Sometimes We Ran (Book 3): Rescue (5 page)

Ryan was waiting in the street. He was holding Claire's little boy in his arms. Ryan was kind of a stay-at-home husband due to a gunshot wound a few years ago. For months after he was shot, he could barely walk without a cane. Thanks to his youth and Claire's help, his health improved and he grew stronger.  However, he often had to stay behind and couldn't go outside the fence. You needed mobility to elude the Red-Eyes. Claire saw her family and bolted from the van with great excitement.

“Mommy!” Ryan put the little boy on the ground, and he ran to her waiting arms. She scooped him up and started hugged him.

“There's my boy! There's my Alex!” she said. Claire began to rain kisses on his chubby face.

Alex was one of the first children born in Cannon Fields. I remember the night he was born very well. It was full of freakish winter thunderstorms and driving hail. He was born at the peak of one such storm, and the high winds nearly tore the roof off the infirmary. It had been a difficult birth, with both mother and child in danger of not making it through the process, Doctor Connelly pulled them through. I had to admit, Claire and Ryan made a good-looking kid. He got Claire's ice-blue eyes and Ryan's strong chin and blond hair. They named him Alexander, after Ryan's father.

Alexander sounded too formal. Everyone just called him Alex for short.

As Claire smothered Alex with motherly love, Ryan and I exchanged greetings. “Hey, John. How's it going?” Ryan said, shaking my hand. “Gave you the good van today, huh?”

“Got a little trade mission. I'm going to borrow your wife for a few hours, okay? We're a little short on people, and I need some backup.”

“Yeah, I think I can lend her out. She's not teaching school today.”

Claire walked up, with Alex in her arms. “Alex, say hello to John.”

After a few seconds, Alex said, “Hello.”

Alex was a shy little guy. “Hey, Alex. How are you?”

“Cold.”

We all laughed. Alex was pretty clever. “It certainly is.” I thought of the toy car taken from the boy zombie, and began fumbling in my pocket. “Wait...I have something for you.” I pulled out the little blue car, and handed it to the boy.

Alex's eyes widened. Toys were a little hard to come by after the zombie apocalypse. We had a lot of girls' toys, but stuff for boys was rare. I guess boys were rougher on their playthings. “Wow,” said Claire. “That's cool. What do you say to John?”

Alex grasped the toy car in his little hand. He had claimed it for his own. “Thanks,” he said

“Neat. Where did you get it?” asked Ryan.

I didn't want to tell them I got it off the walking corpse of some kid. I kept that news to myself. “Found it in a house somewhere.”

“Cool,” Claire said. A cold wind began to blow, causing goose bumps to rise on my flesh. It swirled around us, and howled in my ears. Claire shivered, and hugged Alex close. “Damn...It is cold. Let's go inside and get warm for a bit. Meet you out here in a few minutes, John?”

“Sounds good. Give me about fifteen minutes or so. Going to check on Karen.” I turned and walked to my house. I was getting a little worried about Karen. She was getting better, but the sickness seemed to be lingering. The doctor had already made a few visits.

I navigated the slippery walk, careful not to slip on the thin coating of ice. Our front yard still had the stumps of last year's excellent garden. It had been a good year for vegetables. Karen's green thumb had come through again.

After a few minutes of rooting around in my pocket, I found my key and inserted it into the lock. We didn't really need to lock doors anymore. I don't think anyone in our community was a thief, and zombies had problems with doorknobs. The act of locking the door was an artifact of the old, pre-zombie world. It was a habit from the old days that was hard to break.

I opened the simple steel door and the warmth and smells of an occupied house flowed over me. It was always nice to get home. Even in her sick state of mind, Karen still was able to cook a little lunch.

Karen was napping in the big leather recliner, covered in and old comforter. The furniture was from the previous owners who never came home. It was neither to Karen's nor my tastes, but in an apocalypse you can't afford to be choosy.  We tried not to think of the former owners. Their personal items were in the attic.

I followed the smell of food to the kitchen. Sure enough, on the big wood-burning stove was a pot of something simmering. The steam curled up and disappeared into the air. I grabbed a fork and took a sample. It was rabbit with small, bite-sized vegetables. Karen was a wizard with rabbit.

“John? Is that you?” Karen shuffled into the kitchen and started coughing.

“It's me,” I answered. Karen was a mess. Her dark hair was a crazy mass on her head, and her beautiful green eyes were glazed over. Her nose and upper lip were all red from the tissues. I almost said she looked like death, but caught myself. “How do you feel?”

Karen blew her nose. It echoed off the walls of the kitchen. “Like hell.” She put her arms around me. “Where have you been? I was worried.”

I hugged her back. Her skin was warm and clammy to my touch with fever. “Doing a little zombie hunting.”

We sat down at the little kitchen table. It was covered by a tablecloth with bright, yellow flowers. “Glad you're home. You want to eat something?” Karen said.

I hated to tell her that I was going out again. “Maybe later. I have a little trade mission to complete.” I ducked, and tried to hide the silverware so Karen couldn't throw it at me. She just smiled.

“You must be the busiest man I know,” Karen said, putting her head down on the table.

Kissing the back of the neck, I said,. “Who knew the end of the world was such hard work.” I stood her up, and led her back to her recliner. The whole area was covered in tissues and old magazines. Karen had been in the recliner for a while.

“When will you be back?” Karen asked.

I pulled the comforter over her frail body. “Shouldn't be more than a few hours.”

Karen kissed me goodbye. She was already drifting into sleep. Her usually cool lips were flush with fever. My girl was still sick. “I love you, John. Stay safe.”

“I love you, too. Just get better.” Karen didn't hear me. She was already asleep. I watched her chest rise and fall a few times, and kissed her again.

After grabbing a few supplies and extra ammunition, I made my way back to the van. Claire was at the curb with her family saying goodbye. She was laying a deep kiss on Ryan. Alex was next, and received a few kisses of his own. We swung inside the big van, and I started the engine. Got to get the heat going. Ryan and Claire shared another goodbye kiss at the window of the van. Goodbyes were special events. You never knew if you were going to see each other again.

“You guys be careful,” Ryan said.

“We will,” Claire said. She rolled up the window, and I put the van in gear, pulled away from the curb, and drove down the street. I found the nearest cul-de-sac, and made a graceful U-turn. We passed by our houses again, now going up the street toward the main road and the entrance. Alex and Ryan were still in the yard, waving.

Claire waved back as we passed. “God. I hate leaving them.” She stowed her bat behind her seat. Claire never went anywhere without her trusty bat.

“Yeah. I know,” I said.

Claire fidgeted in her seat a little. “It's just that...In the old days, we only had to look out for each other. Now I've got Alex and Ryan, and you have Karen. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. We both have more to lose.” Add in a few more souls from Cannon Fields, and the responsibility increases. Our continued survival was getting complicated.

At the end of our street, I made a right turn and headed toward the entrance. Lisa, in full winter garb, flagged us down. I stopped a few feet from the gate that kept all the bad stuff outside. I turned to Claire, and said, “We'll be okay. We'll do this thing and get home. Just a normal day.”

Lisa showed up at the van's driver-side window. I caught a glimpse of Elizabeth in the guard shack, still looking a little depressed. There were more snipers in some of the houses near the gate, and one each in the wood perches we built in the trees. Lisa and Elizabeth had adequate backup.

Lisa handed me a folded piece of yellow paper. “Michael told me to give this to you before you went out. It's a list of things he thinks we need.”

I unfolded the paper, and scanned it. Michael's list was a list of the impossible - cough medicine, honey, aspirin, coffee and tea. It was unlikely our friends at Pine Grove had any of it. “What is he thinking? We're not going to the grocery store.”

Lisa shrugged. “I don't know. I'm just the messenger.” She went to open the gate.

I pulled the van through the gate with a salute from Lisa. I waited for a few minutes for the gate to be closed and latched before taking the right turn toward the state highway and our market spot. It wasn't too far away. The van was warm, and the road was clear.

After reading the impossible list again, I handed it to Claire so she could read the unobtainable items. “Sometimes I wonder what goes on in Michael's head,” I said.

Claire scanned the list, shaking her head. “Here's something to think about. He's second in command. If something happened to Denise, he'd be in charge.”

“May God have mercy on our souls,” I said. Claire could only giggle.

We found the state route and took a left. The old supermarket was just a few miles away in an intersection. We drove in silence, looking out for bad guys on the road. The road and the surrounding areas were deserted and broken. The Red-Eyes were sheltering themselves from the cold. They hid in the woods and abandoned buildings, waiting to swarm out on their victims. They also loved to come out at night for short periods in the deep cold. You tried to stay indoors at night. It belonged to the dead and the dogs.

Claire stared wistfully out the window, and then started playing with the radio again. Her futile attempts at finding something on the dial turned up nothing. Sometimes, there wasn't even static. Just nothing. Even the automated emergency broadcasts had stopped long ago.

The wind began to pick up again, and more flurries fell from the sky. I wanted to get this over with and go home before we froze to death. “Been a while...you and I. We haven't been outside together in a long time,” I said.

Claire turned away from her window. “Busy with Alex and helping out the teachers.”

“Not to mention we've both been sick.”

“Yeah,” Claire said, retrieving her bat from behind the seat. “We should get together more often. I forget how well we work together.”

Claire was an old friend. I did miss her, even though we lived across the street from each other. Our friendship was pushed aside sometimes by the struggle for survival. “I'd like that,” I said.

The first part of our little trip was almost over. The car wash across the street was a landmark that told me the supermarket was close. We rounded the last curve before the entrance, and a wrecked car suddenly appeared in the van's huge windshield. I stood on the brakes, and we slid to a stop.

“What the hell is this?” I said. Claire and I exited the van with weapons ready. Someone had crashed a car into a light pole near the entrance to the supermarket.

“Was this here the last time you came out?” Claire asked.

“No. My last visit was a few months ago. This wreck wasn't here.”

We approached the broken car as quietly as possible. Claire approached the passenger side, and I moved to the driver's door, which was open. As we got close, I could make out a body hanging out of the car. “Body hanging out the driver's side,” I said. Claire nodded and she to look in all directions at once to keep tabs on our surroundings. It could be a trap, or many Red-Eyes could be watching.

We reached the car, and began to look around. It had been a heavy impact. The large sedan was crumpled all the way to the firewall, and car parts littered the ground. There wasn't much to salvage. Even the battery looked like it was destroyed.

Claire took a look in the passenger side. “Not much here.”

I walked from the back of the car to the driver's side to check out the corpse. It was a middle-aged man probably in his forties. He was hanging halfway out of the open driver's door, looking at the sky. His eyes were closed and covered in blood. Dark brown splotches of dried blood were all over his clothes and the seats of the car. Something had tried to drag him out.

Dried handprints covered the hood and fenders. A large group had tried to take this man out of the car, but the seat belt had held him in place. A quick examination revealed a large chunk of flesh missing from his neck right at the shoulder. I quickly stood up, and waited. Sometimes the cold slowed down the dead, and they took a minute or two to wake up.

“This was bad. Nothing much to salvage,” Claire said, as she joined me at my side of the car. I continued to stare at the corpse ready for action.
Any minute now.

The eyes of the dead driver popped open, and he began to growl. His eyes were the color of blood. His free arm flailed in the air trying to grab anything within reach. Claire and I both took a step back, away from the door.

Claire drew her knife and plunged it into the zombie's eye socket. The creature let out a long low groan, then went silent. After dispatching the driver, she turned and blew some stray hair out of her eyes. “I hate when they do that.” 

“Yeah. It's the cold. Takes them a while to realize a meal is nearby.” I picked up a black leather wallet from a small pile of personal items near the car. It was swollen and discolored from exposure to the elements.

“Jerry William Buchanan,” I said, reading the license in the wallet. I also found credentials for an engineering firm, and a nearly full bar-b-que joint rewards card. Jerry had about five hundred dollars in cash in crisp, twenty dollars bills. I held the money in my hands for a few minutes. Useless, except for wallpaper or something. I put the wallet back in the car with the money still inside.

“Anybody we know?” Claire said.

“No. Just someone else trying to run away that didn't make it.” I looked around. We were still alone for now, but the wreck would attract the Red-Eyes. “Better keep an eye out. The zombies have found our trading spot. They're probably watching us from the woods.”