Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (2 page)

Mostly we spent the winter trying to put the past behind us. To let go of our old lives, and all the people we had loved and cared for, so we could move on and survive any way we could. We had all made it through those first days of the zombie uprising, fought and bled over hundreds of miles to find each other, then we kept on fighting, scratching and clawing just to keep our heads above water when our Z-Plan went to hell.

As if that hadn’t been bad enough, a new enemy made itself known by killing one of us and kidnapping two others.

It isn’t until you’re forced into a tragic and life-threatening event that you finally understand what makes most people shut down and quit. Quit fighting, stop living. I had come to realize over the winter that it’s an inherent trait among human beings, this inability to let go of the past. Even to the point of going insane, curling up into a ball, and simply waiting for death to come. If it hadn’t been for Jake’s tendency to turn everything into one gigantic joke, I don’t think any of us would have made it off that mountain.

Jake, Nancy, and Mia were on the ground next to me, armed and ready. The horses and Gus were tied at the bottom of the hill and were remaining quiet for the most part. We had lucked out in finding three extra horses on a large farm outside Matias, giving us what we needed for mounts and packhorses. We made a pretty large caravan in all. Luckily, keeping to the woods and unpopulated areas had kept us nearly invisible to the rest of the world. We had picked up the convicts’ trail at the base of my mountain and went from there. Their trail was fairly obvious and could be followed with little effort.

Since then we had been winding our way through West Virginia, camping in heavily forested areas or abandoned farmhouses, scavenging supplies here and there as we needed them, and hunting small game for our meals. Out of the five of us, only Zack was having the most difficulty adjusting to this new way of life. Formerly a city boy, his version of fast-food had been McDonald’s, not a rabbit tearing through a briar patch.

“Well, I say we take ‘em out and stop screwin’ around,” Jake mumbled from beside me.

I had to smile at his cranky enthusiasm. The comedy relief supplied by both he and Mia had made the transition from the Old World into this new one much easier, for all of us.

I flipped my rifle’s safety off. “Alright, you know the drill.”

I could hear the others doing the same; getting into a comfortable prone shooting stance, the clicking of safeties being flipped, the working of actions to load their assorted weapons. The fog was thick; fortunately the deadheads below were close enough that their heads were visible. The others waited for me to give the signal, a stillness much like the heavy calm before a thunderstorm in spring settling over us. That was something else I had done over the winter: transformed my new family into efficient marksmen and women.

I lined my sights on the nearest, and tallest, of the group. Dressed in a suit and what had to have been a tie at one time, the zombie no longer resembled the man he used to be any more than a dog resembles a gorilla. What parts of him that hadn’t been torn away during his initial “death” had either rotted away or fallen off during the thawing process. Large portions of his skull were exposed, including both cheekbones and lower jaw. A thick, frozen piece of flesh hung from his forehead, covering the one eye he still had left. His shirt had been ripped open, revealing almost his entire rib cage. His exposed muscle tissue was no longer red. It had turned black from decomposition and freezing.

“Everything okay?” Zack whispered to me.

I realized I had been obsessing over the deadheads’ appearance again (apparently I had taken to doing that a lot), and remedied this by squeezing off the first shot. The others quickly joined in, dropping the nasties before the moaning could begin. Less than a minute later, the horde had been eliminated, quickly and efficiently. We moved fast, knowing noise would attract any nearby zombies. Without a word to one another, we reloaded our weapons, snuck back down the bank, mounted up, and moved on, over the hill and across the interstate as proficiently as we could with seven horses and a dog lollygagging around.

From there we headed northwest, following the wide swath of trampled ground left behind by the convicts’ horses and the women they’d dragged behind. Every hour since leaving the house I had thanked God the hard winter had preserved the trail. We’d have been totally screwed if it had been a mild winter.

“Nancy, how far to the next town?” I asked after we’d traveled a mile or so in silence.

We were riding up a grassy hollow perpendicular to the interstate, boxed in by thickly wooded hills on either side of us. I preferred to stay in the trees, but I also needed to know how close the next town was. It wouldn’t be prudent to suddenly break out of the woods and ride headfirst into a hungry, freshly thawed gang of deadheads. After taking the map from her saddle bag, Nancy wrapped the reins around the saddle horn and let her horse walk on, spreading the map out in front of her and tracing our route with her finger. I moved in alongside her and scanned the area.

It was evident there had been some activity around here during the winter, not counting the trail left by the convicts. Off to our left there were several huge scorch marks on the ground. Further ahead there were a few fairly large piles of dirt, covering what I could only assume were mass graves. There were some vehicles parked here and there, turning the once vacant valley into a junkyard. To me it seemed like this place had been used as a dump and a cemetery. Perhaps a group of survivors from a nearby town had brought their dead here and burned them, burying some, and either towed or pushed these dead cars and trucks here as well, in an effort to clean up their neighborhoods. Of course this was only a theory. Unless we planned on traveling through all the bordering towns to look for survivors, we’d probably never know.

Nancy jerked her thumb to the right. “I’d say about two miles, as the crow flies.”

I looked over at the map to the spot her finger was pointing out. Just as I thought; there was a town on the other side of the ridge to our right. I frowned and looked up ahead. The valley was long, ending in sort of a bottleneck at the base of yet another hill. Hills that, like the rest of the state, were thickly covered.

“Thanks, Nancy,” I said, raising my voice so the others could hear. “Looks like we’ll have to stick to the trail, at least until we hit the end of the hollow. If we have to, we’ll head into the hills there. Let’s just see where the trail goes once the valley ends.”

There were grunts of agreement from the others, all except Jake. He was staring straight ahead seemingly lost in thought. Or a daydream. Knowing Jake, I probably didn’t want to know.

Gus was up ahead of us, nose to the ground as always, no doubt catching a hint of the cons’ scent here and there. The tall weeds and grass had been beaten down by previous snowfall, yet there were still plenty of hiding places for his favorite game: the fuzzy-tailed, long-eared beast. I pulled the scarf tighter around my neck and watched him hunt, darting first one way then the other, his nose shoved into the grass and his tail twitching back and forth. I had to smile; seemed like business as usual for the old boy.

The dog had worked his way around one of the wrecked vehicles roughly thirty-five yards ahead and was out of sight when he started howling and snarling. Mia, who was in the lead, snapped her head around, fixed her eyes on me for a split second, then headed in his direction at a gallop.

“Shit.” I pulled hard on the reins and rushed to catch up.

Gus was throwing a fit now, growling and throwing in a few long bays. I heard the beat of hooves behind me as the rest of the group followed. I watched Mia come to a stop on the other side of the junked car, then her horse started jumping and rearing. She was riding one of the “borrowed” mares, and we had learned early on these particular horses were pretty damned skittish around zombies.

“Get back!” I screamed, coming up on them fast and waving one arm in the air to motion Mia away.

She tried several times to get her horse under control, but only succeeded in getting dumped. She landed hard on her back, rolling away quickly to keep from getting stomped on, then scrambled to her feet and drew her pistol. Her mount whirled and took off up the hollow. I was off Daisy before she even stopped and had my own pistol drawn. Gus was positioned between the threat and Mia, barking and growling so hard he was foaming at the mouth. The others reined their mounts in next to Daisy and were dismounting by the time I got Gus quieted down.

“Go, now!” I stabbed the air with my finger.

He obeyed, albeit hesitantly, meeting Jake and Zack as they rounded the corner. Nancy had her shotgun raised, hanging back a few feet behind the boys.

“Here, Gus,” she called, lowering her gun and patting her leg. Gus walked over to her, then stood with his tail tucked and ears down. Nancy then proceeded to check him for bites and give him a good scolding.

“You alright?” I asked Mia.

“Yeah.”

We stood side by side and stared at two snapping zombie heads.

“What the fuck?” Jake asked.

He and Zack had joined us, four gun barrels aimed neatly on the disturbing and perplexing scene in front of us. Tucked carefully into the grass and propped against the rear tire were two zombie heads—not zombies, just the heads—still “alive” and hungry. The eyes rolled around in their sockets and the jaws snapped at us, but they weren’t moaning. I suppose that made sense?

The four of us stood there for an amazing amount of time trying to figure out how this was possible, looking first at the heads, then to each other in confusion and disgust. A few times Mia and Jake tried to offer explanations. They came in the form of disjointed words and unfinished sentences. I checked the ground around us, then stepped around the back of the car looking for more heads. There were none. I scanned the surrounding hills, looking for anything that might hint at an explanation. Bored townsfolk setting a trap, the cons playing games with us, anything. The odds of something like that happening were slim to none. The cons didn’t know we were following, and there was no degree of boredom that might drive someone to play with nasty, flesh-torn, rotten yet still lively severed heads.

“Let’s just kill them and get out of here,” Mia finally said.

I glanced at the others; they were all in agreement. I shrugged and gave Mia the go-ahead. She squeezed off two rounds and silenced the snapping.

“Man, that doesn’t make any sense,” Jake said. “I don’t like this.”

My eye caught Gus silently making his way to my feet. I crouched and rubbed my hand over him, suddenly very relieved he was alright. I murmured, “Good boy,” to him, listening to my friends debate over what we had just witnessed. I let them go on for a few minutes before patting Gus once more and standing to mount up.

“It’s just one more reason for us to get the hell out of this valley as quickly as possible. You’ve noticed everything else, right?” I pulled myself into the saddle and swept one arm out to the aftermath that surrounded us.

Their faces changed from a look of general
what-the-hell
to that of sudden suspicion. I whistled for Gus to come along and nudged Daisy back towards the trail. I didn’t know about the rest of them, but I wasn’t too crazy about meeting the potential nutjobs who frequented this area. Mia’s horse stood several hundred feet away, just off the trail picking grass, so she caught a ride with Nancy.

“I think we should wait until we get to that ridge before stopping for lunch,” I suggested.

The trail appeared to head straight up the hill, weaving around the trees this way and that, all the way to the top, which suited me right down to the ground. I’d feel much safer stopping for lunch and to rest up there than down here. Zack caught up with me and fell in alongside my horse.

“I can’t explain the heads, but looks like someone used that place as a dumping ground.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Most likely the nearest town, which is just on the other side of that ridge behind us.” I glanced back over my shoulder. He considered this, then frowned and studied the trees around us. I let him ride on this way until we were almost to the top before asking him what was on his mind.

“Instead of avoiding people, I think we should be looking for them.”

* * *

We found a fairly level spot to rest the horses and eat lunch. Everyone dismounted and tied their horses off to whatever was available, fallen logs, tree branches, large rocks, then rummaged through the supplies on the packhorses for something to eat.

“We don’t have time right now to make nice with the locals. The more time we waste, the farther away they get from us,” I said, pulling a can of beans and a Ziploc bag of dog food from the pack. Everyone else was eavesdropping on the conversation by this time, already finding places to sit and enjoy their assorted canned goods and drinks.

“I know, I know. They’ve got a big head start and we need to catch up. I get it. But Kase, you’re smart enough to realize that eventually we’re gonna have to make friends. Safety in numbers, right? And the only way to do that is to start heading into the towns instead of completely bypassing them. How many have we dodged already?” Zack followed me over to a large rock jutting out of the ground at the base of a hickory tree. I sat and poured some Kibbles-n-Bits on the ground for Gus.