by Caleb Cleek
Matt yelled, “Empty!” There was no way he was going to be able to reload before he was pushed off the trailer. I kicked a head and redirected my aim to cover Matt ten feet to my left. Matt paused his reload long enough to kick an infected at his feet, knocking it off the trailer. I shot another that was poised to pounce at Matt’s side. The bullet struck the infected in the shoulder. The destroyed shoulder joint flopped harmlessly as the force of the bullet spun it around. The body slumped off the trailer and sprawled on the ground, only to get back up and resume its assault.
My next shot passed perfectly through the ear of another infected. The only sign of the bullet hitting its target was a red dot the size of a dime. As the body fell, it twisted ninety degrees, revealing the other side of the head and further evidence of the collision between lead and flesh. The hollow point bullet had expanded from the diameter of a quarter of an inch to over half of an inch. The high velocity impact created a shockwave through the gelatinous brain. Grey matter was liquefied as the wave propagated through the proteinatious tissue. The shockwave battered against the opposite side of skull. There was nowhere for the energy to go and it pulverized the bone, exploding outward. The bullet created a vacuum as it traveled and sucked the remaining contents of the skull out the gaping hole on the far side, leaving the half intact cranium empty. The lifeless corpse fell off the trailer, knocking a grappling body with it.
Matt completed reloading his rifle and engaged the closest body, putting the end of the barrel against its skull. He pulled the trigger, shattering the head. I turned my gun toward the bodies in front of me. I was too slow. A vice like pressure clamped onto my leg just above my left ankle. Teeth ripped through my pants, tore through skin and threatened to crush the bone beneath.
I mashed the muzzle against the top of its skull and jerked the trigger in a panic, hoping the bullet didn’t ricochet off the back of the skull and hit my leg. Any semblance of finesse and skill was gone. The trigger pull violated every marksmanship lesson I had ever received. The range was point blank. Marksmanship didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was releasing the pulverizing jaws from my leg. There was no question of whether or not the bullet would find its mark; it was a given and it did. The body momentarily stiffened and then relaxed and slid off the trailer. It would have landed on the ground, but was stopped short by the pile of carcasses below me that was at least three deep.
I shot two more times at separate infected and then there were no more in front of me. I turned and saw the scattered bodies all around. Matt shot twice and his target fell. Frank and Jeb were on the ground standing back to back. Carcasses of dead infected were piled at their feet. Sporadic shots sounded off randomly like the last kernels of popcorn out of the popper as the wounded were finished off. The entire event had lasted no more than forty seconds. The attack from the front was twenty-five to thirty seconds, including the charge across no man’s land. The initial attack was followed by a ten to fifteen second attack from the back.
My body was spent and I wasn’t the only one. The bubble lens of Frank’s mask was fogged up from the brief, but all consuming, exertion required during the attack. Sweat streamed down Jeb’s forehead and cheeks. His gas mask had been knocked off in the initial struggle. His eyes searched for it in vain. It was somewhere beneath the bodies at his feet. The damage had likely already been done. Digging through infected corpses would only increase his exposure. He followed Frank back onto the trailer, hoping to escape the life sucking germs oozing from the bodies on the ground as blood continued to pool.
Matt fired twice more, putting finishing rounds in crawling infected and then it was quiet. A gust of wind picked up for a few moments and then dissipated, leaving dust hanging in the air. I looked to my left. The tractor driver was on the ground. His shirt was soaked through with blood around the collar. His nickel plated pistol was on the ground at his side. He had run out of bullets and the action was locked open. An infected lay across him with the handle of a survival knife protruding from just behind its ear. An unknown length of blade was buried in the skull.
I descended to the ground and rolled the lifeless body off the driver whose name I had not learned. A four inch piece of skin was missing from his neck. Beneath the skin, a similar sized piece of muscle had been extracted, leaving behind ragged edges of muscle and tissue. His life had already drained away with the gallon of blood that had gushed from his severed carotid artery. Once teeth had ripped the artery in two, there was nothing anyone could have done for him.
He had fought to the death. That was all a man could do. He didn’t give up, even when his fate was sealed. He managed to kill his assailant after it had administered a fatal wound. Men of his tenacity and determination are uncommon.
We could have used him.
Chapter 36
We stood on the trailer and gravely surveyed the scene. Bodies were strewn across the grass on both sides. Close to the trailer, the grass was solid red. Blood had completely erased any traces of the chlorophyll induced green from every blade. Further from the trailer, the color became more mottled. Green showed through seas of crimson. Further yet, islands of red floated in an ocean of green. Finally, all vestiges of the bloody battle disappeared in the tranquil field of green.
At the center of each crimson pool lay the broken body of an infected. Each had a gaping hole in his or her head. Some had other holes as well. Stray bullets had plowed deeply into flesh, many passing through completely. Some were induced by bullets already driven through the skull of an infected which then struck an individual unlucky enough to be in a straight line between the muzzle of a rifle and the head of a target. Others were from bullets that missed their intended target. Bodies had been in close enough proximity that original misses had turned into hits.
Nearly eighty humanesque forms littered the ground, loudly proclaiming a new and terrifying message. For the second time today, the infected had worked together to implement an effective ambush, an ambush that had nearly overcome our defense, not by brute force, but by deception.
Half of the attacking force had remained out of sight while the other half hurled themselves against our formidable stronghold. Not until our attention was completely focused away from the unseen threat did the onslaught from the second prong of the attack commence.
If not for Wim’s timely warning, the second wave would have swept over us, catching us fully unaware. We would have been overcome, completely oblivious to the fact that we were even in danger. This was not the working of a mindless mob relying on instinct. This two fronted attack showed calculation and strategy. When it became evident that the attack was unsuccessful, the remaining infected had melted away as if they had dissolved into the air itself. There were no more on-looking ghouls, no menacing howls. Other than the corpses of the deceased around us, it was as if they had never even been here.
I had watched documentaries about wolves. At times, they worked in concert to bring down large animals. I had even seen a pack split into two groups to attack in coordination from different directions. This infected attack, however, was too perfect. It was too well organized. It didn’t seem possible for it to have been initiated by instinct alone.
This single attack involved over five percent of Lost Hills’ population. Between the rest of the group which had escaped, the ones laying dead around us, and the others we had killed over the last day, we had encountered at least ten percent of the town’s population as infected. The problem with these numbers was that nobody was moving around. Everyone was locked securely away inside their homes. The infection shouldn’t have spread so rampantly.
We had no idea how big the exposure actually was. Containment in our town was a lost cause. There was no longer an expectation of protecting people from the disease. If the infection was rampaging through our spread out population at this pace, there was no hope for those living in metropolitan apartments, one stacked on top of another.
It would tear through inner city slums without abandon. Multi-sto
ry apartments would be fertile breeding grounds for the infection. Infected hordes would spill into business districts where people were working in congested city centers. Rapid routes of escape would be nonexistent. People trying to get out of the city would be imprisoned by gridlock on every street. Subways would be overwhelmed. Sick people in the mobs would infect everyone else. Those who did escape would likely be exposed in the process and take the infection back to their quiet suburbs, where it would rapidly propagate. There was no stopping the spread; it would sweep across the entire country unhindered.
The government should have nuked Lost Hills at the outset.
It remained unseen whether the infection would be contained to North America. It was doubtful. It would certainly travel through Central America and enter South America. Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa may be spared because of the oceans that separated them from the Americas. Most likely, however, wealthy individuals would try to escape North America in private jets. It would only take one infected plane to pass unhindered through blockades in the confusion and the infection would hit Europe. If that occurred, Asia and Africa would quickly fall prey as well. The scene would repeat and Australia would fall, too.
It was inevitably going to become a worldwide pandemic.
I had no way of deciphering whether this was the hand of God passing judgment on mankind or something else altogether. It really didn’t matter. I had already devoted myself to seeing my family through this cataclysm. God spared Noah and his family in a previous judgment; perhaps he would see fit to spare my family as well.
Chapter 37
Nobody had any desire to remain at the site of the slaughter. Wim and his crew were already piling into his pickup. What hadn’t been collected was going to stay where it was until morning and I had doubts whether the drillers would ever come back. Wim fired up his pickup and left without saying a word. The savagery had exacted a toll on him. He would deal with it in his own way, in his own time. Right now, he didn’t want to relive what he had witnessed by talking about it.
We headed to our own trucks in silence, walking cautiously at first as we attempted to avoid stepping on the bodies of deceased infected. I recognized several faces as I passed bodies. A few were people I knew. Others were people I had merely seen around town. Seeing them laying dead in their changed form was surreal. They were familiar and yet completely foreign at the same time. It was like being in a dream and then waking to realize the dream had no continuity and didn’t make any sense.
The grass was slick with blood, more slippery than immediately after being watered. Matt lost his footing as he attempted to traverse the bodies and fell to a knee. When he stood, the knee of his tan pants was defiled with bodily fluids that had spurted from the infected.
Frank and Jeb continued in brooding silence. Concern covered their countenances. Their long faces were glued to the ground. Twice I saw Frank sneak a concerned glance at Jeb. When he caught my eye, he immediately returned his gaze back to the ground, embarrassed by his demonstrated worry.
We reached the trucks at the street and Jeb broke the silence. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.
Nobody spoke. Jeb already knew the answer; we all knew the answer. No one wanted to be the first to admit the truth. He had been exposed. He was face to face with an infected. He breathed air coming directly from the infected’s body, air that was full of microscopic particles of the virus.
I finally broke the silence. “We will know in a couple hours. My exposure was worse than yours and I’m fine. As far as we know, you’re immune to the infection, too.” There was nothing else I could say. Telling him he would be fine was false hope that no one would accept or believe.
“What do I do in the meantime?” he asked. It was an honest question.
“You can’t go home to your parents. If you are exposed, it would be a death sentence for them. You’re welcome to come with Matt and me. We’re on our way to check out Curtis’ camp and hopefully catch him by surprise. If you want to come, we could use your help. It will probably be more dangerous than this afternoon’s project was.”
“We’re with you all the way,” Frank said, speaking for both of them.
“No,” Jeb disagreed. “You’re going back to Mom and Dad. If the farm gets overrun, they won’t stand a chance by themselves. If I make it through the night, I’ll see you back there tomorrow. If I don’t make it, I don’t want you to see me turn into them,” he said, pointing back to the drilling rig and the pile of corpses surrounding it.
Frank started to speak and stopped as his mouth opened. He knew Jeb was right; their parents needed help. Besides, he didn’t want to see Jeb get sick and regress into a mindless lunatic.
“Okay,” Frank said in resignation. “Connor, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“What’s up, Frank?” I asked, walking away from the trucks.
Frank didn’t say anything until we had traveled fifty feet and were out of earshot of Jeb and Matt. “We’ve sacrificed for you today. You owe Jeb and me. We both know he doesn’t have a chance.” His voice changed pitch at the end of his sentence. He stopped talking and looked away from me, attempting to hide the grief that was threatening to cripple him. After a minute, it became obvious he couldn’t contain the emotion and he continued in a broken voice. “When the time comes, put him down. Don’t let him turn.”
“Frank, I…”
“No, Connor,” he interrupted, “You owe him that much. He gave his life to help you. The least you can do is allow him to go out as a man. You can’t ask him to give his life and then abandon him when he needs you. You can’t do it.” Tears began to cascade silently down his face as emotion overcame him. He tried to hide the tears. Finally it became so obvious, hiding them was pointless. He wiped the tears with his finger and turned to face me.
Looking me straight in the eye, in low, slow speech he said, “Give me your word you will do the right thing when the time comes. Give me your word he won’t roam around as one of them,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at the dead for a second time.
I hesitated. He was asking the impossible of me. Yet what he was asking was fair. I slowly relented. “Okay, I’ll do it. You have my word. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what happened.”
Hearing what he needed to hear, Frank turned and walked back to the others, leaving me to contemplate the promise I made. It was the same promise I had tried to extract from Matt yesterday. The only difference was I didn’t have the leverage to get him to make it.
Frank had the leverage.
Relinquished to what I was going to have to do in a few hours, I returned to the group. Frank and Jeb had sequestered themselves twenty feet from Matt and were talking in low voices. Matt and I stood by my pickup and waited for them to finish their good bye. After a couple minutes, the two brothers shook hands and walked away from each other. Frank walked to his truck, which was ahead of ours. Jeb walked back to mine. Frank’s walk was slow. Each step was deliberate and methodically placed as if each was exponentially more painful than the previous. Jeb’s pace was quick and purposeful. He was moving to a new task. He knew he didn’t have long to live and he wanted his last hours to be meaningful. Neither looked back after they parted.
Frank climbed into his truck, fired the engine and left the three of us in silence once again.
“I know I don’t have long to go,” Jeb declared. “Let’s do something important with that time. I never did like Curtis, even before he turned into a killer. How are we going to get him?”
I explained my plan of driving part way up Sager Road, ditching the truck somewhere along the way, and approaching across country from there.
“It’s no good,” Jeb interrupted, shaking his head. “Curtis knows you guys are going to come for him. He’ll have someone hidden at the start of Sager Road to let him know when you come. It would be better to park on the highway a couple miles past Sager and approach across country.”
“That’s going to be close t
o seven miles over rough country. That’s a long hike,” I said, considering his words. “We’ll trust your instinct. You’ve done this a lot more than we have.” If I were in Curtis’ position, I would post a lookout like Jeb had pointed out. Without Jeb’s insight, our incursion would have been compromised from the start.
Matt and I piled into the truck. Jeb hesitated and then climbed into the bed.
“What are you doing?” Matt questioned.
“I’m infected. I’m not going to contaminate your truck by breathing in it,” he stated vehemently.
“Fair enough,” I acquiesced as I shut my door. “If Tuttle agrees to let us pass his roadblock, we’ll leave the truck a couple miles down the road. I’d also like to have Glenn take a look at this,” I said to Matt as I pulled my pant leg up, exposing the bite wound on my leg.
“When did that happen?” he asked, scrunching his face when he saw the two semi circular bloody wounds on the front of my shin.
I pushed the blood soaked sock down to the top of my boot, examining the bite wound for the first time. Teeth had ripped through the skin and hit the bone. Since it was on my shin, there wasn’t really any muscle. Although it looked bad, the damage was actually pretty minimal with torn skin and not much else. “I got it while I was busy shooting the infected lined up in front of you. At the time, a bite on my shin seemed better than two infected chewing your head off while you reloaded. I’m starting to wonder if I made a miscalculation. At least this way, it will be easier to face Eve.”
I pushed my pant leg back down, pulled away from the curb, and steered the truck toward the highway.
Chapter 38
Another trip through town proved as uneventful as the previous trips had been earlier in the day. There were no vehicles driving on Main Street and none parked there. No businesses were open. Nobody was trying to shop and more importantly, nobody was looting.
