American Revenant: Hometown Exodus (4 page)

Jimmy had only met Capp once, a
couple of years ago.  Jack only knew him from hearing Gordy mention him on
occasion.  From what he could gather, Harlan Capp was more of a “gun guy” than
any three people that Gordy could name.  Historian and collector, he had
amassed a huge collection of both historic and modern firearms. 

Gordy drove the back streets,
heading for Harlan’s small, comfortable home on 36
^th
Street.  Dead
people where everywhere.  Some walked around, turning to follow the sound of
the box truck, though most simply lay there, lucky enough to have actually stayed
dead. 

Neither Gordy, nor any from his
group had even the most remote idea what had caused the dead to return to
ravenous life.  He had thought often about it.  Had the EMP somehow caused a
mutation of the virus?  Had it been designed this way?  A negative reaction to
an attempted cure?  He had no idea.  He did know that if you were bitten, you
would ‘zombie out’ just like in the movies.

It was that thought, the idea of
dying and coming back as a mindless murder machine, a ravenous devouring beast
whose only purpose was to consume, that filled his days.  He could often feel
that thought trying to bloom into something else, something akin to fear.  Not
fear for himself, but for those he cared deeply for, the people he loved.  What
would they do without him?  Even worse, what would they do if they had to kill
him?  He pushed back against these thoughts and fears mightily, but could not
escape them entirely.  He was a father, a husband, a brother, and a friend.  He
wondered if any of the others felt the same.

“Hey Gordy, you still in there,
man?”

                “Eh? Oh, yeah, Jack.  Just woolgathering a
bit.”

                “No problem, I wonder the same thing
sometimes.”

                “Wonder what?”

                “Are we all infected with this zombie shit? 
Are we all just gonna wake up one day as psycho biting nutbags?” 

                “I’ve wondered that myself,” Jimmy offered.

                “Yeah, me too.  Either way, it’s not
happening today, not if I can…Jesus.”

                The other men looked out the window to see
what had pulled Gordy up short.  Half a block away sat a small white house on a
large lot.  The grass was knee high in places, but they could still see the
bodies sprawled everywhere. 

                As far as they could tell without an
accurate count, there had to be twenty or thirty bodies scattered around the little
white house.  It was difficult to tell what had been dead before and what had
died after reaching their final resting place.  Many of the dead bodies had
been killed by a headshot, this was obvious.  Still other bodies were riddled
with bullet holes.  There had to have been a massive fire fight here at one
time just recently, as some of the dead had just begun to decompose.  Others
looked as if they had been rotting for some time. 

                “What the fuck happened here?”

                “I’m wondering the same thing Jimmy.”  Gordy
stepped over a body, noticing that it still had a pistol in its dead fist. 
“Some of these things were dead before they ever got here, though it looks like
there are a few that came in armed.  What the hell?”

                The three men moved warily towards the front
door, sidestepping the decaying corpses when they could.  Once, Jimmy laid his
hand on Gordy’s shoulder, stopping him before he could put his foot down in a
bear trap that was partially hidden by the tall grass.

                “Ha! Harlan’s work, I guarantee it.  Thanks
Jimmy.  Be careful guys, there may be a few more, Harlan Capp was never one to
do things half-assed.”

                Moving forward they watched not only the
house but the surrounding area closely.  They made it to the front door without
any problems, not letting down their guard even as they stepped through the
broken in front door.

                “Harlan, you in there?  Capp, it’s Gordy,
you still alive?”  Gordy sharply rapped the butt of the crossbow here carried
on the half-hanging door.  Stepping further into the small, destroyed, living
room he could hear a noise coming from the kitchen, something like a plastic
grocery bag in the wind.

                “Capp, that you?  It’s Gordy, here with a
couple friends.  You ok?” 

                A few quick and cautious steps took the men into
the kitchen.  Gordy’s heart dropped into his stomach at the sight of his old,
dear friend pinned beneath two dead zombies.  A large kitchen knife protruded
from the temple of the topmost zombie.  It looked as if Harlan Capp had driven
the knife through the skulls of both creatures after they had fallen on him. 
Though it hadn’t been fast enough to spare him the huge bite the bottom zombie
had taken out of his upper chest.  They could see the bloody white of Capp’s
collar bone clearly.

                “Fuck!  Fucking bastard gut-sucking…,” Gordy
stammered, stumbling over words, unable to express the rage and fear and
disgust boiling in him.

                He looked down into his friends face,
snapping teeth, vacant eyes.  Harlan’s right arm had gotten caught under the
single kitchen chair he always kept at the little table.  A plastic grocery
sack had snagged on the wrist, creating a wispy rasping noisy every time
Harlan’s hand would move. 

                Jack laid his hand on Gordy’s shoulder,
reminding him that he had friends here and now. 

                “Gordy, I’m so sorry man.  We can’t stay
here, just asking for trouble if we hang out too long.”

                “Jimmy’s right, Gordy.  I feel horrible for
you and for your friend, but we need to go.  Do you want me to…”

                “No, I’ll handle this.”  Gordy’s voice was
barely a whisper.  “Give me just a second, please.”

                Jimmy and Jack stepped back into the living
room, watching both the front door and short hall leading to a bathroom and
bedroom.

                Gordy withdrew the Extreme Ratio Suppressor
dagger from his boot, whispered a quite goodbye to his friend, and closed his
eyes for a moment.  “Like a Band-Aid.  Like the most horrible fucking Band-Aid
ever,” He said, mostly to himself, and quickly plunged the narrow dagger deep
into Harlan Capp’s temple.

                He did not waste time kneeling beside his
dead friend.  Harlan had plenty of company in death.  It was time to go.  Gordy
met his friends in the living room, and made for the front door without saying
a word.  Jimmy and Jack were right behind him, which is why they all bumped
together when Gordy stopped right on the threshold. 

                “Wait.”

                “Gordy, we have got to get out of here.”

                “I know Jack,” Gordy said stepping back and
grabbing the nearly unhinged door.  He pushed it into place as much as he
could; hoping that if it wouldn’t keep anything out it would at least act as an
early warning system.

                “Jimmy, you’ve only been here the one time,
and Jack never, so you guys wouldn’t have noticed.  Either of you see any
guns?”

                Both men looked around the room, not sure
what Gordy was getting at. 

                “Harlan had guns everywhere, old and new
guns both.  Those two racks over there and that glass front cabinet were always
full.  I would say that the guns in Capp’s bedroom are probably gone also.
Hell, I’d bet good money, if money was still good, that he had one in the
bathroom too.”

                Gordy took off into the back rooms, just to
prove himself correct.  There wasn’t a single gun in any room in the house.

                “I think whatever happened here was some
sort of setup so someone could get at Capp’s guns.  Stupid as it may sound, I’d
lay good odds that’s what happened.” 

                “What’s that got to do with us getting the
fuck out of here, Gordy?”  Jack was beginning to get nervous, having stayed in
one unsecured spot for so long. 

                “Capp showed me something years ago, he said
it was just a little hidey-hole to stash some of his more valuable
possessions.  As far as I know I was the only person other than Harlan himself
to know about it. Follow me” 

                Out of habit the men moved as quietly as
possible, following Gordy to a small sunlit back porch.  “Help me move this,”
Gordy had begun to pull out a small sofa that had its back to the inner wall of
the porch. 

                With the sofa moved, they looked down at a
small metal pull ring inset into the floor.  It had been well concealed beneath
the furniture.  Gordy pulled up the ring, the floor giving up a small section
that acted as a trap door. 

                Jimmy turned on the small flashlight he kept
on hand, shining it down a small staircase.  “Little hidey-hole, huh?”

                Gordy took the flashlight from Jimmy and
went down into the room.  The other two men waited, and watching at the top of
the steps, until they heard Gordy say, “Holy shit, Capp!”

                “Gordy, what’s down there, man?”

                “Come on down here, it’s cramped, but we can
all fit, just barely.  You’ll have to stoop, really low ceiling”

                Jack and Jimmy joined Gordy in the cramped
hidey-hole Harlan Capp had created.  The room was six foot to a side, with a
five foot ceiling.  The walls were cinderblock with metal shelving bolted along
each wall from floor to ceiling.  The floor was simple wooden planks laid over
dirt.

                Every shelf was filled to capacity, some
bowing under the weight of the guns and ammunition.

                “Oh.  Holy shit.”

                “That, Jimmy, is an understatement,” Gordy
said with a grin.

                “Barrett .50cal, Accuracy International
L115A3, FN P90, no make that two FN P90’s.  I had no clue he had all this. 
There must be fifteen different guns in here and maybe ten cans of ammo for
each.”  Gordy touched everything as he went by it, constantly bumping into the
other two men.

                “Can we get all of this out of here?” Jimmy
asked.

                “Can we?  Hell I say we can’t leave anything
behind.  Even the few cases of MRE’s and bottled water go.  It’s going to take
us a while to pack everything out and load it in the truck.  Let’s get
started.”

                “Hang on Gordy; let’s bring the truck right
up to the back door. We haven’t seen much in the way of the Creeping Dead out
here, we might be able to just bring it right out of here, straight into the
truck and be gone in less than an hour.”

                Gordy looked at Jimmy, who just shrugged his
shoulders then back to Jack.  “Fuck it, let’s do it.”

                Gordy drove, while Jimmy and Jack walked in
front of the truck, moving bodies and bear traps when necessary.  The few
minutes it took to move the truck were tense, and they all felt a sense of
relief when Gordy cut the engine.

                “Uh, Gordy, with your back why don’t you
climb up on top and stand guard.  Jimmy and I will get this stuff moved as fast
as we can.”

                “Screw that, Jack.  I’ll stay in the truck,
let Jimmy hand it up to you, you set it in and I’ll organize it.  Three of us
working on this will make it go a lot faster.  With the truck backed right up
to the door nothing can get right in at us, and we have the front blocked up.”

                Three eager men went at the task full of
tension and vigor.  In just under an hour they had the truck loaded with
everything from Harlan’s stash. 

                Climbing over the piles of guns and salvaged
supplies in the back of the truck, all three men pushed into the cab through a
tiny sliding door.  Jimmy glanced up through the windshield as they were taking
a moment to get comfortable in the cramped space. 

                “Company,” was all he said.

                Nine creepers stood about fifteen feet from
the front of the truck.  Gordy ground the key, giving the gas pedal a couple of
taps.  The truck didn’t start.

                “Oh, horseshit, this kind of moronic crap
only happens in the damn movies.”

                “To be fair, Gordy, zombies only happened in
movies until a few weeks ago.”

                “Not helping, Jimmy.”  Gordy spared a moment
to glare at him out of the corner of his eye.

                The zombies turned toward the noise of the
grinding starter.  The entire pack moved as one, moving directly at the truck
in their shambling gait. 

                “Hey, I think that’s Ron Miller and his wife
Gail.”  Jack leaned forward and pointed out the window at the pack of zombie
creepers.

                “Yeah, it is,” Gordy said, giving the key
another turn.  The weary old box truck roared to life, sputtering briefly. 

                “Let’s head home, boys.”  Jamming the shift
into first, Gordy released the clutch and gave the truck enough gas to make it
over the body of Gail, Ron Miller’s wife.

                Back out on the street they noticed many
more dead than they had seen coming in. 

                “Looks like we brought the party out.”Jimmy
noticed a distant look in in Gordy’s eye.

                “You ok, Gordy?”

                “Will be.  Can’t say that running over
someone I used to know, face eating zombie or not, makes me feel warm and fuzzy
inside.” 

                “Just think, ‘Hey, they owed me money’, that
might help.”

                Gordy chuckled, “Jimmy, you’re kind of a
dick, you know that.”

                Jack sat smiling for a moment, enjoying the
banter of his good friends.  Despite the world ravaging sickness, and the world
ending EMP, and even the world eating zombies at least these people were a
constant.  Protecting each other was everything, because survival was
everything.  And they kept alive, through it all, what made them human.  The
world may have become unreal, a place of death and fear, but these people
refused to give up their reality.  The reality of who they are and the very
real existence they struggled so hard to sustain.  Good friends were always
great to have, but they certainly made the end of the world a little more tolerable.