Snareville

by David Youngquist

  We climbed into the trucks and headed east out of town.

  "Fences are coming along good," I mentioned as we passed the first checkpoint. We had almost the entire town enclosed in barbed wire and trenches now. We'd cut a few blocks off the village, but for the most part, we'd built a solid perimeter.

  I had Bill and Sandy Henderson in my truck. Bill drove, and Sandy rode shotgun. Jenny sat beside me in the back seat. John and Cathy rode in a second truck. Twelve other platoon members rounded out the team. Bill punched the gas, and we ripped down Bottom Road. No cops, no speed limits. Just don’t roll the truck.

  Four miles down, we turned and headed north. The four trucks roared up out of the valley and flew into Princeton. With the rain the night before, it was too wet to cut through the fields, so we had to stay on the pavement.

  Our route skirted the edge of town. We’d only have to drive through a little bit of the residential areas. We’d been to Princeton a few times since the outbreak, and we never stayed long. Not so long ago, more than seven thousand people lived in town, and Princeton lay right along I-80. That made for a lot of traffic and a lot of wandering deaders.

  We blasted into town and swung down a side street, still pointed north and passing mostly bars and industrial buildings. We blew past one tavern where a dozen or so Zeds wandered in and out of the building. They turned to watch us roll by. Some tried to chase us, but we didn’t even slow down. Up and over the railroad tracks, we were getting close now.

  Jenny tapped the magazine of her rifle. We all checked our guns. We’d never hit Wal-Mart before. I hoped it hadn’t been sacked already. How many uninfected might remain in Princeton, none of us knew.

  We drove past the warehouse where I used to work, before the outbreak. The place was huge. More than one million square feet under one roof. I saw trucks still backed into the dock behind the chain-link fence and a bunch of personal vehicles filling the lot where the employees used to park. I didn’t know if that meant they'd been out on a run when the shit hit the fan or if they were still wandering around inside, dead.

  Next stop: Wally World. A line of dead cars stretched from the stop light all the way back to the edge of the parking lot.

  “Must be a big sale on,” Jenny remarked as we rolled by the store.

  “Huh?”

  She jerked a thumb toward the firing port facing the store. “Take a look.”

  There must have been a thousand deaders milling around the parking lot.

  My mouth went dry. “Swing in.”

  “Boss?”

  “Do it, Bill. We need to check it out. Keep it going fast enough that we don’t get bogged down.”

  “Yessir.”

  I radioed the others to follow, and we tore ass across the parking lot. The Zeds turned to look. Some made a run for us. They quickly learned that several thousand pounds of armored truck trumps a couple hundred pounds of dead flesh.

  “We’re really gonna have to wash these rigs when we get home,” Sandy said.

  We plowed through the zombie crowd in the front of the store.

  “Go around,” I told Bill. “Front looks buttoned up tight.”

  We circled the building at thirty miles per hour. Wheels moaned as we made the turns. I didn't see many Zeds around back. The only doors were those that led to the loading docks and the tire-and-lube center. I spotted one or two fire exits. Not much else.

  In a couple of heartbeats, we swung back around out front. We drove out to the far end of the parking lot, and the Zeds shuffled our way. Some of my crew members stepped out from their cabs and started taking long-range shots. Black blood and brains blossomed in the morning air.

  Even from a hundred yards away, I could hear the moans. The sound got on my nerves. The Zeds had to suck in air to make noise, and they sounded like a slow-motion version of that guy’s laugh from the Nerd movies.

  Bill tapped my arm. “Check out the roof, Danny.”

  I popped up through the sunroof with a pair of binoculars. A handful of people waved at us from the roof. They looked a bit tattered. A little greasy, but the guy had a beard. They weren’t gray, either.

  “We got survivors.”

  “Well?”

  “We've gotta get up there. They can open some doors for us.”

  “Yeah, great. How do we load the trucks? I don’t think the deaders're going to stand back and just let us throw everything in and drive away.”

  I thought about it for a second. “Those bays fit two vehicles at a time, don’t they?”

  “Think so.”

  “Get us up close.” I radioed for one of the other trucks to come with us and told the other two to lay down some cover. Jenny and Sandy hopped back in. Bill hammered the accelerator, and we rocketed into the mass of dead. Guns fired from every port. Zeds went down. I slid the sunroof open and went out with the shotgun. Heads exploded as I nailed them with buckshot from arm’s length.

  “Open the garage doors!” I shouted up at the guy on the roof, dumping another Zed as she tried to crawl onto the hood. I held up a hand, five fingers open. “Five minutes! Open the garage doors in the shop. Five minutes, and we’re coming in!”

  I fell back inside the truck and buttoned up. Bill pulled his gun in, dropped the truck in reverse, and backed out.

  A Zed had managed to climb into the bed of our truck. Jenny stuck the barrel of her shotgun through one of our ports and blew the bastard out. We started making loops of the building, keeping the deaders off us and away from the garage doors. On our third pass, someone waved from the side door of the garage. The doors went up, and we swung the trucks in. We had to slow to make the turn, and the Zeds followed. We rolled in at about twenty and locked up the brakes. As our four trucks slid to a stop, the folks inside yanked down the doors and threw the locks.

  I popped my door and stepped out. My crew followed. A Zed flopped out of the bed of Jim’s truck and stumbled my way. Jenny grabbed a jack handle and brained him. Twice. He went down.

  Outside, the deaders pounded on the doors, running their slimy faces along the small windows. No use shooting them; that would just leave open windows. We turned our backs on them.

  “Wash ‘em, wax ‘em, and change the oil,” I said, grinning as I walked the garage floor. I saw black gore spattered across the cow-catchers. At least now we knew they worked.

  “Not a bad idea, Boss,” Jim said. “Might not get the chance to change oil for awhile.”

  “Do it,” I said.

  Two of my guys dropped into the pit. Two more threw a couple buckets of dirty water across the front ends of the trucks to wash off the gore. Then they flipped up the hoods. Others found garbage bags and taped them over the windows in the garage doors. If the deaders couldn't see us, maybe they’d leave.

  “Who the hell are you people?”

  I turned. I recognized the man in the tattered deputy sheriff’s uniform.

  “Tony. Good to see you. First person I’ve seen that I know.” I smiled and held out my hand.

  Tony took it like a man thrown a lifeline. “You, too, man. Been cooped up here for I don’t know how long.”

  Jenny walked up beside us, pulled off her helmet, and shook out her hair.

  “Tony, this is my girl, Jenny One Sock. Jenny, this is Tony Baker.”

  I don't remember when we started going by nicknames, but we picked them up as we earned them. I saw the guy coming from the left before Jenny did, but he knew her on sight.

  “Thought you were Jennifer Mueller. Or did you tire of my name already, dear?”

  The man stepped forward, pulled Jenny into his arms, and kissed her.

  Jenny’s eyes went big—with shock or fear, I didn’t know which. Then she wrapped her arms around him. Older guy, gray hair, beard, glasses. She’d said her husband was a professor.

  Professor Richard Mueller, to be exact.

  I noticed the mousy little redhead standing behind Jenny's husband as they talked. She wore the same look I was probably wearing. In any case, I had
to break up old-home week.

  “Okay, people, we’re here to shop. You've got your lists. Get ‘em done and get back here to the trucks. Move.”

  My unit scattered into the store. A couple of my guys kept crawling around under the trucks, doing their job. It wouldn’t take them long to finish, then they’d help load us up. Zeds still pounded on the door. Some screamed, but they were quieter now.

  We loaded up carts upon carts full of supplies. Each squad had their own shopping list. One group went for groceries. One went for hygiene stuff. Another went for clothes. The last went for tools and camping items. We made several trips. I stayed in the back with the trucks to help load supplies as they arrived. Jenny went with the others.

  “You in charge of this bunch, Dan?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah. This is part of my platoon. I’ve got ten more back in Snareville. You folks are welcome to come join us.”

  “What’s it like out there? I lost contact with the office not too long after I got stuck in here.”

  I looked him in the eye. “Devastation. Chaos. Apocalypse. However you want to say it. I don’t know much more than that. Princeton seems to be mostly Zeds. We’re okay down in the valley, and we've made contact with the Mennonites. They’re okay, too. Other than that, there’s not much left.”

  Tony slowed as he stacked a flat full of bottled water. “God. We didn’t know. We couldn’t get out. I couldn’t raise anyone on the radio, and no one was broadcasting. We lost power four weeks ago. Haven’t heard anything since.”

  We were just about finished. Oil was done, fluids were topped off, and trucks were loaded. Someone lifted a corner of the plastic on the doors behind us. The deaders were still out there, but not packed in quite so tight. We checked the windows in front of us. It looked clear. Good thing the bastards didn’t have much brains left.

  I pulled a box of shotgun shells out of the stack in the back of my truck and handed it to Tony for his riot gun. His pistol was a different caliber than mine, so we couldn’t fix that.

  “Load up. We’re going out. I’m gonna need every gun on hand. Keep it loaded. Head shots only, unless you can bust a hip and put the thing down. We don’t do body shots.”

  Tony looked at me kind of funny and started to say something. I interrupted.

  “This is my platoon, Tony. I give the orders. Like it or not, there’s no law left. You can either fight with us, or you can go be a gardener or build fences when we get back to Snareville, but right now, I need guns.”

  He frowned, but he nodded. I laid out the plan with the rest of the crew. The first two trucks would make the swing to the right out the doors and block the Zeds from the back of the store. The second two trucks would pull out, wait for a couple people on the ground to close the garage doors, then load them up and pull out of the lot across the curb. My truck would play tail-end Charlie. We’d cover the rear. We'd leave the opposite way we came in, which meant a lot of off-street driving. Everyone had the four-wheel-drive locked in. We were ready.

  As soon as the back doors started to go up, the chains rattled. For a quick second, the Zeds stopped moaning. The guys on the doors pulled as fast as they could. We didn’t need them open all ten feet. I only wanted enough room to get out. The moans started again, and I could tell the direction had shifted. The deaders came our way.

  Bill swung out to the right. John followed. The trucks stopped nose to tail across the small paved area that lent access to the back of the store. There was the swarm.

  We opened up on them from less than fifty yards. Shotguns, rifles, pistols—everyone threw rounds into the wall of rotted bodies. Heads exploded; body parts sheared away. Still, they came. Tony dropped a fast mover. The kid looked no more than twelve, but he was determined to get up in the bed of the truck. Tony swung the barrel down and pulled the trigger, and the kid’s head evaporated. Momentum slammed the corpse into the tailgate. It left a black smear across the red paint before it rolled away. Tony paused for a moment.

  “Don’t stop!” I shouted. “Pour it on!”

  Tony went back to work. He thumbed shells into the bottom of his gun to feed it as he shot and pumped. I swept the field with my AR. Some shots I picked. Others just passed through Zeds and moved on to the horizon. One magazine went dry. I dropped it, slapped another into place, and kept shooting.

  I heard the garage doors drop into place. I glanced over as my two ground guys started to climb into the backs of the trucks. Then I saw the pack of fast movers running up from the dock.

  I shifted the red dot of my Aim-point sight to the head of the first deader. One squeeze of the trigger, and the corpse dropped. I moved to the next. I wasn’t fast enough.

  They balled up on Mike and dragged him off the back of his ride. Tony turned to help, but they were too far away for his shotgun to do much good. The trucks sped past me. I heard Mike scream my name. I saw his hand stretched out from the pile. He shoved one of the deaders aside. I could see his face in my scope.

  I put the red dot on his eye and squeezed the trigger. Brains blew out the back of his helmet against the sky-blue wall.

  I pounded on the roof of the truck, and Bill pulled out of the lot.

  Tony looked at me, eyes wide.

  “We never let any of our people turn!” I shouted over the wind. “They’d do the same for me.”

  I glanced back at the swarm. Some of them were running after us. Some were fighting over Mike’s body.

  “I sure hope you can take orders from me, Tony. You’ve just been drafted into my unit.”

  I dropped into my seat in the truck cab. We sped west through landscaped restaurant and business areas. The intersection was jammed with dead cars. We turned back north, headed down the off-ramp to the Interstate, jostled across the soggy median, and cruised up the other way. A drive that normally took twenty minutes took almost an hour. The redheaded chick babbled, laughed, and cried the whole way to Snareville.

  “I’m glad to see you, Jennifer," Rick murmured to my left. "I’ve missed you."

  “Good to see you too, Rick.” Jenny sat to my right. She worried at the cuticle of her thumb with her teeth. She did that when she was stressed.

  “You don’t sound very enthused.”

  “No. I’m glad you’re back, Richard. Really. How’d you get here? I thought you were stranded in Chicago.”

  “I was. My car was stuck in a traffic jam on Michigan Avenue. Things went crazy that first week. After that, they calmed down a little. People started to lock themselves away. I had a hotel room. When I started noticing things were quieter outside, I stole a cab and drove west. I rolled into Princeton on vapors.”

  “So why not come all the way home?”

  “I was lucky enough to get off the Interstate and get to Wal-Mart. The car died on me just as I rolled into the parking lot. I made it inside with a few other survivors, and there we were… until you rescued us.”

  “Wasn’t a rescue mission,” I said. “We came in for supplies.”

  Rick looked at me like I was something he'd just scraped off his Italian loafers.

  “Be that as it may, we've been freed. We can be together again, Dear.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jenny stared out the firing port as the fields rolled by. She didn’t say anything else until we got home.

  It was noon when we rolled into the first checkpoint. In town, we off-loaded the trucks. Tony offered to help; no one else in his group did. We sent them all with a few guards for a shower and quarantine at the high school. We'd set up some solar camp showers over there, and they worked. Not real private, but a warm shower was a warm shower.

  It took us the better part of two hours to distribute our goods. Then we fueled the trucks and drove them back to the sheds. From there, I walked home with my crew.

  In our bedroom, Jenny and I folded our coveralls and put them away for the next time. Jenny pulled on one of her white tank tops—boybeaters, she called them—and a pair of shorts. I tried to hug her, but she pulled away.

  “I
have to go talk to him. I owe him that much.”

  “Jen, I…”

  “I have to.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the palms of her hands, took up her shotgun, and left.

  I sat on the porch, trying to nurse a beer. I would've killed for a cooler full of ice. I’ve never liked my beer warm, but I needed that one.

  I had George tied to the handrail beside me. We didn’t like our dogs running loose in town. They tended to draw a lot of unwanted attention, and we'd decided they were best used as alarm systems.

  The sun was nearly down. We always buttoned up for the night once the sun disappeared behind the hills.

  I’d give her a few more minutes, then go inside with the others and lock the place down. At least we had a camp light now. We could stay up past dark.

  George woofed. I reached for my gun, then stilled as Jenny came around the corner.

  “Scared me for a minute,” I said.

  She gave a little smile. Her eyes were red and puffy.

  “Think I was a deader?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not.” She laid her gun next to mine. “I’m very much alive. For the first time, I think.”

  She pulled me close and kissed me deep and long. She slid her tongue into my mouth. For a long time, neither of us stopped.

  Finally, she pulled away.

  “I love you, Danny.” She held up her left hand. The gold ring was gone. “I gave it back to him. I don't know anyone named Jennifer Mueller anymore. I’m Jenny One Sock, and I belong with Danny Death.”

  I grinned at her. She'd always held some part of herself away from me, but not anymore. Not now.

  “And I don't remember anything about Daniel Jackson. I’m Danny Death, and I belong with Jenny One Sock.”

  She smiled at me through her tears. We gathered up our guns, I untied George, and we went in the house. Inside, we joined the others' cribbage game. For a long time after that, we were never apart.