This Shattered Land - 02 (18 page)

“You
ready?” I asked.

“Yep.”
He replied through his scarf. “Let’s get this done.”  

We
moved forward at the same time. Our hard knuckled Kevlar gloves would protect
our hands from bites and infected tissue, but we would have to be careful not
to let them get their jaws close to any other parts of our limbs. I approached
my target and delivered a strong front kick to its chest. It stumbled backward,
but did not fall down. It was a large, strong man before it died, and it was
not going to be easy to knock over. I cursed under my breath, slapped away its
grasping hands, and kicked it again, this time following up with a reverse foot
sweep. In a rare display of bad technique, I blew the timing and landed the
kick when the ghoul had its weight on the leg I was trying to sweep. Its foot
did not budge, but the creature stumbled over my ankle as it tried to right
itself, and toppled over backward.

It
ain’t pretty,
I
thought,
but I’ll take it.

I
popped up and rushed over to its head. The ghoul had already started sitting
up, so I pushed it back down with a boot across the throat, lined up my knife
with its eye socket, and shoved the sharply pointed blade down into its skull.
The creature shuddered and clutched at my leg with a frighteningly powerful
grip as it died. Once it went limp, I stepped away from it to see how Gabe was
doing. His undead opponent was already down with a massive section of its skull
caved in. Gabe looked over at the ghoul I dispatched, gave me a grunt of
approval, and then walked over to clean his blade with a handful of leaves and
grass from the side of the road.

“Hey,
come here and look at this.” He said, pointing at the ground in front of him.

I
walked over and looked where he was pointing. “Deer tracks.”

Gabe
nodded. “That would explain why these things are out here. Probably following
Bambi around, trying to scare up some dinner.”

“Well,
let’s hope there aren’t too many more of them. I’m running low on ammo for this
thing.” I said, patting my pistol.

I
took a moment to clean the infected tissue off my knife and pass a lighter over
it to kill anything that might still be clinging to the surface of the steel.
Gabe did the same with his Falcata before we proceed ahead down the road. We
came across a couple of abandoned cars along the way, and searched them for anything
useful. One of the cars was empty, and the other one had its front end wrapped
around a tree with brown smears of old dried blood everywhere and bones
scattered around inside the cab. Gabe reached in and swept the bones aside as
he put one knee on the passenger seat and opened the glove box.

“Hell
yeah, look what we got here.” He said, cracking a smile.

“Whatcha
got?”  

Gabe
stood and held up a small nine-millimeter pistol in a nylon holster and a box
of ammunition. He handed me the gun and checked the ammo.

“Got
a full hundred-round box here. Looks like we both get to carry some real
firepower today.” He said.

“Works
for me.” I dropped the mag and worked the slide a couple of times, then dry
fired it. It seemed to be in good working order, so I stuffed it into my pack
along with the box of ammo.

Gabe
reached down and pulled the lever to pop the trunk. I had to tug on it a few
times to get it open. The stale, musty odor of rotten upholstery wafted up from
the wet compartment. The only thing I could see in the trunk was a black duffel
bag. I unzipped it and turned it over. Neatly wrapped bundles of cash poured
out in a green cascade, spreading out across the bottom of the trunk.

“Holy
shit. Dude, look at this.”

Gabe
stepped around the back of the car and peered into the trunk.

“Well,
I guess we know where this guy’s priorities were.” He said.

“This
kind of thing makes me sad, man. The world starts falling apart, and all this
person was worried about was money.” I shook my head.

“Anything
useful in there?” Gabe asked.

I
shoved the money aside and searched the trunk, not finding anything.

“Nothing
here. Unless you want the tire iron.” I said.

Gabe
frowned, and turned to continue down the road. I closed the trunk and followed
him. We hiked a few more miles toward Marion and passed a rotting wooden sign
that displayed the town’s former population. I pointed at it as we walk by.

“Hard
to believe a place with that many people used to be considered a small town.” I
said.

Gabe
nodded. “I hope to God we find a population that large between here and
Colorado.”

We
continued on in silence until we reached the summit of a steep hill that
branched off into a gravel road. We turned and followed it a quarter mile until
it reached a scenic overlook with an excellent view of the town below. My heart
sank as I took out my little binoculars and scanned the streets at the bottom
of the valley.

“Dammit.
The place is crawling with infected.” I said.

Gabe
sighed, and adjusted his pack. “I thought that might be the case. The valley
around here is steep, I was worried it might box in most of the dead.”

I
looked toward the east at a road that led away from town. I could see about a
half-mile of its length, before it disappeared around a sharp curve and snaked
down the back of a ridge.

“Tell
you what, you stay here, and I’ll go draw the dead over that ridge, and then
double back through the woods on the north side of town.”

Gabe
considered it for a moment, and then gave a curt nod. “That’ll work. Just be
careful, I’ll need your help getting supplies back to the boat.”

I
shot him a glare. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want you to throw your back out or
anything while I’m down there trying not to get eaten.”

Gabe
gave a half smile, and made a low grunting sound that is his version of a
chuckle. I dropped my pack and a few other pieces of gear I didn’t need at the
moment, and started the hike toward the eastern side of town. I crossed the
paved two-lane where it branched off onto the gravel road leading to the
overlook and slipped into the forest on the other side. The carpet of dead
leaves under my boots was thick, and every step made a soft crunching sound. I
drew my pistol and thumbed the safety off just in case the noise attracted any
walkers.

The
hike to the eastern side of town went by without incident. The undead stumbled
in the distance, but none of them had noticed me yet. That was about to change.
I broke cover from the tree line and walked out onto the narrow highway that
accessed the town from the east. A few broken down vehicles sat forgotten on
the side of the road, one of them a large RV with a ladder on the side.

Perfect.
I thought with
a smile, and climbed up to stand on top of it.

 The
roof of the RV gave me a good vantage point to see the horde that occupied the
streets ahead of me. I removed the suppressor from my pistol, pointed it into
the air, and fired a single shot. The loud crack echoed across the floor of the
valley, and about two thousand heads snapped around in my direction all at the
same time.

The
moaning cry of the walking dead spread through the burned out town like wildfire.
A hundred cries went up, then five hundred, spreading as fast as an avalanche.
In less than a minute, every ghoul in the valley was stumbling toward me,
reaching and groaning for flesh. I holstered my pistol and climbed down from
the RV. The buildings lining the side of the highway formed a chokepoint for
the infected. Horrid fascination set in as they made their slow march toward
me, gathering into a festering clump in the street. It was slow going for them,
but they were coming. They might not move very fast, but they didn’t need to.
They were already dead, and they would never get tired. Ever. They would walk,
and walk, and walk all the way to the end of the Earth if that was what it took
to reach their prey. I might be faster, but I am alive, and I need to rest
eventually. I need food, and water, and protection from the elements. The dead
need nothing, care for nothing except the ceaseless, gnawing hunger that drives
them onward.

When
they got to within thirty yards, I turned and led them eastward on the highway.
The dead appear slower than they actually are, and I learned long ago that one
has to maintain a brisk pace to keep ahead of them. A few ghouls who had wandered
off into the woods who the hell knows how long ago emerged from the trees
around me. Most were not close enough to pose any danger, but I increased my
pace to a slow jog anyway to get ahead of them.

I
crested a hill and waited at the top to let the infected catch up. Looking down
the slope on the opposite side, I saw there was a knot of seven or eight undead
that I would not be able to avoid. Once sure that the undead on the road behind
me would not have any trouble following, I walked down the hill and drew my
pistol. The first ghoul got to within twenty feet before I dropped him with a
single shot through the eye. Not quite where I was aiming, but I couldn’t argue
with the result. I sighted in again, and the next one hit the dirt. Without
willing it, I fell into the easy, steady rhythm of shooting. I’d practiced so
much that it only took me about a second and a half per creature to kill them
with well placed shots. The Kel-Tec felt like an extension of my arm, the fiber
optic sights a familiar splash of color just before the squeeze of the trigger.
In less than twenty seconds, eight permanently dead corpses littered the ground
in front of me. A glance over my shoulder revealed that the lead walkers had
already crested the hill. Time to get moving.

The
horde followed me a mile and a half down the road before I turned around and
faced them. I had increased the distance between us to fifty yards, and on the
road behind me, a sharp bend turned down a steep hill that I could use to get
out of sight and double back toward town. The mass of corpses heaved and shoved,
stumbling and rebounding off one another on the narrow highway. I stood up
straight to address them.

“Well
guys, it’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it ain’t been real fun. I gotta go
now. Supplies to gather and all that, I’m sure you understand. Ya’ll have a
nice day, you rotten fucks!” I flashed a smile at the horde, blew them a kiss,
and then ran down the steep embankment behind me.

I got
about a quarter of a mile away, well out of sight of the infected, and left the
highway for the cover of the forest. I kept a quick pace, moving in a wide arc
toward town. No more infected showed up on the way back until I crested the eastern
edge of the valley. There were still a few stragglers and crawlers down below
me, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I threaded the suppressor back onto my
pistol and began picking my way down the slope.

The
same highway where I led the infected away turned northward for a stretch
before taking me back into town. Rather than work my way up to the scenic
overlook where Gabriel was waiting, I walked straight on into Main Street. Gabe
would see me from the ridge, and I expected that he would be along soon enough.

Marion
was once a quaint, happy little community. Like many small mountain towns, it
consisted of a main street with shops, restaurants, a post office, a tiny police
station, and a town hall situated on either side of the main thoroughfare. Some
of the buildings had burned down, and the ones still standing were in a
terrible state of repair. Everywhere I looked, I saw wide, swirling brown streaks
of old blood stains smeared on walls and splattered on the ground. Two years of
high country weather had not been able to wash them away. Amongst the
bloodstains, the bare white bones of people who fell to the infected lay in
scattered piles all around me. The small ones were the hardest to look at.

Nearly
every window on the buildings around me was broken. Sharp little cubes of glass
formed a bright twinkling carpet on the sidewalk. Before the end of the world,
this place would have been bustling with throngs of tourists from Charlotte and
other nearby towns at this time of year. Their voices would have echoed up and
down the street. Children would have scurried on the sidewalks with cones of
ice cream and oversized lollipops. Retirees and young couples would have sat at
small tables outside cafés sipping sweet iced tea in the warm sun.

Not
anymore.

The
only sound I heard was the far off cries of birds and the rasp of my own
breathing. That was the eeriest part about being in these abandoned places, the
endless silence. I took a lap around the town’s shopping and restaurant
district to kill the few infected that were too torn up to follow their cohorts
after me into the wilderness. A few moans filtered out from ghouls trapped
inside buildings, but I left them be. The only structures that I was concerned
with were the drug store, the hardware store, and the small outfitter’s shop.
The dead could have the rest. Near the center of town, I stepped up onto the
crumbling sidewalk and sat down on a park bench in front of what used to be a
coffee house. Across the street from me was a tiny little structure built in
the style of a Swiss chalet with a sign over the door that read “Heavenly
Teas”. I allowed myself a smile and leaned back against the bench with my face
turned up to the sun, enjoying its warmth. A few minutes later, boots crunching
over broken glass announced Gabe’s arrival. He wore his old rucksack across his
broad shoulders, and carried my pack in one ham-sized hand.