The Dead World Ch. 01

"We ain't stealing from a bunch of fuckin' old people and they kids... Oz ain' gonna have it."

"We need the shit more than they do... Raleigh's a long fuckin' way from here 'ESS-EYY'. If it's them or us, then we're taking their shit—hell, they can tag along too if they know what's good for 'em, but we ain't leavin' empty handed... outta yo' fuckin' head... y'all fuckin' charity cases and bleedin' hearts are gonna have us stumblin' fuckin' corpses out here."

"Man, shut your crazy ass up. We're gonna find out what the fuck we doing in a minute... can you ever like, be normal? Like a human being? For fucks sake.." The wild-eyed mechanic shot a vicious leer his way, and moments later he simply laughed uproariously in response.

It was only a matter of minutes before their four comrades came trailing down the paved way toward the now empty barricade of undead. Dog tossed the pack of cigarettes to Ricky as they closed distance, and the man ruffled the younger's long black hair playfully with a gruff chuckle. "Fuck yeah, kid, good shit!" The younger man shoved his hand away with a disapproving scowl before snatching the pack back once the mechanic took a cigarette from it. "Aht-aht!—hey, gatdamn Indian givin' ass!"

"Listen up." Oz's solid call for attention drew all eyes. The men settled down, resting their weight on their weapons, or the large vehicle they arrived in.

"Looks like they only left one person behind to keep an eye on things--no telling how many here. The place is too big to scout. We're losing daylight... so we're gonna pull back to the camp. We can see the bridge from there, see whoever comes, stop whoever tries to go."

"What if it's really just one?" Skully questioned dryly.

"Skully's right... what if there's just one motherfucker in there? Easier to just dip back in at sundown, take what they got quiet like, right?" Slash uttered, keeping his voice down now, tapping the handle of the hatchet he was ever so fond of.

"If it's even worth it." Diablo muttered quietly.

"If it's only one person, it probably won't be..." Oz frowned thoughtfully. "Without scanning every suite we'll never know who's living or where. High risk for a low reward."

"I think we should pull back to camp, rest up, and keep it moving. We checked it out. Looks deserted. The greenhouse was the only thing I saw worthwhile... but the island is clear now so we can chill here and make a straight shot for Raleigh before the temperature really starts dropping." Again, his younger brother's dry, matter-of-fact tone caused the little hairs along the back of his neck to bristle slightly. A few of his men nodded.

Lorenzo and Ruthless, the tall blonde russian, kept their eyes trained on Oz as per usual knowing his word was final... wanting to be just, though, Oz listened as they conversed among each other and considered their opinions. Dog watched them all from afar with his pensive expression, his opinion unbiased... he didn't care what happened in all honesty. He got what he was hoping for out of the adventure.

"We're pulling back. This place has generators that are still running—the elevator came down when I tried it." The men stirred happily at the thought, and Colt's brow twitched as his brother continued pressing the resort. "Shit, might even have running water—it advertises sufficiency all over the lobby... and aside from the ugly building in front, it's not looking awfully booby trapped. Nobody's gunning us down. Ruthless, Slash... I want you running the first watch shift tonight monitoring the bridge. We're gonna lay out spikes halfway on our way back, to slow down anybody coming home... I want whoever's here in good shape... you got that? Slash?" Every eye turned to the man most notorious for violent mishaps, who raised his hands defenselessly with a smug smirk as he feigned innocence.

"At about midnight, I'll take over watch with Skully, 'til sun up. If there's still no activity, Dog, Ruthless and Slash will hit the greenhouse at day break for whatever they can load. I'll check out the generator and water to see if we can maybe shower and fill the water drums in the Hummer... and maybe we can spend a night inside. Afterwards... we'll keep moving. Objections?"

The men were still. He nodded his head to confirm his final statement, and motioned for them to pack it up.

As they loaded themselves into the vehicle, Colton glanced back to the building. He knew he was right and it was honestly a waste of time.. one more day here was one less day that could get them closer to an actual community. His brother always wanted to run the show, though. He shot Oz a subtle glare before loading into the back of the black Humvee.

—————

Eerie was beyond the word for the basement.

The flickering lights and drip-drop of a broken water pipe all but tormented her. It had once been jammed with cars, but she and Matt cleared paths specifically for this day. Charlie navigated through them as quickly as possible, wiping her fear of stumbling by a corpse from her mind. That was honestly far less of a problem than whoever was upstairs noticing the elevator in function and that someone had gone down.

She shoved her knife into the card key mechanism, hoping to stop the elevator of the derelict tower from functioning again. Dragging the now incredibly heavy load to the vehicle nearest the exit of the garage with the most space was now her focus. She frowned, sweat forming along her brow. She wasn't going to be able to fit all of this into this car. Prioritizing meant she had to leave something behind.

She quickly dropped the service pack out of the way, loading the duffel with her photos of her husband and few other personal effects safely inside the passenger seat. She kept the water and as many rations as she could, hoping she might eventually get the hang of hunting during her trip. She then began to load the rest of the space—the backseat and trunk with the weapons, trying her damned best to be quiet and swift. At long last Charlie slid into the driver's seat and closed the door as firmly and quietly as possible.

Half a tank of gas...it was not enough to navigate the entire way to North Georgia on the back roads, but enough to get her a good ways away from whoever the fuck was upstairs. With some luck she'd be able to find fuel on her way. She could see daylight at the end of the garage, not a far drive and relatively easy to navigate the abandoned vehicles haphazardly lacing the street beyond. She would have to charge the fence and hit the only weak point of the barricade just right. As soon as it was dark, she would make her run for it.

Her slim digits shifted to gently swipe at her forehead.

It had been about two hours now, since the intruders moved inside, and the sun had faded beyond dusk. She sat in the loaded Prius, nibbling her bottom lip anxiously, counting the minutes that passed as the sky began to darken. Not one of the armed men had come down. No motion in the garage.

She thanked her lucky stars she didn't have to fight her way through a crowd of dead to make her escape. In a way, though she was hot as all hell bundled up in this car and the windows had begun to fog up from how cool the outer air was becoming, she felt relief. Ready for this new change no matter what may come. She might get lucky and find a community, or a group of people to travel with. She might even make friends, some day in the future. It was a dangerous thought as much as an appealing one. Friends never lasted long in this world... but after being literally alone for years with only her thoughts for company? She'd take anyone over that silence.

She toyed with the key in her hand a moment, her foot on the break... and finally reached out and pressed the ignition button. She could see just barely the emergency lights from the resort carport beyond the garage, and slowly made her way toward them, out into the total blackness and star-lit night. The moon was just peeking from behind the northern tower, the eerie darkness and quiet not bothering Charlotte in the slightest. That she was used to. The shifting waves on the beach was always a thunderous white noise to balance the empty wilderness.

Charlie waited until she made her way down the drive and nestled the car against the single vehicle to the right side of the fence. It had been left in neutral. It was still obnoxiously difficult to get out and push the old rusted thing out of the way—and it was loud. Still, she couldn't be out here all night, and if the people who had infiltrated her home were inside the more distance she put between them, the better.

Her breath was heavy as she moved to her next task, stepping over the several dispatched corpses her earlier visitors left blanketing her path. It had been a while since she had to deal with any of the reanimated corpses of the tourists or resort workers. She had never killed any, not one, but she played bait to help Matthew funnel them out of the resort. It felt like ages ago that they had come here. The survivors who had taken refuge here before they'd come were trapped inside by a group of maniacs who had come along "hunting" them a few months after the disease ravaged the country... the scene had not been a pretty one.

Despite their best efforts—getting through the army of dead left behind, and finding where the few left living were hidden—saving them became impossible. When it came to saving anyone, Matt focused on the only one who mattered, and he and Charlie narrowly escaped with their lives through the ventilation system then. She had never been good at it... dealing with the reanimated. Matt was far better equipped for hand-to-hand with a hundred eighty pound lunging rotting corpse than she had ever been.

She was much shorter than Matthew, at five feet and two inches. When they first met she had been rather solid, and curvaceous. Her love affair with ice cream and late night movies showed back then. Now, she was delicate, and lithe, and while she tried her best to maintain some tone to her body she was far more sinewy muscle with a scarce layer of fat. It was obvious her isolation and being alone had taken its toll. Her boots gave her a little boost but it still was a mediocre aide when met hand to hand with a ravenous corpse.

"Let's get it over with then..." She told herself softly, as per habit. Talking to yourself after a year or two of nothing but chickens, goats, and green life as company was to be expected. She hurried and drew her hunter's knife from its sheath tucked into her back pocket, moving quickly to jam it into the skull of the first few felled still moving corpses, grimacing at the sound and the ease of which the blade penetrated the softened rotting tissue.

She swallowed deeply and held her breath, leap-frogging across to the piece of the fence meant to break away, jerking it out of place and sliding it aside. She glanced back, exhaling and sucking in another deep breath. It would take her all night to move the corpses... she was going to have to go over them.

She rushed back into the driver's seat, the unpleasant scent of the dead still wafting over her, enough to make her nauseous. She shook it off, and pressed the button to turn the radio on, the static to be expected. For the fuck of it Charlie scanned through the stations to be met with dead noise before grimly inserting a CD—one of Matt's favorites.

The soft tones of piano began to fill the little vehicle, and she slowly began to back the car up, taking a deep breath. She wanted to close her eyes, but she knew better. Pressing her foot on the pedal hard she focused on "Moonlight Sonata", engulfing herself in the macabre notes as she bumped along and over the remnants of the zombie moat, making her way down the road and slowing to a stop not far from the bridge.

The headlights were still off, but she knew would need them to navigate the bridge. She could have swore though that she had seen something up ahead, across the water. Charlotte pressed the center button of the stereo to turn off the CD, and rolled her window down, listening hard into the dark. She could feel the delicate hairs along her slim arms prickling, her throat tightening up. Oh, how she despised that feeling. As panic began to slowly seep into her body—like a poison, leaking from her bones, inching its way painfully to every cell of her delicate frame. She felt her chest swell with an all too familiar, all too chilling emotion. Dread.

She battled the impulse to shove her foot on the pedal and press it all the way down, to race across the bridge—to get as far away as possible. Instead, she loosened her grip on the steering wheel and very slowly rolled the car into the nearest cluster of foliage, the metal structure just up ahead glistening. She fumbled in the dark, trying to find where she'd stashed the binoculars to no avail. Her right hand finally released the wheel and slowly traveled across to press the button and turn the car off, before rummaging through her pack for them.

Once found, Charlie opened the door and slowly, so very quietly stepped out, the gravel crunching beneath her boots. She knelt down, finding a clear space between the leaves, and brought the binoculars up to her eyes. A slender finger worked alongside the hi-tech device's controls to activate the night-vision effect as she began to make out the shapes of bodies moving slowly down along the water's edge.

The wind picked up, carrying the scent of the ocean to her. She could hear it back behind her, crashing against the shore. She felt the breeze stroke her cheek tenderly as her heart pounded in her chest. It tried ever so desperately to lure her into a sense of security and remove that awful strain upon her body. Her muscles were taunt. She felt as if something awful were to happen at any moment...

Yet, still, she found herself far more tuned by the sound of the sea behind her, so much that she didn't hear the footsteps rushing, not until it was too late. She had just begun to turn, and suddenly felt the world ignite into a bright flash of light and... pain. She yelped, and felt it coursing from her temple and through her body like a shockwave, felt herself plummeting to the ground...

"Well... well, well...!"

She attempted to catch herself, blindly, to no avail... the world faded into nothingness as consciousness began to slip away, everything except the voice of her assailant--a bemused whisper that reverberated in her mind.

".. look... at what.. we got.. here."

...and then, there was nothing. Nothing but the sound of the ocean waves, lapping at the shore.