by David Smith
"No."
"I want you on recon tomorrow. I think being back out there will give you some...perspective."
Chapter 13: What's This Place?
I wake up and I'm in a house I don't recognize. There's a ceiling fan spinning above me. A television is on with the volume turned low. I can hear music playing loudly downstairs, the bass penetrating the floor. I hear the thermostat click, air moving through the ductwork and feel it blowing cool on my face, central A/C. Where am I?
The door swings open and Stephanie walks in wearing a blue jacket, wool with white leather arms and PRC in big, white letters sewn diagonally down one side of the chest. There's an icon of a megaphone on the 'R' and three stripes beneath it. Her blonde hair is pulled up in a ponytail on the side of her head.
"Would you please come downstairs and socialize?" She says. "You never want to hang out with my friends."
I couldn't say anything. I just got up and followed her. In the hallway and down the stairs were pictures of Mom and Dad, Beth and I, or all of us together. The music grew louder until we reached the bottom of the stairs to find a living room full of young party goers.
"What's she doing here?" Beth asked as she walked up to us.
"I'm his girlfriend. Mind your own business, freshman." Stephanie replied.
Was she my girlfriend? I don't remember her being. I feel like she is. I know that she is but I don't remember anything of her before this moment. I do remember the faceless shadow and have memories of being with her and being happy. I don't remember how we broke up though and I want to know. I want to know so I can fix whatever happened between us. I think back and there is nothing wrong and I...
We walk through the living room and I feel their eyes on me. I feel like they're judging me and can almost hear their thoughts. They laugh at the way I walk, the way I stand, they sound of my voice, they way I hold my drink and no one actually notices me at all. I'd rather be killing. As I stand next to Stephanie, trying to find a way to hold my arms and a place to put my feet that doesn't feel awkward, I look around for the girl from my dreams.
I can feel that she is here somewhere. I ask everyone if they've seen her but no one believes she even exists. The phone rings. I pick it up and it's her. She says she's on her way but it will be a while and my heart sinks. I know that I love her and feel guilty that Stephanie is somehow my girlfriend. I still don't remember how it came to be that way or why. All I know is that I don't want it to be and never have but it seems to be the reality of everyone here but me. I decide the only way to make it right is to kill her and hide her body then kill everyone here who doesn't share the same reality as me. As I kill them, they don't die. Instead, they become conscious of my reality and begin to rot where they stand.
I start to feel that maybe it's a dream but I can't remember ever having been awake, ever having been anywhere else.
Suddenly, I can see her, burning right in front of me. I have no memory of her getting there, only being there. I can't actually see her in the flames, only the flames themselves where she should be and the ropes that bind her around where here waist would be. She's in the flames somewhere though, I can feel that she is but isn't being burned, only trapped there by the ropes, which aren't being burned either.
I try to untie her, only to find that the rope isn't tied anywhere. There are no ends and no knot. It just wraps endlessly around her, continuing from where it began.
Chapter 14: To Feed The Buzzards
I slept just long enough to dream last night, knowing that once I got out of bed and left the compound, there would be someone, very deliberately and purposefully, watching for the opportunity to end my life. There were only three hours from the time I got back to my room to when I had to meet the recon team at the front gate and spent two of those hours speculating how it might happen and planning what I could do to stop it. I knew that the killer was probably awake and doing the same thing. The one advantage I had was that I knew it was going to happen and the killer didn't know that I knew.
With an hour left, I thought about the thin wall between Perez' and Jennings' rooms. I got up and walked as quietly as I could out of the room, down the hall, up the stairs and down to Perez' room. It occurred to me on the way that bare feet on unfinished plywood is as silent as a grave.
I eased the plywood door open slowly and could see Perez sleeping on his cot. I closed the door behind me, careful not to let it bang, then walked over to him.
"Perez." I whispered. "Perez!" I said just a little louder and he opened his eyes.
"What the..." He realized it was me and sat up, putting his feet in the floor. "What do you want, man?" He said as he rubbed his eyes.
"I need your help."
"I'm Catholic but ain't no priest. I don't do last rites."
"So, you heard?"
"Yep."
"What did you hear?"
"Let's see. I seem to remember hearing myself tell you to leave that girl alone."
"Come on! I need to know what he said."
He looked down and shook his head. "All I know is you got a price on your head now and Jackson's the one that's gonna collect."
"Okay. At least I know who to watch out for." I said then started for the door.
"Hold on." He said and got up from his bed. He reached into a foot locker at the foot of his bed and pulled out a revolver. "Take this."
"It's empty."
"No shit. I don't want you doing something crazy. That's so if you get caught leaving here I can say I was asleep and you stole it. At least I won't go down with you."
"Okay." I nodded and turned for the door.
"Hey." He said, stopping me again and I turned around. "Give 'em Hell."
I made it back to my room unnoticed, grabbed what I would need and headed outside. The sun was still so far below the horizon that, even though it would be light soon, it might as well have been the middle of the night. The team was already waiting at the gate, eight men standing around three vehicles. The first was an armored humvee with a turret on top and a .50 cal. The second was the truck we followed here, the one that the men I killed at Walmart had driven. The third was the deuce and a half in which I had ridden my first time out to the farm.
"Rally on me." Jackson said loudly and everyone walked to the hood of the humvee. "Mac, you'll be driving Maggie 2 with James as co-driver. Roberts and Spiers will be the dismounts. Mitchell and Grier, you'll be in Maggie 3. Sampson, you'll be my gunner."
As soon as he started talking, a few of the dead came out of the woods, across the road from the gate. "We'll be taking the usual route. Convoy speed is forty, catch up speed, forty-five." They started rattling the gate. "When we get to the state line, stay alert. This is our first deal with The Vultures and we know they don't have the strongest leadership so there might be some who don't care about the cease fire. If they don't pose an immediate threat, do not return fire. We'll report it to their leader and let him handle it." He looked over his shoulder at the dead who were accumulating at the gate then looked up at the roof of the house. "They ain't even paying attention." He said, then flashed his flashlight at them a couple times. A moment later, I heard the mechanical action of a silenced rifle and the dead starting falling limply to the ground with each shot. "When we get to the warehouse, one man stays in each vehicle. We make the exchange then we head south. Like I said, this is the first trade we've had with them and it's important we make the right impression. Be polite but don't kiss their butts. We want to show them we respect their authority in their land, but make sure we command respect for ours as well."
We got into the truck and Jackson gave me a quick class on how to fire the .50. As soon as the roof guards had a path cleared out far enough to open the gate, we pulled out. The sky was just starting to lighten behind the tops of the pines as we made the curve, turning east toward the main road. It was a very damp morning, fog collecting into droplets on the turret's front armor plates and blowing back into my face in the wind.
I was
standing on the hump in between the back seats, out of the roof from my chest up. The turret had a pad to lean against that caught me just below the shoulders if I leaned back into it and squatted down slightly. From that position, I could keep an eye on Jackson.
We took a right onto the main road and headed back toward town. There were a few dead out in the woods and a few more in the road but we easily swerved around them and the second and last trucks ran over them, their rotten corpses bouncing off the armor and sliding across the asphalt.
We turned left onto the interstate and the wind was stronger. I kept watching Jackson for any sign of being nervous or looking over his shoulder or out of the corner of his eye at me, any sign that he was planning something but there was nothing. He was driving the humvee, looking down the road with his head cocked back, slid down in the seat with his foot propped up like he would take a nap at any moment and the truck would just continue to its destination.
We turned off the interstate at Exit 4, by the Walmart, and went through town, past grocery stores and fast food restaurants, all the signs faded and busted. The dead were more common here, organizing into a herd as we passed by and following us. I kept waiting for Jackson to pull over to thin them out, maybe so there wouldn't be so many when we passed back through. I was trying to put myself in his shoes and if I was going to try to kill someone and needed it to look like an accident, what better way than a firefight with a massive herd closing in from every direction? I wondered what he was waiting for.
We came to the intersection where Dad and I had turned north and went south instead. It was almost three weeks since he had died and it seemed like a different life ago. I wondered what he would do in this situation. We had spent our entire lives separated from these people. I could only guess that he would probably kill them, get Beth out somehow and go find some place away from everyone again. I didn't want that though. Things had changed so much in the last twenty years but we were all still alive and it made me believe things could be brought back to the way things were before.
A few miles down the highway, we turned right onto the interstate and I noticed we were at the intersection I had seen when we left the bunker. There was a wall of cars on either side of us all the way to the state line. As we came out of the gauntlet and into Louisiana the men in the truck behind us stood and took up firing positions, facing outward. There were much fewer dead here but a lot of bodies in various stages of decomposition lying strewn across the highway.
A few miles down, we crossed a river over a high bridge. Off to the left side of the highway was an old truck stop with even older painted wooden signs advertising boiled and live crawfish, lottery tickets and discount liquor. A few more miles down, we exited to the right and passed two gas stations, one on either side of the road. There were motorcycles parked out front and armed guards on top of the buildings. We watched them closely and they watched us, holding assault rifles by their sides. They didn't look like us, long beards, long hair, wearing jeans and leather vests, their arms covered in tattoos. We looked like soldiers and the people back at the compound, like farmers and suburbanites. These men looked like barbarians.
After another left, we came to a massive warehouse complex. There was a fence around the perimeter and the gate, one large enough to let in four lanes of truck traffic, was left open. A small guard house sat unmanned on a concrete island to the left of the gate.
The warehouse was one continuous building with an office near the front, one door on the outside of the fence and one on the inside, then loading docks with roll-up doors down the rest of it which was a few hundred yards. Halfway down the length of the building was a concrete ramp sticking out into the parking lot with a much taller door at the top, twenty feet high and almost as wide. There were a few dead wandering around the parking lot, which was full of semi-trailers parked in one long row, and quite a few banging slowly on the door at the top of the ramp.
We stopped at the bottom of the ramp and Jackson blew the horn, a high pitched honk like a strangled goose. The dead started to turn and jog towards us as the door opened slowly, inches at a time. When it was open about three feet, four men, like the ones on top of the gas station, came out with machetes and bats. They attacked the dead like medieval warriors charging into battle and in ten seconds they were standing over their rotting corpses, spattered in blackened blood and smiling at us as if to say, 'now you know how it's done'.
The sun was up now, the chill of the pre-dawn dampness filling with warmth and I had almost forgotten my predicament until Jackson tapped me on the leg. I slid down inside the cab and into my seat.
"Don't be intimidated. They have no training, no discipline. We could wipe them out in minutes and they know it." He said then started to drive up the ramp and into the building.
"Why don't we?" I asked.
"We've never been able to get them all in one place. They control the route to the refinery and occasionally attack our convoys. We've always managed to fight them off but there are always more of them. There are almost two hundred of us but only a few fighters. We estimate there are only one hundred or more of them, less trained, less equipped that us, but all fighters." When the last vehicle was through the door it was closed behind us. "They live in the swamps around the Pearl River, spread out and in places that are hidden. To attack them in any one place would start a war we would win but it would be costly and our people would not support it." We continued to drive through the building, the men leading us on foot. "The people in our community don't understand what must be done to keep them safe and the people here can't afford to lose anymore of their numbers. So, we try to make peace."
The inside of this building was just like the bunker at home but cleaner, newer and many times larger, emptier. We drove past row after row of empty shelves, reaching to the ceiling four stories above us. The aisles between the rows were so long and straight that they appeared to reach a zenith before ending at the far side of the building. It was all dimly lit by plexiglass skylights.
Finally, we reached the end of the building where there was an emergency exit in front of us and another door to the left. "There's a shotgun behind your seat." Jackson said. "Bring it but keep it slung."
Two men led Jackson and I through the door and into a dark, narrow hallway while the rest of the team waited by the trucks. We stepped into an office to the right where there, behind a desk, sat the fattest, dirtiest man I had ever seen. He was bald on top and had a long, thick, black beard that covered most of his face, a fat, squished pie with tiny, black eyes. His fat, formless arms poured out of a greasy, white tank top and two huge, white shrimp boots were propped up on his desk, his bulbous legs bulging out of the top of them. A gas lantern lit the room from one side and glinted off the barrel of a foot long, five-shot revolver.
"What the hell is this?" He said in a thick St. Bernard Parish accent. For those not familiar with Louisiana, that's a mix of Cajun and New Jersey.
"We're here to deal," Jackson answered. "as you requested."
"My request was to deal with your leader, instead he sends his boy?"
"I'm not his boy." I interjected.
"I wasn't talking about you." He said and waved the pistol at me. "I'm talking about you," he waved the pistol at Jackson and said very slowly, "boy......"
Jackson just stared at him. I could see his jaw twitching and sweat forming on his bald head. "Your racism aside, you don't want a war you know you can't win and we believe hunting all of you down and killing you would be a waste of valuable resources. Despite your willful ignorance, slothful disposition, and poor hygiene you are the leader here and the people look to you for their survival."
The fat man looked at him and squinted hard, his eyes almost disappearing in his cheeks, then he put the gun down and stood. He seemed to keep standing forever until he filled up the side of the room behind his desk. His mask of prideful arrogance slowly crumbled and the face of a desperate man became apparent. "What you got?"
"Our e
quipment uses diesel so we are willing to give you one barrel of gasoline a week in return for safe passage through your territory."
"One barrel?" He laughed nervously, his belly jiggling. "We've got boats and bikes and generators, that's not enough."
"It's better than your situation now. You're using canoes and sitting in the dark, stealing what little you can for the motorcycles."
"Our main generator is diesel." The fat man said. "What about that?"
"We need the diesel. Is air conditioning worth your people lives?"
He thought for a moment, looking around the office and wiping the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. "Okay. We'll do it. When you gonna make first delivery?"
"There is a barrel in the truck but today is a diesel run. More gasoline will be at the end of the week." Jackson answered.
"See you at the end of the week then." He said and gave an ear to ear grin.
We all walked back to the trucks and the four men unloaded a 55-gallon drum, sliding it down the tailgate. The fat man unscrewed the cap, put his nose down in it and took a deep sniff. He motioned to the men and they turned it over and rolled it away.
We got back into the trucks and left without incident. Once we were out of The Vultures' territory and heading further south, I slid back down into the passenger seat. As we rode in silence, I kept watching Jackson out of the corner of my eye for any sign of malicious intent but still, there was nothing. The shotgun lay next to me, the barrel pointing at the floor and I wondered if I could pick it up and blow his head off without him having the chance to put up a fight. I also wondered if maybe he had changed his mind.
