Zompoc Survivor: Odyssey (3 page)

Chapter 2

Rule 23

~ Yes, how many times can a man turn his head/Pretending he just doesn't see?~

Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ In the Wind

“I’ve never shot anyone before,” Amy said over her dinner.

“I’m pretty sure you still haven’t,” I said after I swallowed the bite of fried Spam I’d just taken.

“Are you quoting Firefly lines at me, or are you serious?” For all that she was troubled, her appetite wasn’t suffering any. She had finished the Spam and spooned the last of the corn from the can she’d just taken off the fire onto her mess kit plate.

“Not intentionally,” I said. “I mean it, I think you scared them more than anything with that first shot. There will come a time when you’re going to have to shoot someone, though.” I watched her face as I set the Kelly Kettle on the base and dropped a few twigs and leaves down through the chimney. The little fire inside blazed up and showed me the frown that creased her brow.

“How do you deal with it?” she asked. Gone was the enthusiasm she’d shown that afternoon for shooting zombies. I looked around the barn we were in, remembering how fast she’d been in nailing the ghoul that had rushed us as we pulled into the farmstead. Then she hadn’t hesitated. If she was going to survive, she needed to be ready to pull the trigger just as fast with a living person when the moment called for it.

“I know what I’m willing to die for,” I said after a few moments of thought. “Once you know that, you know what you’re willing to kill for, and you can make peace with it.”

“Sounds too simple,” she said.

“Simple doesn’t mean easy. I don’t like hurting people; it bugs the hell out of me. But if someone is trying to kill me or my people, they’re going to get the same right back.” I stood up and went to the tailgate of the truck, not sure I wanted her to see my face just then. When I had to think about it, I was less sure about what I’d done today. In my head, I’d already convicted the man I’d shot of who knows how many crimes, when all I really knew was that he pointed a shotgun at me. I had imagined him shooting other drivers before me, and assumed he liked it. I had assumed the worst of him, and I’d been completely confident I was right. Rule Twelve was pretty simple:
Assume people suck after shit hits the fan, and that they’re after your stuff.
I had created the next rule to counter the tendency to become that kind of person:
Don’t be one of the people who suck after shit hits the fan.
But was I telling myself I was following one rule to justify killing people with the other? I looked back over my shoulder at Amy.

Suddenly, everything was clear as day, just as it had been when I pulled the trigger. They were trying to kill me. And if they had succeeded, they would have tried to do worse to Amy when they found her. And I would give my own life to keep her from that fate. It was that simple. Of course, if I ever did have to give my life for hers, I wasn’t going to make it easy. The man who tried to take my life was going to pay dearly for the effort. I reached into the duffel back and pulled out the small plastic bag I’d found earlier while we were taking care of the guns. Inside were five little pieces of plastic that could be clipped to a belt loop or a hem. I pulled two out and went back to the overturned milk crates we were using as stools.

“Clip one of those to your back belt loop, and put the other one in your front pocket,” I told her as I held my hand out. She cupped her palm under my hand to catch them, and I demonstrated by clipping one of my own to my rear belt loop.

“What are they?” she asked as she looked them over.

“Handcuff keys. Some cops carry them to keep from being locked up with their own cuffs.” She wasted no time in tucking one to her belt loop, and I stuck the second one in my front pocket.

“You don’t already have some of these?” she asked with a smug little grin on her face.

“Nope,” I said. “Before things went south, I wouldn’t carry them. I didn’t want to give the police the wrong impression if I ever had to deal with them. But…things change.” She nodded. By then the water in the Kelley kettle was boiling, and I took it off the base and poured some into the small pot that came with the kettle’s cook set. Three minutes later, I had Ramen noodle soup.

“So, what’s the plan now?” she asked after I finished my soup and headed back to the truck.

“We find an encrypted radio and contact Nate. After that, we wing it.”

“Oh, is that all we have to do?” Amy said sharply. “Let me check, I think I had an encrypted radio around here somewhere. Dave, seriously, where the hell are we going to find one?”

“National Guard armory,” I said as I picked up the AR-15 and hit the power button on the red dot sight. The little illuminated circle glowed into existence, and I turned the power off before I set it down. “Or, if we’re lucky, we might find a convoy or some kind of mobile command post.” The AR had two mags, just enough to get me into serious trouble. The shotgun was a little better off, with a hundred shells. Since they didn’t require a magazine to load, that wasn’t so bad. The Glock only had the two mags, which meant I would probably have to rely more on the SOCOM than I would have liked, since I had fewer rounds for it. The only saving grace was the snub nosed revolver. It was chambered for .357, and it had a holster that looked like it was designed to be strapped to an ankle. While I wasn’t ready to go putting guns on my limbs, it wasn’t a bad fall back gun even if it did only carry five rounds.

“That’s the third time you’ve checked the guns,” Amy said from behind me. “We’re good, Dave. The guns are cleaned, all the magazines are loaded, our swords are cleaned, sharp and oiled, and our vests are almost dry. Your boots are the only things that still need to dry, and that’s because you won’t take them off.” She stepped up beside me and nudged me with her shoulder.

“Sorry,” I told her. “I’m a worrier when I don’t have a clear plan.”

“What, ‘find an encrypted radio’ isn’t a plan?” she asked.

“It isn’t what you’d call a plan so much as a guideline; a goal, really,” I said in a bad pirate accent.

“You must really be stressed,” she said, laughter in her voice. “You went five whole minutes without a movie quote. You chill. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“Okay. I’ll just make sure the rest of the gear is okay-” I started to say.

“Five times,” Amy cut me off. “Seriously, you’ve already poked and prodded at it five times. We have a week’s worth of food, all the other gear is fine. The only thing you haven’t checked out is the sleeping bag. Why don’t you give it a test run and let me know if it’s working okay.” I held up my hands and sat down on the tailgate to take my boots off. As soon as the first one came off, she took it from me and set it near the fire base for the Kelley Kettle. The second one ended up on the other side a moment later.

“Wake me up in… three hours,” I said, yawning partway through the sentence.

“Whatever you say,” she said as she headed for the ladder that led into the barn’s upper level. While I wasn’t happy about how flippant she sounded, I figured I could trust her to wake me up if she got too tired. I crawled into the bed of the truck and took a look into the cab. The keys were still in the ignition, just like they had been an hour ago. Through the front windshield, I could see the truck’s shadow against the doors, cast by the faint light of the fire behind the tailgate. Behind my seat, the box of radio parts I’d grabbed from Radio Shack while Amy was updating her wardrobe was still secure. Satisfied for the moment that we were okay, I lowered myself onto the sleeping bag.

I woke to the sound of my own voice in my ears and a vague memory of a zombified Maya trying to tear my throat out with her teeth. My heart was pounding in my chest as my head came off the pillow. It was dark, and I was okay. Beside me, I heard the soft rasp of a girl’s snore, then a hand fell on my shoulder.

“’Sokay, Dave,” Amy muttered sleepily. “You’re awright…jus’ a badream.” She patted my shoulder a couple of times before her hand fell away. I sat upright a second later.

“Amy!” I snapped. “What the hell are you doing? Wake the hell up!” I heard the rustle of fabric and a moment later blue light flooded the bed of the truck. I squinted and snatched the LED flashlight from Amy’s hand and pointed it in her direction. She propped herself up on her elbows and squinted at me.

“Damn it Dave,” she groaned at me. “Chill out. We’re fine.”

“We’re not fine! You were supposed to wake me up so I could take the next watch. What if someone attacked us?”

“The coyotes would warn us before they got close,” she said as she let herself fall back onto her sleeping bag. I stopped dead at that.

“Coyotes?” I asked. She nodded and pointed toward the outside of the truck as I heard a short bark nearby. Another bark answered it, then a third gave a longer bark with a high pitched yowl at the end.

“Yeah, they showed up about an hour after you fell asleep,” she said through a yawn. “Go take a look.” Determined to do just that, I turned the light to the tailgate and found my boots near the end of my sleeping bag. I stuck my feet in them and did a sloppy job of tying them without lacing them all the way up, then climbed the ladder and headed for the opening at the front of the barn. The quarter moon was low on the horizon, and in its faint light, I could see three coyotes sitting on their haunches and looking up at me. One of them yipped at me twice, then gave out another longer bark. In the distance, I heard a coyote howl, and the three outside answered. Then silence fell again, and the one that had barked at me looked back up at me for a moment before it trotted around to one side of the barn. I shrugged and let out a grunt before I retreated back to the truck.

I wasn’t sure how long I laid there and tried to get back to sleep, but it felt like it was forever. Eventually, I crawled out of the truck and grabbed the AR, then made my way back to the loft. The moon had set by the time I settled back into place, so I concentrated on listening as I let my eyes adjust to the dark. Without the usual light pollution obscuring it, the Milky Way was a ribbon of stardust overhead, and I spent most of the next few hours alternating between marveling at the sky and listening for anything approaching. Eventually, the stars faded and the gray light of dawn crept across the sky behind me.

By the time Amy woke up, I had water boiling and breakfast was about to be rehydrated. Freeze-dried food was still the best thing I knew how to put together without an ice chest and a full camp stove. Amy slid out of the truck bed feet first and slipped her shoes on before she came over and sat down. Before, she’d never been a morning person, but she was clear eyed and alert as she took the bowl I handed her.

After breakfast, I started Amy’s driving lessons by letting her drive the truck out of the barn and a little ways down the dirt road to get her used to it. Half an hour later, we were back on the road, with the barn cleaned up behind us and our gear stowed. It felt good to have my vest back on and the Deuce close to hand. We headed north, further into Nebraska for a little while, then turned west on another farm road. After a few miles, Amy pointed ahead. I followed the line of her finger to a white building on the right side of the road. “We’re alive! 4 miles N” had been painted in red on the side of it with an arrow pointing in the right direction.

“You think we should check it out?” Amy asked.

“They might be able to tell us if there’s an armory nearby or something. Might be worth checking out.”

I looked over to her, and she shrugged. People were always a crap shoot. But, you also never won if you never took the chance. I took the turn just past the white building, and shook my head at the red “Infected inside. Do not enter” stenciled in red paint on the door. About three miles down the road, I pulled over and turned the truck off.

“I’m going to go on ahead and check things out. If things look okay, I’ll call you in. But if you don’t hear from me in about thirty minutes, give one call out. If I don’t answer, or if I say ‘All is well’, go back to the last intersection we passed before we turned and wait until tomorrow morning. If I don’t make it back to you then, head for Wyoming.” I watched her face to see if she was going to argue with me, but she just gave me a dark look and nodded. Not terribly reassured, I tuned the shortwave on the dash to the same frequency as the Marine radio I had and got out. I didn’t want to risk losing the AR, so I grabbed the Mossberg and shrugged the Takedown’s carrying case on my shoulders. I’d stocked it with some basic gear as well, so it would be a compact survival kit if I needed one. Geared up, I started walking.

At first, the only sound I could hear was my boots on the cracked asphalt. Then the sound of birds, insects and wind. But one thing was missing, a sound I’d even heard sometimes out in the forest with my grandfather as a kid: the soft hum of traffic. Even out here, the sound of a car would travel for a long way, and you could usually hear the sound of rubber on asphalt. I walked for about twenty minutes, and finally found signs of human habitation. Oddly enough, it was the barnyard smell that hit me first. Then, I caught the scent of wood smoke on the wind as the road ahead of me curved around a hill that rose up on my right. As I rounded the curve, several bodies came into view. All of them were lying sprawled on the road as if they’d been left where they fell. I brought the shotgun up and sidestepped to my left, scanning left and right with the shotgun. On the far side of the road from me was a chest high stone wall that led to a metal gate blocking a road that ran up the hill and curved out of sight to the left. I didn’t see anyone pointing a gun at me, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t there. Slowly, I approached one of the bodies and spared a glance down at it. Dessicated brain matter was pooled around the back of its head, and its eyes were milky white, but I could still see the black veins running through them, a sure sign the corpse had been infected before it died. Without turning away from the gate, I checked the other corpses. All of them had bullet holes through their heads, and all of them looked infected. Whoever had been doing the shooting didn’t seem to be targeting the living. I didn’t see any bloodstains, so I figured they hadn’t shot any living people and hid the bodies. Still, I didn’t feel like taking chances.