Threnody (Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter 30

October 18, 2015

Kate remained hidden in the darkness of the hallway as she considered her options.  After being freed by Reams, her first thought was to make a run for it right then.  The memories of the filthy bikers flooded through her mind, and she found it difficult to imagine that these three men – or any others for that matter – were any different.  Somewhere deep inside, however, the slightest seed of indecision sprouted and she hesitated.  At that moment the third man returned, the one who had subdued her, and she doubted escape was feasible any longer.  Then, when John mentioned washing up, everything else seemed to fade into the background of her mind.  Kate had never felt so vile and dirty in all her life, and the prospect of cleansing even a fraction of the filth from her body eclipsed any fear of further harm that might befall her.  As she finished bathing, she again considered slipping out the opposite side of the house.  There was no one standing watch over her—she could do it. But again, she did not flee. 
What is wrong with me?
Am I suffering from some form of Stockholm syndrome?  I have to get away from these animals!

Sitting naked, afraid, and confused on the cold tile floor next to the near-empty pot of rose-colored water, the bloodstained washcloth, and a pile of nearly unrecognizable gore-encrusted clothes, Kate shed the first tears since being abducted by the bikers several days earlier.  Up to that point she had remained strong and stoic, unwilling to give those bastards the satisfaction of knowing they were breaking her, that she was affected at all by their heinous crimes.  During those unthinkable few days, her only consolation was the clear irritation the bikers displayed at not seeing her spirit cave like the others they raped and tortured. Her resolve had been her only weapon. 
At least until that retard Turtle let me get a hold of his blade.

Now, curled in a ball, she let her guard down and wept in private.  She cried for innumerable things: for the world she feared was lost and for what she feared it would become, for the others she had seen brutalized and murdered, and least of all, for herself.  The tears she shed on her own behalf were not born of self-pity.  In fact, she doubted she possessed the capacity for that emotion any longer. On the contrary, those tears were shed for the part of her that died and now seemed as alien as the things currently ravaging all of humanity. Despite the immensity of all of these emotions surfacing at once, her tears were brief.  She realized this was no longer a world suited for tears and understood that the emotional vulnerability of the old world was not compatible with survival in this one.

Cracking the door, Kate retrieved the clothes John left, and again noted that no one guarded the door.  She could not even see any of the men.  Though her brain screamed for her to take advantage of this fact and run, a deep-seated, albeit more irrational feeling prevailed, and instead she walked down the hallway to where she covertly listened to the three men discuss how best to handle her.

Standing there concealed in the shadows, she still could not fathom what caused her to pass up so many opportunities to get away from these men, from this house, from everything.  Admittedly, these guys did not
seem
bad, but Kate knew that alone was not enough to make her risk any further abuse.  All of a sudden, it dawned on her.  She stayed because she needed to know that the biker scum she killed were not representative of what the world had become in the aftermath of the plague.  If she was going to maintain the will to survive, she needed to know there was something left of the human race worth fighting for, and she believed she saw that in Reams’ dark eyes when she first spoke to him.

Stepping into the kitchen, Kate was silhouetted by the dim light produced by the lone candle on the table, and the last few rays of the setting sun.  All three men looked genuinely surprised as they strained to see who this stranger was.  Her transformation from the red, feral wraith of a woman they saw moments ago to the clean, reasonably groomed woman now standing before them was so dramatic that Reams’ first reaction was to go ensure that Kate was safe.  Only when she opened her mouth and spoke did the men truly realize that the stranger standing in the kitchen
was
Kate.  “I want to thank you all again for coming to help me,” she said in a ghost of a voice.

There was an audible exhalation as the men let out the collective breath they were holding in anticipation of how the scene was going to play out when she entered the room.  All three men rose and took a tentative step away from her as John offered her his chair.  In defiance of everything she had experienced and all the horrible, intense emotions she felt raging through her body, she could not help but smile at their gestures. 
Are they really afraid of me?
  She remembered with disgust how the bikers seemed to flock toward any female like a fly to shit.  Taking the offered seat, she replied, “Thank you, that is very kind.”

Cautiously, they all sat back down, and for a moment, a long, awkward silence loomed over the table.  John glanced at Kate momentarily, trying to read her demeanor.  He took in many details about her, but the most striking was her eyes.  While their brilliant, jade green color seemed to glimmer wildly in the candlelight heedless of the swelling threatening to close the curtains over her right eye, it was the intensity of her hard stare that truly garnered his attention.  Simultaneously vacuous and searching, her eyes conveyed a lassitude born of nearly insurmountable turmoil as well as the hopeful fire of a resilient spirit.  To John it seemed as if she was teetering on the edge, destined to fall one way or the other with the slightest perturbation. He imagined his eyes, too, often donned the same look. 
The eyes truly are the windows of the soul.

Despite the substantial improvement afforded her by the bath and clean clothes, Kate still looked anything but attractive.  She was a small-framed woman and suffered from the obvious ravages of weight loss, malnutrition, and neglect.  Her skin appeared olive and sunken in the dim light with the percentage of her integument covered in bruises representing the clear majority.  Damp locks of nutmeg brown hair hung to her shoulders framing her bruised and swollen face.  John knew firsthand how different a person looks after significant facial trauma, having seen countless victims of car accidents and assaults transform into almost inhuman caricatures of their former selves once the edema and ecchymosis set in.  He tried to imagine how Kate looked before all of this and surmised she was likely an attractive lady.  That, in combination with her small size, probably made her a prime target for the bikers.  Unfortunately for them, they clearly underestimated the fight inside this woman.

John broke the silence, saying, “I hope you are feeling a little better after cleaning up.  Would you like something to eat or drink?”

With her unwavering gaze locked forward and her head slightly downcast such that her hair hid some of the damage displayed on her face, she gave a curt nod. 
Ethan
filled a glass of water from the tap and began to prepare one of the MREs from his pack.

“Where are you from, Kate?” inquired John, still uncertain of how much to press the traumatized woman.  After a couple of minutes with no answer, he thought he might be prying too much when she finally spoke.

“Here, I’m from here.  I lived in Atlanta and came back to be with my family when all this started,” said Kate, motioning to the world outside with a slight wave of her hand.

John thought he saw something dark pass through the depths of her eyes and decided not to press her for details about her family.

Ethan
returned with the meager offerings and, as she ate, John told the abbreviated versions of their respective stories.  He told her what they knew about the plague, and about Ava, and Dr. San.  Though she gave no confirmation, John thought she heard and understood his words.

“Reams and I have scoured the area for signs of Ava for the last two weeks without luck.  We planned to shift gears and try to meet up with Dr. San in the next couple of days.  We met
Ethan
only yesterday, and he told us about you, or at least this place.  So that pretty much brings us to this point.”

Again several moments passed in complete silence as Kate finished eating the contents of the MRE.  John briefly exchanged glances with both Reams and
Ethan
, unsure of what to say or do next.  This time, Kate spoke up, “I would like to go with you.  There is nothing left for me here.  I don’t think there is anything left here for anyone.”

Kate looked at John for the first time since she entered the room, and the hurt in his eyes made her immediately regret her last words.  “At least not in this place,” she added, trying unsuccessfully to alleviate some of the sting of her previous statement.  “When are we leaving?”

“First light.  It’s much safer to move in the daylight.  I’m sure you’re eager to get out of this place, but it’s safer to wait until morning.  You should try to rest. One of us will be on watch at all times.  I’ve got first shift,” said John.  At that, the other two men nodded and, after a few moments of small talk, they went to get some much needed sleep.

Chapter 31

October 19, 2015

The round-table meeting with Kate concluded around 7:00, and everyone but John headed off to catch some shut-eye shortly after.  About halfway through his three-hour watch shift, John sat absently staring out across the front lawn of the house.  The wind had picked up, and the branches of the surrounding trees swayed hypnotically under its force.  The occasional distant rumble of thunder provided rhythmic accentuation to the tree’s anodynic dance.  Other than that, nothing stirred in his field of view.

John thought about how much sleeping habits changed when the power grid went down, and all the modern conveniences and entertainments disappeared.  In the absence of such manmade interference and luxury, much like on the camping trips he took with his father when he was young, the sun again regained its rightful place as the supreme dictator of the circadian rhythm. 
Would any of them actually be sleeping now if they had access to late night television?
  Glancing down at his watch, John saw it was not yet 9:00 P.M. He considered what little difference that made as his mind continued to drift, now to thoughts of a time when the last clock ceased to tick, and manmade time quietly disappeared completely.

John’s recondite musings were harshly interrupted by a pulpy thwack on the right side of the house.  Heart racing and senses heightened, he moved toward the sound, imagining that a rev they failed to put down must have collided with one of the house’s side windows.  Earlier, while Kate cleaned up, John and
Ethan
made short work of dispatching the few remaining revs scattered around the house under the watchful eye of the sun’s last rays. The stragglers had not been particularly active, as the three men had moved in so quickly, and taken the house with a minimum of noise.

Now, as John crept toward the window, the muted thump again reverberated through the otherwise silent house.  Thinking back to his garage, it occurred to him that the sound might simply be a tree branch moving like the limb of a marionette – the wind serving as its puppeteer.  He also considered the concerning possibility that one or more of the bikers managed to escape Kate’s wrath and now returned to settle the score.  If he was honest with himself, John did not believe the random, wet sound he heard was due to either of those. 

Nearing the wall where he thought the sound originated, he paused to listen in the absolute blackness of the room.  While he could not clearly see them now, he knew there were two windows on the far wall of the room.  He scanned the room trying intently to look out of his periphery in an effort to maximize his night vision. Though he saw no movement in the room, he struggled to control his escalating anxiety, as every turn of his head seemed to bring with it the ghoulish outline of a rev lying in wait.  The sweat beading on his neck chilled him as it contacted the cool air in the room, leaving him with the sense that one of the revs was right behind him, with fetid breath and rancid mouth poised to take a bite.

Just as he was about to back out of the room, the meaty thump resounded over the hammering thrum of his racing heartbeat.  Taking a furtive step toward the left window, John flung the curtains open just in time to see a milky white, ruptured globe squish against the windowpane. 
Thunk!
  The vitreous slime left on the glass after the thing pulled its head away seemed intent on staying put as it defied the laws of gravity.

Startled, John lurched back, his arms pinwheeling through the air as he tried to find balance.  He lost his footing and fell back onto his haunches as his pistol slipped out of his grip.  When he regained his footing and composure, what he saw outside the window chilled him to his core.  Silhouetted by the dim moonlight, the poor, mangled rev that served as the impotent battering ram stood stock-still before a throng of revs that stretched back to a collapsed section of the brick wall. 
Oh shit!  There goes the neighborhood!

John spun on his heels, trying to strike a balance between speed and stealth as he ran to wake the others.  Despite his efforts to remain unnoticed, his hasty departure caused a definite increase in noise from the uninvited guests outside the house.  He stopped halfway up the stairs before saying in a hushed but urgent tone, “Guys, time to get up!  We’ve got a lot of company, and we need to think about getting out of here now!”

Still not entirely free from sleep’s serene embrace, all three of his companions slowly emerged from their respective sleeping quarters.

“What’s the situation?” asked
Ethan
, instantly sounding as alert as if he had been watching his favorite T.V. show. 

‘Revs! An ass-load of revs! Looks like the wall gave way and now they’re stacked up along the left side of the house,” replied John, trying hard to hide the rising panic in his voice.  “I’m going to check the other sides now.”

Everyone geared up quickly and met John on the first floor landing.  “There are at least twenty behind the house, and another twenty along the left side.  They’re about to spill around to the front.  The right side looks clear for now.  Where the hell did they all come from so fast?” said John, panting from exertion.

Matter-of-factly,
Ethan
replied, “Must have been massed on the outside of the brick wall hidden from view.  With enough weight, any barrier will eventually fail, and then the floodgates are open.  We better get out of here before we lose all points of egress.”

As if on cue, a loud crash came from the rear of the house.  The deathly smell of rancid meat and ozone that seeped into the house left no question as to the cause of the breaking glass.  The infection was always accompanied by a pathognomonic smell—an earthy mix of decay, excrement, and other unidentifiable noxious odors intermingling to form an utterly vile effluvium.

Like water pouring through a hull breach, the infected spilled into the house following the path of least resistance.  As one door leading out of the back room of the house became clogged, the revs were simply diverted deeper into the interior of the house through the other door.  The four survivors just finished getting their packs on when the first rev came into view.

“Move!” shouted
Ethan
as he pulled a long machete from a scabbard on his pack. “I’ll cover you!”

John, Reams, and Kate dashed for a bedroom window on the far side of the house.  The rasping rumble of dozens of uncoordinated bodies resounded through the confines of the previously noiseless house as the horde trampled through the hall, as though herded by some unseen shepherd of death.

The whistle of the machete blade slicing through the air followed by the wet, clunky sound of metal colliding with bone told John that
Ethan
was engaging with the pursuing revs.  “Hurry up with the window! They’re getting closer!” yelled John, not taking his eyes off of the door.  As the sounds of the affray drew closer,
Ethan
’s savage grunts became nearly indistinguishable from the gutturals of the revs.

“Got it!” exclaimed Reams as he hurriedly helped Kate through the window.  John was nearly bowled over as
Ethan
burst through the door, gasping for air with his gore-caked machete still in hand.  Seconds later the first of the infected, a grotesque thing wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt and firefighter’s pants, appeared in the bedroom doorway.  Its legs became hopelessly entangled with the one remaining arm of a corpse
Ethan
left in his wake, causing it to crash down hard on the ground.

Without hesitation, John hefted his Pulaski axe and ferociously swung the adze down onto the back of the rev’s skull.  Following the soft, crunching sound, the creature momentarily shuttered and twitched before collapsing into a lifeless heap.

Reams helped
Ethan
through the window, and then climbed through as well.  For a moment, John feared the big man might get stuck in the window frame, effectively blocking his only way out of the bedroom that was quickly starting to feel like a deathtrap.

After a moment of struggling, Reams disappeared from the window, leaving John to wonder how a guy as big as Reams fit through such an impossibly small opening.  He did not dwell on this for long as the remaining revs were rapidly bearing down on him.  Turning, he fairly launched himself out the window after tossing his rifle and axe through.  He planned to grab the windowpane and pull it closed as he passed through the opening, but the blood and sweat on his hands conspired against him and his grip failed.

The four survivors regrouped in the darkness as the wretched, yearning faces of the infected began to pile up in the window.  John knew it was only a matter of time before some of them fell through the open window, forced out by the ghoulish tide of sickly bodies pouring into the small room.  The first of the revs from behind the house stumbled into view, having clearly taking a keen interest in the small group assembled on the lawn.  With a nod, Kate said, “We’ve got more company!”

With that, the four survivors set out toward the opposite side of the subdivision.  As the wall was only recently breached, and the infected that entered were focused on the house, they surmised that the rest of the neighborhood before them would still be essentially free of the infected.  While they were relieved this turned out to be the case, the ever-blooming number of infected pursuing them more than offset the small stroke of good fortune.

The wind and thunder continued to howl and crash around them as they ran, effectively masking the sound of the infected mob, and offering little insight into the numbers in their ranks.  Without the moon to light the night sky, only the occasional, ephemeral flash of lightning provided a fleeting glimpse of their surroundings.  After a single glance, they each independently decided it was best not to look back toward the pursuing horde.

The heavy, wrought iron gates shimmered in the lightning about fifty yards ahead. 
Ethan
opted to head toward the front of the development thinking it would be much easier for them to scale the closed gates than the more formidable brick wall.  Even as the full force of Reams’ massive bulk collided with the thick bars, the impressive gates barely creaked in protest.  The closest pursuing rev was about seventy yards away when
Ethan
clambered over the rain-slick gate to follow the others.

As their prey skittered off into the darkness once again, the snarling groans of the amassing horde grew so loud it rivaled the thunder, at times becoming nearly indistinguishable.  Safe from the pursuing revs, the group was plunged into the dark unknown of the forested area around Hermitage Estates.  While the intermittent lightning offered limited sensory awareness, it hardly offset the negative effects of the darkness, thunder, and rain.  In addition, the brief intense periods of light wreaked havoc on their night vision.  Reaching a clearing about a half a mile away from the gate,
Ethan
signaled for them to stop.  John examined Reams’ injury, opting to reinforce rather than replace the blood-soaked bandage on his arm.

“What’s the plan?” asked
Ethan
, his eyes scanning their surroundings in perpetual motion as though his head was on a swivel.

Kate stood off to the side of the group and seemed almost as vigilant in her observations.

Speaking over the din of the worsening weather, John said, “My house is not far from here.  There are some supplies there including food and water.  There weren’t many infected in the vicinity when Reams and I were last there.  If we are leaving to find Lin I have to check my house one last time.  I have to leave Ava a note.”

Even in the darkness, the look of absolute sadness in John’s eyes was clear to each of them.  One by one, they nodded in agreement before falling in line behind John.  An exceptionally loud peal of thunder tore through the sky, sounding as though the heavens themselves were being torn to pieces.     

Unbeknownst to them an equally loud, albeit far more ominous grumble resonated about a half mile away, obscured by the sounds of the storm.  Saturated by the torrential rains, the ground near the gates softened and began to loosen around the concrete holding the gateposts in place, as the weight of the horde relentlessly rocked them back and forth.  As a result, increased strain was placed on the hinges and bolts anchoring them to the brick columns.  Slowly the mortar cracked and chipped before finally releasing the bolts, allowing the gate to pull away from the brick.  A sea of pale, blank faces spilled through the narrow gap that opened like a portal straight from hell.