by Z. A. Recht
“And, thus,” said Sherman, thrusting the bar forward in a smooth motion. The pointed end of the bar speared the shambler through an eye socket. Sherman twisted the bar in his hands and yanked it free. The shambler stood frozen in place a moment, and slowly crumpled to the ground, motionless. “Next one’s yours.”
Hal grinned. “Hey, pretty clever. Much better than shooting at them on the run.” His spear thrust caught the second shambler above the bridge of its nose, caving it in. The force Hal put behind the blow wasn’t quite enough to punch through to its brain, however, and the shambler loomed up again. A second thrust penetrated with a sickening noise, and the undead attacker went down, crumpling to lie next to its companion in the grass outside the fence.
“Damn. Two tries,” muttered Hal. “Guess retirement’s no good for my muscles, eh?”
“You’ll get better,” Sherman said.
The pair regarded the corpses on the ground a moment longer. Sherman shook his head and grasped Hal’s shoulder, leading him away from the scene. Brewster and Krueger would be along to dispose of the infected corpses soon enough.
“So, where were we?” he asked. “You were telling me about landfall.”
Hal rubbed at the back of his neck. “Landfall. So it was myself, Commander Harris, and about twenty sailors who set out from the Ramage. Our thought was to follow the track you’d left us—straight inland, making a beeline for Omaha.”
“Makes sense.”
“That’s what we figured, too. We thought we might even catch up with you along the way. We lost a couple of good men in the woods before we hit the first town,” Hal sighed. “It’s hard to see where those running bastards are coming from when you can’t see more than ten feet in front of your face. Finally, we found some civilization.”
“Don’t tell me,” Sherman interrupted. “Hyattsburg.”
“Yeah, that’s the place,” said Hal.
“We nearly got wiped out in there,” Sherman said, going back over the events of months long past in his head. “If it wasn’t for Mbutu’s driving and Stiles’s running we could have all been carrier chow.”
“It was pretty quiet when we went through, Frank. Except for one thing.”
“Stiles.”
“You got it. He was hiding out in a store. Thought we were infected. Shot at us a couple of times before we realized he was one of us. A few of us shot back.”
Sherman whistled. “You want to talk about luck—that’s luck. Imagine accidentally shooting the one guy we know of who’s immune to the Morningstar strain.”
“We’d have felt pretty foolish.”
“Anyway,” Sherman said, replacing the bloodied tamp bar, gore side planted firmly in the earth, against the Fac’s outer wall.
“Anyway, what?”
“Anyway, what happened after Hyattsburg?”
“Smooth sailing, General,” Hal said. “We made it from Oregon all the way through the Rocky Mountains without so much as a skirmish. Thought things were settling down. We walked a lot, but here and there we found a vehicle or two that could get us a few miles down the road before giving out. We made good time. We even stopped in Abraham.”
Something about Hal’s tone bothered Sherman. “I take it that the smooth sailing didn’t last?”
Hal nodded. “Just happened, three, four days ago. There was a dozen of us left then, most of the way here. Lost three on a bridge, then a couple of civilians where we picked up Stone and a couple of vehicles.”
Sherman stayed silent during Hal’s retelling of what happened at the military history museum, his face set hard when he heard of Ron and Katie’s deaths.
“And last night, we were nine, maybe ten miles from here. Harris thought it would be a good idea to hole up for the night and wait until the sun was out again before we risked the city. You know how those infected bastards like the shade. We were in a pretty good spot. Trees all around. Thought they would block us from prying eyes, you know? We even got a little fire going to get some hot food in us. That might have been our mistake.”
Sherman listened intently.
“For the first couple of hours, everything was calm. We had guards watching out for us, of course. I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine, and then . . . chaos. They were in us, among us. Sprinters at first, but then shamblers, too, drawn in by the gunshots and screams. They came in from every direction, right out of the trees. It was chaos. Panic. At first we tried to drive them off, but one by one we broke and ran. It felt hopeless to stay.”
“Are you four the only survivors?” asked Sherman.
“I don’t know,” Hal admitted. “We all went off in different directions. I saw one guy—couldn’t tell who it was, in the darkness—throw down his gun so he could get away faster. Like I said, it was pure panic. Maybe some of them made it. Maybe none of them. I just don’t know.”
Sherman kept his face a carefully controlled mask, but felt his shoulders sag. The sailors from the naval destroyer had fought their way across half a continent to deliver Stiles to Omaha, only to be butchered in the final hours of their journey. Frank remembered many of their faces from the time he had spent on the Ramage, and their bravery when confronted with an infection on board. They were good men, and they would be missed.
The practical side of Sherman’s mind reminded him also that the reinforcements would have been a welcome addition to the Fac’s defenses. All of the survivors were weakened by the loss.
“This Stone fellow. Is he a good hand?”
Hal nodded. “Oh, yeah. It took us a little while to get used to the idea of having him with us, but he’s a good man to have at your back. He doesn’t complain and he’ll shoot the ass off a gnat with that M-16.”
The pair of old soldiers paced slowly across the Fac’s yard, moving far enough from the freshly dispatched shamblers to avoid their stomach-churning stench. They stopped near a steel carport that abutted the Fac’s rear wall. Hal leaned his back against one of the vehicles, a large utility truck painted in flat woodland camouflage, a mottled mix of dark green, brown, and black. He looked past Sherman, through the fence and out at the city beyond.
Hal sighed. “Hell, Stiles and I got lucky twice in the past day: first when we got away from that ambush, and again when we ran into you. We might have spent a week searching this place, otherwise. So if there are any survivors left out there, I doubt they’ll be looking. Most of us had radios, but they were short-range jobs, one, maybe two miles, tops.”
“We have the same problem.” Sherman clenched his jaw. “We could try radioing every quarter hour or so, but it’s a big city. They could walk right past us, just out of range, and never know how close they were.”
Hal grinned. He pointed across the Fac’s yard, outside the fence, to the squat metal dispatcher hut that sat in the corner of the industrial yard. Its rusted antenna perched atop. “All the more reason to get that radio tower up and running again. Just needs some juice, and a little tender, loving care.”
“I’m afraid juice is something we’re in short supply of here. All those solar panels on the roof of the Fac barely power Anna’s BL4 lab and our infirmary. We’re on strict power rationing.”
Hal nodded as Sherman spoke. “I’ll see what I can do about that. You know, electrifying this fence you have wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”
“Are you hearing me, Dorne?” asked Sherman, glancing sideways at the retired tank mechanic. “We just don’t have the power.”
“I’m hurt, Frank. I thought you knew me,” Hal said, frowning. “You know, I once built a boat out of a golf cart, a ceiling fan, one thousand six hundred empty plastic bottles, and a lawn mower engine. Trust me, Frank, I can make this place tick again.”
Sherman laughed out loud at Hal, but admitted that the retired tank mechanic had a way with machinery. “All right, Hal. What did you have in mind?”
Hal looked Sherman straight in the eye. “Well, are there any parking garages around here?”
The Fac’s back door c
langed open, revealing a short man with a runner’s build, short, straight black hair, and a smear of flour on his cheek. It was Mitsui, the Japanese contractor, gesturing at the pair in the courtyard. His English was almost nonexistent after Hyattsburg. Each of the survivors in their turn had tried to pry the reason why from the contractor, and they all had failed.
“Dinner ready!”
“Oh, yeah,” said Hal, rubbing at his stomach. “Haven’t eaten since last night.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. We’ve been getting used to canned food. Nothing gourmet,” warned Sherman.
“At this point, I’d eat a rat. You know, my grandfather said that during dub-dub-one they’d barbecue rats in the trenches and—”
“Oh, God, stop it, Hal,” said Sherman with a groan. “I barely have an appetite as it is.”
Hal looked hurt. “I was going to say they ended up better than the food the Army mess served. But all right. I’ll shut my trap.”
Boisterous laughter drifted down the Spartan halls of the Fac as Hal and Sherman made their way to the break room, now serving double duty as kitchen and mess hall. Apparently, the meal was well under way.
The pair turned the corner into the squarish room with its round folding tables and single, boarded-up window. Glances in their direction meant the occupants noticed the new arrivals. Only one diner reacted differently. Command Sergeant Major Thomas shot to his feet, shouting, “Group, atten-HUT!”
With a chorus of grumbles, the diners turned back to their meals, indifferent to the command. Thomas’s eyes drifted from person to person, daggers in his stare.
“All right,” said Sherman. “Let’s make this official. Thomas, I hereby order you to disregard all military decorum. We are civilians.”
Thomas, grumbling a few choice words of his own, settled back down to his plate. “Yes, sir.” A moment later a thought struck him. “But I’ll still stand up when you walk into a room, sir.”
Sherman fought back a grin and pretended to ignore the remark.
He and Hal grabbed paper plates from a countertop and helped themselves to the meal Mitsui and Jack had cooked up. It wasn’t anything special. Pasta, with something red that passed for sauce, sans meat, and a spoonful of creamed corn. A Styrofoam cup of plain water completed the meal.
“God,” said Denton, tossing down his fork. “I know we’re not supposed to say anything if the food is bad, because none of us was a chef before the shit hit the fan and it’s bad for morale and all, but I have to say: I’ve had better Italian food in fucking Texas. Jack. Mitsui. Damn you both for this travesty.”
“This isn’t Italian,” said Juni, a greenish pallor on her face. “This is American egg noodles with ketchup. It’s horrible.”
“Don’t knock it. It has the calories. Eat up, people,” Sherman said, digging in with gusto. “Never say no to a hot meal. Take it from a guy who spent two months eating raw C-rats.”
“You ate sea rats?” Juni made a face. “God, gross.”
“C-rats,” Sherman repeated, frowning. “C-rations. Canned food.”
“Oh.”
To Hal, it was obvious which survivors had once been military and those who had never been in the service. The ex-Army men and sailors dug in with gusto, powering through their nearly flavorless helpings. The civilians—Denton and Juni among them—picked at their food, wary.
“I don’t think I can eat this stuff much longer,” Juni said. “God, I want . . . you know what I want? I just want some plain steamed rice in a bowl. That’s all. Nothing much. And my grandmother’s tempura, but not the way my grandmother made it—the way my mother made it. And—”
“Yeah, and I’d like a twenty-ounce New York strip steak. Doesn’t mean we’re gonna get it,” Denton said.
“You want to know the trick?” said Krueger around a mouthful of pasta. His plate was nearly empty.
“Trick?” asked Juni, arching an eyebrow.
“Don’t use your tongue. Just chew off to the side and then swallow. That way, you don’t have to taste it.”
“It’s true,” added Brewster. He was scraping the last bits of pasta from his otherwise clean plate. “Works the same way with MREs.”
“That’s where we got our practice in,” added Krueger, with a grin. “Don’t want to taste the cat food? Don’t taste the cat food. Simple as that.”
“Ugh, now you’re eating cat food?” Juni’s voice took on a quiver.
Brewster and Krueger burst out laughing. Even Sherman had a smile on his lips.
“Not cat food. But you crack open one of those MREs, guess what you smell?” Krueger asked.
“Cat food,” answered Brewster, picking up for Krueger. “It smells just like cat food.”
“Better than the four fingers of death,” Krueger said, referring to the MREs that came packed with four finger-sized frankfurters. He forked another helping of pasta into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and continued. “Damn near inedible.”
Brewster pushed his plate away, sated, and took a long, slow look around the room. “Looks like we’re missing a few people. Where’s Stiles, Anna, Mason, and Becky?”
“Stiles was by earlier. He’s taking food down to the labs for Anna and Becky. Mason’s resting in his room, keeping an eye on Harris.”
“How’re they doing?” asked Krueger.
“Coming along,” said Sherman. “Mason still seems a little off his feet. Don’t blame him. A pair of bullets will do that.”
“Oh, I wasn’t knocking him, just—”
“Figure another week or two and he’ll be good as new,” Sherman went on, ignoring Brewster’s interjection. “He’ll be fine. I’m more worried about Anna and her research. Stiles’s blood is a ‘quantum leap’ forward for her. I’m hoping for good news, and soon.”
“All of us are,” said Denton, upending a salt shaker on his plate. “Can you even imagine? A vaccine? We could save what’s left of the human race.”
Struck by a thought, Sherman changed the topic. “Out of curiosity, who’s up on guard duty tonight?”
Thomas’s gruff voice answered. “That’d be me and you, sir.”
“That’s ‘you and I,’” corrected Juni, around a mouthful of pseudo-pasta. Thomas ignored her.
Sherman shrugged. “Thought it was getting close to my turn.”
Denton wiped his mouth and raised his hand. “Point of order, Frank.”
“What is it?”
“We’ve got enough food from this run and the one a couple of days ago to last us about a week. Maybe—while it’s quiet out there—we should try for another run, see if we can scavenge up a surplus.”
Sherman considered the thought for a moment, and finally decided Denton was right. “Good call.”
“Get while the getting’s good,” Denton said. “You didn’t fully clear out that store you hit, right? What was it?”
“The Dollar Stretcher.”
“Let’s hit it again, and scratch a few other addresses off our list while we’re at it,” said Denton.
“Good thinking,” Sherman said. “I suppose you never know when some infected will decide to change venues.”
Denton nodded. “They do seem to move around a lot at night. Could end up anywhere by the time the sun comes back up.”
“Right now, it’s a ghost town,” Thomas said. “We’ve cleared out most or all of the infected within a four-block radius, but we’re still playing Russian roulette every time we go out there.”
Sherman nodded. “That’s a risk. But then, everything we do outside the Fac is risky. Denton, it’s a good idea. We’ll run with it. Get two runs out of the way so we won’t have to worry about it for a while.”
“It’s your show, Frank.”
Sherman frowned. “It’s our show. We’re all in this together.”
“Figure of speech, Frank.”
“Well, that’ll do it for me,” said Sherman, tossing down his plastic fork. “I’m full.”
“Anything on the docket for entertainment tonight?”
asked Denton.
“It’s Juni’s turn,” Frank said, pointing at her.
The slight Japanese girl brightened at the mention of her name. “Shadow puppets! I’ve been working on it all week!”
The rationed electricity didn’t allow the survivors the luxury of television, and so they had made do with improvisational presentations, taking turns, much as they did for guard shifts.
“Should I get set up?” asked Juni.
“Sure,” said Denton. “At this point a mime show would entertain me.”
“Hey, are you knocking my puppets?” Juni said, faux-hurt filling her voice.
“Not at all,” said Denton, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying any entertainment is good entertainment these days.”
QM3 Allen eyed Private Brewster. “Is there any liquor around here? I need to get blind drunk for shadow puppets.”
Brewer looked back. “Race you,” he whispered.
“Well,” Hal said, “as promising as shadow puppets sounds, I think I might spend the night at the dispatcher station. I’ve got flashlights and batteries; all I need are some tools.”
Mitsui the contractor stood at this and hurried out of the room.
“I might go with you,” Stone said. “Helping the elderly might ease my way into Heaven.”
Hal’s eyes narrowed at Stone. “When did you develop a sense of humor?”
Stone shrugged as Mitsui came back into the room with a Fluke multimeter and a small, red, hard plastic case. He presented them to Hal with a quick bow.
Hal, taken aback a bit, returned the bow and took the tools. Inside the red case was a set of screwdrivers in different sizes and heads, as well as a small ratchet set.
“Thank you,” he said to the Japanese contractor.
“We’d better go,” Stone said, rising. “Before the sun goes down. You ready?”
With a nod, Hal stood also and winked at Thomas.
“Hold on, old-timer,” the grizzled sergeant said. “Best take a walkie-talkie with you. Never know.”
