Fortunes & Failures - 03 (3 page)

“It’s only right around the corner,” Kevin replied with a shake of his head. “We were actually coming to see if that truck worked. We were going to snag it and load it up ourselves.”

“Okay,” Kevin slipped an arm in between himself and the pregnant teen, “but we have to get moving. I don’t want to be on this street anymore.”

“I can’t believe it’s you!” Shari said with a smile, hugging Kevin once more before turning and jogging back to the big truck.

“C’mon.” Kevin steered Erin around the corner and back towards the restaurant.

The sputter and rumble of a big diesel engine sounded like thunder, shattering the relative silence of the dead city of Newark, Ohio. Kevin and Heather both jumped and picked up the pace.

The girl stopped in her tracks. Heather kept going but Kevin stopped a few steps later when he realized that Erin was no longer beside him. She was standing in the middle of the street, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“What the hell?” Heather trotted back.

“Ruth’s one of those
things
,” Erin sobbed.

“We don’t have time for this,” Heather explained as she pointed up the street. There was definite movement in the shadows. Looking the other way, the direction they were heading, showed more of the same.

“Erin,” Kevin croutched down in front of the girl, “I know you’re upset, and I probably shouldn’t have asked a stupid question like that right now—”

“Ya think?” Heather quipped, chucking him in the ribs with an elbow.

“I need you to hold it together for just a bit longer. Can you do that for me, Erin?”

The girl scrubbed at her face with her hands and nodded. The trip continued, reaching the restaurant as the five-ton truck came around the corner. It pulled up and a young man leaned out of the driver’s side window. “We better hurry!”

“Everything is right by the door,” Kevin agreed as the man climbed down. Shari leaped from the back.

There were various noises of agreement as the four formed an impromptu line with Kevin at one end and the man, Peter, at the other. They made short work of the stack of canned goods. The entire time, singles and groups of the undead converged in their slow but steady gait on the source of the noise. Soon, their moans could be heard over the idling engine of the large truck.

“Agreed.” Peter took the box from Heather and slid it onto the bed of the truck. He shut the opened tailgate and jammed the locking pins in place.

“Get us clear and we can plan from there,” Kevin agreed. He joined Heather, taking a seat on one of the boxes. The doors to the cab slammed and the grind of gears sounded as the truck lurched foreward.

“What about the rest of the stuff?” Heather asked wist-ully, watching the restaurant disappear from view as the truck turned right and accelerated.

“We can always come back, or someone in need will pass by.”

“Yeah, somebody like Shaw and his men,” Heather snapped.

Kevin kept his mouth shut. He had already said the wrong thing once today. Now, Heather was acting weird. Something had her pissed off and he had no idea what that might possibly be.

There was a small thud and a bounce, jostling both of them as well as sending a couple of boxes tumbling. Kevin looked out the opening slats that ran down the side in time to see a zombie bent at an obscene angle flying through the air.

“Hang on!” Peter’s voice called over the rev and roar of the engine.

Instinctively, Kevin grabbed Heather and pulled her in close. A series of thuds and thumps were accompanied by a jerk and shudder. It was as if they were driving over a long series of closely-spaced speed bumps. Over Heather’s head he could see at least a dozen zombies sprawled on the road or tossed across the hoods of the cars sitting abandoned along either side of the street.

“He’s gonna wreck,” Heather cried.

“This truck is a monster.” Kevin stroked her hair in an attempt to be comforting. “It can take much worse.”

Inside, his mind was screaming in panic. Was this guy an idiot? He was gonna wreck and get them all killed! Everything shifted to the left as they took a right turn at what he was certain to be too fast for the truck to keep from tipping over.
Oh yeah,
he thought,
this guy’s gonna kill us all!

They straightened out. If Kevin’s internal telemetry was correct, they were now going back the way they came. Another left turn brought everything sliding and tumbling to the right of the cargo area. They turned again and again, each time tossing Kevin, Heather, and the dozens of boxes and a couple of odd shaped, hard plastic cases around.

“What the hell is he trying to do?” Heather shoved a box off of her lap after another sharp turn. “He’s trying to kill us!”

“No,” Kevin rubbed a goose egg on his left forearm that promised to turn a lovely shade of purple later, “he’s trying to confuse and shake the zombies. I think he has an idea of where he wants to go, but he’s trying to ensure he can go there without bringing a horde of these things with him.”

“Yeah,” Heather snapped, bracing her arms against a box and the side of the bed of the truck as they took another hard right, “well when we get there…I’m kicking him in the balls.”

Eventually, the truck stayed going straight; the only big jostle came when they sped over a set of railroad tracks. The engine suddenly cut off. They rolled through a partially burned down residential area and into something resembling a park. The truck veered of the remnants of the road and into the tall grass, coming to a stop amidst a few trees and a bunch of thick shrubs.

Kevin struggled to his feet, pulling Heather up beside him, then waded through everything to the rear of the truck and jumped down. The doors to the cab opened and Peter, Shari and Erin climbed out.

“Sorry about all of that,” Peter apologized. Kevin noted that the man’s expression matched the tone of his voice. “I had to try and pull a confuse-and-lose routine on those things to give us a chance.”

“It’s okay.” Kevin shrugged. “Besides, I think you actually missed a few bumps in the road and were five or ten miles per hour too slow on a couple of those corners.”

“I’ve heard a bit about you so I am afraid I’m at a slight advantage.” Peter briefly explained his history and how he came to be captured by Shaw’s men. He told Kevin how things worked at The Basket as well as how extremely well fortified their defenses were.

Kevin listened, trying his best not to look at Shari or Erin as he heard how the women were treated by Shaw and his men. The more he heard, the more he came to realize that any attempt he might have made to rescue the Bergmans would have most likely ended badly for him and those with him.

“So,” Kevin dreaded the next question, “what happened to Ruth and Angela?”

“Ruth was nailed to a cross,” Shari said, obviously fighting back tears. “Whether before or after she was bitten, I don’t know. Occasionaly…they make examples.”

“She was a helluva fighter.” Kevin put a hand on Shari’s shoulder. The words seemed foolish and far short of the actual emotions he felt upon hearing that the woman he was pretty sure he had fallen in love with, was not only dead, but had suffered a heinous fate.

“Angela Bergman is in the pens,” Peter said after being fairly certain that neither Shari nor Erin would want to answer the predictable follow-up question.

“What are the pens?” Heather asked.

“It’s where Shaw keeps the women that aren’t claimed by one of his men,” Peter explained. “They are for…
recrea-tional
use by anybody.”

“This guy
claims
you and it isn’t what I think?”

“No!” Shari glanced back at Peter. Kevin noticed something change in her expression. “They were doing terrible things. It was this big joke; see how loud you can make Shari scream and cry. One of them used to make me hold him like a microphone and sing…and that was the least degrading thing.” Her voice cracked and she turned back to Peter and sunk into his open arms.

“I had to sew her up.” Peter looked at Kevin, daring him to keep hold of his anger. “I claimed her solely for the purpose of taking her away from
that
.”

“And Erin?” Kevin asked, aware that he was almost afraid of the answer. Despite all he’d seen, he still struggled to accept how humanity tended to lean so strongly towards depravity.

“Pregnant females are removed from the general population and kept on one floor,” Peter explained. Kevin noticed that the man hadn’t used the word ‘women’. “One of my duties involved making the rounds and doing the check-ups. Since I knew where Erin was being held, Shari insisted that we not leave without her.”

“Otherwise I would still be there,” Erin said, shooting an angry glare at Peter.

“I couldn’t save everybody.” Peter kept eye contact with Kevin as he spoke. “I would’ve if it were possible, but I’m not a soldier or a movie action hero. I’m just a med student from Cleveland.”

Kevin felt himself liking this guy. He knew exactly how the man felt in some ways. The last four months had wiped away just about every illusion he’d held about how cool it would be if the whole zombie apocalypse thing happened. He’d come to realize that bad actors—or probably even the good ones—could not convey the pain of seeing a friend die. There was no way to show how the nightmares haunted your sleep, tormenting you with the guilt of committing murder; even if it had been a demented pedophile who absolutely deserved it.

“So what about Darrin and Mike?” Shari asked.

“Darrin was shot by those guys the night you were taken.” He went on to explain the rest, including how Cary had showed up. Peter seemed particularly interested when he heard about the possibility of immunity and kept noticeably studying Heather’s bite scar, chewing on his lower lip absently as he did so.

Kevin explained how he’d figured out where Shaw had taken the Bergmans, and how he, Mike, Cary, and Heather were actually planning a rescue. He avoided talking about his main reason being Ruth, a strange voice in the back of his mind told him that would not be a good idea.

“So,” Peter said once Kevin was finished, “what do we do next?”

“I still think that heading someplace remote is our best bet,” Kevin offered. “But having been here for a week and seeing so little zombie activity, I think we can really take advantage and load up on supplies.”

“What happenes when we hit the road and reach some of those stretches that are clogged?” Peter asked. “How do the five of us move all these supplies you are talking about? Also, I’ve got Erin pegged as due to deliver any day now.”

“We avoid major populations and travel the backroads. Nobody’s gonna bitch if we drive through their yard.”

“True, but I crossed most of Northern Ohio, and I can tell you that there are places in the middle of nowhere with five mile long traffic jams. Also, these things are travelling in packs that number in the hundres if not the thousands, and they can show up anywhere; not just in the cities,” Peter explained.

“Why can’t we find a place not too far from here then?” Erin asked. “Why do we need to go someplace like Montana?”

“South Dakota,” Kevin corrected. “It has a sparse population, and…” he trailed off. Erin had a point. Time and again, things that he’d assumed to hold up from the movies and countless zombie books that he’d read were proving to be only halfway accurate at best. Why should they travel several hundred miles, constantly putting themselves at risk of drawing unwanted attention—living or dead—if they didn’t need to?