Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (33 page)

In the kitchen, the gutted, partially eaten
corpse of a small child was already attracting some late season
insects. Emma’s stomach turned when she beheld the carnage. The
boy’s head was still largely in one piece, though its eyes had been
gouged and eaten. When Emma came to the end of the hallway and
looked into the kitchen, she saw those empty eye sockets staring
back at her. She thought it was just a shadow across the child’s
face playing tricks on her, but as she grew closer she realized at
what she was looking.

Then the child started to move. It tried to
roll over onto its front, but there was not enough muscle tissue in
its abdomen to get the job done. It struggled like a tortoise on
its back, trying to turn itself over. Despite having no eyes, the
little monster could detect Emma’s presence and reached out for
her. She suddenly knew how Ichabod Crane felt when he came face to
face with the jack- o’-lantern’s evil grin. Its pitiful, hungry
mewl found a fading sense of sympathy buried deep inside of Emma.
She almost felt sorry for its apparent suffering. She pulled her
knife from her belt and jammed it deeply into the little thing’s
empty eye socket. She verified the back door was locked then called
out, “Clear back here.”

She then proceeded to look in the cabinets
and the refrigerator, which was still on with the help of a
generator; a habit she had developed. She opened her backpack and
piled in dry and canned goods until the pack was full.

She wandered to the front room, which was
empty. She was swept with a very haunting fear: isolation. They
wouldn’t have gone on without her, she was sure of that. There were
no discernible sounds in the house other than her pounding chest,
which she hoped was only loud in her ears. She listened for any
creaks or pops coming from the structure of the house.

Emma hated fear, especially her own. She
felt so out of control when gripped by fear’s cold fingers. She
tried to settle herself, starting with her breathing. Then she
heard the movement immediately over her head. Trusting that she
hadn’t been abandoned and the others were just doing a sweep of the
house, she moved up the stairs slowly. Emma was still running
through exercises in her mind to control her breathing but she
wasn’t having any luck.

At the top of the stairs, she caught Jess’
blonde hair down the hallway. She was behind Neil, going through a
closed door at one end of the hallway while William and Gordon were
going into another at the opposite end.

Emma was starting to calm herself now that
she knew where everyone had wandered when she was again startled.
Jess screamed and then shouted to Neil, “Shoot ‘im! Shoot ‘im!”

Three loud pops and accompanying flashes of
light bounced around the bedroom. There was a thud and then Jess
and Neil reappeared. He looked at Emma and gave her a thumbs up.
William and Gordon exited their room shaking their heads.

“Okay,” Neil said. “Let’s check the place
for supplies. Whatever we find but can’t fit in the back of the
truck, we hide. We can come back later for it. No one— and I mean
no
one
— works
alone. We’ve all seen the horror movies. When someone wanders off
for anything, that’s when bad shit happens.”

“And don’t forget about the sex part,” Emma
added. “None of us are allowed to have sex. That’s a sure way to
exit the movie before the end credits.”

William, Gordon, and Jess shot questioning
looks in her direction.

She answered with a playful smirk, “It’s
true. It always happens. Two young lovers wander off for a little
hanky panky and then Jason or Michael or Freddie shows up, and we
all know where that leads. No sex if you want to make it to the
end.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” William quipped.
“Thanks for the tip. I think we all want to make it to the end
credits.”

“Ya just gotta follow the rules,” Emma
said.

In their search, they found guns and
ammunition as well as fishing gear, warm clothes, and some
medicine. It was all priority, so they found more duffel bags,
backpacks, coolers, and cardboard boxes, which they filled and
loaded into the back of the truck. There was a surprising amount of
space, leaving room for more supplies from other locations. The
thought never occurred to any of them that they might need to make
room for any passengers.

They didn’t talk about those they had put
down, and neither did they discuss those others who would suffer
the same fate. There was no need. Eventually, they would likely
face a creature that had once been someone about whom they cared.
Neil didn’t look forward to that day but knew that it was coming
and fast.

They climbed into the vehicle and each one
breathed a sigh mixed with relief and sorrow. Would every house in
Shotgun Cove yield the same result? Was there anyone still alive?
That was a discussion no one was terribly interested in having.

Carter had been to Whittier before— several
times in fact, but he was always surprised by its size. There
simply wasn’t much Whittier to Whittier. It was a postage stamp
city with a postage stamp population, or it had been in the
not-too-distant past.

From where he stood in the bed of his
gore-caked truck, he could only see the seaside portion of the
city, which didn’t amount to much. There was a handful of small
buildings and two larger ones within view and not much more out of
view. The harbor was full, however, with gently rocking, bobbing
crafts.

It was afternoon already and afternoons in
Alaska during the waning months of the year could pass in a blink
of an eye. If you weren’t careful, the afternoon could yield to
evening without your even knowing it. The faint shadow of the
mountain through which the tunnel had been carved was growing with
each passing minute. Carter had chosen to park just beyond the
shadow’s reach, but it was already starting to encroach upon their
position. He would have liked to move forward but his options this
close to the tunnel were limited.

There had been a parking lot created in the
area usually used to stage automobiles waiting their turn to exit
the city. All the vehicles were facing away from the tunnel, which
was how he determined these were all automobiles that had come into
Whittier and were parked quickly. Around the cars had been erected
a temporary chain link fence, possibly to contain the drivers and
passengers. The effort was makeshift at best and obviously had not
worked.

The apparent boneyard of motor vehicles was
close to where he was standing; close enough for him to see that
the drivers and passengers of the various sized vehicles had fled
suddenly, leaving doors and hatchbacks standing open to the
elements. Many had not fared well, judging by the debris and extant
carnage which clung to the vehicles’ surfaces and the paved ground
beneath.

Carter was taken by the stillness all around
him, but it was a stillness without peace. An edge clung to the
air, slicing the calm with vicious memories of days gone by.
Whittier was a ghost town whose specters still lurked in the
shadows.

He looked beyond, up the road toward the
town itself. On the far edge sat what had likely been a very modern
building used by a cruise company to corral its passengers and hold
them until the start of the next leg of their collective journey.
Much of the structure’s glass facade was shattered and lay in
prisms of light-bending shards on the ground. The arched building
was not measurably different than a cave or some alcove aside from
its floor and some of its interior walls. He wasn’t able to see any
of that anymore than he could see into the building’s front lot,
but there he guessed he’d see much of the same thing as what was in
all around the parked vehicles to his left: discarded luggage,
dropped maps and paper itineraries, and clothing in various
states.

Beyond that building, the seaside was
dominated by a rustic-looking building that Carter knew as the Inn
at Whittier. The buildings around the inn were much smaller shops
and other service-specific businesses catering to boats, fishermen,
and scenic day cruises. The inn itself was impressive amidst its
surroundings. It was the only multistory building in the immediate
vicinity and stretched itself beyond a single or a couple of modest
rooms.

Carter had never stayed at the hotel and
decided that he would treat himself and the others to the most
luxurious accommodations Whittier had to offer. He hoped that the
bar would still be stocked and some beds would still be made. After
the journey through the dark tunnel, he was ready for a little rest
and relaxation.

He scanned the road ahead, and three of the
staggering wretches responsible for the city’s undoing wandered
into view. The trio emerged from inside the white weatherproof tent
structure that had been used by the Alaska Railroad as a passenger
debarkation site and sat across from the ruined cruise company
building.

The demons lifted their noses to the air;
predators catching the scent of prey on the slight breeze. Carter
felt his waning aggression begging to build anew. He pointed toward
the group and hissed, “Looks like we got more business comin’ our
way. Don’t get too comfortable.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others to get
through?” one of his passengers asked.

Carter climbed into the truck cab. “They’ll
be along soon enough. It’s their own damned fault for showing up
late for the party. I guess they’ll just miss out on all the
fun.”

He shouted over to Devon, the driver of the
large GMC, “You wait here for the Colonel! We’re gonna scout ahead
a bit!” To the men still standing in the back of Devon’s truck,
Carter yelled, trying to be heard over his truck’s bellowing
engine, which sounded as a graceful and angry as a tank, “You two.
You’re comin’ with us.”

While he waited for everyone to load
themselves into the truck and ammunition into their firearms,
Carter lit a cigarette and tried to get himself focused on the
coming battle. It didn’t require much on his part. He had enjoyed
the battles in which he had fought recently and was never shy about
entering into them.

For a moment, he found himself thinking
about his friend and mentor Sullivan, who lived for the fight much
more so than Carter or anyone he knew. It had only been a couple of
days since Sullivan had been murdered and already Carter was
growing accustomed to his big friend’s absence. Carter was never
one to suffer an excess of sentimentality, and Sullivan’s death had
not changed that. Still, there were moments, like now, when Carter
knew Sullivan would have been in his element, out on the road in
the midst of constant fighting. Carter resented that his friend was
missing out.

He thought to himself that maybe Colonel
Bear was right to want to exact some revenge. Sullivan was family
after all, and if you wouldn’t seek vengeance for a family member’s
murder then there likely was no place for vengeance in the world.
Maybe it was just about maintaining that order in a world so
overrun with chaos.

With that thought still simmering in his
head, Carter floored the gas pedal and angled them onto the road.
The zombies ahead of him may not have been responsible for
Sullivan’s death, but Carter was willing to ignore that fact for
the moment.

His passengers held their breaths while they
closed the short distance between themselves and the terrifying
trio. Carter never took his foot from the accelerator. He sneered,
flashing his teeth like they were fangs. His three targets were
grouped tightly together, accommodating Carter very nicely. He
would likely be able to take them all out in one swipe.

He steered the grille of his dark truck with
the deer killer affixed to it into the path of the three monsters
ambling on the road toward the tunnel.

When the truck hit them, striking all three
at once, there was barely any indication at all that they had come
into contact with anything. Carter reveled in the wet crunch of
bodies being crushed against the truck’s hood and functional grille
ornament. He smiled when they disappeared beneath the truck’s
oversized tires.

Once over the still squirming bodies, Carter
reversed the truck, which barely registered that there was
something below it. When he brought the truck to a rolling stop,
Carter looked at the wriggling mass still on the road. He couldn’t
deny the satisfaction he felt at the ghouls’ apparent suffering.
One’s mouth opened and closed without apparent cause like the
automated entrance to a carnival fun house. Its flaking, cracking
gray skin was pulling away from its teeth and eyes, one of which
was a vacant black socket.

Another of the creatures was motionless, its
head pulverized into a jellied mass of necrotic blood, bone, hair,
and skin. The third creature’s body, like the first, was shattered
and not able to rise back to its feet due to the extent of damage
it had sustained. Like fish out of water, the undead creatures
wriggled and squirmed on the pavement as if searching for a final
breath of life.

Carter considered for a moment making one
more pass across the animated carcasses but decided against it. He
had no interest in ending their suffering or whatever it could be
called. He didn’t think it was pain that the things still felt but
he didn’t know that they were devoid of all sensation. They weren’t
doing too well on the road as they were, and he was perfectly
content to leave them to wallow.

Someone asked from behind him, “Should we
finish them off?”

“Fuck ‘em,” Carter said, invoking Sullivan.
“Let ‘em rot.”

Squealing his tires on the slimy road
surface, Carter swung them around violently in a cloud of acrid,
foul smelling smoke. He aimed them for the Inn at Whittier, which
was sitting just across the street.