Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls (6 page)

I set out to find the gunsmith and hopefully a few boxes of ammo. I still hurt just about everywhere, but I was anxious to get back into the woods and start tracking down Katherine. I prayed she was still alive.

W
e assembled
in a small clearing and went over our weapons and gear. True to Lisa’s word Molly had provided me with a full load out. The M4 was well worn but it had been maintained and smelled of fresh oil. The action was smooth as I worked the charging handle and tested the gun. It wasn’t the A1 variant so I was stuck with semi-auto and 3 round bursts. That suited me just fine because ammo was not a luxury we had.

Molly handed me a box of 240 grain .44 caliber rounds. I filled my gun and pocketed the rest of ammo. She handed me an extra magazine for the M4, which brought me to sixty rounds of 5.56. I was better equipped than I’d been in some time. The final surprise was a two-point sling for the assault rifle.

We were busy prepping for the next few hours. When I got hungry again I went looking for food and what a luxury that was. For the last few days we’d scraped by on next to nothing. My stomach was like a big hollow pit.

I found the chow line to be busy and was handed a paper plate with a blob of thick, lukewarm oatmeal, a slab of cold SPAM, and a single small green apple that was covered in brown spots and fit in the palm of my hand.

It was like I was eating at a five-star restaurant. I devoured every bite including the apples core, and then proceeded to lick the plate clean.

“Got a little more oatmeal if you want,” the cook, a kid no more than sixteen years old, offered. He wore a wool jacket over a flannel shirt and sported tufts of downy hair on his face.

“I’ll take it.” I said, accepted the blob, and demolished it.

“Got any coffee back there,” I joked.

“It’s instant but it’s got kick. Get it while you can because we’re down to our last few cans.”

“Christ. I was kidding. Hit me with a full mug,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Trey.”

“Chef Trey, you’re my new favorite person,” I said.

He handed over something like eight ounces of brew in a styrofoam cup. I sipped it, found it to indeed by high octane, and guzzled the rest. It was barely warm. I didn’t envy my stomach in the next few hours, or the results once it ran through my system, because I’d have to pop a squat at some point.

“Chef Trey. It’s got a cool ring to it,” he said.

“What’s for dinner, Chef?”

“Probably the same stuff,” he said with a crooked smile.

“Shame I’ll miss it.” I offered him a snap salute before moving out to find Molly.

She was all business but she knew my name. She handed over a Colt M4 that had seen better days, but at least someone had cleaned it. I tucked an extra magazine into my tactical jacket and a box of rounds into my backpack.

She had a dozen .44 rounds. I pocketed those with a smile.

* * *

T
he team consisted of me
, Scott, Thomas, and a woman I hadn’t met before, named Sloane McAllister. She had long hair that had gone gray and she wore a pair of glasses that were thick enough to make her eyes bulge. She had a hard face that bore proud age lines. For some reason, I thought of a DMV worker when I saw her but quickly changed my mind. She was sharp and had a quick wit even if her sense of humor was dry.

I’d known Thomas since the first days at the Wal-Mart and knew he was a capable fighter. He’d been a cop back before the change. He’d also been a leader even though he said he didn’t want the job. Still, people had listened to him. His wife, Ella, was an auburn haired beauty that doted on him at every chance.

“How’s Ella?” I asked Thomas.

“Good. Safe. We have a second location a few miles back. Kept the bulk of the people and supplies separated just in case.”

“So this whole camp is expeditionary?”

“Something like that,” he said. “Since you torched a ghoul camp some of them have been acting even weirder than normal. They don’t show themselves as much. I think they’re planning something but Lisa thinks differently.”

“Sounds like ghouls to me,” I said.

“I think you took a large slice of them out, Erik,” Lisa said as she strode into the circle.

“I hope that’s it,” Thomas said.

“It was bad down there. They lived like animals in the dark,” I said. “No telling how many more of these warrens are around. They want us gone. All of us. We join them or we die.”

When we’d returned to the camp with an arsenal I’d managed to fall into some kind of lair. That’s where I’d had a conversation with one of them. Then I’d killed everyone I could find. After that, we’d torched the place. I don’t know how many ghouls had infested the location but I doubted a single one was still alive.

Scott had slipped away to take a leak but now reappeared. He packed a shotgun over one shoulder and wore his 9mm low on his waist like a gunslinger. He’d slipped two extra magazines into a holder so they were within easy reach.

“We gonna do this thing?” Scott asked.

“Right. Let’s move out. I’ll lead us to the spot, and then we’ll do our best to track them. If we don’t make contact within eight hours, we head back,” Thomas said.

I nodded because the plan was smart, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d return with them if there was no sign of Katherine or the other survivors from the camp.

* * *

T
he trees closed
around us as we dove deeper into them. We’d skirted a side road and made for a wooded area that had been a state park. We weren’t far from Portland, but this section of the Pacific Northwest didn’t care. As we walked over hard ground and avoided overgrown areas, we developed a marching order. Thomas took the lead and I was behind him. Sloane was quiet the entire time but fell in behind me. Scott stuck to the rear.

We paused at noises and avoided one large clump of undead. They’d become fascinated with some dead wildlife, a pair of deer if I’d had to guess, though it was hard to tell by the blood and mass of broken bones. It was a pile of gore left to rot.

Half an hour later, we came to the spot the recon team had reported.

I moved around the area, inspecting the ground and surroundings. Something big had come to a rest here. There was a lot of blood and, as we pushed aside leaves and branches, I came across a hand. It had been severed and some of the flesh had been chewed off. I shuddered and covered it again. Not much of a burial. I hated to think about who it had been attached to. Were they still alive?

The mass had left a beaten path that led further into the woods before we hit an old road. The street had no signs and it was barely a two-lane. At one spot, it was clear someone would have had to pull over to let another car pass. We followed blood splatters for half a mile before we came across a house back from the woods.

There was a fence and a gate that was closed. The home was dilapidated but it was clear someone had recently done work on the location. Windows had fresh boards over them and the front door was completely blocked off with a huge piece of plywood that was nailed over the entryway. I nosed around and found a spot to eyeball the house from cover.

It was clear that whoever was living there was smart. A dip in the roof and a kicked over step stool near it told me that the occupants got into the home by crawling up onto the roof. Probably a side window. But there were also slits cut into the boarded up top floor windows which would provide perfect firing angles to anyone trying to assault the location.

We moved out, cautiously, me with a creeping feeling that someone had a gun trained on us the entire time.

A few minutes later, we stumbled out of the woods and into an industrial area. Warehouses and abandoned buildings lay close to the Willamette river. There was a train and a depot. Boxcars had been opened and emptied. A line of low buildings kissed the edge of the river. We could spend all day investigating this area and maybe come up with a lot of supplies. More than likely it had already been picked completely clean. Six plus months into the end of the world meant that almost everything that could be snatched and eaten had been. There was a chance we’d come across a stash of canned food at some point. There had to be some out there. Think about all of the warehouse stores. All of the storage locations that fed those stores. Think about the companies who created the canned goods. They were probably sitting on tons of supplies.

Right now we didn’t have time for that.

Instead of investigating any further we moved back towards the woods.

A quarter of an hour later, we picked up the trail again. That’s when we found the first body.

“What a mess,” Scott said.

The man’s age was hard to make out because most of his face had been torn off. Little bits of stringy hair still stuck to the side of his head but there wasn’t much more of his scalp. Bone shone through the gore and his eyeballs were gone. The rest of his body had been stripped of clothing and most of its skin. His intestines and organs had been pulled out of his midsection and lay in piles around his corpse. Flies buzzed around the mass, and I had no doubts that maggots would soon appear.

“That guy died in agony,” Thomas said as he crouched next to me.

I covered my nose with my hand but it did little to alleviate the stench. Blood, guts, and shit, not to mention rot, created a concoction that made me want to forget about ever eating again.

“Think he’s from the house back there?” Scott said.

“I think he was dinner,” I said.

We moved out a few minutes later and picked up the trail. It was easy—just follow the blood and body parts.

An hour later we ran into a shit show. A clump of undead had found something alive and made short work of it. I had taken the lead and had gotten a little bit lazy. I stumbled out of the trees and smack dab into a drooling rotter who hadn’t had a bath in months. I first instinct was to start shooting, but there was no telling how many others were in the vicinity without further scouting. I kicked the creep in the gut and he fell back into one of his companions. This started a domino effect that would have been awesome if not for all of the damn squishing and moans.

Thomas strode into the mass with a hand axe and laid into the first undead who set her bloody gaze on him. He hit it with the flat side of the weapon and flipped over the hand axe and cleaved in her skull. Another undead came at him but he slapped it aside and planted the sharp end into the bastard’s throat, nearly decapitating him. It was enough to cut his lifeline. He dropped to the ground in a heap.

I went for my knife and pushed one of the undead aside, then slashed another across the throat.

Two undead fell on Scott and took him to the ground. He thrashed under them but managed to roll away from the unlikely threesome. Scott pushed himself to his feet and drove the knife into the man’s eye. He stopped twitching a few minutes later. I dragged the other one away by its ankle and put the putrid asshole out of his misery.

After we recovered our cool we moved out again.

* * *

W
e’d been
on the move for another hour when we ran into something unexpected.

A pair of men sat by the side of the road. They’d built a little fire and were roasting something. Looked like a skinned rabbit. The smell of cooking meat practically made me drool. We skirted their location, keeping to cover, but I was pretty sure one of them had spotted us and was just playing it cool. If we made a sudden appearance it was likely we’d be looking down the barrel of any weapons they carried.