The Swamp (2 page)

             
All the supplies loaded, only one last luxury left to find, and he knew right were to find it. His destination was a door inside decorated with a stick figure and a single stenciled word, “men”. The Charmin from the house was nice, but a diet of canned goods and junk food required a lot of paper. He started to push the door open, and got it half way before the door exploded outward, rocking him off his feet like he had been hit by a dump truck and landed him painfully in a display of gardening tools. Before he could regain his feet, two hundred pound of rotting flesh dropped on to him, its jaws snapping inches from his face. He grabbed its neck with one hand, and shoved upward, trying to keep as much distance between the monster and his neck as he could. The corpse’s weight had his pistol pinned to his side. Desperately casting around with his free hand, his fingers closed on a wooden handle, he brought it up with all his force, embedding the garden trowel behind the creature’s left ear.  The brittle decayed bone gave way, dropping the things full weight onto him. He lay there for a moment, gathering himself back in, then heaved it off to the side and got to his feet. On the floor in front of him was what was left of a middle aged man dressed in a red apron, obviously the shop keeper. The guy had a large portion of his guts missing. The skin on the guy’s neck looked peeled away. He realized that a lot of the clerks’ throat had sloughed off and was stuck to his hand. The sound of gagging broke the fresh quiet of the room.

             
An hour later he was on the road, reeking of bleach and wearing a set of brand new coveralls scavenged from the hardware store. He would change again when he got back to the tower, the overalls were uncomfortable. The temperature was already well over ninety and the stiff denim chaffed something fierce. He was looking forward to a shower in the ranger’s house, cold of course, supplied by the rainwater tank on the roof. With any luck at all, the tools he had found would restore the pump at the well and supply the house with water that didn’t smell like metal. Gathering supplies would also be a lot easier if he didn’t have to look for bottled water. He didn’t know how long he would stay at the tower, but as of now there was no reason to leave, and nowhere else to go, so it might as well be as comfortable as possible.

             
By the time he was back to the tower, the afternoon was almost over. The sun showed less than two hours remained in the day, so Sam got straight to work. It took a little under an hour to stow the new supplies in the small shed behind the house.

             
He had set himself up quite well; the shed was more than half full of assorted items. Cans and boxes of food covered the shelves on one side of the room. He knew the boxes had to go first, he had already found several infested with bugs.

             
The other wall was beverages, mostly bottled water of various sizes. He had lucked out on his first supply run after arriving here and found a water truck that had run off the road and ended up in thick vegetation. The poor driver had not survived the crash, but was struggling against the seatbelt until Sam had put the tip of an iron curtain rod through his eye. It had taken three trips in the Rodeo to bring all the undamaged water here. The wall also contained some sodas, but most importantly about twenty bottles of assorted alcohol, mostly full, that he had found over his several travels. He was holding on to then because he knew there great value as trade goods should the need and opportunity ever arise. The only exception was a bottle of Johnnie Walker that he was saving for his brother’s arrival.

              Sam could recall when he had found this bottle; it had been when he was making his way to the swamp after getting that text. He had been avoiding the larger roads in favor of the small two lane county roads that gave you a better opportunity to avoid people. At that point he hadn’t decided if it was the ones with pulses or those without had been worse after the fall. Most of the roads, even the back lanes and by ways, were dotted by obstructions, and even in a few areas, manned roadblocks. There were two basic types of road blocks. The first was simply the “do not past” type, this kind was normally staffed by soldiers or police, and occasionally civilians, and the point was to stop people from traveling in and out of “safe” areas. The other type was far more dangerous. Sam thought of them as the “Its going to cost you type”, These were where you had to either pay something to get through, or they just took everything up to and including your car and sent you packing, if you were that lucky. He had even heard talk about some checkpoints being used for “forced resettlement” where you were actually taken into custody and forced into a secure zone. These had been common the first few days, but now almost months later, the “going to cost you” variety ruled the day. His basic principle had become to u turn if he say a road obstruction with people standing around and it had served him well, but it also added days to his trip.

             
The road he was traveling meandered through the countryside side, and had been pretty clear so far. At one point he rounded a corner, and elevated to his left was the interstate. The road he travelled did not have an on ramp, it just ran side by side for a few miles. Ahead he could see a large number of cars that appeared to have been driven or pushed off the freeway, and had slid down the embankment.

             
He was low on supplies, so he decided to check a few cars. Vehicle looting had served him well in the past. It was also one of the most dangerous methods. He thought back to his slow learning curve and tried to recall the things he had learned. When the dead reanimated, there was nothing left of their minds but the need to eat. They would go after anything, Cows, Chickens, Horse and even cats and dogs, but what they seemed to want the most was other people. This one desire was so singular that when foods weren’t around, they would eventually stop moving and just go motionless until something, or someone, wandered by. They lost the ability to reason, so even simple things like seatbelts and door handles were far beyond their intelligence. This made parking lots and traffic jams very bad places to be. Anyone who died in a car would stay there, locked into their seat waiting for someone to walk by.

             
Sam had learned this the hard way when he was looking around just outside Tallahassee, he had walked to close to a car and a dead women dressed in a business suit who had taken for truly dead reached out and made a grab for him. Her chewed fingers caught and dug into the back of his shirt, narrowly missing gouging his skin. The other advantage the infected had was strength and determination, once they got hold of you they didn’t let go.

             
Sam had had to use all his strength to wrench her arm against the window frame until her arm snapped. Once he was free he spun around, she was still extending towards him, unaware that her arm dangled down at a sick angle, the fingers still grasping until he had shot her.

             
He forced his mind back to the now and stepped out of the car. He had parked close in case a quick getaway was needed. ‘No time like the present’ he thought to himself and approached the first car. It was a newer sedan, and like most of the vehicles on the road at the end, was packed with what people had once thought of as important, clothes, electronics and odds and ends filled the back seat, but nothing useful. He was amazed at what people would pack, only a few cars held much of anything that was worth anything today.

             
It wasn’t until the third vehicle, a big crew cab pickup, that he found a person, or at least what had once been a person. What was left of a young man in a john deer cap and plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off, moaned and reached towards him. This one wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, but the trucks height made the creature lean down as it grabbed for him, and it wasn’t smart enough to overcome this angle and fall out of the trucks window.  He knew the advantage of finding a vehicle that still had someone inside meant that it hadn’t been looted yet. Sam searched around for a weapon, unwilling to use his gun because of the noise, and found a length of metal pipe. He thrust it like a spear, and after several blows, the thing stopped moving.

             
When the zombie was finished off, he opened the truck door and let it fall to the ground. Inside the truck, he found a treasure chest of goodies. The back seat was full of food, two cases of army surplus MREs and a bag full of protein bars. In the bed of the truck he found sleeping bags, a tent, a Coleman stove with a couple of extra propane cylinders and a small back pack full of odds and ends necessary for survival. It contained a good hunting knife, water purification tablets and four different methods of starting fires. In the tool box behind the cab, he found a variety of firearms. He helped himself to all of it; after all, Bubba didn’t need it anymore. It took him the better part of an hour to stow it all in the Isuzu, and it barely held it all. This find made the rest of his trip to the swamp much more comfortable. He didn’t have to take this kind of risk again.

             
It wasn’t until that night as he rolled out the sleeping bag in the stock room of a long closed country store that he found the bottle.

             
“God bless rednecks” he said aloud. The bottle now set on the top shelf. Sam had wrapped it in a towel to keep it safe.

             
The rest of the shelves in the shed were filled with the assorted items you get when you pick the houses of those probably now dead. Assorted tools, three large tents and a plethora of other useful items just about filled the available spaces. He planned on filling the cabinets and closets of the house before he was done. He desperately hoped more of his family would arrive. And he wanted to be ready.

             
He came out of his stupor and realized the sun appeared to have leaped across the sky. Sam realized he had been doing this more and more recently, zoning out for sometimes hours at a time. He worried that he was losing his mind, and that he would have one of these fugues at a time that danger was afoot. It was something he would have to worry about later though, he was losing the sun and he had forgotten to secure his little compound. He hadn’t seen any threats yet, but he wanted to always stay ready.

             
By the time he made the long ascent to the tower, it was dark. He fell into the cot and drifted off to the sounds of the red hot chili peppers on one of the mix CDs he had gotten at the house.

Chapter 2

He dreamt that night of being on an island,
in the distance he could see figures on the mainland, he could barely make out that they seemed to be beckoning to him, but he couldn’t tell who they were. Over the sound of the sea, he could make out the sounds of a guitar slowly playing and voice singing, when he strained he could just make out the words:

‘Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
the midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry’

As he listened to the voice sing, he realized the mainland was getting farther away, as if the sea was expanding, pushing the lands apart. Hank Williams continued:

‘I’ve never seen a night so long
when time goes crawling by
the moon just went behind a cloud
to hide its face and cry’

By now the figures were just specks, and still the melody haunted him:

‘Did you ever see a robin weep?

When leaves began to die,

Like me he’s lost the will to live

I’m
so lonesome I could die’

The mainland faded to a thin ribbon on the horizon and finally disappeared.

‘The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
and as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry’

As Hank sang the last word, Sam bolted up in bed, covered in a cold sweat that couldn’t be explained by the unusually cool morning. The dream had definitely shaken him and further made him doubt his sanity. The meaning of the dream was obvious. The solitude of the swamp was wearing on him. He knew he would eventually have to move on, but he couldn’t imagine leaving before he knew.

             
Glancing at the alarm clock, he saw that it was only 3 am, but there was no chance of getting back to sleep. He briefly thought of all the medications stockpiled down the shed, he was sure he could find something that would help him sleep. But he had decided long ago not to take anything that could hinder his wits until someone else arrived, this included drugs and alcohol.