After the early dinner, Mary, Ted, Callum, Zane, and a few other people said their farewells to their loved ones and then set off on their bicycles, riding into the woods as the sun began to set. A dark and uncertain road lay ahead of them, and Mary prayed that they would be able to traverse it without any violence or loss of life, but a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and the tingling of her sixth sense told her that was wishful thinking and that death and darkness lay in wait for them, like a mountain lion ready to pounce.
27
The full moon provided ample illumination for their ride through the night forest, but this did not make their journey either easy or safe. Even with the bright, silver-blue moonlight shining through the treetops, the forest was gloomy, and the shadows were inky and thick. While the very real danger of wild animals was always there in the woods, the party of homesteaders was far more worried about the threat that two-legged predators presented. They rode in single file through the woods, keeping to the many mountain bike trails that crisscrossed the forest, and Callum, who had the sharpest eyesight of the group, took the lead, keeping a careful eye on the road ahead.
It was eerie and quite surreal riding through the woods at night without any sort of artificial light, and Mary felt almost as if she were in a dream or some sort of nightmare. Every sound made her jump, and every hint of movement on the periphery of her vision got her heart racing.
After two or three hours of riding, Callum held up his hand, signaling to the others to stop; he had spotted something. They all came up to a stop, as quietly as they could, and then gathered around Callum, who was peering intently through the dark forest.
“What did you see?” Ted whispered.
“Shh, look, up ahead, over there,” Callum whispered back, pointing to a spot of dark shadows downhill, maybe a hundred yards ahead.
“I don’t see anything,” Mary whispered. This, however, made her even more worried, and her heart was thumping as waves of anxious energy were rushing through her body.
“That shadow right there,” Callum said, pointing to one of the darkest patches of shadow, “isn’t a shadow. Watch closely.”
They observed the shadow for a while and saw that it was moving. Ted took a look through some binoculars and let out a soft, low whistle. “It’s a black bear, the biggest one I’ve ever seen. He’s eating something … can’t make out what. We can go on; as long as we make a wide berth around him, and don’t disturb him, we’ll be fine. Don’t ride, though; we’d better get off our bikes and push.”
They got off the bicycles and pushed them through the dark woods, giving the beer plenty of space. He paused eating and looked up since he could hear that they were near but did not make any moves since he didn’t see the humans as a threat. When they were at their closest to the bear—around sixty yards—Mary asked if she could take a look at him through the binoculars. She hadn’t seen a bear since she had been a little girl, and now that the sense of fright and fear had worn off, she was quite excited about it.
The group stopped for a minute, and Ted handed her the binoculars. Mary took a look through them and smiled as she marveled at the sight of the bear, but then, when she lowered the binoculars slightly and caught a glimpse of what he was eating, she gasped with shock.
“Oh my God,” she murmured, dialing up the focus on the binoculars to try to get a better view.
“What’s wrong?” Ted asked.
“The bear … he’s eating a person!” Mary gasped.
“My God, are you sure?!”
Mary handed her father the binoculars. “Take a look, Dad, I’m sure.”
Ted took a look through the binoculars at the bear, and from this angle, he could see that his daughter was right; the beast was eating a human being. “Oh my word,” he murmured. “She’s right…”
Callum raised his AR-15 and took aim at the bear, but Ted put his hand on the muzzle and gently lowered it. “No, don’t shoot, whoever it is that bear is eating is stone dead, and we don’t want to attract unnecessary attention by firing guns. Let’s just throw some rocks at it and scare it off.”
The party left their bikes and picked up some large stones, and approached the bear in a cautious semi-circle, closing in and throwing rocks at it until, with a growl, it reluctantly moved off. They approached the body warily, staring with horror at the corpse, which was shrouded in shadow.
“I don’t think the bear killed this person,” Ted said. “It’d be very unusual for a black bear to target a person as prey; black bears are much more timid than grizzlies. I think he was just scavenging the remains. Light up one of the gas lamps, let’s get a look at the body.”
Callum ignited a gas lamp, and the group cautiously approached the grisly remains. The corpse was that of a middle-aged man, and he was dressed only in his underwear. Aside from the fact that the bear had already devoured a good few pounds of his flesh, the most gruesome detail the light revealed was that the corpse had been decapitated.
“Oh God,” Mary gasped, gagging and coughing as she felt the bitter taste of vomit creeping up the back of her throat.
“I knew that the bear didn’t kill this guy,” Ted said grimly. “Look at his neck. Only a sharp blade could have taken his head off so cleanly. This isn’t someone who died from an animal attack. This is a murder victim. Whoever killed him must have taken his clothes and his stuff too.”
Callum gripped his AR-15 tightly and stared around him at the darkness with wide eyes, and everyone else’s hands also drifted to the grips of their firearms.
“Where the heck is his head anyway?” Callum asked.
They searched the immediate area, but there was no sign of the missing body part.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mary said. “I don’t think we should hang around here.”
Everyone agreed that it was time to move on.
“What are we gonna do about the headless John Doe?” Callum asked as they mounted up their bicycles and prepared to set off again.
“Leave him for the bear,” Ted said, sighing sadly. “It’s sad, I know, but we can’t afford to spend the rest of the night digging a grave, and at least he’ll be feeding the ecosystem here. Let’s be extra vigilant, everyone; we don’t want to get anywhere near the people who did this to him.”
They rode off in silence. Everyone was feeling on edge now after the discovery of the corpse, and the sight of it had ramped up their fears and intensified their collective anxiety. After another hour, they got to the outskirts of the town.
This was the closest any of them had been to civilization since the day of the EMP strike. While they were extremely nervous and filled with trepidation, they were also quite curious about what had become of the townsfolk and how they had been coping with life over the past few weeks.
The houses on the outskirts of the town seemed deserted; everything was shrouded in pitch-black shadows, and not a single spot of light, not even from a solitary candle, could be seen in any of the windows. The group wasn’t about to take any chances, though, and Ted and Callum told everyone to wait in the woods while they went on a scouting mission.
The others waited in tense silence for about an hour while these two went on ahead, moving with quiet stealth through the backyards and empty streets. The quiet, tension-thick minutes oozed by like hours, and the longer Callum and Ted were gone, the more Mary’s anxiety grew. Intrusive thoughts of terrible things happening to them, prompted by frequent flashbacks of the headless corpse, kept forcing their way into the forefront of her thoughts, and she struggled to stave off the panic and fear that kept clawing frantically at her innards. Eventually, though, she and the others saw two figures materializing silently from the shadows. Everyone kept their fingers on the triggers of their guns, only easing them off and letting out a collective sigh of relief when they heard Ted’s familiar voice.
“We’ve got good news and bad news,” he said, and from the tone of it, Mary guessed that the bad news was really bad.
“Let’s hear t
he good news first,” Mary said warily.
“Most of the town is deserted,” Callum said. “At least the places we looked. Houses have their doors hanging open, a lot of windows are smashed in. Almost no sign of life almost looks like a ghost town. Getting around without being seen shouldn’t be too much of a problem … but then there’s the bad news.”
The emphasis Callum put on the word “almost” told Mary that this word had something to do with the bad news.
“All right,” she said slowly, “so what is the bad news then?”
“We know whose body that was back in the woods,” Ted said grimly. “And it’s a sure sign that there’s someone in this ghost town. The former residents of these houses didn’t abandon them; they were either chased out of here or they met a worse fate, which I’m praying isn’t the case.”
“Whose body is it?” Mary asked, not entirely certain that she actually wanted to know the answer to this question.
“William’s,” Callum growled. “And whoever cut it off stuck it on top of a traffic light in the middle of town.”
“Oh my God,” Mary gasped.
“That’s not even the worst of it, baby girl,” Ted said. “You see, William’s decapitated head wasn’t the only one stuck on top of the traffic lights…”
28
Mary’s jaw dropped. “Are you … are you serious?” she managed to utter. Similar gasps and murmurs of shock and disbelief rippled around the group.
“I’m absolutely serious,” Ted said coolly. “Either some sort of sick serial killer is at work here, or a bunch of violent savages has taken over this town. Whichever it is has either driven everyone off or straight up killed a bunch of ‘em. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.”
“Do you think they’re still around, the people who did this?” Mary asked.
Ted nodded grimly. “We saw signs of life in the middle of town. Not any people, mind you, but sure signs that people had been here very recently: lots of smashed liquor bottles all over the streets, places where fires had been made in piles of tires, litter-strewn everywhere from looted homes and stores. I’m guessing they’re still here.”
“I didn’t see any lamps or candles or fires burning anywhere,” Callum added, “but that could just be because these monsters are sleeping. We have to assume that even though most of these houses and buildings look like they’re completely deserted, there are people—hostile people—hiding out in some of them.”
“We have to proceed with extreme caution,” Ted said. “And because of the terrible things we discovered in town, I want to change the plan up a little.”
“Change it how?” Mary asked.
“We were going to wait for the half-light of dawn to raid the locksmith’s place and the optometrists, but I say we do it now. Get in and out as fast as we can. From the look of what we found in town, they are killers are heavy drinkers. We didn’t see any lookouts or sentries, and we did have a thorough look around. I’m guessing they’re all passed out drunk, so right now would be the best time to do this.”
“You’re guessing,” Mary said, “but you don’t know that they’re all passed out. I don’t know, Dad, this sounds really risky.”
“And you don’t think it’ll be even riskier in the light of dawn when we are a lot more visible in the streets?” Ted asked.
“I know, I get your point, but the whole thing with the … with the heads on the traffic lights, it’s making me scare, Dad, real scared.”
Everyone else murmured their agreement.
“I know, baby girl, and trust me, I’m afraid too. The kind of people who’d do something so depraved and psychotic are not to be taken lightly. But the bottom line is, we have to do this; we all knew it would be a dangerous mission, but this is about the lives of everyone in our community. If we don’t find a way to get the medical supplies we lost, not to mention a new pair of glasses for James, we’re gonna be in some deep trouble down the road.”
“We’re all frightened,” Callum said, “and rightly so. What I saw in town turned my stomach and chilled the blood in my veins … but as scared as I am, I know what I have to do. Everyone in our little community depends on us pulling through with this mission.”
“I wasn’t suggesting we pull out or give up,” Mary said, feeling defensive. “I’m just saying, are you sure it’s a good idea to go in right now? Maybe we should wait a bit and scope things out a little more thoroughly, just to get a better idea of who or what we’re dealing with.”
Callum shook his head. “I don’t think so, Mary. I agree with your dad. When he and I went in, it was dead quiet, not a sign of any movement anywhere, no sounds of anyone being awake. Whoever’s in there is probably asleep. This is our best chance to get in and out without being seen. After that, we can hightail it out of here and get as far away from this place as we can, and we’ll be miles away before they even figure out we were here. If we go at dawn, and they wake up shortly afterward to find out someone was here, they might send out a party looking for us, and they’ll be hot on our heels. I really think that, as scary as it is, the best time to go in and raid the place is right now, without delay.”
“It’s the probably asleep part of this plan that I don’t like,” Mary said, “but you’re right, I guess.”
Everyone agreed that although it was a scary prospect, given what Ted and Callum had seen, it was a safer bet to go in right away and try to get done as quickly as possible. They decided that once they got into the middle of the small town, they would split up into two groups. Ted and Mary would go to the locksmith’s place, while Callum would take the others to the optometrist. On the way into town, they would pass the local pharmacy, and they decided to check it out before looking at the other two places; if by some miracle the pharmacy hadn’t been cleaned out and they could find the medicines they needed there, they wouldn’t need to go to the locksmiths and could get James’s glasses and then go straight home.
“Remember everyone,” Ted whispered as they climbed over the fence of one of the deserted houses on the outskirts of town and crept through the yard, “stealth is the key here. Make sure you’re silent and watch every footstep you take.”
They walked past the house, and when they got closer to it, they saw that many of the windows had been smashed out, and inner-city-gangster-style graffiti had been spray-painted all over the walls. There was no question now about the fact that outsiders had taken over this town … brutal, murderous outsiders. Mary swallowed a dry mouthful of fear, and flashbacks of her ordeal of escaping the city on the day of the EMP attack came rushing into her mind. She prayed that they would be able to get in and out of this cursed town without incident.
They walked through the yard, which was overgrown with weeds, like all of the yards, they soon noticed and headed onto the street. Now the bright moonlight that had been such a welcome aid to them while riding through the night forest made them feel exposed and vulnerable, and they moved quickly from shadow to shadow, using the darkness beneath the large trees that lined the street for cover.
A few vehicles had been abandoned in the streets, and many more were sitting empty in driveways or front yards. All of them had been vandalized and had had their windows and windscreens smashed in, and like most of the houses, they were covered with ugly gang graffiti. It seemed that whoever had taken over this town had indulged in an orgy of utter destruction and mayhem.
It didn’t take them long to come across the first corpses. After turning the corner at the end of the block and heading onto another street, one that took them toward the center of town, Mary noticed a grisly and tragic sight. On one of the houses’ porches, a makeshift barricade of cement bags had been hastily thrown up; it looked like the owner of the house, and his family had tried to make a stand against the thugs. The whole porch area and the cement bags were riddled with bullet holes, and three bloated corpses, already well into decay, lay in various places on the porch. All three had had their heads cut off.
“Looks like there wa
s one hell of a fight here,” Callum whispered to Mary.
They passed an abandoned car in the middle of the street opposite the porch. The vehicle was peppered with bullet holes; the gangsters had probably used it for cover while attacking the house and its defenders.
“It’s disgusting is what it is,” Ted hissed, his jaw clenched. “I didn’t always see eye-to-eye on many issues with the residents of this town, but for the most part, they were decent, honest folk. They didn’t deserve to die like this and have these monsters take over the place like this.”
“I know,” Mary whispered. “But there’s nothing we can do for these people now. They’re all dead, and those who weren’t killed had to have fled long ago.”
They pressed on, getting deeper into the town. The closer they got to the center of the town, the worse things got. They’d seen the occasional smashed liquor bottle on the street when they’d first entered the town, but the deeper in they got, the more evidence of mindless hedonism they saw. Soon they saw hundreds of beer can and liquor bottles smashed all over the streets and sidewalks, as well as a huge mess of discarded candy wrappers and chip packets.
“Looks like these scumbags survive on nothing but candy, chips, and booze,” Callum said, shaking his head with distaste.
They crossed another street, ducked down an alley that led between two buildings, and then got onto the main street. There, the group saw the grisly sight that had clued in Ted and Callum to the identity of the headless corpse in the woods. On the traffic lights were a number of severed human heads in various stages of decay, and William’s was one of them. As much as Mary had loathed him, she now felt pity for him, that such a terrible fate as this one had befallen him.
“This is where we have to split up,” Callum said. “Meet back here in a couple minutes.”
“No messing around,” Ted said, although, with the ominous sight of the severed heads staring at them, nobody really needed to be reminded of this. “Just get in and get out, real fast. Stealth is the key here everyone, remember that. And if you see someone, do not shoot at ‘em. Hide. Keep quiet. Only use your guns if there’s no other option and it’s a life-or-death situation. One gunshot will wake up the whole gang of monsters, and then we’re going to be in some serious trouble.”
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day Page 17