Resurrection: A Zombie Novel by - (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

pedestrians. A boarded-up café on the side of the road. Downed power lines that normally would spark with electricity. The road covered in branches and leaves and everything else that had blown onto it since early September, none of which would ever be cleared. It would just keep piling up. He wondered how much longer any road in the world would still be passable. Roads in the Pacific Northwest would likely be finished in less than a year without cleanup and maintenance.

He saw a dead body in the grass on the right side of the road just up ahead. Actually, body didn’t quite say it. It was mostly just bones. Almost all the meat had been picked clean.

“Oh my God,” Annie said and covered her mouth with her hands. There could be no doubt in her mind that the skeleton once belonged to a human.

She didn’t say anything else. Just turned her head so she could keep staring at it in horror as they drove past.

“Brace yourself,” Hughes said. “There are probably more up ahead.”

They were coming up on the little town now, the kind of place people hardly notice and don’t even remember driving through after they’ve passed it. The town where Parker had told them he saw an outdoor-sporting-goods store that looked like it hadn’t been looted yet. Parker had no time to hit it before, so Hughes and Frank were going back to it now. As soon as they reached the outskirts of town, Annie would see a whole lot more bodies and probably worse.

“What happened?” Annie said.

Hughes had to tell her something. He could hardly believe it was necessary. Annie must be the only human being in the world who didn’t know.

“Plague,” Hughes said. “Worst plague you ever saw. Amazing that you don’t remember.”

“Where’s a safe place we can go?” Annie said.

“We have a place,” Frank said. “Back behind us a couple of miles. We’ll take you.”

“I mean, how can we get away from all this? It can’t be like this everywhere.”

Hughes said nothing. Frank said nothing.

They drove on in silence for another minute or so. Hughes saw buildings ahead set back a ways from the road. Stores with parking lots out front. Buildings meant bodies. He put his thick arm out the window and leaned hard into the door. He might need to shoot again soon.

“More bodies ahead,” he said, to warn Annie.

She saw them. Five bodies, mostly just skeletons, lying in the road next to a Jeep with its doors flung open. This time she didn’t say anything. Didn’t place her hands over her mouth. Didn’t react. Just stared as they drove past.

Dozens of bodies were strewn across a parking lot in front of a feed store. They, too, were mostly just bones. Torn but now dried bloody clothing was scattered all over the place.

“This is what the plague does?” Annie said as much in amazement as horror. “Destroys the whole body? Like flesh-eating bacteria?”

They drove past the feed store and past two more skeletons in the road. Frank swerved around them.

“No,” Hughes said. “That’s not what the plague does at all.”

Hughes would wait and tell her the rest later. It was too much to take in all at once.

“There,” Frank said and pointed at a one-story building with a sign on the roof that said “Adventure Outfitters.” “That must be the place.”

They turned into the parking lot. It was empty of cars and of bodies. The front door was not boarded up. Hughes saw tents and backpacks and lanterns and boots displayed behind unbroken windows, just as Parker had said.

Frank stopped the truck in front of the door and put it in park.

“Okay,” Hughes said to Annie. “Here’s the deal. We’re going to be attacked, so we have to move fast. We run in there, grab a couple of each item, throw them into the truck, then we move. Stay close to me. Don’t venture off more than a couple of feet.”

He and Frank opened the Chevy doors and got out. Annie stayed put for a moment until Hughes beckoned her with a wave of his hand.

“Who do you think is going to attack us?” Annie said. She stepped onto the pavement and looked around with unease. “It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for months.”

“Sick people,” Hughes said. “The plague makes them aggressive.”

“Really aggressive,” Frank said.

Hughes broke through the glass door with the butt of his shotgun. He instinctively expected the screech of an alarm, but of course the power had been out for weeks, and the shattering glass was the only sound in any direction. The silence before and after was total.

He still hadn’t gotten used to such quiet in an environment built by humans. Even the forests were louder than this. At least in the forest you could hear birds, insects, streams, and falling pinecones. Here there was no sound at all, the unreality almost dreamlike.

He reached in through the glass, careful not to cut his wrist on the jagged edges, and unlocked the door.

Frank flipped on a Maglite and swept the beam across the checkout counters and into the gloom. “Looks undisturbed,” he said. “No one has been in here.”

“Those bones we saw back there …” Annie said.

“Yeah,” Hughes said.

“How long have they been there?”

Hughes stepped inside. “A month,” he said in a voice just over a whisper. “Maybe two months.” He scanned the store and swept the Mossberg back and forth, his finger inside the trigger guard. On the right was the clothing section. All-weather jackets, fleece pullovers, high-tech wilderness pants, gloves, hats, and wool socks.

“Then how could the bodies have decomposed so quickly?” Annie whispered. “The animals got to them already?”

“Those bones weren’t picked over by animals,” Hughes whispered.

She squinted.

“Later,” Hughes said. “We’ll explain it all back at home base. Grab some warm clothes that look like they’ll fit you. Get at least two of everything.”

Hughes led Annie to the clothing section as Frank picked up a handbasket to stuff items in. They didn’t have enough time to fill a shopping cart.

“I’m getting food,” Frank whispered. “It’s right here next to the clothing.” He grabbed packages of freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini and chili mac that could be “cooked” in the wilderness just by adding hot water. The expiration dates were years into the future.

Hughes watched over Annie as she grabbed two fleece pullovers and two pairs of pants off the rack. “Get five pairs of socks,” he whispered, “or your feet are going to rot. And grab some strong boots.”

He heard nothing in the store but himself, Annie, and Frank. If one of those things was in there, they’d know by now. The only quiet way in was through the front door. He lowered the shotgun, took his finger out of the trigger guard, and beckoned Annie to follow him toward a large glass counter displaying the expensive items the store owners didn’t want to be shoplifted.

“Frank,” he whispered. “Over here.”

Frank sidled up behind Hughes and shined his Maglite through the glass. Hughes saw exactly what he was hoping to find. Hunting knives, GPS systems, and one-eyed night-vision devices.

“Sweet,” Frank said.

“Grab those night-vision monocles,” Hughes said. “Grab several. We won’t be able to recharge the batteries.”

“Sure, we will,” Annie said. She held something in her hand. “It’s a portable solar panel. Says it’s for charging cell phones and iPads while camping.”

Hughes lit up. “Get as many of those as you can carry.”

“There must be some first-aid packs in here somewhere,” Frank said. Hughes saw that Frank had placed five night-vision monocles in his basket.

“Go find some,” Hughes said. “Get the biggest packs you can find. One minute.”

Hughes grabbed a water filter, a small camp stove, a compass, and navigation maps of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. He collected six small emergency blankets made of reflective Mylar, two hunting knives, two more portable solar panels from where Annie had found hers, a handheld GPS that looked like it might plug into the panels, two winter jackets, two sleeping bags, seven candles, packs of waterproof matches, fistfuls of fleece hats. He stuffed everything into the biggest backpack he could find. He slung the weighted-down backpack over one of his shoulders and grabbed a second empty one for good measure, then hustled toward the front door.

“Time to move,” he said. “Frank. Annie. Let’s go. We can’t push our luck.”

Hughes tossed his items into the Chevy’s truck bed. Frank and Annie followed him out and set their items next to his.

“Shh,” he said and held up his hand. Everyone cocked their heads and stopped breathing for a moment.

“I don’t hear anything,” Annie whispered. She shuddered at the implications. The poor girl still didn’t know what was happening.

“I don’t either,” Frank said, though unlike Annie, he looked relieved.

Hughes thought for a moment.

“If anything heard us pull in here,” he said, “they’d be here by now.”

Frank nodded.

Annie said nothing.

“Nothing is coming,” Hughes said.

“How do you know?” Annie said.

“If something was coming,” Hughes said, “believe me, we’d know.”

“But how?” Annie said. “How would you know if someone is coming?”

“You’ll find out when it happens,” Hughes said.

The last thing Annie remembered was visiting her older sister Jenny in Olympia.