The Infected Dead (Book 6): Buried For Now

by Howard, Bob

  It was possible that there really were only three men at the house, and it was all but confirmed when they made their second appearance in the door.

  When they got back up, the women didn’t run for the Jeeps. They just ran for the open yard like they thought they would get help from someone else, not really understanding how this could be happening to them.

  Stokes shook his head and clicked his tongue in mock disgust.

  “How did you people survive this long?”

  He walked down the hill through the tall grass and wheat. It was far enough away that none of them would see him, and he only needed that pair of pants that was now left behind on the steps. His guess was that would be where he would find keys to the Jeep where the first guy stashed his toilet paper.

  To Stokes it sounded like a bee flew straight into his right ear and stung him, but the warm wetness of blood hit the back of his hand at the same moment that he heard the distant crack of a small caliber rifle. When he grabbed at his ear he found that about a half inch was gone from the tip.

  The grass was tall enough for him to disappear, but he couldn’t see the person who shot him any better than they could see him. He didn’t have any formal combat training, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to stay where the shooter had last seen him, so he crawled across the field. There was just enough breeze for the grass to be swaying, but he was leaving a trail that would be easy for the shooter to spot, and he was amazed at how much an ear could bleed. He looked ahead for gaps and figured he could flank the shooter if he found a gap that went back up the hill. It never occurred to him that there might be more than one shooter behind him.

  Down by the house the women heard the shot and saw Stokes go down. From where they were they could also see him crawling parallel to the men who had been patrolling the fence around the property. The women ran wildly up the hill, pointing and yelling. The resulting confusion was the kind of luck that always seemed to go Stokes’ way.

  He parted the grass to see why the women were screaming and getting closer and saw them running toward his new position.

  “Stupid people,” he said under his breath. “Just like football. Watch the quarterback’s eyes to be able to tell where he was going to pass the ball.”

  Stokes turned in the grass and pointed his body roughly in the direction the woman was pointing, and even though his ear was full of blood, he listened to her voice. As soon as he heard what he was waiting for he pull the trigger on his sawed off shotgun.

  The woman was trying to give away the position of the man in the grass, but she saw she had done it to her own man, too.

  She screamed, “No, wait. He’s….”

  The blast from the shotgun drowned out the rest, and she saw one of her friends fly backward from the impact. The second guy should have done what Stokes had done when he had clipped his ear with the small caliber rifle, but instead of dropping to the ground, he turned and ran back up the hill.

  “Where you going?” yelled Stokes as he stood up and shot the man in the back.

  He chambered another round and shot the woman who had run too far in his direction to get away. Stokes tried to see where the second woman had gone, but she was nowhere in sight. He knew she must have gotten away fast because the three men who had turned into dead meat were all walking up the hill. If she had been slow, they would be following her. The shotgun blasts were more than enough to get their interest.

  Instead of walking toward the house, Stokes walked up the hill and found the guy who had shot him. The rifle he used was only a few feet away.

  “You shot me with a lousy 22?”

  He kicked the body just because he could and then got down to the business of finding the keys to the Jeep. He had his pick from four that were all parked out of sight from the road and figured he would take whichever one had a full tank of gas.

  Gas had become more and more scarce over the years, and even when he found a big supply, a lot of it had been contaminated by ground water and corrosion. Sometimes it just sat in its container too long until it turned to varnish. He had learned that the hard way, but it only had to happen to him once.

  Each of the men had keys in their pockets, so he would have to figure out which set went to each Jeep. At least he knew which one was owned by the ripe meat he had nicknamed pant-less.

  It only took a few minutes to get rid of the ripe meat entourage that was following him all over the backyard. Normally he wouldn’t waste his time with them, but he needed to check their pockets. While he was at it, he collected their guns, and one had a ring that he really liked. Despite the years making everything that had been precious turn into something useless, he still couldn’t get enough of the old treasures like gold rings and necklaces.

  Pant-less had the most gas in his Jeep, and Stokes liked the way he had gotten it professionally painted in hunters camouflage green. It started up easily and purred like a big cat, so he knew the dummy had taken care of the engine. He almost felt bad about killing the guy.

  He checked out the house and found smoked meat, fresh baked bread, and some home brewed beer. That made him feel bad about killing all of them. After a few of the home brews he was a bit misty eyed and wished he would have recruited them. In his mind they would have welcomed the opportunity.

  Less than an hour later he was heading south and making good time. He was still laughing because he had caught up with the woman who had escaped from the house. When she saw the familiar Jeep barreling down the road, she had run straight to him. She realized her mistake far too late.

  ******

  At sunrise the handful of survivors from Hopkins on The Lake timidly whispered at the door to see if their rescuers were still there. They didn’t know who was out there, but they were grateful.

  Iris eased the door open and found a small group of women and children inside the house with one older man who didn’t move as if he could see very well. They only took a few minutes to talk about what had happened to their community. It didn’t take much imagination to know that the horde had moved through the area and overrun the town.

  One of the women explained to them that they thought they were safe out on the lake. They told them about how they had built their settlement on land at first, but they were forced to relocate as more and more of the dead came into the area. If the lake had been deeper, and if they had been given more time, maybe the idea would have worked, but time and safe places were both luxuries that most people couldn’t find.

  When the citizens of Hopkins asked Iris where they had come from, she didn’t have the heart to tell them they had left a perfectly safe shelter in North Carolina where the dead couldn’t reach them, and where supplies were practically endless. It would be hard to explain to people who had lost so much.

  George reminded Iris that they needed to get out of the area soon, and that presented another problem. As much as they wanted to help the defenseless people, they were going to cut across some very hostile terrain, and they weren’t really equipped to protect them all the way to the coast.

  The survivors surprised Iris and her group when they said they had plans of their own. All they knew was that some of their men had followed the horde, so they planned to do the same. Iris told them they planned to set fire to the infected that filled the original pits, and that the fire would attract the infected from all directions. She tried hard to convince them to head north because the horde was massed to the south, but they were convinced their people would be back at any time.

  In the end, the survivors of Hopkins promised Iris that they would wait for one more day, and they would light the pits on fire themselves. Iris Mason had always been a practical person, and she didn’t have much faith that the people of the lake settlement would see their friends again, but it wasn’t up to her to convince them otherwise. She pulled her group off to the side for a chance to see if any of the others disagreed with leaving the people to set the fires.

  Sora was willing to say what they were all afraid to put in
to words. They were leaving the people behind to die. Yuni sadly watched the children play and wanted to say they should stay to help them, but she knew they would need a lot more than the five of them to survive against the stray infected dead that were spread out through the woods. The main horde had gone by, but there would be stragglers for days.

  George said, “You know the longer we hang around the more chance that we’ll get hemmed in with them. I say if they don’t want us to light the pits on fire, then we don’t have to.”

  “I just have a hard time passing up on the opportunity to torch a hundred of them,” said Iris, “but I get your point. These woods will be crawling with the infected for a long time. We need to go back to the next major highway and head east while we can.”

  Sherry was having as much trouble with leaving them as Yuni.

  “You sure we can’t get them to just follow us north? They won’t last more than one week out here.”

  “They’ve already made up their minds,” said Iris. “I have to be honest with them, though.”

  Iris took the woman who had assumed the role of leadership off to speak with her alone. It didn’t take a lip reader to know that the woman thanked Iris for saving them the night before, but they were set on following the plans they had made.

  When Iris came back, she said, “Well, that wasn’t the answer I expected.”

  “What did she say,” asked Sherry. “are they going with us?”

  “No, she said when we saved them last night, we were just delaying the inevitable. She doesn’t think any of their people are coming back for them, and she doesn’t think it would be right for us to die trying to protect them. She said we should go while we can. They’ll light the pits on fire at sunset to get the strays in the woods walking toward them instead of us.”

  “Let’s go before she changes her mind,” said George.

  They said their goodbyes quickly and left at a trot along the gravel road that led to the lake. They were moving to the northwest to try to reach the interstate where the horde had already been, and they would turn back to the east as soon as they felt like they had enough distance between them and Hopkins. If they saw infected dead on the roads to the east, they decided to keep going and look for a road that was safer.

  As it turned out, they went far enough to reach the Interstate that gave them the best visibility in the distance. I-20 was four lanes and went exactly where they wanted to go. When the Chief and Kathy had left them at Ambassadors Island, they had told Iris about Tom and Molly. How they had escaped from Myrtle Beach, and how they wouldn’t have survived without the help of some very brave police officers and soldiers. A lot had changed since then, but Iris knew their best bet of reaching Mud Island was by retracing Tom’s steps down the coast. She had asked to see where it was on a map, so she had a good idea of what they were up against.

  Fortunately, Iris had four capable friends with her and some idea of where they were going. They were tired as they made the turn onto I-20, and they had a long way to go, but for some odd reason they felt like they were in the home stretch. Maybe it was because they weren’t following the biggest horde in the southeast.

  It took a week to travel from Colombia, South Carolina to the town of Conway. Iris remembered Conway was where Tom had been rescued by a police officer who got them into a convoy of small boats that escaped the chaos and death of the first night. She also remembered that the Chief’s friend who owned the shelter was in Surfside when the infection broke out, and he had to race back to the safety of the shelter. She was glad the Chief had taken the time to tell her the stories of how all of his friends survived. If not, she would be traveling blind like the people in Hopkins.

  Thinking of Hopkins made her realize it had been a week and what Sherry had said about how long they would last. They probably lit the pits on fire and then were overrun by the dead. Now they found themselves only a day or so away from Surfside and only a few hours more away from Mud Island.

  Just like all of the other interstates, I-20 had been a vast wasteland of rusted cars and trucks. They moved fast while making very little noise, and they only stopped when they felt like they found a good place to spend the night that they couldn’t pass up. A Greyhound bus had been a perfect place to sleep because someone had left the doors open. If the infected had been trapped inside until the heat had dried them into nothing but brittle skin and bones, the bus would have smelled like the inside of a coffin.

  It was remarkable how few of the infected they saw along the interstate, but it was a true testament to how big the horde was that was using I-26 to reach Charleston. When they spotted lone infected or small groups, they detoured around them rather than try to eliminate them. They were tempted to do their part to help mankind take back the world, but their efforts would be a drop in a bucket, and it would take far longer for them to reach the coast.

  The second night they made a unique discovery. An extension ladder under an overpass went up to the metal frame under the road. Someone had survived long enough to make a platform using scrap metal cannibalized from the vehicles.

  George climbed up and tested it for stability so they wouldn’t end their trip by falling to the median. He waved for them to come on up, and as they arrived he pointed out where crossbeams were located under the sheet metal. They were safe for the night, but they each had to admit they didn’t sleep well trusting the engineering skills of a stranger. Sherry woke up twice with the sensation of falling.

  Sora ran a rope around his waist and tied it around one of the support beams. The others teased him at first, but by the time they went to sleep, everyone had a lifeline.

  When they climbed down the next morning, they were in general agreement that they would rather sleep on the ground than to be afraid of falling all night long. Yuni also admitted that she had been afraid the ladder would be gone in the morning, and they would be forced to use their ropes to get down.

  There were farm houses within short walking distances of the interstate, and just as they expected, every house had already been searched for food and anything else that was useful. Thousands of cars and trucks lined both sides of the interstate, and those people had to have gone somewhere when the infection started.

  They were checking a house as a potential place to spend the night, and no matter how many times they searched a house, they sensed the presence of the original owners, the people who stood in their windows and watched as the dying world forced its way in their front doors.

  “They are called yurei by our people,” said Sora. “Ghosts of the people who were denied a peaceful resting place when they died.”

  “The people who lived here?” asked Sherry.

  Sora nodded at her.

  “You are probably standing where one of them stood hundreds of times, and maybe even on the spot where they died.”

  Sherry glanced down at her feet out of reflex. She was a little pale, and when George asked her if she felt okay, she passed it off as just being tired from being on the move every day.

  George and Sherry were only a bit older than the Tanakas, but they had gotten soft by being inside the shelter for over five years. It was going to take awhile for them to get as tough as they used to be. More time in the gym would have done them some good, and they both knew it.

  Iris said, “Don’t let Sora spook you. You don’t really believe in ghosts, do you?”

  “Do you believe in zombies?” asked Sora.

  “Ouch,” she answered. “I guess I deserved that.”

  George walked over and stood beside Sora at the window. From the window of the farmhouse, the interstate seemed to be out of place. Farmland and scenic forests dominated the view from the window, but the interstate was a gray and rust red scar in the distance.

  “Sora’s right,” he said. “If I had lived here when the whole world fell apart, I would have been standing right here at this window watching it come to me. The cars and trucks were on fire with the exception of those that managed to pull out of
line and then get stuck in the ditches and in the median. People were running everywhere. Some were infected, and they were chasing the living, and the living would have seen this house. Human nature would have made them think of this house as a refuge, but the people watching from their windows were really saying to stay away.”

  Sora had his eyes almost closed when he said, “I’m standing here watching them come toward me, but I have my gun, and I’ll shoot the first person who sets foot on my property.”

  Yuni whispered to the others, “He is seeing it through the eyes of the yurei that live here now.”

  “Will the yurei mind if we spend the night?” asked Iris.

  “They are not vengeful,” said Yuni. “They simply did not get the peaceful passing they had hoped for during their golden years.”

  Now that they were less than a day from Surfside, there would be no need to stay in farmhouses with the yurei. If they didn’t make it to Mud Island by nightfall, they could find plenty of commercial buildings that gave them access to the roof where they could sleep peacefully.

  They left I-20 behind and were forced to use a road that was more narrow in some places. It made them nervous because they didn’t want to get trapped between the river on one side and the woods on the other. By the time they reached the end of the road and it became wider with more commercial areas, they were exhausted, and they decided unanimously to find a place earlier than they had been doing. They could go the last few miles in the morning.

  They were also unanimous about where they would stay when they saw a sign that pointed in the direction of a marina. One of the problems that had worried all of them was the famous moat around Mud Island. The Chief had told Iris about the man who had designed the shelter, and about how he had tried to think of everything to make Mud Island safe. His idea to put a moat around the island had been a stroke of genius, and they couldn’t imagine how many of the infected had tried to cross the moat.