by Won, Mark
Luke asked, “What’s up with the broken radio?”
I answered, “It’s not broken. The radio’s been rigged to send a signal whenever the trap gets triggered. That means a bunch of hostiles are on their way.”
“Did you see that zombie trap?” Gideon enthused, “I can’t wait to meet the people who set it!” He chuckled in anticipation. It was a distinctly unpleasant sound, definitely affirming a cruel and hostile mindset.
“Are we sure that’s the best move here?” asked Luke.
I answered, “As much as it pains me to say it, the kid’s right. We need a ride and the people who set the trap probably have one.”
“How do you figure?” Luke wanted to know.
Exasperated, Gideon answered for me, “Two reasons. One, the trap was set to catch a motor vehicle. If the trap setting trappers are trying to trap a truck then the trapping trappers truly tend to take transportation of that typical type. See? Simple.”
It took Luke a moment to digest that. During that time Gideon got out in the road and began hauling the zombies off to the trees on either side and hiding them in the brush. Luke asked, “What’s he doing?”
“He’s covering our tracks. When the people who tried to murder us show up we don’t want them thinking all their zombies failed. That would make them cautious. This way it looks more like they wandered off chasing us.”
When Gideon returned to our hiding spot, Luke asked the kid, “What’s the second reason?”
“Here they come.” And sure enough, a panel van came down the road from the direction we had been going. It pulled up next to our semi, which was still idling, and three men got out. They moved around and began to fiddle with the door at the back.
Gideon began to move to confront them. I whispered, “Luke, you cover us from here in case more show up. Gideon, remember we want one alive, okay?”
I got a thumbs up from the kid, which did nothing to reassure me, and then Gideon was in the road pointing both pistols at the men. “Freeze, suckers!” he shouted. What a ham.
For a second I thought that we’d have to put them down on the spot, but then Gideon let out a dark, malignant chuckle, reminiscent of Death asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage. That froze the bandits fast, it was the kind of threat even a bandit could respect.
I decided to take over the disarming before Gideon did something spontaneous. “Drop the guns,” I ordered. They obeyed, possibly relieved to hear another, less hateful, voice. Then Gideon produced a pair of handcuffs and fastened them each to the other in a line. He pistol whipped each man in turn, apparently just for the hell of it.
I moved them all off the road where I could question them in a more secluded manner. I asked, “Who did you guys think you were going to trap? Surely, not us.” They couldn’t have known that we were coming, and there wasn’t enough travel in general to vindicate maintaining a full time operation. Unless, of course, there was some more apparent victim nearby, the kind that needed to use the roads.
Gideon interrupted, “Shouldn’t we separate them. That way when their lies don’t agree we’ll have the excuse we need to play with them. Tee hee hee.” He ran off to the semi trailer.
Luke, looking after the departing Gideon, spoke his mind, “Look, you guys might want to start talking before he gets back.”
As good cop bad cop went it was pretty simple, but sometimes simple is best. Anyhow, they began talking over each other, trying to fill in the gaps either of the others might have left out.
Mich, their nominal leader, began with, “We didn’t set the trap for you! It was for some farmers who we thought might come through this way. They carry produce north to another group in a town up that way.”
Deuce, another bandit, who I hope was merely cursed with a horrible nickname, added, “Yeah, the townies make stuff and does repairs. They the ones that made the tractors run off corn oil like our car do!”
Merle, the third bandit, supplied,“We run off whoever’s in a car and then sell the townie stuff to the farmers or the farmers’ stuff to the townies. Everybody wins, see?!”
By then Gideon was rushing back toward us with a hack saw in one hand and some medical tubing in the other. The look of unbridled joy on his face was more unpleasant than the face of any professional torturer I’d ever seen, and I’d seen more than my fair share.
Detailed specifics were immediately forthcoming. The town was called Pine Woods and the farming region was called ‘Brown Strath’. The two communities seemed to be physically removed from one another by about twenty-five miles and operated by way of a clearly symbiotic relationship, each supplying what the other needed. When I asked the robbers if anyone from either community knew that they were highwaymen, they answered in the negative. Apparently they maintained a plausible pretense as salvage claimers, acting only after a zombie assault.
In addition, the highwaymen confessed to another two similar traps which they had set in hopes of taking whatever goods they were able. They were kind enough to mark them on our map for us.
When we were through Luke asked, “So, do we kill them now?”
I was about to put a bullet through the back of their skulls when Gideon took up his hacksaw and interjected, “No way! Let’s play a game! It’s like ‘hangman’ except instead of drawing a body part on the paper, I’ll-” I shot each of them through the head before the kid could finish. Games really aren’t my thing.
“Well, that was mean,” was all Gideon had to say.
I shut off the semi’s engine and we locked everything up. Gideon made a point of detaching his rickshaw and loading it and his bicycle in the back of the highwayman’s van. I couldn’t fault his thinking. In fact it occurred to me that I should recommend to Mark, when we got back, that every rescue and procurement mission take at least one bicycle with them. They were quiet, needed no fuel, and could still cover a hundred miles a day in the hands of an experienced cyclist.
While we were packing away Gideon’s bicycle, the shortwave, and some potential trade goods, Gideon offered, “You know, if you want, I could tie a rope around the hitch of the van and you guys could just tow me in my bike.” Neither Luke nor I bothered to reply. I was hoping the kid’s brain wasn’t getting worse.
Following the directions which we’d been given we made our way to the other two traps. It was a simple matter to avoid any danger once we knew where they were and what to look out for. In each case there were two cages, one to either side of the road. Each cage was a poorly welded affair containing ten zombies.
After dealing with that distraction we made our way to Pine Woods to see if they might have any tires for sale. The community was nothing more than a section of the town in the crook of the river, fenced off and barricaded. Not much good against ogres or ghouls but good enough to keep out the common zombie.
I figured that it was past time to call Haven with an update, so I pulled over to get the radio out of the back. By the time I got back up front Gideon was already using his own radio to contact home.
I overheard the conversation beginning with a vocalized static screech, “Sheee,” the dumb kid made the noise of a radio engaging, “this is Gideon calling Haven high command. Do you read me? Over. Tee hee hee.”
“I read you, Gideon,” it was Lori, she was one of the standard radio operators, “what is your status? Over.”
“Sheee, oh hi Lori, how’s it going? We got to kill a bunch of bandits a little while ago after Luke basically got us lost in a forest-”
Luke, outraged by the truth, exclaimed at the radio, “I did not get us lost! I know almost exactly where we are! Give me that!” He made a grab for the radio which Gideon, giggling like a maniac, effortlessly dodged by rolling under the van with his mutt.
“I’m sorry Gideon, I didn’t get that. Please repeat. Over.” Lori was a professional.
“Sheee, so anyway, after Paul killed all the bandits, way too quickly and boringly, now we’re at some town so we can buy new tires. That’s why I love to travel, so
I can meet new people and kill bad people. Comeback.”
“Is Paul around, sweety, or any adult? Let me talk to him, will ya. Over.”
“Sheee, okay. Roger, wilco.”
Without waiting for the kid to pass his radio over I finally got my own radio operational and managed to get through. Lori and I had a brief conversation while I gave her an update. Gideon only interrupted twice with his ‘Sheee’ nonsense. Once I was done I had to wait another ten minutes while Gideon had his version of a conversation with Lori and anyone else operating a shortwave who happened to be listening in. I was gladly willing to put up with the delay if it gave the kid some stability. He took a lot of pleasure in the way he said ‘Over and out!’
It only took a minute to find the town gate. It had a guard stationed on what appeared to be a giant pile of rubble and debris, in a steel reinforced hut. He saw us coming and opened the gate by pulling on a rope. We drove through and stopped. Then the guard pulled on another rope to close the door behind us.
I called up to him, “My name’s Paul and we’re visitors from the east. We’ve come to trade for some tires. Any idea where we should go?”
The guard pointed further into the sectioned area of the town. He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate and I didn’t think it would be wise to push him. We kept moving at a nice slow pace, wending our way through what appeared to be a ghost town. There was only the one way to go, with all the side avenues being sealed off with a number of rusting cars and other debris. Eventually we came to a large two storey mall. Someone had gone through the trouble of piling up a huge mound of dirt around the outside of the establishment. The parking lot was a ruined mess, with all of its macadam, clay, and cement being used for the construction purpose.
Luke asked no one in particular, “What’s the point of that?”
I answered, “Ogres can knock down just about any wall, but that pile is another matter. The obstruction must be at least twelve feet thick at its base. See how steep it is? Ogres are strong, not smart; they won’t dig, they’ll just punch and shove. The whole thing is heavy enough and loose enough so that just wouldn’t be good enough.”
“Smart,” Gideon replied.
We got out of our van and walked up to a rope ladder someone had left dangling over the side of the building’s roof. It was an uncomfortably long climb with a number of bells ringing on the other end the whole way. Gideon managed the climb one handed while hauling up his mutt. Once on the roof we saw a series of solar panels lining the roof (that sort of thing had become much more common, just before the Change, due to tech breakthroughs and government subsidies) and a group of two men and a woman in another metal reinforced gazebo. They were keeping an eye on our progress. As soon as they saw us they lowered their weapons and one of them motioned us over.
When we got closer a man said, “Hi, was that you guys I heard talking to Haven on the radio a few minutes ago?” I saw that they had a simple radio in their little room with them.
I said, “Yeah, that was us. How come you guys don’t call Haven yourselves?” Another group of survivors out this way was exactly the sort of thing that Mark would have told me all about.
“We don’t have a shortwave, we can just listen in. I’m Clarence.” We shook hands through the bars.
“Come on in,” said another of the men, and opened a gate in their hut. From there Clarence led us down the roof access ladder and into the warehouse of a large general goods store. Mostly racks upon racks of clothing, all pushed back to make an empty central area. There we were met by their informal leader, a man by the name of Jay Ford.
After introductions, Gideon asked, “How is that guy guarding the front gate still alive? Don’t you guys have ogres around here?”
Jay answered, “Ogres can’t drag the pile down before we take them out, and although the ghouls can climb the sides of the heap, they can’t break the bars.” Which told me, by his familiar use of the words ‘ghoul’ and ‘ogre’, that these folks have been listening on Haven communications extensively.
I said, “We heard that this is the place for getting car work done. Is there any way we could convince you to part with six tires for our semi? We got some flats.”
“Yeah, I heard on the radio. You ran into some bandits, huh? Who were they?” asked Jay.
I told Jay the names of the men I’d killed. He seemed more saddened than angered. One of his people muttered an oath, another a vulgarity.
I remarked, “I take it that you didn’t have any suspicions of them, then?”
“No,” said Jay, “but them being bandits, unfortunately, explains a lot.”
Someone muttered, “Those bastards killed Ron and Joey,” followed by more expletives.
Luke asked a bystander, “How bad is the Changed situation around here, anyway? I think I may have came by this way some years back, a bit further south, but we didn’t see much zombie activity until we got into Wisconsin.”
A woman answered, “Most of the zombies in Minneapolis and Duluth all moved east right after the Change. We think they moved along the south side of Lake Superior, at least at first. We didn’t exactly keep close track of them once they cleared out.”
I tried to get back to the point, “We have bullets to trade, if you’re interested. What do you say?”
“I’d rather have that shortwave of yours, if you don’t mind,” was Jay’s counteroffer.
“Sounds good. Set us up and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Where are you guys headed to, anyhow,” asked another bystander.
“We know of a bunker somewhere in Kansas. Once we find it we hope to be able to use it as a forward base,” Luke answered.
“A forward base for what?” wondered Jay.
Luke volunteered, “Rescue missions, scouting, resource procurement, whatever comes up, really. Plus it has tons of ammo and medicine left over.” And here I had been worried about what Gideon might say.
Jay took one look at my face and knew that the missile silo was off the table. He gave me a smile anyway and we got to work.
We exited the mall by way of a single back door. It was a steel emergency door and reinforced with a chain and padlock, deadbolt, and steel bars. It was the only door which wasn’t covered by several feet of shattered cement and dirt. While we stripped the tires from a semi which had been sitting around since the Change, I steered the conversation to the nearby farmers in Brown Strath. I was informed that community numbered in the hundreds and was protected by a moat and a wire fence. The good people of Pine Woods were happy to convert their neighbors tractors into bio diesel- for a modest price. They also lent them use of a pair of bulldozers. Apparently Pine Woods was the only source for advanced automotive care in this part of the country, thus securing a positive long term economic relationship with a number of surrounding farming communities. Mark would be pleased to hear about it, he was always happy to discover any new enclave of civilization.
By the time we were done it was getting late. Jay offered us a room in the mall for the night (no extra charge). It seemed rude to refuse, though I was a bit uneasy. I guess I’m just not a very trusting person. Felicia sometimes says that I’m paranoid. I used Gideon’s shortwave to report back to Haven just before going to bed. Our quarters were in a small comic book shop on the first floor, that’s where we camped out.
When we were alone, Luke commented, “I think it would have been more comfortable back in the van. At least the seats were padded.”
“Yeah, but then we wouldn’t be surrounded by superheros,” was Gideon’s response.
It was a restless night.
Chapter 4: Keeping Tabs, Opportunists, Into the Dark
“Are we there yet?” said Gideon for the millionth time as we crossed the Kansas state line. I liked it better when he was singing, or at least playing his harmonica. I was still regretting the fact that neither Luke nor I had remembered to bring any music of our own for the journey.
I didn’t bother to reply. I was beginning to suspect th
at Gideon was putting on an act to see how much he could get people to underestimate him. That, and he truly was insane.
In spite of his madness, one of the things which made him an effective traveling companion was the occasional flash of insight which he would manifest during his moments of lucidity. No sooner had we begun the most recent leg of our journey, then the kid had us pull over so he could check his stuff. He had seemed on the edge of panic, to the point where I feared that he might try and jump out the door, so I pulled over in a hurry.
Once the trailer was opened up, Luke had said, “What are you looking for?”
“Something’s wrong is all. Sometimes I get the feeling that I’ve made a mistake and that means something is wrong. Maybe somebody put a bomb in our trailer.” The folks of Pine Woods had been kind enough to drive back to our rig with us and help replace the tires the morning after we’d bought them.
Luke looked to me for support, so I offered a rational response, “Nobody planted a bomb in the trailer. Why would they?”
“That Alan looked pretty suspicious to me. He was up to something, I’m sure of it. I think I smelled blood on him.”
The poor kid was sounding nuttier and nuttier by the minute but I thought it wisest to humor him. He turned back from his rickshaw and proclaimed, “Someone stole one of my cop badges!”
Then came Luke’s impassioned response, “What the fuck are you talking about?! Why would anyone want one of your badges?”
Gideon answered, “I don’t know, but I know we’re in some kind of trouble. As soon as we met Jay I noticed that he was acting weird. He’s got some plan, I just don’t know what it is. So does Alan. But it’s not the same plan. Jay gives off more of a thief vibe, but that Alan’s a killer,” Gideon visibly shuddered.
Even though the kid was crazy, I wasn’t about to take any chances. If he thought we were in trouble then it would only take a minute to search the vehicle. I checked under the wheel wells and undercarriage, just in case.
