Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (19 page)

In less than a minute, both he and Sam had loaded
their shotguns while Michelle continued to scan the area. Another handful of
the buckshot went into each of their pockets.

“Max, guard the truck.”

The bodies on the ground hadn’t moved, but as a
precaution, they gave them a wide berth to avoid stepping in any fluids. Even
so, their noses crinkled with the stench.

“Not trying to be a potty mouth here,” Sam drawled,
“but have you two noticed that every one of these things smells like shit?”

Michelle shined her flashlight across the bodies,
“Most people void their bowels after death.”

“I know, but I mean even the ones I shot from the top
of the semi truck smelled like a diaper, and that was before they were . . .
dead.”

Michelle put the light on the corpse of the old lady
that she and Eric had taken down last. “Are you saying that they were dead
before we shot them—that they had already emptied their bowels?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re kidding me, right? Do you really think these
people were zombies?”

Sam grinned his gap-toothed smile, “Hey, I’ve been
divorced for nine years, so I watch a lot of television.”

“Were you watching television at home the day they
taught about gathering evidence and drawing conclusions at the academy?”

“Probably, why?”

Michelle put the light back on the old lady. “Look at
her legs, they’re covered with feces.” A wave of her flashlight at each of the
other bodies near the store showed the same—pants, skirts, or bare legs—all
covered in defecation. “These people were processing waste material through
their bodies continually. It just looks like they couldn’t keep it inside.”

Sam used his own flashlight to scan the bodies. “Well,
I hereby promote you to chief detective, effective immediately and for however
long we stay alive.”

Any further repartee was interrupted with a rapid
knocking on the glass entrance to the store.

“Somebody remind me to be nice,” Eric said as he
headed for the door.

Amy unlocked the door and let them in, rolling her
eyes and gritting her teeth as she did. “Sorry to call you, but after awhile
people get tired of listening to the same voice.”

Small groups of standing people were scattered
throughout the dimly lit, crowded interior. Many more were still huddled in
groups on the floor, and it seemed to Eric like they all began to talk at once.

Sam leaned in and mumbled into Eric’s ear, “You want
me to wing a few of them to get their attention?”

Eric suppressed a smile, “No, not yet anyway. Let me
try to be diplomatic first, if that doesn’t work, then we’ll consider your
alternative.”

Eric raised his hand and stood there silently. Every
shouted question was ignored; every attempt to draw his attention went
unanswered. It took almost two solid minutes before the crowd realized that
nothing was going to be said until they had quieted down. Two of the standing
groups contained most of the worst offenders, and were the reason for the last
thirty seconds of delay.

Scanning the crowd slowly, he could see a definite
divide in the sea of faces. Fear, anger, heartache, apprehension and doubt—it
was all there. Especially fear.

“Well, are you going to stand there with your hand up
in the air like some royal asshole addressing his subjects, or are you just
going to get back in your chariot and drive up to the castle on the hill where
you have electricity and food?”

It had come from a middle-aged man in a business suit standing
with one of the groups. From Eric’s view, it looked like the man’s hair had
been chiseled out of silver plastic.

Eric took a breath to calm himself as he turned to
face the man. “I understand that you’re . . .”

“You don’t understand shit.” The man stepped to the
front of his little group, buoyed by nods and agreements from others in the
crowd. “You . . . and him . . . and those two,” he nodded toward Sam, Michelle,
and Amy, “and all the other ‘special people’ are safe and protected up there in
the house, and you’ve got us down here, locked up in the dark just waiting on
your grace for food. We’re not your subjects, and we’re sure as hell not going
to lay on the floor and be bait for your little safari out there.”

Eric lowered his hand and forced several more breaths
between his tightening lips as the crowd, spurred on by the man’s angry
statements, exploded once again. A dark-haired lady standing with another group
shouted over the din, “They’ve got a whole room full of food and guns up at the
house . . . and they’re supposed to be lawmen. Seems more like jailers to me.”

“Nobody is making you stay here, you can leave anytime
you want,” Eric’s raised voice was loud, but barely pierced through the crowd
before he was shouted down again.

“I know that the old guy has a lot of barrels full of
gasoline in that big warehouse. He flat out told me that he wasn’t going to
give me any, though. I’ll tell you what I think—I think there’s enough of us
like minded folks in here to convince him otherwise.”

Each word that was said chipped away at the remaining
threads of Eric’s patience, and with a quick spin, he long-strided over to the
door—almost bulling over Amy in the process.

She reached up a hand to his shoulder, and in a very
tattered, worn out voice said, “Remember that saying about a few bad apples.
There’s a lot of people in here who are doing their best to be on your side,
but as usual, most of those people are not as outspoken as some of the ‘squeaky
wheel’ groups.”

His face still red with anger, Eric managed to give a
quick nod of acknowledgment to Amy before continuing over and whispering to
Sam. The questioning look that Sam shot back rated another whisper, and then
Sam nodded slowly. Eric stepped back toward the middle of the fray, pausing
momentarily next to Michelle. His whispered words brought a grim look to her
face, and with a terse nod of her head, she shouldered through the crowd toward
Sam and Amy—Glock in hand.

The dark-haired lady threw out more curses at him
before shouting, “Yeah, big people with guns and badges pushing the rest of us
around. It’s just like Fargo all over again.”

Eric raised his right hand again. This time the
majority of the crowd quieted quickly, but interspersed derogatory comments
continued to flow from the standing factions. Without saying a word, he dropped
his right hand back to his side, and slowly lifted his left—pointing it toward the
glass door. The crowd swiveled their necks at the sound of Sam’s key ring
jingling, and even the standing groups became quiet when he unlocked the door
and wedged it halfway open with his boot.

“Now the bastards are kicking us out . . . I don’t
think so. We deserve an explanation about what’s been going on, and I want it
now. I’m not going anywhere—none of us are—until we get it.”

A stout man with a pot belly and braided white beard
stood up from a group that had been huddled in the corner. He wove his way
through the crowd until he was standing midway between Eric and the abusive
loudmouth. Turning towards Eric’s accuser, he folded his arms across his chest
and said, “Sit your ass down and let the man speak. Everybody here is just as
much in the dark as you are, but we’re getting pretty sick of hearing your
nonstop bitching and moaning.”

A trifecta of ‘amens’ detonated from around the room,
and Eric used the ensuing stillness to jump in to the mix.

“That door is open for two reasons. Number one, and most
importantly—anybody, and I mean anybody—is free to leave at any time they want,
as long as their departure does not put other people at risk.” He turned toward
the stiff-haired speaker, “But let me be absolutely, crystal clear—you will be
walking out of that door with exactly what you brought in. Any thoughts you’re
entertaining about forming some ‘Frankenstein lynch mob’ and trying to
take—either by deception or violence—any property that does not belong to you
will be met with force.” Three of Eric’s strides put him right in the face of
the plastic-haired man positioned at the point of the standing group. Eric
raised his hand and pointed a stiff index finger at the man’s forehead. A rapid
poke thumped him dead center between his eyebrows, and Eric punctuated his jab
with, “Lethal force.”

Spinning away and stepping back, Eric continued,
“Number two—that door is open because just moments ago, these ‘special people’
here,” he indicated Sam and Michelle, “and others just outside, were risking
their lives to keep you and your family safe. A dozen feet on the other side of
that door there are five corpses that we had to blow the brains out of just to
keep them from tearing through and coming after you. For all I know, it could
be your mother . . . or your son, lying out there. If you think I’m jerking
your chain, now’s your chance . . . go out there and take a look . . . and
there’s at least ten more scattered between here and the road. WAKE THE HELL
UP, PEOPLE! Most of you were at the campground . . . you experienced the shit
storm that went down. Well guess what folks—as far as we know, it’s not better
anywhere else. We don’t know what’s happening, so don’t start demanding answers
that we can’t give. I can promise you this, though—whatever happened—this is no
longer ‘yesterday’s world’ that we’re living in.”

Eric lowered his voice in pitch, but the intensity
remained. “As some of you may have picked up from Amy’s radio, there’s at least
one more of those things out there. And we think it’s one of the fast ones—the
ones we’ve been calling a feral. The last one of those that Officer Owens
encountered,” he nodded toward Michelle, “took a half dozen rounds of
buckshot—point blank—before it went down. So if you think for one moment that
I’m abusing my authority or violating your rights by asking that you stay in
here while we hunt it down, well then, you just say the word and I’ll be damn
glad to trade places with you.”

The crowd was silent as Eric finished his speech and
walked toward the door. Pausing with his hand on the aluminum push bar, he
turned to face the crowd once more. “Don’t misunderstand me; I am truly sorry
for the losses that many of you have suffered. Just don’t forget that you’re
not the only ones in that boat.” Eric clicked the mounted Quark flashlight on
high. “One other thing before we go out there—we’re still planning on meeting
with everybody tonight. I’m sorry it’s been delayed. Shit happens—deal with it
. . . because to be totally honest with you, right now I could give less than a
hairy rat’s ass if you’re offended that a meeting is behind schedule while
we’re out there putting our lives on the line for you.”

Eric pushed the door and walked outside; Michelle and
Sam followed.

Backtracking in a wide arc around the bodies took them
to the truck, and Eric reached in and started it back up—flipping the switch
again for the off-road lights.

“Worried about draining your battery?” Sam asked.

“The off-road lights will suck it down pretty fast if
it’s not running, but the main reason I turned it off when we were inside was
to make it as silent as possible out here for Max to hear if anything was
coming—he seems to hate these things.”

“Do you think he can find the missing one for us?”

“I don’t know. He’s a hunter, not a tracker, but his
senses are about a hundred times sharper than ours.”

“Are you going to have him on a leash?”

“No. He doesn’t like that when we’re hunting, and I’d
feel a lot more comfortable knowing that he had free reign to protect himself
if the doo-doo hits the fan. Don’t worry though; he won’t take off unless I
gave him the command. Probably.”

“Probably?”

Eric shrugged and smiled, “I can honestly say that we
have zero experience tracking down zombies at night. Maybe I should have
watched some of those television shows with you.”

Sam laughed and shook his head, “Maybe. Oh, and by the
way, I think I was supposed to remind you to ‘be nice’ in there, I just
couldn’t decide if I wanted to say it before—or after—you threatened to put a
bullet in that guy’s head.”

“OK boys, I’m starting to suffer from testosterone
poisoning here, so if you don’t mind, let’s figure out a plan and get moving,”
Michelle chimed in.

Eric took his radio off of his belt, “
Scott . . .
Thompson . . . any news
?”

“
So far, nothing
.”

“
OK, we’re going to start searching in a few
minutes. I’m going to leave my truck angled the way it is so you have a lot of
light to shoot by if anything comes from the road. Scott, I want you facing
that way. Thompson, I want you covering us as best you can. Just remember to be
absolutely sure of your target if you have to fire. There are three of us, plus
Max, that will be down here on the ground
.”

“
Understood
.”

Eric whistled, and Max jumped out of the pickup’s bed
and trotted over, a deep growl emanating from his throat as he got closer to
the bodies outside of the store.

“C’mere buddy.”

Max gave a few more low snarls at the corpse of the
boy with wire-rimmed glasses before bounding over to Eric.

Eric knelt down and put Max in a fake choke hold,
scrubbing his head with his other hand.

“You ready to go hunting, Max?”

Max pawed the ground and pushed his monstrous head
into Eric’s chest, almost bowling him over.

“I’ll take that for a ‘yes.’” Turning to Sam and
Michelle, Eric asked, “Any ideas?”

“Why don’t we walk out along the road first? Sam
suggested, “That way we can get a feel for how Max might react if we find one,
and it’ll also put us out in the open with more room to fire—or run—if we have
to.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Eric handed the chrome plated
shotgun to Michelle, “I’m going to be on point with Max. It’s going to be
easier if you and Sam carry the heavy artillery . . . but I’ll need to borrow
your flashlight.”

Michelle completed the trade, and then the three of
them began walking toward the road—Max and Eric in the lead.

As they passed each downed body, Max gave a slight
growl and bristled menacingly, as if waiting for them to spring up again. None
of them did. Halfway to their endpoint, Max stopped and stared into the weeds;
flattening his tail parallel to the ground and curling his lips back.

“Max, wait.” Eric slid next to Max and knelt down.
“What is it, buddy? What do you see?” The cavernous rumble reverberating
through Max’s chest vibrated against Eric’s shoulder as he stared into the
weeds by the lake.

A few seconds later, Sam and Michelle moved up into
flanking positions. “He got somethin’?”

“Yeah, look at his pose. Tail flat out, lips curled,
partially crouched and focusing—that’s wolf for ‘danger.’”

“What now?”

“Now we move up and take care of it,” Michelle
answered.

After commanding Max to wait, they spread into a
curved skirmish line and slowly approached the weeds, stopping briefly at the
edge of the road to shine their lights down the gradual slope that led to the
edge of Ghost Echo Lake.

“There,” Michelle hissed, “next to that little clump
of willows . . . something’s moving.”

“I see it,” Sam echoed.

“I don’t,” Eric said, craning his neck in the
direction Michelle had indicated.

“Look on the ground at the ‘seven o’clock’ position
from the base of the willow tangle.”

Eric slid to the left a few feet and stared again.
“OK, got it.” Aligning the 10mm’s sights on the object in question, he began to
walk forward—Michelle and Sam slightly ahead to his left and right.

As they closed, it became obvious that the thing on
the ground was human. Or was. Inflamed red eyes looked up at them from a
chubby, mud and blood speckled feminine face. Her brown, woolen parka blended
in almost perfectly with the surroundings as she pulled herself through the
weeds. Grasping roots and rocks with shredded fingers, she wormed and heaved
herself forward inch by inch. Her legs followed limp and useless behind her.

“Look at the back of her coat,” Michelle said as she
closed the gap, stopping about twenty feet away from the crawling woman, “it
looks like she took a round in the lower spine.”

Eric shined his flashlight off to the right. A beaten
down trail had been dredged through the thick underbrush for at least seventy
feet. “Damn, look how far she’s pulled herself with a broken back.”

“Let’s take care of her and get moving, we still have
a lot of stuff to do tonight,” Sam voiced with a bit of impatience showing
through as he raised his shotgun.

“Hold on a minute,” Michelle said as she edged closer
to the dragging lady, “I want to see something.”

She crouched fifteen feet away from the crawling ghoul
and stared at it momentarily, shifting her head to the left and right to be
sure. “You’re wrong, Sam . . . she’s breathing. So they’re not your ‘up from
the grave, midnight theater zombies’ that you were worried about.”

“So what you’re saying is that since this flaming-eyed
fat lady—who managed to drag herself a hundred feet through the thick brush
with a broken back and probably massive internal injuries—because she’s still
breathing, I should feel all warm and fuzzy inside?”

“Yep,” Michelle stood and backed away, “anybody want
to say a quick prayer?”

“I think we’re all going to be saying a lot of prayers
before this is over,” Sam replied, “do you want me to finish her?”

The thunder of the chrome 12 gauge was his answer.

They finished their sweep out the road with no other
encounters. A total of sixteen bodies were found, counting the five in front of
the store.

“Now the fun part,” Eric said dryly as they walked
back to the store.

“OK, let’s circle the marina parking lot and see if
Max picks up on anything. From there, we’ll start spiraling in, checking
buildings as we go.”

“Do you want me to take point?” Sam asked.

“No . . . thanks for offering, but I need to be out
front with Max.”

Sam nodded, and a few minutes later they began their
loop. Going slow and searching every shadow with their lights took almost
twenty minutes, but yielded no results. “How do we know this thing isn’t five
miles down the road by now?”

“We don’t, but let’s eliminate the close possibilities
before we worry about what might be five miles away.” Eric picked his radio up,
paused, and then turned toward Michelle, “These are great, but I’m really
wishing we had a ‘hands free’ option.”

“We do, for six of them anyhow. The ones that Andy and
I brought back from my office have single transducer throat microphones and
earpieces—we just haven’t taken the time to set them up yet.”

“We need to make that a priority.”

“Everything is a priority right now.”

“I know what you mean. Are you ready?” Sam and
Michelle both nodded.

“
Thompson, we’re getting ready to make our sweep
between the buildings
.”

“
10-4
”

They circled around the front of the store, past the
gas pumps and over to the first block building. It was still locked.

“What’s inside here?” Sam asked.

“Walter uses it as an overflow storage building for
products he stocks at the store.”

“So it might be filled with food?” Sam’s eyebrows rose.

“Knowing Walter, it’s probably stacked floor to ceiling
with empty beer bottles.”

The propane storage shed was also secured, and as they
passed, Michelle gave them a quick rundown of what Walter had shown to her and
Amy.

“All right,” Eric sighed, “that leaves us with
Walter’s office and the boat warehouse.”

They reversed course and headed back past the two
small outbuildings, re-examining every nook and crevice as they went by. Ahead
of them, the garage door side of Walter’s office building loomed still and
steady in the cool, night air. Puffs of their breath fogged into miniature
clouds in the brilliant illumination of their lights as they approached the
structure, weapons at the ready.

“Let’s circle it . . . there’s a couple of windows on
the front side that we can look through. They’ll only give us a view into the
area where Walter has his desk, but at least it’s a start.”

They circled counterclockwise, coming up between the
store and the office before continuing around and putting the store at their
backs. Above their heads, just under the eve at the corner of the building, a
small surveillance camera was facing outwards. Eric stopped and shined his
flashlight along the roofline of Walter’s office, and then jumped it over to
the store. He found two more cameras.

“
Hey Walter, when did you get the surveillance
system
?”

“
About two weeks before Christmas last year, so
that’s what—about five months ago, I guess
.”

“
I’m guessing that they don’t work right now,
correct
?”

“
No, they’re tied in to grid power. I’ve got ‘em hooked
to a UPS backup that’ll provide about twenty minutes of runtime for the cameras
and the DVR system before it shuts down, but that’s just for the occasional
power interruption
.”

“
How many cameras are there—I can see three from
where I’m standing—one of them is above my head at the corner of your office
facing towards the store, and I can see two of them on the store, but I can’t
tell which direction those are pointed
.”

“
I have two separate systems. The first one has
three of those little black dome cameras flush mounted in the ceiling of the
store. One is above each register, and one is at the point where the two wings
come together. Those are the only inside cameras hooked to the system. There
are six cameras linked with the outside system. Three of them are on the store,
and three are on my office
.”