Born In The Apocalypse (Book 3): Jericho

by Joseph Talluto

  Chapter 15

  Sergeant Townsend looked at the soldier in front of him and mentally shook his head. Outwardly, he was calm and reserved. Inside, he was screaming in this soldier’s face, wondering how a young man was able to easily overpower a soldier in the United States Army. Easily!

  “Tell me again what happened, Private,” Townsend said.

  “Sir, I came up on a man in the dark. He looked like a local with his barn coat and his hat. Big man, tall, with broad shoulders. When I realized he was the one we were looking for, I went to raise my weapon and that’s when he moved. He grabbed my rifle and hit me in the face with it.” The private was visibly nervous, but he steadied himself and continued. “I went back, and when I rushed him, he brushed me aside and hit me in the neck.”

  Corporal Baker, who was listening to the private, grunted. Townsend turned to him.

  “What?” he asked, irritably.

  Corporal Baker shook his head. “This one is lucky he’s alive. That move is a classic defense move. I saw it a dozen times when we were observing the people over the wall. Usually, they have a knife in their other hand, the one that hits them in the neck. Blade severs the spinal cord in the Tripper’s neck, puts him down for good. Hell, I bet they teach their kids that move over there.”

  Townsend shook his head. “He then took you apart and tied you up. Why didn’t he take your rifle or kill you?”

  The private shook his head. “Not sure, sir.”

  “Dismissed. You will be reassigned out of the runner groups, Private. You’re useless to me now,” Townsend said. The private walked off, shamefaced. Townsend looked over at Baker. “Now what, smart ass?”

  “Well, sir, we know he didn’t go east or south, he’s headed north,” Baker said. “My guess is he’s going for Michigan. Wouldn’t make sense for him to try and go up the lake side of Illinois. I’d say we pull in all runner units, push them north, while laying a picket line along the Indiana-Michigan border.”

  Townsend shrugged. “May as well. We’ve been pulling up blanks everywhere so far.”

  The two men went to tell Captain Vega, and neither of them considered the possibility that the man they were looking for wasn’t interested in staying out of Illinois, but was actively trying to get back there.

  Chapter 16

  I woke up from my hammock after what I assumed were a few hours of sleep. The sun was up in the sky, but not too high. I figured it to be around ten o’clock in the morning, and I was ready to move for the day. I had a two-part plan. Get as far north as I could, then cut back toward the wall and get over. They had to have found the soldier I trussed up last night by now, and he surely told them which direction I was going. I just wanted to get past the two large population centers and then I was on my own to get back.

  I kept my gun in my backpack, and then as a second thought, I put my hat in there as well. I took my coat and turned it inside out, showing the red plaid liner. I had seen a couple of men wearing similar coats, so that shouldn’t make me stand out too much.

  I headed out of the small barn and cautiously looked around. There were a couple of houses in the distance, and a small farm road headed north. I took that road and walked along, just enjoying the cool air and sun on my face.

  After a mile, I heard a car behind me, and looking back revealed a police car. I knew what those were since my father had been a cop in the previous world. Thinking about him caused a flash of anger that I had to suppress as the blue-and-white vehicle pulled up alongside me. I didn’t stop walking, I just kept moving.

  The officer rolled the window down and called out to me.

  “You miss the bus?” he asked.

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but it seemed like a legitimate thing to have missed.

  “Yeah, it left without me,” I said.

  “Well, hop in, I’ll get you over to the school. At the rate you’re walking, school will be over before you get there.” The officer stopped the car and I had a moment of panic. I couldn’t run, and I was effectively trapped into the ride.

  “All right, thanks,” I said. I got into the back seat and the officer drove off. I was secretly thrilled that I was finally getting a ride in a car, and I had a guilty thought that Kim would be jealous that I had done so. But then I realized she probably had been in a car before our world went nuts and wouldn’t think there was anything special about it.

  “You play football?” the officer asked, looking at me in his rearview mirror. We drove along at a good speed, and I could see the speedometer reading over fifty miles an hour. It was a bit mind-blowing that in an hour I could travel over fifty miles. The speedometer went up to one hundred and forty, and I got a little dizzy thinking about how far I could travel in an hour in one of these.

  “No, never liked it,” I said.

  “Huh. Figured with your shoulders you’d be a terror,” he said.

  “Yeah, but my mom is scared I’ll get hurt,” I said.

  “There is that. You don’t need concussions at your age,” the officer said.

  We drove north and then we went a little west. On the outskirts of a small town, there was a large building with a series of fences around it and some fields. The officer took his car up a long winding road that ended in a circle in the front of the building. In the space of twenty minutes, I had traveled about fifteen miles, something that would have taken me hours to travel by foot.

  I got out, and thanked the officer for the ride. He waved and headed back the way we had come, going off in search of whatever he was looking for. I waited for him to leave, and then I was about to walk around the building when a side door opened and a small woman yelled out to me.

  “New student? Come on this way!” She was about four feet tall and nearly as much wide, her small bulk filling the doorway. I felt trapped again, realizing that if I ran she would call the police and then things might get too interesting in my vicinity.

  Chapter 17

  I hoisted my backpack and followed the large woman into a small office in the side of the building. She disappeared behind a door, and then reappeared behind a counter that ran the length of the office. She pulled several papers out of the counter and was arranging them. While I waited, I looked around. The office was larger than I originally thought, with several women sitting at small desks separated by little walls. I had seen those things before when Trey and I had gone up an office building to hide out from the Trippers. On the walls were several paintings of words, which made no sense to me, and the entire back wall was filled with file cabinets. There were several chairs along the wall, and occupying one of them was a man about my age, with a thin build and lazy eyes. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, or at least he didn’t care about the world. I looked away when he looked at me, but he was offended enough to make a comment.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked in a way that didn’t leave much room for an answer.

  I looked back at him for a second. “Not much,” I said honestly, before I looked away.

  It took a minute of processing but he decided he had been insulted. He might have let it go but someone in the office snickered and then it seemed he had something to prove. He stood up and was about to move closer when I stepped over to him and snarled right in his face.

  “Don’t.” I put a lot of anger into that snarl and he seemed to get the message loud and clear. His eyes traveled over my shoulders, and it seemed like something changed in his head. He sat back down like it was his idea and proceeded to pretend like I wasn’t there.

  The big woman who had originally hailed me smiled at me as she sorted the paperwork. I had a feeling that guy wasn’t very popular with the office staff.

  The next twenty minutes were probably the most uncomfortable of my life. I answered all kinds of questions about my family, where I lived, and so on and so on. I lied about nearly everything, except for the fact that I had parents. Kim turned into my sister, and the horses became my emergency contacts.

  A
fter I was finished, the lady made a schedule for me and escorted me to a classroom. She introduced me to the class and the teacher welcomed me, sending me to an empty seat in the back. I nodded at a few of the boys and girls in the room, then stowed my backpack next to my seat. I smiled at a girl sitting next to me, and she smiled back. I took my coat off, and for the next hour, I listened to the teacher tell me all about writing and how a good topic sentence created a sense of expectation for the rest of the essay. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to use this ever in my life, but it was interesting nonetheless. I thought about the books I had read and saw how it applied to authors.

  I followed the rest of the class in leaving when the bell rang, and I made my way to the next class on my list. I figured this would be a good place to spend the day, and I had already made up my traveling with my police car ride, so I was actually ahead of where I wanted to be.

  The rest of the day went surprisingly easy, and I even bought a lunch at the cafeteria. No one sat with me, but I did notice a lot of people were interested in me. I guess they would be interested in anything new. I was actually enjoying myself, being around people my own age. But these kids had all grown up believing that Illinois was just a bad place on the other side of the wall. They wouldn’t accept me if they knew where I was from.

  I walked out with the rest of the school at the end of the day and pointed myself west. I figured I had a good day and a half walk ahead of me, and I couldn’t count on another police car ride.

  “Going someplace?” a voice behind me stopped me and caused me to turn around.

  It was the guy from the office, only this time, he wasn’t alone. There were two others with him, and both of them were cause for concern. The Big One, he had to be at least six foot three, and easily weighed a good two hundred and forty of solid muscle. Most of it seemed to be in his neck. He was staring at me with small, piggy eyes, frowning with an intensity I would have reserved for someone who farted at a funeral. The Small One was about half my size, but he was different. He practically vibrated with nervous energy, and there was something crazy about his eyes. I had a feeling that he was the more dangerous of the two.

  “Just leaving. I don’t need any trouble,” I said. I swung my backpack around off my shoulder and placed it on the ground. I could see several people starting to form a circle around us, and there were at least a dozen that were holding up small rectangles. I had no idea what they were doing; it actually looked pretty weird.

  “You mean, ‘not much’ trouble?” the speaker asked. He was a sly-faced kind of guy, with mean eyes and a pug nose.

  “I suppose,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t have much hope of getting out of this one without a fight, but maybe I could end the fight before it really began.

  “Y’all getting this…?” he asked, and that’s when I moved. I swept forward and using my momentum, swung hard from the back, bringing my shoulder forward. I hit him square in the center of his face, snapping his head back and smashing his nose. Blood flew everywhere, and he was unconscious before he hit the ground. He actually fell back and skidded a ways, making it look like I had hit him even harder.

  The other two watched their leader drop like a sack of dirt and a collective ‘Ooh!’ went up from the spectators.

  I shook my hand out a little and watched the other two. They exchanged a look and the Big One charged. He ran at me with his arms outstretched, and I knew if he managed to wrap me up, I was in trouble. All he had to do was hold me down while his friend kicked me to death. I waited until he was closer then I grabbed his right arm. I pulled it forward, drawing him off balance. I brought a knee up and drove it into his rib cage. That took the breath out of the big guy, and I pressed the advantage by shoving him away, causing him to stumble and fall. I turned to the little one, and he was already charging, his face drawn back into a hideous mask of battle. I didn’t have time to wind up on him, so when he got close, I hit him with an elbow to the head, clobbering him to the ground. I needed him to stay down, so I kicked him in the face, knocking Small One around.

  Big One had gotten up and he rolled his shoulders for another charge. I brought my fist back by my ear and held out my other fist. I waited for him to move, and I could see he was thinking about it because he hesitated. Two of his friends were down and this was not at all like they thought it was going to be.

  His eyes changed and I knew he was going to charge. He was a lot like a Tripper in that aspect. There was that second of processing when they discovered you that they had to make in their diseased minds before they decided you were an enemy.

  “Son of a bitch!” Big One rushed and this time he held his head up. That worked in my favor since I used the opening to slam the fist I had by my ear into the center of his chest. The air came out of him in a coughing bark, and he stopped dead in his tracks. When I hit him, my other hand went back and I brought it forward and up, hitting him on the chin and sending him back to the ground. Both punches occurred in the space of a second, and he was just realizing how bad he had been hit when the second blow came.

  That was enough for him. He stayed on the ground while his eyes rolled up in his head. I picked up my backpack and headed out, still thinking the people holding the little rectangles were weird. About fifty yards down the street, I pulled out my hat and put it back on my head, smoothing the brim and pulling low to keep the afternoon sun out of my eyes.

  Chapter 18

  “Sir, you have to see this.” Corporal Baker held out his cell phone to Sergeant Townsend.

  Townsend saw that the phone was displaying a popular video website. “I don’t have time for games, Corporal,” Townsend said.

  “Sir, I really think you need to see this,” Baker insisted. He handed the phone over to his superior and then picked up a radio while the sergeant watched the video.

  Townsend watched the screen, which looked like an amateur video recording of a high school fight. In it, a lone kid faced off against three assailants. Townsend grunted when he saw the loner sweep forward and take out one of the attackers without so much a word. Townsend knew how fights usually went, and this kid was breaking the rules. Normally, there was a lot of posturing, threatening and such. Not with this kid. He acted like he wanted this done quickly.

  “Damn,” Townsend said. As he watched, the loner took down the other two. The one-two punch was delivered well, and Townsend went to hand the phone back to Baker when Baker waved him off.

  “Watch to the end, sir,” Baker said as he went back to the radio.

  Townsend shook his head, but he pressed play again. He watched the tall kid walk away, and in the last few seconds, he put a wide-brimmed hat on his head.

  “Son of a bitch!” Townsend said. “Where the hell was this taken?”

  “Been trying to find out, sir. These kids have really good ways of covering their tracks online. But we’ll find him,” Baker said.

  Townsend looked at the video again. “He’s heading west,” he said. “Look at the sun. He’s heading west.”

  “Roger that, sir. I’ve got Houston and Robbins on their way here. We’ll get a few more teams to patrol the road. And the drones had been alerted.”

  “Good. Maybe we finally caught a break,” Townsend said.

  “Pretty good fighter, huh, sir?”

  “Those three had no idea what they were messing with. What the hell was he doing at a school?”

  “Not sure, sir. But we’ll find out, as soon as figure out where he went. And after that, sir, we’ll take him out,” Baker said.

  Townsend nodded, but when he thought about the video, he had a doubt. The kid was not acting the way he was supposed to, and had beaten them at every turn. Why was he going west? That made no sense. The only thing there was the wall.

  “Put out the alert,” Townsend said. “He’s going to turn north, probably soon. Let’s put the teams up near Gary, spread them out, and head them south. I want a one-mile line, nothing gets through, walking south. Check every goddamn hole we come across. Ev
ery building, every tree. We check it all.”

  “And if we find him?” Baker asked.

  “Vega wants this over. I’ve grown to respect this kid, but he’s a dead man,” Townsend said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 19

  I have to admit, when I woke up in the morning, I felt a little loss at the civilization I was leaving behind. I had walked west until I had reached a sign that said I was entering a military zone and needed to turn back.

  I found a place to rest for a while and eat, waiting until nightfall. When it was dark, I passed into the zone and walked until I found one of the abandoned towns. I quickly broke into a house and slept the rest of the night in decent comfort.

  Out of curiosity, I explored the house and was stunned to find that the water was still working. I guess that made a certain amount of sense, since they probably figured to come back to these homes once they figured we all were dead. I used the opportunity to take a shower, something I had never done before, but I had read about. The water was pretty cold, but it was an interesting experience.

  As I got dressed, I heard a noise and thought I had left the water on in the kitchen. Downstairs everything was okay, so I looked outside. There was nothing going on around me, and I was about to head back upstairs when I looked up.

  There were dozens of the flying things, and they were not only flying overhead, they were swooping down and hovering by windows and doors. I realized then that they had a way to communicate what they saw to whoever was controlling them.

  Well, that made it a lot more complicated. I had never wished for my bow and arrows more than I did right then. It would have been easy to take them down without anyone knowing where the shots were coming from.

  I packed my bags and made sure my Colt was loaded with spare rounds in my pocket in easy reach. I hadn’t found what I was looking for when it came to getting over the wall, and I was going to have to be careful with these little spies.