“Hey, now!” I protested. “I’m older. At best his crazy is a Xerox copy.”
“Great. I’m stuck in the zombie apocalypse with not one, but two crazy Fosters,” he said, shaking his head. “Alright come on, just don’t touch anything yet. Dan, I’m looking at you.”
“No promises,” I said sarcastically as Joe led us inside.
After flipping a few switches, the interior lit up with a florescent glow. Two large LCD monitors were placed side by side, taking the place of the even larger windshields. But it was the CB radio between the monitors that caught my attention.
“They actually found one of these?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Chris answered. “How do you think they got here? Those two are terrible with directions.”
“But where is yours? I didn’t see anything in the house.”
“Radio’s in the basement. Antenna’s on the roof. I try to have someone listening all the time, and this time we got lucky.”
“Awesome,” I said as I continued to look around the bus.
Most of the seats that had occupied the cabin had been removed. Only the two rows closest to the driver remained. Behind the seats on the driver’s side, sleeping bags, cookware, and other camping essentials were neatly stacked. The other side held what I assumed was their idea of a battery bank. It was more like a metal shelving unit with a bunch of car batteries piled up next to it. Cables and wires hung from the roof running the length of the bus. A wood panel bisected the front and back of the vehicle.
“What’s with the wall?” I asked.
“Behind that is mainly storage. It’ll be more accessible by the time we leave, but for now we didn’t want everyone in the house to know what’s back there,” Chris responded.
“Okay. What’s back there?” I pressed.
“General stuff. Food, cots, blankets, clothes. But it’s the guns and ammo we’re trying to keep quiet,” Chris said. “Joe’s rigged some spare tanks together back there to store as much fuel as we can when we find it. We’ve got the main tank full, and the spares are about half.”
“You think everything’s safe?” I questioned.
“Well, not as safe as I would like,” Joe replied. “The National Transportation Safety Board would shit a six ton brick of they saw what I did back there.”
“Supply wise, it’s probably not the best solution either,” Chris chimed in. “But if we get into a running fight, I want to have somewhere to run to. Right now, this is it. Once you get this wired up and we get some holes cut into the side plates for shooting, this will be our permanent Plan B.”
“I’ll need a few things,” I said. “Think you can scrounge up a few parts here and there?”
“The world is our department store. Hell, Joe can even afford to shop at places pricier than thrift stores now,” Chris chuckled. “You tell us what you need, and we’ll get it.”
I glanced around the bus interior, nodding to myself. It was rough, and traveling in it would be hard. Overall though, it was a damn good start. I studied the interior, formulating some ideas that might be helpful if we found ourselves on the road longer than we planned. I suddenly noticed Chris was watching me with a sly grin on his face.
“Okay Brain, out with it. What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Not much Pinky,” I chided. “I was just wondering if there was a hobby shop around that caters to radio control enthusiasts. If we find some RC helicopters, I could wire in a mini camera so we could get some real time information before we set up for the night. Maybe we could even find some actual hobby drones. It would help to get information before heading into new areas.”
“Reconnaissance drones! Damn good idea!” Chris elbowed Joe in the ribs. “Only ten minutes in and he’s already making this heap stronger.”
“Heap?!” Joe snapped back. “Hey, it’s no Bradley fighting vehicle, but it’s far from a heap!”
“Hey, that’s right! What ever happened to your big plan to go find a Bradley? That was your ace in the hole “what if” plan!” I teased.
“It still is smart ass!” He glared at me. “They’re hard to find right now. When the zeds started walking, they pulled every asset they could to protect high value targets. It just got worse when Washington went nuclear. Every asset east of the Mississippi was…”
“What!” I interrupted. “What the hell do you mean ‘when Washington went nuclear’?”
Their faces dropped in unison. Nothing could have masked the sadness written across Joe’s face. Without another word he turned away, walking off the bus and back to the house. .
“No one’s told you,” Chris sighed. “On purpose,” he added.
“Told me what?! This hiding shit from me ends right now. Spill it!”
“Washington DC is gone. A couple days before we lost power, it was all over what was left of the news. DC wasn’t the only one either. London, Moscow, Beijing…gone.”
“Did we hit back!?” I asked without thinking.
“Hit who? There were no launches detected, no imminent attack warnings. Bombs just exploded. There was a lot of talk as to the whys and the how’s. It was all just bullshit speculation. A lot of talk, but no real answers.”
“Jesus,” I exhaled, falling back into one of the seats. “Joe’s family…”
“Not a word,” he interrupted. “But honestly DC was overrun within the first couple days. He still held on to some hope. Even if they managed to survive the infection, there’s no chance now.”
“He’s hiding it well,” I thought out loud.
“It’s Joe. He’ll never let on what he’s feeling. But it’s killing him. In fact, I think I’m going to follow him and make sure he’s okay. You good out here?”
“Yeah. I’m going to get some work done. I could use some alone time.”
He stopped at the door, sighing again.
“Don’t we all…”
Chapter Forty
I was angry. My anger was directed at everyone and yet no one in particular. The sheer stupidity of man simply boggled my mind. Here we were, sitting at the precipice of extinction. The most virulent and destructive infection mankind had ever seen had sauntered its way across the globe unchallenged. People were dying by the millions, yet someone out there had decided that wasn’t quite good enough. They had to take it one step further and unleash the most destructive weapon man had ever conceived on potentially millions of survivors.
For what reason? Government bodies deciding that if they can’t hold on to their little slice of hell, no one could have it? Rouge military leaders deciding if they were going down, so was everyone else? Or was it a terrorist group trying to get the last “fuck you” in before we tap danced into oblivion?
Whatever the reason, it was stupid and pointless.
I wanted to just lose myself in working towards something useful. Unfortunately, it meant trying to make sense out of the spaghetti mess of cables and wires Joe had left me with. Even with some cables labeled and the solar kit instructions left out for me, I couldn’t focus myself well enough to plug in a lamp.
Instead, I started to stack the few batteries in a line that would make chaining them together a bit easier, once I received the equipment I planned to add to Chris’ shopping list. The noise of the heavy units slamming on the metal shelves was somewhat comforting. It chased the silence away, but it wouldn’t stop my brain from wandering.
Stupid and pointless.
“Dan?”
Had I been a cat, I would have been digging my claws out of the roof. I honestly started to think she was using the whole apocalypse thing as a way to scare me out of my skin as often as she could. With all the jump scares I had done to her over the years, I probably deserved it. Still, it’s not fun being on the receiving end of them.
“Stop doing that!” I panted.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. Just stop sneaking up on me like that.” I sat down on the floor to catch my breath, and try to wrangle my heart rate back down to something a little less heart attacky.
“That’s not ever going to happen. I meant I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You were recovering. I didn’t want to stress you anymore than you already were.” Abby sat down next to me, laying her shotgun on the floor next to us. She had taken to carrying it everywhere she went. It had become such a fixture for her, Chris had fashioned a shoulder strap so she could free up her hands.
“I understand. But you still should have told me. I know it sounds stupid, but I think I would have taken it better from you,” I said. I made a poor attempt to put my arm around her, but my shoulder screamed for mercy when I tried. With all the day’s events, I had strained it too much and I was paying for it. It’s funny how a gunshot wound can heal and be only slightly tender after a relatively short time. But you tweak a major joint like a shoulder, and you’re paying for it for years.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything if I did. You would have just stayed in bed stewing over it. I wanted to keep the bad away from you as long as I could. You can’t hold that against me.”
“Yes I can.” She looked up at me questioningly. “But I won’t. I probably would have done the same.” She closed her eyes and snuggled close.
We sat together for a long while. We didn’t say much of anything to each other. We just held each other, and took comfort in our closeness. Even the bone chilling cold had lost its effect on me while she was there. Eventually she sat in front of me, leaning back with her head on my chest. We rocked back and forth while she hummed “In My Life” from the Beatles. It was our first dance song, and always seemed to pop up at important moments in our lives.
“Want some coffee?” she asked after a while.
“You read my mind. I think I’m done out here. I’ve had enough excitement for one day,” I said, stretching as I stood. Joints creaked and cracked as I did.
“You’re getting old.” She smiled at me as she stretched. Her knees cracked, and she shot me a look that told me I had better not say a word.
“I’m going to finish up and come in. I want to make sure what I’ve sorted out stays that way,” I said, grabbing a bundle of cables and tying them into a loose knot.
“I’m going in. I’ll keep the coffee hot for you.” She picked up her shotgun, slinging it over her shoulder. She winked at me over her shoulder before walking off the bus. I wasn’t sure if it bothered me that she looked so natural walking around with a shotgun strapped to her, or if it was the sexiest damn thing I had ever seen. Regardless of the reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
And she knew it, too.
She looked back at me as she took the first step out of the vehicle, running her fingernails slowly across the silvery hand rails. Her hips swayed as she walked. She stepped off the bus, licking her lips at me as she disappeared into the gloomy barn.
“Bye…” her sultry voice carried in the silence.
“Hey, Abby?”
“Yeah?” she poked her head back inside.
“I love you.”
“I bet you say that to all the heavily armed women in your life,” she joked.
“Not if I want to live I don’t!”
“Good answer! You’ve been practicing!”
“I thought it was a good time to brush up on my female communication etiquette, especially since
every
woman I know is heavily armed now,” I laughed.
“Well, if you hurry there might be something else you can practice when you get back inside.” She winked at me again.
“It better not be sewing. I hate sewing,” I joked.
“You can never be serious, can you?” she sighed with a smile.
“Never. And you love me for it.”
“Almost always,” she said as she disappeared again.
There are moments in a person’s life that are forever etched in the recesses of their mind. Every aspect of those seconds are recorded, locked away in memory until that person is dead and buried. Happy times, like the day you marry or when your child takes her first steps. Tragic times like when the Twin Towers fell, or when you get the phone call in the middle of the night that your father has passed away. Every sound, every smell, every individual thought is recorded and stored away into the mental hard drive.
Abby’s scream will forever live in my nightmares.
Chapter Forty-One
Mark leaned against the wall, staring out the window at the bleak countryside. He thought again about heading out to the hallway window for another smoke. He was not used to the lack of conversation. He had grown accustomed to chatting with Dan while he recovered. Now nothing but silence accompanied him on his long watches.
His mind wandered back to his family. They lived in the middle of the city, where one of the largest outbreaks had occurred. His attempts to contact them had been futile. He mourned for them when he could do it privately.
He found himself mourning a lot.
He questioned his reason for making the trip to the farm in the first place. He had already resigned himself to his fate when he climbed out on his roof. The house was surrounded, and no one was coming for him. He gathered every beer he had and planned to drink until he was numb. By the time he passed out and rolled off his roof into the hands of the awaiting dead, he would be too drunk to care.
He was only four beers in when he saw Matt plowing his way towards his house. He didn’t even know why he chose to leap onto the bus roof. He had already made his peace with a dying world.
Maybe it was loyalty to his friend,
he thought. He did drive all the way there to pick him up after all. It could have even been his own personal desire to know what happened next in his own story. Whatever the reason, he left his home to begin a life of survival.
Shouldering his rifle, he took another quick look across the snowy plains before heading towards the hallway window. He would grab another pack of smokes on his next supply run. As much as he hated them, the cigarettes calmed his frayed nerves. He didn’t want to leave his post, but Chris wouldn’t tolerate smoking anywhere near his bedroom.
“Another one?” Lexi called out from the bedroom across from his. “You know those things stink up the house, right?” He poked his head in, finding her sitting by the open window overlooking the back fields.
“Not as bad as you do after canned chili!” he shot back before retreating.
He started pulling the last cigarette from the pack, smiling as insults only a teenager could come up with were hurled at him. A flick of the thumb opened his father’s old Zippo lighter. Sparks flew as he tried to light it, with no success. He flicked the wheel two more times before smelling the wick. The scent of lighter fluid was noticeably absent.
“What the fu…”
The hallway window exploded inwards, the upper corner of its frame splintering as Mark received a shower of broken glass. Tiny cuts on his exposed skin bled instantly. Carefully he poked his head outside, catching Abby and Adam fighting over possession of her shotgun. He drove his heel into her knee, snapping it backwards. She screamed and fell to the snow howling. Adam leveled the shotgun at her head.
“Put it down!” Mark yelled. He took aim at Adam’s head. “I won’t say it twice!”
Adam just smiled back at him and shrugged. Mark’s finger began to draw back on the trigger when Adam pointed towards the barn. Mark chanced a quick glance, and gasped. He looked back to find Adam was nowhere to be seen.
“Zeds!”
**********
Chris and Joe stared at each other, their conversation cut mid sentence. Even in the cellar the boom resonated off the walls. They were already on the move when they heard Abby’s scream. They fell over the canned food they had been inventorying as they scrambled towards the large gun safe recessed into the stone wall.
“Joe! Those things are outside!” Rosa yelled from the top of the stairs.
“How many?!” Chris called up.
“A lot!” she cried. “Abby’s out there!”
“Get the kids upstairs and barricade the doors!” he ordered.
Joe was at the top of the stairs before Chris could blink. Chris scooped up the closest weapon to him, a Saiga semi automatic shotgun with a drum magazine. He took the stairs two at a time, slipping as he cut the corner at the top. It only took him a couple seconds to get to the front door and throw open a window to add to the ever growing barrage.
He wasn’t fast enough.
**********
Matt had just started drifting off when the shattering glass had him shooting out of bed. He was lacing his boots when he heard Mark calling out. He had the AR-15 Chris had given him in hand before Mark shouted his alert. He was jogging from the back bedroom when Lexi’s rifle suddenly barked.
He quickened his pace, almost running headlong into Anna as she and Rosa crested the stairs, kids in tow. Jane held Anna’s neck tight until it looked as if her head would separate from her body. Rosa corralled Faith and Katie in front of her, both covering their ears and wailing.
“Uncle Matt!” Katie cried. “I want my mommy! Where’s my mommy?!”
He kneeled down, wiping her tears from her cheek. “Don’t worry kiddo. We’re going to find your mommy and daddy. Go with Miss Rosa, she’ll take care of you. Okay squirt?”
“Okay,” she said, her lip quivering.
He launched himself into a run. The floors vibrated as Joe’s weapon joined the fray on the floor below. The house filled with the acrid scent of spent gunpowder. Empty brass clanged on the hardwood floor as Mark emptied his magazine, slamming another one home as Matt arrived. Lexi swore under her breath, rhythmically pumping the bolt action between each shot.
He took a knee at the destroyed window, glass shards digging through his thick denim jeans and into his skin. Mark glanced at him without a word as Matt’s rifle joined the assault.
**********
I ran.
My tenuous grip on my hammer was nearly lost as I scooped it up from the driver’s seat. I was so numb with fear that I did not feel the pain in my still healing knee when I leapt over the two steps onto the concrete floor. There was something in her scream that was different, and it had me terrified.
Chris must have closed the bay doors when he left, because I found myself in almost complete darkness. I bolted towards the side door that let out towards the house, hoping I guessed the direction Abby had gone. The florescent light escaping the bus offered just enough light to mostly avoid tripping over the myriad of obstacles littering the floor.
The crescendo of gunfire grew outside. Several holes appeared in the wall in front of me. Shafts of light penetrated the darkness like laser beams. Bullets ricocheted off the concrete floor and slammed into the side of the bus behind me. I lunged towards the door to escape the errant rounds before one of them put another new bullet hole in me.
I shoved the door, but it only opened five inches before rebounding in my face. Three sets of gnarled and diseased hands wrapped around the door’s edge. I grabbed the doorknob, pulling back against the things trying to gain entrance to no avail. Fingers caught in the frame would not allow me to close it again.
I gave up trying to pull it closed, and instead threw my weight against it. The top hinge cracked and gave way, leaving the door hanging wide open and completely useless. The creatures were caught off guard, the force of my charge knocking them over each other as they hit the ground in a mass. My forward momentum almost sent me tumbling over the mound of squirming dead before I regained my footing.
I drew my pistol and fired three shots at a range close enough that I couldn’t have missed if I tried. Three heads exploded in succession before they had a chance to recover.
Abby was attempting to drag herself towards the house, but her progress was almost nonexistent. Her right knee was bent backwards in an unnatural direction.
I sprinted to her without fully realizing the extent of the danger we were in. I holstered my pistol, transferring the hammer to my right hand so I could fight and carry her. I lifted her arm around my neck, and gingerly lifted her to her feet. She bit down on her lip, the pain written all over her face with every torturous move.
“Dan, look out!” Chris shouted from within the house.
I turned my head in time to see the top of a man’s head sheer off from one of Joe’s bullets. At least twenty of the things were in view. An impressive body count already lay on the ground unmoving. But the hellfire raining down from the house was not enough to stem the tide, as more of the abominations streamed from around the corner of the barn.
Even if I had not ripped the barn door from its hinges, a retreat back inside it had already been cut off as some of the undead already found their way inside. The thunderous noise coming from the house already drew too many of the things towards it as well. Chris had stopped shooting for fear of hitting us; instead he called out towards the creatures in an attempt to lure them away from us. At least a half dozen of them were already on the porch pounding away at the door, their numbers increasing by the minute.
Regardless of how many were lured away, there were still plenty of hungry eyes locked on us.
We were trapped outside with nowhere to run. Abby could barely move without her body tensing in pain, so in reality running at all was out of the question. She shook all over, sweat beading on her face. I prayed the adrenalin running through her veins was enough to keep her from going into shock and passing out before we could get to safety, if there was any safety to be found.
“Abby! Take my gun, I can’t shoot and carry you,” I shouted over the din.
She nodded. She reached across me, pulling the pistol from its holster. The things were no more than ten feet away, and looked like they had no intention of stopping for a coffee break. I gripped the hammer until my hand began to shake. There were so many at that point that I no longer noticed faces or ages. But for some reason, I remember clothes.
Abby fired, Walmart went down. A shot from above, Nightgown hit the dirt. My hammer flew, Naked took a face plant. (I hate the naked ones. Why are there so many naked ones? As if looking at their rotting, loose skin faces aren’t bad enough!) Abby pulled the trigger again, and Footie Pajamas met its final death. Chris, who had moved to a position he could shoot from again, fired his Saiga. Three of the things fell like bowling pins as shotgun pellets tore into their skulls.
“Dan!” Mark called down. “The ambulance! Get to the ambulance!”
Abby’s shot sent Tightey-Whities to his eternal dirt nap just as we started our hobbled journey to the carport. I didn’t know how much protection the box ambulance would provide, but it was better than nothing.
A hell of a lot better than nothing.
She hopped on her one good leg. She choked back the painful yelps, but her face twisted with the agony of every movement. Her cries could be heard over the crescendo of gunfire. Fat tear droplets scrambled down her red cheeks until they glistened.
Zombies appeared from around the other side of the barn. Our only hope of survival was suddenly threatened. Abby let two more bullets fly, Khakis and Polo did an impressive corkscrew on the way down. We had to pick up our pace, and Abby obliged. Her nails digging into my neck let me know how she felt about it through.
“Adam did this,” she spat through gritted teeth.
“We’ll deal with that later,” I huffed.
“He has my gun.” her voice sounded weak. I gripped her tighter and pulled her along. We were fifteen feet from the rig’s back door.
“Almost there,” I exhaled. “Almost there…almost there…almost there.” It became a chant, my mantra that pushed me and my precious cargo forward.
My hammer came up, and a sideways blow devastated the skull of Coveralls.
“Almost there.” Ten feet away.
Lexi’s rifle spoke. The bullet’s heat momentarily warmed the tip of my ear as it whizzed by. Reflective Orange Road Crew crumpled to the ground.
“Almost there.” Five feet away. I could almost feel the cold radiating from the vehicle’s metal skin. The red and white paint stood out like a beacon to me. My vision tunneled, the landscape went black and white, save for the gleaming red star of life on the back of the ambulance door.
I dropped the hammer to the ground. My fingers wrapped around the chilled metal handle on the patient loading door, and I threw open the back door. The stretcher had been removed the day we had arrived, leaving the patient compartment free of obstacles. Abby and I could hurl ourselves inside without worry of getting tripped up on equipment. For a glimmering moment, there was hope that we would make it.
Hope sucks.
Abby’s muscles tensed and her body went rigid. Her fingernails clawed deeper into my neck sending blood trickling down my back. Our eyes met. The brown eyes that I had looked into for thirteen years were wide open with shock. There was confusion and pain, sorrow and fear swimming in them.
It’s funny, the things you notice before your brain will allow you to register the truth. It’s almost like looking at a large painting in a gallery. The brush strokes that come together with a mix of vibrant colors to form a bright blue sunny afternoon sky on canvas. The reds and greens meticulously blended and shaped to form a rose bush in the lower corner of the image. All the minute details that your eyes focus on before you take a step back and see the whole painting in all its horrifying glory.