by David Smith
"So, I'm guessing you made a deal." He said disapprovingly.
"It's gonna be alright."
"You really think you can trust him?"
"Hopefully I won't need to." I wanted to tell him the plan but was afraid they were listening.
"What do you mean?" He asked, raising his head slightly to look at me with his good eye. I couldn't give him an honest answer so I changed the subject.
"If we make it out of this, and Magnolia Ridge falls, what are you going to do?"
Without thinking about it, he answered. "I'm going to the farm. Freeing the slaves and starting a new life, far the Hell away from Mississippi. Take Chontelle and go back to New York City. It's probably safe by now."
Chapter 17: Mac’s Story, Part 2
We stayed on the island a few more days after Watts died. It probably could have been a safe place to restart the world but we all felt like we needed to rejoin the fight as long as there was something left to fight for and with Watts dead, there was nothing to slow us down.
The emplacements across from the Kayak dock had been quiet for a couple days when we decided to cross, still careful not to touch the water even though it looked like the blood had all been washed out. As we reached the more shallow waters, there were so many bodies that we could hardly get the paddles into the water deep enough to row. We were more, using the paddles to push ourselves through them, the bottoms of the kayaks rubbing along the top them.
When we reached to other side, it looked like the beaches of France after D-day. The shore was made of a landslide of large gray rocks leading up out of the water, about ten feet high and just as wide. Thirty feet or more after it leveled off was the centerfield fence of a baseball field. It was midday and it was the first time I noticed how quiet the daytime was now as the water lapped at the rocks. There were no honking horns or tires roaring on the highway, no voices carrying on the air, no planes in the sky. It was quiet as the night used to be, even quieter.
The rock wall was covered with bodies, blown and shot to pieces, many of them still moving their arms or legs, pinned beneath one another. It was like a pile of snakes, the arms and legs squirming aimlessly. Seagulls and other birds circled and landed on the bodies like on a landfill, fighting over scraps of flesh and worms and insects. As far as I could see down the shoreline was covered with them. I assumed these were what was left of those that had fallen from the bridge during the battle upstream. There were a few still up and hanging onto the fence, pulling at it, too mindless to walk around and into the city, their damp clothes clinging tightly around their water logged and bloated bodies.
The kayaks hit the rocks softly, the bodies absorbing the impact, and the current started turning them sideways. I stepped out and rushed to climb over them and up the rocks, trying to move my legs quickly enough that nothing could grab me. I made it first with Osterik right behind me, then the Lieutenant. Chief wasn't so lucky. His foot slipped as I watched and one grabbed his thigh, pulling him down...then another. One sank it's teeth into his calf, then another got him on the opposite thigh. He was good as dead but we unloaded on them anyway, out of respect for his life, or something I guess. We killed him and three of them in a hail of bullets and his body fell backward, the top half of him splashing into the water and floating there, unable to be washed out because of the grip the dead still had on his legs.
"Goddamn waste of bullets." Osterik cursed then turned and started walking to meet the ones by the fence as they had turned to come after us.
"Shouldn't we say a few words?" The Lieutenant suggested.
"I just did." Osterik replied and started busting heads with his machine gun. He was fed up and getting careless so I helped him take out the rest, quietly, as he sat on the chest of one and beat it's head into a pile of chunky mush.
We went on after that, through city after city, killing all the dead we could find and leaving them to rot. There was no time to burn or bury them. The entire countryside looked like a third world country, abandoned in the middle of a civil war; dead bodies of civilians and military and first responders, burning vehicles and tanks and war planes scattered everywhere. We didn't see a single survivor until we reached South Carolina.
That's when the fighting got tough. We went from killing a few stragglers here and there to having to kill mobs of ten, twenty, sometimes fifty or more that we'd find surrounding a boarded up house and trying to get in. Sometimes we'd find places full of lifeless, half rotted bodies that had died of suicide or starvation. Sometimes we'd find people alive and advise them to head back to New York City. We figured the path we left behind us was the safest but we had no idea just how little of a difference we had made.
The Lieutenant was killed in a robbery outside of Atlanta. Five of them, ghetto thugs, caught us with our pants down and the LT tried to negotiate with them. He offered all our food but they wanted more. He offered them our ammo, we knew we could find more. They didn't want any of it. They were convinced that white people created the plague to kill off all the black people and all they wanted was us dead. Never mind the fact that it had killed everyone in half the country regardless of color. When he pointed out that little fact it just made them madder. He was trying to talk and they were all yelling over him incoherently. Then one of them shot him, mid sentence. We killed all four of them though and followed the fifth one back to their hideout in Atlanta. There were about twenty of them holed up in a house in a rich neighborhood, the family of five who had lived there, hung from a tree outside. We set it on fire by the back door and mowed them down as they came out the front, every last one of them. I don't know if it was right but it sure felt that way.
They'd have been dead in a few more days anyway. That was when the bombs fell. Politicians know a lot about bombs but not a damn thing about a dead body walking around. The initial blasts killed a few but the only thing the radiation killed was the bugs that would have made them rot. They'd have all been dead in a year or so and things could have started getting back to normal. Instead, they all got a healthy dose of radioactive preservative for miles around every major city. The ones that weren't close enough to be in the fallout made their way to it, walking in whatever general direction they saw the sky light up.
We barely made it out ourselves, took us three months to make it to Mississippi. When we got to Magnolia Ridge, they already had the fence built and there were about thirty people living there, including the guards. Over the next year, the population grew to over a hundred. It got hard to keep everybody busy and there wasn't enough land to grow enough food to feed everybody. So, when Chontelle arrived with her group from New Orleans, Jennings was already looking for an excuse to send people up to Camp Shelby to start another farm.
There were thirteen of them, counting her. Only about three of them wanted to work, Chontelle being one of them. She had grown up the hard way; no Dad, junkie for a Mom. She had three younger brothers she had raised and kept out of the gangs. She was a tough girl and I took to her like I hadn't taken to anyone since high school. My short adult life had been all about the Army so I hadn't had time for a woman. She had lost everyone she knew over the last year but these few from her neighborhood and she was the one who led them out of the city and to Magnolia Ridge. She was a fighter but it had taken its toll on her so when she found the safety of the compound, she was willing to do anything she had to do to have someone else take the burden of their survival off of her. She should have let them die in New Orleans but that's just not her way. So, all but her and two older men just sat around, tearing shit up, stealing things from other members of the community, trying to sleep with women who were already spoken for. Of course, in Jennings' eyes it was just the fact that they hadn't earned it so it wasn't long before he got what he wanted.
People were already fed up with them and tensions were high. Finally, one of the civilians stood up to one of them when he got tired of them harassing his wife. That one and two others beat the man so bad that he died two days later from swelling i
n his brain. After that, Jennings sent them all to the farm, including Chontelle. He turned the community against all of them and they made it easy for him. I was ready to kill him and every last one of them too but she convinced me she'd be alright. We'd see each other when we could and it would be better than being out on our own. She said she couldn't handle being out there again so I let it go. It didn't go over so smooth with Osterik though, just the unfairness of it all and after running his mouth to the rest of the team, he ended up dead the same way you almost did. I had my suspicions but still thought it was an accident right up till I saw Jackson standing over you down by the river.
It hasn't been that bad though. She's been faithful, far as I know. She's had to fight to keep them off her, being the only woman out there and I've managed to kill four of them for her, just to be sure. Yeah, if I make it through this, I'm gonna take her and go to New York City, kill anyone who gets in our way.
Chapter 18: Assault and Misdirection
Mac passed out immediately after the last sentence and the only sound was that of a single guard outside shifting his weight every few minutes in his metal folding chair and scratching his boots on the concrete wall. My own feet, legs and back were killing me worse than the broken ribs from standing in one position for so long. I tried to get down to my knees so some of the weight would be hanging from my arms but my knees wouldn't reach the ground. I was inches too high. I took off my boots, put them beside one another and folded the padded canvas uppers over sideways with my feet and stomped it down with my heels. I then knelt down, putting each knee on top of a boot and it was the perfect height to hang about half my weight from my arms, stretched out above my head. This caused pain in my ribs like I was being crushed, after not having moved them in so long, but it only lasted a few minutes. I breathed in slow, deliberate, forced breaths until the pain subsided and they settled into a new place and by that time, my knees started hurting. Finally, I decided to let myself off the forks and get comfortable as I could and to hell with the consequences.
I scooted forward and just as I eased my wrist over the ends of the forks and slowly lowered my arms to my sides, holding my breath to try to support my rib cage, I heard gunfire erupt outside. I dropped to my knees again, painfully, and listened as what sounded like the voices of six or seven assault rifles shouted over one another. I scooted quickly over to Mac to wake him and he was already wide eyed and staring at the door.
"Get me free!" He shouted.
I looked around and the tips of the forks on the lift looked shiny and worn down to an edge. Hurrying over to them, bent over to hold my ribs in place, I found that the edge was dull but started running the ziptie along it anyway, as quickly and with as much force as I could manage. As I did, I heard men returning fire just outside the door.
The sounds continued as I worked feverishly to cut through the hard plastic. Finally, I put my wrist around the other side of the fork and pulled, snapping the last bit of plastic and shaking the ties off my wrists which were now bleeding and burning, the skin peeled up like the bottoms of gloves around the backs of my hands.
I rushed over to Mac and tried to find a way to cut him free. I yanked at the pipes but couldn't give it my all because of the pain in my sides. I looked around for anything sharp but saw nothing. Finally, I bent down and got the hard plastic between my back teeth and started chewing. It worked better than I thought and quicker than the forks had cut through my own.
Once freed he stood up and almost fell from the pain in his feet. They had smashed his toes with some blunt object. The nails were gone and the skin was split along sides of each one, each toe a dark purple. He straightened himself up and took another step, then another, walking mostly on the backs of his heels, the pain showing in his face. As I put my boots back on, he walked to the door, cracked it open and looked out.
"There are about thirty guys out there between us and the fence. We don't even have that many left who know how to shoot." He said as he pulled the door closed and leaned back against the wall.
"Why would Jennings try a full on attack like that?" I asked.
"He's not. Just providing a distraction and counting on us to break out of here ourselves."
I walked over to the opposite side of the door. "I'm not leaving here without Kara."
"I don't care what you do. This is where we part ways." He said, trying to see through a small window in the middle of the door.
"I know you're going to the farm. Help me get Kara out of here and I'll help you get Chontelle and we'll all go to New York together."
He looked me up and down. "I don't need your help and you need more help than I can offer. You couldn't get her out of here with every gun-hand in Magnolia Ridge."
Bullets had been slapping into the concrete wall outside since it started. They were firing in our direction. "How you gonna past them anyway? You'll never make it around the corner."
He just listened for a moment. "You hear that?"
I listened more closely. "Nobody's firing back at them."
"Yeah, they're shooting at ghosts." He said and eased the door open.
I looked out and several of our captors had been shot. The guard just outside the door was dead along with a few others scattered from there to the fence a couple hundred yards away. A few were wounded and the rest were hiding behind the few old box trailers that were there since before the outbreak. Fifty or more of the dead had gathered and were pulling at the fence, trying to get in. I immediately thought of Beth. She would probably be with those sent to rescue us and the only reason I could think of why they wouldn't be shooting anymore was that the dead had gotten to them.
"Do you think they're dead?" I asked.
He paused for a moment then said with certainty, "No. I think we're the distraction." He stepped out the door and checked the dead guard for a weapon, unsuccessfully, before hobbling off toward the side of the building.
I followed him, every step sending shooting pains through my chest. Just as we rounded the corner, Mac came face to face with one of the bikers and in one motion, punched him in the face hard enough to knock him out and took the gun out of his hands before he could fall, a rust covered AK-47.
"There's our way out." Mac said, referring to the fuel truck, parked halfway between us and the front gate of the compound. Five men stood just inside the gate, firing their weapons at two armored up trucks that were charging up the driveway toward them. As we made our way, so far unnoticed and with Mac walking on his heels and supporting himself against the wall with one hand, toward the fuel truck one of their trucks smashed through the gate, contorting the chain-link and pipe and swinging it around, swiping two of the men violently aside with a jangling metallic crash. I was sure they were dead on impact.
Thirty-something more sleepy eyed men and women in leather and denim poured out of the warehouse just as twenty something more farmers, dressed as soldiers, poured out of the woods and through the gate and a battle ensued. We continued on, skirting the long, blank wall slowly as they began fighting toward the fuel truck. When any got too close, no matter what side they were on, Mac would lean against the wall and carefully pick them off from the shadows.
"Careful Mac!" I shouted at him over the noise but he didn't even hear me. I passed him and rushed ahead to get closer to the fray, hoping to find Beth or Kara before he or anyone else could kill them. I held my breath to hold myself up the whole way, each step feeling as if my ribs would cave in on my lungs if I exhaled. Finally, I was close enough to make out faces in the crowd as I took cover behind a stack of wooden pallets.
I could see men and women I knew from Magnolia Ridge but none of whom I knew the names until I saw two of the guards I had fought with that night on the catwalk, stepping out of one of the trucks. I scanned the crowd one more time but there was no sign of Beth or Kara. Kara's boyfriend came running out of one of the security doors on the side of the warehouse and out into the fight, right past me but not seeing me ducking in the shadow of my hiding pl
ace. The door had no handle on the outside and would lock automatically when it closed so I made a run for it and got my hand in it just before it closed. As I pulled it open I heard bullets cracking off the concrete wall just behind me and I slipped in and took cover.
The warehouse was almost completely dark, the only light, dimly filtered down through the skylights from the moon. I couldn't even see the floor, only the shapes of the metal shelves reaching to the ceiling some thirty feet or more above. I walked on, aimlessly, hoping to be lucky enough to find where Choppa and Kara were hiding. I walked quickly, but carefully, toward the end of the warehouse where we had met him a few days earlier and halfway there, heard the door being shot and pried open a hundred feet behind me.
I moved a little faster, not sure who was behind me. Tripping over something in the dark, I knocked over something else that made an empty metal echo against the floor. Immediately after I failed to keep myself standing there was the long burst of a machine gun behind me and the pinging of ricochets at the other end if the building, ahead of me. As I crawled on toward the office I heard the shooter reload.
I made it to the hallway and crawled in as he fired again and took a moment to listen to my heart pounding in my chest before getting to my feet. I could see a light coming from the office door and falling across the hallway onto the door of the restroom we had first been kept in. I knew Choppa had to be in the office, probably with Kara and would be ready to shoot the first thing that stepped in front of the threshold. I also knew whoever was behind me would shoot as soon as he turned the corner so I had gotten myself into a bad spot. After taking a deep breath, I leapt across the hallway, slammed through the door and fell to the floor.
Choppa’s office chair gave a squeak of relief as he lifted his cumbersome weight off of it and the wheels gave another as he shoved it out of his way, the sounds echoing in the silence of the hallway. I got to my feet again, feeling like if I fell one more time I wouldn't be able too, and put my ear to the door.
