The Sword of Saint Michael

by D C P Fox

  “I can drag you into the van.”

  He spit out blood and gave a soft laugh, rolling his eyes. “You can try. Maybe you have super-zombie strength.”

  Despite his weight, she resolved to get him into the van. She was stronger from being a half-draugar. Who knows? She grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him toward the rear of the van while he kept his head up off the asphalt, but she realized she had no chance of lifting him into it. Maybe she was weak from having recently been dead. Maybe even being a half-draugar wasn’t enough.

  But she would try anyway. She opened the barn doors and climbed in the rear of the van.

  “Meeow.”

  There was Janice’s cat, still in its carrier.

  The cat could wait.

  She reached down and grabbed Vin by the armpits, but she couldn’t get his head up to the floor of the van. She set him back down again and tried to help him up one last time, but his arms and legs were too weak.

  Frustrated and devastated, she desperately thought about what to do for him. One option would be to leave him by the side of the road, and perhaps people from Colorado Springs would be able to get him into the van?

  But they had never encountered anyone from Colorado Springs. Would they even roam this far? Would it be worth it to them? And given he bled internally, how much longer could he live without medical treatment?

  Rescuing Vin from death seemed a super long shot.

  Except . . . “There’s one last thing I can try.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I can give you some of my blood.”

  He chuckled. “I thought . . . you’d suggest that.” He winced again.

  “You wanted me to try it on Janice and Emily.”

  He nodded and sighed, then coughed and spit out more blood.

  “Hell . . . I always wanted.” Deep breath, cough. “To be a zombie.”

  “You might become like me. That’s the hope.”

  “I know . . . go ahead, try it . . . before I change . . . oof!”

  She thought about the risk of him becoming a draugar. What would he do to her? Would he leave her alone, as Alexander guessed? She felt responsible enough for Vin’s fate that she would accept the risk.

  She would need something sharp, like her knife on her multitool, and to her surprise she found it on her belt. The marauders must have never touched her body, and so her multitool was hidden from their view.

  She slashed her arm and wiped her fingers over the wound, placing some blood on Vin’s gunshot wound and in his mouth.

  “Swallow,” she said.

  He did as directed and grimaced.

  “I’m so tired . . . and so cold.”

  “Don’t pass out on me.”

  “It’ll either work . . . or it . . .”

  He closed his eyes, and his head fell to the side. She felt a faint pulse.

  Now what should she do? The wind picked up, and she shivered. She went into the partial shelter of the van to think. By now darkness had set in. She had two choices: try to rescue her companions from whatever the marauders had in mind for them; or press on to Colorado Springs and maybe be a human guinea pig for their military research. In either case, she might have the wherewithal to send some people back for Vin, but Colorado Springs seemed her best bet for both him and her new friends. Who knows? Maybe the military could rescue them all.

  First, she needed to revive the van. She exited out the side door, walked around to the driver’s door, and climbed into the driver’s seat. She pressed on the brake and hit the start button.

  Nothing happened.

  Shit.

  Then she realized she didn’t have the key fob. Vin must have it.

  She exited out the van, walked back to Vin’s body, and found the key fob in the right front pocket of his sweat pants. With the key fob, she got the engine to start. However, now the flat tire indicator illuminated. She inspected all the tires, fumbling around in the dark. She located the flat tire and discovered a bullet hole. Damn.

  Changing a tire in the dark seemed like a daunting task. She put that off now to take inventory of what she had. She turned on the inside lights and the heat to add a little warmth to the chill air blowing in through the shattered windows.

  “Meeow.” Right. The cat. Realizing that the cat hadn’t eaten in a while, she looked around for its food and spied the bag in the back corner behind the third row of seats. The marauders must not be desperate enough to take cat food. She took a handful and pushed the food through the holes in the cat carrier door. The cat started eating and purring. What was the cat’s name again?

  She inspected the rest of the van’s interior and found, to her amazement, that the marauders had left her sword where she had placed it—in its shoulder harness underneath the second row bench seat. What luck they had missed it! Or maybe they didn’t see the value in it. Either way, a little hope entered Jocelyn’s heart and soul.

  She discovered she couldn’t find the map she needed to direct her to Colorado Springs. Even if she continued on to Bullhead City, and risked running into the marauders, she didn’t know the road to take from there. But she remembered that she would have to backtrack to at least North Valley to get there while avoiding Bullhead City.

  As suspected, the marauders had taken her backpack which contained her haloperidol and other atypical antipsychotic medication she and Alexander had raided.

  She was without medication, and there was none of hers in Beaver Park anymore.

  She was also hungry, though not enough to eat cat food.

  But she knew where she could get a map and food—Clinton. And it was up the same road she was on now. As far as medication, maybe there would be a pharmacy along the way to Colorado Springs? But if she didn’t see one, she wouldn’t stop—she didn’t want to waste any time getting to Colorado Springs.

  This all assumed she could figure out how to change the flat tire.

  She found the flat-tire kit under the back of the van and the van’s operator manual in the glove compartment. She began the described procedure, but she got tripped up when she couldn’t identify where to place the jack.

  Vin was dying, her friends were missing, and Colorado Springs lay within her reach, but she just couldn’t revive the van until morning.

  She was exhausted anyway. She thought that being dead and then unconscious would give her plenty of rest, but that was not the case. The cold night would have to be spent in the van, and Vin would have to spend it out in the elements. Well, he was going to anyway, wasn’t he? It would just take longer now to get him help.

  She checked on Vin one more time. He was unchanged.

  She shut the barn doors to the van from the outside, then climbed in and slid the side door shut, stretching out on the third row bench seat. Chill wind blew through the shattered windows. As she fell asleep, with only her blood-stained clothes to keep her warm, she glimpsed the almost full moon rising, reminding her that God looked over them, that he had a mission for her, that her purpose was to sacrifice her life to save the world.

  But what if it got below freezing overnight? What if Vin turned into a draugar? She might not wake up . . .

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Day Ten

  The “tattoo parlor,” if someone could call it that, was in an ordinary garage in an ordinary small house. Captain Brien and his men looked bored as they guarded Alexander, Marty, Janice, and Emily in the open garage. Brien handed papers to the skinhead in prisoner smocks sitting down on a stool next to a reclined chair. Alexander recognized them as the ones The Führer had given to Brien earlier.

  It was easy for Alexander or anyone to guess that at least all three adults would get a swastika on their foreheads.

  “You won’t tattoo the little girl, will you?” Alexander asked.

  “Who are you addressing, Slave Williams?” Brien asked.

  “Er . . . both of you?”

  “Both of you, Sir. Remember to address everyone properly.”

  “I�
�m sorry, Sir. I hope Slave Schumer needs no branding?”

  “Yes, she does,” Brien said. “Those are The Führer’s orders. You wouldn’t dare question his orders, would you, Slave Williams?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Okay,” said the skinhead on the stool. He got up and disappeared out the garage door and around to the side of the house. Several seconds later, the soft purring of a gasoline motor, coming somewhere from outside the garage, started up.

  The skinhead came back. “Who’s first?”

  “I am,” Brien said as he walked over to lie in the reclined chair. Alexander noted that Brien’s existing tattoo on his forehead—a swastika plus a vertical line crossed by two horizontal lines to the right as you faced him—was so sloppy an amateur must have drawn it. Alexander assumed the real tattoo artist was now a zombie, and Alexander wondered when the zombie and the others would return to Bullhead City. Brien grimaced in pain while the other skinhead added another vertical line, this time to the left of the swastika, followed soon by two crossing horizontal lines. Laver’s turn came next, the new Corporal, Alexander remembered. He already had a vertical line to the right of his tattoo, and the “artist” crossed it with two horizontal lines.

  Alexander was to be the first one of them branded a slave. As the artist started to draw the swastika, Alexander worried about what others he encountered would think. Would people understand it had been done against his will? He doubted it. He wouldn’t.

  And it was very painful. In fact, he was being tortured. They all would be, including sweet little Emily.

  A half-mile northwest of the tattoo parlor was Saint Joseph’s Hospital where they left Janice and Emily. Janice was to assist Doctor Venkat Patel, who was a prison doctor prior to the apocalypse.

  Marty and Alexander were escorted by Brien and his men to the Berman Pharmacy, the well-known national chain store, one mile southeast from the hospital. Four skinheads with assault rifles and holstered handguns guarded the pharmacy entrance. The highest ranking guard Brien called “Corporal,” the same title as Laver. After the obligatory “Sieg Heils” and introductions, they were brought into the pharmacy, where they met a white man in his fifties, maybe sixty, with very short gray hair. Short, 5’6” tops, but fit with good muscle tone, he donned a white lab coat, and his swastika tattoo was adorned by two vertical lines to the left, with two crossing horizontal lines. He carried a handgun in a holster.

  “Sieg Heil! Colonel,” Brien saluted.

  “Sieg Heil! Captain,” the pharmacist saluted back.

  “These slaves are a pharmacist and his assistant.”

  “Oh?”

  “Here are your orders from the Führer.” Brien handed the pharmacist his paperwork. “They’re somewhere in the middle of the page.”

  The pharmacist read it over and looked genuinely surprised. “Holy shit, what luck, man! We’ve captured a real bona fide pharmacist? Are you an actual pharmacist? You worked in a drug store and everything?”

  “In the flesh,” Alexander added, a hint of pride showing. Then he quickly added, “Sir.”

  The pharmacist scowled. “Hell, I don’t like all this ‘Sir’ bullshit.” Then he seemed to remember Brien was in the room. “Still, you’ll address me as such.”

  “All right,” Brien said. “My men and I will go back on patrol. Slave Williams, Slave Scoggins, you attack the Colonel in any way, you two, the woman, the child, will all be executed. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Marty and Alexander said in unison.

  Brien sighed. “I like this slave thing, don’t you Colonel?”

  “Yes. Very . . . efficient. Good to see the shoe on the other foot.“

  Once Brien was gone, the pharmacist said, “I’m Nicholas Lockett. You can call me Nick when the others are not around. Otherwise, I guess it’s Sir. Anyway, either of you religious?”

  “Um . . . yes,” Marty said. “I’m Presbyterian.”

  “I’m Catholic,” Alexander said.

  “Do you think we’re living in The End Times?” Nick said with a gleam in his eye.

  “Uh . . . I don’t know about that,” Marty said.

  “I mean we break out of prison, only to find the entire town deserted. Phones don’t work. Electricity’s out. And stories about crazy people raised from the dead. Sure sounds like the end.”

  “So you never saw one of these ‘Crazies’ yourself?” Alexander asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll come back?” Alexander asked.

  “We got plenty of weapons.” He patted his handgun.

  “I see,” Marty said. Marty wondered how long this group could last with the zombies as a threat, the Hispanics and the African-Americans looming out there, along with possibly the military over in Colorado Springs.

  Chapter Forty

  Day Ten

  Jocelyn woke up shivering several times in the middle of the night as a bitter, cold wind blew through the broken windows of the van. She decided to use meditation to help her endure the cold. She was a shaman, after all, and should put what she’d learned to good use. Working hard to ignore the chill, she put herself into the relaxed state necessary for good meditation, good self-hypnosis, but she could still feel the effects of the cold wind on her body when she started to count down to meditation, and, once in the meditative state, she focused on her breath alone. Thoughts crept in—she had many worries—but she could direct those thoughts gently away.

  She woke up sitting in an upright position, realizing she had fallen asleep during her meditation, as she had hoped. She stirred and found her back sore and stiff. Although in a lot of pain, she twisted her body and stuck her head out of the shattered window next to her. The hill on the van’s right side obscured her view of the sun. Her watch read a little past 10:30.

  Struggling through the back pain, she checked on Vin. He still lay where she had left him, a pool of liquid originating from under the van collecting against his body. As she approached Vin’s body, she smelled the liquid—gasoline.

  The van was leaking gasoline.

  She knelt down in the pool and checked Vin for a pulse. There was none, and he was ice cold to the touch.

  Vin Scoggins was dead.

  She sighed, made the sign of the cross, and said a prayer to Santa Muerte. She knew trying to communicate with him would be futile because he would only remember the past few hours, and he either was unconscious all that time, or just lying here, dying. She shuddered at that last thought. If, however, he were to become a spirit guide, then she could meditate and get more out of him, but the odds of him becoming a spirit guide, and that quickly, were just about zero.

  Instead, she sat there and waited for her back pain to subside. A few minutes later, she dragged Vin’s body to the side of the road. Then she climbed under the van to examine the damage to the undercarriage. She found the slow leak from the gas tank but everything else looked fine.

  She had nothing to repair the leak with, and she turned on the ignition to verify that it still started. It did, but the fuel gauge read about a quarter tank, enough to get her to Clinton. She then switched off the engine and changed the tire with a growing sense of urgency while more and more of the precious gasoline leaked onto the ground. Once she completed the repair, she was ready to hit the road. She pondered whether or not to bury Vin’s body, and she realized with the gas leak, and no shovel, that it would take too much time. Leaving him there felt so disrespectful, but she rationalized to herself that if she got to Colorado Springs, then she could come back for his body and give him a proper burial, maybe even at this Peterson Base.

  The driver’s door was opposite his body. As she turned the corner of the front of the van, she glanced one last time at his body.

  At least he was now at peace.

  She climbed into the van’s driver’s seat, turned on the engine, and put it into drive. She felt like such a horrible person leaving him like that as she pulled away from the scene.

  It took
about forty-five minutes to reach the crossroads that led to the cabin. It seemed like the distant past since she had been there, but it had only been two days. She went into the country store only to find it cleaned out. Maybe some largish organization, like the survivalists, had come through here, and she realized she should be on the lookout for them.

  She remembered the stash of food she and Marty had buried in the back behind the storage sheds, and she was vigilant as she went back to it. She saw no one.

  Without a shovel, she had to dig by hand, but the dirt was still loose. She gathered up her bag containing the protein bars and the bag of almonds. Fortunately, the bags had not broken open. Ravenous, she ate one bar, and it took the edge off. She stashed the rest in the van. Finally, she retrieved maps of Beaver Park and Colorado from the realtor.

  Now where would she go? She could go back south and get to Colorado Springs that way, or she could try I-70 to the North, hitting I-25 going south. She guessed the rural roads would be less jammed, and so far, they hadn’t been jammed.

  But her van would most likely run out of fuel before Colorado Springs. And she could get food from the supermarket, and a van from the rental car lot, in Beaver Park, which was only ten miles to the North.

  So, on to Beaver Park.

  Heading toward Beaver Park, the opposite side of the road was mostly clear; when she encountered a vehicle in her way, which happened a few times, she nudged it out of the way with the van. But by the time she reached the center of town, the van ran out of gas. She took out her map and saw the rental car place was two to three miles up the road. Piece of cake.

  She would have to leave the cat in the van. The unhappy cat had meowed the entire way. Jocelyn had never taken care of a cat before, but she was sure with the windows smashed open it could last at least a few hours in the cat carrier. She put a small amount of food inside the carrier with the cat as she smelled the strong odor of shit and cat urine. She could let her out, but where would she go? Hunting mice, perhaps? Still, Jocelyn would be right back for her, so remaining in her carrier was probably her best chance of survival.