Apocalypse Journeys (Book 2): Finding AJ

by Melrose, Russ

Josh broke the silence. "What about a night run?" he mumbled quietly.

  Everyone looked to Josh.

  He glanced at Jules, then down at the table-top. "We could go in the middle of the night," he said, his voice rising and becoming clearer. He nodded his head once as if he were agreeing with himself. "There’s still plenty of food in that Macey's. Even with a motion-sensor alarm, if they're sleeping, they're not likely to respond as quickly as they might during the day. They might sleep through it."

  Jules thought Josh's plan was plausible, but she knew it wouldn't be that simple. "Going at night's a good idea, but what if they set a trap. They might be expecting us to return."

  "It'll be awful dark in that store at night," Gordo said doubtfully.

  "There's a workaround," Josh said. "We can take lanterns with us and place them strategically in the back area of the store. A half-dozen or so would do the trick."

  Everyone seemed to be mulling over Josh's idea.

  "What kind of trap you think they might set?" Caleb asked, continuing to scratch the paint bubble with his thumbnail.

  Jules sensed the question was for her. "They could set up an ambush inside the store. That's what I'd do. Post a couple lookouts on the roof and eight or ten men inside. And if they're real smart, they'd also have men nearby who could use trucks to keep us pinned in the back parking lot, block off any avenue of escape. We'd be sitting ducks. We wouldn't stand a chance. That's if they're smart, and they know what they're doing." Jules paused for a moment. "And that's what we should assume. We should assume they're smart and they know exactly what they're doing."

  Sophie spoke up for the first time. "Maybe we should go somewhere different this time. Like that Walmart Distribution Center near St. George. That place has gotta be filled with food."

  "No," Caleb said. "Too dangerous. St. George is almost fifty miles further away and it's a lot bigger than Cedar. There'll be more groups there. Maybe a lot more. Someone will have already staked that Walmart out."

  Sophie had no response. Neither did anyone else. "How about the night run?" Josh asked.

  Caleb stopped his scratching and looked up at everyone. "We'll give it a shot," he said. "But only if it looks safe."

  Caleb laid out a detailed plan for them.

  Chapter 12

  Sharon Gleason

  Sharon Gleason pulled Jules aside after dinner. She was the woman Mayor Nichols had recommended to talk to Addy.

  They stood in a secluded grove of slender birch trees east of the picnic area at the foot of the mountain. No one was in earshot of them. Jules was at a loss as to how to begin.

  Sharon Gleason had no such problem. She was remarkably direct.

  "I've met Addy," she said crisply. "Seems a little shy. What's the problem?"

  The smile was cordial enough, but she'd made it clear she didn't have time to waste. Sharon Gleason was around sixty with dark graying hair and the pale complexion of a life-long office worker. She wore a wide-brimmed gardener's hat for shade and had on half-frame bifocals with beaded gold-chained chums. Take the hat off and she'd look like a librarian from another century. She bent her head low and observed Jules studiously from the top half of the lenses.

  "I'm not sure Addy would be comfortable with me sharing what happened," Jules answered.

  "I can't help if I don't know what this is about. If you want my help, you'll have to tell me."

  "Addy was kidnapped and held by a man who raped her. I'm not sure for how long."

  Sharon Gleason exhaled audibly. Her face fell flat and her voice softened. "Oh, that's terrible."

  "I'm not sure what to do," Jules told her. "She hasn't talked about it and I'm not sure she wants to. She's sublimating her feelings, and I don't believe I'm the best person to help her through this."

  "I'm used to dealing with teenagers," she began, her voice soft and gentle. "But nothing like this. There was one girl a few years ago, but she saw a therapist in St. George. If Addy's willing to talk, I would do my best. But you'll have to ask her first."

  "I was wondering if she'd be better off living with a family," Jules suggested. "Her parents are dead. I'm not sure I'm the best person for her to be living with. I have no experience with teenagers whatsoever."

  "If you don't mind my asking, how did the two of you meet?"

  Jules took a breath. "I rescued her from the man who was keeping her."

  "So … you're the only one Addy knows here?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, it's probably best if she stays with you. You're the only person she knows and you rescued her. She probably feels safe with you. I'm not sure she would with anyone else. Not yet at least."

  It wasn't what Jules wanted to hear. "All right," she said. "If that's what you think is best."

  Jules had hoped to hand Addy off to someone who might be able to help her.

  "Talk to her first. Try to gently persuade her. You can't force her. She has to want to talk. Let her know you think it's in her best interest. She's going to listen to you because you're the one person she trusts right now."

  "All right," Jules said.

  Jules would find Addy and ask her right away. There was no point in postponing it. Ask her and get it out of the way. The sooner the better. Jules needed to focus on the second supply run. She already felt nervous about it.

  Chapter 13

  Second Supply Run

  Cole turned the Tundra's lights off a half mile before the Cedar City exit. He and Josh sat in the front. Jules looked eastward for Cedar City, but it was buried in darkness. Not a light anywhere. To the west, a dimmed quarter moon hid behind a bank of dark clouds.

  "Almost there," Cole whispered. Jules wasn't sure why he was whispering. They were the first words he'd uttered since they'd left Gideon. He hadn't spoken a word to Jules since the incident at the picnic table.

  Cole slowed and pulled onto the freeway's shoulder just past last exit sign to Cedar City. The second truck with Gordo and Sophie in it pulled in behind them. A moment later, Caleb whisked by in his Ford F-250.

  The plan was simple. Caleb would use night vision binoculars to check out the area from the same spot on the freeway they'd stopped at that morning. If everything were clear, he'd give them the go ahead. Caleb would stay on the freeway and keep an eye out for any vehicles coming their way. Once they were in the parking lot with the trucks positioned at the loading dock, Cole, Josh, Sophie, and Jules would check out the store. Gordo would stay in his truck with the engine running, ready to take off if anything went awry. If the coast was clear, they'd spend fifteen minutes loading the trucks up, then get the hell out.

  Five minutes later, Caleb's staticky voice squawked over Cole's talkie. "Looks good. Don't see any lookouts. Parking lot's clear. Take it slow and easy."

  Cole slowed to thirty on the exit ramp and proceeded cautiously. The streets were dark and eerily quiet, a few stray infected lingering here and there. The infected stood on front lawns in hibernation mode, sleeping while standing, arms hanging listlessly at their sides. As they drove past the side streets, Jules didn't see any groups.

  Cole turned into the parking lot and took the side alley to the back of the store. Gordo and Sophie trailed at a distance. The back lot was empty. No sign of trouble anywhere.

  Both trucks backed up to the loading dock. Sophie climbed out of Gordo's truck and joined the others. Sophie and Cole grabbed Coleman lanterns from the back seat, three each. Jules grabbed the high-beam flashlights and handed one to Josh.

  Cole tested the back door and it was locked. They'd left it locked when they'd left that morning. He pulled a lock pick set out of his pocket and went to work opening the door.

  "I know what you're thinking, FBI, and it ain't like that," Cole said defensively, his voice a low hush. "Just somethin' I picked up along the way."

  Sophie chuckled softly. Jules didn't bother to respond. Thirty seconds later, Cole cracked the door open.

  Josh and Jules slipped in first, flashlights and guns in their hands. The ma
in aisle was to their left, aligned with the loading dock doors. Jules and Josh moved quickly into the main aisle.

  Jules held the flashlight in her left hand, Glock above it in her right. She moved them in unison in a wide arc across the main aisle.

  If it was a trap, the first few seconds would be the most dangerous. Jules and Josh kept to the edges of the aisle to give themselves cover. Nothing happened.

  The room was engulfed in darkness and Jules couldn't hear a thing. There were six rows on each side of the aisle, some made up of large shelving units and others made up of piles of stacked food boxes sitting on pallets. Her overall view of the room was obscured by the rows of food. There were plenty of places to hide. The rows were wide enough to accommodate forklifts.

  A heavy, pungent odor of rotted fruit permeated the trapped air. Jules wished she'd brought her nose clips. She could hear Sophie and Cole trailing behind them, carrying the lanterns. They'd already placed the first lanterns on the floor and turned them on. The lanterns illuminated the area near the entrance and threw long shadows across the room. Jules looked down the rows as she passed them but couldn't see a thing. It was still too dark.

  "Seems empty," Cole whispered.

  Cole set his second lantern down too hard and it made a metallic clicking sound on the cement floor.

  Jules turned and gave Cole an admonishing look.

  "I know," he mouthed silently. "I know."

  Sophie glared at him.

  Jules and Josh approached another wide aisle near the front. She could see the swinging doors that opened to the front store area.

  She glanced around the corner to the right and scanned the aisle with her flashlight. An office was tucked away to the left and there was a refrigerated room past the office. Then she heard it—a low grumbling sound echoing faintly through the room. Jules stopped. She bent her head slightly to listen, waiting for confirmation.

  A few seconds later, the lone grumbling amplified into a raucous chorus of moans and grunts. Jules tried to get a fix on the sounds, but they seemed to be coming from every direction.

  Three infected appeared at the end of her aisle, ghoulish apparitions in the glow of Jules' flashlight, two men and a woman. Jules recognized the tall gray with the spidery legs. It was the same infected man she'd seen that morning.

  Jules turned. "We have to get out," she yelled at Josh.

  Josh had already turned around. He nodded. He didn't appear afraid at all.

  They headed back down the aisle that led to the back door. Cole stood in the aisle holding his last lantern, looking all around him, bewildered. "Where'd the hell they come from?" he asked.

  "We have to get out of here!" Jules yelled to Cole and Sophie. "Right now!"

  Cole dropped the lantern and turned to run, but the lantern rolled in a semicircle back to him, and he stepped on it and fell awkwardly to the floor.

  "Shit!" he hollered, grabbing his ankle.

  Jules stuck her flashlight inside the waistband of her jeans and reached her hand out to him. "Get up. We've got to get out of here."

  She helped him to his feet.

  An infected woman came out of one of the rows near the back door. The lanterns turned her sunken face a soft golden color. She wobbled determinedly toward them, chin shivering with excitement.

  Jules stopped and took aim, but Josh fired first. He hit the woman in the head and she crumpled to the ground.

  The room reverberated with the clamorous sounds of the infected. Cole had limped ahead of Jules and Josh. He'd removed his crowbar from his belt and held it greedily in his hands and kept it tightly pressed against his chest. He kept to the center of the aisle, moving briskly toward the back door.

  Five more infected stumbled into the aisle from adjacent rows. Sophie stopped dead in her tracks, stuck in no man's land between the infected ahead of her and Jules and Josh and Cole behind her.

  Jules heard others coming from behind them. Josh fired at the infected ahead and Jules turned and fired at the infected closing from behind. The man with the spidery legs led the group and Jules shot him in the head. She killed two others trailing behind him.

  She whirled back around as an infected man lurched out of one of the rows and slammed hard into Cole, knocking him to the ground. Cole's crowbar flew out of his hands. The infected man landed partially on top of him. Cole groaned and wrenched his body around and got on his back. He thrust his hand into the infected man's throat to keep him at bay.

  "Get him the fuck off me!" he screamed.

  "Cole!" Sophie yelled.

  Jules ran to Cole. Peripherally, she saw four more infected shuffling frantically down the same row. She only had a few seconds. The infected man had bullied his way to within a few inches of Cole's face.

  "Close your eyes," Jules yelled, and she pressed the muzzle against the infected man's temple.

  Cole glanced at the gun and shut his eyes. Jules fired and the gray's head snapped sideways as brain debris exploded out the other side of his head.

  Jules pivoted and fired at four infected scurrying down the aisle. She managed to kill the first two but the other two burst into the aisle. Jules took several steps back as a stocky infected man lunged wildly at her, his arms flailing. A hand raked her shoulder at the same moment Jules fired into the gray's face. Jules jumped from being touched and quickly checked her shoulder to see if she'd been scratched.

  Josh had already killed the fourth gray, and he continued to move forward, maintaining perfect firing posture and pivoting to cover all fields of fire as he moved. He was remarkably efficient and economical with his firing. He'd killed several more infected but more kept coming.

  Jules half-noticed Sophie reaching her arm toward Cole to help him. Cole had pushed the infected man off of him and was swiping wildly at his shirt as if a dozen spiders were crawling there.

  Before anyone could react, a scraggly infected woman bolted from one of the rows and clamped onto Sophie's neck from behind. She dug her teeth in, torqued her head sideways, and ripped a piece of flesh from Sophie's neck, her rheumy eyes bulging with excitement. An impish boy followed behind the woman and bit into Sophie's leg.

  Sophie screamed as blood pulsed from her neck. Josh shot the woman before she could bite Sophie again. Then he shot the boy.

  Sophie dropped to her knees, her hand pressed to her neck. A pitiful, gurgled cry escaped her throat. A moment later she wavered and collapsed to the floor, and her hand fell away from her neck.

  Cole cried out her name and rushed to her. He cradled her head in his hands. "It's gonna be all right, baby," he told her. "You'll see. You're gonna be just fine."

  Jules kept firing at the infected as they came out of the rows. Josh too. Fewer of them were coming now. Jules turned and shot the last three that were coming from behind.

  "Time to go," she yelled at Josh.

  Josh grabbed Cole by the arm. "We have to go," he told him.

  Cole yanked his arm from Josh's grip. "I ain't leaving her here," he said, his voice trembling with emotion. "She's gonna be all right."

  "She's gone," Josh told him.

  "It ain't right," Cole said, shaking his head. "It ain't right."

  "C'mon, Cole," Jules told him softly in as gentle a voice as she could muster. "We have to go now."

  Cole looked up at Jules with as wretched an expression as Jules had ever seen on a man's face. His lips quivered and a film of tears filled his eyes.

  Josh fired at a few more infected coming out of the rows. Then the room was suddenly silent.

  Cole let them help him up.

  They heard the front door open and Gordo stepped into the aisle, revolver in his hand. He looked at all the dead bodies on the floor. "Damn," he said.

  *****

  No one spoke a word on the ride back. Josh was driving. Cole had given him the keys without saying a word. All Cole had on now were his underpants and tennis shoes. Gordo had made his friend undress and doused him with rubbing alcohol on his hands and face, meticulously r
ubbing the blood off. Cole had stood there woodenly as Gordo cleaned him off.

  Jules felt an overriding numbness infiltrate her mind. She let it in. Earlier, she'd tried to reconcile the events of the evening and place them in a rational context, but it was a fruitless effort. Nothing made sense to her. She leaned her head against the window and took in the expansive emptiness of the black night as it passed by them.

  It bothered Jules she hadn't even realized Cole and Sophie were a couple. Not that it was a professional oversight. She hadn't noticed because she hadn't cared, and they had no place in her investigation.

  They'd been lucky to get out alive. Getting out alive was the only thing that gave Jules any solace.

  No one said anything when they got out of the trucks. Across the bridge, Caleb's dog, Rusty, lay on the ground, switching his tail and thumping it excitedly.

  Jules could see Mayor Nichols and Sheriff Conway sitting at the nearest picnic table in the dark. She checked her watch. It was one in the morning. There were guards on either side of the bridge with rifles. Sheriff Conway stood up and walked toward them.

  He took a long look at Cole and then looked past them as if he were looking for someone. "Sophie?" he asked quietly.

  Caleb shook his head. "We can talk about it in the morning, Heath. Not now."

  Heath Conway stood silently, chewing at his lip. The crew separated and headed for their tents.

  The Coleman lantern was on in Jules' tent and Addy was reading a book. She was waiting up for Jules.

  "You didn't have to wait up," Jules told her.

  "I wanted to make sure you got back okay. How did it go?"

  Jules hesitated. She didn't want to talk about it. "I'm afraid it didn't go so well."

  "What happened?"

  "We lost someone. We lost Sophie."

  "You're not going out with them again, are you?" she asked in a heightened tone. "You went out twice like the sheriff asked. So, you're done. Right?"

  "I don't know, Addy," Jules told her. Jules felt completely fatigued. "I'm tired and I don't really want to think about it anymore. How did your day go?"