“Reconsituted scrambled eggs and reconstituted beef patty,” Marilyn announced. “Reconstituted breakfast of champions.”
Audrey applauded. “You guys are good at this. How does that happen? Were you survivalists or something before?”
Marilyn laughed. “No. My uncle sort of was, but he was the ‘I need more guns’ type of survivalist. I think he might have had a basement full of dented canned goods he bought at salvage stores, but I think it was mostly beans and stuff. I just camped a lot. And we figured some stuff out.”
Chase said, “Marilyn is the master of post-apocalyptic cuisine. Sonya and I were surviving on beef jerky and potato chips before she came along.”
“Well, credit where credit is due. Warm food is good. I was living on whatever I could find in people’s pantries, mostly. But that was dangerous. Seems like most Subjects got out, but some were trapped in houses. Always risky.” Audrey took several more bites of eggs before continuing. “So what are we doing today?”
“That’s Chase’s job,” Marilyn said. “He’s the man with the plan. Usually.”
“Today we go scouting,” Chase said. He watched Sonya as he spoke. He wanted her to understand that he still knew why they were there. “We need to figure out a good way to get to the interstate without running into too many creepers. The truck stop where Sonya thinks her dad was would be just off of it. I want to see if we can get eyes on it before trying to get there. Look it over from a distance. But we also want to see about finding a vehicle for Audrey. I have some ideas. I’m thinking leave the trailer here, look for a good place closer, and move there later. This is a good place for us now, though. Not too close, not too far away. Plan on spending the night here again. If everything goes right, we get Audrey gone tomorrow morning and we have a good idea what our next step is based on what we find out today.” Chase couldn’t read Sonya’s expression, which was probably a good thing. If she was upset, it was usually pretty apparent.
“Sounds good to me,” Audrey said. “Nothing against your company, but Marilyn has made the camp sound better than staying down here. You don’t know what you are getting into. I’ve seen it. Good luck to you. I guess it’s a noble endeavor, but I’m ready to sleep through the night without listening for the sound of the dead beating at the door.” Chase was glad Audrey’s back was to Sonya and couldn’t see her expression.
Chapter 8 – Marilyn
Sonya sat in the front with Chase. Marilyn and Audrey occupied the rear seats and Honey sat on Marilyn’s feet. Marilyn noticed Audrey wrinkling her noise at the smell. “You kind of get used to it,” Marilyn said. “We hit a lot of creepers on the roads. The smell never goes away.”
Audrey nodded, looking slightly green. “I guess I’ve been out in the country too long. I haven’t had to deal with it as much. At the end when I was still in town they were starting to smell, but not like this.”
From the front, Chase said, “You’re going to see and smell worse. I think we all will. I don’t know much about how bodies rot, but the first ones are getting pretty bad.” He brought the vehicle to a stop as he came to the gate. Sonya darted out and opened it, watching a creeper approaching in the distance. Chase pulled through quickly, allowing Sonya time to close the gate and climb back in before the creeper reached them.
Once Sonya closed the door, Chase drove toward the creeper. It staggered down the middle, and the road was narrow. Chase went over the top of it, and the sound of the body against the front of the vehicle caused Audrey to cringe and retch. Marilyn reached over and patted her shoulder. Audrey looked up gratefully. “Something else I’ll get used to?” Marilyn shrugged.
They rode in silence, Chase dodging creepers when he could and running them down when he couldn’t. Audrey didn’t seem to be relaxing, still tensing with each contact made. They passed farms, and Chase pointed at each one as they passed. “The larger farms will probably have diesel tanks, fuel for the Hummer,” he explained. “Maybe even a vehicle for Audrey. A truck.”
The road they were on intersected a larger road, and chase turned to the east, toward the interstate, toward Ocala. The creepers grew more numerous. They stayed on the paved road, though, so when possible, Chase drove on the shoulder, or even in the ditch. Despite his efforts, they still had to hit a lot of creepers in the roadway.
“Listen,” Audrey said. “This isn’t going to work when you get closer to the interstate. Creepers cover the ground to the east of here. I’ve seen them from a distance. We’re going to have to go across country. Follow the power lines. That’s what I did. I walked beneath them. They keep the trees cut, and usually there are pastures beneath them. Sometimes even service roads or farm roads. This vehicle can handle it, easily.”
Chase nodded and looked at the map. “I’m willing to give it a try. What about swamps, rivers, stuff like that?”
Audrey said, “Not much around here. I think we’ll be okay.”
They continued down the road, waiting to find a large power line running east, but they didn’t find one. At last Chase gave up. “No matter how bad it gets, I think we’re stuck with traveling on the roads.”
Marilyn watched Audrey. The more numerous the creepers, the more nervous Audrey became. At last, after they had been moving closer to the interstate for some time and the creepers created a steady thudding against the front of the Hummer, Audrey spoke.
“I-I don’t know if I can do this. Is it this bad up north?” Her hands twisted in her lap, clutching each other.
“No,” Marilyn comforted her. “Interstate 10 is pretty bad, but there are ways over it. If you follow the map, it shouldn’t be this bad. You will be okay.”
“Maybe I will be. But I’m not okay now. I need a break. Chase, please pull over somewhere. Find a side road, a driveway, somewhere so I can just not hear them for a little bit. Not see them.” Audrey’s eyes were wide, her skin very pale, her breathing shallow and quick. She was almost panting.
“I think Honey and I could use a break too, Chase,” Marilyn said. “Look up over there. That looks like it might be someplace that would have a truck, or a fuel tank.”
The sign on the archway over the drive said Wingfield Stables. The words were separated by a wrought iron winged horse. A tree-lined paved lane separating pipe-fenced pastures led them toward a large house and group of buildings in the distance. Marilyn peered through the windows of the Humvee, searching for horses in the fields. She thought that surely some would have survived. Then she calculated how long it had been. She was afraid of what they would find.
The first horse she saw was dead. Obviously dead. But maybe not dead too long because it hadn’t rotted away. It was lying in a paddock alongside the road. The grass around it was short, showing it had been grazed. Chase followed the lane to the big house at the end. “Do we go in the house?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Marilyn said. “Let’s see what else is here. A truck, maybe, or probably some diesel fuel. A tank, I bet. This kind of place would probably have their own fuel tank.” Chase followed the lane back and to the left where it became a well-maintained dirt lane. They were surrounded by pasture and paddocks. He stopped outside the largest building on the place. Parked in the middle of the open lot was just the truck Marilyn thought they would find.
The truck had a chrome brush-guard and was four-wheel drive, but Marilyn guessed it had never seen any serious off-road use. Chase whistled.
“That is not exactly what I had in mind, but it should work.” He stepped out of the Humvee and walked around the truck. It was an F-450, outfitted to pull trailers for a very wealthy stable. It seemed to have all possible options. Despite the accumulation of a month of dust, the truck gleamed in the late morning sun. “Diesel, too. We should be able to fill it here. You will have to keep an eye out for other opportunities along the way, but I’m almost willing to bet this thing has a big enough tank to get you most of the way to the camp.”
Audrey looked doubtful. “I’ve never driven anything that big.”
&nb
sp; “Time to learn,” Sonya said. Marilyn wished Sonya didn’t sound so mean, but she understood. Sonya viewed Audrey as a threat. And from what they had overheard, she had reason to.
“It won’t be bad,” Chase said. “You can go as slow as you want until you get the hang of it. And you really don’t have to worry about hitting things. You should have seen the Suburban we had before we got into the Hummer. Hitting things was a way of life. Just don’t hit them too hard.”
While Chase and Audrey looked the truck over, Marilyn asked Sonya if she would like to have a look around with her. There were no signs of creepers, but they took their weapons anyway. They walked around the corner of the largest building and found the elevated fuel tank she had expected. It was hooked to an antique fuel pump that had been restored. She wondered what it had been like to have the kind of money for this extravagance. And she kept listening. She thought she had heard horses somewhere. “Let’s go inside,” she said to Sonya. “I want to see something.”
When she opened the door, she wished she hadn’t. The smell of death and rot was overwhelming. She readied her rifle and Sonya held her pistol in both hands, pointed downward. But there were no creepers. They came to the first stall, and a dead horse lay inside. Marilyn tried not to look too closely. She hadn’t been as horse-crazy as some of her classmates, but she had a soft spot for them. He uncle had always had horses, and she rode every time she went to his house. There had been one particular horse her uncle owned. She had been very sweet and calm, and had even seemed glad to see Marilyn every time she had visited. All the death she had seen since leaving home had been bad, but somehow seeing these horses was worse. Sonya seemed unaffected.
They passed several stalls which held the same grim reminders that the plague had struck very swiftly. These horses had starved, or maybe had hurt themselves badly trying to escape. The evidence of this was on the walls of the stalls and on the gates. The aisle between the stalls was incredibly long, but they only walked halfway down before turning around and returning to the entrance. Marilyn felt sick to her stomach, but it wasn’t the smell that caused her to feel that way.
Chase and Audrey were still going over the truck. They had started it, and Chase was going over the controls with her. Marilyn could see Sonya was distracted by the attention Chase was giving the woman, so she left Sonya to watch them. Marilyn decided to have a look in a few of the other buildings.
In the second building she found a golf cart connected to a charger. The charger was dead, of course, but when Marilyn disconnected it and turned the keys, the indicator on the dash showed there was still a charge remaining in the batteries. When she pulled out into the lot, the others turned to look at her. She pulled up to the truck and Chase turned off the engine.
“We found the fuel tank,” she told Chase. Sonya, hanging back a little, nodded.
“Good,” Chase said, “we can fuel the Hummer. The truck has a full tank.”
“I’m going to have a look around. See if there are any creepers, and see what else I can find. This place would make a good base for tomorrow night.”
“This would make a good base,” Chase said. “We can figure out which building is the most defensible before we set up tomorrow. Don’t stay gone too long. I still want to see how close we can get to the truck stop and have time to get back to base one before it gets dark.” Marilyn gave him a thumbs-up. She looked at Sonya, a non-verbal invitation to join her, but Sonya shook her head and then looked pointedly at Audrey and back to Marilyn. Marilyn nodded. She slapped the seat next to her, looking at Honey, who took her up on it and jumped up onto the seat of the cart like she had ridden in one every day of her life. Marilyn laughed and drove out of the dirt lot and down one of the many dirt lanes between pastures.
Most of the pastures were overgrown, and that told Marilyn there were no horses in them. She found four more dead horses in another pasture, although there was grass still remaining. She forced herself to study them. Thoroughbreds from what she knew and could tell. Even lying on the ground, motionless and beginning to rot, they looked graceful. Their long thin legs looked made for speed.
Marilyn didn’t know much about thoroughbreds, but she knew they were usually pretty high-strung and, like just about anything bred for a special purpose, had a lot of medical problems. She tried to imagine them going feral and living wild with all the people gone and couldn’t. People had bred these horses to achieve one goal, and that goal wasn’t to survive without people. She drove around searching for any sign of survivors, occasionally stopping to climb a fence and scan the surrounding fields. At last, she found them. The survivors.
As she pulled up, the horses (there were five of them) crowded against the fence. Honey barked at them once and wagged her tail. They didn’t react to the dog at all. She watched them from her seat in the golf cart. They made her happy and sad all at once. They were alive, but so horribly thin. The grass in the pasture was gone, and there weren’t even the usual weeds horses tended to leave. She studied them. She realized these weren’t thoroughbreds. Two of them obviously had thoroughbred lineage, but the rest looked more like horses her friends had. Mixed. Then she looked around. She looked in the distance and realized she was on a far corner of the ranch. On two sides of the pasture was a strip of scrubland, and over the tops of the low brush and between the trees she could see houses. A subdivision. Then she looked around on the ranch. A small house was on the other side of the pasture with an old Ford Ranger parked in the drive. If she had to guess, this was the equivalent of the servants’ quarters. These were the working horses, the pacers, the horses used to round up the flighty thoroughbreds. Working horses.
Directly across the lane and to her back was an empty pasture. The grass was thigh high and stemmy, but she didn’t think these horses would mind. She located the gate to the new pasture and opened it, then found the gate for the pasture the horses were in and opened that as well. Four of the horses headed for the new pasture at a quick walk. The last one stopped where Marilyn stood by the open gate, looking at her. The horse was a paint mare. Marilyn thought with a little brush work and a week or two of good grain she would be beautiful. She shook her head and whickered at Marilyn.
Marilyn walked toward her hand extended, fingers curled back. The horse lowered her head and Marilyn hesitated, but when she saw that the mare’s ears were still standing she continued. At last she was stroking the horse’s nose and petting her neck, feeling the strong muscles along her jaw. “Why don’t you go eat with the rest?” Marilyn asked the paint. “Did you miss people more than food?” And that might have been the truth. Marilyn walked the paint out into the pasture and stood with her. The paint nuzzled at Marilyn’s shoulders and hair. Marilyn found herself giggling and pushing the horse away. At last hunger got the better of the horse and she lowered her head and began grazing, although every time Marilyn moved the horse would watch her to make sure she wasn’t leaving. Marilyn eased over to the fence and perched on the top bar, watching the horses as they grazed. Honey lay in grass at her feet, once in a while wriggling around on her back with her paws in the air.
Marilyn felt herself relaxing, felt herself entering that state she so rarely enjoyed any more: simple happiness. A moment here, a moment there, and to some extent, the two weeks at the camp with the children. But every day on the road was full of stress, full of danger and disgust and terror. She wondered if she shouldn’t have stayed at the camp. She could have. No one would have said anything. But something inside was pushing her. She knew she was meant to travel for a while. Staying at the camp would have been like Jonah running from God’s plan for him. She smiled at the mental picture she had of a whale coming up in Bob’s lake to swallow her while she bathed.
That was when she noticed all the horses had stopped grazing and were looking back over behind her. Honey was on her feet as well, a low growl starting in her throat. Marilyn turned to look, and it didn’t take long to find what they were looking at. Three creepers were coming up the lane betwe
en pastures from the spot where the road dead-ended at the woods separating the ranch from the subdivision. They weren’t close yet, but they were moving steadily. Marilyn climbed down and slipped between the pipes of the fence. She walked to the golf cart and picked up her rifle. She brought the scope to her eye and looked at the three. All had been men. One wore jeans, boots, and the remains of a western shirt. The other two were nearly nude, scraps of cloth hanging on here and there. The Florida heat hadn’t been kind to any of them.
Marilyn glanced at the horses who were still watching the creepers curiously. She wondered how they would react to the sound of gunfire. She also wondered how the others would react back at the vehicles. She realized it didn’t really matter. These had to be put down. She took in a breath, let it partially out, sighted in on the lead creeper’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger. The sound of receding hoof-beats told her the horses’ reaction even though she didn’t look. Twice more and all three creepers lay in the path unmoving. She looked down at Honey looking up at her, and the dog barked once and lay back down. Only then did Marilyn look back toward the horses.
Four of them had retreated to a distant corner of the pasture where they milled around. The paint stood as near as she could get to Marilyn on the other side of the fence, looking very concerned. Or at least to Marilyn she looked concerned. Despite the grimness of her recent activity, Marilyn laughed. “You know, you’ll never fit in the Hummer,” she told the paint.
Chapter 9 – Sonya
Sonya started at the sound of the first gunshot, and the adrenaline made her heart race. She felt for her pistol, watching Chase to get an idea what her next move might be. He jumped out of the truck and looked around. A second gunshot sounded. “Get in the Hummer!” he called to Sonya. Even in her excitement she noticed he had forgotten about Audrey and felt guilty satisfaction. They dashed to the Humvee, and as they ran the third shot rang out. She climbed in the passenger seat, ready to go, but before climbing in and starting the motor, Chase stood listening. No more gunshots came. “Which way?” he asked Sonya. She pointed. She wasn’t sure, but she gave her best guess. He climbed in and started the motor, but as he made the turn to get the big vehicle pointed the right way, Sonya saw the golf cart approaching down the lane, throwing up a little dust behind it. She pointed it out to Chase.
After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation Page 6