Winter's Salvation (25 page)

             
“God!  You hate him, so much that you want him to die!”  Sam screamed at her mother. 

             
“You saw the news.  The apartment complexes were destroyed.”  Naomi screamed back.   

             
Drew stepped in, with an attempt to lower the noise level and also to justify her mother not wanting to go to the apartment complexes.  “The apartment complexes are in bad shape.  There were just too many people living, so close and so many were infected and didn’t even know it.  My mom came home infected.  By the time she walked into the door until the time she turned was a matter of minutes.  I don’t know when she got bit, but that was just my house.  My apartment complex was in complete and utter chaos just before we escaped. 

             
Naomi liked his answer and agreed with him, but Sam didn’t care what excuse or what the reasoning was for not going to rescue her father. 

“I promise we will go back for him, but there are just too many of them out there right now.”  Naomi swore. 

“If you would like, you can travel with us?” Drew asked.

Naomi smiled, Samantha grimaced, but they both agreed to travel with them. 

**********

             
Traveling with two new sets of eyes and ears had its benefits, but bringing along different personalities also brought some tense moments.  It took them a little longer to get through South Carolina than Eric originally wanted to because apparently women need specific items that men generally don’t need.  Eric, Drew and Sam would use the bathroom outside most of the time and just take toilet paper with them, but on one occasion they had to stop into three different houses so Naomi could find the perfect bathroom to use.  She would go outside sometimes, but they had to stop, so she could find personnel hygiene products.  Apparently to Drew and Eric’s surprise using toilet paper just does not suffice. 

             
Traveling at night was a little different as well.  Eric and Drew did not like to travel at night and only did so when they had no choice.  Securing buildings in the dark was difficult and they tried to avoid it, but sometimes they would have to push the envelope.  Having two extra bodies, one which was generally in pain during most of the day light hours, forced them to begin securing a building or house two sometimes three hours before night fall even crept over the horizon.  Because of this it took them a month of travel to get through South Carolina and part way into North Carolina. 

             
One good thing about having Naomi around was that she knew exactly where she was going and how to get there.  Originally Eric was thinking about following just to the side of highway 95, but Naomi convinced them to travel east to the Outer Banks and then north.  This would take them through a vacation spot that would more than likely be deserted.  Once people found out what was happening they would have rushed to get home and more than likely most of the people on the Outer Banks would have left. 

             
Naomi continued to talk about how it would be more than one hundred miles of peace and quiet once they got onto the main road of the island, but getting onto the main road proved to be rather hair raising.  Naomi was right about everyone trying to leave the island, and apparently they all decided they were going to leave at the same time.  The bridge off of the island was a maze of cars that filled both lanes and were pressed against one another.  The cars were so tightly packed that they no longer made an effort to climb down and try to sneak in between them.  Instead they walked from hood to hood across the bridge.

There were no signs of any physical struggles with the undead on the bridge and just about every car had no useful items left in them.  Eric crouched down and looked through the front and
rear windows of the cars they walked over hoping to see a cooler, or maybe a bag with a few canned goods in them, but none existed.  It was exactly what Eric did not expect.  Every time they have had to cross a bridge or came up to a road block in the past, bloody hand prints covered the vehicles and shattered glass littered the road, from the zombies beating their way into the undead’s canned goods. 

As they came to the end of the bridge the cars started to space themselves out a little more and there was evidence that people had already looted these vehicles.  To think no one else was doing the same thing Eric and Drew normally did was ridiculous, but until now there was little evidence of others looting vehicles.  Eric was disappointed in this, but he kept it to himself.  He glanced back at Drew and saw that he was on the same mission looking in the windows searching for food. 

After crossing the bridge, they passed a set of stores and began to make their way north up the main street of the outer banks.  Eric thought about the other people looting the vehicles and what they looked like filled his head.  He saw images of people with wild hair and pieces of metal and rubber tied to their bodies with ripped pieces of old leather belts like a post-apocalyptic movie, but then he caught a glimpse of a shiny black Mercedes in the drive way of one of the huge beach houses and lost that thought.

He was never one for camping, or hunting, or scavenging for food, but he believed he could probably do it better than the lawyers or the doctors that were the likely owners of that car.  Then something occurred to him,
all these cars have been ransacked and left to sit for however long, but this vehicle hasn’t been touched.
  It was at that moment he glanced at the upstairs window and saw a small figure dart behind the curtains.  He believed it was a child in white clothing, but it moved so fast he could not be sure.  One thing he did know was, it was no zombie, because it did not start bashing its head against the window to reach them. 

He walked silently for a few moments and then said quietly just loud enough so the other three could hear, “Were not alone.”

Naomi moved away from one of the cars on the side of the road and joined the rest of the group walking in the middle of the street.  “What do you mean?”

“I believe some people decided to stay.  There are people in the windows.”  Eric said looking straight at the road to avoid the group looking up into the windows.  “Don’t look, but the house back there had a little kid in it.”

  “All the windows are open in most of these houses.”  Naomi said after a few seconds of looking around.  Not all the houses had cars in the driveway, but in a lot of the houses, curtains could be seen blowing with the sea breeze through the screens of the open windows.  This is one thing Eric could add to Naomi’s list of things she was good at.  She was very observant.  Another thing Naomi pointed out as they walked was one house had the bottom floor windows secured from the inside with wood that was either pressed against or nailed into the frame work of the window.  “People use the AC over here, they don’t open windows.  If people left when this first happened they wouldn’t have taken the time to open them.” 

The wind was picking up and the evening sun was beginning to hide behind dark clouds.  The wind picked up sand that was laying on the ground and all of them had to squint as they walked forward.  “We’re going to have to find a place to stay pretty soon.”  Naomi said as she studied the sky. 

“I don’t like this area, lets travel up a little more.  Every once in a while I see something in the windows.”  Eric said as he kept focusing on the road in front of him.  “At least we know they’re not zombies.”

“Really how do you know that?” Sam asked

“They’re not falling out of the windows,” Drew answered quickly for Eric. 

After all of them began to feel uneasy, they decided to walk along the shore until they found a place they wanted to stay tonight.  They were all amazed with how empty the beach was.  For as far as they could see there was not a soul on the sand.  Eric studied one of the houses and as he looked up a drop of water landed on his cheek, and then one of the children made the obvious comment of how it was beginning to rain. 

Eric looked up at a three story beach house and watched the clouds move quickly above the building giving them the illusion that it was falling over them.  Naomi was looking to see which house seemed to be vacant, but Eric was looking to see which was the biggest and most luxurious.     

             
The clouds were turning from a grey to a deeper black and Naomi began to get upset with Eric’s search for the perfect house.  “Eric we’re staying in that house there.”  She pointed to the house just past the one Eric was inspecting.  The windows were closed and there was no vehicle in the drive way.  In a lot of the houses the windows were open and Naomi figured more than likely those buildings were inhabited.  She assumed the buildings that were closed were that way since the beginning.    

             
There was a set of wooden stairs starting on the beach that led to a balcony that attached to second and third floors.  They looked into each of the ground floor windows and saw no traces of life.  There was a front and back door on the main level and then two sliding glass doors that led into two large bedrooms.  These were all locked and Eric thought about how easy it would be for a zombie to just come walking through one of these doors and how much safer one of the more luxurious houses would have been. 

             
After trying each of the doors and windows the third floor door on the back balcony was open.  This floor had a large vaulted ceiling with large windows that faced the beach.  A large kitchen was opposite a large sliding glass window that led to a balcony with three large plastic reclining chairs.  A master bed room with it’s own bathroom and a sliding glass window that attached to the large balcony.  A huge TV over a fire place and three large grey and blue couches sat in a large entertainment area.  The first thing Drew noticed was the X box 360 under the TV and a large assortment of games.      

             
This house would have been Eric’s and Naomi’s perfect get away if the situation were different.  Now with stairs that led to each floor and multiple large windows this could be a death trap if a hoard of undead were coming in their direction, but this building was an older one and built to last.  This house had sustained many hurricanes and the windows yet old, were sturdy with multiple pains.  The back of the house butted up against a thick wooded area and only the tops of a few houses past the woods could be seen.   

             
After making a round of the house Eric and Drew secured each door and window.  On the main floor Eric gazed into the woods from one of the bedrooms windows.  Even though they didn’t have any contact with any undead here on the islands he just could not feel comfortable with the thick forest behind him.  The entire time they secured the windows he avoided looking into the woods and now that the clouds were turning and covering the sun, the shadows of the tall trees played tricks on his mind.  Growing up in the concrete jungle of Baltimore, Maryland, being surrounded by woods was not natural to him and no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that there were no undead in the area, the snapping of a twig and the movement of a bush sent images of a gnarled zombie reaching out to grab him through the glass.  With these images playing on his mind he quickly pushed the beds mattresses up against the window.     

             
The first and second floors were now pitch black, no sun entered the two bottom floors.  Upon arriving on the third floor the rain was still maintaining a slight drizzle, so Eric had just enough time and felt secure enough that he sat out on the deck on one of the plastic chairs and enjoy the cool sea breeze as it brushed over his face.  Eric focused on the sound of the rolling waves and tried to drown out the sound of the branches rubbing together and moving in the sea breeze and the thought of something crawling out of them.    

             
Just as he sat and got comfortable, a lone figure broke the plain of the beach, as the sun made its last fight to stay above the horizon and shine through the dark clouds.  He watched as an undead vacationer shuffled over the sand.  As it lumbered up the beach Eric could see the tattered loose clothing hanging from it’s flesh and it looked as if it’s skin was crawling.  He leaned over the edge of the railing a little more than he should have just to examine this zombie.  The skin of the ghoul was crawling with crabs.  They hung from the chunks of loose rotting flesh trying to eat him as he made his way through the sand.  The ghoul seemed not to care of the shell fish eating it and paid no mind as they whittled this vacationer away.  As each wave crashed against it, it struggled to maintain its balance and more crabs seemed to grab hold of him with each wave of the sea.  Eric knew that this zombie would surely disappear as the crustaceans ate this ghoul while it looked for it’s next meal.         

             
The night came faster than expected and the rain started to pick up.  Eric called Drew and the girls out to see this site and the women wanted nothing of it.  Drew on the other hand was just as fascinated as Eric was, but the night fell quickly and the rain fell faster and heavier, just as the undead vacationer was passing under the balcony.  Neither one wanted to get soaked, so they fled for shelter back on the third floor.  Naomi and Sam had taken the master bed room and closed the door, so the boys were forced to sleep on the couches.    

             
Eric drifted into a deep sleep listening to the rain beat on the beach house.  He sat up quickly, as the southing sound of water tapping the windows turned into the sound of pounding feet running up the wooden steps.  He listened quietly trying to determine whether the thudding feet were from the undead or an actual live human being.  The steps were consistent and as they passed the second floor Eric made out a second set of footsteps.   He immediately stood up and reached into his open back pack, instinctively grabbing hold of the black pistol.