The Ugly Beginning - 01 (11 page)

“Dennis, Boris, you come with me,” Travis barked like a drill sergeant to a couple of raw recruits. “Tony, you stay here and watch for
deaders
. You got plenty of ammo, and Juan is on that little ridge with Tracy. Shouldn’t be no problem picking off any stragglers. Ain’t seen none of those packs up in this neighborhood so just be...what’s that spic Juan always sayin’? Oh yeah! Be tight like a tigah!”

“Sure thing, Travis,” Tony said with a curt nod.

The three began shoving aside the pieces that made up the twisting, strangely inter-connected barricade of metal. Meanwhile, the inmates had overcome the one surviving sheriff, holding him face down at gunpoint.

“Any a you dudes know Gary Messer?” Travis called out over the erratic sound of gunfire from outside as Tony—and Juan from the varying loudness of the shots ringing out—came and went.

“Yeah, I know him,” one of the inmates, the one with the gun pointed at the head of the subdued officer, answered.

Finally, Travis and his small band of liberators made it to open floor space. Three uniformed county cops lay sprawled in pools of blood, all headshots from the looks of it.
Damn
, Travis thought,
that Juan is a helluva shot
. “Can you take me to him? And, how many cops are holding this place down?”

“Yes, and there are two back in the intake office. Prob’ly gearin’ up for you since all this is playin’ on their closed-circuit monitors.”

Travis walked up to one of the cameras mounted near the ceiling in a corner of the lobby. He waved, smiled, and then shot the camera lens.

***

The sounds of lifeless hands smacking the windows at the front of the building echoed through the practically empty grocery store. As was the case with more and more of the nation, the power here had failed within the first week and a half. The smell of rotten food tried to compete with the unique stench of the dead. It was a close contest.

“You think if we headed to a town like Boise, we’d find more living people?” Ian took another bite of his apple and wiped the rivulet of juice that threatened to drip from his chin. He noisley slurped the juice off the heel of his hand, not wanting to miss even a drop.

“I ain’t anxious to be ‘round any people, living or dead.” Dillon rummaged through his bag and produced two bottles of water. He tossed one to Ian, popped the top of his own, and took a long draw. “Besides, it prob’ly means more of them damned things.”

The sound of shattering glass caused both men to jump. Each grabbed his shotgun, instinctively checking to see that it was loaded and the safety was off.

“
That
is why we can’t stay here.” Dillon nodded up the aisle at the handful of zombies stumbling towards them. One of them clutched a baseball bat. He wore a jersey that read
Reedy Transmission Tigers
.

Dillon smiled and shook his head. The theory that these things were simply driven by some sort of primitive urge might be true, but on the radio there was a lot of talk about former ingrained habits being demonstrated.

He thought back to when all the doors on the cell block had popped open on the fourth day. He had been totally caught by surprise. It was a good thing it happened in the middle of the day. Two of those damn things had been standing just outside his cell door…

Dillon had made a stake from the neck of his acoustic guitar on that first day. So far, four of those things lay dead in front of his cell. The remaining two appeared to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. They just stood on the tier...staring at him twenty-four/seven.

Those two lunged in like racehorses leaping through the starting gate. Dillon had heard Ian scream in surprise, but he didn’t have time to worry about any ass other than his own. He quickly dispatched the two and escaped from his cell.

What he saw, the death up and down the tier—several of the cells were unleashing men literally ripped open—made him shudder. But, it was that one...thing...at the officer’s control station that stood out. The guy was obviously dead. Missing most of his face and a good portion of his chest, he was a bloody mess. Yet, he stood at the station like he was on duty. Dillon swore that the damn thing raised an arm at him like it was trying to issue some sort of order, just like a correctional officer would if a convict came out onto the tier. That damned, dead son-of-a-bitch had unracked the cell doors!

He returned his attention to the here-and-now.
Daydreaming can getcha killed these days
, he reminded himself. Deciding not to waste any bullets, or draw any more attention than already was being done when that front window shattered, he pulled a three-foot machete from the leather sheath strapped to his right thigh. Ian already had his out and was moving in on what looked like it used to be a waitress from a small diner.

Dillon took a few steps back to draw Baseball Player out into the aisle intersection. It lumbered forward, arms outstretched and mouth open, white-filmed, black-bloodshot eyes staring ahead vacant...expressionless. “Little closer, buddy.”

Baseball Player barged past the full grocery cart, still moving as directly as it was able towards Dillon. Once it stepped all the way out into the aisle intersection, it paused for just a moment. Its head jerked first one way, then another, as if it were crossing a street and watching for cars. Then its head snapped back towards its intended prey, and in an instant, lunged forward.

Strange
, Dillon thought as he swung two-handed with the three-foot long blade,
the only time those things are truly quick and almost graceful is when they lunge at you to attack
. The machete came down on the crown of Baseball Player’s head. The resulting crunch and reverberation up the arms was becoming strangely familiar. The body dropped as if it had been suddenly unplugged from an invisible power source.

Clutching the machete and ensuring that there were no more immediate threats, he glanced over to see Ian swing, cutting deep into Waitress’ head from the temple to the bridge of the nose. Black fluid oozed down its face. With a foot to the chest, he pulled his weapon free and gave it a cursory wiping off on the soiled apron.

“We need to move. Those things are coming in, and who knows how many are outside in the lot.” Dillon began up the—at least for the moment—empty aisle. “Shift to your .45. Once we reach the front and the register area, noise ain’t gonna matter much.”

Ian slid his machete into the leather sheath and drew his pistol. He grabbed the cart he had filled and pushed over one aisle. Two coming down. The next aisle was empty and gave a good view of the broken window. A few of the things were jostling each other as they tried to climb through the jagged hole, oblivious to the multiple cuts and gashes they took in the process.

As he reached the end of the aisle, Ian slowed and let go of the cart. It rolled on its own as he moved to the right and pressed against the shelves. Nothing accosted the cart as it cleared the end of the aisle and rolled out into the open area near the row of checkout stands. The grunt and distinct sound of steel embedding in a skull meant Dillon had company.

“You okay?” Ian hissed, keeping his voice low to attract as little attention as he could.

“Just one,” came the reply. If nothing else, they’d gotten proficient at minimal conversation.

Together, they pushed their carts toward the exit. A pair of zombies were struggling through the broken window. Ian paused, raised his gun, and fired. The bullet entered the forehead clean and blew out the back in a spray of greyish-black matter. The body did just what he hoped; it slumped down in the window frame. He sighted on the other and fired again. The shot was low, blowing a hole in the throat. The creature bobbled just a bit and then resumed its attempt to climb through. As it man-aged to force one leg in, with one still outside, Ian fired again. This time he nailed the thing in the temple. The head rocked sideways, and the body fell over the already slumped form next to it.

He watched a handful of others trying desperately, but with so little coordination, failing to climb over the impromptu barrier. The few stragglers that had already made it in were heading for Dillon who was shoving the caravan of empty carts, which had been their makeshift barrier, away from the door. Pushing through the doors and into the parking lot, Dillon shifted to a shotgun and began blasting at the closest threats between the door and the still idling pick-up truck they had liberated in the prison employee parking lot.

Ian remembered the feeling of running outside of the prison that day
. He, Dillon, and a handful of other inmates on the block had burst out like a bunch of kids on the last day of school. They stood in a small cluster in front of the entrance and stared at each other for a moment. Then, with nods of silent agreement, they walked away. Some just headed down the two-lane road on foot. Others, like he and Dillon, found a way to the parking lot and commandeered their own vehicle. Dillon wanted a metallic-blue sports car, but Ian preached the sensibility of a pick-up.

More and more of the damned zombies, or whatever the media had taken to calling them, were shambling across the parking lot in their general direction. The biggest thing Ian noticed about the zombies was that they mostly walked about aimlessly until they heard noise. Then, it was like a dinner bell bringing them in singles and clusters to a focus. He never waited long enough to see if, or how, they dispersed.

In no time, they were in the truck and heading back to the freeway. The decision had finally been reached to head to the Pacific. By skirting larger towns and cities like Portland, they could slip into smaller ones for supplies as the need struck. Now that martial law was not an issue (mainly due to no personnel left to enforce it) they could travel much easier.

Ian tore open a pouch of beef jerky and pulled out a nice- sized piece. He offered some to Dillon who grunted his thanks as he grabbed a strip and stuffed it into his mouth.

Yes indeed, this was much finer than rotting life away in a cell. Ian leaned back and closed his eyes.

***

MILEMARKER 152, I-84, OR
—Anton Maxwell swung the aluminum bat with all his might. The satisfying crunch of a shattered skull rewarded his effort. The gore-crusted thing that looked to have once been a young Hispanic girl fell to the pavement. A few more swings for good measure, and Anton stepped back while turning in a slow circle to ensure nothing else was creeping up.

A blackbird sat on the grill of an overturned semi. The trailer looked undamaged and still upright, but the open cargo doors made it unlikely that anything of value remained. The bird was eyeing him with its beak open. It looked as if the stupid thing was as hot and miserable as he was.

He gave another quick look around before returning his attention under the hood of his broke-down, overheated, piece-of-junk car. Steam rolled out of what seemed to be every part of the engine with a hose connected to it.

Oh well, finding another car shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. The muted slaps from a couple of nearby vehicles were actually a good sign. As long as a vehicle still had some gas, he could dispatch with the occupant or occupants.

Climbing up on the trunk of his former ride—a Seventies model Buick Skylark—he spotted a couple of distant zombies milling about. None seemed locked onto him as of yet. He took visual inventory of his vehicle choices: a PT Cruiser...occupied; a newer looking Honda Accord...occupied; a mid-Nineties Ford Taurus wagon...empty; and a Jeep...empty.

The Jeep looked nice, but offered no real protection. The wagon looked the most inviting simply based on not having any occupants inside waiting to try and take a bite out of him. Still, it was best to be cautious. Anton unfastened the clasp on the holster for the Glock he had been carrying for the past couple weeks. He would only use the weapon as a last resort. Its noise factor almost made it almost not worth the ease in which he could dispatch a zombie. To compound his need for firepower frugality, he had one spare magazine with ten rounds, and three left in the weapon.

Confident that the Glock was ready if needed, he adjusted his grip on the bat and moved toward the Taurus. The scorching heat caused the air to shimmer above the smooth asphalt. The now common stench of the undead rode those waves of heat and only seemed to amplify in strength.

A few steps from the car, he paused. That smell seemed to be rolling out of the open driver’s side window of the burgundy wagon. Rising up on his tiptoes, Anton could still not see any sign of movement from within. Keeping a lookout for anything that could be moving his way, he took a few more cautious steps closer to his intended prize.

He reached the vehicle and moved to the closed windows of the driver’s side backseat. If anything popped out of the open window, he’d be in a position to smash it from a relatively safe spot.

Nothing.

Expecting something terrible was the norm these days,
Anton mused. Whatever had been inside must’ve climbed out the open window and wandered off. He took a moment to relax just a bit and lean against the rear quarter panel. His hand went instinctively to his breast pocket. Damn. He’d been out of smokes for two days now.

Finally, he could take a better look at his surroundings, not that there was much to see in the open, arid, desert-like plains of Eastern Oregon. This must’ve been some wreck. From the looks, the big-rig had jackknifed, taking out a couple of cars. It likely happened after this whole nightmare began, so no emergency personnel responded. The interstate was effectively blocked heading west. To make things a bit worse, the accident was just over a small bluff. That was the reason that he was in his current situation.