by Smith, S. L.
“No, son,” Glenn said impatiently. “Padre’s saying the car dropped off a couple guys. The guys started chasing the girls on foot. The car stayed on the roads, probably taking the long way to meet back up with the guys on foot, you know? That’s what you’re saying, right?”
Padre was nodding, clearly impressed. “Yeah, but I think you’ve already passed me up.”
“So two trails, huh?” Isherwood asked. “Plus whatever Chet and Justin manage to find, assuming it’s not trouble.”
Patrick was shaking his head. “We need more people.” Wilson nodded, tightening his grip on the spear.
“Look,” Glenn said. “My boys and I can handle tracking both trails. Y’all try and catch up with the others.”
“There’s something else, too,” Isherwood said, motioning behind him with his thumb. “That airport. Something inside had been steadily drawing the zeeks to it. I don’t like not knowing what it was. And I definitely don’t like putting whatever it is between us and St. Mary’s. We’ve pretty much left the church without any men to defend it, just the Amazons. Who knows? Whoever took the girls might not be alone. This might all be part of a larger strategy to lure us away from the church.”
Micha cursed under his breath. His father shot him a smoldering look in reply. Eli even jumped a little.
The others were quiet for a time mulling over Isherwood’s insights. Padre was standing with his arms crossed tightly across his chest and staring down at the ground. Lee was still just staring.
“Well, look,” Glenn said. “We can only do what we can do. Me and my boys will start trying to pick up the two trails. And, Padre …”
“Lee and I will go try and find Chet and Justin.” Padre answered. “They’ve got a radio, right?”
“Right,” Isherwood answered. “And I’ll go check out the airport.”
“I’ll go with ‘ya,” Patrick said. “None of us should be out alone right now. Eyes on every back.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Isherwood answered. He was glad for the company. “Wilson? How about you stick with Padre? I’ve gotta bad feeling about what those guys are walking into. In fact, if all goes well at the airport – if it’s just a radio or something, you know, that never went off – we’ll be headed your way, too. Everybody check in every half hour, okay? If you gotta go quiet for a while just switch to channel four, okay? Don’t turn your radio off.”
Before they separated into three groups, Glenn asked Padre to give them all a blessing. Wilson joined Padre and Lee in the Humvee, and they were soon gone. The blessing inspired Isherwood with one last idea before leaving the little defensive line they had thrown together. With Glenn driving his own vehicle, either Isherwood or Patrick would need to leave their truck behind. Before they left Patrick’s truck behind, Isherwood realigned it to block the roadway. Apart from the River Road, it was the only way into town from this direction. He also rigged up Patrick’s CB radio, so it would chirp at them if somebody opened the driver’s side door.
Patrick was giving Isherwood a funny look when he finally got in the driver’s seat of his Jeep. “I just don’t know what we’re dealing with here, buddy,” he told his friend. “Just trying to stay a couple steps ahead.”
“Like I always say,” Patrick nodded. “Better ahead than dead.”
*****
“Can’t you just plow through the fence or something?” Chet was asking. He had jumped in the passenger seat of Justin’s vehicle willingly enough when Justin had caught up with him, but he had been chomping at the bit ever since.
“There’ll be a gate or something soon enough,” Justin said. “Don’t worry, man.”
“And if it’s locked?” Chet asked indignantly. “We’ll just have to plow through it, too, right? Right?”
“Look, man. Just up ‘head. There’s a nice open gate and a road for us to get up and on the levee.”
“’Bout time! We’ve been driving all this time in the opposite direction.”
“How’d’you know it’s the opposite direction?”
“Because, man – they’ll couldn’t’ve got past the school on foot.”
“Okay, that sounds right and all, but how’d you put all that together? You’d never even heard of Morganza a couple days ago.”
“I don’t know,” Chet said, as though his brain had suddenly fogged up. “I just have a picture in my head.”
Justin wrinkled his eyebrows at this and started observing the younger man out of the corner of his eye from then on. “Okay. Whatever that means. So what’s this picture telling you?”
“Turn left, once you get atop the levee.”
“Right, picture in my head was telling me that much, too.”
“Yeah, so, after that, we’ll drive a little bit. We’ll see the school out to our left. Pretty much right when we see the school, we’ll need to get off the road. I mean, go on foot. I’m thinking they’ll be on the riverbank at about that point. Don’t know if they’ll still be there, though.”
“You know the riverbank’s not just right on the other side of the levee, right? That could be a pretty hard slog through man-eating mud, you know.”
“No, I don’t think it will be.”
“The picture again, huh?” Justin’s eye-rolling was nearly audible at this point.
“Uh-huh.”
*****
Despite Justin’s skepticism, it had been exactly as Chet had pictured it. Cutting through the swampy woods on the far side of the levee, there was a long line of half-sunken timber mats that disappeared into the woods.
The sun was sinking low in the sky as the Escalade crunched to a stop along the gravel road atop the levee. “So if that’s the school,” Chet was saying with his eyes closed. “Then, the road ought to be …”
Justin watched as the other man’s index finger slowly gravitated toward a spot along the passenger window. Chet’s eyes were shut tight throughout, as though opening his eyes might break the spell. When the man’s finger finally stilled, Justin lurched over the vehicle’s center console to see what lay below. “You’ve gotta be …,” he trailed off. “Like Dorothy’s yellow-brick road.”
Chet was already gone while Justin was still fumbling with his seatbelt. “Come on. You gotta slow down, jack.” Justin was saying, but he might as well have been talking to himself. “Guess we’re going on foot,” he continued, now truly talking to himself. He grabbed his trusty AR-15 from behind his seat and clipped on a sidearm, as well. He grabbed a second ArmaLite for Chet, as he was pretty sure the other man had run off unarmed.
Justin locked the doors of his vehicle and slammed the door shut behind him. “You’ll be safe here, old lady,” he told his vehicle. “You be a big ol’ bread crumb for the others.” He mumbled the last part to himself as he sprinted down the gentle slope of the levee carrying the extra rifle by the barrel, while his own rifle bounced against his back.
“Dude,” Justin whispered loudly as his feet banged along the slim road. “Take this from me.” The road was not perfectly set into the ground. Sections of the timber mats angled sharply into the mud. In the half-light, it was impossible to tell whether it was just a puddle standing along the mat or a man-sized hole. The condition of the road forced even Chet to slow down. Otherwise, Justin might never have caught up with him.
Justin finally had to rap the end of the rifle against Chet’s shoulder to get him to stop a second for the hand off. “Just throttle back a sec and think, will ya?” Justin scolded Chet. “A little teamwork and strategy might help save her life, you know. What were you gonna do without a gun, anyway, McFly? Not smart.”
“If I slow down,” Chet groaned. “I might lose the image in my head. It’s like I’m chasing a light in the distance now, or a white rabbit. I keep losing sight of it.”
“Okay, fine. Do your thing. I’ll handle the plan part.” Justin looked back to see if he could still see his Escalade and the top of the levee, but the trees had already closed in on them. It was growing dark fast under the canopy of tre
es. Even now, they could barely see fifteen feet ahead or beyond the makeshift road.
Justin gasped as Chet’s foot nearly slipped off the mat. “What?” Chet asked. “So what if I get a little muddy?”
“So that’s what,” Justin said, pointing at a piece of plastic on the left side of the path, maybe ten feet back.
“What’re you pointing at,” Chet asked. “That bit of trash?”
“Look closer, bro.” Justin watched as, despite his hurry, curiosity got the better of Chet. Slowly, Justin saw his eyes widen.
“Is that a …?”
“Yeah, believe it.”
“No way. A whole car?”
“Forget it,” Justin said, prodding Chet along. “Just be careful.” There had been just two plastic saucers visible along the surface of the mud. It was the grill of some kind of Jeep or utility vehicle. The mud had consumed the rest of the vehicle. It had likely run off the path, and was now being slowly digested by the swamp.
They had cleared another five or six timber mats when the woods began to fall away. The mats were nearly completely submerged now, and their legs were sinking deeper and deeper in the water with each passing yard. The dim half-light of the forest quickly gave way as the river shined in gold and silver ahead of them. Soon, they were holding their hands up against the blinding light of the setting sun reflected along the wide and churning river. Their retinas burned even when they looked straight down at their feet. It was getting harder and harder to see the mats through the water. The swamp water had turned now to river water, which was darkening even as it reflected the sunset.
“Chet!” Justin kept whispering as the younger man drew farther away from him. “Slow down, man. The current’s starting to pull at my boots.”
“Slow down?” Chet said, finally turning back. “Can’t you hear that?”
Justin’s already-squinting face grew comical as it squinted further. “Hear what?” He started to say, and then fell silent.
CHAPTER TWELVE: DEAD AIR
Isherwood’s Jeep rolled to a stop outside the large chain-link gate that led to the small administration building of the airport. Isherwood had only driven himself and Patrick a quarter of a mile from the gas station. He felt a little funny for driving a distance they could have easily walked, but the Jeep was like their mobile base. They had stocked all the vehicles with extra ammo and gun, first-aid kits, and provisions – even extra auto parts. They were ready for almost anything, they hoped.
“Nice fence,” Patrick observed as he closed the passenger door softly behind him. “Bet you’ve had your eyes on this place for a while, eh? ‘Part of a larger strategy,’ ‘enemies between us and the church’ – whatever, amiright? You just couldn’t wait any longer to get at this place.”
Isherwood smirked, but couldn’t help look guilty. “I’m sure we’ll soon have a chance to lay down our lives for those two girls, don’t you worry. It’s weird, though. This place. It’s got a perfect fence and all sorts of land inside for farming – and my God, the planes! – and it didn’t even …”
“What?” Patrick said, tilting his head.
“Enter my mind. I completely didn’t even think about this place until the other day, or did I? D’you remember?”
“I dunno. One big blur since that day you came honking by our subdivision with a town-full of zombies behind you, like the pied piper or something.”
As they had been talking, Isherwood had walked over to the edge of the gate where it was joined to the rest of the fence with a chain and a Master-Lock. Patrick meanwhile had turned to face one of the last zombies still stalking around the gate. Hundreds had been lured away by Padre’s crew, but there were still a few stragglers.
“This was supposed to be an easy day, you know?” Isherwood said as he tried squeezing through the space between the fence and the gate. He got one shoulder through, but his head and katana wouldn’t fit. He tried putting the sword through first, but the space was still too tight for his head. He cursed. “Hate ruining a perfectly good lock, but …”
“Let’s just – hrumph! – climb it,” Patrick said as he swung his sledgehammer up and through the jaw of the zeek that had finally stumbled into range.
Isherwood looked up to the top of the fence and winced. “Razor wire?”
Womp. The zombie’s skull caved in as Patrick brought down the sledgehammer for a double tap. “Sure,” Patrick said, taking a deep breath. “We’ll just throw the floormats over it. Not like we haven’t done it before.”
“Eh, let’s just cut the lock and zip-tie it back. We can drive the Jeep inside the gate, too.”
Patrick smirked at Isherwood. “Not sure if you’re being lazy or smart.”
“Maybe a little of both,” Isherwood answered, as he walked to the back of the Jeep to grab a set of bolt-cutters.
“Dang,” Patrick said, taking a moment to scan the whole area. “Padre and Lee really did clear out this whole area. It’s so quiet and still, like the whole world is just empty. Almost prefer seeing one of things stumbling around. Kinda like The Langoliers or something.”
“The what?” Isherwood answered absent-mindedly returning to the gate with the bolt cutters.
“It’s like the world has moved on and these jerks are slowly digesting yesterday. Nevermind. It’s a Stephen King book.”
“You know, you’re right.”
Patrick’s eyes lit up. “About us being in a Stephen King book?”
Isherwood grunted struggling with the bolt cutters. “Uh, no. About it being really quiet. We should be able to hear whatever was drawing those things over here.”
“Or the noise has just stopped,” Patrick snapped back. “Or it just turns on and off intermittently, or, I don’t know, a thousand other reasons.”
“Mood swing much?” Isherwood whispered as he struggled to pull the bolt cutters closed. He exhaled sharply suddenly as the lock’s steel shackle snapped apart. “Sorry about the book, okay? I’ll never make fun of Stephen King again, I promise?”
Seeing Isherwood uncoiling the chain, Patrick jumped into driver’s seat of the Jeep and drove it through the gate. There was a short driveway which led to the office and the vast expanse of concrete beyond.
Isherwood rolled the gate back into place as soon as the Jeep had passed. After he had coiled the chain back around the metal posts of the gate and fence, he walked over to the Jeep to get the zip ties, half-expecting Patrick to have had them ready. He pulled on the handle of the cargo hatch and it slipped through his fingers noisily. He tapped on the back windshield, but there was no response from within, so he tapped again.
Just then, there was the creaking sound of metal as hands began to pull on the chain-link gate. The chain began to slip with the movement. “Where’d you come from?” Isherwood asked the zombie, not expecting an answer.
He walked around to the front of the Jeep and tapped on the tinted window. “Hey man, what gives? Unlock it. We’re starting to get visitors back here.”
The power window slid down a few inches. “Say it,” Patrick said.
“I’m not gonna …”
“Say it.”
“Are you serious?” Isherwood whined, but there was no response.
“Fine. ‘Stephen King is the king of horror.’ Are we good?”
“And say ‘I’m sorry for having offended his highness.’”
“No way I’m saying that,” Isherwood groaned, but just then the chain slipped completely off the gate and clattered to the concrete and grass.
“Just kidding,” Patrick said as he quickly pressed unlock and jumped out to help his friend.
“No,” Isherwood said. “You get the zip ties. This is a job for a lady.”
Patrick shot his friend a funny look, but returned to the vehicle nonetheless. Meanwhile, Isherwood was unsheathing his sword. He set his feet and, bring his head level with the sword, thrust it through the gap between the gate and the fence. Drawing himself back up to his full height, the zombie slumped forward then back.
<
br /> “Quite a dame,” Patrick nodded. “Does the sword have a name?”
Isherwood shook his head, adding, “but she is a lady.”
Several minutes later, with the gate secured behind them, they began searching the office building. Getting inside was easy enough. There was a bloodstain marking the place where a body had been dragged across the wooden planks of the porch which ran the length of the building. They soon realized that the body hadn’t been dragged far. There was sneakered foot still propping the door open.
“I really hope there’s something attached to that sneaker,” Patrick moaned in dread.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Isherwood answered. He moved into the guard position as Patrick slowly opened the door.
“Knock, knock,” Isherwood announced, as Patrick inspected the dead body at the entrance.
“Well,” Patrick mused. “There is a body attached to the foot. Sort of.”
After listening and watching for any activity inside the building and seeing none, Isherwood dropped his gaze to the body. “Nice. I’ll be keeping my out for the rest of him.”
The entire torso of the corpse was missing. The pants were tousled, but facing upward. Only the lumbar section of the man’s spine remained. The pants had begun collapsing inward due to rot and the removal of much of the man’s waistline. “It’s actually pretty lucky that the dead heads left us with this half,” Patrick was saying, as he searched the pockets of the work pants. “Because look.”
As Isherwood watched, something came jangling out of the man’s pocket. “Gotta be kidding me! That’s almost too lucky.”
“Lucky we don’t have to depend on your lock-‘Smithing’ skills, you mean.”
Isherwood groaned in response. “You’d think I’d have more natural ability given my name.”
“Still better than me, Ish. There any reason this place would have guns and ammo? I mean, what sort of ‘high dollar’ supplies does a place like this have?”
“Radio equipment for one. Don’t think we’ll see guns and ammo.” They divided up searching either side of the main room of the building. It was a large room with an open floorplan. It had a large sitting area on one side and a workspace on the other. There was a wall of windows on the far side of the room and another porch beyond. Something or someone had crashed through one of the windows on this side. Doors led out of the main room toward either side of the building.
