It took some searching and she had just about given up, when she opened the dumpster on the side of the building and saw a bag of discarded clothing within. She could have stripped the bodies of those monsters to give the girl something to cover her naked body with, but it was a disgusting act she would not force upon the frightened abused teen. It took a lot of convincing to make the girl stay in the store with those fresh corpses, but she was too vulnerable at the moment to do anything else.
She sorted through the ripped leftovers and from the four sets of clothes, she put together an outfit that would at least cover her long enough to get back to Todd’s parents. They had a daughter, and with all that crap his mother had in that house, she felt sure that the woman had some clothes for her to wear.
Something fresh and not covered in semen or blood.
Running back into the store, she helped the frightened girl get dressed and onto her wobbly knees. She didn’t know what to do, how to help her. She was just as shattered by what had just happened and from the looks of the poor thing, it had to be a hell of a lot worse for her. She didn’t want to imagine it; afraid that her anger would return and she’d do some other disgusting act before they got out of there.
She decided to make something good come of it and fit just about everything she could in the back of that damned truck. Avoiding the left side of the store, she began throwing everything she touched into the back of the truck as the girl huddled on the tailgate just watching her.
“If you want anything, let me know now,” she told her as she focused her anger into something other than cutting dead flesh.
Twinkies, Snowballs, bags of pretzels, Cheetos; she did not discriminate as she threw more bags into the growing pile behind the teenager. Those eyes just watched her; the girl’s silence unbroken since being freed from the cooler.
Not wanting to interfere with the girl’s healing process, she continued on, dashing behind the counter and starting on the liquor and cigarettes. The place hadn’t been looted because those fucktards were killing anyone that tried. Well, she had iced their raping asses and now she was going to take what she had earned.
Bottles clinked as she piled it on top of the junk food and soda bottles she had already thrown in there. She took entire cartons, not caring about brand or type, and threw them in as well. When she got back to the house, she’d see if the old man had a tarp she could use, she was quite sure there was an extra one lying around; they seemed to own everything else.
As she threw the last bit in and closed the tailgate, the anger suddenly left and tears sprung from her eyes. The girl was there waiting for it and took her into her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, trying to fight it all back, but it was still coming in floods and torrents.
“It wasn’t your fault,” the girl cried softly, stroking the back of her hair. The younger girl was the one that was supposed to be comforted and here she stood, holding Sabrina instead.
What the fuck was that about? I have to get it together.
“I know that,” she returned, trying to straighten up.
“No, you don’t,” the girl whispered, holding her tightly and refusing to let her go. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She felt that grief rising and struggled in the girl’s embrace. The youth’s grip was unyielding and she was forced to finally relent and give in. “I should have been more careful. I shouldn’t have come up here by myself. I was so fucking stupid.”
“And I was any different?” the girl asked, making their eyes meet. “I was just strolling down the street as if nothing in the world had changed when they found me. I shouldn’t have been there; I should have stayed at home. But I was lonely,” the girl said, then shivered. “My parents didn’t come home last night and my brother was at a friend’s house. I couldn’t reach either one of them and I got the sudden urge to take a walk.”
“I’m sorry,” she responded, not sure of what else to say. Her own emotions were in turmoil; the rage she felt at having to stand around while her friends and Todd’s parents packed was gone. She wanted to go back to that moment, to feel bored and frustrated again, rather than this feeling of loss and violation.
The girl shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do but go on. Would you mind so much if I came with you?” the girl asked as if expecting to be rejected.
“What about your brother or your parents? Don’t you think you should go back home and see if they came home?” she pursued half-heartedly. She could see from the girl’s eyes that they both knew the truth, even if they didn’t want to admit it. “Of course you can come with me. And the phones are working again, so if we hear from your family you can tell them where we’re going and they can meet us,” she offered, wiping a tear away.
She wouldn’t just leave her here by herself; not after what they had shared—Todd’s reservations about strangers be damned. They embraced then, survivors of a horrible ordeal and ready to try and move on.
“If I missed something you’d want, best to get it now,” she said, her strength of will returning. “I need to get back. I’m sure they’re thinking I just took off on them by now.”
The young girl stepped into the store, went to the magazine rack on the left side, and picked up the recent issue of Teen Vogue. Waving it from through the glass window, Sabrina felt a smile force itself to the surface and she shook her head in amazement. She wanted to laugh but the memory of that man on top of her and what she did to him flashed passed and it died before ever being born.
The girl saw the change and her smile dropped as well.
Coming back out, the magazine was thrown in the back of the truck, then with a hand landing on her arm, she looked back up at the young girl and smiled again, “let’s go.”
Chapter 10
Munchies
Paul
Springerville, AZ
They were hiding in a little white house on a street called Bulk; at least he thought was what it was called. He didn’t know for sure and didn’t really care. He couldn’t remember how they got there; the past couple of hours were a blur in his mind and he could only recall brief moments of their flight south.
Christine was in the bathroom and he didn’t know how long she’d be in there. The door to the house had been left open and it looked like the people that had lived there left in a hurry. There was no vehicle in the driveway and things looked hastily packed.
If he had shown the same amount of drive to leave as these people did, maybe they would have gotten through this small town before all the shit hit the fan; they could be in the compounds right now instead of cowering in this abandoned house.
He did remember the car accident. He thought they were finished, but when he managed to get out of the car, he saw that the monsters that had been chasing them were huddled around the vehicle that had run them off the road. It had plowed into the abandoned cars and the undead townsfolk were hanging though the windows, their legs kicking in excitement.
He felt disgusted at what he could only imagine was happening within and thanked God that the screams from within the car had stopped; they were beginning to drive him insane. He hated the thought that death had come for the occupants of the car, but also couldn’t help the relief that came that it was them instead of him.
He could remember getting his wife out of the car, almost suffocating her by keeping the scream she was about to let out from airing. Her eyes were wide and he nearly killed her keeping her quiet.
The next he recalled, they were running down a side street, having left most of their belongings behind. Their bags had been in the trunk and that had been crushed upon impact with a tree. All they had was her purse and his gun. The majority of the trip to this house was lost to him and when they got here, his wife had fled to the bathroom; locking herself inside ever since.
After munching on a hastily made sandwich from the fridge, he decided to check on her.
The bathroom was down the hall and the light was on. He knocked on the door, a glass
of milk in his right hand, half drunk. He wiped his upper lip with his arm and knocked again; harder this time. There was still no answer but he could hear her moving around in there, so she hadn’t slipped out of the bathroom when he was in the kitchen.
His phone buzzed but he ignored it.
“Christine, we need to keep moving,” he yelled through the door. He took another drink and tried the knob; it wasn’t locked.
Opening the door was harder than he thought it’d be, something was keeping him from pushing it all the way forward. Panic began to hit him, had she fallen down? He pushed against it with all his strength, trying to dislodge whatever was hindering him—then came to an abrupt halt.
He could see his wife in the mirror.
One eye had blown and was looking away from center at an odd direction. The other was staring through the mirror right at him. She had drool dripping from her chin, the left side of her face hanging like the muscles had detached. She turned towards him and a groan escaped her throat. The nasty aroma escaping the open door hit him and he gagged at the putrid smell of defecation.
A scream rose in his throat but it was stopped by the lump of food forcing its way back up, slicked by the milk he had just been drinking.
She turned and he felt a hand on the arm he was using to hold the door open. It had happened so suddenly that he hadn’t had time to react before it gripped him and yanked him into the bathroom; slamming the door in the process.
No one was around to hear him scream in terror as his wife began eating him.
Chapter 11
Monitor
Rosilynn
Flagstaff, AZ
They were pulled over on the side of the road leading staring at the destroyed city before them. They had avoided Kingman as much as possible and she had been surprised by the sporadic traffic on the I-40 as they made their way east. At a rest stop, they had all agreed to at least take a look at Flagstaff before deciding if they should try to go around it. Any other route would take most of the day when it would only take an hour to cross and be through to the other side.
Now the three of them stood on a hill looking at the haze on the horizon with stunned amazement and grief. “Holy hell,” John breathed, his shotgun in hand, his ball cap shoved back, his eyes trying to take it all in.
“Right?” Matt responded, seemingly unable to go on.
She knew how they felt. This had to be what a war zone looked like after two armies left the field. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but the blackened buildings and rising smoke was not it. She had a fleeting thought of coming upon an engagement between the military and the infected populace of Flagstaff; but this battle had already been fought and whoever won had moved on, leaving the charred city behind in its wake.
There were smoldering remnants of cars and trucks on the interstate; the occasional wisp of smoke rising from their broken shells. Businesses and neighborhoods were demolished; reminding her of what the Towers had looked like after they fell. There was black rubble and random parts of architecture jutting out in sporadic intervals. A dark cloud hung on the horizon and she wondered how much of the ash in the air was from burnt bodies lying amongst the wreckage. She couldn’t smell much yet, but she knew that it would be horrible if they tried to drive through there.
John’s cellphone went off and she jumped. “It’s for you,” he said, handing her the phone.
They had contacted Todd once they got out of Havasu and had a moment to breathe and talk things through. She was still not sure what Matt thought of the man, but she was beginning to like him. John was still haunted over leaving his post, but now that he stood there looking at what remained of the once sprawling city, she knew he finally understood how futile his staying would have been.
She placed the phone to her ear and heard Todd’s soothing voice begin speaking to her. She tried to smile. It was hard with so much death in front of her, but he had a way of distracting her that very few could pull off.
“Yeah, we can see that,” she muttered, obviously seeing that Flagstaff had been wiped off the map. “Who did this?”
“The United States Military machine,” he responded and Matt must have heard, because his face took on a sour look. “The city was overrun; they did what they had to.”
“It doesn’t look like they saved anything, or anyone,” John muttered and Todd must have picked up on that because she heard a grunt over the receiver.
“There wasn’t much to save by the time they got there,” Todd told her. “Not many of the living were there when they came through.”
Matt was pointing at the craters and said, “the Air Force bombed the shit out of this place.” They both nodded in agreement and she almost didn’t hear what Todd was saying.
“What was that?” she asked, still taking everything in.
The man on the phone cleared his throat, then began again. “I said we lost our eyes for a bit there, but Ben has been working on the problem all morning and finally got it back up and running. Holbrook is quiet and shouldn’t give you any problems; once the military finished there, they moved south. From what we can tell, most of the armed forces are concentrating on Phoenix and its suburbs. A few units swept east, but most of them went with the main force down the 17 and the much larger threat there.”
Holbrook and Winslow were the next stops along the highway and she felt gladdened that they were still standing. As much as she tried to understand why this was necessary, it was still a stab to the heart and a wakeup call to what was going on out here. “Then it’s just Springerville, then we should be good, right?”
There was silence on the other end and Matt turned to look at her with a questioning look. She shook her head and waited.
“Springerville is bad at the moment. Try to avoid entering the city and move south. Swing around the lower side and then begin to make your way east. While you’re there, there’s something we need you to do,” Todd told her in a lower voice, and she pressed the phone against her ear harder, straining to hear him.
She listened for a few moments more, then she hit the end button and tossed the phone to John. He caught it easily and stuck it back into the holster on his belt. “Everything all right?” he asked her. He didn’t know where they were going, just that there was a safe haven out there that the two of them were desperate to get to. She knew that he had questions, but she was not ready to answer them just yet. She needed to be around him longer before she could fully trust him.
Glancing at Matt then back at the city she said, “Paul and Christine aren’t checking in. They are in some house in Springerville and they want us to check it out.”
“Okay—,” her husband replied, trying to urge her on, “and what’s so bad about that?”
“The town is overrun and we’ll have to go through part of it to reach them,” she replied, making sure that she remembered everything she saw on that skyline. It was important to never be forgotten; she owed it to all those that died down there. If this was ever over, she’d tell their story to whoever was left to hear it.
“Is that all?” Matt asked; surprised that it was affecting her so much.
John was giving him with a what the hell look and it almost made her laugh. “You that eager to die?”
Her husband stepped over to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “We could die right now from a horde of zombies coming out of these woods. We could get in a car accident driving through that shit down on our way to the other side. Maybe they missed something, as impossible as that seems. My point is—we have survived Vegas, we nearly got blown up by a fucking nuclear bomb, and we nearly escaped an outbreak back in Havasu, so running into a few infected while searching for a couple of friends? Yeah—not such a big deal,” her husband finished with a shrug.
She wanted to feel like he did, that it was nothing, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Maybe she hadn’t adjusted as easily, maybe it was the fact that she saved lives while her husband had been trained to take them. Either way, she hadn
’t reached that point yet and she didn’t think she wanted to. When this became easy, she knew there might not be anyway to cross back over that line and back to who she was now.
“Well, we can deal with that when we get there,” she told them. She had long abandoned the helmet for her ability to see unobstructed and as she got back onto her motorcycle, her hair whipped with the cool breeze; sending a chill down her spine. “We’re going to have to find a place to gas up though.”
“If anything is left you mean,” John replied, heading back to his squad car.
Chapter 12
Action junkie
Saint
Tucson, AZ
It only took a minute to drive back to the home that she’d left so long ago. She looked at the clock on the dash and was surprised that only an hour had gone by. It felt like days.
As she pulled up in front of the house, she was stunned to see that the truck and trailer that they had been loading when she left was all buttoned up and ready to get on the road. Could they have left already if she hadn’t gone off?
Pulling to a stop, she got out of the truck and waited as the young girl came to stand at her side, her eyes flittering back and forth across the yard, not knowing what to expect.
Erik stepped from the porch and greeted her with a smile. It froze though, as he came closer and his mouth began to hang. “What the fuck happened to you?” he asked, his arm rising to her swollen and throbbing face.
She shook away the gesture. “Nothing we couldn’t handle, right?” she asked the girl next to her. The young teen took her cue and nodded. “This is—uh—”
“Alicia,” the girl finished, shaking Erik’s hand.
As horrible as they must have looked, Erik made the right choice and didn’t comment, but the smile on his face and the look in his eyes told a different. Manny and Henry were coming from the carport, a rag in the older man’s hands as he wiped some grease off. Lynn was in the doorway looking at them as well.
Charon's Blight: Day Two (the Rotting Souls series Book 2) Page 8