Forsaken World (Book 1): Innocence Lost

by Watson, Thomas A.

  “Should we step back more?”

  “They raise that pistol up here, and I’m shooting at them. That pistol might make it through the window. I know this will,” Ian said, holding up his AR.

  Downstairs, Lance stood by the front door, looking at the small monitor that showed who was at the storm door. He watched them run up, try the handle, then beat on it. The woman reached over and hit the doorbell.

  Smiling, Lance pressed the intercom button. “May I help you?”

  Hearing Lance’s voice, the three froze and looked around then saw the intercom. Stepping over to press the button, the man with the gun shouted, “Open the door; we have sick people chasing us!”

  “Sorry, that’s not the password,” Lance chuckled.

  “Listen, you snot-nosed little brat, let us in, or I’m going to kick your ass!” the man shouted, and Lance turned the volume down on the intercom.

  “I’m sorry, but you can huff and puff, but you can’t come in.”

  The man with the gun stumbled back as the other man stepped over to the intercom. “We know where you live, Carver,” he said, letting the woman’s hand go and turned, pointing to Lance’s house. “We’ll trash and burn your house down.”

  “Shit, go ahead,” Lance laughed. “It’s full of sick people; why the hell do you think we ran to Uncle Doug’s? I closed the garage door so they couldn’t get out and follow us. But hey, you want to go in with them? Be my guest, but you aren’t coming in here.”

  They all looked at each other in shock, then the man with the gun hit the intercom. “Kid, open this door, or I’m about to start shooting.”

  “Then you don’t really know Uncle Doug; that storm door will stop pistol fire, and the door behind it will stop rifles just like the windows. But just a word to the wise: You shoot, and infected show up, and we’ll shoot back at you just for fun.”

  “God damn it, kid, open this fucking door!” he shouted, raising the pistol.

  The radio bud in Lance’s ear went off with Ian’s voice. “That dude needs to shut the hell up. Five just came out around the side of the house, and a small group is coming from across the street.”

  Lance pushed the intercom button and could see movement behind the group on the screen he was watching them on. “You’re attracting a crowd, dumbass. That little girl pistol you are holding can’t hold more than seven rounds in a clip. You need to get back in your house and leave us alone.”

  “I’m an adult, boy,” the man bellowed, and Lance heard him without the intercom. “Open this door right fucking now. I have a gun!”

  Shaking his head, Lance replied, “Mine’s bigger. Why don’t you go use a tampon, or I’ll use one on you?”

  Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop—click sounded outside, and Lance heard the plinks and pings as the bullets hit the door. Beside the man holding the gun, Lance saw the man with the woman grab his chest and collapse to the ground. The monitor Lance was watching was color, and he saw the man’s chest turn red with blood.

  “Adam, you shot Frank!” the woman screamed, kneeling down.

  “No I didn’t; they did!” he yelled, waving the empty gun at the door as Lance heard footsteps running down the stairs.

  Hearing Jennifer and Ian behind him, Lance pressed the intercom. “No, douche, we would’ve shot you, Adam. You need to run. Look behind you and to your right. I’m going to get a tampon to use on your ass now.”

  Adam looked at the door, seething and holding his empty pistol as the woman looked up where Lance told them. “Adam, help me get Frank!”

  Adam turned, and the anger left his face, replaced by panic. “Leave him; we have to run!” he shouted, grabbing her arm and pulling her across the yard, angling away from the group of stinkers. A male stinky trotted faster than the others, holding out his arms and growling.

  The woman yanked away from Adam. “He’s my husband. Help me!” she screamed, pushing away from Adam. The faster stinky grabbed her, biting her on the left shoulder. A blood-curdling scream pierced the neighborhood.

  Kicking and swinging around, the woman broke the stinky’s hold and fell down as Adam took off, leaving her on the ground. Crawling away backwards, the woman got far enough away she stood up to see the new group on the street heading into the yard. She held her bleeding shoulder and looked around at both groups of stinkers closing in.

  Seeing the destroyed Escalade, she ran over and climbed on the hood and pulled herself up to the roof as the stinkers surrounded her. Lance watched the screen as Adam tried to dodge the group of stinkers that broke off the ones coming across the road, but one managed to grab Adam’s shoulder. Breaking the hold, Adam spun and lost his balance, tripped, and hit the pavement hard.

  Adam never had a chance to even crawl as four stinkers dropped down on him. The screams could easily be heard inside. The three watched in morbid fascination as one stinky stood up, holding one of Adam’s arms with the empty pistol still clutched in its hand.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Ian said as one stinky stood up with a long piece of gut, chewing on one end.

  “Uuuggghhhh,” Jennifer gagged, puking as she turned away from the screen. Ian doubled over, joining her, as Lance turned back to the lady on top of the Escalade. Fighting not to puke from what he’d seen and the smell of vomit around him, Lance watched the stinkers around the SUV reaching for her.

  “They’re so stupid. The stinkers want her but don’t know to climb up,” Lance mumbled, swallowing his upchuck.

  “Huh,” Ian said, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm.

  Lance pointed at the monitor. “They are reaching for her, and some are even jumping. Kind of,” he said, watching some of the infected give little hops, reaching for the woman. “They could climb up or even use the running boards, but they don’t. Look, some are even pushing the Escalade. They can’t think out a problem.”

  “Dude, they just ripped that Adam guy apart like they were looking for a prize inside, and you’re trying to figure out their thought process?” Ian said, stepping back from the puddles of puke.

  “If we don’t understand them or get an idea to understand them, we are dead. Those three thought they could out move them but got trapped,” Lance said, looking at Frank lying on the walkway to the front door. “They aren’t even going after Frank.”

  “He’s dead,” Jennifer said, stepping over to the couch.

  “Not yet he’s not.” Hearing sobs, Lance turned around and saw Carrie and Allie curled up, hugging each other and crying softly. Lance spun on his heel and marched upstairs then came back carrying an ammo box. He opened it on the coffee table and confirmed it was full of loose 9mm ammunition; that’s why they didn’t pack it. Heading to the kitchen, he came back with two boxes of zip lock sandwich bags.

  “Carrie, Allie, I need you to count out nineteen shells and put them in a bag. That’s what all of our pistols hold in a magazine. If we shoot something and empty our magazine, we need to know it’s full without having to count shells as we load them. Can you two start that?” Lance asked as they stopped crying, listening to him.

  They both nodded. “Can we do it at the kitchen table?” Allie asked, getting off the couch. Lance grabbed the stuff, moving it to the kitchen table for them. When he came back to the monitor, he saw Ian and Jennifer cleaning the upchuck.

  When they had the majority up, Lance said, “Ian, take Jennifer to the den, and go over the AR with her.” Happily, the two left as Lance watched the stinkers outside and glanced at his watch every few minutes. Almost half an hour after being attacked, Frank, or what was left of Frank, started crawling around.

  When Adam stood up, Lance looked at his watch and saw it took almost an hour, and the stinkers around the Escalade had moved away, but the lady was still whimpering, or it looked like it from the way her chest and body were moving. “I’m going upstairs to the lookout room,” Lance said and headed upstairs.

  Grabbing a chair, he pulled it over to the window and picked up the notebook he had brought up earlier. S
etting his AR down, Lance pulled out an ink pen and wrote across the top of the first page, “Stinkers,” then he started making numbered entries. Pausing occasionally, Lance would look out the window.

  Seeing the woman on the Escalade not moving, Lance grabbed the binoculars and saw she was still breathing but very shallow like she was asleep. He looked at the bite on her shoulder and saw the stinky had taken a divot out of her deltoid.

  Putting the binoculars down, he made several more entries then grabbed the binoculars and saw a stinky just standing in front of the house across the street dressed in a running outfit. Lance didn’t know the man but had seen him around the neighborhood and thought he lived on the very last road in the neighborhood.

  His skin was a pasty, sickly white like all the stinkers. On his left forearm was a bite that looked like it came from a small kid. Putting the binoculars down, Lance made more entries. It was two p.m. when Ian and Jennifer came upstairs and found Lance sitting at the window with the binoculars up to his face. Setting them down, Lance made an entry and turned to another page. “How is she doing?” he asked without looking up.

  “She knows the five rules and is doing well,” Ian said, moving to read over Lance’s shoulder. Lance wrote fifty-two and circled the number then wrote, “Stinkers only go after humans. They only attack animals if animals attack one of them. White German Shepard from front of neighborhood barked around them for almost an hour but when it bit one taking it to the ground, others came over killing it. None purposely fed off it.”

  “They killed Ghost?” Ian asked, looking out the window.

  “Yeah,” Lance said, making another entry. “He’s down past Jennifer’s house on the sidewalk.”

  Seeing something red and white, Ian grabbed the binoculars, and what he saw made him wish he would’ve just taken Lance’s word. “How do you know they don’t attack other animals?”

  “Seen several dogs and even a doe walk around the stinkers, but they don’t go after them when they see them. If they hear them, they go see what the noise is, but when they see it’s not human, the stinkers just leave. They can smell but not great,” Lance said as he continued writing then glanced up for a second.

  Putting the binoculars down and looking back at Lance, Ian asked, “How good can stinkers smell?” as Lance turned a page and started making another entry.

  “Don’t know, but they can’t smell us in here, but Mr. Donner ran out of his house to his car a while ago. None saw him, but one stopped sniffing the door of his car about ten minutes after he touched it. It walked around the yard. I think it was growling, and a few others came over, looking like they were sniffing the air. One went on the porch an hour after Mr. Donner went back inside, sniffing the door, but left,” Lance said and picked up the binoculars.

  Jennifer moved to the window. “I can’t believe Mr. Donner is alive. He’s an old wimp.”

  “Yeah, he was Mr. Oliver’s only friend in the neighborhood,” Ian said as Lance put the binoculars down. “So if animals leave the stinkers alone, the stinkers don’t try to eat them?” he asked, and Lance nodded as he started writing. Glancing down at the Escalade, Ian jumped back. “The woman’s gone!”

  “Yeah, she got up,” Lance looked at his watch, “one hour and twelve minutes ago. She just walked off the Escalade and broke her ankle.” Dropping his arm, Lance looked around outside and pointed. “She’s in front of my house beside the mailbox.”

  Ian and Jennifer looked and saw her just staring off down the road with her right ankle pointed ninety degrees from her leg. “She looks bad,” Ian said.

  “She tripped over several of the bodies Uncle Doug shot, and I think she broke her nose, but she won’t look over here long enough for me to say for sure,” Lance said as he started a new entry. “The girls finish?”

  “Yeah, I found some of those buckets of loose .22s, and they started making bags of fifty,” Ian said, leaning up against a shelf as he looked outside.

  Jennifer looked at all the bodies lying everywhere. “Are we going to have trouble getting out of here with all those bodies on the road?”

  Laughing, Lance quit writing and looked up at her. “Not for the Hummer. It has a two-inch lift with forty-inch super swampers.”

  “It can high center,” Jennifer said, making both boys jump in shock. “What, I can’t know something like that?”

  Ian looked down at Lance then at her. “Well yeah, but how would you?” he asked.

  “Last year, the bus we were on for a football game high centered on a cement block they put in parking lots. I just knew the back wheels were off the ground, but one of the players said it was ‘high centered.’”

  “I’m impressed,” Ian mumbled.

  Smiling, Lance went back to writing. “Yes, we could high center, but the skid plate under the Hummer is shaped like a boat. Uncle Doug put it on after we high centered on some rocks. Now, it slides off.”

  “You know a lot about that Hummer,” Jennifer giggled.

  Shaking his head, Ian looked over at Jennifer. “That’s his dream car. He can tell you everything about it from memory and all the upgrades Uncle Doug put on it.”

  “Is that why Doug let you drive it?” Jennifer asked, looking outside and seeing the woman hobble away from the mailbox, heading to the side of Lance’s house. Looking away from the woman, she saw several stinkers moving toward the same area. “What are they doing?”

  Lance’s head snapped up as he grabbed the binoculars. “Just for your information, Uncle Doug didn’t ‘let’ me drive the Hummer. He made me.”

  Watching as a dozen or so stinkers moved to the side of Lance’s house, Ian leaned closer to the window. “Uncle Doug told Lance if he didn’t drive the Hummer down the road by himself, he was going to chop off his tally whacker with dull scissors,” Ian mumbled, watching two stinkers break into a trot and disappear around the corner of Lance’s house. “Where are they going?”

  “The street behind my house,” Lance said, looking through binoculars. “Looks like someone is leaving.”

  Squinting, Ian saw a blue car backing away from a house. “Is that Tony’s house?”

  “Yeah, looks like his dad’s car,” Lance said, lowering the binoculars.

  “How many others in the neighborhood do you think are alive?” Jennifer asked, watching the car drive down the road.

  “Not many,” Lance said, passing the binoculars to Ian. “Mr. Donner is the only one I’ve found on our street, but I can’t see the other houses on this side. If you look close at the houses we can see, only a few don’t have broken down doors or busted windows. The ones that don’t we know are empty.”

  “Someone is still at Tony’s house. I saw them looking out the upstairs window,” Ian said and passed the binoculars to Jennifer.

  “Only one person was in the car, and it looked like a man,” Lance said as he started writing then glanced outside to see a few stinkers around. “Crack the window, and let Jennifer shoot some of the stinkers.”

  “Won’t they all come over here if they hear it?” Jennifer asked, looking down at her AR.

  “I’m positive they will, but there can’t be but a hundred or so in the area. Whatever Uncle Doug did, most seem to have left,” Lance said as Ian moved over to the window.

  When Ian raised the window, the smell of rotten eggs flooded inside. Jumping up out of his chair and covering his mouth, Lance let the notebook hit the floor as he tried not to puke. “They earned the name stinkers,” he mumbled. Seeing Ian had only raised the window a few inches, Lance shook his head. “No, open it, and set up well away from the window, and shoot several feet away from the window. The room will help trap some sound the suppressor lets out.”

  Nodding, Ian moved the chair Lance was using back from the window as Jennifer picked up his notebook. “How long you want to let her shoot?” Ian asked, pulling Jennifer to the chair.

  Feeling queasy, Lance tried to swallow. “Until she hits what she’s aiming at,” he said, turning for the door. “I’m going
to get something to drink.”

  Grabbing another chair, Ian pulled it beside Jennifer. “See that one in the middle of the road in front of us?” he asked, sitting down, and Jennifer nodded. “Shoot her in the head.”

  “That’s Ms. Glen,” Jennifer mumbled.

  Slowly, Ian shook his head. “Not anymore.”

  Feeling sick, Jennifer lifted the AR to her shoulder, looking through the window of the red dot sight. Putting the red dot in the middle of the circle on the side of Ms. Glen’s head, Jennifer flipped the safety off with her thumb as her index finger moved to the trigger. Letting out half her breath, Jennifer caressed the trigger and felt the AR buck and cough.

  She saw a puff of smoke on the road on the other side of Ms. Glen. “You were right in front of her,” Ian said. Jennifer shot two more times and saw puffs of smoke on the road. Ian reached over and used a small piece of metal to turn a screw. “Just have to dial the EoTech in,” he grinned. “Now try it.”

  When Jennifer squeezed the trigger, Ms. Glen’s head detonated, and the body collapsed. Fighting not to get sick, she flipped the safety on and mumbled, “I hit her.”

  “Man in the yard next door,” Ian said, pointing. Jennifer aimed at the man’s forehead, squeezed the trigger, and watched the back of the man’s head spray out in a mist. When Jennifer emptied her magazine, Ian grabbed the binoculars and said, “Swing your magnifier over, and let’s aim at some farther away.”

  “Some are moving toward us,” Jennifer said as she pulled the magnifier back and swung it over behind the EoTech.

  “That’s their problem,” Ian said, finding a target. “Green shirt standing in your front yard.” Resting her elbows on her knees, Jennifer aimed the AR and squeezed the trigger. “You grazed his cheek. Don’t jerk the trigger when you are aiming. Focus on a small target like the tip of his nose and not his entire face. Aim small, miss small.”

  Caressing the trigger, Jennifer watched the man’s head jerk back as his body collapsed. “I hit him.” She grinned as Ian called out another target. When she finished that magazine, Ian brought up his AR and joined in.