World of Ashes (27 page)

             
“Remind me to write a letter to Pontiac for building one kickass car.” Ethan shook his head, taking a breather as he carried Groupe. This wasn’t the first booby trap they’d encountered, but certainly the most destructive.

             
“I thought GM canceled Pontiac.” Saio joked as they limped up the hill, guns at the ready.

             
“Yeah, well, I didn’t say I was gonna suck their dicks, now did I?”

             
Halfway up the hill behind a tree they left Saio to guard Groupe and Ethan and Michaels went up the house. The door was busted in, and so was the door to the porch from the kitchen. There was no smell of rotting flesh, and no sign it had been inhabited by humans recently. Muddy foot prints were everywhere, but all from animals. Probably feral cats and dogs. That was a problem, attacks by wild dogs and their first generation of mutant, angry puppies were nothing to be trifled with. Not to mention, assuming you killed the dogs, now you’ve attracted zombies.

             
Michaels went to check the rooms on the first floor while Ethan cleared the massive living room and the upstairs. Once up the surprisingly noiseless staircase Ethan found the upstairs carpet dry and mostly undisturbed. Apparently most animals hadn’t venture upstairs, which only meant one thing could be up there. Zombies.

             
With his flashlight Ethan signaled over the banister that he needed Michael’s attention. The pilot slowly crept up the stairs too and made ready for the swarm of zombie relatives the owner had likely locked in the only bedroom with the door still shut. Taking a deep breath Ethan opened it. From within a wall of dust and death assaulted their senses, but then abruptly ended. Turning their lights on again they looked around, there was a lot of junk strewn about, but no cluster of zombies. Someone had obviously not bothered to clean up since fall, there were so many leaves strewn about, which meant it was abandoned.

             
“Why are there leaves on the floor?” Michaels asked.

             
For no reason he could logically think of Ethan reached back and flipped the light switch on. Something clicked, a generator started, and then the lights did came on. About half didn’t work, but it was enough. In the far corner of a room that had mostly served as an attic for the family that lived there they saw where the smell had come from, and why there was no smell now.

             
The family was all dressed up in matching BDU camouflage, their child in between the skeletal remains of his mother and father, wearing a children’s version of the uniform. They hadn’t made a journal, but they did leave a note in a plastic folder with a handgun on top to weigh it down. Ethan moved the now rusted and useless snubnose revolver and removed the note from its sleeve.

             
“Hey, I’m gonna shut the lights off so we don’t waist fuel. I think we should hold up here overnight.” Michaels didn’t give the impression he was asking Ethan’s permission, not that he would have disagreed. Ethan started reading the letter.

To… Whomever,

Our goal was to survive together as a family. We lost our daughter to a car that didn’t stop, and then
our son to the infection. Deanna and I don’t speak anymore, it’s been weeks and she hasn’t forgiven me for Erika’s death. So I shot the nagging bitch, the zombie that was my son, and then myself (obviously not until after this note.) I’m not asking you to bless our bodies, just shove us out the window or use us for Halloween decoration, I don’t give a damn. I’m an atheist anyhow. Sorry there’s no Snicker’s left in the candy drawer. I don’t like Milkyway’s, so there’s lots of those nasty things. Don’t give any to the dog if he comes back. He’s a real beggar and not quite house broken.

Trey Clayborn JR

P.S. If money and jewelry are still worth anything, there’s lots of it in the master bedroom. Some cocaine too. Shut up, it was the 80’s.

P.S.S. I
miss my boy Lewis, my sweet little Erika. If you could bury my boy next to his sister, I would appreciate that.

             
Ethan stared at the note blankly. He wanted to laugh, because it was hilarious, but he also perfectly understood Trey’s last words. They were somber in a way, if you weren’t the type to be dumbstruck by offensive language and blasphemy. Trey had lost his entire family as the world ended, could he be blamed for losing his mind? Of those who survived, who was actually crazy, and who was just crazier? Sane people would be those yet to be born, future generations that would not remember the old world and who could make this new world their home.

             
“Let’s go get my crew.” Michaels was feeling brave now, but then suddenly screamed a most unmanly scream and jumped several feet onto a pile of tote boxes. Ethan hit the light switch again and almost opened fire, but stopped when he looked down to find the Clayborn’s dog, an adolescent Beagle, wagging his tail furiously in his excitement. Ethan wished he could give the dog a candy bar, but chocolate was a doggy no-no, and besides, he’d eat those first.

             
“Hey, boy.” Ethan smiled, “Are you their dog?” The dog sat, though looked impatient. Ethan knelt down and took a piece of beef jerky out of his pants pocket. He tore off a slice and handed it to the dog, which by his best estimate hadn’t eaten in some time. After tearing up the rest of the jerky and leaving it on the floor, Ethan stood. “Let’s get the family out of here first. Last thing Groupe needs to wake up to are the corpsified Simpsons.” They did so, but only after the dog had gone up to his former masters, sniffed their remains and said his goodbyes. He backed away slowly to go and stand by Ethan, his puppy dog eyes completely irresistible.

             
“I think you have a new friend there, Sheriff.” Michaels joked as he slipped his gloves back on. First they took the boy and then the mother, and finally the father. The Clayborns had wasted away nearly to leather and bones and didn’t weigh much. Somehow, the family’s remains stayed cohesive long enough for Ethan and Michaels to utilize several half collapsed graves the father had likely pre-dug to lay the family to rest. Before shutting the doors once everyone was inside, Ethan called for the dog, who’s tag read
Bogey.
He came running, abandoning his vigil over the graves of the dead where he’d stopped to lay down for some time.

             
Saio pulled out his radio and despite the pain in his leg he tried to make contact with the rest of his crew. Groupe’s radio was nowhere to be seen and Michaels’ radio was dead long ago. After a time with no luck he tucked it away, turning it off very slowly, as if the act were physically agonizing as well as emotionally crushing. Saio had been a fighter pilot before the dead walked. Crashing and being stranded in the central United States, where a quick walk to a 7/11 should have been all he needed for retrieval, wasn’t something he was coping with very well. There was supposed to be a voice on the other end. There wasn’t, and he was panicking, growing frustrated with the inanimate black box and his own perceived failures as a pilot. Ethan wondered if he’d ever lost a plane before, and if that affected him like a captain losing a ship.

             
That night was especially terrifying for the four men. They didn’t turn the lights on, not knowing who or what might have been attracted by their crash. Naturally a number of zombies showed up from the woods or nearby buildings, but none made any attempt to climb the hill where the house sat, preferring to meander around the trashed cars, falling into the creek intermittently. Had they not just lived through an explosion watching the Zombies fall into the water might have been comical. Some wild dogs could be heard too, but nothing that resembled organized human movements.

             
Just after midnight Groupe came to, but the pain hadn’t stopped. It was likely he had internal bleeding, a black bruise was spreading form his back all the way around his torso. Saio’s leg was also fractured in a least two places below the knee, and after distributing morphine to both men Michaels set his copilot’s leg while Ethan held a gag in the man’s mouth. They fashioned a makeshift splint, but it was crude at best.

             
“We’re going to have to leave them.” Ethan said while relieving Michaels for fireguard late into the night.

             
“What?”

             
“You and I are going to have to leave them and head back to town and come back for them with an ambulance and half an army at the very least.”             

             
“Why can’t we just find another car? Groupe doesn’t have much time, Sheriff.”

             
“No, he doesn’t. So we’re leaving in twenty minutes. We’ll find another car and we’ll be back before it gets full light outside.” Though Ethan couldn’t see the captain’s face, he knew the man wasn’t happy. “Look, we just can’t move him ourselves again. He probably has a spinal injury at the very least. We need an ambulance.”

             
“Screw that.” Michaels leaned forward so the minimal light of the moon showed his face to Ethan, “You go and get an ambulance. I’m not leaving my crew. Not like this. This discussion is over. And you can leave at your convenience. I’m good till morning.”

             
Not saying another word Ethan grabbed a few bottles of water and two cans of spam. As he descended the staircase the dog was right at his heels. He smiled, realizing there was no getting rid of this one. If he was lucky this dog might prove useful if he reacted the same way most dogs did when zombies were around.

             
Luckily, the zombies that had arrived to investigate the explosion had just continued meandering in the direction they were already heading since they never found any people. This gave Ethan and the dog a chance to get to another house nearby without being detected. A car was in the driveway, but its gas tank had been punctured and the fuel drained. By chance the house’s garage was wide open and a bicycle was sitting in the only clear spot among the piles of junk, a satchel strapped to a rack behind the seat with a bloody hand print on the side. Someone had been planning to bug-out and hadn’t made it. Normally not a cause for concern, but the blood was still red, some of it dripping. Definitely fresh.

             
Bogey must have been a hunter as a puppy, because the first thing he did was follow the blood trail into the laundry room behind the garage. There were two zombies in the oversized closet when Ethan looked. One a boy about seven, wearing nothing but tattered Iron Man underwear and one house slipper, the other Zim a much fresher looking elderly man wearing utility pants, a khaki explorer’s shirt, and a fishing vest with pockets bulging with all kinds of stuff. The man had been trying to get away on the bike and had been caught by Denis the Menace: Cannibal Version.

Bogey started to bark
and Ethan dispatched both Zims with his Colt 45 Automatic and jumped on the bike. He certainly wasn’t much of a bicycler in daily life but he did fine even on the steep hills until finally at the bottom of a valley with an overgrown golf course and river Ethan and Bogey were presented two major problems. Though he could see the Zims weren’t moving quickly, there were a shitload of them, all dressed in what were once very nice Sunday clothes. With a gut wrenching feeling Ethan realized these were one of the many church groups that committed mass suicide during the evacuation. Unfortunately for him, this group had believed the zombies were the literal embodiment of The Rapture and had seen to it to infect themselves en masse at the earliest opportunity.

             
“Well, Bogey.” Ethan said to the dog, who looked up at him with an expression that said he too didn’t like their odds, “We got two choices, boy. We could turn around and look harder for a car I’m sure doesn’t exist, or we could just go balls to the wall and hope for the best.” The dog looked at him like he had no idea what was being said. Well duh, he’s a dog.

             
With one giant push Ethan flew down the rest of the small hill and darted in between the undead cultists. Some reached for him, but most did little but look at him as he passed by, so decayed they perhaps couldn’t make the effort. Once on the bridge it inclined into the uphill slope of a bluff, Ethan stopped to catch his breath. Some of the Zims were coming at him, but at a snail’s pace. After giving his companion a sip of water and a piece of jerky they took off over the hill. There were Zims at the bottom, but atop the next hill someone had parked their minivan and shot themselves next to a tree and apparently never been disturbed. With no people in the are the zombies left it alone. After checking the car, which was locked until he busted a window out, Ethan began digging through the body’s pockets. He found all sorts of knickknacks; an Epi-Pen, loose ammunition and a rusted pocket knife before finding the keys. After a long winter and no maintenance the van’s tires were almost deflated and weather rotted. The engine took a good long time to turn over, but it did start after a lot of struggling. Ethan grabbed the dog and they drove cautiously along Highway 30 back toward home. He hit several of the well dressed Zims from the cult on his way down the driveway and back onto a real paved road. The dog barked furiously, apparently feeling safe and bold inside the vehicle.

             
Though the van coughed and sputtered and one of the tires blew, though to it’s credit got Ethan to the last signal light in St. Clair before the highway. This was an odd intersection, located on a steep downward slope that ended in a thirty foot drop on either side of the road. It was all but unnavigable in the road’s unplowed condition and the van started an uncontrollable sideways slide down the hill. Ethan cursed loudly as the van fell off the side of the road and rolled over into a thicket of sapplings. Bailing out of the van as it lay on its side at the bottom of the drop off Ethan got his bearings. He could hear Zims moaning to his rear, but could see flashlights and smoke from people’s houses in the dawn’s twilight to the north. The only way to go was south toward Sullivan, which meant risking running into people who were looking to rob and possibly ransom him. Kenly wouldn’t pay a ransom, and Lee’s reaction would only be violence.