Mad World (Book 2): Sanctuary (5 page)

DeAndre had knocked one of the zombies to its knees with the shotgun. He kicked the second zombie away from him as it came for him, but the first one was getting up again.

Stanley had crushed the skull of the zombie on the ground, and it had stopped moving entirely. He turned now to help DeAndre and Jacob, who had gotten to his feet and was stumbling back, holding his head.

Stanley came up to the zombie on its knees that was trying to get up. He brought the tire iron up over his head and down again like an executioner on top of the zombie’s head. The back of the creature’s head caved in from the force of the blow, and it fell on its face. Stanley swung a few more times, and the thing’s head was a bloody crushed in mess on the pavement.

DeAndre had run off about ten feet, luring the last zombie away from the others so he could get a clear shot. The thing growled menacingly and advanced on D, reaching its arms out. It moved fast and DeAndre backed up, turning slightly. Then DeAndre stood still, and the zombie rushed him. At the last minute, DeAndre stepped sideways and brought the shotgun up to blast the thing. But the creature was crafty and grabbed at his shotgun. The shot went off but only caught the thing in its side. Blackish blood poured out of the huge rip on the side of its torso. The zombie ignored the wound. DeAndre backed up more, but the shotgun was out of ammunition.

I opened the door of the van.

“Caitlyn, stay in here with the kids, there may be more,” I said, looking into her eyes. She nodded silently and closed and locked the door behind me.

I crept around the side of the van, toward DeAndre and the zombie. Pointing my shotgun at the ground, I got within about ten feet of the thing.

“HEY!!” I said, drawing the creature’s attention. DeAndre saw me and dropped to the ground. The zombie turned and ran at me. I calmly brought my sawed-off up and leveled it at the thing. As it got close, maybe four feet, I pulled the trigger. The blast echoed across the pavement as it blew into the zombie’s face. The thing’s head snapped back, and the last zombie fell heavily to the ground. I looked around.

Jacob, DeAndre and Stanley were all right.

“Get in, we don’t know what else is out here,” I said. Grabbing the flat tire, I hauled it over to the back of the van. Jacob opened it up and lifted the thing inside.

“Thank you, Babe,” I said, kissing him. We all got back into the van, and I drove up the freeway while Caitlyn cleaned up the men’s scrapes and bruises. We had been so lucky. Stanley still seemed in shock from the whole episode.

“Jacob and DeAndre saved my life,” he said.

“Dude, you helped save us afterward. You got the one that was on Jake,” said DeAndre.

“Yeah, thanks, Stanley,” Jacob said, smiling.

“That was so incredible!” said Stanley, still in a daze about the whole thing.

“It happens,” said Jacob philosophically. I laughed, mostly in relief that everyone had come out unscathed. Driving north in the early morning hours after a double zombie fight, I felt energized and exhilarated. It was madness to feel this alive after almost being killed, but that’s how I felt.

Stanley seemed to be lost in thought. Jacob and DeAndre had come to his rescue and saved his life. He in turn had come to their rescue not minutes later, and helped to save us all. It was a lot for him to take in. He had known us for less than a day. Stanley remained quiet for a long time, then dropped off to sleep, his head resting against the window. Everyone else was asleep as well, and it was a dark, quiet drive that took me onward.

Chapter Six

I drove on into the dark, passing through South Dakota and entering North Dakota as the sun rose on my right side. The brilliant orange hue on the morning sky seemed to promise renewal and hope. Yawning, I pulled over at a gas station, looking around for any trouble. The place was deserted, as were the others I had passed on my way here. The van was pretty low on gas. As I pulled to a stop next to a pump, the others began to wake up.

“Hey guys, it’s almost six. We need gas and bathroom. Who’s coming with me?” I said.

“I’ll come,” said Jacob beside me, giving me a sleepy smile. We looked out the window at our surroundings. Everything was bathed in the dawn light, and the placed seemed utterly deserted.

I grabbed my shotgun and opened the door of the van to hop out. I had decided to carry it with me from now on. I didn’t want to be caught without it. This far west, the danger was very real and present.

“Wait up, I’m coming with you,” said Risa. Luke was stirring too. I reached over and unbuckled him and lifted him out of his seat. He raised his face to look around.

“Any zombies around here, Mama?” he asked.

Smiling and kissing his cheek I replied, “No, baby. I think this place is just deserted.”

We all went in one group to the bathroom, taking turns standing watch with shotguns and semi-automatics. Jacob filled the van at the pump and Stanley washed the windows, which were gritty from the drive. In less than ten minutes we were all back in the van and ready to go. Everything was very quiet in the parking lot, so we took the time to pass out some food and drinks.

“Alyssa, I’ll drive. You should get some sleep, you’ve been up all night,” Jacob said.

Munching on a sandwich, I nodded sleepily. I was sitting next to Luke in his booster seat, and I leaned my head against him. I felt exhausted.

“I love you,” Luke said, kissing me lightly on my cheek and patting my arm. I fell asleep smiling.

I had been asleep for less than an hour and a half when I was awakened by the movement of the van slowing. Opening my eyes, I looked out the windows at a traffic jam, of all things.

“Where are we?” I asked, stretching my arms and yawning. I think I felt worse from getting just a little sleep than none at all. Scratch that. Any sleep was preferable to none. I think. I yawned again.

“Not sure, just came upon this now,” Jacob said.

I sat up straighter and looked closer. There were several police cars with lights circling, and there were two full fire engines pulled up to … something. I couldn’t see what the problem was. But I could see huge amounts of smoke billowing out from the center. We were maybe eight or nine car
lengths away from whatever the commotion was. Suddenly there was a huge explosion and our van windows rattled.

“Oh my God!” I said, putting my hand on Jacob’s shoulder in front of me and sitting forward in my seat to get a better view.

“What’s going on?” Risa said.

“I don’t know, but I’m getting out of here,” said Jacob. He put the van in reverse and began to back up. Luckily no one had come up behind us. He backed us up maybe forty or fifty feet to the last exit and then turned off it. Apparently the majority of the drivers thought he had a good idea, because the other cars began to back up from the billowing smoke. The explosion had engulfed three of the closest vehicles and one of the police cars. Flames were shooting up into the sky.

Jacob turned down the frontage road, which brought us closer to the wreckage than we had been. We could see up the embankment to our left; the freeway was maybe ten feet above us and the wreckage fifty feet from us. It looked like a car had hit the right hand side guardrail and flipped over. Its gas tank must have exploded. I wondered if the driver had turned, like the other accident we had seen. I had turned around and was just about to ask Caitlyn what she thought when Stanley exclaimed, “Oh man!”

I swung around to look and gasped. A figure was crawling out of the wreckage toward the firemen, who were trying to put out the blaze. The person was engulfed in flames. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female: the face was a blackened burnt mass. But it was clear the thing was a zombie, probably turned while driving. It walked with arms outstretched toward the firemen, and it did not seem to be panicking, as a human would if set on fire. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach watching the thing, which had probably been a normal human adult only ten minutes before, now engulfed in flames and calmly walking toward the firemen. Black smoke curled up from the figure toward the blue sky, and I could hear the fire crackling.

“Oh man,” Caitlyn said. We all watched as the figure walked towards the firemen and policemen, arms outstretched, trying to reach them to attack them, completely oblivious to the fact that it was entirely on fire. It was like watching a human-shaped torch. The men backed away hastily as it kept coming toward them. The engulfed zombie then began moving toward the fire engine, at which point one of the police officers drew his weapon and, taking careful aim, shot the thing in the head. The corpse dropped where it was and continued to burn on the ground. After a minute one of the firemen came up to it and sprayed it with a fire extinguisher. It was a horrific sight – made even more horrifying by the sight of the fireman calmly extinguishing the flames. He was obviously used to dealing with zombies. He didn’t hurry to save the victim, as he would have had it been a person on fire. Everyone there knew that nothing could have been done to save the victim.

After a person became infected, there was no cure. All you could do was restrain them, quarantine them, or put them in a cell. And when they turned black and began to attack, there was nothing you could do but kill them. Nothing at all.

People had been horrified to see a loved one turn and attack them. Some had even been forced to kill their own family members; it was either that or risk being hurt and infected themselves. It was a world gone mad.

So far, there was a 100 percent succumb rate in infected individuals. Scientists had been trying for years, without success, to find a cure for this virulent strain of the Black Plague. It continued to defy the odds, and as soon as the scientists found something they thought might affect it, it would mutate slightly and continue infecting the population in a slow but steady march to cover the globe. There were efforts to restrict air travel, to try to slow the spread of the Plague, but there had been such an uproar in the beginning from politicians and their wealthy constituents that by the time severe restrictions had been put in place, many infected individuals had already traveled to every corner of the globe. Imagine the common cold virus that hits your town/workplace/family every winter, only with lethal and deadly results. Yeah. That was our world.

Chapter Seven

Jacob pulled the van away from the awful scene and continued down the frontage road, leaving the black smoke and roaring fire behind us. His face was set in a grim yet determined look that we all knew very well. I consulted the map and tried to find the frontage road. It took me a few minutes but finally I found the area where we were.

“Jake, this road doesn’t meet the freeway for another fifteen miles, it just veers to the right up here and goes northeast and into Minnesota. I’m not sure exactly how we are going to get back onto the freeway from here,” I said, looking at the map.

“Maybe it’s time for a short foray into Middle America,” Jake said grimly. I looked into the rearview mirror and into his face and our eyes met. I saw the resigned look on Jacob’s face and I could read his mind. We were all so tired of the struggle, every day it seemed, to avoid the plague and try to lead some semblance of a normal life. I glanced at Luke, who was looking out the window at the passing trees. He was so numb to the sights of zombies that they were a normal part of his world.

But not ours. The rest of us remembered the normal world, life before the craziness of the spreading infection. We had all been in high school when this all started, and we had sort of lost our innocence and had been thrust into adulthood pretty quickly when we were all about 17. We had no choice. We had to survive. Now, I was 22 years old but I felt twice that age. I was good at surviving. I had lived in a zombie-filled world for five years and survived and triumphed every time I had been faced with the creatures. But it was a hard life. A very hard life. A life where we could never truly relax. I sighed. I was so tired of it all. I passed the map to Caitlyn and, yawning, leaned back against Luke again. Let somebody else be the navigator, I was still exhausted. My eyes closed.

I must have dozed off and fallen asleep. I think I was asleep for less than half an hour. I felt the van rumbling across a dirt road though, and it woke me up.

“What’s going on?” I said, rubbing my eyes and sitting up.

“We were trying to find a way back onto the freeway and saw a farmhouse and decided to investigate,” said Risa, giving me
that
look.

“What? Jake, baby, what on earth…?” I said.

“I don’t know. I just want to see if we can buy a home-cooked meal or something. Maybe have some conversation about how their crops are growing or when they’re gonna slaughter their pig,” Jacob shrugged.

I looked at him, disbelieving. He was shaking his head.

“I just want a change of scenery, that’s all. I’m life-weary. Although I’m not too sure of this road,” he added, grimacing. The road was tossing our van more and more as we proceeded; up and down, left and right. Just when I thought the van couldn’t take any more punishment, the dirt road evened out and we were able to continue on to the farmhouse in the distance without blowing our shocks. I peered through the front window at the buildings about a quarter of a mile off.

“I don’t know about this…,” I said.

Jacob tried to reassure me. “If it looks bad, we’ll just turn around.”

“Horses!” Cried Risa. Even in a zombie apocalypse, your average 13-year-old girl was still horse crazy. She had taken some lessons starting a few years back and loved visiting the local stables wherever we lived. I couldn’t afford to take her riding too often, but she loved the times when we could. She was always drawing horses, some with unicorn horns, some with wings, but always with manes and tails flying in the wind. I had somehow managed to find the entire “Black Stallion” series of books, a childhood favorite of mine by Walter Farley, at a garage sale last spring. Risa had devoured them.

I smiled. “Risa, look, there’s a pure black one!” I said, pointing to a huge black gelding running alongside the fence as we drove. Risa was speechless. Looking out the window, her jaw dropped open as she followed the progress of the beautiful animal as he ran.

We were all mesmerized by the beautiful horse, and only Jacob kept his eyes on the farmhouse as we approached it. Everything seemed fine at first. Everything seemed fine. Fine. Yeah.

As Jacob pulled up to a red barn and matching farmhouse, a man in jeans and a T-shirt came walking up to us, wiping his hands on an old rag. He looked to be about 60, sturdy, with sandy brown hair and friendly eyes. His work boots were crusty with dirt, and there was a bit of hay peeking out from under an old straw hat that sat atop his head.

“Can I help you?” he said in a not completely unfriendly way.

“Hi,” Jake said, hopped out of the van and extending his hand. “My name is Jacob Hill, and my family and I were just taking a break from a long road trip north to Canada. We were wondering if we could buy a home-cooked meal from you, or perhaps just spend a few hours enjoying your farm and animals? We are used to living in the city and don’t get to see much of the country.”

The farmer looked on with curiosity and amusement as everyone started piling out of the van. I hopped out of the cramped space and breathed in a lungful of the fresh country air. It was utterly wonderful. Laughing, I went to stand next to Jacob. I put my arm around his waist and extended my hand in friendship at the same time.

“Hi, I’m Alyssa,” I said smiling. “If we could just stretch our legs for a few minutes and maybe breathe some of this wonderful country air …”

“City folk, huh?” The farmer smiled and turned halfway to his left, calling out, “Julie! We’ve got company.” He shook our hands, smiling. “The name’s Tom Summers, and my wife Julie is there in the farmhouse. Pleased to meet you.”

“Mama! Look! He’s got chickens!” Luke exclaimed, running after a bright orange hen. The chicken looked huge and didn’t seem bothered by a 5-year-old boy chasing after her.

“All your animals look so healthy and big! Your horses are so cool!” said Risa, walking up to the farmer and shaking his hand too.

“Well, thank you, little lady,” the farmer said, laughing. “We aim to please.”

A woman in a blue print dress came out of the farmhouse. She wore a white apron and had a smiling, careworn face. As she walked up to us, she was drying her hands on the front of her apron. “Hello, I’m Julie Summers,” she said. A small white dog had followed her out, and it stood beside her, wagging its tail. Laughing, she said, “and this is Timsin, he’s a stray that just stayed one day last year.” She bent down to pat the little dog on its head.

“These nice folks wonder if we have any home cooked meals and they’re willing to pay for it,” Tom said to his wife.

“Oh! Yes, I can whip up a great supper for us all,” Julie said. “You’re a blessing in disguise. Times have been a bit lonely; we’re glad for the company.”

“Yes,” Tom the farmer said, “and we haven’t had much luck selling our wheat lately, so how about, hmmmm, there’s seven of you… How about making it thirty dollars, and it’s all you can eat?”

“Thirty dollars is more than fair, sir.” Jacob stepped forward and shook the farmer’s hand.

“Whoop!” Luke yelled and fist-punched the air before running off to see the horses with Risa. We all laughed at his antics. As he ran up to Risa, they both began climbing the fence of the paddock enclosing the beautiful horses the farmer kept inside. Risa first, then Luke, climbed to the top of the fence and then sat perched on the top rail.

I sighed and looked out at the pastures and the peaceful settings. This place looked idyllic. I closed my eyes and concentrated on feeling the sunshine on my face. A breeze tickled my hair against my chin.

“You must be tired from your drive,” Julie said. “Why don’t you all come in the house. I can fix you some lemonade while you relax.”

I smiled. “That sounds wonderful. Thank you.”

Caitlyn and I walked with her toward the house as DeAndre, Jake and Stanley stayed to talk to Tom.

Caitlyn spread her arms wide as if to embrace the whole scene. “Oh, I’d love to paint this picture,” she said. Caitlyn had recently taken up oil painting and had quite a natural talent for capturing the feel of a landscape.

“You should,” I said, smiling at her.

I glanced toward the children again. Risa had turned 13 the month before and was already beginning to blossom. She was getting quite tall and was in the stage of growth where she was all legs. Looking back at her perched atop the paddock fence, her long hair blowing in the breeze, my heart constricted. She wa
s growing up so fast. I
thought of her as an adult most of the time. Luke was sitting next to her. He turned to her to ask a question and as he sat there in his T-shirt and jeans I realized he was also growing up very fast. It seemed like yesterday that he’d been a baby, then a toddler running about in diapers. I sighed.

“They grow up so fast,” said Julie, reading my mind.

I glanced at her and smiled. “Yes, they do.” I sighed, looking back once more at Risa and Luke. “Sometimes I wish I could just freeze time and keep them the way they are.”

Caitlyn gave me a little hug. “Come on, Alyssa, let’s get some lemonade,” she said. We walked arm-in-arm to the farmhouse, Julie leading the way. Off on my left, out of the corner of my eye, I
saw Stanley walk away from the group of men, and take his cell phone out. Hmmm, I thought. Must be making a call to touch bases with his son again. Something bothered me about Stanley. I saw Jacob watching him as well. Jake did not look happy as Stanley dialed and put the small phone to his ear, then disappeared around some stacked bales of hay. Shrugging, I turned back to walk into the farmhouse with Caitlyn.

Inside, I just could stop looking around. It was like being transported back thirty years. From the blue-and-white calico curtains over the kitchen sink, to the old-fashioned furniture in the adjoining sitting
room, it was as if we’d entered
what could only be described as vintage America. It as if the zombie plague hadn’t touched this place.

Julie immediately went to the sink and picked up a bowl of lemons that had been draining there. “It will take me just a few minutes to whip up a pitcher of lemonade,” she said. “Make yourselves at home.” Caitlyn and I wandered into the sitting room and began looking at all the photos they had on the walls.

Most of the photos were of a young man, about 20, clean-cut and smiling. One picture showed him on a tractor with Tom, another showed him sitting on some bales of hay, with Timsin the dog on his lap, licking his face. Yet another showed all three of them in what was obviously a formal family portrait.

“Who is this young man in these pictures, Julie?” I asked.

There was no answer. I walked back into the kitchen where Julie was cutting lemons and squeezing the juice through a strainer into another bowl.

“Julie?” I asked.

She glanced up at me, smiling, and I saw there were tears in her eyes.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked, coming up to her and putting my hand on her shoulder.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she replied, stopping to blow her nose. “I’m sorry. That’s Ethan, our son. He’s…” she stopped and new tears ran down her face.

“Oh, hey. I’m sorry to have asked.” I said, putting my arm around her. Caitlyn then came into the room behind me. She didn’t say anything, just patted Julie’s arm. Julie looked up at us and smiled.

“I’m okay. It’s just that Ethan’s over in Afghanistan. He’s in the Marines. When the plague broke out, he wanted to get as far away from it as he could, so he signed up. But now he’s also away from
us
. Since he’s been over there, we hardly hear from him, and when we do, he’s like a different person. The military has changed him. He’s not our little boy anymore. And I worry every day that he might be killed. My nightmare is to have the military show up at my front door to tell me he’s gone. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a youngster around these parts …” her voice trailed off.

“We understand.” I said.

“Yeah, we do. It’s okay to cry, Julie,” said Caitlyn.

Julie blew her nose one more time, then smiled again. “I just wish this wretched infection hadn’t ever happened,” she turned back to the lemons. “I hate every bit of it.” She began cutting lemons again, this time with vehemence. She looked so angry that I worried she might cut herself.

“You want me to do that?” I asked.

“No, I’m fine. Really,” she answered.

Caitlyn and I looked at each other and wandered back into the sitting room. We took maybe ten minutes looking at the little figurines and tatted doilies she had on display. I was leaning forward examining an antique sampler hanging on the far wall when she came into the room with a tray and holding a large pitcher of lemonade and some glasses already filled with ice cubes.

“Here we are, fresh lemonade!” she said.