“Danny, if you touch that little girl I’ll cut your balls off with a rusty paring knife.”
Will had to listen to Danny’s bitter complaints about his treatment for weeks.
Tess planted her feet on solid ground and thanked him, her face still a deep crimson.
“You’re welcome, Ma’am.” He led them inside and readied himself for another day.
They stopped for the night at an isolated house that sat right next to the road. A large stand of trees ran along the rear of the house; its front faced open fields across the road.
Will estimated they traveled nine miles that day. In the old days he could have opened the map app on his iPhone to calculate the exact distance down to the foot, he thought, a little bemused.
They had put down six creepers over the course of the day- two pairs of the dead, and two that were shuffling about alone. One of the lone creatures was in bad shape, even for a dead guy. It hobbled towards them cock-eyed because one leg was nothing but bare bone with a few strings of flesh hanging from it. One of its cheeks was flayed open; Will could see its tendons working when it snarled. Its sounds had a slurpy quality to them due to the thing’s broken lower jar flapping about like a pennant in a stiff breeze.
They had a common method for dispatching lone creepers, and they put it to use now. Brianne and David were closest to the creature so it fixated on them, limping straight at them. Rather than run, they stood their ground and watched it approach. Meanwhile, Clay and Tara looped around and behind the creeper, and came at it from the rear. They trotted up and Clay drove the knife-side of his pole deep in the creeper’s head, dropping it before it knew he was back there, and well before it threatened the people in its sights.
Now they gathered under the fading daylight in the house’s kitchen, eating tuna on crackers, with a few sliced peaches on the side. There was no sign of the homeowners- no bodies, no creepers, no bloodstains. They were just gone.
Between sweeping the home and supper they scavenged. The kitchen cabinets provided canned vegetables and soups to add to their food supply. In a bedroom, they found a drawer full of white socks, something the men in the group never seemed to find enough of. A bathroom medicine cabinet contained band-aids, gauze, a large tube of Neosporin and a box of tampons, something the women in the group never seemed to find enough of. A nightstand drawer with a variety of prescription bottles gave Will hope they had found some much-needed antibiotics. There was Ambien, Xanax, a blood thinner, a bottle of Prilosec, high blood pressure medication, calcium tablets... Christ, thought Will, these people had every ailment under the sun.There must be antibiotics in here. But infection seemed to be the one thing the homeowners didn’t suffer from, and the group still lacked then much-needed drugs.
There were no firearms in the house, but they found some good stuff in the garage. One was a heavy-duty crowbar and the other was a one-sided pickax. Will admired the pair and had them added to their growing collection of melee weapons.
It was a three-bedroom house and after they put the food away, there was much discussion over who got to sleep in the beds. They hadn’t spent the night in a house for over a month and they were weary from sleeping on the ground or a barn floor. Will listened to the argument for a time and was about to decree that nobody got a bed- if they were going to fuss and fight like a bunch of school kids then they could all sleep on the floor. But out of the blue, they worked it out. David and Kathy got a bed since they were the oldest. Sylvia and Tempest got one because Tempest was the only child in the group. And Tara and Tess took the third because the single men never missed an opportunity to suck up to the pretty pair of sisters.
Will made sure the first watch shift was in place, then spread out his sleeping bag next to Becky. He laid down next to his wife, wrapped one long arm around her midsection, and fell asleep in minutes.
Chapter Twelve
* * *
They stopped for a midday meal near an old second-rate auto salvage, a dirt lot filled with a motley collection of older-model beat up cars and trucks. Will sat on the shell of a nondescript Chrysler sedan, one rolled out during their inglorious ‘80s, when you needed a program to tell their cars apart and they were all pieces of shit.
A ramshackle two-story house sat next door. The house looked like it was in serious disrepair even before the outbreak. Thin strips of peeled paint exposed wood latticed with rot. The roof was missing large chunks of shingles. All the windows on the bottom were broken out and most of the ones on the top floor were cracked. The front yard doubled as a parking lot for another ten or twelve banged up and stripped down cars, making it clear that the same people who owned the house also owned the auto salvage next door.
“In a scary movie, the teenagers would run and hide in there and end up slaughtered,” Danny said with a nod at the house. He and Will were standing side by side on the shoulder of the road, taking turns looking at the house through a pair of binoculars. Will thought he’d never seen an emptier looking house. He was tempted to skip sweeping it and just let everybody sit down inside and eat, instead. With a touch of irritation, he put the thought aside; if he learned one thing out on the road, it was to never assume any place was safe. Like Danny always said- if you relax, you’re dead.
He decided, however, that the house’s empty appearance presented a good training opportunity. He almost always drew from the same core of six or seven people when it came time for a sweep or salvage. It made sense, he thought, to have the most competent people go into a potentially hostile location. But the clear lack of threat presented by this house gave him a chance to familiarize other group members with how they swept and cleared buildings. He chose David, Tess, Sylvia, and George to go in, led by himself, Danny, Coy, and Tara. An eight-people sweep team was ridiculous overkill for a house that looked creeper-free, but he wanted the first-timers to have the security of seasoned fighters by their sides.
Danny kicked the door in and they burst through one after another in single file. The inside of the house was worse than the outside. Wallpaper peeled from the walls in wide strips and a spiderweb of cracks marred the ceiling. The furniture was mismatched and threadbare. Cockroaches scurried about and a thick layer of dust covered every surface. The dry air smelled of mold, urine, and old age.
After an uneventful sweep of the bottom floor, the team gathered to head upstairs. Tess and David suffered several extended bouts of sneezing and Sylvia’s eyes watered.
“It’s the dust and the mold,” Will explained, “Cover your nose and mouth with a handkerchief, or the tail of your shirt.”
The stairs were narrow and warped and the banister wobbled. Up top, they found themselves in the middle of a straight and narrow hallway. Three doors lined the far side of the hall in both directions. A loose shutter banged against the house, producing a steady thumping sound from behind one of the doors to the right.
“You and Coy take David and Sylvia that way,” he told Danny, pointing to the right. “Me and Tara will take Tess and George to the left.”
Will’s foursome checked each room on their side of the hall- they were all three empty. The last room was a child’s bedroom. Will looked at the colorful toys scattered across the floor and a row of Dr. Seuss books that filled a shelf mounted by the window. Anger as keen and sharp as a knife’s edge surged through him. The little boy that used to drive his Tonka trucks over the bedroom floors and reach for a book from the shelf when his Dad tucked him in at night was another innocent lost. The child who used to play in this room was most likely dead. At best he huddled in a hiding place somewhere, living a life of deprivation and terror. At worst he was a mindless monster capable only of killing and eating.
The banging of the loose shutter on the other end of the house interrupted his thoughts. The noise sounded louder and more frequent than it was a few minutes ago.
“Listen to that shutter,” he said to Tara. “The wind must be really picking up.” He looked out the grimy window. The trees were motionless in the Octobe
r sky, as was a wind vane atop the mailbox out by the road. An icy bolt of fear rippled through him.
“Move!” he commanded, rushing toward the door. He flew out of the room so fast he bounced off the wall on the other side of the hallway, then yelled at Sylvia just as she turned the knob on the last door on her end.
“Don’t...” was all he managed before she pulled the door open.
The creepers imprisoned in the room piled against the other side, drawn there by the noises of the living. They caused the thumping sound by slapping at the walls, trying to get through to the other side. Sylvia opened the door and backed away from the threshold, just the way Danny showed her. David, Coy, and Danny stood to the side, ready to rush in when Sylvia acted. The last thing they expected was for three of the dead to tumble into them.
A tall creeper in bib overalls grabbed Coy’s shoulders. Coy pushed its face away from him with both hands him and tried to squirm free. One of the creepers stumbled to the floor as it left the room. It grabbed David by the leg, snarling and snapping its jaws. It ripped a strip off his jeans before he kicked it away with his other leg. Sylvia backed away toward the end of the hall, screaming. The third creeper shuffled in pursuit. The dead had knocked Danny aside when they surged through the door. He scrambled to his feet and rushed into the fray.
In the time it took Will to reach the stairs, a fourth creeper passed through the doorway. This one wore a gingham dress and snow boots. Its throat was ripped open and bite marks covered both its arms.
The creeper on the ground was grasping at the legs dancing around it. It grabbed the leg of a fellow creeper in the crook of its elbow and bit down with savage hunger, then recoiled when it tasted the flesh of the dead.
Back on his feet, Danny hooked an arm around the neck of the creeper grappling with Coy and pulled its head back out of biting range. That gave Coy enough room to raise his sickle. With the creeper draped over his shoulders he couldn’t swing the weapon with any force, so he used the sickle’s sharp edge to saw at its head like a steak knife slicing into a sirloin. It took four awkward back-and-forth motions before the blade tore into the creepers brain and it went limp. Danny let it fall and grabbed his knife his knife. He used a knee and one hand to steady the creeper thrashing around on the ground and drove the blade deep into the back of its head with the other.
Sylvia was still screaming and flailing at the creature that backed her to the end of the hallway. She had fallen to the floor and was slapping at the creeper; in her terror, she seemed to have forgotten the combat knife in a sheath on her belt. The creeper was bent over at the waist, snarling and chomping its teeth at her and trying to grab hold of one of her arms as she swatted at it and tried to push it away. Coy took three big steps, grabbed the creeper from behind with both hands and threw it against the opposite wall. Before it could attack again, he drove his sickle into its neck with all the force he could muster and beheaded it. Its body slumped to the side and its head hit the floor with a bang. The creeper’s teeth never stopped snapping, even as its head rolled idly across the hall.
Will made it just as the last of the dead fell. Tara and Tess ran up behind him; George was alone back at the other end of the hall. David had his hands on his knees and stared at the floor. Danny leaned back with his back against the wall while Coy helped Sylvia to her feet. Will eyed Danny, who smiled, then chuckled weakly.
Coy looked back toward his Dad with a grin of his own. “Shit, Pop, I’m glad this place was empty- otherwise that might have been a hairy situation.”
Will looked around at the creepers lying about and the gore on the walls and shook his head. He prodded the displaced head with the toe of his boot and felt a wave of revulsion when it responded by snapping its jaws and rolling its eyes.
“Jesus,” Will sighed. “Well, the place is clear. Let’s get everybody else and get dinner going.”
Late on their fifth day on the road, they stopped at a farm outside the town of Lebanon. The number of the dead they encountered went up fast as the town drew near- they had put down over twenty creepers that day.
They set up camp in a barn. During the sweep of the farmhouse and its outbuildings, Clay came to Will with a complaint.
“We’ve been staying in so many barns that I feel like a prize heifer. All these barns are next to houses with beds in them. At least a few of us could sleep up off the ground each night. Why do we set up in the barns, instead?”
“That’s a good question, Clay.” Will reached into his pocket for a can of chew, took a dip, and offered the can to Clay, who declined the offer.
“Thanks, but I’d toss my cookies if I tried that.”
“Just as well, it’s a nasty habit.” Will pocketed the can. “Now, about the barns. What I’m doing is keeping us together in a common area where everyone is accounted for all the time, it’s easy to get to the exits, and there are only one or two ways in. It’s just a better situation, security-wise. Say we’re sleeping in a house with everybody spread out through six rooms. If a creeper came in through a window at the far end of the house, there would be no help for the people in that room. And how many people could it attack, one room at a time, before the whole house knew of the threat?”
Clay watched Will as he spoke, and nodded his head in acknowledgment of his question.
“Now, say we’re all sleeping in a barn and the same creeper gets in somehow. As soon as one person is a creeper is in with us, everyone else knows right away. All they have to do is holler, and the whole team is right there to fight it together. Are you with me?”
“All the way. And I wasn’t complaining Will, I was just curious. Probably shouldn’t have even brought it up.”
“No problem, buddy.” Will turned so he was face to face with Clay and looked at him intently. “But there’s one thing you have to keep in mind. I’m not a jailkeeper and you are not under sentence. Everybody here is free to leave and go their own way any time they want. And if you get a hankering for a good night’s sleep in a bed, or you and Brianne are wanting some alone time, then hell, son, go sleep in the house. Nobody’s gonna try and stop you.”
“Oh no, that’s not what I meant at all.”
Will found it amusing that a small note of panic had crept into Clay’s voice, but he kept a straight face.
“No, I would never want to be that far away from you guys. Like I said, I just wondered. Thanks for listening to me. I’m going to make sure that chicken coop is clear.”
“Anytime, son. Get Jiri or Coy to check that coop with you- don’t do it by it by yourself.”
Will watched Clay as he walked away, confident the younger man understood his point. He heard the groans when he started for the barn earlier in the day- he expected the question to come from someone. He was a little surprised it had been Clay, though. The young man grew up working hard on an unsuccessful farm. Two years of college life softened him up and too much cheap booze gave him a beginner’s beer gut. But he toned up fast out on the road and was one of the group’s hardest workers and most reliable fighters. Maybe he just wanted to be alone with Brianne. Since they’d left home Will’s own sex life consisted of an occasional quickie the rare times he and Becky found a semblance of privacy. Oh, and a blowjob on his birthday back in June, he remembered with a smile.
They discovered a pleasant surprise behind the ramshackle farmhouse. Someone in the pack of creepers upstairs had planted a big vegetable garden before they turned. It was overrun with weeds, and rabbits and deer had munched on many of the vegetables. But not all of them.
Coy and Tara found shovels and a rake in a tool shed not far from the garden and dug up a goodish crop of carrots, onions, and radishes. Served alongside canned ravioli warmed over a small fire, the vegetables had a mealy texture and woody taste to them; Becky explained that those particular vegetables were cool-weather plants that didn’t fare well over the heat of the summer. Nonetheless, it was nice to supplement their usual fare of canned food and saltine crackers with something different.
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After supper, Becky and Will attended to one another with she liked to call their ‘ttwo-person daisy chain.’ They sat with his back to her front, her legs curled around his. He rubbed her bare feet while she massaged his shirtless back. For fifteen minutes they forgot about creepers and the road and enjoyed being together.
With a heavy heart, Will laid his head upon her breasts and sighed. “I’d like to do this all night, but me and the boys have to talk to George.” He stood and extended a hand to help her to her feet.
“What do you need with George?”
“To see what he knows about the town up ahead.” He pulled her close, and they embraced; he bent his head down until their foreheads touched. “If he’s spent time there in his truck, he might know where to find a pharmacy. We have to get antibiotics. Each day somebody doesn’t come up with an infection makes it that much more likely someone will tomorrow.”
“You’re considering going into town?” she frowned up at him. “Look at how many creepers we saw today. It will be a hundred times worse in town.”
“We’d only go in under the right conditions.” He chose his words with care and kept a close eye on her. He didn’t want another fight over the risks he took.
“What conditions are those?”
“George is familiar with the town, we know exactly where a pharmacy is, one of these trucks outside will start, and the roads in town are clear enough to get around.” He enumerated the list on his fingers as he talked.
“You’re not wandering around town, looking for a pharmacy?” she said, sounding relieved.
“Absolutely not,” he assured her.
“Okay then,” she said, mollified. “You can go have your little meeting.” She smiled up at and tweaked his nose between her thumb and index finger.
Journey Page 9
