After he and his friends had quit the community, they had found nothing but hardship. They had lost one of their number in a bad town crawling with little fast zombies that had chased them to the river. They managed to escape, but just when things seemed to go well, they turned bad again. After a month of living hand to mouth, Dan had regretted acting like such a fool. He and his companion were just about to turn north anyway and ask forgiveness when they had been caught. Now Dan’s big mouth may have condemned several people to die, but it wasn’t going to happen if he could help it.
Winters travelled until nightfall, then beached himself on a small island. It was safer than trying to find a place on shore. He settled into a feverish sleep, sweating and fidgeting.
In the morning, Dan woke up to find the sun full on his face. He had slept longer than he wanted to and his shoulder was stiff as a board. It was a struggle to get up and even harder to start the motor, but he managed to do it, crying out in pain as he fell back when the motor kicked to life. His shoulder was a mess of dried blood and the towel was stuck to his back, but the bleeding had stopped. Dan gritted his teeth and continued north.
A week later, a man tending to cattle held on an island in the middle of a river discovered a small boat grounded on the south side. He surely hadn’t seen it before, but approached it cautiously, since there appeared to be a bloody hand hanging over the side. Looking in, he saw a man, barely old enough to shave, slumped in the bottom of the boat, hardly breathing. Carefully lifting him, the man brought the injured kid over to his boat and took him swiftly across the river to the landing on the other side.
Taking out his radio, he called ahead and received a reply, telling him to hold tight and wait. The man took the delay as an opportunity to look over the injured man, giving him water and trying to see the extent of his injuries. He appeared to have been shot, a curious thing, but the wound looked old, several days at least. Ten minutes later, a large man appeared from the woods, making no more noise than a shadow. He was well-armed and took in his surroundings every few seconds, making sure all was well in his vicinity.
The second man spoke. “What have you found, Mike?”
“Well, I was over checking on the livestock when I found this jasper in the boat on the…whoa!” Mike jumped back as the standing man drew his weapon and trained it on the head of the man lying down. The prone man’s head had turned at the sound of voices and was instantly recognized by the newcomer. Mike drew his own weapon in response and stood up next to other man. “What’s going on?” he asked, pointing his own weapon at the wounded man.
Charlie James knelt down by Dan Winters and spoke coldly. “If you can hear me, you’d better give me a reason for not killing you right now.”
Dan opened his eyes and tried to think through his fever-racked brain. All he could muster was, “They’re coming for you.”
Charlie looked around, his brow furrowing. “Who? Dan, don’t crap out on me now. Who?”
Winters took a few deep breaths. “Thorton.” More breaths. “He knows where you are.”
Charlie cursed. It was what he and John had feared. “Where did you escape? When?” Charlie was impatient and concerned all at the same time. He opened his canteen and splashed some water on Dan’s face. “You gotta talk to me, kid,” he said sternly.
Dan seemed to revive a little with the water. “Seven days. Pere Marquette.” He slumped into unconsciousness, unable to speak anymore.
Mike looked at Charlie. “What do you want me to do?”
Charlie looked down at Dan. “Take him to the Visitor Center, I’ll get Rebecca down to look at him. After that, get yourself armed. We got a fight coming.” Charlie looked at the lodge and the surrounding area. For all he knew, the fight was already here.
18
We’d been on the road now for about three weeks. Normally a trip like this would take two days at most. But that was when the world was normal and the highways weren’t choked with abandoned cars and rotting corpses all over the place. Some of those corpses were still walking around, many of them weren’t.
When we had reached the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana, it was clear we weren’t going to be able to follow our designated path. Route 30 had become a tangled mess and I was amazed we had been able to follow it as long as we did. But in parts it was obvious that it was the major road and people had tried to escape using it. Spots of it were clear, but enough was jammed with cars so we didn’t even bother to try. We were forced to go further south, which was fine by me. We would have had to eventually turn south anyway, so this route was as good as any other.
The map indicated that Route 40 was a straight shot to Washington, so we decided to try our luck with old number 40. Things had been going pretty well, all in all. We had discovered that away from the major population centers, people had managed to survive. The smaller towns joined with the larger ones and with increased numbers they managed to keep the zombies at bay for the time being. We still passed many, many dead towns, but the ratio seemed to be two or three dead towns for every live one. I had a lot more hope than I originally had at the beginning of this trip and I began to think we might pull this one off.
At every live town we came to, we explained who we were and what we were doing. It was gratifying to see the overwhelming majority of people supported us and wished us luck. We had a lot of volunteers to come help, but I always politely refused. I told them this was a job for a small team or an army and we had nothing that resembled the latter. At each town, we discussed communications and many of them had some form of speaking to each other. Many were nothing more than car batteries hooked up to CB radios, but they worked and that was the key. I had to think of a way to try and communicate with all of them, but nothing I knew of had that kind of power anymore.
We spent three luxurious days in a small town in Indiana and I say luxurious because they happened to still have power. The electrical plant was nuclear and since they managed to figure out how to keep the thing running and closed all non-essential lines, my crew and I actually managed to take a hot shower for the first time in forever. Tommy said he was grateful for the water as well, not for him, but for me, since he claimed I didn’t smell so good.
We crossed into Ohio after having an interesting run through Richmond, Indiana. The people there were living ten feet off the ground. Every man, woman and child had up and moved literally ten feet in the air. They had suspended bridges between buildings, created walkways that allowed them to move freely about the town, all without touching the ground. Baskets of earth had been hauled up to the tops of flat roofed buildings and they planted their food up in the air as well. All this was well and good, but there was a snag that we could see from our perch on a distant hill. The ground was crawling with zombies. All kinds, large and small, milling about, groaning at whoever happened to be seen at that particular moment. The noise was impressive, but even more so was the fact that the people didn’t seem to notice the grim sea beneath them. They had adapted their world and were content with the living arrangements. We just went our way. It was none of our business and the odds were long against us. Besides, if we did somehow manage to get rid of the Z’s, they’d probably be mad at us for making them waste all that effort. People were weird.
According to the map, the town we were approaching was Lewisburg and for some reason I can’t explain, I started to get a twitchy feeling in the back of my neck, like something was going seriously wrong somewhere. I couldn’t shake the feeling and it stayed with me all day. I spoke to Nate about it, but he just told me to stop being an old woman and concentrate on the job. Good old Nate.