Empty Bodies (Book 5): Damnation (2 page)

Holly fed Dylan water, and he swallowed the pills without protest.

After the boy had swallowed the pills, Will wrapped the belt around the top of Dylan’s arm. He pulled it tight, hoping it would help stop blood flow to the open wound.

“We’re gonna have to do this quickly,” Will said. “As soon as you remove the towel, I’m gonna pour cayenne onto the wound.” He handed Holly one of the clean t-shirts. “Once we’re done, put this one on his arm.”

“Then what do we do?” Holly asked.

“We wait until the bleeding stops,” Charlie said.

“And hope that we don’t have to use the salt,” Will added.

“Is he going to be okay?” Mary Beth asked, having approached the vehicle.

“Don’t look,” Holly snapped. Mary Beth jumped back. “I'm sorry, but we need you to go sit back down, okay? He’s going to be fine.”

Mary Beth bowed her head and turned away, going back to the spot Holly had asked her to stay put at.

Holly wiped her eyes, trying to calm herself.

“You ready?” Will asked her.

Taking a deep breath, Holly nodded.

Will unscrewed the top off of the cayenne pepper. The container was three-quarters of the way full. He hoped that it would be enough to stop the bleeding, as he had no desire to have to try using the salt.

“He’s going to squirm like hell once this hits the wound,” Will said. “You’re going to have to hold him down with everything you’ve got, Charlie.”

Charlie nodded.

Will looked back to Holly. “You stay behind me. As soon as I get this on the wound, I need you to be ready with that clean shirt. I think we can stop the bleeding if we can get some pressure back on it right away.”

Will closed his eyes and drew in long, deep breaths.
Please, God, let this work,
he thought. He looked up and told Charlie to hold Dylan down. Charlie pushed down on Dylan’s shoulders.

Will pulled away the dirty towel, and dumped the spice onto the wound.

It was the loudest scream that Will had ever heard.

CHAPTER TWO

Jessica was the first among the group to wake. All four of them had slept in the middle of the main room of the Welcome Center. The temperature had dropped significantly overnight. Fortunately, they’d slept close to each other, absorbing one another’s body heat.

The smell of cleaning supplies surrounded her, but it still beat the smell of rotting flesh from the bodies they’d pulled out of the inside of the building.

After lying on her back for a few minutes, she decided to get out and go for a short walk before the others woke. She knew that Gabriel would be ready to head out as soon as he was up. In fact, if he’d had the ability to set an alarm, they’d probably already have been on the road by now. But he’d hardly slept lately, and that had caught up with him as he lay with his eyes closed, breathing heavy as he rested.

Careful not to wake Gabriel, Thomas, or Claire, she walked over to one of the bags containing their firearms, removing a pistol from the inside. She stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans, put on a coat, and tip-toed across the room to the door.

A gentle Autumn morning’s breeze brushed against her face. She ran her hands together to warm them, then stuck them into her pockets. It was a typical North Carolina Fall day, like so many she’d lived through. The mornings and evenings would be chilly, while the middle of the day would almost feel like Summer. Soon, every hour of each day would be cold, and she wondered where they’d be when those days came.

In front of the Welcome Center, a group of abandoned cars sat on the highway. She tried her best not to look at them, wanting to forget about the world she lived in. Instead, she looked off in the opposite direction at all the trees which covered much of the property.

As she stared off to the distance, one question loomed heavy on her mind: had she made a mistake?

The decision to come with Gabriel had been an impulsive one. On one hand, she’d simply become bored at the campground, which was strange for her. An introvert by nature, Jessica rarely found herself looking for adventure. As long as she had a pen and paper and somewhere quiet where she could be on her own, she was content. At the cabin, she’d had those things, but it hadn’t seemed to quite fulfill her. Somehow, she’d gained a new sort of love for adventure and a craving for the adrenaline rush that came with it. Sitting inside of a cabin wasn’t going to feed that hunger.

Jessica also wondered if she’d let the jealousy take hold of her.

Because she was in love with Will.

She couldn’t put a finger on why she’d fallen for him so quickly—she just knew it to be true. Perhaps it had been the bond she’d built with his parents before the two of them had even met. She’d already seen so much of their fighting spirit inside their only son. Maybe part of it was the fact that she’d been there when Will had ‘died’. She felt a connection to him through that that would be impossible for Holly to understand. When she’d seen him lying in the middle of the road, the feeling hadn’t been so different from walking in on her dead parents.

But had her jealousy of Holly gotten the best of her?

Jessica reached the far side of the parking lot and stared out onto the desolate highway. Part of her wanted to keep walking and return to the camp. Another part of her wanted to jump into a vehicle and just drive away. To get away from Gabriel, who would only remind her of Will every time she looked at him. Additionally, she worried that Gabriel’s recklessness and desire to reach his family would end up getting her killed. She could head south to Florida, and leave the threat of an impending Winter behind her. Others would surely be there, and she could hook up with another group and lean on them for survival.

All these ideas swam around inside her head, but they didn’t matter. The thought of going at it alone was appealing, but stupid. As careless as Gabriel had become, he was smart and, like Jessica, he was a survivor. The same could be said for Claire, and especially for Thomas, who wasn’t going to put up with a lot of bullshit. He would help keep Gabriel on track and focused.

Jessica set aside the asinine idea of leaving and retraced her steps back to the building. As she approached the Welcome Center, the door opened and Gabriel came walking outside. Immediately, he covered his nose, remembering the bodies they’d left to rot near the building. He met Jessica near the bathrooms, out of range of the stench.

Gabriel asked, “How’d you sleep?”

Jessica shrugged.

“Yeah, same here. What are you doing out here?”

“Just wanted to get some fresh air and take a walk before we left. I knew you were going to want to leave pretty much right after you woke up.”

“Already packed up my bed and got my stuff together,” Gabriel replied. “I purposely made noise in hopes that I’d wake those other two up, but they sleep like rocks. Neither of them moved.”

Jessica smiled.

Gabriel looked off toward the road. He put his hands in his pockets and drew in a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?”

Jessica nodded.

“Do you think I’ll find them?”

The question threw Jessica. She of course knew that Gabriel was speaking of his wife and daughter. Was she supposed to tell the truth? That, no, he wouldn’t find them. That the chances that they’d survived all this were astronomical. From how he’d described her, Gabriel’s wife didn’t seem built for a survivalist world.

But, in this new world, hope was all they had. It was, perhaps, the only thing keeping air in their lungs.

“I do,” Jessica said. “I do think we’re going to find them.”

Gabriel frowned, looking down at the sidewalk.

She asked, “What’s the matter?”

“What if I’m not sure that I
want
to find them?”

“What?” Jessica asked. She’d heard what he’d asked, but couldn’t believe it.

Gabriel looked up. “I haven’t been the best father, and I damn sure haven’t been a great husband. And look around us. Look at what the world has become. Look at what
we’ve
become. We’re goddamn animals out here trying to survive. This isn’t a way to live. I just wonder if it would be better for them to be dead. How am I supposed to have a family in a world like this?”

Jessica found herself at a loss. She really wasn’t sure what to say.

“Gabriel, that isn’t true. Look at what you’ve done with Dylan. You had no responsibility to take care of that child, yet you protected him like he was your own.”

Gabriel looked away, unable to make eye contact with Jessica any longer. She grabbed him by the hand, and he turned to face her.

“We’re going to get to Alexandria, and we’re going to find your wife and your little girl, all right?”

 It took a few moments of staring vacantly into Jessica’s eyes, but he finally nodded. She wrapped her arm around him, just like she would have if he were her brother. She smiled.

“Come on,” Jessica said. “Let’s go wake those rocks up.”

***

With Thomas and Claire now awake, and everything loaded into the SUV, Gabriel went to the two picnic tables at the far end of the Welcome Center. Jessica sat at one, writing in her journal. As Gabriel approached, she closed it, almost as if she didn’t want him to see what she was writing. He wondered what she wrote about, but also knew that it was none of his business. She stood up.

“We ready to go?”

Gabriel nodded. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for letting me have a little bit of time to myself,” Jessica said.

“No problem.” Gabriel cleared his throat. “Thanks for your encouragement earlier. You have to understand that, in a way, the closer to home I get, the more scared I become. I
have
to find my family.”

Jessica hugged Gabriel.

“We’ll find them.”

Gabriel broke their embrace, then looked Jessica in the eyes and smiled. They turned around and headed back over to the SUV. Thomas and Claire stood near the back of it, watching as the two approached.

“You guys ready?” Thomas asked.

Gabriel nodded.

Thomas smiled. “Then let’s blow this joint, shall we?”

***

Gabriel sat in the back seat, chewing on a tough piece of jerky. He’d never been a fan of the stuff, but now the dried meat may as well have been a tender slab of filet mignon. Thomas had several packs, and eating it in-between the cans of processed soup had become a luxury. Gabriel reminded himself of how fortunate they were to have any food at all. That they weren’t to the point yet where they were hunting rabbits and squirrels.

Thomas sat in front of Gabriel, taking the first shift at driving. Gabriel had offered to drive, but Thomas had adamantly said he was driving. Whatever. Gabriel had no issue riding along, just as long as he made it home. That’s all that mattered.

“Any idea how far we are from Alexandria?” Thomas asked.

“God willing, we should be there by day’s end,” Claire said.

Gabriel snorted to himself at the word ‘God’. He then said, “Yeah, if we’re lucky and don’t come up against a ton of resistance.” Other than the occasional straggler, they’d so far only run across one small herd of Empties. Thomas had been able to easily maneuver around it.

They’d passed a few gas stations since leaving the Welcome Center, but hadn’t stopped at any of them. They'd each looked like they'd been empty since before The Fall, with windows busted out, random auto parts and trash outside, and gas prices that Gabriel hadn’t seen in a decade. The weather was nice, but clouds in the eastern sky said that they could hit rain within the hour. So they’d driven on, trying to get as far as they could before the sky fell open.

Jessica sat in the back seat with Gabriel. She had her head buried in her journal.

“What’re you writing about?” Gabriel finally asked.

Jessica looked up from her journal and glanced over to him. She shut the book, leaving her pen inside. “Nothing,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business. Go on, keep writing.”

Jessica turned away from Gabriel, and stared out her window. “It’s okay. I was finished anyway.”

Gabriel looked out his own window. Nothing but vast open fields covered the landscape. He had spent so much time traveling and living in the city that he often forgot that his home state of Virginia had such beautiful scenery.