Survive (Book 1): Salvation

by Veronica Smith

  “Is this similar to what took your siblings?” Antonio asked him.

  Rick nodded in reply, unable to speak. The puppies looked so cute and sweet in this cold and harsh world but he knew better. As they got closer, one of the puppies let go and toddled towards them whimpering.

  “We gotta shut it up,” Antonio whispered. “Something ripped that mama dog in half and it couldn’t have been human.”

  Rick swung his club and silenced the puppy while Antonio dispatched the other two with his machete.

  “Back on the bus; now!” Antonio whispered urgently, he heard something distant that bothered him immensely.

  As they trotted back, he made a hand circling gesture to Steve to get the bus started. As soon as the door closed behind them, a sick, rattling howl filled the air. It was close but they still couldn’t see what voiced it.

  “Arms at ready. Close all the windows,” Antonio ordered as he had Steve continue to drive while he stood at the door. Suddenly one howl became two howls and then several. Everyone inside the bus whipped their heads around; the howls seemed to come from everywhere.

  “Turn there then give it more gas,” Antonio said. “I know this old bus can’t take much but my Oh Shit Meter is way up in the red right now.”

  Steve gunned the old bus as much as he dared and they did speed up. A thump against the bus near the back startled them all. They ran up and down the aisle, looking out each window.

  “Oh Shit!” Tracy exclaimed.

  Rick turned to look briefly and turned back in horror. Whatever these were, they weren’t dogs; or if they had been before, they sure weren’t now. They were larger than a wolf and had patchy, mangy fur. Huge pustules, some open and leaking green pus, showed on every bald spot. The ears, which were pointed and actually similar to the wolves of old, were leaking shiny pus. Their eyes were watery but they had no problem seeing the Raiders on the bus.

  Suddenly Steve slammed on the brakes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” roared Antonio.

  “They’re blocking the road,” Steve pointed ahead.

  Everyone craned their necks to look out the front window. Of all the wolf dogs that were surrounding them, these were the least diseased looking. In fact, one almost looked normal.

  “Do you think they did that on purpose?” Bobby Wayne asked, “Put out the ‘prettier’ ones to make us stop?”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” Rick replied, looking back out his side at the three that were about to jump at the bus. “That would mean they have some intelligence. I really would prefer these things to stay stupid.”

  Antonio nodded in agreement. “Run their infected asses over,” he ordered Steve.

  Steve gunned it and the bus lurched forward. Everyone had to hold on to keep from falling over. That’s when the creatures struck. They jumped face first at the windows; they had no trouble jumping that high. Two of the windows broke on impact but the others held. Rick and Tracy used their machetes to take out the two trying to squeeze through the windows.

  “Don’t forget to wipe those blades!” Antonio yelled back, ever thinking ahead. He turned at the thud on the door. One of the mutants had tried to dive straight through the door. Luckily, it held, but repeated head butts had caused its head to break on impact. Instantly the glass was coated in oozing brain matter and pus.

  Great, now we’ll just have to clean the whole damn bus before we can go back.

  Rick and Tracy were trying to push the dead mutants back out the windows but their bodies were held in place at the necks by the jagged glass.

  “Screw it,” Rick said. “When we get to a safer place we’ll lop the heads off and pull them off.” “Gross!” Tracy laughed as they watched the remaining mutants standing in the road together behind them; eating their dust. Steve got the bus going fast enough none of them could catch up. As soon as they were out of their sight, he slowed it down so he wouldn’t damage the engine.

  “Not sure this was such a great idea, boss,” Bobby Wayne said, watching the two heads dripping down the seats and floor.

  Antonio didn’t answer him but directed Steve which direction to go.

  After putting on their tattered work gloves, they pulled the mutant bodies out of the windows and let them drop heavily to the ground next to their heads, brought out after decapitation.

  “So, what are these?” Steve asked.

  Antonio and Bobby Wayne bent down for a closer look while Rick and Tracy kept watch.

  “Back before all this shit, there were hybrids of wolves and dogs.” Antonio said, lost in thought, “It was illegal to have a pure 100% wolf for a pet. So, people would breed them together. I think the percentage was around 25% wolf was allowed in the dog. Like you can really check that anyway. But, I had some friends who had hybrids that were 10% dog and 90% wolf. They were great animals. These look like some of those but with something else mixed in. I suppose that out here they crossbred before the virus spread to the animals. Coy-Dogs were seen a lot although you wouldn’t want them as a pet. I’m not sure what all animals can cross breed. Plus we know the radiation in the wastelands really screwed up some of these even before then got infected.”

  They got out the shovels and threw dirt on the floor, soaking up the fluids. They scraped up the infected fluid/dirt mix and threw it outside.

  “Too bad we don’t have any kitty litter to soak that up,” Antonio commented.

  “What’s kitty litter?” asked Tracy, “Is that for dirty cats?”

  Antonio laughed, forgetting how young his group was. These three had probably never even seen a cat that wasn’t zombified. After more dirt and scraping, they determined that the bus was at least safe enough to keep going. They knew they’d have to clean it better before it would be allowed back in behind the gate.

  As they drove off a flock of birds flew low overhead in the direction they came from. One bird hit the windshield and it cracked but held. Steve looked at the bird before it bounced off the hood and said to Antonio, “Zombie bird.”

  Antonio nodded; he’d seen the missing feathers. The further east they drove the more they saw. The birds swerved as one and circled the bus. Rick and Bobby Wayne stuffed the broken windows quickly with two blankets that Tracy hastily handed them.

  “Lucky we had these,” Bobby Wayne said.

  “Lucky they were your blankets,” Tracy replied with a grin as his mouth gaped open.

  “Sorry but your bag was closest.”

  “What the hell?” he stammered.

  “You can have one of mine,” Tracy said, “I can’t sleep when it’s too hot anyway.”

  “Look!” Rick said, “They’re leaving.”

  “They’re going to those dog’s bodies,” Antonio said, grimacing.

  “I thought zombies didn’t eat zombie flesh,” Tracy asked.

  “I’ve only seen the birds do it,” Antonio replied. “But they’ll leave the dead to attack you first chance they get. They still prefer fresh meat.”

  “We’re going off road so it’s going to get real bumpy,” Steve said, hanging onto the pole at the front. After driving for two days, he and Antonio were now taking turns driving. Steve had just relinquished the driver’s seat to Antonio and was standing up to ease his numb butt. The others sat down and grabbed the seat bars in front of them.

  They drove another thirty minutes before they slowly braked to a stop. They waited until the cloud of dust dissipated before going out of the door.

  “I don’t think anyone is here,” Bobby Wayne said, looking around.

  They could see the corner of a small building behind some tangled brush. The brush looked as though it had been planted there purposely.

  “It’s not like we were able to sneak up with the dust cloud the bus caused,” Tracy said.

  “Even so, all eyes out,” Antonio said, freeing his axe and machete.

  They knocked, then tried the knob when no one answered. It was unlocked.

  “What’s your Oh Shit meter saying to you right now?”
Tracy asked.

  “Not saying anything,” Antonio muttered.

  The others sighed in relief. The building wasn’t much bigger than a shack. It was shored up and well built, only the one door and no windows. It did have viewing slats with pieces of wood that fit right over them on all walls. They left the door open, so they could take turns watching from the doorway.

  “There’s an old wood burning stove,” Steve said, looking up at the vent. “Doesn’t look like it’s been blocked off so maybe it’s been used recently.”

  There was an old style lantern hanging on a nail on the center post but it was dry and empty. They went through the few cabinets that were in the corner and found only one jug of water and a few cans of food. A single plate, fork, and cup were covered in dust. They also found a few candles, which Antonio lit.

  “I think whoever lived here bugged out,” Rick said. “That’s probably why the door was unlocked.”

  The only real furniture in the single room was a torn and ragged sofa and a tiny table that might fit two but only had a single leaning chair. There was a pile of dingy blankets against a wall, obviously someone’s bed. The floor was dusty and a fly swarmed chamber pot sat in the furthest corner.

  “Oh wow,” Bobby Wayne laughed. “Old fashioned shitter. Haha.”

  “You laugh,” Antonio said, “but when the world went to shit so did the plumbing. If you could get your hands on a chamber pot you were lucky.”

  Tracy sat down on the sofa and a puff of dust floated around her. She coughed and the sofa shook.

  “Wait,” Rick said curiously, “get up Tracy.”

  “But I just sat down,” she complained but got up anyway.

  “Steve, help me out here,” Rick walked to one end of the sofa.

  His parents did it, why not others?

  They lifted the sofa and moved it over. Right below was a door in the floor.

  “How did you know?” Steve asked.

  Rick’s eyes met with Antonio’s; he was the only one that knew his past. “Because this is how my parents kept me safe.”

  The door creaked when it opened but nothing jumped out at them. The light from the open door let very little light below. Antonio held a candle in one hand and his machete in the other as he went down the steps.

  “Keep at the front door,” he muttered, always thinking of their surroundings.

  Bobby Wayne ran back to the opening and was relieved to see nothing but the bus.

  “Shit,” Antonio spoke loudly.

  “Are you okay?” Rick asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “A musty old smell of death. Not zombie death but something died down here a while ago.”

  Tracy followed with another candle and Rick behind her. The room underground spanned the dimensions of the upstairs. The light from the three candles illuminated more of the room. There was a thin mattress in the corner covered with a skeletal figure.

  “Man or woman?” Tracy whispered.

  Antonio shook his head. He couldn’t tell. What little hair was on the skeleton was longish but without barbers anymore, many men had long hair. He himself kept his in a long braid. On the other wall was another mattress but it was empty. There was a long, obviously handmade table with two chairs on the opposite wall and most of the table was covered with cans and boxes. There was also another chamber pot. While the upstairs gave the appearance of a single person living here, the downstairs was the real home. This person really did follow the same idea as Rick’s parents.

  They started looking over the supplies on the table and began sorting them.

  “Chocolate pie filling... “ Tracy’s words trailed off in awe.

  “Sorry,” Antonio said abruptly and threw the can in the corner.

  “What?” she asked, starting to tear up. “I haven’t had anything chocolate since I was a little girl.”

  Antonio went back and got the can to show her. “I know you really want to eat it but if the can is swollen like this one is or has a sharp dent in it, you can’t eat it. I don’t know how many times I got to tell you all that,” he replied, as he threw it back again.

  They found thirty-six cans that looked in good shape but the true test would come when they opened them. In addition, there were over two dozen plastic jugs with water. Antonio sniffed one and didn’t smell anything off so he took a sip. He planned to do this over the course of a day to see if they really could drink it.

  “So what’s down there?” Bobby Wayne called out from the top of the stairs. Steve had relieved him at the front door and he was curious.

  “Got some canned goods,” Rick said, “and some boxes that we need to go through. We’ll get an assembly line going to get it all upstairs.”

  Twenty minutes later, they had everything upstairs. Thankfully, the boxes were wooden and plastic; if they had been cardboard, they would’ve been mush by now. They found a couple more blankets that weren’t too bad to replace the ones stuffed in the bus’s broken windows. Tracy took her turn at the front door while the others when through the boxes.

  “Is this a harmonica?” Bobby Wayne asked, turning the silver and red rectangular item over in his hands.

  “Hell yes, it is!” Antonio said with a grin. “After we clean it up I’ll show you how to play it.”

  “What’s a tampon?” Steve asked, holding a box in his hands. He turned it over and started to read the description but Tracy grabbed it out of his hand and shoved it into her pouch.

  “Hey, why do you get it?” he asked her.

  “Let her have them, Steve,” Antonio said, stifling a laugh. “No one could use them but her.”

  “What?” Steve was very confused at this.

  “I’ll tell you all about it on the trip home,” Antonio replied to him smiling.

  There was a package of toilet tissue but it wasn’t in near as good of condition as the ones they found on their last scavenge. This one disintegrated as they tried to pick it up.

  “Boollian?” Bobby Wayne asked, holding two small jars. “This one says beef and these say chicken. That’s food, right?”

  Antonio sighed, feeling old. He took the offered jars from Bobby Wayne and took off the lids. Only one chicken and the beef were unsealed, but they might still be good. The two other chicken flavors were still sealed and would be an improvement to their bland meals.

  “It’s pronounced ‘bull-yon’,” he explained to them. “You put one of these little cubes in a cup of hot water and when it dissolves you have soup or broth.”

  The others nodded and kept looking. They threw out some dried up hand lotion and a cracked bar of soap. They repacked what they planned to take back out to the bus.

  “You should see this,” Tracy said, “we’ve got a big storm coming.”

  Chapter Four

  They quickly brought everything in from the bus to the shack. Antonio realized since the building was still standing, it obviously could withstand the storms that frequented the area. He decided they would ride out the storm inside the shack, rather than the bus. Rick looked thoughtfully at the front door and back to the basement door.

  “What’s on your mind?” Antonio asked him.

  “The front door wasn’t barred, that could only be done from the inside,” he replied, “but someone had to be here to put the sofa back over this door. They left someone down there to die and never came back? That body wasn’t chained up so we can assume it wasn’t a prisoner. It was someone to be hidden; protected.”

  The memories of the last day with his parents came unbidden, “But there are no signs of a struggle up here. Again, why didn’t that person come back? And why did the person on the mattress die when there were cans of food down there with them?”

  “We didn’t see any empty cans lying around down there so they weren’t eaten. Or empty water bottles,” Tracy added. “Could the person on the mattress have been injured or sick and couldn’t get up?”

  “If that was the case why would they have been left to certain death?” Bobby Wayne asked, “T
hat sounds mean as shit.”

  “Look, we don’t know what happened and may never know,” Antonio said, “but when this storm is over I want to give that body a proper burial outside.”

  They split up the supplies they planned to keep into their bags and broke apart some of the wooden boxes to burn. The storm hit quickly, thunder shaking the stove vent and startling them; old soot and ash rained down around them. Lightning flashed nonstop.

  “What if we get hit by lightning?” Tracy asked, her feet pulled up on the sofa as if that would help.

  “If we do, we do,” Rick said, peeking out of one of the slats. “There’s nothing we can do to stop it. But this place hasn’t burned down yet so that’s a good sign.” He closed the slat; the rain was so torrential he couldn’t see anyway. A loud thump on one of the walls made them all jump.

  “What was that?” Bobby Wayne asked, running from one slat to another. It was impossible to see so they would have to wait until the storm was over. A louder thud and a metallic scraping noise, loud enough to hear over the storm, was next.

  “I think that might have been the bus,” groaned Bobby Wayne.

  “Were storms always this bad?” Steve asked Antonio.

  “Some were,” he answered, “and that was even before the zombies. This part of the country had tornado outbreaks and if you lived near the coast, a hurricane could tear up an entire city.”

  They knew about tornadoes but none of the younger ones had ever seen the ocean.

  “What’s the ocean like?” Tracy asked wistfully. “Is it beautiful?”

  “Always,” Antonio replied with a little smile. “I sometimes wonder what it would be like near the coast right now.”

  “Tell us about when you were a kid, please,” Tracy asked Antonio. “Tell us about things we’ve never seen.”

  Rick turned to look out one of the slats again as Antonio began.

  The storm dissipated right before dawn. They waited until the sun was fully up before opening the door. The devastation was astounding. The first thing they noticed was the bus. It definitely wasn’t where they left it. It was now about fifty yards further and on its side.