The Wild Ones, page 6
“Yeah, I don’t think going alone is a good idea,” I muttered.
“Who said anything about going alone? You and Ryland are going with me.”
“Hell yeah,” Ryland said trudging back into the forest. I stood there for a second until Joe nudged me. As we returned, Ryland asked Joe if we’d be taking weapons.
“Of course not. The last thing Sanders wants is to have cops showing up.”
“Well they’re fakes, aren’t they?” I asked. “I mean the guns are real but the rounds are dummies.”
“You aren’t taking a gun. Dummy rounds or not.”
“Well what about a knife?” Ryland asked.
Joe frowned and shook his head. “Right now we are just going over to pay the campsite a visit, not invade.”
“But…”
“No buts. Goodness’ sakes. Just jump in the truck and let’s get going.”
I cast a final glance at Alexa and Eli as we hopped in a Ford AWD truck and I shut the door. Tobias was over by the compound grinning. I didn’t even want to know what was going through his head. Joe fired up the engine, and it rumbled to life. He gave a nod to Sean before pulling out. There were two options for getting over to the girls camp. One was by way of the water, which would have been a hell of a lot quicker, and the other was by road. Joe didn’t think it was a good idea to go by boat, so it would take a little longer to get over there.
On the journey over, Joe was quiet but Ryland seemed a little high-strung. It was odd behavior from someone who had barely said a word since he’d arrived. Now we couldn’t get him to shut up.
“So what’s the deal with you?” I asked.
“What?”
“One minute you’re all somber and down and the next it’s like you’re bouncing off the walls.”
He grinned and leaned over and his hand fished into his pocket to reveal a medical bottle. It was hard to see what was printed on the label but I didn’t need to see it, he whispered it in my ear. “Adderall. You want one?”
Now it made sense. I’d met a number of teens that took it for ADHD. While the pills could be effective, they came with a crazy number of side effects. Kids I knew that were on them were fairly easy to spot as they could be passive one minute and hyper the next. They called it the “get-ahead” drug because it made people laser-focused, hyper alert and able to cope with a lot more.
I shook my head. “Nah, it’s okay.”
“So Scott, you wanna take me through what you saw again.”
“Alright. I didn’t see anything initially. I could hear screaming. I just thought it was a bunch of wild girls playing games but then it got worse and after I grabbed the FLIR, I saw this one counselor ripping into a girl’s throat. Literally, skin was being pulled away, and she was hysterical. I saw another girl pounce on another and bite down on the back of her head.”
He kept his eyes on the road but every now and again would look at me. It was dark out there. No other vehicles, no streetlights, just endless narrow roads, which cut through a wall of fir, pine, hemlock and spruce.
Ryland piped up. “Hey Joe, if there isn’t any problem at the girls camp, do you think they would allow us to stay the night? I always fancied a sleepover with a bunch of females.” He started chuckling. Joe remained stoic. He fished around in his pocket for his phone and synced it with his truck. He hit a button on the wheel and a dialing sound came over a small speaker. Sean answered.
“Go ahead.”
“Did you get through to Tom?”
“No answer.”
“Do you think we should head over there tonight?”
“No, we’ll give it until the morning. You know how he is, he probably got caught up showing the group around.”
“For seven hours?”
“Look, Joe, just let me deal with that. Anyway, are you there yet?”
“Close.”
“You got me on speakerphone?”
“Yeah.”
“Evans. Can you hear me?”
I swallowed and replied. “Yeah.”
“If you’re screwing around, which I think you are, this will be the last time you end up at this camp. After what your brother did today, Tom has had enough.”
I scoffed. “You want to send me home, be my guest. I never wanted to be here in the first place. You’d be doing me a favor.”
We heard Sean grumble on the other end and toss out a few curse words.
“Call me on your way back.”
“Will do,” Joe muttered before he clicked off.
As we came down the last stretch of the journey, on a road called Antlers, Joe sighed. “Honest to God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because when Tom’s not around Sean’s in charge.”
The truck’s headlights swept over the trees as we passed a weathered sign for Raquette Lake Camps. In between the trees we could see numerous wooden cabins dotted throughout. Joe veered the truck off to the right, and we passed by several parked vehicles. By any measure everything appeared normal. There were no screams. Lights were on in some cabins as we parked and Joe hopped out. “Now listen up. Stay here, I’ll be back in a minute.” He smoothed out his shirt and readjusted his utility belt, which contained nothing more than a med kit, flashlight and zip ties. The truck ticked over as we watched him stroll to a large office with a green metal roof. He cast a glance around before pulling the door wide and entering.
“You think we should follow him?”
“He said to stay here,” I muttered. My eyes were scanning the area. My pulse sped up.
Ryland started whistling to himself and glanced out the passenger side window. “You know they’ve got much more here than us. Look at the size of those tennis courts. And did you see the webbing they had in the water and the inflatables? I swear, my father sent me to the wrong place.”
“How did you end up in the USA?” I asked not taking my eyes off the trails and forest.
“My father is in the military, he gets posted all over the place. Four years ago we were in Germany, the year before that in France. I’m not sure how long we’re going to be here but I like it. Certainly bigger than the UK.”
“So why did he send you here?”
He jerked his head towards me. “Oh, you know, the same old. He thinks it will build character. He wants me to join the military once I leave school. Follow in his footsteps and serve the country and all that macho crap. It’s all bullshit.”
“You don’t want to do that?”
“Hell no, do you?”
I shook my head.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I declined. Smoking wasn’t my thing. I’d tried it once back when I was thirteen and nearly coughed up a lung. I didn’t understand why anyone wanted to fill up their lungs with tar. He placed it between his lips and struck a match, then tossed it out the window. He blew out a plume of smoke. Still no activity outside and Joe hadn’t returned.
“So is it true you started that fire in the camp last year?”
“That’s what people say.”
“But I’m asking you.”
He laughed. “Don’t believe everything people tell you, Scotty. Especially not Tobias. The guy is an asshole.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well isn’t it obvious?”
“No, I mean, why Tobias?”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Look, you want honesty? I got sent here two years ago not by my father but by the court. They put me into one of their diversion programs and I guess Tom Sanders’s place is down as…” he made quote signs with his fingers, “some kind of ‘rehabilitation program. Honestly that’s just a crock of shit. It’s a means for him to earn more money by having the system pay for some kids to go to his camp because who in their right mind would come here willingly?”
I thought about my brother Nick but didn’t say anything.
“What did you do to land yourself in court?”
He flashed a grin. “Start a fire.”
Just as he said that, Joe came staggering backwards out the door gripping his neck with both hands.
“What the hell?” Ryland said, leaning forward in his seat. Our eyes fell upon Joe. He staggered again and then dropped to his knees. Instantly without a thought to his own life, Ryland pushed out of the truck and rushed forward.
“Ryland.” He ignored me as he sprinted. I slid over and out the door but hadn’t got within a few feet when a mound of darkness staggered out of the forest towards me. I jerked my head just in time to see a girl whose face had been chewed off. An eye was dangling out of its socket and a huge chunk had been taken out of her neck. I dodged her and shouted to Ryland who was now crouched over Joe trying to help him up.
On the way over I caught in my peripheral vision, three, maybe four more girls in different states of decay. Their clothes were drenched in blood. All of them were making a beeline for where Joe was. I hurried up the steps. One look at the state he was in and it was clear he wasn’t going to make it another couple of minutes. His neck was torn up badly, and he was losing blood fast. His skin was pale, and he was choking as he tried to say something but only blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
“Ryland, we need to go.”
“But what about…?”
The words barely left his mouth when I saw another crowd of females shuffling our way. “Shit,” I said. I grabbed a hold of the back of Ryland’s collar and yanked him away from Joe. There was no point in all of us dying. Now here’s what you need to know. It was a completely mixed bag. There were slow suckers who dragged ass and several that were a little faster. Coming up the rear were a couple that were moving like apes on all fours. It was the freakiest thing I’d ever seen.
I kicked the closest one in the chest as it tried to reach for me and it tumbled over the metal railing and down into the one behind it. We hopped over the railing and shifted sideways down the slope trying to get back to the truck. The door on the passenger side was still open, but these things were coming out of the forest in droves and homing in on us real fast.
Reaching the truck was not going to happen, they’d cut us off. One of the faster ones came bounding over and launched itself in the air. It landed hard, knocking me to the ground. Its head came within inches of mine, blood dripping down onto the side of my face. A swift kick to the head by Ryland and I was back up again and hurrying towards the office area that Joe had stumbled out. We hurried in pulling the glass door shut. My adrenaline levels spiked as every cell in my body screamed for me to run instead of holding the door.
“Ryland, grab something to wedge between the handles.”
“Uh, a little busy.”
I cast a glance over my shoulder to find him wrestling with an oversized woman. She must have been at least three hundred pounds. A grotesque sight in life, she looked even worse now. Purple veins popping out from behind a thin layer of grayish skin, it brought a whole new meaning to varicose. One after the other, bodies of the dead slammed up against the door, hands and faces spewing blood, and thick saliva. Their arms beat out a rhythm threatening to smash the glass.
“Ryland!” I yelled again. He was bouncing this woman’s skull off the floor. The sound of cracking echoed every time it struck. I felt my stomach lurch into my throat. Minutes felt like seconds as I wedged my shoulder against the second door and used every ounce of strength to prevent them from getting in. Hands slapped against glass, followed by it cracking. I twisted to see where he was but I couldn’t spot him. Great, he was probably using me as bait while he escaped out a back window. Fuck! Fear shot through me, the thought of being torn to pieces the way Joe had. Somehow the hands of the dead managed to pull the door away.
I gritted my teeth. This was not how I was going to die. Not here. Not now. I was too damn young. Suddenly I heard boots pounding and from off to my right Ryland appeared with a red fire axe. “Here’s Johnny!” he yelled before plowing the blade into the hands and faces of those trying to squeeze in the gap. Blood splattered, and the weight against the door eased enough that I was able to close it. As soon as it was aligned, Ryland tied a thick leather belt around the handles and I paused for a second, hesitant to step away.
“It’s okay, it’ll hold,” he said pulling at my arm.
We both stepped back and soaked in the sight of young girls and adult counselors slamming up against the window. It was a grisly sight. Neither one of us said anything as we stepped back through the next double doors and tied them off, this time using a belt from one of the dead. As I turned to look at the building we were in, it was a complete mess. Paperwork scattered all over the ground, door handles busted, a streak of blood on the ground that disappeared off down the hallway. My senses were on high alert as I watched the glass on the door crack.
“The frame might hold but that glass isn’t.”
It cracked again, a fissure spread like web lightning.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Is there another one of those?” I asked referring to the axe he was holding.
“Afraid not.”
We worked our way down the hall casting a glance into the main office. What a state. There were no bodies on the ground, only blood smears all over the walls. Staying as quiet as we could but moving fast, we made our way to the back of the building through a network of corridors.
I shook my head in despair. “They are never going to believe us.”
“Yes they are,” Ryland said pulling out a phone and showing me a recording he’d made of Joe’s final moments and then a few shots of me pressed up against the door holding back the surge of half-decayed dead women.
“This can’t be happening,” I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief. It went against all the laws of our world. These people shouldn’t have been alive, let alone coming after us. It was the stuff of horror movies, post-apocalyptic nightmares, not reality.
“Well it is happening and right now if we don’t find a way out, we are screwed.”
Girls Gone Wild
We barricaded ourselves into a room at the rear of the building. The reality of the situation was beginning to dawn on us. I peered out from behind cheap plastic blinds at the carnage. Front, back, it didn’t matter, the infected were everywhere, and it was only getting worse. Young, old, some shuffling around, others feeding on the remains of… well it was hard to tell as it was just a mess of torn-up flesh. They moaned, gnashed their teeth and moved about slowly in small crowds. It was pure hell.
Ryland was stacking chairs behind the door. We’d already slid a steel cabinet in place but I had a strong feeling that if those freaks managed to break into the office building and made their way down to us, it wouldn’t hold long.
“We just need to make it to the truck,” he said wiping a hand across his sweaty brow and moving over to the window to take a look out.
“Where’s your phone? We’ll call Sean.”
He snorted. “Best of luck getting a reception.”
Ryland tossed it over to me and I powered it on. Sure, enough there were no bars. “Damnit!” I climbed up onto a table and waved it around hoping that we’d get lucky but any hope was soon crushed when the bar for power moved into red. Even if we did manage to get a bar, the phone would power off before we made a call. I shut it down and handed it back.
“Well, we can’t stay in here.”
“No, I know but we need to play this smart. There are hundreds of them out there. We won’t make it to that truck.”
I paced back and forth thinking over every possible means of escape but they all came up short. One glance outside and it was clear that dodging them wasn’t going to work. There were already too many, and even more were beginning to emerge from the woods.
“None of this seems real.”
“And it shouldn’t. How often do you wake up to find people chewing each other apart?”
I took a seat on a table, contemplating it all. I ran a hand around the back of my neck trying to work out the tension.
“What the hell do you think caused this?”
“Who knows? My bet is it’s some kind of biochemical warfare. Think about it. Terrorists have been looking for ways to get back at the USA but driving trucks into people, planting explosives and committing mass shootings, that can only kill so many. It’s a slow process, but if they were to release some kind of modified H1N1 virus into the population, that could do it. Hell, for all we know this could be some kind of screw-up by our own government.”
“Our government? Now you’re sounding paranoid. I think you should stick with terrorists,” I said peering outside and watching a good-looking girl whose breasts were hanging out, trip over and face plant on a rock.
“Oh you don’t think our government is capable of something like this?”
“I’m not saying they couldn’t create something like this. Heck, they’ve been messing with genetics for decades but releasing it into the population? That’s going a little too far, don’t you think?”
Ryland pulled away from his side of the window and leaned against a table. “Did you know that the World Health Organization admitted back in 2009 to releasing a pandemic virus into the population via ‘mock-up’ vaccines?”
“Bullshit.”
“Check it out online. Heck, they even released a document that you can find on their website that states that it’s a common procedure they go through to get ahead of a real pandemic, so they can fast track a vaccine when it’s really needed.”
I shook my head. “I imagine that would have got them in hot water. Why would they admit to it?”
“Because they can get away with whatever the hell they like. It’s a known fact that AIDS and Ebola were created by the government. Then of course there is that time when the U.S. Army released Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York City subway back in 1966.”
I chuckled. “Come on, Ryland, why would they do that?”
“It was part of a germ warfare testing program. You think I’m making this shit up? Go research it. Back in the ’50s a U.S. Navy ship in San Francisco sprayed a cloud of microbes into the air to see how residents would be affected by a biological weapon attack.”
