Mad World (Book 3): Desperation (2 page)

Two

Dad turned the black SUV down the driveway and through the gates, and they swung shut behind us. It was like old times, except that Mom and Caitlyn were missing. Our hearts were heavy with our recent losses, but we were determined in our quest to get to Boston. I felt like a precious jewel being smuggled through dangerous territory. They had to protect me, but the irony was that they were the targets of the zombies, not me. The things didn’t even acknowledge my presence in a fight. It was weird, but I was used to it, and I used it to my advantage.

“Okay, while we are all inside this vehicle, I am going to pretty much ignore just about everything that happens on the outside,” Dad said. “We have a mission, and we have to complete it in record time. There is no wiggle room. Sound good?” None of us wanted a repeat of the incident that had gotten Caitlyn killed and Mom infected. Not on this mission. Helping people that had been in a car crash was good, but saving Mom, saving the world, was better. Much better.

“Yes.”

“Absolutely.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yes.”

We drove out of the city, passing several fires in the distance, and headed down the Trans-Canadian Highway.

“Normally I’d head south into the U.S. and east through Minneapolis, Chicago and New York, but Chicago is completely overrun, and the infestation reaches almost clear over to Detroit,” DeAndre said. “Minneapolis is also getting really bad. Some of our people have had bad outcomes in rescue operations there, despite their preparedness and expertise. The route is nearly impassable.”

We’d all been monitoring the situation in the States as part of our work with the Sanctuary team. Couriers and members of the team brought people to safety from areas overrun by the plague and its victims almost daily. They also brought back news, and it wasn’t good. We’d gone on some of those missions ourselves and had seen the carnage firsthand. You kind of got used to it, but in some ways, you never did, and it was only getting worse.

At DeAndre’s suggestion, we decided to go east rather than south, hoping that we’d see fewer delays on the less populated route. Crossing over the Red River and Provencher Park on our right, we turned right and headed through the industrial area of Winnipeg. I breathed deeply, eyes scanning the area we passed. I hoped we wouldn’t have any trouble to delay us, but at the same time, sometimes emergencies happened. You had to be ready for anything life threw at you.

Speaking of which…

“Oh man!” Dad cried, swerving the wheel as a woman ran out onto the road. Dad got control of the SUV and pulled off to the side.

“Nobody get out,” he said. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he craned his neck, trying to see where the woman had gone.

“She ran off over there,” said Jonathan, pointing off to the right and behind us. We all turned to look, but couldn’t see where she was.

Suddenly, two zombies in advanced stages of decomposition appeared on the driver’s side and ran headlong into the doors.

“Ah!” DeAndre jumped about a foot, then looked sheepishly around. “Took me by surprise…” he said in an octave lower than his normal speaking voice.

“There’s a containment team coming up, see?” I said, looking in the rearview mirror at the armored police car pulling up behind us.
The two officers inside aimed a pair of shotguns through a narrow space in shielded windows and took out the two zombies. Looking around, making sure the coast was clear, they got out of their vehicle, approaching the driver’s side of our SUV.

Dad rolled the window down about 6 inches.

“Sir, are you okay?” the female officer in full riot gear inquired through her mask.

“Yes, we’re fine,” Dad said, “but we almost hit a woman who came running across the road just a minute ago.” He gestured off to the right out past the embankment. “She went off down there.”

“Thank you, Sir,” the officer said. “Now please move along; it’s not safe to idle.” She waved us along and then ran behind us to the edge of the road, where her partner had already begun searching.

“Think they’ll find her in that?” Risa asked.

“No,” answered Jonathan. “It’s a near swamp out there, perfect hiding place for zombies. I give her a 20 percent chance.”

We were a fatalistic bunch, with a healthy side dish of graveside humor.

Pulling back onto the road, Dad cautiously brought the SUV up to about 10 miles under the speed limit, which was about as fast as was safe during the epidemic. You never knew when zombies, or victims for that matter, would pop up and run across the road, or AT a vehicle. It was sudden and abrupt. You had to be ready for anything. Cruising along, we drove another 5 miles down the roadway, passing the huge train yard on our left.

“Look out!” DeAndre cried as three people came running onto the road. I thought they looked like civilians, but as they got closer you could see the eye and the lurching trot they maintained.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Dad said, accelerating and maneuvering around the area so they would miss us. They were clearly running toward our moving vehicle, which was what the zombies were doing nowadays. The theory was that they were attracted by the movement and sound, but I also thought the smell of the vehicle lured them. Zombies hunted mainly by smell, it was their most acute sense, by far

“Boy,” Risa said, her eyes following the three zombies as we passed them. “This area is getting really infested.”

“It may be the train yard,” Jonathan said. “They abandoned it earlier this year, remember? It’s probably a perfect hiding place; no one’s likely to bother them there.” Grim, he watched out the rear windshield as the creatures receded into the background.

Dad stepped on the accelerator, until we were going about 15 mph faster.

After we passed Symington Yards on our left, we headed out onto the open land that surrounded Winnipeg’s southeast corner. The morning light fell on field after rural field of green. It was beautiful if you didn’t look too closely. As we passed the last bit of the railroad yard I could see at least two zombies from the highway alone, one just wandering about, and another engaged in a furious fight with at least half a dozen people. It was a case of constant vigilance these days. It was becoming commonplace. At least up to the point where they overwhelmed you and took down a friend or family member. I drew in a shuddering breath that was half sob as I looked out the window at the misty morning.

My dad must have heard, he reached over and took my hand and squeezed it gently.

“We’ll make it, Luke,” he said. “We have plenty of time, and you’ve got a good team of people around you.”

“I know,” I said quietly, looking out the window again. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I didn’t want the others to see.

We had been driving for an hour without incident when we came to what would have been called a two-horse town in the old movies Mom and Dad watched from time to time. There was one main street, complete with hardware store, boarded-up bank, and two bars. We drove slowly through the area, rubbernecking the whole way. The Sanctuary team hadn't been through this area in a while, and we saw a few zombies off to the side, down a couple of alleys.

“Looks deserted,” Risa said. Nodding, I kept watching the many dark corners of the town in the otherwise bright summer morning.

We saw several dogs nosing through the trash on a sidewalk; it was obvious no one had been feeding them. Pets often suffered slow deaths; they’d been domesticated and fed by their owners all their lives, and now they had to find food on their own. Either they starved or they went wild, and it wasn’t rare to hear about a pack of dogs roaming the outskirts of a city, foraging for food and water, whatever they could find.

Sometimes, they grew vicious and became a threat to humans, but they were nothing compared to the plague.  Zombies were pretty much everywhere now. In some areas, they were few in number and easily subdued, only to have more take their place; in others, their numbers were so overwhelming that they threatened to overrun entire cities and the surrounding regions.

Already many of the bigger cities were nearly lost to them, the residents forced to stay indoors most of the time, keeping out of sight. Even then, it was impossible to know whether a neighbor had been infected the week before and was holed up nearby, suffering and then succumbing to the zombie plague. Those who managed to survive were generally warriors by nature, and they never went out unarmed. To do so was to risk infection.

We came to a small park, where residents seemed to have made a last stand, and built a small barricade in the middle of the park square. What was strange was the open trench built around the square.

“What is that?” DeAndre asked, sitting up in his seat and leaning forward.

Dad eased the SUV to a stop and peered out at the four foot deep, eight feet wide trench in the middle of the road. It spanned the entire width of the road, and there was no way around it. We weren’t going any further.

I looked around us at the deserted park. At least the coast was clear - for the time being. “I'm going to go check it out,” I said, grabbing my bowie and shotgun. “Sit tight, everyone.” The knife went into its sheath on my side, and my hand gripped the sawed-off with familiarity. Being immune to the zombie plague and stronger than an ox came in handy, I thought, opening up the door and jumping out onto the black road. The shotgun came in handy, too, when I wanted a quick dispatch. They might ignore me, but zombies were a nuisance.

“Be careful, Son,” Dad said.

“Always,” I said over my shoulder.
I shut the door firmly behind me and heard it lock from inside. Turning to the trench, I approached it cautiously. It was huge, really, and seemed to stretch around the small park. Beyond it was a bandstand, about fifteen feet in diameter, with a tiny shack off to the side, maybe eight feet square.
Walking up to the trench, I saw it was blackened on the inside, up the wall and at the bottom. Kneeling down, I ran my hand along the inside edge, and it came up dark with soot. I inhaled deeply. Standing up, I brushed my hand against the side of my jeans and looked around again. The area was deserted. Curiosity got the best of me, and I jumped down into the trench and walked a few dozen feet. I came upon about eight bodies, all scorched to a crisp by fire. Looking closely, I could see most of them were zombie bodies, badly burned, heads partially missing, and dead. Wait. Not completely. I came upon two burnt bodies that were not yet dead. Their heads were intact, but their limbs had been blown off, which made crawling out of the pit impossible, although it looked like they had been trying for quite a while. They both ignored me as I calmly walked up to them and blasted their heads off. 

Looking around some more, I climbed out of the trench and up onto the interior of what looked like a last stand. Off in the distance, I saw several bulldozers and a gas tank truck. These people had made their last stand here, digging the trench and filling it with gasoline. Set on fire, it would have provided a formidable barrier.
I walked on, approaching the gazebo and the small shack. Bodies lay everywhere, some human, some zombie. The fatal wounds to the human bodies looked like they had been self-inflicted, and I couldn’t say I blamed them for taking their own lives. Cornered and faced with the prospect of being eaten alive and infected and turning into a zombie, I’d go for a quick death too.

I stood there on the gazebo and looked out at the surrounding terrain. There was evidence of planning that had degenerated into utter chaos. This had been a fight to the death. This town had died here. I kicked at some rubble with my boot and shook my head. 

“What a waste,” I muttered.

Suddenly I heard a faint groaning, coming from the shack off to the side. I tensed. What was this? A trapped zombie? But the groan had sounded weak and hardly malicious, not like a zombie at all.

I went down the steps and over to the door of the little shack. It looked like an equipment storage area. The door was padlocked, and the walls were intact. I took hold of the lock and rattled it; it was solid. 

Another faint groan issued forth from inside. Then a sob. This was no zombie. Someone had locked a human in here, probably to protect him or her from the attack.

“Stand back,” I called out. “I’m going to shoot the lock off.”
I listened but didn’t hear anything more coming from inside. Something told me the person inside was in pretty bad shape.
Standing sideways, so the shot would not go inside, I pointed my sawed-off at the lock a few inches away and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!! The lock not only flew off, but half the door was blown away as well. I kicked wood debris off to the side, once again mentally thanking my mother for the heavy, steel-toed leather work boots she had outfitted me in a few months ago, and pulled what remained of the door open.

“Hello?” I said. “Let me help.”
Those were the words every Sanctuary fighter used during a rescue. Our leader James Frederickson had said the words “let me help” were the most important words we could use, and in his opinion, the three best words in the English language. He recommended them even over “I love you.”

Silence. The interior of the shack was pitch dark, so I shoved more debris aside and opened the door all the way, letting in the sunlight as my eyes slowly adjusted.