Born in the Apocalypse 2: State Of Ruin (2 page)

Chapter 4

We moved back towards the ravine, and I had to say Kim did a pretty good job of staying quiet. She wasn’t half as good as I was, or Trey for that matter, but she was learning.

When we reached the edge, I looked over and did not expect to see what I saw. There were bodies on the ground, the ones that hit their heads on the rocks when they fell and the ones that we had put down.

The rest of them, however, were nowhere to be found. The ditch was empty.

“Well, shoot,” I said. “This just got a lot harder.” I looked back at Kim. “I’ll take the lead this time. Stay behind me by a good ten yards, but keep me in sight.”

Kim just nodded. Her eyes were wide, but her hands were steady, which was all I needed right now.

I went into hunter mode, moving steadily around trees and bushes. The leaves were coming in nicely, but I wasn’t concerned about the ones on the plants, it was the ones on the ground that were the problem. Generations of falling leaves had covered the ground in a multi-hued blanket that cushioned my steps, but the ones on top were extremely crunchy, forcing me to shift through the new leaves to find the soft ones underneath. It was slower than just plowing through the leaves, but it was also silent, which allowed me to hear the Trippers who weren’t as cautious as I was.

I heard footsteps to the right, and as I shifted around a tree, I saw two of them moving through the woods. They were still on the other side of the ditch, but the incline was much less and they could easily get to us if we stood still and waited, which I didn’t plan on doing.

I drew my arrow back and sighted along the shaft, then released. I was using my old bow, but I had replaced the lighter limbs with heavier ones my dad had put away for when I was stronger. Instead of being twenty-five pounds, I was using the forty-five-pound limbs. It took me a bit to get used to the additional power, but I appreciated the reach the new limbs gave me. I was good for accurate hits out to a hundred yards or more, and could easily reach out and touch a Tripper at one-fifty.

I hit the first Tripper in the back of the head, dropping him to his knees. The second one took a look back at his companion and that’s when he saw me. His bloodshot eyes narrowed and his mouth opened, revealing bloodstained teeth. His eyes opened suddenly very wide as an arrow went through his open mouth, spiking his brain and killing him. He died with the same surprised look on his face.

“Thanks for the target,” I said to him as I put another arrow on my riser, moving forward again. I looked back and Kim gave me a small smile and thumbs up.

I kept going, and we eventually made it to Laraway Road. The street stretched away out of sight to the west, and to the east, I could see it slide away until it rose to crest a small hill. I knew under that hill was a major interstate, since Trey and I had walked it before, outrunning and outsmarting hundreds of Trippers.

It was on that trip that I saw the lights. And that memory has haunted me for nearly three years. I never told anyone about the lights, but they were always there, a will-o-the-wisp of my mind, calling to me, beckoning me to the beyond.

“Now what?” Kim asked. She looked around and saw the same thing I did. The Trippers were nowhere to be seen.

“Well, we couldn’t ask for a better killing field,” I said. “Let’s make some noise.”

“What? Let’s just get home!” Kim pleaded.

“Can’t. We don’t know where those Trippers are and there’s a lot of cover for them to hide behind. I’d rather get them out in the open. Much clearer shots,” I said.

“Can you reload fast enough?” Kim asked.

“Been doing this for years. Get them here and you’ll see something,” I said, being a little cocky.

Kim gave me a half smile then she screamed. I actually jumped a little, it was that loud and that sudden.

I took out my remaining arrows, shaking off the mud that was on them. I put them back and waited. I figured we were waiting on around ten of them, maybe more, maybe less.

Kim took a spot behind me, facing the other direction. I had to smile a little. She was getting better all the time.

The first Trippers came out of the woods on the left side, announcing their presence by barreling through the underbrush and causing entire trees to shake in their rush to get to whatever was making the noise. Two showed up first, and I waited until they reached the edge of the road before I sent arrows their way. The roadbed was higher by about four feet, and the Trippers slowed as they reached that barrier. I didn’t fire until they were up on the road itself, because I didn’t want to waste arrows on Trippers that were stumbling and presenting a more difficult target.

The first Tripper went down with an arrow in the side of his head, and the second one got it in the eye when she turned her head to see where the threat was coming from. I heard the twang of a bowstring behind me and I knew Kim was in the fight.

“Did you get him?” I asked over my shoulder.

“First shot, about twenty-five yards!” came the reply.

“Nice.” I didn’t speak again as another two came out of the woods, and these were worse to look at than the first two. Two men, around middle age, were liberally covered in blood and bits of meat. Their clothing was torn, and I could see bleeding tears in their faces where something fought back with desperate ferocity. These were examples of the new behavior we were seeing in the Trippers, and it was as unpleasant to see as it was to hear.

These two came at us faster, and I was hard put to get the second shot in quickly enough to get the second man down. He collapsed barely ten feet from me, looking up at me with his new arrow-filled eye. I wasn’t going for chest shots with these guys, I was going straight for the confirmed kill.

The bow behind me twanged, and then there was a curse, and I heard a sharp intake of breath. I spun around, drawing back on the arrow I had waiting and saw Kim struggling to get her arrow nocked on the string. The Tripper she had missed was barely five yards away and coming in fast. I took a half-step to the side and put an arrow right in the Tripper’s forehead, snapping his head back and dropping him to the ground.

Kim brought her bow up. “Thanks.”

“You’d do the same,” I said.

I turned back to the road and saw three more coming up from the left side of the street. That was what I had been afraid of. The small floodplain was covered in small trees and prairie grass that was easily eight feet high. In that maze, we wouldn’t see the Trippers until they were tearing our throats out.

I put these three down as quickly as I could, since they were closer and a larger threat. Also being closer, my arrows found their mark easily. The power of the bow was pretty evident as I could see the arrows protruding from both sides of their heads.

I hadn’t heard anything from Kim’s side, so I stole a look aver my shoulder. She was taking aim at a Tripper that was easily fifty yards away, and I could see her controlling her breathing, bringing her bow up but not pulling back on the string, just aiming so she did not have to strain on the bow while trying to align her shot. She suddenly pulled back and with a small aiming check, let loose.

The arrow flew in a graceful arc, streaking towards the Tripper. It struck with a smacking sound, and the Tripper stumbled for a second, but kept moving. The arrow had struck the Tripper in the hip, and it walked awkwardly but determinedly.

“Well, I’d say that was a hell of a shot, even though you didn’t put it down,” I said.

Kim stamped her foot indignantly. “I hit it! And if it wasn’t a Tripper, they’d be on the ground in pain right now!”

“No arguing that. But that particular Tripper is in our way, and she’s weaving too much to waste an arrow on,” I said.

Kim pursed her lips. “Okaay…Now what?”

I don’t know why, but I felt the need to show off a little. I slipped my bow onto my back and pulled my knife, the one my father had given me just a few years ago. For some reason, it felt like that was a long time ago.

“Now I do this the hard way,” I said. I walked up the road to the Tripper, who had zeroed in on me and was moving steadily in my direction. She was a young woman, and was wearing what looked like a nurse’s uniform. She probably got the disease from a patient who had come in and infected the entire hospital. Her face was pale and blotchy, and her eyes were deeply bloodshot. Her wheezing breath came out faster as I approached, and she lunged forward trying to grab me. I batted her hands away and brought my knife up under her chin. The long blade slammed her teeth shut as it broke its way through her skull and into her brain. Her eyes rolled up, and as she fell, I held onto my knife. It slid out of her skull with an odd squeaking sound.

I wiped my blade off on her shirt and looked back at Kim.

“We’d better get moving. God knows if there are more of them coming,” I said.

Kim came over to me. She looked down at the dead Tripper and then back up to me.

“You need to teach me that,” she said.

“Deal. Let’s get home,” I said, taking my bow off my shoulder and pulling one of the few arrows I had left. If we ran into a group larger than seven, I was going to be very busy.

Chapter 5

We crossed the tree line and got into the woods. I could see pretty well in front of me, and I followed a trail that I had been down many times before. There weren’t many places in this particular wood I hadn’t been.

The two of us moved quickly, following the same game trails we had tracked so many times before. I was aiming to get to the top of the dam and see how things were at home from the vantage point of being forty feet in the air. I remembered in a flash that same vantage point was the one where I watched my mother commit suicide. I pushed that cheery thought out of my head as we emerged out of the thick woods and onto the top of the dam.

Across the road, past the line of old oak trees, sat my house and Kim’s house. A stone fence ran around my house and down toward the creek. Over the last two years, I had taken down the fence that separated my house from Kim’s, and added it to the fence she had around her house. The end result was a much larger area for the horses to run around in, and they were able to go down to the creek and get their own water. I had dismantled a large steel gate from an abandoned subdivision and used that to make a fenced-off the area by the creek to keep it protected from Trippers.

I checked the yard and couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. My horse Judy was standing by the fence, sticking her head over and looking up at the two of us standing on the dam. Pumpkin was nowhere to be seen, but she was likely to be in her stall in Kim’s garage.

“Looks clear,” I said.

“Seems to be,” Kim replied.

I looked back over the flood plain and didn’t see anything moving out there. We may have actually cleared a mob all by ourselves. Since dealing with Trippers in the past usually involved running away, this actually felt better. I guess on the scale of things, we reduced the number of worries we had by about fifteen.

I moved down the hill and crossed the street, keeping an eye on the road. Trippers usually followed the path of least resistance, and that typically was a street. The old trees, with their long fingers of budding leaves, reached out to greet us as we stepped beneath their canopies of ancient branches. I reached out and put a hand on the oldest one, a giant of an oak with a trunk diameter of at least ten feet. It was a tradition I had started with my dad when he first taught me how to hunt. It was a gesture of respect for the best survivor of us all. I liked to think the old tree missed me when I was gone and waited for me to return.

No one else did, I suppose. Not these days, anyway.

We reached the back gate and Judy blew at me, tossing her head and shaking out her mane. She was a vain one, that girl.

Once inside, Kim hit me lightly on the shoulder.

“Well, Josh, you sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Kim said.

I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, so I just looked at her for a minute.

“Oh, jeez!” Kim threw up her hands. “I need you to read some of
my
books for a change.” Kim turned towards her house. “I’ll see you later. I need to find my horse.”

I watched her leave with a sense of relief and loss. I really didn’t know what to make of what I was feeling, so I shrugged it off as nerves.

Back inside my house, I put my gear away and carefully cleaned my knife. I wasn’t too concerned about the arrows I had lost. Between the ones I made and the ones I recovered from an old archery shop, I had close to three hundred arrows.

I whistled for Judy to come in, and after dinner, as the last glows from the setting sun drifted between the trees, I settled myself into a thick chair and a welcoming book.

My formal education ended with my mother’s death, but I kept it alive and well with a near insatiable desire to read everything I could get my hands on. I was walled off from the real world, but from my growing library, I explored horizons beyond the edges of hemispheres I would never actually see. Through my books I learned about customs and cultures the world over, and a little about life as it might have been had the Trippers never showed up.