Rubble & Ruin (Book 2): The Road North Read online

  We find a gas station at a corner that is intact enough to be useful. The little three-walled structure used to hide the Dumpster has two walls still standing. I pull the tarp from my pack and begin securing it into the grout between the blocks. It’s not the best roof we’ve had, but that it’s a roof at all is still a plus.

  We’ve walked farther than I expected to today, and my feet are screaming. I sit and go to take my boots off, but I stop. I’m not going to lose them even if they do need to be replaced. And if we are attacked in the middle of the night, I won’t have time to put them on and run off. My boots would be gone.

  “We should be there early tomorrow,” Caroline says. “Before lunch time.”

  “Lunch time? What’s lunch?” I smile at her through a groaning stomach. We haven’t eaten a proper meal since leaving Fair Park. Food, at least so far, has been the hardest thing to scramble up.

  “I have a plan for that, too,” Caroline says. “An old lady lived in a duplex around the corner from our place. Mom likes her a lot. She has a garden in the back. We’re going to see if there’s anything there.

  “You think of everything.”

  “I’m trying. I’m captaining this part of the journey.”

  I don’t say anything, but Caroline pauses. “And since I’m the captain, I pick the route. It’s going to be a lot faster if we cut through some of these neighborhoods.”

  Caroline is facing south and sticks an arm out that’s pointed southeasterly. “We need to go there,” she says. “Staying on Preston then cutting over at Royal is going to add hours to our journey. It’s time we travel like the crows…”

  “As the crow flies,” I correct her. She only stares at me.

  “We need to go straight there, and stop this up then over stuff.”

  I don’t like the idea, but it’s only because this is part of Dallas that I really don’t know well. I’m on her ground here, and if she thinks that we should go that way, then I’ll go along.

  I begin to nod my head then say “OK, captain. Your call.”

  We are losing the light. Caroline pulls the knife from the night before out of a pocket on her pack.

  “You look beat,” she says. “I’ll get first shift again.”

  A wailer cries. It can’t be more than a few blocks away. At least three others shriek their responses. They are just as close. Caroline has been spinning the knife. It falls to the ground.

  We are both still and quiet for a moment or two more. She floats the knife from the ground. She spins it half-heartedly.

  Another cry. Also close.

  I wait for the corresponding response then roll over and pretend to sleep.

  +++++

  “This is weird,” Caroline says, looking over her shoulder at me.

  “What is?”

  “Being here again. Seeing this place like this.”

  I’ve been following Caroline all morning. She’s led us down side streets. We’ve cut through yards. We’ve used alleys to cut our walk time down by hours. Or I’m assuming hours. I don’t really know, but we’ve been cutting a pretty straight path toward her old apartment.

  Caroline points to the back of an orange-bricked convenience store. It’s northern wall has collapsed into a pile of broken brick and crushed mortar. It looks to have been a little neighborhood place, probably run by a nice couple. Mom and dad got the mid-day shifts. The kids took the early mornings and late evenings.

  “I used to walk here when I was mad at my mom. I’d get a soda and a bag of chips. I’d eat the chips on the walk back home, and the soda would last me all night. Plus, by the time I got home, I wasn’t so ticked.”

  She diverts off course for the first time since we left this morning.

  “Let’s go see what’s inside.”

  The front of the building was all glass, and it’s now piled in small shards along the ground. I follow Caroline inside, and the place is near empty. Shelves have been knocked over. Fixtures are scattered across the ground. If this was part of Caroline’s hope for finding food, it’s a bust.

  She’s rummaging through what bags of things that are left. There are small sleeves of cookies that have been crushed into dust. She tosses them to me. I catch them and give her a look that says “Really?”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  She reaches deeper underneath an upturned shelf. She pulls her empty hand back out, and it’s covered in some kind of black goo. It’s thick and dark, and it’s very familiar.

  She stands, shocked. I grab the shelving unit and pull it back to standing. Both of us jump back. There on the floor is a dead wailer, a gaping wound burst through its middle. A kill shot, and at close range. I’m slightly jealous of the person who pulled the trigger.

  Caroline begins furiously wiping her hand on her pant leg.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  I follow her out the door.

  “Let’s just get to your place,” I say. I’m ready for this excursion to be over. I understand why we’re doing it. I know that Caroline needs her books. I need her to know better magic. But I’m also ready to be done with Dallas and done with Texas. My future is in Oklahoma and the church there where people are gathering. My future is with that rebuilding society, and I’m ready for my future to begin now.

  The trees here were large. They overhung the road when they were still standing. But now, the just make walking difficult. They haven’t all fallen, but enough of them have that the asphalt that makes up Royal Lane is mostly covered in dried leaves and brittle branches. I try to step where Caroline steps, to match her foot falls. I can’t afford—we can’t afford—for either of us to step wrong and roll an ankle. Hobbling along like that, we’d be sitting ducks.

  Caroline points to a street that’s a couple of blocks away and says: “Up here. On the left. Then another block up the street.”

  If there are any signs of life left in this neighborhood, I’m not seeing them. Everything feels abandoned. The energy that comes from the presence of others is non-existent.

  Caroline slows as she approaches what appears to have been a two-building apartment complex. They sat parallel with each other and perpendicular to the street. The first building that we can see appears to have taken the brunt of the damage from the night it rained boulders. Only the bottom floor remains, and even the roof on those units is gone.

  The second building is in better shape, but only barely. Most of its upper floor is gone. This is the building that Caroline is walking toward. She slows as she gets close. Her hand raises to cover her gaping mouth as she takes everything in.

  She walks to the unit farthest from the street. This part of the building is actually in decent shape considering. The large trees that hung over everything seem to have taken the heaviest damage.

  Caroline walks up to a unit and opens the door; it’s not locked. The smell of stale air and a faint hint of spoiled food come rolling out. We power through and into the apartment. It’s small, but if it were just Caroline and Maggie living here then it didn’t need to be big. We enter into a living room. There’s a small dining room to our right and, past that, a kitchen. A hallway is catty corner from the door. It leads to a bathroom and bedrooms, I’m sure.

  Caroline stops halfway across the living room. She points to the hallway, and I see a tear wet her cheek.

  “I’d sneak in at night after staying out too late, and she’d be standing right there. She’d have her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. She’d never say anything. Just look at me for a couple of moments then turn and go to bed.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Doesn’t feel right being here when she’s not.”

  Caroline’s cheeks are bright with tears now. The light through the window is catching each one as they roll down her face and hang on her chin for a beat. Her breath is ragged, and I can feel her starting to break down. She takes a couple of steps then sits on the arm of the sofa.

  She looks to me: “What are we doing, Ma
c?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are we doing? Why are we walking? We are we leaving Dallas? Why don’t we just stay here and die. That’s so much easier.”

  “Stop it.” I sit in a chair across from her. I rub my hand across the arm and feel the individual threads in the fabric that’s been worn thin with age. “Don’t talk like that. Not here. Not in this place.”

  She’s not looking at me.

  “I’m not going to pretend that I knew your mom that well. I like to think we were friends. I like to think that if we’d met outside of the circumstances that put us together we’d have liked each other. I think we would have. That I would have.”

  Caroline is nodding.

  “But I do know that she loved you. That she believed in you, believed that you could accomplish anything. And I know that she wouldn’t have wanted you to think like that. She wanted you to fight. She wanted you to make a new start. She wouldn’t have had you run that first night, to flee all the way to Fair Park, if she didn’t want you to make a new start. To fight for a life again.”

  I stand and tell Caroline to do the same. “Get your books. Get whatever you need. Then let’s get out of here. This place isn’t part of your story anymore. We are writing new chapters now.”

  Caroline stands and shakes her head and smiles slightly. “All right, writer boy. Give me a few minutes.”

  I sit back in my chair and watch Caroline pick through the books at the far end of a shelf. She grabs three volumes and shoves them in her pack.

  “That’s it?” I ask as she passes and heads for the door. “All this way for three books?”

  “It’s not the number of books, Mac. It’s what’s in them. I got the good stuff.”

  I stand and follow her back outside. She doesn’t bother to close the door behind us.

  She’s silent for a second. When we get back to the main street she says: “Sorry about that in there.”

  I shake off her concerns. “Don’t,” I tell her. “We are allowed moments like that. But, honestly, I’m kind of excited about tomorrow and the day after and the day after. I’m starting to feel possibility again. Like, if we can get you to your sister and me to Oklahoma then things are going to be OK. That we are each going to get a new start, a chance at a redo on what we’d had back at camp.

  I’m still following Caroline, and she’s not taking us back the way we came. “I just hate being weak like that. Like a girl.”

  “It’s not like a girl. None of us know what to do still. You’re allowed those moments, especially when we are in a place that houses so many memories. I’m sure I’ll have moments like that again and we’ll not even be able to figure out what’s caused it. You put up with mine, and I’ll put up with yours.”

  “It’s a deal,” Caroline says.

  We turn a corner, take a couple more steps, then stop in our tracks. Half a block ahead is something hanging from a rope in a tree. Well, half of a something at least.

  We take slow steps, both of us straining to make out what this silhouette actually is. Caroline stops before I do, and I hear a hushed “Oh my God” come from behind me.

  Then the shape comes into focus. It’s twisted and stretched features are distinct. This is a wailer.

  As we get closer we get a better view of the gruesome picture. This is only the top of a wailer. Everything below the waist is gone, and from the way that there’s tattered skin and bone still hanging. It didn’t go easy. The flesh is shredded, like something took claws and teeth to this thing. It wasn’t some animal that did this. It wasn’t a pack of dogs looking anywhere they could for food. And this wasn’t some human looking for his pound of flesh. This thing has been eaten by other wailers.

  But it wasn’t put there by wailers, and how it got in the tree is what Caroline is focused on. She steps in close and begins to investigate what’s left of the wailer. Its chest is stretched. The breastbone looks broken, cracked as what was this human body transformed into something subhuman. The arms are bent at the elbow, drawn up like the wailer was anticipating something. The fingers are long and stretched into claws. The skin has all gone to a black gray and is in the process of rotting.

  She moves her gaze to the face. It’s stretched long, like someone or something has grabbed the creature’s chin and given it a good pull. Gravity has pulled the heavy lower jaw to the wailer’s chest, exposing a mouth full of jagged teeth. The nose is pushed back into the face. It’s an eliminated feature.

  Caroline looks up at the wailer’s eyes. She inches a small step closer and pushes up on her toes. Something is happening. She looks harder and deeper at these morphed human features.

  She doesn’t look away but asks: “Do you have a knife?” And she holds out her hand, expecting me to say yes.

  I do have a knife and place the handle in her hand. She reaches up and saws the blade through the rope holding the wailer in the tree. The line snaps and the wailer falls on top of Caroline, knocking her to the ground. I scramble to help pull the body off of her, but she’s spun out from underneath it before I can get to her. The creature is lying on its back. It’s head has turned and is staring at us. Caroline drops to a knee and leans in close to the face. After a moment I hear her whispering something. She stands and comes next to me. She’s still staring at the face. I’m watching her. Then she says it.

  “I know her.”

  “What?”

  “That’s Naomi. We were friends. We had English and History together. I know her.”

  I suspected wailers were people. There were just enough features left that there was a resemblance to humans. It was in looks only, though. Whatever took over these people killed the soul. They became half-dead or undead walkers focused only on death and destruction. For Caroline, though, this seems to be a new revelation.

  It’s my turn to crouch close. I need to know what killed Naomi. This is a chance to get some intelligence on these things, and maybe the most important thing we can learn is more about how to eliminate them.

  For Naomi, if it was anything that happened in the lower body, we’ll be out of luck. I pull my hand into my sleeve and start running my now-covered fingers along her torso. The skin is uneven and rough, but there’s nothing here that I can see that would have been a fatal blow. I move up and across the shoulders. I force the mouth closed, and that’s when I see it. There’s a thick scab of black goo, what used to be blood, that’s dried into a hard patch. I pick at it, and it comes off in large chunks. I toss them aside and hear them skitter across the concrete. Removing the scab reveals a deep gash across her neck. It’s not the gash that comes from a claw, though. It’s edges are smooth; it’s path is precise.

  “This was done by a human,” I tell Caroline.

  A human who had the huevos to come up behind a wailer and draw a blade slowly across its neck. Then, once that wailer was dead, to string it up in a tree. Naomi was a warning. Hey, wailers, there’s someone here who isn’t afraid of you. In fact, there’s someone here who you should be afraid of.

  I stand and shake flecks of dried goo from the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Caroline has pulled her pack back up on her shoulders. She starts walking then looks behind her.

  “C’mon. One more stop then we start heading toward McKinney again.”

  I hustle to get my pack on my back then follow. She’s walking quickly and with confident steps. Something about seeing the wailer and recognizing it has steeled her up. She has something that she didn’t before. A resolve? A determination? Or maybe she’s just given up. I hope it’s not the latter.

  “How much room do you have in your pack?” she shouts over her shoulder.

  “I can make a little if needed. Why?”

  She turns toward a side yard. She reaches over the top of a small wooden gate and undoes the latch. The gate swings open, and that’s when I see it. It’s a jungle of fruit and vegetables.

  Caroline turns to face me and spreads her arms out wide. “Ta da,” she says.

  I’d lo
ve some protein. A thick steak. A well-cooked pork chop. But right now my mouth is watering for the plump tomatoes that are hanging heavy from the vines behind Caroline. There are peppers beyond that. And lettuce. And strawberries. Tops of carrots sit in bushy bundles on the dirt. There are beets. I don’t like beets, but that’s not a consideration right now. We have them. I want to eat them.

  I push past Caroline and grab a tomato and pull it off the vine. The earthy scent hits my nose, and I’m taken back to Italy. I’m in the mountains, my pack at my side. I am sitting with a small group of friends off the side of a dirt road in the countryside. We are up next to a fence and tomato vines have crept up the posts. We’ve pulled a handful off and have sliced them thin on a wide flat rock. They’ve been salted and drizzled with olive oil that someone in our group had in his pack. Italians.

  Caroline elbows me aside and grabs a tomato for herself. She takes a bite out of it like an apple, and the juice runs down her hand.

  “How’d you know about this place again?” A tomato seed slips down my chin as I bend and grab a handful of carrot greens. Three carrots come up with them.

  “An old lady lived here. I just assumed she didn’t survive. I don’t really know. It doesn’t look like it though, huh?” Caroline finishes what’s left of her first tomato then walks deeper into the overgrown garden. “My mom knew her. They were friends. I used to come over here sometimes when I was younger and help her take care of all of this. I say that; she gave me menial tasks but it made me feel important.”

  Caroline pulls a green pepper off its plant and pulls it in two. She puts one half in her mouth bottom first.

  I pull my pack off my back and start pulling items out and start looking at things with a critical eye. What here do I have to keep? What can I replace with vegetables?

  “Stop,” Caroline tells me. “Just eat for now. We can pack it up later.”

  So, I do. I eat until I’m full and more. I eat everything; even stuff that I don’t like, like radishes, tastes exquisite.