Hanratty was unable to hide his surprise. “I guess I figured you got wounded over there.”
Pete laughed. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? No, I had all the dumb luck a man could ever want. Didn’t get so much as a scratch. Never even lost a man over the course of three tours. Had to come home to lose my legs.” He shook his head and finished off his drink. “Cruel joke, isn’t it?”
Hanratty shifted in his seat. “I can’t empathize, I haven’t been lucky enough in either way.” Never gotten bit, but I’ve had some damn close calls. He shivered.
“Aw, hell, kid,” Pete said. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it.”
He waved a hand at the older man. “No worries, I didn’t take it personally.”
“Yeah,” Pete scowled at his empty glass for a moment, and then set it down. “God’s honest truth, Adam, I’d take jihadis with AKs every day of the week compared to what we have now. At least the damn hajjis just kill you and that’s that.” He nodded in Hanratty’s direction. “That you and your boys have kept it together this long is a testament to good leadership.”
“It’s not always been wine and roses.”
“Oh, I understand that. For every few people we’ve got that are capable of supporting themselves, there’s another who just went into brain lock. Couldn’t deal with what they were seeing, I guess. You ever play role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons?”
Hanratty laughed. “Sorry, I was a jock in high school.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Yet another thing I picked up from Miles. I was a farm kid, myself. Anyway, one of the games he and his friends played was this ancient aliens at the bottom of the sea thing. When they ran into one of the monsters it would look so, I don’t know, horrible and outside the realm of their experience that they’d have to do a ‘sanity check.’ Roll their dice against some number, if they didn’t beat it, their character would just snap, mentally.” Pete glanced up at the darkening sky. “Been thinking about that a lot, recently. Sanity checks.” He lifted a pair of binoculars and gestured toward Hanratty. “Have a good look at the tree line. If it gets much darker I’ll have to break out the night vision.”
Puzzled, Hanratty moved over to accept the binoculars. He knelt down at the rail on the southern side of the observation post and brought them to his eyes. “What am I looking for, exactly?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” Pete said. There was a deep fatigue in his voice, like that of a man resigned to some terrible fate.
With a frown, he panned the binoculars across the line of trees across the creek on the south side of the compound. From what he remembered from the drone overflight, the ground was uneven and shot through with gullies. The forest continued for several hundred yards before the ground flattened out into another field.
At first, he didn’t see it. The shadows underneath the trees were heavy in the fading light. Despite this, he could make out quite a bit of detail — fallen branches, bushes struggling for their share of sunlight, and narrow trails where small game such as rabbits presumably cut through.
The infected was motionless and back far enough out of the light that it was just visible. Once his eyes made out the slight oddity in the shape of the tree it crouched behind, more and more of them popped into sight. He cursed under his breath as he swept the trees again. Everywhere he looked, he could see them waiting.
The presence was disconcerting not only because of the actual presence of literal scores of infected but their uncharacteristic behavior. The community was quiet, but not to an absurd degree. The slightest noise drew them out to hunt. The infected inside of the tree line should have been clawing at the fences in an attempt to gain access, but they weren’t.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Hanratty said. “They see or hear signs of life, they come to investigate. That’s what they do. That’s all they do.”
“You think they’re stupid? You’re wrong. There’s a good two hundred of them out there. They stick outside of what they’ve learned is my effective range. A few times a week they’ll send a lucky winner in my direction, I guess to see if we’re still paying attention. But for the most part, they just wait.”
“What are they waiting for?” Hanratty wondered aloud. He did another scan of the tree line; if anything Pete’s count was low.
How far back do they go?
“Damned if I know. Maybe they’re like us, just waiting for the other side to drop dead so they can have the world to themselves. Maybe they’re waiting to see if we screw up. So I wait. I watch.”
“So why all the secrecy; why the urgency?”
Pete sighed. “I haven’t told anyone else. Didn’t want to cause a panic at first, then, as time went on, it just didn’t feel right, you know? Something’s going on, and I didn’t want to upset the equilibrium of the situation by reacting without knowing everything. I’ve been screaming for years that we need to beef up the fences. Everyone is just too damn complacent to listen.” He laughed. “Hell, the night before you guys showed up I was wishing I could call in an air strike. So what do you say?”
“Be a shame to ruin all those trees. That wood might come in handy someday.” Hanratty lowered the binoculars and massaged his forehead. “But you’re right, we need to do something. Maybe draw them out with the LAV and have a gunship or two on station to shred them. That field to the south is overgrown, right?”
“Yeah. There’s enough ground around here that’s easier to get to, so we let it lay fallow. Good call, at this point, I guess.” Pete grimaced. “Hate to think what would have happened if we’d sent a crew out there to plow.”
“Let me shoot it up to command and see what they think. This is definitely weird enough I think they’ll want to know about it. If they’re getting smarter . . .” He trailed off as he considered a comment Ross had made when they’d been loading up for the mission. What had it been, something about new developments? He frowned as he tried to remember the conversation. He hadn’t paid much attention; the main focus of his mission had been actually getting them here and making peaceful contact. The infected were something omnipresent you accounted for in planning, like IEDs or roadblocks.
There’d been rumors going around for years that some of the surviving scientists and medical staff in the fleet were researching infected specimens. They’d been so commonplace and pervasive that Hanratty had always assumed there was some kernel of truth to it, just expanded and spun out of control by the rumor mill. Now, though, he wondered if his initial doubts weren’t misplaced.
It’s not like there’s a shortage of available space on one of the carriers, or even a hospital ship, where they could conduct research in relative secrecy. Is something up? If this change in behavior was a concern, he needed to know sooner rather than later; Pete was right on the money about the threat this posed. Based on the numbers he could see, the fence wasn’t enough. If there were more infected out there, the fences were sure to fail if they woke from their hibernation, or whatever the hell it was.
“Keep this under your hat for now,” Hanratty decided. “Just for another day or so. I’ll see what the brass have to say about it.”
He was dreaming of shapeless terrors when the hand clamped over his mouth and jerked him out of sleep.
Miles flailed his arms in an attempt to push his attacker away, but an iron grip held him still. “Easy, son, easy,” came a deep-voiced whisper, so close that the other man’s beard tickled his cheek and aided in recognition — Foraker. Miles relaxed, and the arms holding him down eased the pressure. “You were talking in your sleep. We need you quiet — we’ve got a situation here.”
Miles tensed. “What’s going on?”
Foraker’s mouth was still close enough that he could hear the big man swallow. “Best take a look for yourself, I still don’t believe my own eyes.”
Miles sat up. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized that Ross crouched on his left, opposite Foraker. The lieutenant gave him a quiet nod, but there was a wild look
his other man’s eyes. He would have labeled it as panic if Ross’s voice hadn’t been so calm.
“Move slowly,” Ross whispered. “The floor doesn’t creak up here, thank God, but we don’t need any noise right now.”
He nodded toward the opposite side of the room, at the quilt hanging over the window. A glowing LCD screen sat below the window. A green shade tinted the picture, but the screen was so small that Miles could just make out blurs of motion from across the room.
He mimicked the slow, cautious movements of Ross and Foraker as he rose to his feet and padded across the carpet. At the window, he knelt down and studied the screen. Now that he was closer to the device, he could see that it was some sort of ruggedized tablet. A black, semi-rigid cable stuck up from one side of the device and traced up the wall and underneath the quilt. Fiber-optic camera, cool.
The coolness factor dissipated as he studied the screen. The light-amplification rendered the image in shades of black and green and gave it an otherworldly cast. After he studied it for a moment and realized what he was looking at, Miles whispered a curse.
A slow-marching horde of zombies filled the county road in front of the farmhouse. They spilled a bit over the edges and into the ditches on either side, but for the most part, they walked directly on the blacktop. Miles’ study of the movement left him with a vague sense of unease. There was a strange, almost synchronized air to their movements — not unlike a flock of birds. There was no jostling for position, and nor was there any collision or ripple effect from slow-moving members impeding the progress of the group. They moved at a slow, consistent speed all were capable of, unerringly in the same direction — north.
Miles licked his lips. The camera had a limited field of view, but the line stretched across the entire piece of road that was visible on the screen. “How long has this been going on?”
“About five minutes now,” Ross replied. “They just came out of nowhere.”
It was impossible to calculate how many were on the screen at a given time, but it had to number in the hundreds. While they were moving at relative turtle speed, he didn’t want to think how many could have progressed by in five minutes. The number would without a doubt be too horrific to contemplate. Miles settled for waiting, and prayed the tide wouldn’t turn in their direction.
He didn’t know how long they watched the procession in silence before Foraker spoke. “What’s our move if they head this way, Mikey?”
Ross was silent for a long moment before he replied, “We don’t have anywhere close to the amount of ammo we’d need to hold them off. They’ll tear this place out from under us through sheer weight of numbers if we try to shelter in place.” He shook his head. “They so much as look this way, we bail out the back and evade them until we can redirect dust off.”
Miles winced. Hiding from what looked to be thousands upon thousands of zombies, in the dark, in unknown terrain? Not exactly what I’d call a comforting thought.
Ross stood and said, “I’m going to relieve Janacek so he can get some sleep. Mister Matthews, you’re free to try to do the same if you can. Just . . . No more talking, huh?”
Eyes fixed on the screen, Miles nodded.
Chapter 23
Dantzler grinned in the dark.
Like a dope, he’d forgotten that the moon was in its first quarter; it had been damn bright the last couple of nights. A well-timed thunderstorm had rolled through right around dinner. The remnant clouds concealed much of the moonlight and created enough shadow for him to conduct his business.
If you’re not good, it’s always nice to be lucky. Like earlier today, when he’d braced Foster for some more diesel. Usually, it was like pulling teeth trying to finagle extra supplies. Knowing who to approach was the key, and Foster was one of his go-to guys. As far as Dantzler could tell, the man had zero scruples about profiting from his position in the warehouse. But, at the same time, he was canny enough to not only hide what he was doing but never take enough to stick out. Dantzler had once considered offering him a spot on his crew before dismissing the idea. The guy was too smooth and conniving. He’d find some angle to exploit and try to sweeten any deal he got with an eye toward taking over down the road. Ivan preferred his subordinates moderately-capable and satisfied with their lot in life.
If he was being honest, he didn’t need to be out here. He’d gotten enough diesel from Foster to give them a healthy reserve on top of what they’d need to get the truck to the docks. What he didn’t have, though, were any trade goods. The haggling had cleaned him out. If he wasn’t in such a time crunch Foster's attitude in their dealings might have offended him, but it didn’t matter.
When it came down to it, he was just hedging his bets. Maybe there’d be an island in the river with some survivors, or maybe he’d run into other boats. It was always good to come bearing gifts, at least at the start, until you could determine how best to take advantage of a situation. And if not, it was always good to have a little top shelf booze tucked away for a rainy day.
He’d cut through the array of greenhouses and fields and came up on the southern side of the vehicle lot. It was standard procedure to leave the vehicles unlocked and unattended. With the push-button start military vehicles, they removed the batteries and kept them topped off in the warehouse. Dantzler could have gotten a spare battery had he needed one — there were several among the supplies he’d held back for the trip — but he didn’t have a need or desire to drive away. This was a quick check to see what Buck and the boys had stashed in the storage bin.
Dantzler knelt down in the grass at the edge of the graveled lot. Up to this point, he’d been able to move in relative quiet; he couldn’t say the same for when he moved out onto the rocks. He listened hard for a moment. As was typical after dark, silence reigned throughout the community. They'd learned light and sound discipline early, and those behaviors were the rule rather than the exception. The lack of widespread electricity also meant that most people tended to sleep and wake with dawn and dusk instead of an artificial schedule.
Keeping low, Dantzler crept around the southern side of the lot and moved north in parallel to the eastern border. Vir had parked the truck in its usual spot, against the eastern edge of the lot, right about dead center. The gap where the third of the trio normally rested was glaring, and he considered its absence for a moment.
Wonder if there are any goodies left at the warehouse that might be worth a detour before heading south? That truck should still be full of fuel, and we can fill it up with medical supplies after clearing the door off. He thought it over for a second, then grinned to himself and shook his head. Best not get too greedy. Let’s do this, and get it over with.
Dantzler licked his lips and stepped out onto the gravel.
Carter Drake’s boots scuffed on the pavement as he staggered away from The Last Bar and in the general direction of the clinic. He was no stranger to Tom’s establishment, though he usually cut things short early. Too much drinking made him dream, and dreaming usually led to thinking about the past. He’d worked long and hard to try and forget what had gone before, but he’d been swept up and carried along by the festive atmosphere in the bar. Several of the Marines had joined the usual crew, and things had gotten raucous. Not too over the top — Tom had a zero tolerance policy for fighting in and around the bar. You fought, you were out, for a long time.
Carter had faint memories of chasing down bottles of Tom’s home brew with shots someone had ordered in honor of the Marines. Beer before liquor, in the clear, right? Or do I have that backward?
Either way, the point was moot — during the celebration, Carter stumbled and cracked his head on a tabletop. He hadn’t felt much, if any pain, while his buzz was still going, but as it faded, his head throbbed in time with his heart. The goose egg on his forehead felt hot, wet, and almost the same size as the rest of his head.
“Good grief, Carter,” Tom exclaimed as he’d held the door for his patrons after the last call and seen the results of the man
’s spill. “Get down and get yourself checked out by the docs, I don’t need you getting a concussion on my watch.”
It was hard to think straight with the throbbing agony, but Carter had to grant Tom the point. He had duty tomorrow, and he didn’t know how well he was going to be able to stand his watch if he didn’t do something about this, and quick.
And so, he bobbed and weaved in the semi-darkness. The county road was beginning to buckle in places from lack of maintenance. This made it treacherous footing for someone not quite in possession of his full faculties, but Carter managed to get to the clinic without toppling over. He took a moment to steady himself with one arm before pounding on the closed and locked doors with his free hand. Even when the lights were out, someone staffed the clinic at all hours.
If he hadn’t been so focused on the pain in his head and his battle to remain upright, he might have noticed the figure that stepped from the shadows behind him and approached.
Larry glanced at the vague green glow of his watch and tried not to sigh. They’d set up just before dark when they’d been certain that no one had them in sight. That had been six hours ago, and all he had to show for it was a sore ass from sitting in the rear cargo compartment of a Hummer. Despite the discomfort and his desire to stay awake, Larry had nodded off more than a few times, though he’d jerked awake in short order each time. He’d equipped Charlie and Vir with two-way radios and earpieces and wore a matching set himself. If they needed to communicate with each other it was a simple matter of pressing a transmit button in-line with the earpiece cable. The other men were close; Vir lay on top of one of the parked combines, while Charlie sat in the cargo bed of the remaining deuce-and-a-half. If he needed support, Charlie was closest, but Vir had a better field of view. As for Larry, he’d chosen his position for one reason — the Humvee was next to the truck Vir had driven back. Larry had an unobstructed view of the wheel well with the hidden cargo compartment.
A Place Outside The Wild Page 30
