William set his glass of water down. “Child,” he said warmly, “this is as much your home as it is mine. You’re no visitor here. And I can’t think of a better name for today than Thanksgiving.”
It was nice for all of them to hear William say that. Having a place they could all call home, even for the briefest of moments, was refreshing. Most of the places they had seen over the past few months could hardly have been considered homes. Many times, those places smacked more of a prison than a refuge.
Chapter 37
Staring into the partially open Whittier Tunnel gate, Carter couldn’t see more than a few feet into the gloom. He’d seen dark in his life, but he’d never seen this dark. He’d been in caves well below the surface of the Earth that didn’t seem as purely pitch. He wondered if it was Whittier waiting on the other side or perhaps Hell, or maybe worse.
The air was stale and still carried the acrid aroma of spent fuel, which permeated the walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel. It was colder too, the darkness having leached all warmth from the air as it sat and waited to be released; as inviting as a snake pit at night.
Was revenge worth all this? The Colonel certainly thought it was, so Carter was inclined in that direction as well. His resolve was certainly challenged when considering the path they would have to take though.
In the past, when Carter had been faced with difficult challenges in his studies or his training with Sullivan, Colonel Bear talked him through those moments. The Colonel would have Carter close his eyes and envision the positive result he sought. He called it positive self-actualization or something to that effect. Carter wasn’t sure if it had contributed to his successes or not, but he did find himself overcoming any hurdle that presented itself.
Carter closed his eyes again and tried to see beyond the dark. Try as he might though, he couldn’t see anything. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t quite sure what their goal was once in Whittier. He didn’t know if they were going there to take control of the city and start again, or if they were seeking vengeance.
Opening his eyes again, he realized it didn’t matter. If the Colonel said they were going to Whittier, then they were going to Whittier. It was just that basic for Carter. The Colonel called the shots and Carter made sure everyone followed his lead. It wasn’t his job to question or doubt.
Carter knew many of the others didn’t understand what they were doing and probably didn’t agree with most of it. None of that mattered either. They didn’t have to understand or agree with any of it. They just had to listen and follow orders, and that was Carter’s job. He made sure everyone did what he or she was told to do. He ruthlessly and publicly squelched any dissent, as was evident at that very moment.
Oscar, Cody’s apprentice, was dangling at the end of a rope tied to a tall sign hanging over the roadway. His legs had stopped kicking and struggling a few moments earlier as the life finally vacated his lungs. His face was already becoming a bright purple as the mortal effects of asphyxiation began to register in the man’s expression and complexion.
Colonel Bear wanted to leave a group behind to keep watch on this side of the tunnel. He was concerned that if they closed the door, they wouldn’t be able to open it again. Considering it imprudent and perhaps suicidal to traverse the long tunnel with potentially no way out behind them and finding the city overrun with skins, the Colonel wanted to leave his options open.
Cody and Oscar and a small group of reliable men would stay at the control station. Oscar, already sitting in the back seat of one of the trucks, had refused to budge. He said it was crazy to stay behind, a death sentence. He went so far as to suggest that Carter and the Colonel might as well just kill him right then and save him the suspense.
Carter had smiled and walked over to the truck. He told Oscar it was his last chance to get out and do his duty for the rest of them. Oscar neither said a word nor moved from his seat. Carter smiled a serpent’s grin and forcefully pulled a protesting and struggling Oscar from his seat.
Dragging him by both his hair and his coat, Carter manhandled him across the pavement without saying another word. He pointed to Harrison and Belke, two very loyal militiamen, and then to a rope. It wasn’t a rope actually. It was a spool of rubber-wrapped telecommunication cable.
Oscar was blubbering and begging for his life. As Carter wrapped the hastily tied noose around Oscar’s neck and tightened it, Oscar screamed, “Nooooo! I’ll stay behind like you asked. I’ll stayyyyyy!!!!!”Carter looked down at him and then at everyone else watching in shocked silence. Carter said, “Of course you will. And I didn’t ask you to do nothin’. That was an order, motherfucker!”
He pointed to Harrison who then signaled Belke sitting at the wheel of an SUV. The vehicle jolted forward quickly, pulling the cable tight, yanking Oscar up. His legs were mere feet from the pavement but it was enough.
Oscar tried unsuccessfully to force his hands, unbound and flailing, under the constricted cable around his neck; the knot too was firmly tied and unwilling to loosen. When his hands finally fell to his sides, everyone knew Oscar only had seconds remaining.
Carter said to those handpicked to remain behind, “Oscar will keep an eye out for all of you. He’ll do his job now. When I get back, he better still be there. Understand?”
His question was met with consenting nods and nothing else. He’d made his point abundantly clear to all of them. He wanted them all to understand they needed to fear him a hell of a lot more than the most terrifying monsters in their worst nightmares. He wanted them to understand that all those monsters… worked for him.
Looking at the entire group, including a somewhat stunned Colonel Bear, Carter knew that he had their attention and that there would be no more open dissent ever. He looked at Cody. “And you. Find another apprentice.”
The SUV to which Oscar’s execution rope had been tied was left for those staying behind. The Colonel had no fear that Cody and the others representing his rearguard would do anything other than follow their orders and do their jobs. Carter had just made sure of that. Oscar’s swinging feet erased any notion any of them had entertained about using the vehicle to make an escape as soon as the Colonel was out of sight.
Chapter 38
The tunnel was dark and endless. Its air, moist, cool and foul with rot, was like the icy breath of a demon. And it was into the gloom that the militia was preparing to go, despite anyone’s misgivings.
Plunging into the murk felt as if they were being swallowed, as the light behind them grew dim and then disappeared entirely. They were in the belly of the beast and they could all sense it. Many of Carter’s boyhood insecurities, long buried and forgotten, reemerged and made themselves comfortable in the shadows. Unfortunately for Colonel Bear’s militiamen, more than Carter’s dormant fears lurked out of sight.
The trip through the tunnel, with railroad tracks sunk into the concrete road, was slow and unsteady out of necessity under normal circumstances, and this was anything but normal. Their vehicles’ headlights and the few flashlights any of them still carried did little to illuminate their way. Predicting barriers or other hazards potentially blocking the way was nearly impossible, slowing their speed still more. They couldn’t afford to find themselves having to stop to unclog the pipe so to speak, especially if that clog happened to be Carter’s truck.
Colonel Bear’s militiamen were thankful for the cars and trucks in which they were riding, regardless of where they were going. Most of the people in the Colonel’s command were not and had never been soldiers. They were just ordinary folks benefiting from the philosophy of safety in numbers. That wasn’t to say these people were cowards or incapable of defending themselves, but in the face of such wanton destruction some of them had lost the will to live when the disaster first started to unfold. The militia reawakened a sense of hope and possibility in many of them and now, for the most part, they willingly followed the orders given to them. If only someone had remembered to order them to have no fear.
To some, t
he walls on either side of their little convoy felt impossibly close and narrowed the deeper they drove. The darkness, like cold pitch, closed around them, swallowing them into its depths. Skating precariously along a razor’s edge, tensions soared to new heights.
Carter squinted, his sweaty hands clinging to the steering wheel, trying to see beyond his truck’s hood. Not seeing but not knowing what awaited them was unnerving. If it weren’t for the pinch of tobacco between his lower lip and his brown teeth, his mouth would have been as dry as the Mojave.
Carter would never admit to feeling fear. To him, such admission was a sign of cowardice and weakness. Men, real men, simply did not experience fear. If it weren’t for that particular worldview and an association with those of similar minds, Carter would likely not find himself in the lead vehicle nor would he be Colonel Bear’s lone lieutenant.
The truck ambled along at an excruciatingly slow pace, but that was the Colonel’s order. He didn’t know what could be waiting for them in the tunnel. The morbidly obese Colonel’s words were, “Don’t move too quickly or you might run afoul of something that might damage your vehicle and render it useless. That would be a death sentence for us all.”
Carter had once heard that the way to boil a frog was to put it into a vat of warm water and then gradually add heat until the water boils and you have soup. The little critter wouldn’t struggle or protest a bit. Carter wondered if he and all of the Colonel’s militia were simply acting the part of the frog, wandering deeper and deeper into their own vat of warm water.
The rumbles of their engines running at just above an idle were only slightly louder than the exasperated breathing of all the truck and sport utility vehicle passengers.
There were other sounds creeping in the gloom as well. The occasional breeze finding the tunnel entrance stirred leaves, discarded plastic shopping bags, and other odds and ends. The distinct sound of running water, likely the result of snow melting in the sun, also echoed around them as the trickle found its way into pipes and gutters meant to direct the water away from the tunnel. Perhaps the most troubling sound was a faint echo of a deep, guttural moan that was growing stronger. There were times when the men and women sitting in the vehicles thought they could hear the uneven but recognizable shuffle and drag of a skin walking but no one had seen any yet.
When the tunnel was constructed, the designers included plans for Safe Houses along the route to be used in case of any emergencies that might close the way. Like caves with a door, these rooms were cut out of the mountain in the same manner as the tunnel itself. They contained emergency food, water, and first aid supplies, as well as temporary shelter if the need arose.
Passing the first of several of these doors and vehicle pull off spots, Carter realized the shelters had been sought out by desperate souls seeking refuge from the onslaught of death which had followed them into the tunnel. In the pull off lane in front of the safe house’s propped open door were several mutilated carcasses picked nearly clean of skin and tissue. Having resisted the changing of seasons in the sheltered confines of the tunnel, clouds of little gnats and other flying insects feasting on the carrion rose and fell as Carter’s faint flashlight beam was cast upon the macabre scene.
He slowed his truck as they passed and saw a procession of shadowy wraiths stumble through the open door. Men, women, and, tragically, children emerged from the room, drawn out by the sound of the vehicles and the infection’s furious hunger raging in their brains. They crept into view, reaching and grabbing with claw like hands and bone thin stumps jagged with exposed bones. They flashed their cracked, yellow teeth and snapped their ravenous jaws wildly at the air, like feral cats.
“Looks like we have some customers after all,” Carter announced to his passengers. “Let’s put ‘em down and be quick about it.” His voice was calm, evincing no emotion whatsoever. His was the voice of the somber executioner going about his duties. “Let’s drop these fucking skins and get moving again.”
Carter opened his door, and with a growl lifting itself from deep within his chest, he stepped onto the pavement. He brandished a blunt hammer with a sharpened claw in his right hand and a black revolver in his left. He was already diving into the crowd before his four passengers were even out of the vehicle.
They could see the bloodlust in his eyes and in the wild grin stretched across his face. Carter’s arm whipped the hammer around in deadly arcs, bludgeoning everything within reach. From the whirling depths of his berserker rampage, Carter began to laugh hysterically. This was where he belonged and was meant to be.
He had nearly killed all of them before the four militia were able to join in the carnage. Carter was breathing in deep gasps and his reddened forehead was drenched with a torrent of sweat. He was holding one of the gnashing ghouls by the throat while he forcibly extracted the blunt end of his hammer from another zombie’s skull. His hammer freed, Carter kicked the still fighting ghoul away from himself and then sank his hammer’s claw into its eye. The thing shuddered violently and then fell limp, hanging from the end of the hammer.
The final three monsters were dealt with similarly by the others, though the total fury generated by all four of the militia could not come close to measuring up to Carter’s alone. He was on a different level. They could see just how different he was from them. In a lot of respects, he more resembled the ghouls he had just butchered than he did the humans with him.
Looking around, it was obvious to all of them that this was the high-water mark for the survivors on that day so many weeks ago; this was as far as those last few survivors made it before being overwhelmed. Those souls were now little more than rotting piles of bones surrounded by faint greasy patches left on the otherwise dusty ground. There were rags and bits of cloth here and there as well, likely the victims’ clothes torn from their bodies and cast aside, out of the way. There was no way to determine if the remains were male or female...adult or child. There simply was not enough left of any of them.
The mystery of whether Whittier was free of the plague or not had been answered a couple hundred feet into the gloom. The city had not been spared. It was probably good the Colonel had decided to leave the tunnel open. The likelihood they would be staying in Whittier long term was now pretty slim. With any luck, they would be back on the road and heading toward The Ranch in a few hours.
Without a word, Carter wheeled around and strode back over to the truck. Sitting and turning the ignition of the truck in a single, deft movement, Carter spit out the wad of tobacco from his front lip onto the dark street below. He tucked a fresh pinch of chew, strong and minty, into his mouth, noticing that there was a new cold sore on his gum. The stinging sensation to Carter was just short of absolute bliss. He was certain to position the caustic clump against the fresh wound and revel in the burn. He revved the engine twice, getting his passengers’ attention and hurrying them back to the truck, which was already starting to roll.
After a few quiet moments, Carter leaned over toward the passenger next to him, a twitchy, dark-haired young man named Lincoln, and said, “Keep your eyes open. There’s bound to be more skins in here with us and all the noise we just made is just like ringing the dinner bell for ‘em.”
On cue, a pair of wraiths, not much more than two gray heads bobbing in the truck’s headlights like fishing buoys on the surf, appeared in the road in front of them. Carter said, “Hold on. The drive might get a little rougher.”
He pressed his accelerator, letting the truck leap forward. The big vehicle’s grill gobbled up the creatures and sent them under its tires. It didn’t feel much differently than driving over a pair of speed bumps. Carter smiled. “That was easy.”
Further along and deeper into the tunnel, they came upon another of the safe houses. Carter slowed the truck a bit to get a better view. His morbid curiosity was piqued and ready to burst. In the flashlight beams, they could see there were yellow and black hazard stripes and signs with directions and cautions. There were also discarded duffel bags, back
packs, and suitcases.
There was more evidence of a struggle than at their first stop. He could even see spent shell casings and items which likely had been used as clubs but which had also been dropped.
Panning the ground with the light, Carter saw even more. There were bodies, but these were largely intact. They hadn’t been devoured like many of the others. They were skins that had been taken down. He counted at least four of them. Some of those people, terrified and running for their lives, had stood their ground. Maybe it was a father defending his family or a woman fighting for her child. Regardless, he was proud of those brave people refusing to simply lay down and die. There were always fighters in groups of people and those people did what they could for the others. It didn’t look like it had worked long term, but they had tried. In Carter’s mind, there was a certain degree of respectability in fighting, even if it was a futile battle.
Lincoln asked timidly, “Should we go take a look?”
Carter shook his head. “No. Whatever’s in there can stay for now. There may not be anything left anyway. There may be more skins in there waiting for us to open the door. What do people say when old shipwrecks are found? They should be left alone because they were tombs or something. Probably the same with places like this. It even smells like a tomb in here. We should just leave ‘em alone and move on down the road. Pretty soon we’ll be out of this tunnel and out of the dark. Then we’ll be able to figure out what to do.”
The woman sitting behind Carter, a tough tomboy named Kit, leaned forward and pointed. “There’s more of them. Look.”
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Page 21
