The Undead Chronicles | Vol. 3 | Dead of Winter, page 15
part #3 of The Undead Chronicles Series
Trying to avoid breathing too loudly, Sutton felt his heart pound as he approached the cabin. He didn’t feel particularly fearful, exercising caution during the moment he hoped to get some measure of revenge. Several pumpkins lined the ground along the front of the porch, still intact, and likely waiting their turn to be carved as a creepy warning to people who dared come near the cabins.
Assured the rifle was strapped over his shoulder, he stepped on the first step of the cabin’s small porch, pulling the sidearm from his pants, keeping it in a ready position. He attempted to peer inside the windows, and the glass of the front door without making himself an easy target, finding it difficult to see details inside.
Because the porch only lined the front of the cabin, Sutton needed to step down to check around the back. Along the side of the cabin, he saw half a dozen lengthy mounds of dirt where he could only assume bodies were buried in shallow graves. He stared only a few seconds, daring not linger, though he couldn’t fathom the man’s motivation for harming human beings in such a way. Something had to be wrong with him before the apocalypse, and now the world was his playground where he could hunt and maim.
In back, Sutton found little to help his search because the windows were seated too high for him to safely look into, and no porch, parking spot, or otherwise smooth ground existed to offer assistance. Sutton imagined the structure held a few bedrooms, and possibly a large kitchen or living area based on the square footage.
Returning to the front, he noticed an area trampled by footsteps recently that he hadn’t noticed when approaching the first time. He felt positive the man who caused his son so much grief entered the cabin, and perhaps felt he possessed all five cabins. Standing still a moment, Sutton listened intently to everything around him, finding the animals remained silent while no noise came from the cabin.
He walked up the front steps once more, knowing he was made if the mysterious man remained inside, or ever stepped foot inside in the first place. Drawing a deep breath and exhaling, Sutton opened the door with his left hand, keeping his sidearm gripped in his right. When the door opened inward, he spied a younger man standing before him, feeling certain it was the killer because no one else would hole up inside the cabin. Taking aim quickly, Sutton took half a step inside and fired at the man’s shoulder, not wanting to kill him.
Yet.
Instead of seeing the man flinch in pain, however, Sutton witnessed a mirror shatter in front of him, leaving him stunned momentarily. In less than a second, Sutton felt his entire body tense because the man had crouched along his hiding spot to use a stun gun on him. Completely defenseless, Sutton dropped his firearm before collapsing to the floor, completely at the mercy of a man who had already proven he held little regard for human life.
Twelve
Driscoll felt certain he’d been in and out of consciousness a few times when he awoke to find gray, cloudy skies overhead. He sensed it might be early afternoon, but he wasn’t certain. In fact, he didn’t feel certain about very much as he spied an immobile zombie to his left that wouldn’t reanimate based on the bloody stab mark in its skull. Beside his right hand, he found a knife covered in blood, and several feet to his right, a female zombie put down permanently in some fashion.
“Looks like you had a little skirmish, son,” Driscoll’s father said, appearing to him again as a few raindrops pelted Driscoll in the face from the towering trees.
“Striking out on my own was a grand idea,” Driscoll commented sourly, grabbing the knife before wiping it against the ground to remove the blood.
He attempted to stand, but a pain along the right side of his stomach caused him to wince. He looked down, finding blood soaked through his shirt. Hesitantly, he reached down, pulling up his shirt to find teeth marks centered in the blood stain.
“Oh, looks like one of them got you,” his father said with barely an ounce of empathy in his tone.
“I see you let me fight my own battles as always, Dad,” Driscoll said, letting his shirt drop down.
He dared not process what the bite meant, knowing if death was coming for him, he didn’t want to be alone. Even worse, he didn’t want to turn and have the people he knew finding him staggering around. He especially didn’t want to be a mindless entity tracking them down for food. Closing his eyes momentarily, he decided to walk back to the cabin, finding his head continued to ache, even after taking a few calming breaths.
Taking up the sidearm he’d dropped at some point, Driscoll tucked it along his back. He began walking toward the cabin, wondering if the others left the grounds, or decided to help Sutton.
“You can’t go back to them,” Alvin Driscoll said, walking alongside his son, a disgusted look on his face.
“You’d rather I die out here alone in the woods? Like a wounded animal just waiting to bleed out?”
“Better to be one with nature than go against its intended purpose for you.”
Driscoll continued walking, ignoring what he felt certain was a side-effect of whatever plagued his mind following the head injury.
“Don’t walk away from me, boy,” his father said.
“I’m just walking, Dad. But while we’re strolling out here, can you answer me one question?”
“Shoot,” his father answered casually, walking around a tree while keeping his eyes locked on his son.
“We moved quite a bit when I was a kid,” Driscoll stated. “You always had reasons for why we moved from town to town, or a new state, but I never felt like you shot straight with us.”
“There isn’t a question in there, son.”
“Okay,” Driscoll said testily. “Why did we really move all the time?”
His father drew a deep breath, likely framing the words in his mind before speaking them.
“Sometimes the congregations didn’t like what they heard,” he finally said.
“Meaning?”
“The truth hurts sometime, Steven. I didn’t preach my opinions about inferior folk, but squeaky wheels always seemed to find out.”
Driscoll found his way back to the path, not feeling like trudging through the heavily wooded areas because it sapped his strength. He wasn’t feeling the effects of the bite yet, but knew his future, based on witnessed events over the past few months.
“Maybe you should’ve stuck to biblical stories in your sermons and your personal life,” Driscoll noted.
“I should take this belt off and smack you, son.”
He reached for the buckle, and Driscoll recalled numerous times as a child when he or his siblings received whippings for wrongs, or perceived wrongs. The moment passed, and his mind returned to the present reality, which presented a wide variety of dangers instead. Perhaps his father prepared him for some of those dangers, teaching him to shoot firearms and live off the land to a certain extent.
“We both know you can’t hurt me,” Driscoll said. “I’m going crazy, or just resolving some stuff, but you’re just a memory to me now.”
His father fumed, looking ahead momentarily.
“That’s real,” he said, pointing to a zombie heading directly for Driscoll.
Drawing his knife, Driscoll approached it, swinging wide with his right hand when he usually shoved the undead first, or restrained them with his free hand. Finding its mark just the same, the blade punctured the zombie’s skull, ending its diminished life.
He wiped the knife off once again, using the zombie’s clothing, before returning it to the sheath.
“Happy?”
“I’m not happy with the direction you’re headed.”
“You mean literally, or philosophically?”
“Both, if you’re heading back to those people.”
“You talk about them like they’re animals,” Driscoll noted. “They’re pink on the inside, just like you and me. I’ve seen proof of that.”
His father drew close, an angered look crossing his face.
“If you go back to them, they’re going to cast you out. They can’t help you, son. Only the Lord above can help you now.”
“I agree,” Driscoll said. “You know, it took me years, but I finally listened to other preachers at church, and they were nothing like you. I realized maybe it wasn’t all of them who were wrong, but-”
“Don’t you say it,” his father warned.
“Because the truth hurts?”
His father said nothing, choosing to brood and huff instead.
“You led me astray for years, Dad,” Driscoll said.
“I toughened you up, Steven. Who bought you your first business right after high school?”
His father bought him a mowing business, which Driscoll eventually sold to venture into a bait and tackle business, which later expanded into a camping and wilderness shop. The business barely stayed afloat during some tough economical periods, so Driscoll was forced to ask his father for help when tacking on gun sales to the shop.
By this time, he realized his father kept him and his siblings within reach, almost manipulating them into requiring his advice, or his financial backing. His father had a way of making ideas seem like those of his children, but in the end, he was a puppet master who got them to do things his way. And Driscoll couldn’t say things turned out badly, at least until the apocalypse. His father always provided for him, taught him right from wrong, mostly, and never abused him.
“I guess it took this head injury to make me realize what really matters in the world now, Dad,” Driscoll admitted. “Your way just doesn’t hold up anymore.”
He paused momentarily as his mind returned to the day when he returned home, shortly after the start of the apocalypse, finding his father turned, and his mother bitten because she refused to leave.
“I buried you, Dad,” he said aloud, as though expelling the demons that plagued his mind for the past few months. “In the end you didn’t take care of us, and you allowed yourself to take Mom with you.”
“Deflecting your troubles won’t help you through the problems you’ve got now,” his father said. “You’ll be seeing me soon enough.”
“Assuming we both end up in the same place,” Driscoll said with a chuckle.
“You know I couldn’t have killed myself, son. Suicide is a mortal sin.”
“I’m aware. You could’ve taken measures, though, like tying yourself down, or asking Mom to shoot you. Maybe that’s what I’ll ask these people to do for me in the end.”
Alvin Driscoll looked at him, not with anger, or understanding, but rather disappointment in his eyes.
“It hurts your head even worse to hold a conversation with me, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Driscoll admitted.
“Good.”
With his parting word, Alvin Driscoll stepped behind a tree and disappeared from view. Reliving part of his childhood, Driscoll felt alone and abandoned, because he fought and struggled to earn his father’s love, realizing too late how misguided some of his father’s beliefs were in the modern world.
His skull and his side ached, but Driscoll wasn’t about to give up. If his life was measured in hours or days, he wanted to go out being of help to those who assisted him. They provided for him after his family died and other groups left him with empty promises.
Several minutes passed as he followed the trail, and when he finally spied people ahead, he started to instinctively head off the dirt road into the brush, but stopped short when he recognized them.
“Are you okay?” Gracine asked from a distance as she, Luke, Sean, and Samantha headed toward him with Buster by their side.
“I’ve been better.”
All of them looked at him warily when they drew close, spying the wound along his right side.
“I’ve been in and out of consciousness,” Driscoll admitted. “I got all of them, but one of them got a piece of me first, apparently.”
“I’m sorry,” Gracine said sincerely.
“It’s my own fault,” Driscoll said, surprised he felt and sounded as calm as he did. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I probably got a concussion when that guy attacked me, and I haven’t been right since.”
“How are you feeling?” Sean asked, fishing for information about his overall condition.
“Not bad, except the bite mark hurts,” Driscoll answered.
“You should come back with us,” Gracine said.
“Where’s Colby?”
“He went after the guy who attacked you.”
“Where did he go?”
“To the cabin across from the one where that douchebag tried to fry us,” Sean answered.
“He hasn’t come back?”
“We’ve been out looking for you this whole time,” Gracine said.
“He shouldn’t deal with that guy alone,” Driscoll said, stepping forward.
“You need to rest,” Luke said, putting a hand up.
“I have an expiration date that’s coming due. My last few hours should be spent doing something worthwhile. Let’s go see if Colby made it back.”
***
Sutton shook his head when he regained his faculties, and instinctively tried moving his appendages to avoid the danger that had already subdued him. Unable to move, he quickly noticed his hands and feet were bound to a wooden chair by synthetic rope that wasn’t about to give. An old, sturdy chair with wooden planks facing forward secured his arms because they were resting atop the planks. His feet were tied to the thick chair legs below, preventing him from kicking or maneuvering the chair.
He thought about working his hands back and forth to try loosening the bindings, but his eyes noticed his captor standing across the room, sharpening a knife with a revolver sitting on the kitchen counter beside him. Sutton could already tell his firearms and blades weren’t on him, and he regretted being deceived by the mirror trick.
While the younger man appeared to know that Sutton eyeballed him, he said nothing, simply continuing his work.
Not much of a talker in his own right, Sutton decided he needed some answers if he wanted to attempt an escape at some point. Because the killer showed no mercy to his other victims, Sutton certainly wouldn’t waste time trying to reason with him. Any information he gathered might be of use, because he hoped to break the chair or slip through the bindings the minute the killer stepped outside. Sutton looked around, unable to spy his weapons, even though he knew he hadn’t lost consciousness. In fact, he remembered being dragged along the floor to the chair, even as his body convulsed, feeling helpless, like watching from inside an empty vessel that didn’t respond to his commands.
“This cabin isn’t yours,” he said, trying to initiate a conversation.
He needed to stall for time, even if information wasn’t forthcoming.
Instead of replying, the man continued working with the knife, eventually stuffing it into a sheath along his right side before placing the revolver in a holster that sat along the front of his waistline on the left side for an opposite-sided draw. Sutton watched him get into the drawer of a desk along the wall to his right, rummaging for something specific. Because the chair was against the back wall of the living room, Sutton could see most of the cabin except for any bedrooms behind him. He began maneuvering his wrists in circular motions, trying to slowly get the ropes to loosen, monitoring his captor carefully.
“You should be running,” Sutton said. “More people are coming to these campgrounds.”
Without so much as looking back, the man continued to sort through the drawer, picking out a few items, looking at them, and replacing them carefully. He finally turned to Sutton, taking a precise two steps forward before stopping and studying his prey momentarily.
His dark hair appeared disheveled, as though he attempted to give himself haircuts without the benefit of a good mirror. Although not thick or muscular, the young man looked fit. His weathered face displayed two scars, likely created by blades. Sutton pictured innocent people protecting themselves, or loved ones, from this monster, using whatever knives they possessed. A particularly long gash lined his forehead, mostly horizontal, while a vertical streak ran down his right cheek. This scar appeared fresher, as though received within the past week or two, looking particularly red as though it might be infected.
“You didn’t strike me as the type who talked much,” the younger man said when he finally spoke.
“I’m not.”
“You chose a bad time to start. I’m going to kill your friends now.”
Sutton watched him turn about-face as though he’d just graduated a military academy, too stunned to say anything for a few seconds.
“You can’t kill them,” he finally said. “They outnumber you.”
Stopping abruptly, the man waited a few seconds before turning around slowly.
“They’re going to die,” he said assuredly. “And you’re the bait.”
***
“He’s not here,” Driscoll said when they returned to their cabin, finding no sign of Sutton having returned.
“We have to find him,” Sean insisted. “I can’t lose him now.”
“It’s a risk we can’t take,” Luke said, speaking on Samantha’s behalf.
No one wanted to place an eight-year-old in harm’s way.
“I’ll go alone,” Driscoll volunteered. “I’m already compromised, but I can still use a gun.”
“And what if you both wind up dead at that cabin?” Luke questioned.
“Then you all need to leave while you can, and don’t look back.”
Driscoll checked both the pistol and knife at his side momentarily before looking up to see concerned eyes looking his way.
