This Dying World (Book 2): Abandon All Hope Page 24

  A raven haired female wandered down the aisle, her naked body a roadmap of tattoos stretching across her bruised and blistered skin. Thorny vines reached up from her ankles, wrapping around her thighs as the black ink snaked up her legs. The vines continued across her distended stomach, wrapping around her small pert breasts and flowing over her arms. Random blossoms of deep red roses and deep blue lilies appeared at random throughout the design, culminating into a full bouquet that ran up her sternum and across the top of her chest. Piercings adorned her blood stained lips, surgical steel hoops hanging from her eyebrows and a barbell fed through her septum.

  Dry blood covered her face and chest, her arms and legs looking as if they were painted rusty red. Toxic foam spilled from her lips as soon as her creamy white eyes found Jason in the dim light. The frothy saliva cut through the caked blood until it ran in rivulets over her bloated belly and down her naked body.

  Jason drew his Ka-Bar, driving the midnight black blade through her right eye as she lunged at him. The small orb split, thick mucus oozing from the slit as he used his palm against the base of the knife like a hammer, driving the blade through the tough bone until it hit the soft spongy brain. He felt the basilar skull crack as he twisted the knife inside the things head. With a quick jerk, he ripped his weapon free, stepping out of the way as the creature crashed to the floor. A gory halo of green sludge formed around its head, pooling on the light wooden floor.

  The steady slap of uncovered feet drew his attention away from the dead woman. A naked male zombie stumbled toward him, his tall, skinny body bouncing off the shelves and sending various snacks scooting across the floor.

  Like its female companion, its ashen blue face was a patchwork of body modifications and heavy metal piercings. Though its skin was free of tattoos, its long wispy hair was a streaked mix of reds, blues, and greens. It opened and closed its jaw, teeth cracking against the several pieces of metal adorning its thin lips as a forked tongue darted in and out of its mouth. Much like the woman, his blistered body was covered in a thick layer of dry flakey blood.

  Its lips curled back, its jagged teeth digging channels into its own lips and sending a trickle of dark red blood down its chin. Jason readied himself for the creature’s attack, the dead man growling as it set its unearthly gaze on him.

  A heavy thud stopped the creature’s advance, its eyes growing wide as air slowly escaped from its lungs in a slow hissing exhale. Its feet left the floor as its head suddenly snapped back as Murphy ripped his weapon free. The creature slammed down to the floor, its skull breaking with an audible crack.

  He stood over the monster, rapid breaths escaping through hard clenched teeth. Small bits of flesh clung to his blade, sizzling as it broke down into drops of greenish goo. Murphy’s face darkened, his menacing, narrowed eyes filled with rage.

  “Murph?” Jason asked, slowly stepping to his new friend. “You good?”

  “That one,” Murphy said in a monotone voice as he nodded at the dead man. “His boys were chewed clean off. I mean, Ken doll kind of job. Ever see anything like that?”

  Jason shuddered as his mind put the pieces together. The two had to be a couple. One or both of them must have worked nights, and they’d used the remoteness of the truck stop for a late night rendezvous. The girl must have turned while she was focused on pleasuring him and decided to take a bite.

  “She had to have known she was turning,” Jason sighed. “Why keep going?”

  “Young and dumb,” Murphy replied, the murderous rage slowly ebbing from his face. “She probably tried to ignore what was happening until it was too late.”

  “Young and dumb,” Jason repeated.

  “It’s a screwed up situation,” Murphy said, nodding to the back of the station. “Let’s finish this, I want that beer. I’m on point.”

  “Roger that,” Jason exhaled, eyeing Murphy carefully. The menace he saw in the man’s eyes reflected something more than killing just for survival. Murphy was as close to losing his shit as any man he had ever seen. The act of killing the creature seemed almost too personal.

  Even Titan seemed wary of Murphy, keeping a watchful eye on his master as they moved to the back of the store. The canine responded to his companion’s tension with raised hackles and a cautious step.

  For the second time since they arrived at the station, Jason set his concerns aside and continued on with the job at hand. With one eye on Murphy he fell in line to complete their sweep.

  The store was small, owing the lack of random knickknacks and other such useless junk to its remote location. The few aisles that ran the length of the store carried various snack foods and other small necessities most people would only find interesting when on long road trips.

  They walked the remaining aisles, not expecting to find anything else waiting for them. Unless the couple enjoyed a lifestyle of exhibitionism, it was unlikely a horde of the dead would be hiding behind the jelly beans.

  “Almost done,” Murphy whispered. He nodded toward what appeared to be a hallway on the other side of the store.

  The hall looked out of place for the rustic, wood toned store. A single bulb in the center of the ceiling cast its dim light to the dull gray walls. Two green doors sat on their left, a cork board hanging between them displaying various employment rules and company policies. An employee time clock sat on their right, a time card rack hanging next to it with only four cards inserted in its many pockets.

  Jason’s eyes immediately went to where the pine floor gave way to black and white checkered tiles as he followed Murphy into the hall. Bloody footprints coated the tile, heading back and forth as if the two had spent most of their time pacing in that small area. As they moved in, Jason could see a large pool of mostly dried blood spilling out front underneath the furthest door.

  Jason was so focused on the blood stains that he almost collided with Murphy. The man had stopped in front of the time cards, eyeing them over as if suddenly deep in thought. Something that was definitely out of the ordinary for a Marine performing a sweep.

  “April Pinkerson, William Sodd,” Murphy read the names from the two cards placed in the IN row of the card rack. “She was fifteen minutes late.”

  “I guess we should knock,” Jason whispered, pointing his rifle at the doors, trying to get Murphy’s head back in the game.

  “I suppose so,” Murphy replied, still staring at the time cards. His shoulders slumped as he sighed, his breath catching. He lowered his M4, allowing it to hang freely from his single point sling.

  Titan let out a small whine, nuzzling his nose against Murphy’s hand. Murphy reached down, scratching the dog’s head and stroking his neck. As he did, Jason caught a glimpse of Murphy’s face. Gone was the dark anger that he wore since executing the zombie in the store. Instead his face was awash in gut wrenching grief.

  “They had names,” Murphy said under his breath. “April and William. They had names, they had lives.”

  “So did every one of the other zombie’s we’ve killed,” Jason snapped under his breath. “Should I finish things up here?”

  “No,” Murphy exhaled. “I finish what I start.”

  “You good?”

  “I’m fine,” Murphy replied sharply before hefting his rifle back to ready position and moving off to the door closest to him. He knocked once before turning the knob and pushing the it open.

  The office was small, even by closet standards. A paper strewn desk took up a majority of the room with a cheap red plastic chair behind it. A computer that looked as if it had been salvaged from a high school lab in the early ‘90s took up almost an entire quarter of the cheaply made desk. Two more plastic chairs, both school bus yellow sat against the wall opposite the door.

  Jason tapped Murphy on the shoulder, tipping his head toward the other end of the hall before pulling away and taking the lead. He wasn’t sure what was distracting his friend, but they had a job to do. Distractions were dangerous and had a bad habit of getting people killed.

 
He came to a stop in front of the door, trying in vain to avoid the sticky red pool on the floor. He lifted his foot, his stomach roiling as his boot stuck to the floor, making the slightest of sucking sounds as it broke free. He pushed it out of his mind before his stomach could empty itself and focused his attention on his objective.

  He knocked three times, putting his ear just below the small white placard that said RESTROOM emblazoned in bold black letters. As he cocked his ear to the door, he heard the constant hum of the bathroom exhaust. Even with his ear pressed against the door he couldn’t hear anything else above the whine of fan. With a quick glance back to make sure Murphy had pulled his shit together, Jason opened the door.

  Death’s sickly stench attacked Jason’s senses the moment the door cracked open. Blood painted every wall and every fixture, from the single toilet to the wall mounted sink. Handprints streaked across the dirty white walls, leaving trails of blood thick enough to send rivulets streaming to the floor.

  The bathroom floor was lower than the hallway, presumably to contain any waste overflow from overtaxed toilets. Blood as thick and sticky as pancake syrup covered the floor like mud. Rotting chunks of meat were piled in the center of the room, clogging the drain and preventing the body fluids from escaping the room.

  Skeletal remains sat mostly submerged in the thick muck, cracked bones poking up from beneath the sickly pool. Only bone, stripped of all traces of flesh, existed below its rib cage. The chest cavity lay bare, organs ripped from the body and devoured by the two zombies still leaking on the store’s floor. Skin had been flayed from its neck, exposing cords of gnawed muscle holding the head to its massacred shoulders.

  The face was nothing more than strands of leathery muscle still attached to its jaws. Deep trenches had been dug into its head as teeth had been dragged across skull, scraping the flesh from bone. Strips of red stained hair jutted out from the remaining bits of pulverized skin still attached to the skull.

  Jason started to turn away when a sucking sound drew his eyes back to the remains. Bladder emptying fear crushed down on him as the skull started to move. His terror rose into mindless panic as he watched the strands of neck muscle contract as the monster clumsily moved its near fleshless head. Bone scraped on the tiled floor as it tilted its eyeless gaze upward, strands of thickened blood slowly drizzling down from the side of its boney face. Jawbones popped and cracked as its few remaining facial muscles forced its maw open. Unable to move, it simply lay there, mouth open in Jason’s direction as if it tried to will Jason’s warm flesh into its mouth.

  “Oh…my…G” he gagged before the vomit forced its way out. He turned away, retching up the few rations he had left in his stomach. He put a hand on the wall to support himself, doubling over as his stomach tightened and his mind reeled. The unbridled insanity of what he’d just witnessed overwhelmed him as he felt his consciousness begin to slip away.

  “Foster!” Murphy boomed. He heard Titan’s nails clicking on the tile floor. His arm was suddenly hoisted around Murphy’s shoulder as he was led away from the madness. His eyes blurred, black spots swirling in the periphery of his vision as his head suddenly felt very heavy.

  “I got you, brother. Breathe, goddammit! Jason! Breathe!”

  Chapter 23

  I was drained.

  My tanks were empty, both emotionally and physically as I drove the lonely road back to the only family I had left. The cold bit at me, chilling my bones despite the heat blowing in the truck’s cabin. My fingers throbbed, hands burning inside my gloves as blood continued to ooze from the open gashes. My head swam as I tried to focus on my driving. I wanted to cry or scream, anything that would help me feel human again.

  Inside I was as dead as the corpses walking the earth.

  I didn’t know if anyone else was alive besides the small group I’d left behind in the apartment. How many were trying to survive in the new wilderness with the dead nipping at their heels? I’d hoped I would have gotten at least one more text message, or one more familiar voice on the CB radio. The lack of news from anyone haunted me, and I knew it was very likely that most everyone I knew was dead.

  I turned on the radio, praying to find one more lone voice in the static wilderness. I wondered what happened to the man from Chicago who’d continued to broadcast throughout our first days on the road. There was a great comfort in listening to his raspy, tired voice during the long journey to the farm. Chris had tried to tune in, but the distance from his home to Chicago had been too great. He’d never heard the man that kept my family company.

  I only found static.

  Creatures dotted the moonlit landscape, their terrible rotted visages marring what would otherwise be a beautiful snowy night. They struggled against the snow, falling over themselves as they tried to find their way to the only source of human noise left for miles…my truck.

  The vehicle groaned against the snow as I drove through the still night. I stayed as close as I could to shallow areas of snow, counting on the snow chains to keep me on the road and moving. Fortunately, it appeared I had not been the only traveler. I was able to follow the ruts cut into the snow by some other larger vehicle that had passed through earlier.

  At least there was someone else alive out there.

  Eventually exhaustion and crushing sorrow took its toll. My eyelids were bargaining with my will to stay awake, but my eyelids were shrewd negotiators and always won those arguments. I knew myself well enough to know that if I didn’t stop and rest, I would eventually wrap myself around a tree or three. Then Chris would definitely be pissed.

  He loved that truck.

  My eyes closed before I found a place to stop. The truck shook violently as it left the road, snapping me back to full consciousness. In a moment of panic I over steered, sending me careening into a full spin. One of the chains snapped, the links slamming into the truck’s undercarriage and blowing out the tire with a loud boom.

  The truck spun into a ditch, slamming sideways into a windblown snow bank and throwing my head against the window. My vision exploded with streaks of color as sharp pain thundered across my head.

  Dizziness set in as I felt my thundering heart pushing blood through me. I white knuckled the steering wheel as I tried to slow my breathing. As soon as I could coax my fingers loose from the wheel, I twisted to release my seat belt. White hot pain erupted in my chest as I felt my ribs pop.

  My midsection burned as I felt the bruise from the lap belt already forming. Nausea set in as the full extent of the trauma my body endured began to make itself known. The dizziness intensified, blurring my vision as I tried to take stock of my situation. The coppery scent of my blood hung thick in the rapidly cooling air. The world spun as I fell on my side across the truck seats. I came to the realization that I was probably in the early stages of a concussion. Worse yet, I could be bleeding into my brain. Either way, I was going nowhere.

  Katie’s face danced through my mind when the first creature arrived, slamming its meaty fist against the truck. I tried to lift my pistol, but the weapon felt unusually heavy in my hands. Unconsciousness closed in as two more creatures joined the first.

  “I’m sorry, Katie. Be a good girl,” I said as the world faded out.

  **********

  “Over here, Linda,” a man whispered. “They stopped again.”

  The man watched through night vision goggles as a shadowy figure stepped through the woods, moving silently in a crouched walk. The black clad figure came up next to the man kneeling behind a large oak tree.

  “Jesus,” she gasped. “They’re taking another one!”

  “Yeah,” the man sighed. “He’s in bad shape too.”

  “What are they doing with these people?” Linda asked, peeling her NVGs from her eyes.

  “I don’t know. I’d rather not find out if you want to know the truth. The faster we get on the road, the quicker we can get to your family in Canada.”

  “Eric,” she whispered, shaking her head. “We don’t know if anyone
there is better off there than we are here. I haven’t heard anything from my family for weeks now. I don’t like the idea of leaving like this. He might have people waiting for him.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Eric ducked behind the tree, thumbing back toward the road. “We have no idea who that guy is or where he’s from.”

  Linda sighed as she turned her attention back to the snowy road and the massive tow truck idling in the middle of it. Its bright yellow rotating lights pierced through the darkness, highlighting the truck’s yellow paint. A massive boom crane meant for hauling the largest of semi-trucks sat atop the back of the truck, IDOT and RESCUE emblazed across it in bold black letters. A heavy red ram mounted on the front ensured the truck could plow through the occasional small groups of undead.

  She drew her coat tighter around her neck as she watched two men search through a silver pickup truck that had veered off the road and into a deep ditch. One worked fast, tearing through the vehicle’s cabin. He was tall and slim, wearing heavy winter gear that covered every part of his body. A scarf wrapped around his neck, with only his nose and mustache poking above it.

  By comparison, the second man was short and squat, wearing nothing but a simple windbreaker and jeans, much too light for the frigid Midwestern winter. He wore work gloves and boots, a cheap knit cap covered his head. His movements were slow, his gait unsteady, with a face that bore little emotion. To Linda, if it wasn’t for the hunting rifle he carried, he would look very much like one of the walking dead.

  She narrowed her eyes, looking inside the IDOT truck to find a man sitting up in the middle of the cabin. His eyes were closed, blood covering the left side of his face. Wisps of steam escaped his lips in the frigid early morning air.

  After a few seconds, the taller man produced a pistol and what looked like an orange sledge hammer from the pick-up’s interior. He whistled to the other, pointing to the truck bed. The short man meandered over to the truck, slowly shifting items around the pickup’s bed while the tall one tossed his findings into a storage cabinet on the side of their giant road assistance vehicle.