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

  “Will, do you think you can manage the SAW?”

  “The what?”

  “The machine gun mounted up top.”

  “Yeah, I think I can crawl up there,” he replied, shifting his weight onto his good leg and moving painfully to slide himself up top.

  “Bjorn, you up to come with me?”

  Bjorn’s only response was to pop open his own door open and step out. He slid his M4 from the rear compartment, behind where he sat and joined Tim at the rear. Bjorn stretched his body, twisting a great many snaps and pops from his bones.

  “Daddy, please stay,” Sophie called weakly over the rear compartment, to her father.

  Bjorn bent down and inside the compartment, leaning into her. He held his forehead against hers and spoke quietly. No one could hear what he said but Sophie nodded sadly and slid back onto the seat as he stood erect, ready to get started at whatever task Tim had in mind.

  “Jen?” Tim asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “You coming?”

  “Sure, if you got a gun for me. Mine is back on the road a hundred miles or so.”

  “Bjorn will hook you up,” Tim said as he walked around to the passenger’s side door, carefully avoiding the vomit streaking down the side of the vehicle as he waited for Laura to open the window.

  Tim slid her a 9mm pistol out of sight of everyone as he kissed his family.

  “I don’t like this, Tim,” she said softly.

  “Me neither, Laur, but we gotta find a new vehicle sooner or later,” he said as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, whispering into her ear. “The safety is on. I love you.”

  Tim stepped away from the vehicle and joined the others at the edge of the blacktop, about ten feet in front of the Humvee.

  “Hey!” Will called down from the turret mount.

  “Yeah, Will, what’s up?”

  “See if you can find me a wheelchair, in case…” he trailed off.

  “You got it,” Tim replied absently, turning to the task at hand.

  *

  Tar grunted in pain and surprise as the boot struck him where his neck meets his shoulder. The force of the kick and his reflexive reaction sent his pistol off into the night. Whoever had kicked him hadn’t done so on purpose, this was immediately clear as he heard the distinct sound of air being blasted from lungs accompanying the sound of a heavy body thudding to the snow-covered ground just behind him. Tar winced at the pain but drew himself up off the ground into a crouch, pulling a Schrade boot-knife from its sheath. He could see the man behind him start to rise and he dropped his entire weight on his knee into the middle of the man’s back. Under his weight, the two came down heavily with Tar squarely atop him. He hooked his first two fingers into the man’s eye sockets with his palm on the man’s forehead, and pulled his head back before sliding the knife across his throat. A hot gout of blood erupted with force, coating his knife hand, and he quickly shoved the man’s face back down into the dirt. He gritted his teeth against the revulsion he felt, at having to take a life as such, and spun away from the dying man, feeling around the frozen ground for his pistol. After a few moments of searching, he found it lying under a snow-matted clump of uncut Mountain Timothy.

  He cleaned the blood from his hands as best as possible, using the snow to scrub them, and turned his attention back to the scene around him. He saw Wilson Teras, a homesteader, take a shot to the side of his head. Erupting gore sprouted from the exit wound and the man spun to the ground, falling dead to the earth a few feet to the right of him. Already in a half-crouch, Tar settled to one knee, in a shooter’s position, and located target after target, firing until his pistol was empty. The scene was chaotic, and with every squeeze of the trigger, he hoped that his target was not a friend. People scrambled and ran across the snow in every direction with reckless abandon. A fresh volley of gunfire came from both the north and south as the flanking teams entered the fray and tore into the flanks of the enemy. Within a matter of a few bloody, violent moments, the tide was turned. As the attackers fell, a great many of the less eager men started fleeing, siphoning back toward the ruined wall.

  “Kill them all!” Tar screamed, standing at last and pulling his night vision goggles back on his face. “Kill those sons of whores!”

  A moment later, the SAW split the air from the gun nest. Instinctively, Tar threw himself to the ground, knocking the wind out of himself. As he caught his breath and rolled, he could clearly see that the machine gun was firing at the fleeing attackers. He struggled through the pain in his joints and got back to his feet in the crusty snow and moved forward to the gun nest. He approached cautiously, making sure the men and women inside recognized him before climbing over the crushed cars into the recess beyond. He kept his eyes away from the SAW, not wanting to ruin his night vision in its muzzle flare. He caught the eye of Stevie Williams, an accountant by trade.

  “You alright, Tar?” Stevie asked as he fed the ammo into the gun.

  Tar nodded at the man.

  Looking around the pastures through his night vision, he could see the men and women defending the town slowing the pursuit of the fleeing attackers as they neared the wall and the dark forest beyond. He whistled loudly, trying to gather the remaining troops without using walkies. He gathered the attention of Mike Hancock and Sean O’Brien as he approached the other SAW. Mike withdrew his finger from the trigger and turned to the defacto leader of their town.

  “You boys alright?”

  “Right as rain,” Mike called back. “Had us pinned down is all.”

  “Gonna get some stadium lighting set up out here I think, once this is over with. See if we can’t drag it out from the school football field,” Tar called back absently as he pulled the uncomfortable night vision headset off his face and tossed it to Mike.

  His head was always trying to move on to the next project. When most of the men and women had come within earshot, he started giving orders. Tar could see that a number of the defenders had fallen. He tucked that information in the back of his mind to process later. A number of the Teams A and C had arrived and were gathering around the nest.

  “I want six more reinforcing these nests. All of you try and get your hands on some night vision. The rest need to go back to the south barricade to help out there.” He watched for a moment, his ire was up and the adrenaline still pumped. “I’m going after them. Spread the word not to shoot me when I get back.”

  With a nod to the men and women, he hurdled over the east side wall of the nest and started off towards the broken log wall with an old semi-truck impaled through it. Tar picked his way carefully up and around the ruined truck. He finally stepped into the darkness beyond the wall, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the deeper gloom of the nighttime forest. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of fleeing feet slapping on the blacktop and set off slowly after them.

  *

  Jen and Tim nodded at the sense of locating a wheelchair as they stood outside the Humvee, mentally preparing themselves for the task at hand. Tim watched as Bjorn purposefully moved off to the east, picking his way among the disabled vehicles, peering in through windows. He shook his head, concerned for the man he had known most of his life. He knew Bjorn was facing some real hard times right now, but was seriously concerned about where his head was at ever since the death of Lilly and Liam. He made a mental note to try and speak to him when the time and situation allowed for a private conversation, before turning back to the task at hand.

  Tim leapt atop the first car he came upon, a faux wood-paneled minivan, and scrambled to the roof of it to get a better lay of their surroundings. Already, a handful of undead trapped in the cars nearby had started writhing and thrashing about furiously. They still didn’t know how the dead sensed them for sure; even the eyeless ones turned their heads and tracked their movement as they passed. The best theory that Tim had come up with was that the undead could smell them. There was no way he could think of to test his theory, even if he were so inclined. The dead threw
their bodies against the doors and windows of the vehicles they occupied and strained against their restraining seat belts. From atop the vehicle, Tim was able to see a few hundred meters in either direction. Thankfully, there were very few undead wandering out in the open.

  “Are we clear?” Jen asked as he slid down the front windshield from the roof.

  “Yeah…” he started, thoughtfully. “I’d guess that most of the dead in the area would’ve been drawn off by the sound of the plane hitting the highway. There are a few of them about a hundred yards to the east, and just one to the west, on the far side of the bridge.”

  Jen nodded tensely, licking her lips. After the terrifying flight of the previous day, she was nearly petrified to be out in the open again. Every movement required enormous resolve to overcome the fear that gripped her heart. She knew that she could handle it, but not without effort.

  “Jen, can you please follow Bjorn?”

  “Why?” she replied, confused.

  “His wife and son just died and I’m worried about him. I don’t think he has slept and even more concerned that his head isn’t on straight. He is headed towards the undead I saw to the east. Can you follow him and cover his ass?”

  “Oh, shit. Yeah, I got it,” she replied.

  She hesitated for a moment before skittering off between rows of cars to try and catch up to the man. If Tim had noticed her hesitation, he didn’t say anything about it.

  Alone. Great, Tim thought to himself, shaking his head and taking a deep breath to steady his nerves before he started walking across the bridge. He was about halfway across when an undead slammed heavily against the windows of a Buick, making him jump in his skin. His nerves were taut. He had never moved alone through the undead world; he’d always had Bjorn with him to cover his ass. He quickened his pace and moved past the undead raging inside the vehicle, drawing ever closer towards the end of the bridge. Again, he got surprised, a small, involuntary yelp escaping his lips as another undead in a Time Warner Cable van next to him slammed the palms of both hands heavily against the passenger’s side window as he moved past. This one scared the piss out of him, literally. He cautiously moved around the front of the van to the driver’s side. He stood there for a moment, figuring out his next move. This was the first vehicle that met their requirements. It had a clear path off the bridge. He watched nervously as the undead gnashed and thrashed its way across the front windshield, greeting him again on the driver’s side. It slammed into the window heavily, gnawing and gnashing its mouth at him. His heart quickened with anxiety at its presence, while he tried to figure out how to peek in to look for keys.

  A gunshot split the air, startling him for a third time. A sudden flurry of movement from behind sent him reflexively into a sidelong dive. He landed heavily on his right shoulder, sending a jolt of numbing pain down his arm. Without thinking, he rolled backward, executing the first back-somersault he had done in close to twenty years, ending in a crouch. He could see the slow undead staggering after him, ten feet away and closing. Its skin sloughed off the left side of its face, and the whole right side of the pantsuit it wore was charred and burned away at the waist, revealing a left leg that was cleaned down to the bone. What had once been a well put-together older woman was now a shambling atrocity. Its jaw opened and a breathless moan issued forth as it lurched towards its prey.

  Tim was suddenly very aware of the dire urgency of his predicament. He was alone and being hunted by the living dead on a rural stretch of highway. He caught, in that moment, just a hint at what Will and Jen had been through on their escape from New Jersey. He scrambled around the rear bumper of a Subaru, putting the body of the wagon between himself and the pursuing dead. The thing staggered after him, its moan warbling a bit in the chill wind as it came around the side of the car. His situation left him in a quandary, one undead alone wasn’t enough to risk shooting and potentially drawing countless others to him, but it certainly was enough to keep him from his goal of securing a vehicle or supplies.

  The quarry and the predator circled the car one entire loop before Tim broke away and jogged a hundred yards further to the west, moving away from the bridge. He wanted to put some distance between himself and the thing while he looked for a way to dispatch it quietly. Once he was well clear of it, he scrambled atop a parked Honda to catch his breath and get a lay of his surroundings. He scanned the area, moving out towards the horizon in every direction. A huge billowing plume of black smoke drifted from ahead of them, he assumed a tanker truck burning, or maybe a gas station. A few undead milled about in that direction, far in the distance. Pending the unforeseen, it looked like he was in the clear. He glanced back at his pursuer, who was still twenty yards distant. He cast a look over its shoulder to the now distant Humvee, if for no other reason than to make sure it was still there. He then turned his concentration to scanning the ground around the vehicle for a melee weapon to dispatch his pursuer with.

  *

  Nick spun at the sound of the roar to see one of the lunch-ladies wearing chef’s whites with a red-and-white striped apron and curly gray hair. Her face was like the rest of the things, gray and lifeless with milky dead eyes. As he finished his assessment of her, she started running around the ovens towards him, her mouth agape. He grabbed a massive food-service steel pot from the shelf to his right. Swinging it over the top of his head, he smashed it into the top of her head as she lunged the final few feet towards him. A great bong sound issued from the pot as the weight of the woman collided with him, taking them both off their feet. They landed heavily atop the still-unconscious form of Christine. The thing atop him wasn’t dead, however; its hand tore at his chest and face. When he was finally able to push the pot out of his way, he could see that her neck had a weird bulge in it and her head was lolling at a strange angle.

  Nick knew her neck was broken, but she was still attacking him furiously. He ignored the scratching hands and the wounds they caused, concentrating on keeping the thing’s snapping mouth away from him and Chris. He planted his hand on the side of its face, just above the bulge on its neck, and hooked his thumb under its jaw. He grew a bit queasy at how easily the head moved on its broken neck. With a bit of a struggle, he was finally able to slide himself out from under the thing’s considerable bulk. He managed to pull it by its head clear of Chris and sat astride it, keeping his hand on its throat as it thrashed its head about, trying to find some flesh to bite into with its gnashing teeth. With his other hand, he scrabbled around trying to find something with which to hit it with. Finally, his fingers slipped through a greasy grate in the floor, a floor drain cover. He tugged at the thing. The grate resisted at first, but eventually pulled clear of the floor. He started smashing the undead lunch lady mercilessly in the face with the five-inch ring of steel. Five minutes later, his fear and rage fully spent, he stood up with shaking hands. He couldn’t even bear to look at the mutilated thing on the floor in front of him. His stomach rebelled at the mere glimpse of it.

  Off in the corner by the door, Nick could see Christine had come to; she shied away from him a bit. Looking down at himself, he could see why: his entire body was covered in gore and blood, bits of bone and brain matter stuck to his forearms. I doubt the stains are going to come out of my new sweatpants. He laughed grimly as he fought back his nausea. He ran to the sink and retched emptily into the basin and turned the water on full blast. The noise of his gagging echoed loudly off the steel basin. A few minutes later, he collapsed onto the floor shuddering, both from the events as well as the cold water he washed his body off with.

  He watched helplessly as Chris moved to the other doors in the large kitchen. On one end was a bay door that was used to bring food in from the delivery truck. Another led to a large storeroom of food, and the third led into the teacher’s cafeteria and lounge. She just flipped the deadbolt to the locked position and walked away. Finally, he managed to pull himself back to his feet and started looking for a weapon. He grabbed a butcher’s cleaver from the prep area and
moved past the door she had just locked. From the sounds on the other side of the door, it was clear that the things were out there as well. He moved over to the walk-in fridge/freezer, opening the door hesitantly. He stepped back at the ready and looked inside once it swung open fully. It was empty, as was the freezer room accessed through it. The final doorway led into the dry food storage room, filled with cases of food and a giant rack of number 10 cans.

  Nick circled the room three times, cleaver in hand, mainly to get the nervous energy out. Finally, it settled on him: they were safe. Trapped, but safe. He sighed heavily, letting the tension of the situation drain from his muscles and moved over to Christine, who was sitting down, just inside the door they had entered from.

  “I want to go home,” he nearly sobbed out as he plopped to the ground next to her. “ I just want to go home.”

  “We’re safe for now, Nick. Someone will come rescue us.”

  He continued babbling for a moment longer and she put her arms around him. A tingle in his loins made him suddenly aware of the soft and warm feel of her skin on his. He shook the carnal thoughts from his head before they made the situation more uncomfortable. He slid down to lay on the floor, peering underneath the door they had entered the kitchen through. Outside, he could see numerous feet moving to and fro behind the food counter. He pushed himself away from the door, slipping on the bloody tiles and falling heavily atop the dead lunch lady. Once he got back onto his feet, he hissed to Christine.

  “Chris, come away from the door,” he beckoned, holding a hand out to her.

  “What?” she asked

  “Shhh,” he admonished, pushing the fear-wrought emotion away at last.

  She took his hand and Nick escorted her over near the bay of sinks. He scooped a shelf of aprons off and onto the floor where they could sit in relative comfort. He wrapped himself in a few of the aprons to provide warmth in the chill kitchen. Looking at Chris, he could see she was waiting for him to explain himself.