by J N Wood
The creature started to stagger towards us, her bare feet crunching on the broken glass.
‘I really don’t think we should stop here Chris,’ Jack gasped. ‘There’s nothing we can do for her.’
It only took me a couple of seconds to wholeheartedly agree with him. I pressed down on the accelerator and we rapidly drove away from the unsightly creature. About thirty seconds later we drove around a slight bend, and I glanced in the rear view mirror.
I was sure there had been something running behind us on the road. It was there for a split second before we turned the corner and it slipped out of view.
‘What the fuck?’ I said, instinctively taking my foot off the accelerator.
‘What’s the matter, don’t slow down, that sick person or whatever the fuck it was has really freaked me out,’ Jack said.
‘I thought I saw something behind us, someone chasing us maybe.’
I must have imagined it. Surely it was just a dog or an elk, or at least some kind of animal. It can’t have been that woman.
Jack twisted around to look out the back window. ‘Well, nothing there now, it’s hardly going to catch us on foot is it?’
It was just a big dog, not a crazy person chasing us, nothing to worry about.
I hope.
We didn’t speak for a few minutes until Jack decided to break the silence. ‘So, that’s what the end of the virus looks like, it doesn’t look like a pleasant way to die.’
‘Was that the virus?’ I replied. ‘It looked like her head had melted, like the guys at the end of Raiders of The Last Ark.’
Jack screwed his face up. ‘I really want to try and forget it.’
He started to scroll through something on his phone, he pressed on the screen and the Wolf Alice song, Silk, started playing through the Raptor’s speakers.
A few more Wolf Alice songs later and we hit the snow, a lot of snow. Coming from England means I’m not that adept at driving in heavy snow, it never really gets that bad. Jack’s relocation to California has meant he now has even less experience.
We had been steadily climbing for the last twenty minutes, and it looked like we would be continuing to climb for a while.
‘Does this thing have winter tyres on?’ I asked.
Jack snapped his head around to look at me. ‘Shit, I didn’t check, what do winter tyres look like?’
I laughed at our incompetence. ‘No fucking idea, we can’t do anything about it now, just gotta hope we’ll be okay. Blue will get us through.’ I leaned forward and patted the dashboard.
The driving was slow going, even slower than driving through thousands of abandoned cars. The weather forecast would have classed it as blizzard conditions. The extra washer fluid we picked up did come in handy though.
Thank you very much Alex.
The snow was falling really heavily, most of the time I couldn’t even tell where the road ended. All I could see was white. Luckily there were trees lining the road most of the time, so I had a general idea which direction to turn the steering wheel. Jack told me he would have offered to drive, but his eyes were irritating him because his contact lenses had been in for too long.
Great fucking timing mate.
About an hour and a half later we reached the end of Stove Prairie Road, and turned left onto Poudre Canyon Road. The clock on the dashboard read 16:30. My eyes were hurting from concentrating on the whiteness, and my hands were aching from gripping onto the steering wheel too tightly. And I needed a shit. I wasn’t happy.
‘How much longer are we gonna keep on going before we either crash into a tree or I shit myself?’ I asked, bringing the truck to a complete stop.
I don’t think Jack realised I meant I would literally shit myself.
He looked down at the map. ‘Let’s try and get to Kinikinik.’
‘Kinikinik?’ I asked. ‘How are you spelling that?’
‘I’d spell it like it’s written on this map. Anyway, it’s about half way across this green hilly bit.’ He pointed it out to me on the page.
‘Oh yeah, Kinikinik,’ I said.
‘It’s probably not that far away but it’s going to take us two or three hours at the speed we’ve been going, is that okay with you?’
I reluctantly agreed to carry on, resigned to another couple of hours of nightmare driving.
I wasn’t sure if I got more comfortable with the snow or if maybe delirium set in, but either way I started to enjoy myself. A major factor was the Raptors capabilities. I was skidding around bends and having a great time.
About an hour and a half later we were approaching Kinikinik. A collection of houses dotted along the side of the road would be the best way to describe it. I spotted some buildings through the trees on our left and pulled the Raptor over to the side of the road. At least I think I did, I still wasn’t sure where the road ended.
‘Kerrrrrnikinik,’ I sang.
Jack just stared at me.
‘What? What’s up with you?’ I asked, only just realising he hadn’t said a single word for the last ninety minutes.
“Thank fuck that’s over, I was pretty sure you were going to kill us. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to put you off. You were going way too fucking fast. We really need to find somewhere to stay the night around here,’ he quickly said. A nervous sounding laugh escaped from his mouth. ‘I can’t handle any more of your driving tonight.’
‘We’re here and we’re not dead. What more do you want?’
‘Don’t know. How about not feeling like I’m going to die all the time?’
‘Don’t think I can help with that at the moment. It’s the end of the world. I don’t really fancy sleeping in Blue tonight.’
‘We can just try a house. Hopefully we’ll find an empty one,’ Jack said, peering out through the snow at the scattering of buildings. ‘Although we don’t have much choice. You never know, maybe someone will take us in for the night.’
I didn’t really want to stay with potentially sick people but I agreed we needed somewhere to sleep. We chose to investigate the three buildings closest to us. So after putting on a new set of gloves and our masks, we climbed out of the truck. It was truly freezing after the warmth of the Raptor.
We trudged over to the first house, barely visible through the trees and the snow. When we got closer I could see that the house looked a bit like a log cabin, but it was huge. Four steps led up to the front porch and the rest of the decking.
Through the blistering wind I tried shouting over to Jack, ‘Smell test!’
‘What?’ he shouted back.
‘Let’s have a little sniff, see if we can smell dead bodies?’
Jack shrugged his shoulders and gave me a thumb’s up. He climbed the front porch steps and lowered his face mask. His nose crinkled up, like a bloodhound sniffing the air. He turned back to me and shrugged his shoulders again.
I lowered my mask and had a sniff, all I could smell was freshly chopped logs.
‘I can’t smell anything!’ I shouted.
‘What?’
‘I can’t smell anything dead!’
Jack said something I couldn’t hear and walked to the front door. He tried the handle but it was locked. I joined him on the porch and knocked on the door with my freezing cold knuckles. We stood and waited a few moments. I knocked again but there was still no answer.
There was a small black box on the wall next to the door, like a security box where you would leave a key. I pulled down the front of it and looked at the combination lock. We obviously didn’t know the code so I headed into the trees, and came back with a large rock, about the size of my head. Probably too big for the job but it was freezing, and I couldn’t be bothered to search for a more suitable one. I lifted the rock above my head and brought it down on the top of the little box. It disintegrated into tiny plastic fragments and a shiny bit of metal flashed past me, just millimetres from my face.
‘Shit, did you see where the key went?’ I shouted.
L
uckily Jack had been following the key’s trajectory and was already heading over to where he thought it had landed. A few moments later he climbed back up the porch steps, proudly holding the key aloft.
He placed the key into the lock and turned it, the squeaky door opened into the house. The rancid odour hit us almost instantly. My mask wasn’t doing anything to disguise it, definitely the smell of death.
‘Nope, run away!’ I shouted, and jumped down the porch steps in one go.
I didn’t look back and started running towards the next house, Jack was close behind me. The neighbouring building was just visible through the snow and the trees, probably only thirty or forty feet away.
We got to the next home and stopped outside. I looked it up and down whilst trying to regain my composure.
Jack shouted, ‘I’m not really enjoying this!’
He pulled his mask back over his face.
The house was tiny. The wood panelling on the outside had been painted a shade of dark blue.
We approached the little house and I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again and waited, still there was no answer. I very carefully pushed the handle down. It was unlocked so I opened the door just an inch, moving my face closer to the gap.
The smell coming from inside wasn’t very pleasant at all, like cheese that was long past its expiry date. However, mouldy pungent cheese was a lot better than the smell of decaying bodies, so I twisted slightly and gave Jack a thumb’s up. I turned on my phone’s torch then slowly opened the door the rest of the way, and crept into the house.
I stood in the living area and looked around. Just off to the left was the kitchen, opposite me was a set of stairs leading to a mezzanine level, with a door just next to the stairs. Jack followed me in and closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the storm raging outside.
‘Hello,’ I said.
My greeting was answered with silence, so I walked to the other door opposite. Knocked once and then opened it. The bathroom beyond was disgusting, it was entirely peach coloured with seashells adorning everything. The basin, the bath, the tiles on the wall, everything was shaped like a shell or had shells printed on it.
I turned and looked into the living room. ‘The bathroom is fucking horrible. Shall we have a look upstairs?’ I pointed to the open wooden staircase.
Jack led the way with his gun in his hand and started up the stairs. I’d completely forgotten about my gun and left it in the truck, hopefully Jack hadn’t noticed. I’d have to get used to carrying it around with me.
When the top of Jack’s head reached the same height as the mezzanine he signalled me to stop, he then slowly climbed another step so he could only just see over the ledge. After a very brief glimpse he turned back to me and whispered, ‘There’s a bed up here.’
‘An empty one I hope?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know, wait a second,’ Jack whispered.
He slowly crept up the remaining steps and pointed his illuminated phone at the bed.
‘It’s empty but it smells really musty up here, like mothballs or something.’ His voice had returned to a normal volume.
‘Hopefully that just means nobody is planning on coming home any time soon,’ I said, before starting back down the stairs. ‘Gonna go for a shit and then I’ll get Blue.’
After using the toilet in the disgusting bathroom I walked towards the front door. Jack was investigating the chimney in the corner of the room.
It felt like it was even colder outside after my short stint indoors. I picked up my pace and ran to the truck, almost losing my footing a few times. I drove right up to the front of the house, grabbed a bag of food and the cleaning products, and very briefly braved the storm again.
Jack had turned on the lights and was now crouched over the wood burning stove in the living room.
‘Electricity is still on here. I found some logs and firelighters. It’s freezing.’ Jack’s teeth were chattering as he spoke.
‘Not as cold as outside.’ I replied.
I fished around in the cleaning supplies bag for the anti-bacterial wipes, and then went to the kitchen to find some saucepans, plates and cutlery. After cleaning everything we’d need for our dinner I put some new gloves on and had a look at our options.
‘Do you want the chilli con carne? I’m having the macaroni and cheese,’ I asked Jack.
He stood up and pointed at the stove, with a smug looking smile on his face. ‘Fire,’ he declared proudly.
‘Yes, well done, you started a fire. Chilli?’ I held up the tin, showing him the label.
‘Yep, that’ll do me fine,’ he replied.
I ran back out to the truck whilst the food was heating on the electric hobs. I’d forgotten the cans of pale ale.
After giving the cans a quick wipe we sat huddled around the fire sipping our beers.
‘I’m really worried about Beth. I was hoping we would be at least half way home by now,’ Jack said, staring at the can in his hand. ‘At this rate it’s going to take us a week.’
‘You just have to believe she’s fine, Sarah and…’ I tried to remember the guy’s name. ‘Bill?’
‘Roy,’ Jack corrected me.
‘Yeah that’s him, I’m sure they’re all taking care of each other. It’ll drive you crazy if you think the worst all the time. She is hidden away from all the virus shit and they’re doing fine. That’s just the way it is. Where is their house by the way?’
‘It’s not far from ours, maybe a couple of blocks away. It’s a really nice house, must be worth millions.’
‘Well there you go, if it’s worth millions it’ll probably have a shitload of security,’ I suggested.
Jack leaned back into his seat. ‘I’ve never been in, just seen it from the outside when I’ve been to pick Beth up. It has got high walls around it though.’
‘There you go then, she’s gonna be fine. No point in thinking otherwise.’ I got up and walked to the kitchen to check on the food, and to escape from the heat of the fire for a moment.
‘Beth is pregnant,’ Jack said, sounding despondent.
I quickly plated up the food and walked back to the fire carrying our dinner. I handed Jack his plate.
‘Well, I wasn’t expecting you to say that.’
Jack looked at his food. ‘Yep, she’s only two months so we’re not telling anyone yet.’
I swallowed my first mouthful of macaroni and cheese, it was entirely unremarkable. ‘Well you know, congratulations and all that but…’ I paused to consider my next words, placing another forkful of blandness into my mouth.
‘What, shit timing?’ Jack asked soberly.
‘Well yeah, fucking terrible timing, the end of the world is not the best time to have a baby’.
‘Tell me about it.’ Jack looked down at his chilli for a long moment. ‘Thanks for cooking, but this tastes like shit.’
‘Yeah mine does too, I’m still gonna eat it though, I’m starving.’
We both quickly ate the rest of our food and I passed Jack another beer, before opening one for myself. We agreed it was probably safest to sleep in the living room. We would just keep our gloves and masks on.
Jack took the sofa and I was on the recliner armchair, it was surprisingly comfortable. Not long after we’d finished all the beers I must have nodded off.
DAY FOUR
A noise from outside woke me up.
I opened my eyes to see sunshine pouring in through the window. It wasn’t snowing so thank fuck for that.
I’d waken up a few times in the night. It had been blowing a gale outside, so there had been an endless supply of different noises throughout the night, forcing me out of my sleep and scaring me half to death.
I heard another noise from outside. Was that the same noise that woke me up? It sounded like metal striking metal.
Jack was still fast asleep. Sitting slumped into the sofa with his head back and facing the ceiling. The mask covering his mouth and nose was rhythmically puffing in and out.
/> Shit, where’s my mask?
I lifted my hand and found it hanging loosely around my neck.
Again I heard the same noise of metal clanging against metal. I climbed out of the armchair and tiptoed over to the window next to the front door. My mouth was bone dry after drinking the beers last night, I was struggling to swallow. Looking out of the window I could see an incredibly vivid blue sky.
One problem though, there was a giant of a man stood next to our truck. I rubbed my eyes and tried to blink away the sleep. His back was to me but it looked like he was trying to do something to the driver’s side door.
After opening the front door of the cabin I stepped outside onto the small porch. The giant man was well over six feet tall and I mean well over, he was huge. The door closed behind me with a loud crash, making him spin around to face me. He had a great big bushy beard and it followed his swivelling body a split second later. At first he almost looked frightened. I thought I must have startled him because his eyes had a desperate look to them. I briefly considered apologising but then his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed.
There was no fear in his eyes now.
‘Stay the fuck away from me. I’m just taking the truck,’ he growled.
He sounded like a bear as much as he looked like one. I tried to stand as tall as I possibly could, still a lot shorter than the giant bear man.
‘We need the truck, so I’d much rather you didn’t take it.’ I don’t think I’d ever sounded more English.
He stared at me with unwavering eyes. ‘Fuck off,’ he said, before turning back to face the Raptor.
I started walking towards him. ‘Hey you big beardy bastard, get the fuck away from our truck.’
He was looking bigger and bigger the closer I got. I stopped when I thought I’d be just outside of his reach. He spun around and I saw a slight movement from his left arm.
I had just enough time to think, fucking hell, he can move fast for a big guy.
