Aftermath (10 page)

They moved forward, covering the half-mile in just a few seconds. As they drew closer to the abandoned vehicle, more of the road further down became visible. A little more than a quarter-mile more from the Chevrolet Cavalier, the sun glinted off of several windshields.

Harper pointed. “Accident?”

“
Some sort of pileup,” Lee nodded, turning his attention back to the woods.

As they pulled up alongside the Chevy, Lee felt a small measure of disappointment. The gas cap was removed and hanging down. Someone had already tapped this vehicle for gas.

Harper made a face. “Sonofabitch…”

“
We can still check it out.” Lee opened his door. “Might be a little left.”

Harper didn’t argue. He exited the vehicle and grabbed a gas can and a short section of black tubing. Lee let the man set up the siphon as he swung into the back of the pickup truck. The metal roof of the cab was uncomfortably hot against his skin as he settled his elbows on it, using it to prop himself up and survey the area around them.

Harper began coughing and then gagged.

Lee gave the man a sidelong glance. “Anything?”

Harper was bent over, hands on his knees, with a thick trail of saliva coming from his mouth. He shook his head steadily, the saliva swinging from side to side. “Just fumes. God, I forgot how much I hate doing that.”

“
Let’s roll on,” Lee suggested. “I’ll stay back here.”

Harper yanked the black hose from the barren gas tank of the little Chevy and tossed it and the gas can into the bed with Lee. He grumbled as he settled into the driver’s seat: “Good thing I didn’t have anything to eat this morning. I would have lost it.”

Lee took a firm hold of the roof and gave it a tap to indicate he was secure. “You’re a trooper, Harper.”

The older man mumbled something unintelligible and unpleasant sounding.

The pickup moved further down the road, towards the new group of cars. Lee had scoped it while he had been waiting for Harper and it did not seem like a man-made barricade, nor did Lee see anyone around it. As they closed in on the cluster of cars, Lee got a better picture of how they had gotten there.

A large SUV had crossed the grassy center median from the opposite direction. Twin gouges in the grass could still be seen, despite the untrimmed overgrowth. A box truck had swerved to avoid the head-on collision and tipped over on its side. Three smaller vehicles had piled up on the undercarriage of the box truck.

A chain reaction of idiots following too closely.

But their poor driving habits meant good pickings for Lee and his partner. Surely one of the five vehicles would have some fuel left in its tank. Perhaps they would be so lucky as to fill up all twelve gallons.

The body of the box truck lay across the roadway like a felled beast and created a perfect defensive position. Lee kept a wary eye on it as they approached. No one jumped out and started shooting. The wrecked vehicles remained still and silent, like statues depicting a single moment of some violent scene.

Harper swung wide to the right and then cut it to the left so their passenger’s side was facing the vehicles. Lee hopped out and swiftly began clearing the vehicles while Harper snatched his hose and gas cans from the bed again. The vehicles were all empty. In two of them, the airbags were deployed. One of them had a broken passenger window. To the left and right the grass on the median was worn down to the dirt. Lee thought that explained the lack of gridlock behind this accident. Everyone heading inbound towards Angier had just gone around the accident.

Lee wondered if they had gone around it when the people were still trying to drag themselves out of the cars. What happened to the drivers was a mystery. Maybe they just wandered off. Or maybe a horde of infected had taken them.

Harper coughed and spluttered. “Goddamn…” he wheezed.

“
Eureka?”

“
Oh yeah,” he spat. “Gonna be a minute, though.”

Lee nodded and turned his attention to the box truck. He scanned the woods and further down the road as he moved to the roll-up door on the back end. It was emblazoned with a bread company logo and showed pictures of various freshly baked loaves and rolls. Just looking at the pictures made Lee’s mouth water and his stomach growled at him.

Taking another long look around to make sure no one was sneaking up, Lee bent to the latch of the roll-up door and found it unlocked. He flipped the latch and then grabbed the canvas strap at the bottom of the door and yanked it up—or sideways, as the truck was now horizontal.

The door stuck at first and Lee pulled harder.

It finally gave way and slid about halfway before jamming again.

Lee peered into the darkness.

He noticed the smell almost immediately. Not rancid like rotting meat, or overpowering like the shit-and-body-odor smell of the infected. It was a strange musty smell, like an old house that hasn’t been cleaned in years.

Lee wrinkled his nose.

All the bread in the back of the truck had gone bad, he was certain from the smell, and had little desire to investigate further into the dark cargo area. He was about to turn away, but thought better of it and pulled the door shut again. He was pretty sure nothing dangerous was inside. But not positive.

“
Anything?” Harper called over to him.

Lee looked back and saw Harper standing over his slowly filling gas can, one hand on his hip and the other shielding his eyes from the sun. The shotgun was resting against the car while it transfused its fuel into the big red canister. Lee shook his head. “It’s all moldy.”

“
Figured.”

Yes. Lee should have figured that as well. A month in the dark of the box truck, with heat and humidity to boot, and not much was likely to be unspoiled.

Lee faced away and leaned against the box truck. He sighted through the scope again. The overly magnified image forced him to strain his focus. He saw the middle of the road. In the hazy distance, an overpass? Perhaps. The image jumped and quivered with the tiny unconscious movements of his body. He swept to the left, across the median where everything was empty and the overgrown grass nearly blocked his view of the opposite lanes, then up the shoulder to the wood line on the far side of the road.

All clear.

He swept right, back across the median, back across the road that he now stood on, saw the cloudy, shimmering silhouette of the overpass. Up the shoulder. Up the embankment, to the woods. And there he saw a dark shape, hunched low to the ground, disappear into the woods.

Lee jerked back like he’d been touched by something hot.

Was that...?

He was about to call behind him, but decided to double check himself. The movement had been so rapid and sudden that it could have been a mirage, could have been an animal, could have been a sun spot in the lenses of the scope.

He put his cheek against the rifle, hard this time, his focus intense. He sighted at the furthest point in the road before it dipped out of sight on a gradual downslope. There, on the embankment, not fifteen feet from the road, just at the hill crest, he had seen something.

Something crouched down low.

And human, he thought.

He felt his heart quicken its pace, like a worried horse moving from a walk to a trot. He stared at the woods with obsessive focus, but the sunlight reflecting off the leaves blocked his view of what was beyond them.

“
Uh...Harper?” Lee called behind him.

“
Yeah,” Harper sounded gruff and unconcerned.

Lee tried to make himself sound level but that bad feeling was putting a tourniquet around his gut and tightening it down. “You might want to speed it up.”

He didn’t take his eyes of the woods. Behind him he could hear the light metallic click of Harper taking up his shotgun.

“
Did you see something?” Harper blurted in a harsh whisper. “What did you see?”

“
Just...” Lee took a deep breath, forcing relaxation into his muscles. “Just get the gas. Focus on getting the gas. But hurry.”

“
It only goes so fast!” Harper snapped.

“
Can’t you start on the next can?”

“
I only have one hose!” Harper growled. “Shitfire...”

Then from the woods rose a bloodcurdling howl that seemed to go on for minutes on end, searing through them like a white-hot fire that started in the sudden dump of their adrenaline glands and radiated outwards like a shockwave until it stung their fingertips and dried their mouths and throats.

“
That was...” Harper started.

“
Better fucking hurry.” Lee lowered the rifle and scanned the woods with his naked eye. Now the roadway seemed like a horrible place to be and the woods seemed closer than they had been just seconds ago. If something burst from those trees it would be on them in seconds. If there were more than one, they might not have time to react.

Slow it down and think...

Lee began to back up towards Harper, scanning slowly left to right. While he watched, his fingers checked the safety and pulled the bolt back to check that the chamber was loaded. He pushed the bolt back into place and tapped it twice so he knew it was seated.

The Savage Axis with its four-round magazine suddenly seemed like the worst possible weapon to have outside of a stapler. The scope was too ridiculously magnified to use on anything inside a hundred yards, and with only four rounds, each one would have to be a hit-and-a-half to count.

While the first howl still echoed through the woods, another call came from the opposite side of the road, this one more shrill. Lee swung in that direction, but the woods still yielded nothing for him to target.

Are they boxing us in?

“
Where we at, Harper?”

“
First one’s almost full but this tank is tapped.”

“
Keep it moving, I’ll let you know when I see ‘em.” Lee backed up to the bed of the running pickup and quickly vaulted himself in. Being a few feet higher in the bed gave him a better vantage point over the box truck’s big frame.

A third call, this one very close to them, just inside the nearest section of woods. Lee looked to that section of woods and remembered the disaster of the night before—the one limping haphazardly through the trash bins while the others sneaked stealthily up from behind.

Pack instincts.

Lee turned in a slow circle in the bed, his rifle pulled tight to his shoulder, the muzzle held at a low ready. As he turned to the woods across the road from them, he heard the crackle and swish of someone moving swiftly through the leaves and bushes.

Lee wanted to leave, but he wanted that gas.

He did not relish the thought of a second trip out to finish what they could have finished right here and now. But he also did not relish the thought of losing another member of Camp Ryder. He had already taken the blame for what was clearly not his fault, how much more would they blame him if Harper died when they were out here alone and without witnesses?

Harper hacked and spit and began to siphon the next tank of gas.

Just give it a minute...

Another screech, further back towards Camp Ryder. Though the distance was greater, it did nothing to comfort Lee; they were now coming from all directions.

A crack of twigs, very close.

Lee broke down and gave in to his instincts. “We gotta move, Harper.”

Harper didn’t need to be asked twice. With the black tube still spewing gasoline, he ripped it out of the car it was in, spraying gas all over himself and the ground. He snatched the red cans up and sprinted for the truck.

There was a whoosh of leaves.

From the nearest tree line a figure burst through, loping towards them with a strange, sideways gait. Lee brought his rifle up, as a small part of his old self murmured in the back of his mind the many rules of engagement he had been taught. It questioned him with righteous indignation:
Is he a deadly threat? You can’t engage him unless he is a deadly threat!

But Lee sighted through the riflescope, saw the moving, mottled shape and a mouthful of bloodstained teeth, and pulled the trigger. The rifle boomed and bucked and the creature’s left hip exploded in a shower of meat and gristle and bone shards.

Maybe not dead, but immobile.

“
Lee!” Harper shouted as he threw both gas cans and the siphon tube into the bed. “Other side!”

Lee swung about, even as gas sloshed out of the can and onto his legs. From across the road, two, and then three more had exited the woods and were sprinting towards them in a staggered line, closing the gap fast. Lee cranked the bolt hard, up and then back. The brass shell sprung from the chamber leaving a ghostly smoke trail behind it.

Lee slammed the bolt back into place.

Two of the three sprinters were leading at an angle, cutting off their prey’s escape route. The other was heading straight on. Lee chose that one because he knew his chances of hitting the others with the overpowered scope as they moved laterally were slim-to-none.

He raised the scope to his eye, but the sight picture was not there.