Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (12 page)

“So anyway, I finally get inside, and I see this
‘Eddie Munster’ kid tearing apart the chair that Doc was using like a shield. I
swung the wrecker bar and bopped him upside the head, and he went down in a
heap at the same time as another little red-eyed vampire kid stood up. That was
all I needed to see, so I grabbed Doc and shoved him out the door. That door
opens inward, so I hooked my crowbar on the edge of it and pulled. I held it shut
as Doc was stumbling toward the vehicles. That’s when they started shooting.”
He looked over at Dave.

Dave waited through a moment of silence before starting.
“We were almost loaded in the cars and trucks when the other ones began to show
up.”

Eric tightened his grip on Michelle’s hand as Dave
went on, “At first it was one or two of them. They’d just appear around the
corner of a camper, or coming up the road from the loops. Slow moving, like
they were really, really tired. Then they’d see us and start to speed up.”

Mike stood again, “A couple of the guys had guns, and
they managed to take down the first few pairs. But then the second wave came .
. . and then the third. Each time it was more and more. By the time we were all
loaded, there had to be at least twenty-five of them coming up out of the loops
towards us.”

Doc looked over at Walter, “One of them was Sally.”

“I saw Jason Lambert, he was covered in blood. I also
recognized several of the other campers—children as well,” Dave added sadly.

Lenny crunched the remaining hard candy and swallowed.
“So we were all loaded and pulling out, except we weren’t ‘all’ loaded. Mike
was still holding the door shut to keep one of them inside the office.”

“The last vehicle in line, the RV I was supposed to
get in, was already moving by the time I realized that I was the only one left.
There was a group of infected—at least six or seven of them—that were coming
around the bathhouse and heading my way pretty damn quick. So I dropped my
crowbar and took off for the RV. That prick who was driving it—I know he saw me
in the mirror—kept moving. I kept running, and then I see the RV braking and
swerving. It didn’t stop though. Next thing I know, the back door of the camper
pops open and Doc is there, pointing his little pistol in my general direction
and cranking off rounds.” He looked at Doc and smiled, “You need to learn how
to shoot better.”

“You need to learn how to run faster,” Doc chuckled.
Turning to Eric, he continued, “The guy driving the RV would have left Mike
there—I’m sure of it—if Scott hadn’t grabbed the steering wheel and punched him
in the nose.”

“Mr. Lancaster?” Michelle asked.

“That’s him.”

“Anyhow,” Mike finished, “I made it into the camper
and shut the door about three seconds before the pack of zombies smashed into
it.”

“They’re not zombies,” Doc stated, emphasizing the
word ‘not.’

In the distance a lone coyote began to howl. It was
quickly joined by other members of the pack, yipping and baying until they
reached a full chorus. Max perked up his ears and looked toward the door.

“Anyway,” Mike said, “we made it out of there.”

“And you’re thinking of going back?” Thompson asked.

“There might be somebody still alive,” Dave replied.

“That’s not the end of it, though,” Doc stated, “we
made it to the marina with a grand total of thirty-nine people. Another
fourteen people were here as well. They had apparently made it out on their own
and just randomly headed west instead of east.”

Walter added, “They’d gotten ahold of me over the
marine band radio, Doc and Amy that is, and I was up at the road waiting for
them. Fifty-three total people from the campground made it here, and none of
them were real happy. Can’t say as if I blame em’ either. Anyhow, Doc suggested
that we try and consolidate the wounded in a central location, so we moved anybody
that was hurt up to the house.”

“I wasn’t taking any chances though. As you know that,
Walters’s basement is divided into two sections. He’s got the two car garage
area, and the finished basement side. There’s a cement wall between them with a
single steel door. We moved out Bernice’s car—Walter’s truck was already
outside—and cleared out everything else that we could. That basically left us
with a thirty-five foot square cement room. Walter rounded up a half dozen
folding cots, a few more of those old military sleeping bags, and a couple of
inflatable air mattresses. There were eleven people that were injured—that we
knew about—at the campground. Subtract the two boys and that leaves us with
nine.”

Dave and Walter shared a glance with Doc and Lenny,
and then Mike squared towards Eric, locking his eyes as he quietly said, “That
we knew about.”

Doc said, “It was chaos, really. People screaming . .
. crying . . . demanding this, that, and the other. I can’t even really
describe it other than to say that it was total chaos. Somehow,” he looked
around the room, “a few of the more ‘even keeled’ people started pitching in
and . . . and . . . um, well, let’s just say we managed to get some semblance
of order. I started checking temperatures of the nine people in the
sickroom—that’s what we’re calling the garage. Three of them were elevated.
Since that’s the only thing that I even had a remote suspicion of being a
precursor to the illness, we gave them and their families a choice—allow us to
tie up and restrain the injured person, or get in a vehicle and leave.”

“That almost blew up in our face, because none of the
three people who had elevated temperatures had their own vehicle here—they had
all hitched a ride with the caravan,” Dave added.

Walter stood and tapped his watch again. “In the
interest of brevity, I’m going to move this along. The people that we knew, or
kind of knew, like Doc, Mike, Amy, Brenda, Dave’s family, and a few others that
I can’t think of right now, stayed up here at the house. Everybody else that
wasn’t wounded or sick was moved down to the store. By the time supper rolled
around, we had a basic understanding. They were temporary guests. Don’t get me
wrong, I done ‘bout everything I could to make ‘em comfortable – blankets,
pillows—that sort of thing, but there was a whole lot more of them than I had
blankets for. I even gave ‘em two shotguns in case . . . well, just in case. We
also set ‘em up with a battery powered CB radio. We had its twin up here at the
house. Now fast forward to about midnight.”

“Rebecca and I were taking turns checking on the
patients, and we were watching their temperatures slowly, but steadily rise.
Right about then a call came over the radio. It was hard to make out with all
the screaming in the background, but they were saying something about a dead
body.”

Mike chewed another piece of candy as he spoke, “I’d
already had a cat nap, so I volunteered to drive Doc down to the store.”

Dave broke in, “I sent Scott with them, and I stayed
awake and kept my wife company. Brenda said she was feeling better, so we used
her as a guard in the sickroom.”

“I drove Scott and Doc down to the store. When we got
there, it looked like just about everybody was standing outside. One of the
ladies—I can’t remember who, but she was about the only one I saw that wasn’t
flipping out—she comes up to us and says that a guy had died inside. And
apparently, the guy’s wife was still with him . . . hugging and crying on him .
. . wouldn’t let anybody touch him. Nobody wanted to go in, especially with
what had just happened earlier at the campground. Well, we pushed our way
through the crowd—did I mention the power had gone off again?”

“No.”

Mike nodded as he continued, “It had gone off about
3:00 that afternoon—hasn’t been back on since, either. Anyhow, it was dark
inside the store, so I shined a flashlight through the glass and just about
dropped a load in my pants. There were two pairs of red eyes starin’ right back
at me.

As you can imagine, the crowd responded to that in a
dignified and mature manner. Not. We ended up locking the doors and moving
everybody down to the warehouse, and then Scott, Alton, and a guy name Ross
went back to the store with me. Doc stayed in the warehouse with the crowd. OK,
long, and might I add, ‘heroic’ story made short, we didn’t want to just open
the door and blast away. If we did that there’d be blood everywhere, so we
angled the headlights of the truck we drove toward the door. Then we copied
your plan for opening the door with a rope. Only I was in your position. And I
had a shotgun—12 gauge I think.”

“It was,” Walter confirmed.

“How many shotguns do you have?” Eric asked with a
raise of his eyebrows.

“Not enough.”

“So we unlocked the door and pulled it open. Of course
nothing came out. We waited. Nothing. I really wasn’t too fond of going in
after them, but it was looking like we we’re going to have to do just that. And
then Ross—he had a long metal pipe—starts whooping and hollerin’ like he was on
fire. That brought ‘em out. They were walking kind of slow, though, and I let
them get about halfway to me before I plugged them. One shot each . . . in the
head. I ‘bout puked too—ain’t never shot no one before. Anyhow, we were
standing around, just making sure they were really dead when Ross apparently
decided to head into the store.” Mike looked up and frowned, “He got tagged.
Real good, too.”

“There were three of them inside?”

“Four actually. Ross got his foot chewed up by a
little ankle biter. We found another one—a kid also—squirming in a miniature
sleeping bag. We also found the dead guy . . . the one that started all of this
adventure, only he was dead . . . dead. Next to him was his wife  . . . empty
bottle of pills in her hand. She was still breathing when we got there, but she
didn’t make it much longer. Ross skewered the one that bit him with the pipe,
and Alton and me dragged the other one—sleeping bag and all—out the door and
over by the dumpster. It was brutal. I still see that sleeping bag squiggling
around when I close my eyes.” Mike took a deep breath before finishing, “It
took us another couple hours to move the bodies into the dumpster and get
everybody else back to the store. A lot of people were talking about leaving,
but wanted to wait until daylight. I can’t say as if I blame them. Oh, and Ross
. . . he just chugs along like nothing happened until everybody is back in the
store, and then he hops in his car and just drives away.”

“Where would he go? Or for that matter, where did the
other people go who left the campground and didn’t come here? Eric asked. Turning
to look at Michelle, he said, “Didn’t you say that the roads were blocked both
east and west of here?”

Michelle shook her head, “No, what I said was that
because of the lack of traffic on highway 704, Andy, Sam, Thompson, and I
figured that the roads have to be blocked somewhere else. Somewhere that’s
preventing people from getting on to 704.”

“So, as far as we know, highway 704 out there,” Eric
pointed in the general direction of the store, “might be totally open and clear
all the way east to Richland where it hits route 281, and all the way west to
highway 403?”

“Yeah,” Sam answered, “but I can tell you from
personal experience that 403 north heading into Carson is a parking lot for
miles before you get to the border, and it’s a four lane highway. Route 281 is
primarily a two lane road for most of its length, and I can’t imagine why it
wouldn’t be gridlocked just as bad, if not worse.” Sam turned toward Walter, “You’ve
got a straight shot from the road out there directly into Richland. It’s about
what, fifty miles or so?”

“A little less than forty before it ‘T bones’ into
route 281 at Richland,” Walter replied.

“And route 281 heads straight north out of Richland
towards the border.”

“Yep.”

“So we’re looking at three possibilities. The first is
that route 281 heads north from Jamestown . . . passes by Devils Lake
recreation area where about a billion people have fishing cabins and vacation
condos . . . and then proceeds further north through Richland on its way to the
Canadian border—all without any traffic jams. In that case we would also have
to assume that the border is open and traffic is flowing in both directions.”

Walter looked over at Sam and replied, “That’s one
option, I suppose.”