Desolation, p.26
Desolation, page 26
I wasn’t alone in the forest—that was immediately obvious. The air was heavy with the scent of decay, and not all of that could be coming from the interstate. But nothing howled, screamed, or came right for me, so I pushed on for another minute.
Then I saw it loom before me—the perfect tree to climb. A huge oak had survived a smaller but still substantial beech falling against it. There were a lot of dead branches scratching my face as I clambered up the beech and then onto the second-lowest oak bough, staying close to the trunk. Only up there did I allow myself to take a few calming breaths as I leaned against the rough wood, my bat now looped through the straps of my pack next to the ax for better climbing.
It took a good minute for the rustling all around me to die down so I could strain my ears and listen to what was going on beyond the trees.
There was fighting all right, but I couldn’t tell if it was just their random feeding frenzy or whether my companions were getting torn limb from limb. While I heard screams, none of them sounded human or like someone’s dying agony. I also didn’t hear shots. It all sounded close, but not too close—possibly even on the other side of the highway.
And then, slowly but surely, the commotion died down.
I had to admit, that wasn’t something I’d expected to happen. Maybe eventually, once the heat of the day chased them to seek shelter from the sun, likely well-sated on those less fortunate ones, be it human or not. But I couldn’t have been up in my tree for more than ten minutes, my breath still not quite calm, my body aching all over, nerves jittery as hell.
I even considered that I was just imagining things—or that my hearing had gone out again, the stress undoing what two days of healing had restored.
But then I heard it—the unmistakable sound of engines. Car engines, dull roars interspersed with the squeal of brakes and the screech of metal.
That couldn’t be it—but it was, I realized, as they drew closer and closer—
And then the screams and howls rose anew, soon drowning out the discharge of several guns of multiple calibers.
I couldn’t see anything, but I didn’t need to. A veritable slaughter was going on out there—and it took the zombies less than five minutes until the last car had stalled out, only the low chugging of a single engine remaining.
A sharp whistle coming from up close made my head whip around.
I found Jared standing close to the exposed roots of the beech, staring up at me with annoyance.
I pushed away the anger at myself for being glad to see him still alive.
As I made my way back down to the ground—after checking that the forest was still mostly quiet—I caught sight of Axel and Blake, drawing closer from somewhere further away from the town. Like me, all three of them were a little the worse for wear, extra layers of dirt and gore splattering various gear and body parts.
I half expected Jared to berate me for not following his plan—badly communicated as it had been—but he just scrutinized me as if to reassure himself that none of my parts were missing. I flashed him a quick grin and a thumbs-up as I unslung my pack to get my bat ready once more.
When I straightened, he was suddenly right there, reaching for my face.
I froze, caught up in a wave of bewilderment as he touched my left cheek and wiped something off—
Zombie gore. Fucking zombie gore from the teenage boy.
A shudder ran through me that had nothing whatsoever to do with reactions to semi-intimate touches and everything to do with deep-seated revulsion.
A hint of his usual smirk crossed Jared’s face, but before I could react, he had already moved around me and was wading deeper into the forest, of course stepping over each and every hidden root without falling over it, not even once.
I gave myself a hard shake, made sure that my pack was fastened securely, and then fell in line behind him, angling for the deer trail he’d just found.
So much for only moving at night—but so far, except for the odd rustling and motion in the distance, the forest remained quiet, so there was no reason for us not to push on.
Particularly not since I presumed that was Noah and his gang in the cars, committing collective suicide by idiotic plan.
I didn’t even feel like complaining about Jared having been right about his assessment of that.
Hell, maybe we could even retrieve what was left of their weapons and gear on the way back—if we survived that long and happened to take the same route again.
Time would tell—and I had a feeling that it would be one awfully long, tedious, agonizing trip until that happened... Or I died, in which case I no longer had to worry about that.
Silver linings, everywhere.
14
After how we’d made it across the interstate, hiking through the mountains was downright boring—but tedious. Because yes, indeed, we were hiking, and those were definitely mountains. The way from the camp to the town had been mostly along even elevation or downward, but I’d somehow ignored the fact that we were two valleys away from Asheville—and someone, somewhere along the line, would have to climb up those hills.
It got even worse when, two hours after we’d set out again, we took a break and I made the mistake of asking Jared how much longer he thought it would take us—and how far we had to go.
“Just over thirty miles from the interstate. Twenty-five if the forest remains clear and we can cut through parts of it.”
Zeke had mentioned all that before, but it hadn’t fully sunk in until now—particularly the part including mountains.
I was surprised my jaw didn’t unhinge itself from how it dropped. “Thirty miles?! You expect me to hike a fucking marathon—twice!—and then go toe-to-toe with the undead?”
Jared just grinned around his cancer stick—the only one I’d seen him smoke since the camp.
“Don’t forget that on the way back, we’ll hopefully be carrying full packs.”
This was getting better and better.
And all that for what used to be an easy twenty-minute drive.
Fucking hell.
“Has anyone considered us using bikes?” I suggested as we went on and crossed the single road through the forest yet again, pausing to check whether anything was moving there. “Like bicycles, I mean? They’re whisper quiet and we wouldn’t have to lug our packs.”
Jared stopped, his sole focus on me rather than on our environment. “Still means you have to pedal up the almost three thousand feet of elevation that this route comes with. Not sure that’s any easier than walking.”
I was sorely tempted to silently voice that number, but then thought better of it. I was pretty sure I couldn’t hide my despair.
“And that’s really the easiest route you could find?”
That he clearly knew where he was leading us was obvious. We’d switched from one hiking trail to the next, and then a third in the past two hours, now following one that was clearly marked with blazes. Jared hadn’t had to look for the trail even once.
“The easiest? No,” he admitted. “But I’d very much like to get out of this alive to enjoy the spoils of our labor, so excuse me if I chose the way most conducive to that.” His gaze turned judgmental. “If you can’t keep up, feel free to sit down at the side of the road and wait for someone to come by and take you along. We’ll be back in three to four days.”
As I said—fucking hell.
I wordlessly closed my mouth—only to open it after the next step because I needed more fucking air to breathe!—and slogged on behind him, praying that they wouldn’t simply leave me behind when my stamina inevitably ran out.
Just a month ago, I’d woken up in the damn triage tent, and now I had to go hiking through the Appalachians in June?
Surviving really wasn’t all that amazing right now.
The upside to hiking through the wilderness was that there really were no undead here. Close to the interstate—at the bottom of the wide valley, where it was even and nice and you didn’t have to fight every step uphill—there had been plenty of lurkers hiding around, but after twenty minutes or so, they’d thinned out to the point of completely disappearing. From time to time I still caught a whiff of decay or fecal matter, but that was usually when our trail got close to or crossed the road. Some must have followed it up even into the mountains, but those were few and far in between.
That in turn made me wonder—if we’d never tried to set out across the meadows and fields when we’d tried to get back from the Militia HQ to the Enclave, would we have been ambushed? Would we even have known how bad it was out in the open?
How many people would have died by now if we’d resumed the previous scavenging pattern? That we’d even made it to the Militia HQ had been fortunate—or not, considering how hard getting back had been. I’d never quite gotten the numbers of how many people had died, but at least one of the cars had ended up wrecked, everyone inside killed by the undead.
And now here we were, trekking through the forest.
For a while, I managed to keep my ire mostly contained and my body moving, but by mid-morning, what was left of my reserves was spent, lack of food today and almost no rest last night taking its toll. We had some food with us—for today at least—but I didn’t dare touch any of it since I was afraid that I’d just barf it all up from exhaustion once we set out again.
And, quite frankly, it was too hot for this fucking shit, the entire woods around us one stifling green hell now.
I was ready to lay down the law of the land and demand rest when Jared—way more ahead than he’d been hours ago—stopped, waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Blake had gotten really quiet shortly after the slope turned steep, and with Axel I was pretty sure he stayed with me for support, mostly. That Jared was waiting for us now could only mean one thing: something was about to change.
I was about to ask him what was going on when I noticed a signpost next to him, advertising in bright, cheerful font that a resort was close by—two miles, or thirty minutes of hiking, the sign promised.
I stared at it for a second, my tired thoughts sluggish in trying to decide whether this was a good thing or not.
“Hard part’s almost over,” Jared said while I was still playing guessing games. “From here on out, it’s mostly even or downhill. My guess is that we’ll find some resistance at the lodge, but we should be able to clear it out.”
“And if not?” I felt that was a valid question.
He smirked. “Then we’re likely dead and won’t give a shit either way.”
He had a point there.
Walking downhill wasn’t much better than uphill. I was starting to wonder if my misery would ever come to an end when I noticed that ahead, the forest was starting to lighten—not just with the absence of trees, but bright sunshine cutting through the last of them.
I waited for one of the guys to speak up, but if anything, Blake looked eager to get out there and smash in some heads.
“Can we rest up for a few minutes? If things go as usual, I’ll need to run, and right now, all I can do is cramp and moan.”
I fully expected Jared to balk, but instead, he nodded at a fallen tree not far from the trail, already shirking his pack to drop it there. “Stay here. Blake and I will do a quick recon trip.” He gave me a humorless smile. “If we’re not back in thirty, feel free to scavenge what you need from our things and scurry back to your favorite mine empty-handed.”
Good thing that the tree was in direct line of sight to where Jared ended up exiting the forest. That way, I could spend an entire five minutes glaring at his back.
No reprimand came from Axel as he sat down next to me, but it was obvious that he was sick of our shit.
That was okay. So was I. Except that I didn’t seem to be capable of stopping.
This was getting worse and worse.
What thankfully didn’t was the outlook on how noon was shaping up to be. Jared and Blake returned relatively soon, way before I dared root through his pack to steal a candy bar just to spite him.
“The lodge’s overrun,” Jared told us as he sat down on the tree next to Axel, getting out a water bottle from his pack. “Looks like they holed up there for a last stand but ran out of ammo. My guess is the zombies that remained standing have been staying there, feasting on the remains of the dead. Shouldn’t be too hard to kill them. Unless there are smart ones hiding inside the buildings—which is possible since doors are open all over. We’ll soon find out.”
“Why don’t we just sneak by?”
Jared gave me a long-suffering look, then snorted when he realized that I was serious.
“Because I’d really like to sleep in a real bed for a couple of hours?” he teased before getting serious. “It’s a good half-way point between the camp and the city. It’s a small resort—thirty rooms, from what it looks like. Couple of cars left behind so we can likely get at least one if not two working for the way back. It’s shelter out of the way of most obstacles, and they probably have a pantry that’s at least partly stocked. Even if the city’s a bust, we can grab what we can here and return to be celebrated as heroes. We need a forward base to rally at again if we get separated, and this is the next best thing I could come up with on short notice. There might even be a hot tub, but I doubt they have any electricity up here to heat it up. Too bad—but you can take a quick dunk, if you want to.”
That actually didn’t sound too bad, but with my luck, at least three dead had started to rot away in there, or a band of rabid raccoons had taken over.
But the idea of locking myself in a room and sleeping in a real bed until evening sounded really nice.
Nicer than anything I’d expected to find on this trip.
I immediately didn’t trust the very idea of it.
“Then let’s do this,” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt. That earned me a weird look from Jared, as if he was disappointed that I didn’t protest more so he could keep making fun of me.
That idea made me crack a smile.
He cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing.
My smile broadened.
We must have looked like two demented Rottweilers sneering at each other.
I could see why Axel was so sick of our shit.
Looking away first—because that was one fight I knew I would never win against Jared—I considered my pack, then grabbed the ax. The bat would have been ten times easier to handle, but I had a feeling that the potential resistance Jared was talking about was a very real one and would require appropriate tools. And I could always switch to the bat when the ax got too heavy and I had to leave it somewhere. But the pack I took along with me, just to make sure I wouldn’t end up stranded in the middle of nowhere, wounded, without provisions. Again.
Any joking going on found a quick end as we approached the clearing with the lodge, as did any verbal communication. Nobody told me to, but I decided to stick with Jared—less so because he’d “promised” to keep me safe but simply because he looked like the saner choice compared to Blake, who clearly didn’t need meth to go all berserk on the undead. As much as I liked Axel, he had a good twenty years on Jared, and in a physical fight, I’d much rather stick with the younger, stronger guy.
Call me prejudiced, but this was about my very survival, and since nobody else would take care of that…
The lodge—more of a Lodge, with a capital L, according to the signs—wasn’t just one building, although the largest, main house could definitely be called such. There were also six smaller versions of it clustered around a central open space—more aptly referred to as cabins, probably. The expansive parking lot was off to the side, partly hidden from our view by two of the cabins.
It was a place of massive slaughter, so I didn’t mind too much not seeing every inch of it the moment I stepped out from between the trees.
A handful of the vehicles left there looked like they’d belonged to guests, now all burnt-out hulls. Several more were haphazardly strewn all across the lot, making me think of a makeshift barricade—for what, I wasn’t sure, since there was little rhyme or reason to their positions. One possible explanation for that was that some of those vehicles had smashed into the others and had partially broken up the barricade.
In the end, none of that mattered. I had a feeling that everyone who’d been in any of the cars had either died by gunshots, fire, or gotten torn apart.
Some had survived—if you could call it that. Besides the burnt-out wrecks, plenty of carnage had happened all across the parking lot, and even now, three hunched-over figures were busy gorging themselves on the leftovers. All of them looked smaller and scrawny, making me guess that they might be stragglers from the interstate who had happened to find themselves here and were now getting their first food in days, if not weeks. Judging from the stench—and the thick clouds of flies buzzing around them—there was still plenty on that macabre buffet.
More carnage had happened at the previously barricaded and partly broken-down main entrance to the lot, splintered glass and torn-apart body parts everywhere.
Exactly how many people had died here?
From what was left, I quickly raised my estimate from twenty or thirty to a hundred easily. There weren’t anywhere near enough cars around to carry that many.
While the parking lot and the front of the lodge were grisly sights, none of that was new. I’d seen enough of that happen of late to easily judge that this must have happened a week ago at least, everything dried up and less… fresh, for lack of a better word. That impression was strengthened as I passed the first lump of bloody rags—none of the flesh was easily recognizable as such, looking more like dried parchment and beef jerky than human remains. It occurred to me that the maggots had already done their thing and were buzzing around as the abundant flies that were coming way too close to me for comfort, and that wasn’t even taking into account where they had come from.
It was much easier to focus on the zombies than the implications. That much was for sure.
The stench made my gorge rise, not even the scarf I hastily wound across my neck and lower part of my face helping to keep it away from me. This was going to be gory business, so might as well cover up, I reasoned—since I’d already gotten gore on my face once today.
