100 Days in Deadland (9 page)

He looked up and his face turned red. “Fucking bitch!” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. He tackled me, punching me in the face, and—blinded by white and black stars—I pummeled his head with the gun handle. I kept pounding his temple until he fell lax. With a grunt, I kicked him off me.

I pulled myself up into a sitting position, gasping and spitting blood, unable to see through the stars. Every inch of my face hurt. He’d very nearly knocked me out. As my tunnel vision slowly widened, I could see Clutch running toward me. When he got close, he looked at me and then at the guy who was already starting to come back to consciousness. I struggled to aim my gun, but Clutch was in the way. He kicked the man in the gut and then fired two shots at my attacker’s head.

Clutch knelt by me. “You okay?”

I came to my knees, spit out some more blood, and ran my tongue over the nasty cut on my lip. “I need a bigger gun.”

He belted out a single laugh, helped me to my feet, and held me up until the wooziness passed.

I rubbed my cheek. “Damn, that guy hit like a sledgehammer.”

“He’s had plenty of practice.”

I looked up at him, but he was scanning the area.

“The woman…” I said.

“They hurt her. Bad.”

Shivers crawled over my skin. There were too many victims of the zeds already. Adding more unnecessary victims poured acid onto my emotions. I looked over at the guy Clutch had put down. “I’m glad you killed him.”

“Some folks need to die.”

A flurry of movement caught my eye, and I turned to see another man run toward a truck in the distance. “Clutch!” I yelled, wincing at the sharp pain in my cut lip.

Clutch turned, a look of unadulterated fury washed over his face, and he bolted after the man.

The guy was a couple hundred feet away. My .22 was worthless at this distance, so I ran for the truck, jumped in the driver’s seat, and gunned the engine, kicking up pebbles.

Clutch was closing the distance, but he was still too far away. The man had already climbed into a dusty blue minivan. Clutch kept running even as the vehicle cranked around and sped directly toward him.

Clutch stopped, took aim, and fired at the windshield. Buckshot fractured the glass. The minivan was going to hit him head-on, but he fired again. I was on my way to T-bone the van, but I wasn’t going to get there in time.

At the last second, Clutch dove to the side.

I floored it to intersect the van, but it sped away, spinning out on the gravel road before straightening and tearing away from us.

I stopped, got out, and ran toward Clutch.

He was already on his feet, checking the shotgun.

“Are you okay?”

“Fucker got away.” He grimaced. “I didn’t recognize him, but he knows that there’s someone else out here now. We’ll have to be on our guard.”

“If we hurry, we might be able to chase him down.”

He shook his head. “It’ll draw too much attention. We’ll find him again.”

I nodded tightly, and then looked at the bin and started walking.

“Cash, you don’t need to see that. I’ll take care of it.”

I kept walking. The girl wasn’t far away, just out of the line of sight from the truck. She was covered in dried blood and bruises, making it impossible to tell her age, but she looked young. Probably hadn’t even graduated from high school yet. Could’ve been one of Jase’s classmates, even. Her nose was broken and one arm was bent at an unnatural angle. All the skin had been scraped from her knees.

She was nearly naked, her skin sallow. The wind flapped the tatters of clothing left on her. Her poor body looked like she’d been abused and broken since the virus outbreak started. She belonged in a hospital. Now, without doctors and medical technology, there was nothing that could be done. She lay there, one eye swollen shut, staring into nothingness. It was a blank stare. I thought she’d already died, but then she blinked.

I realized that it was only her spirit that had already died.

A tear trickled down her cheek. I came down on a knee and wiped the tear away with my thumb. I found it hard to breathe, like a fist had wrapped around my heart.

She tried to speak. Her pale, broken lips moved but no sound came out.

I pointed the pistol at her temple. “I’m sorry.” They were the only words I could manage to get out without choking.

She closed her eye and gave a weak smile.

I held the .22 as close as I could get it without touching and pulled the trigger. The blast made me jump, and I let out a sob.

I came back to my feet, staring at the girl, her destroyed features now relaxed.

Finally, she’d found peace.

Tears streamed down my cheeks.

I knew Clutch stood at my back. I had a protector, something this girl had never had. The first raindrops landed on her, creating shiny trails through the blood and grime. I turned my face to the sky to let the cool rain wash away my tears. But the rain could wash away neither the sins nor the memories of what had taken place here today.

The Third Circle of Hell

“I agree,” Clutch said as we shoveled mud into the hole where Jase’s parents now rested. “Zed sludge is the foulest odor in the world.”

I would’ve chuckled except I was still too focused on breathing through my mouth, my bandana doing little to block the stench. The mud stuck to our shovels, making the process tedious, but we both agreed that Jase needed to know that his parents had received a proper burial.

“I’ll finish up here. You want to finish loading the truck?” Clutch asked.

“Gladly,” I said and jogged away before Clutch could change his mind. I sucked in fresh air, though hints of decay still saturated the air.

Jase had made one hell of a mess in the living room. Frank’s wife hadn’t been too nasty, just a zed corpse with a headshot in the earliest stages of bloating. But Frank could’ve been an extra in a horror film. His head had been nothing but pulp, and from his chest up, he’d been covered in dried blood and sticky brown goo. The blood, if I had to guess, was canine.

Propped outside the front door sat bags and boxes filled with everything we’d found useful in the house. I grabbed the other two rifles Jase had told Clutch about and slid them behind the front seat before loading the remaining food from the cabinets and supplies into the back of Clutch’s black pickup truck.

This morning, Jase had also asked for us to grab his Xbox, and Clutch snorted out a “hell, no” before going off about how we were about to find ourselves in the dark ages. I grabbed the Xbox, anyway.

By the time I’d loaded the last bag, Clutch was headed my way.

He tugged down his bandana and didn’t look happy. “Ready to hit the next stop?”

I swallowed and gave a tight nod.

Neither one of us spoke on the drive to the corn bin where we buried the girl. We strung the bodies of her assailants together with a tie strap and propped them against the corn bin.

Finished, I pulled out a can of red spray paint I’d found at Jase’s house and painted large letters on the bin above the men:
R-A-P-I-S-T-S.

I stared at the letters for a couple minutes. With no law enforcement, it seemed fitting to somehow note these men’s crimes. When I tossed the can on the ground, Clutch gave me a nod and headed back to the truck.

We drove around for an hour, scanning for the minivan, and only saw a zed here and there. The bastard was either long gone or had gone to ground, and neither option did us any good. I felt like our duty wouldn’t be done be until we could find the fourth rapist. Only then would the poor girl finally be avenged.

All in all, taking care of corpses took us five hours. We sat in the truck and ate the sandwiches I’d made this morning.

“Check out the warehouse next?” I asked between bites. I had the bolt cutters along, and Clutch had been hankering to get his hands onto all the surplus gear.

He nodded while he chewed.

Not even a minute later, thunder rolled, and the damn rain picked up again. I watched heavy drops pelt the windshield. “It’ll be tough watching for zeds in this.”

“Agreed. We’ll try again tomorrow,” he grumbled as he wiped his hands on his pants.

“At least the storms should keep other looters away, too,” I offered.

He grunted. “We can only hope.” And he started the truck.

By the time we’d returned to the farm, the rain had become relentless. Jase stepped out from his cover under a nearby shrub. With the rain parka, he blended seamlessly into the foliage around him. He unlocked the heavy chain and pushed at the gate. Metal screeched as he shoved it open. Something clanged, and the gate broke free from its rollers and swung out at an odd angle.

“Damn it. I knew we were going to have problems with that piece of shit gate,” Clutch muttered before gunning the engine through the open space. Once through, he jumped out of the truck and I followed.

It took all our strength to right the gate. The wind pushed against us and the hail pelted our heads. Once the gate was back in place, we tied it to the barbed wire fence we’d reinforced with chain link on each side. It wasn’t pretty but it would at least hold the gate and slow down anyone—alive or otherwise—trying to get onto the farm.

A thunderous boom shook the ground. A crack echoed through the air, followed by a large branch off an old maple tree slamming into the ditch behind us.

“C’mon!” Clutch yelled out, his voice a whisper over the wind. “We need to get inside. Now!”

We ran to the truck. Even though there was a backseat, Jase and I both tumbled onto the front bucket seat.

The truck lurched forward, buffeted by the wind that seemed to come at us from every direction. “This one’s going to be bad,” Clutch muttered.

Going to be?
Spring storms in the Midwest were known to get nasty. But, maybe because I’d lived in a city where buildings tempered the winds, I didn’t remember a storm this bad in a long time.

Hail bombarded the truck, the noise deafening. When we reached the shed, both Jase and I tumbled out to slide open the large door. The hail hurt, and the wind had become vicious. The sky had turned an ominous green. We started pulling the door shut while Clutch drove the truck into the shed. Once in, he jumped out and helped slide the large door closed.

Hail sounded like an atrocious muddle of drums on the shed’s metal roof.

Then the screaming winds mysteriously stilled and the hail stopped.

We all stood and looked up as if we could see through a metal roof. Chills crawled over my skin.

“This
can’t be good,” Jase said.

“We should get to the cellar,” I said. I headed to the side door to make a break for the house, but Clutch stopped me.

“No time. This way.”

Jase and I hustled behind Clutch through the winding stacks of seed corn waiting to be planted and to the far corner of the shed. He moved aside a couple empty pallets to reveal an earthen-colored tarp. He lifted the tarp and opened a round steel hatch.

“Cool! A bomb shelter,” Jase said from behind me.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Clutch said, getting down on his hands and knees and pulling out a lantern. He pressed a button, the light clicked on, and he handed it to me.

The winds picked up again, howling like banshees, touting impending doom.

Holding the lantern in one hand, I gingerly climbed down the ladder into the dark hole. The small light lit up the dismally small space below. It couldn’t have been more than a five-by-five-foot hole, with the walls taken up by shelves of food, water, and a shotgun vacuum-sealed in plastic. A small square fan covered what I assumed to be the only air vent in the bunker.

Jase landed right behind me. “Cozy.”

The walls were rough concrete, but it still smelled of dank earth. “What is this place, Clutch?” I asked.

“My TEOTWAWKI hole,” he replied after locking the door above us. “Made it myself.”

Sudden silence boomed in the small space.

“The End Of The World As We Know It,” I clarified to Jase when he shot me a confused glance. Clutch had used the acronym the day I met him, back when I could still rely on the Internet to get my answers.

“I built it to support one person for fourteen days. But it’s tornado-proof, so we’ll be safe for tonight. There’s no way anyone or anything is going to get in here without a blow torch and several hours of extra time.” He tore open a plastic bag and pulled out a metallic sheet. “I have only one blanket, so we’ll have to share.”

As I sat next to Jase and dried my pistol, I wondered what would await us in the shed when we went to open the hatch in the morning.

****

“We could set up a fenced-in pasture out back,” I offered while we sat around a huge breakfast feast, cleaning out the last of the food from the freezer and refrigerator. Since the storm had blown the power out, the mood was somber. My final bite of steak marked the beginning of rationing. Clutch said we’d get used to being hungry. I wasn’t so sure.

More so, it was an eerie feeling to know that there was no one left to bring the power grid back up. Even though Clutch had a generator, he’d made it clear that it was for winter use only. It was old and loud and would only attract attention. It also used diesel fuel, and he had only a couple hundred gallons left in the diesel tank out back that had been used for his farm equipment before the outbreak.

No more TV, radio, or ice. No more Internet. No more email to my parents.

“Livestock will attract zeds,” Clutch countered, bringing my attention back. “Besides, that’s too much meat for the three of us. It’ll go bad too quick.”

“Not if we find goats,” I said.

“Have you seen any goats around?” Clutch said.

“What if we smoked the meat?” I asked.

“Mm, I love jerky,” Jase added. “Can we try it, Clutch?”

He scowled. “That means we’d have to keep a watch on the fire. If it puts out smoke that can be seen over the trees, then we can’t use it. The smell of smoked meat may also pose a risk. It could attract attention.”

“We’ll make sure it’s good and sealed,” I said. “Any risk whatsoever and we won’t use it.”

He watched me for a moment. “And you know how to make a smokehouse?”

I shrugged, and then smirked. “No, but I bet you have something in your library.”

He sighed. “See what you can find. But I check over anything you build before you start a fire in it.”

“Deal,” I said, and Jase gave me a high-five.

“Don’t you first need to build that chicken coop you’ve been talking about?” Clutch added.

I’d planned a pen out of chicken wire and two-by-fours to be connected to the smaller shed so that zeds, wildlife, and raiders couldn’t easily get to the chickens. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would do the job. “I saw chickens at a farm a couple miles that way.” I pointed. “I’ll pick them up today and put them in the shed until I’m done with the coop. They won’t last long on their own.”

“That’s the Pierson’s,” Jase added. “They’re nice. Moved in just a couple years ago.”

“We’ll stop on our way back from Home Depot if there’s time,” Clutch replied. “If we don’t get that roof patched, we’re going to have serious problems, no thanks to all these rains.”

While we’d huddled together in our underground tomb, a twister had blown through. We’d been fortunate. The machine shed and two smaller surrounding sheds were left untouched except for some dents and bent corners courtesy of wind damage. The storm had uprooted one tree and split another in the backyard, but we decided to leave them where they fell since they provided decent obstacles for zeds.

One of the wood covers had snapped off a ground-floor window—a quick repair. The only real damage was to the roof of the house. When we checked out the roof the next morning, all Clutch said was, “I’ve been meaning to get that roof redone one of these years.”

“And the surplus,” I added. If Clutch thought there was some badass stuff tucked away in the warehouse, it was going to be Christmas for us. I was keeping my fingers crossed for a Jeep.

“It’s going to be a busy day,” Clutch said.

“I’ll stay back and guard the house,” Jase offered.

“Negative. You’re both coming. Home Depot is big. If I knew where I could get shingles anywhere else, I would, believe me. I need extra eyes and ears there.”

“But who’s going to protect the farm when we’re gone?” he asked.

“We’ll lock the gate up good and tight before we go. That should cover us for a few hours,” Clutch replied. “And you can carry in today’s water before you gear up.”

Jase slumped.

I gave him a reassuring pat. With the power out, we had to get our water from the manual pump outside.

A thump against the outside wall sent us all to our feet. “I’ll check it out from the living room,” I whispered, pulling out my pistol. Clutch had upgraded my .22 to a Glock 9mm after the run-in with the rapists, and the weight felt good in my grip.

“I’ll take upstairs,” Jase whispered before taking the stairs three steps at a time.

Clutch nodded and reached for his rifle.

I headed toward the source of the sound and paused, waiting for the next thump. When it came, I took the window on my left and slid open the peephole. The yard looked clear under the overcast sky, though with the peephole, I couldn’t see anything against the walls.

I turned to Clutch who was now behind me and shrugged. When I turned around to look outside again, I found a jaundiced face staring back at me. I jumped. “Shit!”

“
Ahhnn.
” The zed pounded on the wood and began to chant the meaningless sound over and over as though it was saying, “Let me in.” The window frame vibrated under the pressure.

“Cash?” Clutch asked.

I lifted my pistol, held it just inside the sniper hole, and fired. The pounding stopped and daylight shone through the hole once again.

Jase came running down the stairs a moment later. “The yard’s clear. That was the only one I could see.”

“It never should’ve gotten this close to the house. We need to take shorter breaks with the three of us together,” Clutch said. “No more than fifteen minutes without anyone on guard every three hours.”