by R. J. Spears
“What? That’s crazy talk.”
“You don’t know that. You had a vision of the church being attacked, and that came true.”
“Don’t throw that in my face. God isn’t sending me any visions. If He were sending visions, He’d be sending them to you or Greg. If I were Him, I’d know you guys are a much more suitable choice to be a conduit of important information. I seriously doubt whether I’m in His list of contacts for text messages or emails.”
“He works in mysterious ways.”
“Yeah, and His picking me would be so mysterious; it would be beyond comprehension.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” she said, giving me a knowing look.
I took that moment to look at my watch and noted it was time for me to meet the team to head north for a foraging mission.
Greg mustered the foraging team at 7:00 AM. He picked me to lead the team because he was staying behind to attend to re-enforcing our security measures at the back of the complex. Coming along were Brandon, Travis, and one of Travis’s guys, Devin, substituting for Aaron who was on crutches. Devin was a short, wiry guy who didn’t talk a lot but seemed to have an undercurrent of energy surging through him as he fidgeted nearly non-stop, tapping his feet or drumming his fingers on things.
Our primary goal was to find food and medicine. Also, we were to look for sources of fuel for the generators. If we found a supply of fuel, we’d make a separate trip with fuel drums at a later time. Life in the apocalypse was busy.
The temperature had surged to a balmy thirty-eight degrees, and the snow had melted off most of the roads. The sun shined brightly, bouncing off the snow and forcing us to don sunglasses to avoid being snow-blinded.
We took two SUVs for maximum storage space; plus, we had a trailer attached to the back of one of them. Brandon and I had the lead SUV with Travis and Devin trailing.
State Route 23 was a four-lane divided road heading north and south. We headed north. The road was in fairly good shape, but I kept our speed under forty-five because of the frequency of abandoned cars, either parked on the berm or on the road. Since this stretch of the highway didn’t run through any large population centers, there weren’t a great deal of cars, but more than I would have expected. At one point, I had to slow down to less than twenty miles per hour to navigate around two cars that had collided. One was a truck, and the other was a station wagon. The doors of both of the vehicles were open. Snow had filled the interiors, and I saw a desiccated corpse strapped behind the steering wheel of the station wagon. The corpse was missing both its arms and most of the flesh from its skull.
I was careful to avoid both vehicles and keep all four wheels on the road. I didn’t want to end up stuck.
Focused on navigation, I heard Brandon open the window on his side of the SUV. He pulled his weapon up, and that got my full attention. I looked over his shoulder and saw a zombie dangling off a fence about seventy-five feet off the highway. His legs were hopelessly tangled in the barbed wire at the top of the fence, leaving its hands on the ground, but his legs in the air.
Brandon tried valiantly to draw a bead on the zombie as I jockeyed around the two vehicles.
“Slow down a little,” he said.
“Give it rest, Brandon; it’s not going anywhere.”
“But….” he responded as he adjusted the rifle in the open window.
“Drop it, Brandon,” I said.
He turned and glared at me in a combination of indignation and anger but withdrew the gun. The zombie continued to flail helplessly against the fence.
We drove the next ten miles in silence while Brandon sulked in the passenger seat.
As we approached the exit for Wakefield, I spotted what looked like hundreds of dark blotches on the road. They extended off the road and dotted the snow in the fields on both sides. My caution reflex stirred, so I slapped on the emergency flashers, slowing the SUV down to twenty. Travis slowed down behind me as we started to roll over the blotches.
They were the carcasses of birds. And there weren’t hundreds. There were thousands: crows, sparrows, starlings, and just about any indigenous bird of Ohio. The carcasses didn’t look fresh, and many were picked clean of feather and flesh. More disturbing were the larger predators: hawks and falcons. They lay dead beside the corpses of the other birds.
“Did you feel that?” Brandon asked.
“What?”
“The shiver that goes up your spine. You know what old people always say when they say someone walks over his grave.”
“No,” I said, “sorry, I can’t say I do, but I’m definitely creeped out.”
Our walkie-talkie squawked to life, “Hey, Joel, what’s up with all these dead birds?” It was Travis. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Travis holding his walkie-talkie to his mouth. Even from this distance, I could see his expression seemed stricken. Devin looked the same but by a factor of ten.
I picked up our walkie-talkie and replied. “I have no idea.”
“Should we stop to check it out?” he asked.
“Maybe, but not yet. Let’s go up the road a bit farther.”
“Okay,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
I took us down to ten miles per hour as our wheels crunched over the increasing number of dead birds. Littering in among the bird corpses were the rotting carcasses of raccoons, opossums, and several dogs. We even saw two foxes and a coyote.
“It’s like we’re entering some sort of Death Valley,” Brandon said, his eyes wide as he inspected the landscape of bodies. “Only it’s cold as hell.”
Two grain-silos appeared in the distance on the west side of the road, but since we were heading north, I decided to stay the course. Off to our right, I noticed a one-story building. It looked as if it were a commercial building. In the parking lot in front, two cars were parked haphazardly as if the owners had gotten out of them in a hurry. Both looked empty.
“I’m going to pull off at this building on our right,” I said into the walkie-talkie and steered off the highway, bursting through a small snowdrift to get to the parking lot.
“I don’t like this,” Brandon said.
I didn’t either but kept my mouth shut.
I stopped twenty feet behind the empty cars but kept the transmission in drive with my foot on the brake. Like on the road, dead birds were scattered around the parking lot. The corpse of a partially desiccated dog lay beside one of the cars. It looked as if it had been there awhile.
What was more disturbing was that both vehicles were stained with dark brown smears.
We sat like that for a good thirty seconds, before Travis came over the walkie-talkie, causing me to jump. “What are we doing here, Joel?”
Chapter 11
As If It Couldn’t Get Any Worse
I put the car in park and replied, “Let’s get out and explore.” I shut the engine off, grabbed my rifle from the back seat, and got out. Brandon stayed in place in the SUV.
“You getting out?” I asked, looking back in through my open door.
“What do you think killed all these animals?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said, “but we’re not going to find out by staying in the car.”
“Okay,” he said, but his voice wasn’t entirely steady.
I heard two car doors close behind me and looked back to see Travis and Devin standing beside their SUV, weapons at the ready. Brandon got out and closed the door, still looking wary.
A chilling wind blew out of the west, working its way into my bones. The stillness of the landscape around the building made me think of a desolate tundra, harsh and unforgiving.
Travis came up beside me. “How do you want to handle this?”
I looked at the cars and then on to the building: Harold’s Feed and Seed. The place looked as still as a graveyard. Not a good phrase to use, but there it was.
“We’ll check the cars first then the building. Keep an eye on the building as you approach. We’ll separate into twos and go down
the outsides of both of the cars. That way if someone pops up inside and starts firing, we’ll have decent separation. Something in me says that’s not going to happen, but we have to act as if it could. Everyone good with this?”
I looked to each man, and each nodded, but each man’s face wore a look of concern. Devin fidgeted more the normal and had added a twitch to his face.
I started forward, my foot crunching down on the bones of a large crow, causing me to wince, but I continued forward. Brandon and I approached a gold Toyota Camry. The back passenger door was slightly ajar, a piece of cloth dangled down from the opening. It was almost black from being in the elements for so long. All the other doors were shut tightly.
I looked over to Travis and Devin as they moved towards a small domestic pickup. Travis edged to the back, brought his rifle up, and led with it as he looked into the bed of the truck. It must have been empty because he pulled back his rifle and continued down the side of the truck.
I moved up beside the back of the car and looked into the back seat through long smears of what could only be dried blood. I saw a plush teddy bear lying placidly on its side. Some coloring books and crayons were strewn across the seat. The cloth sticking out of the door turned out to be a decorative baby blanket with figures from a Disney movie dancing across it.
Travis and Devin had the door of the pickup truck open and peered inside. When I caught Travis’s attention, he shook his head to signal that the cab was empty.
I moved up the front of the car and saw a thermos and several bullets on the front seat, the glint of the sun catching the shiny casings.
“There’s some bullets on the front seat,” I said to Brandon, “no gun, though.”
He nodded and pulled on the door handle, and it opened. The air in the interior was stale. I looked over the dash and saw a partially torn map. The keys were dangling from the ignition. On an impulse, I clicked them to the first position. There was a faint click and the dashboard lights lit up dimly. After about five seconds, a warning alarm chimed, and a dashboard light told me that the car was low on gas. I checked the gauge; it signaled that the car was well below empty.
I pulled back out of the car and said, “It looks like they ran out of gas.”
“Where are they now?” Brandon asked.
“Inside, maybe. Or they could be long gone. These cars could have been here for months.”
I looked back at Travis and Devin and signaled that they wait while Brandon and I made our way to the front of the building.
The building was one of those cheaply constructed turnkey businesses with a molded metal exterior. There was a wooden deck tacked on the front with an abbreviated roof overhang that cast the front of the building in shadows. A rusty metal chair lay overturned beside the front door. A brightly colored Purina Foods sign hung sideways from the wall. It looked as if someone had tried to rip it down. The windows were cracked in several places, and it looked as if someone had made an effort to board up the windows from the inside.
Crusted snow and gravel crunched under our feet as we moved forward. I pushed through a small snowdrift and stepped onto the wooden deck in front of the building; the sound of my boot on the wood seemed too loud. Like the cars, the building was painted in long smears of blood. I stood in place for a moment and tried to peer through the boards on the windows, but all I could see was darkness.
There was really nothing else to do but try the door. So, I walked as quietly as possible across the deck and gently grabbed the doorknob. It was locked tight. I saw a nail protruding through the door that had been pounded through by someone from the inside. If we were entering through the door, it was going to take some effort.
I turned and waved Travis and Devin to come up. When Devin got to me, his eyes looked as big as dinner plates.
“You okay, Devin?” I asked.
He took a long pause and nodded.
“We need you calm and collected. If you can’t handle this, you’re better off staying with our vehicles.”
“No, man,” he said, “I’m good. This is just damn freaky.”
“What do you think’s up?” Travis asked.
“I figure the people in the cars ran out of gas or close to it,” I said. “They stopped here and either a swarm drove them inside, or they got inside, and a swarm came down on them. I’m guessing the last option because of the way they have this place boarded up.”
“But where are they?” Devin asked.
“Either, inside and very locked down and very, very quiet or gone. I’m guessing gone because there’s no sign of life from what I can see or hear. Our footprints are the only ones around the building, and this snow has been on the ground for a while.” There was an option three: the building was filled with the undead, but with the way Devin was freaking out, I thought it better not to say anything and let sleeping dogs lie.
“I think we need check if there’s another way in,” Brandon said.
“Agreed,” I said, “let’s break-up into teams again and work our way around the back on each side of the building.”
Each team started down the opposite side of the building. A large window was on the side we went down, but it was completely covered from the inside with pieces of plywood, obscuring any chance of us getting a look inside.
I spotted railroad tracks through the leafless trees about one hundred feet off the back of the building. They ran north/south, but nothing had been on them since the Outbreak. A metal shed sat just in front of the tree line. The doors were smashed in, and a riding lawnmower lay on its side just outside the doors.
We quickly made it to the back of the building and ended up converging with Travis and Devin. The back of the building had two entryways. One was a windowless heavy metal door, and the other was a ten feet wide rolling metal cargo door, presumably used for deliveries. Both were locked.
“What now?” Travis asked.
“I say we shoot the door,” Brandon said.
“It’s a bit off mission,” I replied.
“You’re the one that has us out here,” Brandon said, shrugging. “Maybe we’ll learn something about why all these birds died,” Brandon replied.
“There’s that,” I said, “what do you guys want to do?”
Devin’s answer looked to be “get the hell out of there and back home,” but to his credit, he just shrugged.
“There’s always a possibility we could find something inside we could use,” Travis said. “So that could keep us on mission.”
“Okay, shoot the door, but you need to know that any loud noise such as a gunshot or two could bring the dead down on us.”
Devin looked as if he were about to reconsider when Brandon brought his rifle up and put two shots next to the handle. The shots echoed liked cannon bursts in the cold winter air.
I shot Brandon a scowl, but he pointed to the door which now was cracked open.
I motioned for everyone to step back and take up shooting stances. I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open with a hard yank.
Nothing rushed out of the darkness, but we were assailed with the sickening smell of decaying meat, as palpable as a fist. After being in the clean air all day, I took a step back and covered my nose. Devin was too slow and got a face full. He moved away and started gagging. Breakfast came up ten seconds later.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No need to apologize,” I said, “that’s some stinky shit. We all did our share of puking back in the day.”
I looked to Brandon who was stoic, but Travis was looking a little green. The folks such as Travis and Devin, who had spent their time out in the country during the worst days of the Outbreak, weren’t used to being slapped in the face by the stench of the dead. No one really gets used to the smell. Each learns to bear up to it. It was easier for us who had been in the city and had faced the dead on a daily basis.
I gave them a couple minutes to work up the courage to go inside while we shuffled about in the snow. Lumps of dead birds were lying at the ed
ge of the building’s roof, and I saw two dead cats lying at the side of the storage shed.
“Ready?” I asked, surveying the group.
None of them really looked ready, but everyone nodded their heads. Travis, Devin, and I pulled scarfs up to cover our noses, but Brandon went in as is.
With exception of cracks of light making it in through the boards on the windows, the building was pitch dark. We popped on flashlights. The storage area was full of items including shelves of seeds for corn, wheat, and several other crops. Travis took a quick inventory and said we could use that when we planted in the spring. So there was an upside to checking the building. Other items were stacked in the storage area, too, such as fertilizer, animal feed, and some smaller farming implements. I noticed that several of the bags of feed were torn open with spillage covering the floor. I also noticed random irregular dried blobs of brownish and red goo on the floor. Stringy wet lines of the goo spread out from some of the clumps.
We moved through a door that led out of the storage area into the sales area, and the smell of death intensified exponentially. Devin gagged a couple of times but held himself together. Like the storage area, this area was very dark. The only light came through tiny cracks in the boards covering the windows. Shelves were spaced out at regular intervals and spanned from the back of the room up to the front. Large bags of feed and seed filled the back shelves. Like in the back, several bags of the feed had been opened, and it littered the floor. There were more blobs of the brownish-red goo, too.
Once again, we broke up into our two-man teams and headed up the opposite aisles. Brandon and I went up the far left aisle while Travis and Devin took the far right.
We were barely ten feet up the aisle when Travis shouted, “I’ve got a body. No, make that two.”
“I’m assuming they’re dead and not zombies,” I said.
“Yes, but they look weird.”
I stopped my progress up the aisle. “What do you mean, weird?”
“I can’t see any bite wounds.”
“It could be natural causes.”
