The Fast and the Dead - Day 26

Several thoughts flashed through Ben’s mind all at once. The lit camera light; the presence of people in an area of town that seemed long abandoned; the apparent presence of canned food, for there was no other possible way to get beef stew or anything similar these days that he knew of.

“Stew. I haven’t eaten all day. You don’t suppose there’s any more around, do you?” Ben was irrational even to suggest they stop when they knew there were dead in the area and following them, but neither of them had eaten all day, and eventually they wouldn’t be able to keep moving if they didn’t eat. He still had his condiments from the coffee shop, but he didn’t have much and it wouldn’t do much for them.

He couldn’t see Claire’s face very well in the shadows of the building’s interior, but he thought she was biting her lip. “We need to eat something more than ketchup and relish.” She looked back to the broken door they’d entered through; nothing had followed them inside yet.

Ben was checking out the reception desk. He climbed on top, a little clumsily thanks to his ankle, and down again to the other side. A few seconds of searching in the dark turned up a new find. “There’s more dishes here,” he said, a note of hope in his voice. “Maybe they keep the food near by?”

There was a dark hallway deeper into the building behind the desk. Claire eyed it. “Yes,” she finally replied. “I think we need to check it out, at least a quick check.”

He started his own quick check of the rest of the space behind the desk. They needed not just food, but something solid and heavy they could use to protect themselves if and when the dead got close. There was lots of trash and debris, but nothing with enough heft to be useful. He regretted the earlier loss of the shotgun Claire had had at the pub when they’d met.

He was about to give up entirely when his hand closed around the handle of an old solid metal wrench. It was a big one, and plenty heavy. It was also awkward, and while big for a wrench, using it would require being closer to the dead than he wanted to get. But it felt reassuring in his hand, and was far better than nothing.

“Okay,” he said, showing her the find. “No more than a couple of minutes though. Those things are still behind us, and we need to keep it that way.”

She wasted no time replying, instead ducking into the dark hallway silently. He followed behind her, moving as quietly as his limp would allow. He was the only source of sound, which both bothered and reassured him; if there were any dead inside, they weren’t near enough for them to hear at least.

They hadn’t gone more than maybe 10 feet down the hallway when they found the door to another room in the blackness. It was open, and Claire was already inside when Ben reached it. “Here,” she whispered. She shoved a bunch of what felt like cans into his hands.

“Hang on, wait, wait,” he said. “I need to be able to use the wrench if I have to.”

“Pass me your bag then,” she said, and he did. She stuffed as many cans in as she could, working blind, without even knowing what was in them. She’d found stacks of them inside an old refrigerator that hadn’t seen power in ages.

She was grabbing a few last cans when they heard the snap-tinkle of breaking glass back the way they’d come.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 25

They ducked inside and Ben immediately felt the walls of the room closing in; he almost wanted to rush back out again. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to calm down.

Claire was feeling it too; he could tell by her voice. “Across or up?” she asked, voice brittle with tension. He interpreted that to mean ‘try to find another surface exit on the other side of the building, or head up to the roofs again.’

“Across. Our last trip up wasn’t fun.”

“Let’s go!”

They had to move slow; it was even darker inside than out, which didn’t make either of them feel a lot better about being inside again. They were in a large open area inside what might have been an office building or hotel once. Broad stairs leading up to the next floor faced them, and a long reception desk stood abandoned. The street-facing windows were floor to ceiling, so the room wasn’t completely dark, though it was awfully close. “Stick to this room, there must be an exit on the other side too.” He was able to make out Claire’s nod.

The long hours under the night sky had sharpened their night vision to about the best it was going to reach, but even so they found themselves with a hand on the reception desk for guidance. The floor wasn’t exactly empty; broken glass, dirt and debris were everywhere, and there were even patches of grass growing in places, just like the road ways outside.

They’d gone most of the length of the reception desk when Claire jerked her hand away from it with a grunt of surprise. “Ugh!”

Ben winced at the exclamation; her voice had been low, but compared to the near silence it seemed loud. “What is it?”

She picked something up off the desk. “Food. Or the dish it was eaten from at least.” She sniffed at it. “Beef stew, maybe. And it’s still slimy… it surprised me.”

“Still slimy?” That had to mean it had been eaten very recently, within hours, not days, weeks or years.

“A little… seems pretty dried out, but not completely. Someone was here recently.”

The Fast and the Dead - Day 24

They half-ran, half-hobbled through an intersection, nearly tripping as they tried to keep an eye on every direction at once. They could hear more of the dead close by, too many sources to count, but not enough to be visible. Ben almost wished they were visible; it was somehow worse when you couldn’t see them, couldn’t tell if they were going to mass up and trap you.

“We … have to … get off the street,” Ben managed between gasps as his ankle protested their rapid pace. “We’re too exposed!”

Clair didn’t reply; she was busy searching the building facades as they passed. He was about to say something further when they both stopped short as movement ahead caught their eye. Two of the dead, ahead of them. Both were coming their way, but were too far ahead to be aware of them. One dragged itself along the ground; it was a safe bet it had a problem with its legs, if it still had legs. The other was upright and walking, but leaning so heavily against the wall of a building Ben momentarily felt sorry for it; he could relate.

They stared ahead for a moment, minds racing. The sounds behind them prompted a look; the first they’d spotted was still on their trail. Ben recognized it by the long tattered remnants of a duster it was wearing. It wasn’t closing in fast, but they couldn’t just stand around and wait for it to catch up. He couldn’t tell if the others they’d heard were coming or not.

They could try to keep going ahead on the street; the crawler wouldn’t be much threat to them as long as they stayed out of range of its hands and mouth, and one walker wasn’t that difficult to avoid. They’d be gambling that those were the only two, though, and the stakes were awfully high. There wasn’t much point in going back; there was precious little of value, and nowhere to get to.

That left going in.

The buildings around them were taller, though not the skyscrapers of the Core. They ranged from 5 to 8 storeys, Ben figured. Most of the windows and doors were broken in. That could mean they’d been looted, or it could mean the dead had been busy. There was no way to tell from out here. 5 to 8 storeys left a lot of room inside for the dead to wait.

They looked at each other, and after a moment’s hesitation they ducked inside the nearest building.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 23

Ben watched her going over each car for a while before his curiosity got the better of him. “What’re you looking for?”

“Anything we can use if and when we run into more of those things,” she said, not taking her eyes off the interior of the car she was next to. “They’ve all been looted though I think.”

He checked his belt. The plastic bag filled with water bottles and food was still tied there, a reassuring weight on his good leg. “That’s reassuring in a way. It means people still pass through now and then, or did at one time at least.”

Something caught his eye then, and he jerked his head around before even realizing what it was he’d seen. A light?

He scanned up and down the rows of buildings along the road they were following down to the water. Where … There. The tiniest spark of a light, a red blip in the night. He pointed it out.

They moved closer. They’d covered about three quarters of the distance to the light when they were able to make out the source through the gloom. It was an old security camera that had been outfitted with a makeshift cover to conceal it, only now the cover was showing its age and falling apart.

A noise from behind them startled Claire; she covered her mouth and turned with a muffled gasp. A figure stumbled into the street some distance further up the road. As they watched, it turned their way.

Ben’s stomach turned to ice. Individually they weren’t a threat—but they had no weapons to use against it either, and they couldn’t see reliably. They couldn’t move much faster than it could in the dark either, for fear of injury and because of the injury he already had. He grabbed Claire’s arm and together they moved as quickly as they could away down the street.

They were just coming to a major intersection, about 4 or 5 away from the water when off to their left, more movement. More sound. And then to their right.

Ben swallowed, but dared not speak. They kept moving; Claire threw an arm around his shoulders and almost dragged him in their efforts to go faster.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 22

In the end, caution won, and eventually turned out to be quite a few hours with their slow pace and poor sight. The moon was high in the sky and well on its way down again when they finally reached the point where the highway came back down to earth. To their enormous relief, there were no dead in sight.

They hopped over the barrier in a part of town Ben didn’t recognize. It looked like mostly smallish individual homes with the odd apartment building as far as they could see. “This is good,” Ben said. “Low population density.”

“It could be good,” Claire corrected. “They’re slow and mostly don’t travel great distances but that doesn’t mean they’ve all stayed in the same spots all these years.”

It was true, Ben reflected. It was still a pretty good idea to avoid major population centers, and this was still close enough to being one that they had to be very careful, but zombies did move around enough for dispersion to have happened over the last decade. They might run into more than they assumed. They might run into none.

They had departed the highway near an overpass without ramps. Moving as quietly as they could, they made it to the other road. This one had few cars on it, and looked as though they’d spent the last 10 years rusting in place.

“Have you ever seen anyone get this far away before?” Claire’s expression was hard to read in the dark but her voice was weary but with a nervous edge. Ben was flagging as well.

“No. There’ve only been a few who got away without getting caught, and coverage mostly ends long before you get out here.”

She started carefully inspecting every car they passed. Her inspections were visual only after she touched a rear view mirror and barely managed to catch it when it crumbled off the car. The loud sharp sound of breaking glass would definitely bring them bad luck.