Encounters (9 page)

“Aren’t you coming in?” she cried.

“No” was his terse reply.

The woman chewed her lip for a minute, working up her courage, before speaking again.

“You scare me. Maybe even more than the monsters back at that bar. The way you just killed them so callously.”

“I do what needs to be done. I’m sorry if that frightens you.”

She started walking again bent over from the weight of carrying an injured man. Before he shut his door he called out one last question.

“Hey! What’s your name?”

Over her shoulder she responded, “Christina. My name is Christina.”

He smiled at how far off he had been as he got behind the wheel. He drove off planning out how to keep his involvement from being known by the police. A new paint job for his truck was a definite. A new license plate might be in order as well. Maybe he would paint it black. A dark blue might be a nice color as well. He’d have to think it over.

I love zombie stories. We host Walking Dead nights every Sunday in my house. They do get a little played out however. Virus creates zombies. Zombies propagate at a rate too fast for the world to keep up. No one is immune. Civilization collapses. The few survivors struggle to stay alive one more day.

Except, that isn’t how viruses work. And every movie I watch I end up screaming at the characters for making such stupid choices. So, I sat down to write about a man who is bitten and recovers. A man who would, for the most part, make logical choices to insure his survival. So far Carrier has been my most successful piece. I guess there is some life in the zombie genre after all. Terrible pun intended.

He scanned the scope of his rifle slowly back and forth looking for targets. His breath misted in front of his face. The tree stand he was in blocked some of the wind, but did little else to keep out the chill of a south Arkansas winter. It was a much damper cold than he was used to out west. He was slowly becoming acclimated to it he thought, having hunted in these areas for the last few years. He lowered his rifle and laid it across his lap while he sat back. His mind started to wander as it always did and inevitably he found himself thinking of how everything had begun.

***

They were on a hunting trip when it all started. The news quickly erupted with vivid stories of cannibalism and mindless violence. Sitting in their cabin watching on an old television with rabbit ears and foil they grew more horrified nightly. After the first day he wanted to go home to his family, but the others weren’t convinced. After two more days they were all ready to get home. It was a nightmare journey through a landscape of torn bodies and gutted buildings. A landscape that just a week earlier had been vibrant and alive was now a wasteland of shuffling corpses and terrified survivors.

It was the second time that they stopped for fuel that tragedy struck. Standing with nozzle in hand he could feel his legs trembling. He was terrified every time that they were forced to stop. The hum of the pump was vibrating through his soles when fire
exploded in his shoulder. He could feel teeth biting into him and panic almost overwhelmed him. They should have set a guard. He should have been armed himself, but their laxness was about to cost him.

He beat the thing off with his free hand. Running to the back glass of the Jimmy he managed to get his rifle from the back seat. He spun around and shot the ghoul point blank. His shot brought the others running back out of the store, but it also drew more of the zombies to them. They wasted precious seconds staring at his bleeding arm. Of all the contradicting news reports they had heard only one thing remained constant. If you were bitten then you were dead. And then you were worse than dead.

He knew this and looking into their wide eyes he knew that they were thinking it too. He couldn’t go any farther. He took a deep breath to slow his racing heart before leaning into the SUV for his pack of supplies. Slipping it onto his back he worked the bolt on his Remington 700 and heard the spent casing ping off of the concrete.

“Tell my wife I love her” he said with just the barest of hitches in his voice.

By then several Zombies, he supposed he should start calling them what they were, what he would be, had rounded the side of the building and were starting in their direction. He leveled his rifle and put the first one down with a shot perfectly between the eyes. He calmly worked the bolt and fired off another round. Behind him he heard doors slamming and an engine rev. Tires squealed and he was alone. He emptied his rifle of its five rounds and started looking for cover to reload. Spotting a break in the oncoming crowd he dashed through it and around the corner of a building. He could hear the shuffle of feet close behind him however. Across the street he saw a small pharmacy and hurried across to it. Luckily the door was unlocked. He let himself in and threw the deadbolt closed before moving away from the windows.

Crouching behind a small display he saw the group pursuing him move past the building. He breathed a sigh of relief as the shuffling steps faded into the distance. He wasn’t sure what made him stand up and turn around as quickly as he did, but it was just in time to keep from being grabbed from behind. Reaching out for him was a man, or what was once a man, in a white lab coat. Another second and he would have been a meal for this thing. He didn’t have any rounds left in his rifle and even if he had he was
afraid the sound would bring the rest of the zombies back. He stepped forward and turning at the waist smashed the dead pharmacist in the head with his rifle dropping him instantly. He stooped over him and continued to bash him in the head until he was certain that he was dead.

He collapsed beside the corpse his chest heaving and heart racing. His shoulder announced loudly to him that it was still injured and pumping blood. Pulling on the rack beside him he struggled to his feet. He checked each aisle until he found the first aid supplies. Popping open a bottle of hydrogen peroxide he liberally poured it over the wound. A sharp hiss slipped out and his eyes immediately welled with tears. Forcing himself to look at the wound he saw that it was surprisingly shallow for the amount of bleeding. Nothing looked permanently damaged luckily. Not satisfied he poured the rest of the bottle over the wound before emptying an entire bottle of isopropyl alcohol over it for good measure. That accomplished, he started looking to close up the bite. Stitches were out of the question so he settled for slathering it with antibiotic creams and wrapping it in bandages.

Looking towards the back of the store he saw the pharmacy counter and behind it rows of prescription drugs. Hurrying to the back, head swiveling right to left on the lookout for more “company”, he slid over the counter and began rummaging for any type of antibiotic. He started with the orders that had already been filled. He made it halfway through the stack before he found a Z Pack. He wasn’t sure if they would, or could help, but he twisted the top of a bottle of water from his pack and swallowed several pills. He collapsed behind the counter, out of sight. The heaving of his chest was starting to slow and he felt exhaustion join the thrum of pain. He took a minute and reloaded his rifle. Not that he thought it would matter. He had no faith that a few antibiotics would save him. He leaned his head back against the counter and closed his eyes, fully expecting to not wake up. At least not expecting to wake up still as himself.

***

He opened his eyes, realizing that he had dozed off, and sat up to look once more around the woods for any zombies. Seeing none he decided to call it a day and head back to the cabin. He hoisted his pack, shouldered his rifle and climbed down from the stand. He hiked through crunching leaves on his way home constantly checking his surroundings for anything that might reach out and grab him. He reached his cabin and made the climb up the rope ladder to it. Close to thirty feet up he pulled himself onto the wraparound deck.

When he had first found this resort of cabins set up on stilts in the center of the woods they had stairways leading up to them. They were hard wood planks constructed by hand and beautifully varnished. He had almost cried while taking an axe to them. However, in the interest of safety he hadn’t felt that he had a choice; now each one had a rope ladder leading up to them. The other ones he mostly used for storage, but this one was home. He bent over and hauled up the rope, spooling it on the deck untidily. He took off his boots just inside the door, a habit drilled into him by his wife, so that he wouldn’t track mud across the floor. Stepping quickly across the chilly wood floor to the stove and he lit it with a match. Setting a pot of water to boil he sprinkled in a random assortment of beans and spices before lying back on the couch and shutting his eyes a minute.

***

It was dark in the pharmacy when he opened his eyes. His shoulder throbbed with a deep pulsing pain. Staggering to his feet he began rummaging through the bins stacked on the shelf. Finding some prescription ibuprofen he swallowed two with a gulp of water. Why hadn’t he turned yet he kept wondering? Maybe there was an incubation period. Maybe he should simply write a note and the next round from his rifle should have his name on it. He pushed that thought firmly out of his mind. Even now he couldn’t simply give up. If he started to turn soon then maybe, but he was going to at least keep moving until then.

He crept to the front of the store and peered out. He didn’t see any corpses shuffling down Main Street, so he slipped through the store gathering what supplies he could find. Now, the question was where should he go from here? He supposed the next question was how long did he have? There was no way to answer that question. He slipped out the front door and ran back to the gas station where he had left his friends. He stood a long time staring at the rubber tracks burned into the pavement. If he followed them west they would lead him home to his wife. A wife that was probably terrified and wondering where he was. Could he risk going back to her, assuming that he made it that far or that she would still be there when he arrived? He touched the bandage on his shoulder. Finally he hung his head, turned away towards the south and started walking.

***

He woke up when his pot started boiling over. Leaping off the couch he grabbed a rag and snatched it from the stove. He set if on the table to let it cool. Going out on the deck he picked up one of his beers that he had cooling outside and came back inside to eat. Spooning out his soup he glanced in his pantry and decided that he needed to make a supply run into town soon. He still shuddered when he thought about what all it had taken to clear out the town.

***

He had arrived in town a year earlier in a beat up, dusty red Chevy that he had picked up in Oklahoma. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, but his slow drift southeast had brought him to lower Arkansas. He hadn’t seen any other survivors for at least a month. For a long time he had avoided people altogether. He never did turn like he expected. He continued to take antibiotics, to the point that they began to cause problems with his bowels, and keep his wound clean until it healed. When a month had gone by and he hadn’t turned he started to hope. When three had passed he began to accept it. He wasn’t sure if the meds had helped or if maybe he was naturally immune, but he was grateful. He wondered daily how his wife and friends were, but he had no way of finding out.

One sunny spring day he found himself in a small town in Arkansas. One minute he was driving on a back road and the next the trees opened up to a small town crawling with zombies. He slammed on the brakes causing them to squeal and the truck to fishtail in the loose gravel. He jerked the gear shift into reverse and backed up into the trees before they noticed him.

He sat and watched for a half hour before turning around and going the opposite direction. Sheer luck led him to the small resort that he called home. He had initially planned to stay one night, but one turned into two and two turned into permanent. After a week he decided that if he was going to stay then he was going to have to do something about the infestation of the town next door. The idea of taking on all of those zombies alone was terrifying but he realized that he was tired of running. It was time to stake a claim.

The next day he drove to town and began scouting. He slowly circled it looking for his best means of attack. Most of the buildings were only a single story. A few of the public buildings were two, but not many. He parked his truck behind a gas station on the edge of town and used the bed of his truck to hop up to the roof. He crawled to the far edge and took a long look through his binoculars. There were hundreds of zombies milling around in the streets and the town square.

“What town still has a square” he asked of no one.

He had a nice cache of 30-06 rounds, but not enough for every corpse still moving. He started looking around town to see what he could find. There! Next to a small grocery store, a windfall by
itself, was a hardware store. Hand painted in the window was a sign declaring guns and ammo. Now to get there. He doubted that he could simply drive up to the front door without being spotted. Going back over the edge to his truck he strapped a machete on his waist opposite his revolver.

Holding his rifle in both hands crosswise in front of his body he began moving from cover to cover towards the hardware store. Luckily there were plenty of stalled vehicles to hide behind. He was almost there, and praying hard that the door was unlocked, when one of them stepped around the side of the truck he was crouched behind. Without hesitation he slammed the butt of his rifle into its face knocking it off its feet. Switching to the machete he began hacking at it until its head came free. He crouched back down and wiped his machete clean on the zombie’s clothes.

His head frantically swiveled from side to side. Luckily he hadn’t been spotted and he was less than ten feet from the door. When the coast looked clear he sprinted for the door. Tugging it open with a sigh of relief he slipped inside and locked it behind him. He moved away from the windows and started looking around to make sure he was alone in the store. He didn’t want a repeat of the pharmacy. He went aisle to aisle sweeping his rifle as he went.

In the back right corner he found a treasure trove. It was a small but well stocked sporting good section. There were archery supplies, ammo, knives, guns, and best of all reloading equipment. He stuffed a camp bag full of supplies. He slung it over his shoulder, took three deep breaths and slipped through the door.

The next day he drove back to the same convenience store and climbed back to the roof. He set up a small pile of sand bags from the hardware store to hide behind. It wouldn’t pay to get trapped on the roof. He pushed the full bags across the roof while bear crawling, which was an exercise in torture and time consuming. When he was set he placed his rifle on a bag and looked through his scope. He picked his first target and squeezed the trigger. The shot was true and the man that he had placed in his sites dropped like a stone. The rest looked around in confusion. The sound caught their attention, but they couldn’t tell where it came from.