Chapter 10
Enjoying the finer things in life.
We used the water under the bridge to help clean out the Hummer. Washing away dried blood, old food wrappers and that half-eaten sandwich from my boss. I found myself wondering which was really more disgusting.
Not spending too much time in that particular spot, we used the rest of the day scavenging through more cars for food and siphoning more gasoline. We had a good system down, and were mindful to keep an eye out for any zombies moving around to avoid the situation we had at the gas station.
The old guy was unconscious in the back seat the entire time. Every once in a while, I could hear him grunt in pain, but his eyes never opened.
We were making okay progress given the circumstances. Using back roads and the navigation system to move south through Jersey, we were able to avoid most of the congested roads.
A few creatures popped up from time to time, but they were easy to take care of. We noticed on the third day that most of the zombies were quite slow. Kyle and I agreed that it was probably because the bodies were dead, like in the movies, and that they had gone through rigor mortis, causing all the limbs to tighten up and keeping them from being able to do much more than hobble around.
A fact that, I would learn later on, was correct.
In small numbers, this was a big help. However, we knew we needed to avoid swarms of these things. No matter how slow they were, they were still lethal.
With much of the morning eaten up, we were able to make approximately fifty miles south that day.
In the evening, Kyle and I found what looked like an old lumber warehouse. Upon first glance, it was clearly abandoned, but then I noticed a creature that had its brains bashed in, lying near one of the machines.
It was wearing blue jeans and a white button up shirt that was covered in dirt and blood. It was a few days ripe. After I parked the Hummer in the building, we immediately threw it outside before closing up the sliding doors.
The warehouse was relatively open, with a high ceiling that appeared to have a series of railed bridges running through it. We spent the next hour exploring the place to make certain that we were able to “secure our position,” as Kyle put it. In other words, we were double-checking to make sure that none of the roaming zombies outside would stumble across us by walking through an open door in the back of the building.
Luckily, in the guard shack, we did happen across a refrigerator, to which electricity no longer ran.
“Looks like the place had a night security watch,” Kyle said.
He walked up to the fridge holding both hands up in the air with his fingers crossed. He told me that he had heard stories from others that were part of the same security company he had worked for, about the guys who were lucky enough to get this type of gig, and how they usually sat around and drank beer all night.
He opened the refrigerator, and yelled, “Eureka!” as he pulled out a twelve pack.
“We’re drinking like kings tonight!” he exclaimed, as he held up a bottle of warm Miller High Life.
A smile came to my face, as I shared his excitement. Even warm beer was welcome. Besides, High Life instantly reminded me of the good times I’d had drinking with some of my old buddies in college.
Back at the Hummer, which I had parked squarely in the middle of the place, we checked on the wounded man, who was now tossing and turning a bit. His bandage was fresh, but already showing signs of blood soaking into it. His skin was a tone too pale, and I noticed that he felt a bit feverish. Reaching down to reassure myself that my hammer was still resting securely in my belt, I decided to keep a watchful eye on him. We had done what we could at that point, and I needed to make sure that we’d be ready for a sudden turn for the worse.
During the course of the day, my cellphone had charged up to two full power bars. However, we hadn’t had any luck finding a cellphone tower that worked.
I later learned that most of the power grids in the US wouldn’t last more than three to four days without someone operating them. In rare cases, there were wind and hydro-powered generators that could power small rural areas for longer, but after a few days, everything else went dark.
We were on day three.
As Kyle and I started to pull out some of the camping gear we had stowed in the trunk of the Hummer, our patient woke up.
He slowly opened his eyes, and in a daze, asked where he was. Sitting in the vehicle with him, Kyle and I walked the old man through the course of events that had taken place since his crash.
By the end of the story, he was regaining his wits, and he began to sit up. He clutched his stomach and asked, “What the hell hit me?”
Kyle reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the small metal shard. Handing it to him, he explained that it looked like it was part of the rotor blade from the back of the helicopter.
The gentleman held it up in front of his face, and then thanked us for pulling him out and stitching him up.
“That damn metal beast,” the old man murmured out loud. “I knew we should have never gotten in that thing. We were assured safe passage out of the city. My people paid off some pretty high level officials to get me that ride.”
“What happened? I mean, what happened in the helicopter?” I asked.
He took a deep breath, obviously thinking back to the event. He sat up, holding his side with a grimace.
“The chopper took off with five people in it. The pilot, a copilot, my assistant and I, and an army sergeant who thought he was lucky enough to catch a ride. The copilot took a liking to my assistant immediately, and invited her up to show off the control panel. None of us could have known that the pilot had been bit.”
I looked at Kyle. We knew where this story was heading.
“He turned mid-flight, and took a quarter-sized bite out of Judy, my assistant, as she leaned forward. She took two steps back and fell to the metal floor, holding her neck. Blood was squirting in short bursts across the window and wall to her right.”
He stopped for a moment, panting shallowly as he wiped his eyes. Blood from his own wound streaked across his cheek.
“As she sat there slowly dying, the pilot turned his sights on the copilot. I could hear so much screaming, and watched the infected man waving his hands while blood shot all over the front windshield. That’s when I looked over at the sergeant. He had strapped on a parachute and was pulling the door of the chopper open, which opened sideways just as Judy started to… reanimate.”
He stopped again, catching his breath. There was much sadness in his voice as he continued.
“Judy started to walk towards me. I was frozen with fear. In that instant, the sergeant jumped out the door. Having caught Judy’s attention, and without hesitation, she ran over to the opening and leaped after him. In some ways, I believe that sergeant saved my life, but I recognize he was just trying to save his own ass.”
Thinking back to the figures we watched plummet to the earth, I didn’t think it was necessary to tell him how it ended for the sergeant and his assistant, Judy.
“I watched the head of the copilot rolling around in the belly of the chopper as we started spinning in the air just before the crash. I had no idea what the hell hit me in the stomach, but I knew it was bad.”
He coughed, and I noticed some blood dribbled out of his mouth. He went on to tell us that his name was Michael Hoskins, a high-powered CEO of a technology company headquartered in New York. He held out a weak hand, which I grasped and shook.
The handshake is a funny thing. No matter how utterly screwed up things have gotten, it still seems cordial to shake someone’s hand when meeting. I read somewhere that the handshake actually started out in ancient Greece as a sign of peace, and a way for strangers to prove to each other that they were unarmed. Seemed like we may be reverting to those times quickly.