by Woods, Shane
A single grunt issued, cutting her off, as the Colonel’s voice regained the line.
“Scott,” he chirped, “I’ll be honest, I’m done fucking around with you, son. Surrender yourself if you ever want to see them again.”
“Come get me,” I raged into the mic. “Walk over your dead men and arrest me. I will not be threatened.”
I didn’t wait for a reply before I flung the radio and watched it contact the wall and nearly disintegrate.
“Scott, he has Gwen!” Jennifer nearly wailed.
“I know,” I replied from somewhere very far away, “and even if I surrender, do you think he’ll just let her go free? Or any of them? We’re fucked either way, so, we fight.”
“Okay then,” she replied. “How?”
“For now?” I asked, then, “We wait. Wait until our defenses are done. He won’t come during the day anyway.”
“How can you know this?” she asked.
“Because I wouldn’t,” I stated coldly. “He won’t either. This isn’t about arresting anyone or helping survivors, it’s like Tony said. They’re hungry. He doesn’t care about us.”
“Shit,” Jennifer stated as the others in the room looked at the floor, dismayed.
“Scott? Scoooooott,” the radio on the table cooed, taunting. Okay, apparently smashing the one did nothing when several around were all on the same channel. Oops.
It was him again. The Colonel. That bastard.
“Shootout at noon? Over,” I returned, partially hopeful he’d say ‘okay’ and we could all end this thing before it got out of hand. He didn’t.
“I’ll be seeing you, Scott. Oh, and, no worries, I’ll keep your little girl safe. Bye bye now. Over.”
I stormed from the command center and right into the conference room where I snatched up a chair and began slamming it overhead into the surface of the sturdy table again and again until the wooden chair gave way, splintering and sending pieces of itself flying in all directions. By the time I was done, I slumped into my usual spot and placed my forehead onto the table. What, you thought I’d destroy my own seat? Mine was nice. I didn’t like the one that now lay asunder all around me.
“Feel better?” came Jennifer’s voice as I felt her hands on my shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Scott. We’ll handle this just like we always handle things.”
“He has the kids, Carolyn, and whoever else was on that boat with them,” I spoke into the table as she began rubbing her palms and fingers deeply into my shoulders.
“I know,” she said. “One problem at a time. We take care of the Colonel, then we get our Gwen back. And Hannah.”
The second name sent a new pang through me as I sighed and lifted my head, standing to leave the room as I keyed our compound-wide channel on my own radio.
“Everyone, they have Gwen, and they are apparently looking for a fight,” I explained to everyone with a radio set. “Whatever duty you are on right now, finish it, and help whoever else is around you double time their duties, too. Meet around dinner time at the North Building main entrance.”
“We need a plan,” Jennifer suggested as we made our way down the stairs.
“We block their river access, Henry is on that right now,” I recalled. “We block the roads, Rich is doing that one. Funnel them, take down their numbers the best we can, keep them tight, and hopefully funnel of death them to a sizeable number then mount a full defense at the central compound here once the guerilla defense falls down.”
“Okay then,” Jennifer resigned, forgetting that I always had a plan of some sort or other, even when I didn’t actually have any idea what we were doing.
“We keep a few on lookout over the waterway, disable one entrance, and try to pin them at the other as another funnel,” I continued on. “Then, by then, hopefully however many of them are left is less than what we’ve got left and we overwhelm them.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” she asked.
I did not answer. We had hit the second floor and I walked into, then through, Shannon’s office as I was met by surprise reactions and questions that I ignored. I stepped through her sliding door, grabbed the lawn chair on the balcony, and tossed it over the balustrade to the ground only a dozen feet below. Upon hearing it impact and not hearing anyone yell up, I left the balcony. Then I turned and walked through the office again.
“Be ready to become combat medics,” I instructed without pausing my steps. “Or stay put right here and treat wounded if they make it to you. Both sides. Patch up our enemy as well and maybe those under the Colonel will be sick enough of his shit to become friendlies.”
Shannon and Ashley both exchanged glances and offered positive replies as I left and walked right back to the stairwell and down one flight to the ground level.
Upon exiting the building, I found the lawn chair, now slightly dented but still serviceable, and set it up, then rested my weight in it.
“It’s about to be a long night, woman. Either get ready or find a public place where you can be seen and accounted for and take a nap.” I instructed. “Either way, I want my kit sitting next to me when I wake up, please.”
She just kind of stared at me for a moment before popping her eyebrows once and sighing ‘okay’.
“Hey, you wanted to stay, you need to be ready too,” I urged. “Both our kits by the dinnertime meeting.”
“Okay,” she repeated and turned to leave as I settled into position and closed my eyes. Stress and everything piled on me and didn’t seem to matter. I was asleep before I could even think of any of it.
I did rest, though not well and definitely not thoroughly. I spent a few hours or so in that space between sleep and consciousness, sometimes aware of what was going on around me, sometimes genuinely asleep in spurts. Twice telling Rich to go away and work or rest, but leave me the hell alone nonetheless.
What finally brought me all the way back to the land of the mostly living was a sense of commotion building all around me.
Must be dinnertime, I thought.
Sitting forward and rubbing my eyes until my vision cleared and adjusted confirmed as much. People gathered here and there between the North Building and Rich’s armory in loose groups.
I recognized many as our own, but there was a nearly equal number that I barely recognized, if at all. Hashman’s men. I told him not to send people, just take ours. Apparently, he listened about as well as Tony usually does.
I sat on my plastic lawn chair long enough to get a feeling for the scene before me. Everyone was eating what was on hand, and that wasn’t much, though mostly we didn’t want for much. No big grilled meals cobbled together out of whatever, though, and MREs were finally beginning to be scarce, no longer rationed out but instead horded like gold and only eaten when necessary. Instead, the assorted men and women ate an equally diverse assortment of snacks.
Some passed around a bag of likely stale chips to a few friends, others feasted casually on power bars or bags of mixed nuts. A few here and there were eating canned food cold and straight out of the container.
I looked around for a moment longer and snagged one of the high school aged teens coming out of the building near me, her arms loaded with canned food.
“Pineapple,” I said, watching her give a small startled jump before recognizing me and smiling as she handed me the one single can of pineapple rings.
I pulled the tab and opened the can, draining half the juice in one gulp before digging in and seizing a glorious golden ring of fruit with my fingers and pushing the whole thing into my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten in a week. I felt the sweet juice run through the hair on my lengthening beard, touching the skin, and dribbling down to form a small puddle on my lap before being soaked up by my clothing.
I enjoyed it, not only because it was nourishment, not because I was so hungry, not even because I particularly enjoyed pineapple out of all the fruits.
I enjoyed it because, should this clash with the Colonel go on as I knew it would, it might be the last food I’d ev
er eat. And I damn sure didn’t want that last meal to be the soggy fruit mix from an MRE.
“That’s so attractive,” came Jennifer’s voice from my direct vicinity.
“How long’s it been since you showered here, at the end of the world?” I asked her, opening just one eye to watch her think. “Days? A week? Longer? Don’t talk to me about attractive, woman, we’re all gross here.”
She took it in jest and laughed while rolling her eyes.
“Everybody is almost here, I think,” she observed.
“Looks that way,” I replied. “I’d better get dressed then.”
“Do you think this is really going to happen?” she asked, a tinge of nerves tainting her voice.
“I do,” I stated. “I think it’ll be soon, too. Go get everyone rounded up, I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay,” she nearly whispered and left to do so.
I was getting the feeling that my wife had just realized her defiance wasn’t a game to be played with this time. That she was now learning her choice to stay could leave our daughter parentless. Even as she left, I could see the look of far-off contemplation.
I rose from my seat and lifted my nearby gear onto the seat I had just occupied. A mismatched and cobbled together set of this or that, nothing on the Gucci level of Crye Precision, but serviceable nonetheless.
I stripped off my pants and donned a new pair of BDUs, one of my personal pair in a deep midnight blue and black camouflage pattern. Pulling off my Amon Amarth T-shirt was next and replacing it with a simple black long-sleeved affair with no design or pattern. I continued to add thin layers followed by my outer gear, also all in black and dark blue.
Checking my storage pouches and ensuring I had magazines for my weapons, I then proceeded to check the weapons themselves.
The MK18 MOD 0 rifle had quickly became my personal favorite. Not the best caliber there was, a .300 Blackout, but when firing subsonic rounds and paired with the suppressor it was startlingly quiet and carried fair accuracy between short and medium ranges. The only thing I didn’t like was the damned tan-colored furniture on the weapon, but Cerakote wasn’t exactly ripe for the picking since online services quit delivering after their driver’s became part of the population of hungry infected.
I guess my real complaint was the ammunition itself. I could kick in the door on a quarter of the homes in the country and find 9mm or .223. But the .300Blk was a much scarcer caliber.
Slinging the rifle over my shoulder, I checked the first of two pistols. A basic Sig Sauer P226 in 9mm. Just my style. A common caliber loaded into a reliable firearm, no frills, nothing extra aside from the weapon mounted light. I slid it into place in my chest rig and checked the final piece.
Then the Smith and Wesson 6906 I had with me in the beginning, and on nearly every venture out into this hostile world since. Prior to the end, it had been my EDC. That’s ‘Every Day Carry’, for those not aware. The small 9mm pistol had been in my waistband for years. It even held its place in concealment at my wedding. It fell naturally into the drop-leg holster I now wore for it and was secured into place.
By the time I had finished dressing and got a fresh pair of socks on with boots laced, it seemed as though the last few stragglers were rounded up and staged with the large group.
Thanks to Hashman, we had sent around half our population upriver, and received a similar number in return. Some looked a bit young to fight, but at this point, if they had no family left to claim and nowhere better to be, I’d take them as men and women for what was to come.
I meandered over near the group and took a step up the side of the bed of a nearby pickup truck and took a stand there.
“LISTEN UP!!!” I shouted through my cupped hands, my voice threatening to hoarsen over the effort. “Get as close to over here as you can, I’m not losing my voice for this.”
I stood and watched as the crowd shifted and began to encircle the pickup truck. My mind slipped to fantasy as they worked among each other. I thought of the dilemma it would present me if they were all hungry freaks and left me thankful that I had never had to try fighting from an open position. Two-hundred odd men and women were imposing enough when gathered around you. It would have been terrifying if they were all blood-faced and hungry, spewing viscous infected vomit and clamoring to take a bite of you.
“Well,” Dave spoke up from near the front, “we’re waiting for you sweet cheeks!”
“Fuck you Dave,” I grinned. “I will shoot you.”
“It’s alright,” he quipped, “better you than me!”
“Okay everyone check it out!” I said, returning to the crowd as the chuckles died down. “Chances are pretty damned good that we’re going to fight once again for our little place in the world.”
Murmurs of conversation spread through the crowd, as well as several remarks about me stating the obvious and telling me that’s what we’re all here for. I waited another moment for it to start dying down and began anew.
“The waterways are blocked,” I observed, noting the netting and fencing strewn across the river nearest to our location, “and the way to the water itself has been made difficult. The roadways are blocked, I’m assuming as well?”
“Yeah,” Rich confirmed. “Exactly as planned, no difference, and we used your suggestion for rigging the trap pit to blow.”
“We’re boxed in,” I explained to the crowd. “Fortified, but make no mistake. We are now backed into a corner and we must act like it!”
A dull rumble of concordance spread throughout the large group gathered around me, and again I waited. I didn’t want to forcibly stifle the conversation, I wanted the crowd to do as crowds do and fuel each other. I didn’t want fighters, I wanted warriors.
“A pair of you will break off and wade downriver, and another pair up,” I instructed. “Check your radio gear and batteries, if they try the water, you’ll be our advance warning system.”
As I watched, a younger pair was pushed to the front of the crowd, then two more of similar age and stature. I knelt and spoke quietly to just the four of them, wishing them to be safe but advising they slept in shifts, one up, one down, and someone must always be vigilant. Trusting the alertness of our entire compound to a quartet of boys who didn’t even look old enough to drive. At least, I thought, they’d hopefully be out of the line of fire if shooting started.
The pairs then departed, and I watched momentarily as one left behind my position, heading to cover the south of the river, and the other group skirted the crowd and disappeared around the near corner of the North Building, to cover that end of our territory. Godspeed, kids.
“Rich has all avenues to the compound by land blocked off,” I continued, turning back to the crowd. “I want patrols of six each near the outer wall, and maintain line-of-sight with the next patrol down. I also want two teams of three on each main building rooftop, and roving guards throughout wherever possible.”
“Roving guard?” asked a young red-haired teen near me.
“Ask anyone in camo, kid, they’ll fill you in,” I smiled at him, then regained my position. “We have maybe an hour of sun left. Get with Rich, Henry, or your section leader and start positioning supplies where needed. When we see anything that doesn’t belong, kill it. Infected or not. Guys, we need to take care of ourselves first. Be safe out there.”
“Your attention, please!” Rich’s gravelly voice crooned from near his armory, where he, Henry, and Ash started handing out boxes of forearm-length tubes. “Black are smoke, white go boom! Plastic for ground level, metal goes up to the roofs and gets split between guard towers!”
I eased myself over the edge of the pickup truck, grabbing a pair of the pipe bombs from a box as one man ventured near me with it, and sticking them haphazardly into the cargo pocket of my trousers. I then patted the other one to ensure I had my old trauma kit in place, as they were made to fit such pockets.
I watched the trio at Rich’s bunker hand out supplies, weapons, and personal med kits here and
there to the thinning crowd as Dave and my wife came wordlessly to my side to take in the spectacle.
“Well, let’s go,” I murmured as I turned and went into the North Building and followed the corridor to the stairwell, then up, up, and up.
I passed by our apartment, then stopped and turned in to hand a box of water and snacks to Dave from near the kitchen area.
“The beef jerky and Sun Chips are mine,” I cautioned, “don’t even think about them. The rest is fair game.”
I handed a few of our remaining MREs to Jennifer, and then we turned to leave the apartment and move up to the rooftop, where we’d watch from the east end of the building, looking out over our little walled-in neighborhood.
We settled in, each taking a barstool or similar and spacing out to look through the small gaps between plywood and solar panels as the sun took its last glance over the horizon behind us and dropped even lower, leaving a pink-streaked dusk to stretch across the sky.
The air felt different than usual, but, then again, maybe on this day I was simply more appreciative of it. The sky was beauty in itself and cast a wonderful soft-hued glow on my own favorite beauty, Jennifer. Gods, I wished she’d gotten on that boat. Part of me knew she’d likely be in the Colonel’s hands now, but then she’d be there with little Gwen, and with Hannah. Then again, another part of me held the thought that she’d have been able to fend them off and get the boat to safety.
Then, Dave. As tall and as lanky as ever, he sat digging through a bag of honey roasted peanuts. He wore an all-black hooded sweatshirt to fend off the cooling air, and had his dreadlocks pulled into what he called ‘his peacock’. The thick locks of matted hair brazenly displayed from the back of his head and tied to fall over the top of his crown. With the rest of us wearing the closest we could muster to our own military gear, he looked to be the most unusual of the bunch. Basketball shorts and hoodie, munching away with the ends of four pipe bombs protruding from the front hoodie pocket, and his now trademark AK47 cradled carelessly in his free arm. I was sure he’d have a pistol just shoved into one pocket, and various magazines and ammo shoved into others. And, of course, an old beat up cigarette pack with a precious joint or ten shoved inside.
