by James Cook
“We stay alive.”
*****
Time passed.
Lola moved into a house down the street, saying she couldn’t stand to stay in the place where her husband died. Tyrel helped her pack and drove her things to our part of the lake, helped her move in, gave her some food, a rifle, and spare ammunition. He visited her every day, sneaking off to see her whenever he could get away. If his attentions bothered her, she didn’t complain to any of us about it.
Dad and Blake mapped out all the surrounding stores and housing developments. We spent most of our time scouting them, taking anything useful, and secreting it in various caches spread out around Canyon Lake. Pickings were sparse around the lake itself, but better in nearby areas the fire had missed. We gathered as much food and other supplies as we could, cleaned out Dale’s garage, and packed it to the ceiling with non-perishables. The cabin had a den outfitted with old chairs and sofas and a massive coffee table meant to be a sitting room, a place of conversation, no TV. We tossed the furniture in the yard and filled the room with toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, soap, toothpaste, laundry detergent, and the entire contents of an abandoned drug store. The large supply of antibiotics, painkillers, and various other medicines seemed to grant everyone a measure of ease.
Everyone but me, that is.
Because Mike was Mike, and there was no stopping him from being Mike, he relieved every house we found of their finest booze. Nobody complained.
We saw Lance Morton a few times and gave him some antibiotics and pain medicine. He was polite, but kept his distance. A loner, that one. Dad gave him a flare, same as the other survivors around the lake, and since he lived so close, a radio as well.
“Stop by in the mornings and we’ll give you fresh batteries.” Dad told him.
“Where you getting the juice?” Lance asked.
“Solar panels on the cabin, on the south side, facing the back yard.”
“Oh. Never seen ‘em.”
“You run into any trouble,” Dad said, “or see any coming down the road, give us a heads up. We’ll do the same for you.”
“Fair enough.”
Against my wishes, Dad and Mike insisted Sophia and I work together, ostensibly to thaw the ice between us. It was a mute partnership that first week, both of us throwing ourselves into work to avoid dwelling on our situation.
It went well for a while. Sophia turned out to be a more perceptive creature than I had given her credit for. She left me alone for the most part, limiting the conversation to no more than what was necessary. The hostility she had displayed when we fled Houston largely dried up, replaced by a somber, unassuming acceptance. We rode together in silence, worked mostly in silence, and when we ate meals together away from the cabin, she didn’t try to engage me in conversation. But I caught her watching me sometimes when she thought I couldn’t see. If I had to pin a label on what I saw on her face, I would call it curiosity.
Outwardly, I suppose I put up a convincing enough front everyone thought I was holding it together. But the truth was, between helping out with the night watch rotation, inventorying and organizing supplies, doing everyone’s scut work because they were too busy or too lazy to do it themselves, and trying to play peacekeeper between my father and stepmother as the tension between them intensified, I felt stretched to my limit.
So two weeks after arriving at Canyon Lake, when Dad and the other men announced they wanted me to stay behind with Lauren and Sophia while they headed to the outskirts of San Antonio, I was less than pleased.
“We should have seen other refugees by now,” Dad said, interrupting my protests mid-sentence. “It’s not like Canyon Lake wasn’t popular. Everybody and their brother knew about this place. Whatever is keeping them away, it’s something we need to know about.”
“Not to mention we’re low on gasoline and diesel,” Blake added.
Dad nodded his way. “That too. Caleb, I need you to look after the girls while we’re gone. Keep your eyes peeled for strangers. Lance Morton knows where we’re going. He’s got a radio with a fresh battery. You run into any trouble, call him.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” I asked.
“He seems like a solid guy. If we were going to have any trouble out of him, I think it would have happened already. That said, don’t trust him any more than you have to.”
“I won’t. Listen, are you sure about this, Dad? Maybe I should go with you. Maybe leave one of the other guys behind.”
He shook his head. “Another time, when I’m a little surer of things. God only knows what we’re going to find out there.” He gestured to my three oldest and best friends. “You’ve known these guys most of your life. You think you know what they’re capable of, but you don’t know the half of it. Something like this, I need the best I can get. You’re well trained, son, but you don’t have their experience. So they go and you stay and that’s the end of it. Understood?”
I wanted to argue, but he had that tone of voice which brooked no dissent. I knew better than to push, so I said, “Be careful out there, old man.”
He smiled then, and I realized I had not seen him smile since we arrived at the cabin. “Old man my ass. I’ll run circles around you, kid.”
“On a fast horse, maybe.”
He punched me in the arm. “Keep your head on a swivel. We’ll be back soon.”
They rolled away in the Humvees, a plume of dust marking their trail. I started to think about Perry Torrance, and how many more infected just like him were out there, and the population of San Antonio, and the fires we had all nervously watched to the south, the orange glow in the night sky, the crack of distant gunfire like a miles long string of ladyfingers, and knew I had to do something to clear my head or I would jump in Blake’s Jeep and follow that plume at a good safe distance until I caught up to them too far away to send me back.
So I suited up in my tactical gear, cleaned my carbine and pistol, and went on patrol around the neighborhood. Every ten minutes my watch beeped and I called the cabin to make sure everything was okay. Lauren answered each time with a simple, “We’re good.”
If anything had been wrong, or if she were under duress, the answer would have been “A-okay.” That was the signal to hurry my ass home and be prepared to do violence.
I finished my sweep, exchanged a few polite words with Lance, and was on my way home when a crack and a pop caught my attention.
“The hell …”
It didn’t sound like a gunshot. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw a bright red flare light up the sky to the north, right over Bob and Maureen’s house.
I broke into a sprint.
Lauren and Sophia were standing outside when I arrived. “Lauren, get your gun,” I said as I went into the kitchen looking for the keys to Blake’s Jeep. “You too Sophia.”
“What’s going on?” Lauren asked. “Was that Bob and Maureen?”
“I think so. I’m gonna go check it out.”
Sophia emerged from her bedroom clutching an M-4. Her father had spent an hour each day over the last week teaching her how to use it. She had never shown much interest in firearms until now, but was quickly gaining proficiency. “Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.
I was so surprised by the question I couldn’t answer for a moment. “Uh … no, that’s all right. Stay here with Lauren. Lock the doors, stay away from the windows, and don’t open the door for anyone but me. If someone starts poking around, call me on the radio. If someone tries to break in, shoot them.”
Sophia nodded, eyes hardening. “All right.”
“Wait,” Lauren broke in, “you can’t go alone, Caleb.”
“I don’t plan to. I’ll stop by Lance’s place, see if he can help.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
I snatched up a first aid kit, a canteen of water, and started for the door. “I’ll improvise.”
TWENTY
Evidently, Lance had seen the flare as well. He stood in his yard,
armed and outfitted with a pistol, rifle, and MOLLE vest, waiting.
As he approached, I got a look at his sidearm. It rode in a quick draw holster, and had been so thoroughly customized I could not figure out what model it was other than it looked like a nine-millimeter. The barrel was long, fitted with a muzzle brake, the trigger and hammer were chrome whereas the rest of the gun was black, and had a reflex sight perched atop a rail. The only place I had ever seen weapons like that were at shooting competitions, the kind where people competed for serious money and wore polyester t-shirts with sponsors’ trademarks on them.
He saw me coming and approached. I leaned over to the Jeep’s open window and said, “I’m gonna go check on Bob and Maureen.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I opened the door and he climbed in. Neither of us spoke as I sped north around the perimeter of the lake, only slowing down when the Kennedys’ house rose into view.
“Take a left at this alley,” Lance said. “We’ll circle the block and approach from the back.”
“Sounds good.” I turned onto the street he indicated, then took another right a couple of blocks later. When we were four houses down from Bob and Maureen’s place, Lance pointed at a wide expanse of yard between two houses. “Stop here.”
I did, approving of the location. We were around a bend in the street, the top of the Kennedys’ house just visible over their neighbors’ roofs. From where we were, no one in the immediate vicinity of the Kennedys’ property could spot us, allowing us to move in unseen.
After I parked, Lance hopped out and beckoned me after him. “I’ll take point,” he said. “Follow my lead.”
Lance knew the neighborhood better than I did, so I figured it best to defer to his wisdom. We leap-frogged from house to house, one of us covering the other as he moved, until we stood in the back yard of the home immediately behind the Kennedys’ place. I kept my back close to the wall as Lance crept to the corner and looked around.
“Shit,” he whispered.
“What?”
He rounded on me, a finger pressed over his lips. Quiet, he mouthed, then beckoned me forward. He stepped behind me and pointed ahead. I raised my rifle and pied out the corner, exposing as little of my profile as I could. The Kennedys’ back yard was empty, but past the front corner on the north side I saw a knot of about ten people walking slowly toward the front porch. There was a brief moment where I felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect of contacting other survivors.
Then I noticed how they moved.
It reminded me of Perry Torrance: the shuffling, lumbering gait, the stiff posture, the jerky, birdlike movements of the head, the tattered clothes, the mottled gray skin, the white-glazed eyes. From the front of the house, I heard moaning, beginning with just one, then spreading to the others like a contagion. In seconds, dozens of voices rose like a hellish chorus, pounding at my eardrums. I stood on shaky legs, the coldness in my stomach making me feel like I was falling down a mineshaft. Nervously, I turned to Lance.
Infected, I mouthed.
He leaned close. “Are you sure?”
“Gotta be,” I whispered. “They’re just like that Torrance guy. My Dad told you about him, right?”
He nodded. “Wasn’t sure if I believed him.”
“Believe it. They’re real.”
He stared at the shamblers, indecisive. “What do you think we should do?”
It was the first time in my life I can remember someone older than me asking for my advice. “If the Kennedys are in trouble, we have to help them.”
Lance nodded. “How do you want to do it?”
I thought for a moment, weighing what I knew against how I had been trained. “Those things are not like normal people. They won’t be armed, so we don’t have to worry about weapons. But they’re vicious, Lance. And they’re strong as hell. If one gets ahold of you, it’ll kill you. The only way to kill them is to destroy the brain, so don’t waste bullets shooting center of mass. Go for headshots.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” I wasn’t, but it was all I had to go on at the moment. If it didn’t work, we could always retreat and come up with something else.
I checked my rifle: round in the chamber, safety off, covers flipped up on the optics. Same deal for my pistol, minus the optics. Lance followed suit.
“You ready?” I asked.
He nodded. “Two-man skirmish line. You take left, I’ll take right.”
“All right. On three.” I counted down, and then we moved.
We got halfway to the Kennedys’ yard before the infected saw us. There were six of them in my line of sight around the corner of the house. I swung a few feet to the left to give Lance a better shot. He made the adjustment without even glancing in my direction.
The walking corpses looked confused for a moment. They swung their heads toward the house, then toward us, then toward the house again in unison. Under other circumstances, it might have been comical. It quickly became un-funny when they focused their ravenous gazes on the two of us and belted out ragged, throat-rending screams.
I stopped, peered through the Aimpoint scope, and centered the glowing red dot on the nose of a smallish round man who had been in his fifties or sixties when he died. Most of the meat on his chest, left arm, and upper left thigh had been eaten away, causing him to shuffle along with a limp. I let out half a breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger. The carbine bucked a little—an M-4 does not have very much recoil—and a fine red mist erupted from the back of the dead man’s head.
He stiffened, shuddered in place for a few seconds, then collapsed. Well, at least I know that works.
Lance spared me a glance, then sighted down his rifle and fired a double-tap at a walking dead woman behind the man I had just shot. Rather than shudder first, she simply went limp and slumped to the ground.
Lance and I lowered our guns and looked at each other. “It worked,” he said, surprise in his voice.
“Told you so.” I returned my attention to the dead.
We advanced slowly, picking our shots. I missed a couple of times, but scored kills on the follow up. Although we dropped them quickly, we soon found ourselves backing up as more and more undead packed the space between the Kennedys’ house and the house to our left. When it was clear we couldn’t kill them fast enough to keep moving forward, we turned tail and ran about twenty yards.
It was a good thing we did because the undead on the other side of the house had circled the screened-in porch and almost had us surrounded. If I had been on my own, I’m not sure if I would have made it out of there alive. But when Lance saw the situation we were in, he slung his carbine, drew his pistol, walked within ten feet of the undead, and fired eight rounds quicker than you can count it out loud.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
Eight undead fell, newly-carved tunnels in their skulls. For a second, all I could do was stare.
“Holy shit,” I said.
Lance smiled, holstered his pistol, and waved a hand at the opening he created. “Shall we?”
We ran until we had established sufficient breathing room. “Hey,” I said, tapping Lance on the shoulder. “You see that?”
I pointed up the street and two houses over. There was a two-story colonial with a second floor deck accessed by an outdoor stairway. “Might be easier if we take the high ground.”
“Good thinking,” Lance said, and started toward the house at a jog. Once there, we clambered up the stairs and took a moment to assess the situation.
There were far more undead than I originally thought. We had killed more than twenty of them, but three times that many slowly converged on our position, watching us as they came, outstretched hands curled into grasping claws, moans filling the air.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. Lance nodded grimly. After taking a moment to kick away the balcony’s flimsy wooden rail, we assumed seated firing positions and started shooting.
It was harder than anticipated. A
ll my life, I had trained to shoot center of mass; headshots were something I did for fun, just to show off. Aside from the men who attacked Lauren, I had only ever shot at paper targets, never at ambulatory human bodies. If my optics had had magnification, it would have been easier. But they didn’t, so I had to make due by firing more slowly than I normally would have. Lance seemed to be having a similar difficulty.
I quickly realized the undead moved faster than their shuffling steps let on. Their gait was slow, but constant, never stopping or slowing down. It reminded me of something Tyrel had once told me about a Navy cruiser he spent a few weeks on. The average cruising speed of the ship, depending on conditions, was usually around fifteen knots, or just over 17 MPH. Which may not seem very fast, especially considering the vast distances ships have to cross, but they travel at that speed twenty-four hours a day. As a result, they can cover a lot of miles in a relatively short amount of time. The effect was the same with the undead.
I had reloaded once and was ten rounds into my next magazine when the horde, now reduced by half, reached the bottom of the stairwell and began climbing toward the balcony.
“This isn’t good,” Lance said, getting to his feet. The undead not on the stairs were now beneath the overhang where we could not get a shot at them.
“They’ll bottlenose on the steps,” I said. “Ever read about the battle of Thermopylae?”
Lance used the stock of his rifle to bust out the window of the door leading inside the house, then unlocked it. “If it looks like we’re going to be overrun, we’ll head through the house, throw whatever we can in front of the door, and try to escape on the ground level.”
I gave a single nod, then drew my pistol and knelt in front of the stairs. Lance took position beside me. “I’ll kneecap a few of them,” I said. “Try to slow them down. You take them out when they go down; I have a feeling they’ll try to crawl their way up.”
“Okay.”
We let them get halfway up the steps so they were at point blank range before we started firing. Lance let off four quick shots that toppled an equal number of undead down the stairs. For a few seconds, the tumbling bodies slowed the corpses behind them, but they quickly recovered and began marching upward again. I took careful aim and destroyed the kneecaps of four more, pitching them over face first on the steps. Lance’s pistol cracked four more times, and they went still.
