100 A.Z. (Book 3): The Mountain

by Nelson, Patrick T.

  Keep running. Keep moving.

  John woke up.

  He’d had a dream about a mountain, and a strange box in the ceiling that talked. He’d seen smoke enveloping the herd.

  The first sensation of consciousness was the blood caked on his face. He was tied up, on a walker cart. He could feel the rough road beneath him. Which direction were they headed?

  South.

  “No,” John muttered groggily.

  He saw branches pass overheard. The sun was blinding.

  Why were northerners taking him south? John lifted his head and looked around.

  The cart was on the smaller size, a five-man. There were about fifteen walkers pulling it. Another cart was behind this one, larger, and pulled by closer to thirty. John counted twenty-two men altogether, either on the carts or walking alongside. Well-armed.

  “He’s groaning again,” one of the men on his cart said. John wondered who they were talking about, and then realized it was him. The hunger was upon him again. The ropes holding him felt like they were on fire.

  “Should we hit him again?” another asked.

  “Sure.”

  John felt the fever rise inside him. “STOP!” he shouted. Immediately the zombies pulling the carts went still. The man lifting the club up to silence John froze, and looked at the zombies now standing still.

  “Did he just do that?”

  “Get out here and lure ‘em on!” the driver shouted back.

  One of the men walking alongside the cart jogged ahead to get in front of the zombies.

  “Come one! Move it!” the lure shouted. The zombies ignored him.

  The man with the club watched the scene, ignoring John for the moment.

  The lure waved his arms, trying to get the walker’s attention. They continued to ignore him.

  “What is with this?!” the lure said as he approached the lead walkers. He waved his hand six inches from their face. Still no response. He kicked the lead walker in the shin. Nothing.

  “Are you seeing this?!” he shouted back to the cart.

  “Come on, quit messing around. We need to get this guy to Tenochtitlan.”

  “I’m not messing around!” The lure folded his arms and stuck out his chin, glaring at the uncooperative undead. He had to take a more aggressive tack.

  The man who was going to knock out John lost interest in the scene and looked back at the prisoner.

  “Time for you to shut up,” the man clenched the club and pulled it back to hit John in the head and stop the persistent groaning sounds coming from him. As the club came down John turned his head and dodged the blow before twisting back toward the man’s ankle now inches from his face.

  “Oww! He bit me!!!”

  The lure ignored the shout. He slapped one of the lead walkers in the face. It’s head turned from the blow but it simply turned its face back. The man was less interested in getting them moving now than he was in investigating this unheard of phenomenon unfolding before his eyes.

  “Look at this! Nothing gets their attention!” he said back to the group. All the other men had long since gotten annoyed and sat down under trees to rest.

  Through clenched teeth John growled out, “Your men are complacent.”

  The bitten man, nursing his ankle and staying as far away from John as he could in the small cart, looked confused.

  The lure now had his palm placed on the lead walker’s cheek and was chuckling. He’d once seen a man put his head in a bear’s mouth as part of a travelling circus act. This reminded him of it. In a flash of brilliance he remembered how much he’d paid to see that act. Maybe this could be something like that?

  John spit out the bits of flesh from his mouth. “Vain, too.”

  In a flash, the lead walker turned its head and dug its teeth into the hand on its check.

  “AHHHH!!!” the man screamed.

  Just then, the walkers lurched forward dragging the cart off the road.

  “Hey!” The cart driver shouted as he tried steering against their pull.

  The men resting on the ground snapped to attention and were now shouting and trying to get the walkers to head back onto the road. The man bitten on the hand promptly received a bullet in his head.

  The cart went off the road and down a berm. The cart driver and the man John bit jumped off the cart, realizing it was going to tip. The walkers strained against their harnesses as a wheel caught on a rock. John strained against his bonds and shouted at the walkers. They pulled harder and the cart went over the rock and angled on the side of the berm with the walkers pulling perpendicular to the cart. It slowly arched over and dumped John onto the hard ground. The cart continued to roll over and rested upside down in a gulley. The action caused the tethers attaching the zombies to the cart to snap. They struggled and groaned, still attached to one another, to regain their feet. They struggled toward John. The other cart followed a similar trajectory, but rested against a tree with the walkers still attached.

  “Get the prisoner!” the cart driver yelled. Two men ran to follow the order, but the walkers from John’s cart were in the way. The men raised their weapons and began shooting the walkers. John tried ripping the ropes tying his legs and arms, but it was no use. He changed his angle and forced his body into an awkward roll down the hill. His target was the cart caught on the tree. He yelled as he struggled to get himself further down the hill. A man followed him down, the man he’d bitten earlier. The man approached cautiously, taking his time. A few minutes passed, a strange calm amidst the hectic action. He peered behind the card, seeing John on the ground. He smiled.

  “This time I’m not missing!” he yelled, landing a glancing blow on John’s head. He reached back to swing again but then a strange look came over his face. His body relaxed and he fell down to his knees, a pallor on his face. John had seen that look before. He’d seen it in men bitten by zombies.

  He didn’t wait to see what happened, but inched his way toward the thirty walkers tied to the cart. It was twenty feet away.

  “Carl, what are you doing?! Get him!” one of the men shooting up the walkers cried. They’d nearly finished off the fifteen undead from the first cart.

  Carl didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond. Instead, he stood up and began lurching toward John.

  “Yeah, bring him up here,” they yelled back down to Carl.

  Carl was in no position to follow orders, though. He caught up to John, who was flailing to get himself to the walkers.

  “Stop!” John commanded.

  Carl, hot with the virus, didn’t listen.

  “Stop!” John ordered, angrier. He was only a few feet from the walkers. Carl fell upon him and dug his mouth into John’s shoulder, chomping into the skin. John shoved the new walker off but it came back at him, this time his throat. He tried getting his tied up legs around to kick him off but he couldn’t get them under Carl’s torso. John pressed his jaw into his shoulder where Carl was trying to sink his teeth, protecting his neck for the moment. John threw all his strength into a backward roll that sent him into the walkers as a hatchet sank into Carl’s head from behind.

  The walkers knew what to do and swarmed onto John, some of them breaking their damaged harnesses in the process. The men who’d come down the hill tried to fight the walkers off John, but realized it was futile. John was already bit.

  “Dang. He’s bit! A bunch!” the man yelled up the hill to their leader.

  The leader was standing near the road, looking on the scene as the walkers blocked John from view.

  “I thought it didn’t matter. This guy’s immune,” one of the men standing next to the leader said.

  “Ain’t no man immune to that, but we’ll make sure. He’s more money alive, but we can bring him in as a walker all the same. Those crazy guys in Mexico want him. I’m not ignoring this payday.” He let off a loud whistle and got the attention of his men down the hill. “Kill those walkers! Bring him up here!”

  The four men down the hill looked with revulsion
at the swarm of walkers. They asked for help from up the hill.

  “If one of you gets bit, I’ll send another down to help,” the leader yelled back.

  They used hatchets, guns, and clubs to drop the walkers nearest them as they tried to clear a path to John. They couldn’t see him anymore, though, amongst the frenzied undead.

  Then the zombies calmed, oddly. Their frenzy stopped. The undead stood and looked at the humans, who stared back.

  One foot in front of the other. Never stopping. Never feeling.

  The men didn’t notice as a figure stood up from where the frenzy had been. No bites except for the one on his shoulder from Carl. The ropes gnawed off by the loyal herd. The bite of the hot walker coursing through his taxed veins, refreshing the virus anew. Rage flying through his head like a tornado.

  “Leave them alone…”

  The sound reverberated from his throat.

  The men standing near the road weren’t paying attention, busy smoking tobacco and joking. They were snapped backed to the present when they heard the screams from their comrades below.

  Chapter 19 – Late December 101 A.Z.

  Guirguis regarded the men in front of him. Justin Beck of New Generation and Havish Young from the Fountain Cartel. They were all gathered at the Air Force Academy.

  Beck and Young sat tense, awaiting Guirguis’ words.

  “This is the deal. You’re getting what you want,” Guirguis said after a few more seconds of silence.

  “We didn’t want her back here!” Young exclaimed.

  “I want her back. I’ve got…some ideas,” Beck countered.

  Guirguis looked at the two men. One cowardly, the other inching toward sadistic.

  “The rumor is she has no army. She’s helpless,” Guirguis said plainly, assuming it would address both their comments.

  “Rumors aren’t good enough. We need better information than that! We also have ‘rumors’ that Sal is headed here!” Young cried. Guirguis gave a scolding look to the frantic man.

  “Sal coming here to meet Sara…I don’t like it,” Beck said.

  “We don’t know that this is the case.”

  “Then why are they coming here at the same time? It isn’t a coincidence.”

  “It may be just that. We don’t even know for sure either of them is coming.

  “Please. Your ‘comforting’ words are misplaced.”

  Guirguis folded his hands and tucked them under his chin. He gazed beyond the two men out the open window behind them. The mountains. The beautiful, treacherous mountains. He could faintly see the trail that wound up the thousands of feet of elevation to safety. It may need use sooner than he imagined. Besides the rumors of Sal and Sara’s returns, there were other, stranger reports from the north that truly concerned him. He’d heard them through the radio. It used to be that people kept silent, saving radios for conversations on personal, secret channels of communication. Now, multiple channels were abuzz with news of an army mobilized from the far north. It was heading southeast, possibly even toward Colorado. Possibly not coincidence.

  “And what of this force from the north! Who knows where it’s going!” Young said, as if reading Guirguis’ mind.

  Guirguis stood. This meeting was an exercise in futility. He’d had many of them in the preceding months. Both men seemed to think Guirguis was beholden to all their requests, worries, or complaints. He was in a tenuous position, sure enough, but both had already pushed the limits. Guirguis had ceded as much as he was willing to. After this “deal” they had repeatedly returned for more land, more laborers, more supplies, until Guirguis had told them enough was enough. That had taken weeks to smooth over, but they did ease up. It was always unclear who was in control.

  “Are we dismissed?” Havish Young asked snidely. “Your lot is cast with ours, Guirguis. She’ll kill you, too, if given the chance.”

  “She’s not killing anyone. I agree, though, we need more information. Can either of you spare patrols?”

  Guirguis’ request rubbed them both the wrong way. Despite the reversal of fortunes between the cartels, it still echoed of the more powerful Academy Cartel putting undue burden on the weaker ones. Guirguis sensed this and presented a new idea.

  “Actually, forget it. I’ll go.”

  Predictably, the men then offered up help, not wanting to lose out on information from the patrols.

  “I’ll leave tomorrow. Send your people in the morning. Not just men, either. Good patrols include women, especially if we have to ask ‘innocent’ questions in the hinterland.”

  After the two men left, Guirguis sat back down to think, still gazing at the mountains.

  Sara. Sal. Northerners. What did it all mean? There was also strange news about an immune man who controlled the undead. It was obviously a ghost story, but ghost stories always revealed the underlying fears of people. In this case, humans were beginning to realize the zombie age was coming to an end. A myth about a man who commanded the undead brought some feeling of security into peoples’ lives.

  “For the last 100 years, the people with zombies ruled. Now it will be those who learn to rule without zombies, who will decide the next 100 years of human existence,” he said to himself quietly.

  The next morning twenty people arrived, per Guirguis’ request, ten from each cartel. New Generation obviously hadn’t sent their best and brightest. Only the “most progressive” in their territory wore the fashions of the previous age. These were dressed in the usual sloppy clothes most people wore. It was getting colder these days, despite the lingering summer, so they had warmer layers with them as well.

  “Where we going, boss?” a hoarse woman asked. She looked to be in her forties and had deep wrinkles at the edges of her eyes from squinting under Colorado’s high elevation sun.

  “You’ll see,” Guirguis replied.

  “No, now. I don’t go anywhere until you spill it.”

  Guirguis reared up, readying to smack down this show of independence, but he saw something in her eye that reflected intelligence. Maybe New Generation hadn’t sent fodder.

  “Would you like to go over the map here? I had preferred to do it outside of the walls. Too many ears, and too many bounty hunters watching my movements for clues regarding Sal.”

  The woman smiled. She respected a man who knew how to turn a situation to his favor. The woman held out her hand to Guirguis.

  “Josephine.”

  “Pleasure to meet you. May I call you Joe? For short?”

  “No.”

  Guirguis split the twenty people into groups of two, assigning Josephine and a young man named Reed to himself. Once out of the city walls, Guirguis showed everyone a map of the region and where they should go. Guirguis would watch the most common route into Colorado Springs, former Interstate 25. This would give him the best chance of intercepting Sara should she arrive. He instructed all the others to send news if they saw anything.

  “It’s very important you don’t approach her. This isn’t an ambush,” Guirguis said. He couldn’t be sure what contradictory orders they’d gotten from their leadership prior to arriving, though.

  After ensuring every team knew where they could find Guirguis if there was anything to report, he sent them off. It would be boring duty, but it beat more meetings with Beck and Young.

  Once on the road and walking south, Josephine began asking questions. Strange questions.

  “Where you from? What do you eat? What kind of name is Guirguis?”

  He might have thought she was attracted to him, except it wasn’t about that. Was she nervous? No, it was something else. She was feeling him out, annoying him, trying to find his line where he’d lose his professional demeanor and snap at her. He’d met people who were like this, needed to know the boundaries.

  “How can we be sure she’s coming from the south? Who cares if she comes? Why even worry about it? How do you get your mustache to look like that?”

  “So,” Guirguis answered. “What if we see her?”
/>   “What do you mean? You’re the boss,” she scoffed.

  “Sara Academy, the dreaded cartel leader, strolls back into her hometown where she had ruled imperiously. Now she’s powerless…or maybe she isn’t, maybe she returns with a whole army.”

  “That’s not what the rumors say. They say she’s only in a small group.”

  “Maybe that’s a trick. She’s good at tricks. Especially when people underestimate her.”

  “Yeah, maybe, Guirguis. I suppose that’s what we’re out here to see. Why you’re out here. You need to figure out which side you’re going to be on?”

  “How do you figure?” Guirguis asked Josephine, amused.

  “Well, everyone knows you made a deal with New Generation and Fountain to hand her over. But, what if she does have an army and can clobber everyone? You don’t want to get on her bad side – so you meet her out on the road. You tell her what’s waiting for her, she thanks you, you’re golden. Young and Beck are dead, and who knows how many others.”

  “Maybe. But maybe there’s a third option,” Guirguis hinted.

  “What’s that?”

  “If you can guess it, I’ll tell you how I get my mustache to look like this.”

  “Deal.” She thought for a moment. “Option three is you go up the mountain and hide, whether or not she has an army.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “You’ve got a nice rifle on your shoulder,” she mused, pointing to Guirguis’ bolt action slung onto his back. “Maybe you take her out yourself. Leave nothing to chance.”

  Guirguis shook his head.

  “I know, you could…”

  It went on like this for the rest of the day. Josephine never guessed the third option, because there was no third option. In reality, he wanted to hear every idea she came up with. Maybe he’d find that third option in there somewhere.

  Predictably, three days of waiting yielded no sign of Sara. A journey that long made anticipating the time of her arrival impossible. For all Guirguis knew, she was dead. He doubted it, though, as that would be too clean. He assumed the worst.