No Easy Hope - 01 (17 page)

On a shelf above the workbench, I saw a large red gasoline container. I picked it up to see if it had anything in it. It was full. I picked up a can filled with greasy old bolts from underneath the workbench and dumped its contents out on the cement floor. I set the can on the bench and poured a little of the gasoline into it. The gasoline was mostly clear, meaning that it hadn’t been sitting there long enough to go bad. The container held two gallons, so I decided to bring it along, just in case.

I went back to the house to search for anything useful. I took what little non-perishable food was still in the kitchen, and checked the rest of the house. I didn’t find anything I might need on the ground floor, other than the little bit of food from the kitchen, so I proceeded upstairs. The bedrooms and playroom were more of the same, but in the office, just above a low bookshelf, I found a hand drawn map pinned to the sheetrock. I took it down from the wall and studied it.

In the center of the map were two lines labeled as highway sixteen. The long driveway that traversed the soybean fields was one of several lines that radiated out from a box representing the farmhouse. Most of the lines lead to different parts of the property, but one of the lines led to a road whose name I recognized. If I followed that road north, it would take me around the bridge I ran into earlier that day, and onto highway 16. I couldn’t believe my luck. If not for that map, God only knows how long I would have spent driving aimlessly around back roads trying to make my way north. Excited by my good fortune, I hurried back to the truck. I took off the small sword and threw it in the back, then laid the load bearing harness on top of my suitcase in the passenger seat. I propped the rifle up on the center console, and then drove across the front yard to the wood line and the trail marked on the map.

 The trail was a rutted dirt road that would probably be impassable in a heavy rain. Thankfully, the last couple of weeks had been dry, and the road was in pretty good shape. I took it slow, not wanting to hit any potholes or risk running off the road. The road bent and twisted through the thick forest, the massive branches of the surrounding trees forming a dense canopy overhead. I was rounding a particularly sharp turn when I saw one of the infected standing in the middle of the trail facing away from me. Its head snapped around when it heard my truck behind it. It was about thirty yards away from me, and I briefly debated simply running it over. Deciding not to risk damaging the truck, I slowed to a stop. I grabbed the rifle as I stepped out and walked to within twenty yards of the walking corpse. It was wearing bib overalls and a t-shirt that had once been white, now stained brown with dried blood. There was a chunk of flesh missing from one of its arms, and it had gore smeared all over its mouth and chin. Decaying flesh crusted the creature’s teeth turning them black. It raised its hands toward me and moaned loudly.

I leveled my rifle and put a round through its skull. The shot took off most of the top left portion of its skull, and the creature fell to the ground in a limp, bloody heap. I drove the truck closer to it and dragged it to the side of the trail. Reddish gray brain matter dribbled from its skull as I pulled it by its feet across the dirt. I clamped my teeth down and looked away, trying to keep from vomiting for the second time that day.

As I climbed back into the truck, I heard the sound of something crashing through the brush. I turned around, rifle at the ready, and saw another ghoul emerge from the forest about ten feet ahead of me. This one was an older female with most of her face gone. Flaps of loose, rotting skin dangled from her bare skull. Both of her eyes were missing, but she still knew what direction to stumble in to get me.

I took a knee, and a deep breath, and put a bullet between the empty sockets where her eyes used to be. Even as the corpse collapsed, I heard more of them tearing through the undergrowth as they homed in on me. I left her body beside the trail and got back in the truck. As I pulled away, dozens of undead emerged onto the path behind me, and I had to dodge a couple that wandered out onto the road ahead. I sped up and cursed as I drove away. For creatures that can only move at a walking pace, they sure as hell got to me quick. They must have been close by already to hear the first undead moan as he saw me. Or maybe they heard the muted report from the rifle. But why were there so many of them this far out into the boonies? Could they have come all this way from the small towns and housing developments that dotted this part of the county? I needed to rethink my view of these things.

Until then I thought that they pretty much stayed in one place, maybe wandering around in circles or something. From what I had witnessed that day, it was evident that they actually roamed long distances in search of food. I wondered if there was any method to their way of travel, or if they just stumbled in whatever direction they happened to be facing when the local food supply ran out. Were these things capable of any kind of cognitive reasoning? If they were, that could mean trouble. Big trouble.

A few miles later the trail ended and I turned northeast on a two lane road. It was good to be back on asphalt. Dirt roads do not make for a smooth ride, especially when you have a few hundred pounds of gear in the back of your truck. In about ten minutes, I was back on highway 16, two miles north of the bridge where that walking pus sack tried to take a bite out of me. The highway was clear for the time it took me to reach a side road that cut over to highway 273. I reached the outskirts of the small town of Lucia, and turned left onto Alexis Lucia road. Things got a bit tense when I drove through the center of town and a few hundred undead noticed me, but I managed to zip through before they could converge. Once I got a couple of miles out of town I didn’t see any more undead.

The way was clear until I reached highway 27 north near another small town called Alexis. I knew that the road I was on ran through the center of town, and between the two fire stations, a gas station, restaurants, and the strip mall on that stretch of road, there were likely to be a large number of undead. I topped a hill near the intersection of Alexis Lucia road and 27 North, and stopped the truck to take a look at what I was heading into. I climbed on top of the truck and peered into the shallow valley ahead through my binoculars. Sure enough, it was just as congested with undead as Lucia had been. As I was scanning the street, I heard a faint, distant cracking sound.

“Was that a gunshot?” I said.

A few seconds later, I heard it again. And again. I scanned around looking for the source of the sound. After a minute or two of searching, I spotted the shooter. A man was standing on the roof of a Burger King, surrounded by undead, and firing into the mass of corpses around him with a bolt-action rifle. From the sound of it, I guessed that it was a .22 magnum. A massive black duffel bag lay on the roof at his feet. As I watched, he worked the weapon’s bolt and fired another shot into the crowd. A corpse dropped to the ground, but it was like swatting mosquitoes in a swarm. I doubted that he would have enough bullets on him to dispose of all the ghouls converging on the restaurant. From this distance, I doubted that he could see or hear me. The crowd of undead was growing larger by the second, and corpses were staggering toward him from every direction. Every damn ghoul in town seemed to be on its way to Burger King, and they were not ordering Whoppers.

I lowered the binoculars and debated what to do. On one hand, the distraction could work in my favor. While Mr. Dumbass down there was picking shots, I could skirt around the edge of town and be gone before any undead knew I was there. But if I did that, I would have to live with this man’s death on my conscience. I was determined to survive, but in that moment, I realized that I did not want to survive at the cost of my humanity. Even here, at the end of all things, I still thought of myself as a good person who would not leave someone to die at the hands of the infected if I had the means to help. I had to do something.

I got back in the truck and drove toward the town, formulating a plan as I went. The first thing I needed to do was to get the man with the rifle to notice me. If he ran low on ammo, there was a very real chance that he might turn the gun on himself to avoid dying of dehydration on top of the restaurant. He probably did not realize that if he just hunkered down in the middle of the roof out of sight of the ghouls, stayed quiet, and waited a little while, they would eventually lose interest and wander off. It might take a few hours, but it beat the hell out of the alternative.

I drove to within about two hundred yards of the restaurant and stopped in the middle of an intersection. Most of the undead that I first spotted milling around the town square had by then packed into a moaning, struggling ring around the Burger King. The smell of the heaving mass of dead flesh was almost overwhelming. To give you an idea of how bad the undead smell, take a dead rat, soak it in a toilet full of diarrhea, put it in a bag, let it sit in the hot sun for a couple of days, then stick your nose in and take a big whiff. That would be about one tenth as bad as the horde in front of me smelled. I was amazed that the poor dumb bastard on the roof had not lost his guts throwing up.

I got out of the truck and climbed onto the roof of the cab. I brought my rifle with me and took off the suppressor. I waited until the stranded man was between shots before firing a round into the air. The noise got his attention, but the undead didn’t seem to notice. They were too intent on the walking meal shooting at them from above. There was a loud crash as the press of dead flesh became too heavy for the restaurant’s front windows, and they collapsed inward. The guy on the roof raised a hand in the air and waved to me. I waved back and cupped my hands in front of my face.

“Can you hear me!” I shouted.

Rather than yell back he gave me a thumbs-up.

“Go to the middle of the roof. Lay down. Don’t make any noise.” I yelled.

He gave me another thumbs-up and did as I asked.

“I must be out of my fucking mind.” I muttered.

I turned the truck around and pointed it down the street back the way I came. A few of the undead in the crowd noticed and started staggering toward me. I climbed up into the truck’s bed and sat down on the roof. I leveled the rifle and started taking pot shots. To my credit, I managed to drop a ghoul with almost every shot, but a few of them went wide. I got through about twenty rounds before I had the undivided attention of a very large, very hungry audience. Once I was certain that all of the undead were coming my way, I got down off the truck and put the silencer back on the barrel. I took out the nearly empty magazine and popped in a full one.

I put the truck in gear, rolled up both of the windows, and waited until the first rank of the horde was within ten feet of me. I took my foot off the break and let the truck creep forward. I didn’t even need to touch the gas, the engine idling was enough to stay in front of the undead. The street in front of me was long and flat, and I led them to the end of it a quarter mile away. I checked the rear view mirror to make sure that they were all still behind me, then accelerated and turned right into the parking lot of an auto parts store. The parking lot adjoined several others, and I used it to double back behind the horde.

I got back onto the street, and after dodging a few stragglers, I drove straight for the Burger King. It took only a few seconds to get there, and as I arrived I saw the man who had been on the roof emerge from behind the restaurant carrying the big duffel bag. Whatever was in it must have been heavy, because he was bent almost double under its weight. I wondered what could be in there that was valuable enough for the crazy bastard to risk his life for it. I rolled down the window and unlocked the passenger side door. The man heaved the duffel back into the back of the truck and came around to the passenger side. I slid my load bearing harness down onto the floorboard beneath me.

“Take the suitcase and throw it in the back.” I said.

He nodded and pulled it out with a grunt of effort. He set it in the back and took a moment to make sure it was wedged in tightly. Apparently satisfied, he got in the truck and closed his door.

“Head north.” He said, pointing down the road ahead of us. “I know a place where we’ll be safe.”

Figuring that introductions would have to wait, I pulled out of the parking lot and drove north on highway 27.

Chapter 7

The Compound

We drove north for about three miles until the man beside me pointed to a road that turned off to the right.

“Turn up here. We’re close now.”

“Close to what?” I asked.

“To what passes for home these days.”

I glanced over at him to read his expression, but he faced away from me staring out the window. I slowed the truck to a stop just before reaching the road he indicated.