by David Peters
“I dug a shallow grave with the tractor and buried the Hunter in it. Maybe that will keep them from coming around to look for it.”
Niccole put the tote in the back of the truck and closed the canopy.
“Let’s roll Cowboy”
Dylan started the truck and slowly drove down the driveway. It hit him hard that this was probably the last time he would ever drive down this road. They would never again have breakfast on the porch while watching the sun come up or talk over coffee while they watched the cattle turn out. Dylan was feeling like not only had they had turned a page in life, he felt like they just picked up a whole new book.
Chapter 3
They were on the road, with their old home and the life that went with it, fading behind them. Dylan kept the truck moving at the posted speed limit without thinking about it. This stretch took them closer to Pullman than they really wanted to be but for the sake of speed and better road they took the chance. The only other options either took them way north, or were gravel along the river, and those roads were notorious for their washouts, potholes and just poor all around maintenance. They knew Bill had warned them to stay away from population centers, but Pullman had never been called a large city.
Niccole had scanned the entire spectrum of radio stations on both FM and AM and didn’t pick up a single signal. Even the CB in Dylan’s truck was quiet.
As they crested the last major hill it gave them their first unobstructed look at Pullman. The rising smoke, the fires, all of it was clearly visible. It appeared as if nearly half the town was engulfed or smoldering from a previous fire. The mid-morning breeze was driving the fire and keeping the smoke low to the ground. That explained why they hadn’t seen the tell tale signs of the inferno.
“Dylan, I don’t like the looks of that at all” Niccole said pointing at the road ahead.
As they rounded the bend a road block came into view. Two Pullman patrol cars were parked nose to nose across the road. There an old model four door that had burned down to the rims on the oncoming shoulder, smoke was still rising from the passenger compartment where something lay smoldering. There were several more vehicles piled up behind the police blockade but the smoke obscured the details.
Dylan slowed to a stop about a hundred yards from the roadblock. Aside from the clouds of black smoke drifting across the road there was no movement. It was quiet.
“It looks like we can squeeze by on the right shoulder maybe. The real question is whether we want to try or not.” Dylan was trying to decide whether it was a good idea or not. The sides of the road dropped steeply down to tilled farm land. It was only about three feet down to the bottom but that was more than enough to roll the horse trailer or high center the pickup truck. Turning around wasn’t a real option on this narrow portion of the road.
Although it was only mid-morning the suns heat was already starting to build. The shimmers off of the road hid a lot of the finer details at this range. Dylan looked at Niccole. She shrugged and shook her head. She wasn’t sure what to do either. Dylan traveled this road hundreds if not thousands of times but on this day it looked like a road he had never been on.
“I can’t tell which way they were trying to block traffic, are we heading into, or out of the bad area?”
“Seeing as most of the city behind it is either burning or has been burnt I’m going with us currently being on the right side of this.”
They sat quietly watching for another minute when Dylan impulsively honked the trucks horn.
They sat watching the scene for another minute when Niccole whispered “One of them moved Dylan, there by the front of unmarked cruiser, far left tire.” She was pointing to the center of the blockade.
Something on all fours was moving cautiously on the other side of the police cruiser. Through the wisps of smoke Dylan watched as a black head slowly peered around the rear bumper of the car.
“That looks like another Hunter” Dylan said quietly.
As they watched, the thing crawled up onto the trunk of the car and stretched its head high into the air to try and catch a scent. The wind was in their favor and it was apparent in the creatures’ actions that it wasn’t sure what it was up against.
“It looks like the two at Ernest’s place but much more animal like. Its skin doesn’t look the same as those two though. Not sure why.” Dylan was both scared and amazed. “What are these things? That thing doesn’t even look human anymore.”
Dylan grabbed his rifle and stepped out of the truck. The Hunter turned toward the creak of the old truck door and sniffed at the air again. Not being able to catch a scent, it started toward the sound and stepped down off the car. It may have bad eyesight but it seemed that its hearing and smell more than made up for it.
“Dylan, how close are you going to let that thing get?”
“I want it away from the cars; I want to look at this one.” Dylan said as he drew a bead on the thing.
“Are you crazy? Kill the thing!” Niccole was getting concerned. “This isn’t the time to turn into Doctor Science!”
Dylan let the Hunter get about twenty five yards from the blockade and loosed a single round from the lever action. Before the body hit the ground, multiple things stood up behind the blockade. All of them were looking in Dylan’s direction.
“Oh crap.” Dylan looked on as seven or eight Corrupted slowly walked around the cars, it wasn’t for a lack of speed, it seemed like they were gauging the attacker. “What are those? They don’t look at all like the Hunter.” Dylan was talking as he took aim at the first target. “They look confused; I think I cut the head off when I smoked the Hunter.”
Dylan dispatched the first one with ease. As he watched, the remaining Corrupted, still slowly moving forward, appeared to be talking to one another, actually pausing as if discussing an important point. One of them was not agreeing. Dylan could not make anything out beyond gurgling grunts and high pitched sounds but they figured out a plan and it clearly involved running at him as fast as they could.
He sent the second thing to the pavement with a crash. They were closing extremely fast now and the math wasn’t working in his favor as they continued towards him. Dylan could see that far more of them than him would be standing when they reached him.
“Dylan!” Niccole screamed. She had the door of the truck open and was using the open window as a brace for her rifle. She was firing three round bursts, and scoring hit after hit, but the .223 round just wasn’t packing enough punch to drop them in one burst. Bodies were falling as the group was whittled down but not fast enough. It was clear to Dylan they were going to reach him. There were two left untouched when they slammed into Dylan.
Niccole screamed at him again “Dylan!” As she rounded the front of the truck she jammed another magazine into the rifle and dropped down to one knee.
Dylan felt like he had been hit by a bull. His head had bounced hard off the pavement when he went down and he wasn’t sure he was going to stay conscious. Lying on his back he used his rifle like a riot club to keep the jaws of the things away from him but he was losing the battle. The two of them were so fast and amazingly strong. They tore at him with their hands, shredding his shirt, tearing at his arms and chest. They were simply too fast to fend off that many blows, even one would be more than a match.
Supporting the weight of both was taking every ounce of strength he could muster. There was no hope of getting his pistol out for a close range shot. His strength was ebbing fast and he had mere seconds before he could no longer hold them. He didn’t see any way out of this when the head of the one on the right came apart. The Corrupted’s twitching corpse rolled off of Dylan and landed with a thump next to him.
Niccole fired another controlled burst from her rifle at the remaining Corrupted. The rounds struck home and the monster was catapulted off of Dylan landing lifelessly next to the other.
He rolled into a kneeling position and scanned the blockade with his rifle. Nothing else moved or made a sound. The only thing th
ey could hear aside from the ringing ears was the crackle of the small fire on one of the cars.
“Damn it Dylan! What will I do without you, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you ok? How do you feel? Why did you get out of the truck in the first place?” She was roughly turning him about as she did a quick examination of his wounds.
He was still staring at the bodies on the ground when she grabbed him roughly by the jaw and turned his face towards her “Listen to me! Are you ok? How do you feel?”
The adrenaline from the fight finally drained from his system and he dropped to his knees as a wave of fear and nausea washed over him. He noticed his hands were shaking uncontrollably. Taking a few deep breaths he was finally able to focus and met her eyes “Am I ok?”
“Look at yourself. Your arms and chest are shredded. You’re bleeding like mad. How do you feel?” She was terrified of hearing the same words she had heard from JJ and Bill.
Dylan looked down at his forearms and chest. His shirt was hanging in shreds and he had more cuts and scratches than he cared to count. Once he saw how torn up he was the pain from the wounds washed over him draining what little energy he still had remaining.
“Dylan, how do you feel, don’t do this to me damn it! JJ said it felt like his blood was on fire. Do you feel anything?” Niccole still stood a few feet away, “Tell me you don’t feel anything. Don’t put me in this position Dylan!” She was nearly screaming at him.
Dylan lay back on the pavement and closed his eyes Dylan did a quick self examination. His cuts burned, but it didn’t feel out of the ordinary. “I feel ok, kind of like I was thrown through sticker bushes. No blood burning though. Nothing feels any different. I think I am still me, Coco. Damn it, that was my favorite John Deer shirt too.”
Niccole finally lowered her gun and came to his aid “We need to get some anti-bacterial on those cuts. Something that smells that bad is bound to cause one hell of an infection. Part of me hopes it burns like hell. Get up, Cowboy; we can’t stay here any longer.”
As they walked towards the truck Dylan looked down at one of the dead things “These are different than the Hunters. They are completely different. Look how much they have changed! Their skin is mottled, more a blue than a black. Their hands are changing too, but not like the Hunters. They still have the stink though, man that is strong.”
Niccole was still holding her gun aimed at the blockade “Dylan, don’t you think it might be time to go? I don’t think it’s the best idea to hang out here. We just made a whole hell of a lot of noise. Let’s get in the truck and get a mile or two down the road and get you patched up.” Dylan continued to look at the dead Corrupted and poking at them with the end of his rifle.
Niccole picked up a small rock and threw it at Dylan’s back, “What is it going to take for you to leave?”
Dylan turned towards her and started walking towards the truck “Ok, ok. Let’s get out of here. You’re driving. If it moves, run over it. If it is still moving, shoot it.”
The two of them got back into the truck and started off around the roadblock. Dylan tried to get a good look at the Hunter as they drove slowly past the corpse, “they are different, that Hunter barely even looks human anymore. Makes me wonder what one of these things will look like when they have fully changed.”
Niccole picked the widest point between the two cars on the shoulder and drove through. It helped vent some of her anger as the front bumper of the truck crushed in the passenger door of the car. The old Lincoln must have been left in neutral without any brake on and made a satisfying crash as it slid off the embankment and rolled onto its roof. Once up to speed she punched Dylan in the arm.
Niccole was keeping a very angry finger pointed at Dylan “You ever pull a stunt like that again and I will shoot you myself, bite or not. Seriously, what are you going to find out? Are you going to save the world with some freakin’ discovery on a country highway? Are you taking this seriously? Damn it Dylan! What would I have left if you were gone? You very nearly put me in a position to have to put you down like some sort of sick animal!”
Dylan sighed “I’m sorry, Hon. I really am. I’m just trying to make sense of what is happening. This is like a corruption of the human race. It is hard for me to believe. I know you’re angry. I would be just as pissed if it was the other way around, probably even more so. I’m just trying to understand how a city that was quiet and content a few days ago is now a smoldering ruin and filled with, well, whatever the hell those things are. Tell you what. If I ever pull a crappy stunt like that again, I’ll do the dishes for a week.”
Niccole looked at him and tried hold onto her anger. She shook her angry finger at him but couldn’t find any words to back it up. She finally just scowled at him and he stuck out his lower lip like a child. They both broke into laughter, letting the anger flow away as the smoldering road block disappeared around a bend in the road behind them.
They drove for another ten minutes before Niccole stopped the truck in the middle of the road and broke out the first aid kit. She tended to the worst of his wounds by carefully cleaning out each claw mark. Most of the bleeding had stopped but she knew he would be feeling them for some time to come.
“Holy crap that burns! I swear that stuff is made out of acid,” Dylan was wincing as she applied the anti-bacterial.
“Good, I’m glad. Maybe it will remind you not to be such a dumb-ass in the future. Most of these don’t look too bad. A few on your arms are pretty deep. I wish we had some antibiotics or better yet a doctor.” Niccole wrapped a bandage around his left arm where he had fended off the worst of the attacks. She counted their blessings that it hadn’t been any worse.
Dylan was looking toward the burning college town as she finished up her work, “I can’t imagine what is going on in there. I guess I should say I don’t want to imagine it.”
Niccole closed the kit and looked out over the nearly destroyed town “Let’s get moving. I don’t like sitting still here and want to get away from that. I want to be back out in the middle of nowhere.”
Dylan got them back up to road speed and was heading south. The highway was far enough away from the city that they couldn’t see any details. They could see occasional movement but didn’t look to close to see if they were people or something else. They certainly didn’t see any kind of organized defense from anyone.
“I had planned to take this all the way south but that will dump us out into the middle of Lewiston without much of a way around the town. I’m thinking if Pullman is crap Lewiston won’t be a happy place either.” Dylan kept his eyes forward trying not to see the smoke from the dying town in the mirrors.
“I think we should break off and use as many back roads as possible. We will eventually drop down next to the Snake River. We can figure out things when we see how it looks down there,” thought Dylan out loud.
“Agreed, if we leave the highway here,” Niccole was pointing at a gravel road on the map that Dylan carried “We will eventually drop down to the river level here and we catch pavement here. Crossing at the dam should be fairly easy there. This road here runs up to the dam here and it’s a straight shot after that.”
Dylan slowed the truck and looked over at the map “Sounds good. Sure would be nice if we don’t have to shoot anything else.”
--1--
They traveled the primitive gravel road as it wound around farmland beautiful enough to take their minds off of the current situation. The Palouse hills had been their homes nearly their entire lives and they loved them as much today as they did when they were children. They joined up with a nicely paved road after about an hour, and would make the final decent down to the river level in another hour and half. The last few miles before reaching the river would be an elevation change of nearly twelve hundred feet.
Dylan drove along in silence trying not to look too closely at the homes they came upon. Niccole would give them a brief look but not try too hard to actually see anything. They knew the owners of most of the homestea
ds they passed, either as friends, clients of Dylan’s or more than likely, both. For the few of their friends that didn’t grow up in this environment, it was always hard to comprehend how you could consider someone twenty five miles away as a neighbor.
“Johnston’s are gone. Well at least their rig isn’t there” Dylan said with a hopeful edge to his voice. “Wonder if they got out. I know Jim works in Pullman but I don’t know if they have family elsewhere.”
They covered the miles between them and their destination slowly but surely. They hadn’t seen a single car yet although this was an out of the way road. Only people who lived in the area would be traveling out here. It was hard not to worry about friends whose homes they weren’t passing.
Niccole looked ahead “The Regan’s cars are all there and the front door is open. I don’t see anyone though.” It was hard not to think about the Williams’ house and if the same thing was happening across the countryside.
