S. Davis - 900 Miles

Glancing to the dashboard, my eyes fell on the digital clock built into the navigation unit. Gritting my teeth, I knew it wouldn’t be long before that phlegm-filled cough crept into Tyler’s young lungs, and I wouldn’t be there to make it better.

Pushing the pedal to the floor mat, listening to the Hummer’s engine roar to life, I couldn’t help but think ahead to our destination. Rodgers had better be right about it. He’d better be sure that what we needed was there.

My son’s life depended on it.

Seems like there really aren’t any “good” sides anymore.

Prior to the Apocalypse, White Sulfur Springs was a fairly small town with a population of just over two thousand residents. Not rich, but far from poor, this quaint little area nestled near the border of West Virginia, and Virginia was what we now directionally called home. With Avalon resting on the edge of town, we’d spent a fair amount of time in those first months scavenging through its limited stores and going door-to-door to raid the houses and trailers that filled the landscape. I got to know the area pretty well, and aside from the Zs, I found myself thinking it would have been a nice enough place to raise Tyler.

However, we soon found that we’d need to expand beyond our immediate area if we were going to truly bulk up on supplies, food, and medicine. The nearby town of Lewisburg wound up being far more fruitful. Not as small and quaint, but still manageable, it was home to the Greenbriar Valley Medical Center, which sadly, had long since been looted by the time our team got there all those months ago. This, too, was a nice enough town, and luckily we did find plenty of supplies in and around its boundaries.

The good news was that during all those initial runs, we’d found a decent supply of medicine. The bad news, it all went up in smoke during the fire.

In more recent months, we’d extended our scavenging runs to the closest major city, Roanoke, Virginia, at just eighty-one miles away. Roanoke was a sizable metropolitan area with a large population that nearly topped one hundred thousand people before the end of the world.

It was Roanoke that first taught us that any sort of major city not completely destroyed in those initial weeks had turned out to be a hotbed for the dead. For some reason, the creatures simply stayed put, lumbering around the streets, buildings, and stores. Maybe trying to go on like they did, with some sort of primal need to consume, or maybe they just lacked in the mental ability to find their way out. Either way, we learned to avoid those high-rise tombs.

That left us with very few options in terms of scavenging in those days. Our best bets were on hitting other small towns, or at least the outlying homes of small towns. The problem was that we’d found ourselves having to go further and further away from White Sulfur Springs, making each run that much more dangerous. With seven months since things stopped being made, manufactured, and processed… well, let’s just say it was slim pickings out there.

Perhaps that’s why we were so open to the idea, the thought of medical supplies still being available in that so-called Safe Zone. These designated safety areas that the government set up for people to seek refuge in during the initial weeks of the outbreak had proven to be filled with supplies in past runs. Seemed that those places were overly outfitted to help fight whatever emergency they could think of… aside from the dead suddenly rising, of course. The ones we’d found in the past would often be untouched by the outside world. Mostly because they would still be filled to the brim with Zs, those undead watchdogs, keeping any precious supplies safe within the walls.

Sure, we’d still have to cut through the Zs that would be roaming around inside, but these days that seemed to come with the territory. With our preparations, we had the right men and enough ammunition to bust through… at least we thought.

I’m not saying we believed it would be easy, but we’d done it before, and it looked like we’d be doing it again.

It was Rodgers that suggested the old middle school where he’d substituted. It had been designated as one of these Safe Zones. Near the town of Rainelle, West Virginia, the school itself was on the outskirts of town. That particular destination appealed to us because it was far enough from the city, which was pretty small, and secluded enough to be accessible without having to put up with much of a fight on our way there. We hadn’t hit it up in the past because it was pretty far away, and frankly, we had plenty of medical supplies leading up to that day.

According to Rodgers, last he’d seen it, the middle school had chains on the doors holding an unknown number of the dead inside. This wasn’t uncommon, as I’d later find out. Evidently before the government officials bugged out they would lock the doors, telling the Safe Zone’s temporary inhabitants that they’d come back with help.

Guess we know how that turned out for them.

Rodgers had given us the address to the old school, and our navigation was set with a course that told us it was forty-two miles away. As we drove through the overgrown landscape, he seemed to know the course, calling out landmarks as we went along.

Trying to avoid the dead on the trek out there was nearly impossible. However, most of them were now slow and simply staggered along. As the dead aged, their bodies continued to deteriorate. The Zs that had been around since the beginning were always easy to spot. Those monsters seemed to be decomposing from the inside out. They’d often be missing most of their skin, with only tight muscle tissue holding them together under whatever ratty clothing would be hanging loosely on their bodies. On the flip side of that coin, if we ever saw faster Zs, showing fewer signs of decomposition, we always knew that some poor bastards had just been overrun.

There was much speculation about why the creatures appeared faster when they were fresh. They weren’t exactly Carl Lewis, but hell, they seemed pretty fucking fast when they charged at you displaying a mouth full of pearly whites.

To some, they might almost seem stronger than they were when they were human. My opinion at this point is that humans have limits set by their minds. The brain won’t let someone run too long without a break. The mind won’t let you lift something that it knows you shouldn’t. These things… these creatures were devoid of thought. Their minds were gone, and with the absence of limits, a body had the natural ability to push itself harder and faster.

Either way, we tried like hell to avoid anything with more than a hobbled limp while outside the walls. If any of them saw you, slow or fast, they would be sure to follow you until their last step. We didn’t need that kind of trouble.

Letting my mind drift as we passed a creature pulling itself along the road on all fours, my attention was drawn to our surroundings and how much they’d changed. I couldn’t help but realize that the world outside of Avalon had been taken back by Mother Earth. Grass was growing up the sides of the houses it had once pristinely sat around. Trees, once trim and beautiful alongside the roads, now grew across the sky, blocking the clouds… and the sunlight. Everything seemed darker.

Perfect atmosphere to scare the shit out of anyone, day or night.

The roads were covered in dirt and moss. It was getting harder and harder to see them each time we left the compound. I found myself thinking about the fact that it wouldn’t be too long before that bitch, Mother Earth, would swallow this area whole, much like shaking an Etch A Sketch, erasing all that man had built. Would there be any part of modern society that survived? Surely, some part of the world still existed like it used to.