Apocalypse Journeys (Book 2): Finding AJ

by Melrose, Russ

  Ten infected, moving in unison, careened straight for them. Jules opened fire and yelled at Caleb. He turned and started firing too. The infected dropped one after the other, but three managed to get through. A lanky male reached for Jules, and she pushed the Glock under his chin and screamed like a lunatic as she fired. The bullet tore through the gray's head and projectile dark gray matter flew out the top of his head. Jules stumbled backwards and landed on her butt.

  Two came at Caleb at the same time. He smashed one of them between the eyes with the butt of his rifle. The other gray flew into him, knocking the rifle out of his hands. They both fell to the ground. Rusty barked furiously at the gray and made jab steps toward him. Caleb yelled at Rusty to get back. In one motion, Caleb pushed the gray off him, rolled him over, and whisked the knife out of its sheath and stabbed him through an eye.

  The gray he'd smashed with the rifle started to get to his feet. Jules shot him in the temple.

  Caleb picked up his rifle and shot two more grays heading their way.

  Everything was moving helter-skelter in an ever-dizzying blur. Groups of infected were feeding everywhere. Jules kept pivoting to make sure she covered her half of the area. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Angela and Bethany. Bethany sat huddled, her back against a tree, clenched fists covering her eyes. She shook hysterically and was crying. Her mother stood in front of her holding a crowbar, wild-eyed with fear and determination. Three infected closed on them.

  Jules ran as fast as she could.

  "No! Jules!" Caleb shouted.

  They were fifty feet away. Jules stopped halfway to steady her aim. She fired at one of the infected who wasn't in a direct line with Angela. The bullet struck him in the back of the head and he dropped like a ghost. Shots rang out throughout camp. A second gray, a female, dropped suddenly. Only one was left. Jules saw Heath and Dallin running side-by-side, firing weapons as they ran toward Angela and Bethany. Dallin had his revolver and Heath his Glock. "Angela!" Heath screamed. The third gray was in direct line with Angela and Bethany and Jules didn't want to take the chance of infected blood spraying into Angela's eyes or mouth. It didn't appear that Heath had a shot either. Jules ran as hard as she could but knew she wouldn't get there in time.

  Jules saw the crowbar rise like a scythe above Angela's head. It wavered there for a split-second as if she were waiting for the perfect moment or gathering her nerve. In a blink, she brought the crowbar down with a crazed fury into the infected man's skull. Jules could hear Angela's primal scream. The gray froze in place, then collapsed at her feet, the crowbar still lodged in his head. Angela stepped back, her arms and hands shaking wildly in front of her.

  When Jules reached them, she grabbed Angela by the arm. "We have to go," she told her. "Right now."

  Caleb was right behind Jules, and Heath and Dallin arrived a moment later.

  Heath looked Angela over head to foot to see if she'd been bitten. "You okay?" he hollered.

  Angela was still shaken but nodded.

  "Bethany. You all right?"

  Bethany didn't say anything but stood up and ran to her father, crying, arms outstretched.

  Dallin kept a careful lookout as he used a speed loader to reload his revolver.

  Jules saw Gordo stumbling toward them. He kept pivoting in every direction, firing erratically at the grays, missing more often than not, eyes wild with fear. The pistol he held looked like a toy in his huge hand. A naked middle-aged infected man lurched at him and Gordo screamed and slammed him on the top of the head with the butt of his gun and the heel of his fist. The gray took a bumbling sideward step before crumbling to the ground.

  A few seconds later, Gordo joined them.

  They formed an arrowhead formation around Angela and Bethany and headed for the mountain, Caleb in front setting the pace. The pace was brisk and they fired at any infected headed their way. Heath and Dallin were closest to the front and Jules and Gordo close behind them. Bethany clung to her mother with her head buried against her mother's chest.

  Jules head was on a swivel. She ran facing forward but turned every few seconds to make sure none of the infected were closing in on them from behind. That's when she noticed a thick, impenetrable wall of infected sweeping through camp, swallowing up anyone in its path. Jules yelled, "Run!"

  They turned to look and Caleb yelled for them to run too. They ran as fast as they could.

  A ragged line of agitated grays, two and three deep, arms reaching out, loomed ahead of them, cawing hysterically.

  Caleb guided the group toward the weakest part of the line. "Everyone to the front," Caleb yelled. "We need to kill the ones ahead of us. Make sure to get 'em in the head. Angela, stay right behind us."

  Caleb shifted his rifle into his left hand and pulled his Glock and started firing it. Jules saw Dallin shove another speed loader into the chamber of his revolver.

  They slowed to fire more accurately. They fired repeated volleys of shots.

  Jules was hyper aware and entirely focused on killing the grays. She would aim at their foreheads, then squeeze a shot off. She'd killed five so far. She felt an incredible charge of energy running through her. She was only peripherally aware of the ongoing assault on her senses—the incredibly loud ringing of shots around her and the acrid smell of sulfur. They'd killed more than twenty infected and a gap in the line had been created.

  They kept firing as grays from both sides of the line started to collapse into the gap.

  "Hurry. Let's go," Caleb yelled.

  They made a mad dash for the gap, firing at the converging grays as they ran. There was still room for them to run through. They reformed into the arrowhead formation to protect Angela and Bethany. They stepped over the bodies of the infected they'd killed as they made their way into the gap.

  For the first time, Jules felt confident they would get through.

  Bethany suddenly screamed.

  Jules turned. Angela had tripped over one of the infected lying on the ground. As she fell, she dropped Bethany. A gray lying on the ground reached a filthy hand out and snagged Bethany by the leg. Angela grabbed her daughter under the arms and tried to pull her away. Bethany's shrill screams pierced the air.

  The infected man's mouth gaped open and was flush with darkly tarred teeth and a grayish-black tongue.

  "No!" Gordo yelled. Before anyone could move, he dropped his gun and fell heavily on the infected man. He sat on the gray's upper back and reached out and grabbed the infected man's wrist with both hands. He yelled and viciously ripped the wrist backward. Jules heard bones snap. Heath turned and helped Angela pull their daughter away and lift her up off the ground. Gordo turned to reach for his gun. He gathered himself and started to push himself back up. As he did, the gray scrambled wildly toward Gordo's leg and bit into his instep.

  Gordo screamed. He bent down and drove his fist into the gray's head, but the gray wouldn't let go. The gray shimmied his head back and forth and ripped a wedge of flesh from Gordo's instep. Gordo cried out and frantically slammed his fist into the gray's head repeatedly. After several blows, a spurt of dark blood sprayed from the infected man's head.

  Everyone was firing wildly as the grays closed in. "Let's go," Caleb yelled. "Let's go."

  The gray had stopped moving and Gordo stared at his bloody instep. Gordo grabbed the gray by the hair and the back of his pants and lifted him up. He held him sideways in front of him. He turned and limped and ran as best he could into the mob of infected, grunting and yelling fiercely as he ran. He used the dead gray as a battering ram and knocked a half-dozen grays off their feet. He scrummed against a dozen more infected but was soon swallowed up by them.

  They ran up the foothill chased by Gordo's fading screams. Early on, Caleb had turned and tried to get a bead on Gordo, but Gordo was buried underneath a pile of infected.

  As they climbed, Jules glimpsed back down the mountain to see if the infected were following them. A handful were trying, but the steepness of the terrain had the grays on
all fours. They kept looking up but not going anywhere. After a while, they gave up.

  The infected had overrun the campground. A quiet hazy-blue shading of light shrouded the tree-lined camp. No one was left standing. There were no more gunshots. No more screams. The only sounds were the incessant grumbling of the infected, but even that had died down as they fed. Jules knew there wouldn't be any survivors.

  Three hundred feet up the mountain they came upon the path Heath had mentioned the day before. From below, the path was hidden by the slope of the foothills. They stood silently for a few minutes, catching their breath. No one said a word. Jules fought off the urge to look back down at the camp.

  Bethany hugged her mother's leg and stared fixedly at nothing. Angela placed a hand gently on the back of her daughter's head. Bethany was in shock, her face smooth and waxy white.

  Jules' thigh ached and pulsed. She patted it and rubbed it with her hand. It had begun to hurt the last hundred feet or so. From what Jules could see, the path was laid out horizontally and appeared to go as far as the eye could see. It followed the flat upper slope of the foothills in a serpentine weave. At the point where the path would be above the dam, Jules could see Garrett Nicholson and his two trainees. They all had rifles.

  Heath was the only one witnessing the slaughter below. He stood listless, mesmerized by the carnage.

  Dallin was using a small stone to dig out dirt and mud from the grooves of his hiking boots' soles.

  Caleb caught Jules' eye and pointed north in the direction of the path. "Leads to a plateau on the side of the mountain. This is how we travel to the valley on the other side."

  After several minutes on the path, they noticed hundreds of infected below trudging along the path to the dam, staring up the mountain at them, mirroring their pace.

  "It's not over," Heath said wearily. "They're not going to stop following us. The infected might not be able to come after us up here, but the alphas can."

  "There's an alpha down there hiding in the group," Caleb said.

  "I saw Josh kill a male alpha on the Gideon side of the river. I believe that leaves two," Jules added.

  "Yeah. I think that's right. I saw two of them in camp, on the outskirts," Heath added.

  "We need to set up where they can't see us," Caleb said. "In the trees. Two of us. Two lines of fire. I'm figuring it should be me and Dallin. We'll have to coordinate the shots. Make sure we get 'em at the same time."

  "Sounds about right," Heath said.

  "I-I can do it," Dallin said.

  Caleb looked up to where several bands of trees ribboned the top half of the mountain. His eyes drifted down. "That first cluster of trees up there," he said, pointing. "Should have good cover there."

  It wasn't more than a hundred feet up.

  Caleb looked at Dallin. "Maybe you could get up into that patch of trees over there, Dallin," he suggested, pointing to a pocket of trees further down the trail. "You could borrow Garrett's rifle. When you get set up, make sure you can see me. When we get them sighted, we'll give each other a thumbs up. You take the alpha on the path. I'll find the one still in camp. When we've got them sighted and signal, we'll count to five and fire."

  "Okay. Sounds g-good to me," Dallin said.

  "I'll meet you guys at the plateau when it's done," Heath told them.

  "I'll wait there too," Jules added.

  Caleb grabbed Jules hard by her upper arms, an intense look in his eyes. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. "Are you going to be all right?"

  "Yes," she told him.

  Caleb turned and scrambled up the slope to his sniper perch.

  It took them fifteen minutes to catch up with Garrett Nicholson and his trainees. Heath told them the plan and Garrett handed his rifle over to Dallin. Dallin inspected it briefly and checked out the scope, aiming it down toward the path at the infected.

  Garrett Nicholson assured Dallin the rifle's scope was sighted accurately.

  Dallin held the rifle by the barrel and set the butt down onto the path. He reached back to his fanny pack and brought out a Pepsi and took a long drink.

  Heath gave Dallin a look. "You ever go anywhere without one of those damn Pepsis?"

  Dallin ignored Heath and gulped down the rest of his Pepsi. He let out a small burp that he covered up with his hand. He drew out a Dr. Pepper from the pack and handed it to Jules with a nod.

  Heath shook his head. "Better get going."

  "Thanks, Dallin," Jules told him.

  Though it was still relatively cool out, Jules throat was dry. She sipped the Dr. Pepper and it felt cool going down.

  Dallin jogged back down the path toward the pocket of fir trees Caleb had suggested to him while the rest of the group headed for the plateau. It took them ten minutes to get there. The plateau sloped down from the side of the mountain like a droopy shoulder. There was a canyon below and another mountain across from the plateau. The plateau was about eighty feet wide. There were groves of white-barked aspen trees and a few elms along with scattered patches of sunbaked grass.

  They stood lethargically in the middle of the plateau like weary travelers.

  Jules ambled over to the edge of the plateau and stared at the whispering river below. She sipped her soda. The pain in her thigh had begun to ebb away. Below, flecks of white appeared where the water broke over large rocks near the banks.

  Behind her, Jules heard Garrett Nicholson ask, "What the hell happened?"

  No one answered him. Then Heath said, "Don't have a clue."

  Jules wandered back to the others. Angela was leaning her head on her husband's shoulder. Bethany was lost in a listless stupor, her hand gripping her mother's pant leg.

  Heath broke the silence. "The rest of you should head down to the hunter's cabin. We'll meet up there later. I'm going to hang out here and wait for Dallin and Caleb."

  "I'll stay too," Jules said.

  Angela hugged her husband and kissed him on the cheek. They embraced for a long time. Bethany wrapped her arms around their legs and joined in the hug.

  Angela and Bethany left with Nicholson and his trainees, disappearing through a grove of trees.

  Jules and Heath stood silently on the plateau, ignoring each other. They were surrounded by the sounds of the whispering river and the muted murmuring of the infected from Gideon.

  After about fifteen minutes, several shots rang out, some simultaneously.

  "Maybe they got 'em," Heath said excitedly.

  A few minutes later, Heath turned toward Jules. He nudged a rock with his hiking boot and looked up at her. "Look, Jules. I want to thank you for what you did for Angela and Bethany back there. If it wasn't for you, they might not have made it. So, I'm grateful. I won't forget it."

  Jules' mind was elsewhere. A memory teased her, but she couldn't quite find it. She rubbed her upper arm.

  "Shouldn't take them too long to get back," he said.

  Jules was going to say something but forgot what it was.

  Several minutes later, she remembered, and she managed to get it out before she forgot it again. "I know it wasn't Caleb that carved up that bird in high school," she said. Her fingers rested lightly on her Glock.

  "What?" he asked, distractedly. Then he seemed to become aware of exactly what Jules had said. "You shitting me? Who gives a rat's ass about who carved up a damn bird in high school? What the hell difference does it make now?"

  He took a double take and stared at her as if she were stark raving mad. He walked over to where she stood and leaned in, his face no more than a couple inches away. His lips were squeezed so tight they'd lost their color.

  Despite his proximity to her, Jules was surprised how relaxed she felt.

  "Maybe it's escaped you, Jules," he said, his voice laced with bitter irony. "But nearly everyone in Gideon is fucking dead. And you know what that means? That means that your precious serial killer is dead too. Dead and fucking gone. History. You get it? There's nothing left down there. Nothing. They're all dead!"

>   He squinted at her as if to see if anything he'd said had registered. He shook his head in frustration as if Jules hadn't understood a word he'd said. Heath's tirade hadn't bothered Jules at all. Not one iota. She found it almost comical. She nearly laughed but held it in.

  Jules wanted another sip of her Dr. Pepper but discovered it had vanished. It was nowhere to be found and Jules had no idea what had happened to it.

  Heath took a long weary breath, shook his head, and casually walked away from her. Not far. No more than five feet away, his back to her. He inclined his head thoughtfully and stared at the ground. His shoulders rose and fell in conjunction with a breath. He turned softly to face her. The glare was gone. It had vanished like the Dr. Pepper. "Okay. Look. I'm sorry," he said. "I'm upset. I'm not sure you've ever understood, Jules, but that little town down there meant everything to me … and now it's gone. I shouldn't have yelled at you like that. Sorry."

  A small piece of her mind realized Heath was right—she'd never really understood how much Gideon meant to him. And that puzzled her, but she didn't know why. Something was off. Something didn't fit—as if the last piece to a puzzle had morphed into a different shape that no longer matched the empty space it was meant to occupy.

  Heath went back to watching the head of the path.

  Jules turned sideways to Heath and drew the Glock out of its holster. She wasn't sure why. She suddenly became aware of gravity pulling at her from the plateau's slope. She imagined it was pulling her toward the edge of the plateau, though she was a good twenty feet from it. To fight it, she took a step in the opposite direction but lost her balance and stumbled. She collected herself and got back to her feet. Heath hadn't noticed. He was too busy watching for them. It occurred to Jules that something was wrong, but she couldn't dial in on what it was. A recent thought had pestered her about its importance, but she'd lost track of it. She was certain it had to do with Heath.