Infection: Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (11 page)

“Yeah, I’ll sleep good with these won’t I?”

The doctor nodded his head as he injected the first tube into her leg.

She looked around at the group and said, “Good luck and don’t you all worry about me. I’ll be just fine.”

The four remaining survivors from Providence Hospital trudged up the paved road leading away from the soccer fields and toward the traffic light at the entrance to the park. The pavement was damp, as were the waist high plants and bushes to either side of the road. There were scores of geese on the open field and fenced baseball diamond to their right. Their honking, typically considered obnoxious by the doctor, was a welcome reminder of more normal times. The geese, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, were just enjoying a brief stopover in Anchorage as they made their way south for the winter. The doctor wondered what the geese would see when they got to their final destination. Was this happening elsewhere or just in Anchorage?

Neil and his group were just getting themselves out of harm’s way when the storm of destruction started to reach them. Luckily, Meghan was able to cajole her car enough to get it off of the Old Seward Highway and onto a side street that opened into a neighborhood of houses and duplexes. It was just another typical Anchorage neighborhood. Most of the homes looked as if they had been constructed during the 80s, many showing the wear of the past decades.

It had the feeling of a ghost town to all of them. There were open front doors and garage doors all up and down the street, there were clothes strewn across lawns, children’s toys laying on their sides in driveways, and, most strikingly, absolutely no people. News of the unfolding disaster must have reached the residents and encouraged them to get away, despite the broadcast’s simple message of get inside and stay inside.

Meghan’s car came to a rolling stop. She jammed the gearshift into park even before they were completely stopped. Tony and Kim could tell immediately that this was a frustration that wasn’t new to Meghan. She turned the key in the ignition and gently tapped the gas pedal the way that Landon, her boyfriend, had done in the past to try and convince the car to start. It hadn’t worked any better for him than it was for her right now. The engine sputtered and coughed, but there was no starting it. Not now anyway. If she were able to sit and wait, the car would start readily in about fifteen minutes. Judging by the rising din of noise coming up behind them, she didn’t think that she could spare even fifteen seconds. She knew that it was time to give up. She looked over at Neil’s minivan, which was reversing toward them.

Over the radio, Neil’s voice pleaded, “Get yourselves outta there. Leave the goddamned car!”

He was right and Meghan knew it. She grabbed the keys from the ignition, stuffed them in her pocket, and asked, “You two ready?”

Like panicked rodents scurrying from the light, Meghan, Tony, and Kim leapt from the stalled car and ran in search of safety and a place to hide. Neil slowed the reversing minivan and looked over his shoulder at his scared passengers already in the rear of the vehicle.

“Make some room. We’ve got company joining us.”

There wasn’t really any room to be made, though. The minivan was full. Jerry and the two kids pressed themselves as far to one side of the bench seat as they could. In the end, they just moved into the small space between the bench seat and the passenger side sliding door. Jerry was standing but was stooped at the waist. Jules and Danny cowered beneath the arch that Jerry’s leaning upper torso created. There was no getting in the backseat as it was filled very nearly to the ceiling with supplies.

Meghan, perhaps involuntarily but most certainly unbeknownst to her while she did it, let out a shrill scream as she ran to the other vehicle and didn’t stop until Tony pulled the driver side sliding door shut behind him. Looking around at the others, she laughed and cried at the same time. She nodded to Neil and then let the tears take her all at once. Tension, anxiety, and fear tickled all of her nerves and senses at the same time, and she quaked and shuddered all over at once.

Jules began to cry too. Already pressed against Danny, she laid her head on his chest looking for some comfort...any comfort. She was so confused and now with this lady crying, she just couldn’t control it anymore. And not knowing why she was crying made the tears come even easier.

Sorrow, bitter, heavy, and humid, filled the cabin as they made their way into the neighborhood. It was a fitting backdrop for their trek and the day that was still unfolding. It was still early enough in the morning that most people would just then be starting their day. Of course, for all of them in the car, the day had already been long and full.

The refuge they sought was there in that neighborhood. The house sat on a cul-de-sac at the terminus of a dead end residential street, which was just around the corner and still in sight of Meghan’s abandoned car. There were trees and large hedges in most of the yards. One house, the largest on the street, had a carefully laid pile of enormous stones on either side of its driveway. The house they finally settled on was chosen for the simple reason that its garage door was standing open. Apparently the owners had fled in a hurry, much like the majority of Anchorage’s residents. The front yard and driveway were littered with hastily packed suitcases, shirt sleeves and pant legs hanging lazily out of partially opened seams. In the backyard barking was obviously the family dog, confused as to who all these people were and where its humans might be.

Neil pulled the minivan into the garage and got out to shut the door. Rachel, Jules, and Danny went inside to some upstairs windows that overlooked much of the immediate neighborhood. With the kids still looking out, Rachel went to the kitchen and started foraging through cabinets until she found what she sought. She pulled a big, more than half full one and three quarter liter bottle of Stolichnaya Vodka from a cabinet and took a long and full drink directly from the bottle. The liquor hit her empty stomach like a hammer and sent her to the floor partially gagging almost immediately. She had had enough and the vodka was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. She started to cry and, in trying to fight back the tears, her crying became sobbing.

Neil, meanwhile, peeked his head into the van. Other than Rachel and the two kids, no one had moved. It didn’t look as if any of them could without causing an avalanche of plastic, cardboard, and aluminum packages to come crashing down around the others. In all of the starting and stopping, the stacks of supplies had shifted and shifted again until they all but engulfed the passengers in the two back seats.

Neil said with a slight smirk creeping onto his face, “I know just what to do. Nobody move.”

His weak attempt at humor brought only rolling eyes and perhaps a strained groan from one of them, but they did as instructed, patiently awaiting the details of Neil’s brilliant plan.

Neil ran around to the back of the van and opened the rear hatch. And sure enough, as he did, the mountain of pilfered retail goods teetered back, falling to the ground around Neil’s feet. He suddenly found himself standing knee-deep in an assortment of camping supplies, tools, ammunition and firearms, and boxes, bags, and cans of food.

The smirk growing into a full smile, Neil said, “Maybe we should…organize all this stuff. I gotta warn all of you though, I was never very good at putting the groceries away. I’m gonna need some help.”

Jerry said as he stood, “I’ll help with that. You did the shopping. I guess I can put it away.”

Neil suggested, “I think maybe we should leave some of the non-perishable food and a couple of pistols with ammo in the van. Just in case.”

Jerry repeated, “Yeah. Just in case. Hell, maybe we should put all of what we can in the van and then just work on eating whatever doesn’t fit.”

“Helluvan idea,” Neil heartily agreed.

In the garage, the others started unloading the remaining supplies from the minivan and stacking its already disgorged contents into semi-organized piles...guns and ammunition to one corner, food and water in another, and miscellaneous materials such as batteries, blankets, flashlights, matches and whatever else in still another pile.

They then proceeded to pack behind the last seat and between the two front seats bottled water, canned soups, bags of chips and crackers and boxes of dry cereal. Under the front passenger seat, Jerry tucked a pair of black, semi-automatic pistols and a case of shells. Jerry found the touch and feel of the pistols to be energizing in a dangerous way. He couldn’t believe he was slipping pistols under a seat. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, other than simply anxiousness. It didn’t matter the cause. It could have been the guns but it could have been any number of things. So much had happened already in the span of just a handful of hours and the gun in his hand convinced him that much more was still to come.

Shutting the driver’s side door, Neil looked around at the others and asked, “Who is willing to help me go out back and bring firewood inside?”

Meghan stood back up from the pile of firearms and, dumbfounded, asked, “Are you outta your fucking mind? You’re the one that told me what was going on and you wanna go back out into it?”

“It’s going to start getting cold at night and we’ve got no idea how long we will be on our own. I think we oughta get as much wood inside now before...”

“Before what?”

Neil looked at Jerry for confirmation of his fears. Jerry nodded and continued for Neil, “It’s just a matter of time before those things realize we’re in here. This is a good place...only a couple of windows down low, a fenced back yard, and a fireplace. That’s all good. But he’s right. We’ve gotta be ready to be in here for a bit so that all of this can settle down.” Jerry knew though that there really wasn’t any possibility of “this” just going away. None of the movies or games that he had seen involving zombies had ever ended well. He at least held some small comfort in the fact that he and Neil knew what was happening. In the movies and even in the games, the characters never seemed to have a clue. Maybe that fact alone would be enough to carry them all through this. He knew Neil was right though. They needed to do what they were able while there was still time.

Jerry, Tony, and Neil hurried into the backyard. The woodpile was just outside the door, which was good news. Neil started to toss logs into the garage while Jerry looked around the backyard. He headed toward a small storage shed without doors near the edge of the fenced yard. While his heart was threatening to crawl out his mouth, the six-foot wooden privacy fence lent a small degree of comfort. He looked over his shoulder as he crept forward. Tony stood watch with one of the shotguns at the ready in front of him. Neil too was armed with a handgun slung in one of the shoulder holsters he’d grabbed at Fred Meyer. He was grabbing and throwing pieces of split birch, but looking up every few seconds to scan the fence for any threats.

While they did that, Meghan and Kim went through the house to find any containers into which they could collect water from the faucet. Neil was concerned that they would soon lose electricity and then water service as no one would be left to operate those utilities. Rachel, Danny, and Jules turned on the television and radio to see if any news was forthcoming yet.

In the shed, Jerry found a small stash of lumber, scraps of two by fours, two by sixes, and some pieces of plywood. All of this was carted into the garage as quickly as possible. With some of the firewood and lumber having been moved inside, a fairly hysterical Rachel, who was still drinking from the bottle of vodka, suddenly summoned the three men upstairs.

“Oh my God. Get up here quick! Hurry!”

Jerry leapt up the stairs, barely touching foot to carpet. They could see, through a space between trees, the Old Seward Highway where it passed by the little neighborhood. There were still a couple of cars that were trying to make headway, but the vast majority of what they saw were people...hundreds of them, streaming like a chaotic parade down the road. They all heard the train-like sound that actually rumbled and shook the house with the same force as a small trembler. Interlaced in the deep roar, just below that rumbling surface of sound, were barely discernible screams and shouts.

Meghan ran down to the front door and was all set to open it. She yelled, “We gotta do somethin’!”

Neil and Jerry simultaneously shouted down at her not to open the door. Neil continued, “You’re right though. We do gotta do something. This house isn’t ready yet. We gotta cover those windows downstairs and reinforce that door. We gotta bunker ourselves in.”

Disbelieving, Meghan asked, “We’re not gonna do anything for all those people?”

“What do you propose we do? I’m assuming you saw what was happening on the overpass? There were hundreds of people there and they weren’t able to do anything. What can the six of us do? Besides, if we were to save someone from over there on the road, how do we decide which one or ones to save? We haven’t got room for everyone here. We haven’t got supplies to sustain the few of us for any length of time, how are we gonna feed more?”

It wasn’t like Neil to speak that bluntly or to be that emphatic. He was typically that guy that nodded during office meetings and merely consented to and with the majority on any issues that arose about which he probably should care; so to say that he was uncomfortable speaking in such a manner was a gross understatement. The looks that he got from Meghan, Rachel, and the confused children only added to his discomfort.