Swarm (Dead Ends) (10 page)

“Yeah, I know it,” Ricky responded, “we can get to it through one of the forest access roads. I use them all the time for hunting.”

A smirk came over my face as I marveled at how little I knew about this area even though I had driven through it hundreds of times on day or weekend trips to the coast. My focus had always been on the final destination. This stretch of road was just a means to an end. If I wanted to see the ocean, I had no choice but to drive through all of the boring stuff first. There wasn’t much worth remembering out here anyway and the only reason I enjoyed the drive is because I knew what awaited me at the end. My inability to stop and smell the roses every once in a while was never something I was ashamed of until right now. I could barely remember the street names in my neighborhood let alone the intricacies of terrain I had been travelling through my whole life.

Chapter 10

I was hesitant about being sidetracked but the decision had already been made. The car was filled with hope once again at the thought of finding more information about what was really happening out there. Where did it start? Who’s to blame? What do we do about it? All important questions to say the least but I couldn’t help but think that knowing those answers would only make it more difficult to survive. Normally, fear of the unknown would be considered a foolish waste of time. But now? It may be the only thing that keeps us on our toes. Our life expectancy has already taken a nosedive. If we’re truly working on borrowed time, I’d prefer to live out the rest of my days with as little fanfare as possible.

Before I could muster the confidence to voice my opinion, we were there, at the entrance to Forest Road 21. The gate was still closed which I chose to see as a good sign. Ricky unhinged it as I stood watch. The gate swung open, it’s NO TRESPASSING sign dutifully ignored in the interest of survival. If the zombies weren’t going to follow the rules then why should we? The road immediately began a steep ascent, the Jeep’s 4-wheel drive making easy work of the loose gravel. I felt a certain sense of safety as it climbed higher and higher. This minimalist swath of road could barely hold two cars side by side. I’d seen how the undead had handled even a small set of stairs or a gradual incline so the 500 feet or so of altitude that we would gain created a reassuring buffer from the hellish reality that surrounded us. Even if there were a few undead stragglers up here, we could use the environment to our advantage; the trees offering ample opportunity for stealth and the steep drop-offs creating an easy method of disposal.

The mood was subdued to say the least, the current situation making any amount of small talk seem somewhat disingenuous. I loved my quiet time but even I was beginning to go a little stir-crazy. I fantasized about being in a huge stadium, packed to the rafters with rowdy fans watching baseball or football, or roller derby for that matter. Any place where the noise could drown out my thoughts. I could focus solely on cheering as loudly as I could, the release of screaming my head off allowing my subconscious to take the night off. I wanted to scream so bad it hurt.

I glanced back at Jane – now cradling Zoe’s head in her lap – and wondered what her story was. How did this geek goddess end up at a Sportsman’s Paradise in the first place? She didn’t really seem like the gun-toting type. I couldn’t picture her knee deep in a river, casting a fly and catching a trout to fry up for dinner. Just as I was about to break the silence and ask her what she was doing there, Zoe’s head shot up, her face ghost-white with a look of worry pasted all over it. Before I could recognize the look, she vomited all over the floor, remnants of turkey jerky and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups creating a kaleidoscope of human bile all over the floorboards and back of my seat. Ricky stopped the car to see what the fuss was about and I, being in the minority of people who immediately puke upon seeing someone else puke, jumped out to avoid adding precious time to the inevitable clean-up effort. The loose gravel surprised me, almost like stepping on a bunch of marbles, and if not for still holding onto the door handle, I would’ve taken a spill down a 50 foot drop and undead wanderers would be the least of my problems. So I stood there, death-gripped to the handle, dry heaving until the sight and smell of Zoe’s upchuck had left my brain.

By the time I got back in, Jane had already cleaned up the mess with the briskness of a nurse or a mother, seemingly undeterred by or completely used to the smell of human waste. I was grateful to say the least. She had already laid Zoe down on the bench seat with a pillow and blanket. Hopefully rest would soothe whatever demons still remained in her digestive tract. The last thing we needed right now was a sick child to slow us down.

Just as I regained my faculties, we rounded a tight corner to see a fallen tree blocking us from advancing any further.

“Shit,” Ricky exclaimed, “it would just figure, wouldn’t it?”

“How close are we?” I asked, “Can we make it on foot?”

Ricky thought about it for a second, “I think we’re about a mile or so away. I’m not totally sure though. It’s been a while since I’ve been up here.”

All I could think to myself was:
this is what happens when you stray from the goddamned plan
. But playing the blame game wouldn’t help anyone right now so I kept it to myself.

“So I guess we take a vote then…” Ricky suggested.

“Turn around or keep going?” Jane responded.

“I don’t think so” I said calmly, “we’re already up here and as much as I would love to turn around and head for the coast, we should probably see if we can find out anything. If it’s really only a mile away, then it shouldn’t be a problem.” I looked at Zoe, still ghost-white and in somewhat of a daze from losing the entire contents of her stomach, “We’ll just have to take it slow and make sure we bring plenty of liquid.”

An unwelcome thought crossed my mind for the briefest moment that involved pushing them all off the side of the road and just taking a nice quiet ride to the coast alone, the way I liked it. An attempt was made and failed to disguise just how disgusted I felt for harboring such a notion. My face screwed up with a mixture of pain and contempt as I attempted to filter out the negative thoughts and think about what lies ahead. I was pretty sure Jane caught the look on my face but she said nothing, choosing instead to study me intently as if I weren’t the person she first thought I was.

Ricky was distracted, only half paying attention to my little speech, his eyes focused on the fallen tree. “Look at the base” he said “there’s no roots. It’s a clean cut. Someone did that on purpose.”

“So maybe there are other survivors up here” Jane said, her voice tinged with hope.

“Yeah, other survivors who clearly want to be left alone” I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go up there after all.”

“I’m guessing they did it to keep the undead from getting any closer” Ricky said, “I mean, it’s not like they put up a NO TRESPASSING sign or something. I don’t know, I think it’s worth a shot.”

I despised group decisions. In my experience, the more heads that were put together to devise a plan or course of action, the more convoluted that plan seemed to be. I’ve spent my last five years toiling away in a cubicle farm so I have first-hand knowledge of just how horribly inefficient a bureaucracy can be. Crowd mentality: the bigger the group, the dumber the actions. Hell, in my office the managers were actually praised for their idiotic decisions. But in the office, the worst that could happen was a less than stellar profits report. Out here, it could mean life and death. But our group was small enough and our trust strong enough that I knew I had to bite my lip and go along with them, acting as if it were the best plan in the world. And I’d be hoping the whole time that giving in to the group won’t end up getting me killed.

“Well, I guess we better put on the packs and get going while there’s still plenty of daylight” I said.

“I think I should stay here and let Zoe rest” Jane said, “Otherwise, we’ll slow you up.”

Ricky and I looked at each other uncomfortably but said nothing. I think we both knew splitting up was a horrible idea but we also liked thinking about making good time to get to wherever we may be going. We had Zoe take some Tylenol which she begrudgingly swallowed down with a bit of water but Jane pointed out that her throat was swollen and she could possibly have the flu which would mean she’d need something stronger than painkillers, of which we had none. Ricky instructed her to keep Zoe lying down and to stay down herself so if anyone or anything were to be walking or shuffling by, they wouldn’t see any movement in the car. We left her with a large knife and a small crossbow. If something happened, I honestly didn’t have much faith in them surviving. Although to be honest, I didn’t place much faith in my own survival either.

We scaled the downed tree relatively easily due to Ricky’s last minute decision to put a ladder on top of the car before leaving the store. After a steep climb on the logging trail we saw a path through the bushes that, according to Ricky, would take us to the ranger’s tower. There didn’t seem to be much of a trail to speak of so we just kept trudging through until the vegetation changed and began to thin out. Ricky seemed lost but he didn’t say anything. We encountered a row of trees that didn’t seem to fit in with rest, as if they’d been planted here in the middle of nowhere for some unknown and possibly nefarious reason. The long wispy branches blocked our view of the land ahead. It put us on edge but we had to get through. Ricky walked around a bit and began to push the branches aside about 20 feet from where I stood. I slowly traipsed through with my head down looking no more than a few feet ahead when I caught a hint of filtered sunlight shining off something directly in front of me. I looked up and stopped immediately when I realized what it was. We were walking directly into a marijuana grow field hidden in the middle of the forest. The shiny objects in front of me were fish hooks hanging from lines and resting at different levels, one of the many deterrents that growers use to keep people from stealing their crop. One more step and my face would have been ripped to shreds as I thrashed in confusion and tried to escape the pain. I had seen fields like this before and I was thankful that fish hooks were all that I had encountered.

For a second (or ten) my mind got lost in the beauty of what lay before me. Green as far as the eye could see. Then the fog lifted when I thought about all of the
other
traps that growers use to keep grimy stoners like me from getting free weed for a year. There were the relatively harmless ones: air horns, trip flares, smoke grenades, and fake machine gun fire. If you were smart enough to leave when you encountered any of these things, no harm no foul. But if you went deeper, your stupidity was rewarded with things like poisonous snakes, pipe bombs, pressure-sensitive mines, and the hick favorite, a trip wire attached to the trigger of a loaded shotgun usually filled with Flechette rounds, which were basically small arrow type projectiles that had the ability to pierce armor if they were of high enough quality.

Just as I turned to yell at Ricky to stop where he was, I heard the ominously familiar shake of a rattlesnake’s tail that I had learned to fear as a child spending summers east of the mountains in Moses Lake, which save for the actual lake, felt more like a desert. About three feet away from me, a rattler sat coiled at the foot of a marijuana plant with a demeanor that suggested considerable unease. I knew that the best thing to do with rattlesnakes was to give them space but I had already unknowingly violated that rule simply by standing right where I was. The earth tone colors of the snake did a great job of helping it blend in with the environment especially considering that the last thing people are going to do when they encounter an endless field of marijuana is admire the soil in which it’s grown. It must have been sleeping which is why it hadn’t started rattling when I was further away. I knew they couldn’t hear but they could sense vibrations and I’m assuming that my child-like attempt to get up on my tippy-toes and then jump up a little bit to try and get a better idea of how far this musty field of green stretched was probably enough to alert it to my presence. The scariest part was that it looked to be a younger snake and I remember my uncle telling me once that the younger ones have more concentrated venom which clearly made this a problem I didn’t need right now. I felt like it sensed the fact that I used to carry a keychain made from a real rattlesnake’s tail that my uncle had killed on his property. But it wasn’t looking for an apology. It was as scared of me as I was of it and the only thing that would end this standoff was for me to back the hell off as calmly as possible. I kept an eye on it as I shouted for Ricky to stop where he was and let me come and get him. I was too late.

The shot rang out loud and clear, almost numbing my senses. If there were any birds left who somehow hadn’t gotten the message that the world was ending, they would’ve fluttered out of the trees in an instant. Instead the boom echoed into silence. It was definitely a shotgun round and judging by the thud and rustle of plants I heard after the shot, it had fulfilled its intended purpose. I backed away from the snake more quickly than I would have liked which made it strike at me but I had distanced myself enough that it was over a foot away from making contact. I don’t think it was actually trying to bite me. That was just its way of telling me not to come back, which I had no problem with. I resisted the urge to run into the brush and make sure Ricky was alright. I was pretty sure he
wasn’t
alright and I was also sure that I didn’t want to get bitten or blown up trying to recover what will most likely be a corpse.

I grabbed a stick and rustled the leaves where I remember Ricky walking in. For good measure I grabbed a small rock and threw it a few feet in to see if there were any other snakes, badgers, or whatever other kind of feral horror shows that may be waiting to end my life before the undead get their chance. I heard a rattle but it was faint so I brushed a few leaves aside to see a mangled mess of blood and bone splashed across a swathe of plants. I immediately dropped to my butt, which only served to give me an even gorier view of what was left of Ricky’s body. The scatter shot had completely disintegrated his right shoulder and most of the right side of his neck and face. If I’d wanted to look for a pulse, I’d have to find his carotid artery laying on the ground somewhere which should give me any answer I need about his chances of survival. I told myself to look away but I couldn’t. I almost wanted to see it. I’m convinced this won’t be the last time I see something like this and the quicker I get used to it the better. I craned my neck a bit to survey the rest of his body. His feet were dug into the ground and his legs were tangled up in a position that made it look like he was getting ready to do some crunches. The faint rattle I heard made sense now as I saw the right side of his face, the side not completely blown off. A rattlesnake had attacked him, perhaps after his body collapsed, and it currently had its fangs stuck in the one eye he had left. I could see it struggling to get free as it tried to maneuver the unfamiliar viscous fluid of the eye. Every once in a while its tail would rattle not as a warning but as a sign that it was using every ounce of strength and torque that it could muster to try and get out of this slowly rotting prison. Usually when rattlesnakes get their fangs caught in something they simply snap off but the unusual texture of the human eye was neither solid enough to get a good grip nor soft enough to allow the fangs to slide right out. It would probably be humorous if it weren’t right in front me. Instead I just sat there in silence as a strange feeling of lucid euphoria began to blanket my whole body.