by Calen, Tom
Mike was joined by Erik, Blaine, and Michelle. Though hesitant to allow her to accompany them, Michelle argued that it would fall to her to procure the necessary feminine items she and the other two females would need.
“Unless you’re going to pick out what we need?” she asked, the rhetorical tone clear to all. With awkward mumbling, Mike and the two male teens assented, and Michelle won her place among the group, though the men found her tactics somewhat devious. Parking the vehicle directly in front of the store’s glass doors, the four exited the truck with firearms at the ready.
Mike approached the door as Erik asked over his shoulder, “Need me to shoot the glass out, Mr. A.?”
“I would if the doors were locked, which they’re not. But you know, thanks Mr. Trigger Happy,” Mike replied as he pushed the doors inward.
The lights suspended from the store’s ceiling were dark, leaving Mike to assume that, like the military base, power was indeed out everywhere. The clear day provided enough illumination to move about surefooted. Blaine and Michelle each commandeered an available shopping cart and the four refugees set out to collect the much needed supplies. The carts filled quickly with canned beans, soups, fruits, vegetables, as well as some fresh produce that seemed in good condition. Soaps, shampoo, and deodorant were some of Mike’s chief priorities since none of them had had an adequate chance to clean themselves in days and it was quickly becoming evident in the minimally ventilated stone cabin. Clothing detergent was also a sorely needed necessity, and Mike placed several jugs of it in the carts’ undercarriages. A variety of pastas and sauces added to their cache, as well as large amounts of bottled water. Several flashlights and many packs of batteries were likewise scavenged along their tour of the aisles. Blaine, notorious for his sweet tooth, ensured that a pile of candy and chocolates found room in the crowded carts.
Once the supplies had been secured in the SUV, Mike and the teenagers returned to the interior of the grocery store. Relieved to find the water still working in the bathrooms, the four eagerly used dishtowels from the “home” aisle and washed up. Mike was surprised at how long the water ran dark as he washed the grime from his hair, arms, face, and chest. The evidence of their ordeal stubbornly clung to their bodies. Even with several repeated attempts, he could still see dark patches of skin that dirt refused to abandon. Though not as ideal as a hot shower, he did feel better from having cleaned himself as much as a grocery store’s sink would allow.
Mike could see the same effect he was experiencing from the bodily refreshment in the three students as they piled back into the SUV. The conversation during the drive back to the others was more playful than it had been in past days. A casual banter had broken out among the four when Mike was forced to bring the vehicle to a halt in front of an extended passenger van that blocked both lanes of traffic.
“You take a different way back, Mr. A.?” Erik asked.
“No,” Mike answered slowly. His mind itched with unease as his eyes flashed to the left and right of the truck. “Guys, make sure you have your guns ready.”
He quickly put the vehicle in reverse. As he twisted in the seat to see out the rear window, he saw another large van approaching quickly. Stifling a curse, Mike returned his foot to the brake. Now boxed in from the front and rear, the small SUV was rapidly surrounded with armed men that swarmed out of the wooded sides of the road. A mountain of a man stepped out of the newly arrived van and began to walk towards the blocked vehicle.
“How about y’all step out of there real slow now?” the man’s voice boomed. Though it was a question, it was clear he expected only one answer.
“Mr. Allard, what’s going on?” Michelle asked nervously from the back seat.
“I don’t know. Just stay calm,” he tried to sound confident in his reply, but in truth Mike did not feel it. With his left index fingered he pressed a button on the door and the driver side window rolled down.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Mike shouted. “We just want to pass through.”
He had his eyes glued to the rear-view mirror and the man that loomed ominously in it. As a result, he did not see one of the armed men reach his door. With a start, Mike felt himself forcefully pulled from the vehicle and roughly pushed towards the side of the SUV. The man that accosted him took possession of Mike’s two firearms. He stood helplessly, a gun jabbing into his spine, as the others were removed from the truck and relieved of their weapons.
As the large man that had spoken earlier approached them, Mike was able to get a better view of him. The man stood several inches beyond Mike’s own above-average height. He was clothed in camouflaged pants and a ribbed, white tank top that exposed a well-muscled frame. His arms, neck, and the visible parts of his torso were covered in a variety of tattoos, skulls and naked women the most common designs on him. Even the man’s fingers were tattooed to spell out four-letter expletives.
“Look we don’t want any trouble, man,” Mike repeated his earlier plea while attempting to disguise the building fear in his voice. He and his three companions were now unarmed and outnumbered two to one. He knew that this situation, as bad as it was, could take a drastic turn to the worse if not handled delicately.
“We don’t want no trouble either,” the man said. He stood but a few feet from Mike, with thumbs tucked nonchalantly through his belt loops. “We just want your guns, your truck, and your supplies.” As he concluded his heavily accented sentence, he spit a large amount of brown liquid onto Mike’s right shoe. The men that followed him laughed uproariously, either from the words or the spitting, or both.
“There’re a lot of supplies in town,” Blaine interjected, clearly in an attempt to rationalize with their captors.
The man turned his head to the teen and slowly drawled, “Why should I go shopping when I got delivery right here?” Again, his followers laughed at the leader’s paltry witticism.
Trying his best to assess the situation, Mike estimated that they were still five miles from the campground. On foot the trip would take at least an hour. Without weapons, he and the three in his care were at the mercy from any attack of the infected along the way. Yet, overpowering this band of thieves was unlikely, and he was old enough to understand that rationalizing with the mindset of these men was equally improbable.
“Take the guns and the supplies. Just leave us the truck, man. We’re sitting ducks out here without it,” Mike tried to counter-offer even though he believed the attempt was made in vain.
The tattooed man laughed loudly, “I’m sorry. Were you thinkin’ this was a negotiation?”
“Dude, come on, what the…” Erik began, but was cut off abruptly as the man’s fist collided with his face. The two men restraining Erik took advantage of his current shock and weakness and drove him to his knees.
“No one was talkin’ to you, boy!” the band’s leader followed his words with another spit of his snuff-induced saliva, the second glob aimed at Erik’s hair and bleeding face. Michelle cried out in protest, and Blaine struggled against his captors who quickly subdued him with a blow to his right kidney. He crumpled under the pain and soon joined Erik in his kneel.
“They’re kids!” Mike shouted. “Leave them alone! You want our stuff, take it. Just leave them alone!”
Crackling his knuckles in a needless display of intimidation, the towering man drew close to Mike’s face and smiled.
“See, I told ya I didn’t want no trouble,” he said. His noxious breath stung Mike’s eyes and nose. “But, now y’all done went and made me get violent. ‘Cause of that, the price just went up.”
“We don’t have anything else. You’re leaving us out here to die, what else could you take?” Mike spat the words as his angered boiled inside him.
“Oh, I think you got something else we could use,” he said as he cupped Michelle’s face in a filthy, tattooed hand. The gleam in the man’s eye was not unlike that of the infected. Not just a thief, Mike realized, but a predator as well.
Michelle flinched at t
he touch and Mike shouted as he struggled against the men that held his arms, “You sick, bastard, get your hands off of her!”
The young girl could no longer fight her fear and a withering sob escaped her. Her body shook uncontrollably as the man leaned in close to her face and began to sniff her neck and hair. His inability to defend Michelle turned his stomach as much as the sight of the man’s action.
“Yeah, this one is gonna be good, boys,” he called out to his men, who replied with disgusting taunts and slurs. Turning his attention back to Mike, the man’s smile grew even more sinister as he spoke. “We got a new world to populate, brother, and she’s gonna have to do her part.”
From the corner of his left eye, Mike saw a flash of Erik’s arm, which was then followed by a grunt from the tattooed man.
“That’ll be tough to do when I blow these off you,” Erik seethed as he spoke. Mike moved his head lower and saw that Erik now held a gun jabbed into the crotch of the band’s leader. Erik’s right pant leg was pulled up slightly, enough to reveal the holster strapped to his ankle in which he had concealed the weapon.
“You’re making a big mistake, kid,” the man said, though his tone clearly showed his surprise and faintly decreased bravado.
“Move an inch, and it’ll be you that made the mistake,” Erik warned. “Now, tell your guys to drop their weapons, or your voice is gonna get a lot higher.”
Mike could see the indecision on the man’s face. Several tense seconds passed until he finally ordered his men to place their weapons on the ground. Mike and Derrick moved quickly to repossess their own weapons from the ground. Once control of the situation shifted in their favor, Erik slowly regained his feet and backed away from the tattooed man.
“Mr. A., take their guns,” Erik said, though his eyes never left the figure at which he pointed his weapon.
“Erik, let’s just go!” Mike tried to break through the boy’s trance. “We’re not them. We’re not leaving them out here helpless.”
Mike wasn’t sure if Erik’s slight turn was to argue with him or instead agree, but in the brief half-second his attention was diverted, the tattooed man lunged forward. The shot rang out loudly in the tension and plunged deeply into the tattooed man’s forehead before it exited the back of his skull. The man’s body jerked backwards from the force of the blow and smashed lifelessly to the pavement. It was not until Mike felt the familiar reverberation through his left arm and shoulder that he realized that he had pulled the trigger. The slow motion of the moment ended abruptly as he heard three shots fired behind him. Whirling around, he found that Blaine and Michelle had both shot and killed two men that had used the confusion to attempt to retrieve their own weapons from the ground.
The remaining five men stood in stunned silence. With their leader ended, Mike could see their resolve shatter. Though the tide had changed, he still felt as if the situation was not fully in his control. He had hoped to salvage some fragment of civilization by denying Erik’s request to leave the men unarmed. He had not necessarily cared about the fate of the thieves, he had acted out of the hope that ethics and morals still played a part in the world.
“Kick your guns forward,” he finally said to the bandits. They complied without hesitation, and Mike slowly bent to collect their weapons while the other three members of his group kept steady aim.
“Where are the keys to the van?”
“In…inside,” one of the men stammered in reply. Blaine moved to the van that blocked their forward progression and confirmed that the keys were inside. Once Blaine repositioned the van, Mike told the others to get into the SUV. Through the open windows, his students made sure the unarmed men made no attempt to escape. Mike walked over to the vans that were now parked parallel to each other, drew his weapon down, and fired shots that quickly deflated two tires on each vehicle.
Within seconds of resuming the driver’s seat of the SUV, Mike had them speeding down several back roads hoping to reach the campground before the thieves could offer pursuit. He doubted they would, but he used the idea as a way to avoid thinking about what had occurred. His students remained silent during the drive either of their own accord or from sensing Mike’s mood.
The short distance and the fast speed brought them to the campground’s entrance minutes later. Mike slowed the vehicle substantially as he turned into the dirt and gravel driveway. Several yards in, he brought the truck to a complete stop before he exited. Gathering several branches from the ground, Mike began running them over the tracks the SUV had left behind. Once he was satisfied that their path was sufficiently disguised, he drove the rest of the way to the trails.
Assisted by the rest of their companions, the supplies were unloaded and carried to the stone dwelling. Upon seeing Erik’s swollen jaw and split lip, Sarah’s motherly instincts immediately went into action. At first refusing any care, Erik eventually relented and allowed her ministrations. When she asked what had happened though, Erik as well as Blaine and Michelle, downplayed the situation. Later that night Mike told Sarah the entirety of the day’s events as the two sat in the night-darkened front room.
She tried her best to improve his melancholy, but her words proved paper tigers. He accepted the necessity of firing at the tattooed man to protect Erik. It was the acts of the band of men that troubled him more. Mike and those with him had struggled to survive so fitfully over the last several days, but that struggle had been against a diseased, maddened creature; today’s battle was against other men. He had read the fiction, seen the movies, never thought it would happen so quickly in reality.
Six days, he thought, That’s all it took. Six days for humanity to end.
Chapter Sixteen
“So you’re abandoning us? Kicking us out?” Derrick shouted with understandable anger.
“It’s not safe, Derrick, and you know that. If we had more time then maybe, but as it stands now we have no way to contain her during the trip,” Mike repeated the statement he had said several times in the past twenty minutes. Once the council had made its decision, he had volunteered to be the one to inform Derrick of the news. His guilt in helping create the young man’s situation drove Mike to accept that the words had to come from him. With barely enough vehicles to transport the refugees, a separate vehicle could not be spared to isolate the infected Jenni Calente.
“So, that’s it then? After all these years, after all we have been through together, you’re just going to leave us behind?”
Mike could not bring himself to repeat the rationale again.
“We’re so close. She can get better once we get to Cuba. You know it, she can get better. They’ll be able to help her. You can’t do this to us! Please, don’t do this to us!” Derrick implored. His pleas were steadily becoming more frantic, tears streaming down his face. Their voices and movements had incited the caged, infected Jenni to snarl wildly as it thrashed against its restraints. The moment grew to be too much, and Mike knew he had to leave the confining tent.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words catching in his throat. He turned quickly and exited through the tent flaps into the pre-dusk mountain air. Avoiding the camp proper, he instead took himself into the wooded area that marked the edge of the refugee stronghold. His vision began to blur as his own tears welled up. Mike could still hear the pleading screams of Derrick in the tent.
“Please, don’t do this to us!”
Mike quickened his steps, hoping to get far enough away to no longer hear the repeated imploring of his former student. Branches stung his face as he shifted into a run, the thin wisps of wood whipped and lashed at him. He welcomed the pain as a form of required punishment, a self-mortification that could bring absolution of his sins. Several minutes passed before his blind sprint resulted in a stumble and he crashed to his knees. The free-flowing tears mixed with the thread-like trails of blood on his face. Breathing heavily, he cast his eyes upward as a primal scream ripped from his lungs and filled the silent woods. Six years of pain, loss, fear, and defeat took contr
ol of his voice as he continued to scream into the fading light. In time his throat became raw and the shouts weakened to thin rasps until silence once again claimed dominion.
Rising from the softened earth, Mike could make out lumbering shapes in the distance. As his vision cleared from the tears, the violently bent necks of the figures became obvious. Still in a cathartic meditation, he instinctively reached his hands towards the double holster on his chest. He felt complete, felt whole, as his fingers wrapped around the warm steel. Easing them from the leather restraints, his arms straightened and dropped to his sides as the figures advanced. His eyes did not move yet his vision perceived his surroundings with uncanny certitude. Seventeen, his mind stated lifelessly.
The infected quickened their pace, yet Mike kept his guns lowered. Soon they were thirty feet away, then twenty, fifteen, ten…
With a dark glare and half smile that bordered on demonic, he slowly raised his arms and began firing his weapons into the group of infected. Ignoring his own rules for Til encounters, he did not take head or heart shots. Instead, he filled the diseased bodies with lead in arms, legs, and stomachs. The force of the shots caused the infected to stumble and fall. He did not want to give them a quick death, he wanted to give them pain, though they could not feel.
“Come on! Get up!” he screamed at them. In that moment, he no longer cared if he got bitten. In that moment, he almost envied the creatures before him and their inability to feel pain, physical or emotional. He envied the carefree reality in which they existed. If I get bit, he thought, then it all ends.
Mike shouted again for them to rise. And so they did. And again he squeezed the triggers; the rhythmic percussion of the blasts lulled him into a stupor. The infected continued to fall from the bullets tearing threw them. Soon, though, they no longer were able to rise. The loss of blood or the ruined leg muscles prevented them from offering any further threat. Only one still lived and was using its arms to drag itself closer to Mike.