by Edward Crae
“Hmm,” Dan grunted.
“After that, we had a lot more respect for him. He learned fast and made captain about a year later. He was a decent dude, but putting him in charge of experienced troops was a gamble.”
“Fortunately it paid off.”
“Yep,” Cliff agreed. “The point is, never underestimate someone younger than you.”
“Shit, I’ve had doctors twenty years younger than me. Fresh out of med school, using their iPhones to look up WebMD.”
Cliff burst out laughing. “Man, I couldn’t imagine somebody Googling how not to die in battle.”
“I bet somebody has.”
The two snickered for several minutes imagining some poor sucker trying to get a signal on the battlefield; hunched down in a trench with bullets whizzing around him. But soon, Dan’s mood began to even out when he thought of the incident with the scavenger. He could still see Cliff’s face and hear his screams; before and after Dan chopped off his forearm. He looked over to Cliff’s stump, trying hard to imagine what Cliff felt. Dan himself could only feel guilt.
“Dan,” Cliff said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“I love you, man.”
Dan chuckled, drawing snickers from Cliff.
“I’m serious. After all we’ve been through… you’re my brother, man.”
Dan’s guilt melted away, replaced by a strange sadness. It was a sadness he couldn’t explain, but it filled him with a weird sensation he hadn’t felt since his dad died. He looked at Cliff, who stared off into the woods with a slight smile. He felt a sense of brotherhood with Cliff. They were two different people, to be sure, but Cliff was a great friend and one tough mother fucker.
“Thanks, man,” Dan said. “We are brothers. I got your back. Always.”
He held out his fist for Cliff to “bump”, but the man just looked at it and laughed. “Not a good angle, man,” he said.
“Right, right.”
“How long are you guys gonna fuck with that thing?” Jake asked from the door of the radio shack.
“Until we get something, man,” Travis said. “You got a date or what?”
Jake chuckled and shook his head, coming in and closing the door behind him. “It’s a bit chilly out there,” he said.
“Hold on a sec,” Max said.
He turned the dial side to side in a particular spot, leaning closer to the speaker to fine tune what he thought was a voice. There was a broken signal, as if someone were talking, but none of them knew for sure. Max stared off into space as he turned the dial in tiny increments, his brow raising every time he heard the tone.
“What is that?” Travis asked.
“I think it’s a voice or something.”
“Did you guys ever hear of that weird station broadcast in Russian?” Jake asked.
“Wait,” Max said.
He stood and adjusted another dial. Through the static, Jake could hear a definite voice, albeit muffled and broken.
“Stat---gun---area gone and---derelict---ssssscraft.”
“What?” Travis said. “Derelict craft.”
“I think he said spacecraft,” Jake said.
“No fuckin’ way, man.”
Max nodded. “That’s what I heard,” he said. “I could be wrong though.”
“---omet---crat---size of Rhode Island---ulf of Oman.”
“Comet left a crater the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Oman?”
“That’s a big crater,” Travis said. “I wonder if they’re talking about the impact we saw.”
“Can’t be,” Max said. “That was a month ago. There were more fragments, Grace said. Another one must have hit.”
“Where?” Jake asked.
Max shook his head. “Grace might know, or at least be able to guess.”
He continued turning the dials and gestured for to Travis to speak into the mic. Travis picked it up, sat with his mouth open for a second, and then put the mic back on the table.
“What the hell do I say?” he asked.
“Ask if anyone is listening.”
Travis shrugged and picked up the mic again. “Anyone got your ears on?” he asked.
“It’s a shortwave radio, not a CB,” Max said.
“Come in.”
“Ha!” Travis said. “Come in. Who is this?”
“This is Martin Patterson. Who am I speaking to?”
“Martin Patterson?” Dan repeated. “I know that name. He was the network bigwig at the Bloomington station.”
“Do you wanna talk to him?” Max asked.
Dan shrugged. “I didn’t know him,” he said. “He was just memorable because he sounded like Ron Swanson.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Just talk to him. We’ll all talk to him.”
“Martin,” Travis said. “This is Travis Williams. It’s nice to hear from you, man.”
“Where are you located?”
“Uh… where the hell are we, man?”
“South of Columbus,” Cliff said.
“We’re, uh, somewhere south of Columbus. Out in the middle of nowhere pretty much.”
“You’re safe, then. I take it everyone survived the first impact.”
“Uh yeah, mostly. Where are you?”
“I’m with a group in northwest Ohio.”
“Did we hear you say something about a derelict spacecraft?”
“Spacecraft? No… not that I know of.”
“How about the new impact?” Travis went on. “Do you know anything about that?”
“We don’t have many details. We just know it was a large crater and that the impact happened somewhere in eastern Asia.”
“Oh good.”
“Oh good?” Dan asked. Travis shrugged. “Didn’t you mention something about the Gulf of Oman?”
“As far as we know---base---ing---out.”
“Shitskies,” Max said. “We’re losing him.”
“Did he say something about a damn UFO?” Cliff asked. “Grace?”
Grace shrugged and shook her head. “I never knew anything about a spaceship or aliens.”
“You hiding something from us?”
Grace’s mouth dropped open and she punched Cliff in the arm. “Why would I do that?” she asked somewhat mockingly. “We’re all in this together. Do you wanna be in the dog house?”
Cliff grinned. Dan stood up, patting Max on the back. “It’s okay, man,” he said. “We can try again tomorrow. I think we should all get inside before it gets too dark.”
With the fireplace blazing, everyone settled down to relax. Dan kept watch at the window, leaving it open slightly in order to hear anything that may be moving around outside. The couches and sleeping bags had been arranged in a semicircle in front of the fireplace, and everyone talked among themselves or got some well-needed rest. Bill and Travis were both asleep, each on a couch, and Toby fiddled with his rifle.
Outside, the property was pitch black. Dan kept his eyes moving, however, watching the subtle movements of the tree tops against the tiny pieces of sky that showed through. Everything seemed peaceful; too much so. It had been a long time since things had been this quiet. Perhaps the group had found a good place to settle. Despite the lack of privacy, and the limited amount of room, it seemed safe. The main concern was the lack of sunny spots to plant vegetables. Everything was shaded by the thick forest around them, and it was doubtful that even shade-loving plants would produce much.
“I like it here,” Dan said out loud. “But there’s not much hope of growing anything.”
“Just a brief stop,” Cliff said. “A little bit of rest before we move on. It’s nice and seems safe, but if we ever had to defend this place it would be difficult.”
“Right,” Drew agreed. “These walls are pretty thick and all, but still not fortified. We need something bigger and defensible.”
“True,” Dan said. “We’ll head out when everyone’s ready.”
“What do you make of that radio transmission?” Max asked
from underneath his covers.
Dan shook his head. “That was definitely Martin Patterson. I recognized his voice.”
“Me too,” Max replied. “But that first voice we heard wasn’t him. It sounded more like a news report.”
“Who the hell is broadcasting the news nowadays?” Jake asked. “Who would be listening?”
“Short wave radio is probably the only way to communicate nowadays,” Max said. “Other than possible areas survivors could get communications towers up and running again. But even then, it would only be local, unless the satellites were still working.”
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t be,” Jake said. “They don’t rely on the power grid to keep going. It’s all solar, man.”
“Unless a giant spaceship knocked them all out,” Toby said. “Or turned them against us like they did in Independence Day.”
Dan chuckled. “Let’s not start thinking crazy shit,” he said. “Things are crazy enough as it is.”
“We haven’t seen many infected lately,” Cliff said. “The last thing I saw was that scavenger group. I think our biggest enemy right now is other people.”
“There were fresh wounds on the corpses we saw,” Eric said, breaking his silence. Toni grunted in agreement.
“What do you mean?” Dan asked.
Eric sat up, crossing his legs. “They looked like they had recently been attacked. Fresh wounds, still dripping brown blood.”
“How rotten were they?” Dan asked.
“Not as rotten as the others we’ve seen,” Toni said. “Like they had been human just a few weeks ago. But someone had done some damage to them, maybe not knowing they had to destroy the brain.”
“Maybe not a lot of people know that,” Jake said. “I didn’t know it until you showed me. But then, we never saw any walking corpses before. Just the moldy fuckers and the mutants.”
“There are still five more pieces of the comet,” Grace said. “The first one seemed to have brought the dead back to life, even before it hit. Who knows what the most recent one did, or what the rest of them will do.”
“Goddamn space rocks,” Jake said. “I wish it would have just smashed into the ground and killed us all. This is bullshit.”
Everyone got quiet for a moment. Dan could understand Jake’s meaning. There was no enjoying life now; just survival. They would continue to roam around, risking their lives for scraps of food, a night’s shelter, and a place to temporarily call home. And for what? To do it again the next day?
It really was bullshit.
“I can’t imagine how the human race even survived,” Drew said. “Wandering around aimlessly just to survive. What kind of life is that?”
“It’s nature man,” Travis said, apparently having been listening. “Just nature. That’s the way it is. Survival instincts and such. Only the strongest survive. You gotta kill or be killed. That’s the way it’s always worked man.”
Eric grunted, and Dan knew he was thinking of his recent kills. Drew had told him what happened, how Eric had killed three men with barely more than his bare hands. Good old docile and “wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly” Eric, finally drew his first blood. Popped his murder cherry, so to speak. He hadn’t really seemed the same since.
It was strange how Toby had not seemed affected at all by his first kill. He put a bullet through Mason’s brain and didn’t think twice about it. Maybe it was the fact that the kid knew he had to do it or Drew would die, or maybe it was just that the kid hadn’t realized what he was really doing and it would catch up with him someday. But from the looks of it, that wasn’t the case. Toby just sat there cleaning his rifle like nothing had happened. Dan wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it made him wonder what Toby would be like when he was older.
He sighed and laid back, resting his head on his clasped hands and staring at the ceiling. Though everyone else was quiet, he knew they were all awake and contemplating things. Even Bill’s eyes were open now. Eventually, the old man would get up and poke around in the fireplace. He was a stickler for keeping the flames at just the right level.
Just like Dan had been at home. Home. That long lost paradise of comfort and laziness, back when he didn’t give a shit.
Back when things were simpler.
Chapter Four
Nathan’s heart pounded as he watched a brutal scene unfolding before him. He was hidden in the safety of a small clump of fir trees, having taken cover when he heard the screams and shouts of a small band of survivors as he was hiking through the forest. It was clear that there was another group actively hunting the remaining survivors in the area.
For the past few days, Nathan had run across the destroyed camps of at least three other groups. They were small bands with only four or five members each, and they were all dead. They had been murdered; not eaten or otherwise attacked by the infected—simply murdered. However each group was slaughtered, they all had one thing in common; the strongest appearing members, likely the leaders, had been brutally killed with some kind of axe or hatchet.
Each of their skulls had been smashed in half right down the middle; their necks also crushed as if the attack happened while the victims were on their knees. Their limbs were often roughly severed; crush—not cut—from their bodies. And this was no simple bludgeoning. Some other kind of weapon had been used. Likely the very same weapon that Nathan looked upon now.
The leader of this violent group stood a ways away, his cohorts surrounding a small group of men and women who were tied up and positioned on their knees. The females of the group had been stripped from the waste up, and their bare breasts, soiled and scratched, were exposed to all. The big man who carried the strange weapon stood before them, looking them over as he stroked the giant broken gear that served as the weapon’s blade. It was an axe handle, decorated with strange symbols, with half a cog bolted and tied to the end of it. The cog’s teeth, which served as the blade’s edge, had been filed to points.
It was a fearsome thing.
“I’m looking for a man,” the giant leader said, scratching his gnarled black beard. “A guy named Drew. He’s bald, wears glasses, and hangs with another guy named Dan.”
The prisoners were silent, their pleading eyes tearing up in terror as the man began walking from one side to the other, all the while patting the edge of his weapon in his left hand.
“Don’t know them?” he asked.
“I-I’ve never heard of them,” the lead victim said. “Please let us go. If we see him, we’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
“Shut up, mother fucker. I don’t want yo’ help. I want yo’ blood. If you don’t tell me where these niggas are at, I’ll be bathing in that blood.”
“I don’t know,” the man on his knees pleaded. “None of us have heard of them.”
“Well,” the giant said. “Before I kill you all, I just want y’all to know that it’s nothing personal. You stumbled onto our territory, and we don’t take kindly to trespassers.”
“No, wait!” the man pleaded.
“Grab his arm,” the leader said. “Pin him to the ground.”
Nathan watched as a cohort kicked the man to the ground face down, while another took the man’s wrist and pulled his arm out straight. The leader raised his weapon, taking a step forward as he prepared to strike. Nathan turned his head, his heart racing in terror. He heard the leader groan as he chopped downward. There was the sound of flesh and bone being crushed, followed the agonized screams of the poor victim.
The other men in the group laughed—most of them anyway. The women’s muffled screams came after, their mouths covered by the filthy hands of the leader’s cohorts.
“Pull him back up,” the leader commanded.
Nathan turned to look again. The man’s left arm had been mangled at the shoulder, and hung there from a few strands of flesh and tendons. He was moaning and swaying, his face pale and frozen in shock. The man behind him pulled his head back to look up at the leader again.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time, have you seen Dan and Drew?”
The man said nothing—he could say nothing. His head lolled around limply as he lost consciousness. Frustrated, the man behind him smacked him on the back of the head.
“He’s done for,” he said.
The giant leader walked right up to him, raised the brutal weapon into the air, and smiled. Nathan’s heart nearly exploded and he closed his eyes. He heard the crunching, splatting sound of the poor victim’s head being crushed. And then the ring of steel as his cohorts unsheathed their knives. There were the muffled screams of the women as their throats were cut, and more chopping sounds; presumably of them being dismembered by the leader as they lay choking on their own blood.
Nathan felt a lump rising in his throat. It was pure terror; pure terror for the victims. The sickening sounds of their deaths echoed in his ears, making the dark of night all that much more desolate. He felt like weeping; like crying out in sorrow. He didn’t even know these people, but he had felt their fear—their terror—as the end of their lives suddenly arrived.
He suddenly felt anger and rage as he opened his eyes. He looked at the vile man with hatred, malice, disgust. He was truly a monster; one that deserved death. Out of all the dangers the survivors of this new world faced, he was unmatched in ferocity. Nathan had never imagined that one man could do so much evil to others. In this new era, it behooved the remainders of the human race to band together for survival. And now this man was killing them. All of them except his equally disgusting band of monsters.
Who was he? Why was he looking for this other group?
Nathan sighed sadly, gathering up his gear as the violent group piled back into their vehicles. He stepped out into the carnage, looking around at the camp. Curiously, the group had no guns. There were a few hand weapons around, but nothing to fend off other humans. Nathan had carried for a long time, even before the infection came. He was never really a “gun guy” but had decided to start carrying when his partner, Michael, was gunned down by a Somalian immigrant.
He vowed that he would never be defenseless again.
Now as he crept among the mutilated bodies, the smell of their blood was rampant. The attack had only lasted a few minutes, but the poor people had been savagely dismembered alive. His footfalls made squishing sounds in the blood-soaked mud, and he nearly stepped on a severed hand before stopping and changing direction. It was the most horrifying thing Nathan had ever seen in his life.
