LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (4 page)

They break his arms with the first blows, each audibly snapping as his knife clatters onto the street and screams fill the night air. The two men beat him to death with their pipe and what I think is a length of rebar, the sounds of their sickening blows passing through the walls and filling my ears with their horrid noise. There is a second, no longer than that, where I consider trying to help the Kid. It is a flash, like a dying lighter sparking in the darkness. It is as gone as quickly as it had appeared and I stand motionless, watching as the bastards beat him until his squirming ceases and he becomes completely motionless while his blood is snaking into the ashy film along the sidewalk. The Kid lays curled into a ball, a sad attempt to try and protect himself, but he is little more than ruined meat and bones now. I watch the man with the machete grab the Kid by the boot and drag him back into the liquor store. I watch those doors close and the flashlight remain on in the middle of the sidewalk, shining down the road, straight along my path. I watch those doors for hours. I grip my cleaver, certain that they will come for me. Every sound makes me flinch, my head swiveling in terror.

I will not try and justify my inaction. It’s distasteful, disturbing, and it haunts me; but I cannot risk sticking my neck out for anyone. That boy might have been anyone. He might have been a psychopath himself. All I can think about are my girls and how far away they are. There is nothing I will not do to see them again, and sometimes, I’m forced to do nothing. Sometimes I am forced to watch others beat a Kid to death. In another life, who knows what that boy might have grown to do, but I’ll leave that to others to ponder. All I have is the now. All I have is the drive to see my girls again. The breeze howls through the collapsed beams of the building and I am left alone, watching the flashlight, my eyes darting to the doors that held those evils within. I cannot move. I can hardly breathe as I watch those doors. This was the world I now live in. How many times did I need to be reminded of that?

I don’t think they stayed in the liquor store through the rest of the night. There wasn’t a single movement beyond those dusty windows as I kept my frozen vigil. My knees were stiff and aching, but I didn’t dare look away. At dawn, a gusting wind began to pick up and the ash rose with it, drawing a curtain between me and everything else. This is my chance. I know it. I pull out a roll of wrapping that I’d taken from the Planned Parenthood and wind it around my head, offering my eyes a mild filter from the ash and dust. It is my one chance to escape, just in case they had remained nearby. I clamber out of the hole in the wall, as the dust and ash really start to pick up, into the adjacent, burned out ruins of the next store and rush out into the growing storm.

My plan to keep my eyes protected proves to be useless as I make my way along Van Dyke Avenue. I know that if I stick to the road, I will inevitably make it to Detroit. I feel my feet stumbling along the asphalt and keep walking with my arm over my face, looking at the ground and praying that the wind won’t pick up any more than it has. I bear the journey with as much grace and gratitude as my limping body can offer. When the wind picks a different direction to slash at the world with, I find it against my back, as if the wind is trying to push me along the road, encouraging me to continue. For a moment I am grateful, taking it as a sign that I am in luck or being graced by the will of some divine being. But then my thoughts sour and I blame my sudden willingness to adopt mystical beliefs on my starvation. There is no God. No fate. No universe anymore. There is only death.

I barely find a gas station and crawl in through one of the shattered windows as the howling wind pursues me, sending tendrils of ash and dust into the building on my heels. I rip the bandage wraps from my face and look around. Pretty much everything in this gas station has been covered with a layer dust and ash from a dozen—maybe hundreds—of other storms. It doesn’t matter. I find nothing but empty shelves where the food once was, but I’m not looking for food just yet. I find what I am looking for on a rack that lay toppled onto the floor. I never thought I’d be happy to find bandanas for bikers and sunglasses for those just making a pit stop on the way to their destinations. I wrap the bandana around my face and slip on the sunglasses, making sure they hug my face tightly. I need to keep my sight out there.

Away from the ferocity of the storm, I take a drink of water and wipe away the caked dust and ash so I can check my watch. I am making good time, all things considered. I am just at the overpass, about to make my way over the freeway. I pull a map off one of the racks of brochures and unfold it on the derelict counter, looking over my coming journey into Detroit. I trace my finger along Van Dyke Avenue and follow it as far as I can go. I figure that if I don’t stop, I can make it to the Detroit River by just past midday. I realize this might be overly optimistic, but I am suddenly feeling better. I look out the window and pray that the storm holds up. I will need to scavenge some food, but I will worry about that when the storm begins to abate. I need to use the cover to move openly and freely.

Back out in the storm, I make my way across the overpass and push toward Detroit. The storm picks up even harder, gusting from different directions as I blindly walk down Van Dyke Avenue. I bang my knees on the bumpers and trunks of cars, slowly navigating around them, cursing my blindness. My feet become tangled in something before I fall loudly against the side of a van, cursing loudly, my words lost in the wind. Panic grips me thanks to my clumsiness, and I listen to make sure no one is listening or making their way toward me. I pick myself up and limp forward, seeing that my unknown attacker was nothing more than a bicycle. I continue forward, making my way block after block through the storm until I see the swirling ash part and a form emerge. I run my hands over it, letting them
see
the structure for me, and realize that it is some sort of tower or spire that has been knocked over from the side of the road. It had smashed down on two cars, caving them in, and I follow it blindly until I can get around it. A shattered cross is sprawled on the road. I look at it with complete apathy, reaching down to take a closer look at the center of the cross’s structure. Finding a long metal piece of rebar, I shake it and bang it on the road to get the fiberglass off, and decide to start using it as a staff to distinguish if anything is lurking ahead of me in the swirling veil of ash and dust. No more running into cars.

Blindly picking my way down Van Dyke Avenue, I look up at the sky, trying to spot the sun so I can find out the general time it is. Darkness reigns oppressively and I am still left blind, even to the sun. Turning back to the task at hand I make my way down the road. Every time I find a car or a truck, I stop and check to see if the doors are unlocked. Twice I have found guns hidden in trucks, but both of them had been unloaded, no doubt stripped of their ammunition by others, though I am left to wonder why they didn’t take the guns as well. Eventually I give up trying to find anything of value in cars and just focus on the road.

I ponder my path ahead with grave uncertainty. This infuriating, blinding storm is the only thing helping me at the moment and sooner or later, it’s going to cease and I will be left naked on my way downtown. I can’t help thinking about the kid from the previous night. He had been brutally murdered by those lurking in buildings and I am surrounded by similar buildings at any given moment. How am I supposed to survive Detroit, let alone everything that sits between me and Florida? I realize I was wrong earlier. I am going to need a car, but the nearer my proximity to Detroit, the more congestion on the road there is. There’s no winning with this dilemma. Survivors had driven cars as far as they would go, jumped out, and then hotwired the next car; leaving an endless expanse of useless cars. Reckless anarchists and nihilists had taken cars for joyrides, crashing them into whatever happened to be in the way as well. The streets are littered with debris and carnage. Even I have to abandon the road on foot after a while and follow a rod iron fence along what looks to be a massive park.

I keep walking, listening to the howling for a little more than an hour until I think I hear something on the wind. I freeze when I first hear the sound, keeping to the sidewalks now, just far enough from the buildings that I’m not visible to those inside. At most, they might see me as a faint silhouette. Fear is what’s propelling me at every turn. The slightest sound is enough to make me stop and listen, hunkering down to avoid being spotted. I keep the rebar firmly gripped in my hands, ready to use it as a spear if need be. I slowly stand up and creep forward, time and again, listening and making sure my footsteps are as quiet as a mouse, even if the wind is still howling.

Suddenly, there is a lull in the wind, as everything slows to a lazy drift for the time span of maybe fifteen seconds. The furious swarm of ash and dust ceases and the drifts float down the road like a sea of feathers and I see that I am standing on the street corner looking directly at a church. The barren lawn has several tents propped up on it, housing refugees or looters. The only thing that immediately draws my attention about the scene is the very intimidating man standing maybe twenty feet away from me with an assault rifle. Thankfully, he has his back to me and as soon as the storm lets up, he looks back to the church and shouts to those taking refuge inside.

“All clear!” he calls. “Might not last long. Start ‘em up!”

“You got it,” someone calls back.

The man turns and looks straight ahead, but I can tell he’s caught me out of the corner of his eye. Thankfully, that same instant, I am engulfed in the renewed rush of the raging wind and the man’s shouts are immediately swallowed by the storm. Everything is suddenly drowned in a whirl of ash and dust. I limp out into the street, away from where he had seen me and I head down the road as quickly as possible, not wanting them to have a chance when the storm lets up and they can truly start searching for me. I hear the faint roar of an engine and could swear I hear the echo of gunshots, but I just keep moving, waving my metal staff in front of me, avoiding anything it hits.

Eventually, the storm abates once more and begins to disintegrate completely. It tapers off near the end of the afternoon. Somewhere along the line, I have lost Van Dyke Avenue in the storm and am wandering between buildings, which frightens me more than being on the open road. As the last of the storm slowly dies, I find myself between a pair of brick buildings in the middle of a street that I don’t recognize. But as I look down the road, all I can do is smile. Right there, in the warm afternoon light sits the Detroit skyline. If I keep walking, I can be in the heart of the city by the time it’s midnight. I weigh the value of traveling onward late into the night, if it means I will get through Detroit faster. Time is my most important commodity now.

Playing it smart is key so I decide to put that decision on the back burner until I make it closer to the city. I keep close to the buildings after finding it nearly impossible to keep to the streets with the hundreds of accidents on the road and the traffic jams that block every hope of passage I discover. Eventually I find a Save a Lot and my growling stomach can be ignored no longer. I sneak closer to the store after watching it for nearly an hour. Safety is my top priority now. That reality keeps sinking deeper and deeper in me with every passing minute and mile. I rely on my sight and my hearing, waiting for any indication that going inside the store might be suicidal.

When I decide that there is no one inside, I make my way around the building and slip in through the loading bay doors. There are dead bodies heaped against the wall, resting where someone deposited them, or where they fell. It’s hard to tell. The darkness of the back room is tangible and my quivering hands cling to my rebar staff with ferocious terror. If there is someone in the store, I have to remember where I am going and how best to escape. I kick myself for this plan. I can smell stale, rotten food that has long since turned to rancid puddles and stains. The whole backroom still stinks of that old decay and festering horrors. It takes everything that I have to not gag or vomit as I move slowly into that hungry darkness. When I find the doors into the main floor, I cautiously push them open and find that I am definitely not alone.

Entering the store from doors beside the dairy cooler, I scan the shelves that are stripped and pushed aside to open up the aisle. There is a pile of old wood next to a large metal drum that is smoldering and flickering with an ominous, orange light across the room, revealing thirteen sleeping figures. They are rolled up in blankets and sleeping bags, softly snoring along with the snapping of the fire and the pounding of my heart. Remaining motionless, terror of what I will need to do if these sleepers wake up fills my mind. I hear footsteps and instinctively drop down into a crouch and listen as I hear soft humming carry through the air like some mournful death cry, and I search the dim darkness to the wall of windows on the far side of the building. The windows are murky at best, but they let a pale brown light pass through them and I see a blackened figure moving along that wall of light. I can’t tell if it is a hunting rifle or a shotgun the silhouette carries, but it is leaning against his shoulder as he meanders across the front of the store, humming the dreadful tune.

Slowly and as silently as death, I make my way back through the swinging doors, meticulously opening and closing them before I sneak my way through the thick darkness of the back room. My head is whirling with a thousand scenarios that will undoubtedly happen if I make a single sound. Unspeakable horrors are lurking in the wings, hungrily and eagerly waiting for me to slip up. Images of Tiffany, Lexi, and Val whirl like dervishes through the maelstrom inside of my head as I move as quickly as I can in the darkness.

When my foot hits a can that rolls into a shelving unit, I feel my heart stop. I feel my whole world shatter and I reach down for the can, trying to silence it as it continues spinning on the concrete floor. My desperate fingers find a dormant can and I immediately grab it and feel another can next to it. I scoop them up and shuffle to the side of the wall, hiding behind a pallet of toilet paper and listen as I hunker down like a rat and wait for my life to end. I hear footsteps hurry through the store and then the inevitable boom of the swinging doors being thrown open to slam into the wall while heavy footsteps continue into the darkness. I feel the icy hands of death gripping my spine as I see light spreading like a disease up the walls and across the floor as the watchman makes his way through the backroom. The light darts across the walls and into half a dozen hiding spots that I might have taken if I could have seen anything in this nightmarish darkness. Thankfully, I hadn’t crouched in any of those spots.

The man approaches a pallet and starts rummaging through the stock just as the boom of the swinging doors echoes again through the backroom and I immediately pray to God for forgiveness for everything that I have ever done. I pray that the girls will find safety and salvation in this hellish wasteland. I pray for a million things in those final precious seconds of life as the footsteps come to join the watchman. I can feel the light on my face, betraying me.

“What is it?” a voice asks through the darkness in a low, gruff voice.

“Rat or something,” the watchman answers. “Nothing here. Want a beer?”

“Keep it down, damn it,” the second voice grumbles, his footsteps leading away until the boom of the swinging doors echoes again.

“Asshole,” the watchman murmurs.

I keep still until the watchman flicks his bottle cap away after the familiar, distinct hiss of the bottle opening. I listen to the
tinking
of the bottle cap before it comes to rest upon the floor and I keep still as the light ebbs back toward the door. Once I hear the boom of the swinging doors one last time, I don’t waste a second hurrying back to the loading doors and roll underneath them and down onto the asphalt below with the dead. I land with a loud
thump
and roll onto my feet before limping off toward the direction of the Detroit skyline. I make sure to avoid the streets now. Terror drives me into the alleys and whenever I come to a street, I waste no time rushing from car to car, waiting a second in a crouch and listening for sounds of anyone who might be watching me. Nowhere is safe this close to Detroit.