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

I saw an empty jug that looked like it once held water, several blankets and a figure, curled up in the corner, unmoving.

Approaching, I knelt and put a hand on the person’s shoulder.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked. “Hey, I’m a friend.” I gently shook the shoulder, trying to rouse him.

A groan. Then he stirred, and moved slightly and turned his head up and I saw him. 

He looked about 20 and his face was covered in soot. His eyes slowly opened and he groaned again.

“Can you stand?” I asked. “Can you walk?”

“I... I...,” he struggled. Then he tried to sit up and stand.

“Ah!” He cried out and fell back down.

Feeling his leg, I was gentle, but not gentle enough.

“Ahhh!” he cried out again, clutching his leg. 

“Is it broken?” I asked.

“No, I just got burned,” he managed to say through clenched teeth.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Za... Zach,” he said. “My name is Zach.”

“Well, come on, Zach, I’m going to get you out of here.”
I put my arm around him and lifted him up. Stumbling, we made it outside the shack and into the sunlight. He blinked rapidly; he had probably been inside the little structure for days. Out in the light where I could see, I laid him down onto the grass and looked him over.

“That’s not too bad,” I said. His leg had a small second-degree burn and it looked like he had a wound on his side. There was dried blood on his shirt. “Try to walk again. I’ll help you.”

“Okay,” he said. “Do you have any food? I’m starving.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We have food and we’re going to treat your burns. How long have you been in there?”

“I think it’s been four days,” Zach said. He was really weak, and he had to struggle to get up.

I put my arm around him again and lifted. Leaning on me heavily, he was able to walk down to the edge of the trench. I sat him down on the edge and hopped down and then lifted him down and carried him to the opposite edge. Arms reached down to lift him up and out and I raised my eyes to the face of my father and DeAndre looking down at me. Dad lifted him under his arms as I pushed from below.

“Here, Son,’ DeAndre said as he caught Zach’s legs. “We’ve got you.”

“Thank you,” said Zach, trembling.

I hopped up and out and helped them get him into the SUV. It was still pretty quiet, with no sign of any movement other than us. We bundled Zach into the back of the SUV, and Jonathan went to work on him. He had been trained as a triage medic for the Sanctuary team, and he was very, very good.

“His name is Zach,” I said to the others while looking into Zach’s eyes. He had opened them to look at me, and I saw that beneath the soot and grime and pain, he had green eyes. His hair looked black but that could have been the soot too. Jonathan nodded and continued working on his patient, cutting a slit up his pants leg with scissors from the first aid kit and going to work cleaning his wounds.

Zach was still looking at me intently, so I introduced myself.
“I’m Luke, Zach. This is Jonathan, he’s a medic, the best. You’re in good hands.”

“Luke,” Zach said, trying out my name. “Thank you for helping me, Luke.”

“It’s no problem,” I said. “You just work on getting better, okay?” I patted his shoulder gently and went to go sit up front.
Dad, DeAndre, Risa were discussing our options.

“We could go back, drop him off at home,” DeAndre said.

“Or shoot up flares and wait for the paramedics to come get him.”

“We already drove half a day, if we go back now we will lose an entire day,” Dad said. “Alyssa can’t spare a day; she’s on a death sentence.”

“We could take him along with us,” Risa said. “If we meet some authorities up ahead they can take him, get him more help, or to a family member.”

“I think Risa’s right,” I said, sitting down with them. “We can’t afford to have any delays at all. Forget about turning back, that’s simply out of the question.”

Dad looked at me with a small smile on his face.
“Then it’s settled,” he said, starting up the SUV again.

Three

“How’s Zach doing?” I asked Jonathan.

“He’s actually doing great,” Jonathan wiped his hands on a towel and looked down at his patient. “The burn wasn’t too bad. I cleaned it and bandaged it, and it should heal quickly. His side was already starting to heal, there was the blood on his shirt, but the wound itself wasn’t deep at all. I think he was mostly suffering from hunger and thirst. Once he ate something and downed a bunch of lemonade, he seemed to feel much better.”

I looked down at Zach. Jonathan had cleaned him up a bit, and he’d fallen asleep. His hair looked lighter now, maybe a medium brown, and his face was striking.

“Under all that grime was a hunk,” I said, smiling. Chuckling, Jonathan smiled.

“Well, let him recuperate a bit and I think he’ll be a keeper,” he winked at me.

Smiling back at him, I whispered, “Thanks for doing such a great job, Jonathan. You’re awesome.”

Chuckling some more, Jonathan made his way to the front of the vehicle and sat behind Dad. He was probably bringing him up to date on Zach’s situation. I looked down at the sleeping form again. I couldn’t stop looking at his face, there was just something about it.

Settling down in the seat beside his makeshift bed, I grabbed a spare blanket and pulled it over my legs. It could get cool at night here in Ontario, even in the summertime. Zach shivered in his sleep, and I put another blanket over him.

All of a sudden, the SUV came to an abrupt stop, throwing me into the seat in front. Instinctively, I put my arm out and held Zach in place so he wouldn’t roll off onto the floor. I heard swearing up front, and got up to check on the situation. Passing Jonathan on his way back to check on his patient, I asked: “What’s going on?”

“Some kind of road problem, I don’t know.”
I made my way up to the front.
“What’s up?”

“A tree has fallen across the road,” Dad said. “It almost looks deliberate.”

I peered out the window. Night had fallen, and it was hard to see what was going on.

“Looks pretty windy,” I said. “Want me to go check it out?”

“Well,” Dad started to say. Then: WUMP! A zombie suddenly came out of nowhere and smashed up against the right side window. Then a second later: SMACK! A small tree branch came smack down on our windshield, almost breaking it.

“What the …?” said DeAndre.

“I knew it…,” Dad said as he threw the SUV in reverse. The tires squealed as he accelerated away from the mess in front of him. The zombie fell off to the side but quickly picked itself up and began run-lurching after us.

“Oh, man!” I said, sitting down and buckling my seatbelt. Anything could happen in these kinds of situations. Dad kept reversing, then all of a sudden braked and swung the SUV around and raced away from the scene.

“I am going to have to double back to the turn off east of Kenora. We’re going to lose nearly sixty miles,” he said. His face looked grim.

“That road looked completely blocked, and the fences were all topped with barbed wire. Looks like the town of Dryden doesn’t want anyone going through it,” DeAndre said, peering out the window and shaking his head. “It’s almost as if it was done deliberately.”

“Oh, I have no doubt it was,” Dad said. “I have heard of this kind of thing happening. Small towns desperate to keep travelers out of their area. It never works, though.” He shook his head, looking disgusted.

Racing back the way we’d come, it was over an hour before we could cut down Highway 71. By that time, Zach was sitting up and drinking more water. His cheeks looked pinker, and he actually had a smile on his face.

“Do you want some fruit, Zach?” Jonathan asked.

“Maybe later,” Zach said. “Thank you. I think I’m stuffed.” he smiled and patted his belly. Jonathan smiled and touched his shoulder, then headed up to the front of the vehicle.
I settled in beside Zach. 

“If you let him, Jonathan will feed you until you pass out,” I said, smiling.

“I can tell,” he said, looking out the window. “Where are we headed now?”

“Dad is taking us down Highway 71, and we’re headed east after that. We’re on a tight time limit. We have to get to Boston and back to Winnipeg in less than two weeks."

Zach sat up more. “Wow. Do you think you can do it?”

I took a deep breath, trying to stay positive. Sitting forward, my hands wrapped together in nervousness, I continued. “We have to. My mother’s life depends on it.” I then filled him in on the desperate situation we were in.

“Oh my god,” he said, blinking back tears. We were both silent for several minutes.

“Luke, I want to help you in any way I can,” Zach said. “I know I’m just 21, but I’m strong and I’m fast. I want to help you guys. Even in our small podunk town, we’ve heard of the Sanctuary team. You guys have rescued a lot of people, saved a lot of families. You deserve all the help anyone can give.” He sat back, still looking fatigued from his ordeal, but he appeared determined.

My chest felt warm and my heart fluttered at his words and his voice. I could tell he was getting to me. I’d never really had any crushes, except for one back when I was 13, and he’d moved away soon after. But there was just something about Zach…

“Thank you. We may need your help,” I sat back in my seat. “Tell me about your family. What happened in that town?”

Zach closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. “We were overwhelmed, all of a sudden,” he began. “A week ago, everything was normal; it was business as usual. I worked at the dairy on the outskirts of town, and my mom and dad and I lived in town with my little sister. Jenny was only seven. Then one night, we were awakened around 3 a.m. by the sound of the gas station exploding. It was five blocks away, but the blast rattled our windows. Dad went to go find out what had happened and he barely got back. Before this, we’d had a few zombie outbreaks, but nothing we couldn’t handle. All the businesses had shotguns behind the counter, and that had been enough to keep things under control. We’re so remote that we thought we were safe. I guess we let our guard down. We should have had more defenses around the town.” He took a sip of water and blew his nose, then went on. “We were overrun. There were hundreds of them. They were at the gas station, and also behind the town, in the cornfields. In fact, we think they’d been hiding in the fields, the hundreds of acres of corn completely hid them. This summer the corn was growing really well, it was up over seven feet tall.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yes, wow. Exactly. They had been gathering in the cornfield for months I guess. Waiting. Just waiting,”

I shuddered.

“Well, they attacked finally, and it wasn’t random, it wasn’t hit and miss. They somehow knew to organize. First there was the gas station explosion, the double tanks blew sky high. The flames were huge: they must’ve been 30 feet high. Then when everyone went to go investigate, the rest of them moved in from the fields, they closed us in. We were caught unaware, we had no time to prepare, to escape. Most of the people were attacked and eaten within the first hour.”
He shuddered, and I put my arm around his shoulder.

“Well,” Zach said. “It was chaos. Just ... crazy. By morning, there were only a few dozen of us left, and they had chased us all into the center of town. We headed to the only defense we had. Last summer, the mayor had ordered that trench dug around the town park, with some tanks of gasoline nearby, all you had to do was pull the two switches and the gasoline poured out into the trench, then light it. Sounds good, right?" he looked up at me with tears in his eyes.

I swallowed hard. “It didn’t work, did it?” I asked.

“No,” Zach said, blowing his nose again. “It didn’t. We all ran there, Mom, Dad, Jenny and me. There were already several families there. We got there just as they were going to pull the switch. Well, we were all waiting there, in the bandstand, where Mr. Erickson pulled the switch and the trench was flooded with gasoline. I hadn’t realized there were so many tanks; they had rigged it so that the trench would fill at least a foot with gasoline, all around. And it did. Then they lit the thing. The zombies were already coming toward the park when they lit it. The closest one was several dozen feet away when they lit it.” Tears were running down Zach’s face as he spoke. I reached out and took his hand in mine. Looking up, I saw that DeAndre and Risa had joined us. Their faces were somber as they listened.

“Can you go on, Zach?” I asked gently. He nodded.

“They lit the trench and the flames roared up. We could no longer even see past the trench. It was a solid wall of flame. We thought it would stop them. It had to! Anything going into that trench would have been roasted alive! It was so hot we had to back up a dozen feet. Our faces were pink as we watched the flames.”

Zach took a shuddering breath and continued.
“We watched the trench burn, we just sat there and watched it. After about twenty minutes the flames began to die down a bit, but they were still over ten feet high. My dad and mom had sat down to talk, Jenny and I went to see what the bottom of the trench looked like. We walked closer, and I picked up some small rocks to throw across. Jenny picked up a small branch and moved closer. I guess she wanted to poke at the flames, maybe light her stick on fire. I called her back, told her to come away from there. Then I heard dad call her loudly from behind me, and it was then that Jenny turned to us.” Zach choked back a sob and fresh tears ran down his face. I squeezed his hand and murmured to him. He nodded and continued.

“The zombie was engulfed with fire, but it didn’t slow down at all. It had climbed up to the top edge on our side, and it leapt up and grabbed her. It must have been eight to ten feet that it jumped from the edge of the trench, but it grabbed Jenny and she screamed and it bit down on her and tore half her head off ...” His voice petered off into a soft sob.

“Jesus Christ,” Risa said, bowing her head and turning away to hide her own tears.

DeAndre just looked incredibly sad. He had just lost his wife, and he looked numb with sadness.

“Oh, Zach,” I said softly. “I am so sorry.” I put my arms around him, and he cried onto my shoulder. We stayed like that for maybe ten minutes, until he quieted and hiccoughed a little. He raised his head and looked at us with red-rimmed eyes, his face wet with tears. Grabbing some more tissue, he blew his nose several times.

“I want to tell you the rest,” he said. We waited silently.

After a few minutes, Zach took a deep breath and then continued.

“Everyone went ballistic when Jenny was lost. Several guys started shooting, and Mom started screaming and Dad yelled like crazy. Then more of them started coming over the fire. We had thought we were being so clever and sure of our defenses with that trench. But it only stopped them for a little while, and as the flames died down and settled into burning a few feet high, they came over in droves. Like I said, there were hundreds of them, just so many. They were overwhelming us. When Dad went to go join the others at the trench, trying to shoot them while they were still down in it climbing over, my mom forced me into the shed. I thought she was going to go in with me, but she pushed me in and told me to not come out, not for anything, and not to make a sound. Then she slammed the door and I heard her lock the padlock.”

He took another shuddering breath and then continued. “It actually took a while for it all to happen. I heard shooting, and men yelling, and the zombies were growling, and then they were kind of roaring and groaning. The town had packed lots of ammo when they retreated to the park, and so they fought for a long time, the last people standing were close by, I think. I heard shooting, fighting, yelling, and the moans and groans and roars of the creatures. I stayed quiet after that. I’m not sure if there were hardly any left after the last man fell. They overwhelmed us with numbers, but shotguns can take a lot down. I don’t know how many days passed before you found me,” he looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “If you hadn’t come ...”

“I think we got you out of that shed just in time.” I smiled down at him with tears in my eyes. “I am so sorry about your family.” I patted his shoulder, and he was silent. We just sat there, quiet, deep in thought. Risa and DeAndre went up front to fill Dad and Jonathan in on Zach's incredible story. 

“Zach?” I asked after a minute.

“Yes?” he said.

“Was that your only family?”

“As far as I know. I had an aunt and uncle in Vancouver, but we hadn’t heard from them after the last time the city was overrun, and that was over a year ago.” His voice sounded tired. “I’m the last one left.” A fresh tear slid down his cheek.

We both dozed off as the SUV drove on into the night. Sometime later, we stopped to switch drivers and eat something. I woke up and came to sit in the front, leaving Zach asleep in the back with Jonathan, who traded places with me.

“How’s he doing?” Dad asked, munching on an apple.

“He’s asleep now, but he told us his story,” I said, drinking some water and eating a granola bar. “Did they fill you in?”

“Yes. It sounds like the town had quite the last stand.”