Just as we were saying our farewells, the radio message came. Tim returned to the lookout. He, Snoe, three survivors from Opportunity, and five of the combined fifteen members of their teams are returning to Irony! Wish I could stay...details were sketchy. But at least we left knowing some of them were safe.
* * * * *
Chapter 6
Sunday, June 1
Back in the wilderness.
Today felt like summer. Driving through the church-like silence of the woods reminded me of camping trips with my folks when I was very young. Of course, I wasn’t sitting in the cab of a deuce-and-a-half with a rifle resting between my knees and a pair of pistols under each arm in quick-draw holsters.
Roy Haines drove most of the day. He’s not very talkative so it was quiet except for the droning snarl of the big engine that propelled us along the increasingly harder to navigate roads. Three times we were forced to stop to move a fallen tree. Twice required the motorized cable winch.
We may not have slowed to the pace of the wagon trains that settled this country two hundred or so years ago, but the express lanes don’t exist in the back woods. It made me wonder how much of our nation’s infrastructure took care of all the mundane things that we never gave a moment’s thought to.
Still, it beats walking.
Tomorrow is when things will start getting dicey. We will leave the relative safety of the logging and forest service roads for a paved and most likely populated route. It is the only way to get the big deuce to our destination.
Monday, June 2
Nothing that happened today can bode well for anything resembling a future of peace and the chance to rebuild humanity. Of course after today…who can really know what is worth saving. And strangely enough, those of us who remain are now more determined than ever to get to the Trout Creek area and clear the compound.
But where to begin…how to begin with what exactly happened today as I sit here on the charred remains of one of the deuce-and-a-halfs and watch Roy checking out the other deuce to make sure it’s going to get us safely to our destination.
We woke up, and I mean all of us, to the blood-curdling scream that can only be a person being eaten alive. We’ve all heard it enough. Friends. Family. Adults. Children. Men. Women. When the pain and terror reach that point as a person is being devoured alive by the undead, often times it is impossible to tell if it is man or woman. Adult or child.
Instinctively I grabbed a long blade and both my holsters carrying my loaded .45 Colt semi-automatic pistols. All around me, those that had bedded down in the back of my deuce were similarly engaged when the first set of blue-gray hands reached through the flap of canvas at the rear. I had no time to shout a warning as those hands grasped Antonio who was on his knees trying to find his baseball bat in the nest of blankets he’d been sleeping in.
Those hands grasped the collar of his shirt and yanked back cracking his head hard on the metal tailgate. Then his body lifted and seemed to slither backwards through the gap in the dark cloth much like an alligator propelling itself from a muddy bank into the water.
Kyle was closest and dove for Antonio’s leg, missing by a hair. More hands were now clutching at and pulling away the canvas covering of the cargo area. I heard a pair of shots fired and quickly guessed them to be in the direction of the other deuce.
All of this was in the first five or ten seconds from the scream that woke me and the others.
Kyle yanked the canvas with the ‘brrrrrap’ of velcro tearing away. It was like some sort of ghastly magic trick. Appearing to be at least five deep and as far as our view allowed left and right, zombies were pressing against the rear of the big truck. The only thing saving us this very moment was how high up the clearance of the deuce sat. But, with hands slapping and clawing at the sides as well, I knew they had to be thick out there. It would not take long for them to start climbing in, and all of our combined ammo in the weapons we held wouldn’t make so much as a dent in their numbers.
In the cargo area of the deuce with me were Caren, Meredith, Bill, Kyle, and Jimmy. Of course Antonio had been with us, but the hunched over knot of zombies identified his current location, or what was left of him anyways. Shannon, Roy, and Trent had the other deuce. One of them was supposed to be on watch. My guess is that whoever was the owner of the scream is who got the day started. That left eight of us—hopefully—to deal with this and try to get out alive.
Caren was scrambling up the back side of the cab, slicing through the burlap overhead with a long buck knife and pulling herself up using the support above her head. Just that quick, everybody was scrambling to follow, mostly in an every-man (or woman)-for-themselves mode. Nobody jostled or pushed another aside. It was just a simple case of each of us knowing the consequence of stopping at this particular moment to be a hero.
Bill was the last to pull himself up with Meredith and I grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt and hoisting. The scene that greeted us was truly horrifying.
We had pulled well off the remnants of the road we intended to take, but those damn things had found us. They were pouring through the woods and had our three vehicles totally surrounded. I could see Roy and Shannon in the front seat of the other deuce staring back at us in total shock. The hummer sat empty between us and them.
Jimmy suddenly yelled something about having an idea. Before long he had handed us everything but a long sword he had strapped to his back and a pistol on his left hip. He reached up and grasped an overhanging branch from some monstrous pine tree and began working his way to the trunk. In a moment he had climbed up and his eyes were on a tree only a few feet away. But, and this is where I was thinking he had lost his mind, it was much thinner. In fact it couldn’t be much bigger around than my leg at the thickest part of the thigh. Most of the nearby trees were similarly young and less sturdy.
We all watched, even Roy and Shannon were leaning forward, necks craned and straining to see what the hell the kid was doing. On yeah, and the zombies were in a tizzy. All his movement had them interested and agitated.
Then…he jumped.
The zombies were like a crowd at a fireworks display. Instead of “ooo’s” and “ahhh’s” there was a ripple of moans and snapping teeth. Arms reached skyward, almost in unison, reminding me of that scene in Close Encounters where the Frenchman asked the crowd of desert dwellers where the sound and light came from and they pointed straight up.
He caught the thinner pine which swayed violently. Climbing just a bit higher, Jimmy began rocking back and forth. All the while, the zombies are going crazy below. Then he reaches out and grabs the next tree. Tree by tree he moves away from us, bringing practically all of the hundreds of zombies that had surrounded us.
That allowed Roy to get the deuce moving and Meredith to dash for the Hummer. In no time we had bashed or decapitated the stubborn remnant that remained between us and our goal of getting into the cab. Bill remained in the back, the idea was to drive to a spot where Jimmy could jump down. I got the big deuce rolling and followed the “path” that Roy was making through the zombies who were now torn as to which meal possibility to pursue.
Bill slapped the roof of the cab, signaling me to stop. I heard a thud as Jimmy landed in back and then gassed it again to break out of the ever-thickening ring of walking dead. In seconds that seemed agonizingly slow we were out on what passed for a road.
Roy had opened about a good fifty yard lead by the time we rolled out of the trees and was hard to see through the rooster-tail of dust in his wake. We were driving faster than was sensible, but, at that moment, fear and adrenaline were pretty much in charge of the show.