It took forever for the screams to die down, and longer still until the wet sounds of feasting dropped off. The attic felt like it was at least a thousand degrees, and since I would be fucked if anything got in here whether I was all geared up or not, I peeled myself out of my clothes before I lay down next to them once more. The attic had two windows but both were impossible to pry open, and I didn’t dare smash them; somehow, disturbing the peace up here with my presence was bad enough; I didn’t need to add to that. It wouldn’t bring me any relief as long as the sun was up, anyway.
I dozed off eventually, even though I wasn’t accustomed to sleeping under these conditions anymore. As much time Nate and I had spent preparing for worst-case scenarios over the past months, we’d gotten fucking complacent and pampered as well. Not for the first—or hundredth—time I regretted that we hadn’t gone straight up to Alaska after leaving the bunker. Sure, spending half the year buried in ice and snow wasn’t fun, but I didn’t mind hardships if they came with a good overall chance of survival. With the entire summer to prep, hunt, and gather, we could have easily established an enclave for fifteen to twenty people. Hell, why had Nate been so stupid and let Emma pretty much run us out of the bunker that was ours as much as hers? Why did we have to play heroes? Wouldn’t it have been enough to survive?
I never voiced those thoughts around him, but now, on my own, all alone in the world, it was hard not to be a little resentful. I’d lost so much that year—and I didn’t even mean physically, although I sure missed my fingers and toes an awful lot. We’d been a family, a rag-tag band of survivors and all that shit. In fact, that first winter I’d felt more like I had a place in the world than ever before, and, if I was honest, ever since. I’d belonged. Of course it hadn’t been perfect, but I’d had food to eat, water to drink, and people to annoy—what more could anyone ask for?
And what had I traded that in for? A stinking sauna of an attic, and no one being the wiser if I ended up locked in here, dying of thirst.
That idea—that for whatever reason the hatch was permanently shut, locking me in here—made a bout of paranoia surge through me, but I forced myself to relax before I could bolt for the trap door and increase my problem tenfold. No, I would get out of here, and if I had to shoot a new way for me to get out through the floor, wall, or roof, so be it.
The day kept dragging on forever. Once the sky outside started to darken, I decided that I’d had about enough of this and tried the hatch. A little fumbling got the latch to disengage and I managed to push the door open just far enough to peer outside without letting the ladder down. I didn’t remember how many shamblers I’d put down before, but there were enough torn-apart body parts for at least twice that many, the feasting still going strong. Even though I had barely made a sound, two heads snapped up and turned in my direction immediately, intelligent, bright eyes zeroing in on the gap in the ceiling. I quickly pulled the door back up, stepping away to err on the side of caution. I wasn’t going to get down there tonight, that much was sure. Maybe not even tomorrow. I liked the odds about as much as the stink in the attic, which wasn’t better now that the acrid scent of my sweat and urine added to it. Time to go look for option B.
The attic wasn’t exactly spacious but had been rudimentarily furbished, mostly for storage. I ignored the spare duvets and boxes full of old clothes in favor of looking for something more useful… like the toolbox I eventually found near some electrical wiring supplies. It was old and rusty, squeaking somewhat awfully as I opened it—obviously the backup box—but I didn’t mind. Fuck fancy new drills that had, years ago, run out of batteries. I’d take an old-fashioned screwdriver any day, thank you very much.
I found not just one but an entire set of them—and, just as I was about to set to work on the recalcitrant windows, there was the attachable handle for the windows. Feeling slightly stupid that I hadn’t looked for that first, I tried my luck—and, seconds later, got my first free and unencumbered breath in fucking forever. The window was high up and small, but thanks to boxes full of old books and a discarded lawn chair, I managed to build enough of a ramp to first check, then push my pack up and out through the window, with me following closely behind. I didn’t much care for the height of the roof, but it only took me ten minutes to gather my courage, tie a makeshift climbing harness of the rope I’d liberated from a house the day before, and set about getting down to the ground. As if to make up for my blunders earlier in the day, it all went without a hitch or much noise, and I managed to slink away without disturbing the shamblers still busy inside the house. Those that must have lingered outside had long since wandered off to greener pastures, and that was exactly what I set to do as well. The next time I’d catch a whiff of death, I’d be long gone before it could try to catch up with me.
Chapter 6
Two more nights of sleeping in cars, and two more days of walking as long as my legs would carry me, and I had about enough of traipsing through the wilderness on my own. So, when I got close to another small town and noticed a rusty, dirty sign advertising a bike shop, it made me halt in my tracks. I would normally have passed it up, but there’d been an abundance of old signs praising the beauty of the recreational areas around, and the “bike” in question seemed to be a bicycle rather than something that relied on fossil fuels. I still had over a hundred miles to go, maybe farther if my intel was old and the settlement didn’t exist anymore, so finding an alternate mode of transportation wasn’t the worst idea I’d had that week. In my head, I could hear Nate’s voice taunting me about little girl bikes, pink with unicorns on them, but rather than annoy me, that idea made me smile. Now all I could do was hope this idiocy wouldn’t get me eaten.
The town wasn’t large—the sign near the outskirts declared that Willis Springs had been home to 4,795 souls—and thanks to the resorts in the hills outside rich enough that there were lots of spaces between the houses, once well-kept and loved. I’d have lots of exit routes, even if the center proved to be overrun. Just to make sure I could spare myself an unnecessary series of potentially-fatal jump scares, I got off the road leading through town and walked around it, hoping to find the bike shop with the inevitable Mattress Kings and car dealerships. Nope—another sign told me that it was smack in the middle of town, along the quaint main street and its many shops selling fake art and overpriced outdoor gear. My trek around town hadn’t yielded any run-ins but I had heard the odd scrape or moan that made me guess it wasn’t completely deserted. I longingly looked down the road leaving town, the sheer endless miles of straight tarmac making me shudder. It had been more than a day since I’d last had to run away from anything—I at least owed it to myself to try.
With the sun beating down on me, I decided to disregard every single instinct I had as I ventured into the town—and continued walking, slowly and softly but steadily, in the very center of the road. The squatters would be inside the houses, and I had yet to see one of them pick up a habit of staring out of windows. The more open the space, the more distance to the houses, the more warning I’d get, I figured.
I was about ten blocks into town when I realized I could have tried one of the resorts as well.
There went nothing.
Like most towns, the center of this one was just as clogged with damaged cars left behind by the people who’d tried to get out a little too late. It was too small—and too far away from larger cities—for the remains of FEMA camp tarps. They didn’t even have a hospital from what I could tell, and the apocalypse must have hit them late enough that the residents must have known that the shit had hit the fan, judging from virtually no storefront having remained untouched—or the last citizens had had some anger management issues. The signs of looting didn’t deter me; at least I wouldn’t have to be the one to bust the locks or break the glass, creating unnecessary amounts of noise. It was still nerve-wracking to slowly weave my way through the cars, eyes wide open, stopping every so often to listen.
I realized I’d reached the shop before I’d
had a chance to look at the sign; the fact that the sidewalk was littered with twisted metal frames was a dead giveaway. Apparently, I hadn’t been the first to get inspired to go hunt for a different mode of transportation. I considered for a moment if it was still worth checking out but figured, since I was like already in mortal danger, I might as well go forward. I was very thankful for my boots as I crunched my way through what remained of the storefront’s glass facade, stepping into the shadowy interior of the shop.
The bicycles that had landed on the road outside must have once been lined up by the windows as that space had obviously been cleared. Someone had been in here to loot as plenty of empty racks that must have held clothes one time proved. Since I had all the gear I needed, I ignored what little they’d left behind and sneaked deeper into the store, toward where the remainder of the bikes stood, mostly undisturbed. A few had fallen over, and none that I could see at a first glance still had air in the tires, but that was something I was sure I could remedy—I was, after all, in a bike shop, where there must be pumps and spare parts aplenty.
It took me a few minutes to decide on which one to go for and ended up choosing a bright purple-framed mountain bike. It had been years since I’d owned anything with splashes of color, and I figured that me being a moving target would make me more so in the first place than the bike’s frame could. The front tire held the air I sneakily pumped into it well, but the rear one needed patching—or replacing, seeing as I had a good thirty more to choose from. Since I was still on my own and the town around me remained quiet, I took the time to get some extra water bottles—and screw bottle holders to the frame. I considered some kind of saddle bag contraption abomination as well but decided that my pack on my back was as much as I wanted to lug with me. There was just enough room left to cram a tire-mending set in there, and I was ready to leave.
On my way back to the store’s front, I paused when my gaze snagged on a bright pink pair of bike shorts. I had absolutely no fondness for the color but I did remember what a vacation’s lazy bike excursion had done to my ass and thighs a few years ago all too well. Sure, back then I didn’t yet have abs and glutes of steel, but there was something to be said about mitigating likely discomfort. And it wasn’t like anyone would see them until I got to the settlement.
For once, I hit the jackpot and wasn’t accosted by zombies with the pink bike shorts around my ankles, and made it back out onto the road all dressed and ready to roll. I caught some movement further down the road, the way I had come, and decided to take one of the smaller side streets to circle the town once more. Getting on the bike was easy—and I had, smartly enough, chosen one with a frame fitting my size—but balancing on it was a little harder. In short order I realized that it was kind of a blessing that my right hand was the more busted one, seeing as a hasty, hard brake ended up relatively smoothly with only the rear tire’s brake catching—from where my left hand was clawing at the brake handle. Thankfully, there was no one to watch my first shaky mile, and by the time I hit the grassy stretches to get from someone’s garden back to the road leading out of town, I was handling myself pretty decently. The heat of the day was just as bad on the bike—and with extra strain on my thighs now maybe even worse, thanks to the additional layer of the shorts—but as I gathered velocity, I couldn’t help but grin at the wind streaking across my face and hair.
I decided that, yes, indeed—this would do.
I pedaled until nightfall and ended up crashing in the hayloft of a barn half a mile from the road. I still had water and the last pack of extra-protein nuts—or so I kept telling myself as I wolfed down the contents of the pack that hadn’t been in pristine condition when I’d picked it up. That was enough to get me through the night, and in the morning I decided to risk it and go for the settlement straight away rather than try to find more food elsewhere. I’d lost some weight since that fateful night at the tree house, but not enough to concern me too much. With luck, I’d get a chance to eat—and clean myself up—before the sun set again. I didn’t know what I looked forward to more—probably the cleaning supplies. I wondered if I should try picking up something else to barter with, but I couldn’t exactly transport it. Maybe trading in the bike would be worth something. Quite frankly, that was one bridge I wasn’t too scared of crossing—but found myself oddly apprehensive as I swung back onto the bike and aimed for the road.
And the bike pants turned out to be a saving grace for sure.
I had sixty more miles to go, and while that was better than staying in an attic with two mummified corpses while more lively ones ate each other below, it still was that endless kind of drag that wore me down mentally as much as physically. I did my best to keep the glum thoughts at bay, but I didn’t really look forward to reentering civilization once more. Sure, all the amenities of a settlement were nice, but as far as I knew, the world at large wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with me. Then again, with over two years since anyone had last seen me, I was probably presumed dead. I likely didn’t look anything like what people expected, either—the last sheen of red had long since left my hair, and I’d likely cut off what had once been dyed the last time I’d trimmed it. Unwashed for weeks—and haphazardly braided thanks to my lack of fingers to do so well—my hair was a dark blondish mess that was, if anything, very unremarkable. I still had the marks, of course—and the tattoo down on my back proudly proclaiming my affiliation—but not many would get to see that, or even know about the significance. My memories about what had happened at the camp were more than a little fuzzy but I still remembered that, upon seeing them, they’d all thought of me as an imposter. What had been up with that still left me curious, but I was sure that I would be able to make it work in my favor.
But to worry about all of that, I needed to get into the settlement first without anyone shooting me on sight; I could only hope that this wouldn’t be the hard part.
By midday, I saw the first signs that I was getting somewhere close to where the living still roamed freely, after switching from my straight, single-lane road onto a somewhat broader two-lane highway. There was a dust cloud in the sky toward the west, and most of the cars that had broken down on the road had been pushed to the shoulders on either side, creating space enough for larger vehicles to pass at decent speeds. Seeing that gave me a brief pang deep in my chest—damn, but I still missed my Rover. From what I could tell, that dust belonged to a caravan, likely heading to the same settlement or coming from there. I was still miles away from being able to see anything, but already I felt my paranoia come alive.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. So many things that I didn’t know anything about were waiting for me. So many things that could go wrong… but unless I wanted to hoof it north to Dispatch or traverse the hottest states in the country all by my lonesome self—which would take me months at this rate—I was out of options.
Fuck this shit.
And fuck those fucking idiots with their fucking camp and—
This was getting me nowhere, but the settlement was something, somewhere. At the very least I could ask them to get someone on the radio for me—or if worse came to worst, I could always try to track down that caravan. At this point, stealing a car in the middle of the night wasn’t beyond me. I considered that option for a moment but since the dust was already settling, I figured I’d have a hard time catching up to them.
Settlement first. If that failed, I’d look for a different solution.
It took me the remainder of the afternoon to get to the first sign proclaiming “10 miles to Sweet Water, Alabama”—my ultimate destination. On the maps I’d picked up, it didn’t look like much more than two roads crossing in the middle of nowhere, but that was the same for most modern settlements. They had roads, access to water, and woods around aplenty to build fortifications and new buildings, if needed. They were also far enough away from larger towns that people could have survived there, although I wasn’t sure when this settlement had been established as such. I hadn’t pa
id much attention to that besides the few places we’d decided to visit—which had been farther north and west of here. For all I knew, it could have sprung up the summer after we’d dropped off the side of the earth; the intel we had about it was from the year after that—last year—and nothing more than a name and vague location.
I figured it was a good sign that, as I drew closer, I reached the end of the forest to where trees had been felled only days ago, the scent of freshly cut wood still heavy in the air, and nature hadn’t had time to grow over the drag marks of where the logs had been pulled closer to the road to be transported off. I didn’t see any guards out on patrol but with the sun about to set in an hour or so, they’d probably returned to the town already—or were stealthy enough not to let themselves be seen. I couldn’t help but feel watched as I continued to pedal down the road to where, ever so slowly, the settlement came into view.
They hadn’t bothered digging ditches or erecting flimsy metal fences like some communities but relied on a double wall of heavy log palisades, easily spanning several miles in circumference from what I could tell. Directly around the palisades and close to the road, the ground was barren, even the grass whacked to below the height where anything larger than a cat or rabbit could have been hiding. Beyond that, I saw the setup for fields large enough to support a community several hundreds strong but nowhere near what I’d seen at the camp. Along the road, I could still see what remained of the old village; the new settlement lay to the north and west of where my road met a similar one coming down from the north. Remained, because they’d done a good job deconstructing everything that could be carried off, further adding to the large, open space that kept hiding spots to a minimum. People had known what they were doing as they established this settlement; good for them, but it made me a little wary. I hadn’t forgotten who had been all too ready to volunteer their help, expertise, and manpower for guards to all those who had survived the first winter. Hell, this far south, it probably didn’t even snow during the colder months; they might very well be one of the earliest established settlements as far as I knew.
Green Fields (Book 10): Uprising: Page 8