Haven (Book 1): Journey

by Switzer, Brian M.

  A house stocked with a huge supply of baking goods gave up twenty cans of evaporated milk. Will didn’t like its sweet taste, but Becky did wonders with it when she cooked. Another house had a big stock of protein bars. Mixed in with tuna, milk and protein bars were the common finds- beans, Campbell’s soup, rice, canned vegetables. They found a lot of crackers, though he wondered if crackers and chips wouldn’t start to get stale soon.

  Transportation was tougher. Most vehicles sitting in garages, driveways, and parking lots suffered from some fatal flaw. Dead batteries, flat tires, empty gas tanks or bad fuel were the most common. But by noon on the second day, they’d founding working transportation with enough seats for everyone. They had a four-wheel-drive F-150 that started right up and only needed gas. A nearly new Buick Rendezvous that sat five adults and Tempest with comfort. And the best find- a Jeep Grand Cherokee Hardtop with mud tires and a winch mounted to the front frame. Will hesitated to take it because of the tires.

  “If we blow one of those big sons of bitches we can’t run to the nearest tire store and find a replacement,” he told Clay and Justin.

  “But Will, it’s a Jeep- the best four-wheel-drive on the road!” Justin said. “And with that winch, if any of the other cars get stuck we can pull them right out. And we can use it to clear the road.”

  “You guys are going to keep yapping until I agree, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Take it back to the house and Justin, you give it the once over this afternoon. If you say its sound we’ll take it.”

  Justin was the group’s mechanic. Will, Danny, and Coy had spent most of their lives working on trucks, tractors, and machinery. Each of them could repair most breakdowns with nothing but spit and baling wire. But Justin had an ear for engines and a way of detecting problems before they became breakdowns.

  Will was happy. Things were getting done, progress was being made, and they were almost ready to hit the road. One more outing to look for a little more food, and he would call it a day.

  A few hours later Will, Becky, David, and Tara were outside an A-frame house a half mile west of the camp. It was a tidy little place with big windows in the front and newish-looking siding. Nestled in a little dell amid a range of steep hills, a battery of pine trees shielded the house from the road.

  Will was embarrassed- the house’s front door was metal and proving impossible to kick in. He’d kicked it four times and thrown his weight against it once. All that did was hurt his knee and bruised his shoulder.

  “Come on, Muscles,” Becky said in a cheerful tone. “Let’s find a rock to break one of those front windows. We ought to let Tara throw it though. I hope I’m never trapped and about to be eaten by creepers where you have to get through a door to save me.”

  “That’s not a normal door,” Will muttered. “And what makes you think I wouldn’t just let you get eaten, anyway?” He added under his breath.

  Tara had been looking at the two picture windows with a quizzical expression. “Why would someone cover those big, pretty windows with those God-awful, heavy drapes?” she wondered.

  Will looked closer and saw there were indeed drapes on the interior side of the windows. He shrugged.

  He threw the rock hard, shattering the window.

  “Overcompensate much?” Becky asked archly.

  “Woman,” Will growled. “This is why I go out with Danny and the boys and leave you at camp. This right here.”

  He picked at the remaining glass shards in the window frame. Two hands clamped down on each of his wrists from the other side of the drapes and tried to pull him inside the trailer. He was so surprised he didn’t resist until he felt his feet trying to leave the ground. He grunted and pulled back hard, lifting a snarling creeper halfway through the window with the drape still between them. David and Becky realized he was in trouble and ran to him. Becky grabbed him around the waist and pulled. David had his knife out and cocked and was desperately rooting through the drapes with his free hand.

  “I can’t find its head,” he cried.

  That was because the creeper’s head was swinging side to side, jaws snapping, as it tried to bite down on something other than fabric. Its mouth landed on his wrist and he felt a sudden pressure like it was clamped in a vise. He bellowed and raised his feet, pushing against the house with his legs. At first, the effort was futile; he couldn’t free his hands or pull himself away. He heard a wet, ripping sound and suddenly all resistance stopped. He hurtled backward and landed hard, realizing he had pulled the creeper’s arms out of their sockets when they fell to the ground beside him.

  The now-armless creeper tumbled out the window and landed face-down at Will’s feet. Tara was on it in a flash. She drove her knee between its shoulders and brought her knife down through the top of its head.

  Will scrambled to his feet. “Fuck fuck fuck. The motherfucker bit me!” He cried.

  Working feverishly, he unbuttoned his cuff and tugged up his shirt sleeve. He looked at his wrist and rubbed it with his other hand. Relief washed through him as he realized that the creeper’s bite hadn’t broken his skin. His knees buckled and he grabbed David for support.

  Becky looked at him wide-eyed with her hands over her mouth, crying.

  “It’s okay, Becks, I’m okay. See?” He held his arm up in front of her. “It didn’t break the skin. Those drapes saved my life.”

  She broke down in great, braying sobs.

  Will held her close and whispered to her. “Hush now, we’re fine,” He repeated over and over until her crying subsided. He brought his arm back up for her to see, turning it this way and that. She examined it to her satisfaction, then smiled and leaned into him.

  A creeper snarled from inside the house behind them.

  Even as he spun toward the sound, Will thought it didn’t sound right. It was too soft and too high-pitched.

  David was already facing the house. “My Christ,” he said in a weak, flat voice.

  A creeper looked at them through the picture window frame and snarled in a hesitant manner, like a cross puppy still learning its boundaries. Before it turned it had been a little girl, about four years old.

  Will leaned forward, hands on his knees, and sighed a great exhale of air. “This just keeps getting better and better,” he muttered.

  The little creeper was leaning out the window, waving her arms and snarling her little snarl. Will’s stomach roiled. He shot Becky a pained stare, and she shrugged in return.

  “You could leave it,” she said in a noncommittal voice.

  “So it can bite somebody else? No way. Besides, that thing was somebody’s little girl before the outbreak. If you had a little girl and this monster is what became of her, would you want someone to leave her like this or release her?” When Becky didn’t respond, he turned to David. “Do you think you can chuck her out of there without getting bit?”

  David nodded and approached the trailer with caution. The creeper waved its arms harder and snarled louder as he drew closer. He looked at Will.

  “Can you draw its attention?”

  “Sure.” Will yelled and clapped his hands. The creeper turned its attention from David to him.

  David waited until it focused just on Will. Two big steps put him right outside the window frame. He reached in and grabbed the creeper by the back of its collar. He lifted up and pulled forward, spilling it onto the ground beneath the window, then backpedaled out of its range.

  It wobbled a bit, then struggled to its feet. As it did, Will couldn’t help but notice it wore a pair of footie pajamas. Whee! Will thought. Creepers in footie jammies! I’m losing my fucking mind.

  A large bite wound marred its upper thigh. It snarled at them but didn’t charge, just leaned drunkenly back and for.

  “Why isn’t it attacking?” Becky whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Will didn’t take his eyes off of it. “Could be the little tiny part of its brain that still works is telling it we’re too
big to take on.”

  “We’ve never seen them notice they’re outmatched before.”

  “Nope.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Kill it.”

  He walked up to it and grabbed one outstretched arm, spinning it away from him. When it faced the other way he braced one arm against the back of its neck and brought his knife down in a quick thrust. He caught it as it slumped and gently laid it on the ground. The rest of his team stood next to him and the four of them looked down at it. It had a flawless complexion except for the bite on its leg and its hair was done up in a neat side-ponytail. It didn’t have any of the sores, sallow skin, or filthy appearance that they were accustomed to.

  “That’s one well-preserved little creeper,” Becky said. “Do you think it turned recently?”

  “No way to tell,” Will said. “Could be it turned a while back, but with nobody but it and Momma creeper bouncing around this little house, there’s not a lot to bang them up.”

  “What do you think happened with the two of them?” Becky ducked her head toward the armless creeper under the window.

  Will shrugged his shoulders. “But the big one’s been a creeper for a while, judging by how easy her arms came off.”

  “I know what happened,” David said, with a snap of his fingers. “Mom came home bit and sick. She got sick, turned, then attacked the girl. You know how little kids like to hide? She got the one bite and then the little one hid away somewhere until she turned.”

  “Can you imagine being that little and seeing your own Mother come after you?” Becky said. “Oh my God, the horror of that.”

  “Maybe that’s how it happened, and maybe Momma’s meth dealer boyfriend bit them both, they came home, and died in each other’s arms.” Will flashed David a warning look- Becky had been through all the upset he would tolerate for one night. “It’s useless to speculate because you can’t know. Now come on, let’s see if they left us anything good in there.

  The camp house had the feel of a football team’s locker room before the Super Bowl mixed with the air of a dinner party. Coy had come through in spades during his day-long hunt, and another day spent walking wasn’t on the agenda, at least for tomorrow. Tomorrow they were driving.

  Coy followed a gray fox’s tracks to a chicken coop. A storm or heavy winds broke a limb of a big burl oak that provided the coop with shade and the limb crashed down on the coop’s wood-framed door. The broken door left a sizable hole that the chickens used to escape the coop and scratch for food during the day and return to the safety of their roost at night.

  He bagged the five fattest hens he saw. He wanted badly to collect the eggs from the roost- the thought of three eggs fried sunny-side up made his mouth water. But he couldn’t think of a way to prevent their breaking during the walk back to the house. Besides the chickens, he also snared three rabbits.

  When he left the house to hunt, he took Sally and his prized Benelli Super Black Eagle shotgun that had traveled with him all the way from the ranch. Earlier that day he took a chance and fired it four times when he the dog led him to a pond covered with wild ducks. He found the waterfowl much easier to hunt when he was free to ignore the conservation department’s edict against shooting them on the water. It took him about three minutes to convey to Sally what he wanted from her and then instinct kicked in and she joyfully raced into the water and retrieved three of his kills. She searched diligently for the fourth for fifteen minutes before he called her out of the pond.

  He pulled up mounds of wild onions and dug for potatoes in a weed-ridden vegetable garden. The spuds were small and mealy looking, but he put five pounds of them in his bag, anyway. Best to see if his mom could do anything with them.

  Clay helped him clean the birds while Brianne hung nearby, grousing about how gross he was becoming. They cooked the meat on a big barbecue grill on the back deck. The grill had two burners on its left side, allowing them to cook side dishes. Will told the tale of his close encounter with the creeper in the drapes while they feasted. Coy watched his dad’s face as he talked. He made it sound funny as hell now, but there was no laughter in his eyes. Coy was pretty sure he had almost lost his father.

  After the meal, Coy went to work. There was equipment to clean, pack and load into the vehicles. Some of the people in the group, in his opinion, were slobs. Justin, for example. They’d been in the house for nine days and in that time he had scattered his clothes from one end of it to the other. Coy didn’t understand that behavior. His dad taught him at an early age the importance of cleaning his tools when he finished with them. When he was six, his parents no longer needed to tell him to clean his room. You took care of your things and when you needed them, they would take care of you. It was as simple as that.

  These weapons, for example. Will tasked him with cleaning the group’s gun supply. He had a collection of rifles and handguns at his side, and the shape some were in made him shake his head. Dirty barrels, slides that needed oil, carbon buildup in the chamber. He cleaned his weapons after each use and every Sunday night; he always had. It seemed that in this new world, people that thought like he did were always caring for people that didn’t.

  Clay pulled a chair over to Coy’s work table. A few days ago on a scavenge he had found a pair of Carhartt overalls he liked. He sat down, wearing them over his jeans with the sleeves tied around his waist.

  “Get mine the cleanest, Buddy,” he said with a grin

  “What if instead, I taught you how to clean it yourself... again?”

  “You know, I would like that, I really would. I often say to myself, ‘Self, you don’t have anything to do right now. Why don’t you find Coy and have him teach you to clean your guns?’ But every time I set out to do that, it also happens to be a time when the lovely and talented Brianne is feeling frisky. And what do you think I prefer, Buddy? Having you show me how to clean my big gun or having Brianne mouth-clean my little gun?” He leaned his chair back on two legs and gave Coy a broad smile.

  “Proud of that one, aren’t you?”

  “You bet. That was some of my best work.”

  “What’s some of your best work, Honey?” Brianne asked as she walked up to their table. She put an elbow on each of his shoulders and bent down to kiss Clay on the cheek.

  Clay brought the chair down on all four legs. “Um, nothing, I was just telling Coy about how busy the bar got on the weekends, before the outbreak.”

  He went poker-faced and a vein popped out on his neck. Coy knew why. Brianne had chewed his ass out twice already for talking about their sex life. She told him if she caught him again, she’d use his nut sack as a coin purse.

  “You were a bartender?” Coy asked in an innocent voice.

  “You know I was a bartender.” Clay shot him a warning look. “I’ve talked about like a thousand times.”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess you have.”

  “You two are weird sometimes,” Brianne told them, frowning. She paused, then shrugged as if to forget it. “Honey, are you going to drive one of the trucks?” she asked Clay.

  “I don’t know. Will hasn’t said who’s driving what.”

  “Okay. Just make sure we’re together.” She gave him a smacking kiss and headed toward the back of the house.

  They watched her sashay down the hall. After she disappeared into a bedroom, Coy turned back to Clay.

  “Close one,” he said dryly.

  “You don’t know the half of it! She hates it when I talk about our sex life. She’ll have my balls if she catches me doing it again.” He grinned at Coy. “Speaking of balls, man, when she goes down on me she does this thing with my nuts where she...”

  “Shut the fuck up and get away from me, you pervert,” Coy laughed and pushed him playfully. Just then, Sally stood up, barking.

  “Fine. I’m not going to hang out where I’m not wanted.” Clay pointed at the retriever as he stood. “Your dog doesn’t like you pushing me,” he said.

  “My dog doesn’t like y
ou. Sally!” he called in a firm tone and gave her the non-verbal command for ‘hush’. She quit barking but continued to whine, and her hackles were up.

  Clay had walked a few feet from the table when a light thump sounded at the front door.

  “Fuckin’ Justin,” Clay called as he walked to the door. “Do you know how many times I’ve opened this door for him tonight? I keep telling him he doesn’t have to lock it behind him to run stuff out to the truck.”

  When Clay pulled the door open, the creeper that had thumped against it was leaning forward, pressing on the door with all its weight. It tumbled into Clay and before he or anyone else in the room could react or even say anything, it snarled and tore into his shoulder. Clay screamed the scream of the damned. Several people reached for their handguns and came up empty- Coy had them. Sally answered the creeper with a snarl of her own and dashed toward the pair. The creeper pulled its head back, its cheeks and chin dripping with blood. A flap of Clay’s skin stretched impossibly far before it tore loose from his shoulder blade. With Clay’s flesh still hanging from its mouth, it thrust its head forward, going for his throat. Clay dropped straight down to his knees as if he were dead weight. The creeper’s lips brushed across the top of his head as he dropped. It snarled a second time and bent toward Clay. Sally sprung up and over him, hitting the creeper like a great gold bullet. Clay fell to his back and covered his shoulder as Sally drove the creeper into a corner and tore out most of its throat.

  Jiri and Coy finally reacted; Jiri kicked the door shut and Coy called off Sally. He felt a little loopy, as if his mind was processing what he saw in slow motion. In the corner, the creeper had clambered to its feet. Jiri made an anguished cry and slashed his knife into its head. Brianne had returned from down the hall and stood stock still and white-faced with both hands covering her mouth.

  Clay laid in a ball on the floor. Coy knelt beside him, and Clay turned toward him with a sickly smile.