His rough hands grasped my face as he planted a kiss on the top of my head, and then, he walked off silently towards the tunnel.
Gordon and I headed back to the outskirts of the woods near the cabin, and then, all hell broke loose. There was a man standing out near the cabin.
He spotted us, lifted his gun, and just started shooting. We bolted back behind the trees. He emptied his rifle into the treeline around us before yelling out at the men in the cabin.
“Yo! Get out here. We’ve got two out in the woods. A woman and an older man. Come on! We gotta take ‘em down before they get any closer.”
I peaked around the tree where I was posted just as two more men ran out, guns held ready. I pulled out my gun, breathing evenly. Gordon’s back was pasted to a tree several feet away. I nodded at him as he pulled the rifle from his shoulder.
As the two men came running around a nearby tree, Gordon and I opened fire. I downed the first man in one shot. Gordon took out the other two with neat precision. Faces peered out of the windows before I saw the shutters inside the cabin slam closed.
The cabin was a veritable fort, not easy to get into unless you knew about the tunnel underneath. The shutters were smooth metal that glided into place behind the windows.
The doors were thick metal, and the inside was reinforced cinder blocks covered in flame retardant. Even if you lit it on fire, while the outside wood burned, the inside would be untouched.
Norm just wanted the cabin look because of aesthetics. He’d bought it years ago as a vacation spot before I was born, and after mom died, he started the renovations. He learned how to fortify the place.
Every summer, Norm and I would come to stay and work on the cabin. Sometimes, half the cabin would have been torn down while we would stay in the remaining structure.
Piece by piece each summer I saw the cabin broken down, rebuilt, and eventually, finished.
I came to love everything about the mountain and the cabin. Norm and I spent so many moments bonding there. Long nights staring up at the stars, mornings spent fishing down at Waters Creek, evenings cooking and roasting fish over an open campfire.
Eventually, it became his permanent home with retirement, me going off to school, and Norm settling down into his “old man life,” as I’d called it.
The air around me had gone quiet. I looked again. The shutters remained closed. Nothing stirred.
“That’s it, Gordon. We’ve lost sight, and I don’t think they are going to risk coming out.” I yelled over to him.
“Let’s go, Holly.”
We made our way slowly, taking cover behind the trees as we slowly made our way back into the forest.
We silently circled around in a wide arc, covering each other, until we came to the tunnel a half mile out.
Norm had covered the entrance well. The manhole cover was camouflage, and above it, Norm had created a wooden ivy cover.
The cover was 10 feet by 12 feet. It was made of treated wood that resembled thick, gnarled branches. Norm had woven in realistic looking leaves.
So, even if someone tripped over the ivy, they would think it was just forest growth and move on. The man-hole cover opened from the inside out with an inside lock, but Norm and Gordon had unlocked it to come look for me.
We slid the cover over, opened the manhole, used the large hooked stick in the tunnel to pull the ivy back over, and secured the cover, pulling it down and turning the iron wheel until it locked into place. We climbed down the metal rungs set into the concrete wall and landed in the tunnel below.
The concrete ended a couple of feet into the tunnel, and I felt the comfort of the hard packed dirt beneath my feet.
Gordon and I headed further into the tunnel until we saw Norm with his solar lamp, the dim light reflecting off the shadows in the tunnel.
“Well,” he whispered. “I heard the firing before I even got into the tunnel. No use cutting the power cord to the generator now. We know they just want us dead. We need to sneak in while they think they are safely secured inside. I think we wait until dark and take them out.”
“Norm, I’ve already killed more than my share of people since the blackout. I just want to make sure we know the rest are on the same page before we just go in and kill them.”
I looked earnestly from Gordon to Norm.
“Dammit, Holly, I know!” his whispered voice took on an edge of frustration. “How do you think I feel? I just don’t want to take the chance with any of us. Is it worth our lives?”
“I think it is, Norm.” Gordon’s voice broke in. “We can’t become that . . .” he pointed in the direction of the cabin’s front porch. “We need to make sure. Our only action should be self-defense. Can your conscience really live with less than that?”
“Yes, Gordon, it could if it meant yours, and especially, Holly’s life.” Norm sighed heavily, “but . . . I will compromise since I’m outvoted. So, we sneak in tonight, and make our way up the stairs. We can try to knock them out and tie them up. Just don’t know what we are going to do with them after that. We already killed three of their friends.”
Gordon and I nodded. We sat and waited in the tunnel.
Norm’s solar watch ticking away the seconds until early morning.
At 2 a.m., we finally decide to sneak in. Norm slid the thick metal door back, slowly and painstakingly. The false wall was the tough part. From the other side of the wall, you could just push a little and it would pop into the side pocket inside the wall to slide in.
From the inside of the tunnel, you had to grip the small metal handles on the false wall and pull it into the groove.
This had always been noisier than Norm had wanted, but he couldn’t find a better way to manually do it. Gordon and Norm each took one handle and pulled.
A slight creak sounded as the wall slipped into the notch. We all paused and listened.
After ten minutes of holding our breath, Norm inched the wall further and further back into the groove in the wall until there was enough space for one person to peek out. He stuck his head out into the dark cellar and turned and gave us a thumbs up.
He wheeled the shelf forward carefully and slipped through the doorway. Gordon and I followed Norm into the room.
The cellar was a cinderblock room, extra food stores on one side in milk crates, electronics and parts sorted and labeled neatly on a huge wall of roll-away shelving. The generator hummed on the opposite wall. Thankfully, it had masked the noise.
Why would they be running the generator at 2 a.m.? The weather was perfect, no need for heat or air. Meal time was over? What did they really need up there at this time in the morning?
We headed through the basement and up the stairs, trying to avoid the steps that always creaked.
The door to the cellar stood ajar. Norm went first, knife out. I followed behind, my gun out and held ready in both hands down by my right.
Light from the living room flooded the front half of the cabin, but the kitchen was grey and steeped in shadows. Norm cleared the room before beckoning us out with a wave.
He held his hand up to stop us from heading towards the living room.
The light played on the hallway walls in between the two rooms. He took measured steps forward. It seemed like a footstep a minute, the anxiety of not-knowing stirring butterflies around my insides.
Finally, he disappeared into the light. I waited a beat and, then, quickly rushed forward into the light.
“It’s okay.” Norm called out quietly.
I blinked in the artificial light, my eyes adjusting to the room. Norm had his gun trained on a brute of a man.
The man’s muscles pulsated unnaturally beneath his shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and watery, his veins popping out around his temples and all through his biceps and down the length of his arms.
His eyes were empty, a hollow reflection, no soul. His mouth was full of black and yellow rotting teeth, porous and full of black holes.
Blood lining the edges and running down his chin. He
sat in the corner of the room, rocking with his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, murmuring unintelligibly to himself.
“Gordon, will you clear the two bedrooms?” Norm asked, without turning away from the druggy.
I tore my eyes away from the grotesque site of him to survey the room. Two men were slumped over face first on the rug. Their hands bound so tightly that they had turned an unnatural blue.
A jagged gash tore apart the side of one man’s neck. The other had a wide valley in the back of his skull, seeping blood and brains. The rug looked more red than blue, its original color.
A woman lay on her side, clothes torn off from the waist down, and bruises ringing her neck and thighs. Her eyes were open and vacant, no life left in them. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat.
“You need to come in here, Holly.” Gordon called from the second bedroom.
“On my w-way,” I sputtered, turning my back on the site.
As I rounded the corner to my bedroom, I saw Norm raise his gun higher and squeeze the trigger with conviction.
The shot blasted through the cabin, and the man in the corner sputtered and lay still. I shuddered and kept walking. There was no place here for that monster. He deserved to die.
I passed the first bedroom on the left, glancing at the pictures that lined the walls.
Norm and me. A large photo of me, my dad, and my mom when I was five. They were swinging me between them, my hands grasping theirs as I rocketed into the air, pigtails tied in red, white, and blue, bows flying. I vaguely remembered that 4th of July.
We sat on the lawn at Marietta Square, the fireworks whirring into the sky. They pop, pop, popped loudly and fizzled out so quickly. I stopped in front of the picture, reminiscing and pondering.
What would life have been like if they were still with me? First mom when I was so young, and then, the heartbreak seeped through dad, a spreading cancer. He loved me the best he could, but he was incapable of holding on to life without her.
Ten years after she died, they found the cancer growing in his lungs. It had eaten through his lungs, his liver, and his pancreas within three months.
And finally, at sixteen, I had to say goodbye to him. Norm and I - we were all we had. He had taken me in that year, moving into the sad house where mom and dad’s ghosts lingered in the hallways, memories haunting me day after day.
I stepped away from the frame and headed to the back of the cabin, the last room, my room.
I could hear whispers echoing down the hallway. As I peered through the doorway, I heard the soft, comforting voice of Gordon soothing someone. My bed was oversized for the room.
It had a dark brown metal canopy with white lace sheets pooling down along the sides. The sheet parted at the left side of the bed, small feet peeking out.
They were cute, little feet with tiny, baby pink painted toenails. I stepped forward quietly, craning my neck to see who those little feet belonged to.
The little girl looked about seven, her black hair hung in strings around her face. Her eyes were like big blue teardrops, beautiful and sad. She looked up out of those sad eyes, and I froze. Gordon turned to look at me.
“Um . . . Holly. This is Kate. She was with her mommy and daddy when they were taken by the bad men. Can you sit with her for a while? Norm and I need to . . . ummm . . . ur . . . get dinner going in the kitchen and get everything ready for Kate to come stay with us for a bit.”
He smiled back at the little girl, and gestured for me to meet him at the door.
“I don’t think she knows about what happened out there. She said her mommy told her to stay in here and lock the door. She said she hid under the bed when she heard the yelling and fighting and didn’t come out. Norman and I will get the bodies and the bloody rug out. You sit with her and keep her away from it all, please?” He looked at me. His eyes full of unspoken sadness.
“I got her, Gordon.” I patted him on the shoulder and smiled, turning back into the room.
“You wanna play a game? I think I have Uno in here still. This is my room, and you can play with anything you want.”
I grabbed a pack of Uno cards and my favorite stuffed rabbit off the shelf nearby. I sat on the bed next to Kate and started dealing the cards.
Three hours later, I slowly lifted her head off my arm and tucked her in with Carrot, the stuffed bunny.
She had fallen asleep after several rounds of Uno and a long bubble bath in the attached bathroom. I had bundled her up in a one of my t-shirts. It fit like a nightgown on her tiny body.
I quietly pulled the door closed and tiptoed into the living room.
Norm and Gordon had cleaned up the bodies and cleared the floor of the rug. They told me they had dug a shallow pit out back until they could bury the bodies properly early tomorrow morning.
There we stood, surveying the rest of the damage as Norm took stock of the supplies.
And finally, my mind had drifted back to Matthew. Oh god. . . we had to rescue him.
Was he still alive? The thoughts and questions came flooding back as I knelt on the living room floor and tried to catch my breath.
“Norm . . . I think it’s time we talk. We have more trouble ahead of us.”
Our eyes locked as I began my story.
Chapter 14 (Matthew)
The next morning, I woke with a blazing fever. My head felt heavy and pained, the constant beat of my heart reverberating throughout my entire body.
The infection had taken root faster than anticipated. The world was a fog of blurry shapes and colors . . . the first fuzzy figure nudging me with the toe of his boot, and then, kicking me a little harder.
When I whimpered in pain, the owner of the shoe got nose to nose with me, his face so close it finally came into focus.
Travis, one of the younger men in the group, came into view. His beady brown eyes bore into mine, and then, my eyes blurred again, and I faded into unconsciousness.
The next time I woke, my head felt as heavy as concrete. Steve crouched over me with his hand to my forehead and a wet rag in his left fist.
He mumbled something about medicine and finding the wound.
My limbs felt heavy and tired and swollen from fever, but I absentmindedly tugged a little at the bandage underneath my pant leg. It didn’t escape Steve’s sharp focus.
I felt more tugging and tearing, and finally, I felt the open air brushing across the gash in my leg. Liquid and pus from the infection leaked down my leg in a slow trickle.
Steve held a bottle up to my mouth, pouring water in a steady current.
My throat throbbed in protest, the water spilled out around my cheeks and slid down my swollen throat.
The fire in my body was relentless and spreading quickly. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the pulsing ache pounding over and over in my head.
“We have to find some medicine, or he’s not going to be able to give us any more directions to the cabin,” I heard Travis say.
His voice seemed like a far away echo. The men were tired of the woods. Yesterday, one of the men had thrown down his pack at our last stop, cursing the trees and rocks around him.
The others dropped their packs with grunts of agreement. These weren’t men used to roughing it on the trail, unlike Steve.
He knew they were getting restless, and this placed all of the pressure on me and him.
“I can find the cabin without him,” Steve replied.
“Steve, we could roam these mountains for days. Getting lost isn’t going to help us survive. Our food supplies are extremely low. The truck is down by the trailhead. I say two of us take the truck back into town and raid the pharmacy for some antibiotics and whatever else we think can get him better quickly. He’s a sure bet. No offense.”
Travis voice trailed off weakly, but he seemed to speak for the group because I heard several muffled ‘yesses.’
“We split up, we lose our advantage if something goes wrong,” Steve replied. “But if that’s the plan everyone can get behind, then
, I will do it. Let’s take a vote.”
I was too weak to open my eyes, but a minute later, I heard Steve sigh in resignation.
“Alright, then. Travis, you and Spence head back down the trail. Spence, you’ve hiked a good bit. You are going to take my compass and head SouthEast. Make a beeline until you hit the paved road. Turn right. It will curve around into the parking lot. Here are the keys.” He tossed the set of keys to Travis. “Now, don’t be long, or we might lose him and the cabin.”
My wound continued to seep, my head still throbbing relentlessly, but I was secretly comforted that my plan had succeeded.
I was exhausted from struggling to stay awake through the pain, and my mind finally slipped into a fitful unconsciousness.
Hours or days or a week passed, I wasn’t sure. I woke up intermittently. The sounds of night and the cool feeling of the evening air fading into the autumn mornings.
Sometimes, when I woke, I could feel the afternoon sun shining down, a pink light behind my closed eyes. But my lucid moments began to fade, and I lost larger increments of time as I felt the blackness closing in around me.
Late one evening, as the sunset and the shadows of dusk began to fill the forest, I felt a cold cloth brushing away the sweat that soaked my filthy clothing.
A gentle hand brushed away the hair that was plastered to my forehead and neck. I struggled to open my eyes, the lids heavy and swollen. I heard a familiar voice.
“Sshhhh,” her delicate hands drifted over my eyes, willing them to close. “They are bringing you medicine, and once you get well, I will help you. We will escape together. We will go to cabin together, and you will see Holly. We will all be safe.”
Rough footsteps approached, and Steve’s voice echoed from above where I lay on the ground.
“They found antibiotics down at the Park Ranger’s house, so it didn’t take long. Should be enough to get him better for a little while, but not enough to kill off the infection for good. That’s not our concern. He will die one way or another, not many of us get to choose.”
I heard pills in the bottle clattering around as it landed near my head.
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