Winter's Salvation (34 page)

             
“This is their fight!”  Jay screamed.  Johnny’s men started to move around the table until Jay pulled a knife from his pocket.  “No one will jump in!”  He demanded and they all stopped. 

   
              John spun when he hit the ground and tried to move at him, but Eric controlled his movements by the hair on top of his head.  When John spun, the raining hammer fists turned into waves of upper cuts.  John stood, but every time he began to make a move Eric pushed him back down by his head.  He reached at Eric’s hands trying to pry them from his hair, but every time Johnny tried he left a portion of his face unprotected and a fist managed to find it and connect with it. 

             
John managed to grab hold of Eric’s foot and pulled it in hoping to pull it up to gain some form of control, but Eric dropped his shin on the top of his neck and began hammer fisting the side of his face again.  John pushed up letting go of his leg and the upper cuts began again.  One upper cut connected clearly and made his body go limp. 

             
The full weight of the large man fell from Eric’s hand and he let go of his hair.  John was still moving and was still conscious, but barely.  Eric rolled him over to his back and began making connections squarely to the front and sides of his face.  John was no longer protecting himself and was clearly unconscious, but something had hold of Eric and wasn’t letting go. 

             
“That’s enough!”   One of John’s guys screamed, and Jay’s crew agreed.  It took Shawn and Brian both to pull Eric off of him and even they were having troubles stopping the onslaught of blows. 

             
“You’re going to kill the man, if you don’t stop!”  Brian screamed into his ear, finally making him calm.  John’s crew immediately pushed the chairs and table out of the way and one guy ran for Doc, as soon as they had made space and pulled Eric off. 

**********

              Eric worked in the shop the entire day.  Jay didn’t want him leaving the motor pool and be by himself walking through the village.  Jay even assigned Joey to sit in class and keep an eye on Naomi for the rest of the day, even though Joey quickly fell asleep sprawled out over one of the log seats. 

             
During dinner Naomi joined Eric in the motor pool’s building and Jay came in shortly after.  “How is John?” Eric said to both of them as they sat at the white plastic folding table. 

             
Naomi didn’t know, but Jay responded.  “He’ll be ok, but he definitely knows he got in a fight.”  He laughed a little.  Eric thought it was humorous, but Naomi didn’t find it as entertaining.   

             
“You know there’s a lot of shit going around right now.”  Naomi said annoyed.  “Dan is all kinds of riled up and talking about getting back at you.  And me too.”  Now she was angry, “What are we going to do?  All kinds of rumors are being spread.”

             
“I don’t know?”  Eric responded

             
“If you wanted the four of you could stay here tonight.”  Jay suggested.

             
“Where’s the kids?”  Eric asked.

             
“There with Victoria.  They’ll be alright, for now, but I would not put it passed Mike and Jeremy to do something to Drew.  I don’t think they would mess with Sam.” 

             
“Jay could you give us a minute?”  Eric asked.

             
“Yeah sure, anything you want.”  He began walking out the door.  “Did you two need anything?”

             
They both shook their heads, no.  Eric reached over the table and grabbed hold of her hand.  “It may be time we consider leaving.”  He entered this topic lightly knowing Naomi’s initial reaction when they were going to leave when they first got here.   

             
“It’s fucked up, we are talking about leaving when these hicks are the ones who are starting all the trouble.”  She was getting upset.  “Why don’t you, Jay and the rest of them just handle those people?”

             
“You know it’s only going to get worse.  Once we go after them, they are going to come right back even harder.  Someone is going to get severely injured if we keep doing what we’re doing.”  He leaned in talking lower, “You know Dan and Jeremy are sitting with Mike somewhere right now talking about how they are going to get back at us.  And it’s not just us they are going to try to get back at.  They may bring Drew and Sam into it.”

             
“I’ll fucking kill them first.”  She said pulling back and becoming enraged.

             
Eric pulled her back down and close.  “Before we have to do anything crazy lets leave.  I’ll drop a car off so we can walk out the gate and it will be waiting for us.  I can do it tomara.” 

             
“Why don’t we just leave during the day?  Tomorrow afternoon or something, won’t they give you a vehicle?”

             
“Jay would that wouldn’t be a problem, but the other groups may say something.  Besides if people know we are going to leave Dan and his crew may try to do something sooner.  I can get that Explorer over there.  I’m the one that does all the maintenance on it, so I can test drive it and drop it off a few hundred yards down the road.”                  

             
“I really don’t want to leave this though.  We have a good thing right now.”

             
“No one is going to kick them out of the village and nobody knows when Elijah will be back, so this is kind of like the Wild West right now.”  He squeezed her hands, “This was only supposed to be temporary anyway.  The winter is soon coming and if my parents are alive they won’t make it through a winter in Maryland.” 

             
Naomi didn’t want to agree, but was scared for the children.  “What do we tell the kids?”

             
“Nothing.  We don’t let this get out.  We can’t let them know until we are getting ready to sleep.  That way we will have everything packed and we can take off, without anyone else knowing.” 

             
Naomi agreed.  “Then tomorrow night we leave.”

             
“We’ll be ok.  I promise I won’t let anything happen to you or the kids.”     

Chapter 16

The Escape

              Eric had the hood to the Explorer open and was leaning over it pulling the oil dip stick out.  They had just came back from a run and got some more clothes, warmer blankets and a bin of random toys they kept hidden in the motor pool, so next month Santa could drop them off in front of the tents for all the good little boys and girls of the village. 

             
“What’s up?”  Jay walked behind him and then studied the dip stick.  He was carrying a thick rolled up blanket in his hands. 

             
“It was running rough earlier.  I just wanted to take a quick look, see if there were any obvious issues I was missing.”  Eric wiped the dip stick with a dirty cloth and put it back in, just to pull it back out and examine it once more.

             
“Joey forgot his blanky.”  Jay said as he held the blanket up.  Joey made it perfectly clear that he was going to keep this blanket and on the way back to the village he sat in the back seat and took a nap on it and drooled all over it, to seal his ownership knowing none of the other would want it after he laid on it.   

             
  There were only three groups that would go out and they all tried not to claim and keep the best stuff for themselves, but all the groups did, on a small scale at least.  Everything was to be given to Elijah and he was to distribute all of the goods evenly.  This way no one could accuse anyone of getting the better items, but all the scavengers had the better choices as far as clothing, covers, toys or really anything they picked up and snuck into their pockets. 

             
“So it’s running rough?”  Jay looked at him quizzically.                    

             
“Yeah it wasn’t running right, so I added a little transmission fluid to it and checked the levels.  I was going to take it out in a little, real quick, just down the road and back. 

             
“I’ll go with you.”  Jay said as he tossed the blanket into the back.

             
Eric put the dip stick back in and dropped the hood.  “You don’t have to.  I’ll only be a minute or two.”

             
“Na I’ll go with you.”  Jay said.  Eric was about to argue against it, but Jay looked to him and demanded.  “I’m going with you.” 

Eric got this vehicle for one initial reason
many weeks ago.  It wasn’t because it was large and had a big enough storage area to hold a lot of stuff.  It was because he intended to claim this one as his own when he did decide to leave, but the current situation expedited his departure.  It could also easily drive over undead and a curb or two without getting stuck and not have to worry about having their vehicle turn into a coffin.  

Eric got in the
SUV and turned it on.  “Did you feel that stutter?” 

“Nope.” 

The guard at the back gate opened it as they approached and once they broke the perimeter of the village Jay turned to him.  “Ok, so what’s really going on?  There aint nothing wrong with this truck.” 

Eric believed he already knew.  He just wanted to hear it from him.  “We’re leaving tonight.” 

“Where you going?” 

“We’re going north to Maryland, like I was originally planning when we first got here.”

“You still going to look for your folks?”  The statement came out slightly sarcastically. 

Eric thought about this and knew
Jay didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, but he was serious about the question.  “To be honest I’m not,” He searched for the proper way to say it, but could not think of any way that would make it sound as if he had given up hope. 

“You need to see
for you.”  He finished his statement for him.  “So you’re going to take the Explorer?”

“Yeah
.  I found it and I’m the one that worked on it to make it run.”  He was telling the truth.  He removed the parts that had to be replaced from the Explorer on one of their excursions, and as he found parts from other vehicles, he would exchange them.  On every trip he would fix another item until it could be driven back to the village.  “No one in the village can know.  We haven’t even told Sam or Drew yet.”

“So how’s this going to work?  You’re going to take off in the middle of the night and not expect anyone to know?” 

“Something like that.”  Now that Jay knew it put Eric in an awkward position.  If Jay would go back to the village and tell someone they would watch over the Explorer and not let him take any of the vehicles.  “You can’t tell anyone.”

Eric could feel
Jay’s eyes staring through him.  “Are you serious?  Do your thing.”  Jay spoke loudly, “You got to do what you got to do.  Everyone knew that you wanted to leave, but you’re not leaving cause of those rednecks are you?”

“Fuck no.  That was just what pushed Naomi over the edge.” 

“I don’t think anyone believed Naomi wanted to go.  How did she take it when you told her?”

“She
’s cool with it. She thinks it’s better that we go before I burn their tents down while they sleep, or they do the same to us, so we think it’s just time for us to go.  We really only stayed here for as long as we did because Naomi hurt her neck and back pretty bad and we were all tired from running.”

“We could take care of that other gang and those Hillbillies if you wanted us to?”

“I’m not worried about them.”

“So you’re going to start running again?  You’re going to travel up through some of the most populated parts of the country to find your folks?  That sounds pretty stupid risking your life and the lives of the others to go make sure your parents are dead.”

“Fuck you.”  Eric snapped back, “We’re leaving tonight; with the Explorer.” 

Jay
sat back and fell silent.  They traveled this road many times before and never saw a ghoul on it, but now one stumbled toward them in the middle of the road.  The sun was just over head and shined down on the slumping figure.  Eric slowed the vehicle and stopped in the middle of the street about thirty yards in front of it.  “What are you doing?”  Jay asked

“I made this thing up the other day and wanted to know how it would work.”  They both stepped out of the car and scanned the bushes and trees of the reserve. 
Jay strapped his machete to his side and Eric pulled from the hatch of the Explorer what resembled a long silver pitch fork.  “Remember when that runner got me against the truck?” 

Jay
nodded in response.

“It would not push or pull the axe off it’s throat, so it was not able to grab me.  I created this to see if they all would just keep coming.”  He stumbled back on his words, “I had the idea and Mike actually welded it up for me.  I didn’t really want to do it on a hunt, because this is a prototype and I just wanted to see how it would work.”  He grabbed the six foot pole with both hands and started walking in the middle of the street. 

The wind blew in their direction and the tattered clothing that hung from the ghoul waved through the breeze.  Shortly after seeing the tattered strands of clothing sway the smell of rotting flesh attacked their nostrils.  The zombie moved very slowly having to struggle to maintain it’s balance and took slow concentrated step after step.  This undead was just about rotten to bone.  The first ones that got this disease, or virus, or demonic possession or whatever it was, were the ones that were the most decomposed.  Even though they continued to function instinctively, their muscle tissues were being eaten, by bugs and literally rotting off of their bones.  This ghoul’s skin was taut on its face and was sculpted around each bone, portraying sunken temples and jutting cheeks.  As it opened and closed its mouth the skin was pulled tight like a stretched balloon.  It’s eyes were smaller, wrinkled and appeared to be sitting loosely in its eye sockets. 

Jay and Eric walked closer to it and it stopped
, standing very still to listen for its welcomed visitors.  They both stepped to the side of it to get from being downwind of it.  As they moved a skin covered skeletal hand fanned out for them; with stretched out fingers that resembled dull spikes.  The bony undead could see them when they got closer to it and as it went for them Eric positioned the ghoul catcher.  He placed the silver U under its bony chin and pressed firmly against its neck.                   

It’s arms were as thick as a chairs leg, but it reached out for Eric with growing enthusiasm.  Eric did not have to plant his feet
or even try to push to hold this one back.  This zombie was falling apart in front of them.  The weight of the tool itself could hold this one back.  “Well since our specimen sucks this is how I was planning on using it.”  The ghoul tried to move forward twisting its head back and forth.  The U was ripping into the skin and parted it creating a gap in its throat three times the thickness of the catcher.  The taught skin pulled the slice apart and bigger.  “We could either hold it like this, but if we have a runner, I made it long enough, so if we put the butt end on the ground it will continue to walk up and not be able to get to us.”  He put the butt end on the ground in front of him and secured the butt with his foot.  The ghoul walked forward and the hook continued to raise its head, outstretching its neck.  “When you got them like this, this would be the perfect time to bury that machete.”  As soon as he paused the ghoul lost its footing from being forced up and fell to the ground.