The Book of a Few

by Rodgers, Austen

  ——

  I only got two hours of sleep. Dana woke me up around six p.m. as we were coming up on Omaha. The city was more desolate and destroyed than I had anticipated. A charred gasoline tanker was tipped on its side amidst a pileup, and the fire had spread to the other vehicles surrounding it. People sitting in their seats were burnt to a red and black husk. Some were children.

  Just after crossing a bridge that led into town, Dana pointed out a peculiar sign. Someone had written a message on the siding of a motel in big red letters. It read “HELP. 8/5/13.” That was yesterday. Dana squinted his eyes as he surveyed the area ahead for an off ramp. He began letting the car slow down.

  “It’s not worth it,” I said. “We are fine on the road. If we stop, we don’t know what will happen. This is foreign territory.”

  “We’ll be all right. I just want to check it out,” Dana said.

  “Your curiosity is going to kill us!”

  “Someone could be in real trouble. What good are we when we have an opportunity to help someone in need and decide not to?”

  “That’s unusually moral for you, Dana,” I said.

  Dana glared me down.

  We drove into the parking lot and parked the car. “It could be a trap!” I said.

  Dana got out of the car anyway. “You coming with?” he asked.

  I groaned and got out, too. The doors to the hotel rooms faced outside along the side of the building. We walked along the first side of the building with no signs of anyone. As we walked to the other side of the building, I double-checked my rifle. I kept my eyes looking outward toward the surrounding buildings. The back of the hotel was also lined with rooms. Each door was accompanied by only one window, and only one door was marked with a red ‘x’.

  “Who would do that?” I whispered to Dana. “Leavening a big ‘x’ is like saying ‘I’m in here, come steal all my stuff.’”

  “Just shut up,” Dana whispered back.

  He held his handgun up as we approached the door. Dana pressed his back against the wall for a moment. He turned his head to glance inside the small window.

  “I can’t see anything. I’m opening it,” he said.

  Before I had any time to talk sense into him, his hand had already extended to the doorknob and had begun pushing the door open. I stood behind him in silence. A moment passed with the door fully open, and nothing happened. Dana took a step inside and then turned to me.

  “You’re going to want to see this,” he said.

  Dana did not seem alarmed or threatened by the contents of the hotel room, so I followed him. The interior was dingy, and the carpet was marked with stains of settled blood. The two other men present in the room remained unresponsive as we walked inside. One lay on the bed, which was cleared of all but one pillow and a sheet. The second man sat extended backwards on an armed chair. The seated man had nothing but bandages wrapped around his left leg. The man in the bed had bloodied cloth over one side of his face and around his head. I wondered in my silent thoughts what had happened to these two men.

  Both wore the same outfit that is standard among military personnel. Two Kevlar helmets sat on a small coffee table next to the bed’s comforter, which had been wadded and tossed to the side. I examined the bedridden man first. His face was scruffy, and I could see the edge of a large crusted wound along the rim of his bandage that covered a large portion of his face. I pulled a corner back, and released the protective dressing after only seeing another inch of the wound. I had seen enough to know that it was bad.

  “Check for pulses,” Dana said as he took a step toward the sitting man.

  The stranger gripped his gun that rested across his lap as he sluggishly awoke. He struggled to raise the firearm to his shoulder, and with his other hand he reached into a pocket for a moment before extending it to the forestock of his gun. Dana was quick and pulled his handgun up to eye-level and pointed it at the man’s head.

  The wounded man tried to speak, but only an unintelligible mumble was produced. He cleared his throat with a harsh cough and said, “Put your gun down.”

  “You first, sir,” Dana said.

  The stranger sighed. “Food. Do you have any food?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “Did you come to help or take, then?”

  “Hopefully a bit of both. Do you think that vest would fit a big guy like me?” Dana asked.

  “No, Dana. They obviously need it more than us,” I interjected.

  “No.” Dana scowled at me. “They obviously need medicine more than they need those vests, Chester.”

  The man’s eye’s burst into a flame of desperation. “What do you have? I need antibiotics, burn cream, painkillers, and a proper sling.”

  “We might have some of those…” Dana trailed off in thought. “Chester, go take a peek in the car.”

  “If you can get me three of those and some food,” he paused, “I’ll give you all the extra equipment I have on me.” The man broke into another fit of coughs.

  Just as I reached the door, Dana said, “Now, can we put our guns down?”

  I turned down the sidewalk and headed around the building, all the while contemplating this occurrence. I remember thinking that these two military men did not seem to be C.V.P.M. at all, so I could rest at ease in that sense. Where had these men come from, and what had happened to them?

  I popped the trunk of the car and began searching inside until I spotted the plastic sack of various medicines deep inside the pit. It was stashed behind a small mountain of flats of bottled water. As I stretched myself to reach behind the water, a familiar sound touched my ear. It was a gunshot, followed by a second and a third. I began running back to the room, but I wouldn’t say it was out of care or worry for Dana. I ran toward the sound purely for my own wish to know what was happening.

  Dana was on the bed, and the sitting man was now lying on the floor. Dana held his shoulder and blood dribbled through the spaces between his fingers. Dana gritted his teeth. I had no doubt in my mind that the man on the floor was deceased when I noticed the nickel-sized hole that had been punched through the bridge of his nose.

  “No surprises here,” I stated.

  “Fuck you,” Dana said. He took a moment to catch his breath and continued, “I had to. He wouldn’t put his gun down, and before I knew it we were shooting each other.”

  “I know how things are around you. You don’t need to lie anymore.”

  “I’m not fucking lying, you piece of shit,” he said.

  Infuriated, I retaliated harshly, “I’m the piece of shit? Really, Dana? You do realize that none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

  “None of what? I fucking told you what happened! We got in a stalemate, and we both knew that one of us was going to die.” He looked up at me. “You should be happy I’m still alive, Chester.”

  I bent down and began unfastening the vest from the deceased man and spoke hushed and honestly, “Well, I’m not.”

  I knew that as I worked on removing the man’s gear, Dana’s eyes were fixed on me. He was probably thinking about putting his gun to my head and taking my life.

  Still in the same hushed tone, I said, “I mean that I wouldn’t be here, dealing with another one of your messes, if it weren’t for you in the first place.”

  “Oh, fucking cry some more. I have stood up for you and the rest of the guys more than all of you combined. Just recently, I got us a deal with the C.V.P.M. and saved all of you.”

  “The funny thing about all that is the latter wouldn’t have even happened if you weren’t involved with the group.”

  “Christ, I’m the only person that has kept us moving forward. The only reason why you are still here today is because you hid away from everything that is going on outside the Warehouse. Must have been fucking rough.”

  I found a roll of gauze and some tape in one of the dead man’s pouches. I threw them and the vest at Dana and stood up. He was barely able to catch them while his one han
d was busy squeezing his shoulder.

  “I need an answer right now,” I said without making eye contact. “If there is anything good left in you, tell me the truth, that’s all I’m after.” Dana looked at me quizzically. “Did you give the C.V.P.M. my notebook?”

  Dana grinned and chuckled. “You really don’t realize how useless you are, do you? Why would I steal your journal? So I could get you to come with me when all you do is mope about?”

  I shook my head and rolled my eyes.

  “Seriously, that’s all you do! Walk around the Warehouse from dark room to lonely roof and write in your damn journal. ‘Oh, I lost my notebook! I’m going to die! We shouldn’t have killed Bruce! Woe is me!’” he said in a high-pitched, mocking voice. “I would rather have Will with me right now.”

  A scream came from behind me. A crazed woman was rushing toward the hotel room’s door. As I squared my feet and prepared myself to lunge upward and push the woman back, her skull erupted and she fell to the ground. Dana sat behind me with a smoking gun in hand.

  “Time to go,” he said. “Grab the guns and that other guy’s gear.” He pointed toward the man on the bed and picked up the helmets on the table.

  Within a minute, we had grabbed everything of value from the room: two M4 carbines, six full 20-round boxes of ammo, Kevlar vests and combat helmets, a few rations, menthol cigarettes (thank God), flashlights, a little audio recorder that was in the sitting man’s pocket, handcuffs, and even pepper spray. I had carried most of it out of the building so Dana could still have a free hand to use his gun, but I made sure to close the door behind us. Hopefully, the man in the bed would still have a chance to survive that way.

  Another maddened person accosted us before we could reach the car. The infected, this time a man, managed to reach Dana, who had missed the first three times he shot at it. It slammed into him and pushed him down to the ground. Quickly, I stepped up and pushed the infected man off Dana with my foot. While it was scrambling to get back on Dana, I pressed my weight on its back. Dana dispatched it while it was temporarily pinned.

  Three more infected made themselves apparent when they screamed from across the parking lot. I whipped the driver door open and threw all the equipment we grabbed into the back seats. By the time I seated myself, Dana had gotten up off the ground and had opened the passenger door. Without either of us buckling our seat belts, I reversed the car into one of the infected before driving back toward the interstate.

  Needless to say, as I am writing this, Dana is driving, and it is actually the sixteenth day. For part of the fifteenth night, after our incident in Omaha, I drove. With nearly five hours behind the wheel, we ultimately decided to stop around eleven. We found ourselves a gravel road between the two smaller towns, Paxton and Ogallala. It was a nice and quiet night, and I found myself surprisingly well-rested this morning.

  Paxton reminds me so much of Readlyn. It’s small, really small, and just has a homey feel to it. We only drove through a small portion of it to get onto a highway and find our gravel road, but I did get a good view of the town despite the lack of sunlight. In fact, there was no lighting at all. Streetlights failed to create even a flicker of light to see by, leaving our spectating limited to our headlights and the moon.

  A co-operative held multiple silos along the southwestern edge of town. Along the main stretch of the road, there is a beat-down winery, a library, and two undisturbed eateries. I thought about the smells the steakhouse must have once produced as we passed it and realized how much I miss the old life of pleasantries. A gas station with only two pumps and signs advertising cigarettes sat on a corner. A pile of used tires nearly chest-high blocked one of its service doors, giving it a cozy small-business feel to it. Perhaps these feelings are all pulled from the messy car shop I regularly went to back in Readlyn. Oh, well.

  Day Sixteen

  Got up around seven today, and within an hour, we were back up on the interstate. The pack of smokes I found on one of the Army guys in Omaha was only missing five or six cigarettes, so I smoked a few of those this morning. Best nicotine buzz ever. I also took some time while Dana was driving the first shift to look at the audio recorder. It is a digital recorder and has multiple files or recordings on it. Curious of their story, I listened to it.

  I started at one of the most recent recordings, which was dated the day before we had met them. The man’s voice was garbled and strained, and I never did catch any names. Based from context, the two soldiers were chasing after someone from an Air Force base in Nevada.

  The recorder explained that he had found and taken shelter in that motel room in Omaha after a run-in with the man they were after. He spoke of his failure to either kill or capture him, and he prays that no one will be harmed because of it. I could go on and on, as I listened to the recordings for at least an hour, but that is a book-length story by itself.

  I’ve decided the audio recordings and the device itself are quite valuable. It makes me glad that I have been taking the time to write down everything that has happened to myself. Being able to listen to someone else’s story and their problems is quite intriguing. I might even have to start using the recorder myself from time to time. I do prefer the written word, but it’s simply so much faster to record my own voice. I can also use it in a pinch where I may not have the time to write. Of course I will not overlap or delete the soldier’s recordings, as I wouldn’t deny anyone their voice.

  As morning discreetly changed to afternoon, I eagerly awaited the sight of the Rocky Mountains. I had seen them before on a trip with an old friend who’d brought me to Denver once before, but couldn’t remember the details of the mountains very clearly. It seemed that they did not come into sight until we began hitting the smaller suburbs of Denver.

  The deeper we traveled into Denver, the more obscene the surroundings became. Carcasses littered the roads, houses had been burnt down, and infected—dare I say herds of fifteen to twenty—were as common as the city’s streets. Looking down from overpasses revealed Denver’s dire situation. It was worse there than it was back home. More people, more chaos, more death.

  Dana and I kept our calm about us, even as the constant weaving through cars on the wrong side of the road added tension. It seemed that, even though the majority of this town was dead, you still naturally worried about oncoming traffic.

  Literally pushing your way through sick people became the norm. We discovered the sweet speed of fifteen miles per hour was just fast enough that the infected were unable to punch out glass or grab you from your seat, but slow enough not to heavily damage the car. By the time we had made it through three-fourths of Denver, we were used to it. The clunks and rolling bodies were normal at this point. Of course the infected would come after us for a while. But they would oftentimes lose interest or become distracted as we gained distance from them.

  It’s not like we had the option to stop in Denver, either. In fact, that was one of our fears. We worried that as we traveled along we would come across a barricade, or a large accident that would completely block us from going any farther. We would have no other choice than to take a side road and try to find our way back on the other side of the obstacle. Luckily, we did not have that problem. But we did have another.

  After breaking through Denver and into the suburbs on the west side of town, we had to make a quick stop for bodily functions. We looked about us and felt that it was safe, as there were no people to be seen. Just bodies.

  “No more than two steps away from your door,” Dana said, and I agreed.

  We stepped out and glanced around us one last time for safe measure. All was well, and we proceeded to unzip our pants and do what we stopped to do. Mid-stream my eyes caught sight of movement about a block away. It had disappeared since, but I knew that something had just been right there.

  I turned to Dana and whispered, “Just saw something down that road. Hurry up.” Both Dana and I affixed our eyes in that direction to see if the source of the movement would show itself agai
n.

  A hulking beast emerged between two homes and began charging toward us. Its forearms were disproportionately long and bereft of skin below the elbows.

  “In the car!” I screamed while fumbling with the button of my jeans.

  My scream was nothing compared to the volume of the beast’s roar. I opened the door and sat myself down as fast as I could. I reached out to grab the car door and beheld the creature only ten feet from me. Its muscular and nude physique loomed over me. It was at least eight and a half feet tall. Thick veins were visible on its forehead and upper body. Its eyes emitted immense anger and rage. I have never seen a creature from even a nightmare as foreboding and horrifying as this.