Welcome To Strange. Zombie's in The Land Of Milk and Honey.

 

Tuesday, February 29th, 2084.

They had been with me just long enough for me to get to know their names. She was a whopping 17-year-old blonde haired and blued stunner, and her name was Ashley, her younger brother was fourteen, his name was Henry, and they were both raised in a family of hunters, and both were familiar with the use of firearms. Prior to Louis Taft and I, finding them trying to fend off a pack of drooling flesh hungry stiffs, they had both suffered through the experience of watching the virus take each of their parents-turning them before the siblings were forced to flee for their lives without any weapons. Never having been one to have a great deal of trust in adults or the rest of the world to begin with, the first time that I had turned my back for more than twenty minutes-Ashley had scooped up her younger brother and was gone like the wind. In spite of my search efforts, I never saw them either of them again-until yesterday. I had passed through several small towns between then and yesterday, and surprisingly had little trouble with refueling the truck whenever necessary, I had a few run ins with some more stiffs, a few of them alive but mostly dead. Welcome to the land of milk and honey. Paradise. Zombie Central.

I stuck to the highways mostly, they were passable for the most part, so I headed East toward the mountains on highway 10. In the foothills beneath a small little shithole called Cranston, I caught my first sight of snow. I pulled into a small little rest area just off of the freeway to catch my breath and stretch my legs-when I rolled out of the cab of the truck, I caught a whiff of a familiar scent, not to mention two sets of fresh footprints in the snow heading away from an old beat up Honda Civic with steam coming from the engine. I studied the scene carefully before pulling the S&W out from behind the seat, I closed up the truck and took the keys out of the ignition just in case. there were no drag marks near or behind the footprints, which told me whoever had made them was very much alive. One set went into one of the restrooms, the other went around the back of the building, I decided that I would wait them out and got back into the truck to get a couple of extra clips of ammo and that's when I caught a glimpse of the one in the restroom.

“So are you going to come out here and get something to eat, Ashley, or are you just going to stay in there and starve?”

Slowly she appeared in the doorway, stared at me for a time but didn’t offer much in the way of conversation.

“So where’s Henry?”

“He’s going to the bathroom, so how did you find us Crash?”

“I wasn’t looking for you, I suppose we just happened to be moving in the same direction. How did you get so far North of Vicksburg?”

“That gas station that we stopped in, when you went inside we went around the corner there was a car there with the keys still in the ignition, I can drive, and it had a full tank of gas so we took it and headed East.”

“To do what exactly?”

“We went to our grandparent's house-they-”

“Dead?”

She lowered her head.

“We think that they took their own lives rather than wait for the virus.”

Henry appeared from out of the restroom and seemed genuinely surprised to see me, I shared some food with them, and told them I was going to carefully roll into Cranston to see what I could find. they could continue to take their chances on their own, or they could come with me. Ashley rode shotgun and Henry climbed into the rear seat of the king cab, and we headed to Cranston, never dreaming what we would find.

Cranston.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was just one of those types of things, just a feeling that tugs at you sometimes for no particular reason, and not in a good way. I pulled over to the side of the road just about two miles from the town limits. Ashley passed me my binoculars from the glove box, and I opened the door and slid out from the seat to take a look. There were fences with barbed wire wrapped across the top stretched out across the highway and across the empty fields. A few overturned cars blocked the road and seemed to be acting as a main gate into town.  A town, in which I'd guessed were more than a few uninfected people who were trying to stay that way. I didn’t see any sign of any stiffs, but they were definitely trying to keep something out. that’s when I saw something coming at us fast from across the field, the smell hit me hard before they even got close, I pulled out the S&W just in time to splatter two stiffs all over the highway. But something was different about these-these two seemed to move a lot faster than the ones I encountered before, and they were white as snow, in the distance towards Cranston I heard a motorcycle headed toward us. I held up the S&W and waited.

He pulled up next to me just as I was standing over the two stiffs giving them the side eye, he cautiously rolled up beside me, with no particular aggression, upon closer inspection these stiffs were something way different from the ones we'd encountered before, they were faster, more agile. the guy standing on my left told me his name was Aaron Trickle, and he was one of three mechanics in Cranston that kept all the vehicles running. There were all told about 35 people living there, and for the past three months they had been fighting off what they were calling the frosties. He'd guessed like everyone else in Cranston that they'd made their way down from a place in the mountains called Cleffton, it was a town bigger than Cranston, there were about 620 people living there at last count, and there was no telling exactly how many of those had been turned into frosties, and they'd usually only came in small groups of seven or eight, and always from the same direction across the fields down the mountain from Cleffton.

They had been surviving in Cranston for three plus months with no outside help, but people were starting to get the itch to move, and the frosties were starting to wear on their nerves. They hadn't been to any other towns for fear of what they'd find. I told him everything that I knew, and that if they at any time need to venture out to scrounge for supplies to have at least three or four people and to stay away from highly populated areas as the bigger cities had mostly fallen to the virus, and they weren't safe. After Aaron Trickle had decided to return to Cranston, and watching him leave, something began to gnaw at me, that little voice in my head that I had grown to trust so much was telling me, that he didn't come out because I killed two frosties, he came out to see if I was armed and alone. I put Ashley into the driver's seat and told her to pull the truck into the far lane of Highway 10 and to drive as fast as she could past Cranston, as she did, another smaller truck pulled out behind us, there were four guys that I counted in the cab and bed, I sat on my knee's in the back and kept the S&W out of sight.

The two guys in the bed of the mini truck came up over the top of their cab with two hand guns and fired off a couple of rounds at the back of my truck, Ashley slowed down a bit to let them catch up just close enough for me to fire off three rounds from the S&W right into their radiator, they immediately broke off any further pursuit, and we pretty much got away unscathed, my hunch was correct, they wanted our gas, and whatever else we were carrying. Ashley put a comfortable distance between us and Cranston before she pulled over. she was shaken but quickly recovered and moved to the passenger seat, passing me the binoculars. There were three buildings ahead of us on our right, no cars, no people, but there were what seemed to be fresh tire tracks, I slowed the truck as we passed, but didn't stop. We pressed on until we arrived at an abandoned rest area, Ashley and Henry used the restroom, while I checked the map to see where we were headed next, the next town was a shithole called Ridgeway. We rolled into town around 1:00 PM, Big Mistake.

~Scratch.. A.B.T. Copyright © 2024~