The Inroad Chronicles (Book 1): Legion Seed

by Erickson, Brian

  Kathleen nodded and narrowed one eye. “Well, it would be nice to know we were safe, but what if they trapped us? I mean, maybe they wouldn’t get in, and maybe we wouldn’t get out.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Beats the alternative anyway.”

  Kathleen walked to the edge of the porch and peered out over the valley below.

  “What about checking some other houses? There’s bound to be enough materials floating around, and at least one place must have some good tools.”

  Jackson joined her at the porch’s railing and pushed a splinter around with his fingernail. “I know, I thought about it. I’d have to go alone. So much can go wrong. We don’t know if or when Beverly will turn. You couldn’t handle her with your belly like that. You could go into labor while I’m out. Couple that with Beverly turning. Something could happen to me. There’s so much risk. How can I go?”

  Kathleen put her arm around his shoulder. “You’re right. There’s too much at stake to leave me here alone.” She rested her head on Jackson’s shoulder.

  Jackson looked around and down at her. “I better finish this, and I think you have a patient to care for, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, guess I better get to it.” She nodded and patted him on the back then shuffled inside.

  Jackson looked around and spotted the fractured wood at the front door that he had kicked in, so he repaired the frame and reinforced it by shoving a chair under the door knob and putting a stop behind it on the floor. He used his last nail on that barricade and could not find anymore. Otherwise, he would have started ripping off doors and used them to beef up his fortification outside.

  If nothing else, the measures would stall an assault long enough for them to mount a solid defense. If that failed, they could always fall back inside the house as well, but having use of the porch gave much better mobility and access, similar to controlling the walls of a castle.

  Inside the house Kathleen treated Beverly with the alpha-interferon and waited. The first injection had no major effect. However, as one hour turned into two, and then three and four, a war clearly raged inside her body. She would steady herself to keep from falling over and then, later, seemingly walk around normally. Sometimes sweat covered her face and she complained of hot flashes, and then it would evaporate as she cooled down. She began to shiver, received another injection, and then returned to normal for a while. However, despite the erratic symptoms one trend persisted: regardless of the symptom, one always returned, and her health continued to decline.

  Kathleen looked down at her hand and noticed the same blackish infection Michael had suffered from spreading out in tendrils over her skin, but it was still considerably smaller.

  “It’s not growing as fast as Michael’s did, and I’m not as sick.” Beverly’s voice sounded upbeat, but her eyes rolled down and locked on the floor.

  “Yes, you’re doing well. Keep fighting.” Kathleen gave a small smile and patted her lightly on the arm. “Excuse me just a moment. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay.”

  Kathleen got up and walked outside to the porch. She found Jackson outside adjusting furniture on the stairs. “Jackson.”

  “Hold on.” He grunted as he pulled the couch slightly back up the steps and slid it into a slot he had created, and let it fall into place at a forty-five-degree angle. “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe you were right. The drug’s doing something, but her infection keeps growing. If it were working don’t you think she would feel better, not just slowly get worse?”

  “Well, I’m not a doctor, Kat, but you know how I feel. She’s been bitten. It means only one thing in my eyes. But you wanted to try out your experiment on her, so I gave you some leeway.”

  “Well at least I’m trying! You were just going to shoot her.”

  “Kat, I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t change my words around. I think what you’re doin’ is commendable all right. I’m just sayin’, you know? Unless somethin’ majorly changes, she’s dangerous.”

  Kathleen let out a long exhale and her eyes narrowed to spear points as she rubbed her temples. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re just a typical, simple minded man. Shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “Well if that’s what you call eliminating a threat and protecting my family, then I guess I am. What did you come out here for anyway? Do you just wanna make my brain tired as well as my body? Can’t you see I’m tryin’ to build this barrier here?” He chopped his arm toward the clutter on the stairs as a small shelf fell over and a magazine slid out.

  Kathleen put her hands on her hips. “Oh well…I’m sorry. Next time I won’t bother you with an update on our patient. When you finish here, you can just come inside and shoot her. That’s what you wanna do anyway, I’m sure.”

  “All right Kathleen, enough! Now cut it out! I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I didn’t do anything wrong. You just came out here for a fight because you’re frustrated, so if that’s what you want, then that’s what you’ll ge…” He jumped in the middle of his word as a snap rang out from the forest. He looked over and saw one of the undead emerge from the trees on the side of the hill and stagger toward the porch. Then another one stepped out a few feet away and another after that. “Oh shit! Here they come goddamn it! Get the other gun from inside, hurry!” Kathleen rushed inside, as Jackson fitted the last parts of his barrier into place. “Oh please hold.” He pushed a coffee table into a free space and scooped up his gun.

  Kathleen stormed into the house to grab the gun and waddled past Beverly.

  “What’s wrong?” Beverly’s face wrinkled up as her head tracked Kathleen’s movement.

  “They found us. They’re pourin’ out of the forest as we speak.” She trotted out with the AK.

  Upon hearing the news, Beverly looked off at nothing and began biting her nails.

  “Jackson, here!” Kathleen handed him his AK.

  “Same as the basement all right? I’m gonna fire while you reload. Grab the ammo in that bag over there.” He pointed to the pile of their belongings. Jackson took aim and plugged a couple rounds into the closest one’s head. It slumped down to its knees as blood gushed down its face and fell over limply. He took aim and fired again.

  ✹✹✹

  “What the hell was that?” Donnie’s head shot up from beside a screwdriver he had wedged into a locked door.

  Laura looked back and stared at him. “What? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Wait…sh sh sh.” He held his hand up. “There it is again. You hear it?

  Laura tilted her head toward the front of the complex. “I did hear somethin’. Was that…did that sound like gunfire to you?”

  “I think so.”

  They ran upstairs to the main level just as Jim and Meg emerged from another room. They all looked toward the front door and back at each other.

  “Did you hear it too?” Meg’s face revealed the first hint of a smile since Jeremy’s death.

  Donnie craned his head. “Yeah, there it is again! It is gunfire!” He ran outside to the parking lot and looked around at the hills. He didn’t even notice the undead clambering at the fence ineffectively. “It’s comin’ from up there.” He pointed up into the hills that ascended just beyond the edge of the lot on the west side.

  “What do you think we should do?” Laura’s voice sounded a little bit higher than usual as she touched a finger to her lips.

  Donnie raised his arms and let them fall to his side. “We gotta get up there. If they’re shootin’, somebody probably needs our help.”

  “Are you crazy?” Jim stepped forward and slashed his arm through the air, and his nose still resembled a bad patch on a banana. “Look at those things around the fence. We’ll kill ourselves just opening the gate.”

  “You don’t have a leg to stand on!” Donnie stabbed the air with his finger in front of Jim’s face.

  Meg stepped forward with her arms crossed. “Donnie, he’s right. I don’t like to admi
t it either, but he is. We can’t help those people up there if we kill ourselves tryin’.”

  “What?” Donnie’s face crinkled up as he stomped forward.

  Laura stepped in at Meg’s side. “It’s true. Listen to me, Donnie. You’re right, okay. We should help those people, but we can’t just bust outta here like commandos and charge up that hill. It’s suicide. We’ve got to think of another way.”

  “What other way? There’s no other way!” Donnie’s voice shook as his face turned cherry red. “There’re people up there, real people, flesh and blood, brains that can think! Listen to that gunfire. Listen! That’s what it sounds like when people are in trouble. And we should do somethin’.”

  Laura stepped forward with her hands out. “We don’t know that, Donnie. We weren’t in any trouble when we rolled through town shootin’ everything that moved.”

  His eyes got a serrated look. “We were right after that, or have you already forgotten?”

  Laura’s eyes glazed over as her lip quivered. “Maybe those people up there set a trap. We don’t know.” She clasped her hands together and shook them.

  “Yeah, well listen.” Donnie pointed up the hill and held his hand in the air until no sounds pierced the sky except the drum of gunfire up in the hills. “Does that sound like a barrage of gunfire, like a bunch of people springin’ a trap, or a rescue team? It’s not. That’s one gun. One person, desperate and scared, and you want to leave ‘em there?”

  Laura gasped. “If it’s one person that’s all the more reason not to risk four tryin’ to mount a rescue mission.”

  Meg nodded behind her as she stared at him. “Donnie, please listen to her. It’s true. We’re safe here. Let’s keep it that way.”

  Jim’s lips creased into a wry smile. He started to speak, but Donnie saw it and put his finger in his face. “Don’t even think about it, you piece of shit.” Donnie stood eye to eye with Jim and wore a sick smile. His voice dropped to nearly a whisper as he got so close that his breath could have moved Jim’s hair. “Go ahead, just give me a reason. I swear to God I’ll feed you to those things.”

  “It’s not my fault that Jeremy’s dead.” Jim’s voice cracked as he spoke.

  “Yes—it—is.” Donnie seemed to punch Jim with every syllable. “Yes, it is. If you weren’t such a pussy, he’d be here right now, and our chances of survival would look twice as good. Instead of him, I’ve got you. And what are you gonna do? I don’t see you workin’ with me, so why don’t you go back there and do some knitting with your girlfriends. Get out of my face you fuckin’ faggot, before I decide to throw you over the fence as a distraction.”

  Jim’s eyes had turned red and glossed over as he listened, and his lips mashed into each other in a contortion. He spat on the ground and walked away. Without saying another word, he scampered back inside and left the other three standing there.

  Laura and Meg looked at Donnie, and their eyes narrowed down to slits, and their hands were planted on their hips. They shook their heads almost imperceptibly and followed Jim inside, leaving Donnie alone.

  Off in the distance the gunfire carried on. Donnie paced back and forth, as he listened to the shots. A couple times he stopped and looked at the Hummer. Then his eyes tracked over to the undead lingering beside it, and their hands clutching the fence. Finally, his neck craned back toward the factory, and he scratched his head and ran inside. Several minutes later he scooted out with an armload of supplies scavenged from offices and shelves. He dumped them on the pavement and ran back inside for a couple more items.

  When he had completely assembled his salvage pile, it contained old rags, boards, plywood, dismantled particle board shelves, a stack of printer paper, and an old blanket. He arranged several pieces of wood into a teepee, and stuffed the rags and wads of paper into the middle. He threw the blanket to the side, and pulled a lighter out of his pocket, lit it, and watched the smoke rise up. He smiled and ran back inside. He found Laura and Meg sitting on the floor by a wall gesticulating with their arms as they talked. “Laura! Come help fast.”

  “Now you want my help?”

  “Please. I thought of another way to contact those people up there. I think I can bring them to us.” He looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

  She stared back with her arms crossed, head cocked to the side, lips sealed, and eyebrows pinched together.

  “Okay.” He held his palms up. “I’m sorry about the way I acted back there. I was an asshole, and y’all are right.” He looked over his shoulder at Jim sitting against the wall with his head bowed. “Even you, Jim! I’m sorry. You were right. I’m an asshole.” He turned and looked back at Laura with a flat face and wide eyes.

  She glared at him for a second slightly shaking her head, then let a hiss escape from her lips. “All right, what is it?” Her face went flat except for raised eyebrows. “This doesn’t mean you’re totally forgiven you know.”

  “I know. Now come on, time’s wastin’.” Donnie grabbed her hand and ran outside with her. “Okay, see that fire? What we’re gonna do is take this blanket and move it over the flames to block some smoke and then let it go up again.”

  “You mean smoke signals?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well how’s that gonna work? Do you know how to communicate with smoke?”

  “Of course not, but it doesn’t matter. As soon as people up there see smoke they’ll look. And when they see that we’ve intentionally broken it up, they’ll know that people are down here communicating, that we heard ‘em. Then maybe they’ll come to us, and we can get ‘em in here somehow.”

  Laura tapped her fingernails on her crossed arms and threw her hands up. “Well I still don’t think this is gonna work, but we can give it a shot.”

  She grabbed the blanket with Donnie and they covered the fire for a second then let the smoke billow up again. They repeated the process until the fire started to burn out. Then threw the blanket to the side and sat down to wait.

  ✹✹✹

  Jackson had flashbacks of the basement massacre as he popped round after round into the approaching undead. Finally, it became evident that he had to do damage control. Several of them had made it up to the barricade and started testing it, pushing and pulling. Some of them attempted to climb over the railing, but failed as they either slipped on a shifting piece of furniture, or Jackson shot them off. He looked and hoped earnestly that they stopped pouring in soon. He did not know how long he could physically fire the AK and try to keep them off the porch. The muscles in his arms burned, and he had to keep dragging them back up.

  While the porch offered great visibility, it did not work as he planned because he could not feasibly fire in every direction to try and stop them. He realized the castle wall approach worked much better with a group instead of a lone defender. To make a difficult situation harder, once they formed a bottleneck around the stairs, his barricade hindered a clean shot. Finally, he looked back at Kathleen panting heavily and shook his head. “I can’t do this for much longer. It’s exhausting. We have to hold out inside awhile.”

  “What about the barricade?”

  “If they get past it, we’ll have to hope the door jamb holds.”

  “That’s not good enough Jackson! We have to get out of here! We can’t live in there with those things pounding on the door!”

  “Well what do you want me to do? I’m shooting as many as I can.”

  “Well shoot more damn it!”

  Jackson turned back to the railing with pursed lips and squeezed off more shots. After he dropped three more bodies, he felt a pointy finger jabbing him on the shoulder and turned around quickly. What now damn it! When he looked back, he saw Kathleen’s hand pointing up toward the sky, but he turned away and squeezed off another round.

  “Jackson, look over there, smoke!”

  “What?”

  “Smoke!”

  He had another creature in his sights and lined it up with the end of the barrel.

  “So something’s o
n fire.”

  “Of course it is, but somebody’s breakin’ it up, makin’ signals.”

  Jackson’s eyes widened as he stopped firing and looked. He saw a stream of smoke rise above the trees, then a break and another large puff. “I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned! There’re people down there! We gotta get down there and find ‘em, and we gotta do it soon.” He ceased firing and ran inside.

  The skin around Kathleen’s eyes wrinkled as she watched him go, then she followed him. “What are you doin’?”

  Jackson crouched behind a small wet bar and pulled out every bottle of spirits with a high alcohol percentage he could find. Once he had them all on the table, he ran into the kitchen and opened the pantry. “Jackpot!” He walked out with a box and set it down. Inside it contained another six bottles of eighty proof vodka. He had six and a half bottles of vodka, a quarter of a bottle of rum, half a bottle of Scotch, and a nearly full bottle of gin, all totaling ten. He raided the bedroom dressers and added several plain, white T-shirts to the pile. He looked up at Kathleen wearing a broad smile. “With these we can make bombs. See how those fuckers like being torched.”

  “What’s going on? I heard gunfire.” Beverly slowly sat up on the couch holding her head.

  Kathleen’s mouth hung open as she stared at her. “Don’t you remember? I barged in here awhile ago to get the gun, and told you that they found us. You already forgot?”

  “I…don’t.” Beverly covered her forehead and her eyes fell to the floor.

  Jackson took a step toward her. “How you feelin’?” He looked at her with an icy gaze and studied her appearance with unwavering eyes. His index finger rubbed the gun’s chamber close to the trigger.

  “You need another injection.” Kathleen started toward the kitchen table.

  Beverly raised her hands and leaned back. “Oh no, please, not again. It feels like you’re putting acid in my veins. I can’t take it anymore.”