Below him lay his dead wife. He had decapitated her in one hard swing of the barbaric weapon. I quickly scanned the room and saw her head had rolled to the corner behind me.
All the anger that was inside me seconds earlier evaporated. I guess I should have still been mad at him, but the pain, anger, and hatred that resonated from his face made me feel pity for the man.
He dropped to a knee and laid his hand on her back.
I looked away, but not before I saw him close his eyes and lower his head.
I tiredly rose to my feet and stumbled back into the hallway. I was light headed and losing blood quickly. Reaching behind me, I grabbed my medical bag that was attached to my ammo vest. I wrapped my head in enough gauze to halt most of the bleeding.
Remembering the earpiece, I shoved it in my ear.
“Fish,” I said, barely able to talk.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Fish erupted.
“The scabs are dead. We’re leaving the store now.” I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him. The tone of my voice must have conveyed that.
“Roger that,” he said after a moment. “Cecil and I are on our way to pick you up.”
Cecil had taken another group to the West Melbourne Police Station. They must have joined up with Fish and Campbell.
I glanced at Enrique, who was kneeling next to the body of his wife. One hand was on her back while the other covered his face.
I was going to tell him we had to leave, but decided to give him a moment. I stayed close, though, to make sure he didn’t do anything irrational in his emotional state.
Minutes passed until finally, Enrique looked up.
“We… we have to go,” I told him solemnly.
He glanced around the room. My flashlight revealed his tear-stained face as hopelessness washed over him.
“It’s done…” I said softly. “We—”
“I know,” Enrique stated. He stood and picked up the empty pistol and shoved it into his belt. He took the sword and placed it on his shoulder as he walked silently passed me.
I stopped at the zombie which was still convulsing on the floor, and put an end to him. After, I grabbed the game box I had kicked earlier. I’m not sure why, but I shoved the “Card Against Humanity” game in my pack.
We climbed out of the window and saw that the rain had completely stopped. It was still overcast, and it appeared that zombies were taking this break in the weather to do a little hunting.
Two of the dead-heads that were shambling through the parking lot noticed us. Enrique didn’t say anything as he walked over to them. Two swift hacks with the large blade took both down in seconds.
A rumble of a large engine caught my attention.
Driving down a side road was a large black vehicle. It looked like one of the APCs, or Armored Personnel Carriers, that we had used in Afghanistan. It was the West Melbourne Police Riot Vehicle.
There was no way it could have crossed the main road with all the vehicles jammed together, so Enrique and I maneuvered through the cars to meet up with it.
Just as we approached, Cecil hit the gas and almost ran over me.
“What the hell?” I grumbled as we loaded up through the back.
“Sorry Christian. Still trying to get the hang of this thing,” Cecil responded sheepishly.
“You look like shit,” Fish said as I sat down.
“Still better looking than you,” I joked.
“My ass looks better than you, kid. You going to make it?”
I nodded and put my back against the seat. Enrique slumped down across from me, staring blankly at something over my shoulder.
“You alright, Pablo?” Fish asked.
Enrique didn’t answer, so I did for him. “He’ll be fine.”
Fish, sensing that this wasn’t the time to be his usual heartless self, turned and faced the road.
Enrique and I were silent for the rest of the trip back to Camp Holly. Cecil and Fish shared small talk and I got the gist of what happened back at the post office after Enrique and I left.
There were two more scabs assaulting the building. One was on the roof and the other had jumped the wall after we left. They were loading the bus at the time and Fish took the wall jumper out before it was any real threat. Jenna sniped the one on the roof as the bus began to pull out.
The convoy with Big Red made it back to Camp Holly about ten minutes before we did. Only Fish and Cecil stayed back for us.
The refugees were welcomed and cared for, and Rich Marino, our new resident medical expert, went right to work on me. Daniel, our medic, assisted him and noted how well Rich had stitched up my forehead. Boomer was overjoyed to see me and Daniel had to repeatedly shoo him away while Rich worked on me.
I spent the rest of the day in my shack. Boomer stayed with me the whole time, nestled by my side and occasionally attempting to drown me in doggy slobber as he licked my wounds.
Later that night, Fish came in. He said nothing as he dropped his gear and then shaved his head and face. After, he came over to me and sat in a fold out chair next to my bedding.
“What were you thinking, kid?” he asked. I could sense the anger in his voice, but he did a good job of keeping it under control.
“I don’t know,” I said as I stroked Boomer’s mane.
“Enrique could have gotten us all killed. If you or he would have gotten your asses bit—”
“But we didn’t,” I cut him off. “You have to start trusting me. I’m not the same ‘kid’ you found a month ago.”
He was about to retort, but stopped himself.
“Look, man,” I continued, “Enrique had to do what he did. Maybe I could have stopped him from going into that store, but…”
“But… what?” he said, cocking an eyebrow.
I hesitated a moment. Did I want to tell him why? I wasn’t sure how he was going to react.
“When he asked to go into the store after her, I thought about you. I thought about what you had to do to your… family. He needed to do what he did. And let me tell you, if I wasn’t there to take the ass whipping I got, he would have died trying.”
“And… you took quite an ass whoop’n.” Fish shook his head. “According to Pablo, you were seconds away from getting bit.”
Enrique must have told Fish about the fight. I was shocked they didn’t put me in isolation. Some of her blood had to spray on me when she had been decapitated. Maybe I had cleaned up enough before Enrique was able to get a decent look at me.
This would probably have been the perfect time to tell Fish about my immunity to the virus, but I didn’t. Chuck’s words still rang clear in my head from when we were trapped inside the walk-in cooler.
You may be a carrier
, he had said.
“But I didn’t get bit. I’m still alive,” I said with a weak smile.
“Yeah, you’re lucky,” he said as he stood.
“Come on, some of it was me. I did pretty well in there, considering.”
Fish chuckled. “Sure. Your luck plus what I’ve been teaching you kept you breathing. I’m not ready to bury you yet, kid. Next time, wait for me.”
“Hold on a second,” I said pulling myself part way up. “Do I sense some care in your voice? I’m getting the feeling you may have cried if I would have died back there.”
“Cried? Did Rich put you on some happy pills or something?” Fish sat on his bed and kicked his boots off.
“No – well yes… and a tetanus shot, but still. I think there might be some brotherly love here.” I grinned.
He chuckled manically and pointed at his feet. “I love these nasty socks more than you. And if you ever say something like that again, I’ll piss on them and shove them down your throat.”
“I love you too, Fish,” I laughed and sank back down into my bedding.
“Fuck off,” he grumbled as he slumped to his pillow.
Chapter 12
Wild Packs
June 15
th
Morning
Over the next month and a half, Camp Holly was bustling with activity. Not only were we surviving, we were thriving.
We made numerous runs into the city to gather the supplies we needed to both secure the camp and to make it hospitable.
During these runs, we came across various survivors. Most were starving or had all but given up. We accepted them into our community under the condition that they abide by our rules. All were more than happy to do so. The military structure in which we were organized was a little difficult for most to adjust to, but they soon adapted. Fitting in meant relative safety from scabs and the zombies. By mid-June, we had nearly eighty survivors.
We built a wall around Camp Holly by scavenging from nearby construction sites. The river perimeter was protected from anything floating or swimming in it by chain-link fencing extending all the way to the river bed and ten feet above the surface of the water. Outside the walls were lines of traps and obstacles, making it difficult for even the living to approach the compound, let alone the unsavory creatures that wandered into our area.
Campbell and DJ had organized us into platoons, each one having specific duties around the compound. This was one of the main reasons I think Camp Holly thrived. We were organized. Everyone knew who they had to go to for duties, complaints, or ideas.
Kat, the woman who had pretty much took care of the supplies at Ace Hardware, was in charge of logistics and food production. This also put her in charge of the hunters. There were only three permanent hunters.
Kolin was the lead hunter, backed by Jenna and another newcomer. They were all skilled at tracking, shooting and trapping the local wildlife, and they kept a limited but steady supply of fresh meat on the table.
Preacher, the elderly African-American, took charge of the engineering side, which encompassed everything from power generation to maintaining the wall. I was shocked to learn that Preacher was an engineer for twenty years before he turned to The Cloth.
A man named Barry, a former city councilman, was put in charge of the administrative side of things. That included assigning basic chores, rotations for hunting and making runs into the city. He was also in charge of the children and the people who took care of them. That was a particularly heavy weight off Campbell’s shoulders.
Almost everyone was required to rotate in and out of the various jobs around the camp. Campbell didn’t want to depend too much on any one person just in case the unfortunate happened. We still had our primary jobs, but everyone spent some time working out of their comfort zone.
Camp Holly turned out to be an Oasis in the Sahara Desert.
I was made a Runner. We were the ones that went into the city to gather supplies. Though everyone took a turn scavenging, a select few of us were permanently assigned to the task.
I knew the reason why Fish gave me the job. I was Boomer’s handler, and he was invaluable when it came to raiding a building. He not only told us if zombies or scabs were near, but also was another combatant if need be.
We found two other friendly canines. Neither proved to be up to the task of joining the Runners, but they were useful in other ways.
Kolin adopted Duncan, a fifty pound black mouth cur, and he fit right in with the rest of the hunters. Very sociable by nature, the buckskin colored dog proved to be an excellent game tracker and certainly earned his place in our little community.
The other was what I like to call a ‘rat dog’. Princess, as the kids named her, was a ten pound black Yorkshire terrier. Chad and I found her on a run into the city. She was hiding in a large greenhouse and had been surviving on lizards and bugs. The orphans named her and she slept with them in the main building.
Our three canines were the exception, though. Unfortunately, most dogs either died or reverted back to the ancestral roots of their cousins, the wolf. On more than one occasion, we had to put a few dogs down that we came across.
This always made me sad, but there were few options. We learned that the hard way when a hunting group was stalked and attacked by a pack of dogs. Rich patched up one of the Hunters, giving him twenty stitches across his leg and forearm.
These wild packs of canines had fled from the city and into the swamps. Dogs, plus alligators and wild boars, were more worrisome than scabs or zombies in the marshland. In the month and a half that passed, we only had a handful of zombies approach the camp. All were easily put down. Scabs were nowhere to be seen.
On June 15
th
, Chad and I were on rotation to go hunting with Jenna. Kolin usually led those trips with his trusty sidekick, Duncan, but since we had Boomer with us, there was no need.
Chad had just bagged a seventy pound wild pig, and Jenna was going over the cleaning process with him.
We were only a couple of miles south of Camp Holly and almost within eyesight of the St. Johns River. The boat we traveled in was just a couple hundred feet away. We were lucky to find a pig this close to the shore.
It was an overcast day, but the clouds were white and puffy with little sign of rain to come. It was the worst scenario for zombies. No rain and no sun, so scavenging operations had been scrubbed for the day.
“You know, six months ago, this shit would have made me puke,” Chad commented as he removed the innards from the swine.
“Three months ago, you were making me puke,” Jenna retorted in her southern drawl. She glanced at me, grinning.
I was kneeling next to Boomer who was still panting heavily from the chase. I stroked his back as he licked my face.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Chad said as he wiped his bloody hand off on the tall grass. “I said I was sorry.” He was referring to a time before I met the two of them. Chad had put the moves on Jenna. She had clocked him in return, hurting both his jaw and his pride.
“Come on, Jenna, give the guy a break,” I mused.
“Oh, I’ll give a break.” Jenna pushed Chad out of the way and examined his work.
“Not bad, Chad. I give you four out of five stars.” Jenna unsheathed a small, sharp knife from her belt and reached into the pig. After a moment she pulled out two more small organs.
“What I miss?” Chad said hurtfully.
“Kidneys. Don’t worry, you did better than Christian did last week.” Jenna stood up.
“Thanks for calling me out,” I sighed.
“No problem,” she smiled and turned to Chad. “Your kill, you get to carry it back to the boat.”
“Figures,” Chad frowned. He slung his rifle across his back and knelt down to pick up the beast. Chad may have been thin, but he had what I liked to call ‘skinny man strength’. He heaved the pig up over his shoulder.
“Well, we got lucky today. Early kill,” I said.
We left Camp Holly only two hours earlier. The boat ride alone took almost an hour. Some hunting trips went all day without anything to show for it. It couldn’t have been past ten o’clock in the morning that day.
“Yep,” Jenna said as she followed Chad to the boat. “Means more time to teach you two how to cut that bad boy up.”
I stood up and noticed Boomer peering off into the brush.
“What is it?” I whispered to him. The hair on his neck slowly rose, and he released a light grumble from his throat.
I grabbed a small pair of binoculars I had on my web belt and scanned the marsh in the direction he was facing.
At first, I saw nothing. Soon, though, a pair of figures stepped out from a group of trees. They were dogs. They had either picked up our scent or the scent of the blood from the slain boar.
“Calm down, buddy,” I told Boomer as the rumbling in his chest grew louder. He was aggressively hopping forward, as if to ward off the other canines.
More dogs followed the pair out of the woods. The lead was a very large Rottweiler. His black fur was missing patches and he had various mud and dirt stains on his coat. Wild dogs always looked wild and all of these dogs fit that category.
He and the others would sniff the ground and look in our direction. I think Boomer made them hesitate, though, because they didn’t immediately charge at us.
I lowered the goggles and gauged our distance. They were at least a football field away. Running would only cause them to react, so I was sure to only make slow, deliberate motions.
“Come on, boy,” I grabbed Boomer by his harness. Kolin helped me fashion one out of leather from deer hide. It had a handle, which had come in handy more than once. I gently pulled him back. He didn’t obey, though, and pulled away from me. That was not like him.
“Boomer, come on!” I hissed.
The group of dogs had grown to over ten. All were large breed canines, ranging from mutts to the giant Rottweiler.
Boomer gave a bark to ward them off, but all they did was perk up and glare at us.
I was armed with an AR-15. I had replaced the one that was damaged in the comic store with the other one I had retrieved from my best friend’s locker in the first days of The Awakening. I had kept the red dot site and other attachments though, and found this rifle had a better feel than the one I had used for the first month of the apocalypse.
“Christian!” Jenna shouted playfully. “Hurry up!”
Her shout did it. The pack of dogs bolted toward us at amazing speed. Boomer started to hunch down, preparing to strike at them when they closed the distance. I wasn’t having it though, and yanked on his harness as hard as I could.
“Boomer, COME!” I screamed as I pulled him my way.
“Christian, hurry your ass up!” Chad yelled. “I don’t want Jenna trying to take advantage of me.” I heard Jenna retort, but was too focused on the problem in front of me to make out what she said. They were clueless to what was happening.
Boomer finally obeyed and turned toward the boat. We both sprinted as fast as we could toward the shoreline.
Constant runs to the city and manual labor back at Camp Holly put me in better condition than when I served in the Military. But I knew I wasn’t fast enough to make it to our transportation before the lead dogs made it to me.
The dog pack charged toward us. There was a small hill before the shore, and I darted up it at full speed.
“Push off!” I ordered hoarsely as I crossed over the crest of the hill. At the bottom, I saw that they were already about a foot away from the shore. Chad was sitting with an oar in the mud, preparing to push away when we were all loaded up.
“Dogs!” I screamed at them. “Dogs behind me!”
“What?” Jenna called back, still oblivious to the danger.
“Wild dogs!” I yelled back. Her eyes opened wide, not because of what I said, but the creature panting behind me. Boomer was almost to the shore, so that only meant one thing.
I looked over my shoulder. At first I was relieved to see it wasn’t the hulking, black Rottweiler, until I realized it was a very hungry grey pit bull. Three more blurs of motion were behind it, but only the pit received my full attention.
It was seconds away from leaping on me when a loud bang erupted from the shoreline.
I looked back at the boat and saw Jenna curse as she took aim with her 308 hunting rifle again and fired. Another loud bang, followed by a yelp told me Jenna hit her mark this time. She didn’t shoot at the pit bull for fear of striking me on accident.
I could hear the dog’s paws trampling through the grass and knew it had me. I was still thirty feet from the shore.
I took a chance and dodged to the left, thinking an attack was imminent. Luck was on my side as the pit bull lunged toward my leg and missed it by an inch. It shot past me about five feet before it could slow down enough to turn around. Within a split second, the wild dog was charging at me again. My speed had slowed and there was no way I was going to avoid another attack.
I brought my rifle up just as the pit dove at my knee.
The ferocious wail of Boomer was like a jet screaming in my ear as the German shepherd rallied to my defense.
Boomer tackled the pit in midair. The collision caused the wild dog to squeal in shock and pain as Boomer brought him to the ground.
More gunshots rang out, this time from both Chad and Jenna. None were toward me and the two dogs scrambling to their feet.
Boomer was slower to get up than the agile pit bull, and the grey beast mashed his teeth on the shepherd’s back.
Boomer wailed, but was not subdued. The German shepherd was well over a hundred pounds now and the pit bull couldn’t have been more than sixty. The sixty pounds was all muscle, of course, but was still no match for Boomer.
Boomer twisted and rolled. The urban legend that pits could permanently lock their jaws was evidently wrong. Boomer tossed the lighter pit to the side and hunched down, ready to leap on the other dog as it rolled over to its feet.