Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) (4 page)

Since that time, they had been joined by families lucky enough or smart enough to happen upon their haven. All had been welcomed to share in their bounty and their security.

There were dozens of people there who were eager to hear God’s words. Maggie was more than willing to share His message and her own testimony. They welcomed her work and His words with open arms and willing hearts. It was more than she could ask and decidedly more than she had expected.

She lived with them for several days, enjoying company but always waiting for her opportunity to perform her true work. Her purpose was clear in her mind and free from her thoughts was any sense of guilt or doubt. She was, after all, performing His work. How could doing such great things create either guilt or doubt for her or anyone else for that matter?

Early one morning, Maggie awoke to hear His voice instructing her. He told her that it was time and that he would show her the way. She found, with his guidance, an unattended emergency exit. She knew what she had to do. On foot, she ventured into the adjoining neighborhoods and found what she sought.

They may have been His instrument, but that made them no less frightening. There was a large group of ashen-colored devils near a school nestled back in the neighborhood. It was as if He had gathered them there for her. There wasn’t much enticement needed. All that was required was for them to see her and they were immediately fast on her heels, shuffling hungrily after her. She moved just fast enough to stay ahead of them but not so fast as to lose them. Their festering ranks swelled steadily as more and more of them joined the horrible procession.

She led them back to the same Costco exit that she’d left propped slightly open. Following the scent of prey, they piled through the door to pounce on the unsuspecting families still rising for the day. The chaos that followed was horrible and redeeming. Men, women, and children, largely defenseless and totally unprepared, were ruthlessly butchered. The Costco floor became a torrential sea of red. There was nowhere to run for any of them. Their walls, once protecting them, had been used to trap and, ultimately, doom them all.

Maggie once again managed to get herself out and back on the road to continue to perform the Lord’s bidding. There had been a handful more people here and there, smaller groups mostly, who had been delivered as well. With each new victory, she felt reinvigorated and inspired and ready to do more of the same. These were truly wonderful days and could never have come to pass without His intervention. She thanked Him for the wonderful opportunity with each waking day.

It had been days since she had seen anyone though, so she suspected perhaps all of Anchorage’s souls had been harvested. With her car’s fuel tank full of pilfered gasoline, she decided that it was high time to move to more fertile grounds.

She was unable to get out of Anchorage on the northbound Glenn Highway, so she decided to try her luck heading south. Once again, the Lord showed her the way.

She found her way onto the southbound Seward Highway and decided that was the path for her to follow. The unknown was again before her, but her faith in God carried her forward.

There she was heading south with nothing but possibilities and opportunities in her thoughts. So wrapped up in her thoughts was she that she didn’t see the man crawling into the road ahead of her.

Dr. Caldwell was more or less spent when he finally was able to get himself out of the parking lot and into the road. His legs were of little use to him, so he pulled himself along the abrasive pavement with his hands and sheer will, looking like a six foot serpent.

His fading, opaque skin glistened with the deluge of sweat that poured from his forehead down to his chin. The salty fluid dampened his hair, his neck and his clothing. He could feel it course down his chest and his back in torrents. It appeared as if he was crawling through a fog, as his deep exhaled breaths gathered in front of him. Every muscle in his body that continued to respond to his requests was struggling to propel him forward.

It would all be worth it though if he could....

Now that he was in the road, he wasn’t certain
wha
t his next move should be. He doubted his ability to get himself there, so he hadn’t entirely fleshed out his next steps. He figured that he would likely collapse before ever arriving.

With the black car barreling down on him, he thought it only fitting to fight fire with fire. He got himself into the middle of the road, steadied himself on his numb haunches, folded his hands in front of his face, and continued the prayers that he had already started. His prayers were for peace for his wife and safety for his children. In those last seconds, he asked God to grant sanctuary and life for his friends, who were even then fleeing south on the highway. He raised his head and opened his eyes in time to see the black car only a handful of car lengths away from him and he asked God for one more small favor: justice.

Maggie didn’t see the praying figure until it was almost too late. Her screams in tune with those of her protesting tires, she jerked her steering wheel hard as she pressed her brake pedal to the floor.

The little black car tried to maintain its composure, but it was not to be. The car lurched right and then left before pitching itself into a glass-shattering roll. Bits of plastic, chunks of metal, and shards of glass all took to flight in a swirling storm of destruction.

The Passat came to a gradual rest beneath a settling cloud of smoke and dust, its final living gasp escaping in the form of a series of metallic clanks as its motor died. And much like the car, Dr. Caldwell too was no longer breathing. He was lying face down in the road, his hands still clutched in prayer in front of him. With his forehead pressed into the pavement, the doctor’s corpse remained motionless for several moments.

Though his breathing had ceased, there was still activity in his brain. Confused neural synapses and cerebral tissue, continued to send rudimentary signals, slightly altering functions and delivering new instructions. With a couple of twitches, his body accepted its new chemistry and began to reawaken some of his dead flesh and nerves.

When his eyes reopened, any kindness or understanding of the former man were replaced with confusion and anger... and hunger. The doctor remained there on his knees for a handful of seconds, not certain what this new life held in store for him. He flexed his fingers and clawed at the pavement, shredding most of his fingernails.

A faint voice roused him from somewhere behind him. The words no longer held any meaning for him, but the sounds themselves communicated one thing to him which led to the single thought, the single impulse that his preternatural mind could formulate: prey.

With the agility and urgency of a predatory cat, he leapt to his feet. He listened again and heard the voice once more. A short distance away sat a black object, ticking and popping and wreathed in a swirl of slowly rising smoke. He looked at the object and waited until he heard the voice again. It was faint and a little desperate, but was definitely coming from the black, smoky object.

Excitement, like electricity through a wire, filled his veins and charged his actions. He ran to the black object and looked in through a large opening which once held a windshield.

Maggie, still dazed from the accident, looked up and saw the doctor standing there. His wound, largely superficial and out of sight, did not immediately betray the transformation. She recognized him and forced an awkward smile, not sure if he still harbored any ill will toward her. As he approached and she could see more clearly his eyes, she realized her mistake. There was, however, neither time nor hope for her to react.

He dived across her hood and slid in through the opening where the windshield had once been. With his jaw snapping shut as hard and as fast as a machine, he lunged at her again and again trying to find purchase. She tried unsuccessfully to fend him off with her hands, but he brushed aside her flailing arms and brought his gaping maw to her neck and ear. As he sunk his teeth into her hanging lobe, Maggie stopped struggling for the briefest of moments, her terror trading places with her utter disbelief and shock. The creature ground his teeth together over her flesh like a pair of jagged saws until he withdrew, her outer ear in his mouth. He chewed the tough cartilage and skin like the appetizer that it was. There was much more to be eaten. And eat he would.

Shaken from her momentary disbelief-laden stupor, Maggie tried to fight back. She pushed him away with one hand and pulled at the stuck seatbelt latch with the other. The belt refused to release her from her restraints. Unable to extricate herself from her seat and her ability to fight back ebbing with her blood as it flowed down her neck, she was forced to sit and watch him swallow chunks of her flesh from her face and neck as he set about satiating his hunger. When she brought her hands back up to push him away, he merely bit off fingers and devoured them instead. Her death came slowly and painfully, and her screams were heard by no one.

Shortly after parting ways with Dr. Caldwell, the sun decided to call it a day, making room for the burnt hues of evening. Neil Jordan, through his exhaustion and internal anguish, still forced enough emotion to be amazed by the brevity and beauty of Alaska’s autumn. The golds and reds of the season, like spilled paint, splashed onto the trees in mellow autumnal smiles.

There was no smile for Neil though. He wasn’t certain that he would ever find it in himself to ever smile again. He tried to remind himself that the melodrama would not please Dr. Caldwell but he couldn’t help his pain. When Dr. Caldwell, who had been bitten, demanded that Neil lead away their small clan of survivors, he obeyed. He did so without thinking or, more importantly and perhaps more tragically, without feeling. The acute ache starting in his chest and then spreading like a miserable disease to his extremities and back again was a powerful force of self-doubt and loathing, but it didn’t rear its poisonous head until it was too late.

He didn’t doubt the logic of leaving the doctor to his unavoidable fate, but turning their backs on him and leaving him to face it alone seemed a cruel measure. It didn’t matter that he’d asked them to do exactly that. Dr. Caldwell was as much a brother to Neil as anyone in the world, including his actual brother living in Middle America somewhere. Neil felt nothing but guilt and a profound sense of loss, though his faculties were not functioning well enough for him to be able to frame such a rational thought. The cold burn in his chest would not allow it, and he was forced to remember what he wanted to forget

He regretted their stoic departure. He regretted not having said so many things to his friend. Maybe that was just how it was with loss. He’d never really lost anyone that close to him and was not prepared for the emotional ice pick lodged to the handle in his chest.

It had only been a few months, not even a season, since they had all come together as desperate survivors. Their experiences bonded them each to the other as tight or tighter than the prototypical nuclear family. Neil had come to depend upon the good doctor’s steadfast rationality and strength, maybe more than anyone else in the group. There wasn’t a single decision or action taken that the doctor had not in some way helped to shape. Whenever Neil faltered, Dr. Caldwell was always willing to hold the reins until Neil regained his direction.

Neil thought back on his last conversation with Dr. Caldwell and the days leading up to their parting. They’d been fighting for their lives for so long and seeing all hope slowly slip further and further from view. If it wasn’t for the doctor, Neil doubted if they would ever have made it as far as they had. He, as much as anyone, was responsible for keeping them all going. He didn’t deserve the end that he surely faced. No one did, but especially Dr. Caldwell. He was a good man; something of a dying breed. Neil hoped that the doctor’s final moments were at least peaceful.

Neil wasn’t the only one suffering. They all were. But Emma, she was in a completely different dimension of pain from everyone else. When she finally allowed herself to be pulled away from Dr. Caldwell, she felt a spark of light, tiny and struggling in the deepest recesses of her being, snuffed out and sent away. That beacon’s demise didn’t prevent the sobbing or the explosion of pain and loss from grabbing hold of her chest and squeezing with its chill, heartless grip. But she quickly realized that she would likely not allow herself to love again. She doubted she would be able to survive a loss like that again. She couldn’t and wouldn’t allow the possibility of that kind of pain ever again.

When she looked at Meghan and Neil, she felt a slight resentment for their happiness, but she also felt a rising foreboding for them as well. Both emotions were newly emerging and somewhat surprising to her, although when she thought about it, neither was that much of a surprise. She didn’t wish her suffering on anyone else. It was unrequited love at its worst. She also suspected that, had her relationship with the doctor become as deep or as manifest as theirs, she would likely be more than just upset.

She’d refused to get close to anyone since her last break-up, which was more than a few years ago. Her present sorrow was proof enough for her that her decision so long ago was well founded. Romance just wasn’t worth the potential devastation of heartache.