He didn’t want to look at her. She looked to be about his age, and there was a good chance he knew her. A few steps later and he was on the second corpse, an older girl. She turned and raised her arms. Her moaning started a chain reaction that was terrifying as the woods vibrated with the moans of the dead.
This girl was tall, and her arms looked too long for her body. Cooper thought maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. He worried if he got too close she would get a hold on him and drag him down. She came at him. Both breasts were chewed down to the ribs, her mouth a gaping, jagged hole revealing cracked teeth snapping loudly. He ran at her, and at the last minute he veered sharply and avoided her. A hiss came from her throat as she lurched at him. He made it past her, but there were more ahead coming out of the trees and into the shallow ditch. They were just feet from the road and soon would be on the road.
He looked back. The road was already filled with the dead. He had to push forward; he had no other options. To his left was the dirt wall, to his right the dead-filled woods, and ahead a gap soon to be closed. He was getting winded. His pumping blood made his hand and neck wounds throb painfully.
He was running out of space, and he had no weapon. Then he remembered the gun, the 22 he’d taken from the last house. He pulled it out, and after several yards he was near a zombie. He pushed this one down. Another old man with giant black splotches where blood pooled. His feet and hands were black. His eyes looked as if they had been gouged out, and his lower jaw was missing. He was so thin and frail that he was easy to take down with a shove. But the next one was a huge man.
This man was filthy. He looked as if he were covered in dried blood. What was most disturbing was the huge hole in his abdomen. Metal clamps held the hole open and innards hung out. Several thin tubes taped to his arm trailed along behind him. His penis was taped to the side and had a catheter tube coming from it. He turned and hissed, but Cooper shot him in the head. He shot two more in rapid succession. His exit was closing.
He was panicked but knew he had to stay calm if he were to survive. He slowed to a jog to catch his breath. He had a precious few moments to do so. It seemed his only option was to make a mad dash through the trees and try to outmaneuver the dead. He picked a spot in the woods that looked thin and took off.
He darted through the trees, easily outmaneuvering the dead, and was making good progress until he collided headlong with a zombie. He went down on top of a naked old lady. His hands touched her cold gray skin. His knee was on her bloated belly as they fell, and when they hit the ground he heard a loud squelch as her intestines blew threw her ruptured abdomen. As he struggled to get away from her grasping hands and gnashing teeth, he heard muffled snapping as the bones under her skin broke under his weight. None of this slowed her down. She struggled to stand and fell as her own innards knotted around her legs. Cooper was up and running before she could gain her feet.
Three more were coming at him. His fall caused a brief delay, enough time for the nearest zombies to approach. The nearest was a large man, an orderly or nurse maybe. Cooper kicked him in the groin and sent him backward, falling into the others behind him.
He felt a hand on his arm, turned, and faced another orderly. He hadn’t even seen this one, and he was sure he was about to die. He was still holding the gun and wondered if he should use it on himself but knew he never could. That just wasn’t in his nature. He felt long nails dig into him through his sleeve. He shot this one in the head, and it dropped instantly.
He took a few more long strides, jumped a fallen tree, and ran on. The tree seemed to be a barrier that foiled pursuit to some significant degree. The corpses were thinning out as he ran.
He didn’t want to go back to where he’d come from, so he veered left, heading east by his reckoning. He stopped for a moment to breathe. He was drenched, winded, and hurting.
Holy shit! I almost died
, he thought. He saw something on his sleeve. It was a fingernail from the last deadhead. He flicked it off with disgust.
He was far more cautious as he moved on and eventually came out on a green hillside that sloped down to Highway 68. The sun was dropping, and the clouds were a colorful wash on the sky. He stood for a few moments atop the hill, looking at the road below him. It was the main highway in and out of Monterey and was only two lanes. The Monterey Airport was across the highway from him. He saw no movement or activity. He was getting farther away from the more populated areas, and hopefully the going would be easier for at least a while.
Cooper paralleled the highway for the next hour or so. The terrain was constantly changing from extremely thick vegetation near impossible to penetrate to wide open pastures and golf courses. Along the way, he crossed private roads and smaller public roads and had yet to see anyone, living or dead.
He didn’t dare sit when he rested. He was exhausted and knew he would fall asleep if he sat for even a few moments. He pushed on, hoping to find a safe place to sleep for the night.
He felt lucky to be alive, but for what, to wander alone in a wasteland populated by the dead? He decided to stay focused on his goal to keep from thinking too much about his situation. He kept walking parallel to the 68 toward the next sizable city, Salinas. He knew he had to eventually break away from this path to not only get to his sister, but to avoid the city. He would have to leave the highway and make his way across more rough terrain all the way to Highway 101. He thought the 101 might be a nightmare of stopped cars and the dead. He worried about going anywhere near it.
Eventually he worked his way through the most difficult parts of the terrain and came out of the scrubby hills and into a vast valley. The hills sloped down to the edge of a road, and on the other side of the road was the start of many, many miles of farmland. The land was flat and wide open all the way to the city and beyond. He planned to leave the road and cross the fields to avoid major thoroughfares and populations.
He was happy to have left behind the rough terrain of the Monterey peninsula, but the fields were wide open with no cover at all. The valley was a vast, open stretch of farmland that ran hundreds of miles up the center of California.
Cooper saw the city of Salinas in the distance, the highway leading to it surprisingly empty. He moved on and down the hill and crossed the highway. Only a few feet off the road the farmlands started.
He walked a good thirty minutes across deep rows and over ditches. No one seemed to be following as he made his way to a small, flat-roofed concrete house surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. It looked to be a pump house for an irrigation system. The fence was locked, so he climbed it and then climbed to the top of the little structure using the large pipes coming out of it. The sun was down by the time he fell asleep on the little building.
The sun woke him. He lay still for a moment, breathing the fresh morning air, before he sat up. The world was still, quiet, and beautiful. No evidence of the events he had witnessed in the last few days. He wished he could stay on top of that little concrete shed for the rest of his life. He slid off the roof, onto the pipes, and down onto the ground. He was hungry, itchy, and stiff from sleeping on the concrete roof, but he was rested. If he weren’t so tired, the cold would have kept him awake all night. His legs and feet were sore from the day before. He sighed and started walking again.
After walking a couple of hours, he came across a small clump of buildings, an island in the vast expanse of farmland. He was hungry and thirsty, and although it was still early in the day, he decided to investigate the buildings as a possible place to stop for the night. The previous day had been brutal, and he needed the rest. The night on the concrete roof didn’t cut it.
Even from a distance, he could see the buildings were businesses, not just barns or private residences. He circled to observe them from a safe distance—nothing, no movement, and no sounds he could hear.
He made his way closer. There were four buildings at the crossroads of two straight ribbons of tar—county roads. Three of the buildings looked useless, so he quickly looked those over and spent thirty minutes looking around corners and through windows and trying doors. These three were a boarded-up gas station, an empty and partially collapsed building, and a large locked metal warehouse with no windows. The fourth building was a large one with banners and flags strung about, large glass windows, and a large sign that read, “Farm Equipment Sales and Repair.” There were also several large farm machines, like tractors, parked in front of the place. He walked about this one more cautiously.
It wasn’t until he was right in front of the building that he noticed a small sign advertising a gun shop. The smaller business was located in the same building. The door was in the rear. When he felt comfortable that there wasn’t a soul in the place or for miles around from what he could see, he tried to pry open a window or door. Everything looked untouched from the outside, but when he tried the door to the gun shop it swung open easily.
He stepped through the doorway and immediately could see the place had been looted. Glass cracked underfoot as he walked along the aisles. Everything was gone or thrown on the floor. He circled the store once and turned to leave.
He saw a few things in the rubble and bent down. A small multipurpose tool was still in its package; he took it. He almost skipped a small scope but picked it up to have a look. It was light, weighing less than a pound, and when he looked through he was surprised at the level of magnification it offered. He took that too. He also found a small, black metal tube that fit in his palm. It had a small loop of nylon cord on one end and on the other a small metal ball. He thought it might be a flashlight until he lifted it. It was light, and he immediately recognized it. This was a collapsible baton and was perfect for self-defense. He had used one a few times in martial arts class. He had never gotten too far in his training, but the little instruction he had helped him develop an understanding of what a fight really was.
A fight wasn’t a choreographed dance but a quick and brutal thing. You were all in or you were all out, his instructor said. Strike first, fast, hard, and dirty if you have to. The goal was to survive. The instructor didn’t last long at this school for well-off kids. Parents hovering nearby heard this harsh talk and complained. But the guy knew what he was talking about, and Cooper never forgot that philosophy. He wasn’t violent by nature and never got into fights, but that “all in or all out” phrase stuck with him. It was how he accomplished all he did.
He was about to leave when he remembered something about gun shops having secret rooms. Was that only in the movies? He wasn’t sure. He poked around the shelves behind the counter filled with books on survival, bomb making, hand-to-hand combat, sniper training, and every conceivable topic of the sort. He squatted down and looked for any type of latch or knob. That was when he saw the hinges, barely noticeable, painted flat black. The hinges were to a door that was right behind one of the shelves. He pulled and the shelf rolled toward him with ease. The door and wall were painted flat black like the hinges. He turned the knob and opened the door. He felt the blood drain from his face.
Standing at the door, waiting for him, was a man with a gun pointed at his face, and he looked angry.
12.
Ron was thinking of Donna as the noose tightened around his neck. He had been alone when he got caught and hoped Sal would get away safely.
Sal turned out to be a nice guy, but now he’s going to die because of me,
Ron thought.
He was terrified, even angry that he was being lynched. As a black American it was sometimes still a remote fear, a lot less than it had been just fifty years ago, but hate still survived. He lived in an accepting and tolerant community, but there was racism there too. Intolerance raised its ugly head, not toward his race, but it was common to hear Mexicans, Asians, Christians, or almost any group maligned very harshly.
He had never expected to die like this and was almost embarrassed, feeling as if he had failed his race somehow. He struggled to breathe as the noose tightened. He was on his tiptoes and fighting for air. The world was going dark. He thought of how much he would miss Donna and felt a deep sadness.
Donna was also his dental hygienist at work. They had met when Ron bought the practice of a retiring dentist where she was already employed. She stayed on, and for a year they fought to keep their behavior professional until a Christmas office party. They both got tipsy and took a long walk, and Donna grabbed his hand. He turned to her and said, “I have to fire you.”
“What?” She jerked her hand back.
“Well, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to ask you out if I were your boss.”
“OK,” she said with a smile, “I’ll go out with you, but you have to give me a job right after our first date.” And she negotiated a raise. They had been together ever since. They tended to laugh a lot and were always holding hands.
Ron gasped for air. He came to for a bit, but the world was going dark again. There were points of light swimming in his vision, and his eyes hurt from the pressure.
He was in a home improvement store, a vast warehouse as dark as a cave. He remembered being snatched. He’d heard footsteps and thought it was Sal. Two men grabbed him from behind and bound him. They tossed a rope over a beam and dropped the noose around his neck. He couldn’t see them at first, but when they stepped in front of him he had lost all hope of surviving this ordeal. These men were outlaw bikers, members of Satan’s Angels, a notoriously racist and violent gang.
The rope finally loosened a little, and he took in a gulp of air. He was crying; he could feel the hot tears running down his cheeks. He was angry these assholes got the satisfaction of seeing him cry.