by D. J. Molles
Not that it mattered—on the off chance that Sam and Charlie bumped into each other in the Butler Safe Zone, they each shared a moment of near-panic, as though everyone around them would know their deep dark secret, and then they averted their eyes and ignored each other.
That secret being that Charlie was a Lincolnist, and that Sam knew it, and had let her get away with it.
As he did so often when his mind strayed into Charlie, he shook his head to clear it and deliberately turned away from the thought of her—of how she was a traitor, and how he had protected her, and, ultimately, how she’d played him like a cheap toy.
All of that nonsense aside, there were girls in the Butler Safe Zone that did look at Sam differently, and who Sam was pretty sure weren’t trying to pump him for information. Because he wasn’t just a kid anymore.
He was one of the Hunter-Killers.
Two months ago, they’d all been nobodies, walking perimeters inside of the Fort Bragg Safe Zone. Now people looked at them like they were tucking their dicks into their socks.
In just a few short weeks, the Hunter-Killer squads had become a complete subculture.
Squads were coming up with call signs and emblems and various off-shoots of esprit de corps.
Jones was a fountain of squad name suggestions—Tiger Cats, Screeching Freedom Eagles, and Pussy Kings, to name a few—but Billings hadn’t found one that he liked yet. A few squads had started to use their call signs on the radio, and they hadn’t been corrected by command, which was only encouraging it further.
All of this promoted two things.
Bravery...
And possibly stupidity.
Sam had to give the whole thing its due. They’d made quick progress securing hundreds of miles of route and erecting the radio repeaters along the way.
But sometimes he wondered if they’d become reckless.
Up ahead, the sign for I-520 was crumpled, laying on the concrete, with some weedy vines growing on it. But you learned to read signs like this.
“Here,” Billings pointed to the right. “Take this on-ramp. Come on. Speed up.”
Chris turned onto the ramp. The straightaway lay ahead of them, and Chris began accelerating down it. A few cars were clustered on the shoulders of the on-ramp, now just rusty humps emerging from a sea of weeds.
Up ahead, on the interstate, Squad Seven’s Humvee was visible, just passing the merge lane of their on-ramp, and heading towards the barricade of cars.
Loudermouth hadn’t been exaggerating. The line of cars was obviously deliberately placed, and they stretched from the concrete median that divided the inner and outer loops of the beltway, all the way across three lanes of traffic, and down into the woods.
“Dammit,” Billings grunted. “Fine. Slow up. No need to rush. Let this asshat do his thing.”
Jones made a disgusted noise. “Loudermouth? You’re going to let Loudermouth beat us out?”
“No,” Billings said, shouldering his rifle and leaning heavily into his window, as Chris slowed their Humvee to a crawl. “I’m going to let him do the work.” He reached over with his support hand and keyed the radio again. “Loudermouth. We got overwatch on you. We’ll let you know—”
“Shit! Contact!” Pickell belted out.
The second that Pickell said it, Sam saw it.
It would have been easy to miss, except for their elevated position on the on-ramp.
Movement, on the other side of the median barricades.
A lot of movement.
“Loudermouth!” Billings transmitted. “Pull out or punch through! You got company!”
Squad Seven’s Humvee was now sitting still, three vehicle lengths from the barricade of cars. As Billings transmitted, Sam watched their gunner spin in a circle, looking for the threat, but his attention was to the woods, not the median.
“Take ‘em, Pickell!” Billings ordered.
Pickell opened up with the M2. The massive .50-caliber rounds lanced out and smashed the top of the concrete barrier, tracking the movement of the shapes on the other side.
Down on the interstate, Squad Seven’s gunner spun about, seeing where Pickell was shooting and deciding that might be a good direction for him to shoot as well.
And then a fifty-foot section of concrete median seemed to disappear.
A mass of shapes swarmed over it, seeming to engulf it, giving the impression that the concrete itself had simply dissolved. Sam couldn’t count them. And the way their Humvee was angled, he didn’t have a shot on them either. He would need to get out.
He started to push his door open, but felt Jones grab him by the shoulder. “Stay in the truck!”
Billings yelled over the radio: “Loudermouth! Ram those vehicles and get out!”
The M2 thundered over their heads.
Down on the interstate, Loudermouth’s Humvee backed up with a chirp of tires, but no less than a dozen primals had now swarmed it, like wolves converging on a lumbering moose. The gunner ducked below his turret as two primals launched themselves at him.
“He’s not gonna ram the barricade,” Billings observed, his voice weirdly cold. “Chris, we gotta clear that barricade.”
“Dammit. Okay.”
“Go!”
Chris stomped on the accelerator.
On the interstate, Squad Seven’s Humvee was now reversing at top speed, the engine roaring, while six or seven primals hung onto it and tried to get into the open turret, and one of the side windows that hadn’t been shut in time.
Squad Seven’s Humvee swerved, the driver trying to correct, then overcorrect, and then their escape terminated in a sudden crash, as the Humvee slammed its rear end into the concrete median, throwing a few primals free.
“Loudermouth!” Billings called on the radio as they hauled down the on-ramp towards the barricade and the crowd of primals. “We’re gonna hit the barricade! Follow! Follow!”
Sam remembered the hordes of infected that had coalesced in the cities in the early days of the infection. This looked similar, but it was not the same. The primals on the interstate were already splitting up into several packs of five or six each, moving to flank Squad Seven’s Humvee, working in concert with each other.
And just now noticing Billings’s Humvee, roaring towards them.
The first generation of infected would have run right at the approaching Humvee in a deluge of rage and screaming. But the primals were different. They were smarter, and the self-preservation centers of their brains were intact.
They parted as the Humvee approached them, dodging out of the way, clearly cognizant that the ram bars on the front of the vehicle would leave them as a slick patch of red on the blacktop.
But they didn’t retreat.
Chris had both hands on the wheel now as he roared onto the interstate, his shoulders pinched up, like he was cringing.
“Windows!” Billings yelled at them, then reached behind and started yanking Pickell back inside. “Get inside! Chris, ram the cars, but don’t wreck us, okay?”
Which was a tall order in the moment, surrounded by primals.
Chris let off the accelerator, but they were still approaching the barricade of cars at about forty-five miles an hour.
They were almost abreast of where Squad Seven’s Humvee had crashed into the median.
Sam looked out his window, and for a flash, stared directly at Loudermouth as he fought the primals that were yanking his door open, pulling his squad out.
Beyond the glare of the windshield, the shaded shapes of limbs, thrashing, and muzzle flashes strobing. But there were too many of the primals, and the primals were too quick, dodging the wild gunfire and then lunging in, latching onto necks, ripping weapons from hands…
One of the soldiers was pulled apart, and his ghastly face looked across the empty stretch of interstate, and Sam thought, in that slim second where they were adjacent Squad Seven’s Humvee, that the soldier was looking right at him.
Then the moment whipped by.
A
blur of fleshy shapes.
Gnashing teeth.
Predator’s eyes.
Something slammed Sam’s window—a passing claw, trying for purchase as the Humvee drove by.
“Everyone hold on!” Chris yelled, his voice pitching high.
Sam looked forward. Through the windshield.
The line of cars seemed to loom up in front of them. In Sam’s sudden, fearful vision, it looked like a towering wall.
Chris stomped on the brakes.
They all slammed forward in their seats.
Then Chris hit the accelerator again, with surprising precision, and with the Humvee’s ram bars right between the bumper of two sedan’s, he pushed through them, with little more than a hard jostling that felt like hitting a nasty pothole.
Something hit the roof of the Humvee as the engine roared again and they began to accelerate away from the barricade of cars, a hole punched in it now. Sam looked out his window and caught the bare flash of a gnarled foot, the toes splayed almost like fingers, as it scrambled up onto the Humvee.
Sam let out a yelp of warning and rolled his body so that he pointed his rifle up at the ceiling—the best he could manage in the cramped confines of the vehicle—and he fired on automatic.
His hearing went out
The slugging of his rifle became a dim, background chatter.
His squad yelled at him.
He watched bullet holes sprout in the ceiling, punching up at whatever was scrambling towards the turret hole.
Sam tracked with it.
Two demon faces stared down at him. Teeth bared, mouths wider than was humanly possible, no longer people at all, but something else, something terrible.
Hands reached for him—fingers like claws, nails like talons.
Sam didn’t let off the trigger. He pushed his muzzle towards the grasping hands, watched fingers fly off, and then the snarling faces beyond morphed, consciousness—however animalistic—fleeing from their eyes as jacketed lead pierced their brains.
Chris swerved the Humvee, and Sam watched the ruined faces of the primals slip out of sight, and perceived the distant tumble of their limbs as they rolled off the fastback of the Humvee, limp and dead.
He realized he’d gone empty.
The Humvee kept tearing onwards.
Billings had the radio in his hand and called something into it, looking over his shoulder at his troops in the back.
Sam’s dazed eyes scanned his squadmates, and saw Pickell struggling up, with a smattering of blood across his face, but alive. Across from him, Jones had lowered his window and was now half out of it, firing his rifle behind them and screaming things that didn’t register with Sam.
Billings held the radio with one hand, and with the other pulled at Pickell, yelling, “Get on the turret!”
Sam let his rifle fall out of his hands and he grabbed ahold of Pickell and helped the man extricate himself from where he’d managed to get wedged between Sam and Jones.
Pickell surged to his knees, and then clambered into the turret again, cursing all the way.
“Ryder!” Billings yelled at Sam. “Get him another box of fifty!”
Jones slammed back into his seat, stripping an empty mag from his rifle and reloading. “Slow it down, Sarge!” he called. “Let them chase us a bit! We got a goddamned turkey shoot!”
“Chris, stay just ahead of them,” Billings ordered.
Sam felt the Humvee decelerate again. He strained, reaching into the far back for one of the extra cans of .50-caliber ammunition.
Above them, Pickell scanned, but didn’t fire.
“Why aren’t you shooting, Pickell?” Billings demanded.
Pickell hunched to shout back inside. “They’re not coming after us!”
“Stop the truck,” Billings grunted.
“You want me to stop the truck?”
“Stop the fucking truck!”
Chris slammed on the brakes, almost spitefully.
Sam was thrown onto the ground. Still couldn’t quite reach the box of ammunition, but Billings had kicked his door open, and Jones was following, and Sam thought it would be a good idea to do the same.
Sam reloaded his rifle as he extricated himself from the Humvee. Pushed out of his door. His feet hit blacktop. Median barrier directly in front of him. He wondered what might lurk on the other side, but he turned to his left, looking back the way they’d come.
He was just in time to see Squad Seven’s Humvee, all four doors hanging open, rolling slowly off the interstate. It was completely empty. It picked up speed as it hit the slope of the shoulder, and then trundled off the blacktop, down the shoulder, and slammed into the trees.
At the median, which was a concrete wall about six feet high, the last of the primals slipped over the top. They’d left no bodies behind. Not even their own.
Every bit of meat, they took with them.
Escaping with their kills.
On the other side of the Humvee, Sam heard Billings and Jones cursing anything and everything as they watched.
After a moment, Billings stalked back to the front passenger’s seat and snatched the radio. “Squad Four to Alfred,” he didn’t wait for them to answer back. “We have positive contact with a colony of primals inside the Augusta beltway. Confirming, no less than a hundred primals. They just took out Squad Seven, but it looks like they’re pulling back into the city. I want you to scramble all available squads and have them meet me at Checkpoint Scarecrow for a direct hunt.”
He slammed the receiver back down, irritable and amped up. But a shaky smile crossed over his face. “We’re gonna earn some CKs tonight, gents!”
TEN
─▬▬▬─
MATEO
Mateo looked at the sad gathering before him, and wished he could be furious with them.
Mateo was not a man given to bouts of dominant anger.
His predominant pattern of thought was a serene trust in the providence of the universe—that in the end, he was destined to be victorious over everyone, and everything.
And when he looked out at the men that had tucked tail and run from Triple Rocker Ranch, he didn’t feel enraged by what they’d done. Just disgusted.
There were five of them before him. Two gringos, and three original cartel. Each one had been in charge of their own “squad” of five to ten men. Mateo had let their men go—they were just riff-raff. He didn’t expect them to stand their ground when their leaders ran away.
The whole lot of them stood atop Mateo’s preferred place—the top of the refinery. A wonderful lookout over everything that he had conquered, and everything that he would conquer. It was like a throne room for him.
This was a different refinery than the one he had occupied a month ago. A month ago, he had been at what he considered his “front lines,” in Louisiana, pushing his territory forward, and claiming his birthright.
Unfortunately, as Nadie y Ninguno had arisen out of the darkness, he’d been forced to return back to Texas, and reconvene his base of operations at one of the refineries that they had taken control of nearly a year ago.
One step forward, and two steps back.
And now this.
This downtrodden cast of faces standing before him, unable to meet his gaze. These men who considered themselves monsters, but who had run screaming when the real beasts showed up.
Mateo smiled without mirth. “Tres triste tigres,” he sighed. “That’s what you all remind me of. Sad tigers. You claimed that you were brave and ferocious, and yet, here you stand, like geldings freshly neutered.”
“Los demonios,” one of the men murmured, desperation in his voice. One of the Mexicans. “Nadie y Ninguno. No puedes luchar ellos.”
That did manage to make Mateo angry.
And when he was angry, he did not hide it.
He crossed to the man in a flash, and seized him by the back of his hair and bent him over backwards so that he was leaning out over the safety railing, and a three-story plummet to the sandy Texa
s ground lay beneath him.
“You can fight them, you ignorant fuck! There are no demons! The only demon here is your pathetic superstition!” Mateo reeled himself in with a sudden jerk, as though his rational self had suddenly caught his animal self red-handed. He released the man. Straightened his own guayabera and flashed his white teeth at the other men, like a snarl. “They are just men. Men that can be killed with bullets, just like any other man.”
Mateo turned. Stepped away. He paused, thinking. Then whirled around and pointed.
Out over the edge.
His eyes locked on the one who had spoken out of turn.
The man looked shaken, but it took a moment for him to realize what was going on, that his master was looking at him. And then he raised his gaze and saw. And he followed the pointing finger out over the edge of the refinery platform, and he began to tremble.
“Go,” Mateo said, his finger like an unyielding signpost.
“You want I leave?” The man attempted English.
“I want you to jump.”
The man’s body began to quake so hard, it almost looked like he was nodding emphatically, though his eyes showed that he was far from agreeing with Mateo.
“I die,” the man squeaked. “I jump. I die.”
Mateo stared at him. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s three stories. Men have survived worse falls. Maybe you will too. I promise it will be better than staying up here with me.”
The man’s eyes were as wide and white as full moons. He dropped to his knees.
He began to beg.
Mateo’s lips curled. Nose wrinkled.
The man standing next to the beggar suddenly bent down and seized his comrade, hauling the blubbering man to his feet. For a moment, it seemed that the beggar thought his friend was simply standing him up—encouraging him to have some self-respect.
Reality crashed into this idea, and obliterated it, as his friend propelled him backwards, against the safety rail, and began to push him over.
The cries for mercy gave way to animal snarls, wordless growling between two cowardly creatures. Like rats fighting.
