Duncan writhed in pain, but didn’t say anything. Joe let up from causing any further damage to him. He pointed to Duncan.
“Keep him alive, whatever it takes. We need information.”
Reggie and Boyd both nodded. Both men were taken aback at the ferocity that Joe had shown. In the time that they had known him, they hadn’t seen anything like what they just witnessed. The reputation that Joe had garnered was one of honor and not taking any bullshit, but there was something else there, something showing up that wasn’t there before.
Joe stormed out of the jail, slamming the door behind him. As he walked into the parking lot, the rest of the Tazewell Town Council met him. Joe quickly wiped his hands on his pants, wiping off the remaining blood. Larry, Cornbread, Jamie, Curtis, Captain White, and Rick watched from a distance as he approached.
Larry pointed to the jail. “Who do we have in there now?”
Joe glanced over his shoulder to the jail. “Reggie and Boyd caught two assholes in the woods. Both of them had USMC camo. Looks like a sniper team from what they took off him.”
“Shit. What do they want?” Jamie asked.
“He won’t say. The one that they didn’t kill took an arrow in the shoulder. He’s lost a lot of blood, but we are keeping him alive.”
“Why the hell are we keeping him alive? This is going to be just like when we took that damn woman in! He’s gonna turn and end up killing…” Rick said.
“We are keeping him alive to get information from him!” Joe yelled. He didn’t like yelling at his son, but he didn’t have a choice. Now was the time for getting his point across. “Who do you think those two assholes work for? Marines? Here? I seriously fucking doubt they are taking up donations for Toys for Tots! After we stabilize him, we are going to interrogate the shit out of him. Until then, I think it’s time that we start coming up with a viable plan to save this town. We’ve got thousands of undead streaming towards us from the East River Tunnel, and now we have two snipers creeping up on us. Something is about to go down around here, and I would really like to still be alive when the smoke settles.”
“What do you have in mind?” Captain White asked.
“Arm the walls and all the roads leading into town. My guess is that the snipers are some of Wyatt’s Peacemaker goons sent here on recon. You agree with that, Captain White?”
“Yeah, one hundred percent. Why don’t you let me talk to him? See if I can get anything out of him that might be of use,” White asked. “What are their names?”
“The one left alive is Duncan. He’s refusing to say who his partner was, but Reggie said he was pretty sure it was a guy named Fisher.”
“Shit. I know them. Two of the General’s higher ups. Damn good sniper team, too. I doubt that the General is too far behind if Duncan and Fisher are here. You want me to try and turn them?”
Joe pointed to Captain White. “Do it. See if you can get him on our side. If he won’t turn on Wyatt, let him know what’s going to happen if he doesn’t.”
Captain White popped his knuckles. “Damn right I will.”
White strode past Joe towards the jail. Joe had no doubt what he was capable of, and maybe it was for the best. Joe had lost too much already. Throughout the years, he lost bits of his humanity. A little caring here, a little compassion there, everything good that he had left was slowly eroding away. He still clung to love; it was the one emotion that he still held closely guarded in his heart. There was no sense in him furthering a problem that he already had a better answer for. White could use his position against Duncan. He took a deep breath and refocused.
“Jamie, you and Cornbread take care of arming the walls. I know we have Claymores, so use them first. Try to spread out what we’ve got. I don’t think we need to cover everything, but both gates and all roads leading into town need to have some sort of explosives. Take the C4 that we have left and booby-trap the roads. I don’t want any conventional route into town to be unarmed. We’re gonna hold back these undead assholes and the goddamn Peacemakers.”
“What about the people in town? You said that even with what we’ve got, we are still gonna come up short on explosives and ammo,” Larry asked.
“I want you to load up every magazine we have left. Get the word around town that we have some potential problems with the horde. Do not mention Wyatt and the Peacemakers. I have an idea for those assholes.”
Larry grinned, ever so slightly. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That kind of idea?”
Joe couldn’t help but grin a bit. “Damn right. I’m still trying to come up with something to lure them to Wyatt.”
Larry pulled Joe towards him and put an arm around his shoulder. “Oh, I have an idea, buddy.”
CHAPTER 9
Jamie and Cornbread grabbed up everything left in the armory. Bags of Claymores and blocks of C4 were carried out to the waiting truck. While the Ram was barely running, it was the only means to transport the necessary equipment out of town. Both men knew what their job was, and they couldn’t be happier. Blowing shit up was their specialty, and they excelled at it.
Cornbread tossed the last bag of C4 into the bed of the truck. “You think we have enough to hold off these assholes?”
Jamie got into the driver’s side of the truck as Cornbread got into the passenger’s. “For the dead ones, yes. We are gonna have to get creative with the C4 to take out some more of the military vehicles, assuming that’s what they are bringing with them.”
“C4 seemed to work pretty damn well from what I remember. We just gotta make sure to cover up that stuff,” Cornbread said.
“It worked on a Humvee, but it barely made a dent in that LAV. It took a hell of a lot of C4 to blow that thing up, and I doubt we have enough to do the job more than once or twice,” Jamie replied. “They start bringin’ in anything bigger than that and we’re gonna be screwed.”
“So we need to focus on disabling them instead of destroying them. If we can disable vehicles, we might get some use out them later on.”
Jamie raised his eyebrows. “If there is a ‘later on.’”
“Come on, buddy. I’m sure that you and Joe have had some worse times in the last few years. This can’t be the worst thing you’ve seen since the end of the world.”
Jamie thought to himself. In the past nine years, he’d been through all kinds of hell with his friends, and they always had managed to come out of it in one piece. Lately, that feeling of accomplishment was starting to wane, like there was something sinister on the horizon. Something that they might not make it back from. Wouldn’t that be some shit? Make it nearly a decade through some of the worst imaginable circumstances all to be taken out by the lone loose end in their history.
Jamie got lost in a moment of nostalgia. From the first day the world went to shit, Jamie had been by Joe’s side. From the ambulance wreck to the wall breach, they had been through it all. It saddened Jamie to think it all might be over now. There was no doubting the looming encounter with Wyatt and the undead. It was going to happen, come hell or high water. The only thing remained is whether or not they could withstand the onslaught.
Jamie stayed lost in his thoughts for a while. It wasn’t like him to dwell on things, but he was doing so nonetheless. Of course, having a wayward mind with a handful of explosives wasn’t going to do him any favors, either. He started to go over everything in his head. The remaining roads going into town were going to be the easiest to arm, but the hardest to maintain. They had plenty of det-cord but that meant someone staying behind long enough to blow the charges, much in the way they had attacked Captain White, only this time there was no hiding in the snow. Either Jamie or Cornbread was going to have to wait out the oncoming attackers, or the horde. Neither option seemed particularly desirable.
“Here we go. Best place to start is right here. The intersection will give us the best chance of maximum damage, plus the creek beside the road runs all the way back into town. If we get fucked, we can always beat feet down the river back
to town,” Cornbread said. The truck’s engine clattered, on its last legs as it came to a stop.
Jamie and Cornbread both exited the truck. The lack of the Virginia Department of Transportation had taken its toll on the roads, especially the ones outside the walls. Large tufts of grass poked through large cracks in the road. Broken tree branches and rocks littered the highway, unmoved by nature for quite some time. The detritus would make hiding the explosives much easier, but no less dangerous. There were plenty of zombies around, even minus the oncoming horde. A snap of a twig or the scrape of gravel gave away even the most unassuming of enemies.
Jamie pointed to the side of the road. Where a large tree once stood, he waved his finger. “Right there. We can strap a Claymore to the front of the stump and hide it with some branches. Should blend in pretty well. Look for some more trees down the road. If these fuckers are going to be coming this way, we could take out a couple dozen at a time if we put the Claymores about head-high.”
Cornbread nodded. “Not a bad idea. Stagger the mines to expand our kill zone. String out as far as we can. How much det-cord do we have?”
“Plenty. Let’s get these things in place,” Jamie replied.
Cornbread stopped for a moment before moving on. “Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose. What’s up?”
“What happened to Joe?” Cornbread asked.
Jamie furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
Cornbread shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, what happened to him? I remember him being a lot happier and fun to be around. Now it seems like every time someone talks to him, he just wants to slap the shit out of them.”
“Maybe it’s just you, Cornbread,” Jamie said, snickering.
“I’m serious, Jamie. After all the shit you guys went through, you still managed to make it back home. I would call that a victory.”
“It’s only a victory if you win, buddy. We haven’t won anything. As far as Joe goes…” Jamie said, trailing off. “We got old, ‘Bread. We all got old. I guess that comes with a certain amount of loss of humor. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but there’s not much to laugh at anymore.”
Cornbread looked down forlornly. “He’s never even made fun of the fact that I’m missing a hand. I figure there’s at least a dozen jokes he could make about that alone. Give me a hand, if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…the list goes on and on.”
Jamie wanted to laugh, but tears came to his eyes instead. There was something amiss about Joe. He’d found someone else after Buffey left him, and he seemed to be a lot better off now than he was at Camp Dawson, but there still lingered some resentment. Jamie wiped his eyes before Cornbread could notice.
“Let’s just get our work done. I can hear that horde coming, and I don’t think they want to make nice,” Jamie said.
A rustling of leaves and snapping of branches greeted Cornbread as he set up the first Claymore. He paused for a moment.
“Did you hear that?” Cornbread asked.
“Probably just a wayward walker. Don’t worry about him,” Jamie replied.
The sound got farther off, but picked up in frequency. Something or someone was running away.
“Jamie, that’s something running,” Cornbread said. He sat the Claymore down and brought up his trusty shotgun.
“And?” Jamie replied.
“Zombies don’t run, Jamie. Someone was spying on us,” Cornbread replied.
It took a moment for Cornbread’s words to sink in, but by the time they had, Jamie saw him bounding through the woods. Jamie dropped his gear and took off after his friend. The brambles and brush on the side of the road were particularly thick, but Cornbread seemed to have no trouble getting through. He was a good twenty yards ahead of Jamie, and opening the gap as they both trounced through the underbrush.
“Wait up, dammit!” Jamie yelled as he tried to get through the dense forest.
He heard someone yell. From the distance, he couldn’t tell whether it was Cornbread. Jamie tucked his head and ignored the sting of briars as they smacked his face and arms. He brought his arms up and tried to shield himself as much as he could, but the thorny vines still found their way onto his face. Up ahead, he could still hear struggling. Whatever or whoever Cornbread was after, he’d caught them.
Jamie bounded through the thick underbrush into a sparsely wooded area. Although there were plenty of trees, he could see Cornbread on the ground, wrestling with someone.
“Shit! Hang on, buddy!” Jamie yelled.
Jamie sprinted as much as his nearly fifty-year-old body would let him. Running for his life had given him a new outlet for exercise, and now it paid off. As he approached Cornbread and his wrestling partner, he pulled his 1911 .45.
“I can’t get a shot!” Jamie yelled.
“Don’t shoot him! I know where he’s from! Just get his smelly ass off me!”
Jamie paused for a moment, and then brought the butt of the .45 down hard on the back of the assailant’s head. He’d managed to pin Cornbread underneath him, but Cornbread didn’t give up so easily. The assailant abated his fist fighting and fell off Cornbread. Cornbread shoved the smelly, unkempt spy off him and tried to catch his breath.
Jamie reached down and helped his sweaty, panting friend back up. Cornbread grabbed his hand and got to his feet. Quickly dusting himself off, he glanced over to the filthy man that had attacked him.
“I don’t guess he’s goin’ anywhere.”
Jamie nodded to the unconscious man, still panting. “You said you knew who he was.”
“I don’t know who he is, but I know where he came from. We got problems, well, we got bigger problems now,” Cornbread said.
“More ‘mountain men’ assholes, I assume?” Jamie asked.
“Yeah, except he’s from across Stony Ridge. He’s from the followers over in Bishop. Crazy-assed preacher man named Father Rife. If they’re scouting out here, we need to tell Joe and Larry.”
Jamie closed his eyes and shook his head.
“They’re coming from all sides, aren’t they?” Jamie asked.
Cornbread grabbed the scrawny man under the arm, as did Jamie.
Cornbread huffed. “Yeah, and we just lost our only escape route.”
CHAPTER 10
Joe scratched his head as he stared at the plans laid out before him. He moved around the table, trying to get a better look at it. No matter how much he stared, he couldn’t get his mind wrapped around the concept. He scratched his head again.
“I don’t know about this, Larry. How the hell we gonna pull this off?” Joe asked.
Larry pointed to the map. “This is the only sure-fire idea that I’ve got. If you have any suggestions, now would be the time to voice them.”
“Cornbread to Larry, Joe. Come in, guys. We got more issues…” the radio crackled to life.
Larry keyed his mic. “What now, ‘Bread?”
“Our last escape route just dried up. Caught one of those worshippers from Bishop snooping around. He had a friend with him, but they got away. He’s takin’ a little nap in the back of the Ram right now. We’re on our way to you. You guys still at the jail?”
Joe gave Larry a look of disdain that his longtime friend matched. “Shit. Yeah, bring him to the jail. We need to talk to him and his asshole friend from Alabama,” Larry replied.
Joe hung his head. “I guess we have no choice but to go for your idea now,” he said, not looking up. When he did, it was a pained look, as if someone had just died. “It’ll be the end of the town, Larry.”
Larry straightened himself. “I know, but we made it this far. I don’t know how much longer we can hold out. Too many people out there want to take what we have. I’m not saying that we let them have it, but there has to be a point where the risks outweigh the rewards. We can’t hold out forever. We have too many people to think about.”
“Larry, throughout the last decade, we’ve lost friends, family, and countless others along the way. I don’t
think we should accept defeat with such an ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude. There has to be a better way,” Joe said, finally looking up.
“We aren’t accepting defeat. It’s the only damn way that we will live through this,” Larry said, smiling humorlessly. “It’s the Kobayashi Maru.”
Joe frowned. “Did you just throw out a Star Trek reference?”
Larry shrugged. “Seems fitting. It’s not whether you can save anyone, it’s the fortitude that you have in the face of an unwinnable situation. People are going to die and there’s not a goddamn thing you or I can do about it.”
“Yeah, Larry. I’m well aware of what the Kobayashi Maru is. If you stay and fight, you die, if you run and hide, you live with the guilt of letting everyone die. It’s a no-win situation.”
Larry stared.
Joe’s eyes lit up.
“I have an idea. We need to talk to Captain White, though,” Joe said. He quickly turned and exited the room.
This just might work.
* * *
Captain White huffed. For the last fifteen minutes, he’d tried to get information out of their most recent capture, but to no avail. Boyd greatly admired the Marine and his interrogation techniques, but thus far had come up short.
“He ain’t telling us anything, White. Might have lost too much blood to take anything serious anyway,” Boyd quipped.
Captain White wiped his hands with an old cloth. He literally had blood on his hands, but nothing was going to wash away the figurative blood he’d shed. Since joining the population of Tazewell, he’d become a vital cog in a somewhat ailing machine. His technical expertise was his greatest asset, but even that was no match for what was coming.
“Screw it. I can guess what’s coming, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. General Wyatt is going to come in here guns blazing with enough firepower to level this place a couple times over. I’m surprised it took this long for these assholes to show up,” White said.
Six Feet From Hell (Book 6): End Game Page 6
