Chapter 14

Darren Slattery

The weather was still fantastic the day I decided to head back to the Carter’s. The sky was clear, the humidity low and the morning bright. It was one of those perfect days where you wanted to be by a pool with your kids, or sitting on a deck and drinking beer with old friends. It was the type of day that you only get the opportunity to enjoy every so often. Personally, my choice would have been more training, but I was starting to run low on food.

It was time to move on, to go exploring and find out what was happening in Cincinnati. The world was changing into something unrecognizable, but if other people were out there then we could help each other through these tumultuous times. Before any of that happened, I needed show my friend his last respects and put him in the ground.

Wearing my high school backpack, I pushed a wheelbarrow containing a large tarp and my pitchfork towards the Carters’. The pack is a new constant feature of my wardrobe, and contained basic survival supplies, like food, water and bandages that will with me everywhere. It is one of my attempts to be better prepared going forward. With the pack I can always run in a different direction from the house and still live for a few days on what’s inside. While not quite as prepared as an average boy scout, I was getting closer.

Protective gear is what I really needed, especially arm and leg guards. My poor extremities were getting mutilated and devoured way too much. Rather than trying to rig up some ghetto armor with cardboard or scrap metal last week, I decided the time would be better spent on training. That left me leaving the house in my standard defensive outfit consisting of jeans, a t-shirt and work boots. I kept my hammer and two knives on me as well, but left the bow at home for this trip.

I went the same route as the first time. Moving up to the street and then down to their driveway, I jogged along as fast as the wheelbarrow could be kept under control. Less exposure meant more safety and I wanted to get back to my yard as soon as possible. Knowing the Carters’ house would still have an overwhelming smell of death and decay, I decided to moderate the odor by booting in the locked front door after arriving. Hopefully it would create a cross wind and draw some of the stench out. The heavy oak exterior door had been a very solid piece of construction but I barely noticed the impact when my work boot shattered it open. I took hesitant sniff at the air and gagged anew at the smell wafting out before heading around back.

With some apprehension I pushed the wheelbarrow to the rear. I had left the doors open last time, but the smell was still far worse than before. The still outline of John’s corpse in the dimly lit room brought tears to my eyes. I am not a big crier, but I recognize that there is a time and place for it. Now I am not saying I am a stoic by any means, but repressing feelings until they explode in anger and rage is kind of my thing. It just seemed to work better for me rather than having a nice healthy cathartic sob on occasion.

There was no way avoid it this time though. I tried to push it down like normal, but the loss of my friend hit me harder than I could cope. Stumbling back to middle of the yard, I fell to the ground and started crying so hard my shoulders shook. Calling it a nice cry did not do it justice. It was uncontrollable. Snot leaked and tears fell as I screamed out in pain from a fetal position. After a while it simmered down to a whimpering shudder, which was followed by some sniffling before I finally sat up and began wiping the fluids from my face. As my nose cleared the smell of death made itself known again, and I was reminded of the work ahead of me. My emotions were back to a controllable level now and I was finally able to push the remainder back down, repressing them again like they were supposed to be. Steeling myself for the grisly work ahead, I stood back up and got to it.

There is nothing graceful about moving a corpse. Even when they are ridged with rigor mortis, they are still ungainly and heavy sacks of meat. It makes it hard to show the respect the dead deserve when their body just flops around all over. For that reason, well that and to try and contain the leaking bodily fluids, someone invented the body bag. A dead person compressed into a thick plastic bag and then strapped to a backboard makes them a lot easier to carry with some dignity. Regrettably, the needed equipment was not on hand nor was a helper available, so I was unable to treat John like he should have been.

In bad shape like expected, the corpse was still in the bloat stage of decomposition. He was still in one piece, and it did not appear that scavengers had gotten to him. His killer was still lying in the floor nearby with fangs exposed in a permanent snarl. Loathing being in the same room with the creature that had taken so much from me, I still could not bring myself to move it. In my weakness I settled to covering the abomination with a towel acquired from the bathroom before moving on to my friend.

Moving John was a careful process. I laid down the blue tarp and started pulling John onto it by his legs. The skin from his legs sloughed as I dragged the body into position. I managed to not puke directly on him when it happened, but it was a near thing and my breakfast soon decorated the floor beside us. After the retching subsided and I could handle it, he was rolled up in the tarp.

A six foot, ten inch, 400 pound dead body does not fit easily into a wheelbarrow, but it was a far better option than dragging him back to my house. To be honest, without my recently improved strength, the task would have been beyond me. As I am now though, muscling him onto the cart was only a few moments of moderate effort. The corpse did not quite explode from the process, but burst a little and started leaking fluids heavily. The smell caused me to need another short break and I took it. Physically I was not tired at all, but mentally it had been one of the most taxing endeavors of my life. The emotions dripped out again in the form of quiet tears as I rolled him back to my yard. Not quite ready to put him in the ground, I left him in the wheelbarrow and took off running with my fork back to the Carters’.

There was no food to be found in the residence and I had searched extensively. A few week’s worth of stacked garbage bags in the utility room suggesting that the Carters’ had survived for a time. I went looking for signs of what happened and found it in the master bedroom. It contained what was left of two adults and one small child in the form of corpses lying mostly on the bed. The hound had eaten most of them and bones were scattered across the room and into the hallway like as many discarded chew toys. It was a gory scene that belonged in a B rated horror flick, not at my neighbors. They couldn’t have all died of natural causes and have ended up on the bed together. From the bloody knife beside the largest skeleton, it looked like they had decided to leave this world together. Never being married and without child, I was unable to fully grasp the ultimate terror and grim resolution the Carters must have experienced in order to go through with such a tragedy. Feeling sick, I moved on and tried not to think about it anymore.

One of the items I did end up taking was a carpenter’s half-hatchet from the garage. The half-hatchet is exactly what it sounds like, the front half a hammer and the back half a hatchet. The hatchet side blade was about four inches wide and it weighed close to three pounds. I shoved it into my belt to replace the hammer and it fit comfortably. I also snagged a spud bar which I liked the look of. It was a fourteen pound piece of metal shaped like a staff about sixty inches long. It had a dull point on one end and I liked feel of it. If I had any talent in wielding a staff this would be a great combination of weight and length to go with my newfound strength. I took it to play around with during my next training session.

My new toys in hand, I carried a can of gas out into the yard to test its flammability. There had been no cars driving by and my truck had not started, but that could be attributed to all the newer models relying on electronics. If it was just an electrical issue, then maybe older machines might still work. I poured a little onto the driveway and lit it with a match from the house. It caught on fire, but was lacked the explosiveness of old. Instead of a small fireball of exploding fumes, the flame slowly marched across the pool until it was fully lit. The small puddle of gas took a long time to burn out, like oil in a lamp, and it finally consumed itself over the course of 15 minutes. As interesting as it all was, I had no idea what that meant for the world or physics. When I got done playing with the fire I jogged home, leaving the useless gas where it lay.

I started digging John’s grave after arriving home and it should have been backbreaking work. Being in manual labor and construction, I have had the occasion to dig many a hole with by hand. Unless you were a Winchester and on the set of Supernatural, it used to be impossible to dig a grave without totally exhausting yourself over the course of 3-4 hours. This one only took me about an hour. I felt a little tired afterwards but even that seemed to be mostly mental. It had just been a long day so far.

Being in superhuman condition was still astonishing even after a week of testing my limits. Finding out what I could do from body weight exercises and jumping around was all well and good, but what I really wanted was access to a gym. A nice set of weights would enable me to more accurately gauge my new strength and allow me to quantify it. I made a mental note to attempt to do so during my wanderings.

My errant thoughts drifted as I finished up the pit. It was a little longer wider than my friend. It was silly and irrational, but I wanted him to have some room to stretch out. I did not want him to be cramped for space like he was most of his life. I lowered John into it as gracefully as I was able, and straightened him out. He had to stay wrapped up in the tarp because I had no access to a coffin. I thought about taking another look at the man who had helped me through a difficult part of my life, but I knew from the horrid smell and viscous fluids coming out of the tarp that there was nothing of him but meat rotting in the sun.

I climbed out of the pit and stood over it for several long minutes before filling it back in. I debated giving an audible eulogy but decided against it. His hopes, dreams and aspirations were gone, and I had to focus on my own. If there was anything left of John other than the corpse he left behind, hopefully he would know how I felt.

After my friend was finally in the ground and covered with his dirt blanket, I thought about doing the same for my roommate. Even if he was an asshole he deserved a proper burial as well. Unfortunately for him, I was all out of tarps and didn’t want to make a mess dragging his gooey ass up the stairs. The whole deep freezer was not coming out of the basement in one piece either, so Seth would just have to stay on metaphorical ice for a little longer. I don’t know what it was that made me think of John as still a person and Seth as rotting meat, but it spoke to my personality that I disassociated myself with my murder victim and still thought myself a good person for taking care of a friend.

The burial had been enough exercise for the day and after cleaning up I spent the rest of the afternoon debating traveling gear. A backpack made for schoolbooks was not enough for a man to live out of, but beggars can’t be choosers. I went downstairs and loaded mine up to its limit. Two lighters were added, as well more food. I was able to loop the canteen to the outside and fit in a couple of full plastic water bottles. A small cooking pot would have been nice to bring, but there was no room left and everything else was more important than cooking utensils. As I picked up the pack I noticed that it rattled annoyingly from the cans of food inside. Following the Hitchiker’s Guide, I wrapped everything up in a good old fashioned towel to keep it from making noise. I thought about rigging my yoga mat to strap to the top for sleeping comfort, but decided against it. I could likely secure myself inside a building somewhere if when I intended to sleep and hopefully find a bed. As a last minute thought, I tied some empty pillow cases on the straps for extra carrying capacity if needed.

I worked out my traveling strategy next. Although confident in my ability to run the distance to the mall and back, there was no reason to pull every mob in the area by sprinting around like a madman. It would do me no good to arrive quickly but with a horde of monsters on my tail when I stopped to look for weapons. Heading towards the city instead of away from it meant that I was guaranteed a few fights along the way, but there would also be an increased chance of encounters with other survivors. Which would be more dangerous was open for debate. Mutated humans and monsters should be instinctual hunters, acting on impulse without much planning. A retreat or tactical fall back to a more defensible position should allow me to overcome most of those encounters.

Conversely, the potential to meet other survivors filled me with both hope and fear. Living through the change would be a lot easier if I could group up with some good people, but people are people, both good and bad. The humans still alive would be one of three types. They would be lucky, extremely tough or they had been protected by someone else. Although I have had my share of good luck, I did not fear those who have been surviving by relying on pure chance. I also did not have to worry about the protected members of the herd, the weak and infirm. What concerned me most were the tough bastards who have fought for their survival every day for the last few months. Those guys would have had to been ruthless to survive out in the world without prior preparation. That surely would be far beyond me in both combat experience and levels.

Humans had ruled the world for a reason, and it was not our physical prowess. Our minds had made us the apex predators on this planet. We took advantage of our surroundings and used them to our advantage. It was that knowledge in particular that led me to fear an ambush. What you don’t see coming can kill you. It was still a little early for that yet though. Hopefully people had not yet reached the point where they were killing each other for their experience and levels, but it was possible and something I wanted to avoid being the victim of.

The need to my long term survival weighed on me as well, but my mind kept jumping. There were just too many unknowns right now to know where to begin. Winter would be coming in a few months and without the convenience of food supplied by grocery stores, I am not sure how to get enough food to last through the cold season. It could even be best to start traveling south to avoid the worst of the weather. That may still be an option, but I still had business to take care of in Cincinnati.

The present was already overwhelmingly difficult enough. I decided to make it to the mall first, and try to scrounge up some decent gear from the specialty sword store there. Once better equipped for medieval style combat, with actual weapons instead of farm equipment, I would try and find Jessica. The next step would depend on her still being alive and any encounters I had with other survivors along the way. With the decision made, I decided to forgo further training and head towards the city.

The next morning I left the house decked out in my newbie gear. I had my Secondary School Pack of Lesser Carrying, the Carter’s Homestead Half-Hatchet with plus two damage vs nails and my Pitchfork of Rat-slaying. Deciding to keep the pitchfork in my hands, I ended up tying my Compound Bow of Inconvenient Use to the pack in case I ever a chance use it. I had also equipped my Jeans of Greater Paint Stains, my Bud Light T-shirt of Minor Alcoholism, and of course my Work Boots of Mutant Hound Stomping.

The tutorial was complete and I had slain the necessary number of rats in the barn. Thus armed and armored I set out on my nooby quest to upgrade my starter gear and left the house at an easy jog. I decided travel down US- 50 to Cinci. Hopefully people would be avoiding the major roads and I could use it to my advantage.