The Darkest Place: A Surviving the Dead Novel (20 page)

“Hmm?”

“Why did you wait so long?”

Hollow Rock, Tennessee

“Now I know what you meant.” Miranda said.

“About what?”

“About not liking what I was going to hear.”

Caleb laughed quietly. After lunch, he and Miranda had gone for a walk to Stall’s tavern. They had taken a table outside and ordered two tall glasses of what Mike Stall called his Special Hard Cider. Really, it was whatever fruit juice he could get his hands on laced with grain liquor.

A few high, wispy clouds had moved in, but it was still a bright, pleasantly warm spring day—not unlike the morning Caleb had woken next to Sophia on Dale’s boat. He looked across the table at Miranda, at how much she resembled Sophia, the biggest differences being Miranda’s curvier body and blue eyes, and wondered if his feelings for her were just a coincidence.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never had a boyfriend,” Caleb said.

“I could, but I would be lying.”

“Anybody worth mentioning?”

She shook her head, eyes fixed on her glass. “Not really.”

The conversation lulled for a while, and Caleb could tell she was working her way up to something. It went through a few fits and starts, until finally she said, “So what’s the big mystery here, anyway?”

Caleb frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well … you talk about your past like you’re carrying some kind of dark secret. But so far, you haven’t told me anything I might not hear from any number of people. I mean, the Outbreak was brutal; it took a toll on us all. And I’m not trying to downplay what happened to you, or how awful it was. But I’ve heard worse. Hell, I’ve lived through worse.”

Caleb took a long sip of eighty-proof pineapple juice and sat back in his chair. “I’m getting around to it.”

“I’m not trying to rush you, I just ... you know what? I shouldn’t have said anything. That was stupid. What a stupid, insensitive thing to say.”

“It wasn’t stupid, Miranda. Tell you the truth, I’ve been dragging my feet.”

She reached for his hand. “Not your favorite subject, is it?”

“No. It’s not.”

“It’s okay if you want to stop. You don’t need to tell me anything else.”

“I kind of do, Miranda. I need to get it out.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The server came by. Caleb ordered another round, and for the next couple of hours, he kept his voice low.

*****

Canyon Lake, Texas

Breakfast was instant grits and fried Spam.

Lauren, Lance and I washed ours down with coffee, whereas Sophia and Lola fled at the sight of food. After eating, I raided Dale’s liquor cabinet, whipped up a couple of Bloody Marys, and brought them topside. The girls’ spirits improved dramatically.

As the sun rose higher and a fine mist began to rise from the lake, I sat by the radio waiting in vain for it to squawk again. This lasted for the better part of a half hour, until Lola and Sophia declared the hair of the dog had eased its owner’s bite enough they could endure the short transit back to the cabin. Lance eased the boat forward while I used the windlass to pull in the anchor. We motored southward.

Rounding the bend in the shoreline, our view of the street was obscured by the houses lining the waterfront. Still, I could hear the unmistakable rumble of the Humvee’s engines followed by several cracks of a rifle. The infected walking aimless laps around the cabin whipped their heads in the direction of the reports, sending up an earsplitting clamor of moans.

“The heck are they doin’?” Lance muttered.

I stood beside him on the forecastle and shook my head. “No idea.”

A few minutes later, the strategy became clear. The sounds of engines and gunfire grabbed the undead’s attention as Dad and the others slowly led the horde away. I thought back to Perry Torrance, and how he seemed to know exactly where Tyrel and I were standing despite the fact he couldn’t see us, and a light bulb came on over my head.

“It’s sound,” I said.

Lance turned his head. “What’s that?”

“The infected. They hunt by sound.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t follow.”

“Think about it. Their eyes are glazed over with that white stuff. They probably can’t see very well. Back at the Kennedys’ house, they didn’t notice us until we were close enough they could hear our footsteps. And look at what they’re doing over there on the shore. The infected can’t see the Humvee any better than we can, but they’re still following it. How else could they do that?”

Lance brought a hand to his chin and watched the horde wander after the Humvees. “You know, you may be on to something.”

An uneasy hour went by while we watched and worried, and the lamentations of the undead grew increasingly distant. Sophia and Lola went belowdecks to clean up while Lance and I sat by the radio, waiting. Lauren paced back and forth from the forecastle to the aft part of the main deck, chewing on her nails, muttering and cursing under her breath. Finally, a crackle of static broke the silence.

“Fox, this is Eagle. Do you copy, over.”

I snatched up the handset. “Copy Eagle. Everyone okay?”

“More or less. We’re en route, ETA five minutes. Don’t approach yet, there’s still a few infected in the neighborhood.”

“Copy. Standing by.”

The roar of Humvee engines approached again, followed by the staccato clamor of gunfire. Several times, the thunder of M-240s pounded the air, the last of which ended with a tremendous WHUMP that sent every bird in a hundred yard radius flapping and screeching in fear.

“Jesus,” Lance said, shading his eyes as he stared at the shore. “Was that a grenade?”

“I think so.” I said.

“The hell did they get a grenade?”

“Beats me.”

Lauren stopped pacing. “Do you think they’re all right?”

I picked up the handset. “Eagle, Fox. What was that explosion? Over.”

A few seconds passed, then Blake answered, “Frag Grenade. Can’t talk.” Another voice said something else, but the hammering of a machine gun drowned it out.

The gunshots and steady thrum of 400 cubic-inch V8 turbo-diesels increased in volume until they were directly in front of the cabin. The frequency of fire slowed until nearly a minute went by with no shots at all. The engines cut off, then a few seconds later, the gun-toting silhouettes of Dad, Blake, and Mike appeared in the back yard.

“Where’s Tyrel?” I wondered aloud.

The radio crackled. “Fox, Eagle. You are clear to approach. Acknowledge.”

I grabbed the mike. “Copy, Eagle. On our way.”

Lance took the helm and guided us in, slowing down parallel to the shore and dropping anchor a hundred feet out. The five of us climbed into the dinghy and set off for shore, leaving the supplies and spare ammo aboard the cruiser. We could always come back for it later.

I drove the dinghy to within twenty feet of the shoreline, then killed the engine and let it drift the rest of the way. When it came to rest in the sand, we all hopped out and dragged it ashore.

“Everybody all right?” Mike asked.

My heart leapt in my chest at the sight of him, my mind going back to last night. I cleared my throat and took a deep breath to steady my hands lest Mike see them shaking.

“We’re all fine,” Lauren answered.

Sophia ran to her father and jumped into his arms. She hugged the big Marine, kissed him on the cheek, then reared back and swatted him on the arm hard enough to raise a welt. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick. You were supposed to be back yesterday afternoon. What happened?”

Mike rubbed his bicep and backed away. “Listen, sweetie, it wasn’t our fault. I’ll explain everything later, but right now we need to start packing.”

Lauren walked up to them, Dad and Blake looking on. “What do you mean, start packing?”

“We have to leave,” Mike said.

“Why?” Lola asked. “What’s going on?”

“There’s trouble headed our way,” Mike said. “Serious trouble.”

*****

“San Antonio didn’t make out any better than Houston,” Dad said, following Mike and I as we unloaded Tyrel from one of the Humvees. “We barely made it back alive.”

“What happened to Tyrel?” I asked. He was unconscious, the left leg of his pants cut away to reveal a wide swath of bandages over his thigh.

“What does it look like?” Mike said. “He got shot.”

“By who?”

“Long story.”

I grunted in irritation as we carried the heavy ex-SEAL around back and up the steps. “How bad is it?”

“Not too bad. Missed the bone and the femoral artery. Painkillers knocked him out.”

Lance finished prying the last nail from the plywood covering the back door just as we arrived. He lifted it out of the way and stood aside, looking on mutely as we deposited Tyrel on the sofa. Lola followed us in and pushed me out of the way so she could kneel beside him.

“Is he going to be all right,” she asked, voice quavering.

“As long as the wound doesn’t get infected,” Blake said from behind me, “he should be fine in a few weeks.”

Lola stroked Tyrel’s hair out of his face, her hands slow and gentle. “Who did this to him?”

No one spoke. Dad looked around at the defenses Lance had erected and nodded to himself in approval. “We should be okay for a while,” he said. “Blake, Mike, let’s get something to eat. The rest of you hungry?”

We said no, explaining we had eaten already. Dad grabbed three MREs from a box in the den and tossed two of them to Blake and Mike. “So we have good news and bad news,” Dad said. “The good news is we got the fuel we need, and we found out why no other refugees made it to Canyon Lake.”

“Okay,” Lauren said. “So what’s the bad news?”

“Tyrel got shot, and there’s a giant horde of infected, as well as a thousand or so troops, headed this way.”

The room went silent as those of us who hadn’t gone to San Antonio absorbed the news. After a long pause, I said, “So that’s what Mike meant when he said we need to start packing.”

Dad nodded. “Exactly.”

When he didn’t say anything else for a while, Sophia raised her hand as though she were in a classroom. “So … you wanna explain what happened?”

Dad peeled open his MRE, sat down on the ottoman, and laid aside his rifle. “The idea was to approach San Antonio from the north, find a vantage point, and try to get an idea what was going on in the city. Maybe swing around south to Lackland Air Force Base, see what was left.”

He opened a brown mil-spec pouch of five-year-old spaghetti and meatballs and dug in with a plastic spoon. “We didn’t get very far.”

It took him ten minutes to explain.

They had headed south, intent on entering the city limits by paralleling Highway 281. There were infected in the distance, but the highway was strangely clear, abandoned cars pushed to the shoulder as if by a giant hand. In a few places, evenly slotted lines pitted the pavement, indicating someone had used bulldozers to move the cars aside.

Somewhere near the junction of 281 and the 46 loop north of San Antonio, they topped a rise and saw what looked like a roadblock up ahead. Even as far away as they were, they could hear gunfire and the unmistakable thunder of tanks and artillery. Helicopters patrolled in the distance, occasionally opening up with machine guns and rocket fire.

To be safe, they backtracked, found a water tower, and sent Blake up with his massive binoculars. A short time later, he climbed down and said the roadblock was military, and extended as far as he could see. Scattered hordes of infected were approaching from the south, obscured in the distance by the hazy smoke of the burning city beyond. He couldn’t tell how many there were, but the piles of dead bodies just past the highway were enormous.

Earthmovers crisscrossed the open ground beyond the barricades pushing corpses into heaps for a small army of dump trucks to haul away. On both sides of the highway, there were earthen berms piled twenty feet high, telephone poles and fence posts and shattered remnants of cars jutting out from the hastily dug earth. Most of the fighting was happening to the south, but a few smaller hordes were filtering in from the east and west. To the north, the direction Dad was coming from, things looked clear. But there were thick clusters of trees and scattered buildings between the water tower and the roadblock. Anything could be waiting there.

At that point, they had a decision to make. It would be no trouble at all to simply fill up on gas and diesel by draining fuel from abandoned vehicles along the road. Doing so would give them what they needed without taking any unnecessary risks. But a large military force might also have information about what was going on with the rest of the country, how the fight against the infected was proceeding, and if there was somewhere we could go that was safer than Canyon Lake. They decided it was worth the risk for one of them to approach the troops and see what they could learn.

Tyrel volunteered.

The other three split up in the Humvees and found positions where they could keep an eye on Tyrel without being spotted. Blake dropped him off on River Way a mile north of the junction before falling back.

Tyrel covered the remaining distance on foot, leaving behind his gear and weapons except for a knife, a pack containing a few bottles of water, and his ever-present Beretta M-9. He made it about halfway unmolested, but as he drew closer to the roadblock, the undead began to appear from doorways and storage sheds and clusters of dense foliage. At first, he simply sped up to outpace them, but the moans they sent up alerted other infected farther down the line. Ghouls began to converge from all directions, forcing him to draw his weapon and begin taking potshots. Not enough to wipe them out—he lacked sufficient ammo for that—but enough to clear a path.

As the dead become more numerous, he had to set a harder and harder pace to keep away from their grasping hands. With over a quarter mile to go before he reached the roadblock, he found himself down to his last two magazines. At that point, he turned and signaled to Mike, who had taken position a few hundred meters away on overwatch.

From a rooftop, Mike sighted through a Leupold scope mounted to his Barrett .300 Winchester magnum and started picking off infected. After four shots, he had cleared a path for Tyrel to a house on the side of the road. Tyrel sprinted for it, kicked open the front door, and disappeared inside. Moments later, he emerged with a .22 rifle and several hundred cartridges.

.22 rifles are not very powerful, but at close range, they can penetrate a ghoul’s head—or a person’s—with lethal results. In many cases, the bullet enters the skull but loses the necessary kinetic energy to exit the other side. As a result, it ricochets inside the brain case, effectively turning gray matter into guava paste. Tyrel used this phenomenon to his advantage as he fought his way the last few hundred yards to the berm bordering the roadblock.

The moment he topped the rise, a trio of armed soldiers riding ATVs surrounded him, guns leveled. Tyrel tossed down his weapons when ordered to do so, put his hands on his head, and went down to his knees. The soldiers quickly bound his hands and feet with zip ties, lashed him to the back of an ATV, and drove back to camp. At this point, Dad and the others lost track of him.

“We weren’t sure what to do at that point,” Dad said. “For a while, we just waited and watched. Kept eyes on the camp, trying to catch sight of Tyrel. After nightfall, we set up a watch rotation and switched to night vision. Blake was on watch at about three in the morning when they finally brought him out.” Dad nodded in Blake’s direction.

“They’d stripped him down to just his pants,” Blake said, “but other than that, he didn’t seem hurt. There was this fenced-in enclosure like the ones you see on prison yards where they put guys doing time in solitary. The guards put him in there with a few dozen other people. Looked like some kind of quarantine.”

“The enclosure was close to the edge of camp,” Dad resumed. “They’d made a restaurant across the street into a command center. We figured if we caused a disturbance there, we might be able to sneak in and get Tyrel out.”

“Now, you gotta remember,” Blake cut in. “This whole time, the fightin’ don’t stop. Helicopters flying back and forth shootin’ anything that moves, artillery blowing shit up, machine gun nests goin’ crazy—I’m tellin’ you, man, I ain’t never seen anything like it. And the whole time, you can hear the infected getting closer and closer. Not quickly, mind you, but slow, like the tide coming in. And those soldiers knew it, too. I could see it in their faces, the way they moved, the way they talked to each other. They were nervous. Scared. Like they knew they couldn’t hold out much longer. Saw a bunch of ‘em sneak off in the middle of the night.”

“That’s what tore it for us,” Mike spoke up, “the deserters. We weren’t about to take a chance on that place being overrun with Tyrel still in there.”

Dad nodded. “So once we had a visual on Tyrel, we moved.”

“First thing we did,” Blake said, “we caught up with a few of those deserters. Found a couple ‘bout the same size as Joe and me and took their uniforms. As you can imagine, they weren’t too happy about that. Asked us what they was supposed to do to survive. I told ‘em there’s plenty of houses to scavenge on the way to Colorado, at least one of ‘em was bound to have some clothes. Probably weapons too. In the meantime, we needed the passwords to get into the camp. We left ol’ Mike behind with ‘em as an insurance policy in case they gave us bad intel.”

“Turned out to be unnecessary,” Dad said. “The units there were ad-hoc. Mix of Marines, National Guard, Air Force, even some law enforcement types. Nobody seemed to know anybody. All we had to do was wait until the end of watch and slip in with the guys coming off duty. Walked in like we owned the place.”

“Next part was easy,” said Blake. “Joe climbed on top of a truck and found an empty room in the command center while I rounded up some materials and made a napalm Molotov. Waited until I was sure I couldn’t be seen, then lobbed it through a window. Made a hell of a mess.”

“So the alarm goes up,” Dad cut in, “this fire truck comes rolling over, everybody’s looking at the command center trying to figure out what happened. Blake and I work our way over to the enclosure and catch Tyrel’s attention, sneak him a pair of wire-cutters. He tells us to find a vehicle and come around to the west side. So we go over to a motor pool and try to talk our way into a Humvee, but the supply sergeant isn’t having it. I’ll give you one guess how we handled
that
situation.”

Blake chuckled. “After we dragged him behind a stack of fuel drums, we drove back to the enclosure. Tyrel, he’s got these dudes standing around him in a circle all casual like while he cuts a hole in the fence. Soon as the hole’s big enough, he jumps in the Humvee and we book it for the gate at Highway 281. The rest of the prisoners run for cover. When we start getting close to the gate, one of the guards sees us coming. Steps in front of us, starts yelling at us to stop. We don’t, and this guy manning a fifty-cal starts swinging it our direction. I yell back to Tyrel, and he gets on the sixty and sends a few warning shots their way, just enough to make ‘em keep their heads down. We bust through the gate, but by then some dudes on a guard tower start shooting at us. Tyrel returns fire, but takes one in the leg doing it.”

“I didn’t know why at the time,” Dad said, “But they didn’t bother chasing us. It wasn’t until we got back to our vehicles I figured it out.” He finished his spaghetti and tossed the empty packet aside.

“Turns out, just as we were leaving, the infected breached the south perimeter.”

*****

I told them what happened to Bob and Maureen. Dad listened, nodding sadly at the end. “I’m sorry you had to see that, son.”

“I think I should go check on Phil,” I said.

He shook his head. “Too many infected between here and there. I can’t let you risk it.”

“I’ll take Dale’s boat. All I need is one person to help with the lines.”

“I’ll go,” Sophia said, a little too quickly.

Dad glanced at her, then back at me. “Fine. Take your rifle. Clear the yard before you make landfall. If it looks too dicey, abort. I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but we barely know Phil. He’s not worth risking your life over.”

I smiled at my father. “It’s not a terrible thing to say, Dad.”

He held my gaze, eyes steady. The two of us had always been on the same page for the most part, but I think it made him feel better to reaffirm it. “Don’t take too long,” he said. “I want us out of here in an hour. We should be ready to roll out by the time you get back.”

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I want to leave this place as much as you do.”

“As for you,” Mike said, stepping closer to Sophia. “You stay on the boat. I don’t want you getting anywhere near those infected. You hear?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, Dad.”

Mike kissed her on the cheek and gave me a hard stare. “Be careful. Look after my little girl like your life depends on it.”

I watched Sophia walk toward me, a flutter in my chest and a tightening in my stomach. She stopped close enough to smell the sweat on her skin, her fingers warm and dry as she slipped them into mine.

“Count on it,” I said.

No one seemed surprised.