The Undead Chronicles | Vol. 3 | Dead of Winter, page 11
part #3 of The Undead Chronicles Series
“This has to be the work of one person,” he surmised aloud.
“How can you be so sure?” Luke questioned. “Didn’t we just deal with an entire clan of sick and depraved individuals?”
Buster approached his owner, sniffing around the area of the bodies as though something intrigued him.
“Stay,” Sutton ordered him before he drew any closer to the smell of death.
Very little odor reached his nostrils, causing Sutton to wonder if the bodies weren’t fresh. Although the entire incident felt strange, like a cat and mouse game, he wasn’t in a playing mood.
“I can’t ask any of you to stay for this,” he said. “I’ll deal with this sick asshole and find my boys.”
“That sounds like a terrible idea,” Luke stated.
“There are five cabins in this area. His base of operations has to be in one of them.”
“Or he lingers just outside of the area and waits for unsuspecting victims to arrive,” Driscoll suggested. “I don’t see any drag marks, but I do see some tire tracks.”
He nodded up the path where the tracks began or ended, far enough away that anyone in the cabin might not have heard a vehicle in the overnight.
“How far do they go?” Sutton inquired.
“As far as the eye can see,” Driscoll said, pointing the way.
“Don’t do this,” Gracine said before Sutton could take a single step. “You know this is probably a trap.”
Trees prevented the light of dawn from illuminating the woods well enough to spot details clearly. Sutton knew he needed better daylight to spot any potential traps, but he couldn’t linger too long if he wanted to locate the madman responsible for burning people alive. He walked to the second corpse, finding similar circumstances, knowing this person wasn’t dead when his body was set ablaze. He also knew this wasn’t either of his sons, but if the murderer kidnapped victims and held them before killing them, his sons might be on borrowed time if they indeed reached the area.
Looking down, he saw two fingers severed at the second knuckle. Appearing as though they were deliberately cut, and cleanly with precision, the ends appeared charred as well. Sutton knew the wounds took place before the gruesome burning ceremony occurred.
“How are we sure they weren’t zombies when this happened?” Luke questioned, taking his first step down from the porch.
“They’d still be zombies,” Driscoll answered. “There aren’t any marks on them that indicate fatal wounds.”
“If this guy is keeping prisoners and torturing them, there’s a chance he has Sean or Jacob,” Sutton surmised. “I can’t let this go.”
“We have Samantha to think about,” Luke said. “It’s not safe staying here.”
“You all need to go,” Sutton offered. “Me and Buster can deal with this.”
An awkward hesitation kept everyone from speaking momentarily.
“I’m not sure we’re any better off out there,” Luke said. “What if this psycho laid traps in the woods, or along the roads?”
“That’s a concern,” Sutton admitted. “If you aren’t going to leave the campground, you should all stay here and arm yourselves.”
“You’re really going to check all those cabins by yourself?” Gracine questioned.
“I’ve got Buster.”
“This would go a lot faster if we all went with you,” Driscoll reasoned. “He left those bodies to scare us. He doesn’t want us to come looking for him, because we might fuck up his little game.”
“Fine,” Luke agreed, “but we have to protect ourselves. This one doesn’t get out of the car.”
He referred to Samantha, who looked a bit frightened by all of the adult talk.
Sutton spent about half an hour drawing a rough map of the area, and explaining how to get to each cabin. Everyone agreed driving was the best bet, because it provided them protection, but only one traditional vehicle sat in the driveway for their use. Sutton said he didn’t mind using the box truck, but it wouldn’t traverse very well through any dense foliage. It also made for a terrible getaway vehicle if anyone came after them.
After making certain everyone had weapons locked and loaded, Sutton led the way on foot with Buster and Driscoll at his side, while everyone else followed in the most recent car the group acquired during their travels. He kept looking for traps along the way, carrying the long-range rifle that provided him with a thermal vision scope. In the woods, it might provide him with an advantage so long as the sun didn’t bathe the woods with morning rays.
“How well do you know these cabins?” Driscoll asked.
“I’d only stepped foot in one before last night.”
“We don’t even know if this guy is holing up in one of them.”
“I’m beginning to get the impression the plane crash had nothing to do with my cabin burning,” Sutton said. “But even a pyromaniac needs somewhere to stay, and any one of these cabins beats sleeping with bugs and snakes.”
“I hate to say it, but in the scheme of things, you picked a fucked up place to buy a cabin.”
Sutton grunted, agreeing, and no longer wanting anything to do with either campground location once he located his sons.
“I have to imagine this guy is going to see us coming,” Driscoll stated.
“He probably will, but I don’t care about that.”
“Shooting him in the head is preferable to letting him circle around us in the woods.”
“Agreed, but we’re screwing up his plan, so he’ll probably come to us.”
Driscoll started to say something else, but Sutton held up his right hand, stopping them both in their tracks. Kneeling down, Sutton found a thin wire in the road he figured might be a boobytrap of some sort, but as he examined it more closely, he wasn’t so sure.
“What is it?” Driscoll asked quietly, squatting down beside him.
“It’s low to the ground,” Sutton replied, “so I’m not sure it’s a tripwire. Might be an early warning system. Walking or driving over it probably rattles some cans, or makes a noise to alert him that strangers are near.”
“Or the dead,” Driscoll reasoned.
“Either way, one end or the other should lead us to him.”
Sutton walked back to the car the others were piled in, speaking to Gracine when she rolled down the driver’s side window.
“There’s some kind of tripwire in the middle of the road,” he said. “Driving over it might alert him that we’re nearby.”
“You expect us to skip through the woods?”
“Give us a few minutes and we can track it down in both directions.”
“You’re splitting up?” she asked with skepticism. “This is how you white folks get hacked up in the slasher flicks.”
“Aren’t the black people usually the first to get chopped up in those things?” Driscoll asked, trying to get a rise out of Gracine.
“Only ‘cause dumb crackers bring that shit down on them.”
Sutton cleared his throat before their conversation grew any more intense.
“I’m asking that you stay here while Steve and I check both ends of this thing,” he said. “I’m going to leave Buster here, because I don’t want him springing any traps or alarms.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Luke said.
“You have guns,” Sutton pointed out, tilting his head. “Besides, we’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“That’s what white people always say in those movies right before they get a hatchet to the face,” Gracine said with a bit of sass.
Sutton turned to Driscoll.
“Let’s get this over with.”
Sutton chose a direction and began following the line through the woods, finding it barely lingered more than an inch above dirt and foliage the entire duration. Carefully stepping around the line the entire walk, Sutton finally discovered the end wrapped around a tree and secured in place with some kind of tack that penetrated the bark.
Since the discovery required only a few minutes of his time, Sutton walked back to the road and signaled to his friends in the car that he was going to follow Driscoll’s path. Buster looked to him anxiously, wanting to leave his post beside the driver’s side of the car.
“Stay,” Sutton said firmly.
He followed Driscoll’s path in the other direction, suspecting the other end of the wire led to either a cabin, or some remote camp in the woods. Unable to determine his new enemy’s mindset, or motivations, Sutton imagined he was dealing with a psychopath who no longer felt required to hide behind pretense. Once the rules of survival changed, some people let out their inner inhibitions. Like a trapdoor spider, the man simply hid in the woods and waited for his prey to arrive before springing his trap.
Although Sutton knew of the five cabins in the area, he couldn’t recall their exact locations, leaving him at a disadvantage. He carefully walked nearly a hundred yards through dense shrubs, weeds, and trees, hearing little in the way of insects and birds. Strangely, the predatory undead were nowhere to be found, causing him to wonder if the man kept the area clear so only his chosen prey would venture into his world. Plant life grew less dense as Sutton saw the blue sky through the branches above him, just before a small clearing emerged, revealing his destination. Sutton stood by a tree momentarily while he observed the small cabin before him, seeing no activity. His stomach tightened, because he didn’t see or hear any sign of Driscoll, leaving him gravely concerned.
Daring not call out, he stepped forward, finding the end of the wire attached to a thin aluminum pole that looked a bit like a misshapen silver Christmas tree with cans and bells hanging from it. Sutton suspected it provided the cabin’s occupant with numerous false alarms, but also alerted him to unsuspecting travelers in his area. He obviously knew a group of people took up residence not very far from him, and Sutton wondered if they were now doing exactly what the man wanted.
Treading as lightly as possible, Sutton approached the cabin, seeing no open doors or windows from the rear. He took a few steps to the side of the structure, seeing no evidence of Driscoll until he looked down and spied a trail of recent footprints in the moist soil. Following the footprints to the front of the cabin, he stopped just short of the veranda that held one chair and a small, round table. Eerily, the front door stood wide-open, inviting him inside. Unfortunately, the footprints led to the front steps where wet footprints from the morning dew completed the trail and went inside.
Unnerved by the fact that Driscoll hadn’t shown his face, or said something, Sutton felt concerned that his fellow traveler found trouble.
Or trouble found him.
Knowing he couldn’t enter the cabin silently, no matter how hard he tried, Sutton slid the sniper rifle around his shoulder by its strap, opting to pull the sidearm from his belt. He hadn’t found a holster that fit the .40 semi-automatic, so he’d stuffed it inside his belt that morning. Holding the firearm in a ready position, he ascended the stairs, making little noise as he did so, stepping inside the cabin a moment later.
Less than a thousand square feet, the cabin presented little in the way of exploration. Virtually an open-floor concept throughout, the space consisted of a kitchen, complete with an island that doubled as seating for meals, that tied into living quarters. That area contained only few pieces of furniture, and no mounted animal heads or rural décor one might expect inside a genuine log cabin. Only a bedroom behind a closed door remained a mystery to him, so Sutton carefully walked over to the door. He kept his gun trained on the door as he opened it, hearing a pained squeak that lasted two seconds while the door slowly opened inward. Sutton felt like he waited an eternity for the door to come to a stop, but a window inside the room revealed an unmade bed, a dresser, and some strewn clothing.
Not exactly a luxury cabin, the structure didn’t have closets or sealed off spaces, other than the bedroom. Sutton wondered where the hell Driscoll had gotten to, if not inside the cabin. Every clue indicated that the man preceded him in checking the space, but no evidence of him remained. Carefully stepping into the living room, Sutton checked the ceiling first for any attic access, finding none, before he scoured the floor for some sort of hatch leading below. He knew he wasn’t the only person preparing for the end of the world before it happened.
As though intentional, the cabin didn’t have a rear door, though a porch occupied the back portion of the cabin. A carpet remnant was evident along the opposite side of a loveseat in the living space. A plain tan color, the remnant appeared stained, filthy almost, and no respectable cabin owner would bring it inside, before or after the apocalypse.
Unless the fragment served a purpose other than interior decoration.
Sutton walked over, lifting one corner to see a metal circle with a twist lock about the size of his fist. Careful to stand back while doing so, Sutton aimed the gun at the square space about a foot-and-a-half square while he turned the twist lock counterclockwise about a quarter turn before it released, allowing him to pull up on the hatch.
He hadn’t seen basement windows along the cabin’s exterior, meaning the cabin certainly wasn’t built to modern architectural codes. This likely meant that a hermit or prepper chose to build the cabin in such a fashion. Sutton threw the carpet fragment aside, allowing the hatch door to open fully as he looked inside. Light from the outside didn’t prove enough to give him a full view of the cabin’s lower level, and he didn’t have a flashlight with him, so he peered down, trying to get his eyes adjusted to the darkness, hoping someone didn’t have a gun trained on him. He found a ladder attached to a wall, or perhaps a support beam, but about halfway down the ladder’s bottom half was swallowed by darkness.
Maneuvering to the other side of the hatch, Sutton tried pulling it all the way back, hoping the hinges might snap, meaning the door couldn’t seat correctly and lock again. He quickly discovered the hinges were thick, too much so for him to snap or bend, so he began looking for a nearby tool to use for striking them.
Using what little early morning light penetrated the cabin’s few windows in the common area, Sutton began looking through cupboards for anything useful when he heard a cry for help from the basement area. Inside the cupboard he currently had open, Sutton noticed a flashlight, which he switched on before returning to the square opening.
“Hello?” he called.
“Help!” the voice said in reply.
“Sean?” Sutton asked with bewilderment, recognizing the voice.
“Dad?” came the equally shocked response.
“I’m coming,” Sutton said as he scurried down the ladder, finding a body on the dirt floor at the base of the ladder.
Absolutely no light penetrated the lower level, because no windows existed in the area, which appeared just as large as the main level in square footage.
He shined the light downward, discovering Driscoll immobile on the floor.
“I think he’s dead,” Sean Sutton said from behind a set of bars crafted before the apocalypse, but modified afterwards to be a jail instead of a safe room. “He threw him down the ladder like a sack of potatoes.”
Sutton went to his son, clasping the bars that went from floor to ceiling, with wooden planks covering them about to his waistline along the front. He saw no key to the lock along the door, and no good way to force the bars open. His son appeared a bit haggard, dirt covering portions of his familiar face, and Sutton noticed Sean had grown his hair nearly to his shoulders since the last time they met in person. He and Sean touched fingers through the bars for only a second before both realized the unseen danger still lurking nearby.
“Where is he?” Sutton asked once he discovered he couldn’t free his son without a key.
“I don’t know. He threw that guy down here and locked the hatch a few minutes before you got here.”
Sutton turned around, realizing the ladder was mounted to a thick support beam, and behind it was a prepper’s dream with dry goods and other supplies lining shelves that wrapped around the other half of the basement. Even in front of the stocked walls were free-standing shelves with more goods, including what looked like tools and a small generator.
“How did you wind up down here?” Sutton inquired, not looking to his son, but up the ladder because he sensed a trap.
“Long story,” Sean answered.
Sutton’s instincts proved correct when a hand holding a Molotov cocktail appeared above the opening. Sutton immediately saw the open flame at the end of the bottle, dancing on some sort of soiled rag, and aimed his firearm, taking two shots before the bottle landed beside Driscoll, setting some of the man’s clothing on fire.
“Fuck,” Sutton muttered, confronted with a decision to make regarding three lives as the fire began to spread, and the hatch above him slammed shut.
Nine
Waking suddenly, Driscoll began screaming as the fire spread along his left arm and torso where the bottle had shattered. He started to stand and shake his arm, but Sutton grabbed him and helped smother the flames before they spread any further.
“Glad to see you’re alive,” Sutton said.
“What the fuck?” Driscoll asked in shock. “Last thing I remember is walking into the cabin before everything went black.”
“Well, now we’re trapped in the basement of this sick fucker’s fantasy cabin,” Sutton answered, climbing the stairs to find the hatch’s handle twisted and secured from the other side.
He found a mechanism on the underbelly of the hatch that would move the latch away from the steel plate that kept the square hatch from swinging upward. Grabbing it with his fingers, Sutton couldn’t move it by finger strength alone because of the weight from above. He quickly descended the ladder, holding the flashlight, so he could search for some kind of tool that might assist him.
