by Jake Bible
“Day three?” I panic. “No wonder the Consortium is so close.”
“Getting closer,” Stuart says as he jogs up to us. “Come see.”
“Too loud,” Marcie calls from inside the tent. “Trying to sleep.”
Stuart rolls his eyes and gestures for us to follow. We get up to the top of the stadium again and stare at the sight before us.
“Well, at least they can’t move fast,” I say as we watch the Consortium’s army roll into Denver. “Not that we’re exactly mobile and zippy.”
“We’re working on that,” Stuart says. “Brittany returned an hour ago and we’re all set for the next phase.”
“Next phase?” I ask. “What next phase? No one said anything about a next phase last night.”
“That’s because we were too busy telling you about the Stronghold,” Antoinette says as she comes up next to us, two of her sisters by her side.
Lacy and Steph. I think. Hard to keep track sometimes.
“So? What is the next phase?” I ask.
“We take Boulder,” Antoinette says. “We secure that city and in turn secure the Stronghold. Then we prepare for the Consortium. Camille believes she has the numbers to win, which she technically does, but she forgets that numbers aren’t everything.”
“They’re quite a lot,” I counter.
“But not everything,” Antoinette says. “We’ll have position. There is really only one way up to Boulder and we’ll make sure that route is a nightmare for them every step of the way.”
“How many people do we have left?” I ask. “Thirty? Forty?”
“Fifty,” Stuart frowns. “About. But that doesn’t matter.”
“I am obviously missing something,” I say.
“You are, but that’s okay,” Stuart says. He’s enjoying this.
“Just spell it out, please,” I sigh. “The Jace brain is at about ten-percent capacity these days. I spent all my thinking cash on the chain-link cage idea.”
“Good theory,” Antoinette says. “Bad execution.”
“We’ll use the environment against them,” Stuart says. “The one resource we have an almost endless supply of. One that never gets tired and never gives up.”
“The Zs?” I ask. “You want to use the Zs against them? How?”
The enthusiasm for the plan seems to just fizzle away at my question.
“It won’t be pretty,” Antoinette says.
***
I know more than a few of the faces that are revealed as the tarp is pulled back. I don’t know how they got the corpses back here, but they did. Close to twenty of them.
“We chum the water,” Stuart frowns. “It’s downright sacrilegious, but we don’t have the luxury of those kinds of morals at the moment.”
“Chum the water?” I ask.
“Spray the army,” Lourdes says, having joined us. “Mr. Flips will be assisting us. Apparently the Cannibal Road cannies have experience with this sort of thing. They have done it before with some of their...games.”
“We pretty much liquefy the corpses, add to water tanks and dilute the chum so that we have more volume, then drop it on them as they come up the mountain,” Stuart says. “The Zs will go insane.”
“Why don’t we just stay here?” I ask. “These walls are massive. Nothing is getting inside. We quiet the fuck down and let them roll past.”
“Then they get the Stronghold,” Lourdes says. “We explained why that can’t happen.”
“So fucking what?” I say. “They get the keys to the kingdom and all the fun toys. Good for them. What does it matter? We move on. We find somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else,” Lourdes snaps. “Once Camille is inside the Stronghold then she can press a button and we are gone.” She snaps her fingers. “Vaporized in an instant.”
“So you say,” I reply. “We assume things are still working.”
“They are still working,” Antoinette says. “Brittany got confirmation of that.”
“Fine,” I concede. “Camille gets the Stronghold and basically she becomes the one and only big, swinging dick in all the land. She can piss on whoever she wants and doesn’t have to worry about splash back.”
“Really, Jace? That’s the analogy you come up with?” Stella asks. “Jesus.”
I shrug. Then I wince.
“Wait a minute,” I say, finally catching up to what Stuart said. “How are we dropping the chum on the Consortium’s army?”
“Chopper,” Stuart says then smiles.
“One problem,” I reply. “We don’t have choppers.”
“We will shortly,” Stuart says. “You’ll see.”
“Okay, okay, okay!” I yell and receive a wallop of a headache for it. But, fuck it. I’m done with all the word games. “Will someone please just be straight with me? You all are having way too much fun keeping me in the dark!”
“We are taking the choppers from Boulder,” Stuart says. “They’ll be here any minute.”
We are sheltered in one of the ramps that lead out onto the field. It’s as good a place to keep dead bodies as any, I guess. Stuart turns from the corpses and looks out at the field, studying our small group of survivors.
Stella wheels me around so I can see what’s going on. Everyone is breaking camp fast, getting the gear stacked into neat, manageable piles. Others are rushing around with tarps and bungee cords, wrapping a pile up tight then moving on to the next one.
“We hook the gear to the choppers,” Stuart says. “Leaving as much room inside to transport our people. It’ll take a few trips, but we should have enough fuel.”
“So we made peace with Amy and her people?” I ask.
“What? No,” Lourdes responds. “Amy was not interested in peace. She was interested in saving her own skin. That’s all.”
“I’m sure she was interested in saving the skin of her people as well,” I say. “That can motivate someone to do things they aren’t proud of.”
“Bullshit,” Stuart says. “You know why she changed her tune as soon as she realized how many of us there were?”
“Because we would be a drain on their resources,” I say. “We used to do the same thing back at Whispering Pines, Stuart. We’d rarely take in any bums. Just send them on their way or shoot them if they refused to keep moving.”
“Yes, resources played into her motivations, but not in the way you think,” Stuart says. “She ditched us because we would have outnumbered them almost ten to one. Easy.”
“Ten to one? What?” I exclaim. “No way. We met, like, eight of them. And there’s some guy named Crumb too. That’s nine.”
“That’s two thirds of their group,” Stuart says. “Brittany confirmed it. There are fifteen of them altogether. Fifteen. That’s it.”
“Fifteen?” I say, my mouth just hanging open. “No way. That can’t be. How the hell do they only have fifteen?”
“We don’t know the story,” Lourdes says. “Not yet. But we will soon. Audrey is up there right now. She’ll be back with the choppers any time now.”
“But there are two choppers,” I say. “Who’s flying the second one?”
I don’t have to wait too long to find out. The distinct sound of rotors fills the air and soon the two Boulder choppers are cresting the side of the stadium. They hover for a second or two as everyone clears space then they land easily. Well, one lands easily. The other does a little hop before it settles.
And out of the hopping chopper comes Elsbeth. All smiles and big teeth.
“Hey, Long Pork!” she yells as she hurries over to me. “I can fly a helicopter! Did you know I can fly a helicopter?”
“I don’t know what you can and can’t do anymore, El,” I say. “But I am not surprised.”
“I got in and I knew what everything did,” Elsbeth says, like a kid that’s just gone from learning to ride a bike to being able to ride with no hands in a day. “I knew all the buttons and switches. All the levers and sticks. I knew what the pedals do. I could read the instruments. It was great
!”
“You nearly crashed it into the ground right after take-off,” Audrey says as she comes up to us. “But you got it together after that.”
“Nerves,” Elsbeth says. “I had the nerves.”
“A little moonshine takes care of the nerves,” Critter says as he comes up to us. “Too damn bad I don’t have none of that. I think we could all use a snort or two.”
“Did you kill them?” I ask. “Amy and her people?”
“What? No, Long Pork,” Elsbeth says, offended. “We ain’t the bad guys. My mother is the bad guy and all her little asshole soldiers are the bad guys. We’re the good guys. Good guys don’t kill dumbasses that have no spines and just want to cry and cry and cry.”
“El broke them,” Audrey grins. “She broke them like the first night.”
“I told them what a bad person my mother is and that she’ll never trade for me,” Elsbeth says. “She’d take me and then kill them all then do whatever she wants to do with the stupid Stronghold place. I said to stick with me and Long Pork and everything would turn out just fine.”
“You told them that?” I ask. “Thanks, El. I’m flattered.”
“Yeah, I told them that because you are always doing stupid things and as long as we do the opposite of whatever you say then we’ll be fine,” she smiles. “It’s called reverse strategy.”
“Oh. Uh. Good,” I reply. “I do tend to—”
“Oh, shut up, Long Pork!” Elsbeth guffaws. “I’m only shit fucking with you! I said that you could help rebuild Boulder and make it strong again. She liked the idea. She was very receptive.”
“You also had just kicked the shit out of her and half her people,” Audrey grins. “That helped with the reception.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Elsbeth nods. “They thought handcuffs would hold me. They were wrong.”
“So now we have their choppers and what?” I ask. “You left them all up there? What’s to say they don’t shoot us out of the sky when we return?”
Elsbeth cocks her head, looks at me like I’ve just grown eye stalks, looks at Stella like why would she let me grow eye stalks, then looks back at me like she’s going to rip off my new eye stalks. For the record, I do not have eye stalks. This isn’t that kind of story.
“Have you ever heard of a place called a jail, Long Pork?” Elsbeth says, talking really slow like I’m addled in the brain. Which, technically, isn’t far from the truth.
“Yes, El, I have heard of jails,” I say. “So you locked them up in one? All of them?”
“Not all of them,” she nods. “Just a few. Enough so she knows that if she messes with us again, her people die. Oh, and I locked up Kramer.”
“She was really happy about that,” Audrey says.
“I was really happy about that,” Elsbeth echoes. “He yelled at me almost the whole way I carried him into the cell.”
“Why’d he stop yelling?” I ask.
“He bumped his head,” Elsbeth says and shrugs. “Six times on the corner of a wall. He’s clumsy. He stopped yelling after that. Probably because he was asleep. He’s old, he needed the nap.”
“I love you,” Stella says and gives Elsbeth a huge hug. “Only way I could love you more is if you’d made a video of it all.”
“Sorry. No video,” Elsbeth replies as she steps away from Stella. She actually looks bummed she didn’t video the whole thing. “I can do it again for you when we get back. You can video it then. Might kill him though. But at least we’d have video.”
“No killing Kramer,” Lourdes says. “He’s still useful.” She glances at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I say. “I don’t want that asshole’s hands in my head ever again. I’d rather have Stinkler in there, even though I hate the man.”
“Why you hate Stenkler so much?” Elsbeth asks.
“It’s obvious,” I say.
“Not really,” Stella says. “I’ve always thought it was because something went down back at the Tomb with that Lizard Jesus guy you are always talking about. Now, I’m not so sure. Why do you hate him?”
“Never mind,” I say. “This isn’t the time. We live through this and I’ll tell you.”
“We all set?” Audrey asks. “We have fuel in the choppers for four trips up and back. There’s enough fuel in Boulder for a few more trips, but not much. We’ll need to be fast and efficient.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Lourdes says and puts her hands to her mouth. “OKAY, PEOPLE! YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO! LOAD UP ACCORDING TO YOUR LOT NUMBERS AND LET’S DO THIS!”
“Lot numbers?” I ask.
“We drew lots to group folks together,” Stella says. “Wrote it down so we know who we lose if something goes wrong.”
“Something goes wrong? What will go wrong?” I ask.
My answer is a loud explosion outside the stadium.
“They have tanks and RPGs, Jace,” Stuart says. “We’ll be flying targets.”
“God dammit,” I swear. “I was just getting comfortable with this whole plan. Fucking RPGs ruin everything.”
***
I’m in the first group of passengers. I guess they want to move my crippled ass as fast as possible so if things go south they won’t have to deal with me later. Stella says it was so I could help coordinate at the other end and start looking at Boulder and the fortifications already up, but I know when people want to get rid of me. I’ve had a lot of experience with it.
The landscape is breathtaking as we fly over the Denver Boulder Turnpike on our way up the mountain to Boulder. It’s arid yet green due to the pines and firs and cedars that are everywhere. There’s the occasional clump of aspens and birches, which I thought I’d see more of, but I guess those are higher up in the mountains. Our route takes us over a couple of lakes, one of which is pretty good size.
“What’s that called?” I ask as I point down at the lake. I get to be in the front with Audrey.
“What’s what called?” she replies over the headset. “Be specific, Long Pork.”
“That lake,” I reply. “Do you know its name?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I saw it on a map. It’s Standley Lake.”
“Stanley Lake? Like Stanley Hotel up in Estes Park?” I ask.
“Standley! With a D!” she shouts over the sound of the chopper’s rotors. Despite our headsets, it’s still really fucking loud. “What’s the Stanley Hotel?”
“It’s where they shot The Shining!” I reply. “Or the interiors, at least!”
“What’s The Shining?” she asks.
I weep for the apocalyptic youth of today. But I don’t say that out loud.
“Yes, you did!” Audrey laughs. “I forgot how fun you are, Long Pork! Good to be back with you!”
“Oh, well, thanks,” I reply.
I try to settle in for the rest of the ride, but the jostling of the chopper makes it hard. My shoulder hurts, my head hurts, my side and ribs hurt, my whole body hurts. And Audrey isn’t exactly the most graceful pilot.
“But I’m a hell of a dancer!” she shouts and gives me a wide grin.
“Sorry about the out loud stuff!” I yell.
“Don’t worry about it!” she responds. “We all know you aren’t mean or cruel! We’ve got your back, Long Pork! Especially with Marcie digging on Chuck! He’s a cutie! A little young for me, but cute!”
“Yeah, about that!” I yell. “How old is Marcie?”
“She’s twenty-three!” Audrey says. “How old is Chuck?”
How old is Chuck? I mean Charlie. How old is my son now? Eighteen? Is he eighteen? No, he’s not that old yet. Is he? Fuck. I don’t even know how old either of my kids are anymore. Hell, I don’t even know what year it is anymore. Time gets fucked in the zombie apocalypse and birthdays go out the window when you are running across the country for your life.
We really need an official time keeper and historian for this place when we get setup. Keeping track of what has happened and what will happen is important if we plan on making a new life h
ere. Once we survive. Yeah, survival comes first before we start making new desk calendars.
We’re directly over the Denver Boulder Turnpike and there’s not much down there. Not much that hasn’t been burned down or looted. I see some buildings that used to be intact, but they’ve been stripped of their siding and look like husks of civilization. I’m so busy staring at the remains that I miss our approach to Boulder.
“Long Pork! Pay attention!” Audrey yells. “You won’t get this view again for a while!”
I snap my head forward and instantly regret it. The world turns sideways and I feel a hand grab my shoulder. My non-destroyed shoulder.
“Long Pork?” Audrey yells, but not just to be heard. The concern in her voice is pretty obvious.
“I’m good. I’m good,” I say.
I straighten up and focus out the windshield. Boulder. We made it. Or I made it. Everyone else is still on their way.
I first see the sprawl of ubiquitous suburban neighborhoods. It’s the West, after all. Yes, the East has suburbs, but the West perfected the concept. Spread out them citizens. Let them drive, drive, drive their way into the American Dream.
“Okay, you can stop talking now,” Audrey says. “It’s getting old.”
“Try living inside my head for five minutes,” I reply.
We pass over the neighborhoods and I can see some barricades set up here and there at the ends of specific roads, but other than that, the place is not fortified. We get up over the University of Colorado and the place looks fairly intact. This is good. There are signs of heavy fortifications around some of the buildings, but nothing central. Nothing unifying this place as any type of sustainable sanctuary.
Where the fuck did I bring my family? Where the fuck did I bring my friends and those that were looking to me to keep them safe? Whispering Pines was a million times more locked down than this. This is one of the big settlements left in the country?
At least there aren’t that many Zs. I can see some small groupings, but they can easily be handled. The big herds haven’t gotten up this way yet. I’m guessing the mountain road isn’t so easy for Zs to hike up. Not in the middle of winter when their limbs are stiff from the cold. At least the slow ones are stiff. The fast fuckers don’t have too much of a mobility problem.
