by Brown, TW
“Bring the prisoner forward,” Joel announced once Debra filed out. She gave him a slight nod, her lips hinting at a smile that once again threatened to give Joel chills to his core.
Will grabbed the man from where he’d been kneeling and brought him to Joel where he forced him back to his knees again. Joel looked into the man’s eyes and saw fear. But there was something else. He didn’t have long to wait to find out what that might be.
“Are you all going to allow this?” Patrick croaked. “This is not what we are. Building a new life doesn’t mean we have to lose our humanity. And how can one person set the rules and change them arbitrarily? This is doomed to end poorly.”
“One person setting the rules will ensure we have order,” Joel said in a voice almost too soft to hear. “These are the ways and thoughts that brought us to where we are now. If you give everyone a say, then the center is pulled apart in every direction. To achieve what is best for our chance at an actual life in this disaster, there must be one hand on the rudder. I am here to guide and bring us to the other side.”
“And so anybody who disagrees with you is murdered? That is a dictatorship. We have seen how that plays out through history,” Patrick spat.
Joel felt a kernel of sadness grow in his heart. He respected the man kneeling before him. He was strong. Only somebody with real courage could face certain death and not be reduced to tears and begging.
“What is your name again?” For some reason, that was important to Joel in the moment.
“Patrick Sweeny.”
“Very well.” Joel nodded to Debra and Will who stepped up and grabbed the man in the crook of each elbow. “Patrick Sweeny, you have been found guilty of sedition. Your actions endanger the community, and therefore, you must be removed.”
Joel looked around at his gathered community. He saw what he expected in the various gazes he locked onto. Some were curious, others afraid, a few still in shock and visibly numb. But there were a few that stood out. He knew well what the feverish look of the devoted looked like. These would be the ones he would pull in closer. They would keep his rules and not hesitate to move against any who did not conform.
“Do you have anything else to say before I pass sentence?” Joel looked back down at the man and now saw the hint of desperation creep across his face like a cloud.
“You’re mad. This will not end well…not for you…not for anybody mad enough to follow you,” the man replied, his voice shaking just a bit now as the inevitability of an unknown but terrible fate loomed.
“Then, Patrick Sweeny, for your crimes…I sentence you to the darkness.”
With that, Joel gave a nod. Will and Debra jerked the man to his feet and dragged him to the open doorway. In a flash, Will produced a knife and sliced the zip cuffs right before shoving Patrick through the open doorway and down the metal stairs.
Debra pulled the gate shut and locked it before the man could recover. “You will find water at the bottom.” With those words, she stepped back and slammed the metal door shut with an ominous clang, instantly silencing the man’s first real scream.
Joel turned back to the crowd gathered around. “There will be order. Each of you was told when you first joined us that there would only be one person in charge. You were asked if you could accept that. Each of you said that you could. Make no mistake…this is not a democracy. If you stay here, it is under my protection, but it is also under my rules. I want each of you to take part in a scavenger run in the next week. I want you to see what is out there. I want you to see for yourselves what chaos and anarchy can bring. I want you to experience with your own eyes the lawlessness that now claims this world and understand that this was what seethed under the surface of our society with its bleeding heart sympathy for people who refused to care for themselves and instead burdened society with their care. A criminal justice system that failed long ago and housed the worst of society in conditions far better than what some of our own people who worked hard and struggled daily to put a meal on the table could hope for.”
As he spoke, Joel paced back and forth with the metal door behind him as a visible reminder of what awaited any who would think to rebel or disobey. If his dream of carving out not just the chance of survival, but a place where life could flourish were to have any chance at success, then he needed absolute obedience.
“When you go to your quarters, we have power, we have hot meals and showers. We are not merely surviving…we are alive. Outside this bubble, the world is dark. Death is now the norm. People are devolving into creatures worse than the walking dead. Make no mistake…this was our ultimate destiny. We lived in a world where every person cared only for themselves and their own tiny circle. Courtesy, decency, and personal accountability were relics. What I offer here is a world where you will all be part of something greater than yourselves. We will rebuild a beacon that will shine against that darkness. But for that to become a reality…there must be order. Are you with me?”
Joel looked around. There were a lot of blank expressions. Not quite the rousing cheer he’d expected. Perhaps they believed the question was rhetorical.
“I ask again…are you with me?”
It started with individual shouts of “Aye!” or “Yes!” and then grew into cheers and applause. This was his time to strike.
“We will make a kingdom here that will be the envy of the world. We will return to the ways that made this country great!” The cheers grew louder and some of those he’d seen with a devoted fervor were now beginning to actually weep. “I need each of you to commit to this with all your heart and soul. I need you to accept that I will always put the community’s strength and health ahead of everything else. I will build an empire where each of you will reap the rewards, but you must be willing to work hard for it. The days of having things handed to you are gone. You must earn your place…daily. What you did yesterday will not matter. It will always be about what you do today…what you do in the moment.”
He let the cheers grow. He brought his hands up and encouraged the applause to continue for a few minutes. He also took that time to scan for any who might still be holding back. Those would be the ones to watch. At last, he signaled the crowd to quiet down.
“Know that I will see to it that we have a paradise here in the midst of the hell that the world has become.” His voice grew solemn, and he smiled inwardly when he saw his people lean forward in order to hear. They craved his message. “If you fail to do what is asked of you, there will be consequences. I will not kill you. I will not return you to the world where you might be swallowed by the evil that exists, or worse, try to come back here and destroy what we have built…what we will build. No…I will bring you here before the community and sentence you to the darkness where you belong. There, you will be denied the light that the rest have earned. There, you will exist with your own thoughts and poisons for as long as you care to cling to the misery of your failed life.”
Joel waited for a moment, and then dismissed the crowd. Once they were gone, Debra and Will approached him. Malik stayed back with the three other individuals that volunteered to leave with him on his mission to try and rescue Conrad and his people.
“You brought down the four pallets of military rations and the water source is active?” Joel asked Debra.
“Yeah,” Debra answered with a harsh laugh. “I sure don’t envy the poor bastard that has to make that trek all the way down to the bottom. We switched off our lamps for a minute or two once we got all the way down there. Even with the door open at the top, there is no light down there. It is a darkness I never knew existed. And with the door shut, the entire stairwell is a void.”
“Where the hell did you get that idea?” Will snorted.
“One of the tour guides told me about it when she was taking me around,” Joel answered. “I knew we would have the need for a jail sooner or later. It seemed to fit the bill.”
“Why not just toss ‘em out…or over for that matter?” Debra asked with a deadly glint i
n her eye.
“Tossing them over is too quick. And it isn’t really much of a deterrent. Everybody has been exposed to the stairwell and I have a feeling that will stick with them for quite a while. Also, I refuse to be a cliché and allow some rebellious trouble-maker to be expelled from the community only to return with a small army and attack with full knowledge of our setup.”
“I thought you weren’t into this crap before the Zee Event.” Debra drew a blade from her belt and began to run the point under the tips of her fingernails.
“I wasn’t. But my wife loved it. While I managed to avoid it most of the time, I was not able to duck it entirely.” Joel clapped his hands together, signaling that this part of the conversation was over. “So, we have our team. I assume you have a vehicle gassed up and ready?”
“Absolutely,” Will piped up, his tone making it clear that he was glad to be able to contribute to the conversation again. “I figured that Humvee we came here in would suit perfect for the lead vehicle. We also have one of the big M35 deuce-and-a-halfs. That should allow us to bring back this group as well as some supplies if we find anything worth grabbing while we are out there.”
Twenty minutes later, Joel was in the front of the Humvee with Debra. Will had given over the machine gun turret to Malik so that he could drive the M35. Joel had made it clear that he was not yet ready to put that level of trust in anybody else yet. That was only partially true. His main reason was that he wanted to see Malik in action. The young man seemed very confident and sure of himself. Joel needed more people that he could trust out in the field, and Malik would fit the bill nicely.
The two-vehicle convoy rolled out through the gates that had been the first thing installed once they’d arrived. The sturdy iron gates ran between two massive power supply stations with ten-foot walls acting as a funnel for anything that might approach his outpost. By the time they were on the Great Basin Highway and headed towards Las Vegas, Joel had counted two lone undead and both turned around and started away from his growing complex to follow after this newest form of stimulus.
“I want a patrol out this far every day,” Joel said to Debra as they cruised up the onramp. “Have them equipped with some sort of noisemaker.”
“Alrighty,” Debra’s voice came back in his headset.
Joel sat back and smiled. That was just another reason that he liked the woman. No questions. She simply did what was asked. She was the perfect soldier. The fact that she was just a bit terrifying didn’t hurt.
6
Into the Heart of Darkness
It had been perhaps just over a month since Joel had been in the city. It was impossible not to be taken aback by how things had unraveled. The degree of destruction was beyond anything he’d ever witnessed. More houses and structures were torched and now reduced to little more than blackened skeletal husks. Bodies and partial bodies were scattered about and attracting swarms of insects, and in more than a few cases, showed signs of animals having snacked on them.
They were perhaps an hour’s drive from what had once been a global Mecca for debauchery and excess when Joel called for Debra to stop. Just ahead, on the side of the road, was what would almost be considered a normal scene these days.
From the looks of things, a small party of failed survivors had taken a stand on the outskirts of what the sign announced as Boulder City. It was really nothing more than a simple sign beside the road. The terrain was mostly just flat with the usual variety of plant life that survived in the desert until the first signs of development asserted itself. There were three large RVs ranging in size from twenty-four to thirty-five footers parked in a line. All around were perhaps a hundred or so undead that had been put down during this battle.
None of the proper battle area stood out any more than any other display of humans attempting to make a stand that dotted the post-apocalyptic landscape. It was the upper half of what had once been a woman with dark hair that had pulled itself to the middle of the highway that made Joel pause.
He pulled a set of field glasses from his bag and sighted in on the female zombie. She was surrounded by at least twenty cats. The collection of felines were darting in, taking a bite out of the flailing creature, and then darting back to a safe distance to feast on their newly acquired prize. From the looks of things, a great deal of the insides of this pathetic zombie had already been pulled free. Joel had to assume the cats had already picked at those soft and gushy bits.
“This is not making things any clearer,” Joel grumbled.
“What do you mean?” Debra asked, slowly getting the Humvee moving again.
“The transmission of this virus or disease or whatever it is that has wiped out humanity.” Joel’s eyes stayed fixed on the unsettling scene as they rolled past. “We’ve already seen a few cases of what appear to be spontaneous infection and then there was that dog.” The memory made Joel shudder.
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen anything else. I expected rats or birds and figured that no matter what we did, unless we just went totally underground, humans were done for. But nothing else has popped up.” Debra stepped on the gas and swerved just enough to clip a lone zombie stumbling down the center of the road for them. “And I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there have been a handful of zombie dog sightings by patrols and scavenge teams.”
Joel had heard. And it was that sort of thing that had him trying to guess how the zombie infection might be spread besides just the typical bite or scratch. He’d already passed a rule that anybody going on patrol was to wear a surgical mask and eye protection. He wasn’t absolutely convinced that this would do any good, but it was better safe than sorry. Also, every person coming back from the field was put in quarantine for seventy-two hours.
***
They followed the highway to Vegas. The closer to the city they drew, the worse the damage. And now they were starting to see various spray-painted messages warning people to either stay away, or beware entering by whoever had claimed a particular area. These were the outlaw-style gangs that Joel expected, and they would be the first to be removed. He knew that there would be other communities of survivors that would spring up, and these would be perfect sources for supplies. Some would eventually be “taxed” and others would be absorbed. Each would be a case-by-case situation.
With the outlaw gangs, Joel simply decided that there would be no negotiation. These would be the sort to victimize others and cause trouble. These people would be the dregs of society crawling from under their rock and doing unspeakable things. Nope…these would simply be exterminated.
“We got incoming,” Malik’s voice announced through Joel’s headset.
Looking around, it was easy to spot the dust cloud that gave away the approaching band of survivors. “Pull up here,” he said, unharnessing himself. “Everybody take up positions. Debra and Will, split to either side and find a spot in the weeds where you can snipe.”
Joel did a self-check of his own armament as he took his place in front of the Humvee. Cradled in his arms was his M4 with the laser-dot scope. It had been his experience in the past few weeks that people often backed down when they noticed a red pinpoint of light or two on their bodies. On his hips were his beloved .44 Magnum and the simple-yet-practical Beretta. He also wore an assortment of blades including a nasty field blade that could chop a coconut in half like it was melted butter.
“Don’t wait for my word, Malik,” Joel called up over his shoulder. “The moment it looks bad, just lay into ‘em with everything you got.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Malik called down.
Joel didn’t hide his smile. The young man had certainly taken a firmer stance in his loyalty as Joel offered him more responsibility. Malik’s greatest advantage came from his mouth. Joel could almost remember back that far when he believed himself to be invincible.
Once they were in full view, Joel was able to count five motorcycles and two large panel vans. He would guess their numbers to be no more than twenty, and he was already dismissin
g them as just the sort of raider he felt compelled to eradicate.
The lead bike was one of those overly loud three-wheel affairs. The man riding it was so much of a stereotype that Joel refused to hide the smirk on his face.
“You folks must’ve missed the signs,” the man said in a rumbling voice.
He was easily over six feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds—very little of it muscle by the way the man’s gut wobbled to the thrum of the bike’s powerful engine.
Trike, Joel corrected himself. This biker wasn’t even hardcore enough to ride what Joel considered to be a real motorcycle.
Looking the man over quickly, Joel made a checklist of every B-Grade movie’s cheesy biker and this guy was acing the test. Small, black open-faced helmet—check; tinted goggles—check; leather vest (although a bit new in appearance, which was certainly a deduction in points)—check; open-fingered gloves with spikes on the knuckles—check; long, braided beard and handlebar mustache—check.
The man had a dingy sort of hair color that, if washed, might reveal itself to be ginger. Even from a few paces away with decaying corpses littering the landscape and a bunch of engines running, the man’s rank body odor was gut-turning.
“Last one I saw that meant anything said ‘Welcome to Boulder City’ if my memory serves,” Joel said casually.
“And I must say, that weapon you’re holding looks like it was stolen off our fine military,” the man continued, seemingly oblivious of Joel’s response. “The Hells’ Avengers laid claim to all military hardware in these parts, so I think you’re gonna need to hand that over.”
The stupidity of some people never ceased to amaze Joel. He saw the realization dawn on the man’s face just a moment too late. His eyes were just tracking up to where Malik sat in the turret manning the .50 cal on top of the Humvee that Joel stood so casually in front of.
There was a mechanical ratcheting sound that Joel heard with just enough time to allow his rifle to drop and dangle from its strap as he covered his ears. When the machine gun opened fire, Joel actually took a few steps to the side and back to avoid being hit by the flying debris of metal as the motorcycles and their riders were cut to pieces by the high-velocity ammunition. The vans made a clumsy attempt to escape, colliding with each other as they backed up too fast. Before they could wrench themselves free of each other, Malik was already walking bullets across the ground in short bursts until he had his newest targets sighted in.
