Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2)

by Durnin, S. P.

  “Really? You're going to take time to steal somebody's liquor?” Jake turned and Cho shoved the bottle into his pack. “Are you gonna raid their medicine cabinet too?”

  The blue-haired, young woman actually considered that for a moment, then shook her head. “Nah. We still have that bag of weed we found in Old Hall, and it probably wouldn't be worth the trouble to search. What would be here anyway? Some outdated Codeine? Maybe a bottle of Nyquil or some Vapo-rub? And we've had this discussion before, haven't we? It's not looting if there's no one to loot from. I'm salvaging a tasty bottle of yummy-yum that would go to waste here.”

  Looking skyward, Jake shook his head and swore he'd get even with the Gods for everything he'd been forced to put up with since the zombie apocalypse began. He didn't think anyone would blame him if he took up heavy drinking as a hobby at this point.

  “Let's just keep moving, okay?” Jake hurried to the front door and checked outside. “It'll be dawn soon, and I'd like to get as far from that horde back there as we can.”

  Thankfully, all the nearby zombies had been drawn off by the Charger's alarm to the opposite side of the house, and the street in front was empty. Quickly unlocking the deadbolt, O'Connor crept out on the large front porch and Kat closed the door behind them. There was no point in doing so. No one would be coming back to that home in the foreseeable future—it just made her feel better. Unlike Jake, who was concentrating on the street, she felt a twinge of sadness after noticing a blood-smeared, stuffed Snuffleupagus under the porch swing.

  They moved through the front yard, over the abandoned avenue, and into the opposite house, repeating their room clearing process after gaining entry. The interior of that dwelling had been privy to some violence, but whether that was when the dead rose or afterwards Kat was unable to tell. There were several decomposed, partially-eaten corpses in the family room and kitchen, one of which the blue-haired young woman was positive was a child under ten years of age. While it was sad, the sight didn't immediately have the same effect on her as it did upon Jake. He knelt on the filthy linoleum next to the body and slowly examined it.

  “Seven or eight” He looked back towards the front of the home. “Looks like gunshot wounds in the chest there. Can't tell if it was postmortem.”

  Cho stood beside him, calmly gripping her sword and glancing around the kitchen. “There's a lot of damage in here. Could've been caused by automatic weapons fire I guess.”

  Jake pulled his Tanto and carefully dug at the corpse's shoulder-blade.

  “Oh, God. Don't do that.” Kat gagged. “It's covered in yuck!”

  “Real mature. There's a round in the bone here. I want to see what type.” Jake continued prying at it until the bullet popped free, then picked it up gingerly with two fingers. “It's .223. Could've come from a number of weapons. Anything from a Bushmaster ACR to a belt-fed Shrike uses it.”

  “How do you know that?” Kat asked with some surprise.

  “You do remember George used to be my landlord, right?” Jake reminded her.

  “Oh, yeah. That would do it I guess.” She crouched down beside him. “So what does it tell you?”

  He tossed the bullet to the floor. “Nothing. These people could've been zombies, or they could've been survivors. There's really no way to tell. Not without a handy note that reads: You're next! or something.”

  Kat stood and folded her arms, unconsciously pushing her breasts together slightly. “Not funny.”

  Jake shrugged and rose to his feet, still focused on the child-corpse. “You know what's really sad? This happened, all over the world, even before the zombies appeared. It's just that nobody noticed unless it was plastered all over the 5:00 pm news. Human beings have been victimizing and murdering each other since the dawn of history, since before written language was invented if we want to be brutally honest about it. The only difference is that now, it's right in our faces. All day. Every day. Kind of make you wonder what people are going to be like after all of this. Will we improve, or just stagnate in the brutality of it all and let civilization go swirling. I wonder if there will be anyone left in a few years to even worry about things like that...”

  “Wow, that's some great pillow talk. I bet all the girls line up to listen to you wax all moralistic and stuff.” Cho nudged him gently with one arm. “Come on, we'll survive. As a species, I mean. Take our little group—”

  “Do I have to?” He asked her dryly.

  Kat smiled and motioned towards the back door. “Smart-ass. What I mean is, we're doing alright. Yeah, we've stepped right in it a few times, but we're all still here. Still alive. Members of our group haven't tried to kill each other, and we've been able to deal with most of the dangerous crap we've encountered so far.”

  Following her swaying hips, Jake considered that for a moment.

  “What about Mike and Nichole?” he asked.

  “Ppppft...” Kat flicked her fingers and checked the backyard. “They were never actually part of the group, per say. Just selfish users. And pervs besides. Dead weight. Good riddance to both of them, if you ask me. Don't give those two a second thought.”

  They trotted past a trampoline out back and, after checking the next yard, jumped the fence. Jake thought about Kat's words as they moved from house to house, avoiding the occasional stray ghoul, rummaging through the abandoned domiciles and moving ever southward. He wasn't so sure responsibility for what happened with the two addicts they'd expelled from their group, back when they'd been sheltering within Foster's Columbus safe-house, didn't fall squarely on his shoulders.

  It would take them a full day to circle around the town of Bainbridge at their current pace, carnivorous obstacles notwithstanding, and Jake would have plenty of time to ponder the subject.

  * * *

  Sara missed ice cream.

  That was something most people didn’t think about, pre-disaster. All the stuff they would miss if the world finally went to shit.

  She’d been on the road for a while after leaving her house outside Winthrop, roughly forty-five miles east/south-east of Minneapolis. Her home had been kind of secluded, but eventually the hungry dead fuckers had spread into her area as well. There had been far too many to even consider fighting, so she’d hefted her hiking pack and bugged out. Sara had kept to the woods and back roads, killing quite a few stray infected along the way with her SOG Fasthawk to avoid making any undue noise, and headed away from population centers.

  She thought about what she’d do for a double-scoop of Moose Tracks as she fished the bottle of Absolut out of the water. She’d camped that night next to a stream feeding into Huron Lake, south of Route 60, and was well east of Sioux Falls to avoid its large concentration of the dead. That being the case, she was certain none of the creatures were about. No prey in the area, no predators, ya know?

  When she’d raided an abandoned Stop-n-Go along the highway two nights back where she acquired a bag of Turkey Jerky, a four-pack of cheap, disposable lighters and—to her delight—an unopened bottle of top-shelf vodka from the manager’s office, all of it went into her pack. She’d left said bottle dunked in the stream all day to cool, after tying it to a large rock with some 550 paracord from her survival bracelet—it wouldn’t do to have good liquor float away, now would it?—and had prepped her camping spot for the night.

  Now, half-reclined on a large river rock as she watched the sunset, Sara sipped easily at her vodka, wishing absently for a good book to read, and thought about ice cream. She pouted briefly at the thought of never tasting that sweet, creamy, chocolaty goodness, since all of it was surely long sour and smelly by now –much like the rotten things walking through the cities. She went back to her vodka.

  That reminded her. She wanted to keep an eye out for an army-navy surplus store. Sara intended to find a gas mask, post haste. Partially to help her avoid infection in case any zombie goop got on her face—no apocalyptic facials for her, thank you very much—but mostly because the zombies really smelled of poo…

&nb
sp; -Chapter Three-

  Dawn came, valiantly attempting to burn of the healthy fog that had risen in the wee hours of the morning. They had almost cleared the city limits when Cho's “Kitty-sense” began tingling.

  She and Jake were huddled together behind a charred mobile home, now no more than some wreckage and the trailer on which the shelter had rested, when she felt the first tickle in her back-brain that something was off. O'Connor had been noticeably withdrawn since they'd found that house full of corpses, real ones, not the ones still walking about the landscaped, and Kat wished he'd talk to her. She'd been about to broach a conversation with him about something they both enjoyed, namely Anime, when she got the feeling they were no longer alone. Thoughts of Super Saiyans and the benefits of Veritech Fighters verses those of Gundam Armor were shunted aside as Kat went into assassin mode.

  She hadn't actually seen anything. The street they followed was as empty as a lawyer's soul, and even the number of scattered zombies had dwindled down to zero over the last hours. There was something amiss though.

  “What's up?” Jake mumbled, crouched close enough that she could feel the ambient heat radiating from his skin.

  Kat shook her head and held up one hand, silently asking for a moment. Jake trusted her instincts, so he pressed his back against the mobile home's seared frame and stayed silent. Looking around, Kat took in the immediate area carefully. It seemed a fire had begun inside one of the cookie-cutter homes to the west. Without a Fire Department to battle the initial blaze, thanks to an unscheduled apocalypse, the prevailing winds had fanned the flames into a conflagration that burned its way eastward for miles. Cho and O'Connor had moved stealthily through the charred wreckage of long-immolated neighborhoods for nearly forty-five minutes now without seeing any movement whatsoever. Maybe the quiet desolation was simply making her jumpy? No, that wasn't it. There was something. Something out of place.

  Kat extended her awareness and went still. Most people couldn't do so. It took years of training to turn off your intellect, quiet your personality, shut down and just experience. The trick was to not only use your eyes or ears, but all five senses at once without contaminating your surroundings with random thoughts or assumptions. Kat had practiced daily for years before developing the ability, and it gave her a finely tuned “street sense” as some called it. Basically, the ability to precisely locate everything in the nearby environment and its location, even other people seeking to hide from her. That was the reason, to Laurel's dismay, she could never surprise her roommate with prearranged birthday celebrations. Kat always knew in advance when and where everyone would leap from, even in public places, joyfully yelling 'Surprise!' It was an extremely annoying trait that served her well over the years, and she used it to her absolute advantage now.

  Her mind quieted. While Jake and the mobile home didn't fade out of her awareness, the rest of the world came slowly into focus. She could feel ash ground into the soil under her feet. The breeze ruffled her short hair sending blue strands back away from her face. She felt warmth streaming from Jake's skin nearby, like radiation from a rogue sun. Kat heard something small and furry scamper from its hiding place perhaps forty yards away. Lifting her head slightly, her nostrils detected the faint but noticeable smell of worn clothing left unwashed on a body for far too long. Licking her lips, Cho picked up the distinctive taste gunpowder. That could've been residue left on her or Jake's clothing from their firefight with a group of raiders prior, but she didn't think so. Their 'flavor', if that was the correct phrase, would have been much clearer, sharper. This tasted old and stale, almost flat. Letting her eyes relax and lose focus, Cho allowed them to drift about seeking anomalies.

  Yep. She began to see subtle hints that someone was about, or had been not long before. There, slight bending of the grass leading around the far edge of a nearby trailer husk. There, dust had been kicked up by a boot or shoe, coating the front of a burned doorstep. Below that, partially obscured in the small, overgrown front yard, half a print, likely from the same boot. Over there, a dry, sticky smear where someone had attempted to open a can of pears without a can opener. The dented, leaking can itself lay not far beyond. Finally, nearly sixty yards distant, a seared, old Ford conversion van sat half-melted to the road. What tripped the danger sensor hardwired in Kat's brain, which sat just behind the 'bullshit-o-meter' and above the 'chocolate detector', was the noticeable lack of dust on the van's sliding side door. Everything else in the fire's path displayed a thin layer of gritty ash, due to the intense heat crisping the surface. The van's door had what Kat could make out from that distance, hand-prints in the grime.

  Pulling her awareness back in, she motioned for Jake to scoot closer. Once he could see around the corner, Kat pointed at the van. She made sure to keep her movements slow and below the line of sight for anyone who might be watching from the junked vehicle. “I'm thinking that would make a great hidey-hole to surprise unsuspecting survivors. Or occasional zombies, for that matter. There's a reason all the creepers had them before the zombies started rising. All sorts of nasty possibilities.”

  “If you make a 'Want some candy, little girl?' joke, I am going to spank you,” Jake promised.

  “Never crossed my mind,” Cho said loftily. “What's your take on it?”

  Jake peered around the mobile home, using its overturned propane tank to keep hidden. “No cover to speak of along the road, lots of tight spots between what's left of the trailers, plenty of room for somebody to hide given half a chance and half a brain.”

  “Yeah. Makes me want to backtrack and brave running into zombies to find another way around.” Kat nodded and slid back around the corner. “What say we do just that?”

  Jake didn't answer, so she tried again.

  “Come on, stud. Time to make tracks.”

  That didn't elicit a response either.

  “Hey, I have an idea!” Kat switched tactics. “Let's head back to that Circle K we passed a few blocks ago, crack open a six-pack of Angry Orchard, lock ourselves in the cooler, get snookered—”

  Mmh.” Jake grunted, still focused on the view down the street.

  “I'll strip down and give you a lap-dance, wearing nothing but some whip cream in the shape of a bikini,” Kat went on.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “-Then we'll have the hottest, most insanely mind-blowing sex in all of human history-”

  “Right.” Jake nodded, considering their options.

  “Just before we fly our rainbow-farting unicorn into space and blow up the Death Star,” Kat finished with a straight face.

  “Sounds g… Wait, what?” Jake frowned. “Death Star?”

  Kat shook her head. “Out of all that, what actually registers in your brain is a Star Wars reference? Amai kami, Anata wa kono yona a hodesu!”

  “Huh? I don't speak Japanese, Kat.”

  “Sweet gods, you are such a dork!” she translated, stifling a giggle.

  Jake gave her a level gaze. “Are you finished?”

  “Maybe.” Cho grinned unrepentantly.

  “Let's double back to the next street.” By now, Jake was resigned to the fact that he was the Rodney-fucking-Dangerfield of the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

  Moving as quietly as he could, O'Connor followed Cho as she crept along the bottom of the easement on the other side of the road. Even though it hadn't rained in days, there was still a good amount of water running through the roadside ditch. Enough to bring Jake fond memories of a certain drainage ditch at a water treatment plant. He sighed mentally and counted his blessings.

  At least there's no sewage in this one, Jake thought dryly.

  Kat scurried from the ditch and into the sparse underbrush beneath charred trees at the side of the road and Jake followed. The pair trekked for ten full minutes through the blackened woods before turning east to circle the trailer park. During that time, Jake didn't see a single sign of life. No deer, no squirrels, not even a single bird. While the zombies didn't pay much attention to nonhuman forms
of life, the survivors had seen them devour the unlucky cat, dog, even cows if the group of infected were large and fast enough. While it was possible for them to deplete the indigenous species of a given area, the dead forest was different. As terrible as it was, that seemingly endless devastation caused by a naturally occurring phenomena was almost comforting in the face of extinction by zombies. It was an event they could understand, however unfortunate. There hadn't been an explanation as of yet of as to why the dead rose to consume the living, even from governmental sources, and it didn't seem likely one would be forthcoming any time in near future.

  Perhaps that explained Jake's desperate need to get his friends to the safety of the Rockies. Unlike most of his group, he'd long accepted the world as they'd known it had come to an end months ago and there was no way to resuscitate the once-mighty civilization. Whatever followed, if anything did, would be something new. Maybe this time, they'd figure out a way to create a system of government without boat-loads of self-serving, mealy-mouthed politicians.

  They'd just passed burned zone's border and moved through a small ravine onto a dirt path behind the town's high school, when O'Connor heard the distinctive sound of an engine. He and Kat shared a look, then ran for a nearby hill covered with young pine trees to the north. Upon reaching the evergreens, Jake doffed his pack, tossed it into the sloping evergreens, then he and Kat hurled themselves into the foliage after it.

  “Up the road in front of the school?” Kat lay on one hip, carefully attaching her Glock's suppressor, taking care not to cross-thread the slim can over the weapon's barrel.

  Jake readied his Hammer automatic. The massive handgun was George Foster’s own creation. Hammer stood for: a high impact, multi-caliber, repeater. ‘Hammer’ for short. The weapon fired .45 slugs or any 12 gauge ammo, and the upper barrel was adaptable to take a suppressor. You didn’t want to try to use any shot with it on though, or you’d get hit by some blow-back. It was only accurate at up to fifty yards, but Jake didn't want to attempt shooting farther than that without a rifle anyway. Vents along the pistol's slides directed the combustion force of the round up at a forty-five, so the barrel didn’t jump. It was double action too, so recoil was almost zero. Basically, if what you were shooting at bled, the Hammer could kill it.