Dead World (Book 2): Headed North (13 page)

21

Far North

Peter opens the door with a creak. It swings out on hinges that squeal with protest. A shallow breeze, frigid air blows across the yard chilling him even in his heavy coat. The scant trees around the yard do little to protect him from the wind.

Terry walks into the musty barn. The sun is nearly set now with a full moon hanging in the sky. The sky truly is beautiful. Now that Humanity isn’t polluting everything the stars shine line beacons, so close he feels he could nearly touch them.

Peter recoils as a waft of foul air pours from the barn.

“What the hell is that?” Terry asks covering his mouth.

Peter covers his mouth in the crook of his arm as well. His gorge rises and he forces down a gag. Shaking his head he says, “I don’t know.”

A gust of wind makes the barn rattle. Peter raises the flashlight and pans it across the empty floor. Straw is scattered across the floor the light reflects from pools of dark liquid. Empty stalls hang open their doors shifting in the frigid air.

The light falls on some rusted chains hanging from a wall. Partially frozen meat hangs from a few of them like butchers hooks. Then Peter sees something that makes him gag fully. A wash basin splattered with dark liquid he knows must be blood. And there gutted, covered in smears of gore is a human torso. The arms are hacked free. The legs also. All that is left is the disemboweled chest and head. The horrible face stares back, lifeless, dead eyes staring at them.

Despite everything they have been through Terry turns and retches out the door.

“We are leaving,” Peter says horrified at what he sees.

A small gasp stops him dead and he spins around searching for the noise. One of the stall doors that was shut shakes weakly and a muffled voice cries in the darkness. Peter rushes over to the door swinging it open and pointing his flashlight and gun into the stall.

A small figure recoils away backing into the corner of the stall. It is a young girl, lying in filth and matted with dirty straw. Her hair used to be blonde but it is stained and wretched. Her hands are manacled and Peter can see where the rough metal has cut deep gouges in her wrists and hands leaving them coated with sticky blood. She wears bare rags. She can’t be more than 18.

Then he notices that she is missing her legs too. Covered in straw he could not see her well but she shifted her weight and he can see cauterized ends of her thighs.

Her eyes look to him pleadingly. Peter is shocked for several long moments. Too shocked to do anything. His heart thuds and his palms are suddenly sweaty. He reaches a hand to steady himself against the barn door, his knees suddenly weak. 

Who could do such a thing? The question works its way through his mind. Peter feels more frozen than the cold could ever account for.

Help, her eyes scream. He bends down quickly working his hands at the locks around her arms. The metal is cold to the touch and the girl is barely able to move.

He reaches out and pulls tries to work the tape from her mouth. He is vaguely aware of Terry standing over him. Then he hears screaming, ragged and hoarse like a madman. His eyes go wide, when a gunshot snaps him back into focus. Terry recoils falling to the ground. And then a lot of things happen at once.

Screaming and more gunshots. Terry yells something and fires his gun. He is bleeding from his side but he fires at the open door where several people are pouring into the room. They look crazed and angry. But they are definitely not the dead.

Peter immediately connects what he is seeing. Like some sort of horror freak show these people must have been living off of the bodies in the barn. Cannibalism. His mind recoils at the thought but none others form. It is the only option.

Whipping his head back into the stall with the girl he tries to peek around the corner but a gunshot chips the wood near his face sending splinters everywhere. Terry fires again, a blast from his shotgun. One of his last rounds. But it is rewarded with a yelp of pain and a pause in the firing.

Terry slumps back against the wall beside Peter. “I think I’m done,” he says. Blood froths from his mouth, coating his rough beard.

Peter doesn’t know what to say. This is his best friend. Not the first friend he has seen die to gunfire, but his best. If this were a story he would know what to say to his friend, something glorious about giving his life to save them. But there is no glory in death. And the new world is only death.

The girl, still without a name, without anything, looks on in terror. She is screaming behind her taped mouth. Then, as if time slows down, Peter hears the thud-click of a shotgun chamber being loaded. The crack of the slide being racked and then the deafening explosion of a 12 gauge being fired in such close quarters. The rotten wood of the stable door right by his head explodes inwards showering him with debris and giving him a dozen bloody splinters. Straw is kicked up by the blast and the concussive force throws him to the ground.

When his vision finally stops swimming he sees the lifeless form of the girl. Her body thrown into the corner like a lifeless doll. The fallen flashlight catching just enough of her to show that her chest is now a bloody ruin. Her body convulses a few times before finally falling still.

In everything he had seen. The dead coming back. Eating the living. All of the horrors of the past few months. None of it compared to what living people were still capable of.

***

Daniel hears the screaming. He is moving before he even has time to think. He knows something is wrong a split second before the gunshots start.

“What is happening?” Valentine asks. Chloe jumps up from the couch where she was sitting and flings herself into Valentines leg.

Daniel grabs the gun from his waist sprinting to the door. “Keep her safe,” he calls back to Valentine as he flies through the hallway. Valentine grabs Chloe and pulls her close.

“Ok baby we need to run,” she takes off down the hallway towards one of the bedrooms, half dragging the young girl.

The sun is mostly down by now and Daniel squints through the dirty glass of the front door, trying to make out what is happening. He sees figures running in the dark. There is the brief muzzle flash of weapons fire coming from the barn. The fact that weapons are being fired at all gives him hope that Peter and Terry are still ok.

His mind races and his heart thunders to keep up. Where could they have come from? The house had evidence of living but they all assumed people had moved on. Just people in the same tough spot as them passing through. But obviously that was not the case. Whoever it was that lived here came back. They aren’t done, and Daniel and his group are the intruders now.

Daniel tries to count how many there are through the foggy glass but it is impossible to get a good count. They are moving around too rapidly. He hears the distinct blast of a 12 gauge shotgun and ducks involuntarily back into the hallway. His best bet is that they haven’t seen him yet. It seems that most of the people are grouping around the barn. Trying to get at Peter and Terry whose return fire is keeping them at bay for the moment.

He takes a deep breath, forcing his shaking hands under control. Fighting the dead was one thing. Taking a man’s life while he breathes is something completely different. But his mind goes back to Chloe and Valentine, racing to hide in the house. He knows in that moment that he would kill anyone to keep them safe.

Pushing the door open as quietly as he can he slips out into the night. He doesn’t have time but rushing out guns blazing, especially with only a few rounds will get him killed for nothing. So he slides along the wall. Staying low behind bushes trying to find a position he can flank the intruders from.

Sidling along the house the moon finally comes out fully from behind a dark bank of clouds. He gets a good look at the attackers. Five of them are hustling around near the entrance to the barn. From the brief muzzle flares of their weapons he can make out flashes of features. They are all dirty and disheveled. Their patchy skin shows lesions and sores. Lank hair, greasy and thin hangs from their heads and they wear coats stained with blackish fluid.

The smell from the open barn doors hits him like a physical blow, mixing with the cordite from the weapons and burning his nose. He struggles not to retch.

The firing from inside the barn stops and Daniel can hear the men cawing and jeering at Terry and Peter. They know they have won now.

“What will you do now?” one of them calls in a harsh voice. “All out of bullets.”

“Let’s just finish this, Billy,” says a female voice that is coarse and broken. The voice of a lifetime smoker that had to be on 4 packs a day.

“We don’t want to kill them just yet,” The one who must be Billy responds. “Good meat in there. We don’t want to kill them,” he repeats, “Their better fresh.”

Daniel pieces together what they are saying. What the wafting odor coming from the barn was rank human flesh. These people were using the barn to store Peter and Terry. Then eventually going back into the house and finding Valentine and Chloe propels him out of his hiding spot.

He flies from the bushes in a rage and fires straight into the chest of the leader, Billy. The man grunts as the bullet catches him and spins around falling to the ground heavily. Daniel spins on his heel and fires at the man carrying the heavy shotgun. The bullet catches him in the throat and he falls with a gurgle of blood, making a sickening sound as his body struggles to breathe despite the fact that it will be dead in moments.

The other three were unarmed. Daniel fires as one of them moves to pick up the fallen gun. The man falls clutching at his thigh, wounded but not dead. They are screaming now and the girl who advocated killing Peter rushes him. Her bare legs are filthy and her blouse is torn, despite the freezing weather. She flings herself at him faster than he thought possible.  Daniel is knocked to the ground. His head smacks a flat rock in the soil and he can feel blackness closing in on his vision.

The other man, the one he was unable to shoot stands over him with a pitchfork. He raises it to thrust down, but is knocked to the ground at the last moment. The pitchfork stabs into the ground inches from Daniel’s face.

***

Peter hears the gunshot and knows he has to move now. Daniel must have heard them and come out. Terry lies next to him, bleeding out. Peter has seen enough battle injuries to know he won’t make it. Maybe if they had a hospital to go to. Maybe if the world wasn’t the hellhole it had become. Maybe in a world where that girl without a name would have never had to go through what she did. But that world doesn’t exist. Maybe it never did.

His heart breaks at the thought of losing the man who was so close to him for so long but he knows there is nothing he can do. His mind races to the girls that must have been left inside the house. He moves from cover as the gunshots begin and races to the front of the barn.

Daniel moves and shoots, the precision is startling, but he doesn’t have enough bullets. By the time Peter reaches the doors Daniel has already felled three of them but they are on him by then. Peter watches as a man in a tattered coat prepares to end his life. He flings himself forward, knocking the man aside moments before the pitchfork ends Daniel.

They tumble heavily to the ground and Peter smashes his fists furiously. He catches the man in the jaw snapping his head back.

Then a heavy kick lands on Peter’s ribs sending him sprawling and knocking the air from him. Peter rolls with the momentum and raises to his knees just as the girl comes in for another kick. He catches it on his forearms the sting of her heavy boots numbed by his adrenaline. Grabbing for her foot he pulls her off balance and she falls to the ground.

Peter stumbles to the side and feels his hand land on a large rock. He grips it just as the man he was fighting first throws himself on to him. Peter brings the rock around in a tight arc, smashing into the man’s head. He feels bone crack and give way as he smashes again and again. The man cries out in pain the first time but in moments the cries are silenced. Warm blood is spattered across his face and clothes.

He gets up covered in the blood of his attacker and sees that the woman from earlier had fallen awkwardly against a wheelbarrow. Her neck is bent and her empty eyes stare at him. She died from the fall.

Daniel stands, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His hands shake as he looks around the yard. Peter knows that feeling, knows what it is like the first time he killed a man, even in self-defense.

Peter grunts and kicks the body of the man who held the shotgun. The man who killed Terry. There is no more retribution Peter can offer his friend. He wants to scream as tears of rage make his vision cloudy.

22

Far North

Valentine stares out the window into the passing snow. It seems like it snows all the time now. They have been driving for days and a soft, white blanket covers everything, muting the world and giving her far too much time to dwell on her thoughts.

Chloe lays curled on the seat, her head in her lap. The girl cried when they buried Terry. They all cried. There are too many burials. Too much death and not enough answers. That is the way the world has become. Just death.

You wake up, you eat breakfast, or more likely you don’t because there is no food, you try to survive through the day. Try to find food. All of it with the constant threat of death hanging over your head. It is enough to drive anyone insane.

Valentine knows she would have succumbed weeks ago had it not been for Chloe. She was the reason to stay strong. The only reason to continue to believe. Despite everything the girl had lost so much and at such a young age. Valentine never allowed herself to feel bad for herself. For she could not compare her own suffering to the grief that Chloe lived with.

It had changed them all. Daniel was so much harder now. He knew only how to survive. Valentine had a hard time adjusting to this at times. Seeing how cold he has become, so willing to do what needs to be done. But she finds herself falling for him because of it. Despite everything he had saved them all so many times.

She looks up at him driving. His face, in the rearview mirror smiles back for a brief second, just the merest tugging at the corners of his lips. But it is enough. It shows that he still cares.

Daniel’s cheeks have become sunken and gaunt. His face, because of the lack of sleep, the lack of eating, the lack of living, has receded into his skull. The dark circles around his eyes attest to everything they have been through together as a group. But despite it all his eyes still shine. He truly believes that they will find the safe zone. They have been driving for days. And it has been days since any of them have eaten. There was no food at the slaughterhouse, and none of them want to risk stopping again.

After the fight with the cannibals, Valentine still can’t believe that people could sink so low, they had left with nothing more than gasoline. They ran out of food the following morning. Splitting a chocolate bar and a few crackers between all of them. Extravagant.

The funeral for Terry was a small affair. They threw the bodies of their attackers into the barn. They were disease ridden and unhealthy looking. Their skin full of abrasions and other lesions. Dieting on human flesh had quite negative side effects for them. Then they burned the barn.

Peter said a few words for the girl he had described to them. The one who died in that barn. He had never gotten her name. Never known anything about the tragedy she suffered, or how long her life had been in such a miserable condition. But he gave her his respects, told about the family she surely had before all of this. Maybe she was some one’s girlfriend. A daughter, a sister, she worked somewhere. She lived a life as full as any of them and to die like that was worse than anyone could ever deserve. But, he wished, she must be in a better place right now. For, he said, if there is a god he could not be a god and deny her heavens gates.

Then they buried Terry. Chloe wove a few scraggly flowers together into a small wreath. Something her mother had taught her to do. And she laid it on the grave. Peter also said words for him. They had been close in life, as close as brothers. Terry had saved him in Iraq, saved him after the chaos started. He was the one who had always been there.

Peter said he was grateful, grateful that despite the way he died, the way his life was stolen from him by some bastards who had been broken by the state of the world, he never gave up. And he didn’t become one of them.

He said it passingly, without referring to them, the zombies, walkers, brain eaters, the dead, any other number of names they had been called. But they all knew what he was referring too. And with the way the world had gone it was some small mercy. For he also would have moved on to a better place.

No one could have deserved it more, Peter said, staring at the shallow mound of earth. They did not have a stone that would suffice. But Peter said he would forever remember the site of where his best friend lay. And one day when all of this was done. He waved his hand around then, indicating everything that could not be said with words. He promised he would come back and make a proper burial for him. Something that he deserved.

They all cried then. Even Daniel, who Valentine thought had moved passed that. He never seemed to cry. Ever since he killed that first walker, it was like something in him snapped. But seeing all of this death. Seeing Peter, so hard in life and so strong, crying for his best friend brought him back. Reminded him why they still tried.

And so they left. Without pretense and without anything they hoped they would find there, and in her darkest moments Valentine feared that is all it would ever be. Just chasing a safe zone that didn’t exist.

But she refuses to give up.

***

Daniel drums out a light rhythm on the steering wheel as he drives. The heater is on full blast, trying to keep them warm. One of the only commodities they can afford. The driving, constantly in fear for their lives has taken its toll on him. His stomach gnaws at him with hunger and the lack of sleep has created dark circles around his eyes.

He blinks away the need for sleep and focuses his mind on the road. Peter is sleeping in the back with Chloe who is wrapped in the only blanket they escaped with. Valentine sits beside him, her head against the window.

Daniel stares at her for a moment. Even after everything he sees how beautiful she is. The slight curve of her jaw. The messed, tousled hair framing her face. She bears a small scar on her cheek where she had been cut in one of their many close calls. But still, she is breath taking.

“Don’t stare,” she says and smiles, not as asleep as he thought. Daniel looks back to the road. “Especially not when I look like this,” she sits up and adjusts in her seat.

“Just enjoying the view,” Daniel says, knowing that it is corny but feeling that the words are true regardless. “Sometimes I have to take what I can get out here.”

Her smile broadens. “Do you think we are almost there?” she asks.

“We only have a half tank left,” Daniel says, looking at the gauge. “And we used up everything else in the back. Unless we get lucky and run into another car that still has fuel, or a town or something, then I don’t know.”

She looks worried for a moment but then covers it up. “I just wish we would have seen a sign by now.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t make sense that there would be no signs,” he looks around. The Canadian landscape is lost in the darkness. The pregnant moon hanging in the sky. Trees covered in snow dot the landscape of rolling hills. Really it would be beautiful if they were not about to run out of gas and had not been out of food for days.

“You don’t think…” Valentine begins letting the question hang.

“No,” Daniel says, trying to reassure her, “They are here. I know they are. And we are going to find them.”

“What if we don’t?” Valentine asks, looking over her shoulder at Chloe. Daniel knows how hard this has been on her. How much she feels for Chloe, especially after Sasha and Isaiah were killed. So many good people died.

“We will,” Daniel replies more forcefully, “Everything is going to be OK. I know it’s all crazy. But even if I have to carry both of you I will not stop until we find the safe zone. And when we do there will be people and we can finally start to live again. No more of this running forever. We can try to get on with normal lives. We will do our best for her,” Daniel looks at Chloe in the mirror. “Besides, do you think Peter will let anything happen to her?”

Valentine smiles a bit at them, “No. I think he would do anything to protect her.”

“We all would Valentine.”

“What about when we get there though?” Valentine asks. “How will she even be able to have a childhood? What can we do?”

Daniel reaches across the center divider and grabs her hand from her lap giving it a light squeeze. “We will figure this out together. Besides, she has you, and I think you would make a great mom.”

Valentine looks out the window a tear forming in her eyes. “I don’t think I can Daniel. I don’t know if I am ready for that.”

“None of us were ready for this,” Daniel says, “Any of it. But I will be here for you, for both of you, and we will figure this thing out. No matter what has happened, we’re what’s best for her now. We will figure this thing out together,” he is trying to persuade her but he knows it’s failing. It’s so cold. They are so hungry. They are almost out of gas. And he has nothing but promises that he fears he can’t keep. “We will do this,” he says again, giving her hand another squeeze.