Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (72 page)

Shawn crouched next to me and tilted his head toward
the sprawl of bodies on the road. “Whatever happened here was hardcore.”

I was getting ready to move through the front entrance
when Shawn stopped me with a hand on my vest. “What?” I practically hissed.

“I know it doesn’t look good from here, but before you
go charging into the house, remember that there’s a lot of bodies lying
everywhere, and some of those bodies might be not quite dead. Let’s take our
time just a bit to make sure we don’t get  . . . ah . . . bit.”

He was right, and as much as I wanted to sprint into
the house screaming Michelle’s name, I also had no desire to make a stupid, and
probably fatal, mistake.

We stepped cautiously over and around as many of the
bodies as we could and entered the cabin. The stench was horrible, and if it
hadn’t been for the permeating odor of cigarette smoke that still lingered
around to provide some cover, I’m pretty sure my eyes would have been watering.
Inside was a bloodbath. Multiple corpses displaying ghastly gunshot wounds
tattooed across their gray skin were everywhere, and toward the back door they
piled upon one another so high that we couldn’t get to the stairs—it was
completely blocked with a waist high plug of ghouls.

“Mother of . . .” Shawn trailed off at the macabre
scene in front of us.

“Michelle,” I mumbled quietly as I looked for a body
with long red hair. There were so many dead lying everywhere I couldn’t tell
who was who, and my heart sank in despair. I sidestepped across the corpses and
back towards the front door, head hanging in anguish at my loss and wishing
with everything that I could join them. In the front yard I sank to my knees
and buried my face in my hands. “I’m sorry Michelle . . . I’m so sorry,” I
whispered to the light breeze that worked to dissipate the haze.

“Eric? . . . Eric is that you?”
Michelle’s sleepy voice crept into my headset and my
eyes shot open as I vaulted to my feet.

“Michelle? . . . Michelle? . . . can you hear me?”
The skyrocketing disbelief and joy that bounded into
my spirit at the sound of her voice had me practically dancing as I searched up
and down the road trying to locate her.

“Eric! . . . thank God! . . . where are you?”

“I’m standing in front of your dad’s cabin . . . where
are you?”

“We’re still in the cabin on the second floor, but
we’re trapped here,”
Michelle said

“We’re coming for you—hang tight.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“You’ll find out in a minute . . . just hold on.”

It ended up taking us substantially longer than a
minute due to our concern about becoming contaminated on the massive quantities
of blood that practically soaked every surface. We finally solved our dilemma
by scavenging an extension ladder from another cabin two doors down. Judging
from the broken windows and shattered door frame at that cabin, we didn’t think
anybody would mind. We leaned the ladder against the lake facing window of
Michelle’s dad’s cabin, and I climbed up as Shawn held the bottom for
stability. The first thing that greeted me was the sleepy-eyed, red curly
haired, war painted face of Faith. Someone, I was guessing Michelle, had used
scarlet lipstick and black eyeliner to decorate her cheeks and forehead in a
series of zigzags and dots, the whole effect reminding me of something that had
taken its inspiration from the Aztecs. I carried her down and Shawn hustled her
to the boat as Mack kept watch. I didn’t wait for him to return before I
climbed for the second trip. Lynn came next, acting decidedly more awake and
coherent then when I’d last seen her. My third trip almost resulted in a fall
when I got a look at Michelle’s face. It was garishly painted with at least
three different shades of lipstick, mostly arranged in a pattern of large polka
dots. Sweat, smudges and tiny flecks of carbon worked to transform her
countenance into something that would be better suited wearing giant shoes and
a bulbous red nose at a circus.

She noticed my gawking and returned it with a glare
that mutated the result even more. “Don’t say a word,” Michelle shushed, “our
little girl insisted that she got to paint my ‘brave face.’ I don’t know what
she’ll be when she grows up, but I’m betting it won’t be an artist.”

I practically beamed from ear to ear as the
multicolored, gaudy paint job stared back at me. One more rung upward was all
it took for me to lean through the open window and kiss the most beautiful face
I’d ever seen.

Michelle sank to her knees and cradled the back of my
head tightly. “I thought you were dead . . . I thought I’d never see you again
Eric . . . I thought. . .”

My lips interrupted her thought, and I kissed her hard—only
stopping when Shawn’s voice carried up from below.

“Everything OK up there?”

I pulled back from Michelle—still giddy inside at her
safety—and took the AR that she offered. It only took me a few steps downward
before Shawn was able to reach it. Five more minutes of transfer brought the
other rifle, Faith’s garbage bag of clothing and toys, several of the old,
green sleeping bags, and two cases of water. My next climb brought me face to
face, or rather “face to foot” with Michelle’s hiking shoe coming out the
window.

“Before you climb out, hand me the ammo cans and
anything else heavy,” I said.

“The only ammunition I have left is in the magazines
that are in the rifles,” she replied as she stepped onto the aluminum ladder.

The enormity of her statement smacked me like a wet
towel, and as I climbed down, I took another look at the spread of corpses that
littered the area. When we were both on the ground, I introduced her to Shawn,
and I could tell he was biting back a potential explosion of laughter at the
sight of her finger painted face. He grabbed the large garbage bag and both
cases of water before scooting rapidly back towards the boat—and the safety it
represented if it turned out he couldn’t hold back his amusement.

“Are you OK?” I held her by the shoulders and searched
her eyes as I asked.

She nodded slowly, scanning me up and down like she
was trying to verify that I was real.

“Alright, head to the boat and I’ll go up and get your
dad. I turned and put one foot on the rung, but her hand laid across my arm to
hold me in check. I turned to face her and saw her slowly shaking her head. I
knew what it meant.

“I’m sorry . . .”

“It’s OK,” she mumbled.

“How?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure of the
answer.

“Not now,” she said. “Let’s just get out of here . . .
we can catch up once we’re safe.”

I thought about the multitude of bodies in and around
the cabin, as well as the horde at the airport. And of course, I thought about
the ebony-eyed woman. Somehow, the word “safe” was getting harder and harder to
believe. I put one arm around her and grabbed the pickle bags with the other,
and then we walked down to the dock. Shawn was just coming off the boat when we
got there.

“I got the bass boat in the water and tied to a tow
line. Everyone and everything is loaded and ready to go,” he said, “but I could
use your help for a minute.”

Michelle kissed my cheek and then trotted onto the
patrol boat, kneeling down to hug her mother and Faith as I turned to Shawn.
“Sure, what do you need?”

“When we were stealing the ladder, I thought I saw
something through one of the broken windows. You mind providing a little fire
support while I check it out?” He extended my CZ towards me.

I took the pistol and the extra magazine, repeating back
the same words he’d said to me earlier. “Lead the way.”

Three minutes later we were both grinning like kids in
a candy shop as we jogged towards the idling NauticStar, each of us carrying a
shrink wrapped case of canned ravioli under our arms.

I turned the boat out towards the center of the lake
and throttled up until we were cruising at the most fuel efficient
speed—roughly thirty miles per hour. A check of the gauges showed everything in
the green and the gas tank still reading a little over half. Michelle sat
beside me on the wide pilot’s seat and scrubbed her face with a pack of wet
wipes that came from Shawn’s fanny pack. The occasional turn towards me for verification
brought several more rounds of scrubbing before she rejoined the ranks of
humanity.

“Looks good . . . I think that was the last of it,” I
said.

She removed another wipe and tried to attack my face
with it, but I pulled away wincing.

“Ouch . . . that stings.”

“It probably will,” she answered, “your face looks
like you were in an avalanche. What happened?”

I was so overwhelmed with the last twenty-four hours
that I just locked up and said nothing for a minute. When my brain finally
skidded off its Mobius loop, I defaulted to a similar answer that she had given
me. “Let’s just get somewhere safe first, and then we can swap stories.”

About ninety minutes later we added Walter’s bass boat
to our aquatic caravan, and shortly after that I stopped the boat in the
general vicinity of where Michelle and I had spent the night on the water. The
fuel status was showing forty-three percent—plenty to take us as far as we’d be
going on the NauticStar—and the bar of radios displayed steady green lights that
indicated a fully charged status, so I dropped anchor and shut the boat down.
When I got up to move, the stiffness and soreness in just about every square
inch of my body seemed to agree with Michelle’s assessment that I might have
recently been caught in an avalanche. Faith and Mack were each wrapped inside
of a pickle bag and further covered with blankets up on the flat deck near the
bow, and Michelle, Lynn, Shawn and I moved to the facing bench seats on the
stern deck. Introductions were remade, and we began to heat up the ravioli over
my little pocket stove as the brisk morning breeze engaged in a losing battle
with the sunlight pouring down from the crystal blue sky. I dropped the siphon
line of my water filter over the edge and filled the reservoir bladder in my
pack, and then passed it around so everybody could drink their fill. We almost
emptied it. A return trip to the edge filled it once again, and then I sat down
next to Michelle. The smell of simmering pasta clenched at my stomach, and I
realized that I was starving. The Cajun rice at the cabin and the partial pop
tart I’d had about twelve hours ago were the only food that I could remember
eating since we left the marina—not counting the dog treats—so I reached down
for another can and popped it open, forking the cold contents into my mouth two
and three at a time.

“Hungry there boss?” Shawn cracked.

“Starving.”

“I believe you’ve got the right idea. Chuck me one of
them cans if ya don’t mind.”

I threw him a cold can and a set of white plastic silverware
wrapped in cellophane. It was one of a few dozen sets that had been tossed in
the console where I’d gotten the ramen from yesterday. My little cooking pot
held the contents of two additional cans, and it was bubbling nicely so I gave
it one final stir before dividing it back into the original containers and
handing one each to Michelle and Lynn. I dumped two more in to start warming up
before sitting back and stretching.

Nobody said much for the next forty-five minutes. We
ate, drank some water, and then ate some more. When we had finally finished, I
made a general announcement. “Coffee or tea?”

They all voted for coffee, which left me our entire
stash of three tea bags. “I believe that I’m going to claim the captain’s prerogative
and make the tea first, that way the pot won’t be contaminated by that bitter,
nasty sludge that you three call a beverage.”

Michelle shook her head slowly as she replied, “I
don’t think those little instant bags filled with dehydrated coffee will be
able to contaminate anything. How many years had they been floating around
under the seat?”

“Who said I was talking about those.” I reached into
my backpack and brought out the pair of bags filled with gourmet coffee beans.
“Then again, maybe these would be better used for fishin’ bait . . .”

Michelle and Lynn—both coffee hounds from long
ago—practically leapt talons first in my direction at the sight of the
epicurean blend from Peru. I surrendered it without too much of a struggle, and
then watched as they drafted Shawn and a hammer from the boat’s toolbox. In a
matter of minutes they had created a miniature assembly line that started with
Shawn crushing a single bean using the hammer and the back of a wooden fillet
board. From there, Michelle scraped the granules off the board and onto a
napkin with the edge of a pocket knife. I chuckled with amusement as she handed
the napkin to her mother, who carefully deposited every speck into a tiny,
white cotton sock they had “borrowed” from Faith’s belongings. By the time my
tea was ready, so was their improvised filter sock. In no time at all we were
leaning back and staring at the blue sky with our stomachs full of food and our
hands holding a steaming beverage. It was Shawn who broke us out of our stupor.

“So, what now?”

Michelle’s head was leaning against my shoulder, and
at Shawn’s question she sat up and stretched. Lynn took the opportunity to
stand and walk over to me. She leaned down and gave me a hug, and then a kiss
on the cheek. “Thank you . . . both of you.” She turned and fixed eyes that
were just a tad darker than Michelle’s on Shawn. “And you too, young man. I’m
certain that I’ll never know half of what went on just to bring us together,
but I wanted you to know, all of you, how grateful I am. I’m also having a hard
time staying awake, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to move up front and try
and get some rest.”

I dug out the medicine for her arrhythmia, and by
combining two of the lower dose capsules from the veterinarian’s office we were
able to equal her regular prescription strength. She took the pills and headed
toward the front.

My tea was starting to cool off, so I drained the rest
of the cup and turned towards Shawn. “I went to school in Tennessee, and
judging from your accent, it sounds like you’re from somewhere around there
rather than North Dakota.”

“Close, I’m from Charlotte, North Carolina.”

“What brings you to the fine state of prairie grass
and eight month-long blizzards?” Michelle asked.

“What’s the date today?” he asked.

I looked at my watch, or rather my empty wrist with a
frown.

“It’s the 30
^th
of April,” Michelle
answered.

“On April 15
^th
—the same day I got my taxes
in at the last minute—I flew up to Bismarck for an interview with a company
that makes industrial products used in the oil fields. Mack was on spring break
from school, so I brought him along. We got there OK, but it was apparently one
of the last flights before they started shutting things down. The guy at the
company I interviewed with was real apologetic and offered to put us up in a
hotel and spring for a rental car until the airport started booking flights
again. As you can imagine, that didn’t happen. Anyhow, I guess I was in the
same frame of mind that everyone else was a few weeks back—just figuring things
would blow over pretty quick and then I’d be back home. Mack brought up the
idea of going fishin’ while we were waiting, so we looked at a map and ended up
at Devils Lake in a little cabin. For the first week we had a blast. Getting up
early and hitting the lake, sleeping half the afternoon, and then just hanging
out and catching up on some long lost father and son time. I don’t think we
even turned on the TV but once or twice. Maybe we should have.”

“So you stayed in a little cabin for the last two
weeks?” Michelle asked.

“No. After that first week I could tell that something
was going on in town. Little pockets of people that used to be friendly were
now going out of their way to avoid talking to anybody. Food was disappearing
off the shelves, and gas stations started limiting everyone to five gallons.
Clem—that’s Clem Naughton, the old guy that rented us the cabin—and I were
talking about the changes going on, and he suggested that I pack up what food I
could and head to his camp about twelve miles north of town until things
settled down, so that’s what Mack and I did. Clem had a rundown, double wide
trailer sitting on about fifteen acres just north of Devils Lake next to
another, much smaller lake. Sweetwater Lake, he called it.”

“I know where that’s at,” I said.

Shawn nodded toward me. “Beautiful place up there . .
. wish I owned it. Anyhow, my son and I spent a few more days at the trailer,
but we were starting to get stir crazy, and to be honest I was getting damn
tired of eating fish. We couldn’t get any info on the car radio, so we decided
to head back to town and make what preparations we could to try and drive
home.”

“I take it that didn’t work out,” I volunteered.

“Not hardly. The engine on that piece of crap rental
car seized up about a mile from town, and when we coasted to a stop and got
out, we could hear a bunch of gunfire. It sounded like the opening day of buck
season. Still, there was no way we’d be able to walk all the way to North
Carolina, so we did our best to hot foot the last mile. I’m not really sure
what I had planned except to try and acquire car from somewhere, and I figured
I’d start with Clem since he was the only person I really knew. We were about
200 yards from the fishing cabin when some type of major firefight just seemed
to erupt all around us. There was shooting from all directions, and several
waves of those pasty faced, gray sickos showed up and started tearing into
folks. It was like a freaking nightmare, and we hauled ass to the cabin. That’s
when Mack caught one in the leg. I carried him the rest of the way, and we made
it inside. I did my best to stop the bleeding, and when the shooting slowed
down about an hour later, Clem came in through the back door. He wasn’t alone
though. He was half dragging some skinny guy wrapped in a yellow rain poncho. I
found out a few minutes later that it was his brother Harv—I guess that’s short
for Harvey. Anyhow, Harv had his shoulder torn up, and he was gibbering all
kinds of nonsense about how the ‘civil defense line had fallen,’ and ‘the
crazies had come out of the ground near the elementary school.’”

Shawn took another slug from his coffee, and I just
sat there and shook my head.

“What?” Michelle asked.

“This is just so bizarre. The whole situation I mean.
Here we are, sitting in a patrol boat that we basically stole, and we’re anchored
miles from shore in the middle of the lake just so we’ll have some semblance of
security.” I started laughing, “And all three of us are just casually talking
about things that a few weeks ago would have got us a straitjacket and a rubber
room.”

Shawn started chuckling along with me, but Michelle
just looked away and sighed. “I know what you mean,” Shawn answered as he
drained the last of his coffee and put in another dip of snuff.

“What happened next?” I asked.

“Harv passed out, and I helped Clem with the wound. I
really didn’t do much except cut some sheets into strips and get some water
boiling. When things settled down a bit, Clem gave me the .45 that his brother
was carrying, along with about a box and a half of full metal jacket ammo. He
also gave me some Tylenol for Mack. Both of us knew that Mack and Harv were
going to need a lot stronger medicine, and that’s when I volunteered to make a
run for it. When I said that, Clem basically told me that it would be a suicide
mission for me to head into town. Apparently the sickness was spreading like
wildfire, and it was driving people insane. The local police department had
been trying to form up the civilians into ‘protection squads’ or something like
that, but I guess it was a lost cause. ‘Way too little, way too late,’ is the
way that Clem put it. He took a look at Mack’s leg and suggested the vet office
. . . even drew me a map right there on the floor of the cabin with a magic
marker. It was about, oh, I guess maybe noon or little before by then. Clem
said he’d take care of Mack until I returned, and then he went to the window to
give me an ‘all clear’ . . . . it wasn’t. The glass shattered and he was pulled
through. I can still remember the look on his face when his arm snapped. The
old man was tough though, and he yelled at me to grab Mack and run even as he
was being torn apart. I pulled Mack to his feet and we headed to the back door.
As soon as I opened it, I was looking straight into the red eyes of the lady
who lived next door to Clem. Well, she hisses and starts reaching for me, so I
popped her three times in the chest. She went down, but she was still
scrambling towards me. I couldn’t believe it. Point blank . . . three shots . .
. and she’s still trying to come at me. I was about to cap her in the head when
she finally stopped moving.”