Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Read online

  Will looked around for help before recognizing that the entire group was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to speak.

  “Not much I can do. Someone will have to carry me or find a sled to drag me on.”

  “Okay!” Laura added. “Good point, Tim…ideas?”

  “We could probably fashion something here to pull him on now that we have some tools.”

  “Good, let’s get started on that.” She looked to Bjorn who nodded and started scouring the piles of stored goods. “How do we get past the undead? Jen?”

  “One person escapes and finds a vehicle we can use? Or we all go and wing it,” Jen ventured, unsure of the idea.

  “The former is a good plan to me, the latter…well, I’d rather that the situation necessitate that,” Tim said quietly. “If we all went, we would be risking the children on a wing-and-a-prayer. To me, the first option is the way to go.”

  “Okay!” Laura said, eager to continue making progress. “Who goes and who stays?”

  “Jen and I are going,” Tim stated flatly, immediately catching a glare from Laura.

  Tim could tell that she didn’t like that Jen was always going with the men. He recognized that it was probably due to the fact that it highlighted Jen’s freedom, when she was stuck caring for the children. She and Tim had discussed it at length one evening while the others slept. Laura hated being left but ceded the point that due to the fact that only she had the instant ability to soothe their child. All the same, it made her feel somewhat worthless when everyone else was risking their lives to be sitting in warmth and safety. In Tim’s mind, as much as he hated leaving his family behind, knowing they were safe was all that mattered.

  “Bjorn will be building the sled and maybe he can figure out how to rig a line to a tree, a zip-line or something to get out from here,” Tim added quickly.

  “When are we going?” Jen gulped.

  “As soon as you get your coat on,” he replied, standing and slinging his reloaded rifle over his shoulder.

  Tim moved from window to window, scanning the area around the farmhouse, looking for the clearest spot to run. He also focused on the few scattered houses they were able to see from the attic, looking for a parked truck, preferably something with four-wheel drive. Nothing came to his eye with most of the view blocked by the heavy woods in the area.

  “Ready,” Jen said from behind him.

  Tim turned and walked to the north-facing window pulling it open.

  “Bjorn, help lower us down, please,” he asked the man, busily trying to fix an old wooden sled with a broken runner.

  Jen moved forwards to look out at what lay ahead. There was a breezeway that led from the side of the house to the detached two-car garage. The window sill they were going to be exiting from was about twelve feet up from the roof of the breezeway. Bjorn came over and looked out the window beside her. Once he understood was being asked of him, he spoke.

  “Who is going first?”

  “I am,” Tim responded.

  Tim collected a couple snacks and clips of ammo, stowing them in his pockets and quickly kissed Laura and Luna, before moving to the back to the window. He had lost a bit of weight over the past couple weeks, but was still over two hundred pounds. He hung down the side of the house, his feet searching for some purchase as Bjorn and his one-hundred and forty pound frame started lowering him, clutching each other’s wrists. He could sense the difficulty Bjorn was having as they went. After a moment more, he looked down at his goal and let go, immediately sliding out of Bjorn’s grasp and landing heavily, on his rear, in the snow that covered the roof. The stock end of his rifle hit the roof behind him and almost bounced free of his arm. He managed to grab hold of the strap as it slid down his arm.

  By the time he had collected himself and moved back a step, he could see that Jen was being lowered down. He could also tell by the change in pitch of the moaning all about then that they had been spotted by some of the undead below. Hungry hands reached up at them, longingly, although they were well out of reach of even the gutter that rimmed the breezeway. Tim overcame his nerve-wrought hesitation at seeing the undead and forced himself forward, grabbing the soles of Jen’s feet, helping to guiding her down in front of him. Once she alit on the roof next to him, the two crouched down together to figure out the next leg of the escape.

  *

  Tar made his rounds, driving his old Silverado to visit all of the barricades. He wanted to ensure the work was being done to repair and improve upon them. They were working on the south and east to reinforce the barricades with crushed cars from Sickler’s junkyard. The ton and a half cubes of crushed steel formed a twelve-foot-high wall at the southern barricade, reinforced by the mound of dirt that was recently overrun. More car-cubes were lifted via crane outside the log wall at the east. In case anyone else tried to ram the barrier again, they would need to move a dozen of the things to get a clear path. At the western barricade, they added a machine gun nest on the bridge crossing the Illinois River, which served a dual purpose of preventing a vehicle from crossing it. There was little in the way of actual help that Tar could offer with his injured shoulder, so rather than standing around barking orders at the men, who had been working long before he arrived, he drove to Elsie’s for a bite to eat.

  He strode into the cozy diner, as he had a thousand times in the past. Darla, as always, had a cup of coffee ready for him at his usual spot at the counter.

  “How’re you feeling, Tar?” she asked, her face showing genuine concern.

  “Well enough, I reckon. The doc fixed me up decent,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

  “It’s really terrifying that people would attack us like that. There’s so much death already. You think they’ll come back?”

  “With the hard winter setting in, I’m hopeful that was the last of the problems we will see until spring, at least from people.”

  “Purnell said you followed after those people, and that’s how you got shot.”

  Tar nodded.

  “You got a lot of folks needing you here, Tar. Wouldn’t be good to go off like that and get yourself killed.”

  “Yeah, Darla, I know that. At the moment, it seemed the right thing to do.”

  “All we have left is beef and potatoes, Tar,” she said, changing the subject. “Out of greens now that the season is over and deliveries have stopped coming in.”

  “Steak then, and a couple baked potatoes.”

  “Tar, I hate to be a pain in your ass,” she said.

  Tar bit back a retort, irritated that the woman wouldn’t leave him alone with his cigarette and coffee. He sighed and took a deep breath to steady himself.

  “Go ahead, Dar.”

  “Well, you know I haven’t heard from my daughter with the phones being down and such.”

  Tar nodded. He hoped the conversation wasn’t going where he started to suspect it was.

  “You think in the spring that all this will be over with? I’d like to go try and find her.”

  Fuck, Tar thought to himself. He either had to dash the woman’s hopes now or lie his ass off. He took a deep pull of his coffee and a drag off his cigarette before continuing.

  “Well, Dar, I think we need to worry about making it through the winter first,” he took another long drag off the cigarette and decided to change the subject himself. “I need to ask you something here, Dar.”

  Darla hesitated at first, not liking that he was changing the subject on her, but caved in eventually.

  “Sure thing, sweetie.”

  “I think that we might need to start pooling our resources. Making community meals and such. You think you could round up the help you’d need to feed six hundred?”

  “I don’t think the help will be a problem. People are all on edge; I think a lot of them would be glad to have a purpose.” She absently started wiping the counter tops as she continued. “Food is going to be the real problem.”

  Tar exhaled, blowing a thick cloud of smoke as he slipped his ci
garette into the slotted ashtray.

  “That’s kinda the direction I’m moving in, Dar. I’m thinking that we need to move away from individual households having food,” he said, finally voicing the thought that had been recurring in his thoughts all morning. “Clearing out the pantries and root cellars would go a long way, especially coupled with the cattle on the ranches.”

  “You know, a lot of people aren’t going to like that, Tar,” she warned.

  “You know what they are going to like less? There are going to like twenty desperate, hungry, and well-armed men on their lawn come January a lot less,” he replied, having already considered the amount of push-back he was going to get on what he was proposing.

  She nodded, understanding where things would head if people hoarded their food.

  “Next year might be different, but we can’t let half the population starve while the other half are getting fat.”

  Tar knew he was likely to have a lot of irate ranchers on his hands. This is why he chose to discuss it with Darla. He was using her to diffuse the word out about what was going to happen before he called a meeting about it. He thought it was better to give some of the good old boys some time to cool their engines, rather than ambushing them with the request. These were a sturdy bunch of ranchers that worked hard and shed blood and tears for what they were able to accumulate. He had been thinking about it since the whole mess started and he couldn’t see any way around it. If the people in the community were going to survive the winter, the ranchers needed to recognize their responsibility. He just hoped that cooler heads would prevail and they would grasp the bigger picture.

  “Goddamn it, Daltry! Wake the fuck up!” he blurted out, slamming his fist down on the counter.

  “You’re right, I think, Tar. People here in town are probably starting to run out of food already; most folks do monthly shopping down over at the Walmart in Steamboat. I’d guess that most of their cupboards are starting to look barren.”

  “Yeah, it’s easy to see the sense when you aren’t the one being asked to fork over your ample supply of food. On top of the food in freezers and cupboards, we are talking about their cattle. We are going to be asking these ranchers to willingly allow us to feed the town with their lifeblood.”

  Tar shook his head and sat in silence mulling the potential consequences of the dilemma over while he finished his cigarette.

  *

  “I figure we’ll have to make a run for it and drop off the far side of the roof, above the garage. That way we have a bit of distance between us and them,” Tim said, looking intently at the young woman.

  Jen nodded, understanding, and looked ready to go until uncertainty swept her features.

  “What happens if one of us doesn’t make it…or if we get split up?” she hissed at him. “What then?”

  “We will cross that bridge if it comes to that, Jen; no use in worrying now,” he said, ready to move off. “Just keep your eyes and ears peeled for the fast ones and make sure to communicate.”

  With that, he took her hand and pulled her along behind him, moving as fast as he dared on the narrow roof before transitioning to the top of the garage. They ran side by side to the far edge. Tim dropped to the snow-crusted asphalt shingles and rolled over at the edge to lower himself down. The strip of lawn on the far side of the garage was clear of undead, and he came down lightly in four inches of powdery snow. He stood at the corner of the building and glanced around quickly. The undead moved along the front of the garage bay in pursuit, though they had created a decent cushion by running. Jen positioned herself to lower down. Once she touched down on the snow, Tim turned to move off, freezing as he noticed a familiar orange and black color and shape erupting from the fresh snow. He ran quickly to it and yanked the extending ladder upright in one fluid movement, leaning it against the side of the garage.

  He took Jen’s arm and ushered her quickly towards the road, taking wide berth to avoid a scattered tangle of slow undead.

  “If shit goes bad, get back up the ladder…that is our plan,” he said, cutting across the corner of the yard and turning left onto the snowy roadway.

  A noisy racket from above drew both of their attention back to the house as they stepped onto the roadway. Bjorn was hanging out of the window, slamming a wooden plank against the siding of the house. Tim and Jen rushed ahead, recognizing Bjorn was trying to distract the undead.

  The rural road was heavily wooded. Clear cuts with lawns and houses popped up every few hundred feet, most of them set fairly close to the road. The duo moved quietly and cautiously, crunching through the virgin snow down the middle of the road. They easily outpaced the few undead that followed and cautiously scanned the woods on either side of the road, where the forms of the dead blended easily against the barren gray trees. Tim armed himself with a steel rod from a lawn ornament, determined to try and kill any dead they encountered as quietly as possible so as not to draw more onto them. At every house they came upon, they scouted their way up driveways to look in garage doors. More than once they were sent fleeing as the sounds of the undead, trapped inside the homes, struck terror in their heart. He wished to himself that they had brought everyone out; it was so easy thus far that he felt guilty for leaving them all trapped in the attic, especially Laura who always worried about him.

  The thought was cast from his head as a muted roar of a fast undead split the snowy silence. Another sound, that of a body slamming heavily into the face of a roll-top garage door issued from off to the side, in a detached two-car garage. The two could see its ruined face as it slammed into the window, shaking the door noisily. Tim raised his pistol as the thing burst out through the side door of the garage, sliding and falling in the snow, bringing a chuckle from both of them. As the thing tried to get to its feet it slipped again, falling awkwardly on one shoulder. They both started giggling as the enraged thing continued to slip and fall. Moving forwards, Tim got in range to kill the feral thing and took aim. One shot and it lay in a bloody tangled mess, marring the pristine snow with gore. Just to be sure, he brought the steel rod to bear, smashing the side of its skull in before cautiously stepping over it to peer into the garage.

  Inside the garage sat a new looking Jeep Commander. Tim hesitantly frisked the bloody mess at his feet, looking for a key. He jerked away twice, out of nerves before he felt a wad of keys in the left side pocket of the thing’s coveralls and retrieved them, spotting a newer electronic key immediately. He pocketed the other keys and moved into the gloomy interior of the garage, flipping the lights on as he stepped down to the concrete floor. Overhead fluorescent lights blinked on casting their sickly greenish-white glow to the far corners of the area. Jen followed him inside and the two circled the Jeep, anxiously ensuring that they were alone in the garage before closing and securing the side door. Tim clicked the remote-start button on the key and the Jeep started up without hesitation. Jen nearly jumped out of her skin, standing next to it. Tim snickered at her expense.

  “Nice, asshole!” she said without malice.

  “Let’s see if there is anything we can scrounge from the garage while we’re here.”

  They did a fast search the garage, throwing whatever they thought might be useful into the open tailgate. In the end, they managed to come up with a decent cache of tools, about two gallons of gas in a five-gallon gas can, and a chainsaw. They swung the tailgate shut and were just settling into the front seats, getting ready to depart, when the side door of the garage crashed inwards.

  Tim’s mouth dropped and his eyes bulged as he saw three young men, one with a rifle aimed at them. He dove sideways, throwing the Jeep in gear and slamming on the accelerator. The V8 engine roared, propelling the massive vehicle through the closed doors, as a shot rang out. Tim poked his head up to make sure he steered the SUV onto the road, as another shot split the air, shattering the rear window. He guided the thing onto the roadway heading south, in the direction of the farmhouse when he felt the first tinges of pain letting him know something was wr
ong.

  He reached down to his hip and retracted his hand, coated in blood.

  “Fuck,” Jen yelled, her voice panicked. “Are you shot?”

  Tim wiped his hand clean on the front of his pants and sat upright in the Jeep hearing another shot ring out, this one a bit distant. Over the sound of tires crunching their way through fresh snow, Tim was sure he heard voices screaming curses.

  “Who were they?” Jen asked.

  “Who cares? It doesn’t matter now anyway,” he grunted out, clearly in pain.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, they tried to kill us, that’s enough knowledge for me. Whether they did it out of murderous intent or because we are the bad guys, stealing their car; it really doesn’t make much of a difference at this point, does it?”

  Jen grew quiet at the thought that they may have just left those men stranded.

  *

  A knock on the door woke Tar from his uneasy rest. Although it had been a few days since the assault on Donner by Grayson’s men, his shoulder nagged at him almost constantly, and the constant snow wasn’t helping. Sitting up caused a fresh jolt of pain from his wounded shoulder. As he swung his legs off the couch, he could see that it was the late morning. He hooked his feet into a pair of wool socks and then slipped them easily into his western boots that he had left next to the couch. His hands moved instinctively to smooth out his mustache as he stood and moved through the parlor into the front vestibule. He took his western hat off the coat rack next to the door, pulling it on to cover the greasy knot of hair atop his head. There were many things that had needed to be accomplished recently, and bathing had been pushed somewhere beyond rest and eating. Looking through the gossamer curtain that covered the large square window on the upper half of his front door, he could see Linda waiting on his front porch. He reached for the handle and turned it, letting the weight of the door carry it inwards as he turned to move towards the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.