The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse (11 page)

“So you phone her from the car?”

“No. I texted her. If I called, my Bluetooth would kick the news off until the call was completed, and I wanted to keep listening to the radio. The announcer on Info Wars was calling it ‘the day of the dead’.”

“Did Iris text you back?”

“No. She called. That frightened me. It was so unexpected. She’s dedicated to her job – she never interrupts her work to phone me, so when I heard her voice, and the
tone
of her words, the panic became real.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to get Colt from school,
now
! She said the hospital was forcing her to stay to help with the sick. She said people were being brought to the emergency room in fits of uncontrollable rage. She was scared. It was in her voice. I mean really scared. In the background I could hear pandemonium. There were people shouting, and alarms wailing. I could hear sirens too. It sounded like the hospital had become a war zone.”

I paused for a moment to write everything down Chad had told me and then stared thoughtfully at my notes. A breeze rustled across the ground, sweeping away the leaves from nearby trees. It was very quiet, here in West Virginia – so quiet that the sound of the silence as we stood there was almost deafening. I tried to imagine the scene unfolding through Chad’s eyes as he drove back into Grafton on that fateful day – the clamor and the panic rising.

“What did you say to Iris during that phone call, Chad?” I asked at last.

“I told her to leave the hospital. I told her not to stay.”

“Did she agree?”

“Yes,” Chad said, “surprisingly.”

I looked a question. Chad made a face that every guy would recognize.

“She can be stubborn sometimes,” he said. “Especially when it comes to her work. She’s not the type of person to leave the weak or helpless. She’s always offering her help. She’s selfless… that was why I was so relieved when she agreed. I stayed on the line with her until she was at her car. She was shouting to me over the insanity and screaming sirens. When she was safely in her car, I told her to drive home. I told her not to fuck around – that she should blow through red lights and drive along the sidewalk if she had to.”

“You felt it was that serious?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went to get Colton from his school.”

I flipped over to a new page in my notebook, writing as quickly as I could to capture the terror of that time; the chaos and confusion. Some things just don’t translate powerfully onto paper – like the expression on a man’s face when he’s faced with impending disaster, for instance. When I was caught up, I looked hard into Chad’s eyes.

“Tell me what scared you most at the moment?” I asked.

Chad flinched – the question was unexpected. I had caught him off guard. “Getting Colton home and safe,” he said simply. “I thought Iris would be safe. I thought she would make it home in one piece. That was the plan – get everyone home and then re-assess. I was worried that there would be no time to bug out. With Iris and Colton in my care, that would have been my first instinct – flee West Virginia and find somewhere else that was safe. I was starting to worry that escape wouldn’t be an option. But overriding all of that was the need to get Colton first. We couldn’t plan anything until I had him home and secure.”

“So you drove to his school.”

Chad laughed, but it was a bitter huff in the back of his throat, lacking any humor. “I
tried
to drive to his school,” he said. “But it wasn’t as easy as you make it sound.”

“Why?”

“The town seemed ominously still all of a sudden as I saw it in the distance. I was stopped by a set of traffic lights. That was when I got my first taste of the insane madness that Iris had been trying to tell me about in her phone call.”

“What did you see?”

“A woman, running for her life across four lanes of traffic, screaming, with her face twisted in utter horror. Pursuing her were two crazed young guys. They were sprinting after her, clawing at her as they came within reach. They were snarling, howling. They were demented. Their clothes were torn and hanging like rags from them,” his voice lowered to a whisper, “and they were covered in fresh blood.”

“How did you react?”

“I grabbed for my Glock 45 and racked the slide.”

“What?”
I held up a hand to stop Chad from continuing and then frowned at him. “You had a gun in the car with you?”

“Of course,” Chad said simply. “I never leave home without my Glock and some extra mags. I’m a closet prepper,” he explained quickly. “I had all the basic essentials for an emergency… including go-packs at home and a stored supply of food and water.”

“Okay…” I said thoughtfully. A few months before the Apocalypse, a lot of Americans would have thought Chad Delloma crazy for the preparations he had overseen. They wouldn’t be laughing now… if they were still alive. Chad had been right – his precautions had probably saved him and his family on that fateful day the ‘Affliction’ swept through his part of the world.

“Anyhow, as the woman ran past the front of the truck, an older man opened his car door and ran at the two pursuers. He slammed his shoulder into the closest one and drove him into the second one. All three of them went down on the blacktop. One of the blood-covered crazies scrambled to his feet and began clawing at the guy who tackled them, literally trying to tear him apart. It was fucking gruesome. Both of the crazies ripped the guy to pieces with just their hands and teeth. Even above the V8 of my truck, I could hear his screams. They went on and on…”

“You didn’t stop?”

Chad shook his head. “Cars were pushing through the intersection. I punched the peddle to the floor and went up the sidewalk to get around slow traffic. My hands were sweating – not with fear, but certainly with panic. I knew I had to get to Colton.”

“How far away were you from the school at that time?”

“Just a few minutes,” Chad said. “I was steering with one hand, holding the Glock in the other. I pulled onto Harmony Grove Road. It’s a long, straight stretch with beautiful homes on either side – like the houses you used to see in the TV commercials or movies. All the houses have swimming pools, manicured gardens, high gates across their driveways… you know the kind of places I am talking about, right?”

I nodded. I could imagine the kind of street Chad was describing.

“Well their luxurious lifestyle went to hell in a hurry,” he said grimly. “I pulled onto the street doing eighty in a thirty-five zone… and drove into a war zone. Bodies were lying on the lawns with hunched figures crouching on top of them, their heads buried in open chest wounds like fucking turkey buzzards picking at road kill. People were running, screaming in all directions. Houses were on fire, cars were boiling black smoke. The corpses were piled up in the gutters, and the tarmac was awash with blood. I drove through it all, praying Colton was safe, praying I would be able to grab him quickly and get back home. One of the ‘Afflicted’ made the mistake of coming at me in the truck. His eyes were wild with madness, blood dripping from his chin and his hands. I shot him in the face through the open driver’s side window.”

“Tell me more about the school,” I urged Chad. “What was the scene like when you arrived?”

“It was chaos,” he confessed, and for a moment his tone and the look in his eyes became reflective. “The road was choked with the cars of other parents who were trying to do exactly the same thing I was doing. There was nowhere to park so I just reversed the truck until it was facing the way I had come and put it up onto the sidewalk. I wanted to get away quickly. It was three miles to our home from the school… but the route was back the way I had arrived – through the horror and the madness.”

“You found Colton?”

“Not easily. The school was in fucking lock down!” Chad swore and shook his head. “Parents were waiting at the doors but there was no one on the inside of the building to let the kids out. Every single god-damned door was locked. I went around the school with the Glock raised at eye level and checked them all. I turned to go back the way I had come and then noticed an open class room window. I didn’t hesitate.”

“What did you find when you got inside the building?”

“I could hear cries and screams from the children. The school only teaches kids up until the fifth grade, so you could imagine the fear and panic. I followed the sound down an abandoned hallway towards the gym. By then there were other parents with me, calling out hysterically for their kids, running frantic with their own fear.”

“Were all the students being kept in the gymnasium? Is that normal practice?”

“Nothing was normal about that day, Mr. Culver,” Chad said pointedly. “But, yeah. All the kids were being detained in the gym, along with the teachers. We ran towards the doors in a group. Then suddenly something came snarling from out of the school’s main office. It had been a man, but now it was something else. It only had one arm and there was a hole ripped through its chest. It came out into the hallway dripping blood. Its eyes were yellow, and some of the flesh had been ripped from its face. It saw us. It raised its head and screamed at the ceiling. Blood spewed from its mouth and dripped from its lips. It lunged for one of the mothers running alongside me. I threw up the Glock and fired a snap shot. The bullet ripped through the thing’s left shoulder… and nothing happened. It didn’t go down. It didn’t even seem to register the impact. I went cold with shock. I fired again, hitting it in the chest. The fucking thing swayed, but stayed on its feet. It started to go into a kind of crouch like it was about to pounce. I took aim and fired a third shot. I hit it right between the eyes. It went over backwards and didn’t move again.”

“Were there any more of the ‘Afflicted’ between you and the gymnasium?”

“Not that I saw,” Chad muttered. “The gym door opened and two teachers emerged, both of the men white faced with fear. I grabbed the first one by the collar of his shirt and shouted into his face, demanding to know where Colton was.”

“And…?”

“He was there,” Chad’s face lit up with relief in the re-telling, his emotions still riding the roller-coaster of the day that changed America forever. “He came to me, tears welling in his eyes. I guess there were tears in mine too. The relief… you know?”

I nodded. Chad’s smile trembled for just a second. “He calls me ‘Bug’. It’s the nickname he’s given me. He still uses it to this day…”

We kicked our feet around in the dirt a little bit – the way grown men do when they don’t really understand or know how to deal with awkward emotions. Chad coughed, cleared his throat. I made a point of studying the scored timberwork along the siding of the house for a few moments. Then it was all right again.

“We went back out the exact way I came,” Chad picked up the thread of his story. “Out through the window, running hard for the truck. Behind me I could hear screams… not the kind I was accustomed to, though. These weren’t screams of fear and panic any more. They were cries of terrible pain. I know the difference…”

“You didn’t stop? You didn’t look back?”

“No,” Chad said without any remorse. “Colton was my only priority. I got him belted into the truck and was about to drive away from the school when I saw Iris’s car slowing. I waved her down, blasted the truck horn, and pointed to let her know Colton was with me. We ran like a two-car convoy all the way home, Iris tailing my truck, and me driving fast and ramming anything that got in the way, clearing the path for her to follow.”

We had arrived at the critical segment of Chad’s story – his tale of surviving the attacking ‘Afflicted’ while he and his little family defended their home. I was intrigued. I looked around me again, trying to understand whether the environment had helped or hindered their valiant defense.

The home was tucked away, off the main road, in a semi-secluded area, with acres and acres of steep wooded terrain to the rear. Ahead of the home was a long gravel road that I could imagine would be perilous in winter. I had driven that road to arrive for the interview and counted only half a dozen other houses, each of them separated by wide spaces of land. It was quiet, peaceful and serene. The road was even named ‘Serene Drive’. It was hard to imagine the hellish scenes that must have played out here during the spread of the contagion.

“What happened when you arrived back here from the school, Chad? What was the situation like back along the road?”

“The gravel road was clear,” Chad explained. “We saw nothing once we turned off the main road. But between the school and the turnoff it was smoke and fire and chaos. It was heading this way, spreading out from the town. I knew we didn’t have long to prepare.”

“And your neighbors?”

“A couple of the houses were boarded up, windows and doors sealed tight. They had either packed up and fled north, or they were in their home, waiting for shit to get real,” he said laconically. “I didn’t stop to check. Everyone along the gravel road is a gun owner. I knew if they stayed, it was because they were prepared.”

“And how about you?”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged and set aside my notebook for a moment. “When you pulled up here. Did you feel prepared, or was escape still on your mind?”

Chad began shaking his head. “I didn’t feel prepared at all,” he admitted. “I had everything I needed, but this wasn’t the way I had imagined it. I had been caught out by the spread of the contagion while I was visiting my mother. If I had been home when I had heard the news, I would have felt better. It would have given me time… When we arrived back here, that was the unknown quantity; how long before the infected would come looking for us.”