They were practice arrows with pointy metal tips, not the razor-sharp arrowheads that I needed for hunting.
But practice arrows would still be suitable for small game hunting and would also be good if I found myself in a situation where shooting an arrow at the undead was a better option than getting in close to use my club. Good hunting arrows were just too valuable to waste shooting at the undead.
I started grabbing the arrows from all the quivers and I put them into one quiver so I could take them with me.
In total, I found twenty-five arrows, better than nothing.
They would be better than anything I could make myself when I finally broke or lost my last two hunting arrows.
It’s not that I haven’t tried to make my own arrows out of branches, I know that someday soon it might come down to me needing to make my own arrows.
I hate to admit it, but making arrows is another item on my list of things that I’m not very good at. My list of things that I can’t do is probably longer than my list of things that I do well, but fortunately the things I do well have been the things that have been the most important for keeping me alive so far.
That and I have my buddy Wolfe, he makes up for a lot of my short comings.
He is probably the biggest reason that I’m still alive and in return, I’m probably the biggest reason why he weighs about twenty pounds more than the average wolf. At one hundred twenty pounds, he is a big guy, but he is also all solid muscle. I’m just fortunate that he is on my side.
I slipped the quiver of arrows over my shoulder and crawled back out over the counter of the shack.
As my feet hit the ground I felt my heart jump up into my throat and chills ran through my body when I heard a loud cracking sound, followed by a painful yelp.
I hadn’t heard Wolfe yelp since he was a pup, I was horrified to think what possibly could cause Wolfe to make that sound.
I grabbed my club and quickly turned around to find Wolfe.
I could hear a thrashing sound, the sound of a struggle coming from somewhere out in the thicket.
I desperately scanned the thicket as I called out, “Wolfe, where are you buddy?”
Then I spotted the weeds, twenty feet away, thrashing from side to side as the sound of a struggle on the grounds continued.
Whatever was happening, it was taking place down on the ground below and was hidden from my sight by the high grass and brush.
When I heard a second yelp, a sinking feeling grabbed at my insides. I began to run ignoring the thorns as they scratched and tore at my skin.
I was gasping for breath when I reached the spot where I had seen the weeds being knocked around.
I raised my club, ready to defend Wolfe, but I had no Idea what was big or strong enough to have attacked Wolfe and cause him to cry out in pain.
Before I had taught him not to attack the undead, I had seen him tear ten of them apart in a matter of minutes.
I had even seen him make a mountain lion back away, he was not afraid of anything. Any animal with any intelligence would not choose to mess with Wolfe.
As I approached the sound of the struggle, I prepared myself to take on something that I would have never considered facing on my own without Wolfe, but I was determined to do whatever I had to do to save my friend, as he has always done for me.
As I reached the crumbled weeds and brush and saw what was in front of me, I tossed my club aside and dropped down and grabbed Wolfe to make him stop struggling.
“It’s OK buddy,” I said. “Stop fighting, I’ve got you.”
He stopped struggling and just laid there, panting hard as I held him, rubbing his neck and talking softly to him.
The sound of my voice calmed him down and he looked at me with a look of confusion in his eyes, as he struggled to understand what had happened.
However, I could see the look of confusion turn to one of relief knowing that I was here as I talked to him. He seemed to be waiting as if to hear me give him the instructions that would magically help him. He instinctively looked up at me and waited.
I slowly sat up, keeping my hand on his side as I looked him over and then at the metal jaw trap that had a painful grip on his back right leg.
The trap was secured to the ground by a short chain so whatever got caught in the metal jaws couldn’t get away, taking the trap with them.
Blood was running from where the trap had bitten into the flesh of Wolfe’s leg, either from snapping closed around his leg or from Wolfe struggling to get out of its grip.
“Wolfe, stay,” I said as I moved to where his leg was held between the jaws of the trap.
Wolfe just laid on his side and watched me.
It was a spring-loaded trap, fortunately it wasn’t one of those large traps with the sharp jagged metal teeth that had been used in the past to trap bears, the blades on this trap were smooth.
The trap was similar to a bear trap, but fortunately was smaller or Wolfe would have probably lost his leg when the trap snapped shut.
I put my foot on the spring and shifted my weight to put more pressure against it then slowly pulled the jaws of the trap open.
I gently slid Wolfe’s leg from the trap and then let the trap snap closed again.
I examined his leg, feeling for broken bones, but Wolfe had been lucky. Other than the painful looking wound on his leg, nothing had been broken as far as I could tell.
I started talking to Wolfe, hoping the sound of my voice would somehow reassure him.
“The good news is that nothing is broken,” I said as he listened attentively to my words. “The bad news is you are going to have a sore leg for a few days, but you’ll live. So there will be no chasing rabbits for a couple days.”
At the sound of me saying rabbits, Wolfe’s head popped up and he slowly hobbled to his feet.
He appeared to have mentally recovered from the experience, but he limped badly when he tried to walk.
“Stay,” I said as I watched him trying to walk.
I scratched him behind the ears and told him the plan.
I knew he liked it when I had a plan and he expected that I would have a plan. That was my job.
The plan, I explained to Wolfe, was that I was going to try and carry him back up the hill to our camp.
I just hoped he wouldn’t try to bite me or something when I tried to pick him up. I hadn’t done anything like that since he was a pup.
I wanted to keep him off that leg until I could get him back to camp, clean up the wound and put something on it to keep it from becoming infected. Infections of any kind were deadly in my world, regardless of the source.
I also didn’t want him trying to walk on that leg in case something was broken and my initial diagnosis was wrong. Being a vet wasn’t on my list of things that I wasn’t very good at, but I knew it could be.
Back at camp I had a small bottle of peroxide that I had found a year back and had it stashed in the outside pocket of the backpack in case of an emergency.
Any kind of injury to Wolfe was an emergency in my book.
I could sense the trust Wolfe had in me as I got down and put my neck under his body while he stood in front of me.
He didn’t try to struggle or resist as I first struggled to lift him up then struggled to stand with him draped over my shoulders.
Maybe he remembered the times I carried him around when he was a pup, to protect him and to give him a lift when he was tired. Maybe it was the years of bonding and working together that had enabled me to gain his trust. It also could have been that piece of ham, done medium rare that I had given him the day I found him, Wolfe has a long memory.
Wolfe also probably doesn’t realize how big he is now, but he seemed to take my picking him up in stride as if it happened every day.
It was a long walk back, walking up hill with one hundred and twenty extra pounds on my shoulders.
I made it back up the hill and laid Wolfe down on his blanket.
I cleaned the wound and wrapped it
with an old rag.
He didn’t resist, he let me do what I felt was necessary, seeming to have more confidence in me than I had in myself.
After I was done tending to his leg, I gave him a few pieces of deer meat then I built a fire.
I guess we would be staying here for a few extra days after all.
I set out my club and the arrows I had found today where I could easily get at them as I prepared myself to keep watch throughout the night.
I sat by the fire next to Wolfe and gently stroked his side to let him know I was there and that I had his back.
As the night moved in around us, he fell asleep, an uneasy sleep, but he did sleep.
I could feel his muscles moving as he slept.
I said I often wondered what Wolfe dreamt about during the night.
To be honest, I still can’t answer that question.
Tonight, I guessed he dreamt about the trap and the feeling of helplessness that he had never felt before.
But that was just me, that’s what I would have been dreaming about.
But Wolfe wasn’t me, for all I knew he was probably dreaming about chasing down that big buck today.
He was a lot tougher than I was, but even someone like Wolfe needed a little help occasionally.
I’m just glad that something worse hadn’t happened.
In the world we live in, there is always something worse waiting for us.
At least for now, we were both still alive.
Chapter 9
As I sat around the fire, taking on the job of keeping watch by myself tonight to give Wolfe some time to sleep and recover from his injury, my mind began to drift back to my dreams last night.
I guess thinking about Jamie and her Monopoly money as I was searching that store today, led me to think about where my dreams last night were going.
It was a quiet evening and my thoughts wandered back to that day again.
We had just sat and watched the most gruesome display outside our basement window that I had ever seen.
If I would have been an emergency room doctor that dealt with horrible automobile accident victims all day long, this is what I would imagine my nightmares would be like. An endless parade of bloody broken bodies.
A nuclear war had started, was still going on, or was now over for all I knew, but at this moment, I really didn’t care either way.
What I was now feeling was far more terrifying than what I had felt that morning I saw the incoming missiles.
Incoming missiles, nuclear explosions, being vaporized, all that I understood. Bodies walking around that should be dead, this I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why or how they were here.
Maybe because I didn’t understand it, it made it all that much more terrifying. Were those people in agony, and maybe worse, could this happen to me and my family? I knew that there were some things that were worse than death.
If it could happen to my family, how could it happen?
Did the radiation cause people to become horribly disfigured like the people I saw or was it something else?
Was there something else going on out there that I wasn’t aware of yet?
Was I focusing on the wrong things, was the nuclear attack just a diversion from the real danger I should be focusing on?
When I looked at the big picture, adding together everything I had seen over the last few days, when I first thought that we might just be able to survive the nuclear war, was I focusing on surviving the wrong problem?
I had so many questions, but there were few answers.
“Charlie,” Kelly said. “It looks clear outside, I think we should go over and see what happened to Bill.”
“I think we know what happened to Bill,” I replied.
“But we might be wrong,” Kelly said. “We can’t really see him very well from down here. What if he is just hurt and not dead?”
Kelly stared out the window, looking in Bill’s direction.
“Charlie, I think I just saw Bill moving,” Kelly said.
I looked over Kelly’s shoulder.
“I don’t see any movement,” I replied.
“Honest, I thought I saw him moving,” Kelly said. “I think I just saw his head move again this time.”
“OK, I’ll go out and take a look,” I replied. “We’ve known Bill ever since we moved here, it’s the least we can do for the old guy, but I know what I’m going to find and it’s not going to be pretty.”
“I want to go out with you,” Kelly said.
“I don’t know Kelly, you saw what just walked past this window,” I replied. “I don’t think it’s safe. I think you should stay here with the girls until I get back. If Bill looks like what I expect to find, I don’t think you want to see that.”
“The girls will be OK for three minutes,” Kelly said. “You came back today looking like you saw a ghost. All I’ve seen has been the inside of this house, except for the bloody feet and legs outside that window. If I am going to be able to help, so we can all get through whatever is happening out there, I need to understand what we are dealing with.”
“OK. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let me make sure there aren’t any stragglers outside first,” I replied. “Make sure the girls have something to keep them occupied while we are outside then I’ll meet you upstairs.”
I took the shotgun and went upstairs and looked out through the broken windows in the house which gave me a much better view than the small basement window. To say the view was eerie and gave me the creeps was an understatement. It all just added to the sinking feeling that was growing inside me.
Kelly came up out of the basement a few minutes later.
“Is it clear outside?” she asked as she stepped out of the stairwell.
“So far,” I replied.
“I told the girls to set up the Monopoly game while we went outside,” Kelly said. “That usually keeps them busy for at least ten minutes. Maybe more, I told Jamie she could count out everyone’s money.”
“The last time you let her count out the money I thought she and Tammy were going to kill each other,” I grinned. “Tammy accused Jamie of cheating and not giving her as much money as she gave everyone else.”
“I’m sure we’ll be back before things get physical,” Kelly replied. “But at least they will be too busy to get into anything else before we get back.”
We walked out the kitchen door and slowly moved to the corner of the house.
“What’s that smeared all over the grass?” Kelly asked.
“Blood,” I replied. “Watch where you step.”
By the look on Kelly’s face I could tell she hadn’t expected that answer.
From what we could see from the corner of the house, the neighborhood looked to be deserted. Any neighbors that were still here had decided it was best to stay out of sight or were just too afraid to come out yet.
The mob that had come through earlier had moved on, but they had left plenty of signs behind to indicate that they were here and to show what direction they had gone. But what was important to me now was that they were gone.
I motioned for Kelly to follow me. We walked quickly across the yard, then we walked across the street into Bill’s yard.
I felt Kelly’s hands tighten around my arm when we approached Bill’s body.
His body laid face down in a pool of blood. It looked like he had been laying there there for a week and had been ravaged by scavengers.
His entire body was covered by cuts, scrapes and what looked like bite marks where the flesh had been ripped from his body.
His shotgun laid on the ground next to him.
The sight was very difficult to look at, especially when the mangled body was someone you knew.
“Why would they have done this to Bill?” Kelly asked. “This is sick.”
“If you would have seen their faces like I did at Walmart, I don’t think you would need to ask that question,” I replied. “I don’t know why, but something is telling me that the
se horribly injured people are more dangerous than whatever after effects we can expect from the fallout.”
“Charlie!” Kelly said as she stared at Bill’s body. “I saw him move again. His legs moved.”
“He couldn’t have moved,” I replied. “He’s dead. Just look at him, he can’t still be alive, and you see that he isn’t breathing.”
“Yeah, he looks just like everyone else that’s been out on the street today,” Kelly said.
“Your right, I didn’t think about that,” I replied. “Hopefully something will put all those other horribly injured people out of their misery soon too. I can’t believe they’re still on their feet. This is one side effect of a nuclear attack that I never expected, this is unbelievable. I wonder how much longer those poor bastards can keep moving in their condition before they finally die? As long as they’re still on their feet, out of their mind crazy like this, we’re going to have to be careful and make sure they aren’t around before we go outside.”
“Charlie,” Kelly said quietly. “Look at Bill.”
I was going to ask why, but then I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.
When I looked down at Bill’s body, his arms and legs were both moving. Then Bill’s head turned to look in my direction and his eyes snapped open.
When I saw his eyes open and the two haunting white eyes moving in their sockets, chills ran down my spine.
I knew this was Bill, but what I saw looking back at me no longer seemed to be human.
When he began to struggle to get up, I took Kelly’s arm and pulled her away from the body and into the street.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
“What about Bill?” she asked. “What should we do?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I can’t believe one minute he was dead, or at least I thought he was dead, and the next minute he is getting up off the ground. My first reaction was that I should put him out of his misery, but I can’t just shoot our neighbor. I don’t understand this.”
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