I waited, holding my breath for about 37 million years until the shaking stopped. When it finally stopped I didn’t even notice at first, I was trembling so hard. I ripped the I.V. out of my arm, and let me tell you, it is nothing like what you see on t.v. That shit hurt!
It also turns out that Bugs Bunny was right, you really do see stars if something hurts enough. When I could breathe again I straightened up and tried to stride decisively out of the room. I actually wound up just sort of shuffling. The soldier whose name I either never caught or had forgotten followed me like a lost little puppy. I found that odd considering how predatory he’d looked when I was lying down and helpless. The guy gave me a serious case of the wiggins.
The opened door revealed yet another warehouse and confirmed my belief that we were in the junkyard. The shaking earth hadn’t disarranged much here, giant piles of junk were hard to “disarrange” after all, but I was worried about our fortifications in town, and about Sarge and Annie back on the island.
Contrary to popular belief we got earthquakes in Maine often enough that I was well aware of the consequences. And the last time, rising tides and rogue waves had left the island sealed off for two weeks. We had to go, and NOW if we didn’t want to be separated from the rest of our little makeshift family for quite a while.
Un-named soldier boy continued to follow me as I carefully clambered over the assorted junk on the ground, looking around for Molly and Jason. A thin sheet of ice over everything made that more difficult than I would have thought. Dust covered ice was more slippery then the non-dust covered variety it turned out, and what should have been a one or two minute walk stretched out for almost twenty bone-numbingly cold minutes.
The sky kept getting darker and darker and the wind whipped up again, strong enough to literally tear the iron wind chimes apart. Dust stung our eyes and tiny particles of ice stabbed themselves into our skin. The wind howled and picked up velocity. It was almost enough to cover the sound of the shrieking coming from the only other building in the junkyard.
The sorting building was placed far enough away from the one room “office” building I’d been put in that the noise and smell were somewhat muted. Generally not nearly enough, but it did allow paperwork to be done in relative peace for the former owners. When we reached the sorting building the smell emanating from the concrete walls was fairly noxious even in the depths of winter. (Dear god shouldn’t spring be here already?!)
Jason and Molly were outside the giant bay doors struggling to close them and soldier-boy and I leapt to help. Ok, I leapt, he slipped. But close enough right? Several pain-filled, swearing, sweaty millennia passed before we were finally able to wrestle the doors closed. I started pushing and shoving everyone towards the trucks, unable to yell over the shrieking winds anymore. It took them a few minutes to cooperate, but we eventually all got into the trucks, I managed to maneuver things so that I was in the plow with Molly and Jason and creepy soldier-boy were in the other truck.
I pulled out of the junkyard carefully, well aware of the black ice blanketing the roads. Molly, me, the other two soldiers were setting up some sort of cache at the town library, so I immediately left the road for the slightly less slick unplowed lawns and golf course. It would shave almost a half hour off our trip I was sure.
If it did, I never noticed. I spent so much time fighting wind drag on the plow and trying to clear a path that it might not have mattered at all. But we did make it to the library eventually, battered, and down over a half a tank of gas. That was bad. Really bad. It meant we’d have to gas up before we left for the island. And any delay at this point was calamitous. The last time a storm like this had whipped up, I’d been a kid. But people had died, and our portion of the state had been declared a disaster area.
We reached the lawn of the library and the two other soldiers ran out clutching heavy looking bags, ducking their heads against the sudden onslaught of wind, snow and ice. One jumped into each truck and I proceeded to ignore everyone completely as I attempted to drive as fast as safety and sanity would allow to the nearest gas station. Thankfully it was less than a block away and the pumps were on the lee side of the building.
While the guys chattered to each other on the radios Molly and I concentrated on squirming into more, and warming clothing. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds in the cab of a truck with three people. Trying to get a bra on was so stupidly painful I just gave up on it and had Molly wrap duct tape around my chest over the Clarks t-shirt I was wearing under the two flannel shirts. Couldn’t have those damn things bouncing around getting in my way if I had to fight or something.
After about ten minutes we were ready, and I pulled the plow up to the first pump and jumped out to get the gas turned on. We’d already jimmy-rigged this station earlier when we first came into town so that all we had to do was manually turn the pumps on from the outside.
I was so busy fighting with the frozen over lever that I completely failed to notice the small crowd of undead staggering through the eddies of snow and ice at us. Jason’s shotgun roaring about ten feet away sure got my attention though. I swore and grabbed for my gun.
It was there, thankfully. I didn’t remember putting the homemade holster on at all. Good thing some behaviors become ingrained habit or I would have been zombie chow thirty seconds later. I shoved Molly at the pump, she was a lot more valuable than I was, and I knew it. Risking the closest thing we had to a doctor was just not an option in my mind.
I staggered and slipped over the slick concrete until I was good distance away from the pumps and carefully opened fire on the approaching dead. It was fairly easy to put all of them down with the help of Jason and three other trained men. Far easier than I was used to.
One minute there was a dozen corpses dragging themselves towards me, the next the next there were a dozen corpses lying perfectly still on the ground, each with a hole in the head. It was surreal how fast it was over. I hadn’t truly appreciated the difference between us and trained military men until that moment. But it was staggering. They were so quick, and calm. Oddly that sent a warm trickle of reassurance over my spine. I turned with a smile to thank the men and felt teeth clamp down on my ankle.