by Tim Yingling
Little did they know the time for me to be dog ass tired was drawing near. I was feeling it. I would give it till we got to Commerce, which if we kept up our current pace we would make it in about four days. Of course, the area around Commerce I knew pretty well. I would easily be able to find someplace to lay low for a day or two and get my energy back. But I knew I wouldn’t. I had people to get to. I couldn’t stop even though I knew it could kill me if I didn’t. If I did stop that could kill me as well. It was a double-edged sword I had to find some way of getting rid of.
During the four days, I didn’t see Stone once. I didn’t even know if he was still out there. As a matter of fact, the last time I remember seeing or hearing him was when he fired those shots the night of the fire (if you were wondering about the fire, you need not to, it burned out in the night). I didn’t think he would have been captured and turned by the zombies. He was too smart for that. He had to of been lost in the woods somewhere, trying to catch up. That was the only explanation.
Stopping was still two hours away when we passed the school I used as our waypoint. The school was destroyed. I mean, compared to the last school we passed, this one looked like the epitome of an apocalyptic building. All the windows were busted, along the wall facing the road was a hole that was most likely made from some sort of explosive, and there was even still a fire somewhere in the school. We could see the smoke rising from the roof in the center of the school. It could have been an open area in the center, but I didn’t think so.
I looked at the others as we passed the school. Their eyes told me to keep walking. I’m glad they did. I did not want to stop in there to investigate. So, we continued to walk. Maybe if we would have stopped, none of what happened would happen. But then again, I also think these people were lying in wait.
A half-mile past the school we passed a farmhouse. Outside, much like Adam and Beverly, were two people; a man and a woman. They both stood at the same time and offered a wave. We waved back.
The woman, she had to be topping seventy-five, had to yell out for us to hear her. What we did hear was nothing but rasp in her voice. Many years of smoking in that one. “You all must be hungry. Come on over here and get some food.”
We stopped to converse amongst ourselves. It wasn’t that long, but we decided a light snack wouldn’t hurt us. Plus, if we liked the place, we could stay there the night. I didn’t think I would want to. Not with that ominous school so close. I didn’t express my concerns right there. I had another agenda I wanted to take care of at the house instead of eating.
We walked single file to the house with me bringing up the rear and Kate in front of me. Once we hit the grass, I pulled Kate back a bit.
I whispered to her, “I’m going to leave Tom here. These people are old. They have no weapons that are visible. They need protection.” She only nodded, so I went on. “I’m actually giving you an option. He doesn’t have one. Do you want to stay here or keep going with me?”
She looked to where Tom was. He looked back at us and raised his hands in a questioning manner. Kate offered one finger to him, then turned to me when he nodded.
“I don’t think I can go on that much further. My legs are killing me. And, mostly, I am just tired of walking. We haven’t had anything happen to us since the airport. The zombies are too stupid to attack us. So, I’m going to stay here for a while before finding a better way of getting home. You get to your family.”
I think she was wrong. I don’t think the zombies were too stupid to attack us. I think they were too smart and just biding their time. They will eventually do another onslaught of attacks, but it isn’t happening just yet.
“All right,” was what I said to her. “Just tell Tom that I am checking the perimeter or something. Don’t tell him till about two hours from now that I left you all here. By then, I should be ten miles down the road and hunkered down safely for the night.”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything. The hug she gave me was one of respect and friendship, not affection. I hugged her back, slipping the cell phone into her back pocket. I don’t know if she felt it, but she would find it eventually.
I picked the spot where I stopped her for a reason. It offered me a chance to sneak off while under the cover of foliage. There wasn’t much, but there was enough to shadow me as I turned back north and headed out.
I didn’t turn around to look back. Tom would be alright without me. He didn’t give me the message that Stone wanted him to give me. I didn’t need it. The only message I cared about was the message from my Hannah about Pilgrim. I needed to find out what was happening there.
Four days to Commerce. Spend a day there getting my daughter’s things together and fighting with my ex-wife about taking Debbie with me. I would offer her the chance to come with us, but there was no way that I was going to leave Debbie with her. That was even if both of them were still alive. I believed they were.
That’s why I pushed the thoughts of finding them out of my mind. I knew the houses I was going to go to once I got to Commerce. So, it would be easy for me to find them.
That is what I was thinking about when it happened. I let my mind wander for about an hour and I wasn’t concentrating on my surroundings. There was only one other time that happened. Lucky enough, nothing happened to me then. But something happened this time. Remember I told you that our (now my) luck wouldn’t hold out that long. Well, it was true.
I had my head down, walking north on Route 91 (yes I left 321 again, I didn’t think it would be necessary to tell you each time I left a road, it would just bog down my journal), not looking around like I had been doing the last week. I made a mistake. One that cost me a lot of time, but in the end, I think it also saved me some time.
I looked up as I was coming around a short curve. When I did, something moved out of the corner of my left eye. I didn’t raise my rifle. I didn’t even move my head to acknowledge something moving in the woods. The cracking noise I heard in the woods to my right told me I was surrounded by at least two people. I had to believe there were more than just two out there.
Trying to do it nonchalantly, I reached down to unsnap the pistol holster. I wouldn’t need it just yet, but I was getting it prepared. I would use the rifle to the last round. The pistol would still hold in the holster no matter what I did.
The threat to my left was more eminent than the one to my right. The one to my right was behind me quite a bit. The one to my left was directly to my left. I could still see it moving with me.
The selector switch to my rifle was facing in toward my body. I had been walking the same way I always did whenever I had a rifle slung. My hand was on the pistol grip ready to raise the rifle if need be. And I was ready to raise the rifle. And it needed to be.
I dropped to my right knee raising the rifle to the person who was keeping pace with me. One shot was all I would allow to go out. The person was taken by surprise because he wasn’t even able to get one shot off. The round made a wet sound as it entered the chest cavity of the guy. Yes, I did see it was a guy by that point. He was in his mid-twenties and looked to take care of himself.
I turned to address the threat behind me. There was only one person back there. She came out of the wood line with her gun blazing. If I would have hesitated, I probably would have found out that she couldn’t shoot worth shit. None of the rounds she fired were even close to me. I still put one round through her head. Her forward motion brought her a couple more feet toward me before she hit the ground face first.
I didn’t check my kills just yet. First, I scanned the area to make sure there was nobody else going to come out. I waited two minutes. Those two minutes weren’t that long. The silence spoke a thousand words to me. The only words I cared about was that there was nobody else there.
I checked my kills. The man I shot was ex-military by his military ID he still carried. The woman was his wife.
I didn’t know where they came from. I passed a lot of houses since I left Tom and Kate. All I cared abou
t at that point was getting back to Tom and Kate to make sure they were okay. If they were, it was just two hours I lost. If they’re not okay, then I would be losing a lot more than two hours. It would be my fault they were taken or worse. I had to redeem myself for it.
I wasted little time. I dropped the pack of food I was carrying to lessen the weight on my back. I had a distance to run. It was no more than five miles, but it would still take me close to forty-five minutes to get back to them. Maybe even less.
It didn’t take me less than forty-five minutes. It didn’t even take me forty-five minutes. It was closer to fifty. I was tired. I was walking all day and my legs just couldn’t carry me. But once I neared the house I began to slow down. I didn’t want to do a frontal assault. No, my military mind told me to slow it down and take it easy. Analyze the situation before jumping head first into it.
And that’s what I did.
With still a quarter mile to get to the house, I ducked into the woods on the west side of the road, the same side the house was on. The going wasn’t easy, either. The owners, whoever they may have been, let their land go since the outbreak. Weeds and bushes ran like crazy through the woods. It took me an additional five minutes to navigate through the woods just to get a visual on the house. That’s two hours since I left them for something bad to happen. I wasn’t proud of my decision, but I had to deal with it.
Once I was able to see the house there was nothing out of the ordinary. I was no more than three hundred yards away. If I would have taken one more step I would be in the opening of the field to the north of the house. Where I was I didn’t think anybody would be able to see me. The sun was mostly behind the trees offering me the cover of darkness. If I did try to make it to the house, chances are someone would see me. I didn’t want to take that chance.
I maneuvered myself along the tree line to get on the west side of the house, looking at the back door. From here I could finally see people. They must have thought I would have been coming in guns blazing because they were lying in wait for me.
Now, my eyesight isn’t the best out there, but I can tell when someone is an amateur at something. One of the guys at the back of the house put his finger to his ear. That told me they all had earwigs in. He was talking to someone else. At first, I thought it was someone in the house until I saw what all of the guys at the back of the house did.
They all looked in my direction. If they would have seen me they would have opened fire. But they didn’t see me. They were scanning the wood line for me.
That was one possibility.
The other possibility was that someone had seen me and was tailing me in the woods. I looked to my left and right and turned to look behind me. There was no one there. I mean, I didn’t see anyone. If I would have had some night vision goggles then maybe I would have been able to tell. But for the time being, I didn’t think there was anyone there.
My focus turned back to the half-dozen men at the back of the house. I could take out two of them right there and then move to a new spot. Continue to do that until everyone who was at the house was taken care of. Since I didn’t know how many were in the house, or if there was anyone in the woods with me, I wasn’t going to take the chance.
My chances of survival were slim. And they were dwindling by the second. The way I saw it I only had one option left. And it was what I did.
I unslung my rifle and held it above my head. I didn’t bother with my pistol. With my arms in the air, and holding my rifle, I wouldn’t be able to get to it fast enough. I was trying my best to not show I was a threat.
The second I emerged from the trees one of the men stood up and fired at me. My shoulders slumped and I put a disappointed look on my face.
“Do you know what someone surrendering looks like, asshole?” I yelled across the field.
I couldn’t hear what the others said, but they took the rifle away from the man who shot at me. Four of the other men ran to me to take me prisoner. As they neared, I dropped the rifle in front of them so they could take it easier. One of them did without taking his rifle off me. Another decked me in the face with a left cross.
I didn’t fall to the ground, but I did waver a bit. “What the fuck? Seriously, one of you takes a shot at me and another one punches me. What are your orders?”
The guy who took my rifle (I placed him as the one in charge on the outside) said to me, “I’m sorry for that. These guys aren’t military like you and me. They are overzealous about this type of thing.” He raised his arm to the house. “If you would please walk with me to the house, I can assure you, no more harm will come to you here.”
I didn’t want to fight any of them. I only wanted to make sure my friends were okay.
They let me lead the way to the door. As I neared, the door opened from the inside. The man holding the door was one of the biggest men I have ever seen. By this time, I didn’t think I had any chance of getting the three of us out of the situation.
Once we were all inside, I let the man in charge guide me. I shouldn’t say he was in charge; he was in charge outside, but now that they had me, the person who was talking to them would be considered the person in charge. Just needed to get to him first.
We walked through the kitchen into a small hallway. The small hallway had two doors to it and made me feel claustrophobic. The big guy who opened the door walked down the hall slightly slanted. I almost had to do it. The man leading us turned to the door on the right. The door on the left went to a dining room. What I was expecting the entire time actually came to light with one added extra.
Tom, Kate, and Stone were sitting on the couch tied together. Inside the room were three more people; a man and woman standing and one man sitting in a chair reading a hardback book. I followed the leader into the room with six people coming in behind me. I thought the hallway felt cramp until I found out there wasn’t even standing room in the living room with everybody in it.
There were still two people I haven’t seen. Now that I knew where my two were, I needed to know where the other two were.
I looked at the man sitting in the chair to ask the question. He looked to be the one in charge of this entire operation.
“The old man and woman, where are they?”
He didn’t look up from the book he was reading. A thick book at that. One I have read myself, several times. It too told of the end of the world. But the world didn’t end because of zombies in that book. It ended because of a major virus.
Finally, the man finished his paragraph. I kind of figured where he was in the book and probably knew which page long paragraph he was reading. He looked at me through silver-rimmed glasses. His face was small and the large lenses made it look even smaller. I thought I recognized the guy but couldn’t be sure. His smile sort of told me he was a politician at one point. Even his body mannerisms (the way he was sitting) told me he didn’t have a military mind.
“You must be SSG Yames,” the man said to me.
I already didn’t like this guy. He was using military rank.
“By your silence, I can tell you have a problem.” I nodded and he continued. “Well, the problem is mutual. You killed two of the soldiers in our newly formed military. We have been following you three, four if you count General Stone since you left the hanger. I have been interested in your skills particularly. The way you handled General Stone in the hanger was well done. I commend you on that. We could use a man like you in this new military.”
I looked at the three tied on the couch. “Not that I care about you Stone –”
The man in the chair cut me off, sharply. “His name is General Stone to you, SSG.”
I turned on the man. After, I wished I didn’t. “Fuck you that’s his name.” A hard hand came down on the back of my neck. This one did bring me to my knees.
The man in the chair patted my shoulder, saying, “That’s okay, SSG. You still don’t know any better.” He helped me to my feet. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Colonial Bradley Mitchel Travis. Bu
t I was put in charge of finding as many people as I could to help organize the country into a fighting force.”
“Colonial my ass, you never served. And I don’t give a shit what you have been tasked to do. I have my own task right now. And what you are doing here is detouring me from that. My one and only mission is to get to my family. And because you had amateurs tracking me north of here I figured you had my friends captured as well.”
He made a clicking noise with his tongue. The one that said I misspoke. “You know better than that, SSG. Soldiers are not friends of NCOs.”
I didn’t look at Stone as I addressed him. “You want to enlighten him as to how I feel about the whole military thing?”
Stone didn’t move as he talked. He couldn’t. “Byron doesn’t believe, unfortunately, that we are still in the military. The way he sees it is the government no longer exist so there for the military no longer exist.”
Brad looked at Stone as he talked. He bobbed his head from side to side after Stone was finished then turned to me. He had to look up to me a little to look into my eyes. At least I thought he was looking into my eyes. There was a glare from the floor lamp on his glasses.
“I can assure you, SSG Yames, there is a government and we are functional.”
“Really? A government of three separate but equal parts with elected officials by the people of the United States of America, Brad.”
Brad smiled at me. All the smile did was make me angrier.