Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3)

by Sean Schubert

When one of the men spotted her and signaled with his hand as much, Jess felt her heart sink into her stomach and start to boil in her digestive acids. Much to her surprise and relief, he didn’t turn the gun on her. He waved to her with a friendly but shaking hand. He didn’t appear to pose any immediate threat, despite the gun in his hands.

  She stopped her car short of their position. From the angle her car was sitting, she was able to see somewhat under and beyond the two trucks. Jess dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to her, but she could have sworn she could see bodies lying in the street on the other side of the trucks. It couldn’t be, she told herself. It’s probably something else entirely. Bob always told her she had an overactive imagination. She invited his calming demeanor into her memory, trying to soothe the disquieting thoughts to which she was prone.

  She was so distracted with what she thought she was seeing that she didn’t see one of the young men walking over to her driver side window. He waved to her and started to speak which of course she could not hear through the still closed window. She rolled the window down a bit. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  His eyes may have been able to disguise his fear, but his voice cracked with distress. He asked politely, a slight hint of Texas curling cozily around his words, “You doin’ okay?”

  She nodded but couldn’t find any words with which to answer.

  “You hear ‘bout what’s been happenin’?” Again she nodded.

  “You know where you’re headed?”

  She shrugged, still distracted with the apparent body lying in the road and the disregard with which it was being treated by everyone else.

  The man, his face still evincing signs of adolescence, turned his eyes in the same direction as hers. “You...you don’t w-want to go that way unless you hafta’,” he stammered. “I don’t know what’s happenin’ to them folks, but somethin’s makin’ em all crazy.”

  Jess moved her eyes and then her head so that she was facing him again. Her mouth stood partially agape but produced no words.

  He looked away. “They just keep comin’, no matter what we do. They just don’t stop. One of em bit Trey on the hand before he shot it in the face. It was just an old lady who was mad as a dog. She came at em and he pushed her away, but she didn’t stop. So he pushed her down but she got back up. Ain’t nothin’ he could do. The craziest thing was that she just kept bitin’ at him like she ain’t eaten in a week and he was a big ole T-bone or somethin’. When she bit em, I guess he had enough and shot her. We been shootin’ all the others ever since.”

  She was finally able to ask, “Others?”

  He gestured with his chin. “You can see ‘em. We ain’t murderers. They was...just not right.”

  Jess put her car into park and removed her foot from the brake. She sat back in her seat and let his revelation settle into her mind. An old woman. Shooting people. Crazy. Dead bodies. Terror.

  One of the other men nearer the trucks said with some distress, “I think Trey is gettin’ worse.”

  She got out of the car and walked over to the other man standing beside the truck’s open door. With both concern and fear in his eyes, he asked her, “What’s wrong with him? It didn’t seem like much of a bite, but it just keeps bleeding. It won’t stop.”

  Jess leaned into the truck, the interior of which was heavy with the scent and moisture of perspiration. She could smell something else too. It was a different kind of salty, warm odor which she immediately realized was the aroma of blood. The man was breathing in quick, labored, shallow breaths; his chest barely rising enough to allow air into his lungs. His clothes and the seat in which he was sitting were both streaked with drying patterns of red.

  “How long ago did he get bitten?”

  The first man with whom the young man had spoken said, “It happened early this mornin’. Just before dawn. She was walking down the street but when she saw us, she started to run at us. We thought maybe she needed help or somethin’ but when we could see her face... I ain’t never seen no one looked so...mad, I guess. I been around some real mean drunks in my day, but ain’t none of them ever look as bad as her. After she bit ’im, we drove outta town and headed down this way. We stopped to pick up Hank over there but Trey looked too sick to do much travelin’. We decided to hole up for a bit, but he just keeps gettin’ worse.”

  Jess realized that Hank was the man she recognized and then remembered that she had indeed seen him in her office. He was standing close to the tail end of the other truck. He looked up, realizing she was still processing his face. “Me and Geraldine ain’t workin’ out so I was over here visitin’ a friend.”

  She surmised he was admitting to some possible infidelity from the woman with whom he had visited her office. His face was riddled with guilt, but her memory of the woman was hazy at best so there was no need for his blushing cheeks. She nodded, trying her best to absolve him of whatever affront he had committed.

  Jess met the rest of the guys as they discussed what to do. The first young man was named Allen. There was a darkly tanned Native man named Simeon. She couldn’t decide if he was young or old, but he was certainly weathered. His hands looked like leather work gloves and his cheeks looked as tough as rawhide, and his dark eyes were serious. The final man in the group was Justin, a thin, wiry man in his early thirties whose metabolism had obviously not marched much beyond his adolescence. His arms, while nothing but sinewy muscle, weren’t much bigger around than a mop handle. He was the only man not armed with a rifle of some sort. Instead, tucked in the waistband of his Carhartt pants like some suburban gangsta was a semi-automatic pistol. His boxers rising slightly above his sagging pants helped to complete the look in Jess’ opinion.

  They debated whether to stay or to go, and then they debated which direction to go if they were to leave. Every discussion, however, returned to what to do about Trey, who was still languishing in the growing pool of his own blood. Trey wasn’t involved in any of the discussions. Of course, he hadn’t been conscious in some time, but he likely would have been excluded anyway. In his last moments of consciousness, he had been delirious and his speech unintelligible. No one wanted to admit it, but it had occurred to all of them at one point or another that Trey was likely dying.

  Jess finally asked, “Where the hell were you guys headed when you stopped here in the first place?”

  In a jumbled, out of tune chorus, they all answered, “Homer.”

  She shook her head and huffed. “Then why the fuck don’t we just go to Homer?” Jess knew that Bob and Syd would be somewhere near Ninilchik which was just outside of Homer, so heading in that direction would get her closer to them.

  Allen said, “Last we heard, the Guard had closed the road between here and there and weren’t lettin’ no one through.”

  Undeterred, she answered, “And?”

  Hank, the oldest in the group, said, “There’s probably a line of cars a mile long down that way. What we gonna do when we get stuck in that?”

  Simeon ended the discussion with, “We walk.”

  Jess seconded his motion with a nod and an approving, “We walk.”

  45.

  Jess pulled her car in behind the two trucks and they started on their way out of the neighborhood and down to Homer. As they steered around the dead bodies in the road, Jess refused to look down at them for fear that they might be people she had known. She still didn’t know what was happening, but she had to trust that these men, even the slightly off Justin, were not ruthless, cold-blooded killers. There had to be a reason for it.

  She was alone in her car and was thankful that none of the men had wanted to ride with her. She wasn’t certain how she would have handled such a request. After all, she didn’t really know any of them and, desperation or no, she would have felt very compromised.

  In the black Chevy in front of her was Justin and Hank with the suffering Trey across the back seat in the full sized cab. His breathing had become raspy and sounded as if his throat and lungs were filling with
fluid. Attempts to position his head in such a manner as to allow it to drain had been unfruitful. His condition was critical and was worsening by the minute.

  The smaller black GMC, with Simeon at the wheel and Allen sitting next to him, was in the lead. They drove with dire intention, whipping their vehicles into a growling, gravel-spitting frenzy.

  The three vehicle convoy was quickly out on the highway heading south. While she could feel herself starting to calm down a bit, Jess was still very much on edge. She was glad to be on the move, but her questions and her concern lingered, but guilt was looming larger for her than any other emotion. She felt guilty for not trying to flee Soldotna sooner. She should have left as soon as she got the news like everyone else. She could have and maybe she would be with Syd at that very moment. But what would she have done if, after she had fled with the rest of Soldotna, Syd and Bob had returned? She would never have forgiven herself if her daughter had come home and not found her mother. At the very least, she had a fair idea of where to find her daughter now and that was exactly what she was going to do. She wiped the misting tears from her eyes with her sleeve and focused on the road.

  It was a good thing she did. Through the black Chevy’s rear window, she saw Trey suddenly sit straight up in his seat. Though she couldn’t see his face clearly, he seemed to have shaken the debilitating sickness which had laid him low, as evidenced by his more alert posture. A rush of activity followed in which it appeared Trey was reaching into the front of the truck.

  The next few immediate moments were some of the most intense and frightening of Jess’ life. The big black truck, like a pinball bouncing its chaotic way down the table, careened from one side of the road to the other. The truck’s brake lights protested suddenly, forcing Jess to bring her car to an abrupt stop. She watched motionless as the truck then sped forward out of control and struck the back of the lead truck. Like the booming voice of thunder, the collision’s impact created a sound that rattled Jess’ teeth and made her jump in her seat.

  Both trucks lost control and toppled violently end over end off the road and into the trees. Shattered pieces of fenders, windows, and mirrors exploded into a tornado of swirling plastic, metal, and fiberglass that was strewn across the road. A thin cloud of smoke and dust kicked up by the collision settled over the debris and the still clicking and ticking but motionless trucks.

  Simeon’s truck came to rest on its tires, though it had rolled on its top at least once. Sitting in her car, Jess was stunned speechless. For a long time, she merely stared and waited. There didn’t seem to be any movement in either vehicle.

  Leaving her car door open and the engine running, Jess climbed from her car to investigate. The nearer of the two vehicles was Simeon’s. By the time she stood next to the passenger side window now devoid of glass, Allen was sitting upright again. His forehead was cut and bleeding quite profusely, coursing rivulets of crimson having been forged around both sides of his right eye, his eyebrow forming a temporary but rapidly saturating barrier around which the blood was forced to flow. His cornea was splotchy from burst capillaries, producing a spreading patch of red.

  When Jess looked in upon all of this, she let out a tiny, surprised sound resembling a kitten’s mewling. Allen looked at her with his other eye and asked with some humor still in his voice, “Do I really look that bad? I guess either I’m in shock or it looks a helluva lot worse than it feels.”

  She asked quickly, “Do you think you can get out?”

  “I don’t feel broken, if that’s what you’re askin’, but I think the door may be. I might need a second or two before I’m up for that though.”

  She hadn’t seen Simeon move yet. He was draped over his steering wheel, which seemed to be twisted into an unusual angle. She was about to ask if he was alright when he leaned back into his seat, removed from his pocket a pack of cigarettes, and lit one, though doing so with his shaking hands, proved quite a task.

  He looked over at Jess and Allen. “Ya miss one insurance payment and that’s when you get into an accident.”

  Jess responded, “I think Allstate gonna cut you a break on this one. You okay?”

  He looked down at his waist and then at his legs. Everything seemed to be in proper order, though his chest hurt from impacting upon the steering wheel. He could feel the deep bruises with every breath. He nodded and leaned hard into his door until it opened. Had he not been still wearing his seatbelt, he likely would have landed squarely on his face due to the dizzying disorientation that swept him as a result of his exertion. He was also introduced to the throbbing ache in his neck which had avoided detection.

  Jess hurried around to the opposite side of the truck and stood next to Simeon. She suggested, “Maybe you should take it easy like Allen.”

  Simeon asked, “What about the others? Hank? Justin? Trey?”

  “I’ll go check. It looked like Trey had gotten better just before they crashed. I thought I saw him sit up maybe.”

  Simeon looked over at Allen and cocked an eyebrow. She started to walk away when Simeon said with some urgency, “Here take this. Just in case.” He took a small revolver from an inside pocket in his jacket and put it in her hand.

  “And what the hell would I need this for?”

  “Just take it.”

  Guns didn’t solicit any specific response from Jess; she could take or leave them really. Having grown up in Soldotna, she had always been around firearms, so seeing one was of little consequence to her. She was neither a gun enthusiast nor an opponent of the right to bear arms, but fell somewhere in between. The small pistol Simeon gave to her was only different in that she was holding it now rather than just looking at it or listening to someone else discharge it. She slipped the pistol into the front pocket of the blue kuspuk she was wearing and walked over to the other truck.

  The Chevy was resting on its driver’s side. Steam from the engine was creating a malodorous cloud that clung to the truck and the area around it. She could hear movement in the truck, although from this angle all she could see was the vehicle’s suspension, transmission, and axles. She walked through the noxious vapor, using her hands in a fruitless attempt to fan it from her face.

  Hank’s head was partially visible through a shattered opening in the front windshield. His skin was torn and his skull was partially broken. His blood was spilling down the glass in efficient streams which spread into web-like tributaries the further it got from the source. A small dark puddle was forming on the ground just below the leaning truck. Despite the grievous wound, Jess saw that he was moving. Perhaps he was still alive but stuck and unable to extricate himself.

  “Hold on, Hank,” she said aloud. “I think I need to get some help. Just hold on. I’ll go get Simeon and Allen.” Hank said nothing, though his head came forward a little further into the jagged gap in the glass. “I’ll be right back.”

  As she ran back, she thought she heard a grunt or possibly a groan. She knew she needed to hurry. She also knew that she couldn’t help the men alone. She needed help. Jess’ life didn’t demand a level of fitness above the most rudimentary level and if the rescue was going to require significant physical exertion, she wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be up to her solely. She would get the job done, but it wouldn’t be pretty or efficient. With a little assistance, she knew she could get those guys out of the truck.

  Simeon was already on his feet as she emerged from the cloud.

  “They need help. Hank looks hurt real bad,” Jess said to him.

  Simeon leaned his head back trying to stretch his injured neck. “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No. I saw Hank’s head through the windshield and came back to get you. I didn’t even take the time to look. Sorry, guess I should’ve.”

  He shook his head and followed her back. A concealing shadow hung over the truck and obscured their view in. They approached and, from just above the glass, peered inside. Jess was confused by what she saw. Someone was moving inside but she was having a hard time di
scerning what he was doing. Whoever it was, he seemed to be rooting around looking for something.

  Pressing her face against the window, Jess was finally able to see in clearly. Trey was the one who was moving. He was digging into the side of the passenger seat but she could not make out what he was trying to get. When his hands re-emerged from their errand, he was holding what appeared to be Hank’s slick, dripping innards. Trey shoveled the oozing bits of flesh into his chomping maw and swallowed them down only half chewed before he forced in more.

  Jess was frozen in utter terror, incapable of processing what she was witnessing. Her brain didn’t seem to want to register or acknowledge what she was seeing. She also couldn’t look away or even blink. She finally flinched, blinking rapidly when a geyser of blood sprayed from a newly punctured pocket of flesh between Trey’s teeth. Her sudden movement caught Trey’s attention, and he paused momentarily, his mouth still full of Hank’s skin and organs.

  Seeing her, he lunged straight for her, slamming his face into and further shattering the windshield. Jess retreated, falling backward as she did. Simeon caught her by the arm and steadied her before she completely lost her balance. They shared a look between one another as the growling and rustling on the other side of the glass rose in pitch and intensity.

  With her terror filled blue eyes darting between Simeon and the windshield, Jess asked, “What is going on? It looked like Trey was...was eating Hank. I think that’s what I saw.”

  Pressing the inside, Trey began to force the shattered glass from its frame. Hank’s head fell from the opening in the windshield and disappeared from sight. When the glass finally fell away, Trey spilled out of the vehicle’s cab. His back obviously broken and his legs not working for him, Trey flopped around on the ground in the horrific soup of blood, organs, and human detritus. His face was spattered with blood and small pieces of tissue from Hank and possibly Justin, both of whom were still strapped into their seats by their seatbelts.