Born In The Apocalypse (20 page)

Chapter 43

We moved north, passing dozens of old stores and buildings. The tree-lined street was quiet, and the snow on the ground gave us good warning of any activity in the area. We saw several large groups of footprints, and on a couple of occasions we saw smaller numbers. The Trippers were easy to identify. All we had to do was look for the bare feet. The people who might be alive wore boots, and sometimes there were tracks of wagons, sleds, and the odd dog.

“Did you notice all of the tracks we’ve seen, they were all headed south?” Trey asked.

“And we’re headed north,” I replied.

“Are we the stupid ones?”

“Maybe there will be no one left by the time we get there,” I said hopefully.

Trey didn’t bother to answer that one.

We stayed close to trees and the edges of the roads, making ourselves as invisible as possible. Trippers could see well enough, but daylight seemed to hurt their eyes. Never could tell with them, though.

We crossed a major road, and to the west I could see large buildings. They were enormous and seemed to go on for a long time. We saw several tall buildings reaching up ten or more stories. I wondered what we could see if we went up there.

The buildings thinned out, and the road thinned as well. The trees were reaching over the road creating a kind of tunnel that blocked out light. Trey and I moved through it quickly, as neither of us much cared for things like that.

On our left was a subdivision of long houses. They were two stories tall, but they looked like three houses put together. It was an odd thing to see, but what made it more odd was every door on every house was open.

“Wonder why those doors are like that?” I asked.

“Maybe looters wanted to know which houses they had already been to,” Trey said.

“I don’t know; it seems really weird to me. Something’s not right,” I said.

“What’s the matter?” Trey asked.

“Well, there’s just something wrong. Oh, hell.”

“Run!”

“I don’t know where we’re going!”

“Just
run
!”

I took off to the north, following the road we had been on. There looked to be a large forest ahead of us, and if we could make it, it would slow down the Trippers that had poured out of the buildings like a diseased avalanche. Several of them were pretty fast walkers, and we were hard pressed to keep ahead of them. Our legs weren’t as long, and we could hear them wheezing as they got closer and closer.

“We ain’t gonna make it, Josh!” Trey yelled, trying to keep up. We ran around a corner and followed another road north. The woods to our left were sparse and would hardly have slowed this crowd down. A quick look behind me showed at least a hundred if not more of the damned things.

“Hang on! Just keep going!” I was panting now, trying to stay ahead of the Trippers who had outpaced their kin, and were closing fast. I drew the string back on my bow, and suddenly stopped and turned, swinging my weapon around. The Tripper was a lot closer than I thought, and I could see his splotched face with his bloodshot eyes barreling down on me.

I didn’t even aim, I just let the string go by instinct. I didn’t wait to see what happened, I just whipped another arrow out of my quiver and shot the next closest one. This one was a woman, her face twisted with rage. Dark circles were around her eyes, and her hands were twisted. Her fingers were black with strips of flesh hanging down from her nails.

I didn’t need any more reason than her hands to shoot her in the face.

After my second shot I turned and ran, having put down our two closest pursuers. Trey had stopped a little further up the way than I had, and he was kneeling with his crossbow up. The string twanged, and a bolt split the chill air, whistling as it did so. The whistle ended with a meaty crunch as the bolt found a home in the skull of a third Tripper.

“Nice shot,” I said, running by Trey.

“Thanks. Next time warn me before you do a little archery ballet,” Trey said.

“Deal. By the way, we’re out of road,”  I observed.

The street we had followed, called Justamere Road by the sign, ended abruptly into another street going east and west. The road was clear in both directions and promised easy passage for anyone taking that route. Unfortunately, that meant Trippers as well.

“Call it,” Trey said, reloading his crossbow.

“It that a trail?” I said, pointing across the street.

Trey squinted. “Sure looks like it used to be one.”

“Let’s take it,” I said. “We might get lucky and hit the river.”

Trey brought his weapon up and fired again, this time killing a teenager who was wearing a very colorful shirt. “No such thing as luck with us, man; you know that.”

“Let’s move anyway,” I said.

We took to the trail and were immediately swallowed up by trees and brush. There wasn’t much in the way of cover since the winter had stripped the leaves off everything, but the trees were thick, and we were able to make good use of the trail that wound its way further and further north. The sun was full up now, and we made good use of the daylight. As we went, we kept an eye on our backs, and I was glad to see our pursuers were having a much harder time of the forest than we were. The ones who followed us directly were having the easiest time, but the ones on the fringe were not doing well in the tangling brush.

Through the trees we could see some houses and subdivisions, and given what was following us, Trey and I decided not to push our luck and try and lose them that way. God knows we probably would have opened another nest of the sick things.

We passed by two small ponds, and if it were summer and we had a boat we could have crossed the water and waited on the other side. Trippers weren’t afraid of water, but swimming was beyond them. They usually walked in until they were over their heads and then they drowned. Dad told me the rivers were full of corpses during the bad times.

At the end of the second mile, or at least what I thought was the second mile, we stumbled out of the forest and smack into a river. It was about fifty to sixty feet across and looked like it was deep. The banks of the river were lined with trees, and there looked like the remains of another road following the river to the east.

“Sure would love to have a boat right about now,” Trey said, looking back on our trail.

“I’m tired, too, but we need to keep moving,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find something along the way. People who lived this close to water like this had to use it from time to time.”

“That makes sense,” Trey said, falling in behind me.

The trail stayed close to the river, crossing a road at one point before dipping back into the trees. The river flowed silently beside us, a place of death and life, depending on how you treated it. We followed the trail, crossing from one side to the next, but always staying with the river.

Behind us, the Trippers stayed on our trail, never stopping, never resting. They were going to run us down soon, since we never could shake them, being as close as they were.

Chapter 44

We kept going and passed an uncountable number of houses. I was beginning to see where all the Trippers we had ever seen had come from. But the homes here were tiny and clustered close together. Living here must have been hard with no privacy to speak of.

“What’s that?” Trey asked suddenly, pointing to a small structure. Leaning up against the side of the building was a silver, shell-like object.

“Our salvation,” I said. “Come on!” I ran over to the object and flipped it over. My heart leaped with relief when I saw it was a small boat. Two oars fell out as I had tipped it, and they clattered noisily to the ground.

“Is this what I think it is?” Trey asked, picking up the oars.

“Yes, it’s a boat,” I said impatiently. “I know you know what a boat is.”

“I’m just hoping it’s not exhaustion playing with our heads,” Trey said.

I took a serious look at my friend and realized he was played out. We had been moving for miles, and both of us were carrying heavy. Not to mention the fact that we were running for our lives, and the stress of that was taking its toll as well.

“Come on, let’s get it to the water.” I took one end and dragged the boat through the snow like a sled. It moved quickly until it suddenly stopped, jerking out of my hand and causing me to flip backwards. The bow I had on my pack jabbed me in the neck and in the back.

“Ouch. What the hell?” I said, painfully getting to my feet.

Trey traced a piece of rope from the boat to a small object that had lodged in a corner of the sidewalk that went around the building.

“Guess the anchor works,” he said, holding the small weight up for me to see.

I just shook my head and let him toss the anchor inside with a dull boom.

We dragged the boat to the water and had a moment when we weren’t sure what to do next. The river was lower than I expected it to be, and there was a pretty steep riverbank to get to it.

“Now what?” Trey asked. He looked down the path and saw the Trippers were getting closer by the second. “We have about two minutes, and then we’re either running or dead.”

I looked down the river and saw there was a spot where the riverbank sloped easily into the water. 
“Put the oars in and take my bow!” I said, shrugging off my pack and putting it in the boat. “Get in!”

Trey did what he was told, and I pushed him and the gear through the snow like a sled. The Trippers were about fifty yards behind me, and I could hear their wheezing in the cold air.

The boat was heavier than I thought, and I had to struggle through some thicker snow, but we got down the road towards the gentler slope, and I pushed Trey down the side. As the boat moved on its own, I gave another heave and then jumped in, adding to the momentum.

The boat slid down the riverbank and then fell a foot to the water, startling the two of us and causing me to nearly fall over the side. I caught myself just in time as Trey bopped me with an oar.

“Better get to paddling on your side,” he said.

I took the long oar and pushed us away from the bank, easing us further into the current. As I pulled the oar back in, I watched the Trippers reach the river where we had slid in. Two of them fell into the water and sank like stones. The others milled a bit before a few more tried to walk out to get us. Apparently they forgot their Jesus shoes at home because they splashed into the cold water and sank out of sight.

We drifted away from them, and Trey figured out where the oars were supposed to go. Once we got the hang of things, we moved along pretty well. Trey rowed slowly, keeping us in the center of the river, and we stayed pretty much with the current. The boat was thankfully without holes, so we were safe and dry. Not much we could do about the cold, but we were dressed pretty well for that.

We watched the banks of the river slowly drift by, and the trees gave way to buildings and homes. Creaky looking bridges crossed overhead, and dark, humorless buildings stared down at us like the trespassers we were. On one bridge, there were about twenty Trippers looking at us as we floated away. Ten of them went into the water after us, never to rise again.

The sun sparkled on the water, and I noticed it was turning from bright white to a duller orange as it set. I nudged Trey and he jumped like he had been sleeping.

“Any thoughts on where we might want to sleep tonight?” I asked. “We sure aren’t going to be home.”

“I don’t want to spend it on this boat, that’s for sure,” Trey said. “I need to be able to light a fire. I can’t seem to get warm at all.”

I looked closer at Trey, and he was actually in worse shape than I thought he was. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he might be getting sick.

“All right. If we find a spot to get ashore we will,” I said.

“When will we reach the wall?” Trey said.

“Not for miles,” I said.

“Maybe we should head south now,” Trey suggested. “We’ve lost the Trippers, and I haven’t seen any more other than the ones on that bridge.”

“All right. Let’s find a spot to get out of the water,” I said.

We rowed quietly through another area full of buildings, and on a sign over a road, I saw it was leading to I-57. Running my memory back a bit, I remembered seeing that same highway when my dad and I went east for that last time. If my head was clear, that road would take us within three miles of our own homes.

I said as much to Trey. “We need that road right there,” I said, pointing.

“You got it,” Trey said. He aimed us towards a section of the riverbank that had fallen over. The huge slab of concrete was hanging out over the water like a landing, and was just within reach of two young boys very far from home.

Trey swung the anchor and lodged it in a crack of the slab. The boat swung around, and Trey pulled us in. Looping the extra line around his arm, he climbed out of the boat, and then held the line while I took out our packs and weapons.

I climbed out, and Trey looked at me.

“What do we do with the boat?” he asked.

“If we lived closer to the water, I’d say let’s take it with us,” I said. “But since we don’t, we may as well haul it up and leave it here.”

Which we did. The hard part of pulling that boat out was keeping things quiet. There were a lot of homes and buildings around here that likely had Trippers inside, so we wanted to keep a more silent profile.

Once that was done, we headed up towards I-57 and started to make our way home, taking the highway.