Spinning away and stepping back, Eric continued, “Number two—that door is open because just moments ago, these ‘special people’ here,” he indicated Sam and Michelle, “and others just outside, were risking their lives to keep you and your family safe. A dozen feet on the other side of that door there are five corpses that we had to blow the brains out of just to keep them from tearing through and coming after you. For all I know, it could be your mother . . . or your son, lying out there. If you think I’m jerking your chain, now’s your chance . . . go out there and take a look . . . and there’s at least ten more scattered between here and the road. WAKE THE HELL UP, PEOPLE! Most of you were at the campground . . . you experienced the shit storm that went down. Well guess what folks—as far as we know, it’s not better anywhere else. We don’t know what’s happening, so don’t start demanding answers that we can’t give. I can promise you this, though—whatever happened—this is no longer ‘yesterday’s world’ that we’re living in.”
Eric lowered his voice in pitch, but the intensity remained. “As some of you may have picked up from Amy’s radio, there’s at least one more of those things out there. And we think it’s one of the fast ones—the ones we’ve been calling a feral. The last one of those that Officer Owens encountered,” he nodded toward Michelle, “took a half dozen rounds of buckshot—point blank—before it went down. So if you think for one moment that I’m abusing my authority or violating your rights by asking that you stay in here while we hunt it down, well then, you just say the word and I’ll be damn glad to trade places with you.”
The crowd was silent as Eric finished his speech and walked toward the door. Pausing with his hand on the aluminum push bar, he turned to face the crowd once more. “Don’t misunderstand me; I am truly sorry for the losses that many of you have suffered. Just don’t forget that you’re not the only ones in that boat.” Eric clicked the mounted Quark flashlight on high. “One other thing before we go out there—we’re still planning on meeting with everybody tonight. I’m sorry it’s been delayed. Shit happens—deal with it . . . because to be totally honest with you, right now I could give less than a hairy rat’s ass if you’re offended that a meeting is behind schedule while we’re out there putting our lives on the line for you.”
Eric pushed the door and walked outside; Michelle and Sam followed.
Chapter 14
Backtracking in a wide arc around the bodies took them to the truck, and Eric reached in and started it back up—flipping the switch again for the off-road lights.
“Worried about draining your battery?” Sam asked.
“The off-road lights will suck it down pretty fast if it’s not running, but the main reason I turned it off when we were inside was to make it as silent as possible out here for Max to hear if anything was coming—he seems to hate these things.”
“Do you think he can find the missing one for us?”
“I don’t know. He’s a hunter, not a tracker, but his senses are about a hundred times sharper than ours.”
“Are you going to have him on a leash?”
“No. He doesn’t like that when we’re hunting, and I’d feel a lot more comfortable knowing that he had free reign to protect himself if the doo-doo hits the fan. Don’t worry though; he won’t take off unless I gave him the command. Probably.”
“Probably?”
Eric shrugged and smiled, “I can honestly say that we have zero experience tracking down zombies at night. Maybe I should have watched some of those television shows with you.”
Sam laughed and shook his head, “Maybe. Oh, and by the way, I think I was supposed to remind you to ‘be nice’ in there, I just couldn’t decide if I wanted to say it before—or after—you threatened to put a bullet in that guy’s head.”
“OK boys, I’m starting to suffer from testosterone poisoning here, so if you don’t mind, let’s figure out a plan and get moving,” Michelle chimed in.
Eric took his radio off of his belt, “Scott . . . Thompson . . . any news?”
“So far, nothing.”
“OK, we’re going to start searching in a few minutes. I’m going to leave my truck angled the way it is so you have a lot of light to shoot by if anything comes from the road. Scott, I want you facing that way. Thompson, I want you covering us as best you can. Just remember to be absolutely sure of your target if you have to fire. There are three of us, plus Max, that will be down here on the ground.”
“Understood.”
Eric whistled, and Max jumped out of the pickup’s bed and trotted over, a deep growl emanating from his throat as he got closer to the bodies outside of the store.
“C’mere buddy.”
Max gave a few more low snarls at the corpse of the boy with wire-rimmed glasses before bounding over to Eric.
Eric knelt down and put Max in a fake choke hold, scrubbing his head with his other hand.
“You ready to go hunting, Max?”
Max pawed the ground and pushed his monstrous head into Eric’s chest, almost bowling him over.
“I’ll take that for a ‘yes.’” Turning to Sam and Michelle, Eric asked, “Any ideas?”
“Why don’t we walk out along the road first? Sam suggested, “That way we can get a feel for how Max might react if we find one, and it’ll also put us out in the open with more room to fire—or run—if we have to.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Eric handed the chrome plated shotgun to Michelle, “I’m going to be on point with Max. It’s going to be easier if you and Sam carry the heavy artillery . . . but I’ll need to borrow your flashlight.”
Michelle completed the trade, and then the three of them began walking toward the road—Max and Eric in the lead.
As they passed each downed body, Max gave a slight growl and bristled menacingly, as if waiting for them to spring up again. None of them did. Halfway to their endpoint, Max stopped and stared into the weeds; flattening his tail parallel to the ground and curling his lips back.
“Max, wait.” Eric slid next to Max and knelt down. “What is it, buddy? What do you see?” The cavernous rumble reverberating through Max’s chest vibrated against Eric’s shoulder as he stared into the weeds by the lake.
A few seconds later, Sam and Michelle moved up into flanking positions. “He got somethin’?”
“Yeah, look at his pose. Tail flat out, lips curled, partially crouched and focusing—that’s wolf for ‘danger.’”
“What now?”
“Now we move up and take care of it,” Michelle answered.
After commanding Max to wait, they spread into a curved skirmish line and slowly approached the weeds, stopping briefly at the edge of the road to shine their lights down the gradual slope that led to the edge of Ghost Echo Lake.
“There,” Michelle hissed, “next to that little clump of willows . . . something’s moving.”
“I see it,” Sam echoed.
“I don’t,” Eric said, craning his neck in the direction Michelle had indicated.
“Look on the ground at the ‘seven o’clock’ position from the base of the willow tangle.”
Eric slid to the left a few feet and stared again. “OK, got it.” Aligning the 10mm’s sights on the object in question, he began to walk forward—Michelle and Sam slightly ahead to his left and right.
As they closed, it became obvious that the thing on the ground was human. Or was. Inflamed red eyes looked up at them from a chubby, mud and blood speckled feminine face. Her brown, woolen parka blended in almost perfectly with the surroundings as she pulled herself through the weeds. Grasping roots and rocks with shredded fingers, she wormed and heaved herself forward inch by inch. Her legs followed limp and useless behind her.
“Look at the back of her coat,” Michelle said as she closed the gap, stopping about twenty feet away from the crawling woman, “it looks like she took a round in the lower spine.”
Eric shined his flashlight off to the right. A beaten down trail had been dredged through the thick underbrush for at least s
eventy feet. “Damn, look how far she’s pulled herself with a broken back.”
“Let’s take care of her and get moving, we still have a lot of stuff to do tonight,” Sam voiced with a bit of impatience showing through as he raised his shotgun.
“Hold on a minute,” Michelle said as she edged closer to the dragging lady, “I want to see something.”
She crouched fifteen feet away from the crawling ghoul and stared at it momentarily, shifting her head to the left and right to be sure. “You’re wrong, Sam . . . she’s breathing. So they’re not your ‘up from the grave, midnight theater zombies’ that you were worried about.”
“So what you’re saying is that since this flaming-eyed fat lady—who managed to drag herself a hundred feet through the thick brush with a broken back and probably massive internal injuries—because she’s still breathing, I should feel all warm and fuzzy inside?”
“Yep,” Michelle stood and backed away, “anybody want to say a quick prayer?”
“I think we’re all going to be saying a lot of prayers before this is over,” Sam replied, “do you want me to finish her?”
The thunder of the chrome 12 gauge was his answer.
They finished their sweep out the road with no other encounters. A total of sixteen bodies were found, counting the five in front of the store.
“Now the fun part,” Eric said dryly as they walked back to the store.
“OK, let’s circle the marina parking lot and see if Max picks up on anything. From there, we’ll start spiraling in, checking buildings as we go.”
“Do you want me to take point?” Sam asked.
“No . . . thanks for offering, but I need to be out front with Max.”
Sam nodded, and a few minutes later they began their loop. Going slow and searching every shadow with their lights took almost twenty minutes, but yielded no results. “How do we know this thing isn’t five miles down the road by now?”
“We don’t, but let’s eliminate the close possibilities before we worry about what might be five miles away.” Eric picked his radio up, paused, and then turned toward Michelle, “These are great, but I’m really wishing we had a ‘hands free’ option.”
“We do, for six of them anyhow. The ones that Andy and I brought back from my office have single transducer throat microphones and earpieces—we just haven’t taken the time to set them up yet.”
“We need to make that a priority.”
“Everything is a priority right now.”
“I know what you mean. Are you ready?” Sam and Michelle both nodded.
“Thompson, we’re getting ready to make our sweep between the buildings.”
“10-4”
They circled around the front of the store, past the gas pumps and over to the first block building. It was still locked.
“What’s inside here?” Sam asked.
“Walter uses it as an overflow storage building for products he stocks at the store.”
“So it might be filled with food?” Sam’s eyebrows rose.
“Knowing Walter, it’s probably stacked floor to ceiling with empty beer bottles.”
The propane storage shed was also secured, and as they passed, Michelle gave them a quick rundown of what Walter had shown to her and Amy.
“All right,” Eric sighed, “that leaves us with Walter’s office and the boat warehouse.”
They reversed course and headed back past the two small outbuildings, re-examining every nook and crevice as they went by. Ahead of them, the garage door side of Walter’s office building loomed still and steady in the cool, night air. Puffs of their breath fogged into miniature clouds in the brilliant illumination of their lights as they approached the structure, weapons at the ready.
“Let’s circle it . . . there’s a couple of windows on the front side that we can look through. They’ll only give us a view into the area where Walter has his desk, but at least it’s a start.”
They circled counterclockwise, coming up between the store and the office before continuing around and putting the store at their backs. Above their heads, just under the eve at the corner of the building, a small surveillance camera was facing outwards. Eric stopped and shined his flashlight along the roofline of Walter’s office, and then jumped it over to the store. He found two more cameras.
“Hey Walter, when did you get the surveillance system?”
“About two weeks before Christmas last year, so that’s what—about five months ago, I guess.”
“I’m guessing that they don’t work right now, correct?”
“No, they’re tied in to grid power. I’ve got ‘em hooked to a UPS backup that’ll provide about twenty minutes of runtime for the cameras and the DVR system before it shuts down, but that’s just for the occasional power interruption.”
“How many cameras are there—I can see three from where I’m standing—one of them is above my head at the corner of your office facing towards the store, and I can see two of them on the store, but I can’t tell which direction those are pointed.”
“I have two separate systems. The first one has three of those little black dome cameras flush mounted in the ceiling of the store. One is above each register, and one is at the point where the two wings come together. Those are the only inside cameras hooked to the system. There are six cameras linked with the outside system. Three of them are on the store, and three are on my office.”
“Where do they point?”
“Ah, let me try and picture this for you . . . OK, on the store, there’s a camera that picks up from the two small outbuildings over to the road, so it catches the diesel pump as well. There’s another camera out front pointing straight at the gas pumps, and then the last one catches the edge of the boat launch, the road out front, and just a sliver of the gas pumps. You with me so far?”
“Yep.”
“OK, on my office there’s a camera—the one right above your head—that faces towards the store. Another one is on the backside of my office and faces towards the warehouse. The last one is also on the back—actually just around the corner—and it gets a wedge from where my driveway cuts off of the marina all the way over to the boat ramp. On a clear day you can see the horizon over at the campground on that one.”
“Any of them have night vision capability?”
“All of them, but the range is pretty sucky. On a dark night without any external light source, you’ll get a clear picture out to maybe thirty feet. Out to the fifty foot mark, you can see, but it’s pretty fuzzy. Beyond that it’s black. Normally it’s not a problem since we have the big mercury vapor lights at the boat launch, as well as other spotlights and whatnot scattered around the marina. Of course, they ain’t been on for awhile now, so we’re back to suck central—but none of that matters since there’s no power.”
“OK, thanks.”
“So much for catching a break,” Eric grumbled.
“Maybe not right now, but there might be a way to figure out how we can use them later.”
Eric nodded at Sam as he slid past and positioned himself near a window. Michelle leapfrogged past him and pressed her back against the wall by the second window. “On two and a half?” she teased.
Eric smiled as he whispered, “One . . . two . . . three.”
On three he spun and pressed the light flat against the glass of the window, flooding the inside front room of the office with a white glow. Michelle’s weapon light added to the illumination—the bright chrome barrel of the shotgun holding steady less than a foot away from the glass. Nothing moved. Another few moments of searching through the windows kept their score at zero.
Eric quietly slid over to the door and tested the knob. It didn’t move.
“I hope one of you has the key.”
Sam stepped forward, “I do supposedly, although I don’t know which one it is.”
It turned out to be the first key that Sam tried, and the door opened silently inward.
“Max, come here,” Eric called out softly.
&
nbsp; Max trotted over and paused in the doorway, his head shifting and bobbing as he peered into the room beyond.
“Let’s go buddy . . . go get ‘em.”
Max’s bushy black tail curled partway over his haunches as he stepped into the building and moved haltingly past Walter’s desk. Eric followed quietly, searching left to right with the Colt and flashlight combination. Michelle trailed five feet behind, and Sam brought up the rear. The office and restroom were empty, and Max moved through the open door into the hallway.
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 16
