Day 346 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 7.2 - (1,381 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 7.2

Derek was alone, there was no sign of anyone and he had been unconscious for a while, the sun had moved in the sky and his face felt red, like he had burned on one side lying in the sun. His face stung a little but it was not as bad as the throbbing in his head. The dizziness had passed while he had been passed out on the ground and there was more of a connection with his surroundings than there had been before. Everything was clearer and the weird echo and small ringing noise he had was gone as well, he was probably concussed before, probably was still in risk of it going bad but he felt much more awake and attuned than the quasi state he had stumbled around in before.

Ben must have come back while he was out and taken the girl, Angela away, or maybe a third party, or was that fourth party, had come and taken Ben then Angela. Did that means someone was on the way back for him?

He could see to his left some distance and saw nothing, and back the way they had been driving there had been no features or hills, not one building or structure that would indicate another presence.  They had come to the bend in the road and at the last moment Ben had slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel, causing the car to spin out and then flip on it’s horizontal axis. Derek’s memories were flooding back in, the inside world turning end over end and the gravity sickening twists threw any loose objects around the back of the car.

There had been a radio he was sitting on, it had been Angela’s, she had ben threatening Ben’s mother for some reason, it was all too confusing and new for Derek, he understood none of what was going on and that lead him to his decision. He walked past the burning wreck, the heat still noticeable and coming off in waves, though the flames burned much less intense than they had initially. The sheets of heat were warping his view of the road ahead, the shimmering and dancing of the light showed him what places to avoid.

He took a long arc and walked in the ditch on the opposite side of the road, giving the burning vehicle a wide berth as he passed it and moved forwards. The last town they passed was over an hour ago from when he could last remember and that meant, given how fast Ben was driving in general, it was fifty to seventy miles back, so he may as well move forward.

What’s that? He could see a black rectangle in the ditch ahead of him just lying there, assuming it was thrown clear by the crash he knelt down and picked it up.

It was a black leather notebook and it had survived the crash unscathed if it was in fact thrown from the car as he supposed it was. He opened it up and stared at the gibberish inside it, it made absolutely no sense to him at all. Letters, numbers and symbols in a language that may have been English but he was not sure.

He pocketed the black book in his back pocket and then, recalling how he lost the gun, he moved it to the front of his jeans, where he could feel it poking into the meat of his hip, reassuring him that he knew where it was.

A few feet away he saw the radio and it was then that he knew where he was, the same spot where he had been thrown in the crash, a few feet off to the side, he had been lying and the lighter materials had gone just a few feet further, that was why he had not seen them before.

The radio was on and a little green light signified it had power at least. Derek turned the device over and over in his hands looking for any clues or explanation of it’s significance or how it worked. There were no markings, not even a make or model number, it was a plain finish and had nothing to add information to the moment.

The big button on the side was probably to make calls and if you let it go, to receive transmissions. Derek hefted the device and saw that the volume knob on the top had a dot at one end of the dial, and he turned it until it clicked past that point.

The green light blinked off, so he turned it back on again and watched the green light pulse once then stay on.

“What now?” Derek said out loud to no one but himself. He listened for a noise or a sign that he was not alone, but there was none.

He sighed heavily and started walking along the road, into the curve that they had hit so very fast and it began to head upwards at a steady pace, a rise that was leading away from the bend, they had not seen that this was coming because all three occupants of the vehicle were so engrossed in whatever was going on inside the car.

He had been walking for about thirty minutes when the road curved off to the left and the ground rose steeply directly ahead, a small hill blocking his view and joining a ridge that went all the way to the right until it met a wooded area, so there was no way to know what lay beyond the corner.

The sun was getting low on the horizon, he figured that the road ran south and the ridge rang along the west towards the setting sun, and he wanted to see where he was going and how far away the next place of relative safety was.

He had no gun, no weapon of any kind except the book and the radio, which in pinch he could probably bludgeon a zombie with, though how effective that would be was unknown. He had not been able to get close enough to the car to look to see if any of the sound devices were inside, and even if they were they must have been destroyed or broken in the explosion, as it had ripped into the rear of the car, where the flames were concentrated now.

“Right then, up we go.” Derek made his way off the road and began to climb the hill, looking to find a good view forwards and see where he was going and what he was doing this far south, he had no idea how far they had gone or where they were, but he was definitely out of his depth.

As he walked up the hill he looked into the notebook again, while the light was still good and he could understand a few words here and there that were in English, but they were surrounded by gibberish and without context they were meaningless.

The hill grade got too steep so the book was put away and he used his hands and feet together to claw his way up a steep draw in the side of the hill, pulling himself over the top on the exposed roots of a tree on the edge where a landslide had carved them out some tie before. On the top he only had to walk up a few more minutes before the crest of the lowest part of the ridge was beneath him and he could see forwards.

There was a town, and it was lit up and he could see activity there. There was machine and electricity at work, plenty of people milling about and encased in a very high, but solid looking wall.

He could probably have made it there in under an hour as the crow flies, but between him and the entry gate which intersected the road they had been driving down, was more undead shuffling mindlessly than he could count.

“Fuck!” he swore out loud.

The height, the wind and the acoustics must have been just right because the nearest edge of zombies all turned towards the sound he had made and started walking up the hill towards him.