This Would Be Paradise (Book 1) (9 page)

“How about we just give it a couple of days?” I suggested. “Let us get more experience with the bottles and stuff first.”

John nodded. “Probably a good idea.”

My side was now stinging a bit, but it was getting better everyday. I moved my arm around a bit to stretch the sore muscles. That's another thing they don't show you in the movies – the pain that accompanies the recoil of the gun.

“Okay, how about two Reese’s Pieces for some deer jerky?” Zoe pleaded again.

“No way, the jerky’s mine!” I stood strong in the face of the chocolaty temptation.

We were running extremely low on supplies so we resorted to bartering amongst ourselves. We never made that trip a couple of months ago;
was it just a couple?
Man, it felt like a lifetime ago. All radio stations had quit broadcasting, even the emergency ones. We could no longer see the lights from the city, so the nights were beyond dark with the stars providing our only light.

In addition to all that, cell signals had also stopped, rendering everyone’s cellphones useless. I wasn’t addicted to my phone like some people, but I still found myself trying to check for new texts or calls from my family every once and a while. So I stowed it away in my backpack to keep it from getting damaged, hoping that one day it’d be usable again.

We had opted for the safer route, which was to wait here and see if help came instead of running head long into the city we just tried to escape. Well, obviously, since we were stuck here arguing over junk food, it was a wise choice. So now we really did have a decision to make: starve, or chance a run into a nearby town to grab some much needed supplies. On the plus side, with nothing but time on our hands, we had gotten lots of target practice and I had even been on a few hunting trips.

Not that I was much use on them. Basically it was to show me how to use my rifle. Damn Taylor showed me up every time. But at least he got his comeuppance a few weeks earlier.

“This is unholy early,” I yawned, as I pulled the rifle strap back up my shoulder.

The stupid thing slid off repeatedly as I trekked behind Taylor in the rough-terrain of the forest. Well, it was rough to me anyways.

“Six in the mornin’ is the best time to catch game,” Taylor, once again, pointed out. “Hey, it was you who wanted to learn anyways.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it entailed getting up at five o’clock in the morning!”

Whatever the opposite of a morning person was, that was me. I saw Taylor clench his jaw before he picked up his pace and left me to scramble behind him just to keep up in the face of all the protruding tree roots. They were like the grabbing hands of the dead crawling their way out of the grave. This trek kept up for another hour, and I really regretted my decision to attend this Taylor hosted event. I heard the crunch of leaves off to our right and Taylor held up his closed fist which I assumed meant, “Sit still and shut up,” so I did. Slowly Taylor slid his rifle off of his shoulder, and moved quietly toward the noise.

I decided to stay still since I would most likely trip and fall, and thus have ruined any chances of us actually catching something. Or worse, I might alert something to our presence. I turned my head and squinted, in an attempt to see what had made the noise. I couldn’t see much, but I spotted a mass of brown fur with a white tail. I may have been a city girl, as Taylor called me, but I knew that was deer. The grin on Taylor’s face reinforced my guess and he crept silently closer while he brought the rifle up to eye level. What happened next was quite strange.

One minute Taylor was approaching the deer and the next, he was gone. It was almost like the ground had swallowed him up. I heard him let out a yelp of surprise which made the deer bolt off in the opposite direction. I ran to where Taylor had disappeared and heard him yell, “Stop!” I came to a halt just in front of what looked like a pitfall where Taylor stood at the bottom. This was not a natural formation, which lead me to believe this was a manmade hunting trap. I peered down into the trap at Taylor and I couldn’t help myself.

“It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” I burst out laughing.

Needless to say, Taylor didn’t look amused.

“That’s real hilarious,” he drawled and I clutched my sides from laughing so hard.

Roots were stuck out in every direction and dirt was constantly sliding down the sides only to land on Taylor’s cowboy hat and shoulders. The hole must have been seven or eight feet deep, but wasn’t very wide; maybe enough for two people who knew each other pretty well to fit.

“Gimme your hand,” he demanded, as he held out his own.

Still chuckling, I leaned down to offer mine as I said, “Give me the ring,” before I burst into side splitting laughter again.

He rolled his eyes, but I could see a semblance of a smirk on his face. Finally, with much effort on my part, I stopped laughing long enough to help him out of the hole. I strained to lift as he dug his boots into the loose soil while grasping at the gangly roots. It took a couple of tries because he would lose his footing and I had to let his hand go or risk being pulled down with him.

“We never speak of this again,” he huffed.

Both of us sat side by side, on the forest floor trying to catch our breath. I started to chuckle again at the bizarre situation, and Taylor shook his head.

“Come on, when would I ever get a chance to say that again?” I laughed.

Taylor grinned, “Fair enough. But not one word.”

“Fine,” I muttered. “Bad karma’s a bitch, huh?”

“Whatever, let’s just see if we can track that deer down,” he said, dusting off his pants which were covered in loose soil.

A few hours later, the sun had gotten relentless and even bore down through the thick roof of foliage. I could feel the start of a sun burn on my nose and shoulders.

“Hurry up.”

“You better be a bit nicer country boy or else I’ll tell the whole camp,” I grinned. Wasn’t leverage great?

He turned his attention back to the fresh deer tracks and studiously ignored me. To be fair, he had taught me a great deal about tracking. The older the tracks, the more leaves and twigs that covered them, but usually the leaves and twigs were crushed and broken. The fresher tracks usually weren’t covered but stood out in the dirt floor. The tracks we followed fell under category number two, so we were close to something. I could hear the faint sound of rushing water, and Taylor had mentioned that brooks and ponds were the best place to find game.

I mirrored what Taylor was doing and followed closely behind him as we approached the brook. Luck was finally on our side. The deer had stopped to take a drink and I could have jumped for joy, except that would have put us back to square one. Taylor didn’t dare get any closer as he lifted the scope to his right eye and took aim. I plugged my ears, now fully aware of how loud a rifle really was thanks to the copious amounts of target practice. The shot rang out, but before the deer could react, the bullet hit it sending it to the forest floor. We ran up to the fallen mass and saw that the animal was still alive. Taylor pulled out his hunting knife and stabbed it in the head to end its misery.

I couldn’t understand why, but I felt bad. I was by no means a vegetarian or a member of PETA, but having witnessed this first hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again. Well at least this was a legal way to get out your serial killer tendencies. Taylor turned to me with a grin plastered on his face.

“Finally! That took forever,” he exclaimed.

“So what now?” I asked, not sure I could stomach him gutting it.

“We should gut it here so it’s lighter to take back,” Taylor said. “But it will rot faster if we cut into it.”

“Plus, it will leave a nasty trail leading back to the cabin,” I pointed out.

Taylor seemed to think about it as he pulled out a compass and map to give us a rough idea of where we were.

“Looks like the deer took us back around. We’re actually only ‘bout an hour’s walk with draggin’ the deer back, from the cabin,” Taylor noted as he scanned the map.

So we got to work and found a strong, lengthy tree branch to truss up the deer on. I felt like a caveman dragging a kill back to it’s cave. We both had an end of the branch with the deer between us, hanging from its tied legs. Taylor had brought the extra strength rope with him in his small backpack, which I never would have thought of. He said we were lucky because the deer was a small one, but to me it seemed like it weighed a ton. I got the end with the head which made me cringe every time I looked at it; supposedly it was the lighter end.

I was about to demand we stop for a break so I could give my shoulder a rest, when the trees started to thin out and more light started to shine through. I sighed in relief knowing this meant we were finally getting out of the forest and back to the cabin. John and Darren met us at the property fence, where I gladly handed the thing over to them.

“Look at that,” John smiled as he inspected the deer. “We better get this thing cut up, right fast.”

“I’ll take a pass on that,” I said as I massaged my shoulder.

“You should learn how, just in case,” Taylor grinned, flexing his own sore shoulder.

“Unless you want to see someone throw up, it’s better that I don’t,” I insisted.

“Why are you covered in dirt?” Darren eyed Taylor and I burst out laughing again. See, this is what happens when I don’t get my sleep; I get delirious.

I don’t know how they gutted and disposed of the parts, but I didn’t ask. That night we had fresh cooked deer, and it was delicious. I still felt bad about having to kill it, but my hunger washed away my hesitation. They decided it wasn’t worth the risk to keep it for fresh meat any longer than a few days, so they smoked the rest of it, and I guessed we would be dining on deer jerky for quite a while.

John’s voice cut into my reminiscing.

“All right, so we’re down to the nitty-gritty of our food supplies and essentials,” John said as we all situated ourselves around the camp fire.

“I thought we had a bit more left,” Darren said as he rubbed his chin in thought.

“Nope, so this means we really have to make that trip into town,” John said. “But we have to plan this right.”

I toyed with the ring hanging from my gold necklace. I completely forgot that I had packed the ring and matching necklace, but it was a nice surprise to find it at the bottom of my backpack. My parents had gotten me the jewelry as a graduation present, and at the time I thought I would have to end up pawning off the pieces just to help pay off my student loans, but I’m glad I didn’t. It was a nice reminder of my family, and I felt a little less despondent when I wore them. The necklace reminded me of home, even though home was so far away. The crackle of the walkie-talkie grabbed my attention.

“Guys, we got a situation over here,” Taylor’s voice sounded out. “I just found our first infected.”

John picked up the walkie-talkie before anyone was even able to get up.

“What marker are you by?” he asked.

“The fourth one,” Taylor’s voice answered.

“We’ll be right there,” John said as he made sure his guns were on his belt and bolted off toward the direction of the marker. A month into our stay, John had the brilliant idea to lay out markers around the perimeter with whatever we could spare. It made it easier to organize watches and get to certain locations faster. 

I jumped up and followed John, briefly registering that Darren was right behind me. The good thing about all this exercise was that I lost those ten pounds that had been haunting me since my first year of university.

The sun was setting but it was still light enough that we could see without flashlights. In the distance I could see Taylor’s silhouette against the rays from the setting sun. I could also see a second figure, which seemed to be stuck on the barbed fence. Taylor was standing far enough from the thing that its grabbing hands were uselessly flinging up and down in an attempt to reach him.

The odd thing, aside from the being presumably dead part, was that the infected was wearing torn and dirtied hunting gear from being out in the forest. This guy must have been camping out in the woods and gotten infected, but the question was,
How?
I thought it took actual contact with a sick individual to turn someone. Maybe the infected had started to fan out from the cities and towns, which was an unsettling thought. His face had become so decayed that it was barely there. His lips were chewed off, and a chunk of his cheek was missing. The other side was so sunken in that his cheek bone stood out painfully against his emaciated and discolored face.

“What should we do with him?” Taylor asked.

“Shoot it,” John said with finality.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Burn it,” John said back, and I made a face at that.

There was no way that would smell good.

“How about we bury him?” Darren suggested and I nodded in agreement. 

“Fine.”

Taylor raised his gun to shoot the now snarling infected, but John grabbed his arm.

“We’re on the cabin property and that shot will be loud,” John reprimanded Taylor.

“Well, then what do you suggest?” Taylor huffed.

John turned to me, “Bailey has a suppressor on her Beretta.”

I didn’t like were this was going. And I really didn’t like the smirk that had encroached on Taylor’s face either.

“By all means,” Taylor smiled, far too nicely.

“If you hand me your gun, I can shoot him,” John offered, but I knew I would never live this down if I chickened out.