Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead Page 8

  When the reality that no one was coming finally sank in, some of the lost sank deeper down into despair. Some of the poseurs complained even louder about things and did less work. As for the rest of us, we endured.

  Weeks later, people wondered if maybe our group was too small to rescue while others speculated we were too big for a rescue mission. Others wondered if God had abandoned. Pastor Stevens did his best to quell the doubts and fears, but we lost something in those weeks after the drone flew over. Maybe not our faith, but certainly our hope.

  Being a world class pessimist, I found the message was simple -- we were on our own.

  CHAPTER 14

  Turf War

  Henry burst into the sanctuary, a rifle slung over his shoulder, just as Pastor Stevens was about to start the worship hour. “There’s a group of marauders coming across the bridge!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the walls. Fifty heads whipped in his direction. He was only fourteen and little more excitable than most. He was part of a foraging party that was assigned to finding more food and medicine in South Shore, a small town just across the Ohio River in Kentucky.

  Greg moved into the sanctuary at a less excited pace and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Yes, we have some people moving into the city, but there’s no reason to panic. It’s only a truck and a couple cars. They’re not heavily armed and are probably just nomads trying to find a safe place to land for a couple days.”

  “But they’re going to take things from the town we need,” a rough growl of a voice came from the back of the sanctuary. The voice belonged to Frank. He had a bushy, unkempt beard. He looked as if he had just come out of several months alone in the hills living on nothing but bugs, bark, and possum.

  “We can’t protect it all; the city’s just too large for that,” Greg responded. “Besides, we already have the people up north on the hill we leave alone.”

  “Those people lived here before the Outbreak. It’s the outsiders I want to protect us against,” Frank said standing, a fixed look on his face, more than ready to go to war.

  “Gentleman, please let’s discuss this in a calm and civil way,” Pastor Stevens said coming down the aisle, and all the eyes left the two other men and went to him.

  “But the things they’re taking out there are things we are going to eventually need,” Frank said, putting a lot of emphasis on the word “we.”

  “Possibly,” Pastor Stevens said. “There are a lot of resources still out there.”

  “And why should we risk people if they’re only taking scraps?” Greg asked.

  “It might come down to scraps,” Frank said. The onlooker’s attention bounced back and forth between the men, a nervous tension spreading throughout the room.

  “Again, let’s discuss this in private. Shall we?” The pastor asked with outstretched arms entreating the two men to join him in his study, but both of them stood their ground. While Frank was intimidating, given his size, Greg was every bit as formidable with his discipline and quiet strength.

  A few weeks ago this argument would have been easily diffused but after the lack of a government rescue, everyone seemed more on edge. Greg broke the impasse and stepped towards the pastor following him out of the sanctuary. Frank exhaled loudly and did the same.

  I felt someone touch my shoulder. Mrs. Gergan extended her arm, seemingly for support as she slumped forward in the pew. She looked down, shaking her head slowly back and forth. She had been my English teacher in the 10th grade, a friendly and upbeat teacher, but now she was one of the lost. Her husband and daughter had been taken down early after The Outbreak.

  “I just don’t know, Joel,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

  Kara, who was sitting next to Mrs. Gergan, put an arm around her and pulled her close, displaying all the things that made her a member of the true believers. “Sure you do,” she said in a reassuring way. “We’ll get through this. We’ll find a way. Won’t we, Joel?” She smiled at me looking for support. I liked her smile and the way her blonde curls framed her elfin face.

  Still, it was like someone had put a loaded gun to my head. What else could I do but say, yes. Which is what I did.

  Mrs. Gergan looked up at Kara, then at me. I mustered a half-baked smile. Kara nodded at me and I nodded back feeling about as genuine as a discount toupee.

  The open argument between Frank and Greg put everyone on edge, evidence that our coalition was fraying around the edges. More than a few people left the sanctuary sharing hushed conversations. With the pressure we were all under, taking sides was bound to happen.

  Our “all for one and one for all” principles were on thin ice. With each passing day and with each challenge, cracks began to appear in our wall of solidarity. The passing months brought the realization that this new reality was the only reality. For some, the prospects were just too grim and the old rules just didn’t work anymore. Others clung to the past, hoping and praying that we could maintain the core principles that made us better than the undead creatures that roamed the streets outside the church walls.

  Maybe we thought God would spare us from the horrors, but He obviously did not. After the marauders attacked our foraging parties, morale dropped like a rock. When the drone came and went our spirits dropped even further. Still, Pastor Stevens held us together, but the day-in, day-out reality was beginning to wear us all down.

  Guard duties were posted every night and anyone that could shoot half-way straight took their turn. Adhering to his military ways, Greg set-up the duty roster. When I checked the list that night I saw that Kara and I had the duty. It was our responsibility to walk the interior parameter of the church, making sure all the doors and windows were secure.

  I considered the serendipity of being paired with Kara as a blessing. She wasn’t hard on the eyes and was about the only unattached female in our group even close to my age range. Not that the thought of dating was a top priority, but still, a guy had to dream.

  We had a strict lights-out policy at night. All of the street level windows were fully sealed just in case. Every window on the lower floors was boarded up or covered. The intent was to keep any of our interior lights from leaking out into the night; because any light attracted the undead like moths to a flame.

  “What did you think about what Frank said?” Kara asked me as we patrolled the front hallway.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can see both sides.”

  She pushed at one of the front doors and it didn’t budge a centimeter. “Do you think we’ll run out of supplies?”

  “I think we’re okay for a few months. We lucked out when we nabbed all the stored food at the high school.” The high school sat just across the street from the church. One of first foraging parties cleared out the school’s cafeteria getting enough food supplies to carry us quite a while. “But yes, eventually, we’re going to run out.”

  “Oh,” she said acting as if the thought never crossed her mind. That was the way a lot of people’s minds worked. They were still steeped in the old ways. Go to the grocery and get what you need -- a loaf of bread, some steaks, a few gallons of gourmet ice cream. The grocery was the first place to be raided. It was also one of the first places that burned when the upper half of the downtown went up in flames. Only a skeleton crew of firefighters came to fight the fire and they ran for the hills when the zombies showed up for their own personal barbecue. Fortunately, the firefighters quelled enough of the fire before retreating or else half the town might have burned.

  We made our way up to the second floor, checking all the windows, and occasionally taking quick peeks out of them to look for any undead in the vicinity.

  “Eventually, we’re going to have to raise our own food,” I said. “Water will become an issue sooner than food. We’re just lucky that we got our hands on generators.”

  “Thank the Lord,” she said.

  “Once gas runs out to power the genies the power goes.”

  “You’ve obviously thought about this a lot.”
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br />   “What else is there to do?” I asked.

  “Well, you could pay attention in the worship services.”

  I winced at that one. Was I that transparent?

  We made our way to the back hall, checking windows and finding them all in good shape.

  “How do you think it all started?” Kara asked me as we checked the last set of windows on the east side of the church.

  This question was one of the most frequently asked one for us survivors. It seemed we never got tired of the endless speculation. Some were convinced that The Outbreak was a military bio-weapon accidentally released from a secret government lab.

  A variation on this theme was nano-bots, designed and released by a greedy multinational corporation to create a need for anti-nano-bot technology that only the corporation could provide. Others thought it came from North Korea and that crazy bastard of a leader. Taking their cue from the silver screen, some thought it came to earth with a meteor or maybe aliens were using it to depopulate earth before they took over the planet.

  The most popular one in our merry band was that it was God abandoning man to his own just deserves. There were some days I believed this one.

  “What does it matter,” I said. “We are where we are. It is what it is.”

  “That’s awfully fatalistic,” she said.

  I shrugged. Clever repartee wasn’t my strength.

  “I think it’s a test. God testing man.”

  “I’d say we failed.”

  “Are you trying to exasperate me,” she said with her hands on her hips, a tight lipped expression on her face. It was more statement than question.

  Again, I shrugged.

  “I’m going to check the basement,” she said. “You should check the third floor.”

  She disappeared down the steps and I was alone -- which was nothing new.

  While the third floor was the safest place in the church when it came to zombies -- because up to now, none of them knew how to climb buildings -- I still felt small pangs of fear as I traipsed around in the dark. Not that I would ever admit it.

  I went over to one of the windows, pulled back the cardboard held in place by duct tape, and surveyed the city. The moon shone brightly in the night sky giving the landscape a ghostly pale blue cast. Two blocks down the main drag a small group of the undead shambled along aimlessly. With no food around them it seemed as they were out for a leisurely evening stroll. It was my observation that they seemed to roam more at night than during the day. Maybe they were concerned with what the harmful rays of the sun would do to their complexion?

  There seemed to be no pattern to how they grouped, but they rarely traveled alone. It was as if they had some sort of flocking or herding instinct bringing them together. The small groups were a lot easier to handle than the larger ones.

  The group wandered down the street and out of sight. As I turned to head downstairs I heard movement above me -- a slight thump followed by another louder thump. Someone was on the roof. I doubted it was a zombie, unless they had learned to fly. Still, I pulled out my baseball bat and took a firm grip on it.

  Holding my bat at my side, I made my way up the stairs to the roof and found the door propped open with a brick. Zombies usually didn’t prop doors open, but I maintained my defensive posture. I came out the door, peered around the corner, and saw Frank standing at the edge of the roof, looking southward with a night scope. He must have heard me because he turned to me.

  “Joel,” he said talking softly. “Come on over here.”

  Frank was a bit of a wild card. His unpredictability set everyone on edge, but I decided to comply with his request. Besides, he had saved Naveen and me when the chips were down.

  When I came up beside him I could see that he was watching the area around the bridge. The U.S. Grant Bridge spanned over from the Ohio River connecting Ohio with Kentucky. The original suspension version of it went up in the late ‘20s but was torn down in 2001 and the new bridge opened for traffic in 2006. The support cables gleamed in the moonlight, reminding me of a baseball stadium at night.

  Frank pointed over the city towards the south end of town, “They’re camping down at the college.”

  “Who?” I said playing dumb.

  He turned and glared down at me. Frank stood in at around 6’6” and I bet he weighed 320 if he weighed a pound. “You know who I’m talking about. I spotted a pickup and two cars. I can’t tell which building they’re in, but I’m guessing they’re in Massie Hall. That or the admin building.”

  I looked into the darkness but only saw the bulky outlines buildings. The Shawnee State University campus wasn’t much of a campus with only a handful of buildings, but a former legislator decided to make the place his legacy so the ivory towers of higher education came to town -- so to speak.

  After high school graduation I took nearly two and half years’ worth of classes flitting between programs at Shawnee before drifting out of the college scene. Now I guess, I’d never get that sheepskin.

  “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “We have pretty much picked the campus clean of anything useful.”

  “Yeah, but they’ll move to the houses around that area and we haven’t been in half of those.” He peered back down to the river.

  “What could those houses have anyway?” I asked, trying to downplay the situation.

  “We don’t know what those houses have,” he said, a tinge of anger in his voice and turned to me. “How many people do we have downstairs?”

  “Sixty seven at last count.”

  “How much food do we have down in the kitchen?”

  “Enough,” I said.

  “Enough for how long? We’ll be lucky to make it into next year before the shelves are going to look pretty bare.”

  “But what are those people going to take? There can’t be more than ten of them.”

  “Joel, my man, when it comes down to the last can of peaches in Portsmouth, I want to make sure it’s our people that have it and not some out of town freeloading assholes.” He turned away from me and headed for the door.

  “Wait, what are you thinking of doing?” I asked.

  “I’m going to persuade those folks to move on down the road,” he said over his shoulder and I raced across the roof to catch up with him.

  “You can’t just go down there by yourself. You’re big, but like you said, there’s three carloads full of them.”

  He stood, his hand poised on the door knob, a wild ass glint in his eyes. “Are you coming with me then?”

  “I, ah, I,” I stammered out.

  “Just what I thought,” he said opening the door.

  “Well, I don’t have a gun,” I said.

  He stopped midway through the door and backed up, his hands moving at his side. Almost before I could react, he tossed me a gun. I caught it like I was grabbing a snake, afraid it might bite me. While guns were a necessity in this brave new world, I shared none of the infatuation with them like the warriors.

  “The safety’s on,” he said.

  It was an automatic of some sort. I think it was a .45, but my knowledge of guns was limited. Even with the extensive training by the warriors, I rarely paid attention to makes and models. You pointed them at your target, pulled the trigger, and shot it.

  “So, now you comin’?” he asked.

  “Well, shouldn’t we tell Greg or someone?”

  “We don’t have to tell ‘daddy’ everything we do.” He put finger quotes around the word ‘daddy.’ “If you’re not coming then give me back the gun, because I’m heading down the back stairs in less than a minute.”

  Everything in me screamed to stay with the church, but letting even an asshole like Frank go out alone was a bad idea. What he didn’t know was that I could call “daddy” anytime I wanted with the walkie-talkie in my pocket.

  I stuffed the gun in my waistband, hoping not to shoot off my private parts by accident, and followed him into the back stairwell. As we descended the stairs I reached into my pocke
t and flipped the walk-talkie off. In less than thirty seconds we were out the back door and into the night with me wondering what the hell I was doing.

  CHAPTER 15

  Field Trip

  As soon as we got outside he pulled me close. “I saw two groups of zombies. One smaller group down Gallia and a larger one -- maybe six or seven -- moving around the houses down on Fourth.”

  “What do you have pn you that doesn’t make a lot of noise because all I saw was guns?” I asked.

  He reached to his side and pulled up a medium sized axe with an extended handle. In his massive hands, it looked like a child’s toy hatchet. How I’d missed it earlier was beyond me. “Little Bessie here is good at splitting zombie skulls open. She sure as shit is. I say we take Gallia down to Sinton or Bond depending what we run into. That work for you?”

  “Whatever,” I said, gripping my bat so hard my knuckles hurt, all the while thinking, a fool and his life are soon parted.

  We made it down Gallia without incident. I liked going down Sinton because there was more cover and places to duck into and hide if things went south. That, of course, meant Frank would pick Bond.

  We’d made it a block down Bond when we heard a clattering noise off in a parking lot to the right. A half dozen abandoned cars sat silent and dark, spaced out across the lot.

  I couldn’t see any movement but brought my bat up to a ready position and stopped in my tracks. Frank, being Frank, didn’t lose a step and thundered on down the street. I tried to get his attention making a hiss-hiss sound but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t care

  The first zombie came from between two of the cars, shambling forward with a halting determination wearing nothing but a soiled and torn bath robe fluttering in the wind. It looked to be a man in his fifties, but the zombification process poured on the years. Let’s face it, death ages you.