{"id":562,"date":"2009-12-11T07:14:52","date_gmt":"2009-12-11T12:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=562"},"modified":"2018-10-30T19:46:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T23:46:37","slug":"judgment-day-part-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=562","title":{"rendered":"Judgment Day: Part 26"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 21st<\/em><\/p>\n

Walking in Darkness<\/em><\/p>\n

When faced with coincidence, a reasoning mind must be suspicious.\u00a0 Daryl\u2019s van shuddered on the road, wind whipping through the windows, the sound of metal on metal coming from somewhere beneath and behind him.\u00a0 Molly, still unconscious, moved with the van.\u00a0 She twisted right and left, her body in tune with the laboring engine.\u00a0 Ahead, Martin ran through the rain without headlights, storming down the middle of the country road without fear.\u00a0 Martin was a different breed.\u00a0 His idea of a good time usually involved blowing up toilet bowls at this stupid \u201chunting camp\u201d he had bought in West Virginia, the remains of a tiny mine town, abandoned in the early 80\u2019s and left to rot with a muddy government road and a set of abandoned railroad tracks providing the only access.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t a mountain man or anything of that sort, the property was purchased on a lark a couple of years ago.\u00a0 But that and a deeply cynical, anti-social attitude had always been worrying.\u00a0 Martin had enforced a sort of self-exile, working from home, traveling alone, and never receiving a personal phone call.\u00a0 He made Daryl look like a social butterfly.\u00a0 Hell, they all shared those thoughts, though.\u00a0 Maybe that was the common link.\u00a0 For the three of them to survive this disaster was too much of a coincidence for Daryl to accept.\u00a0 Yet, something about it did make sense.\u00a0 Emotionally, perhaps, the three of them were prepared for this.\u00a0 Daryl with his despair at the working world, Azizi the shut in working on his computer, and crazy Martin.<\/p>\n

He smiled and looked ahead at Martin\u2019s speeding pickup.\u00a0 He could tell just from the last few minutes that he fool was in his element, locking himself into a little paranoid survivalist world.\u00a0\u00a0 Martin was the dumpster diving, urban adventuring type with a shelf full of manuals on how to survive the end o the world.\u00a0 Too bad Daryl felt like he was on\u00a0 Breakdown Street.\u00a0 A nuke or a plague was one thing, but angry super-zombies with axes to grind was a bit too much to think about in one setting.\u00a0 There were wild emotions boiling inside him. Trying to recall the events at the gas station, only a mile behind him, was already difficult.\u00a0 The recent events falling behind a hazy, defensive barrier. A moment where his life was on the line and it felt unreal, like a dream, as he followed his friends along the country road to Sugarloaf Mountain.\u00a0 All the images of the past two days had been thrown into the realm of impossible visions.\u00a0\u00a0 How could society just come to a screeching halt in a matter of minutes?\u00a0 And how could those things rise from the ashes with such power and organization overnight?\u00a0 There was a feeling of design to the whole thing.\u00a0 From the beginning, each one of those things acted as if they had known him.\u00a0 They appeared to be sharing each other\u2019s thoughts, but Daryl was one survivor out of many.\u00a0 Why treat him with kid gloves just because he stood up against them in hour one?\u00a0 There must have been hundreds of people who gave them a rough time that night.<\/p>\n

Those monsters put more fear in his heart than the end of civilization.\u00a0 Humanity, law and government were gone in the blink of an eye and there wasn\u2019t an inch of regret in his heart.\u00a0 He realized, first, that that might be a problem.\u00a0 A total disregard for the old life.\u00a0 Right now, it was fine, because the material world of the dead could easily provide for a handful of living.\u00a0 He had his two closest friends and everything they needed would be growing on trees for a while.\u00a0 In the midst of millions, billions of corpses, it was a utopia.\u00a0 Especially out here in the country and, ultimately, Martin\u2019s West Virginia hideout.\u00a0 He had no doubt that that would be their final destination.<\/p>\n

Dealing with the dead \u2013 family and acquaintances lying out there somewhere \u2013 was no matter.\u00a0 Most of Daryl\u2019s family was gone.\u00a0 His narrow group of friends were primarily represented by the two jokers in the speeding, sliding, pickup in front of him.\u00a0 So that left the apocalypse with one problem to deal with: Those creatures.\u00a0 A problem larger than his mind could work around.\u00a0 These impossible, supernatural monsters weren\u2019t just stumbling through the darkness.\u00a0 They could think and strategize; they knew something more about the situation than he did.\u00a0\u00a0 Survival seemed a hopeless cause in the face of a superior enemy.\u00a0 What was this \u2018agreement\u2019?<\/p>\n

Those damned things meant business.\u00a0 But then they pulled their punches when they finally caught him at the gas station.\u00a0 What\u2019s the point of that?\u00a0 Block the road, ambush him, hunt him down and then yell at each other because of some \u2018agreement\u2019 forbidding them to kill him?<\/p>\n

Martin turned sharply at the T-intersection watched over by the old Comus Inn.\u00a0 The road led to Sugarloaf, and Daryl spared a glance at the dark Inn.\u00a0 He\u2019d been there several times while on day trips to the mountain.\u00a0 Great wine selection, and a wonderful Sunday brunch.\u00a0 Luxury lost, the service society faded into the March rain.<\/p>\n

It was afternoon, but the skies were still solidly grey.\u00a0 The rattling van was decidedly uncomfortable, cool air whipping in through the shattered windows, metal dragging behind them and the rain hitting his neck from somewhere above.\u00a0 He looked over at Molly, unconscious and bleeding, her shirt hanging open, her face pale, and he hoped the collective medical know-how of three wage slave yahoos on the impossible side of a fantastic adventure could piece her back together.<\/p>\n

The road ended at the Sugarloaf parking lot, which was empty save for a few service vehicles.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A one lane access road led up the mountain, vanishing into the forest.\u00a0 The terminus appeared at the far end of the parking lot and, even in a confused and miserable state, Daryl knew a bottleneck when he saw one.\u00a0 Azizi and Martin had picked a fortress with no escape.<\/p>\n

To further worsen the situation, they had toppled a tree across the terminus of the access road, blocking it from the parking lot.\u00a0 Though, if an enemy were to come up, they, too, would be trapped on the tiny road.\u00a0 Easily neutralized, if there were experienced people holding the mountain.\u00a0 If the creatures were together enough to coax human survivors into their fold and set up roadblocks, then it wouldn\u2019t be hard to overwhelm three wage slaves and a wounded girl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[404],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nachos-lousy-novel","tag-nachos-lousy-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}