Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter

by Mongelli, Arthur

  “I don’t see why not, Gary; let me just check with the others,” Tim said and started off towards Bjorn, Jen, and Will.

  They were shifting goods around in the storage bins to maximize space. They realized quickly that they would have difficulty, even with the snowmobiles, moving everything across the ice.

  “They want to spend the night with us,” Tim said quietly as he sidled up next to Bjorn.

  Bjorn shrugged.

  “That’s fine; they are helpless,” Jen replied absently.

  “Do we know that?” Tim asked, somewhat incredulous at the trust Jen had implied.

  “No,” Will interjected a bit harshly. “But they have no weapons and we saved their lives. Besides, where are we staying? It’s already after dark.”

  “Bjorn?” Tim asked, looking to his friend for any ideas.

  “We’ll stay in the stockroom and barricade the doors. Jen’s right, they are harmless…all the same, sleep with your weapons tonight and keep the Jeep key hidden. I’ll stay awake until everyone is sleeping.”

  Tim turned to Gary, catching his attention, and gave him the thumbs-up. He could visibly see the relief come over the man who smiled broadly in return. They all made one final pass through the store, grabbing any additional supplies they either wanted or thought they may need. They finally set about barricading themselves into the back room for the night. They first locked the door, then loaded a palette of goods in front to fortify it from anything that might try to force its way through. Tim and the rest huddled close together, far from Gary and his family. No one was willing to trust them more than sharing the open space with them. Gary and his wife argued in hushed tones for some time after everyone had settled down. They all tried to hear the subject of the conversation to no avail. Tim was mostly worried that they were going to invite themselves along in the morning.

  Tim awoke to a gust of frigid winter air blowing down his sleeping bag. He sat up immediately, groaning when he realized the back door was ajar. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, clearing them in time to see Bjorn step in from outside.

  “Sorry, man, wanted to start loading the rest of the gear early,” Bjorn said, seeing his discomfort.

  Tim breathed a sigh of relief and looked around panicked for a minute, to make sure Laura and Luna were still next to him before he looked across to check on Gary’s family.

  “They are helping us load up and sending us off this morning,” Bjorn said, seeing his friend tense at their empty sleeping bags. “In return for the Jeep once we are icebound.”

  Tim nodded at the sense of it, after a moment he replied.

  “We should take whatever guns and ammo we can from the bodies and the vehicles outside before we go.”

  “Already on it,” Bjorn said, smiling at his friend. “You shouldn’t sleep in so late; you might be able to help if you didn’t.”

  “Fuck you,” Tim barked back with a big grin on his face, before asking soberly, “Is this a good idea?”

  “What are our other options?”

  “I don’t know.” Tim shrugged. “With people like that roaming about, it makes me wonder if we should just go back to Hancock. We had a decent spot there.”

  “To what end though? We just hole up there and wait there for some group like that to find us? Or the dead? I know that it’s fucked up and terrifying out here, but if I have to die to make sure that Sophie gets somewhere safe, for the long-term, I’m happy to do so.”

  “So you think it’ll be better in Wisconsin?”

  This time, it was Bjorn who shrugged.

  “I don’t know, probably not, but he says it’s wide open country. Less undead means better odds. In my opinion.”

  Not entirely satisfied with the result of the conversation, Tim slid halfway out of his sleeping bag before pushing it the rest of the way off of him and pulled his new coat and boots on. He fought with the stiff laces for a minute before tying them and moving to help finish packing the Jeep and trailer. Within twenty minutes, the gear was loaded onto the trailer and the rest of the group was packing their stuff into the Jeep. It was a tight squeeze with twelve in the Jeep; Luna sat on Laura’s lap between Tim’s legs in the front passenger seat, Christine on Nick’s. Sophie sat on Bjorn’s lap who sat sideways with his pistol in hand on the middle bench, keeping a mistrustful eye on Gary’s family in the back row.

  *

  The following evening, with his interviews done for the day, Tar strode into Elsie’s to finally meet with the ranchers. He had sent Clara Daniels, one of the homesteaders, to ask the men to meet him here at three o’clock. Clara was a newcomer to the community, an accomplished cook and forager who had previously eked out a living off the land a dozen or so miles outside the east side of Donner, halfway to Fort Collins. Darla had recruited her into her kitchen crew immediately, seeing her potential. As Tar entered, Darla shot him a look as she turned to pour him a fresh cup of coffee. The twenty or so ranchers were all armed and most had brought a farmhand or their grown sons to the meeting, filling the room to capacity.

  Fuck, this is gonna get ugly quick! Tar thought to himself, tipping his hat to the assembled men before turning to grab his coffee from Darla.

  “Tar, we know what this is about. There ain’t no need to beat around the bush,” Big Eddie called from behind him. “You want our food stores.”

  Tar hadn’t turned around yet and he lazily stirred his coffee at the counter, wondering the best way to proceed. The way the room rumbled and roared at Big Eddie’s proclamation made him doubt his chances of convincing them. As the rumbles and complaints continued, he started to wonder how good his chances were of making it out of the room alive. Finally, the room settled down, and after a brief silence, Tar turned to address the group.

  “Gentlemen, I appreciate you all coming out here today. I know you’ve all got responsibilities, but yes, that’s what I want to ask of you.” Tar let it linger, trying to get a feel for the room.

  The crowd exploded in shouts and complaints, the loudest of which was coming from a corner table where Tyler Peterson and his boys sat. Some arguments broke out between ranchers known to have enmity, which was usually over property disputes.

  “Ask us? Or tell us?” Tyler came forward, barking at Tar with a red face.

  “Afternoon, Ty,” Tar said, trying to stall the man’s momentum. “I am asking you all, out of the knowledge that we are all in this together. We need to come together as a community so that we all can survive whatever this is.”

  “That’s bullshit, Errol, and you know it,” Tyler barked back, using Tar’s given name. “We work year round so that we can provide for our own. I ain’t about to give the fruits of our labor to a bunch of strangers. You’re asking us to put our families at risk of not making it through the winter, Tar.”

  “Ty, most of these people aren’t strangers. You grew up with these people; they’re your kid’s friends and classmates. I’m sure that some of them worked summers for you.”

  “Well, those people you’re letting in by the droves are strangers, Tar. It’s bad enough you’re asking us to let them squat on our land, now you want us to feed them too?”

  Tyler was working himself up into a righteous frenzy, and his three sons came up behind to stand with their father. Thom Huxley, Martin Kilhammond, and Sam Parkins, along with their sons, moved across the room to join the man. The tension in the room was palpable. The rest of the men shifted uncomfortably. They all knew Tar’s temperament and expected some trouble.

  “That’s fine, Tyler…and the rest of you,” Tar said quietly, calming his own temper.

  The blood was rushing in his neck and he wanted nothing more than to stomp a mudhole in the man.

  “If you don’t want to be a part of this community anymore, you are all free to return to your land.”

  *

  Jen steered the Jeep back onto Route 60 North and crept through the city of Dunkirk. This close to the Lake, the snow was nearer to two feet deep and heavy winds nearly whited out the road
ahead. Having been drawn out by the gunfire of the night before, undead now meandered about, clogging the otherwise empty stretches of roadway. On multiple occasions, Jen had to steer the Jeep directly through a cluster of them rather than risk spinning out on the treacherous roadway. An interstate highway passed by overhead and the commercial surroundings instantly transformed into residential neighborhoods. Undead milled about in larger numbers along the roadway here as schools, businesses, and houses all crowded up to the street. Their speed decreased even more as Jen had to steer around traffic, stalled for eternity in intersections and at traffic lights. Their decreased speed caused many undead to move in pursuit of the slow-moving vehicle.

  Burdened by twelve people and the heavy load they hauled, the Jeep crawled down the roads, moving just a bit faster than the slow dead. The fast ones, when they came, slammed into the sides of the vehicle like linebackers going for a tackle. Some hit the Jeep with enough force to cause the rear end to fishtail. Bjorn and Tim dispatched these with their pistols from out of the moon roof. Thankfully, the fast undead were much fewer in number than the slow ones were.

  As they passed under a train overpass emblazoned with a sign indicating it was “Chadwick Bay,” they caught their first view of the vast snowy lake ahead. It was still about a mile distant, but they all stared at the vastness of it before the wind driven snow blurred it out again.

  “Okay, we need to figure out how we are going to get moving on the lake now that we have a few hundred undead following behind,” Will said, his anxiety showing through in his voice.

  Silence greeted him in return from the rest of the group. Jen pressed harder on the accelerator, kicking the Jeep into third gear for the first time in days. Tim grabbed the handle above the window with one hand and gathered his wife and child into him with the other.

  “Jen! What are you doing?” Will barked.

  “The road is straight and empty. I’m putting some ground in between us and them to try and give us a bit more of a cushion to play with.”

  “Please don’t crash!” Gary’s wife called up from the back, her voice shaking in panic.

  Jen dropped it into low gear before the transmission popped into fourth, setting the wheels into a spin. The Jeep fishtailed momentarily, until the engine slowed the vehicle enough for the wheels to regain traction. They blazed through an intersection at near thirty miles an hour with the engine roaring. After passing an apartment building on the left, the guardrail turned sharply to the right, exposing the vast wasteland of blinding white straight ahead of them. Jen followed the curve of the guardrail, trying to find a slip to back the Jeep down, or at least a gap in the iron railing to squeeze the trailer through. She kept the speed up moving a couple miles along the shoreline until they reached the end of the railing. When the concrete barrier fell away, it left the ground to slope on its own, downwards to the ice. This allowed Jen ample room to back the trailer down.

  Jen masterfully spun the Jeep and trailer combo around and backed down the bumpy, snow-covered slope. Bjorn and Tim jumped out immediately to start unloading their gear. Tim clumsily climbed back up the snowy slope to the roadway, where he set about guarding the area with his M4. Bjorn immediately detached the trailer, freeing the snowmobiles. The rest of the group filtered out, carrying their gear. Luna was tucked safely into her mother’s coat, her cherubic face poking out from the front above the zipper. Once the trailer was detached, Bjorn popped the rear hatch of the Jeep.

  Jen and Bjorn started unloading the last dozen cases of food they kept in the rear compartment of the Jeep for easy access. They managed to get six boxes out and onto their pile of gear, when the reverse lights cycled past and the engine roared to life. Bjorn had to jump back as the wheels spun and the rear end of the Jeep slipped back towards him. Tim, hearing the commotion stepped out into the path of the fishtailing Jeep as it hurtled up towards him. As Tim dove sidelong through the air, out of the path of the Jeep, he could see the grim visage of concentration on Gary’s face as he gripped the steering wheel. A moment later, the wheels lurched up to the top of the slope and onto the roadway. The vehicle spun out until the wheels slammed sideways into a curb, then hurtled off down the roadway, leaving the rest of the group slack-jawed.

  “Couldn’t even say thanks,” Tim said absently, picking himself up from the snow.

  “They got away with a bunch of the food,” Jen yelled.

  “It’s okay, Jen. We still have plenty to get us through. Besides, it’s less to lug across the lake,” Tim reassured her, not convinced himself, but knowing well that they weren’t going to get the supplies back.

  “Let’s concentrate on getting this shit onto the lake before that horde catches up to us,” Bjorn grunted as he pulled himself atop one of the snowmobiles.

  He turned the key and breathed a sigh of relief as the thing roared to life. He left it idling while he started the other two, one of which was a pull-cord start. Tim climbed atop the trailer and tossed a handful of toboggans and snowshoes out of the way before kicking down the rear ramp. Jen took up position atop the iron railing above to continue the watch down the length of the road. They all worked feverishly to get the gear loaded on the toboggans and lash them, fully loaded to the back of the snowmobiles. Jen jumped down about fifteen minutes later, just as they were finishing up.

  “We gotta get out of sight. The herd is coming!” she yelled at them.

  “How far off?” Tim called back.

  “I don’t know! Everything looks the same. There are no landmarks for me to gauge. Half-mile, maybe more, maybe less.”

  “Well, we have another problem,” Tim announced with a stressed sigh. “Six can ride on the snowmobiles, seven including Luna. That leaves two walking. There’s no room with all the gear for anyone to ride behind on the sleds, and I doubt they could pull the weight, anyhow.”

  “Can we leave some gear behind?” Jen asked, hopefully.

  “We are already leaving a lot behind as it is; any more and we would need resupply on food and fuel. In order to do that, we would need to venture closer to Detroit or London than I’m comfortable with. We might be able to make it to Sarnia, but with the cold, we’ll be eating two or three times as much,” Will somberly chipped in, much to the dismay of everyone.

  “Get everyone you can on the snowmobiles. Jen, you and I are walking. Let’s go, now,” Bjorn said as he grabbed her by her upper arm and steered her towards the white wasteland ahead.

  Tim got behind the handlebars of one, with Laura and Luna in her coat behind him with a blanket wrapped around all three. Will sat astride another, holding Sophie in front of him and Nick at the helm of the third with Chris behind him. It was only moments before they realized that the snowmobiles were taxed beyond their capabilities with the weight of multiple riders and towing over four hundred pound of supplies each. The track on all three machines ground downwards through the snow until it hit the ice below. Tim yelled for all three to lay off the throttles, dismounting.

  “Laura, you’ll have to drive it,” he said to her. “It’s controlled like your dad’s four-wheeler, remember that?”

  Laura nodded her head in assent as she slid forwards on the seat and grasped the throttle.

  “Nick, you’re with me; Sophie rides with Chris. Give her a crash course if she doesn’t know the controls.”

  The boy nodded as Tim set about loading two packs worth of gear, mostly from Will’s sled to lighten his load. Nick came over to help and Tim handed one of the packs to him. Moans came drifting to them, lifting over the whipping wind and both turned to see undead starting to topple over the iron railing a couple hundred yards away. Nick threw his pack on and started stomping off as fast as he could across the frozen lake.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Tim yelled to the three, scooping up his M4 and shouldering his own load.

  The three snowmobiles’ tracks ground noisily into the ice below before sluggishly moving forward atop the snowy ice. They gradually started gaining speed, leaving Tim and Nick behind in sh
ort order. Even with their fully loaded packs, the two were able to quickly outpace the slow undead which struggled through the feet of snow. Panic drove the two onward to greater speed. Tim still winced with each step, struggling through the pain of the gunshot, as he trotted behind the rapidly diminishing snowmobiles. They could see Bjorn and Jen, between the drifting gusts of snow a few hundred yards ahead. They stood out as two black specks in a whipping vortex of white.

  “Are we sure the whole lake going to be frozen?” Nick puffed out through his ski mask.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Will is the one that knows the lakes.”

  “How the fuck are we going to find them? Or catch up to them?” Nick shot back with panic welling in his voice.

  “Take it easy. We have what we need to survive. They won’t leave us out here, though they’ll probably have to search a bit to find us,” Tim replied, as he struggled to keep his breathing steady and even. “Now, let’s concentrate on getting one foot in front of the other.”

  Tim wanted to silence the conversation mainly to focus on sublimating his own fears. He didn’t want to dwell on the unknowable. He knew that what he had said was correct, but he had never seen this vast of a white waste before. His own doubts lingered and gnawed at the edges of his mind. The wind blew fresh snow across the goggles that shielded their eyes, blinding them to anything that wasn’t within a few feet. They kept their feet in the tread-mark of the snowmobiles, but after only a few minutes had passed, the blown snow reclaimed the signs of their passing.

  Their slower pace due to Tim’s limp ensured that they wouldn’t catch Bjorn and Jen. In the first hour, they had left the horde of undead far back in the blinding whiteness behind. The accumulated snow dissipated as they moved further from the shoreline, leaving the foreboding, windswept surface of black ice in its stead. Only the occasional crust of white snow atop the crack-streaked ice gave the comfort of solidity to the lake. They hoped that the dead would lose interest and wander off once they were out of sight. All four on foot all had the same worries of the dead stumbling upon them while they slept in their tents.