“Well, we aren’t gearing up there,” Bjorn stated flatly, drawing nods from the rest of the group.
Will knew that Walmart carried little in the way of performance survival gear, but the point was moot so kept silent. He hoped for an REI or an EMS and kept his eyes alert for a suitable outfitter. Just over a mile further up Route 60, the crowd of dead had petered out and the road was clear once again. Will’s perseverance paid off and he spotted a Eureka outlet store in a strip-mall to the right, nestled in between a dollar store and a movie theater.
“Jackpot!” he exclaimed loudly, extending his pointed finger over the center console between Tim and Laura.
“Isn’t that a vacuum store?” Laura asked, puzzled by the name.
Will got confused for a moment and shook it off before reinforcing his statement.
“Tents and outdoor stuff,” he blurted, excitedly.
Tim nosed the Jeep down the short ramp into the nearly barren lot, and drove slowly past the storefront. They peered through the windows at the tents on display, emblazoned with a large comic exclamation point. The sound of gunfire still sounded in the distance behind them.
“Pull around back,” Bjorn called from behind Tim. “Just to be on the safe side. People and undead are close by, and I’d rather not be seen by either.”
Tim nodded and pulled the Jeep around the back of the aging strip plaza, easing it up to a door with the same, cartoonish exclamation point on it, nestled in between two dumpsters. He peered intently at the area surrounding the Jeep at the rear of the strip mall for a solid minute before he opened his door and stepped out into the biting wind. He swung his M4 out from where he had wedged it, between the door and the driver’s seat, and moved to the rear of the SUV, gun in hand. He popped the tailgate open and started rummaging through the assortment of tools, eventually producing the same crowbar Bjorn had opened the Top’s grocery truck with.
The frigid, blowing gusts of wind instantly sapped the motivation from his limbs. He heaved the M4 higher atop his shoulder and pulled his collar closed around his neck, pushing himself to the task at hand. He had to force his legs to carry him the ten feet to the rear door. Bjorn exited from the passenger’s side and met him at the door.
Tim leaned in, gripped the door handle, and pressed the top button, pulling. He nearly fell over when the door swung easily outward. He might have laughed at himself if it weren’t for the looming blackness of the store staring menacingly back at him from the open doorway. Bjorn covered the dark interior with his M4 raised to shoulder level while they took a moment to make sure that no threat was imminent. Finally, Tim hefted the pry bar and rammed it between the door and the jamb, just above the lower hinge, to pin the door open.
As Tim brought his own rifle to bear, Bjorn started advancing into the gloomy interior. The two men stepped cautiously into the rear stockroom. They were both hesitant and nervous stepping into the dark interior, when the lights suddenly clicked on, as Jen following behind, flipping the switch. All around them were garish colors of performance tents, backpacks, and random boxes of gear, colored so to stand out against a verdant or snowy landscape. Tim looked anxiously to his wife and child in the Jeep, making sure the doors were secured. Laura held up a pistol to reassure him. He nodded and moved towards the closed door at the front of the stockroom; he assumed it would lead to the front of the store. Bjorn held up his finger, indicating to them to wait, then pointed to his ear.
*
Since the heavy snows of winter set in barely a week ago, Linda had found some time to examine and further pursue her research. The people of Donner were used to the long hard winters, though most chose to hide from this one, staying in the warmth and safety of their homes. Because of this, the visits to the clinic had dropped off to a few a week. Even still, some of these were new infections. It was the constant reminder of the failings to determine the source of the infection, the sick who had not been bitten, that spurred her back to examine her research.
In pouring over the endless notes and lab results for the first time with fresh eyes, she was able to conclude, within a reasonable doubt, the fast undead were those that died of contracting the illness some other way. The bacteria had the time to spread over the course of the illness. When the infected individual died of the illness, the bacteria had already reached a critical mass in the system. These individuals returned nearly immediately after expiration, and just as fast as they were in life. They might even be faster and stronger than they were in life, as they didn’t fear bodily injury.
When the bacteria was forced to spread post-mortem, such as when an individual was bitten and then died of blood loss, the time it took the bacteria to reach critical mass averaged eight to twenty hours after death. This delay in reanimation pushed it back until rigor mortis would have already set in. Her examination of a few bodies showed that the slow ones were all in a state of prolonged rigor. Apparently, unlike normal corpses, the rigor did not ease once the individual reanimated.
Studying the cause of the fast undead reignited her curiosity as to the source of the bacteria. She looked to her case notes from the early days of the outbreak and decided to look into the similarities between the young and old. The heaviest casualties of the early days were teenagers and the elderly that lived in the senior care wing of the Heartland facility. She had found no evidence of the bacteria in the water or the air. It was with a eureka moment that Linda realized the dietary link between the two age groups. They were the populations that relied most on frozen foods.
*
The night drifted past cold and uncomfortable on the floor behind the counter of the souvenir shop. Nala awoke to the beginnings of another gray day. The snow had begun falling quietly overnight and continued to fall outside in flakes the size of grapes. After twenty minutes of alternating between pacing about the shop and staring out at the snowfall, she worked up the nerve to check out the grocery store. After scanning the area around the buildings for a few minutes, she moved stealthily out from the back door of the gift shop. She crossed the virgin snow, moving across the open lot to the grocery store, which looked like an oversized log cabin.
The front door of the store was ajar and she could clearly see that there was no one at the front of the store. Having watched the building for some time over the last sixteen hours, she was confident that the men had vacated some time ago. Rather than remaining exposed out in the open, she ran right inside, without pause, closing and bolting the door behind her. Inside the shop lay a scene of brutal violence. A dozen corpses lay scattered about the floor on and around the front register area. It became clear to her that the men had encountered other survivors here. In addition to the typical signs of rape they left in their wake, they had butchered the entire group, including two small children.
After she was finally done vomiting, it took Nala a long time to stop crying at the sight of the children. Eventually, her own needs took priority and she worked to slide the bodies behind the counter where she covered them with a tarp she took off a pile of firewood on the front porch. She was shaking with rage and horror, her fear of the men directly conflicting with her very sincere desire to end each and every one of their lives. She spent the entire day in the store, eating and resting and packing the best assortment of food and supplies she was able to carry.
By the time she was ready to leave the following morning, she wore a new backpack that was loaded with all the supplies that she wouldn’t need in a pinch. She slung the oversize purse, filled with snacks, over her neck with the gun and pocketknife readily accessible. She stood in front of the framed map hanging on the wall at the front of the store, trying to plot her course. She briefly tried to figure how many miles she was covering in a day. She knew it wasn’t many, and after realizing that there was no way to figure out how fast she moved through the hills and the forest, she put the number somewhere between five and ten miles a day. She figured she would have to spend one more night in the forest before she would reach the next town, Donner
, the following day.
It was around the middle of the afternoon the following day when the screams of terror and calls for help drifted across a meadow to Nala. She could see log chalet-style house with a Quonset outbuilding about three hundred feet off the road. The familiar sight of a handful of motorcycles and pickup truck immediately clued her in as to the reason for the screams. Her bile rose as she thought of the butchered children; they couldn’t have been more than three and five years old. Before she even realized what she was doing, she found herself a hundred feet closer to the house, creeping low through the uncut hay towards the house. As she stalked up, a heavy-set man came out of the front door with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and lit a cigarette. She froze in her tracks, suddenly aware of how foolish her decision was, no matter how noble her intentions.
*
Jen, Tim, and Bjorn stood in silence in the back storeroom of the Eureka outlet. The only noise they could hear initially was the vicious wind that came in great heaving gusts through the open rear door. Then they all heard it, thumping and thrashing from the other side of the door. Their hearts started pounding in their chests. Tim and Bjorn worked to ready their weapons and to keep their feet from moving them backward toward the open rear door and the safety of the Jeep beyond. Jen moved over to the door and grasped the knob, looking to the others for a signal to open it.
Bjorn scanned the contents of the room quickly and smiled broadly as he reached under a pallet. He turned to face the others, proudly showing them the ice ax he found. He swung the lightweight aluminum pick a couple times, getting a feel for its weight and reach, before nodding to Jen to open the door. She twisted the handle and stood there for a moment, breathing deeply to steady herself before swinging the door open. She jumped back quickly, leaving Bjorn, alone, standing in the doorway.
Bjorn stood with the ax held over his shoulder, ready for an ambush that never came. Tim covered him from behind, holding his M4 tensely at the ready. The thumping and thrashing continued, unabated, from further ahead in the shop as he fumbled around for a light switch. His hand struck a bank of switches and he toggled them all. When the overhead fluorescent lights blinked on, a violent flurry of movement towards the front of the store immediately alerted them to the location of the undead. It thrashed about, tangled in a hammock and a copious amount of multi-colored parachute cord. When it spotted them, it seemed to redouble its thrashing as it gnashed its teeth hungrily at them.
Bjorn stalked up to the thing without hesitation and drove the ice ax home deep into its skull, putting it to rest. He gave the ax a brief tug to see it if would come free, but discarded it, instinctively knowing that it would not. The three of them stood stock still for a tense minute as they scanned the entire store to ensure that no more undead lurked about. Bjorn moved to the front doors, ensuring that they were locked and bolted before he paused to peer out into the late gray morning. The store had once been a large pharmacy, the faded remnants of the words “analgesics” and “First-aid” could be spotted high on the walls. The store was about twenty feet wide and forty feet deep to the stockroom wall. Once they were certain that nothing else lurked about in the spacious showroom, Jen moved back towards the stockroom.
“I’ll get the others,” she stated before ducking back out of sight.
Jen jumped into the driver’s seat and maneuvered the Jeep, pinning it and trailer against the dumpsters so nothing could slip in behind them. Once she slid the shifter into park, she slid out through the passenger’s side and helped Will limp his way into the store.
*
Nala waited patiently for the convict to finish his cigarette and go back inside. Her heart sunk when he didn’t. Instead, he stoked the fire in front of the home and sat atop the porch steps, eventually lighting another cigarette. She was left exposed out in the middle of a narrow field; if he were to scan the area with anything more than passing curiosity, he would see her clear as day in the sheep’s wool lined denim jacket she acquired from The Lodge some days back. She lay down in the tall grasses as stealthily as possible in order to minimize her visibility. She watched him from her vantage through a gap in the straw, waiting for him to return inside or fall asleep.
The man was picking at his fingernails with a folding knife for some time, and eventually Nala, exhausted from days of travel on foot, drifted off to sleep. She awoke with a start as footsteps sounded a few feet to her right in the high grass. As she came to her senses, alerted by the sound and proximity of someone, she realized that it was dark out. The only illumination came from the multitude of stars overhead and the dim glow of the fire burning in front of the house two hundred and fifty feet away. She forced herself to stay still and keep her breathing quiet as the stench of death and feces filled her nostrils.
She recognized the zombie for what it was as it ambled by, barely ten feet from where she lay, moving toward the house. Its soft moans mingled eerily with the winds on the high mountain farm, sounding eerily like a single prolonged cry of complaint in her ears. The adrenaline surged, wiping away the last of her lingering sleep-haze. Her eyes were wide with fear and her body tensed, ready to spring away and run if it somehow sensed her and turned to come for her. It didn’t, and as she watched, it limped and stumbled without pause towards the house where the screams were still coming from. When the zombie reached the front yard, she sat up and retched, having held out for as long as she possibly could from the sour smell of the thing.
While she quietly evacuated her stomach of its contents on the ground in front of her, she watched its progress towards the house with great interest. She hoped that the thing would catch the guard unaware. She hoped he would get bit so she could get the pleasure of the other men executing him. An inevitable urge swept through her, wiping away her fear and sending a cold knot in her stomach. She looked cautiously around to ensure no other undead were afoot before she stood at a crouch and started snaking through the grass towards the house. She had her gun out and trained on the man, who was smoking another cigarette, still oblivious to presence of the approaching zombie.
The man shook whatever thoughts were occupying his mind out and stood at attention as the thing finally ambled to the edge of the firelight. Nala froze and steadied herself, taking great efforts to ensure her shot was a kill. As the man lifted his gun to kill the zombie that was twenty feet from him, Nala squeezed her trigger. The pistol popped off and she saw the look of surprise on the man’s face as he clutched at the wound in his chest. There was an explosion of activity within the house at the sound of the discharge. The zombie turned his attention from the dead man lying in front of it, turning its attention up the short stairs when another man ripped open the front door.
The convict stood there, bleary eyed with nothing but a pair of boots and jeans on. He held a pistol in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other and looked as if he had been sleeping.
“The fuck izzat?” he slurred out, staring blankly out into the dark beyond the fire.
Nala froze, terrified that the man would spot her, as he stood motionless in the doorway. Before was able get his wits about him, the undead mounted the stairs and grabbed him by the shoulders. A scream of agony issued from the man as they collapsed to the ground in the threshold, taken down by the weight of the thing. More screams issued from inside followed by the sounds of running feet and a handful of gunshots. A muzzle flash issued from just inside the darkened doorway, and the zombie rolled off the convict, and sidelong, down the short stairs. The body of the zombie came to rest alongside the man she had shot.
Nala, who still hadn’t moved from her shooting position, waited tensely for the person who shot the zombie to step outside the door. Moments passed and then more gunfire issued from inside the house. She had no idea what was happening, but was thankful that the remaining men hadn’t come out in force. She was a decent shot when she had time to aim, but doubted her ability against multiple targets who were all equally armed and shooting at her. As the firing within the house con
tinued, she knew that she needed to act. If she were to wait until it sorted itself out, she may have to face multiple attackers. She knew in that moment that if she were to face capture by the convicts, she would just turn the gun on herself. She thought it would be better to die fast than be tortured and raped before they killed her. As she approached the house, she could catch glimpses through the curtains into the living area. Inside, she saw three of the men firing upon someone else who was hiding behind the kitchen counter.
Her heart thudded in her chest, filling her ears with the sound of blood as she stepped near the bodies that lay below the front door. She paused at the edge of the firelight, taking a long look in advance to ensure the corpses were truly dead, before she moved up to the door. She didn’t hesitate, dropping to one knee next to the corpse in the doorway with its throat torn out. She took aim and shot the first man she saw in the back of the head. The sound of the shot from behind and the heavyset man next to them crumpling to the floor, alerted the other two to her presence.
They both spun as she pulled the trigger again, sending the next man continuing his spin face-first to the floor. As the other man squeezed the trigger of his pistol, she was already rolling to the right, putting the wall of the house between her and the shooter. Two shots issued from within the house and a bullet struck the cedar shakes behind where she had been crouched, sending a puff of dust and splinters into the air.
*
“Okay, if all goes well, we may spend the night here. But we can worry about that later. For now, let’s get started here. What are we going to need, Will?” Tim asked.
“Sleeping bags, first and foremost,” he started. “Make sure they are all rated to negative forty, or as close to that as you can find.”
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 25
