I explained that Sam was gone and we had to get out of the shop as fast as possible. Joey had created enough of a clearing to get to the back exit and we were ready to go.
Tara comforted Jen as best she could while Joey, Mike and I moved a large shelving unit in front of the swinging doors. We all agreed that even if we were taking off, we wanted to have something to slow down the infected.
After moving the unit in front of the doors, I took a look through the small plastic windows on the swinging doors and saw three undead getting to their feet after coming through the window—they were inside. Fix-It was now officially lost to the infection and Robbie had returned to his workplace, possibly where he will stay forever.
With no other options, we quickly took off through the back exit. Joey took out his keys and ran to the corner of the building. In the dark, he was able to see his car lit up by the lights of the store and we could all hear the continuous barking and growling of Fido.
As Joey was about to run over there, he noticed that the mass of undead was much larger than we had originally perceived and there was no way we’d be able to get Fido or get in the car safely—not without losing another member of our group.
I called Joey back and we made the tough decision to literally go on the run for the time being. I looked to the woods behind the hardware store and knew that they were thick and eventually led to the highway.
More likely than not, we would remain free of any contact with the infected in there. So, I told everyone that we had to stay close as the most dangerous aspect of this was how dark it was. We had to keep moving until dawn.
We began the run, moving at a steady pace away from the hardware store and into the unknown. I looked back as we ran, seeing the light of Fix-It—the only light in sight. I watched it for a moment until the brush of the forest began to grow thicker and the light faded into the distance.
Later, after hours of repetitious running through the thick woods, and several emotional stops, the trees started to space out more and the woods were finally coming to an end. The quiet highway came into view as the sky grew lighter and the sun began to rise.
Each of us basically collapsed into the grass hill that led onto the highway. We looked at one another and couldn’t believe how far momentum had taken us.
The only problem now was that we were in the open, completely vulnerable and without any shelter or hardly any equipment.
DISPATCHED
DAVID
Our current base in Berlin, New Hampshire had just dispatched several crews of Military Police and Infantry Specialists on a mission for Operation Survival. My crew of eight had entered the field in two fully loaded Suburban Utility Vehicles and our current mission is to find any and all survivors in Massachusetts, focusing on our designated zones of one and three—Northern and Central.
Currently, we had been scouting a small town known as Hopkinton, where one of the first safe zones was established. The zone had officially succumbed to the Arthriphagy sickness, but the area was never combed for survivors.
We’re also paying special attention to any homes or other small establishments that appear to be boarded up and/or sealed with survivors inside. Originally we were broadcasting via AM radio to these areas, but we have since ceased such efforts, as several rebel groups had used those broadcasts to find and ambush our rescue teams.
A lot of these groups had it ingrained in their minds that the government was behind all of this—something that’s simply not true. This virus had spread globally in less than a week, wiping out entire countries and almost continents. So, we’ve done our best to stay off frequencies, only using a secure line for absolutely necessary intel between field crews and the safe zone bases.
I’m occupying the back of the SUV as the only Infantry specialist aboard. I’m with three M.P. officers, whom my Infantry buddies and I probably would’ve given a hard time in a different situation. But, these guys were all right. Officer Michael Sharpe is one of the Military Police I had been talking to a lot—he’s about my age and was in the same training camp as me six years ago.
Officers Rickley and Heminez were also with us—they seemed all right, but they already knew one another from having been stationed together over the past few years, so they sat up front and didn’t converse with us too much.
We sat in the back as we drove down a long highway—completely abandoned on our side and completely bumper-to-bumper on the other. With a few miles before we hit our next hot spot for suspected survivors, we were hitting higher speeds somewhere around fifty-five or sixty miles per hour.
Sharpe and I began discussing the events that we knew to be fact—the rapid outbreak of infection, the President and his cabinet retreating to an unknown and secure location, and the fact that the people infected with Arthriphagy were—for all intents and purposes—dead. Immediately, Heminez turned back to us. “What the fuck are you guys talking about?” he asked. “How can dead people get up and walk around? Hey, get a load of these guys Rickley!”
“Well,” Sharpe said. “They don’t sustain a body temperature, nor do they have a readable pulse.”
“How do you know that?” Rickley asked.
“Well, I mean…”
“Ha! Yeah! What’d you do? Ask one of ‘em to stay still while you checked the vitals or something?” Heminez said, cutting off Sharpe’s answer.
“Whatever, man. Why don’t you just keep your eyes on the road,” I said.
Heminez glanced at the road, then back at us. “Ain’t nothin’ out there, man! Quit your backseat driving!”
As Heminez continued with his royally douche-like attitude, he completely ignored the other SUV in our convoy and the fact that it had stopped up ahead for something. Heminez smirked at us as he laughed and kept pushing down the gas pedal.
“Watch out man!” I shouted.
Rickley looked forward and smacked Heminez’s arm. “Chet! Look out!” After hearing this from his partner in crime, he quickly looked forward and said, “Oh shit!” and slammed on the brakes and crashed into our partners’ vehicle real hard.
Their SUV flew forward and crashed through the guard rail, flying down a grassy hill and eventually came to a stop at a tree. Ours followed them and slid to the side, smashing into the broken guard rail and almost rolling over entirely.
From this point, everything went dark until I came to moments later. I noticed that both airbags in the front had gone off, Heminez’s door was pushed in, and the window had shattered because of the guard rail. I looked at him and Rickley—both did not move and if they were still breathing, it was so shallow that I could not detect it by watching any rising and falling action of their chests.
I looked over to Sharpe as he was slowly moving his head with his eyes still shut. Blood from his nose covered his face as he began to moan in a disoriented manner.
For a moment, I thought he was alive until I realized that he could be one of them. The stories we had been told were that you had to be bitten to become one, but I didn’t fully believe that at this point. So, I grabbed my handgun and clenched it tightly as I watched the MP sway his head back-and-forth.
As his moaning continued, I became relatively certain that his body had been reanimated and he was now an Arthriphagy carrier. I held up my gun with the safety off and one in the chamber, ready to fire at the sight of his dead pupils. But to my relief, he finally opened his eyes and asked, clear as day, “What happened?”
“Thank God,” I said. “I thought you were gone.”
He looked at me for a moment, trying to piece together the situation, and then looked up at Heminez and Rickley’s corpses. “Shit,” he said. “Where’s the other SUV?”
I pointed to the horrific sight out our side windows. “Right there.”
Sharpe looked and saw the SUV smashed directly into the tree. From our vantage point, we discovered that the airbags had gone off and broken glass littered the scene. I quickly looked around and made sure the sound of the crash had not drawn any i
nfected people to the area. After making sure that everything seemed all right, Sharpe and I slowly exited the vehicle and had planned on checking on the rest of our crew.
However, as we stepped out of the vehicle, I immediately got a strong smell of gasoline fumes. “You smell that?” I asked Sharpe.
He nodded and looked around the area of our vehicle where the guard rail had caused the most damage. “I don’t see any signs of gas here,” he said. “It must not be coming from our tank.”
I nodded and cautiously proceeded to the other crash site. The gas could have been coming from the other SUV or from the highway, what with all the abandoned and crashed vehicles on the other side. However, as we got closer to their crash site, we found that the smell intensified quickly. I stopped for a moment and noticed smoke rising from the engine where the vehicle had crashed into the tree trunk.
“Move back!” I shouted as I ran back behind our vehicle. Sharpe quickly followed me as the SUV exploded with the rest of our crew inside. The explosion was massive and vibrated through my entire body as it pushed us onto the ground.
I began to crawl towards the highway to get away from our vehicle, just in case. Sharpe followed me after he got back to his feet. I looked back at the charred and burning remnants of the other SUV and couldn’t help but think that I hoped they were already dead from the crash. And, while I wished we had gotten to them sooner, there was a chance that we’d be dead now too.
After a moment of staring at the wreck site, I took out my walkie-talkie and attempted to reach base for an extraction as Sharpe and I were officially on our own out here with no transport. However, the walkie-talkie seemed to have been damaged during the crash because all I got was static.
So, we tried Sharpe’s as I was sure the MPs would have had the better equipment. To no avail, his was the same result as mine. We decided to give it a minute to be sure our vehicle wasn’t about to go up in flames as well, then we would retrieve whatever useful gear we had inside and head out on foot in search of transport.
After retrieving some ammunition and our canteens, we headed out, taking a mile-or-so of the highway on foot. As we got a little further away from the crash site, I tried the walkie-talkie again, still to no avail. We were on our own for the time being and we both knew that could be quite a long time—especially if we couldn’t find a mode of transportation. We both agreed that we would continue our mission and search for survivors while we looked for a way out for ourselves. After all, any survivors we might find could end up having a car that we could use to get back to Berlin.
As we came to a highway onramp that would lead us into town, we cautiously went in, keeping an eye out for survivors and infected people. We both knew from experience that the more thickly settled areas would harvest more infected. So, we moved quickly and quietly with our weapons ready.
Upon entering the town, we found many broken down and abandoned cars and trucks. However, many of them were without keys. If they did have keys, they were either totaled or left on in some way so that the tanks were empty or the batteries were dead. We kept moving down side streets and didn’t see anyone—alive or otherwise, except completely dead corpses littered among the streets and sidewalks.
Just as we were about to give up, we came to an intersection where we looked a little further down the road and saw a couple of large signs hanging from the roof of a building. One was blocked by a tree, but the other said SOS in huge letters. Of course there was a chance these were put up a while ago and the people had come and gone or had left on their own accord. Regardless, we decided to check it out.
As we got closer, we noticed it was some kind of shop, a hardware shop. But, even if there were once people inside, there wasn’t anymore. The entire place was crawling with infected hosts, lurking around the parking lot and on the inside.
There was a red convertible in the lot, but between the dozen stumbling around the lot, we decided not to risk our lives for something that wasn’t even certain. After observing this mess for a moment, we both decided we should quietly get out of there before being spotted by one of those things. They weren’t so bad if it was just a couple, but dozens gets more than overwhelming.
So, we continued on our way. After cutting across another smaller highway, we came to another thickly settled area. However, this place seemed to be more sprinkled with infected loiterers. We approached with extreme caution.
After passing several blocks, we came to an intriguing scene. There was a car that looked like it was used very recently. The skid marks leading up to its parking space were dark on the pavement and very fresh. To say you could smell the burnt rubber would be a bit of an exaggeration, but I didn’t doubt that we only missed that sensation by a few minutes. Also, behind the car were two corpses that looked to have been bashed in the head with something, the pools of thick blood around them were definitely fresh and made us wonder if there were some survivors around.
The car was in front of a large brick factory building that looked otherwise void of people. After a moment of keeping ourselves hidden behind some trash cans on the other side of the street, a few of the infected came stumbling down the street. As Sharpe looked around for a few moments, he noticed something very strange. A man on the roof of the building, holding a gun and pointing it down to the ground.
We didn’t know his intention; whether he wanted to take the infected out or if he was going to take us out. We also didn’t want to take the chance that he took out the infected and then us by accident as I’m sure he hadn’t seen many people with a heartbeat walking down these roads lately.
So after a moment of watching him watch us or the road or the infected, I decided it was time to make him aware of our presence. I readied my gun, aimed and fired—taking out one of the Arthriphagy carriers. As the creature’s head exploded, it fell to the ground. Sharpe kept an eye on our mystery shooter as I took two more well-aimed shots, ridding us of the problem of the infected for the time being.
At this point, we had likely severely startled this shooter on the roof because as Sharpe watched him, he was frantically pointing his gun in all different directions. After a moment of realizing that this man was definitely no professional, I stepped out carefully, still holding my gun I. “Drop the gun!” I shouted to him.
I saw him look directly down at me and aim his weapon in my direction.
“I said put it down, sir!” I told him once more.
“Don’t even think about it!” Sharpe chimed in. “We’ve got you and we don’t mean any harm!”
From my vantage point, I could tell he was nervous and wasn’t about to fire. So, I lowered my gun and told Sharpe to do the same. Reluctantly, he followed my orders and did so.
“Take it easy up there!” I said once more.
Then, out of nowhere, the large front doors to the factory clicked and creaked loudly as they began to open. Immediately, Sharpe and I raised our weapons once more when we noticed that the man on the roof had run away.
As I began to sweat, not knowing what we had walked into here, the doors opened all the way and a man stepped out slowly.
“Freeze!” I said, aiming my gun cautiously.
BACK ON OUR FEET
PETER
We were all exhausted as we sat on the side of the highway. The sun was rising and none of us had the energy to move—but we had to. We had to get back moving and find some kind of shelter. There were figures moving off in the distance and we had no immediate plan.
“What are…? Where are we going? What are we going to do?” an exhausted Mike asked.
Jen plopped onto the ground with dried teardrop streaks on her face. Her face was blank and she breathed heavily.
“We need to keep going,” I said.
Tara crouched down next to Jen and rubbed her back as Joey looked up and down the stretch of highway with me. A handful of the undead were lurking about in each direction. They probably didn’t know we were here yet, but it was only a matter of time. We observed the cars as well
—scattered throughout the road, many with doors ajar and cracked up bumpers and sides.
“Should we try one of the cars?” I asked.
Joey looked around. “Seems like our best bet,” I said.
“Lots of gas tanks are probably empty and I’ll bet the batteries are long dead by now,” Mike said. “I was in a similar situation to these people and I don’t think I took the time to turn off my car when I had to take off.”
“We might as well check out a few,” I said.
Mike nodded and began walking onto the road and towards the nearest sedan. Joey and I followed, keeping a close eye on the lurking undead off in the distance.
As I began checking the idle vehicles, I noticed something moving inside a small sedan. Intrigued, and also a little nervous, I slowly approached the vehicle. At first, I thought it was a dog or something.
I peeked through the back windows and saw that it was a child that had been infected with the A. Phagy disease. He was buckled into the backseat and lacked the motor skills to unfasten the belt. I watched him for a moment as he slowly moved from side-to-side, trying to free himself from the safety harness that was now providing more safety than ever originally intended.
“Pete, you okay?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” I said as I quickly turned away from the disturbing sight of such a young person succumbing to this sickness. “I was just checking the car. You have any luck?”
“There’s a pick-up over here that Joey found.”
Mike and I quickly walked to Joey, who was standing next to a dark red pick-up truck. He was holding the front door open.
“Was that already open?” I asked.
“I just opened it,” he said. “The keys are sitting in the ignition.”
“Was it left on?” Mike asked.
Decay: A Zombie Story Page 11
