Deadfall: Survivors (10 page)

Our elder in the group, the very spitting image of a southern belle, was actually far from it. Dawn was a minister’s wife, and originally from Wisconsin. Her husband was one of those mega church pastors, the kind that preached that God wanted everyone to be rich, just that the pastor should get his first. (That’s my personal opinion. Obviously, Dawn thinks quite the opposite, but I haven’t said as much.) Along with her husband and about a thousand other church members, she had flown down to North Carolina, specifically the Outer Banks. The pastor had thought it best that they should all go to heaven in one large wave, quite literally. They had been on a praise and worship binge, when the comet failed to hit the planet like it had first intended to. Unfortunately, for the pastor and his wife, the church members were actually not overjoyed by this result.

For months
, the pastor had been preaching that this comet was the wrath of God, and that this was the foretold end of the world. He had tasked his church members, the thousands of them that lived there in southern Wisconsin, to give up their goods and give their lives to God to the very end. Unfortunately for them, that end didn’t come as they had expected, and now these thousand that had followed him there, were stranded without cash or means to return home. To add insult to the lies was the fact that the pastor himself had not acquitted himself of all of his goods as he had preached to his flock. When he tried to sneak out that day to return back to the North Carolina coast, the rejected flock turned on him, and beat the poor liar to an inch of his life.

Dawn was with her husband
, who was taken to a hospital in New Bern, along the coast, when the zombies began to rise. A hospital of any decent size was one of the worst places to be when the dead began to rise. Short of a battlefield, fewer places on earth have a large amount of recently deceased than a large hospital. She talked about how one morning, on her way to visit her husband, who had been recuperating and would be released in a few days, she arrived at the hospital to find police units being attacked by strange men. She had initially been barred from entering the hospital, and soon found herself trapped in the hotel she had been staying in.

She remained at the hotel for almost two months, while the food supplies dwindled and people slowly disappeared, either to their own salvation or to their own demise. After three months, she was the only remaining person at the hotel. Thankfully, food goes longer for just one person
, and she seemed quite corralled inside of the hotel, keeping the zombies out. She heard the Charlotte radio transmission one evening on an AM station, broadcasting that everyone who can make it there would find safe haven. She also mentioned how that wasn’t the only radio signal she could pick up at night. She remembered hearing broadcasts from England, Maine, somewhere in Canada, and a whole larger portion of languages and places she had never heard about. She assumed correctly that Charlotte was the closest location to her.

Dawn has apparently had a large
transformation from who she used to be to the woman she is now. She had only graduated high school, never pursued education beyond that, and married a charismatic young pastor who, in her own words, “always had to have it his way”. She led a very sheltered life in the full assumption that she would be taken care of by her loving, yet overbearing husband, and with the full assurance that his preaching was God’s truth. She had never held a job or raised any children, always content with being the pastor’s wife.

As she talked about it, that month
while she waited for her husband’s recovery in the hospital, she had found herself with a heavy heart and conscious. It wasn’t so much that he had somehow failed to predict the end of the world, but that he had been a hypocrite, and was willing to run away from his errors, instead of facing the people he had assumedly led for so many years. Now, she was entirely on her own, without any idea about what to do, and without any real life skills to save her in this new horrific world. She watched in dread as the people slowly left her in that hotel, until she was the last one left, and still too afraid to leave, thinking that she didn’t have the required know how to survive.

She recall
ed how terrified she was when she got into a car at the hotel to attempt to drive to Charlotte, having only driven a dozen times in her entire life, and drove out only to run into a zombie right at the hotel garage gate. She stepped on it and flew down the road before nearly smashing into a caravan of Humvees being driven by U.S. Marines. They had been based out of Camp LeJune in Jacksonville, and were just now returning from Norfolk, where they had attempted to get some gear to take down to Charlotte. Dawn had been in the right place at the right time, although just not smashed into one of the Humvees.

On an interesting note, Dawn mentioned
some of the things she heard the Marines she was with talking about on her trip down to Charlotte. Apparently, the US military had decided to refuel and restock as many ships as it possibly could and get them out to sea, but only to protect American waters. Despite the fact that the news of the rising dead and the collapse of civilization was coming for all corners of the planet, the government and military were wary of a surprise attack from foreign forces at this time of incredible weakness. There had also been news reports of conflicts and wars breaking out all over the world, which one can only think is about the dumbest thing to do at a time where every death creates a new enemy. I wonder how quickly these wars were over, or if former enemies actually allied against a new threat. One such rumor was that Russia had actually invaded China, only to have its army vanish. I can think of almost a billion reasons as to how this would happen.

So Dawn, our
fifty year old who has barely done a thing in her life, got a military escort to Charlotte, where she decided to change who she was. She asked the Marines to teach her how to shoot a gun, and when the call for volunteers comes out, she joined up with Aaron’s group because “I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. Not this time.”

I will give her this
; for a fifty year old, she looks great. But I think that was the point. She had been kept that way her entire life, without being allowed to be who she truly might have been.

Evan’s Notes: Dawn’s story is
, in some ways, the saddest of them all. If only we knew what she would become.

So, technically speaking (or writing), my little end of the world biographies are incomplete. No, I'm not talking about myself, because technically, that would be an autobiography. I'm certainly into technicalities. No,
it’s  incomplete because there are two more people in our group who I have not yet had the time to get to know well since, well, these past two days have been almost non-stop for this budding writer. I will now relate the events that occurred from the airport, to our arriving here at my house.

After being nearly
trapped inside an airplane coffin, and making our way out of the airport, we thought that our walk back to the park where we had left the truck would be simple enough, at least in that we knew precisely where to go. Unfortunately (notice a trend? I use that word a lot), while the route was exactly the same, the zombies were not. The day was turning out to be a cooler spring day; cool even for a May in North Carolina, and one could almost swear that the zombies change with the weather. It was cloudy and windy, but not rainy in any way, just dreary in an Erie, Pennsylvania or London sort of way. Our route had proceeded as we had hoped, until we got to the interstate overpass. The previous day, we had crossed over stealthily without any problem, but when the overpass began to come into view, we quickly saw that this time, the whole area was mobbed by the dead. The exits, the overpass, as well as the interstate, were completely choked with the movement of dead people. It was a traffic jam of human bodies. It seemed as if it were a stream, slowly, very slowly, heading north this time. I had seen this before. Once, when I had come down from the mountains using the Blue Ridge Parkway, I had come to a section of the parkway that crossed over the interstate on a very high bridge, and from that vantage point I had witnessed the massive river of dead people, slowly moving north, walking in between the occasional wrecks on the highway, choking up both north and southbound lanes. But it had been a patch. They seemed to go in hordes like that, somehow triggered by the movement of others, until it all gathered momentum and kept adding more and more to the pack.

I would love to know why they move to begin with
, and where they think they’re  going, but unfortunately, I haven’t received a government grant to study that yet.

In either case, it seems Evan had also seen this kind of zombie movement
, and so with the weight of our combined experiences, we convinced everyone to just wait it out a bit until the path opened up, even if just for a few minutes. It would sure beat trying to find an alternate route when in nearly every similar crossing, we would have to cross over or under the interstate, no matter which way we went. We had just passed a small fire station, so we back tracked to it, just to see if there was anything interesting in there. I remember thinking about driving a fire truck through the mass of zombies. Of course, I have no idea how to drive one. But it has been these unusual thoughts of mine that have usually helped me find good things.

Well,
while we didn’t find any fire trucks there, we did find a rather large stash of weapons, along with boxes and crates full of ammunition. Far more than any one of us could carry. Evan was like a little boy in a candy store, going on and on about the specific models, and the ammunition type, and what went where. Things that made very little sense to me. He started to gather some of the weapons up and hand them off to people in the group. When he tried to offer a gun to me, I tried to explain to him that I don’t use guns.

Evan:
“You had better learn then.”

Me:
“I’ll be honest. I get a little scared that they will break down and blow up.”

The blank stare that Evan gave me was one more of disbelief than surprise. So he handed me an AK-47. Even I know what that is. He said that it was one of the most user-friendly guns in the world. He
specifically used the term, user-friendly, on a gun. I submitted. Even if I didn’t fire it, I could carry it for someone who did. I packed up as many of the clips of ammunition for the weapon as I was going to feel comfortable carrying, without having too heavy of a pack. Aaron agreed with Evan when he mentioned that maybe they needed to return here and get everything after we got the truck. The thought of doubling back, even for a cache such as this, left me a bit uneasy.

So we buckled down and began waiting for the
Red Sea of zombies to part. We had someone always outside, hidden, to let us know when there was any break in the zombie river. It was during a shift that Tague was on, somewhere around three in the afternoon, when he came back in a bit early. We were all a bit relieved, thinking he was about to inform us that the flow of dead had finally stopped, and we would be able to get on the move again. Instead, he informed us of another mass of zombies he had spotted.

Tague told us how he had gotten a little bored just sitting out there
, constantly looking through the binoculars at the interstate exits, when he started to look around. That’s when he spotted a dozen or so zombies surrounding a house in a housing development far off on the opposite side of the fire station. It was one of those unfinished residential neighborhoods, where the plots had all been carved out and the roads paved in, but only a few houses had actually been constructed on the plots, leaving many open plots and giving it the feel of a ghost town. Taking a few of us outside, Tague handed us the binoculars and had us look at the same house he had seen, far down to the left, south of the station. It was a two story house with that fake southern mansion look, with the large white pillars in front. Just as he had told us, about ten or so zombies were outside of the house, wandering around and quite focused on the house itself, not just walking past it.

I remember
looking at the rest of them and specifically saying,

“I’ve seen this before.”

Granted, it had been a far greater number of zombies, but the atmosphere about it was the same. This was just like the grocery store in Hendersonville when I had rescued them from the mass of dead, there with my failed truck bomb that had worked better than I had hoped. When I told them about this, Aaron quickly decided that we needed to go over to scout it out, and perhaps attempt to rescue whoever might be inside. At this point, a small argument broke out. Tague was very cautious, wanting more to preserve what they had than risk more loss of life for something unknown. Evan was more geared toward killing the zombies, even if there were no living people inside. The rush of having found the guns was still keeping his adrenaline pumping.

For
my part, I mostly agreed with Tague. I had only attempted to rescue them from the grocery store when I had confirmed that someone was inside, and I had been unable to communicate with them. I also mentioned that we had better get back inside and discuss it with the women as well, before making any kind of decision.

The girls
, on their part, were more than willing to risk their lives to attempt to rescue anyone inside. The odds were on our side this time. Evan had gone outside and scouted out the house from afar to see just how many zombies there were, and came back to assure us there couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. Evan was confident that he had a good view of the entire area around the house, with a clear view to the sides. It was a distance of about half a mile to the house from the station, with a clear view all the way to the house. While there was nothing for us to hide behind, it also meant that there would be no chance of zombies surprising us either.

On the downside, we were more than near enough to the interstate that any gunfire would surely be heard from there
, and raise the very high risk of bringing any number of zombies off into our direction, possibly  into the whole area. It was also about a half mile from the station to the interstate exit ramps, and while the zombies walked far slower than living people scared for their lives, the mass it might bring would prove to be too risky. We would have to cross the distance to the house without drawing too much attention, kill the zombies, get whoever was inside, and get back to the station, before any zombies came to investigate what they heard.

So why the station?
It seemed like a very secure place. The garage doors were steel, and the whole area had been reinforced. If we did attract a mob of zombies, we would be able to hide inside the station and if we weren’t seen, eventually they would leave. The problem arose if they saw us go in there, or heard something. Then we would be similarly trapped. That was the main risk we took in attempting to rescue anyone alive in that house.

Tague found some radios and announced that he would remain behind at the station and be our lookout
, and let us know if and when the zombies began to come. He would also be on the lookout for other possible zombies hidden among the growing vegetation in the area or simply out of sight of the binoculars. Thankfully, the rechargeable batteries I had picked up days early now came in handy as the radios needed them. Despite that, we only had enough for one working pair. After testing the units, I decided I would take it, since it was unlikely that I would do any shooting. The rest of the group, Dawn included, grabbed more of the guns from the stock we had found. Apparently, they had all received some kind of training from the soldiers while at the airport. I felt a tad inadequate.

The next
fifteen minutes were the longest fifteen minutes of my life, at least to this point. We broke into a sprint off across the street, and into the empty neighborhood and up towards the house. I consider myself to be in pretty good shape, and I was winded in a minute, probably due to the overwhelming excitement of carrying guns and storming straight into a mass of zombies. My entire existence after the fall of the comet and the rise of the dead had been one of stealth and avoidance, and here I was rushing straight into a small pack of them, with the very good potential of bringing  thousands of them down on our heads. Now, as we got up close to the small ridge that led up to the house, a few of the zombies there finally took notice of us and turned to face us.

Now, the walking dead aren’t nearly as dead looking as you might think. Whatever is animating their corpses is doing something to somehow preserve
their bodies, in a way. Most of them are still quite grotesque, mostly because they had to have died first, and by this point in time, most of them had died at the hands of other zombies, beings who are generally not very gentle with their mauling. Most zombies had bite marks or parts of them torn off, and almost every one of them that I managed to see up close had old dry blood splattered and caked all over their clothes and bodies. Despite that, and the darker, almost purple, color their skins glistened with, they could almost come away as looking normal.

Well, normal is a matter of perspective.

But the worst of them all were those poor souls that did die of natural causes that involved no serious trauma. These of course, also rose as zombies. They were the most difficult to confront because, while a zombie who has been torn to shreds has lost most of its humanity, these individuals still looked very human.

As we came up that ridge, the first one that looked at me was what had once been a teenage girl, completely unscathed, in some kind of school uniform. I nearly gasped when I saw her, because in her face I saw the countless students I had taught for so many years. For a split second I could almost sense recognition in her eyes, even if just a blank recognition of life. Then, her chest exploded in a red mist, followed by her jaw being torn off
, and then the top of her head vanishing, all within three quick cracks of a gun. I stood there stunned, without recognizing that my brain was creating a horror of human death in front of me. I had to fight the urge to remain in shock, and remember that the poor girl had already been dead before those gunshots ended her second life, if it could be called a life.

Evan was quickly taking point in our assault, followed on his left by Aaron. Evan moved quickly, firing shots with pretty good accuracy, usually taking down the zombies
he aimed at with two shots or less. When one of his rifles had been expended, he simply dropped it and took out a hand gun and kept firing. He easily took out more than half of them on his own, while Aaron, Lucy and Dawn took down the rest. The whole event took no more than a minute and the zombies were dead. I radioed back to Tague who let me know that he had clearly heard the gunfire, but had seen no change yet to the zombies down by the interstate. With the zombies here dispatched, Evan rushed behind the house to make sure we had gotten any that might have been just slightly behind the sight from the station. While Aaron and I called out to the house, I heard two more gunshots from behind the house, and then Evan shouting that there were no more.

I walked up to the door to see that it was locked and most likely barred from the inside. Lucy kept shouting
, “Please, come out. We’re  here to help. We need to get out of here fast.” I kept trying to look in through windows, but those had been blocked as well. When Evan came around from the back, the discussion quickly went into how long we would wait to see if anyone came out. We certainly didn’t want to wait long out here, because even if the zombies down by the interstate had not come our way, others might have heard it. We shouted a few more times and were about to walk away, when we heard the grinding sound of something being moved from in front of the door. When the door cracked open, out came a ten or so year old boy and his older sister/nanny/neighbor/random stranger. They were both carrying a pack.