Journey Read online

  This book is for my Mom,

  who took me to the library,

  fed my curiosity,

  and always found a few dollars for the book fair.

  The first time I ever put pencil to paper it was with the hope of impressing you.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Will Crandall and his team watched the house for thirty minutes. Silent and motionless, they monitored it for any signs of life. Will thought it sure looked empty. A shotgun house, a shack almost, it had peeling paint and a scarred tin roof. The front door hung askew; broken windows bordered it on both sides. He had crept around back long enough to determine that there was no approach from that side- the back door opened near a thick stand of scrub trees that were fast swallowing the house’s rear wall. Weeds and brush overgrew the yard on the other three sides, but to Will that meant little. No yard work had gone on anywhere the previous summer, not since the dead had raised up and commenced to feasting on the living.

  He used hand signals to gather his team members behind a dilapidated shed on the house’s east side.

  “What do you think?” Will asked the group, his voice a near-whisper.

  “No breathers in there, boss,” a young man answered. He was brawny and handsome, with a near-permanent grin.

  “Does everybody agree with Danny?”

  The team nodded in unison.

  “Okay- just a normal clear and scavenge. Danny, you’re to the left of the porch, Justin to the right. You three,” he pointed a thick, meaty finger at an older man and two women, “in a semi-circle right about there.” He pointed to a spot in the yard about twenty-five feet from the porch. “I’ll open the door. If any creepers jump out, you guys are the bait. Make sure you get their attention. We’ll come up from behind and put them down. If there’s more than a handful then you jump in and help.”

  “Easier than a drunk cowgirl at a Keith Urban concert,” Danny said, with a wink at Tara. She gazed at him, impassive; Will rolled his eyes, then motioned to the group to get going.

  Will possessed a rugged build and shoulders like a pair of barn doors. A shock of black hair sprawled atop a face that had spent most of its forty-eight years outdoors. Tanned a deep bronze even in the middle of winter, and furrowed with wrinkles, it looked tough as sandpaper. He had piercing green eyes that missed nothing. With his team in place, he crept up the creaky-looking front steps and took up position against the wall of the house, next to the door. Once Danny and Justin signaled they were ready, he sprang into action. Three hard blows were all it took to kick the door open. It fell to the floor with a bang that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet countryside. Will pivoted and took two big steps away from the opening.

  For a few moments, nothing happened. Then, from the darkness inside the house, an apparition from the bowels of hell appeared.

  The creeper had a grayish hue, and its head swayed at a grotesque angle. Filthy, tattered clothing hung from its frame, and large, runny sores covered its arms, cheeks, and forehead. Its eyes were milky white with pin-pricks for pupils. Red veins ran outward from the tiny pupil, giving them a red, rheumy, cast. It had long black fingernails at the tips of swollen and misshapen hands, and it moved forward with an eerie, crooked shuffle. A black tongue lolled out over swollen and flayed lips.

  It was an obscenity.

  When the monster’s eyes landed on the people out in the yard it drooled yellow saliva down its chin. It twitched with hunger and made a terrible keening sound as it shuffled faster, its outstretched arms reaching for the food in front of it.

  A second creeper emerged from the house on the heels of the first. Pressing himself against the wall, Will saw that the second one had been a woman in life. It wore a faded pink dress with yellow flowers. A double strand of fake pearls drooped around its neck; bits of dried gore-flecked its matted hair. A bite on the second creeper’s bicep had ripped away flesh and muscle, exposing its bone. The wound had festered and a boiling mass of maggots writhed inside it. A horrible smell emanated from both of them. Like the male, the lady creeper moaned and drooled when she saw the people in the yard.

  Stairs were beyond the creeper’s ability. When they reached the edge of the porch, first one, and then the other, tumbled down the four steps and landed in a pile on the ground. That was Will’s cue to move.

  He bounded to the steps; his peripheral vision picked up Danny and Justin racing in from the ends of the porch. Each team member carried a gun, but they had long since learned the importance of using firearms only as a last resort. The dead had a visceral response to sound, and the flat crack of gunfire would bring every creeper within hearing distance straight to the shooter.

  Will took the steps two at a time, survival knife at the ready. The male creeper had just struggled to its knees as he ran up next to it. He drove the nine-inch blade through the creeper’s eye and into the gray matter behind it. A fast and sure turn of his wrist, clockwise, then counter-clockwise, released a fetid wash of blood mixed with a viscous black fluid. He pushed the creature forward with his foot and pulled his blade free. The creeper tumbled to the ground and was still.

  The female had yet to regain its feet; it was on its stomach with its arms pinned underneath, snarling and snapping its teeth at Will. It bit through its lips and broke off pieces of its teeth in its effort to feed. Danny approached it from the rear holding a fireman’s ax at the ready. When he was close enough he swung from over his shoulder. The blow cleaved the female in half from the top of its head to its mouth.

  The team reformed in a group a couple yards away from the corpses. They stood in silence, waiting to see if any more creepers emerged from the house. Except for the noise the door made when it fell, they had dispatched the two creatures with little commotion. But one thing they’d learned during their time on the road was that the creeper’s hearing was acute, and they fixated on the moaning noise their kind made when they saw prey. If the bang of the door or moaning sounds attracted nearby creepers, they would appear on the scene any minute.

  “Listen,” Will said. “If we come across more than we can handle, I want you to double-time it back to the truck. I lead and Danny’s at the rear.” He spoke to a tall and patrician-looking man of about fifty with an aquiline nose and broad forehead. “David, you’re in charge of getting the truck started while we hold them off.”

  “Will do,” David replied.

  “When have we ever come across more creepers than we can handle?” Danny asked, pretending to sound indignant.

  “When they ran us off the ranch,” Will answered, giving him a level look.

  Danny pressed his lips together and ducked his head.

  After five m
inutes elapsed, Will felt it safe to proceed. “Here we go,” he told the others. “David, you guard the front entrance; Tara, the back. The four of us will enter, with me on point and Danny in the rear. Once we’ve cleared all the rooms, look for things we can scavenge. Grab anything useful but concentrate on weapons, food, and medicine.”

  “And booze!” David added, eliciting laughter from the others.

  The front door opened onto a small, shabby living room. Will burst in with his rifle up but his finger on the trigger guard. He stepped aside and the rest of the team rushed past. A quick scan of the room determined there were no creepers inside.

  “Clear!” Will called, telling his team the room was safe.

  He stood in the previous occupant’s living room. Paper peeled from the walls and a thick layer of dust covered everything. A pair of lumpy-looking easy chairs lined one wall, facing an ancient console TV with a pair of rabbit ears on top, their tips covered in foil. A threadbare couch with a dip in the cushions sat against a wall. A succession of pictures in cheap 8x10 frames hung above the couch, displaying an assortment of school-age children.Children?Will wondered.Grandchildren?

  The team checked each room for creepers. One by one they yelled “Clear!” until they declared the house creeper-free and safe.

  Will had picked the house because of its seclusion; very often the houses off the beaten path had yet to be ransacked. That was the case here.

  Though the inside was as sparse and unkempt as the outside, and whoever had lived there was poor, the team found items they could use. A larder in the kitchen yielded twenty-two jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, they found several packages of gauze, a full bottle of hydrogen peroxide, prescription bottles of prednisone and hydrocodone, and an EpiPen. In a bedroom closet, there was an ancient-looking, depression-era .22 rifle. The gun was dirty, with a broken stock and chinked barrel. Will deemed it worthless, even for target practice. But in a milk crate in the back of the closet, there were six boxes of bullets for the rifle. In a world where ammunition was more valuable than almost anything else, that was like finding gold.

  After the house was checked and rechecked, Will called the team together.

  “All right, you bastards, load up. Good work, everybody. Let’s get back to camp and get this food to Becky and the girls. Be alert. What do we say, Danny?”

  “If you relax, you’re dead,” Danny replied.

  With that in mind, they climbed aboard the truck and headed to join the main group.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  It was a twenty-mile drive back to camp. They were staying overnight just off Missouri Highway AC, alongside the Osage Fork River, five miles west of Fort Leonard Wood. The campsite was a dusty patch of bare earth surrounded by trees and bushes. A few grimy and weather-beaten picnic tables formed a rough semi-circle around a trio of concrete fire pits with bolted-on iron grills across the top. On the opposite side of the trees and bushes, towards the river, was a grassy clearing dotted with an array of tents, no two the same size, or color. Beyond the clearing was the muddy bank of the river. Here the Osage Fork was wide and slow, its brooding, muddy-bronze water shimmering under the Missouri sun.

  When the truck carrying the scout group pulled into the camping area, several people came to greet it. There were fifteen people in the group now and everyone who wasn’t tending to other duties hurried over to find out how the scavenging had fared.

  Will grinned at his wife, Becky, as she approached.

  “How’d it go, big fella?” She asked.

  “Couldn’t have been better,” he answered, wrapping his powerful arms around his wife. “No losses, no injuries, and we only came across two creepers.”

  “Outstanding,” she said, looking up at him with a smile. “What’d you bring me?”

  Will ran his hands through her thick hair and admired her features. He’d loved her hair from the first moment he cast his eyes on her. Copper-colored, with flakes of gold, it highlighted her face and cascaded over her shoulders. She had blue-gray eyes that shone with merriment and full, sensuous lips. Her flawless and porcelain complexion never tanned, not back on the farm or out on the road. It burned and peeled, burned and peeled.

  “What’d I bring you? Let’s see, there’s a box of nails, a couple dozen Official NFL Footballs, a big pile of porn—” She cut him off with a sharp jab to his ribcage. Twenty years of working cattle left her toned and taut with muscle- Will gasped from the blow and flinched sideways.

  “What did you bring me, asshole?” She flashed a wicked smile and leaned against him. Will grinned back and allowed her to push his bigger frame against the bed of the truck.

  He reached into the bed and paused, building up anticipation. “How does... fresh fruits and vegetables sound?” He brought out two of the jars with a flourish.

  Becky gasped and grabbed a jar from his hands. “Oh my God!” Becky exclaimed, examining the jar of home-canned green beans. In her life on the ranch before the outbreak, her favorite way to pass away the months from March until October was tending to her three-quarter of an acre vegetable garden. She ran her plot like a tyrant. It was strictly off-limits to the men on the ranch unless it was in need of something she couldn’t do by herself. Plowing the ground in early March and tilling it after, for example, or lining the garden’s rows, or repairing the old John Deere garden tractor during one of its frequent breakdowns. Then she harangued Will, Danny, or Coy without mercy until she got the help she needed.

  She planted onions and potatoes around St. Patrick’s Day, then added cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage soon after. Warmer weather meant planting cukes, butter beans, snap peas, and green beans; later, she added okra, sweet corn, eggplants, zucchinis, and a variety of tomatoes and peppers. June meant harvesting her cold weather crops and replacing them with watermelon, cantaloupe, and pumpkins. She took weeds in her garden as a personal affront, and woe be unto any aphid, earworm, or blister beetle that had the temerity to wander into her rows.

  Harvesting her crops was only half the job; then came the work of preserving them for eating throughout the year. She learned at her mother’s knee the secrets of canning, pressure cooking, and pickling vegetables- what the old folks called ‘putting them up’.

  ”Don’t make plans for this afternoon,” her Mom would tell her at breakfast, “We’re putting up the green beans.”

  She learned to can beans, peas, and tomatoes, boiling the vegetable-laden jars until the lids popped, killing any bacteria lurking inside. Her mother passed on her secret methods for pickling cucumbers, corn, cabbage, and hot peppers. Each had its own ingredients and method. They would process bushels of tomatoes in the pressure cooker, turning out tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, and even ketchup.

  As an adult Becky applied her mother’s processing techniques along with others she learned on her own and put up hundreds of jars of vegetables every summer and fall. Countless times after the dead overran the ranch and forced the Crandalls to flee, as the group slogged south toward Fort Leonard Wood, eating beef jerky, stale potato chips, cold canned soup, or nothing at all, Becky’s mind wandered to the larder in the ranch house basement. Jar after jar of home-grown vegetables filled the shelves along three of its walls. Each jar bore a label written in Becky’s careful script that told its contents and fill-date. Not long after the outbreak she did some calculations and figured the larder held enough jars to feed the four of them for two years. Soon after, the jars went up in flames along with the rest of the house.

  She examined the jar of green beans Will had handed her, then squinted at him. He was grinning from ear to ear grinning from ear to ear. “What else?”

  “An assortment of delicacies. There’s beets, pickled okra, three kinds of pickles, corn relish. And for dessert- strawberries and plums.”

  For several weeks they had been subsisting on beef jerky and stale snack food, with the occasional can of ravioli or soup to break up the monotony. The
prospect of real food made her mouth water.

  “It’s an omen isn’t it, Will?” She wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, she gazed at him with studious sincerity.

  “An omen of what, babe?” He pulled her to his side and draped an arm over her shoulders.

  “A good-luck omen. We’ve had damned little good luck this year. But we’re going to eat this good food, wake up in the morning and walk to that Army base. And when we get there we will find safety, and warm beds, and hot water, and someone else to make the decisions. You can go back to being Will the Cattle Baron.”

  “With no cattle,” he said in a wry tone.

  “With no cattle,” she agreed.

  “I don’t know,” He said, nuzzling her neck. “Maybe you’re right.” He sighed and looked off into the distance, wishing he could view the base from where he stood. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Will and his family, with Danny alongside, left their ranch in North Kansas on the twelfth of February, forced out when an enormous herd of creepers overran their home.

  As society unraveled after the outbreak began, Will saw a news segment about a camp the Army set up. It was at Fort Leonard Wood, a base in Missouri, 367 miles to the south and east from their home outside Marysville. The Army said the base was a haven for survivors.

  A reporter had been interviewing some Colonel. “The Army, in conjunction with FEMA and other government agencies, has declared Fort Leonard Wood a haven,” the Colonel said. “If you are a survivor of the outbreak in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, or Arkansas, get here. We have room for you. We have food and water. But most important, we are safe from the infected. The Corps of Engineers has worked day and night to make this base impregnable. If you and your loved ones can hear this broadcast, you are welcome. Get here any way you can and help ensure that the American way of life prevails.”

  When the herd overran the Crandall’s ranch, their house had burned, along with most of their belongings. Will’s last look at the land he’d lived on all his life would be etched on his mind for the rest of his days. The house was a pyre, with flames shooting twenty feet into the night sky. The corrals were on fire, and the conflagration had just spread to the barn and equipment shed. Cows ran every which way, crazed with pain and fear. Some were ablaze, some carried creepers that were rending their flesh and digging into their entrails. And everywhere there were the dead, more dead than Will thought could be in one place.