Desolation, p.7
Desolation, page 7
I had a sinking feeling that way more than two hundred people had died here.
While Blake, Axel, and Jared joined us, Joaquin led most of the men across what must have been a meadow once to the barn and, after a brief moment of checking, on toward the woods on the opposite slope. A few started straying away from the group, but usually only for a short while—a few steps here, a quick check on a car there. None of them so much as hunkered down or pulled any debris aside to check on anything too closely. Too gruesome must have been whatever they found at a first glance.
As we drew closer, my suspicion hardened—those had been huts, not unlike the cabins the Militia people were erecting up on the plateau above the Enclave now.
The first one was completely destroyed since it had burned down to the ground. The one right next to it had also caught on fire, but there were some timbers left standing. One glimpse inside, and I quickly backed away and aimed for the remaining huts.
Twisted, charred remains were nothing I felt the need to look at more closely.
Particularly not the small ones.
The same was true for the third hut—and the fourth, albeit without the charring.
I remained standing there for a good twenty seconds, ax at the ready, as I stared at the dead bodies on the ground. They must have been rotting here for over a week now, the hot air doing its own to further decomposition. The door was still up and barricaded, explaining why nothing had managed to drag anything outside through there. But I was standing next to the window that was maybe two feet up from the ground—by far low enough that even a geriatric, clumsy zombie would have been able to tumble inside. Whatever had been blocking the window—and I was sure that something had, once—was gone, leaving it a moderately good exit. Or entrance.
This could only mean one thing: another trap.
The very idea that the undead were smart enough to use irregular infrastructure for ambushes gave me the creeps—almost as much as what I glimpsed inside.
Trust it to the asshole to sidle up to me, glance at what had me so transfixed, and then lean in so he could whisper into my ear, his breath hot against the side of my neck.
“That’s at least five kids. And the adults are a little on the small side, too. Think they tried to hunker down here and wait out the worst while the others tried to stave off the zombies right outside the door?” He paused, mostly for effect, of course. “That wood used to be really light. Birch and aspen, if I remember correctly. I wonder why someone painted it dark from top to bottom?”
My free hand convulsed into a fist.
Was it worth drawing potentially thousands of undead down on us if I let out the scream that was making my lungs burn anew?
Probably.
Jared smirked at me as I slowly turned my head to stare at him from up close.
Yes. Definitely.
And I’d come right back as a screaming banshee to kill him all over again.
A bat appeared between us. In near comical synchronicity, we glanced along the smooth wood, on to the hand holding it, and then the man that hand belonged to—Axel.
He glared at both of us, then none too gently pushed us physically apart, the tap my arm got with the bat not exactly gentle.
Once in motion, the spell was broken, and I took a few more steps aside, further along the house to the next window. This one was still partly boarded shut, making it obvious that they’d had time to hunker down and prepare at least somewhat. Some of the slats had been wrenched away, but not all of them. Between them, I could see inside at what looked like a toppled-over desk that someone had used to further board up the window from the inside.
There was blood and strips of fabric caught on the edge of the desk and where the slats had splintered.
I was about to turn away, not needing to see more—until my mind caught up with the dynamics. All those strips were caught on the outside, so they likely weren’t from anyone trying to get out. And the open space created by the torn-off slats was hardly big enough to fit a small woman…
…but by far big enough to accommodate a child.
Suddenly, the presence of so many children in the huts took on a very different meaning.
I knew I shouldn’t, but before my mind could hold me back, I was already marching to the other window and leaned inside to get a better look at the bodies.
True enough, the small ones were all dirty, soiled, and torn up. Some of that could have been because of the attack, but I doubted they’d all equally crapped themselves and torn up the ground with their fingernails until their hands were bloody ruins.
Well, technically, that sounded like exactly what might have happened to them—particularly if they were suffocating from smoke as the huts caught fire—but there was a simpler, somewhat more humane explanation… that ultimately sucked even worse.
Osprey leaned in next to me, registering everything with a glance or two. I pulled back as he did, glancing at him.
He had a strange expression on his face—that same kind of conflicted and tormented that I felt deep inside of me.
No, those weren’t the children everyone had tried to protect.
Those were the child zombies that had broken through the defenses first and rampaged inside the huts, while their inhabitants had been too stunned to defend themselves. And when someone noticed what had been going on, they had tried to contain the situation by setting the huts on fire, only that it had already been too late. The fire had possibly alerted or drawn the mob if it had happened during the night.
Fuck.
All I could do was hope that I was wrong.
I made as if to turn away for good, but Osprey held me back. When I gave him a weird look, he jerked his chin back at the partly burned-down hut.
I stared some more before making an effort to try to find what he wanted me to see.
It took me a moment more.
While the inhabitants of the hut had been slaughtered, the general devastation inside was limited mostly to ground-level, leaving a handful of shelves almost undisturbed.
Shelves where food, weapons, and ammo might have been stored.
I gave a curt nod to acknowledge Osprey’s order but found myself hesitating—and not just because the floor was lava. Err, gore.
Picking up my earlier train of thought, why were there still bodies in here when the lurking ambushers had taken all the dead we’d created with them?
Had they missed the possibility of more food over all the stench?
It was possible, but I kind of doubted it. They seemed really good about finding their favorite supply.
But maybe the wood smoke had masked it?
There really was no guessing what or why.
Only one way to find out, as they say.
I almost expected Osprey to gesture for me to go first, but for once, reverse chivalry won out and he ducked inside before I could. I winced when I heard his boot come down on the floor. It made a horrifying, squelching sound. Why was there even enough liquid left for anything to squelch? Shouldn’t the heat have dried it all up as one small mercy? Apparently not.
Then I remembered the night of rain when we’d been fleeing from the power plant. With the roof gone, no wonder the rain had not just gotten inside but must have pooled on the floor with little possibility of the water draining on its own.
So what was in there was basically drenched zombie soup.
Simply amazing.
Osprey hesitated only for a second before he fully climbed inside. When nothing immediately came for him, I followed, shuddering as my sneakers hit the ground, the water immediately soaking them. I tried not to focus too hard on what was floating in the water all around my feet, but that was nigh impossible.
Pushing away from the window, I forced myself to take a good look around. With the sun high overhead, only the corners of the hut were cast in shadows and what might have lurked underneath the overturned furniture. Since there were zero bite marks on the corpses, I doubted anything was hiding there, or else we should have seen at least some form of predation.
Somehow, that made it even more creepy.
More in search of a distraction than hope of actually finding anything of use to us, I scanned the remaining shelves. My attention snagged on a couple of photos—two framed, the others simply stacked up around them, as if someone had grabbed them in haste when they’d fled their home without having access to frames, or maybe tore them out of a photo album that was too heavy to lug along. As soon as the happy family’s smiling faces registered in my mind, I immediately looked away, my throat tightening up.
No, I absolutely didn’t need to know how the potential victims floating at our feet had looked.
But then a spark of recognition went off. Were those the girls I’d seen in the cabin just hours ago?
It made sense. They’d come from here, and they had made it, but clearly not everyone from their families had. I tried to wrack my brain for what Marion had told me about which relatives were watching over them, but it hadn’t been “Mom and Dad.”
I hesitated for a second, then grabbed all the photos and put them into my pack. Osprey gave me a weird look until he realized what I was doing. He didn’t question me after that.
We spent a good five minutes searching through the wreckage, but there was nothing useful—and little intact in general—inside the hut. Whether my theory about the child zombie incursion was right or not, the people in here had died violent deaths that had wrecked their meager belongings as well. Osprey scrounged up some cans of preserved food that were only mildly dented, but that was about it.
No weapons, no ammo, and nothing useful in terms of fuel or first aid.
So far, the Militia camp was nothing but a devastatingly disheartening bust—but then, who would have expected much else?
I was more than glad to get out of the hut, even if that meant rejoining Jared and his people. They must have checked up on the other huts in the meantime, and judging from how deflated their packs looked, they hadn’t found much more than we did.
A round of quick looks affirmed everything was still deceptively calm around us. Joaquin and the other Militia people were still busy on the other side of the clearing, hopefully having better luck.
I knew I wouldn’t like what was coming next when Jared came sauntering over to us, once more intruding on my personal space. I donned my most pleasant, fake smile as he leaned in, still whispering as not to draw unwanted attention—which must have been a first for him. Or not, considering that this seemed to become our thing.
“I need you...” He trailed off there and leaned back far enough so his grin could be displayed to full effect.
The way we were grimacing at each other, sooner or later one of us would get cramps in our facial muscles.
“Such a sweet sentiment,” I whispered back, leaning closer. “And I so share it. Because I really need you, too… to fuck off.” Now my smile was even real.
Unperturbed, Jared leaned in once more.
“We found one of the ammo dumps still intact, but the entrance is caved in. I need you to crawl in there and see if anything is salvageable.”
Now that sounded much more like something he’d say.
Also because it was something that sounded like the opposite of what I wanted to do.
“You always have the best tasks for me—” I started, but then paused. “Wait. This is why you took some of the women along, right? Because you couldn’t count on me being up to this.”
Not a single muscle moved in his face, but I didn’t need his confirmation to know that I was right.
Which rankled in so many ways. And there I’d assumed they trusted me and thought I was deserving of a second chance. Apparently only to stick my neck out for the good of everyone else.
Question was, would this end just like last time—with me taking one for the team and then getting punished for it?
Part of me wanted to confront Osprey about that suspicion, but now was by far neither the time nor the place. He was busy glancing around nervously like everyone else. He’d likely have told me about it if that had been the plan.
Or not.
Belatedly, I asked myself why he was even along for the ride. While he seemed fit enough to keep up with the rest—unlike me, I had to admit—he still moved in that hesitant way that spoke of his body hurting all over. Which made sense since it had been all of five days since he’d needed a blood transfusion for his vitals to stabilize.
It was only then that I realized nobody had let me know how badly—and how—he’d been injured in the end. It couldn’t have been that dire since he was standing right next to me now.
But none of that really mattered, I reminded myself, as Jared kept staring at me from up close, still waiting for my answer.
All that was needed was a curt nod from me.
Crawling into a partly caved-in dark hole in the middle of a destroyed, zombie-infested town? Sure, why the hell not?
We didn’t have far to go. Behind the huts, there was a strip of grass that led to a small hill bordering the forest. It didn’t look like much, and under normal circumstances, I would have completely ignored it. But the fact that debris had been partly cleared away made it interesting.
Blake and Axel did a quick sweep of the woods as far as we could see from the clearing while Jared walked up to what ended up being a twisted, warped kind of trapdoor that had already been blown off one hinge—and probably not recently. Jared pulled it back, revealing…
I wasn’t quite sure what I had expected, but this wasn’t it. No ladder led down, let alone stairs. There was simply a hole in the ground, loose dirt all around it.
It looked hardly big enough for a child to crawl through, let alone a grown man—which I presumed was who was supposed to get something from a weapons cache. But then he had said “ammo dump.” I was starting to suspect that this was closer to a handful of ammunition boxes literally dumped in the dirt.
Osprey stepped up to the hole and cautiously shone his flashlight in.
From up close, I saw that the entrance widened deeper down, but it looked far from roomy—or stable.
I wondered if I should ask if somebody had a rope I could tie around me so they could pull me back out if the rest of the dirt started coming down, kicked loose by my very presence crawling down. That sounded like a very good idea. A smart idea.
Shirking my ax and my pack—and then my hoodie, because any way I might lose bulk was a good idea, I figured—I crouched down, and with the flashlight gripped in my teeth started shimmying feet-first into the hole.
As soon as my ass hit dirt, I felt it move with and around me, but less so than I’d feared.
I also didn’t get bitten in the ankle by a lurker, which was my far greater fear.
The dust I inevitably kicked loose clogged up my lungs and tickled my nostrils, making me gasp for breath, then sneeze unnaturally hard. That resulted in my entire body jerking hard—and suddenly, I felt gravity take over, pulling me into near blackness.
To my racing heart, my slide felt like an avalanche, although in reality it was more like a couple of feet only. As the dust settled, I could clearly see the opening above me, two heads framed against the light sky—Osprey and Jared.
Blinking against the dust burning in my eyes, I reached up and took the flashlight out of my mouth to do a quick sweep. It confirmed what my body already told me—I’d dropped down into a small cavernous room, roughly the size of a small bathroom. There was more to it, but two toppled shelves that had fallen against each other hid what looked like a small back room from sight.
I kept the flashlight trained on the shelves for a little longer than necessary, listening to anything move behind them.
Nothing.
While I coughed twice more—once because I had to, the second time in hopes of further clearing my lungs—I forced myself to take stock of the inventory. What looked promising were the three weapons that must have fallen over as the shelves toppled—two carbines and a shotgun. And not that far from them, I caught sight of several small cardboard and plastic boxes—ammo, if I wasn’t sorely mistaken.
I was sure that among the detritus that had come off the shelves, a few other things that might have been useful were hiding, but since I didn’t have my pack…
“Find something?” Axel called down to me, his voice almost too faint to make out.
“Weapons and ammo,” I replied, hoping that I’d pitched my response equally low.
Instead of a verbal answer, a pack dropped down on me, bringing a new shower of dirt with it.
Not mine, so it was probably Axel’s.
Fine with me.
Since the cavern wasn’t very high—and I really didn’t trust the stability of it at all—I simply crawled over to the heap of spillage, flashlight again between my teeth. I didn’t bother with verifying if it was the right ammo, but simply shook the first case, and when it gave a promising rattle, shoved it into the pack. Six more boxes quickly followed, plus a random first-aid kit that had gotten partly buried under them. The pack was hardly full with that bounty, but that way I could at least cram the weapons stocks-first in as well.
Several times, the dirt around me moved, each and every time making me jump as a new shower of small pebbles and dust descended on me.
It was about time for me to hightail it out of here.
And yet, as I reached for the shotgun last, something made me hesitate. I couldn’t say what exactly. No sound had tipped me off, and between the earthy scents coming from all around me and what wafted in from the outside, it was impossible to smell anything that didn’t make me want to puke, either. There was only one scent my brain was hunting for, anyway, and the proximity to the burned huts made that impossible.
So what, exactly, had tipped me off?
I held my breath and strained my ears.
Still nothing, not even any sounds from the guys waiting outside.
And yet, the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
With my eyes still glued to the shelves, I put the pack down. Rather than shove the shotgun in, I checked if it was loaded.
