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Yes, I made another one. This will be the third, though the first two sucked and were not finished. I plan to actually complete this one. I'm only putting up the first chapter unless people actually ask for more. Otherwise I don't see a point in bumping it. So without further blathering:
Chapter 1 – Spread
Twenty-two-year-old Isaac Marlow stared down the iron sights at the disturbed-looking individual stumbling down the quiet suburban road. He could practically feel the air, thick with mist and so wet one could almost drown in it. And the last rays of the red sun put a rusty, sickening glow over everything. Isaac watched the man along the road and concluded that they had finally spread. He silently worked the lever under the rifle back and forth. A light breeze blew through the trees and the man kept stumbling forward. His skin was pale and worn, wrinkled in places and falling off in others. His clothes were dirty and shirt stained with blood. And he walked forward barefoot. Isaac reasoned that he must have walked for miles and miles as his feet were worn to the bone.
Isaac lifted the insulating earmuffs up over his ears and clicked back the trigger. There was no give, just a crisp, clean snap like breaking a glass rod. The muzzle sent the .30 caliber jacketed bolt through the air, vaporizing the mist in the way until the stumbling man’s cranium was reduced to a pulpy mess and fragments of bone. Isaac sighed and stood up, looking over the neighborhood from his vantage point atop the apartment complex’s roof. The apartments faced a single, quiet road lined with various small businesses and homes, tucked away in the small Missouri town. Isaac pulled the earmuffs from his ears and pulled the radio transmitter from his belt. “Hey, Brett, you find anything?”
“An abandoned place had a nice stash of canned food. I put all I could carry in the backpack.”
“Run into any problems?”
“Yeah, six or seven of them were wandering around too close to our shelter.”
Isaac thought long and hard before saying any more, knowing what it would mean. “One of them made it to our road. I don’t think it’s safe any more. There’s more and more of them now. It’s spreading so damn fast…”
There was a delay on the line. Isaac cupped his hand around the Marlin rifle’s ejection port and worked the lever, letting the still warm brass case into his hand. He stuck it in his pocket.
“We’ll have to move the people,” Brett said.
“To where? The nearest safe zone is the high school. That’s ten miles away and no one has gas anymore.”
“Know of any place better than that?”
Isaac didn’t answer. He hung the rifle on its sling over his shoulder and clambered down the pipe welded to the side of the apartment. On the ground he walked around the perimeter, checking for any more of them, then unlocked the front door and walked inside. At a comfortable seventy degrees inside, Isaac was glad it was spring. But as soon as he relocked the door behind him a middle-aged woman came out from one of the rooms to the side of the hallway.
“Isaac, what was that?”
“It was… one of them…”
“They’re here?” she said, eyes wide, shock already taking over her features.
“Just one! It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Don’t lie like that! I can tell, we’re going to have to leave, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know anything yet. Stay calm. But… ask the heads of the families to meet in the lobby in twenty minutes.”
The woman kept staring through him, not wanting to believe it. Then she abruptly turned around and locked herself back in the room. Isaac walked down the hall and across the small lobby-like room where a few mailboxes lined up flush with the wall. He passed a few more rooms on both sides down the hall, then turned in the knob to room seventeen. He propped the Marlin up against the wall and tossed the Flecktarn jacket onto a bed and looked around the room a little. It was extremely cluttered with clothes, books, CDs, and ammunition boxes all over the place. Isaac sat on the edge of the bed and rested his face in his hands. The room was eerily still and quiet so he turned on the HAM radio for any information on the incident.
“—in north Iowa. We’re just seeing signs of them. I had to shoot one in my front yard with the wife’s .22 the other day.”
Isaac took the microphone and spoke into it. “This is Marlow—you said they’re in Iowa?”
“Yeah, Marlow is it? just started showing up. A buddy in Arizona told me government’s saying the spread pattern is mainly going South and East from where it started in Oklahoma. Where are you? See any signs of it?”
“I’m in Missouri. There’s plenty of it here.”
“Damn. How’re ya holding up?”
“My roommate and I have been protecting a small group of refugees in an apartment complex in a small town. I thought it would be a good location to lay low and weather this thing until the feds fix it, if they ever do. But there’s been more and more of them. One showed up on our street. I’ve got the feeling it’s time to move.”
“How many people you got?” the man said.
“Eight families—between two and five people each. It’s quite a group. Only about a third are combat capable, though.”
“That’s a b***h. Any place to go?”
“I’ve heard that there’s a high school a group of people fortified into a permanent shelter and that they have room. But that’s about ten miles away and no one has fuel. We’d have to huff it.”
Isaac picked at a bit of paint peeling along the window. The doorknob turned and a man of about Isaac’s age walked in, leaning his Ithaca shotgun in the corner beside the Marlin. Isaac looked up and spoke into the speaker, “I have to go.”
“All right. Good luck.”
“There’s people waiting in the lobby,” Brett said.
“Yeah, I know. I asked Miss Arlene to gather them up. We have to discuss moving with them…”
Brett was an inch or so taller than Isaac and with blonde hair contrasting Isaac’s brown. It was wavy and unkempt, running just over his eyes, not having been cut since before the incident.
“You wanna tell them?” Isaac said.
“Not really.”
“You’re a better leader than I am.”
Brett shrugged. The two of them left the apartment and joined the circle of eight men and women in the center of the lobby.
Miss Arlene looked the most concerned of all of them, but each person looked on with dismay as Isaac and Brett approached. Isaac stood in the middle of the circle, a bit intimidated with everyone staring at him.
“We have to leave,” he said at last and waited for reactions. None were favorable. “This place isn’t secure enough for so many people. There’s supposed to be a school in Hatcher that survivors converted into a settlement. It’s well-guarded, the people take care of each other, and they have room.”
“How far is it?” one of the men said.
“About ten miles. It wouldn’t be an easy journey. We estimate at least six hundred infected within a twenty-mile radius. I’m not going to sugar-coat that. It will be your choice whether to stay here or come. But it is not safe here anymore and will just get worse.”
Isaac waited for a minute as people soaked it in. The second hands on the clock on the wall were audible. Tick, tick, tick, tick. “If you wish to join the trip to the school, raise your hand.”
Two hands went up fairly quickly, followed by another. Then two more. A few seconds passed and all but three hands were up. Isaac nodded. “I understand. But please think about it. Brett and I will make the plans. Everyone get packed. We’ll leave just as the sun comes up over the horizon tomorrow morning.”
Isaac and Brett turned back to their room, saying nothing more. The people in the lobby dawdled for a few minutes, then dispersed.
“How many do you think will survive the trip?” Brett said in the room.
“All of them,” Isaac said matter-of-factly. He set the perimeter alarm, put his Smith revolver under his pillow, and slept, waiting for the dawn.
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