Mad World (Book 2): Sanctuary (8 page)

“It was about two months ago when Ethan came back from the country store about five miles down the road, and he’d been attacked. His arm had been badly mangled, and his leg was injured. It was clear he was infected. Tom and I couldn’t face losing out only child to this cursed infection, so Tom set up a bed and table down in the cellar. He laid him in bed, and I nursed him through the night, but he grew more feverish as the morning approached. By mid-morning he had completely turned and actually chased us out of the cellar. We were able to get out and lock him in there without getting infected ourselves. But as the days wore on he banged around in there more and more.”

“At first we would put animals in there, but he wouldn’t eat them. He just ignored them. We even tried feeding Ethan normal food. He wouldn’t touch any of it. After about a week and a half, his banging grew weaker and weaker. One day it stopped entirely. We went down there to check on him and he was lying on the floor, so weak he could only growl at us. Tom lifted him up onto the bed and then went for the local doctor.”

“We didn’t know if anything could be done for him, but we had to try. He’s our son!” Julie wrung her hands as she continued to speak. “Well, Doc Watson did come out, we just told him our son was deathly ill, we didn’t mention the plague infection. There’s been nearly no outbreaks in this part of the state. Anyway, Tom showed Doc Watson where Ethan was. As soon as Tom had the doctor at Ethan’s bedside down there, examining him, Ethan grabbed the doctor as he leaned over him with his stethoscope. I was up here and I heard the doctor scream. Tom scrambled back up, and we both huddled here and listened as Ethan fought with the doctor and killed him. Then we heard Ethan begin to eat. It was horrible!”

Julie drew a shuddering breath, “I told Tom we had to help Doc Watson, but Tom said it was better this way, that the doctor was already done for, and that it was good Ethan was finally eating.
We closed the trap door and put the padlock on it and left. The next day I came back in here to check on things, and I could still hear Ethan eating. He ate on that doctor for more than a week.”

“From then on Tom said we had to get people for Ethan to eat, or he would die,” Julie said.

An absolutely artic cold shiver slowly crawled up my back at Julie’s words.

“Ethan was already dead, Julie. Zombies are dead, that’s been proven by the president’s scientists,” Jacob said quietly. Julie shook her head.

“It’s not true, Ethan kept moving, kept making sounds, kept eating on people we put down there. He was living on!” Julie said.

I shook my head. This woman was clearly delusional.

She continued. “So we’ve been putting people down there for him to eat. But lately, not many people have come by. It’d been more than nine days. That’s why we were so happy to see you drive up. The Lord really helped us out, delivering you to us.”

“YOU’RE INSANE, YOU KNOW THAT?” Jacob yelled in her face, his hand on her shoulder. Julie shrank from him. “WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO DO? FEED ME TO YOUR ZOMBIE SON?”

“No, I don’t think Tom was going to do that. He told me in the back bedroom that your little boy would be better, easier to get to Ethan,” Julie said, looking up at him.

“WHAT?!?” I screamed.

Risa let out a cry of dismay. Caitlyn looked like she wanted to hit Julie.

“What the hell?” DeAndre said. “You crazy old woman.”

“WHERE IS LUKE?” Jacob demanded.

“For that matter, where is Stanley?” Caitlyn said.

“Where’s my brother?” Risa cried with anguish.

“Wait a minute,” I said in sudden realization and horror. “Where’s the zombie?”

Chapter Eleven

It was decided that we would split up to look for Luke. At this point our full focus was on him. Jacob didn’t remember seeing Stanley after they’d gone around the side of the barn and before Tom attacked him. We didn’t know where Stanley had gone, whether he had been attacked by the zombie or had fled with Luke, but Luke was all we really cared about. If we found Stanley, then fine. If we came upon the zombie, we had weapons. But Luke, oh my dear God, Luke. He was only 5 years old. It was by now a pitch-dark night, somewhere between 8 p.m. and midnight. We didn’t check. We didn’t care. All we could think about was our little boy, alone in the dark woods, with a zombie nearby.

“Okay, everyone has their guns, right?” Jacob said. We had all armed ourselves from the van, and even Risa had my spare .33 semi. We had trained her on it, and she was confident.

“It’s important to only shoot if you are sure it’s the zombie. In the dark woods, with all of us searching, we don’t want to shoot each other,” I said, slipping my sawed-off shotgun into the back holster I had made myself. I also had a wicked huge Bowie knife with a 15-inch blade that almost looked like a machete in a holster on my hip. That zombie had better watch out, I thought, checking the buckles. I turned to Risa, but Jake was checking her gun.

“Make sure you keep the safety on until you’re ready to shoot,” he instructed her. “Remember how I showed you? You can flip it with your thumb, like this.” He demonstrated.

“I know, Jake, don’t worry. I remember everything you guys taught me,” she said, determined.

After thinking for a moment, I reached into the back of the van once more and into the locked case where we kept our weapons. Withdrawing a sheathed hunting knife, I gave it to Risa. “Take this and buckle it around your waist. And be careful with the blade. I just had it sharpened last month - it’s like a razor.”

Risa smiled at me gratefully. “Thanks, Alyssa.” At 13, she was almost as tall as I was, nearly an adult. We were certainly beginning to consider her one. She was very mature for her age. At 13, I had still been trying to figure things out. Studying the look of resolve on her face, I saw a steady friend I could count on in a fight. Nodding, I turned to Jake.

“We’re ready,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Nodding, he turned to the others, who were armed, eager and ready to head out to look for Luke. Each of us had a powerful Magnum flashlight and at least two weapons.

I turned to look at the Summers house. Julie peered down at us from a second story window. She had asked to help, but she was a basket case - and clearly unbalanced. I didn’t trust her at all, and neither did the rest of us. I mentally dismissed her.

“Let’s go,” Jake said. “Spread out.”

We had found Luke’s footprints a few dozen feet into the forest, and we had determined he had run away from the zombie through it. Unfortunately, we had also found the zombie’s shambling footprints, which had been heading in the general direction Luke had taken. According to Julie, the nearest farm was less than a mile away, through the forest and beyond several meadows and past a small lake. We had all agreed to fire off three gunshots 5 seconds apart into the sky if we found Luke or needed help. Flipping on our flashlights, we all trotted off into the forest, about 20 feet from one another.

You could hear us calling, “Lu-uke!” over and over again, and the sounds of the others’ voices soon became more distant as we all spread out in our search.

I decided to run out as far as I could and then stop and just listen to the forest, get used to its rhythm and sound. Holding my knife to my side so it didn’t bounce, I lowered my head and trotted out several hundred yards, nearly to the edge of the forest. The moon was only a quarter full, so it didn’t help much. I stopped and knelt in the dense forest foliage, bowing my head and closing my eyes to listen.

After a few minutes, the forest began to speak. As the sounds rose around me, I lifted my head to the trees, eyes closed, and breathed in deeply. I could hear crickets. And the breeze through the trees, it sounded like the ocean. I could hear an owl hooting, and some kind of small animal zipping through the underbrush. Very faintly, off to my left, I could hear Caitlyn’s voice calling for Luke. The forest was still and peaceful.

I opened my eyes and studied the forest around me. In my crouched position, my face was about 3½ feet off the ground. 42 inches, about as tall as Luke was. I scanned the forest from this height, seeing it the way Luke would see it. I looked and saw near blackness, the outline of bushes and trees, the night sky with its stars and moon. I swung my head toward the edge of the forest. The meadow started about 30 feet away, and it was covered in little white flowers that seemed to glow in what little moonlight there was. Standing up again, I moved toward the edge. As I reached the last tree and looked out into the meadow, I stared. There in the flowers were several clear paths that had recently been taken: the flowers were trampled and the bushes pushed aside. Luke had been through here. Possibly the zombie and Stanley too, but I felt Luke had run through this meadow in the dying light, scared and running like the wind, just like I taught him.

I flicked on my flashlight, and the beam swung wide over the meadow. “Lu-uke!!” I called, walking forward. The meadow was about a hundred yards through, then I encountered some trees again. Calling and calling repeatedly, I moved forward. But I found nothing.

___

I later learned that DeAndre had gone farther south, off to my right, and had skirted the edge of the meadow by several hundred feet. He called and called, but there was no sign of Luke at all. He decided to walk farther south and had come upon some hills and started up them. About a quarter
of a mile away from the forest, in some small hills, he was searching through a wooden shack that had been built maybe 50 years ago, , when the zombie that had been Ethan Summers jumped him from behind. DeAndre screamed in surprise as the zombie grabbed at his head, knocking him to the ground. It fell on top of DeAndre, growling menacingly, and tried to bite D’s face and then shoulder.

But DeAndre was not the lanky teen he had been when our ordeal had begun, back in 2012 in Fresno. He was nearly 23 years old now, and had put on 30 pounds of muscle. He worked out regularly, and he wasn’t about to surrender meekly to what the zombie had planned for him. Stiff-arming the creature, he was able to grab its face and hold it away from him, simultaneously doing a wiggle-flip and escaping like a Greco-Roman wrestler.  He managed to scramble away from it, crab-walking backward about 6 feet to the door of the shack where he jumped to his feet and turned simultaneously, drawing his shotgun. That zombie had just eaten off his own father, and was a bit sluggish and not very quick on his feet. DeAndre watched as the thing picked itself off the ground,
and then
turned toward him and growl. As it began stumble walking toward him, DeAndre calmly lifted his shotgun to the thing’s face and blew off half its head.

“I love this gun,” he said, holstering the 12-gauge and looking around. The little moonlight showed he was alone once again. Looking down at the fallen zombie, he nudged it with the toe of his boot. “Yup, definitely not going to be bothering anyone anymore.” He walked around the shack, turned left, and began walking and calling again: “LU-UKE!!”

___

Jacob, meanwhile, had turned north and was searching to my left. He’d walked through the thicker part of the forest, calling and calling, and had eventually come out at a road. He reasoned that, had Luke come this way, he probably would have followed the road. That’s what we’d told him he should do if he was ever lost. We had taught him that roads meant civilization, and that all roads eventually went to some kind of house, store, building or town. So Jake had begun walking northeast, calling and searching, and had eventually reached an old gas station that turned out to be about two miles from the Summers farmhouse. It appeared to be closed for the night, possibly abandoned. Several windows looked broken. But it was possible that Luke had gone that way, so after quietly searching the parking lot and behind the small building, Jake had crept up to the small building and looked inside a dirty window. His eyes scanned the interior. He found someone, but not who he was hoping for.

“Stanley!” Jake exclaimed, straightening up and waving through the window. Inside the closed and darkened gas station, Stanley was on his cell phone. Again.

What Jacob hadn’t told us yet, but did later, was that he had caught Stanley making some pretty suspicious phone calls a number of times. Once in the Walmart, once in the restaurant, and once more back at the Summers farm.

Jake walked over to the side where Stanley was slowly climbing out a broken window. Jumping to the ground, Stanley turned to Jake. “Hey Jake,” he said heavily.

Jake was silent for a minute, looking around, and then back at Stanley. “Stanley, did you take Luke?”

Stanley looked at him blankly.

Jacob tried again. “Stanley, have you seen Luke? He’s missing.”

“What? He’s missing?” Stanley asked.

Jake tried to stay calm. His hopes had risen when he’d seen Stanley inside the gas station. “Yes, he’s missing. Tom jumped me and tried to snatch Luke, and Luke took off. We don’t know where he is, we’ve all been searching for nearly an hour.”

“I haven’t seen him, Jacob.” Stanley seemed distracted.

“Stanley, where’ve you been all this time?” Jacob asked. “You seemed to just disappear right after dinner. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Stanley looked at the ground then back up at Jacob. He seemed at a loss for words.

“Does this disappearing act have anything to do with you making all these cell phone calls to the CDC?” Jacob asked quietly, looking into Stanley’s eyes.

At this Stanley jumped back in surprise and began pacing. After about a minute he asked, “How did you know?”

“I didn’t.”

Swearing under his breath, Stanley took out a cigarette and lit it nervously. “I’m sorry, for everything. I told them I quit.”

“What?” Jake looked around and sat down on a nearby chair. “Why don’t you sit and tell me everything.”

Stanley remained standing and kept pacing, but he started to talk. “They sent me in as a plant. I was supposed to act like I was warning you, and then get to know you, to find out more, before they moved in.” He stopped and put his hand to his forehead, breathing hard.

“I wasn’t too happy about it, and then when I got to know the kid a little, well…” He started pacing again. “I was having second thoughts. Then when you and DeAndre saved me from those zombies, I just… well… I just couldn’t go through with it.” He stubbed out his used-up cigarette, which he’d been smoking furiously, and lit another. “Jake, you’re good people. And Luke is a great kid. What they want to do with him is just bad science. Goin’ in there without a plan, dissecting tissue in hopes for some kind of miracle…”

“So you had second thoughts on betraying us?” Jacob asked.

Stanley glanced at him. “It was my job, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you. It was just a job.”

Jake shook his head in disgust.

“Look,” Stanley continued, “I split after dinner because I couldn’t do this anymore. I got to know your family and I just couldn’t double cross you anymore.” He paced and smoked, and then stopped again and looked at Jacob. “They wanted me to stay with you,” he gestured with the hand he was holding the cigarette in, “all the way to the Sanctuary, so they could find out where it was.”

“You told them about the Sanctuary - about where we were going?” Jacob looked at him in horror.

Stanley started pacing again. “After you guys saved me from the zombies,” he stopped again and looked at Jake, “and I coulda been KILLED, but you guys saved me. Me! A complete stranger!” he began pacing again. “Well, after that, I just couldn’t do it no more. I couldn’t double cross ya. I couldn’t turn you in.”

“So this phone call I just saw you making?” Jacob asked, his hands on his knees as he looked up at the pacing agent.

“That was me telling them I quit. That I refused to do it anymore,” Stanley said, with conviction. He stopped pacing and looked at Jacob. “But Jake, I think they traced my signal,” he held up the little cellphone he’d been using. “They are probably on their way here right now, to pick me up, to interrogate me.