The Renegades (A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Novel) (10 page)

L
oss is
hard to cope with no matter how much time has passed. Time keeps passing, the ache grows less, and you eventually find yourself smiling again and not feeling bad about. Some might even think that it no longer affects you, but all it takes is a scent, a sound, or a dream and I could I find myself in tears. I still missed my mother.

That morning I awoke sobbing. I was grateful that none of the others were in the room at the time. Specs and Baja had taken Matt’s room. I had thrown a few pillows in the tub and settled in there.

Since she had passed, I kept having the same dream. It was always the same. I would find myself running across ice towards my mother. Running to escape from ice that was breaking beneath my feet. I could hear it cracking behind me, as ice fissures chased me until they caught up. I would then fall into the water and be swept away by the current. As much as I would try, I could never find the hole.

I knew it was fear. Nothing seemed to get rid of it. I didn’t have the dream every night, but when I did, I would awake in tears. Not exactly the thing you want your friends to know about. I guess that’s why I didn’t go to many sleepovers.

Getting a grip on myself I climbed out of the bed and ran the taps. Splashing warm water on my face I looked in the mirror. The image of Specs’s family dead burned into my mind. Would we kill like that, given enough time? Turn on innocent people? What would have led others to do this?

I dried my face, stretched my aching muscles, and joined the others in the living room. Izzy and Jess slept in the main bedroom. Dax, Jason, and Scot had the living room. None of them were up. I cracked the curtain and a warm band of light came in.

“Uh, close it. It can’t be morning already,” Jason mumbled while placing a pillow over his head.

“Afraid so. But at least we have food and are still alive.”

“Not sure if that’s a good thing,” Scot replied.

Most reached for cigarettes in the morning. Dax reached for his assault rifle. Maybe it was a force of habit. Being they trained you in the military to always be ready. He rolled out of bed, banged out thirty push-ups, flipped over, and did sit-ups until I lost count.

“Today we’re going to head over to Baja’s house,” I said.

“I’m going with you today. I’m going stir-crazy being in here,” Dax replied.

“See if you can pick up anything on the radio.”

Scot dialed in. The others slowly crawled out of their rooms with all the enthusiasm of a slow-moving zombie. When Specs came out, the conversation went quiet.

“Don’t stop on account of me.”

He was going to go into the bathroom, but then stopped. The layout of Matt’s home was exactly the same as Specs’s. I saw his hesitation.

“There’s a bathroom downstairs,” I said.

He nodded and decided to use that instead. You don’t think much of hygiene when the shit hits the fan. Your focus is entirely on surviving. We still had running water and power. And while we knew life had taken a turn for the worse, we were doing our best to try and maintain some semblance of normality. This included brushing teeth, taking showers, and changing into clothes that were clean. You’d think that the thought of going into abandoned shops hunting for new clothes would be appealing now that you didn’t have to pay. But it wasn’t like that. It could get us killed. Z’s were everywhere.

While we ate breakfast that morning, Dax looked through what we had collected from the military surplus store. There was much less than what we had anticipated. All the good stuff had been taken by whoever had killed Specs’s family.

“Anything?” Dax asked Scot.

“Nothing. Just the same signal from Salt Lake.”

“And it looks as if the power has gone out,” Baja muttered while walking out with a bowl of cereal.

“Great. That means all that food we collected isn’t going to last,” Dax said.

“Maybe it just went out in here?” Jason asked.

“We’re lucky it lasted this long.”

“More reason to head up to my parents’ RV. They have a gas-powered generator there.”

“And what happens when there is no more gas?”

“Everything else is powered by the sun. There are LED flashlights and batteries there too,” Specs said.

“Not exactly good if you don’t have food,” Jason said before taking a look out the window.

“That’s why we grow vegetables, maintain livestock, and have a pond for our fish.”

“Smart. But it’s probably been overrun by Z’s or ruined by those assholes who…” he trailed off.

“Go ahead. Say it. Say it,” Specs said. “That killed my family.”

Jason’s chin dropped.

“Listen. We can’t change that. We’ve all lost family. But for Baja’s sake we need to check on his. So get your shit together and let’s go,” Dax added.

“Hey, you know what? Go check out the RV. We can check on my parents later.”

Specs looked surprised. “You sure, man?”

“I’d like to say it’s because I’m nice guy. But I like hot food. Bring back good news. As I want to get out of this shit hole. No offense, Matt.” Baja looked around as if Matt’s ghost might still be there.”

“Who’s staying behind? We don’t know how many of them there are. Someone should keep an eye on the weapons. I’m surprised they haven’t already shown up.”

“Scot, Jason, Izzy, you guys stay here,” Dax bellowed as he was heading to the door.

“Yes sir,” Scot said in jest.

“I’m not staying here,” Izzy said.

“Why? You think we might bite?” Jason replied.

“Then Baja, you stay.”

“You got it.”

“I think we can handle this,” Jason said.

“Sure you can. But better we leave a couple behind, got it?” Dax replied. Jason scowled. I could tell he didn’t get Dax’s usual commando-style orders. I was used to them. I had taken them long before he went into the army. Though I could see how others could take his orders wrong.

So that was it. Specs, Dax, and I and the two women headed out. We took with us extra ammo, and a few more weapons. Honestly, I don’t think Dax trusted the others to watch over all of it. But we couldn’t take too much. Just a duffel bag full of ammo and a few more guns.

Outside, we immediately shifted into combat mode. You did whatever you had to in order to not get bitten. That meant if you weren’t reaching for your assault rifle, handgun, or knife, you wielded anything you could get your hands on. The key was to destroy the brain. Even with dislocated jaws, guts hanging out, these suckers would come at you. They were the perfect killing machines. Each day we came out, the crowd of Z’s never seemed to get any less. New Z’s had replaced the ones we’d killed.

In the heat of the moment I couldn’t keep track of how many bullets I had fired. That was dangerous. Unless you got a break in the battle, you had to run and fire at the same time. If you ran out of bullets, you used the butt of the rifle as a weapon. Numerous times I had to wield it like an axe to take off their heads. Each of us had found new weapons to use. Jess was keen on the crossbow. She had discovered it inside a closet at Specs’s apartment. They obviously hadn’t searched hard for that. Then again, I had to wonder if the reason they killed his parents was because of what was in the store. I think they wanted whatever they were keeping up at the RV. Everyone knew about it in the town. It wasn’t like it was a secret. Originally they had tried to keep it that way, but secrets are hard to keep in a small town. Eventually word got out and they were forced to pay a fine for building on government property. They had tried to fight it in the court, but lost. The government owned so much land in the area, it was unreal. What had happened to the days when no one owned land? When the United States belonged to no one?

Izzy had borrowed a sword from Baja. He might not have got the whole wielding nunchucks down, but he knew how to swing a katana like a samurai. It was a beautiful piece of work.

I would be lying to say that I didn’t find myself enjoying killing Z’s. When you spend your whole life having to get that kick from a video game, then you are allowed to take up a weapon and fire at something that is going to take your life for real, you get a satisfaction out of seeing them drop. It’s one less Z to worry about. That’s why I never rushed to get into the car, even though Dax was yelling for me to get inside. The way I saw it, we were the last defense.

“I think we should see about getting a couple of trucks if we are going to leave Castle Rock,” Dax said.

“Yeah, hook up some snowplow blades on the front of them. Might as well make it a weapon in itself,” Baja added.

“Now you’re thinking,” Dax said. He loved anything that was to do with war. This was his own personal war. He might not have had the chance to fight on the front line, but he was trained for it. That had to count for something.

“Not much snow around here. I wouldn’t imagine they would sell them,” Jess said.

At an elevation of six thousand feet, the weather in Castle Rock usually hovered around eighty degrees in July, though it had been known to hit in the high nineties and around the low twenties in the winter. It meant we got around four feet of snow each year.

“Enough. You just haven’t experienced a cold one,” I said.

Truth was, it had been pretty warm the last couple of winters.

“No, he’s right. We need to start thinking about everything as a weapon. We aren’t going to be able to stay here much longer. And before we leave, I’m going to have to give you all a lesson in surviving,” Dax said.

“I think I could teach a few things,” Specs said.

“That’s more like it. Step up to the plate. We need each other.”

T
he drive
out to the RV which was two miles outside of town wasn’t without its fair share of Z’s. The road was littered with them. We spent most of our time dodging them. Dax didn’t want us wasting our bullets on Z’s that weren’t an immediate threat. There was no way of knowing who would be out at the RV.

The highway wound its way through the mountains. Small and large pine trees of every kind covered the landscape. In the summer or winter it was beautiful. To think that we might not see this place again, ate away at me. As much as we grew up wanting to get out of Castle Rock, we never imagined it would be because there was no other choice.

“Take a left up here,” Specs pointed to a dusty road turn-off. The cruiser bumped its way up and down a small road that looked as if it had been made to not look like a road. The further we went down, the more it opened up. We passed over old tracks in the ground from years gone by. As we came over a rise in the road, there it was. It looked like any typical recreational vehicle. Backed up against a large dune of rock. There was nothing to give anyone the sense that far below it, one hundred feet down, was a shelter that would make any prepper proud.

Except there was one thing different. There were two black 4x4 trucks.

“Hold up.”

I stopped the cruiser.

“Back up.”

I shifted into reverse and rolled back over the rise in the road.

“Park out of the way. We don’t want to alert these suckers to our presence. Specs, did your family have any surveillance cameras that might tell them if anyone was nearby?”

“They were preppers. Of course they did.”

“Great, then we may have just announced our arrival.”

“They don’t know how many of us there are. Let’s do this. Spread out. Izzy and Specs, you take the left side, Johnny and Jess, circle around. I’m going to see if I can get close.”

“Um. There is another entrance. I mean, exit for the underground. My father built it Just in case we got sealed in.”

“Your pops thought of everything.”

“Nearly.” Specs’s eyes dropped.

Dax squeezed him on the arm. “Lead the way.”

We covered the cruiser in branches. If another vehicle came in on the same road, they wouldn’t have seen it. It was way off the road, and covered by pine branches. We kept low and moved around the back, keeping a close eye on the entrance. Specs led us up to another rise of rock. At the top was a large metal dome, almost like a submarine opening.

“Here it is.”

“Good job.”

Dax spun the top and slowly cracked the lid. It was dark down below. Metal steps went down and disappeared into the darkness.

“It’s a long way down.”

“Where does it come out?”

“In a storage area.”

Dax shouldered his rifle with the strap and began the descent. Each of us followed.

“No. Two of you should hang back. Just in case,” Dax said.

“We will,” Jess volunteered her and Izzy.

“Ladies. Our lives are in your hands.”

“Aren’t they always?” She smiled. I gave her a kiss, and then followed the other two. Jess closed the lid behind us. The steps seemed to go on forever. If anyone slipped, we would have been dead. No doubt about that. The idea of being trapped this far underground was crazy. I felt like an ant burrowing down into an unknown cavernous tunnel.

Once we reached the bottom, we dropped down into a large arched room. It reminded me of a small warehouse. There were metal shelves stacked with boxes, and cans of food. Below that, bottled water.

Dax started throwing us a couple of his asinine military hand signals. We just nodded pretending to know what the hell he was on about. We could hear voices. Male. There had to have been three, maybe five. It was hard to tell. Every sound echoed off the steel walls. The floors were pure rock.

“One hell of a find. I told you they had stockpiled,” a voice came from the other room.

“Tex, I swear that girl had a fine ass on her. You really missed out there.”

“I don’t fuck what is dead.”

“I dunno about that, I saw the way you got friendly with the mother,” another voice said.

“I used her mouth. That was it. She was going to die. It was pity to let it go to waste. But fucking the dead. You guys are demented.”

Laughter ensued.

We were sitting quietly in the storage room. Close to the door.

My face screwed up. What the hell?

“All I know is they didn’t know what hit ’em.”

“Teach them to be greedy. Greedy fucking preppers.”