by Arthur Stone
At last he reached the city, or at least an industrial area in the outskirts of the city. Even at rush hour, traffic here was light. At times you could fly through intersections with nothing more than a quick glance left and right, if you were in a rush. At this hour, he didn’t need to look at all—he was all alone on the road.
Or perhaps he wasn’t. A long shadow swept over his car, the world lit up with a dazzling white fire, and the sound of a thousand-ton hammer on steel pounded his eardrums. Leland was hurled out of the missing door space like a dropkicked kitten, rolling and skidding across the asphalt and suffering painful abrasions on his elbows, knees, head, and other sensitive areas.
When he finally came to a stop, he was too weak to breathe. The ringing of church bells echoed in his ears, drowning out the other sounds in the world, and his vision clouded, transforming his surroundings into pure indiscernibility. Something long, resembling a huge, thin cross, flashed in his field of vision once more, but his eyes refused to focus.
He was powerless to do anything. Not that he wanted to do anything. He had felt this once before, a couple of years ago, after falling from a roof and landing on some sacks of grain. The fall dealt him no long-term injuries, but the landing wasn’t a soft one—his vision had darkened, and the wind had been knocked out of him so hard that he’d tottered on the brink, barely balancing on the boundary between consciousness and void.
But this feeling—this was worse. He was overcome with pain, with confusion, with terror. His body was all in one piece, but only his abject agony assured him of that, and he could not bring himself to move.
Come on, come to your senses! Lying around like a discarded rag was a terrible idea. The world was filled with the dead, and a helpless human was their favorite meal.
Leland picked himself up a bit, groaning in pain, and shook his head. Strangely enough, that helped. The haze cleared, and he could see once more. His vision was dull, and the world’s color spectrum misaligned, but he could see.
He saw his Jeep. Somehow it had ended up on the embankment of an overpass. But it was on its side, its rear smashed in and missing the passenger-side tire, its whole body wreathed in smoke and lapping tongues of flame.
There was no pulling that one out of the mud.
Issuing his body the torturous command to move itself, Leland managed to crawl to the side of the road and over the fence, where he lay on the sloped ground, taking cover in the weeds. He hid just in time. He saw the cross-shaped object make a third pass, and this time he got a good look at it.
It was an airplane. It had an awkwardly thin fuselage and even thinner wings stretching out nearly perpendicularly to either side. The tail of the plane was a bizarre design with three-way symmetry, not unlike the Mercedes logo.
A blast of smoke shot out from under the wings of the plane, and Leland instinctively lowered his head against the earth. A loud explosion followed, and a gut-wrenching squeal over his head. He lifted his eyes and saw that the Jeep was torn apart, enveloped in flame.
The plane made its swift escape, disappearing as rapidly as it had come. Leland saw nothing but a glimpse of its departure, the silhouette of its propeller from behind.
That plane could hardly have been carrying a man inside, unless he was lying on his side and curled up in a ball. It had no room for any substantial armament, either, so it must have been using underpowered rockets that required two solid hits to take out an unarmored passenger vehicle.
Leland had of course assumed that his country didn’t employ strike drones on home soil. Had war been declared on the United States? Why would the aggressors have attacked the small city of Bismarck, of all places? Even if they came from Canada, they would’ve had to clear over a hundred miles from the border to reach Bismarck. The land of the Mounties seemed an unlikely aggressor, and wouldn’t an invasion force have been detected immediately?
There were zombies everywhere, but no living humans. Strike drones were blowing up cars on the road. And he still hadn’t gotten through to Catalina.
Then he had an idea. He could smash in some zombie’s head and steal its cell phone. That should let him call someone, though he was beginning to doubt any call would be possible at all. These events had started with that fog yesterday, accompanied by the complete breakdown of cell phone communications.
He lay still for a minute, distrusting the sudden silence. The incident had deafened him, at least for now, so his ears told him nothing. He would lie here and watch to see if the man-made bird came back.
It didn’t.
Still, Leland wouldn’t let himself relax. This world was full of death, delivered from both land and air. Once he determined the best way out, he crawled a hundred feet along the slope, then up it, slipped up to the bridge and hugged the cold concrete. He strained his ears, trying to reach through his deafness to detect that threatening bell ring again. Nothing seemed to be happening, so it was safe to move again. Another bit of slope-crawling and he’d be under the next bridge, where he could sit for a while, listen, and then make one last desperate lunge to the gas station.
There he stopped, protected from the elements under the station’s awning. It provided no defense from zombies, but at least it was in the open, so if he was attacked he could flee in any direction.
Idiot. One rocket hit to the right spot, and this place would turn into hell on earth. Gasoline, propane, and diesel were here, all ready to blow, yet strangely, he didn’t care. Here he was, happily sitting on a massive land mine.
Oddly, his head wasn’t hurting. But he was suffering from intense thirst and unprecedented levels of nausea. Had he torn something in his digestive tract? If so, that was a big problem, one that could not be fixed with an aspirin and a band-aid.
In desperation, he threw open the glass door, stepped inside, and began to look around. There was no one inside the store, and no signs of any violence. He probably wouldn’t find a weapon or any communication devices here, but there were other things he needed more urgently.
Even though the power was out, the water in the fridge was still cold. He downed a whole bottle, then a good portion of a second. Life still sucked, sure, but at least his thirst was gone.
Leland took stock. His pants were in tatters, and his left knee was torn up so bad that the sight of it made him want to throw up. His right knee had been hurt, too, but not as severely. His jacket and shirt looked about as new as the Stonehenge, and his elbows, knuckles, and left wrist looked even worse. Impressive abrasions lined his cheeks, chin, and everywhere else, doubtless painted there when he went sliding and rolling along the asphalt. Thankfully he hadn’t been traveling very fast.
He cleaned up his wounds as best he could, using the ointments and bandages he found in the store. His wounds would cause him unbearable pain tomorrow, but he barely felt them right now. It was time to get moving. Staying in a glass house with missile drones roaming around was ill-advised.
But where could he go? Home? It wasn’t too far—he could make it on foot. But what did home hold for him? It was no fortress, no refuge against hordes of ghouls and drones, and no one would be there waiting for him. Leland banished the thought of heading toward his residence—he had to act from his head, not from his heart.
What did he need most of all? To survive, of course. But what took second place? Information. No one could make long-term plans without information.
But first, survival.
He needed food, water, medical attention, and protection from threats, which included two that he knew of: bloodthirsty zombie people and missile drones. He also knew of another vague threat, however. Those sluggish walkers couldn’t have torn off a car door and left deep claw marks in it. They couldn’t even catch you if you walked at a mildly brisk pace. Some had executed dangerous leaps, but only once they had come within nine or ten feet of him, tops. They couldn’t do that frequently, either. A couple of seconds later, they’d be moseying along as sluggishly as before.
They were unpleasant, of course, but
they were not the most fearsome threat. In fact, in open spaces they were barely a threat at all. But that unknown entity that had ripped off sturdy Jeep doors like they were butterfly wings—that thing was scary.
Leland had to find a weapon, preferably a firearm. Even his stick was gone now, consumed in the flames of his rocket-blasted Jeep.
Finding some people would be nice, too. Normal, living people. But where would they be?
Oh man, now I really feel sick. His nausea was coming in full force, and his knees were trembling, overtaken by weakness. His head must have taken a serious blow. He needed a doctor, but where could he hope to find one?
This place had water and food, even though he didn’t feel like eating. He’d take a bottle with him. If and when he vomited all over the place, his thirst would return.
There were decent weapons to be had in the city of Bismarck. You just needed to know where to look, and Leland did.
Chapter 4
The outdoors store was two stories tall, and divided into several departments offering every variety of item providing portable comfort for treks out into the sticks. Backpacks and fishing rods, boots, inexpensive tents, gas burners, even inflatable rafts. But none of that was of interest to Leland now. He was focused on only one department: the weapons department. Not airsoft or BB guns, either, but the store's selection of real weapons. With a rifle in hand and some large-caliber bullets designed to shred huge animals, he'd have a plan for his encounter with that walking car door displacer—an encounter that some inner voice told him would occur before long.
But if his health kept deteriorating, he soon wouldn't have the strength to raise and aim his gun. He had to find a place to rest and recover.
Of course, if his head trauma was severe, he might never wake up.
Dozens of zombies slowly ambled around the store. Leland watched them from the second floor, noting that many were dressed in clothes best reserved for the living room sofa. Old pajamas, shorts, worn-out tee shirts. These must have succumbed to whatever had become their end while still inside their own homes, then managed to get out. Their exodus communicated that they were not as brainless as he thought. Or perhaps it was relatives of theirs, fleeing in terror, who had let them out.
But Leland hadn't seen a regular human being yet. Everything was novel, devolved, corrupted—everything except for him.
He had no trouble ascertaining why this place was overflowing with zombies. Someone had bashed in the shop's glass façade, leaving no glass and no window bars in place. Whatever had managed such destruction caused a commotion that pulled in zombies from the whole neighborhood, and the first animated corpses to arrive had gotten in the looters' way, earning them bullets to the skull. Leland could see the motionless bodies on the pavement, and even from his faraway vantage point in this unfinished building, he spotted dark red spots soaked through their clothing and onto the pavement, bleeding from wounds to their upper bodies.
Somebody else had been following those zombie shows, too, and was aiming to hit the ghouls in the head.
One of the ghouls had been rocking in one place for a long time, but now she chanced a step, then another, and then crouched over a dead body and engaged in the same morbid festivity enjoyed by that boy in the lakeside town. The closest of the zombies perked up, dragged themselves over to their feasting sister, and joined in the revolting breakfast. Leland looked away from the scene and caught a rapid movement among the trees in the park, near the store, something covering ground rapidly, and not intermittently like the jumping zombies. No matter how hard he looked, his brain failed to deduce anything more than movement. A vague silhouette tearing through the thick foliage.
Waiting here by these bare concrete walls was not a good plan. Some unknown party had already visited this store and doubtless stripped it clean. Would there be anything left? Maybe, maybe not. But the place was surrounded by ghouls, and that super-fast and probably super-deadly something was observing the scene from the nearby foliage. No way Leland was risking the store.
Where else could he go? The police station came to mind as the closest option, and he might even bump into some normal people there. Whatever remnants of authority persisted would likely take any actions necessary to hold places like the police station. If that proved a dead end, he would locate another option.
He grabbed a piece of steel from the construction materials lying around. Not a good weapon, but better than nothing. His attempts to collect a fire ax had failed—yet another building code violation reaching back from the old world to spoil his intentions. Try as he might, the glass would not break.
Leland tried to stay positive. His chance to arm himself properly would come soon enough.
He was happy that the store had been plundered. At least that meant someone normal, someone who thought rationally in the same way he did, was still alive. If he could only track them down, most of the problems he was facing now would be in the past.
* * *
Leland did indeed meet some living people, but not when he expected to. He was walking across the yards of the various buildings, avoiding the walking corpses' lines of sight as much as he could. Slipping through the passageway between two five-story buildings, he looked both ways to assure himself of the area's relative safety. No lightning-fast clawed monsters, just the usual bumbling figures, barely moving. He bolted forward to cross the broad avenue as quickly as possible, to minimize his risk of being spotted. The nearest zombie stretched out its arms, trying to leap at him, but stumbled and fell, victim to its poor estimation of its own movement abilities. Leland ran past, gave another walker a cordial kick in the rump, and kept moving.
Too late he discovered an unannounced dark green Jeep pursuing him, from the same passage he had taken. It resembled the one the drone had destroyed, with a few striking differences, primarily the luggage rack atop it, covered with short spikes for some reason that Leland could hardly guess. Other racks flanked the vehicle, and all the glass windows were reinforced with a metal grating.
The Jeep came to a screeching stop, and four men between the ages of twenty and forty leaped out. Their dress styles varied, but none had to endure tattered rags like Leland's. Some sported camo, others jeans and jackets made of denim or leather. One wore a bike helmet and another a construction helmet; the other two went bare-headed.
All were armed: two with large crossbows, one with a twin-barreled rifle, and one with a pump shotgun. Those with the crossbows failed at Game of Thrones cosplay, though: one had a pistol holstered at his side, while the other used a simple lash tied around his torso to carry a sawed-off shotgun.
“You there. Halt!” the rifleman shouted, kneeling and taking aim at Leland's heart. The others followed suit, without kneeling.
Leland raised his arms and replied, with paradoxical calm, “I'm not going anywhere.”
“Whose side you on? Why you on our turf?” the shotgunner asked sternly. “Where'd you come from?”
“From home.”
“Hah! Hey guys, this guy's from home!” The man's smile vanished in an instant. “Last chance: who the hell are you?”
One of the men lowered his crossbow. “Take it easy, Kettle. He's clearly an immune from the last reset.”
“Yeah, I was just poking fun at him. Not every day you run into somebody so—hilarious. So, joker, what tore you up? Trying to repurpose a lawnmower?”
“I can show you where it happened, but they'll be waiting for you.”
“Hah, like I said, a funny one. Saw something good, eh? So, where is it? Give us the nates, mans!”
The crossbowman interrupted again. “Leave him alone. The cluster just came out of reset, and they've already hit this newb hard on his first day. He knows nothing.”
“Ah. Well, he's a lucky one, then.”
“Just imagine what he's thinking right now. No concept of the Hive nor anything in it. The reset hit less than a day ago, so his brain's still fried. I bet whatever he's been through these past twenty-four hours would
keep you up at night.”
“Yeah, well, I sure as hell remember my first day. I barely dodged a reset straight into hell, for sure. Let's get out of here.”
“What do we do with him?”
“What do I care? What, you looking to finish him off?”
“The hell for?”
“Nah, you're right, bad luck. He'll die without our help anyway. Look how heavy he's breathing. We're almost out of lifewater—all thanks to you, by the way—and this guy would need about a liter of the stuff to pull through. He's not worth it. We got our own business to attend to.”
The strangers were making progressively less sense as the conversation continued and they climbed back into the car. Leland realized they intended to abandon the “newb,” but trying to provoke an armed squad would ensure his triumph at the Darwin Awards. Instead he asked, as calmly as possible, “What's happening? Can't you at least tell me that?”
The crossbowman paused, stepped into the Jeep, and shook his head. “No, I can't. It would take hours. Get out of here fast, buddy, and go far. Go west, and don't even think of stopping or straying till you get there.”
“What lies in the west?”
“Good places. Less dangerous places. There you'll at least have a chance, but here you'll be dead before you know it. A quick cluster after a reset is a death trap for a newcomer like you, but west is the only course you can take where things won't get worse. Well, good luck, I guess.”
He closed his door, and the Jeep reared and rumbled away. Leland stood in the street, alone once more.
Chapter 5
The government district Leland expected to find wasn’t there. Nor were the neighborhoods that had sprawled out around it. Nor the neighborhoods that had sprawled out around them. The chemical factory that had posed the greatest threat to the area’s environment, belching smoke night and day, was completely absent. Its unsightly mass was normally visible from this hill any time of the day, in any weather conditions. The top of it, anyway.