Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 2

  When the sun finally crept up, illuminating the overcast horizon to the east, they all sat awake, groggy, and in a foul temper. Jen wanted to speak, to say something to cut the tension in the air but couldn’t find any words. She sat silent instead, trying to ignore the faces of the dead as they pressed against the glass. Tired of seeing and hearing the undead outside himself, Tim twisted the ignition and the Humvee roared to life. They sat idling for a moment before he put it in gear and lightly pressed the gas pedal. The undead slid off the sides of the plow blade that Bjorn had welded on the front of the vehicle as it started moving off the ramp, onto the highway. Tim cut the wheel counterclockwise and aimed the vehicle west in the eastbound lanes. A few moments later and they moved clear of the mob that moved to pursue.

  They moved at a crawl westward on I-86. Tim wasn’t committed to traveling yet, he just wanted to be clear of the mass of undead. Laura started making sandwiches on the passenger seat next to him, enlisting Luna’s help to entertain the little girl. Tim looked lovingly at his daughter, accepting the sandwich she offered when she was done making it.

  “Eat, Daddy!” she said, looking at her father with the sweetest eyes and a big smile.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” he replied, forcing a smile through his terrible mood. He took a bite and forced his head, turning away from the child so she didn’t see him gag.

  “Oh, mayonnaise on bread, my favorite!” he forced out as he shot a glare at Laura.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed at him.

  Laura and Luna switched to peanut butter and made sandwiches for the entire vehicle. They all ate in silence before Tim parked the vehicle near the first Goshen exit. The mass of undead following them was now miles behind, having disappeared over the horizon.

  “So, before we waste any more fuel, where are we going?” Tim ventured at last.

  Bjorn remained silent, choosing to stare out the windows than participate. The loss of his wife and son to the virus was too fresh for him to trust that his voice wouldn’t betray his state. His emotional state at this point, after the loss and a sleepless night, fluctuated from rage to despair. Only Sophie kept him from acting out drastically. His seven year old was the only thing that kept him going. He was the only thing she had left and although suicide was a recurrent thought, he would never leave her alone, no matter how much pain he was in.

  Jen convinced Will to take his pants down so she could get a good look at his knee. His kneecap was swollen to the size of a melon and was a full palette of purples, from lavender to blue-black. He cringed in pain every time he shifted. Jen made an impromptu ice-pack out of a bread-bag she had filled with bullets and he held it painfully on his throbbing knee. He had no way of knowing exactly what was wrong with it, just that he could bear no weight at all on it. He tried his best not to bemoan his fate, being one of the very few survivors he’d seen since leaving New York City, and now he couldn’t even walk. At least in the present company he could ride in peace; he just hoped the strangers were good people.

  Sophie sat quietly in the very back of the Humvee, trying to hide the fact that she was crying from her father. She didn’t want him to know that she was sad, that she missed her mother and brother. She thought her daddy was mad at her and didn’t want him to yell, so she curled up in a ball, and sobbed silently into her knees.

  The silence that ensued was long enough that all had forgotten they were asked a question. Only Tim remembered.

  “Oooookayyyy!” he uttered at last. “North and west it is then, away from New York…let me know if you have any objections.”

  He let his foot off the brake and pressed the accelerator. He kept it around thirty miles an hour for no other reason than they had no destination so speed was irrelevant.

  “Jen, you guys were heading to Wisconsin, right?” Tim asked.

  Jen shrugged and nodded, spacing out while staring at the endless cars and undead milling about in the westbound lanes of the highway.

  She didn’t care where they went; she was just happy to be with other people, having spent the first few nights alone in a freezing cold, broken down car, surrounded by undead. Will was the first human, living human, that she had seen since her brother had gone to look for gas and never came back.

  “Do you guys have a map?” he followed with.

  “We left it on the cart back there,” Will said, grunting with pain as he shifted his weight.

  “Okay, so mission number one: Locate map of United States.” He smiled at his wife and then in the rearview mirror at his own joke, but no one was paying attention.

  *

  Nick lifted his head out of the chilly pool water, the reek of chlorine sticking in his nostrils and burning his eyes. He looked to the end of the pool where Coach Miller was holding his hand out to the class, absently, while chatting with Ms. Kilgore. She was the pretty young English teacher that all the boys talked about. Nick twisted around to float on his back lazily. He kept his eyes well away from the girls in his co-ed class, knowing full well the possibility of having an embarrassing ‘growth’ in front of his peers, especially Andy Tilmot. Andy was a bully and the source of most of Nick’s absences from school. Andy always went out of his way to belittle or abuse Nick, from pantsing him in the hallways to slamming him face-first into the lockers when he was fetching books for his next class. Nick could see Andy and his friends hanging out in the deeper water, conspiring to dunk their unsuspecting peers’ heads underwater. Nick didn’t stray from the shallow area for just that reason; he had nearly drowned three days earlier when the coach left the swim area for a few minutes and Andy and his gang of sadists sneak-attacked him.

  The class-period was almost over; he could see looking at the caged clock that hung on the wall above the locker room doors. This left him in a predicament. He didn’t want to encounter Andy and his cronies in the locker room where they made a habit of stealing people’s clothing once they opened their lockers. The way he figured it, he could either try and sneak into the locker room early, while Coach Miller was occupied flirting, and change quickly, or he would have to linger in the pool for a few extra minutes, and risk being late for History, again. Thinking deeper, he considered faking another asthma attack. With the humidity and chlorine in the air of the indoor pool, it would be easy enough to get him out of school. He was jarred out of his thoughts and back to his grim, high school reality when the double doors on opposite ends of the pool area slammed open almost in unison. A handful of senior pranksters came running in through the doors, jumping into the pool with their clothes on. Nick rolled his eyes and climbed out of the pool, deciding to use this distraction to make it out of class early.

  It was only as he stood up outside the pool with the water draining from his suit onto the tiled deck, that he noticed something strange about the pool-crashers. He was positive that his biology teacher, Mr. Tomlin, was one of them. With all the splashing about, he couldn’t really tell what was going on in the pool as more kids and teachers came flooding through the doors at the opposite end of the pool. One of them tackled Coach Miller and Ms. Kilgore into the pool. It was only then that Nick could see their features were twisted and their skin tone was wrong. His stomach lurched as he started to hear screams above the splashing. Looking back at those in the pool, he could see a blot of crimson spreading near where Andy and his gang of assholes had been swimming.

  He threw his gaze back at those coming in through the door. Definitely not makeup, he thought, as one of them locked its milky eyes on him and started running around the decking of the pool with an inhuman screech. Nick started running towards the shower area that led into the men’s locker room when one of the crazed-looking people came skidding out of the doorway, slipping on the wet tile and sliding into the pool. As it passed him, it clawed frantically at his leg, leaving three painful scratches across the top of his foot. What struck him most was the mouth that snapped and bit at him as it slid past.

  Nick was moving slowly at first, trying to build momentum and make sure he
didn’t slip on the slick tiles. His pursuer from the other side of the pool turned the corner and came tearing down the length of the pool towards him. He gained enough traction to move out of the way as it barreled in, its teeth gnashing at him as it slid past. He watched, transfixed as it dropped heavily onto its back and flailed around, scrambling to find purchase on the wet tile. Another of the things came hurtling out of the locker room to join the first one, still thrashing about in the water. He moved quickly past the boy’s locker room, ignoring the screams coming from within, and ducked into the quiet girl’s locker room.

  Lindsey Swanson was standing under a shower spigot with her eyes closed, rinsing the pool water off her body. He paused, unable to rip his eyes from the prettiest girl in school. She turned at the sound of his entrance and opened her eyes, screaming in reaction to seeing a boy in the showers. Her scream broke the spell holding him in place, turning his attention away. Blood rushed to his face and he started running again, as one of the things came blasting through the door behind him.

  “Get out of here, you perv!” she shrieked at him.

  “Run, Lindsey!” he shouted as he moved out of the shower area into the locker room proper. In the first changing area, he could see Vice Principal Mathis in his usual three-piece suit, crouched over the top of a nearly naked girl. He did a double take and saw blood pooling out from underneath them. A scream issued from behind him, and he recognized it as Lindsey’s voice. His heart was pounding in his chest, Mr. Mathis looked back over his shoulder at him, his face grayish and half of his lower lip ripped off and hanging down below his chin. Blood and bits of gore hung from his ruined mouth. Nick continued moving through the area, edging around Mathis, who had returned to eating the girl. The rest of the locker room was empty and Nick ran to the door that emptied into the science hallway. As he approached, he could hear the screams from the other side through the heavy wooden door. He took a couple deep breaths to steady himself. What the fuck is going on? he asked himself. He heard another roar from behind him and knew he was out of time.

  *

  While they cruised up I-86, they exchanged their stories of survival, with the exception of Bjorn, who sat quietly holding his daughter on his lap. He seemed detached from the group, and though Tim couldn’t blame him, he worried whether the man, who lived for his family, could spring back from it.

  “Well, aside from my family being there, I guess the reason I want to go back to Benoit is that it is sooo rural,” Will said, just to make conversation.

  “What makes you so certain that everything is fine there?” Tim asked, absently.

  “Everyone hunts, everyone has guns, y’know. Even if everyone in the county turned into those things, there’d only be a couple thousand. The way I figure it, people would’ve stopped the things.”

  Silence followed for a minute after while Tim waited to see if anyone else had any input.

  “Well, it appears our lack of options has interceded with your sense of optimism,” Tim ventured, looking long at Laura for signs of objection. “Let’s head in that direction for now.”

  Tim didn’t necessarily agree with Will’s assessment; he was just happy to have someone talking and offering a course. Once they got to the Liberty exit, the roadblocks that lined the highway at every on and off-ramp stopped abruptly. They had to start weaving in and out of traffic as cars now appeared on their previously vacant side of the roadway, slowing their pace from leisurely to a crawl.

  “What do you think they were doing with the roadblocks anyways?” Tim asked, genuinely curious.

  Will shrugged and sat quiet for a moment before answering.

  “I’d guess they were trying to evacuate people from around the city, in the more densely populated areas,” he sighed, breathing deeply, then continued. “Guess they didn’t anticipate it spreading so fast.”

  “You see any military in your travels?” Tim asked softly.

  “A group stopped me in Fort Lee. They took my gun before they got eaten,” Will stated.

  He intentionally left out the fact that he could have prevented it; he felt his actions that day were morally justified.

  “Other than that, just a couple helicopters in the distance, nothing in the past few days though,” he finished.

  Tim quieted, digesting and processing the information. Like everyone in the car, he still held on to the hope that they would run into a checkpoint. Somewhere they would be checked for signs of the virus before being brought out to a “safe zone” while the military got everything sorted out. Logically, the idea of a containment area the size of the tri-state area made no sense, but hope often didn’t make sense. The highway seemed to get smaller as they moved further from the densely populated areas of lower New York State. It was still two lanes in each direction, but the guardrails disappeared and stores started appearing with parking lots that directly accessed the interstate.

  “Keep an eye out for anything we can use,” Tim announced to the car.

  They were all staring out the windows anyway, looking at the bleak landscape, seemingly devoid of life. They all started scanning the scattered shops eagerly, grateful for the distraction of having a purpose.

  “Over there, on the right side of the road,” Bjorn called from the back seat.

  He had spotted a Shell gas station that. If not for the flickering neon ‘Open’ sign, he would’ve thought had been abandoned years before. A blinking yellow traffic signal hung swaying in the breeze overhead. Tim let off the accelerator, allowing the heavy, armored vehicle to wind itself to a halt. They sat tensely in the idling vehicle for a tense eternity, scanning the surrounding area for signs of the undead.

  “Three of them in the distance behind the Shell,” Laura called, pointing at a tree-covered hillock in the distance.

  Tim was wrestling with something else altogether in his mind. He wasn’t sure what to do about the newcomers. He wouldn’t leave the Humvee unattended, nor could he expect Will to go out in the open with his ruined knee. Nor would he allow Will to remain alone in the car. They had already had one of their vehicles stolen from under their noses back at the warehouse, and he wasn’t about to let this one, filled with all the supplies they had accumulated, meet the same fate. Nor was he willing to leave his wife and child to guard Will. At length, he made up his mind; he just hoped no one raised a fuss about it. He stepped on the accelerator and let the Humvee glide into the parking lot of the disused gas station. Throwing the shifter into park, he swung his head around once more, checking out all the windows before popping the door open and stepping out into the blustery autumn air.

  “Jen, come with me. Everyone else, stay here,” he called, trying to keep his tone even and not betray his fears about leaving his family in the car with a stranger.

  He pulled the collar of his light jacket up, trying to keep the biting wind off his neck as he stepped around the front of the Humvee with his pistol in hand. Bjorn stepped out from the rear driver’s side door a moment later to let Jen out. Bjorn and Tim locked eyes for a moment. Tim tried to express his feelings to him in that look. Bjorn lingered for a minute then took his pistol from his waistband and slid back into the Humvee masking it from sight to those within. Seeing that Bjorn understood, he and Jen circled around to the rear of the Humvee. Tim fetched a pair of gas cans from the roof of the vehicle and started refilling the fuel tank from the can. When the first can was empty, he passed it to Jen.

  “See if you can get it filled,” he said quietly, nodding at the diesel pump about twenty feet off.

  “Why not just fill the tank from the pump?”

  “We don’t know if the pumps work. We needed to stop to fill up anyway; getting the fuel in the tank is the most important thing. Since we are here, we might as well try and refill the cans, but if shit goes south, at the very least, we filled the tank to bug out of here with. If we tried the pumps first, we might get fuel, we might not. We might also waste time and get set upon by those things before we get fuel in the tank.”

&n
bsp; He unscrewed the cap from the second can and started pouring from that as Jen moved off towards the pump. He watched as the pretty young girl stuck the pump handle into the open can. He smiled despite the situation as she quickly grew frustrated with her attempts at pressing buttons to get the pump working.

  “Jen!” he called in a sharp whisper to her, as she wound her foot back to kick the pump.

  She spun with an angry face before responding.

  “What? This fucking thing won’t work,” she hissed angrily back at him.

  The diesel he was pouring started to overflow and he jumped away quickly, not wanting to sit in a diesel-fume-filled car the rest of the day. He held a finger up to Jen as he walked over to the pump. He threw the receiver on the pump in the upright position and fished his wallet out. Producing a credit card from the wallet, he swiped it through the slot on the pump. A low beeping sound started to emit from the inside the Shell station.

  “Wait here. I need to go hit a button inside before it’ll start pumping,” he said to her.

  “Why?” Jen asked. “The tank is full, why risk it?”

  “We need a map too, figure they might have one in this relic of a gas station.”

  He looked back at his wife through the windows of the Humvee and winked at her, throwing a quick wave before moving off towards the building. He shifted off to the side of the structure, looking down its length before moving to the opposite side and doing the same. There was no need to have anything sneak up on him once he went inside. He walked the length of the front of the store, peering in through the filthy, streaked windows. The interior consisted of a twelve foot by twelve foot room with a counter that faced out the front window. There were two display racks, one of snack foods and one of magazines near the counter. A coffee station on the counter at the back wall with a soda fountain, just to the left of a door. Other than that, there was one shelf that ran down the center of the store adorned with dusty, ancient-looking bottles of motor oil and assorted filters and belts for cars.