Chapter Two

Josiah wandered the streets of his neighborhood in a state of semi-shock. He thought that the trip from Quantico would have prepared him for what he found but he was wrong. He’d bypassed towns and cities as much as he could, abandoning his car several times to walk around road blocks or traffic jams. The sheriff shook his head — part of him felt guilty for how quickly he’d learned to pick locks and hotwire cars. Sticking to the backroads, he’d no doubt avoided seeing this kind of carnage and desolation close to cities like Raleigh, Richmond, or Charleston. However, he’d had little choice but to track close to the main roads running into Athens until he could bypass them and come around from the south towards his neighborhood.

The closer he got to Atlanta, the worse things appeared. He couldn’t tell if there had been some kind of battle or if the twisted mess of cars blocking some of the major arteries had been the result of a riot or panic of some kind. Burn marks, the way the metal and even glass had melted, and the gaping holes in the roadway spoke of a battle or some kind of attack by a military-grade force. Bodies burned and then left to rot, the flesh picked from them by carrion eaters, were evidence that the attack had hit suddenly. Still, the idea of the armed forces attacking civilians seemed too incredible to believe. Even the most die-hard fanatical member of one of the many militia groups had a hard time believing that the armed forces would turn tyrant. The FBI, CIA, or other police forces — sure. But never the military. However, based on what he was seeing, it looked like there had been an air force strike down I-85 and another one along I-20.

“At least there’s none of the undead around here,” he muttered as he walked around another crater. His backpack was heavier than it had been in days and Jo found himself more fatigued than he had been when he’d woken up on Quantico. Still, he couldn’t pass up the chance to scavenge supplies from the cars as he walked along. With none of the dead milling about and with there being no sign that any of the living had been through here since the attacks, he wanted to take the chance to stock up while he could. There was no telling what he would find when he got back to his house. He had originally hoped to return there and find some clue of where his family had fled to but now he was beginning to wonder if he would find the neighborhood at all. If there had been bombs dropped on the interstates, then it stood to reason that the same thing might have been done in civilian areas like his suburban subdivision. Or, there could have been a fire or lightning strike that would have taken out the entire area.

“The whole trip down here I was thinking I might find normalcy,” he sighed to himself as he hitched his backpack higher and tightened the chest strap. “I must be out of my mind.” He stared around the neighborhood once more, trying to convince himself that he wouldn’t wind up regretting this.

He could remember the first time he and Caitlin drove into the neighborhood. They’d been married three years and he’d just received a promotion at work. They had been saving ever since their wedding in hopes of buying a house in a good neighborhood. With his new position, they would easily be able to afford the one they’d seen advertised on the local paper’s website.

“This will be a great place to raise our children,” Caitlin had whispered. She’d been unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. They’d toured the house with the realtor and made an offer on the spot. A few months later, they moved in and just a few months after that, Sandy and Dennis were born. As he walked those same streets now, Caitlin’s words rang hollow in his memory.

The neighborhood was heavy with silence. The still air was molasses-thick and the sun beat down relentlessly, adding its own measure of insult to the assault on his senses. Yards that had once been carefully manicured and tended were yellowed. Bushes and flowering plants had grown wilder. Shutters hung on hinges and blood stained the walls of many of the homes. The sickly-sweet odor of rotting flesh permeated the air and Jo thought he was going to be sick if he had to breathe it in much longer. He feared that the stench might cling to his sweat-sodden clothes and hair, might find its way into the pores of his skin, and taint him forever. Dolls, toys, clothes, and other keepsakes were strewn about the streets, sidewalks, and lawns. Shattered windows let curtains flutter in the slight breezes that whispered through. Several homes had their doors battered down or hanging in splinters in busted frames. When he turned down the corner towards his home, he stopped cold in his tracks.

“What the hell happened here?” he whispered. “It’s a bloodbath…”

Several houses on his street had holes burned into them as if a tank had launched heavy artillery into them. Mangled corpses lay everywhere with rifles next to them. Red stains colored the pavement as if some kind of unholy flood had washed through. His own home was riddled with bullet holes. Josiah approached it cautiously, his stomach in knots and his heart in his throat. He kept glancing over his shoulder and all around him, looking for signs that someone — anyone — was in the area. However, the absolute silence argued against that possibility. He circled his own house, carefully peaking in windows and listening for any signs of life or unlife inside. Through the windows, he could see that the interior had been left untouched. The back door was still in its frame though the front door was broken. Peeking into the garage, he saw no evidence that the door there had been tampered with. Steeling himself, Josiah pulled out his keys and unlocked the door. Finding it already unlocked, he frowned. Caitlin was obsessive about locking the doors whenever she left the house and the spare key was hidden very well. That meant that whoever had unlocked this door had either gotten the information from Caitlin or had gotten her keys. Clenching his jaw and preparing himself for the worst, Josiah gently opened the door and quickly stepped inside, closing it behind him. He moved from room to room, his pistol at the ready. As he checked each room, he was relieved to see no signs of a struggle or a robbery. Aside from the mess that he expected from having two children under the age of twelve and the chaos he would have anticipated that showed his family had left in a rush, everything was in place.

Josiah walked back through the house more at ease than he had been now that he knew the house was clear. He stopped in the bedroom he’d shared with his wife and took off his backpack. She’d left some of his clothes behind so he took the opportunity to pack a few clean outfits and then went and checked the water. It still ran so he hopped in the shower and took a lukewarm one, feeling fresher than he had in a while once he was finally clean. By the time he was finished, though, the pressure in the line was beginning to drop letting him know that the septic tank was no longer functioning. Changing into fresh clothes, he began to feel more like himself than he had since the day Quantico went on lockdown. He went back through the house, packing a few extra things in his backpack and strapping a machete onto his belt. He would check in the garage and see if Caitlin had left a tent he could use before he left. However, he noticed something odd as he dug through his underwear drawer looking for his spare .44. There was a letter with his name on it. Opening it, he read it and heaved a sigh of relief.

“She’s alive,” he laughed. Then he checked the date… had he really been out for three months? A map was included along with the letter explaining where they had been staying and that they were planning to leave there and try for the CDC or a farm near Elberton. She said that he should try for the CDC regardless as they would have answers. She’d included as much information as she knew and some speculations she’d gotten from her camp-mates. Two of the names she mentioned — Daryl and Merle Dixon — made Jo wince. The Dixon brothers were infamous in the region. Merle was a small-time drug dealer who had been paroled a few years back after serving time for manslaughter. Daryl was a hunter and handyman who drifted around from place to place whenever Merle wasn’t in jail. Elberton…something about that made Jo’s hackles rise. Merle had some connection to something that had gone down near Elberton. Jo couldn’t remember what it was. “The CDC,” he whispered. “I’ll find them there.”

Josiah wanted to stay at his house overnight but knew he couldn’t risk it. He had another few hours of daylight left and he planned to make the most of them if he was going to head to the CDC. Hopefully his family would be there waiting for him. At least he knew they were alive and hadn’t been killed in the initial Outbreak or shortly thereafter. There weren’t many backroads he could rely on connecting Athens to Atlanta. Anything he took would eventually run into one of the interstates that fed into the metropolitan area. Still, he let caution guide him as he carefully picked his way through the various traffic jams and snarls. With each mile he walked, the zombies grew more numerous.

“Being out here on the interstate with all of them and no way out is suicide,” he muttered to himself as he began looking for an exit. He remembered seeing a sign about an exit for Lithonia a few minutes back. There was a street that ran through Lithonia and would take him directly to the CDC near Emory without requiring him to get on any of the major highways or interstates. Doubling back, he hastened his steps while keeping his ears open for signs of pursuit. He must have been far enough away from the undead for them not to catch his scent because none followed him. Josiah heaved a sigh of relief when he reached the exit to Lithonia just as the sun dropped below the western horizon. Climbing up the ramp, he immediately began looking for a place he could crash for the night. The normal stop-offs after the exit gave way quickly to stately homes that looked almost completely untouched except for the deafening silence that hung over everything. It was broken only by a few growls and the wet sound of flesh being torn from something. Walking past the manor-style houses, Josiah pressed on until he reached a run-down neighborhood filled with shotgun houses. The oppressive silence was complete there. Shrugging and glancing at the sky, he knew he had only an hour before full-dark arrived. At random, he selected the third house down the block and made for it quickly and quietly.

He could not case the joint the way he’d wanted too — it was too dark for that. Instead, he settled for tapping a window to see if that drew anything in the house. After a slow count to fifty that brought only silence, Jo set to work on getting in through the window. Once inside, he moved room-to-room, surprised to find signs that someone was living there. Whoever it was, though, was absent at the moment. Praying that they would be good people, Jo set up his own camp in the dining room — the only room on the ground floor that did not have windows and had doors that he could shut and lock. Pulling a can of pork-and-beans out of his pack, he lit a candle and began warming the contents up for his supper while keeping his ears open in case his hosts returned. He did not have to wait very long.

“Did you check the windows and lock ‘em?” a man’s voice asked from the front of the house.

“I did, Dad,” a boy replied.

“We’ll hole up in here for a few more days and then try to make our way out to that farm,” the man continued. “That girl seemed pretty insistent that we not wait too long.”

“She was really weird, Dad.”

“Well, the weird ones are the ones who managed to survive the end of the world, Taylor. But, she’s more than likely right. The CDC is getting ready to shut down and evacuate and them and that pack of people there will be headed to the place she mentioned. We’re all going to need to get to know each other and work hard to prepare for the winter.”

“Do you think she’ll really teach me to ride horses and hunt the way she does?” the boy was asking. Josiah grinned at how eager the kid sounded. He couldn’t be much older than twelve if that based on the way he acted and the timbre of his voice. He might be the same age as the twins.

“Ssh!” the man hissed. “Thought I heard something from further in the house. Are you sure you locked all the windows, Tay?” There was a beat of silence. “I’ll go check it out. You stay here. Don’t argue with me, son! Just stay here!” Josiah stood up and took care to make certain he was not holding any weapons or doing anything that could be construed as threatening. He held his hands up and stood quietly until the man poked his head into the dining room and saw him. Instantly, the other man had his gun up. All the earlier gentleness Jo had overheard was gone in a flash. “Who are you? What do you want?” the man demanded angrily.

“I didn’t want to get caught outside overnight with those things,” Jo replied calmly. Years as a law officer taught him that being anything other than calm right now increased his chances of getting shot. “I jimmied open the window — it was locked, your boy did right there — and climbed inside. I was just heating up some stuff I brought with me and planning to sleep in here tonight. I’ll be gone first thing in the morning. You can hold my weapons if that will make you feel safer.”

“You really think I’m going to believe that? You some good ol’ boy looking to try to grab us up and sell us to one of them slave caravans? I’ve killed ten of your kind already, slaver, and I’ll sleep like a baby tonight if I have to make it eleven.”

“Slave caravans?” Josiah blanched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about there at all. I’m a sheriff from over in Athens. I was up at Quantico for training when all of this broke out. I just got back down here looking for my family. My wife left a note saying where they’d been camping out and that they were headed in to the CDC or would be going to a farm over near Elberton.”

“Quantico? I would have figured that they’d have everything under control up there. What about DC? Did you see it?”

“No. When I left Quantico, I decided to bypass everything I could and just get down here as fast as was humanly possible. I think it’s been three months that I was out of commission.”

“Out of commission? Were you bit?”

“No,” Jo sighed. “Look, I’m going to lower my hands. My arms are getting tired and it’s been a hell of a few weeks for me since I woke up among the dead.”

“I think you’d best tell me the whole story. Go on and put your hands down. We got some fresh food while we were out. We’ll feed you and see what’s what after that.”

Rob watched Josiah as they sat around the portable cooker eating. He no longer suspected that the sheriff was anything other than what he claimed to be. The man’s story was too incredible to be anything other than mostly true. That didn’t mean that Rob was going to let the white man have his weapons back just yet, though. However, Taylor seemed at ease around Josiah and Rob trusted Taylor’s childhood instincts over his own when it came to deciding if someone needed to be killed immediately.

“So, you were up on the military base when the Outbreak started?” Rob asked. Josiah nodded. “Wow. And you said that you got sick right after the first big breakout in New York?”

“That was three months ago, I think,” Josiah replied.

“No, that was six months ago,” Rob sighed. “You’ve been out a lot longer than you thought. This letter from your wife,” Rob continued, holding the note Josiah had let him read, “was written three, maybe four months ago. And the place they were staying at was completely overrun. We passed by there on our way down here from Cincinnati. Taylor and Mels wanted to stay at Stone Mountain but I knew that would be a bad idea so we went well around it and wound up over by Tribble Mill Park. I was thinking to keep heading east for the coast. Maybe get a boat and follow the coast south to see if there is some uninhabited island off the mainland where we could ride this thing out. But then Mels got bit and we wound up barely making it out of there. I put her down and buried her just off New Hope Road. We decided to head toward Between — I had some cousins there — but then we ran into Shy.”

“Shy?”

“She’s weird,” Taylor interjected, “nice but weird.”

“Taylor,” his father remonstrated. The boy hunched his shoulders and looked abashed. “We’d just got done burying Mels and were walking down the road when we heard a horse. There was this pretty white girl riding like she didn’t have a care in the world. She saw us, though, and pulled her bow out real quick. We managed to convince each other that we weren’t out for any trouble and that’s when she told us to head for the CDC. She stayed with us a few days and said if we weren’t going to go to the CDC, then we should make for Elberton where her brother would take us in if we were willing to work and help him keep his farm secure. I told her we wanted to make for Between first and she suggested we head down here through Lithonia. We wound up staying in this area for a while and saw her a few more times. She makes the trek back and forth between Elberton and the CDC every month. Sometimes she carries people back with her.”

“When did you see her last? Did she mention anything about my wife? Or any of the others staying at the CDC?” Josiah asked.

“She said that she was looking for a particular man who was last seen in Atlanta. We saw her this morning and she looked about done in. Said that this would probably be her last trip out this way and that if we were going to make for Elberton, we needed to get a move on. Her brother and nieces have been clearing some of the roads around there because the folks at the CDC aren’t going to hold out much longer. Shy said she’s got to find her fiancé this trip in or give up hope on him for a while.”

“Well, maybe I’ll run into her on my way in to the CDC,” Jo said softly. “Now, you mentioned slavers? What’s going on with that?”
“The world ended, sheriff,” Rob chuckled. “And apparently there’s a war in Atlanta at the very least. There’s also roving bands out looking for easy pickings. Shy killed one group of them and freed a bunch of their prisoners. They’re selling people to even worse groups. She said that there’s some kind of sex-slave ring setting up in Virginia and that all of the Klan assholes who are still around are rounding up any black folks they can find and enslaving them. So, you can see why I was a bit worried when I first saw you.” Rob gestured. His dusky skin was near ebony in color and his teeth and eyes were the only white parts of his body. “I have no desire to learn first-hand how life was for my ancestors in these parts.”

“That’s disgusting,” Jo growled. “And it’s only been six months and this shit has started already? That’s…”

“It’s the end of the world and everyone’s out to make a quick buck,” Rob shrugged. “Very few decent folks around anymore.”

“But there are still good people like Shy,” Taylor cut in.

“Yeah, Shy is a good woman. I hope she finds that fiancé of hers and that he realizes just what a good woman he has,” Rob nodded. “Every time we see her, she’s got a little something for us. That fish we just ate. Berries. Hardbread. News.”

“Well, I hope she can take care of herself until we can get to Elberton. Hopefully her brother will let all of us stay on there.”

“She said he would and that if there were too many for his farm, there are several abandoned farms nearby.”

“Good, good,” Jo sighed. “Well, let’s get some sleep. I’m planning to leave for the CDC in the morning. Maybe one of these cars will work.”

“You can hotwire a car?” Taylor said in awe. Jo nodded. “Can you teach us?”

“Sure,” Jo laughed. “That way you can get to Between and then over to Elberton before winter really sets in.”

The moon was full and the air was cold. Jo could see his breath whenever he exhaled. A red-headed man walked in front of him with anger gushing out of every pore. Jo didn’t know the man’s name — he’d never seen him before — but he knew that the man was dangerous. He knew that Caitlin was terrified of him. He knew that this man was going to cost them the closest thing they had to a home. He’d already cost them dearly enough before they’d left Atlanta. There was no way that Jo was going to let him destroy the only chance they all had to survive the winter.

The prison vanished and was replaced with a frenetic montage of different towns. Some were idyllic locales and some looked like an urban-industrial wasteland. Faces flashed in his eyes and then a voice — a woman’s voice — deep, rich, and with the lowland twang that spoke of rivers, patience, and wisdom. He could just barely see her face…

“Wake up!” he heard Rob calling to him. Josiah opened his eyes and wondered why Rob and Taylor looked so worried. “You were having one hell of a dream there, sheriff,” Rob said, looking relieved. “And you’re burning up. We’ve been trying to get you to swallow some of this for hours now but you wouldn’t come around enough to take it.”

“What is it?” Jo asked, surprised to hear his teeth chattering.

“Elderberry tea. We don’t have any Tylenol with us and we’ve got to get your fever down a bit.” Jo nodded and took a deep gulp of the bitter drink. “Get some more rest. Maybe we’ll stick around here for a few days until you’re better,” Rob suggested.
Jo closed his eyes and slept once more.

It was another three days before Josiah was well enough to travel even the short distance to the CDC. Rob and Taylor had both remained behind to look after him. On quaking legs, Jo managed to get up, dress, and, with help, get out of the house. It was still dark out but Rob felt it best for them to get moving before the sun was up. The black man hoped to run into the elusive Shy on their way and find out more about what was going on inside Atlanta. Jo hoped to find her as well — more information would be welcome.

“I’ll find a car for you two first,” Jo started to say as the three of them made their way down the street. Taylor walked in front with Jo’s machete in his hands in case any of the undead came near. “Then I can find one for myself. If all goes well, we’ll see each other very soon.”

“No need to find a car for us. We’re coming with you,” Rob said calmly.

“I thought you were going to Between?”

“Maybe we’ll go there after this is done. For now, my son and I are going to stick close to you and go to the CDC. Maybe there we can get some answers ourselves.”

“Then it’s settled. Off to the CDC we go.”