With most of the zombies heading toward Maria, I now had a decent shot at making it to Buck Street. I charged the lumbering corpses, swinging my knife with my left hand and taking shots with my right.
Just when my gun clicked empty, I saw the street sign ahead of me, only a few feet away, Buck Street.
I turned around in time to find a zombie right on top of me.
If I hadn’t turned to get a glimpse of Maria, to see if the zombies were still heading that way or not, the zombie would’ve been right on top of the baby on my back.
A cry of distress and pure heartache was ripped out of me as I slammed the butt of my gun into the skull of the zombie over and over again, even when it was no longer moving, even when the cranium had given way beneath my blows into a pile of brain mush, blood and bone fragments, still I rained blows down.
It wasn’t until I saw zombies turning back in my peripheral vision, turning to the sound of me acting like a wild man did I snap out of my rage.
I turned onto Buck Street and ran with all the energy I had left.
Stepping onto Buck Street was like stepping into the Twilight Zone.
Nothing moved, not even a zombie.
It was like stepping into a soundproof room.
I could still hear the zombies merely a street over, and a few had straggled on the street after me, but if I hadn’t just seen the hundreds of dead, if I hadn’t seen Maria have to sacrifice herself to give me and her baby a chance, I would’ve thought the apocalypse had never happened here.
It all looked so untouched.
Now I understood what Carter had said when he mentioned never making it past Buck Street without having to pull back… he must have run into that mass of zombies like we had.
Except, Warren had a little army with him and he had vehicles.
Warren would pay for this.
I clenched my jaw in order to keep my anger in check. I just needed to make it to the green-trimmed house for now. Then we’d have supplies and transportation.
It was only little Rose and I.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around that, so I shoved it out of my mind for later.
I immediately found the house with green shutters and trim. The door was unlocked and the zombies that had been following us were of the slow, smushy variety, so they were several houses back when I closed the door behind me.
I double bolted the door and shoved a bookshelf in front it. I went from room to room, checking out the windows and doors before heading upstairs to the pink bedroom that Carter spoke of.
It had been a baby’s room, complete with a crib and everything.
I didn’t think about what had happened to the infant that had once slept in the room, I just shoved all the toys out of the toy box until I found Carter’s stash.
With two duffle bags from the toy box in hand, I went into the main bedroom and dropped them on the dusty bed. I was going to go through them when I felt the baby shift gently on my back.
I did my best to remove the baby carrier without waking up or dropping Rose.
Once I got her free, I laid her in the center of the bed and stared at her little face, still asleep, even though we’d just been through Hell, her and I. I used a shirt out of a dresser and a little water from the bags to wash my arms and hands.
I was bone weary.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through my sweat-matted hair. I sifted through the bags on the bed. Water, candles, some canned goods, a can opener, a nice gun with plenty of ammo, and several other random items.
Maria’s bag had our gear and stuff for the baby. I took out a clean bottle and got it ready. I laid a clean diaper on the bed. The baby would be hungry and need to be changed when she woke up.
While I sat there staring at the baby, I noticed that zombie gunk had been splattered on the feet of the button up pajamas Maria had her dressed in.
I went into the pink room and found a few pajama outfits that looked about her size, along with a soft, fluffy blanket. I sat everything on the bed, ready for her when she awoke.
Would she somehow know what had happened?
Would she cry for her mama, not understanding why she wasn’t there?
I worried over all of that and everything else in between before I laid down on the bed next to her, waiting for her to wake up.
It wasn’t long until I drifted off to sleep, my exhaustion winning out over my worry.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Midtown, North Carolina
Little hands touching my face, little slobbery hands, is what I woke up to. I blinked, trying to remove the sleep from my eyes. I looked around the room, noticing the way the sun was starting to light up the space. Had I slept the entire day and night away?
I jolted fully awake, startling Rose.
She stuck out her bottom lip like she was going to cry.
“Hey there, little lady,” I said gently.
“How long have you been awake?” I glanced over at the bottle on the bed, completely empty. Her pajamas look soaked, so I imagined she’d wet straight through her diaper.
“Let Uncle Tex take care of you, honey,” I cooed at her.
Rose stared at me like she didn’t know what to think, but at least her lip wasn’t quivering anymore. I changed her diaper and her little pajama set, taking entirely too long to figure out the snaps that went up the front. When I finally got all the snaps lined up, she mumbled in baby language, “Mama.”
A fist squeezed around my heart as I gazed into her big brown eyes.
Her mama was gone.
I was all she had.
I picked her up and sat her on my lap, handing her the little gray elephant from the bag Maria had carried.
She grabbed it excitedly, immediately stuffing the elephant’s ear in her mouth.
“Your mamma loved you very much, Rose,” I said.
“She made sure you were safe and she said she always wanted you to look for the good in the world, even if it seems hard to find.”
Rose smiled and chattered away in her baby gibberish. I smiled down at her.
“We’re going to get through this, kiddo,” I said more to myself than to Rose.
“We’re going to make your mama proud.”
Another set of baby words was her only answer. It sounded like an affirmative to me.
“Alright, let’s get a move on then, little miss,” I said.
“We’ve got some people to meet. Your new Auntie Melody is going to love you.”
I sat the baby on the bed and handed her the blanket I’d found. She played with it while I condensed all our supplies into a single backpack. Enough to last three days. Everything else I added to the duffle bag.
I’d put that in the car, but if I had to ditch the car at any point, I’d leave the duffle bag behind. I’d only be able to carry the baby and a single backpack.
I loaded the gun I’d found in the toy bin, tucked it in my pants, and added the two extra clips of ammunition to the pockets of my jeans.
“Okay, Rose, it’s time for us to go. We’ll take your little elephant with us and your new pretty blanket, okay?”
Mostly I just talked to hear something, anything to block out my own thoughts. It was reassuring to hear myself sound so confident even though Maria was gone and I had no idea what to do with a baby.
I picked Rose up along with her carrier and our two bags. When I got downstairs, the sun had risen even more and I was ready to put miles between us and the infested town. The map I’d found the previous evening in a kitchen drawer told me that we were about thirty miles outside of Midtown, North Carolina.
Old bills on the kitchen counter told me the small town we were in was called Palatka. Midtown was right outside of the Army base that Rose and I were headed to. It could take an hour or two to drive that thirty miles with the way the world was now.
Inside the garage I found a tan Hyundai.
I stood there with the baby and all our bags in my arms, wondering how I was supposed
to do this. Should I strap the baby to me while I drive?
That could be dangerous.
Should I strap the baby in the back seat? But what if I had to get to her quickly to make a run for it? So many scenarios rolled through my mind and I felt even more unsure of myself than ever.
I opened the back door of the car and there was a baby car seat. I took that as a sign and put her in it. The straps looked complicated, so I opted to pull the seat belts across the car seat instead of taking the chance that once I strapped Rose in I wouldn’t be able to get her back out if I had to.
I threw our bags in the seat beside her and climbed in the front seat. I set my gun in the front passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. The car started on the first try and just like Carter had said, there was a quarter tank of gas.
I owed that kid a lot.
I backed out, shutting the garage as soon as we were clear.
I didn’t want to take the chance that Warren or anyone in his group would notice that something was different in the area. It was best that Warren thought we all had died the day before. I put the car in drive.
Some of us had died the day before.
And Warren would pay.
When I turned off of Buck Street, I didn’t even glance in the direction of the church.
I ignored the masses of zombies still wandering the streets there and I drove away with nothing on my mind but getting Rose safely to Melody and Jude at the Army base.
There would be time to mourn Maria later.
It took us almost two hours to reach the outskirts of Midtown.
The baby had to be fed and changed after an hour of driving and we had to make three minor detours to get around roads blocked by abandoned vehicles or the dead. We were running on fumes by then.
When I saw the “Welcome to Midtown” sign, I let out a relieved breath. Once we made it into town, I knew we were going to be only a couple miles from the base. Only a few miles from absolute safety. I’d been hoping to make it on what was in the tank, but the car ran out of gas half a mile before we made it into town.
“Looks like we’ll be hoofing it from here,” I said to the baby.
She just stared at me from the rearview mirror.
“You can pretend Uncle Tex is a big ‘ole horsey,” I said with a grin.
Rose smiled and clapped.
Maybe she understood more than I gave her credit for. I tucked the gun in the waist of my pants and began the daunting task of putting the baby in her carrier. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought would be.
I tried to remember everything Maria had done.
With the baby securely in place on my back, I loosened the straps on the backpack enough to wear it on my back around the carrier and so that it wasn’t too tight or awkward around the baby.
I’d carried heavier loads in the Army.
We headed into town.
Midtown looked like any other insignificant small town in North Carolina.
It wasn’t without its charm, but these towns tended to have big secrets and hidden surprises, and I found that after the undead began to walk over two years ago that this was doubly true and seldom a good thing.
I just wanted to get into town, find a new set of wheels, and then to get back out of town as quickly as possible. That should have been more than easy, since the town was filled with abandoned cars, many with their keys still hanging in the ignition.
The problem was, someone else had gotten into town before me.
The gunshots were my first clue.
I ran to the side of the building I’d been walking around and hid myself back from the view of the main street. I could hear the dead lumbering around and I also heard shots coming from very close by.
I was up shit creek with no paddle in sight. I needed a car, but the people shooting up the town might not be the types I wanted to run into with Rose on my back. I couldn’t stay out in the open this close to town without taking shelter, not if I didn’t want to end up a meal for the zombies.
I clenched my teeth in frustration.
I had not come this far to fail. I would have to backtrack a bit, take the long way around town, and walk the few miles to the base.
Better safe than sorry.
I took several steps back, my eyes on the main road in town, when a zombie behind me grabbed my arm. There were two of them on top of me before I could say skedaddle.
I yelled out, startling the baby, who immediately started crying.
My knife stilled the first zombie before it could do any damage. I grappled with the second one, trying with all my might to keep it from biting into the baby, to keep its extremely aggressive, snapping teeth away from Rose.
I grunted, taking the full force of the zombie’s attack. I finally managed to shove my knife into its temple, slumping against the wall when the corpse finally quit moving.
Rose was pretty shaken up. I shushed her and talked nonsense to her, and eventually she quit crying, but not before the undead started flooding the side street. The way we had come was already filling up with walking corpses.
I had no choice.
I ran toward the center of town, hoping that whoever was there wouldn’t have heard the commotion and hoping they wouldn’t see me.
I cleared the building and stepped right out onto the main street in town where I was immediately noticed. Just like the zombies we’d been running into the past few days, these zombies too looked like something was wrong with them… and I mean more wrong than the fact that they were walking, rotten corpses.
They were slower, their skin waxy and nearly translucent from the liquid that pushed the skin so taut that it threatened to burst with the slightest touch.
A barefoot zombie reached me and its feet were nothing but bone.
The flesh had shredded away and a constant stream of rancid fluids poured out of the wounds there. The rest of its skin hung on the skeleton like the zombie had lost hundreds of pounds and all that was left was skin over bones like melted, sickly white candle wax.
I was so taken aback by the state of the zombie who lunged at me that by the time I forced my knife into its skull, several others had surrounded me. I pulled my gun out.
No time to care if anyone would hear.
I took out the half dozen zombies that had managed to sneak up behind me before positioning myself so that Rose wasn’t exposed. With my back to a storefront window, I planted my feet and began putting a dent in the number of dead that were closing in on us.
It wasn’t until I rammed my last magazine of ammunition into the gun that I realized more zombies had arrived.
When I was almost empty and ready to pull my knife, another gun went off and the undead started dropping like flies all around me.
I yanked my knife free and began taking down all those that were nearest me, hoping that the people helping me out were decent shots, even so, I didn’t want bullets getting too close to Rose. When bullets stopped flying, I glanced up from the carnage that surrounded me and found Uncle Gus standing there, his gun drawn and looking at me with a shocked look on his face.
I’m sure I had the same look on my own. He jumped down from the back of the truck he’d been standing in and ran over to help me fight off the last few zombies with his metal baseball bat.
The waterlogged zombies didn’t stand a chance.
“What are you doing here, boy?” Uncle Gus hissed as he neared me.
“I could ask you the same, old man,” I grunted, pulling my knife from a zombie’s throat and then spearing it through the eye.
“He’s here with me,” a voice I never intended to hear again said.
I swung around and sure enough there stood none other than Michael Hatten.
Michael walked over while Uncle Gus took down a few more zombies, striding toward me like he was invincible, untouchable. When he finally realized what it was I carried on my back, he froze, his eyes widening and then narrowing in white-hot fury.
“She’s dead then?” he as
ked.
I gritted my teeth, and stared at him.
I didn’t dare say anything for fear that the rage I was once again experiencing would spill over and I’d lose control like I had the day before.
Uncle Gus shook his head sadly.
“God found her unworthy then,” Michael said heatedly.
He pulled his gun and before I realized his intent, he pointed it right at me.
“Michael… don’t!” Uncle Gus gasped.
Michael didn’t even spare him a glance.
“Give me the baby,” he commanded.
My grip tightened on my weapon.
“It will be a cold day in Hell when I let you have her,” I growled.
“I will shoot you,” he said calmly.
“What if the bullet accidently hits her instead?” he asked as if he were asking me what my favorite color was.
“If you truly want her, you wouldn’t take that chance,” I said.
He cocked his head, like he was studying a fascinating specimen under a microscope.
“Wouldn’t I?” he asked after a few seconds ticked by.
“If it’s God’s will that I take her to raise as my own, he will protect her.”
“Don’t!” I said raising a hand in surrender.
“I’ll hand her over.”
Michael cocked his head again.
“No. I don’t trust you. I do trust God though.”
Michael raised his arm again, his intention written clearly on his face. Uncle Gus yelled out and I saw movement from the corner of my eye just as Michael’s gun went off.
A bullet struck Uncle Gus right in the chest as he threw his body in front of me.
It all happened so fast that I barely had time to register my surprise or my anger.
I pulled my gun and shot Michael Hatten, still staring down at Uncle Gus on the pavement at my feet, in both of his kneecaps.
Michael hit the ground and his gun flew across the pavement where he lay screaming in agony.
Uncle Gus was dead before his body hit the ground.
I walked over to Michael, now writhing in pain in the middle of the road, vaguely aware that all the zombies that were left in town were beginning to show up to see if any food was available.
State of | Book 2 | State of Ruin Page 15
