Dead Man's Land

by R. J. Spears

  While my ears still rang from the firefight, the sounds I heard then were more like a bell choir, ringing as hard and as fast as their arms could go. It must have been the 1812 Overture because a cannon boomed just a couple bars into the performance. Smoke billowed into the hallway from the room.

  I felt hands grab my shoulders, and I was being tugged down the hall. I looked up in a detached sort of way and saw both Kara’s and Brother Ed’s face, hovering above me like birds, with the ceiling passing by above them. The view wasn’t very flattering for either of them, as their features seemed distorted, like caricatures of their faces instead of the real thing. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I re-opened them, we were around the corner and out of the line of fire.

  “Joel, are you hurt?” Kara asked, her over-large face loomed into mine. Her voice seemed drawn out and watery.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked again.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “You guys look really funny. Your nose is enormous.”

  “He’s got his bell rung,” Brother Ed said, sticking his bulbous beak of a nose into my field of view. He ducked away and looked around the corner. No new shots came.

  I disappeared for a moment and came back to consciousness with a start, remembering some of what was going on.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, remembering why we were there.

  “Lots of smoke and nothing else,” Brother Ed said.

  “Do you see Aaron?” I asked.

  “No, the smoke’s too thick.”

  “We should get to him,” I said. My tongue felt thick and unwieldy.

  “Not yet,” he said, “we need to see if the soldier is still in the room.”

  I closed my eyes for a second and then opened them again, and I saw Brandon standing over me. “Where’d you come from?” I asked.

  His face was etched with worry. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked, pointing down at me.

  “He was thrown into the wall from a grenade blast,” Kara said. “I’m fairly sure he has a concussion.”

  “Where’s Aaron?” he asked.

  Kara put her hand on his arm and said, “He’s at the end of the hall.” She paused for second, collecting herself. “We think he’s been shot.”

  “Then why the hell aren’t we down there?” he asked, his voice rising.

  “Because we don’t want our butts shot off,” Brother Ed said, leaning into my field of view again. “There were two guys down there. Joel took out one, but the other one threw a grenade into the hall. Then there was an explosion in the room he was hiding in.”

  “Well, I’m not waiting any longer,” Brandon said, a muscle in his jaw tensed.

  “Brandon, you really should wait,” Kara said.

  “Fuck that,” he said, and he was gone, running into the smoke cloud to find Aaron. I would have followed closely behind him, but my departure was into unconsciousness instead.

  Chapter 18

  Enemies

  I felt myself swimming along on the murky waters of unconsciousness. It seemed different from the time I had been knocked out by the blast from the MAV, back in the city. That was more absolute black with no sensation or images. While under this spell of unconsciousness, I saw shadowy imagery. Initially, it was primarily formless, abstract, and out of focus, but after a few seconds, it began to coalesce into a more concrete form, not that it helped a great deal.

  I saw the top of a hill. It was covered in a thick gray fog. Shapes moved in the grayness. At first, they were indistinct, bulky masses of black and gray, but there was something all too familiar with the movements. There was that telltale shamble. It was the undead, and there was a whole mess of them.

  This was strikingly similar to my early vision, just a different perspective. It was less of a bird’s eye view and more constricted to a narrow portal. Despite this difference, it made me wonder why God was sending me a re-run. Didn’t He have some ingenious angels up there dreaming all new and exciting programming?

  But there was a difference. Despite not being able to see anything more than bulky silhouettes in the fog, there was something about these zombie forms. There was a symmetry that was out of place and a little off-putting. It was as if someone had taken off their round edges and had replaced them with sharp, hard ones.

  They were about to crest the hill and punch through the fog when I felt a dull pain from beyond the scene. It became more insistent and was accompanied by a voice, but it was as distant as the zombies in my vision. Before the voice could break through, I felt my sight seared with lightning so intense that it felt as if my head might explode. The world of my vision filled with a pure white. It took a few seconds, but lines of darkness began to appear out of the white, almost translucent. They were thin at first, but became clearer over time. The lines began to connect, and I saw a pattern begin to form. It looked like a spider web of mammoth proportions.

  What this meant, I had no idea, but it was important. I studied the pattern for several seconds, but that distant voice came back, this time it was clearer.

  The voice became more distinct, and I heard my name, sounding far away with an echoing effect. To make matters worse, a burning sensation prickled at my back. It both hurt and itched at the same time.

  The voice broke through the vision, and I was awake with my eyelids flapping open like a pair of blinds, the light of the room overwhelming my senses. Despite the disorientation, I tried to sit up.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Doc Wilson said, pressing gently onto my shoulder as I tried to rise. “You need to take it easy.”

  “Where? What?” I asked quickly, but the words came out muddled as if I were speaking through cotton.

  I had been walking down a hallway with Kara and Brother Ed, now I was lying in a bed with Doc Wilson over me.

  “The ‘where’ is the infirmary,” Doc Wilson said. “The ‘what’ is the two pieces of shrapnel I took out of your back and a nasty concussion.”

  “They were coming,” I said.

  “The soldiers?” Doc asked.

  Brandon’s head appeared over Kara’s shoulder. His face was creased with worry.

  “No, the undead,” I said, still feeling the after effects of the vision.

  “Did you have another vision?” Kara asked, stepping around Brandon. It was getting crowded in there.

  “Yes,” I said “they were coming out of a fog or a mist, and I had this feeling that they were close by.”

  “I think you need to get with the times,” Brandon said as he popped his head past Doc’s shoulder. “We were attacked by the living.”

  It all came rushing back to me: the shootout, the man I’d shot, the explosion, and Brandon running to find Aaron.

  “Where’s Aaron?” I asked.

  A voice came from off to my left and said, “Right here.”

  I swiveled my head and saw Aaron lying in the bed next to me, a bandage on his shoulder, and his head wrapped in gauze. He gave me a big thumbs up and smiled at me. “How’s it going, boss man?”

  I looked up to Doc and said, “You tell me.”

  “The shrapnel wounds aren’t too bad. The concussion was moderate. You should be up in a day or two.”

  I shoved Doc’s hand aside and sat up, which turned out to be a big mistake. My head felt as if it bulged out in a couple of places, and my stomach did a somersault. Kara pushed by Doc, put her hands on my shoulder, and said, “You need to lie back down.”

  I focused on my feet for a couple seconds, hoping I wasn’t about to throw up on them as another wave of nausea swept over me. “Okay, you guys win,” I said with my eyes closed. My head felt as if someone was trying to fight their way out of it from the inside, slamming Thor’s hammer against the side of my skull. “Can someone tell me what happened after I passed out?”

  Brandon’s voice came from my left, “I found Aaron down at the end of the hall. He had taken a bullet in his shoulder. We checked the one soldier you shot, and he was dead. The other one used some sort of explosives to
blow a hole in the wall and had escaped through it.”

  “Do we have any idea who they were and what they wanted?” I asked.

  “You’re going to have to open your eyes for this one,” Brandon said.

  Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes. It took some time to focus, but I saw a photo floating in front of my eyes. Brandon held it steady, I’m sure, but it seemed to bob and weave for a moment, as my vision skewed from having my brains scrambled. My vision finally settled down, but my mental state did not. The photo was of Jason. He was wearing hospital scrubs, and there was blood on his neck. His face was fuller, and he looked healthier than he was now.

  “We found it on the guy you shot,” Brandon said.

  “This is not good,” I said.

  “No, it is not,” Brandon said. “We also found this on him,” Brandon said, holding out a satellite phone.”

  “Did you check the number?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Brandon said, “it’s the same number as the other ones.”

  “That means it’s the same source.”

  “Yep. I’ve upped security. We did a search of the woods and found a lot of rounds expended out there, but no signs of any soldiers. We were able to track some footsteps leading west, but we lost them after about a hundred yards. I’d say they got the hell out of here.”

  “That doesn’t mean they won’t come back,” I said as I pushed myself to my feet. That only lasted a few seconds as the room began to rotate quickly. When it reached the equivalent of the spin cycle of washing machine, I fell back onto the bed, holding my head in my hands in a futile attempt to stop the motion.

  “I tried to tell you,” Kara said, gently guiding me back onto the bed.

  As much as I really wanted to get up, my head and Kara wouldn’t allow it. Every time I tried to move, the room would jitter and shake. It’s hard to do anything in that state.

  While I couldn’t move, it didn’t mean that my mind wasn’t whirring away. “Someone needs to find Jason,” I said. “Those soldiers were after him. I want him in a safe place.”

  “Already done,” Brandon said, “he’s down the hall.”

  “How do you know they’re after Jason?” Kara asked.

  “Why else would they have that photo?” Brandon answered.

  “They had to be from where Jason escaped,” I added. “If they saw Jason here, they’ll definitely be back.”

  “The one you shot had a night scope,” Brandon said. “We found a small spot in the woods where it looked as if they had been camped out. They could have been watching us for a while and decided to make their move to snatch him today.”

  “If they come back….” Kara said, but I put my hand to stop her.

  “It’s not ‘if,’ but when,” I said. Now, my stomach was aching as much as my head, but this was from anxiety.

  Once again, I thought about what Greg would do, and it hit me square in the face -- I was not Greg. Never would be. I wondered if it were too late to ask for a recount on the election that put me in charge, but then I remembered that he wanted me to lead. It was my time to reach down deep and find a way to keep us safe and secure from these soldiers. Greg always said that he liked how I thought outside the box.

  “Brandon, I need you to find some heavy metal cable,” I said.

  “I think there’s some in Lucasville, at the old phone office,” Brandon said and then asked, “What do you need it for?”

  “Something I’ve been thinking about. It might not help against the living, but if we get large incursions of our undead friends, it could be helpful.”

  “I think our more immediate concerns are the soldiers returning with a lot more force.”

  “You may be right, but the undead are always out there,” I said, “and I have a feeling that we’ll see them sooner than we think.”

  “How soon will you be ready?” Anthony asked. He leaned on his cane as he stood by Rex on the catwalk, surveying the scene below. He hated using the cane. It made him feel weak and small, but the pain still bothered him from time-to-time when he didn’t use it. Also, losing half of his foot sometimes made balancing a challenge.

  They stood, overlooking the gymnasium floor. The place was a beehive of activity. Roy moved a small herd of their new and improved soldiers across the floor. The soldiers moved slower than normal with the new hardware, and they were carrying more weight now, but it was to be expected.

  “Two days, maybe three,” Rex said.

  “And we’re sure they’re at that retirement complex outside Lucasville?”

  “Yes,” Rex said, trying to hold back his annoyance at going over this again. He had noticed that Anthony was more anxious since being injured. There was a tentativeness to his actions and a need to go over and over things. On most occasions, he indulged Anthony, but after fifteen times of going over the same questions, he was at the end of his patience.

  “I want to go as soon as we’re ready,” Anthony said.

  “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but why do you think we should be doing this?”

  Anthony ground his teeth for a moment, but tried to remain calm. “They are a threat to us here,” Anthony said.

  “It’s not one that we can’t handle,” Rex said. “We kicked their ass and sent them running with their tails between their legs.”

  “But they are still there,” Anthony said. “We have killed their people, and they will want revenge.”

  “They may want it, but revenge may not be something they can afford. How many times can they take getting their ass beat and come back for more?”

  “I don’t want to know. I want to finish them.”

  There was something in Anthony’s tone that made Rex hold back, despite the fact that he thought this was potentially a dangerous move and that it was best to bolster their defenses and wait them out.

  Rex also knew that the real reason was that Anthony wanted revenge. It was actually much more compelling that that; Anthony had to have it. They had taken too much from him on that fiery bus. He had to take care of them.

  Despite these misgivings, Rex knew he would follow this command. Anthony was the top dog. He had all the smarts Rex knew he’d never have. It was best to stick with the horse that brought you.

  “We’ll attack at dawn. With these new soldiers, we will be able to take them.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Rex said, but he sensed a false bravado behind Anthony’s statement, as if Anthony needed to convince himself. Rex didn’t like this new uncertain Lord of the Dead. He needed Anthony to be sure.

  The Colonel met the away team at the gate. He felt as if he had been there for hours when in fact, it had only been minutes.

  The Humvee came through the gate, and the away team disembarked from the vehicle. He counted them and was shocked to see only three men and knew they had left with four.

  He strode past the guards on a direct path to the away team. The men worked hard to avoid any direct eye contact with the Colonel because they knew he was about to tear them a new one, despite the fact that they had lost one of their own. They had lost something more crucial in the Colonel’s mind. They had failed the mission.

  “Sergeant Baker,” the Colonel barked, “what the hell happened? Where is Pembry?”

  Baker looked to the ground.

  “I asked you a question, soldier!” the Colonel shouted.

  “We lost him, sir,” Baker said in a quiet voice.

  “You lost a man and failed to obtain the objective of the mission.” The Colonel pivoted away, exhaling loudly, while trying to maintain control and then turned back. “Why didn’t you call in?”

  “Pembry had the sat-phone.”

  “Shit, is there anything you didn’t fuck-up?” the Colonel asked. “What happened?”

  “They had safeguards that we hadn’t anticipated,” Baker replied. He had been the lead on the mission, and the failure fell fully on him.

  “It’s your job to anticipate everything.”

  “Yes, sir.”


  “Sir, we couldn’t have anticipated alarm systems,” Corporal Workman spoke up. “They barely have electricity. It seemed inconceivable that they would have an electronic alarm system.”

  “Was I speaking with you, Corporal?” the Colonel asked.

  “No, sir, but....” Workman started to add, but was brutally interrupted when the Colonel shot out a fist that connected with the side of his head, knocking him off his feet.

  Workman lay stunned on the pavement, barely moving. The other men knew better than to confront the Colonel. While he was in his early fifties, the Colonel could still outrun, out muscle, and out punch anyone on the base with the exception of Sergeant Jones. But the Colonel was probably tougher. Once, in a test of strength, the Colonel had broken a man’s arm during an arm wrestling challenge. No, they knew better than to mess with the Colonel.

  “Okay,” the Colonel said, “now, that is settled. Carter was there, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir, he was,” Baker said.

  “I’ll expect a full and detailed briefing at HQ in a half hour. I may have to take care of this myself since you fucked it up. I damn well want to know what I’m walking into this time.”

  Chapter 19

  The Six Ps: Proper Pre-Planning Prevents Poor Performance

  It took two days for my head to completely clear, but my back still burned as if someone were working on my shrapnel wounds with a blowtorch. It only hurt when I breathed, though. Too bad I needed to breathe.

  Over those two days, we worked to double our defenses and security. Many people asked what the hurry was about, but there was no time for a blue ribbon fact-finding committee and report. Trouble was coming, and I wasn’t sure how ugly it was going to be. I only knew it would be ugly.

  The only problem with not answering all the questions was that people began to supply their own answers, letting their imaginations run wild. One rumor that came back to me was that I was insane and that I was going to be deposed as leader at any moment. I’m not sure I could argue with the first part of it. Other rumors had me burning the building to the ground, a la Waco and David Koresh, and his wacky tribe of nut jobs.