“What the hell?” I asked.
Jamie busted up, and Courtney was getting hit with a case of the funnies as I reached back over and dug in the chili with my fingers until I found the handle of my spoon. Redoing it, I watched Mel carefully as I took a bite.
“Mad Dog, don’t steal the mad dog’s food,” she said through half a mouthful.
“Devil Dog?” I asked her.
“Yeah, sure,” she said, looking at least ten years younger.
I licked the spoon clean, and it was almost too hot, but it took us all about ten minutes to demolish everything. We all washed the chili down with sips of water from our canteens. It was then that I saw Mel lift her head and sniff the air.
“Is that almost ready?” she asked.
“God I hope so, that chili had some spice,” Luis grouched.
“You can’t take a little spice?” Courtney cooed to him, and he pointed at her with his spoon.
“Don’t get me started, we have to go, and there're no hotel rooms nearby.”
“Little ears,” Mel screamed, holding her hands over the side of her head.
“I think she’s heard worse,” I said to Jamie, who was smiling at all of us.
“I think the cornbread is almost done by the smell,” Jamie told me instead.
I was worried I’d tied the holder too low and flames would have burned the paracord, but so far it was all good. Instead I lifted it off the Y branches carefully and laid it on the now bare earth next to the fire hole. I tossed the Mountain House wrapper into the still glowing coals of the sticks we had used for fuel and then pulled the sheet off the top. It looked fantastic, but I didn’t think it was quite ready. Right up until Mel stuck her spoon in it and gouged out a chunk from the top and shoved it in her mouth.
She gagged and fanned her tongue again, and I handed her my canteen. It was almost empty, but she upended it and then flopped on the ground with a mock moan, holding her stomach and making yummy sounds. All over-exaggerated and over the top. I had to wonder if this was the kind of behavior Maggie would display as a teen, and we were all kind of smiling at her antics. In another life, it might have annoyed me, but it seemed so… normal. Like a group of friends who were camping.
“Little hot there?” I asked her.
“You burn your tongue?” Jamie asked at the same moment.
“Yes,” she said, upending my canteen again before screwing the top on and sitting up, tossing it to me.
“Is it any good?” Courtney asked.
“It smelled good, but it was too hot for me to taste. If you hold on, I can puke it up and tell ya?”
“Quit horsing around,” Jamie scolded, but it was a halfhearted effort.
“No, I’ll wait for it to cool down some—”
A howl broke the silence, and we all scrambled to our feet.
“Kick the dirt into the holes, get the truck packed,” I said.
It wasn’t a howl of a wolf, dog, or coyote. It sounded like a howl from what the jackasses on TV would make a werewolf sound like. It was joined in by a second and then a third. A chorus that sounded off. I dropped the NVGs down over my eyes and cycled them on.
“Oh God, we have to go, go now,” I said, fumbling for my pack.
What I’d seen was so horrifying I’d hesitated; it was so terrible, I was almost speechless.
It must have been something in my voice, but they all moved. Courtney almost turned five shades of pale in the moonlight when she heard me, and she was the first one to go. Luis was kicking dirt in the hole, and I was grabbing my canteen and pack to throw towards the bed of the truck. We had to hurry, they weren’t far off. I spared a glance behind me and saw they were converging on us.
“The bikes,” Courtney said, looking towards the back of the truck.
“Leave them, we can’t fight these guys, there’s too many,” I said, panicking.
“What is it?” Jamie screamed, tearing the driver’s side door open and hopping inside.
“Too many,” I repeated. “Everyone in,” I screamed and leaped over the side. Mel and then Luis jumped in the passenger seat, and Jamie fired up the truck.
I didn’t have time to give her the NVGs, and I didn’t want her to see what was coming for us. I was about to tell her to turn the lights on, but she did it as if reading my mind, and left streaks on the pavement as she performed the finest burnout the truck had probably ever done in its forty-year lifespan. Still, as we were pulling away from our hasty bathroom and heated spot, the howls and screams of rage were loud over the motor. I looked up ahead and had to flip up the goggles to see. The headlights had obscured and whited out the units, but savage people were running beside the highway. Every time the truck swerved to avoid a car, they would leap and start trying to close in on us.
“Oh my God, who or what are they?” Courtney asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her, completely unnerved.
They were mostly naked, filthy. Every one of them carried a rock, a stick, or some sort of tool or machete. Men and women both. At first, I couldn’t tell the men and women apart. Filth and dried ichor of some sort covered them. Every mouth was full of sharp pointed teeth, and in the light of the NVGs I could see that many of the streaks of ichor started at their mouths. Rocks and spears were thrown at the truck, and I ducked, pulling the NVGs back over my head. I almost wished I hadn’t. Behind us, a group was trying to close us off. Only the truck’s speed was making them fall behind. It would take one slowdown, one bad moment to lose all momentum… After everything, it had been this group that had scared the crap out of me so badly. They ran, leaped, threw weapons, howled, and chased us relentlessly.
The next group was much like the one we were passing through, but it was made up of all men. One of them was carrying what looked like a quarterstaff with human skulls tied off by lengths of rope. He swung them over his head, howling and screaming. Of all the things I’d seen in my life, nothing scared me more than having them almost sneak up on us.
Something thudded against the cab just in front of my head, and I ducked down in the bed of the truck, a feat that wouldn’t have been possible if the bikes were stuffed back there with Courtney and me. A gunshot rang out, and I flipped the goggles up and off, turned to see Luis’s woman standing and firing the AK. She was on full auto, but sending short bursts ahead of the truck. When Luis’s window rolled down, and he started firing, I regained my nerve. I rose and pulled my KSG to my shoulder and started firing off shots at figures running at the truck from the driver’s side. I don’t know if I hit any or all, but several were flung back.
“Look out,” Mel screamed as we were driving past a semi when a shape detached itself from the roof and fell several feet. A grimy hand knocked me off my feet, and I almost bounced over the tailgate before I caught a grip.
The woman must have also gotten a hand on Courtney, because the AK stopped firing. I looked up to see it wasn’t anywhere in the bed. She must have dropped it, and I was too close to use the KSG. That’s when I saw the knife. The filthy human had a knife in her left hand and was using her right hand to brace her wrist, pushing towards Courtney’s throat. Courtney had both hands locked around her knife wrist and was pushing back, but losing ground too fast.
Jamie must have gotten the word, because she started swerving even more when she didn’t have to dodge vehicles, but in the space of those couple seconds, it didn’t matter. As it was, I was starting to move towards her.
“Get off me, bitch,” Courtney snarled.
Mel reached through the back window with something silver. I had no idea what it was, but looking ahead, I saw two semi-trailers on the left and right lanes. We were about to shoot through the middle.
“You’ll feed my kin,” the savage woman snarled as her nude form wrestled for position, the knife barely being held away. Spittle dripped from what looked like filed teeth as I jockeyed myself to my feet.
I almost lost my footing as we hit a pothole, and that’s when Mel threw something silver and shiny ou
t the truck’s center back window. It hit the savage in the face. The knife was dropped just as I grabbed the howling savage woman by her hair and left arm and gave a tremendous yank. She pulled away from Courtney, and I tossed her body out of the bed, just as we were about to go through the gap. She hit the side of the semi-trailer with a wet snap and tumbled to the pavement behind us. Angry shrieks shouted at us, but they were now behind the truck, and were growing quieter the further we went. No one else was running in front of or beside the old beater any more.
“Is she ok?” Mel and Luis were both screaming.
“I’m fine, but that shit’s hot,” Courtney yelled, standing up in the bed of the truck.
“Did you lose your gun?” I asked her.
“Lost it, I think. I hit the edge of the bed on my way down with my elbow. My arm’s numb.”
“Flex your fingers,” I said after seeing that her neck wasn’t bleeding anywhere.
She did, and then rolled her shoulder, arm, and hand again.
“Sorry, what was hot?” I asked Courtney after a second.
“Whatever it was that Mel threw in her face,” Courtney said.
“What was that?” I asked Mel, who was sitting backwards and checking out the bed of the truck.
I could see Luis struggling to do the same, and Jamie was throwing looks over her shoulder just long enough not to get us in a wreck.
Mel reached into the bed of the truck and picked up a chunk of whatever it was and stuffed it in her mouth.
“I think I have a new Zombieland Achievement unlocked. Death by cornbread,” she said, deadpan.
I think my jaw hit the floor, and when the laugh escaped, I had tears running down my cheeks.
30
The morning hours had been quiet. Luis had promised to take first watch and wake me, but I didn’t want to have a repeat of only having one set of goggles available when we should have had both up and going. I dug through my pack and pulled out a small roll-up solar charger that we’d looted from the Russians. I plugged Luis’s goggles in the charger. It might take two days to charge it, but at least by the end of the day, he’d have a working set again. As it was, mine were almost dead.
“You’ve done enough,” Courtney said, nudging me.
I’d been knelt over, and the gentle hip check sent me falling on my side. I was bone weary.
“Thanks. I’m going to get some shut-eye. Just remember to shake your boots out before you put them back on,” I told her, grinning wickedly and pulling for my sleeping bag to use as a pillow.
“That’s not funny,” she told me, pointing.
We’d stopped just as the soft glow of the rising sun broke the horizon. We’d driven another hour past the attackers, at least a good twenty or thirty more miles. The landscape had changed to more hills and corn. Everywhere you could see was corn. If our spot weren't so secluded, I’d hate to not be able to see past the almost six-foot-tall plants. We’d backed the truck into a hollowed-out spot, probably where the local farmer had let the police park to catch speeders, in another era. As it was, it hadn’t taken much to cut down some stalks and camouflage the truck and the small area we’d set up to sleep.
“Or you could be on the lookout for he who walks between the rows…” Jamie said and snickered when Mel gave her a dirty look.
“What’s wrong with this corn?” Luis asked, pulling an ear off one of the stalks we’d cut to use as camo.
“Nothing. Should be just about ready, I think,” I told him. “You can peel it back and bite into it raw. Should be a little sweet.”
My eyes were half open as I watched him do just that. He bit in, and his eyes widened, and he offered it to Courtney to try. Her reaction was even more pronounced.
“Who were they?” Mel asked, rolling out her sleeping pad a couple of feet next to me.
“The savages?” I asked her.
“Yeah, I was talking to Mom, and we’ve never seen or heard of anything like that.”
Jamie walked over and sat on the edge of Mel’s mat. “They had pointed teeth. That isn’t normal.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” I admitted. “When I saw them closing in on us in the dark… it startled me.”
“Dick,” Courtney said, “if it startled you, then it would have freaked us the eff out.”
“I read about something like this once,” Luis said after a pause.
“What?” we all but chorused.
“My dad used to love reading Westerns,” Luis said softly. “One of his favorite authors was William Johnstone. Senior, not Junior. He had this mountain man series that he read over and over…” his words trailed off as he looked at the sky.
It had my attention, but my eyelids were getting heavy. Pure unadulterated fear really sapped me. I really didn’t know how much the others had seen, and I knew I probably wasn’t going to be the only one with nightmares.
“But he had another series that was kind of post-apocalyptic. Something Ashes. Every book had ‘Ashes’ in the title.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
He nodded and then went on. “In it, he had a group of people. Cannibals. They called themselves the Night People. Wore cloaks and thought fear and adrenaline were the best flavoring when they were chewing a chunk off of you.”
“Jesus,” Courtney whispered.
“But these people weren’t wearing cloaks,” Mel said.
“Did they smell like buzzard puke?” Luis asked me.
“I don’t know. I used the hand sanitizer and an old shirt to get that stink off of me,” I admitted. “But I think Courtney got a better whiff.”
“Asshole,” she spat at me. “She smelled like rotten meat. Horrible. Why, was buzzard puke something from the books?”
“Yeah, it was,” Luis told us. “But they were afraid of the light and only lived in the inner cities. Apparently you could smell their funk for some ways off.”
“I wonder if they read his books?” Jamie asked, though to the sky as she lay back on Mel’s mat.
“It was strange, scary,” Mel said. “They were like… cavemen.”
“Did you hear what that bitch said as she was trying to cut my head off?” Courtney asked, a shudder making her tremble and causing her arms to break out into gooseflesh.
“Yeah, feeding her kin or something,” I told her.
“It seemed like there were hundreds. Do you think they’re this far out?” Jamie asked, rolling onto her side.
“No,” I told her. “I think there were probably thirty, maybe forty tops. The filed teeth was a shocker to me.”
“That doesn’t make sense though,” Courtney said. “I mean, how many dentists are left?”
“You know, that’s something I don’t think I want to find out about. I’m worn out,” I admitted.
“You get some sleep,” Luis said. “Courtney and I will take first watch. Then we can look for water and gasoline.”
“Getting low, huh?” I asked, yawning.
“Down to a quarter of a tank,” Jamie answered, yawning as deeply as I did. Yawns were contagious.
“Mom, move over,” Mel complained and gave her a gentle nudge.
She was answered by a soft snore. I let my eyes drift closed.
Drifting through the void, I found myself tied to a pole. Firewood had been stacked all around it and up to my knees. Dozens of nude or near nude forms were dancing and chanting around me, their sharp, filed teeth gnashing and making their words sound like a rasp or lisp. The streaks of gore I’d seen on many of them the night before were now visible in the daylight. Blood streaked from their bottom lips, all the way down their chests. Children ran around the legs of the men and women; only the older ones had modified teeth.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the man with the quarterstaff and human skulls finished.
He’d been leading some sort of prayer, an obscene parody of Genesis. Then he turned and tossed a small burning branch. The firewood must have been soaked in some sort of fuel because it all lit at once
. The heat was immediate and immense, but it wasn’t burning. That’s when I realized it was a dream.
I woke up and rolled over. The desert was hot, probably giving credence to the heat I’d felt in my dream. Martin was along for the ride on this rig. Search and rescue. The mission was not sanctioned, and I’d gone UNORDIR (unless otherwise directed) and bought a small truck from Kandahar. It had cost me a pretty penny, but the prices here were nothing as I’d expected. I’d take enough gas and water in containers to take me to Burn, and then Northwest into the mountains. Everything had gone well until we’d made it to the foothills and the truck’s serpentine belt had snapped.
It was stupid on my part. I was probably waiting for a court-martial or worse when I got back, if I got back… and now I was on my own with the world’s worst conversationalist. He was a good shooter, a solid friend of Sargent James, and the only one crazy enough to do this when we knew the chances of finding him were nil. See, SAR had already combed over the area, and the electronics team had already stripped the chopper that’d been downed by insurgent fire. Three bodies had been recovered, but the chopper had been carrying seven. There were survivors, but the question was where, and who had them.
“We going to hike this?” Martin asked me.
“Yeah, unless you want to call for help,” I told him, grinning.
Me going UNORDIR wasn’t unusual, but taking someone else along on my shenanigans was. If I’d waited a week, I could have probably gotten approval, but out here in the desert, the law of threes told me that they didn’t have much time. Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food… and three days without shelter… but there was some shelter to be had in the area, natural rocky outcroppings. Today was day four since the crash.
“No way, man,” he said, standing and rolling his bedroll. “Let's fill our canteens and start.”
Marching was something I’d done quite a bit of, and a forced march up the foothills leading to the mountains was invigorating. The elevation was different here, and though it was hot during the day, it cooled off considerably once the sun went down. Nothing at all like back home in Arkansas where Mary and Maggie waited for me to get home from this deployment. We were going to be moving to Chicago, pending the end of my career. I’d known she was unhappy, but I needed one more deployment to get that promotion before I could retire at a higher pay rate… and here I was doing stupid shit like this, jeopardizing it.
The Devil Dog Trilogy: Out Of The Dark Page 32
