Dead World (Book 2): Headed North (11 page)

18

Several days later…

They sit around a rickety black card table. A pile of torn and bent cards sits in the corner, untouched for the moment. Daniel shivers in his coat and wraps himself a little tighter. The back-up generators stuttered and finally died yesterday. The temperature in the school dropped to near freezing, but there is no way to get out to the gasoline supplies and so there is no way to get any of the generators running. They have had to bear the last several days in the frigid weather.

Daniel has no idea how those things out there can still be moving. He feels frozen himself, wrapped in blankets and a jacket. But the steady moaning continues. It has become obvious that they rarely need rest. The sound of them shuffling around outside the school continued almost unabated except for a few rare instances.

When Terry went to check the first time he had only been gone a few minutes. He came back with his head shaking. Just being near the door had roused them into action.

“So what do we do if they just don’t freeze?” Peter asks taking a pull from a bottle of whiskey. They are all well and truly plastered by now. But the constant sound of roaming dead is a remarkable mood killer, giving the place a somber feel despite the alcohol burning in their veins.

“I don’t know what we can do, sir,” Terry slurs the sir just a little bit taking a sip and then passing the bottle across the small lamp they are using as a makeshift campfire. Chloe sleeps in the corner curled up in blankets. It took a long while for her to drift off to sleep but after a while Valentine was able to rejoin them.

“Well at least the food is holding out,” Valentine says, looking at the piled boxes of rations.

“I don’t know if that will be enough though.” Daniel grabs the proffered whiskey bottle and takes a swig. The burn as it goes down his throat feels good. It is the only warmth he has been able to get from these past few days and it helps to numb the constant pain of loss. “It doesn’t make sense those things are not freezing out there. The temperature has dropped below freezing the past few nights for sure.”

“Maybe it just takes longer?” Valentine offers. “Maybe whatever it is that reanimates them makes their bodies more resilient. Like they can wait this out longer than we expected.”

“Well we need to do something regardless,” Peter says. He looks around at each of them. “We have food, that’s not the issue for the moment. But eventually we will run out.” He takes a pull of the whiskey letting the point sink in. Nothing is permanent any more. “What we need is a place to stay longer. We need to make it to those safe zones.”

“We aren’t even sure if they exist,” Terry says. It is the first time Daniel can remember Terry having such a tone with Peter, but Peter doesn’t act bothered.

“Well we sure as hell know this isn’t going to work. Maybe further up north it will really be cold enough to freeze these bastards and we could make it to a safe zone,” Peter says.

“Even if we could make it out of the city, which I don’t see how that could happen with a couple thousand zombies between us and any type of car, how would we know where to go?” Terry asks.

Daniel grabs the bottle and takes another swig. Through a haze he remembers seeing what might be their salvation. “What about the old radio in the principal’s office?” Daniel says. “I didn’t think about it the other day. But if there is a safe zone doesn’t it make sense that they would be broadcasting on short wave. You know letting people know where they are? Maybe we are close enough to pick something up.”

“It might be a fool’s hope, but it is better than nothing,” Peter says.

“Ok so say we figure out where they are how do we get out of the school?” Terry asks still stuck on the impossibility of the plan. “It’s not as though we can just walk out there through the horde and say ‘excuse me have you seen a working car around here?”

“What about the Humvee?” Valentine asks.

“I did leave the keys in it. And it is only a couple hundred feet from the door,” Daniel says.

“A couple hundred feet filled with the dead. Do you think they are going to let us get there?” Terry scoffs.

Peter adjusts his weight in the chair and pulls absently at his growing beard. The lack of shaving bothered him at first. But after all this time he is gaunt and rough looking. They all are. “What if they are moving slower?” he raises his hands plaintively as Terry looks about to argue. “I know you went out there Terry, and they started moving. But we haven’t actually seen them. There is no way this cold is not having some kind of effect on them.”

“So you think maybe it has slowed them down?” Daniel asks. “It seems plausible. Maybe we could move fast enough just to make it to the car.”

“Whatever we do we need to do it before the snows start in earnest,” Peter says. “Once it starts snowing then all of our hopes of making it out are going from slim to zero. It is already the middle of November if my dates are correct. That gives us at most a week or two to make it to a safe zone before we are stuck by snow and the dead. Then we won’t have any hope.”

Of course the thought had crossed Daniel’s mind. He knows that once the snows started it would make it impossible. And then it is a matter of slowly freezing to death as they run out of things to burn. They already collected office furniture and old desks for burnable material. For when it really starts to get cold.

“I think he’s right,” Daniel agrees, “We all know we can’t stay here. It’s getting too cold too fast. Moving on is our only option, same as always, till we get to a safe zone at least.”

“Then we need to get that radio,” says Peter with finality, standing up. “It’s our best bet of figuring out if anyone is broadcasting a safe zone.”

***

Terry fidgets with brittle wires, muttering softly under his breath. Once they got to the principal’s office they realized it wouldn’t be as straightforward as they hoped for initially. The radio was barely serviceable and getting anything on it so far had proven impossible.

Another infuriating blurt of white static comes through and then the radio dies again. Terry, who had been a communications officer under Peter, was struggling to get the thing to pick up any signals. What made it more difficult was the fact that, not only was getting a signal proving to be difficult, they had no way to be sure if anyone out there was even broadcasting.

In all it has been a frustrating dozen hours, working late into the night and even seeing the sun rise again. The sounds of moaning still coming from the front door only a little ways away has him on edge as well.

Peter wipes at his forehead brushing away sweat despite the chill in the air. In the time since Terry set to work on the radio he’d gone through most of their boxes and tried to find the most useful tools to get them to the car.

“This is going to be a one shot wonder at best,” he says to the group. Chloe is with Valentine in the gym, trying to stay warm. In the few days since the child’s parents had passed Peter has watched the girl cling to Valentine like a lifeline. He still hasn’t been able to talk to her much. Chloe reminds him too much of his own lost child.

The little girl took to Valentine like she was the only beacon of hope. They mostly occupy each-others time. Spending the evenings drawing with crayons they found in the salvaged classrooms. Or going through the books. Most of them were intended for the high schoolers but it provided ready relief from the constant drone of the undead scratching at the walls. All of them needed something to focus their efforts on. Peter concerns himself almost exclusively with trying to find a way to get them to the car in one piece.

“We are going to have to carry everything we can to the car. In one trip. Coming back likely won’t be an option so we need to be able to pack out all of our food,” Peter says.

“That’s still assuming this damned thing works,” Terry says, slamming his fist down in frustration. The noise startles Daniel who is leaning forward in a chair near the office door. His eyes have been glued on the front door. The dirty fingers, all bloody or missing fingernails try to pry their way through the locked front doors.

“It’s the only option, Terry. We already talked about it,” Peter says, “Besides if this doesn’t work then we will leave and find somewhere else to go. If there is no safe zone we will just stay on the move.”

Daniel swings his head back around finally taking his eyes off the front doors and those questing undead fingers. “This is going to work,” he says, “I know it doesn’t look good, but we didn’t come this far just to give up.”

“We might not have a choice here Daniel,” Terry says. He buries his face back into his work arranging and then rearranging wires.

Peter looks over his shoulder for a moment before he turns back to Daniel. “Daniel, we are going to have to fight our way to the car regardless.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, nodding his head. “I guess it’s a blessing we still have a few full cans of gas in the trunk.”

“It will have to be enough to get us out of the city. After that we can figure things out,” Peter says. He unfolds a large map on the dusty ground, a street by street layout of the city. “I think it would be best if I drive.” He pauses for a moment to clear his throat. “In the event that I don’t make it then either you or Terry need to take over. We need to get those girls out of here.”

In the short time they spent together Peter developed a liking for Valentine. She reminded him of his sister who he had not heard from since the fall. He hopes she is OK and that taking care of Valentine is recompense in some small way for not being able to be there with her.

Peter points his stubby finger at the map where he has highlighted likely routes out of the city. “I think we need to go around the outsides. It is going to be rough but these are all the ways that will give us the greatest chance of making it out of here alive,” he says.

“How do we know those roads will even be clear?” Daniel asks.

“We don’t. This is guess work at best. I’m going off what I remember before shit hit the fan. Of course that’s all likely to have changed by now. Who knows how far the fires went. But if we go out there with no idea of what’s coming then we are going to die. We have to have an idea of what we are getting into.”

There is a small spurt of static that abruptly cuts short. Followed by more cursing from Terry. Daniel looks over at him for a moment. The large man is still hunkered down over the radio. The thing looks a complete wreck, pieces lying everywhere and wiring exposed but Terry must see some semblance of order.

Daniel looks back at the map. “So we aim for the highway by shooting around these streets here?” he asks, pointing towards the streets which all radiate away from where the car is. In pragmatic fashion Peter has planned several routes out, many of them even heading away from their destination initially. Anything to separate themselves from the horde that probably still fills the town.

He holds onto the small hope that maybe some of the dead will have wandered on. Maybe they left the city the same way they came.

“Yeah that’s the plan,” Peter replies, “Once we have a decent amount of speed behind us we might be able to try and force our way out,” he shakes his head. “It’s not going to be pretty but it doesn’t need to be.”

“With any luck maybe some of the dead will have wandered off,” Daniel echoes what Peter is hoping for. “I mean if they all came here looking for people then maybe they will wander back, or move on looking for more people.”

“That’s a good hope. But I don’t want to put faith in something we can’t control,” Peter replies.

“What do we have to try and force our way out?” Daniel asks.

“We still have the guns. It will be so close that we are going to use the shotguns. Be careful firing though. If we force our way through the crowd just to damage the car then this is all pointless,” Daniel nods at him. “There is plenty of ammo so that won’t be an issue. There will be a lot of them though. As soon as those doors are open we either run for the car or just get surrounded and pushed back into the school.”

Another burst of static causes them to look up. Terry leans back over his prize. The thing is a rickety contraption at best but whatever he did to get it working there comes a constant white noise of off air radio.

“I think it is working,” he announces, a small smile tugging at his perpetual frown. He adjusts a few dials and the thing clicks going through different frequencies but always relaying that white noise. “If anyone is broadcasting we should be able to pick it up.”

Daniel and Peter walk over to him as he continues to turn the dial, slowly going through each frequency. Hope dwindles as each frequency continues to pulse out the dead noise, the background radiation of the universe with not so much a as care to their current predicament.

“Well…”Peter begins after Terry has made nearly a full cycle through the frequencies the radio covers. “It doesn’t mean there is no one out there. We can’t give…”

He is cut off as the signal pulses weakly and they catch the garbled voice of a woman. Her voice is broken and strained with a clinical detachment to it.

“…casting…. All frequenc…. afe zone, Canada.” Her stuttered voice continues over the speakers. Daniels eyes go wide with hope. Terry curses under his breath again and fiddles with some of the wires before they lose her all together back to the white noise. He slams his fist against the table again in frustration and suddenly her voice comes through stronger.