The Book of a Few

by Rodgers, Austen

  With love from your brother,,

  Bruce

  Day Ten

  Yesterday, I wrote how we were planning on looking for Branden’s kid. Well, we did. But we started the day off in search of a vehicle. We wanted to find something that was utilitarian in nature and that all of us could fit in easily. A truck would serve this purpose well, but we eventually changed our mind to a cargo van. In a cargo van, not everyone would be belted in, so it would be risky if we ever got into an accident. It would be capable of moving just about anything a truck could, and it would be slightly more apocalypse friendly. If we ever had to flee, we would have the ability to shoot out the back much easier than we could from a truck. The idea of lying in the bed out in the open does not sound intelligent; I don’t want to be bucked onto the street.

  Taylor, Branden, Dana, and I left the Warehouse mid-morning. Will wanted a day off, so we left him to guard the Warehouse and the others. We figured that a good place to start our search would either be a gas station, a hardware store, or any place that used to rent out utility vehicles. Our first stop was a gas station near the shopping area we had gone to numerous times. While it didn’t have any vehicles in the parking lot, we piddled about inside the store.

  I noticed an abandoned pack of cigarettes in a corner. The pack was green, a signal that they were menthol, which is also my personal favorite. I bent over, picked it up, and proceeded to shake the small box to hear if there were any left inside. To my own surprise, there were two cigarettes left, and needless to say, I rejoiced. I showed them to Taylor.

  “Hell yeah!” Taylor squealed. We both laughed, a little too loud perhaps.

  Even though menthol is not his favorite, he did not complain. We had both been craving a smoke for a number of days now. With only two cigarettes in the pack, I gave one of them to Taylor. In the middle of our exclamations of “fuck yeah” and high fives, we realized that we had attracted some unwanted attention.

  Two infected men that were walking about across the street had heard us. They replied to our yelling with grunting of their own as they began running toward us. All of us quickly readied ourselves. Branden took post at the doorway with his axe in hand, just in case Taylor, Dana, or I were unable to shoot them.

  Taylor shot out one of the windows first. Mid-step, the flesh eater’s body lost all strength and blood began to pour from the bullet holes of the buckshot that had peppered his face. Dana fired afterward with Bruce’s revolver. Dana missed the first few times, and was unable to hit the second zombie in as dazzling a display as Taylor. He was, however, able to gut-shot the remaining infected. The creature fell to the ground and approached us in a slow crawl for a few more paces. Branden stepped out of the gas station and finished it off by beheading it with a swing of his axe.

  The whole situation seemed fine and dandy until four more infected burst out from the back of the gas station. They whipped their heads about, hunting for the source of our gunshots. The first infected suddenly stopped and caused one of the others to trip over him. The infected flopped and toppled into a stand, sending the porcelain coffee cups that rested there to the floor. That was when we realized we were not alone in the store.

  “Branden!” I shouted, getting his attention. I instructed the group, “Move!”

  We jumped out the blown-out windows and took off down the street. As we sprinted, Dana trailing in the rear, we came to realize how many infected were in the area today. Each building we passed by grabbed the attention of more madmen. The group following us gradually grew bigger. Dana began gaining distance from the rest of us, and losing distance between himself and the tailing infected.

  Dana began desperately firing his gun behind him in hopes of hitting a few. While he did kill some, he gained the attention of even more. I didn’t have the time to count, but at this point, we probably had at least fifteen running after us. It was obvious that we were not going to be able to simply outrun them, or at least Dana wouldn’t. While the others were yelling at Dana to hurry, an inhumane thought crossed my mind: Shoot his legs. If we sacrificed Dana, most of the infected would stay behind to consume his dying body, thereby leaving the rest of us with only a few to deal with. But I quickly rejected the thought.

  With no better ideas, we turned to our left and approached a large home-improvement and hardware store. We dashed into the lumberyard out front in an endeavor to find a place to disappear. We weaved in and out of the rows of stacked wood, trying to lose the infected, but also hoping that Dana would be able to follow us through the maze. I began to feel fatigued when I spotted a side door into the store and ran for it. I shouted for the others to get in. Branden and Taylor went inside and began checking the immediate area for any other threats.

  “Dana!” I yelled with my gun pressed to my shoulder, “Follow my voice!”

  I stopped for a moment to listen. I heard heavy breathing, grunting, and occasionally a knocking noise of someone crashing into a pile of lumber. Two more gunshots rang through the air. A moment passed and Dana appeared from a different area than we did. The horde, now immediately behind him, reached out to pull him in. I took a risk and aimed my sights right next to Dana, and shot at the infected I felt was the biggest risk to him. I struck the zombie squarely, dropping him in a frenzy of convulsions. To my surprise, a second zombie immediately behind the first also fell to the ground.

  Dana rushed past me, panting like a dog. I didn’t bother to cycle my bolt; my biggest concern was getting the door in between them and me. I followed immediately behind Dana with only seconds to spare. The infected pounded on the metal door the moment it shut. We were lucky, that’s for sure.

  Inside, Branden and Taylor confirmed that the room we were in was empty. The air in the room was stale and lacked circulation. A mini-fridge and a microwave sat on a fake granite countertop that ran along one wall. Tables and chairs were tipped and pushed against walls. While the single empty vending machine made the room seem desolate and abandoned, muddy footprints on the ground said otherwise.

  We didn’t know what we were getting into, but we couldn’t go back. Taylor put his hand on the knob of the door leading further into the store. He sighed while he prepared himself mentally and repositioned his gun on his shoulder with his free hand. He slowly pushed the door open, revealing the interior of the store to be cast in darkness. The only lighting inside was the glass entrance doors, through which the sun shined, and a small, distant corner of the store where the fluorescent lighting was still working.

  Looking to the bright area of the store, we saw a big mass of metal. The sight itself was nearly indistinguishable. All that could be derived was that the tall rows of racking that separated the aisles had been tipped. Large sheets of plywood lay about the mess of racking, systematically, it seemed, and with purpose. From my guess, I figured that the plywood was serving as ramps to walk up and down the jumble of metal.

  Taylor continued to lead us deeper by taking the first few steps.

  Boosh! A deep and bellowing gunshot resonated through the store. It startled all of us. The sound echoed throughout the large home improvement store and fell upon our ears a second time. We all looked at one another, wondering if the source of the sound really was a gunshot. But it had been a gunshot; Taylor bent a knee.

  We all rushed to him and surround him. I dropped down to his level and wrapped an arm around him so I could hold him upright. His hands, soaked in blood, clutched his chest. He was gargling and coughing, and by the look of his eyes, he was still in shock. He didn’t last another minute.

  A bell began ringing sharply and in a moment’s notice, the building came alive. Lights flicked on throughout the building, and I heard yelling. My eyes darted back and forth behind every counter, corner, and pallet of wares that was placed in the opening. With the added lighting, I could see that many things had been moved since the few times I had been inside that particular store before the Silence. Large things, like shower and hot tub displays, and the thirty- or forty-foot tall racks that
would normally be considered immovable were no longer where I remembered, or not present at all.

  The bell, presumably an alarm, continued ringing from an unknown direction. I looked back down at Taylor and realized that he had already left us. A wire at his feet led to both sides of us, one end tied to a rack, and the other end found up inside the racking of the opposite side, tied to the trigger of a shotgun mounted in a wooden frame.

  The rhythmic footsteps of boots grew loud, and I knew that we had just triggered a trap. Once we stepped out of the tiny break room, the racking served as a funnel that would push us forward into the store to confront our assailants. Dana gripped my shoulder and shook me from my thoughts.

  “Move back!” he told me.

  I nodded sluggishly. Reality sunk in after a moment, and I wrapped my arms under Taylor’s and pulled on his weight. As I dragged him backward toward the break room, the occupants of the store appeared around the corners of the racking that contained us. They bore AR style rifles and shotguns. They were better equipped than we were, without a doubt.

  I yanked Taylor into the tiny break room as hard as I could with at least ten of the strangers moving in. Dana slammed the door shut after Taylor’s feet cleared the threshold. I tried to be gentle with Taylor as I propped him up against a wall, even though I knew he was gone. Respect for the dead, I suppose.

  So there we were, trapped. Behind the door that led outside was a group of the infected. They had grown quiet; there was no pounding on the door, but there was also no doubt that there would at least be a few remaining in the lumberyard. Behind door number two, we had a group of well-armed people. We explored our options.

  “Friendly? Hostile?” Branden asked, panicked.

  Dana let loose one sarcastic laugh. “Ha! They’re hostile.”

  “H-how do we know?” Branden stuttered. “Accidents happen. That could have been put there for the intention of dealing with any zombies that might roam in.”

  “Jesus Christ. Zombies don’t just roam through two closed doors; you would hear them beat their way through.” Motioning toward the inside of the store, Dana said, “That was for people.” Dana cycled his handgun and began retrieving extra rounds from his pockets to reload his magazine.

  A powerful voice shouted from outside the door, “Come out! Hands up!” All of us looked at one another and whispered a plan within a minute.

  “Screw you!” I yelled back at the voice. Dana and Branden headed toward the door leading outside, and cracked it open to peek outside. “We were herded in here! We had no intention of stealing anything or hurting anyone. But you went and fucked up! Your trap got one of ours! I’ve got the feeling that you guys are the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ type of people.”

  Dana returned to me, put his head down by mine, and whispered in my ear, “I can see at least five, but I couldn’t get a good look.”

  I nodded in response. Branden began moving the tables around. He moved them back away from the wall a little, and laid them on their sides. I pulled Taylor back behind one of them once Branden was done. Dana joined Taylor and me under the cover of the tables. Not necessarily for cover from bullets, but from sight.

  “Let’s just talk this out, all right?” the voice from the other room said. “Accidents happen, we all know this. And I know you were chased in here; we saw. Where are you from?”

  Branden took a few fast but deep breaths, preparing himself for the danger he was about to put himself in.

  “I’m not telling you anything. If you saw us, why the hell didn’t you help us?” There was a brief pause.

  “You know how it is, with ammo being in short supply and all. Sometimes you gotta dig in and fend for yourself. Doing the right thing doesn’t always get you by.”

  I smirked to myself and looked at Dana. He felt it, too, but luckily, we beat them to the punch.

  Branden whipped the door to the lumberyard open and began whacking the haft of his axe on the doorframe. After being sure that he had caught the attention of the infected, he rushed to the second door, leaving the first open. Within a few moments, the infected began trickling in, seeking out the source of the sound. I peeked around the table and thought to myself as I counted, One… Two… Three… Four… Branden, trapped in the corner between the second door and the wall, pushed the first two off himself. He was trying to let as many as he could handle inside the break room. Once the third and the fourth ran inside, Branden yanked the second door open.

  Branden swung the second door in between him and the zombies. The infected people beat on the door, pulled on it, and tried to reach behind to grab him. It was only a moment before the infected took notice of the men right on the other side of the doorway. Their attention shifted from Branden to the fuckers who got Taylor killed. By that time, three more ghouls had entered the break room and now followed the other ones into the store.

  The men hesitated shooting, probably because they were worried about crossfire. I could hear one man begin panicking as the horde of seven infected pushed its way inside the store. With the assholes occupied, Branden burst from his hiding place behind the door. He helped me pick Taylor off the ground and Dana took point with his handgun at the ready. Once we stepped out into the lumberyard, we noticed two infected making their way toward us, but Dana dispatched them easily enough.

  “Where now?” I asked the rest of the group.

  “We can’t outrun them with Taylor. We should leave him,” Branden said. I refused to consider that an option. Taylor deserved better than to be picked apart and eaten.

  “Follow me,” Dana ordered, “to the back.” Dana began jogging off through the lumberyard, leaving Branden and I with no choice but to follow him.

  Dana led us through the piles of plywood and lumber. We found a parking area behind the store next to the loading docks. Luckily for us, Dana knows how to hotwire a vehicle. Branden and I threw Taylor up into the back of a flatbed truck and I climbed up next to his corpse. Branden took the passenger seat as Dana tampered with the wires under the steering wheel. The diesel roared to life, and we drove out of the back, away from the store.

  In the back with Taylor, I couldn’t help but just stare at him the whole way to the Warehouse. His eyes were closed, and his face was relaxed; I would have guessed he was asleep if I didn’t know better. Seeing him die in front of me was different than when I found my family dead. I felt more stirred up by it. How could it be that the death of a friend might affect me more than the death of my relatives? Maybe the combination of Miranda being missing, Taylor’s death, and my family’s deaths are all just adding up to the point where it’s getting harder to keep myself together.

  When we arrived at the Warehouse, I stayed in the back while Branden ran inside to get Will. Dana and I waited for a minute or two in silence. Branden returned with more than just Will; Lisa came out of her turtle shell to join us. They inspected him and asked us what had happened, and we told them in a brief manner what we had experienced.

  Lisa shook her head and said, “What are you going to do with his body?”

  “Burn him,” I said. “Better to be safe than sorry.” I clambered down from the truck, grabbed my dead friend’s feet, and pulled him closer. Dana grabbed the other end of Taylor and lifted him out of the truck with me. We walked out toward the place in the parking lot where we had burned Bruce. Branden went inside to retrieve the small amount of gasoline we had accumulated over the past few days, and I began pulling things from Taylor’s pockets. In his left pocket, he had some ammo for the Circuit Judge we had left behind in the home improvement store. In his right, I found the cigarette I had given him, droopy and crinkled. I sighed heavily. It’s still intact, so I could smoke it if I wanted to. But I felt like holding on to it for a while, so I just cautiously placed it in my backpack.

  We all went our separate ways, wandering around the Warehouse for an hour or so. I just stayed outside. The fence in the back kept a few roaming infected from getting inside and becoming a problem, so I didn�
��t bother dispatching them. I took a seat against the wall below one of the loading docks and sat there for a while. In my time there, I came to realize a few things about myself.

  The world is different, and I can’t keep living the way that I always did. I have to shake the pacifist side of myself if I want a chance at living. I’m going to make myself be more assertive. I won’t let anyone walk all over me. In my opinion, this new life doesn’t have to be gruesome and savage, but if someone else is, I have to be. I believe that people still have the ability to be forgiving and compassionate, and everyone is simply afraid. That fear is what is driving them to kill and steal. In the end, I think it’s making this place worse off than it has to be.

  Will walked up to me, interrupting my gloomy thoughts. “Hey,” he said.

  I sighed heavily.

  “Earlier, while you guys were out, I went up on the roof and looked around. I was up there for an hour or so, and I saw a truck. It parked for probably ten minutes on the bridge over the interstate to the south. I could barely see it, but it looked like an olive green military truck. You know, the ones with the cloth over the top?”