Born In The Apocalypse (4 page)

Chapter 6

I was about to retort when we crossed the Highland Road junction.  Ordinarily we just walk, but then Lucy Simpson isn’t running like crazy towards us.

“Trey!  Josh!  Help!  There’s two of them at my house!  They’re trying to get in!”  Lucy was breathless from running, so it took a minute to get the story out.  She was in the garden when two Trippers showed up, stumbling through the back lots and bouncing round the abandoned swimming pools.  Lucy saw them in time and hid in the corn stalks, waiting for them to go by.  As luck would have it, her brother chose that moment to open the back door and yell out for Lucy to hurry up.  He barely got the door closed in time.  Lucy waited for them to be distracted, then bolted.

Trey asked the obvious question.  “Where’s your weapon?”

Lucy pouted.  “It was in the house.  I was twenty yards from my door.”

Trey shook his head.  “There’s only one at your house, by the way.”

“What?  No, there’s two.”  Lucy argued.

I stepped in.  “No, he’s right.  There’s only one.  The other one followed you here.”

Lucy spun around and seemed to shrink into herself as she saw the Tripper stumbling towards us.  It was having a hard time since the terrain was uneven, but it was coming, no doubt about it.  Trippers travel in a straight line to whatever they are chasing.  They don’t deviate at all.  They’ll turn, but they won’t pay attention to the terrain.  Lots of them have fallen down stairs that way.

The Tripper fell into a ditch and then climbed out, its eyes fixated on us.  Its mouth moved in silent rage as it worked through its diseased brain how to dismember us. It was a young woman, probably in her twenties by the look of her.  She didn’t seem to have that old look about her, so if I had to guess, she was infected recently.  Dad would want to know about her.

Trey hefted his crossbow, and I nocked an arrow. 

“What do you want to do?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. 

I knew Trey was scared, but then so was I.  We’d seen these things all of our lives, but that didn’t mean they still didn’t scare the crap out of us.  We’d seen what they could do, and no one wanted to go out that way.

“Let’s let her get closer, then you put one in her.  I’ll take a shot while you reload, deal?” I said, pulling back on my arrow.

Trey didn’t bother to respond.  The Tripper caught her footing and moved quickly towards us, her eyes wide and furious.  The splotches on her face were bright red, and stood out angrily against her pale skin.  Trey aimed quickly and let fly, the bolt whipping through the air.  It struck her throat with a deep smack, causing her to stumble and grab at her neck.  When her hands reached the shaft, she began pulling the bolt out, tearing and stretching her skin.  She finally wrenched the thing out, and started for us again.

It was hard to focus considering there was a large bloody hole in the middle of the Tripper’s throat which blew bubbles of blood for every breath she exhaled.  I didn’t have a lot of choice, now that gaping wound was a serious risk to all of us, and her bloody hands would be brimming with infection. 

I lined up my shot on her head, which was easier since she was a lot closer now.  I could see Trey working quickly with his crossbow, but he would never have that bolt loaded in time.  Lucy was stepping back, and I imagine she was looking for a place to run to.

I waited another heartbeat then let go of my bow string.  My arrow struck the woman in the bridge of her nose, into her eye, and punched through the fragile bones of the eye socket.  She collapsed without another step forward.

I released the breath I was holding, and looking back at Lucy, I noticed she was further away than I figured.  I wondered briefly if she was just about to cut and run and let Trey and me handle this alone.  That thought didn’t sit well with me, but I decided not to bring it up.

“Nice shot,” Trey said, walking over to the dead woman.

“I’m getting a lot of practice these days,” I said. At Trey’s look I quickly related the story of the man I shot over by the place where we had killed the other.

Trey looked around. “What’s going on, man? We don’t see a Tripper for months, maybe a year, then we see three in just a couple of days?  Ain’t right, man.”

“I know.  Let’s get our arrows,”  I said.  My dad would kill me if he knew what I was doing, but I really hated making new arrows.  Everything was easy except for the stupid fletching.  One would always be off center, then I’d have to start over.

Trey had it easy.  He just picked his up off the ground.  He wiped it off on the woman’s leg, leaving long streaks of red on her thigh.  I had to brace my foot on the woman’s face, and it was a little uncomfortable yanking out the arrow from one eye while the other looked at me.  Lucky for me though, the wound was tight, and there was little residue left on the arrow.  I wasn’t fooled, though.  I knew there was a lot of virus on that head and shaft.  I took out a lighter and quickly burned the areas that had been touched by the virus. Handing it over to Trey, he did the same with his bolt.  Dad said it was the best way to kill the virus since nothing could survive open flames.

I put the now-blackened arrow back into my bow and started forward.  Trey looked at me funny.

“Hey, man, the woods are that way,” he said, pointing to the south.

“Yeah, but there’s another Tripper at Lucy’s house, remember?”  I replied.  I didn’t look back to see if Lucy was following, and at the moment I really didn’t care.  Suddenly, I got mad about the whole thing.  I turned around and started walking back towards the entrance to the subdivision.  Trey spun around and followed.

“What are you doing?”  he asked, looking back at Lucy who seemed shocked as hell that I was leaving a Tripper at her house unattended.

“Tripper at the Simpson’s is none of my business,” I said, walking on.

Lucy stopped suddenly. “What?” she shouted.  “What the hell?”

I turned around and looked at her.  “You and your family survived just like we did when the Tripper mobs came over the land.  I think your family can handle one.  Besides,” I added, “I’m not going to risk my neck by being mistaken for another Tripper by poking around your place where the family is a little jumpy right now, hey?”

Well, that knocked them both back a peg, and neither of them had anything to say to me at that point.  I figured logic won over emotion, and Trey proved it by shrugging his shoulders and falling in line with me on our way to the hunting grounds.

Lucy just stood there for a minute, then it seemed like family duty called, and she started heading back to her house.  I figured she’d be okay since there was only one Tripper and there were several fully grown adult males at her place.  In all likelihood, she’d arrive just in time for cleanup.

Chapter 7

Trey and I walked over the road to the woods and slipped in pretty easily.  We’d been in here hundreds of times, and our trap lines were just to the east of us.  We’d check them when we got back, assuming we had any luck whatsoever in our hunt. 

The brush was thick, but we’d made trails through here before.  The trees were only about twenty years old, to hear my dad talk about it, and so there was a lot of space between the bigger trees.  A little to the south was a more formidable tree line, and Trey and I headed right for it.  The deer we were looking for wouldn’t be in this area, but if we headed further west, we might get luckier. 

“Creek is down,” Trey said as we jumped over a foot-wide stream that wound its way through the woods.  The banks of the creek were steep, and if they ever filled, we’d see three-foot deep creeks that were about ten feet wide.  We’d never get across without help if that happened.

“Good for us to cross, bad for us to find meat,” I said, swinging on a branch.  We crossed the creek and worked our way south, trying to see if there were any tracks worth a look. 

Trey was the better tracker between the two of us, and I wasn’t about to argue the point.  I could track something well enough, but Trey had a knack for figuring out where the game went.  He seemed to read the land differently than me, and I didn’t stand in his way.  I figured he’d get us meat, and the best I could do was shut up and follow along.

After circling a bit, Trey settled into a line and followed it for a few feet, then it went off in another direction.  He followed that one for a time, then went another way.  He was so focused on reading signs that he completely missed the fact that we had left the woods and were nearly at another road.

“Trey!” I called, spooking any game nearby.

“What?  What’s the…oh.”  Trey looked around and saw we were well out of the woods.  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that any large game would have spotted us easily by now and were long gone.

“C’mon, let’s head west,” I said, walking at the bottom of the ditch that paralleled the road.

Trey nodded and fell in behind me, his crossbow slung over his back like my recurve.  I held onto the arrow that had killed that infected woman since I didn’t want to put it in my quiver, and every once in a while I would use it to hack down a particularly large weed.  We passed an old church on our right and then a couple of schools.  Dad said a lot of people died in those buildings thinking they would be good places to fort up against the Trippers.  Problem was, the people inside didn’t get along, and it all fell apart.  Rumor had it the places were haunted, and if you were around at night you could hear voices and see lights go on and off. I never stuck around for the show, thank you very much.

“Think there’s anything in those buildings we could use?” Trey said, somehow reading into what I was thinking.

I shook my head.  “Doubt it.  What would be left?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s go take a look!”  Trey said, leaving the ditch and walking across a small field.  An unusually shaped fence sat sentry in a corner, and Trey walked around it carefully.  It was shaped like a quarter of a sphere, and I couldn’t imagine for the life of me what it was intended to keep in or out.

“Trey!  We have hunting to do!  Come on!”  I shouted, trying to get him back on track. 

“If you’re scared, stay there.  I’ll come back for you later,” Trey taunted.

Well, that did it.  Trey knew there was no way I was going to let him go somewhere and claim I was too scared, so I pulled my bow off my shoulder and nocked the arrow I was holding.  I don’t know why I did it, I just felt better for doing it.

Trey watched me with an amused grin on his face, and if I were so inclined, I might have smacked him for it.  But we tripped onto a sidewalk very quickly, and our banter became silent as we approached the big buildings.

In reality, there were two schools here, joined by a long connecting section.  I had seen the buildings before, but always from a distance, and I never had the urge to go see what was inside.

The front of the building closest to us was kind of scary.  The entrance was under an overhang which darkened everything.  The sides of the entrance came out about twenty yards, and they curved slightly inward, like they were going to drag you in if you came to close.  I didn’t like the look of it at all, but Trey was not to be denied.

“Look, there’s a place we can get in.” He pointed to a large section of glass that had been broken which was a bottom panel of a door.  It wasn’t completely broken through, so no animals or anything else had been through there.

“Maybe we should try the doors first before we go crawling through glass,” I suggested with just a touch of sarcasm.

“Picky, picky,” Trey said.  But that didn’t stop him from trying the doors.

I took extreme satisfaction from the fact that the door he was going to crawl through actually opened when he pulled on it. 

Trey held the door open.  “After you,” he said.

“Oh, no.  This was your idea.  You go first,”  I insisted.

Trey shot me a withering look. “Baby.”

“What was that line mom taught us about fools?” I asked innocently.

Trey frowned as he got my point.  He checked his crossbow and slowly walked through the door.  I was a good two steps behind him, and that was just so I didn’t accidentally poke him with my possibly poisoned arrow.

The front part of the building was clear although there were some papers on the floor.  To our left was an area that looked like an office, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw a sign on the door that read ‘Office’.

I didn’t see anything of interest in there, so I just shook my head at Trey who walked down a small hallway that passed in front of the office.  We crossed an opening that looked like it led into a large area, but it was very dark and not very inviting.  We could see across the opening thanks to light coming in from another hallway in the back, but it was still pretty dark. 

Trey kept moving down the hall, and he stopped in front of a door.  If I had to guess, it went into a classroom, but it wasn’t easy to tell.  Trey tried the handle, and it was locked.  There were dark stains all over the place down here, and I couldn’t think of anything good that could cause such stains.

“Let’s try the other side,” Trey said quietly. 

I didn’t say anything, I just shrugged. This was Trey’s show, and I wasn’t going to jump in anywhere.

We walked back across the office and over to the other side of the foyer.  There was a larger opening on this side, and it also led to the very dark area in the middle of the school.  Trey walked along the wall while I circled wide.  My dad had always taught us to spread out as much as we could when we were hunting anything, and I figured it was as appropriate here as it was in the woods.

The area in front of us was dark, but there was nothing in it except for a bunch of benches and tables.  If I had to guess, I’d say this was where everyone came to eat when they were here.  There were more papers and garbage on the floor, but nothing of interest.

“What’s in there?” Trey asked.  He pointed behind me to the big set of double doors I didn’t know I was standing in front of. 

“Beats me.  Help yourself,”  I said, stepping away from the big doors.

“Dang, you gonna make me do all the work?”  Trey said, frowning.

“
You
wanted to come in here to see what was what,
you
can see what is what,” I said, sounding somewhat stupid.

Trey shook his head and pulled on the handles.  Neither of them worked, so we walked along the wall until we came across another set of double doors.  These didn’t work either, and I was beginning to figure we weren’t going to get in.  The last set of doors opened, but only slightly.  We could barely make out that they had been chained together on the other side.

“Well, that tells us one thing,” Trey said.

“Do tell,” I prompted, looking around at a huge eating room which seemed to be big enough to have a stage on it.

“There might be some stuff worth recovering if no one else has been able to get in there,” Trey said.

I tossed that around in my head for a second.  “Maybe it’s full of sleeping Trippers, too.”