by Mark Clodi
Stewart snorted, "Sounds like you got some sort of zombie powered hearing aid. That's fitting old man."
Ruben blinked and looked away, "Could be. But maybe it will be useful. I'll take what I can get."
"Well...okay. You can stay at the trucks, the three of us will find the tracks and follow them if we can. But Ruben if you so much as even think there is something coming, you let us know right away. Trust your gut."
"I will. They already got three hours on you." Ruben said.
"Alright, we're going. Everyone make sure you have water and something to eat. Let's go." Bill said.
"Yessir!" was Stewart's smart comeback, which earned her a reproachful glance from Bill.
Stewart turned back to Ruben and asked, "So, can't you just 'wonder' where Max is and point us in the right direction?"
The old man shook his head, "No."
"Fuck all good that does us then."
"Sorry lady, but my ability didn't come with a set of instructions like yours apparently did. I'm learning it as I go."
"Ruben...just get in the truck. We'll go find him. Honk if anything comes up." Bill said.
Ruben nodded and climbed into the truck, where he locked the doors and settled back to wait.
The other three walked over to the corpse sitting a few feet away from the truck and started circling it, looking for an indication of which way their friend had been carried away. Ruben eased himself into the truck and hit the door lock button on the remote. He hated lying to Bill like that; the man was a decent enough fellow, but some secrets needed to stay that way.
"Stewart, you see anything?" Bill asked a few moments after they had circled the body again.
"No. The day light helps, Bill, but we walked all over this place. If I had to guess though, and I do, I would say they dragged him a few feet, then boosted him up and carried him." Stewart pointed to some scuff marks in the mix of dirt and pea gravel, "See? This mess ends about here. Then we just have a couple of clear foot prints heading off that way."
"Not much of a guess then." Javier said.
"They could have circled around. We'll just make for the trees straight that way and see if we find anything." Responded Stewart.
"Fine." Bill agreed.
The three headed away from the body towards the tree line where Stewart had pointed. When they got to the edge of the woods they found a well beaten path leading down through the trees. Stewart squatted and looked at it.
"Boot prints, probably from this morning. Looks like they came up and back this way. See how the prints overlap each other?"
"Yeah, I got it." Bill said, knowing he could have seen the same thing as Stewart, had he looked.
"I'll keep my eyes on the trail, you two watch, in case they left someone for us."
"Why would they do that?" asked Javier.
"She means, 'In case they left someone to ambush us.'" Bill clarified.
"Oh. Got it." Javier glanced about warily.
"I doubt they would have sat here waiting for us for three hours."
Stewart laughed, "Why not? They are dead, they have all the time in the world. Still, I bet you are right Bill. Let's go."
Stewart took off at a brisk pace down the path. After only a few minutes it ended on the banks of a creek. She bent down and looked on the muddy banks. As she rose she shook her head.
"Nothing, they must have gone off the trail somewhere and I didn't notice. Let's go back and see if we can pick them up. Everyone keep their eyes open for anything, bent twigs, foot prints, that sort of thing. I will watch the path and see if I can figure out where they left it." Stewart said.
They proceeded up the path more slowly and close to halfway up Stewart halted and pointed at the path, "Here. This is where they got on the path this morning, but I don't see any return tracks, so they went off somewhere between here and the park."
"This is slower than I was hoping for." Bill said, eyeing the woods around them.
"What can we do? Unless you have some sort of 'Max radar', we are stuck doing this the slow way."
The three followed a scared trail through the woods until the sun was high over-head. Stewart stopped them as they trudged along another deer path. Her sudden stop caused the men behind her to come up short, but not quite bump into her.
"What is it?" Bill asked.
"Look up there." Stewart said, pointed to their left.
"Yeah? It looks like a clearing."
Stewart trudged up the steep hillside, when she got there she turned back around and said, "Shit."
"What?" asked Javier and Bill at the same time.
"Come on up, see for yourselves."
The two men carefully climbed the slope and saw that they were actually on the edge of a paved roadway.
"A road? So? We know we're..." Bill stopped when Stewart raised her hand and pointed behind him along the roadway.
Bill turned around and softly swore under his breath. Stewart was pointing at a sign that said, "RVs, Cabins, Camping!" and had a huge red arrow underneath it. The same sign that they had followed the night before to drive into the campground.
"We've hiked all morning and the campground is right there?" asked Javier with disbelief.
"Let's go back." Stewart said, heading off down the road.
"We can't leave him!"
"Bill, we can't find him either. We've hiked around for two hours and we're five minutes away from the truck. They led us in a circle."
Grumbling, Bill fell into line behind her, Javier took up the rear. The young man kept glancing back behind them, as if still disbelieving that they had come such a short distance.
The trio walked into the campground and saw the two trucks parked where they had left them. Ruben was not in the cab, when Stewart saw this she sped up into a jog that left the others behind. Her gun came up and she started eyeing the area around the trucks.
Stewart pulled to a stop when she saw Ruben at the back of the diesel; he was looking at the bomb. For a moment Stewart thought he was talking to it, but he waved and smiled at her.
"What's up Ruben. You gave me a scare when I didn't see you in the truck."
"I had to water the horses. I decided to check on the bomb when I got back, because, like a darned fool, I left it there instead of taking it with me or locking it in the cab."
"Oh."
"So...no Max?"
"We walked in circles. I'm not a good bloodhound."
"I am sorry to hear that. What are we going to do now?"
Bill and Javier walked up and both grabbed fresh water bottles out of the cooler in the pickup bed. The cooler didn't have any ice in, so the water was warm, but fresh.
"I don't know what to do. I thought, maybe when we were gone, someone would come along and drop Max off. Or at least contact us to tell us what they wanted. This feels more like a kidnapping than a bunch of zombies out for a snack." Bill said.
"You were hoping they would contact us, you mean." Ruben said, "Look I'm just going to throw this out there, so don't be mad. What if he's dead?"
"No!" Stewart and Bill said simultaneously.
Raising his hands before him, Ruben said, "It has to be said. How long are we going to sit here before we move on? Another few hours? A few days? Another week? A month? C'mon Bill, how long will it be?"
"I don't know...I can't..."
"Well, they pinned the bars on you, so you have to decide, even if you listen to us first. If I am going to die fighting zombies, I'd rather do it in Iowa defending my town, not where ever the hell we are now."
"So we give up the mission entirely?" Stewart asked.
"Max was the mission. Without our hunting dog we can't find the animal, can we?" Ruben countered.
No one said anything to that right away.
Finally Bill shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He brushed his arm across his face and then spoke without looking at the others. "I'm still going to Florida. Max knew he was in Florida. How hard can it be to find him? He's their leader."
> Stewart said, "I'm with you."
"Well I think that's horseshit and you two know it. No Max, no leader, this bomb is big, but it's not like we can plant it in the middle of the state and it'll wipe all the bad guys out. I think the military could use it in some other manner, to help shore up the state's defenses." As he spoke Ruben's old, weathered hand stroked the backpack containing the bomb.
"You said it Ruben, I've got the bars. I'm going. You and Javier can take the other truck and head north if you want to. I'll head south and try and find this guy. If you cut the head of the snake off, the body dies. I think we'll do more good taking this leader out than killing a few thousand zombies near Iowa."
"What about your family?" Ruben countered.
"This is for my family." Bill said firmly, "So they have a better chance. I knew this was probably a one way trip. I would've thought you had figured that out too."
"But it doesn't have to be." Persisted Ruben, "We can turn now and head for home. We don't have to throw our lives away like...."
"Max?" suggested Stewart.
Ruben's response was a slight nod.
"First, we don't know that he is dead. Second, if he is, he died trying to do the right thing. Third, we were air lifted halfway across the country, do you really think the four of us have such a good chance to make it back to Iowa anyway?" Ruben conceded the point by shaking his head slightly, "We're closer to our original goal than home now, even if we don't have much of a chance."
Bill looked at Javier, "What do you want to do?"
The young man smiled, "I'm with you Bill. You and Ruben."
"That doesn't help much." Bill said wryly, "But is it good to know you like us both."
"You think the old man would leave you?" Javier shook his head, "He'll go with you, he's just trying to make you decide and do it. Don't you get it?"
In a flash Bill did understand that. They had already spent more time than they would have if, say, Ruben had been taken. So now it was time to shit or get off the pot. "I guess it's shitting time then." He said softly.
"You got that right. I can't tell you how sorry I am about Max, he was a good guy and we needed him. He would have made our job easier, but wishing he was still here isn't going to change anything."
"I got it. Stewart, do you want to drive the diesel? I'll take the Ford. Javier you ride shotgun with me, Ruben you and that bomb you're so fond of can ride with Stewart." Inside Bill was wondering how he went from determined to find his friend to leaving him behind, 'Fucking old man, there is something up with you, something you aren't telling us, isn't there?'
Without another look around the four of them got into the trucks and drove out of the campgrounds.
Chapter 24-- Max
"You actually want me to believe this crap?" Max said to Aubrey.
"You have to believe it, I can provide you with some proof, but I need...assurances Max that you won't reveal anything to any of our kind. I'm barely holding it together this close to Sentry, I don't trust anyone else. You saw the guys who brought you in, do you think they were with him?"
"I thought they were with you."
"I contacted them. I can still do that, and they were hard to find. There are some of us who have fallen off Sentry's radar, he is a busy...entity, and some people he never knew about, others, like me, he thinks are incapacitated. And then there is that third class, who figured out some way to avoid being subjugated altogether."
"And it can be taught?"
"More like, they can give other zombies a bit of a vaccine against the compulsion. It isn't a full vaccination either. I don't think I would do well against Sentry if we were in the same room. This guy with Red gave me the basics and that was at a great distance. He wasn't willing to meet me either, which tells me something."
"Red? In Nebraska?"
Aubrey's mouth turned into a small 'o' of surprise, but she nodded, "You know Red?"
"He helped me out. But he killed some people who didn't deserve it."
"That club has a large membership these days, Max."
Shrugging his shoulders Max nodded. "So what did he tell you?"
"First, his actions told me a lot in and of themselves. We might not be of the same lineage, but he was afraid to get too close to me. The closer I am to weaker zombies, those that haven't consumed enough flesh and blood, the easier it is for me to control them. That guy who brought you in? I had to ask him to help me. I couldn't make him do it."
"Does that matter, you are all working together." Max said bitterly.
"You really think so? It might surprise you that we aren't. I had to convince him. And it was not easy. I had to share something pretty important to get his help."
"How to avoid being controlled by stronger zombies?"
Aubrey nodded, "Yes. Something I don't want to become common knowledge."
Max grimaced and said, "Oh, no we wouldn't want that would we? I mean that might mean people get to do what they want again!"
"You don't really understand what you're talking about. When we are...freshly made, we are hungry. But I think Jimbo stumbled on this technique of his when he was still hungry, it could be taught to others, with no one to control them humanity is doomed."
Max thought about that for a moment and responded, "You seem to be making a case for leaving Sentry alive."
"You haven't met him. The man is deranged; something went wrong with him when he turned. He killed, as far as we can tell, all the first zombies he created. But there is a rumor..."
"Alright, I'll bite, a rumor of what?"
"That he wasn't the first zombie."
"What?" Max shouted, "You have got to be fucking with me! I'm coming all this way, leaving my family and this tool isn't even the guy I need to be looking for?"
"It's just a rumor. He made me in his clinic and the oldest zombies there weren't that old, but it was whispered that Sentry wasn't the first. One of us who could use the computers in his office, found evidence that there were experiments on prisoners...and others before Sentry came along."
"How did it start?"
Aubrey shrugged, "Hell if I know. But the rumor is that Sentry killed the first zombie after being bitten."
"So that doesn't help us, if the first guy is dead..."
"Wait, let me finish. The first zombie didn't just infect Sentry, he infected someone else too. A cop of some sort."
"So Sentry has a sibling, how does that work?"
"Well affecting a lessor zombie is easy, no matter who it belongs to. Affecting someone more powerful is dicey, even if you are more stronger than they are. Siblings are altogether different, some are worse than your parent zombie, some are easier. I don't know why. But I did a few experiments on my own in Chicago and I know it is true."
"So finding this guy, if he can be found, is a crapshoot."
"I think I know who it is." said Aubrey.
"Yeah, who? And how did you find that out?"
"I found it out by getting a list of the security detail from the clinic, it was a short list. Everyone thought it was a guy named 'Gabe', one of the first children created by Sentry. But I met Gabe, briefly, before he was sent somewhere in the Far East. I think he is the only one of the first group to survive and I think that is why Sentry sent him halfway across the world. The other guards I ran down one by one, talking to people and putting together a picture of who I could confirm was dead. The only one missing was someone named Dan. Daniel Gears."
"And where is mister Gears?"
"I don't know."
"Gosh, I wouldn't have guessed that. So I have to find one guy, who may or may not help me, in the entire fucking world? He could be anywhere!"
Aubrey shrugged, "No. You got it wrong Max, I'm just throwing you that in case you can find him. It is one of three things I am working on right now. You, finding Dan and one other thing that I am saving as my ace in the hole."
"Why do you want me?"
"I want to know what your plans are. Maybe I can help. We both want the sam
e thing."
Max laughed. "Oh, that's awesome. I'm one of your three methods of attack and you don't even know what I am doing! What the hell, if I don't tell you, you'll just beat it out of me, won't you?"
The look Aubrey gave him was reproachful, but she nodded. "I have a need to know."
"We're going old school sister. We brought a bomb to blow the motherfucker up."
"Not a beacon? You're not going to call down an airstrike?"
"No, it's a bomb. Although it wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't do jack shit. The guy who gave it to me has a history of honesty impairment."
This earned him a puzzled look from Aubrey.
"The guy is some sort of Special Forces bad ass. He doesn't think much of me and frankly the feeling is mutual. He headed to Washington to see if he could rescue any parts of the old government there." said Max.
"Then you won't be seeing him again." said Aubrey shaking her head.
"I hope not. In my nightmares I see him is as a super zombie, and I think I've only ever been lucky dealing with your kind so far."
With a smile Aubrey said, "I'll take luck. We're going to need it. So now that I know what you are doing I can help."
"How?"
"I know the roads are clear, but there are going to be checkpoints as you get into Florida. Sentry may be crazy, but he has some sense. I can clear the checkpoints away for you. I can keep the zombies away from you when you need to sleep."
"I don't think the people I am travelling with would care to have you with us."
"Oh Max, you're such a joy! I can't travel with you! I have other things to take care of. You'll never see me at all."
"Well that will make things easier, but what am I supposed to tell the people I'm with about the roads being clear?"
"Tell them what you want. Just go fast, things are coming to a head more quickly than I would like. I hope your bomb is bigger than a bunch of hand grenades."
"It is, by a pretty large magnitude, if it works."
"I tracked you in Chicago, you know. It looked like your group was avoiding the zombies I sent after you. When I spoke to Jimbo he said Red told him stories about you too, that you could see us with your mind."
