“I captured one once,” Lindsay confesses to me as we near the truck. I look at her as she starts her tale. I’m not sure that it’s one I want to listen to. “Well, he wasn’t one when I first caught him. I found a group of hunters moving through Dayton, just four of them, nothing too threatening. There are groups of a hundred in Columbus and I hear Cincinnati has an entire army of cannibalistic hunters. Anyway, four wasn’t bad. I could deal with four, and I did. I set up an ambush and killed the first with an arrow to the chest. He went down and slowly bled out while the others took cover. Too bad they took cover right where I expected them to. I’d doused the house they were in with gasoline and burnt them alive. Only one made it out and he had some pretty bad burns on his right leg. He didn’t put up much of a fight when I dragged him off.
Anyway, I chained him up in an alleyway that was blocked off. I let him scream for help, but after a while, he knew there wasn’t anyone coming for him. Not even the Zombies could get to him. I kept him alive, feeding his friends to him. He seemed to enjoy it. After the first storm, I barely noticed a difference. A second and a third storm came and he looked like he was made entirely out of dust and ash. That was when I started noticing the twitching and the drooling. It takes a while, but it slowly begins to take them. They become this sort of feral monstrosity. Anyways, I let him keep deteriorating. Storm after storm, I would study him while he withered into a feral horror. Eventually he gnawed off his left foot—the one I’d chained him with. He bled out in the middle of the night, pieces of his own foot stuck in his teeth.”
I stop and stare at her, not sure what to say. Finally the words do come to me. “That’s fucked up, Lindsay,” I say.
“I know,” she answers with a shrug.
The Tundra got hit pretty bad in the fire fight, but all the windows are still intact, the tires are good, and the engine is fine. There are three hunters dead down by the truck and on one of them, I find the keys. I don’t feel bad for any of them. They were part of the same group that died on the bridge and if there was one cannibal among them, then they all were. It’s not something you just tolerate from your traveling buddy. I grab the keys and toss out anything that we don’t need from inside the truck. Lindsay hops into the passenger seat and slowly sinks down and gets comfortable, smiling at me when she sees that I’m watching her. She starts to giggle and then bursts out laughing.
I stick the keys in the ignition and turn the starter. The truck doesn’t even hesitate. It fires to life immediately and I let out a cry of delight as Lindsay screams with happiness. They have gallons of water, but there isn’t anything to eat other than the bundles of human jerky which we toss out into the fire. Lindsay hops back into the truck and slams the door.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she laughs before buckling up. I think it’s strange that she worries about the seat belt in the end of the world, but it convinces me to buckle up.
I drive backwards up the off ramp and get onto the bridge where we transfer the gallons of water from the stuck truck into our own and then take the containers of gasoline from the bed. We leave the scene of the bridge without any kind of ceremony or concern. I realize, as we drive away, that one day, we might be the dead people on the bridge. Someone might watch us die and have not a care in the world about our passing. It’s a dark and dreary thought, but it’s the world I now live in. People die and those who remain don’t give a shit.
We head west along the road, watching the world blast by in a blur, and Lindsay rolls down her window, letting the hot, stagnant air outside turn into a refreshing breeze. I do the same and smile at the comfort of it. We drive recklessly and without any care to the old laws and ways of man. Farmyards, fields, and roads are all the same to me as I make my way southwest. Eventually, we come to an intersection with a ton of cars and I can’t help but smile. The Tundra slows to a stop and Lindsay looks over at me.
“What’s going on?” she asks, sitting up in her seat. “Why did we stop?”
“We’re here,” I tell her. We’ve only been driving for maybe an hour, but it’s fantastic to see.
“Where?” She takes off her sunglasses and looks at the wide stretch of road in front of us.
“Interstate 75,” I tell her. I turn and look at her with a grin on my face. “This is the road that’s going to take us to Florida.”
Chapter Twelve
Dust rises from the ground like a great, enormous sign pointing straight at us as we coast slowly across the abandoned farm out in the middle of nowhere. Wherever it is exactly that we are at the moment was always nowhere. The truck chokes again and the whole thing rattles. I look out the window at the endless expanse of nothingness. We’ve come a long way, but damn, everything still looks horrible around here. The distance has been put behind us, but the whole world has washed away in a dark, charcoal color that is intermittently displaced with patches of brown that are anything but warm and welcoming. I hate this world. My dreams are now void of the color green as well. This change has cut too deep for me.
Over four hundred miles are behind us since we passed the Ohio River. The world is much more beautiful now when it’s moving quickly into the distance. There is an enormous amount of distance that I’ve traveled in the last few days, avoiding horrid places. The 75 has taken us all the way to Georgia, but there’s no difference between Michigan and Georgia. In fact, if someone were to blindfold me, spin me around twenty times, and then rip the blindfold off, I would swear that I was back half a dozen miles away from Lake Huron again. The world is a desolate repeat everywhere I look.
The truck shakes again and I look to the southwest where a distant cluster is all that is keeping my hopes up. We’re on fumes and there isn’t much around to give us any hope. We’ve exhausted nearly everything we had in the supply, but there is still plenty of distance to travel. I look toward the buildings with hope in my eyes, but I’m not sure that there is much left anymore. Soon we’ll be back on foot. Soon, we will be walking again and the world will turn into a miserable march once more. I’m not ready for that. I don’t think Lindsay is either. It’ll be hard going back to the way things were.
“What is it?” Lindsay asks, following my eyes to the southwest.
“Not sure,” I say, slowly tapping the brakes to bring the truck to a stop. I turn the keys in the ignition and the motor dies. We’re far enough away that we can sneak up on the town, but the dust trail will give anyone with eyes a warning that we’re coming. It’s not the best situation, but it’ll have to work for us. I have hope that we can find something on the outskirts of the town to keep us going. We’ve strayed from the 75, but it’s not that far away. Most cars on the interstate have been sucked dry anyways. We need a populace to resupply us.
“We need food,” Lindsay reminds me. We haven’t eaten since the parlor.
“I know.” I open the door to the truck.
I spread the map out on the dusty hood and look it over with a studious eye. Every time we stop, it’s the same routine. I run my finger over where we’ve been and see that the only thing near us is a small town on the map. I look up to check that I’m right. I have no landmarks, but sure, it looks right.
“Cartersville,” I shout to Lindsay. She looks at me with a confused expression so I point to the town behind her.
“How big is it?” she asks me.
“No clue,” I shrug.
“Well,” she reaches into the back of the truck and pulls out a tank of gas. “We’ve got about three gallons left. Anything more promising near?”
I look at the map. “We’re getting close to Atlanta,” I reply. “There’s a town called Emerson on the way. If we don’t want to venture deeper into Atlanta, these two towns are our best options before trying to get around.”
“Then I guess we stay,” Lindsay smiles at me.
“I guess we do.” I fold up the map.
Like most places around here that we’ve seen, the dead forests have been burned through already. There’s not much left of this wor
ld other than the blackened stumps that make it impossible to avoid the roads. Eventually, the stumps will rot into dust, but right now, they’re a formidable barrier between our truck and the town of Cartersville. We make our way on foot, leaving the truck exactly where I stopped it. There’s no sense moving it. If someone is following us, the best they will get is a bunch of water containers that are nearly empty. I collect a ten gallon water container and strap two five gallon containers for gasoline to my pack before Lindsay grabs two more five gallon containers and starts to follow me. We pick our way through the dead forest that has turned into a tangle of ash drifts and fallen trunks that are blackened and charred to crisps. Every trudging footstep sends enormous plumes of ash up around us, nearly to our heads as we keep walking. I stop and adjust the hose wrapped across my chest and give Lindsay a chance to check out the town before we keep going. I look to her for verification that it’s safe. She gives me a nod and we keep moving.
The town looks like a death trap. I don’t trust it and I don’t like it. Part of me wants to turn around and just use the three gallons we have to get to Emerson. There’s a burning house which is an immediate sign that there is trouble here. Houses don’t just combust anymore. The gas lines have all burst or burnt out. There are no more build ups after the time we’ve seen pass. No, someone had to have lit that house on fire. There is a tangle of cars blocking the major artery into the town, built up as a sort of metallic barricade to keep outsiders from getting in. Lindsay hands me the binoculars and I follow the streets to see that most of the town is built up in this sort of haphazard barricade fashion. Whoever is living in there is definitely trying to keep people out. I assume they’re defending themselves from the Zombies. Hunters and other cannibals would be able to get through, but the rammed cars all smashed together might work for those with lower thought function.
The northern side of the town seems to have been abandoned to fire, which is still blackening the sky with dozens of columns of smoke slithering up into the ether as clouds roll overhead. I’m afraid that it’s going to rain. If it does, we’re in trouble. Rain brings floods without the roots of the plants to keep the ground firmly stable. When the sun comes back out, the world will be drastically altered and wherever the mud has slithered off to, it will bake and harden into concrete. We need to get out of here and to safety before that happens.
“Come on,” I whisper to her.
“What if it’s occupied?” Lindsay asks me. I take another look at the town. I see no movement. A lot of people had to have coordinated to get the barricades up. One person couldn’t do that. Besides, there is plenty of town that isn’t blocked up. There are a lot of houses that have been abandoned beyond those barricades.
“We won’t pass over the barricades,” I tell her. “You look for food and I’ll search for gas. We stick close together. No hairy situations, you got it?”
“You think I’m nothing but trouble,” Lindsay grins at me.
“I know that’s exactly what you are,” I say.
She tangles her fingers into my shirt’s collar and pulls me close, pressing her warm, soft lips against mine and I feel her tongue. I part my lips and embrace her kiss, pulling her close and feeling the warmth of her tongue slipping against mine. She breaks away before kissing me again, passionately and full of fire and desire. I can’t help but feel the same toward her. We haven’t touched like this since the night in the home improvement store. Part of me wants to take her back to the truck, to expend some of the building energy that we have, but I know I can’t. There are priorities right now. We can have a whole lot of victory fun later, but first, we need supplies. I slowly pull back and she smiles at me. She gives me one last kiss on the lips, a soft peck that makes me smile back at her.
“Keep up, old man,” she shouts over her shoulder before heading toward Cartersville.
The closer we get, the more it looks like there was a mass flood of cars in the streets and yards of the houses, each of them parked or abandoned in some sort of haphazard and chaotic condition. I know now, more than ever, that they were defending themselves from Zombies. The vehicles are parked to slow the flesh-eating creatures down before they reach the barricade. I can’t help but wonder if it worked very well. I stop at the first house as Lindsay throws open the door and enters with only a knife in her left hand. She doesn’t stop to make eye contact with me. She’s in hunter mode and she has a job to do.
I check out the garage, hoping to find some gas stowed away for a lawn mower. I remember the old garage that I used to have. It was stuffed full of fishing and survival equipment for the next camping excursion with the girls. I built a gym out there when Lexi decided that she wanted to be able to run a marathon when she turned eighteen. Of course, she never half-assed anything. She decided to do the Iron Man triathlon before I could have a word. There was a spin cycle in my garage too and a treadmill for the days that she didn’t want to go outside for her sixteen mile runs. Val was more into figure and wanted the bench press and squat rack. I always made it sound like I was building that gym for their benefit, but since they went off to college and whenever they weren’t home, I used it to exhaustion. I loved working out. It was the greatest relaxation I could find inside of a house or city.
There’s no lawnmower in the garage and there’s definitely no gasoline. In fact, the place looks like it was looted pretty heavily by travelers or whoever is set up behind the barricades. The door to the house opens and Lindsay steps over the threshold. “Nothing?” I ask her. She shakes her head and I frown. This might not be as easy as I thought.
“I think it’s going to rain soon,” Lindsay says as she descends the concrete stairs and stands next to me. “We should probably set up camp or we should head back to the truck. I don’t want to be stuck out in the open when shit starts to get sludgy.”
The whole world turns to a lye-infested cesspool during the rain. She’s right. This place was a bad idea. We step out of the garage and I look up toward the heavens where thick charcoal and black clouds ripple overhead. There might be thunder and lightning too. Great, this whole plan is shot to hell now. “We’ve got a little more than an hour,” I say, looking to the horizon where the worst of the storm is brewing. The clouds are hardly moving. We have time. “Let’s keep looking.”
“You got it.” Lindsay doesn’t seem to have any real qualm with the plan and heads down the street, climbing into the bed of a pickup and tossing it, searching for anything of value. At this point, I think she’s just looking for gas too. I go with her, but I linger behind, popping open gas caps and sticking the tip of the hose down into the tank and pulling it up. Some of the cars have locks on their caps, which make it impossible to get to whatever is inside of the tank. Instead, I’m left with the caps that don’t have locks on them. The unfortunate side to that is most of them are empty already, their caps dangling from whoever opened them prior to our arrival. I listen to Lindsay walking around, bumping into the sides of cars and trucks as she goes. She’s a fearless woman, making noise everywhere.
If there’s anyone in the barricaded part of town, they certainly haven’t made their presence known. Maybe they cleared out or there was a breach. If anything happened, it must have been within the past few days. Maybe they went north and that explains why there is so much devastation and destruction. They might have been forced to retreat, burning everything as they went in hopes of stopping their pursuers. I listen to Lindsay bumping into cars and hear her footsteps coming closer.
I find half a tank of gas and smile, uncoiling the hose and sticking the other tip in my mouth, I begin sucking to create a vacuum. I spit out the gas that spills onto my tongue and gag a little before stuffing the pouring tip into one of my gas cans. By the time I look up to ask Lindsay why she’s coming back, they’re nearly on top of me.
They shriek in euphoric delight at the sight of me and I immediately stumble backwards before the two Zombies can grab me. Pulling my machete free, I hack off the nearest hand with a single swing. T
he Zombie grips his stump with horror that I can greatly relate to, but his friend keeps me distracted as I gut him like a fish with my bladed stump. His intestines and something larger, maybe his kidney or liver, spills out across his feet and causes him to slip before crashing hard to the asphalt. The screaming, one-handed Zombie gets a slash across the face before I knock the dying creature aside to warn Lindsay.
But she’s well aware. Stumbling across the roof of a van, she has a pack of five chasing her. She trips and falls hard, losing her bow as she slams to the asphalt from the roof of the truck, hitting the road with a sickening thud. By the time she’s on her feet, ripping free two of her knives, they have her surrounded and I am still too far away. She’s bleeding from her forehead and panting with terror and determination as she is clearly fighting back the pain. I know that I’m not going to get to her in time. The first to charge her is eviscerated by Lindsay before another is on her back and then another replaces the dying Zombie. They tackle her, and soon they’re all on top of her as she screams for help. She screams for me.
My God, I’ve failed her. How could I be so stupid? I don’t stop running, in fact, I run harder. I can see her legs squirming and kicking as she’s still trying to fight. I plant a foot on the eviscerated, dying Zombie and crush his brittle ribs under my boot as I immediately dive into the fray, swinging and kicking. I slam my boot into the head of the nearest one, listening to its skull slam hard against the door of the truck Lindsay had tripped on. I take off the head of another before slashing the face of another with my bladed stump. This only infuriates the slashed Zombie, who abandons Lindsay and slams into me. He’s stronger than the others, larger too. He knocks me aside and roars with a fury that I haven’t seen in most Zombies. He’s different in a frustrating way.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 28