Winter's Salvation (26 page)

             
He ran past the couch Drew was sleeping on and slapped him on the head.  “Wake the girls.”  Eric whispered as he ran to the side door.  He arrived at the door the same time the pounding feet did and the door knob began to turn and then stopped abruptly.  Once the house was cleared Naomi went around every door and ensured they were locked.  The door knob shook vigorously as the intruders wanted to get in. 

             
“Did you lock the door?”  A voice from the other side asked.  There was no response to the question, but Eric imagined a person shaking their head no.  “Then some son of a bitch decided to make themselves comfortable in our house.”  There was a short pause as the intruders thought about what they were going to do. 

             
Eric never thought of them as being the intruders.  After the many houses they had stayed in, the thought of actually breaking into a person’s house had left them a long time ago.  Never once had they been confronted about being in a vacant house and there was nothing in here to indicate this house was taken, but apparently they were now the intruders. 

             
“Are we going to break in?”  The second voice asked. 

             
Eric turned to the bedroom as the outlines of Drew, Sam and Naomi made their way through the door frame engulfed by the deep darkness of the master bedroom. 

             
The first voice whispered in response, “Their probably sleeping.” 

             
Eric had no idea what they would do or who these people outside the door were, but he felt that these people were not the type to shake hands and except them into their home with open arms, so he decided to respond in his own way.  He grabbed the slide and snapped it back.  The sound of the pistol arming was louder than either of their pounding feet or their conversation and his response to the intruder’s statement was heard loud and clear through the door. 

             
The new intruders stood not moving and then one of them spoke a short reply, “Oh.”  The sound of two sets of feet traveled down the stairs and were able to be heard making their way to the ground floor, but much lower and without the enthusiasm they had when they traveled up. 

             
Eric looked to the three in the door way and Naomi said quietly, “We leave at the break of dawn.” 

**********

              Eric and Naomi didn’t find sleep the rest of the night and were ready to leave hours before the sun rose.  The following morning was cool, but the humidity from last night’s storm lingered over them.  They picked up four beach bikes as they passed some of the beach water front houses and made their way away from the resort area.  They peddled quickly to avoid last night’s visitors and within a few hours they were peddling into what Naomi believed to be Virginia Beach.  Their food supplies were running low, but they began to feel confident that they would find something to eat, as they started heading into another resort town.  They peddled to the back side of the beach houses and began to peddle up the sandy streets. 

             
The beach houses in this area were not as luxurious as the homes they stayed in at the outer banks and they were a lot closer.  They passed a few undead that were sitting on the side of the road against a car or were in between houses just standing there rocking or walking away from them on the street.  With every ghoul they passed a low moan would bellow out of them and alert the walking undead. 

             
The vast majority of the side streets were clear, but every once in a while they were forced to squeeze in between a parked car that was stopped in the middle of the road.  It was when they slowed to swerve around a few parked cars in the middle of an intersection, Sam looked down the adjacent street and noticed a grocery store in a little strip mall.  Hunger was beginning to communicate with them through their stomachs, so Sam made the suggestion they should stop.   

             
Cars were cluttered on the main roads that lined the outer edge of the strip mall, so they parked their bikes across the street and planned to make their way to the supermarket on foot.  As soon as they got off their bikes they heard a familiar sound they hadn’t heard in a long time.  The sound of an engine from a large vehicle could be heard making its way down the street crashing into everything that was not secured to the concrete.   

             
Soon a red pickup truck was seen racing down the side walk and over the grassy medium.  The large truck had three people seated in the front and four people riding in the back in the bed.  The four in the back were holding on effortlessly and moved expertly with the rough rocking of the vehicle.  Their heads were on a swivel watching and looking, through dark sunglasses, for any undead that they were ridding up on or have passed.  They pulled to the front of the grocery store and all at once the four in the back jumped over the sides of the bed and ran into the store.  The four that ran in were wearing all black clothing and exchanged their sunglasses for clear face shields, as the dark shadows of the store swallowed them.  They had nothing in their hands, but each one had a weapon of some sort.  Two had machetes hanging from their sides, one had what looked to be a small axe and the other had a baseball bat slung over his shoulder, by a looped piece of rope.  As the four ran into the grocery store a heavier man on the passenger side jumped out and stood at the front door with a bat held in his hand.  The driver stood by the driver’s side door and watched over the random parked cars in the parking lot.  The one man that sat in the middle was shorter than the others and was very wiry, but what made this man stand out amongst the others was his long blond dread locks that hung over a dark tinted face shield.  He pulled a large machete from a green scabbard attached to his hip and stood with the driver. 

             
The groaning of hungry undead echoed from the street they had just traveled down.  Eric pushed the crew out of eye sight from the ghouls making their way down the street.  Then undead began crawling from the parked vehicles and rounded the corners from the direction the red truck came from. 

             
Crouching down between two cars they watched these mysterious men.  As the undead made their way through the parking lot four men came out of the supermarket with arms full of groceries.  Cereals, boxed pastas, and canned goods were thrown into the back of the truck.  The dread locked man scanned the parking lot then turned to them and screamed, “One more trip!” 

             
The parking lot was beginning to fill with lumbering undead and Eric didn’t like the amount that began to fill in between the cars.  He felt that his escape routes were beginning to close. 

             
They watched the strange men as the zombies began making their way closer toward them.  The man with the dread locks and the heavier one that stood watch at the door ran out to the closest ghoul that was to the left of the store.  The heavier man stood in front of the undead that reached wildly for him.  Its mouth opened and closed as if it were already eating his thick flesh.  The smaller man ran wide around and behind the undead, taking the machete to the base of its neck.  The ghoul dropped instantly and lay still.  As soon as it collapsed both of the men ran to the next one that was making its way to the store.  They repeated this same act again and again and with each undead that fell they moved on confident that it was not going to get up. 

             
Eric was amazed at the accuracy and confidence these men had, but was very upset that they would not be visiting this grocery store anytime soon.  They were all hungry, but they could not risk running into a store that was quickly becoming over populated with undead.  The four men ran from the store with another load of boxed and canned goods, tossed them into the bed of the truck and jumped in.  The driver honked his horn and the large and dread locked man ran back to the truck and jumped into the front seat.   

             
Seeing their escape routes closing, Eric and the rest of his crew got up and began running up the street perpendicular to the one they were on.  The heavier man was the last to enter the truck and he caught a glimpse of them running.  Eric turned as the man hollered.  “Come with us.”  The four in the bed of the truck turned quickly and then the truck started to move slowly forward. 

             
Undead were starting to gather quickly around the strip mall and the truck would not be able to make it to them without battling a few obstacles.  A series of cars divided them and between those cars lined scores of undead.  Eric did not reply, but forced his crew up the street.  The heavier man jumped into the passenger seat and the truck road away with no attempt to reach them.  Eric did however hear one of the men holler as they drove away, “Keep traveling up the beach!” and then the message was drowned out by the groaning of undead that now turned their attention to them.        

             
The streets were full of movement now, so they decided to make their way back to the beach houses.  The main street was crawling with the undead answering the calls of other ghouls.  They ran down the beach front passing a few small duplex houses and ran up to the first one that they came across with the front door open.  They barged in hoping no undead were able to actually make out what house they went into, and closed the door as quietly as possible. 

             
This house was unoccupied or at least it was vacant during last night’s storm.  The reason they knew this is because the windows were left open and the couches under the windows were saturated with rain water.  The carpet bubbled and pooled around their feet with each step as they walked over it.  Eric made a quick inspection of the house and by the time he came back down the stairs he found Naomi, Drew and Samantha digging through the cabinets. 

             
There was enough food here to last them a few days.  Most of it was junk food such as potato chips and little snack cakes, but it was something to fill the void in their stomachs.              

Chapter 13

The Village

They set out the next morning and agreed they would follow the beach up and continue to travel north.  There were more undead on the beach now since yesterdays rendezvous, but the ghouls had a harder time traveling through the sand than they did.  A few would get excited and try to trudge their way through it, but the most decomposed zombies no longer picked their legs up to give chase and wound up falling face first over the piles of sand they made from their shuffling feet.     

They traveled the soft sand beach for almost an hour before the strain of their legs became unbearable.  They moved to the wet sand to alleviate the burn in their legs, but their shoes and socks started to become sodden with ocean water.  Even though it would be a little more hazardous they came to the unanimous decision to travel the street just beyond the first set of beach houses.  

The further they walked on the streets
the fewer undead began to emerge from the houses and buildings.  Initially when they decided to walk on the main street the cars were packed tightly due to the haste to exit the vacation beach resort.  The further north they traveled the vehicles began to become sporadic. Soon the vehicles began to become positioned in an organized manner.  They looked as if someone had taken each car and purposely pushed it off to the side of the road.  The vehicles were positioned with the trunks facing the road and were parked so close to each other nothing could squeeze between them.  The houses and streets seemed to come to a halt and the clean paved street they were traveling on turned into an asphalt path that was unkempt.  The street still existed, but no one would ever know it until they stood on the road itself. 

A vehicle has traveled this road on a routine bases due to the two distinct tracks made on the path and they all had the feeling it was the red truck they saw the day before. 
Random weeds grew up to Naomi’s waist from sand covered cracks, and the brush from the sides of the road reached into the middle of it, brushing all who traveled down it.  No stores were built in front of them and to the left they could see a few old dark buildings off in the distance, but they seemed to die down as well the further they walked this old road.  The path began to slowly turn away from the beach, but the sea wind continued to touch their cheeks. 

They traveled down the sandy
road that changed to dirt, for what felt to be everlasting and it was beginning to turn to dusk, but they all felt at peace.  They were all very comfortable and at ease, even Eric was relaxed being surrounded by tall grass and the unknowing of what lurked in it.  Sam was the first to realize what it was that made her feel contented.  “I can smell the ocean and the grass.  It smells clean.”  She was right.  For the first time in months the lingering stench of rotting flesh did not assault their noses.  At this point they all inhaled the fresh air.