by Chris Lowry
The second guy, long hair, folded under me with a cracked clavicle.
I tried to land a roll, and mostly succeeded, and made it to my feet.
Then I was on them.
I sent a foot into long hair’s face and kept him occupied with a squirting nose.
The other guy was on his hands and knees crawling fast for his lost gun.
I landed a knee into the spine between his shoulder blades and sent him sprawling. Then I grabbed his chin, planted both knees against his back and pulled until something cracked.
He stopped moving.
I should have grabbed his knife.
I should have grabbed the rifle.
But hindsight is always 20/20.
Instead I went for long hair and he screamed.
It was more of a gurgle than a scream and it sprayed blood all over the moist leaves.
That brought the others running.
They shot, but couldn’t hit me because it’s tough to shoot straight when you’re pounding through slippery leaves and aiming through trees.
I ran.
And left a trail they could follow.
Tracking is a skill I don’t possess, but I do know if you want someone to trail you, turn over dirt and leaves. Scrape bark off trees.
It’s tough to do when you’re trying to be obvious about it, and don’t want the person tracking you to know you’re being obvious.
The subtlety of it was lost with me.
All I knew is I wanted them after me once I put a little distance between us.
In the movies, they had time to build all sorts of booby traps learned in the jungles of Vietnam.
I think jumping from the tree was my one trick pony, but it took out two of them, plus one stayed behind to take care of long hair.
That’s what I figured when he stopped screaming.
Either that or they killed him.
Three kept up with me.
It’s easy to get lost in the woods.
Terribly easy.
It happened to me once when I was fourteen. I was spending Christmas break with my Dad at the home he had in the country. This sounds a lot fancier than it actually was.
The truth was my Dad lived in the woods, in a house owned by my grandfather. We would go visit him on the weekends, and stay longer when school was out, even though we lived in the same town.
That time it snowed.
It didn’t often snow in the small town where I lived, maybe once every other year. This time it put almost eight inches on the ground.
I’d never been on a walk in the woods when it was white and quiet, the snow muffling very step.
I bundled up and took off for a hike on the logging and three wheeler trails carved through the pine forest.
After an hour, I turned around and followed my footsteps back.
Only they weren’t my footsteps.
After three hours, I tried to pick one direction and kept walking.
At the end of the day I ended up almost thirty miles from my house when I stepped out on an ice covered highway.
It was almost twilight, I was half frozen and terrified when a couple in a four wheel drive picked me up and drove me home.
Getting lost in the woods is easy.
I tried to think about that when I ran, because I needed to be able to find my way back to the compound.
I was thinking about it when I hit the edge of a shallow slope and pitched down a mud slicked side of creek.
I slid to the bottom, tried to catch my breath and listened to the men chasing me.
They pounded through the leaves, clucking and whistling to each other as they tried to zero in on my position.
I sat up, felt the mud slurp around me and glanced at the lip of the bank where I tripped.
It was an easy trail to follow.
But the creek had flooded in the past and carved a shallow depression under the hill.
It wasn’t deep, just a few inches, but it was on the shadowed side of the creek, and I had an idea.
I slathered mud across my face and rolled over so it coated me.
Then I backed up into the dark ground under the lip of the creek.
It was a great hiding spot, but I saw a rock about the size of my fist next to the water and I yanked it up, just as someone stopped at the edge of the overhang and sent a shower of dead leaves across me.
I tried not to breath.
He didn’t jump.
He sat down, put both legs over the rim and jumped to splotch in front of me, studying the ground I had just wallowed on.
I listened for anyone close and decided to chance it.
He turned as I lunged from the mud, the two steps between us too tight for him to bring the gun to bear.
Then I beaned him with the rock.
He fell backwards into the creek and I was on top of him, pounding with the rock twice, three times.
I grabbed his rifle and pushed back toward the shadows, hoping to use his body as bait.
It worked.
The next guy stopped at the top a few meters away.
“Tom?”
He leaped down, fought for balance and recovered to kneel next to his buddy.
“Don’t move,” I said as he checked for vital signs.
He glanced over at me, and I’m not sure what he saw.
A mud covered monster holding a rifle at him from the shadows under a patch of ground.
I might have been scared too.
He dropped his rifle and held up his hands.
“Don’t kill me,” he said in a loud voice. “Please.”
His eyes flicked up.
I raised the rifle and sent a shot back over the edge and heard a yelp.
The guy down here with me threw himself forward to try to grab his rifle, but we were close. I stepped out and slammed the butt into his chin, then went to check on the mewling man above.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
I tied them to the trees, the ones that were alive at least. I circled back to gather long hair and his crunched nose and his would be rescue party, stepping out of the shadows to take them by surprise.
I marched them back to join their buddies.
Four of them.
Then I built a small fire made of twigs in a hole I scooped out of the ground, the tiny flames just enough warmth to work by.
I stripped them all of clothes, then washed the mud off me in the creek before putting on a little fashion show to find what fit.
They were not appreciative, or maybe they were quiet because of the sweaty socks I tied into their mouths.
All of their feet were smaller than mine, so I had to forego boots, but I doubled up on socks that weren’t being chewed on at the moment.
I sat on the ground in front of the fire, working over the actions of the rifles, checking the magazines and cleaning them as best I could with a scrap of cloth ripped from the dead man’s shirt.
I finished and pulled a gag off the man closest to me.
“You killed Sid,” one of them croaked through parched lips and I looked up to see which one.
He caught my eye and tried to hold it with his scared blue ones, the left twitching like an electric current ran under it from stress.
“Where are my kids?”
“They’re safe,” he answered, then cackled.
It sounded wet and phlegmy, like a smoker when they first wake up. “We kept ‘em all good and safe. It’s what we do with all the cattle.”
Cattle.
I didn’t like the way it sounded and the way he said it.
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what? There’s nothing you can do,” he crowed in a braggart’s voice. “They’ll send others to find us, too many for you to handle on your own and then you’ll be dead.”
“I thought your Council wanted me alive.”
“Mags don’t,” said the braggart. “And the Colonel’s work for Mags.”
“Tell me more.”
But he shut up after a glance at the ot
hers.
I held up one of the rifles and let him watch me feed in the bullets.
“You don’t scare me,” he sniffed. “You can kill me or let me live. I don’t care much either way.”
A man who isn’t afraid to die isn’t scared easily.
I knew from personal experience.
But I also knew a secret.
“There are worse things than death,” I told him.
He must not have liked the way I said it because I saw him gulp then, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down on his thin throat.
Then he dug deep and bolstered his resolve.
I almost admired him for that.
Men and women have an infinite capacity for willpower, for being able to marshal reserves of strength that boggle the human mind.
I’d seen it hundreds of times over, and we’ve all heard stories about people who do extraordinary things that seem superhuman.
Scientists explain it is willpower and an adrenaline dump, the kind strong enough to let a mother lift a car to save her child, or a soldier like Audi Murphy to fight off a German battalion by himself after being wounded.
This man had that much willpower.
In another life, he could have been a hero too.
But in this one, his will met mine.
He didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
My ex wife had a habit that I hated. Whenever she wanted a chore done, or a lot of tasks knocked off the honey do list, she would pick a fight.
I would bottle up my anger and let it out through activity, which meant she learned how to selectively direct my behavior.
She didn't feel like doing the dishes? Pick a fight about money.
Wanted the yard work finished?
Start an argument about affection, or jealousy or any other tiny little thing.
She was an ace at it too with the ability to use digs and sarcasm in a single most annoying way.
The result was a lot of bad blood, a lot of housework and eventually a divorce.
After that, I was able to do some introspection.
Especially as I discovered long distance running. There is a lot of time to think during so many miles.
I realized that a lot of people did the same thing to me. My parents would make me angry to get a reaction.
My girlfriends would get fed up with how I bottled up emotions, and argue just to watch me feel something.
I went into professional environments to work where feelings were hidden, locked down and discouraged.
Because I didn't know how to have feelings.
I didn't know how to deal with them.
The zombie apocalypse may have been bad for the rest of the world, but at least it allowed me to get in touch with my gooey center.
Mine was made of rage.
Red hot molten lava of rage.
I'm not sure what caused it.
There was some abuse as a child, so maybe that messed me up. It certainly gave me a sense of justice and fairness about how the world should operate. Or maybe my depression era grandfather taught me to repress, to tough it up, to walk it off.
Showing emotion of any kind was weakness, and boys are not allowed to be weak.
Hell, maybe I did it.
I idolized strong men, the Rambo's, the Commando's and Die Hard heroes who were tough as nails and crapped bricks.
More likely it was a combination of things.
I bottled up the rage. I compacted it into a tiny little ball, a living swirling planet that orbited somewhere around my beltline.
Then I spent all of my adult life quashing it, keeping it quiet, holding it still.
Until one day, I didn't have to do that anymore.
Granted, the first time I let loose the rage, it was against the walking dead.
But since then I'd learned about a very valuable tool at my disposal.
Some people get crazy when they get angry.
I get cold. Calculated.
Some psyche major would have a field day with why.
Lucky for me, most of them were gone now, part of the Z herd I could decimate, and if any still survived, they were more concerned with eating than analyzing me.
Rage. Always simmering beneath the surface. Washing up like a tsunami and taking out
I turned it on for the four survivors and they talked.
They told me about the Council. About Mags. About the Colonels.
They told me about more Army bases and refugee camps, and if I would have asked for the Colonel’s secret recipe they would have told me that too.
And when were done I let them slip into oblivion with a quick twist of the knife.
I didn’t wash off in the creek again.
I wanted everyone in the compound to see the blood of their men on me. I even took trophies to show them what they were up against.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
They told me all I needed to know.
How to get in.
Passwords.
Layout.
I moved back through the woods toward the compound, paralleling the path and moving slow.
I wanted to run, sprint back to the gate, break in and rescue the kids, but I was trying to play the caution card.
The prisoners also told me what I was up against.
And why Mags wanted the Fort.
They were out of supplies and growing desperate. The Colonels were her answer to growing unrest in her group. They played by Mafia rules, which is the strong got to do whatever they wanted to the weak.
They were fighting with another group of survivors, but none of the prisoners I took knew why.
My feelings were a little hurt that she didn't send better men than those to kill me. It was like she didn't think I was a threat.
I daydreamed a little about how I would make her rethink the position, but quelled it. My goal was to get in, get my trio and get gone.
Hopefully that fast, and with as little violence as possible.
I approached the gate I exited through and watched.
There were two guards on the sides, which was smart. They looked bored and tired.
Good for me.
I had the weapons my execution squad brought out with them, and from the trees I could take two shots and remove the guards.
But that would let the ones inside know I was coming.
It's tough to have a sneak attack when you can't be sneaky.
I needed a distraction.
A fire would help. The smoke would draw their attention. I could toss a couple of bullets into the flames and then move to another part of the tree line.
The shots would draw more people.
I considered hunting up a Z and leading it toward the gate, but they would shoot it, which would draw more attention.
Besides, I spent most of my time trying to avoid zombies.
Why would I hunt one up on purpose even if it was to use as bait.
Sometimes luck favors the bold.
Or in this case, the dumb luck.
A group of moving trucks rumbled up the road and stopped at the gate. There were six of them, with a pick up truck in the lead.
"Open up!" screamed the driver of the pick up as he leaned out of the open window.
One of the guards worked the mechanism and pushed the gate back while the second went to the passenger window.
"Did you get a good haul?"
"Better than good," the driver crowed.
I didn't listen to the rest. I scooted through the trees to the point closest to the last truck in line.
It was eighteen inches off the ground, and I'd only seen it done in movies, but it was my way in.
The guards moved to one side and waved the truck through.
I ran across the narrow open space and waited by the back to listen for a sound of alarm.
But all I heard was grumbling engines and the whine of gear as the heavily laden trucks moved forward.
I slid under the back of the truck and searched the under
carriage for a place to grip.
Parts moved, and the metal was hot, but I wedged my toes into the rear axle, and used shirtsleeves to pad my hands.
I lifted up as the truck took off, moving forward on the pressed gravel road.
The heat leeched through the cloth and started to hurt.
I shifted, and the butt of the rifle strapped to by back scraped against the rocks.
It almost knocked me off, and combined with the heat, made me cling by the tips of my fingers.
By the time we rolled through the gate, it was too much.
I dropped and let the truck rumble over me.
Luck held.
The gate was halfway closed, the guard watching his partner hidden behind the other side.
I rolled toward the shadow of the wall and waited, letting my hands cool off, trying to decide what to do next.
I was in.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Obi Wan made it look a lot easier than it was.
That's all I thought about as I crept around inside the compound and searched for sign of Tyler, Bem and the Boy. I didn't have Force mind control to wave off guards, and while I wasn't sure if these sharp shooters were as accurate as Stormtroopers, I wasn't ready to test it out.
It involved a lot of standing still.
And double checking a way to make sure it was clear.
Since there was dissension in the ranks, Mags had declared martial law, which kept most of the people in the compound locked in safe places. There were large yards within the rooms, areas the size of city parks with hurricane wire fences thrown around them, and locked with padlocks.
"For their safety," the last guy told me before I let him journey into the great beyond.
A cell within a cell. Or cells.
Which was good for me in a way.
It kept most of the ways clear.
And bad in that I didn't know which cell the kids were in.
"You're pretty good," said Mags from over my shoulder. "Better than I imagined."
So much for being sneaky.
She waited around the corner from me. I leaned against the side of the wall and tried to think of a way around it.
Or through it.
"We had a check in time for the boys I sent with you," she said.
