Infected: They Will Eat You!: A Story of Family Survival in a Zombie Apocalypse (29 page)

It took an hour but we got the armored vehicle in place and were back at the tank. “Now the fun starts.” I said hoisting myself up onto the cold steel.

“Can I ride with you dada?” asked Caleb.

“Yeah!” cheered Jesse.

“I want you guys with your mom,” I said, “I don’t think this is going to be a fun ride, especially the first few miles.”

That was not a popular answer with the boys but exactly what Christine wanted to hear. They got in the hummer as I slid into the tank. It started up with another belch and whirr and as it warmed up I tested the controls. The first few miles were jerky, neck wrenching, and tense but by the time we were on the highway we were cruising at thirty miles an hour.

Eight hours later we were home. It was a tight fit but we parked the tank in one of the fire house bays and went home to hot showers, hot food and bed. It was an exciting day, the only spoiler was the realization that there were only five shells for the cannon and we hadn’t looked for more.

“We want to stay on 287 going into Lander.” I said to Caleb who was looking at the atlas.

“I see it.” he acknowledged.

We had been driving three hours and weren’t making very good time. Under normal conditions the trip from Rawlins to Lander looked like it should take about two hours but we were having to clear debris from the road in many places and fight our less than nimble vehicles around cars and up, over and around in the valleys and hills. There wasn’t much along the road to look at just rocks, scrub and an occasional structure. The highlights were herds of antelope and mule deer seen in the distance, we even saw a good size herd of bison. Of course we had to stop at every opportunity to down infected. There weren’t many, just one or two at the buildings we passed, and it made since to put them down when we could.

Our two hour trip turned into five and everyone was showing signs that they had had enough for the day. Whether it was meeting nice living people and having to leave them or just too many days travel our moods were headed as low as some of the valleys we’d been driving past.

“Look there.” I said pointing off to the right, “Those look like tree tops.”

“Real trees.” said Caleb.

I pulled the RV to a stop and we got out.

“Grab the binoculars and let’s check it out.” I told him.

“What’s up?” Christine asked as she and Jesse walked up.

“Trees.” I answered pointing.

“There’s a house and cars and a boat.” Caleb said looking toward the patch of green, “And I see three infected.”

“Does it look like someplace we would like to stay?” I asked, “I think we’d all like to stop for the day and get some rest.”

“It looks nice.” he answered.

“What’s off to the left down that road?”

“Barns and fences.”

“No houses or people or anything?”

“Horses.”

“Well, let’s gear up and walk down, looks a bit tight and I don’t want the vehicles to get jammed up and not be able to get out quickly if we need to.”

It took little time for everyone to be ready. “Caleb and I will take point. Jesse will be with mommy on that hill. Find a spot where you can cover us and watch around the area. If there are infected at the house there probably won’t be people but we want to keep an eye out just in case. Watch the vehicles also.”

We started walking down the winding dirt drive. As we crested a small hill overlooking the house we could see three buildings and various other smaller structures, vehicles, trees and the infected.

“Do your thing Jesse.” I instructed.

Jesse went prone using his bipod to steady his rifle and within seconds had the three infected on the ground.

“See anymore?” I asked.

“Looking.” he replied.

“There’s one behind the middle building, I can see it through the trees.” Caleb said looking through the binoculars.

“I can’t see it.” said Jesse.

“If you need to move to a better spot go ahead. Caleb and I will start walking down.” I said.

“Be careful.” Christine ordered.

We started walking down the drive toward ever greening vegetation and taller trees. It was a nice setting, a creek bottom tucked between small rolling hills. The three main buildings were an older farmhouse, a newer house and what looked to be a large workshop or storage building. There were three smaller sheds dotting the area along with four pickups, a boat and two cars. This would be a great place to rest and plan our next steps.

Caleb and I rounded the corner of the first house and moved past the three infected Jesse had shot. I was checking windows when,
phut
, Caleb put down the one he had seen from the hill. We walked around the drive past all three buildings Caleb was watching the property and I inside the houses.

“Let’s get up on this bank and make some noise and see what we can scare up.” I said motioning to the cut bank bordering the drive on the right.

“We have moved and are now looking over your left shoulder.” I heard Christine say over the radio.

I turned and looked and saw her waving and Jesse on the ground next to her. “Good.” I said and put my attention back on the houses.

“HEY!” I shouted as loud as I could. “Anyone here?!” We waited. “WOOOO WHOOOO!” I screeched.

There was no movement outside or in that we could see.

“Guess it’s time to go inside.” I said, “I hate checking buildings.”

“Yeah.” was all Caleb said. I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing that it was time to check inside the buildings or that he hated going in them. I didn’t ask.

The sweep of the buildings went easily, they were all empty. The houses had to be aired out because of rotting food in the refrigerators and stinky trash but it didn’t take long for us to park our vehicles, clean up the houses and burn the infected we had shot.

“I’m hungry.” Jesse said as we all sat down on the deck of the farm house.

“I bet you are,” Christine said, “we haven’t had much to eat today.

“Do you guys want to start dinner while Caleb and I walk around checking things out?” I asked.

“Sure, we can do that.” Christine said, “Sound good Jesse?”

“Sure.” he agreed.

Caleb and I walked down the drive away from the houses toward the barns he’d seen. We walked into open fields with lush green grass and a tree line snaking up a small valley to the right. Not quite a half mile away were the barns with livestock pens a shed and piles of hay bales.

There were three horses munching on grass off to the right and a half dozen or so more up the green valley. “Not a bad place to stay for a while.” I said.

“Nope.” agreed Caleb.

“We can use the horses to check out the area around the houses and make sure there are no surprises.” I said.

“There are four-wheelers back in the garage.” he informed with a grin.

“They make noise, horses are quieter.”

“I don’t know how to ride a horse.”

“You’ve never ridden a four-wheeler either.”

“But a four-wheeler would be more fun”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Of course. You’ll learn to ride both soon enough. Let’s get back, it looks fine around here.”

“OK, besides, we’d have to catch the horses before we could ride them. The four-wheelers are already sitting in the garage.”

“True. We’ll see.”

By the time we got back to the house Christine and Jesse had dinner ready. Jesse had already eaten enough while preparing that he was ‘not very hungry’ so he went and explored the creek. Caleb, not wanting to miss any important discovery, wolfed down his food and ran after his brother.

“Is it safe for them to be wandering around?” Christine asked.

“We checked the place well. There’s always a chance something could stumble onto us but yeah, I think it’s safe.” I said, “Besides, they are both experienced and armed.”

“OK. What do you think of this place?” she asked.

“Nice. It feels good.” I said, “I want to look around and go into town and check things out.”

“When?”

“We can take a couple days to look around here first. That road over there, where does that go? This is wide open country and it’s possible that people could be just over the hill or living back up in the mountains. It’s possible that some communities are isolated enough that they have not been infected at all.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice, if we found a town that was full of people.”

“It would. We’ll check out Lander in two or three days. There’s Riverton just past that and a couple smaller communities in the area. There could be thousands of infected, not sure what the population of any of these places is but they’re probably much smaller than home.”

“And maybe they’ve been spared the infection.” Christine added cheerfully as she got up and started cleaning the dinner table.

“Dad! Dad!” the boys came running toward the house shouting, they were excited and out of breath.

“We saw deer!” Jesse shouted.

“In that field by where we walked!” Caleb added.

“They’re all over, big ones!” Jesse continued.

“Calm down.” I said, “That means we have something to hunt other than horse.” I said with a smile.

“You hunt horse?” Jesse asked bewildered.

“No Jesse, he’s joking.” said Caleb.

“Oh, good.”

“Can we go hunting?” Caleb asked.

“Yeah! can we? they’re there now.” added Jesse.

“They’ll be there again, right now we need to pick up and start getting ready to secure the house for the night.” I answered.

“Aw, can’t we hunt first?” whined Caleb.

“It’ll be dark soon and we need to be inside secured before then. We don’t know everything that could be around. We can hunt in a couple days once we have checked the area out better.”

Christine came out hearing the excitement “What is it?”

“Deer!” exclaimed Jesse.

“Daddy won’t let us go hunting.” Caleb added.

“I need your help fixing beds anyway.” she said.

“We’ll get some rest tonight and go exploring tomorrow. If we see something we can get it when we have more time to prepare it.” I said. “Besides, we need to take care of the chickens and the rabbits and make sure Joey is not too frightened.

“Oh yeah.” Jesse said and went off to find the cat in the house.

Our day started with the disappointment of saying goodbye to the first living people we’d seen since leaving home. Most of it was then spent in slow tedious travel but now we had a beautiful setting to stay in with livestock and big game. This area was feeling better and better.

Once the boys settled down it didn’t take them long to fall asleep. We had again chosen to all sleep in one upstairs bedroom barricading the stairs bottom and top. I didn’t remember lying down, all I knew was I didn’t wake ‘till the sun was pouring through the windows and there was a commotion outside.

CHAPTER NINE

“She’s cute.” I said to Jesse as we rode out of Crag.

“Who?” he asked.

“That girl you were staring at.” I said.

“I wasn’t staring at any girl.” he protested.

“Whatever you say,” I grinned, “but she is cute and she was certainly eyeing you back.”

Jesse was silent for a moment then said “We’re gonna be late.” and kicked his horse into a trot.

Crag had grown since our visit last fall. Four new families had joined Jack and his clan mostly people from the area who had hidden in the mountains only to be driven lower by cold weather and lack of supplies. One family had moved down from Cody and a prosperous trade rout quickly developed.

“She’s from Casper.” Jesse finally said after twenty minutes of riding. “They were visiting family in Riverton when it started. Went into the mountains when they couldn’t get back home.”

“Who?” I asked

He looked over at me and glared “Jackie….the girl.”

“Girl?” I couldn’t keep the grin from my face.

“You know who I’m talking about!”

Jesse was now twelve, nearly thirteen and it was evident that he was
maturing
. He and his brother wanted to travel with me whenever I visited other communities not to spend more time with dad but to visit friends their age. More of those friends were becoming
girls
.

My eyes popped open and I lay still listening, I wasn’t sure if the noise I heard was a dream or real. I sat up and looked around the room, everyone was still asleep. Clank! The noise was real and it was in the yard, close.

I got up and looked out the window, nothing. Collecting my rifle I worked my way around the upstairs looking out each window. There it was, in the middle of the yard, a goat and it was playing with a metal bucket.

Clank! It knocked the bucket ten feet then nosed it. Christine came running into the hall calling “Jeffrey!” then saw me standing at the window. “What is it?” she asked.

“Come look.” I said, “We may have to move after all.”

“Oh no.” disappointment overwhelmed her until she reached the window and looked down, “It’s a goat!”

“I don’t know if I can deal with the noise.” I joked.

“He’s cute.” she said staring.

“Who’s cute?” asked Caleb walking into the room.

“The goat.” Christine answered.

“The goat?” he said “It is a goat!”

It took a few minutes to wake Jesse and make our way outside but when we did the goat looked up gave us a
baaaa
, and knocked the bucket with its head.

Christine started breakfast while Jesse gathered eggs. The chickens had done well in the yard, the rabbits were happy eating grass in the pen we had constructed. Caleb followed the goat and learning that it wanted food. He had picked up the bucket and followed the goat to a plastic bin on a shelf by the workshop. He lifted a door and out poured pellets that the goat gobbled up.

After breakfast the boys helped clean while I checked out the four-wheelers. There were six, two looked to be work vehicles the other four were decked out for hunting with gun racks, camo paint and all. The keys were in each so I began starting them, all cranked up with little effort. “I guess we’re riddin’ four-wheelers today.” I said to myself.

“Yippie!” I heard Caleb cheer from behind me.

We spent thirty minutes driving slowly around the property getting used to the quads then took off up the dirt road next to the house. The noise of the machines would attract attention if there was anything around but I wanted to see what the area looked like and this was the fastest way to do it.