Nobody said a word.
The Blazer rolled down what remained of Highway 9 and then snaked around a towering cliff. The daylight gave the abandoned farms dotting the landscape a daunting edge. However, the yellow rays kept his courage high. On this morning, the sky was a dull blue and the faint appearance of Red Dead, the approaching red planet Abraham blamed for the appearance of the infected, dangled high near the horizon. The icy, bitter air draped the pines and firs in damp morning dew. They discovered a dozen abandoned vehicles at the sides of the road, but the gas tanks were bone dry.
“I think I should have a gun,” Emme said in a flat tone. She furrowed her brow and canted her head. “I’m serious,” she added when she saw her brother laughing.
The vehicle crept around the stones and boulders of the never-ending Rocky Mountains as Abraham gave her words some thought. “Listen, I don’t think a twelve-year-old should have a gun. A firearm is a dangerous weapon in the hands of an untrained person. How about a knife?”
“No! If I had a gun, I wouldn’t need you to rescue me,” she spat with an ounce of sass. “Besides, most twelve-year-olds haven’t smashed the skulls of their dead neighbors.” She pushed up her purple glasses and sucked in her cheeks. He could tell she was serious.
Abraham considered her arguments. The world was a scary place. But was it malevolent enough to hand a twelve-year-old a pistol? He didn’t like the fact Sam had to carry a crossbow like most girls did a purse. This was a harsh world. “Let me think on it,” he whispered, already coming up with reasons to say no. He considered what his wife would think when she saw her granddaughter carrying a gun. This brought a curve to his lips, he almost cackled.
“It’s not fair,” Emme said, crossing her arms in front of her dainty chest. “Hunter gets to shoot living people, and I can’t even get a gun against the infected.”
“I told you, let me think about it,” Abraham answered. “And enjoy the view. It might be the last time we drive through these majestic mountains.”
Emme flipped her hair back in annoyance.
Abraham gave a dismissive laugh as he commanded the 1976 Blazer, lost in the raw beauty of nature. The vehicle belonged to his father long ago. It was chance that brought Abraham back to the same exact one. It was a wonder the hunk of metal still worked. Abraham could drive anything and fixing up old cars was sort of a hobby. He loved cruising on the open roads. With lips pressing together, he couldn’t remember the last time he went for a long drive. Red Dead showed up and changed everything. It took away the old joys of life.
There was something about sitting up in the SUV that made him feel like a king. For the first time in months, he gave a genuine smirk. Abraham understood the sturdy iron shell wouldn’t stop bombs or the infected. Still, the open road gave him hope in ways he would never understand. As he gave the vehicle a little more gas, he glanced down at a family picture taped to the cracked dashboard. It had all five of his grown children and seven grandkids. It was his favorite family photo. He was determined to bring every one of them back.
“Look at that,” Sam said, jamming her finger ahead.
One of the mountain homes right off the road was painted in the same white letters that stained his home. INFETCED STAY AWAY! The windows were clouded in an orange- and avocado-colored growth. He was certain it was used by the creatures to block out the light. He had seen similar growths at the mill.
“Should we burn it to the ground?” Hunter asked.
“No, we need to hurry before the daylight is gone.” Abraham pressed his boot against the pedal. He wanted to get away from the infested house. He planned on stopping in Fairplay and visiting an old friend. Bob had a timeworn mechanics garage in the middle of the flourishing town. If anyone would have survived, it would have been Bob and his band of greasers. Abraham knew Bob back from his days in the army. A time he tried to forget.
“I can’t wait to get to Denver,” Hunter whispered as he ran a hand through his dark, chaotic hair.
Abraham was glad he got to clean up at the farm house. He didn’t give his group much time, but it was enough. Sam kept telling his grandchildren to take advantage of the amenities at the farm. She explained that she was traveling for a long time before she got to freshen up. For a second, he speculated if leaving the luxuries of the farm house with its wind and solar power was a mistake.
“Do you think Denver is safe?” questioned Emme, biting at her nails.
“It has to be,” Sam replied, exchanging glances with the curious little girl.
Abraham tried to focus on the present, on the task before him. Yet, with his family missing, it was impossible to think ahead. He had no idea what the day had in store for him and his companions. Given the seriousness of his worries, he almost didn’t see the fast-approaching wreck in front of him.
He veered to the side and ignored the bark of the brakes. His eyes narrowed under his bushy eyebrows. Thoughts of his dead family sprung on him like a wartime ambush. The Blazer slid off the road, avoiding the wreckage by several feet. Abraham switched off the engine and tried not to imagine the worst possible outcome. “Is that one of the buses?”
Emme shot up in the back of the vehicle and narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, it looks the same,” she slurred, unable to control her shaking.
Abraham targeted the smoking bus on its side. The entire highway was blocked. What could have knocked over a bus? He pictured the septic and its towering size and overwhelming strength. He was out the door and jogging toward the wreckage in an instant. In the swirl of smoke, an image of his wife’s delicate face passed over his eyes.
“Beth,” he howled as the heavy smoke dissipated.
He jumped up on the bus and tore open the door facing the sky. When he dropped into the guts of the sideways wreckage, he pulled his collar over his mouth. A small mist of spores orbited the tight, dark space.
His hands slapped forward, ready for anything. He barreled on, trying his best not to touch the icy bodies of the dead. Abraham noticed most of the corpses had a gaping hole somewhere in the head. He wondered if the passengers were dead before the bus turned over. Confused, he staggered between the uneven rows, tossing loose limbs aside. A glaze of mold had already caked the insides. It resembled green mucus and effectively blocked out the sun.
The tingling in his gut was a product of what could have lied ahead. He was careful to check the rotten faces for his loved ones using his flashlight. Abraham struggled against the need to pass out from the stress.
“Thank God,” he gasped, realizing he didn’t recognize any of the passengers. As he neared the back, something stirred. His deep-rooted eyes couldn’t make out the form. Desperate, he drew his pistol and shouted, “Freeze!”
A second noise got him spinning on his heels in the tight space. All he could think about was shooting his infected family members. Please, it can’t be, he pleaded. He didn’t have the heart to kill anyone he loved. He had never been this afraid in his life. It was one thing to kill an infected stranger, but to kill a family member was the ultimate sacrifice. Shit! Shit! Shit! After a tense moment, he settled back down. This bus had been wrecked for at least a week. This wasn’t his family.
Thank God, he thought turning away from the phantom sound. Then, he noticed a small glimmer of ambers, a dying campfire smoking in the back of the bus.
“Who are you?” he asked, facing the hazy shape of a tiny boy. It appeared someone had been living in the wreck. The shadow stirred about in the web of fungi, and the sound of the broken glass pressed against his boots. “Don’t make me shoot.”
***
Outside the wreck, Emme inched on her heels in the back of the Blazer. Touching her hearing aids, she turned to face the dense edge of the forest. She couldn’t see them, but her hearing aids were ringing. “The infected are coming.” Her tiny voice carried to Hunter and Sam, but she didn’t believe Abraham could hear her inside the bus.
Emme looked up and saw heavy rain clouds brewing like an old enemy. �
�The daylight, it’s gone,” she whispered, unable to process the circumstances. One instant the mountains were covered in sunshine, and the next, it was nothing but darkness. She knew it was the sun keeping the things trapped in dark places. Now it was gone.
“Sam, get the Blazer ready to go,” she heard her brother call out. She watched Hunter stare at the forest and snarl.
“Grandpa, get out!” Hunter yelled, moving closer to the wreck.
Emme tossed the keys to Sam and felt a little better when Sam gave it a twist. The exhaust pipe blasted out a thick, dense burp of smoke as the tires squealed. Emme wanted to leave; she needed to get away from this terrible sound.
***
Abraham struggled to make out the faint sounds amongst the chaos inside the overturned bus. Nevertheless, he was more concerned about what lurked in the shadows. After several tense seconds, a small boy with bright eyes scrambled forward, kicking and screaming at the glowing ambers of a camp fire. The boy’s skin was covered in charcoal and his clothing hung in shambles. He must have been living in the bus for a while.
“Are you bitten?” Abraham asked as his weak heart hammered away in his chest. Out of the blue, the boy with barren eyes flew forward, knocking the pistol from his hand.
“Dr. John,” the boy wailed as he maneuvered through Abraham and toward the exit like a frenzied monkey.
“Stupid boy,” Abraham muttered. He felt around the floor, and when he found the pistol grip, he snatched it tightly, then tore back toward the exit. Because of his size, he couldn’t move as fast as the tiny boy. Pushing and shoving, he stumbled. “Get back here,” he said, creasing his brow. It was too late the boy was already exiting the bus.
Then he felt something grip his forearm, and when he saw one of the dead passenger’s mouth open and poise for a bite, he fired without hesitation.
The muzzle flash blinded him as he fell back in a tangle of unanimated, brainless bodies. It felt like they were trying to drown him. These freaks are already dead, he reminded himself. Clambering up and then falling on all fours, he scrambled back, kicking at the infected woman’s robust jaw. The bullet had taken part of her left ear. Desperate, he understood he needed to get out of the bus in a hurry. Fighting in the small, dark space was a sure way to get killed.
***
Lunging out of the bus, the wild boy kicked and swung his arms. “Dr. John,” the boy said over and over, tearing out chunks of his oily black hair. He was in a manic rage.
“What the hell is this?” Hunter shrieked.
Emme wasn’t sure if the boy was infected or just crazy. “Get Grandpa,” she shrieked in shock, hanging out of the passenger door. She couldn’t see what happened in the bus, but she knew Abraham was still inside. “Grandpa, are you alright?” She shuddered as only a single grunt escaped the bus. “Do something,” she yelled to her brother.
Then, the sound of the infected freaks behind them stole the moment. The wail was getting so high-pitched she screamed as she tore out her hearing aids. She pictured a cave or something big with the infected hunched over, eagerly waiting for their time to overrun them. To the right, a band of fowl flapped their wings and flew away squawking. “Here they come!”
In the distance between the trees, the first of the nasty creatures appeared. They scurried toward the highway buzzing and breathing foul spores.
Emme looked to Hunter and saw him dumbfounded with the strange boy. Then, Sam hit the gas in a panic. Sam’s knee-jerk reaction brought the front bumper of the Blazer into the tail of the bus. The force sent Emme reeling back and forth, fighting for balance.
“I’m sorry,” Sam stuttered, reversing the vehicle with a jolt. But the dark-skinned girl’s apology offered no comfort to Emme as she watched the bus spin slow and steady with her grandpa still trapped inside.
“Hunter,” she screamed. It was all she could do.
***
The sudden motion of the spinning bus forced Abraham to his knees. The jerk also brought the infected women right on top of his back. Twisting away, he hammered his boots against her face. Part of her jawline splintered under the force and seemed to shock her enough to give him more time.
At that moment, pockets of fungus caked over the broken windows popped like a zit. The sudden clouded light revealed the lady’s dreadful face of boils and folds of mold. She was dressed in red silky panamas and he couldn’t help but think that the men in yellow must have come for her in the middle of the night. The sudden change gave the corpse a jolt. She lunged on top of Abraham opening and closing her mouth inches from his face. I can’t die like this.
As the abomination screamed, Abraham pistol whipped her in the teeth, smashing her rotten bones. The continuous rotating motion made him dizzy. He punched at her bleeding gums as he reached around, trying to find balance and safety. But most of all, he tried to stay alive. Abraham heard the frantic voices of his grandchildren. He felt a second wind as he jammed his pistol in the infected women’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Nothing was going to keep him from protecting his grandchildren.
***
“Get Grandpa,” Emme said to her brother. “Hunter, do it.” She looked back over her shoulder and saw the ground crawling in scurrying dead.
She heard Hunter asking the wild boy if he was infected. She wanted to tell her brother if he was, he would be fighting for his life. Who’s stupid now? The torn shirt of the odd boy was flaked in dry blood. Dabs of moldy flesh crumbled about with each stomp the boy took. Emme didn’t know what to do, but she wasn’t leaving without Grandpa.
A second gunshot erupted in the guts of the bus. Emme shifted her concern toward the shell of the vehicle, thinking only of her grandfather. Then she watched something covered in flakes of filth emerge from the bus door facing the sky. She watched Hunter take aim. Her swirling mind wondered if the awful sight was similar to watching a natural birth. “Don’t shoot,” she said, able to recognize her grandpa.
Hunter lowered his rifle and looked back. “The infected are coming,” he said, pointing back.
***
Abraham brushed off a cord of foul secretion and jumped off the slow-moving bus. He listened to Hunter ask the furious wild boy if he was infected.
The boy yowled. “Dr. John!”
The shrill sound of buzzing forced Abraham to make a tough choice. He could leave the strange boy. But the infected freaks would tear him apart. He could take the boy and risk contamination, if the boy was infected.
“Dammit!” Abraham shrieked as his fist plowed the temple of the wild boy screaming that same name over and over. The hit was a clean blow. “Help me get him to the car,” Abraham slurred, shaking in adrenaline.
“We don’t have time,” Emme howled, fidgeting in the back seat.
Abraham turned back and saw a wave of infected freaks breaking the plain of the asphalt twenty feet back.
“You damn fool,” she muttered, bursting into tears. It amazed Abraham how much she sounded like him.
His heart raced as he struggled to move the boy. He stared at the Blazer and then back to the infestation of corpses buzzing like a swarm of devil bees. Hunter pulled the boy up into the front seat as Abraham gave a final push. The vehicle squealed as it shook from the sudden rush of gas. Abraham climbed up and in as Sam steered off the highway and back up on the other side.
“Watch out,” blurted Emme.
“Shit,” Abraham said, pulling the passenger door closed. Behind him, the first surge of infected ran around the bus and fingered the tailgate of the moving Blazer. Sam slammed the brakes and Abraham squirmed as the undead spattered against the back. Their awful faces pressed up against the glass like a group of dead flies and then peeled back. “Keep moving!”
As quick as a fox, Sam pressed the gas again and maintained control of the wheel.
“Faster,” Abraham muttered as he gazed out the rear. A dozen more infected freaks lunged at the side of the vehicle from different angles. Their nasty fingers ran down the car as they slipped behind.
&
nbsp; “I said faster!” Abraham bellowed at the girl.
Sam gave the vehicle everything it had and this allowed them to out run the swarming freaks. The rest of the horde swarmed the highway, giving chase. It was a race the monsters wouldn’t win.
II
The highway was quiet compared to Abraham’s constant-running mind. The vehicle drove by countless mountain homes and propane ranches written in the same white paint with the same frightful words. INFECTED! STAY AWAY. The farther they went, the more his chest weighed him down. In his mind’s eye, he remembered the clustered faces of the dead in the shadowy bus. There was the crazy woman who attacked him, dressed in nightclothes spoiled in the alien mold. He blew her brains out in an instant of absolute adrenaline. There were numerous strangers with various bullet holes already in their infected brains. They sat still in the mesh of decay, their cold stare itching at his investigative thoughts. Then, there was the wild child, the boy who kept repeating the same damn name.
Abraham frowned and looked back at the odd little boy, tied in bungee cords and sleeping off the hard hit. He couldn’t have been older than Emme, judging by his small size. More teens, he growled.
After tense moments of silence, his granddaughter exhaled. “So are you going to tell us?”
“Tell you what?” Abraham questioned. He pushed his frameless glasses back up the slope of his marred nose and waited for his sassy granddaughter to speak her bold mind.
“Who was in the bus?”
Abraham tugged at his heavy coat sleeve.
“Hello?” she said, waving her hand. “Earth to Grandpa.”
Closing his eyes, he pictured the dead faces on the bus. They were fractured and brainless. Then Abraham’s fear vanished with a half-smile. “Those people were long expired. Most of them had been shot in the head before the bus crashed.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Emme said.
He saw the trickle of tears falling down her face. The pain in her quaking features hurt Abraham. “No,” he replied, unable to blink. “That bus wasn’t the one that visited our farm. I think it must be the same people, but those corpses have been dead for weeks. That crash happened a while back. So no, it wasn’t them.”
Infected Freaks (Book 2): The Echo of Decay Page 2