Making a stirrup with his calloused hands, Matt leaned forward and presented it to Raven.
“You want me to step there?”
He nodded. “It’s how me and Michael got into our tree house back home.”
Raven remembered one of the twins mention that their home had been in Indiana but couldn’t recall where. Instead of asking, lest it dredge up bitter memories, she braced one splayed hand on his muscled shoulder and planted her right foot on his clasped hands.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He bent his knees and counted down from three.
On “One” Raven put some bend in her knees. When she felt him rise up, she pushed off with her right leg and tilted her head backwards. Arms outthrust, she focused on the branch the camera was on.
Getting ahold of the branch with both hands, she chinned herself up and hooked one arm over the top. To find the leverage to pry the camera loose, she shimmied up and draped her upper body over the branch.
The camera came off easily.
“Drop it,” Matt urged.
“Uh, uh,” she said. While the thing did have a sort of armored exterior, she didn’t want to risk losing any evidence.
He said, “I’ll catch you, then.”
“I can do this myself,” she insisted.
“It’s twice your height.”
She thought, So was the play structure at Creston Park back in Portland. She remembered jumping from the top of that and surviving. Only, as she suddenly recalled, there had been several inches of bark shavings to brace her fall. In a split-second her thinking about the play structure brought back another memory: her first F-bomb. She’d been four or five at the time and was simply reading graffiti off the bottom of the play structure. The look on her dad’s face had scared her at the time. The quick recovery on his part—a wide smile and the promise of an ice cream cone if she never said it again—instantly rocketed him back to exalted status.
Bringing her back to the present, Matt said, “I won’t drop you. I promise.”
“Move it,” she growled and let go of the branch.
The landing was perfect. Maybe even something a table full of Olympic judges would award a mess of perfect 10s.
Matt was going on about how impressed he was with her display of courage when his twin laid into him for taking too long of a break.
“My break’s over,” Matt said. “Let us know what the camera picked up, if anything.”
Raven followed him back to the monument and saw that the taggers had hit the hewn stone base that would eventually accept the statue honoring the Pueblo refugees who had gotten trapped between an overwhelming surge of living dead and the fledgling capital’s newly erected walls.
As Matt rejoined his brother, Raven sat with her back to the wall between the two. It was wild how much alike they were: short, dirty-blond hair. High, wide brows over dark brown eyes. Both were average size, maybe five-eight, and dressed for the work they were doing: red flannel shirts, Carharrt coveralls, rubber knee pads.
“Hey,” Michael said. “Sorry I lost it on Matt.”
Returning the greeting, Raven said, “You ought to tell him you’re sorry.”
Matt said, “It’s OK. I know he didn’t mean it like it sounded.”
The interaction between siblings called to mind a saying Raven heard often from her parents: What’s the most important thing?
The expected reply: Family.
In response to Matt’s earlier request, Raven said, “Since we’re all affected by these tagging buttholes, I’ll check the camera right now.”
The brothers stopped what they were doing and sat against the wall, flanking Raven.
Pushing the camera’s recessed On button brought the screen to life.
Matt was looking over her shoulder as a black smudge filled up the screen. He said, “Bad angle.”
Peering down on the device from the opposite side, Michael said, “Bad light, too.”
Raven said. “These things never capture anything useful.”
Matt said, “This is what? Third time they hit the park?”
“Fourth,” she spat. “And this time I got nothing but a middle finger, one camera painted like an Easter egg and this”—she tapped a finger on the screen—“image that would get me laughed off one of those ghost hunter television shows.”
Michael shook his head. “You already took it to the law, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “They don’t care about property crimes.”
Matt said, “Then I think you need to take the matter into your own hands.”
Stowing the camera in her pack, she said, “My dad forbids it.”
“Then send your dad after them,” Matt said, smiling wide at the prospect. “I’m sure he knows how to sit still for awhile.”
“Not funny,” Raven shot.
“Not because of the coma,” Matt said, his cheeks flushing red. “No, no, no. Not even what I meant. I was thinking about his profession. His … certain set of skills.”
The Taken reference delivered with a terrible Liam Neeson impression earned Matt a questioning look from Raven.
“Everybody in Springs knows who your dad is. And what he does … or, did,” Michael said. “I bet he even has night vision goggles.”
I have NVGs, Raven thought as Matt stood up and regarded Michael. “We still have a lot of names to etch today.”
Michael rose. “He’s older by three minutes. I better do what he says.”
Raven shrugged on her pack and slung the SBR. She followed Matt to the spot where there used to be just a cement pad. It had sat there forlornly in the center of the park, the only evidence pointing to its existence while the snow blanketed the ground the four lengths of rebar jutting skyward.
Seeing the full extent of the damage done by the taggers, she thought, Man, these two must want to murder the people who did this. Lord knows she did.
Speaking to Michael, she said, “Who is the guy they painted on there?”
Matthew said, “We think it’s that old Chinese leader, Mao Tse-tung.”
Not knowing a thing about the communist dictator, Raven said nothing. Instead she was hoping the twins were fed up with the tagging. Maybe, she thought, this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. If only she could somehow convince them to go with her to Chief Riggleman’s office in the BERR building.
Strength in numbers. And they could snap pictures of the damage and present them as evidence.
Yeah, that might get the chief to take her seriously.
As far as she knew, the brothers weren’t getting paid. Not with credits, at least.
When Raven had first met them and asked why they were devoting so much time to the memorial, Michael had said with no hesitation that it was not only out of respect for the people whose names they were carving on the wall, but also for all of the family and friends they had lost during the early days of the outbreak.
When pressed about how they were able to work such long hours with no compensation, Matt had said that they were being put up in the Antlers and getting three squares a day at the BERR building chow hall.
They seemed to have all they needed. Which begged the question: How to get them on board?
In her head she heard her mom say: Just ask them.
So she did.
Chapter 38
Daymon had pulled up to the curb fronting Antlers Park five minutes after Raven had finished laying out her plan to Matt and Michael. Now, after a short drive north on Cascade Avenue, which took them through the Old North End residential district, past Penrose Hospital, and onward to the northernmost stretch of freeway barriers, they sat in the idling Bronco, eyeing the north gate and the stern-faced soldier walking their way.
“Whole nine yards,” said Duncan. “You all know where that saying originated, right?”
The soldier arrived at the Bronco’s driver’s side window and asked for credentials.
Anticipating the request, Da
ymon had rolled his window down and was dangling his Golden Ticket at the soldier even as the man was still speaking.
His previous question unanswered, Duncan said, “I always forget about the rules.” Muttering under his breath, he unbuckled and started to search in earnest for his pass.
After jabbing a hand into every pocket of his woodland-camouflaged jacket, then doing the same to his like-colored BDU pants, Duncan located the folded square of yellow paper in one of the cargo pockets.
“Got it,” he said, passing the document over to the soldier.
“Here’s mine,” Raven said, thrusting her pass out Daymon’s open window.
Wearing a bored expression, the soldier collected the slips and started back for the Airstream trailer he had come from.
Poking her head between the seats, Raven regarded Daymon with a puzzled look. “We’re going outside the wire first?” she asked.
Busy watching the final undulations of the hula girl on the dash, Daymon nodded and killed the engine.
Crossing her arms, Raven sank back into the rear seat.
“Well,” Duncan said, “anyone know the answer to my question?”
Great, it’s trivia hour, Daymon thought. Shooting a sidelong glance at Duncan, he proffered a guess. "Something to do with football?”
“Close, but no cigar.”
From the backseat, Raven said, "During the Second World War, linked ammunition for some airplanes came in lengths of twenty-seven feet. If a pilot used all of his ammunition on a strafing run, he gave the enemy the whole nine yards.”
The soldier emerged from the trailer with their papers clutched in his hand.
Struck speechless, Duncan remained quiet through half of the soldier’s walk back to the Bronco. Finally, having processed Raven’s lengthy answer, he turned slowly in her direction. “X gets a square, little lady.” He paused for a beat. “How did you know that?”
The soldier was nearly to the window when Raven said, “Because, since I’ve known you, that’s the fourth or fifth time you’ve asked the same question.”
Wearing a sheepish grin, Duncan said, “I’ll have to try and stymie you with a new one, then. Just you wait. I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”
Daymon took the papers from the soldier and handed them to Duncan.
“What’s it like out there?” Raven asked the soldier.
The soldier, whose name tape read Prosser and rank insignia put him very low on the 4th Infantry Division totem pole, quickly ran down the frequency of zombie sightings by zone, then warned that, given the absence of cold weather, encounters with “Glowers" outside the wire was happening with increased regularity.
Daymon said, “Bunch of little entrepreneurs up there. What’s it like on the other side of the gate?”
Prosser said, “It’ll be cleared of Zs before we let you out.”
Raven leaned forward and looked out the front windshield. The angle wasn’t good, so she pressed her face against the fixed window to her left and lifted her gaze to the walkway running atop the north gate.
A couple of dozen kids and teenagers stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the crowded walkway. They wore stocking caps and winter clothes and were armed with slingshots of many different designs. Most were the homemade items for sale in Lola’s: surgical tubing affixed to crude wooden handles. Others were the type with bent metal tubing, foam grips, and extended forearm braces.
Many weeks ago, while culling dead outside the wire south of Springs, Daymon had mentioned having a slingshot of that type when he was a kid in Utah. He had called his a “wrist rocket” and had used it to such great effect against starlings and other nuisance birds that his mother’s vegetable garden didn’t require a scarecrow.
While rocks were plentiful here due to the excavating done to seat the cement walls, Raven assumed the kids were instead using the same tiny ball bearings she’d seen Peter shoot with his slingshot.
As Prosser about-faced and began the hundred-foot walk back to the Airstream, he barked an order to the kids on the wall.
At once the kids rose up, leaned over the parapet, and let projectiles fly. The action was so fast and furious that Raven imagined the sounds she would be hearing if she were on the wall with them: The sproing of taut elastic being released. The static-like whizz of ammo rocketing groundward. Hollow thuds as the stricken rotters fell in place.
Like the rimfire cartridges for the little Ruger 10/22 she had first learned to shoot with, these projectiles would be easy on the corpses. Upon entering an eye socket, they might bounce around a bit and destroy the brain, but there would be no splitting of skulls, no blood and brains to clean up afterward, and, most importantly: no loud reports capable of carrying for miles across nearby Austin Bluffs’ Open Space.
There was no “stand-down” order delivered by Prosser as he neared the trailer. One second the kids were firing down off the wall, the next they were all turned inward and staring expectantly in his direction.
Slowing his gait, Prosser removed a radio from a pocket and lifted it to his lips. A beat later, a soldier in the guard tower was giving the rampart kids a thumbs up.
All clear, Raven thought.
“Putting the hurt on the deaders,” Duncan said in front of a soft chuckle. “Never woulda thought we’d be revertin’ back to Medieval-times tactics so quickly.”
Prosser’s go-ahead call started a flurry of activity. The bigger kids put down their weapons and hauled up the pair of ladders used to access their perch. In perfect unison—as if they’d done this many times before—they nosed the ladders over the parapet and allowed gravity to take them to the opposite side of the wall. Once the ladders were set, the smaller kids scrambled over the parapet and disappeared from sight. Done bracing the ladders for the first wave, the older kids followed quickly after.
Cracking open a bottled water, Duncan said, “Efficient little buggers, ain’t they?”
Firing the Bronco’s V8, Daymon said, “They’re all orphans. They have to be industrious or they don’t eat.”
Duncan said, “Everyone’s got to pull their weight.”
Raven shot him a sour look. “That’s harsh.”
Daymon put Heidi into gear. Speaking to nobody in particular, he said, “This world is harsh.”
“Well,” Raven said, “I hope they’re getting what they need.”
Duncan craned around. “You of all people, Bird of the Apocalypse, should know that hope isn’t a plan. Like you, these kids have a plan. And they and others like them are going to be the ones who pull this country back up by its bootstraps.”
A few seconds after the majority of the kids had disappeared, the ladder tenders were back on the wall and hauling the ladders up.
The north gate doors began to part. As the vertical seam widened, it was clear the outer doors were already open.
Taking a cue from another soldier on the ground near the trailer, Daymon popped the clutch and drove through the gate in first gear, maybe five miles an hour, fast enough so that they all missed seeing the blood trails on the two-lane, but still slow enough so that everyone got a good look at the orphans’ handiwork.
The scene outside the wall was far different than Raven had imagined. The kids were a blur of motion, stabbing and hacking away at the twice-dead Zs. There seemed to be a hierarchy, with the littler kids collecting ears and the bigger, stronger teens dragging and stacking the corpses.
They worked from the outside in. Now and again the stackers would pause long enough to let a girl, who looked to be ten or eleven, run a Geiger counter over the prone bodies not yet pounced upon by the ear collectors.
Following behind the slicers and stackers was another work detail comprised of the littlest boys and girls. Some were stooped over, hands on knees, and staring at the ground. Others were on all fours and probing the bare dirt with spades and screwdrivers.
By the base of the wall was a teen girl. She walked slowly away from the gate, sweeping a metal detector over the ground with metronomic preci
sion. Following in her footsteps was a redheaded boy of about ten. He stopped when she did and went to work tilling the soil with a rake.
Raven tapped Duncan on the shoulder and pointed. “They’re working together like a well-oiled machine.”
After a brief pause, Duncan said, “Still looks to me like a bunch of chickens peckin’ for feed.”
“That’s what I’d be doing if my dad—” She bit her lip and looked away.
“But he didn’t leave us. And you’re going outside the wire. Unlike the kids back there, you’re free. Free to come and go. Free to choose your work.”
Dabbing a tear, Raven said, “I feel bad for them.”
“Don’t,” Duncan said, “because they’re on this side of the grass. And there are untold millions of us who ain’t.”
Chapter 39
“Yep … there’s that smell.” Eyes narrowing, Duncan grabbed the collar of his tee shirt and covered his nose with it.
The air just outside the gate was heavy with the stink of death, the main contributor the massive dump truck parked upwind from the killing grounds. Filled with way too many Z corpses to count, it sagged low on its heavy-duty suspension.
Daymon rolled up his window. It was no help. The old girl had rolled off the Detroit lines more than four decades ago and was a sieve compared to the newer, nearly air-tight rigs. Only way to fix the problem was to get away from the gate. So he grabbed second gear and matted the pedal.
Continuing down a two-lane lined by mature trees and cement Jersey barriers, he upshifted again and drew in a much-needed breath of fresh air.
Uncovering his mouth and nose, Duncan said, “Much better,” and cracked his window a few inches. He remembered developing an immunity to the stench not too long after the dead had started to walk. It had been the same for him once he arrived in Vietnam. First thing he saw upon setting foot on the broiling tarmac was the multitude of body bags being loaded onto the 707 that had just arrived full of fresh meat for the grinder.
Now, after a few weeks on the inside, during which he was rarely exposed to the sickly sweet smell of death and decay, his gag reflex had seemingly been reset.
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home Page 20
