Haven From Hell (Book 2): Warrior's Chronicle

by Won, Mark

  The ogre tried to grab the barrel of my rifle. I’ve seen what they can do to whatever they lay their hands on so I dropped the weapon in order to save it. Then it reached for me. The strength of those things is unbelievable, but they got no sense of balance or leverage. Generally, they don’t need it. I grabbed ahold of its arm and swung around the monster, putting my foot against the back of its knee. A human would have fallen but the ogre didn’t even notice. He tried reaching around, so I let go while he turned around to try again. By then I had my knife out and managed to plant it in the exposed gooey mess of its brain.

  Once I’d turned around I saw that most of the action had cleared up. My guys had cleared out the zombies and ogres which had been approaching our position. Before I could regain my rifle the ghoul landed right in front of me, with its feet holding the weapon securely in place. That’s when Max put a bullet through the back of its head, narrowly missing me.

  Everything looked safe as I picked up my rifle. I turned to Bernard, “Why didn’t you take the shot?”

  He said, “I only had the one bullet.” I could feel a headache coming on. A couple of the guys started snickering.

  “Why did you only have one bullet?” Color me curious.

  “Because that’s all I had. When we,” he motioned to his buddies, “divided up the bullets we each only got one bullet,” was his reply.

  Since everyone had been constantly firing their weapons not more than thirty seconds ago, I had to assume that when they ‘divided the ammunition’ someone thought it would be funny to short Bernard. Not cool, but they weren’t my soldiers.

  Facing all the troops, I told them, “I don’t know which one of you screw heads only gave Bernard one bullet, but you almost got me killed. This is a combat situation, so quit screwing around. When I make my report to the chief I surely hope he fires whoever is responsible. That man is a danger to his companions and worth less than shit to me.” That wiped the grins off their faces.

  I asked Bernard, “Why didn’t you tell someone? I’m sure we could have filled your magazine.”

  He just looked at me with an open mouthed expression, and I had my answer.

  To everyone else, “Does anyone else need ammunition?” I reached in a pocket and handed Bernard ten rounds. They all answered in the negative.

  “All right then, let’s get this over with.”

  And we did.

  Part 3: Disinterment

  Chapter 1: Fun Facts, One Simple Job, My House is Your House

  About a year later I learned from Mark that cyanide poisoning damages the eye somehow. Normally you’d never notice because being dead is an even bigger problem, but in the case of zombies, apparently the distinction becomes relevant. You see, Mark had some nutty scientist doing research, and he learned that zombies are especially susceptible to eye damage. It seemed that kind of thing just shuts zombies down immediately. Who knew?

  As far as why I was able to sniff out cannibals, no one could say. At first. Then one day Mark invited me to a tiny island where I’m pretty sure research was happening. You gotta remember how that first research fiasco turned out. Only Mark could have pulled off a second effort after that mess.

  Anyhow, I was brought in to see if I could sniff out a cannibal, and I did. He was wrapped up in a dozen chains and reeked to high heaven. I wasn’t the only one there who could do it. I wasn’t sure that either of the others knew what that place was all about, so I kept it to myself.

  I asked, and it seemed the cannibal was some bandit that had been taken captive. Looking back, I’m not sure whether he had been a cannibal before being captured, or not. That Mark takes his epistemic pursuits very seriously.

  The best guess was that some folks just had the ability to detect cannibals not yet Changed into ghasts (bone zombies). All those of us with the unusual ability had in common, was that we’d all engaged ogres in personal combat and won. That and we all had real high personal combat body counts (zombie body counts, that is). Not a lot of people can say that.

  There were two other people with me in that ghast chamber, both friends of each other. One of them was a farmer from up north, and to hear every one tell it, the man had killed a whole town of the Changed up north, including ogres and ghouls, with nothing more than a big ax. His name was John, and when I asked him if it were true, he said that it wasn’t: he’d also used nine shots from a borrowed pistol.

  John had led his band southward, and they’d had to fight their way through quite a horde before finally finding safety at Mr. Althaus’s home. When all was said and done, they hadn’t lost a single soul to either the journey or the undead onslaught. Quite an accomplishment.

  The other fellow was a tall, skinny man by the name of Luke. He and his wife had come from out west, from an old repurposed missile silo. Most of their troubles had come from getting lost on their way to Haven, they just couldn’t seem to catch a break. It seemed that a big bunch of zombies had found their way over from Duluth, and Luke’s group had all they could do to break free and stay ahead of them. Eventually, Luke met up with John on his way through Wisconsin.

  Anyhow, all three of us could detect the cannibal with a single sniff, but that wasn’t quite good enough for the scientists that Mark had assigned to the experimentation. Naturally, one of them, by the name of Dr. Shelly, ordered his assistant, Joe, to shoot the prisoner. If you’d ever met those guys you’d ask yourself, ‘Well, sure. Why wouldn’t they?’ I guess that’s just the kind of mad scientist wannabees you have to hire when researching the undead.

  Sure enough, the bandit Changed instantly. I still couldn’t get over how fast those bone ghouls happened. One instant he was some murderous, rapacious, bloodthirsty, highwayman, and the next moment it was transformed into something even worse. I was gratified to note that the chains held.

  John and Luke were absent for that part of the experiment.

  Dr. Shelly performed a few perfunctory dismemberments on the thing before finally slashing it in the eye. That killed it straight away, which I found interesting. I thought that kind of thing was nice to know but not too useful from a practical perspective. My plan was to stick to shooting zombies in the head if at all possible.

  After all that, I was glad to get out of that madman’s laboratory, off that gruesome island, and back to the sweet embrace of my family. By then little Martin was running around the house non-stop, looking for some way to get into trouble. Sarah and Lindsy had really proven to me that they could handle the concept of firearm safety, so I had them both out to the range four times a week. Because the girls were so young, Felicia had some mixed feelings about that, but what could she say? Learning how to shoot at a young age is just common sense during a zombie apocalypse.

  Felicia and I were getting along great. It may seem strange, but life in Haven was more peaceful to me than any other time of my life. I liked nothing better than getting home early to help my wife make up a casserole in the kitchen, help set the table, and get ready for game night with the in-laws. It was like living in a dream.

  On the whole though, I would have preferred for my peace to not have come about as the consequence of a world full of death.

  All the trading the guys and I established went real well (as everyone knows). Eventually Mark sent the river boat to handle all that sort of thing with New Orleans. The guys on the riverboat were the ones who set up the salt trading with Morning Town, but only because the guys and I paved the way through New Orleans first.

  I gave my position of Scouting Sergeant to Jake so I could take steady work in the militia. The pay was good, and I hardly ever missed game night with the family after that. Felicia was pleased, she made that abundantly clear, and it was a joy to watch the kids grow under my watchful care. Family is truly one of God’s greatest gifts.

  It was four years after the Change before Mark finally managed to talk my wife into letting me out to play some more. It was a simple job involving a little travel, no intentional rescue work, and some easy resource pro
curement. I was to go to Old Man Althaus place and help him dig up a bunch of pre-Change catches that he’d had buried on land which used to belong to him. I was told that John and Luke were already there waiting for me.

  The only potential problem was that Mr. Althaus was catching up to Methuselah in summers gone by. He’d already had one heart attack and no one saw any use putting him through any undue strain. His great granddaughter, Deborah, got along real well with my own kids. Deborah and her parents were currently visiting their grandfather when I got the job.

  So, after kissing Felicia, Lindsy, Sarah, and Martin goodbye I took the rig I was given, a vehicle heavily modified with a bull bar on the front and thick bars crisscrossing all the windows, crossed the bridge and began my journey along the peninsula. After about ten minutes I checked the main fuel thermometer, and seeing that the oil was finally hot enough, I switched over from the alcohol. From there I had no problems moving through the city at the crook of the bay, it having been cleared out months previously.

  Still, I kept things nice and slow since I didn’t have much experience with the big rigs, and the roads weren’t getting any better. The whole journey took about and hour and a quarter, then I was being greeted through the intercom at Old Man Althaus’s big front gates. While I waited, Mr. Althaus’s grandson, Irwin, came out to open the gate for me. I remember having a heck of a time making the turn and getting the truck around the corner and onto the property.

  It was a secure location, surrounded by a berm, faced by a brick wall, topped with razor wire. Ghouls could still get over it, but they’d been wiped out in the region. If we did see some coming, the wire could be electrified, and Mr. Althaus didn’t believe in the legal limit for that sort thing, either. The ‘silo’ on the property was actually a platform for antenna as well as a home made remote turret machine gun emplacement. Mr. Mathew Althaus used to be what people called a ‘survivalist lunatic’- the kind with a lot of money and free time on his hands. Nowadays folks just thought of him as a wise, ahead of his time, elderly gentleman.

  Once Irwin had showed me into the main house I was greeted all around by friendly faces. Mark had decided, long ago, that it would be a good idea to leave a ten man crew with Mr. Althaus, just in case. The estate was over four acres in size and not a bad preparation point for forays further north and west.

  Although the ten man crew were there on a rotational basis, Mr. Althaus had a few, more or less, permanent guests. There was John Gottschalk and his wife, Anna; also, Luke Wysoki-Zolnierz and his wife Sue. Both ladies were in a family way.

  Mr. Althaus greeted me and we all decided to sit out on the front porch drinking apple cider. The ten man crew who got assigned this detail usually had to fight for it due to all the perks that came with the job. I knew for a fact that the infighting got so bad that sometimes an officer had to step in and lay down the law. We talked about crops and the weather, politics and security, all the usual stuff. Then Mr. Althaus got down to the specifics of my mission.

  “I’ve got some marks on this map here, showing where I put my caches. Well, most of them, anyway. See that one? I’d like to get that one tomorrow if you don’t mind.” There were a number or notations marked on the margin of the map.

  “What do the marks mean?” They seemed relevant.

  “Those are all my notes on how to find the places now that the GPS don’t work. Actually, I made those note before GPS. They should all still be good though. I guess we’ll see.”

  “So it’ll just be the two of us, then?” I asked.

  “Oh, heavens no! Luke and John will be going with us. We’ll need to bust through some pavement to get at some of it. Then too, there’s still a few zombies left round about and it’s better safe than sorry.”

  “I’d been told that the zombie presence was negligible in this area,” I said. “Are you saying that’s not true?”

  “It was true, now it’s not. We’ve seen a wispy bunch wandering around the byways and highways. Just a few here and there, stumbling around aimlessly. They’re too few to call out the troops,” by which Mr. Althaus meant a larger security force from Haven, “but too many to make me want to risk going it alone. That’s why you’re here. I’m thinking the four of us can handle ourselves while these men can hold down the fort.” The men he was referring to were his ten militia on loan from home.

  I had to acknowledge that Old Man Althaus had to know his own backyard better than I did. “As long as you think that the four of us are enough. When will we head out?”

  John interrupted, “We weren’t supposed to be going with only four, but our fifth hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe one of the guys should come along to help with the lifting.”

  Sergeant Rogers, the squad’s leader, volunteered, “That sounds like a great idea. I’ll send Bill and James along with you tomorrow.”

  Mr. Althaus had other ideas, “We’ve been over this, Sergeant. I want all of you militia types here in case there is an attack, see? It’s just common sense. Besides, if we have any trouble I know your all only ten minutes away, tops.”

  “Who were we supposed to be taking with us?” I asked.

  Luke, a tall man, skinny but well over six feet, offered, “Some guy by the name of Gideon. We just got the call that he was coming while you were on your way here. Mark said he should already be here; said that you knew the guy from some time you spent down south.”

  Mr. Althaus opined, “I don’t think we really need a fifth, anyway, so were not waiting. That Gideon fellow can just wait here till we get back. Mostly we’re making a mountain out of a mole hill here. It should be no problem. Still-” suddenly Luke, John, Sue, and Anna cut him off.

  “Better safe than sorry!” They all laughed.

  I said, “The only man I know by that name is just a kid by the name of Storm. He did a lot of rescue work along the East Coast and down South.”

  “You seem a little unsure of this Gideon fellow, Paul. Ain’t he solid?” asked Old Man Althaus.

  Luke asked, “What do you mean a kid?”

  I answered both, “Gideon’s maybe eighteen now. He was fourteen when the Change happened and the first zombies he killed were a big bunch of ogres, his family. I’m told there were over a dozen of them. I...it’s left him changed. Solid in a fight, but...off.”

  “A weirdo, huh? Well that’s okay by me,” offered Luke. His wife nudged him.

  “How horrible!” Sue said.

  “Having to kill his whole family? It’s no wonder that he’s a little messed up. Tell us how you met him,” Anna wanted to know.

  John added, “I had to kill the zombie who used to be my brother. It would have been hell if my parents had been zombies, too.”

  I said, “I first heard of him while doing rescue runs out east. Gideon would use his shortwave to call us and then we’d show up. By the time we got there he had always moved on.”

  Mr. Althaus interjected, “He liked to keep moving, huh? Not necessarily a bad survival strategy.”

  I continued, “Every time I collected people for the trip back to Haven, the people we rescued told the same tale. Apparently there was a crazy kid biking around who slaughtered his way through masses of the undead, saving everyone. Frankly, I didn’t believe them. Then I finally did meet him. He was... intense.”

  “How so?” Sue prompted.

  “When I met him he was hauling a prisoner in toe, a murderer, one of a much larger group, who had been hounding the group Gideon was with at the time. He already had some more prisoners locked in some outbuildings. Gideon took the appearance of the rescue buses in stride, and told me the bandits he had captured might have information about where I could find a store of ammunition, maybe some other equipment.”

  “Go on,” Anna prodded.

  “Well, I questioned the bandits and learned all about where they kept their stash. Turns out it wasn’t much, just some leftovers none of the bandits wanted, a bunch of Civil War relics in a collector’s basement. The bandits had already plundered the World War
One and Two stuff. Anyway, that’s not the point. When I got back from the interrogation, Gideon noticed my hammer head,” I lifted it to show them, “it was still red from...executing… the bandits. That usually makes people uneasy. When Gideon saw it he got a creepy smile on his face and I could tell that he understood exactly what I’d done. I think he wished he’d been the one swinging the hammer.”

  “Is that all?” asked Luke. “Because, that’s not so weird. Heck, I’d have wanted to do the same if they had been threatening Sue.” She gave him a little sideways hug.

  I tried to explain, “There’s other things, too. Some doctors who I brought back to Haven told me that Gideon had once released a pair of,” I glanced at the ladies; I didn’t want to be too explicit, “very bad men. Then he organized a hunt to kill them. For ‘fun’. The kid’s spooky.”

  We talked awhile about the location of the two troves which Mr. Althaus had us scheduled to unearth come morning, before hitting the hay.

  By morning Gideon still hadn’t shown up. I was ambivalent. On the one hand I hoped the poor kid was okay (or as okay as he was ever likely to be). On the other hand I wasn’t too keen about having a crazy person watching my back.

  The sky had filled with clouds during the night and a light sprinkle of rain had already begun. Luke said, “Mr. Althaus, you want to put this off until later, I’m fine with that.”

  The Old Man replied with a laugh, “Don’t worry son, you won’t melt.” and off we went, trying to beat the weather.

  The sight of the first cache which we came to was located under a paved parking lot. We were flanked on two sides by a strip mall and the other two sides by a major road, a gas station, an apartment complex which (I was told) used to cater to the elderly, and a residential region.

  John hauled a jack hammer out of the back of Old Man Althaus’s truck like it was an oversized child’s toy. That guy was a mass of muscle. Luke handed out earplugs while John got to work. I stood guard with Mr. Althaus, according to plan.