by Jay Brenham
Sam saw the group of infected the same moment Matt did.
“Woods,” Matt whispered hoarsely and they stepped inside the tree line to wait for the group to pass. Each group was different: some of the infected bore bloody marks, signs of their membership in a larger group, but many had no marks at all. All of them had a similar look, as if savagery had been gained at the expense of intelligence.
The thought struck Sam as darkly amusing. They weren’t much different than himself, only instead of intelligence, he’d lost his softness, the luxury of compassion.
As night began to fall they were faced with two options: push on or stop. The advantage of pushing on was that the infected were only human. Their capacity for violence may have increased but Sam doubted they could see any better at night than he could. The disadvantage was that Sam and Matt had a lot more to lose by bumbling around in the dark than the marked did.
“I don’t know if we should risk breaking into a house right now,” Matt said in a low voice. “It’ll be loud and we can’t see well enough to know if there are any infected nearby.”
Sam held up the large towels he’d taken from the house. “Follow me,” he said, heading deeper into the woods.
He selected a tree with sturdy, thick branches and began climbing, going higher than was probably safe for someone his size. He stopped when he reached two close branches that extended horizontally from the trunk. With practiced ease, he wrapped the towel around the two branches multiple times, tucking the loose end inside.
Matt gazed upward, a dubious expression on his face. “What the hell?”
“A seat, see?” Sam hoisted himself up and leaned comfortably against the tree.
“That’s genius. How did you think of that?”
“I was a pool rat when I was little. My mom used the place like a baby sitter all summer long. She’d drop me off for swim practice early in the morning and I’d stay there with my friends until the pool closed every night. We would climb up into one tree and everyone would find a couple branches and wrap their towels like this so it made a seat. We called them hammocks.”
Matt snorted and began to climb up after Sam. “Well, if it means I don’t have to sleep with my face in the dirt, I’m glad you were unsupervised.”
Sam grinned. “Thank you, Pleasant View Swim Club.”
They were deep enough in the woods that they didn’t have to fear being seen from the road, but they were too tired to talk. Sam drained half of his water bottle, saving some for morning despite his thirst. The liquid filled his stomach but hunger clawed its way back a few minutes later. In the chaos he had left the beef jerky he took from the marina in the master bedroom of the house. He wished the house they had burned down had been stocked with food. They could have gorged themselves while they kept watch. It must have been a vacation rental property because there had been nothing in the cupboards.
Matt handed Sam a bag of Jerky. He hadn’t left his behind.
“I already ate half. The rest of the bag is yours. Tomorrow let’s try to get to water, find a boat, and get back to Raft City,” Matt said.
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
Sam ate the jerky and put the bag in his pocket, then laid his head back against the rough bark and drifted off to sleep.
#
The night was anything but restful. The mosquitoes were relentless and, despite being far from the road, the infected still managed to find their way into the woods.
This unnerved Sam far more than if they’d stuck to traditional paths of human movement like he’d assumed they did. He’d thought the woods would be safer, but now that they were hidden from the road he realized they might have been walking into danger.
It was more difficult to move quietly through the woods, but that could work in their advantage—the infected were louder too. At one point he counted a group of forty walking under their tree.
The noise the infected groups made only attracted more infected, leading them to merge into larger and larger groups. Sam wondered how often a merger of two groups resulted in an alpha male showdown like what had happened between Leonidas and Franklin. Judging from the sounds he heard in the woods, conflict among the infected wasn’t exactly uncommon.
At daylight, a poorly-rested Sam and Matt quietly made their way down the tree and through the woods, before continuing down the road. He wasn’t sure of their exact location—somewhere near the city of Hampton—but he suspected moving south and east would bring them to the water again.
Despite these looming decisions all that either of them could think of was food and water. The going was slow; they barely covered any distance because of the steady stream of infected wandering toward the smoldering house.
Sam found it strange that they would head toward fire. Nobody told the groups there would be uninfected people at the house fire; the marked instinctively moved towards a stimulus, drawn to wherever it looked like there would be conflict.
Because the road west was so slow and the groups of infected seemed more numerous than the day before, they made the decision to walk south. If they had not walked too far yesterday, the land would meet water soon and they would encounter fewer infected.
They took a road south, with Sam still nursing the faint hope of finding a boat to carry him north to his family. As the day pressed on, he’d become painfully aware of his hunger and thirst. He was growing more lethargic with each passing minute. In order to stave off the effects of dehydration, he finished the rest of his water. Eventually they spotted a large waterfront house and, just beyond the water’s edge, a boat.
Matt had turned around, scanning the woods behind them when Sam tapped him twice on the back.
“I see water straight ahead, and a boat.” Sam tried to keep his voice at a reasonable volume but his enthusiasm shown through in his tone.
Matt turned and grinned. “Oh hell yes.”
The house was an old southern style construction with a large wraparound porch. Wicker furniture with floral cushions had been placed around the porch and lawn as if waiting for someone to sit and sip mint juleps.
Despite the pristine condition of the porch, the rest of the house looked much worse. Even from a distance, Sam could see the shattered windows on the first floor. Blood was splattered on the siding and pooled around some of the window frames. Sam and Matt made their way closer to the house, watching the windows and surrounding area for movement that would give away the location of infected.
They inched closer to the house and saw a woman’s body draped over one of the broken windows. Bloody hand prints marked her back and torso, marks which made Sam wonder if she belonged to the original group of infected they’d encountered at the marina.
Tacky blood oozed down the siding from her abdomen and settled on the porch. Sam peered around and saw that a gunshot wound the size of a tea saucer had taken a large chunk from the woman’s scalp. Brain matter and pieces of skull were scattered in gelatinous lumps across the floor.
A long dock stretched into a sheltered inlet. A hoist cradled a large motor boat.
“We need the keys to that boat,” Sam said, pitching his voice low. “This is a rural area. Maybe they left them in the ignition or in the glove box.”
“If we walk out onto the dock any infected in the surrounding houses will spot us. If the keys aren’t there, we’ll be trapped. Let’s check the house for keys first. If we don’t find them in a cupboard, at least we might find something to eat or drink. And we can always try the boat next.”
Sam was silent for a moment. He questioned the odds of finding the keys in the huge house. Then again, he’d been able to find the keys to the pickup hanging inside the Peterson’s house in Norfolk. That felt like a decade ago. Would he be lucky enough to have it happen a second time?
“What are the chances we actually find a boat key in a house?” Sam asked, voicing his concerns aloud.
They’d retreated to the side of the road, hidden from view as best they could.
“
I dunno, but what’s the worst that happens? We go in, there are infected inside the house and we start a feeding frenzy? Or we go to the dock and start a feeding frenzy there. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
“Okay,” Sam sighed. “Let’s check it out.”
They approached the house carefully, scanning the area around them. Sam felt the doorknob. Locked. He reached carefully through the broken glass panels on the side of the door and unlocked the deadbolt.
He shoved the door open and stepped to the right so Matt could turn left. An opulent staircase rose out of the foyer like it was growing from the floor. The varnished floor was littered with blood and expensive antiques. One of the smashed vases was probably worth more than Sam’s car.
Matt quietly shut the door and locked the deadbolt. Sam thought about protesting—a locked door would slow them down if they needed a quick escape—but decided against it. This way they wouldn’t be vulnerable to attack from behind. It was impossible to know which would be better, a quick escape or a secure house.
Sam stepped cautiously forward, moving so he could see around the corner before he entered the kitchen. There was a central island with granite counters and space for nearly a dozen stools. Whoever had owned this house must have loved entertaining.
The kitchen was organized and free from the blood and destruction that marked the entryway. On the countertop sat a large knife block inscribed with Japanese characters. Honyaki knives. Sam recognized them, not from his own experience, but from a cook he’d known in the Navy. The guy was always talking about starting a fancy restaurant, complete with the best equipment money could buy.
The house had an open floor plan with arched ceilings. The kitchen blended seamlessly with the dining room and a family room, which had large overstuffed couches and chairs from which to view the water. Carved decoys lined the shelves over the door, completing the Southern Living look. Finding the keys to the boat was not going to be easy in a house this size.
The crunch of broken glass was clear in the silence.
Sam and Matt swiveled in unison, their guns pointed in the direction of the sound. They inched forward, trying not to give away their location.
Matt took point, turning the corner in the opposite direction they’d come. Over Matt’s shoulder, Sam could see two fully dressed men climb carefully into the house through an open window. Matt held up his hand for Sam to stop.
“Not infected,” he mouthed back to Sam, then made a stabbing motion with one hand. They were armed with knives.
Suddenly an arm reached from behind Sam and grabbed the barrel of his shogun, pulling it hard against his chest so he couldn’t turn around and aim. The arm was huge, but Sam barely had time to register that fact—or the fact that its owner must have a body to match——before a fist struck him in the side of the head, bouncing his face against one of the kitchen cabinets. Light bloomed in his vision, followed by pain as his attacker smashed his face into the doorjamb. The crunch of his nose against the wood was distinct and painful.
After the impact with the wall Sam had trouble keeping track of what Matt was doing but he did hear the deafening sound of a gunshot. Sam half turned, getting a glimpse of his attacker before he was struck again. The man was huge: a mountain with arms and legs. Sam could tell he was no match for the Mountain, at least not in a fair fight. Knowing that if he let go of the shotgun he’d be shot with his own weapon, he pushed off the door jam with his leg, propelling himself and the Mountain backward into the counter.
The Mountain fell, but so did Sam, striking the back of his head on one of the cherry cabinets. Despite the hit to his head, Sam managed to clutch the shotgun. The Mountain recovered quicker, picking him up and flipping him around so he could pummel Sam face to face.
The counter and the knife block dug into Sam’s back. They were close enough that Sam could smell the man’s fetid breath on his cheek and see the dark hairs of his beard. The shotgun was between them. Its stock pressed over Sam’s front right pants pocket, preventing him from drawing his back-up weapon. Even if he’d been able to retrieve the revolver, however, he doubted he could draw it and fire before the Mountain pulled the shotgun out of his other hand.
The Mountain yanked hard at the shotgun and it took all of Sam’s strength to maintain his grip. The Mountain narrowed his eyes, readjusted and pulled a second time. The Mountain expected resistance, but instead Sam pushed toward the man, keeping his left hand on the barrel and groping for the knife block with his right.
The Mountain, caught off guard for a split second, fell backwards over the kitchen’s center island.
Sam didn’t hesitate; he didn’t warn the Mountain or ask him to stop struggling. He plunged the tip of the eight-inch Honyaki knife into the man’s Adam’s apple. The blade thrust in and out of the man’s throat as easily as if it was piercing a tender fillet. The Mountain tried to say something through his gurgling throat but Sam didn’t bother listening. He ripped the shotgun from the man’s grasp and let him fall to the floor.
Sam looked up. A short man lay on the kitchen floor, bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound in his stomach. It wasn’t Matt, thank God. A wooden baseball bat with a nail jutting out of one side lay a few feet away; Sam kicked it out of the man’s reach. Just beyond the gut shot man, Matt and a third, slenderer, man grappled on the floor. There were slip marks in the blood where Matt had lost his footing and fallen.
The slender man was on top of Matt, trying to force his blade into Matt’s throat just as Sam had done to the Mountain seconds before. Sam dropped his knife and slung the shotgun behind him, picking up the bat he’d kicked a moment before. Neither the slender man or Matt noticed Sam approaching. Sam gripped the bat and swung it into the side of the man’s head. The nail that had been driven through the bat embedded itself where Slender man’s jaw ended, just behind his earlobe.
Hesitation had become a convenience Sam did not have. He knew he could not allow this man the opportunity to hurt either of them. He acted quickly, hitting the man’s face until it was crushed into an unrecognizable mess. When Sam was finished, clumps of hair, blood, and brains splattered against the wall and floor in what looked like a perverted version of a Rorschach inkblot test.
Matt rolled over and pushed himself onto all fours. It looked like he’d been spared a battering like the one Sam had received.
Blood flowed undeterred from Sam’s nostrils; any facial movement caused the shattered bones in his nose to crunch, turning his already empty stomach.
Matt stood over the gut shot man and toed him with his boot. The man whimpered.
“What’s your name?” Matt snarled.
“Paul. My name’s Paul. Please help me. I didn’t want anything to do with this. The other two said they’d kill me if I didn’t help. We didn’t have guns or much food. They saw you two and thought they could overwhelm you. They told me they wouldn’t kill you. I didn’t want to do it. Those guys made me.”
Sam ducked into the bathroom next to the kitchen, trying to find something to plug the bloody faucet that used to be his nose. He grabbed some toilet paper and held it there while he rifled through the medicine cabinet with his free hand. He pocketed a bottle of Advil but that wouldn’t stop the bleeding. He’d heard that wrestlers used tampons to stem their nosebleeds and, luckily for him, this bathroom was a feminine product jackpot. He grabbed a blue box sitting in the front of the cabinet and stuffed a handful in his pockets. When he got back to the kitchen, Matt was doing the talking.
“I understand, Paul,” he said, his tone sympathetic. “This wasn’t your fault. We’ll try to do what we can to help you. I don’t think you’re shot too badly, if you can make it to our friends in Raft City the doctor there will help you. It was just the three of you?”
Sam realized that Matt must have told Paul what Raft City was while he was in the bathroom.
“Yeah man, just us three. Please help me. I can help you get to Raft City.”
Blood had started to come from Pa
ul’s mouth, staining his teeth crimson.
“How can you help us get back there?” Matt asked.
“The boat. We were coming back for it so we could get out of here.”
“Where are the keys?”
“In the boat. The glove compartment. We left them there after the big guy took them from the owner. We were about to leave yesterday when the infected came. We had to leave the boat in the hoist and make a run for it. There were five of us then.”
Matt glanced at Sam, who’d just cut a tampon with one of the Honyaki knives. Sam stuck a piece of tampon into each nostril to stop the flow of blood, removing the string so it wouldn’t dangle over his lips.
He nodded at Matt. “I’ll check it out.”
“That gun shot will have alerted any infected nearby,” Matt said. “Hurry.”
“Already moving,” Sam replied.
He crept cautiously toward the pier, silently cursing his broken nose, which required him to breathe solely through his mouth.
The boat was a Boston Whaler: a 315 Conquest, their newest model. It had clearly been used for fishing—there were rods in each of the holders—but there was also a front cabin for sleeping. The transom held three Mercury 250 horsepower outboard motors: this boat could really move. The aft half was covered with a blue cover to keep leaves and other debris out when the boat wasn’t in use, but a number of buttons had been unfastened on the side where someone—Paul or one of his accomplices—had slipped through. Sam pulled a few more buttons loose and peeked inside. The floor was white and pristine. It looked as if the boat had been used sparingly.
The keys were exactly where Paul said they’d be. He pulled them from the glove compartment and started the engine, shutting it down a moment later so the water cooled engines would not overheat. That’s when he noticed the hoist was electric. Without power they would not be able to lower the boat into the water.
