From Oblivion's Ashes

by Michael E. A. Nyman

  Carefully, she crossed the street, heading for a big hole in the brick wall that must have been smashed open by an angry zombie at some time. The smell, awful as it was, grew stronger as she approached, and at the edge of the wall, she was overwhelmed by the power of the stench.

  Should it still be this stinky? Angie wondered. It’s been over a month since the outbreak. Shouldn’t all the animal poo have dried out by now? Doesn’t the stinkiness of it wear off after a while?

  Unless, she thought excitedly, the animals were still alive!

  Without another second of hesitation, Angie pulled herself through the open hole, and slipped into the dark room beyond. Inside, she felt a moment of apprehension at the claustrophobic darkness, but she regained some of her courage as her eyes adjusted. It was an office of some kind, with a desk and chair, a filing cabinet, and several benches.

  Plucking up her courage, Angie moved deeper into the darkness.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d braved the dark shadows during her travels. A world without electricity left little ambient light when checking out back rooms and basements. The important thing was to be sure that there were no undead in the dark, which wasn’t very hard since they hardly ever stopped moving. She used to use the trick of just waiting for a while, and if there was no sound of movement, she could pull out her flashlight and look around.

  These days, adjustable night-vision goggles, acquired from a sporting goods store, were a far more effective tool. And less terrifying.

  It was slow progress. The rooms and hallways beyond the hole where Angie had entered were a labyrinth, but she could hear them now. Distant pig squeals and cow moos and other noises. Eagerly, she pressed onwards, anxious to make the new discovery, and knowing that Marshal and Luca would be so proud.

  “Angie? Is everything okay? Albert lost his first drone. He got a little way in and – he’s not sure, but he thinks he bumped it up against a ceiling beam. We’re launching another but we wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “I’m fine,” Angie whispered excitedly. “There’s animals ahead! I can hear them! Cows and pigs for sure. I’m going to get a closer look.”

  “Just be careful, sweetheart.”

  But Angie didn’t hear. Marshal had told her about how, historically, the first insulin had been harvested from calves. The insulin she had should last a year, or maybe two, but if they could recover some cows…

  The dingy hallway ahead led to a battered door that hung from one hinge, but opened up into what looked like the upper levels of a cavernous room. There were strange, flickering lights casting illumination on a railing and ceiling rafters. What the light was, she couldn’t see, but she could detect the smell of smoke.

  Angie’s mind raced as she crept forward. Smoke meant fire. Fire meant either that the place was burning down or… smoke meant humans! And the sound of animals was crazy now. Pigs, cows, and definitely, chickens. That meant fresh eggs, and maybe fresh milk, and… and chicken wings, and someday, insulin!

  She crawled to the door, until the comparative illumination of lit fires in the distance forced her to remove her goggles. Her eyesight flared, trying to adjust to the abrupt shift in light. She eased her way through the open doorway and onto the metal grate floor on the other side. Squinting, she perceived that she was now crouched atop a metal catwalk that hung suspended at least fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. From her high perch, she looked down at the spectacle below.

  There were metal basins filled with fire, positioned strategically on stone posts so as to cast their light as effectively as possible. The ground below, stretching for hundreds of feet in all directions, was a complicated series of animal pens, aisles, coops, ramps, and feed troughs. The sounds and smells were incredible, with a cacophony of animal cries and whines, and an overpowering stench that made Angie’s nose quiver and her eyes water.

  And there were animals! To her delight, Angie saw dozens of black and white cows, of all sizes. There were also pigs, shrieking and shoving in the pens, as well as a few sheep and even a couple of goats. There were banks of chicken-wire coops, filled with hundreds of white-feathered chickens.

  Slowly, her eyes filling with wonder, Angie made her way along the catwalk. How was it that all these animals were still alive? Why hadn’t the zombies smashed this place to pieces, and… and where were all the humans?

  There! There was one. She spotted an enormous, mountain of a man in coveralls with big, bare shoulders, walking down between the stalls. He carried a very long stick with a three-pronged fork in two hands, which he poked through the wooden bars, causing one of the pigs to squeal. God, he was ugly. No wait… he was wearing some kind of… of leather mask.

  Using the fork, the thick man reached into one of the pens and forked a small tuft of cow manure, flinging it up into a blazing metal basin. Greasy black smoke billowed up in a thick cloud.

  Angie hesitated, not wanting to go any further. Her instincts were suddenly screaming at her.

  Something was very, very wrong!

  A cry of pain from below drew her gaze. She squinted against the dim light, trying to peer between the squirming animal bodies for the source of the cry, which did not sound at all animal. She saw the huge man in the leather mask pulling back his fork from the victim of his most recent poke. And that victim wasn’t an animal at all.

  There were other people down there, barely visible between the clusters of animal bodies. The one who had cried out was a thick-bodied, naked man, with a wild main of tangled, brown hair, matted beard, hairy chest, and welts all over his body. His hands were tied with leather straps to the top plank of the animal pen he shared with three small pigs that came up to his knees. His eyes were wrenched closed in pain, and his body was covered in red welts and what looked to be bite marks. In spite of his anguish and fatigue, he was twisted around to shelter his genitals from the rest of the pen and the frantic animals he shared it with.

  Angie’s horror grew as she saw another two women in shredded rags, hanging from their wrists in a pen that contained two cows. Their faces were filthy with manure, smoke, and blood. They could have been dead for all that Angie could see. One of the women was being crushed against the pen wall by the hip of an oblivious cow that was trying to lick the feed trough. She didn’t so much as quiver.

  It all came into view then, dozens of people in the vast, interior stockyards, tied up, stripped down, and forced to share the stalls with animals. Angie saw three hollow-eyed children, huddled together in the corner of a sheep pen, their ragged, filthy clothes barely clinging to their scrawny bodies. On a platform, outside the pens and hanging by the ropes that kept him suspended between two poles, was the body of a man. He was clearly dead, with his abdomen carved open and his intestines spilled out onto the floor. Innumerable cuts and welts on his body, however, indicated that his death had not come so quickly, but had instead been the product of hours of agony.

  Angie started back-pedaling, crawling backwards as fast as she could manage. She had to go and tell Marshal. He had to know about this place, either to help these people or to stay away. She spotted two more men, not as big as the first but still terrifying, sitting around a fire pit roasting bits of meat on long forks. There was a big, fat woman with them, also roasting meat. The coveralls she wore could not hide her gender, nor the fat, rolls of cleavage bulging out from her top. Standing at attention nearby were two skinny attendants, half-naked, eyes sunken in, and pale with hunger, their elbows fastened tight to their bodies with ropes.

  Something landed heavily on top of Angie and, before she could shriek, call out for help, or even breathe, she was slammed down hard onto the unyielding metal grate of the catwalk. Stars danced in her vision and she struggled briefly, until she felt the cold, steel tip of a knife pressed firmly against the corner of her eye.

  She stopped fighting and went limp, even as the soft trickle of blood wet her cheek.

  “Much better,” a woman’s voice whispered in her ear. “Fight me, little gir
l, and I’ll cut your eye from its socket. Nod if you understand me, but not too much. We don’t want you cutting out your own eye now, do we?”

  Angie hesitated, and then nodded slightly, trembling.

  “Angie?” came Jackie’s voice through the headset. “Is something wrong? The camera angle fell. Were those people in those pens?”

  A hand lifted the headset from Angie’s head.

  “What’s this?” the woman whispered, sounding fascinated. “A live camera-link and speaker phone? To where? Stanislav will want to see this. For now, we’ll put it inside a little bag. No need for anyone to see what we do here.”

  The painful weight on Angie’s back eased, and she was dragged to her feet.

  Angie turned to look at the woman who’d captured her. She wasn’t tall, maybe only a few inches taller than Angie, and her body was thin and wiry. She wore tight black jeans on her lithe body, a black shirt under an open, studded, black leather jacket, and calf-high black boots. She wasn’t particularly muscular, but she exuded an air of lethality that made Angie shiver just to look at her. Aside from the knife in her hand, three more knives were prominently displayed on her person, including two on her belt, and one tucked into a boot. Her face was hard and pretty, cold and cruel, clean and humorless.

  Angie yelped as the woman seized her by the hair.

  “You’re pretty sneaky, girl,” the woman hissed. “If I hadn’t been patrolling just a short way down the catwalk, I might not have seen you. I’ve got a lot of questions for you, starting with that ridiculous garbage-dress you’re wearing. But first, I’m taking you to Stan. I may not know where you came from, but I can tell you have friends close by.”

  “Let me go,” Angie snarled. “You’ll be sorry you-”

  She cried out as the butt of the knife slammed heavily into her eye.

  “Fight me,” the woman purred, “and I’ll start cutting off body parts and feed them to the pigs. I’ll start with that eye. Now, keep your mouth shut until someone tells you to open it.”

  Wrenching her by the hair, the woman dragged Angie along the catwalk.

  “Krissy,” Marshal said. “I’d like you to meet Paul. Jackie and I just found him yesterday.”

  Krissy looked up at the tall, bespectacled man and frowned. Then, remembering her manners, she smiled and extended her hand.

  “Hello,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  The man blinked, looking nervous. Then, he adjusted his glasses and accepted the handshake. “The pleasure is mine, Krissy. I understand you’re the community’s new Chief of Police. Must be challenging, patrolling a society of nearly twenty people.”

  Krissy laughed. “It does seem a bit silly at this point, doesn’t it? I really doubt there will be much for me to worry about. What kind of crime could there be during an apocalypse?”

  Paul smiled broadly, seeming to relax. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Actually, Krissy,” Marshal said, “I was hoping to talk to you about that. There may not be any crime, but there sure as hell is a need for scavengers. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to make you a scavenger. You’d still be our Chief, but as long as there isn’t any crime to fight, you can be out on patrol, finding us new citizens and resources.”

  Krissy smiled. “I’d be happy to,” she said.

  “And Paul? What about you?” Marshal asked.

  “Me?” Paul looked at him with surprise.

  “Just for a while,” Marshal said. “Truth is, you’d be pretty valuable anywhere, but I’d like you to get some field experience. Who knows? The two of you might make a good team.”

  “Marshal!”

  The shout startled all three of them, and they turned to see Cesar rushing up to them. Torstein came after, looking grim.

  “A little louder, Cesar,” Marshal snapped. “I’m sure the undead three blocks away didn’t hear you.”

  “They can’t hear us up here anyway, remember?” Cesar said. “But even if they could - Marshal, somebody’s grabbed Angie!”

  For a second, Marshal just stood and stared.

  “What?”

  “Jackie radioed Kumar,” Cesar said, waving in the direction of the computer link, “and Kumar just radioed Brian. Our hook-up just got set up this morning or else we wouldn’t have-”

  “Get to the point, Cesar,” Marshal said, storming past him towards the computer link.

  “They went down to the Distillery District,” Cesar said. “There’s a big slaughterhouse there that provided meat to all the downtown butcher shops. Anyway, Angie went inside exploring about an hour ago, and things were going fine, when-”

  “Brian! Get me Kumar!”

  “Y-yes, Marshal.”

  “Angie found the animal pens,” Cesar continued, “and they were filled with cows and pigs and chickens, but that’s not all. There were people, Marshal! Naked people, inside the pens with the animals. Jackie only got a quick look – she sent all the footage back to Kumar, and he started going over it for clues. Albert lost a drone, then a second… they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t want to leave her there, but… There’s lots of people there, Marshal. More than we got. So they’re trying to get more inf-.”

  “Kumar!” Marshal shouted into the microphone.

  “What is it?” asked Corporal Vandermeer. “What’s going on?”

  “Angie’s been kidnapped, that’s what,” Marshal shouted, feeling sick in his stomach. “Kumar, god damn you, answer me now!”

  “Sorry, Marshal,” came the answer, and Kumar’s worried face popped up on the screen. “It’s been - there’s some crazy shit going down, Marshal. We’re in big trouble.”

  “Tell Jackie and Albert to get their asses back here as soon as they can,” Marshal said. “Radio Luca. Tell him what’s happened and-”

  “No, Marshal, you have to-”

  “Just do it! I want to be leading a team into that fucking slaughterhouse within the next hour! These people, whoever they are, they’re going to regret-”

  “Marshal, I can’t!” Kumar’s voice was almost a wail.

  Startled, Marshal hesitated. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve lost contact with Crapmobile, Marshal,” Kumar said. “The last message was Jackie and Albert shouting. Marshal, they’ve been captured too, and now, we’ve lost Crapmobile.”

  Marshal stood, dumbfounded, as the implications settled in.

  “We’re all stranded.”

  Chapter Nineteen: Day 33(night): The Son of Winter

  The space in the center of the gymnasium was a frenzy of activity. Three men bent to their task with unified purpose. They had just entered their eighth straight hour of work.

  It had been four in the afternoon when Luca received the call from Kumar informing him on the loss of Crapmobile and the capture of Angie, Albert, and Jackie. With Brad and Steve hovering over each shoulder, watching the screen with wide eyes, Luca had witnessed Crapmobile’s final moments, as a half a dozen brutish-looking men and women furtively closed in on the exterior cameras, more afraid of discovery by zombies than any resistance. They listened to Jackie shouting out their peaceful intentions, even as Albert shrieked in pain. Then there was a crackle of electricity from Jackie’s taser, a couple of angry shouts, and finally the heavy sounds of smacking meat. Jackie’s cries and whimpers were silenced soon after.

  Rrggrrgghghr...

  Steve and Brad had exchanged puzzled glances as they heard a quiet rumble like gravel crunching together. It took a few seconds before they realized that it was Luca’s teeth grinding.

  Then, the video changed, becoming darker and more nebulous. It was the view from the interior of a large building, looking down on an extensive network of animal pens and flaming pots. Faintly, barely perceptible amidst the shadows and the lens flares, the images of naked people, tied to the rails inside the pens could be seen. The sheen of sweat on skin glowed in the firelight.

  And then the camera panned into the distance, coming to focus and then freeze upon
the naked, upright figure of a dead man. He was black and tied spread-eagle between two posts with a waterfall of internal organs spilling out from the slit-open cavern of his abdomen.

  “That,” Kumar had reported in a hollow voice, “was the last bit of footage from Angie’s helmet cam. Time stamp shows that it was filmed approximately… uh, thirty minutes before the assault on Crapmobile. Given how well-orchestrated the attack was, Marshal and Eric suspect that they got the details on what to expect from interrogating Angie.”

  Rrggrrgghghrr...

  “Marshal says we’re in a state of war,” Kumar said, “and that it’s up to you guys to get Shitbox up and running as soon as possible. He’s confabbing with Eric and Krissy on strategy right now, but it starts and ends with us being able to move our people through the streets safely. Also, everybody is to be on full alert. These guys may not appreciate what they have in Crapmobile, but as long as they have it - and our people - we’re to be on high alert. They believe it’s only a matter of time before they figure out what they have and surprise-attack one of our outposts.”

  “So,” Luca growled, “Marshal thinks that they’ll torture our people for information, and that they already tortured Angie to get info on Jackie and Albert. That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with here.”

  Something in the sound of his voice caused both Brad and Steve to lean away from him. On the screen, Kumar looked grim.

  “We think so. Marshal is-”

  “We’ll have Shitbox ready by morning,” Luca said. “If these assholes want a war with us, then I’ll be planting our fucking flag in their ass by tomorrow night. When I get my hands on the motherless fuck that laid hands on Angie…!”

  Luca had stopped himself there, rebottling his anger. There were a few more quiet words exchanged, some details from Kumar, barely heard. The mission had become clear, their objective, plain. They had two days worth of hard work to complete by morning, or else.