In the warm, sane light of day, the city of Spencer's Mill looked significantly less threatening. Unfortunately, it was also that much easier to see all the damage and decay. Marcus followed Alan and Sam down a dirt road leading away from the church. The same road he, Ed and Maya had driven up last night.
"Why aren't we driving?" he asked.
"Because only a dumbass drives around a city full of these things," Alan replied.
"What Alan is trying to say is that cars make noise, and the zeds like noise, so we don't want to attract any extra attention," Sam replied. "Not to mention that cars aren't exactly a renewable resources and we only have so many of them."
"Keep it down," Alan hissed.
Sam sighed, but quieted down. Marcus tried to keep a watchful eye on his surroundings as they continued along the dirt road. Either side of the path was overgrown with trees and shrubs, though it extended into a forest to the right. To the left were a few houses down a short incline. If he focused, Marcus could see some broken out windows, the occasional dead body, random debris dropped on the ground in the chaos that must have consumed the town. He didn't focus too hard. If he did, it began to make him sick.
He turned his thoughts to his new roommates...or landlords...or whatever the hell they were. Alan, he didn't trust. Besides the man's abrasive attitude and just the general fact that he was clearly a jerk, there was something there a little deeper. Something that set Marcus on edge. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, but it frightened him. Sam, on the other hand, seemed more straightforward. He got the feeling that being in a bad mood and short with people was just her way of dealing with the zombie apocalypse.
They reached the end of the dirt road. The road split. Left led further into the residential area (of which most of the town seemed to be), and straight led past a pair of houses, one of which had clearly still been under construction when the zombies hit. It was nothing more than a skeletal woodworking of a house.
Alan and Sam led him on dead ahead. Marcus heard a low groan come from somewhere nearby and both of them froze. He did, too, waiting. Some rustling came from the right. Marcus gripped his crowbar, waiting. A mass of bushes shifted, and then the zombie seemed to be birthed from it. Alan didn't wait for it to come to them. He rushed over to it and cracked its skull with the large red wrench he was carrying in one sure, swift hit.
"Come on," he said as the body dropped.
They kept going, straight down the outer road.
Now, he found his thoughts drifting towards the scope of the outbreak. It seemed likely that the entirety of Trumbull Valley was infected with these things. But how far did this outbreak extend? The state? The country? The whole world? Were they living in a genuine zombie apocalypse? The thought chilled him. Things that mattered more than practically anything a month ago now didn't mean shit. Bills to pay? Who cares, there's zombies outside. Don't have a job? Who cares, there's zombies walking around outside!
Survival mattered now. Resources, friendships, a place to live and defend yourself from the hordes. Marcus suddenly found himself incredibly grateful that he had no known medical conditions and didn't need glasses. He was fairly smart, fit and at least somewhat brave. He could shoot a gun, he could fight if he really had to. He was pretty well-suited to survive in this horrifying new world. But that meant a lot of people weren't.
The road they were on came to an end. To the right was the road that would ultimately terminate at Mount Tanner. They broke left, passing another house, a low row of storage units, a restaurant and a post office. Alan and Sam hadn't said a word the whole time and so far, any zombies in the area were keeping their distance. Marcus kept thinking about that last part. How many people were dead? If this was widespread, how many people?
Were his parents still alive? In a way, he was also glad that he and Ed had no pets. Marcus had no siblings, nor any aunts or uncles, just his parents. They were like him: fit, active, capable. His father was an outdoorsman, at least to a certain degree. He imagined his parents would have taken off to the family cabin they'd bought, it was out in the woods about thirty miles outside of town. They could last for a while out there.
Marcus stopped this train of thought. He didn't necessarily like it. How long was long enough? How long would this whole thing last? They came to a diner with broken out windows to their left and the pair led Marcus across the abandoned parking lot, stepping over bodies and broken glass. As they reached the edge of the lot, they paused.
"It's there," Alan said.
Up ahead was a wrecked, flipped-over camper. But beyond that, further down the road, he could see a structure. The vet clinic.
"So what's the plan?" Marcus asked.
"We get in, we clear the place out, you watch our asses while we search for any and all meds, then we get out," Alan replied tersely.
"Sounds like fun," Marcus muttered.
"It's not supposed to be fun!" he snapped.
"Shut up," Sam whispered harshly. "There don't seem to be that many of them around, so let's go," she said.
The trio started up again. They jogged across the street, around the ruined camper and into the parking lot of the building. As they began moving across the blacktop, a sudden chorus of zombie voices, groans and moans and the occasional muttered semi-phrase, came to them.
"Freeze!" Alan hissed.
Marcus looked around frantically and finally spied another group of zombies, maybe twelve or fifteen of them, coming at them from further down the road, past the vet clinic. Following Alan's quick hand commands, they ducked down low and moved over to the only car left parked in the lot. There they sat, squatted on their haunches, for several minutes as the voices grew louder. They kept getting louder until they were practically right next to them. Then the voices receded until they were almost gone. Marcus let out a long sigh.
"Come on," Alan muttered.
"Why do they do that?" Marcus asked as they crossed the cracked blacktop parking lot. "Group together like that?"
"I don't know, but we've been seeing it more lately," Sam replied.
"Be quiet!" Alan growled.
They reached the front door to the clinic. Marcus tried the knob and found it unlocked. He pushed the door open, staring into the clinic's dim lobby. The only light came from the morning sun through the stained, cracked front windows. Marcus moved deeper into the building, crowbar at ready, but he heard nothing.
The building didn't seem to be very large. There was just a single door at the back. Marcus moved through it, coming into an examination room that doubled as a kennel. He stopped as a reek of dead, rotting flesh came to him. The light was even worse here, because there weren't many windows. He looked across the floor.
"Oh, god," he moaned sickly.
"Jesus," Sam whispered from behind him.
The bloody, gory remains of several dogs, maybe a dozen, were scattered across the cement floor. It looked like the zombies had been feasting here. Marcus felt sick to his stomach. He took a step to the side and tried to breathe through his mouth. Forcing himself to focus, he turned and looked through another open door. It led to an exam room that seemed to double as a supply area. There was nothing waiting inside. He cleared the last room, an office, and then hurried back to the lobby area, his breakfast threatening to come up.
"Building's clear," he managed to say to Alan, who'd been watching the front.
"Watch our ass," the ranger replied, then disappeared back into the slaughterhouse.
Marcus swallowed several times, trying to get the images out of his head, and moved to the front door. He looked out through the glass and couldn't see any zombies nearby. He locked the deadbolt, hoping it would keep the zombies out if they showed up. Behind him, he heard the other two shifting around, deeper in the building.
Time passed. Seconds bled into minutes.
Marcus' pulse was slowly rising as the tension increased. He kept waiting for something to go wrong, a zombie to pop up, or a hoard of them. More time passed. He heard a distant growl. Somewhere, maybe back in the office, he heard Sam curse.
"What is it?" Alan asked.
"My rucksack is fucking falling apart at the damn seams," Sam snapped back.
"Just grab what you can, we've been here too long," Alan replied.
"No, I've got to get everything we can. We won't have an opportunity like this again."
"And we won't have any opportunities if we wind up dead!"
"Goddamnit, Alan-"
Marcus turned his attention back to the front door and barely managed to muffle a startled shout. Where there had only been a vacant lot there were now five zombies, stumbling their way. Apparently they'd heard the argument.
"Uh, guys, we've got zombies," Marcus called back.
"Dammit! See, I told you, let's go, Sam!" Alan yelled.
"Fuck! All right."
The pair of them returned to the lobby a moment later. Marcus nodded and got his crowbar ready. He turned the handle and pushed the door open. Or tried to. He rebounded off, cursed and then undid the deadbolt. Opening the door, he stepped out, sweeping the area with his gaze for the nearest zombie. It seemed to be about ten feet away, dead ahead and-A cold, clammy hand fell on his forearm, gripping him tightly.
He cried out, turning, and tried to get out of the grip of a man in a torn business suit with glowing yellow eyes and a wide, blood-smeared mouth that was coming for him. But the grip was like iron. Abruptly, the head snapped back and half of it vaporized. His hearing was blown out and his vision briefly, too. A gunshot, he realized after a second as he shrugged off the zombie.
"Goddamnit, Sam!" Alan roared, though he sounded faraway.
"Shut up and run!" Sam replied.
Then he was running, dodging past zombies with Sam and Alan, rushing across the parking lot. They hit the road, crossed it and had made it across the diner parking lot when Sam suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, cursing violently.
"What is it?" Marcus asked, his hearing somewhat back now.
"My fucking rucksack, it's coming apart! At this rate we'll lose half the stuff on the run home," she replied, dropping to her knees and grabbing a few errant bottles of medicine that had fallen out.
"Leave it!" Alan snapped, stopping with them but looking like he might take off at any moment.
"No, we need it!" Sam replied.
"I'll go get a car," Marcus said.
"No, it's too dangerous!" Alan said.
"Go get a car, Marcus," Sam said.
"Screw you, I'm out. You want a horde coming down on your ass, fine." Alan turned and started jogging away.
"Alan, get back here!" Sam cried.
He didn't say anything. Marcus got out his pistol.
"Stay here, I'll be right back with a car."