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

The loss of Alec, the last living member of
her immediate family, was a tragedy to be sure, but by that time
Jules had become numb to such sorrowful events. She was sad but her
grief was lost amid layers of recent calamity, which had so scarred
her young mind as to dull her emotional response to any stimuli.
Jules would miss Alec, along with her mom, her dad, and her brother
Martin, but she had no tears to shed. Her eyes became fixed and
distant and her affect as flat as a pane of glass.

After the dramatic rescue, Neil took their
group, now driving in a compact car, back onto the highway and
toward some place called Whittier, where they had been heading
prior to the abduction and Meghan’s death. They drove into the
darkness, heavy with a gathering snowfall that filled the car’s
headlights. Finally, Jules was getting her snow, but she barely
noticed. Along with her sadness, Jules’ joy was also blunted and
absent.

When Neil stopped the car and turned off the
lights, everyone sat up and stiffened. It was still dark and the
side windows were white with fog from the cold air on the outside.
Jules had been dozing, snatching short moments of restless sleep
like an uncomfortable airline passenger. She adjusted in her seat
to look through the defrosted front window.

It was dark and getting darker with each
passing moment, most of dusk’s purples having faded irreversibly
into night’s lonely black. Neil’s quiet and unanswered announcement
that they would wait until morning to go on calmed all of them
somewhat. The warm interior of the car and the open, still empty
road were too inviting to be discarded for the cold,
unpredictability of the Portage Highway stretching itself out in
front of them.

Despite the darkness, Jules could tell that
it was along that stretch of winding road where they had left
Meghan’s lifeless body. She vividly remembered that sad day not too
long ago and could see in Neil’s eyes that he was remembering it as
well. She wished there was something she could do to help ease his
pain, but she understood that he needed to be left alone with his
thoughts. Instead of saying anything, she looked away and gave him
his privacy, much the same as everyone else.

Silently, each of them surrendered their
consciousness to their exhaustion. Neil, the last to close his
eyes, reluctantly turned both the car’s lights and engine off
before he allowed himself to drift off to sleep. He looked at
everyone in the car before he closed his eyes. Jess, sitting next
to him in the passenger seat, was already asleep and snoring. In
the back seat sat Emma and Jerry, with the three kids draped across
them in uncomfortable knots.

Neil’s slumber was interrupted by bouts of
cold sorrow and hot tears. He hadn’t truly lamented Meghan’s
passing. It happened suddenly and was followed by frantic action,
preventing him from dealing with the loss. Jules could hear his
sniffles and his loud, dry swallows as he tried to stifle the
noise. His crying finally brought tears to her eyes as well, as it
did to everyone else in the car. They had all lost so much in such
a short time.

The next morning the dawn was barely able to
break through the sullen clouds. Jules awoke slowly and was
surprised to find Neil’s seat empty. Everyone else was still
asleep, so she shook Emma awake and pointed at the empty driver’s
seat. Helplessness and fear rising in her throat, Emma leaned
forward and relaxed somewhat to see that the vehicle’s keys were
still in the ignition.

Emma’s and Jules’ relief was tempered at
best, however, due to Neil’s absence. Scratching a hole through the
ice-crusted window, the two looked out into the road hoping to see
Neil.

“Oh shit,” Emma whispered.

There were three shady figures drifting in
the dispersing storm. The cadence of their gait, erratic and
broken, meant only one thing: they were the undead. Emma reached
over her shoulder and laid her hands on her M4 assault rifle, lying
on its side across the car’s two rear speakers. Not long ago a
firearm such as that would have made her more than a little
uncomfortable. She had never seen the need for such hardware. Those
days seemed so long ago. The touch, smell, and weight of the rifle
welcome to her now. She hoped she never had to do without it.
Slipping a full magazine into the rifle quietly, Emma quickly had
the gun ready for action.

Emma placed a calming hand on Jules’
shoulder and used her eyes to let the child know they would be
okay. They didn’t share a word but the message was clear. Emma
pointed to the others and peered back through the frosty
window.

Jules quietly roused the others in the car
for the coming confrontation. As deftly as she could, Jess slid
over into the driver seat.

She got her hand onto the key but hesitated
when Jerry cautioned her to wait. It didn’t look like the zombies
knew they were in the car. They had likely been drawn to the sound
of the engine during the early morning hours but were now merely
drifting rudderless without the noise to direct them.

“Everyone, just stay quiet and don’t move,”
Jerry whispered. “Maybe they’ll pass us by.” He added with a bit of
anxiety in his voice, “Where’s Neil?”

As if in answer, they heard a commotion from
the street outside. Emma, feeling very anxious and fairly
vulnerable in the car, tried to look back outside before stepping
out, but their peek hole had already frosted over. She shifted
Jules onto Jerry’s lap and threw open the door.

She emerged just in time to see Neil
finishing off the third ghoul with his bat. He swung it around his
head in a wide sweeping motion, striking the creature just below
its left knee. It wasn’t a lethal blow, but it was enough to knock
it from its feet.

Emma winced at the impact. If she were
struck in the same manner, the pain would be excruciating. However,
the zombie Neil hit was quick to try and get back to its feet. When
it became apparent that was not an option on its now broken and
twisted limb, the thing tried to wriggle and crawl toward Neil, but
he wasn’t waiting to give it second chances.

Circling aggressively like a shark ready to
pounce, Neil brought the solid aluminum bat down upon the back of
its skull, which imploded like a rotten melon, spilling brain
matter and dark, congealed blood onto the icy pavement. The other
two had been dealt with similarly and lay in their own horrible
mess of necrotic fluids. Neil stepped through the jellied fluids,
which clung to the bottoms of his boots like barnacles. Each sticky
footstep produced stringy umbilici, connecting his feet to the
ground.

Emma winced at the sounds of Neil’s sticky
footsteps. They reminded her of feet passing through a busy and
seldom-cleaned cinema with a full day’s worth of spilled soda and
dropped popcorn on its floors.

She scanned behind Neil and then all around
the car. Nothing. Not a damned thing. For the right person, this
brand of isolation would be heavenly, but Emma was not one of them.
Or rather, she hadn’t been one of them. She wasn’t entirely sure
what kind of person she was at the present. For the moment, she
decided she would settle for being a live person and that seemed to
be enough for now.

By then, Jules had gotten enough courage to
peer out too. She saw Neil walking through the motionless corpses
and breathed a sigh of relief along with everyone else in the car.
Neil wiped his blood-caked bat on his latest victim’s tattered
sports coat and smiled over at her. He said that he thought he was
getting better at using his bat and struck the pose of a major
league hitter swinging for the home run fence, making Jules smile
despite the grisly circumstances.

Neil climbed into the passenger seat,
dropping himself heavily into it.

“I scouted ahead of us a bit up the
highway,” he said. “It looks clear up the road, so I think it
should be smooth sailing up to...” He stopped short of finishing
his sentence because of the painful memory that accompanied it.

Both Jerry and Emma, companions of Neil’s
since the beginning, understood. They shared a glance with one
another and allowed the moment to pass. None of them were without
pain. They understood how the simplest thing could steal away the
breath or dispel a thought. Jerry’s relationship with Claire had
been only days old, but his heart split every time he thought about
her or adjusted the green and gold University of Alaska Anchorage
Seawolves hat he words, his sole remembrance of her. She had been
mutilated and butchered by a lunatic and had to face his wrath
alone.

Emma too suffered from the still very recent
loss of Dr. Caldwell, who had saved her life and the lives of
several others along their arduous trek to safety. Tragically
bitten, the good doctor was, in Emma’s mind, abandoned and left to
face his fate alone as well. They each shared in a common
tragedy.

Somewhat oblivious to the looks and the
nods, the newest member of their group, Jess, sitting behind the
wheel said, “Are we ready to go then?”

Jess was grieving as well, although her
grief was from not knowing. Her teenaged daughter was out on a
fishing trip when the world had soured and was now a missing shadow
in Jess’ life. Now and again, Jess imagined Syd riding next to her
in the car or sitting with her during the quiet moments. She went
so far as to conduct full conversations with her daughter,
sometimes out loud and sometimes in her mind. Syd was never far
from her thoughts and the not knowing was like an icy dagger
digging at her heart.

They drove slowly along the highway toward
Portage Lake and Whittier beyond, a quiet reverence settling over
all of them. This road was painfully familiar and thick with
regret, like the scene of a crime. They passed more than a couple
of the walking undead, heads turning almost wistfully to watch the
car continue on its way.

Neil was a little surprised to see the
ghouls. He had not encountered any of them, at least he did not
think he had. He wondered how close he had come to them in the
snowstorm that had passed by then. Remnants continued to flutter,
occasionally dancing erratically when a quick, unexpected gust
lifted the flakes. The monsters had likely been lurking in the
several campground turnoffs or other parking areas along the main
road. They looked like the dazed and confused survivors of a
natural disaster emerging after the storm, but their wretched
appearance and hungry disposition belied a more threatening
reality.

Concerned by the growing number of
gray-skinned devils crawling out onto the road, Jerry asked from
the backseat, “Where’d you go, Neil?”

“I wanted to check things out. Make sure we
had a smooth ride ahead.” The truth was not nearly as simple as
that, but Neil wasn’t willing to acknowledge it to either himself
or those with him.

Suspicious that there was more to it but
unwilling to press, Jerry answered with a nod and a soft touch to
Neil’s shoulder.

Danny, not yet a teenager and not possessing
the filters that come with age and experience, asked, “Did you see
Meghan’s grave?”

With a remorseful sigh, Neil answered only,
“Yeah.”

Danny may have been young, but Neil’s
response was enough for him to cut off any further questions.
Though slow to understand, he wasn’t dimwitted or without empathy.
He could sense something in Neil’s voice that encouraged him to
leave well enough alone.

“The ground is frozen now,” Neil said. “We
should be able to drive around all the stuck cars ahead. We’ll just
have to be careful that we don’t end up at the bottom of a ditch.
With any luck, we can probably drive right up to the tunnel. We
have to be careful though.”

“And what about the tunnel?” Emma asked. “It
was closed last time we saw it. How are we gonna get onto the other
side?”

Neil rubbed his chin. He said with some hope
in his voice, “When we were here yesterday, DB said that there was
a service trail that went over the mountain. He had worked on it a
couple of times for the state. Doing maintenance, I guess.”

Neil looked over at Jess and explained, “Our
plan all along was to get to Whittier. We thought that maybe it
would have been cut off from the road system in time to keep it
free of...whatever the hell is causing all this. We came down from
Anchorage hoping to get into the city. We were all set to make a go
of it when those bastards you were staying with down in Soldotna
attacked us. It kind of set us off course. DB was with us then. He
was a guy who just showed up one day and was gone a couple days
later. Nikki back there was with him. He told me about the path,
where to find it, and that if we hurried and beat winter, we could
make it to the other side.”

“Sounds like a solid idea,” Jess said
hesitantly. “I don’t know about the rest of you though, but I’m no
mountain climber. Are you sure we can make it?”

“And that’s a pretty big mountain,” Emma
chimed in.

Neil looked back out the front windshield
and asked, “Do we have a choice?”

When they passed Meghan’s rock pile, Neil
couldn’t bring himself to look over at it. He chewed his chapped
lower lip and stared out in the opposite direction. There was
nothing much to see aside from Alaska surrendering itself to
winter. The not too distant mountains were already blanketed in
white with only the most stubborn rocky promontories resisting the
snow. Glistening in coats of the new powder, the thin trees and
sparse bushes in the frozen wetlands along the road looked like
they had been planted according to some kind of plan. An occasional
bird, finches and robins that had different plans than heading
south for the winter, flitted from branch to branch looking for the
last berries to be plucked for the season. Soon there would be
nothing left and most of the area’s wildlife would have moved
on.