We Go On (THE DELL) Read online

  Have I mentioned lately how much I love my wife? If I haven't, I want to point out what a good girl she is. The next thing I knew, I saw an aluminum bat come swinging out of my line of sight and connected with a completely satisfying thud to the side of granny's head. The left side of her face caved in and what was left of her features went slack and she collapsed on top of me.

  I looked up into the beautiful, angelic, smiling face of my wife.

  "Saved your ass again, Scotty," she said.

  The only response I could come up with under the circumstances, and that I was sure wouldn't get me popped with the bat was, "Thanks."

  I rolled granny off and got to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster, reached down, picked up the machete, and started back up the steps to the porch. Kat asked if I hadn't learned my lesson the first time and I pointed out that I was a fast learner. This time, when I got close to the door, I started banging the side of the machete's blade on the door frame and yelling like a fool.

  The thought was that books and TV always says zombies are attracted to noise. So, if I make a lot of noise and there’s anyone not quite dead left in the house, it would come to me where I was now ready for it. After waiting for what my wife thought was an appropriate amount of time—I thought the appropriate amount of time was like twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight—Kat bellowed a “Well?”

  I told her I guessed I'd go in and have a look around.

  “Don’t get bit,” Kat responded. I didn't say anything this time, figured it was pointless. I went slowly, checking every corner, stopping, and listening. Not a peep. In the kitchen I found the remains of granny's last meal. Pa lay on the floor, or what was left of Pa. The coppery stench of blood and the dark red smears drying on the otherwise spotless vinyl floor were proof that the old man had gone out fighting.

  I continued the search of the house until I was satisfied it was empty except for the elderly corpse in the kitchen. The house was clean and neat with that lived in feel, not the sterile feel I'd noticed in some older couple's houses. It was a home. They lived here and cared about each other. Such a shame it ended the way it did. I’m sure he thought she was sick and tried to take care of her, right up to the time she took a bite out of his arm.

  I went back to the kitchen and propped the back door open. As careful of the blood as I could be, I dragged the old man outside and away from the house. I went back in and shut and locked the back door, then went out front where Kat and Mark were waiting. I helped her get Mark into the living room and onto the couch. She helped him to get comfortable. I told her not to go into the kitchen, and then I went back out to the front lawn where the old women still laid. I nudged her with my toe a few times to see if there was any life left in her. When I was fairly certain she was dead-dead, I dragged her around to the back and laid her beside her husband.

  Poking around in the garage, I found a tarp and used it to cover up the couple. I weighed it down with some bricks and apologized for not being able to do more for them. Then I went back to the house and secured the front door. I found a bucket and mop in a small closet off the kitchen and used it to clean up most of the blood. The cleaner from under the sink got rid of most of the smell. I figured that was good enough for now.

  It’s here that I experienced another of those learning points in this new world we found ourselves. Just because a body has been partially devoured by a zombie and appears dead, doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. This was also when we found out there’s no rhyme or reason to how long it takes for a person to come back once infected. Some come back quick, others take a while.

  We stayed in that house two days. We stayed quiet and kept lights to a minimum. There was plenty of food and I found some 12-gauge shotgun shells for my shotgun. Now we had some fire power. I'd have felt better with some 40 cal. for the Glock’s, but that would have to wait. Mark’s leg had gotten worse and he needed medical care. He was in constant pain and the only medicine we'd found in the house for pain was aspirin. It helped at first, but he had rapidly gotten to the point of needing something stronger.

  That's why we decided to leave. To try and find a doctor, nurse, EMT, someone who could tend to Mark’s leg. Kat went upstairs to look for supplies and I went out to the garage to get the old Buick started that the couple owned.

  Kat and I have discussed it many times over the last four years. We never heard a thing until Mark started screaming. With Kat upstairs, I'd had to leave the back door unlocked so I could get back inside. I don't know if it didn't latch when I went out or whether the old man had enough of his brain working to know how to open the door, and since zombies have become a constant part of our lives, I have seen some do things you wouldn't think possible. Climb short ladders, they can't stay coordinated for long ladders. Open doors, windows, and figure out simple latches. That's why now, I insist that everything is locked and guarded.

  When Mark started screaming, I dropped what I’d been doing and ran for the house. As I came through the back door I heard Kat start screaming. I nearly had a heart attack then. The thought of losing her overpowered me and I almost froze. I forced myself to continue to the living room. I saw my wife standing in the doorway from the hall with her hands over her mouth. Mark had stopped screaming by now and his silence was replaced by a wet sucking, tearing sound.

  As I stepped closer to the couch I saw the old gentleman that I had laid next to his wife out behind their house, down on his knees, chewing on Marks throat. Blood pooled on the cushion under Mark’s head and his eyes were starting to take on that glassy look so commonly associated with the dying. He was still alive but just barely. I had the shotgun in my hands but I couldn't take a shot for fear of hitting Mark.

  In retrospect it would have been better to take the shot and end it for both of them. What I did, instead, was yell. The old man raised his head and turned in my direction. I already had the stock to my shoulder and as soon as he was clear of Mark, I fired. All I had was bird shot but from that distance it didn't matter. Pa's head exploded sending gore and blood across the living room floor and onto the wall. The body seemed to wilt and flopped over onto its back and lay still.

  I ran to Mark wanting to help him but knowing it was already too late. I knelt in the same place the old man had been a moment earlier and took Mark’s hand. He turned his head slightly and looked at me. He smiled and then he died. That was it. A smile, a glance, and then gone. Some great cop I turned out to be.

  I was a detective, I was senior. It had been my responsibility to keep those two younger officers alive. In three days I'd lost both of them. How in the hell was I supposed to keep my wife safe when I couldn't keep two trained police officers alive for more than three days? That was a bad time for me. If it hadn't been for Kat I'd have sat down right there and waited. Waited for death, zombies, somebody to come along and tell me what to do. I don't know but I had a hard time getting up off that floor.

  Kat came over and placed her hand on my cheek. When I looked up at her, she said, "We have to go."

  I nodded and dragged myself up right. I told her we couldn't leave yet and she asked why. I pointed at Mark and told her I had to take care of him first. I wasn't going to let what had happened to the old man happen to him. She understood and said she would go back upstairs and finish collecting supplies. As carefully as I could, I carried Mark outside and laid him close to the woman from the house. Then, I went back in and brought the man out and laid him by his wife once more.

  I knew what I had to do but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I couldn't stand to think about bashing Mark’s head in with the bat or blowing it away with the shotgun. The machete wasn't much better. Everything I thought of seemed more and more like I was mutilating my friend. I stood there looking down at his face and just about missed the hand twitching. Then his eyes opened and my decision was made.

  I cleaned the bat and covered Mark with the tarp. He lay close to the old couple but not touching them. I still felt responsible for his death but I
was glad I could stop the change. At least he wasn’t in pain.

  Chapter 2

  The Trip South

  It was just Kat and I now. We loaded all the supplies from the Tahoe and the house into the Buick and I got it started. We headed south toward Arkansas. We thought maybe the Ozark Mountains would be a good place to hold up. Sparsely populated, rugged terrain, plenty of water and game. If we could get re-supplied on ammo and find a cabin up in the mountains, I believed we could live indefinitely, never seeing another person, living or dead.

  The drive south was quiet. We didn't talk much, each of us with our own thoughts. Kat and I are both from a small town outside of Nashville, Tennessee and our parents were still there. We hadn't been able to call them and they were on our minds. As was our son. Alex had been nineteen and going to school at Vanderbilt in Nashville. I got to talk to him briefly on Sunday night and he said he would check on his grandparents. My wife and I both worried about him and our parents.

  Both sets were in their late sixties and, while not feeble, were not at all prepared for this. Kat's father had been a middle school principle and my father was in insurance. Both our mothers were housewives and neither of our fathers had served in the military. My dad had been a hunter earlier in his life, so I knew there were a few guns at their house. Kat's parents didn't like guns and didn't own any. Her parents lived in town and mine lived in a sub-division on the out skirts of Murfreesboro. Alex could get there in about thirty minutes, depending on traffic. I hoped he'd made it and not been in Nashville when everything happened. I knew at some point we would have to discuss trying to find them. I dreaded that conversation. Considering how well we had done so far, I didn't have much hope, but I wouldn't tell my wife that.

  Our drive took us south on Highway 21 through Hillsboro and on down to De Soto where we cut across to Highway 67 into Arkansas. There was little traffic. We saw a few cars moving but they weren’t interested in stopping for a chat. We saw more wrecked and abandoned vehicles now and lots of bodies.

  In some places, you could tell this had been the last stand with bodies of the un-dead piled around a group of vehicles. The blood pool and drag marks told the final outcome. The un-dead were everywhere. We saw them moving through fields as well as along the road. Sometimes in groups as big ten, most by themselves. They just wandered in the ever present search for food. If they were close enough they would reach for the car as we passed. Most just turned and looked before resuming their slow shuffle toward whatever had gotten their attention.

  We stopped outside the little town of Poplar Bluff and spent the night in an empty convenience store. I went in and checked to make sure the place was empty while Kat kept the car running. She parked close to the door in case I needed to make a hasty get away. Once I was sure it was clear, she shut it off and came inside. We were tired but first things first. Kat started collecting food and any of the smaller items that we'd need. Cold medicine, aspirin, batteries, and the like. I found several one-and- one-half gallon red plastic fuel containers and carried an arm load out to pumps to fill them. I put the gas in the trunk while Kat put the food and other items in the back seat. We went back in and continued to scavenge. I found a Taurus 38 caliber revolver in a drawer of a desk in the little back office. There was no spare ammo but the cylinder was full, so we had the six shots from it along with the shotgun shells I'd taken from the old couple’s house.

  We sat by the counter and ate chips and beef jerky and drank flavored water drinks. The lights were off and we left them that way. I'd already checked the back exit and it had an inward opening door with a metal bar securing it. So we stayed up front sitting on the sleeping bags from the sporting goods store in St. Louis. As it got dark outside, Kat fell asleep leaned against my shoulder. I was tired but determined to keep watch. I let her sleep a couple of hours then woke her to relieve me. I told her to wake me in an hour and immediately fell asleep.

  When she woke me I felt better and let her sleep the rest of the night. Next morning, as the sun came up, I fixed coffee in the stores maker and the aroma woke Kat. When I handed her the steaming cup of coffee she smiled and said thanks. It was the first smile I'd seen from her in several days. That smile made me feel better than if I'd gotten a full night’s sleep.

  The store had big insulated cups on a shelf under the coffee maker and after our breakfast of week-old donuts, we filled up two each with the coffee I'd made and got on the road again. I'd studied a map during the night, trying to decide on the best route to anyplace. I knew eventually we would have to try for Nashville but there were a lot of miles between us and there. Miles filled with all kinds of trouble.

  There was the obvious kind, the zombies. My cop mind was also worried about other kinds of trouble. I knew there were going to be people out there preying on the survivors. There have always been people that were pieces of shit and preyed on the suffering of others. I knew they didn't just get up this morning and decide their old way of life was wrong and now they were going to help their fellow man. I worried that running into them with limited ammo might be more dangerous than the groups of un-dead we would surely encounter.

  Memphis was the closest place with a bridge across the Mississippi, but I felt sure they had been destroyed at the same time as the ones in St. Louis. Crossing the big river would be a problem. I still thought that someplace in the Ozarks would be a great first stop. We could hold up, scavenge supplies, and find ammo for our weapons. A new vehicle had to be pretty high on our list. The old Buick ran but it wasn't very reliable and there was no way I'd try a long trip like to Nashville in it.

  The route I decided on continued with highway 67 to Pocahontas, Arkansas. From there, a combination of highways 62 and 115 would get us west to Smithville. There I decided to go north, staying away from the bigger towns like Batesville. So, it would be Maxville instead, where we'd pick up 58 West to Guion. A bridge crossed the White River there and I hoped it would still be intact. From Guion, we'd continue south and pick up 14 West to the area of Mountain View. Mountain View sat in the edge of the Ozark National Forest and I felt sure, with the hunting and fishing there, we'd be able to find stores that had ammo. It was also a great place to camp and vacation, so I hoped to find a deserted cabin where we'd be safe.

  Before, that trip would have been a one day drive and I'd have felt good enough after to chase Kat around the cabin. In those first few days traveling, twenty miles was an epic trip. The further we went the more abandoned cars, wrecks, and zombies we had to deal with. The creatures were everywhere now. We'd figured out by slowing down to around ten miles an hour we could drive through them. It’s too fast for them to get at the doors but slow enough we didn’t damage the vehicle to the point it wouldn't run. We hadn't seen any living people yet. My paranoia said that’s a good thing but it would’ve been swell to have a few more pairs of eyes to help keep watch.

  Around noon we were nearing a small town in Arkansas. The sign on the outskirts said Corning. I knew that Highway 67 turned west here on its way to Pocahontas. There was a lot of smoke on the horizon. Once I noticed it, I started looking around and saw smoke all around us. It was like the whole world was on fire. We didn't know then how right that assessment was.

  People, in an attempt to destroy the zombies, had set fires. While doing the job, it had the nasty side effect of setting everything around on fire. Imagine twenty or thirty of those things walking around, on fire, bumping into stuff. The fire destroyed them but not fast. This along with the fact there wasn’t anybody minding the store in power plants and appliances were still plugged in and working in the deserted houses. There were a lot of fires in those first weeks.

  The dead owned Corning. We didn't try to stop, just continued west. The dead owned the world now. The trip to Mountain View took around three months. We'd stop when we could find some place we trusted. Sometimes we drove all day. Sometimes we'd spend as much as a week at a place. During those three months we had our first encounters with the road gangs, gangs of crim
inals, murderers, and rapists. The zombies were bad, the road gangs were worse. They were equal opportunity killers. We saw evidence of their atrocities in towns and on the side of the roads.

  We learned a lot on that trip. We also started collecting survivors along the way. It wasn't intentional, it just seemed people needed something to hold onto and we had a plan. Most of the survivors we ran into those first weeks were just trying to stay alive day to day. They hadn't thought of a plan. I think they were still under the illusion this wasn't real or would be over in a few weeks.

  By the time we got to Mountain View, we had a group of about fifty. That number fluctuated as high as fifty-nine but attrition had brought it lower. There was a lot of combat in those first months. My old Special Forces training started coming back and I found I remembered a lot of things I'd forgotten—how to organize, how to lead men and women in combat, how to plan.

  And that's how it happened. I'm in charge of a group of about two hundred survivors. It's been four years, eight months, and three days since that Sunday in September. It feels like a lifetime ago. I'm not going to write about all the things that happened during that time. I just wanted you to know the history of how we got here.

  Here, is a small compound in the edge of Lebanon in middle Tennessee.

  Chapter 3

  Hard Lessons

  We've been here about six months now. We found a warehouse on the outskirts of Lebanon and made it fairly secure. This is the first time things have been calm enough for me to even think about keeping a journal. Kat’s been after me to write down all this stuff. She says it will be important in the future. I'm just beginning to hope there's going to be a future. It was iffy for a while.