Miles shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Norma stalked between Larry and Miles and took a long look at Ronnie’s body. Tish continued her examination and ignored the other woman. Norma lifted her eyes from the ground and studied the writing on the water tank.
“And what does this mean?”
Larry’s voice was droll. “Looks to be a nursery rhyme, ma’am.”
She whirled on him. “And have you identified any suspects?”
“Not as such,” Larry said. “Particularly considering we’ve just begun looking into the matter.”
Miles opened his mouth to ask if Norma had anyone in mind, then decided against it. If she'd ever had a sense of humor, it was long replaced by an outrage circuit. “Well, it should be obvious,” Norma said, then waved a lazy hand in the direction of Val’s house. “One of Miss McKee’s maniacs has finally snapped. They happened upon poor Mr. Cartwright in a rage and finger-painted one of the nursery rhymes read to the children.” She sniffed. “I was against the commingling of children and those psychotic freaks from the get go. I still say we should do the merciful thing and just do away with them.”
Miles frowned. “Mighty Christian of you, Councilwoman,” he saud. It was a well-known fact that Norma was only found in Pastor Dave’s church services around election time.
She whirled back to Miles, eyes flashing. Her finger came within a hair’s breadth of Miles’ upper lip as she jabbed it at him to emphasize her words. “It has nothing to do with charity or kindness, Marshal. It’s a simple matter of resources. They sit around consuming and consuming, yet provide nothing to the larger population. We’d be far better off if we didn’t have to account for such a drain on what limited foodstuffs we’re able to produce and salvage.”
Miles winced. The argument came a little too close to the debate he’d shared with Larry yesterday for comfort. “Be that as it may, ma’am, I’m confident in saying that none of the people in Val’s house were responsible for Ronnie’s death. Wouldn’t you agree, Larry?”
“I think that’s a fair statement,” Larry said. “Councilwoman, Miss Val had a movie night last evening. I stayed on to help out as a chaperone. I didn’t hear much of anything outside due to the rain, but that old house creaks and moans fit to wake the dead. No one left the house until I went out this morning and found Ronnie. So you can drop your ‘undesirables’ from our suspect pool.”
Norma pursed her lips. Larry’s revelation had thrown her off track. Before she could gain her bearings, Miles chimed in. “Councilwoman, we’ll have a verbal report for you by the end of the day. We’ll need to retrace Ronnie’s steps last evening; I imagine he was at Tom’s for a while, and the murder occurred when he was nearing home.” He shrugged. “To be honest, Chris Naylor was my first thought as a suspect, but I believe he’s still in a cell. That’s on my mental list to check, in case you were wondering. We don’t have a big population, so we should be able to narrow it down soon.” He paused and debated whether to continue. What the hell. “You and the council gave me this job for a reason. You coming down here and throwing your weight around, trying to bully my deputies, puts a bad taste in my mouth. If you, Jim, and Calvin don’t like the job I’m doing, say so, and I’ll hand in my resignation. But don’t expect me to be quiet about your attitude if and when I do resign.” He met her eyes without blinking.
“I don’t appreciate threats, Marshal,” she said with an icy glare.
“Not a threat at all, ma’am, just a statement of fact. The way I see it, we let the council come together to manage things because we were busy focusing on projects like the wall, or scavenging missions. Maybe it’s time I take a bigger interest in domestic matters. Just say the word.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “I, and the rest of the council, are completely satisfied with the work you’re doing, Marshal. We’d never think of asking you to quit, and we would try to talk you out of it should you decide to do so.”
Miles kept his face stony. “That’s good to hear, Councilwoman. I’ll look for you this evening to keep you up to date, all right?”
She nodded and turned to walk away. The group was silent until she reached the road and walked out of earshot, then Brian and Jenny started snickering. Larry looked more serious.
“Don’t think you made yourself a friend there, son.”
Miles shrugged. “Forget her. She drives Jim as crazy as she does us, and Calvin’s from out here, he’d never back her in a serious power play.” He shrugged. “I’d rather have her in her little fiefdom there than getting involved with, oh, the school, or supply management.” Over by Ronnie, Tish stood. She pulled the gloves inside-out off of her hands and walked back over to Larry and Miles.
“Well, what I know about forensics you can write on a sheet of notebook paper, but as best I can tell, every wound came from the same knife. They are all about the same size.” Tish blanched. “There are over twenty of them. One of them hit Ronnie’s kidney. That’s the source of most of the blood.” She shrugged. “The grass is pretty thick, and it’s matted down, but I didn’t make out any footprints. Whoever did it had to get up close and personal, so that’s something, at least. They had to have gotten drenched in blood.”
“Just one person, you think?” Miles mused.
“Hard to say. I’d guess so since there was just one weapon involved, but they could have passed it around. I wouldn’t think so, but I don’t know enough to be able to say yes or no in any firm sense.”
“We’re all in the blind here,” Larry said. Death was no stranger to any of them, but not like this. Death in a sick bed, or at the teeth of a zombie, sure. They’d all seen too much of that. Outside, even the scavengers had noted that other survivors they’d run into, as rare as they were, often seemed reluctant to make any sort of aggressive action toward another living person. The human race was an endangered species — murdering each other was just piling on.
Miles put his hands on his hips and said, “Anyone know how to run a murder investigation?”
Vir woke as soon as the rising sun crested the parapet of the warehouse’s roof. He gasped in surprise and fumbled for his kirpan before he realized that all was well.
Last evening, after observing the tide of the dead for a long, stunned moment, he’d pulled back from the edge. With as many as he could see, if they tried one of those climbing maneuvers, it wouldn’t have mattered how tall the building was. They’d have surmounted it in short order. So he’d taken up station atop the roof access hatch to wait for the inevitable assault from below. The entire time he sat and prayed that his weight would be enough to keep anything below from pushing it open. No such attempt ever came, and as night fell, he began to relax, until he fell asleep. All the while he maintained his position atop the hatch.
He stood with a wince and stretched his cramped limbs. It had been chilly overnight, and the morning air still held a hint of that coolness. Vir cocked his head to one side and listened to the world around him. He heard nothing out of the ordinary. The morning, in fact, held an eerie quiet other than the rush of the wind through the trees. He moved to the edge of the roof and looked down.
Countless feet had churned the grass into the ground and littered the area with bits of debris. Nothing moved, living or undead. If there had been stragglers, perhaps they’d passed him by in the night, or perhaps that great horde had absorbed them. He waited for a bit, but nothing revealed itself. That, perhaps, was more disconcerting than the alternative.
One of the problems the salvage teams encountered, Buck had explained, was the trailing tendency of the dead. Once aroused to a noise or some other form of input, they tended to follow it in single-minded fashion unless distracted by something else. Knowing that the warehouse clearance would need more than one trip, they’d mapped out several alternate routes, but they’d always known that the activity at the warehouse would draw in various biters over time, depending on their rates of speed.
With all the hubbub yesterday, there should have been s
omething.
After a few minutes Vir shook his head and shrugged. He’d write it off to good luck and go with it. The trick was to not allow his good fortune to make him drop his guard.
He moved back to the roof hatch and lifted it. The interior of the warehouse was dimmer than the afternoon before, but like the road outside, it was empty. He lay on his stomach and shifted forward until he could lower his head through the opening and look around inside. The floor wasn’t as clean as it had been yesterday, but as with the outside, nothing moved.
Vir took his time going down the ladder, pausing every so often to listen for anything roused by the noise he was making.
The interior was as still and silent as a tomb.
At the bottom, he waited once more, but nervous energy didn’t permit him to stand still for long. He unslung the shotgun and crept to the end of the aisle to peer around the corner.
The warehouse was brighter toward the loading docks. He puzzled over that for a moment then moved forward. Any other time his suspicions would have been somewhat alleviated, but after yesterday, he couldn’t allow it. Buck had made plenty of noise, but somehow, an entire horde of biters had waited rather than rushing to attack. He shivered. Things were bad enough without having to worry about the dead exhibiting intelligence, even if it was just a sort of animal cunning.
Let’s pray that’s as far as it goes, Vir thought as he stepped up to the loading dock. If there’d been enough left of Donald and Buck to get up and walk away, they were long gone. He searched the floor. Only light smears of blood stained it, and he gave an involuntary nervous titter as he realized that hundreds of feet had wiped up most of the gore. The men who’d been about to kill him — and the rest of the team — had met their fate, and it wasn’t one Vir would have wished up on his worst enemy. Joey, over all of them, had deserved better. He gave the floor a second look and shuddered.
Pull yourself together.
As he’d seen, the loading dock was well-lit. Light poured through the hole where the personnel access door had been. The more impressive sight lay next to the man-sized opening. With the bottleneck of the smaller door, the biters had spread out. There’d been enough of them to rip the first roll-up door from its track. The twisted pieces of the door had landed on the rear half of Buck’s cargo truck, crushing the frame over the bed. From his position, the other truck seemed undamaged. After further study, Vir surmised that the area behind the warehouse was as deserted as the front.
Vir knelt and glanced below the desks. His pistol lay underneath with the slide locked back on an empty magazine. He fished it out and noted with surprise that it was clean. Either Donald had dropped it before being dog-piled, or it had just luckily avoided any blood spray. Despite that, he took a moment to wipe it off before reloading it with a fresh magazine.
Now what?
Vir looked around. He studied the interior of the warehouse then turned and looked at the empty roll-up door frame. There’d be no way to secure it by himself, particularly without tools or any sort of heavy equipment. He might have managed if any of the crew had survived, but he doubted it, given the size of the horde.
He needed to get what he could, as fast as possible, and get back to the other survivors. Yes, the information about the change in biter behavior was important, but biters were headed away from the settlement. As far as Vir knew, there were no organized communities save for lone survivors or small family groups in that direction. For the moment, the information was of secondary importance. Medical supplies were more crucial.
When Miles enlisted Vir for this assignment, he’d provided him with copies of the medical supply wish list, put together by the clinic staff.
“Look for anything out of the ordinary,” the Marshal had instructed. “It’s understandable if they grab stuff like booze or snacks. Candy bars are usually stale by now, but a lot of people don’t care how bad they taste. Keep the list close at hand. Stuff like painkillers is on the list, but they aren’t as important as say, antibiotics. You see somebody loading up on Oxy — that may be our guy. Same goes for decongestant.”
Vir opened one of the cargo pockets of his khakis and withdrew the list. It was legible despite some deep creases in the paper. Ordered in priority of need, as he remembered.
So get to it, he told himself.
He turned back into the warehouse and began to search.
Chapter 10
Pete’s day didn’t begin well, which wasn’t helpful. It had been a long night.
Larry had radioed up early to determine if he had seen anything out of the ordinary last night. Well, he had, of course, in the tree line, but he wasn’t about to tell Larry that. Ronnie’s death had hit Pete like a sucker-punch. He’d had a gut feeling that the old man wasn’t doing well. But he’d never expected to lose him so soon. And for it to be a murder . . .
Pete cursed his lack of focus. Sure, it had rained a bit last night, but would he have seen anything if he hadn’t been so intent on the fences? Larry hadn’t mentioned the possibility, which meant he hadn’t considered it relevant. They’d been friends too long to worry about such small things as hurt feelings. That didn’t help Pete’s own self-recrimination, though.
When the kids clambered up after breakfast, chattering about Ronnie’s death in the strange, fascinated and non-frightened way that teenagers seemed to view such things, it was more than Pete was ready to deal with.
All things considered, he would have much rather had a quiet morning, so Pete let his kids make ammo.
The advantage to that was that it was a skill they’d already gotten down pat. So if he decided to tuck his chin into his chest and snooze for a moment, all would be well. Sleeping as needed was a skill he’d perfected to a science in the Corps, and it was something that he could still draw on as needed. After a while, the rhythmic clicking of the press and the clink of finished cartridges dropping into ammo cans lulled him into an even deeper repose. It wasn’t a particularly restful sleep, as the sounds of reloading and quiet conversation tempered his dreams. Despite the soundtrack, he dreamed of the death of his friend, alone in the rain.
He came awake at once when Bruce murmured, “Vehicle coming from the east. Still too far out for any details.” Pete lifted his head and looked in the indicated direction, but without the aid of the spotting scope all he could see was a small smudge on the horizon. Good eyes, he thought in approval.
“Is it Charlie, Captain?” Vinnie asked. They kept an up-to-date list of the teams out in the field on a white board, along with their anticipated return time.
“Charlie should be coming in from the west. One vehicle or two, Bruce?” It was too soon for Buck’s group to get back, but maybe the medical warehouse had been a bust and they had returned earlier than planned.
“Can’t tell yet. Still a couple of miles out.”
Pete wheeled over and elbowed the youngster out of the way. “Cara, Vinny, watch north and south. Bruce, grab the walkie.” He leaned over and pressed his eye to the eyepiece. Bruce had the zoom dialed to the max, and he opened it up a bit so he didn’t lose sight on the approaching vehicle. He squinted, but details were murky with the sun haze. He thought that the vehicle — he could see now that it was just one — might be tan or light brown, which would eliminate Buck’s team as a possibility, but that could also just be dirt or mud.
Bruce pressed the walkie into his hand. Without looking away from the spotting scope Pete lifted it to his mouth and keyed the transmit button. “Gary, come in, we have incoming to the east.”
“Any ID?” Gary came back almost immediately, and Pete offered a ghost of a smile. The man was as steadfast as ever.
“Nothing yet, but we have no eyes to the east at this time.”
“Roger that, back in one.” After a moment, Gary came back on. “West wall understands they’re on their own, they’re doubling eyes until we give the all clear.” Generally speaking, each wall bunker had three men on duty in twelve-hour shifts. To ease the tedium and keep them fresh, ob
servers usually rotated out often to ensure that those who were watching weren’t asleep at the switch. The off-duty personnel would nap, prepare meals for the others, or tend to equipment. They’d experimented with various methods. The current method was the one that worked best given the limited number of people who were willing to take a turn at standing a watch.
Pete’s brow furrowed — the vehicle was within a mile of the settlement now. A little less than a mile from the gate was a small rise, after which the road sloped down to the settlement. After the rise, vehicle identification became much simpler. His breath caught as it crested the hill and kept rolling toward them.
“Holy shit, Gary,” Pete managed after several attempts to key the transmit button. “All hands on deck. Get the Brownings up and have your guys standing by with Javelins. It’s a LAV.”
“Say again, Pete, what is that?”
He zoomed the spotting scope out as the vehicle kept coming. “Bruce, get the Savage and all the spare magazines and ammo out of the locker.” He brought the radio back up. “Gary, it’s an armored personnel carrier. Eight-wheeled, cross-country and river capable. Crew of three with room for six infantrymen. And a 25mm cannon that will make our wall look like tissue paper.” Bruce slapped him several times on the bicep. “Hold on.” He looked up at the teenager. “What?”
The boy pointed. “They’re stopping.”
Pete turned back. Sure enough, the vehicle had come to a stop at the crossroads a half-mile from the gate. It sat there, idling. Pete watched it for a long moment. The hatch above the driver’s position opened up, and the driver reached up with both arms. He had a wad of fabric clutched in one hand. With slow, exaggerated motions he knotted one end around the barrel of the cannon running over the compartment. Complete, he brought his arms back down while pulling the hatch closed. The barrel of the cannon began to rise. Once it was at about a forty-five degree angle, the turret began to rotate to Pete’s left — avoiding a barrel sweep of the bunkers, he noted. When the cannon was at a right angle to the body of the LAV, the motion stopped.
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