This Shattered Land - 02 (22 page)

As
sad as I was to be leaving, I had to admit that it was a good day for travel.
June was only a couple of days away, and the weather was finally starting to
warm up into something that felt like spring. It was already in the mid-fifties,
and it would get much warmer before mid-day. The last few days of clear sunny
skies had dried up all the mud and muck that had made travel so difficult for
much of the past winter, and the ground felt firm and solid beneath the soles
of my boots. Gabe and Tom finished preparing the MUV and walked over to where I
stood with Sarah and Brian. We turned from watching the sunrise and looked back
toward the cabin for a long moment. Gabe stepped next to me and laid one heavy
hand on my shoulder in a rare display of sentimentality.

“Seems
like a damn shame to be leaving this place behind.” He said.

 “I
know what you mean, man. This place has been in my family for decades. I can’t
believe I’m walking away from it.”

Tom
put an arm around his wife and son, and they stepped closer to lean on him.

“Dad,
I don’t know if I want to leave.” Brian said.

Tom
ran a gentle, calloused hand through his son’s hair. “I know son, I know, but this
is for the best. We don’t stand much of a chance here by ourselves in the long
run. We have to try and find more people to work with.”

Brian
looked up at his father for a moment, a kind of understanding passing between
them.

“Okay.
I trust you, Dad.”

Tom
smiled down at the boy, his deeply lined face lightening for a moment. He leaned
down and kissed his son on the forehead. Sarah smiled at him, and when he stood
back up, she took his bearded face in both of her hands, looking him in the
eye.

“I
love you.” She said, and planted a long one on his lips.

Brian
made a face, and I did my best to hide a smile. For most of my life, if you had
asked me if I ever wanted to get married, I would have responded with a hearty
‘hell no’. Watching Tom standing there silhouetted by the sunrise with a loving
family around him made me want to reconsider that notion.

“Alright
folks, we ain’t getting any closer to Colorado standing here doing nothing.”
Gabe said, reverting to his usual gruffness.

The
big man turned and walked over to the MUV. As he climbed in and started the
engine, I paused to take one last look around the mountaintop. Tom spent a few
moments with Sarah and Brian after they climbed in the Honda and hugged them
both before stepping away. Gabe nodded to Tom, then put the Honda in gear and
set off down the dirt road. The cart bounced along behind them as they pulled
away. Brian had his MP5 against his shoulder and stood up in the back, leaning
against the roll cage scanning for threats. Tom and I watched them until they drove
out of sight down the narrow, winding lane.

“I
guess we better get going.” I said, as the sound of the engine faded in the distance.

Tom
clapped me on the shoulder, and set off down the embankment. I adjusted my
rifle on its tactical sling and followed after him. This was it. Colorado or
bust.

Chapter 7

The Journal of Gabriel Garrett:

Gauntlet

We’re
finally on our way. I have to admit it was not easy leaving the cabin behind, I’ve
grown quite fond of that place. It reminded me of the house my father mortgaged
for my mother and me the year before he died. That being said, I’m not stupid
enough to believe that Eric and I could have made it on our own up there
indefinitely. My skinny blond friend is an intelligent, quick-thinking fellow,
and I’m damn glad to have him around, but there is only so much work that two
people can accomplish in any given day. I don’t know if Eric realized it or
not, but we were fighting a losing battle up there on the mountain, and I am
happy to finally be on the road. I was not expecting company on this trip, but
I am glad that our new friends decided to come along with us. After spending so
much time with only an insufferable smart-ass for company, the Glover family is
like a breath of fresh air.

I
was fairly certain that the roads on the first leg of our path were clear of
fallen trees and broken down cars. All we had to do today was drive the first
twelve miles, and then wait for Tom and Eric to catch up. The distance passed
quickly, and less than an hour after leaving the cabin, we arrived at the
abandoned bed and breakfast where we planned to spend the night. I stopped the MUV
in the gravel parking lot out front and took a few minutes to watch our back
trail just in case any walkers decided to follow us. I didn’t see any, but that
did not mean they weren’t on their way.

Sarah
and her son waited outside while I did a sweep inside the old inn. The front
door was locked, but a quick bit of work with my handy lock-pick solved that
problem quite nicely. I threaded a suppressor onto my .45 and drew my Falcata
before going inside. With my trusty short-sword in one fist and a pistol in the
other, I pushed the door open and began my search.

I
took a few steps into the foyer and saw a pair of feet sticking out from one
end of the wood paneling on the front desk. The feet still had flesh on them,
so I went immediately on my guard. If the feet belonged to a non-infected
corpse, they would have rotted down to the bone a long time ago. Sure enough,
my boots creaking over the dusty hardwood floor brought the ghoul out of its
hibernation and it began to rise to its feet. I stepped around the corner of
the desk and put a bullet into the back of its head. The corpse had once been a
plump little old woman, and I stopped for a moment as I recognized her.

Eric
and I were on a hiking trip up the Appalachian Trail about four years ago, and we
stayed at this very inn the night before we started. I remembered that the old
woman’s name was Barbara. She had a quick smile, a good-natured wit, and she
made amazing omelets. Part of me wanted to take her outside and give her a
proper burial, but I clamped down on that sentiment and swept the room with my
pistol. There could still be more infected around. I needed to clear the rest
of the building.

Being
as big as I am, learning how to move quickly and silently without running into
things was not an easy skill to master, but eventually I got the hang of it. I
called to mind every trick and technique that I could remember as I began my
sweep. The downstairs part of the inn consisted of the foyer, a small dining
room, and the kitchen in the back. The foyer was clear, so I crept forward and
used the tip of my sword to nudge open the swinging door to the kitchen. Sunlight
filtering in through the windows in the lobby brightened the foyer, but only
barely illuminated the dark room ahead of me. I clicked on the little LED
tactical light under the barrel of my pistol and proceeded inside. There was a
stainless steel table in the middle and a sink full of moldy dishes on my
right, but I didn’t see anything moving inside. I took a few more steps into
the room and almost gagged when I breathed in an incredibly foul odor. It was
coming from a white deep-freezer on my left. Anything inside of it had been
rotting in there for at least two years now. I eased the lid open with the
sword and trained the pistol on anything that might come out. What was inside
can only be described as some kind of putrid death soup, but nothing that was still
moving. I let the lid close and took a deep breath as I stepped back out of the
kitchen.

A
quick search of the dining room didn’t turn up anything, but the damn floorboards
underneath me were creaking something awful. I abandoned trying to be quiet and
stomped my boot a few times to see if there was anything around to hear me. I
heard something thump in one of the rooms on the floor above me, and the
tell-tale moan of the undead drifted down the stairwell. This one was strangely
high-pitched, and my heart sank into my shoes as I realized what I was about to
face.

“Nothing
for it, Garrett. Get the job done.” I muttered.

I
have repeated that mantra hundreds of times in bad situations on five different
continents outside of North America. Like always, it helped me clear my head,
shut down my emotions, and proceed on mission. I shifted into a stance that
allowed me to bring either my gun or blade to bear with equal speed and began
climbing the stairs. The flashlight on my pistol illuminated a long hallway
with four doors on each side as I rounded the corner on the second floor
landing. The room at the end of the hall on my right was the one that Eric and
I stayed in all those years ago. It had two single beds, a washbasin, and a
tiny closet to hang our clothes. On the left was the communal toilet, and on
the right was a small room with two narrow shower stalls.

When
we stayed here, we got a night in our room and breakfast the next day for just
forty bucks. A steady stream of hikers and weekenders kept this place in
business, as well as a couple of dozen others just like it along the AT. They
provided a cheap, clean place to stay for the night, and in exchange, the
owners got to live in a beautiful part of the country and be their own bosses.
A win-win situation all around. Staring down that darkened hallway, not for the
first time, I felt a painful surge of guilt and regret at what had happened to
the world.

There
was a time in my life when it was my job to keep things like this from
happening, and I walked away from it. I’m not stupid enough to believe that I
could have stopped the Outbreak single handedly, but I can’t help but feel
guilty for not doing something—anything—to raise awareness of the Reanimation
Phage. If only people had been better prepared, maybe all of this could have
been prevented. As much as I kick myself for not doing something, deep down I
know that I could not have changed anything. First of all, if I had ever tried
to go public with what I knew, then someone from Aegis would have splattered my
brain on a sidewalk with a high-powered rifle in very short order. There were
other people who tried to expose what was going on, and they paid for their
efforts with their lives. Aegis’ funding came directly from the federal
government, and those bastards were protected from on high by the intelligence
community and their cronies at the Pentagon. It would have been suicide to defy
them. I chose the path of survival, and it led me to where I was today,
standing in a dark hallway dreading what I was about to have to do.

The
moaning and thumping came from my left. There were at least two sets of hands
battering the door ahead of me, but no sounds came from the other rooms. I
heaved a sigh and approached the source of the noise, stopping in front of the
door and debating what to do next. It opened inward, and the undead were
pushing on it from the other side, so it would be difficult to open without
getting within biting distance. I holstered my pistol and switched my sword to
my right hand.

One
of the good things about being six foot five and well over two hundred and
fifty pounds is that I am a very strong man. I have long legs, and I know how
to use my size and strength to my advantage. I dropped back a step and launched
my best front kick at the door handle. All those years of doing endless
thousands of squats paid off as the door slammed inward and knocked both ghouls
on their asses. The undead have a hard time getting up once they go down, and
if you want to kill them easily, you have to do it before they can get their
legs back underneath them.

The
first ghoul was once a woman, probably in her late twenties when she turned. Her
head flopped horribly on a neck that had almost all of its muscle and
connective tissue eaten away. That would explain why I only heard one moan. I leaned
down and buried the edge of my Falcata’s leaf shaped blade through her skull,
and then turned to address the other infected.

I
have fought the dead many times in many places, but dealing with the little
ones never gets any easier. A quick look around the room told me everything I
needed to know about what happened there. A child runs up to her room with a
bite mark on her arm, and her mother does what she can to help her. Sometime
later, the child dies, reanimates, and attacks her mother. The poor woman is
too traumatized to fight back, and suffers the unfathomable horror of being
eaten alive by her own kid. Honestly, I can’t think of a worse way to die.

The
coarse yellow light filtering in the window through a set of blood-spattered
curtains fell upon the twisted face of a creature that had once been a little
girl. For some reason, the little ones can move somewhat faster than the adults.
In the seconds it took me to dispatch the first infected, the little one had
gotten back to her feet and lunged at me with blackened teeth bared in a
vicious snarl. A swift kick to the chest knocked her back down to the floor. I
knew she would be able to get back to her feet much quicker than other undead,
so I planted one boot on her chest to hold her down. The creature thrashed and screeched,
her jaws snapping together grotesquely as she tried to bite my leg holding her
down. I allowed myself a brief moment of pity for what had once been a precious
little life before ending the thing’s existence with a swift backswing of my
sword. The razor sharp blade sliced off the top half of its head, and after a
brief series of shudders, it went still.

I
stepped away from the corpse and placed a mental vice around the sorrow that surged
in my chest. With jaw clenched and teeth gritted, I stayed on task and cleared
the remaining rooms on the second floor. Thankfully, I did not find any other
infected. I took a few minutes when I was done to sit down on the top of the
stairs and stare off into space. I tried to make my mind blank, but I just
couldn’t get the image of that girl’s torn, broken little fingernails out of my
head. For anyone who may come along and read this, let me make one thing as
perfectly clear as I can.