by R. J. Spears
“I don’t know shit, asshole,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You know something!” Kilgore shouted into the man’s face. “And you’re going to tell me.” He took the rifle barrel and drove it into the wound on the man’s leg. The scream eclipsed the sound of the fire and the reports from the other soldier’s guns.
The man writhed on the ground, trying desperately to get away from the searingly hot barrel of the gun. Kilgore worked hard to keep the barrel pressed against the wound. The man’s contortions and the blood made the barrel slip free, and Kilgore slipped forward, falling to one knee.
The man saw his opportunity and lashed out with his uninjured leg, striking Kilgore in the side of the head, knocking him over. Kilgore rolled with the impact and was back on his feet almost instantly, snapping his aim onto the man in an instant.
“Got you, shit for brains,” the man said, choking back the pain. “You’re a real pussy, aren’t you? You can’t even handle a wounded man.” A wave of blackness rushed over him, but he came back to a fuzzy reality a couple seconds later.
Kilgore lunged for the man, but this time, he aimed for the man’s face, instead of his leg.
“You’re nothing but a big pussy,” the man hissed between his teeth.
“Tell me what you know!” Kilgore shouted at the top his lungs.
“I don’t know shit,” the man replied. “And you can go fuck your--”
Kilgore shot the man in the face, unloading his full clip, the muzzle flashes coming like chain lightning in the cramped space between the two houses. He continued to depress the trigger even after the gun was empty, the fury roiling in his head.
It took several more seconds before he realized the folly of his actions, and the anger boiled back up. Well past the edge, he began to kick and stomp the man’s body. With each kick, he cursed out every word he knew and transitioned past words into guttural grunts and unintelligible sounds, more like a creature than a man.
He ceased stomping on the man’s now compressed and battered body when he almost slipped and went down in the gore. He felt as if he had just run a marathon. His exhalations were deep, coming in and out of his body hot and hurried, like an overexerted animal. It was another thirty seconds before he returned to a normal breathing pattern.
He knew he had lost it. He knew he had let the wounded man goad him into shooting. But he also knew that Jason Carter had to be close, maybe among the dead. He took some cold consolation in that. The man had died not telling him anything, but there was no doubt he had been hiding something. Jason Carter was nearby, if not in one of these houses.
He pulled up his walkie-talkie and said, “Check the houses and bodies. See if there’s any sign of Jason Carter.”
Chapter 36
Aftermath
It didn’t look good. Bodies lay in the front yards of several houses. From the distance we were away, there was no telling who the people were, but it seemed to be a mix of the former living and undead. One house was blazing out of control, and the flames were starting to lick at the house next door. If that next house caught fire, the likelihood the whole block would burn was high. A house just down the street from the burning one looked like it had been folded, spindled, and mutilated with pieces of vinyl siding hanging off the house, looking like shredded cheese.
Our view was obscured by houses and trees, plus a liberal amount of smoke in the air, but we didn’t want to be seen, so all those factors worked in our favor. Being seen would be a very bad thing. It was sort of like looking through a giant-sized keyhole with some obstructions. I spotted two men in soldier’s uniforms skirting around a burning house on some sort of search, busting in doors of the other houses on the block. Both of the men were heavily armed and wore combat tactical gear. They entered each house with military precision. One would kick in the door, and the other would follow. This was repeated for several houses until the soldiers were out of view.
“What are they looking for?” Brother Ed asked in a soft whisper next to my ear.
“Most likely us,” I replied, watching the scene closely. I left Jason’s name out of it. We were just bit players. Kilgore wanted Jason, dead or alive.
Brother Ed and I had threaded our way through the housing development south of town on foot. We had jogged most of the way, and it had only taken fifteen minutes. It wasn’t hard to find the source of the battle, even after the shooting had ended. We just had to follow the thick black smoke billowing into the bright morning sky.
We had left the others with the task of finding some gasoline. It didn’t have to be much. A gallon would get us out of town, but without it, we’d be forced to escape on foot, and there was no way Kara was going to be able to do that.
“Do you think this is Jenelle’s group?” Brother Ed asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, not wanting to say the word.
We aren’t bad people, echoed in my mind. That’s what Jenelle had said to us when they took Brent. And they probably weren’t. In the old world, they would have clearly been the villains of the story, but the rules had changed. Survival was the watchword. There was very little else.
It wasn’t that I would ever forgive them for taking Brent, but they didn’t deserve being ambushed and killed in a brutal attack. That’s what it looked like, though.
“Do you think any of them got away?” Brother Ed asked.
I hoped some of them did, but my gut was telling me that it was a total wipeout of their crew, and my heart sank because they had Brent.
Trying to be hopeful, I said, “Maybe some of them.”
I got ready to say something else when a soldier walked into the middle of the street. His posture was ramrod straight, and I knew it was Kilgore. My only view of him had come in a vision, and he was nearly eighty yards away, but I was positive it was him.
“That’s Kilgore,” I said. Our personal boogeyman, live and real.
Brother Ed went still beside me.
I measured the distance, calculating the shot, but a question flitted in the back of my mind, can you really kill the devil?
I came back to rationality a moment later and took the real measure. I’d have to make the shot or else all his soldiers would come down on us. I didn’t relish that. Not in the slightest.
Better to be conservative and live another day, but when I looked to my right, I saw that Brother Ed had his rifle up and was looking down the sightline. An icy knot formed in my gut. I slowly reached out and pushed down his rifle barrel. He glared at me but saw something in my eyes that must have convinced him that it was a bad idea.
My eyes darted back to Kilgore. He still stood in the middle of the street, his arms crossed like he was casually waiting for someone to arrive. And someone did, or better put, some thing.
A man-like creature, hunched over, with its arms dangling down, nearly touching the ground, bounded from in-between two of the houses towards Kilgore. It was the same creature I had seen in my vision. Of course, in my vision, I had no idea what the thing was doing, but it was noticeably less creepy at a distance instead of the close-up in my vision. Still, seeing it in a full broken-loping motion sort of balanced out that creep factor, making it seem more frightening than in my vision.
Kilgore seemed unperturbed by its arrival. The creature was on a collision course for him, but he held his ground. At the last possible moment, the thing came to a stop and slid right up to Kilgore’s feet like an obedient dog.
At least, that’s how it struck me. The thing lowered its head as if it expected to be petted, then it looked up at him through one eye. While it remained next to him, it had a nervous, twitchy quality about it.
“That’s the thing I saw in my vision,” I whispered to Brother Ed.
“What is it?”
“Hell if I know,” I said, and “Hell” was probably the best answer, but I kept that to myself.
Several seconds later, two zombies shambled through the space this man-creature had come from, heading right toward Kilgore and his man-do
g. Again, Kilgore showed no concern and still stood with his arms crossed. The two zombies came off the curb in front of the house, and the man-creature broke from beside Kilgore and headed straight at the zombies. It had a broken, herky-jerky gait, and its arms lolled back and forth, instead of the alternating movement of a real human.
It certainly wasn’t the battle of the titans, but the zombies and the creature were on a head-on collision course. Kilgore watched with what I could only classify as mild disinterest. (Although, it is challenging to read body language nearly a full city block away.)
Just as the man-creature was about to collide with the zombies, it pulled up, skidded to stop in front of the zombies, and then it did the damndest thing. It emitted a barking noise at the two zombies, and they stopped dead in place. They tried to shamble away, but the man-creature backed up, ran forward, and then butted its head into the zombies. They cowered away from the creature as if they were afraid of it. One tried to step away, but the man-creature barked again, and it fell into line with the other zombie.
“Did you see that?” Brother Ed asked.
“Uh huh.”
“You sure?”
“This could be a game changer,” I replied as a tinge of fear shivered its way down my spine, “and not in a good way.”
The last time we faced off with someone who could control zombies, it was an ugly mess in which we lost several good friends.
“What should we do?” he asked.
“Well, a smart man would get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible.”
“What about Brent?”
My response was delayed when I spied another soldier come on the scene hoisting a very big machine gun in a wheelbarrow. He pushed his weapon of mass destruction along toward Kilgore but pulled up short when he saw the man-creature herding the two zombies back toward Kilgore. I put two-and-two together, deciding that gun must have been what tore up the one house.
I made a mental note to myself: avoid that gun at all costs.
“Joel?” Brother Ed asked.
I didn’t want to admit what I thought was true. At least not out loud.
“I think Brent is probably dead,” I finally said.
“So, we should leave?”
“I said that’s what a smart man would do,” I said. “I’m cut from a different cloth.”
“I find your attempts at humor to be less than amusing.”
“Sorry, Brother Ed,” I replied. “It’s a coping mechanism. Maybe not the best one.”
“Yeah.”
“But I have to know. I can’t just leave without being certain that he’s dead. If there’s any chance he could be alive, then I need to know.”
We watched in silence for several more seconds. Kilgore remained in place as the wheelbarrow toting soldier made his way down the street toward him. The man-creature stuck with the zombies, bounding around them in a tight circle, keeping them in place.
The two soldiers that had been on a house-to-house search appeared on the scene about two minutes later, and all the soldiers grouped up on Kilgore. My heart sank a little bit more as they came empty-handed. That most likely meant that everyone was dead and that Brent was lost, but there was always a chance that they got away. I grasped onto that hope like a child held onto a promise.
“Why do you think they attacked Jenelle’s group?” Brother Ed asked.
“They were coming after us. Maybe they thought we were with Jenelle’s group. Maybe Jenelle’s group was in-between them and us. Maybe they were surprised.”
“But why attack them at all? Why not check them out and move on when they saw Jason wasn’t with them? As I see it, this Colonel only has a handful of men, and Jenelle’s group wasn’t all that small.”
It was a good question. Taking on another group of a larger size was a big risk. Especially if they had no guarantee that Jason would be in that group. You have limited resources in terms of men, weapons, and ammunition. Expending any amount of those resources needlessly was risk, and I could tell that Kilgore wasn’t a stupid man.
Then it hit me.
“Oh shit,” I said.
“What?” Brother Ed asked, sounding somewhat annoyed.
“You saw that man-thing over there?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I think that thing is their bloodhound, and he’s sniffing in our direction.”
“We haven’t ever been to this block or else we would have known how to find Brent.”
“There you have it,” I replied. “We haven’t been here, but Brent has.”
“Now, you’re talking crazy. There’s no way that thing can sniff out a man.”
We both focused our attention on the man-creature standing amidst the little pow-wow that Kilgore was convening in front of the houses he and his men had attacked. There was no telling what they were talking about, but I’d bet all the tea in China that it was about finding us.
“What if it doesn’t smell odors or scents but something else?” I asked, more thinking aloud than really asking a question.
“What are you talking about?”
I could tell I was pushing Brother Ed’s patience.
“It could be our auras, it could be a psychic trail, it could be the remnants of our bad breath, but you have to believe me. Maybe it’s keyed into Jason, and there was enough of Jason’s aura or psychic residue or some other shit on Brent. Whatever it is, that thing is tracking us down.”
“So, if what you say is true, what do we do?”
“Leave here as fast as we can.”
“But you want to find Brent.”
There was the rub. Going back to Linda empty-handed wasn’t a choice I wanted to make. Getting killed finding what was most likely a dead man wasn’t something I relished either. Given the choice between terrible and horrible, I opted for a compromise.
“You need to get back to the house and get people moving and I mean now.”
“Wait, what are you going to do?” he asked, grabbing my upper right arm.
I turned and looked him in the eyes and said, “I’m going to wait here until they leave and see if there is any chance that Brent is still alive. It’s not that smart choice, but one I have to make.”
“I don’t like it. If anything goes wrong. They see you. A zombie horde comes on the scene. Then you’re a dead man.”
I looked to the ground for a moment as if there might be some wisdom there but found none. “Listen, I’ve lost Brent once already. I can’t do it again. I just can’t. There’s no way I can return to Linda and tell her that I didn’t even try. That’s it. Bottom line.”
He released his grip on my arm. “Joel, I’ve seen you do a lot of stupid things, and this is probably the stupidest, but I can’t argue with you. I’d do the same. You should let me stay and look, and you get the crew on the road.”
“No, I can’t do that. Stupid or not, I’ve got to do this. It was my decision that got Brent taken. I have to be the one to find him or, at least, find out what happened to him.”
It was Brother Ed’s time to ruminate. For several seconds, he looked off at the soldiers and their little conference in the street. I watched, too. After several seconds, Kilgore shouted something that was just a murmur from where we were standing and then motioned with his arm. A moment later, the man-creature broke from its two-zombie herd and bounded over to his side.
Kilgore knelt down next to it, and I could tell that, even from this distance, he was reluctant to touch the beast. His hand hovered over the creature’s head in a sort of mock petting. The gesture was both disturbing and frightening. A few seconds later, the man-creature pulled away from Kilgore and disappeared between two of the houses, heading north.
There is little doubt that this is what tipped the scales in Brother Ed’s mind.
“Okay,” he said, “have it your way, but I’m not waiting. I’m bugging out of there in twenty minutes or less, so how will you find us?”
“If I remember, there’s a farmer’s market just north of town
. Go there. If I’m not there in an hour, take off without me.”
“What will I tell Kara?”
“Tell her I’m coming.”
“And what if you don’t show up?”
“You have to leave no matter what. She’s too weak to fight you. Take her gun if you have to, but for the love of God, get out as soon as possible. I’m guessing there’s not much time.”
Again, he weighed the choices, and much like the terrible factors I had just considered, and he made the one he had to.
He looked me square in the eye and said, “Twenty minutes after I get there, we are gone.”
I knew he meant it.
Chapter 37
A Pleasant Drive in the Country
Ellen turned the key in the ignition, and the truck’s engine rumbled to life.
From the seat next to her, Henry leaned over and tried to eye the dashboard but couldn’t see what he wanted to see. “How are we doing on gas?”
Ellen eyed the gas gauge and said, “More than fumes but not much more.”
“Enough?” he asked.
“It will have to be,” Ellen responded.
The zombies wandering in the parking lot took notice of the truck’s rumble and started in the direction of the truck, shambling along in that way that they do. Their movements had changed from aimless wandering to something with intent.
So had Ellen. She shifted the truck into gear and started forward, moving slowly at first, taking the truck in a long, looping arc at the edge of the parking lot.
“Well, at least, they are making it easy on us,” Ellen said.
Once she had the truck up to ten miles per hour, she looked for the first zombie to target. It wasn’t hard to find. Just seventy-five feet slightly off to their right were three zombies, heading toward the truck.
“Oh yeah, they are making it too easy,” Henry said.
“Don’t get overconfident,” Ellen said as she pressed the accelerator.
Most would think this was a simple thing, and it was, mechanically, but there was this nagging resistance in the back of Ellen’s mind. Years of driving had ingrained in her that you didn’t hit people. That was forbidden. Taboo, even. But she thought of her husband, Greg, dead because of these damnable things, and the resistance slipped away. The truck rumbled forward at the zombies. Not being smart, they didn’t try to avoid the truck, because it could contain some delicious human meat. Their needs were basic, and they didn’t factor in the danger of the truck. In fact, they didn’t care. Hunger overrode all.
