Infected: They Will Eat You!: A Story of Family Survival in a Zombie Apocalypse (17 page)

By the time Caleb and I started rain could be seen to the south over the mountain. “We’ll probably get wet.” I said pointing. He just nodded.

We walked without talking taking out the few infected we encountered in the first five blocks. By now we worked as an efficient team each covering his area with no distraction. By the time we had reached Fourth Street and the Town Hall battleground we were both on our third magazine. We had shot many more this morning than in the same time on any other trip. We were carrying fifteen magazines for each of us, mostly in the back pack I carried, and we had already used nearly twenty percent of them.

“That storm really got them scattered about. This whole area was clear a couple days ago.” I said standing looking up and down Fourth.

“They seem more bunched up than before.” he said glancing around.

It was true, all we could see were in small groups standing within ten or so yards of each other.

“Maybe a sound or something drew them where they all are and that’s just where they stopped. It’s weird. Keep a watch, I want to check these hummers out.”

We carefully checked the area and I opened the driver door of the closest of the three hum-v’s and looked in. “It’s a mess but looks OK. Watch where you walk, there’s a lot of brass on the ground.”

“We should scoop it up. How about that one?” he said grinning.

I looked where he was pointing, “Of course.” I said smiling.

“Is that a 50 cal?”

“Pig.”

“Oh.”

After a minute of looking around he asked “Why is it called a Pig”

“Because it huffs and puffs and can blow your house down.” I answered with a smile.

He giggled.

“Let’s get moving, this area looks good and we can test these out later.”

By the time we had gone eight blocks had emptied two more magazines each. We were less than half way to the ball park and a third of the way through our ammo. Travel was going much slower than I had expected.

“I always wanted to buy that building.” he said looking at the Park Home, an early 1900’s building that was once a hotel serving the rail that stopped out back. It was a fine old building with a property covering half a city block. “I wanted to make it into a hotel again, and put the top floor back on it.” There had been a fire a half century ago in the ballroom and the entire third floor was removed.

We walked on past parks and churches, fine old homes and infected. Many infected. As we approached the ball park area we could see more. On our left were tennis courts and softball fields, ahead Little League fields on the left and the playground adjacent to the baseball field on the right.

“There’s more there than I want to deal with.” I told him.

“There must be a thousand.”

“They’re all the way over on the bridge across the creek. Let’s go back.”

We started walking back the way we came checking side streets. The rain we’d seen to the south had passed but it was getting darker to the west.

“Let’s sit over here.” I pointed to a porch, “I’m glad it’s not sunny and hot today, I’m sweating as it is.”

“Yeah.”

We sat quietly for a moment looking around drinking water. “Let’s go see if Jack’s around.” I finally said.

“Jack?” he said puzzled. “All the way out there?”

“Yeah, I have an idea. It may be dumb but we can try.”

“What’s your idea?”

“Ya know that hummer…..?”

“Ahhh! can we take the one with the Pig?” he said with a nod and sparkle in his eye.

-——————————————

“This is probably not a good idea.” I said as we approached the vehicles.

“Yeah.” was all Caleb said in return.

“If we’re taking this one we need ammo. No reason to have the gun if there’s nothing to shoot out of it. Look around for ammo boxes but keep your eye on the infected.”

“There’s five boxes in the back that say 7.62 on them.”

“That’s it.”

“There’s also nine that say 5.56.”

“Ooo, that’s for the AR’s. There’s more here in the back of this truck. I’ll move them, you watch out.”

All together we were loaded down with six-teen eight boxes of 5.56 and twenty-eight boxes for the M60. “That’s a good find.” I said.

“I’ll see if the hummer will start. That will probably get some of these infected heading our way so watch out. I’ll have to back it up. Stand there and I’ll pull next to you and you jump in. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

He moved to the side as I looked around and got in the vehicle. I pushed the starter and it worked to turn over but did not start.

“Here they come.” Caleb said raising his rifle. The engine noise had awakened three bunches. I tried again,
varoom, varoom
, it growled. We were off both smiling as big as possible driving past those infected and through intersections toward the beltway.

“We’ll go out the beltway and up to Jack’s. Maybe we’ll stop by Al’s on the way back.”

“And get some bows and arrows.”

“Yeah. Call your mom, let her know our plan.”

“She won’t like it.”

“She needs to know and we need to know how they are.”

He got his radio out and called home. “Hi. Over.”

“Hi honey how are you? over”

“Good. We are going to Jack’s. over.”

“Where? over.”

“Tell her we couldn’t get to Bowman.” I told Caleb.

“We couldn’t get to Bowman so we’re going to Jack’s, over.”

“What happened at Bowman? over.”

“Nothing happened there were just too many infected around it so we left. Now we’re going to Jack’s, over.”

“I thought that was a long way…are you walking? over.”

“No, we took a hummer. It has a Pig on it, over.” he said smiling.

“A what? over.”

“A Pig. over.”

“Tell her what a pig is.”

“I don’t understand, did you say a pig? over.”

“Yeah a P-I-G, pig. It’s a machine gun. over.”

“Oh, it’s a gun called a pig. Why don’t you just come home? over.”

“We want to see Jack, over”

“Ask her if everything’s OK.”

“Dad wants to know if everything OK, over.”

“We are fine. It’s quiet and there are no infected outside. We did hear a loud noise though and thought it might be you, over”

“It wasn’t us…….”

“Ask what kind of noise and where.”

“Dad wants to know what kind of noise and where, over.”

“It was a loud bang but Jesse said it wasn’t a gun. He said it was on the way to soccer, over.”

“OK. We’ll call you when we get to Jacks, over.”

“OK. I love you, over.”

“I love you too, out.”

We drove west on the beltway dodging infected in the road, driving around vehicles and bodies. At times we were in the median or on the shoulder going around wrecks. We could see infected in fields planted in soy and other low crops and wondered what was lurking in the corn fields that we couldn’t see into.

Along the way there were a few burned out buildings but the further we got from town the less destruction we saw. The road however was getting much more crowded with abandoned vehicles. Looking in the mirror I could see the infected we had passed staggering after us. “I wonder if the ones following us will just keep walking even after we are out of sight.” I said.

Caleb just looked in the mirror and said nothing.

We made our turn north heading into the country. There were fewer cars and no infected in site. We saw two cow carcasses and a horse munching grass in the front yard of a house but no people. After two more turns and winding around for a few miles we neared our final turn.

“There’s the cow trampoline, I don’t see any cows though.” Caleb said.

“There’s two in the road up there.”

“Oh Yeah.”

We turned up the wooded lane to Jack’s, a gunsmith who ran a small gun store out of his home. He’d become a friend a couple years ago and was our primary source of guns.

“His truck is gone.” I said pulling into the driveway.

We got out of the hummer and looked around. Noting was moving. “Stand back so you can see around two sides of the house, I’m going to check the door.”

The shop door was locked. We worked our way around the house, the front door was locked. I tapped on a window and looked in.

“Anything inside?” Caleb asked.

“I don’t see anything. Jack was probably called up and his kids with their mom.” Jack is retired military and active duty National Guard, he could be one of the guys around town or in Philly or halfway around the globe. “Let’s check the doors on the deck.”

We walked around the house and tested the doors, locked, then looked in, nothing.

“Dad, there’s one.”

“Jack?” I asked turning to see.

“Too short.”
phut
.

“Keep your eyes open. I’d like to get in and see if he still has anything. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here but he may have moved things or given them away before leaving.”

“He could have taken them.”

“Yeah. Maybe he wasn’t called up and just left.”

We jimmied the door open and peeked inside. Normally the alarm would be screaming but with no electricity everything was quiet.

“There’s a bear.”

“What?”

“There’s a black bear almost in the yard.”

I moved to see where he was pointing, “Cool. It doesn’t look like a zombie bear does it?”

“No, just a black bear. Good size too.”

“Watch it, we don’t want to be eaten by a bear any more than by an infected.”

We liked to hunt and loved seeing different animals, the first time Caleb saw a porcupine he sat and watched it ‘till it disappeared. There could have been deer running in front of him and he still would have watched that porcupine, it’s not every day you see a porcupine. This was the first bear he’d see in the wild and he watched every move.

“Stay here, I’m going to check inside.”

I did not have an ominous feeling going into Jack’s house like I felt at the armory. It was light enough to see and, as it turned out, was empty. I went back out to get Caleb. “That bear still out there?”

“He walked back into the woods.”

“Come on. I didn’t find anyone but we still need to be careful.”

We entered Jack’s work area then the shop. “Looks normal.” Caleb said.

“Yep. That’s good. I’m gonna check outside then we’ll see what we have.” I unbolted the shop door then walked around outside making sure we weren’t being crept up on by infected then went back inside and shut the door. “Looks clear outside. Here’s what we’re looking for, suppressors, he may have two or three, ammo……”

“Those.” he said pointing to the three rifles on the wall. They were customer conversions Jack had hanging waiting for NFA stamps because of their short barrels.

“They’re just pistol length barrels.”

“I know but they’re cool, I like the gingerbread.” he smiled with a twinkle in his eye.

“OK.”

“Yippie!”

“Set them by the door. We’ll haul stuff out all at once.”

We ended up taking the three short barreled ARs, six regular length AR’s, four shotguns, two .22’s and an assortment of hand guns in 9 mm, 380 and .45 including two conversions with suppressors. There wasn’t much ammo but we did pack up a few cleaning and smithing tools we thought may come in handy.

“When we leave we may not have room for everything.”

“Is that why we aren’t taking it all?”

“Yeah, if we take it we have to deal with it and if we leave it we know where it is and maybe someone else will find it and use it.”

“Oh, I found a key to the door.”

“Great. Mark it so we know what it’s too and let’s go. Call home when we get in.”

The trip hadn’t gone as originally planned but it went very well, we were headed home with a generous load of weapons and ammo. We had also found out that another friend was gone, vehicle and all, which could be a good thing.

I pulled the hummer into the neighbor’s back yard to conceal it somewhat, once parked we looked down the alley and around the block for any infected. We had been whizzing by them on the way home and wanted to make sure none was still following.

“I’m hungry.” I said as we walked to the house.

“You should have eaten.”

“You were eating constantly, I didn’t think there was anything left.”

“There isn’t…much, but you could have eaten when there was.”

“It never did rain today.” I said looking at the sky.

“It still feels like rain and those clouds mean thunder storms.”

Christine and Jesse met us on the deck. “That’s cool!” said Jesse looking at the hummer.

“Is that the pig?” asked Christine.

“The gun on top is.” answered Caleb.

After showing them the vehicle and what we had we went inside to get cleaned up. It would feel good to wash off and get into fresh clothes, and eat.

That evening Caleb and I told our stories about the large mobs around Bowman Field, about getting the hummer and Jack’s and of course the bear. Hearing his stories reinforced my feeling that leaving was the right thing.

-——————————————

I sat up quickly, my hand on the pistol next to me, and listened. Something had woke me, a sound, or was it a dream? Sleep had not been easy last night, there were too many things bouncing around in my head.
Was
leaving the right thing? Where would we end up? How was I going to keep everyone safe? What about other people?

There was no noise other than the rain that finally started to fall during the night. I got up and checked around the house, nothing that I could see.
“So the rain doesn’t get them moving. It’s the thunder and lightning….”

Back in the kitchen I sat and stared sipping coffee, petting the cat and thinking. Deep down I knew leaving was the correct decision but the desire to stay still lived. Christine definitely wanted to stay. We all
wanted
to stay the question needing an answer was whether staying was possible. Christine walked in and before she could say anything I blurted out “We have to go.”

She stopped and looked down working to hold back tears.

“Every time I think we could stay we run into a major obstacle. They’re not small ones, they’re dangerous.”

“Couldn’t we keep looking? What about going out to Lori and Vince’s.”