by Tim Yingling
The blood trail turned at a small opening in the hedge. It offered a petite sized person the opportunity to crawl through the hole. I am not that type of person. The only option I had was to go around. Didn’t matter to me. She wasn’t going to get far.
I turned to look at the end of the driveway. There was no way I could get through the burning rubble of the SUV and the house. I went out the backyard as I had went in, through the open gate that my bother never seemed to lock.
His neighbors, on the other hand, didn’t even have a fence for their backyard. I walked around Bobby’s garage to see Erin leaning up its side. To my surprise, Kate, Sara, and Debbie were already with her. I looked down towards the road to see they had indeed already found a vehicle. It was an early 2000’s Oldsmobile minivan. It could seat us all for the ride to Pilgrim the next morning. Tayvon was in the driver’s seat with Phil riding shotgun. Ernie and Linny sat in the back seat looking at us.
There was only one person I wanted to address.
“Erin, say hello to the person trying to save your life. This is my daughter, Debbie.”
Debbie was indeed trying to save Erin’s life. She had already put a pressure dressing on the frontal wound and was examining the entry wound on Erin’s back. From what I could see, it looked like a piece of shrapnel from the SUV had broken off and found its way into Erin’s left shoulder. I looked Erin over from a distance and came to one conclusion. There was too much blood coming out of both holes in her body. She may have been able to survive if she hadn’t moved, but she was trying to get to safety.
Kate stood up to talk to me. “She already lost a lot of blood. Her pulse rate is slowing faster and faster. And she’s also spitting up blood. I think her lung has been punctured and some blood has gotten in.”
I nodded.
Kate waited for an answer. I didn’t have one to give her. But she still knew what to do.
“Sara, Debbie, we should leave this area as quickly as possible. There are going to be more zombies coming this way.”
Sara stood, ready to get out of the situation. Debbie stayed where she was. She was bound to make sure that Erin was going to survive. And she was doing it with a tear in her eye.
“Debbie,” I said with a little more force than I intended. “Don’t you cry for her. She was going to kill you because I took out some of her team. She knew better than to fuck with my family on this type of manner.”
“We can still save her, Dad,” Debbie said through sobs. “Didn’t you tell me a couple of days ago that you still love her?”
“I do still love her. And I will for a long time. But she did threaten you and your mother. And then put Hannah’s, Sammy’s, and Claire’s life in danger by trying to make me stay with her. So, she gets no tears from us.”
I looked from Debbie to Erin. There was pain there. Not only from the wound (I’m pretty sure she was in shock by this point) but by the words I had said. She wasn’t expecting me to be acting the way I was. I don’t know why. She did know me pretty well. Well enough to know one does not simply fuck with my family.
Erin shifted her eyes to Debbie. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re a good girl. You take after both your parents on that matter. But you look so much like your father.”
A soft hand crept up to caress Debbie’s check. Thankfully, the hand was clean of any blood. Sara seemed to be a little more than apprehensive about the touch. She rushed down to take Debbie by the hand and guide her away from the scene. Kate stayed behind with me.
I waited for Sara to rush Debbie into the van then waved for Tayvon to drive off. Once they were out of sight I looked down on Erin.
“Now that I have your full attention, I want you to know I didn’t want this. Any of this. I hate killing people, and I have had to do a lot of it in the last two weeks. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Erin couldn’t look at me. She was trying to lift her head, but she physically couldn’t. “You don’t have to kill me, Byron. I know how to fix this if you just get me to a hospital. Your daughter –”
“Not that it really matters, but don’t ever fucking mention Debbie in my presence again. You lost all standing with me when you wanted to kill her.” I paused to get my train of thought correct. “But, as I was saying, I don’t want to kill anyone else even though I know I will have to. As far as you go, I can’t kill you. We have too much history for me to want to do it.”
“Thank you, Byron.”
“That’s not to say that Kate won’t do it.”
I handed Kate my pistol before walking between the two of them. I got five feet before the shot rang out. It took another three steps until Kate joined me. By the time we reached the sidewalk, Tayvon had backed the van up. He relinquished the driver’s seat to me so he could get the middle seat with Sara and Debbie. But Debbie instantly went to the floor sitting between myself and Phil.
I drove until we were on the outskirts of the western side of Cincinnati. We found a hotel we could crash in for the night. The second I found a room to sleep in, I slammed the door and closed my eyes.
* * * *
Friday, 8 July 2016
Cambridge, Indiana
6 Miles to Pilgrim, Indiana
I know, six miles from my destination and I get stopped. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
I was dead to the world the night before. The banging on the door woke me the next morning. I shot to a sitting position, pulling my pistol. With the pistol pointed at the door, I asked, “Who is it?”
Softly from the other side of the door, “It’s Phil, man. Let me in.”
Groggily, I got to my feet. I noticed I didn’t take any of the clothing, too include my boots and pistol holster, off when I hit the bed. I could feel the effects now. My pant legs were stiff from the sweat I produced in them the day before. My t-shirt stuck to me from wallowing throughout the night. And my feet felt ten times their size from sleeping with my boots on. It hurt like hell to walk to the door, but I made it.
I pulled the door open to hear Phil say, “Holy fuck, you look like one of the dead.”
A poor attempt at humor, at best, but I had to give it to him. He had the look of a man with something on his mind.
I waved him in while moving back to the bed. I left an almost empty pack of Camel’s on the nightstand before I went to bed. At least I had sense enough to take those out of my pocket so I wouldn’t crush them. Phil didn’t want one so I lit one up for myself.
A plume of smoke exited my mouth as I asked, “Did you talk to Kate last night?”
Phil nodded. “She told me what happened out there. The thing about it is, we can’t figure out why you are having such a hard time with this one. Sara said she didn’t see your brother or his family anywhere. She didn’t even see his car in their garage. So that can’t be the reason why you are having such a hard time. Is it because of this Erin woman?”
I looked at him from the corner of my eyes. Phil jumped back a bit from my look. A new demeanor had overcome him.
“That’s not it, is it?”
I shook my head.
“You’re like this because you couldn’t kill her.”
Not a statement, but I nodded my head anyway.
He ran a hand down his scruffy face. Much like myself, he hasn’t been keeping up with his grooming habits. Although my beard was coming in more fully, he still had patches here and there.
“Look, man. I need you to pull yourself together.”
I took the last hit off my cigarette and snuffed it out on the end table. There was no ashtray to be found for me to put it out.
“Phil, I’m together. I’m just fucking tired.”
“What!”
Genuine surprise in that reaction.
“Dude, the last couple of weeks are finally catching up to me. And not being able to kill Erin last night put it all in perspective. It hit me pretty hard.”
“Okay, so are you ready to go?”
“Yeah. I just need some food.”
“Well, let’
s go.”
Phil led me out of the room. The hotel had a lobby with a full-service kitchen in the back. Tayvon was in there going to work on getting a good breakfast going. The gas grill wasn’t working, but he was able to get the food cooking by starting a fire in the stove area. All he was making was bacon and some eggs. I didn’t want to, but I took his word for the fact they were still good.
After I walked in, Kate gave my hand a gentle squeeze. I smiled at her to tell her everything was okay. Sara was the one who was more concerned about my wellbeing than anyone.
“We’ll find Bobby and Karen,” she said as I sat down.
I gave her a smile with a snicker. “Sara, if they’re not here there’s only one place they can be.”
“Pilgrim.”
“That’s right.” I looked at Debbie who shied away from me for a second. I put my hand on her shoulder as I addressed the room. “I know ya’ll are little more than concerned about me right now. I was just tired is all. There’s nothing more to it than that. Just me being exhausted from constantly fighting. The good news is, I think the fighting is over. Once we get to Pilgrim, things will settle down and we can get this world back to a normal existence, hopefully.”
Everyone seemed to be pleased with my little speech.
Tayvon finished the breakfast as best he could. I helped him serve so we could eat. We weren’t in too big of a rush to leave just yet. It took us almost an hour to eat because we were constantly stopping and joking around with each other. The laughter felt good to me. The lighter spirits in the room were something I’ve been craving for so long that it seemed almost alien to me. But once it got into my system I was good to go.
There was no need to clean up the mess. Whoever came into the hotel after us probably wouldn’t give a shit about the mess anyway. Instead, we loaded the van with the limited supplies we had. It’s a good thing we were almost to Pilgrim because we were running low on everything and wherever we stopped didn’t seem to have what we needed. I’m surprised it took us this long to stop finding supplies.
I again became the driver. Almost all the seating was the same. Instead, Phil gave the passenger seat to Kate. That worked out better for me. She knew what I would be looking for and I couldn’t rely on her seeing any danger from the backseat. But Phil wasn’t that far away. Sara sat in the back with the kids while Phil and Tayvon sat in the middle seat. Debbie was still perched on the floor between the driver’s and passenger’s seat.
The van had been modified a bit so an iPod could be hooked up to the console. I went through my list before heading out to find the perfect riding music. The first thing I put on was Thunder Kiss ’65. Sara instantly protested my type of music. She despised anything but hip-hop and rap, the type of sound I don’t even consider music. I have my reasons. It didn’t matter anyway. We made it close to a hundred feet before we all came to the realization that listening to White Zombie in a mini-van just wouldn’t fly. I changed the music over to shuffle and we rode on.
Normally, it would take me about four hours and one tank of gas to get to Pilgrim from Cincinnati, but nothing was normal anymore. We had to find ways around roadblocks, intentional and unintentional ones. I had to stop for gas once because the tank was almost empty. And, of course, like on most trips, the kids needed to use the restroom. That added another thirty minutes.
In truth, it took us almost four hours to get to Bluhm, and we were still an hour away from Pilgrim. Most people would go through Ford to get back to Pilgrim, but I didn’t like that route from the start. I wanted to stay to major freeways and state roads as much as possible. Going through Ford wouldn’t allow that. Bluhm didn’t offer us any help either. I had to drive around the north side of the city to avoid the major traffic problems. Once on the north side, it was almost impossible for me to get us back to SR 54, the road I needed to get to Pilgrim.
SR 45 was nothing but a parking lot. That, in turn, blocked us from getting to the newly built Interstate 69. There was only one option I could use. And it was the last option I wanted to use. I had to take the back way to get to Pilgrim. Even without the zombie apocalypse going on out there, I still hated taking the backroads between Pilgrim and Bluhm. It was the same reason I didn’t want to go through Ford. Although, there was the chance the people I didn’t want to run into were already dead. Still, I had to take the route. It added another twenty minutes to our already overtime trip.
And we didn’t even fucking make it to Pilgrim anyway.
I was driving along SR 67 about to enter Cambridge when I noticed something different. There weren’t cars in the road blocking us from getting into the small town. The road had been destroyed. The ditch had been dug close to ten feet deep. If we had been driving at night, I wouldn’t have seen the ditch.
“What are we going to do now?” Tayvon asked from the backseat.
I put the van in park and shut it off.
“We walk the rest of the way. It’s only six, maybe seven, miles from here. We can make it in two hours.”
No one argued with me. They exited the vehicle and gathered the supplies. They stopped when I heard a distinct voice. One I hated while I lived in Pilgrim.
“You won’t be needing any of the things from your van,” the voice said.
I turned to see Jeff Spilner standing on the other side of the ditch. He hadn’t noticed me just yet.
Softly, I said to Phil, “Go talk to him and see what he has to say.”
As Phil walked off, I put a fresh magazine in my rifle. It seems my wish for peaceful travel was nothing more than a fool’s wish. Jeff and the two people he had with him (who I recognized from a few grades behind me) all had weapons with them. And all of them had their fingers on the triggers.
Phil got to about ten feet away from the ditch when Jeff put his hand up. “That’s far enough right there, guy.”
Phil stopped and put his hands out to his sides in a non-threatening manner. “Okay, son. Why don’t you tell me why you are stopping us like this?”
“I’m not your fucking son.” Jeff had put on a bit more of an attitude than I remember. “Now, tell all your friends to get the fuck out here where I can see them. And if they have weapons, they might as well leave them in the van.”
I handed Kate her rifle and pistol while saying, “As long as I am here, he won’t do anything to us.”
Kate didn’t question my actions, like usual. She took the rifle and pistol, checking them for ammo, before heading out. I stayed back a second wanting to get everyone else in front of me. Sara was the last person to walk away from the back of the van. I fell in behind her, keeping my head down so Jeff wouldn’t be able to see me.
As we neared Phil, I heard Jeff say, “I said no fucking weapons. Now, drop that fucking rifle and fucking pistol before I fucking drop you.”
I had enough of listening to his stupidity. I didn’t need to look up to know he was aiming his rifle at Kate. He hadn’t seen me yet or he would have said something.
“Cut the bullshit, Jeff,” I said from the back with my head still down. “You were nothing but a little bitch who took orders when I lived in Pilgrim oh so long ago, and now it seems you are trying to get out of that image.”
“Who the fuck is that back there?”
I stepped pass Sara and the kids to stand next to Kate. Phil was on her other side. I still kept my head down.
“Someone who knows you are only acting like this because you finally got some authority.” I lifted my head to see Jeff lower his rifle in an instant. “I also know that when push comes to shove you are going to bitch up and run off crying.”
Jeff stammered as he talked. “B… Byron… Where ya been, man?”
“I’ve been fighting my way to get back to my family. And now you’re standing in my way. So, if you don’t mind, I would like to pass to get to Pilgrim to see my wife and kids.”
Jeff looked at his workers before he answered me. He tried to put the authority back in his voice, but it only made him squeak as he talked.
In the many years since I have been gone it seemed Jeff has forgotten who he is talking to. I retightened the grip on my rifle with audible, as well as visible, annoyance.
“There is no way you’re getting this away from me.” Jeff stepped back a bit. “Now, call whoever you have to call, but I am getting to Pilgrim today.”
“There… um… there is no way that is possible. You see this ditch” – he pointed down to the ditch – “it goes all the way around Pilgrim at about this distance. It’s impossible to cross at points that there aren’t any roads. It’s filled with various types of deadly traps that won’t allow anybody to cross into our town.”
This wasn’t a plan Jeff could come up with by himself. There are others out there who are in charge. Jeff is too stupid to do this if the fact of him holding me back was evidence enough of his stupidity.
“And I have to ask again –”
“You didn’t ask the first time,” I said, cutting him off. “You told us to give you our weapons. And I’m telling you that I am not going to give you my weapons.”
“Only the ones who give us their weapons will be allowed to cross. Those are the rules.”
I pulled my pistol and fired three quick shots at the ground; one at the feet of each person. I had my reasons for doing so. I wanted to show them how quick I could be. I also wanted to see if there was anyone else out there besides these three. My plan worked on both accounts. Fear surfaced in the faces of Jeff and his two cronies and I could hear people yelling in the distance about the gunfire. It didn’t take too long after to hear the approaching people.
Right away I recognized one of the men running towards our position.
“Hey, Owen, tell this fucknut to let us cross.”
The man who was leading the charge to our position came to a sliding halt. He was someone I hadn’t seen in almost five years. Surprisingly, his features hadn’t changed too much. There was one thing that did startle me though. Hannah was not with my brother.