Running Towards The Abyss Read online

  He had Beth layer up with all the clothes she had, including the shirt from Chuck that she had been wearing. Her next mission was to go through the house one more time, looking for anything that might be useful to them. Any and all food items, especially, needed to be brought along.

  McCain checked his weapons and magazines, and then looked out all the windows to make sure there were no surprises waiting for him. He stepped out into the back yard carrying his kevlar helmet, placing it in the backseat of the Cherokee where he would be sitting. He quietly rearranged boxes of canned goods in Beth’s SUV, transferring several to the front passenger seat, creating a buffer that would stop bullets.

  Chuck wished that he’d kept his soft body armor for Beth to wear. That had been one of the things that he had been forced to leave behind in the shot-to-pieces, Nissan Armada. A few more boxes of food went into the backseat of the Cherokee. He pushed several against the left rear passenger door, stacking them so they stopped just below the window frame. They would provide a layer of protection against rifle fire but he couldn’t stack them any higher because he needed to be able to fire out the windows.

  One more thing, he realized, checking his work. Walking back inside, he found Elizabeth watching him through one of the kitchen windows. Her Springfield pistol was tucked inside her waistband and her rifle was laying on the counter next to her.

  “Are your guns loaded and ready to go?”

  “I think so,” she answered. “Would you check them for me?”

  The 9mm pistol had a loaded magazine in it but did not have a round chambered. He showed her how to pull the slide to the rear and release it to chamber a bullet, making the gun ready to fire. Her AR-15 was in the same condition, so he showed her how to put the weapon into battery and had her click the lever on the side of the long gun to ‘Safe.’

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, opening the door from the house to the garage. After rummaging around for a few minutes, he was back holding an almost square piece of plywood, roughly two feet by three feet. That should do what he needed it to do.

  McCain had briefed Benton over breakfast about her role on the drive back to her school. It was a simple plan with few moving parts. She was to drive in the middle of the road whenever possible. She wasn’t to stop or leave the roadway unless Chuck told her to. McCain made it clear that she wasn’t to exit the vehicle unless he indicated that it was safe to do so. And, lastly, she wasn’t to use her weapons unless it was absolutely necessary. He wanted her to focus solely on piloting the SUV.

  The piece of plywood went between the center console and the front passenger seat of the Jeep to prevent the canned goods from shifting and hitting Beth while she drove, keeping the boxes in place to ward off any stray bullets that penetrated the car door. It wasn’t perfect and bullets could still come flying through the windows but the makeshift barriers that McCain had in the front passenger seat and in the backseat with him would offer at least a little protection.

  Chuck took a deep breath and glanced at his watch. 0900 hours. We should be at the Northeast Georgia Technical College in plenty of time for lunch, he thought. It was only a fifteen mile drive but in this strange new world, that was the equivalent to a hundred miles.

  Beth was looking at him expectantly. She had been very quiet this morning which, in the short time that he had known her, was uncharacteristic. He looked into her eyes and saw fear. I understand that, he thought.

  Her left eye was black and blue, the eyeball slightly bloodshot. Another few days and that eye will be fine, he thought. That is, if we live through today.

  McCain forced a smile and winked at her. “So, you ready to go home, Beautiful?”

  She looked down and nodded. She stepped towards him and they embraced. He sensed that she wanted to say something.

  “Hey, its OK. I’m scared, too,” he said.

  “Yeah, but now I’m afraid of losing you,” she said, quietly.

  Her words struck a chord inside of Chuck and he held her close. What’s happening to me, he thought? I can’t believe the feelings I’m having for this young woman. He prayed a silent prayer for protection. He squeezed Beth and released her, taking her face in his hands, and kissing her softly on the lips.

  “I hope I’m not being too forward, but I’d like another one of those when get to the school,” he said, looking into her eyes and smiling. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Chuck sat in the middle of the back seat with both windows down while Elizabeth drove. His rifle hung from the sling across his chest, pointed to the right since he was a lefty. The Glock, suppressor attached, lay next to his left leg. Inside the tight confines of the vehicle, it would be easier to grab the pistol to engage threats on the driver’s side rather than trying to swing the rifle around.

  The plan was to drive north on Highway 59 as far as they could. Beth had grown up in the area and knew other back roads but those would take them on a much more roundabout trip. Highway 59 was two-lane state highway that paralleled I-85. If they didn’t run into any problems, the route would take them almost the entire way to the college.

  The first three miles were smooth sailing. The blue skies were clear and the road was mostly ice free. There were none of the abandoned or wrecked vehicles which Chuck had encountered on the interstate. They passed house after house, sitting isolated off of the road, not seeing any signs of life. It was cold riding with all of the windows down, but they needed to be able to fire their weapons without shooting the glass out.

  As they drove around a slight curve, however, McCain picked up movement next to a house ahead of them on the right side of the road. Elizabeth had to slow down because of a large patch of ice just as two white males stepped out from behind a brown van parked next to the house. The men aimed long guns at the Cherokee from a distance of around seventy yards.

  “Guys with guns to our right,” he told Beth. “Watch the road and drive.”

  He flipped the selector of his M4 to “Auto,” raising the rifle to his shoulder just as the two attackers fired. Benton screamed as a heavy bullet slammed into the rear of the Cherokee. She shoved the accelerator to the floor as Chuck squeezed the trigger twice, firing two full auto bursts at their attackers.

  One of the men spun around, dropping his gun and collapsing as one of McCain’s rounds hit him in the abdomen and another struck him in the chest. The other shooter threw himself facedown in the grass as more of Chuck’s bullets struck the van behind which the two men had been hiding.

  There were no more shots from behind them as Beth drove around the ice and sped away. Chuck continued to scan the area, looking for additional threats while he swapped magazines in his rifle.

  “You can slow down now. We’re out of their line of sight.”

  McCain saw the white-knuckle grip that Beth had on the steering wheel and could see the speedometer was at seventy-five miles an hour. He reached over the seat and gently touched her shoulder.

  “It’s OK now. You need to slow down.”

  At his touch, he felt her relax and she took her foot off of the gas pedal. “What just happened?” she asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “Those guys just started shooting at us! For no reason! They just started shooting!” She was almost yelling.

  “I don’t see any houses on this stretch of road,” Chuck observed. “Stop for a second and let me check where we got hit.”

  The Cherokee slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. Chuck slid the boxes out of the way so that he could exit the vehicle. A single bullet hole had penetrated high on the passenger side rear quarter panel, piercing the metal and entering the storage compartment of the Jeep. He got back into the SUV and rearranged the boxes next to the door.

  “Do you smell that?” McCain asked Beth.

  “It kind of smells like spaghetti,” she answered, sniffing the air.

  Chuck turned around, checking the items they had stored behind them. Thick red liquid was dripping from a bullet hole in a cardboard box.

  “
Well, now I’m pissed,” he said. “Turn around and take me back so I can kill that other bastard. He shot one of our big cans of tomato sauce.”

  “I hope you’re kidding about going back,” Beth said, nervously, trying to smile.

  McCain laughed. “He definitely deserves to die for his crime, but someone else will have to do it. Let’s keep going.”

  “I got a glimpse of two guys back there,” she said, as the Jeep started forward again. “Did you see any more?”

  “No, just those two,” Chuck answered, “and I got one of them. Hopefully, the other one will have a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment with himself and see the error of his ways.”

  Four miles down the road the houses and businesses were closer together, indicating their approach into the city limits of Carnesville. The small town presented a new set of challenges to Elizabeth and Chuck as they passed through.

  Beth pointed out her window. “Right up here on the left is a grocery store, a Dollar General, and a Family Dollar store.”

  “So, a lot of high-end shopping in Carnesville, huh?” McCain quipped.

  “Yeah, right? But those businesses are pretty much cleaned out. We’ve sent looting teams down here before. Their last trip, though, they almost got overrun by zombies. They pulled up to the grocery store, and saw the front doors were propped open. Then this big group came charging out after them, and our guys just barely got away.”

  As they passed the small shopping center on their left, Chuck saw what Beth was talking about. The doors of the Market Place grocery store were still propped open. All of the glass had been smashed out of the front of the Dollar General. Three figures stumbled out of the grocery store, running towards the roadway and the passing vehicle. Additional Zs poured out of the other businesses at the sound of the car driving by. McCain could see the blood and gore that covered them.

  “And speaking of zombies…,” he muttered.

  The small downtown area was just two hundred yards ahead of them now, but several vehicles were parked lengthwise across the road, forming a makeshift barricade, blocking their access into town. Beth braked to a stop, not sure what to do. There did not appear to be anyone manning the barrier. McCain, his head on a constant swivel scanning the area, looked to the rear and saw at least fifteen zombies now coming towards them from the area of the shopping center they had just passed, most shuffling slowly, decomposition making their movements sluggish. Two of the pack, however, were overachievers and started to run towards the SUV.

  “Keep moving forward and see if you can drive around on the shoulder,” Chuck said, pointing to the two cars and the pickup blocking the road. “We can’t sit here.”

  McCain guessed the town had been abandoned if there were still groups of zombies in the area. Elizabeth pulled up to the vehicles, parked end-to-end across the two-lane road. There was a narrow sliver of snow-covered shoulder that she thought she could squeeze through. Bennett steered around a white Ford F-150 pickup truck bearing a ‘City of Carnesville’ placard on the side.

  The soft, muddy ground caused the Cherokee’s tires to lose traction, though, and Beth found herself spinning the wheels on the soft shoulder. A glance to the rear told Chuck the Zs were less than a football field length away, the two runners even closer. Beth began to panic, holding the accelerator to the floor, causing the tires to spin faster, the vehicle still stuck in the mud. The back end of Jeep started to swing around.

  “Stop!” Chuck ordered. “Put it in four-wheel drive.”

  “Right,” Elizabeth said. “Sorry. How close are they?” she asked, trying to look out the rearview mirror.

  “Just focus on driving. We’re good,” Chuck said.

  We really aren’t good, he thought. The two runners were inside fifty yards.

  With the four-wheel drive engaged, the Jeep’s tires got some traction and Benton was able to drive around the barricade, getting them back onto the dry pavement. Chuck glanced at the remains of four bodies that had been torn apart, lying next to the vehicle barrier.

  “Leave the four-wheel drive on and let’s get through town,” he said.

  Elizabeth nodded and kept the SUV moving. The pursuing zombies kept coming but Chuck wasn’t worried about them as long as their vehicle kept going forward. They had just passed the Franklin County Courthouse on their right and were almost clear of downtown Carnesville when a surging pack of thirty zombies suddenly rushed off a side street, directly in front of the McCain and Benton, less than a hundred feet away. As one, they surged towards the Cherokee, blocking the entire road.

  These Zs were a mixed group. There were bloody men in business suits, growling women wearing dresses, two decomposing Hispanic women wearing aprons, and lots of infected children. At least half of this group of zombies looked like elementary school age kids. In an instant, McCain took all of this in. These people had been infected for a while, he realized. Their bodies were in various stages of rot and decay.

  “What do we do?” Beth screamed.

  “Hang on a sec,” he said, calmly leaning out of the left side window with his pistol, exploding the two heads of the running zombies who were about to reach their vehicle from the group coming up behind them.

  There was no place to go, he realized, pushing the power button to put the windows up.

  “Chuck?” The pack about to converge upon their vehicle was only twenty feet away.

  “Put your windows up and pull to the left and drive through those small ones. Gun it and let’s go!”

  “But they’re children!” she exclaimed.

  “Now!” he ordered. “Do it or we die.”

  Elizabeth hesitated, their vehicle sitting motionless.

  McCain grabbed the door handle and was about to dive out of the Cherokee and start shooting Zs. If he could get them to chase him, Beth could get away, he thought. Just as he tugged the handle, he was slammed back into the seat as Elizabeth shoved the gas pedal to the floor.

  Several zombie children were on the far side of the pack that was almost to the vehicle. As she accelerated and steered to the left, the SUV ran over three small boys, two girls, and a grown man. There were several seconds of sickening bumps as the Cherokee slammed into and bounced over the infected children. The impact of the SUV on the man knocked him up onto the hood and into the windshield, face-first, cracking it and leaving a bloody trail on the glass and down the front of the Jeep. He slid off to the right and Benton realized that she was free and clear, the zombies all behind them.

  Three miles outside of town, Chuck asked her to stop the vehicle so he could check it for damage. He also needed to check Beth and make sure she was good to keep driving. It’s not every day that you intentionally drive through a pack of children, zombies or not.

  McCain scanned the area through the windows and then exited and walked around the Jeep. The front was coated with blood and gore. The right headlight was smashed out and there was damage to the fender, the grill, and the bumper. Blood covered the hood and the windshield would need to be replaced.

  Elizabeth sat in the driver’s seat, holding onto the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, tears streaking down her face. Chuck walked around and opened her door, taking her hand, gently helping her out of the Cherokee. She fell into his arms and started crying. He let her sob for several minutes, standing in the middle of the road, while constantly looking around them for threats.

  “Hey, we need to keep moving,” Chuck said. “Are you going to be OK?”

  “No, I’m never going to be OK after that. I just ran over a bunch of kids. I’m going to see their faces forever.”

  McCain continued to hold her, stroking her hair. “My new favorite person told me recently that ‘all of us are finding ourselves doing things that we would never have imagined we were capable of.’ Beth, no matter what it looked like, those were not children. They were dead bodies that were only functioning because of this evil virus. You did what you had to do and you saved both of our lives. I’m proud of you. You’re a pretty good dri
ver, too.”

  “Really? You think so?” Her voice was quiet, her face still buried in his chest.

  “Yeah, you can be my driver anytime we’re going to have strangers shooting at us or we’re being chased by zombies.”

  The rest of the trip turned out to be anticlimactic. They spotted a group of Zs in the parking lot of a large factory as they drove past. Another handful of the creatures were milling around a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. There has to be some irony there, McCain thought.

  The road was clear and Elizabeth had her head back in the game. It’s good to see that she recovers fast, Chuck noticed. Deal with the trauma, cry it out if you need to, and then move on. Whenever things got back to normal, though, therapy and counseling were going to be lucrative fields, Chuck mused.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Home

  The Northeast Georgia Technical College, Lavonia, Georgia, Friday, 1110 hours

  “We’re here,” Elizabeth said, the relief evident in her voice.

  Chuck saw the sign identifying the school as the Cherokee turned off of the main road onto a long, winding drive. After a half mile, a formidable roadblock loomed in front of them. With slight embankments of dark red clay rising on either side of the narrow road, the trailer and the vehicles completely eliminated the possibility of any unauthorized cars getting onto the campus.

  Two young men, one black and one white, both holding rifles, were sitting on top of the trailer, their legs dangling. The sight of the bloody SUV prompted both of them to stand and aim their guns at the vehicle. The black guy took a step back, knelt, and picked up a phone that was laying on top of the trailer, speaking into it, and then hanging it up.