Soldier On: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (14 page)

His first impulse was to barge in, hand cannon leading the way while calling out the proprietor’s name. On the other hand, rushing in would be damn foolish. Dan thought that if Bo wasn’t dead yet, then a couple more ticks of the clocks big hand probably wasn’t going to kill him. Dan still had no idea who had shot up the turd brown Dodge or if they were even still around, but he had to assume that they were most likely still in the area and most definitely armed. Discretion would have to be the better part of valor; because there was no doubt his .45 was no match for the automatic rifle responsible for ventilating the Dodge.

Head swiveling, Dan took in the sights and smells inside of the store. The stench of rotting meat first assailed his senses. Trying his best to only breathe through his mouth, Dan extracted a handkerchief and covered his nose.

An antique bronze cash register dominated the prime real estate on the counter; it was older than Bo and usually more cantankerous. The drawer was open and still contained a fair amount of cash, s
trange,
Dan thought.

The sound of his footsteps shattered the shroud of stillness and echoed off of the empty shelves. He stopped in front of a row of darkened glass doors; every last ounce of beer and wine was gone; yet bulging gallon containers of warm spoiled milk remained.

Once more, like the rattle of a dying man’s last breath, the panting sounded from the rear of the store.

The kerchief went back in his pocket as he withdrew the tactical flashlight, switching it on with a press of his thumb. Dan held the pistol in his right hand, the barrel rested over the top of his left wrist, ensuring that the flashlight beam and muzzle moved as one.

His Marine Corps training kicked in, this was no tunnel in Nam, but the unknown danger was still real. Dan edged his head around a display of Gatorade capping the end of the aisle, waited and listened for a few seconds,
nothing
. He then crept further into the semi-darkened produce section.

Shit,
the wheezing resumed, louder than before, from somewhere behind the plastic slats that separated the front of the store and the stock area in back.

Dan had no idea what was going on in his little town. The shell casings and the pock marked vehicle added a strange twist to the deadly mystery.

The blued barrel poked between the hanging slats, allowing the brilliant white beam from the flashlight access to the storeroom.

Dan swept the room from left to right. Boxes and plastic crates were piled high. A rolling recycling bin full of crushed and flattened cardboard boxes succeeded in further blocking his view.

The eerie noise was repeated, much louder and much nearer. In the windowless storeroom the carrion odor was overpowering. He fought the urge to vomit, but instead hacked a couple of dry heaves. In response, the mysterious sound repeated anew, louder still.

The former tunnel rat deliberately knelt down on his good knee, the bad one protested with a loud pop. The ray of light from the tactical flashlight probed the area under Bo’s oak roll top desk. Still half in the shadows, something moved. Dan recognized the mangy tail as it swished a slow, steady, half arc on the floor. Champ wheezed, he was older than Bo,
in dog years,
and looked worse for the wear.

Dan recoiled; a gasp escaped his lips as the source of the retched odor was revealed by the cone of light. Beauregard Hampton, stiff with rigor mortis, lay stretched out beside his beloved Collie, one stiff arm around Champ and the other clutching an obviously fatal stomach wound. Bo’s wizened eyes, cloudy and dry, were still open. The store owner’s face wore a slack, pale, scowl, frozen in death. Maggots teemed inside of his abdominal cavity, the sickening wet symphony of the squirming larvae made Dan wince.

Champ’s fur was glued to the floor in the long dried blood that had pooled around both man and his dog.

Dan spent a moment wondering what kind of shitbags would shoot an old man in the gut and leave him to bleed out. The kind came to mind immediately, reminding him why he had come to town in the first place. Finding Sheriff Blanda was more important than ever, now that he saw what the fringe element was really capable of.

The grizzled vet sat and comforted the skinny old dog, while reflecting on the last time he was in his friend Beauregard Hampton’s company. One hot afternoon a month ago the men sat on the porch of this very store and discussed the past, present and the future; neither one of them aware of the tragedy about to beset the Nation. Bo had given him a book a mile thick, covering all anyone would want to know about the last Great Depression.

“Read up and get ready,” was the wise advice that he received from Bo that June day. He told Dan that he had barely survived the first financial crash and he hoped he wouldn’t be around for the one he knew was looming on the horizon. The entire population of Stanley, Idaho knew of Bo’s beliefs. Most people brushed them off as the ranting’s of a cynical old coot. It was also common knowledge that he was ready for “eventualities” as he put it. Bo owned a sizable cache of weapons and ammunition and stored some of them in the cellar of the hundred year old general store. Dan feared that Bo walked in on a robbery and got himself killed,
all over some guns and beer...what a shame.
Old Bo was a fixture in Stanley. The man was a treasure and would be missed.

Dan switched off the flashlight. While he sat cross legged in the impenetrable dark with only Champ and Bo’s cold corpse for company he tried to think of all the scenarios that would leave Stanley empty and deserted.

Outbreak Day 5

Hanna, Utah

Long shadows stretched across the unkempt yard. The lifeless eyes of the three boys glowed orange, the setting sun reflecting off of them. Night was coming swiftly and the dead didn’t have an opinion, they only wanted upstairs.

Cade spent the better part of an hour trying to think of a way out of the mess he and his two new acquaintances were in. His call to Duncan at Camp Williams went unanswered, it appeared aerial rescue wasn’t in the cards.

The green Suburban was in back of the house, so were most of the zombies. Cade watched for an hour. The SUV was a no-go it never had less than twenty flesh-eaters surrounding it. He contemplated the idea of jumping on top of the rig and quickly slipping inside. It was a good twenty feet to the roof of Daymon’s Suburban, even if he did clear the gulf, from this height he was sure to rupture a tendon or break something, and coming up lame in the middle of a pack of undead would be a death sentence. While deep in thought, Cade detected movement from the corner of his eye. A toddler sized zombie had wormed its way through the jumbled maze. Reacting instantaneously, Cade delivered a boot to the juvenile’s sternum, the awful sound of breaking ribs echoed off of the ceiling. The blow sent the thing sprawling across the floor and it screeched to a halt on the white tiles in the adjacent bathroom. Undeterred the ghoul grabbed onto the pedestal sink, hauled itself erect and resumed the attack, hissing and clacking its teeth at the three survivors.

Daymon was first to intervene, playfully egging the thing on, “What’s the matter-miss the preschool bus?” Tracing a barely visible green arc Daymon’s machete flashed through the air, and with a hollow thunk cleaved into the center of the undead boy’s forehead. Daymon put his boot on the ghoul’s scrawny neck and wrenched the blade from its skull.

“That was fucking awful.” Hoss whined.

“This is fucking awful...” Daymon displayed his weapon, brains still clinging to the steel. 

At the first sight of bloody gray matter, Hoss began to dry heave.

“Where’d you learn to swing that thing?” Cade already had a hunch it was Daymon who had taken care of the three on the lawn and after what he had just witnessed there was no doubt.

“Fighting fires, cutting brush for back burns and such. Put so many hours in using the thing it’s a natural extension of my arm.”

“I was hoping that you didn’t say the Boy Scouts taught you. I didn’t remember there being a machete merit badge anyway. Please...remind me not to get on your bad side,” Cade said jokingly while he unceremoniously tossed the small body on the barricade below while taking every precaution to keep from coming into contact with the chunks of frontal lobe dribbling from the zombies head.

Leaving the two men alone, Cade went into the master bath in search of water. He splashed his face and then drank his fill. When he gazed into the mirror he was taken aback by his own reflection, through red rimmed eyes the thousand yard stare had returned.

In the days since the outbreak he had little time to sleep and even less time for personal hygiene. His sideburns were now merging with his black goatee and was on the way to becoming the full beard that he always wore on deployment in the Middle East.

Cade rifled through the medicine cabinet and found what he needed. Wasting little time, he smeared the viscous black eyeliner on any exposed skin. The dead had poor night vision but he needed every advantage he could get to escape the house alone, unseen and unscathed.

“Daymon I need to borrow that sword of yours.”

“I’ve got
zero
ammo for the crossbow and there’s no way I can go downstairs and look for an extra butcher knife...why you gonna leave me high and dry?”

“Were trapped up here and were not going to be able to shoot our way out...” Cade had already made the decision, was standing on the ledge, and nobody was going to talk him down.

“What do you have in mind then?” Daymon asked.

“The Cliffs Notes version, I’m going to slip away from here, hopefully undetected, and then find another Suburban or something bigger.”

He couldn’t resist, “Sounds pretty elaborate to me,” Hosford chimed in.

“I’m just trying to keep it simple.”

“We’ll hold down the fort for you then,” said the usually quiet Daymon, thrusting the green handle in Cade’s direction, “don’t forget about us.”

Cade took the blade. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

In the one of the boy’s rooms Cade found a dark blue tracksuit. It was a size too small but the material stretched easily. He thought that since the moon was still in a very full phase it would be stupid trying to evade a town full of walking dead wearing light tan digital camo. Cade removed all of his weapons and his combat harness, before he donned the nylon two piece exercise outfit over his fatigues.
I’m going to broil in this getup
, was his first thought, but he was confident that wearing it would allow him to move stealthily and attract less attention from the zombies.

***

The path of least resistance appeared to be the front of the dwelling. The door was still keeping a handful of zombies at bay while the majority of them were swarming around the Suburban and crushing into the house via the back door. By his estimation there were fifteen to twenty milling about the walk and porch.

The window remained open making it easy for him to get out onto the roof while keeping the noise to a minimum.

Cade wanted to go as fast and quiet as humanly possible. He had the M4 at the ready strapped to his chest and had decided to use it only as a last resort. Even though the carbine was silenced it still produced a muzzle flash, especially at night. It would have to be a knife and machete affair only.

Cade’s Suunto read 2 a.m. He remained on the roof until a series of clouds masked the nearly full moon. Reluctantly he plucked the fabric from his ears, letting the voices of the dead fully assault his hearing.

Peering over the edge of the roof, Cade took a headcount of the ambling zombies. Four patrolled the porch and another five traipsed around the shin high grass flanking the walk. For some reason they seemed less agitated, their moans and groans had subsided somewhat; Cade guessed it was because he and the other two trapped men hadn’t shown their faces for a couple of hours.

While lying facedown on the roof Cade grasped the rain gutter firmly and gave it a wiggle. There was a little give, but it would most likely hold his weight without tearing off of the house, while he lowered himself to the ground.

Cade waited until the zombies on the porch were facing away from him before he committed and rolled off into space. The gutters flexed but held fast, the only noise, a muffled rattle from the rifle, failed to reach zombie’s ears. Cade held his breath and gradually lowered his one hundred eighty pound frame to full extension, let go, and dropped the remaining eight feet to the ground. He absorbed the impact with his knees, the dull thud from his weight meeting the soft bark dust was masked by a gust of warm wind smelling of carrion and earth.

Cade sat nestled between two cat piss smelling shrubs, alone and exposed, fighting the impulse to break and run; doing so would have been disastrous. Two heartbeats after landing in the bushes a bloated creature ambled by, its chalky legs close enough to touch; the things bloody shredded feet slapped a rhythm on the cement walk. He contemplated burying the dagger in its brain but grudgingly resisted the urge.

Cade knew that he would have to be methodical and patient if he was going to slip by without prompting a chain of moaning zombies. He had a lot of ground to cover, and hoped that the undead weren’t as thick the farther he got into town.

Cade thought about Brook and Raven, who were his first priority. A selfish notion wormed its way into his brain, it urged him to abandon the strangers and go on solo. Cade shook off the thought, he had given his word to Daymon; and he would return to get them. Dad always said a man is only as good as his word; it was sage advice that he took to heart.