Fever!

by David Achord

  I watched them for the next three days, learning their habits. The weather had been pleasant, which led them to eat their meals at picnic tables in the backyard. I was too far away to hear their conversations, but as I watched them with the little pair of binoculars, I could see them laughing and carrying on. The big dude was obviously the leader and everyone deferred to him. I was going to need to kill him first.

  As I watched, I thought back to the time we’d raided them. We spotted two of them in town, riding bicycles. We kept our distance, and followed them from a distance. That was back last fall, and it was cool enough at night that they built fires, so it wasn’t hard following the smell of wood smoke that evening.

  It was Gavin, BC, and me. We watched them from a spot not too far from where I currently was. One morning, a bunch of them left, leaving only two people at the house. Gavin wanted to kill them, but BC talked him out of it. Amazingly, they had some good fuel and a diesel truck. We loaded up with as much as we could and took off.

  I relived the memory of that day while I lay there in my spider hole, watching them go about their daily lives.

  They didn’t seem much different from us. I’d see a couple of them go hunting and come back at the end of the day with a deer. I watched the big man hang the deer and butcher it with expert efficiency. I watched them plant their spring gardens, which was probably a little early, but that didn’t stop them. I watched them gather buckets of water from a well. I watched them wash laundry and hang it out to dry.

  Like I said, not much different from us. But, even though we didn’t kill that man and woman, they felt the need to retaliate. I might’ve understood, and while I lay there in that spider hole, I started having second thoughts, but then, on the second morning, I saw little Prairie. She walked outside carrying a pitcher of water or something, and dropped it. One of the women walked over to her. I couldn’t hear, but it was obvious she was scolding Prairie, and then she hauled off and slapped her so hard Prairie fell to the ground.

  “You gonna pay for that,” I whispered.

  On the third morning, I woke up before daylight and got ready. I couldn’t spend any more time in this little hole. I was out of food, almost out of water, and even though they didn’t have roaming patrols, they were eventually going to find me.

  I assembled the M60 in the dark and fed the linked ammo into the tray. I then waited for sunup and for them to gather at the picnic tables for breakfast, like they had the previous two mornings. I watched them with the little binoculars I’d taken from Gavin’s houseboat and did a headcount. They were all there. All I needed was for Prairie to leave the picnic tables, and then I was going to light ‘em up.

  The old lady who’d slapped Prairie suddenly grabbed her arm. It looked like she was once again scolding Prairie, who stood there, her head hanging and looking at the ground. The old woman pointed back toward the house and Prairie dutifully began walking toward it.

  I looked around and found acne face. He was the only guard on duty, and currently, he was sitting at the table, shoving food in his ugly mug, his shotgun propped up at the end of the table. None of the others were armed, except for the big man, who had a pistol holstered on his side. They felt safe. Why shouldn’t they? They’d killed all of their enemies, or so they believed.

  The big man was sitting by the woman who had been mistreating Prairie. I decided I was going to kill him first and then spray in a left-to-right pattern, saving acne face for last. I doubted he’d run off. He’d grab that shotgun and look for a target, but a shotgun couldn’t get anywhere close to me.

  I took one final look with the binocs, confirmed the headcount, and confirmed Prairie had not wandered back outside.

  It was time.

  I checked the ammo tray again, gently closed the cover, and pulled the charging handle. Flipping up the rear sight, I took aim and squeezed the trigger. The intermittent tracer rounds confirmed I was on target as I sprayed the area. Some tried to run. It didn’t do no good. Some tried to hide under the wooden tables. The 7.62 hardball ammo had no problems penetrating the soft wood.

  There was a dozen of them and only one of me, but I had the high ground and five hundred rounds of agony. The odds were against them. I kept firing and firing until I had no bullets left, which maybe lasted a minute. The barrel had an angry red glow and steam was coming off it. I’d probably seized it up. No matter. A slow scan with my binoculars confirmed I’d inflicted death and destruction. There were bodies everywhere.

  I crawled out of the spider hole and began jogging down the hill. I’d left the M60 behind and was now only armed with the .38. This was when I was the most vulnerable. Someone could’ve been in the house the whole time and I’d never seen them. All they had to do was wait for me to walk into range and pump me full of lead.

  But, there wasn’t anyone hiding in wait. Most of them were dead. The old woman, Prairie’s tormentor, had a couple of bullets in her midsection, but she was still alive. She was trying to hold her guts in with her hands and watched me walk up to her with a mixture of fear and hatred in her eyes. I took a knife off of the nearest picnic table, walked over, and stabbed her in the side of her neck. The blood squirted out like water coming out of a garden hose.

  There was one other person still alive: acne face. He caught a stitching of four bullets across his torso, but somehow, he was still alive.

  “Remember me?” I asked, and waited until recognition dawned in his eyes before I did the same thing to him as I did the old woman.

  The rest of them were dead, even the big mean-looking one. My hands were shaking a little bit from the adrenaline, but I felt no emotion for them. They’d massacred my people and cut their heads off. They got what they deserved. In the end, we all get what we deserve.

  I got the shotgun, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then cautiously searched the house. I found her hiding under a little dirty cot, which I assumed was her bed. She stared out at me apprehensively with her big blue eyes.

  “Hi, Lil’ Bit,” I said.

  “Uncle True?” she questioned.

  “Yep, it’s me. Come on out from under there.”

  It took a little bit of coaxing, but she finally wiggled out and stood. Other than some dust bunnies on her clothes, she was unscathed.

  “You’re dirty,” she said. “And you smell bad.”

  I smiled at her. “I’m sure I do.”

  She was right. I could’ve done with a bath and some clean clothes, so could she, but there wasn’t time. The gunfire was either going to attract zombies, people, or both, and I didn’t want to have any contact with any of them.

  “Do you want to go on a trip with me?” I asked her.

  “Where?”

  “It’s a place a long way from here. There’s lots of nice people and there’s kids you can play with all day long if you want to.”

  “Is that where Mommy and Daddy are?” she asked.

  “No, sweetie. Your mommy and daddy are in heaven now.”

  “Oh.”

  She never answered my question. I knew her young mind was having difficulty processing everything at the moment, so I pushed ahead.

  “Okay, you wait right here. We’ll get going in a few minutes.”

  “Okay, Uncle True.”

  The car I had my eye on was one of two Toyota Land Cruisers. They had a biodiesel setup on them, and I believe that’s what they used to travel to Johnsonville to pay us a visit. I started walking over to them, but then I glanced over at the picnic tables. Some of the plates had eggs and venison on them, which all of a sudden made me ravenous. I grabbed a plate, cleaned it off quickly, and did the same to another plate. Washing it down with somebody’s glass of water, I refocused and walked over to the Toyotas. My heart sunk when I got closer to them. Both of them had multiple bullet holes in them. There was a mixture of antifreeze and oil forming under both of them. I was so fixated on killing everyone I hadn’t paid attention to these two vehicles. I knew it was going to be useless, but I tried to start t
hem anyway. The results were about what one would imagine.

  Gas was no good anymore, and unless you had some kind of special rigging, anything with an internal combustion engine didn’t work, like the two Toyotas. There weren’t any horses around here that I saw, so that left only one other mode of transportation: bicycles. The trouble was going to be how to accommodate Prairie. I looked around in a barn and found a kid’s bicycle, along with a well-used mountain bike.

  Unfortunately, Prairie didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, but leaving her behind was out of the question. After a little bit of figuring, I found a large rucksack she could sit in and loaded her up. It was a little awkward and I couldn’t fill it up with food and water now, so I found a smaller bag that I was able to strap on the handlebars. It didn’t hold much, so I was going to have to figure out something along the way.

  When I walked Prairie outside, she acted like the bodies were invisible and said nothing. I knew one day I was going to have to explain everything to her, but not right now. I strapped up the ruck, squatted down where she could step into it, and mounted the bike. I had some rough directions in my head, but I had no idea of how arduous a journey it was going to be. It took us all day before we even made it to I-40, and we were still in Tennessee, several hundred miles from Mount Weather.

  Chapter 40 – True and Prairie’s Big Adventure

  I took a detour. There was no way we were going to make it to Mount Weather like this, so I detoured to the school on Concord Road, a little bit between Nolensville and Brentwood.

  I expected people to be there, and I hoped they’d help us out, but the school was a burnt-out shell and there wasn’t anyone around. Same thing with the radio tower. I rode back over the bridge crossing I-65 and turned into the parking lot of a large church. It wasn’t burnt, but it too was empty. I walked in warily, my rifle at the ready, but there were no signs of life. The air inside was tired and stale. Nobody had been in here for a while.

  They’d had get-togethers and socials and stuff, back when people lived here. The back wall had been made into a bulletin board. It was filled with notes and pictures. People used it to try to reconnect to lost loved ones. I wondered if there had been any success stories.

  “Why are we here?” Prairie asked me.

  “Some people used to live here, but I guess they’re gone now,” I said. I looked around. “Alright, let’s see if I can round us up some food.”

  The church’s pantry was empty, but, there were rabbits running around everywhere outside. I managed to kill one with one shot and boiled some water from the nearby creek. Amazingly, one of the old tree houses that they’d used as a lookout was still intact, so we slept in it before heading out the next morning.

  It was going to take us several days, I knew that. I didn’t have a map, but I vaguely remembered the route. It was over three hundred miles, I knew that well enough. We were making thirty to forty miles a day, which wasn’t bad, until the bicycle’s chain broke somewhere north of Bristol. Try as I might, I couldn’t fix it. When I finally gave up on it, I wiped my grimy hands as best as I could on the thick Johnson grass along the side of the interstate and looked down at Prairie.

  “Looks like we’re going to be walking for a little while.”

  She looked up at me with her big blue eyes and nodded, like it was no big deal. That was three days ago. She simply was not strong enough, nor were her feet tough enough to walk a long distance. So, when she got tired, I’d put her on my shoulders. Her little legs dangled over my shoulder and sometimes she’d softly hum to herself. We must have looked quite the sight; a pretty little white girl being carried by a filthy black man.

  Our situation wasn’t looking good. I believe a good word would be bleak. We had no transportation, no water, no food. All I could do was put one foot in front of another. One foot in front of another. At some point, I’d zoned out. I don’t know how long I’d been like that until I bumped into an abandoned car. It scared the hell out of me when I realized I could’ve walked the two of us right into some zombies.

  I stopped and rubbed my face with a grimy hand. I was thirsty. And tired. And my feet hurt. My shoulders hurt. My ribs hurt. Hell, I hurt all over. But, what hurt most is what I knew. I knew I was failing, and my failure was going to kill the little girl sitting on my shoulders.

  “True,” Prairie said from her perch.

  “Yeah?” I asked, my voice raspy with thirst.

  “I need to pee.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I stopped, and with a little difficulty, dropped to one knee and helped her off of my shoulders. She started to squat down beside me, but I stopped her.

  “Hang on a second,” I said and scanned the area. I saw no zombies or any other signs of life, only a couple of crows flying overhead and maybe a blue jay chirping somewhere nearby.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said quietly. “Go ahead.”

  I walked up the interstate for a few yards, giving her some privacy, and worked the rucksack off of my shoulders. I dropped beside it, worked myself into a sitting position, and set the AR-15 in my lap. I leaned my back against a guardrail post and wondered if I had the strength to go much further. Prairie finished, then walked up and sat beside me.

  “I’m thirsty,” Prairie said.

  “Me too, Lil’ Bit.”

  “And hungry.”

  I sighed. I was hungry too and I only had four bullets left. I had more at one time, but we kept running into zeds. Outrunning them was out of the question; the combination of the ribs and utter exhaustion prevented it. So, I had to shoot them, and use up my precious ammo. I’d shot up all of the .38 ammo too. The gun was currently sitting useless in my rucksack and I was seriously considering dumping all of the gear to shed weight.

  I pulled the AR-15 to me and checked the magazine. In my exhausted state, I was hoping I’d miscounted and the magazine was still full. No such luck. I tried to shift my weight to find a more comfortable sitting position, but that was always impossible when it came to broken ribs. I glanced over at Prairie, who was looking at me expectantly.

  “Prairie?”

  She looked up at me.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this. I’m sorry for everything.”

  “It’s okay, True,” she said.

  “Let’s rest a spell and then I’ll find us some water,” I told her.

  I hated making such a promise, but I didn’t want to upset her. The sun was going down. We could spend the night in one of the abandoned cars, like we’d been doing, but, that wasn’t going to get us any food or water. And, I could feel a nip in the evening breeze. It was going to be a chilly night. She was oblivious, a naïve little girl. She’d go to sleep and wake up believing there would be a hot breakfast waiting on her.

  “Are we going to rest here?” she asked.

  “Just for a little bit,” I answered.

  She nodded, plopped down, and snuggled up beside me. Within a minute, she had fallen into a fitful asleep. Just as well. We weren’t going to be traveling anymore today.

  “I’ll just rest myself a few minutes,” I mumbled and leaned my head back against the guardrail.

  That was a mistake. I must have dozed off into a deep slumber within seconds. The next thing I know, I felt someone wiggling my foot. When I finally opened my eyes, there was a white dude squatting down in front of me, and he had my rifle in his hands.

  “Howdy,” he said. “You were sleeping so good I thought you might’ve been dead.”

  He was older than me, more meat on his bones, clean shaven, and a fresh haircut. He was clean too, unlike me and Prairie. He stared curiously, not smiling or nothing, but curious.

  My eyes looked over at the rucksack where I had the pistol. If I could get it out, maybe I could bluff him down. A slight smile crossed his face.

  “I see you looking over at your rucksack, so I’m thinking maybe you have another weapon in there. I’d appreciate it if you’d just leave it be. We’re friendly enough and I’d hate for things to get ugly befo
re we even get to know each other.”

  “We ain’t got anything worth taking,” I said, which was mostly true. Besides the pistol, the only thing I had in there was a blanket, poncho, and two empty canteens.

  “And we aren’t looking to steal anything from you,” the man said as he continued inspecting my rifle. He then looked back at me with a steady gaze.

  “My name’s Melvin and that’s Savannah,” he said as he gestured over his right shoulder.

  I looked over and for the first time saw a woman standing beside a big redneck truck, rifle in hand. She was a few years younger than the man, cute, with hard brown eyes, making me think she’d seen some rough times. She was wearing a short-sleeved shirt revealing slender but muscular arms. She was a little on the skinny side, but who wasn’t these days. Well, this dude wasn’t skinny, but he wasn’t fat neither. He looked like all muscle. I was waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t, she only stared.

  “Alright,” I said, my voice a little hoarser than it was before.

  “You sound thirsty,” Melvin said.

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. He made a head nod at the girl, who reached into the cab of the truck and came out with a canteen. She walked over and tossed it to me. I watched her for a second or two, noticing a large knife sheathed on her hip, and then woke up Prairie.

  “Here, Lil’ Bit,” I said.

  Prairie stirred and rubbed her eyes. When she saw Melvin, her eyes widened in a mixture of surprise and fright.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  The man gave a friendly grin now. I couldn’t help but notice he had pearly white teeth and there weren’t any that were missing. You didn’t see that too often these days.

  “My name’s Melvin,” he said again. “Where’d you two come from?”

  “Does it matter?” I asked. I was reluctant to answer. After all, I had no idea if he was friends with the people I’d killed.