Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (28 page)

The four of them walked out of the cabin and down to Andy’s
new storage building. Andy opened the side door and held it open as they all
went in. Michelle looked around, nose catching the faint scent that told of
recently poured cement. She saw the little backhoe was parked inside, as was
his farm tractor and snow machine. Three of the walls were covered with
pegboard, and almost every square inch of it had various tools, knickknacks and
odds and ends suspended from a wide variety of peg hooks. Just in front of the
closed garage door was an empty area on the floor, probably where Andy kept the
Gator that Eric had. The right side of the shop, orienting from the garage door
entrance was lined with a long workbench. Underneath it, Andy had built
cabinets and shelving units—all neatly labeled with their alleged contents. He
walked over to the bench and pulled a large box off one of the shelves labeled
“miscellaneous computer parts.” Two more identical boxes soon followed. Samantha
had started going through the first box before the second hit the floor. Michelle
leaned against the workbench and watched impatiently, anxious to get on the
road.

Samantha was assembling the various gizmos, whatnots and
widgets into different piles, accompanied by words like “Definitely this . . . no
. . . I doubt it . . . no . . . no . . . maybe . . .”

Andy stopped her for a moment to point out two small
parabolic satellite dish antennas hanging from the back pegboard. Both of them
had coils of cable already attached to some sort of centerpiece on the dish.

“Where did you get these, and why do they have DOD style
LNB’s mounted on them? These are military issue, aren’t they?”  Samantha asked.

“I’m retired Air Force . . . computer specialist . . . let’s
leave it at that for now,” he said, adding, “I think you’ll have better luck
working with those then with the dish I used for my civilian Internet access.”

Garret disappeared while Andy and Samantha spent the next
half hour talking in geek about possibilities for building their uplink. Michelle
wandered away and occupied herself by triple checking all of the supplies for
the hopefully short trip to Fort Hammer. After satisfying herself that it was
as good as it was going to get, she went back into the garage to pry Andy away
from Samantha so they could get moving. Andy and Samantha were talking about
“time division multiple access, signal latency and block upconverters” . . . it
wouldn’t have surprised Michelle to hear the words “warp drive” come out of
either of their mouths, and it wouldn’t have mattered, because the unease
Michelle had felt earlier this morning was coming back. Maybe even kicking up a
notch or two, and Michelle could feel herself chomping at the bit. She was just
about to grab Andy by the ear when Garrett burst in and said, “Samantha, this
old dude has a kick ass gaming system. Shoot, he’s got at least as many games
as you did.”

Andy started to reply but Michelle cut him off. “Andy, we
have to go, OK?”

He nodded, asking Samantha if she had any questions on where
things were located. She didn’t.

“All right, we’re gonna be heading out. If everything goes
right we’ll be back sometime after dark. If not, then we’ll be back as soon as
we can. Walter may stop up to check on you if he has time. Remember what I told
you about the limitations of the solar power, so use the little generator
anytime you need power. And don’t forget to lock the bear bar over the door at
night. And don’t throw too much wood in the stove at once. And remember . . .”

Michelle grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out the door. She
could hear Garrett and Samantha laughing all the way to the truck.

RRRRRrrrrrrrr . . . . . . RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRggggggggggggggggg .
. . The sound of the chainsaw reverberated through the early morning stillness,
it’s pitch varying inversely to the diameter of log the husky man was driving
it into. Augustus “Gus” Jansen shifted his feet to the left, ducking under
another small limb to get closer to the next section of trunk. He was working
on an aspen that varied from about six inches thick at the top end, all the way
down to almost eighteen inches near the base. It was one of, well . . . several
hundred he guessed, that were pushed down and piled up at the edge of the
campground.

“Comfort team, huh . . . you feel very comfortable yet, Gus?”
The question was huffed out by a balding man in his mid-fifties who was dressed
in Carhartts and chomping on the stub of a very smelly cheap cigar.

Gus chuckled and replied, “Let me tell you what Travis, I’ve
been stuck in an office sharing a seat with my ass for the last twenty-three
years, so any chance to get outside and work with my hands again is something
that I’ll not let pass me by.”

Travis shook his head and watched as the wood chips spewed
out of the next cut in the aspen. With another sigh, he sent a puff of acrid
blue stink rising upwards before resuming his duty of gathering the cut
sections and moving them out toward the road, where the third part of their
“comfort team” would load them into a wheelbarrow and move them up to the spot
designated for the central supply. They’d already been working throughout the
morning, and after another half hour they’d switch out with the afternoon crew.
On his fourth trip up from the woodpile in the last ten minutes, Travis noticed
the large white pickup truck that belonged to the jarhead old man with the
shotgun. The truck was moving slowly past the campground office and heading
toward the exit. Travis could see several vague silhouettes inside the truck,
but the distance made their identity unclear. Probably the cops, he thought. Lazy
bastards . . . if they wanted to prove how tough they were, they should come
down here and move all this firewood. That thought still lingered as he took
another puff off of his “three for ninety-nine cents” convenience store special
cigar. Swiveling his gaze to the left, he saw that Glenda was almost back with
a wheelbarrow. Glenda, together with her husband Leonard, made up the rest of
the morning shift comfort team. They took turns ferrying the wheelbarrow back
and forth from the edge of the dirt road where Travis was stacking it, up to
the campground where it was being piled near the top of Blue Heron loop.

“What do you think Travis, maybe two or three more trips
until our shift is over?” Glenda asked cheerfully.

People who were in a perpetually good mood bugged the crap
out of Travis. This fat cow of a woman, who didn’t even have the courtesy to
breathe heavy after pushing a heavy wheelbarrow all the way up to the
campground and back was no exception. Her rosy cheeks and smile lines offered a
hazy similarity to his second ex wife, whom he despised. Shaking his head, he
replied, “I imagine.”

Behind them the sound of the chainsaw racing through smaller
limbs was suddenly cut off. Glenda peered around Travis’s shoulder, trying to
locate Gus through the thick brush. “Gus . . . are you OK?” There was no
answer.

Glenda looked at Travis briefly before calling out again,
louder this time. “Hey Gus, are you OK?”

“Yeah, I just threw a chain. Workin’ on it. Be ready in a
few.” Gus’s voice came up faint and defused from somewhere behind the brush.

Feeling relieved, Glenda started loading the wheelbarrow with
the chunks of wood. Travis looked down at the woman who was still managing to
smile and breathe normally despite hefting the heavy sections of aspen into the
cart. The sooner it was loaded, the sooner he wouldn’t have to watch that
persistent cherubic expression on her face. He bent down to help.

Back at the woodpile, Gus had just finished snugging up the
second lock nut to the correct tension against the metal housing of the
chainsaw’s sprocket guard. Too loose and the bar would drop down, too tight and
he wouldn’t be able to turn the chain adjustment screw. His hands were coated
with the thick, viscous bar oil and sawdust mixture that had come from
underneath the sprocket guard, but he didn’t care. The smell and feel reminded
him of working summers on his uncle’s farm in South Carolina. That had been
what . . . about thirty years ago maybe?  Judging from the accumulated dents,
dings, scratches and scars that decorated almost every inch of the chainsaw,
there was a good possibility that it had been around since that time as well. A
few minutes later the job was complete. Gus stood up, put his hands on his
ample love handles and arched his back, stretching out his shoulders and neck. Satisfied
that he hadn’t done any permanent damage from the morning’s labor, he stooped
back down to start the saw. Grasping the black rubber pull with his right hand,
he steadied the ancient machine with his foot and left hand. Three cranks later
it still had not caught. Gus paused to wipe a bead of sweat from the corner of
his eye, rolled his neck to loosen up the kinks, and bent down for another try.
This time the old machine fired up on the first pull. He revved up the RPM’s
and was just about to make his first cut when his nose wrinkled under the
assault of a foul smell. It reminded him immediately of a garbage can filled
with dirty diapers. What the heck, Gus thought, did I just shit myself?  He
turned slightly to the right and froze. Five feet away from him was a gray-skinned
boy, maybe fifteen years old. He was dressed in only a t-shirt and gym shorts,
and should’ve been freezing to death on this cold morning. If the boy was cold,
he gave no indication of it. Scarlet eyes locked on to Gus as the boy advanced
two steps. Gus was frozen with fear, his hands still locked on the chainsaw
that was idling in his grasp. Another step and the gray skin boy lunged
forward, locking onto Gus’s forearms with a vice-like grip. Startled out of his
daze by the strength of the teenager, Gus squeezed the throttle all the way and
twisted the screaming saw up into and completely through his attacker’s right
arm. The boy never even blinked. Panic shot through Gus as the boy shoved him
to the ground and tore into his heavy parka, searching for the flesh beneath. Gus
still had ahold of the chainsaw and tried to bring it to bear against his
attacker, but something twisted his neck sharply to the left. Eyes rolling
upwards with terror, his vision registered a second attacker for a split second
before the blood pouring from the stump of his first attacker sprayed into his
eyes, blinding him. The shock and horror of his predicament barely had time to
register before he felt teeth sinking into his neck, trapping his scream and
sealing his fate. The overpowering stench of human waste drifted in with his
final breath.

Travis finished helping Glenda load the wheelbarrow and
watched as the happy, bovine-faced lady pushed the load back towards the
campground. Behind him he could hear the idling of Gus’s chainsaw. After a few
seconds the RPM’s spiked up as Gus got ready, he imagined, to tackle another
fallen tree. Well, this ought to be the last one before the afternoon shift
took over. Travis had two thirds of a bottle of whiskey that he was looking
forward to sharing with no one, and after two, maybe three more trips down to
the work area and back up to the road, his ass was going to be in a chair with
a cigar in one hand and that whiskey bottle in the other. That thought imbued
him with enough energy to head down the short trail to where Gus’s chainsaw had
stopped again.

A couple dozen steps later he called out, “What’s the matter
Gus, you throw another blade?  Or are you just laying down on the job?” Another
twenty feet and the trail did a quick dogleg to the left. Travis froze. Gus was
on the ground and two gray-skinned teenagers were bent over him, ripping,
tearing, and shredding his clothes. And skin. And muscle. With a sickening
snap, Travis added bones to the list. One of the boys looked up; eyes that were
the color of Travis's “arrest me red” Mustang GT that he had lost to his first
wife in the divorce locked on to him. Travis began backing away. Two steps,
three . . . four. Spinning away from the horrific scene, Travis ran smack into two
small, brown-haired girls wearing Hannah Montana pajamas. With a smile they looked
up at him. Their eyes were the same color as the urine stream running down the
inside of Travis’s Carhartts.

It was almost 3:00 PM by the time they made it back out to
the highway. They turned right onto 704 and headed west—the sun riding low in
the sky made Michelle wish for her shades, but they were back in the Tahoe. Five
minutes of uneventful travel went by before they saw the first person walking
down the road about a quarter mile in front of them.

“Andy, stop,” Michelle said.

He eased off the gas and gradually braked, slowing them to a
bare crawl.

Michelle said, “I’m just wondering what our plan is for when
we meet people. Do we swerve and avoid, do we stop and talk?  If they won’t
move out of the way do we run them down?  We need some kind of a plan on how to
handle that situation, because we’ve only been on the road five minutes and
it’s already in front of us.”

Andy thought about it for while, still creeping slowly
forward along the road. Finally he said, “I think we need to err on the side of
caution. I don’t know how many people we’re going to run into—maybe just a few,
maybe hundreds, or thousands. Most of them are probably gonna be honest folks
just looking for a little help—and I’ve nothing against helping them—but
sometimes things that are started with the best of intentions end up
snowballing out of control. The only things in the bed of the truck are spare
tires and the fuel transfer tank, and it’s bolted to the sides and locked. So
if it’s just people needing a ride between here and where we turn off this
road, I don’t have a problem with that as long as they ride in the back. If we
run into infected people, I think our best bet is to avoid conflict except as a
last resort. What about you, any thoughts?”

They talked it over for a few more minutes as the figure
ahead of them got further away. Michelle agreed with Andy’s assessment of being
cautious, but was a little more on the fuzzy side of how they were going to
determine whether somebody was infected or not short of looking into their
eyes.

“Let’s just try and do the best we can,” Andy said.

Michelle agreed and reached into her pack that was laying on
the bench seat behind them. She grabbed her old pair of Nikon 7-15 zoom binoculars
and focused them up ahead. Andy pulled back onto the road and accelerated. About
one hundred yards from the figure, he slowed as she tried for a better look. The
low magnification showed a male dressed in some type of workout clothing or
jogging suit, still walking away from them. Andy hit the horn and the figure
slowed as he looked back over his shoulder. Then he stopped, turned around, and
started walking towards the truck. Michelle cranked it the binoculars to the
maximum magnification, but his head was slightly down and she couldn’t tell
anything else. She didn’t see any obvious blood or wounds though.

“Andy, you just be ready to get us out of here if this goes
wrong, OK?” He acknowledged with a grunt and nod.

The man got closer and closer, walking steadily down the
center of the road. When he was about twenty yards away, Michelle opened the
door halfway and yelled for him to stop. He did.

“So far, so good,” Andy quipped.

“Stay where you are, don’t come any closer—not even one step—do
you understand me?” she shouted.

“Yes, I understand.” The guy answered in a raspy voice.

Michelle slowly edged out of the truck, racked a shell into
the chamber of the shotgun, and put the bead on the man’s forehead.

“You move, I shoot . . . do you understand?” she said.

“If I move, you’re going to shoot me . . . I got it,” he
answered.

Michelle approached slowly, studying him. Mid-thirties,
Reebok windbreaker, three-day-old beard, glasses.

“Take off your glasses and show me your eyes, open them wide,
got it?”

He nodded his head and took off his glasses, then used his
thumb and pointer finger to manually widen his eyes. They were clear.

Michelle relaxed a little bit, but still kept the gun pointed
at him. “I don’t know what your name is and I don’t care. We have nothing to
offer you except a ride along this road in the direction we’re going. The ride
will be in the bed of the truck, not inside. The ride will end in about thirty
miles when we reach our turnoff, or if you decide you want out earlier, or . .
. if you cause any trouble. There may be other passengers we pick up along the
way, they will be treated the same as you provided they’re not infected. If you
interfere, or even interrupt while I’m deciding whether to offer them a ride,
your ride will end. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

He shook his head vigorously up and down, but then stopped
and tentatively raised his left hand.

“What is it?” she asked.

His hoarse voice scratched out, “I know you said you couldn’t
offer anything except a ride, and I’m very much appreciative for it, but I’m
wondering if you might know where I could get some water?”

“I can provide that for you. Stand by the side of the road
and when the truck stops next to you, climb in over the tailgate and take a
seat. I’ll leave a jug of water back there.”

Without a word he stepped to the edge of the road. Michelle
backpedaled until she got to the truck, then grabbed a one gallon water jug and
a Styrofoam cup and set them inside the bed before getting back in the cab. She
told Andy almost verbatim what she’d told the guy on the road. He approved and
pulled slowly forward. Like a well choreographed dance, the passenger followed
through with his part and they were on the way again. The next ten miles saw
three repeats of the same scenario. They were starting to pass a lot of
vehicles that were pulled off the side of the road. Out of gas, out of time or
out of hope—Michelle couldn’t say which. And truth be told, her heart was
aching as she thought about what might be taking place in a million different
spots across the country. Plus, she was worried about Eric. There was a little
rise up ahead, and Michelle saw several RV’s pulled off along the south side of
the road. One of the four passengers in the truck bed knocked on the back
window and pointed in that direction. Michelle nodded as Andy started slowing
down. Two people came out from between the line of RV’s and walked toward them.
Andy stopped about fifty yards away and let the passenger get out. He said
thank you through the window and walked toward the two figures. About twenty
feet away from them he stopped. He waved his hand in greeting, and then he
paused for a second in confusion. A few seconds later he started backpedaling. It
quickly became a full fledged sprint.

Andy rolled down his window and shouted, “Get back in the
truck.” The man didn’t need any further encouragement. Andy threw it in reverse
and backed about one hundred yards down the road. The two figures were following
slowly. Michelle turned around and slid over the front seat into the back;
unlocked the sliding glass window and said, “What happened?”

“I don’t know, my RV is the furthest one up there on the
left, those other ones weren’t there when I ran out of gas. Those people on the
road, there’s something wrong with them . . . oh man, we are so screwed . . .”

He kept babbling and wouldn’t answer anything else, so she
slid back into the front seat and grabbed the binoculars again, focusing on the
two approaching. The one in front was a female, the one behind was male. He was
outpacing her by about double, probably due to the compound fracture she had on
her left leg below the knee. Michelle focused on their eyes as best as she
could. Twenty yards away they converged and she could tell their eyes were
solid red.

“Andy, they’re both infected, get us out of here.”

Andy gave it gas and shot forward, swerving around them. Both
of the walkers made what looked like halfhearted attempts to swipe at the truck
as it moved past. About one hundred yards beyond the RV’s the same passenger
thumped the side of the truck again. Andy looked in the rearview mirror to make
sure he was clear of the infected before slowing a bit. Another one hundred
yards and he pulled off. The RV owner slid off the back of the tailgate and
stood there, hand raised in the air. Apparently, Michelle thought, passenger
number one had given them the rundown on how to talk to us. She rolled her eyes
toward Andy, shaking her head to try and dissuade the migraine that she could
foresee in her future. He shrugged his shoulders saying, “Your call.”

Michelle closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths,
consciously letting the stress and aggravation seep out and away before she
answered, “Mr. Question.”

“What?”

He looked back over his shoulders to judge the distance
between himself and the approaching infected. Apparently satisfied that he had
several minutes at least, he said, “Um, first off, thank you for giving me a
ride. I really appreciate it, and I know you said you didn’t want to hear our
names, but I’m Charles. So like I said, thanks for the lift.” He took another
look over his shoulder and then back at us before continuing. “I . . . well I
was hoping that . . . you see it’s like . . . OK, I’m just gonna say it. I’ve
got nowhere to go. I don’t want to be dropped off on this road when you turn
off to wherever you’re going, and you’ve made it clear to all of us that we
can’t go with you. My RV is out of diesel, but at least it’s a place where I
can sleep in basic comfort until somebody else comes along. However, there
seems to be an issue with a couple of sick people who may disagree with my
return to the RV.”

He stopped talking, almost looking like he was afraid that he
had already said too much. Michelle grimaced—unsure of what to do—there were
already too many things fighting for space inside her head as it was. Thank God
for Andy, who cut in with the voice of wisdom and said, “This may be the
perfect opportunity to try out the little silenced 22.”

He was right of course, Michelle thought, and they had
Charles get back in the truck. He was only too happy to oblige. Andy pulled
away again, giving them a little more room to come up with a plan. They ended
up having Andy turn around and quarter the truck slightly across the road with Michelle’s
window on the approach side. That way, she was able to lean out and use the
side view mirror as a rest. At twenty-five yards away Michelle cut loose with
the first shot, swearing in frustration as she learned how difficult it was to
keep a laser beam on the forehead of a moving target, even a slowly moving
target. A quick thought passed through her head, recalling every action movie she’d
ever seen. Like when the bad guy is standing there with a little red dot on his
chest and the camera pans away so you can see the shooter 250 yards away . . .
and the shooter is just standing upright with no support . . . no bipod—nothing—yet
the red dot stays rock steady on the other guys chest. Verisimilitude, she
thought it was called. “Willing suspension of disbelief,” or something like
that. Kind of like when you were a kid and you knew that Godzilla was just some
guy in a rubber lizard suit, but for the length of the movie you let your mind convince
you that it really was a 500 foot tall reptile stomping on Japan. Verisimilitude
or not, at twenty yards she fired again. Missed again.
Breathe in—breathe
out halfway
. . . She pulled the trigger at fifteen yards, missing again.

“Andy, get ready to take us out of here,” she said.

“Easy girl, just relax and squeeze the trigger.” He made the
word “squeeze” last about three seconds.

At twelve yards Michelle drilled him. He didn’t blow
backwards twenty-five feet, again, like in some of those movies. His head didn’t
explode either. He just kind of . . . “locked up” for a second, then his knees
buckled and he fell down face forward, smacking into the asphalt with a
sickening crunch as the cartilage in his nose crumpled. She took aim and
dropped another round through the top of his head. The second target was both
easier and harder. Easier because she was even slower, harder because her
broken leg gave her gait more of a “hop along” motion. Michelle dropped her
around seventeen yards away. Andy locked the truck and they did a quick sweep
through the RV’s, finding nothing alive, or “unalive” as the case may be. They did
find several bodies; it looked like they died from the infection, not by
“zombiecide” as Charles put it. In the end, all four of the passengers elected
to stay here rather than be put out along the side of the road when Andy and
Michelle turned off. Probably a smart choice. They kept the goodbyes short and
were on the road again by 4:30 PM. They passed several more stalled vehicles,
swerved or dodged around about a dozen people, many of which they assumed were
infected by the way they acted. They were wrong about one though, figuring it
out when he threw an empty beer bottle at the side of the truck as they drove
by. About a mile from their turnoff Andy pointed to a lady up ahead waving a stick
with a bright yellow shirt tied onto it. She was standing next to an orange
minivan that had some type of trailer hitch platform attached. Andy coasted to
a stop far enough away to let Michelle use the binoculars. From that distance
she looked normal. Andy drove up and Michelle gave her the standard speech. Her
shoulders slumped and she leaned on the stick for support, shaking her head and
fighting back tears.

“Please, can you just help us out with some gas. I’ve got my
kids with me and we’re all tired and cold. I can pay you, please . . . just a
gallon or two,” she was sobbing by the end.