Desolation, p.28
Desolation, page 28
Fuck privacy. I was not going to get jumped by one of the undead with my pants tangled around my ankles.
Even walking mostly on even ground or slightly downhill, it was rough going. My entire body hurt, worst of all my legs and the soles of my feet. Even if we didn’t have to walk the full twenty-five fucking miles to Asheville, this was the longest I had to keep going without a longer break since I’d woken up in the triage tent—and there had been the matter of the fight as well. I felt my attention slipping every so often, even though I tried to stay sharp. At first, I jumped at every unexpected sound, fear chasing away exhaustion, but after a while that lost a lot of its effect. While nobody complained, I could tell that the others were tired as well, even Jared.
It was early evening when we finally got close to the town we had been aiming for. In the forest, it was already gloomy enough to make walking on the trail hard, if not impossible.
I absolutely didn’t feel up to a fight, and if I had to run more than five to ten minutes, I doubted I’d be able to. This was not working out the way it should have, considering that Jared’s plan had been to hit Asheville itself tonight.
But rather than proceed to the town, Jared halted when our trail crossed another. I was honestly too tired to care, using the moment to sit down on a convenient boulder while Jared studied the map next to the signposts. I knew I shouldn’t have been this disinterested, but I was pretty sure that if I got lost in these woods, I’d end up dead before sunrise, anyway.
I really didn’t like it when Jared looked uphill at the crossing trail and then set out in that direction.
When I didn’t immediately and with enthusiasm shoot to my feet, he halted and glanced back at me. “No guarantee that we come back down the mountain this way,” he jeered. “Or that the lurkers won’t try their luck if it’s just you on your own.”
Normally, I would have griped that I hadn’t even suggested staying behind to be picked up later, but since it made little sense to waste even a single breath on him, I simply lumbered to my feet and trudged after him.
Uphill.
For what felt like forever, on what I wondered more and more if it wasn’t a senseless detour.
The sun was already setting behind mountains far to the west as we stepped out of the cover of the trees and onto some kind of overlook. The view was, without a doubt, stunning, the sky lit up in a million shades of red, orange, and magenta. I could see why this was such a popular hiking and vacation destination.
What I couldn’t see was why Jared had dragged us up here to the literal middle of nowhere. We could have looked at mountains pretty much every which way we turned—
That was when I noticed what else there was to see, far less specular than the scenery: the city of Asheville itself.
It took me a few seconds to make sense of it, and not just because I was beyond tired—and blinded by the figurative beauty spread out before us and the literal sun still sending its last rays our way. Besides the mass of buildings—higher in the city center, of course—what I could make out were the streets around them, most of all the highways going through and around parts of the city. What weirded me out was that Mike had been right. There were some lights on down there, although not as many as I’d expected after his statement—not that I had one hundred percent believed it to be true to start with. It seemed to be mostly streetlights rather than building illuminations, from what I could tell. We were far enough away that except for specks in the near-complete darkness of the valley, I couldn’t make out much.
Jared shirked his pack and got out the binoculars, staring down at the city. And then he kept on staring, far longer than was warranted, I felt.
“See anything interesting? Like one of the other groups?” I asked, doubting that was the case. We’d been by far the first to have set out. Maybe some of them were still in camp, having decided to stick with the go-by-night-only plan.
Jared wordlessly handed the binoculars to me after another twenty seconds.
Annoyed, I adjusted the focus—
—and then did a lot of staring myself.
I couldn’t make out many details, but that was far from necessary. Even with magnification, we were too far away for that. It took my eyes a few moments to catch on to what looked like some kind of wave-pattern motion all through the streets, like gentle surf lapping at the shore. Then my brain needed even longer to process what I was seeing.
People. The entire city was filled to the brim with people.
I didn’t need to be close enough to see details to know that none of them were still alive.
It wasn’t like the town we’d accidentally ended up in when we’d fled from the power plant. They weren’t jammed in like sardines, herded and fenced in like cattle. From what I could tell, most didn’t just stand around and gaze at the street lamps, although I did notice clusters of them close to the lights.
Damn, but I hated to be right sometimes.
What was mind-numbingly baffling was the sheer number of them.
From what I remembered hearing, Asheville had had just under a hundred thousand inhabitants. Those down there were several times that number, easily. I had no fucking clue what half a million people looked like, but that felt about right.
Where the fuck had so many people come from, around here, in the mountains? That looked more like the streets of NYC on New Year’s Eve than a larger city in North Carolina. Technically speaking, the entire metro area around here could of course have accounted for them, but why were they clustered together like this?
Was it the lights? Or the fact that greater numbers always meant someone was weaker than them and they could consequently hunt them down and eat them?
Was this where the zombies that had killed Xander had ended up, following the interstate west?
My mind tried to skip into map view. Yes, that made sense. I didn’t know the interstate well since it passed by Charlotte far to the north—but then I remembered that the other major cities all lay along its route. Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, Winston-Salem—and probably even Wilmington to the southeast. I had no clue what cities it passed across the border in Tennessee, but it might just as well have been the big ones like Memphis, Knoxville, and Nashville—or all three.
That explained the mobs we’d been dealing with for the past two weeks.
Shit.
Shitshitshitshit!
That was why they had bombed the interstate close to where we’d crossed it. They’d tried to cut off some of the access—only to divert the undead into the surrounding countryside, which just so happened to be our backyard.
How we’d crossed it—twice more!—without getting eaten was beyond me. Luck didn’t seem to cut it.
“Nobody’s going down there any time soon,” Blake remarked wryly when I finally gave up the binoculars and handed them to him.
“Nope,” Jared agreed. “And if they don’t do any recon, they’ll die just like Zeke and Noah this morning.”
“Did you actually see them die?” I asked, still distracted. “I mean, I heard the cars and the shots, but—”
“No way they didn’t die, being so stupid,” Jared harped.
I slowly turned my head and looked at him. Even without being able to see the zombie masses below, they still transfixed me.
“You do realize that our plan with the weapons cache is theirs in reverse, right? Unless I’ve missed something and that has changed?”
That down below sure was plenty of reason to alter any and all plans that had ever existed before that discovery.
Jared’s answer came after less than ten seconds of consideration.
“Only change is we take four cars instead of one or two. And we wait until at least two hours after full dark to cross the interstate. Maybe three. We likely won’t be back there much before that, anyway, if we cram them full of as much food as we can load into them without overtaxing the engines.” He smirked. “And pray, if you’re the kind to believe in that.”
I’d been afraid he’d say something like this.
Considering what I’d seen down there, I wasn’t really comfortable staying in the region much longer, exhaustion be damned. That the Enclave wasn’t that much farther away from another stretch of the same highway was true, but at least there, the mob had spread out already. Or mobs, as I started to suspect. Which did not bode well for the future.
But that was literally tomorrow’s problem. First, we had to find working cars, and then we had to make it either back to the camp or straight home. And then I would start to worry about what was going to happen days or weeks down the road.
I couldn’t help but think back to the firebombing that had happened with Charlotte. If they’d done the same to all the other larger cities, this down there likely wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe there would just be a couple fewer zombies, and some more lightly crisped over.
I’d never thought I’d think that, but whoever it had been who’d voiced that opinion to me before had been right.
After Axel had his fill staring at the overrun city, Jared packed away the binoculars and we started back down the trail, heading toward the small town in the woods.
The going was slow, now that darkness enveloped us quickly, but nobody asked to use a flashlight.
Two hours later, we stopped as our trail came close to the road leading back up to the lodge, just outside of town. The town limits themselves were further out in the open, but since a few of the houses went right up to the forest on small side streets, we aimed for a cluster of those.
As far as I could tell, nothing was moving out there, possible lurkers notwithstanding. The air smelled moderately fresh and clean, and night-time critters were out aplenty. Just as if they weren’t aware of the fact that at the end of this valley, certain death times a million roamed.
Ah, to be that oblivious again!
It took us less than twenty minutes to find four suitable cars—including keys, no hot-wiring required. We had to kill eight more zombies for them, but while that made me rather paranoid about more lurkers, it was almost too easy. The entire town seemed mostly deserted, and if not for Asheville ten miles away, it would have made a great place to clean up and fortify as a new place to live for easily half the people in the Enclave. Suddenly, that stronghold of a mine didn’t sound so bad anymore, which I found kind of hilarious after my weeks spent griping about its many not-so-ideal aspects.
Perspective, and all that.
Now the only problem was to get Blake to shut up about my choice of a get-away vehicle—a newish, smallish SUV that looked like half the size of the behemoth of a truck that he’d selected, both still parked next to each other in the same carport.
“Why do you have to be such a girl?” he complained. “That thing is tiny!”
“It’s literally four fifths the size of the car we drove to Mike’s camp,” I pointed out. “Plus, it has four-wheel drive and is very agile. Also has brand-new tires with great grip.” None of that was true for his vehicle. The only upside I saw was more storage, particularly with the closed cabin. It was also a semi-antique piece of scrap metal on semi-bald wheels—if I had to guess, the husband’s first car that he couldn’t stand to get rid of yet, while his wife had opted for the practical family-friendly solution that also did great when they got snowed-in during winter storms.
And yes, I’d had to swallow twice when I’d ripped out the booster seats that had still been belted into the back row.
“Children, please, play nice,” Jared teased as he came back to us from where he and Axel had been checking the cars on the other side of the road. It looked like they’d settled on two limousines—not my first choice, but then they were right there, were hopefully ready to start, and we wouldn’t be delayed any further.
While nobody had said so outright, I could tell that all of us were nervous about the impending zombie incursion down the small country road into the town that was inevitably about to happen now that we were here and were aware of the masses gathered in Asheville. Even if there wasn’t a single indication that was about to happen.
“Only if you give us some candy, Daddy.”
I didn’t know what devil was riding me hard to make me say that. Exhaustion and fear sure didn’t cut it.
Blake burst out laughing, although he tried hard to suppress it instantly. Just because we hadn’t gotten attacked yet didn’t mean we could just make enough noise to raise the dead—pun intended.
Jared gave me a truly unreadable look, the light of the single flashlight he was carrying not helping.
“You and me, we are going to have a long conversation when we’re out of immediate danger,” he said—or rather promised, as my fucked-up mind would interpret it.
Nope, we so were not going to do that.
I was tempted to snark back something like, “Over my dead body,” but wisely refrained. I had a feeling we were well past necrophilia jokes at this point, and if I gave him that kind of ammunition, he was so going to use that against me.
Right—nerves. Survival first. Everything else later.
All four cars started up immediately. I was quite happy to see that the gas gauge of mine was almost completely full. Typical prepared manager-of-the-family car. I heard Blake curse in his behemoth but he didn’t turn it off again, making me guess we’d have to sacrifice at least one of the canisters for his tank that we’d syphoned off beforehand.
Yes, Jared had come prepared, making me guess that he’d planned all along to only walk part of the trek he’d forced us through already. Good man—when he wasn’t being an asshole. All three percent of the time.
We briefly debated what to do about the car lights. The moon still hadn’t risen, leaving the night relatively dark. After the quick flash of blindness induced by getting into the car before I’d started it—and killed the lights, as far as I’d been able to do that—I realized it was at least possible to follow the road, so that was exactly what I did. At first I’d balked at Jared’s suggestion that I should go first, but eventually saw reason. My car had the lowest horsepower-per-weight ratio, and while I doubted that would be an issue even loaded to the maximum with loot, he’d disagreed.
I was very satisfied with how my car easily took the slight incline needed to get onto the main road after rolling down the hill to get there, not a single lurker jumping in my way—that I could see, and since I hit nothing, I was ninety-nine percent sure the road was clear. From there, I sent the car along the road at an easy thirty miles per hour—slow enough that I hoped I wouldn’t have any issues seeing obstacles or switchbacks up ahead, or rev the engine to a point that it became the sole focus of every single undead in the state.
There were simply too many around, as we now knew.
Just thinking of the masses made goosebumps break out all across my body, a visceral shiver almost jerking my hands on the steering wheel into disaster.
I drove with the front windows rolled down completely to let in an illusion of cool air, and maybe pick up on issues before I literally slammed into them. Behind me, I could just make out Jared’s car coming after mine, only loud compared to the utter silence of the night around us.
We didn’t run into any grave obstacles on the way back to the lodge. In two places, the road was caked with enough mud that I was glad I’d chosen a car made for rougher terrain, and I had to drive over a couple of tree branches that I only noticed after it was too late, making me slow down further. Nothing except for the paint job of the car got damaged, though, and I had a feeling that would get much, much worse before we were done here.
Between the late sunset, the time it took us to walk to the village, and our slow driving, it was after one in the morning when I rolled out into the clearing the lodge sat on. I immediately slowed down to avoid slamming into our corpse heap, but I needn’t have bothered. Nothing except for dark stains on the road was left of it. The lurkers had been quite busy. As I ambled onto the parking lot, I could still smell the blood from our earlier carnage, and the car rocked and crunched its way through quite the gruesome tableau that I wasn’t too heartbroken not having to see now.
I did a quick loop and then backed the car up toward the main entrance, just as planned. This way, we’d cut the distance to the cars to a minimum, and if we had to make a quick getaway, at least I wouldn’t have to reverse then.
Before shutting off the engine, I closed up the windows once more on a paranoid hunch. The last thing I needed was for an enterprising lurker to climb in unnoticed through a window and then scare the living shit out of me once I got back behind the wheel.
I considered taking the keys with me, but fumbling with them in the dark while running scared from something didn’t sound like a smart move. Besides, the car didn’t have locks, technically, but was all push-buttons and key-fob action.
When I got out, Jared was parking his ego-mobile next to me, and Blake came rolling out of the forest. While he waited, I climbed into the back row of my car and started pulling off the cargo net currently in place toward the trunk, probably to keep the family dog from jumping into the back row with the kids. With only a flashlight held awkwardly between my teeth, I did my best to somehow fix it behind the front-row seats to avoid something from the back decapitating me at the first hard brake. Done with that, I pushed the back row into the trunk to maximize the space available.
By then, Axel had arrived, and we were ready to grab our loot and run.
We weren’t exactly in a hurry, so it made sense to quickly clear the entire building one last time to make sure that no stragglers or lurkers were lying in wait for us. We found none, but my nerves were still shot by the time we returned to the kitchen to start packing.
I didn’t complain when Jared pretty much ordered me on ammo-box-distribution duty while the guys took turns dragging the heavy weapon crates outside. Could I have helped? Yes, but I would have slowed them down, and after the abuse my body had received in the past twenty-two hours, I was more than ready to do the light lifting instead. I was done way ahead of them, so I turned to the pantry next, taking quick stock before I started stacking the most useful items and boxes on the kitchen counters for easy grabbing.
