by J. W. Vohs
Christy was out before her head hit the pillow, but David volunteered to keep the first watch while the others rested. Both Bobby and Marcus offered to take the first shift as well, but David didn’t think he would be able to get to sleep for a while anyway. The two Rangers flipped a coin for the second shift, the winner actually getting to cut his sleep short to relieve David after three hours.
Luke and Gracie were sharing a tent, but David wasn’t uncomfortable with the arrangement. He wanted to give the teens some space; he knew that they had to be thinking about the Independence Dam on the far side of Defiance where Luke had lost his dad. He knew that simply having Christy close-by made dealing with the ghosts of this trip more bearable, and even though they were incredibly young, Luke and Gracie had the same kind of bond. When David finally sprawled out next to Christy for a few hours of sleep, he was thinking about how good it was for Luke to have Gracie by his side on this journey.
Before they resumed their trip after sunset, David pulled Luke aside and asked, “Do you want to stop when we reach the island where we buried your dad? We’ll probably pass by there within an hour of leaving this place.”
Luke thought for a moment before shaking his head, explaining, “Eventually I want to put a stone marker up at his grave, but he isn’t there. I’ve dreamt of him several times and he’s so glorious with light . . . He’s smiling, and Mom’s with him. They’re waiting for me, but there’re things I need to do here first.”
David was accustomed to Luke’s mysticism, but he was a little worried about this last statement. “You haven’t had one of your feelings or visions or whatever that you aren’t going to be with us for much longer have you?”
Luke’s smile was melancholy as he quietly promised, “No, nothing like that. It’s just, when my time ends in this world I know that mom and dad will be waiting on the other side for me. That’s all I meant. Shoot, David, I plan on marrying Gracie and having some kids of my own after this war.”
David frowned, “You might be waiting a long time.”
“Well,” Luke explained, “I guess I should rephrase that. Once we have a number of settlements in place and a safe food supply organized we’ll all have to settle down a little bit. I doubt that we’ll have the globe cleansed of these monsters in our lifetimes, but maybe we can balance war with living, you know?”
David nodded, “I do know. We’ve all been struggling so hard just to survive since the outbreak, but Vickie told me that a few of the women at The Castle are pregnant so I guess life goes on.”
Luke just smiled broadly and agreed, “I guess so!”
David cocked an eyebrow and suspiciously asked, “Anything you need to tell me about you and Gracie?”
Luke looked shocked, “Oh, heck no! We’ll wait till we’re married, which is gonna have to be soon, by the way, and even then we’ll try to avoid babies until we’re older.”
David seemed mollified, “All right, I’m counting on you two to be part of our team in the fights to come; I’m not sure Lori and Blake will leave The Castle if you aren’t part of the group.”
Now Luke cocked an eyebrow, “So they think they have a better chance of living if I’m along to be hunter-bait, huh?”
David chuckled, “You’re the idiot who’s always swooping in like Batman, making suicidal charges. One of these days your luck’s gonna run out, and one of us will have to be there to save your butt. We all have our callings.”
Luke smiled wryly and shook his head, “It isn’t luck, and my time will come when it comes.”
David grew serious, “I suppose you’re right, Luke. Being back on the water, reliving what we went through, it reminds me of how miraculous it is that we’re still here.”
Full of energy, Christy skipped up behind them, gave David a squeeze, and ruffled Luke’s hair. “Hey you two, you can chit-chat later. Let’s get this show on the road.”
At full dark everyone was packed up and ready to go, so they hit the river and again made great time as they paddled along with the current. As predicted, within the hour they passed the island where Jerry was buried. David found himself thinking about the ex-cop, remembering all the times they’d fought the hunters side-by-side, trusting one another with their lives. They had survived so many close calls in the city, only to be overwhelmed by a large pack of stinking flesh-eaters along the rural banks of the Maumee. He’d told himself a thousand times since the tearful goodbye inside the tent where Jerry had spent his final hours that he’d done everything he possibly could to save his buddy in their final battle together, but sometimes he couldn’t keep the guilt at bay and found himself foundering in depression. Lori had explained the concept of survivor’s guilt to him, and it helped a great deal when he inevitably found himself thinking of the death of the best friend he’d ever had.
Christy’s voice whispered in the darkness, “Jerry wouldn’t want you feeling guilty. And he’d be darn impressed by the way you’ve stepped up to be a father figure for Luke. You’re a good man, David Smith.”
David felt his eyes well up, and he didn’t trust himself to speak. He concentrated on aligning his breathing with the soft rhythm of the paddling.
“I know Jerry is kind of an old man’s name,” Christy’s voice was barely audible, “but if we ever have a son, I’d like to name him Jerry. Maybe Jerald James. I think my dad would approve.”
David nodded, but when he opened his mouth to mention that he wasn’t sure it would be ethical to bring a baby into a world full of the infected, Christy cut him off and pointed ahead, “Look!”
The sight of the Independence Dam in the distance interrupted the conversation as the other travelers were alerted to prepare for the crossing. Once again, they lined up on shore and wordlessly lifted the canoes to their shoulders. The portage was a short, rocky trail below a small bluff, and this time they encountered no hunters as they efficiently and quickly bypassed the dam. As with the previous night’s experiences, David figured that most of the monsters were sleeping in some type of lair near whatever food they were finding these days.
As they re-entered the river and let the current carry them while they caught their breath, David tried not to think about the difficulties of paddling back upstream when the mission was complete, dreading the sore muscles and agony of wading through the shallows in between bouts of struggling to propel the boats against the current. Still, he found himself analyzing the return trip, his recent conversation with Christy, and many other things as the hours of darkness and the quiet monotony of the paddle dipping rhythmically into the water lulled him into places in his mind that had been buried under an avalanche of incessant catastrophe management. Christy had grown quiet and introspective as well, so David reflected on what had become of the world in a few short months.
He found himself remembering the frantic effort he and Christy had made to escape their apartment building when they had finally realized the scope of the disaster, killing zombies all the way to their vehicle despite both of them being bitten numerous times without the teeth making it through their armor. He smiled grimly as he recalled the bruises and soreness left by those teeth, and mostly succeeded in not thinking about the thousands of people in the city that night who had no protection against the voracious flesh-eaters. He remembered the desperation on the faces of people they passed as they drove along the sidewalks and shoulders of the roads toward Westlake, not daring to stop and offer assistance after a man pointed a gun in their direction, presumably hoping to car-jack them. He now realized it was surprising that they hadn’t run into more desperate behavior, and more ruthlessness. With the exception of a couple of perverted former political lobbyists taking advantage of teenaged girls on one of the islands, he hadn’t come face to face with any truly predatory humans since the beginning of the outbreak. He decided that it was probably just a matter of time, but sincerely hoped that he was wrong about that.
The long hours crept past as they continued to make outstanding time down the Maumee. Twice they scraped bo
ttom as the water level continued to drop in proportion to the increase in time since the runoff from the Fort Wayne area thunderstorms began, but the sounds were muffled and no hunters appeared as they approached the island dam that finally came into view at the periphery of their night vision.
David assumed that the dam had a name, but he didn’t know it. Since the structure was divided in the middle by a long, wooded island, everyone in the group just called it the island dam when they talked about the heroic stand Luke and his father had made here that allowed the others to get the canoes over the portage. This time David hoped to avoid any trouble as they carefully paddled up to the rocky edge of the island and stepped out into the shallows to await the others. With their NVGs there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between night and day for the travelers when it came to seeing their way clear of the brush and other obstacles as they crossed the short distance to the put-in point, and they were back on the water just as the eastern horizon began to lighten up with the first rays of the approaching sun. As they had the previous morning, the group decided to travel during the early part of the day. Unfortunately, the peacefulness of the prior morning and the relative ease of their journey so far did not mean that the countryside wasn’t crawling with hunters.
Not long after sunrise the tiny flotilla came to a long stretch of rapids that everyone agreed would be safer to wade than float. The water level here seemed to be about the same as David remembered from the last time he was on the river, so his earlier suspicion that the runoff from the storm a few days earlier had finally run its course was confirmed. The distance from where he now stood to the next bend in the river was about three hundred yards. The entire stretch was filled with large rocks and small boulders, the current swiftly flowing over and around the obstacles. This time he doubted that the group would make it through noiselessly. He could only hope that the sound of the rushing water and the breeze rustling the leaves in the canopy above them would drown out the sound of their passing.
About a hundred yards into the rapids however, that hope was dashed when Gracie stumbled and briefly fell into the choppy waters. The canoe she’d been leading with a short rope before her, another challenge quite different from the towing they’d done when moving upstream a few weeks earlier, banged into a mid-sized boulder with a hollow thump that resonated up and down the river before being swallowed up by the surrounding foliage. Gracie quickly regained her feet and began pulling the canoe back toward her, but a howl from the east told them that the damage was done.
David urged everyone to increase their pace as much as possible, hoping to reach deeper water before any hunters spotted them. The good luck they’d enjoyed since they’d started downriver held a moment longer, as everyone in the group reached the bend in the river at the same time that a chorus of howls from behind them revealed a pack of about a dozen of the flesh-eaters climbing down the bank near the spot where Gracie’s canoe had hit the rock. At the same time the depth of the water quickly deepened and nobody needed to be told to get into the boats and begin paddling. David noticed that the hunters didn’t hesitate to move out into the shallows where his people had been standing just moments earlier, but after they stumbled around in the rapidly deepening water for a few moments they quickly climbed back onto the bank and began chasing the humans in the river by keeping pace along the shoreline.
David figured that they were making six or seven miles an hour on the water, but the monsters on the bank were running much faster, and from the racket they were making as they ran along he knew that the original pack had been heavily reinforced. Luke and Gracie were the first to reach the next bend in the river, where they were initially relieved to find another stretch too deep for the hunters to enter. Unfortunately, just a few hundred yards away they could see that the water transformed into rapids that stretched to the next bend.
The hunters were even with the canoeists now, and they kept pace along the bank, sometimes running ahead a bit, where the bravest among them tested the water to see if they could wade out to where the food was. Inevitably the monsters would reach water up to their waists, where they seemed to panic and begin to flail against the current as they struggled to return to the bank where they continued to follow the boats. Finally, the lead hunters reached the rapids about fifty yards ahead of the three canoes and found that they could make it out into the middle of the river where they howled and snarled impatiently as they waited to intercept the humans.
David saw what was happening and shouted for everyone to test the depths around them, and nowhere was the water deeper than any of the paddles they stuck down into the murky current. With more and more hunters following the pack leaders out into the river, there seemed to be no other option for David and the others than to hop out into the water where they were and see how the flesh eaters responded.
Gracie found herself in water almost to her chest, while the rest of the team discovered that the river reached just above their waists. The hunters in front of them seemed puzzled as to what they should do next. Some of them tried to advance toward the humans, but again, when they felt the water rise with each step they reluctantly retreated back to where the rapids merely flowed around their ankles and calves. Luke did a quick count and shouted over to David that there were at least sixty of the monsters, and Marcus confirmed the estimate a few seconds later. David knew that the longer he waited to give the order to engage the more hunters would be coming to investigate all of the howling going on, but they would also be attracted to the noise of a battle.
Ultimately it was Luke who made the decision for him by shouting over, “We have to advance closer to them and tempt them into water deeper than they’re comfortable with, and we need to do it before we’re facing hundreds more!”
David realized that Luke was right; all the howling was like ringing a dinner bell, and they had to put a stop to it as soon as possible. He immediately turned toward Bobby and Marcus to make sure they understood the plan. Within a few seconds they were all slowly wading toward the line of hunters, stopping when they were about twenty yards away and the water was thigh-deep. As Luke had suspected, the combination of food being so close by and the river’s depth being just at the edge of their comfort level proved too tempting for the hunters to resist, and a number of them began cautiously moving toward the humans standing so tantalizingly near.
Luke had already killed two flesh-eaters with arrows and had set his sights on a third when David and the others began methodically and carefully firing their pistols at the hunters. Within a few minutes, more than twenty of the flesh-eaters were dead in the water and floating downstream, and what had appeared to be an encounter fraught with danger had turned into a turkey shoot. Then, just as it became obvious to Luke that they were going to kill them all with no danger to themselves, the hunters acted in a manner none of the humans had ever seen before: they retreated.
CHAPTER 7
As more and more of their pack-mates fell mortally wounded into the current and floated away, some of the monsters began looking at the dead curiously, as if they were trying to figure out how they had died. A few of the creatures continued pressing the attack only to quickly join the others already lying in the water, and finally the remaining hunters apparently decided that the humans weren’t worth the price they were paying to get at them. The surviving monsters made for the bank, while David shouted at everyone to save their ammo. Luke looked over at him, the fanatical gleam of battle in his eyes, and snarled, “What the hell are they doing?”
David yelled back, “Just get past the shallows before they change their minds!”
Reluctantly, that’s what the teen did, along with everyone else in the group. Nobody had allowed a hunter to come within ten yards of their firing positions, but all of them were more than happy to escape while they had the opportunity to do so. Just minutes later they reached another stretch of the Maumee that flowed relatively deep and slow, where they paddled for about an hour before reaching an island that was surr
ounded by water high enough to keep the hunters following them on the banks from trying to reach them as they camped for the day. Luke insisted on retrieving as many arrows as possible from the floating corpses they were passing, so they all got a good look at the dead hunters.
Almost all of the creatures were naked after months of thrashing through the brush and being exposed to the elements, and David was disgusted to see that most of them were covered with pink scar tissue in many places on their sinewy bodies. Apparently the healing effect of the virus was still going strong, and the creatures could survive cold and rain. Some nights had seen temperatures in the low-fifties as summer began to wane, and that type of cold would eventually send normal humans into hypothermia if wearing only summer clothing, even if they remained dry. He assumed that the brutal cold periods of a normal Midwestern winter would compel the hunters to seek shelter, but he couldn’t be certain of that until the season arrived. He also hoped that the creatures didn’t grow fur or learn to clothe themselves as the weather changed. Still, after all that he’d witnessed since May, he decided that nothing would surprise him concerning the infected and pushed the questions from his mind for the time being.
After the tents had been set up everyone gathered around the tiny camp-stoves they’d brought along to heat their food, and Luke again asked why the hunters had retreated. David continued to stir his rice and beans as he offered an opinion, “Well, appears to me that the hunters are continuing to learn new behaviors.”
“They’ve always been capable of learned behavior,” Luke replied with frustration. “But they’ve never broken off an attack before. I mean, yeah, they obviously are capable of learning to avoid water that might drown them, or spreading out and working together to round up a poor cow, but this was different.”
