She liked to see him smile since he seemed both serious and sad all the time. He must carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Let Gwen know I’m starting breakfast so we can get going.”
###
The camp smelled like heaven while the bacon cooked, and the coffee brewed. Betty hadn’t been much of a coffee drinker, but she also hadn’t been a camper, traveler, or apocalypse survivor before yesterday either. They all sat and ate in silence. Betty couldn’t be sure what the others thought about, but she reflected on the loss they all experienced yesterday and what they would have to face while they traveled today. She imagined the others dwelled on the same thoughts.
As they broke camp, Matthew spoke. “Donald, why don’t we stay here? We have your trailer and stuff, and it feels safe here.” He slept through the zombie attack the night before.
“Matthew, I can understand that traveling scares you because I am scared too. Both you and Betty experienced an unspeakable loss yesterday. Gwen and Helen lost their friends too. When we make it to my cabin, we’ll be safe, and we can wait for help there.”
“You’re afraid too, Donald? I didn’t know tough guys like you were ever afraid.”
“We all get afraid, but I promise you I’ll do my best to get all of us safely to Maine. Ok?”
“Ok,” Matthew said.
It surprised Betty that Donald let Helen ride in the truck cab with them as they departed. He made her ride in the trailer yesterday to keep her out of the way. Helen seemed nice, but Betty suspected that Donald didn’t trust her. Betty had devoured all things zombie, so she understood the dangers they would face before the apocalypse finished. If it ever ended.
CHAPTER 14 - DONALD BISHOP
DONALD PULLED THE truck out of the rest area for day number two of their drive through Hell. He had lived through many tricky situations and had traveled through dangerous places, but this topped them all. He wished for a squad of well trained, armed Marines to back him up. Instead, he had two women, a teenager, and a kid for an army. There would be no room for errors if they wanted to stay alive. Make no mistake, this would be a war, but it was a battle Donald didn’t understand. Who could comprehend the dead rising to feast on the living?
Mel no longer acted as their guide, so Donald had been thankful the GPS Satellites still transmitted, or they would have lost their way by now. He didn’t want to burden anyone else with these worries since it wouldn’t help their situation. To top all these potential dangers off, Gwen pointed out no one even had a change of clothes with them. Only the clothes on their backs. The cabin in the woods of Maine had an enormous question mark over it since Donald hadn’t been there before. He didn’t even have a picture to know what the place looked like. It might be a ramshackle dump or only a hole in the ground awaiting a construction crew. The cabin would remain an unknown until they arrived and saw the place for themselves. Better deal with each problem as it presented itself.
To help calm his mind, he said. “Betty, since you are our resident zombie expert, how can we defeat these monsters?”
“In all the stories, the zombie virus kills the body and the human part of the mind. It leaves the brain operating in some violent way. They seek the flesh of living humans to eat. The only way to kill them is to destroy their infected brain.”
Matthew asked, “Why do they want to eat if they are already dead? That doesn’t make sense.”
“No idea, Matthew. Anyone bitten or scratched gets infected. They die, and then they reanimate as zombies themselves. It’s their circle of life, I guess.”
“Maybe they aren’t eating to satisfy their hunger, but they are doing it to procreate their species?” Helen said.
“What’s procreate mean?” Matthew asked.
“You want to take that one, Donald?” Gwen said while she wore an enormous smile.
Donald glared at Gwen and said, “Ask me again in a few years, Matthew.”
“What’s that building up ahead?” Helen asked.
It had been a church with some type of store next to it. The sign read St. Nick’s Church and Thrift Shoppe. A thrift shop would mean clothing and other supplies they could use. It would be worth a quick stop to look around and gather anything useful. Who knew what they would find further up the road? The area had been rural, and they had passed no place like this since they left Boston.
The large parking lot sat empty, which didn’t surprise him. One side of the property held the thrift shop while the other end had the church building. A meager but well-kept house sat next to the church. The sign out front of the house read St. Nick’s Parsonage. Donald pulled into the lot near the thrift shop and angled the truck for a quick getaway. They needed to plan on how to handle this shopping excursion with no one getting hurt. A quick in and out where they grabbed the anything worth taking.
“Betty, I remember your mother worked at the car dealership. Did she ever let you drive cars around the lot?”
“Yes, when the dealership was closed and no one else was around, she would let me drive sometimes.”
“OK, here’s the plan. Betty, you’ll sit in the driver's seat just in case we need a quick escape. Gwen, Helen, and I will head inside the store and see what supplies we can find. Matthew, you stay here and keep your eyes open for trouble.”
Betty’s shoulders slumped and her chin fell, but she didn’t disagree with his plan. Donald made sure both Gwen and Helen carried hunting knives. They needed a silent way to dispatch any zombies they might find inside the building. With any luck, they wouldn’t need to use any weapons.
“Remember to aim for the head,” he said.
The door opened with a creak as a bell hanging above the door tinkled. He hoped they weren’t ringing the dinner bell for a group of hungry zombies as they entered the shop. No electric lights were on inside the shop, but sunlight streamed through the large front display windows, which provided a murky light to the showroom. No shopkeeper or other customers greeted them as they entered the store, but they expected nothing different at this point. It felt like they were the only survivors left in the world. Many types of clothing filled the racks within the store, so they got lucky finding this place.
Donald spied some second hand pieces of luggage and said, “Let’s grab those and load up on the clothing. Take everything we can carry. Don’t get picky. We’ll sort it out later.”
They nodded their agreement and then split up to cover more ground so they would get stuff for each of them. Donald loaded up his bag with various pieces of clothes and didn’t pay attention to what happened around him in the store. Laser focused. A shriek from across the store interrupted his browsing. As he turned toward the cry, Donald ran straight into a zombie. The collision knocked them both to the ground. He held the zombie’s hair with his left hand and grabbed his knife with his right hand. Then Donald thrusted the knife into the head of the monster. Donald leaped back up to his feet as he heard another shriek and found another zombie stood between him and Gwen. The monster lunged at him before he got his knife hand up. So Donald swung the bag of clothing he had loaded around and he knocked the zombie to the floor. He crashed his boot down on the zombie’s skull and it stilled. Two down, but now Helen screamed. Just need to get across the store. Bang, bang, bang. Who the hell was shooting?
The gunfire ceased, and Betty stood inside the store with a perfect two-handed grip on the Glock 22 from the truck. Three zombies laid at Gwen’s feet and two more near Helen. Donald noted that Betty dropped two zombies from the three shots. Wow, the kid could shoot.
“Is everyone OK?” Betty asked.
Both the women nodded yes. That’s a bit of pleasant news, Donald thought.
“From now on, we all need to stick together. There’s safety in numbers,” Betty continued her speech.
Maybe he didn’t have to be the one who kept everyone safe. Even with the close call in this store, this thought lifted his spirits.
“Let’s finish gathering this stuff together and get ou
t of here,” Donald said.
They finished loading the truck with their loot and got back underway again. Maine, here we come.
###
“Betty, where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“Before he got hurt during the Marathon bombing, my dad was a Boston Cop. He wanted his baby girl to be able to defend herself, so he took me to the gun range and taught me how to shoot. After his injury, he turned to the bottle and away from everyone who loved him. His former partner would stop by from time to time to check on us, and she continued to give me lessons at the range.”
“An expert with firearms and zombie knowledge. Any other surprises that you have for us?” Donald asked.
She smiled before she replied. “I play a mean game of Uno.”
“Girl, thanks for saving my ass! I thought I was a goner,” Helen said. “Maybe we’ll get to play some Uno now.”
###
The drive had been quiet, and this put Donald on high alert. He knew the dangers of letting his guard down after the near tragedy in the thrift shop. Both the dead and living had proved dangerous enemies. They had almost reached the Maine border. From Mel’s earlier advice and the GPS guidance, Donald knew a river separated New Hampshire from Maine. A river meant a bridge, and a bridge meant a potential choke point with no cover. If Donald planned an ambush, it would be the ideal place for one. He needed to figure out what to do before they reached the bridge and got trapped without cover. Driving with reckless abandonment while they towed a trailer behind wouldn’t be a workable plan to keep them all alive.
“We’re almost to the border of Maine, and we need to cross a bridge to enter the state. We need a plan to avoid any trouble at the bridge,” Donald said.
“How about we drive fast so we can bust through any trouble?” Matthew asked.
“That works in the movies, but this isn’t a movie, Matthew,” Betty said. “Do you have a drone?”
“Aerial photography hadn’t been my thing, so I’m fresh out of drones. What I am thinking is we should stop short and then go on foot to recon the bridge to see if it’s safe. How’s that for a plan?”
###
About a half mile before they reached the bridge, Donald found a secluded turnoff similar to the rest area where they had spent the night. It wasn’t far off the road, but both the truck and trailer were difficult to see by anyone who passed by on the highway. He had been vague about his plan since Donald knew his entire army would want to volunteer to check out to the bridge. All along his plans included only Gwen and himself. They’d run ahead and scout the crossing for any potential danger.
“Here’s how we will handle this mission. Gwen and I will run to the bridge to see if it’s safe to cross.”
Betty interrupted his speech, “We shouldn’t split up! Didn’t you learn anything at the thrift store?”
“Both Gwen and I are runners, and we can run a mile or two without breaking a sweat. Plus, we need to leave you here to protect the truck and then you’ll come get us when we know everything is safe for us to cross.”
“How are we going to know when it’s safe to come get you?” Asked Betty while she bit her upper lip.
“I picked up some walkie talkies at the thrift shop. It doesn’t look like anyone ever used them. They are expensive ones that have a range well over a mile. When things are safe, we’ll radio for you to come to the bridge and pick us up.”
As they discussed the plan, an SUV raced down the road. “What was that?” Helen asked.
“It looked like a larger SUV headed straight toward the bridge. That’s good for us, because whoever they are will trigger any hidden traps there. Gwen, let’s grab our gear and go.”
They both carried rifles with scopes, extra mags, and a hunting knife. Donald took a Glock 17 as a backup weapon with some extra mags because of its size. A Humvee with a 50-caliber machine gun would have made him feel more comfortable, but this would only be a recon mission. They took a path that kept them close to the woods for cover and would bring them to an overlook on the south side of the bridge. The river crossed through a natural valley, so both sides of the entrance to the bridge had wooded cover along it.
An older pickup truck and other assorted disabled vehicles blocked the bridge. Two men stood in the back of a pickup truck and pointed rifles at the stopped Mercedes SUV. Three more armed men stood on the roadway between the parked truck and the SUV. Two people stood in front of the stopped vehicle with their arms raised. One was a doughy-looking fellow and the other his younger trophy wife. Fatso must have been a rich man because nothing else would explain why this odd couple traveled together.
From their vantage point up on the hill, Donald couldn’t hear the conversation on the bridge below. He could only guess at the topics of their discussion.
“What should we do?” Gwen asked.
“We could leave them all to their own devices, but I’m afraid that would embolden the men on the bridge rather than make them go away.”
“In case you didn’t notice Don, there are five armed men down there and only two of us.”
“I can see that, but we can fool them into thinking we have a much bigger force.”
“How do we do that?”
He explained his plan to her. As they discussed their strategy, one man ripped the shirt off the trophy wife. The doughy man objected and got pistol whipped for his effort. The woman didn’t react to either event. She stood still with everything hanging out in the breeze.
After they witnessed this, Gwen hurried off to take up her position. Donald eased his breathing to ready himself to eliminate the threats on the bridge. He needed to relax and concentrate to take out his targets. It came down to his rifle and the intended target. As he aimed and prepared to pull the trigger for the first time, the pickup truck that blocked the way exploded into a bright orange fireball.
CHAPTER 15 - GWEN QUINN
GWEN’S MIND DIDN’T have time to register fear. One second she picked out clothing in the thrift store and the next she laid on her back wrestling with a zombie. Dead eyes stared into hers while its putrid breath filled her nose with the stench of the grave. Her stomach wretched and her breakfast threatened to make a surprise reappearance. It lunged teeth first and was more handsy than Gwen’s worst high school date. She fought for her life. Then she heard a scream and knew it came from Helen, but Gwen had her own fight and would be no help to her. Gwen didn’t want to die today at the hands or teeth of a zombie. She knew Donald leaned on her as much as she leaned on him, and those kids needed her too. Where had Donald gone? Why didn’t he come to her aid in this fight?
Gwen’s arms turned to rubber, and the zombie’s teeth closed in on their mark of the tender flesh on her neck. Where had her knife gone to? Right then, she thought she had lost her fight, but then she heard the gunshot. The body she had struggled with moments before went still and became a dead weight in her arms. Gwen rolled out from under the corpse and expected to find even more grave news.
What she discovered surprised her instead. Betty stood in the store's doorway with a pistol in her hands. The fourteen-year-old girl became their savior.
###
After the close call with death by the zombie, Gwen knew they had finished their looting of the thrift store. But it had been a blur to her. She operated on automatic pilot. Would she ever adapt to this reality of death around each corner? One disaster after another and any mistake would result in certain death or something much worse. Being a Barista had always been mindless and boring, but she wished to return to her old boring life. She wanted to wake up from this terrible nightmare warm in her comfortable bed in her tiny bedroom. Gwen felt a bond to both Donald and the kids, and she liked it. A connection to other people had been missing from her old life. The apocalypse finally allowed her to let people into her life.
Donald interrupted her few minutes of quiet contemplation when he stopped the truck again in some random turnoff behind the cover of the forest. It looked like the same place they camp
ed at last night. If they hadn’t driven all this time north, Gwen would assume they had ended up right back where they started their day. He explained how there was a bridge ahead and it is the last obstacle they needed to cross before they reached the border of Maine. He wanted to check out the bridge on foot before they tried to drive over it to make sure there weren’t any surprises waiting there for them. Gwen could understand his point since the bridge deck is wide open with no cover as it crosses a river. There isn’t anywhere to hide once you start across the span.
Donald asked her to run with him to the bridge, and Gwen understood why he had chosen her. She had an athletic build built by a daily run. Gwen could cover half a mile with minimal effort and in less than ten minutes. Helen possessed a more voluptuous build not made for running while Betty and Matt were both kids. After they all had failed to concentrate and messed up in the store, she wouldn’t let that happen again. Olympic athletes required a different type of discipline than a soldier, but she’d be sure to remain alert this time. They won’t have Betty as their back up this time either since she would remain with the others in the truck.
As they readied for their run to the bridge, an SUV raced down the road. Where did they come from? Donald guessed this would be good for them since the SUV would flush out any trap set up on the bridge. Gwen didn’t want to watch anyone else die, but it would be better if it happened to a stranger rather than someone from their little group. They all had experienced too much death already. While monsters hunted down humanity, why did men help them satisfy their goal? Survival of the fittest only benefited you when you are the fittest.
Before they departed, Donald explained how the rifle Gwen carried worked. It wasn’t a standard hunting rifle like the one he let her fire at the campground. Donald explained to her this one was an AR-15 assault rifle with a 30-round magazine. Gwen would replace the magazine once she emptied it. She carried five extra magazines with her on this mission. You simply point at the target you want to hit and pull the trigger. Unlike a war movie where the guns fire multiple rounds, this rifle fired only one at a time. One round sent down range each time you pulled the trigger as quickly as you could pull the trigger.
Operation Z | Book 1 | Uprising Page 10
