This Dark Earth

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Something is on top of my legs, crushing them. I can see a square of light above. A window of the cab is exposed to the air, and, right now, there are no zeds trying to climb in.

  Another moan and I’m able to differentiate my moans from Klein’s. Mine are the moans of the still living.

  His are the moans of the dead.

  I don’t have much time.

  But my pistol is still here, strapped to what’s left of my leg.

  I won’t shamble. I won’t. I’ll take myself out before that can happen.

  But first, I’ll give Klein the release he deserves.

  He was a good engineer.

  7

  THIS DARK EARTH

  A burning light pierces the sky. It’s happened before, in the few drills Wallis allowed, but there’s nothing to compare it to now, with the slavers finally approaching.

  Above the south ridge, in the dark of early morning, the signal flares arc hot phosphorescent blue, throwing multiple, long shadows from the men on the Wall.

  Rector sounds the alarm, a steady series of bleats from a canned-air horn until the air gives out, like the end of some macabre football game, while Gus, with his one good hand, furiously yanks the cord to the alarm bell in the motor pool.

  “To arms! To arms!” The call comes from many men and women along the length of the bridge.

  They erupt from tents in the military quarter and farther away, from the inner span of Bridge City, all racing to preordained positions, slipping headknockers into belts and weapons into holsters. Many shrug on their motorcycle helmets and whatever piecemeal Kevlar they have left. The men from the G Unit clank and clatter in full battle rattle, Kevlar vests, M-16s, grenades, the full fucking monty.

  Underneath the wavering light, the scouts, having discharged their flares, run through the open killing fields—the Dead Mile—toward the ramparts. Wallis stalks like a lion from his tent, cursing and looking as though he wants to throttle someone, a not-so-rare sight since the loss of Broadsword and the train. Gus dashes down the battlement steps to meet him.

  “This is it, Lieutenant.” Wallis doesn’t balk at Gus’s use of his former rank. “What we’ve been waiting for.”

  Wallis squints at the young man. “We knew they were coming.” He turns and stomps up the steps to the battlements. “Howe, get those gates open and the Bradley into the open to maneuver. Take out the few zeds currently at the gate. What’s the status at the north watch?”

  Howe, a slight, studious man with glasses, barks, “No signal. All’s well. A light crew accounted for.” He spits a string of orders at a boy. The child nods and races off.

  “What about the children? The women?”

  “We’re here!” This from Sarah. And at the edge of the Wall, Wendy waits, bristling with guns and headknockers.

  “That information is coming, sir. They’ve drilled for this.”

  Wallis snags Rector by the arm, tugs him around.

  “Get the doctor and Knock-Out. Make sure they board a boat. This is your sole duty. Understood? At gunpoint if you have to.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” He salutes, even though he was never in the G Unit.

  Gus stops him and says, quietly, “Make sure Barb is there too, will you, Rector?”

  Rector nods once. Salutes.

  When Gus turns around, Keb stands at his side, grinning.

  “We here, then, Lil P? Huh?”

  “Yeah.” Gus pokes at Keb with his stump. An awkward pat. “We’re here. Until it’s over.”

  “It’s cool, man. We gonna take care of this.” Then, at the sky and clouds, he yelps, “Posted at the trap, motherfuckers!”

  “Right,” Gus says. He turns away and yells, “You! Smetana! Get the other snipers on the Wall ready. They’ll be coming at first light.”

  “Or sooner.” Keb looks up at the halogen lights, bright white and luminous, running from the ever-turning gennies below. “Sitting fucking ducks, P.”

  “Once everyone is in position and under cover, make sure their juice is cut.”

  Keb grins, his lip turning down in amusement. “Yassah, boss. I’s do ’zactly what you say.”

  “Jesus, Keb. Do you have to pull that shit now?” Gus’s one hand clenches tight and presses into the Kevlar armor on his leg.

  The other man blinks and shakes his head. “No. Guess not, man.”

  Gus looks down at the space where his hand once was—a quizzical little pause, as if judging his body’s weakness or testing his resolve—then up at the lights and then the Wall. “This might be the end of all things. I don’t want to go out on a bad note with you.”

  Keb considers Gus, his height, his broad shoulders, his raw adolescent wildness in contrast with his gray, old man’s face. He grabs Gus’s stump, pulls it up between them—a reminder, a promise. “Lil P, you ain’t going out here. My job is to keep you from shambling.”

  “And me you, Keb. And me you.” Their eyes lock, man and half man, half boy, and in the moment each knows what the other is thinking. Then Keb releases the stump, smiles, and says, “I’ll take care of the lights, P. Sho’ ’nuff.”

  Gus takes the steps up to the battlements by threes, past the new brick and cement work, past heaps of sandbags, until he’s at Wallis’s side.

  Wallis, staring into the half-light of dawn, flexes and unflexes his hands, as if in preparation for a fistfight. His hair has grayed at his ears and around the back, so that his head is laureled with white. He’s dressed in fatigues and a green tee. Gus looks at him, and the way the men still look to him, and sees the rankless general before the battle.

  “They’ll come to the ridge but no farther. They want us, our people. They’ll do what they can to convince us to surrender. Failing that, they’ll kill as many of us as they need to convince the rest to give in. They’ve got to have at least a mega-damily on their tail. An army that size on the move will draw a lot of dead.”

  “We’ll make them wait as long as we can. They’ll be taking heat from the rear, most definitely.”

  “Need time to get the families and children out, down to the docks.”

  Gus nods, knowing all this, but it’s important it’s stated. There’s a nervous energy to the man, understandably, and rehashing plans and repeating orders has become the litany of Bridge City and the remains of the old army unit. To bolster their courage, to keep the men focused. He can see scared expressions on the citizens of Bridge City, wide eyed and white knuckled, holding hunting rifles and shotguns, standing nervously. He looks over the fortified parapet, down to the cluster of zombies below at the gates, twenty or thirty strong.

  “Yes. That’s what we’ll do. Keep them still, waiting at the gate.”

  Wallis nods. They watch as the scouts and ridge watchmen race through the Dead Mile toward the Wall.

  “Howe!” Wallis’s voice cuts through the clatter of weapons and armor. “Goddamn it, I said to take out the fucking zeds at the gate!”

  Beneath them, a motor hums and the steel doors rattle back on greased rollers. The shamblers come through, into the murderhole, moaning. The waiting Bradley coughs and sputters and ratchets up to move after three years dormant with only maintenance checks every fortnight.

  The gunfire, when it comes, sounds like rain on a galvanized barn roof, sporadic and tinny. The moaning stops, corpses drop, and the Bradley spews white smoke into the half-light, rolling over fallen shamblers into the Dead Mile. The smoke hugs the barren earth, floating east, downriver, and disappearing into the far trees.

  “Wallis!” Rector trudges up the steps, breathing heavy. “They won’t go. Refused and laughed when I pulled my gun.”

  Wallis curses under his breath.

  Gus asks, “What about Ellie? The women? They at the docks?”

  “Women’s quarter is empty, and the north Wall secure. Barb has Ellie with Joblo and the engineers at the dock, awaiting the order to scuttle. But Knock-Out and Doc Ingersol aren’t leaving. They instructed me to alert you that they’ll be here shortly, befor
e the sun.”

  Gus jumps into the murderhole, among surprised men in Kevlar, and runs north.

  Outside their tent, he stops, controls his breathing. Looking back the length of the bridge, past the new growth in the Garden, Gus sees the twin stars of halogens over the motor pool and murderhole, new flares arcing over the Dead Mile, the sky lightening, roseate, like fingers stretching themselves against the vault of heaven.

  He stops, listening.

  “No, I can’t let you.” She’s crying, a sound so foreign to his ears that it takes him a while to identify it.

  “I won’t run. And this is something I can give to Gus. To Ellie. Give to everyone in Bridge City who will follow him,” says Knock-Out. He coughs, and shadows shift in the small dome of tenting. “And they will follow him. This will mean something. For you. For Gus. It will make your position stronger.”

  The sound of her voice pulls at Gus. He’s never heard her sound this way before, even after the Big Turnover.

  “Will Wallis follow? If he . . . balks, no one else will. Does he know about this?”

  “He knows. Or suspects.”

  “No . . . it’s just a piece of metal. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It will mean something. It already means something to the monster driving the slavers. But I will give it more meaning, our meaning, for our people. By what I do . . .”

  She sobs. The tent rustles. “We can go downstream, baby, get more chemo and beat this. I can beat this.”

  He imagines her thumping Knock-Out’s chest in desperation.

  “It’s won, Luce. I died in the fire. The fire where we met. And I’ll never regret it.”

  He’s kissing her now, Gus knows. There were years, years when he was ambivalent and even resentful of this brute, this bear that mated itself to his mother, supplanted his father. But now . . . now . . . his heart expands, like some unknown creature of the deep finally rising to the surface, expanding, growing warm, expanding.

  “There’s not much time, Luce. We’ve got to go. You won’t take the boat?”

  “No. I’ll be there for Gus, at least, and the injured.”

  “The wounded will get treatment. From themselves or their company.”

  Suicide is mandatory. Take a bullet in the chest, you take yourself out or someone else will. Arm, leg, it’s a drumhead court-martial. Head . . . then there’s not much to worry about.

  They remain quiet for a long time while Gus limits his breathing. He feels like a thief, stealing these moments from them.

  “Luce, you’ve got to be there for Ellie. Go to the dock.”

  Her voice is bitter. “No. Goddamn me to hell for leaving her to Barb and Joblo, but—”

  Wracking sobs, and for an instant, Gus wants to call out to her.

  “It’s not just about us. If you can wear that thing . . . and make that . . . I don’t know . . . sacrifice—”

  He shushes her like a baby. The sound travels in the air, loud, until a chatter of gunfire comes from the south.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Silence. The wind ruffles the fabric of the tent.

  “I’ll be there at the Wall, at least until—”

  “The end.”

  The sky grows lighter, dawn coloring the dark blue of night. Gus, wiping his tears, reaches out to open the tent flap and realizes, for the thousandth time, that he’s lost his hand.

  “You never told me.”

  “What?”

  “Knock-Out. You never told me how you got that absurd name.”

  Her tears are dry, if Gus is any judge of his mother, and she’s back to business.

  “It’s a long story.” His voice is thick and wounded. “We don’t have time . . . and it’s not a good one anyway.”

  “You can’t . . . leave me with just that—”

  Silence. Again. Silence so long Gus considers interrupting. “My father. He called me that after the first time he . . . knocked me unconscious.”

  She’s breathing heavy, and he’s quiet.

  “I can’t believe you kept it.”

  “A reminder. Of who he was. Of who I wasn’t.”

  The bells ring again. Shadows in the tent join, part.

  Gus clears his throat and scratches at the tent opening.

  “The slavers. They’re here. You’ve got to get to the docks. Mom. Knock-Out.”

  Lucy throws back the flap, steps into the dim morning light.

  “We aren’t going to do that.”

  Behind her, Knock-Out emerges.

  “No, Gus,” he says. “We’re going to the Wall.”

  On his head, fashioned from blunt, black iron, is a circlet.

  A crown.

  There’s muttering and soft exclamations as Gus, Lucy, and Knock-Out approach the Wall. A smattering of applause, then silence, then a nervous laugh. One man curses.

  Knock-Out walks slowly but shrugs off Gus when he tries to take his arm and steady him.

  He’s proud.

  The cancer has withered him to a skeleton, and the chemo has denuded his skull of hair. But dressed in a white shirt and linen pants—surely a considered move, Gus thinks—he looks royal. He wears the crown well.

  Slowly, the withered giant climbs the battlements above the Wall and turns to look out. He looks out not toward the Dead Mile but to the people of Bridge City, men ready to die in its defense. He holds up his arms.

  “You all know me. You know me. In a moment, these slavers, this man, Konstantin . . . this man who took Gus’s hand . . . this man and his followers, the slavers we’ve all been talking about for the last year . . . they are going to come over that ridge. Before they make war on us, they’ll demand things.”

  His voice, at first weak, has gained power and now is rumbling, audible over the rattle and sputter of the Bradley in front of the gates, audible above the men, the gennies turning below, the hiss and pop of the halogens now fighting the dawn that has arrived.

  “I’m no fool. I’m not your king, just someone who sat on councils and bounced a baby on his knee.”

  Wallis shakes his head. Gus says, “More than that.” His voice catches in his throat. “So much more than that.”

  Knock-Out touches his shoulders but keeps his gaze fixed on the people at the Wall.

  Gus glances at Wallis standing near, but not next to, Knock-Out. His face is tense, but no more than earlier.

  In the distance, a sporadic chatter of rifles echoes over the Dead Mile. Then dies. There’s a murmur from the gathered men.

  Knock-Out says loud, so it carries, “They want us. This bridge. They don’t want to kill us. They want to enslave us! How is that different from being one of them?” He jabs a finger down at the remaining shamblers at the gate. “He’ll keep you alive, keep you breathing, but you’ll be no better than those walkers. The dead! Slaves to hunger.”

  He paused and coughed hard into his sleeve. For a moment it seemed he’d topple over, the coughs wracked his body so violently, but with a great show of will, he stopped, and straightened, setting his shoulders and grinding his teeth. “Look, look there, at Wendy. You all know her. Her story. Look at her face and see what kind of true beasts those people are!”

  All eyes go to the short, stout woman in mismatched men’s garb with a .30-06 clutched in her hands. She looks embarrassed.

  “They’re coming, and they’ll ask for the prince. The one he tortured before.” He points a long thin arm directly at Gus’s chest. “I plan to give them a king!”

  The silence that follows is broken by a cough. Wallis.

  He walks over to Knock-Out and smiles sadly. Then he kneels, bowing his head.

  Knock-Out blushes and looks uncomfortable.

  The men laugh, and Keb yells, “Long live the king, motherfuckers!”

  Lucy sobs.

  Knock-Out tugs at Wallis’s arms. “Get up, man. No need for that.”

  Someone takes up the chant. “Long live the king!”

  Others follow, pumping their fists.

  �
��Long live the king!”

  Beyond the Wall, past the Dead Mile, the black, thick silhouettes of war machines top the ridge.

  It’s full light now. A Humvee with a white banner ruffling from its passenger side rumbles over the ridge, down the hill, and across the Dead Mile. It approaches the Wall, keeping its distance from the waiting Bradley.

  It stops equidistant from the slavers and the people of Bridge City. Two men get out, keeping the body of the vehicle between them and the Bridge’s sharpshooters.

  Wallis barks from his place on the Wall, “Smetana!”

  Smetana and his men, crouching behind sandbags, take aim with deer rifles.

  There’s a squelch, and then one of the intruding men holds up a megaphone.

  “Good morning. I am Captain Konstantin.” The voice is calm, reasonable. “Please send out the little prince so that we might discuss your surrender.”

  The megaphone squelches again, an eerie sound that echoes off Bridge City and back across the expanse to where the man stands.

  “You don’t know it yet, but your city is already destroyed! Do not entertain ideas of fighting back. Look behind me.”

  Hundreds of men top the ridge, far beyond rifle range. They scurry about in clusters of three or four, setting up equipment.

  There’s another chatter of gunfire, longer this time.

  Wallis yells, “They’re taking heat from the zeds on their flank! Do not fire! Do not fire!”

  The clusters of men on the ridge stop movement. Another burst of gunfire and then silence.

  The man behind the Humvee, Konstantin, lifts the megaphone. “You have no hope of resistance. Send out the prince so that we might negotiate surrender. And just so you know we aren’t playing, here’s a little object lesson.”

  The second man pulls the flag from the Humvee and waves it in the air, and a corresponding puff of white shows from one of the groups of men on the ridge.

  There comes a whistling in the air and then, thirty yards to the east of the Wall, an explosion.

  Wallis blisters the air with curses. “Mortars.”

  The flag is replaced. The voice returns.

  “You have ten minutes.”

  Knock-Out turns and descends from the Wall. At the bottom, Lucy clutches him, and they kiss. He disengages, turns, and looks up at Gus standing near Wallis on the Wall.