by A. R. Wise
“Shut it, Stubs!” Harrison covered the dog’s mouth, but it wormed its mouth away from his palm and continued to yip.
Ben got in and Laura followed soon after. The cell smelled like an old, unplugged freezer, not laden with rot but rather stale and oddly medical. Laura pulled the door shut before the zombies outside could get to them and the latch clicked tight.
Soon, the room outside of the cells filled with zombies that had come into the church to flee the fire. They filled the room, slamming their hands against the glass cells in frustration.
Harrison laughed and whooped. He grabbed Ben’s arm and shook it and then started to kiss the pug right on his slimy lips. “Would you look at this? Can you believe it? We find our way into a church, and look what God provided for us! You want to argue with me about how the big man’s up there looking out for us?” He kissed his finger tips and then pointed up. “Thanks fellow. I owe you one.”
Billy felt something move near his ankle. Then there was a gasp just as Billy looked at his feet. The zombies in the cell were waking up.
Ben saw them too, and he started to stomp at the writhing bodies.
“What the hell?” asked Laura as she noticed what was happening. “They’re alive!”
“Crush them,” said Ben. “They’re woozy or something. Crush their heads before they gain any strength.”
They each started mashing the creatures below them, squishing their soft skulls and causing the black liquid within to spill out. Eyeballs, teeth, brains, and fragments of skulls filled the floor as the zombies in the cell beside them began to rise as well.
“Oh this is gross,” said Laura.
“Hey Harry,” said Ben. “Can you do me a favor and tell this God that’s supposedly looking after us that he can kiss my fucking ass.”
Harrison looked for more creatures to mash and then nodded as he said, “Yeah, God, for real. That was a dick move.”
PART FOUR
This Is Some Rescue
Chapter Sixteen – Old Names
Two years after the apocalypse
At a campsite in north Colorado, Reagan meets with Jules again after not seeing him for several months.
Jules was a short man, but Reagan hadn’t met many soldiers that he would say was tougher. It was common in the service to meet someone who was short in stature, but compensated by constantly acting tougher than anyone else in the room. Jules earned every bit of his Napoleon complex, but his bite matched his bark.
Jules and The Department had been an invaluable ally to Reagan ever since they met a year and a half earlier. What started as a contentious encounter had turned into a close relationship. Jules and Reagan had a common interest to bring the fight to the people responsible for the start of the apocalypse, and they were both former military, which helped them understand each other better than most. Over the past year, they had set about investigating a large section of the Rocky Mountains, meticulously scouting suspicious areas and unearthing evidence of several abandoned bases, as well as some that were still housing soldiers.
During the past year, Jules had put together a strong group, but he was very particular about who he allowed to travel with him. He’d asked Reagan to join, and even offered to split command of the group, but that wasn’t something Reagan had any interest in doing.
“Change your mind yet?” asked Jules as Reagan sat at the picnic table.
“About what?” It had been a few months since Reagan had seen Jules, and wasn’t sure what had prompted the visit.
“About ditching your crew and joining The Department.” Jules tugged at his mustache, like some villain in an old western.
“We’ve been over that,” said Reagan. “I’ve got a family here.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Jules as he looked past Reagan at the trucks parked on the hill. “Are you sleeping with that woman you’ve been carting around?”
“Laura?” asked Reagan, and then he laughed at how ridiculous the question was. “No. She’s twenty times too good for me.”
“Oh come on,” said Jules. “I bet you could still get it up if you wanted to.”
Reagan looked off at the men from The Department that were standing guard, protecting their leader during the meeting. “As much as I’d love to sit here and talk about my ability to get an erection all afternoon, I’m going to venture a guess that’s not why you made the trip up here.”
“No,” said Jules as if he’d been trying to push off the subject that he’d come to discuss. “There’s something you need to see.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it before sliding it across the table.
It was a travel log, detailing which commanders were being sent to what station.
“We found it in a helicopter that crashed near Denver,” said Jules. “I thought you should see it.”
“Why?” asked Reagan. “Am I missing something?” He squinted and read the list again.
“Second row,” said Jules. “Near the bottom. See it?”
General Richard Covington.
Reagan read the name three times, certain that he was reading it wrong. “That’s impossible. How old is this?”
“It’s recent. They’re using a new date, if you can believe it. They’re dating everything from the day the apocalypse started. Fucking bastards.”
“This must be wrong, or someone else has the same name,” said Reagan. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe he survived.”
“Impossible,” said Reagan. “I shoved a piece of glass through his throat and left him for dead. There was no one else in that facility when I got out. This has to be wrong.”
“Just one way to find out,” said Jules.
“How?”
He leaned over the table and pointed at the name of the base that Covington was stationed at. “I can show you where this is at. We didn’t just find this in that helicopter. We got a breakdown of the bases too, and their location. We didn’t get them all, but we got enough.”
“Have you hit any of them yet?” asked Reagan.
Jules shook his head. “Nope. Out of respect, I came here first. I figured that if we went charging in, they might evacuate all the bases like they did back when we ran into each other. I didn’t want you to lose the chance to figure out if this prick is still alive.”
“Thanks,” said Reagan. “I owe you one.” His thoughts dwelled on the name, and when he spoke he sounded disinterested in Jules.
“Want me to come with? Or I could loan you a few of my guys.”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll bring some of the Rollers.”
“Rollers?” asked Jules, unfamiliar with the term.
“Yeah, Hero started calling us the High Rollers because we’ve been converting those tankers into mobile homes. The name just kind of stuck.”
“You really like that kid, don’t you?” asked Jules.
“Despite my better judgment,” said Reagan as he looked over his shoulder at the young man that was clowning around with his girlfriend, Jill. “He’s a good kid.”
“Maybe,” said Jules. “But they’re not soldiers. None of these guys are. If they were, they’d be with me. Come on, Reagan, let me send some of my guys out with you.”
“No,” said Reagan. “I trust my crew.”
“All right,” said Jules. “Suit yourself, but you need to move on this quickly.” He tapped his finger on the stolen list. “Because we’re not waiting around any longer. We’re going to start hitting these targets three days from now. Your friend is headed out to a town up in the mountains, near where Boulder used to be.”
“I thought that area burned down,” said Reagan.
“Me too, but these moles like to crawl around underground. I’d bet the fires didn’t touch them.”
“Thanks for this, Jules,” said Reagan. “This means a lot to me. I won’t forget this.”
“Just keep giving me first pick of the new recruits and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal.”
Reagan c
ontinued to stare at the name, unsure what emotion to settle on.
General Richard Covington.
* * *
Celeste is back in a room in the facility beneath Denver International Airport.
“Good morning, Cobra,” said the voice Celeste despised. It was her own, beckoning her out of bed from the screen on the other side of the room.
“Go fuck yourself, Mommy.”
“Cobra, I’m not who you think I am.”
She stayed on her bed, facing away from the screen. This wasn’t her room, but it looked exactly like her old one. The mirror in the ready room was still intact, now reinforced, but all the rooms looked the same. She had no way of knowing where she lived now.
“I don’t care who you are.”
“I’m trying to help you,” said the digital representation of herself on the computer screen that took up most of the wall opposite the bed.
“Then open my door and get out of my way.”
“You know I can’t do that,” said the avatar.
“Then I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“You have to eat something.”
“No I don’t,” said Celeste. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me, ever again.”
“Cobra…”
“Stop calling me that,” said Celeste. “That’s not my name any more.”
“Of course it is. Your name is Cobra Dawn, and you’re an important member of our society. You’re going to be a leader of our people, and we need to make sure that you take care of yourself. We need you, Cobra.”
“Keep calling me that,” said Celeste. “See what happens. I’ll break every God damn screen you’ve got in this place. You can gas me up and move me to a new room every night for all I care. I’ll get up and bash in that fucking screen every morning until you run out of rooms to stick me in.”
“You’re being difficult.”
“You’re God damn fucking right I am,” said Celeste.
The avatar was quiet for a moment, then said, “We only want what’s best for you. You have to understand that, Cobra.”
Celeste sat up and turned so that she faced the screen. She dropped her legs over the side of the bed and then stood up. The automatic bed’s pneumatic hinges hissed as it disappeared back into the wall. “I warned you.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Cobra,” said her avatar. The representation on the screen bore the same wounds that Celeste did, a bandaged shoulder, head, and thigh, a black eye and a cut lip, bruised neck and clawed waist. Celeste’s mirror image was a ravaged girl, but the avatar hadn’t earned those scars.
Celeste punched the screen and the colors warped from the impact.
“Don’t do this, Cobra.”
Celeste punched again, but then backed up.”
“Thank you. There’s no need to…”
Celeste didn’t back away in retreat, but rather to get the space needed to run and kick the screen. She did, and the glass wavered from the strike, but didn’t crack. When she looked back at her avatar she saw that there was a sliver of distorted color on the screen. It was a minor victory that was more than enough to inspire another strike. She ran and kicked the screen again just as the gas started to hiss into the room.
“Every fucking room!” Celeste screamed and kicked again. “I’ll do this to every room you put me in. Do you get it?”
She felt the dizzying effect of the gas just as the false wall slid to the side to reveal a soldier. Celeste rushed at the man, but the potent gas had already taken hold, causing her world to spin. The soldier caught her, but she managed to get her left hand over his shoulder.
She held her breath and silently counted how long it took before the gas affected her. Her fingers grazed the tube that connected the soldier’s mask to his backpack. She would remember how it felt in her hands as the oxygen flowed into his mask. She would memorize how fragile it felt and if it was pliable. Seven seconds after she first smelled the sweet aroma of the noxious gas they used on her, she couldn’t count any more.
Seven seconds.
She would have seven seconds.
Next time she would try to practice getting both arms up when the soldier grabbed her. If there was one thing that Celeste excelled at, it was practice. Her entire life she’d been training.
They didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter Seventeen – Immolated
Two years after the apocalypse
Reagan is headed to the base where Covington is supposedly stationed.
Reagan was dressed in black, and had smeared ash on his face to help blend in with his surroundings. The Boulder valley had been burned by a forest fire a few months back, ravaging the area and leaving little alive except a few persistent buds of growth poking out from the soot.
Hero and Billy had come along, and were a few yards back as the group made their way up the foothills and into the mountains where the town of Nederland once sat.
They were following a stream that ran along the road, providing cover for them while keeping them on course. The water was murky from the ash, and there was sediment clinging to the bank that looked like sludge.
“We’re not far,” said Reagan. “Jules said the entrance to the base is past the reservoir, on the south side of town.”
“This was one hell of a fire,” said Billy before he tried to stifle a cough. The trip had been a struggle for him, and Reagan wished he hadn’t come. Back at their camp, Billy had insisted that his back hadn’t bothered him in months, but Reagan suspected the kid was lying. Billy was struggling to find his place in their new group.
Jules and The Department were helping to train the members of The High Rollers, but Billy hadn’t been healthy enough to join them. When the Rollers found survivors, they determined who was best to send off on their way, who should be sent to one of the local colonies, and who might be a good candidate to join the militia that was fighting against the military. Any that stayed with the Rollers were sent to Jules for a few months, and the best were kept as part of The Department while others were sent back to Reagan.
The Department did the majority of the work in the area, and Reagan’s group helped patrol the northern Colorado region, slaughtering zombies whenever they found them. Occasionally they encountered military groups, but they tried not to seek them out. As time wore on, Reagan’s bloodlust had faded. Like a soldier succumbing to retirement, he had come to the realization that his fighting days were near an end.
But if Richard Covington was still alive, then Reagan had one last fight to finish.
“Looks like most of the mountain burned,” said Hero.
“The fires out here are no joke,” said Reagan. “Without a fire department to put them out, the wild fires have nothing but time. I’m surprised there haven’t been more of them.”
“Whole damn state’s liable to burn down,” said Billy. “Remind me to get to work getting some Rollers together to start a fire department of our own, just in case.”
“Is that the reservoir?” asked Hero as he pointed up the hill, to a concrete wall in the distance that a short waterfall descended from.
“I’d bet,” said Reagan. “Let’s keep quiet.”
They hiked up to the wall and found a steep upgrade along the side that they climbed to reveal a manmade lake on the other side of. Reagan got low when he saw movement in the distance.
There was a soldier across the lake, walking along the side of a wire fence. Reagan watched as the man descended a set of stairs and disappeared.
“Truck,” said Hero.
Reagan ducked lower as the sound of a vehicle rumbled in the distance, growing closer until they heard the squeal of its brakes past the lake. Reagan rose just high enough to watch as the driver got out of the camouflage truck and went down the same stairs that the first soldier had.
“Well, we found the right spot,” said Reagan.
“Are we moving in, or do we want to scout first?” asked Billy.
“Let’s be smart about this,” said Re
agan. “We’ll move around the area first, and see what we can find out about…”
They heard a little girl crying. The three men crawled back up the hill to peer over the lake.
The soldier had come back up from the stairs and was standing at the back of the truck. They could hear him speaking, but the distance muffled his words. He unlatched the back of the truck and pulled it down while waving at someone inside. He was getting impatient and drew his pistol. All the while, the child kept crying.
Another soldier came up the stairs and they understood as he screamed, “Just give her to me.” Then he stepped up into it and the child’s screams of protest became more insistent before he appeared again. He had a young black girl in his arms, and it looked like her limbs were splinted. It was almost as if he’d pulled a living doll from the truck, three feet high and screaming as her limbs stayed rigid.
A woman yelled out in protest before she was dragged out of the truck as well. The woman’s hands were bound behind her back and she fell to her knees as the soldier got down from the truck to stand beside her.
“Why are you doing this?” asked the woman.
Hero tensed and was about to climb up the hill further to attack, but Reagan held him back. “He’s going to kill her.”
“What can we do about it?” asked Reagan. “If we take a shot from out here, they’ll lock that place up tight before we can get in. Then that little girl is dead for sure.”
They watched as the soldier put his pistol to the back of the screaming mother’s head.
“So we’re just going to watch this happen?” asked Hero. “We’re not going to do nothing about it?”
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Reagan.
The soldier kept his pistol at the back of her head.
“Fucking do it!” The mother screamed and thrust her head back at the soldier. He stepped away and then returned to grip the woman’s hair.
