The Zombie Plagues (Book 1)

by Sweet, Dell

  “I think we all need each other,” Johnny answered, “Ed will come around.”

  Once everyone had eaten they packed up the Jeeps; unlocked the garage doors, and backed out into the already hot morning air.

  Johnny left the Jeep and motioned the others out of the Jeeps onto the pavement. The quiet of early morning descended.

  “We don't know anything at all about what's next. If, after a night to sleep on it you have changed your mind, it's no sin... No one will blame you if you want to go back... Or even somewhere else.” He waited, but no one spoke. No nervous clearing of throats, no uneasy laughter. Nothing. “Okay,” he scrubbed at his face and the beard that was growing across his chin. Marveling at how it could be there at all. “I'd say windows down... Rifles loaded and safeties off... Watch... Follow my lead. If I back up and try to get out of there you follow me. Don't turn around, just keep it floored in reverse... Let's just be smart. Maybe those guys were nothing but smoke.” The silence held.

  “Smoke or not we can't run away,” Alan said. He straightened and smoothed his shirt front.

  Johnny nodded, looked around once more and then climbed back into the jeep.

  They pulled off the service stations paved area; rolled slowly through the intersection and headed into the city of Rochester.

  TEN

  Johnny

  I took a trip around the upstairs. The boards are all tight, but the night is dragging on and the dead are still too quiet: That bothers me a great deal. I don't know what they are up to. I will be glad when morning arrives, although to be honest it doesn't seem to stop them much anymore. They are getting used to it, if they ever weren't. Maybe it is just my own mind that is more comforted by the daylight...

  Had me a little drink. Rummaging around upstairs and found the access panel to the attic. Just a square in the ceiling, but you pull the handle and a set of stairs drop down. No floor up there, just tons of that blown-in insulation, and boxes and crates packed in there sort of haphazardly. I found a case of brandy in between the ceiling joists, dusty, but when did that ever matter when it came to booze. I was afraid it might be gone over. I'm not even sure that is possible. In any case it doesn't taste gone over. It tastes fine. Smooth. It will make the rest of this night easier... I hope it will anyway.

  I was telling you about the City, Rochester. I had misgivings and I ignored them. I shouldn't have, but of course after the fact we all see twenty-twenty, as we had gotten closer to Rochester we had found others. They had come out of hiding. Some to say hello, some to warn us, others to join with us. By the time we rolled down East Avenue into the city we had a few more vehicles and more than a dozen more people traveling with us.

  The next day...

  A Highway

  Johnny

  Johnny came awake with sunlight streaming in through the windshield of the small car he was in. He looked around at the road. Stalled cars for as far as he could see in any direction he was somewhere outside of Rochester, but where, he wondered. He thought back to Rochester.

  The drive into the city in the early morning had seemed uneventful right up until the attack had come. Afterward he had berated himself, cursed himself for not taking the events of the night before more seriously, but he knew that the truth was that none of them had. None of them had, and now he was the only one left. The only one left, and he was alone because of that decision.

  They had just passed a large mansion, or what had once been a large mansion on East Avenue: Nearly into downtown when the attack had come. The last vehicle, Ed... Terry, Gina? He couldn't remember for sure, but it didn't matter, they were only the first to go. The truck had blown up behind them. One second it was morning silent, and the next a roaring fireball had erupted from the roadway. The truck had lifted into the air engulfed with flame, and had come back down a split second later a twisted, shattered wreck. The roof ripped open crudely as if a giant can opener had done the job: Glass gone, body twisted. Blackened shapes still moving clearly seen through the flames.

  They had all panicked. Johnny had hit the brakes, somehow convinced they had driven over something in the road. Landmines. The word leapt into his mind and kept repeating. The Jeep behind them had rammed into them, Scotty, Lilly, Jan, and that had distracted him further. As he had lifted his eyes he had seen the men squatting beside the once elegant mansion. A rocket launcher on one man's shoulder, and he had known the truth.

  His foot had seemed to leap forward of its own accord and slam into the gas pedal, but it was too late. His eyes swiveled back and he saw the rocket leap from the launcher. A second later a black curtain had descended.

  He had come to hours later. The vehicles' nothing but twisted husks, still burning in the black night. He could feel the heat from the fires. He had lain for what seemed like a long time trying to orient himself, make sense of what he last remembered, and what he now saw. Time did nothing to sort it out. It still made no sense some time later when he had first tried to sit up. Pain had flared everywhere and the black curtain had descended once more.

  The second time he awakened the fires had been out. Heat still came from the blackened shells, but the fires were dead. The moon was high in the sky, bloated, bright silver.

  He had moved slower, and while it had been close he had managed to fight past the first pain when he had moved.

  His left leg was bad. Not broken, but cut badly, maybe sprung, after all he had lain with it twisted to one side for what he assumed was a very long time. He used part of his shirt to wrap his leg as he let his head clear.

  The heat from the fires was still heavy, rolling across the pavement and baking into him. Here and there flames did flicker in some other close by vehicles. Probably, he thought, the only reason the dead hadn't gotten to him. They were still afraid of fire, even if they were losing their fear of nearly everything else.

  His head was worse. Pain flared rapidly inside every time he tried to move too fast. It felt like liquid sloshing around inside his head, his brain shifting with it, slamming into the bone cage of his skull, and he wondered if it were true, or just something his mind provided in explanation of the pain. He bent and retched until his stomach simply clenched. There was nothing left to void. As he sat the pain eased enough for him to stand. Standing helped to ease it even more and he began to search.

  What was left was hard to understand at first. Pieces. An arm here, a leg there, bones blackened in the wreckage. A pool of blood where his head had lain. No other blood anywhere, and more than enough pieces and bones to make him sick once more.

  Vomiting had pulled the pain back full force and he had found himself exiting into the black curtain once again. It was dawn when he had found his way back and a sense of urgency to be moving had set in.

  His head was better, but his leg seemed worse. He had set out limping, staggering, but had managed a fairly reasonable walk after a few hundred feet. A shattered convenience store a few blocks down provided bottled sports drinks he rounded up from the aisles. He drank two straight down and his head began to clear. He watched the sun as it began to rise, the street lights winked out: Taking more bottles with him he began to walk back out of the city. Keeping to the back yards and alleyways of homes and businesses.

  He looked at the cracked plastic dashboard of the little car now as he pulled his mind back. He had no idea how long he had walked. He had no idea where he was right now. The car was not familiar, but he could recall the morning coming on and a panic as he searched for a place to hide away the day. He could feel heat baking into his hand from his leg when he rested his hand against it, and a low grade buzzing had seemed to fill his head, distracting. The little car had probably looked perfect in the early morning light. The windows thickly dusted, hard to see inside of. Protection from the dead and the living.

  He looked down at the car’s interior. Key's hung from the switch. He didn't have a lot of hope, but he twisted the key and the starter began to turn over: Slow, barely there, but then it picked up speed in a rush and th
e car stuttered to life, coughed, nearly quit, and then smoothed out and began to warm up.

  The muffler was loud, one side of the windshield was a spider webbed mess, but the gas gauge stood at three quarters of a tank.

  He rolled his window down to rid it of most of the dust. A second later he had rolled down the passenger side front window to clear it too. A short windshield session had found no fluid, but the dust had mostly been pushed aside by the rubber blades. Johnny shifted the car into first and pulled from the side of the road bumping over the cracked and tilted pavement as he went.

  The driving was slow going, but an hour later he reached the outskirts of the city of Oswego. Had he really walked so far in the last days and nights? How much time had slipped by him, he wondered, but he had no answers. For the last twenty minutes he had been following deep tire tracks that cut around the stalled traffic, and the closer he had gotten to the city the more he had found himself having to slow down and cut around the stalled traffic following the muddy tracks.

  He had no idea who had made the tracks, and it made him more than a little concerned. He wound slowly through the stalled traffic, going around where he had to, and he was almost into the downtown section when the car became hopelessly mired as he tried to get around several vehicles blocking the road. It had been close before, but the front wheel drive had pulled the small car through despite the churned up ground. This time it was buried up to the undercarriage, and there was no hope of getting the little car out.

  Johnny shut it off, and leaving the keys in the switch where he had found them, walked off into the downtown district.

  When he came to the first bridge, he scrambled over the cars, pulling his damaged leg behind him when it refused to flex or bear his weight, and walked to the second bridge. He saw the same scene that he had seen a few days before: The bridge collapsed into the river. A large steel service walk that had run beside the bridge, however, was still intact, and he carefully walked across it to the other side.

  He walked slowly down the crowded roadway and eventually out of the downtown section. It had been eerie to say the least.

  When he reached the other side of the city, he stopped at a used car lot by the side of the road. An older Chevy pickup sat among the line of cars and trucks that fronted the road, and Johnny walked over to examine it.

  The four wheel drive truck looked to have been used fairly well. It was dented and rusty, but Johnny liked the look of it. He walked around it and looked it over. The tires appeared to be in good shape, wider than most, as well as being tall and aggressively tread. He looked in the corner of the windshield, noted the stock number, and headed in the direction of a small trailer at the back of the gravel lot. The trailer served as an office, and he knew that if the keys were to be found, that was where he would find them.

  He hoped the keys would be there and that the truck would start. If not, he supposed, he could cross the street to a new car lot that he had noticed. He would prefer the old Chevy, but if there was no choice he would cross the street and take one of the shiny new pickups that sat on the lot.

  He supposed he would even be better off taking one of the newer vehicles, but he didn't want to. Even the old Chevy was newer than any truck he had ever owned, and all the newer trucks he had seen, seemed more like cars than real trucks. Even the Jeeps had been more luxury vehicle than an actual off road vehicle. The old Chevy looked like it had already seen its share of rough roads and would have no problem with them.

  He had marveled while walking through the downtown district at how many things had changed in just a few days. The grass was growing. The temperatures were higher again, vegetation seemed to be making a fast grab at every inch of real estate. Like it had only been waiting all these years to take back its own.

  He found the keys on a small board in the cluttered office, and headed back to the old Chevy. He had to pump it several times before it would start, but it had eventually caught and started with a large cloud of black smoke pouring out of the rusty tail-pipe when it did. Almost flooded it, he thought. The smoke cleared as the truck warmed up, and he sat and waited for the idle to fall off before he pulled out onto the roadway once more and headed north out of the city of Oswego.

  October 16th

  West of Mexico NY: Johnny

  Things had gone bad fast. There had been two significant earthquakes, one following on the heels of the other. The first time he had nearly wrecked the truck, the second one came as he was pulled to the side of the road trying to ease the pain that had come back full tilt in his head. The truck leapt forward, and then darted sideways; Johnny managed to get his hand out to stop his head from smashing into the dashboard, but only barely. The truck had finally stopped rocking and the world came back into focus. He pulled the truck back onto the roadway, careful of all the new cracks and devastation, and found his way to a small roadside strip mall a few miles farther down.

  The lot was deserted. Half the store at the opposite end was collapsed. A small mini mart, a drug store and a pawn shop were still standing; untouched. He had made his way into the small store, found the drug aisle and was surprised to see it intact. The one back in Rochester had been emptied of drugs.

  The leg was swollen against the pants material; the rags he had wrapped around it had stopped the blood flow, but had done nothing for infection. He peeled the rags away now, taking a good part of his skin with it, and looked the wound over.

  Something had punched a deep hole into his leg. The area that had pulled away was oozing puss now, the skin around it red and swollen. He had helped himself to a bottle of peroxide, some antibiotic cream, iodine and some bandage. He scrounged up a fast meal while he worked up the nerve to work on the leg. He probably wouldn't feel like eating afterwards.

  He had no fever, and he counted that as a good thing, but the leg still felt hot to the touch and that worried him. He finished some energy bars and three bottles of water before he limped off to find what he still needed. Two aisles over he found a small knitting needle. The point was sharp. It was wide enough to allow him to push it in to get to the abscess he was sure was there. He carried it back to the aisle then decided maybe something to help with the pain might help. He searched, but there was nothing stronger than beer in the now warm coolers, and that was covered with a gray moss he didn't want to chance touching. The drug store nearby probably had some pain pills he could take, but he wouldn't know how much would be safe. It probably wasn't a good idea to be out of it in this world any longer. Maybe later, he decided. He would have to visit to get antibiotics anyway. Reluctantly he limped back to the aisle and sat with his back against the shelving as he arranged the items he needed around him.

  The peroxide came first. He broke the seal and poured half the bottle over the wound. There was some pain, but the bubbling and foam that appeared told him what he had already guessed, the infection was bad.

  He spun the top off the iodine, spilled a little into the dimple of the puncture wound and then inserted the knitting needle into the bottle and left it to soak in the iodine. He wasn't positive if it could disinfect it, but he was reasonably sure it could. The pain was intense when the iodine hit the raw wound, but it abated after a few moments. He picked up the needle, but just touching the wound with it sent shock waves of pain up his leg.

  He stopped, stretched backwards against the shelving, bracing himself firmly. His breathing was hard and fast, tears had squirted from his eyes and stained his dirty cheeks as they rolled away to his jaw line. Sweat had instantly broke out on his brow. He couldn't stop at a mere touch. He had to shove the needle down far enough to be sure he punctured the abscess so it could drain. He steeled himself, took a deep breath, centered the needle over the dimple and drove it down into his leg before he could think anymore about it. The pain came fast, but his mind shut down almost as quickly.

  He had awakened hours later, the sunlight lower in the front windows. The leg was draining freely, fresh blood now, but he could see that the poison
had also drained. His head felt better, his stomach more settled. He took his time and grimaced only slightly as he poured first the remaining peroxide into the wound, and then the balance of the iodine. Both hurt, but the pain was nothing like it had been. Antibiotic cream and some bandage and he was finished. He sat, staring down at his hands. Dirt, blood, who knew what else. He made his feet and limped off into the store looking for supplies for the road. A few moments later he was loading them into the passenger side of the truck. A quick search through the drug store turned up antibiotics, an ace bandage that might help, and some vitamins. He didn't know if the vitamins could help, but he was sure they couldn't hurt. A few minutes later he had bent the pawnshop's steel-mesh protective door open and smashed out the front door glass with a jack handle from the truck. The exercise was making his leg hurt, but the skies were turning dark and he wanted to hurry before nightfall came.

  The pawn shop was a nightmare inside. Every single cabinet was locked. Even so he found a gun cabinet, managed to pry it open, and left with two semi automatic nine mm pistols and a dozen boxes of ammunition. He got to the truck, debated on the ammunition, and went back to see if he could find more. The problem was he didn't know where to look. He found nothing, but he did liberate a shotgun and a whole case of deer slugs for it. He made his way back to the truck tired out, sweating, his leg aching deep inside. The bandage was soaked through with blood so he changed it as he sat in the truck and gathered his strength.

  The leg of the jeans he had been wearing were a tattered wreck. Blood and gore streaked the leg to his boot top. The once white sock stained deep red and black in places. He needed clothes. His shirt stank, and was stuck to him with sweat. His boots, he hadn't really noticed until he had just taken a hard look at them, were melted in places. The leather looked sandblasted and ratty. He took two of the pills, washed it down with water. Next big town, he told himself, he would get clothes.