Liberation (Human Extinction Level Loss Book 3) Page 4

  If they were running, then something was chasing them!

  The thought hurled to the forefront of Jacob’s mind and he looked again through his scope. Moving off the road and giving chase were the runners, tightly packed. Jacob moved the rifle rapidly between the pack and the woman and her child. They were ahead of the Dead, but the Dead were closing the gap. Jacob looked up a final time to confirm that what was happening was not just happening in his scope. He did not give further investigation to the vision before him. Abandoning his position, he grabbed his rifle and ran to the Jeep.

  Beverly gripped Tommy’s small hand and pulled him after her. She could hear him breathing and knew that he would not last much longer at this pace. Her own breath crashed in and out of her lungs like the waves in a storm surge. It was her own grief and sense of loss that had kept her looking behind them, back the way they had come. She knew Mark was gone, but some part of her wanted to believe, like her son, that Mark had survived and was catching up. Something was catching up to them, but it wasn’t her husband. Beverly and Tommy ran from the road and across the rock strewn field, hoping that the Dead would not follow, that she and Tommy might hide among the boulders and not be seen. As she and Tommy ran, the Dead followed and she knew that her hope was in vain.

  She turned her head and looked back. Her worst fears were confirmed as she saw the Runners behind her, closer now than on the road. She cried out as she looked forward. Her cries turned into screams as she dug her feet into the ground and tried to stop. Tommy’s momentum brought him crashing into her and threatened to send them both toppling over the edge of a steep drop-off and to the rocks below. She scanned left and right, but the ledge continued in both directions.

  “Nooooo!” she screamed as she turned and looked back towards the road.

  The Dead propelled themselves at her and her son. Beverly grabbed Tommy and pressed him against her, turning his face into her side. She took one step, then two, back towards the ledge. She probed the icy depths of her fear for enough courage to do what she had to do, to make sure that neither she nor her son ever became one of them. She could feel the updraft from the canyon below and knew she was close. Buried against her side, she could hear the frenzied whimpers of Tommy. It was then that she heard another noise, the drawn out whine of a vehicle’s engine.

  Jacob knew that the thirty Dead chasing the woman and child across the field were the vanguard of the massive horde, a horde that even now pushed themselves through the tunnel. Down in the valley was not somewhere he wanted to be. When he had seen the two figures run off the road, he knew they were not like the others. He did not consider that what he had seen might not be real, his delusions gaining strength. As he drove across the highway and out into the field, the thought began to gnaw at him. Was he chasing ghosts, and would those ghosts, like the Sirens calling to Odysseus lead him to his destruction?

  He saw the Dead in the distance, running towards the cliffs. Between the edge of the cliff and the Dead was a rock formation jutting from the earth like a stone finger. A plan sprang to his mind and Jacob raced ahead of the pack, to the spire, bringing the truck to a skidding halt in the dirt. He jumped from the truck and ran to the front. Grabbing the large metal hook, Jacob pulled several lengths of steel cable from the winch. He wrapped a loop around the spire and secured the hook to the cable. He allowed himself only one look back as he dived into the truck. The Dead seemed to forget the woman and her child as they barreled toward him. Slamming the door, Jacob threw the Jeep in reverse and careened back towards the Dead. With one hand on the wheel, Jacob turned his head and measured the rapidly decreasing distance between himself and the Runners through the back window. When they were almost upon him, he cut the wheel and, in a flanking maneuver, circled around them and headed back towards the boulder. Part of the training at the police academy was defensive driving so steering his Jeep full speed in reverse was not a completely unknown skill to him. As he passed the spire, he made another turn of the wheel and headed back towards the Dead. The winch on the front of his jeep, which had been letting out cable at a feverish pace, locked tight as he mashed the stop button on the interior winch controls. The Dead, who had turned back to follow the Jeep, were dragged by the tensioning cable into a tighter pack and flung as one against the spire. They struggled mindlessly against the silver coils that constricted them. As a python strangles its prey, the cable squeezed the pack tighter, against each other and against the tall boulder.

  They groaned and continued to struggle forward, even as the first of them were bisected. A wet sloshing sounded as torsos separated from legs and fell. As they fell, the cable gave slack, but Jacob continued to pull the coil tighter. The Jeep’s engine raced and its tires gnawed and chewed the ground. The vehicle bucked and jumped as it met the new resistance of the confined Dead. A second of slack and another row of the severed Dead fell to the ground in pieces. A few more feet, more dirt and rock churned beneath the Jeep’s all terrain tires, then cable met boulder as the last of the pack toppled at the waist. With no more slack, the Jeep bucked wildly, prevented further backward movement by the cable entwined around only rock.

  Seven

  Beverly saw the Dead coming, but her attention was not on them. She stared in disbelief, and for a moment dared to hope that her husband had somehow made it out of the tunnel and now raced to save them. Her hopes were dashed anew as she watched a lone figure jump from the vehicle and pull cable from a winch mounted on the front. He wrapped the cable around a tall boulder set in the field between her and the advancing pack. She stood transfixed by the scene before her as the Jeep raced away in reverse. The cable snaked around the Dead, then lashed them to the spire. Beverly pulled Tommy closer into her as she watched the Jeep buck and tear at the ground, fighting against the tension in the cable. She felt the bile in her throat as she saw the Dead fall, their gore staining the grass and soil with a reddish black spew. The Jeep stopped and a man got out. He did not signal to them or seem to see them at all. She was about to cry out to him, when she saw him pull a pistol from inside the jeep and screw on what looked like a silencer. The cry caught in her throat and she panicked. Looking to her left, along the ledge of the cliff, Beverly saw a line of trees running back up towards the road. She grabbed her son’s hand and ran towards them.

  Jacob knew he did not have much time. He knew he should retrieve his cable and get away from there as fast as he could. This group of Runners was part of the larger horde that was bursting from the tunnel by the hundreds a few short miles from where he now stood. He also knew, because these were part of the horde he tracked, he could not leave until he was sure. He pulled the Mark I from his jeep and screwed on the suppressor, then looked around. The severed lay on the ground before him. Looking into the distance ahead of him, his mind reeled.

  There was no woman, no child.

  A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He scanned the field to the horizon, left and right. Turning quickly, he looked back the way he had come. Nothing.

  Had he imagined it?

  Of more concern to him than his tenuous hold on reality, was the fact that he had acted. Thinking he saw a woman and child being pursued by the advance of a massive horde, he had reacted and sought to lend aid. If there was no woman and child, then he just foolishly ran out into the path of the Dead.

  The Dead…

  Jacob snapped his head around and as if for the first time noticed the severed remains of the horde’s early arrivals. Leaving the door open, he went to the spire. He studied the ground and the remains of the Dead. Though cut to pieces, they still moved. As Jacob came upon them, their top halves clawed and pulled along the ground with their arms. Within moments they had spread out over the terrain like baby spiders slowly fleeing from their egg sac. They struggled to get to him. They reached out for him in an effort to latch on, to hold and to eat. Jacob stepped carefully, looking into each wasted face. The woman and her child that he thought he saw was not among them, giving his mind further confirmation tha
t his grasp on the real was slipping. His pistol hung by his side as he moved from face to face. He was about to give up hope of striking a name from his ledgers when he came upon the last of the Dead. In appearance, it seemed to be small, diminished in size all the more by the loss of half its body. Jacob stooped down and stared into the vacant milky eyes and slack jaw of Charlie Wagner, age ten, red head, freckles.

  Charlie had lived with his mother and three sisters in a run down trailer park on the edge of town. The park’s inhabitants were all down-and-outers who worked what jobs they could to pay their way through their meager existence. Patty Wagner worked at the truck stop on the night shift. She smoked, drank, and slept her way through the other hours of the day, leaving little Charlie and his sisters to fend for themselves. His sisters were old enough to behave and stay out of trouble. Charlie wasn’t. Largely unsupervised, Charlie was known as the hellion of the trailer park. It was not that he damaged property or stole from his neighbors, but with nothing better to do, he would insert himself uninvited into their affairs. It became a game of sorts for the other residents. Whenever they would leave or come home to their trailers. Charlie would always seem to be around. If he saw you, he talked to you, and getting out of any conversation became a gargantuan and unenviable chore. Still, the Denizens of the trailer park knew his situation and didn’t always try as hard as they could to avoid the boy. Spare candy and food seemed to find their way to him, as well as the occasional bag of old clothes, cleaned and washed and just his size.

  When there was nobody to harangue at the trailer park, Charlie would pedal his bike into town and make his rounds. As Jacob stared into the darkened and misshapen face of the child, he remembered how folks would tell him that something should be done about the boy’s situation. Jacob had taken to checking on him from time to time. They had gotten to know each other a little and he imagined the two were becoming friends of sorts.

  “Help me, Sheriff Miller…”

  The plea that Jacob knew had not been uttered, a plea that he knew he had to answer, pierced his heart. He stood, and with eyes blurry from unasked for tears, raised the gun. He fired twice and Charlie Wagner was released. Jacob returned to his vehicle and secured the cable back onto the winch. Before getting in, he grabbed his census ledger from the passenger seat and opened it to ‘W’. He found the name he was looking for and drew a line through it.

  Jacob turned back onto the road and sat facing West. He looked into his rear view mirror and knew they were coming. He cut his eyes forward and looked down the stretch of road. Would he have time to get back to his vantage point and set up for another shot before the horde arrived. He had almost convinced himself that he would when a new sound rose above the throaty idle of the Jeep. Jacob looked back in his rear view mirror and saw them coming like a slow moving tsunami. Time had run out. Jacob hit the gas and the Jeep took off, disappearing around a bend in the road. His disappointment at not being able to survey the entire horde in their passing was tempered by his liberation of Charlie Wagner. The horde would keep moving and so would Jacob Miller. There would be other days, other shots.

  “Maybe tomorrow, Betsy,” he said to himself as he raced down the road.

  As he entered a straightaway that cut through the rocky hills and tall pines, he felt like someone punched him hard in the stomach. Springing from the tree line on his left was the woman and child, their path through the trees made inaccessible by the stony terrain on either side of the road. They cut across his path and ran down the right hand side of the highway. Jacob watched them as he drew closer. At fifty miles per hour he locked eyes with the woman for a few brief seconds as he passed. He thought she looked terrified, desperate, but not weak. He turned his head and looked back at them even as they fell behind him. The woman jumped when she saw him and her mouth opened in a scream that was lost on the wind. Looking forward, Jacob watched her turn and drag the boy back down the road, back towards the oncoming Dead. He slowed the Jeep, finally coming to a stop. Jacob closed his eyes and took deep breaths.

  Could it be? Real or not real…

  He opened his eyes and spun the wheel, racing back the way he had come. As he came upon the woman and child, he could see her look back. This time, her scream faintly reached his ears as she tried to outrun his advance and make it back to the tree line. Jacob turned in front of them in the road and brought the Jeep to a screeching halt. He pulled his pistol and pointed it at them. The woman and her child, both gasping for air, were clearly spent. The three of them eyed each other nervously, engaged in a standoff in the middle of the road.

  “Please, help us,” the woman said. Jacob blinked and cut his eyes between her and her child.

  He did not lower his gun or his gaze. He watched their stare break from his, a low moaning sound coming to them on the breeze. Jacob saw the woman plead with her eyes and he withdrew his pistol.

  “If you are real, get in. Hurry,” he said.

  Jacob saw confusion cross the woman’s face, but it was not enough to stop her. She ran to the Jeep and flung the door open. Shoving her child in first, she climbed in after him. Beverly closed the door just as Jacob peeled away, heading West down the highway in a cloud of smoke.

  Eight

  In the back seat, Beverly sat holding Tommy close to her. She split her gaze between the rugged terrain outside her window and the stranger behind the wheel. Metal bars separated the front seat from the back and there were no handles on the doors. The only people that usually rode in the back of police cars were prisoners, but Beverly tried not to think of their situation in those terms. Their “rescuer” had not spoken or acknowledged them in any way since telling them to get in, which struck her as strange. She replayed the event in her mind, his words echoing in her head and not adding to her comfort level.

  “If you are real, get in. Hurry”

  If you’re real? What kind of person says a thing like that, she thought to herself.

  “A crazy psycho who has lost all touch with reality out in the Deadlands, that’s who,” her mind told her.

  She pushed those thoughts aside. If she was going to be locked in the back of a vehicle heading who knew where, she preferred to think of it as still her choice for as long as she could. They were away from the Dead and heading West which is where she wanted to go. She told herself again that there was nothing to worry about. Her attempts at rationalizing her predicament were only moderately successful.

  As the minutes and the miles ticked away, Beverly decided that formal introductions were in order. She figured that maybe if names were exchanged it would be at least one step removed from a killer-victim scenario.

  “My name is Beverly. This is my son, Tommy. We are going to Colorado. You know… because of the broadcasts,” she said.

  Out of habit, she almost introduced her husband, Mark. The reality of his loss came rushing back to her and she bit down hard. She fought back tears, not wanting to show a weakness that might give him indication that she was any kind of soft target. She stared at the back of Jacob’s head and waited for some response. None was offered.

  Beverly tried not to let the cold reception eat away at her doubt. The uncomfortable silence was broken by Tommy.

  “You’re a Sheriff? My Dad is a Policeman. He had to fight some zombies so we could get away, but he’s going to catch up to us when he’s done.”

  This time, Beverly could not hold back the tears. She turned away and stared out the window, not wanting Tommy or the stranger to see her vulnerability. Not any more successful at getting a response than his mother, Tommy gazed out the window.

  Silence again filled the vehicle. Jacob cut his eyes to Beverly and Tommy in the rear view mirror for several seconds, before staring back down the road in front of him.

  It was dark by the time Jacob got to his next vantage point. He always got there well ahead of the horde and this time was no different, even with the delays. The dark didn’t matter. He had made the circuit following the horde long enough to know the lay of t
he land. He negotiated the uneven terrain, parking deep in the woods before getting out. The horde would not arrive at the vantage point until late the next morning, which gave him time to eat and grab some sleep.

  In the back seat, Beverly and Tommy watched him move around to the back of the Jeep and open the tailgate. The rear interior light of the Jeep cast a yellow glow as Jacob stuck his head in, unlocked a footlocker and began to rummage around through his gear. He did not acknowledge them as he grabbed a can of stew, a single burner propane stove and a pot. Jacob fired up the little stove and a blue flame jumped to life. No sooner had he opened his can of stew than the flame died.

  “Damn,” he said as he disconnected the small green propane tank. He knew as soon as he picked it up that it was empty.

  “Stupid, Miller. Rookie move,” he said as he searched in vain for another tank amongst his supplies. Giving up, he grabbed the can of stew and dumped it into the pot. He grabbed a spoon and sat down on the tailgate. With his back to Beverly and Tommy, he ate his stew cold.

  Beverly stared at the back of Jacob’s head and watched him eat.

  “Hey, what about us? Did you rescue us back there just to starve us?” Beverly said, fatigue and frustration getting the better of her fear of the unknown.

  Jacob gave no response.

  Beverly could feel her anger rising. She was about to blast this stranger, who seemed more captor then rescuer, with a verbal assault when she thought better of it. Hearing him talk to himself, she tried a different tact.