by Morris, SJ
Chris sat down next to me, and I assumed he could tell I was not in a good mood.
“You don’t have to come with us, you know? You could stay here and make sure that everyone stays safe.”
“Yes, I know, but Jake is Allycia’s friend, and he knows me. He’s already scared and has no idea who you are, so he might think you’re there to hurt him. I won’t take that chance.”
“I’m sure he’s seen Justin, Reed, or John before. They were all firefighters with your husband, so I’m sure he’s seen them around.”
“I’m not sure about that, and I’d rather not risk it. Also, I called and invited them to the cabin. I’m responsible for him and his mother. I need to make sure they get here as safely as possible. It wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t go.”
“You’re not responsible for anyone other than your family, who is here and safe.”
“Please, let’s not start this. I can’t today. I want to keep a clear head for when we’re out there and arguing with you is not going to help me do that.”
“Okay. Same thing as the last time we went out, though. You stay close to me, and we’ll have each other’s backs, all right?”
“Got it. Let’s finish up and get on the road. The sun is starting to rise.”
Chris stood up and looked at me like there was so much more he wanted to say, but he just couldn’t. I was glad he kept it to himself. I had enough in my head to think about for the time being.
We cleaned up and headed out to the trucks. Lance and Tyler were already outside, waiting for me. Lance quickly gave me a hug and headed back to the porch where Chase, Chester, and Tori were waiting.
“Good morning, Tyler.”
“Morning, Mom. I just wanted to wish you luck and let you know that Dan showed me how to track everyone with your watches, so I’ll be keeping an eye on all of you. Kristen is going to be with me, monitoring you guys and the radios so we can stay in contact.”
“I’m very proud of you, Tyler. For all that you’ve done to help out and everything you’ve learned from Dan.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. Dan is a great teacher and all the stuff he showed me is so cool, how could I not love it!”
It was nice to see him excited to learn. It was good to see him excited at all, with everything that was going on. I gave my son a firm hug, and he gave it back to me. I kissed him on the forehead and got in the truck with Chris and Tom.
I waved goodbye, and we pulled out of the gates.
Chapter 16
Desmond was only a few towns over, and it was all farmland. It shouldn’t have been a difficult trip, but I expected the drive was not going to be the twenty to thirty minutes the GPS had it estimated to be.
Chris still wanted to make sure we stopped along the way to take out any infected we came across. He was worried that when we’d need to come back this way, if we were in a hurry, they’d pose a problem. I didn’t doubt him, but it was making the drive take so much longer than I wanted it to.
There were a few car accidents here and there, where we had to get rid of the infected to be able to navigate the trucks around safely.
Chris, Tom and I were in the lead Jeep. Dan, Justin, and Mark were in the second Jeep behind us. Reed, Harry, and John were at the end of our convoy, in a big, black van.
We tried to make as little noise as possible, but the infected seemed to just appear out of the trees in front of us. I assumed the sounds of the three vehicles were just like asking for them to come find us.
“Hey, Chris, do you realize that we’re stopping about every ten minutes or so to take out a group of five or six infected?”
“Yes, I did, especially since I’m shooting them. Why?”
“Well, when we first left the cabin, we didn’t see any infected for at least the first twenty minutes. I think the infected hear the cars and are attracted to the road because of them. When they come out of the trees, they seem to know right where we are.”
“Okay, so what do you think we should do?”
“How close are we to the house now?”
“We are about two miles away, just a few minutes out.”
“How about we pull over and shut the trucks off, clear the area we’re in of infected, and wait a bit to see what else shows up?”
“I’m not sure I’m following you, Abby.”
“We know they’re almost blind after they’ve been infected for even a few days. They have to hunt by sound. The trucks are making a lot of noise, and every infected for miles is probably following the noise the trucks are making and the traveling moans of the infected that hear us. It’s like they’re playing telephone. Sound can travel pretty far, even in the woods. If you figure the trucks are making enough noise to be heard in these quiet woods for a half a mile or so, we should expect every infected within that half a mile to be headed in our direction. They’re more than likely moaning, and their cries will carry for another half a mile, and so on.”
“So, your suggestion is to stop and let them catch up?”
“Yes and no. Well, more yes. Listen, if we stop now and be quiet, the close ones will probably continue in the same path the sound was coming from and make it to us, eventually. Without the noise continuing to attract them, the others might just lose interest and wander back off somewhere else. But if we keep going, we’ll just be ringing the dinner bell and leading the infected that are on our tail right to the farmhouse. Since we have no idea what we are going to be dealing with at the farmhouse, we might not want to have a large number of infected just show up while we’re trying to get Jake and anyone else who is there, out.”
“That does sound like a better idea than bringing these zombies with us. Let me radio to the other cars that we’re stopping. Let’s clear the area here, and then maybe Tom and I can hike up to the farmhouse and get some intel on what we’re going to be dealing with when we get up there.”
I nodded my head, “Sounds good to me.”
We turned to Tom in the back, and he also nodded in agreement. Chris keyed up the radio to let the rest of the team know what was going on and we pulled over. We tried to get as far into the woods as the trucks would allow, so we were off of the road.
It only took about fifteen minutes before the first group of about ten infected showed up. As I suspected, they came out of the woods about a thousand feet from where we pulled off and just walked down the road, right in our direction. We all sat completely still and made no noise. They walked right past us but kept following the road. Chris and Tom got out with their silenced rifles and got rid of the group.
However, they hadn’t even made it back to the Jeep when another group of fifteen came heading up the street behind us. Before the infected made it to where we were parked, Chris and Tom quietly took them out also. I was so busy watching the action behind us that I didn’t see the large group heading right towards us from up the road until they were all around the truck. I had to stifle a scream from escaping my mouth as they started bumping into the Jeep and rubbing against it.
Thankfully, the trucks all had tinted windows, or they wouldn’t be walking past me, I was sure of it. They might be almost blind, but I was sure they could still track movement, at least.
Then, just as I thought my situation couldn’t get any worse, the radio keyed up. I reached forward to silence it, but the damage was done. The horde of infected that were all around the Jeep was now very aware that there might be something inside the tan box on wheels that was worth checking out.
They started hitting and clawing at the doors and windows. I didn’t want to move at all for fear of making more noise, but I had to reach for my gun. I needed to be prepared for the worst. I closed my eyes and held my weapon tightly, praying silently for these monsters to go away. As I opened my eyes, I saw hands pushed up against the windows and then, a splattering of black.
I looked out the windshield and saw the number of infected at the front starting to lessen, and I realized they were not losing interest but that they were being shot.
It was only about five minutes before the infected were no more, but it felt like the longest five minutes of my life.
Even with their buddies dropping all around them, the other infected were relentless. They continued to come at me like nothing else was happening around them.
By the time they were all finally dead, I had to use the windshield wipers to be able to see through the pane of glass and found that it was cracked. Chris had told me it was supposed to be bulletproof, so the fact that they were able to crack the glass was extremely unnerving.
All of us got out of the trucks to survey the scene. It was gruesome and smelled appalling. However, we had planned for this, so we had scarves, and Chris had even packed some gas masks. Thankfully he did because the smell of death and rot was so fetid, we ended up using them. We needed to move some of the bodies out of the way so we could get the trucks through without causing damage to the undercarriage of the vehicles.
I wasn’t worried about the two Jeeps, but the van might sustain some damage climbing over the piles of the now, finally dead, infected. We used crowbars like meat hooks and dragged the deceased off to the side of the road. I couldn’t help but feel like I was looking at a scene from Auschwitz. All of the dead, men, women, and children were emaciated. Their clothes were hanging in tatters from their broken bodies and their eyes. Their eyes were the most disturbing.
They were glazed-over, in white, and the skin around the eye was black and gray as if they had all been truly dead for weeks and had started to decompose.
I knew then that those faces, those eyes, especially, were going to haunt me for the rest of my days. When I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I hooked into a body without looking, and as I began to drag it away, something caught my eye, as it fell from the corpse.
It was a dirty, stuffed, purple unicorn. I forced myself to look at the body and found a little girl that was probably Gia or Amelia’s age. She was wearing a little purple nightgown with a unicorn on the front. The unicorn was running down a rainbow. I looked at the happy pajamas, and then I looked into the face of the little girl that was in them. She was no longer the innocent little girl she used to be.
The Z-Strain had turned her into a monster and the bullet that had been shot through her skull destroyed the top left half of her head, making her now completely lifeless, frozen in time as a hideous, and grotesque figure of her former self.
I felt my breakfast churning in my stomach and I now regretted eating at all. I quickly ripped my gas mask off, and the foul smell of the infected hit me like a brick wall. I ran into the woods and began throwing up everything I had in me and then some. Chris ran over to check on me and I tried to wave him away.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The smell got to me, is all.”
“We can finish if you need. Go get some water and catch your breath.”
“Thanks, I might need to do that. I don’t know if I can look at them much longer.”
“Are you sure it was just the smell and not the little girl that got to you?”
“Chris... this just feels like it’s all my fault, still. Before you start in on me again, I know it isn’t, but it still feels like it is, and I can’t help that.”
“I know. You’re a strong and caring woman, Abby. I’d be worried if you could drag away the body of a small child without having it affect you. Take some time. The woods are pretty clear but stay close please and let me know if you need anything. And I mean it, anything at all.”
I smiled up at him, “Thanks, Chris. I will. I just need to collect myself, and I’ll be okay. I’ll stay close. Believe me, when I say I do not want to meet up with a horde like that without at least, the Jeep to protect me.”
I grabbed a bottle of water from the truck and took a few rinses before I swallowed any of it. I gave Tom a quick wave as I walked into the tree line. I walked far enough away that I could not hear or smell the cleanup that was going on, but I could still kind of see my friends.
I leaned against a tree and took some deep breaths. I had my eyes closed, but I was listening to everything that was going on around me. I heard the birds chirping and squirrels rustling around in the leaves like it was just another beautiful late spring day.
To the animals of the forest, that’s all it was.
For me, it was a different kind of day. I felt my humanity slip just a little further away as I closed my eyes again, and all I could envision were the hazy, white, sunken eyes of the little girl... those eyes and her dirty, stuffed unicorn.
At first, I began to cry, and then I wept. I had no control over what came out of me, but it felt good to cry.
Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me, and I stood up straight, reaching for my gun and then standing still, so I could listen closer. I heard a twig snap behind me, and just as I was palming my gun, my hands were seized, some kind of cloth was shoved in my mouth, and a bag was thrown over my head.
“Hello, Abby. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the wife of Jack Norrington. Let’s leave your friends to the cleanup, while we go have some fun getting to know each other,” spoke a raspy Southern voice, in something just over a whisper.
I tried to kick and scream, but the cloth in my mouth muffled my attempts to alert anyone, and my feet were quickly secured as I was thrown over someone’s shoulder. I guessed it was the man that spoke to me, but I couldn’t be sure as I now heard the quiet footfalls of several other people. It sounded like at least four, maybe five.
I began to really panic as I realized what four men I could be dealing with who knew who I was, and I started to fight harder. I felt a sharp pain in the side of my head just above my ear. I registered some quiet laughter, and then, it was lights out.
Chapter 17
I woke up with the bag still over my head and the cloth still in my mouth. It was a severely uncomfortable feeling. It was hard to swallow, and I couldn’t see anything. Plus, I was dizzy and disoriented. I figured whatever I was hit with caught me right in the temple and might have done some real damage.
I tried pulling on my hands and feet, but I was tied tightly. My hands were above my head, I was clutching something metal, and my hands were bound with very coarse rope. My shoes and socks were off, and each foot was tied to something. I was lying on my back, and my legs were spread wide. It hurt to pull against my restraints. Every time I tried to move my legs, I felt the insides of my thighs pull tightly like I was trying to do a split, and I definitely can’t do one.
This was not a good position to be tied up in. I didn’t want to think about what these men had planned for me, bound like this.
I heard a deep chuckle from across the room and the scrape of metal, like someone had pushed a chair out. Then, I heard the heavy footsteps of large boots coming towards me.
The hood was pulled off of my face, and the cloth was ripped from my mouth. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the low light and to get some saliva back to my painfully dry mouth. I tried to look around, but what little light there was in the room was pointing right at me. I couldn’t see much of anything or anyone around me. It was extremely frightening to not be able to tell who or how many people were there. I could have been surrounded by infected, for all I knew.
“Would you like some water, Mrs. Norrington? I know the sock must have made your mouth pretty dry.”
“Who are you, and what do you want?” I said with as much anger as I could muster, and my head spinning and my mouth painfully arid.
The man grunted and then spoke again, “Well there boys, I guess we got a woman who likes to just get right down to it. No foreplay for you, huh? I guess I can see that coming from Jack’s old lady. I bet he was as cold as a cucumber in the sack and probably just as pleasing with his limp dick.”
There was laughter from men I couldn’t see. With my head spinning like it was, they seemed to be all around me. I was happy to still feel I had my t-shirt and jeans on, but I wasn’t sure with how this guy was talking and how the others were laughing, how lon
g my clothes were going to last.
“Never mind, I don’t care about who you are anymore since I know you’re the low life pieces of shit that used to work with my husband doing the government’s dirty work. Let’s cut the theatrical shit and get down to it. What do you want from me?”
I figured trying to show no fear would have gotten me further with this group since I’d known them to victimize helpless women and girls in the past.
“Oh, sweetheart, you’re sorely mistaken. Yes, we’re old buddies of your husband, but there’s nothing we want from you. It’s more of what you’re going to want from us and what you’re going to do to get it. You see, we know where your little cabin is and with Chris, and most of the big boys busy looking for our buddy, Jake, and now you, we’re going to take the cabin by force if necessary.”
I struggled painfully against my restraints and yelled out, “No! You can’t hurt my kids and all of those innocent people!”
The voice laughed at me in response, “Well, darlin’, that part’s up to you. Here’s the deal. We’re going to take you back to the cabin and you’re going to let us come in with you. You’re going to tell everyone inside that Chris, and the others didn’t make it but that you found us to take care of ya’ll and keep you safe. Then, you’re going to be a good little mommy and pretend that everything’s hunky-dory. If you do this, I promise no one will get hurt. On my soldier’s honor, I promise.”
“Soldier’s Honor? Are you fucking kidding me? After what I’ve heard of you and your little platoon of assholes here, I’d never trust you! Especially with the lives of my family and anyone else I care about. You can go fuck yourself.”
“What a potty-mouth this one has on her. What do you think we should do to help her clean it up, Ben?”
Another voice spoke, “I think we should rinse it out nice and good,” a deep voice replied from the shadows.
