He started the big generator from the panel in the utility room, maybe the noise would draw some of them away from the building, put on some water to boil and rinsed out the three cups they'd used for wine the night before, spooning instant coffee into them. He was briefly tempted by the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d found upon arriving on the island before deciding that he'd save it until the situation was irredeemably hopeless. He went back to each window to reassure himself that they were all firmly latched and checked the front and kitchen doors yet again. Lastly, he went back into the utility room to double-check that door and he could hear the water flowing down the drainpipe and listened for a moment to the faint sound of the two women giggling in the shower. He smiled a rueful smile, regretting he'd not taken Vickie up on her offer before; it looked as though he might never get another chance. When they finally came downstairs, he offered each a cup of coffee and they sat down again at the table.
“What's going on outside?” Carolyn asked after taking a sip.
“The fence is down and they're inside the compound,” Jake said, matter-of-factly.
“What do we do next?” Vickie's face paled as she asked.
“Same plan,” he shrugged. “Wait it out. Did either of you look upriver at the bridge before you came down?”
“No,” Carolyn replied. “I guess we just didn't want to think about it.”
“Well, probably a good idea to take a look. I'll go look after I finish my coffee.”
The flow of once-human traffic across the bridge had subsided quite a bit. Instead of thousands crowding the approaches, there were now only scores, few enough that they were no longer being forced over the side into the water. Jake scanned the water with the binoculars and saw no sign of any more infected being carried downstream. On the ground below him, the infected writhed and struggled, bled and died. In another day or so, hopefully, their numbers would be manageable and they could escape the refuge that had now become their prison. He began to think about the old garage he'd had to abandon, the food and water there, the weapons and ammo he'd left behind. The place was too small for all of them to live there comfortably and, as he now realized, was in too exposed a position to be properly defended against a horde of the size that had descended upon the island.
“It looks better than yesterday,” Vickie said hopefully after he'd handed her the binoculars. “The smell is getting pretty ripe, though.”
Jake looked at both of them for a moment before saying, “We're going to have to leave the island as soon as we can. There's no way we can clean up all this... this mess they're leaving. It's going to become a breeding ground for disease. We need to fill up every container we've got with water, get all the ammo and medical supplies together, pack up as much food as we can fit in the Hummer and be ready to take off at a moment’s notice. We should probably look for another vehicle too, just in case.”
Tears began to flow down Vickie's cheek and she sniffled and tried to stifle a sob. Carolyn put her arms around her and hugged her to chest, whispering that everything was going to work out.
“How long until we leave?” she asked him.
“I'm figuring no more than two days. The stench is already getting to be almost too much to tolerate and the flies are finding their way into the building by the drove. If we stay much longer, we'll be risking disease, I think.”
Carolyn sat Vickie down on the bed back inside the room and came back out on the balcony, putting her hands on the railing and looking down at the mass of infected.
“What's going on over there?” she asked, pointing.
Jake looked down and could see that a pair of infected were gathered together, feasting on various dismembered body parts while the rest kept a respectful distance. When one got too close, the pair snarled and growled at it and it meekly backed away. To his stunned eyes, one approached them tentatively and held out a bloody mass, seemingly of internal organs, which one of the pair quickly snatched from his hands, baring teeth while the subservient drone quickly backed away.
“Son of a bitch!” Jake muttered.
Vickie immediately came off the bed and back onto the balcony, a look of shock and fright on her face.
He turned to look at her and saw the fear in her eyes. “Something bad is happening. Those two are alphas and they seem to have become, I don’t know, leaders. See how the others are keeping clear of them? Some of them are bringing meat to them; offerings.”
Jake turned and picked up an AR propped against a wall.
“I don't know whether there’s some kind of formal hierarchy developing down there, or if they're even capable of that type of organization, but I think we need to take those two out before this goes any further. Both of you be ready with rifles.” He put the AR to shoulder and looked at each of them in turn; Vickie with tears still streaming down her cheeks blinked her eyes clear and nodded. Carolyn’s face was outwardly calm, but her lower lip trembled and she pulled it back between her teeth and nodded also. “Now!”
All three rifles barked at almost the same instant and both targets dropped with obviously fatal head and neck wounds. For a moment, there was complete silence. Then, by twos and threes and then in ever greater numbers, the rest of the infected looked up at the balcony. The howling began almost immediately. All the infected wailed and screamed and stretched their arms up toward the three humans on the balcony, reaching out for them. Some tried to scale the walls, climbing over others in attempting to reach the balcony; more began beating against the shutters with fists and heads. Still others reacted with a wild frenzy of violence directed at their companions. Jake ushered the women back inside and closed and bolted the door.
“Well, I don't know now whether that was a mistake or not, but we sure got their attention.”
The howling, pounding and fighting went on all day as the infected desperately tried to force their way inside. The three companions spent the day organizing their supplies near the front door, keeping an eye on happenings from the second story windows. When Jake slid open the firing slit on one of the ground floor windows, bloody hands were immediately thrust into it and he had to have help beating at them with gun butts until they were withdrawn and he was able to get it closed again. At that, the infected continued to concentrate attention against that shutter, actually deforming the metal. Only after sunset did their efforts taper off to a stop as they became disoriented and confused in the darkness. The three trapped people slept downstairs, or at least tried to, one of them staying on watch at all times. By morning, they were all bleary eyed, tense and drained. At first light, the howling began again, first one voice, then ten, then dozens.
Jake estimated there were probably at least a hundred fifty infected still alive. There were still a few desultory fights, but their attention was mostly on the house now and how to get inside it. They'd discovered the front door and battered at it relentlessly for hours and Jake could see that he was wrong about it holding them off. Their unrelenting pounding and battering was actually beginning to break down the mortar into which the heavy steel hinges were set. The brick wall itself was beginning to weaken, showing the first signs of cracking and crumbling. After a second full day in the sun, the stench was overwhelming, all but unbearable and he knew they had to take action now.
On the balcony with their rifles again, the three of them began the grim task of taking down the infected shot by shot. Those who fell were trod upon by other infected, trying to get closer to the human feast above them and soon they were tramping on bodies piled three and four high. Vickie wept silently and Jake's jaw was set in grim determination while Carolyn's face was blank, emotionless as she squeezed off one round after another almost mechanically. Half an hour later, there were no more live targets in sight. By that time Vickie was emotionally drained and Carolyn was shaking so badly she could barely hold her rifle. Jake tried his best to put up a brave front but his own hands were trembling so badly he had difficulty shaking a cigarette loose from his pack and striking a match to light it. A
search through the other upstairs windows found eleven more infected still standing, which Jake duly dispatched, and then everything outside was quiet and still. He went to each downstairs shutter in turn and dropped another six that were invisible from the upper floor.
“I'm going out to make sure we got them all,” Jake said after smoking a second cigarette down to the filter.
“No!” Vickie shouted.
“Sooner or later, it's got to be done. We have to leave this place. I'll get my protective gear on and you two can cover me from the doorway and windows. I'll check around to make sure they're all down and we can start to load up the Hummer. Trust me. I'm not going to take any unnecessary chances.”
Vickie nodded, knowing he was right but still not liking it at all. Jake put on his heavy boots, leather leggings, armlets and gloves along with a football helmet he’d picked up, checked his two Glocks and grabbed a loaded shotgun, a bandolier with extra shells over one shoulder.
“Carolyn, you open the door, but stay behind it. If it's clear, I'll head out and you can cover me from the doorway. Vickie, when Carolyn tells you, open that window and cover me from there. We can do this. Just keep your heads. Carolyn, if I go down, you shut and bolt that door. Don't try to come after me and, whatever you do, don’t let Vickie out of the building, you hear?”
Carolyn swallowed hard and nodded, then took hold of the door handle.
“Now!” Jake said.
She pulled the door open quickly as Jake leveled the shotgun. He stepped out, craning his neck left and right, then stepped off the stoop and began carefully making his way into the yard. He nodded to Carolyn and heard the window opening and, out of the corner of his eye, saw a rifle barrel protrude from it. Twisting and turning to keep watch all around him, he began to make his way to the right side of the house, where the first section of fence had come down.
Just as he was about to leave Carolyn's line of sight, three figures rose quickly off the ground and rushed toward him from different directions. Jake fired the shotgun, racked the slide and fired again. One infected was down with a chest full of double-ought buckshot and a second took the load directly in the face. The third was upon him before he could rack the slide again, but he held the shotgun up with both hands to ward off the attacker. As he struggled with the third infected he heard rifle fire; spaced shots followed by rapid firing. A fourth attacker dived at his legs, sinking its teeth into the leather legging covering his shin. He managed to push off the standing assailant and slammed the butt of the shotgun into the bridge of its nose, smashing it to a bloody pulp. The infected staggered and was stunned long enough for Jake to fire, the muzzle of the shotgun four inches from its corrupted stomach. He drew a Glock and shot the one on the ground through the top of the head. By now, his left shoulder was screaming with pain and he slung the shotgun and ran toward the door, left arm tucked against his body, but all was again quiet.
“They rose up off the ground,” Carolyn panted. “About five of them, all at once. Then a dozen or more came around the side of the building, from where we shot them off the balcony. Oh, God, they were lying in wait for you!”
Vickie ran out the door and threw her arms around Jake, hugging him tightly and sobbing. “Thank God you're okay,” she wept.
Jake held her for half a minute with his good arm before gently disengaging. “That just made it all worth it,” he told her softly. Looking at Carolyn, he guided Vickie toward her and said, “Close the door and you two follow a few steps behind and to either side of me and we'll go through the compound and check the rest of them. If you have any doubts at all, put a bullet through their heads. Don't let your guards down! We've already seen these things are more clever than we ever gave them credit for.”
Another hour and another forty odd rounds later, they were satisfied that they were the only living things on the island except for the swarms of black flies and a growing gathering of carrion-eating birds. Back inside the house, Carolyn rigged up a sling for his nearly paralyzed arm. The gunfire had attracted several score of infected to the clearing across the footbridge and it took another hour to lure most of them into the water and drop the rest of them with the rifles. After another ninety minutes and nearly three hundred shots fired, they had the Hummer packed tightly with supplies and the three of them squeezed into what room was left. Vickie behind the wheel, they drove away from the island.
“Pull over here,” Carolyn instructed when they were a few miles down the road and no infected were in sight.
“What? We should keep moving,” Jake protested.
“Pull over. I want to look at your leg. The way you’ve been limping on it, it needs to be checked out.”
Vickie braked to a stop in the middle of an intersection where there was an unobstructed line of sight all around for a hundred yards or more. They stepped out of the vehicle and Jake undid the leather on his right leg and rolled up his pants, revealing an ugly bruise on his lower calf, just above the ankle.
“It's a good thing you had that heavy leather on,” Carolyn told him after examining the bruise. “You'd have been in deep shit without it. Thank God it didn't draw blood. Still, it must hurt like hell.”
“It is a bit sore.”
“Oh, you stupid, macho idiot,” Vickie cried. “You weren't going to say anything about it, were you?”
“It's not that big a deal,” Jake insisted. “I've had worse at the mill. I can't stop for every little cut or scrape or bruise, especially now.”
“You fucking dope,” Carolyn told him, point blank, punching him in his good arm. “Any kind of wound or injury is especially dangerous now! Any kind of contact with the infected has a chance of spreading that infection, particularly through a cut or a scrape!”
Jake turned to look at Vickie, seeing the fear and apprehension on her face, knowing what Carolyn said was true.
“You’re right, I know, but we really didn’t have time to stop and take care of it right away. It was more important to get away from the island first. If something like this happens again, I’ll see to it as soon as possible, circumstances permitting.”
“Just don’t try to play the hero to a couple of defenseless girls,” Carolyn added. “If what we did on the island doesn’t prove we can handle a tough situation, I don’t know how else to show you.”
“We need to keep moving,” Jake told them as he spotted a few infected heading their way. “We have to find another place before night.” They got back into the Hummer and Vickie steered it down the road again.
Chapter 18: Art and Ellen
They continued down the road, avoiding the larger masses of infected as much as possible, making their way back toward the sporting goods store. Slowing as they approached the parking lot, they saw two vehicles, a pickup and a van with a cargo carrier mounted on the roof that weren’t there when he made his last excursion. The driver’s door on the pickup was wide open and blood stained the pavement near it, a dark smear leading across the road into a grassy field. The accordion gate at the front of the store was open a couple of feet and the glass doors stood wide-open, bloodstains evident all around them.
“I'm going to go in here and see if there's anything left,” he told the two women. “We could use ammo for those .45s and grab a few .22 pistols; we can carry a lot more .22 ammo; I should have thought of that long ago. Maybe grab a couple more 9mms since there are three of us now.”
“Playing the hero again,” Carolyn scolded, “going in there alone to protect us poor, defenseless women?”
“It’s a matter of who’s had the most experience,” Jake gave back at her. “Not to mention I’m the only one wearing any kind of protective gear. I need the two of you to keep an eye on things out here and, if I run into trouble, one of you can rush in and save me. Does that suit you?”
Carolyn snorted, but didn’t put up an argument.
Vickie parked about fifty feet from the entrance and Jake slipped out of the sling and rotated his shoulder, finding it still painful but more man
ageable now. He approached the two vehicles, a Chevy S-10 and a newer Town and Country minivan. Both were unoccupied. In the back of the van were a couple of boxes full of canned goods and several black plastic bags, which he didn't look into. The cab of the pickup was littered with trash, mostly food wrappers, beer cans and empty cigarette packs. The truck bed contained several cases of beer and dozens of empty cans along with various other items of trash and two, five-gallon gasoline cans, both full. He made a mental note and headed for the storefront. There were spent shell casings littering the entrance, blood all over the floor and a number of shelves and display cases had been overturned; it was obvious that some sort of fight had taken place here. Pistol at the ready, he called out “Hello! Any of you ugly mothers in here?”
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard another voice reply “Hello! Don't shoot! We've been hiding in here!”
“Come out and let me see you!” Jake commanded.
A door slowly opened at the back of the store and a man in his mid-sixties with thinning white hair and a paunch eased out with his hands in the air.
“I'm Art Honeywell. I don't mean you any harm, mister! Really!”
“You said 'we'! Who else is with you?”
The man hesitated for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder and said “Come on out, Ellen. You too, Mark.”
A graying woman stepped cautiously out from the back room, followed by a man a few years younger than Jake, with his own left arm in a sling, bloody swollen lips, dark bruises on his cheeks and a nasty looking cut on his forehead.
“Is that it?” Jake demanded.
“Please, mister,” Art said. “This is all of us. We don't want any trouble.”
“Step outside, and don't do anything to make me have to kill you!”
The three of them obeyed and Vickie gasped when they appeared in the parking lot.
“Ellen! Mr. Honeywell!” she shouted.
The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 12