Damn it, Hannah, we can’t feed everyone. Damn it. I can’t save everyone. Damn! He wishes he could scream.
The violation of a few women should send him into public outrage, but the black market actually helps maintain some control as Kade’s providing some items he no longer has to ration. Problems remain. People don’t need shaving razors, but they think they can’t live without such an item. Kade trades razors, making him important. Any more action against Kade could cause riots. He hasn’t the troops to prevent disturbances. He barely has enough now to patrol the fences. Travis stopped ordering soldiers to gather survivors.
“I’ll do whatever I have to in order to protect my only child.” Travis wants to do more to protect her. Instead of wasting energy pumping life into something unable to be revived. He should be gathering his best soldiers and supplies staking out a defensible area to wait out the end of civilization. He should be devoting himself to solely protecting Hannah.
“Shutting down the black market is not a viable option. People need the distraction until Washington sends in more supplies.”
“Just kick the Bowlin brothers out.”
“The five of them have quite a following. Gun play would ensue costing a lot of people their lives. And costing me valuable soldiers I need to protect the base. Washington has recalled over half my troops in the last few weeks. Living soldiers are more important than the violation of a few women.”
“Rape isn’t right.”
“A few brutalized women are better than a few hundred dead ones. This conversation’s non-negotiable.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers.”
“Hannah, the only reason you’re not in the brig—”
“Dad, this isn’t right.”
“I don’t like removing the rights of individuals, but we have to face what is important for the good of all of us.”
He wants to tell her the war has an end. They’ll all return to their homes, and after some mass funeral pyres life will be as it was, but reality has proven otherwise. It wouldn’t be a lie. The war would be over soon, but it will be America’s last war and there won’t be anyone left to record how mom and apple pie couldn’t defeat walking corpses. No, better for her to be mad at him than to tell her he’d put a bullet in her temple before this camp succumbs to evil and she becomes a poor underage girl sucking cock for scraps of bread.
“Do as I tell you. Stay away from the refugee camps. In fact, go back to our apartment and pack an energy travel bag.”
Before she questions the orders, Hannah realizes her father has his way of sending a coded message. He’s no longer capable of protecting her, let alone so many others in the camp. She thinks back to all her exploring. At first they built a fence and erected portable buildings, much in the way a child would build with Legos. Then, as the undead army grew, more people flooded in and a tent city arose. A second fence line was erected as were more and more tents. The place burst with people. It would only take one getting in who was bitten and there would be no place left for anyone to run. Her father instructing her to pack a bag meant this place wouldn’t be safe for much longer, but where could he be sending all those people from the hospital?
“Father.”
“No, Hannah. Just do it. Forget about the Bowlins.”
Being the resident local survivalists, the Bowlin brothers assume the place of the military patrols outside the fence in the last few weeks. Hannah spied them leave the camp and returning with foraged supplies and small groups of refugees, but only when it suited them.
She plays her last card. “Kame made a run off base and took three girls with him. They claimed they had found their families in another camp…”
Travis wants to interrupt her with the information that there are no other camps, but clearly confirming her suspicions would cause her to insist further about removing the brothers from the camp. So he just listens.
“They haven’t come back yet, but the last time they took a woman with them she didn’t come back either,” Hannah continues.
So much, so many to take care of shouldn’t be an excuse to allow such tragedy to occur under his nose. Protecting people is his mandate, and clearly Travis has failed, but the question now remains, what is the greater good for the group? Individuality may be lost. Is the molestations of a few girls worth losing the lives of ten thousand? Before the outbreak the answer should have been yes, but now…now the rules have changed and he must protect humanity even over his own daughter.
“How do you know this?” Travis asks.
“I’ve been talking to people.”
“Hearsay’s not evidence.”
“Ask Sarah, the girl I want you to help. She saw them leave,” Hannah says.
“Trading food for sex may not be the most moral act, but kidnapping these girls…will stop.”
Before Hannah gets excited about this, he adds, “I’ll have to have absolute proof.”
“Just send some troops out. Kill them when they’re off base. No one will know.”
“I won’t put my men at risk. It’s not just a raid on Kade men, it’s the Infected. They are growing in number.”
“Why hasn’t the government evacuated the civilians?”
“Hannah, I’m not allowed to explain...” Travis pauses, then makes a quick decision. “There’s no place to evacuate to.”
JIM SLAMS ON the brakes. The U-Haul trailer jars forward inching the truck onward with the momentum, sending his passengers against the dash.
“What the fuck, dude!” Rabia slaps Jim’s arm. “I thought you could drive, white boy?” Horns howl.
“Fuck. This’s not New York rush hour, fuckers.” He climbs out the window. “Stop honking, fuckers!” He slides back into his seat. “Did everyone forget that those things are attracted by noise?”
“Too late, Jim.” Ed spots why they stopped.
Now the milling mass of walking corpses along the interstate has shifted and become a wave of rotting flesh streaming toward the truck.
With car after car barely pushed aside to crawl down the interstate, there’s no place to turn around.
No time run.
In reality, nowhere to run.
Rabia jerks the slide on her pistol. “Get us out of here white-boy.”
Jim slams the truck into gear. “Hold on to your potatoes.” He presses down with both feet, one on the brake the other on the gas. The back tires whirl to life sending up white rubber smoke. Drawing the undead directly to him. He releases the brake and the truck propels forward at breakneck speed. Running over once-people with a dull smacking thud. The bodies accumulate, jerking the truck up and down as if it was going over dozens of speed bumps.
Jim attempts to steer, but a tangled corpse in the wheel wells sends the right fender into an abandoned Honda. The rice burner skids against the concrete barrier and bounces off, slamming back into the truck’s passenger door crumpling it permanently shut. Ed feels the door bruise his thigh. Rabia’s gun ejects from her hand and bounces around the floor before sliding under the seat.
Jim fights to keep the truck steady, but he refuses to un-mash the gas petal. Two more cars spin away from the truck’s superior metal frame, but the modern metal cannot match the 1960-something Plymouth Buick tank metal. They impact. Rabia feels the kiss of glass on her forehead. She slumps into her seat. Before all goes black, she witnesses the windshield crack in a spider web.
Danziger drops behind the blue mailbox, gun in hand. Blood mushrooms from Tom’s shoulder. A DK shambles down the middle of the street.
“How bad is it?”
Tom rubs the wound. “Feels like it just scraped the skin. Burns like a mother.” Tom slaps a feminine hygiene pad on the bleeding skin. “Don’t say nothing. And from now on we can’t walk down the middle of the street.”
Danziger asks, “Did you see where the shot came from?”
“The upper window of that drugstore, I think.”
“Makes sense. Good location for supplies. They must figure we’re goi
ng to raid them.”
“We mean you no harm. We’re just passing through. If you’d shot the DK we’d have just moved on.” The corpse moan-howls the only response. “We don’t want anything you have. We’ve nothing of value to even trade.” A lie. He knows the guns they carry are better currency than any greenbacks. “We just want to get to the caravan leaving for the military base.”
The growls lumber closer. Danziger peeks at the building. The local drugstore provides cover for his assailant. The drugstore would have been well stocked with supplies. The building appears secure, but a poor choice of a hiding location. Anyone in need of anything in this neighborhood would start there in a search.
“Just shoot!” Tom screams.
“I have sixty-four bullets in this rifle. We’re going to need them.”
“We need to find a couple of machetes,” Tom suggests.
The corpse lumbers toward them.
“He sure don’t move quickly.”
“Some don’t. Most seem broken.”
“But in a group of them they’ll bring you down like a pack of lions.”
“Lion groups are called prides,” Danziger corrects Tom before calling back out to the drugstore. “Just shoot the dead thing and we’ll move on.”
Tom swings his rifle around. “I’m going to have to shoot it.”
“We’ll still have to outrun whoever’s in the upstairs window.”
“I shoot the meat-bag, you run. Better covering position from those buildings across the street.”
Bam.
The DK falls to the ground. A smoking rifle barrel draws back inside one of the drugstore windows.
“Take a step toward this building and you get the same,” a deep voice calls from the window.
Danziger puts a sterile gauze pad on Tom’s torn skin from the bullet graze. “It’s not bad, but infection is a greater worry. How far do you think we are from the caravan?”
“Cutting across people’s backyards I’d say about two miles, but if we keep moving at an angle it could be longer, but still way past the end.” Tom circles his shoulder to evaluate his range of motion. “Unless it’s rolled out already.”
“We better get moving.”
Aleydis finds herself falling.
The nearly two-foot drop takes forever as she is jarred from the bus seat. As she tries to right herself the bus continues to shake. Kelly, a stringy blonde about her age steadies herself, “You have to get up. We got to go.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for the shaking to stop first?”
“It’s not an earthquake.” The short middle-aged man leans over the seat and offers his hand to pull her up.
“What’s going on?” Aleydis struggles to get back to the seat, but the violent shaking keeps her on the floor.
“The rotters. We have to go.” He offers his hand to her again.
“Take it,” Kelly screams at her while stuffing a blanket into a satchel.
Aleydis lets the man get her out of the seat.
“Grab your bag and let’s go.” He pulls the handle on the emergency escape hatch in the roof. “Up you go.” He stuffs Kelly through the hole.
Aleydis reluctantly steps back from him. The front doors smash open and rotters lumber inside. She jumps up, grabbing the hatch. The man shoves her through. He climbs on the seat. A rotter reaches for him. He jabs a screwdriver into its eye, shoving the brute back onto the next monster in line. Those few seconds of the dead rotter falling onto the other allows him to crawl out the hatch.
The undead shoving and pushing against the bus don’t notice the trio. Thousands of walking corpses surround the bus, caravan, and interstate. Aleydis screams. Both Kelly and the man clamp hands over her mouth. The bus shakes. The DKs jump and claw reaching for a finger hold in order to pull themselves up.
The man lets go of Aleydis and turns counter clockwise slowly, taking in his entire surroundings. People jump from their vehicles still dragging their possessions. They run into the woods drawing many of the DKs after them. He witnesses stupid decisions as people drag bags of clothes and other worldly goods, slowing their escape. Many hold on to their luggage, even as the undead drag them to the ground and eat their flesh.
The bus violently rocks. The DKs hunger for the three people on top.
“Okay, girls. How far can you jump?”
“Jump where?” Kelly seems calmer than Aleydis.
“Truck bed.” He points. “The rotters are going to tip this bus.”
“Wrong way. Everyone’s running the other way.”
“They ran the wrong direction. Trust me.”
Given a lack of choice, Kelly leaps from the bus. The boxes in the truck bed cushion most of her landing.
“You have to go,” he yells at Aleydis.
Fear keeps her frozen on the rocking bus.
Kelly scrambles to the roof of the truck cab and waves for Aleydis to jump. She knows better than to yell, and the rotters around the truck have failed to notice her. They keep shambling to the shaking bus.
Two cars down a man jackrabbits from a car. He jumps over one car trunk avoiding grabbing corpses. Kelly prays he reaches the divided median where the dead thin out enough to avoid them. Aleydis wants to cheer him on. The man on the bus with her spins her around so she doesn’t see the jackrabbiting teen slide over the roof of a car and into the waiting arms of a dozen undead.
“You have to jump.” He half shoves her from the bus.
Aleydis screams all the way to the truck bed. He follows her pulling her from the boxes before the rotters turn and grab them. He pushes Aleydis to the cab roof before grabbing a crutch from a pile of personal possessions. He smashes the nearest rotter in the face.
“Where do we run now?” Panic creeps into Kelly’s voice. The girl has nerve, but even she won’t take much more of this.
He slams the crutch into another rotter before joining the girls on the roof. “We run for those trees.” He points.
“Those monsters are coming from that direction. Everyone’s running the other way.”
“Exactly. The ones coming from the north out of those woods have thinned out because they are heading south. Leaving fewer rotters to deal with. Unfortunately, they’ll be chasing those poor souls running south.” He points back across the interstate.
The bus smashes to its side drawing more DKs to the crushing metal noise.
“We go now.” He drops from the roof.
Kelly shoves Aleydis from the cab into the man’s arms. He sets her on the ground feeling wet on his hand. The man realizes Aleydis has an abdominal wound from the crimson fluid dripping through his fingers.
They run through the monster’s grabbing arms racing through the cleared ground between the interstate and the tree line. He stops. The girls pause.
“Keep running!”
The girls sprint faster, weaving between the thinning herds. He grabs the handle of a machete sunk into the shoulder of a rotter. He has to kick the creature in the chest to yank the blade free. Once he has the weapon he races after the girls.
They reach the tree line. The rotters have thinned. Three turn to pursue them. Kelly runs right into a rotter. The man sinks the machete into its skull.
“We keep moving through the woods. Don’t stop.”
“Who are you?” Kelly asks her savior, falling against a tree sucking in deep breaths.
“Don’t stop,” he scolds them.
“I don’t know who you are.” Blood blooms through Aleydis’ shirt.
“I’m a guy trying to stay alive. Call me Jack, if it gets you to run.” Levin smiles at his joke.
Aleydis huffs in deep breaths. “Something in one of those boxes was sharp.”
“We’ve got to get clear of this herd before we fix your wound.”
They race off into the woods.
“Suburbia.” Tom kicks a deflated beach ball into the green water of a backyard pool.
Danziger fiddles with the latch on the gate. “The thing’s rusted shut.”
&nbs
p; “Use the butt of the rifle,” Tom suggests.
Danziger raises the weapon to drive the butt like a hammer against the lock when the creak of a swing forces his muscles to freeze. Danziger waves Tom to be quiet. Tom becomes a statue, but not before he raises his rifle. Danziger points over the fence to the yard next to the one they are in. Tom side-steps in that direction. Danziger crunches some dead bushes to peek over the fence.
A dead girl in a ruined pink dress swings in the back yard. She turns her head and hisses at Danziger. She pumps her legs to swing again.
“You ever see one behave like that?”
“It’s not swinging, detective. Look at her hands.”
Danziger notes her wrists have been duct taped to the chains to prevent escape. “Someone couldn’t deal with their precious little girl turning.”
“Should we kill it?”
“I think we should tread lightly. I’ve heard stories of people who keep loved ones chained and feed them parts of the living because they can’t bear to let them go.”
Danziger won’t pass judgment on such people. He has no idea how he’d behave if it had been his little girl who’d been bitten. He just knows what he will do to her murderer.
“How do you want to handle this? I’ve got to bust the gate lock.”
“Let’s avoid the noise and go around the other way, or at least a few houses down.”
“Safety first.”
“You want to find your daughter’s killer then we don’t need unnecessary risks. The world’s full of new killers, and not just the DKs.”
“You’re going to keep me alive through this aren’t you, Tom?” Just like Hyun Su did for most of their partnership on the force.
“I’m not sure how you’ve made it all these months.” Tom tries the back door.
“I had this Asian good luck charm.”
“It must have worked well.”
“It did until I lost it.”
Locked.
He heads out the back gate into the alley. “Me and the guys, we held out at the fire station till they closed off that section of town, then we took off just outside the city and holed up in a few houses with some others. Our food ran out so we came back into St. Louis. Took up as guards to protect those who gathered as they planned the caravan to the military base. It paid in food.”
No Room In Hell (Book 1): The Good, The Bad and The Undead Page 13