Sanctuary

by Blake Brown

  ​“Matt and I are going fishing, care to join?” Bryce asked, already knowing Byark would say yes.

  ​“That’s a great idea my friend. I’ll grab my things and meet you at the gate when I’m ready.” Byark replied with a huge grin.

  ​Bryce nodded and walked away from the other man’s small camp. As he made his way to the gate, he spotted a hungover and exhausted looking Alejandro exiting his RV. He still wanted to talk to him and gauge how he was doing, so he walked over. “Want to go fishing?” Bryce asked, believing that the fresh air and non-stressful activity would be good for Alejandro, it would hopefully also provide Bryce with the chance to talk to him further.

  ​“Sure, beats sticking around here with all of them.” Alejandro said, seeming half asleep and distant. Bryce wondered who Alejandro was referring to, seeing as how the other man seemed to like everyone in their group, excluding Randy and Nathan of course. “Let me take a piss and get some coffee in me really quick.” Alejandro finished, rubbing his slightly crusty eyes.

  ​“Sounds good, just meet us at the gate when you’re ready.” Bryce replied before walking away. He saw Grunt making his way towards him as he walked to the gate, his tail wagging and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He seemed practically healed by now, and he had regained most of his weight and muscle tone. The training and commands Bryce had been working on with the dog seemed to be working quite well also, so Bryce decided it was time for Grunt to get a little outdoor time and to be taken off his medical restriction. Bryce called Grunt to his side and the large Malinois listened obediently, walking up beside him.

  ​After fifteen minutes of waiting, all four men were at the gate and ready to head out. They called out to the others as they exited the camp, beginning their trek into the woods. Bryce led the group to a large stream that he had spotted before while searching for the wolves, the body of water ran off the American river and continued for miles before splintering off into several, small creeks. They dug up some earth worms from the wet dirt near the stream and severed them in half to bait their hooks. Then they set up their fishing poles and spread out small distances from each other before casting their lines.

  ​Byark naturally refused to use one of the poles they had retrieved from the camping store, instead finding a fallen tree branch to use. After carving some parts of it with his knife, he secured the fishing line to it and cast in with the others. Alejandro remained deadly silent as the other three joked and shared stories of past fishing trips. Bryce told the others about the times that he and his father had fished in these very same woods and how his father had taught him to fish and to respect the outdoors, making him the man he was today. Matt talked about the one and only time him and his dad had went fishing together in a boat in Folsom lake and how the trip had ended in a comedic disaster when they beached the rental boat on a large rock hidden under the water.

  ​“We tried everything to break the boat free, but it just wouldn’t budge. When it started taking in water, we had to swim back and forth hella times to get all our stuff back to shore. Bet dad was glad he paid that little bit extra for the rental insurance.” Matt said with a laugh as he finished up his story. Bryce was extremely glad that the young man, who he was starting to see as a younger brother, could talk about his father and remember him without getting upset. Bryce and Byark let out a laugh at Matt’s unfortunate story as it concluded.

  “I haven’t done much fishing since I came to America. Unfortunately, it doesn’t compare to the beautiful scenery of fishing in the Swedish countryside.” Byark said, staring off into the distance as he reminisced about his homeland. “What about you Alejandro? Much of a fisherman?” Byark asked, trying to entice Alejandro into joining the conversation.

  “Not really, I would go fishing with my uncle when I was a kid but that’s about it.” Alejandro replied, staring down at the slowly moving water. The group grew silent for a few minutes as they focused on the water and the few fish moving underneath the surface. Bryce watched Alejandro out of the corner of his eye, and he could see the man staring intently at the water. Alejandro bent down and took one hand off his fishing pole so that he could brace his weight on it at the water’s edge, leaning down towards the water and staring at his own reflection in the stream. Bryce focused more and more on the man and his strange actions. Alejandro looked slightly to the right of his reflection, as if he were looking at the reflection of someone or something behind him. Fear was evident on his face, but there was nothing behind him.

  A strong shiver seemed to spread throughout the man’s body as he shook his head. “No.” He whispered quietly.

  “What’s that?” Byark asked, looking over towards Alejandro. Alejandro looked up and locked eyes with Bryce, making a stern face that seemed to say “None of your fucking business” before standing up and placing both hands on his fishing pole again. “Did you say something friend?” Byark asked, oblivious to the change that was happening to Alejandro.

  “No.” Alejandro replied, and Bryce could tell that he wasn’t repeating what he said but telling the other man that he didn’t say anything. Bryce was growing more and more concerned about Alejandro, but he chose to keep watching him to see if his actions became a danger to any of the others before confronting him.

  “I got one!” Matt called out excitedly, beginning to reel in a fish. He yanked his fishing pole back as the medium sized fish drew close, and it plopped out of the water onto a small bed of rocks by the shore.

  Grunt rushed towards the wiggling creature as it gasped for water and flopped about. “Grunt.” Bryce said in a stern voice, causing the dog to circle back and sit by his feet, letting out a low whine as he watched the fish intently. Matt walked up to the fish and after struggling for a few moments to get a firm grasp on it, lifted it up and pulled the hook from its jaw, placing it in the cooler.

  They fished for two more hours, deciding to pack up and head home after Matt had caught his second fish, figuring the five they had caught would be more than enough to feed the whole group tonight. Byark had caught two of the fish and Bryce had caught one, leaving Alejandro to be the only one among them to come out empty handed, which Bryce figured was from his distracted lack of interest.

  As they made their way back to the cabin, Byark spotted a large gray squirrel and shot it out of the tree with an arrow, figuring that the extra meat would be appreciated. When they were still about a mile from home, they heard a man cry out in pain and terror from somewhere in the woods. Byark reacted quickly, pulling his axe and running towards the screams. Bryce set down the cooler and the squirrel that he carried by the tail as him and the others followed their companion.

  After a minute or two of running through the woods, they could not only hear the man’s screams, but also the shrieks of multiple infected and what sounded like a horse neighing and crying out. They broke through the tree line into a clearing to see a young man on horseback surrounded by infected. One of the infected creatures was biting deeply into the man’s left leg while another had its claws dug into his right hip and midsection. They aggressively tried to pull him from the horse, playing a sort of tug of war with his body. More of the infected were ripping into the horse’s belly and gnawing on its bloody legs, legs that were about to give out at any second.

  The four men were taken aback for a moment as they watched the grizzly scene unfold, knowing that even if the man and horse weren’t already fatally injured, they might not be able to survive an encounter with a dozen or more infected at close range. Two more figures on horseback rushed into the clearing from the opposite side of them, one male and one female. The young man fired a revolver into the group of infected, only downing one and injuring a few others before having to reload the weapon. The woman slashed and stabbed at the group with what resembled a spear, quickly downing more of them than her companion. The injured horse collapsed to the ground as the creatures continued to feed on its remains, and the bloody man rolled off it, either unconscious or already dead. The two crea
tures that were playing tug of war with the man fell upon him, insuring his death as they tore into his flesh.

  More infected rushed out from where the three horse riders had come from, attacking the man with the revolver as he was closest to them. Byark rushed into the fray with his axe at the ready, seeming to have no concern for his own safety. Bryce, Alejandro, and Matt rushed in guns blazing, backing up their friend as they started to pick off the creatures one by one. A small cluster of the things descended upon the woman and her horse, and she pulled up on her reigns hard, causing the horse’s front feet to rise off the ground. It then slammed back down with all its weight onto two of the infected, crushing one’s skull in, and smashing in the other’s sternum, causing it to gasp desperately for air as its mouth filled with blood.

  The creatures started tearing away at the second man’s horse, causing it to fall to the ground like the one before it as its legs gave out and its neck was torn open. The man slammed onto the ground, knocking the wind out of him and nearly knocking him unconscious. The large animal’s weight slammed onto his left leg, pinning him to the ground and twisting his leg at a brutal angle, causing his bones to snap in multiple locations. Byark hacked away at the creatures, thinning their numbers as he made his way towards the incapacitated man. One of the infected things ran towards the pinned man, dropping down as it reached him to begin its feast. Byark slammed into the side of it with his shield and sent it sprawling to the ground. The creature got back up to its feet quickly and charged the big man. He hacked into its belly with his axe and in one, fluid motion, sliced its gut open, causing its innards to pile out onto the bloody patch of grass below it.

  Byark stayed at the injured man’s side and killed anything that tried to get near him as the other four continued to kill off the rest of the creatures. One of the things snuck up behind the woman’s horse and was about to lash out at her when Bryce dropped it with three rounds from his .45, having already run out of ammo for his rifle. The woman stopped impaling the heads of the creatures for a second to look back at the falling corpse, giving Bryce a thankful look before continuing her attack.

  One of the infected rushed out of the woods from the direction Bryce and the others had come from, and Bryce struggled to raise his pistol before it reached him, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to stop it in time. Just before the creature slammed into him, Grunt leapt at the side of the beast and locked his jaw down hard onto its left arm, using his momentum to spin the infected around and slam it into the ground. The infected woman struggled to fight back and regain her footing, but she failed miserably as the large dog thrashed about violently. Blood splattered the ground and the creature’s shoulder dislocated as it was yanked around on the grass. Bryce quickly put a round into the back of the woman’s head, calling off Grunt and telling him that he was a good boy.

  Bryce then looked over to check how his other friends were doing, making sure that they didn’t need any help. Matt had downed a few of the creatures with his .38 and was now bashing another’s skull in with his aluminum baseball bat. Another creature rushed the boy and just as it reached his range, he swung out hard. The bat connected violently, splitting open the infected thing’s head and launching it through the air before it dropped to the ground. Confident that Matt was holding his own, Bryce switched his gaze over to Alejandro who was firing his 9mm at one of the creatures. As the infected dropped he could see Alejandro’s whole-body spasm. He turned to the woods with a look of panic on his face. “Contact to our right!” Alejandro yelled as he began to fire into the woods at ghosts of Taliban soldiers that only he could see. Bryce’s fears and suspicions were confirmed as he watched the man practically teleport back in time to his army days, and Bryce knew that he would have to be the one to confront this problem head on if Alejandro was going to be helped. The group finished off the remaining infected and then spent a few moments observing the forest around them, making sure that no more of the creatures were in the immediate vicinity.

  Bryce stormed towards Alejandro once he was confident the infected had been dealt with. “Where are you right now?” He said sternly.

  Alejandro looked at him as if he were insane. “In the woods with you, what the fuck are you talking about?” Alejandro replied, seeming to genuinely not remember his hallucination.

  ​The injured man trapped under the horse cried out in pain as his adrenaline wore off and the full brunt of his senses returned. The woman got down off her black and white stallion and ran over to him with the others in tow. “Get it off of me!” He cried out in desperation.

  ​“Hold on, we’ll get you out friend.” Byark said as he waved the others over. They started to pry the giant animal off him as he screamed out in even more pain than before. The woman let go of her share of the dead animal and dragged her friend out from underneath it as they got the weight of the dead thing off him.

  ​“We have to go now. More of them will be drawn to the noise and we’re not going to lead them back home.” Bryce said as the injured man held his mangled leg in agony and screamed.

  ​“What about Darren and the horses?” The woman said, tears filling her eyes as she stared at the bodies of the horses and the man.

  ​“I’m sorry, I really am.” Bryce said, his heart genuinely broken for the man and animals that had just been violently eaten alive. “But we have to go, we can take your friend back and give him a proper burial, but we have to leave the horses. I’m sorry.”

  ​The woman opened her mouth as if she were about to protest leaving the animals as a meal for the infected, but then she stopped herself. “Okay.” She quickly grabbed anything useful she could from the corpses while Byark slung the bloody corpse of the man over his shoulder and the others helped the injured man onto the horse.

  ​He’ll probably never walk again. Bryce had no idea how they were going to treat the injured man’s leg. More infected shrieks pierced through the forest just as the group was ready to go, and they moved as quickly as they could back to the cabin.

  ​Lauren opened the gate as soon as she spotted them, and it appeared as though the whole camp was on high alert, having all armed themselves and come outside when they heard the gunshots and infected shrieks. They lowered the injured man off the horse and carried him into the cabin.

  ​“Great, more mouths to feed.” Randy said as they passed by. They put the man down onto the living room table and Byark used his knife to cut open his jeans. Everyone fell ill as they gazed upon the man’s massacred and unbelievably swollen, purple limb.

  ​“What do we do?” Byark asked as he turned to the not so competent combat medic.

  ​“I’ll need a few of you to help me but everyone else needs to be outside and ready for an attack. Those things could be coming here next.” Alejandro said, seeming to have snapped back into reality for the time being.

  ​Bryce was surprised by the man’s rational thinking after what he had seen earlier that day. “I’m a farm vet, I can help.” The young, Native American woman spoke up. She had long, black hair that ran in a single braid down her back and she was toned and athletic, her tear-filled, brown eyes showing true determination to help her friend. He felt almost bad for thinking it in a time like this, but he thought that she was absolutely gorgeous.

  ​“Good. Lauren, get the pain killers and some liquor. You…” Alejandro said as he pointed to the woman, realizing that he didn’t know her name.

  ​“Catori.” The woman responded quickly.

  ​“Catori, there’s medical supplies in that closet, grab ‘em.” Alejandro said, pointing to the closet before examining the screaming man’s leg. “We’re going to have to set the leg as best as we can and then splint it to help it heal. Not much else we can do without a hospital so let’s pray that’s enough.” Lauren returned with the painkillers and a bottle of bourbon, the man downed the pills and chugged a quarter of the bottle of liquor. “This is going to fucking hurt man, hopefully you’ll pass out right away, but either way I’m sorry.”
/>   ​Catori returned with the medical supplies. “Just fucking do it, I don’t want to lose my leg.” The man cried out.

  ​“Everyone else get the fuck outside, now!” Alejandro yelled at the others, wanting to spare them from the grizzly sight as well as make sure their home was defended. Bryce and everyone else that had been in the cabin walked outside, moving to watch the perimeter fence. They could hear the man’s horrible screams for over ten minutes as they set the leg, and suddenly, the screaming stopped as he lost consciousness.

  ***

  ​Only two infected had found the cabin from the noise of the gunshots and the man’s screaming, and the group ended their existence with little effort. Later that night, as the injured man was passed out on Bryce’s bed, the others gathered together and made dinner with the fish and squirrel the group had brought back and a few cans of vegetables. They didn’t bother to make gourmet meals like they had with the venison, as nobody was in the mood for extravagant cooking, and they barely spoke except to ask Catori where her and her group had come from and what had happened to them.

  ​She told the group that she and the other man, Eddie, worked on a ranch not far from there. He was a farm hand and she was a veterinarian in training, specializing in farm animals and horses. When the outbreak started, they had decided to hold up at the ranch, having plenty of supplies and seeming remote enough to be safe from the outside world. The past few weeks, they had seen no other people and only had to kill a few infected that found their way to the ranch and tried to attack the animals, the creatures sometimes succeeding in killing one or more of the animals before being put down. A few days ago, however, a large group of infected had attacked the farm as if they had banded together and organized the assault. Darren was the son of the owners, and while defending against the attack, the infected had killed most of the workers, his entire family, and nearly all the animals. The three of them and one other worker had escaped on four horses with very little supplies, managing to survive in the woods until a large pack of the infected had tracked them down and attacked. The mutants killed the fourth man and his horse, but the others managed to escape and get some distance between them.