The Red X_Complete Edition

by Robert P. Sullivan

  Chapter 16

  After that the only thing that I could think was that I had to keep on pushing with the plan I had in the beginning, go to my grandparent’s cabin. Although, I knew that it was going to be a lot harder without any supplies… And I was right.

  First, I moved away from the river at a spot where I could make sure I wasn’t going to be leaving a large trail behind. I was lucky to find a log that had fallen down into the river, and led out the side in the direction I wanted to go. I took off my shoes, and dried my feet with the parts of clothing that weren’t wet. I climbed out of the river bed up that log, and when I looked back at it, there was no sign that I had left the river.

  I felt a bit of peace in the thought that the ‘X’s were going to have a hard time finding me again. But then a sense of dread came over me when I realized I dropped the wrench I had at the top of the hill, when I started to sprint. Without that, I was defenseless, and not just from the ‘X’s, but from the zombies that were still wondering around those parts. There was a rather large branch sticking out of the tree that had fallen, and I thought that if I could break it then I could use it as some kind of club. But, as it turns out, not all trees are equal. It snapped right off the log and had a decent weight to it, but the faded and rotten wood made me feel uneasy. I was learning, finally, that being caught off guard was a bad thing. So I took the club. I swung it as hard as I could against the trunk of a nearby tree, and watched as it broke into two big pieces, a thousand splinters… which I swear all went directly into my eyes, and a puff of dust, just enough to choke on.

  When I stopped coughing and rubbing my eyes I was rather glad to know I wasn’t going to get a surprise thinking that I had a weapon that would hold up, when that was what happened after just one swing. It was relieving, but at the same time disappointing, because I still had to find something to protect myself. Of course it didn’t take much time to find another stick that could hold up to the impact, but I was still making progress.

  I started to make my way toward the mountains, this time being careful to avoid anything that looked like it could be trouble. Well, that was the plan, but things don’t always turn out that way.

  I was out there with nothing but a good stick for bashing a zombie’s brains in, and I was trying to climb a mountain. I was going to need something to carry water in, at the very least. So, I started to stake out some country houses, and make sure that there were no ‘X’s nearby before moving in. I made my way inside to find that it was almost a waste of time. There was little inside that the ‘X’s hadn’t cleared out. The food and water were gone, however, I was able to find a few water bottles in the cabinets, along with a backpack in one of the closets. It doesn’t seem like much now, but that makes all the difference when you don’t have anything at all. That was when I heard something at the front door.

  I recognized the shuffling and deep groans as I tried to peer around the corner to see the dark figure enter the house. I had left the front door open and it just followed me in. I stood there trying not to make a noise as the zombie’s eyes adjusted to the light. It was waiting there confused, trying to figure out where I had gone. There wasn’t going to be a good chance to rush it, not with it just standing there looking for me, and with zombies I had figured it was better not to fight them if you didn’t have to. That’s when it hit me, I remembered they were stupid and slow. All I had to do was outsmart them, and I wouldn’t have to fight them at all. I moved silently back into the room, and grabbed a handful of change off a dresser. I peaked back around the corner to see that it was starting to move in my direction.

  I took just one coin and tossed it down the hall so that it would hit something behind him. There was a loud pinging noise that rung through the house as the coin made contact with something metal, and the zombie turned to face the noise that was behind him. I took the chance to move quickly and quietly. All I had to do was make it outside, and I could just outpace him by walking fast. I crept up to just behind where he was standing. I was less than a foot away when the creature looked back to face me. I hadn’t quite gotten used to being sneaky yet, and when you are out there alone, the stillness makes no noise. Every sound you make carries. I am sure that what the zombie noticed was the sound of my breath… either that or the stench that still lingered on me from the cages.

  Well, it lurched around and tried to grab a hold of me, but I forced it back causing it to stumble. I took a firm grasp of the club that I had in my hand and gave it an upward swing busting its jaw. It looked down at me with that cold dead stare and I could tell that it was not going to yield. I held the club above my head and crashed it down on his head with a sickening thud and the pops and cracks of the breaking of bones. After that it fell to the floor lifeless. I looked at it lying there, only briefly until I was sure that it wasn’t going to move again, and then I moved on. It was then that I knew that I had a chance to make it on my own, even though I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I took that confidence with me as I left the house and looked up at the mountains before me. I was going to try, and maybe I would make it.

  I started my way up into the hills, trying to stay away from the roads, not only because it kept you away from more of the zombies, but I knew that the ‘X’s would more than likely make their way up there to try and find supplies at some point or another. It was tough, the mountains were unyielding, and steep. I climbed up those hills for days, just trying to go a few measly miles. Water was scarce, but I was able to find several small streams which branched off of the river that led from the lake near where I was heading. Food however was the real problem. The houses were mostly bare, but as I got farther and farther from Oak Noll the supplies inside were getting more abundant.

  It took me the better part of a month to finally get to the sleepy town of Bear Lake, and when I got there, I could see just how dilapidated the works of man could get with no one to maintain them. What was once a charming little mountain town had given way to the forest, and it was growing out of everything. Bushes and a few fallen trees littered the town, and the roads were covered with pine needles. I could only scarcely see the lines that divided the lanes between traffic under the cover that the streets had taken.

  I found it odd that there weren’t many zombies about. Most of them were dead in the streets with only a few left wandering. Which, I suppose made it easy to get around at least. I know the town didn’t have a large populous to begin with, but it was more deserted than I had expected.

  I made my way down the main street just looking for any signs of survivors, although, I think I was more captivated by just wondering down memory lane. Every store I walked past flooded me with memories of a better time. I remember getting ice cream at the deli with my family, and the smell of the bakery before the outbreak… It was like coming home, but home had changed.

  It was bleak and lonely. Each window I looked through only made it more obvious that I wasn’t going to find anyone, even though the town had taken far better to the disaster than Ashville had fared.

  Once I had collected myself, and come to terms with the fact that I was still alone up here, I decided it was time to try and settle in, and the best way to get to know the area was to find a map. I made my way to the old post office to try and find one, but when I came around the turn that led there I only found a charred pile of ash. The building was burned to the ground with nothing inside remaining. It had used to stand alone in a field right where I stood, so I scratched my head and moved on to the next place that might have what I was looking for. But, when I got to the town hall, I found more of the same, just a burnt pile of ashes. Unlike the post office, the town hall was surround on all sides with buildings, but not a one of them had even so much a singe mark on them, even though the town hall was just a pile of black dust.

  It was strange, like the fire had been controlled, but I figured I had seen stranger things in my time, end of the world and all that. I shook it off, and left knowing that I was going to have to do this
the hard way. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I figured finding the lay of the land wasn’t going to be too hard compared to everything else that I had went through. See, I knew the town pretty well, but the location of all the extra cabins nearby would require walking around through the forest a bit. But there were worse things that could happen than a bit of a nature walk.

  It made more sense at the time to go out and set up a home base rather than to find the other cabins. So I decided to make my way up to my grandparent’s cabin. It was a pretty long walk from the town of Bear Lake, but it was one of those things we always did in a car, once again you forget how big the world really is when you can drive everywhere. What was once a short five minute drive took me about an hour to walk. I turned off the main street and onto the dirt road that connected to the cabin, and by the time that I finally set my eyes on the old place, the sun was just setting. It was a sight for sore eyes.

  It was just a simple one story cabin made of old logs that looked like they were ancient, but still had a long bit of life left in them at the same time. The windows were dirty, but that wasn’t unusual for a place that was only used as a vacation home. It was small but homey, and normally I might have stopped to get a good look at the sun pouring through the trees and shining a warm glow on the house, but I couldn’t wait to just get a good night’s rest in a comfortable place.

  Of course nothing is as easy as it ever was before. I didn’t have a key to the front door with me, and I felt like an idiot for not grabbing the spare one we had back at the house. But I certainly wasn’t going back to get it. Now I knew that there was a spare key hidden around there somewhere but I never found it. Still I had to get in, and as begrudging as I was to have to do it. I broke the window next to the door.

  Once I was inside, I was expecting to be comforted by such a familiar place, but it was never like it was before. It was cold, and empty. There was no life about it, and even though there was water, power was off and that wasn’t about to change. I covered the window with an old dresser, and was still just happy to have a decent meal of canned goods, and to my surprise a hot shower. See, all of the gas appliances still worked due to the fact that it was all ran an a propane tank outside the house. My grandparents always kept it full because, if they didn’t the pipes would freeze in the winter and could burst. After I got out of the shower I took a look around for some of the spare clothes that were kept at the house, and I was pleased to find that there were than enough clothes that fit me decently. As for the clothes that I was wearing, I burned them in the fireplace. They were so nasty, especially after the whole ordeal with the kennel. I just knew that I would never want to wear them again, and even seeing them would only bring up bad memories, so I burned them to ash.

  I went to bed after that, and for the first time in months, I was able to sleep soundly. I had to barricade the door and window to the room of course, but it was nice to be able to just sleep without thinking that I was going to be eaten in the night.

  In the morning, I had set out with a different goal in mind. I was no longer just going to have to run to a place to save myself, I now had to fight to survive. It was hard for a stupid kid to try and do that. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was completely unprepared for living on my own. I knew that I was going to need food, and I also knew that I didn’t know anything about getting it. Now don’t take me wrong, I knew the basics, kill animals and farm plants, but there is a world of difference between knowing what food was and where it came from, and how to get it.

  It started out fine; I plowed some land out back of the cabin and found some seeds to plant in a local hardware shop, but right off the bat I realized that I planted in the wrong spot, as I had to carry water to the garden. That doesn’t sound like a huge problem, but when everything you do determines whether you live or die, little things start to add up. I tried so hard to learn to make it out there, but things just weren’t going my way. It was two steps forward, three steps back. Every plant I grew died, either because I didn’t water them right, or because some animal got to it before I could. Even when hunting I had little luck. I didn’t have any kind of firearm, but there were some fishing poles and an old slingshot in the cabin.

  Believe it or not, that sling shot and rod kept me fed off of squirrels and fish for about a month. Perhaps those were the only things that I was good at during that time, but it didn’t matter. Winter was going to come in a few months, and I wasn’t ready for that. When I realized that there was no way that I was going to be able to keep fishing once the lake froze over I knew that I was going to have to change what I was doing, but I didn’t know how.

  I kept trying, but as each day passed I had to become more reliant on the resources of the other nearby cabins, and that wasn’t going to last forever, eventually I would have to leave… and I had nowhere to go.

  Chapter 17

  “I started to run low on supplies from the nearby cabins, and had to make my way back toward town. It wasn’t a big deal, each house out there was empty, and most were easy enough to barricade for protection. That, and as time rolled on the zombies became less and less of a problem, seeing as most of them were dying off from starvation. I never saw the streets completely bare in those times though, there were always a few of them out and about in Bear Lake.

  It had become easy for me to move past them without being noticed, but it was still easier for me to just go around through the woods to get to the other cabins that surrounded the town, and it was because of that, I found something strange one day.

  I was making a trip between this old house that our friends used to own and some other little cabin that I had found but hadn’t touched as far as supplies went, when I came upon this clearing in the forest. It went down into this meadow that was pristine. It was getting near the evening, and I saw nothing in sight but a small wooden fence that crossed all the way across the meadow, and touched both ends of what I could see, until the forest overlapped it. There was a small pond that was filled by a stream that crossed through the area which I had to cross over to get to the fence, seeing as I was trying to go straight through to the other side.

  When I got to the fence, I hopped over and was startled by a sound I had not heard in a while.

  “Moo!” let out a cow that had jumped to its feet, almost as scared of me as I was of it. When I had realized that it was just a cow, I calmed down immediately.

  “Huh, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of you.” I said to it as I looked up in the meadow, to see that there were a good thirty or so cows along the tree line, tucked behind where the forest had covered when I was walking up. I just kind of stood there admiring them for a moment, when I saw an old cabin up behind them, just in the woods. The windows were boarded up, and more importantly, there was smoke coming out of the chimney. “Oh shit.” I said, remembering that everyone I met out here was likely to kill you… and I was right.

  A gunshot broke the silence from the cabin off in the distance, and whizzed right past my head into a post on the fence behind me, it spit out splinters that fell as I shoved my face in the grass to get out of sight. “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” I whispered to myself as a mantra while trying to crawl through the grass to the forest, but it was too far away for me to get there before the person shooting caught up to me.

  “Quit moving or the next one will be in your back.” said a woman in a rough voice. I started to look up at her, but was unable to before she put her boot between my shoulders and shoved my face in the ground. She stood there holding me down for a moment to look around. “Who’s with you?” she asked quietly but with a lot of rage in her voice.

  “N-nobody, I’m all-” I tried to respond, but she cut me off digging her heal into my spine.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit! How many of you are there?” she asked a bit more forcefully.

  “I’m all alone out here.” I managed to cough out.

  She paused for a moment, before saying “Is that so? Well maybe a bit mor
e pain will loosen those lips.”

  I started to say “Wait!” as she slammed the butt of her gun onto the fingers of my left hand. I screamed out in pain and rolled on my back when I felt the two little ones dislocate. Crying I spat out the words. “I really am alone.”

  She stood over me, taking in the situation as I winced in pain. It was about half a minute or so when she realized that she wasn’t looking at some kind of raider, but just a dumb kid with broken fingers and really bad luck. She lifted her foot and sighed in dismay “Well… Now what?” she asked herself, in an apathetic tone.

  I finally got a good look at her. She was an older woman, with grey in her hair, only slightly showing at the tips of what was otherwise brown. She was about fifty seven years old then, but she was still strong, the kind of person who worked for everything they had. Her clothes weren’t the kind of thing you see a lady wearing, they were work clothes, worn in, but still in good useable shape. She furrowed her brow as she look down at me, trying to decide what she was going to do, and bent down over me.

  “Look,” I said. ”I’m all alone out here, just let me go and- AHHHH!” I finished with a scream as she took my hand and bent my fingers back into place.

  “There ain’t a doctor out here, so as much as that hurt, it was the only way.” She tried to help me to my feet, but I was still rolling in pain. “Oh, quit crying and get up!” she went on, this time dragging me to my feet. “What’s your name boy?”