by David Spell
Chuck waited until they were all the way under the bridge and almost to the Armada. AK Man and Fat Man were on the driver’s side, with Baldy approaching from the passenger side. As the leader got to the driver’s window and looked in, McCain leaned out from the left side of the pillar, putting the red cross of the EOTech sight on the side of his head.
“Right between the eyes, huh?” AK Man said, turning from the empty vehicle to berate his companion. Chuck squeezed the trigger. The suppressed shot was louder than normal under the bridge as the man crumpled to the asphalt, blood splattering the side of the vehicle. A slight shift to the right and two more shots hit Fat Man in the chest. The hunting rifle clattered loudly to the pavement, its owner falling backwards against the side of the Armada, and sliding to the ground.
The AR-15 of the bald man fired, the bullet impacting the concrete embankment five feet to McCain’s left. Chuck slid to the right, peeking around the other side of the pillar. Baldy was leaning over the hood of the SUV, waiting for Chuck to expose himself again. When he glimpsed McCain, now on the other side of the pillar, it was too late. The bandit’s eyes were wild with fear as he tried to swing his rifle over but he had no chance.
Chuck squeezed the trigger twice, heard a gasp of pain, and watched his adversary fall. He glanced at the other two men whom he had shot and saw no movement. A look back up the road, though, and he saw that the pack of Zs were inside four hundred yards now. McCain slipped his backpack on and hurried down the embankment towards the Armada. Smoke and steam were still pouring out from under the hood and it was clear that this SUV wasn’t going any further.
AK Man was dead, the round having exited out his forehead. Chuck quickly unloaded and field stripped his rifle, throwing the pieces in different directions. The dead man had a Kimber compact .45 ACP pistol in a holster on his belt. Chuck stuffed it and an extra magazine of ammo into one of his cargo pockets.
Fat Man was alive but probably wouldn’t be for long. McCain pulled the bolt out of his hunting rifle, throwing it away. On the opposite side of the truck, the other thug was groaning. Chuck had aimed at and hit AR Man’s right shoulder and his right side. Normally, from that distance he would shoot center-mass or make head shots on human targets. Not today, though. He needed this guy alive.
McCain cautiously approached, pointing his rifle at the downed man. Baldy was writhing in pain and was in and out of consciousness. The 5.56 mm round had shattered his shoulder and collar bone. The other bullet had punched a hole lower, on the same side, destroying ribs, and possibly collapsing a lung.
Chuck picked up his attacker’s AR-15 and removed the magazine, putting it into one of his pockets. Chuck pulled the bolt to the rear, ejecting the chambered round. He then pushed takedown pin out and the rifle opened up. He snatched the bolt carrier out of the gun and tossed it away. The thug had an extra loaded thirty-round magazine in his back pocket which McCain took, as well.
The zombies were now inside two hundred yards and closing fast. Chuck dragged the wounded man ten feet beyond the rear of the vehicle, into the path of the oncoming Zs. Fat Man was still moaning softly, but he could stay where he was.
“What…what are you going to do to me?” Baldy asked weakly.
McCain ignored him and checked the interior of the Armada, grabbing a few things but leaving so much behind. He made sure that his backpack was secure, quickly reloaded his rifle, and started running away from the scene.
The wounded man lifted his head and saw the group of twenty-five zombies running towards him and began yelling at Chuck.
“No, you can’t leave me here! I’m sorry, man. Please! Don’t do this to me.”
As McCain ran out from underneath the overpass, the piercing screams of the zombies’ newest victim filled the air and echoed in Chuck’s mind. He turned to the right, using the extra time that the wounded man’s death had bought him, and ducked into the tree line, running north while paralleling the interstate.
Abandoned house, Thursday, 1900 hours
Chuck and Elizabeth sat on opposite ends of the couch in the cold, dark house, finishing their bottle of wine.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Benton asked, wrapping the blanket around herself.
“I’m not proud of what I did,” McCain said, looking over, barely able to make her out in the darkness. “You’ve been through a lot. I didn’t want you to know that you were stuck in this house with a monster.”
The girl did not respond for several minutes. McCain expected her to be shocked by what he’d done and knew that she would never view him in the same way. He didn’t even see himself as the same person he’d been just a few weeks prior, he’d changed so much. Survival is not a polite game and he was a little surprised at how quickly he had adapted to the new normal.
Chuck felt movement as Elizabeth got to her feet. She probably doesn’t want to be around me anymore and is going upstairs, he thought. I understand how she feels.
Instead of leaving, however, Beth came and sat next to him. She pulled the blanket around both of them and wrapped her arms around the big man.
“I don’t think you’re a monster. You didn’t have to get involved and help me but you did. Monsters don’t risk their lives for other people. You got shot in the chest saving my life. I don’t know if I would’ve jumped in to save me. You’re a good man but I think that all of us are finding ourselves doing things we never imagined we were capable of.”
McCain digested what she had said. He didn’t feel guilty that he had used a wounded man as bait for zombies so that he could escape. That guy had just tried to kill him, after all. For Chuck, it was more of a shock that he’d done it without even thinking twice. Elizabeth was right, though. In this strange new world, survival involved making decisions and doing things that, a few months before, would have been unheard of.
Beth and Chuck sat in the silence of the quiet house, listening to each other breathe. “You said you lost two cars. What happened to the other one? Or do you not feel like talking about it?” she asked, her head leaning against his shoulder.
McCain smiled. “There isn’t as much to that story. After I hit the woods, I walked for a few miles before I finally came out of the brush, moving along the shoulder of 85. It was quicker walking that way but I was close enough that I could duck back into the woods if I needed to.
“I didn’t see any Zs for the first couple of miles and then, they where everywhere. One or two here. A few there. And wherever they were, there were usually bodies. It really slowed me down because I had to hike quietly through the undergrowth so they wouldn’t see me or smell me.
“I had to sleep out in the open that first night. I found a secure place a couple of hundred yards off the highway, up on an embankment, but it was a cold and miserable night. The next day I decided to try to find another car.
“After walking for an hour, I came up on several vehicles that had been wrecked or abandoned along the road. There were bodies and the remains of bodies scattered everywhere but no Zs in sight. I saw a black Honda Civic that didn’t look damaged. The keys were in it and it started on the first try.
“I drove around a few small groups of zombies and managed to make it almost five miles before I got to an overturned tractor trailer and a big pack of Zs about two hundred yards in front of me. This was one of the biggest groups that I’d seen so far on the interstate, maybe fifty. I stopped because I knew I couldn’t get around them, not in a Civic anyway. Then I looked into the rearview mirror and saw another group of around twenty coming out of the woods a hundred yards behind me.”
Chuck felt Beth’s arms squeeze him even tighter. I’m really going to miss her, he suddenly realized.
“What happened? How’d you get away from them?” she asked.
McCain wrapped his arm around his companion, pulling her a little closer, and laughed. “Adapt, improvise, and overcome. I held the horn down for a couple of seconds to really get them fired up. Then, I aimed the Civic at the group in front of me, reached in and put th
e gear shift into ‘Drive,’ and ran as fast as I could into the woods.”
Chuck felt Elizabeth relax and heard her laugh softly. “Did you get any of them with the car?”
“Thankfully, that stretch of highway was straight and flat. That little car plowed right through the middle of them and took out fifteen or twenty. The group behind me, though, was another matter. They’d seen me run into the woods and most of them followed me. I spent the rest of the day going deeper and deeper into the forest trying to evade zombies. They just kept coming.
“There was a big creek, almost a river, that I crossed, figuring the more barriers between me and the Zs, the better. The problem was, I stepped into a hole in the middle of the creek and fell down, getting completely drenched. So, now it was getting on towards evening and the temperatures were starting to drop. I couldn’t start a fire so I just kept going.
“I finally came to a two-lane road and found an abandoned house where I could rest and dry out. The next day, I couldn’t move. I’d pulled a hamstring with all my running through the woods and almost drowning. It took a couple of days to heal up but after that, I decided to give up on trying to find another vehicle. Cars are big targets, so I just kept walking. I’d go as far as I could each day and then find a place to spend the night.
“And speaking of night,” McCain yawned, “we need to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Benton said, standing. She reached down and took Chuck’s hand and said, “Come with me?”
McCain swallowed hard, stood up, and peeked out all of the downstairs windows. After satisfying himself that they were safe, he followed her up the stairs, cupping his hand over his flashlight, just illuminating their steps in front of them. He repeated the process, looking out all of the upstairs windows before retiring to the master bedroom. How was he going to navigate this situation?
Beth was already under the covers, huddled in the middle of the big bed, he noticed. Chuck took off his boots and got under the blankets fully clothed. The temperatures had remained above freezing all day, and the sun had melted much of the snow and ice. It was still cold, however, with the temperatures in the thirties, and Elizabeth slid over next to him. He could feel her shivering even with several layers of clothing on, her small body against his, her arm draped across his chest. They lay in a comfortable silence for several minutes, warming up under the covers.
“Can I ask you a question? A really personal question?” Elizabeth’s voice was timid, as if she wasn’t sure she should broach this subject.
Chuck lay on his back with the beautiful twenty-eight year old girl next to him. He had already bared his soul to her like he had done with few others. What was she going to ask him now? Part of him was ready to be by himself again and another part of him knew that, somehow, over just two days, he had come to care about Beth deeply.
“Sure. Go ahead,” he answered.
There was a long pause. “Why haven’t you tried to have sex with me? I know you’re a gentleman and I appreciate that, but you haven’t even asked. And if you had asked, I would’ve said, ‘Yes.’ I mean you’ve already seen me mostly naked and I practically threw myself at you last night. You saved my life and that seems like a way that I could show my appreciation. Most of the guys that I’ve dated, we go out once or twice and then they’re ready to hop into bed.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” McCain answered, “we are in bed.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, laughing and lightly slapping his chest. “Am I just not your type? Or, well, I know I’m not as pretty as a lot of other girls, but we’ve been together for two days and I guess I’m just surprised.”
Chuck laughed quietly. “You aren’t afraid to deal with the elephant in the room, are you? First, let me say that you’re beautiful, inside and out. As for whether or not you’re my type? I could fall in love with you very easily, Beth, but I’m not foolish enough to think that you’d be interested in a man who’s sixteen years older than you.
“But, the real answer to your question is pretty simple. I’m a Christian and I try to live by God’s Word. I believe the Bible and it teaches that sex outside of marriage is wrong. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings and desires, and lying here this close to such a pretty girl, just the two of us, all alone in a big, cold house, requires an infinite amount of self-control.”
She accepted his answer and thought about it. “Okay, but, please don’t get mad at me, I’m just trying to understand. The Bible also says we shouldn’t kill and, well, I know you’ve killed some people. I’m not criticizing you, I’m just trying to figure out if one commandment is more important than the other. It seems like not killing would be a bigger deal than not having sex.”
“That makes sense except the Bible never commands us not to kill,” Chuck said. “It commands us not to murder. There’s a big difference between the two. Maybe I should, but I don’t regret any of the people that I’ve taken out. I even let that one guy, Greg, who I told you about, live. If it hadn’t been for the baby, I would’ve killed him, too.
“Now I know everybody doesn’t believe the Bible and even those who say they do, often don’t live by it, me included. But the Book teaches that sex is one of God’s greatest gifts to us, but it’s to be expressed in the context of marriage. After my divorce, years ago, I dated and slept with a lot of women, and enjoyed every second of it. I was young, single again, and girls were turned on by the uniform.
“I was living it up, thinking that life couldn’t get any better. Then one Easter, another police officer, a good friend of mine, invited me to church. I hadn’t been to church since my wedding and before that, I don’t think I’d gone since I was a child.
“My buddy told me his kid was in a production that they were putting on for the holiday and I thought, why not? I wasn’t into religion but I’d go because my friend invited me. Well, that morning, my life changed. I didn’t go to church looking for anything. I wasn’t having a crisis. I really thought my life was great.
“But while that pastor preached his Easter message, something happened inside of me. It was like all of a sudden I knew that what he was saying was true and I needed to give my life to Jesus. That day was kind of like a new start for me.”
McCain laughed softly at a memory. “I had a date that very evening and we spent the night together. The next morning, I felt so guilty. I can’t even explain it; I’d never felt guilt over my sex life before, but I knew that God was speaking to me. That morning I promised him, among other things, that I’d keep myself pure until I got married again. As hard as it is, I’ve been able to keep that promise. I’m sorry if that comes across as weird. You probably think I’m a freak.”
“Wow,” Beth said, “that’s amazing, and no, I don’t think you’re a freak. Like I told you before, I was a Christian, but now I’m trying to find my way back to God. I admire your discipline, but I’m not sure if I understand or even agree with that whole waiting-until-you-get-married idea. But I really appreciate your honesty and sharing that with me. I didn’t know there were any men like you left in the world.”
“I’m nothing special, Beth. I was in the right place at the right time to help you. I’d do it again; I’d just try not to get shot or beat up the next time I save your life,” he said, with a chuckle. “But you don’t owe me anything and I don’t want either of us to do something that we’ll regret later. I’ve really enjoyed meeting you and hanging out, and I hope you meet a great guy who’ll take good care of you.”
Elizabeth was quiet for a few minutes and then softly asked, “Did you really mean what you said? About how you could fall in love with me?”
Oh, no, McCain thought. What have I done? At least she isn’t laughing at me or calling me a dirty old man. She’ll probably tell me that she’s flattered or something like that.
Chuck sighed. “Yeah, I meant it, but I’m sorry if I was out of line.”
“Don’t be sorry, Mr. McCain. I think I
could fall in love with you, too.”
Neither one of them knew what to say next. Chuck turned towards Beth and their lips met, electricity shooting through both of them. After another, longer kiss, Chuck wrapped his arms around the young woman, holding her tightly. Within minutes, they were both asleep.
Northeast of Atlanta, Friday, 0700 hours
Chuck had awakened with the first hint of sunlight coming through the bedroom windows. Beth was still lying up against him, her body draped over his. He watched her sleeping for a few minutes, saying a silent prayer of thanks that he’d been able to rescue her from her kidnappers, but wondering what the future was going to hold for them. I could get used to waking up in bed with her, he realized, the thought surprising him. Gently, he leaned over, kissed the young woman on the forehead, and crawled out of bed.
It was so cold in the house that McCain wondered if he would ever be warm again. The thermometer in the kitchen had good news, though. It was already thirty-five degrees and the sun was shining brightly. That would keep thawing everything out and hopefully allow them a safe, ice-free ride back to the technical school.
And then what? he wondered, staring out the kitchen window at the melting snow and ice in the back yard. Deliver Beth to her friends, stick around for a day or two, and then keep trying to find Melanie? How was he going to feel leaving Elizabeth? Would he ever see her again? What would happen to her? What would happen to him as he continued his journey? So many questions, but if there was ever a time that he needed to be mission-focused, this was it.
He heard footsteps behind him. A small pair of arms reached around and hugged him tightly. “So, what’s the plan, big man?” Elizabeth asked him.
“Let’s share a cup of coffee, eat, and hit the road?”
Twenty minutes later, after another meal of beef jerky and trail mix, washed down by hot MRE coffee, Chuck started putting on his equipment. He snapped his gun belt on and slipped his kevlar-lined jacket over the three shirts he was wearing. The black Nascar hoodie went over the jacket, and he pulled on his heavy body armor, adjusting the velcro straps until it was comfortable.