Surviving The Aftermath (Book 1): The Dead Linger (26 page)

These fuckers were ruthless. Jeff thought, as they left the room finally after his latest beating, shortly they’d come back to give him his daily ration of food, god how he looked forward to that. He’d lost track of time, he had no idea how long he’d been here, last outside thing he remembered was being in that ghost town with Tom and the others, then he woke up here and so began the beatings. Every so often, they would come in asking questions about Jill and their base of operations as they called it. Every day was the same questions over and over again, but he only had so many answers. He knew they were going to kill him, they were just keeping him alive to get enough info. He wondered what happened to Tom.

“Here’s your food.” One of the numerous nameless men came in with some bread, a scoop of beans and glass of dirty water.

“When can I get out of here?” Jeff asked the same question every time they brought the food. And they all always gave the same answer.

“When we get our answers.” And he left. Ah, so was life.

Tom knew they were beating the shit out of Jeff almost daily, and starving him. They made him prepare the meals, but he didn’t care, he was not giving them anything. He knew as long as he kept his mouth shut he held the trump card. Upon their arrival back, he was methodically planning his escape. Keeping quiet and mostly to himself, he observed, people watched, learned routines and the pecking order around this place. Most people were creatures of habit, and even with a zombie-apocalypse happening, habits still formed. The days were slowing starting to get shorter, his window for escape was dwindling. He feared if he didn’t escape during summer and the early part of fall, without a car, he didn’t think he’d survive the harsh wintery weather. He was maybe 70 miles plus away from their re-built stronghold. Maybe they would take him back if he admitted what an asshole he’d been. He could learn to live with Jill, maybe forgive her and himself. It was amazing how living here had changed his perspective on things. Seeing the un-holiness in this new place really makes a man do some soul searching about what’s right and wrong and what’s really important. He missed his family every day, and if he got out of here he’d never leave them again.

He continued loading and moving boxes around, sometimes it felt like busy work just to keep him active and from plotting with others. They kept him segregated from most people if they could help it. They would have him clean inside the house, or do gardening or maintenance out around the house. Just useless activity that didn’t matter anymore, but always kept him within sight of the house. But Luke hadn’t realized, the room where they were scheming and planning their raid on the rebuilt fortress, was on the far side of the house where no one could see Tom stand and just listen. This is how he knew he only had weeks left. They had worked out most the details, they were able to get a general direction of where this place was, south, but was it southeast, southwest or directly south. That’s a lot of miles to cover in all directions, and how far do they go? 20 miles, 50, 100? Now they just needed to break Jeff or Tom do get the exact location.

“Fuck it! Let’s just ride down there and start searching. I mean how many Menards can there be around here right?” Some nameless man said.

“We tried that idiot, remember? That shit didn’t work and we lost 3 guys and a car. Dumbass.” He said with distain.

“Hold it.” Luke held up his hand for silence, the room stilled and everyone looked at each other. “Just thought I heard something.”

“Look, Jeff is dying, I think we’ve gotten all we could out of him, if he knew more he’d tell us. Let’s just kill him now and start on Tom.” A murmur of yes and head nods went around the room.

“Beating Tom won’t help, he'll gladly let us kill him to protect his family at this place. We’ve got do something creative, flip it up on him.” Luke had an idea, a good one, in fact to date it was probably the best idea he’d ever had, and it was going to keep them alive and in the lap of luxury they had become accustomed to.

Tom strained against the window, they were talking so soft now, he slipped against the house and stood statue still as silence came from the room. Shit, they’d heard him. He continued to stand until Luke spoke again. He could barely make out the words today. Maybe they knew he was listening. “Beating Tom won’t help, hell gladly let us kill him to protect his family at this place. We’ve got do something creative, flip it up on him.” Truer words could have never been spoken more. He’d absolutely stand in front of a firing squad, or swing from a tree before he’d lead them to his wife and daughter. He heard the door opening, meeting must be over. He high tailed it back to the front of the house, back to the arbitrary lifting and loading of boxes. The sun was starting to set. He’d have to squirrel away more supplies, he only had a knapsack at the moment with a couple bottles of water, a box of old pop tarts, some beef jerky and a mixture of candy bars. He’d have to really load up for his journey, 70 plus miles through the woods, he calculated maybe 10-15 plus miles a day depending on the terrain and if he was able to keep his strength up. A walk that a person should be able to accomplish in a day would take him 2 or 3, he knew they would be searching the obvious roads for him, so he had to make sure to go off road, and still be on the lookout for zombies. That was his other obstacle, he need a weapon of some kind. Tonight he’d finish digging out underneath the fence then worry about supplies and a weapon in the morning.

The ride was rough, they’d already had to detour twice, it had been over the hour and 10minute call time and they were only just out of the city. If this kept up, it was going to take an extra day for this supply run. Casey made the first call, Jill was right there to respond and answer back. She wanted details of the road they were on and what they saw around them.

“I think she was just trying to keep you talking.”

“Oh and Kurt wasn’t? Did he really need to know how the cars were holding up? We’ve been gone an hour and they act like they haven’t heard from us for days.” Casey said. Oscar turned to look at him.

“And you’re going to tell me you didn’t enjoy hearing her voice?” He said with sarcasm. Casey shrugged slightly. “Only as much as you enjoyed hearing his.” They both just laughed. Oscar decided to radio the cars behind them and see how everyone was doing.

“Quiet.”

“Fine.”

“All good.”

“I’m probably going to regret saying this, but this trip might turn out to be pleasantly uneventful.” Oscar stated.

Four hours later, torrential downpour hit. The convoy was slow moving, the cars were maybe able to go about 45mph. They were just over half way, and if this kept up it would take another 4hr possibly. They radioed in, no rain there yet, but they could see the dark clouds moving in and were getting ready for the onslaught. The convoy pushed on keeping in radio contact since visual contact limited. Casey just kept going. They had too.

“I didn’t like the looks of those clouds.” Beth said, helping Jill work on some remedial PT for her shoulder. While she couldn’t lift weights yet, at least she almost had full rotation of her arm again.

“Yeah, they are over to the west, you think that’ll hit the group?” Jill asked, wincing in pain a bit. As much as she wanted to do this, it still hurt every time. 

“No idea, but we need to stay undercover and batten down the hatches.”

“Maybe I should go help.” Jill went to leave.

“Ah ah, you’re not done here missy. I told you, we’re doing this 30mins every day and you’ve still got to ice it. Do you ever want to use this arm again?”

“Yes nurse Ratchet.” Jill muttered.

“I’ll give you a Ratchet. Just work with here.”

Most people were heading for shelter outside and preparing for the storm.

“It’s pouring here, how is it by you guys?” Casey almost had to shout and you could hear the rain beating against the car in the background.

“Nothing here yet.” Carlton replied back into the radio. Oscar spoke now.

“Well if it doesn’t clear up soon we’ll be stopping because we’ve lost visual on car 3 and 4.”

“10-4 guys. Keep us informed. Over and out.”

Slowly all the cars came to a stop side by side. They were completely alone, the clouds were opening up and like some sort of heavenly visual the rays shone down on the main building of fort McCoy. They made it and the rain had stopped. Casey picked up the radio to speak to the group.

“Were going to do a drive by, we’ll radio if it’s safe. Then well head to the housing units as planned to bed down for the night.” Looking from car to car, and seeing all the heads nodding, he started pulling forward. Oscar crawled in the back seat and opened the newly made sun roof and perched the 50 cal up top. They drove the long horseshoe shaped driveway to towards the front of the building just to observe.

“Ok this is building 1.” Oscar shouted down. “Drive around here to the right.” He gave more direction. They passed barracks, and activity center, and large area that Oscar called the parade grounds. Everything looked untouched, like a creepy ghost town.

“Those are the housing units. They may be the most dangerous.” Oscar said pointing straight ahead. He was thinking on the fly now, suddenly realizing solider or people may have gone there seeking shelter.

“Stop.” He said to Casey. “Maybe we should head to the motor pool and park the cars in the garage and stay in there. That way we’d be all together if something happened.” Casey radioed the other cars to meet them back here. Oscar was still staring at the houses wondering what the best idea was, on the outside everything appeared ok and normal. He just kept having a really bad feeling about those houses. All four cars made their way to the large garage where they fixed and stored vehicles. The doors were all down of course, so they had to do this the hard way. Oscar, Casey and Jane got out, and when to the office door on the side. They knocked, mostly just to see if anything knocked back. They knocked on the garage too and waited. About 10mins elapsed and they decided if anything was in there it would be over here already. Breaking the door handle Oscar dropped to his knee with his M4 raised and Casey pushed the door open slowly from above with his weapon also drawn. The office was 6ft by 6ft, a simple desk, lots of paperwork and a wall full of keys. Nothing seemed remised. The others followed in behind them, keeping watch at the door and all around. Oscar was slowly opening the door between the office and the garage, it wasn’t locked so he could be nice and quiet. He motioned to Casey to go high, he would go low again. Door opened, both men poised and ready, listened and waited. It was pitch black, you could hear a breeze whistle through a hole in the roof maybe. Casey reached along the wall for a light switch, he came across buttons, these must open the doors.

“I’m going to open a garage door I think.” Casey whispered, and Oscar nodded. Jane and the others braced themselves outside for potential company. He clicked the button, the noise was very loud breaking the silence, light began to filter in and Casey could see a Humvee was directly in front of them. The others scooted in and spread out searching the entire area.

“Clear!” a few more shouts of “Clear!” and then one of “I’ve got a body here!” Everyone spun towards the voice ready for a zombie, but as you got close you saw it was actually dead.

“He’s in uniform.” Jane added.

“Looks like he died of natural causes.”

“Probably starved to death, what’s left looks emaciated.” Oscar added.

“It’s late and it’ll take us a while to set stuff up. Let’s move all the vehicles into the garage and we’ll settle in for the night, maybe take a look around this place.” Casey said as everyone started moving to make stuff happen.

Chapter 9

This was the night. Tom was ready. He’d gathered a nice size pack of food, and water, he estimated 3 to 4 days’ worth of food, even if he ran out of water he knew there were ponds and streams in areas we could rehydrate if he had to. He’d working on digging a hole under the fence by a large birch tree. It seemed to take forever, but it was completed. Jeff was dead, he’d been killed days ago and he overheard them planning to torture him next. While he welcomed the challenge, he still would rather avoid it. It was late into the evening or early the next day depending on how you looked at it. There were rag tag guards walking the perimeter, but they had an easy route that they didn’t deviate from. He army crawled from his communal tent shared with 20 or so other guys, to the tree by the fence. He figured to have a good 5 or 6 hour start before people would awake and notice him gone. He just had to pray he could get lost enough in the woods that they couldn’t track him. Snap. A twig broke directly behind him, heart racing, ears thundering, he slowly turned his head to see what was there. A young boy, army crawling up behind him. He looked wide eyed at Tom, and just as frozen with fear. Tom had seen the boy around before. Mostly running errands and delivering the illegal goods, that was now legal, to others to distribute and sell. Tom waved the boy back. The kid pointed at himself then Tom. He did not want to take anyone with him. What if this kid was some sort of spy. Tom quickly decided, he’d let the kid follow so far, then he’d kill him and leave no trace. Better than trying to argue in a whispery silence with the kid while armed guards were walking all around him. They continued crawling, amazingly enough there were no other mishaps, which made Tom uneasy. This whole thing almost seemed effortless. They both quickly crawled through the hole, Tom covered the hole back up with a large chunk of artificial grass he had painstakingly sewed from bits of fabric and anything else he could find. It didn’t really match the area that much, but it covered the hole good so it served a bit of a purpose. Tom and the boy ran down the slow sloping hill towards the trees, he was heading North, in the opposite direction on purpose. He wanted to lead these bastards away in case they followed and he needed to dump the boy. About 25mins, and 2 miles later they reached a wooded area. Both were out of breath having not had any type of exercise in quite some time and being scared, it took a lot out of you. Tom cracked a water bottle open and offered the boy some, he gulped greedily at it before Tom managed to grab it away.