by Chris Lowry
He pulled into the empty driveway in front of a garage and cut off the rumbling engine.
"How long can we hide here?" Brian didn't bother to turn around.
"You want to make this your fort?"
He glanced up at the dark windows.
"Ten houses," he stated in a matter of fact tone of voice. "Not enough food to last a couple of weeks and that's if they're stocked. No fence, no defense. This isn't a good place."
Peg leaned her head on his shoulder.
"We'll keep looking."
"But not now," I said and opened the door. "Stay here. I'll check it out."
Somebody had to.
I could hear my hiking boots slapping on the concrete as I moved up the drive toward the front door and tried to step softer.
I remembered sitting on a hill in Arkansas, five miles from the Interstate on a cold January morning once. It was 28 degrees, but the skies were a brilliant blue with tiny cotton candy cloud puffs floating lazily across the horizon. The air was still, that time in the morning when folks are awake but haven't made it past their coffee to the outside world yet. It was in one of those moments, the still time, I could hear trucks roaring along the interstate. The dull thrum of diesel engines as they jockeyed for position with commuters juxtaposed against the absolute stillness of the neighborhood.
I marveled for a second at being able to hear so far, such a distance, and wondered how the first people to cross this hill that had been stripped bare of trees and cover and replanted with three bedroom two bath cracker box houses would have reacted to all of the noise. The noise that penetrated so far up into this subdivision, and if way back then they would have heard animals the way I hear trucks now.
The noise was all around us, not just the roar of the cars, but the whir of electronic life, the lines that carried energy to the houses, the sound of lights burning.
We were surrounded by bubbles of noise and even as I thought about how quiet it was watching those morning clouds, I had absolutely no idea what real silence was.
Now it was really quiet.
The tick of the hot engine behind me, the whisper of the wind as it rustled through the leaves but there were no man made noises. The power lines didn't hum, the meters didn't spin in a whirring sound. The small little cul de sac was silent.
Like a graveyard, I thought and shivered.
I knocked on the door, shave and a haircut raps. I skipped the two bits and tried the knob. The door was unlocked so I eased it open.
Something growled and slammed against it, knocked it closed and batted against it.
I swallowed the heart that jumped in my throat and backed away.
"What is it?"
Brian stood by the passenger door, pike held ready.
"There's one in there," I said. "You ready?"
He shifted the pike to his other hand and moved away from the car. Scott got out of the driver's side and joined him, two points of a triangle off the door as a third.
"Be careful," Peg said.
I went back to the door and tried to shove it open, but it wouldn't budge. The body on the other side was too strong or too much for me to move. All I did was get it pounding on the door even harder.
"It's too big to move," Harriet moved out of the car. "Hang on."
"Mom," Hannah tried to hold her back.
Harriet shrugged her off and jogged around to the back of the house. I could hear her pounding on the back door and the noise on the other side of the front disappeared.
She reappeared almost as soon as the noise left.
"Try it," she said.
I twisted the knob, opened the door and stepped to one side.
The stench of Z rolled through the open doorway. I banged the front door twice with my palm and waited.
We heard it lurch up the foyer, out of the door and straight at Scott. It was a woman, once middle aged perhaps, but gray skin and skeleton hands gave her a crone look now.
She raised up a hand to grab him, opened her mouth like she was going in for a kiss. Brian got her with the tip of his pike. It made a popping sound as it cracked through her thin skull and ripped out as her body fell.
Hannah leaned out of the car and dry heaved.
I waited on one side of the door just in case there might be more than one and slapped the door frame again.
Nothing happened.
After a few moments I peeked in. The house had been well kept in a former life, but the furniture was overturned, fluids and ick stained the carpets. The stench was on the verge of being overpowering and it was dark.
But it felt empty. The Z was the only one in there.
I pulled my gun all the same.
"I'm going to open the windows," I explained my plan. "Be ready if I run out being chased."
Brian and Scott nodded and stepped away from the dead Z on the ground between them.
I took another look at everyone still at the car. Hopefully if something followed me out they would be smart enough to jump in and lock the doors. I took a big gulp of air, pulled my tee shirt over my nose and stepped into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Third night together. In the past we would have been more paranoid, we would have asked more questions before spending so much time with strangers. I still didn't know Harriet's story or Anna's. Hannah hardly said a word since being rescued. The same for Julie and Scott. Except for the singing, all we knew about them was their place had been overrun and they were married. Hell they never said they were married to each for, so for all I know they were two people who found each other after all of the madness started and they lost their spouses.
That's what this kind of permanent crisis did to your mindset. So much stress, so many adrenaline dumps that it established a new normal. When you weren't running for your lives from end of the world congregations, marauders, soldiers turned bandits and the Z, you had to hunt for food and a safe place to sleep. When you finally found a quiet moment you didn't want to talk, you wanted to go to sleep so your systems could reset and recharge because who knew when the running would start again.
The house stank. I had opened all of the windows and doors to air it out, but the Z stench of rotting meat lingered in the walls and carpet. We lucked out and found food in the cabinet and when Scott found the next house over empty, we turned it into our camping spot for the night.
The food finds weren't much to brag about. Cans of soup. Cans of beans. Combined over a small fire we built in a fire pit dragged in from a deck.
"If we found a closet full of Ramin, we'd be set," Brian joked in the flickering light. "Lightweight, easy to carry, easy to make."
Scott slurped the last of the beans off of a plate and ladled some more out of the community pot.
"I won't say no to more of these."
Julie rubbed his back and shoulder, her empty bowl between them.
"He was a cowboy in another life."
"Get along little doggies," he pantomimed a lasso with his fork and returned to the meal.
"What next?" Brian asked me.
It was the same question he had asked the last three nights, as if my answer would change. But I knew he didn't mean my final destination. He meant what about tomorrow?
"We do this again," I said. "We're the new hunter-gatherers. We hunt for a place to stay and food to eat, gather around a fire and last the night."
He nodded.
"We devolved pretty quickly back to caveman status. That's why we need a fort."
I couldn't recall too much history about Forts, but I know a string of them were used to conquer the US during westward expansion. And in the movies the forts were always surrounded by Indians trying to burn them down.
"We need to get someplace safe, make it safer and start to rebuild society," Brian continued. "This can't be a way of life."
"That's what we tried," said Julie. "It didn't work."
"Someone stronger came and took what you had," Brian nodded. "That's why we need to make it safer. A
real fort that can withstand the Z and the elements of humanity that don't want to rebuild."
I thought about that for a moment. He had me thinking about Westerns, the wooden logs driven into the ground to create shaky structures ready to crisp up at the first burning arrow. But Brian was talking about medieval fortresses, a castle.
"You want a moat?"
"Exactly," his eyes shined. "Maybe not a true moat, but something close to it. Think about it. Strong walls that can't be breached by the Z, and can stand up to human elements."
"You're talking Max Max type stuff," said Scott.
"It's the only way we can stay safe. And then we can start to bring things back to normal."
"This is safe," Harriet chimed in. "I feel safe right now. Groups larger than this and they start to bring up old prejudices..."
She hiccupped a sob and bit it back. Hannah nestled close to her and held her mother tight.
"I miss her too," said the little girl.
"Until we find the safe place we're going to keep this up," I said. "The further we get away from populated places the better our chances."
"Not for this," argued Brian. "If we get away from the populated cities, houses will be further apart and it's going to be more difficult to find food, shelter. And we might find more of those people alive. They won't want to give up what they have."
"We can't have it both ways," I said. "There are no safe spots close to big cities. The suburbs are overrun, and it's where the bandits are going to be hunting for groups like this one."
Brian nodded.
"We don't have to decide now. Even if we keep moving at the pace we made today, it's still going to take us time to reach wherever it is that we're going."
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
There are things I wish I would have done back when the world was real. They mostly involve spending more time with my kids. I worried about that as they got older, especially the pre-teen ages. I never quite felt needed by them. My two oldest had a step-dad they had been around since they were toddlers, and considered that their family. The same with my youngest who was missing somewhere on the east coast. Her step-dad was the man my ex had an affair with, so he was in her life from the time she was two. And she too considered that her family.
Which left me being Dad.
Loved? Sure. Fun? I tried. But I know how much I missed.
Maybe that's why I was obsessing over reaching them.
As if the act of me saving them would make up for lost time. Or finding out they've gone Z would somehow make me feel guiltier, as if it was my fault.
I can't think about it too much.
If I do, I spiral off into the red and that makes me think about dumping these folks. Brian and Peg, snoring softly cuddled up together in the corner. Julie and Scott doing the same in the opposite side of the room. Harriet holding Hannah against one wall, watching me. Anna off by herself, not really with anyone. Shoulders slowly drifting up and down as she sleeps.
"What were you thinking about just now?" Harriet whispered.
I returned her stare.
"Why?"
"Your face looked dangerous."
"Don't I always?" I smirked. "It is just my face."
"Sometimes," she shrugged. "I've only known you a couple of days, but sometimes when I see you, it's like looking at someone different."
"Just my face," I said again in a lame voice.
She nodded, but didn't believe me. I could tell. She could tell that I knew that. But she let me have it. I'm not sure what she was in the past, maybe a counselor or maybe a cop. She didn't carry herself like a cop, but they're trained to read people and pick up on physical cues.
I guess it didn't matter what she had been in the past. Right now, she was a wife who lost her partner, a woman almost killed by right wing religious nuts probably due to her having a partner instead of a husband, and a mother trying everything in her power to protect her child.
I could respect that.
"I was thinking about my kids," I said.
"Plural."
"Three. Two are in Arkansas, which is where I'm going. One is lost somewhere."
"One of them?"
"I don't know. I don't think so."
"But you wouldn't know if she was?"
"No."
"That really...sucks," she said. She stroked long fingers over Hannah's hair and tucked the blanket closer under her chin.
"I couldn't imagine not knowing. That must be the hardest part."
I nodded.
"That explains your face," she said. "But it doesn't explain why you're still with us. Or why you stopped to help us?"
Cop or counselor. She was pretty good at zeroing in or I was much worse at poker than I thought.
"I stopped to help you because it was the right thing to do. I haven't done the right thing enough in my life so I needed to balance the scales."
"Weren't you scared?"
"Terrified," I lied.
"You're lying."
"Now?"
"Probably. But your face then, you didn't look scared."
"I was scared on the inside where it counts."
"You looked like you were enjoying it."
"Maybe I did enjoy saving you."
"No," she kept her eyes locked on mine. "Like you enjoyed killing the Reverend."
I could see her throat move as she gulped.
"Do I look like the kind of guy who enjoys killing?"
Her throat moved up and down again.
"I don't have anything to compare it to," she said.
But her eyes told me that's exactly what she thought. And I wondered if she was right. Or maybe I was afraid she was right.
Because I didn't give the preacher a chance to back off, back down or back away. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do. Decisive. Brook no complaint or stand for anyone else to try and stop me.
Measured in the flickering light of the campfire she had me second guessing my decision.
Was I the kind of man who could enjoy killing?
Or did enjoy it.
I turned my back to Hannah and resumed watching the world outside through a crack in the blankets. Nothing moved.
But I could feel her watching my back.
That's why her eyes were open.
Momma bear wasn't about to let her guard down if they were in a room with a psycho. That made me respect her even more.
There are lies we tell ourselves so that we keep moving forward. It was easy enough to understand why some people sucked on the barrel end of a gun when the Z apocalypse occurred. With the breakdown in society, it was going to take a long time to rebuild, and even if we did what kind of life would it be until we got there. A lot of people living today had no true idea of strife.
Maybe if it happened to the Great Depression generation, the last one to truly know deprivation and starvation, maybe they would have just toughed it out.
There were still pockets of grit out there, an indefinable quality that some people possess that makes them keep going despite the odds.
They would be the ones who hunkered down behind the walls and slowly rebuilt something from the ashes.
But I understood the ones who didn't.
Julie was one of them.
We woke that morning to warmed over beans and an easy feeling that came from a solid night's rest. Brian and I shared shifts watching through the windows but it was more of a listening post than anything. I saw a couple of wandering Z, he said the same but nothing else. No huge mob or reason to panic.
They didn't bother the house, the car or us.
The plan was to hop forward as far as the ride would take us, then switch to foot or find another auto to hop even more. From here it was just a winding road north running not quite parallel to the Interstate.
I remember my drives on I-75 felt more like a race with cars weaving in and out of the three lanes, dodging trucks and brake lights all the way up to Atlanta. It was a straight shot and easy to make at ninety.
>
We were stuck going west, then north because the old highway had been bisected and dissected so many times, it was no longer straight. Plus it put us in line with a bunch of little towns, which I liked because we could resupply in the homes or untouched businesses, but it also put us in danger of Z contact. Or people contact.
Scott drove us north, Julie settled next to him, one hand on his thigh while she helped him watch the road. He gripped the wheel with two hands and drove with practiced ease, while Brain rode shotgun and I held the backseat. It seemed easy enough to just assume the old posts when Scott opened the driver's door. His surefooted reflexes kept us rolling around twenty miles per hour, sometimes faster and we made good time until Milford.
Milford was one of those slow spots in the road where the local sheriff built a speed trap to catch fast drivers when they hit the city limits. We weren't in danger of speeding because of the sheriff's car across the road blocking the entrance to town. No fence leading to either side so we just drove around.
But it being there had me worried.
It meant two things. Either no one had made their way north on this road, in which case we were off the Res and entering uncharted territory. Or it had been placed there on purpose and we just violated some line in the sand.
“You feel that?” Brian asked from up front.
Scott eased off the gas and we slid down from twenty to ten.
I didn't answer. I didn't have to.
It felt like we were being watched.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Scott's head popped and sprayed the inside of the windshield. He slumped forward, jammed the accelerator with a spasm and the car sailed off the Main Street curb and through the front of a building. We didn't have time to hear the echo of the gunshot that killed him as walls, plaster and bricks rained down on the car.
Julie screamed in a low throaty wail that quickly devolved into the word No gasped over and over again.
I hit the door and spilled out, the Glock with one bullet aimed behind us. It took a minute for my wobbly legs to get steady, and I didn't notice the pinging sounds were bullets plowing into the trunk until Brian tackled me.
