Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (5 page)

Neil started doubting the wisdom of their
choice...of his choice for all of them, as they continued to climb
up and up without end. The path didn’t go up and over the mountain,
but rather skirted a wide but elevated tier, like the largest,
first layer of an extravagant wedding cake. The first couple of
hours Neil and the others found themselves beneath a thin canopy of
leafless trees that shrouded the sunlight. Despite the best efforts
of the firs and other evergreen trees spread around them to add
green to the surroundings, everything was draped in a dreary,
lifeless brown. The forest grew less dense, and the ground beneath
began to transform. The patches of yellow and brown grass
struggling to keep their heads barely above the snow gave way to
growing bodies of the white atop grassless mud or bare rock. The
slippery rocks, loose gravel, and snow all conspired against them
as the elements challenged each and every step. Neil tried to
conceal his fear but looking in everyone else’s eyes, he realized
they shared his misgivings. No matter how high their ascent, the
mountain loomed ever upward.

They could still turn around. It wasn’t too
late. They could go back to Jess’ car and come up with another
plan. Maybe they could drive to some other place and wait out the
winter. Perhaps there were some cabins or homes or some other
shelter that they hadn’t thought of yet.

They were pulling and pushing one another
along, sometimes literally when traction failed them or legs didn’t
have the energy to push on any longer. All of their feet, cold and
wet to the bone, were soon like cinder blocks threatening to anchor
them to the unforgiving earth. If it weren’t for the trail markers,
they likely would have given up. But each new post renewed their
hope. Like lighthouses shining their beacons into the gloom, the
wooden markers kept them focused on the easier stretches between
when the snow seemed overwhelming and their exhaustion threatened
their next steps.

Finding a rare stand of trees in a shallow
depression on the inclining mountain that might provide some
respite from the weather, the adults stretched a pair of tarpaulins
between the narrow trunks to block the wind and the snow. Jerry
gathered some branches from the ground and piled them together to
build a fire, hoping they weren’t too green or wet to burn. Using
the last bits of paper they had as kindling, they managed a small
flame that initially struggled to burn the moist wood but finally
took hold.

The flame flickered and danced as the
changing winds forced it to seek cover. All of the people huddled
around the desperate fire watched absently, the small blaze more an
object of focus than one of warmth. They tried to collectively form
a barrier between the fire and the buffeting winds threatening to
extinguish it.

They rested for a few hours and allowed some
of their gear to dry a bit. There was no food to be had, but the
rest was very welcome. While they waited, the snow stopped falling
and a peaceful quiet settled over them. The sun even managed to
stage a surprise visit through a wide opening in the dark
clouds.

The likelihood they had been followed by any
of the ghouls was slight, but that didn’t mean they could afford to
get too comfortable. Jerry and Emma kept a watchful eye on the path
behind while Neil kept looking ahead. The mountain was serene and
calm, with nothing stirring in the freshly fallen snow. Neil
understood why hermits had always been rumored to retreat to the
mountains to seek their isolation. It was easy to get lost in the
quiet.

Danny, Jules, and Nikki stayed close to the
fire, warming their hands and feet in the sparse blaze. Jess was
preoccupied with a picture of her daughter Syd, staring at it
intensely, and saying nothing though a few, quiet tears managed to
escape.

Danny finally mustered the courage to ask,
“Who’s that a picture of?”

Jess said, her emotion absent from her
voice, “My daughter. Sydney.”

“Is she... I mean do you know if...?”

Jess merely shook her head and put the
picture back in the inside pocket of her coat. She stood up and
walked away from the fire and the possible next line of questions
for which there were no answers.

Danny felt a pang of guilt for asking about
the photo but was unsure about what to do about it. He turned his
attention to Jules and Nikki, hoping to help them get both warm and
dry. He scouted around a bit and brought back sticks and twigs that
Jerry had neglected to grab. He never could get the fire big enough
or warm enough. Danny wanted to be useful and do his part.

In a short while, they were back on the
trail. With the passing of the storm, the going was easier and,
thankfully, they were traveling downhill again. Jules began to
enjoy the snow. She kicked at it and scooped up handfuls to throw
into the air. It wasn’t much, but it was the most joy she had felt
in quite some time. She wished that she could share it with her
parents. In that moment, she missed them as much as Jess missed her
daughter although her sorrow didn’t linger for her the way it did
for the quiet Jess.

Not long afterward, Jules had started to
play her game of jumping between snow patches. Her levity lightened
everyone’s mood, especially when the other children joined her game
and they all laughed.

The laughter ended when they came up over a
final rise and beheld Whittier.

Months
earlier
...

Abdul Manneh arrived in Anchorage from
Gambia, West Africa a little more than a year earlier. He felt like
he stepped off the plane, got himself into a cab, and hadn’t gotten
out since. Driving a cab had become such a major part of his
identity. He drove his cab for the early morning rush, arriving at
Anchorage International Airport and then again for the redeye
flights later in the evening. He got them both coming and going
from the city that he had taken to calling home. After a year, he
could claim to be a local, he reasoned. He knew the city better
than most, having driven to the best and worst that Anchorage had
to offer.

He didn’t allow himself much in the way of
free time because his family was still in Gambia. The only leisure
activity he pursued was his weekly kick-arounds with his friends
out at the soccer fields on the Park Strip. He and a group of other
immigrants from Africa and some locals who knew about it would
gather every Sunday evening to play some pick up matches until the
ground was too frozen to play. Those two to three hours weekly were
his only release from the week’s toil.

He’d seen some pretty strange things in the
short time he’d been driving his cab. Through all of it, he just
kept his head down and his hands on the wheel. He stayed alive and
made a living by staying out of people’s ways and definitely out of
their business. He didn’t need to know why the woman carrying what
appeared to be all of her belongings in duffel bags ran out of the
apartment building, hopped into his cab, and directed him to a
nearby hotel. His life wasn’t more complete when he picked up the
well-dressed executive and his much younger, much more giggly, and
very friendly assistant from the new Embassy Suites. Nor did he ask
for details from the many quiet passengers he had who needed to be
taken to work on a Sunday morning because the public transit system
wasn’t very accommodating to the working class.

Nothing, however, prepared him for the
events of that morning not too long ago. He dropped off an
emotional man at Providence Hospital. The man was on the phone and
involved in a call that was at times conciliatory and at others
accusatory through the entire short trip. It sounded like the man’s
mother, if Abdul’s English wasn’t failing him, was in distress and
likely near the end of her life. The couple of times Abdul looked
into the rearview mirror, the man was talking with his head down
and his hand up around his face. It reminded Abdul of himself when
he endured losing his own mother. He would have shared a consoling
look it if wasn’t against his policy of not getting involved and if
the man ever raised his head to see it.

In front of the hospital’s main entrance,
they sat idling for a few moments before the man realized they had
stopped. Abdul waited patiently. He was nothing if not patient.

While sitting there, Abdul thought he heard
some sirens and alarms, but he chalked it up to sitting in front of
a hospital where such sounds were commonplace. He grabbed the
twenty-dollar bill that was handed to him as silently as the rest
of the ride had been. The man’s rear door opened and closed and he
was gone. No change. It was only one dollar and seventy-eight cents
worth of gratuity, but it was that much more to send home. His wife
and children counted on every cent, and he wasn’t willing to
disappoint. In a couple more years he would either go home, or have
them come to him. For now though, Abdul committed himself to being
a solid provider despite his absence.

He missed his family. His sons and daughter
had grown so much in the months of his absence. They Skyped often
and spoke almost daily, but it wasn’t the same for either them or
him. He missed them all terribly, especially his wife Nya. Whenever
his thoughts turned to her, he felt his breath catch in his chest.
She was the reason his world turned and being away from her was
nothing short of torture. Soon. Very soon, he would end his workday
in her arms once again.

He sat for a second longer, waiting to see
if any other easy fares would present themselves. When none showed,
he pulled back around the loop, nodding to the Jesus statue
standing near the entrance. Abdul’s more colorful American friend
and coworker Greg called it the Touchdown Jesus statue because of
the Savior’s hands raised up similarly to that of a football
referee’s stance after a touchdown had been scored.

Americans
and
their
football
.

He came back around and noticed a commotion
behind him. He was in the process of deciding what to do when
another man leapt into his car’s backseat. He shouted, “Drive!
Drive! Just drive!”

Startled and somewhat fearful, Abdul did as
he was told and drove them quickly out of the growing chaos, which
was starting to engulf the front parking lot. He squealed his
tires, hoping that doing such would prove to the man that Abdul had
heard him and was complying.

The man in the backseat, out of breath and
complaining about something, didn’t look up for a few minutes, and
that was fine because Abdul needed to get them to the main road.
The man didn’t seem to be threatening in any way, so Abdul relaxed
a bit and settled into his role and awaited instructions at the
traffic light at the intersection of Providence Drive and Lake Otis
Parkway. When the man did look up, he said only, “Whittier. Take me
to Whittier.”

Whittier was a long drive; at least an hour
and a half and back again. It was a hell of a fare and it was a
good way to shake things up a bit. A little deviation from the
routine every now and then was good for the soul. Still, Abdul
looked at the man who flashed a wallet with a significant amount of
cash in it. The man said, “I take cabs down there all the time. I’m
not allowed to drive for a bit longer.”

Abdul smiled. A nice long fare would be a
great way to end this shift. Maybe the guy would be a big tipper
too.

Abdul closed the Plexiglas divider
separating him from the backseat. Not many of the cabs in the fleet
had dividers. He liked having the option available to him if he
wanted a little distance between himself and his passengers. He
didn’t close it often, but on longer fares he found people often
liked their privacy. Abdul found his iPod in his jacket’s pocket
and hit the resume button, sending melodies to the ear buds tucked
just inside his jacket’s collar. They weren’t in his ears
technically, but he could still listen to his music without drawing
a lot of attention or criticism. He loved to listen to tunes that
could warm his soul on cold, dark, Anchorage winter mornings and
brighten his eyes on melancholy Mondays. Typically, the soulful
notes drifting up to his ears were teeming with saxophones,
trumpets, guitars, bass, piano, drums, and above it all and through
it all was Bob Marley’s voice.

Abdul loved reggae, having even adapted his
own speech to match the tenor and pace of a generic Jamaican
accent. Daniel Tosh. Bunny Wailer. Prince Buster. Even Ken Boothe.
But Bob Marley was the messiah. His beautiful, soulful rhythms and
angelic, soothing voice were how he envisioned Jah’s voice. He
could only hope that when his time came and he took that wild ride
in the sky that Bob’s voice would help him onto the right path. In
Abdul’s vision of heaven, the cherubs were singing backup on
Walkin’
Blues
and
Jah was jamming to
No
Woman
No
Cry
.

The drive went quicker than Abdul had
anticipated. There were a few cars stopped at Beluga Point, their
occupants hoping to catch an early morning glimpse of the migrating
pods of opaque white Beluga whales.

For Abdul, whale watching along the Seward
Highway was neither the best use of his time, unless he was being
paid by a curious tourist, nor was it the best way to see Belugas.
He had never seen Belugas when he went looking for them. He always
had the best luck when he wasn’t even paying attention. On those
rare occasions when he did see those pasty heads bobbing up and
down in the surf, he couldn’t deny his own wonder. It felt like
such a personal accomplishment, as if he had something to do with
it. He felt something akin to pride. Maybe this
was
where he’d like to see his children grow into
adults.