Authors: Jacqueline Druga
“I mean. No one is here.”
“Two thousand people don’t disappear. They’re there somewhere. Be vigilant. Don’t wander around. Police station is center. Go there first.”
Cade was listening and nodded.
“We’ll do that,” I said.
Cade suddenly slowed down. “Oh wow. Look.” He hit the brakes.
It was a small storefront, a single door with two windows on a yellow brick building, but the sign on top took me by surprise.
Cade said. “How fucking freaky is that? We so have to go in there.”
Again, I lifted the radio. “Lev, did you know Evans City has a
Night of the Living Dead Museum
. I mean it’s not much of a museum, but it’s here.”
“Everyone knows that,” Lev said. “Don’t go in there. Hit the PD, then the pharmacy. Got that? Don’t wander around town.”
“No one is here,” I said.
“That you can see. Remember. Infected are fast. So focus.”
“I’m focused, we just passed the pharmacy. I’ll radio you back in a few.” I put down the radio. “Seriously, Cade, where is everyone?”
The mystery was partially solved almost immediately after I said that. The deeper we went into the city and down Main Street, the more obvious it was that Evans City went under. Car windows were smashed, blood smeared the street. Some store windows were smashed. And the bodies we did see, had surpassed the straggler stage and had moved into crawler.
“You had to ask, what could go wrong,” I said.
“Oh, stop. What happened here doesn’t count.”
“Should we check the police station?” I asked.
“Yeah, if for nothing else, maybe weapons.” Cade suggested.
“How did it hit so hard, so fast?”
“A couple of people bite a couple more. That’s all it takes. It’s possible that once it hit, people just left.”
We arrived at the police station and Cade pulled the SUV as close to the ramp as he could. After shutting off the vehicle, we grabbed our weapons, the radio, my backpack and did a quick visual check of the area before leaving.
Like Lev had said, infected were fast.
The second I stepped from the SUV, I knew, whatever happened to Evans City hadn’t happened that long ago. The horrid smell still lingered in the air.
We were quiet. A single sound could signal a blast of infected our way.
There wasn’t a noise to be heard in town, and the busted front doors of the Evans City Police Department told us someone else had the same idea. Inside the station was ransacked.
There were no bodies, no blood, just open doors, cabinets and drawers everywhere we looked.
We made it only as far as the front area, when we decided to turn and leave.
That was when I saw it on the radio desk.
“Whoa. Wait.” I walked over.
“What do you see?” Cade asked.
“The map on that desk.”
“We have maps.”
“It’s marked in red. Maybe it shows infected areas.” I hurried to the desk. Someone had been keeping a radio post for a while. I wondered if he was one of the call signs that failed to check in last week. Reaching for the map, I saw familiar words I’d heard before.
The Green.
Whoever was in control of the map, had several areas circled and marked, ‘The Green.’ Inside each circle, was also an address or name of a business.
“What is it?” Cade asked.
“Remember Bobby had mentioned ‘The Green’ and we thought it was an infection or something? I think it’s safe zones.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Each circle is a location. A place to go. Green is life. Bobby said to listen for ‘The Green’.”
“Let’s take that, get the meds and head out of this town.”
“I agree.” I slipped the map into my pack and we left.
We got back in the SUV and drove toward the drug store. During the two block ride, I radioed Lev to check in and told him of our plans.
There was one bright spot to Evans City’s demise. It happened fast and that told me that our wait in the cabin wouldn’t be that long at all.
The name of the drug store was
Evans City Gift and Pharmacy
. The exterior looked more like the OK Corral with the old fashion wooden siding and thick brown posts.
We were able to pull directly to the front.
The door was open and before letting me enter, Cade stepped inside to look.
“Clear,” he said.
I winced when I walked in. “Stinks. Do you think they were looted too?”
“Yes, But I highly doubt what we need was taken. Pharmacy’s back there. Look around, see if there’s anything we can take or anything useful.” He walked back to the end of the store.
“No one took the candy,” I said.
“Grab some.”
I did. I grabbed a few handfuls and put them in the bag.
“Hey, Niles, check this out.”
Curious, I took a few steps and peeked.
Cade pointed to a body slumped on the pharmacy counter. “Talk about a diligent worker.”
“Bet me they worked him to death.” I paused. “Ha.”
Cade shook his head and then just as callous as my joke, he pushed the lifeless body aside and it slumped to the floor.
He went back to the shelves and I searched the store. There really wasn’t much left that we needed. The food was gone, but most of the other stuff remained. I contemplated taking the bandages, but I thought that would bring us bad luck.
The feminine protection shelf had a couple boxes of tampons and then I saw two bottles of orange soda were in the cooler. I grabbed those and zipped them in my backpack. “I saw the liquor store next door,” I yelled. “Bet me they have stuff.”
“We can check. Oh, beautiful. They have it.”
I heard the rattle of pills and I made my way back to the pharmacy.
Cade had set bottles on the counter and I placed them into my backpack and the radio next to it.
He emerged from the shelved area and I saw him stumble a little. “Shit, I almost fell over our dead worker.”
“That’s what you get for tossing him on the floor.”
“Speaking of tossing.” He threw me a pill bottle. “Put that in your bag.”
“What about this stuff?” I pointed.
“I want to go through it. Double check.”
“Okay.” I reached for the zipper on my pack. “This is gonna be stuffed when we’re done. I got …” As I pulled the zipper, the backpack slid on the counter, hitting into the radio and causing it to sail across the counter and slam into a shelf. “Shit. Goddamn it. Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“You had to ask what could go wrong.” I walked over. “I dropped the radio. Damn it.” I bent down and picked it up. It was in three pieces. “Hope it can be fixed.”
“We have lots of radios. No problem. I’m done.”
I turned around.
Cade held up a pill bottle. “Found everything we need for Manny. This was the last…” His words were cut short when his mouth opened in what looked like a silent scream. His hands slammed to the counter and then Cade dropped out of sight. “Niles,” he called my name with pain.
I flew over. What happened? Did he step on something?
Because of the look on his face, I was certain he plunged his foot into a nail or slither of glass. To my surprise, that wasn’t the case.
Counter man wasn’t completely dead. The former pharmacy employee that Cade tossed on the floor was in the final stages of being a straggler. The counter man’s left leg only twitched, his partial arms swung in an attempt to grab Cade, while his jaw, barely held on by a decaying tendon was locked tight to Cade’s ankle.
It was as if counter man was on autopilot. His eyes didn’t move but the jaw kept chomping.
I pulled my weapon, but realized the shot could signal more of them.
Knowing the being was already in a deteriorated state, I lifted my leg and stomped on his face as hard as I could.
His jaw fell off and Cade pulled away his leg. I wasn’t worried until I saw the blood and realized, Cade was wearing tennis shoes, not boots.
“Oh, God,” he said softly. “He got my Achilles tendon. I can’t walk.”
“I’ll help you. Can you stand?”
“I’ll try.”
I pulled a stool forward and helped Cade to stand then sit on it. I turned him and lifted his leg to the counter.
“What are you doing? We have to get back to camp.”
“We’re in a pharmacy. Let’s clean this wound now.”
First I peered around, to make sure nothing else was coming in then I lifted his pant leg, took off his shoe and sock, and looked at the bite.
It was a big bite. A huge line of teeth marks caused a gap on the outer portion of his ankle between the bone and back tendon.
“How bad?”
“It’s bad. Stay put.” I raced outside to the SUV, looking in both directions to make sure there weren’t any infected around, I grabbed a jug of water and ran back in.
After setting that on the counter, I moved frantically around the store, getting what I needed to make a quick first aid.
The faster I cleaned the wound, perhaps the less chance there would be of infection.
I hoped.
When I returned with an armful of items, I saw Cade drinking from the jug.
“What did you just take?”
“A thousand milligrams of ibuprofen. I’m saving the hard stuff.”
Ripping open a roll of paper towels, I snatched the jug from his hand, turned his leg to my advantage, and poured water slowly over it, patting it dry every few seconds. I kept pouring until the bleeding slowed.
Once I got it to that point, I held a towel over it and reached for the pack of butterfly sutures.
“Do I need those?”
“They won’t hurt.” Hoping that they’d stick, I pinched the wound together and place three sutures over them. But I wasn’t done.
I grabbed the can of first aid spray and shook it.
“What are you doing?”
“Bactine,” I replied and proceeded to spray the wound like hell.
After he let out a quiet squeal of pain, Cade winced. “You know that has no medicinal purpose whatsoever, right?”
“I know. They didn’t have ointment.”
“Just … whoa. It’s numb.”
“That’s the point,” I grabbed the roll of gauze and wrapped it around his ankle until the roll ran out. I then shoved the rest of the bandages along with medicine in my pack and threw it over my shoulder. “Ready?”
With a sad look, Cade peered up to me. “Why did you just do all that? I’m a dead man. You know it.”
“No, I don’t.” I reached for him. “Let’s go.” I aided him in standing, and with my support we walked together out of that pharmacy.
Bound and determined not to be shaken, I opened the passenger door for him and helped him in.
He handed me the keys. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Bet you regret now asking what could go wrong?” I shut the door, walked around to the driver’s side and got in.
Once I started the car, I just went straight, full speed, zig-zagging through the cars that were parked on the road.
It wasn’t the way we came onto Main Street, but I knew it would get us back to Route 68.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Cade.
“Hurts. I’m sorry.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry this happened.”
I learned quickly that I had chosen the wrong way when the street was completely blocked off by a fire truck. Swearing under my breath, I put the SUV in reverse, spun around, went down another block and turned down a side street.
“Are we lost?” Cade asked.
“We’re in Evans City, we can’t get lost.”
I was worried. I just wanted to get back to the cabin. Up ahead two cars blocked another street, but there was enough room for me to get through. It was tight and I actually heard the metal of the SUV scrape against one of the cars.
“Your dad is gonna be pissed,” Cade said.
The SUV bounced.
“Did you run over something?”
“Not that I …”
The quadruple ‘Pop’ sound told me exactly what happened. I must have hit one of those speed strips. Within seconds, I felt the SUV descend as all four tires lost air. I slowed down with the tires thumping, coming to a stop on a side street.
“Fuck!” I screamed.
“That’s not going to help.”
I tossed the SUV in park. I could chance driving on the rims, but not for over twenty miles.
“Do we walk?” Cade asked.
“Not with your injury,” I told him, running my hand frantically over my face. Then I looked out. There were several stragglers on the street. I didn’t really worry about them. I worried about Cade. He was bit and it wasn’t going to be long before that fever set in.
“What now?” he asked.
“We wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what?”
“Lev. He told me if he didn’t hear from me he was coming,” I said with certainty. “He’ll come.”