Mad Swine (Book 2): Dead Winter (27 page)

The thing that gripped my boot held tightly. One of the three gripped my coat, pulling his way toward me. I tried to roll onto my side so that I could face my attackers, but the damn things seem to have superhuman grips. In panic-mode, I thrashed my body, flailing and kicking, striking out blindly. My free foot struck something soft, like a midsection, but still the crazies clung to me.

When I heard boots pounding the ground, I knew that help had finally arrived. I stopped flailing when I heard Lara and Chandra giving Albert directions. They first attacked the thing trying to climb my back. I saw Chandra’s spike drive through my assailant’s ear, pinning his head to the ground. With his grip loosed, I was finally able to pull away into a roll.

On my knees, I saw that Albert and Lara were engaged with the remaining two so I got to my feet and started to run again, heading for the road. I was winded; my throat was raw and my ribs hurt like a son-of-bitch, but I couldn’t stop.

The horde had reached our members and had plowed into the center. As I approached, I saw the tangle of men and women and undead. It was as if they’d known the weak point and had attacked it. Cody’s ferocious bark assaulted my ears. Women were screaming and men shouting.

A gunshot rang out just as I reached the embankment, halting me in my tracks. Two seconds passed and another gunshot.

“Cease fire, damn it!” That was Brian’s voice.

Getting my senses about me, I moved forward again. Whatever had happened, those shots ended the action. Pushing through to my friends, I assessed the situation. The four creatures all lay dead on the road, their maroon-black blood spreading over the pavement. Beside them lay the bodies of two of our own.

Bruce Halverson had been a software engineer before the apocalypse. He’d lost his wife in the early days of the outbreak. He’d made a substantial chunk of change from two popular video games he designed. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the titles. I don’t know if he was the first to be attacked, but the bites on his face and the nail gouges across his neck seemed to suggest he’d been one of the first. His sandy blonde hair was covered with blood, but I could see the bullet hole just the same.

Anne Marie Lepore was a recent college graduate who hadn’t yet found her first career and she’d been living at home with her parents who were both vacationing in Florida when Mad Swine struck. She’d been a chubby girl with bad acne when I first met her. In the last three months she’d lost weight and joked that not even Weight Watchers could help her shed pounds faster than the zombie apocalypse. The bullet fired from Ray’s gun penetrated the top of her skull. She never saw it coming.

“Is anyone else injured?” I asked. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Anne Marie.

“Aye, brother, I think my arm is broken,” Liam responded. His brother, Ian, was down on one knee beside him. Ian had elevated the arm and was attempting to create a makeshift sling from a T-shirt he’d pulled out of his bag.

“Anyone bitten or scratched?” My voice seemed extremely loud, even to my own ears. No one responded. They were probably afraid to speak up for fear Ray would shoot them.

Kneeling down next to Anne Marie, I looked for Brian and waved him toward me. He took a knee next to me, his eyes never wandering to the body next to us.

“Check them all. Everyone. If they were scratched or bitten I want to know.” When he said nothing, only stared at me I asked, “Is there a problem?”

Finally, he shook his head and got to his feet. Not waiting to see if he followed orders, I picked up Anne Marie’s bag and unlatched the straps that secured her sleeping bag to her pack. I unrolled the bedroll; it was light pink on the back side and a darker pink on the front. A large image of Hello Kitty was imprinted on the front. With Kitty face down, I covered Anne Marie’s body from the waist up.

I found Ray and Wesley. The boy was sitting on the ground with Cody lying in his lap. He was absently petting the golden retriever. His eyes turned to me when I knelt down in front of him. I scratched the scruff of Cody’s neck. To Wesley I asked, “How’s Cody doing?”

“He was barking like crazy, like when he went crazy by Mr. Elmore’s house. He’s okay now, though.”

“Did Cody get close to any of those things, Wesley? Did he bite any of them?”

The boy shook his head. His hands gripped the dog more tightly. “No, Mr. Danzig. He tried to get at them, but I didn’t let him go. I don’t want him to get sick like them.”

“That’s good, Wesley.” I patted his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “Are you okay? Did you see all that stuff that happened there?”

For a moment the boy just stared at me and then he craned his neck to look at Ray. When he turned back to me, he lowered his voice. “Mr. Ray shot that guy and Anne Marie.”

“I know. They were going to be sick—“

“Were they going to turn into zombies?”

I nodded my head.

“Then Mr. Ray did a good thing,” Wesley said and nodded for emphasis.

I left Wesley and Cody and walked over to Ray. He had moved his chair away from the bodies and sat alone, about fifteen feet away. As I approached him, he said, “I did them a favor, so don’t you dare lecture me.”

When I put a hand on his shoulder, he looked surprised. “Reload your gun, Ray. We still have a long way to go.”

* * *

It was near five in the evening when we reached the abandoned farmhouse. The sun had gone down near four and for the last hour we had walked in darkness. After the incident earlier, our group was on high alert. Actually, people were downright spooked and that led to false alarms. People started seeing things in the distance they were sure were more infected souls coming for us. Each time I used the binoculars I found a tree or structure that was not human.

We approached the structure from the northeast, cutting across an eighth of a mile of open land. In the dark, it was difficult to make out the details. From a distance, I could see that it was a ranch style home, with only one floor of living space. When I thought of a farmhouse, this was not what came to mind.

A vehicle without tires had been abandoned in the driveway in front of the attached garage. It looked like a pickup truck from mid-1980. It had once been white, but it was now mostly covered in rust, blending into the darkness. The windows facing our direction of approach were boarded over. The faux shutters that flanked either side of the windows had all fallen askew, some hanging half on the ground.

Brian led us around to the east side of the home. There was a front porch that spanned the length of the house. All of the railings and posts had been destroyed or rotted and had fallen into disrepair over the years. We came to a halt at the southeast corner, where a large gouge had been torn into the structure. The siding and lumber was exposed in jagged jumbles where at some point the nearby tree had fallen, breaching the structure. The tree had been moved and a large dark item blocked the entrance.

Motioning for us all to stay put, Brian walked to the torn section of the home and pushed the dark object aside, revealing a man-sized opening through which we could enter. He waved Justin forward, spoke to him in whispered tones, and together they entered the house.

“It’ll just be a moment and we’ll get everyone inside,” I said. No one responded and I also fell silent again.

Since the attack this afternoon, no one had spoken. I don’t know if folks were in shock, or mourning, or what they were all feeling, but we had left behind two of our own among the infected. I think we were all sobered by the fact that it could have been any of us.

Several minutes later, Justin emerged and gave us the all clear to enter. I directed the flow of traffic, moving them in by teams, four or five at a time, giving those who entered a chance to find a spot and settle. Al and Araceli helped get Ray and his chair into the house with assistance from Stanley. Lara and I were the last and we stood together for a few minutes in the cold night air. Overhead, we had a clear view of hundreds of stars and planets. To the north, a cluster of low clouds blanketed that portion of the skyline in gray.

Lara put her head against my chest and wrapped her arms around me. I reciprocated, closing my eyes and trying to block out my thoughts and feelings. When she pulled away, I saw she had tears in her eyes.

“That was horrible what happened back there,” she said. She wiped away the mucus that escaped her nose. “They didn’t deserve to die that way.”

“No one does. But what Ray did—“

“I don’t mean that. What Ray did was…was…mercy. It was compassion. What I mean is the way those things attacked them…”

Brian appeared in the darkness. He stopped beside Lara and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Lara shook her head. Instead of answering, she left us and went into the house through jagged opening. As I watched, I saw the orange and yellow glow of a fire getting started.

“What was that all about? Did I do something wrong?”

“Forget about that,” I told my brother. “Everyone is just a bit out of sorts. What happened back there scared a lot of people. It scared me.”

“That shouldn’t have happened. We fucked up back there. That whole situation just got out of control and it just happened too damn fast.”

There may have been some truth to Brian’s words, but the fact was, there was no predictable way to deal with the infected. When you were fighting an enemy that no longer processed thoughts in the same way as the human mind, you could not anticipate their moves, their thoughts, or ideas.

I changed the subject. “So this is what you call a farmhouse? This is a single family ranch home with an attached garage.”

“Excuse me, but I never said I was fucking realtor. Besides, it’s really not that bad inside if you can ignore the giant hole in the wall.”

* * *

While I spent the evening making sure everyone was squared away and doing my best to boost morale, Brian worked with Chandra to put together a watch schedule. They came up with three watches, two men per shift, in three hour shifts. Justin and Lara agreed to take the first shift, Albert and Chandra would take the second, and Brian and I would take the third shift. I insisted in being included in the rotation because yesterday I had been allowed to sleep through the night.

I estimated the ranch to be about 1200 square feet of living space, which was plenty to accommodate our group, although we would all be sleeping in much closer quarters than we were probably used to. There were three bedrooms, a living room and dining room that were all prime space for a person to lay down their sleeping bag to rest for the night.

Most of the furniture had been removed long ago from all of the rooms. Aside from the tattered sofa that Brian had used to block the entrance before departing, a broken coffee table and wood leaves from a long gone dining room table were all that was left in the combination living room/dining room. The only other piece of remaining furniture in the entire house was an old Formica table in the kitchen. The metal legs were dented and the Formica tabletop was chipped to hell, but it was still functional. Maureen, Jenna and a few others took over the kitchen and began preparing chow for the group.

Justin had broken down the remains of the coffee table and used the precious wood to start the fire that now blazed in the fireplace, keeping us nice and warm, despite the gouge in the wall. We had a bit of a scare when the smoke started backing up into the house, but that was quickly addressed by opening the flue. Using his Tomahawks, Justin also made quick work of the two leaves from the dining room table and split them into shorter, thinner pieces that we could feed to the fire.

Ray and Wesley had taken up a spot close to the fire. The boy had covered Ray with the thick wool blanket and now sat in front of the fire with Cody, who was stretched luxuriously out in front of the blaze. Maureen brought Wesley a cup of soup which he eagerly accepted. I was still worried about him, wondering how much psychological damage had been done. I found myself wondering again whether I had done the right thing in allowing him to come on this journey.

We all ate soup and we all took turns sitting close to the fire. As the evening wore on, I noticed the shift in the general morale and attitude of the group. People were conversing and sharing stories. Sometime during the evening someone started a game where each person would stand up and tell everyone what food, music, television show and activity they missed most since the infection. I played with along with them while I passed time waiting for Lara to return from her shift. Even Ray took his turn. Wesley shared with us that he missed pizza, Selena Gomez,
Adventure Time
with Finn and Jake, and story time with his mother.

The game ended after that and everyone started getting their bedrolls ready and bunking down for the night. After Lara returned from her shift, she was in a better mood, but she said she was tired and wanted to get some rest. I lay down next to her for a while, until she fell asleep, and then I spent the next hour roaming through the house. I checked on the folks in the bedrooms. The heat from the fireplace could not reach the rooms, but blankets were enough to keep everyone warm through the night as the temperature was relatively mild for this time of year.

I found Brian in the kitchen with Liam and Ian. The three of them were playing poker for cigarettes.