Ron laughed. “I never saw someone clutching Cheetos like they were gold, risking their life for junk food.”
“First of all,” Jeff corrected, “they were ranch-flavored Doritos. Do you know how hard it is to find ranch Doritos during an apocalypse? It seems to be the first thing all the looters take. And second, they technically are more valuable than gold right now, seeing that gold is pretty much worthless and food a precious commodity. Oh, and might I add, Doritos are not junk food, they are brain food.”
“So help me here.” Ron looked over at Jeff. “Were you joking just now?”
“You couldn’t tell?” Jeff smiled at him.
“OK, later you will have to explain to me the difference between you serious and you joking.” Ron shook his head. “So we picked up Jeff, and here we are.”
Sal gave them a quick summation of his life during the asteroid scare and the viral outbreak up to the present.
“So you missed the final stage of the virus,” Ron said.
“That’s a good thing,” Bill said.
“You were drunk one full day, hungover the next, and walked for two days?” Ron was amazed. “I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
“You missed all the running, the screaming, the dying,” Jeff said. “Lucky you.”
Sal couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d been lucky that the slow walkers hadn’t caught him.
As the sun dropped and the world cooled, the men fell quiet. They kept their eyes open for the infected.
“Why did you guys try to snatch me?” Sal asked, breaking a long quiet streak.
“So you wouldn’t die,” Jeff said in a flat tone.
Bill coughed. “We can’t leave people to die, but several times in the last few days when we tried to help someone they pulled a gun on us and took our food, whatever we had on us. We were trying something new: save you without giving you the chance to rob us.”
“So what now?” Sal asked.
Bill shrugged. That was the most depressing question you could ask a person these days.
“Ron has some ideas,” Jeff said as he stared into the sky, “some really great ideas.”
9.
The second Cooper heard the voices calling Ben and Willow by name, it became obvious that there was a group waiting out in the woods for some fucked-up reason. Now that group was coming toward him, was in fact surrounding him. He needed two things immediately: to get away from these people, and a light.
He was moving in near-complete darkness, trying to make a quick escape. He didn’t want to trip or make noise, so he had his arms out, feeling for the trees in front of him. Suddenly a very bright light came on right in front of him, blinding him. It also blinded the rail-thin kid who was looking right at it when he turned it on. The light wasn’t between them; in fact they were both facing the same general direction. The kid was in front of Cooper and facing just a little to the left of the lantern. Cooper saw the kid first and acted immediately.
He launched himself at the kid, grabbing the lantern with one hand and throwing his elbow into the kid’s jaw as hard as possible. The kid didn’t make a sound as he fell backward onto the ground. Cooper thought he might have killed him because his head snapped so far around.
He used the lantern to get a few more yards away, clicked it off and walked a few more, then put his back against a tree. He didn’t want his pursuers to see a light moving away from them in the dark, and he couldn’t go on blind. He needed to let his eyes adjust, and he also needed to let his body quiet down. The adrenaline and blood pumping made it hard to hear and see.
He tried to steady his breathing. Sweat chilled him, his hand ached from beating Ben, and he still felt dizzy and weak. But he was far from stopping. Not only did he know these people were bad news, the kid was wearing a hooded black robe and a large medallion with a goat’s head on it. Many people thought these gatherings were an urban legend, but he knew people who knew people involved in this shit. He had seen pictures, even once saw the groups in person at a distance when on a camping trip, but he had wisely stayed far away. While most of these groups were harmless, it seemed these freaks were going to try their hands at human sacrifice.
The scratchy rough bark against his back felt like safety. His eyes were closed and adjusting to the dark, and he was listening. The people seemed to be moving toward the clearing, still thrashing about and blinded by their own lights, yelling to each other. They weren’t venturing too far into the trees, so he felt home free, but it would only be a matter of minutes before they noticed the missing member and resumed a more organized search.
Cooper opened his eyes. He was a decent distance away; he’d managed to break through the circle they had tried to close around him. He kept the light off and moved as cautiously as he could. For the next thirty minutes, he kept the lantern under his shirt and attempted to hide as much of the light as possible, only letting a small amount out to illume his path.
§
At least an hour had passed. There were no signs of pursuit, so he pulled the lantern out and held it high. Now he could move at a much quicker pace. He scaled one of the large hills near him and looked around. All he could see was that he was somewhere far away from Monterey. There was no sign of the bay or the ocean, and since the lights were off all over, he couldn’t see any man-made landmarks. At least he had a goal now: the valley on the other side of the hill he had just climbed.
Halfway down the hill, he came across a tarmac road and followed it downhill. It was easier and safer walking, and he could probably figure out where he was faster, but this also meant there could be humans about, and right now he didn’t want to see anybody, living or dead.
A short time later he came to a larger, two-lane road and suspected he was on Carmel Valley Road. He was able to quickly verify that with the lantern, but he didn’t know where on the long and winding road he was. The road ran almost fifty miles down the entire length of the Carmel Valley. He was able to determine east from west and headed west, back toward the ocean and Monterey.
He walked for a few hours through the night. He was glad he hadn’t seen another human in any condition, but it was still slow and stressful moving along the road. He was exhausted. The adrenaline had worn off long ago, and he was gripped by a deep and painful hunger. He still felt vulnerable, even though he was far from the clearing of evil creepy shit. Chances were good that the group—he estimated their number to be at least fifteen—had used this road to take him way the fuck out to who knows where. He had to have been somewhere in a remote area north of Big Sur. They might be traveling this road again, so he kept his eyes and ears open.
In a short while he passed a clump of buildings he recognized as being about eleven miles from the end of the road. He would have to walk a couple of hours to get back to where he started in Monterey. He still had a long way to go, and this crap had set him back. He had no idea how long he’d been out in that van.
Around dawn, he came close to the valley mouth and was nearing a heavily populated area. He decided to find a place to hold up for the day and the next night. He needed food and rest above all. His hand was tender and was starting to throb. But the bite on his neck really hurt. He had to clean his wounds and wished he could have done it a long time ago.
He left the road and climbed a hill. He knew there was a small neighborhood up there, a cluster of about thirty houses around a few cul-de-sacs. He hoped the residents had left as they did in so many other places. It seemed they had, as the streets were clear. He found a house with an unlocked door. It looked as if the residents had just walked away. Once inside, he checked every room for occupants and made sure all the doors and windows were locked. He fell on an upstairs bed and fell asleep.
§
Only hours later, the sun woke Cooper. He felt better after some sleep, but the swelling on his hand and neck felt hot and tight.
Shit, infected. Should’ve cleaned them first thing.
He searched the medicine cabinets and drawers in the bathroom and found a tube of antibiotic cream. He pulled out hydrogen peroxide and soap. He tried the water. It worked and was still running hot. He cleaned his hand wounds and covered them with the cream and bandages. It didn’t look like he had broken a bone, which was very good news.
He started wiping his neck with an alcohol-soaked wad of toilet paper. Something snagged the paper and tugged on his skin, and it hurt. He stopped rubbing, gently touched the welt, and felt something hard and scratchy. He grabbed it with his fingernails and pulled. He rolled a half-inch-long metal tube between his fingers.
Holy shit, it’s part of a hypodermic needle. They tried injecting me with some shit.
He flung it in the sink, grateful he had gotten out alive. The needle breaking had probably saved his life. It appeared he didn’t get a full dose of whatever it was they used to sedate him and he had woken sooner than they expected.
He ate, took several over-the-counter painkillers, lay back down, and slept till late evening. He woke, changed his bandages, ate again, and slept some more. The next morning he was ready to go. He took a 22-caliber target pistol he found in the top of a closet. It felt like a silly underpowered weapon. It was a peashooter compared to most pistols, but it was better than nothing.
He filled the pockets of his jacket and cargo pants with stuff he found around the house. A pocketknife, a couple of small LED reading lights, energy bars, and what first aid supplies he could find. All of this was lightweight, but he was tempted to toss it. He was feeling weighed down, even though the supplies he had just pocketed barely registered as extra weight.
He decided he should take it all out and repack it. He removed all the packaging from his first aid gear, mostly he removed Band-Aids from their plastic cases, and this reduced the bulk of it considerably. He split all the stuff he had between several Ziploc bags. As he was pulling out the bags, he found a large box of wooden matches, put these into several more bags, and pocketed them too.
He tried to stay off the roads. He trekked through pine forest, up and down easy hills, and through thick underbrush for an hour. He was coming to the exit ramp where he had been taken and wished to avoid it. He left the road and walked up a steep hill to look around. The bodies were still there, packed around the wrecked cars. He was nervous about returning to the location.
Don’t criminals return to the scene of the crime? What if Ben and Willow are back? What if they brought the whole group?
He walked down the hill, away from the exit, and skirted it widely. His next goal was to get to Highway 68 and then walk parallel to it towards his next goal. At times he waited to avoid people, both living and dead, although he didn’t see many living people.
He spent hours traversing brutal terrain. Right off the edge of most streets in Monterey were steep canyons filled with large firs, dense underbrush, and fallen trees. Wet pine needles hid hazards such as rocks and holes. There was no straight and easy path. Sliding down a steep slope was a constant threat. Wet pine needles were as slippery as ice, and when (not if) Cooper started sliding, he would go very fast and out of control. The chances of getting injured were high as he slid over sharp sticks and rocks. Colliding with a tree was a possibility. And climbing up one of the steep slopes was infinitely harder than getting down one. If he were lucky, he would walk away with only the unpleasant experience of having wet pine needles inside his clothes.
Every year several drivers ended up down in a canyon and needed to be rescued, or even brought to the morgue. But Cooper would rather traverse the most brutal canyon blindfolded and barefoot than deal with the dead.
He came across one canyon filled with the dead and had to cross it by walking over a fallen tree that spanned the bottom. He was but a foot or two above the grasping hands of the hungry corpses. At the end of the treacherous walk, he had to climb a particularly steep slope, which required digging out handholds and footholds in the pine needles. He took a breather at the top and studied the next canyon.
This canyon wasn’t particularly steep, but it was wide. This would be an easy one, but the thick underbrush at the bottom concerned him. He threw a rock into the bushes at the bottom and heard nothing. He could still hear the dead behind him as they milled around, hissing and groaning. As he made his way to this spot, he had noticed how they were triggered by noises, especially noises that were clearly not ambient. The human voice especially worked them up. He walked a little ways down the slope to prevent working up the crowd behind him and cupped his hands.
“Hello.” He spoke in an even tone, not too soft, not too loud.
The underbrush at the bottom of the canyon came to life. It thrashed and shook as nude and dirty bodies poured out, tripping and rising, stumbling and falling, but always moving forward. They came toward him, able to traverse the slope, and that was very bad news.
They emerged growling and moaning, alerting those next to them to the possibility of fresh meat. It was a chain reaction and Cooper watched, afraid when it started and more terrified every second it continued. In just seconds he faced a horde of corpses roughly five deep in a wedge formation that stretched in both directions down the canyon. With the crowd behind him he was trapped, and panic threatened to overwhelm him.
He was desperate for an escape. Climbing the trees was impossible, as the firs were huge and wrapping his arms around one was impossible. There were no low-hanging branches to grab hold of.
Down the slope and to his right about thirty yards, something caught his eye. A bit of concrete, something man-made, a possible escape or refuge. He realized what it was and ran straight for it. It was a maintenance access to a storm drain. These five-foot columns of concrete dotted the peninsula. Several of the canyons had large drainage pipes buried beneath them to prevent erosion by collecting the water before it could run down the canyon walls.