A Place Outside The Wild Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Author's Note

  About The Author

  A PLACE OUTSIDE THE WILD

  DANIEL HUMPHREYS

  Copyright © 2016 Daniel Humphreys

  Twitter: @NerdKing52

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions therof in any form.

  ISBN: 1536979171

  ISBN-13: 978-1536979176

  Cover art by damonza.com

  First Printing September 2016

  For Tara, who got me writing again.

  Prologue

  Miles Matthews survived the apocalypse because of his third job.

  Unlike many of his fellow graduates, he’d been able to get a job after graduation. The position in the IT department of a local pharmaceutical company wasn’t a world-beater, but it was a start.

  The work wasn’t all that difficult and the pay was decent enough for a single guy living on the cheap. All things considered, post-college life started out well. But like all things that seem too good to be true, it wasn’t long until harsh reality reasserted itself.

  Once the recession hit, his full-time job with occasional overtime became a 28-hour a week proposition. To make things worse, his seven-hour shifts weren’t consecutive. His schedule called for him to work Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. “The beginning and end of the week are our busy times; we can’t sacrifice staff,” his boss proclaimed. If Mr. Novak had noticed his own low-hanging hypocritical softball, he didn’t let on. As far as Miles could tell, management hadn’t taken much of a hit, if any. It was a hard lesson to learn for someone just under two years out of college. In the business world, when times get tough, IT takes the hit. For some reason, they hadn’t covered that in any of his coursework.

  After a few months of attrition, Miles was the most tenured IT staffer. The others had found positions with other companies or moved on to different fields.

  In the end, Miles had Wednesdays and weekends to make up for his lost pay. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for the payment on the brand-new Jeep and ballooning student loan repayments. There went dating. On the bright side, the rent for his childhood bedroom was low. Miles wasn’t dumb, but even he could admit that foresight wasn’t always his strong suit. One quality that he did possess was that he was in no way, shape, or form a whiner.

  Things were tough now but this was just a situation to which he had to ‘react, adapt, and overcome’. Uncle Pete’s catch-phrase had been eye-roll worthy when he was younger. Now it made much more sense.

  Weekends weren’t a big problem. His uncle was more than happy to let him help out in his shop, and that was even less real work than his IT career. Stand around and shoot the breeze, drinking coffee and run the cash register once in a while? A piece of cake, but not quite enough to restore his budget to its former splendor.

  After some searching, he found a part-time gig running the front desk at a motel. Just off the Interstate, it was far enough away from the city to be cheap.

  Despite the limited hours, it was his most difficult job from a labor aspect. His job title could have been clerk, bellhop, alternate housekeeping, and general gofer. In those terms it wasn’t worth the pay, but jobs weren’t falling out of the sky.

  From a mental standpoint, it was boring. The weekends were the motel’s busiest days. The weekday nights that Miles covered were usually a wasteland. On the bright side, he was pretty much his own boss. He read a lot of books and perused job-seeking websites. The coffee was lousy compared to his other jobs, but it had enough caffeine in it to keep him awake.

  Lack of extracurricular — translation: ‘expensive’ — hobbies stunk. But he was making steady progress on digging himself out of the hole. It was an ascetic life to be sure, but Miles forced himself to take the long view.

  Wednesdays were usually dead and this one was no different. Only a quarter of the motel’s forty rooms had occupants, and no one had checked in since Miles had clocked in at noon. A few hours after that, he’d turned off the lobby television. All the news was talking about was the flu outbreak that had dragged much of the world into sick beds. When the same stories began repeating every hour, Miles figured that he didn’t need the noise. He had a painter’s mask and a jumbo bottle of hand sanitizer behind the counter in case anyone came in coughing. He wasn’t in any sort of mood to hear about the crisis for the next nine hours. The latest Larry Correia book was a more worthy investment of his time.

  He was a few pages into the second chapter when the two-way radio sitting on the desk chirped. A breathy, panicked voice shouted. “Miles! I need help in room 17!”

  Miles shot to his feet and threw his book on the desk. On his way out of the office, he snagged the radio and brought it close to his mouth. “On my way, Celia,” he responded as he trotted through the glass doors. The layout of the chain motel was simplicity itself. Rooms 1 through 20 were on the right side of the motel, 21 through 40 were on the left.

  Every few months, tweakers would pay cash for a room and use it to cook a batch of meth. It often didn’t work out for them. The chain restaurants on either side of the motel were popular cop hangouts, and they usually made a cursory check of the vehicles parked in the lot for warrants. Sometimes the maids happened upon them first. This was most common when the vagabond cooks neglected to hang their “Do Not Disturb” signs. On the bright side, the cooks were more bark than bite when confronted. Usually. The rest of the time they needed a little more reinforcement to sit down and wait for the police to arrive. The motel had a strict zero-tolerance policy regarding armed employees, but Miles already had two other jobs. He wasn’t about to trade his life to keep his third.

  Toward the rear of the motel, one of the housekeepers stood several feet back from the door to room 17. It was almost as though she were afraid to get any closer. He heard a high-pitched scream, but it wasn’t the housekeeper. She stood with an open jaw and a shocked look on her face. Miles doubted she could have screamed if she wanted to.

  As he came up to the room, he eased Celia to the side. She didn’t resist, but raised her arm and indicated the interior with a trembling finger.

  As Miles looked there was another shriek. Just inside the door, another housekeeper lay face down and spread-eagle on the floor. The source of the high-pitched screams was a balding, heavyset man. He stood on the threshold of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “What happened?” Miles said to Celia, though he kept his eyes on the man.

  After a moment, she regained her wits and replied, “I was in the next room and I heard a thud. I came out and Rita was lying on
the floor. I don’t know if he hit her or . . .”

  “I didn’t touch her!” the heavyset man said in a shrill voice. “I came out of the shower and she was standing there bleeding out of her damn eyes! She hit the floor and I screamed.” He edged back into the bathroom. “Oh God, she has it, doesn’t she?”

  “Her eyes?” Miles muttered. He began to move into the room, but there was a tremendous crash back in the direction of the office. Startled, he turned and looked in that direction. It was tough to make out any detail, but it seemed as though there had been a wreck on the state highway in front of the motel. For a moment all was silent, and then the screaming started, from the road this time. After a beat, another scream sounded, from a different direction.

  “What the . . .” Miles began, but a much closer scream cut him off. He spun back around.

  Celia was bent over Rita, and she was trying to pull the younger women up for some reason. No — Miles blinked and tried to reconcile what he was seeing. No, Celia was trying to pull away. Rita had her teeth clamped on the older woman’s fleshy forearm. Blood streamed down the bottom of Rita’s face and joined the twin tracks from her tear ducts.

  The most frightening thing of all wasn’t the gore. It was the slate-gray nothing that stared at Miles from what had once been a pair of rather beautiful blue eyes.

  “Holy sh. . .” Miles started. With a final, Herculean effort, Celia tore her arm away. Flesh stretched and then ripped with a sound like damp cloth tearing. Celia screamed again. The blood that had been streaming turned into a torrent as one of the arteries in her forearm opened to the air. The older woman staggered back and fell. Before Miles knew it, he backed away. The man in the towel screamed again, retreated all the way into the bathroom, and slammed the door.

  Thanks for the help, buddy.

  Later, the thing that would most stand out to Miles was just how surreal it had felt. He would remember blurs of blood, the screams, and the dead gray eyes. He would never remember drawing his concealed pistol.

  The Kahr 9mm was small enough to make the slightest bulge under his polo shirt, and he’d never fired it anywhere but the range. He fired three times now, without a thought. The ingrained instincts of hard-earned muscle memory saved his life.

  In the time it took him to draw his pistol, Rita had staggered to her feet and closed within arms-length of Miles. The first two hollow points went center mass and were ineffective. Later, Miles would reflect on the irony of that. He’d seen enough horror movies to know the game, but here and now he was still on a learning curve. This course was pass-fail, and to fail meant death.

  The pistol tracked upward with the recoil of his first shots. As the bridge of the Rita-thing’s nose crossed his sight picture, he fired again. The gray eyes changed hue and the body stiffened and fell to the ground in mid-step. Miles forced himself to look away from the shattered ruin of Rita’s head as he stepped toward Celia. She groaned and turned her head to look at him. Miles met her look, then recoiled. There was still a tinge of warm brown to her eyes but as he watched hints of steel gray crept into the surrounding white. Blood welled at the corners of her eyes and began to trickle down plump cheeks. “Run,” she whispered.

  For a moment, Miles hesitated. He began to raise the pistol, then hesitated. Defending himself was one thing, but this would be cold-blooded murder — wouldn’t it? He shook his head with a start and moved to obey Celia’s last command. Miles ran, digging for his car keys.

  As he ran, the crescendo of chaos returned to his ears — more screaming, from the highway. The squealing of tires. The impact of another wreck. Then, from the south, the rapid pop-pop-pop of gunfire. After a moment, more screams sounded. If anything the sound of gunfire escalated. “Police?” Miles wondered aloud. The sounds could have originated from the Waffle House in that direction.

  He reached his Jeep. The welcoming flash of the lights as he thumbed the unlock button on the fob prompted a shout of elation. He yanked the driver’s door open and jumped inside. Without thinking, he thumbed the door locks and locked himself in. For a moment, he juggled the pistol in his right hand and the keys in his left. Finally, he dropped the pistol on the passenger seat, transferred the keys to his other hand, and cranked the engine. The self-doubting voice in the back of Miles’ head whispered, “It won’t start.” The reassuring roar of the Jeep’s V6 shut that self-doubt down.

  Before he put the Rubicon in gear, a figure leaped in front of it and slammed both hands down on the hood. Miles flinched and grabbed for the Kahr. As he leveled it at the figure through the windshield, the figure backed up and stuck both hands toward him. “Wait!” the figure shouted, and Miles blinked. The man was disheveled, soaked in blood, and wild-eyed, but Miles recognized him.

  Derek Garcia and Miles Matthews had run in different circles in school. Despite that, it was a small enough school — and town — that they knew of each other. They weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren’t enemies, either.

  Derek’s black Lewisville PD uniform was much the worse for wear. A spray of blood had washed across Derek’s chest and stained his name tag and badge. The right sleeve of his shirt had separated at the shoulder and revealed the T-shirt underneath. Miles hesitated. He didn’t lower the Kahr. “Is it yours?” he yelled.

  The other man looked puzzled for a moment, but then he looked down and saw the blood on his chest. He grimaced and shook his head.

  “Are you bit?” Miles shouted, his tone growing more frantic. This time, Derek shook his head without hesitation.

  “No!” the other man shouted. He turned to look over his shoulder. “For God’s sake man, let me in the damn truck!”

  Miles swallowed and nodded. He thumbed the locks again, and Derek slid around to the passenger side and climbed up in the Jeep. When he closed the door Miles locked it again.

  “Derek, what the hell is going on?” Miles demanded. The other man stared at him. He saw something of the same shock in the police officer’s eyes that he’d seen in Celia’s. Before Rita. Before . . . Miles shook away the memories. He didn’t have time for them now. He popped open the center storage bin and pulled out the spare magazine for his pistol. The small size came at a disadvantage when it came to ammunition capacity. The Kahr only held seven rounds if you kept one in the chamber. As Derek spoke, he exchanged the partial magazine for the full and tucked the partial away.

  “Drive,” Derek demanded, running shaking hands through his hair. “Just drive.”

  Miles nodded.

  Miles drove.

  //BEGIN INTERCEPT TRANSCRIPT

  30-OCT-2019 0255EST

  CALCULATED GPS COORDINATES [REDACTED - SI/TK]

  TYPE OF INTERCEPT: HAM

  INTERCEPT FREQ: [REDACTED – SI/TK]

  SUBJECT CODE NAME: “UNCLE PETE” (FILE 002-2134)

  CQ, CQ, CQ, this is KG3BBX. Anybody out there, over? [LONG SILENCE] All right, kiddies. Pull up a chair and listen. It’s story time. Of course, if you’re hearing this you probably know it already, but back off. It’s my dime. You can talk next, if you’re out there.

  The Brazilian flu went through civilization like a tidal wave. We went from the first ‘oh by the way’ reports on the nightly news to the Emergency Broadcast System going off while I was trying to drink my way through the baseball playoffs in twenty-six days. Mankind went from zero to Mad Max in just shy of a freaking month. I used to joke that the world would end when the Cubs won the Series, but the end of the world didn’t even extend me that small courtesy. Ah well. They would have lost anyway. [LAUGHS]

  It’s a no-brainer why it spread so fast – international flights, world travelers who couldn’t be bothered to take a sick day, yadda yadda yadda. The flu took a ride on every plane, train, and automobile — great flick, by the way — that radiated from those travel hubs and spread from there. If you didn’t catch the first wave of the sniffles, you were lucky. Maybe about 10 percent seemed to have a natural immunity. Include me in that. All things considered, I’d
rather have won the Power Ball. [LAUGHS] Initial symptoms were mild, which they say contributed to the lack of concern about it. After about 72 hours, though . . . I’m not a disease guy, I just know what I’ve seen in movies and heard on the news, but at that point the virus spread to the brain, causing seizures, comas, and in some extremely rare cases death. They say the death part was about 10 percent of the population. It’s hard to even think about it. Go to a party with a couple dozen people, if you can find them, and imagine two or three of them just keeling over dead, boom. In a lot of ways I think they were the lucky ones. But, hell, I’m just a crazy old man talking to himself in the depths of the night. You know all this already, or you should. Feel free to interrupt me if you have something better to talk about. [LONG SILENCE]

  So the coma patients pretty much overwhelmed the medical system, there were hardly enough beds to go around. In the rural areas it wasn’t too bad; folks had families, and doctors could usually be persuaded to make an informal visit. The cities were bad then. I shudder to even think about what they’re like now. So this went on for a while until one day, like flipping a switch, they woke up. Sort of; I don’t know if you can really call them alive, for God’s sake. I mean, some of the folks around here decided to get all scientific and stuff, and they tell me they couldn’t find a pulse or anything. They’re morons for even trying, you ask me.

  So they woke up. And they were [STRONG EMPHASIS] hungry [/EMPHASIS]. You’d think that might have been something the folks in Asia might have mentioned, given that they ran into it a good two weeks before the rest of the world, but I guess there was just too much damn static to pick up the real, solid information. By the time the first coma patients in the old US of A started waking up, it was too late. I don’t know if Uncle Sammy was locking down the information for our ‘protection’, but we’ve got a few former . . . hospital employees in our group. Not trying to be cagey, but who the hell knows who’s listening to this. Anyway, the medical people thought the stories were a bunch of crap. The worst part, of course, wasn’t the coma patients — it was the people who never even realized they were sick until the virus reached some sort of, I don’t know, critical mass. Right around the time the coma patients were getting up for dinner, people all over the world were dropping dead where they stood — then standing right up a few minutes later. By the time it hit here, small town USA, it was too late. Of course, we had enough business travelers among us that our outbreak kicked off the same time as places like Denver, Boston, Louisville, and Minneapolis. I had a lot of ham buddies out there. Can’t reach a one of them now — anybody listening out there? [LONG PAUSE, STATIC ON TRANSMISSION]