Harvest of Ruin: The Dead of Winter
Arthur Mongelli
For Brenda and Eric, my two constants and my betas. For Freyja, my darling.
Thanks for everything George A. Romero
My zombies will never take over the world because I need the humans. The humans are the ones I dislike the most, and they're where the trouble really lies. -George A. Romero
The Dead of Winter
Prologue
“In this world, there are only the dead and the living, gentlemen,” Grayson bellowed to the assembled men. “And the cowards behind that wall care so little for the continuation of the human race that they would rather watch you starve at their gates than share their abundance with you. They want to keep you and your brothers from eating. They want you to starve. They want you to freeze to death. They’d rather that the dead feast on your bones!”
Grayson paused and watched with satisfaction at the effect his words had, as the ripple of anger flashed through the men before him. He took pride in his ability to rally emotion in people, although, the steady stream of intoxicants he kept his men plied with was just as much a motivator to them as his carefully crafted speeches. He knew that they could easily backtrack and find another way around the town and avoid it altogether. But, with winter fast settling in, he knew he needed to quickly acquire a store of food to see them through. As always, they also needed more weapons and ammunition, and he knew from Howard, the man he had sent up earlier in the day to threaten the townsfolk, that the defenders were mostly older men and women, and that they had weapons, nice ones.
This nameless town of bumpkins seemed a likely source to provide them with all their needs, and if it were as Howard reported, just the weak and elderly defending it, he figured that they needed to take the chance for an easy score. He also held out some hope there might be a woman or two in town, to help raise morale during the cold months ahead. After watching the crowd for a few moments, seeing the fire that his speech had ignited in the men’s eyes, he lifted his arms, palms up before him, asking them for a response. To a man, they raised their guns and roared their affirmations.
Things had been growing tense in camp recently, though most of the men knew well enough to behave themselves. Grayson was intolerant for any kind of discord and those who strayed from his law faced his punishments, which were harsh, and often, final. He knew that if he could find a few women, he could provide the men with some distraction other than fighting and sodomizing one another. Women were always the sticking point with men. You could house men, feed them, and meet all their needs, but without women to satisfy that hunger, you could never fully trust their loyalty. Once they were able to carve out a spot and begin to re-establish society, things would be different, but for now, he needed his men loyal and compliant.
The sun, at last, crept down below the tree-line, toward the horizon. As the deeper gloom of dusk settled in the forest around them, with a resigned sigh as to what must be done, Grayson finally lifted his two-way radio to his lips.
“Start the procession, Louis; let us know when first contact is made.”
“Roger, Wilco,” came the answering call.
Grayson fingered at the grip of the M4 rifle that he carried, more for a show of solidarity with the men, than for his actual use of it. Though he had no personal compunction against killing, he had done so in the first Iraq war, and since the dead decided to stand up and start killing, he had done it much more frequently. Always though, he preferred, relished in fact, in his ability at getting others to do it for him. Getting people to do his bidding, post-apocalypse, was no different than it was during his tenure as a Senator for the state of Oklahoma. Grayson found it to be easier now, in fact, as imminent death was now available as bargaining leverage. For the most part, he found that playing on people’s vanity, their greed, and their sense of self-worth was the easiest path, as it left less ill-will. He let them enjoy debauchery and hedonism and then showed them an enemy that was preventing them from more.
Grayson found that he enjoyed playing Warlord much more than he enjoyed playing politics. During the abortion that was the evacuation of Oklahoma City, he had acquired half a battalion of the Oklahoma Army National Guard. On the first night after he fell into their company, the officers “deserted.” They openly disagreed with Grayson’s directions in the officer’s mess. His personal bodyguard, Pablo, had crept from tent to tent that night, slitting throats and dragging the officer’s bodies silently out of camp to their eventual resting place, at the bottom of Arcadia Lake. Grayson wouldn’t risk them usurping his authority.
The troops, relieved of the burden of military formality, were happy to have him as their sole commanding officer. He filled their heads with notions of patriotic duty and talked of America rising like a phoenix from the ashes. The young men learned quickly, they either adapted to his way, or they deserted, before Grayson had them “deserted.” Over the past few weeks, the troops had largely left of their own accord, seeing the course that Grayson set them upon. A good number of able-bodied men had come to replace them, but always, the numbers diminished. A good many had also died, either succumbing to whatever was causing this catastrophe, or getting killed in the line of duty. It was close to seventy men and a handful of women that Grayson brought to the gates of Donner. Seventy hungry mouths that needed to be fed over the long winter.
The women he called to duty in different ways. Grayson wasn’t a cruel man; he didn’t enjoy inflicting pain and death on women and children. To him, they were just pawns in the game. He used them where necessary, and discarded them when convenient. Extra mouths to feed were a burden they couldn’t yet bear. He was a man used to playing political chess. A career of twenty-three years in federal politics had allowed him to hone his skills in the subtleties of manipulation. Though, in certain situations, he easily adapted to being the hammer rather than the nail, when it was called for.
After fifteen minutes of waiting, as the darkness intensified and the last sliver of orange slid down below the peaks to the west, Grayson lifted the radio back up to his mouth to address his men.
“Form up, men, we go shortly. Keith, bring the door-knocker up front.”
The man, Keith, shuffled from the edge of the shifting throng of armed men, moving out of sight. He returned a few minutes later, driving an old Peterbilt truck, trudging through the shifting crowd of bristling, battle-ready men. He stopped at the front of the assembly, next to where Grayson stood and left the truck to idle, waiting for further instruction. They had been scouting and watching the community for nearly a week. The truck had been scavenged from a lumberyard outside Fort Collins two days prior with the express purpose of penetrating the log wall. Grayson climbed onto the running board of the truck, hurriedly fixing his shirt as it rode high, briefly exposing the tactical flack vest he wore underneath. He was very conscious of his image and wanted the men to see him as a warrior-king. If they were to see that he was wearing a bullet-proof vest, it would definitely do some damage to that image. Once his shirt once again covered the vest, he turned his gaze on to Keith.
“You know the drill, Keith. If you do your job and take out that wall, you get first pick of the spoils.” He looked hard at the man, knowing that the steel blue of his eyes unnerved some. “You fuck this up and you are gonna wish you were dead.”
“Contact made, sir,” squawked the radio on his hip.
The contact that the radio referred to was in the form of a herd of stiffs that they had, with the use of a three-bladed highway plow, pushed up the pass to the south of town. Contact meant that the dead had engaged the townsfolk, hopefully diverting the combined defenses of Donner in that directio
n. Ten heartbeats later and the sounds of gunfire drifted across from the southwest.
“You heard the man, Keith. Take that fucking wall out!”
Grayson stepped down from the running board as the truck began to move, and breathed heavily as the truck accelerated, climbing rapidly through its set of gears. Over the past twenty minutes, the men had been filtering into the woods, taking their assigned positions in preparation for storming the town’s defenses. More than anything though, he was interested in the cattle that the scouts reported, grazing in the pastures behind the walls. Food was in short supply, and what was available was mostly shit that he wouldn’t pollute his body with. The cattle though, provided a source of steak that he was eager to claim as his own. When the truck had faded into the darkness of the forest, he started walking slowly down the road after it. They were two miles from the wall and he figured, moving at his slow pace, by the time he arrived that the battle would be over, or at least much deeper into the town. He figured that he could march in uncontested to claim his share of the spoils, and most importantly of all, never place himself in any kind of danger.
A few moments later, the sound of a heavy crash followed by the sounds of splintering timbers and a set of explosions issued back down the road from ahead. There goes the wall and the battlements, he thought happily, checking himself to ensure his excitement didn’t quicken his pace. The sounds of many guns firing and a great deal of yelling and screaming started filtering back to him from ahead. He smiled without even realizing it; the thought of so many men willing to die at his command never failed to elate him. He viewed sending men to battle and death as the truest, most pure form of power.
The sounds of firing didn’t slow over the next ten minutes as he approached; if anything, it intensified. The continued heavy fire caused him to pause as he rounded the final bend in the road. Looking down the final half-mile of roadway, at the ruined wall, he was satisfied with the job Keith had done. Looking beyond, however, he was blinded by at least a dozen sets of headlights up on the hill in the distance, setting a shadowy and confusing battlefield.
Winter of Ruin
“–east, need reinforcements,” screamed a voice through the two-way radio at Tar. “I repeat, taking heavy gunfire at the east, need immediate reinforcement.”
Tar could barely comprehend the terror he felt at what was happening. Moments earlier, a sea of undead had moved, under cover of night, up the roadway from the south. Just as the chaos of their surprise arrival set in, their shuffling and moaning masked by the early winter winds, a heavy machine gun opened fire at them. One of the town’s defenders had been dragged down and devoured by the dead and pair of able-bodied men had been mowed down by the heavy weapon. Now, the news that an attack was taking place at the east barricade was nearly overwhelming to him. He knew that they were not going to be able to answer the call for help, no matter how desperate. Those at the east barricade would need to hold out until they could prevent the dead from moving into the town in any appreciable number. Only after the dead were stopped and the gunner neutralized would they be able to send reinforcements.
The first of the undead, set ablaze by the gasoline the sicker boys had poured down the embankment, crested the top of the mound of earth. The light cast by the flames gave an otherworldly, almost demonic look to the dead. Its flesh sloughed from its face, melting like candle wax, its milky eyes staring blankly ahead as it shambled over the rise. With living prey nearby, it seemed to quicken its pace slightly, a low, breathless moan issued forth from its lipless mouth, barely audible over the crackling of flames and the hail of gunfire.
The men and women of Donner, Colorado had hurriedly set up defenses at the onset of the cataclysm and had reinforced them as needed. The earthen mound piled at the southern entrance into town created a weak box canyon. They positioned machine gunners atop the mound and had sniper positions atop the canyon walls. It had served them well thus far, though the occasional band of refugees or undead staggering up the pass was the most they had encountered. The town had endured no coordinated attacks until now. They were getting fast overrun by the dead as the constant suppression fire from the machine gun, far down the pass, kept them pinned down on the inside of the berm.
“Snipers, take out that fucking machine gun!” Tar roared into the radio to the men positioned atop the canyon walls, praying they could hear him over the frantic screams and gunfire.
After the first burning corpse, the mass of burning dead behind topped the crest of the mound. Tar looked at his pistol, immediately recognizing that he had the wrong tool for the job. He scrambled over to Tim Starik’s body, lying crumpled where the gunfire had dropped him at the base of the mound, and took the AR-15 still slung over the dead man’s shoulder. As soon as he stood erect, he began firing the semi-automatic .223 weapon into the descending mob. All around him the townspeople rallied, firing into the rotting mass of dead, not aiming to kill necessarily, more to cripple and maim; there was no time for marksmanship.
“Fighting withdrawal!” he heard Harold scream off to his left. “Lay down some covering fire!”
Harold must have just returned and joined the fracas. Tar had sent a couple men out to scout in anticipation of the attack, but never did he expect them to use the undead as a weapon. He looked back over his shoulder and could see the old veteran with a handful of people, waiting for the front line to withdraw from the advancing dead. As soon the undead got within twenty feet Tar screamed to those around him.
“Get back! Retreat fifty feet!” he roared, looking down the length of the line in both directions, making eye contact with every man and woman before moving back himself.
And then they were filtering through the gaps Harold and the others provided as they trained their weapons ahead. Screams could be heard from the machine gun nests as they were finally overrun by the sheer number of the dead. The doomed men inside were surrounded and cut off from any avenue of escape. They continued the fighting withdrawal for many minutes, steadily retreating as the horde of dead advanced. They were nearly a half-mile closer to town when the last of the dead fell. Tar whistled loudly using his thumb and pinky.
“Half of you come with me! Everyone else, get this place lit up so bright that a blind man could see,” he screamed at the men. “Mop up here, take no chances, kill everything twice and make sure that gunner down the pass is down. No need to get stingy with bullets and wind up dead yourself.”
As Tar moved to his truck, he called one more instruction as an afterthought.
“Burn them all.”
*
None of the seven that sat crowded in the Humvee slept well that first night together. They were an island in a sea of undead that shifted and flowed around the armored vehicle. The dead had pursued the newcomers, Jen and Will, for most of the previous day, towards their eventual meeting on the side of the highway at night. Their presence ensured that none slept peacefully, though the confined quarters and the presence of strangers didn’t help to lower the tensions.
Even Will and Jen, exhausted and drained from their flight from the dead the day earlier woke often, the incessant moaning and the sounds of the undead slapping at the vehicle were unsettling and woke them all regularly. Beyond all of the exterior causes for their lack of rest, the terror of the situation insinuated itself into all of their dreams, haunting them when they finally were able to nestle down and find some sleep.
Bjorn didn’t even try to close his eyes, the grief over the loss of his wife, Lilly, and young son, Liam, just hours before completely overwhelmed him. Instead, he sat there in silence once he had cried all his tears out, staring into oblivion and holding the last remaining member of his family, his daughter, Sophie. Lilly had been bitten in the onset of the catastrophe and had steadily deteriorated while they hid in an industrial lubricant warehouse. She had turned while he and Tim were out gathering supplies. The elation of their triumphant return with a vehicle, guns, ammunition, and cases of food from a nearby convenience store was qu
ickly replaced by the dread of the undead in their midst. Bjorn couldn’t bring himself to lay his wife and child to rest, nor would he allow anyone else to. Instead, they fled the warehouse that they had occupied since the onset of the undead. Even in light of the terrible events, he was able to push the nausea and desperation aside to remain vigilant. The need to protect his daughter gave him purpose. The presence of the two strangers gave fuel to his fears for her, even if, by his measure, they seemed harmless.
Tim and Laura slept fitfully through the night in the front seats. Their two-year-old daughter, Luna, woke frequently to nurse from her mother before falling back to sleep with a full belly. The prolonged nursing was something they had discussed at length during Luna’s infancy. They both came into parenthood intentionally and wanted to do the best for their daughter. Also playing a part in it was Laura’s desire to maintain the bond between her and her only child. Laura kept a blanket pinned up against the passenger’s side window and pulled over the top of them to keep their little girl from seeing the undead, though it did nothing to diminish the sounds of the dead and the gentle rocking of the vehicle as the combined weight of hundreds pressed against it.
The uncertainty of where they would go nagged at all of them, save Will and Jen. After the fearful flight the day before, they were content to have the relative safety of the glass and steel Humvee between them and the dead. The pain in Will’s knee woke him often from his restless slumber. One of the fast undead had fallen heavily into it hours before, on their flight out of New Jersey. Jen was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life, having pushed him in a dilapidated camp-cart for most of the prior day and evening, before they finally stumbled upon the Humvee. Still, however, thoughts of rape and murder nagged at her keeping her from resting comfortably among total strangers, especially with the guy next to her, Bjorn, staring holes through the two of them.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 1
