Outbreak (Book 1): Emerald City (18 page)

LUKE

Matt drove the tow truck through the front gate as they returned to the Bowman Shipyard. The headlights shined on the wet asphalt as Matt pulled to a stop behind an old four door sedan which had been shot to ruin and sat smoking and leaking oil in the center of Corridor Row. “I don’t remember that being here,” Matt said.

What in the hell happened here?
Luke wondered as he pulled a drag off the cigarette in his mouth. “Yeah, no shit,” he said. “Hang out. I’ll see what’s up.” Luke got out of the truck with his cigarette clenched between his teeth and his shotgun pointed ahead of him. He slowly approached the car and saw that the trunk was open and empty, but the back seat was full of blood and trash. Luke heard movement to his right and turned with the shotgun ready as Pete came running out of the warehouse, smiling from ear to ear.

“Jesus, Pete!” Luke said. “Don’t come running up on me like that!”

“Sorry, Luke,” Pete replied. “Look what we did!”

Luke turned to Matt, who put the truck’s transmission into park and got out of the vehicle. “What happened?” he asked.

Ted came strolling out of the warehouse and grinned stupidly at the two of them.
Ugly bastard,
Luke thought. “Just taking care of business,” Ted said, still grinning.

Pete was so excited that he could hardly contain himself. “It was perfect,” he said and leaned against the sedan like it was some kind of trophy. “It went just like you said it would. This car, this little piece of shit, it went flying by on the freeway and went up the bridge. We thought maybe it would go driving off of the end, but about two minutes later, it came back down and they turned right in our gate. Just like you said they would!” He pointed at Ted. “He lit them up!”

Luke watched Matt walk a slow lap around the sedan. Windows were blown out, tires were flat, and the engine was leaking. Blood and brain matter still ran down the inside of the windows. “UZI did all this?” he asked.

“Yep,” Ted replied. “They was driving pretty fast, but I got lucky and hit the driver in the head.”

Luke saw trails of blood in the tow truck's headlights. They ran from the car to the marina. “How many people?” he asked.

“How many people … what?” Ted replied.

Inbred idiot
, Luke thought and spoke slowly. “How many people were in the car?” he asked. Ted frowned as if he was unsure if Luke was mocking him or not. Before the hillbilly could respond, Pete chimed in.

“Two guys and a girl,” he said.

“Any survivors?” Luke asked. The last thing he wanted to deal with was hostages. Luke could only imagine Ted having survivors tied up in the warehouse. He’d seen plenty of what the man liked to do to zombies. The idea of what he would do with a live person made Luke’s stomach twist in disgust.

“Nope,” Ted replied. “All dead, man.”

“What did you do with the bodies?” Matt asked.

“We threw them in the water,” Pete said.

“Good work,” Matt said and Pete beamed. “Any supplies?”

“Some,” Ted said. “Come up and take a look.”

They closed the boatyard gate behind the truck to keep zombies and any other cars from coming through and the four of them walked inside the warehouse. Ted led them past the rows of boats and up a set of wooden stairs to his hiding place in the balcony. There were a couple of boxes of miscellaneous canned goods, a camp stove, a small propane canister, a case of beer, and two large jugs of water. There was also a pair of sleeping bags and a tent. Almost everything had been shot to shit and had bullet holes in it.

“You’re kidding me,” Matt said when he got done looking over the stuff. “You blew the crap out of all of it!”

Ted shrugged. “Hard to control the Uzi. I just lit up the car!”

Matt shook his head. “Whatever,” he said. “I think we need to come up with a better plan.”

“Were there any cigarettes?” Luke asked. “Tell me there was.”

“Oh, hey man, yeah,” Ted said. “I almost forgot.” He reached into the pile of goods and pulled out a half full carton of smokes. Luke felt himself suddenly choked up.
Cigarettes.
He grabbed the box and looked inside. Only a couple packs had been obliterated by Ted’s hail of gunfire.
Four usable packs. Twenty smokes in a pack. Eighty cigarettes. No more menthols! It’s like Christmas,
he thought. He quickly ripped open a pack and pulled out a white stick of tobacco. In seconds he had it lit and was sucking down the smoke.

Matt started to go through the supplies and stacked the cans that did not have holes in them.

“Ted said we had to wait,” Pete complained. “I’m hungry, though. Can we eat?”

Luke looked over the supplies as he finished his cigarette and realized how hungry he was. It was a lot of food.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Luke, cook us up some chow!”

Luke went to work. He was the designated cook back in the hotel. While he began setting up the stove, he wondered if the reason Pete and Ted had not eaten already was out of respect for Matt or if it was simply because they were too damn lazy to cook it
. Or just too stupid to figure out how to get the stove started
, he thought, working the dials. He had it lit in a few seconds. It was a good stove and in just a couple of minutes, Luke had a large pot of chili coming to a boil. It was a simple meal, but they had been eating on strict rations lately as their supplies had run low. Something hot and with flavor would be a welcome change. Luke’s mouth watered while he stirred the pot. “We are hot,” Luke said when the food was ready. “Nothing fancy.”

“Good enough for me,” Ted said and looked at Matt for permission to grab a spoon. There were plenty of spoons, but only two bowls. Luke filled the bowls, gave one to Matt and kept the other for himself. For all he cared, Ted and Pete could eat out of the pot. Apparently they did not care either and everyone went to work on the hot food. Luke finished his bowl and it felt good to have a full stomach. He pulled out a fresh cigarette, lit up, and reconsidered his view on taking hostages. It would have been nice to know where the people in the car had gotten the supplies and where they were taking them.

“Maybe try to not kill everyone next time,” he said.

Ted looked over at Luke, his spoon in his mouth. “Excuse me?” he mumbled and chewed down his mouthful. “Why would I do that?”

Luke held up his smoke. “Where did they get these?” he asked. He pointed at the box of canned goods. “And all of that. Can’t question a corpse.”

Ted’s face flushed with color. “You ungrateful little punk. You really think you could do better?“

“Calm down,” Matt interrupted. “Luke’s right. We can gain information from people who we trap. We just need to make a better ambush.”

“They came through too fast,” Pete offered and quickly spooned more chili into his mouth.

Luke set his empty bowl down and smoked thoughtfully for a moment. “So, how do we slow them down?” he asked.

“Spike strip,” Pete mumbled.

“What?” Matt asked.

“A spike strip,” Pete repeated. “That’s how the cops did it to me in video games.” Pete paused and looked distant for a moment. “Damn, I miss stuff like that.”

Luke knew how he felt. Not so much about video games, but just life like it was before the outbreak. Back then, things had been nice and simple. No wife, no kids, not even a dog. He had an easy, good paying job, a couple friends to go have a beer with now and then and zero real responsibilities.
And now …
he thought
. Now I live with men who see nothing wrong with murdering three strangers for a bowl of chili
. Luke had to get away from these people, at least for a little while. “I’m going to go for a walk around,” he announced.

“Why don’t you check out the garage,” Matt said. “We need to know if there is anything we can use.”

Luke made sure he had a fresh pack of smokes and picked up his shotgun. “You got it,” he said and walked along the balcony and down the stairs. He walked past the rows of boats and out through the door to Corridor Row.

“Hey,” Ted called from the window above him. “I could kill you right now.”

Luke heard Pete start giggling and had to resist the urge to look up at Ted. He knew what he would see. An ugly, crooked tooth son of a bitch staring down at him out of the dark, probably with an UZI pointed at his head for good measure.
Nope,
Luke thought.
Not going to look.
Ignoring them, he turned to his right and walked south along the outside of the warehouse.

He immediately felt better being on his own and away from “Team Crazy”, but it was cold, wet and not helped by a stiff wind that seemed to accelerate between the buildings.
This coat sucks,
he thought and made a mental note to keep an eye out for a better one. He also reminded himself to keep his eyes open. Just because they thought they had cleared out any zombies inside the fence did not mean jack shit. He paused between two buildings and looked at the horizon. The moon was up and cast a silhouette against the clouds gathered there.
Weather doesn’t look good. I better get a move on.
He picked up his pace to a fast walk.

Luke chain smoked as he wound his way between the buildings and came to a parking lot with a large, red brick garage. He paused and looked around for trouble but the night was surprisingly quiet. Other than the garage, as best he could tell in the dark, there were a few cargo containers and a couple vans lined up, but nothing practical to drive to Eastern Oregon. After watching and listening for another minute, he was confident there was nothing hiding in the shadows and he walked over to the back of the building. Rubbing away dirt from one of the filthy windows, he tried to look in but it was too dark inside. Staying low so he could duck under the windows, he crept around one end of the building and tried a door. Locked. He continued around to the front of the building and saw that one of the bay doors was open at the floor. Kneeling down slowly, he peeked inside. The garage reeked of gas, oil, and rotten fish.
What the hell
, he thought.
Fish?

He held his breath. Nothing moved. He knew he needed to take a real look inside, so deciding the building was empty, he covered his nose, took another breath, and slid silently under the door. Once inside, he crouched down and listened. Nothing. It smelled bad, real bad, but Luke crept further into the garage and peeked carefully into the sub floors beneath the lifts. He knew those were spaces for mechanics so they could get under the cars and work on them from below.
A motor pit, or a garage pit, or something
, he thought. Surprisingly, the second pit he came to had been made into someone’s camp. It was also the source of the fish smell. He could see a sleeping bag, a lantern, and some books. There was also a stack of gutted and slowly drying fish. As Luke stood at the edge and looked down into the space, he heard a subtle noise that was more than just the wind. He felt something behind him and he spun around, his heart thundering in his chest. “Jesus Christ!” he screamed at a person standing by the door. “Move and I will blow you straight to hell!”

It was a man. Luke could just make out his silhouette in the darkness, but he didn’t know if he was human or a zombie or what. The intruder took a step forward and Luke fired the shotgun from his hip. He hit the man square in the chest, blowing him backward into the garage bay door. The stranger’s body slipped to the floor and Luke walked forward. He stood over the man and saw that it was just some guy. Not a zombie. Just a hermit with long hair and filthy brown clothes.
Shit!
Luke thought and shivered. He had broken out into a cold sweat.
What the hell was he thinking? Why would he sneak up on me?
The man was still alive, breathing is short hitched gasps, but Luke could tell from the amount of blood spreading on the floor around him that he was dying fast. “Stupid son of a bitch,” Luke said to the hermit. The man’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. He could only look up at Luke with accusing eyes. Luke did not care to hear what the man had to say anyhow and stood there and watched him die.

What have I become?
Luke asked himself.
This poor son of a bitch was just trying to survive in this crazy world.
Luke was conflicted. He didn’t know if the man was trying to attack him or just get his attention.
Shit, maybe he would have offered me some of his fish. And why the hell didn’t we think to try to catch fish? We’ve been eating shit that a dog wouldn’t touch and we could have been catching God damned salmon all winter. Stupid!

Luke stood in the darkness and wondered if maybe Ted was the one who had things figured out.
Maybe to survive in this world you have to be insane.
He kicked the hermit in the foot to make sure he was dead and then left the body slumped next to the bay door. Covering his nose again, he climbed down the stairs into the pit to see what it was the man had stashed down there. It was not much. Luke looked through the meager supplies and poked at the fish with his rifle. It looked like the hermit had been eating them raw.
Welcome to Crazyland,
Luke thought.
Enjoy your complimentary lifelong pass.
Disgusted, he climbed back up and out of the pit and left the garage to go back to the warehouse.