ROTD (Book 4): Refuge of The Dead Page 2

  Rifle barrels appear out of the rear windows of the Tahoe in front of us and begin firing on anything that gets too close. Scout rolls down the window beside me and takes aim with her pistol. She opens fire as well.

  My hand reaches down and finds the assault rifle nestled between my leg and the center console. I push open the door and take a quick look around. We have may ten or fifteen stiffs still coming at us from different directions. Nothing we can’t handle. We have countless times before. But you never know when things might go wrong.

  My finger squeezes the trigger after I take aim at a guy in tattered jeans and a green trucker hat. The first shot hits him in the neck and he stumbles closer, but I pull the trigger again and the round knocks his head back.

  He collapses on the asphalt close enough that I catch the acrid scent of rotting meat. The smell fills my nostrils. I do my best to ignore it while I turn to locate another target.

  A hunter in an orange vest emerges from behind a cabin and shuffles through the waist-high grass. I take aim, but hold my fire when I notice the large propane tank along the side of the building. Maybe it’s empty, but if it isn’t and I miss my mark, which is entirely possible, god only knows what kind of damage it might do.

  I decide not to risk it. There are other targets. Some are even closer than the hunter by the tank. I lower the gun and glance around at the dead people that close in all around us.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Chase yells when he pauses to reload his weapon. He shakes his head at me when I look at him. “Fucking shoot them.” He slaps a fresh magazine into his assault rifle and returns his focus on the approaching threats.

  I refocus my gaze back at the corpse near the propane tank. I take an extra moment to aim before I finally take the shot. The bullet tears through the skull of the thing, but my heart skips a beat when I hear a ping as the bullet ricochets off the side of the big red tank. I hold my breath for several seconds and wait for the explosion, but nothing happens.

  When I realize the blast is not coming, I scan the area for more targets. Bodies, riddled with bullets, litter the area. The rest of the team has already made quick work of the dead.

  “Clear,” Chase yells out.

  Several of the others respond to confirm that all threats are eliminated. An eerie silence returns in the aftermath. We take a look around the street at what the small town has to offer.

  A rundown filling station.

  A general store and a diner.

  A car repair shop and a hair salon.

  That’s about it. It could be worse, but it could be a lot better, too.

  “Let’s split up into teams,” Chase suggests.

  “Sounds good,” I agree.

  “You two are with me,” he looks at Natalie and Hawk and jerks his head. “We’ll take everything on the west side of the road. Thirty minutes.”

  I nod and return to the Lincoln to grab some empty duffel bags from the back. I follow Scout and Lana as toward the general store, scanning the area for any signs of movement. We may have cleared the dead that wandered the streets, but that does not mean it is okay to think it is safe. There is always the chance that more of those things are lingering nearby. They could be trapped inside one of the nearby buildings. There is always the chance that the sounds of gunfire might attract more of the dead that are in the area.

  There is the possibility that we might run into other survivors, too. It doesn’t happen very often anymore out here. Most survivors out here are hiding out way up in the mountains and they don’t want to be found.

  Then, of course, there are the Reapers.

  Metal cans crash to the floor inside the store and stop us in our tracks. We stare at the door for several seconds and listen again. I shift the straps of the duffel bags hanging from my shoulder and adjust my grip on the rifle to be ready to take out whatever the hell might be in there if it should come through the door. Out here in the sunlight, it’s impossible to tell what might be lurking inside.

  “You alive in there?” Scout says.

  We listen for several seconds but we get no response. I take another few steps toward the entrance of the shop, but I freeze when something else crashes inside.

  “Fuck this,” mutters Lana. She hoists her submachine gun up and a second later she opens fire. Bullets tear through the cracked front windows of the store and glass shatters loudly on the sidewalk. Lana keeps shooting until she runs out of bullets and smoke drifts up from the muzzle of her gun. I listen for any more sounds as she swaps in a fresh magazine, but the area seems quiet once again.

  “What?” Lana says. I turn to see Scout scowling at the woman and shaking her head.

  “What do you mean what?” Scout says. “We’re out here risking our lives to find this stuff only to have you shoot it all up as soon as we find it. Jesus.”

  “No,” said Lana. “I’m not risking my life out here. Not at all. Nothing out here is worth dying for. Not anymore.”

  “Alright,” I interrupt them to end the discussion before they end up in an argument. It happens a lot out here. Every single one of us can be a little on edge at times. “Let’s just do this. We don’t have much sunlight left.”

  I walk around Scout and step up the curb. My boots crack the pieces through the glass on the sidewalk as I make my way to the door. Another loud crash greets me as I reach for the handle. I have a look inside and spot a rotating rack of sunglasses that just toppled to the floor. My eyes scan upwards and I see the feet from a body that dangles from the rafters. The rest of the body comes into view as my fingers wrap around the doorknob.

  The man appears to have been the pharmacist here, judging by his white jacket. As my gaze drifts up toward the ceiling I notice the length of rope tied around the rafters. I take another noisy step through the crunching shards on the floor and the man jerks at the sound. His rotted eyeballs dangle like dead grapes on the vine but I suppose he can still hear us. I slowly bring the rifle up while he kicks his feet and stretches his arms in my direction. Then I squeeze the trigger and put him to rest forever.

  Poor bastard. I’m sure ending up like that was not part of his plan.

  Scout and Lana are already searching through the shelves of the store, but I decide to clear the backroom just to be safe. We don’t need any surprises.

  “Be careful,” Scout reminds me as I approach the door marked with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say as I tap softly against the door.

  Silence.

  I nudge open the door and poke the barrel of the rifle through the crack and peer into the darkness. When nothing comes rushing at me, I push the door all the way open.

  “It’s clear,” I tell them.

  I pull down a large bag of dog food of a shelf beside the door and use it to prop the door open so that some light from the storefront will filter into the windowless stockroom. The dust in here makes my throat itch. I feel it start to close up and have to clear it several times as I look around the aisles of shelves.

  There is plenty of useful stuff here, but our cargo space in the Tahoes is pretty small. We can’t bring back anything that isn’t essential.

  Food. Water. Medicine. Ammunition.

  Those are still the top priorities.

  Clothes, tools, and any equipment and supplies for the research lab are also vital to our longterm survival.

  Even though the bunker at Cheyenne Mountain was stocked with plenty of supplies, it was not meant to sustain this many people indefinitely. The fuel that powers the facility will run out within a few months unless we find more or find a way to get the local power restored, but that is a long shot, to say the least. Still, the fact that we have even started to discuss trying to turn the local power back on as an eventual possibility seems to be a good sign for the future.

  I turn on the flashlight attached to the rifle to get some extra light and aim the beam at the boxes stacked against the wall to read the labels. There is plenty of dry goods to pick from. I shoulder t
he rifle and grab one of the boxes full of cans of soup and make my way back to the car. After I pop open the trunk and set the heavy box in the back, Chase and his team emerge from the shop across the street empty-handed.

  “Find anything good?” Chase asks me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Still got to check out the pharmacy, but there’s plenty inside. More than we have room for.”

  “That’s a good problem to have for once,” Chase flashes a rare smile. “We’ll load up as much as we can and come back for the rest tomorrow.”

  “It’s about time we got lucky,” Natalie agrees.

  “It’s all about perseverance,” Chase says. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

  I leave the trunk open and follow the others back toward the entrance of the general store. Then I hear a distant rattle of gunfire to the north. We pause in front of the store and look up the road toward the opposite end of town.

  “How far away was that?” Natalie asks.

  “Not far,” Hawk says.

  More gunshots ring out. These aren’t handguns either. It sounds like multiple assault weapons being fired on full auto.

  Reapers.

  “We better hurry,” I say.

  We all dash back inside the general store and start grabbing as much as we can and filling the duffel bags.

  “Two minutes!” Chase warns us as he grabs boxes of cough medicine and bandages off the shelf and shoves them in a bag. “Grab whatever you can and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  I hop over the counter and start to look on the shelves of the pharmacy. My eyes scan the hundreds of labels looking for Donepezil.

  “The gunshots are getting closer!” Natalie says.

  “Let’s move!” I hear chase yell.

  I give up and just start grabbing everything in sight and shoving it in the duffel bag. I just have to hope that one of the medications will be something the doctor can use. If not, Doctor Schoenheim isn’t going to be able to take care of himself, let alone save the rest of us from the undead.

  As soon as the bag is full, I zip it close and run for the vehicles. Everyone else has already left the building. Even though we cleared the street several minutes before, more corpses are already stumbling into the road surrounding the store. The growls of the engines grow louder as the vehicles approach the edge of town.

  “Reapers,” Scout says. “Lots of them.” She pulls her eye away from the scope and lowers her rifle. After she tosses her pack inside, Scout hops into the passenger seat of the Tahoe.

  Chase tosses a duffel bag in the back. He grits his teeth and stares up the road for a few seconds. He isn’t the kind of guy that would run from a fight, even when he knows the odds are against him. But he isn’t stupid. Even he realizes we don’t stand a chance.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Chase urges us to move faster.

  I take a moment to glance down the road while I hop into my seat. A small convoy of armored vehicles speeds toward us.

  Narco tanks.

  The Reapers created these moving fortresses by fitting various types of vehicles with thick steel plates, turrets, murder holes, and insulating the interior with a layer of bulletproof chemical foam. The improvised fighting vehicles, or IFVs, as Chase has taken to calling them, were popular among the cartel in Mexico and South America. Some of these drug lords were locked up in the supermax prison in Colorado known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies. It’s no surprise they have used these same inventions to survive the apocalypse.

  I can see at least a dozen of them kicking up a cloud of dust off the road. There could be even more concealed behind them.

  Corpses converge on our vehicle just as I slam the door shut. The dead smear their rotting faces against the windows. They smear black streaks of filth and decay on the glass.

  I start the engine. The tires of the other Tahoe squeal as Chase pulls back around to retreat the way we came. He plows through several dead bodies in the way and floors the gas as the first of the Reapers reaches the edge of town.

  The muzzle of the gun atop the first vehicle flashes. A barrage of bullets hits the vehicle a moment later. One of the rounds hits the rear window. I duck instinctively when I hear the loud crack and then breathe a sigh of relief when I check the rearview mirror and see the bulletproof glass is still intact. My eyes focus back on the road as I try to weave through the bodies walking around on the street.

  “They’re slowing down,” Lana says.

  I glance back up to the mirror as we leave town and realize she is right. None of the vehicles are bothering to chase after us. Instead, the Reapers have stopped in the center of town and focus their attention on the remaining undead on the streets.

  “They’re after the town,” I say. “Not us.”

  Chapter Three

  “Nope,” Scout says. She tosses down the medicine bottle in her hands and zips the duffel bag closed again.

  “Are you sure?” I ask her.

  “I checked twice,” she says. “No Donepezil.”

  “Great,” I sigh.

  “There might be something similar,” she says. “I haven’t heard of half the drugs here.”

  A silence fills the vehicle as we ride home in the orange glow of the sunset. Scout puts on her sunglasses and slumps down in the seat as Lana stares at the horizon.

  “Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow,” Scout finally says.

  I can tell by the flat tone of her voice that she does not really believe that.

  “That’s what we said yesterday,” Lana says. “And the day before that.”

  With every day that goes by out here, we seem to have less and less luck scavenging anything of value. And it is just a matter of time before we will have to deal with the Reapers. We might be safe inside the fortress of Cheyenne Mountain, but everything else around here belongs to the Reapers or the dead.

  “Well tomorrow could still be different,” Scout says.

  “Yeah,” I nod in agreement with Scout. “Tomorrow.”

  “Eventually,” Scout says. “We are going to have to fight them.”

  “It might not come to that,” says Lana. She leans forward and pokes her head between the front seats. “They can’t survive forever out here.”

  “Seems like they’re doing okay to me,” Scout says. “Every day we have to drive further and further to find someplace that they haven’t looted.”

  “Still,” says Lana as she leans back in her seat. “We can outlast them. I’m sure of it.”

  “As long as they don’t figure out where to find us. Once they figure that out, they will come for us,” Scout says. “They might already know.”

  “They’ll never get inside,” Lana says. “Cheyenne Mountain is a fortress.”

  “There is always a way,” Scout says.

  I think back to the complex in Missouri and I know Scout is right.

  “You’re just being paranoid,” Lana waves a hand dismissively. “They didn’t bother to follow us this time.”

  “You haven’t had to survive out here for months like the rest of us. You don’t know what people will do to each other now just to survive. And these aren’t just ordinary people. They’re criminals. Some of the worst in the world.”

  As much as I know what they are talking about is important, I have a lot of my own problems on my mind.

  After we made it to Cheyenne Mountain, I began to believe that we could start to build some sort of a normal life for ourselves again. Maybe we had lost everything, but we had a chance to start over.

  Then I laid eyes on Amanda again. She appeared like an apparition. Suddenly, as though she appeared out of nothing, she was there. She may have looked like the woman I knew, but she bore no resemblance to her otherwise. From the moment I touched her, I could feel how little of the person I remembered was actually still there.

  It’s been a couple of weeks since Amanda was found by Scout and Chase while they were out scavenging for supplies. It was such a shock to discover she was still alive. Everything seems so much mor
e complicated.

  Sometimes, she still looks at me like she hardly recognizes me and if I look at her too closely, she will lower avert her eyes as if to try and hide whatever it is about her that she doesn’t want me to see.

  I know being out there will take a toll on anyone. It nearly broke me. Maybe she just needs more time. I don’t know.

  It could be that we are just not the same people that we were just a few months ago.

  After finding her vehicle abandoned, and then seeing our daughter turned into one of those monsters, I forced myself to accept that they were gone. I had to or the pain of losing them would have destroyed me.

  Danielle was there for me. She kept me from completely falling apart. Eventually, I’d even started to put it all behind me. I wanted to find a way to move on, and together with Danielle, I finally started to look ahead to our future again.

  Danielle has been more than understanding since Amanda resurfaced, but everything between us changed immediately. Even though she wants to be there for me, she has tried to put some distance between us at the same time. She took on extra shifts in the clinic when some of the staff got sick.

  She wants to give me and Amanda the chance to figure things out. However, I can hardly get Amanda to talk to me. It seemed easier to avoid talking about it altogether.

  That was when I decided to start going back out with the others to scavenge. I figure if I keep busy enough, I don’t have to deal with the problems that I have been avoiding. If we don’t see each other, we don’t need to talk about things or lie about the things we don’t want to talk about.

  “Blake,” Scout says.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  She looks at me expecting an answer of some kind, but I have no idea what she was saying.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t listening,” I confess.

  “Jesus,” Scout says. “I just asked if you’re okay. You’ve been staring through the windshield like a damn zombie for ten minutes.”