Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter

by Mongelli, Arthur

  He started to reach for Luna, to give her a big hug, but noticed his gore-covered hands and quickly withdrew them.

  “You okay?” Laura asked with genuine concern, her smile disappeared.

  “Yeah, ran into a couple of the slow ones. No problems…yet,” he added, remembering the heavy smoke ahead.

  He tapped on Will’s good foot and called out to him.

  “Can you see Bjorn and Jen?”

  “Yeah, they are on their way back with a wheelchair,” he called down.

  Tim clapped his hands in excitement.

  “Alright!” he cheered excitedly. “When do we leave?”

  The tailgate swung open and Bjorn hurled the folded up wheelchair inside as Jen jumped in the backseat, sliding past Sophie and back onto the hump. Will slid painfully back down from the turret, pulling the hatch shut behind him. Bjorn hopped in, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “Two-for-two!” Tim called out, holding his hand out and receiving a high-five from Bjorn.

  “You found a car?” Bjorn asked, his voice tinged with a bit of excitement.

  “Yup, a work van.”

  “Alright! We leaving now?”

  “Was gonna ask you the same thing.”

  “Let’s transfer all our gear at least and see what time it is,” Bjorn said, the slight hint of excitement leaving his voice, returning to its somber tone.

  An hour later, after three trips, they were all situated in the work van. Will set about fixing sandwiches while Tim and Bjorn siphoned gas from the surrounding vehicles. They dumped the last few drops of diesel onto the roadway and worked to refill the gas cans with unleaded. By the time they were done scavenging, the sun was low on the horizon.

  “Should we split up into both vehicles and sleep comfortably?” Jen asked hopefully.

  She looked at Will, wanting the two of them to go to sleep together, like they did the few days they were holed up in the sporting goods store in Ramsey. She wasn’t over her ex by a longshot, but she really wanted to be held by someone. After the frantic run of the previous day, the terror had scarred her and she needed some comfort. Her feelings towards Will continued to grow, but he hadn’t so much as cast her a glance since she had rebuffed him when he kissed her. She hoped that he was still interested, even if she weren’t quite ready to move on. Bjorn’s voice interrupted her train of thought.

  “We stay together. We need each other to survive, if the undead come at night, the fast ones…”

  “What do you think the smoke up ahead there is coming from?” Laura asked.

  Tim shrugged, shaking his head.

  “Fire or a car wreck maybe. Whatever it is, I just hope that it isn’t blocking our way when we get there,” he replied.

  The wind beat at the sides of the van heavily that night, rumpling the metal intermittently and waking the fearful people sleeping in the back. Will and Jen, sitting in the front, slept long and heavily. When morning arrived, they were rested at least, if not well rested.

  “Shit!” Will called from the passenger’s seat where he had spent the night.

  Groggily, Tim sat upright.

  “What?” Laura called anxiously, hugging Luna tight against her chest as the child nursed.

  “Fucking snowstorm!” Will called back.

  “No wonder it’s so fucking cold in here,” Tim mumbled, watching his breath dissipate into the air.

  Tim sidled up to the boom mechanism and looked around it out through the front windows. Sure enough, it looked like they had gotten a few inches of snow already and more was still coming down steadily.

  “We need some cold weather gear, and fast if the heavy snow is coming this early,” he muttered aloud.

  “You aren’t kidding,” Bjorn said in response, holding Sophie tight into his chest for warmth.

  “Who is the best at driving in snow?” Tim asked.

  Silence greeted him.

  “I was always good at it in Wisconsin, but with my right leg useless…” Will tapered off.

  “I will,” Jen said, from the driver’s seat. “I’m already here, anyways.”

  Looking in the rear-view mirror, she saw Tim cringe.

  “What? Because I’m a woman?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Tim said defensively “It’s just that you’re from Jersey.”

  “Whatever, dick!” she called back at him.

  “Are Jersey drivers bad?” Will asked.

  “None worse,” Tim replied with a smirk, taking genuine delight in Jen’s seething anger.

  The engine fired up immediately.

  “Can you guys crank the heat? It’s pretty dire back here,” Bjorn called forward, cradling Sophie.

  The two families in the rear compartment bundled up together to combat the cold as the van crept away on the shoulder of the highway. Tim was secretly grateful, both that he didn’t have to drive as well as not having to watch a Jersey driver navigate in the bad weather. He had always hated driving in the snow and had always done so against his will, white-knuckled. He also wasn’t kidding about Jersey drivers being the worst. He had traveled around the country fairly extensively in his early twenties and seen drivers from all over. He had never encountered anything more terrifying than a Jersey driver in bad weather.

  Thankfully, Jen wasn’t a terrible driver, and they continued along slowly for about an hour before the wheels skidded out sideways from the snow. The rear of the van slid, slamming into the side of another vehicle before the tires caught pavement again. They exchanged worried looks among each other in the back of the van.

  “Shit! Sorry, guys!” Jen called out as the van spun out and started moving forwards again.

  A few minutes later, the tail of the van spun out again, but this time, Jen righted the thing before it hit anything. She skillfully maneuvered the thing for another half an hour before the wheels hit a patch of snow-covered ice and spun them sideways into the drainage ditch. The van nearly tipped over and everyone in the rear of the van had to pick themselves off of the floor. Jen put the transmission in park.

  “That’s as far as we go,” Will called back.

  “You aren’t going to try and get us out of the ditch?” Bjorn asked, incredulously.

  “It’s not that,” Will replied from the front. “The road is impassable.”

  Before Tim could get out a question, Bjorn had set Sophie next to Laura and kicked open the rear doors. A gust of windswept snow blew in as he exited the van, swinging the doors shut behind him.

  “Wait here please, Laura, I’ll be right back,” Tim said softly.

  “Tim, no, please,” she called back to him, her eyes pleading. “Let them go this time.”

  “I’ll be okay, hon, I promise.”

  “Daddy! No!” Luna screeched.

  Tim patted his daughter on the cheek and followed Bjorn out of the back of the van and came around the passenger’s side. Ahead of the van lay a vast waste of abandoned and disabled vehicles fast disappearing under the fresh blanket of snow. The traffic jam splayed across all four lanes of the highway. Cars were snarled, pinned and crushed under the weight of others that had tried to move forward. On both sides of the highway lay farmland that was strewn with disabled and abandoned vehicles that had tried, and failed, to cross the pastures. To Tim, it looked like the largest junkyard he had ever seen. Ahead of the van, a few miles distant, he could see an overpass shrouded in billowing smoke. This is the end of the line, he thought, as Will lowered the window next to him.

  “Now what?” Will asked.

  “Now…” Tim began. “Now, we see if that wheelchair of yours is any good at off-roading, it seems.”

  “Fuck,” Will said flatly.

  *

  Grayson was on the edge of panic with his armed escort following about fifteen feet behind him. There was nothing more he wanted to do than to run off into the woods, but he wouldn’t risk getting shot unless he knew he was out of other options.

  “Sir, could we stop? I need to use the facilities, so to speak,�
� he asked, laying his charming southern drawl on thick, hoping to engage the man in further conversation.

  “Ain’t you eager to get back to your family?”

  “I am, sir. Truly, I am, but they feed us such meager, disgusting food that my stomach rebels after most every meal.”

  “Drop trow right there, then,” the man replied, coldly. “Wipe with your clothes if you need to. You make a move toward the forest and you will be a dead man.”

  The voice promised death and Grayson had enough experience not to test the man. Instead, he took his pants down and squatted in the road, making a show of it, if for no other reason than to stall so he could try and come up with a plan.

  “All you people, so cocksure with your automatic rifles,” the mustachioed man began. “Thinking that filling the air with lead will make up for your lack of marksmanship. The men and women in that town grew up hunting with bolt-action rifles. You know what that means? That means that if that first shot doesn’t kill, you’re going to spend the rest of your day tracking a wounded animal through the mountains.”

  “Sir, I have no intention of testing your marksmanship abilities, I merely want to collect my wife and child and be on our way,” Grayson responded, raising his voice in the hopes that some of his fleeing men would hear the awkward discussion.

  “Enough talk. Finish your business and hoist up them pants.”

  Another minute passed and Grayson reluctantly pulled up his trousers, buttoning and zipping and belting them as he turned back down the road. He tried a few more times to engage the man in conversation, but got no response. He even hazarded a look back to make sure that the man was still following, drawing a raised weapon and a glare from the man. Around one more bend in the road they could see the campfires a quarter-mile ahead and to the left of the roadway. He knew that this scenario was rapidly drawing to a close when the man spoke again.

  “Now, if you ain’t on the level with me, I’ll kill you. You might be considering calling out to them, a warning maybe. I guarantee you that you’ll be dead before you can spit two words out.”

  Grayson nodded and moved slowly towards the camp. He knew time was running out, that if he didn’t do something in the next few moments, he most likely wouldn’t survive the night. But what? his mind screamed. He had never felt this powerless and couldn’t concentrate with the man behind him. The panic began to build, and the only thing he could think to do was draw attention with his facial expressions, or run. He looked nervously behind him again and the man was nowhere to be seen. His sphincter clenched, knowing that if the man was as good a shot as he seemed to believe, that any wrong move now was just as dangerous as it had been a moment ago. Finally, he composed himself and stepped through the brush and trees towards the fire-lit clearing.

  Six men were busily gathering gear into packs on the far side of the fire. They stopped in unison, turning to face him with their weapons drawn as Grayson stepped into the light. The men relaxed instantly. Simon stepped forward, looking at the cut on his face carefully. Simon was the camp medic.

  “Man, that’s a nice gusher you got there,” Simon said then looked queerly at Grayson. “What you making those weird faces for, Grayson?”

  Grayson’s eyes went wide with panic as the man uttered his name and then the roar of a gun behind him split the quiet night. A knot of pain erupted in the middle of his back. Grayson fell flat on his face a foot in front of the fire. A second shot tore through Simon’s face, peeling his right eye, and the skull behind it, away from his head, dropping him to the dirt as well.

  *

  Will could already feel the throbbing in his knee at the thought of getting dragged through a rutted corn field.

  “Are you sure? I really don’t want to bring her out into the cold unless we need to,” Laura asked, holding Luna under her jacket.

  The little girl was fast asleep. Tim helped the two out of the tilted rear of the work van and onto the rutted field.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t seem like we have any other choice. The road is completely impassable. We don’t know what’s beyond the overpass, but there is no way Will would be able to navigate a wheelchair through the wreckage of the roadway, nevermind a vehicle, even without the snow to contend with.”

  “Where do we go, though?”

  Not having an answer to give to his wife, Tim just shrugged, looking off across the pastures as Bjorn and Jen approached.

  “I’m worried about where the occupants of all these cars went,” Bjorn said after a long pause.

  “Me too. But we can’t stay here. We’d be fine until the gas runs out, then we’d freeze to death,” Tim responded.

  They all nodded agreement as Will tried to maneuver his wheelchair over the snowy ground toward them.

  “It looks like there’s a farmhouse over there,” Jen said, pointing through a heavy thicket of trees to a chimney and a small length of roofline poking out above the foliage.

  “That’s our first stop then,” Bjorn said, immediately starting towards the distant shape.

  Sophie came forward, sliding her hand into Laura’s who sighed heavily, shooting Tim a weary look.

  “I’m sorry. Thank you,” Tim said quietly to her, looking lovingly into her eyes.

  Laura had been thrust into the role of Den-Mother since this whole fiasco had started. The nursing attachment between her and Luna meant that the child rarely fussed when her mother was within arms-reach. Since Lilly’s death, Bjorn seemed always to be the first one running off towards danger. Even when he was present, he had withdrawn so much, dealing with his own grief, that Sophie got little to no attention. This left Laura, already straddled with her own daughter’s needs, to step into a caregiver role for Sophie. Not that Laura altogether minded caring for the children; in fact, the very idea of being in close contact with the undead absolutely mortified her. She just hated that it was becoming expected of her, that Tim and Bjorn would just walk off whenever they damn well pleased, leaving her with the burden of responsibility. Now, seeing Jen move up to join Bjorn and Tim, worse of all she was responsible for the guy in the wheelchair. She could do nothing but shake her head in exasperation. At least Will has a gun, she thought, as she moved up with the kids alongside Will.

  They spent the next hour gathering and organizing all the supplies they had gathered to be more easily transported. Tim had made a sled out of cardboard boxes, using a length of coaxial cable as a tow-line. Once they loaded all their ammunition and the meager supply of food they had left onto it, they moved off, trudging slowly through the field. They made a wide berth around the broken-down cars scattered about the field so as not to risk riling up any undead that might still be inside. Tim struggled to drag the sled as it constantly got caught, hung up on the cut corn stalks that erupted from the snow at regular intervals. Jen followed behind, doing her best to reload anything that fell off, while Bjorn took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed Will along, knowing that there was no way for Laura to manage it while she cared for the kids. The roadway gradually drifted far behind, eventually melding into the horizon.

  Tim’s ears were stinging from the cold and he could barely feel the hand that held the icy metal of the M4, when an all-too-familiar roar split the air. Bjorn immediately let go of the wheelchair, bringing his weapon to the ready. Tim dropped the reigns of the cardboard sled and Jen moved back towards Laura and the kids with her rifle at the ready. A pair of undead burst through the bushes ahead, one after the other, and started running headlong across the rutted, snowy field toward them.

  “Got the lead one,” Tim called.

  A moment later, the report of the M4 split the biting cold air. The back of the undead thing’s head erupted, sending a spray of crimson gore onto the fresh powder. A second report sounded and the next undead fell to the hard ground sending a puff of the light powder into the air. Bjorn lowered the smoking muzzle of his M4. Without a moment to regroup and consider their trajectory, a series of roars issued from all around. The high-pitched throaty gurgling
roars that only issued from the throats of the fast ones echoed off the mountains and forest around the fields. It was reminiscent of a pack of wolves howling to Tim, only he would prefer wolves to the undead.

  “Go!” Will yelled seated in the wheelchair, slapping at Bjorn’s arm

  Bjorn grabbed the handle grips of the wheelchair and thrust it forward over the heavily rutted land. Will moaned loudly as agony as the chair bounced him around in the seat and searing pain continuously shot through his injured knee. Tim slung the M4 on his shoulder and scooped up Sophie, taking her from Laura’s hand as he ran alongside her. Luna was wide awake and yelling at her mother to stop and put her down, which was rapidly degrading into a screaming fit. Twenty paces into their run and the wheelchair toppled sideways, its wheel had caught on a rock and the force of Bjorn shoving it from behind sent the thing tumbling over, spilling Will to the snowy ground. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bjorn scooped Will up and threw him across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

  Tim came slowly through the shrubbery at the end of the field, unsure of what may lay beyond. Laura joined him, coming out of the bushes onto the manicured backyard next to him. A large leafless maple tree stood to the left, a swing hanging from one of the lower boughs. A beautiful stone patio lay ahead leading to French doors at the rear of a large farmhouse. With no immediate danger ahead, he set Sophie down and struggled to pull the sled through, along with whatever survived the journey with him. The rest of the group funneled through the bushes and made for the French doors without hesitation. The roaring continued sounding from all around them.

  They all raced to the doors, where Tim finally dropped the tow-line, leaving the sled of supplies at the base of the patio stairs. He yanked on the door handle, but it was locked. Without a pause, he punched through the pane of glass next to the deadbolt and flipped it, ignoring the pain as a shard of glass ripped a deep gouge on the inside of his ring finger. He yanked the door open and stepped aside as Bjorn, carrying Will, roared past. Laura carrying the screaming Luna piled through with Jen and Sophie right behind. As they ran past the abandoned cardboard sled, a trio of fast undead came roaring through the bushes. Tim watched as one was clothes-lined by a clothesline, and another bounced face first off the maple tree taking its momentum away. The third spotted them immediately and roared again, tearing across the yard towards Jen.