haired fellow named Gabriel. Milo was back on top of the Bus along with three other gunners. Miguel and Kaylee were on the bus. I would have preferred to be on the bus too, but Jack asked that I ride in the tail car to keep an eye out for anything falling off the farm truck or the hay wagon. I could see a scattered group of shambling figures walking toward us from the south as we pulled onto I35, the leading edge of the horde Milo had spotted.
It was a relatively uneventful drive. We encountered a few walking dead, but in small enough numbers that they did not present much of a problem. Max dodged them in the SUV. Jack ran a couple over with the bus. The rest of us stayed close to the bus and let Jack clear the way. The gunners didn't even waste any ammo. Gabriel kept up a constant chatter as he drove, barely letting me or the other passengers in the station wagon get a word in.
“My name's Gabriel, like the archangel,” he started in, “but you can all call me Gabe.” He went on to tell us that he had been a seminary student, but “that had nothing to do with being named after an angel.” He went on talking about how exciting it was being in the end-times, as foretold in Revelations in the Bible. A teenage girl named Shelly asked if that meant we had been left behind after the Rapture.
“Oh I don't claim to have any answers.” Gabe replied. “I joined the seminary because all I had was questions. The Bible is actually a bit vague about the end times. That whole thing about the Rapture and the Tribulation, there is still a lot of debate going on in theological circles... at least there was. I think God's hand must be in this though, just like the great flood. It's his way to bend the forces of nature and use them to work his will.”
“So you think the undead are natural?” the same teenage girl asked.
“Yes, I suppose so. It's a plague of sorts, isn't it?” He thought about it a bit more before continuing, “I mean, just because we haven't seen something like it before doesn't mean it isn't part of God's nature. He's used plagues and pestilence before.”
I kept silent. I was never very religious myself and just assumed there was some sort of scientific explanation for the dead seeming to rise. But what do I know, maybe we really are in the end times, and we are all just playing our part in God's mysterious plan.
We kept north until reaching an interchange for state highway 11, then Max slowed and signaled that he was taking the ramp. We all followed and headed west, ignoring the few buildings there. I noticed a boarded up Mexican restaurant and wondered if we might find food in it, but Max evidently did not want to use up our remaining daylight by stopping to look. We drove west, and soon found nothing but empty fields on either side. A few minutes down the road, a large complex of buildings appeared on the north side of the road. The caravan stopped, and I saw Max get out of the SUV and walk back to the bus, no doubt to talk to Jack. After a few minutes he headed back to the SUV and led us all into the nearly empty parking lot of the building. A large sign announced that it was Liberty Forklift Assembly Plant 5, “A Proud American Manufacturer of Quality Warehouse Systems”. The parking lot had only two cars in it, so the plant must have been closed when everything finally came apart. Perhaps they shut down when too many of the workers were out sick.
We all climbed out of our respective vehicles to stretch our legs, and Max addressed the group. “We'll bed down here tonight. This place is off the main roads a bit and well built, so we should be safe here. We'll sweep it for supplies and then decide on a route in the morning.” He turned to Milo and the other gunners. “Those two cars in the parking lot might mean people, or they might mean we've dead to deal with. You know the drill; split into pairs, sweep the building, make note of anything useful you see, but leave it for others to retrieve later. Our first goal is to make sure this place is safe.”
I wandered over to where Kalee was standing, thankful for a chance to finally talk to her. “It looks like we have at least another hour of daylight. I'm surprised Max didn't look for something farther down the road, a bit farther from the Interstate.”
“Would you want to sweep a building for zombies in the dark?” was her answer. I couldn't fault her logic. “Seems an odd place to build something like this though, out in the boonies.” She looked around, as if trying to see the merits of the location.
“I suppose the land was cheap,” I answered, “though they probably also had to pay the power company to extend electrical service from the lines along the Interstate.” I pointed to the relatively new looking poles holding high voltage cables running to the building. “This whole factory can't be more than a couple years old. They barely got going before it all came slamming down.”
We chatted for a while about nothing in particular. Standing there, next to that bus as the evening sun went down, I could almost imagine this was all just some school outing and not the apocalypse. Miguel came over, and we all speculated about what we might find inside. We all hoped it would include food, as rations had been very thin for more than a week now. There is only so much you can water down soup before it stops being filling.
Two of the gunners finally came out and declared the office area clear. The others were still checking the factory floor and the loading bays. We began hauling various supplies into the building, up the concrete steps through the main doors which someone had jimmied open. Miguel ran ahead to find a new quarantine area, eager to let the remaining sick out of the luggage area and into someplace more comfortable.
The office area of the factory was three stories tall, and its entrance led into an atrium that extended up that full three stories to a giant skylight. The atrium was filled with dried, mostly dead tropical plants. Balconies on the second and third floors overlooked the area. A couple of dusty benches that looked more appropriate to an outdoor park sat on either end of the plant beds.
Kalee walked up and touched the leaves of one of the dried plants. “Poor thing.” she whispered. I'd seen her face down hordes of average people transformed into mindless monsters with barely a twitch of emotion, yet these pitiful plants seemed to really move her.
Miguel came jogging past and waved for us to follow him. He had found a place to set up quarantine, a first floor room near a side door he had already propped open. We went back to the bus where the luggage compartment door was already open, and two healthy looking people had already emerged carrying a pale third. Everyone gave them their distance as they laid the person on the pavement and went back into the compartment to retrieve the fourth. The body came out, pale, motionless, with its arms and legs bound. She was a young woman, in her twenties probably, in a floral patterned blouse and tan slacks. She had stringy blond hair, knotted from days of neglect. Her skin was the gray of death.
Then it began. A twitching at first. Then the arms straining against the ropes. Her eyes came open, glassy and yellowish, but looking at us. Her mouth opened and a raspy groan emerged. It deepened and gained in volume. We stood horrified and transfixed.
Miguel shook his head slowly. “It shouldn't have been allowed to go this far. She must have died on the road. They had no way to tell us.” He went to the hay wagon and retrieved an ax. He hooked the ax over the ropes that bound the woman's feet and began to drag her to the edge of the parking lot, away from the vehicles. “Isaac, give me some help with this.” I ran over, grabbed the handle of the ax with him and helped him awkwardly drag her the rest of the way. “Now stand back”
He swung the ax overhead, and it came down with a sickening crunch. I though he meant to decapitate her, but he had planted the blade right in her skull. The body stopped moving. Miguel planted his foot on her chest, pulled out the bloody ax, and started heading back. The blood wasn't red as I expected, more like brownish black. It was also thicker than normal blood. “We'll need to dig a grave.” Miguel announced flatly. “Two actually; the other one doesn't have long.” I thought back to the unfilled graves we had dug for them back at the farm, back before we realized we would leave so soon.
I walked back
to Kalee. “I'm going to get a shovel from the wagon.” I said, but then made no move to find it. Kalee looked at me, her expression a bit sad, but also a bit distant. Like she was remembering something.
“I'm... I'm going to water some plants.” she announced, then turned and walked back into the building. I stood there for a while, watching her go, then finally walked to the hay wagon to dig through the tools. Maybe we could get the grave dug before the last of our light vanished.
I found two shovels, and Miguel and I together dug a grave before night fell. It was not as deep as we would have liked, but we wouldn't be staying here more than a day, so it would suffice. The second grave would have to wait until morning. Miguel explained that when the other ill person passed, his brain would be destroyed using a thin, sharp blade inserted through the corners of the eye sockets. This had proven very effective in preventing the reanimation process while not producing a gruesome mess. We rolled the dead woman into her grave and shoveled a thin layer of dirt onto her, then decided we would finish the job in the morning when we had more light. We hurried inside as soon as we were done.
In the atrium,