Benjamin pumped gas into the huge tank in the back of the truck, and Bryce grabbed some of the smaller cans and filled those.
After about fifteen minutes of pumping, all the small cans were full and the large generator tank was just about full.
That’s when they heard the noise.
A loud growling noise grew in strength. Bryce jogged over to the edge of the gas station and peeked behind the fence. A group of about twenty infected, all bundled together in a big swarm approached them like a pack of wolves about to take down their prey. This was the most infected that he had seen thus far, and suddenly Bryce had the sinking feeling that they grouped together in urban environments, like some kind of pack instinct.
The infected must have been drawn out by the sound of the gunshots and the generator, he guessed.
“Dad, we need to get out of here. We’ve got company,” he explained.
“The tank’s almost full, how long do we have?” Benjamin replied.
“I’m not waiting any longer, I am going to go shut the generator down, and we are bugging out,” Bryce said.
With a sigh of acceptance, Benjamin returned the pump to its proper place and got ready to leave. Bryce ran behind the station and shut down the generator. Bryce wanted to be able to use this facility again in the future, so leaving the generator running until it died would not suit his purposes.
The three of them gathered up their belongings and started the truck. They drove as quickly as possible away from the group of infected and back toward town. With a sigh of relief as they put distance between them and the infected, they all looked at each other.
“We need to see if we can get some supplies too, we are running pretty low,” Benjamin suggested.
“Let’s head over to the grocery store and see if there’s anything left,” Bryce said.
“It’s going to be pretty picked through at this point don’t you think?” Jessica said.
“I’m sure, but people are interesting creatures, and sometimes the best stuff will get left behind,” Bryce reasoned.
“Well, let’s get over there and find out,” Jessica told him.
The three of them headed to across town in silence, to see what was left at the grocery store. Any supplies they could get their hands on at this point would be well received. They had an entire shopping list of items provided by the women that they needed to look for.
On the list were tons of everyday items that, that a month ago, wouldn’t have been a big deal. Now, some of them were almost life or death to some of the members of the group.
The over the counter allergy medications were literally a lifesaver for Bryce. He suffered from allergy hypersensitivity due to both food and environmental allergies. It had become a problem in the last month, and it he was running out of allergy medication. If he could get his hands on something as simple as Claritin, he would feel infinitely better.
Bryce silently hoped for some good fortune, and kept to himself the rest of the way. Jessica and Benjamin both kept to themselves as well, and within a few minutes they had arrived.
The three of them unloaded from the truck and headed into the store to see what they could find. They all needed the supplies desperately, but not one of them wanted to enter the building after the run in they had at the gas station.
Bryce took a second to collect himself and then boldly stepped into the building first. Someone had to go first and he figured it might as well be himself.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Payson, Arizona
Logan Bartlett, his wife Christine, and their four children were crammed into a small one-room hotel room. The infected clawed at the door, and Logan was unsure of what to do next.
Logan had attempted to lead his family to safety for weeks. Originally, they had tried to stay holed up in their home in Tucson. Logan had a more than ample supply of food, water, and munitions, with which he had planned to ride out the Outbreak.
They had chosen Tucson as their home after Logan had performed various training exercises in Arizona as part of his Navy SEAL training. Logan had grown fond of the warm temperate climate of southern Arizona, after years of freezing his ass off all across the planet. After many years had gone by and he and his wife had four children, Logan had found it much harder to be away from his family. His wife had been able to stay on base with the kids, due to her job in the Navy as a nurse, which worked out to allow her to be full-time military but still raise a family while Logan was away.
Eventually, Logan had gotten tired of the revolving door of enemies that popped up from the “war on terror” and all the fucking politicians in D.C. who wanted to keep wounding the snake instead of just cutting off its head. It had become too difficult to turn it all off when he came home, and when he did, he felt like he had spent months at a time away from his family for nothing.
He discussed it with his wife and they both agreed that when their contracts expired they would leave the Navy and find jobs in Arizona. Christine had retired from the Navy a year before him and had picked up a nursing job at one of the major Tucson hospitals; she had been forced to relocate the family to Tucson ahead of Logan.
When Logan finally got out, he picked up a job as a survival instructor at a school in southern Arizona. The school taught various forms of survival with everything from wilderness survival to urban. He picked the job due to his extensive military training, and also because he generally enjoyed it. Teaching other people how to fend for themselves had brought him joy.
Unfortunately, after all the steps Logan and his family had gone through to prepare their home for this kind of outbreak, Logan could never have known that Tucson would be the single point of evacuation for the entire Phoenix metropolitan area. After Tucson fell, Logan knew that he had to get his family to safety.
They had taken back roads out of Tucson and headed north, toward what Logan hoped would be some kind of refuge. They had packed up their car with as much food, water and guns as they could hold, and the Bartlett family was on the move.
Unfortunately, while they were stopped for gas in Globe, a gang of thugs had broken into the vehicle and stole their supplies before they set it on fire. Logan’s decision to keep the family together at all times had most likely saved lives, but ultimately had cost him all of his supplies.
With only the weapons they carried on them, and the food they could scavenge, they carried on through Globe. Logan found an old car that he could easily hotwire and got them mobile once more.
The rugged drive through the Salt River Canyon put the car through the wringer, however, and before they even reached Payson the car gave out on the side of the highway.
The family had been forced to hike the rest of the journey with limited provisions, and no other form of transportation in sight. The only cars left on the highway had been broken-down, burned-out, beaters like the one they had given up on.
It took the family almost a full week to reach Payson on foot, and by the time they had arrived they were spent. They found a small hotel off the beaten path, close to a small grocery store in the center of town. Logan decided that they would bunk down and take a few days to recover. Logan, Christine, and their oldest son Robby were more than capable of making the journey, but the other three children were much younger and could not handle the forced march as well. Thankfully, Logan had found a decent supply of food and beverages in a few vending machines near their room and it would allow them to take some time to rest.
After only half a day of rest, Logan decided to explore the hotel and its surroundings to see what other supplies he could find.
What he found was his worst nightmare; an entire horde of infected huddled together in the conference room of the hotel.
Logan backpedaled out of the room as quickly as he could, but before he made it all the way out; his son popped his head into the room.
“Dad, where are you?” Robby said.
Logan made the shush noise as quietly as he could and waved for Robby to retreat, but the
damage was done.
Suddenly, across the room, eyes opened and spun toward Logan and his son.
“Run!” Logan yelled.
Robby spun on one heel and turned for the door, which Logan shoved him through.
The infected came at them with greater speed than Logan cared for. They chased Logan and his son through the lobby, up the stairs, and down the hallway, right toward the room where the rest of his family was.
Logan had to make a split decision. He could try and lure the infected away from the room and hope they did not find his family, or he could take refuge in the room with them and try to defend them. His brain went back and forth for a few seconds, but ultimately, he decided it was better to actively protect his family than to hope that they were not discovered and leave them to fend for themselves.
He shoved Robby through the door to their room and slammed it shut behind him. He engaged all the locks on the doors and grabbed a nearby dresser by the end. He singlehandedly yanked the dresser over to the door and wedged it up against the doorframe. Next he grabbed the two nightstands and threw them against the door as well.
His family looked on in horror as the infected slammed into the door on the other side and Logan held his back to the pile of furniture as he willed it to hold.
After a few hours of moaning and pounding, the infected lost some interest in the Bartlett family, but they still lingered at the door and did not disperse.
This went on for an entire day before Logan and his family started to worry.
After the better part of the second day had slipped by with no way out, the small room had become a rotten cesspool. Logan realized that he was either going to have to fight his way out of this room, or find another way to escape.
Logan tried to wrack his brain on a solution to the problem. He knew going out the door would be absolute suicide, and the chance of saving any of his family members was very minimal.
At the end of the second day, it was Robby who came up with a solution.
“Dad, you know how we were joking about how paper thin these walls are?” Robby said.
“Yes, what about it,” Logan replied.
“Why don’t we just knock down a portion of the wall and go through a few rooms to get past the majority of them and then make a run for it,” Robby told his family in a no big deal, manner.
Logan looked at his son for a second, and then when he could find no holes in the teenager’s logic, told him that it was a great plan.
Logan searched around the room for something he could use to bust through the hotel room walls. After a few minutes of searching he came up with a sturdy pole from the closet and a shower curtain rod. He looked at both tools and gave the curtain rod to Robby, knowing that it wouldn’t hold up very long.
Logan tapped along the wall to find a place between what he hoped would be two studs. He wasn’t sure how they would build a hotel like this, but he knew that the walls sounded fairly hollow. The hotel was very old and in poor condition, so Logan continued the search for a weak point.
After a few minutes of tapping Logan found a spot that looked particularly good and rammed his wooden pole into the wall, which sunk all the way through. When he pulled the rod back out he could see light from the room next to them. Logan popped the rod through the wall an inch or two from his original hole and used it like a crowbar to connect the two holes, which made one large hole.
Logan stepped back to take a quick peek through the hole to see if he could see anything. He didn’t want to bust through a wall only to find that there were infected in the room that waited to kill him.
After he didn’t hear anything or see anything, he decided it was safe to continue. Logan motioned for Robby to join him and together the two of them started to make the hole larger. Logan stopped at one point to pop his head through and visually check that the door in the adjoining room was closed, which it was, and then they resumed their destruction project.
After only a short time Robby and Logan had the hole large enough for them to fit through and Logan pulled out his handgun and went through the hole first.
He cleared the room and confirmed it was empty before he told Robby to throw their equipment through the hole.
Robby followed the two poles into the room and they repeated the process on the next room, after Bryce replaced Robby’s pole with another closet pole from the new room.
Three rooms down from their original room Logan looked out the peep hole on the door and could not see any infected in front of the door. They had finally made it past the group of infected in the hallway.
Logan went back through the holes and told his wife and children his plan. He and his son would go into the hallway first and hold off the infected while the rest of the family fled down the hallway. As soon as they were clear, Robby and Logan would join them.
They moved the bags and got everyone ready to go. Logan was forced once again to abandon some of what little gear he had left. It had taken him two trips with Robby to get everything to the room they had picked and now he would only be able to make one trip.
With only what they could carry, Logan and Robby stepped into the hallway. Logan had his AR-15, and Robby had a Remington shotgun.
Christine and the girls crept out of the room as quietly as they could, but it only took one infected to catch their movement and then the entire group turned on them in one fluid movement.
Logan wasted no time before he fired into the group of infected, which he could now see numbered at least fifty. How he had missed this nest of them, he didn’t know, but he knew if he made it out of this shit storm, he would never again make the mistake of letting his guard down with these creatures.
Robby opened up with the shotgun and sprayed the group with birdshot, which had little effect at the distance between them.
Logan however took carefully aimed headshots and killed multiple infected before his family members were even through the doorframe.
Logan checked over his shoulder and saw that his family had made it thirty feet down the hallway, and with the infected only feet in front of him, he tapped his son on the shoulder to signal their retreat.
The father and son turned and ran as fast as their legs could carry them to the end of the hallway where Christina had a large metal door held open. As soon as her husband and son made it through she shut the door and braced it with a nearby chair.
The entire family ran as fast as they could toward the parking lot, which was on the other side of the hotel. Their departure had left them on the opposite side of the hotel, and now they would have to sprint through the entire lobby and across the complex.
Fifteen feet before the exit that led to the parking lot, the door to the conference room stood in their way. The loud noises had awoken the conference room, and the infected inside poured into the lobby.
The infected streamed through the door they had barricaded, and with their parking lot exit cut off; Logan pushed his family toward the check in counter, and prayed there would be a back entrance to the area.
They busted through the check in area and into the back half of the administration section of the hotel. Logan could see a fire exit ahead and a small glimmer of hope shot into his mind.
This glimmer of hope was squashed as soon as they stepped through the door and Logan caught sight of a group of infected as they poured into the parking lot.
With no way to get safely to any of the vehicles, he told his family to run toward the center of town. He hoped that they could somehow lose the group in the shops ahead.
They all took off toward the grocery stores and shops where the highways converged, with hope that they could either lose the infected or find a suitable getaway vehicle.
With all of the weight on their backs combined with the high altitude, aside from Logan, the entire family began to slow down, they took fewer steps, and all of them sucked for air.
Logan looked behind him and saw that the infected still followed them and gained ground every inch the Bartle
tt family took.
Logan tried to urge his family forward. He told Robby to help Rebecca, and Logan was concerned about his youngest children, fraternal twins Sarah and Timothy. They were both scared, but Logan told his wife to pick up their eight-year-old daughter, while he told Timothy to hang on tight as he threw him on his back, and ran as fast as they could.
The family finally made it to the parking lot of a shopping center and Logan planned to jump into the nearest vehicle and try to hotwire it. That plan failed immediately as the infected horde that followed them rounded the corner only a second later.
Logan was out of ideas, and was at the end of his rope, when he saw hope in the distance.
Two men and a woman loaded up groceries into the back of a large flatbed truck.
With nothing left to lose, Logan ran toward the truck while his son hung off his neck.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Payson, Arizona
Bryce, Jessica, and Benjamin decided to stop at one of the smaller local markets instead of a large grocery store, since they figured all of the chain grocery stores would have been cleaned out by now and they hoped that the smaller market had not been picked through quite as extensively.
They jumped out of the truck, and Bryce took a look around. After the last stop, he wasn’t going to take any chances. He didn’t even know where the hell the group of infected had come from; it was as if they appeared out of thin air.
Sneaky little bastards, Bryce thought.
Bryce entered the store first, followed by Jessica and his father, and together they checked each aisle for infected before they touched anything. Only after the perimeter check and no sign of infected, did anyone dare to see what was actually left in the store.
Satisfied that the store was clear, they each grabbed a shopping cart, and zoomed down the aisles as they swept everything that remained off the shelves into the baskets. They couldn’t be picky at this point in the game, and what little supplies were left would be useful. Since the store was small and rural, most of what was left would normally be considered horrible food, like cans of pork brains and canned liver. Aside from the canned aisle the found pet food, random perishables, and random assortments of items. Within ten minutes, all three carts were filled, and they started with three more. The three of them kept up their shopping spree for twenty more minutes and filled up nine shopping carts with things like spices, hot sauces, condiments, and whatever else they saw. They found toiletries and hygiene products and even toilet paper.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 14