This Shattered Land - 02

by James Cook

  As sad as I was to be leaving, I had to admit that it was a good day for travel. June was only a couple of days away, and the weather was finally starting to warm up into something that felt like spring. It was already in the mid-fifties, and it would get much warmer before mid-day. The last few days of clear sunny skies had dried up all the mud and muck that had made travel so difficult for much of the past winter, and the ground felt firm and solid beneath the soles of my boots. Gabe and Tom finished preparing the MUV and walked over to where I stood with Sarah and Brian. We turned from watching the sunrise and looked back toward the cabin for a long moment. Gabe stepped next to me and laid one heavy hand on my shoulder in a rare display of sentimentality.

  “Seems like a damn shame to be leaving this place behind.” He said.

  “I know what you mean, man. This place has been in my family for decades. I can’t believe I’m walking away from it.”

  Tom put an arm around his wife and son, and they stepped closer to lean on him.

  “Dad, I don’t know if I want to leave.” Brian said.

  Tom ran a gentle, calloused hand through his son’s hair. “I know son, I know, but this is for the best. We don’t stand much of a chance here by ourselves in the long run. We have to try and find more people to work with.”

  Brian looked up at his father for a moment, a kind of understanding passing between them.

  “Okay. I trust you, Dad.”

  Tom smiled down at the boy, his deeply lined face lightening for a moment. He leaned down and kissed his son on the forehead. Sarah smiled at him, and when he stood back up, she took his bearded face in both of her hands, looking him in the eye.

  “I love you.” She said, and planted a long one on his lips.

  Brian made a face, and I did my best to hide a smile. For most of my life, if you had asked me if I ever wanted to get married, I would have responded with a hearty ‘hell no’. Watching Tom standing there silhouetted by the sunrise with a loving family around him made me want to reconsider that notion.

  “Alright folks, we ain’t getting any closer to Colorado standing here doing nothing.” Gabe said, reverting to his usual gruffness.

  The big man turned and walked over to the MUV. As he climbed in and started the engine, I paused to take one last look around the mountaintop. Tom spent a few moments with Sarah and Brian after they climbed in the Honda and hugged them both before stepping away. Gabe nodded to Tom, then put the Honda in gear and set off down the dirt road. The cart bounced along behind them as they pulled away. Brian had his MP5 against his shoulder and stood up in the back, leaning against the roll cage scanning for threats. Tom and I watched them until they drove out of sight down the narrow, winding lane.

  “I guess we better get going.” I said, as the sound of the engine faded in the distance.

  Tom clapped me on the shoulder, and set off down the embankment. I adjusted my rifle on its tactical sling and followed after him. This was it. Colorado or bust.

  Chapter 7

  The Journal of Gabriel Garrett:

  Gauntlet

  We’re finally on our way. I have to admit it was not easy leaving the cabin behind, I’ve grown quite fond of that place. It reminded me of the house my father mortgaged for my mother and me the year before he died. That being said, I’m not stupid enough to believe that Eric and I could have made it on our own up there indefinitely. My skinny blond friend is an intelligent, quick-thinking fellow, and I’m damn glad to have him around, but there is only so much work that two people can accomplish in any given day. I don’t know if Eric realized it or not, but we were fighting a losing battle up there on the mountain, and I am happy to finally be on the road. I was not expecting company on this trip, but I am glad that our new friends decided to come along with us. After spending so much time with only an insufferable smart-ass for company, the Glover family is like a breath of fresh air.

  I was fairly certain that the roads on the first leg of our path were clear of fallen trees and broken down cars. All we had to do today was drive the first twelve miles, and then wait for Tom and Eric to catch up. The distance passed quickly, and less than an hour after leaving the cabin, we arrived at the abandoned bed and breakfast where we planned to spend the night. I stopped the MUV in the gravel parking lot out front and took a few minutes to watch our back trail just in case any walkers decided to follow us. I didn’t see any, but that did not mean they weren’t on their way.

  Sarah and her son waited outside while I did a sweep inside the old inn. The front door was locked, but a quick bit of work with my handy lock-pick solved that problem quite nicely. I threaded a suppressor onto my .45 and drew my Falcata before going inside. With my trusty short-sword in one fist and a pistol in the other, I pushed the door open and began my search.

  I took a few steps into the foyer and saw a pair of feet sticking out from one end of the wood paneling on the front desk. The feet still had flesh on them, so I went immediately on my guard. If the feet belonged to a non-infected corpse, they would have rotted down to the bone a long time ago. Sure enough, my boots creaking over the dusty hardwood floor brought the ghoul out of its hibernation and it began to rise to its feet. I stepped around the corner of the desk and put a bullet into the back of its head. The corpse had once been a plump little old woman, and I stopped for a moment as I recognized her.

  Eric and I were on a hiking trip up the Appalachian Trail about four years ago, and we stayed at this very inn the night before we started. I remembered that the old woman’s name was Barbara. She had a quick smile, a good-natured wit, and she made amazing omelets. Part of me wanted to take her outside and give her a proper burial, but I clamped down on that sentiment and swept the room with my pistol. There could still be more infected around. I needed to clear the rest of the building.

  Being as big as I am, learning how to move quickly and silently without running into things was not an easy skill to master, but eventually I got the hang of it. I called to mind every trick and technique that I could remember as I began my sweep. The downstairs part of the inn consisted of the foyer, a small dining room, and the kitchen in the back. The foyer was clear, so I crept forward and used the tip of my sword to nudge open the swinging door to the kitchen. Sunlight filtering in through the windows in the lobby brightened the foyer, but only barely illuminated the dark room ahead of me. I clicked on the little LED tactical light under the barrel of my pistol and proceeded inside. There was a stainless steel table in the middle and a sink full of moldy dishes on my right, but I didn’t see anything moving inside. I took a few more steps into the room and almost gagged when I breathed in an incredibly foul odor. It was coming from a white deep-freezer on my left. Anything inside of it had been rotting in there for at least two years now. I eased the lid open with the sword and trained the pistol on anything that might come out. What was inside can only be described as some kind of putrid death soup, but nothing that was still moving. I let the lid close and took a deep breath as I stepped back out of the kitchen.

  A quick search of the dining room didn’t turn up anything, but the damn floorboards underneath me were creaking something awful. I abandoned trying to be quiet and stomped my boot a few times to see if there was anything around to hear me. I heard something thump in one of the rooms on the floor above me, and the tell-tale moan of the undead drifted down the stairwell. This one was strangely high-pitched, and my heart sank into my shoes as I realized what I was about to face.

  “Nothing for it, Garrett. Get the job done.” I muttered.

  I have repeated that mantra hundreds of times in bad situations on five different continents outside of North America. Like always, it helped me clear my head, shut down my emotions, and proceed on mission. I shifted into a stance that allowed me to bring either my gun or blade to bear with equal speed and began climbing the stairs. The flashlight on my pistol illuminated a long hallway with four doors on each side as I rounded the corner on the second floor landing. The room at the end of the hall on my
right was the one that Eric and I stayed in all those years ago. It had two single beds, a washbasin, and a tiny closet to hang our clothes. On the left was the communal toilet, and on the right was a small room with two narrow shower stalls.

  When we stayed here, we got a night in our room and breakfast the next day for just forty bucks. A steady stream of hikers and weekenders kept this place in business, as well as a couple of dozen others just like it along the AT. They provided a cheap, clean place to stay for the night, and in exchange, the owners got to live in a beautiful part of the country and be their own bosses. A win-win situation all around. Staring down that darkened hallway, not for the first time, I felt a painful surge of guilt and regret at what had happened to the world.

  There was a time in my life when it was my job to keep things like this from happening, and I walked away from it. I’m not stupid enough to believe that I could have stopped the Outbreak single handedly, but I can’t help but feel guilty for not doing something—anything—to raise awareness of the Reanimation Phage. If only people had been better prepared, maybe all of this could have been prevented. As much as I kick myself for not doing something, deep down I know that I could not have changed anything. First of all, if I had ever tried to go public with what I knew, then someone from Aegis would have splattered my brain on a sidewalk with a high-powered rifle in very short order. There were other people who tried to expose what was going on, and they paid for their efforts with their lives. Aegis’ funding came directly from the federal government, and those bastards were protected from on high by the intelligence community and their cronies at the Pentagon. It would have been suicide to defy them. I chose the path of survival, and it led me to where I was today, standing in a dark hallway dreading what I was about to have to do.

  The moaning and thumping came from my left. There were at least two sets of hands battering the door ahead of me, but no sounds came from the other rooms. I heaved a sigh and approached the source of the noise, stopping in front of the door and debating what to do next. It opened inward, and the undead were pushing on it from the other side, so it would be difficult to open without getting within biting distance. I holstered my pistol and switched my sword to my right hand.

  One of the good things about being six foot five and well over two hundred and fifty pounds is that I am a very strong man. I have long legs, and I know how to use my size and strength to my advantage. I dropped back a step and launched my best front kick at the door handle. All those years of doing endless thousands of squats paid off as the door slammed inward and knocked both ghouls on their asses. The undead have a hard time getting up once they go down, and if you want to kill them easily, you have to do it before they can get their legs back underneath them.

  The first ghoul was once a woman, probably in her late twenties when she turned. Her head flopped horribly on a neck that had almost all of its muscle and connective tissue eaten away. That would explain why I only heard one moan. I leaned down and buried the edge of my Falcata’s leaf shaped blade through her skull, and then turned to address the other infected.

  I have fought the dead many times in many places, but dealing with the little ones never gets any easier. A quick look around the room told me everything I needed to know about what happened there. A child runs up to her room with a bite mark on her arm, and her mother does what she can to help her. Sometime later, the child dies, reanimates, and attacks her mother. The poor woman is too traumatized to fight back, and suffers the unfathomable horror of being eaten alive by her own kid. Honestly, I can’t think of a worse way to die.

  The coarse yellow light filtering in the window through a set of blood-spattered curtains fell upon the twisted face of a creature that had once been a little girl. For some reason, the little ones can move somewhat faster than the adults. In the seconds it took me to dispatch the first infected, the little one had gotten back to her feet and lunged at me with blackened teeth bared in a vicious snarl. A swift kick to the chest knocked her back down to the floor. I knew she would be able to get back to her feet much quicker than other undead, so I planted one boot on her chest to hold her down. The creature thrashed and screeched, her jaws snapping together grotesquely as she tried to bite my leg holding her down. I allowed myself a brief moment of pity for what had once been a precious little life before ending the thing’s existence with a swift backswing of my sword. The razor sharp blade sliced off the top half of its head, and after a brief series of shudders, it went still.

  I stepped away from the corpse and placed a mental vice around the sorrow that surged in my chest. With jaw clenched and teeth gritted, I stayed on task and cleared the remaining rooms on the second floor. Thankfully, I did not find any other infected. I took a few minutes when I was done to sit down on the top of the stairs and stare off into space. I tried to make my mind blank, but I just couldn’t get the image of that girl’s torn, broken little fingernails out of my head. For anyone who may come along and read this, let me make one thing as perfectly clear as I can.

  I have done terrible things.

  I have killed hundreds, possibly even over a thousand people. I am guilty of murder. I have tortured people many times to get information that I wanted from them. Whether I did it to save lives, or because I was ordered to, or because I was angry and afraid, nothing can ever excuse my actions. To make matters worse, I know that if it becomes necessary to do it again, I will not hesitate. I am a killing machine.

  But I am not heartless.

  The world is full of murderers. Well, at least it used to be. I am one of them, there is no doubt about that, but I am not a killer without a conscience. I regret what I have done, and although I don’t know if there is any redemption for someone like me in this life, I know that I am not a monster. People like me are something of a necessity. In order for the good people of the world to sleep safely at night, they need men who are just as ruthless and nasty as the bad guys to stand ready to do violence on their behalf. That was my job. To be that man who would do anything, stop at nothing, cross any line to ensure the safety of the people under my protection, no matter the cost.

  I don’t know how long I spent on that stairwell brooding and lost in thought with my blade unsheathed on the floor beside me. Undead children have that effect on me. A voice drifted up the stairwell from the front of the inn, putting an end to my little pity party.

  “Gabriel? Is everything alright?”

  It was Sarah. She sounded worried.

  “I’m fine, Sarah. I’ll be down in just a minute. Everything is fine.” I called out.

  That was a damned lie. There was absolutely nothing ‘fine’ about the situation I had just dealt with. Nothing was fine about the whole sorry world. I got my feet underneath me and walked back downstairs. Sarah met me at the door and stepped back as I stalked toward the Honda. Her eyes fixated on the gore dripping from the edge of my sword.

  “Did you run into any trouble in there?” She asked.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  I dug around in the trailer behind the MUV until I found a piece of cloth and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. I poured some of the alcohol on the cloth and used it to clean off the black goop that was rapidly congealing on the carefully forged steel. I looked up and saw Brian standing on the other side of the trailer. It was unnerving seeing such intelligence and maturity staring at me through the eyes of a boy who just celebrated his twelfth birthday.

  “I’ve never seen you like this before, Gabe.” He said. “What did you see in there?”

  I thought about brushing off the comment for a moment, but after meeting Brian’s steady gaze I decided against it. I didn’t figure I would be doing the kid any favors by sugar-coating things for him.

  “I found three infected. One of them was a little girl.”

  Brian nodded, and looked down. “How old was she?”

  “I’d say probably seven or eight before she turned.”

  I heard gravel crunch behind me as Sarah stepped close
r and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Gabe.” She said.

  I shrugged. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. We need to drag those bodies out of there.”

  Sarah watched me for a moment more before taking my hand and giving it a quick squeeze.

  “Okay.” She said. “I’ll help you.”

  “Me too.” Said Brian.

  I gave them a curt nod and took a small blue tarp out of the trailer. We rolled the bodies onto it and dragged them a couple of hundred yards from the building before depositing them at the edge of the woods. Sarah retrieved some old cleaning supplies from a broom closet and got to work cleaning up the stains on the inn’s rough wooden floor. Brian and I spent a couple of hours gathering smooth, rounded river stones from a nearby creek and stacking them over the corpses in a makeshift cairn. It wouldn’t do much to keep the scavengers away, but at least I did not have to look at the bodies anymore. I didn’t have to see the broken fingernails of that little girl, or the dried blood and scraps of rotten tissue stuck to them.

  When we finished, we walked back to the inn and helped Sarah clean up a couple of rooms for us to stay the night in. I wedged the broken door shut in the room where I found the infected as best I could, and silently resolved not to go in there anymore. Sarah found a large pot in the kitchen big enough to do laundry in, so we filled it with water from the creek and set it to boil over a small fire in the parking lot. Sarah spent the afternoon washing sheets and then hanging them out to dry so that we would have clean linens to sleep on. I offered to do some knife fighting practice with Brian to pass the time, and he happily accepted. Sarah watched us as she worked with a little smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Not for the first time, I felt a flutter in my chest looking at her, and then quickly shut the door on those thoughts. She is married, and her husband is my friend. I knew it was dangerous to allow myself to be attracted to her, and honestly at that point, almost anything alive, female, human, and between the ages of eighteen and forty-five would have looked pretty damn good. It had been a couple of years since I had even seen a woman, much less someone as pretty as Sarah.