Dozens of biters float down the Mississippi.
Ethan grabs an oar, pushing an undead away from the motor.
“Shoot them!” Serena screams.
Won’t stop the buildup of bodies. They float. Don’t panic, girl. “Try and not hit any of them. They’ll ruin the motor.”
“Shoot them!”
“It won’t change their buoyancy. They’re floating down the river, undead or dead.”
Ethan throws the boat into reverse, tugging the boat full of guns into the Mississippi River.
Serena gooses the accelerator.
Ethan draws his knife, severing the line between boats. “Take it right on up the bank next to the truck. We won’t be making another trip back.”
“There’s a lot of chop.” She fights against the current.
“Bob and weave. You can’t shoot straight across the river. Too many undertows.” Ethan slides into the driver’s seat of his boat. “It’s rougher since we crossed.” He glances at Serena. She seems to have her boat under control. “The aftershocks have reshaped the river.” I hope home’s safe.
Ethan directs her toward the bank where he left the boat trailer in the water. Instead of driving onto and hauling the boat back full of gear, they find the bed of the truck submerged.
For about two seconds, he contemplates if the truck is drivable. Was it four-wheel or rear-wheel? If the engine’s dry, it should fire. It will take hours to hike to a car, and who knows if it works. Fuck me. Time to get wet. Ethan waves Serena to hang back. “Pull along the edge as best you can.”
“How’s the ankle?” Ethan closes the driver’s side truck door.
“Throbs.” Serena twists her red hair into two braided pigtails. “Why were they performing mad scientist experiments at the military base?”
“Why would you ask that?” He hands her the keys.
“We had a snow storm. The winter had been mild, so the undead stirred. Some thought cold would freeze their rotting joints. But winter wasn’t harsh enough.”
“Squirrel.”
“What!?” She huffs. “Fuck you, old man. You want to hear this, or not?”
I need to unload the MREs. It will be dark by the time we get back. “Despite your use of exposed skin to distract people, you’ve a brain under your red scalp.”
“Because I show some flesh doesn’t mean I’m a bimbo. Men do more for cleavage than a burqa. Now you want to know what happened, or not?” She twirls the tip of her pigtail around her finger.
“Sure.”
She continues, “We thought cold might slow them. But the only winter we had, real winter, was this week it snowed some seven or eight inches. During the snow, a man with a piecemeal military uniform appeared. He had the pants, the boots, the gun, but his gear bag was from Walmart. And a cheap windbreaker. He wasn’t dressed for winter, even without snow, and he said he escaped the base. The military initiated crazy experiments. I thought it was bullshit. He was a crazy.”
“Did he say what kind?”
“This dude babbled quite a bit. He had frostbite. He did have army rations. A whole pack. He offered them if we let him stay.”
“Did you?”
“They did. He had a fever. Some were afraid he was an escaped experiment, as no one could cross the bridge safely. He died with some rash. They burnt his bed and him. He was babbling about these biters. Biters unlike he’d ever seen. He never gave specifics.”
“I didn’t find any unusual biters, but they were searching for a cure.”
“Maybe they said they were attempting a cure to hide the weaponized biters. The government did stuff in secret bunkers.”
“You’re awful young to be a conspiracy nutter.”
“Hell, old man, every day I try not to get eaten by corpses. We’re way past The X-Files here. I’m no Scully, I believe.”
“You’re young for The X-Files.”
“No, they did the reboot, remake. How the show lasted nine years based on those six episodes, I don’t get.”
“Well, the writing was much better in the nineties.”
“O-M-G you were, like, alive in the nineties.”
“Weren’t you?”
“I was a baby. It doesn’t count,” she says.
“Have you encountered any bizzaro undead?”
“Fresh ones move faster, but nope. The knights have a few stories. But I avoid those.”
Ethan contemplates if early in the cure process they create hybrids. Or cures which failed. Maybe they released some cured, infected undead to cure other undead before they moved on to experimenting on the living. He asks, “Did you lose any of your camp people in the past few weeks?”
“We’ve been lucky.”
With the boat full of guns secure on the trailer, Ethan considers abandoning the cases of MREs in his boat. His leg throbs, and the sun slips into late afternoon. Crazy stupid plan. Going to need every bit of supplies to get past all the biters in the Boot Heel. His mind travels backward to 1860, when Samuel Clemens was a pilot of a river boat. He sees the river, a grainy sepia image, for a moment, full of steamships. Only they aren’t vintage—a few are, but most are new or refurbished. As gas diminishes and stales, other means of transportation will flourish. It’s why I push the rail system. I know they can build a steam engine. Horses and buggies will become common inside the fence. And on the river—boats. I envision steamers.
“What’re you staring at, old man?” Serena views Ethan, frozen in the side mirror.
“The future.”
“You getting senility.” It wasn’t a question.
Ethan accepts the stress of the end of the world has aged him. He thinks it has left him healthier. I wonder if my cholesterol has reached acceptable numbers. I should ask Dr. Baker if he can check. I hauled all the medical and dental equipment to do routine procedures. Blood checks should be among them.
“I forget you millennials have lost all imagination without an app.” He smiles.
“You’re so funny.”
“Is that the only retort you got?” Ethan taunts.
“Do you hate women?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You’re kind of a dick to me.”
“Have you examined your own behavior? Maybe the way you behave constitutes how I treat you. No, I don’t hate women. I do have a mild distaste for teen girls who think they know all.”
“I’m almost twenty. You work with a lot of teens?” she asks.
“I work with people of all ages. You must to survive.”
“I meant before the end.”
“I don’t think about before much anymore. There’s no going back. It’s not like you got dumped by a girl and you can improve yourself and win her over. Or find a better job. Nothing we do. No matter how we change will we ever be able to go back to the way it was.”
“I’ll never have a working iPhone again.” She frowns.
“Not on my watch. Activating Wi-Fi towers is beyond my pay grade. I’m hoping to have landline phones operating again at my camp.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
THE STARS DANCE in the barn loft opening. Karen counts them the way she did as a kid.
“I think there are more,” Harley whispers.
“Less pollution. I read ancient people wondered if there was a single star or thousands. And Mars and Venus could be seen during the day.”
“I used to count them to fall asleep,” Harley says.
“You need to sleep. Tomorrow, we’ve got to move fast. No resting.”
“Karen, I know I left out much of my story. I love Paola. We’ve been lovers, and after what happened at the hospital, we hid it. But she tends to wear her sexual preference with pride.”
“Even without the hiking boots and flannel, I get it. I don’t care.”
“It’s not about her being gay. I was considering dropping from med school when the attacks came. Some of the zealots thought it was a curse from God because of our belief in science.”
“Science is
the devil?”
“Knowledge has always been frowned upon in religion. God doesn’t care for education because his followers would figure out we don’t need Him. Or, He’s not all-knowing. Or, what He knows we can learn for ourselves.”
“I get it,” Karen says.
“They slaughtered every doctor, nurse and medic they could find. They emptied everyone from the hospitals and clinics and executed them. Poor receptionists in scrubs were eliminated, just in case.”
“I thought they were bitten.”
“No. I was lucky. I’d quit med school a few days before the infection. Rumors are, they jailed those zealots who killed the doctors, but I don’t know. When the city council attempted to restore an economy, I stepped forward to offer my skills. I needed to eat. I wasn’t placed under guard, but if I don’t check in, they do send a team to locate me. They need doctors, and so far, no one reaching the city has been to med school.”
“They won’t punish you if you return.”
“No, but I’ll live under guard, and they might hold Paola against me. When those in the religious right assume power, we might be cleansed. Some of the more effeminate men have found their way to being imprisoned. Even if they aren’t gay.”
“Alec was right to want to escape.”
“It’s the regular people surviving there who’ll be forced to believe or face the sword. I would rather swan dive into the undead below us than allow those chasing us to drag us back to Springfield,” Harley says.
“I won’t let that happen. Now get some sleep.”
“Karen.” Kalvin nudges her shoulder.
She jerks awake.
“You were snoring and drooling a bit.” He points at his own chin.
“I feel like I just fell asleep.” She wipes her lip with the back of her hand.
“I think you did,” Kalvin whispers. “You’ve been guarding us all night.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” She yawns. The moon hangs above the tops of some trees. “Do you think Ethan was correct?”
“About what?”
“He was against anyone besides himself exploring outside the fence.”
“Don’t second-guess yourself.”
“Trapped in a barn, surrounded by the undead, it’s difficult not to.”
“How about instead of a car, we find a boat and head north upriver? We’ve got maps, and plenty of rivers are deep enough for a boat. No one would suspect a boat. We gain ground on our pursuers,” Kalvin says.
“We’d be safe from the living and the undead, even if it’s for a few hours.”
“Now we have a plan. We wait,” Kalvin says.
The barn shakes.
“They bounce off.”
“There must be a hundred thousand,” Karen says. “No way to fight our way through it.”
“If the barn falls.”
“We won’t escape,” Karen says.
“There’s some kerosene. We could light some of them on fire,” Kalvin says.
“Fire doesn’t kill them. They keep walking until the brain cooks. They could ignite the wood. We must wait. Anyone who prays, pray.”
“Sometimes, I wonder how we keep making it out of such messes.”
“We’re the good guys.” Karen smiles.
Automatic weapon reports turn the entire herd.
“Wake everyone up, and get them ready to run,” Karen orders.
“We don’t know who is firing or why.”
“We do. And they want us.”
Harley wakes from her slumber and gazes into Paola’s eyes. They kiss.
“How come you two kiss like mommies and daddies?” Grace asks.
“We love each other,” Harley says.
“But you’re both girls,” Grace says.
Paola smiles. “Sometimes you want to love a woman. When you’re older, you’ll make your own choice in who you love.”
“But how do you get babies?”
The women glance at each other.
“Guess there are no artificial ways anymore. We may have to surrender to a man.” Harley winks at Frank.
“We could adopt. There must be plenty of orphan children,” Paola says.
Grace beams. “I need a mommy. Why couldn’t I have two?”
“Do you want us to be your parents?” Paola asks.
She nods.
“But it means that when you’re bad, we will punish you.”
“But when I’ve bad dreams, you’ll protect me?” Grace asks.
“We would.”
“We’ll always protect you. No matter what.”
“And love you,” Harley says.
They embrace in a three-way hug. When they break, Grace says, “But I want Karen as a mommy, too.”
Karen smiles. If we don’t make it out of the barn, at least Grace gets a final happy moment.
Kalvin waves her over to the opening.
The herd shambles toward the echoing reports.
“She must be a hell of a doctor.”
“Karen, we’re missing something about the goings-on in Springfield.”
The last undead to stumble from the barn lot cracks its body on the gate post. Black blood splatters. It staggers after the moving herd.
“Everyone remain quiet and run.”
“We must find a place to rest. We can’t keep moving without sleep,” Karen says.
“I think we lost them,” Kalvin says.
“Twice last night they were close. No way they were stalking us visually in the dark.” Karen admires the morning sun as it peeks through the trees.
“A tracking device? Not the three girls. Sonya was an afterthought.”
“Was she? Alec just happened to bring her along,” Karen says.
“What was the purpose? If they wanted to make an example of us as rule breakers, then snagging us in the city was more cost effective.”
“Not if they are interested in other camps who might be a threat,” Karen speculates.
“They’ve internal strife. We’re nothing compared to the mess they’re facing,” Kalvin says.
“And an outside enemy would bring them together.”
“Like the biters aren’t enough of a threat,” Kalvin says.
“Not like a living, thinking enemy who desires your belongings and your women.”
“Crazy plan, Karen.”
“It’s convoluted, but I’ve no other explanation. No one would even miss us if Harley wasn’t with us.”
“Then we risk it. We find a car and put some miles under us,” Kalvin says.
“I was thinking we steal the truck they’re chasing us in.”
“And if you’re wrong about one of them, you put us all at risk.”
“We love risk. But I’ll kill any traitor in our cohort.” Karen marches back to the group. “Mount up.”
“Can’t we sleep?” Paola lifts her head from Harley’s shoulder.
“The Springfieldians are still on our trail.”
“How is that possible?” Sonya asks.
“We’ve cut across country twice, and they don’t have dogs. No way they’re able to stay with us.” Alec adjusts his Stetson.
“We’ve got to shake them before we collapse.”
Frank scoops up a sleeping Grace. “This one’s out.”
“You’ve got her?”
“Better this way than her constant barrage of questions,” Frank says.
“Kalvin, lead the way.” Karen grabs Alec’s shoulder, holding him back. “A medical person’s that important to them? She can’t be the only one left in the city.”
“They don’t have any. She was it. Except for a few home health nurses and most of those weren’t employed at the hospitals.”
Karen realizes Alec knows what happened to the medical staff. “If we leave them, will they cease pursuit?”
“I don’t know,” Alec admits. “There was a lot going on I didn’t know about. What I did know scared me more than the undead.”
“Then I’m open to suggestions on how to l
ose them.”
“They only have so much gasoline. Even if they had a full tank, they must return at the halfway point. We cost them fuel, and they must turn back.”
“You better be right, Alec. We need a break.”
Karen peeks through the trees. She never noticed how many small groves of wood surround so much of the landscape until the world ended. “It’s a warehouse. We’ve searched dozens.”
Alec hands her the binoculars. “Check it again, fearless leader.”
“Don’t be a smartass.” Karen scans the building through the twin lenses.
“Are we looking at a place to sleep?” Harley asks.
Karen hands her the binoculars.
“It’s a warehouse.”
“Check the fence line.”
At gut height, strips of bent rebar are sharpened to spear points.
“Why?” Harley asks.
“I would guess to damage biters, but not kill them. Plus, there are no corpses around the border.”
“I should’ve seen the rebar, but why are no biters important?” Harley asks.
“It may not be, but someone set up a defensive perimeter and doesn’t leave any corpses around,” Alec says.
“Doesn’t mean there are people now. They could’ve died on a supply run. With no one inside to attract more, biters don’t stick around. It’s worth checking out,” Karen says.
“My Spidey Sense is tingling,” Frank says.
“Now you’re a radioactive spider.”
“Naw. All EMTs develop this sixth since about disasters,” Frank says.
“We skip. Find someplace that won’t take long to search, so we can sleep. No reason to get hung up here in a trap.”
“And if it’s a trap, they may pursue us. We don’t need more people chasing us.”
“Catch twenty-two. Make the call, fearless leader.”
“We clear that place, and we get a good, secure night’s sleep,” Karen says.
“And if we spend a few hours, and it doesn’t work out, we’re hunting for a bed in the dark. And we must sleep, and soon,” Frank says.
“You should be an expert at fumbling around in the dark.” Karen smiles.
Barking interrupts their decision. They all freeze.
No Room In Hell (Book 3): Aftershocks Page 28
