by Poe, S. B.
Walk with Me
S.B. Poe
Copyright © 2018 S.B. Poe
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781980932093
DEDICATION
To my wife
For my kids
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Prologue Janice, The Harrisons and the Boys
3
1
In the Darkness Lead me on my Way
9
2
This Dirty Road
29
3
That I should Rise and You should Not
49
4
Easier Than Waitin Round to Die
68
5
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
86
6
Through the Darkness See the Light
106
7
Another Hard Life Long Forgotten
125
8
Run to You Walk with Me
140
9
Empty Spaces Abandoned Places
158
10
For Just a While Feel at Home Again
178
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank all those who support this effort
Prologue
Janice, the Harrisons and the Boys
She had to find Dottie and Ray. They had been together since yesterday and she was not going to leave them. When the news reports began she had turned to Dottie before any one else. Dottie and Ray Harrison’s back yard connected to the back of Janice’s yard. They had been fence neighbors for over ten years. They were there when Jeremy was born. They were his godparents. They were there when Mac, her husband, had died of a heart attack a few years later. She wouldn’t have made it through that time if Dottie and Ray hadn’t been there to help her. They would sit with Jeremy while she struggled to work two jobs. It was hard but she finally got things straightened out and she had settled into a job that didn’t require her to be gone too many evenings. And then yesterday the world fell apart. They had gone to the church. Dottie and Ray had helped Janice get food and water loaded in her car. They also helped her keep Jeremy and his cousin Clyde calm.
The church had been open since yesterday. Most of the parishioners had gathered for an evening prayer and had decided to stay. Safety in numbers. Dottie was on the flower committee and Agnes Weathers had called her to tell her to come to the church. They all went together. The church had stood with its doors open for over twelve hours welcoming people in. It became a home for the ill and infirmed that evening. Shortly after Janice and her group arrived Agnes’s husband had a massive stroke. Two hours after that all hell broke loose in the house of God. Janice saw Ray.
“Ray, where’s Dottie?”
“She’s coming. Go ahead. Get to your car. We’re parked right next to you. Go. We’ll meet at the school.” Ray yelled.
Janice grabbed for Jeremy and Clyde and made her way out of the fellowship hall exit. They got to the car and drove to the school without looking back. She parked at the end of the lot facing the road so she could watch for Dottie and Ray. She saw several military vehicles pull around to the back of the school. She could see them unload a few people on stretchers and take them into the back of the school. More military people arrived and went in the front of the school. She saw Ray’s car and flashed her lights. He pulled in next to her.
“Well. Did you check in yet?” Ray asked, rolling down his window.
“Not yet. I was waiting for you two.” Janice said.
“Ok. Just wait here and let me go see what’s what.” Ray said.
“Ok.”
Ray got out but left his window down so Dottie and Janice could speak to each other. He walked up to the side door but it wouldn’t open. He waved back at them and disappeared around to the front of the school.
“What happened back there?” Janice finally asked.
“Tom Weathers had Marionette, I guess. He collapsed and the preacher said he was dead, right before he rose up and attacked him.”
“The preacher?”
“Yes. He killed him. Bit him. After that I just turned and left as quickly as I could. I could hear them screaming behind me. I swear Janice, I don’t know what is happening but it is evil. Pure evil.”
“OPEN THE DOOR. OPEN THE DOOR” They heard Ray yelling as he came around the side of the school. Dottie opened the door.
Ray quickly jumped in and raised his window. As he did several people came running from around the front of the school. A military person turned and raised his weapon and shot back towards the front of the school. Janice screamed inside the car. He kept firing and reloading until finally from around the front came a large crowd of other people. The people looked like the crowds she had seen in the videos on the TV. Shuffling, falling forward. The crowd came towards the growing line of military personnel gathered in front of them.
They watched the crowd approach the military line. The street on the opposite side began to fill with more of the dead. Janice looked back up the hill towards the church and saw Marionette infected coming from that way too. They were surrounded. She watched as the crowd finally overwhelmed the military. She watched it all. A few hours later she watched as a sheriffs car rode by slowly and turned down the street towards the Home Depot. She thought about following it but couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Hours passed.
The crowd had moved away, mostly across the bridge. Ray rolled down his window just a little bit.
“Janice. Honey. Can you talk?” Ray asked.
“Yes. Yes. I” Janice started. Her voice was drowned out by the sound of a school bus.
“What the hell?” She heard Ray say.
“Let’s go.” Janice said.
“What?” Dottie asked.
“Let’s go. Let’s follow those buses. They may be headed somewhere safe.”
Janice put the car in gear and pulled ahead. She watched as two men got out and cleared the infected from the bridge. It was two buses and a big SUV. If they made it across the bridge, she was going to follow. She watched the last bus pull across the bridge and she pulled out of the parking lot. Ray followed. They fell in behind the last bus. A short ways down the road the buses pulled over. She pulled over too. Ray and Dottie Harrison pulled in behind her. She watched as the two men she saw clearing the bridge approached her car. She rolled down the window.
1
In the Darkness
Lead me on my way
JW sat among the trees listening to the cicadas buzz. The mist brightened as the sun crept over the horizon. He could hear squirrels running around a pine trunk, their tiny claws rudely echoing through the morning quiet. He had been watching the road for almost two hours. The smell came again.
He was still processing the last two weeks. They had reacted so fast. Was it too fast? While everything he had seen told him that he’d made the right decision, sitting here now he began to wonder. Could they have held out at home? Maybe, maybe not. Now he had seventeen other people hoping this was the right plan. And the weather was going to get colder. Admittedly, Alabama in the winter isn’t the Arctic Circle but it still gets cold. And wet. Wet and cold is a bad combination. They had gone through the firewood in JW’s truck and were spending their days gathering more. Groups of two or three would patrol around the camp watching the woods for infected but so far they had been completely unmolested. A few times they had heard cars
on the road a few miles away, but only a few. The military aircraft that had filled the air for the first few nights were now mostly gone.
The wind shifted again and the smell of death came back. South. He waited a few more minutes so the sun could rise above the horizon. He pulled the walkie out of his pocket.
“Bridge?” he thumbed the button. A pause.
“Good morning sunshine.” Bridger replied.
“I am going for a little walk south. I’ll follow along the edge of the road and should be back by dark.” He said.
“You think that’s a good idea?”
“Don’t know, but I have to see if I can tell where that smell is coming from. Whatever it is.”
“You need me to come?” Bridger asked.
“Not this time. Just keep an eye on everyone. Make sure you keep everyone alert. And make sure everyone is armed.”
“You get in trouble, you sing out. I’ll come running.”
“Will do.”
JW put the walkie back in his pocket and stood. He waited for the wind to rise one more time. Death. It had been over a week since they came down this road to escape the Marionette virus and the infected.
At night, when the AM band could reach the heavens, they could hear Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, and on really clear nights, New York and Connecticut as they slowly scanned the radio dial. The radios in the cars weren’t as effective as Charlie’s weather radio but they could still pick up some things. They had run the battery down on Janice’s car the first night. That next day Janice told them about the school. She told them how her and the boys went to the church for shelter and the National Guard had moved them to the school. Then the aid station in town got over run and the National Guard had evacuated those patients to the school too. That was how it got in. She also told them how it ended. The radio broadcasts were not much better.
Emergency broadcasts were interrupted by panicked local deejays. The military had closed Long Island but the virus had already crossed over. Or maybe it was already there. They heard a broadcast from Atlanta directing people to a shelter. The military had closed off I-85 and it had reportedly created huge traffic jams coming out of the city. Folks were trapped on the interstates as the city fell. Two nights later brought the news that the military bombed the city to prevent the outbreak from spreading. The fate of the people stranded on the interstate was never mentioned again. The story was the same all over. The major cities fell quickly. Too many people, too few options. Most of the radio stations from the big cities died away by the third night. They listened as the world fell apart. Under the stars with the breeze blowing, they listened as Marionette marched across the radio dial into weaker and weaker bands until finally, nothing. Charlie continued to try and find something, anything, for another day. Cranking the handle for power and turning the dial. Nothing.
Then the smell came. It started as just a slight unpleasant odor on the morning breeze as they finished their first week in the woods. Throughout the day it would come and go. By nightfall it would linger in the air a little longer. It had the distinct smell of death, maybe a dead dog. JW decided to walk out to the road to see what he could see.
He stayed inside the wood line keeping the road on his left. He bought his land a few years ago and even though he came up here as often as he could, he didn’t know anybody who lived in the few houses and the only landmarks he knew were the little country post office and the old fireworks stand down the road. He had noticed the stand when he came last time. It had a new coat of paint and hand painted sign in anticipation of the coming holidays. He knew the stand and the post office were about five miles away. He figured he could cover that distance and be back by nightfall. Any further would be a stretch unless he wanted to start walking the road. He wasn’t ready for that. He wanted to use the cover of the trees and watch the road as he went. The smell was growing stronger the further south he went. He would watch the road for a little bit and then move on. He wasn’t hurrying but he wasn’t spending a lot of time waiting. He wanted to figure out what the smell was and get back. He didn’t mind being alone, he actually enjoyed it but he wasn’t enjoying it right now.
He could see a hand painted billboard. FIREWORKS 1000ft . He looked up at the sky and then at his watch. Three hours. Not bad he thought. He still had not seen anything that would explain the smell. But he was close. The wind didn’t need to bring it to his nose any longer. It hung in the air now. He must be close. He paused in front of the little post office. The little white cinder block structure sat mockingly secure. The door was heavy steel and the small windows were covered with bars. He tried the latch. Locked. He walked around to the side and for the first time noticed the trail running into the woods from the back of the building. He followed the trail a few yards and saw a small house nestled back in the woods. The trail led right to the steps to the front porch. He stood there looking with his head cocked to the side, watching the little plume of smoke rise from the stone chimney.
Cameron Day had moved back to Berry over thirty years ago. He had left when he was eighteen to join the Navy. He spent a few years knocking around and finally moved back when his uncle asked him to come run the Post Office. Not a lot of pay but a free house and easy hours. After his uncle had passed away Cameron had renewed the contract and became the new Post Master for Berry. All 32 citizens. He mulled over the fact that he was probably going to be the last postmaster of Berry.
“No probably about it old boy. None at all.” He said to himself after this started.
He had spent the last few years making the job even easier. He installed a CCTV system in the post office and had the feed sent to his cabin so he could sit in front of his shortwave radio listening to far away signals to record in his logbook. Shortwave had been part of his life since his Navy days, where he learned about the way radio signals bounce around the world. He didn’t like to transmit and really had not even bought a decent microphone in twenty years. The one he owned was somewhere in the attic. He just listened. And he listened all the time. When the power bill got too high he converted the whole system over to solar power with generator backup. The generator ran on liquid propane that he kept in a big tank behind the cabin. He put enough panels on the roof to run most of his electrical needs. He still had the power company hookup but his bill was in the single digits if he got a bill at all. When the grid dropped he didn’t even notice for a few hours until his generator kicked on to supplement the solar system. He began pulling everything off the system except for his radio, computer and CCTV system. His refrigerator was the first to come off and he had spent the first full day of the official apocalypse stuffing his face with everything he pulled out. Anything he couldn’t eat he put out in his compost pile. All these years of being mostly self-sufficient had unknowingly prepared him for the beginning of the end. He hadn’t stockpiled food but he usually only made one trip a month to buy groceries. He had gone the same day Marionette jumped over to America. He had listened to the Surgeon General’s speech on the trip back from the Wal-Mart in Collier. He had been glued to his short wave ever since. Nobody had bothered to check the mail since that day. Until now.
“Dammit Bridger, can’t you talk some sense into him. We don’t need him out wandering around the country. We need him here.” Kate said as Bridger sheepishly put the walkie in his pocket. “You came down to help, now help.”
“JW is out there doing what he thinks is the best thing to keep us all safe.” He said.
“I came down here because I trust him. I don’t like it but he is right. Until he is confident that Raj or Tilly or you or anyone else is able to go out and be an asset he’ll just go alone. He wants me here at the camp, so that’s what I do. It may not be a perfect scenario but it will have to work for now.”
Kate knew Bridger was right, just like she knew JW was right when they had the same basic conversation last night when he was leaving. They had to know what was out there. If it hadn’t been the smell that drew him out, it would have b
een something else. She knew he needed to go. Just to see.
As she walked away from Bridger, Evelyn fell in beside her.
“So, any word yet?” She asked.
“Nothing yet. He is heading further down the road to see if he can see anything.”
“I know you’re worried, I would be too.”
“Thanks.” Kate said.
“Anyway, me and Tilly will go with Charlie and his two daughters.”
“Only Jennifer is his daughter, Lori is just a friend.” Kate interrupted.
“Honestly, I can’t keep it all straight. How do kids end up with not their parents during the apocalypse?” Evelyn mused. “Well Tilly, Charlie, Charlie’s daughter and not Charlie’s daughter and I are going to the creek and draw some water after lunch.” She laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Kate asked.
“Go to the creek and draw some water. Just another phrase I never imagined I would say.”
“Well if we’re saying things we never thought we would, here’s one. Make sure the kids have guns.” Kate smiled.
The group spent the rest of the morning taking turns gathering wood. They had an axe but they would mostly pick up what was on the forest floor. Once they had an armful they would take it back to camp. Groups of three or four would go together with one person tasked to just be the lookout. They would carry a shotgun. The rest carried some kind of pistol.
Janice, her son and her nephew would go with Chris and Amanda. The boys would walk with Chris while he was on watch and he would help load their arms with tree limbs. Janice was happy to see the boys coping. Amanda would spend the time alone just within sight of the others. She had been having a hard time since the day they evacuated. That little girl had been right next to her. She saw her head explode. She felt it. And then stepping over those people to get on the bus. All that blood. She had woke more than a few times shaking, with Chris’s hand over her mouth because she had been screaming. The rest of the camp was being polite but she knew that a screaming woman in the middle of the night was probably not the best way to avoid these things. But she couldn’t help it, she could see it all. It was all there, every night. She tried to use these moments alone in the woods to sort it out. She was getting a little better.
