by Paul Hetzer
The street was quiet and empty. I drove up to my driveway, scanning the road for any of the infected, my situational awareness on high alert. I saw only one shuffling up the road toward me in a soiled tattered pink nightgown.
I backed the truck into the driveway, putting the tailgate as close to the front door as I could, and shut down the engine. The quiet was unnerving. I stepped out of the pickup and briskly walked toward the Loony, my one shoe slapping loudly on the concrete. It was an older woman – I recognized her although I didn’t know her name. When she spotted me she ran at me with an unbelievable burst of speed, with that keening growl that I was becoming all too familiar with.
I unholstered the Beretta and raised it toward her in a two handed grip. Her distorted face was a blur. I focused on the front sight and pulled the trigger twice, one shot rang out and the slide locked back. The Loony dropped in its tracks as the bullet tore through its throat and out the back of its spine.
I triggered the mag release and swiftly heeled another one in the open slot, cursing myself for not changing mags after the last encounter. I couldn’t overlook these types of details – it would get us killed.
My wife must have heard the truck arrive and was out the door and running toward me with her arms outstretched. Jeremy was close behind. Both of them carried rifles. I enfolded my family in my arms and sobbed along with them. I brushed my wife’s long auburn hair back from her face and kissed her deeply.
“We can’t stay out here,” I said. I reached down and put my arm around my boy, hugging him tightly to me. He was getting big enough that I could barely lift him off his feet.
“What are we going to do, Papa?” he asked wiping at the tears with the back of his hand and hoping I hadn’t seen them.
“Let’s get in the house and talk about it.” I gathered them up and herded them toward the door.
“I didn’t know you were going to stop and truck shop on the way home,” Holly said in jest when she saw the pickup.
“I couldn’t pass up the deal, and it’s owner financing,” I winked at her.
“I’m so thankful you’re home,” Holly cried in my ear when the door closed behind us. “How bad is it out there?”
I took my briefcase off of my shoulder and set it on the floor. “It’s about as bad as you can imagine. I think the world that we have known is gone forever.”
We walked to the kitchen where she examined me from head to toe, taking in the blood splatters on my torn trousers and shirt. “Are you injured?”
I kicked off my remaining loafer. “I don’t think so. That blood’s from the infected I fought with. I need to get out of this stuff and wash up. I don’t think the blood’s still hot but we can’t take the chance.”
I had Jeremy get a trash bag from under the sink and soon I was standing in just my underwear while we bagged my ruined clothes. I told Jeremy to keep an eye out through the windows in case the horde of Loonies found their way here through the woods and he went off with a serious expression on his young face to carry out his assignment. Holly followed me into the bathroom to help me clean up.
The sun was setting. We had survived another day.
We spent the evening gathering the remaining supplies and piling them up on the inside of the garage with those that Holly had already put together. We had eight military patterned rifles, ranging in calibers from .22 long rifle to .308. Two were class III short barreled AR15 M4 style rifles. We also had four shotguns and several hunting and old military rifles, plus an assortment of handguns. I only had one suppressor which I used on several of the .22 rifles and handguns. For ammunition we had sixteen 50 caliber ammo cans filled with various rounds for all our weapons, about 2,000 rounds per weapon.
From their display case I grabbed the two authentic samurai swords that my grandfather had brought back from the Pacific during WWII. We boxed up all of our pantry food along with the buckets of emergency food we had stored. We emptied our refrigerator/freezers into the couple of large coolers and topped them with icepacks. We would unfortunately have to leave some behind to rot.
We put two cases of water along with several cases of soda in the pile. We had clothes out at the farm, nevertheless we packed a bag of travelling clothes for each of us. We cleaned out all of our medical supplies, including prescriptions and vitamins, along with Holly’s medical kit. We even boxed up our canning supplies and spare jars.
It was a huge load, however, I was confident the full sized bed of the pickup could easily carry it. I would have to get the spare gas from the shed in the morning and top off the truck’s tank and take whatever was left with us for on the road fills.
It was just over 250 miles to the farm, which seemed like the other side of the world after what I went through earlier. Each of us would carry two handguns and one carbine with plenty of spare mags for each weapon. I cut down the barrel on our old double barrel to use as a coach gun in the truck’s cab. It was nearly midnight when we finally got to sleep.
CHAPTER 6
I awoke at 0500 hours with my son nestled between Holly and me on the full size bed. It was pitch black in the basement bedroom. I had slept fully dressed in olive drab cargo pants and a tan tee shirt in case the shit hit the fan in the middle of the night. I slipped out of the warm bed and lit the lantern on the desk, bathing the room in a warm glow.
I quietly slid into my hiking boots, grabbed the Colt short barreled M4 with the EoTech holographic scope and slung it over my shoulder, then strapped on the drop-leg holster and inserted my Para Ordnance NightHawg. It was a full size .45 with a 10 round magazine. My wife carried a Para PXT in 9mm which held 18 double stacked rounds. My older Sig P220, also a .45, went into the retention holster on my belt.
Holly raised her head and looked at me. “What time is it?” she asked.
I looked at my watch again. “Zero-five-fifteen,” I replied. I adjusted the Colt so it was in front of me and tight to my chest. “We need to get moving. Those things are mainly active during the day and sleep at night. I want to get the truck loaded and out of here before they’re on the move.”
Holly shook Jeremy awake while I went upstairs to scout the outside of the house. I had always meant to purchase a set of night vision goggles or a scope, although I had never gotten around to it. You never expect to need something like that until you absolutely need something like that. You know what they say about hindsight.
I had a SureFire G3 flashlight in my hand. It gave out 120 lumens of blinding white light when switched on, at least that’s what the ad for it said. I kept it off for now since I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to the house.
I looked out through the shades in the front. Dawn was just breaking, but darkness still permeated the yard. I couldn’t see any movement on the street. I checked a few more windows on the four corners of the house and when I was fairly confident that there were no surprises waiting for me I slipped quietly out the front door. I unclipped the front strap of the rifle sling, turning it into a single point sling. Keeping the rifle at the ready, I cautiously walked the perimeter of the house, but nothing stirred.
I walked out to the street and stood where normally the streetlight would be enveloping me in its bubble of warm light, that was, if the grid had been up. I looked up and down the brightening street, there was no movement. The body of the dead Loony still lay in a heap where it had fallen on the asphalt. I retraced my path to the house and went inside.
Downstairs, Holly had her hair braided back and had cooked a light breakfast of oatmeal, eggs and coffee on the small gas stove. The odor of the hot food made my mouth water.
“I wanted to use the last of our fresh eggs. After this it’s powdered for awhile,” she said, handing me a cup of steaming black coffee.
I had to smile lovingly at Holly. She was the spitting image of Angelina Jolie as her Lara Croft character from the movie Tomb Raider, complete with leg holsters strapped to each leg. The white tee-shirt she had on hugged the lines of her firm, rounded breasts while
her clingy slacks accented her thin waist and long, sexy legs. All of which made me long for an hour alone with her. Who am I kidding, give me just three minutes. My wife was most definitely a knockout!
I set the rifle down on an end table and hugged her tightly to me, feeling the curves of her body melt into mine. Even with all this shit going to hell around us, I still wanted her. We kissed deeply, tasting each other’s mouth and lingering together. We looked deeply into each other’s eyes, not having to express verbally the feelings for each other that were so obvious.
We pulled apart, slightly embarrassed when Jeremy came out of the bedroom dressed nearly identical to me. He had wanted to wear shorts, nonetheless I had insisted that we all wear long pants to help protect against bites. He carried the Sig P556 in his hand. We had attached a forward grip to its picatinny rail system last night for better control. I don’t think we had to worry about BATF rules anymore. The P556 was basically an M4 carbine without a stock. It was shorter, lighter, and easier for Jeremy to handle.
“Were there any of those things outside, Papa?” he asked.
“No, so far we’re in the clear. Let’s eat and then get the truck loaded up.”
We sat down at the card table Holly had put together on the first day and ate quietly, each lost in our own thoughts of what lay ahead. I looked at my boy. His hair has a darker shade of copper than his mother’s, straight and nearly long enough to cover his ears. It needed a cut. He was big for his age, just two inches shy of five feet in height and an athletic 85 pounds. He was growing up fast, but was still a child in many of his actions.
He was well versed in firearms, getting his first .22 at four years of age. He was planning on getting into competitive shooting and was good enough with rifle and pistol to do both. He loved soccer, football, baseball, skiing and hunting. The kid just couldn’t get enough of the outdoors. What was his future now? Would it be just an interminable fight for survival for the rest of his days? He looked up and smiled at me when he saw me watching him. I smiled back holding a forkful of scrambled eggs to my lips.
And then there was Holly, my beautiful, talented wife. She was my pillar in life. At 32 she looked no older than when I had met her a little over eleven years back while I was in grad school. I had been on temporary assignment at Walter Reed while I worked on my PhD. I was a 25-year-old first lieutenant in the Army at the time going to school on their dime when I first spied this beautiful, lithe med student in my Advanced Biochemistry Class at Georgetown. It took me nearly three weeks to get up the courage to ask her out and when I approached her I could have sworn that the butterflies were going to fly from my stomach and burst out my mouth when I opened it. She stood five and a half feet to my six. When I looked down into those bright liquid green eyes everything just clicked. I found my tongue and my courage and she said ‘yes’ to coffee. It was a whirlwind romance that survived the pressures of both of our academic aspirations and burgeoning careers.
I grabbed her hand and gave it a loving squeeze. “We’ll be okay,” I said, holding on to her hand. “We’re going to make it.”
“I know,” she replied, smiling at me.
We hurriedly packed the truck with all our supplies, topped off the fuel and went over our kits one more time. Holly had the Para in her right leg holster and the Beretta from the lab on her left leg. She would carry the other short barreled Colt M4 in the truck next to her with a quick release sling attached to it. She had thrown on a black shooting vest over her white tee-shirt. She still looked sexy as hell.
Jeremy sat in the back seat of the cab cradling his P556 on his lap. He had a Sig mosquito .22 semi-auto pistol with the suppressor in a waist pouch and his Springfield XDM Compact 9mm on his hip. We all had plenty of spare mags in holders and pockets for all our weapons plus a bunch loaded up in a box in the back. All the rest of our guns were in a duffle in the truck bed, along with the cans of ammo, food, medicine, etc. We also packed our backpacks and threw them in just in case we had to hoof it anywhere. Holly and I threw a tarp over the stacked supplies in the bed and secured it with an elastic cargo net. We had a one day supply of water and food in the cab with us along with a couple spare cans of ammo. We were ready.
So far during the loading process we had seen none of the infected on our street. The sun was up and shining brightly as we finished our preparations, which we accomplished with minimal noise so as not to attract any unwanted attention. I had cleaned all of the blood off of the windows, doors and seat with a bleach solution. Even though my research had shown that the Zombie Virus quickly became inactive when exposed to air, we couldn’t take any chances.
Turkey vultures descended on the corpse lying in our street and we did our best to ignore them while they fed. It got me thinking though, about birds as a vector for the virus. I would have to keep that in the back of my mind. By 0715 hours we were all piled in the truck and ready to leave. We programmed our GPS for our farm. It showed six hours and five minutes of travel time and I nearly laughed at that estimate.
I started up the truck and headed off up the street, scattering the vultures when we went by. We cleared the neighborhood without any problems. The few infected that we saw were easily avoided and we were soon pulling onto the main road. The horde that I had led away yesterday was nowhere in sight. I would hate to be on that dirt track in the woods right now.
Our route would take us back across the bridge from yesterday. I dreaded the thought of retracing my way through the horrors again. This time I knew the path was clear and we wouldn’t have to stop.
“Why are there so many abandoned cars on the road?” Holly inquired as we turned southbound on State Route 4.
“I guess many people tried to ignore their illnesses and go to work or to wherever their plans for that day were taking them. This disease hits fast and hard, and by the time they realized just how bad they really were it was likely too late. I believe many just couldn’t drive any further.”
I weaved past several abandoned cars. “Some must have passed out while they were driving and caused some of the accidents that you see. It was rush hour on the East Coast so even with the pandemic there were still a lot of people on the road.”
We reached the area approaching the bridge. In the northbound lane I could see the scattered bodies that I had left behind yesterday. Here too, vultures and crows were feasting. We watched in awe as a Loony sped out from behind an SUV and jumped one of the vultures, biting its neck when it landed on it. Several more came running and tore the bird apart. One of the feasters had become the feast.
Further down the road, crowds of infected were milling about, their heads rising and their pace picking up when they heard us go by. I avoided hitting the few that were on the road.
“That’s your car, Papa, isn’t it?” Jeremy said excitedly as we drove by in the other lane. The wrecked carcass of what had been my Jetta sat where I left it. I shuddered at the memory.
“Yeah, son. That’s it.”
“Wow, you sure tore it up!” he said wide-eyed. We squeezed by the two cars I had pushed aside yesterday then we were up and over the bridge. So far so good.
“They’ll die soon if they don’t eat and drink,” Holly said to no one in particular. “And what will they do come winter?”
“Hopefully freeze to death,” I spat out coldly. “As far as food and drink, they’re like wild animals, they’ll make do,” I added glumly.
We were on a short rural stretch of road between major road crossings and didn’t see very many of the Loonies.
At certain points along the drive the going was slow, especially around concentrations of civilization where there were many deserted vehicles or roaming Loonies that had to be avoided. Once we were into Maryland’s rural area approaching the Potomac River we made better time. The few cars scattered here and there had mainly drifted off the road before being abandoned.
We didn’t see any signs of anyone who wasn’t infected, although flying by in a truck I wouldn’t expect to see any survi
vors.
“There have to be others like us,” I told my wife. “Holed up in their homes or trying to get out of Dodge like us.”
“I’m sure there are some,” Holly said, looking out the window at the passing trees and farms, “but how many families possessed this mutated gene that gave them all immunity from the virus? How many had one infected member in their family that in turn infected the others?” She looked over at me. “I’m sure there are others like us out there, but I think we are the exception, not the rule.”
I nodded in agreement. The human species was in piss poor shape right now.
Jeremy was, to my amazement, drifting off in the back seat, something he was a pro at when we were on trips. Holly turned on the radio and scanned through the different stations, none were broadcasting. She flicked off the radio in anger.
“How are we going to live like this?” she cried. “Just the three of us fighting those… those things!” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “What kind of existence are we going to have?”
Jeremy was awake again in the back, trying to tune into the conversation.
Holly hung her head and whispered “I want to talk to my mom so bad.”
She sobbed quietly. She had tried calling both of our parents repeatedly for the first few days until the power loss had halted her efforts. She had never reached them. Her parents were in St. Petersburg Florida. With its huge population it would be a hellhole by now.
“They’re smart people, Holly,” I said consolingly. “With any luck they both carry the mutated gene and survived the initial infection. Your dad would have realized what was happening and gotten your mother the hell out of there and someplace safe.”
My parents lived in western North Carolina about two hundred miles from where our farm lay in Virginia. We hadn’t been able to reach them either.
“They would have called me,” she replied sullenly, her eyes still heavy with tears. I had no reply for that.
