Running Towards The Abyss Read online

  A sign on the left side of the road advertised new homes a mile further down Old Federal Road. Chuck stayed low, crossing the street, and slipping into the woods across from the store with the Zs. He moved quickly but carefully in the direction of the housing development. After a quarter of a mile, the woods gave way to an open field. There was no sign of any infected and Chuck moved back to the roadway, walking as fast as he could on the snow blanketed ground.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Savior

  South of Carnesville, Northeast of Atlanta, Tuesday, 1705 hours

  Chuck couldn’t scout the neighborhood as thoroughly as he would have liked. The builder’s sign in front of the subdivision advertised ‘Homes for Sale,’ but all the houses that McCain saw appeared to have been occupied before their owners had fled the flesh-eating zombies that swept up the interstate. He had less than a half hour of daylight left and was shivering as the wintery mix of precipitation continued to fall on his wet clothing. He needed to find shelter before hypothermia took hold of him.

  He chose a house in the middle of a cul-de-sac near the entrance to the subdivision. The short side street ran directly off of the main road that led into the neighborhood. The doors and windows appeared intact, a big plus. He cautiously circled the gray, two-story frame house, rifle pressed into his shoulder, as he listened for any signs of life.

  The doors were locked but he found a lower level window in the rear that wasn’t. Chuck eased it up and listened some more. He sniffed inside and was pleasantly surprised to only smell the musty odor of an abandoned house. McCain was a solid six foot two, two hundred and twenty pounds, and maneuvering through the window wasn’t easy nor safe since he hadn’t cleared the inside of the residence yet.

  Thankfully, he was able to get inside without hurting himself or making too much noise. He closed and locked the window behind him and slowly searched the residence. The more he searched, the happier he became. This is really nice, he thought. Unlike the abandoned house that he had shared with Greg and Tonya the night before, this one didn’t appear to have been visited by the virus. There were no blood stains on the floors or walls and it hadn’t been ransacked.

  Most of the homes closer to Atlanta had been broken into and looted already. Here, Chuck got the feeling that the residents had packed up and gone on a trip and could return at any time. He knew that probably wasn’t true but he was thankful to have a relatively warm, dry place to rest and wait out the winter storm. The homeowners had even left a few clothes and some canned goods behind. His own food stores were getting low so this find was a pleasant surprise.

  Something caught his eye as he cleared the kitchen. A thermometer hung outside the window over the sink, attached to the glass by suction cups. There was just enough light that he could read the red temperature line. Twenty-four degrees. It would not be a good night to sleep outside. Thank God I found this place, McCain mused.

  He had no idea if there were any other survivors hiding out in the neighborhood or not. He doubted it but knew it was possible. There were plenty of people who had chosen not to evacuate as the government had ordered. For most of those, however, things had not turned out well.

  McCain also had no idea if there were any infected lurking in the subdivision. He had seen the group up the road in the convenience store parking lot and couldn’t take a chance on lighting a fire to warm himself or to dry his clothes. It might attract both the living and the dead.

  Now it was time to get his wets clothes off. Chuck stripped off his body armor and jacket. He had on several layers of shirts, all of which were soaked to his skin. After getting the wet clothes off, he grabbed a dry t-shirt and a long sleeve thermal top out of his backpack, shivering as he pulled the shirts on, thankful to feel dry again.

  He pulled a dry pair of socks out of his bag and set them on the coffee table next to the couch. They would be going on in just a few minutes. After spreading his wet garments over the dining room chairs, he scrounged around in the closets upstairs to see what else he could use while his clothes dried out. He only had one more dry shirt tucked inside his pack and a few more layers of dry garments would be nice.

  The man of the house was not as big as Chuck and wore medium size shirts. At this point, however, anything would do. Even a University of Alabama sweatshirt that he found folded on the top shelf of the master bedroom closet. “Roll Tide,” McCain said to himself as he tried to force the sweatshirt on over his shoulders.

  A car engine roared as a vehicle sped into the neighborhood and skidded to a stop nearby. Chuck dropped the too-small sweatshirt to the floor, quickly making his way down to the living room and peeking out of the closed curtains. Men’s voices filled the air. He could see them, three houses down from him. A white SUV had pulled into a driveway and several men were struggling with something in the backseat.

  Another sound cut through the evening silence. A girl’s voice screaming, “No!”

  A shiver went down McCain’s spine and it had nothing to do with the cold. The men laughed and two of them reached into the vehicle for her legs. Suddenly, one of them recoiled backwards, screaming and holding his face.

  “She kicked me in the nose! I think the little bitch broke my nose! I’m gonna kill her right now,” he yelled, drawing a knife from his belt and starting back towards the car. A tall muscular man grabbed him and held him back as the other men laughed.

  “Not yet, you aren’t,” an authoritative voice boomed. “We’ll all get to have some fun with her and then you can kill her, Larry.”

  Two other men grabbed at the girl from the opposite side of the car. She fought back with everything she had, flailing at them with her fists, screaming for them to stop, but a big, balding man drew back and punched her in the face. The sound of his fist impacting her head carried all the way to the end of the cul-de-sac and McCain’s ears.

  A sick feeling dropped into Chuck’s stomach as he saw the girl go limp and dragged out of the SUV. The man who had punched her tossed the small body over his shoulder and they all walked towards the front door. Three of the men had long guns, Chuck noticed, one of them the distinct shape of an AK-47.

  Without consciously thinking about it, McCain had already thrown on his modular lightweight load-carrying equipment (MOLLE) plate-carrier. Weighing around thirty pounds, the carrier contained heavy front, rear, and side armor plates, pouches for rifle and pistol magazines, an individual first-aid kit, a Glock knife, and a CamelBak hydration system attached to the rear. He slung his rifle over his chest, snapped on his black kevlar helmet, and rushed towards the back door.

  The snow wasn’t falling as heavily now but the freezing rain continued to pelt him, threatening to soak his only dry pieces of clothing. At least two inches of snow and ice already covered the ground. It would soon be dark and Chuck didn’t want to be outside after nightfall. With all the noise the newcomers had made, there could already be Zs moving into the area.

  The good news was that he had the element of surprise. They had no idea that anyone else was around and they clearly only had one thing on their minds. The bad news was that there were four of them and four to one were never good odds.

  McCain used the two adjacent houses for cover as he maneuvered next to the target house. It sounded like all four of the men were inside with the girl. They still were making no effort to be quiet as the loud laughter carried through the thin walls. Do these clowns not realize that hungry zombies will come running to all the noise that they were making?

  Of course, Chuck hadn’t been able to recon the house so he had no idea of the floor plan. At the same time, he wasn’t going to stand by and watch a girl be murdered by these animals. He paused for just a moment and thought about how things had changed. A few months earlier, he would have tried to arrest these men. Now, he realized, that was the furthest thought from his mind.

  South of Carnesville, Northeast of Atlanta, Tuesday, 1725 hours

  Her head and face hurt really bad and she was so cold that she felt hers
elf shivering. Who was laughing? Was she back at the school? Elizabeth Benton tried to open her eyes but even that effort brought sharp pain. She suddenly realized that she didn’t have a shirt on. No wonder I’m so cold, she thought. Benton shook as she tried to cover herself with her hands, the laughter only growing louder.

  Elizabeth finally forced her eyes open but then wished that she’d kept them closed. She was lying on a couch in the middle of a living room and the big bald creep was standing over her, leering down as he took a drink from a bottle. In his other hand, he was holding Elizabeth’s red flannel shirt and her bra. Another man, maybe in his forties, with greasy hair, stepped into view. He was holding a bloody cloth to his nose as he glared down at her.

  “You’re gonna regret kickin’ me, little girl, I promise you. You’re gonna regret it.”

  The room was illuminated by three candles flickering on the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. The other two men were standing behind the couch, looking down on her. She couldn’t see them clearly because of the low light and because of the pounding in her head. It didn’t matter. Their faces were etched into her mind forever. The skinny guy with the long, stringy hair and yellow teeth. The fourth man was the one the others had called, ‘5-0.’ He was big and muscular, with a bushy mustache. He hadn’t said much but the other three deferred to him. Elizabeth had watched in horror as 5-0 had shot all three of her friends in the head and then stuck a pistol in her face less than an hour before. She had expected him to shoot her as well, but he’d changed his mind.

  What could she do? She couldn’t fight all four of these animals. They had already said they were going to kill her. Her head continued to throb, but suddenly, a sound track began to play in her mind. It came from several years before when she had taken a women’s self-defense class. She heard her instructor’s voice. “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. As long as you’re breathing, keep fighting.”

  “Give me a drink of that, Bobby,” a voice demanded.

  Bobby handed the bottle to 5-0 and said, “I say we get this party started,” dropping her clothes to the floor and reaching for his belt. “Get her pants off, Larry.”

  Elizabeth decided that they might very well rape her, but she was going to be dead first. She squinted as Greasy Hair reached for the button on her blue jeans and she launched a kick at his groin. Her heel caught Larry full in the testicles and he grunted in pain, stumbling backwards.

  Without warning, a crashing sound froze Bobby and his friends in place. They all turned towards the back of the house, not sure what was happening as the double French doors burst inward. There was a loud pop and Bobby’s head snapped back, blood spurting out of a hole in his forehead.

  Chuck stood to the side of the rear entrance and did a quick peek through the back doors. The four kidnappers were standing around a couch, looking down and laughing at something. He couldn’t see the girl but that had to be who they were staring at on the sofa. The bald guy reached down where McCain guessed she was lying and after a minute, stood back up holding a red shirt and a bra. This elicited more laughter.

  A middle-aged man with a bloody nose was standing next to the bald man and leaned down, saying, “You’re gonna regret kickin’ me, little girl, I promise you. You’re gonna regret it.”

  McCain was formulating his plan. The two men on the other side of the couch were standing in the shadows. One of them was the biggest of the four, probably close to his own size. He was the one Chuck had seen carrying the AK. Nice mustache, McCain thought.

  Chuck couldn’t hear everything that was said inside, but he did hear, “Get her pants off, Larry,” and knew that it was time for him act.

  Suddenly, the man with the bleeding nose recoiled and bent over in pain as a small foot collided with his groin. That little girl has a set, Chuck thought. Let’s go while they’re distracted. He reared back and kicked into the center of the double French doors, shattering the frame and sending them flying open.

  He started shooting as he burst through the doorway, his first shot hitting Bobby in the head. McCain continued moving, stepping to the right and putting a shot into Larry’s chest and another into his face.

  Stringy Hair managed to draw a pistol and was trying to raise it as Chuck swung his muzzle back to the left and fired again, the two 5.56mm rounds ripping into his sternum. A third bullet punched through his yellow teeth and exited out the back of his head.

  McCain’s movement had brought him far enough into the room to where he could see the girl lying on the couch. She was shirtless and trying to cover herself, pulling her legs up into a fetal position.

  “Get on the floor!” he yelled towards her.

  She didn’t move but Mustache Man suddenly came up from behind the couch firing his AK. It felt like someone had hit Chuck in the chest with a baseball bat. The breath was driven out of his lungs and he felt his knees buckle. A second shot from the AK whizzed by Chuck’s left ear as he took a step to the right, trying to get out of the line-of-fire. McCain managed to fire his M4 twice at the man and was rewarded with hearing a grunt of pain and seeing wooden splinters explode outwards from the front of the AK.

  Chuck’s first round had struck the man’s left hand that was wrapped around the front wooden hand guard, shattering fingers and destroying the rifle. McCain’s second shot had hit his attacker in the center of the chest, eliciting another gasp. Mustache Man dropped the broken weapon, rushing to his right to clear the couch as Chuck fired twice more and missed. The bullet to Chuck’s sternum had slowed his reaction time and he realized too late that he couldn’t track his target.

  Mustache Man charged, knocking the muzzle of McCain’s rifle to the side with his left forearm and throwing a straight right punch that caught Chuck on the left side of the face. McCain rolled his head with the blow, but still felt his adversary’s power. His muscular attacker continued forward, grabbing Chuck around the waist, shoving him backwards across a coffee table that was next to the sofa, and falling on top of the intruder who had just killed his three friends.

  The table collapsed under the combined weight of the two men. Chuck’s attacker was top of him, punching him again in the face with his right hand and reaching for his throat with his left hand. McCain saw an explosion of light from the fist to the head, taking the full impact of the punch. He knew that another strike like that would knock him unconscious, leaving both Chuck and the girl defenseless.

  The attacker’s right hand wrapped around McCain’s throat, Mustache Man’s eyes full of hatred as he tried to choke the life out of the man beneath him. Three of the fingers on his left hand had been destroyed by the round that hit his AK-47, however, and he wasn’t able to grip Chuck’s neck with both hands.

  McCain was an MMA fighter and had fought professionally for several years while he was a police officer. Even though Chuck had wrestled in high school, he always preferred to fight standing up. As a cop and as a pro fighter, however, he understood the importance of having a good ground game. His head had started to clear but his chest still throbbed. Chuck had no idea how badly he was hurt from the gunshot, and with Mustache Man on top of him and clearly intent on killing him, McCain needed to end this now.

  From his back, Chuck viciously slammed both open palms onto his attacker’s ears, bursting the eardrums. The man on top of him cursed in pain and instinctively reached for his own head. McCain shot the heel of his right palm under his opponent’s chin, snapping his head back, and Chuck’s left hand grabbed a handful of hair on the back of the man’s skull. The body always follows the head and Chuck twisted the kidnapper’s head to side, quickly reversing their positions, rolling the muscular man onto his back, mounting him, and dropping heavy, thudding elbows onto his head and face. Normally, after a few of these strikes, the referee would pull him off, signaling the end of the fight. There was no referee here, though, and Chuck needed to make sure that Mustache Man was never going to be a threat again, slamming powerful elbow strikes into his skull, again and again
.

  After it was clear that his opponent was unconscious, Chuck rolled him over, drew his Glock knife, and shoved the blade into the base of his attacker’s skull. He wiggled the handle until he was confident the kidnapper was dead. McCain thought that he had struck his adversary in the chest with a shot from his rifle. When he searched him, he felt the heavy body armor, similar to what McCain himself was wearing, and saw where his own 5.56mm round had impacted the center of the ballistic vest.

  Chuck glanced over at the girl on the couch. She had sat up and was watching him, her mouth hanging open. She appeared to be having trouble focusing as she looked at him with fear-filled eyes. She pulled her legs up under herself and backed to the far end of the sofa. The left side of her face was swollen and her left eye was almost closed. Her bottom lip was busted, with dried blood around her mouth.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, trying to bring his breathing back under control. Chuck yanked his knife out of the dead man’s head and cleaned the blood off on Mustache Man’s shirt, and re-sheathed it. “I don’t know if there are any zombies around here but that shooting may bring them in.”

  “Who are you?” the girl asked quietly, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  “My name’s Chuck,” he said, forcing a smile. “I was in the neighborhood and it looked like you could use a little help. I’ve got a house just up the street where I was going to hole up for a couple of days.”

  McCain realized three things. He was still sitting astride the dead man, the girl still didn’t have a shirt on, and something wet was running down his lower back and legs. Chuck tried to avert his gaze as he reached beside him and picked up her flannel shirt and bra.