by Brown, TW
Four times, the young man fired. Joel had no idea if he was actually hitting anything, but he was willing to bet that this kid was chipping away at the enemy with brutal efficiency. After the fourth round was fired, the young man rolled back and sat up, again using the wheel as his cover.
“One sniper left, but I think he is pulling back. I might’ve nicked him, but he moved just as I got off my shot, so it wasn’t clean,” the man said.
“Who are you, son?” Joel asked, the tone of respect with a hint of amazement clear in his voice.
“Richard Simmons…no relation to the fitness guy,” the young man said with a hint of laughter in his voice.
“You handled yourself well, Richard.”
“Not well enough, sir. We still have one of their snipers out there, those other people are on the run, and this whole situation makes less sense than the finale of LOST.”
“I will take your word for it.” Joel shrugged his shoulders, not entirely certain what this Richard Simmons person might be talking about.
“All that radio chatter, the flare…it was as if somebody tried to lure us out, sir,” Richard said as he reloaded his weapon.
“We got zips incoming!” somebody shouted before Joel could voice his agreement with the observation.
Looking from behind the rear of the Deuce, Joel saw the undead coming from all directions. Getting to his feet, he called for everybody to load into the trucks. It was time to get out of here right now. They would return, and do so with a force that would make others think twice before engaging.
***
The trucks slowed and then rolled to a halt. Joel tossed aside the handset for the radio and stared out the front window. While he’d not gotten a good look at the people that had fled and taken off into the scrubs at the border of Boulder City, he was confident that these were the same individuals.
“Let me just end this,” Debra’s voice crackled on the radio.
The small group of people had stopped running and were now facing them. Some had their hands in the air, others were dancing nervously from foot to foot. All of them seemed to be trying to find someplace to run where they could hide. He recalled seeing very similar body language and posture during his time in Vietnam. This was common anytime he and his fellow soldiers would encounter and inspect a village.
Shoving those images away before they could take root, Joel opened his door and hopped down to the ground. Without having to be told, he heard or saw the others doing the same with the exception of Will and Debra who remained stationed at the machine guns. His people quickly fanned out, weapons at the ready, covering this small group of men, women…and children.
“P-p-please…” A man stepped forward, hands held high. “We don’t want any trouble. We didn’t want anybody hurt, but they said they would kill us if we didn’t run for it.”
“Who told you this?” Joel stepped forward and signaled for his people to stay put.
“These soldiers…at least they were dressed like soldiers,” the man said.
As he spoke, Joel looked him over more closely. It hadn’t been that long since all hell broke loose, but this guy and his people looked awful. Some were so filthy that it was almost impossible to tell if they were male or female. Their clothing was tattered and coming apart in places. A few had their shoes wrapped in cloth; presumably to keep them from falling apart.
Tourists, he determined.
“What are you doing way out here?” Joel asked.
“We were on a bus tour a few weeks ago. There was a military roadblock that stopped us from returning to Las Vegas. We were all put into an emergency shelter. One day, almost all the soldiers were just gone. The ones who were left told us that we were on our own. Several people just drifted away, but some of us stayed.” The man stopped talking and rubbed his throat with one hand. “Listen, can I get a sip of water? We’ve been locked in a basement for the past few days, and we ran out of water yesterday. Talking to you is not doing me any favors.”
Joel didn’t see the harm. After all, if there was one thing he access to plenty of at the dam, it was water. He snapped his fingers and waited as the man gratefully accepted the proffered canteen and drank long gulps. He finished and then glanced back at his group. Joel nodded and the man hurried over, handing them the container of precious fluid.
“Early this morning, they told us all that we would be released. They said that it was going to be a sort of game…they would open the door, and we had to run in the direction they told us. We were getting a head start.”
“Head start?” Joel asked, raising a hand to stop the man for a moment.
“They said that they would give us five minutes from when the flare was fired. After that, we would be…fair game.” The man spat the last word with the first display of anger Joel had heard.
“And these soldiers, how many?” Joel pressed.
“Fifteen maybe?”
“Are you guessing?”
“I didn’t actually take the time to count them, but I can give a good guess based on what I saw.” The man was starting to get nervous as the undead could be seen trudging their direction. They were still a good distance away, but Joel saw no reason to add to what had obviously been a crappy day for this man and his group. He also had a feeling that it was about to get just a little worse.
“Are you people from the dam…the ones making the broadcast?” the man blurted. Joel gave a nod, and the man began to almost babble he began speaking so fast. “We were heading for you. We would work hard, do whatever you needed. We just can’t keep going out here.”
“Yeah,” Joel let that word draw out as he scanned the group clustered together a short distance away. “But you don’t really fit the bill.”
“What?” the man spat incredulously. “Sure, we may not be militarily trained or anything, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say we’d be in your debt and work our collective asses off. We would do whatever you needed.”
“The kids.” Joel let that statement hang.
He looked once more at the group. Of the eleven, three were obviously under the age of ten, and a couple were borderline as to if they might even be teenagers.
“What about them?” the man whispered. “They won’t be any trouble. We will care for them. You won’t even know they are there.”
“Until one of you can’t do your duties because a child needs tending. And what about food? Who is going to give up their portion so one of the kids can eat?” Joel said coolly.
“They’re children…they won’t eat that much. Surely that small amount could be spared.”
“And when the next group arrives…and the next? And pretty soon we have this huge drain on supplies from a portion of the population that serve no function.”
“No function!” Spittle flew from the man’s lips and his face began to turn red. “What sort of monsters are you people? Please tell me we didn’t get away from one group of evil just to stumble into another.”
“Save it.” Joel stepped back, wiping at his face. “Your passion would be better served finding someplace safe before nightfall.”
The man looked past Joel to the rest of his people. “Are you all okay with this?” He stepped toward one of the women, obviously thinking that he would get more sympathy. The woman just stared at him, her face stony, no emotion flitting across, not even the eyes showed pity. “These drains on supplies as your leader calls them are the future. They are our chance to continue.”
“Let’s go,” Joel called out, pushing past the man and returning to the truck.
His people backed up, following his lead. As Joel climbed up and prepared to get into the cab, another voice got his attention.
“Wait!” a young woman detached herself from the group of bedraggled survivors and half-jogged, half-staggered towards Joel. “I get it. No problem. Take me with you, I don’t have any kids. I’m by myself.”
She reached Joel and threw herself onto her knees, looking up to him with a face that showed numerous
trails where dirt had caked up, tears had cut through, and then more dirt caked on. Her hair was clumps of knots and tangles that looked like they might defy any attempt to undo. She was wearing a tattered blue shirt and jeans that had equal parts mud, blood, and possibly even vomit. He could smell her, and his nose wrinkled at something familiar.
“Are you infected?” Joel asked.
Despite not seeing the tracers in her eyes, he knew the smell. There was a hint of the stench associated with the walking dead.
“No, this…” she plucked at her shirt with finger and thumb, “…was one person’s bright idea that smearing ourselves with zombie guts might make us invisible to them.” She cast a dirty look over her shoulder and then brought her eyes back to Joel. “It didn’t work. Fortunately, the idiot who thought of it was one of the five we lost that day.”
“Anybody else?” Joel hiked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the cargo area of the truck. “I only make the offer once. But I am very serious when I say we won’t be taking any of the individuals unable to earn their way through hard work.”
He saw a few traded glances, and then two more people stepped away from the group. Joel gave them a nod and tilted his head over his shoulder, indicating that they could get into the back of the Deuce as well.
“You can’t be this cold…this heartless,” a man shouted. He started towards Joel but froze in his tracks when the two machine guns on top of the transport trucks swung in his direction.
“This has nothing to do with being cold or heartless,” Joel said softly, trying his hardest to sound calm and relaxed. “If I was as you say, then I would kill everybody that I didn’t deem acceptable of joining us.”
“You’re a bastard,” a woman sobbed.
“Perhaps, but I would really use this chance to find someplace safe.” Joel hiked a thumb at the approaching streams of undead that were drawn to all the commotion. “They won’t care one way or the other who they rip apart, so I would maybe gather what you can. I’m pretty sure we got all but one of the snipers, but who knows how many other people are in that little group. They used you as bait, so I wouldn’t bet my farm on how they might treat you next time.”
“What’s to stop us from just following you?” the man who now seemed to be acting as the spokesman for those not willing to abandon their group, more specifically…the children, asked.
“That’s a stupid question.” Joel hiked a thumb at the machine guns.
“So you’d be willing to kill us in cold blood.” It wasn’t really put as a question, but more as perhaps a confirmation.
“I am willing to do what it takes to see to the safety of my people,” Joel confirmed.
“And they would be willing to follow that order?”
“Hey, buddy?” Debra called down. “I can’t speak for Slick Willy over there, but I will put you all down and consider it a merciful ending. Now, enough of the chit-chat. You need to run and hide, and we have to go back to our base and gather our people so we can start getting down to the business of establishing our community.”
“Comm—” the man started with a bark of sarcastic laughter. His response was cut short by the loud chatter from Debra’s .50 cal.
What had once been the man known as Dustin Gollyhorn flew apart in pulpy chunks as the massive, high-velocity rounds of the machine gun tore into him. Bits of bone and chunks of flesh flew, some of it splattering on the people huddled together in terror at what they were witnessing.
“I suggest you people get a move on!” the woman snarled, swinging the barrel of her weapon over to the main group still clustered a dozen or so yards away. Many of them threw themselves on the ground as they screamed in fear, a few broke free and took off, running wildly with no apparent destination.
Joel was in agreement. The undead were coming in large numbers, and now that the .50 cal had roared and belched smoke, flame, and high-velocity lead, the conversation could officially be considered over.
“Let’s roll!” he called out as he turned his back on the scene and returned to his truck. In a matter of moments, the small expedition force was rolling out again. By morning, a much larger convoy would be returning with the first wave set to occupy the now zombie-free, semi-secure community.
***
The next few days were spent bringing out the people who would make up the first wave of settlers. A meeting was held the night before the first group rolled out where Joel gave details on housing selection and security protocols.
Joel rolled out with the first group and went to his new home. Shortly after, the supply trucks came with the allotted boxed goods that each residence would receive based on the number of occupants.
All of this was running smoothly, however, there was one fly in the ointment and Joel was furious with himself for not thinking it through. When they had brought the power up and on line to Boulder City, they hadn’t thought to go through and shut everything off.
On the plus side, since most of the residents had apparently evacuated and had the presence of mind to shut things off, the power grid hadn’t tripped any breakers and shut down. However, there were several fires burning as you looked toward the heart of what made up Boulder City.
At the moment, the winds were in their favor, but these were the sorts of mistakes that he could not afford. It was time to expand the inner circle and bring in a few people to help with the planning. He had already brought in Debra and Will, but they were not of much use beyond the military and security aspects.
After all his supplies were stored, he sat down with the most recent roster of residents. That had been one thing he’d done right away; he’d had every resident added to a running census that also noted their Old World skills as well as current work assignments and their new address.
Kurt Billings was the man who oversaw the operations at the dam, and he would be a perfect candidate. He was tough as nails and a very no-nonsense kind of guy. In fact, he hadn’t been the man in charge when Joel first met with the surviving employees of the dam’s hydroelectrical plant. Just a shade over six feet tall, and sporting a beer belly that was slowly receding due to what some residents termed “the Post-Apocalypse weight loss program”, Kurt reminded Joel of a young Sam Elliott. He even had the bushy mustache that always fluttered when he would blow out a sigh of exasperation.
During the first meeting, the actual supervisor had balked at many of Joel’s ideas, but Kurt had seen the logic. The old supervisor had tried to leave and promptly been tossed from the dam. This had happened before Joel discovered the stairwell that was now simply known in the community as ‘The Darkness’ after that first pronouncement of sentence.
After Kurt, Joel decided Malik was somebody that he felt could be trusted. The man had a level head in a fight, but also had helped devise the assault plan that they had used to clear this first neighborhood. It had been Malik that thought of using all the abandoned vehicles to create a secondary barricade on the highway.
After that, Joel chose a woman named Daisy Porter. This woman had the meanest and nastiest disposition he’d ever encountered in a woman…Debra included. Her face was in a perpetual scowl, and not once had he seen it any other way. This woman reminded him of Beulah Balbricker from Porky’s…only somehow less attractive, as improbable as that would seem.
Once he had his council selected, he held a meeting with all the residents of the newly established community and introduced them to the masses. In a matter of days, a full security roster was selected and put into action. This included roving patrols inside and outside the perimeter.
Something about the relative ease of things did not sit right with Joel. He tried to dismiss it as perhaps just his naturally pessimistic nature. The days were passing and things were coming along well. The community had been out of the path of the fires that were now starting to finally burn themselves out. Supply runs were yielding a plentiful stockpile of goods, and a greenhouse complex had been located and cleared out of all the useless flowers. It was now seeing the firs
t shoots beginning to push through the soil as a variety of vegetables had been started.
It was that core of cynicism that gave him strength on a morning that started no different than several over the past few weeks. Joel woke, made coffee, and sat at the table reviewing watch logs and the couple of arrest reports that had been turned in the night before. He was just pouring the second cup when a knock sounded at his front door.
Joel tightened the sash on his robe as he opened the door to reveal three uniformed personnel on his porch. A young man in his twenties stepped forward from the others. He removed his cap and began to wring it in his hands.
“Yes?” Joel prompted.
“Mister Landon, sir, I have been sent by Captain Debra Allen. She says that you are to come to the radio building with all haste…sir.” He blurted that last word out almost like he was afraid he had not been formal enough.
“What for?” Joel sipped his coffee and let his gaze drift past the trio on his porch. He didn’t see anything that would indicate there might be an immediate problem. Still, just because he couldn’t see anything did not mean there was not something wrong.
“She just said we needed to fetch you back to the center now and that we were not to leave without you.”
Joel scowled. He glanced down at his cup of coffee that still had wisps of steam coming of its dark brown surface. With a sigh, he set the cup down.
“I need to change.”
The young man opened his mouth, presumably to protest, but Joel had already slammed the door shut and headed upstairs. He opened his closet and decided on a set of military fatigues. Chances were that he wasn’t being called upon to share a cup of tea.
A few minutes later, Joel walked along the road with his trio of escorts. None of them would make eye contact with him, but that could be for any number of reasons. They had maintained that they were not informed as to the reason Debra had insisted upon his presence.
