Interviews, Profiles, and Reviews
July 15th 2010
3.
Friday, April 27th, 2007
That night he slept in the back of an abandoned gas station, behind a locked door with working electric lights blazing, which was the best security he’d had in a while. He sank deep and dreamed long, mostly of a woman holding a claw hammer. She swung and swung but connected with nothing.
In the morning he plugged in his cell phone and let it charge up. He found bottled water in the station’s coolers and some pork rinds to break his fast. The cash register popped open when he hit it with the flat of his hand and he found about seventy dollars inside. Cash still had its uses, so he pocketed the worn bills, but he was much more excited when he found a box in the stockroom full of potted meat. The stuff was purplish gray and tasted like cat food but it didn’t go bad in his pack and it would sustain him for the coming day’s hike.
Maybe his last. The thought startled him so much he stood there behind the counter looking up at a security camera for a good long minute. He could be in Olympia before dark if he pushed himself hard enough. After the weeks he’d put in walking from San Francisco, he’d almost forgotten that he had a real destination. That he was going somewhere.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. When he’d come up with this plan, such as it was, there had been so many unknowns. What would he do once he got to Seattle? How would he talk his way through the barricades and then… how would he stay alive in there? Lacking answers, he’d promised himself he could figure these things out when he arrived. That the important thing was to start, to proceed northward, to get there.
He’d walked for weeks in that vacuum of rationality, a hazy kind of walking hypnosis that ate up the hours and the miles. Now he wondered if he could handle the last leg.
Tim shook his head. He still had hours to go, before he had to really think about anything. He gathered up his phone from the counter and unplugged it from the charger. He considered briefly calling in the bus full of possibly infected people. There was a national hotline you were supposed to call, 1-800-FLU-HELP. He thought about the woman in the suit, however, and what he’d done to her life, and he just used the phone to check the weather report.
Eighty-one degrees and sunny. Just like the day before.
There was a big display of road atlases near the front of the store but he passed them by. He didn’t need maps anymore—Interstate Five would take him all the way home.
Outside again, hot already by ten in the morning, sweating. Thirsty. He moved his feet and his arms and kept on trucking. The road shot straight as an arrow over flat land, distant mountains on his right, Mount Rainier a constant companion, as white and dependable as the moon. The road ran through orchards and farmland, through belts of trees where pale orchids flashed in the darkness of lost forests. It passed through town after town, small little crossroads places and bigger, more important-sounding municipalities. Toledo, Napavine, Centralia. Maytown.
Funny. He’d been to Maytown, once, or at least through it. There was a veterinarian with an office near there, a nice guy with a mole that bisected one eyebrow. He’d vaccinated Tim’s dog against the parvovirus, back when Tim had a dog.
The sun went over his head and sank again toward the sea. And then…
And then.
The sound of the helicopter made him blink in a syncopated rhythm. It made his chest feel funny. It was huge, one of the big transport ones with counter-rotating rotors. It was dark against the sunset, almost black. It hung there in the air as if it were pinned there, like an insect mounted on a colorful board.
Below it the lights and windows of Olympia twinkled in the haze. The inlet burned like liquid fire. If he squinted, if he looked in just the right place, he could make out the new capitol building.
Olympia. It wasn’t home, not quite. It was the wrong end of Puget Sound. But it was as close as he was going to safely get. The rest of the journey, the unsafe part, would come later.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:55 am
first comment!!
great chapter dave!-
April 27th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Good chapter…..you can feel his loneliness and the fatique. Wonder about the woman in the suit…and the one who haunts his sleep with a claw hammer….are they one and the same?
Hmmmm…………..
April 27th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Im getting excited, I forgot how good it was reading Dave’s stuff…come on Dave…its…eh…Monday, so post more!
^^
April 27th, 2007 at 9:37 am
gah! *blinks* Sorry, that chapter ended a lot sooner than i thought it would.
Heee, very cool tho, piling up the unanswered questions already, i see. It feels a little like the start of Frostbite at the mo – person hiking in to destination for unknown reason… if we have to wait thirty chapters to get answers again i might have to start biting some people. 
Is awesome though, i’m getting into this one already!!
April 27th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Yes!
“He… kept on trucking.”!
Kept on trucking!
Yes!
I love this story!
April 27th, 2007 at 9:55 am
very nice
going to seattle for a reason
back into hell
quite interesting
have a good weekend all
April 27th, 2007 at 10:30 am
So a librarian walks into a zombie-infested town… Hmm, don’t think the punchline to this one is going to be all that funny. He’d better be either one bad ass mofo or have a _really_ good reason for going back to Seattle. Can’t wait to find out…
April 27th, 2007 at 10:45 am
First time in a while one of Dave’s stories has had me more confused about the situation than the characters. Still a great read though.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Pretty cool set up chapter. It feels good to get the friday cliffhangers again. I definately like this character; maybe it’s just the fact I get to see zombie-related action again, but he reminds me of a cowboy. I wish he had a mustache.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Another well written, scene setting chapter… quite a cliffhanger start on this one! Can’t wait till Monday!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Another well written chapter! Not that I was expecting anything else, but still.
Potted meat. There is something wrong with potted meat. Meat should not be purplish gray. Same thing with scrapple. It should not be greenish gray. If you don’t know what scrapple is, don’t look it up. Trust me.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
I know what scrapple is….. I know what potted meat is too……. Purple and green are not good color choices for eating…….. I agree with Nate…. don’t look it up….ignorance is truly bliss
April 27th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Great chapter….and now I have to wait clear til Monday…damn!!
April 27th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
So a zombie virus has broken out in the U.S. but cell phones and electricity still work and money still has some uses. Cool, it’s not the ned of the world yet. Though a question I have is, what was he before a librarian? If he is walking all the way from San Fran to Seattle and killing some zombies, he wasn’t always a librarian. What’s his past? Does the woman with the claw hammer have something to do with it?
April 27th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Hey all,
if you haven’t hit the DIGG button up on the right, and your digging the ook please do. If you’ve already DUGG, thanks! (You can only digg once)
A
April 27th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I always DIGG a good D. Wellington read.
HAH!
April 27th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Dave…who is the chick with the hammer?? A disgruntled zombie carpenter??? Oh well, I guess we will have to wait for Monday..same Zombie time, same Zombie channel.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Thanks, everyone.
I promise all will be revealed… soon.
Have a great weekend!
April 27th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
nice chapter, i’m reading from home today couldn’t wait till Monday because our days off is Friday and Saturday (this Sunday Public Holiday) so i couldn’t wait to read this nice chapter… also i’m wondering about his job as a librarian, could he do all that if he is a librarian??????????????????