by Dirk Patton
Right now I didn’t have time to worry about them. Of the original pack there were still five of them sprinting at me and they were all inside twenty yards. Shooting one I shifted aim, noted that Rachel was now standing next to me with her rifle aimed and two more dropped as we fired at the same time. Then we ran out of time. The two that were still charging leapt, both landing in the back of the truck. One of them came down on the fifth wheel hitch and I clearly heard her leg break, even over the pounding rain. The other leapt again, directly at me, but I had already back pedaled and drawn my pistol. She hit the ground three feet in front of me and started to gather herself for another leap but was tackled to the ground by Dog.
Knowing he would finish her off I looked for the other female and saw Rachel struggling with her at the side of the truck. Rachel hadn’t moved back as quickly as I had, and even with a broken leg the female had managed to lunge forward and get a grip on Rachel’s rifle. The infected was trying to pull it out of the way as Rachel used it to fend her off. Stepping up next to Rachel I shot the female in the head with my pistol then spun around to check on Dog. He stood in the rain, looking drenched and unhappy, but the female he had tackled lay dead on the ground a few feet away with most of her throat missing.
Holstering the pistol, I brought the rifle up and scanned in the direction the two smart females had run. Nothing. Turning a full three sixty I still couldn’t find them, but there were plenty of buildings they could be hiding in or behind. Keeping the rifle up and continuing my scan I paused when I thought I detected movement at the edge of a burger place, but it was only trash blowing in the wind. Rachel moved a few feet away from me and also started scanning with her rifle, careful to lower the muzzle as she rotated through the direction I was standing. Dog moved between us, nose slightly raised.
We stood there watching for a couple of minutes, but neither of us spotted anything. Knowing we were burning time we didn’t have I told Rachel and Dog to keep watch, lowered my rifle and looked at the situation the truck was in. The median sloped slightly away from the pavement on each side, the center being maybe two feet lower than the edge of the road. This was done to help drain water. The grass the truck was sitting on was dense and rain slick. Slick even under the soles of my boots. The truck was perpendicular to the pavement with the rear tires sitting in the lowest part of the median.
I thought about trying to get it moving again, but quickly dismissed the impulse. All that would be accomplished would be to dig through the grass into the mud and then we’d really be stuck with no way to get it out other than a tow truck. I didn’t think AAA was going to answer their phone. Checking on Rachel, who was still scanning for threats, I started looking at the businesses up and down the highway. Through the limited visibility I saw what looked like a local hardware store about half a mile down the road. Hoping they’d have what I needed I closed up the cab of the truck, hit the lock button on the key and dropped it in my pocket.
Calling Rachel and Dog up onto the pavement I pointed out our destination and told Rachel to lead the way. I would normally take point, or be the one in front, but with two females running around in the quickly darkening evening I was more worried about our rear and flanks. Rachel was learning the skills she needed, but I knew I was the one to keep an eye on three directions at once as we moved. Setting off through the rain, Dog trailed Rachel and I stepped off behind him, maintaining about twenty feet of separation. We moved as fast as we could, but when you’re trying to watch every direction at once you don’t move too fast.
Ten minutes later we reached the business I’d seen. It was as I suspected, a local hardware store called Mick’s. The front of the business was all glass and either the power was off or the proprietor had turned off all the lights when he left. Either way, the interior was dark as a tomb. Having Rachel watch our backs I tried the door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Using the muzzle of my rifle I tapped hard on the glass a few times, hoping if there were any infected inside they would come to investigate so I could shoot them. Giving it a long minute with no infected showing up, I stepped back and fired half a dozen rounds from my suppressed rifle through the glass door.
This was safety glass and didn’t shatter and drop out of the doorframe. Instead six neat holes were punched through it, each surrounded by a spider web of cracks. The holes were in the same general area and I was able to kick the weakened glass out of the frame without making a lot of racket. Telling Rachel and Dog to stay put I stepped through the opening and had to click on the flashlight attached to my rifle to see. I walked the width of the front of the store, aiming down each aisle as I came to it just in case there were infected that hadn’t been attracted to my tapping. When all seemed clear I carefully moved to the back of the store.
At the very back a large section had been devoted to lumber. Heavy duty steel shelves held all different dimensions of boards and I quickly located what I was looking for. I pulled two 12 foot long 2x8 pine boards off a shelf and leaned them up against the stack on end so I could get a shoulder under them. A sudden banging from above me sent a fresh surge of adrenalin pumping through my system and I snapped the rifle up and scanned for the source of the noise. A set of windows in the wall a dozen feet above floor level looked over the store, probably the manager’s office, and as I shone the light through one of them I could see an infected male pressed against the glass and pounding with both fists. Lowering the rifle and ignoring him I squatted, got my shoulder under the two boards and stood up.
Taking a moment to get the balance of the load, I turned in place, swinging the boards around to head back to the front of the store. As I completed my turn I heard a crack then the sound of shattering glass behind me, followed a moment later by the heavy thud of a body impacting the painted concrete floor. Dropping the boards off my shoulder, I pivoted around, rifle coming up, and spotlighted the male I had seen in the office window. He was dead, having fallen on his head which was now bent at an angle so unnatural it could only mean broken neck. I let out a breath and lowered my rifle, turning back to pick up the lumber I had dropped, and was tackled to the floor.
10
The female that tackled me hadn’t screamed or done anything else to alert me to her presence. I didn’t know if she had come out of the office with the male, or had been skulking around the store waiting for an opportunity to attack. Regardless, she was obviously one of the smart ones and she had hit me hard in the side when she tackled me. Most of the wind had been knocked out of me and my head bounced off the hard floor when I went down, stars popping to life in the darkness before my eyes.
I felt hands grasping for my throat and I pushed everything else aside and started fighting. I got a grip on her hands, but she was strong and moved with a speed that was frightening. Every time I shifted my weight to try and gain some leverage she responded before I could take advantage of the new position. She was trying to reach my face and throat with her teeth while she struggled to break her arms free, and I was having trouble maintaining control. Shifting again I was prepared for her move and moved with her, succeeding in rolling her underneath me where I could use my greater body weight to my advantage.
Forcing her arms into a cross I locked in the leverage and used the weight of my upper body to press forward, rewarded with a snap as her right arm broke. A normal human would have reacted to the injury, but she kept fighting like she hadn’t even felt it. She squirmed under me, bucking and twisting and nearly succeeded in throwing me off as we scrambled on the floor. Finally getting around her broken arm, I got my forearm on her throat and leaned into it as hard as I could while trying to draw my knife.
She fought harder, trying to twist her head to get away from the pressure I was applying but she couldn’t overcome my strength. I couldn’t get a grip on my knife, needing my hand to fend off the slashing nails that were aimed at my eyes. We kept struggling and after close to a minute she started weakening from lack of air. I was compressing her throat so hard there was no way she was
breathing. From that point she went quickly. Less than another minute later she went from fighting to twitching as her brain died from lack of oxygen. Finally she lay still underneath me and I wasted no time in flipping the body over, drawing the knife and stabbing into her brain to make sure she stayed down. Not having time to celebrate my victory, I climbed back to my feet, grabbed up the boards and headed for the exit.
Rachel and Dog were still on watch and fell in on either side of me as I exited the front of the store and headed for our stuck vehicle. It was raining even harder and the sun was long gone, making it about as dark as could be. The only respite were the widely spaced street lights that ran down each side of the road, so the power was still on. The bad thing about this was the street lights were set so far apart that the light one shed didn’t meet up with the light from the next one, leaving dark areas between each pair of poles. The unlit areas appeared to be all the darker because of the light on either side of them.
“Watch the dark spots between the lights,” I said to Rachel as we walked.
“Got it.”
I walked with the two boards on my left shoulder, my pistol ready in my right hand. With the extra, ungainly weight I carried I wouldn’t be winning any pistol shooting competitions, but I knew I’d be able to hit anything within forty feet or so. We covered the distance to the truck slightly slower than we had made it to the store, but we made it without encountering any more infected. I stopped fifty feet from the truck, lowered the boards to the ground, raised my rifle and flicked the flashlight on. First I checked under the truck to make sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for us, then slowly worked my way forward and checked the bed. All clear.
Scooping up the boards I put one in place on each side, jamming an end under the front edge of each set of rear tires. As long as I could drive the truck up and onto the boards we’d have a solid path to the pavement, but if I gave it too much throttle the tires would just grab the boards and spit them out behind us without moving an inch. Ready to go, we all climbed into the cab and I started the engine and shifted into drive. I pressed on the accelerator like I had an egg under my foot, applying just enough pressure to change the engine note. We didn’t move and I didn’t hear any indication of the rear tires spinning, so I gave it just a fraction more throttle, then we were moving. Slowly at first as the tires came up off the grass and onto the lumber, then faster as we rolled up the hill. I pressed a little harder to get some speed and momentum so we didn’t bog down when we came off the front edge of the boards. We bumped off the end and the truck kept going until we were back on asphalt and heading deeper into town.
“Everything ok in the store? I heard some noise.” Rachel asked, drying her rain soaked hair with a towel she had taken from the house we’d stayed at earlier.
“I won’t be going back there. They have a lousy approach to customer service.” Rachel looked at me, grinned and shook her head then went back to blotting the water out of her hair. “Actually, I think one of the smart females I told you about was in there. She was absolutely silent until she attacked. I can’t say for sure. She may have been in an office with a male that broke through the window and let her out, but I think she was stalking me from the moment I entered the store.”
The grin on Rachel’s face disappeared. She well understood the impact of female infected having enough intelligence to actually hunt the survivors rather than just scream and attack. Up to now we’d been able to count on any infected attack being announced in advance by a scream, but it didn’t seem we had that luxury any longer. Survival had gotten a lot tougher.
I glanced at the dash and noted the time on the clock. We’d lost nearly an hour due to our little mishap. Four hours left and we still had to get into downtown Nashville. By nature I’m fairly optimistic, but was having a hard time thinking we were going to make the last train out before the herd showed up. I pressed harder with my foot and pushed our speed to nearly 80. Driving this fast in the dark and rain was risky, but I didn’t think it was as risky as not getting on that train. With no other way to cross the Mississippi we’d be stuck between three herds that were converging on the state.
“So what’s Plan B? What do we do if we can’t get to the train, or get there too late?”
“We do what the pioneers did. We use a boat to get across. Of course they had time to build rafts, time we won’t have, and I’m having a hard time imagining we’ll have much luck finding one. Anyone that can get their hands on one has probably already done so. Also, we cross on a boat and we’re on foot when we get to the western shore. We can always steal another car or truck, but…” I trailed off, not really sure where my train of thought was going.
We blasted through Gallatin without seeing any other people, infected or healthy, and quickly reached the highway the GPS voice told me to turn onto. State Highway 386 turned us to the southwest and would connect up with I-65 in a few miles. I kept our speed up, wipers on high. The rain was falling even harder, torrential best describes it, and the wipers did their best but couldn’t keep up with the volume of water that was falling out of the sky. The headlights barely pierced the gloom and I had to jam on the brakes and make some fancy maneuvers to avoid a pile up of cars that appeared when we crested a small rise. After much skidding on the wet pavement I got us back under control and decided to lower our speed a bit. Reaching I-65 we turned due south towards Nashville and started seeing an occasional car speeding away from the city in the north bound lanes.
“Where do you suppose they’re going?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know. This freeway goes up to Kentucky, and from what we’ve heard things aren’t any better up there.”
We watched as two more SUVs passed us going north. Both were heavily loaded with people and supplies. One of them was flashing his lights and honking his horn. I didn’t know if this was for the other SUV or if he was trying to warn me about something, but it definitely didn’t give me a warm fuzzy. I checked the time and our speed and turned the radio back on, scanning AM looking for any update Max might be broadcasting, but he was off the air.
As we continued south we started seeing more businesses along the interstate. After only about 15 minutes of driving we merged with I-24 that also fed into the city, and I had to slow more as we started regularly encountering wrecked or abandoned vehicles. With the darkness and rain I couldn’t see them sitting there until we were almost on top of them and wasn’t happy that I had to hold our speed under 40.
Some of the areas we passed through still had power. Most didn’t, but there were some that were brightly lit as we drove past. Every one we passed that had light also had large groups of infected stumbling around. I suspected the dark ones did too, we just couldn’t see them. The navigation screen showed the freeway we were on splitting a short distance ahead and the voice told me to get on I-24. Approaching the interchange where the road split I stepped on the brakes and came to a stop. Ahead were two lanes that swept up onto a ramp and was the direction the GPS wanted me to go, but the ramp was jammed with tangled wrecks. Looking at the screen it appeared that I-65 could get us where we were going, it just dipped farther south before getting us there.
All three of us jumped when a female slammed into my door, beating on the glass with bloody fists. A second later two more were pounding on Rachel’s window and I stepped on the throttle and started us moving forward again. We quickly left them behind, but as we slalomed our way through the wreckage on the pavement we started encountering more infected. We were running many of them down and crushing their bodies under the heavy tires. There was no power in this area and they would just suddenly appear out of the rain, right in front of us. Even if I had wanted to avoid them I couldn’t have.
“Is this a good idea? Going into the city, I mean.”
I kept my eyes glued to the road ahead and a tight grip on the steering wheel. “If I said I wasn’t having second thoughts I’d be lying, but the situation hasn’t changed. We need to try and get to that train.” R
achel didn’t say anything, just stared ahead as intently as I was. Dog might have had a different opinion, but he kept it to himself.
We drove like this for another mile, then the wrecks started thinning out and I was able to put on a little more speed. I still didn’t want to be going too fast and damage the truck by crashing into a large group of infected. Directly ahead of us there was a pale glow that strengthened as we approached. When we crested a rise I hit the brakes, bringing us to a complete stop. Less than a mile in front of us a defensive barricade had been set up, looking much like the wall I’d built in Murfreesboro, and it was lit up like Christmas morning. Pressed up against the base of the wall were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of infected. They were trying to get to the men on top of the barricade that blocked our route.
11
For the moment there weren’t any infected in our immediate vicinity. Shutting off the headlights so we didn’t draw attention, I sat and stared at the barricade. Rachel was mumbling something I couldn’t understand and I didn’t bother to ask her to repeat it. We could either turn around and try to find our way to the river and hope there would be a boat we could steal, or we could find a way around this and get to the train. The existence of the barricade encouraged me, gave me a little hope that if we could get around it we could make it to the train. Forward.
I messed with the navigation screen and found an exit a mile behind us that looked like our best way around. We were eight miles from the train station and while I fully expected to have to cover some of that on foot, I didn’t want to walk any farther than absolutely necessary. The more time we spent on foot, the greater the chances of a lethal encounter with a group of infected. Or survivors, I reminded myself. Shifting into reverse I backed up until the crest hid us from the barricade before turning the lights back on.
