No More Fear: Part Two

He turned the key and the Jeep rumbled to life. We backed out of the driveway and Zach pointed the Jeep to the east. The stench of the blood in the back was almost overwhelming. I rolled down my window to keep from gagging and stared out into the darkness, almost complete now. The cool night air had brought with it an eerie fog that hung low to the ground. I looked back towards the coast as we crested a hill. The faint glow of dozens of fires dotted suburbia. I was thankful we were not there. It looked like we had gotten safely away from the chaos. I settled back down in my seat as we descended the hill. Out the windshield, the Jeep’s high beams revealed the narrow road in front of us bordered by thick green forest on both sides.
The road wound steadily upward as the mountains grew larger in front of us. Several minutes had passed when I spotted a flickering light in an opening on the road ahead of us. As we drew closer, I could see it was a fire. Zach slowed the Jeep as we approached it. I could see it was a vehicle now; a large late 80’s Ford pick-up truck.
“Stop,” I said when we pulled up next to the wreck. It was off the shoulder and the front end was wrapped around a telephone pole. The fire covered the hood. Thick smoke filled the cab but as far as I could tell the fire hadn’t reached the inside of the cab yet.
“I’m gonna go take a look. I’ll call you if I need help,” I told Zach as I opened my door. Walking to the truck, I could hear a commotion coming from the cab. I heaved open the door with some difficulty because of the damage to the front end and stepped back as smoke poured out of the cab followed by a throaty growl, which startled me. I instinctively drew the Glock, aiming it at the cloud of smoke. As the smoke dissipated, I began piecing together what had happened, and realized there was no one I could help here.
The driver, a female in her thirties, was smashed up against the steering wheel, legs pinned underneath the dashboard. Her head faced me. Blood from several gashes streaked her face and a bite wound on her neck bled profusely. Her eyes stared dully through me with half opened lids. Her right forearm was missing. Well, it wasn’t missing, just no longer attached. Her passenger, a forty-something male who was in better condition than she was, had it in his left hand. He was gnawing vigorously at it, seemingly unaware of his surroundings and all the pain he should have been in. His skin, dimly lit by the blaze, was a ghastly grey. He turned his head, noticed me and he dropped the appendage, reaching out to me with his good arm. He was pinned so tightly by the dash board that he was unable to move, just reach out at me and gnash his teeth in his rage, hissing at me all the while. He had probably been unconscious when they started out; she was probably running just like we were, trying to escape this nightmare, unaware that he was infected. He must have come to and attacked her. She’d lost control and here we all are. I’d guess they were doing at least seventy when she went off the road. I decided there was only one thing left to do. I leveled the Glock it at the angry, blood-smeared face and squeezed the trigger. The hollow point slug passed through the infected’s head and spider-webbed the window behind it, making a large mess of his brain along the way. The corpse slumped forward up against the windshield, empty eyes staring at me accusingly. I secured the Glock and checked to see if there was anything useful in the bed of the pick-up. It was empty save for a spare tire and an axe. I took the axe to the Jeep, placed it in back and got in.
“They were gone long before we got here,” I said, not looking at my brother, “Let’s go.”
We went.
* * *
The blacktop ended at the base of the mountain but the road continued to wind steadily upwards, crossing a small river that gushed down the mountainside. The darkness was nearly complete. A full moon stared down at us from a clear sky, affording us some light.
When we had climbed about thousand feet up the mountain, Zack took a narrow trail that branched off the main road. The forest around us was well established with many large trees of all varieties. After about a quarter mile, Zach stopped the Jeep and turned off the engine. We dismounted. There was very little underbrush. A thick bed of damp leaves made it easy to move quietly. I heard Zach check the chambers on his rifle and sidearm as I retrieved my Mini-14 from the rear seat. I slung it muzzle down over my shoulder.
“We can leave the stuff in the Jeep. I’m going to find a place to sleep tonight,” I said. I checked the sky for clouds. Nothing but stars dotted the sky. “The weather will be fine tonight.”
I rummaged through the back of the Jeep until I found my flashlight and my sleeping bag. I found a soft patch of leaves and unrolled my sleeping bag. I removed the rifle from my shoulder and propped it up against a tree trunk near my makeshift bed. I untied my shoes and placed them an arm’s reach from my bed. I removed the shoulder rig and both holsters from my belt, placed them next to my shoes and slithered into my sleeping bag. I turned off my flashlight and placed it directly above my head so it would be within easy reach if I needed to use it. Zach continued to wrestle with his sleeping bag for a few more minutes before his light went dark as well.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could barely make out Zach’s prone form; a dark lump a few yards from me.
“Tomorrow morning we’ll see about unpacking the Jeep and setting up a campsite,” I said to the lump. The lump grunted a reply, already dozing off. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the night as I let sleep take me.
* * *
I awoke as the sun was beginning to rise, the sky ablaze with vibrant hues of orange and red. I could hear a fire crackling behind me. I sat up groggily, rubbing the sleep from my eyes with the back of my hand. Zach was sitting on a log near a small fire, stirring the embers with a stick and staring blankly into the flames.
“You’re up early,” I said, wincing as a thousand needles pricked my leg, “I must have slept on a rock. How’d you sleep?”
“I’ve slept better,” my brother replied.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. I slowly got to my feet and stretched, “Well, I’m going to throw together a little shelter since I didn’t bring the tent. You wanna give me a hand?”
“Yeah, sure.”
He flipped the stick into the glowing embers and stretched. We picked out a spot nearby with two pine trees about ten feet apart and began clearing the lower branches, I with the hatchet and Zach with the axe I took from the burning pick-up last night. The slobbering faces of the two people, no, the two infected, the two dead people I killed last night continued to come back to me as I worked. The split second when a bullet bulldozed through each of their skulls played out in slow motion in my head over and over. I watched blood and brain matter splatter again and again, until I finally shook my head in an effort to stop the gruesome images. I snickered at the thought of killing people who had already died. That made a so much sense. I put the thoughts out of my mind and focused on my work.
I wandered around the area for a few minutes, finally finding a sapling that could serve as a cross beam that we could stretch between the two pines. I felled it with a few strokes of my hatchet, stripped off all the branches and trimmed it to the proper length. When I got back to the pines, Zach had finished clearing branches and I hooked the cross beam in place on the lowest remaining branches of the two pines. It was about five feet off the ground. Not enough room to stand, but plenty of room to sit comfortably. We gathered the branches we had trimmed and leaned them all on one side of the cross beam, filling in the gaps with other branches from other nearby trees which made a nice little lean-to shelter which would at least keep out the rain.
We left most of the gear in the Jeep. I cleared a small space in front of our shelter and built a cooking fire. Zach dragged a couple dead logs over to use as benches as I popped open two cans of stew and set them on rocks near the fire to heat them.
“Home sweet home,” I said to Zach when he sat down on the log next to me. He let out a short laugh.
“I’d prefer my bed at home, but we’ve had worse than this. Remember that canoeing trip when we took the wrong turn?” he said.
“Ugh, how could I forget? That was the worst three days of my life,” I replied. We had been halfway through a week-long canoe trip down a river in the middle of nowhere and ended up losing half of our gear to some rapids due to a navigational error. We ended up spending the night in a similar shelter without a fire, cold and wet and without sleeping bags, each of us trying to place the blame on the other.
After a few quiet moments, I asked, “Did you happen to try the radio to see if there’s any news on this mess?”
“No,” Zach answered, “I’ll be right back.”
He went over to the Jeep and opened the door. He tuned it to the local news station and turned up the volume so I could hear it from where I was sitting.
“…contact with anyone showing signs of infection. Remain indoors until further instructions are given to you by local law enforcement or military personnel. If you are in need of medical assistance please remain calm and wait until further instructions are given to you by local law enforcement or military personnel. This is an emergency news broadcast. This is a national crisis situation. Avoid all contact with anyone showing signs of infection…”
“It’s a looped message,” I said to Zach, “That can’t be good. It sounds like they’re either evacuating or trying to use the military to get control of the situation. And it would seem that this isn’t an isolated incident.”
“But if it’s a national crisis, where are they going to evacuate people to?” Zach inquired.
“Good question. Try some other stations.”
He cycled through several other stations, each one playing the same looped message. After a minute or so he said, “It’s playing on every freaking station!”
He shut off the radio and sat back down on his log.
I opened my mouth to speak, but as I did I was cut off by a gunshot in the distance. We both turned our heads towards the sound as it was followed by two more gunshots. They came from down the mountain, back the way we came.
“Trouble?” asked Zach.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re just stuck out here like us,” I said, “Did it sound like a rifle or a handgun to you?”
“A handgun. Which would mean they aren’t so far away if we can hear it through all these trees.” Zach shifted uneasily and glanced to his rifle which was still propped against the tree he had leaned it on last night.
“Don’t get too excited there, sport,” I said to him, “Anyone out here isn’t interested in coming after us. They probably just had the same plan we did. Maybe they left without food and they’re just trying to catch lunch.”
I handed him a warm can of stew and a fork.
“Chow’s on.”
We ate lunch in silence. Several times I caught myself unsnapping and re-snapping the latch keeping my Glock in the holster on my hip or pausing to listen to noises in the woods around us, real or imagined. The gunshots un-nerved me as well, though I was doing a poor job of not letting it show.
We finished lunch and cleaned up. I occupied myself by gathering some firewood, Zach kept himself busy by whittling at a stick with his KA-BAR, launching a shaving off the stick into the fire and watching it burn completely before launching another one. I soon finished my task and sat down next to my brother.
“Wanna go for a walk? Maybe we can find a better place to hide out, like a cave or something,” I asked, “If anything, at least it will kill some time.”
“Sounds good to me,” he replied as he stuck the sharp end of the stick he was working on into the ground between his feet. He sheathed the KA-BAR on his belt, latched it and kicked some dirt on the fire, effectively smothering it. I got up, checked my rifle and slung it muzzle down across my back. Zach did the same.
“Got a compass or a map or something?” he inquired.
“Compass, yes, map no,” I replied, “That should be good enough as long as we’re paying attention to where we’re going. And we won’t be going too far. If we get lost, we just head back towards the road and follow it back here.”
“Okay. Let’s go get lost,” Zach joked.
“Don’t jinx us!”
We set out across the mountain, not really climbing or descending, checking out every rocky area for caves or overhangs that would provide better shelter than our makeshift one. We did find several small caves, but nothing large enough to be worth relocating our whole camp for. We had gone about three quarters of a mile, maybe a little more, and it was now mid-afternoon.
“Well, probably about time to start heading back. Don’t want to get caught out here in the dark,” I said.
“I agree,” Zach replied.
We began our trek back to camp, the sun hanging low in the west. When we entered a small clearing, I glanced back down the mountain towards the coast. The sky was clear. I un-slung my rifle, cranked the scope to nine-power and peered through. I could barely make out the thin lines of smoke still rising up from the more heavily populated areas. I let out a sigh, and kept on moving back towards camp, not really paying attention to anything since I already recognized where we were. I was trying to think of what to do next. What was the next step? I hadn’t realized we reached the camp till I heard Zach’s voice coming from over my shoulder.
“Stop,” he whispered sharply, “Look.”
He nodded towards the camp. I saw what he meant. One of our sleeping bags was sprawled on the ground ten feet from the shelter where we left it. I could hear rustling coming from the shelter. We had approached the camp from the back side of the shelter, so we couldn’t see what was causing it. Zach tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to him.
“I’ll go wide left down the hill and see who it is. You keep an eye on it for me,” he whispered. I nodded and he tip-toed down the hill. I rested my rifle in the nook of a tree branch and waited. I wasn’t too worried. If it was one of those things I could have half a magazine of ammo through its head before it covered the forty or so yards to my position. I also had a clear view to the left and right of the shelter for about two dozen yards, giving me enough time to take a decent shot at it if it tried to move towards Zach or get away up the mountain. I couldn’t see what was beyond the shelter though; that was Zach’s zone and he’d know that.
I caught a glimpse of Zach crawling up to a large boulder and peer around. He should have a good view from there, I thought.
“Hey!” Zach yelled, though not at me. I peered thought my scope, waiting for a chance to take a shot if I needed to.
“Hey!” Zach yelled again, drawing it out a little longer this time. I heard his rifle go off once, twice. Nothing moved in my scope. He must have killed it. I looked up and turned to the rock, but Zach wasn’t there. He was walking up the hill, his rifle pointed at the sky. He let off two more rounds into the air. I heard a commotion and turned back to the shelter as a black furry blob tore off up the mountain. A small black bear. Well, small for its species, still bigger than me. I slung my rifle and rejoined my brother at the camp.
“He did the dishes for us,” Zach said as he tossed me a stew can. It was licked clean on the inside.
“And redecorated,” I said.
“I liked it better before,” Zach said. He retrieved his sleeping bag and returned it to its place. The bear didn’t cause any real damage, just jostled some things around and knocked some things over. Nothing to get excited about.