by Woods, Shane
Approaching my friends again, I dropped out and checked the magazine for the rifle. Then, I rocked it back into position and chambered a round.
“An AK-47?” Fred nearly cringed. “Damn commie rifle if there ever was one.”
“WASR-10,” I corrected. “And while it’s only semi-auto, it has more rounds in one magazine than both of your guns together, and you’re going to use it. It works, and it works every time. Unlike those relics from the First World War that you carry.”
Fred accepted the rifle hesitantly, and put the spare magazines wherever he could; one in his back pocket, the other two in his waistband at the small of his back.
I motioned to the other team to be ready and turned to speak to the rest in a hushed voice.
“Clara behind me, Parker, then Fred, then Cody,” I instructed. “You other three, watch our backs.”
I felt bad that I didn’t even know the names of those with us, but I tried not to let it show as I hunched my back and crouched my knees to disappear into the underbrush along the path.
As we moved, carefully, quietly so as not to disturb much and make a scene, the vegetation thickened.
The path was narrow, and as we got farther in it seemed to reach from both sides to tickle faces and snag pant legs. Even this late in the season, into fall, it still held much of its green hue and more than enough leaf material. By the time we were ten whole yards into the mess, we couldn’t even see the road we had left.
As we moved, my nose picked up another marker. The earthy scents of the outdoors carried a darker note with it. A note of copper. And rot. And what smelled like raw feces for a nice finish to every breath inhaled.
Another twenty-five paces, had we been walking normally, and we hit a splitting of the trail. As informed, I motioned and we took the trail leading to the right, which was much wider than that which we had just traversed.
The trail was much shorter, and as it began to open up even more, I took note of our other guys standing guard in a clearing.
I stood and sped up my approach, the rest of my group hot on my heels until we reached the clearing.
I don’t recall what I was expecting, but I know what we found wasn’t it.
The clearing was perhaps a dozen yards across and littered with several small tents around the outer ring, and a modest fire pit in the center. The fire had long gone, though there was still a barely noticeable wisp of smoke rising only a few inches from the center before disappearing into the atmosphere.
“Check the tents already?” I asked quietly.
“Yes sir,” Harrison responded. “No good.”
“No good?” I asked, approaching one tent and moving the hanging flap aside with the barrel of my MK18.
The smell that leapt out of the small space was that of rancid copper and soggy spoiled meat. I was assaulted so by the smell itself that I took a step back and nearly fired my rifle into the space. Yeah, it was that potent, the weatherproof tent material having not let any of it out in who knows how long.
“I warned you,” Harrison said, and I could see the unease stapled across his features. “No bodies, just gross.”
“No bodies?” I answered, speculating.
I stepped to the next tent in line, this time holding my nose pinched shut.
Sticking the barrel of my rifle in and moving the flap aside, much as before, revulsion struck me again. I didn’t recoil, I didn’t move, I stayed glued into one place.
A mass of gore that scarcely even resembled a human being lay to one side of the space, blackened and rotting flesh holding foundation to only a few rib bones and a pelvis, the rest of the mess either gone, or hidden deeper within the sleeping bag.
Alongside this, was the remains of a German Shepherd. The type of dog was easy, as the remains were little more than a head leading a length of spine, still in place with what little viscera remained, piled behind the teeth and lolling tongue like a bucket of muddy concrete had been dumped and painted red.
I caught sight of a gunstock visible right next to the tent entrance and reached in to pull it out. An old pump-action Mossberg produced from within the confines of the tent, attached by webbing to a medium hiking pack.
“Search this,” I instructed, handing it to the early-twenties girl that had come in with Harrison. She took the pack and just kind of looked at me, unsure, so I repeated myself hastily, “Put the fucking bag, on the fucking ground, and search it.”
She began frantically digging through the bag as we scanned the rest of the area.
“Did you check the other tents?” Clara asked Harrison, and he nodded.
“Some are a mess like the others, but no bodies or remains,” he informed us, his hushed voice sounding twig-dry.
I began scanning the ground around the tents he motioned to and found a plethora of prints. This place had been heavily used, and the witness markings of foot traffic showed as much.
“Look here,” I whispered, pointing to a trail along the ground, disappearing into the thick grasses and plants. Thick, crimson smears highlighted by deep drag marks. I pointed the drag marks out to Fred.
“Fingers,” he said, deep in thought as he examined them. “Somebody was dragged from these tents. More than a single somebody, too.”
He motioned to more nearby marks and streaks of blood, also all disappearing into the brush.
“This bothers me,” Clara chimed in, already hoisting her AR-15 to the ready and scanning around. “It’s been raining. These marks should have been erased if they were anything but recent.”
As if to accent her statement, the brush on the far side of the clearing coughed.
Okay, the brush didn’t cough, but something in the brush coughed, and all of our weapons pointed at that side of the campsite as a torrent of viscous red and black fluid shot forth from the strands of grass, covering the girl with the backpack as she crouched over it. Her scream may be something that will haunt me the rest of my life, and it continued on as she toppled over onto her back.
“CONTACT!” I bellowed as the entire edge of the clearing burst to life, the first visible runner shrieking that godawful tone as it hit Parker like a cop tackling a criminal before carrying on with the momentum and disappearing from sight carrying our friend. The beast moved so fast in the small open area we couldn’t even get a shot on him.
Parker’s screams carried deeper into the field as we lobbed shots into the parted grass he and his assailant disappeared into.
The backpack girl, covered in freak vomit, continued to lay on her back screaming as she writhed like a tipped turtle, her arms beginning to convulse as her hands twisted like those of an arthritic carpenter.
The cacophony of weapons fire and shouts drowned out all intelligible thought as I picked moving grasses and fired.
Another running infected burst through the barrier into visibility as she screeched her long war cry. Several of us must have already been focused in that area as she took several rifle rounds to the upper body and face, twisting her body to and fro as her run broke into a stumble. She hit the ground face-first, the earth nearly writhing under her with the puddle of projectile vomit that was meant for one of the men. She finished her dance when Cody pulled out his heavy S&W .500 revolver and launched a veritable cannon shell into the back of her head.
I screamed, “FALL BACK! FALL THE FUCK BACK!” but my words were lost among all the commotion. So many voices and screams at once, and the gunfire, it was like trying to pick a conversation out of a crowded club on Friday. I grabbed for my radio and tried again.
“EVERYBODY FALL BACK! ONE GROUP TOGETHER, MOVE AND SHOOT!” then continued, “Team three! Start the trucks, burn the left field, FUCKING MOVE! OVER!”
Cody lifted his FN FAL rifle from its drop on the three-point sling and started casting heavy 7.62 rounds into the brush, sweeping through a full magazine before stuffing the empty back into his chest rig and slamming a new one home.
“RUN!” I shouted into my radio again as I paused just long enoug
h in my shooting to witness several growing clouds of smoke reaching lazily into the sky near the roadway, the scent of burning gasoline and diesel reaching my nostrils.
“RUN FASTER!” I reiterated, realizing the fire could also eliminate our escape route before we even reached as far. Might have been preemptive on my part, setting the field ablaze, but I couldn’t exactly take it back at this point.
I stood by, the suppressed MK18 whispering its own .30 caliber variant into anything that moved and didn’t have a gun. As most of both teams broke the entrance to the clearing, the grass came to life on a scale that made the previous onslaught look like an appetizer.
Clara turned to run and tripped over a fallen infected as soon as she’d twisted, cursing and already running again before she could even fully find her feet. As she ran, and Cody’s large frame followed her, I ushered them past me, leaving only a few of our own in the clearing to fire into the unknown as more runners started to explode into the space.
Most ran straight across the clearing, hitting the field on the other side in a trajectory to intercept my own people. Just as the last of us started their sprint out of Hell, I recognized a runner. Parker. He no longer wore his glasses, but I recognized him regardless, his rail-thin frame just a flash as he bolted across the open spot alongside another freak. His eyes already dilated almost full black, a trail of blood streaming from each. He shrieked. Our Parker, shrieking like the dead.
I placed a single round into the head of the backpack girl as she started her own shriek while finding her feet and she fell into a heap, the force of her fall sending runners of the remaining vomit cascading on the ground. And I ran.
I ran like never before in my life, three of our own so far up my ass they may as well have been fake fox tails. We booked it out of the clearing, down the short path, and left onto the narrower passageway out of there, the smoke from the nearby fire already rolling in and lazily covering our surroundings.
As I stepped, nearly rolling my ankle twice, I caught a flash of movement to my left side just as the movement caught me.
Even as relatively large as I am, I went from a full-bore sprint to a cartoonish flight, my legs still kicking as my body was flung by the impact of a freak. It hit me mercilessly hard, but luckily high as we sailed into the briars and other thorns alongside the pathway.
We impacted hard, nothing but needle-sharp pricks to break my fall, but the impact sent the freak just a little further than myself. I had time to watch it sail past as it grasped the air and tried to latch onto whatever it could, and before I could find my feet and get my bearings, he had found his.
I began a frantic scramble to get away as the monstrosity found solid earth and bared its teeth at me and began a second full-charge.
Just as I thought I was about to die in some shitty field in Portage County, Ohio, the freak’s head erupted like a rubber-banded watermelon. The concussion of the shot was a thing of beauty, as much physical as it was visual, thudding a single huge nail deep into my chest like a bass speaker. I looked up to see Cody reaching his hand for me, his full face and heavyset figure drenched in sweat, mud, and gore as he shouted something I could not hear.
I took the offered hand and began anew, heading toward the trucks as another runner took out one of the guys that had previously been following me. Before we even got close, it had gone for his throat. Nothing we could do at that point but shoot at him too, in case he decided to start trying to eat us.
The end of the footpath closest to the road was nearly completely engulfed in flames as we rushed through it, myself for one very happy that I had no hair to singe.
The trucks lay just ahead, up a slight embankment and not a half-dozen long strides ahead. Most of the others had already mounted up as my own door and Cody’s lay open and ready. The metallic arms of a favorite thing at this very moment, waiting to embrace us both with safety.
I launched myself into the gap, into the truck interior, slamming the door behind me as I went and just in time to feel the truck rock as Cody did the same. Several more shakes and shudders rocked the vehicle as several infected tried, and failed, to make the same entrance we had just done. I turned back and saw a thing even scarier than what we had just encountered. Christ, I should have never looked.
The fuel-soaked grass was soaking the runners, and even a few shamblers that had started to breach the perimeter and find the roadway. These runners burst forth through the fire, soaked in the same fuel mixture, and flames covered most of them as they made beelines straight for the trucks.
Nightmare visages of lost humanity as they quite literally blazed paths right toward us, leaving black markings wherever they impacted the vehicles. Some couldn’t quite reach that far as the heat contracted and charred muscles and connective tissues. These ones would nearly close into themselves, not in pain but with involuntary muscle spasms. I wasn’t so sure they felt pain.
“Take it, SHOOT!” I ordered Clara as I shoved my rifle into her grasp, immediately more willing to hear the suppressed gunfire so close to me as opposed to the monster that was her .223 with a muzzle break.
The glass of the truck exploded outward as she opened fire, the rounds taking bits of window and the attached chain link protection with them as they stitched the chest and torso of several of the flaming beasts.
The vacancy of the window now added to the grisliness of the situation as the flaming dead could be felt as they neared the spot.
I slammed the truck into gear and squashed the accelerator like a cockroach as the vehicle twisted sideways, belching black exhaust and white tire smoke in unison. Several more thumps and thuds shook us as I took several of the infected freaks with the bumper-mounted bull bar in our escape. I watched the truck behind us fleeing in similar fashion, and could only assume, and hope, that the third was doing the same.
“Are you okay?” Clara asked, and I nodded so she started checking the others.
“Where’s Parker?” Fred grumbled as he leaned back, almost as if trying to stretch a kink out of his back.
“Gone,” I said, sure I was still shouting but not much able to tell after Cody’s hand-cannon.
“Gone?” Fred and Cody echoed in unison.
“Yes, gone,” I gasped, still trying to regain my breath as the truck rocketed down the center of the road. “He was one of the first, they fuckin’ carried him…carried him away. No chance to help.”
Both men in the back groaned as they sat themselves back, also trying hard to breathe. Clara extended a hand to my shoulder for comfort as Cody began to laugh.
“What the fuck is so funny?” she shot at him.
“Dude. This is bad enough,” he started, almost delirious, “but wait until Smokey the Bear hears what we did.”
“You’re fired, Cody,” I said flatly, slowing the truck now as we had outpaced our attackers.
“Fired from what?” he asked, amused.
“Talking,” I stated. “Shut the fuck up.”
They all got a little laugh out of that as the mood of the truck lessened just a hair and my radio began to crackle back to life.
“Team three,” the radio informed, the female voice coming in tinny yet clear, “No KIA, one wounded from friendly fire. Over.”
“Solid copy,” Cody drawled into his own radio set so I could drive. “Team two, status check. Over.”
“Team two at fifty percent,” came Harrison’s youthful voice. “We lost three, one wounded. Burnt. Over.”
“Team one,” Cody continued, “lost two, one wounded. Treat your remaining casualties the best you can, will figure the rest out later. Over.”
Both of the other teams confirmed this, and we continued on, the truck swaying slightly as I dropped my speed to maneuver around small obstacles in the road here and there.
The infected still were not absent from our area.
There was a ‘thin spot’, in the area surrounding our adventure. That is, a much sparser population of freaks in the immediate area, as they’d all been dra
wn in and burnt to this point. Our escapades seemed to dog whistle every infected around beyond that, and it quickly reinforced the intelligence of the decision to flee instead of standing ground like we lived with the ghost of General Custer. The number of faces with gaping mauls and bloodshot eyes heading in the direction of our little field burning was a bit disconcerting.
Okay, it was more than disconcerting. It was downright terrifying. Hungry monsters that couldn’t feel pain and wanted to eat us moved across the landscape in droves. Clearly the dinner bell had been rung.
So, wisely we made a hasty departure and in no time at all the situation had changed again.
We were officially, fully, and totally in the countryside. The land occupied by mostly field, forest, and farm was now overshadowing the amount occupied by house and grass. Occasionally, nice homes could be seen on either side of us, only to concede their territory to more field separated from another field by small strands of trees and underbrush.
So, the number of infected freaks we were seeing made no sense. At least, not at first. The country was supposed to be so much more sparsely populated than the dense city populations, right? Then Clara hit the nail on the head. They were spreading out. Leaving the cities. The numbers were not as compacted into a single area anymore, but they were still there, nonetheless. And there was no telling how many we weren’t seeing as they hid among tall grasses and unkempt this or that.
Talk was kept to a minimum, and what was said wasn’t deep or thought-provoking as Clara and I watched our path ahead, and the others watched all around.
We spoke lightly of Parker. He was a good kid, and a kid was exactly what he still was. Too young to have even qualified to rent a car in many states before the big collapse, now he was likely destined to roam the countryside looking for other humans to eat. No telling if there even was any Parker left, or if it was something darker wearing a Parker suit.
“Got one,” Clara observed, pointing off to our ten o’clock. “Right there.”
