The Workermonkey

Saturday, March 07, 2015

Day 37: Another Day of Survival 

# posted by Supreme Monkey Overlord @ 3/07/2015 05:34:00 PM

the barn house turned out to be empty and the area fairly quiet. we spent the night upstairs in the house after backing the truck up under the window and barricading the doors. the truck would provide an easy means of escape if something went wrong. the bear trap and some string with cans attached were hung around the area to act as alarms just in case a roamer got too close. paranoia keeps a man alive.

the night was clear and filled with a moon akin to a silver dollar. the still air made every noise sound as if it was just outside the door. moans could be heard intermittently from several miles away, carried on the light breeze. burns couldn't sleep and took first watch. tim quickly relived him and hadn't even finished taking a piss before i woke up and wanted to take a turn on watch. it was a long, sleepless night. the crack of dawn couldn't’ come fast enough. we didn't wait.

the truck was loud enough to attract attention in the dark, so were the lights. we needed to go slow to avoid walkers and broken down cars but we also had to fucking move to avoid drawing attention in the dark.

the tension was high and we hadn't slept. we were making good progress and the sun was starting to break the edge of the treeline. the morning fog was rolling out and the road seemed to open up. the maps we had suggested we head north towards a popular micro brewery in the area. it wasn't too clear if they brewed beer there or just served their own brew from another location. it wasn't too far off the path we would need to take towards our second best option, an actual brewery, which made it worth the gas to get there and check.

it was close to noon before we reached the first signs of a former civilization near our destination. typical small town, a few small houses on main street, a gas station, McDonalds, and a church formed the center of town at a blinking yellow light. the light was still blinking when we drove under. Tim noticed and yelled to pull over.

“what the fuck? the lights are on!?!”

“how the hell...?”

“solar? got to be solar, they did make some of those right?. anyone see a panel?”

“nope”

“um...no”

“balls, then where’s it getting power from? what the fuck is still running?”

“over there, you hear it!? generator!”

there was a slight muffled sound coming from the ally next to the  station. we ran over to the side of the gas station where we heard the noise coming from. there it was, clear as day, a little yellow gas powered generator, wire going straight up to the pole, across the building and into the traffic light. someone had rigged this thinking that stoplights in ass scratch, east bum-fuck nowhere was an immediate priority during the zombie apocalypse. genius. even scarier? someone was keeping it running.

“we need to get the fuck out of here. now.”

“grab it.”

“what?!”

“grab that son of a bitch, don’t just leave it.” fuck, good point.

“fuck me lets do this quick and get out” of course it was a good idea, we needed that generator and it was obviously functional. why the hell would anyone keep a traffic light running?

burns went to grab the live power line in order to disconnect it, so i grabbed burns and threw him to the ground. “dumbass...” turned it off, and then pulled the lead cables and rolled it off. we threw it in the back and high tailed it out of there.

“wait, stop.”

“no”

“what do you mean no? fuck off, stop the truck.”

“what for? we need to keep moving, no need to stop..”

“no we need to figure out what was going on back there. pull over so we can do this”

“figure what out? we got the generator”

“it doesn't bother you that a generator was running a traffic light? during the zombie apocalypse? no? nothing odd about that?”

“who knows, maybe it was just left on?”

“for more than a month? you think that little generator was just left on like a light switch? yeah?”

“ well maybe not like the whole time...., maybe it was an accident”

“yes, that’s the solution, it was accidentally connected to the traffic light, accidentally filled with gasoline every day for more than a month, accidentally turned on, left running and all that energy and ridiculous expense of resources was use on keeping a BLINKING YELLOW LIGHT running!!! GENIUS! that explains everything!”

the following awkward silence was immediately broken by a passing Smart Car.

“Fuck you”

“what the fuck was that”

“....mother fucker, i don’t agree with that.....”

we almost ran off the road all looking back at the moving object at the same time. what the fuck was going on that a car just passed us? and they didn't stop? a smart car was a good idea, efficient, fuck me who was in it! we aren't that far from the stop light, are there more smart cars?

“what the fuck..... who was driving?”

“i didn't see”

“we should drive a smart car”

silent stares......

“... what!?! its efficient! do you like sucking gas through a tube? fuck off!”

“STOP!”

wheels screeching we pulled to a stop. deep breaths all around and we got out. the smart car just kept going and was well out of sight at this point. ....a working traffic light... a casual passer by... what the fuck...

“um... they didn’t seem so bothered by us, they must have seen us stop. are driving cars a normal thing around here?”

“maybe they didn't’ see us?”

“shut up”

perplexed, we stood in the road for a few minutes scratching our heads and our balls. there were no cars on the road around here, it wasn’t littered with the usual junk you’d find on the road in all the other areas we’d been in. we didn’t see anything at the traffic light that seemed out of place other than a working generator. was someone keeping this place clean and running? how were they finding all these resources? more questions than answers at this point.

“umm... where are all the walkers? when was the last time we saw one?”

silence...

i’d been a few hours since we’d seen a roamer at all. these streets seemed to be free of debris and roamers. the blinking traffic light should have drawn them to it at nite at the least but there were none to be found at the intersection.

we didn’t want to stand around all day and we obviously weren’t going to figure this out just standing here. the natural desire to keep moving had been ingrained in us for sometime now so we jumped back in the truck and kept going.

believe it or not this wasn’t the strangest thing we’d seen lately so i guess we’re just becoming numb to the oddities of our new reality. stay focused, complete our dubious mission and get our asses back to safety. we kept moving.

“that bugs the fuck out of me”

“yeah i hate the fucking religious bullshit in this part of the country” replied burns.

“no asshole, the fucking blinking light”

“oh” we had just past out hundredth church of some type of christianity.

“the generator only holds like 12 hours worth of gas, it wasn’t producing full power to keep just that light running and who would keep it full to do so?”

“what if that smartcar had blown the light and hit another car, or someone crossing the street?” replied burns, he was oddly compassionate when tripping face.

“do you really think there’s traffic here? enough you would need working traffic signals? i think you may have finally fried your own brain to the point of no return.”

“did anyone see a driver in that car?”

“umm...”

“i was just shocked at seeing another moving vehicle, didn’t look for a driver.”

“i missed it, there was this really interesting piece of string right here and i’m pretty sure it was suggesting the berlin wall was sort of like the moon landing being fake.”

we both stared at burns in amazement. he really had finally lost his shit. maybe less drugs for the foreseeable future.

“you didn’t see the first passing car in a month? fuck it he’s shot.”

“they didn’t seem too fazed by us either though, does that suggest there are usually cars on the road? wouldn’t they be just as curious as we were?”

“we haven’t seen any signs, no roamers, no people, no living places that we can tell. this is fucking strange.”

“I’ll go check it out.” shouted burns in an awkwardly loud tone, just before he pulled the door open and stepped out of the moving truck.

ramirez gave me a deadpan stare as if this was almost expected and normal before slowly bringing the truck to a halt.

“did that dumb fuck just walk out of a moving car? why doesn't that surprise me, we need to start limiting his intake of drugs immediately.”

we jumped out of the truck but burns was nowhere to be seen. he must have run into the woods to “go check it out”, what the fuck.

“i know you’re first thought is to leave him right?” i opened.

“leave who?” he said with a coy smile. “it looks like a problem just solved itself.”

“we can’t really just leave him can we? he’ll never make it out here on his own. what happens when he sobers up and realizes he has no clue where he is and is out of drugs?”

i grabbed a rifle and a bottle of water and started walking into the woods. ramirez pulled the truck off to the side of the road and parked it under a tree. he pulled some brush up to the side to make it look like it’d been there a while. that was the best last second cover we could manage without losing burns.

just past the tree line there wasn’t much more than more trees and ground cover. it was eerily silent for being in the woods. at some point most of the insects and critters had been scared off or killed and the world only consisted of noises from the wind moving through the trees. the area was fairly open but burns was nowhere to be seen or heard. ramirez was a little ways back after trying to hide the truck but was moving quickly to catch up.

“where the fuck is he?” i mumbled to myself. he couldn’t have gone that far, he can’t even see straight. we spent a few more minutes sweeping back up the road towards where we had just come from thinking maybe he really was going to check it out. i darted back into the road to see if maybe he’d taken the path of least resistance.

nothing.

i popped back into the wood line only to find burns shirt hanging from a tree branch just off the road. It was hung from a branch as if he’d found a coat rack.

“oh what the fuck, shirtless?” ramirez slapped his forehead at the discovery. at least we’d found some sign he was there. the woods here looked like there was an old deer path leading to a small cliff face just ahead. we moved quickly up the path hoping burns had done the same. the cliff had blocked the wind from our path and it was more eerily silent here that the rest of the area. the air was still and the stench of death and rot once again hung in the air. there must have been roamers around here at some point or even still to have such a strong smell.

as we moved up the path, we started to notice more and more trails connecting to the path we were on. we didn’t think much of the first one, but the second, third, fourth, and fifth were too much of a coincidence. ramirez loosened his rifle and raised it to his shoulder. i unbuckled my pistol and proceeded with a little more caution than before. the silence between us was more than enough to keep us on alert and signal to the other that this was not right.

a clean sock, laying perfectly folded into a square, laying in the path interrupted our search. at this point the path took three branches, one following the cliff face in either direction and one more mirroring the path that led us there headed back towards the road to the south. the air was still and the stench of rot and death had grown stronger the further we traveled down it.

ramirez whispered “i don’t think we should split up, something isn’t right here, where the fuck is burns!? first a shirt, then his sock? the fuck is wrong with him.”  i nodded and mirrored his concern, this seemed to be more than just a old deer path and burns’ clothing pieces weren’t exactly a bread crumb trail to follow.

“lets move a few minutes up the cliff face then we’ll circle back around to check the other paths, we can’t be very far from the road here.” ramirez nodded in agreement and we moved swiftly up the rock face.  less that 20 yards up we found the second sock, also neatly folded in the middle of the path.

“at least we’re on the right track.”

“when we get back, i’m going to take as many drugs as this asshole and just forget this ever happened. how fried is he that he’s folding his socks?”

we continued up the path more quickly than silently. we couldn’t be that far from burns at this point but who knows what level of superhuman speed he was moving at, or thought he was moving at. what stopped us dead in our tracks was a new trail entering from the road which was covered in blood and had looked as if something had been dragged up it towards the rock face.

i turned to ramirez and silently mouthed “FUCK”. a short pause to listen to anything out of place had us more paranoid than anything. it was hard to tell if the tracks or blood were fresh, it was far too dark to be normal people blood, it had to be roamer blood. but why would it have been dragged up here? and by who? theres no way this was burns was it? i mean, you never know but still, he hasn’t been gone that long, but he was on a lot of drugs. crap. ramirez nodded up the path and we continued down it far more silently than before.

every twig snap made us flinch, we hadn't brought enough stuff with us to really do recon or assault anything let alone survive. this was already taking longer than we hoped and the truck was still at risk only being parked just off the road with minimal cover. the stench of rot grew even stronger as we moved. something must have been up ahead that was causing it but what? we continued, ready to shit our pants at any second. the blood trail continued so we followed.

so far no more clothing, flip a coin to see if that's a good sign or not. the trail continued along the rock face until it came to a turn, almost a 90 degree angle in the rock. it jutted back about a hundred yards and into what looked like a small clearing. we couldn't see much from the trail but it looked like the rock formed a horseshoe around the area. it wasn’t very high but the top of the rock hung over the bottom by a few feet, creating a small overhang. the trail followed this overhang as if its travelers needed cover from teh rain. the rock was pitted and full of small crevices, many could have been much deeper caves. i’m sure this was the home of a million critters and insects, all looking for shelter from something.

the stench here was far stronger than we had smelt before. it seems to be contained in the bowl created by the rock. there was no breeze here either, air wasn’t moving. the trail continued along the rock, under the overhang. as much as this was a breeding ground for small animals and insects, none could be found. there were no flies, no crawlers, no squirrels scurrying about. something must have kept them from this place. it seemed too good to be empty. this only made us more paranoid. why the silence, why the emptiness, it was odd that such and area was devoid of life, let alone the hanging rot in the air.

“pst..” noted Ramirez. he nodded towards what looked like a small shack on teh far side of the bowl. it couldn't have been much larger than an out house, a small 4 walled shed made of scrap parts. one side was sheet metal which looked like roof parts and the other three were wooden planks, mostly plywood and pallets. the roof was just two pieces of plywood and some shingles. it wouldn't’ hold up to a strong breeze let alone a storm you’d need shelter from.

i looked back at Ramirez in cautious optimism. at least it was a sign of life. there's no way burns could have built that in the time since we last saw him which meant someone else was using that area. not too shocking, we had seen a car pass though. there must be something around here or some type of settlement. my gaze was stuck on the dilapidated structure when Ramirez nodded again to a different area, one further back in the bowl of the rock. a small plume of smoke rose up from it, there must have been a camp fire burning.

i rolled my eyes at him and shook my head in agreement, we both knew we’d have to go check it out. i put away my pistol and instead took control of the rifel. shit just got serious. we continued down the rock path a little further towards the smoke. about 30 yards away from it we culd only smell burning flesh, or perhaps it was the smell of burning rot from the roamers. hard to tell the difference. we stopped and cut right, into the woods again for cover. there were no more trails here, they must have all led to the rock face under the cover of the cliff. we still hadn’t seem any critters.

we crouched behind a tree and cautiously approached the smoke. from here all we could see was a plume of smoke arising from the ground, what ever the fire was, it must have been in a hole or pit. we couldn’t see any flame. the area around the pit was slightly clear, no signs of a camping spot or any permanent structures. we paused again, just yards from the smoke. the stench of death and rot here was overwhelming. i pulled my shirt over my mouth and looked back. Ramirez had wrapped burns shirt around his face to do the same. we waited a moment to see if we could hear or see anything.

all we could hear is what sounded like a crunching sound, not a branch breaking, but more of a snapping of bone. a curious and confused look was exchanged and i pointed towards the pit with the rifle. after a moments hesitation i moved out from cover into the clearing and approached the hole.

i could see it far clearer now. the hole was almost 10 feet deep on the sides, but full of slowly burning corpses. most of them looked like roamers, rotting flesh, missing pieces of skin, maggots running wild across their dead flesh. but they were not all roamers, some fo these had been living people. my gasp only made ramize more alert and he came up to the edge of the pit with me. his expression said it all. this is not what we expected to find in the woods off the road.

there was no open flame in the pit, only the smoldering remains of a much larger fire. if anything, more bodies had been added on top of it after the fire extinguished. could this be where the smart car had come from? it couldn’t have transported this many bodies and the fire wasn’t fresh enough.

inching closer, we saw the source of the bone cracking sounds. a pit bull was in the pit, feasting on rotten flesh. it looked as if it was a roamer itself, not something we’d seen before. there had been no previous signs of wildlife being affected by the disease, or whatever it was. we’d never seen a dog or deer that showed any signs of being the walking dead.

the pitbull proceeded to munch on the bodies, unconcerned if the body was a former living person or not. it hadn’t noticed our presence yet. ramirez cringed and raised his rifle to put the beast down. i held up my hand and stopped him as to not make any noise and alert possible others. i must have made too much noise as the second my hand hit his rifle barrel, a noise came from the woods. we turned only to catch a glimpse of another wild dog leaping at ramirez.

the dog must have weighed 75 pounds, a German Shepard covered in rot and missing flesh but still a war machine in its own right. it leaped at ramirez, who didn't have time to react. it knocked him backwards, teetering on the edge of the pit. the two rolled over each other, the dog snapping at ramirez's head. ramirez still held his rifle, using it to keep the dog at arms length as best he could.i dropped my own rifle and unholstered my knife. a gunshot in the bowl would have alerted the next state over, or been entirely contained within the bowl, who the fuck knows. not worth the risk.

ramirez had the dog pinned down under his rifle but couldn't keep it under control, its mouth snapping wildly at anything ti could bite and shaking its body violently to break free. i lunged on both man and dog and with a mighty stab, tried to hit the dog in the head with my knife. but i missed and hit nothing but dirt leaving my arm exposed to the dogs bite.

ramirez reacted better than i did and shoved his rifle in between the two of us, the dog biting metal and wood first. this gave me a chance to try again which i used more intelligently. the dogs grip on the rifle held its head still enough that i didn’t miss this time.a shallow groan and the beast was dead. but  the fight was not over.

from the woods where the first dog had entered, two more appeared, red eyed and teeth exposed. thier mouths were missing flesh and dripping black ooze. these creatures were far removed from the domestic animals they had once been. neither had tails and their flesh was far from complete.i rolled off of ramirez and lifted my rifle, noise be damned. the first trigger pull reminded me to take the safety off as nothing happened. the second reminded me to murder burns if i ever saw him again as a tootsie roll fell out of the barrel and again no bullet.

ramirez’s rifle was shot after the first dog had munched on its parts. no time to grab for my pistol and my knife was lodged in the firsts head.

alas, from over the top of the rock face gleamed an amazing sight. burns had stepped in front of the setting sun and held high his polearm, dripping with the blood of a thousand innocent somethings. He had returned in glorious fashion, leaping from high above us on a rock ledge over head, spearing the first dog and quickly dispatching the second. He was covered in blood from head to toe and completely naked other than the mud and blood sticking to his skin.

“HI GUYS,WHYAREYOUMOVINGLIKETHAT?IFOUNDTHESEMUSHROOMSINTHEWOODS THEYREREALLYGOODTRYSOMETHEYREREALLYGOODTHEYREALLYGOODMUSHROOMSILIKEMUSHROOMSIFOUNDTHESEINTHEWOODSWHEREIFOUNDTHEMUSHROOMSILIKEMUSROOMSLIKETHESEIFOUNDINTHEWOODSWHEREIFOUNDMUSHROOMSLIKETHESEMUSHROOMSIFOUNDINTHEWOODSWHEREIFOUNDTHESEMUSHROOMSILIKETHESEMUSHROOMSLIKETHESEMUSHROOMSIFOUNDINTHEWOODSWHEREIFOUNDTHESEMUSHROOMS...”.... like nothing had ever happened.

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