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

  “Those things are waiting on the other side of the doors, a lot of them.”

  Within a few minutes, the adrenaline high wore off entirely, draining the energy from Nick’s muscles. He lay down, setting his head on a pillow of striped wool and nodded off into a fitful sleep.

  Christine nervously looked around the kitchen, her eyes darting from door to door. Christine pushed aside her own misery and terror, and seeing him shivering on the floor, she stood and moved to the nearest oven, cranked the knob to broil, and opened the door. She then dragged over the largest pots she could handle and started filling them in the sinks. Once they were full to the point where she could still manage their weight, she dragged them into the walk-in freezer. Over the course of half an hour, she had every pot and pitcher in the kitchen filled and stacked in the freezer. She plugged the drains on two of the three sinks and filled them to capacity as well. Only then did she take a break. Nick stirred and looked at her.

  “Sit up, Nick. I found a first-aid kit above the sink. Let me clean out and bandage your feet.”

  He did as he was told and the last of the lethargy was thrust from his body the instant she started digging glass shards painfully out of the soles of his feet. The next twenty minutes were the most painful of his life. He was sweating and had tears and snot running down his face by the time she taped the last bandage around his foot. He blew his nose in an apron, wiping his eyes clear at the same time.

  “I think I got it all. Sorry about the pain,” she said with a wince.

  “No problem. Thanks. I think,” he responded with a weak smile. “That oven is really cranking out the heat.”

  “Yeah, might as well be comfortable while we are stuck in here.”

  Nick nodded and slid on his butt back to the door. His feet had seen enough agony in the last couple hours, no need to tax them with more. Looking under the door again, he could see that the crowd outside the door had thinned quite a bit. There were only three sets of legs moving about beyond.

  *

  Grayson moved forward hesitantly, having a sneaking suspicion that the scouts hadn’t been thorough enough in their estimation of the town’s defenses. Deflecting blame was another of his strengths, though among his colleagues at the Capitol, it was obligatory and accompanied narcissism. As he crept forward, he could see the silhouette forms of some of his men in withdrawal, backlit by the row of headlights atop the hill in the distance. He could see them clambering up and through the hole the Peterbilt had punched through the wall. Many more forms could be seen running in his direction on the roadway. Alarm bells rang in his head as he couldn’t be certain whether they were still living or if they were undead. He quickly dodged to the edge of the road, then into the woods, moving out of sight of the fleeing forms.

  From his vantage in the woods, he watched as the remnants of his soldiers filtered down the road, back towards their camp. He knew that morale had suffered a major blow and his mind already worked to fix the problem. He crouched down, drawing his pocketknife out and ran the blade high across his cheekbone, creating a nasty little cut that bled instantly. He took two handfuls of dirt and rubbed them across his face, matting some into his hair. He waited patiently for a few minutes, until he was sure the rout was complete before he stepped back out onto the road. He strode onto the tarmac, heading in the same direction of his fleeing men just moments before.

  Grayson already knew his play as he started on his way back to camp and he started rehearsing some lines in his head. He would kill at least one of the deserters in retaliation for leaving the battle before the order was given. He might tell a story about his own ‘survival’ if he deemed it necessary, then he would take his men to the next conquest. He would choose a smaller group, a family or maybe a small encampment as his next target, easy pickings to bring morale back up. He was so intent on his mental rehearsal and his next plan of action that he didn’t notice the footsteps closing on him from behind. A cold chill shot up his spine as the voice cut through his thoughts.

  “Drop that fucking gun and turn around, asshole,” a stern voice said.

  Grayson lowered his M4 to the ground slowly. With a heavy sigh, he pushed aside the immediate panic and switched gears to turn his charm on. He hazarded a look at the man, whose silhouette showed his profile. He held a pistol aimed at his chest and sported a Sam Elliot mustache to match his gravelly voice. Grayson looked him up and down trying to get a read on the man. Simple rancher, he thought. Protecting his family, his town, his people.

  “Sir, I beg of you, don’t kill me. Grayson has my family and he’ll kill them if I don’t do as he says,” he blurted out pleadingly, with a slightly southern drawl.

  He wasn’t sure the effect this appeal would have on the man so he held back on the tears and blubbering, but had them ready to use them at a moment’s notice. After waiting a long minute, the man’s expression did not change as he uttered his next sentence.

  “Alright, let’s go get them, then. I’d like to meet this Grayson fellow in person.”

  “Thank you!” he called back, forcing hope and appreciation into his tone. “I’ll find a way to repay your kindness.”

  Fuck! he screamed internally, doing his best to hide his frustration. Take your time, he warned himself. Plenty of time to change the circumstances on the way back to camp.

  He reached down to pick up his discarded rifle and received a kick in the face for it. He staggered away from the heavy blow from the tip of the man’s western boot, blinking away the stars clouding his vision.

  “I tell you to pick that up?” he heard the man ask. “You know where the camp is, now start moving.”

  *

  About fifty feet further west, Tim noticed a vehicle in the breakdown lane with its trunk ajar. He slid off the roof of the Honda and made for it without pause. After a quick glance around to make sure he was alone, he swung the trunk of the burgundy sedan fully up, exposing a set of jumper cables lying atop a flat tire. Moving around the vehicle, he could see that the front passenger’s side was jacked up and a bloody tire iron lying on the ground next to the jack. He slid to a stop at the wheel, grabbing the gore-caked iron rod. He looked around furtively with a white-knuckled grip on the weapon in hand, half-panicked, before he spotted the undead in pursuit. It staggered free of the traffic and onto the shoulder, moving purposefully towards him. He clenched his teeth and ran towards the thing, throwing his feet out in a drop kick, planting them in its chest. The force of his kick sent it tumbling backward and down onto the snow-crusted gravel underfoot. As it struggled to right itself, Tim came down with a vicious overhead blow with the iron bar. The first blow stuck heavily, but failed to crack the skull, so Tim reared back and struck again and again until the job was done.

  He yanked the bar free with blood-soaked hands and forearms and looked nervously around. The raucous noise of the undead thrashing about inside nearby cars, slamming at the doors and windows in an attempt to get out at him, left him feeling vulnerable and paranoid at every shift of the wind. Again, he alit atop a car to ensure that nothing moved nearby on the roadway. He started to calm down, forcing his breathing into a slow and steady rhythm. He could see that he was a large distance from the Humvee, probably close to half a mile, and knew that Will wouldn’t be able to cover him with the SAW at this distance.

  Eager to get his task done with and get back to safety, he quickly scanned the traffic on the outside edge of the highway for a van or SUV that would suit their needs. After a minute of careful consideration, he saw three possible candidates and moved towards the first one, a gold Ford Windstar with Texas plates. Looking in through the passenger’s side window, he could see there were no occupants, nor any keys in the ignition. Next, he checked a huge Chevy Suburban that also was sans key, though it wouldn’t have mattered as there were three undead children seat-belted inside of the thing. They furiously lashed at the windows or clawed at the air, desperate to get at him.

  Tim hadn’t really taken all too much time to try and d
igest what had been happening over the past couple weeks; he had been too busy concentrating on scavenging, survival, and his family’s safety to dwell long on anything beyond the immediacy of need. What little downtime he had was spent sleeping, as his body was ill-used to the labor intensive days. For the first time, it really settled into him that this was real and this was widespread, that there would be no ‘safe-zone.’ He started to consider what was going on. Why are these dead things still moving? In the case of Lilly, Bjorn’s wife, it seemed apparent, she had been bitten, infection killed her, and she arose as one of the undead. He considered the possibility of biological/chemical warfare. Was there somewhere an army, amassed to invade? He considered the thought for a brief moment before dismissing it. He doubted it was a precursor to an invasion. Any army would have invaded the country already, or at least what little he had seen of it was devastated, ripe for an invader. Terrorism? He could only relate the catastrophe to the zombie movies he had grown up on. It seemed silly to him that of all the possibilities for the apocalypse, global warming, nuclear war, meteor strikes, etc. that the end would come in a B-movie format. He couldn’t bring himself to call them zombies, it seemed too absurd, even if it appeared that was exactly what they were.

  He shoved these thoughts aside as, moving back toward the Humvee, he approached the Time-Warner cable van he had encountered earlier. He took a few moments to steady himself and get his focus back to deal with the undead inside. The rest of the vehicles he examined were a no-go; this one was his final hope for the day. The undead inside still smashed its face against the windows, smearing gore across it as it gnashed its teeth at him. He walked straight up to the door and grabbed the handle of the passenger’s side door, swinging it wide open without hesitation. He knew if he paused for even a moment that his courage would waiver. He jumped back quickly as the door swung outward, spilling the undead to the blacktop at his feet. Three rapid strikes with the bar left the thing unmoving, thick reddish-black ichor oozing from its ruined skull.

  He stood there on the windswept highway for the span of a dozen heartbeats, looking into the van. He breathed heavily as he waited for another to come out from the rear compartment, when he noticed the keys dangling from the ignition. Hope sprung inside him. He decided rather than climbing up into the cab and risking an encounter in tight quarters that he would open the rear doors first. A moment later, he stood in front of the rear doors, grasping the handle. He took a deep breath through gritted teeth and blew it out through pursed lips to steady himself. He yanked and the door swung free as he jumped back a few feet.

  Empty.

  Tim breathed a sigh of relief at the piles of bundled cables and cable boxes that lay all about the rear compartment. Tools lay scattered about the floor of the van in apparent disarray. The boom mechanism inside blocked most of the walk-thru to the cab, leaving only a couple cracks big enough to fit a hand through. He closed the rear doors and returned to the open passenger’s side, sliding in and pulling the door shut behind him. Without hesitation, he twisted the key, his hopes hinging on the results. The motor cranked slowly for a lengthy, despair-inducing amount of time, but finally turned over and roared to life. He revved the engine a bit, a habit left over from his first car, a 1976 Buick that would stall whenever he left it to idle when the temperature dipped below freezing. The gas tank read that it was half-full.

  He let the van idle for a few minutes, wondering how the thing would fare at pushing vehicles out of its path; certainly not as good as the Humvee, but he hoped it would suffice. He sat, spinning the radio tuner in hopes of hearing something before he gave up and switched off the ignition. He thought he had let it run long enough and was comfortable that it would start again when needed. The engine sputtered into silence, leaving him to wonder if the running and revving of the motor had drawn the attention of any nearby undead.

  *

  “What do we do now?” Chris quietly asked from across the room.

  Nick slid back to her before answering, not wanting to alert the things outside of their presence.

  “You have your phone?”

  “Ms. Metteson collects them at the start of class. I didn’t have time to grab it when those things came in through the door. How about you?”

  Nick looked down at his ridiculous outfit of skin-tight pink sweatpants and aprons and threw his hands up.

  “Right, nevermind,” she said, feeling stupid at the question after seeing him run in the library in nothing but swim trunks.

  “I guess we just wait until someone rescues us then. The cops or…” he trailed off.

  “What are they?” Chris asked nervously. “I mean, they are our teachers and classmates, but what happened to them? Why are they doing this?”

  “I don’t know, Chris, but at least we are safe for the moment, and we have food and water. We just need to hang in there until the cops get here.”

  They spent the next few hours waiting, looking under the doors often for some sign of rescue. Eventually, they grew disinterested with the bleak prospect, figuring that if help came, it would most likely require gunfire of some sort. That kind of noise would provide them with more notice than the view through a one-inch gap under the door. Nick turned his attention to the room they occupied. In the center of the kitchen were four stoves, set up two by two, with their backs butting together, above which hung a heavy stainless steel exhaust vent. The steel sinks took up much of the exterior wall, next to the roll-top bay door. Shelves of baking sheets and pots and pans lined the walls on either side of the doors leading to the cafeteria and teacher’s lounge. On the fourth wall was the walk-in and can storage rooms.

  Nick busied himself preparing some food. His mother had gone back to work years ago and neither of his parents got home before seven in the evening. He was used to cooking for himself. He pulled a pair of Salisbury steaks out of the freezer and threw them in a warm water bath, still shrink-wrapped.

  “You’re really going to eat that shit?” Christine asked from across the room, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Meat,” she quipped. “Is murder.”

  “Oh, you’re vegetarian?”

  “You’re not?” she replied snarkily.

  “Never really thought about it,” Nick said, shrugging his shoulders, a bit embarrassed at her criticism.

  “Well, you need to,” she said a bit more forcefully, walking over to the sink.

  She grabbed the steaks out, holding them by the corner of plastic like it was filled with excrement and threw them in the garbage can.

  “That was a living breathing animal, you know. It had feelings and dreams, a mother and maybe some children.”

  “Well, what are we supposed to eat then?” he barked back at her, starting to get defensive.

  “Don’t get upset,” she said. “I’ll cook.”

  An hour later, they were devouring bean and cheese burritos.

  “Well? How were they?”

  “Good, thanks,” Nick responded.

  “Didn’t miss the meat, did you?”

  “No, not at all,” he lied.

  “Told ya!” she shot back with a wide grin, satisfied with herself.

  Chris pulled a pack of playing cards out of her bag and started dealing. They played gin rummy for the next few hours, throwing a game of poker and blackjack in here and there to break things up. Finally, they decided to retire for the evening. Awkwardly, Nick started making his bed across the room from the apron-nest.

  “Listen, Nick, you don’t have to sleep next to me if you don’t want, but it makes a lot of sense if we do, for safety and warmth.”

  Nick really wanted to but he was afraid he would find himself in an awkward situation; his pubescent hormones caused him to get an erection every time the wind blew, nevermind lying next to a girl. She came over and took him by the hand and walked him back to the nest. Within a few minutes, he could hear the sound of her sleeping behind him. He tossed and turned for a few hours before
he was able to drift off to sleep.

  The next few days played out much the same as the evening before. The two grew closer, played cards and traded stories. All while Nick’s feet slowly healed with a great deal of itching.

  On the morning of the sixth day, over a breakfast of eggs and toast, Nick decided to bring up an idea he had the day before.

  “Are you good at climbing?” he asked.

  “Huh? I guess so.”

  “If we can rip that exhaust hood off, do you think you could climb up through the hole and onto the roof?”

  “To what end?” she asked, looking at him curiously.

  “Well, for one, we can get an idea of what is going on out there, maybe we can flag down some help. Besides, maybe some fresh air would do us some good.”

  “You think we can rip it down?”

  “Let’s try,” he said, smiling as he gingerly climbed atop one of the range tops.

  The two struggled for nearly an hour, causing a serious din. When they finally gave up and stepped away from the hood, the sounds of heavy banging on the doors leading to the cafeteria and teacher’s lounge continued on for many hours afterward. The two huddled in the gloomy corner of the kitchen long into the night. Both were on the verge of hysteria.

  *

  Tim ran back to the Humvee, half because he was elated that he had found a suitable replacement, half out of the tension and fear that had built in him being alone among the undead. He also realized that he was happy to be returning to his tribe…or is it pack? He thought as he slid into back into the driver’s seat.

  “I found a van!” he announced to the trio in the Humvee, smiling broadly at his family.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Luna cried, elated to see him.

  Laura grinned, and she and Luna started clapping together, chanting, “Yay! Yay! Yay!”