The Last Bastion [Book 5]

by K. W. Callahan

  Along their trip, Michael did his best to steer the fishing boat with his injured hand. He reversed his hold, gripping his paddle so that he held it at its base on his left side and with his left hand. Then he held most of the shaft at an angle, wedged under his armpit, pinned between his left elbow and the side of his torso. In this way, he acted as a sort of human rudder. He could raise, lower, or twist the blade of the paddle with his left hand. It meant that little if anything needed to be done with his injured right hand.

  The Blenders found islands on which to make camp each night, sticking to their prior modus operandi but remaining vigilant for signs of outsiders or incoming inclement weather.

  And in this way, things progressed smoothly for the first few days of the Blender’s renewed river trip. But things weren’t progressing smoothly everywhere – far from it in fact.

  * * *

  “We got enough of these goddamn things?” Groush ran a hand through rumpled hair and paused to scratch halfway through.

  “I’m sure we have enough,” Roscoe nodded.

  “You’re sure or you know?” Groush eyed him warily.

  Roscoe was a newer recruit. Groush needed a steady supply of warm bodies – the newer, the dumber, the better.

  “I know,” Roscoe nodded subserviently.

  “How many we got then?”

  “Couple hundred, I guess.”

  Groush exhaled heavily in frustration. “You tell me you know we have enough, but then you say, ‘Couple hundred, I guess’. That sure as hell ain’t real reassuring.”

  “Well how am I supposed to get an exact count? It ain’t like those things just sit around and wait to be counted. They’re always movin’ around and fightin’ with each other and shit. Ain’t like I can get in there with ‘em and do a goddamn head count.”

  “You’d better get me a better fucking number,” Groush growled. “Otherwise you will be in there with them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roscoe mumbled.

  Roscoe was in his mid-20s. He was tall and lean. There wasn’t much room for those with weight issues in this new world. If people were overweight at the onset of the Carchar Syndrome, the vast majority didn’t stay that way long. He had dark shaggy hair, wore a full half-inch-thick beard, and had dark brooding eyes and a hawk-like nose.

  The two men were sitting inside Groush’s idling SUV just outside a temporary camp they’d established. Groush was content to stay put in the relatively isolated area until his scouts had rounded up enough biters for their purposes. Then they’d load up the biters into several tractor trailers they’d commandeered and move on. Once they reached their final destination, they’d round up more biters to add to their current stock.

  But right now, time was of the essence. The whole thing was a delicate balancing act, and Groush had to time things just right. He was already running low on supplies for his crew. And now, not only did he have to feed his own people, but he had to feed the sizeable number of biters he’d rounded up. He prayed the target he’d selected to hit next had the supplies he was counting on. If it didn’t, he was screwed.

  He had Dave and Locks haul out the dead they’d shot in the Riverport supply room and load them into a truck once the majority of his crew had already left town. He ensured that the bodies were unrecognizable by cutting off the heads. Then he dismembered the corpses and used them as the bait for rounding up their current load of biters. He’d supplemented the biter’s food supply with animals they caught en route – dogs, deer, cows, horses, pigs, pretty much anything with a pulse.

  But Groush knew that prime rib for biters was human flesh. So when they encountered several families of syndrome survivors trudging the highway they were traveling, it was a welcome sight. The band of nearly a dozen people would keep the biters he’d collected fed just long enough. He estimated he had 48 to 72 hours at best. Then the biters he’d collected would be past the point of being ravenous – the time during which they were the most effective fighters – and would start to deteriorate due to lack of nourishment. He figured that he could try feeding a couple of his own people to them at that point, but that wouldn’t do much for morale, and he could have an all-out mutiny on his hands. Plus, he needed his troops for the next attack.

  Concerned that if his timeline wasn’t adhered to closely, they’d forfeit any advantage they held, Groush was losing patience. And even under the best of circumstances, Groush wouldn’t tolerate Roscoe’s fucking around.

  “Listen to me, you little shit,” Groush gritted his teeth as he grabbed Roscoe by the collar and pulled him close, his nostrils flaring, his eyes burning into the young man. Groush pulled one of his 9-millimeter handguns and pressed the end of its barrel hard up against the man’s cheek. “You get that fucking count,” Groush seethed through gritted teeth, the gun barrel trembling in his hand as he continued to press it against Roscoe’s face. “I don’t care how the fuck you get it, but you get it, and you get it to me asap! From our scouting reports, there are a helluva lot of people in there…a lot more than I was expecting. And I don’t have time to fuck around. We don’t take this place, and I’m fucked. And if I’m fucked, you’d better believe, we’re all fucked. And that starts with you, asshole. You got that?!”

  “Yeah…yeah, I got it,” Roscoe panted, his eyes angling over and down toward the cold black gun barrel shoved against the side of his face.

  * * *

  “Hurry the fuck up!” Roscoe shouted.

  “Man, stop fucking rushing us!” Dave shot back. “Should be your ass in here anyway!”

  “Groush gave me the job,” Roscoe retorted. “Told me to get it done, to use whatever or whoever I needed. You got picked. So fuckin’ be it. I don’t need any of your back sass.”

  “Help me with this latch, Locks,” Dave tugged at the metal handle holding a moving truck’s roll-top rear door shut. “And be ready to fucking move when this door opens,” he added.

  The moving truck had been backed up to the loading dock of an abandoned warehouse. Ringing the upper portion of the loading dock’s interior was a steel grate, cat-walk-style balcony. The balcony was reached by way of a steel stairway closed off by a chain-link fence and gate. The gate could be manually opened or closed with a C-shaped latched that was raised or lowered at one side.

  Several of Groush’s more trusted men stood above them on the balcony, armed and watching with semi-automatic weapons.

  “Don’t know why we have to do this shit,” Dave grumbled.

  “’Cause Groush wants an exact count of how many goddamn biters we got,” Roscoe retorted. “And unless you wanna get inside the truck with them or got some better goddamn idea, this is the only way I can think to count them.”

  “Shoulda counted ‘em when ya put ‘em in,” Locks mumbled.

  “Damn straight,” Dave agreed.

  “Just open the goddamn door,” Roscoe said, heading for the stairway that led up to the steel-grate balcony above them.

  “Asshole,” Locks muttered.

  “Fuckin’ young punk is what he is,” Dave said as Locks bent to give him a hand with the truck’s rear latch that Dave was still trying unsuccessfully to open.

  But even with both men pulling on the latch, it wouldn’t give.

  “Here, wait a minute,” Dave said. “On the count of three, let’s pull together. Okay?”

  “Got it,” Locks nodded his agreement.

  “Okay,” Dave got a better grip on his portion of the metal handle. “One, two, three!”

  Both men yanked hard on the handle, straining. Then the latch gave and popped free. The roll-top door went flying up, revealing a truckload of voracious biters inside. The biters seemed momentarily stunned by the sudden freedom with which they were presented and appeared unsure of what to do. But it didn’t take them long to figure it out. Upon seeing the two meals before them, the first row of biters spilled out of the back of the truck, arms outstretched as they came after their ready-made-meals.

  Both men stumbled backward with the rele
ase of the latch. Dave remained on his feet but Locks went sprawling onto the floor. Biters were now pouring out of the truck toward the men in droves.

  “Keep ‘em away from us!” Dave cried to the men on the catwalk above them, moving as quickly as he could over to his fallen friend. “Come on!” he tried to help Locks to his feet.

  The first few biters were just a yard or two away, and Dave was having trouble getting Locks up. Locks had hurt his ankle in the fall.

  “Shoot the fuckers!” Dave cried, hoping that if the men on the balcony took out the first few biters, it would buy them the few critical seconds they needed to make it over to where Roscoe stood waiting at the caged stairway.

  But Groush was on the scene now. He had accessed the catwalk from a second-floor door at one end. “Hold your fire!” he instructed his men. “We can’t afford to lose any of those biters!”

  The closest biter lurched toward Dave and Locks, literally diving onto the injured Locks. Dave kicked the thing as hard as he could in the face. It scrambled away, screeching and bleeding from the nose. Dave then bent to grab his friend’s collar, pulling him along the floor with him, but a biter snagged his shirt from behind, yanking him around. Dave released Locks’ collar and caught the biter with a well-placed elbow to the head that dropped it to the floor, dazed. But just as quickly, several more biters were on the scene with more pouring from inside the truck.

  It was a losing battle without Groush’s men covering them, and Dave knew it. Yet he didn’t give up. He took another biter down with an equally vicious elbow to the side of the face, and repelled another with a kick to the stomach that doubled it over in pain.

  “Move!” Dave instructed Locks. But as he looked over to where Locks had sat just moments prior, all he saw was a mound of biters, blood spurting from within the pile.

  “Fuck!” Dave swore, turning to make his own retreat, but a biter had latched onto his arm. He felt its nails ripping into his skin and tore his arm away regardless of the damage done. A few deep injuries to his hand and arm were worth it compared to ending up like poor Locks.

  Dave knew there was no helping his friend, and began to run toward the stairs while the ravenous biters were busy fighting over poor Locks’ remains. He got there just as Roscoe was retreating up the stairs ahead of him. He thanked his lucky stars that there was no lock on the stairway gate, otherwise he had a bad feeling his luck would have run out there in the warehouse. Instead, he slid the latch up, swung the gate open, ducked inside, and re-latched the gate behind him.

  After making his way to the top of the stairs and onto the balcony, he took a moment to gather himself. A large group of biters were still clustered around the spot where Locks had fallen. More of them, the ones who couldn’t get in for a bite, had filtered into the room below where Dave, Roscoe, Groush, and Groush’s armed soldiers stood watching from above.

  Dave stormed down the steel-grate balcony, past Roscoe who was doing his best to get a headcount of the biters below, and directly up to Groush, or at least as directly as he could with two armed men blocking his path. One of the men used his rifle butt, planted squarely in the center of Dave’s chest to stop his approach and back him up a few feet.

  “Let him by,” Groush, who stood several feet behind the guards, sternly instructed.

  The two beefy guards turned sideways, pressing their backsides up against the balcony rails, allowing Dave enough room to squeeze by. He came over to where Groush stood, hands on hips, glaring at him almost tauntingly.

  “What do you want?” Groush asked, as though Dave was a child disturbing his evening dinner or watching of a favorite television program.

  “What do I want?!” Dave shook his head in amazement. “A little fuckin’ respect as a human being would be nice! You just let my fucking friend get eaten by biters down there, and you ask me what the fuck I want?!”

  “I didn’t let shit happen,” Groush responded casually. “Way I see it, you were the one down there. If anyone let it happen, you did.”

  “Fuck I did! I tried to help the guy, but those fucking biters were all over the place. All you had to do was tell your beefcakes here,” he tilted his head toward the armed guards carefully watching the scene, “to shoot a couple of ‘em and we would have been fine.”

  “I need those biters. We need those biters. Without them, we’re fucked,” Groush said coolly. “We don’t got enough biters to send in ahead of us, and we’re going to be in a world of hurt. We don’t have the people to be sending in an all-out attack.”

  “Huh,” Dave snorted. “And why the fuck is that?” he muttered. “You’d stop killing everyone and maybe we would have enough people.”

  “What’d you fuckin’ say?” Groush stepped forward, towering over Dave, the physical size difference between them drastic. It was like a mid-size sedan parked alongside a monster truck.

  “Nothin’,” Dave gritted his teeth and looked away in irate frustration.

  “That’s what I thought,” Groush sneered. “Now if you fuckin’ know what’s good for you, you’ll go get some rest before we move out. Soon as we get a count on this last truck of biters, we’re loadin’ ‘em up and headin’ out. We attack tomorrow morning. Biters needed a goddamn snack anyway,” he sneered, looking down at where Locks was still being consumed.

  Without another word, Dave turned and walked back down the catwalk. He knew he’d pressed his luck as far as he dared. There was no point in arguing with Groush. What was done was done. There was no bringing Locks back now, and all that Dave risked in pressing the point was ending up like his blood-stain of a buddy below.

  CHAPTER 14

  Finally, on the afternoon of their third day on the river, the lead kayaks were seen traveling back toward the rest of the group. These scouts had spaced themselves even farther from the rest of the Blenders earlier that day. Michael felt it would be a good idea since he was anticipating meeting up with the Mississippi River sometime in the next day or so, and he wanted to be prepared.

  The Illinois River was wide enough to make them feel insignificant out on the open water. Michael could only imagine how they’d feel when they met up with the mighty Mississippi.

  The kayaks had taken to traveling nearly a quarter of a mile ahead in order to have enough time to get back to the others should it prove necessary. The rest of the boats tried to maintain a course that kept them about 50 yards from the right-side riverbank. This was far enough out that they stayed away from obstacles such as fallen trees and other shoreline debris. But the proximity to land also allowed them a relatively easy path back in to shore should they need it.

  “Looks like we’re meeting up with another river,” Christine reported as she and Jack paddled their kayak up alongside the fishing boat. “A big one. Think it’s the Mississippi?”

  “Don’t know what else it would be?” Michael replied. “I don’t think we meet up with any other rivers before that. So I’m assuming we’ve made it.”

  “How much farther until we reach St. Louis then?” Wendell asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Michael shook his head. “Shouldn’t be too long, I wouldn’t think. But without a good map, I can’t be sure.”

  Michael wobbled unsteadily in his seat, almost losing the grip on his paddle.

  “Whoa there,” Wendell said as Michael righted himself. “You okay?”

  Michael nodded. “Just tired. Been a long trip.”

  “You said it,” Wendell agreed. “We can’t reach St. Louis soon enough.”

  Michael turned his attention back to Christine in the kayak as they continued to glide smoothly along the river.

  “So everything looks clear ahead? No big obstacles? Water didn’t look too rough where we meet up with the other river?”

  “Things look clear. Water looks calm from what I could see with the binoculars,” Christine reported.

  “Good,” Michael said. “Let’s get through this river confluence. Then we can start looking for a good spot to stop for the day.”
>
  “Got it,” Christine said as Jack saluted dutifully from his seat within the kayak.

  Ten minutes later, the group found itself on a waterway that had doubled in width and was obviously the grand ol’ dame known as the Mississippi River.

  “Talk about feeling insignificant,” Michael said, gazing toward the distant shores on either side of them.

  “Yeah,” Wendell said. He sounded petrified. “Uh…think we should head closer in to shore?” he added after a few seconds.

  “Probably a good idea,” Michael added.

  “Are we close to Ohio yet?” Caroline said.

  “Ohio?!” Michael snorted with a frown. “They sure didn’t teach you much about the states in fifth grade, did they? We’re bordering Illinois and Missouri, not Ohio.”

  “Oh my, what am I saying?” Caroline sighed to herself. “Missouri is what I meant to say. We’ve been away from any sort of civilization for so long that I’m getting all mixed up,” she chuckled.

  “That’s my wife for you,” Michael said softly.

  “Oh be nice,” Caroline scolded. “You’ve had your fair share of brain farts.”

  “Me? No, never,” Michael feigned astonishment at the accusation.

  “Ha! Yeah, right,” Caroline shot back.

  “Justin, we’re counting on those muscles of yours to help us paddle,” Michael said, wanting to ensure the boy continued to feel a necessary part of the group.

  “Yes, sir!” Justin perked up, plunging his paddle over the side of the boat and digging it into the muddy brown water.

  After about half an hour of paddling, the group was skirting the river’s western, Missouri-side bank. A half hour after that, they came to an island that looked like a good spot to make camp for the night. It was a sizeable island with lots of trees that sat toward the Missouri side of the river. A channel, several hundred feet wide, flowed around its right side.

  “We have to be getting close to St. Louis by now, don’t you think?” Wendell asked as they guided the fishing boat toward the tip of the island.