Justin had handed the glasses on down the line, and now he picked up the narrative. “But it’s a couple of months into the outbreak and not common knowledge yet that the creepers don’t drown. So instead of flowing into the mouth of the funnel the creepers come streaming in from everywhere. The men with their backs to the lake and the river aren’t even aware the dead are coming out of the water and lurching up behind them until they are bitten. All your concentration is on shooting the creepers in front of you and all of the sudden there are two chewing on the back of your shoulder.”
“Might have happened just that way,” Will said. The creepers coming down the hill were about halfway to the bottom now.
“Fuuuck!” Danny cried. “I can’t get my head around that. You see forty creepers walk into the lake and think ‘Hot damn, those guys are gone’, forget all about them... and ten minutes later the same creepers are biting you on your ass. Jesus, I hate these fuckers.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” said Justin. He had been peering through the eyeglass again and now he turned to Will and Jiri with a quizzical expression. “A lot of those soldiers were blown up. The last I heard, creepers didn’t use grenades or mortars. How did so many of them get blown up with their own ordinance?”
“Once things go bad on a battlefield, you wait for the order to retreat,” said Jiri. “That didn’t work here because there’s nowhere to retreat to- they had creepers in front and back of them and water on the sides. And creepers in the water, probably. Your buddies aren’t getting shot- they’re getting their throats ripped out, then getting up and ripping the throats out of the guy next to them. Panic reaches a point where all a guy does is try to clear a path in front of himself. He doesn't care about fields of fire or who he's blowing up.”
Will listened impassively. All the conjecture in the world didn’t change one simple fact- the soldiers lurching around in that meadow had made the one mistake, and that was one more than this world allowed. Any of those soldiers might have been creeper-killing machines who had personally dispatched five thousand of the dead. But he fucked up one time- zigged when he should have zagged, estimated a distance wrong, didn’t look to his left at the right time, let himself run out of ammo, or any other of a hundred things- and now he was a creeper himself.
He sighed, then shook his head to refocus.
“All right, folks. Let’s load up. We’re following this road to the north. We’re, what, George- about three miles away?”
“Yup. It’s right over yonder as the crow flies.”
“There you go.” Will gazed at the surrounding group with a stern visage. “Now listen. I didn’t come this far to lose any of you in the place’s driveway. Be alert, have your weapons at the ready and stay in a tight formation- stay right on the truck in front of you. Except for Jiri, Danny and myself, when we get to whatever kind of perimeter guard they have, or if we get stopped by a patrol before we get there, stay in your trucks. Keep your weapons locked and loaded but out of sight. You’ll know if it comes time to use them
“Be safe. Be smart. We’re about to the end. Now load up.”
Chapter Thirty-One
* * *
They pulled north out of the parking lot onto a county road. Will had Justin driving; if things broke bad, he preferred to be returning fire from the passenger seat rather than driving. Just as they got back on the road, George tapped Will on the shoulder. He flipped the visor and caught the old man’s eye in the little compact mirror; his big, round, moon-face bore a puzzled look.
“What’s up, George?”
I been thinkin’ on this but I’m confused as a dog trying to find a corner in a round room. If all them dead followed us from three miles yonder up the hill, what’s to keep them from following us on to the caves?”
“That’s a good question.” Will watched in the mirror and smiled to himself as the old-timer’s face lit up at the compliment. “Best as we’ve been able to tell, they only follow prey for as long as they can see it or hear it. When their stimulus goes away, they keep going in the last direction it came from until something else catches their attention.”
“Boy, you folks got this thing figured out. I’m glad I run into ya’all.”
“We’re glad you ran into us too, George.”
“I’ll tell you, it makes me about as proud as a peach to hear you say that.” George cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his tattered flannel shirt. He cleared his throat again and called out to Justin. “Turn right up yonder, then you’ll turn left up the road a piece.”
Will looked at the surroundings as George called out right and left turns. Whatever part of town they were in wasn’t where the successful people came to hang their hats at the end of the day. Tattered houses in need of repair and run-down trailer homes lined the streets, and old beaters with rusted-out panels and peeling paint sat in the driveways. There was a notable lack of grass in the yards and empty lots. Instead of grass, the yards were mostly dirt or knee-high weeds; gravel covered most of the lots. Chat piles rose here and there, and short, sickly-looking trees waved in the breeze. A few creepers stood motionless in the bleak yards and a few lurched through the empty streets. The dead trailed after the passing trucks but were quickly left behind.
They turned to the south and to Will’s amazement, the landscape to the east disappeared.
“The caves are underneath us right now,” George said with an air of satisfaction.
A line of enormous blocks of limestone formed the shoulder on the east side. The blocks were two feet tall and between three and five feet long, with six to eight-inch gaps between them. Tall, full, fir trees planted close together rose behind the blocks. After the trees, about five feet of outcropping came to an abrupt end at the edge of a cliff. The drop off following the edge appeared to be a straight vertical. It was difficult to see because of the firs but empty spaces between the branches gave split-second glimpses of an enormous pit hundreds of feet deep and even further across.
The other side of the road sported an empty field behind a barbed wire fence. A water tower rose high in the air on the north end. An overgrown gravel road twisted and turned through the field and disappeared into the trees on the far side.
A half a mile after it began, the edge of the pit curved away, running along the far side of an overgrown meadow. The road itself widened, switched from macadam to blacktop, and curved gently to the left. The land on both sides was grass studded with tall, stately trees in copses and standing alone. Will imagined it was well-manicured and attractive before the outbreak.
As the curve straightened out an entryway to the mines appeared on the left. The entry was wide, about 30 yards across, with a guard shack well back away from the intersection. The entrance road thinned after the shack and disappeared behind a deep dip.
George leaned forward and peered ahead. “Huh. There used to be a guard that came out of that shack. Well,” he gave a few brisk hand-claps, “We made it. Welcome to The Underground.”
The trucks idled on the drive, motionless. Will strained his eyes looking for movement but came up with nothing.
Becky cleared her throat. “Where are the caves, George?”
“Stay on this road here. It will take you right to them.”
Will shook his head. There was something off-kilter. Where were the people on guard duty? “Stay in the truck. I’ve got to talk to Jiri.”
He climbed down from the truck’s cab, taking care to push the door shut softly, creating as little noise as possible. The other trucks had pulled up parallel to the Ford, so they all sat with their noses facing the guard shack. As he crossed in front of the Tahoe Coy stuck his head out the driver’s window; he pivoted in that direction.
“Is this it?” Coy asked, his eyes aglow with excitement.
Will nodded. “This is it.”
The Tahoe exploded with noise and motion. Coy beat his hand on the window sill, a wide grin plastered on his face. Danny whooped with joy and singing and la
ughter bubbled up from the depths of the SUV.
“Keep it down!” Will hissed. “You guys alerted every guard around that we’re here.”
“Like the trucks coming down the road and then sitting here wouldn’t alert them first,” Danny said from the passenger seat, where he was engaged in an odd and misshapen victory dance. Will stared at him in silence, and Danny danced slower and slower until he was sitting still. He glanced over and saw Will’s stare was unchanged. He rubbed his head in discomfort, then turned in his seat. “Come on man, quiet back there!” he called back into the Tahoe.
Will rolled his eyes. “Dumb and dumber- with me,” he said, pointing at to Coy and Danny. He leaned into the window and spoke to the passengers in the back seat. “You guys sit tight.” He continued toward the Jeep, Coy and Danny trailing behind him.
Jiri stepped out as they approached. “George says the caves are right down that hill,” Will told him.
“How far.”
“Just” -Will shrugged his shoulders- “down the hill. You saw the pit from above as we drove by. You know what I don’t get, though?”
“Where are the guards? Where are the people?”
“Yeah.” They looked around as if a company of armed guards hid in the trees and behind the boulders. “Let’s go take a look at that shack,” Will said finally.
He looked around at the grounds as they walked. Once again, he saw where this place had been well taken care of and attractive before the outbreak. The grounds sloped steeply, leveled off at the entrance, and sloped away again on the other side. Tall oaks and elm trees dotted the grounds, and tall lamp posts lined both sides of the drive.
All of a sudden Coy stopped walking and looked at the dip up ahead. “Did you guys hear something?” he asked without taking his eyes of the drive in front of them.
They paused in silence.
“Probably the wind, if anything,” Jiri said after a moment. They started up again, and he commented on the driveway. “Man, this thing is wide. You could fit three tractor-trailers side-by-side in both lanes.”
“Jiri!” Coy said in a sharp tone.
All three heads jerked to where Coy was looking.
An army jeep came racing over the rise. There were two men in the front and three in the back, and the Jeep sped straight at the four of them.
The jeep skidded to a stop and Will’s team spread out into a semi-circle around its front end. Will left his gun in its holster but kept one hand on the pistol’s grip, ready to draw at the first sign of trouble. Coy, Danny, and Jiri did the same; it surprised Will that the men in the Jeep allowed them to act in such an aggressive manner. The two groups of men stared at each other for a few long seconds.
The man driving the Jeep stood. He was tan and pudgy, with a shock of dark hair atop an abnormally small head. He wore a windbreaker against the November chill; like the rest of his clothes, it looked clean and cared for.
He looked at each of them before he spoke to Will. “Do you mean us trouble?”
Danny tilted his head like a Labrador pup trying to identify a noise.
Will blinked, perplexed. “What’s that?”
The man in the Jeep spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “Do you mean us trouble? Do you intend us harm?”
“We’re just looking for a safe place to stay. We don’t intend anyone harm.”
All five men in the Jeep relaxed; the two in the front seat got out and walked in their direction.
“Randy Williams,” the driver introduced himself and offered Will his hand. He nodded his head toward the other man.
“Taylor,” the other man said. “Taylor Siefert.” Taylor was younger, seventeen or eighteen, Will thought. He was tall, with a fleshy face and soft hands that felt like they’d never put in a hard day’s work. Will introduced his group to the pair; they shook hands and mumbled greetings all around.
Randy gestured at the idling trucks. “Are those all yours?”
That’s my people in them, yes. We borrowed the trucks.
Randy peered at them, then turned his attention back to Will. “So you want to stay?”
“That’s what we came for, yes, sir. We’ve got our own weapons and we’re willing to work. Whatever you need- hunting, labor, keeping the place safe.”
Randy waved a hand at him in a stop talking gesture and Will felt a flash of anger.
“You don’t have to sell me,” he told Will. “The Judge is the man that makes those decisions.”
Will swallowed, then smiled. “Well, let’s go see the Judge.”
Randy stared at the trucks for several seconds. “How many of you are there?”
“We’ve got fifteen adults, three teens, and a little girl. We’ve been on the road a long time.”
Randy looked shocked, like he’d caught Will pissing in the punch bowl. “Nineteen people? Oh, the Judge will never let a group that big in.” He pointed at Will and his team. “You four, maybe, but not nineteen people.”
Will dropped all pretense of friendliness and stared hard at Randy. “We’re a group. We’ve been through a lot. Together. And wherever we go, we’ll go there together.
“Like I say, that’s not up to me. I’m telling you what the Judge is going to say.”
Will realized with a start that Danny, Coy and Jiri had each eased themselves close to the men from the Jeep. They kept their eyes on Will, waiting for the signal to kill. He gave them an almost imperceptible shake of his head; with his hand at his waist, he held it out flat with his palm down, signaling the men to stand pat. He needed more information. Looking at Randy, he pointed off into the trees. “You guys do a good job with your guards- we haven’t been able to pick them out anywhere.”
Randy gave him a blank look. “That’s because we don’t have any.”
Danny chortled and his teammates smiled.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Will said, looking at Randy closely.
“I’m serious. Sometimes a couple of people will walk a patrol out front, but we don’t have any stationed guards.” He put air quotes around the word ‘stationed’.
Jiri stepped close. “You don’t have people watching for creepers at all times?”
“Creepers?”
“Creepers. Ghouls. Zombies. The dead guys that eat people. The reason we’re all here instead of home, eating chicken wings and watching football.”
“Oh. We call them biters. And we don’t get many out here.”
“What happens when they show up? How do you keep them from attacking people?”
Randy’s lip curled, and he and Taylor shared a long look. It was obvious he didn’t appreciate the questioning.
“We have people below tasked with watching for biters. When one shows up we sound an alarm.”
“And then you put it down?”
Randy shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. “No. The Judge doesn’t let us kill them. He says anybody that kills one will be in big trouble once the government comes up with a vaccine and gets things back under control.”
Jiri stared at him in clear wonderment.
Will had heard enough. He decided it was time to assert himself. “We’re walking back to our trucks and driving down there. With everybody.”
“Okay, but I can promise the Judge won’t like it.”
“I’ll try to find a way to help him deal with his pain. Nice to meet you guys.” Will strode back to his truck, his men behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
* * *
Taylor and Randy, the two men in the Jeep they had met up top, walked towards the group with a third person Will hadn’t seen. The new guy was of medium height, lean, and muscular. Where the other people he’d seen so far looked soft, and a lot of them were flabby, this guy looked hard, without an ounce of fat on his frame. He had a buzz-cut and a well-trimmed beard and wore a bright red button-up shirt over a pair of blue jeans that looked out-of-the-box new. He walked with the air of a man who wanted you to know he had authority. Extended a hand in greeting, his eyes gleamin
g. “Are you Will?”
“Yes sir,” Will said as he shook the man’s hand. He nodded at his men. “This is Jiri and Danny, and that’s the rest of the group behind them. You’re The Judge?”
The man laughed. “Oh no, not me. I just try to help him stay organized. My name’s Mark.” Mark shook with Jiri and Danny and gave a once-over to the cluster of people behind them. “You guys are well-armed!” Mark exclaimed with a smile. He sounded jovial but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“We’ve been out in it for a long time. Out there, you’re well-armed or you’re dead.”
“But you’re not out there now.” The smile didn’t leave Mark’s face but his eyes drilled into Will’s.
“I guess that’s what we’re here to discuss.” Will nodded his head toward the man on Mark’s left. “You’re boy Randy there said we can’t all stay.”
Randy bristled. “I’m not anybody’s boy.” He spat the word ‘boy’ like it was a curse word, pulled his shoulders back and puffed out his chest, and glared at Will.
Will held up a placating hand. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You hear that, Randy?” Mark’s smile took on a sardonic tilt. “Relax. He didn’t mean to offend you.”
Randy glowered at Will, who met his gaze with no outward show of emotion. After a few beats, he looked down and muttering something unintelligible.
Mark clapped his hands briskly. “Well,” he exclaimed, rubbing them together, “Let’s take you to meet the Judge.”
The three men stepped in Mark’s direction, and he held up a hand to stop them. “Just Will, if you don’t mind.”
Will turned to Jiri and Danny. He backed Danny down with a stern gaze, knowing his foreman contemplated shooting the three men where they stood before allowing Will to face possible peril by going alone. When he was certain Danny wasn’t going to kill anybody he looked at Jiri. The professor gave him a near-imperceptible shake of his head, and Will shrugged his shoulders in return.
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