Dead Wrangler
Page 17
He was used to prison food, and that was still the worst breakfast he'd ever had. Especially after last night, the last thing he needed was such a flat, weird, and just wrong buffalo chicken meatpile.
A few hours after that Major Hendrix appeared.
"I thought you gentlemen would like to have an update. We've gotten a confession. The cook responsible is Peter Melville."
"That's the asshole we found in that house!" Jesus exclaimed, with an excited glance at James.
"Yes. The rest of the cooks have been cleared of any wrongdoing. I understand that you were fed MRE's today for breakfast, and I apologize for that. I promise you hot meals until you are out of quarantine."
Shouted questions echoed around the cells. Finally the Major raised a hand. "One at a time please." He pointed at one man.
"How long are you going to quarantine us?"
"Procedure says three days. I plan on sticking to that to be safe," Major Hendrix said.
"Why'd that cocksucker do it?" Another shouted.
"He won't say. He just says he did it alone."
"Major Hendrix," James said. "I think you might want to interview me. I knew there was something wrong with that guy when I found him in that basement–I think I can help figure out why he did it."
Major Hendrix eyed him. "Why do you think that?"
"There was something wrong with the whole thing," James had no idea what exactly had been wrong with it. Just a sense of unease. So he made something up. "I think he may be a mole."
Major Andrew's eyebrows rose. "Bring him to my office." He turned and left.
His neighbors looked at him with suspicion. Perhaps they suspected he was bullshitting just to get out. There was enough truth to their suspicion to make James keep his eyes down as he walked out. They brought him to Major Hendrix office without fuss. He stepped inside.
"So what is this bullshit? I'm letting you talk only because I don't want anyone to think I'm not pursuing all leads," Hendrix said.
"I'm on a salvage crew. Last month we come on this house. Just packed with zombies. Forty of them in a fifteen hundred square foot house. So we clean them out, go in. The garage is full of food, and everything is in good order. No zombies in the garage even though they must have been bouncing off each other in the rest of the house. Door is still closed. There's some stairs down to a basement–the door is unlocked, and at the bottom is this Melville guy. He'd been in there for who knows how long, with nothing but two unlocked doors to protect him, and the zombies never found him. I mean, the smell of his shit and piss alone should have been enough, but they didn't bother him."
"What's your point?"
"At the time we thought it was just weird, you know. One of those weird miraculous things you hear about. Three dudes and a chick holding off ten thousand zombies in a shopping mall. Comatose dudes waking up in a dead hospital a month after everyone else died. Stuff like that. But now..."
"Get to the point."
"What if the zombies left him alone because he's working for them?"
Hendrix starting laughing, a deep belly laugh. "Get the fuck out of my office," he said between guffaws. James clenched his hand and continued.
"Why else would you put bits of zombie in the food? To infect us, that's why."
"The doctors assure me that the boiling and the digestive acid would prevent the disease from spreading that way."
"They why in the fuck did you make me eat a Buffalo Chicken MRE in a jail cell?"
"Procedure dictates anyone exposed be quarantined for seventy-two hours, no exceptions."
"Maybe Melville didn't know that it wouldn't work."
"If he didn't know that it's because he's just a nut. Maybe he convinced himself that if he helped the zombies they wouldn't eat him, and somehow he got lucky. Zombies are fucking stupid. Stooopid stupid. I don't know what you're on, but the man’s just a nutter. Honestly, I feel sorry for him. How fucked up would you have to be to think you were working for the zombies?" Hendrix said with certainty and a bit of sympathy. "Who knows where your mind would go if you spent a month with nothing but two unlocked doors between you and forty of them, too scared to even sneak up the stairs to lock the door."
James didn't have much of a response to that; it made too much sense. Occam's razor told him the simplest explanation was what Hendrix thought-- the man had gone straight crazy. The zombies he knew were stupid, and he had no evidence of any other kind. Nothing besides rumors so crazy and second hand that if he believed them he would have to believe in Bigfoot. But his gut was pulling him another way.
A man, wretchedly thin, grabbed his eyes and screamed as the light hit his eyes. He scrambled away from the light and hid in the corner.
"He screamed," James said.
"Who screamed?" Hendrix asked, in a tone of voice saying the conversation was not going to last much longer.
"Melville. When we opened the door. He screamed at the flashlight."
"Who wouldn't?"
"If you'd spent a month terrified that the slightest noise would get you eaten alive, would you scream?"
"You are reaching very far."
"Have you ever been in solitary?" James asked.
"Of course not," Hendrix said.
"I know what it's like to see light for the first time in a month. It hurts. It really hurts, but you don't scream because you don't want to show weakness ever around here. I know what it's like to be Melville a lot more than you think. You don't scream when you are surrounded by predators. He screamed. He wasn't as afraid as you'd think," James said.
"Look, thank you for trying to help, and we're certainly not going to let Melville loose to do any kind of harm. The quarantine is an annoyance, but it's not the worst thing that's happened to any of us."
James' mind was racing, running in circles, playing with the clues and jangling them together. Hendrix was not going to wait for him to grind his thoughts into a theory.
"Let me search his cell," James said.
"Why?"
"I'm a bit of an expert on where people hide things in these cells. I know the places to hide things when you really don't want the guards to find them," James said.
Hendrix shrugged. "Guess it can't hurt. Go for it. Now leave."
"I'll need a screwdriver," James said. Hendrix grunted in a way James decided to interpret as yes. Hendrix started thumbing through a report.
James stood up and saluted. Hendrix gave a parody of a salute, and James turned to leave. Two MP's escorted him to Melville's cell.
Melville's cell was the same as every other cell; sparse, hot, and dank. It held the few pathetic possessions the resident had managed to keep.
James started at the top. The walls were all concrete, of course, but it was good to be thorough. He didn't see any signs of digging. The cell had the normal layer of dust up here; Melville hadn't been doing anything clever up here. He descended down, screwdriver in hand. He pried off the metal gasket that covered the gap between the wall and the pipe. He jammed a finger in the gap–nothing like the tolerances accepted in government work–and felt his way around. Nothing. He hammered the gasket back in place with the butt end of the screwdriver. The toilet got the same treatment. Nothing again. He opened the drain trap, which was not a popular spot. While the guards never checked it, it was hard to get your item back. A plug of nasty old hair almost blocked the pipe. He pulled it out–what long haired freak had lived here James thought–but it was nothing. He threw the cud on the ground with a muttered curse. The MP's were glaring at him, thinking they would have to clean it. James picked it up and flicked it into the trash.
He was starting to feel a mounting desperation to find something. Major Hendrix would laugh his balls off if he didn't find anything. He felt under the bed–nothing. He stabbed open the pillow. Nothing. The mattress was next, and the MP's eyes were bugging out of their head as he threw polyester wadding all over the cell. Two little baggies of meth. He recognized the grinning monkey on the sticker, and he tossed them to
the guards.
"Not Melville. Roger's been dead for weeks, but that's his stuff," James said as he turned to scan one last time. He was convinced there had to be something–but where? He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
'When I open my eyes, I will see the cell as the cell is. I will see every detail. I will assume nothing. I will not just see, I will observe.' He thought to himself. He inhaled slowly, and exhaled loudly. Again, ignoring the polyester fluff tickling his noise. Again. He opened his eyes.
A toothbrush. An almost empty tube of Crest. Splatter on the mirror from Melville spitting into the sink. A thin layer of yellow around the toilet. The oldest, nastiest pair of shoes he'd ever seen.
They should have smelled him after so long, or heard him, or just stumbled into him. It was miraculous. The man was sobbing in the corner as James grabbed his flashlight and scanned the basement. He was naked, except for a pair of nasty tennis shoes.
Those were the same shoes he had been wearing. They had been the only things he had been wearing. They were worn past all use, and he could have gotten a new pair–shoes and clothes were about the only thing they had too much of these days.
He reached for the shoes, and pulled out the insoles. Nothing. He snarled, then stopped himself. See what is. He turned the shoes over, and he noticed a gash on the inside heel of the left shoe. He stuck his finger in and hit a sharp edge. He grinned. Ingenious hiding place, James thought. He pulled it out. It was a folded Polaroid. He straightened it out and tried to see it.
He felt his brain seize up, like a blown transmission. His eyes saw, but he couldn't understand what he was looking at. It made no sense. Bizarre explanations zipped through his head–maybe the family had a terrible skin condition–maybe it was photoshopped somehow–maybe it was from the set of some movie–but he chewed his lip and worked through it. His brain started to come back together and he realized that the photo was what it was. He needed to adjust to it, because it wasn't going to adjust to him. He stared for a long time, and then turned to the MPs with tears in his eyes.
"Take me to him," he said, voice firm as the world shook.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Pistol Tick
Pete woke her up in the middle of the night. She woke with a cold dread. "They didn't make it to Fort Wineca did they?" she said.
Pete was taken aback. "They got ambushed on the way. A couple of guys got killed, but Tabitha and a few others are ok. A person named Meghan was in the car with your daughter, and they ended up going south and connecting with a guy down there. They're fine too."
Janet started crying. She was so relieved on the one hand, and felt so guilty to feel relieved on the other. Gary hadn't gotten good news. He'd just died in his sleep. But at least Diane was ok.
"Where is my daughter?" Janet demanded.
"Some guy, guess he's some kind of operative cause they wouldn't say much beyond that."
"Operative?"
"I can't tell you."
"What is all this secretive bullshit about? Who the fuck do you think I'm going to tell?" Janet snapped.
Pete raised an eyebrow and said, "I didn't use the word ambush by mistake. But that doesn't matter. I thought you'd want to know that your family is safe."
"But!"
"But nothing. I won't tell you to go to sleep, but I've already said more than I should."
"But where is Diane? Who is she with?" Janet demanded, voice raising and hitching with tears and frustration.
"Oh, I guess you won't believe this, but trust me–if they're with who I think they're with, they are infinitely safer than you or I tonight. Now that really is the end of it," Pete got up and left, ignoring her exclamations.
She twisted her blankets around and tried to be angry, but she couldn't sustain it. Diane was safe. The rest of them were safe. They had some cold war paranoia going on but who could blame them.
She snorted. Operative. Secrets. You never heard of Fort Wineca. Keeping secrets from a bunch of meatbags that couldn't understand a map if you gave them a four year course in cartography. Silly men playing silly men games. But they meant well enough.
She wouldn't have thought she would be able to sleep, but she could. Pete hadn't had the air of someone trying to bullshit her; he'd been truthful when he said that Diane was safer than they were. She was with Meghan. Meghan, the survival machine. If Meghan had been chased by hot-tubbing zombies, she wouldn't have collapsed in exhaustion in a shitty little house. She'd have found a way. With that thought in mind she drifted off for a few hours before being gently kicked awake by Pete.
The daily routine was for everyone to get one baby wipe to clean what they could, or maybe a hot washcloth and a bar of ivory soap if they had a fire. Propane was not to be wasted for something as frivolous as hygiene. Even though she felt dirty all the time, and her hair was a knotted and disgusting mess, it kept them clean enough.
They slept in the back of two of the trucks; campers. They slept on the tiny beds and on the floor, two in the cab, either on the bench seats or leaned back. Two men sat on the roof with compound bows with what they said was a "target illuminator" and night vision goggles. Every so often in the night a pale green light shined through the camper windows, and she could hear the thrum of a bow. Most of the time the zombie didn't even know they were there before it got shot. Tidying up for the day was quick; packing up the blankets took about as long as recovering the arrows in the daylight.
They were on the road as the sun peaked above the trees. Snow still clung to the ground, and a truck with a snowplow attached cleared a slow but steady path for them. Janet stared out the window and thought. They had told all their safe stories, it seemed like. Before stories brought up too many painful memories for casual conversation. After stories were usually too awful. So people kept to themselves, or flipped through whatever ragged books they had found along the way or managed to hold on to. Bibles and cheap grocery store paperbacks were common. Books were in libraries and people’s houses. It was difficult to convince anyone to break into a building populated by monsters to pick up a copy of Crime and Punishment. They made do with what could be found in places they did visit, like grocery stores or gas stations. Even though those places were ransacked of anything useful, people were ok with risking their lives to go there. Now that she thought about it, it didn't make any sense logically, but emotionally it did. The houses were private tombs. You weren't supposed to have fire fights in libraries. They weren't desperate enough to break the taboos. Yet. But food was growing thin. If they stayed out here much longer she would mention it. Maybe they just needed someone to say it out loud. She wouldn't have minded some Dickens.
She had been a regular church goer once, but it had never been a big thing for her. If you had asked her then how she would have responded to the things she had been through, she would have thought she'd have prayed all the time, or hated God for taking her child. She felt nothing either way. The only reason she even realized it was an issue was because of the fervent way some people read their Bibles. It reflected her apathy. She was puzzled by it. Many people, maybe most, were convinced that this was the End Times, and scoured the Bible for succor and hints of prophecy. The apocalypse had intensified their religious interest. The theological implications of what had happened were immense. She could see that, but she just couldn't care. She felt stunted somehow, but that didn't prevent conversations about souls and the Anti-Christ from boring her to tears.
What it boiled down to, she thought, was that it didn't matter. God or no God, she was going to do what she had to do to protect her remaining child as best she could. Whether Gary was in heaven or not, she would still grieve just as hard. Whether a zombie had the soul of the person it once was or was just a pile of disease, she would not let it bite her. She felt neither gratitude nor guilt for being alive. She didn't think she was so unique as to merit special treatment above the billions who had died. Nor did she fear death enough to think she was all that better off than those who had died.
Survive. Find Diane. Get her someplace safe. Then maybe she could care about higher meaning.
They stopped after a few hours and she got out in a hurry, barely remembering to sling her rifle behind her back. She had to pee so badly that she wet herself a little bit with every step. She hustled out to a copse of trees while undoing her pants. She sighed with relief as she squatted. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it, even the cold air. When she opened her eyes she noticed something strange–a long line of people marching three ranks deep into the trees half a mile away. She squinted, worried she was hallucinating. She hadn't seen that many people in one place since before. But there was something wrong about how they moved–and yet they were organized. She gaped, not quite making sense of what she was seeing.
It wasn't until the wind shifted and she heard the moans that she realized that line was zombies. They looked like soldiers on parade. She almost screamed, but it caught in her throat. She fell on her face and wrestled her pants up, getting snow both up her shirt and down her pants. Her breath was quick as she crawled back to the trucks. She hissed and waved at the men. The look on her face said more than anything else, and they were on alert immediately.
"How close?" Pete asked.
"Half a mile east. Thousands of them, all walking in a line."
"Walking in a line?" Pete asked, eyebrows scrunched together.
"Yes," Janet hissed. Pete crouched low and headed down to the copse. He pulled out a small pair of binoculars he always carried in a pocket and scanned. His crouch deepened as he looked, and he crawled back up to the trucks.