Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (27 page)

As it was, he had no sunglasses and the
corpse-littered house killed any levity he may have felt. Gordon
looked down at Norman’s corpse for a quiet moment. He wondered how
many others he would see similarly in the days to come.

The big green Land Rover was parked on the
opposite side of the lodge in a carport with a pair of high end
Ski-Doo snow-machines and equally nice Honda four-wheelers. Next to
the carport was a partially constructed single-engine plane beneath
a blue and green tarpaulin.

“Geez,” Neil remarked. “This guy had more
toys than Santa.”

There wasn’t time to admire the vehicles;
Tom’s wound and his disposition were both going from bad to worse.
Neil had seen it far too many times. The process was painfully
familiar. He wished he could spare them all, but there was no
getting around it. Tom was living on borrowed time and if they
weren’t careful, he would be borrowing from all of them.

They arrived back at Gordon’s house to find
a table full of food and Betsy waiting at the window above the
front door. She hid her relief at Gordon’s return. She asked with a
smile, “Did you stop at the car dealership? Dear, you should
probably consult your wife before...”

Betsy’s mirth dried up when she saw Tom in
the doorway. He was being carried more than he was walking, his
legs dangling and useless on most steps. His arm looked terrible,
like he had been poisoned or something. The flesh around an obvious
bite was discolored and the veins leading away from the wound
looked to be filled with tar. Tom, barely hanging on to his
consciousness, was led to a spare bedroom upstairs.

Neil recommended that they tie Tom to the
bed as a precaution. William understood Neil’s concerns but was
still not clear on the specifics. He accepted that something
happened to people suffering bites by those who had already been
infected, although he didn’t know if he accepted that nothing could
be done once someone was bitten. Neil seemed to be in an awful rush
to put a bullet between people’s eyes.

Then again, William had stopped Neil from
doing the same to Ferguson who then tried to attack them the same
way Norman had attacked him. It was all just so crazy and surreal
to think that any of this could be happening. This was the stuff of
folklore and of the past. How could this be happening in this day
and age?

Maybe he would get some answers after
talking with Mia. Perhaps some of those information gaps plaguing
his understanding would be bridged.

Back down in the main room, Neil said to
William, “I think we should head back to your lodge. We need to let
them know what’s going on.”

William agreed with a nod. “We’ll head back
over there in just a little bit...before it gets dark. I think we
should sit down and talk first.”

So talk they did while Gordon and Betsy ate
their meal. There was ample food for everyone, but no one else had
much of an appetite. Gordon ate, though he only nibbled so as not
to offend his wife.

Neil started with a warning. “No one should
go into Tom’s room alone and no one should go in unarmed.”

The stern militancy of Neil’s tone and his
words caught everyone off guard. He was a stranger after all. Who
was he to tell them what they should do or how they should care for
one of their own? Betsy was visibly stunned.

She was about to tell Neil what she thought
but was cut off by Mia saying, “He’s probably right.”

All eyes were suddenly on her. No one
expected her to say that. William was afraid they were going to
have to force her to take part in the conversation. To be truthful,
Mia surprised herself with the comment as well. She reached into
the middle of the table and grabbed a fresh dinner roll and a
napkin.

“When they brought Nakissha into the lodge,”
Mia said, “she was half crazed. She wouldn’t stop crying and going
on about the people who attacked her and the others. She called
them murderers, butchers, and cannibals. Most of what she said I
couldn’t understand because she was crying so much.

“Nakissha was always so dramatic. It was
hard to know what to believe and what to chalk up to just coming
from her, you know? Like that time she was tellin’ everyone about
almost being eaten by that shark down out of Yakutat. I mean,
really.

“Ole Doc Brewster, he gave her something to
calm her down. That was about when those things who had chased her
showed up. That was awful. I stayed inside but watched most of it
through the window. It was like watching a horror movie or
something. Did any of you ever see that movie
28
Days
Later
? It was kind of like that. They just kept coming
no matter how many times they were shot. I never seen no one shot
before, but I didn’t imagine it was anything like that.

“They finally brought those things down but
not before they’d bit another couple guys. They took Nakissha to
the front room and put her on the couch. The bite didn’t look that
bad, but she went from bad to worse really quick. The skin on her
face and arms...it was like it lost all its color. Her veins
started to show through like they were trying to come through the
surface or something.

“We took turns watching her and Doc Brewster
gave her a couple of shots to try and help her sleep but nothing
worked. She was having a hard time breathing and she got really
restless, jerking and shaking.

“I don’t know what happened, but sometime
early in the night after most everyone had gone to bed, we all got
woken up by a scream. I started to go downstairs when I heard
another scream. It wasn’t a woman’s scream though. Like I said, I
don’t know what happened. I thought maybe it was Nakissha...maybe
something had happened. Maybe she had died or was having some kind
of a fit or something. I don’t know. For as many people as were
staying at the lodge, it sure seemed empty when I started going
down the stairs. I heard some footsteps running and then a door
slamming shut.

“From the top of the stairs I saw someone
run by being chased by someone else. It was still too dark for me
to see who it was though. There was some fighting or something
happening in the kitchen. I heard dishes breaking and the sound of
pans getting banged around. Then Melinda screamed. She ran by me up
the stairs and shut the door to her sewing room. I don’t think she
even saw me. She was just running to get away from something.
That’s when I got scared.

“I walked down the stairs real slow. There
was still an awful lot of activity in other rooms. It sounded like
fights or something. When I got into the main room, Nakissha wasn’t
on the couch. She just wasn’t there…” Mia became quiet as she
remembered that terrifying moment. “I looked around but it was so
dark.” Mia started to choke up as the memory hit her.

Breathing deeply and trying to control her
emotions she picked up her tale. “I just wandered for a few seconds
and ended up in another room. I found Nakissha. She was sitting on
Norman’s chest and had her head down on his neck like they were
making out or something. No wonder Melinda was so upset. I thought
that maybe she had walked in on the two of them going at it or
something. But then Nakissha pulled away from Norman and I saw what
she was doing. She wasn’t kissing him. She was...she was...and
Norman, he looked...he looked… dead.” Mia’s voice was cracking with
emotion and her breathing was shallow and labored, as if she might
hyperventilate at any moment.

“And then Tom was there next to me. He
touched my shoulder and I about jumped outta my skin. He whispered
something but I didn’t catch it. Nakissha did though. She stopped
eating on Norman and looked up like a wild animal. Tom pushed me
out of the doorway and was running before I could even move. She
chased him up the stairs and didn’t even see me. He saved my life.
When he pushed me outta the way, he saved my life.”

With that, Neil understood why she was so
adamant about bringing Tom back with them despite what she knew to
be true about his wound. He asked her, “Then what happened?”

“I really don’t know how much time passed. I
heard Nakissha pounding on a wall or something. I guess it must
have been the bathroom door where Tom was hiding. I saw some other
people run through the room and heard them go out the back. I don’t
know who all made it out or who was bitten or not. I would guess
that there were at least a few who were probably like Nakissha. I
don’t know about the others.

“I decided maybe I just should get outta
there too. When I crossed the doorway to the room where Norman was
laying though, I looked in and saw that he wasn’t there anymore.
Well, he wasn’t laying on the floor anyway. I still didn’t know
about the bites. He was standing at the window. I remember hearing
a dripping sound and wondering what it was. It was blood, wasn’t
it? I think I knew it even then. There was something about him that
was…off. He was too stiff everywhere but his neck. He had a hard
time controlling his neck and his head. He looked like a person
with that disease that guy had in that movie...Parkinson’s or
something like that. Then his arms started to do it too. It was the
creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. It made me sick to my stomach to
watch.

“When I turned to run, he must’ve heard me.
He was on my heels almost immediately. I ran through the kitchen
and then back around to the other hallway that comes out by the
stairs. He slipped on a pan on the floor in the kitchen, so I got
away. The front door was too far away and I could still hear
Nakissha upstairs pounding on the door. The only option I had was
that equipment closet under the stairs. I climbed in and held my
breath just a second before Norman was standing there. I think he
knew that I was still there. I don’t know if he heard me or maybe
smelled me, but he knew.”

Mia was crying again. Betsy too had begun to
tear up. She reached over and grabbed Gordon’s hand, who then laid
his other hand over hers. William stepped away from the table and
looked out the window.

Gordon asked, “What is going on? None of
this seems real. How could it be?”

“The only thing that matters is this is how
it is,” Neil said. “I don’t want to sound cold, because I was just
like you not that long ago. We came from Anchorage where I think
this all started. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve seen.” He paused
as he too remembered those early days. He recalled the carnage, the
fear, and the doubt. Then he remembered the faces of those first
days and found himself remembering two he missed terribly: his
friend Dr. Jonathan Caldwell and his love Meghan Taylor, both of
whom were lost on their journey to Whittier. His eyes were dry
though. The pain was still there, stabbing at his chest as if he
had swallowed shards of glass, but the tears refused to come.

Neil stood. “I think we are in a good spot
here. And not just here in Shotgun Cove. Whittier is an ideal spot.
With that tunnel closed off, there isn’t an infinite supply of
zombies. We can clean the city up, if we’re careful about it. We
can make this place work, but we have to start here...in Shotgun
Cove.”

William asked, “So what next?”

Emma and Jerry were sitting on the large
balcony on the front of William’s lodge. The front porch,
completely screened in to ward off mosquitoes, was directly below
them. It was chilly but not yet truly cold. They had a fire burning
in a stone fire pit radiating heat between the two of them. The sky
was still gray, but there was no more snow. It was just a matter of
time before the real winter storms hit. The evergreen trees, the
only ones with any hint of green left on them, were covered in a
thin coat of white, which clung to the individual needles. The path
leading to the lodge from the main road was covered in snow, except
for Neil’s, William’s, and Gordon’s footprints, but the leaf and
foliage covered ground below the trees was free of snow. The air
was moist and cool, threatening more snow at any moment.

Emma was smoking another cigarette she had
pilfered a couple of days earlier. She said, “You know, I quit.
Well, I liked to
tell
myself that I quit.
Every now and again I would fall off the wagon and have a cigarette
when I was out, but I didn’t keep them in my apartment anymore. I
guess that was an accomplishment, wasn’t it? Now, I can’t think of
anything that I’d rather have than a good cigarette.”

“I quit a few years back,” Jerry said.

“Are you okay?” Emma asked him. “What I mean
is, how are you doing?”

Emma knew that both Jerry and Neil were
stinging from recent losses as much as she was. All three of them
had lost someone close to them over the past few days. Emma
considered herself the luckiest of the three because she’d had an
opportunity to tell Dr. Caldwell goodbye. Meghan had fallen prey to
a zombie on the Portage Highway while Neil was away and Claire had
been abducted and tortured to death by a lunatic with that militia
down in Soldotna. Neither Neil nor Jerry had been afforded a last
moment with their loves, which likely made it much more painful and
harder to let go.

Jerry lifted the binoculars around his neck
to look again at the forest in front of them. Still looking through
the twin lenses, he said, “I can’t get the image of her lying on
that table out of my mind. What did they do to her? Why? She didn’t
deserve that. Why did it have to be her? I sit here looking through
these damned glasses and all I see is her.”

Emma just let him speak. He hadn’t had an
opportunity to let it out yet, so she got out of the way of his
emotions and let it come.

“What kind of people do things like that?
Especially now? Ya know, the zombies...zekes...whatever we’re
calling them now, they don’t do things like that. They don’t
torture and don’t take pleasure in what they do. They are just
acting on instinct and impulse. It’s not personal. But when people
do things like that to other people, I just wonder if maybe it
would just be better if humans went away completely.”