World of Ashes

by J. K. Robinson

  A few more shots rang out, Keith waved his hands, "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

  The kid snickered. "That'll happen to you when you try to take ‘twenty- fours’ off- roading. Fucking ghetto rat tard fuckers."

  "So when you sit there late at night, masturbating to your elf character on WoW and dropping a load on your anime print body-pillow, do you ever stop to think about truly fucking sick you really are?” Ethan narrowed his eyes and addressed the rest of the Minutemen assembled. "No one shoots until we find out what they want. Let them run out of ammo, we’re well out of range of handguns." He stood up and heard a few more shots fired from downrange. The gangbangers only had pistols, maybe even a sawed off shotgun. They certainly had no idea how to properly use either. "Keith, go get that up-armored M1114 and a five ton. We'll bring them back here and in-process them."

  "In-process?" Rowe stood as well, realizing there was a snowball’s chance in hell of getting hit. "Are we arresting them?"

  "Did they shoot first?" Ethan turned to the kid. The kid looked away and made a discrete exit. "Arresting them is your call, we'll get information and identification from them and then we can push them on South. There's a lot of vehicles here, we can afford to give them one if it means we don’t have to keep gang-bangers around.”

  "Why waste the gas on ‘em?" A man asked. "Fuck ‘em."

  "Yes. Right. ‘Fuck them.’ That makes loads of sense. Why don't we just go ahead and quarter them at your neighbor's abandoned house instead, Mr. Singer is it? I thought you were a Man of God.” The bearded Minuteman's frown made his beard twist in funny ways when scolded by Officer Rowe. "Deputy Cally’s idea will work fine. We'll send them on their way. Escort them as far as Bourbon so we know they won't come back."

  Keith returned with the truck and another driver. He forgot to unlock the other doors and had to play twister inside the Humvee to unlock them for Ethan, who was watching and trying not to laugh from outside. Others piled into the 5-Ton truck as the gangbangers down range began to come to grips with the fact that they were surrounded by truly dead people, thousands of them. They were also in the gun sights of a well trained militia, the ones who’d stacked the bodies they’d become stuck on. Slowly the two trucks crept toward the newcomers, rolling over corpses, their bloating sacks of fat and gases popping and crunching like so much roadkill. Everyone vomited at least once, if not from the smell then the sound. It’s not one you ever forget, like the squeaking of a cassette tape when the play button isn’t pushed hard enough. Nails on a chalkboard.

  As soon as the convoy was within seventy five meters, still just outside effective pistol range, Ethan got on the bullhorn. "Attention. Attention. This is the Sullivan Militia. Lay down your weapons and come out where we can see you and you will not be harmed.”

  Amazingly enough they complied without a fuss. It was probably the machine gun in the turret that changed their minds, though they were slow to lay the guns down, and who wouldn't be? The terrified city dwellers never stopped making eye contact with Ethan as they inched closer to the ground to lay down arms. Ethan and a few others dismounted, carefully approaching with their guns pointed down, making it clear they really weren’t going to open fire first. For some reason, the men in the red gang colors seemed relieved they’d met someone who was willing to talk. A zombie that had been buried under the other zombies groaned near a deputy, startling him as he took his position for the encounter. A three round burst echoed across the valley, he’d blown its head off and was still screaming as he jumped away from it.

  Confused and frightened, the gangbangers grabbed their guns and started shooting wildly, shouting racial slurs and about being betrayed. Someone managed to hit a deputy in the vest, knocking him down and out when his face hit the pavement. Others dragged him away in the confusion of shouts and screams. Ethan’s experiences in Iraq had been harsh, but they were never this gruesome. What transpired in the next ten seconds was something more becoming of an SS Extermination Squad than American Militiamen. The machine gunner, having seen it all from above and withholding his fire because his own men were below, took a ricochet in the helmet. He had tried to warn the gangbangers not to pick up their guns, but after picking himself back up from the massive impact to his head pulled the trigger and mowed the gangbangers down in a violent salvo that ate the entire belt of ammo and melted the barrel.

  Perhaps killing zombies from a distance was something of a disconnect, like a video game that has no consequences and isn't real. Killing people at point blank range was messy and brutal, a different experience entirely and unimaginably horrible. Ethan was still standing in the midst of it, just below the gun’s defilade. The M240Bravo's 7.62mm rounds blew people almost in half, their blood and entrails sprayed in every direction, mostly on Ethan. He could feel the thumping concussion of every bullet that sailed just inches above his head, making a sickening thak sound every time they hit a person. Most of the deputies stopped firing after only a few shots, but the gunner didn't.

  In the deafening silence where only your heartbeat can be heard, Ethan looked up the gunner, still clutching the trigger of the white hot gun for dear life. It was the rude kid's older brother. Black carbon and cordite covering his face as his hand held the trigger still, a stream of dirty tears running down his eyes and mixing with his own blood from a nasty gash on his head. Ethan and the others saw the damaged Kevlar when the kid sank back into the turret, holding his head and rocking back and forth.

  “It’s okay, man.” Ethan stuffed the helmet in the trunk for evidence later, in case someone accused the boy of murder. Maybe it was murder, but for certain it was panic. Though what he’d done was terrible, it might have saved everyone there. Being shot in the head can have a profound effect on someone’s thinking.

  All fifteen men in the party were sworn to silence as they looked at the remains, some still twitching, bright red blood spilling and mixing with black zombie ooz. Ethan up-chucked again as he realized that the girl standing behind the very truck he'd wrecked days earlier had been pregnant. He stared at her body, missing half her left shoulder and part of her right leg. Her eyes were open, large as saucers and black as night. Her hands still clutched a chrome plated Beretta 9mm, the slide locked back and empty. She was the one who’d fired at the deputy first. She’d never put the gun down in the first place. She was planning to attack them all along, take a truck, do something stupid. Was she suicidal? What had these poor people experienced that had made them so untrusting? Also, how in the fuck did a pregnant teenager plan to take down two armored vehicles and a machine gun with a pistol?

  The answer was inside the Escalade. Pounds of crack cocaine, methamphetamines, heroine, and practically no weed but what was already rolled in a half finished blunt. The drugs were in varying states of being “cut”, which gave Ethan the impression they’d been collecting this stuff from other safe houses. Probably robbed every crack dealer in St. Louis on their way out. While most people were hoarding food, water, ammunition and toilet paper, these people were hoarding enough drugs to last them a lifetime. What was the logic behind that, he wondered.

  Ethan wouldn't let anyone else near the truck as he hauled weapons out of it too, since he was there. They didn't bother burying the bodies, no one was going to touch the mess of infected blood anyhow. Their silence prevailed even as they drove back to the roadblock.

  "What happened!?" Rowe and the two other cops demanded to know.

  Keith held up his hand. "They wouldn't come peacefully. They opened fire." He choked back tears. An even larger crowd had gathered to see the commotion. It wasn't every day one heard a machine gun rattling in urban America.

  There were more shootings that day. Townsfolk cleared most of the city proper by nightfall, the people already galvanized by the previous night’s victory over the horde. The electricity was still on, a fact they'd have to investigate soon enough, which gave a second shift the opportunity to clear the rest of the town and most of the outskirts. Neighbors helped clear other neig
hbor’s infected family, the need to let police search a home without a warrant negated. Two more people died from gunfire exchanges with thieves in the woods, and another three were bitten and euthanized shortly thereafter. A heavy price, but now the town was as clear as it was ever likely to be. They could keep a regular patrol up for the foreseeable future, so long as people continued to volunteer.

  The Charlie Daniels impersonator who’d been in the meeting was about to address a gathered crowd from the podium at the fair grounds that night. He was shorter that he looked before, with a white beard and a well worn Stetson. He smelled of tobacco, alcohol, and probably some pot too, as if he didn’t care what he smelled like.

  "Keith, turn down your radio." Ethan said, buttoning up his uniform blouse. He'd cut the U.S. Army nametape off his old BDU uniforms, but kept his name and the US flag on it. Keith was becoming fond of just wearing a t-shirt and any pattern of camouflage pants that were clean with un-bloused desert boots. The police still wore their regular blue uniforms, and had each donned lieutenant's rank, though they certainly weren't being paid a matching salary. Being alive and relatively safe would have to suffice for payment.

  "I think I should go back to the car and monitor the radio. There's been a few people in trucks with guns mounted on them Iraqi-style testing our borders. A few refugees showed up too, one was infected..." Keith trailed off for a moment while the wouldbe mayor tested the microphone. "Bourbon's been overrun by a biker gang. Lots of stories of torturing the infected and raping women are coming out of there. Its making me a little distracted.”

  Ethan's eyes widened. "Does this guy know about this?” He gestured with his thumb at the speaker. Keith shrugged, so Ethan scooted right up to the Charlie Daniels clone and pulled him close. "Look, Sir. We have a problem in Bourbon. It's a big one, but we're going to handle it. Whatever you do, don't publicly announce us sending men to check it out, okay?"

  The shorter man looked up and smiled. He wreaked of liquor even worse up close, but then who really wanted to be sober right now? "Look, son, I got this." He pulled away and stepped back to the microphone. "My fellow Americans…" He began, smiling at his own innuendo. "My name is Aaron Kenly. I was a Marine, a Deputy, and a Sheriff… So believe me when I say we have a problem." He motioned to the small police and deputy force gathered. "Our brave men and women in uniform, who have chosen to stay despite orders from Cheyenne Mountain and D.C. to abandon us, to try and protect us from the risen dead…"

  "Are they really Zombies?" A man shouted from the front row, cutting him off. "CNN is still sayin' they're just infected, and that there’s a cure in the works.”

  The man on stage shrugged. "I’m afraid I’ve not spent much time sitting in front of a television hoping for miracle cures lately, but since I'd like to avoid the same questions, I will recap." Ethan smirked as the man continued. "The dead people are as close to zombies as any definition allows for. They're attacking people and spreading this rabies-like virus. At last estimates more than half the world’s population is infected... That’s more than three billion people for those counting. The government ain't workin’, the Army is retreatin’, and in case you missed their pull-out the other day, let me be the first to assure you that we are well and truly on our own." A murmur rose from the crowd, some people were beginning to panic. "That does not mean the world is ending!" Kenly suddenly harrumphed. "We are still here, my friends! And our men will protect us. We will hold until the United States of America can get herself together, and then, I swear to you all, we are going to give these lurching, infected puss-bags an ass whoopin’ history will never forget! We’ll hoist OId Glory above the White House again one day soon… This I swear to you.”

  Ethan felt Mr. Kenly might be and okay guy, his Winston Churchill impersonation had something to be desired, though. Kenly finished his speech and stepped off the stage so Officer Reynolds could address the people on emergency services and the possibility of making the Wal*Mart parking lot a marketplace, another meeting of those interested in a farming and economic council and a waste and body removal council were mentioned as well. This was obviously all going to get a lot worse before it got better, but at least they stood a chance with an organized resistance. The theory that they could hold their own had already been tried and proven in blood.

  "Now tell me what we're going to do about Bourbon and those little bastards coming through Japan and Beauford." Kenly said as he came back to stand next to Ethan. He didn’t seem to notice Keith had gone.

  Raising an eyebrow Ethan shrugged. "The South roadblock is getting a steady trickle of refugees. For now we've got another roadblock at the turn at the town of Japan, no word from them tonight besides an hourly check in. I don't think bandits are going to be a problem very often. Once they figure out this town is defended we shouldn’t see much of them.”

  Aaron Kenly nodded appreciatively. "How about what happened at the North checkpoint? People are going to start to wonder the longer the men stay silent.”

  "How's about telling me if that's SoCo I smell, or Jim Beam?" Ethan countered. Kenly smiled again and walked back towards the massive 1959 Cadillac he'd parked near the stage. It even had a ridiculous looking set of bull horns bolted to the grill. Ethan walked back to the patrol car and stuck his head inside. Keith was glaring at him.

  “What?”

  "I got a call from the South Gate. A girl showed up with bloodied feet… buck-ass naked. She's in critical condition at the hospital." Ethan jumped in, the drive to the hospital taking only seconds, but much faster than running. Walking into the air conditioned lobby, the shock of cold air felt amazing beyond words in the late summer heat. A nurse was there to greet them along with a chubby girl in her twenties with a police department promotional shirt on and a shotgun she seemed very comfortable with. Allowing guns in the hospital had become a gruesome fact of life the staff had had to adjust to. Restraints meant nothing to the raging infected, and what few nurses and doctors that were left had to be guarded as if they were more precious than a newborn.

  "She's still in the E.R.” The nurse said, “Massive dehydration, broken ribs and fractured arm. She's not talking, we have no name yet. We’re running a rape kit… but it’s pretty obvious. She probably has a broken pelvis too…”

  "Is she infected?" Keith asked.

  "No, I don't know how she made it through. My husband says they shoot at least three zombies coming out of the woods every hour, but they have a thermal scope and she was just barely warm enough to find."

  "Can we talk to her? It could be a while before the regular cops can get here. We need her memory to be as fresh as possible." Ethan asked.

  Shelly, the guard, nodded to them and they went into the victim’s room. Machines bleeped and whirred, the girl was awake, but her eyes never met the newcomer’s. "I'm Deputy Keith Brewer. What's your name?" Keith asked, keeping his distance and speaking in as soothing a voice as he could.

  "Ma'am, we need to know what happened to you." Ethan’s bedside manner had something to be desired.

  "They did." She said, "Those bikers. They happened to me. The guy I was traveling with didn’t have any food or guns to give them to get into the gang… So they took me and shot him." Her tone was clear and calm, as if her blood had been replaced with ice water. Who knew she could be so concise with all that had happened to her. "After I bit their leader’s dick off they stripped me, raped me, beat me until I blacked out, and left me in the woods for dead." She remained steady and calm. “They didn’t shoot me because they were tired of all the bodies sitting around rotting… stinking. I hope reminding them of what they’ve done.”

  "If you have a name we can go look for there, it will make things simpler for us." Ethan offered. “Bring them to justice.”

  “They don’t have names, Officer.” She said, laying back down and becoming catatonic again.

  They left the room and headed back to the station. "What time you want to call it quits tonight?" Keith practically begged. Seeing the beautif
ul young woman so badly beaten had taken more of a toll on him than even his own wounds and bruises. Ethan’s couch was beckoning to him, like the temptresses of the isle of sirens. So soft, so vodka and pizza scented that this 70’s throwback monstrosity would swallow him into the cushions like a fat Army wife’s ample cleavage.

  "After we cook up a battle plan." Ethan was letting on how much the girl's state had upset him too. "I'm not letting this go. They raped her, and that is worse than anything you could ever do to someone. Worse than being a zombie…”

  "Any response to the emails?" Keith changed the subject, disturbed as well. Ethan had been emailing all of his friends and family obsessively for days. When they weren't on patrol they were tirelessly watching news feeds and trying to contact relatives. When the last regular broadcast from CNN went dark, most of the traffic on the highway, dead and living, dried up. Most people in the U.S. and Canada had gone to the hundreds of illicit FEMA “Refugee Camps” in the early days of the panic, dark hellholes where internet and phone use were almost nonexistent, and always monitored by the government. Emails rumored to be opened and edited by the spooks at the National Security Agency abounded, but these were just rumors, right?

  "No." He answered quietly.

  They arrived at the police station where about twenty off duty deputies were filling out reports by the light of a construction lamp. The police station's air conditioner had given out, apparently due to mechanical failure unrelated to the apocalypse, and the place was stifling in this midsummer’s nightmare. A strong wind blew from the West, the smell of death and fire assailed them. Ethan closed his eyes, his heart and mind unable to prevent the flashbacks from the desert he’d been sent to rot in years before. The smell of ten thousand years of death, violence, trash, and oil was omnipresent in Iraq. The smells the wind carried there made you pray for a still day where only the heat was making your skin feel like it was on fire, and not the sandy winds. This breeze made it all that much worse, polluting the one peaceful aroma of the Missouri forests.