The Darkest Place: A Surviving the Dead Novel (37 page)

“We watched this place for a long time,” Mike said. “I saw
nothing
.”

“Neither did I.”

“Not a stir, not a peep, not a damn thing. They came out of nowhere.”

I looked at the stables and the fields beyond. “It’s like they were waiting for us.”

Mike thought a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I talked to some of those soldiers from San Antonio. The things they told me are starting to make sense now.”

“Like what?”

“This one guy told me they don’t like sunlight, especially when it’s hot outside. Said if they can’t find food they look for shelter, or just kind of drop like they’re hibernating or something. Might explain why they’re more active at night.”

I thought of the ghouls emerging from the field and stables, faces confused, swaying and turning circles as though punch drunk, angling their heads to vector in on me. There was no way they could have known we were headed this way—
we
didn’t know we were headed this way—and none of the undead’s behavior thus far indicated they were intelligent enough to plan an ambush.

“I see your point. But it’s early morning, Mike. Why weren’t they out last night?”

“Maybe nothing worth eating came along in a while.”

“So you think they were sleeping?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I’m just telling you what the man said. Your guess is as good as mine.” He removed the half-spent mag from his carbine and replaced it with a full one. “Think we got ‘em all?”

“Could be more in the fields. Crawlers.”

“Have to keep an eye out.”

I turned toward the Humvee. “Yes, we will.”

*****

It took us an hour to stack the bodies in one of the stables.

That done, we used shovels liberated from the tool shed to scrape the leftover gore into small piles, which we then carted away in a wheelbarrow and dumped out of sight in the fields. Last, we made makeshift brooms with bundles of grass and erased both our tracks and those of the undead.

From a distance, our location would look abandoned and undisturbed. But up close, the striations left by the grass stalks would be a dead giveaway. All we could do was hope the weather helped us out with a strong wind or an afternoon thunderstorm.

After cleaning up, the three of us looked at each other, each one waiting for the others to speak. Finally, Mike said, “Well, anyone feel like sleeping in one of the stables?”

Sophia and I said, in unison, “No.”

We looked at each other and laughed. “Kind of seems like a lot of work for nothing, doesn’t it?” I said.

Mike shrugged. “I’ve done a lot harder work for a lot dumber reasons. At least the next person who comes along won’t have to worry about those things.”

“Walkers,” I said, more to myself than the others.

“What?”

I looked at Mike. “That’s what the soldiers called them. Walkers. Walking corpses, walking dead, you know. Like an abbreviation.”

He turned his head toward the stable loaded with dead bodies. “Makes as much sense as anything, I suppose.”

“Walkers, schmalkers,” Sophia said. “I’m tired. Let’s get out of here.”

Mike and Sophia slept under the shade of a lodgepole pine near the Humvee, the engine making the occasional faint ticking as it finished cooling. I stayed close for a while, perched atop the wide vehicle, binoculars focused on the small ranch up the hill until it became clear no more infected were nearby. Thanking fate for small favors, I put my ghillie suit back on and conducted a slow, careful sweep of the surrounding area.

I’m a firm believer people overuse the word ‘surreal’, often applying it to situations out of context with its definition, but that’s exactly what the next five hours were like. Surreal. No airplanes droned overhead, no cars buzzed along the highway, no voices drifted to me on the wind, nothing manmade. The only sound was a light breeze sighing through the dry brush and the rustling of sparse evergreen limbs. Sometimes a rodent or lizard skittered away at my approach, a bird took flight with a flap of feathered wings, or a door to one of the open stalls beat against its frame. Otherwise, I heard nothing.

After a while, I realized that other than Mike and Sophia, I was probably the only living person for miles. All the sneaking and crawling and straining of ears began to feel silly. So I stood up in the middle of hundreds of acres of open terrain, made a pile of my gear, and removed my ghillie suit. Rolled it up. Tied it to my assault pack. Tilted my head back and closed my eyes to the sun.

Orange spots raced across my vision, the amber glow of faraway nuclear fusion backlighting my eyelids. The wind ruffled my hair and flapped my collar against my neck, carrying the scents of warmth, dry grass, pinesap, and the faint, earthy undertone of decay. The field around me was a static crackling of brown stalks gently colliding in the breeze, dipping and rising like the surface of a lake, flashes of white reflected at a cloudless, azure sky.

My eyes stung when I opened them, forcing me to blink to restore sight. When I could see without large, multi-colored spots obscuring half the world, I picked up my gear, finished my patrol, and headed back to camp.

It was a refreshing, clear-minded peace I felt that morning, alone in that bright field. It was pure. Undiluted. An instant of hopeful clarity amidst a maelstrom of chaos and fear.

No peace has found me since.

Two more days on the road brought us to the outskirts of Colorado Springs.

The first day was downright boring. We set out at night, Mike and I taking turns driving, and after seven hours of dodging wrecks, abandoned vehicles, fallen trees, dead bodies, and a crashed single-engine airplane, we spotted a cluster of buildings. Drawing closer, I could see the buildings comprised one of those parasitic road towns that once earned a bleak subsistence siphoning money from tourists and passing travelers.

Gas stations, chain restaurants, and a dry cleaner lined the road, while in the center of town was a squat strip mall, complete with coin laundry, coffee shop, nail salon, barber, used books, and the all-important grocery store. Looters had shattered the grocery store’s front window, leaving broken glass glittering in the parking lot. Looking past the entrance, I could see whoever trashed the place had done a thorough job of cleaning it out. Not much point in searching for leftovers. I glanced around to see if there were any cars nearby. A nineties-model Mercedes with flat tires was the only vehicle in sight.

“How much you wanna bet there’s a maintenance ladder around back?” I asked.

“No bet,” Mike said. He drove to the service entrance and followed a narrow strip of gravel behind the building. The lane widened into a flat loading area. Mike parked next to one of several service ladders.

“Not much of a lock,” Mike said. A metal security grate covered the ladder, held shut by a cheap bronze padlock. I grabbed a crowbar from the back of the Humvee and levered it off. While I worked, Sophia appeared with Mike’s tent and bedroll and kissed him on the cheek. “Sleep well, Dad,” she said. “See you this afternoon.”

She grabbed my arm and started pulling me away. Mike said, “Where are you two going?”

“We’ll be on the roof of that gas station over there,” she replied. “Keep your radio handy.”

Mike looked like he was about argue, then let it go with a sigh, looking deflated. “Fine. Just keep it down over there. Don’t want to draw any infected.”

“Okay, Dad.” 

I kept my mouth shut and followed.

While Sophia was settling in, I retrieved an empty five-gallon fuel can from the Humvee and checked the abandoned Mercedes’ tank. To my delight, not only was it a diesel, but there were just over four gallons left. I thought about how long it had been since the Outbreak and wondered how much longer it would be before what limited quantities of salvageable fuel were left lying around went bad. The prospect of walking to Colorado Springs appealed not at all.

After stowing the fuel, I went back to Sophia and lay down with her in the tent. A simple kiss became two, then three, and the next thing I knew we were tearing each other’s clothes off, skin hot, hands exploring.

There are few things more awkward than two people trying to undress one another in a pup tent, but somehow we managed. There was a lot of pulling and cursing and pauses to kiss whatever portion of skin one of us happened to expose on the other. Then came the clutching, and thrusting, and gasping, and heavy breathing, and Sophia’s white teeth biting down on her lower lip.

We tried to be quiet. We really did.

*****

Later, as Sophia drifted to sleep next to me, I lay awake, ears straining.

A few hours passed. I heard nothing but birds, insects, and the breathing sound of the wind against our tent. I thought about Mike on the other rooftop, alone, and wondered if he was thinking of his wife, and if so, was he remembering the good times, or the bad?

I tried to imagine what would preoccupy my thoughts if Sophia were far away, unreachable, and putting my mind in that place, I knew I would remember the arguments, the harsh words, the digs we took at each other. For Mike’s sake, I hoped he had enough good memories to outweigh the bad.

It is easy to be impatient with someone when they are close to you. When you can reach out and touch them, and hear their voice, and apologize for whatever stupid thing you did or said. But distance creates perspective, and when that distance is eternal, there is no salve for the regret of loved ones taken for granted.

Memories stirred of my father, and Lauren, and Blake, and I clenched my fists to keep my hands from trembling. That way held nothing but pain, regret, and sorrow, and its path ended at a cliff. Once over it, no matter how much I clutched and scrambled, there would be no coming back. So instead, I closed my eyes and focused on the immense black nothing in front of me, wondering if it was the last thing they saw before the end. If the empty dark was what waited for us all, the answer to the great mystery of life after death, the idea people had been debating and philosophizing and fighting wars over for millennia. Maybe the answer had been staring us in the face all along, every time we closed our eyes. I wondered, when my time came, if my family would be there waiting with hands outstretched to lead me home.

Sophia stirred beside me, turned over onto her side. I opened my eyes and sat up a little, the light filtering through the tent’s canopy chasing away dark thoughts. The pain faded somewhat, diluted by the soft warm body next to me. I moved closer and draped an arm around her, listening to her sigh contentedly as I pulled her close.

Plenty of time to mourn later
, I told myself.
For now, hold it together.

Just past midday, I slept.

*****

The next night was more of the same. About five miles from I-40 we turned left and traveled cross-country toward Highway 24, staying well away from the interstate. The scars left over from the horrors we had witnessed on I-35 and I-20 were still fresh, and none of us were willing to bet I-40 was any better.

During the transit, I thought of how I had always imagined Colorado as a wonderland of soaring mountains, sweeping valleys, verdant forests, and flower-covered fields dotted with crystal blue lakes. That was what I had always seen in pictures, magazines, and on television—America’s version of the Bavarian Alps. But the reality was far different from the idyllic setting I had dreamed up in my mind. The region we traveled over was mostly flat with the occasional lifts, saddles, and long, sloping basins.

When we could, we traveled on roads. When we couldn’t, we relied on the Humvee’s off-road capabilities. On four separate occasions, we got stuck and had to drive over wooden planks after digging our way free of wet, clinging mud. Out of frustration, I asked Mike why it was so fucking damp around here despite the lack of rain.

“We’re in a saddle,” Mike said. “A damned big one. Starts back there at 287 and goes clear to the foothills that way.” He pointed east. “The water runoff between flows down here, smack dab the middle.”

“So we’re basically standing in the bottom of a giant drainage ditch.”

“Pretty much.”

“Fantastic.”

At just after four ‘o clock in the morning, I drove the Humvee over a rise and could see the flat expanse of Highway 24 a couple of miles below. “Not much farther now,” I said.

“You see the highway?” Mike asked.

“Yep.”

Sophia let out a sleepy little whoop from the back. Grinning, I angled around a stand of trees and made for the road.

The trip down the hill went smoothly, the dry dirt at higher elevation providing better traction. I glanced at the fuel gauge nervously, thinking about the last two gallons in the back and worried it would not be enough. I voiced my concerns to Mike.

“Just keep driving for now,” he said. “Get a few miles down the highway, then we’ll see what we can scrounge up. Worst case, we’ll pull over somewhere and stash this thing. Go the rest of the way on foot and come back for our stuff later.”

I couldn’t think of a better plan, so I nodded.

When we reached the highway, Mike checked the map under an LED light and declared we were just over sixty miles from Colorado Springs. There was no way our fuel would hold up that long, but I could see no cars close by. All around us was mile after mile of flat, empty grassland. If it had been daylight, I would have seen the toothy line of the Rockies in the distance, but my NVGs could not reach that far.

So we drove on, the needle lowering inexorably toward empty, wheels picking up speed on the unobstructed highway. I eased the Humvee up to thirty-five and let it stay there, figuring it was the point of greatest fuel efficiency. We made it a little over fifteen miles before the engine began to sputter and cough. Thankfully, I could make out the shape of a few buildings ahead and the unmistakable outline of a tractor-trailer.

“There’s a semi up ahead,” I said. “A few buildings too. Might have what we need.”

“Go ahead and pull over,” Mike said. “Hopefully that truck has some diesel in it. Otherwise, we got a long walk ahead of us.”

I tapped the brakes and eased the Humvee to the side of the road. As I did, it struck me as an odd thing to do; we had seen no other vehicles since leaving the convoy. I could have straddled the double-yellow lines if I wanted to, and it would have made no difference.

Old habits die hard, I guess
.

Mike stepped out and walked to the rear of the vehicle. I heard the back hatch open, the clattering of a gerry can and funnel being removed from the cargo area, and a few clanks as Mike poured the last of the fuel into the tank.

With the absence of road noise, I also heard the sound of slow, heavy breathing. Turning around, I saw Sophia lying across the back seat, eyes closed, mouth hanging slightly open. Even through the grainy green image of the NVGs, she was a beauty. Smiling, I waited until Mike climbed back in.

“Good to go?” I asked.

“As good as it gets for now.”

I put the Humvee in gear and headed for the truck.