No Easy Hope - 01 (15 page)

After I got a mile or so away from the development, I saw no more of the undead. The road was clear all the way back home. I parked my truck in the garage, and took the pack with the newly acquired supplies down to the bunker. After arming my security system, I sat down at the kitchen table to clean my guns. As I worked, I mulled over the day’s events, and realized that I had to think of  new ways to gather supplies without drawing the undead to me. The truck was great, but it made too much noise. My theory that the undead would not find my house seemed to be correct. If they were close by, not only should I have seen some of them by now, but they would have been drawn to the sound of the truck. That meant I could use the truck to get close to a source of supplies, but would have to proceed on foot afterward.

I wrote down a few ideas, and then helped myself to some of the linguine and marinara sauce I had liberated that morning. Pasta is my favorite food in the whole wide world, and my own supply had run out a week earlier. I was craving it something fierce. After eating, I thought about Gabe, and wondered how he was making out up in Morganton. I also thought about my own situation, and began to have serious doubts about my long-term survival chances. The food I took from my scouting run, in addition to what I already had before, was enough to live on for three weeks. But then what? Go on another dangerous supply run? I had gotten lucky this time. If there had been any more undead around the truck when I reached it, I would have been forced to abandon it and flee on foot. How long would it take me to hike back there to retrieve it, if I even could? I could not stay at my house indefinitely. Sooner or later, I would have to leave and make my way north to Morganton. My best chance for survival lay in reaching Gabriel. Working together, our chances for survival would be far greater than trying to go at it alone.

Several months before the outbreak, at Gabe’s insistence, I purchased a map of North Carolina and marked out several different routes leading to Morganton. On a good day, it was only an hour or so drive. If the roads were clear, I could be there tomorrow. If they weren’t, I could use the map to find alternate routes. I went into the storage unit to inventory my supplies. It didn’t take very long. As I stared at the pitifully empty shelves, I knew what I had to do. It was time to get on the road.

Chapter 6

I thought it would be easy. Just load up the truck, plot out a route, and enjoy the ride. It should have been nice and quiet. Maybe I would have to dodge the occasional undead, or broken down car, but no major obstacles, right?

Wrong.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The day after my nearly disastrous supply run, I loaded up the truck for the trip to Gabriel’s place. I packed the rest of my food in a few boxes, as well as four ten gallon Gerry cans of water. All of the clothing I brought fit into one large suitcase, and I only took the toughest and most durable stuff I owned. I brought all of my guns, grenades, and ammo except for the Bushmaster M4A3carbine, and the Sig .40 caliber pistol. I left the two guns and a few hundred rounds of ammo for each on my front porch. I unlocked my front door and taped a letter to it.

Dear whoever,

I’m leaving these guns behind with the hope that someone will find them and use them responsibly. Guns should be used to protect people, so don’t do anything stupid with them. My house is yours for as long as you like. I won’t be needing it anymore. There is a nice surprise waiting for you in the basement. Look behind the dryer. And yes, I paid a lot of money for it.

Enjoy.

Sincerely,

E.R.

P.S.- Please don’t take my toolbox. I know it’s big and pretty, but it was a gift. Lord willing, I’d like to come back for it someday.

After leaving a parting gift for whatever lucky soul found my house, I spent a good forty-five minutes wandering around my garage trying to figure out ways to bring as many of my tools as possible. I rearranged the gear in the truck’s bed through at least ten permutations in an effort to create more space. By moving the suitcase into the passenger seat, I managed to fit a small toolbox, bolt cutters, my crowbar, a gasoline powered generator, and my arc welder. Maybe I would need them, maybe I wouldn’t. It’s a hard thing for a man to do, walking away from his tools.

Before leaving, I picked some flowers from the flowerbed in my front yard and laid them on top of Vanessa’s grave. I knelt beside her resting place to pay my last respects. A wave of guilt came over me as I spoke to her for the last time.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Vanessa.” I said to the cold ground. “I should have tried harder to get you to stay with me. If I had, you might still be alive, for what that’s worth.”

I looked up at the tree line, imaging the undead staggering around between the tall trees. My heart sank as I thought about what kind of world remained for those of us who survived the outbreak. What kind of future did we face? The cold weight of despair settled heavily onto my mind.

“Then again, maybe you’re the lucky one. Your suffering is over. I got the feeling mine is just getting started.” I picked up a handful of earth from her grave and let it run slowly through my fingers.

“Rest easy, beautiful. I’ll always remember you the way you were. If I can, I’ll try to come back here some day and make a proper headstone for you. I hope you find peace wherever you are. This world ain’t such a nice place anymore.”

I stood up and fished my keys out of my pocket as I walked away. I drove the truck to the front of the house and got out to take one last look at my home. I am not ashamed to admit that I had a lump in my throat as I prepared to leave for the last time. This was my dream home. I spent a boatload of money having the place built, and I loved every square inch of it. As hard as it was, I knew that making my way north to Morganton and teaming up with Gabriel presented the best chance I had for long-term survival. I said one final goodbye, and got back in the truck.

The trip to Morganton was only supposed to take about an hour and a half. I had driven there at least a hundred times, and knew the way like the back of my hand. I left home at about ten in the morning, and I expected to be at Gabriel’s before noon.

At noon, I was nowhere near Gabriel’s place.

The trouble started as I headed south to get on highway 16. As I neared the town of Lucia, I saw increasing numbers of cars parked on the side of the road. Eventually, the cars became so dense that they blocked traffic completely in the southbound lane, and I had to drive on the wrong side of the road to make any progress. As I passed the cars, I looked inside them to see if there were any signs of the drivers. All but a few were empty, and the occupants of the ones that weren’t thrashed and moaned as I drove by. After seeing a few of the undead trapped in their cars, I stopped looking. The sight of all those pathetic, hungry creatures trapped in a steel prison was just too unsettling.

I kept a slow pace on the hilly, winding two-lane road. As I crested a hill near a shopping center adjacent to a large suburban neighborhood, I saw why so many of the cars on the road were empty. There was a large horde of the undead milling aimlessly about the intersection to highway 16. The parking lot of the strip mall ahead of me, and the gas station to my left, were littered with corpses, both walking and non-walking. It looked like the local law enforcement had tried to set up a barricade in the intersection to stop the horde from reaching the houses just beyond the road. Several of the undead wore police uniforms. One of them clutched a pistol with the slide locked to the rear in its bloody fist. The cop must have emptied all of his ammo before succumbing to the horde. At least he went down fighting.

I slowed to a halt atop the hill and considered my next move. I couldn’t drive down into the intersection without attracting the attention of several hundred undead. On the other hand, if I turned back I would have to find a safe place to consult my atlas and find an alternate route to 16 North. I watched the infected for a few moments and noticed that although there were a lot of them, they were fairly well spaced apart. If I moved quickly, and dodged as many as I could, I should be able to make it through them without getting stuck. I rolled up both of my windows and accelerated down the hill.

As I neared the intersection, the undead noticed my truck and dozens of vacant, bloody faces swiveled in my direction. I heard their moaning over the sound of the truck’s engine, even though the windows were up. The sound was a catalyst that quickly had every corpse in shouting distance homing in on my truck and stumbling towards me as fast as their awkward legs could carry them. I sped up to get through the crowd before they could converge and block my path by sheer force of numbers.

I reached the first of them at over forty miles an hour and swerved off the road into the gas station parking lot to avoid a clump of six or seven infected. I circled around to my left and just barely missed taking my mirror off on an SUV parked in front of the fuel pump. I spun the steering wheel back to my right and stepped on the gas, shot through a gap between two large groups of undead, and swerved back onto the road. A loose skirmish line of walking dead stood between me and the highway. I feathered the brakes and slowed down to less than twenty miles an hour before I hit them. I cursed as I realized that I was going to have to take a few of them out to get clear. Thankfully, I had a large steel brush guard mounted to the front of the truck, and I hoped that it would bear the worst of the damage. If one of them punctured my radiator, I could be in serious trouble.

Slowing down turned out to be a good idea. The horde was too slow to react to me weaving through the main body of their number and they had yet to converge on my truck. I was only going fifteen miles an hour when I hit the last of them. Two corpses bounced off the edges of the brush guard, and rolled ass over heels away from the truck. I hit a third one straight on and it fell directly beneath the front end. I felt it tumbling and thumping against the underside of the truck as I drove over it, and had to bite back a wave of nausea as I heard its bones crunch under my back tires. As I cleared the horde, I sped up and left them behind as fast as I dared to go. I came around a curve and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a long stretch of clear road ahead of me. I slowed down and checked the rearview mirror. The horde was still stumbling in my direction, but I would soon be far ahead of them. I relaxed a bit and focused on driving for a few miles. Right as I was just beginning to think that the worst of the trouble was behind me, I ran into an even tighter spot than the one back at the intersection.

I came around a sharp corner on a steep downhill slope and damn near ran headlong into the back of a massive traffic pileup. I was going faster than I should have been, and only had an instant to react. I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop just inches away from the back bumper of a canary yellow H2.

I sat in the cab of my truck for a few moments willing my pulse to slow down, and looked at the carnage in front of me. A line of cars ran down the hill in both lanes, spilling from the road to the tree line on either side of the highway. I could see down the hill that the pileup spanned nearly a quarter of a mile to a bridge over a broad, swift running creek. The ground, where it wasn’t covered with every make and model of automobile under the sun, was littered with corpses. I got out of my truck to investigate. It quickly became clear that there was no way I was getting around this little catastrophe.

I climbed up into the bed of the truck and onto the roof. I shaded my eyes with one hand as I tried to see what had caused the pileup. I made out the shape, and distinctive olive drab color, of military vehicles parked across the entrance to the bridge forming a makeshift barricade. I climbed down long enough to fish my binoculars out of a box and took another look at the bridge. The military vehicles parked across the entrance to the bridge were armored personnel carriers with machine gun turrets on their roofs. Large caliber bullet holes riddled the cars directly in front of the barricade, less than ten feet away.

A dead soldier lay motionless, draped over one of the gun turrets. A long streak of blood ran down the side of the APC beneath him. A waist-high pile of dead bodies carpeted the ground between the barricade and the foremost cars. Withering fire from the heavy machine guns had literally torn many of them apart. Severed limbs and streams of entrails lay strewn about the heaps of dead bodies. Some of them still moved, struggling and crawling through the pile. I lowered my binoculars and turned away. Sitting down on the roof of the truck, I clenched my jaw and swallowed hard against the bile that rose in my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to erase the image from my memory. For a moment, I focused so hard on not losing my shit that I forgot the danger I was in.