“You killed him!” The woman on the ground said. “You killed my husband.”
She tried to push herself off the ground, but it was as if she had lost all her strength as she fell back down and began to sob.
Mason jogged over to Donovan and Clayton, “This doesn’t look good.”
That was about the time that Bonds recovered, and he approached Robbie with his gun up and aimed it directly at Robbie’s chest. The other two men with Bonds went to cover the women and kids in the bed of the truck.
Sergeant Jones crutched in, walking between two cars on his crutches. He was followed by Berry and Gardner. Berry had his assault rifle up and ready. Gardner didn’t look nearly as ready. In fact, his rifle trembled a little. Berry was a short and stocky black man with what seemed like a perpetual sweat going on. Beads of moisture seemed to pop out from all over him.
Gardner was slight for a soldier, looking almost mousey with black curly hair. He had what some people called hamster eyes, weak and furtive.
They no sooner made it on the scene than did the rumble of an engine sound from deeper inside the Sanctum. All eyes shifted in that direction.
Two Humvees headed their way, weaving along through cars and debris in the street. Any people in the streets rushed to get out of the way as the Humvees barreled toward the gate. Humvees with mounted .50 caliber guns have that effect on people.
“Remember what I said about trouble,” Donovan said to Clayton. “I think it’s headed our way.”
“Hey, Bonds,” Jones yelled.
Bonds jumped and nearly pulled the trigger, but he dropped his aim from Robbie.
“Get those people out of the truck,” Jones shouted.
“You don’t give orders around here,” Bonds yelled back.
“You need to get those people out of the truck no matter who gives the orders,” Jones said. “Call it a suggestion, then.”
The first truck skidded to a stop about seventy-five feet from the gate, kicking up a plume of dust. Almost before the dust settled, the passenger door opened and Eli popped out, wearing tactical gear and carrying an assault rifle.
“What the hell is going on here?” He asked.
Jones changed course from heading toward the truck to an intercept path to Eli, who was also fast walking toward the truck. After weeks on crutches, he was becoming quite proficient, covering the ground quickly. Once again, Privates Berry, and Gardner followed close behind.
“What happened here?” Eli asked again.
Jones spoke when he got to within fifteen feet of Eli, “Some of your people commandeered a truck, and we’re trying to make a run for it. We had to stop them.”
“What do you mean by stopping them?” Eli asked. “This looks like a cluster fuck to me.”
By that time, Clayton was walking toward where Jones and Eli were.
“We did what had to be done,” Clayton said.
“Did you shoot one of my people?” Eli asked, coming to a stop in front of Sergeant Jones and fixing him in a hot stare.
“Listen, this was a volatile situation,” Jones said. “That truck,” he pointed toward the truck wedged up against the back gate, “looked like it was about to ram its way through the gate. Or else shoot their way through. My men were back here, and I ordered them to address the situation in any way they could.”
“By shooting my people?” Eli asked as his voice raised in volume.
“He was threatening to ram that gate,” Jones said, keeping his voice calm and even. “If he compromised that gate, it could become an issue when the horde arrives.”
“But you didn’t have to shoot anyone,” Eli said, frustration very clear in his voice. “My men were back here to control that.”
Clayton took a step closer to Eli and said, “If I can speak freely, I was here, and I can tell you that your men weren’t doing Jack shit.”
“But you didn’t have to shoot them!” Eli said.
“Respectfully, but you weren’t here,” Jones said. “If he had damaged that gate, we could all be in trouble. If you’re going to blame someone, blame me. I made the call, and that’s that.”
Eli narrowed his eyes and said, “You are not in command here. You are just guests. Karen calls the shots on big picture things. I’m in charge of security, and I don’t like what you did.”
Jones had more to say. Much more, but he knew that silence was the best diplomacy in this case.
“Now, I have to go clean up your mess,” Eli said, tossing a hand in the air. He stormed away from Jones and Clayton and waded into the women and children climbing down from the back of the truck. By then, at least two of the women were openly sobbing, and a couple of the kids were asking about ‘daddy.’
There was no question that it was an ugly scene. The last thing Jones wanted to do was to have to kill one of Eli’s people but was necessary.
“Did we just step into the shit?” Clayton asked, keeping his voice low.
“Honestly, we have a lot bigger issues to take care of,” Jones responded. “Eli will have to get over this. We have a day and a half before that horde gets here.”
“Do you think the fires you set will do anything?” Berry asked from over Jones’s shoulder.
Jones looked to the ground and kicked at the dirt with his good foot and said, “I hope so. We have to do anything to get their numbers down, or else we’re screwed.”
“What do we do now, Sarge?” Gardner asked.
“Work with whoever you can to help get this place ready?” Jones said.
“On it,” Berry said, and he slapped Gardner on the shoulder, and the two soldiers walked away.
Jones and Clayton stood in silence as they watched Eli and Bonds help the last of the kids out of the back of the truck. Two of Eli’s men had Robbie Baldwin by the arm and were leading him away. Where they were taking him, neither Jones or Clayton knew.
“Did you have to shoot him?” Jones asked, not looking at Clayton directly.
“You know I did,” Clayton said. “They could have fucked us all over.”
“The needs of the many over the needs of the few,” Jones said, almost in a whisper.
“What?” Clayton said.
“Oh, nothing,” Jones said. “Let’s get somewhere we can make a difference.”
Chapter 8
The Half-Dead and the Full Out Dead
Thick black smoke rolled across the landscape, heavy and tinged with a caustic heat. It burned the eyes and irritated the nostrils. Not that the walking dead cared. They seemed oblivious to its effects, trudging forward, never coughing and barely blinking as the smoke rolled through their ranks.
But Lance sensed a nervous agitation in their movements. Maybe it was their deep-down primal sense of fear when it came to fire. Even animals knew that smoke meant fire.
Being half-dead, Lance felt the effects of the smoke a little more acutely. His eyes watered, and his throat felt raw and parched, but it wasn’t debilitating, just irritating. Lance did not need anything to worsen his attitude. Of the three half-deaders leading the undead horde, Lance was easily the angriest. While simmering anger seemed to be one of the leading side effects of their half-dead existence, it was Lance’s default and dominant position.
During their trek out of Indiana, the four collected the undead around them as if they had some kind of magnetic attraction. The size of their group blossomed, increasing each day exponentially. By the time they hit the Ohio border, their numbers were close to reaching super-horde proportions. They wreaked havoc and consumed the living like a plague of locusts, sweeping across the landscape, moving eastward.
None of them knew why they did what they did. Some sort of seed of hatred for the living had been planted during their transformation from living to near death and then back to half-dead. Maybe it was because they were no longer fully living and they envied or resented that lack of status? Perhaps some sort of evil had entered their half-souls? Or maybe it was the voice that spoke to them at night?
They also d
idn’t understand why they were headed east. It could have been the pull of the ocean tides. It could have been that once upon a time, the living had the seat of all their power invested there. That if they went there and totally eradicated that place, they might have a type of revenge against the living.
There was also a chance they might hit the east coast and bounce back off it, then head to the west. Then they would travel to the other shore, growing bigger by the day and ultimately wiping out any vestiges of the living.
In truth, they had little idea of why they did what they did. Lance only knew a dark voice in the back of his head told him to keep going. That he had a purpose of dark portent.
He was deep in these malevolent thoughts when he heard a voice coming from his left.
“Lance, the smoke is getting thick,” Maxwell said. “Maybe we should slow down or move around it.”
“No,” Lance shouted, “this isn’t that bad. We stay the course.”
“We are losing some of the dead,” Maxwell said. “They’re peeling off the sides in the smoke.”
Lance looked back at a sea of dead faces bobbing along behind him and said, “We have enough. Once we get out this forest fire, we can just collect more.”
Maxwell had his doubts. He had no way to count in the smoke, but he knew that they had lost scores of zombies at the edges of their horde. They got lost in the smoke and wandered off course. Some encountered actual flames, and that ingrained fear of fire either stopped or steered them away and out of the control of their half-dead leaders.
Maxwell didn’t understand how or why the zombies were attracted to him and the others. To him, it was as if they were Pied Pipers and somehow played a song that drew the dead like the pop singers of the now-dead past. Unlike Lance and Grayson, he wasn’t sure he liked it. It was just something that happened, as natural as gravity. Wherever the half-dead were, the undead were sure to gather.
The wind shifted, and a large cloud of smoke wafted over them, obscuring the view ahead. Maxwell felt a slight burning in his eyes, but when he looked around at the undead behind them, they were completely unphased. Very few things bothered them. They had only one purpose, and that was to eat. One bite of flesh was never enough as their appetite was endless.
Maxwell wasn’t even sure why they led this massive horde across the country on a Bataan death march to the sea. He felt the same anger inside him, burning like a furnace, but he knew it wasn’t as intense as Lance, and Grayson felt it. They carried forth on this unholy mission as if it were some sort of unspoken crusade. It was as if they wanted to pay the living back for what had been done to them.
“Do you think we will need what you have on the wagon?” Maxwell asked.
Lance had fashioned a wagon of sorts out of a rolling equipment trailer. He had used corded metal cables and wrapped them around a set of zombies, creating a team of them to pull the wagon across the terrain. In the olden days, you would have used horses or oxen, but you used what you had. After they had overrun a military base on the west side of Ohio, Lance had picked through the toys the soldiers had left behind. He placed selected items on the wagon, giving their contingent a little firepower.
“You never know,” Lance said. “I have a feeling we will run into some crafty ones ahead, and what’s on the cart may come into use. You never know, but you should always be prepared.”
“I hope we don’t have to use it,” Maxwell said.
“You worry too much,” Lance said. “Get back to your position, or we will lose cohesion.”
With Grayson gone, Lance had assumed leadership of their little trio. Maxwell didn’t like being ordered around, but when there were only four of your kind on the planet, it was best to get along.
“Think about what I said about delaying our march forward,” Maxwell said.
Lance said, “I will,” but Maxwell didn’t know if he was being patronized or not, but he broke off from Lance. He made his way across the mass of wretched and stinking walking corpses that made up their horde.
One broke away from the front edge and stepped in Maxwell’s path. Feeling a simmering rage after his conversation with Lance, Maxwell hauled off and punched the zombie in the side of the head. Maxwell felt the crunching of bone on impact, and the zombie’s body flew sideways in the air until it landed nearly ten feet away. Its undead brethren didn’t seem to notice and continued marching forward, grinding the downed zombie’s body into a pulpy mush.
Maxwell returned to his spot in the middle of the herd, and they all continued east through the smoke and charred trees.
Chapter 9
The Experiments
“The subject doesn’t seem affected by extreme heat,” Hollaway said as he pressed a set of red-hot tongs onto the smart zombie’s shoulder. Tendrils of smoke wafted off the dark burn wound, but the creature didn’t even blink.
“That is fucking gross,” Molly said as she reached up to pinch her nose closed. “And it stinks like shit.”
Doc Wilson stepped next to Hollaway and said, “I think it has been determined that these new creatures are very similar to zombies. They feel very limited or no pain at all.”
Darke, who had stayed a safe, assured distance away from the smart zombie, took a tentative step forward and said, “I concur with Doctor Wilson. I think we can dispense with some of these preliminary tests since our timeline is short.”
Hollaway withdrew the tongs, raised an eyebrow, and asked Darke, “What do you propose we do? There is an exhaustive amount of tests we can run, but how do we know which direction to take if we don’t eliminate the obvious.”
“Take a look,” Molly said, pointing at the smart zombie strapped down to the exam table. “It doesn’t take a mad scientist to see that these fuckers can take a lot of damage and not be phased by it.”
“Molly, please,” Henry said as he got down from the table he had been sitting on.
“We don’t have time to be delicate here,” Molly said.
Darke raised his hand and tapped his index finger against his lips for a moment, then said, “Maybe instead of looking at what makes this creature tick, we investigate what attracts the undead to it.”
Henry cocked his head and looked in Darke’s direction, “Do you have any zombies to use in this type of experiment?”
“Of course, we do,” Darke said, and it was in such a way that he seemed to think that his answer should be obvious.”
“You’re keeping zombies here?” Molly asked. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“How else could we do experiments?” Darke asked, again astonished at the question.
“Where are they?” Henry asked.
“We have several locked in a lab just down the hall,” Darke said, pointing toward the interior of the building.
Unconsciously, Molly took a step in the opposite direction.
Doc Wilson took a step toward Darke and asked, “Just what are you and Doctor Hollaway’s backgrounds?”
“I’m a virologist and have a lot of time in epidemiology,” Hollaway said but maintained his focus on the creature.
Darke said, “My specialty is microbiology, but I have widespread knowledge of medicine as I worked as a physician before switching to research. You might call me a Jack of all trades.” He paused for a moment and glanced at Hollaway. “I saw that smirk. You need to get over yourself.”
“You need to not call yourself a Jack of all trades,” Hollaway responded, not looking Darke’s way.
Color flooded Darke’s face, and Henry noticed the man clenching and unclenching his fists.
“What experiments have you already done on the zombies that might help us now?” Henry asked, hoping to derail any possible argument. It seemed obvious to him that there was some tension between the two scientists that he wanted to diffuse.
Hollaway finally drew his attention away from the creature and said, “We have done literally thousands of experiments on the undead creatures.”
“And what have you found?” Doc Wilson ask
ed.
Darke looked to his feet and said, “Not much. We are fairly certain the zombie virus is a prion disease. Its effects on the brain are both amazing and catastrophic. It is as if it almost kills large portions of the brain and enhances other portions. For instance, the thalamus and hypothalamus are where emotions are regulated. There is a duality to the transformation there. The higher emotions like love or caring seemed to have been wiped out, but hunger impulses have been exponentially increased by the effects of the disease.” He stopped and rubbed his chin. “It is all so very curious.”
“I don’t think they need to know about what seems obvious about these creatures,” Hollaway said.
“For once, I’m with this guy,” Molly said, pointing with her thumb to Hollaway. “We need to know what can help us kill these bastards.”
“Killing them is easy, I guess,” Hollaway said. “They probably aren’t much different from your garden variety zombies. A shot to the head should extinguish the thing.”
“You know that you are speaking about me, and I’m right here,” the smart zombie said.
Hollaway looked back down at the creature and said, “Oh, yes, how rude of us. You are right there, and you seemingly understand everything we have said.” He paused for a moment and pursed his lips. “Let me ask you this, do you have a name?”
“My name is Grayson,” the smart zombie said. “Not that it matters. It was what I was called before I became this.”
“Well, we should be more respectful of you, Mr. Grayson. Or is that your first name?” Hollaway asked.
Molly crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at what she was seeing.
“Just call me Grayson,” the creature said.
“I think we can respect that,” Hollaway said.
“Holy shit!” Molly said. “Are you going to give him a cookie next?”
Darke stepped closer to Grayson and said, “Maybe we should go directly to the horse’s mouth, as they say.”
“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” Molly said.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 4
