Will nodded as he shoveled the scrambled eggs into his mouth. Tim and Will both thought about his statement for a moment, recognizing the truth of it. Unless they came across any living remnants of society, there were a lot of things they may never see again.
“What do you think about resting for a few days here, Will?” Tim asked between sips of his own cup.
Will nodded again, throwing a thumbs-up as he chugged the warm black coffee.
“What’s the deal with the kids?” Bjorn asked at last.
“Lucked out,” Tim responded. “Locked themselves in the school kitchen when the shit-hit-the-fan. They’ve been there ever since.”
“So the idea of this…this ruined world is new to them?” Bjorn asked again, knowing the answer.
Tim and Will both shrugged, nodding agreement.
“Gonna be a rough adjustment and a steep learning curve.”
“Hope they learn fast,” Tim said.
*
Nala eased the company car out of the Kwik-stop parking lot onto Route 287 North, headed to Laramie for her next sales call. Her weekly rounds brought her from Pueblo to Casper then west to Salt Lake to sell soda products to beverage distributors. Her most recent sales call to High Country Beverage in Fort Collins went as always, a dull listing of products she offered, followed by the manager of the store giving a quantity of the cases he would be ordering. She was fully fueled up and on her way to the Loaf and Jug in Laramie. She eased the sedan up to 75 and threw on the cruise control before shifting her attention to trying to find a radio station. It was hard out here, in “God’s Country,” to find a station that played something other than country music or religious talk. Her phone rang and she glanced down to her phone, nestled in its charger in the center console. She rolled her eyes, seeing that it was her sister, and reached down to slide the bar to answer while touching her Bluetooth headpiece with her other hand to turn it on.
“Hey, Tam,” she said as she raised her head, looking back to the roadway.
The roadway that was now overrun with people on foot, milling about. She slammed both of her feet onto the brake pedal and clenched her teeth. Her heart dropped into her stomach and went cold as she knew the impact was inevitable. At the last second, in an attempt to avoid hitting a young boy, she jerked the wheel. Tires squealed, skipped, and skidded on the blacktop for a moment before the forced of the turn caused them to burst. The vulcanized rubber shredded off the wheels followed by the scrape of the steel rims on the tarmac and then everything went black.
She awoke to excruciating pain and discomfort, completely disoriented. Her nose was blocked up and she couldn’t breathe out of it; she lifted her hand to try and clear it but a lightning bolt of agony shot up her arm. She gradually became aware that she was upside down, still buckled into her seat. Her eyes were crusted and sticky. With her other arm, she reached and wiped the film away, revealing it to be congealing blood. She gingerly probed at her nose, sending a jolt of pain across her face, causing her to swoon. Her good arm probed her body for a long minute, until she was finally convinced she was relatively intact, a broken arm and a broken nose, and maybe a broken cheekbone was all that seemed wrong. Her senses finally moved off of herself and to the car and the world around her.
The roof of the sedan was caved-in, pressing down at the front. The driver’s side window was pressed nearly closed, leaving only a two-inch gap to look out of. The passenger’s side was less crushed. Even though she was small, barely five feet and a hundred pounds, Nala doubted she would be able to fit through the gap left by the broken window. It was then that she noticed the sound of the movement of feet around the car. She forced herself to concentrate, pushing away her own mental noise, and sure enough, there were a number of people outside. Why aren’t they helping me? Do they not know I’m in here? rushed through her head. The panic of her situation set in and she started yelling.
“Help! I’m in here,” she cried. “Please, somebody get me out!”
She could see a number of the feet outside the car shuffle about to face the sound of her voice.
“In here! I’m trapped!” she shouted.
As she started tugging at the seatbelt that had locked in place around her, an arm slid into the passenger’s window of the car, followed by a head. She looked away from the belt to see what had once been a police officer, his shoulder still bearing the patch of the Colorado State Police. His eye socket was ruined, gore oozed down his cheek as his hand grasped at her. A sickening hissing growl came from its mouth, a mouth that was reaching and snapping at her. It was then that she screamed, loud and long. Her cries seemed to urge the thing on, although it had wedged itself as far as its bulk would allow. The tips of its fingers were able to reach in far enough to scrape at her shoulder. It continued clawing at her as if growled and moaned, trying desperately to get a grip on her.
Nala started to meltdown, the tears began falling freely before she willed herself to stop. No time for that now, Nal, get the hell out of here! her inner voice screamed. She reached down with her good hand, scrabbling about on the headliner and pulled largest chunk of safety glass from the shattered windshield that she could find. She gripped the thumbnail-sized chunk of glass between her thumb and forefinger and started sawing at the seatbelt. She did her best to ignore the rabid, ruined face of the trooper that clawed hungrily at her. One thing at a time, Nal.
It took the better part of twenty minutes for her to successfully saw through, and by the time she was done, her good hand was bleeding profusely. She pulled the belt through the loop and was able to wriggle her lower body free. She flopped heavily and painfully on the roof of the car. The blood rushed away from her head and she swooned again, striking her broken left arm on the roof. Her revulsion at the fingertips clawing at her was the only thing that kept her conscious. She looked one more time at the ruined face, shuddering, before she forced herself between the driver’s and passenger’s seat, into the backseat of the car. The hand grasped at her slacks and ankles, but was unable to get a grip as she flailed her legs, screaming in disgust as she felt it clawing for her.
The roof in the back was in better shape than the front and she had some room to move. The windows in the back were only slightly crushed and she could see that the rest of the people moving around on the road were in roughly the same physical shape as the state trooper. A number of them crawled and clutched at the trooper, trying to get in position next to him. None of them as of yet noticed that she had moved to the rear of the car. She pulled a blanket she kept in the rear seat of the car over her, as much hiding them from sight as she was trying to hide herself.
*
One by one, the rest of the group huddled in the living room arose and got themselves ready for the day. They all agreed after breakfast that a couple days rest was in order. Bjorn was able to outfit himself in a new pair of boots. The homeowner was a larger man who had a similarly large wife and a couple teenage children. This worked out fortuitously for them all to acquire cold weather clothing. It wasn’t performance gear, it was working man’s cold weather gear; padded Carharrt coveralls, overalls, heavy wool socks, waterproof work boots, and hunting parkas. As each outfitted themselves, the rest got the opportunity to laugh at their expense, with the exception of Nick and Chris. They not only knew the people who lived here, they had grown up their whole lives with people that dressed like this; most of their family members dressed that way. They withdrew a little from the rest of the group at the mockery. Laura, being a sensitive soul, noticed this and shut down the laughter immediately.
“They are just blowing off steam, being silly and all,” she said quietly to the teens in the next room. “Don’t get offended, they are just a bunch of asses. Come on, let’s go start some lunch.”
Laura shot Tim a withering look as she led the teenagers into the kitchen.
“What was that about?” Will asked.
“That,” Tim said, staring at Laura’s retreating back, “as her way of letting me know I fucked u
p. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say we offended the locals.”
Jen and Bjorn spent an hour rearranging the cartons of food in the Jeep so that all of them could sit comfortably. They spent the remainder of the day in leisure, eating, joking, and playing a stack of board games and card games they found in the hall closet. Tim found a bottle of Tylenol with codeine he pocketed, figuring it would dull the pain in his hip enough to allow him to be a help to the group. It was the first time since this had started that most of them went the entire day without seeing any undead. They all split a bottle of whiskey that evening and ended up in a terrible but ridiculously funny game of drunken charades. The evening of mirth and laughter ended when Tim stumbled and fell while doing a poor impersonation of Richard Nixon, crushing the coffee table under his weight and falling asleep where he lay.
By the middle of the following morning, the snowstorm petered off, having dumped nearly a foot of snow. They were all getting anxious to get on the road and start moving. Nick and Chris were the only ones who could care less about leaving. Still in the honeymoon period and being teenagers in love, they mostly kept to themselves, often sneaking away to one of the bedrooms to be intimate, drawing smirks from the adults. When Nick and Chris sought out interaction, it was usually through Laura, who was kind and sweet, especially to the young girl who reminded her of her little sister, whose fate she did her best not to think about.
The teens were friendly enough, but they were at the state of their development where, if the world was right and not in the throes of the apocalypse, they would be sneaking out to go to parties and rolling their eyes whenever an adult spoke to them. Now, though, they were thrust into a group of strangers with death lurking around every corner, depending on them for survival. For the most part, they were just happy to be out of the school, safe in the company of adults that could worry about the big things. For now, they were content to continue in the hedonistic pursuits of puppy love. When the teens were off in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Laura addressed the group in the living room.
“Should we just stay here for the winter?” Laura asked hopefully. “I mean, it is safe, warm and dry. Best of all, none of those things are around.”
The light mood in the room was swept away with that statement. Bjorn, Will, Tim, and Sophie stopped their game of Scrabble and turned to her. Without realizing it, the question instilled doubt in their minds, as well as the seed of despair. It made them all question, subconsciously, if there was any reason to hope that it might be better somewhere else.
“Look, I know Will thinks that Benoit will be safe and clear of the undead, but how many miles is it? A thousand? Fifteen hundred? Look how much has already happened in just a hundred miles. Tim, you got shot and Bjorn nearly died. Hell, we all nearly died in that farmhouse.”
“We also saved the teens,” Tim replied, quietly.
“Did we, Tim? Or did we take them out of a safe spot and put them in constant danger, filled with the undead?”
Tim had no answer. Instead, he turned his thoughts to their course.
“I’m not saying we don’t go, just that maybe we should put some caution into it. We haven’t even talked about a course yet. I was looking at the atlas yesterday, and I can’t see a way there without adding hundreds of miles to avoid, or are we going to risk passing through some major cities? Look for yourself if you haven’t already,” she barked, flinging the atlas into the room.
Bjorn picked the atlas up and started leafing through the pages. Tim, having already perused it, had figured they could wing it, moving well clear of the cities, even if it added days or weeks to their travel. Now he felt guilty and irresponsible for dragging his child out on a wing and a prayer. Will knew she was right; to head straight west, the shortest course would bring them through Cleveland and Chicago. A more middling route would still run them through Cleveland and then the outskirts of Detroit. They could go through Canada, but that would bring them in proximity to Toronto. Any way he looked at it, they would need to detour for a great many miles to avoid those metropolitan areas.
“We will figure it out on the road, Laur,” Tim said absently, refusing to give up on the hope that Benoit offered.
“Well, you better,” she replied, deadly serious. “I want you to think long and hard before you put our daughter in danger again.”
*
In the relative safety under the blanket in the rear of the car, Nala took the time to assess her options. She could see her phone back up front, but even if she were so inclined to move within reach of the thing’s grasping hands, she could see the screen was shattered and that it was most likely useless. She took her sweater off and awkwardly tied it around her broken arm in a poor attempt to immobilize it and prevent any more blackout moments. She was confident that at any point she could squeeze out of the shattered windows in the back, but had no interest, at the moment, in walking out in the midst of whatever they were.
Zombies, like that TV show, her mind urged, and although she dismissed the thought as silly, the thought lingered there, lurking at the edges of her consciousness, warning her. As she sat quietly watching their shuffling forms, the creatures that were jockeying for position around the state trooper eventually lost interest and started milling about again. Only the trooper himself stayed interested in her, continuing to thrash about with its head and arm inside the vehicle, clawing and biting towards her. She tried to find something she could hit it with, maybe kill it, but the only thing she could find in the tidy company car was a floor mat. The thought of crawling forward into its reach to grab the keys was too unsettling for her. Combined with the noise that pulling a jangling set of keys would make pushed the thought out of her options. She had no desire to draw more of the things attention back to her.
Nala stayed as quiet as she possibly could for the remainder of the day. She only moved to use the bathroom, which she did on the floor mat, before sliding it away from her on the headliner. She slept restlessly on the roof of the overturned car. Every time she shifted, a fresh jolt of agony from her broken arm would wake her. Always, the incessant snarling of the trooper as he clawed at the passenger seat prevented her from returning to sleep easily. When the exhaustion took hold and she was finally able to drift off for the night, the chilly fall air wafting in from the shattered windows ensured that she slept less than an hour. As the sky to the east began to lighten just before dawn, Nala wept silently for a few minutes, bemoaning her fate. The jag was short-lived however as the sound of squealing tires from the direction of the front of the car snapped her out of it. She could see the beams from a vehicle’s headlights cast dimly down the length of the car on both sides.
Rescue? Help? she wondered. Her senses came sharply to attention and hope blossomed in her heart. She scrambled about to her knees with her weight leaning heavily on her one good arm, and peered out through the broken windows. She could see fully, for the first time, the crowd she was in the midst of. She watched in horror and revulsion as the creatures all about started, moving towards the source of the light. The crushed front end of the car kept her from seeing what was happening and she was only able to track the events by a series of sounds. The sounds of more than one car door being open then shut came to her, followed by the sounds of someone swearing. An ear-splitting scream of pain was then followed by sounds of running feet. After a moment, she could tell that the footsteps were growing distant and knew that whoever had been in the vehicle, was now running away.
Her heart sank, and the terrible loneliness and despair she felt, resumed its strangle-hold on her heart once again. It took nearly a full minute for the continued movement outside to register as important. When it dawned on her to look back out, she noticed that the crowd of creatures was drifting slowly away from her. They were staggering and stumbling towards the newly arrived vehicle and the footsteps that had long faded into the distance.
She watched hopefully for many minutes, her good hand growing numb under the weight she pressed on it, as seemingly endle
ss sets of legs moved past. The only sounds she could hear outside was the shuffle and scrape of the creature’s lazy gait and the breathless moans that issued from their mouths. Inside the car, and more insistent, was the gnashing and snarling of the state trooper, yearning to get hold of her. Finally, after a seeming eternity of waiting and watching the legs move past, she started to notice an ebb in the flow of feet and crawled forward a bit. She hovered at the door, breathing in the cool pre-dawn air she waited for a long count of ten.
Seeing no more feet moving past, she worked up the nerve and leaned out to get a look at her surroundings. Just as she moved her head clear of the car, a hand slapped the blacktop, just inches in front of her face. She recoiled in horror as the fingernails dug themselves into the tarmac and the elbow behind bent, dragging forward a horribly mangled form. Blackened, burnt flesh hung limply from its ruined face and it reeked of charred meat. The worst part for Nala was that her stomach rumbled at the smell, reminiscent of barbecue, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since the Cobb salad she had for lunch the day previous. She vowed in that moment never to eat ribs again.
The creature’s face pulled even with Nala’s and her eyes widened with fright as it turned to look in her direction. She held her breath in abject terror as the eyeless thing paused, its lip-less mouth opening and closing twice before its extended arm finally dragged it from her view. Entrails dragged behind the legless form, leaving a trail of gore in its wake. Nala, horrified at the grim visage lingered, lost in her terror for a moment, staring after until it moved well out of sight. What the fuck is it? What are these things? she thought before her tormented mind answered in a whisper: Zombies.
Nala’s fear waned gradually as the thing moved out of sight and her courage returned. She knew that she had to get out of the car. She knew that to stay was to die miserably of hunger or worse to be killed by one of those things. Bracing herself in anticipation of another shock, she again leaned her head out. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the pre-dawn grays of the early morning. She could see the large mob of things moving down the road, away from her. Nothing moved on the highway behind her. She crawled painfully from the wreckage. Chunks of broken, laminated glass cut painfully into her palm and knees as she crawled out. She swooned and nearly blacked out when she stood upright outside and smashed the elbow of her broken arm against the body of the car. As soon as she recovered, she ran.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 19
