“Three . . . two . . . one . . .” Mike turned the key and started to pull the latch when the door burst outward, catching Mike on the shoulder and knocking him down. Mike struggled to regain his footing, but got tangled in the rope and went down again. Leaping out of the Gulfstream was a snarling, bearded man; my flashlight clearly showed his blood covered face and feral yellow eyes. Yellow. Yellow? With a surprisingly agile movement, he crouched and shifted to my left, towards Mike, then reversed course and exploded at me. I fired. So did Brenda. Three of the five shots I managed to get off hit him. Two in the upper chest, and one that smashed through the orbital bone just inside of his left eye. A lucky shot that saved my life. Brenda’s shot caught him on the side of the ribcage. He crashed, skidding to a halt on the leaves in front of me, his outstretched hands six inches from my boots.
“Good Lord above, what was that?” Dave said in his loud baritone preacher’s voice.
I kept my gun trained on him as Mike untangled himself from the rope. The yellow eyed . . . monster? . . . thing? . . . zombie? I still don’t know what to call them, was face down in the leaves. I could see the back of his skull was missing, blown outward along with the pink mist of vaporized brain cells that always accompany a headshot.
Dave repeated his question.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I hope there’s no more of em’.”
Scott moved up for a closer look and said, “Did you see how fast that thing moved? It was like a freakin’ ninja. Damn . . .”
A stern look from his dad changed his vocabulary. “I mean dang . . . and you were like freakin’ Clint Eastwood, all ‘boom-boom-boom’ . . . holy s . . . um . . . I mean crap,” he finished.
I shook my head and snapped out of my self-induced stun. “Is everybody OK? . . . nobody’s hit or hurt?” I asked.
More gunshots split the air—they were close—Michelle’s team. I spun around and looked; their group was near the top of Blue Heron loop, probably at one of their last sites. I could barely make out Michelle at this distance, she was lit up by several different flashlights, standing in a classic weaver stance, gun pointed towards the ground in front of her. She looked OK, unhurt.
I forced myself to focus on our own situation and ask again if everyone was OK. They were. I put a fresh magazine in my CZ, raised it up along with my light, and said, “People, we’re not done here.” I indicated toward the inside of the Gulfstream. We took up entry positions and I slowly poked my head through the doorway, flooding the interior with brilliant white light. Two short steps later I was standing inside, looking at the remains of a large black man. He was dressed in what I would call the “I just bought these from L.L. Bean” look. Everything he had on looked like it just came off the rack, no wear or tear, no rips or stains . . . unless you counted the four quarts of blood, torn flesh and entrails that decorated most of what was left of his body. The rest of the RV was empty. I came back out and told Dave to call in our status . . . “Total of two bodies, both deceased.”
Doc rushed up to me, “What other body? What does it look like? Please . . . tell me!”
As I began to describe the body I watched his expression go from a sense of fear to relief, and then through confusion, finally settling back on worry. I started again to ask him what was wrong, but Mike said, “Here comes your uncle’s team.”
I turned toward the road and saw that Uncle Andy’s team was walking up toward us, their flashlights pointed right at us until a gruff voice said, “Get yer’ damn lights out of their eyes, whatcha trying to do, blind them?” I turned back just in time to see Doc hop on the golf cart and leave.
Both of our teams waited, watching as Michelle’s team approached as well. When she arrived, I scanned both her and Uncle Andy with my light, they looked OK. Physically anyhow, Michelle looked a little green around the gills. It was now fully dark, the overcast sky deadening our vision even further. Uncle Andy asked if I wanted him and his team to start at the top end of the loop and work their way back towards us, just to make things go faster. I thought about it for a minute, then told him to watch my team a few times first to see how we do it with an RV. He thought that was a good idea. I asked if any of my team needed a break or wanted to switch out, nobody did. Two people on Michelle’s team and one on Uncle Andy’s asked if they could go back to the soccer field. Having too many people crowd around a potential firefight zone was inherently risky enough, so we thinned the herd and sent them back. The rest of Michelle’s team was divided between mine and Uncle Andy’s teams. I gave Michelle the choice of where she wanted to go. She hesitated for a moment and then walked towards my uncle. My gut was telling me she didn’t want to appear weak in front of me. If she only knew how much effort I was putting in just to keep my own knees from shaking.
The next few sites all checked out normal, so we sent my uncle’s team to start at the top of the loop and work his way back towards us. The first RV they hit had two of the “red eyes” in it. I heard my shotgun BOOM several times, then silence. We waited a few minutes for the report.
It came through saying, “Two infected put down, four more previously deceased found inside. Security team OK.” It was followed by the site number and a brief description of the RV.
My team worked our way up the loop, finding several more deceased bodies along the way. At site number sixty-one, we found a Travelite motor home with two dead bodies in it, one male, one female. We also found two live bodies, and I think I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life because I almost blew them away. They were kids. Two little curly-haired blond girls . . . twins—about nine years old. They were hiding under blankets on the pull-out bench, and when they heard my footsteps squeak on the floor, they flung the cover off and bolted toward the back screaming. My heart was going about a mile a minute and it took a bit for me to calm down enough to gather my senses. I stepped back out and told my team what I saw, and was about to go back in when Mike said, “How do you know they weren’t infected?”
Good question. I didn’t . . . and I really only got a brief glimpse of them jumping up and running away from me. I remember praying as I went back inside . . . “Please let them be OK.” I didn’t want to have to shoot two kids. They had locked themselves in the back bedroom and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Nothing. Not a word from them. At that point I started to think that they might be infected, and backed out again to reassess my situation. Brenda asked what was wrong and I told her. She thought for a second and then asked if she could try. I nodded and we rearranged ourselves, her leading the way and me providing cover right behind her.
She walked up to the bedroom door—didn’t even knock—just said in a quiet voice, “Hey girls, I’m Miss Brenda, the teacher at the school here. Your mom and dad told me to come and make sure you’re OK. We’re getting ready to have snack time, are you and your sister hungry?” Child psychology combined with a woman’s voice.
There was a soft rustling sound from behind the door, then a child’s voice asked, “What school?”
Brenda spent the next ten minutes or so talking through the door to the girls. Ashley and Alicia, as it turns out. Eventually she got them to open the door, and shortly after that we got them safely up to the soccer field so medical could look at them. Quick thinking Dave had covered their parents with a blanket. Thank God for answered prayers. The next several sites were unoccupied. At campsite sixty-seven my flashlight batteries started to fade away. That’s the one thing that you need to get used to if you run some of the better LED lights. Most of them operate off a microchip-controlled power circuit, which basically gives them a full output of light right up to the point where the batteries are completely drained, then they drop off significantly in a very short time. Not like the old lights that would gradually dim as their batteries got weaker. I didn’t have any spares on me, they were in my truck, so I radioed to see if anybody had any AA alkaline batteries. Michelle said she did and would bring them to me.
Campsite sixty-eight had an old Chevy pickup
with a camper top on it, and a sixteen foot U-Haul trailer attached to the truck with what looked like a home-made hitch. Parked in front of the Chevy, closer to the road, was an equally old Pontiac Fiero. I saw Michelle’s light bobbing toward us as she walked down the road. Twenty-five feet away from me she passed by the Fiero and took a tumble, dropping her light and screaming. Several flashlights from my team aimed towards her as I sprinted that direction, scooped up her rolling Maglite, and shined it at the car. Michelle was kicking and screaming, her right leg being pulled underneath the rear of the car as she tried to draw her Glock. I grabbed her under the shoulders and heaved backwards for all I was worth. She didn’t budge. I felt more hands wrap around her body and pull—Mike and Dave—she started to move backwards.
“It’s pulling my boot off! . . . Eric . . . Help me!” she screamed.
Brenda grabbed a hold of Michelle’s waist, dropping her shotgun to do so.
We all felt a quick tug as whatever it was under the Fiero pulled back. Hard. Michelle screamed again. I made a decision.
“On the count of three pull for all your worth,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “One . . . two . . . THREE!” On three Dave, Mike, and Brenda surged with everything they had as I let go of Michelle, drew my CZ and wedged my head, gun, and Michelle’s Maglite underneath the low sports car. I could see pasty gray hands clenched around Michelle’s half torn GORE-TEX work boots. Behind the outstretched grasping hands I could only see shadows and leaves. I emptied the magazine. Nineteen shots thundered in my ears, deafening me. Half blinded by the muzzle flash, I kept firing until the hands were still. I felt other hands on my legs and kicked at them until I realized who they were. I let myself be helped up. Michelle was sitting down, trying to push away people in order to get to me. She managed to get on one knee and was trying to tell me something—I couldn’t hear her—my ears were still ringing and echoing. I was close enough to read her lips though. “Are you OK?” she mouthed. I shook my head yes. I could see the relief wash over her.
A few moments later my hearing was starting to come back, so I asked Michelle if she was OK, a question she had probably only heard about 300 times in the last five minutes. She was. Her boot was torn, even her sock underneath the boot was ripped, but by some miracle her skin was unbroken—not even scratched. Michelle and I were seated next to each other on a picnic bench across the road at an empty campsite, resting. My team, led by Brenda and Mike finished the search of site sixty-eight. Only the shredded remains of the shot-up, red-eyed ghoul under the Fiero were found. Michelle elbowed me in the side to get my attention, then reached into her pocket and handed me two AA batteries. She looked up at me and said in a weary voice, “I think I’m going to have to charge you a little extra for delivery, sir.” We both smiled. The smiles quickly progressed to giggles then onto full-fledged insane laughter. It earned us a few looks from the other teams, but the trade-off in stress relief was worth it.
Uncle Andy’s team finished the remaining sites. Nothing else alive, but he did find something very strange at seventy-three. He called us over to a stainless steel American Traveler motor home.
“There are three bodies inside; they all passed the stick test,” he said. “Go in and tell me what you think.”
“You’re not gonna give me any hints?” I said with eyebrows raised.
He shook his head no. “I’d rather get your first impression.”
I walked up to the motor home and opened the door; immediately my nose was assaulted by a sickly sweet smell, like a truckload of bananas left sitting in the afternoon sun. I shut the door and looked at my uncle. He kind of waved his finger like I should go inside, so I clicked on my newly regenerated flashlight and went up the stairs. There were three bodies in there, as described. All of them the now familiar putty gray. The stench of rotting bananas was strong enough that my stomach was starting to give me warning signs that it might flip. I examined the bodies with my light, nothing unusual that I could tell until I got to the final corpse. Male, white—well grey now—maybe thirty-five, wearing some type of bathrobe over long sleeve pajamas. The difference was his face. Crusting around his mouth was what appeared to be massive amounts of foamy pinkish-orange drool. As disgusting as that was, it was also the source of the rotten banana odor. I backed out. When I got outside Uncle Andy looked at me and put his hands up in the universal “I don’t know” position. I shrugged my shoulders as well and said, “Maybe he took some kind of poison?”
The sweep now finished, we reported in as we were walking back to the soccer field. The medical team had finished with their exams, nothing odd to report there, we figured that anybody who was sick already knew it and took off earlier. A combination of Amy’s organizational skills and the medical team’s foresight resulted in the assembly of a volunteer team already set up to remove the bodies. They had somehow managed to scavenge several plastic raincoats, a box of latex gloves, and two propane lanterns. Doc had hooked up a little five by eight trailer to the back of the golf cart that would serve as a body wagon. They also scrubbed out the cargo compartment of the golf cart with a strong bleach solution. The only thing left to do was to provide them with a security escort, just in case. VW, Brenda, and Scott volunteered for that duty. I let Brenda borrow my flashlight.
I had just sat down with my back against a tree and closed my eyes. I could feel the built-up adrenaline slowly dissipating, giving me shivers and chills. I took several deep breaths, forcing the air slowly in—slowly out. Repeat. It hardly seemed like such a short time had passed since I was sitting on a moss-covered boulder drinking a light beer and listening to Max crunch up ice cubes. A wave of tiredness washed over me. I looked at my watch, 7:42 PM. At 7:49 PM the power to the campground came back on, the mercury vapor lights buzzing as they warmed up. A cheer went up over the soccer field, people were hugging and kissing, congratulating each other on surviving the “great spring blackout.” I would have liked to celebrate along with them, but I was wondering how long the power would stay on. Amy spotted me and came over, handing me three packs of assorted cheese crackers and a bottle of water. She asked if I had a minute. I nodded.
“First off Eric, I wanted to express my personal gratitude, as well as relay the gratitude from each and every person here at the campground. You and your teams did a wonderful and very brave job and we can’t thank you enough.” She held my gaze as she continued, “I know you have a lot on your mind, decisions to be made, plans to be laid—and you don’t even stay at this campground. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve taken the liberty of speaking to Doc and Sally, and the little bit to your uncle and Michelle. From what I gather, we may be basically on our own here for quite awhile. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d like to help here at the campground in kind of an ‘organizational coordinator’ position. I’ve already come up with a list of things that we’ll need to do to prepare for an extended stay. A lot of it is based on what you talked about earlier, but I wanted you to take a quick look at it if you don’t mind, I could really use your expertise here.”
I said, “Amy, I’d be glad to help you out anyway I can, on one condition.”
“Sure, just name it,” she said.
“Tell me what you did for a living before the world turned to mush.”
She smiled as she replied, “I was a civilian contractor with the Department of Defense. I taught interpersonal dynamic, inter-relational, objective team building skills.”
“You must have had a heck of a long business card to fit all that on it,” I said.
“We usually called it by its acronym.” Her hazel eyes glittered as she watched my tired mind crank out the solution.
I buried my head in my hands, groaning. “You taught . . . idiots.” Her musical laughter soon had me smiling as well. “So you taught the idiots in the military team building skills?”
“For seventeen years now,” she answered.
“Well, then you’re just the right person for the job you have in mind . . . go for it,” I said. She
handed me her list of ideas and we spent the next ten minutes or so adding and subtracting from it. When we finished, she scampered off to another part of the field. Just based on her energy level, I could see why she worked in the field of teambuilding. I felt lucky to have her here. I also felt I had some unfinished business and went to find Doc.
Chapter 13
I munched down the packs of crackers as I walked across the soccer field. At the sand volleyball court I found Michelle and Uncle Andy talking to each other. They paused midway in their conversation to ask me how I was holding up. After grunting the standard “mmm” in response, I threw the same question back at them. Uncle Andy gave me a thumbs up gesture and Michelle said that her right leg felt longer, but other than that she was good to go. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but it was a moot point in any case. In my mind, this was fast approaching a point of no return situation. A few days ago I’d have been buried in a month’s paperwork for firing my weapon even once; now we’ve got dead, and maybe not-quite-so-dead bodies piled up in the campground amphitheater, and it’s just kind of like the “elephant in the room” saying. Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, we’re going to have to deal with this on oh-so-many levels. All of us. I shook my head to clear out those thoughts, then gave my uncle and Michelle a rundown of the discussion I had with Amy. They agreed she was the right person for that job.
“Do you know where we can find Doc?” I asked.
“Last I heard he was up at the campground office,” my uncle said.
“Well then, one more thing to do before we head back to Walter’s,” I said as I walked towards the office. Michelle and Uncle Andy followed me.
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