The Gristle & Bone Series (Book 1): The Flayed & The Dying

by Roach, Aaron

  Bishop’s pickup slowed to a stop next to a large construction truck with an open flatbed. Built into the front of the bed, towards the cab, was a crane with control levers that stuck out of a panel on the side.

  Gabe exited the truck and motioned to the others to do the same. They gathered around him at the flatbed. “When Bishop and I came through here while stalking that deer, we found this beauty.” He patted the hood of the massive truck affectionately. “Look, we can use that,” he pointed up at the hook that dangled from the truck’s attached crane, “to lift a half dozen or so of those.” He then pointed at the concrete dividers that split the highway in two. “We load them up onto this baby and get them back home. We can use the dividers to start fortifying the entrance to the cave.”

  Gabe walked over to speak to Huck, seated in the passenger’s seat next to Andy. “What do you think, Huck? Think you can operate this thing?”

  Huck looked up at the truck and squinted, “Let me take a closer look. Do you mind?”

  “Sure.” Gabe reached into the back to pull out Huck’s folded wheelchair and walked it over to him. Huck opened his door and dropped into the chair before rolling over to the control panel with all the levers. He turned back to Gabe with a smile on his face. “I think I can figure it out.”

  “Good,” replied Gabe, as he walked around to the driver’s side door and reached inside. “Because whoever left it here also left the keys.” He held the keys up and jangled them happily.

  “What do you want the rest of us to do, hon?” asked Molly.

  “See that armored truck over there? The one with all the cash spilling out the back? Well, forget the cash. What we need is its rear doors. The one on the right, specifically. See if you can get it off its hinges. And the rest of you?” he said, turning to the group. “Start checking the other vehicles for supplies. Look for anything that might be useful, especially rain gear. Batteries, coolers, chains, medical supplies, flashlights, anything. There was an RV we passed back there which might have a generator and keep an eye out for jerry cans. If you can’t find jerry cans, any plastic container will do. We’ll siphon fuel from the vehicles and bring back as much as we can.

  “Now, when we’re done, we’ll have to drive this baby back,” he patted the hood of the crane-truck again. “And the pickups too, but there’s no reason why we can’t bring back more vehicles. Check the cars. Some of them will still have keys in the ignition. Keep an eye out for anything with all-wheel drive that will be able to make it up the slope. This behemoth won’t be able to, so we’ll drive it as far as we can, then load the barriers one at a time into the pickups. We’ll have to make several trips up and down the mountain to get everything up to the cave, but if we work fast, we should have all this done by the end of the day. Also, this thing is going to be loud, and it might attract unwelcome visitors. Keep an eye out for the dead and if you see anything, find the nearest vehicle and honk the horn three times to alert the rest of us. If you hear a horn, duck for cover and don’t come out until you’re sure the bastards have gone.”

  As the others set about to their various tasks, Molly came up to Gabe with a small smile playing on her face. “What?” Gabe asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said. “It’s just seeing you like this…”

  “Seeing me like what?”

  Molly shrugged, but the smile didn’t leave her face. “You’re enjoying yourself, Gabe. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you happy.”

  Gabe’s looked down at his feet. “When my mind’s busy, when it’s planning, it’s easier not to think about him.”

  “I know, baby,” she said, standing up on her toes to kiss him. “I know.”

  Next to them, the crane-truck roared to life and, with Huck at the controls, the large hook moved overhead toward the concrete dividers separating the lanes of the road.

  “Get those chains, Gabe,” Huck said loudly over the noise. “Let’s get this party started.”

  -63-

  Kat was frantic. She had spent the whole day walking up and down the length of the camp searching for Sophia, but she was nowhere she should have been; not at school, not the housing unit, nor at any of the mess halls.

  Where was she?

  And then there was the fact that another body had been found that morning. This one she’d seen for herself. She’d just dropped Sophia off at the schoolhouse when she came upon a large crowd gathered over by the latrines. She was starting to join in with the crowd, to see what all the commotion was about, when a man rushed by her. “Excuse me,” the man had said, pushing by her into the throng. “I need to get through.” The man disappeared and then Kat heard his broken cries a few moments later. Only with the arrival of soldiers did the onlookers begin to disperse and Kat was able to see what the commotion had been about. It was a body of a woman, bruised and mutilated, with dark curly hair. She could only assume the mourning, crying man who held her in his arms was her husband.

  Where the hell is Sophia?

  Kat continued her search until she saw a truck outside the camp’s perimeter rumbling along the fenceline towards the gated access of the military section. She jogged, keeping up with the truck until it turned into the gate and she could go no farther. She watched anxiously as it came to a stop and Ward hopped out of the driver’s seat.

  “Ward!” Kat shouted through the fence that separated them. “Sophia’s missing! I can’t find her anywhere!”

  Ward looked up, shaking his head. “We got her, Kat.” He opened the rear passenger door to reveal Sophia sitting there, shamefaced. “We found her out in the woods.”

  Sophia stepped out of the truck and looked up at Kat apologetically.

  “You come here right now!” Kat demanded through the fence. “Do you have any idea…” Before she could finish, a young woman stepped out of the truck behind Sophia, so horribly battered that Kat’s words caught in her throat. A soldier’s jacket was draped over her shoulders, but her legs, bruised and purple, were bare and exposed to the wind. Behind them, Litz exited the vehicle and walked around the truck to reach into the back. His hand came back carrying a length of wood with several dead creatures hanging from it like some morbid Christmas ornament. Ward gently guided the disheveled girl toward one of the nearby buildings, while Litz and Sophia came over to speak to Kat.

  “Where have you been?” Kat demanded from Sophia as they approached.

  “I went through the fence,” Sophia answered without looking up at her.

  “Went through the fence, how? Why?”

  “I went hunting. To bring us back some food,” she said softly.

  Next to her, Litz flashed a smile and held up the carcass-adorned shaft of wood, “She didn’t do a bad job, actually, considering she was only armed with a slingshot.”

  “Don’t encourage her, Litz.” Kat snapped. “You had me worried something bad happened to you, Soph!”

  “Hey now, she didn’t just go hunting,” Litz interrupted diplomatically. “Sophia here discovered the killer’s lair. That’s where we found her, helping Mary over there,” he jerked his thumb back to the building where Ward had taken the disheveled girl. “We were on patrol when we came upon Sophia rescuing Mary from this weird den the killer had built in the forest.”

  Sophia’s mouth dropped open and she looked wide-eyed up at Litz. He returned the look with a wink. Kat saw the exchange and knew the story wasn’t the whole truth but decided not to press the issue further. Sophia was safe, and that was all that mattered. She looked Sophia up and down to make sure the girl was indeed alright. Save for a few scratches, she didn’t seem to have any injuries. At the sight of her feet, though, Kat sighed.

  “Where is your shoe, Soph?”

  -64-

  Gabe stood outside the newly fortified cave, his chest filling with pride for their small community and the work they had done.

  Their raid on the highway had been bountiful, yielding guns, fuel, and other materials that had allowed them to turn their underground home into a veritab
le fortress. They had plenty of water, clothes to last them through the winter, and they’d even rigged lighting throughout the inside of the cave using a generator and car batteries. The concrete highway dividers they had appropriated were placed strategically at the cave’s mouth so that anyone, dead or alive, intent on entering the mountain was funneled through a zigzag pattern where they would be vulnerable to a hail of gunfire from above. If attackers somehow made it alive through the barriers to the entrance, they would encounter the three-inch thick steel door they had pilfered from the armored truck and mounted into the rock.

  Above the mouth of the cave, further up the mountain, Gabe had used his knowledge of hunting blinds to oversee the construction of fifteen-foot tall watchtowers, built from felled trees. There were four of them, facing outward so that the watchmen had a 360-degree view of the mountain and for several miles beyond.

  Their community also now had ten trucks. Two, they kept up on the mountain, just outside the cave in case of emergencies. The other eight were spread out across the base of the mountain where his people worked. They were armed with saws and axes, chopping down trees so nothing could sneak up on them through the surrounding forests. Even now, he could hear the rattle of chains and the roar of engines as trucks dragged logs away from the brush, to be used for building more fortifications.

  Weeeet, weeeet, weeeet! Weeeet, weeeet, weeeet!

  The blast of whistles was barely audible across the distance, but Gabe heard it and sprinted towards the noise on the western side of the mountain. He raised binoculars to see something he’d grown accustomed to over the past few days – the dead, coming out of the woods at the bottom of the slope, to attack his people. The workers had already sprung to action, implementing the safety measures put into place for such occasions.

  They had retreated into two trucks, which were now charging up the slope, its passengers firing from the bed at a pack of two dozen skeletals snapping at the tires. The trucks moved quickly up the hill, skidding and weaving through stumps of recently felled trees. Farther behind the skeletals, a swarm of a hundred or so groaners charged behind their masters in that stiff, ambling jog they had. It was the largest swarm of dead things they had seen since establishing the emergency procedures and for a moment Gabe was worried, until he saw the trucks coming out of the north and southern faces of the mountain, charging into the groaners’ flanks as planned. Even from up on the mountain, Gabe could hear the meaty impacts as the trucks slammed into the ambling bodies, running them down. He was glad the groaners couldn’t scream as they died by the handful beneath the tires.

  Next to Gabe, others came to watch the battle below. In their hands, they held weapons they had pilfered from abandoned police and military vehicles on the highway. Without taking his eyes off the rally of trucks, Gabe spoke loudly, pointing at the range markers he’d placed halfway up the mountain. “When they reach the markers, let loose.”

  Near the bottom, there were not many groaners left standing, and those that were, were quickly being run down. The trucks with the pursuing skeletals were approaching the range markers, and Gabe heard his comrades next to him loading weapons and moving to form a firing line. However, as the trucks rolled over the markers, the skeletals came to a dead stop, snapping their teeth and coming up on two feet to beat their ribs.

  “What the hell?” Gabe heard Bishop say next to him.

  Suddenly, down in the woods, a roar erupted loud enough to shake the birds from the trees and send them skittering into the sky. A heartbeat later, a massive skeletal came bursting from the treeline, charging like a gorilla up the slope to take on the trucks running down the last of the groaners. It was then that Gabe saw the monster’s massive horns.

  It was Ibex-Face, the pack leader, and it had doubled in size since he and Bishop had seen it last. As it announced itself, the skeletals at the range markers pivoted and ran down the hill to join their leader, converging on the trucks below.

  “No!” Gabe shouted, running down the slope and waving his arms. “Get out of there!”

  But it was too late. Ibex-Face had closed the distance in two giant leaps. It launched itself onto the nearest vehicle, stabbing down through the windshield and yanking the driver out through the glass. The creature held up his victim so the watchers on the hill could see. It was Andy, pierced through the collar by the thing’s jagged forearm. He dangled from the limb like a limp flag. Ibex-Face raised the skewered Andy up to its mouth and ripped into his neck with its teeth. Andy’s passengers scattered from the vehicle, only to be immediately set upon by the smaller skeletals who had joined the fray. They were tackled to the ground and Gabe listened as their screams carried up the slope. As the creatures feasted, the other vehicles made their escape.

  Ibex-Face tossed the body of Andy onto the ground before turning its eyeless gaze to the watchers. Despite the distance, Gabe could have sworn the creature was staring directly at him. Then, with a snort, the thing turned its back on the watchers to walk calmly into the forest, followed by its skeletal underlings.

  -65-

  “She never got a name, or a good look at him,” Ward said to Kat as they walked along the camp’s perimeter. “After he’d killed the other girl, the killer told her he’d be back the following night to do her, so we went back to the site to wait for him. But he didn’t show and hasn’t since. I don’t know how, but he must have figured out we were there. Here, this is it.”

  They stopped at the spot where Sophia had gone through the fence, where they also suspected the killer had been bringing his victims into the woods. The cut was patched now, rebound with new wire.

  “I can’t believe she went out there,” Kat said while shaking her head in disbelief and looking out into the forest beyond.

  “Yeah well, it’s probably safer out there than in here. Other than those groaners we found at the killer’s den, there hasn’t been a sighting of the dead in days. I still don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But here, on this side of the fence, there’s a killer running loose and fights breaking out every day. Did you know this morning I had to break up a fistfight between two seniors over a stolen egg? An egg! And then Litz and a few of the other guys had to stop a near riot over at the latrines because there wasn’t enough toilet paper.”

  When he’d finished, Kat looked at him, her eyes suspicious. “Litz never mentioned groaners being at the killer’s den when they found Sophia.”

  Ward raised his hands, feigning ignorance. “You’ll have to ask Litz or Sophia about that. Not my place to tell,” he said flashing a smile.

  Kat didn’t press the issue and they walked in silence for a little bit. Kat could tell Ward had something on his mind, something he wanted to tell her. She said nothing and let him find his moment and his words.

  “Kat, you and Sophia have been saving supplies, right? For when the shit hits the fan?” he asked eventually.

  “Yeah, but we don’t have much,” she said. “Why?”

  Ward turned to her, his eyes serious. “This infection, or whatever the hell it is, is turning into a global pandemic. It’s not just where the rain falls here, but everywhere. There are reports of skeletals in Europe, Japan, South America, Africa – nowhere is safe. Command doesn’t have the resources or the manpower to maintain the safety zones, and they’ve all but given up on the cities. Did you know they bombed Boston? And New York? Fucking nuked them. Those places are nothing but rubble and ash now, and everywhere between here and the Frontier is quickly becoming a warzone.”

  Though Kat had had her suspicious about the world outside the camp, it was a blow to hear them confirmed. Still, she clung to the idea that it wasn’t all bad. “I... I thought you said no one’s seen the dead in almost a week?” she asked.

  “Around here, no. But look where we are, Kat. We’re in the middle of nowhere out here. The closest populated area is a tiny town fifteen miles away and we already learned those people can take care of themselves. But outside of here? In the suburbs, and cities? People
are dying, Kat.”

  Kat nodded. It made sense. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

  Ward sighed and looked back towards the section of the camp where he and the rest of the soldiers were housed. “They are pulling us out of here by the end of the week. The only reason we’re not leaving sooner is the forecast of rain over the next couple of days.”

  “Pulling out? To where?”

  Ward looked at the ground and kicked at the grass, “Command is planning to reconsolidate its ground forces in Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Not much rain in the southwest, right? From there, I guess we try and establish a base of operations to begin the push for retaking the country.”

  “Wait,” Kat said, picking up on his unspoken words. “You’re abandoning us?”

  Ward didn’t answer, so she continued, her voice angry, “So, what? Command is just going to leave us here to die? They’re the reason we were brought here in the first place, Ward! They’re the ones who said we couldn’t leave, and now that’s their plan? To just leave?”

  “No, I’m not abandoning you,” Ward said quietly, after she had said her piece. “I don’t intend to go with them.” His voice was sad, and she could tell there was some inner turmoil there that she did not understand. He continued, “I’m not sure about Litz. I’ll have to talk to him about coming with us. But when the time comes, you and Sophia won’t be left alone. Just don’t say anything, to anyone. If the rest of the civilian population knew they were about to be left behind, there would be no way to stop the rioting or the looting.”

  Kat gave him a hard look but nodded. “I won’t say anything, but I don’t like it.”

  “I know, but it’s the safest option we have right now. In the meantime, keep preparing your bug-out kit.” With that, he turned his back on her and began making his way towards the soldiers’ barracks in the distance.