by Tim Yingling
The man would not move, this I knew. I decided I must do what I needed to do.
I turned the bin upside-down. At first, only the water and leftover fuel mixture poured out. It hit the floor, spreading out. It did get on my boots. Splashed over them as a matter of fact. I would have to throw them away sooner than later.
As I got to the halfway point, a clatter echoed in the bin. It didn’t take long after for the now-defunct head to fall to the floor. As it fell, I looked at everyone’s eyes. Only Stone didn’t follow the head to the floor. His dark brown, with a hint of red, eyes stayed on me. I didn’t give him any leeway on intimidating me.
The head hit the floor and shattered. Hardly any blood flowed, again. It was more of brain matter, bone, and chunks of burned flesh that flew from the impact area. I had a good mind to know I should have moved back. None of it got on me.
I said as I dropped the bin to the floor, “So, as you can see, fire will kill these things.”
Stone crossed his arms and stepped forward. “You don’t know that. Maybe it was the fall and destruction of the head that killed it.”
The dumbfounded looks from behind him told the entire story. The soldiers and officers have lost faith in Stone. It took way too long for that to happen. But, finally, the force is beginning to shift.
“Sir,” I began, “I want you to look at the people behind you. I want you to take a close look at their faces.” I couldn’t believe it, but he actually turned around. I didn’t miss a beat. I continued to talk. “Those looks you are getting should tell you how much of an idiot you are being. I have given you some great evidence to the fact that we can’t kill these fuckers with normal means. Everyone else got the point except you. Are you so hard headed and full of yourself that you don’t want to use this knowledge?”
Stone turned on me. There was no more hint of red in his eyes. The red encompassed his entire head. “What did you say to me?”
“I didn’t say anything. I asked a question. A simplistic question that doesn’t warrant an answer. Because we all know the answer. And the answer is that you are. I’m here, and I did all of this to tell you that if you continue down this course you will get everyone killed.”
Damien stepped forward. It was a good thing he did, too. The situation was getting worse. Yes, I had a hand in it. Stone was the problem, though. The more he pushed the more I pushed back. None of the others would step in. They were too afraid of what would happen. Luckily, Damien was like me. Or I should say I was like him. After all, he was the one who taught me to speak my mind. He was about to do just that.
“General Stone, Sir. You have to understand that we are losing here. We’re running out of ammo. So far, only one of The Horde has died. That was just now. And more zombies are getting made. We don’t have the means to survive. People will start dying of starvation and dehydration within two weeks.”
Stone put up a hand to stop him. “First of all, everyone here is overstepping their bounds. If you are getting to what I think you are getting to, that is called a mutiny. Secondly, I am the one in charge here. I decide what’s best for the soldiers.”
I couldn’t hold my tongue on the matter anymore. I had to get my main point out.
“Robert Stone,” I bellowed. When he turned, the red tint was gone. Now, he was stark white. “You are not in charge of me. No one is anymore. I have one mission. To get to my family. First, to my daughter in West Virginia. Second, to my wife and kids in Indiana. No one will stop me from doing just that.”
“I will. And so will the Uniform –”
“Blow that shit out your fucking ass. There is no more military. Hell, there is no more government. There is us and them. I gave you all the tools you need to fight with. And now I am leaving. Well, in a couple of hours. You come near me, Bob, I will kill you myself.” Color came back into his face with that one. “I am putting this out to everyone. I suggest you leave. But not all at the same time. Myself and Rice are leaving at 0300. You have from now until then. If anyone wants to roll with me, I will meet you about four miles northwest of here. There is a small town there. So, I’m sure they have a motel or something. I will take no more than three others.”
That is where I stopped talking. I turned around and walked away. Stone made to yell at me, but he was stopped. I don’t know who stopped him and don’t care. Most likely it was Damien. He knew I would have been true to what I said about killing Stone. Damien was just looking out for Stone.
Over the next hour, the newly found civilians put their belongings together. It took another hour for them to realize how to leave secretly so the zombies wouldn’t get them.
No one bothered me. That was a good thing. It gave me time to get all this done. It took me close to three hours just to write everything. I did eat, and I did take a few breaks. One of those breaks was to get my arm stitched up. I hadn’t smoked for about two years. It seemed now was a good time to pick up the habit again.
It’s getting close to midnight now. I want to get a few hours of sleep before I begin tomorrow. I should put this out there as well. I have noticed Stone staring in my direction all night. But it doesn’t matter. In a few hours, I’ll be gone. He’ll be a distant memory in less than twenty-four hours.
* * * *
Thursday, 23 June 2016 (Day)
Horrel Hill, South Carolina
713 Miles to Pilgrim, Indiana (407 Miles to Commerce, WV)
What a beautiful day?
I don’t mean in the sense of it being gorgeous, although it was once the sun came up. The birds were singing a glorious song. The red-orange sky as the sun crested the trees to our right was the best sunrise I have ever seen. I just wished Hannah was with me for that. Best of all? No Stone to hold me back. That is why it was a beautiful day. I was able to be free to go see my family.
The day started out good. I woke up to the sight of Rice sitting across from me (in the spot that used to house Varner, who wasn’t there) and ready to go. Don’t take that out of context. I was happy she was ready to get out of there.
We still had ten minutes before I wanted to leave to get my stuff ready. Plenty of time. I didn’t want to take much. Especially since I knew we would find the essentials on the road. What I didn’t take was all my gear from the military to include my weapons with exception to the machete I never gave back. Rice wanted to take what I wasn’t taking. I told her there was no need. She didn’t understand but complied.
All we had with us were the clothes on our backs (we left our ACU tops), our boots (I did change my boots out), a machete each slung tight to our backs, and an assault pack. In the assault pack, we only had a few change of shirts, socks, and underwear. That is the good thing about ACUs. You can continue to wear them no matter how dirty they are. They won’t fall apart.
Before setting out, I took a quick look around the hanger. More than half the people took off in the three hours I was asleep. I figured that not many people would actually take me up on the idea, but it seems they did. Out of the half that stayed in the hanger, a good number of people were still awake, and they were all staring at me. It was as if they were waiting for me to leave. Nobody was near the door.
I did happen to notice Damien wasn’t in the hanger anymore. He was most likely one of the first to leave. ‘Lead by example’ as he always said. There was one other person that wasn’t in the hanger. I figured he would still be in there, but he wasn’t.
General Robert Stone had abandoned his military. That’s the way I saw it. The son-of-a-bitch actually did take off. Not surprising since after I made him look like a bitch in front of all the soldiers. He stuck his tail between his legs and took off like a wounded dog. He deserved whatever happened to him.
But I have to put that behind me. I don’t care about him anymore. I have to take off.
I turned to Rice. “You ready for this?”
The look in her eyes told me she was scared. I didn’t blame her. Her voice only amplified it. “I am ready,” she squeaked.
I had
no choice. I made a promise to her. The way she sounded and looked made me want to leave her there. I couldn’t do that. If I make a promise, I will fulfill it.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
We donned our assault packs while heading toward the door. Before opening it, I took one more look around. I read the eyes that I could see. The other people were eager to get out of the hanger and on their way. I didn’t blame them.
I opened the door a little to make sure the exit would be safe. It was, and we set out.
Upon exiting the hanger, I didn’t see a single zombie within a hundred yards. That was a good thing. After a quick look at my compass, I judged the direction we needed to head. Once I had my bearing, we walked.
We walked along the side of the tarmac to the end. No zombie came close to us. If one did, we simply moved away making no noise to alert the thing we were close to it.
As we walked off the airfield we did see several of the soldiers we knew who were turned. Rice wanted to put the poor bastards out of their misery. I had to sway her from doing so. For one, we didn’t have enough equipment as of yet to actually kill them. And another, the most important in my mind, there was no point. All we would do is attract attention to ourselves. The kind of attention we didn’t want.
She agreed with me.
The going was slow once we were off the airfield. We had to scale a fence to get out. I didn’t want to go looking for a door to exit through. Chances were the door would have been hounded by the zombies. On the outside of the fence was a set of woods. Again, not exactly something I wanted to do, but we trekked through anyway. Every so often we would come by a zombie or two. Some just mulling around in the woods with no real place to go. Others were moving toward the airfield as if a battle was still going on in there. The ones that came into our direct path were easy to dodge. We would put our backs to the closest big tree, never two at one tree. The zombies would pass us with no real acknowledgment we were even there. Once they passed, we set about our way.
It took us just under an hour and a half to get out of the woods and into a field. For a three mile trek, that was sad in my mind. I have always been under the impression that it should never take anyone more than an hour to walk three miles. I had to get my mind off the military type of thinking. I had one person with me. I knew the walking was going to be slow from the jump. So, I couldn’t be that mad at her for making it go slow. All of it wasn’t even her fault. The zombies had to take most of the blame.
Not to mention, I had to take some of the blame as well. I wanted to investigate every single thing I came across. Luckily I did, otherwise, we wouldn’t have found a couple of pistols. Military grade 9mm Berettas. They had to of fallen off a zombie that used to be a soldier. We did find other pistols (no rifles surprisingly), but we didn’t take them. We only took the clips from them for more ammo.
Then there were the animals we came across. We found more of them dead than alive. We only saw three live animals. Two squirrels and one rabbit. The dead was a much higher number, upwards of fifteen. Fifteen is when I stopped counting. I don’t know if Rice continued to count, I never asked. Most were deer, I did see one dead fox, and the rest were squirrels and rabbits. I wanted to take them to eat. I didn’t, though, for good reason. They were attacked by the zombies. I didn’t want tainted meat. It makes sense to me.
Once we were in the field we could see the town we were heading to. The walking was faster in the open. The town itself was no more than a one-horse town. But the surrounding area was actually pretty big. Although there was no damn hotel anywhere. We searched the town for the better part of the day, coming across some interesting places. Two were extremely important.
One was the local grocery store. Most of it had already been ransacked, but we were able to find some canned goods and some food that hasn’t expired or gone bad as of yet. The fruit was no good to use. Nor was the meat. That one pissed me off. We took what we could. At the end of it, we were only able to stuff our assault packs half full with the food we found. We left, neither disappointed nor happy, to go to the other place we wanted to visit.
The more important place.
The Ace Hardware store had a lot more stuff we could use than the grocery store did with food. The things we were looking for out of everything was more ammunition to fight the zombies. That being things we can make fire with. And there was an abundance of that in there. Items like timber, lighter fluid, matches, and there was even a pop-up tent of all things. Rice didn’t know why I took the tent, but once I explained she understood. I knew we weren’t always going to find someplace to sleep inside.
After our adventure in the Ace Hardware, we set out to find someplace to sleep for the night. It was getting on late in the day and I had to find something that we could house at least five people in. We were walking down Main Street of the small township when I saw the sign. The sign that would give us shelter for the night.
The high school would make for great shelter. Plenty of room to move around with easy access to hold up if need be. The school was about two miles from the center of the city. I needed to leave some sign of where we were going. And that was easier than finding someplace to sleep. I had to go back into Ace Hardware to get some paint. With the paint, I left a note on the sign for the school that we would be there. A simple note saying, “No motel, go to school.” That should let anyone who wanted to join us know where we were.
After I was done with my note, we took off. The road was lonely. We didn’t see any zombies or anyone else on the road. We did see plenty of vehicles. Rice asked another question. She was just full of questions as to why I was doing what I was doing.
“Why don’t we take a car?”
It was a good question. One I would have asked if I didn’t have my training. I couldn’t be mad at her for asking.
I kept walking as I answered. “Because vehicles will make too much noise. I don’t want to attract anything our way.”
“But a vehicle will easily outrun them.”
I stopped and turned to her. “I didn’t say anything about the zombies. I know we can outrun them. I’m referring to other people out there. Sure, there will most likely be good people, but there will be bad people as well.” I inched my way closer to her, slitting my eyes a little. I was joking with her, just trying to scare her a little. It was working. “The people I am referring to are the people that would kill me just to rape you. They would leave you alive for days on end. Taking advantage of you every chance they get. Once they find something better, they would kill you and move on. Or they could just keep you and trade you off for other goods.” I stepped back, losing my menacing look and tone. “Also, even though it’s not too bad here, most of the roads will be cluttered with cars. Don’t want to take the chance of getting stuck and then having to find another way to get about.”
I walked off. It took Rice half a minute, but she caught up.
“Were you trying to scare me?”
I nodded.
“It worked. Why would you want to do that?”
I didn’t say a thing. I continued to walk, putting my earbuds in to listen to music. I didn’t want to talk for the time being. I didn’t see the point. We were about to be in a high school, bedding down for the night, and we would have plenty of time to talk then. I could still hear her pestering me through the song I was listening to. By the time the song came to an end, she gave up.
In truth, the reason I wanted to scare her was in hopes of getting her away from me. I didn’t tell her the truth when I explained it to her later in the night. No point. I’m not a cold bastard. She needed help and asked me to help. I don’t turn on people when they need help.
After twenty-five minutes of walking, we arrived at the school. It was a good sized school for the area. Standing in the parking lot looking back east I could see four buildings. As we walked across the blacktop I saw another four buildings. The buildings were separated but connected with awnings. Not a bad set up for a small town. It wasn’t until la
ter in the school when I found out why the school was so big.
We walked up to the main building, keeping a vigilant eye for any outsiders; human or zombie alike. There were none. That was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. The hours were growing late. I had some things I wanted to do before I bedded down for the night. First and foremost was to get some food in me.
The doors were locked. But that didn’t matter. The windows had been busted out to the doors. That should have been my first indicator to get the fuck out of there and find someplace else to hold up. I didn’t though. I was still under the impression the school would make a great housing unit for the night.
We walked in through the broken glass. It didn’t take Rice but one second to piss me off in there.
“Hello!” she yelled. “Is anyone th –”
I put my non-firing hand over her mouth. I had to reach across my body to do so.
We had two different hallways to look down. The one that stretched out in front of us and the one we were standing in going left and right. I looked down the hallways to see if anyone – or thing – would come out. We stayed that way for one minute. When the minute was up, I turned left and went to the administration office.
The door was locked. We continued down the halls until we found one that wasn’t. All the doors were locked going in the first direction we tried. The first door we came to going in the opposite direction was unlocked. We walked into to a ramshackle of a classroom. The desks were either destroyed to the point where we wouldn’t be able to sit in them or they were tossed into the far corner. The blackboard looked as if it was used for target practice, even with dried blood at the bottom of it. There was a smell in the room. It was the same smell as the zombies. Rancid meat is what it reminded me of. In another corner of the room was human feces. That didn’t actually smell that bad. It dried up and crusted over. Someone left food in the room. Not much, but it also wasn’t eatable. Whoever was in the room left a long time ago. That didn’t bother me.