Flirting With Death: Surviving The Infected

by Boyd Craven III

  “Frank told you to, Sarah is worried that...”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, shit. She's always...”

  “Mom, please don't.”

  “Ok.” She finished, leaving the words unsaid. It was better this way, I could ignore it easier if she didn't come right out and make secrets known.

  We sat in silence for about ten minutes, and there was no more gunfire. I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, but I heard the distinctive sound of my Wrangler start up and the tires crunched on the gravel as it turned into the marina drive.

  “Your supplies?” I asked Katherine as she stood up, pulling me with her.

  “At the cabin. Don't worry, Jim, we've thought of everything.”

  “Pull the rope close.” Frank's voice came out of the gloom, and the boat floated closer to the dock as Katherine gave me a gentle push. Strong hands caught me under the arms, and I could see both Sarah and Frank's faces as we made our way to the passenger side of the Jeep.

  “There are only two seats!” Sarah complained, giving the smoker the stink eye.

  “Dump this thing,” Katherine said.

  “No,” I complained, if they only knew how much trouble I went through to get it...

  “Katherine, drive, I'll ride in back.” Frank screamed as shadowy forms started towards us from the dark.

  “Where do I sit?” Sarah called back.

  “Double up with Jim.” Mom called to her. I was being roughly buckled in and, when Sarah's weight slammed into my waist and stomach, I finally passed out with the pain.

  +++++++

  “Help us move him!” I heard one of the girls say, not sure who was speaking. Janie, it sounded like Janie.

  “Get him in here, he's convulsing!”

  “How bad is he?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Were we followed, Dad?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “Is Jim going to be OK?”

  “I have dinner.”

  “The book’s in here...”

  The chatter washed over me as I faded in and out of consciousness, waking to be fed, or walked to the restroom. Days went by in a blur and, when I awoke again, I felt stronger than before.

  “Mom, he's up!” Justin was sitting on the edge of the big bed, apparently in Frank and Katherine's bedroom.

  “Good, trade me places and go find Katherine.” Claire said, walking into the bedroom, her smile almost big enough to split her head in half.

  “I'm alive.” I stated more than asked.

  “Yeah, you and Sarah smacked heads together getting on the railroad tracks. They didn't realize you were out again until they got here.”

  Her hand found mine and I gave her a weak squeeze; it was the most I could manage.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “In and out for three days. You haven't talked this much until now. Katherine said you had a thick head, so you'd make it,” she said, smirking, “and I tend to agree with her.”

  I looked down, and this time I was relieved to be dressed in a pair of sweat pants. I had to use the bathroom, and I swung my legs over the bed and was able to stand with a minimal amount of leg wobble. Claire put an arm around my waist, her shoulder under my arm, and led me out of the bedroom. I knew if I stumbled, we'd both go down, so I took my time.

  “You need a hand in here?” Claire asked me as I considered the toilet, which seemed to sway back and forth.

  “Uh, no offense but...”

  “If you need a hand, let me know. I've been helping you since you got back.” She laughed as my skin turned even more red in embarrassment.

  “Did, uh...”

  “You'll never know. Sarah was pissed.”

  “Oh shit.” I said, deciding to close the door and take care of things myself.

  My head swam. How was it that everyone knew about Sarah's feelings, and I was just finding out? If Claire was needling her, what did my in-laws think?

  I opened the door and headed out to the kitchen to wash my hands, when I heard Frank and Justin talking and laughing softly from the front door, followed by Katherine and Sarah.

  “Oh shit, you aren't supposed to be out of bed,” Katherine fussed, grabbing my wrist and feeling my pulse.

  “I needed to wash my hands,” I explained.

  “OK, wash them, and then sit down.” I was corralled into the soft chair at the dining table, the one that was next to the wall.

  “I hope you like chicken and rice,” Sarah asked, “It's probably the softest solid food we have here, unless you want a tuna fish sandwich.”

  “Chicken and rice sounds good,” I mumbled, accepting a glass of orange liquid from Claire as Katherine was looking into each of my eyes, poking about my head. I finally had to put the glass down until she was done.

  “You're very lucky,” Katherine told me.

  “Look Mom, no bites,” I held up my wrists, trying to be goofy. “Thank you though, thank you guys. I wouldn't have made it back if you hadn't...”

  “We never would have made it here if you weren't where you were. You either have shit luck or are a shit magnet, I can't decide.” Sarah snarked.

  “I don't know what that means.”

  “I don't either,” Claire said with a laugh.

  “Mom says you have to take it easy. Do you want to help me with the fishing for a while?” Justin asked me, and I looked at him puzzled. I couldn't remember fishing. Was I supposed to be fishing?

  “You are on light duty. Claire said you've been working on the firewood stocks, and even fishing might be too much,” Frank told me. Sarah's nose, but I didn't care, it could be my faulty sight as well as my fuzzy memory.

  “OK. I'm pretty tired though.”

  “Oh, hell no, your ass is going to eat!” Sarah said, pissed.

  “What did I do?” I asked Frank.

  “She cooked it.”

  “Oh shit,” I moaned.

  Justin started laughing, and pretty soon the rest of them joined in, including Sarah. I looked out of the window and saw that snow had started falling. It was going to get deep soon, and I was worried all the laughter would turn to tears before long.

  Chapter 15 – Healing & Laying in Supplies

  December 20th, 2015

  Close to a month passed, and I got stronger day by day. Katherine told me that my concussion was serious enough, that without imaging, I could have had a closed head injury, but when I hit it again on Sarah's head, I most certainly did. I was given a month of light duty, plus Frank was impressed with the wood I had dropped and chopped by hand.

  Sarah spent almost every night on security, going from location to location around the property line. I found out that although Frank and Katherine owned the majority of land on this side of the lake, the cabin's parcel was about ten acres square. That was the area that was patrolled, and Sarah made quick use of the supplies under Frank’s bed. Tripwires were set up in a way that they would trigger a road flare, glow stick or a pull popper of some sort. Even with six people, it wasn't enough to have an effective 24-hour watch.

  Frank had spent his mornings hunting, and had gotten lucky several times as November came into December. He bagged two more deer, and the smoker I had saved from Claire’s house came into great use. It could hold most of a deer in its boxy 4x4 frame, just eating charcoal, or hardwood under a pan of wet hickory, to give it the flavor we wanted. Fish, venison and some cat tail roots had all been smoked there, and the smell always made my mouth water. The freezer was filling up fast, and we started smoking everything until it was brittle, storing it in a Tupperware storage container in the second shed.

  Justin worked closely with Sarah and me when he wasn't breaking through the ice and fishing, learning how to preserve food, keeping the cabin picked up, and studying books on natural remedies and medicine. I couldn't do much, so I mainly watched the fires, and kept the food cycled through the home-made smoker, the solar dehydrator and the big smoker. Claire worked on gathering every walnut and ac
orn she could, almost having to fight the squirrels for the privilege. Her other job was hunting, but it wasn't food she was hunting.

  She patrolled much further than Sarah, looking for survivors. She often took her bow as well as a handgun. If she ran across one of the infected, she'd use the bow to take it down, preferring head shots. It ruined arrows, but those were easy enough to make according to Frank, who worked on just that, at night time. Most of Claire's patrols were on foot, or on a bicycle depending on the distance she was traveling. The only thing she found so far were the dead heads, and had put down a half a dozen that somehow made it out in the direction of the cabin. Some of them still had their ID on them, and most of them were from in town. One was from Tennessee according to his license, and we all thought about that some before giving up.

  Every one of the infected she came across was over a mile away from the cabin, but that was getting too close to where we lived; a mile was only half an hour of walking after all. Frank joined her on the hunts, and I think Sarah would have too, but she seemed to be resting during the early part of the day, sitting close to Justin and I, resting when she couldn't stay awake any longer. A lot of times, I carried her sleeping form to one of the open beds when her soft snores became overly loud.

  We healed, I learned what it was like to be close to family and I figured out that both Sarah and Claire were getting close, and the way they looked at me... I missed Janie like hell, and being around her family without her was like salt on an open wound at times, especially when Sarah's snark was particularly sharp, but Claire tried to make things light, fun and easy. The age difference didn't seem so big after a while, and we often took coffee together in the mornings, once folks were up and about. I knew I was on my last days of rest when I asked Frank one night where he wanted me.

  My limited woodcraft skills made me the poorer choice as a hunter, and Justin did such a good job on fishing, that we made him take a day off every now and then so we could catch up. I could, however, do some of the watches, and it was suggested that I pair up with Sarah for a while to get used to it, as she'd been doing it for most of a month. After my training, I'd have my own time slot, as would everyone else as the hunting and food gathering came to a close with the snow.

  The season usually averaged 70” of snow and, being right off the lake, it stayed cold enough for most of that to collect. Once the heavy snow hit, we might spend a month or longer stuck in or around the cabin. That's why it was important to get as much done as we could, as quickly as possible.

  Sarah wasn't as abusive as normal when we were alone in the night. She sometimes reminisced about times Janie and I would take her to the movies with us, and she talked a lot about how much she looked up to her bigger sister. It was painful to listen to, but I knew she needed it as much as I needed to hear it. Sharing together, perhaps we'd find some peace, instead of walking through life numb, no better than the infected that Claire ran across from time to time.

  “We need to thin things out,” Claire informed us the next morning at breakfast time.

  “The trees?” I asked, confused.

  “No, more of the infected are starting to move this way. We need to thin things out, otherwise they will bunch up and come after us again,” she said, looking to Sarah for a nod of approval.

  “I ran across some last night,” Sarah said; nobody had told me that, as it was my first day doing a solo run, in the early daylight hours.

  “Did you...?”

  “I didn't use a gun, that's for sure. I would have alerted everything around here.”

  “My God, they were this close to the cabin?” Katherine asked, her voice tense and high in fear.

  “Looking for us?” I asked, but got a stern look of disapproval from Frank.

  “How would they know we’re here?” Justin asked me, and I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Maybe we should organize some sort of hunt, or do something to draw them all in and...”

  “And?” Katherine asked her daughter, an eyebrow raised.

  “Fish in a barrel,” Claire answered for Sarah and they smiled at each other. Huh, that was a new one; they'd been shooting death glances at each other since they'd all been under one roof.

  Luckily the chair in front of the fire had become my new “spot” so I didn't have to worry about being stuck in the bunk room with both ladies and Justin. That would have been... Awkward. I was, however, both worried and anxious to find out why the dead heads had been traveling out this far, not having seen any myself since the day I got the smoker.

  “Do you really think it's a good idea to lure them at all? Maybe they are wandering around, because there’s nothing left to find in the city?”

  “I hate to think of them out here,” Katherine said, her voice shocked.

  “Well, let's take a day to think on this. We can always go on the attack if we need to. There are six of us now, enough to setup some sort of trap, if necessary,” Frank told us. “It isn't as if they are knocking on our door right now.”

  “They almost were, Dad. I just dragged the bodies out past the trail to the driveway, that's all.”

  “Dammit.”

  “What do we do?” Claire asked.

  “I've got a plan, but let me think on it.” Frank replied.

  I just nodded; many of his plans had come together wonderfully, including the cabin I had been staying in, and I hadn’t realized that all those buckets in the shed had been literally tons of food and supplies that were so cleverly stored inside I hadn't realized I was looking at them. The only indications of the Andersen's secret hobbies were the bookshelves and the enormous gun safe.

  The rest of the stuff looked pretty normal, considering folks who lived here in the winter time might find themselves cutoff from civilization for long stretches as the almost six feet of snow made itself into drifts that could cover the cabin entirely. Now that was a warm thought, I thought to myself.

  “What do you think will happen this winter?” I asked aloud, not directing it at anybody in general.

  “I kind of think they will freeze solid, as long as they aren't too active. I'm surprised they have lasted this long, to be honest.” Katherine answered.

  “Do you think the snow will stop them?” Justin asked. I was confused for a moment, but figured the kid had made the same connections I did.

  A ton of snow would make any sort of traveling difficult no matter who you were.

  “It might slow them down...” I started...

  “What do you have in mind for a trap?”

  “Nothing special. Just a different way of hunting predators.” Frank said with a grin. Both Katherine and Sarah started smiling as well and all I could do was scratch my head and wonder what I was missing out on.

  “Hey Jim, where's that small solar charger at? I have some batteries I need to top off.” Frank grinned.

  Claire’s stricken expression wasn’t lost on me; I just chalked it up to being horrified about the situation. Later, I would find out the terrible truth.

  +++++++++++

  December 21st, 2015

  It was just over freezing and snowing lightly when we set up the game call, which ended up being a fancy name for a digital recorder and a self amplified speaker that looked like a small megaphone. The previous evening, we set the recorder up on the kitchen table as the entire cabin talked about random things. None of us knew how long it would record, but Katherine assured me that it would play itself on a loop until we either turned it off, or the batteries died.

  Sarah and Claire both built impromptu tree stands on either side of the tracks leading to the turnoff to the cabin, and the rest of us, including Justin, were on the ground, spread out so we wouldn't fire on each other, but close enough to hear a whispered word. Our plan turned out to be simple. We'd play our loop loudly, and the infected would be drawn to the center of the conversation, if things worked out as planned. We all had a set of bow and arrows, as well as some sort of firearm and enough spare ammunition to make us jingle if we trie
d to move fast.

  In my head, I knew that the sound of gunfire would travel a lot further, but the thought of using bows made me all cold inside. I was also worried that if we saw any of the infected this far out, how many were close enough to the cabin? I know in my head we needed a day like this to either thin things out or to get a realistic idea, but I knew in my heart that I wasn't a soldier. Hell, I wasn't even a hunter, not in the true sense. Here I was though, in the woods and about to find out how serious the situation was for us.

  Frank's form was broken up by his camo ghillie suit. Apparently, it was in the bedroom closet the entire time, but it looked like strips of randomly colored canvas. Now he looked like a running bush, with sticks, twigs and leaves breaking up his form. We all talked about whether or not the dead heads could smell us or not, but the suit was good enough to make Frank look like anything but a human. Hitting the play button, he scrambled to the side of the road, between both Katherine and I. I'd like to think it's so he could cover a better angle, but it was more likely that there wasn't a lot of faith in my woodcraft and shooting skills. I could live with that.

  I waited for the soft chatter of last night’s conversation to come out of the speaker when I almost got scared out of my skin. The Jimmie Hendrix version of the Star Spangled Banner blared at concert volume, and we all resisted standing and putting our hands over our hearts, but we had our bows ready, guns for backup. When the music died, there was a long pause, perhaps four minutes. I was bewildered, I knew things had been recorded and Frank had a new SD card.

  The conversation I heard made me blush; I must have been washing up for the night, because the voices I heard were only of the ladies. I had no clue where Frank was, but I had a feeling it was when he was walking the outside of the cabin, having a rare cigar.

  “I see the way you look at him, I just want to know.”

  “That isn't fair,” Sarah's voice.

  “He was practically married to your family. I just want to know if...”

  “He never looks at me that way.”