Badlands Trilogy (Book 3): Out of the Badlands Read online

  Ed eventually drifted off to a fitful sleep as the carriers howled in the distance, stalking their prey in the darkness.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  After leaving the temporary sanctuary of the small house behind, Ed navigated a consecutive series of side roads while Trish sat in the passenger seat, map in hand, navigating their way through the maze of cracking concrete and asphalt. Zach and Jeremy sat in the back seat keeping watch behind. Terry piloted the vehicle in the rear, carrying the rest of the passengers and the remainder of their meager supplies.

  They drove for nearly five hours, the pace excruciatingly slow at times. Ed began to wonder just how much time it would take them to get to the coast. More importantly, the amount of gasoline required to make the journey seemed disproportionately high compared to the reserves they carried with them. At this rate they’d run out well before completing the journey. The only outstanding question seemed to be when.

  The side roads led them along a mixture of old stores and houses, all intermingled with each other. Burned out gas stations, disintegrating corner stores and small office buildings with broken windows and doors lined the street.

  Ed began to wonder as they passed these empty relics whether or not they were actually better off avoiding the highway. Anything or anyone could be inside these old structures, just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to pass by. But after they carnage they’d experienced on the highway, the apparent desolation of the side roads had become a welcome respite. Either way they faced a risk, mitigating that risk was about the best he could do now.

  They stopped along the way for bathroom breaks, reminding Ed of normal road trips taken with Sarah, back before the kids were born and the virus destroyed the world. Back when things had been so simple and easy. Maybe they could have something like that again in Hawaii.

  With several hours passed since the last stop, Ed signaled with a hand gesture to Terry to stop the convoy. Ahead of them sat a small corner gas station, its windows broken and door askew on its hinges.

  “Be ready,” Ed said over the din of the jeep’s engine. Zach and Jeremy nodded, gripping pistols tightly, their eyes darting back and forth. Ed pulled into the parking lot in front of the gas station, drawing his own pistol as they rolled to a stop. He left the engine running, placing the gearshift in neutral before applying the parking brake. His heart beat loudly in his ears as adrenaline pumped into his system, placing him on high alert as Terry pulled in behind him.

  They waited in the lot for a minute before killing the engines. With no activity from any of the inside buildings, Ed decided to chance it. “I hate these buildings,” he said to Trish. “Puts me on edge.”

  “Would you feel better on the highway?” she asked.

  “I doubt it,” Ed replied. “Let’s just get in and out.”

  “Yes, let’s.” Trish exited the jeep, followed by Zach and Jeremy. They stepped onto the cracked and weed-strewn asphalt as Terry approached from behind, pistol in hand.

  “Want to check out that store while we’re here?” Terry asked.

  Behind him Jasper and Emily got out of the car, Emily extending a hand and helping Jasper to his feet. He stood, unsteady, leaning on Emily for balance. Sam and Chloe piled out of the car, stretching tired muscles.

  “I’m not sure it’s worth it,” Ed said. He looked around at the surrounding buildings. The windows stared back like deep, black eyes. “These buildings give me the creeps.”

  “They’re not giving up the goods like they used to, that’s for sure,” Terry replied. “But we can’t keep passing places up forever. The food’s gonna run out before long, shitty as it is these days.”

  “We should do some hunting,” Ed said. “Plenty of game around now.”

  “I agree.” Ed watched as Zach and Jeremy walked to the edge of the lot to relieve themselves. Trish checked the map against their surroundings, ensuring they remained on the right path.

  Movement from the front door of the gas station caught Ed’s attention and he turned quickly, raising the pistol. An unmistakable white figure emerged through the opening, emitting a low growl as its sharp claws scraped against the surface of the parking lot.

  The growl became a piercing shriek as the beast charged toward Zach and Jeremy.

  The carrier took another step before a loud gunshot crackled through the air. The massive, muscled beast took another step forward before collapsing face down in the parking lot. A pool of dark, red blood formed around its equally massive head. A whoosh of air escaped its lungs as it exhaled, bloody bubbles forming around its mouth.

  Ed looked at Terry. “Did you…?”

  Terry shook his head. “No, that wasn’t me.”

  Ed glanced around at the other members of the group. They all shook their heads.

  “Where did that shot come from?” Trish asked.

  As if in response, two men approached them from the end of the street, rifles balanced on their shoulders.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Ed and the others watched with one part curiosity and one part concern as the two men approached. They kept their weapons pointed at the ground, but didn’t stow them. No one spoke as the men approached. The pair neither dawdled or rushed, choosing instead to walk at their own steady pace.

  As the men approached, Ed tensed. “Boys, get behind me,” he said, his voice low. Zach and Jeremy did as instructed.

  The men continued toward them. They wore denim jeans and army jackets. Both stood roughly the same height. Long beards draped from their chins. As they neared, Ed could better make out their features. Brown hair, darker brown beards with touches of gray. Ed put them in their mid to late thirties.

  The men continued toward them at the same pace, stopping twenty feet away. The man on the right, slightly taller than his counterpart, cocked his head sideways as he shot them a confused look. “Are you guys dense in the head?” he asked.

  No one replied. Ed’s muscles felt like taut ropes, ready to snap.

  “You’re welcome,” the other man said.

  “For what?” Terry asked.

  The shorter man laughed, glancing at his partner. “They are dense, Ethan.”

  Ethan chuckled in response, shaking his head. “We’re not gonna shoot you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Jesus Christ, we’d have already done that if so.”

  “What do you want?” Ed asked.

  “Quit fucking with them, Charlie,” Ethan said. “They must’ve come from the East. Otherwise they’d know better.”

  “Did you?” Charlie asked. “Come from the East?”

  “We did,” Ed replied.

  “Well, shit. No wonder,” Charlie said. “These white fuckers love these little buildings. You got yourself a loner here. Lucky for you, because if it’d been a pack of the devils you’d all be supper now.”

  “So you shot it,” Ed said.

  Charlie chuckled. “Surely. Gotten pretty good at it these days. We pick ‘em off wherever we can, but it’s cheaper to avoid ‘em altogether. Ammo’s getting harder and harder to come by these days.”

  “No offense,” Ed said, “we appreciate what you did, but we’ve run across some bad people along the way. So if we don’t immediately trust you, you can understand why.”

  “Well, if we’re being honest here, looks like you folks got the upper hand,” Ethan said. “You outnumber us like four to one. And you still haven’t put those pistols away.”

  “Neither have you,” Terry said.

  “These?” Ethan said, motioning toward the rifles. “Little hard to quick draw with a rifle, don’t you think?”

  No one replied.

  “Look,” Charlie said, “you folks strike us as probably okay. You got these kids and all, plus the gimp back there.” He pointed at Jasper. “Way I see it, you folks don’t kill kids and you keep your injured. We figure that makes you all right.”

  Ethan nodded. “And considering we just saved you the problem of replacing those two boys of yours, maybe you guys could give us t
he benefit of the doubt.”

  “He’s got a point,” Terry said.

  Ed paused, considering. They’d encountered some terrible people along the way and a lot of people had died as a result. He remembered how Tex had taken Ed’s group in, a decision that ended up being his death. But that guilt he still had to process. In the meantime he could help make up for it by extending some of the same consideration.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  After determining no carriers inhabited the structure, Ed and Terry pulled the cars around back. The group made use of the seats inside an old restaurant across the street from the gas station where they sat together, talking.

  “Why in the hell would you guys be headed west?” Ethan asked.

  “We came from Kansas City,” Ed said. “We caught a ham radio transmission while we were there.” Ed explained about the safe haven in Hawaii and the ship ferrying survivors across the Pacific.

  “Sounds pretty far-fetched,” Charlie said. “Not to burst your bubble or anything.”

  “Have you been to California?” Trish asked.

  “Not that far west,” Charlie said, “but my brother and me came from Arizona.”

  “Ah, you’re brothers then?” Trish asked.

  “Have been our whole lives,” Charlie said, eliciting a laugh from the group.

  “It’s a fucking wasteland out there,” Ethan said. He glanced at Zach and Jeremy sitting at the table across from them. “Whoops. I don’t spend much time around kids.”

  “Go on,” Ed said. “Four letter words are the least of our worries.”

  “All this gets worse the further west you get,” Charlie said. “That thing that almost killed your boys, his brothers and sisters are thick out there. Place is overrun with them, pretty much exclusively at night.”

  “We hole up at night to avoid them,” Terry said.

  “That works for the most part,” Ethan said. “At night they really come out in force, though. If they sniff you out they won’t stop until they’ve clawed their way inside whatever you’re hiding in, or if the sun comes up. Whichever comes first.”

  “But that carrier you shot out there, it came out in the daytime,” Emily said.

  Charlie nodded. “Sometimes they do. We’ve been watching these things close…real close. God knows we’ve seen enough of ‘em. They don’t like the sun, but that doesn’t mean it kills them or anything. It’s not like they’re vampires. But their eyes, they can’t see in the bright light. It blinds them.”

  “Same thing I noticed back at the school with my camera,” Sam said. He briefly explained the events of the night when he lost his mother.

  “But that nose they got on ‘em, they can sniff out fresh meat like a shark can smell chum,” Charlie continued. “And to them we’re fresh meat.”

  “If they smell a meal and they think it’s easy pickins then they’ll come out in the daytime,” Ethan added. “They’ll just charge, like you saw. If they get you they’ll drag you off and finish chowing down in the dark.”

  “Like a crocodile dragging its prey down deep, where they have the advantage,” Jasper said.

  “Pretty much,” Ethan said.

  Emily frowned. “That’s gruesome.”

  “It’s the way of the world now,” Charlie said. “Best to accept it. And if you think it’s been bad so far, just wait…the further you get out west the worse it gets.”

  “But we don’t know that California is overrun,” Chloe said.

  “I can’t speak for Cali,” Ethan continued, “but as far as Arizona goes it’s crawling with those things and you’re gonna have to go through them to get where you’re planning to go.”

  “The further east we get they seem to be thinning out,” Charlie said. “That’s what we’ve seen, at least.”

  “The first contracted case of the virus was in California,” Emily said. “Patient zero was identified to have come from one of the airports there.”

  “I remember that,” Trish said.

  “It spread east and fast,” Emily said. “The hospital I worked at just got overwhelmed. And when they started changing, well…”

  “The shit hit the fan,” Charlie said.

  “But what are these things?” Trish asked. “Where are they all coming from?”

  “The carriers…they’re changing. Morphing into something new. We found weird cocoons like things back in Cali. That’s how they change. From what we can tell that metamorphosis is following the same path as the virus did when it broke out.”

  “So the carriers are changing in a sweeping pattern, starting west and heading east?” Emily said.

  Ethan nodded. “That’s what we think, at least.”

  “What else do we need to know about these things?” Ed asked.

  “You’re still planning on going out that way?” Charlie said.

  “It’s our only chance.”

  “Well, it’s your prerogative, I suppose, but I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Where would you go then?” Trish asked.

  “East.”

  “It’s not all that much better east,” Ed said. “And if these new carriers are spreading out in that direction then eventually the rest of the country will eventually be just as bad. You won’t be able to outrun them.”

  “I can see your point,” Ethan said, “but what happens if you get to California and there’s no boat waiting there?”

  “There has to be,” Ed said.

  “For your sake I hope there is,” Ethan said.

  “You should come with us,” Jasper said, glancing away from the picture window facing the street. “At least in California you have a chance.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Nah, Charlie and me have always been live off the land types. We’ll do okay on our own.”

  “You sure?” Ed asked.

  Charlie nodded. “We’ve been doing this ever since the bug hit. We’ve gotten pretty good at it. It’s just the two of us and we keep it that way. We don’t take people on and we don’t really join up with anybody.”

  “But what will you do when the carriers catch up?” Ed asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “What we always do, survive. We know their routines pretty well. We watch them pretty close. We know how to avoid them at night and we keep moving through the day.”

  “No offense, buddy, but that doesn’t sound any less crazy than our plan,” Terry said.

  Ethan laughed. “None taken.”

  “So back to my question; what do we need to know about these things?” Ed asked. “If we’re heading into the thick of things, any information you have will help.”

  “Well, they’re pack animals, for the most part,” Ethan said. “On occasion they break off like you saw, either by choice or chance we don’t really know. But they prefer to stick together, like a wolf pack.”

  “We stay away from the bigger buildings, like big department stores, grocery stores, places like that.” Charlie said. “They nest there in big groups during the day, out of the sun and come out at night to hunt like bats.”

  “What do they hunt?” Sam asked. “There aren’t a lot of people around anymore.”

  “Pretty much anything; deer, coyote, mountain lion.” Charlie glanced at Jasper. “What was it you called them?”

  “Apex carriers,” Jasper replied.

  “Right. They’re king of the jungle, all right. Nothing hunts them. Well, except for my brother and me, but we’re not really putting a dent in their population.”

  “You don’t…eat them, do you?” Sam asked.

  “Only tried it once,” Ethan replied, smiling. “They taste like chicken.” That got a laugh out of the others.

  “What about the roads?” Ed asked. “How are the highways?”

  “We don’t really travel the highway,” Charlie said. “Too exposed.”

  Ed relayed their experiences with the road gangs they’d encountered along the way, omitting their encounter with Lester.

  “I
suppose there could be gangs along the highways out west as well,” Ethan said. “Like I said, it’s too open for us. Nowhere to run if the shit hits the fan. I don’t know that I’d change your approach with these side roads you’re taking. Lots of houses and other buildings alongside, so as long as they’re empty you got a place to stay.”

  “Those vehicles you got there though,” Charlie said, “that’ll draw a lot of attention to yourselves. Probably why you got that beast’s attention and he tried to eat your little ones. You roll up on these building, man and it’ll stir them up.”

  “But if we’re going to make it to the coast we can’t do that on foot,” Trish said. “It’s too far.”

  “Point taken,” Ethan said. “The vehicles might be worth the risk, considering how far you got to go and how many people you got with you.” He glanced around the table. “You just need to be careful when you stop. No matter what, it’s risky.”

  “Being alive these days is risky,” Terry added.

  “Find places with basements,” Charlie said. “These guys can smell better than a blood hound, so stay in the basement and keep quiet. Keep away from the doors, cause they can smell you through them. Plus they can hear like nobody’s business too. Real keen ears. Below ground is your best bet. Stay there until the sun comes up bright and you’ll probably do okay.”

  Ethan glanced out through the picture window of the restaurant which was still surprisingly intact. “Night’s coming up on us soon. Charlie and me tend to get settled in well before dusk each night. You should probably start doing the same, if you’re not doing so already.”

  “We do,” Ed said.

  “Good man,” Charlie said. “Keep doing it and you might just make it all the way to California yet.”

  * * *

  Ed and the group gathered outside the restaurant in the middle of the street to say goodbye to the two brothers. After a quick glance up and down the street to ensure the way remained clear, Ed shook hands with both men.