Aftershock: A Collection of Survivors Tales (7 page)

All of our scouting has paid off. We are on the road now with more than enough supplies. It wasn’t an easy task. It took a lot longer than Garett really wanted it to, but we got everything on our lists and more. The truck was the hardest thing to come by. Getting it packed up was an event too. We were lucky enough to find a newer SUV parked in the garage of one of the houses we were going through. They even left the keys hanging on a hook right next to the door. Talk about convenient.

It only had a quarter of a tank of gas, and I wasn’t sure how far that was going to get us. After we found it, and drove it back to the house we had to wait 3 more days for the dead that followed us home to get bored before we could go syphon gas from other cars. I didn’t have a garage so our best option was to back it up to the front porch and load it up over a few days. That was fine by me, but the kids were antsy about getting on the road. I, on the other hand, was growing more nervous every day. My dreams were filled with worst case scenarios.

Garett showed every chance that he could how valuable he really was. That kid is a great scout. He can spot the dead a mile away, and finds supplies even when well hidden. His memory is fantastic, and I never had to remind him what we were looking for. Most of the time it was him reminding me, or adding to the lists. My nephew, who was just a child a few months ago, is my right hand man now. I don’t know if I could have done any of this without him. Sometimes it seems like he has been training his whole life for a scenario like this.

His sisters have been essential too. They stripped my home of every usable thing, and packed all of our supplies so everything would fit into the back of our truck. Zoe is meticulous. She has every bag and box labeled and neatly organized. She even has an inventory sheet of everything we are bringing with us divided into subgroups. She would update us every morning with a tally of what we had, and what we still needed. Her sister was her perfect little worker. She never questioned her, and followed every order perfectly. We were becoming a well-oiled machine.

With the flyer in hand we piled into the truck and drove away from my home. We decided leaving at dawn was best. We wanted as much daylight as we could get on our first day. We didn’t know how far we would get, and wanted to find a safe place before sundown. I was an anxious mess, but the kids were on cloud 9. To them this was an adventure, a chance to get away from the horrors we have seen. For me it was a risk, and even though it was a necessary one, it was frightening.

We hadn’t even turned off of my street when the dead began to follow the truck. They heard the noise, and stumbled toward it. In the truck we could easily outrun them until we found ourselves at a road block. Garett and I had gone out a few days earlier and moved the military trucks that blocked the road out of town just enough for our truck to get through. We had walked the route we were going to take to make sure it was passable. We could only go so far though, and it wasn’t long before we were stuck where people had abandoned their cars. I bet they ran out of gas, and never made it back to fill them up again.

We did our best to go around the blocks as we could. Other times we had to double back and find a new route. Highways were out of the question. They were a mess of abandoned and smashed up cars. The best routes were side roads, but most brought us through neighborhoods. That was a bad thing. There were so many dead in the neighborhoods. It seemed like the first day if it wasn’t dead people it was dead cars. We did venture out of our truck twice to get extra fuel. It was slim pickings when it came to extra gas, and there were a few cars we wasted our time on. Leaving the truck was scary even with a gun in hand. You never knew when a dead person would come shuffling up. I still feel exposed out of the truck.

The first night we slept in the truck. We were on a road that seemed to go on forever with nothing but fields on both sides. We were miles from anyone or anything. That seemed like the safest place to stop for the night. I told the kids stories about their Dad and me as kids until the girls were asleep. Garett waited until he was sure they were out before he started to talk.

“Aunt Amy?”

“Yes sweetheart.”

“Do you think we will make it to the place on the flyer?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. We haven’t gotten very far today. We are nowhere near the dangerous part of our trip. That will be when we get further north. Up there the areas have more people that live closer together. We will have to find a way around all of that and I never left home. The furthest I have ever been is two towns over. That’s not true. The furthest I have ever been is today.”

“I think we will make it. We have to. We have nowhere else to go.” His voice trailed off. I knew he was trying to convince himself that it was true. He needed to believe that it would all work out in the end. I wanted it too.

“Get some sleep honey. We are going to need it. Tomorrow we go further into the unknown. I’ll stay awake for a few hours and keep watch. I will wake you up when it is your turn.”

He rolled over onto the truck’s door. Zoe had packed everyone pillows and blankets so we were as comfortable as you could be sleeping in a vehicle. I sat there alone in the dark watching for movement out on the road or the fields. It never came. I drifted off to sleep without waking Garett. That was stupid of me. I should have never left us vulnerable like that. When I woke in the morning our truck was surrounded by the dead.

They hadn’t noticed us because we were quiet and still while we slept. They were stumbling past the truck two and three at a time. A herd of them was following the road, looking for their next meal. The children were still asleep and I knew if I woke them the girls would panic and alert the dead that we were here. All I could do was watch, and wait. My breathing was rapid, and I kept imagining every breath I took was going to be the one that tipped them off. There must have been over a hundred of them. If they saw us there would be no way for us to get away. Their numbers would overwhelm us.

Five minutes, then ten, then fifteen passed. They were still stumbling down the road. I thought it was a group that would never end. Garett woke up next to me, and I quickly covered his mouth. I did my best to sign to him not to make a sound. Luckily, Zoe had left a pen and pad in the console for us to log the supplies that we had used so she could adjust her inventory. I scribbled quickly to Garett what was happening and how many there really were. In all caps I wrote, DON’T WAKE THE GIRLS. He wrote back, GOOD PLAN.

We sat in silence for another twenty minutes. It was like playing possum. If they thought you were dead, or even better didn’t see you at all, you were safe. The herd finally passed. That’s when the girls woke up. Thank god for small miracles. I shushed them right away and whispered to them that we would be spending another half an hour here before we moved on. We needed to decide if we were going to double back, or go forward and risk catching the herd.

No one wanted to go backwards, but we couldn’t see any way around it. When we started the engine I half expected to be swarmed. We made our way back down the road we had travelled the day before and turned at the first offshoot we could find. There was a need to get going in the direction of the address on the flyer. More than anything I wanted to feel like we were making progress. The few towns we encountered we sped right through. I even ran over a dead guy in one. He dented the front bumper, but that was all the damage the truck took from the hit.

We drove on for four more days sleeping at night in the truck. My back began to hate me. I’m not a kid anymore, so I don’t have the ability to fall asleep anywhere and feel like I slept a whole night. I made sure to wake Garett up for his turn at watch. That first night taught me a lesson about being caught off guard. We even had the girls watch together for an hour or two every morning when the sun rose. They ate breakfast and chatted while Garett and I got that extra bit of sleep. It’s amazing how much better you feel with just a little extra sleep.

On the fifth day we decided to stretch our legs for real before we put a full day’s drive in. We needed to reorganize our supplies too. Zoe’s system was great, but days of digging into it had left it messy and filled with trash. We were in need of water by then. There was a small town on the map right down the road. Towns were bad, but if we were lucky we might find a place on the outskirts with a well. We weren’t lucky that morning and driving in the town was the best we could do. This place looked like a disaster movie set. The streets were littered with trash, and broken bodies. I pulled to a stop on what looked like Main Street USA. Getting out of the truck right away was not the way we did things. We parked and did our best to scout out the area from the truck.

There was a corner store, a hardware store and a hair place. The corner store looked boarded up, but the upstairs windows were open. There was a sheet hanging down from one of the windows. I wondered if there was someone alive up there. The dead don’t do things like hang sheets out windows, signals were something the living would do. On the other side of the street there was a produce stand that was picked clean and a municipal hall. I chose the municipal hall as our place to go and look for water. Maybe they had a water cooler, and if they did they would have bottles of water with it.

Garett and I got out first. We brought our guns and a pitchfork Garett found when we were out getting supplies. Such a smart kid, he knew noiseless weapons were our best way to fight the dead. This could be a good or bad thing when it comes to abandoned buildings. The open door either let all the dead out, or it let them in. There weren’t many rooms in for us to search. There were a total of five, if you count the lobby. The first door we opened led into what looked like a multipurpose room. It looked like it had triple duty; court, meeting hall, and bingo hall. There was nothing of use left in there so we did our best to clear the room.

Door number two was a small office. Saying it was small was being generous. It looked like they had converted a closet by adding a desk to this area. I watched the door and Garett went through the drawers. We scored five power bars, and a Snickers bar. The girls were going to be in heaven. Two books were resting on the desk, and I popped them in my bag. There was an iPod Touch that Garett grabbed, and to both of our amazement the car charger that went with it. The joy on his face made this the best scavenging trip so far. I had to snap back to attention and look where I was supposed to, and not at all the loot we were getting. I heard shuffling coming our way.

I stepped out of the office with my pitchfork ready to go. There was a dead sheriff staggering towards me. He was in his uniform when he died, and it was worn and ripped from the fight he must have endured to end up this way. With one quick jab through the face his staggering ended. Now I had to figure out how to get my pitchfork back. It was a great weapon because of its silence, but it was bulky and was now embedded in the sheriff’s head. It took me a good 2 minutes to remove the weapon and by the time I was done Garett had finished in the office.

We moved to the next room. This office was much larger and had a very old and ornate desk. There was an American flag, and pictures of dead politicians. It was my turn to rummage and Garett’s to watch. I handed off the pitchfork and worked my way to the desk. Half of the drawers were locked, and there was no sign of a key. The ones that were open didn’t hold anything of value to us, and it was useless to try to bust open an old desk. Unlike the shit they built in the last few decades, craftsmanship like this was made to last forever.

I gave up and moved with Garett over to the last door. Jackpot! It was the break room. There was a water cooler with a half empty jug in it and a replacement on the floor beside it. There were also some non-perishables in the cabinets. I couldn’t help but smile. My choice was the right one and I was ecstatic. We had water and some extra food, what could be better than that? I grabbed the full jug off the floor and told Garett to cover me while I carried it to the truck. If we were only getting one of them I wanted it to be the full one. Outside there were two dead women clawing at the truck. Garett put his pitchfork into the closest one’s head, and before I had a chance to do anything to the other she went down. Behind her stood a man with a crude spear in his hand.

“Need a hand?”

“Thanks, for getting her off the truck,” I said as handed off the water jug to him. “We need it thrown in the back. Garett! Keep watch.”

“Name’s Mick. Can I catch a ride? I’ve been blocked in that corner store for ages.”

“I just want you to know before this all happened I would have told you to go fuck yourself, and if you try to hurt those kids I will kill you before you finish the thought,” I stared at him awaiting a response that never came. “All right, get in. You wanna grab anything before we leave? We already got what we were looking for.”

“I’m good. All I’ve got is the spear and the backpack. Where you heading?”

We loaded in the truck. I plugged Garett’s iPod in. It was a good way to get his mind off the fact that he had just been demoted to the kid’s row in the back of the truck. Garett eyeballed our new friend. I started the truck up, split the Snickers bar in two for the girls and began to tell Mick about the flyers and the mystery location. He agreed it was as good a place to start as any, and that he was eternally grateful for us getting him out of that store. He talked about the other cars and trucks he had watched race past his window. We were the first ones to stop long enough for him to get outside in time.