Chapter Three - Fuel Tank
Malana scanned the roadside carefully, her sharp eyes searching the tree-line for any sign of infected. Their trip out of the woods had taken a toll on ammunition for the mounted gun but ever since their emergence back onto main roadways they'd encountered very few zombies. The biggest obstacle had been finding a route to Gettysburg that wasn't choked by abandoned vehicles or blocked off by an equally abandoned CEDA road block. They had been on the road for five hours trying to get a city that was only about an hour away from where they were. Brutus' inability to read the map correctly hadn't helped but luckily that was a problem they'd solved fairly early on. Doc was now reading the map and helping direct Brutus toward a small nearby town where they hoped to find some desperately needed fuel for the Jeep.
The houses came into view and soon enough so did the roof of the gas station. Malana knew they would have to be careful. In the post-apocalyptic world the infected weren't the only threat. Gasoline was now a major commodity and she was worried that if anyone had remained in the town they would be guarding it well. There were no signs of life as the Jeep screeched to a halt beside the gas pump and the group piled out to stretch their legs.
"Can we go for a walk?" Kael asked, truthfully sick and tired of being cramped up in the jeep.
"I wouldn't recommend it," Malana replied lifting the gas cap and inserting the pump while her eyes continued to dart around.
"The kid might be right," Doc said, "We need food anyway. I'll go with him."
"Alright Doc but it's your funeral," Brutus growled and Malana waved them away in apparent agreement with the sentiment,"
Kael grabbed the Remington shotgun but Brutus cut him an angry look and he had to settle for the Colt Python and his baseball bat. They set out toward the houses first cautiously approaching the first. Doc leaned down to examine several scratches on the door, deep gouges from the wood. He opened the door slowly. It was dark inside. A waft of air carried with it the stench of death as the two of them made their way slowly inside. Kael squeezed his bat anxiously as they continued into the kitchen. The source of the smell became apparent. The Fridge was open and inside was various meats and other perishables that had clearly been decaying for some time.
"No food here," Doc announced quietly.
"Doc Wright," Kael said as they exited the house, "Do you ever think things will go back to normal? Do you think maybe somewhere out there there's a place where the infection hasn't hit yet and it's peaceful?"
"I'm guessing that wherever people are the infection is," Doc replied grimly as they reached the next house, "Or it will be there soon enough. This thing spreads like no pathogen I've ever seen."
"So than why do we go on living?" Kael asked when they had reached the next fridge and found it empty, "If the whole thing is fucked than why don't we just kill ourselves?"
"The very fact we are still alive means there is some small hope," Doc answered, "A bit of fuel left to restart the human race when the infected finally die... We are immune Kael, we wouldn't have lived this long if we weren't."
The two of them found the next three houses in ruins. The roofs appeared to have been broken down from the outside in and the furniture had been overturned. A massive hole in the wall on the side seemed to suggest something either exiting or entering. Kael suggested it might be tornado damage but the worried look on Doc's face told him that something far more dangerous than Mother Nature was at work here. They took what little food there was in the house, mainly canned goods, and rushed back to the gas station.
"How'd the date go ladies?" Brutus asked chuckling.
"There's massive damage to some of these homes, I'm not sure they were made by infected," Doc explained, "The military might have done it, but I'm not sure."
"And the food?"
"Not much," Kael admitted sadly, "We should check the station's mini market."
"Alright you two," Malana said handing Kael the M4, "but watch your asses."
"Don't spoil the kid," Brutus said when Kael was far enough away, "You gotta build up to stuff like that, I'm not even sure he can handle that sort of weapon."
"Have some faith in your fellow man Brutus," Malana scolded.
"Fellow man?" Brutus scoffed, "The kid's voice has barely broken and you think he's a man?"
Doc walked toward the darkened market with his weapon drawn. He could hear something very faint. At first he thought it was merely a breeze whispering through the trees but the air was soon still and the sound became clearer. It was a crying, a moaning, a sound filled with profound sadness. He felt his heart drop as he stepped into the doorway and caught sight of the figure standing inside the shadowy shop with her back turned and body slouched. Her head was buried in her palms and she sobbed uncontrollably. Doc looked back to Kael for a moment noting that the kid's face was drawn up in untold horror.
"Kael," Doc said, "What is it boy? We've got a survivor here, I need you snap out of your stupor and help me get her to talk."
Doc turned back and realized his mistake. She was facing him now, her piercing red eyes shimmering in the deep gloom that consumed the shop. She was screaming in a horrid rage and out came her claws. Doc tried to back away but she was too fast, her strike too precise. Her razor nails ripped at his flesh repeatedly and Doc fell to the floor trying to shield himself and crying for Kael to help him. The boy seemed too shocked, too utterly terrified as the shrieking Witch tore into Doctor Wright. He knew that he should spring into action to help his friend but his haunted memories stopped him.
Brutus rushed into the shop pushing past Kael and lifting his shot gun. He unloaded two shells worth of pellets into the enraged Witch but the demonic thing just kept scratching despite being missing large chunks of flesh and muscle. Brutus pumped again and again until all eight rounds had found the Witch and with a shriek she collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood that now mixed with Doc's own.
"Kael!" Brutus shouted, "Snap out of it kid and go get the medicine kit! Run kid!"
Kael returned to reality and was served with a heaping helping of guilt from his own conscience as he rushed toward the Jeep and pulled Brutus's massive pack from the back. He grabbed the medical supplies out stopping only for a moment when a horrid howling, like a hundred ravenous voices, resounded all around them. He rushed the supplies to Brutus who tried to stem the flow of blood from Doc's wounds as best he could. Doc, whimpering and barely conscious, tried to direct the man in the proper medical procedure but he could barely form a coherent word let alone a complete sentence. Brutus bit the cap off an adrenaline shot and delivered it into Doc as well as offering the map a bit of morphine to dull the pain as the bleeding slowly subsided.
"Malana is going to need help," Brutus said, "the horde is coming. Give her the M4 and kid," Brutus tossed his shotgun to Kael exchanging it for the kids Colt Python and shutting the market's doors tight behind him. Luckily the doors had been boarded up with wood replacing the glass that normally would have been in them.
Kael rushed out to meet Malana and handed her the M4 while reloading the Remington. Malana saw there were shapes moving through the trees, the sickly green-gray flesh of infected and the shimmering eye shine that sent a chill down her spine. She lifted her M4 and fired away landing several body shots on the nearest infected. She'd taken aim on her next target before the first even hit the ground and it too had bullets tear holes into its center of mass. Kael was hard pressed to find a target even near enough to be injured by the shotgun as Malana was taking care of most of those that emerged. He saw one then, one that was perched high up in the trees. He watched as it leapt from one tree to the next and then catapulted itself toward them with claws positioned to pounce. He lifted the shotgun, pumped it and felt a blood sprinkle his cheek as the Hunter's head exploded in mid-pounce and its corpse crashed into the pavement.
"Nice shot kid," Malana congratulated taking out another three zombies in a horizontal spray of short bursts from the M4.
They heard something else then, something that none of them had ever heard. The strange roar lasted for a long while. It was deep and afterwards everything seemed to grow silent. The horde seemed to almost calm down now and a rumbling in the ground told Malana that what was about to happen was far from good.
"That couldn't be a zombie could it?" Brutus asked, poking his head out from with the shop, "It would have to be the biggest mother ever."
"Can you move the Doc?" Malana asked.
"He's in rough shape but I think he'll be alright to move," Brutus replied trying to get the half-conscious man to his feet.
"No," Doc said, "You've got to get out of here. Go!"
"You don't wanna be left for dead do you Doc?" Brutus said picking the man up and hoisting him over his shoulder.
"You don't understand, this thing is going to be huge. The damage on those houses... this thing is going to be big."
"How big?" Brutus asked.
"Big," Doc replied, "And built like a fucking tank."
Malana reloaded her M4 and waved Brutus as she watched the tree-line above the station for signs of the coming monstrosity. She could see birds fleeing in its wake and hear the sound of crashing lumber. She turned to the backpack and reached inside fumbling for something that she knew Brutus would be carrying. She found it buried in a side-pouch, a bottle of Jack. She tore off a piece of cloth and ignored Brutus' protesting as he got into the jeep and tried to situate the Doc in a comfortable position. Malana readied a match and waited for the beast with her Molotov in hand.
"We're gonna light this mother and run," Malana explained, "Brutus, get into the driver seat, Kael, you get the big gun."
"What did I tell you about spoiling him Mal?" Brutus argued.
"Not now," Malana said.
The Tank emerged from the trees and stumbled onto the roof of the mini-mart. It was massive, nearly nine feet tall with long arms as thick as tree trunks and built of bulging muscle. With a grotesque bald head and a chest as wide as the front of a city bus the beastly infected leapt down onto the pavement nearly cracking it in the process. Malana felt a wave of fear as she lit the Molotov and tossed it at the charging Tank. It broke over the creature's chest engulfing it in flames. She saw her mistake then, realizing that the entire station could now go up in flames she screamed for Brutus to hit the gas and leapt into the Jeep. It happened far too quickly, the station exploded jolting the jeep forward and causing it to tip on its side and slide along the road. Though bruised they had to act quickly as the stomping Tank, somehow still alive, stormed out of the fire with wisps of flame still smoldering on his shoulders.
"I told you it was a Tank," Doc said as Brutus pulled him to his feet and helped him away from the wrecked Jeep.
Suddenly the sound of machinegun fire filled the air, the spinning of a mini-gun was unmistakable though none of the four Survivors were near the Jeep and even if they had been the gun was on its side as was the entire vehicle. They watched an armored military personnel carrier storm down the street. A mini-gun mounted on top of it struck the Tank with more than a hundred rounds every second. The towering titan took cover behind the Jeep and rammed its knuckles into the ground. Its gargantuan digits grasped a boulder of asphalt and rent it from the ground below hurling it toward the APC forcing the gunner to duck inside. Wounded but somehow still on its feet the Tank bounded away toward the woods leaving the four Survivors bewildered but happy to be alive.
The APC rolled up beside them and opened up its doors.
"You folks immune too?" the man inside, dressed in a tattered blood covered military uniform, asked, "Hop in."
The four of them sat silently in the APC for the first few minutes of the trip. They were tired, dirty, and had been taxed to their limit in an ordeal that had only lasted a few minutes. Doc's head lolled back and forth as he faded in and out of consciousness. Despite having sustained fairly serious lacerations from his encounter with the Witch Brutus's makeshift medical intervention had proved pretty successful. He wasn't losing blood any more. The pain was still intense for him and it left him struggling to stay alert and awake. Doc could see that Kael was looking at him with an expression of guilt on his face.
"Don't feel bad," Doc mumbled, "Fear is natural."
"Just 'cause it's natural don't mean it's good," Brutus spat, "We can't have him freezing up like that."
"I'm not usually afraid of the infected," Kael said, "It's just, I've run into that sort before... before we met. Please understand."
"What makes them any scarier than the others, just because the bitch cries doesn't mean she's scary."
"It's not just fear," Kael replied, "Before you guys found me I'd only encountered one zombie. You see my Dad was off on a business trip and I was at home alone with my older sister. She'd always sort of been by baby sitter I guess but I was angry because at sixteen I didn't think I needed one. Anyway we got into a fight because I wanted to go out after curfew, this was before CEDA had started the evacuations... she wouldn't let me. I ended up hitting her," Kael seemed on the verge of tears but he managed to hold them back and continue his story, "I came upstairs, to apologize and I could hear her crying... I... I opened the door and went up to her. She had those piercing eyes. She attacked me and I had to kill her. I had to kill my own sister."
Kael felt Malana put a comforting arm around him as tears escaped his eyes. She was the only one who had known the truth about what had happened to him. He'd been trapped with his sister's infected corpse in his home in Harrisburg for almost a week before they arrived. Trapped in that house haunted by what he'd been forced to do, haunted by the fact that the last thing his sister knew in this world was being struck by her own brother. Now his guilt, his memories, had caused Doc undue pain as well.
"That's a pretty messed up story kid," one of the soldiers said, "And that's coming from someone who did two tours in Afghanistan. Name's Ryan, Corporal Jarrod Ryan."
"You were in the war?" Kael asked hoping to take his mind off of his memories.
"Yep," the man replied, "I'm trained Marine Scout Sniper but over there they had me doing all sorts of things. I've seen some wild shit. We messed up that part of the world pretty bad, although it was pretty messed up before we got there too... I only got back home a few months ago. It didn't take long before this place was messed up too. So where you four headed?"
"Gettysburg," Malana answered, "We heard there was an evacuation, CEDA and the Military. A man told us to come here and look for his son, a man named Arnold Wilhelm."
"Charlie Wilhelm's Dad," Jarrod replied lighting a cigarette, "Charlie's back in Gettysburg with the others."
"And the evacuation?" Kael asked with hope simmering in his bright blue Irish eyes.
"I don't know how to say this," Jarrod said taking a long drag, "but there ain't no evacuation. We were supposed to be part of one but at the last moment CEDA and half our goddamn battalion pulled out on us. We expected some choppers but nothing ever came."
"Great," Brutus said, "Just great. I knew the Military was no good but fucking CEDA, gutless scientist bastards."
"We're nearly there now," Jarrod said, "We'll get your friend here to medical and set you up with some ammunition and sleeping space if you want it."
"Thank you Corporal Ryan," Malana said.
"Call me Jarrod Ma'am."
The APC came to a stop less than fifteen minutes later and the three soldiers inside exited first making sure the area was secure before directing the four survivors into the safe house. Amazingly rather than having any new military fortification built the group were using an old Hotel that was built in the 1860s during the Civil War. They had fortified it with lumber boarding up all walls and windows and bracing them with heavy objects some of which were priceless antiques that had been on display in the city. Across the street from the Hotel was the Gettysburg Hospital allowing Jarrod and the others access to medial supplies necessary to keep everyone healthy.
Aside from Jarrod and the other two soldiers in the APC there were six military men in the Hotel and another thirty or forty currently out hunting for supplies. Apparently the APC and the Hotel's back up generators ran on diesel and such fuel was hard to come by in the post-apocalyptic world. The solution was typically to use frenchfry oil from fast-food restaurants but even that would eventually run out. There were also fifteen or so regular civilian survivors including three children under ten. Malana hated to see them cooped up like this. The world wasn't safe for adults so keeping children safe was no small task in a city infested with infected.
"Private Gutierrez I want you to take the good Doctor here down to medical," Jarrod said helping Doc into a wheel chair, "And send Private Wilhelm up, he's got company."
Malana felt a rush of nervousness when she heard the name. Flashes of what had happened in Harrisburg filled her mind. How would she break it to this poor boy that his Father had blown his brains out and his Mother had been amongst the infected when they found her? She felt even weaker at the knees when she saw his young face, he didn't look a day over twenty as he approached her and saluted his superior officer.
"This is Private Charlie Wilhelm," Jarrod said, "Private, this is..."
"Malana," Malana said shaking the man's hand nervously, "Malana Landry."
"She ran into your Father," Jarrod said, "If you excuse me, I'm gonna go check on the Doc."
"You saw my Father?" Charlie asked with an inquiring grin, "How is he? Is he here? Or is he making the trip with a different group?"
"I'm afraid he isn't coming, Charlie," Malana struggled to speak as she explained, "He was killed."
"My Mother too?" Charlie asked, and as Malana nodded she saw the sadness wash over his face, "I guess I should have suspected as much. Zombies are everywhere... they, they didn't get infected did they?"
"No," Malana half-lied, "They told us to find you and tell you if something happened and they couldn't make it."
"I understand," the Private replied, "Thank you for honoring what they asked and coming to find me. I'm just sorry the evacuation wasn't here like you expected. Reports have come in from all over the place of evacuations being scrapped in favor of bombing cities wholesale. Luckily Gettysburg isn't all the big so I don't think they'll wind up bombing us. I just can't believe the Military, our own fellow soldiers, would do this to us."
"I can," Brutus interjected, "I mean it isn't like they get their orders from other grunts, they get 'em from some General who gets his orders from some asshole President in a bunker. Unless CEDA has suspended the Constitution and assumed complete control"
"Anyway," Charlie said standing and offering a slight smile, "Welcome to Gettysburg, I'll show you around."
Doc lay on his back with his chest heaving. His breathing was fairly labored and brought with it agony as his scratched and torn flesh contracted and expanded with each breath. He took off his jacket, covered in blood that was a blend of infected and his own, and tossed it onto the floor. His wallet slid out of the pocket and across the floor to where Jarrod Ryan and a friend of his, a medic, stood.
"So what's your story Doc?" Jarrod asked picking up the wallet and walking toward the man.
"Pretty uninteresting one actually," Doc replied coughing and reaching for the wallet. He didn't get a good grip on it and it fell to the floor open. The Corporal bent to pick it up but his eyes went wide when he saw the ID card inside marked with a familiar logo.
"Uninteresting my ass," the Corporal said, "This is a CEDA clearance ID Badge."
"Yes," Doc said, "I worked with CEDA, but not in an official capacity. They brought me in because I know about diseases, I'm a pathologist, they tried to recruit as many civilian scientists and doctors as they could. I was one of them. Please don't tell the others, they would think me a traitor, a monster."
"You were looking for a cure?" Jarrod asked as the medic began to mend the man's wounds.
"Yes," Doc coughed, "But then the team started getting infected. I had to run for it. I made it to a boat... The others picked me up a few miles North of Riverside. Please don't tell. I'm still looking for a cure."
"Good," Jarrod said as the medic prepared to put Doc under for surgery, "We need you to keep working on it."
"Why?" Doc asked as he grew sleepy.
"Because our Sergeant is becoming one of them," Jarrod answered.
Doc tried to form a reply but the waking world was fading and soon an unnatural sleep stole him away.
