Chloe’s voice jarred me out of my grim imaginings. “You seein’ ghosts, Alvaro?”
“Not exactly. More like premonitions.”
Her fine, dark eyebrows straightened. “Whaddya mean?”
I turned and hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Tell me, if something was coming from there, could you see it?”
She glanced in the direction of my thumb, focused on the terrain. “Not sure.” A dainty cuspid came down on her very full lower lip. “It would depend.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Now, Alvaro,” said Prospero, putting an uninvited arm around my shoulder, “do not spook our one and only sniper. Build confidence, not anxiety!”
I removed his arm gently but firmly. “Sorry. That’s not my job.”
“But it is. Our objective is to kill as many stalkers as—”
“That’s not my job.” When Prospero stopped, puzzled, mouth still open, I set him straight. “My job is to make sure that everyone who got off Voyager gets back on. Alive, intact, healthy. Having enough to eat is a bonus. Anything more is icing on the cake. So my first concern is not how to kill infected, but how to keep my friends from getting killed by them.” I pointed back up the east road. “There are a lot of places along that stretch of highway we can’t see. Which means it’s a place we can’t really control. If something reaches the top of that rise across the intersection undetected, it’s just one long jump and a short sprint away from us.”
Prospero shook his head; he pointed south toward the base and the airfield. “Down there is one of the two major concentrations of stalkers.” He swung his arm around until it pointed at Green Mountain. “There’s the other. Almost three miles away. No direct road. Rugged ground. Even assuming that gunfire might attract them here, we’ll still be long gone by the time any from the mountain arrive.”
I crossed my arms. “You sure? And you still think the best way to bait the infected from the airfield up to us is with a live, thrashing fish?”
Prospero crossed his arms, too. “That remains my suggestion. You have a better one, perhaps?”
“No, I think it’s promising. But ’splain this to me; assuming they can’t smell their lunch from that far away, how are you gonna let the infected know we’re even up here tomorrow?”
“We’ll blow the Range Rover’s horn a few times. It’s always attracted them in the past.”
“Right. And then we assume that, without any delay, they’ll run up the southern road toward the fish we’ve got hanging from the traffic sign about fifty yards away.”
“Correct.”
“And you’re not concerned that there might be some other infected, just prowling around, that could get here first—or at the same time—from a different direction?”
“That’s why I agreed with your suggestion that you and Steve carry the two AK-47s instead of FALs. If we have unexpected guests, or any get too close, the automatic fire should be more than sufficient to deal with them.”
I nodded. “Yeah, let’s hope.”
Rod shrugged and smiled, as if to say, “hey, don’t worry so much.” Steve was Steve; couldn’t tell what the hell he was thinking. Chloe was smiling too, but more like she was trying to reassure me.
Jeeza, however, was not smiling. She was just looking at me, like she wanted to say something but didn’t know what—or maybe, couldn’t find the words. She just nodded slightly and looked past me.
Up the eastern road.
October 18
It wasn’t a perfect day. The clouds had socked in. No rain, but reduced long-range visibility.
And then there was the wind. There’s usually a stiff breeze blowing on Ascension, and the higher you go, the more noticeable it becomes. But we’d made landfall during a period of relative calm, and Chloe had estimated her long-range accuracy based on what we’d experienced since then.
Those estimates had changed with the weather. Her mood had changed too, as well as the frequency with which she was cussing under her breath. And then more loudly.
When Rod asked her what was wrong, she damn near bit his head off. “What is wrong is that the wind speed and direction is going to make the first three or four shots pretty much a crapshoot. And since we don’t want to alert the zombies until we’re ready for them, I can’t get the windage until right before we ring their dinner—well, lunch—bell.” She resumed her string of muttered obscenities. Chloe may be the most creative curser I have ever met.
It didn’t help that the wind was also shifting as much as two points every few minutes.
Jeeza, who was on top of the Range Rover to work as spotter (and driver, if we needed to bug out), turned to Prospero. “Do we, uh, abort the mission?”
He shrugged, nodded down to where Rod was pouring water over the tuna that had mostly stopped thrashing. “Might as well carry on.”
We’d lashed a fish-gutting rack to the traffic sign down the road and had hung a live tuna from it, the one that had been caught the day before and kept in a tank until this morning. For the past fifteen minutes, I’d been glad fish don’t have vocal cords, because if they had, this one would have been screaming.
I half-agreed with Jeeza; maybe we should wait for a better day. Which made me wonder what would happen if I said so. Who was really in charge? And not knowing the answer pissed me off because I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought that through beforehand.
Prospero kind of acted like he was, probably because we were the outsiders and he was military. A Senior Aircraftman, Technical, whatever that is. Certainly didn’t sound very impressive. I mean, maybe he is super hot shit with radios and computers, but that title doesn’t exactly scream “I am a badass zombie killer.” And he didn’t hold his FAL much more confidently than the rest of us.
I guess we found ourselves in that situation for a bunch of reasons. Coming up with the plan had genuinely been a group effort, so we were kind of in a collaboration groove. Then, when we met with the council, it was Prospero who got us in, who introduced us, and got us taken seriously. So, he had the local juice, even though all the locals treated him like he was a living, breathing bad-luck charm. And despite all we’d been through, the bottom line is that the five of us still think of ourselves as kids when we’re around older people. Or we did when we got up today.
But right at that moment, as I kept my AK sighted down the south road, and well to the side of Rod’s silhouette, I just breathed out my frustration. We were six people without any backup, clustered behind a Range Rover tricked out for a Mad Max movie. And yeah, we’d picked an okay spot for our little surprise party, but it wasn’t perfect and the wide-open spaces of this near-desert island were making us all very aware of just how easily we could be overrun.
This was especially true since we really didn’t know how the infected would act in this kind of situation or this kind of terrain. Our only experience was dealing with them as they tried to get off a trawler in an icy subarctic inlet. Prospero had seen more of how they acted, but that was people who’d just turned, in town. It wasn’t out in the open, where we could only guess where they’d come from, when, and whether it would be as small scattered groups or one big horde.
Rod stepped back from the wide-gilled tuna, careful not to be in range in case it found enough strength to start thrashing again. Prospero leaned over into the Range Rover. Only thing left to do was honk the horn.
Yeah, the day wasn’t perfect, and it was an awful idea to start a life-and-death activity without knowing—knowing—who was in charge. But on the other hand, the fishermen had caught exactly what we needed, followed us to the intersection, hung the critter up, and then rolled back down toward Georgetown in neutral to minimize sound. No random infected had appeared, which would have been—at the very least—a real pain in the ass. And best of all, no one, not even Jeeza, showed any sign of wigging out.
And still the horn hadn’t blown. I looked over my left shoulder; Prospero was looking at me, then looked at the horn symbol on the middle of the steeri
ng wheel, and on down the hill.
I shrugged and nodded.
And wondered what would happen next.
* * *
What happened next is that we waited. Long enough to check our watches. Twice.
Then, way down the road, a couple of infected wandered into view from the housing section of the U.S. base. They veered in our direction. Jeeza, who was up on the roof of the Rover, swept through a three-sixty with our best binoculars. She shook her head. With our flanks and rear clear, those of us aiming down the slope hunkered down behind our cover: Chloe and Prospero prone up on the hillock just behind the Rover, Rod and I behind its hood. We leaned over our guns, waiting.
I don’t know what we had been expecting. Maybe a mad rush like the human wave attacks that you see in old black-and-white Korean War flicks? Or maybe an angry mob in those “glorious revolution” movies that make it look noble and cool to be cut down in windrows by muskets or machine guns? Well, it wasn’t that.
It was, at first, just a handful of infected ambling up the road, stooped forward like they were either half asleep on their feet, or trying to catch a scent. Maybe it was both, because as they neared three hundred yards (we had range markers every fifty), they started to perk up. But before that, it became obvious why the locals had taken to calling them “stalkers.” What made them really scary, even at this long range, was that you could tell they were relentless. They’d keep coming no matter what. And at three hundred yards, they must have smelled the fish, because some of them started, well, speed-walking.
“Is this normal?” I heard Chloe ask as she snugged her eye to the scope of the .308.
“Slower than usual,” Prospero allowed. “Must have been dormant for quite some time.”
Which made sense, but also got my pulse up a little. We still had no idea how quickly stalkers went dormant, or how hard it was for them to remain that way. And if the answer to both was “easily,” then the number that had survived this long might be significantly higher than even we had guessed. “Chloe—” I started.
“I get it,” she assured me. “I’ll stay ahead of the curve.” Which sounded a little like the “plucky bravado” equivalent of whistling past a graveyard. But if anyone could thin the stalkers out before they got close, it was Chloe.
Still, I can’t say I really enjoyed hearing the flat thunderclap of the .308 just four yards behind my right ear. Don’t get me wrong; the sound of guns doesn’t bother me. But when they’re close, I don’t like having them go off right behind me. Where I grew up, that was often the last sound unlucky gang-bangers heard.
Down the road, the closest of the stalkers sort of flinched to one side and then started running. No: that doesn’t explain it correctly. One moment he was walking, the next he was in a full-out long-legged charge. And howling.
Behind me was the clacketta-clack sound of Chloe working the rifle’s bolt, and also a lot of cursing about shitty wind conditions.
Rod had risen up from his sights to get a better look at the lead stalker and the other two who were keeping up, just behind him. “Hey, Chloe—” started Rod.
“Safety off,” I told him, “and shut the hell up.”
The .308 cracked again. Half a heartbeat later, the lead stalker took a final staggering step, and then fell toward the side of the road. The one right behind him glanced over but didn’t stop; he was charging and yowling even more energetically than the first one had. The second paused long enough for hunger to overcome bloodlust, I guess; he swerved into a crouch alongside the fresh corpse, hands already a blur in anticipation of bloody reaping.
Chloe was reloading. Jeeza was calling out targets. “Three more behind. Five hundred yards. They’re, uh, trotting. Getting faster. More behind. I think.”
“You think?” Prospero’s tone was high and ironic.
“There are more,” she corrected. “And more behind that. But they’re dirty as shit and—”
—ker-rack! declared the .308—
“—the light sucks, so—”
The new lead stalker, stumbled, righted herself, and charged even harder.
“—I can’t give you precise headcounts until they’re at about four hundred fifty yards. If that’s okay with you.”
The .308 spoke again and the charging stalker went down, about one hundred yards south of the tuna.
Not that I’m a gifted observer of stalker behavior, but it sure didn’t look like that zombie, or the one before it, had been interested in the fish. Their impulse was pure aggression. They evidently knew they were being attacked, and the gunshots may have seemed like some kind of challenge—hell, who knows what goes on inside their broken brains? What I do know is that, hungry or not, they were being driven by insane, ragemonstering fury.
Maybe, if we had held fire until they got to the fish, it might have gone down differently. But the next spot where we could have hung any bait was too far away and too close to stalkertown. Besides, Prospero thought that if the stalkers were too far away to see us clearly, they might stop for food, and so we could pick them off. One at a time.
But he was dead wrong. I didn’t know what he’d seen, or how he came to the conclusions he did, but they were in it for the kill. Feeding appeared to be an afterthought.
I heard the clicka-snick, clicka-snick of Chloe reloading the .308. “Suggestion,” I shouted over my shoulder.
“Make it good and make it fast.”
“The wind steadies, you take shots. Any you’ve got. Screw optimal range. Go with your gut.”
“Already there, Alvaro,” she said as I heard the bolt snap down.
If Prospero didn’t approve of the modification to his plan, he didn’t voice it.
“Targets approaching three-hundred-yard mark,” Jeeza said loudly. “Big bunch. Coming fast. We’ll need the long rifles, the Flahs—the, uh—”
“The FALs,” I corrected loudly as Chloe’s rifle barked again.
“Yeah—the FALs. We’re going to need them. Good news is the stalkers are kinda bunched up. They’re sticking to the road.” She paused. “Mostly.”
Prospero’s voice was clipped: “Define ‘mostly.’”
“Some are angling off into the brush to our right.”
I could see why they might. The pack in the road was just thick enough that it probably frustrated some of the ones coming up behind them. They were eager to see their prey, and they were probably stupid enough to think that if they could see us, they could get to us faster. But not over that ground. Not even if they had wings.
“Two hundred fifty yards,” Jeeza said, just before the rifle cracked again. “Nice shooting, Chloe.”
“They’re closer,” she muttered back, “and the wind’s steadier.” She squeezed the trigger again. Another dropped. There were still a dozen, all charging now. And behind them—
“Another group coming,” Jeeza said. “Gotta be at least twenty.”
Chloe’s next shot hit one in the sniper’s triangle; messy. “One more and I’m going to the Captain’s FAL.”
I nodded at no one. Inside one hundred fifty yards, the scope was still a huge help to most people, but Chloe—rightly—asserted that at that distance, her ability to put lots of lethal rounds down range with the FAL was a better use of time and of her skills.
But, I thought, if someone isn’t using the hunting rifle to thin out the next wave—and then I decided not to think about that. Rule one of combat: there is no time to optimize. Here’s what I mean:
You know those role-playing games where you sit around the kitchen table and roll dice to fight battles? You know how the game kinda stops while everyone plans exactly what they’re going to do next, when they’re going to do it, and in what sequence? Yeah, well, real world combat is not like that. Not at all. It’s the opposite. The guns are so loud, there’s so much you can’t see or don’t know, and so much shit is going down in so many places, that you just go with what you think will work. And when training, common sense, and instinct are all telling you the same t
hing? You do that without question. It’s like using aikido in a real fight; you’ve trained each move so much that when you need it, you don’t have to think; it’s your reaction.
So, yeah: Chloe was right to drop the hunting rifle and grab our best FAL to deal with the closest stalkers. We’d worry about the farther ones later. If we survived that long. But even so—
I turned, sprinting toward the hillock. “Chloe: rifle!”
She stared, but tossed it down to me. I caught it—barely—spun around, handed it up toward Jeeza. Who also stared. “Load it for Chloe.” Then I went back to the front corner of the Rover, just behind the right headlight.
That was the furthest forward cover we had. To the side and behind me was Rod with a FAL. Chloe and Prospero had the two best ones up on the hillock. Steve was at the back end of the Rover with the other AK. From there, he could fire to the south, or, in case of a nasty surprise coming from the east road, he could swing back behind the Rover and hit them from there. Everything was in the right place; everything was going as we’d rehearsed it. I breathed a sigh of relief, even though eleven stalkers were coming closer on the southern road. If that long uphill run had tired them, they didn’t show it. They were already at the one-hundred-yard range marker. Then they were past it. “Jeeza? Targets!”
“Oh, fuck!” she shouted; .308 rounds clinked as they fell out of her binocular-grabbing hands.
Which was my fault. By asking her to reload the hunting rifle, I’d pulled her off her main task: watching and reporting on everything going on around us. All because I couldn’t resist slipping in a little bit of optimization. Prick that I am.
“Uh…uh…seventy yards. Fire!”
The three FALs started sending rounds down range, slow and steady. I swear, every time Chloe pulled the trigger, one of those gimping bastards went down. About half the time, they stayed down.
Our other two shooters—well, that was a different story. And while Senior Aircraftman Percival Halethorpe was doing better than Rod from the ’burbs, it wasn’t by much.
At the End of the World Page 17
