“Wow. With everything else going on around us, here we have to have this little soap opera playing out, too. I don't ever remember life being this fucking complicated before the infection.”
. . .
The ex-ironworker was watching the house carefully, munching on the remains of a field mouse he'd caught a few moments earlier. A young female was on the porch, rifle leaning against the rail while she scanned the road with a pair of binoculars. He actually had no clue about what the binoculars were or what they did, but had enough sense to stay hidden when she turned his way. He also recognized the rifle as being dangerous, though he had no idea how it worked. The attack on the house and the ambush in the field had been his doing; his and two others, one now dead, who'd organized the mob of infected. Now he realized that any attempt at taking the house and feeding on the occupants would require a much larger attack from several directions to overwhelm the defenders. He didn't care how many of his own kind would die in the attempt; the survivors could feed off their own dead while he and his lieutenants fed on the fresh meat inside.
. . .
It was approaching nightfall when the three of them arrived at the gun outlet. Vickie and Pete made their way to the door, her bow at the ready, his AR shouldered and he led the way. Carolyn was atop the truck's cab with her own AR, covering their advance. Vickie stopped suddenly, drawing the bow and loosing an arrow into the chest of an infected who came out from behind a panel truck. Two others appeared and began to feed off their fallen comrade. Vickie took a second one down with another arrow and Pete dispatched the last with a hatchet. She turned around to wave at Carolyn, who nodded back, then they advanced to the doors.
Pete was prepared to pry the doors open, but they pushed apart easily and the smell of rotted flesh and bodily waste hit them immediately. He rubbed a dab of Vicks under his nose and handed the jar to Vickie, who did the same. As always, that helped mask at least some of the stench. She shot two former customers and Pete cleaved the skull of an ex clerk and they quickly checked the rest of the store. Finding it clear, Vickie went back outside to trade places with Carolyn. While she stood watch with her bow, Carolyn and Pete began loading ammunition into carts. It took nearly two and a half hours, including the time it took him to use a sledgehammer to break down a block wall leading into a storeroom with a heavy steel door, but they loaded boxes and crates of ammunition, dividing them between the two vehicles. Extra rifles, pistols, revolvers and shotguns, along with two more bows and a hundred or so arrows topped off their load. They decided they didn't need to chance checking out the other, smaller gun-shops and stopped for the night at a Walgreens, Carolyn raiding the place for all the bandages, antiseptics and drugs she could fit into what little space remained in the vehicles.
Vickie took the first watch while Carolyn and Pete retired to the back of the store. Not a half hour later, she heard Carolyn giggling, followed a few minutes later by soft moans and muffled gasps. She heard Pete grunt and Carolyn cry out and then everything was quiet again. Smiling, if a bit sadly, she decided she'd let them have an extra hour or so before waking Pete to relieve her.
. . .
Just after first light the next morning, Liz noticed movement in the field across the road. A group of thirty or so infected were approaching the house as fast as their clumsy legs would take them. She raised her rifle and fired at the nearest, punching a hole in its belly. The noise drew Jake and the rest of them to the front of the house where they all began firing. They'd brought down over twenty of them when dozens more began streaming around the sides of the house, having approached from the rear while everyone's attention was riveted. More emerged from the overgrown field and two large groups moved toward the house from either direction on the road. Eve was sent back into the house to bring out all the loaded magazines and boxes of spare ammunition as each of the others emptied their weapons again and again at the fast-approaching horde.
. . .
“Are you going to ride with me on the way back?” Pete asked Carolyn, leaning down to kiss her neck.
“No, I'm going to ride with Vickie again. I think the two of us need to talk a few things over on the way.”
“Okay. I'm sure going to be lonely on that long ride, though.”
“Oh, yeah,” she rolled her eyes. “You were just hoping for a little action while you drove, weren't you?”
“Well,” Pete grinned, “I wouldn't turn it down.”
Vickie was filling the last gas can from one of the abandoned cars in the lot, the three of them already having topped off the Hummer and the 350.
“Hey, save that for when we get back,” she teased.
Carolyn kissed Pete and he reluctantly climbed into the truck alone. He led the way out of the parking lot, bouncing a couple of infected off the railroad tie he'd wired to the front of the vehicle, and down the road back toward their house.
“So, did you and Pete do a lot of talking last night?”
“Among other things,” Carolyn smiled.
“Things seem to be moving pretty fast.”
“They have to with the way the world is now,” she answered with a sigh. “I don't know, it just seems like you have to reach out for any kind of happiness you can now, you know? Anyway, since it looks like you and Jake are finally going to hook up, I needed something more in my life.”
Vickie gazed out the side window for a while as Carolyn kept the Hummer a few dozen yards behind Pete's truck.
“So, does this mean the end of you and me?”
“We won’t be sleeping in the same bed anymore,” Carolyn admitted. “I’m going to move in with Pete, but it doesn’t have to be the end of us. We could still make time for each other. Pete and I talked that over, sort of.”
“That must have been some conversation!”
“Well, it was a bit awkward. Anyway, he’s not adamantly opposed to the idea. It's kind of a male fantasy anyway, you know,” she chuckled.
“Whoa! Where are we going with this?”
“Oh, nothing like that,” Carolyn laughed. “There are going to be boundaries. It just depends on how complicated it all gets.”
“You mean it can get even more complicated than it already is?”
“You know how I feel about you, Vickie. That hasn't changed. But this is just so, I don't know, just so strange! I just don't know how all the details will work out. You and Jake, me and Pete, me and you, I don’t know where it’s all going to lead to or how long it’s going to last.”
“Well, things are going to be interesting once we get back.”
The miles passed in relative quiet, the infected few and mostly unaware of them until they'd passed them by, staring after them with open mouths and reaching arms. About noon, they stopped for a bathroom break and a quick stretch, then Carolyn got into the 350 with Pete and they continued down the road.
“I'm glad you decided to ride with me,” Pete told her as he rested his hand on her knee.
“You're still thinking you’re going to get some action, aren’t you?” she mockingly accused him.
“Why, I wasn't thinking any such thing,” he protested unconvincingly.
“Uh huh. You think you can keep the truck on the road?” she asked as she began undoing the front of his pants.
Vickie wondered why the truck was weaving on the road and she started to pull up beside it when she saw the way Pete was leaning back in his seat, which was pushed back as far as it could go. With the expression on his face and the occasional glimpse of the back of Carolyn's head near the steering wheel it dawned on her suddenly and, red-faced, she dropped back to a respectful distance, smiling to herself. She planned to hand Carolyn a bottle of Listerine and to tease her mercilessly when they got back.
Chapter 28: Aftermath
The sun was low in the sky when the house finally came into view. Pete slowed the truck and Vickie could see Carolyn readying her rifle, the barrel pointing out the side window. Pulling closer, dead bodies were everywhere on the grounds in front of the
house, piled two and three deep around the porch. She drove holding her .38 in her right hand, trying to prepare herself for the worst. They pulled as close as they could to the porch and Tom emerged from the house, looking exhausted, but smiling as he waved to them.
“Good God,” Pete called as he stepped out. “What the hell happened?”
“They came at us early this morning,” Tom explained as Liz and Eve joined him on the porch. “They came in waves, hundreds of them. For a while, I was sure they were going to overwhelm us, but they had to climb over the dead bodies of the first waves and a lot of them stopped to feed on them and it slowed them down enough we were just able to keep up.”
“Where's Jake?” Vickie called out worriedly.
Liz's face contorted with a pained expression and she turned around and went back into the house while Tom avoided her gaze. Suddenly frightened, she stepped over bodies onto the porch and repeated her question. Eve hugged her tightly, sobbing against her shoulder and Tom finally met her gaze and looked at her with sorrowful eyes for a moment.
“There were just so many of them. Liz and Eve kept reloading the magazines, but they couldn't keep up with all the rounds we were shooting. Jake and I ended up fighting them on the porch with machetes and hatchets. We’d killed one of the alphas and the last one took off back into the field when it was obvious they weren't going to take the house. Jake went after him.”
“You let him go by himself?” Vickie shrieked. “How could you let him go alone?”
Eve took a step back and looked at her dad; he just shook his head and turned back to Vickie.
“Jake fought them off, helped keep them away from the rest of us. He waded into them, dropping them one after another but...” He had to stop for a moment before continuing. “He was bitten.”
“No! No!” Vickie cried out faintly, covering her mouth with her hands.
“He took off after the last one,” Tom continued hesitantly, “said he was going to try to hunt him down and kill him before he... before he turned.”
Vickie collapsed in a heap on the bloody porch, face buried in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Carolyn and Eve managed to help her into the house onto a chair in the living room.
“Honey, I am so sorry,” Carolyn started.
“No! It can't happen! Not Jake!” Vickie rebelled. “After everything he's been through, it can't end this way!”
“I'm sorry, Vickie,” Tom offered. “I saw the bite. I saw it sink its teeth into his left arm. It was a deep bite. He knew what was going to happen, and he didn't want any of us to see him turn. He said to tell you he loved you, that he wished he could have seen you one last time. I'm so sorry.”
Carolyn and Eve took charge of Vickie, Carolyn making her swallow a sedative and staying with her until it took effect as she cried herself to sleep.
“So, what do we do now?” Pete asked Tom after Carolyn reported that Vickie was out.
“We can't stay here anymore, obviously. There are too many bodies and too much blood and gore and this place will be unlivable once they start rotting in the sun. We should load up everything we can into the van and the Hummer and that Mustang and be prepared to leave tomorrow as soon as we can.”
“God, of all of us, I would have thought Jake would be the last to go.”
“I know; it doesn't seem real. I don't know how we'll get along without him. He was like the glue holding us together. If it wasn't for the way he organized our defenses here, they'd have overrun us for sure. I don't know what we do now.”
“We survive,” Carolyn said simply. “We stay alive and we find another place and we keep going. He'd want us to go on, to restart a civilization somehow. That was his plan from the beginning and I don't intend to let him down.”
“You're right,” Pete agreed, taking her hand. “Tom and I will stay on the balcony tonight, keeping watch and, in the morning, we'll load up and start looking for a new place.”
. . .
Vickie slept fitfully during the night, Carolyn by her side, holding her tightly when her dreams turned ugly and woke her, leaving her to cry herself back to sleep. Nearly a dozen infected stumbled upon the corpses during the night, feasting on their dead brethren and the two men watched, unwilling to risk the sound of gunfire attracting more and content to leave them alone unless they got too interested in the house.
The household stirred to life at dawn, the stench from the bodies already so strong as to almost be felt. Tom and Pete picked off the newcomers, those who hadn't already filled their stomachs and moved on, one by one with .22 rifles while the rest of the group loaded as many supplies as they could. They were on their way before noon, Pete leading in the 350, Tom driving the Hummer, Carolyn in the Town and Country with Vickie, and Liz with Eve bringing up the rear with the Mustang.
They had an idea where they were going; heading down the road to cross the bridge where they'd earlier dumped the bodies from the first attack, deeper into farm country. A bit more than eight miles further along, they stopped to check out a farmhouse they’d noticed on an earlier excursion, nestled just behind two huge willow trees with pines lining one side of the long driveway. Sitting about forty yards from the road, it was a big, two-story house. There was a spacious second floor balcony and a porch that wrapped around the front and most of the way along each side. Like the one they'd had to abandon, the house rose several feet from the ground on a brick foundation and six steps led to the porch. The barn behind it had burned, only the blackened remains of ruined farm equipment and a few stout timbers and the stone foundation remaining, but there was a smaller barn and several sheds which had survived with some scorching on the sides facing the barn. A creek flowed behind the house and a small pond, maybe twenty yards across pooled a hundred or so yards from the back door. A wide, sturdy wooden bridge crossed the stream, leading to a field of corn covering many acres. The long desiccated remains of a score of bodies were scattered about, mostly near the front porch.
Pete tried the door, finding it locked. He rapped loudly and waited half a minute for an answer, then broke a window and, shotgun in hand and Tom covering with a rifle, crawled through. They searched the entire house, finding it empty. On the kitchen table lay a hand-written note; “Food gone, ammunition low. Don't want them eating our bodies. God forgive us. Tim and Marie Robinson.”
Upon further examination, they found the charred remains of two bodies in the barn, each skull holed by a single bullet.
“Looks as likely a place as we'll find,” Pete told the rest. “I just can't stop thinking about all the work we put into building up defenses around the other house.”
“Those defenses saved our lives,” Tom said. “There's an old well in the yard with a hand pump, still works. LP tank in the back, about a third full, wood stove in a huge kitchen alongside the gas range, Franklin stove in the living room, fireplaces with inserts in the bedrooms. Seems to be about two cords of wood under cover by one of the sheds, but we'll have to cut a lot more if we plan on wintering here.”
“Why should this place be any safer than the last?” Liz wanted to know. “We thought we could wait it out there, too, and we were wrong.”
“Our defense works did allow us to repel that big attack. Now we need another base, a home, something with four walls and a roof, some place that we can defend. And I truly believe Jake took out that last alpha before, ah...” Pete stopped, glancing at Vickie who'd lowered her head and put her hand on Carolyn's shoulder for support at the mention of Jake's name. “Anyway, I think we won't see that kind of organized attack again anytime soon.”
“I think Pete's right,” Tom said. “Those smart infected organized that attack. We killed one of them right there on the porch for sure and I have no doubt Jake took out the other. Without their leaders,” he continued, “the rest of the infected are just drones roaming the countryside looking for food. They've never before shown any kind of organization and I don't think they're capable of it by themselves. Even when they have attacked in groups before
, without leaders there was never any kind of coordination; they just rushed at us, each for themselves.”
“I have to agree,” Carolyn said, a comforting arm around Vickie's shoulder. “Jake would have taken the other one down before turning.”
“He would never have turned,” Vickie said in a barely audible voice. “He wouldn't have let himself. I know he's dead. If they didn't kill him, he would have done it himself to keep from turning.”
Carolyn walked her to a sofa and sat with her, holding her as she quietly sobbed.
“Well,” Tom said, “There are four bedrooms, so take your pick. Then, let's start hauling supplies in.”
It was a long, tiring day, moving all their supplies into the house and getting them organized, hauling off the decayed corpses from the grounds and, finally, burying the remains of the couple who'd chosen suicide as the way out. Eve stayed close to Vickie throughout, trying to comfort her, to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.
Chapter 29: Leaderless
Vickie was still feeling the loss deeply the next morning as she helped Liz make breakfast; something to keep her mind otherwise occupied. Tom and Pete explored the outbuildings and the scouted the surrounding area. The big front yard and the long, straight road whose shoulder dropped off sharply into the fields beyond plus the rapid stream behind the house made for a good defensible position with clear fields of fire.
“I think this is an even better place than the last one,” Pete enthused as they all sat down for breakfast.
“It's such a nice place, why isn't anyone else already using it?” queried Carolyn. “I mean, I've run into maybe two dozen living people in the last six weeks, how about the rest of you?” The others had to admit that they'd seen only that many or fewer. “What does that mean? Empty farms, empty towns? This was a pretty populated area before the infection. How many unlooted stores have we come across? Gun shops, pharmacies, food stores, department stores. Where are all the survivors?”
The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 21