A Spring of Sorrow

by Arthur Mongelli

  “Back up,” the man said, his face grim.

  Tim did as he was bade and stepped to the side, in front of the windows of the next room. A split-second later, the glass shattered and a muffled gunshot sounded. The blast reverberated off the glass and steel of the clinic and the mountains behind. Before Tim could register the movement, Jen leapt to the ground and rushed past, moving around the side of the building towards the front lot. Tim hobbled quickly after, relying heavily on his left leg and the cane to propel him. A moment later the black woman ran past him, following after Jen.

  “Nala! No!” Linda called after her.

  “No!” came Jen's anguished scream from the edge of the lot, twenty feet ahead of Tim.

  He cringed at the sound, knowing how many undead were out front and fearing the amount of attention it would draw. By the time he got to the corner himself, he could see that Will and Jen's eyes were locked on each other. They were having a silent conversation across the sea of undead that separated them. Tim watched as Will blew her a kiss and mouthed the words 'I love you' before he turned, looking back over his shoulder. A few moments went by with Nala, now accompanied by Linda, holding Jen back. Jen was on the verge of hysterics, sobbing and wailing barely fifty feet from the edge of the huge crowd of undead assembled around the Silverado.

  Gradually, Tim started to notice some movement from the area around the truck. In the span of a few seconds, the truck started rolling backwards through the horde of undead. Tim smiled, though he wasn't sure how it would end, he took the truck moving clear of the horde as a good sign. Bodies were thrown out of the way or under the wheels, only to be crunched over as the heavy old Silverado gained momentum. The passenger side wheels banged and scraped the concrete curb, forcing it back onto the roadway as it tried to edge off. Will tried to steer but was mostly just along for the ride at this point.

  Tim's initial excitement of the escape quickly wore off as the assembled horde moved off in pursuit, leaving the pair of crutches laying on the pavement next to where the SUV had been.

  *

  The large group moved quickly through the farmland, keeping clear of any and all structures, as they had discussed. As they approached the town itself, where the major ranches gave way to more numerous smaller farms, Yen called for a halt every time a house came into view. They would take care and listen for signs of the living or those of the undead before moving on. At nearly every house they came upon, only the sounds of the undead rummaging about could be heard inside. Their moans drifted out through open windows and doors, quickly indicating to the group that they should move quickly and quietly past. A great many guns could be heard firing further to the east.

  It quickly became apparent that they were no longer within the town's protected areas, they were back in the wild. They chose to ford a number of waterways rather than risk crossing the bridges over which the undead moved. A loud whistle from the rear of the group sounded, and Yen hurriedly altered the course of the group steering them to the north. They set into a fast jog, only stopping once they melded into a thick copse of trees. As Mark and Amber, clutching each other’s hands, came through the initial boughs into the tree line, Yen was there, counting heads. Once all were accounted for, Yen looked to Raoul, who had issued the call.

  “I couldn't see anything over the hilltops, but there was the sound of a lot of movement coming up behind us,” the man huffed out between steaming breaths.

  “Everyone with a weapon get to the tree line now,” Yen barked as he started off in that direction.

  Mark and Amber stood motionless, looking around fearfully at the other non-combatants. A few moved off into the bushes to relieve themselves while the opportunity existed, and Mark dragged Amber back to do likewise. Once their nervous bladders were drained, they moved up near to where Yen stood with the other armed men. There were eight of them in total, rifles aimed out as they all stared silently into the misty gloom of the early morning pasture.

  Mark figured that he and Amber's best chances were to be near the people with guns. After a minute more of silent waiting, the tip of a large horde of undead topped a rise just southwest of where they hid, eliciting an audible gasp from Amber. Yen half-turned, casting a withering gaze at her before holding a finger to his nose. The gentle, breathless moans of the undead drifted over to them, muted by the hanging humidity in the air. Gooseflesh sprouted upon the arms of any who heard it, as they cowered in the shadows of the trees. They watched in absolute silence as the group of at least fifty undead staggered and shuffled past.

  “We should just head north and get the fuck out of here,” Raoul whispered to Yen.

  Yen took the words in, nodding as the man spoke. He considered the journey they had made across western Colorado. It was more than a week of abject terror as slowly, inexorably his people's numbers had dwindled. He wanted to flee more than anything, but he feared that without a vehicle, he would be dooming them to more of the same. At the same time, he recognized that dragging them across the undead infested town in search of a vehicle wasn't wise either. It had gone well so far but to this point, they had only moved through farmland. Now that they were headed towards the more populated business district of town, he had no answers.

  He and the others spent five more minutes hiding among the trees as the undead streamed past. Yen pondered the questions that nagged at him as they waited until well after the last of the crowd of undead was out of sight. Yen finally made his mind up and addressed the group.

  “Okay, we are going to split. There is no need for all of us to go traipsing into danger. I need a few volunteers to go with me, the rest of you will stay here with Raoul,” Yen said at length.

  A few hands raised as Yen scanned the group. He pointed to Win, Leonard, Milton, and Cristobal to accompany him. If anyone was so inclined to put any kind of thought into his decision, they might notice that the people he chose to join him were young men who had no dependents.

  Yen spoke again, this time only looking only at Raoul.

  “That still work?” he said, pointing at the wristwatch the man wore.

  “Grandfather's watch, as long as I remember to wind it, it'll work long after I'm in the dirt.”

  Yen nodded, pausing for a moment to remember Raoul's grandfather's face before continuing.

  “Okay, you all stay here until three in the afternoon. If we aren't back by then, take the group to the north at least a few miles to get clear of this clusterfuck. Find an outbuilding to shelter in for the night and hang a pair of pants outside, somewhere near the road, to let us know you are there. We are going to try and get a bus and maybe help some people, if we can.”

  Raoul stepped forward to stand in front of his friend. They looked at one another for a moment before Raoul clasped Yen on the shoulder. Yen mimicked the movement. Each shared in a lifetime of memories in that moment. They had grown up together. They had been classmates and close friends as children. They had a falling out due to a drunken fistfight in their teens, but those memories of a childhood of adventure and trouble-making in the hills and canyons of eastern Utah remained. The men stared at one another for a moment before each nodded to the other and released their grip. They each moved off towards their own destinies.

  Yen and the others moved off across the hills to the east just as the rain started. The lingering smoke and firelight against the steel gray sky gave everything an other-worldly feel. Everywhere they looked the undead roamed about. From a single solitary form shuffling across a barren pasture to a thick knot of undead passing noisily through the woodlands. Their perversion had fully invaded the former safety of Donner. They took long, circuitous detours around those undead that had become stuck in the thick, sucking mud. These undead thrashed about, moaning hungrily and reaching at the swift forms of the men as they passed.

  After moving across miles of ranch land and pasture, the village of Donner sat just a hundred yards away. They could see snippets of movement through the gaps in trees and in between houses. It was readil
y apparent that the streets were clogged with the shuffling forms of the undead. All of them had been raised in the same traditions of hunting and they fell easily into the same old habits. They fell in line behind Yen, moving as his shadow as he moved through someone's backyard. They moved along the driveway and paused, peering into the open streets of the town proper. Four more blocks, Yen thought. The five men hid between the rusting Buick LeSabre in the driveway and a hedgerow, waiting for Yen to start moving again.

  Yen waited as a handful of undead shuffled past, seemingly aimless in their movement. Once they were out of range, he edged out to get a better look down the residential street. He looked to the right and scanned slowly to the left. His heart froze in his chest when a roar issued from directly in front of him, mere yards away. His eyes danced furtively around before finally picking out the dun clad form from the equally drab surroundings. The thing was crouched over the top of a body in the driveway of the house opposite from them, on which it had been feasting. Yen no sooner recognized the undead for what it was, when it lurched to its feet and ran full bore at him.

  “Fuck,” Milton swore from behind him.

  Yen half-turned to shush the man, never taking his eyes off the fast approaching undead. He eased the hatchet out of his belt and waited in a crouch. He knew that he could easily draw his pistol and end it without risking a struggle. He also knew that to fire a weapon on the crowded streets would draw the attention of a great many undead and likely bring doom upon their mission. Every muscle on his body tensed as the thing's bare feet slapped on the pavement, hurtling towards him. The thing dove at him from about six feet away, a move Yen anticipated. He sidestepped expertly, swinging the short handled ax with a quick, measured stroke.

  His hack missed the mark, but Yen hardly noticed. He threw himself on top of the undead as it landed. He hacked again, driving the blade of the hatchet deep into its temple as the thing flailed about, trying to attack him. Once he was certain it was down for good, he ripped the hatchet free and spun in a crouch, alert and looking for more of them. The moments ticked slowly by and a handful of undead moved about on the street, but none seemed to track their location.

  Tense moments slipped past as they waited at the side of the Buick for more undead to appear, drawn by the sound of the struggle. Nothing came but the continued sounds of gunfire and screams from all around. Yen was about to start edging back out into the open, but paused for another moment as he heard the sounds of at least one of his companions relieving themselves on the concrete driveway. He waited for the span of a few heartbeats, making sure they were all ready before he stepped out into the open, scrambling across the road. He skirted the half-eaten body on the driveway opposite and made a fast and thorough scan of the area, making sure it was clear before flagging the other men across to him. They moved quickly and quietly up the driveway to the garage at the rear of the property where they peered into the yard behind.

  A cedar playhouse occupied the back corner of the abutting yard. They used its bulk to mask their presence as they moved through the bushes at the rear of the yard. Once they were all through, Yen met their eyes, trying to both reassure them as well as get a picture of the mental state the others were in. Satisfied that they were still solid, they approached the rear of the one-story ranch house. Each of their hearts hammered inside their chests as they neared. They could hear the clumsy crashing and smashing of undead moving about within the house. As they edged their way to the corner, the soft moaning of the undead drifted from the blackness within, through the shattered sliding-glass doors.

  Three more blocks, Yen thought, as they slid along the side of the house towards the front. He winced, biting back a gasp of surprise as a heavy machine gun roared through the area from close by to the northeast. Its heavy metallic rhythm continued in measured bursts for quite a few minutes. The undead inside the house were drawn out by the noise. They shambled out from the open front door and down the concrete stairs, moving off in the direction of the sound. On the streets around them, they could see the shift, subtly at first, but within a handful of heartbeats it seemed that every one of the undead was moving in the direction of the heavy weapon.

  Yen decided to try and use their apparent fixation on the machine gun as a distraction. He slipped out into the open from alongside the house, signaling for the others to follow. He crossed the street in a crouch, coming into a parking lot that sat behind the Oasis, the town's only bar. The lot was empty. The bar had been shuttered and its stock of liquor disposed of early on in the winter. They quickly learned that having an available supply of liquor was a danger in its own right. A string of brutal fist-fights marred the beginning of winter. The final straw was when a man who was only known to them as Ricky, was stabbed to death on the snow-covered sidewalk outside the bar after bumping into another man, spilling a drink on his boots. The hard-heartedness and focus on the 'self' at the cost of others that was shown by some of the survivors never failed to surprise him. He knew that it was a sickness in other cultures rather than coming as a result of the disaster, but its continuation in the face of a common enemy left him speechless. Yen shook the thoughts and memory from his head in disgust and turned his focus back to the task at hand.

  Yen sprinted across the open and climbed the inside corner of a wooden fence at the rear of the lot. He knew what lay opposite and dropped down lightly into the small park beyond. The park commemorated Mabel Sherman, who had raised money to buy a bomber during WWII. The monument to her, surrounded by shrubbery, was the only thing in the otherwise open plot of land. He froze once he hit the ground, taking measure of the area around him for the span of a dozen heartbeats. The others dropped, one-by-one, down from the fence and moved to his side, waiting patiently, albeit nervously.

  Across the street and down a slope sat the school. In its heyday, before the undead came, it housed and molded the minds of all of Donner's youth, from kindergarten through senior high school. Its most recent class to graduate high school, was a class of eleven, the largest in nearly a decade. It wasn't the school that Yen was looking at however, but the steel shed building that sat just north of it. The bus garage was a hundred yards from the main building and the town's two long yellow buses and one short bus were parked in front of it.

  The sounds of gunfire quieted momentarily and an eerie quiet settled over them. The only sound at all in the little park for the span of a few seconds was the hoarse rasp of their own breathing and the dull flutter of their own hearts thrumming inside their chests. The school was dark, no candles burned within as they did when class was in session. If anyone was sheltering within the building, they were doing their best to remain hidden. The momentary quiet dissolved as randomly as it had begun when the roar of a machine gun split the air. They hadn't seen any undead since hopping the fence and Yen strode confidently across the road, moving toward the garage. The others shadowed behind him, each one ten feet behind the person in front.

  In less than a minute, the five men stood in front of the office door of the bus garage, working to regulate their breathing and slow their hearts. They had peered eagerly into the buses as they moved past, hoping that the keys were in the ignition. They hadn't been. The office door was locked when Yen reached out and jiggled the knob. He glanced around briefly, making sure nothing moved close by, before stepping, shoulder-first, into the door. His shoulder struck heavily sending a loud thud echoing off the buses and nearby school building. The door held fast, but the cheap knob broke off in his grip, exposing the latch assembly. Yen hooked his finger into it and wiggled until it came free, dropping to the ground with a dull clatter. The door swung inwards, silently.

  The five piled into the small open office, with Leonard bringing up the rear. Leonard swung the door shut and pressed his back to it, bracing it closed. The rest searched quickly and quietly in the eight-foot by ten foot room, looking for the keys to the buses.

  “Got 'em!” Cristobal exclaimed a bit too exuberantly, as he dropped the lock-box onto the d
esktop.

  Yen gritted his teeth against the racket inside the steel shed and held his finger in front of his nose. He scooped up all three sets of keys before moving back to the door. With another quick glance around, the men stepped back into the open, just as a cold light rain began falling. They streamed across the gap to the first long Yellowbird bus. Once they arrived at the front bi-fold door, the three searched around for a way to open the door. Win knew there was a panel or button somewhere that would let them in, but none were able to find it in their haste. As the panic of the moment reached critical mass, Cristobal, the skinniest of the five, pressed his leg in-between the flaps of the door and started to force his way in. As he pushed the doors to squeeze his pelvis through they issued a loud shriek of unlubricated metal. The five winced at the raucous noise and he stopped pushing immediately. Eyes wide, the five looked nervously around.

  “Just go, get in and open the door,” Yen growled, reaching out to start pushing him.

  The sounds of many feet slapping on the pavement from the direction of the school building sounded.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Yen snarled, pushing the man forcefully into the gap.

  *

  With the chaos rapidly unfolding around them as she packed the tents and gear, Laura was growing increasingly nervous. Sophie was busily playing with Luna while she worked, but her progress felt exceedingly slow, as if she were moving underwater. After Tim and Will had moved off, the events around them devolved at speed. The other refugees seemed equally panicked, some fled to the barricades, looking to the heavy machine gun to protect them, while others fled to the north. These refugees streamed past their campsite, heightening the tension and panic she felt. Along with the fear of the undead, now that the living were moving past, she grew worried that someone would steal the Yukon before they got there. As destroyed as the Yukon was, it at least offered some protection. The last thing she wanted was to be left out in the open waiting for the others.