The King of Clayfield - 01 (35 page)

"I just got word the batteries are getting low!" he said, holding up a cell phone. "You might want to take up a new position!"

He'd mistaken me for someone else.

I nodded to them. He waved, then
 
backed the trailer around and headed back, taking a right
 
onto 2nd
 
Street.

I wasn't sure what he meant, but I climbed down,
 
thinking it prudent to obey.

"What are they doing?" Jen
 
asked as I climbed in.

"It looks like they're trying to lure them all to one place so they can kill them. They're shooting and burning them. There are a few survivors out there. Somerville must have gotten some help."

"How many survivors did you see?" Sara asked.

"Nine--counting the couple in the truck.”

"This is some major
 
dumbassery," Jen said. "This is what happens when rednecks sit around and brainstorm."

"Did you see
 
the Somervilles?"
 
Sara asked

"I couldn't tell," I said. "Everyone was too far away, and they were all wearing masks."

"What do you want to do?" Jen said. "Do you want to stay and help these morons?"

"I don't really want any part of this," I said. "I suppose
 
killing the infected
 
is necessary, but I don't know if I can stomach it like this. I don't even know if they're doing any good."

Then the siren stopped. My ears were ringing a little
 
in the new silence.

"What are they doing?" Sara said.

"That must be what he meant about the batteries," I said. "The batteries running the siren have died."

The infected looked like they'd been awakened from a trance. I could hear the ones on fire
 
screaming. There was movement in the crowd that reminded me of movement in water. The fire and smoke began to drift south. The men on the
 
fire trucks turned their hoses on the burning people now, trying to put them out before they got away from them. The ones with guns focused their attention on the burning ones, too.

Fire started licking out of the windows of the drugstore. The two people on top of the building ran around on the roof looking for a way of escape.

"They're going to burn the whole town down," Jen said. "What were they thinking? Stupid--"

"They were thinking they could contain it," I said.

Arms
 
reached up to one of the fire trucks. The men on top tried to hold them away with the force of the water, but they couldn't push them all away. The infected started
 
climbing up.

"This is about to get bad,"
 
Jen said, "and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it.
 
Get the hell away from here."

I couldn't leave.

"We're going to try to help those people on the roof."

I could feel Jen looking at me, but she didn't say anything.

I put the van into drive and pulled up close to the back of the
 
building.
 
Sara wouldn't be able to open her door, but the infected couldn't get at her either.

"Jen, I'm going to get them on the roof of the truck. When I tell you, pull us out of here."

I jumped out of the truck again. The creatures were moving around more now, and I had three come at me all at once. I pulled the .38 from my pocket and aimed at the first one. The gun clicked. I pulled the trigger again, and it clicked again. It only had three rounds and
 
evidently they
 
hadn't moved into
 
place as the cylinder
 
rotated. I could have tried one or two more times, and
 
it would have fired, but they were too close.
 
I stopped trying to shoot and just climbed up on the hood, then cab roof, then top of the box. Below, I heard a gunshot and knew that Jen was taking care of business.

The roof of the drugstore was still a few feet higher than the top of the moving van, but I could see. The two figures were moving around in the smoke.
 
It
 
hadn't gotten too thick on the far side yet, so that's where they were. They were looking over the edge with their backs to me. I could tell they were trying to decide whether they should jump and face the
 
monsters. There was really no choice--they'd eventually have to jump.

"Over here!"

They turned in the smoke. Only my head and shoulders were sticking up over the roof but they saw me. They thought I was one of the infected at first, and the one with the rifle pointed it at me. Then they noticed my mask, lowered the gun, and ran to me. When they got to the edge, they sat on the roof ledge,
 
and dropped to the top of the truck.

"Go, Jen!"

Jen backed the van into the crowd, turned, and
 
then pulled away heading east. The three of us on the roof held on as well as we could, trying to keep our backs to the cold wind. A large group of the creatures chased us, but were soon left behind.

When she got to the intersection of East Broadway and the bypass, she stopped the truck.
 
This was
 
the
 
outer edge of the east side of Clayfield where the town abruptly
 
turned into farmland.
 
There was no one around except an
 
infected old man shuffling in.

"You two okay?" I said.

One of them nodded.

"What about the others?" said
 
the one with the gun,
 
"We have to go
 
back!"

"We can't help them," I said.

Jen got out, shot the old man,
 
and
 
stood in front of the truck facing us with the shotgun in a defensive posture.

"Come on down," she said.

We climbed down the front of the truck.
 

The two pulled down their masks. It was a boy--15 years old at most--and a woman in her 50s.

"We have to go back," the woman said again.

"We were barely able to help
you
," Jen said.

"Who are you?" the woman said. "You're not with our group."

"What the hell were y'all thinking?" Jen said.

"Excuse me? We were thinking we'd take our town back."

The boy stepped up.

"We were doing
 
something about it," he said.

"Hunter, no," the woman said, grabbing the boy's arm.

"We ain't going back," Jen said. "Y'all have them all stirred up. We'll never get in there. We even have a bunch coming this way."

We all looked down East Broadway. They were coming, but they were still far enough away not to worry about just yet.

"Then let me take the truck, and I'll go in and get them," the boy said.

"It's too dangerous," I said. "You're safer with us."

"If we go back,
 
then we'll all get caught," Jen said.

"If you don't want to go, then don't!" Hunter
 
yelled.

He ran
 
around to the driver's side of the moving van and started to get in.
 
Jen ran
 
to
 
catch him.
 
She got to him and tried to pull him out. He punched her in the face. I ran to help her.

"You little shit!" Jen said, holding her jaw.

She came back at him. A gun went off, but I didn't see it happen because my view was blocked by the door. Jen
 
stumbled backward and landed hard on her back. The door shut, the van shifted into drive and started to roll.

"Hunter! No!"
 
the woman yelled.

Sara opened her door and jumped out. Hunter wheeled around us as we
 
encircled Jen. Then he sped off down East Broadway toward the mass of infected.

"The terd
 
shot me," Jen said, surprised.

There was a bullet wound in the top of her right thigh. A
 
spot of blood began
 
to spread out around it, soaking her jeans.
 
I took off my bandana and
 
held it on the wound.

We were in the middle of the intersection, beneath the stoplight. We were completely exposed.

The moving van plowed into the approaching
 
crowd then stopped when too many bodies got wedged under the undercarriage. They started climbing up the sides.

"Hunter!" the woman screamed.

I grabbed the woman's mouth and squeezed it.

"Shut up," I said. "We're out in the open, and Jen is wounded. If you want to make noise, do it somewhere else. Do you underfuckinstand?"

She nodded, fear in her eyes. I let her go and blood from Jen's leg was smeared
 
around her mouth where my hand had been.

I felt sick--sick over Jen, sick over how vulnerable we were, and sick
 
over
 
how I had just acted.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Please...I'm sorry."

The woman was crying.

"We have to find a car," the woman said. "We have a doctor in our group and medicine.
 
Maybe he can help her."

"Good," I said. "What's your name?"

"Brenda."

"Brenda, this is Sara. You two carry Jen off the road and hide in that ditch over there. Keep pressure on her leg.
 
I'm going to find us a vehicle."

I didn't know where to go. The
 
only vehicles close
 
were on the west side
 
of the bypass, but
 
the crowd of infected was there trying to get at Hunter. There would be no way I could get in there and get a car and get out again. Even if I could get in there, I had no guarantee that the car would even start. We'd driven the bypass a few times that day. There were
 
vehicles on it, but I
 
feared they would be dead just like most of the other abandoned cars on the road. I had to try.

I headed south down the bypass, running as fast as I could. There was a white car on the shoulder about a quarter of a
 
mile away. All I could hear were my boots clomping on the asphalt and my own raspy breathing.

My lungs were burning, and my throat was raw from running in the cold air. My heart kept punching me in the chest. I wasn't
 
into fitness
 
before the virus hit. I wasn't really overweight, but I wasn't in very good shape either. Taking the stairs usually winded me, and I liked my donuts. In this new world, everyone would have to get in shape or they would
 
die. It would be the new
 
fitness craze--run for your life.
 

I'd left the .30-06 with the others.
 
All I
 
had was the .38 in my coat pocket and one of the .22 revolvers in the front of my pants. Hopefully I wouldn't meet a crowd
 
of them.

I started doing math in my head.
 
I didn't know how long it should take
 
to run a quarter of a mile,
 
but I seemed to remember people always talking about a ten-minute mile.
 
It would take more than two minutes for me to reach the white car at that rate. That was like an eternity when there were zombies close to the people you cared about.

I looked over my shoulder. I didn't see the women anymore. They were hiding. Good. The white car was close. Gunshots and screaming. The creatures had gotten to Hunter. Poor kid. Poor, stupid,
 
reckless kid.

I got to thinking about one of the conversations Jen, Sara, and I had during
 
the rainy evenings around the fire back at Blaine’s. Jen had been saying how there were two kinds of people that had survived the initial outbreak--the lucky and the smart. She said that the lucky wouldn't be lucky forever. They would have to get smart or Darwin would eventually have his way. Stupid people might have survived and procreated in the soft and civilized world before Canton B, but in this world, nature wasn't going to allow
 
it.