"No, not yet," she said. "Just a little bit further."
"What's wrong with the car, Mom?" David asked. "Are we going to make it?"
"Yes, we're going to make it," she said distractedly. "Come on!" she yelled at the engine.
The car choked and heaved and sputtered, and finally died completely. It coasted for a while and rolled to a stop, the engine making ticking noises as thick clouds of white smoke poured out from under the hood.
She lowered her head and sighed. "Well that's that," she said. She looked at David, who had a frown on his face.
"The car doesn't work anymore?" he asked.
"Nope."
"So we have to walk the rest of the way?"
"Yeah."
She stewed for a minute then pulled the map out of the glove compartment.
"I just have to figure out where we are," she said.
The two of them sat in the car for a while, consulting the map. They figured out they were on the outskirts of a town called Hillsboro, just northwest of Durham. It wasn't too much farther; it would probably take only another day for them to make it into Durham on foot, but they would have to find somewhere to stay for the night and they were in the middle of nowhere. They definitely couldn't stay in the car with the back window smashed in.
There was a cornfield to their right. Only a small portion of the field was in use, but there were thriving stalks of corn growing from the ground. They could see a faded red barn and a windpump standing behind it, still spinning in the breeze.
David pointed down the road. "Someone's coming."
Sarah looked up from the map and grabbed the gun from the glove compartment.
Far away in the road, a man walked toward them. He was big, with a plaid shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans. As he got closer, they could see a six shooter strapped to his waist.
"Will he hurt us?" David asked.
"I don't know," Sarah said. "Just do what I say, okay?"
"Okay."
When the man was in earshot, he called, "How you folks doin'? You okay?"
She leaned her head out the window, holding the gun between her legs. "We're fine," she said. "Just ran into some engine trouble."
The man walked up to the car and stopped in front of it, inspecting all the bullet holes and damage. He moved up to the window and looked in at Sarah and David. "Are you two okay? You didn't get shot, did you?"
"No, we're okay," she said.
"I can see you had a run-in with the bandits," he said, picking up the dangling sideview mirror and appraising it.
"Is that what you call them?" she said.
"Yep. Bunch o' unsavory men travelin' up and down the road, harassing people. I'm guessin' you drove by one of their camps they set up in the road."
"Yeah," she said, "that was them. Are there a lot of them?"
"Around these parts? Yep, plenty." He leaned in the window and looked at David. "Is your son okay?"
She looked at David. "Yeah, he's okay, right honey?"
David nodded.
"I'm Gary, by the way," the man said.
"I'm Sarah. And this is my son, David."
"Well hello there, David, it's nice to meet you," Gary said with a smile.
David just looked at him, scared.
Sarah prodded him. "It's okay, honey. Why don't you say hello?"
"Hello," he said, then fell silent again.
"Do you own the farm over there?" she asked.
"I surely do. Me and my wife were just gettin' dinner ready when we saw your big smokestack come up over the corn. At first I thought someone set my corn on fire, then imagine my surprise when I see a car sittin' in the middle of the road, smokin'. Haven't seen a sight like that in a long time. How'd you get it runnin'?"
"We found a gas can in a school and the keys to this car sitting in the parking lot," she said.
"No kiddin'," he said.
"We were on our way to Durham, and we probably would have made it if it wasn't for those bandits," she said.
Gary glanced at the hood of the car. "Well, I think it woulda broke down regardless," he said. "I don't see any holes in your engine, so it probably overheated on its own. All the parts in these old cars are all gunked up sittin' for so long. Even if not, the gas you found was maybe startin' to go bad. Stuff don't last forever."
"I suppose not," she said.
"I'm surprised you even got this thing runnin'."
He looked in her lap and saw the pistol she had tucked between her legs.
She followed his gaze and became embarrassed. "I'm sorry," she said, "I thought you might have been someone else at first."
"Don't be!" he said. "You should always be armed. Can't protect your family with words.
"Well," he continued, "why don't you two get out of that hunk o' junk and follow me for some dinner, if you want."
Sarah looked at David then back at Gary. "That would be wonderful. Thank you."
The three of them walked back to the farmhouse beyond the cornfield, taking the jugs of water and their backpack with them.
Gary introduced the two of them to his wife Diane and his daughter-in-law Kailey, and the three of them sat down to eat. The women had prepared a fresh meal of roasted deer, corn on the cob, potatoes, and gravy, and they all had a glass of clean well water, too. Sarah thanked them profusely for feeding her and David and offering to take them in for the night, and they all conversed over dinner.
"My son Pete's just out in the woods now, huntin'." Gary said. "He's not usually late for dinner, but sometimes he gets a little carried away."
Pete's wife, Kailey, looked nervous at the mention of him being late, and she kept glancing out the window.
"So tell me more about these bandits," Sarah said.
Gary chewed on a knob of corn and set it down. "They're just a bunch o' punks, lookin' to steal and destroy what ain't theirs. No sense of hard work in 'em. They just want the easy way out. You best watch out for 'em, they can be pretty nasty."
"Do you have any problems with them?" she asked.
"Well, none of 'em have set up too close to here, but every once in a while they'll come and steal some of my crops. They leave me alone, though, because they know they're too stupid to grow food for themselves. I leave it be for the most part. I just have my family here, so I have more food than I know what to do with, anyway. And of course, I'm well-armed, and they know it."
"Have you heard of Noah's Ark?" David asked.
"Sure I have," he said.
"Have you ever been there?"
"Me? No, never been there myself, but I've heard plenty o' stories about it. I tend to stay away from Durham, so I can't really tell you anything about it in particular. I see a lot of folk come by sayin' they're on their way to it. Matter of fact, you just missed a couple passin' by that were on their way there. Big fella in suspenders and his wife. Quite the characters."
Sarah's ears perked up. "Herb and Molly, right?" she said.
He nodded. "Those'd be the ones."
"How did they seem?" she asked. "Were they okay?"
"I suppose so," he said.
"How did they get all the way here without getting hurt?" she asked.
"Some folk are craftier than you might give 'em credit for," he said. "That man and his wife definitely struck me as two that fit the bill. That's how you gotta be sometimes if you want to survive in this world."
"So we might catch up to them," David said, thinking.
"Maybe," Sarah said. It wouldn't be such a bad thing if they could catch up to them and travel the rest of the way together. But they couldn't do it that night. They would have to rest and save their strength for the next day in the daylight.
"Word of warning, though," Gary said. "Every once in a while I see some people travelin' by here on their way to Noah's Ark... Now, it's not really my business what is or isn't in that place—if it's even there at all—but everyone thinks they can just waltz on in to Durham without any trouble, and I always have to be the bearer of ba
d news to them."
Sarah's and David's faces fell.
"No one really gets into Durham so easily," Gary continued. "Those bandits you ran into? When I said there's a lot of 'em around here, I meant it. Not so much over in Hillsboro here, but they've got Durham surrounded. There's just about no places that you can sneak by 'em and get into the city without them seeing you. If you follow the road down here you'll come up to a bridge that goes over the river into Durham, but they've got that whole thing staked out. They even set up a wall below to keep people from gettin' past 'em. Think of 'em like toll takers. If you want to pass, you have to go through them, and they always get a cut. For most people, that cut is their life. In fact, the only people I've ever heard of that have done business with the bandits and lived to tell about it are a bunch of these scroungers that gather supplies for 'em. They come with carts full o' supplies to give to the bandits in exchange for protection and a safe place to live in the area. But anything beyond that is up to them. Think of it like the mob. When they said only cockroaches survive the apocalypse, they weren't kiddin'."
Sarah was speechless and David was on the verge of tears. "So... there's no way to get into the city?" she asked.
"Well, I'm not sayin' there's no way. Some folks have done it, but you gotta be crafty about it. Those two folks that we were just talkin' about? Molly and, what's his face... Herb? That's what I'm talkin' about when I say crafty. You might not've noticed anything to look at 'em, but a sixty-somethin'-year-old couple travelin' across state lines on foot all this way without a scratch on 'em? They know a thing or two more than they're lettin' on, and that's how you have to be if the two of you want to get to Durham. I know that's not really the kind of news you want to hear, but I figure it wouldn't be fair to let you go on and wander right into a trap."
Before Sarah and David could even process the shocking information, the screen door whined and a set of heavy boots came into the room. A dog started barking and they all turned and looked to see Gary's son, Pete, walk in with a golden retriever.
Kailey got up and ran to Pete, wrapping him in a big hug as the dog happily trotted around the dining room. Diane tossed the dog some dinner scraps and he curled up by the table and ate.
"Sorry I'm late," Pete said. He was a big man, even bigger than his father. He wore blue jeans and a buttoned shirt with the collar pulled up over his neck, and hunting gear over top. He looked tired, his features pale, and a layer of sweat covered his skin. He walked across the room and slumped down into an empty chair. "Didn't get anything today," he said.
"Well, there's always next time," Gary said with a smile. "Food's gettin' cold, though. Shouldn't have taken so long. You gave us all a scare."
Pete started to dig into the food, slopping a bunch on a plate for himself. "Yeah I know, sorry. I'm okay, though. Just tired."
"You look exhausted," Kailey said, worried.
He looked at her with groggy eyes and scratched his neck. "Yeah, I'm pretty beat. Deer had me runnin' all over the damn place today. I'm probably going to hit the hay after I'm done eatin', but for now, I'm starving." He dug into his food and started ravaging his plate, like he hadn't eaten a meal for a year.
David was too upset to say another word for the rest of the night, and Sarah decided to drop the subject as well. When they were done eating, they all retired for the night and Diane showed Sarah and David to the guest bedroom upstairs.
They got into the bed together, and Pete's dog walked into the room and set himself down on a throw rug at the foot of the bed. Sarah tried to talk to David about what Gary had said, but he didn't want to say anything. She was upset too, and she had no idea what to do. Thoughts of Noah's Ark and the bandits stayed with her the whole night and kept her up for quite a while, but eventually she found her way into the comforting embrace of sleep.
15
A Late-Night Snack
Her eyes shot open in the middle of the night. It wasn't anything sudden that startled her, but she awoke nonetheless. The guest bedroom they were in was dark, and she let her eyes adjust to it. The window sat next to the bed beside her, the curtains opened to the sides to let the pale moonlight into the room. She turned her head to David lying next to her and grabbed his hand in hers, squeezing it. He was fast asleep and showed no sign of waking up, and she was comforted just to feel his hand, to feel a warm connection to her son. God, she loved him. And she always would.
The door to the room was open, the hallway leading to the other upstairs bedrooms just beyond. And there was something else in the room with her, too. It was a sound, abstract in her sleepiness, but somehow familiar. Her mind wandered, searching for the answer. She grasped onto the edge of it and thought that it sounded rather wet, like slurping or sucking.
She stirred in bed, remembering the dog that slept with them for the night at the foot of the bed. She looked at the dog and saw it lying there in the dimness of the room. Her first thought was that it was eating something, but it lay flat on the floor, like it was playing dead. And there was a large shape over top of it, like a big black ball. The figure hovered over the dog, like a shadow.
Sarah sat propped up on one arm in the bed for a long time, just staring at the strange figure, trying to wrap her mind around what she was seeing.
The shadowy balled-up figure shifted and paused. Then it stood up. It was around six feet tall and shaped like a big man. As it stepped into the moonlight coming through the window, she saw that it was Pete. And the dog's flesh was sticking out of his mouth as his gray and rotted jaw chewed.
She shrieked and pushed herself to the back of the bed. David woke up and jerked his head around, desperately trying to find where the commotion was.
Pete's milky eyes glowed in the dim light as his expressionless face glided toward her. The collar of his shirt had been folded down and there was a necrotic bite mark just under his jawline. He lumbered toward the side of the bed where Sarah was, his heavy boots clomping on the hardwood. He opened his mouth and let the dog's guts slide out, preparing himself for an even better meal.
Sarah's fight-or-flight instincts kicked in and her legs churned in the bed, kicking the covers every which way. Her arms flailed and she grabbed hold of the collar of David's t-shirt, pulling them both out of bed and backing into a corner.
Pete stood fully upright, three hundred pounds and six feet tall, and he was right between them and the exit.
"David!" she cried. "Do something!"
He just stared in shock. His mouth tried to move, tried to utter some words, but he couldn't get anything out. Urine trickled down his leg and stained his pants.
The zombie that used to be Pete started forward, each step shaking the floor. He didn't need to run or move quickly at all; all it would take were a few steps and he would be on them. He would fall on them like a gigantic sack of flour and crush them, and then he would have his full meal.
As her senses started to come back to her, she remembered that she put the gun on the bedside table. It sat there on the other side of the bed from them, gleaming as if to taunt them. There was one round left, but it was their only hope.
Pete lunged forward and collided into the wall as they darted out and leapt up on the bed. They jumped off the other side and Sarah grabbed the gun.
She had put their backpack full of supplies and food in the closet that sat near the opposite corner of the room.
Pete staggered toward them, his arms out, howling a raspy groan of ravenous hunger. He tripped on the bed and fell flat across it, his body bouncing like he fell on a trampoline.
Sarah darted for the closet, but Pete bounced back up to his feet and was on her with alarming speed. She staggered backward and yanked David away from him, but he lunged forward and grabbed hold of David's legs, knocking both of them to the ground. She aimed the gun at Pete's head, but he swiped out at her and knocked the gun out of her hand with incredible force, sending it flying out into the hallway. She fell backward and crashed into the door, making her head dizzy.
<
br /> Pete pulled David toward him with one hand. All zombies lost their muscle mass and became sickly thin over time as they wasted away, but Pete had just turned and still possessed enormous strength and agility.
Sarah tried to pull David by the arm, but Pete was too strong.
Pete grabbed hold of the top of David's pants and gave a great yank, sliding him under his drooling mouth. He leaned down to rip a chunk out of the boy just as Sarah clobbered the side of his head with the base of a standing lamp.
The lamp made a hollow gong sound and Pete's head bobbed up and down violently, smacking against the hardwood. His grip faltered just briefly enough for David to squirm out of his grasp. Sarah kept hammering on him with the lamp over and over, drawing blood, dark and putrid in the faint moonlight. His arms squirmed and flailed, reaching out to grab for her ankles, but she kept her distance. She hammered his skull again and again, but it was doing nothing to stop him. He pushed himself off the floor and shot up to his feet.
She threw the lamp at him, but it just bounced off, the expression on his face unchanged. He stood in front of the window, the moonlight coming in from behind casting him as a monstrous silhouette in the baneful night.
They retreated into the hall, and Sarah tried to slam the door shut behind her, but Pete shoved his arm through in time to stop it. His body followed like a barreling train that had too much momentum to stop.
She bent and picked up the gun as they fled toward the staircase leading down at the end of the hall. They rounded the banister and flew down the steps as Pete followed.
Faint orange light illuminated the staircase, coming from the ground floor below. Diane had lit candles for dinner, and she must have left a few burning overnight.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they witnessed the brutal carnage that ensued while they were sleeping.
There was blood everywhere. Spatters and splashes and strokes of blood covered the walls, the floor, the furniture and the countertops. Diane's lifeless body was bent backwards over the top of the couch in the living room, her shirt torn and an open chasm where her stomach used to be. Kailey was laid out in the front hall, awkwardly pressed up against the door like she was trying to flee before being ravaged, and Gary's body lay right beside the bottom of the stairs in a pool of his own blood, his face completely eaten off.
Zombie Apocalypse Series Books 1-3 (Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set) Page 14
