900 Miles (Book 2): 900 Minutes (6 page)

The inhabitants of Avalon fell squarely into that first category, and we were in a constant state of alert from all that live
d…
or did
n’
t, outside our walls. The undeniable truth was that the ter
m“
survival of the fittest" was suddenly back in vogue.

Jarvis continued
,“
This group has me nervous, boys. I
t’
s been a while since we saw someone just driving around outside our gates. A little too fearless, like they were testing us to see what w
e’
d do
.
”

“
How close did they come
?”
Kyle asked.

“
They stayed on the far side of the field, but they just drove around while we watched them from the tower. Did
n’
t even try to hide, which is wha
t’
s got us nervous
,”
Jarvis said, turning toward Kyle.

“
Do you think i
t’
s anybody we know
?”
I asked with a slight pitch in my voice.

They all knew what I meant.

Jarvis paused and looked over toward Rodgers, then back toward Kyle and I.

“
We do
n’
t know if i
t’
s Gordon or not. He was
n’
t in the Jeep, but that does
n’
t rule him out
.
”

Gordon. The bastard who ran Avalon before the revolt. H
e’
d escaped during the mayhem seven months earlier, taking a small army with him. Disappearing behind a shroud of broken lives and a twisted landscape, he had
n’
t attacked nor tried to return since, but that made us more anxious than if he had. All we could do was assume that the over-bloated prick was either dead, had moved onto another regio
n…
or was patiently waiting for his chance to return.

Nobody knew how he escaped. Last time I had seen him, he was being carried out of the Arena by a mob that looked like they were going to tear him apar
t
…

I wish they had.

Chapter 6

Reaching down, Kyle yanked his gear up over his shoulder with a grunt. Following his lead, we grabbed our weapons and followed him toward the front wall. We set out across the Yard with the pace of men on a mission. It was time to get a better sense of what w
e’
d be going up against.

Eyeing the top of the wall, I could see a number of armed men and women standing guard as we approached. On the alert, they were posted to help take down any of the rotting dead if things got out of hand.

They almost always did.

Taking two planks at a time, I followed Kyle up a steep wooden ladder, which led to the open top of the concrete wall facing the field in front of Avalon. Even before I reached the top, I could hear them. Nearly lost in the background like the steady roar of waves on the beach, it was always ther
e—
the slow, methodical moaning of the dead.

W
e’
d been making runs every couple of weeks for at least three months. The people, who built Project Greek Island under the Greenbriar Hotel, or what we now called Avalon, had thought of everything. Food, water, air compressors, energ
y…
you name it. However, in the end, it would only last us so long, and we knew we would need to scavenge to ensure our long-term survival. As a result, we had a system for moving in and out.

“
When we get back, w
e’
ll need to clear the Yard
,”
Kyle said as he reached the top.

Catching up, I peered over the side of the wall, looking out at the dead piling over each other.

“
Whoa. No shit! We really should have cleared this last week
,”
I replied, lowering my hands to the concrete.

As I surveyed the Yard full of mangled heads bobbing up and down, one of the creatures caught my eye. He was wearing a grey t-shirt that prominently said:

“
Warning: If Zombies Chase Us,
I’
m Tripping You
.
”

I remember thinking how crazy we all were before the world went to shit.
I’
d seen people posting things on Twitter lik
e“
Ca
n’
t Wait for the Zombie Apocalyps
e”
o
r“
Wish I was a Zombie
.
”

Guess most of them were probably granted that wis
h
…

We had hundreds of movies, blogs, radio dramas, and books. We all loved them so much. That is, until the day the first zombie actually stood up and took a chunk out of someon
e’
s neck. I
t’
s ironic if you think about the fact that th
e“
zombi
e”
was kinda famous in a way. Not any particular zombie of course. Just the idea of a zombie. Children would walk around with their arms out, begging fo
r“
braaaiiins
.”
Hell, we got to a point where the number of zombies walking the streets on Halloween night would be hanging in there toe-to-toe with the likes of Dracula, the Avengers and the flippi
n’
Transformer
s
…

I
t’
s funny how that works. How something gets so big so fast. Before mass media, it used to take a lot more to rally people behind a cause. When America was first built, ou
r“
famous peopl
e”
were the ones who made the world better. Inventors, scientists, patriots, warrior
s…
these were whom Americans looked to as leader
s…
they were the ones we all looked up to. They had last names like Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. We read about these heroes in history books, learning about them as the people who changed the world. Flash forward a few hundred year
s…
and suddenly, the fastest way to become famous was to post a dimly lit sex tape on the Web.

W
e’
d fallen pretty far from grace.

“
W
e’
ll use the siren to get out of here
,”
Kyle said as he turned back toward the ladder.

“
I
t’
s been doing the trick so far
,”
I said, nodding in agreement.

Before turning to follow him down the ladder, I took one last fleeting look down to the grass waving up at us from the field. It had gotten tal
l…
too tall. There was no telling how many crawlers were out there, lurking around, hidden from sight. It was
n’
t the creatures you could see that worried m
e
… it was the ones that you could
n’
t. The
y’
d be the tricky bastards tha
t’
d get you.

Our four-person team jumped into the yellow Hummer while another four-man team pulled themselves up into a pickup that was outfitted with a large caliber machine gun bolted down in the truck bed. The weapon was great for protection against the living, but not nearly as useful against the dead. Even the most skilled gunner would find it too hard to aim with any real precision, making it nearly impossible to hit the brai
n…
on purpose anyway.

The pickup held three men in the cabin. They were all Hispanic and roughly five foot four in height. I think they were brothers, but could
n’
t understand a damn thing they said. Each of them carried a blade that rested in a black sheath across their chest.
I’
d seen them take out more creatures with those knives than any other man with a full-on automatic machine gun.

The Three Amigos were accompanied by a guy who had the best mullet that
I’
d ever seen in my life. It blew in the wind across his shoulders while the trucker hat atop his head kept the bangs out of his eyes. He seemed to have a permanent mark on the right side of his lower lip, where h
e’
d spent the majority of his life with a fist full of tobacco hidden. He manned the turret in the bed of the pickup and was clearly the right man for the job, having been a gunner in one of those military-style, armor-platted Hummers when he was based in Iraq. I had heard Kyle refer to him as a Whiskey Tango one time. When I asked him about that, he told me it was a military code for W.T. or white trash.

Hanging his arm out the passenger side door, Kyle gave the signal to a scout on the cement wall, who in turn stepped carefully over to a small gray box bolted to the cement. Lifting the cover, he revealed a red button, which he slid his hand over before looking over his shoulder back at Kyle.

As I gripped the steering wheel with a set of clammy hands, my eyes fell directly on the metal-reinforced school bus serving as the gate to Avalon. Rising in my seat as I forced a deep breath of air into my tightening chest, my thoughts were on Tyler. This would all be for him, and I knew I had to be strong for both of us. Everything counted on it.

A loud siren, perched on a tree in the far left side of the field outside the wall, shattered the silence as the scout pushed on the button. The Zs loved noise. This was a trick w
e’
d used many times before. The siren would attract the dead away from our walls and over to the far side of the field. Once the Yard was clear, or as clear as we could get it, w
e’
d roll out the front gate.

A movement in the guard tower up above caught my attention as a man holding a long sniper rifle leaned in, getting ready to play God. H
e’
d be watching from above, deciding what lived and what died.

Looking in the rearview mirror, I could make out the Three Amigos. The one in the drive
r’
s seat lifted his arm, holding two fingers out, and shook it back and forth toward the gate, signaling that they were ready.

A silent hush fell within the walls of Avalon as the driver of the bus, an older man with a long white ponytail, threw
a“
thumbs u
p”
toward us. Known to me only as Mr. Gate,
I’
d never had a proper conversation with the man. Although
I’
d certainly seen that same familiar thumb thrown up toward me countless times before. The thing about his thumb was that it was the only finger he had left on that hand. The rest had been torn off in some sort of accident. It was as if he enjoyed the look on our faces as he flashed the damn thing at us. Maybe an old ma
n’
s sick sense of humor. Maybe he was just using what he had available to him. Either way, it still turned my stomach.

The bus started up, the engine roaring a hair louder than any of us was comfortable with, as he slid it into gear and pulled forward, exposing the outside of the compound. With my white knuckles gripping the wheel, I hesitantly lifted my foot off the brake and pulled forward through the narrow exit. Even above the sound of the siren, I could hear my own heartbeat as our companions pulled out behind us and Mr. Gate quickly reversed the bus, covering our only real entrance back into Avalon.

We were officially cut off.

With my eyes drawn toward the horde of the dead, who were clawing the bark off the tree that the siren was screaming from, I stepped on the accelerator, pulling through the long waving grass in the field ahead. Even over the rumble of our engine, I could hear the crackling of the brittle blades of grass, dry from the lack of rain over the past weeks, as they were crushed by the tires below. I found myself trying to see through the green brush, watching for any creatures still lurking within its perfect camouflage.

A broken-down, blown-to-hell car rested lifelessly at the edge of the field. Lifting my eyes from the grass, I honed in on it as we approached. Less than a month earlier, we were forced to fill it full of bullet holes when a small band of, le
t’
s just sa
y“
unfriendly peopl
e”
decided to mount an attack on Avalon when we would
n’
t let them into our gates. It was increasingly difficult to know who was friend and who was foe out there.

W
e’
d reached the point where, for the safety of everybody inside, we always had to assume we were coming across the latter.

The idea of humans fighting humans was bizarre to me. There weren't enough of us left to be killing each other. The real enemy did
n’
t have a heartbeat. Luckily,
I’
d been able to hold onto the vision that Jarvis had set out for us. Preserve life, avoid conflict when possible.
I’
m not saying
I’
ve never shot toward someone.
I’
m just saying that the only thing
I’
ve ever killed at that point was a shit load of zombie
s…
and a bird that ran into my windshield while driving to work one day a few years earlier.

A small group of intruders was easy to fight off, but we were always concerned about the time when someone picked a fight with us that we knew we would
n’
t be able to win. Kyle had led the defense preparation, and we had a whole slew of what he calle
d“
countermeasure
s”
set up to protect our little world. The creatures collected in the Dead Shed outside the wall were just the tip of the iceberg.

With the grass from the field starting to get shorter, we were just yards away from the tree line, split in two by a narrow road that we used to come and go. Passing by the broken-down car, I heard Jarvis let out a small sigh of relief. Completely entranced by the siren, not one creature clawing at the tree out there had so much as glanced our way. 

His celebration was a bit premature.

A sudden but loud crack boomed from behind us. Twisting our heads back toward the cement walls, just in time to hear another go off, I heard Kyle yell
,“
Muzzle flash from the guard tower
!
”

Spinning my head around, I manically shifted my focus from mirror to mirror while trying to push the Hummer to outpace whatever the hell God was firing at.

“
I
t’
s the picku
p…
ther
e’
s two of them crawling up into the bed of the pickup
!”
I heard Rodgers call out.

Another boom and a crack as I turned to see paint chipping off the rear of the truck, the shot just narrowly missing Mr. Mullet, who was on his feet kicking at one of the creatures. The Z grabbing at Mr. Mulle
t’
s leg wore once-white baseball pants, which were now covered in enough gore to match his red baseball jersey.