Pack Animals [An Undead Post-Apocalypse Thriller]

by Cain, Kenneth W.

  They wouldn’t take Gollum’s piss and distill it, would they?

  Dale offered the slyest of nods, as if to confirm Allen’s worse nightmare.

  Allen hacked and spit, trying to bring up every last drop of the foul liquor. He ended up only dry heaving, unable to force himself to throw up. “What the fuck!”

  “Relax there, Captian Giddyup. I was only fucking with you.” This time Dale laughed so hard he nearly threw up. “That shit’s just a good old recipe we got from our Granddaddy.”

  Relieved, Allen seized the opportunity to talk about topics of a more sensitive nature. Nudging an elbow toward the creature, Allen asked. “So, why Gollum?”

  “He just looks like you would expect, I guess.”

  It somewhat surprised Allen the brothers even knew about such a character. He didn’t think them the sort to read. Then he remembered there had been movies, one even a cartoon, and found himself wondering which format they might have secured the name from.

  “No,” Allen said, finding Dale’s eyes with seriousness. “I mean, why?”

  Dale’s smile faded, obvious he hadn’t expected the question. Not only that, but it was also clear he didn’t want to talk about it. He looked over his shoulder at his brother. Clyde was still fast asleep, even after all the commotion. Temptation appeared to cross Dale’s thoughts. Allen could see the devotion of one brother to another, a promise to keep a secret.

  “We just did,” was all Dale offered on the subject.

  He took another hard slug off the bottle and presented it to Allen. When Allen didn’t take a drink, Dale lost interest and walked away.

  Allen watched as he went to check on his brother, then over to the stream where he sat by his lonesome.

  There’s more to this than meets the eye.

  Allen’s interest was fully piqued.

  He looked back toward the town. Allen thought the others would be on the move soon. He meant to keep up. If nothing else, he intended to follow her, find out where she was keeping Orson. At the very least, he needed to see his son. After everything he’d been through, his son was all he had left.

  Allen required this end.

  CHAPTER 19

  On the roof of Norton’s Sporting Goods, the fire illuminated her young face. Sydney had grown suspicious of her intentions, the way Melanie kept eyeing her up. It did more than make Sydney uncomfortable, and she found herself vulnerable in a most awkward moment. She could not just walk away from this, either. So she looked for opportunities to keep herself busy.

  Sydney stood and looked over the edge of her two corners of the roof. She had just checked them a few minutes earlier. A sigh found her lips. “I’d better—”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Sydney turned back to the girl, staring into her eyes with sudden surprise. She wasn’t seeing Melanie, but looking through her, trying to see into the girl’s past. No, she didn’t recognize Melanie at all. She shook her head.

  Melanie fidgeted with a stick, a marshmallow cooking on the end, one of the few foods the drugstore had left in bulk. She was making a s’more, the other ingredients resting beside her on a napkin. “I didn’t think so. I was pretty young back then.”

  Interested in what the girl had to say, Sydney took a seat across from her. She ran through a mental Rolodex of all the raven-haired kids she had met over the years. She still couldn’t place the girl, having met so many children while working at the school. Although she could recall many, Melanie held no familiarity whatsoever.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t,” Sydney said.

  The girl’s eyes brightened. “Oh, you don’t have to be sorry. It was a very long time ago—before any of this. And it was a brief meeting.”

  Sydney peered out across the horizon. A warm red glow could be seen over much of the span of land. Many fires still burned. Perhaps they would never be put out. Destruction rarely slept and even then it remained restless. Ruin tended to spread and grow like a fungus.

  Melanie pushed her hair back over one ear. “Besides, it wasn’t me that you knew.”

  “Not you? But you just said—”

  “My father. You knew my father.” Melanie sighed. “Landon Hughes?”

  Sydney couldn’t help but gasp when Melanie spoke the name. She tried to hold back the emotions, if for no other reason than to keep the peace among the others. The last thing Sydney wanted was another fight so soon after avoiding the two groups clashing. If not for these reasons, Sydney was sure their conversation would have ended in an argument right then and there. People, good people, had died because of Hughes. If that ever got out, who this girl was, Melanie might be the next to die.

  It’s not her fault that her father was a killer.

  “You don’t have to say it.” The girl’s face tilted to her marshmallow. She was holding it much too far from the fire, its sides still pure white with the reddish glow illuminating it, as if Melanie was delaying the inevitable. “I know how bad of a man he was.”

  Sydney felt like preparing the marshmallow for her, to satisfy her own impatience if nothing else. That would be a much wanted distraction. The girl’s father wasn’t only bad; he had been a mad man, much worse than Sydney had ever imagined.

  How much does she know?

  Sydney didn’t even know the whole truth. She did, however, know the man’s name well enough. Allen had muttered that name many times, usually followed by a curse or two. Melanie’s father had been instrumental in creating the terrible world they now lived in?

  Not knowing she was doing so, Sydney stared at Melanie’s young face, trying to see Landon in her features. Thankfully, she wasn’t able to.

  “He...” Melanie stumbled on her words, choking back tears. “He made the virus.”

  Sydney already knew this. Landon was instrumental in creating whatever led to this destruction. But she also knew Landon had another concoction he kept locked away, somewhere in his lab. Sydney had no idea what either creation did because Allen never spoke of those details, though she always suspected they were some form of biological warfare.

  She did remember her husband pacing back and forth, anxious and cursing, saying things about Landon like “didn’t use the right one” and “didn’t follow the plan” and “Goddamned backstabber.”

  In those weeks that followed, it became apparent to everyone who knew anything what Landon had done. A raid on the man’s lab eventually revealed a secret chamber where he kept one of the creatures locked away in a cage for observation, much of its flesh having been cut away and examined.

  “He doomed us all.” Melanie’s words hung in the early morning air like a whisper.

  Hearing those words now, they were still hard to accept. Landon had done just that, and himself as well. No one knew why he did it. The only truth Allen and she had been able to agree on was that the man had gone bat shit crazy.

  But so had Allen.

  Using biological warfare to win a war in one’s own country was a horrible idea. And while Sydney reckoned spending so much time in a hidden room, creating a virus like that, could drive any man mad, the shame of it was that Allen had ever been involved in it at all. Considering this, she kind of wished she knew Allen’s entire role in setting their country on this path, creating a place where their son had to live in constant fear.

  What was he thinking?

  Sydney could recall the two of them watching the news, seeing the earliest consequences of his betrayal. She remembered feeling so angry. Even when an animated Allen continued to proclaim his innocence, often quite loud and waking Orson, she hadn’t been listening. Not really. By that point she had gone numb to it all. Even then, in her catatonic state, he kept reassuring her over and over that he hadn’t known this would happen.

  Melanie whispered, “It wasn’t his fault, you know?”

  Sydney couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Of course it was Landon’s fault. “What do you mean it wasn’t his fault?”

  Melanie pulled the marshmallow back to her face, e
xamining it with a careful eye and then extended it back into the fire. “Your husband, I mean.”

  What?

  Allen was fully to blame. She knew this because he had worn the guilt on his face as they watched the news unfold. It showed in his trembling hands when they first saw people come back to life as some hideous, malformed creature. He confirmed his culpability in it all when he made the choice to leave her and Orson behind.

  Of course, he’s to blame.

  “I was there,” Melanie said.

  “There?” A sense of urgency overwhelmed her from hearing this last bit. “What do you mean?”

  Melanie removed the marshmallow from the fire, went to place it on the graham cracker that held a small chocolate bar, then did nothing. Sydney reckoned talking about all this could spoil anyone’s appetite.

  “They held a gun to his head,” Melanie said.

  Sydney ran through the history of what had happened to the best of her knowledge. She attempted to recollect whether Allen had ever pleaded to her for forgiveness or tried to hide his shame. Accounting for each indifference in an attempt to discover the truth about what had transpired. She remembered how furious she had been, how Allen had defied their family.

  Was he merely a patsy?

  She wanted more details. More so, she needed to know, to obtain some sense of closure. The urge to discover the whole truth flooded her thoughts.

  “This is all hitting home.” Isaac came up behind Sydney and sat next to her.

  Sydney’s worry consumed her. “How much did you hear?”

  Isaac shook his head. “Enough.”

  She stretched herself out to reach his shoulder. “You can’t tell the others. They can’t know. They would—”

  “No worries,” Isaac said. “I got no reason to say anything.” He patted Melanie’s back. “Besides, Mel’s my girl.”

  Melanie smiled weakly.

  “Destruction,” Isaac said, “that’s so much more than just a word, isn’t it? It’s the foundation on which my adult life was built. The reason I never finished school. That word taught me how to kill.” He pointed over his shoulder. “I even got this tattoo back there; it’s got all the names of those prominent men I destroyed. Destruction made me who I am today, more a refugee than a member of some lowly street gang.”

  He looked as though he might start crying.

  “Isaac, I’m—”

  “S’kay. Just hearing what Mel said and all; it brought up some dark stuff.” He looked Sydney deep in the eyes. “I’m not that man anymore. I swear.”

  This was an emotion he must have longed to release but never had the chance. Still, he appeared to suppress the emotion, likely for the same reason most men did, because their dads taught them that strong men don’t cry.

  “I believe you,” Sydney said.

  “You know, I can still hear my Pa’s voice in my head, feel the sting of his belt on my back. He used to say, ‘I’ll stop hitting you when it don’t hurt no more.’ That man done whipped me good all the damn time. Sometimes for no reason at all. Other times, ‘cause he drank too much. And the beating came from the belt, then a switch, and eventually his fist. Even after it stopped hurting.”

  Melanie returned the favor, patting Isaac’s back.

  “Destruction? Yeah, I’ve seen my share of destruction. Listenin’ to you two talk, I s’pose you have too. Mel, what your Pa did, that wasn’t right, but you can do right by yourself. I reckon the people who survive these sorts of things, it’s ‘cause we been hardened in one way or another. That means we the truly damned, that this is our purgatory. We can survive this.”

  Those were some strong words from a strong man, but Sydney made sure to keep in mind that this was a man who had been to hell and back. He knew things about pain she would never know. And people like that, they could be patient in getting what they wanted.

  “What is that?” Melanie said.

  “What?” Sydney turned up an ear. Then she heard it.

  Isaac listened, too. “Is that thunder?”

  Then Sydney realized what that sound was, stood, and turned to the others. “Wake up!”

  Isaac sprang to his feet, helping Craig afoot. As each member woke, they took one of the guns they had scored from the store in tired hands.

  Todd stumbled as he stood, assisting Allison to her feet and almost sending both of them to the roof floor. Gavin slept through it all. Chris remained seated, nurturing his wounds.

  “Get up, Gavin.” Craig kicked the boy in his butt. “You’d best get up as well, Chris.”

  Both did just that.

  “Are we going to be able to hold them off?” Todd said.

  Sydney had thought this out. “We need to get down that chute,” she said, pointing at the rusty metal tube. They all looked in unison; some taking tired steps toward it without knowing they had. “But I don’t think we’re gonna have time to get everyone down before they reach the roof.”

  Isaac held out his arms, rounding the others up and herding them toward the chute. Some packed what they could, but they left much of what they had secured, including much of the water that hadn’t fit in their backpacks.

  Seeing this made Sydney frown, knowing this had been the very thing they had fought over. Now it would just be abandoned. She peered over the edge of the building, making sure the area below was clear for escape.

  Todd’s tired eyes went to Isaac. “Get da fuck down there,” Isaac said. “Watch the perimeter so the others can get down safely.”

  Sydney withdrew her sword, readying to defend her people, old and new. She handed Isaac her guns when he joined her. They made a pretty good team. He must have agreed judging by his sly grin. She ignored it, choosing to keep her focus. Her eyes trained on the doorway above the ladder.

  Behind them, the others escaped one at a time.

  “Y’all need to get down there faster,” Isaac said.

  They didn’t.

  Each time one of them plunged down the chute, a rumble indicated their progress. The rusty fasteners that held the chute in place squeaked, complaining of the weight each of them brought to the strained metal.

  When the first creature reached the roof only Isaac, Sydney, Craig, and Melanie remained. All the others waited below, their guns raised, scanning the area with wide eyes. Without doubt, everyone was now fully awake.

  “Go!” Isaac said.

  Melanie was brave for such a young girl. She was nudging Craig in his ribs, but the old man insisted on being chivalrous. “There’s no time for that. Now go!”

  “Do it,” Sydney said, glancing back over her shoulder.

  Reluctantly, Craig threw himself into the tube.

  Now it was just the three of them.

  Melanie prepared to go next, standing at the edge of chute waiting for Craig to reach the bottom.

  Maybe we’ll make it after all.

  The first of the pack stood on the roof. At least six more clamored up behind it. She had no idea how many more remained downstairs, scrambling over each other to reach the top.

  Surprise showed in Isaac’s face when the lead creature didn’t come for him or Sydney, but instead thrust itself at Melanie. She had no idea why as Melanie didn’t pose a threat to any of them at the moment. But what she did know was that these creatures had a different way of thinking, all logic out the door, leaving only those animal instincts.

  Isaac fired a shot, which grazed the monster’s side.

  Sydney’s arced her sword upward, a flash of silver in the early morning light. She severed the creature’s arm, then struck its leg, cutting a large gash in the flesh. This did nothing to alter the creature’s path. Though damaged, the creature seemed hell-bent on ruining the young woman’s day.

  CHAPTER 20

  Allen watched as Dale leaned over and tried to motivate his brother to do something. Anything. “Clyde? We need to get on the road, bro.”

  It didn’t take.

  Clyde wrestled around in his bedding, looking uncomfortable. He was swea
ting profusely, his eyes appearing so heavy.

  Maybe Allen’s initial concerns were off, and his intuition of what really happened were spot correct. Could Gollum have infected Clyde?

  Dale kicked Clyde’s side, but his brother just rolled over. “Get the fuck up, you shit!”

  “He’s turning.” Allen didn’t realize he had muttered this out loud.

  Dale shot a look to Allen, his face twisted in a knot of anger. “He ain’t turning! I told you, the waters fine!”

  Allen didn’t know what to say now that he’d breeched the subject. He knew if he pissed off Dale, he might get shot. Allen studied Clyde, how pale his skin looked now. The fever he seemed to endure. All the sleep. He had no doubt the man would turn.

  The words found him. “It wasn’t the water.”

  “What? The what? What was it then?”

  “Gollum.”

  Allen felt almost numb with the mention of his name. Visions of his past came to him, so vivid in his thoughts. He saw all his crimes. They haunted him. Even now, long after the war had ended, he would never live down the atrocities of what he had done, the things he had seen as a result of his choices.

  “Hell, Gollum ain’t even all gone. He couldn’t have—” Dale broke off and stared at the creature they held captive. “But it’s his goddamned son, for Christ sake!”

  The words twisted around in Allen’s head. The realization of why they toted the creature around became crystal clear. They held hope he might someday come back to them. Or maybe, that there would be a cure. And, what better way to ignore the need to grieve the loss of a family member on a daily basis than to get drunk and openly mock life itself? It all made sense.

  “It’s true.” Clyde said.

  Clyde’s voice sounded so dry and hoarse. The brother struggled to turn over, and more so to get the words out. Dale stood over Clyde, anger twisting on his face. Allen could see Dale searching for the right words. But what words could ease the pain of losing a loved one, especially when you endured toting that loved one’s undead body around with you.