Neil, Jerry, and Dr. Caldwell all looked back to see young Danny with his rifle still at the ready. He pulled the pump action on the small rifle and shot again. This bullet hit the thing squarely in its chest, shattering its sternum as it set it back several steps.
Neil smiled at Danny but said to the doctor, “You better go before Danny takes them all and makes us look bad.” And to Danny he said, “Nice shootin’ there, Tex. Help the Doc keep everyone safe for me.”
There was no more discussion. Neil and Jerry were once again on their own. Jerry fired again and realized he’d emptied the five round capacity of his rifle. He slung it over his back and pulled his pistol from its holster. “You know, I’m not very good with these things, don’t you?”
Neil pulled the trigger on the shotgun again and then said, “Yeah, I know buddy. I think it may be time to get ourselves moving again before you prove that point.”
Looking down the road from where their group had originally come, Jerry could see that the first group of zombies who had been tracking them were now coming up from that direction. Options were quickly being eliminated. He shouted to Neil, “We got more company.”
Neil fired his remaining three shots into the nearest crowd of undead and then ran in the same direction the others had gone with Jerry fast on his heels. Trying to think ahead as they ran, Neil started to feed more orange plastic sheathed shells into the aperture on the bottom of the still hot gun. He tried to keep track but lost count almost immediately. Having anything in it would be of benefit he figured. He just hoped that he loaded enough to get them out of a pinch if necessary.
They were thankful for the fact that the now desiccated and decaying zombies were by this point unable to get beyond the pace of a serious mall-walker. Their limbs were simply too stiff to allow any fluid movement at all. There was some comfort in that but running into the new group of monsters created a new reason for alarm. And to drive that point home, they heard a not too distant scream followed by a pair of gunshots somewhere ahead of them.
They increased their pace as much as they could. Another shot, this one a little closer, raised the urgency in their steps still further. By then, they were close enough to hear and recognize the next scream as belonging to Claire.
They looked down each intersecting street they passed, searching for evidence of the rest of the group. They saw nothing; just empty pavement and abandoned houses. They finally came to a spot where the road turned to the right, heading east and directly toward the distant mountains. There, in the middle of the street, were four more of the creatures, all with their backs to the two men. Neil shot the first one, hitting it at the base of its skull. The creature very nearly did a forward flip from the blunt, violent impact. The three remaining zekes tried to turn, but Jerry’s sleek firearm barked and spat feverishly and he quickly dispatched those. In only a matter of seconds both his pistol and the street were empty.
The two men paused, breathing heavily, their breath animated by the cold air into thin white clouds, reluctantly dispersing before their faces. Neil nodded and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Nice shooting.”
Jerry choked out between labored breaths, “Where are they?”
Looking around and hoping to get the slightest idea from any clues left for them, Neil said despairingly, “I’ve got no idea. They could’ve gone anywhere but they couldn’t have gone far. Besides, they’ll hear our gunshots and know that we’re following. I mean, the Doc knows that we—”
Jerry held up his hand and stood stock still with his ear turned toward the street. He looked around wide-eyed and asked, “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“I can hear something. It kind of sounds like...”
Neil was already pumping the action on the shotgun. He’d learned to trust Jerry’s ears and his instincts. And once again, both of these attributes served them well.
There, amidst the coagulated carnage piled in the street, lay a fifth body; a body that had gone unnoticed previously. Neil could tell by the noises it was making that it was no longer human. He was all too familiar with the preternatural and predatory sounds made by the undead ghouls who now populated their city.
Both Neil and Jerry felt the terror in their chests burst into painful, heavy knots. This newly reanimating corpse was most likely from their group and could be just about anyone.
Still unable to definitively discern who it was, they were able to at least figure out that it was a woman based upon her clothing and size. It raised itself onto its hands and knees as its disorientation turned to ravenous rage. Neil was able to hear the new vibrations in the air this time. From the beast’s mouth a steady, foul, dark fluid spilled onto the damp pavement.
Neil said with a mixture of regret and limited relief, “It’s Evelyn. They got Evelyn.”
The poor woman had been brutalized. Her neck had been sheared clean of any flesh, exposing both her trachea and esophagus; both life-giving passageways also severed. This was the cause of the fluid spilling from her gaping mouth, which continued even as she rose to her feet. Once she was up, the fluid found its original path back down the now open drains that currently comprised what was left of her throat. The air still in her lungs slowly tried to force its way up and out against the downward flow of bright red blood, causing a bubbling, sucking, red morass to form on her upper chest.
“Evelyn, I’m so sorry,” Jerry managed. His words were just fading into the ethereal soup when Neil discharged the shotgun and ended their former companion’s suffering.
Jerry said solemnly and honestly, “I’m glad you were able to do that.”
“It was done before I could think about it.”
“And now?”
Neil was already walking when he said, “Let’s just leave it at that. C’mon, let’s keep moving.”
With the possible threats all around them seemingly multiplying, the two men were more on guard than ever. They were moving at a good clip, but not running. They couldn’t chance it. Not anymore. One wrong move and they could end up like Evelyn.
They had traveled a couple of blocks further east when Neil said, “I think I see them.”
Jerry asked, “By ‘them” you mean...?”
“Up there, ya goof,” and Neil pointed. “Use your scope if you can’t see them.”
Jerry was way ahead of him. Peering through the optic on his rifle, he said with a smile, “Yeah. It’s them alright.” He lowered the rifle. “Thanks, man.”
Neil wasn’t quite certain the reason for the gratitude and his expression must have betrayed this fact.
Jerry clarified, “I guess I didn’t know that Claire meant that much to me. Getting back to her means an awful lot. Back there I was afraid that...well...it could have been anyone lying there in the street. It could have been her. I don’t know for sure what I would have done if it was.”
Recounting his own fears of the possibilities to himself, Neil said only, “Yeah, man. I get you completely.”
Chapter 52
Now away from base housing and moving along a road that had been cut through a thick forest of alder and spruce trees, the relief of not seeing the horde of undead hot on their trail helped them all to relax somewhat and fall into a much more sustainable pace. Dr. Caldwell and Neil were at the head of the column, Jerry and Claire were at the tail, and everyone else was in between taking turns pulling the travois. From either side, they could hear the gentle snaps and cracks of the falling autumn leaves, noises that at first made them all jumpy. The air was cold and moist, pinching their exposed cheeks and ushering in a chorus of stuffy, sniffling noses. As they walked, a thick ominous fog rolled in and obscured the road ahead and the forest behind the first rank of trees to either side. It was as if they were walking into an only partially completed painting with blank canvas all around the central focal point.
It was as quiet as a church on an early Sunday morning before services began. The fog, taking full advantage of the stillness of the air, waited and watched
, anticipating the next act of the drama that was unfolding in its midst.
Not one for showing reverence to just anything, Claire said to Jerry, “I used to love the fog. It always seemed so full of mystery, and questions and possibility. I remember waking up early on school mornings when I was a kid and standing on the deck with my dad and watching the morning fog as it clung to the trees and bushes like cotton balls caught in the branches and leaves...like today.” Claire paused and thought about her father, who had been dead for a few years by then, and then about her mother who, in all likelihood, joined him on that morning a few weeks ago when their living nightmare began.
Jerry asked, “And now?”
“I hate the fog,” she spit like poison.
“Why?”
“Same reasons I guess. Now the unknown seems a heck of a lot more frightening than back then. Before it was just a matter of seeing what the fog was hiding. I knew every inch of my backyard during the day, but when the fog was there and I couldn’t even see my swing set that had been there for years, it was like I was in some foreign place. Now, the fog and the dark and the unknown are just as likely to kill you as anything else.” She looked ahead at Jules and Danny and lamented, “I feel so bad for those two kids. Whatever childhood they had is gone and it’ll never come back. Even if—and that’s a big if—all of this somehow sorts itself out, they’ll never be able to go back to just being normal kids again. What hope do they have? What hope do any of us have?”
Jerry put his arm around her small shoulders. “There may still be hope yet. Don’t give up. Not yet.”
She looked at him squarely. “You say that, but do you really mean it? I mean, every time I turn around, there are fewer and fewer of us. That’s what happened before you found us. When we started out, there were so many and then there was just me and Art. And now we’ve been whittled down to just a handful again. What happens if we’re all that’s left? What happens?”
Jerry knew that was, or could become, a very real possibility. They’d heard nothing from the outside world since this all began. He wondered about other extinct species and if they were able to begin to contemplate the end.
He wasn’t a great student in school but he remembered a high school English class with Mr. Anderson. They read a book called Grendel that captured his attention. It was the story about a monster from another older book called Beowulf, but this more recent novel was told from the monster’s point of view. At one point, Grendel happened upon an old dragon who was angry at the whole world because he was the last of his kind and was hunted merely because of who he was and what he represented. Jerry was really able to relate to the dragon’s anger at the world and his fate. There were just far too many similarities between the dragon’s reality and his own. The worst part was that the dragon could see into the future and knew that the end was coming and there was nothing he could do to change his fate. Perhaps there was some comfort for Jerry in not knowing the future. There was still free will and chance that needed to be figured into their situation, and to that he clung.
“I could’ve given up on hope back there when we had to...deal...with Evelyn. It was horrible. Before, when I pulled the trigger and put one of these things down, there was no connection. They were strangers. It wasn’t easy because I couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t too long ago and that person could have been checking me out at the cash register at the grocery store, or helping me open my new bank account, or whatever. But at least I didn’t recognize any of them. And then there was Evelyn. But even before we knew that it was her, there was this fear in me that it could have been someone else. Maybe even you. What I mean is that...shit. I’m not really good at....”
Claire smiled coyly and asked, “At what, honey?”
Jerry’s head nearly swooned as he summoned the courage to say, “Claire, I have real feelings for you and for the first time in a long time, since even before all of this began, things, at least some things, seemed good. And what I mean by things is you. For all the bad and the ugliness that’s been all around us, I think it’s a helluva lot more bearable when I’m with you. And back there, when we didn’t know who it was that they’d gotten, all I could think about was losing you. I just don’t think I could take that.”
Claire said softly and sincerely, “It was no walk in the park to have you gone either, I can assure you.” She looked up at him from beneath the ever-present green and gold Seawolves cap and flashed a smile that warmed him from inside out and made their surroundings a little less foreboding.
He thought to himself that, yes, things were good for a change.
Chapter 53
They plodded along slowly and quietly for some time. The hushed sounds of the forest all around them were the only sounds that accompanied their trek. Even the travois’ legs, wrapped in socks, seemed to withhold their voices. They went on like this for more than an hour. Eventually even the fog grew weary of watching them and retreated further into the trees, exposing the empty, open road in front of them.
A very tired Jules looked over at Danny and whispered, “How much longer do you think?”
Danny shrugged his shoulders and wondered the same thing. He also was curious about their destination. Were they headed toward safety and perhaps more people? The constant fear, the terror, and the loss, along with the nagging exhaustion in his feet and legs were all starting to become a focus that defied ignoring. He was just a kid. He didn’t have the same coping skills that adults in their many more years had developed. He just knew that he was tired and hungry and was ready to be home again.
Missing home, like his fleeting juvenile attention, came and went, but when it was in his thoughts it was hard to shake. The memories though were becoming more bitter with each passing day. The problem that was plaguing him was that he didn’t seem to have the same recall of home or his parents as he thought he should. Their faces and their voices seemed like he was experiencing them from behind an opaque window. The basic essence of them was there, but it was just outlines and suggestions lacking any real presence. They were just masks, crude representations of the people and the things that were so important to him in a time not too long ago. He wondered if it was the same with everyone. Was it just easier to concentrate on dealing with the problems all around you if your memories weren’t distracting you? The question was there and gone almost immediately as his attention was drawn to his left by a louder than normal leaf breaking loose from its arboreal mooring and tumbling awkwardly to the ground.
Every now and again, Neil would come to the rear of the their line to ask Jerry and Claire, as well as Jules and Danny, if they were hearing or perhaps feeling the tonal vibrations that were the undeads’ calling card, but they had detected nothing. There was nothing around them making the slightest noise. Maybe it was just the fog forcing everything into a temporary slumber, but somehow it all seemed so different, so permanent and final. It was as if the air itself had become toxic and had poisoned the land to the point that life, all life, was unsustainable. It didn’t help that the autumnal season was in full swing, shaking the leaves and the vibrant colors of summer from most of the trees within immediate sight.
They proceeded like this, shrouded in the silence of the grave, for several hours more. The morning had given way to midday, which was fading into a rapidly declining afternoon.
Neil peered over his shoulder to catch Jerry’s eyes, but the younger man was too busy looking into the trees to his left. Jerry’s distraction immediately raised alarms for Neil, so he turned abruptly to make his way back to inquire. He walked briskly, choosing not to run and cause anyone else undue alarm. He swept by the group walking with Art and didn’t say a word or even make eye contact with any of them.
“Hey? We good?” asked Neil in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
Jerry, not fully aware that he’d been distracted, answered, “Sorry. I was just.... No, I don’t hear anything or see anything. Sorry to cause you any heartburn.”
“No, I’m sorry.
I guess I’m just a little jumpy.”
“Try decaf. I hear it helps to calm the nerves,” Jerry teased.
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m ordering a cup. Smartass.” Neil turned to resume his post at the lead position. He was just coming to Meghan’s side, with whom he still hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk yet, when Claire got his attention.
“Hey , Neil, I think we got a problem here.”
Neil thought to himself that of all the phrases in the English language, he perhaps dreaded that one the most. Every time he heard it, it seemed that things typically went from bad to worse all at once. He said unemotionally, “What’s going on Claire?”
Dr. Caldwell, meanwhile, raised the M4 assault rifle to his shoulder and assumed a very trained and professional firing stance in the middle of the road. He scanned left and right, careful to lower the gun’s muzzle if he was pointing it anywhere near the others in the group. He breathed slowly, trying to control his emotions, especially the fear that was starting to percolate in his stomach.
Neil could feel his own blood pressure begin to rise in anticipation of Claire’s revelation. He could surmise from Jerry’s posture, however, that it was something other than the approach of a ghoul or a group of the monsters. He tried to glean from Jerry’s eyes what it could possibly be but there was not the slightest hint because Jerry was looking down at the pavement.
Neil asked again, “What is it? The suspense is killing me.”
Neil was still nearing them when both Jerry and Claire pointed to the ground. Then Neil could see the unmistakably new patches of dark fluid that had pooled in long, slithering stretches along their path. It didn’t take much deduction to figure out that the fluid in question was blood and not much more to determine that it was coming from Art.
“Jerry, can you go up to the front and help keep an eye out? Claire, I need you to stay back here and do the same. Doc, can you come back here for a second or so?”
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse | Books 1 & 2 | Infection & Containment Page 49