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

“Victory!” he said, laughing.

  *

  “Three teams now!” Tar yelled to the twenty or so men and women as he came down from atop the farm shed.

  The vehicles were all parked with their headlights casting their halogen light onto the battlefield below. The assembled townspeople were loosely gathered on the sheltered side of the shed. They quickly organized themselves into three groups of seven and eight. Tar had been a bit stuck in the prior century and had initially balked when nearly a score of the town’s women insisted on taking part in the defenses. He understood that they all had everything to lose, and couldn’t find a way to politely refuse, so instead, he acquiesced. To his surprise and great pleasure, many of the women he had seen thus far were every bit the shooter as the men that were present. They had all grown up on the ranches and represented themselves well.

  “You are Team A, you are Team B, and you are Team C,” he said, pointing to each group. “Team A, you are going to make a wide flanking maneuver to the north side of the road, hold position about two hundred yards to the north of the machine gun nest. Team C, you will do the same on the south side. Move now!”

  The two teams moved off in their assigned directions leaving Tar alone with Team B. The men and women looked at him anxiously.

  “Follow me and stay low,” he said, moving off quickly.

  He moved to Gary Bonnet’s brand new Dodge Ram 3500 idling on the shoulder of the roadway. Tar smirked spitefully, knowing the man had left it purposefully on the road so as not to damage it. Gary is a dickhead anyways, Tar thought as he opened the door and made sure the wheels were pointed straight. Tar turned on the radio, cranked the volume, and lowered the automatic windows before popping the transmission into neutral. He stepped down from the running board and swung the door shut as the truck started slowly rolling down the gentle slope.

  “Run,” he yelled at the men and women behind him. “Follow the truck.”

  The eight of them ran as fast as they could after the truck, which was blaring Travis Tritt through the bitter cold early winter air. Its headlights illuminated the road and a swath of the battle as they ran behind trying to keep pace. The truck outpaced them quickly as gravity pulled it, ever faster, down the hill, leaving the six men and two women huffing and panting in the darkness behind it. It was only a few moments before the tall grass on either side of the road exploded with gunfire. Bullets pinged and ponged off the body of the truck, a tire finally exploded, sending it careening to a stop in a ditch. Tar split his team in two, instructing each to head up the drainage gully on opposite sides of the road. The gunmen continued firing on the disabled truck as it sat idling in the ditch blasting “I’m Gonna Be Somebody” from its ample sound system. The truck had served its purpose in injecting them cleanly onto the battlefield.

  Tar raised his finger in the air, closing his eyes for a moment to shake the remnants of light pollution from his visual memory. He slid his night vision goggles down over his eyes before opening them. He looked across the road and could see those on the opposite side waiting. Tar flicked his thumb down quickly, sparking the flint on his lighter, the arranged signal. He stowed the lighter back in his pocket and raised his pistol at the ready.

  Gunfire rang out incessantly from all directions ahead of them, some aimed at the crashed truck, but most of it was concentrated on the bunkers which housed the defender’s heavy weapons. The three men and one woman on his side of the road fanned out around him as the greenish figure of a man lying prone on the ground came into view about twenty yards ahead of him. Tar aimed carefully, he wanted to make sure the first shot was a kill, and pulled the trigger. The 9mm in his hand jumped weakly compared to the .45 he had been carrying until late. The last gunfight he had been in, his first gunfight, ended with Stan Simons getting killed and Sheriff Daltry left in a coma.

  He had switched to the lighter caliber gun for a few reasons. First and most important was the effects of his arthritis in the chill autumn air; firing the heavier caliber caused his knuckles to ache. He also appreciated the increased ammo capacity as well as the ease of reloading, the low recoil which allowed him to steady and shoot more rapidly and finally, the quieter report drew less undead than the hand cannon he had been using.

  The man that Tar had just shot at now had a bleeding wound in the side of his head. To the left of him, Tar narrowly avoided the blinding flash of a muzzle in his periphery as his team went on the offense. He found three more targets that he was able to draw a bead on and fire before the whirring whine of a bullet flying past his ear forced him to duck back down into the high grass. The blinding muzzle flashes from ahead stung his eyes and he ripped off the headset before it further ruined his night vision. He rolled onto his back and tried blinking away the white flashes that were burned onto his retina. The sounds of small arms and rifles firing were now joined by the sound of the SAW from the nest to the north. That better be one of ours, he thought grimly, as he spun around to try and decipher. Just as he got to his hands and knees, a running form rushed on him and kicked him hard in the neck.

  *

  Nick kicked out with all his might, connecting a solid blow with the thing’s cheekbone. Agony shot through him from his bloodied foot but he didn’t relent; he struck again and again until he was finally able to rip his other foot out of its icy grip. The force with which he yanked his foot out propelled him clear of the avalanche of books, leaving the thing struggling behind him. Christine was screaming and flailing under the table to the left of him, beneath the bulk of one of the monsters wearing janitor’s coveralls. She took her pocketbook which was slung across her shoulder and neck and thrust it forwards as the thing bit down at her, stuffing it halfway into the thing’s mouth. Fear tore through him and the blood ran cold in his veins. His balls crept up, and without even realizing it at first, he started edging away. At the realization of his movement, his mind forced him to act. You can’t leave her, you pussy! his mind barked at him.

  Without a moment more of hesitation, he reached out and flipped the table off the two, exposing the thing’s back. He reached to the side and swung a heavy wooden Butler chair over his head, coming down on the back of its head. The back of the thing’s skull caved in, sending a gout of gore out and across his shredded feet. He could barely tolerate the smell alone, but seeing the skull cave-in was more than he could handle. He had to lean sideways as his stomach purged once again. The blow from the chair had the unintended consequence of smashing the thing’s head heavily down into Christine’s face. He heard her issue a low moan as the body of the creature sloughed off to the side and lay unmoving. Nick rolled the thing off her to find her face covered in gore and her eyelashes fluttering as she blacked out.

  “Chris!” he snarled. “Get up! We have to go!”

  She lay there unconscious with her mouth agape.

  “Fuck!” he spat and smacked her cheek lightly a few times. “C’mon, c’mon!”

  She reacted to the smacks, rolling her head and letting out a light moan, but did not regain consciousness. Behind them, the thing trapped in the book pile thrashed about, continuing in its efforts to extricate itself from the mess. The sounds of glass creaking and cracking from the door and windows at the back of the library lit him into action. He stood up and his eyes darted about the room, scanning about before spotting a book cart across the library. He roughly grabbed Chris, awkwardly carried her over and threw her atop the cart. The books on the top row kept her balanced on it. As he began pushing the cart, the creature came clear of the avalanche of books and roared across the empty study area toward him. Instinctively, he threw an elbow back, protecting his flank. The elbow connected with the side of its head, redirecting it where it crashed heavily under the row of computer desks.

  The sounds of an entire pane of glass cascading down in jingles of glass issued from behind him. The sounds of the roars and moans from behind grew louder and clearer and his terror deepened. Nick hazarded a glance behind to see the mass of dead throwing themselves throug
h the shattered window and running after him as soon as they extricated themselves from the pile of dead struggling inside the shattered window. The fear and adrenaline got him moving, and he shoved the cart ahead of him, out through the open side of the library double doors in full flight.

  Nick didn’t bother looking left or right, as he could see the light of day across the expanse of the cafeteria ahead of him. The lunchroom looked largely empty, save a dozen or so bloody corpses lying about on the floor or seated at their tables. Roars came from behind him and to his left, sending a shiver up his spine. His feet hurt so badly that he didn’t even realize that he was crying as he ran into the cafeteria and towards the far corner of the room. A stainless steel row of serving stations sat along the back wall, to the left of that was an exit to the rear parking lot of the school. He made a beeline for the exit, shoving the awkwardly balanced cart ahead of him.

  The sound of a table flipping behind him and steel-legged chairs skittering across the waxed floor echoed through the room and his legs nearly gave out in terror. Chris nearly toppled from atop the cart as he took a gentle turn around a table at speed. Twenty feet from the door and a face came into view through the glass of the double doors. It was one of the things, followed by another then another. They staggered up to the doors, blotting out the view of the outside altogether. They stood there slapping at and mouthing at the glass. These ones seemed different than the others, but Nick had no time to make a detailed analysis. He shoved the cart around the back of the serving counter, sending it crashing into the wall. Christine’s unconscious form tumbled onto the linoleum floor. He scooped her up hurriedly, biting back the pain in his feet as he took the corner and shoved her violently through the heavy wooden door behind the counter. A cacophony of noise sounded from behind, as the undead in pursuit collided with the serving station and book cart. He slammed the door shut and flipped the deadbolt on it.

  A roar issued from behind him and he pissed himself, literally.

  *

  The Humvee continued up I-86 at a crawl, the road alternating between great swaths of open roadway followed by huge multi-car pile-ups and traffic jams. Tim had been paying close attention to their fuel situation, and by noon, he realized that the Humvee was enormously inefficient on diesel. Having poured the last of the gas cans of fuel into the tank, it left them with just over three-quarters of a tank. At this rate, with the constant doubling-back and using the heavy vehicle to push or pull cars out of the way, they would run out of gas around mid-afternoon.

  “I think we are going to need to switch vehicles,” Tim said, as he stowed the last empty gas cans back in the tailgate of the Humvee. “This thing is getting like ten miles a gallon…at most.”

  “We are going to have to get lucky then,” Will said. “A: we need to find something that all of us fit in. B: the keys need to be there, unless you know how to hot-wire a car, and C: it needs to have gas and preferably be free of undead.”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy,” Tim called back a bit sharply. “What I am saying is that we will be out of fuel by the time we hit Syracuse.”

  Once the cans were stowed, Tim climbed back in behind the steering wheel and started the Humvee moving again, at a crawl. They crept through the edges of traffic they encountered, and although they avoided stopping wherever they saw the undead active, they all were actively looking for a replacement vehicle. They passed through a small town named Roscoe and Tim’s mind drifted off to a memory from his childhood, when his family had eaten at a diner there on the way to his grandparent’s house in Batavia, New York. The memories of the past always carried melancholy with them. The feelings, good and bad towards his family. He hadn’t spoken with any of them in a good amount of years, and chances were that he never would again. The thought didn’t sadden him; it was just a reminder of bridges that burned behind.

  Will sat in silence in the storage area in the back of the vehicle, trying to keep his injured knee from banging off anything as the Humvee swerved around traffic. His thoughts constantly drifted between hope and despair. He despaired at the death of everyone he knew in New York, as well as all the millions of others he didn’t know when the bomb went off. Conversely, his thoughts were drawn back to Wisconsin, where his hope that his family and the rest of the small farm community had survived lay. He was completely caught unaware when Tim slammed on the brakes, after the tires slid on the thin snow for a moment, the tires squealed briefly as the heavy vehicle ground to a halt. He reached forward and grabbed Jen by her belt as the severity of the stop sent her hurtling forward between the driver’s and passenger’s seat.

  Once he steadied Jen and the vehicle finished skidding to a stop, Will was able to turn his attention to the cause of the abrupt stop. Looking out the rear passenger’s side window, he could see nothing but rubble ahead of them. Looking closer, he could tell that what looked like a commercial airliner had tried, with disastrous results, to land on the highway. The tarmac was ripped away in deep gouges, some ten feet wide and four feet deep, clothing and assorted debris clung to the trees all around the wreckage. A few undead ambled about the ruined hulk of a fuselage and bodies lay scattered across all four lanes of the highway in various conditions and states of death. To the left side of the road was a ten-foot drop to a wide creek. The only clear path was behind or across the pastures on the right side of the road if they wanted to try and maneuver the Humvee around the carnage.

  Laura’s stomach heaved greatly for all in the Humvee to hear and she grasped the handle to open the window. Her stomach evacuated as soon as she opened the window wide enough to get her head out sideways. She vomited again when the wretched aroma of jet fuel and burned corpses hit her in the face, and hearing the groans and sounds of disgust from behind, she quickly rolled up the window. Luna started jumping up and down on her lap asking her mother,

  “What’s that?”

  “That is a plane crash, sweetie,” came Laura’s measured response, still holding a hand over her mouth.

  “What’s that?”

  “Boo!” Laura said with a smile, turning the child’s questions into a game she enjoyed playing.

  “You scared me, Mommy!” squealed the little voice, followed by a fit of the kind of genuine, unbridled laughter that only a child is capable of.

  “Should we go back or go around?” Tim asked quietly.

  No response came from behind as the game continued for a few minutes. Tim slowly picked and steered the Humvee around the median and into the westbound lanes, eventually guiding the vehicle off of the blacktop and onto the browning grass. Once they were over the initial hump of a drainage ditch, Tim floored it to get enough speed to power the heavy vehicle through a barbed wire fence.

  It took them the better part of an hour of backtracking and roundabouts to work their way around the ruined airplane and stretch of highway, avoiding deep irrigation ditches and wreckage cast off from the airliner. When they were finally past the carnage and back to the highway, what lay ahead of them offered less hope. The stalled traffic was too heavy to penetrate and they were forced to ride in the drainage ditch for miles hoping that it would clear, all of them uncomfortably leaning to the driver’s side. There were a few disabled vehicles they had to either push out of the way or scrape past to get by. They passed through areas where the undead were thick, and hands slapping and smashing into the sides of the vehicle sounded continuously, leaving the occupants in a state of constant unease. In other stretches, they seemed to be the only people, living or dead, left in the world, the bleak, wintry landscape taking on an otherworldly feel as the gray sky met the drab landscape. Eventually, their efforts in continuing along the ditch were foiled when the same creek crossed under a bridge to this side of the highway. The ditch in which they drove dove off the edge of a fifteen-foot precipice to the water of the wide creek below.

  “Well, folks…I’m open to suggestions,” Tim said with a resigned sigh, sliding the shifter into park and idling the Humvee about twenty feet from t
he edge of the ravine.

  “Can we back up?” Laura asked.

  “We can try, but I’m worried…I’m pretty sure that we’ll get stuck.”

  “Will can’t walk!” Jen barked angrily, worried that was the direction the conversation was headed.

  “We are not giving up the Humvee until we find a replacement for it, don’t worry,” Tim responded evenly. “I’m going to suggest we camp here for the night and sleep on our options.”

  Silence greeted him in response. The undead were visible, but sparsely on this stretch of the roadway. He waited a few minutes for any lingering questions to arise, and when none did, he turned the ignition off gently. The motor sputtered to a whining, dieselly silence, which seemed to amplify the quiet inside the cab. Tim’s anxiety over their predicament was rising in the dull silence of the vehicle. He was worried that if they just hunkered down for the night, the dead might stumble upon them and trap them. It was thoughts of having to spend another night like the previous one that finally spurred him to action. He spun his head around twice, looking all around the vehicle carefully, before popping open his door and stepping into the blustery early winter air. The wind had been blowing snow around most of the morning, though the kind that puts a light rind on everything rather than accumulates. The breeze gusted on his neck as he stood out of the Humvee, chilling him to the bone immediately. He quickly wrestled his collar up to block it.

  “What are you doing?” Laura called, looking nervously around.

  “I can’t sit in the fucking silence in that car for another minute,” he called back. “We don’t know what the morning will bring. I want to try and find us something now, while it’s relatively clear out there.”

  He swung the door shut and moved to the rear of the vehicle and popped the rear hatch. He shifted around the cardboard cartons of food until he came across what he was searching for. He wrestled out a pair of ammo canisters from behind the two empty gas cans.