Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (56 page)

The squeaks on the stairs returned, and a diminutive
lady with short, dark hair descended slowly. In her grasp was the well worn
length of an old shotgun. It was a single shot, and for the moment at least,
wasn’t pointed at me. Surrounding her legs were the grasping figures of her
children. All three were boys, triplets I’d guess, and bundled against the
chill in puffy layers of baggy sweatshirts.

I watched as she came down the stairs cautiously, her
dark eyes apprehensive as she stopped on the landing and peered around the
room. A moment later, she burst in rapid fire Spanish. I was clueless.

Tater looked me. “She wants to know why your lady out
by the truck is holding a gun.”

I nosed towards the dark haired woman. “What’s her
name?”

“I call her Mia,” Tater replied.

“Tell Mia that my friend is holding a gun for the same
reason that she is—just to make sure that everything is going to be safe.”

Tater and Mia volleyed back and forth for a moment
before Mia appeared to relax somewhat. She turned to me and in halting, broken
English said, “Can you fix?” Her eyes looked toward the rusty wood burner that
continued to seep tiny ribbons of smoke into the room.

The weight of impatience to get moving towards Devils
Lake clashed with four pairs of dark eyes that held unswervingly on to me as I
considered her question.

As if guided by some unspoken queue from his mother,
one of the boys trotted over to me and bear hugged my leg.

Tater grinned and lit another cigarette. “They kinda
grow on you, don’t they?”

I chuckled and shook my head.
“Michelle . . . have
you ever fixed a chimney?”

*click*

OK, just a short note for the record before we head
out. Let’s see, we got to the old farmhouse a little after 10:00 AM. There were
no major problems on the way—as a matter of fact, we didn’t have any hostile
encounters at all. Taking the back roads seemed to keep us out of the traffic
jams entirely. We did manage to backtrack and avoid two small intersections
that showed some activity and a few cars, but other than that, it was pretty
smooth sailing. The chimney fiasco was another story. You know the expression,
‘before you do something, ten other things have to be done first’. Well it’s
true. Michelle came in to the house and met everybody. After one look at the
three little boys, she volunteered us to help out. But of course, Tater didn’t
have a ladder to get onto the second story roof. No chimney cleaning equipment
either. They say that necessity breeds invention, so we ended up winching out
the stuck sedan. Our next move was pulling my truck close to the house. It was
still too short, and that, coupled with the generally dilapidated condition of
the roof, forced us to rethink. We ended up building a rickety ladder out of
the sawmill slabs from the barn. Tater wasn’t kidding either; there was a pile of
them in there about forty feet long and maybe fifteen feet wide—taller than me,
too, in the right hand section of the old barn. The center part was wide open
with the exception of a few scattered mounds of moldy silage. The left side of
the barn formerly held stalls, but it looked as if they had been removed years
ago to make room for other farm equipment, none of which was there. Anyhow, we
built a ladder that was held together by a few rusty nails that we pulled out
of the barn siding, and then reinforced with lengths of fencing wire that we
found behind the farmhouse. I managed to get on the roof, and then Michelle
handed me up a length of the slab wood. My plan was to smash it up and down in
the chimney to break loose the accumulation of bird nests, but of course, I
didn’t think about the chimney cap being in the way. It took a solid hour of
chipping away with a little framing hammer before I was able to loosen the
metal tabs enough to swivel the chimney cap out of the way. Then it was another
forty-five minutes of bashing and twisting until we hit daylight in the
fireplace. There was still a lot of little crap inside the chimney, and
Michelle came up with the idea to use a length of paracord with a rough ball
made out of the wire fencing tied in the middle of the rope. It actually worked
really well, and reminded me of the ‘rope and brush’ bore cleaners I used for
firearms. When we were done with that, I sawed up enough of the slab wood for
several nights worth of fire while Michelle prepared a few of our spare MRE’s
for Tater, Mia, and her boys.

By the time they were done eating, it was about 2:00
PM. The old stove, true to its reputation, was starting to put out some serious
heat, and we finally got around to getting the ‘official’ permission to park
the truck at the farm. The boat went in the creek easy enough, and then I
pulled my pickup into the center section of the barn. We had brought along
additional supplies just in case, and after sorting out the food that had to go
with us, Michelle took the rest in for the kids. She even gave them half of my
precious supply of hot chocolate. While she was doing that, I grabbed the
shovel I brought and dug a trench in the bone dry dirt against the inside
foundation wall. Our shotguns, some ammunition, and a few other valuables that
we weren’t taking with us—but at the same time, didn’t want to just leave in
the vehicle—got put in heavy plastic bags and buried. The dirt was then packed
down firm, and the top scattered with straw. The bass boat was equipped with a
twelve gallon external fuel tank, and we had three additional gas cans, five
gallons each, with us as well. The transfer of our weapons and packs to the
boat didn’t take long, and after a few final waves from Tater and Mia’s family,
Michelle and I headed downstream.

“What is that?” Michelle pointed toward a bobbing mass
in the creek ahead of us.

“I don’t know,” I said as I idled down the twenty-five
horsepower outboard motor to a crawl and looked where she indicated. The
channel up ahead shifted to the left and narrowed, and dead center was a
blockage of some type. As we drifted closer, we’re able to pick out the bloated
and waterlogged form of a cow at the center of the debris.

“Great. We’re what . . . maybe a mile from the barn
and we’ve already hit a snag,” she hissed in frustration.

“Sorry, my mapping program doesn’t update with dead
livestock sightings. Besides, it won’t take us long to lift the boat around,
and then we can get moving again. We’re not that far from where this stream
enters into Silver Lake, anyhow.”

True to my prediction, we were able to ‘float lift’
the boat around the obstacle, and the job was accomplished without having to
unload our gear—not that we brought a whole lot with us. Both Michelle and I
had light packs that only contained critical supplies for our search and,
hopefully, rescue attempt. Each of us also wore a tactical vest overtop of our
weather gear. Mine was primarily loaded with high capacity magazines for the
silenced .22, although I did have a pair of thirty round AR
magazines—Michelle’s vest was geared only toward the 5.56 platform. Neither of
us had anywhere near a full military combat load out, electing for speed and
mobility rather than prolonged firefights. If it came to that, we had extra
ammo in the boat. Then again, the likelihood that we would have to sustain an
extended battle from onboard a bass boat seemed doubtful to me.

After passing around the ‘cow clog,’ I ran the boat
another quarter mile before beaching it near a thick tangle of an old, washed
out beaver dam.

“Why are we stopping here?” Michelle asked.

“I want to stash one of our gas cans and the truck
keys up in the brush above the creek. That way, if something happens to one of
us, the other person will have a way to get home, even if somebody comes by and
siphons the gas from my truck.”

“Let’s make sure we don’t have something ‘happen to
one of us’ on this trip, OK?” Michelle's voice was devoid of any emotion; a
sure sign, as I had learned through the years, that she was doing her best to
bite back what she truly wanted to say.

“Sorry . . . don’t mean to be a downer . . . just
trying to be a realistic.”

She said nothing in reply, and it only took us a few
minutes to offload and camouflage the gas and a key, and then we were back in
the boat heading downstream. I kept the motor at low RPMs—just enough to steer
us through the current from the recent rain as Michelle rode point with
binoculars in hand and rifle at the ready.

“OK, slow down,” she said after another five minutes
of travel. “I see the overpass. It’s got to be Highway 281.”

I cut the motor and grabbed on to a passing bush,
holding our position in the creek as Michelle studied the scene.

“Eric, that’s not much of an overpass. It’s more like
a low bridge over a country creek. Are you sure we can even go underneath it?”

“I had to duck my head a bit when I came through it a
few years ago, but I’m pretty sure we can manage.”

“Was the water level this high when you came through
last time?”

“It was actually a little bit higher I think. Then
again,” I continued as I looked at the boat, “the last time I was in a flat
bottom. This one is a semi-V, so we might have to lay back a little further.”

“That might not be our only problem. I can see several
vehicles on the bridge. One of them is upside down, and there’s at least three
people up there as well. I have no idea if they’re infected or not. Also, that
little cluster of trees on the right side of the road is preventing me from
seeing anything in that direction.”

One of the tricks I’ve learned through the years of
boating is to keep a short length of rope tied to a hard point near my seat. On
the other end of the rope I have a sliding loop, and attached to that loop is a
small set of clamping pliers. When the situation arises, it’s easy to hold your
boat in position by locking the pliers on any handy anchor point, like a tree
limb or root ball. If nothing small is available, you can use the sliding loop
to hold onto larger objects. Either way, it’s quick and effective—and it’s
exactly what I did before picking up my own binoculars.

I studied the landscape from the creek all the way up
to the bridge. Like most places in North Dakota, it was basically flat. On the
left hand side of the creek just before you hit the highway was a rather
disheveled looking farmhouse. As far as I knew though, it wasn’t abandoned . . .
or at least it hadn’t been. The bridge was maybe a tenth of a mile ahead, and
as Michelle had indicated, there were several vehicles blocking it. I tried to
keep the binoculars steady in the bobbing current, and after a minute I saw two
people emerge from behind one of the cars. They seemed to be pointing toward
the south, but that’s about all I could make out from here.

“Infected or not, that’s our direction,” I said.

Michelle shifted her rifle into a ready position as I
unclipped the bush anchor and guided the boat downstream. It wasn’t a straight
run; the creek meandered through a series of large sways and loops on its
course toward the bridge, and both of us kept a sharp eye out as it loomed
closer. About seventy feet away I cut the engine off and dropped the little
mushroom shaped anchor. We drifted another twenty or so feet before it caught
the soft bottom and slowed us to a stop. From this distance it was easy to see
the pileup of vehicles that blocked the road. What also became visible was a traffic
jam that stretched to the south further than we could see. Several of the cars,
trucks, and RV’s in the jam were burnt out husks. A few of them still smoked.

“This isn’t good,” Michelle whispered with her neck
slightly angled towards me. “With this many cars, there ought to be a whole lot
of people milling around.”

I was about to reply when a group of four people
materialized from among the wreckage on the north side of the low bridge. They
were moving in a series of leapfrogs, with at least two of them stationary and
watching toward the south at all times. Through my binoculars, none of them
appeared armed—with firearms, anyhow. One of them carried a baseball bat,
visibly stained from use on objects other than baseballs. Another one was
hefting what appeared to be a machete. The other two were lost to my vision
momentarily. Above the quiet babble of the stream, I could hear car doors being
opened. I eased my binoculars down and let them hang from the neck strap, and
then picked up the silenced .22.

Michelle had dropped her own binoculars and now held her
AR in a two handed grip, the business end of which was pointed directly toward
the bridge, and I was scanning the area through the reflex sight of my Ruger when
a scruffy haired, baseball hat wearing head poked up over the bridge’s cement
guardrail. The face below the brim did a wide-eyed double take when he realized
the barrels of two rifles were pointed at him, and quick as a flash he dropped
below the cement barrier. Extremely faint voices crept across the breeze to our
ears as we held position in the current.

“What now?” Michelle whispered over her shoulder.

In answer to her question, another head—this one
covered in an orange winter cap—peered over the railing for a split second
before diving down out of sight.

“If they were infected, they wouldn’t be acting like
that,” I whispered back.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t shoot at us.”

“I didn’t see any guns, did you?”

“The guns you don’t see are the ones that get you
killed.”

I glanced up at the afternoon sky as Michelle’s
statement sank in. We had maybe ninety minutes of daylight left, and I wanted
to get to the ranger station before then. These little delays—from the
farmhouse chimney to the dead cow, and now this—were starting to really irk me.

“Get ready,” I hissed to Michelle as I dropped the
Ruger to a less threatening, one handed position across my chest. With my other
hand, I half cupped an improvised megaphone and called out. “Attention on the
bridge, we mean you no harm . . .”

I was interrupted by the orange hat poking over the
cement. The face below it was young—maybe eighteen or so—and nervously
gesturing the universal hand signal for silence. The raised finger in front of
his lips slid sideways and pointed to the south at the long line of traffic. I
glanced in that direction, but from my slightly lower elevation, I could see
nothing except cars. I could guess, though. Pointing my finger to the northern
side of the creek next to the bridge, I mimicked his silence gesture and then
nodded in that direction. He glanced tensely again towards the south before
quickly nodding at me and disappearing below the buttress.

In a short span, I had pulled up the anchor slightly
and let the boat glide forward, dropping it again when we reached the slow eddy
that twisted in a lazy half circle just before the water drifted underneath the
bridge. The current pushed us gently towards the bank, and we leaned backwards
to allow the nose of the bass boat to lift slightly onto shore. When the
friction stopped us, Michelle agilely hopped out and crouched, steadying the
boat with one hand while she held the AR with the other. I was tracking through
the red crosshair, searching the area for any targets as she dug her heels in
and pulled the boat further onto dry land. When it stopped, I padded quietly
onto shore.

The orange hat poked around the edge of the bridge,
and a pair of gloved hands beckoned for us. Michelle and I nodded at each
other, and then guardedly sidestepped out of the shallow stream bed. When we crested
the low overpass, it became much more apparent over what had caused the traffic
jam. There was an upside down station wagon sandwiched between a pair of pickup
trucks—the trio further complicated by somehow wedging themselves halfway in
the body cavity of an old panel van. The smell of automotive
lubricants—transmission fluid and gear oil primarily—still reeked in the area.
On the back side of the panel van, the boy with the orange hat stood warily
next to another young man of about the same age . . . maybe a little younger.
The younger one sported a bomber style jacket that looked a few sizes too
large, and a leather hat with a pair of furry flap ear covers. For the moment,
the other two that we had noted remained hidden.

I studied the pair of them briefly as we all stood in
silence. Both of the boys were scruffy, and came fully equipped with faces and
hadn’t seen a bar of soap in a long time. Orange Hat stood tense but still as
our eyes met. The boy in the bomber jacket, however, looked extremely jumpy and
ready to bolt in a flash.

“Where’s your friends?” I asked.

Bomber Jacket shifted his eyes briefly to the right
toward the station wagon, but neither said anything.

I tried again. “Boys, I’m Officer Coleman, this is Officer
Owens.” My words were at a normal level for conversation, but the one in the
orange hat widened his eyes and raised a finger to his lips. Pointing with his
other hand to the binoculars that still hung on their cord around my neck, he
motioned for me to look to the south. I slid to the side and immediately saw
what was causing the boys anxiety. The traffic snag continued on for at least a
half mile, but my eyes were immediately drawn to a churning pack of infected
that spiraled and gushed in a loose mob about 200 yards away. There were easily
over 150 individuals in the swarm, and they seem to undulate and pulse around a
central core of . . . something.

I slid back and silently indicated for Michelle to
take a look. The expression on her face when she pulled back mirrored mine.

Turning toward the boy in orange hat, I whispered, “I
see what you mean.”

He nodded curtly, and his eyes searched both Michelle
and I in a split second, lingering briefly on the ammunition in our tac vests.

“Got any .38 ammo you can spare?” The boy’s voice was
slightly shaky, and reminded me of someone who was too young to wear the crown
of authority that had been placed on them.