The Hunt Chronicles (Volume 1): Awakening

by J. D. Demers

  “He’ll be fine. Just need to stitch him up and get some fluids in him. It looks like he lost a good amount of blood.” He hung the IV bag on a screw in the wall, and then cleaned the wound before he applied the stitching. Fish barely flinched as Daniel quickly and expertly applied a few stitches to his forehead. I instinctively grabbed my forearm.

  “Take it easy and get some sleep,” he told Fish. “Can you do me a favor and clean up the wound?” he asked me as he finished, snipping the last stitch. I nodded. Daniel got up and walked over to the others who were talking quietly near DJ’s truck.

  I knelt down near Fish, and tried to listen in on their conversation as I wiped up the trickling blood around the stitches. It wasn’t easy to hear, but I gathered that DJ was pissed at this Lt. Campbell, and vice versa. I found out later that when I radioed them, DJ and the Lieutenant had argued over rescuing us.

  The LT thought it may have been a trap and wasn’t worth risking vehicles, fuel, and personnel to rescue us so close to night fall. DJ, however, told him he wasn’t about to let us get eaten, and that the trucks were his to do with as he pleased. I guess there was somewhat of a power struggle in their group. I understood that. The Lieutenant probably thought since he was the ranking officer there, he was in charge. I think DJ let him think that most of the time, but would put his boot down… on the LT, when he felt the need.

  DJ had asked for volunteers, and Campbell asked Chad to go with them, just to keep an eye on things. That seemed like an awkward duo, a criminal and an officer in the military. I wasn’t about to ask why, though. We were definitely outsiders here.

  Fish had been passed out for at least a half an hour by the time DJ, Daniel, and the girl named Jenna made their way over to us while Chad and Jared unloaded some gear.

  “How is he?” DJ asked.

  “I think he’s alright,” I responded as I looked Fish over. “Just lost a lot of blood, like he said,” I nodded toward Daniel.

  “We got some food, if you’re hungry,” Jenna said in a thick country accent. A cute little smile spread across her face.

  “Thanks,” I said as I stood, “I’m starving.”

  I sat quietly while the six of us ate. They had brought a few cans of chicken noodle soup, along with Wheat Thins and some bottled water. I decided to drink the water I had brought, rather than earn a few more dirty looks from Chad.

  The five of them talked mostly about the politics I heard earlier. They were careful not to mention where their base was. I didn’t want to inquire either and thought it was best to just play humble. Mostly, though, they just grumbled and griped about their situation.

  After we ate, DJ told the crew to get some rest, and he would pull first watch.

  “I’ll help,” I chimed in. Everyone, including DJ, glared at me. I guess they didn’t trust me yet.

  “Yeah right, shit head,” Chad remarked.

  DJ moved his glaring eyes over to Chad, but spoke to me.

  “Don’t worry, Christian, we have this. But if you want, you can stay up with me.”

  I nodded, and snuck a ‘fuck you’ glance at Chad. He definitely noticed it. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

  Jared went to DJ’s truck and Jenna went to hers while Chad and Daniel picked a mattress to sleep on. Fish was still passed out. Daniel had changed the IV bag before he went down for the night.

  DJ sat near the door that led to the inside of the fire station. I grabbed my AR and moved over to him. He looked up at me as I took a seat and then went back to drawing something on a pad of paper.

  “I never really thanked you,” I said.

  “You don’t have to,” he returned. He wasn’t rude but also wasn’t kind. He spoke matter-of-factly.

  “Um, yeah I do. You guys put your asses on the line for us. We were going to be zombie food.”

  He gave me a confused look. “What are you talking about? You two would have been safe up there. The dead-heads probably would have dispersed after a while. They definitely would have after the sun came up.”

  “I thought we would have been safe too, until they started banging on the roof hatch,” I said.

  “Banging on the hatch?” he asked.

  “Yeah, a few of them must have climbed up the ladder. Right before you radioed us, they were banging on it. They probably would have broken through, eventually. They’re persistent.” I started taking apart my rifle as we spoke. I had shot a lot of rounds out of it and the AR was a sensitive rifle that you had to clean regularly. At least, that’s what the Army taught us.

  “You’re telling me the dead-heads climbed up there? Impossible.” He wasn’t calling me a liar exactly, but I think he just couldn’t believe it. “Are you sure a scab wasn’t in the mix?”

  Evidently DJ and the rest had heard the same nickname over the radio that Fish had heard. I thought back to earlier when the zombie was banging on the hatch. It was slow and methodical, not fast and desperate like I thought would come from a scab. Besides, Fish had told me zombies would attack scabs just as they would try and eat a living person.

  “I’m pretty sure. You mean you’ve never seen a zombie, or dead-head, do something like that before?” I asked, including the nickname DJ had used for the walking dead.

  “Hell no. Scabs, sure, but dead-heads? That’s something new.”

  “Well, anyway, thanks. I thought Fish was going to die up there,” I told him.

  “Eh, just a light head wound. He probably would have come out of it anyways,” he said. “You guys friends before all this happened?”

  I couldn’t suppress a snicker. “Um, no. He’s not exactly my type of person.” Truthfully, I wasn’t his type of person.

  “What was he? Army? He wasn’t a Marine, that much is for sure,” he chuckled to himself.

  That last remark told me DJ use to be a Marine. It’s funny how easy it was to catch things if you paid attention. If he was, it had to have been a while ago. He was easily in his late thirties or early forties, and I was sure he wouldn’t be able to pass the physical fitness test. I’m not saying he was out of shape, but… okay, he was out of shape.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I told him, lowering my voice a little. “He’s not exactly the talkative sort. I’m pretty sure he was Army, but what he did? Well, I’d guess a Ranger or Special Ops. Whichever type makes you a bigger asshole would be the one I would go with.”

  DJ started to grin at my last remark, then let it fall into a frown.

  “Man has demons. I can tell,” DJ said, like he knew what they might be. “Everyone has to work it out in their own way.” He paused for a moment. “What about you? You seem to know how to handle that pea shooter,” he motioned at my AR which was now taken fully apart.

  “I was in the Army. Supply. No, I don’t need to hear any jokes,” I said with a smirk.

  “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t. Everyone has a role to play when they strap on a uniform. Even the paper pushers,” he added with sincerity in his voice.

  I smiled as I cleaned the bolt from my rifle. I was sure to add a little oil to it before I reassembled it. The AR only needed a little lubricant to work effectively.

  “What about your crew?” I asked. “Any vets?”

  “None of the ones here, no,” he said, and slightly shook his head. “Just me. Jared over there, well, I knew him before all this went down. He did some electrical work at my house. Chad, if you couldn’t tell, recently got out of prison. Guess he was breaking into houses when he was a teenager. Judge threw the book at him and gave him eleven years. Only been out six months. Campbell found him. Guess the LT saved his life. We got lucky with Daniel. I’m guessing a paramedic or a doctor will be hard to find these days. Jenna pulled him out of a FEMA camp when things started getting bad. She’s a wild and crazy one, that girl. I’d rather have her at my side then most of the guys we have at camp.”

  I started to put my AR back together, allowing silence take over for a few seconds. Then I asked, “And you? You have a story?”

  He h
uffed, and then looked at me. “Everyone has a story. I was in the Marines. Got married, had a boy. My wife wanted me to get out, so I did. I’ve been working as a bike mechanic at a chop shop off US1 ever since.”

  I pondered a moment. Should I ask about his wife and son? I mean, that was pretty personal. Chances were one or both didn’t make it. I wasn’t sure what was appropriate. I never asked Fish about his personal life, but then again, DJ had just told me more about himself in two minutes than Fish had since I met him.

  “Are they…” was all I could manage to say.

  “Are they dead-heads?” he finished for me. “Naw, I’m lucky. My brother lived with us. He got sick and changed. I had to put him down… twice,” he added.

  “So they’re alive? Where are they?” I asked a little excited to hear some good news.

  “Back at our camp. Ry wasn’t too happy about me coming out here tonight,” he said referring to his wife Ryan, and then laughed, “Hell, she’s never happy about me leaving camp. But we put up some good defenses, and have yet to attract any scabs. The LT’s a douche bag sometimes, but he means well. His troops aren’t half bad either. Haven’t had a breach since we set up our compound.” He looked at me, and changed to a serious tone. “If I didn’t feel like they were safe, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. He had his family when most people didn’t. I didn’t know what had become of mine.

  “We’re not in such a bad spot either,” I said, “but Fish still thinks we need to move. After what I saw tonight, I guess I kinda agree. We’re just too close to the city. Too many of them wandering around.”

  DJ seemed to ponder a moment. “You guys may be able to join up with us. I don’t know, though. Our little community would have to discuss it. It’s hard to feed everyone as it is.”

  I wasn’t sure how Fish would feel about that, either. I know I wanted to. But I wouldn’t do it without him, Judy, and definitely Boomer. They might not be too keen on a dog running around. Fish seemed to have his own plan, anyway. He hadn’t let me in on it, though. He was going to have to open up a little and trust me.

  I let the silence linger. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Telling DJ how paranoid Fish could be about meeting other people didn’t seem like a good idea. I glanced over at the picture he was drawing. It looked like a fire truck that had some Mad Max style upgrades.

  “That looks interesting,” I told him. “Drawing something for your kid?”

  He gave me an awkward look, and then continued with his illustration.

  “This is for me,” he said. “A guy back at my camp is helping me design something to make biofuel,” he continued as he added some finishing touches. It wasn’t the Mona Lisa, but it wasn’t half bad either. “I figure we should have something big and bad if the need ever arose. Most fire trucks are diesel, finding replacement parts would be easy, and the bastards are tough as hell. Not to mention it can carry water for us.”

  “That and he always wanted to be a fireman,” Jared joked as he came over to where we were sat.

  “Can it, Jared,” DJ shot back. He wasn’t serious. I saw a smile start to form beneath DJ’s bushy beard.

  “How long have you guys known each other?” I asked.

  “Too long,” DJ jested before Jared could answer.

  “Three years,” Jared said and then added with a smile, “Like he said, too long.”

  “Yeah, the bastard showed up at my place the day after the power went out.” He pointed his pencil at Jared. “He’s lucky I didn’t blow his head off then.”

  “Really?” I asked. “So you guys were good friends before all of this happened?”

  “Not good friends, but we saw each other from time to time,” Jared told me. “He would call me whenever he wired something wrong in his house.”

  “Won’t let me live that down, will you?” DJ said, sharing an inside joke.

  “Nope,” he returned smiling, and then looked at DJ’s illustration. “Still trying to become a road warrior?”

  “Keep messing with me Jared,” DJ retorted.

  “It doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea,” I said, throwing in my two cents.

  “Seems like Christian is smarter than you, buddy.” DJ folded up the paper and stuffed it into a cargo pocket. “Time to get some sleep you two. I’ll be waking you in an hour, Jared. I don’t want to hear you crying because you’re tired.”

  DJ rose and walked over to his truck.

  “So how did you two meet back up? I mean, after everything went bad?” I asked Jared as he started to turn to leave.

  He turned around and smirked.

  “DJ was one of those prepper guys. You know, tons of guns and ammo, gas masks… all that crap. My wife passed a few years ago. Guess I got lucky with that. Too many people I’ve met had to put their own loved ones down. I didn’t know where to go and I remembered him. I showed up an hour after he shot his brother. We both had to put him down a second time. Funny, he almost shot me when I knocked on his door.”

  “So you guys must be well set. I mean, I saw some of those shows. People waiting for the world to collapse. They seemed ready for anything.” I probably sounded a little jealous when I said that.

  “Not really,” Jared chuckled. “He won’t admit it, but we bugged out of his house so fast after his brother came back to life… death… whatever. It freaked us out. We left half his supplies. Come to find out most of it was useless. We went back for a few things but left the rest. After finding those kids, we’ve burned through most of the food he had. Man’s gotta big heart. Don’t let his grizzly appearance fool ya.”

  “Kids…” I muttered.

  “Yeah. We ran across some-” Jared started to say, but was then cut off.

  “I said go to bed, Jared. You know how grumpy you get when you don’t get your beauty sleep,” DJ said as he came back over.

  “Alright, alright, I’m going. Night Christian.” Jared turned around and went back to the truck he had been in.

  DJ plopped back down next to me with a small pad of paper. I could see he had some notes already written down, but couldn’t make out what they were. I guessed it was a shopping list.

  “So you were a prepper?” I asked.

  “Heh, no,” he chuckled looking back at the truck where Jared had climbed into. “Jared tell you that?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled.

  “No, not like those idiots on TV. I always thought a man should be prepared for whatever may come, but I never went crazy with it,” he said as he wrote down a few notes.

  “Guess those idiots weren’t so crazy after all,” I said, more to myself than to DJ. It made me think of my best friend Dave. He believed in being prepared. I wonder if my making fun of him kept him from prepping more than he did.

  “You’re right. I used to think I had enough ammo. I would see people with tens of thousands of rounds. I was happy with a just a couple of hundred. I guess the one good thing I did do was make that silencer last year. It was illegal as all hell, but only my wife and I knew about it.”

  “I think you did a lot more good than that,” I told him. I paused a moment. “I’m glad we met you, DJ.”

  We didn’t really discuss much more, and I said my farewell to him as I went to lie next to Fish on the mattress. He was breathing steady and I carefully lay down next to him, attempting to be as quiet as possible. I knew it would be difficult to sleep that night. It was the first time since I found Boomer that he wasn’t nestled up next to me or at my feet. I always felt safe with him around.

  The sun must have gone down, because the echoing hum of the dead could be heard even through the thick walls of the fire station. I was thinking about how Judy and Boomer were doing when I felt movement beside me.

  Fish was stirring in his sleep. I could faintly hear him mumbling and made out the names Becky and Nolan. I couldn’t hear everything he was saying, but the words ‘sorry’ and ‘I had to’ kept coming up. He never mentioned those names before
, but it was a good guess that Becky was his wife.

  Fish shook and sprang up to a sitting position. He held his head with one hand and grabbed his chest with the other. He looked around the fire station, and seemed to slowly come back to reality. DJ was right. Fish did have demons. He looked down at me, too quick for me to look away.

  “What are you staring at, kid?” he asked, breathing heavy.

  “Sorry, you were dreaming,” I replied. I could have made a smartass remark like he did about my sister, but thought better of it. Not because he would kick my ass, which I’m sure he would have, but because I didn’t want to see the pain it would bring. I no longer wanted to know what demons he was suppressing.

  He lightly patted his wound, and gave me somewhat of an apologetic look. Of course, he would never actually say that he was sorry.

  “Daniel said you would be okay. Just that you lost a lot of blood,” I told him. “Maybe you should lie back down. Rest for the night.”

  “Yeah,” he said, then asked, “Can we trust these guys?”

  “I think so. I mean, they didn’t have to come save our lives.”

  Fish nodded and lay back down. He wasn’t looking at me, but just gazed up at the ceiling, seemingly lost in thought. Then he broke the silence.

  “Today, when I told you to get out of the truck…” he stopped in mid-sentence. He pondered for a moment and rephrased what he was going to say. “When you got out of the truck, you looked like you were about to leave me.” It wasn’t a question and he didn’t sound angry, but it didn’t stop the queasiness in the pit of my stomach from forming.

  I didn’t know what to say. This man saved my life from that scab when there was no question that she would have killed me. Then I repaid him by almost leaving him behind to get eaten by the sea of zombies that attacked us outside of Wagon Wheel. He had to have seen my expression when I turned around. The white fear must have been written all over my face, just like the guilt that was written all over it while we were talking.

  “I… I panicked,” I said after a pause. “I’m sorry man. I couldn’t think of anything except getting away.”