by Damon Hunter
“Only one more year,” Gavin said. “I’m going to middle school next year.”
“Where would the rest of us go while three of us go back?” Ana asked. “We are all kind of together in this thing.”
Bar pointed at a house they just passed with his good arm. “We could hole up in an abandoned house. This neighborhood is quiet for the moment. We might even rustle up some breakfast.”
“If we can keep a low profile for a while we should be fine,” Donna said.
“You’re driving,” Vance told her. “Pick a house and let’s go see if it’s clear.”
Chapter 3
Derek’s Van - Oceanside, CA
“Rumors, loyal listeners, continue to swirl about who exactly is behind the attack on our shores. You heard me clearly, I said attack. This much is undeniable. Who and why is still a matter of some speculation but here at the Cam Carson show, our sources say the Chinese operating with North Korea as their proxy. Loyal and long time listeners will recognize this tactic from back in the day when the North Korean winter Olympic team released testosterone inhibitors into the water supply in Vancouver.”
“Seriously! Please turn that idiot off,” Doug said to Derek as they worked their way from downtown Oceanside to neighborhoods on the east side of town. If abandoned and wrecked cars were an indication, it appeared Tanner’s theory about all the infected being downtown was correct. The roads were almost clear.
“It’s still my van. I can listen to the radio if I damn well please,” Derek said.
“You actually like listening to this nonsense?”
“No, not really, but the love of my life just blew her hand off and became an ambler. I need something to distract me from thinking about it. Plus, I still have to go to the bathroom.”
“We’re almost there, then you can use the bathroom at least. So can we please turn this off?”
“If we are almost there then you can listen for a few more minutes.” Derek said as he grabbed his cigarettes off the console and plopped one between his lips.
“Do you have to do that right now?” Doug asked.
Derek was saying, “What part of ‘this is my van’ did you not understand?” when something darted in front of the van and on instinct Doug swerved to avoid a collision.
“What was that?” Derek asked as he dug his lighter out of his pocket.
“Looked like an animal of some sort,” Doug said.
“Looked like a person to me,” Tanner told them.
“But he was on all fours like a big dog,” Doug said, looking back at this son for just a second.
When he turned back around, he could see a body cartwheeling through the air at the windshield. Doug tried to turn to avoid the person flying directly at them, cranking the wheel hard, but it hit them dead on anyway. The windshield shattered in a million pieces as the body hit it.
With the windshield smashed and the bloodied Doug unable to see where he was driving, he swerved the van into a collision course with a parked car. He never tapped on the brakes as they slammed into an old Lincoln parked against the curb.
Derek, who had not bothered with a seat belt, flew through the front window. His seventies-era van had no air bags. Derek landed thirty feet in front of the van, skipping three times across the pavement like a flat stone thrown into a lake before coming to a stop when his face found the grille of a parked sedan.
Tanner had not worn a seat belt either, but with where he was in the back of the van, he bounced off the passenger seat instead of flying out the front. Unlike Derek, he came out of the wreck fairly unscathed.
Doug had put on his belt. He was shaken up and his chest hurt but otherwise felt he was okay. He looked back and saw his son had come out of the wreck as well as he could have hoped.
“We need to get out of here,” Doug said as he opened the front door.
Tanner was slow to follow his dad out the front of the car. He could have opened the big side doors, but his mind was still scrambled after getting bounced around the interior of the van. Instead he went to follow his dad out the front.
He had just reached the front when the thing running on all fours hit his dad and took him down to the ground. The thing sunk its teeth into his father’s shoulder before Tanner could do anything to stop it.
After tearing out a piece of Doug with its teeth, it turned and put its pulsating yellow-eyed gaze on Tanner. It leaped as Tanner shut the door. It struck the window with its elongated jaw open as wide as it would go. Derek saw two rows of jagged pointy yellow teeth dig into the glass on impact. A thick tongue covered in tiny white sores left a swath of thick green pus on the window before it slid off the door onto the street. Tanner was locking the door when it occurred to him that the front windshield was mostly gone.
The vampire rotter figured this out as well. As Tanner was scrambling toward the back of the van, the rotter was climbing into the front. Tanner threw open the sliding door on the side of Derek’s van and jumped out as the rotter was climbing between the seats.
It reached for him and Tanner shut the slider as hard as he could. He smashed the thing’s arm in the door. He could hear the bones crack and from the noise the creature made, he knew he had hurt it.
Tanner pulled the door back to slam the arm again but the rotter jerked the mangled arm back into the van. He closed the door, disappointed he did not get to wound it again. Tanner looked to the front of the van, expecting to see the vampire rotter coming back through the front window to get him.
Before the monster came out to get him, he saw two things. The first was that the car they hit was leaking gasoline. Tanner figured there was a full tank of gas puddled on the pavement where the van had smashed into the parked car. The other thing he saw was Derek’s lighter, which he must have lost as he went through the window.
The lighter was only a few feet away from where Tanner was standing. Tanner reached it in one big stride. He picked up the stainless steel lighter with a faded painting of the Grateful Dead logo on the side. He flipped it open. He thumbed a spark which became a flame as the butane gas came across it. Tanner tossed the lighter as the rotter came out of the window and it landed in the puddle of gasoline. It was crouching to pounce when the fire went up.
A flame-covered vampire rotter sprang out of the fireball Tanner had created. Tanner had to move quickly to avoid it landing on him.
The rotter rose, standing on two legs. It slapped at the flames. When this did not work, it pulled on its clothes and skin as if the fire dancing on its body could be yanked off.
It let out an awful shriek before running down the street, moving on all fours as if it could outrun the flames engulfing it.
Tanner watched it run for a few seconds, seeing the flames grow as the speed of the rotter added oxygen to the growing fire covering its body. He also saw a pair of amblers coming up the road and heading his way. Two slow-moving amblers this far away did not bother him much. It wasn’t long before three more came out from between some houses to join the pair slowly, but steadily, moving in Tanner’s direction.
He looked back and saw another trio was coming down the road at him from the other side. When he turned to see if the rotter was still running and burning he saw the five had grown to nearly fifteen.
“Son,” Tanner heard as he saw his dad start to stand. He was having trouble, the front of his shirt was covered in blood. When the vampire rotter leapt from the fireball it must have splashed some of the flaming fuel on Doug, as a small fire was growing on his back. Doug did not seem to notice his back was burning.
“You’re, like, on fire,” Tanner said as he stepped forward to help him up.
He stopped when he saw the first sore grow out of the top of his father’s bald head. Tanner stepped back as his dad began to scream in pain. Tanner saw why he was hurting as his eyes tried to push themselves free of their sockets and his jaw began to stretch out. Blood poured from his father’s mouth as new teeth pushed their way through his gums.
The road was now f
ull of amblers. The fifteen or so Tanner had seen just a few minutes before had doubled in number. They had the road blocked in both directions. On the side of the street in front of him, Tanner had either the fire or his vampire rotter father to deal with. Tanner turned the other way, it was the only choice, and sprinted across the street and onto the manicured front lawn of the house facing the growing fire around the van.
He figured the odds of either the door being open or someone answering it to be slim and none, so he angled for the fence and vaulted over it into the back yard. Pre-infection dad would not be able to climb over the fence but vampire rotter dad jumped over the redwood fence as if it were not there.
Tanner planned to sprint across the yard and hop the next fence, but he stopped in his tracks as a German Shepherd stood in his path, growling and showing some teeth.
Tanner decided if he had to get bit he would rather it be by a dog than a vampire rotter, even if the rotter was his father. He ran as hard as he could towards the other side of the the yard. The dog left him alone and charged his vampire rotter dad.
Tanner pulled himself up to the top of the fence and dared to glance back. The dog had clamped his teeth into the thigh of Tanner’s infected dad, but the vampire rotter his father had become did not seem to mind as much as Tanner thought he should.
He pulled the dog off his leg, letting it take a chunk of his leg with him. Tanner’s infected father bit the dog back and then tossed the animal aside.
Tanner pulled himself over the fence and hit the next yard running. As he ran he heard the dog bark, but something had changed about it. It reminded Tanner of the low, guttural sound the infected make sometimes. A sound he knew from experience drew more amblers to its location.
Since the vampire rotter Tanner had set on fire had already sent out the signal, it did not mean much, Tanner thought as he jumped another fence. Tanner ran as hard as he could, hoping to get clear of the horde. He hopped another fence and found himself on the road. He stopped as he saw something moving along the neighborhood street.
Tanner became as still as he could as he saw a black lab running alongside a doberman, while a short-legged pit bull and a yorkie trailed behind the longer legged animals. Tanner stayed still as the sickly animals made their way past him. Their eyes glowed red even in the sunshine and seeing them run with an open mouth, he could see the extra set of teeth most of them had.
Once they moved on, Tanner hurried across the street. He could see the house almost directly in front of him had the front door open. He hustled to get there. He risked a glance back and saw his dad and his new pet were coming over the fence he had just cleared. Tanner slipped inside and shut the door behind him. He was planning to lock it, but before he could, it fell off the hinges and he saw why it had been left open. Someone or something had practically torn it off the hinges. It was barely hanging on, but with his rotter father and his infected dog coming fast, Tanner was in too much of a hurry to notice.
He ran to the back of the house, planing to escape through the back yard. He stopped when he saw amblers with their faces distorted even more than usual as they pressed their open mouths against the glass of the sliding door leading to the yard.
Tanner looked back to see the dog coming through the front. The back door was off the television room next to the kitchen. At the end of the kitchen Tanner saw another door. He ran for it as he heard the dog’s paws skitter across the television room’s tiled floor.
Tanner made it through and shut the door before the dog could reach him. Thankfully, no one had torn the hinges off this one and the deadbolt lock worked. Tanner stepped into the garage as either the dog, his dad, or both began to throw themselves against the door.
There was a door leading to the side of the house on the wall nearest the entrance from the kitchen. Tanner thought about using this one to escape, but as soon as he touched the knob something banged against it, trying to get inside.
“Thanks, asshole,” he said to the door, meaning it. If the infected outside the garage had waited another second before throwing itself against the entrance, Tanner would have walked right into it.
With all the banging of hungry infected looking to get in, Tanner had not noticed the car parked inside with him, or the smell.
The owner of the house had a nice Toyota Highlander. It looked brand new and it was running. Tanner got closer and saw someone had run a garden hose from the the exhaust through the driver’s side window, which was opened just enough for the hose to go through. Tanner had stumbled into a suicide.
He moved to the window and saw the suicide attempt he had walked in on appeared to be a success.
The dead man in the driver’s seat was a bit younger than his father. Next to him was a woman who had been bit and turned ambler. He had managed to tie her up with some duct tape, taping her mouth so she could not bite him and using a considerable amount of silver tape to attach her to the seat. He saw the man was holding his passenger’s hand as he gassed them both to death. The both had on wedding rings so Tanner figured they must have been husband and wife.
The door was not locked so Tanner opened it and turned off the Toyota so he wouldn’t die himself. The carbon monoxide already in the enclosed garage had him feeling a little woozy even outside the truck.
When he reached in to shut down the vehicle he saw the note. He picked it up and read it. It was short and to the point.
“I don’t see a better choice. This sucks.”
It was signed, Glen ‘the Glenster’ Larsen and family.
As he put the note back, Tanner noticed the infant’s seat strapped in the back. It was the kind for a small baby that faced backwards. He couldn’t tell if there was anyone in it or not.
He told himself nothing good would come from looking to see but went to the back door and opened it to look anyway. He hoped it would be empty, even though that would mean an orphan was probably somewhere else in the house among the infected, but did not get his wish.
He figured the blue outfit meant it was a boy. Seeing a dead infant, even one clearly infected, was too much. He puked on the garage floor until he had the dry heaves.
After he could not puke anymore he started to cry. He cried for his father, for this family and for what the world had become. When he had no tears, Tanner decided he was not ready to give up. The infected throwing themselves against the door certainly hadn’t and neither would he.
He looked around the garage for weapons, hoping he had run into the home of some gun nuts, but found he had taken refuge in the abode of a softball enthusiast. He left the gloves and ball and took a good-sized aluminum bat.
The man had some tools, too. Tanner found a small acetylene torch, the sparking device to light it and a heavy monkey wrench he figured he could use. He also found some garden shears, which could be effective. He hoped for a chainsaw, but only found a leaf blower. He did figure the leaf blower wouldn’t be very effective so he did not put it in his pile of supplies.
Even though the man and wife were heavier and the wife was taped to the seat, moving the infant was the hardest part.
He stacked them against the wall, said, “Sorry,” and then loaded his weapons into the front seat.
Tanner got behind the wheel and turned the key, jolting the Toyota back to life.
“Well, here goes nothing,” he said to himself as he hit the button on the remote for the garage door. He put the Toyota into reverse and got ready to stomp on the gas as the door slowly rose.
Chapter 4
The SWARC Urban Assault Vehicle - Oceanside, CA
“As if sending a deadly virus to our shores to destroy the freedom we love and they hate is not bad enough, it gets worse, loyal listeners. Our sources, and as long time listeners know, our sources are beyond reproach, tell us certain Asian nations are using the disease they themselves sent to us as a pretense to launch a possible nuclear strike on our shores.”
“Sorry,” Ana said as she turned off the radio. “I was hoping to find some news
or something.”
“I guess we need to pick a house,” Donna said as she drove slowly down the street.
“What about that one?” Bo said, pointing at a two-story single family home at the end of a cul de sac. “It doesn’t have a sign out front for a security company or anything.”
“If we tripped the alarm do you really think anyone would come?” Ana asked.
“Be funny if they did,” Clay said. “I don’t think we want to be in a cul de sac anyway. I’d feel better having more than one way out.”
Donna turned the Suburban around and the headed out of the cul de sac.
“Same house right there in the middle of the block. Two directions to drive if things go bad,” Ana said. “No beware of dog sign either.”
Donna pulled into the driveway. “Should we check it out?”
“Looks good to me,” Clay said.
“Let’s do it,” Vance said. “Everyone get a gun and another weapon. I’ll remind you guys to only use firearms if there is a vampire rotter and even then, avoid it if you can.”
Everyone nodded gravely. The noise gunfire made attracted the infected. If they had to shoot something, they would have to leave the area immediately and start over further away. Even if gunfire was not an invitation for a horde to gather, bullets were a finite resource. They had used a lot of ammunition escaping from Corrigan’s only the night before.
If a vampire rotter was around it would not matter. Not only were they hard to bring down without guns, they let out low, guttural sounds that brought even more infected to their location.
Vance put an AR-15 over his shoulder and grabbed his Sick Slaying Stick. The metal alloy staff could release a long, sword-like blade on one end like an oversized stiletto and on the other side was a heavy ball. With just the press of a button, the ball would become spiked like a medieval mace.
Clay had the same weapon. He drew his, saying to Vance, “You ever use yours?”
