CHAPTER 44: JACKSON TOWNSHIP

The motorcycle’s engine hummed beneath me as we carved through the empty highways, leaving the skeletal remains of New York City far behind us. Hours had passed since we’d fled.

The air itself seemed to breathe easier out here. Gone was the thick, putrid stench of decay that had clung to every street corner in the city—that nauseating cocktail of rotting flesh and stagnant water that made your throat close up with every breath. Here, beyond the urban sprawl, the wind carried hints of pine and earth, reminding me that somewhere beneath all this chaos, the world was still trying to heal itself.

My hands had long since gone numb from gripping the handlebars, and my thighs burned from maintaining balance on the bike for so many consecutive hours. Even with my excellent stamina the constant vibration and tension were taking their toll.

Sleep. God, what I wouldn’t give for eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. But that luxury felt as distant as the life I’d left behind. Safety first, then rest. If such a thing as safety even existed anymore.

Miss Ivy’s brake lights flared ahead of me, and I eased off the throttle as she began to slow. Through the cracked windshield of her sedan, I could see her pointing toward something in the distance. A weathered green road sign emerged from the roadside weeds, its white letters stark against the fading afternoon sky.

JACKSON TOWNSHIPOcean CountyPopulation 54,842

Someone had spray-painted over the population count with a single word in blood-red letters: "DEAD."

I’d heard the name before, probably in some half-remembered conversation or news.

Jackson Township sprawled before us like a ghost town caught in amber. Where New York had been a vertical maze of steel and glass, this place spread horizontally across rolling hills dotted with strip malls and suburban developments. Ranch houses sat behind overgrown lawns, their windows dark and lifeless. A McDonald’s sign tilted at a crazy angle, half its letters missing. Traffic lights blinked red in meaningless patterns, their electronic persistence a futile monument to a world that no longer cared about right-of-way.

The infected were here, but not in the overwhelming numbers we’d grown accustomed to. I spotted them shambling between abandoned cars in a parking lot, maybe a dozen total.

The silence between their moans was what unnerved me most. In the city, there had always been noise—screams, breaking glass, the distant rumble of fires that never seemed to go out. Here, the quiet pressed against my eardrums like cotton. It was the kind of silence that made you hyperaware of your own heartbeat, your own breathing.

Miss Ivy navigated us deeper into the town’s commercial district. Sydney’s car followed close behind, and I brought up the rear, constantly checking my mirrors for any signs of pursuit. A few infected had taken notice of our little convoy and were shambling after us with that characteristic awkward gait, but they moved like actors in slow motion. We could outrun them easily enough.

The buildings here told a story of hasty evacuation and gradual decay. A hair salon’s front window had been shattered, leaving jagged teeth of glass around its frame. Mannequins in a clothing store had toppled over like dominoes, their plastic limbs twisted at unnatural angles. A bank’s ATM had been ripped from the wall, probably in those first desperate days when people still thought money might matter.

Miss Ivy’s car suddenly lurched to a stop in front of a large building with a faded blue and white sign: "FreshMart Grocery." The parking lot was a graveyard of shopping carts, some overturned, others filled with scattered debris that rustled in the wind. Several cars sat abandoned with their doors hanging open like broken wings.

I killed the motorcycle’s engine and swung my leg over, immediately feeling the relief of solid ground beneath my feet.

Christopher was already out of Sydney’s car, stretching his arms above his head and working out the kinks in his back. He gestured toward the grocery store with obvious excitement. "Look at this. It’s a market store, we should take as much provisions as we can here."

Through the store’s large front windows, I could see the aftermath of panic and desperation. Shelves had been overturned, their contents scattered across the floor in islands of chaos. But there were also areas that looked relatively untouched—perhaps sections that desperate survivors had overlooked in their haste, or items that had been deemed non-essential in those early days when people still believed rescue was coming.

"Then let’s hurry up," I said, pocketing the motorcycle key and doing a quick weapons check. My knife was secure at my hip, easily accessible but out of the way.

More importantly, I could see the infected inside the store. Three, maybe four of them, wandering aimlessly between the aisles like lost shoppers who’d forgotten what they’d come to buy. Their presence meant that anyone who’d tried to scavenge here before had either been driven off or... well, had become part of the problem.

Cindy climbed out of Sydney’s car as well. She looked tired—we all did but clearly wanted to go inside. "Who goes inside?"

"Shouldn’t we all go together?" Christopher said. "We all want something to take inside there, right? And it’s safer to stick together unless you want to stay inside a car?"

I watched as everyone exchanged glances, weighing the risks. Staying in the cars meant safety, but it also meant missing out on potentially crucial supplies. Going in meant facing the infected, but it also meant we could cover more ground and gather more provisions.

The decision was unanimous without anyone having to voice it. Car doors slammed shut one by one as everyone chose to face the danger rather than wait in safety.

"I’ll take point with Christopher," I said, moving toward the store’s entrance. The automatic doors had long since lost power and stood partially open, creating a gap just wide enough for a person to slip through sideways.

Jason caught up with me before I reached the entrance, his footsteps hesitant on the cracked asphalt.

"You should stay behind if you aren’t sure about fighting infected," I said without looking at him. It wasn’t meant as an insult, just a practical assessment. In a fight, hesitation could get everyone killed.

"Y...yes, but I wanted to thank you... and apologize," he said.

I stopped walking and turned to face him properly. "For what?"

Jason’s shoulders sagged, and he couldn’t meet my eyes. "The car. You forced me in, and you were alone in the parking lot. I thought you were dead for..." He trailed off, the words catching in his throat.

The split-second decision to shove Jason into the backseat while I stayed behind to buy them time. I’d known the risks, had calculated them in the space of a heartbeat.

"I was confident in my abilities to get out of it alive, and I knew you wouldn’t, so I chose the best solution," I said with a shrug. There was no point in false modesty or dramatic gestures. It had been a tactical decision, nothing more.

The car had only three seats In the back, and forcing myself inside would have wasted precious seconds—seconds that could have meant the difference between escape and death for everyone.

"Right... you are amazing, aren’t you?" Jason whispered, but there was pain in his voice rather than admiration. The weight of his own perceived inadequacy was written across his face in lines of self-loathing.

I didn’t offer empty comfort.

I knew a bit about how weak he felt...

I was like this before.

Christopher had reached the store entrance and was peering through the gap in the doors, his body tense with concentration. "There are four of them inside, Ryan," he called back to me in a low voice.

I nodded and brought my attention back to the task at hand. Four infected in a confined space with limited visibility—not ideal, but manageable if we were smart about it.

"We’ll need some backup, just in case," I said to the group.

Sydney stepped forward, her hand already moving to the knife at her belt. "I’ll help."

"I... I will as well," Rachel said, surprising me. She took a hesitant step forward, her own knife trembling slightly in her grip. It was one she’d grabbed from her kitchen before we’d fled her house—nothing fancy, just a standard paring knife, but sharp enough to do damage if used correctly.

"Are you sure?" I asked her.

"I... I am," she nodded, meeting my gaze with an intensity that caught me off guard. "P... please let me help you," she whispered.

There was vulnerability there, yes, but also a desperate need to prove herself—to me, to the group, maybe to herself most of all. Her green eyes held mine for a moment longer than necessary, and I found myself nodding before I’d fully processed the decision.

"Yeah... okay," I managed, thrown off balance by whatever had just passed between us.

What was that about? I pushed the thought aside. Now wasn’t the time for distractions.

We spent a few minutes studying the store’s layout through the windows, identifying our targets and planning our approach. Two of the infected were shambling together down the canned goods aisle, moving in that eerie synchronization they sometimes displayed. The other two were separated—one near the pharmacy counter at the back, another wandering through what had once been the produce section.

"Christopher and I will take the isolated ones," I decided. "Rachel and Sydney, you work together on the pair. The others, stay close to them for support."

Christopher nodded, already moving toward his entry point. We’d done this dance enough times to have developed an unspoken communication. He’d circle around to the pharmacy while I approached from the front, trapping our targets between us.

The automatic doors scraped against their tracks as we forced them wider, the sound echoing through the empty store like a dinner bell. Somewhere in the darkness between the aisles, I heard an answering moan—low, hungry, and entirely too close for comfort.

Time to get to work.

The moment we stepped through the doorway, the infected nearest to me turned with that jerky, unnatural movement they all shared. Its head snapped toward the sound of our entry, milky eyes focusing on me with predatory hunger. What had once been a middle-aged man in a grocery store uniform now shambled forward, his name tag still reading "MANAGER - STEVE" in cheerful blue letters that seemed obscenely bright against his gray, mottled skin.

I didn’t hesitate. The time for horror and revulsion had passed already, burned away by necessity and survival.

The infected reached for me with grasping fingers, black blood crusted under its fingernails. I pivoted on my heel and drove my boot into its chest, the impact sending it sprawling backward across the linoleum floor. Its skull cracked against the base of a checkout counter with a wet sound that echoed through the store.

Before it could attempt to rise, I was on it. My knees pinned its shoulders to the ground as I drew my knife.

"Sorry, Steve," I muttered, then brought the knife down with controlled force.

The blade punched through flesh and cartilage, severing the spinal cord at the base of the skull. Blood—thick and dark as motor oil—spurted across my hands and forearms. The infected’s body convulsed once, then went completely still. Not just motionless, but truly lifeless in a way that was almost peaceful after the constant, twitching animation it had displayed moments before.

I’d gotten faster at this, more efficient. More ruthless. The thought should have disturbed me more than it did, but fear and squeamishness were luxuries I couldn’t afford anymore.

From the pharmacy section came the rhythmic sound of Christopher dealing with his own target. I glanced over to see him wielding a broken chair leg like a club, bringing it down repeatedly on the skull of what had once been an elderly woman. Each impact made a sick, wet sound as bone gave way and brain matter splattered across the white pharmacy tiles.

"Come on, you bastard, just die already," Christopher grunted between swings.

"What a gentlman you are," Cindy said bursting out in laughter observing from behind.

"I know right!" Christopher laughed back ending the Infected.

I wiped my knife clean on the dead infected’s uniform and turned my attention to the other side of the store, where Sydney and Rachel were facing their own targets.

"Hold it, Rachel!" Sydney yelled as she grappled with her target—a teenage boy whose varsity football jacket was now torn and stained with fluids I didn’t want to identify. Sydney had managed to get behind him, one arm wrapped around his throat while her knife hand worked to find the right angle for a killing blow.

The infected thrashed in her grip, its movements becoming increasingly sluggish as Sydney’s blade found its mark. She drove the knife deep into the base of its skull, twisting slightly to ensure maximum damage to the brain stem. The creature’s struggles grew weaker, then stopped entirely.

"That’s how you do it," Sydney said, breathing hard as she let the body drop. "You’ve got to hit the right spot in the brain—the part that controls motor function. Cut that off from the rest of the body, and they drop like a stone."

I made a mental note of her technique. She was right about the brain being the key, but there seemed to be specific areas that were more effective than others. Either severe enough damage to shut down all brain function, or precise strikes that severed the connection between brain and body. Good information to have.

Rachel, meanwhile, was having a much harder time with her opponent.

The infected she faced had once been a woman about her own age, wearing yoga pants and a tank top that suggested she’d been caught during a morning workout routine. Now she pressed forward with relentless hunger, forcing Rachel to backpedal between the grocery aisles.

"Y...yes!" Rachel gasped, her hands planted firmly against the infected woman’s chest, using all her strength to keep those snapping teeth away from her throat. Her knife was raised and ready, but the infected’s constant movement made it nearly impossible to land a clean strike.

Rachel’s arm shook with effort as she tried to find an opening, the blade weaving uncertainly through the air. Her technique was all wrong—too much hesitation, too much concern for precision when what she needed was decisive action.

Elena started forward to help, but Rachel’s voice stopped her cold.

"N...no! Please let me do it..." The words came out strained, desperate, but there was steel underneath the fear.

Elena hesitated, clearly torn between helping and respecting Rachel’s wishes. Rebecca looked worried, her hands wringing together as she watched her sister struggling.

I kept my hand near my handgun, ready to intervene if things went south, but something in Rachel’s voice made me wait. She needed this—needed to prove to herself that she could do what was necessary to survive in this new world.

Rachel continued to thrust with her knife, most of her strikes hitting empty air as the infected twisted and writhed in her grip. Frustration built in her face, mixing with fear and determination in equal measure.

Then something changed.

"Get away from me!" Rachel snarled through gritted teeth, and there was a fury in her voice that I’d never heard before. She planted her feet more firmly and shoved back against the infected with every ounce of strength in her compact frame.

The result was spectacular and terrifying.

Craasshh!!

The infected woman went flying backward with such force that she seemed to hang in the air for a moment before slamming into the customer service counter. The impact shattered the cheap particleboard desk, sending papers and office supplies cascading to the floor in a shower of debris. The infected’s body left a spider web of cracks in the counter’s surface before sliding to the ground in a crumpled heap.

Everyone in the store froze, staring in shocked silence.

Rachel didn’t seem to notice our stunned expressions. Her eyes were locked on the fallen infected with laser focus, and there was something wild and primal in her gaze that sent a chill down my spine. Without hesitation, she rushed forward and straddled the dazed creature.

"I... I can do this," she whispered to herself, raising the knife with both hands like she was about to drive a stake into a vampire’s heart.

The first strike punched through the infected’s left eye socket with a wet, sucking sound. Rachel pulled the blade free and struck again, this time catching the temple. Blood and other fluids splattered across her face and clothes, but she didn’t stop.

Again and again she brought the knife down, each blow accompanied by a small grunt of effort. The infected’s skull cracked and split under the repeated impacts, brain matter leaking out to pool on the floor beneath its head. What had once been a face was rapidly becoming an unrecognizable mess of pulped tissue and bone fragments.

Finally, she stopped. Her chest heaved with exertion, sweat mixing with blood on her face as she stared down at her handiwork. The infected’s head looked like a shattered watermelon, its contents spread across a three-foot radius.

"Ha..." Rachel’s lips curved into a smile that was equal parts triumph and something much darker. She looked up at us, her green eyes bright happiness. "I... I did it..."

The silence that followed was quite deafening.

Everyone stood frozen, jaws hanging open in various degrees of shock.

Rachel was undeniably beautiful—delicate features, expressive eyes, a graceful way of moving that spoke of intelligence and sensitivity. But standing there covered in blood and brain matter, smiling happily over the brutalized corpse at her feet, she looked like something out of a nightmare.