Gabriel turned back around and looked through the line of the trees the plane had come to a stop in front of. They appeared to only go for a few hundred yards before light peeked out again on the other side. He squinted, sure that he could see something on the other side of the trees.
Looking down to Dylan, Gabriel pointed toward the trees. “Let’s go.”
Dylan put his hands around the straps of his bag and, Gabriel moving like a man walking his son to the school house, they left the plane and the large pile of a steel graveyard it had become.
***
After walking a few hundred yards unscathed, they made it past the edge of the trees and came upon the parking lot of a shopping center. It was the middle of the day and Gabriel was surprised to see that it wasn’t busy. Normally, a shopping center like the one in front of him would be stirring with people right now. But it was calm, quiet, and abandoned. Gabriel saw a variety of stores in the mall, including two he would need to go into. There was a supermarket that he could only pray would have at least some food left, not totally raided by other survivors. Then again, he wasn’t sure if there were any survivors. They hadn’t seen any since the plane had come crashing down, even though they had only walked a few hundred yards away from a farm and through some trees.
A few buildings down from the supermarket was a sporting goods store. The captain hadn’t left Gabriel with very much ammunition, so he would need to go there as well to obtain some more and, hopefully, another weapon or two. Again, Gabriel wondered if there would be anything left to salvage.
They moved a little closer to where they could see the other stores in the shopping center, and that’s when Gabriel saw them.
He grabbed Dylan and ducked behind a nearby bush, putting his finger to his lips and signaling for the boy to be quiet.
There were at least twenty beasts limping around the lot and walking aimlessly around the abandoned vehicles. Gabriel wondered, even if he made it into one of the stores, how many more of the things would be inside. He looked down to Dylan.
“Stay right here, okay? Don’t move,” Gabriel commanded.
“No,” the boy cried. “What did you see?”
“I’m not sure if I saw anything,” Gabriel lied. “I just want to make sure it’s clear before we go over there.”
“Let me come with you. Please, don’t leave me here,” Dylan pleaded.
Gabriel shook his head. It was hard to look into the boy’s eyes, his scared eyes, and tell him that he had to leave him alone for a little bit. All in all, he felt fairly safe leaving the boy there. They had just come out of the woods and not come across any danger, and the infected limping in the parking lot were far enough away where they would be no threat to Dylan. Regardless, looking into the boy’s worn and tired eyes made Gabriel’s heart slow and weep for him.
“Where are you going?” Dylan asked, wiping tears away from his eyes.
Gabriel pointed toward the shopping center. “Just right over there. I’m going to try to find us some food and a car.”
He looked up and saw that the sun was dying fast. If he was going to do this, he needed to go now.
Gabriel reached down and pulled the gun out of the waist band of his dress slacks.
“Know how to use one of these?” Gabriel asked, praying that the boy had at least seen a gun.
Dylan nodded. “My dad takes me hunting all the time.”
Gabriel let out a sigh of relief.
“Good. I want you to hold onto this. If you feel threatened, at all, I want you to use it. Okay? And then you run back to the plane and I’ll find you,” Gabriel directed him.
Dylan took the gun, shaking his head.
“I don’t want you to go,” the boy said.
“I won’t be gone long. I promise. And when I get back, we are going to get the heck outta here and have food to eat.”
The boy looked down at the gun before tilting his head back up to Gabriel.
“But what if you need this gun? What if someone comes after you?” Dylan asked.
Gabriel smiled. He rubbed his hand through the boy’s hair and hinged at the hips to meet him face to face.
“In that case, hopefully, I’m a faster runner than them.”
Gabriel gave Dylan a pat on the shoulder. He could see the fear welling in the boys’ eyes, and second-guessed himself on whether he should leave him alone. But in his gut, he knew it would be much more dangerous to take the child with him.
He removed his hand from Dylan’s shoulder and stared down at him.
“Just remember to run if you get into trouble. Don’t try to be a hero. Just run. As fast as you can.”
With the tears continuing to gather in his tired eyes, Dylan gave Gabriel a nod.
Gabriel turned, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. He decided it would be best to try the sporting goods store first. He needed to find a weapon if he wanted to increase his chances of surviving. Unfortunately, the sporting goods store stood three suites further down the shopping center than the supermarket, creating a little bit further of a journey.
He scanned the parking lot again. The undead were spread wide through the parking lot, making it more difficult to find a gap to run through as a straight shot to his destination.
Once more, he took a deep breath. He thought of his wife, Katie; constantly wondering if she and Sarah were okay.
Gabriel opened his eyes and positioned himself into a sprinter’s lunge—a funny sight, considering his current business attire.
He pushed off his back foot.
And Gabriel ran.
CHAPTER TEN
WILL
A couple of hours later, Will awoke, shivering. Fall nights in Nashville can get cold and Will hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the roof, especially on the ledge. When he woke, he startled when he realized that that’s exactly what he had done, peeking over the side at a parking lot he could just vaguely see with the help of a couple of flood lights mounted to the front of the building.
He sat up, and as he looked down the industrial park and toward the city, he saw that very few building had power on. Beyond the immediate, Will could barely make out the smoke still floating in the distant air of the horizon.
For a moment, he stood still and listened. In the distance, he heard the howls of the undead, but it didn’t sound like there were any near the front of the building, though he did hear scratching to the rear of it.
Will patted off the dirt on his clothes and walked to the other end of the roof, where the ladder was. He looked over and, while the ground was encased in total darkness, he could hear the Empties below, still clawing at the bottom of the ladder. It sounded like it was still just the two of them. He tried thinking of a way that he could distract them so that he could get down. It would be difficult to shoot them from the top of the ladder, and he didn’t want to attract more of them, especially in the pitch black of night.
He looked around on the roof and smiled as he noticed the silhouette of a ball.
Many times while on lunch their lunch break, Will and Jordan would go outside and throw the football around if the weather was nice enough. The last time they’d done it, Jordan was messing around and had punted the football onto the roof. Will was pissed at him at the time, but was more than thankful now.
He walked over and grabbed the football and walked back over near the ladder.
As hard as he could, Will threw the football into the trees that lined the opposite side of the building. The Empties snarled and walked toward the sound. Will hopped over the ledge and landed quietly on the ladder.
Slowly, he made his decent, trying not to grab their attention.
His feet hit the ground, rustling leaves. He heard them stop, turn, and the spitting came closer to him.
Will ran, moving around the corner of the building and praying that he wouldn’t run into anymore Empties.
When he reached the front, the flood lights shined on a small horde coming at him.
His eyes widened.
Will hustled around the railing, his feet hitting the first step just as one of the Empties reached at him. It caught the bottom of his shirt, tugging it back for a moment, but he was able to move up the stairs and slip through the door, locking it just as the first Empty banged at the door.
He moved fifteen feet through the small lobby and went inside the main office. The front door was locked now, but he still feared that Empties would break through the glass and fill the lobby again. So, as a precaution, he moved the office furniture by the door back in front of it. Looking out the window, Will noticed that a group of no less than ten Empties was making its way to the front door.
He wasn’t going to be able to sustain himself here much longer. Meals would quickly become few and far between, only having whatever his co-workers had left behind. There wasn’t a lot, as most of the guys ate out for lunch on a regular basis.
The time was fast approaching that Will would have to leave Element.
But, not tonight. He needed to sleep.
Will walked down the hallway to the lunch room, turning the lights off in the rest of the office to conserve power. His stomach grumbling, sounding like clothes turning over in a dryer, Will looked into the refrigerator and grabbed deli meat and mustard to make himself a sandwich before going to sleep.
Earlier in the day while he’d been moving the bodies, he’d found a bunch of blankets that the company had purchased when they had moved from a building down the street five months previously. Will had put enough down to give his back some padding from the hard tile, and had enough to put over him so that he didn’t have to run the heat in case it got cold and could conserve more power. After finishing his sandwich, he went to the center of the room and dropped to one knee to adjust the covers on his make-shift bed before moving under them.
As he lay on his back staring at the ceiling within his four walls of silence, Will passed the events of a day earlier through his mind. And the more he saw their faces, the more impossible it became to think about falling asleep.
***
The sound of failing machinery awoke Will the next morning.
He sat up and looked around the room. The sound dissipated, and he listened close as it disappeared completely.
On the countertop by the sink, the microwave’s digital display was blank. The previous night, he’d thought about unplugging it to save power, but had been too exhausted to move after he was under the covers.
The room sounded too quiet. He noticed the hiss of the motor in the refrigerator had gone away, and then jumped to his feet, hurrying over to it.
As he opened the refrigerator, he felt the cool air release, reached his hand in, and found that the air inside had warmed. Quickly, he slammed the door to the refrigerator. Reaching above the sink, he flipped the switch that should have turned on the garbage disposal. It didn’t. He ran over to the light switch by the doorway and flipped it. Like the garbage disposal, nothing.
“Shit.”
Will ran out of the doorway, down the hall, and toward the front of the building.
As he moved into the main office, the banging at the front door sounded louder. He approached it and saw a group of eight Empties grouped up, banging on the glass and the door inside the lobby. Behind them, the glass door of the main entrance lay shattered in hundreds of pieces on the ground.
Outside, he heard a different kind of banging, which caused him to turn.
He looked outside the window and noticed the parking lot was still mostly abandoned. Their were some Empties out there, but they had started to walk away from the building.
The bang again.
Gun shots?
Will ran back to the lunch room. On the floor was a duffle bag which he grabbed and began to fill with granola bars and nuts that were left in the pantry. Inside the refrigerator were five bottles of water, and he grabbed those too, stuffing them into the bag.
He headed out of the office, into the warehouse.
***
With the power out and no lights working in the warehouse, he crept carefully, only able to see a couple of feet in front of his face. The warehouse was eerie, quiet, and still. Will had ignored going out there for the most part, leaving it as a graveyard of sorts; a resting place for the sudden departed.
If Will was leaving, it wasn’t going to be in his late-nineties model Honda Civic. Instead, he remembered that his boss, Andrew, owned a large, dual-cab pick-up. Andrew always carried his keys on him, the dangling always sounding through the warehouse when he walked through to check on the employees, so Will knew they would be on his corpse.
Halfway to the corner, he could smell it. The rot. The decay. It was awful.
He pulled his shirt up over his nose, trying to block out as much of the smell as he could and holding back the sandwich he had eaten before bed the night before.
When he reached the stack of bodies, he saw Andrew’s leg exposed, but not his waist where the keys would be. Dean’s body lay on top of it.
Will reached out and began to roll Dean’s body off of the pile. As he did, his shirt came off of his nose and he instantly threw up all over the ground next to him. After that, he did all he could to get the keys as fast as possible.
And, just as he’d suspected, they were there, clipped onto Andrew’s belt loop with a blue carabiner.
He unclipped the keys, gripping them in his palm like they were a talisman, and jogged to the front of the warehouse.
Jordan still lay in the same place he’d left him, with the same blanket covering his body. Will took the bag off of his shoulder, set it down on the cold concrete, and knelt down beside his friend. He used his forearm to wipe the tears from his face, his sniffles slightly echoing in the large warehouse.
“I’m so sorry that this happened to you. I’ll wonder every day how and why I survived. Was it just cause I decided to go on my break at a different time than you so that I could take a nap? A fucking nap saved me?”
For a few moments, Will remained there, knelt down next to his friend, allowing his tears to fall on his body. He rested his hand over Jordan’s, which Will had placed over his stomach before covering him with the blanket.
“Goodbye, brother,” Will said, taking his time to stand up.
***
Will stood at the peep hole he’d drilled into the large, aluminum bay door, looking out at the small group in the parking lot. From his vantage point, he could count eight Empties.
He double-checked his bag to make sure that he had everything he needed: food, water, a first-aid kit from the lunch room pantry, and extra ammunition he had found in Andrew’s office. The gun, stuffed in the back of his pants, was loaded and ready to fire.
Another explosion rang through the sky.
He looked out the hole and saw the group were heading left toward the dead end of the industrial park. Will looked to the right where he could see another horde coming from down the street, where the exit to the park was. It didn’t appear to be as many as he had seen on the roof. He assumed that the first explosion he’d heard and the smoke that rose after it had attracted most of that group.
With the power out, Will had no choice but to continue with his plan to exit. If he stayed, he would either freeze with no heat as the season continued its transition into winter or he would starve when the food spoiled. He had to leave and try his luck elsewhere. He went to the shipping table and grabbed the small key that opened the locks to the bay doors off its hook.
Will made sure he had Andrew’s keys in his hand, took a deep breath, and unlocked the small lock on the bay door, sliding it up and revealing the warehouse to the open air outside.
The small group that had been hanging around the outside of the building was about thirty yards away now, and the ones coming from the other end of the road were only about twenty yards away, leaving Will a clear gap to sprint to the truck. The ones to his left were no concern, but the group coming toward the explosion had already seen him and started to snarl. He took a quick look up to h
is left and noticed the smoke coming from the tree line. He didn’t know what it was and didn’t really care. He only knew that he had to get to that truck. Fast.
Will took another deep breath and jumped off the loading dock. He ran toward the silver truck, hitting the unlock button on the keyless-entry. Nothing happened. He went to pull the handle and the door remained locked.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he said, hitting the button over and over, trying to open the door.
A couple of them were moving closer to him.
He began to fumble the keys, trying to grasp the large black one, but his hands were shaking too much.
They were getting closer.
Will dropped the keys on the ground.
“Fuck.”
He kneeled down to pick up the keys and heard the snarl behind him. He rolled on the ground, while the Empty fell down, arms outstretched, over the keys.
Will pulled out the gun and shot, taking off the top of its skull.
The shot gathered the attention of the group to his left, and they turned around and headed back toward him while the other group growled, growing ever closer to where he stood.
Will knelt down, closed his eyes, and rolled the decrepit body over to unveil the keys underneath. The skin was cold and gray and it felt like he was touching a corpse that had been buried for a thousand years.
Two Empties were just yards away from him now, and he turned and shot. It took four bullets, but he was able to put them down.
Putting away the thought of trying the keyless-entry again, he put the key into the small keyhole on the door and it finally opened. Will climbed into the truck just as twelve approached it.
Empty Bodies: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Dystopian Survival (Book 1) Page 7