I thought back to something I’d heard Rodgers say to Jarvis earlier. He’d asked Jarvis how he could betray his best friend, referring to Gordon. All along, I had thought Gordon was just taunting Jarvis by calling him things like old friend. I was starting to believe there was much more history behind that story. Knowing that now wasn’t the time to get to the bottom of it, I decided to table the conversation until we were out of this mess. If we got out of this mess.
Standing up, brushing rotted bark off my chest, I stepped back onto the trail and darted toward the trail sign. As I studied it, the helicopter engine droned to a halt. I found what appeared to be the trailhead less than a mile away. This exit from the hiking trails led directly into a structure labeled Park Office. I’ve been to many of these types of places before. I knew that they would have some limited equipment and maybe even some dry clothing.
I explained what I saw to Kyle and Jarvis, and pointed in the direction I thought we’d have to go. Anywhere would have been fine if it was away from where those bastards that had just landed were starting their hunt.
“Can you walk, Jarvis?” Kyle asked.
“I can limp if you’ll help me a bit,” he responded.
The two of us ducked under each of Jarvis’s arms and lifted him up. His legs were dragging through the trail below us, more than limping along as Kyle and I took off in as much of a sprint as we could muster.
As we moved along, I kept my ears tuned to the sounds of the forest. We could just barely hear them moving around in the distance. It would have been easy to mistake the sounds for small animals scurrying around, foraging for food. However, it felt like Lady Luck was out for lunch, leaving us on our own. Besides, we knew better. There was no doubt the walking dead were lurking in the forest. How many and how close was nearly impossible to tell.
Having to pull Jarvis over a fallen tree that lay across the trail was the most difficult thing we ran into before we reached the edge of a parking lot. With a good sweat worked up, my eyes darted from one side of the dark abyss to the other before finally landing on a winding path that led to a small office up on a hill across from us. The building sat below what appeared to be an old fire tower. At first glance, it looked more like a relic than something still operational.
As we took our first cautious steps into the lot itself, I saw three massively decomposed corpses on the black tar pavement. One of them was leaning up against a silver SUV with its severed hand dangling from a set of keys stuck in the door.
Guess he could have used a hand getting into his vehicle.
Standing over the body, I rubbed a circle in the dust plastered against the side window and stuck my face to the glass. Lowering my shoulders, I realized that it had already been picked clean, much like the set of bones resting at my feet. Snagging the keys from the door, I rattled the hand loose, letting it fall to the ground, and opened the door. After a few twists, I confirmed what I already had feared. The battery was drained.
From the rear of the truck where Kyle was standing guard, a small scratching sound caught my attention. Sliding around the rear wheel, I peered around the edge to see him digging his fingernail into the rear windshield.
Curious, I stepped a little closer, only to find that he was picking at a set of decals in the shape of five white stick figures. Two adults, two kids, and one in the shape of a dog.
“What?” he asked, almost defensively, before the decal in the shape of one of the parents slipped off and floated back and forth to the ground like a dead leaf falling from a tree.
Shaking my head, I looked out to the rest of the parking lot. There were two full rows of white-painted lines to help guide parking running up and down the oval lot that led up to the office. From the sky, I imagined that it must have looked much like the giant skeletal remains of a fish.
Feeling nearly trapped in that small section of human-made park, I gazed along the line of forest that ran around the whole parking lot as well as up and around the hill that the office and the fire tower sat on. Breathing deeply to regain my bearings, I couldn’t help but notice that we were nearly fenced in by the overgrowth of the woods.
As the moonlight traded places with a series of clouds, a darkness stole what little visibility we had, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand at full attention. What lurked beyond those trees didn’t immediately bother me. It was not being able to see what was two steps in front of us that had my mind set at a full panic.
Kyle stopped just outside the office building as the clouds shifted away, illuminating the exterior. Pausing for a few seconds, he finally whispered, “Sounds quiet. You hear anything?”
Tripping across the roots of an old oak tree which hung over the roof of the building, I stopped briefly to listen.
“No. Not a peep… If there’s anything in there, it’s been working on its patience.”
Sizing up the building, Jarvis added “Not one scratch on it. Windows seem intact and the door looks like it may actually be locked.”
“Hell, if it wasn’t for the weeds overgrowing through that wrought iron fence over there, I’d think the place was still open for business,” Kyle said, almost distantly.
He was right. As we continued slightly closer, I felt a sense of familiarity with the seemingly fresh painted brown exterior walls and the wrought iron fence that surrounded the place. It had that genuine rustic feel that I’d always loved when out in the wilderness.
Aside from the grass, weeds and unkempt trees, the place looked like it had been unscathed by the apocalypse. If it weren’t for the bodies resting in the parking lot, I might actually have let myself believe that.
Propping Jarvis up against the oak tree, I noticed the moonlight creating a dim shadow from the limbs above, almost appearing to scratch across our worn bodies like a giant decrepit hand. Lifting the hammer from my side, I pushed the thought from my mind as I noticed Kyle rooting around in the yard.
“What are you looking for?”
“Protection,” he replied, lifting a leg up, over a short brick wall, and into the field.
At first, he spied an oversized tree branch sticking up from the tall grass. Kicking it with his boot, he looked dismayed at the flimsiness of the rotting wood. I watched his gaze flicker as his eyes surveyed the building itself, finally stopping directly on the wrought iron fence that protected a small, weed-filled garden. Reaching down, he grunted as he slid his boot under one of the posts, testing its integrity. Giving it a good shake, he found one that was just loose enough for him to pry free. It was about three feet long, and fashioned a heart-shaped spike at the tip.
With a soft snort, he slung the post over his shoulder. I could nearly see his teeth shining in the moonlight as he grinned like a child with a new toy. Kyle had officially found his very own Z-Saber.
With a quick flick of his hand, Kyle motioned toward the building. The two of us tiptoed up to the front door. Leaning in, I shot dust into the air as I blew on the glass before putting a hand up against it to block the slight glare from the moon above.
“Nothing moving,” Kyle said.
“Nope.”
“Whatcha think?”
“I can’t see shit, but the place has gotta have something useful aside from that scary as hell mannequin in the window.”
The only thing that the moonlight allowed us to see was the upper torso of a mannequin wearing a bright red t-shirt with large font wording that read:
Welcome to Fire Tower Park
Preventing Forest Fires for Over 100 Years!
“Shh… Do you hear that?” Kyle asked, turning around to peer out into the forest.
I listened intently until I did. Something was running through the trees. It was distant, but close enough for us to know that it wasn’t just some squirrel trying to find its nut.