The smell was almost a physical sensation as Peter approached. He felt his own stomach roiling some, and resolved to not say a single word to Smith. Especially since Peter wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t going to hurl himself. The odor of two month old foods that had been fermenting in the hotboxes that had used to be cold storage . . . he’d take zombies over that any day of the week.
Hastily he changed his course a little to swing somewhat wider of the ‘food’ in the yard, and pulled up the collar of his undershirt to cover his nose. As he did, he tried to remember if he’d chewed the gum out of last night’s MRE yet. It wouldn’t be much, but at this point
anything
to help him cut the presence and memory of the ‘food’ was going to help him hold on to his gorge.
“Yeah, not sure even zombies will be interested in this.” Whitley said from the doorway. “Smith, you done heaving?”
“Oh God.” the man moaned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That is so fucking rank.”
“Inside.” Peter said through his shirt as he neared the door. Smith — still looking green and queasy — straightened up and managed to maneuver himself in after Peter. As soon as they were through, Whitley closed the door and started shoving at a couch. Peter helped her, and in seconds they had the door blocked off. A couch wasn’t much of a blockade, but it was something. And zombies weren’t smart — or coordinated — enough to climb over it without having serious problems.
“Back door’s this way.” Whitley said, pointing.
“You check the back yard yet?”
“Calm. Same deal we’ve been seeing all day. No problem.”
“Good.” Peter said, heading through the dining room and stopping near the door. It was wood, but had a few small window panes set just above eye line for most people. He went up on tiptoe and checked through them. Whitley was right, just the now standard scattering of zombies were in view, and none of them were close enough to be a problem.
“What are we waiting for?” Smith asked, gulping a little between his words like he was still struggling to keep control of his discombobulation.
“The horde out front.” Peter answered.
“We’re trying to lose them aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but we need them to get interested in the house first. And it’d be helpful to find out if they’ll eat that shit you guys threw out there.”
“Oh . . .” Smith said, paling again.
“Man up you sissy.” Whitley said.
“Who are you, Crawford?” he asked.
“No, but you don’t see me carrying on like you are.”
“I don’t see how you’re not.”
“Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m not tough jackass.”
“It ain’t about that—” Smith moaned. “But, seriously, how can you stand that?”
“Can it.” Peter said as she just shrugged like the question was awkward. “Whitley, you up to taking a peek out front?” It pained him a little to ask her to volunteer herself, but the risk was small, and he was enjoying the brief rest his legs were gaining simply standing there at the back door. It was the first time in hours he wasn’t in motion.
“Yeah, hold tight.” she said. He watched as she went back through the rooms to the front of the house and angled herself for a look through one of the windows. “Okay, there’s a bit of a huddle forming near the food.”
“They’re eating?”
“Can’t tell,” she said without turning from the window, “but some of them are bent over or down on their knees.”
“Urrk!” Smith gurgled, twisting and stumbling away from Peter before he doubled over and started heaving again.
“Is he throwing up again?”
“Yeah.” Peter answered. “They all clumping up on the food?”
“No, there’s no more room to get near it.” she said. “Hang on. Okay, yeah, they’re pressing in on the house. Yeah, they want to take a look at the building. It’s like they saw us go in and it’s the only thing they’re interested in.” She backed away from the window and headed back to rejoin Peter.
“Smith, pull your shit together.” the Marine told the other man as the first thump sounded from the front of the house. A standard front door wasn’t inordinately tough, but it was generally enough to hold off most humans who didn’t know how to kick through it; and even then it would take some time. Zombies though, they never held back like humans tended to when beating on something. And they felt no pain; the monsters were perfectly content to pound their hands down to the bone if they got it in what was left of their heads to batter past something.
Cracking open the back door amid the tumult of noise coming from behind him, Peter checked again in a quick-then-longer-look pattern of two visual sweeps before stepping out into the back yard.
“Want me on point again?” Whitley asked as he walked directly away from the house.
“If you’re still good for it.”
“No problem.”
“Hold this course for a few hundred yards, at least.” Peter said, glancing behind them even as he gestured to indicate a path straight away from the house; one that would draw a straight line from the front of the house to the humans and keep the house between both. This close to the house, whatever was happening on the other side was out of view. The further they got from it though, the more likely it was any zombies in the front that were spreading out might notice the retreating humans. There didn’t seem to be any real hard rule for how far away a person needed to be from a zombie to avoid triggering the pursuit reflex, but the further the distance the less likely it was.
“Got it.”
“I hope we don’t have to do that again.” Smith said, wiping at his mouth again.
“Yeah, no shit.” Whitley told him. “You just threw up a breakfast we didn’t really have to waste you know.”
“Breakfast was hours ago.” he shot back. “Those were just dry heaves.”
“And balls. Don’t forget your balls; they’re back there with the zombies too.”
“Asshole.” Smith muttered.
“Sissy.”
“Knock it off.” Peter said mildly. “Good job, both of you. Looks like it worked.”
“Won’t last.” Smith said unhappily. “There’s always more zombies.”
Peter sighed, but he couldn’t disagree.
“Now that’s interesting.” Peter remarked as he stopped his sweep and centered the binoculars on another set of farm buildings a little to the south of the trio’s current course. Fiddling with the focusing knob, he brought the view into sharper relief and studied the scene. “Fucked up, but interesting.”
“What’s that?” Whitley asked.
“Either someone had a bad day, or someone else did.”
“What?” Smith said, shading his eyes against the noontime sun with his hand. The temperature had risen to all of maybe fifty, maybe, but whenever the wind decided to gust itself across the Arkansas landscape it carried icy knives that sliced right through with a solid chill. And that was at noon.
“Just head that way.” Peter said, declining to explain further. “You’ll see.”
“We gonna pull another break away?” Whitley wondered.
“Maybe.” Peter shrugged as he finished his visual sweep before dropping the binoculars on their strap.
Five minutes later, they were close enough for the other two to see what the binoculars had allowed Peter to already spot. It was a neatly kept two story house, a sprawling floor plan affair that easily looked big enough to have housed television’s Waltons back in the 70s. Adjacent was a normal looking — though large — painted wood barn; but behind the house and barn were three more modern warehouse structures. And a five or six story circular tower structure that Peter, even though he wasn’t a farmer, suspected probably was for storing grain or corn or something.
Clearly the owners hadn’t been little subsistence farmers; the layout looked too elaborate to explain any other way. But, if the scene out front was any indication, the past tense was the correct interpretation.
“Jeez, what the fuck is this?” Smith demanded as he finally figured out what was hanging from the house’s second floor eaves.
“I’m hoping they just gave up.” Peter said.
“Jesus Gunny!” Whitley blurted, sounding shocked.
“What?”
“That’s pretty damned cold.”
Peter shrugged, but he softened his tone a little as he sought to explain. “If they weren’t suicides, then that means someone did it to them. Personally, I’d rather think they ran out of options and choose this over what it means if someone
else
came by and strung them up. There are a lot of zombie bodies scattered around the house you know. They probably were surrounded.”
The two soldiers were quiet for a moment, then Smith shrugged while Whitley made a sort of half-grunting unhappy noise deep in her throat. Peter spared one more look at the seven bodies suspended by the neck on the end of ropes, then shifted his eyes back to the ground and tried to put them out of his mind.
Of the seven twisting slowly in the gusting wind, five looked large enough to have been either adults or at least teenagers; but two were clearly children since that pair was under three feet tall. Whenever it had happened, it hadn’t been so far back on the calendar to have given the decomposition process enough time to fully break the bodies down. They were heavily weathered and rotted, but were actually in better shape than some zombies Peter had seen since the apocalypse begin.
Based on what he knew, he’d guess they couldn’t have died more than a month ago. Maybe a bit further back since he knew cold would slow the process of converting bodies into bones; but that was ultimately an academic question he wasn’t interested in. What he
did
care about was the bodies would very likely serve as a good distraction against the current horde pursuing the trio.
As unsettling as it was for him to contemplate, he figured if zombies would stop to eat two month old rotten beef and chicken and pork; they’d definitely go for seven human bodies who were in better shape.
“Okay, here’s what I want to do.” he said after a few moments. “Let’s push ourselves up to a run and get to the house as quick as we can. Dive inside, close up the front, then hustle upstairs and cut the bodies down.”
“Uh—” Smith started, but Whitley spoke over him.
“How are we doing to lower them with several hundred zombies on our asses and milling about the property.”
“Yeah, and unless we find some shovels — and even if the zombies split —any sort of grave for those poor bastards is going to take some time to dig. Even a mass grave.”
“We’re not burying them.” Peter explained calmly. “We’re using them as a distraction.”
“Oh fucking hell.” Smith said.
“Wow.” Whitley said.
Peter shrugged even though they were both ahead of him. “We can’t help them. They’ve been dead a while. Their sacrifice can buy us time.” He didn’t like the thought of using the corpses as mere distractions any more than Smith seemed to; but they were already dead. He and Smith and Whitley were still breathing. It was a matter of staying that way; there was a lot he was prepared to entertain to keep it that way.
Regardless of how distasteful he found it.
“Time for what?” Whitley asked, her voice also curiously calm.
“To search the property.”
“We’ve been searching properties without resorting to sick shit like this all morning.” Smith pointed out.
“Yeah, but I think we might can finally find ourselves a ride now.”
“How you figure?”
Peter gestured forward. “It’s overgrown a good bit, but you can still see the tire tracks leading into that warehouse. And that tank next to them, that’s either LP or fuel. I’ll bet there’s vehicles squirreled away over there somewhere.” There was an aboveground tank of reasonable size, probably in the five to seven hundred gallon range, a short distance from the line of warehouses.
It was the tank that made Peter think it was worth taking the time to really have a good look. He couldn’t imagine any farmer this close to Memphis bothering with an on-site fuel storage tank for his regular cars and trucks. But he knew farm vehicles were in a different category, and anyone who’d operated a lot of them would have likely made arrangements for on-site refueling. So many buildings on the property seemed to strongly indicate a lot of regular activity; or, at least, that there
had
been such.
“So what, we hotwire ourselves a farm combine and churn our way north?” Whitley asked.
“We?” Peter asked mildly.
“You then, but you know you’re going to let us ride along.”
“If there’s one vehicle in that building there’s probably five or six.” Peter said, though he was guessing. He was no farmer, and even his well-traveled experience in the Corps didn’t give him any real framework for figuring out what exactly might be bouncing around on a big farm. “They’ve probably got trucks and stuff. And I’ll probably have time to get one running.”
“What if the zombies wander over to the warehouse after us?” Smith asked.
“We’ll handle it.”
“The last group here didn’t handle it so well.”
“We’re armed.”
“Pistols Gunny. Pistols and some crap hunting guns.”
“Hey, they’re not crap.”
“They’re civvie crap.”
“Bullshit. There’s nothing wrong with anything we’ve turned up.” Peter shot back. “This Remington is a M-24 without DOD’s fiddling around getting in the way.”
They’d found several shotguns in their checks of houses; enough that there’d been a chance to upgrade several times so that both Smith and Whitley were happy with what they were carrying. Currently Smith was toting a well maintained Mossberg, while Whitley had hung onto a Remington shotgun that looked battered but was actually in really great shape. The scratches and abuse on the stock and barrel didn’t matter to its firing action.
As for him, Peter had a Remington 700, a rifle, slung behind his shoulder. The gun was a
version
of the M-24 the Army used; something Smith would likely be familiar with at least in passing. And it was the same weapon the Marines had rebuilt before calling it the M-40; but Smith wasn’t a gun guy like Peter was, so the Marine hadn’t bothered getting into the minutia. The bottom line was, there was nothing wrong with a solid 30-06 rifle, and the Remington Peter was carrying was in good shape.
It was a bolt action, and the shotguns were both pump actions, so all three had a slower rate of fire than the semi-auto M-16s — and his AR-15 — that had been abandoned. But rapid fire didn’t usually help all that much with zombies anyway. It hadn’t back at the bridge. If a shot wasn’t aimed properly, the zombie ignored it. All he cared about was it worked, and he had over sixty rounds of jacketed soft point bullets. They would take down just about any animal on the North American continent short of a grizzly if used correctly.
He knew they’d do just fine against zombie skulls.
“Ammo levels ain’t all that great if we end up standing a siege.” Smith said.
“That’s crap.” Whitley cut in before Peter could answer. “We’re actually close to starting to need to decide if we’re going to add more food or bullets the way we keep finding shotgun shells.” Peter agreed with her. Ammo
was
heavy, and shotgun shells especially weighed more than five five six. The last time he’d checked, both of the soldiers had a good amount of shells for the shotguns in their pouches. She was right; after a certain point they didn’t need — or would be able to carry — more ammunition.
“What’s a scattergun going to do against zombies?” Smith demanded.
“That’s why I’ve been letting you have all the slugs we’ve found.”
“We’ll take it easy.” Peter said, trying to nip the debate off. They were wasting time. “Let’s run to the house, cut the bodies down and make sure they hit the ground. Then we can see what the horde does before we bail out the back.”
“What if they stick on us?”
“They didn’t last time.” Whitley pointed out.
“What if they don’t?”
“Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve
now
?” she demanded.
“Hey, I’ve pulled my weight ever since Atlanta.” he protested. “There ain’t nothing you’ve done that I haven’t. But I’ve had it with being treed up with zombies.”
“We’re not going to get surrounded.” Peter said.
“How do you know the bastards won’t go all in on the warehouse while we’re screwing around inside?”
“We’ll keep an eye out, and we can always distract them at the front while we exit some other way.”
“What’s to say there’s a back door?” Smith asked.
“You want to run laps out here while Gunny and I find a vehicle?” Whitley asked skeptically.
“Yeah, actually.” Smith said.
Peter blinked in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“Seriously?” Whitley asked.
“Yeah, seriously. You two go do whatever and I’ll play ring-around-the-rosy with the fuckers following us. Let me know when you’re done.”
“I might need a while to get a vehicle working.” Peter said. The reason he wanted to try to break contact using the bodies was he couldn’t guarantee he’d just find a vehicle and start it up. There was only so much he could do without a lot of tools, but some of the things he
could
might need some time to get done before an engine cooperated with his efforts.
“How long?”
“Could be a few hours.”
“Fuck.” Smith said, sounding seriously unhappy.
“This works and we’ll have wheels again.” Whitley told him.
“Yeah, but what’s wrong with what we’ve been doing?”
“We’re walking.”
“We can’t walk to South Dakota.” Peter said.
“I know.”
“So, sooner or later we’ll have to bite the bullet and try for a ride.” Whitley said.
“Maybe we’ll find a better chance?”
“Where?” she demanded.
“I don’t want to get anywhere near a town or city or whatever unless we’re mobile.” Peter said, forcing himself to keep his voice calm and patient. Smith was clearly having a ‘moment’; and pressuring him or leveling any of a couple of obvious accusations wouldn’t help the situation. “And we’re still something like a thousand miles from our goal. This needs to get done.”
“Fine.” Smith said. “But I’d still rather hang out around here than hole up inside and hope.”
“Fine.” Peter said.
“But—” Whitley started, but Peter cut her off.
“That’s fine.” he said again. “Whitley and I will take a quick sweep through the house and then check out the warehouse. You can be the piper out here. If you run into any problems, fire some shots off, okay?”
“Good.” Smith nodded.
“Okay then. You break off right and we’ll head for the house.” Peter said. “We’re close enough now.”
“Good luck.” the Guardsman said, changing course. Peter pushed his pace up to a jog and left him behind. Whitley joined him as he went past, easily matching his speed. The Marine was really feeling the impacts in his tired legs as he ran lightly, but he commanded himself to keep moving. He’d never given up on anything and now definitely wasn’t the time to start.
But he really hoped they’d find a ride.