A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  Charlie arched his body and thrust his shoulder up and out of the Tahoe’s passenger compartment in one convulsive motion. The door slammed back down again, this time on his back. It knocked the wind from him for a heart-stopping moment, and when he regained it his cries of pain were weak and strained. He pulled up one leg and fumbled for a foothold. Finally, he was able to snake his shoe inside the steering wheel, and he shoved himself up again. He had both arms out now. The door rode his back for the entire motion; he hadn’t pushed with enough force for it to lurch up and away from him. Charlie gasped for breath, pushed with his legs and pulled with both arms this time, and swung out from the inside of the truck. The door slammed down and latched behind him. Spent, he lay on the driver’s side of the vehicle and tried to regain his breath.

  As the pounding of his heart calmed he became more aware of what was going on around him. He eased his head up to assess the world he’d entered. If anything, sanity had departed even further from this reality than it had from the one inside of his truck.

  Up and down the highway, vehicles had rolled over, stopped, or ended up in the ditches. Smoke trailed up into the sky from burning wrecks. Charlie didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but the lack of emergency response was striking. What in the world had happened? The destruction stretched as far as the eye could see. There didn’t seem to be any one point of origin. His head throbbed from where he’d hit it on something, but he was starting to remember. Another car had slammed into the Tahoe and the truck rolled as he tried to regain control. He stared at the rail at the side of the road for a long moment before he realized that he was on an overpass. He’d been within a few feet of hitting the side rail and going over.

  Screaming, from nearby. He looked, and almost wished he hadn’t. In a car just behind him, the vehicle had slammed into the guard rail and stopped. The airbags had deployed, but he was still able to see the spray of blood inside of the car as the driver turned on the female passenger.

  “What in the hell . . .” Charlie whispered. This was insane. It was like one of Cooper’s zombie movies . . . Cooper!

  He raised himself up onto hands and knees and peered down into the back of the Tahoe. His son had been lying down on the back bench napping. Oh, Lord, had he taken his seatbelt off? He couldn’t make out the third row through the window. Cringing in agony, he slid off of the Tahoe and limped around to the back of the truck and tried the handle. Locked, of course.

  From further down the road, a roaring engine interrupted the intermittent screams in the silence. Charlie turned away from the back of his truck and faced the road in an attempt to see what was coming. The roof of a single vehicle was visible as it jerked back and forth across the highway, dodging wrecks. It wasn’t moving all that fast, but from Charlie’s perspective, it seemed like an approaching freight train. The roof shifted to the median as the driver avoided a large knot of vehicles, and then, in an instant it was upon him.

  With the humming purr of knobby off-road tires, the lifted Jeep zoomed by. Charlie leaped out of the way on instinct alone, but the vehicle hadn’t been all that close. The driver of the Jeep had been running on the far edge of the overpass, well away from the wreck of the Tahoe. He walked around the back of the truck and opened his mouth to call for help, but then looked down. Generous smears of blood decorated the front of his shirt. All around, survivors of wrecks were pulling themselves out, but the others were as well. The momentary silence broke with rising screams as the others fell upon their friends and families as though they were mere prey. It was as if the Jeep’s passage had awoken something dormant in the wrecks on the highway.

  Hell, Charlie wouldn’t have stopped, either.

  When the Tahoe had rolled, the rear window popped out of its frame. Charlie snaked his fingers into the seam and tugged. The safety glass was somewhat intact, but loose slivers of it dug into his palms and the bottom of his fingers. His left hand joined the right’s chorus of pain.

  Finally, with a protracted ripping sensation, the window came loose. He cast it to the pavement and leaned over, shoving his upper body inside of the truck. It was dim, but Charlie could make out the shadow of his son, crumpled on top of the rear passenger window. He stirred as Charlie crawled further inside. “Cooper!” Charlie shouted. “Coop, you okay?”

  A hand like a vise clamped onto his wrist, and Charlie jerked backward. Cooper came with him, and as the light fell on the battered form of his only son, something snapped in Charlie’s mind. Charlie would never know the extent of his son’s injuries. The only answer Cooper gave him was a low hiss; his eyes the gray of a storm cloud sky.

  The scream started out as a cry of denial, but it became something more primal. Charlie screamed and screamed. When he ran out of breath he took another breath, only to keep screaming until the agony of his tortured throat overwhelmed the mindless shriek of terror and loss that consumed him.

  Charlie jerked awake.

  He lay still for a long moment and took slow, deep breaths as he tried to slow his racing heart.

  The damn dream again. It had been months, and he’d allowed himself to think that maybe, just maybe, he was done with it. No such luck.

  He shifted into a sitting position, more out of the desire to not tip the folding cot over than to be quiet. Across from him, Corey slept on his own folding cut, snoring. Charlie smiled. Back when electricity had been ubiquitous, he’d grown accustomed to sleeping with a fan blowing beside him for the noise. In the absence of bedside fans, Corey’s buzzing snores made for an adequate replacement.

  His heart had ceased its trip-hammering rhythm, but he knew from long experience that sleep would be elusive. He reached under the cot and pulled out his boots. He laced them up and tied them, and then levered himself up and out of the cot.

  The interior of the bus was actually quite spacious. They’d removed the bench seats save for a couple at the front, leaving the entire interior wide open. After only a day of scavenging, full totes stacked in neat columns filled the back quarter of the bus. It wasn’t the greatest haul in quantity, but they’d gotten some good, useful salvage to bring home. He tiptoed down the center aisle of the bus. The folding doors were open to allow for a bit of breeze — even in early spring the interior got a little stuffy. Dalton sat on the bottom step, carving on a shapeless chunk of wood. He glanced up at Charlie’s approach.

  “Bit early. Can’t sleep?”

  Charlie shrugged and huffed a sigh. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Yeah, sure.” Dalton glanced at his watch. “Only a couple of hours early. Been quiet. Just me and the stars.”

  Charlie nodded. Reclaimed tin roofing material plated the sides of the bus like medieval armor. There had been enough barns in the area surrounding the community that there was plenty of it. The upper row covered up all the windows save for narrow vision and firing slits. A hinged lower row, when loosened, hung down a bare inch off of the ground. This combined to make the former school bus a mobile, anti-biter pillbox. The panels also served as an effective alarm system. Any biter that walked up and tried to claw its way in created an amazing racket. The fact that Corey was still snoring away was a testament to the fact that yes, it was a quiet night.

  Dalton stepped up and out of the doorway. As Charlie stepped down he sketched a salute with one index finger and clambered inside.

  Charlie was still restless, so he elected for a short stroll to stretch his legs before taking a seat. They’d dragged a rusting sheet metal fire pit from behind one of the houses and set it in front of the bus door. Many of the trees in the subdivision were non-native breeds that had died without frequent watering. This provided a more than adequate supply of firewood. The rations the supply teams carried were in cans and didn’t need cooking, but there was something soothing about a fire. Fire appealed to some base instinct, recently reborn, that reveled in the capability of a dancing flame to chase away the terrors of the night. They didn’t have a lot of things, but la
st night at least, they’d had warm Spaghetti-Os, heated over a crackling fire.

  The irony there, of course, was that light attracted biters almost as well as sound. The lack of widespread man-made lighting made small light sources like campfires stand out like neon signs. But the fire was small, and the bulk of the bus served as an adequate block. By now, the fire had dwindled down to a warm, comfortable bed of embers. Charlie knelt down and press-checked his sidearm in the faint light. Brass winked at him from the loaded chamber, and he holstered it once more. He’d not been much of a pistol man before everything fell apart, but he’d been through a hard and unforgiving school these past years. This changed world was intolerant of mistakes, even if Charlie had an advantage they had yet to see in any of the other survivors.

  He flexed his fingers and watched shadows play over the twisted scarring on the back of his right hand. The motion still felt stiff and unnatural, but Tish had put his hand back together as well as she could. She was good, but she was no orthopedic surgeon. He doubted she’d have disagreed with the assessment, but he’d never be so uncouth as to say it to her. He liked Tish, but then, he liked most people. Always had. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

  The fire crackled, and an ember fell to the ground through of one of the rusted-out spots on the bottom of the fire pit. After tonight it was bound to be useless, but they wouldn’t be needing it any longer. The team had gone through eight houses that day, two-thirds of the way through the addition. Charlie didn’t expect that the others would take them much past noon tomorrow. Especially given the state of the homes they’d already made their way through.

  They’d been careful in scavenging through the home with the burst-open door, but it had been devoid of any living, or non-living, presence. Charlie suspected the escapee had not been human — there was too much useful equipment left behind.

  What was most troublesome was not the existence of the home with the burst-open door, but the two more just like it. It was a small statistical sample, but they’d gleaned two concrete facts from the searches. The homes with broken doors or windows were empty. The homes that were intact generally had one or more biters, though they’d all been in sorry shape. As best as they could tell, the events that had precipitated the breaking of the doors and windows occurred around the same time. If it were survivors fleeing, there would be evidence of a horde large enough to force them from homes that had attics to hide in. Even if it had been a group of human raiders — rare but not unknown — there would be some evidence of their passage. And raiders wouldn’t have skipped going through the other houses in the subdivision.

  The three of them had grumbled over it while packing the bus and eating dinner, though none had any grand insight. What Charlie knew, though he’d not expressed it to his partners, was that something had changed. The crawling feeling at the back of his neck when he studied the broken doors and windows told him that change was unlikely to be a good one. For that reason if nothing else, he was glad for the speed with which they’d worked their way through the division. This was something that the other survivors needed to know about. Part of him considered radioing in to report, but in the end, he’d elected not to. He’d have to rely on Corey and Dalton to do the lion’s share of the speaking, and he didn’t know if that would convey his concern over what he’d seen.

  No, he wanted to look Miles in the eye when he explained what he’d seen. Charlie smiled again, though his expression was wistful. Miles, good Miles, would understand, and would believe.

  Out in the shadows, something shifted.

  Charlie willed his body into stillness. I didn’t see that, he lied to himself. Perhaps his body believed the lie and perhaps not, but he didn’t flinch or react, and that was his intention. Without moving his head, he raised his eyes and waited.

  Another shift, and now he knew where to look, on the left side of the cul de sac, near the third house they’d scavenged. It had been intact and inhabited by an elderly man. He’d died in a bathroom and spent the following years doing laps on the tile floor until it collapsed from the sheer wear and tear on its feet. Before it had fallen it had made a God-awful mess of the interior. The damage caused to the medicines and toiletries as the biter ground them underfoot rendered it all worthless.

  He studied the shadows beside the front porch. He thought the noise might perhaps have been the brushing of fabric against the wooden lattice along the bottom of the porch. They’d given it a cursory glance and tap earlier that day, but nothing had reacted from within. He’d thought the lattice tight on his first inspection, but now he questioned his judgment.

  The movement in the shadow this time was silent, and he studied it, without expression as it shifted. Yes, there at the back corner, he judged. He flexed his fingers and debated whether to draw his pistol. A biter would have moved in for the attack by now. With the fire before him, there was no missing Charlie, even with their reduced state of awareness. Whatever crouched at the corner of the porch was something else.

  Which made it all the more dangerous, of course.

  Charlie studied the shadow and mentally grumbled at the impact of the fire pit on his night vision. Details came into slow focus.

  At once it hit him.

  The figure in the shadows was not crouched by the porch; it stood upright. One hand rested on the corner post to the porch railing; the other cocked in mid-air as though waiting for something. Charlie’s sense of danger left him, replaced by a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  It was a child. Who could guess how old, given the vagaries of diet in this fallen world? Either way, frozen in fear rather than playing some deadly version of freeze tag. This was no world for a child to grow up in, especially alone. The mere fact of survival was incomprehensible.

  Where are you from? Is this your neighborhood? Charlie ached to call out, but he knew how his raspy, damaged voice would come across. No. Best to back off and show a lack of interest in harming the child, lest he spook him or her into running. At once he felt a rush of fear. Had the child been watching him when he’d toyed with the biter and allowed it within a hair’s breadth of biting? How that must have seemed, to someone unaware of Charlie’s ability to handle himself.

  He licked his lips, then made a point to turn his head and study the right side of the cul de sac as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. After a long pause he heard a slight rustling sound, and when he glanced back, the child was gone.

  Charlie sighed and flexed his fingers.

  Finally, he rose from the fire pit — his knees cracked like gunshots in the night — and moved back to the bus. He glanced over his shoulder, and of course saw nothing. Stepping inside, he peered into the shadowed interior. Corey snored on, and Dalton teetered on the edge of heavy breathing and outright snoring. Neither of the men was aware of what had just happened outside, and Charlie smiled at the irony. He eased into the back of the bus and studied the stack of totes. Where had they . . . Oh yes, that one. He shifted one tote out of its position at the top of a stack and opened up the one beneath it. The revealed tote held miscellaneous foodstuffs. The top layer consisted of canned goods, a case of Ramen noodles, and a sealed six-pack of Hershey bars. Glancing over his shoulder, Charlie drew out his knife and made a slit in the packaging of the pack of candy bars. Sheathing the knife, he considered the pack and extracted three bars. He set them aside for the moment and rearranged the totes. This task complete, he grabbed the candy bars and crept back out of the school bus.

  At the bottom of the steps, he studied the shadows near the porch. The figure of the child was gone, and he detected no further movement. Decision made, he took slow, careful steps forward. As he went he made a fan of the candy bars and held them out with one hand to display them.

  Still on the roadway, he paused at the base of the third home’s driveway. He looked at the porch for a long moment and considered, then decided to not push his luck. He displayed the candy bars a final time, then closed the fan into a neat rectangle.
The mailbox of the house was the shape of a miniature barn, peaked roof and all. Clamped to the pole next to it was a square receptacle for the local newspaper. He stacked the candy bars on top of the newspaper box and backed away. After taking a few steps, Charlie turned his back on the house and crept back to the bus.

  This time, he took Dalton’s seat on the bottom step. With a slight smile on his face, he lowered his eyes to the embers of the fire pit and listened. He didn’t know if he’d hear anything, but for the first time in a long time, Charlie waited with something other than tired resignation. He listened, and he hoped.

  Tom Oliver’s sarcastic sense of humor was famous throughout the community. When he’d built a bar in front of his homestead and begun bartering home-brewed beer, a chalkboard on the front door had featured a series of names that elicited either guffaws or confused frowns from eager patrons. He’d finally settled on a name that tickled his fancy, and mounted a carved wooden sign over the door that read, “The Last Bar.”

  Maybe Tom’s place was the last bar, and maybe it wasn’t. It was the only bar anyone knew of, so maybe that was close enough. And while it wasn’t quite last call at The Last Bar, Ronnie Cartwright decided to make it a night.

  Home-brewed beer and scavenged hard alcohol made for a decent selection, though prices tended to shift some. As garden crops came in, Tom liked to trade beer for vegetables; during the winter, he traded it for know-how or labor. The vegetables ended up on The Last Bar’s ever growing dinner menu along with the latest sacrificial victim from Tom’s herd of beef cattle. The labor he generally used to help wrangle the cattle or do other chores around the farm. It wasn’t quite the commune that Miles Matthews liked to complain about, but it wasn’t a capitalist utopia, either.

  Promises of “splitting a rick of wood for you in the spring” for a beer in the winter came close to Wimpy’s promise of paying next week for a cheeseburger today, but it had generally worked until the mass of notes had overwhelmed Tom to the point that he’d made an executive decision to streamline things.