DUSK 2
By the time they gathered what supplies they could carry from the four bodies and tossed the rest into the dormitory building for the other survivors, the moans around grew louder. None of the gunmen had keys, so they were either in the station wagon or the vehicle had bee hotwired. In either case, it was ready for a quick exit. They only needed to find it.
“Jasper. Did you see where they parked?” Sal asked.
“They disappeared behind some buildings that way,” Jasper answered and began walking.
“Do we use guns now?” asked Wade.
“Not unless we get cornered or until we reach the car,” Sal answered.
“We’d better make sure Jasper doesn’t get himself killed,” Sarah said, clutching a light weight, titanium club.
Sal thought of telling his daughter that Jasper could take care of himself, but wondered if that was true.
“Wade,” Sal said, “stay with Jasper.”
The Greek ran ahead, still holding his tire iron. Sarah watched him run ahead for a moment before turning her eyes to her father. A breeze caught a strand of her long, blonde hair trying to pull it into the night. Her pale skin contrasted the blackish blue sky. Her thin frame had not been constructed for physical confrontation and worse yet, she wore tan khakis and a tank top, leaving her arms unprotected. Sal was tempted to stop her and make his girl wear his jacket, but he wanted to get her to the safety of the car first.
He wondered how he could have been so slow. If he’d have shouted at her before she’d come down, maybe she’d be inside. Then again, the girl had never been good at listening to her father. She’d practiced her shooting to avoid a belt whipping when she was younger, but she’d joined the medical unit and science teams against Sal’s wishes.
Ever since the dead started to walk, Sal had heard tales of freak accidents; restraints breaking in the terminal ward or careless staff members suffering bites from the undead. Most of the research sector had restricted access, which meant that Sal had no way to make sure his daughter was safe while she was at work. Sometimes in the pub, he would hear about a disaster, and listen for his daughter’s name. She’d never been mentioned, maybe because of luck or maybe she’d learned something from her old man.
“Sarah,” Sal said, “if you’re coming with us, I need you to do everything I say. Don’t wander off alone and when we get a chance, I want you to put on a jacket.”
“I understand,” she said.
Although he wished his daughter was in the relative safety of the dormitory, she’d had a point when she said that if Sal and the others didn’t make it back, the survivors were dead. It would also be nice having her around. Not only would Sal get to spend time with his daughter, but she had more medical training than anyone under Sal’s command.
An undead body stepped out from behind a building, less than 50 yards away. It was followed by another, and another, and another, and twenty more. A few of them were missing arms, hands, or large chunks of skin, but most of them were intact.
So far, they were only coming from one direction, so Sal took Sarah’s hand and pulled her along, following Jasper and Wade at a faster pace.
“It shouldn’t be far!” Jasper called.
When the boy stopped, Sal looked around and saw no car. He pushed Sarah at Wade, and ran to the nearest alley, searching for a vehicle and praying that Jasper had not led them into a dead end. His heart thumped, like God had hit the fast forward button on his heart until he found a station wagon in the third alley over.
“Here!”
He yanked open the driver’s door, followed by the doors on the passenger’s side. After throwing the crowbar and shotgun inside, Sal took aim with a hunting rifle, prepared to give the others cover fire. The undead were close, but the the others stood little chance of being cornered before reaching the car.
When they were at the doors, Wade pushed Sarah into the front passenger seat, then lunged into the seat behind Sal’s and Jasper took the last seat. Sal shut the driver’s side door.
“Look in the glove compartment,” Sal told his daughter and he lowered the sun visors.
“Here,” she said, passing over a key.
Sal brought life to the transmission, shifted gears, and bowled over any zombies in his path. The station wagon was armored in the same fashion as the one they spotted earlier, so it could take some abuse on the road. They were safe as long as they didn’t run out of gas in the middle of an undead mob.
“When we get to a quiet spot, I want to check our supplies,” Sal said.
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.
“We saw a car go by shortly before sunset. We’re going to see if we can pick up a trail.”
As Sal accelerated passed the broken fence, the crowd of undead who followed them into the compound shrank in his mirror.
*
As soon as the car started rolling, Jasper’s mood had changed. With nowhere to run and nothing to bash, he just sat there, staring out of the window. Wade felt sorry for him, but they’d all lost someone. Wade had a brother, parents, and extended family there, who were probably dead. He’d been ten when the dead started to walk, so he was old enough to remember those first few weeks, when seeing a reanimated corpse was shocking and unusual. Had his father not sensed something wrong about his grandmother after she died of a stroke and got up again, Wade would have been another victim lost in the crumbling of society.
What worried Wade was the destruction of their home and the probable slaughter of everyone the attackers found. Aside from an army of psychopaths, the four people in the car and the survivors in the dormitory might have been all that was left of humanity. They hadn’t heard from anyone outside of their own compound in over ten years. Even if there were other settlements, they were probably thousands of miles away, if not across the oceans. They may never meet.
If that was the case, Wade wondered what the point in continuing was. Twenty-four people could not build a long lasting society. Even when they lived among five hundred, their numbers dwindled every year. More people were dying than were being born. Though they were still comfortable, the situation might have become desperate in ten years. Maybe even as few as five.
Wade wasn’t like Sal. He needed some incentive. He needed something positive in the future, where Sal saw survival as his duty. If Sal were the only person left alive, he’d still go after the car they spotted. He’d take his revenge then live out his life wherever he could.
Turning his attention away from Jasper, Wade paused on Sarah, who shifted her gaze between her father and the road. She hadn’t been out this far before. Outside of pictures and movies, this was the first she’d ever seen of farmland which was less than twenty miles away.
Wade remembered how furious she’d been when he told her he was going to be on Sal’s team, just as she’d been when Sal volunteered to lead it. She’d been certain that she’d never see her father again, but she could handle it. What she couldn’t handle was losing her lover at the same time.
He wondered if Sal suspected anything or if Sarah was ever planning on telling her father. Wade was not only a friend of her father, but ten years older than her, so Sarah had been apprehensive about telling him. Wade wasn’t looking forward to the meeting either, because it would probably be punctuated by his broken knee caps.
Sarah smiled and stroked her father’s arm. They talked in low voices, so Wade could not make out what they said. The girl seemed content. She’d accepted the situation, but found joy because two important men in her life were still alive.
Wade looked out of the window in time to see the damage left behind by the fire that forced them into the stream.
“I’ll be damned,” Sal said.
“I think we lucked out,” Wade said.
“What?” Sarah asked.
“Keep an eye out for deer,” Sal said.
Sarah shot a quizitive look at Wade. He shrugged.
“We just left her there,” Jasper said. “We just left Connie hanging there like that.”
In the commotion they hadn’t had a chance to put the victims in the ballroom to rest.
“I think we should check our supplies here,” Sal said.
The station wagon turned onto a driveway, and pulled to a stop next to the burned out barn, where they had rested before the fire. Everyone but Jasper got out of the car.
“Sarah, honey. I want you to take inventory with Wade,” Sal said.
He opened Jasper’s door and pulled him out of the car. The newly confirmed widow and probably orphan was crying. Putting an arm around his shoulders, Sal led him towards the other side of the barn.
“If there are any problems, I want both of you in the car. Honk the horn and drive around. If you don’t see us five minutes afterwards, leave without us. And Wade, if you don’t do it I’ll kill you.”
“Daddy!”
“Got it, sir.”
When the others disappeared around the corner, Sarah threw herself at Wade and kissed his lips.
“Oh God, Wade. I’m sorry I’ve neglected you.”
“It’s alright. When I saw the base, I thought everyone was dead.”
“I’m so glad you two are alive.”
Wade tightened his arms around her waist.
“I just feel bad for Jasper,” Sarah said. “Connie and Patricia were both wonderful people. I didn’t want him to see that.”
“Maybe we should break this up before your father comes back and kills me,” Wade said, thinking about what might have happened to his missing family.
They kissed one more time, then opened the back.
Four duffle bags and two boxes rested behind the rear seat. As Wade hefted them out, he grunted. Each was probably filled with ammunition and canned food.
*
“I should have never left her,” Jasper said.
“We had to go or we’d have been stuck in that dorm building.”
“I should have never gone on the mission.”
“If you hadn’t you’d be dead in some ditch and we probably would have never made it through the city. If I hadn’t had Sarah, I don’t know how I would have gotten through my wife’s death. I know what you’re going through is rough but you have a purpose right now. You have a mission and people are counting on us. When we get back, you can take care of your wife and sister, but if you’re going to do that we have to get back there alive.”
A line of snot dribbled from Jasper’s nose and he sniffed it back in.
“I never though I’d find… like that. I thought they’d taken her prisoner.”
Sal couldn’t blame Jasper for falling apart. Had Connie or Patricia been alive and Sarah been dead and hanging on the wall, Sal probably would not have been able to leave the dorm, even with his rage. Maybe he should have sent the boy back to the dorm to stay with the other survivors, but he needed someone with some combat experience.
“You know, I’d never killed a man before,” Jasper said.
“It had to be done, and even if it didn’t I wouldn’t have told anyone on you,” Sal said. “You know, I killed someone years before all this. I’d been caught up with one of those radical anti-establishment groups. We’d robbed a few banks, but this one time something went wrong. A security guard showed up when he wasn’t supposed to. There was a struggle and I shot him. I couldn’t live with it for years. Instead I started drinking.”
Sal hadn’t even told his wife or Sarah about the shooting. He’d been lucky in that nobody identified the robbers and there was little physical evidence. After the shooting, Sal had disassociated himself with the group and made a point to keep it a secret even after the legal system had died with most of humanity.
Jasper’s face was aimed at the soil, shielding his eyes from the starlight, but the crying had stopped.
“Wipe your face off and let’s help the others.”
Jasper didn’t respond, so Sal slapped him in the face.
“Come on!”
For a moment, the boy gazed towards the woods in shock, then he rubbed his face on his sleeve and walked back to the station wagon.
*
Ty Cooper knew they were close when they pulled past a two car wreck, which stretched across the road, but left squeeze room on the shoulder. One of the cars had flipped upside down, and the road was splattered with crumpled glass and scraps of rusty metal which had been sitting there for twenty-two years.
Soon they would be through the country roads and back into crumbling developments and maybe a few turns away from their target while the other groups were riding to their deaths.
Stop here, someone else thought in Ty’s head.
“Why don’t you pull over here? Our turn off is coming and I want to check everything out before he enter a hot zone.”
Hayden stopped the car in the middle of the road, and everyone stepped out.
“Jud, Oscar, take a look at our supplies. Hayden, look at the engine. I’m going to take a leak.”
As he walked to the woods, Ty expected to see a pair of glowing red eyes in the darkness. Maybe they’d be attached to a psychotic cartoon cat. Instead he was greeted by trees and shadows. He’d brought a shotgun in case there were any stray lepers in the woods, but nothing was hiding in the darkness.
After penetrating the tree line, Ty discovered that he really did have to piss. He unzipped his fly, and sprayed the nearest tree.
Cooper, the voice in his head called.
Ty jumped and looked back, expecting to see someone but saw only plants.
This road is not safe.
“What do you mean?”
There are others.
“Who are you?”
No answer.
As he squeezed off the last few drops, Ty hoped that he hadn’t hosed down his boots. He zipped up and looked around the forest searching for the entity, although he knew it would be nowhere. Though the woods were black and he was afraid of getting lost or even left behind by his own men, Ty walked a little further into the woods.
Something took control of his neck, craning his head to the left, where an unnatural light gleamed through the darkness. In a wide, circular beam of light, he saw a settlement, surrounded by a sturdy wall, spots of which had been demolished. He’d seen similar setups in the past, but this one was from his dream. Unlike in the dream, there was some sort of activity. He could see spotlights and headlights moving about, but not what cast them.
His head jerked to the right, and he saw one of the station wagons Reed had sent out, only it wasn’t driven by the faithful. Instead, the passengers were three strange men, and a blond Ty instantly wanted to rape.
I knew there was a reason I chose you, the voice said. She can be yours after you find the city and deliver the news to Reed. They are headed along this road now, but if they catch you now, you won’t get out of the ruined city alive.
The visions disappeared, but a path to the station wagon illuminated. He followed.
“Let’s get a move on it. I want to find them tonight if I can.”
Without speaking, the others got into the car.
*
The naked corpse of a man in his early twenties wriggled on a makeshift crucifix with its arms and fixed to the post with nails. The man had been dead for less than a day and his face was bloody from both the beatings he received before being nailed in place and the barbed wire crown upon his head. Blood ran down his shoulder from an unmended bullet wound. The eyes were milky and grey, but not vacant or zombielike.
The undead man was backdropped by a ruined and repopulated city, full of high stretching apartment and office buildings, each connected by rope bridges. The stars dotted the black sky, but the ground was bright as though it was noon and not a cloud was in the sky.
Slowly, the dead man raised his head.
“Jasper,” a raspy voice said.
“How did you know my name?” he asked.
“Jasper,” the corpse said again. This time, the fingers on the body’s right hand curled inward, except for the index finger.
Jasper looked where the digit pointed and saw himself, Wade, Sal, and Sarah crucified and undead. Unlike the others who were in the same mock Christian pose, the girl’s legs were stuck open, leaving her in an X position.
A crowd of grizzly hecklers stood in front of the crosses, throwing bricks, bottles, and stones. A few of the men took turns raping Sarah’s corpse. They chanted “burn in Hell, lepers” at the bodies, and some of them spat.
In front of them, a man with a missing eye and wearing a red hood preached verses to the crowd. As he talked, the hecklers grew more frenzied. They snarled, and crawled on all fours. One of them took a bite out of the undead, blonde stranger’s leg.
Unnoticed by the crowd, a burly man with black hair and a grizzled beard stood behind them, smiling. His eyes were brown, but empty while his grin held both satisfaction and contempt. When Jasper looked closer, he saw gunshot wounds in the man’s chest.
An armored station wagon flew past the smirking monstrosity, and a waving hand popped out of the front passenger side window, while a rifle from the back driver’s side window spouted a white, milky fluid.
As the crowd continued to feast on the stranger he said, “fear them.”
*
Wade rested his head against the window, forcing his eyes to stay open. They were probably safe as long as the car kept moving, but if something went wrong he wanted to be alert. The sandman had been winning the battle until Jasper screamed, shooting his foot out, hitting Wade’s shin.
As Wade yelped in surprise, Jasper continued to kick, and clawed at the door. Still straddling the border between the dream world and reality, Jasper didn’t seem to realize that opening the car door would result in a death tumble along the side of the road.
“Fear them!” he shouted. “Don’t let them take you alive!”
Sal cursed under his breath, but kept his attention on the road, while Sarah turned back and watched with her hand over her mouth, not knowing what to do.
Before the dreaming man’s hand could grasp the door handle, Wade tackled him and pulled his arms down. Jasper struggled until Wade slapped him in the face, hard. His eyes widened and he looked around the car before pushing Wade off and pressing his face against the window.
“Are you alright?” Sarah asked.
“How long was I out?” Jasper asked, breathing heavily.
“Ten miles,” Sal said.
“It’s over,” Sarah said, putting a hand on Jasper’s knee.
Wade wished he’d had the nightmare.
“I think it’s time we turn in for the night,” Sal said. “That farmhouse ahead looks good.”
“What if someone comes by? That’s right on the road,” Wade asked.
Jasper balled his hands into fists, but his eyes widened in fear.
“That wreck ain’t gonna hold a bunch of people. Only a small group would stop there for the night,” Sal said.
“That place looks like it’ll fall over if we slam the door,” Sarah said.
“Which means people are less likely to stop there. Nobody is looking for us, so they have no reason to check that house and we all need sleep.”
Sal turned the station wagon onto a dirt road, and pulled behind the farmhouse, out of view of the road. After killing the transmission Sal got out, holding his crowbar. Sarah held her club, following her father’s example. Not trusting his tire iron in a pinch, Wade was ready to fire his shotgun if anything came out of the woods, but Jasper stumbled out unarmed.
“Do you hear anything?” Sarah asked.
“I might if you’d shut your mouth.”
She turned her head and Wade saw the pain in her eyes. Judging from Sal’s expression, he regretted snapping at his daughter, but couldn’t contain the remark. He was starting to treat her like he would any new recruit.
A breeze pushed the tall grass, rocking it back and forth. A gas pump was in the distance. Wade expected it to be dry, but the group would check it after securing the house. Once he was satisfied with the surroundings, Sal moved towards the house, still ready to swing the crowbar but motioned for the others to stand back. The door had fallen off of the hinges years ago, so Sal did not have to worry about what might be waiting behind it. Without slowing his pace, he disappeared inside.
Sarah moved closer to Wade and leaned in, putting her mouth close to his ear and letting her hand linger on his forearm.
“I don’t like this place?”
“If Sal chose it, I’m sure it’s safe.”
Sal’s arm shot out of the darkened doorway and he waved for the others to come in.
“Downstairs is clear and I’m not sure if the stairway will hold our weight.”
Jasper ignored Sal’s words and pushed his way past the rest of the group then ran to the stairs.
“What the fuck? Wade, pull him back down here!”
Leaving Sal behind to watch his daughter, Wade dashed after Jasper. As he made his way up the stairs, he felt the wood bend under his feet. If the stairs didn’t give, he expected the floor to shatter under his weight. Though he could not hear it in the excitement, Wade imagined that the boards under his feet were creaking like furniture was being dropped on them.
From the top of the stairs, he saw Jasper run over a fallen door and into a bedroom. The door lifted itself and blocked the entrance.
What the fuck?
Wade ran to the now closed doorway. Remembering his training, Wade kicked around where the handle should have been with no result but a sore foot. He kicked again, and again and again and again…