Apokalypsis | Book 5 | Apokalypsis 5

by Morris, Kate

  Avery held her breath as Tristan pulled in. It was clear that no one had been down the driveway, but that didn’t mean it was abandoned, either. Maybe they had everything they needed and therefore didn’t leave their farm.

  “Hey, I see a cow,” Kaia exclaimed from the backseat.

  “Caution is going to be our friend here, people,” Tristan warned as the truck inched forward.

  “Agreed,” Alex added in a wary tone.

  “I think we should leave the truck here behind the cover of trees and shrubs,” Tristan said as he slowed the big vehicle to a stop.

  “You want to walk the rest of the way?” Avery asked of the long expanse of driveway before them.

  “Yeah, if you look, there’s a bend in the driveway and a little bit of a bank hill. I think if we leave it here, if anyone’s down there, they won’t be able to see it. The woods here,” he said, pointing out Avery’s window, “will cover it. If we get into trouble, we can run through those woods to come back to it more safely, too.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” she replied.

  “It’s all about how to get back out,” he informed her. “Ready?”

  She nodded, the others said they were, and they all got out.

  “I’m not gonna lock it, but if I go down, get the keys out of my pocket, Ave, and take off.”

  She knew that arguing would be futile, but also that she would never leave him behind. Instead, she nodded.

  They traipsed through the dense woods in the snow, jaggers from bushes catching on their coats as no clear path led through them. She just followed along until Tristan came to a halt at the edge before the clearing. It seemed to be a small patch of land, maybe an acre, before the more manicured sections of the property began. He squatted, so they all did.

  “There’s a car near the barn,” Kaia pointed out.

  “I see it,” Tristan said in a distrustful way as they spied on the property in silence a few minutes. It was a brick, ranch-style home probably built in the 1950s or so.

  “Okay, let’s move out. Ave, stay close to me,” he told her and looked at Alex. “Watch out for Kaia.”

  “Got it,” Alex answered.

  Together, they rose and walked toward the home first. There was a deep drift of snow near the base of a steeper hill that led up to the huge, white bank barn. Tristan avoided it and kept going.

  “Oh, Tristan,” Avery gasped, stopped, and pointed. There was a dead person lying in the snow, blood around his body, dressed in denim overalls and no shoes or socks.

  “Scheisse!” Kaia softly swore in German and pointed. “There’s another one near the barn. What the frick happened here?”

  “Maybe you ought to go back to the truck,” he suggested to Avery.

  “Wait…” she started but got her rebuttal cut off.

  Tristan looked at Alex and ordered, “Anything happens, get them the hell out of here. Stay here. Let me check it out.”

  Tristan walked toward the dead body.

  “It’s okay,” Alex whispered to her. “I won’t leave him.”

  She offered Alex a lopsided smile of appreciation as she watched Tristan step around the front of the body in the deep snow. He pushed him over with the toe of his military boot. They stayed back a way and let Tristan do the grisly work of looking at the body.

  In the pasture, three cows came over, calling out loudly for their morning meal and effectively startling Avery. Tristan kept going and walked up the short incline to the barn where he bent to inspect the other body. Then he jogged back, or attempted to, in the heavy snow.

  “What is it?” Avery asked.

  “The one beside the driveway isn’t infected. The one at the barn was. Not sure what the hell happened. Maybe he got attacked. She looked shot. He didn’t. His head was…bashed in.”

  “Gross,” Kaia remarked.

  “I told you that you should stay home,” Avery reminded her.

  “I’m not a baby, Avery,” she returned angrily.

  Tristan jumped in like he usually did and said, “She’ll be fine. Kaia needs to learn about this, how to handle herself.”

  Avery just sighed as he kept going again.

  “Look, let’s check out the house first,” he said. “We don’t know what happened here, but those bodies don’t seem like they’ve been here all that long. They aren’t covered in snow, and it hasn’t snowed in two days. Just watch corners, watch out for each other. We’ll go single file everywhere. Me first, you girls in the middle, Alex pulls up the rear. Keep your finger off the trigger unless you mean to kill someone. And be careful you don’t shoot each other.”

  “You already told us all this,” Kaia said impatiently.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not looking to get smoked by my own crew this morning,” Tristan said with a grin that her little sister returned.

  “Let’s move,” Alex said as if antsy.

  Tristan nodded and stepped forward more quietly this time. She did the same and noticed the others also copied the move. Avery just wanted to find supplies and maybe some chickens. Actually, as the wind bit into her cheeks, she wished more that she was still at home snuggled under the covers with Tristan.

  He stood listening for a few moments at the edge of the barn before giving a curt nod and moving forward. There was something in his eyes, about the tenseness in his shoulders that wasn’t there a moment ago.

  They circled the massive white barn with the chipped paint and broken and drooping downspouts and came out behind the house. Creeping closer, they reached a set of sliding glass doors and paused. He tried the pull handle. It didn’t give, so Tristan sent a nod toward Alex, who seemed to understand this unspoken order and went the other way, trudging through the snow with Kaia right behind him. She followed Tristan and walked over to the back door, where he tried that one. It was also locked. As they circled the house and met at the front again, Tristan spied through windows carefully lest someone shoot at them.

  “I don’t think anybody’s here,” she whispered as they joined up with the others again near the attached garage.

  Suddenly, someone whistling a tune pierced the silence, and a thrill of anxiousness chased up her spine. Avery gasped as a man came into view near the barn carrying a bucket. He tossed the empty bucket down and marched toward them, lifting his short legs high to get through the snow. The moment he spotted them, he raised a shotgun that had been slung over his shoulder and aimed it at them, as well.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Tristan shouted. “We don’t want trouble!”

  “Where the hell’d he come from?” Alex asked quietly.

  “Who’re you?” the man with the red stocking cap shouted back.

  “We’re looking for the farmers that own this place.”

  The man looked around quickly, then yelled back, “That’s me.”

  “We’re looking to trade if you’re willing,” Tristan said. “We have some things that maybe we could trade if you have any chickens.”

  “What?” Kaia whispered only to have Tristan shush her as the man slowly lowered his gun and approached.

  “What you got?” the man asked as if he didn’t trust them. Avery didn’t blame him. She didn’t trust him, either, especially because he kept glancing around as if something were wrong or he was expecting something to happen. His antsy behavior made her even more so.

  “What would you need?”

  The man stopped probably fifteen yards from them and thought about it for a long time. “Got any liquor?”

  “We might. I’m not sure what the other people in our group have, but I could find out,” Tristan answered, although Avery knew they all had a small coffer of alcohol. She wasn’t sure why Tristan answered him that way but held her tongue.

  “I could go for some Wild Turkey you got any,” the man said and spat tobacco juice. It left a dirty, brown stain on the pristine snow. Something about it marring that perfection of God’s creation bothered Avery, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. It just seemed tainted now. The man
lowered the shotgun further, and she noticed a bandage on his left hand, which was way too dirty to be keeping anything under it in a sanitary state.

  “Do you have chickens or other small livestock you’d be willing to trade?” Tristan called out.

  “Tristan, where’d he come from?” Avery whispered behind him quickly as the answer came to her. “There weren’t footprints in the…”

  “I know,” he swiftly replied in the same hushed decibel.

  “Got a few hogs, couple dozen hens, no rooster, though,” the man said and tried to see around them to Alex and Kaia. He looked more and more on edge as the conversation went on and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Don’t like me no rooster. Flogging cocks. Nasty bastards’ll peck ya’ when you ain’t lookin’.”

  “Hogs would be good. Chickens, too. We might be able to make a deal,” Tristan said. “Anyone else in the house?”

  The man’s facial expression changed to a more panicked one, and he flushed to a redder complexion. It was even odder because, although it was cold out, his ruddy complexion turned a ripe beet color. Avery furrowed her brow at him.

  “What you wanna’ know that for?”

  “Did you kill those two?” Tristan redirected, priming him for answers.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he answered. “She was done crazy with that virus.”

  That much Tristan had already verified. The woman was, indeed, infected.

  “Did you know them?”

  The man shifted his weight, which was substantial for his height. “What you wanna’ know that for?”

  “I know that can be hard,” Tristan said to the man with barely any neck. “We’ve lost people, too.”

  “Think they’re related?” Alex whispered, to which Tristan shook his head in a very subtle manner.

  “What else you gotta trade?” the man asked without answering Tristan’s question.

  “Maybe some pills, pain pills, that sort of thing,” he replied.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the man said with a lot more enthusiasm this time. Then his eyes darted to the house again. He was nervous.

  “Anyone else in there?” Tristan asked.

  He shook his head vigorously and said, “No, no, man. Just me. It’s just me. This is my place.”

  “Dairy farm?”

  “Yeah, dairy. Good ole’ dairy farm. That’s…”

  Tristan raised his rifle so quickly and shot the man point-blank that Avery actually screamed. Kaia gasped.

  “What the hell, man?” Alex asked.

  “Tristan!” Avery cried out.

  “He was lying,” Tristan said and swiftly turned toward the house again. “Those are beef cows in that field, not dairy. I’m no farmer, but even I know that. There was tobacco juice by both bodies. And this house isn’t empty.”

  “Are you sure?” Kaia asked.

  He nodded resolutely and turned to go as if he’d just done nothing out of the ordinary.

  She followed, looking over her shoulder more than once at the dead man, as Tristan tramped through the snow and returned to the rear entry door, which he kicked three times hard enough to send it flying inward where it smacked loudly against the wall.

  “Wait,” Tristan ordered, to which she shook her head.

  “No, way,” she whispered vehemently. Avery certainly didn’t want to wait outside in case there were other men like the no-necked liar hanging around. Tristan just gave her a disappointed and briefly angry expression. “Wait with Kaia,” he told Alex, who nodded. “Come on. Mask up,” he told her, to which she complied as he also pulled his own up to protect himself in case the home was infected.

  Avery followed him with her pistol drawn but down in front of her in a two-handed grip as he showed her. Tristan had been working with everyone in their family for the last month solid on how to handle themselves. She was thankful for that now.

  The floor of the kitchen was so filthy, so grimy and dirty that whatever color or pattern the linoleum used to be, it was now indiscernible and only black and sticky. It made her want to gag, but she resisted.

  They searched to their left and didn’t find anything but an empty bathroom and bedroom. Those rooms were also disgusting, cluttered, and smelled like mildew and mold. Tristan was very thorough in his search, too. Avery pulled her face mask up a little higher and pinched the tiny metal clip in the hopes of keeping out the stench. It didn’t really work. The home was inhabited by pigs, but not the kind that could’ve been made into bacon.

  “I don’t think anyone’s lived here for a long time,” she said, her voice muffled.

  “Maybe.”

  He led her down the other hall toward more rooms, which turned out to be a living room, dining room, and a coat closet. The next hallway held a linen closet and two more bedrooms, which were also empty other than old furniture and a full cat litter box. There weren’t any signs of a cat still living in the house, though. Another bathroom in that wing of the house was also vacant.

  She looked up at him and shrugged with confusion. “Maybe he was telling the truth,” Avery suggested as she looked around them at the hovel the place had become over time. There was a lot of food in boxes on the counters and kitchen table, though. Cereal, snack cakes, microwavable meals in plastic containers, mostly junk but good enough in a pinch. Her mother never would’ve let her or her siblings eat such garbage, but this was a different time in history. She’d probably eat a can of dog food if she had to now.

  Tristan shook his head. “He was hiding something.” He paused another moment and finally said, “Basement.”

  Her eyes widened with enlightenment, and she reluctantly followed him to the basement. The electricity wasn’t working, and there didn’t seem to be any source of heat on in this home, either, which was strange if the no-neck man was living in it. In the corner of the living room had been a fireplace, which wasn’t the greatest source of heat, but it would’ve worked to at least take off the chill. It didn’t appear to have been used recently. The house just felt cold and damp.

  Tristan found the basement door off of the kitchen in a laundry room they missed. There was still plenty of laundry soap, which she definitely thought they should take. That was one thing she knew nothing about making should this go on long enough that she’d have to figure it out.

  The basement door creaked softly, and for some strange reason, that sound bothered her more than Tristan shooting the weird man. She fully expected a hoard of night crawlers to come barreling up the stairs, but none did.

  It was pitch dark save for the little sliver of light coming through a very small, boarded-up window at the base of the stairs. Oddly enough, none of the windows on the first floor were closed up with wood, though. That man Tristan shot, or the previous owners, must’ve thought this window posed more of a weak entry point. She followed Tristan as he slowly took each step while holding out his gun and flashlight in front of him.

  A foul smell, putrid and rancid at the same time, assaulted her nose and made her senses awaken in an unnatural and unpleasant way. She knew Tristan could smell it, too, because he began holding his breath. Was one of those things down here dead like the one outside? The air just hung thick and full of sickening odors. Avery felt guilty, but she gagged a few times and actually thought she might vomit. She hoped Tristan wasn’t getting angry with her weakness or possibly giving them away. He didn’t even acknowledge it, though. He only stepped down from the last step onto the basement’s cement floor, which looked as dirty as the kitchen linoleum.

  The hair came up on the back of her neck as if to silently warn her of danger, as if her body’s natural, ancient instincts were coming alive of their own volition.

  “Jesus!” Tristan swore as he rounded the corner at the base of the stairs a moment before she could.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Roman

  “Jesus,” Wren whispered as they all lay prone on their stomachs to spy out the hayloft doors. “There’s two more of those buggers.”

  “Where…yeah, I see �
�em,” Roman agreed as he looked through his rifle scope. There had to be about a dozen of them out there now.

  “This could be a potential trap up here,” Spencer said. “I’m going to scout out if we can lock ourselves up here in case they come this way.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Wren said and inched herself backward and then into the shadows until she could stand. Roman was impressed. He also wondered why she moved and talked and acted like she was in the military before. She was a girl with a lot of secrets, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t just some high school student who took selfies and hung out with her friends on the weekends at the local mall.

  They walked carefully so as not to make a lot of noise on the squeaky old barn floor and were soon gone from sight. Roman kept his eyes on the horizon.

  “We’re in trouble, Roman,” Jane whispered beside him.

  He rubbed her back, then resumed peering through his scope. “We’re okay.”

  “For now,” she added nervously.

  “We have the high ground,” he told her. “That evens out the numbers a lot.”

  “Roman, I don’t know how to shoot that well,” she admitted as if it were a problem.

  “I’m more concerned that those things were so close to your dad’s place,” he admitted. “We’re not even a mile away or so. And we don’t even know where your mom is. She could be out for a walk.”

  “I hadn’t considered that,” she said softly. “I doubt it, though. Knowing Maureen, she’s hotwired a car somewhere and left. Or she went to town to see what trouble she could stir up. It doesn’t take her long.”

  “We have to work on a perimeter safety net. Set up some sort of traps or something.”

  Beside him, Jane jumped when Wren’s dog padded over and flattened itself to the floor between them as if it understood the situation. Then it growled softly, and they watched as the night crawlers in the field began fighting with one another. Then they split off and ran in opposite directions. One tried to catch a deer, but they mostly spooked them all away, which sucked. Hunting for a deer was the whole point of him being out here this morning. It was just one more time he’d put Jane in danger, and that didn’t sit well with Roman.