by Megan Duncan
Chapter 2
A mountain of shopping carts were stacked haphazardly near the main entrance. We had each opted for quieter weapons, as to not draw unwanted attention, but I always kept my shotgun on me. Max had grabbed one of our old wood chopping axes, which I had voted we not bring because it was dull; and there was no way to sharpen it, plus, the blade head was coming loose from the handle. I obviously lost that argument, but we did all have large hunting knives strapped to our legs.
A few days ago Max had gone to our local fish and game store to salvage what he could. He had managed the knives, some handguns and a crossbow for Carter. He wasn’t as good at hand to hand as Max and I, but he was a very good shot. Which he attributed to all the hours of HALO he used to play. I rolled my eyes at that comment, but I couldn’t argue with him, he was a good shot.
I had emptied my duffel bag into the back of the Bronco before we started to head in. The more room we had to carry extra supplies, the better. Moving the carts was out of the question, so we opted to push a nearby car under a broken window at a side entrance to the right.
“Carter you stay by the window, and watch our backs.”
He already had an arrow loaded, and the strap for his knife was undone.
“Got it! You two make it quick, and stay together.”
Max grabbed the empty duffel bag, and swung it over his shoulder as we made our way between the registers. We both quickly turned at the sound of an avalanche of DVD cases falling to the tile floor.
“Sorry,” Carter whispered as Max, and I just mumbled under our breath, and continued walking. We headed straight for the middle of the store, avoiding the perishable food lining the outer aisles that had rotted long ago.
“You think he’s okay by himself?” Max asked as we reached the canned goods.
“I’d rather have him there, than in here. It’s safer. At least he can make a run for the Bronco if he needs to.” Max nodded silently. We both had an unspoken understanding that we felt Carter was the most valuable of the three of us. He was the brains behind our little operation, and if we were ever going to survive this, it would be because of Carter.
I watched Max as he removed the bag from his back. “Keep an eye out while I fill this,” I told him as I took the bag from his grasp. Our fingers brushed slightly, and I did my best to act as if I didn’t notice. I dropped the bag, and opened it, surveying the shelves of what was available.
Max walked further down the aisle to scout more of the store while I grabbed what food I could, staying away from anything with blood on it. Seeing him standing guard over me made a flush of warmth flow through me, but I pushed it away. There were more important things I needed to focus on at the moment.
We quietly made our way through more aisles, picking up what we could, until we found ourselves standing before the double doors to the back of the store.
“What do you think?” I asked Max.
“I think you’re crazy, but maybe we could find something useful back there, I guess. It’s risky though.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “It’s your call, Abs.”
“Let’s go,” I said, as I zipped up the bag, and handed it to him. I took the lead since I was unencumbered, and pushed open the doors.
I was preparing myself for a demon, but the smell of decomposing bodies was what almost overpowered me. I fought back the urge to vomit as I pulled a rag out of my pocket, and held it over my nose and mouth. I turned around to take survey Max for his reaction.
“Damn! There are bodies here,” he looked as shocked as I did, as he assessed the room.
From what we could tell, it seemed like a group of people had tried to hide out here. Didn’t seem like too bad of an idea to me, they would definitely have enough supplies to sustain them. There were a few cots, and chains on the outer doors. Body parts lay strewn all over, mostly in the small sleeping area they had set up.
“Looks like they got them when they were sleeping.” Max pointed out to a woman still lying in a cot. Her face was frozen in horror. Long, deep gashes were torn across her chest. Another person was completely mauled. The head had been torn clean off, and they were rolled over onto their side in a fetal position. They probably didn’t even see it coming.
“Poor bastards,” Max commented, quietly.
Stepping through as quietly as we could, we found the office door. A man’s hand hung from the door knob in a frozen death grip. I was afraid I would have to break a couple fingers to get it off, but Max was able to pry it loose. As he went to lay the severed hand down on a cot, the door slowly creaked open, and we both froze. A wave of nauseating odor wafted from the room, carrying the smell of rotting meat.
“Go!” Max shouted as he shoved me out the double doors. I glimpsed a flash of silver as I fell to the ground. I got up to pull my shotgun free, as the hound came barreling out the doors toward me. Max’s knife was buried to the hilt, deep into its neck, and it didn’t seem to slow it in the least.
It swung at me, and missed, but got me on the back swing taking my feet out from under me. I was sent tumbling into a shelf propelling cans of dog food down on top of me. My shotgun had been knocked free, and was too far out of my reach.
The hound lunged to bite at my leg, sending bloody drool flying, but I pulled away, and kicked it hard in the head. It shook its head in a daze for only a second, and it lunged at me again.
Grasping a can of dog food, I chucked it at its grotesque face as hard as I could, and then another. The hound bit at one of the can so I took a chance and dove for my shotgun. My fingers closed around the cool, smooth metal.
Success!
As I rolled over cocking it, the hound was charging for me. It let out a deep, guttural growl as bloody slobber dripped from its mouth.
I aimed, and shoved the barrel of the gun in its mouth, and pulled the trigger as it bit at me. The hound’s head exploded, sending blood and brain matter everywhere. The dead weight of its body fell onto me and pinned me to the ground. Hot blood poured onto my chest, and neck as it gushed out of the open wound in a sudden rush.
“Abby!” Carter shouted as he came running down the aisle.
“Get this demon off me!” I grunted as I pushed.
“Are you ok? What happened? Where’s Max?” Carter hammered me with questions.
“Shit, Max!” I shouted as we rolled the beast off me, and panic coursed through me. Did the hound kill Max? “Carter! Get Max’s knife!” I ordered, as I ran for the double doors.
“I got it!” Carter called out as he followed after me. I heard the squeak of his boots as he stepped through the puddle of blood on the tiled floor leaving bloody footprints in his wake.
I found Max slumped on the ground near a far wall, and ran for him. Carter stayed by the door, and when I heard him vomiting I ordered for him to suck it up and help me. As we lifted Max up to a sitting position, I took the bag off of his back.
“Did I get him?” Max asked, wearily. A smile crept onto my face as I sighed in relief.
“Yeah,” I lied. “You got ‘em. Are you hurt, Max?”
He began a pat down of himself, and located a gash on his leg. “We’ll get that fixed up in the Bronco,” I said.
“He charged at me, and slammed me into the wall. I remember shoving my knife into its neck, then... then… I must have blacked out.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get eaten!” Carter said harshly, holding up the broken axe like some kind of evidence. “What the hell were you doing, or what the hell weren’t you doing? You almost got Abby killed!”
“What?” Max looked at me, and his eyes grew wide at the sight of me covered in blood.
“Shut it, Carter! It wasn’t Max’s fault, he shoved me out of the way, but...” then I realized, “it didn’t go after him. It knocked you out of the way.” I pointed to Max, “And then it ran out through the doors, and saw me.”
“So…” Carter said, with a bit of attitude.
“I don’t think that it liked
being locked up,” I said. “It wanted out more than it wanted to kill Max.”
“Well, lucky him. Now come on, we’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Carter said, as he grabbed the duffel bag, and headed out the double doors.
“Can you walk?” I asked Max and he nodded. I took his hands, and balanced our weight while he stood himself up.
“Abby,” he said, as he grabbed my shoulders, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I just keep screwing things up.” He took the rag out of my hand, and started to wipe the blood off my neck.
“It’s okay Max. I’m okay, and you’re okay.” I took the rag back from him, and slid my body under his arm as we made our way out of the store as fast as we could.
Max cursed as we walked past the hound.
“They smell worse dead then they do alive, don’t they?” Carter asked.
I could tell his anger had already dissipated, and his mind was reeling with the new information we had just discovered. Although I couldn’t understand how that knowledge would be of any use to us. So, the hounds didn’t like being locked up, big deal. I sure as shit wasn’t going to ever try to lock one up myself.
Seeing the blue Bronco parked out front gave me a small burst of adrenaline and I ran for it. Carter already had the engine running by the time Max and I had even opened the back door. I tossed the bag in, and we jumped in as Carter sped off. I could have sworn I heard the call of one of those demon birds as we drove away, but I didn’t say anything.
I crawled into the back of the Bronco, and started digging through our things, looking for our first aid kit.
“Carter, where did you pack the first aid kit?” I asked.
“It’s in the green bag. Dad’s old A1 bag.”
I knew that bag well, and found it quickly. I crawled into the seat with Max and tried to assess his wound. He clenched his teeth as I slowly began to pull away his pants from the wound. Pieces of fiber were already sticking.
“Take off your pants,” I ordered. Carter must have seen a smile pass Max’s face because the Bronco suddenly jerked to the right. I shouted at Carter to watch it, and he apologized while constantly looking back at us through the rear view mirror.
As I helped pull his pant legs down, being careful not hit the wound, I was relieved to see the cuts weren’t as deep as I had thought. I pulled out what tools I needed from our kit, and got to work.
“Alright, Max, this is going to hurt. A lot.” I looked in his eyes, and held up a bottle of alcohol to show him.
“Aren’t you supposed to lie to me?”
I smiled. “Oh yes, ok Max, this isn’t going to hurt a bit. You’re just going to feel a slight tingling sensation, and then you’ll be right as rain,” I said in my best doctoral tone.
He started to laugh, so I poured a bit of the alcohol on his wound and he yelled out in agony. The gash bubbled up, and I quickly placed a piece of gauze over it pressing down as hard as I could.
Max leaned his head back, and closed his eyes letting out a moan as I slowly pried the gauze off and placed a couple bandages over the wound trying to close it up the best I could. After placing another piece of gauze on it, and securing the bandage, I assured Max I wouldn’t have to take the leg, and he laughed.
Feeling the blood starting to dry on my own skin, the urge to clean myself up was impossible to fight. Small chunks of demon hound brain were stuck in my hair, and I tried to control the bile rising up my throat while I pulled them out.
I crawled into the back again, and took off my t-shirt. I rolled it into a ball, and shoved into a side pocket of my duffel bag, I wanted to try to clean it someday, if I could. After a thorough wipe down using baby wipes we swiped from the store, I pulled on a black top with a picture of Eeyore and the words Moody on the front. I let Max take the back seat so he could keep his leg straight as I crawled up front with Carter, and grabbed our map.
“So where are we?” I asked.
“We are about ten minutes outside of Spokane, I think.”
“Wow, already?” I said. “I didn’t think we would hit a bigger city so fast. What’s the plan?”
“I think we should just stay on the highway, and try to make it through as quickly and quietly as possible. Keep an eye on the map for me though, Abby, just in case we have to make a detour.”
“So what are you thinking, Carter?” I asked.
“What?”
“Come on,” I said. “I can almost hear the wheels spinning up there,” and I tapped him on the head.
“Geez, Abby,” he said, as he took the folded up map and slapped me on the leg with it. “Grab my book from the glove box, would ya? Open it to the fifth page.”
I turned the pages and found Carter’s almost illegible handwriting describing the hounds. I wrote down what Carter told me to, after I had narrated what happened at the back of the store. He seemed to relax a bit after we had added the information to the book. I’m sure he would read through it a million times as soon as he got the chance.
I wanted to tease him every time I saw him with it, but I was starting to understand his need for it. This book was his lifeline to reality, or at least the reality that we once knew. It was his ticket to our old way of life, and whether or not it would really be of any help in the end didn’t matter right now. What really mattered was that it was getting him through each day.
It had taken much longer to get through town. We would occasionally get out to clear a path through the abandoned vehicles, and debris, and other times we would have to take side streets. We wanted to avoid that as much as possible. There were too many places for things to hide.
As we neared the center of town, the tall brick buildings loomed over us. I had been to Spokane before, but these no longer carried the beauty I once thought they did. Instead, an unnerving sensation that something was watching us tickled up my spine, but no matter how many dark windows I looked into, I couldn’t find anything. Crossing over the Spokane River, I saw that a car had gone over the side of the bridge. I tried to look down into the car as we drove by, but it was too hard to see. Whoever it was, I hoped they made it out okay, even though I knew the chances were slim.
“Where are we?” Max asked from the backseat.
“Spokane, but once we get through here and Coeur D’Alene it should be an easier drive for a bit. Hopefully,” I said. “You feeling better?”
“Yeah thanks. Damn, this place looks like a war zone,” he commented while looking out the window.
“Shit, the entrance to the interstate is blocked off,” Carter said, as we approached I-90. A huge semi had flipped onto its side across the entrance.
“I’m sure we can find another ramp to go up,” I offered a solution, as I pointed to my left. “Looks like that road follows along the interstate, let’s take that until we can get on.”
Carter put the Bronco in gear, and we started our way down Mission Avenue. Max and I pointed out things along the way. Vandals had written sinister sayings on buildings, announcing that the end of the world was near or that the devil had come to earth. I didn’t want to think that they were probably right.
After a good number of blocks we found an entrance, and made our way onto the interstate.
“Wow, check out all the smoke,” Max said pointing, and we all looked. Towers of black smoke rose up throughout the whole city.
“Max! Over here,” I said as I tapped my finger on the window. He scooted over to the right side of the car and gazed out the window.
“What am I looking for?” he asked.
“Just above the tree tops,” I said. “There are birds.”
“Crap.” Carter let out an aggravated groan, and stopped the Bronco.
“What?” Max and I both turned in unison, and saw what Carter was looking at. The whole road was barricaded with cars.
“How are we going to get through that?” I asked.
“We’re going to have to back track, go back on the surface streets until we can find an entrance past this,” Carter said.
“That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” I said. I punched the dash, and stepped out of the car, shutting the door as quietly as I could.
“What the hell, Abby!” Carter tried his hardest to yell at me, and whisper at the same time. He ran his fingers through his greasy blonde hair and headed toward me. “What do you want me to do, huh?”
I looked at the Bronco and saw Max sitting up, staring through the windshield at me, giving me his best what the hell are you doing look.
“I just don’t want to go back on the streets, Carter, I have a bad feeling. Can’t we just move these cars like we did the other ones?” I asked.
“There are too many, Abby,” he said with his voice full of annoyance.
“No… We just need to make enough room for the Bronco, we don’t have to move them all.” I waved my arm toward the pile of wreckage in a Vanna White type motion, and started walking toward the smallest car I could see, a bright yellow beetle near the shoulder. I peered inside, and saw the keys were still in the ignition.
“Well?” Carter asked creeping up behind me with his fists resting on his hips, looking very much like how I thought our mother looked.
“The keys are in the ignition, if we can move this beetle and maybe that truck we can squeeze through, what do you think?”
He eyed the space I was proposing and then looked back at the Bronco and then back again. “Maybe… But we got to do this quickly, Abby. I think we’re going to have to move the cars at the same time, while Max drives the Bronco through. I’m guessing we have one shot at this,” he said as he jerked his head toward the hill where I had seen the birds. “Before they notice.”
~
