Red Runs the River

by Tony Urban

  Their travel, by horse and donkey, was slower than it needed to be. Almost as if none of them were in a hurry to get where they were going and were only doing so because it was expected. Conversation was slim. Even Mead who usually talked enough for a half dozen men barely spoke more than a few words a day. Wim could see he was hurting because he'd been there before. Heck he was still there. That kind of pain never goes away. At best, you acclimate to it and live with it for the rest of your life.

  In some ways, Wim blamed himself. If he hadn't set out to kill Doc, these men wouldn't have followed him there. They'd have been at Brimley when hell rolled into their town and maybe they would have had a chance of preventing it.

  But, Wim doubted that. Two more warm bodies (or three if you counted Pablo) wouldn't have made a bit of difference against what had happened. Still, he carried the guilt with him like a satchel on his back.

  They hadn't seen a solitary zombie since leaving Brinley in the dust, a fact that seemed impossible to believe if Wim hadn't lived it. It didn't matter whether they passed through the countryside or through middling towns. Everything in their path was gone. Nothing but a trampled, dusty path in its wake.

  Wim had his theory as to what might be brewing, and his thoughts were fueled by a story Aben told about that pastor having a conniption fit when another man killed a zombie. He didn't mention his thoughts to the others as it seemed impossible to believe, but at the same time, it seemed almost horrifically possible.

  They were somewhere in southwest Texas, where the land had made the transition from green to brown, when he got his answer.

  Typically, they spent the nights in a house or trailer or even a barn when the pickings were slim, but they'd wandered far enough off the beaten path that, around the time the sun set, there wasn't a structure in sight, so they decided to camp out under the stars.

  Wim didn't like the idea much. This land was as foreign to him as Mars and he found the notion of spending the night on the ground unappealing. He worried about snakes and scorpions, plenty of which they'd seen as they rode. They'd even heard some coyotes a few days earlier.

  That was why he set off looking for whatever passed for high ground in this rolling terrain. He found a little butte that wasn't anything to brag about, but as he looked at it from below, he thought it might suffice. For some reason, he felt safer higher up. As he scaled the steep hillside, his feet sent rivers of pebbles and dirt cascading downward as they slipped and dug for traction.

  After struggling for a few minutes, he made it to the top and all he wanted to do was sit down and catch his breath, but what he saw put a quick end to that. In the distance - it was hard to judge from that vantage point but he supposed it must have been at least a mile to the west - he saw a dark mass that looked something like a black pond against the sea of tan dirt and sand. At first, he thought maybe it was a body of water, or maybe a large copse of dead trees, but neither made any sense.

  He took his rifle and pressed the stock against his shoulder. He hesitated before peering into the scope as if trying to decide whether he really wanted to see what was out there, but he knew he couldn't ignore it and he steeled himself and took a good look.

  What Wim found gathered in the hollow West of him, was Pastor Grady O'Baker's army of the undead. There were so many he had to keep waving the rifle back and forth as he tried to take them all in. They appeared to be roped to one another and they stood mostly in place, only occasionally shifting a foot or two in any direction.

  As he watched, every now and again one would seem to take issue with its nearest neighbor and swat or grab at it, but the scuffles died out fast, like they knew it was pointless and since they were all dead, there was no sense in fighting amongst themselves.

  Somehow, this seemed familiar to Wim, but he couldn’t fathom why that was. He'd never seen anything like this. Heck, he doubted anyone had. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of zombies, lassoed together to create some kind of invincible, unstoppable killing machine.

  And then he remembered the rats. What had Emory called them? He tried so hard to recall that his brow furrowed, and his eyes squinted. Think, Wim. Don't be so dumb. There was a word for it. A foreign one. But what was it?

  Rattenkönig. A rat king.

  That was it. It was like the jumble of rats he'd found in the barn in the days before the plague came to his little farm. They'd scurried and skittered about, eating anything in their path and, by God, this cluster of zombies he saw in the distance must behave the same way.

  Wim had killed the rat king in his barn, but that only took two shots from his Pa's old shotgun. How would it be possible to destroy that many zombies with anything short of a nuclear bomb?

  He had two other men with him and he hoped that one of them was smarter than him and might be able to come up with something. Because, if not, he had little doubt that those zombies, and the man who controlled them, would destroy what remained of the world.

  Aben took no pleasure in reliving his past, especially his years in the Marines and his time in the Middle East. He thought himself a barely adequate soldier and his most memorable contribution to the war was getting several of his friends killed because he was a shitty driver. Such memories belonged in the past. Nonetheless, when coupled with a pig farmer and fry cook, he seemed to be the default go to source of information on strategical planning for what would almost certainly end up as a suicide mission.

  The fact that they were outnumbered at least three or four hundred to one was not lost on any of them, but Aben thought he was the only one who grasped the extreme gravity of the situation.

  "We'd do just as well strapping ourselves up with bombs, pushing as far into the mass of them as possible, and pressing the button." He meant that remark to be sarcastic and was a little alarmed when neither Wim nor Mead immediately put the kibosh on it. Instead, they stared at him as if giving it serious consideration.

  "Where would we get the bombs?" Wim asked.

  Sweet Caroline, Aben thought. This is going to be even worse than I expected. "That was not a serious plan," he said. "You boys might be the 'go out on a blaze of glory' types, but I am not. I rather enjoy life, such that it is. I didn't sign up to save the world."

  Thus far, the only ideas the others had tendered were getting the zombies to the Grand Canyon and somehow dumping them over the cliff or getting them to the ocean and drowning them.

  Both plans were so flawed Aben felt they bordered on absurd. They must be six hundred miles or more from the Grand Canyon and, even if they did somehow lead them there, it seemed illogical to believe they could convince them to commit mass suicide like a bunch of lemmings. The ocean hypothesis was equally short-sighted. Aben's experience at the boy scout camp years earlier had proved to him that, while zombies couldn't swim, they also did not drown.

  He had considered fire. That seemed to be a comparably simple idea, but Mead put a quick end to that when he shared with them the story about LaRon and the guns and ammunition store. That really left to options. Ignore them and let them become someone else's problems or find a way to blow them up. And not with suicide vests.

  Between those two, Aben leaned toward the former. He knew that was the coward's way of dealing and he was fine with that. However, the other men possessed moral character of a firmer quality and he was reluctant to say that, in his opinion as a long ago professional soldier, they should tuck tail and run.

  That left explosives, but seeing as how they were in the middle of some God forsaken West Texas desert, finding them was apt to be difficult, a nearly impossible to conquer scavenger hunt, so they decided to stop tracking the horde and find a few of the nearest towns, cross their fingers and toes, and hope something turned up

  As far as plans went, it wasn't much, but under the circumstances it was as good as it got.

  In towns like Big Lake, Texon, and Rankin they had no luck. Fort Davis too turned up no place to find dynamite, but it did possess a gun shop large enough to give Charlton Heston a hard on
even from the grave. They had plenty of guns, and any more would be more than they could carry, but Mead demanded they stop anyway.

  "An old acquaintance of mine had something called, I think, target right," he said.

  "Never heard of it." Aben wanted to move on. Even though they hadn't seen the horde in days, he knew it likely wasn't far.

  "He said people used it for target shooting. You shoot it, and it blows up."

  Aben turned to Mead, suddenly less eager to get a move on. "Tannerite."

  Mead smiled, a rare sight these days. "That's the one. We got ourselves in a pickle and he used it to blow up a van. Made one hell of a mess."

  Aben's wheels were turning. This was a good idea. Better than dynamite which to be frank, he had little knowledge about how to use safely or effectively. "I think you might be on to something, kiddo."

  The store carried no Tannerite but Aben knew the same product could be made quite easily with nothing more than ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. They found the ammonium nitrate at a feed and fertilizer milling company. There was so much that they had to rig up carts to Gypsy and Mead's donkey to haul it.

  Mead was the one who suggested they find a paint store for the aluminum powder, insisting that they used it to create the metallic fleck look. He was right, and at the end of the day they had what they needed. Whether it would actually work remained to be seen.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Each of the eight most recent men to fight in the arena had died there. All eight were now impaled in an uneven row outside town. And while people still seemed to enjoy the blood sport, they watched the events not only with excitement, but with fear. Fear that they might be next.

  It was getting harder to find volunteers. Not that anyone had a real choice. Mitch got the feeling that, if someone didn't win soon, the tide might turn completely and, while he was dubious about whether they'd revolt against Saw (and by proxy, him) he thought it wasn't a risk worth taking.

  He was inside his trailer, compiling the latest inventory, when there was a knock at the door of his motorhome. He set aside the logbook and went to the door, expecting, or maybe hoping, to find Sally Rose. The two had been spending more and more time together the last few weeks and she'd stop servicing other men in town. He appreciated that, even though he never would have asked her.

  When he opened the door, instead of finding Sally Rose's smiling face, he found Mina's scowling one. The sight so surprised him that he was speechless, a rare occurrence for him.

  "Are you gonna stand there like an asshole or are you going to invite me in?"

  Mitch stepped aside, and she pushed her way past him. He closed the door behind her.

  "We need to talk about Saw." She sat on the couch and helped herself to an open bottle of beer without bothering to ask.

  "What about him?"

  "He's cheating on me."

  Mitch was in the process of taking a seat of his own when she said that, and her declaration so surprised him that he almost missed. "He would never."

  "He is. Not that I give half a shit. But it's who he's doing it with that matters." She sat down the bottle and stared at him, dead serious. "Matters to you."

  Mitch didn't know why he should care who Saw stuck it to on the side and resented being brought into their domestic matters. He was ready to tell her when she spoke again.

  "It's that whore you see. Sally."

  Mitch went from annoyed to angry as if she'd flipped a light switch. He was pissed that Mina of all people would call Sally Rose a whore and he was pissed at the accusation that there was something up between her and Saw. He didn't know which angered him more.

  "Shut the fuck up. Where do you come up with this paranoid bullshit?"

  "I've known it for a while but figured what did it matter. Saw's gonna do what he wants. Nothing I say or do will change that."

  "Enough!" Mitch stood up so fast his chair toppled over backward and he saw Mina flinch. She recovered quick though and grabbed the beer. That time she finished it off.

  "Ask her if you don't believe me. She was the one giving Saw the heroin. Apparently, they shot up together."

  "Bullshit, Mina. The heroin came from Boyd. He admitted that to my face."

  "Boyd brought it in. Sally the whore delivered it. I suppose that's when they started up. No good junkies, the both of em. He's still using, you know?"

  Mitch's mind was in overdrive. All this information seemed impossible but made a perverse kind of sense. Maybe that's why Sally Rose had been sticking so close to him of late, trying to keep him off the trail. He knew she liked nose candy, but then again so did he. He couldn't believe she'd do H but, when he thought about it, what did he really know about her?

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "Saw's gone off the rails. The violence, the torture. He's losing the town and if he catches on, he'll burn this place to the ground."

  She stood and moved to him. He could smell the stale beer on her breath but the look in her eyes said she was sober. Sober and truthful. "This place and everyone in it," she said. "Now are you the kind of man whose gonna stand by and do nothing? Fiddle while Rome burns, like the saying went?"

  Mina slipped by him. He heard the door open but didn't turn to look as she exited. When he heard the door close again, he went to the cabinet where he kept his stash and grabbed a baggie of cocaine. He poured it onto the kitchen counter, then used a spatula to divide it into lines.

  He bent at the waist to snort a line, then stopped himself. He wanted to numb the pain he felt, but he needed to keep his head clear even more. He swept the drugs into the sink and turned his back on it. He was going to find out the truth one way or another.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Mina watched from a distance as Mitch stormed toward Sally Rose's trailer. The door hung ajar and he didn't knock before entering. As he barged inside, she hoped she'd made the right decision.

  "You done screwed up this time, Birdie," her daddy's voice whispered inside her head. "That boy's too smart to fall for your little nappy-headed games. He gone see straight through your lies and then you's gonna have hell to pay."

  She'd stopped answering him out loud, at least most of the time. Although, in this horrible place talking to yourself was one of the less unusual habits a person could possess. But in her mind, she told him to shut up. Not that that ever worked.

  "That boy's gone know straight away what you up to. Then he's gone tell Saw and Lordy help you. You thought I was hard on your skinny ass? Yo in for a whole new world of pain."

  Don't be right, she thought. For once let the old bastard be wrong. All her life, Mina had felt like she'd been playing a supporting role. First to her younger sister, who was always prettier and smarter. Then she became her daddy's caregiver and punching bag. And now she was nothing more than Saw's woman, asking 'how high' when he said jump'.

  She was tired of always being in the background. Always being a person who things happened to and not someone who made things happen. She was going to be different now. She'd made her choice and it was too late to go back. Today was the day Mina took hold of her own fate.

  From inside the trailer, she heard Mitch scream. Confused, angry sounds. Then things breaking. She held her breath and hoped she'd got it all right.

  There was no more heroin. She'd spent weeks trying to find some but had no luck, but she thought some burned molasses on a spoon would be close enough to fool Mitch. She'd left that, along with a needle and syringe, beside Sally Rose's body after she killed her.

  That act was far easier than she'd expected. The whore was kind and trusting and seemed a little flattered when Mina had arrived at her doorstep. She invited her inside without a single question and her only concern seemed to be tucking away dirty dishes so Mina wouldn't realize her housekeeping skills weren't the best. She'd just sat a stack of plates in the sink when Mina hit her in the back of the head with a rubber mallet.

  She'd gone with rubber because she didn't want to leave any obv
ious wounds, but it wasn't quite as powerful as a regular hammer and while the blow sent Sally Rose tumbling into her ramshackle cabinets, it didn’t kill her straight off. The woman hit the floor and managed to turn her way before Mina could get in a second blow. She stared up at her dazed and wide-eyed.

  "Why'd you do that?"

  Mina didn't answer. Instead she raised the mallet over her head and swung with every bit of strength her scrawny arms could muster. That blow connected with the top of Sally Rose's skull and the woman went limp. Mina checked for a pulse and couldn't find one, but her own heartbeat was pounding so loud she knew she might have missed it.

  After waiting a minute to make sure there wasn't any blood, Mina tossed the spoon and needle near the body and headed straight for Mitch.

  Inside the trailer, the screaming and the commotion had stopped and, as the silence dragged on, Mina began to wonder if things had gone bad. Maybe Sally Rose wasn't dead. Or maybe she was, and she'd managed to bite Mitch. Either scenario meant game over for her.

  "If you smart you'd get your skinny ass outta Dodge, Birdie. Before anyone finds out what you done."

  "They won't find out." The words slipped from her mouth before she could stop herself and she wasn't sure whether she was saying them to her daddy or herself. "This is gonna work."

  But was it? Nothing had happened yet and her confidence in her plan in herself, began to fade. She was just about ready to run when she saw movement at the trailer door. A moment later Mitch stepped through, into the harsh midday sunlight. He carried Sally Rose's limp body in his arms and Mina saw the handle of a kitchen knife poking out of her eye socket.