The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now (10 page)

One by one the infected fell into the open area between the gate and the high voltage equipment that hummed its warning. Tom could guess that Officer Barrett had circled the danger zone to get to the back corner judging by the large number of infected dead that had gone around to the back side of the fence. Tom also guessed that the total number of the infected had grown to three hundred. It was time to move to the front of the house, but before they left, Tom had to see what Ron was doing.

Tom told the others to wait in the kitchen while he checked to see if their way was clear out front. He circled back through the living room and ran up the stairs to the second floor. He made sure a bedroom on the front of the house was clear before crossing to the window. From there he saw that there were a few stragglers still making their way through the gaps between the houses over to the power relay station, but it was definitely better than it had been. Ron’s plan was working.

Tom crossed the hallway and checked a bedroom on the back of the house. His luck was holding up, because the room was also empty. He went to that window and looked out at the rear view behind the house. The Infected crowd had swollen in size, and the fenced area around the power relay station appeared to be smaller and insignificant in their midst.

Inside the enclosure, he could see Officer Ron Barrett sitting on the ground at a spot directly across from the gate. The entire size of the station appeared to be about two hundred feet on each side with a safe zone around its inside perimeter, and as Tom watched the first of the infected had gotten their feet under them and started for Ron. True to form, they were going to take a direct path to him, and as they stepped from the safe zone of the perimeter into the proximity of the high voltage equipment, it was obvious what was about to happen.

Their ungraceful, shambling way of walking caused them to go as much left and right as it did forward, and one by one they made contact with the wrong things. Blue electric arcs of lightning began shooting through the bodies of the infected. They erupted into flame as their tattered clothing caught fire and spread. Those nearest to them didn’t even need to be electrocuted because their clothing caught fire so easily. Hair and skin were ablaze, and smoke was billowing above the entire scene. Tom knew the sacrifice his friend had made for him and Molly one more time, but he thought to himself that it must smell like hell down there.

Those infected that had spread out to the left and right to go around the melee in the middle were not spared by the fire or electricity. The crowd of groaning, snapping dead were packing into the area so tightly that the electric charge crossed through them and reached the surrounding fence.

Tom was mesmerized by the sight of hundreds of infected dead being electrocuted all around the outside of the enclosure. They were falling and colliding with the dead behind them, and they were also catching fire. There was a large buffer zone around the outside of the fence, and the infected filled that zone. The smoke, fire, and bolts of electricity were amazing, and in the middle of it all sat Officer Barrett. He had stood up and turned in a circle to watch as he personally brought about the end for an untold number of infected dead.

Tom had to tear himself away, but just as he started to leave the window, he saw Officer Barrett look in his direction. He doubted that Ron could really see him through all of the smoke, but Tom could see him clearly waving his arm in a motion that said it was time for Tom to get the others to safety. He gave a silent wave to the brave man who had been responsible for giving him and Molly a chance to live once again.

He crossed the hall again and looked out the window. The streets were so clear that all of the infected must have been drawn to the bonfire and chaos at the power relay station. Tom quickly ran down the stairs to the kitchen where he found all four adults crowded around the little kitchen window.

One of them turned and asked him if he had seen what was happening, and despite the fact that he had been watching from a better vantage point, he had to take one more look. He was surprised to see that the infected so completely filled the area that they were almost to the back of the house where they were hiding. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the fire traveled across the infected and found a new source of fuel as the homes caught on fire. Ron was going to thin the population of Simmonsville by at least a thousand. Homes that held infected dead inside were going to join the fun.

Tom told the others the way was clear out front and it was time to go. They didn’t hesitate, but each one gave an unseen wave in the direction of Officer Ron Barrett. They quickly ran out the front door and ran in the general direction of the coast, but they had a long way to go.

They stayed close to the houses and made their way to the front of the neighborhood, looking back from time to time at the massive fire and plume of smoke. The noise was incredible, and the infected from miles around were probably moving toward them. They needed to keep moving as long as there was a gap between them.

At first it was better to be in front of the homes running parallel to the street, but they gradually started seeing more and more of the infected that had come a long way, drawn like moths to the huge fire. Behind the homes was an access road that ran directly to the power relay station, and it had become the most popular route for the infected to use. Whether they were streaming out of the neighborhood or the forests to the South, they were converging on the access road and were packed together so tightly that the entire parade was being pushed forward from behind.

Tom said the last block of houses had trees behind them that gave them some cover, and the street in front of the homes was beginning to be too populated, so they crept low to the ground between the buildings until they were in the trees behind them. Even if the infected saw them, the push from behind would carry the infected forward toward the fire. If they were spotted by any infected, they weren’t aware of it.

They kept creeping along until Tom was surprised that he could see an intersection sign that said they had reached Highway 17 in record time. The dirt road that had become Infected Dead Turnpike was the crossroad with Highway 17, and it was named Overland Drive. From what he could see, it was crowded with the infected that were being drawn across from the other side of Highway 17.

Tom gathered the four adults in close with him. Molly was squeezed in the middle of them. He told them that the bad news was that they had to cross Highway 17. That meant they would be in the open crossing four lanes of road, and the median and shoulders had no cover. The good news was that there was a fire station across the road, and better yet, one of the fire trucks was outside.

He explained to them that getting across the road was not impossible if they kept moving. Stopping for any reason was as good as a death sentence. Tom told them to just run for the truck and climb it. If he could get it started, he would drive it out onto Highway 17 using the northbound lane to go south. He told them that the map showed a road less than two miles away that would lead directly to the coast. We didn’t want to interrupt him to tell him he was talking about our road, but we were all wondering if he was going to say anything about the big accident that had blocked people from leaving Simmonsville.

“Tom,” I said, “did you see anything that looked like a big wreck on Highway 17 near where you were?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Tom. “That’s what changed everything. I thought we were going to be home free once we made it to the truck, but I was wrong.”

“What happened?” asked Kathy.

Tom told us that he knew they were in trouble as soon as they left the cover of the trees. The plume of smoke was still rising, and the noise from that direction was drawing the infected straight toward them in a steady stream. The wood line on the other side of Highway 17 was a mass of movement as the infected stumbled out of the dense brush onto the open shoulder, and the entire highway was a swarm of dead. They were spread out, but it was going to be a gauntlet for them to run in order to reach the fire engine.

Tom said he scooped Molly up and started to run, and the others automatically followed. They made it across the grassy shoulder onto the pavement before they got a good look down Highway 17. They were on a slight rise in the road so they could see the massive wreck that made the road look like an auto salvage yard. From shoulder to shoulder there were cars and trucks turned in every possible direction. Some were destroyed beyond recognition while others had probably come to a stop soon enough to join the others, but the drivers and passengers had been caught up in the wave of infected that were going from vehicle to vehicle in search of living flesh to bite.

There wasn’t time to stop and take it all in, but Tom did have time to realize that cars were against the trees on the far side of the road, all lanes and the median were blocked, and large numbers of cars had tried to go around the wreckage by crossing a small open field on the right. Once cars and trucks began getting stuck in the soft soil of that field, it had filled with people trying to drive through the gaps between them. In some places there were cars on top of cars, and many trucks had rolled over smaller vehicles. In the moments when the chain reaction began, it must have been total mayhem just avoiding running over people who were fleeing for their lives. The infected didn’t have to search for people to bite. They only had to stand still and wait for the unsuspecting living to run directly into their arms.

Tom didn’t know how long this many infected had been wandering around near this impossible barrier, but many of them had been doing what they tended to do when there was nothing drawing their attention. They had been just standing around and staring at each other. Sometimes a breeze would blow and move a tree, and they would all look that way. Sometimes it was nothing more than moving grass that drew their attention, but given nothing new for a really long period of time, they often did nothing more than stare at their own feet.

This crowd of infected was on stimulus overload. After countless weeks of nothing new to attack, there was a roaring pillar of fire and smoke, and a handful of living people running through their midst. The horde was growing by the second as the highway filled with more and more of the infected, and they were coming from all directions.

Just when it seemed to Tom that they had made a terrible mistake to think they could run through so many of the infected, something exploded near the power relay station. The sound momentarily blocked out the chorus of groaning that had also increased to a deafening roar, but as the explosion rolled across the trees, the houses, and the infected, the groaning changed to a fevered pitch. Tom said it sounded like desire, and the thought made him shudder. He said he heard them groan plenty of times, but he said the explosion seemed to awaken in them a more desperate sound.

Tom looked around himself and saw that he was completely surrounded, but he kept moving from side to side and mostly forward. He didn’t have time to look back to see if the last survivors in his group were still with him, but he was sure he heard a scream rise above the sound of the groaning. He came face to face with infected dead more than once, but there was so much noise and so much movement, that he was fairly sure they were lost in the craziness that was happening around them. Before it registered in whatever thought processes drove the infected to react, Tom had slipped by again.

Molly clung to Tom’s neck and held her breath for most of the run through the horde. She even kept her eyes shut for most of it, but Tom could sense from the racking sobs he felt shudder through her that she wasn’t going to be able to keep it together much longer.

Tom said that he didn’t remember when the pavement ended and the grassy median began. He also didn’t remember when the pavement began or ended the second time. The fire truck was just suddenly in front of him.

There were infected on all sides of the truck, and although most of them were reaching in the direction of the huge pillar of fire and smoke, some of them could see him better now that he was not blending in with the crowd. With the truck as his background, he looked exactly like what he was……a living, breathing person who needed to be bitten.

Tom practically tossed Molly over the top edge of the truck to safety, and with his last drop of willpower he caught his foot in a rung of ladder and gave himself a powerful shove to freedom. He felt more than one hand grab his trailing leg but not bites, and with disbelief he rolled over to find Molly sitting on top of coiled firehoses and ladders smiling at him. He looked around and saw that they weren’t even visible to the infected dead surrounding the truck.

It was with no small measure of guilt that he remembered the four people who had been with him. He had become so caught up in keeping Molly alive that he had never even asked their names. A small part of him wondered if he stopped asking people for their names because he had seen so many die in such a short time.

Tom looked around at us all and realized that he had become lost in his thoughts and had stopped talking.

Kathy said, “It’s okay, Tom. You can tell us the rest later.”

“No, no……I should finish,” he said. “You need to know this if you don’t already.”

Tom thought for a minute before continuing, and he listened as his little girl was doing her duty in the next room at the short wave radio.

Tom said he didn’t want to draw attention to where they had gone, and he was sure there were a few of the infected still trying to figure out where he had gone or how they could climb the side of the truck, but he had to see if the others had made it. He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked out between firefighting equipment to get a better look at the direction from where they had come.