by Josh Hilden
For many long hours they remained trapped inside the car. Thirteen people, four badly injured, facing a horde of what appeared to be several hundred of the dead. One of the survivors had a radio on her and they listened to the news reports of the dead rising all over the world and the increasingly desperate actions being used to combat them. They learned that large sections of New York City had been abandoned to the dead and it did not take any of them more than a minute to figure out that they were right inside the area that had been abandoned.
One of the badly injured died five hours after the train was stopped. One minute the man, by his dress Tammy thought he was a bicycle messenger, was breathing raggedly and the next he was not. Only two minutes later he sat straight up and looked at them, he then let out a low savage moan. The second panic was worse than the first. He lumbered over and began eating one of the other badly injured people, several others tried to stop him but they were in turn bit. Tammy had been listening to the news and she knew what was going to happen, she reached into her purse and drew out the snub nosed .32 caliber pistol that her mother had bought her when she moved to the city. In four years she had never drawn it in anger, but she was a damn good shot.
She put one round in the head of the Bike Messenger, the news had been pretty clear about that, and proceeded to do the same to four others that had been attacked. She ignored their pleas for her not to shoot, she had seen too much today. She had one round left when she was done the seven other living people in the car stared at her but said nothing. Tammy knew in that moment that there was no way she or anyone else was going to get out of this coffin, but she didn’t really give a fuck about the rest of them. Let them figure their own way out.
She put the barrel under her chin and pulled the trigger.
Book Two
The Journey
Chapter One
1
Somewhere Else
Some When Else
Her feet sank up to her calves in the thick putrid ooze covering the slope of the hill. Lisa had been running up the slope for what seemed like hours. Behind her the water rising from the sea was closer than ever. She needed to hurry. If she was late then she would miss her opportunity to see Sandy. Sandy would leave on the train that waited at the summit of the hill and she would never see her again. She could hear the shrill whistle signaling the final boarding of the train. Despite the searing pain in her legs Lisa applied even more speed.
In the back of her mind, a small part of herself that was fully aware of what was happening tried to tell her that none of this was real. She wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t was a better way to look at it, hear herself. From behind the mental bubble protecting her mind from horror, the bubble she had unconsciously constructed for herself in the mountains of Afghanistan, she was muted.
The moans of the rising water pounded in her ears and muffled the sounds of the fetid jungle. The smells of rotted meats and of wet vegetation saturated her nostrils, and were so strong she was forced to fight back against the gorge that welled up within her at every breath. Above her the canopy of the jungle created tunnels and corridors that arched in cyclopean vaults. They hurt the brain if they were contemplated for too long. Sign posts that looked too much like the state signs up and down the length of Michigan’s highways were spaced every hundred or so feet. Instead of announcing distances to the next town and warning drivers and passengers to “Buckle Up, it’s the Law”, these signs were covered with a flowing runic script that felt greasy and alien. Yet Lisa was sure she should be able to read these signs, that her ability to read them was in fact very important.
As she was passing a giant tree that she was sure was a Californian Redwood, a tree with no business on a tropical island, she saw a woman standing in the middle of the path. She was short, barely five feet tall, and was beautiful in an exotic way Lisa couldn’t put her finger on. She had long jet black hair pulled into a plaited braid down the middle of her back. In lovely contrast she had skin almost as white as milk fresh from the cow. She wore what looked like a cross between a toga and sari of bright silver cloth.
“Why are you running?” she asked in a beautiful musical language as Lisa came to a halt. Lisa knew that the language wasn’t even a kissing cousin of English but she could still understand her.
Lisa looked back at the water that was still rising up the side of the hill, even though she’d come to a complete halt. Then she turned to the woman, she was shocked to see that her eyes were so dark they seemed violet. “I have to get to the top before the water does, my sister is waiting there for me and I am already late.” It felt true to Lisa, the part of her that was in control and the small part that was inside her protective bubble.
The woman looked sad when she heard these words, and as she did the light that had been so constant in the sky darkened noticeably. “Daughter of my heart, you must be brave. The worst I fear still lies before you.” As she spoke the strange woman seemed to become more and more insubstantial, Lisa thought she could see the trees through her.
“Who are you?” Lisa asked. Now she knew she was sleeping but the knowledge seemed to have little if any effect. The light continued to wane.
The woman did not seem to hear her instead she continued, “He is coming for you, you must move faster and reach the crossing before he does or all is lost. You must return to the beginning and find your sister or all will be lost and the Dead will rule the earth.” She was now only a faint shadow in the murk.
“PLEASE” Lisa screamed, “I don’t know what to do!”
“You will know.” The ghostly woman whispered and then she disappeared.
Hands grasped Lisa from behind by the hair and shoulders dragging her to the ground. She kicked and screamed as their smell gripped her and hundreds of fingers pawed at her. Then the teeth began to sink into her flesh, she felt the skin ripped her face and shoulders, from her legs and breasts.
And she screamed.
2
Outside of Hession, Michigan
October 23, 2012 AD (Day Six)
12:00pm (Noon) EST
“NO!” Lisa screamed springing to wakefulness. It took her several seconds to realize she was stretched out on the cot in the back of the modified City of Ann Arbor bus serving as her headquarters during the trek north. Sweat streamed down her face despite the near bitter cold, the buses’ heaters were geriatric at best, and her breathing was rapid.
Sam Sims hurried from the front of the bus at the sound of her screams. The former Police Captain had taken to the role of her primary advisor and right hand like a fish to water. Lisa though he was glad he was no longer expected to be the person in charge. He was holding a bottle of water in one hand and his service pistol slapped his hip as he trotted down the tight aisle created by all of the supplies stacked in the bus. The University survivors were sticking to the back roads as they headed north. Taking every opportunity to scavenge for supplies in the little burgs and one stoplight towns that they entered. They’d seen very few people that weren’t already Dead and even fewer wanted to join them even though they kept making the offer.
“You alright boss?” Sam asked as he kneeled beside her and offered her the bottle of water.
She took the water, cracked the cap, and downed half of the tepid liquid in one long pull. She vaguely wondered how the hell it could be so cold and the water was still warm. She gave that train of thought up immediately realizing that fixating on it would probably drive her mad. She finished the water and handed the bottle back to Sam, they weren’t wasting anything if they could help it, when they had the chance the bottle would be refilled with heat sterilized water.
“It was just a bad dream,” she said sitting up and stretching, several joints popped and she took a second to enjoy the feeling before standing up.
“You seem to be having a lot of bad dreams boss,” He said.
“Everybody is having bad dreams,” she replied. That was true. They all had been having bad dreams. The little Hanover kid had screaming n
ight terrors every time he closed his eyes.
“Not like you Doc, your dreams seem more intense somehow.” His concern was unmasked in the intimacy of the bus.
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She’d been dreaming about her sister in one form or another every time she went to sleep since this all had started. Before this, she dreamed about that night in the “Stan” more than anything else. She hadn’t dreamed about that once since the dead rose
“I don’t know Sam, with everything that is happening I’m not sure if my dreams mean anything or not.” She was uncomfortable talking about what her Grandfather had always referred to as “Handwavium”, meaning anything that had a supernatural smell to it.
“I put stock in the power of dreams,” he said without embarrassment. “One night when I was a rookie I dreamed that I was going to be involved in a shootout, I thought nothing of it. When I was on my next patrol, we had a domestic call near the University. When we got there this guy who’d killed his lover opened fire on us.” He looked at her and then continued, “I know most people would call it coincidence, but as far as I’m concerned I dreamed what was going to happen. So tell me Boss did you dream anything important?”
“I’m not sure,” she said and then her voice slipped into a whisper, “I think we are being followed Sam. We need to get across the bridge as fast as we can.”
Sam didn’t say anything. She was reminded again how lucky they all were to have him with them. He took the radio off his belt and spoke into it, “This is Sims, we need to find a place to stop safely and have a meeting. Anyone have an idea?”
Pat Rowland was the first to respond, “We are coming up on the Village of Hession. We’ve been picking up coded chatter from the area. If they are organized, we might be able to stop there and maybe work on the equipment and barter for supplies. We can always use more ammo.” Pat was a no nonsense man and his thoughts were straight to the point.
“What do you think Doc?” Sam asked.
“I’ve been through Hession several times, it’s nice.” She thought for a minute about stops in the quaint farming community when she was child traveling north with her Pa and then the decision firmed in her mind, “Let’s chance it.” She said.
Sam nodded, “All vehicles we are making for Hession. I want the scouts out in front checking things out ASAP.” The scouts were people who’d volunteered to ride a collection of motorcycles out in front of the convoy to reconnoiter places before the main group entered. It was a dangerous job, but the information that had been gleaned was invaluable.
“You better watch out bad guys, the Wolverines are coming!” The bus driver and the commander of the Scouts, Rich Paulson called out. Lisa grimaced as she did every time somebody said something like that. It was something that occurred more and more as they traveled. Rich and the young men and women who made up the bulk of the Scouts had all been students at the University before the rising of the Dead. They’d taken to referring to the members of the convoy as “The Wolverines”. Intellectually Lisa knew that the name was helping the people become a cohesive group as opposed to a collection of refugees. Sometimes she thought Rich took it a little too seriously.
But he was right, the Wolverines were coming to Hession, and the bad guys had better beware.
3
South of “The Compound”, Hession, Michigan
October 23, 2012 AD (Day Six)
12:45pm EST
Ken Michener sat in the highest crook of the tallest apple tree south of “The Compound”. He had a high power set of binoculars in his hands. They were the same ones that his brother brought home from Iraq for him when he’d been a little kid. Jerry had never returned from his next deployment. The binoculars were all that Ken had left to remember him by.
Now 16, Ken had been planning on enlisting in the Marine Corps as soon as he had finished High School whether his mother had wanted him to or not. He’d spent the years growing up on the farm in Hession doing the things that country kids in the United States had done since before there was a United States. Hunting, fishing, riding horses, and camping had made all of the people in such communities more able than their city counterparts to resist the rising horde of the Dead.
Ken had been on the crew of spotters since the first night of the rising. They were all level headed young men and women. Each and every one of them was a good shot with a deer rifle. They were positioned in six hour rotating shifts in all of the high places around The Compound, with rifles and radios to call in sightings of the Dead to the mobile teams that would go out and dispatch them.
As the swarms of refugees and genuine bandits from the cities became thicker, they’d been charged with acting as early warning pickets. There’d already been several bloody firefights with groups of “Highway Men”, but there had also been quite a few useful refugees taken in. Not the least of which included a doctor, two nurses, and a former Police Officer from Detroit. That man had scared them all shitless with stories of some crazy preacher who could control the Dead and was gathering an army. Nobody actually believed that story, but it’d been enough to give Ken nightmares. That aside, a lot of good and hard-working people had been taken in from off the road. They just needed to be careful about who they let into The Compound and who they turned away.
He saw the dust on the horizon before he heard the engines of the vehicles. Ken did a triple count. The convoy looked like something out of one of his Dad’s 80’s post-apocalyptic movies, before he called in what he saw.
“This is Michener out at the big tree, over.” He called into his radio. He figured he should sound as professional as possible when reporting in.
“Ken this Estelle, go ahead.” Estelle Landry was 63 and had taught chemistry at the High School before the Dead had risen. She’d been one of his favorite teachers, and as an Army nurse in Vietnam, she had the most Military experience in town. She was nominally in charge of The Compound since the Mayor of Hession killed himself, and she’d organized the spotters from the ranks of the Boy and Girl Scouts.
“Yeah Estelle, I have a large convoy of vehicles coming up the old south road. There are 36 vehicles. They all seem to be armored in one form or another.” He stopped for a second before continuing, he did not want to let her know how nervous he was. “There appear to be a lot of armed people and they are heading right for The Compound.”
“Alright Ken, you sit tight. There is no need for you to expose your position. If they are friendly, everything will be fine, if not we may need you to observe from behind.” She sounded calm. When Ken heard her speak during the big town meeting during the first day of the crisis, she had not sounded like Mrs. Landry the Chemistry teacher. She’d sounded hard and clipped, she’d inspired confidence but she’d also been a little scary. Now, she walked around with a .45 pistol strapped to her hip wherever she went.
“Yes ma’am.” He said and raised the binoculars again. Jesus these people looked tough, if they were here to fight his people might be in trouble.
4
The Gate to “The Compound”
1:15pm EST
As the lead vehicle pulled to a stop the tension in the Wolverines caravan could have been cut with a knife. Most of them were convinced that for every rifle they could see pointed in their direction, and there may have been an even dozen of those, there were 10 more that they could not see. Lisa didn’t think that there were that many concealed guns, but she knew that these people with their messy but strong fortifications were not playing around.
“Alright Sam, let’s do this thing.” She said opening the rear door of the bus, and stepping out onto the asphalt. The air was crisp and clean. The smell of smoke, while less powerful than it had been in Ann Arbor, still washed across her senses.
“Alright Doc, but let me go first.” He said joining her.
They were both armed with pistols and rifles that they kept pointed down as they walked toward the gate that blocked the road. It looked like a steampunk version of a medieval keep. When they got withi
n 100 feet of the gates, a voice called out to them over the loud speakers mounted on poles.
“That’s far enough folks, just keep those weapons pointed down, and do not advance as the gate opens. Any hostile action by yourselves or your compatriots will be met with deadly force.” The voice sounded firm and defiant, but not exactly hostile to Lisa’s ears. Or at least she hoped that it actually sounded that way and was not wishful thinking.
