by Howard, Bob
“Why are they here, Chief?”
“My best guess would be an alarm system. Can you imagine making the mistake of coming through here at night? We didn’t see this drop over the wall, and it’s broad daylight.”
Kathy looked around on the ground and pointed at several regularly spaced holes.
“There used to be a fence here,” she said. “They must have taken it down so intruders would fall in.”
“The burlap bags would keep the infected from biting people when they fall in, but there would be plenty of noise. Most people would start screaming as soon as they went over the edge,” said the Chief. “Then they would start trying to find a way out, and in the dark they might not even figure out why they aren't getting bitten.”
“Nasty little trap they have here. I’d like to push a few of them into it,” said Kathy.
Ever since the beginning of the infection, Kathy had always been for the little guy. She wouldn’t really throw the people into the pit with the infected, but she felt like it was what they deserved if they were willing to do it to other people.
“We’d better get moving,” said the Chief.
They gathered up their gear and began skirting around the left side of the outdoor theater. They had a long way to go and the delay caused by the guard had the Chief worried. As far as he knew, there was only one guard left on the island. What he didn’t know was when the others would be back.
The boat park was their next landmark. The Chief explained to Kathy as they jogged that the center island of trees would end not far after the boat park, and then there would only be one road going out of the gates.
Kathy glanced at the gigantic house to her left. She could only imagine what it must have been like to live in such a beautiful gated community before the end of civilization. This house looked like it had at least six or eight bedrooms. The four car garage had all of its doors closed, and there were three cars in the driveway. Kathy saw the curtains in the front windows moving as something brushed against them. She slowed to a walk and watched as a child squeezed between the curtains and the glass.
Her first instinct was to get the Chief to stop running because they had to help the little boy, but then she saw the way he pushed his face against the glass in her direction, and she knew his chance for help had come and gone a long time ago. Before she could tear her eyes away, another child and an adult woman pushed up to the window with the boy.
Kathy looked in the direction they had been running, and she was surprised to find the Chief waiting patiently for her. He had a sad look on his face, one of the first times she could recall ever seeing him with that look, and she realized it was for her, not them. She felt a lump well up in her throat, and she had to fight back the tears.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded at him and just started to jog without looking back at the window.
They circled the boat park and crossed through the last of the trees before coming to the two lane road that led to the front gate. There was still no sign of the last guard, but the Chief felt like the temptation to have the guard anywhere except at the front gate was too great to resist. That meant they would be able to get within a house or two of the entrance to the shelter before they would be exposed.
The trees were still full and provided enough cover for them to make it over half way on the road before the front gate was visible. They could only see three houses on their left, and after the gate they only had about thirty yards to the drop off where the shelter door was hidden. That was when they heard the sound they had dreaded. There were vehicles approaching the gate in large numbers, and there would be no reason for them to stop at the gate. Kathy and the Chief knew they were too exposed for no one to see them.
They ran as hard as they could across the wide yard that led to the nearest house on their left, and they almost made it without being spotted. Shouts of surprise were followed by shots from rifles as the caravan of pick up trucks and jeeps rolled up to the gate. The last guard was already rolling the gate open with more than one person yelling at him to hurry. Gunners were sighting over the cabs of the trucks but were hitting the house and the trees. Kathy felt a piece of brick crease the side of her head, and they both heard breaking glass from the nearest windows.
They were faced with few choices. There was no doubt that the armed occupants of Ambassadors Island would outflank them from the front. The Chief knew what he would do if he had the advantage. He would have half of his people cut them off by going in between the second house and the one they had ducked behind. That only left one choice. They had to get to the back of the houses and retreat as fast as possible.
What the Chief was more worried about was the other half of the people. They could stay in vehicles if they were smart, and they could race ahead of the Chief and Kathy to corner them behind the fourth or fifth house.
Luckily for them, that group wasn’t so smart. They were well armed, and they had the numbers, but they didn’t know how to use what they had. Instead of driving past where the intruders had gone and surrounding them, the second group left their vehicles and rushed straight for the front of the house on foot. As they were reaching the corner of the house and getting ready to slaughter their prey, Kathy and the Chief were already crossing the back yard of the fourth house and well on their way to the fifth.
******
The first house on the left had been a total surprise to Hampton and Colleen. They approached it from the side facing the water and planned to enter it just as they had the house they had stayed in when they escaped the massacre on I-77. The house had a deck that ran across most of the back where guests could admire the view, and at first it had seemed like just another beautiful house until they noticed the black smears on the glass. Colleen had her face up close to the glass trying to see in through the partially tinted window when the first infected dead slammed up against the other side. The glass held, but Colleen’s nerves were shot. She fell over onto the deck as one infected after the next hit the glass and bounced backward.
Hampton was quick to get to her side and help her up. He wasn’t exactly sure what she was saying, but it was a mixture of angry and scared out of her wits. What amazed him was the way the glass seemed to shake in its large frame but not break.
“Must be some kind of shatterproof glass,” he said.
Colleen managed a coherent sentence and shouted, “Is it bulletproof, too? I’m going to shoot every damn one of those things.”
Hampton realized just in time that he needed to help Colleen get over it because she really was going to start shooting them through the window.
“Slow down, girl. If they can’t get out, it’s best just to leave them in there. They can have this house. As a matter of fact, let’s take our chances with that big place after all. If the Chief came this way, that’s where he would have gone.”
Colleen was looking back and forth between Hampton and the large picture window full of infected dead. She had a look like she needed to at least get even with them for scaring the pants off of her. She gradually shook off the embarrassment of landing on her butt and started off in the direction Hampton had pointed.
Hampton didn’t like being out in the open, but he felt like he had to get Colleen away from there so she could get her nerve back.
“Did you see how many there were?” she asked between breaths as they ran across the open field between the houses.
“What about it?”
“There were over a dozen at that one window,” she said.
“Maybe they had all holed up there as a group when the infection started,” he answered.
She was just about to answer when they reached the end of the back of the first house. They had continued to believe that it would be safer to approach the back of the houses, but Colleen caught a glimpse of something up by the far end of the garage just as they were reaching the thick trees on the side of the house.
“I think that’s a leg,” she said.
Seeing bodies or body parts in this new world was no longer something strange. If it was the first day of the infection, she would have been shocked and unable to move. Now, it was just that the body part was in an unexpected place, and it was the first one they had seen that wasn’t shambling around.
“Maybe your friends went that way,” she said. “We should check.”
Colleen was careful when she rounded the front of the house, but she moved faster than normal. The scene on the back porch of the first house still had her a bit rattled. She was surprised to see several bodies, some with limbs severed that were obviously decayed, but some had fatal injuries that looked fresh.
When Hampton came up beside her she asked, “Does it look to you like a couple of these guys were killed recently?”
“If they ran into the Chief and Kathy and weren’t friendly, this is what they would look like,” he said. He looked at the pile of bodies and added, “I don’t think there’s going to be anything worth seeing at this house, but I still can’t figure it out. Why did they land behind that island and then come all of the way over here?”
“Maybe they thought they spotted you from the plane, Chris. If they came here looking for you, they must have thought you would be here for a good reason.”
The front of the second house on the right side of the island was not far away, so they decided to go to it next. It had a prominent driveway that had a central island of trees in the middle of a sea of concrete. The island was surrounded by eight vehicles ranging from antique to luxury SUV’s. Hampton gave up all pretense of stealth and went straight up to the front door. There were two narrow windows, one on each side of the door, and he did as Colleen had done and went right up to the glass to look inside.
The inside of the house was well lit, and Hampton could see the damage caused by the infected dead that had been wandering around in search of prey. Every time one would make noise by knocking over something breakable, the others would all move toward that area. Then something would fall in another room, and they would move that way. They also groaned as they searched for the source of the noise, and that was like ringing the dinner bell for the rest of them. One of them saw Hampton at the window and started toward him.
Hampton took the steps down to the driveway in one leap and caught Colleen by the right arm.
“Just like the first house,” he said. “They couldn’t be in there.”
They went in the direction of the third house, and Colleen started to ask him how many he had seen. They were passing the wide doors to the garage, and for the second time she almost went over on her back as something slammed up against the inside of the door. Hampton caught her and steered her away from the door while he brought one finger up to his lips.
They both found themselves backing away from the big doors as the aluminum panels shook loudly from the continual impact of bodies. The more noise they made hitting the doors, the more noise they made with their groaning.
“Did everybody try to hole up on this island?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Hampton, “but there must be close to a hundred inside the only two houses we’ve checked. ”
He turned around in the direction to the first house they had tried to approach from behind and looked at the front. The driveway was full of cars, too.
“I’m not ready to jump to conclusions yet,” he said, “but when the infection started, I would have thought this island was a safe place to be. That is if I had friends or relatives with a place here. All of the cars look expensive, so it’s not so strange that there are so many people here. They just weren’t the survivor types, and once the infection got inside, they couldn’t stop it.”
Colleen didn’t look convinced. She had a frown on her forehead as she sized up the area around the homes.
“Chris, when we were up in the tower of that first house, how many bodies did we see? I mean, decayed bodies of people who didn’t walk away after they died, and maybe some that were put down for a second time.”
He thought about it and it suddenly occurred to him that they had been able to see dozens of heaps that could only have been people who didn’t survive. He had become so used to seeing them that he seldom even mentioned them. As a matter of fact, when he stepped over them to get from one place to another, the only attention he gave them was to be sure they weren’t infected dead that were just very still. He had even become used to the smell and no longer felt the pangs of guilt he used to experience when he thought about why he survived, but they didn’t. Then there were the kids. In neighborhoods there were always the bodies of the long dead kids. Somehow, Hampton had learned to look past them instead of at them.
The yard of the homes where they stood had none of the decayed victims. Civilization had ended, and the only places that had no bodies piled on the sidewalks or huddled in corners were places that were somehow under the control of the living.
“Someone lives here,” he said in a low voice.
“Where? In this house?” asked Colleen.
“No, I’m talking about this neighborhood. It must be closed off up front, because the houses are full of the infected, but it’s clean outside with the exception of back there.”
He gestured toward the spot where they had found the bodies.
“I think you’re right, Colleen. Where are all the remains? Someone has been picking up the bodies and disposing of them, but they haven’t found out about the Chief’s handiwork yet. When they do, they won’t care who we are or why we’re here. They’ll think we did it.”
“We need to find your friends and get out of here.”
“I know, but they could be anywhere. We can’t shoot up a flare.”
“That only leaves us one choice,” said Colleen. “We need to keep moving as fast as we can and check every house.”
“You know something,” said Hampton. “I almost said it’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack, but they probably said the same about finding me. At least we’re all on the same island.”
They set off at a trot straight to the next house. Neither of them were surprised when they looked through the windows and saw crowds of the infected wandering through the rooms. Quietly listening at garage doors they could hear the constant shuffling of feet inside. Hampton exchanged a look with Colleen, and he shook his head. Both could tell that the other was sensing there was something wrong with this island.
After the third house they came to a large, wooded lot without a house on it. Since they were away from the homes, they were able to talk as they jogged, and they agreed that the infected dead had most likely been put inside the houses. The one thing they couldn’t guess was why. It just didn’t make sense to take control of a neighborhood and then stock it with the infected.
Hampton stopped running when he thought he had it figured out.
“This couldn’t be someone’s warped version of a zoo, could it?”
Colleen looked like the thought made her sick.
“You mean someone comes here to look at them…or worse yet, feed them?”
“Don’t be too surprised by the answer to the second part of your question,” said Hampton.
After the wooded lot, they picked up speed. They only stopped long enough to look inside a window, nod to the other, and then move on. They knew what they would hear inside the garages if they listened closely, so they didn’t slow down. If the Chief and Kathy were somewhere on the island, they weren’t going to be inside any of the houses occupied by the dead.
The last six houses were ahead of them, and they saw that the road they had been following was actually an oval shape that went around the island. They had suspected as much by the way it curved across the first two houses they had checked. Now they could see where the two branches met and formed a single, two lane road that went toward a steel gate. That explained the lack of infected walking around, but it didn’t mean they were safe.
Colleen came to a sudden stop when she saw someone running through the trees directly in fr
ont of where the two roads merged into one. At the same moment there was the sound of vehicles and shouting directly outside the gate. They couldn’t see what was happening yet, but the gunshots started and the people Colleen had seen running had disappeared in the general direction of the last few houses on the other side of the road.
“Did you get a look at them?” asked Hampton. Even though he knew the answer, he didn’t want to hear it because it was too obvious that the new arrivals were in pursuit of his friends.
“A big guy and a blond? Yeah, I got a good enough look.”
“They’re flanking them on the right and the left, but the Chief and Kathy are too smart to be behind the third house. They would be moving for the fourth house by the time those people close in.”
“How can we help them?” asked Colleen.
Hampton looked around as if there would be someone else to stop the people with the guns from killing his friends. He felt helpless when he came to the instant conclusion that it would be up to them, but just like the Chief, Hampton had survived this long for a reason. He also had the advantage that Colleen gave him. If there was a way to gain the upper hand, they would find it.
The answer crossed his face just as Colleen started to say something.
“One of us just had an idea,” he said. “You want to go first?”
Colleen smiled and said, “Knowing you, we just had the same idea.”
“The garages?”
Hampton hooked a thumb in the direction of the houses as he said it.
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said, “but not the ones we already checked. We have to go for the last few on the right and work our way back.”
Gunshots were increasing on the other side of the island, and through the trees they could see at least forty or fifty people encircling the third house. Hampton saw what Colleen meant. They had their backs to the right side of the island and were pouring weapons fire into the area around that one house. They were totally exposed from behind. If they could open the garage doors of the houses behind the shooters, the infected would be drawn toward the gunfire.
