Dead Soil | Book 3 | Dead World, page 7
part #3 of Dead Soil Series
Luke paced back and forth in front of the blazing fire, the crackling fueling his discomforts and fears until he couldn’t take it anymore. “What is taking you so long anyway?” he finally turned on Lee and stood over him, hoping the giant Irishman stayed down. “I mean, you’re a nurse right? Don’t you know some secret place where this medicine was kept from the public? Can’t we just go and get some secret stash somewhere? Why are we raiding public pharmacies and coming up with a whole lotta nothing? You’re supposed to be the leader of this mission, aren’t you? Well, a whole lot of good you’re doing, because—”
But he never finished his sentence. Svend rose slowly, his battle axe grazing his thigh gently. His broad shoulders rolled back so his muscular chest puffed out. The veins in his biceps bulged as he clenched his fists tightly together. “You have lot of nerve,” he said in his broken English. “Lee risks everything for little girl while you hide behind one. You are no man. You are coward.”
There was a shift in the darkness behind them and Luke knew Imani was there listening to this Dane and his lies. He didn’t hide behind his daughter. He encouraged her to do her best, to learn how to survive in this world because he wouldn’t always be there to protect her. Coddling her now would get her killed. He was doing her a favor. Why could no one see that?
Slowly, Luke lowered himself down onto the soft ground and stared into the fire. Svend did the same, going back to his wood work as if nothing happened. Imani brushed by Luke to sit next to Lee, close enough by his side to raise jealousy in her father. Luke couldn’t remember the last time Imani sat close to him, touching him voluntarily with her arm or knee or foot. Silence enveloped them all, the only noise to be heard the crackling of the fire and the chirping of the crickets in the distance. If they weren’t out in the elements braving flesh-eating zombies it could have been a peaceful night.
“I know dis has all been for nothin’ so far,” Lee spoke, making everyone jerk their heads up to stare at him. It was the first time he’d addressed the group at all, spending most of his time in determined silence. “I know yeh’re all riskin’ yehr lives ta help Liv, and I know if we don’ find antibiotics soon she will die.” Tears gathered in his brown eyes. He choked on a sob and let the wetness pour down his face unashamedly.
Imani wanted to reach out and place a comforting hand on his shoulder, give him a hug, tell him they will find the medicine and Olivia will pull through and not to worry. Svend wanted to tell the Irishman not to give up, that when his mother lay dying of cancer and the doctors said she wouldn’t make it through the night, it was his faith that brought her through and she lived another three. He wanted to tell Lee to never give up hope for all was not lost yet. And Luke. He wanted to tell Lee that Olivia probably would die, and she would most likely do so without him by her side if they stayed out much longer. That if he wanted to see her again alive they should turn around and go back home now. But none of them spoke. They looked on at Lee, his shoulders shaking as he cried, and tears gathered in their own eyes for his heartbreak.
III
At the bunker, the majority of the dwellers were gathered in the circular living quarters, standing around in cliques or sitting on the dusty old couches.
“It’s been days,” a young man said as he talked animatedly with his hands. “They haven’t returned. That means something has happened to them.”
“I think that hulking man killed them all and ran off,” a middle-aged woman with an upturned nose and puckered lips spoke harshly.
“Excuse me?” Carolyn interjected, her hands on her hips. “Lee did not kill anyone.”
“Not yet that we know of,” someone said, but she didn’t see who so she simply ignored it.
“They haven’t returned because everything is so picked over they haven’t found it yet. When they do they’ll come back. I trust them and know they can take care of themselves. They’ll be back soon.” Her gaze turned to the cracked steel door to the left of her. Olivia was resting in a private room now, switching between periods of writhing on the bed and falling into deep and sweaty sleeps.
“We should send someone out to find them. What if they’re hurt?” a young woman with short dark hair and kind eyes said softly. “They have that young girl with them.”
“Svend and Lee are more than capable of taking care of them, plus have you seen Imani with her bat? She’ll have no trouble out there. There’s nothing they can’t handle as a group if they stick together,” Carolyn said with a huff of laughter. The very thought of anyone getting the best of little Imani was enough to make her chuckle. That girl had fire in her.
“I still think we should send someone up there anyway,” another older man agreed, turning to Mac for confirmation. Carolyn really wished she had taken the time to learn all these peoples’ names.
Mac took in a deep breath and shoved his hands deep in his pockets as he studied the dirt floor in thought. “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to send a few up to check on them. If they need help they can help and if they don’t they can make their way back, possibly with some more supplies. Lord knows we could use it. It’s been a mighty long time since we made a run up on the surface. Our stores are dwindling fast.”
Carolyn shrugged her shoulders, not wanting to argue anymore. She was tired of bickering. It was exhausting to always be pushing against the people of the bunker. Their motives for wanting to search for Lee and the others were absurd. They feared Lee being up there and what he might do, but there was nothing to fear in Lee. She doesn’t know why he fell off the rails with Rowan, but she knew it hadn’t been completely unprovoked. It couldn’t have been. Lee was a gentle giant in her eyes and always would be. But as Mac said what could it hurt, no matter their intentions? They find the group and that’s that. Or they don’t and they grab supplies and come back. She was overcome with wondering about how her group was doing up there and if they’d found anything yet. She hoped they were already on their way back with the medicine and sending these dwellers up to the top was a completely useless act. But something inside her told her they were still searching fruitlessly. Her stomach twisted into knots the more she thought about them, wishing she was out there helping rather than trying to keep the peace in this glorified hole.
Two young men wasted no time in volunteering and venturing to the surface to search for Lee and the others. Days went by with no word. No one returned, and the dwellers started to get nervous all over again. They gathered in the same area as they had days earlier and discussed what to do. Carolyn felt as though she were experiencing deja vu.
“We can’t just keep sending people up there if they’re not coming back,” one woman said with panic in her voice. “Something’s wrong.”
“Would you calm down, Ellen. Nothing is wrong,” a man standing next to her said with the familiarity of a long-time husband. “They’re still looking for the others is all.”
“They should have found them by now and returned. What if they’re all dead? What if it’s worse up there than the last time we went up?”
“Would everyone just calm down, please,” Carolyn spoke up with authority that she wasn’t sure she had. She turned to look at Mac who gave her a gentle nod of assurance.
“Why should we send out more people if we know the ones we already sent out aren’t returning? I don’t think we should send people to their death like that, do you?” a man with jet black hair cropped short and piercing blue eyes said rather roughly.
“But what if the people wandered off and they’re lost?”
“What if they’ve been taken and they tell others where our hiding spot is?”
This thought erupted a raucous stir from the other dwellers, a thought that hadn’t even crossed their minds until that very moment.
“QUIET!” Mac shouted, his deep voice booming through the caverns. Everyone fell into hushed silence. “Now, it’s not going to do us any good to speculate when we don’t know nothin’ about what’s going on.” He turned his back to the crowd and placed a hand on Carolyn’s shoulder to turn her in the same direction. Together they talked low with their heads together.
“I don’t want to admit it but something may be going on with the people we send up top. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for one of us to go and check it out. Say, just for the day. Then if we don’t return at the end of the day everyone will know something is definitely wrong.”
“And who wants to volunteer for that job?” Carolyn scoffed, but then her lips curled up into a playful smile. “I’m only joking. Of course I’ll go. You need to stay here and hold down the fort, keep an eye on Olivia and Rowan for me.”
“Now, I can’t just send you up there all by your lonesome while I sit comfy down here. It’s not right,” Mac argued but then couldn’t help looking around when an uproar spread through the watching crowd.
“You can’t go up there, Mac!” a woman almost screamed in terror. “Who will run this bunker?”
“Who will take care of this place?”
“Who will make sure everything is in order?”
The questions kept flying until Carolyn rolled her eyes and held her hands up to silence them. “Don’t worry yourselves stupid, OK? I’ll go. I’m fine going by myself.”
A few of the bunker dwellers actually gave audible sighs of relief. It was only Carolyn going. They barely knew her so if they lost her it wouldn’t be so bad, not like losing their leader, the founder of their shelter. They wouldn’t know how to survive without him. Carolyn imagined hearing their thoughts and they stabbed at her heart like a knife. She turned away from them and gave a small, agitated sniff.
“We’ll both go,” Mac said as he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “No one should be going up there alone and I really should go and check on the crops and animals while we’re up there. I’m afraid I’ve been terribly neglectful of my duties up top and those poor creatures are suffering for it.”
Mac was smart and charismatic in the way he turned a conversation so everyone accepted what he said. Instead of making him leaving about possible imminent death or disappearing, he simply made it a necessary chore that no one else really wanted or knew how to do. And that was that. The arguing ceased.
Within a matter of minutes Carolyn had a backpack packed and a spare bowie knife in hand. The woman with short dark hair and kind eyes had lent it to her. It was good to know someone down there aside from Mac was on her side.
Mac approached her with his farming sickle in hand, looking like the nicest grim reaper she could have ever imagined. His eyes were small and jovial, his round cheeks rosy, his thin lips parted into a grin that went from ear to ear beneath his snowy beard. A breath of laughter escaped Carolyn’s nose in a snort without her meaning to. Her arm raised to cover her face before she composed herself and lowered it again, her smile shivering with more oncoming laughter.
Mac gave her a nod, oblivious to the hilarious sight of him in his flannel shirt and overalls with a large curved sickle in hand. “I’d say we’re about ready.”
Carolyn nodded in agreement and turned to make her way down the long, dark corridor. She carried a flashlight close to her. The bunker had been stocked with solar powered flashlights since before the apocalypse occurred, just in case. Frequently, if anyone was above looking, one could find them laying in the grass charging in the warm summer sun. But there were so few people left up there it seemed that no one was ever worried about gear coming up missing. Ever since the winter they had seen fewer and fewer living people walking the earth. Carolyn couldn’t help wondering if most of them were zombies now or if they had died in the cold, frozen and alone as they tried to survive. The thought sent a shiver down her spine even though it was at least seventy degrees outside. The waxing moon shining silver as it rose over the fields.
Carolyn and Mac went slowly, looking at the ground closely for any clues they might find to where the two boys went. If they found tracks of two leaving in the direction Lee and the others went, then there was most likely nothing to worry about, but they had yet to find those tracks. The longer the search went on the more worried they became.
“I think I found something,” Carolyn yelled in a hoarse whisper, waving Mac over frantically.
He rushed as fast as he could carry himself to her side and struggled to squat down to see what she was looking at.
“You see this?” she pointed at long marks in the soil. “They’re drag marks. The dirt is all kicked up. There are a few footsteps, slightly washed away, and then they just disappear and turn into this. Both sets. Something happened.”
Mac rubbed at his mouth with his hand as he nodded in contemplation. “Uh-huh, but by the looks of it I’m not so sure this was an attack by them dead folks.”
Carolyn looked to him, her eyebrows lifted. “What then?”
“I think they were taken by living people and dragged into those woods over there,” he pointed off into the distance past his barn. A line of trees swayed in the gentle warm breeze. The rustling of leaves blended together with the hum of the cicadas. Here and there, the tips of the grass blades lit up with fireflies.
Carolyn’s eyes grew as what Mac said settled in. Zombies were everywhere. That was a fact. But now they had living people to worry about too? Someone, or a group of someones, were out there snatching dwellers up and dragging them off into the woods, for what? Her mind raced with all the terrible things people would want with those two young men who disappeared days ago. Why couldn’t she remember their names? Conditions of an apocalypse were harsh. People did desperate things to survive, abominable things they never would have considered plausible in a normal world. And those people were now at their doorstep. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the treeline but there was nothing there. At least nothing she could see.
“Why don’t we go and have a closer look?” Carolyn said, standing up and gripping her knife tighter.
Mac used his leg as leverage to boost himself up. He stumbled but then steadied himself, using his sickle for stability. “Good idea. Follow me.”
They walked slowly through the open field past the barn, both their heads turning as if on swivels to scan their surroundings. It was as quiet a night as any in the normal world. So much so that Carolyn could imagine the apocalypse away completely, although then what reason would she have for taking a moonlit stroll through a field with a farmer she barely knew while he grasped a deadly weapon to his chest? But if she ignored that and just looked up at the dark night sky, at the swaying trees, if she closed her eyes and listened to the summer bugs, she could almost pretend they weren’t hunting for missing bodies in a zombie-riddled world. Almost.
Carolyn was pulled from her daydreams when Mac squatted down again and fumbled with something between his fingers. She almost tripped over him but caught herself just before taking him out. She knelt down next to him. “What is it?” she whispered, her eyes trained on the woods now mere feet in front of them.
“Blood.”
Carolyn’s breath hitched in her chest, her eyes following the trail forward from where they were kneeling. The drops of blood grew closer together until they became streaks, and then, right at the base of the first tree, a pool. A pool of blood but no body in sight. “We need to go back and warn the others,” Carolyn said, standing in a hurry. The hairs on her arms stood up. An overwhelming urge to get out of there consumed her. She was sure it was just her nerves from finding the blood but she felt as if she could feel eyes watching her every move.
“You’re right,” Mac said, getting up slowly. “No sense in chasing this trail when we have no idea what it will lead us to. But after seeing this, I think it’s safe to say we now know we have ourselves a human problem, and they’re not afraid of being discovered either. They want us to know they’re here, they’re watching, and you can bet your last dollar they’re coming.”
A twig snapped in the not too far distance. Carolyn couldn’t stop the little jump she gave as she whirled around. But once again the night was quiet and the forest was still, the lines of trees disappearing into the blackness of the night.
IV
Christine and Zack paced the former employee lounge used as their living quarters frantically, both ignoring the other as they passed by each other. Dr. Bhatt and her team were taking what they discovered in Liam’s journal and applying it to their formula, whatever that meant. Christine had never been good at chemistry or biology, and hadn’t had to further her education in it in college to become a corporate lawyer. Her eyes flickered to Zack in their last passing, who walked right by her without a glance.
Zack’s hands wrung together as his feet moved endlessly, carrying him back and forth across the room as if they had a mind of their own. He was too occupied with what would happen to Gretchen to think about motor skills. When he first heard they’d found something useful in the journal he was immediately overcome with a radiating excitement. He felt it was on its way to being over, that in a matter of days Gretchen would become herself again and all would be well. But not long after the good news he started to think about the reality of it. Their formula was already unstable, unpredictable. Just because they found something helpful in Liam’s scribblings did not mean the vaccine would then become a hundred percent effective. Instead of working half the time, it might work three-fourths of the time, and frankly that still wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t ready to risk her life. He wasn’t ready to lose her. He allowed himself a huff of laughter as he rolled his eyes. Gretchen wasn’t even his in the first place. She never was and most likely never would be. And why did that bother him anyway? He tried to remind himself of how much she irritated him but it didn’t work. He still wanted her back.
The door opened and both stopped in their tracks, heads turned and eyes bulging as if in wait of terrible news. Jonathan Rivers stood in the doorway, his face screwed up in an uncomfortable way.
