100 Days in Deadland (23 page)

I’d traveled too far north.

Clutch’s farm was southwest of town. Camp Fox was southeast of town.

I never should’ve gotten close to Chow Town.

Without a GPS or compass, I’d let the woods guide me right to the backyard of a large two-story house in a row of cookie-cutter two-story houses in a newer sub-development for as far I could see.

“Sonofabitch.”

I walked past the play set and up to the patio door. Certainly, not
all
of these houses had zeds inside. I crossed my fingers. After looking inside and seeing no signs of zeds or violence, I rapped on the glass. A clamor erupted from somewhere deep inside the house.

I sprinted over a short chain-link fence and into the next yard. That was the good thing about zeds. They clung to the
out of sight, out of mind
philosophy and lost focus on their prey quickly if they couldn’t see, hear, or smell it. But once they’d homed in on a target, they could be damn near relentless.

I didn’t even knock at the next house. I could see overturned chairs, something dead and furry and on the floor, and a shape hovering at the kitchen window. I crept away from the patio door.

Finally, at the fifth house—one with a nice rock garden in its backyard—I rapped on the glass and waited and rapped again.

Silence greeted me.

Even better, the patio door had been left unlocked, and it slid open silently and smoothly. I pulled out my larger knife and stepped inside, carefully closing and locking the door behind me.

The air was stale and hinted of rotten fruit but didn’t contain the all-too-familiar stench of infection and decay.

I tiptoed across the open dining room and noticed drawers left ajar in the kitchen as though someone had left in a hurry. I bypassed the kitchen to the adjacent living room. No signs of struggle. Checked out the hallway, closets, a nicely finished basement, and upstairs. The master bed hadn’t been made yet, and several shirts lay strewn across the mattress. “Thank God,” I muttered and hustled downstairs. Whoever lived here must’ve left town as soon as the outbreak hit. If they got lucky, maybe they got to wherever it was they’d been headed.

Back in the kitchen, I turned on the faucet. Nothing, as expected. Before checking the refrigerator for liquids, I walked into the large walk-in pantry and smiled. Inside was bliss. It wasn’t fully stocked by any means, but a dozen or so cans of food, several bottles of wine, and a case of flavored water waited on the shelves. I went straight for the water, tearing through the plastic, and grabbed two bottles. I chugged the first down without stopping.

I leaned back against a shelf, careful to avoid the fuzzy green bread. There was enough here to last me a week, maybe longer. Since this neighborhood hadn’t been looted yet, the Dogs must’ve had the same idea as us when it came to Chow Town. The risk of drawing out a herd of zeds in this town was too high to take as long as we could still find food in solitary, secluded farmhouses with no more than a few zeds to deal with at one time.

It was a good reminder that I had to remain silent and unseen. I’d already stirred up zeds in at least three nearby houses. I could only hope
they’d given up by now and gone back to lumbering around their homes. They could easily break out of the homes, especially through the all-glass patio doors. Clearly, they hadn’t had a reason to…until possibly now.

No matter. I planned to
be back to the farm by dark, which was only an hour or so away.

I closed the kitchen blinds and patio shades to hide my movements.

I grabbed a can of fruit cocktail and looked around for a can opener. “Of course,” I muttered when I noticed the power opener on the counter. Rather than wasting time hunting around for tools, I opted instead for a jar of peanuts while sipping a second bottle of water.

Finished, I grabbed my knife off the countertop, and headed back up to the master bedroom and adjacent bathroom. I peeled off my clothes caked with sludge, blood, sweat, and dirt.

Without water pressure, a shower was impossible. Instead, I grabbed a half-empty bottle of shampoo and soap from the shower. I dipped a washcloth in the tank behind the toilet and thoroughly scrubbed myself. After I’d used nearly all the water in the tank and made a mess of the floor, I grabbed a tube of Neosporin and Band-Aids for my palm that still oozed blood.

Leaving the wrappers on the counter, I headed into the walk-in closet and sifted through clothes until I found a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that fit. I hurriedly dressed, fastened my belt and weapons, and ventured to the garage. I tapped lightly on the door and heard nothing in response. This time, rather than going slowly, I threw open the door and scanned the three stalls.

I sighed with a smile and leaned back against the wall. Not only was the garage clear, but a Ford sat in one stall. After a quick sweep under the sedan, I opened the car door and a beeping tone reverberated throughout the garage, energetically telling me that both the keys were still in the ignition and the battery wasn’t dead. I turned the battery on and found that the car still had over a half tank of gas. I turned off the battery and patted the dash. “You’ll do just fine,” I said as I hopped back into the house.

It took me several trips to carry all the food to the car. After another search of the house, I found a baseball bat. By then, the sun had long since set. Without knowing the roads—and roadblocks—in this area, I did one final sweep of the house before settling in for the night in an upstairs bedroom facing the street.

Even though there was no way zeds knew where I was, I didn’t sleep well. After an especially violent nightmare of Clutch being attacked by zeds, I shot awake as dawn was just beginning to light up the street.

I went down on a knee to look out the window, and fell back on my butt. Now, at least twenty zeds milled around the street below me, sniffing the air, as though sensing prey in the area. Their sheer numbers could crush the car with me in it.

I cupped my head in my hands.
How the fuck…

After watching the herd for over an hour, I accepted the fact that they weren’t going anywhere, and I changed my bandages and ate cereal out of the box.

And waited.

Their numbers never changed throughout the day. Some came, some went. Zeds shuffled in lazy circles as though waiting for food to come to them.

It wasn’t until night returned that something snagged their attention and the street cleared except for a few stragglers.
Now.
I hustled to the garage. When I opened the car door, something thumped on the other side of the garage door.

I stood there, holding my breath.

Another thump.

I edged closer to the garage door and inched onto my toes to peer out the high windows. Under the moonlight, I could see a single zed on the other side, but as it banged at the door, it drew the attention of others. I came back down on my heels, my breath coming in short pants. Soon, a second pair of fists joined the first at the door.

“Shit!” I whispered.

If I waited any longer, the noise could draw out every zed in the area. It probably wouldn’t take more than the weight of twenty or so to push in a garage door.

They had me exactly where they wanted me: in a gift box, ready to open.

I did a slow three-sixty, looking for anything to distract the zeds, trying to concentrate above the ruckus.

Then it hit me.

Get ’em where I want ’em
.

I wanted them as far from the garage as possible.

I went back to the car, pulled out the bat and headed back into the house. I headed down the hallway and to the office near the front door. I took a swing and smashed the front windows.
Home run.

I rushed back to the garage, looked out through the windows and found the thumping had stopped. I tossed the bat onto the front seat and grabbed the cord on the garage door.

One, two, three.

I yanked the cord, and the door opened with a clatter. I jumped into the car and slammed the door shut as I slid the key into the ignition. The car roared to life, and I had the tires squealing in reverse.

A zed slammed into the car before I was out of the garage. The car lurched over its body. More zeds shuffled from the darkness, filling the street with their relentless groans. As soon as I was on the street, I slammed on the brakes, shoved the car into drive, and rammed into zeds head-on.

The car snagged on bodies as I drove over them, and the right wheel ended up off the ground, leaving only the left front wheel with any traction, and it was burning rubber uselessly. I rocked the car between gears, using reverse and forward to try to nudge free like I was stuck in snow.

By now, the zeds that I’d drawn to the house had turned their attention to the car. The window behind me shattered. I pulled out my Beretta while keeping my foot on the gas. Zeds pushed against the car as they tried to get to me from all sides. The extra weight pushed the car forward, and the right tire caught traction. The car took off, pitching to a near stop when plowing through a wall of zeds trying to block me in.

Somehow, the car made it through and the strays slid off the hood. I took the first right, realizing too late that it was a cul-de-sac. “Fuck!” Spinning around, I got back on the main street.

When the number of zeds dissipated, I chanced a glance in the rearview mirror. One reached out to me under the moonlight. It looked young—too much like Jase—though months in the sun had baked its skin into a jaundiced husk.

I sped away. Since I was on the edge of town, it took only three turns, some lawn driving around a roadblock, and a couple curb-checks before Chow Town disappeared behind me.

I drove west until I came to a familiar stretch of road. The car made a clacking sound and the steering wheel shuddered if I went over twenty, not that I could drive any faster without headlights, which would give away my location. According to the car’s clock, it took me over an hour to make it to the gravel road the farm was on.

As I turned onto the gravel road, I slammed on the brakes. Taillights in the distance signaled a vehicle leaving the farm. After the taillights disappeared and no other lights appeared, I crept forward and parked the car by the garage of Jase’s old house, making sure it was hidden from the road. After a wistful glance at the beat-up sedan with an arm caught in the bumper, I stepped into the night.

I didn’t like the idea of walking at night, but I couldn’t risk driving into an ambush at the farm. The smell of smoke was strong in the air, and a bad feeling formed in my gut.

As I closed the distance between Jase’s house and Clutch’s farm, the smell of smoke grew stronger every minute. When I noticed the garbage truck had been shoved into the ditch, I avoided the lane and walked through a field that never got planted and into the trees enclosing the farm. I crept soundlessly through the woods, expecting a zed to pop out from behind every tree.

Not a single zed sniffed me out, likely thanks to the blanket of smoke over the area. Soon, I could see a glow through the trees and hear the crackle of a large campfire. I cautiously moved close enough to see the yard.

Or what was left of it. I gasped and covered my mouth. “
No
.”

The Dogs had burned everything to the ground.

I gripped the baseball bat as I fell to my knees. The house was nothing but a charred framework and a pile of burning ash and blackened debris with still-glowing embers.

This farm had become my home when the outbreak hit. It was a fortress. I was safe here. Months of hard work, the supplies, weapons, all the food we’d stored,
gone
.

It made no sense. Clutch had willingly joined the Dogs. Why would they destroy his farm? They wouldn’t do something like this to one of their own. Which meant…

“No.” I had to lean on the bat to keep from collapsing.

Clutch was dead.

I clenched my eyes closed. If only I’d gotten here earlier. If I’d returned to the farm last night, I could’ve prevented this somehow.

I chortled. Who was I kidding?

Like I could’ve single-handedly held back the Dogs.

Furious, I pulled myself back to my feet. In the distance, I saw two men with shaved heads leaning against their truck parked in the lane several hundred feet away. Too far away for me to overhear their conversation. I looked for more Dogs but found none.

I heard a rustle to my right and saw three zeds encircle me, groaning through jaws that no longer worked. They were badly burned, their arms and faces charred.

I grabbed the baseball bat and swung, crushing the first zed’s skull like it was a T-ball. The second zed was on me too quickly and I kicked its ankles together, knocking its feet out from under it. I left it floundering on the ground, while I swung at the third, nailing it in the chest. The force knocked it back, and my second swing crumpled its head.

After smashing the zed on the ground, I turned back to the house.

All the food, weapons…
gone.

Everything Clutch, Jase, and I had built was destroyed. The Dogs had burned the fuel tanks, and it looked like the explosions took down two of the three sheds. Only the smallest shed still stood, though its door was open, and I suspected any valuable contents gone. They’d even slashed the tires on the poor Prius.

After giving the house a final brokenhearted look, I headed past the burnt gardens, careful to keep the still-burning house between the Dogs and me, and cautiously around the backside of the largest shed, held up only by Clutch’s combine. Feathers littered the ground, though I couldn’t find any sign of the chickens.

Coming down on a knee, I pulled at the tin and debris as quietly as possible. Blood dripped from my hand. When I finally pulled away the last bit of plywood, I sighed in relief.

The Dogs hadn’t discovered Clutch’s TEOTWAWKI bunker.

I opened the round door and climbed down a few steps. With one final look around, I noticed the Dogs were still lounging by their truck, and I tugged the plywood up so it’d cover the bunker door.

“Damn Dogs,” I muttered before shutting the door and descending into the darkness.

Knowing I was secure, I curled up on the floor and slept.

That was, until the door overhead opened.