This Shattered Land - 02 (34 page)

Gabe’s
smile broadened. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

I
stared at him for a moment. “Of course you do. Of fucking course you do. Why
wouldn’t you?”

The
big man fetched his harness and held it out to me. I recognized it from a few
years ago when we went climbing in Alaska for my birthday. Rather than do the
smart thing and shop around for some good quality rock climbing gear, I had
bought a bunch of cheap crap from a local outfitter that damn near got me killed
on a high Aleutian peak. Gabe had used his old reliable military issue stuff,
and it worked just fine. When my shitty store-bought equipment failed, he had
to climb down and help me get to safety. I hoped we were not about to have a
repeat of that incident.

“This
thing isn’t sized for me.” I said.  

“No
problem, it’s adjustable.” Gabe replied.

“Yes,
of course it is.” I grumbled, stepping into it.

The
others looked on while I geared up. They all wore the same half-amused, half-worried
expression, except for John. The old man was obviously feeling the flask of
tequila he’d drank the night before. I couldn’t tell if he was concerned for my
safety, or just squinting against a headache. My money was on the latter.

Gabe
stood under the spot on the roof where I was to climb out and interlaced his
fingers for me to step in. Tom held me steady while I used my hatchet to cut an
appropriate sized hole through a long tin shingle near the ceiling joist. Once
satisfied it was wide enough that I wouldn’t snag my clothes or cut myself
climbing out, I stepped down and ran the para-cord through the figure eight
ring on the climbing harness. Tom and Gabe boosted me up through the opening,
and I ran out the belay line behind me and down the side of the barn to the
ground. Gabe anchored the line to a ceiling joist, double checked the knot,
then gave me a thumbs-up and signaled for me to descend.

“Why
do
I
always have to do this shit?” I muttered as I eased slowly toward
the edge of the roof.

My
Kevlar gloves gave me a good grip on the thin nylon cord. I kept a firm hand on
the belay line and paid it out nice and easy. When I reached the edge, I
realized that the tin roof had a nearly foot-long overhang past the support
beam under my feet. Toes planted on the solid board beneath me, I leaned
backward over empty space and dug my heels against the metal shingle. It
scraped and popped against the other shingles interlocked to it. I ground my
teeth in frustration at all the noise, the last thing I needed was a curious
ghoul spotting me with my ass hanging in the wind. Gabe, God bless him, heard
the noise and started yelling at the infected from the edge of the loft. He
must have indicated for the others to join him, as a few seconds later I heard
several more voices join in. I took advantage of the distraction and stomped
the metal down flat, then began descending.

It
took three kicks off the wall to make it down the side of barn. The palm pads
on my gloves were painfully hot from friction by the time my feet touched the
ground. Not wasting any time, I stepped out of the harness and tied it to the
cord so that Gabe could retrieve it. No sense wasting perfectly good climbing
gear.

I
walked around the back of the barn for a few moments to gather my wits and come
up with a game plan. The walkers were concentrated under the loft and just in
front of the entrance. If I circled wide around them behind the tree line, then
emerged at their backs, I could lead them off through the woods to the east a
mile or so, and then double back to the farmhouse.

Simple
enough, and simple is good. I set off toward the woods and snuck around to the
other side of the barn. The sun was high in the sky by the time I stepped out
of cover. The horde didn’t notice me right away, so I drew my pistol and shot a
few of the rotten bastards in the head. The noise made me very popular, very
quickly. Gabe and the others went quiet and stepped out of sight so that I
would have the full attention of the undead.

The
rest went like clockwork.

The
dead followed me, I blasted a few crawlers out in the woods, and then I shouted
a few obscenities at my admirers before running the mile back to the farm.
Running through a dense forest in combat fatigues and heavy boots is much more
tiring than running on flat roads, especially when you have to go up steep
hills. I’d led the horde down into a hollow formed at the base of three mountains,
making sure to approach from the north so that I would have an unobstructed
path westward.

I
was hot, sweaty, and tired when I got back to camp. The others had already
packed up and made ready to leave. John Rollins was nowhere in sight.

“Where’d
the old man get off to?” I asked Gabe as he climbed into the MUV’s passenger
seat.

“Went
back to his cabin.” Gabe replied.

“Did
you tell him about Colorado?”

Gabe
nodded. “He’s running low on supplies, same as we were. Said he would be
heading that way.”

“I’m
guessing you didn’t offer to let him come with us?”

“Do
we have room for anyone else?”

Gabe
was right. We were nearly overloaded as it was. “No, I guess not.”

It
was my turn to suck exhaust fumes while Sarah drove. It was a bumpy,
uncomfortable ride clinging to the trailer, and I had to shout for Sarah to
slow down once when she nearly threw Tom and me to the side of the road. A few
times, we reached impassable traffic snarls left behind by the Outbreak, and
fallen trees that forced us to double back and find alternate routes westward.

The
next few days were easy travel, aside from fighting the infected. We all got
plenty of practice at that. The suppressors on our weapons proved again how
valuable they were, allowing us to kill the ghouls without drawing too much
attention to ourselves. We tried to conserve ammunition as much as possible,
which led to me swapping out my Kel-Tec for the Sig .22 in my pack. It didn’t
have quite as much
oomph
as the larger .22 magnum, but we had literally
thousands of rounds for it in the cart. Better to use them first and save the
more powerful stuff for the living enemies we were almost guaranteed to
encounter sooner or later. Whenever possible, rather than shooting the
revenants I put on a balaclava, wrapped a scarf around my mouth, slipped on a
pair of ski goggles, and used my small sword to do the killing. Sarah and Brian
were skeptical of the slender weapon, but after seeing me dispatch literally
dozens of walkers using my Y-stick and eye-stab method in rapid succession,
they admitted to being impressed. Not only was it faster than cleaving the
undead’s skulls with an axe, it used up less energy.

That’s
me, Mr. Efficiency.

 Our
fuel supply steadily dwindled, and progress was slower than what we had hoped.
As we crossed into Tennessee, the hordes of infected grew larger and harder to
outrun. We implemented a strategy of parking the MUV, which is what was really
attracting the dead with all its noise, and splitting up into two groups to
make camp at separate locations. That way, if any one of us made too much noise
and attracted unwanted attention from the ghouls, the others could distract
them and lead them away. It made for lonely, paranoid nights, but we were
quickly learning that a certain level of paranoia was a healthy thing.

Along
the way, we saw evidence of other survivors traveling the same roads. The
remnants of old campfires, plumes of smoke drifting into the air in the far
distance, and occasionally, revenants with their skulls bashed in told us that
we were not alone. Although we saw the signs of other survivors in the region,
we never actually crossed paths with any of them. There were too few, and the
territory was too wide with plenty of caves, ravines, and abandoned buildings
within which to hide. We knew, because we used them too. 

Exactly
one week after leaving our cozy mountaintop mini-fortress, Gabe poured the last
five gallons in the tank and stared despondently down the road. We had hoped to
make the treated gasoline last for six-hundred miles, but what we actually
accomplished was somewhere just north of four-hundred. If we didn’t run into
any roadblocks, the last bit of fuel might get us another eighty or so, and
then after that we would be on foot. The good news was that we had cleared the
Appalachian range a couple of days ago and proceeded down into lower, flatter
territory. The bad news was we had about a thousand miles to walk to reach
Colorado.

Gabe
pulled out a map and waved everyone over. We put down our breakfast dishes and
joined him at the trailer. He had raised the trailer’s lid and spread out the
map over our supplies and equipment to give us all a clear look at the route he
planned to take.

“Here’s
what we’re gonna do,” He said. “We follow this road here northwest until we
reach these railroad tracks. Once there, I’ll swap out the wheels and we follow
the railways all the way to Colorado. Eric and I will take turns scouting ahead
before we move locations to check for trouble. It’ll be slow going, but we’ll
be able to stay well supplied, and I doubt too many survivors will have thought
to use the railroad, much less have brought the right maps with them.”

“I
get the feeling that using the railroads is going to create its own set of
problems.” Sarah observed, running a finger over the highlighted route on the
map.

Gabe
nodded. “I imagine it will, but it beats the hell out of the alternative.”

He
was right, of course. The fourth night out, we had stopped to make camp within
a few miles of I-40 and scouted around to see if conditions on the interstate
were any better in that part of the country. If anything, the hordes were
bigger and the signs of fighting more brutal. The interstate was simply not an
option. We’d managed to skirt around Asheville back in North Carolina, then bee-lined
west staying well north of Chattanooga. Our luck held up for a change, and we
managed to get past Nashville by staying well south of the overrun city and
giving ourselves a ten mile buffer zone north of Columbia. The last couple of
days saw us make quick progress north of Jackson, where we had set up camp on a
rural road lined with empty houses set well back from the highway. A search of
the houses within short walking distance had even yielded a couple hundred
rounds of nine-millimeter ammo to replenish what Brian had used with his MP5.

Our
intention from that point was to reach a railroad track that would lead us to
what we hoped was a passable bridge across the Mississippi just north of
Memphis. That was the plan, anyway.

As
Gabe is fond of saying, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

Chapter 12

The Journal of Gabriel Garrett:

Threat Response

The
mood was grim amongst our little troop as we set out. With our last can of gas
burning up as we creaked and bounced along the winding country road, we all
knew the tough times were about to begin in earnest. None of us looked forward
to the prospect of walking a thousand weary miles through a massive lawless
wasteland, and we were under no illusions about what we might have to do to
stay alive. But we had our weapons, our wits, and we had each other. That
counted for a lot.

Before
the Outbreak, the military conducted numerous studies about battlefield psychology
which invariably found that a man’s confidence is much higher, and his anxiety
much lower, when paired up with even one other soldier in battle, especially
one he trusted. Trusting Eric and Sarah wasn’t a problem, I knew they could
handle themselves in a stand-up fight, but Tom and Brian were a question mark.
Not that I didn’t believe in their courage, no one survives the Outbreak for as
long as they have without a big pair of stones to brag about, but I doubted
their actual combat effectiveness. Eric has flourished as a rifleman under my
tutelage, which I concede as a point of personal pride, and the guys at
Quantico took Sarah’s innate strength and mental toughness and made a
well-honed fighter out of her. Tom and Brian, however, posed a dilemma.

Brian
has the makings of a warrior, and a damn good one at that. The problem is that
he is young, inexperienced, and as tough as he may be, he’s still just a kid.
As for Tom, while I have no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to fight to protect his
family, I’m worried that in doing so he would only succeed in getting himself
killed. I wish I could have had more time to train him before beginning our
journey west, but time is not on our side. Winter is coming, and it is a long
way to Colorado.

These
thoughts slogged disconsolately through my mind as I watched the gas needle’s
slow, gradual descent toward the big red E. I drove with Eric riding shotgun.
Tom and Sarah rode in the narrow bed where the gas cans used to sit, which was
a hell of a lot more comfortable than riding on the trailer. Brian stood
between them holding on to the roll cage and, as always, keeping his head on a
swivel and scanning around for signs of danger. Being up a few feet higher than
me gave him a longer field of view than what I could see from the driver’s
seat. Brian spotted the trouble before even Eric’s uncannily sharp eyes could,
and he tapped me excitedly on the shoulder.