Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead (3 page)

Chapter 3

Tony led Char off the main road. The trees were still sparse, but the trail was no longer paved. They were on an incline, as well. The engine whined, exhaled, and grunted. They moved along, but the going was slow.

She braked. The rig hissed. Cutting the engine, she realized rocks should be wedged under the tires to prevent the trailer from rolling backward.

Tony eventually realized he was on his own and turned his horse around. He came at her galloping and stopped alongside the rig. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t keep going.”

Tony knew what she meant. It wasn’t about feeling tired. “We’ve only been riding for an hour, maybe less. We haven’t put much distance behind us.”

“We put enough.” She didn’t want to say it. Didn’t think she needed to. “We have to check.”

Tony stared at her for a full minute. The silence just lingered between them. She knew he was afraid to look and he was afraid not too. “Okay. Let’s look.”

She jumped down from the rig. She wondered where Broadhurst was getting diesel fuel. The man was resourceful. That much credit was deserved.

Walking toward the back of the trailer, Char kept an eye on the surrounding forest. The dead were not as prevalent in the mountains. Maybe it was because of the damp autumn weather, she knew the things hated rain.

Tony searched on the ground for a rock. “This looks big enough,” he said. He walked to the back of the trailer and smashed the rock against the padlock.

Char pet her horse, attempting to keep him calm. “Shh, shh.”

Tony pounded the rock against the lock over and over until it broke. He removed the halves and lifted the latch.

“What are you waiting for?” she said.

“Get your sword out. We really have no idea what’s inside.”

“Before we started following them, we saw them load the trailer.”

“Take out your sword. Please.”

She reached across her waist and pulled the sword from the scabbard. Gripping the hilt with both hands, the blade pointing toward the sky, she nodded. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Tony yanked on the doors. Rusted hinges screamed in protest. “It’s pitch black in there.”

Char looked around. This would be the perfect time for the infected to attack, while they were distracted. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She hated the feeling. She remembered watching a movie with her father after her younger brother had fallen asleep. A captain miscounted the number of passengers on his boat, and after a diving excursion, left the area for the night, leaving a couple stranded in the middle of the ocean. They spent the night trying to stay afloat and alive. The couple kept expecting to be attacked. They knew they’d never see it coming. Before help arrived, they were both eaten by sharks. What stuck with her most after seeing the film was the fear and tension that grew the entire time they spent treading water and just waiting for the inevitable.

“I’ll go in,” Char said.

“I will,” Tony said.

She shook her head. “Stand back,” she said.

Char replaced her sword. She unsheathed the machete and stepped into Tony’s cupped hands as he hoisted her up and into the back of the trailer. Confronted with fifty-three feet of darkness, Char wasted no time. She used her feet to kick at the items stacked on either side of the narrow aisle. “Hello? It’s okay now. It’s me. It’s Char,” she said. She knew not to yell. She talked loud enough to be heard. While she expected her voice to echo, it only fell flat.

“Anything?”

“No. Not yet,” she said.

Char did not think the infected were piled in the trailer. If anything, the danger was outside surrounding Tony, surrounding both of them, but in here, she was safe. She replaced her machete and used her free hands to help search.

Something moved. It was slight. A shuffling.

Standing still, she was unsure where the sound came from. Regardless, it was a good sign. A great sign. “I’m coming. You’re okay. You will be okay!”

She could not believe she’d left that flashlight at the enemy’s campsite. It was probably still on the sleeping bag, a dying beam shooting a now dim yellowing light toward the trees. With renewed vigor, Char climbed up and onto stacks of boxes. A tower tilted, wobbled, and crashed.

“Char?”

“I’m okay,” she called out. She pushed items out of the way, confident the sound came from the very back of the trailer. She just wanted some light. She smelled cardboard and urine. “Sam? Grace?”

“You got them?” Tony said.

“They’re back here. I’m almost to them.” Her hands worked as her eyes. She felt in front of her as she crawled over boxes on her knees. They had been tied and bagged and riding in the back of this trailer the entire time. It was hot inside the box, the air stagnant and rank.

Char reached the back of the trailer. Her palms planted against the inside wall. She worried she’d made her way past them and remained still as she called out their names once more.

Something wiggled below her. She felt around. There was a break in the tower stacks. She lowered herself down between them and she stepped on something squishy. A muffled cry erupted.

Using the boxes, Char lifted herself up. She had landed on at least one of them.

It hadn’t been that long ago, while on the way from Texas to the mountains, that Tony and Char met up with two other people. One was Sam Gerringer. He was just a year or two older than Char was, but acted ten years younger. He reminded Char of an undisciplined, but thankfully, potty-trained, puppy. He was the exact opposite of Tony, with curly blond hair and red acne on his cheeks. He had big blue eyes and wore jeans and an Aztec-style parka.

The three had then found Grace Mattison on the roof of a backyard shed surrounded by the infected screaming for help. While the screams brought potential help, it was also like a dinner bell for the monsters. . .

“It’s me. I’m here, guys. I’m going to get you out of there.” Char used the toe of her boot and felt around for a place to stand. She lowered herself to the trailer’s floor. Ignoring the pungent odor of urine, Char got onto her knees. She used her knife to saw through rope around ankles, straddled legs, and severed more secured rope around the middles, and finally cut through a third section that was tied across necks. They were in bags. There must have been air holes or Sam and Grace would be dead.

She tore at the plastic and was now sitting between the two.

“Oh, man,” Sam said, sitting up. He pulled the bag away from his face as he got to his feet and shook the bag off the rest of his body.

Char assisted Grace out of her bag.

“She’s not moving,” she said. Char damned the darkness as she lowered her ear to where Grace’s mouth should be. She listened. “She’s breathing—barely. Help me get her out of here.”

“Where are we?”

“Sam, I need you to help me.” She squatted, moving behind Grace’s head. “I’ll get her under the arms.”

Boxes crashed down around them.

“What was that?” Char said.

“I’m clearing a path,” Sam said. There was more grunting and shifting of boxes. Something glass smashed open.

“Char!”

“We’re good, Tony. We’re coming out.”

“Hurry. Something’s in the forest and is coming this way!”

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

“I know. I heard him.”

“Grace?” Char said, as she struggled to maneuver over fallen boxes with Grace in her arms. “Are you helping at all?”

“I have her legs.”

It didn’t feel like it. “You go first,” she said, not wishing to walk backwards.

“Char!”

“We’re coming!” Her foot landed on the edge of a box. She slipped and lost her balance. The tumble was awkward with her arms tucked under Grace. She landed on a knee and toppled down on her side.

“You okay?”

“Hold on,” Char said. She used the muscles in her legs and back to get back up while lifting Grace with her. “I’m fine. I’m good. Let’s go.”

Sam walked backward, stepping carefully. The center of the trailer was a clear path. Char’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness inside the trailer; she could see out of the back end where the doors were open and Tony stood ready for battle.

“We should set her down,” Char said.

“Why?”

“Set her down, Sam. She’s safer in here. We’ll close the doors. Tony needs our help.”

#  #  #

“What have we got?” Char jumped down from the back of the trailer and stood on Tony’s right.

“Hey, man,” Tony said, offering a hand up to assist Sam clambering out of the trailer.

“Thanks for the rescue.”

He cocked a thumb toward Char. “She made me. Where’s Grace?”

“She’s not alert. We’re keeping her inside the trailer,” Char said. “Close these doors, she’ll be safer in there.”

“I’ve got movement all over the place. Nothing is coming out of the trees, though; it’s almost like they’re spooked,” Tony said.

“Maybe it’s not the infected?”

“Take a whiff,” Tony said.

The three of them sniffed the air and Char said, “It’s them. The infected.”

“I think we might be better off just getting out of here,” Tony said, grabbing one of the opened doors and swinging it closed. “Sam, get the other one.”

“No. We can’t. Grace is lying unconscious in there, and she’s right in the center of the trailer. With all the rocks out here, we could jar loose a stack of supplies, and she’ll be crushed,” Char said.

“I could ride in back with her,” Sam said.

“It’s too late to discuss it anymore,” Tony said. “Here they come.”

Chapter 4

The infected were too numerous to count as they stumbled out of the forest. Thankfully, it had been some time since any fast ones has been spotted. Char figured the fast eventually become the slow if they survived long enough. Time and being undernourished took a toll on them. Once the rigor mortis set in, they could barely walk. She didn’t know if that eventually killed them for good, but it made fighting them much easier.

The freshly bitten were still fast. The ones that fed often, fast.

It didn’t mean three against a horde was a fair match-up.

“There’s too many,” Sam said. “I don’t have a weapon.”

Char gave him the sword, and she removed her machete, ready for a war. While the infected may be fewer in numbers and slower than when first turned, they were still cunning. It was as if once adjusted, they regained some brain function. It wasn’t that they became smart, or smarter, as much as they became instinctive. They learned, and used that new knowledge to hunt flesh more efficiently, more effectively. That was what made even the slow and starving infected so dangerous; the surprises they sprang.

There were no answers. Whatever the virus stemmed from, it seemed to mutate. Her father had tried to find answers, and he died while still searching.

Char ran at the closest infected and chopped through the air. The machete sliced through the rotted skin around the thing’s neck. She sawed the blade as she pulled it away, and black blood spilled from the severed arteries that in someone normal, supplied oxygenated blood to the brain. The spine, not as brittle as expected, kept the head in place. Damage was inflicted, and the impact drove the infected to the ground. She set a booted foot onto his shoulder, slammed the machete into the back of the neck, and pulled it out in one swift motion.

She heard battle cries from around her.

Her peripheral picked up Sam just as he swung the sword like a baseball bat. Without a whetting stone, she was forced to improvise when it came time to keep the steel sharpened. Satisfaction filled her as she saw an infected sliced into half. Sam kicked the creature in the chest, knocking the torso off the lower half of the body.

The sun was rising. Daylight would aid the fight some. Steam, like clouds, swam through the mountains on a chilling morning airstream; Char wielded the machete in one hand and a serrated hunting knife in the other, as she was about to charge a group of infected that ambled forward clustered close together. She counted four heads. Two men in front, the women behind them. The bobbing heads of the men allowed Char to notice bite marks on the women’s faces. They looked raw and oozed pus.

Something about that was wrong.

The men stepped aside, slow, sluggish. The women ran at Char.

“They’re fast!” She crossed her arms out in front of her. The blades clanked as she turned them into one X-shaped weapon. She set the crux of the blades to one infected’s throat and uncrossed her arms. The makeshift hedge clippers cut through skin, meat, and bone. The head toppled backward but did not fall off the neck, its threat minimized.

The second infected woman was about to wrap arms around Char just as Char fell purposely to the ground. She backslid between its legs, rolled onto her belly, and cut through both Achilles tendons. Springing to her feet, Char swung, and severed the infected’s head. The black blood was not as dark, not as crusty. The thing actually bled.

She spun around and lacerated the first man. Her machete slid across its belly, doubling him over. She drove the knife into the ear of the second man. It was stuck in his skull. She let the handle go, and gripped the machete with both hands. She brought the blade up and swung down, finishing the first man with a swift motion that decapitated him in a clean slice.

Char retrieved her knife from the skull of the other man and stood looking at the bodies scattered along the road.

They had managed a win; it was a small victory, but a victory, nonetheless. She would take it. “You guys alright?”

Sam was bent over, one hand on a knee, the other on the sword’s handle. He breathed heavy, deep breaths. He did not answer, but nodded his head.

“Handful of fast ones,” Tony said. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Crafty bastards,” Sam said. “Crafty little bastards. Let’s get Grace into the cab. I can ride either your horse, Char, or drive the truck. Makes no difference to me.”

“Can you drive a stick shift? It has like a hundred gears,” Char said.

“No. I cannot.” Sam bit into his upper lip as he shook his head.

“That could be a problem,” she said.

Tony threw open the back doors while Sam climbed up and into the trailer. “Grace?”

“She okay?” Tony said.

“She’s still out of it,” Sam said. “I don’t like this. She needs a doctor. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“Did they hurt her?”

“Roughed us up, but that was all. Bagged us, tied us up, and tossed us in back of this trailer.”

“She’s got to be dehydrated, hungry. She could be in shock,” Tony said.

“Shock. That’s bad right?”

“If it’s medical shock, but if it’s acute shock, she’ll be okay. We just have to get her someplace safe, warm. She’s going to be alright,” Tony said. Char thought Tony’s explanation sounded convincing, but maybe because she knew it was what Sam needed to hear.

They maneuvered her body out of the trailer, placed her in the passenger seat of the rig, and seat belted her in place.

Tony didn’t hesitate. He removed the reins from the back of the truck and climbed onto the saddle of his horse. It neighed and twisted its head. Its breath was visible as it plumed from giant nostrils.

Char pet her horse’s mane. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Sammy is going to take good care of you.”

She held the reins, keeping her horse calm and steady as Sam mounted her.

“Where are we headed?” Char said.

“Somewhere far from here. We need to find some other roads, get some twists and turns behind us. We don’t want Broadhurst finding us too easily, now do we?”

“No. We don’t,” Char said. She patted the horse’s neck and quickly nuzzled her face against his. She scratched him lightly under the chin. “My baby,” she said, in a baby voice.

“You spoil him,” Sam said.

“And you’d better, as well. I love this horse!” She ruffled his mane and patted his muscular neck. She wished she’d had an apple or carrot. There was little she loved as much as hand feeding her horse. “You take care of Dispatch—promise.”

“Promise.”

# # #

Char followed behind her friends in the eighteen wheeler. Tony and Sam rode nearly side by side at a steady gallop, with Tony just slightly ahead. She kept the rig in one gear as her eyes searched the woods that lined the narrow mountain road. She knew they were always susceptible to an attack. Letting one’s guard down was beyond foolish, it could prove deadly. It was up to each of them to do their part. From up inside the cab, she felt like she could see clearer, further than her friends on horseback.

The sun’s rays burned away the rolling steam. It looked like the beginning of a beautiful autumn day. Despite the anarchy that surrounded her life, she took in the foliage, appreciating the red scarred and brilliant orange flamed leaves that decorated tree branches.

Char didn’t like time alone, and even though Grace sat buckled beside her, she wasn’t conscious. Char thought about how the days were long and full. They took turns sleeping, someone always on guard. They spent hours of daylight looking for food; hunting and fishing. Most nights they set new snares to catch rabbits, opossum, or anything unlucky enough to walk into the trap. Life was about surviving, and surviving was about having enough to eat so as to keep healthy. Since they reached the Blue Ridge Mountains, it had become easier. Not easy, just easier. She wanted Grace to wake up so she wasn’t forced to spend so much time thinking.

It all changed about a month back when they crossed paths with Frank Broadhurst. . .