“I think I’m ready to admit that I’m getting old,” I breathed, exhaling deeply as the adrenaline began to wear off and my body caught up. Was it too much to ask for a relaxing night in?
“I’m still twenty-five, which no one can disprove since I’m pretty sure all the records are destroyed by now. I guess there’s a silver lining after all.” Jessica laughed across the room and I couldn’t help but grin.
“Right, well, I don’t expect to find anything useful in this place, so I suggest we try to get some sleep and hit that subway with the sun high in the sky.”
“Aww, come on,” She faked sadness, holding up a pair of holed jeans, “You don’t think these will come in handy?” I didn’t dignify that with a response, opting to give her a look instead. She burst out laughing and set the jeans down, coming over to join me in the back dressing room. It was the furthest room from the front door, with a wall separating us from street view, so it would have to do.
I set my pack down on the other side of the dressing room, where my M4 rested, and Jessica did the same with her gear. Flicking the lighter closed and shoving it in my pocket, I sat against the wall and leaned my head back in the hood of my coat, the softness acting as a cushion against the hard wood. Jessica cuddled up next to me, her head laying on my chest. A nice warmth went through me and it wasn’t long before she fell asleep, her soft breathing countering the earlier stress. My mind still roamed for a while, listening to the sounds outside as the creatures roared in frustration, but it wasn’t long before I joined her in slumber.
Chapter 8
When I woke, Jessica’s head was still against my chest, her messy hair draped over her face. The lack of worry in her features made me smile, hoping I had something to do with that, but I reached up to rub her shoulder.
“Jessica, I think the sun is up,” I spoke softly, shaking her gently. Her eyes blinked open and she licked her lips, looking confused for a moment. Her eyes glanced around the dressing room before she sighed and sat up.
“I was hoping to wake up in a mansion, with breakfast in bed, but I guess this will do.” She rubbed her eyes and I pulled my pack closer.
“Well, it’s not the best ever and I don’t have a bed, but I can help with the breakfast part.” I dug a box of Pop Tarts out of my bag and handed her a package, which she took with a smile.
“This is pretty close,” She said through her fingers, covering the mouthful of food as she chewed. “Thanks.” We shared small talk over Pop Tarts and water, finishing up and leaving the trash in the corner. Toward the beginning of the outbreak, littering had bothered me, but it had since become second-nature. I pulled the sling of my rifle over my head and poked my head out of the dressing room, looking toward the door.
The storm had mostly passed, down to a light sleet, and the sun was up, but any sign of the night’s danger was gone. Remaining cautious, Jessica and I walked to the door and looked down both sides of the street, finding it empty.
“What do you think?” she asked quietly. I continued to watch, noting that footprints from the previous night would be covered by the storm. Still, it seemed like the streets were clear and I wanted to check out the hotel before hitting the subway.
“I want to take a look at whatever fell out of the vent last night, maybe get an idea of what we’re up against, and then I want to make sure we’re the last people that get ambushed in this city.” Jessica nodded in agreement, so I stepped into the snow and she followed me back to the hotel.
We had gotten pretty lost, apparently, because we weren’t as far from the Marriot as we thought, but either way we managed to find our way back. I circled around the exterior of the building, looking for signs that anything was waiting inside, but found nothing. Opening the lobby door once more, I aimed to the left while Mills checked the right.
“Clear,” she called out.
“Same here.” I made sure to look down the hallway before heading to the office. The door was open, but the room was vacant. “Alright, let’s find some answers.”
We walked down the hall to the right, passing vending machines that had been emptied long ago. Turning two corners, the ventilation shaft hung down in front of us, and I brought up my M4. I located the holes where my bullets went wide, and there were spots of what looked like congealed blood, but no body. Kneeling to look closer, I glanced over my shoulder at Jessica.
“The blood is almost black.” She stepped past me, studying the floor.
“Eric, look over here.” I stood and joined her, watching the stains in the carpet grow and smear as we walked. Eventually, we were at the back door that we had escaped through, where the blood trail ended. “That was a lot of blood.”
“Either I missed the brain and it was still mobile, but leaking a lot, or something carried the body out.” She shook her head, trying to make sense of the situation.
“I think it’s time we head to the subway and find out what’s down there.”
“Maybe they’re down one, so the odds are better for us?” Even I didn’t believe what I said, so Jessica didn’t offer optimism.
“Let’s just keep our eyes and ears open, hope for the best.” With that, we jogged out of the hotel and followed street signs until we reached an entrance to the subway station. Several cars were abandoned in the street, snow piled high on the frames, and frost lined the stairs descending into the station below.
I stood between the rails, staring into the darkness at the bottom of the steps, and listened. There were no sounds emanating from the pitch black, so I gestured for Jessica to follow me and entered the subway.
Chapter 9
I strained my ears for the slightest sound of movement as I walked, using the night vision to watch where I planted my feet. A few times, I had to readjust my placement at the last second to avoid stepping on a crumpled piece of paper or broken glass. I moved slowly, knowing Jessica was still behind me without actually looking at her. Talk about a trust exercise, right?
Over my shoulder, I could barely see the stairs, my body completely shrouded in darkness. Up ahead, I heard something. It was faint, like a lemon being squeezed, but with my ears attuned to the silence, it might as well have been a grenade going off. I waved forward, knowing Jessica was watching me, and moved in the direction of the sound.
Through the scope, I saw a divider with benches on either side and, beyond that, a short hall to the vending area. It was from that direction that another sound came, a wet, smacking sound. Again, I had heard that sound before and it was never pleasant, so my muscles tensed as I walked. With my eyes on the ground, I stepped past a short wall. That’s when I heard it: A soft breathing to my right, one of hunger.
It sounded close, so I hesitated to shift my scope, choosing to step backward instead. With my body behind the short wall, I raised my rifle and contorted my body to look over. I have few regrets in my life, but that’s definitely one of them.
The scene before me was one straight out of Dante’s Inferno, disturbing imagery that burned into my memory. Three ferals tore into their meal, their fingernails having grown to twisted lengths. Their teeth were broken and sharp, their diets changing how their bodies grew. Looking closer, I saw one clutching a human thigh in its grasp, but it looked strange.
Even through the gritty green of the scope, the flesh looked mangled, decayed, and I saw a hole in the skin. Being on the range for years, I had seen the results of a .223 bullet, and that was it. They had taken the body with them to devour their comrade, greedily ingesting pieces of diseased flesh. Nausea swirled in my stomach, especially as I heard the wet smack from my right.
Shifting my aim, I was looking directly into the face of a feral, its teeth gnashing on bone and marrow. I won’t go into more details, but take my word that it was fucking disgusting. Still, its eyes were odd. I had seen dilated pupils, and I knew that the ferals’ eyes before were red, but this one’s eyes seemed…nonexistent. It was like the effects of zombified flesh were worsening, causing them to go blind among other things.
That would make sense of why they only came out at night. The sunlight was too bright for them to handle.
With four ferals in front of us, I edged off of the wall and stepped back until I was ten feet back from the opening. I made sure Mills knew my plan, patting her shoulder to bring her back with me, before going prone and preparing to fire. My crosshairs were centered on the closest feral, the gross one chewing on bone, and I reached out with my off-hand to pat Jessica’s back.
One…two…three. I quickly shifted my hand back to stabilize my shots as we opened fire, putting a dozen rounds on target before waiting to see what was left standing. One of the ferals rose, barely holding itself up, but we quickly helped it find the ground again. My paranoia tingled and I thought about how many ferals I had seen or heard last night, feeling like the numbers didn’t add up.
As if to answer my thoughts, a distorted howl came from further down the subway and I rolled over to aim toward the parked train cars. Jessica did the same, and we watched as six more ferals charged out of hiding, running wildly at us with flailing limbs. We unloaded rounds, not stopping until all six lay dead, with the closest one less than ten feet away from my face.
Exhaling, I knew how lucky we had been, but we stood and waited another five minutes in the darkness. When nothing else attacked or made a sound, and we had made a circle with our rifles, I turned off the night vision again and brought out my lighter. Stepping up to the gross feral, I reached down and lifted its eyelid.
The pupil was barely there, a pinprick in a sea of white that shrunk even more when exposed to the light. Jessica stood over me, watching with a look on her face that mirrored my stomach.
“Things are getting really strange out here,” I muttered, looking to the other ferals. Checking them, their eyes were more of the same.
“I think maybe it’s time we find out what else has changed, Eric. They’re learning, changing, and this is the second patch of ferals we’ve found in four months.”
“You think Murray knows what’s going on?”
“I think, if we at least check in with him, we’ll have backup if something like last night happens again.” I took a deep breath and ran my hand through my hair, which had grown out almost to my shoulders again.
“Then I guess a road trip is in order.”
Chapter 10
We did a sweep of the buildings on our hike back to the SUV, but, much like most places Jessica and I had come across, anything worth taking was already gone. As the virus expanded and the situation worsened, the scarce supplies were taken by the increasing number of raiding parties. Needless to say, we reached our ride with what we had brought into the city, minus a breakfast.
Using the map, I plotted our route to Murray and rode shotgun long enough to catch the journal up to date. It was strange to only turn a few pages, having been at the end of the previous journal for so long. The scenery on the way to Mississippi was deceitfully beautiful, lush forestry and shimmering water that masked the horrors within. I say that because, even if nothing was actually there, it felt like eyes were always watching, always waiting…Maybe I had lost my mind along with my humanity a few months ago. It was hard to tell sometimes.
“Stop,” Jessica broke the silence, bringing me back to Earth.
“Stop what?” I tried to think if I had quoted anything in the last thirty minutes, coming up empty.
“You’ve got your thinking face on.”
“Isn’t thinking a good thing?”
“Not when you do it.”
“Fair enough.” Jessica looked like she was about to say something, her lip rising at the corner, when a loud pop shook the car, startling her and causing the SUV to swerve.
“Oh, come on!” I was becoming tired of no breaks. Was it really so much to ask for one uneventful day?
Mills pulled the car off to the shoulder, fighting the wheel as she did. We both looked around, our field of vision reduced to twenty feet by the trees I had just mentioned. There were two spares in the back of the vehicle, the most easily accessible of which was behind a latch in the trunk.
“I’ll change while you cover?” I offered. Jessica nodded, her eyes never leaving our surroundings. “On three, then. One…two…three.” We both popped our doors open and stepped out, scanning the trees with our rifles as we moved to the back.
The latch was inside on the right, so I pulled it out with the jack and lug wrench. Trusting Jessica to watch my six, I went to work. In my head, as I pulled off the blown tire, I ran through a dozen scenarios in my head, ranging from a frontal assault by infected to being surrounded by raiders. Still, as I tightened the final bolt, nothing attacked.
Suspicious, I shut the trunk and told Jessica there was something I wanted to check. Walking back the way we had driven my eyes spotted something in the road.
Laid out across the pavement was a makeshift spike strip. Kneeling to examine the handiwork, I had a troubling thought. The trap was tree bark lined with sap, with sharp rocks and broken glass scattered along the length, but the trap itself wasn’t the problem.
Whoever had made this intended to set up an ambush. If they were raiders, where were they? We weren’t too far from the city, so it was plausible that the ferals were responsible, especially since they retained their intelligence, but if they weren’t…
Troubling indeed.
“Find anything?” Jessica called out behind me. I stood and walked briskly back to the car.
“We need to go.” Without question, she got in and started driving. Once on the road, I explained what I found and her jaw clenched.
“I hate to say it, because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it, but we got lucky.”
Neither of us spoke as that settled in, knowing that, no matter how skilled we were, a proper ambush with any real numbers would spell our death, or worse. It was a humbling thought, if not a terrifying one.
We drove like that for a while, only talking to give directions, before calming down enough to trade small talk. After another hour, I offered to take the wheel while she read the map.
“Based on the sign back there, we should be coming up to the outpost any time now…” She swallowed the last word, her eyes widening as we came around a bend in the road to find the outpost in full view before us.
“Holy…shit,” I whispered, pulling to a stop as my heart sank.
Chapter 11
The outpost was under siege before us. Flames engulfed the nearest section of defenses, a roaring wall of conflagration that caused me to sweat despite the frigid temperatures of the air. Gunfire could be heard throughout the area, seemingly coming from all directions. Right in the middle of the streets, though, funneling in through a gap in the gate, was the cause of the pandemonium: A tide of infected that stretched out of view, their collective moans almost loud enough to drown out the pounding of the adrenaline-spiked heartbeat in my ears.
“You ready?” I reached over and checked my M4, pulling back the charging handle, ejecting the magazine to manually see that it was refilled, even pulling on the sling to feel it jerk taut. Jessica already had her weapon in hand, prepared for bloodshed with that icy glaze in her eyes, though that could’ve just been the cold.
“Let’s go.” I drove around the outpost, going off-road to reach an area secluded from the swarming zombies, and put the SUV in park. In unison, Jessica and I stepped out, pulled on our packs, shut the doors, and got ready to do work.
I jogged to the nearest building, checking the corner before moving up to the street. A bullet ricocheted off the brick two feet from my head and I jerked back, looking for the source. Down the street, several infected were bearing down on a man armed with a .38 Special pistol. Knowing the shot had been panic fire, I brought up my rifle and fired, depressing the trigger six times to bring down four zombies. Jessica joined me and took out three more, leaving the man suddenly out of danger with a stunned expression on his face.
We ran toward him, hoping to get some answers, but were forced to stop
at the first intersection. More zombies were joining the party, and I saw the man running away beyond the horde. Mills and I opened fire, one slowly falling back while the other continued to suppress. After we had both reloaded, we realized there were a lot more of them than we had bullets.
“Where the hell is Murray?” Jessica panted as we kept a quick pace, running past streets with blazing fires and hordes of infected. The last time we had been to the outpost, Murray had just opened a functioning hospital. Looking at all of the destruction, though, he would shift focus to rebuilding for the foreseeable future if we were able to retake the outpost from the infected.
“Let’s check the hospital first, try and link up with his military. Maybe we can establish a defensive line.” Working our way through the city, turning each time we encountered a wave of undead, we found the right street. An explosion went off to my left, and I turned to see a fireball of various limbs and viscera hurling through the air.
At least fifty zombies were pushing their way closer to the hospital doors, but their progress was slow as I heard gunfire over their collective moans. I patted Jessica on the arm and led the way down the street. Nearing the edge of the horde, I hooked a left and crashed through the door of a two-story building.
I sprinted through rooms, up a flight of stairs, and located a window facing the street. Shoving it open, Jessica angled herself to fire at the street, already letting off five shots before my sights rested over their first target. For what felt like the next ten minutes, but was probably only two, all I saw was red and black as blood and decayed brain matter filled the air. My lungs filled with gun smoke as I inhaled, each breath a taste of the violence below.
As we switched between targets and the crowd thinned out, I was able to see a line of soldiers at the front of the hospital, a small front to repel borders. Above them, posted on the roof, were a few snipers, presumably taking out incoming zombies. The only negative about this was what it meant: The outpost borders had fallen.
A Broken World (Book 3): Fractured Memories Page 3
