Leaking gas, the other new currency of the world, dripping, wasted onto the ground. He moves but his body keeps him in the chair. He pulls on the door handle. It won’t budge. He yanks the handle. No progress. He wraps his fingers into his pants material using as a level to pick his left leg up and prop it against the door. Jerking back he slams his boot sending the door flying open.
Growls.
His guns are under his right side. He slides the M&P from its left thigh holster transferring it to his steady right hand. The growls turn to barks. This accident didn’t attract biters, but man’s best friend. The car hood pops and contorts as a pit bull walks across it. The dog snarls and slobbers. He hears the shuttering of padded paws on the asphalt. A few dogs move past the open door into his line of sight.
No wolves. All domestic dogs, or at least they were domestic nine months ago. Now they have banned together returning to natural pack instincts. The pit bull has assumed command and must be the strongest, largest most viscous of the dogs or he would not be allowed to rule.
Biters scattered most of the wild game. The one reason they fenced in the national forest as part of the camp over houses and fields—deer meat.
He knows a lot of the cattle and other farm animals have been eaten. So these once pets have turned on their masters to fulfill their basic needs.
Every movie he’s ever watched insisted creatures form hierarchy packs. If the pecking order’s broken the animals will scatter needing to reestablish a leader before they resume an attack. If true, this would give him plenty of time to escape. He wonders how factual this is, especially when it comes to being hungry. Will the need to eat outweigh the need to have a ruler?
He raises his M&P toward the pit bull. The cracked glass hinders his ability to draw a clear bead on the animal’s forehead. He needs a single clean shot. Just in case. After all, he could bark a kill order before he dies and the frenzy of attacking dogs could negate them realizing they have no leader before they kill him, or at least mangle him before he forces them to retreat. Just how wild have these canines reverted? Will they fear the thunder boom he unleashes?
The bullet exits the windshield and smashes through the left eye of the beast. The dog rolls from the hood in yelping whimpers.
He forces his body to deal with the pain in order to escape the car. The dogs look to their fallen pack leader, and then their fear of man overwhelms their hunger. They race for the woods. He fires into the trees twice to ensure the mutts continue to run from him.
He slumps against the car. In the center of the road remains what’s left of a riding lawn mower.
“Who the hell parks a lawn mower in the center of the road?” He squeezes off another round, striking the mower before falling back against the car. His body betrays him as he becomes numb from the impact of the crash. He slides down the side of the car to the ground.
Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out.
He picks himself up from the asphalt. “So much for not passing out.”
The sun hangs low in the western sky. The dogs scattered, and blind luck kept any undead from finding him while he slept.
“I don’t want to be out here in the dark. I must have hit my head. I’m talking to myself, out loud no less.” He uses the door as a crutch to stand on unsteady feet. “No choice but to move. Can’t stay exposed like this. Even if dogs were my only problem.”
The dead pit bull has cooked in the heat of the afternoon sun. Part of him thinks the death smell may have protected him from any passing biters.
“Think. No visible houses.” He staggers to the trunk and pulls out a couple of the blankets. “Can’t walk down the road in the dark.”
He shuffles forward.
“This can’t be good. From a distance I look like one of those things.” He reaches down and touches the gun holster on his left hip. The bottom leg strap feels like a needle jabbed into him. He runs his finger over the cracked plastic buckle. He must have hit the steering wheel and bruised it.
“That’s tender. I must’ve hit my head. I can’t stop talking to myself.”
“Maybe you should stop talking to yourself and pay more attention to what’s going on.”
He hobbles around at the voice.
A ratty pair of mud-covered twenty-somethings approach him. One draws back a compound bow.
Pain shoots through him as the quick turn reveals new places he must be bruised.
“I told you no one would be ‘specking a mower in the road.”
“It was a great plan, Sis.”
He bites the corner of his lip to prevent screaming from the needles stabbing everywhere he impacted in the crash.
“I’ll tell you an even better plan. You two turn and walk away while you can still breathe.” Flexing his right hand in order to draw cramps his shoulder.
“Listen, gramps.”
“I’m not that old.”
“Open your coat slow,” demands the kid with the bow.
He pulls open his coat. The male’s eyes go right for the shiny barrel of the .375.
“Look! He’s got a big one.”
The kid’s arms shake from keeping tension on the bow. He lets his arm slide in an inch, weakening the bows draw. “Use two fingers to pull it out.”
“You saw that on some cop show, didn’t you?”
“Just pull it out with two fingers, gramps.”
“It’s too heavy for just two fingers.”
“I don’t want you to put your hand on it.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Sis, you get it.”
The girl darts across the asphalt reaching for the gun. Putting herself between her brother and the man who jerks her arm and spins her around as a shield to catch the brother’s arrow. She screams as the shaft sinks into her flesh.
With no warning he snaps the sister’s neck.
The mud-covered boy stares down the barrel of the magnum before he’s able to notch another arrow.
“You like my gun?”
“You fucking killed my sister,” the mud-covered boy howls.
“I’m going to kill you and then find someplace to sleep like a baby.”
The kid drops the bow and runs. He raises the magnum.
The kid disappears into the trees.
“You must have been feeling lucky.” He lowers the gun and staggers down the road.
Don’t pass out with your shoes on. That’s good advice but I’m going to have to. I should be more worried about a concussion.
He uses the banister to pull himself up step by step to reach the upper stairs. He feels safer on the second floor. Many biters have a hard time climbing stairs and a stairwell is a natural bottleneck. Only one or two dead can get up the stairs at a time and they’re not smart enough to do anything but climb.
His head swims again.
He takes the first bedroom sealing the door with an overturned dresser just like he did when he escorted Emily. Anything trying to get in will make enough noise to wake him.
He should have checked the room first, made sure the closet was empty but he’ll just shoot a biter.
Empty. No monsters under the bed either. He falls face first into the pillow his boots on his feet.
Sleep.
Dreamless because he passed out.
The sun shines in.
He cracks his eyes enough to know it’s the next day, or at least daylight. He could have slept longer. At least he woke up and not as a biter. He closes his eyes. He knows he’s had a greater head injury before, but maybe he hit his head just right this time. Kicking his boots off he goes to sleep.
He slams the car into park. The small SUV jolts to a stop in the center of the highway.
Streaking across the sky are the fiery flames of a meteor.
The highway becomes a makeshift parking lot as he and dozens of others get out of their cars to witness the flaming boulder. He steps out of the still running vehicle and watches the streaking meteor flame across the sky. It crashes into the ground hard enough to create a ground quake. He
grabs the door of his SUV to keep from being bucked to the asphalt. Black smoke billows from behind the trees.
Sirens blare.
Fire trucks race by as if they had been following the burning object. The force of their speed sends him back against his SUV. None of the fire trucks are painted with the name of a town or county. They disappear, sirens wailing.
He climbs back into the vehicle, flipping the radio to a news station.
“Early reports air traffic control stations have shut down across the country leaving thousands of people stranded in planes with no guidance to landing fields will not be confirmed or denied by the FFA.”
“Sixteen confirmed plane crashes have occurred within the last hour. Authorities are urging everyone to return to their homes and clear all major highways. Due to the number of planes still in the air if interstates aren’t cleared within the next thirty minutes the National Guard will be forced to move off all cars.”
He presses the phone button on the steering wheel. “Daughter,” he commands.
The phone rings and a plucky teen voice answers. Before she can say more than, ‘hi, Daddy,’ he grills her.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Practice.”
“And your mother?” ‘Your mother’ sounds more like ‘fucking bitch.’
“I don’t know, Dad.”
“Then you turn on the news and stay home no matter what.”
“I saw the news, it’s on the cable channels as well.”
The last time he saw cable channels interrupted for news events the Twin Towers fell.
“Dad, you know Mom doesn’t deal well with emergencies. Come get us.”
“I’m an hour from my house and four from you. They’re closing the roads. By the time I take all the back roads to get to you this will all be over.”
“Daddy, just come get us.”
“Daddy, just come get us.”
“Daddy, just come get us.”
“Daddy.”
“Daddy!”
“DADDY!”
His eyes flash open. Sweat covers his forehead. He hears pawing at the door as if a cat is trying to get in. He draws his Beretta. The pawing continues and doesn’t stop when he drags the dresser away from the door. He flings the door open, pistol level. Nothing there. Damn crawlers. He lowers the gun to shoot whatever undead slinks across the floor and spots the calico cat bounding into the room.
Damn cat.
He escapes the room before it rubs up against his legs. He takes the stairs with caution. The cat’s a clear indication no biters are around, but he never lets his guard down.
The farmhouse sits off the road in the midday sun. His muscles ache and stiffen from the crash, but nothing more than a few swollen contusions decorate his body. He throws a quilt over a barbed wire fence and heaves his left leg over. He’ll cut across the fields to reach the city of Rolla. Once there he’ll acquire a new car. Something new. They seem to start better. Old farm trucks might be more reliable, but after nine months in dormancy, they’re a bitch to start. It will have to be from a dealership with these new microchipped starters.
With luck he won’t find too many biters until he reaches the city. They may have migrated closer to the military base as well. Cats, dogs, even cattle, have adapted to not making noise to avoid attracting them. Humans with their higher brain functions never seem to understand.
Movies always show abandoned modern cities—Old West ghost towns have a different look—as trash filled. Papers blow in the wind, garbage cans overturned, cars abandoned, maybe a body or two in the street. Not here. This place remains pristine, like on a Sunday morning right before everyone gets up for church, and he figures everyone in this part of the state gets up to attend church. Not a single broken window or even a lone biter wandering. There seems to be a distinct lack of cars, as if everyone has a garage. The city doesn’t even feel abandoned, but asleep. A lot of towns have doors smashed open and people’s possessions strewn about the lawns. At first, it was televisions and computers, but when power faded it became clothes and canned goods. Some places have a rotten food smell. For lack of a better explanation. Not here. Later if he has time he’ll re-scout this place. It has a Kmart and a Walmart and a few other major stores possibly with supplies intact. With a major college campus as well with dorm rooms full of Ramen Noodles, those things never seem to expire, and even if they do, no one really notices a difference in taste.
For easy math purposes, this city is thirty miles from the military base. Could everyone here have immediately just followed the evacuation orders? As close as they were, maybe they figured they could just go back home if they had to. Of course, as close to the base as they are, they could have been evacuated in an orderly fashion quickly where places further away fell to pandemonium.
He reaches a car lot and considers a truck. Next door a bicycle shop calls to him. If not for a thirty-mile trip those would be nice to explore the town on. No noise. Better yet he recalls a motorcycle place a few blocks down. Even going slow weaving in and out of traffic on the interstate he could be there before dark.
The real killer in the apocalypse might be the boredom. Sure, every now and then an undead corpse tries to eat you, maybe on a good day an army of biters bang at your door and occasionally a few desperate people attack, but most days it’s just a lot of nothing. How did primitive man just hunt for a living? After they killed a deer to feed the tribe, what did they do with their time? Maybe the Pyramids were built out of boredom. ‘Hey, let’s fuck with future generations and build a massive stone temple in such a way no one can figure out how or why we did it.’ Somebody did the same thing in the 1970s when they invented the Rubik’s cube.
He knows better than to let his mind wander too far. The cars parked on the highway may have enough room for the Harley to pass between so far, but infinity welcomes careless drivers.
The road from the interstate has been cleared of all debris. Plumes of black smoke billow from the southwest. He tastes the smoke on the wind. The military must be cremating the bodies of the undead. Soldiers load trucks with useless burnable items from the businesses.
Those men on guard take note of him, but don’t attempt to stop him.
He slows at a new forward checkpoint constructed out of sandbags and concrete barriers at what used to be a civilian-friendly entrance to Fort Wood.
The corporal in charge of this new gate signals for him to cut his engine.
He complies.
“If you wish to take up as a refugee in the Fort, you are going to have to surrender all weapons.”
“I work for the colonel. I’m one of his contracted scouts.”
Uneasy trigger fingers have soldiers attached to them. “Then you have the proper paperwork.”
“I’m going to slowly reach into my pocket, okay?” He waits until the corporal agrees before sliding his hand under his duster overcoat, behind his back and below his gun belt to reach his rear jean pocket.
The soldiers don’t raise the weapons but they are quick to clink their machine guns in a manner that reminds a person they are fully loaded.
His arm moves even slower as he hands over the note.
The corporal reads it—twice. “I need to call and confirm this.”
“It says as much.” He drops the kickstand and leans back on the Harley. “I’ll wait.”
He slips off his coat. Even the military boys seem impressed with hardware around his waist. He unzips the tactical vest, before reaching down to unclasp the tie straps on his left leg holster before unhooking his gun belt. He lays the line of handguns across the top of his folded coat. Removing the vest requires more effort than he realized. The stiff Kevlar padding had kept his insides in place.
His arms slip from the vest. His legs give way in a wobble. The corporal catches him.
“You okay, sir?”
“Just a bit woozy.”
A private unslings his rifle.
“I’m not bit,” he assures them. “I crashed
a car.”
“Sorry, sir. You must report, under guard, to the infirmary.”
He pulls another gun hidden in his boot. “I might need some help.” He drops the gun on his coat.”
“That’s a lot of weight in guns.”
“Not so much. I’d carry one of those M60s if I could.”
“Nice, I bet you’d handle one easily by yourself because it’s going to take a few of us to move you.”
Colonel Travis waves his hand. The medics leave the room.
“This isn’t the hospital on the base.”
“My soldiers almost had to carry you in.”
“It’s all contusions. Had a little fender bender on the way in.”
“Bet it takes forever for your insurance to pay off,” Travis jokingly says, but still keeps his CO tone.
“Try finding a bank willing to cash a check these days.” He laughs to himself.
“Your hidden camp still safe?”
“Didn’t the soldier report back?” He adjusts himself in bed to sit up more.
“What soldier?”
“Two trips ago, some kid followed me. He was in uniform. I lost him, but he should’ve been able to backtrack to base and return to report in. Hell, I left him close to the road.”
“I never sent anyone to follow you. I don’t want to know where you hide. Your continued success ensures I’ve a place to send my daughter.”
“I take it even the greatest army on the planet can’t defeat these things?”
“By the time the government figured out killing the dead was the key to survival it was already too late. Once it started those who survived had to be willing to bludgeon, smash, or shoot even the closest of loved ones.” Knowing he couldn’t do that to his own daughter, how could he expect anyone to do the same? “People just couldn’t do it. It was too hard to shoot Mom, smash in children’s heads, shred husbands and wives. Those able to defend themselves stayed where they were, the others were able to escape to refugee camps.”
No Room In Hell (Book 1): The Good, The Bad and The Undead Page 15