by Joseph Coley
The “Mountain Men” as near as Joe could tell would most likely be some of the infamous Wrong Turn types that had been so stereotypical years ago. The film had been a horror movie that turned the typecast West Virginian into the starved, crazy, inbred cannibal. Not that there wasn’t some of the crazy inbred hicks in the backwoods and mountains of West Virginia, from what Joe had seen. God knows there was some basis to the stereotype.
The people were obviously more concerned with the immediate threat as opposed to the possible threat. There was still no indication that Wyatt was going to make a run on Tazewell, but there would be no way to convince the populace of the danger of him attacking. Thinking quickly, Joe came up with a scheme to take care of both of his problems.
“The Mountain Men and the Snake Handlers are a big part of why I want to make these outposts. If we have a few people on either end of the county, it’ll give us a heads up on anything that might be coming our way. I’d love to extend the wall out here in town as well. The big issue is that we don’t have enough people for what I have planned. I’m not asking for any of you to do this, but if you would like to help then you are more than welcome to.
“I want to go get our friends in Hazard and I want them to come here to help, not to hinder. I would like them to make this place more secure as well. I want to make a more stable life than we already have. We should never settle for just living right now, we need to succeed as well. We need food, water, safety and shelter. Everything we do after that should be to increase our quality of living.” Joe raised his arms to the people and gave them what they wanted.
“Because this is our town and I’ll be damned if anyone is gonna take it from us!”
An uneasy stillness greeted Joe as he fired off his last line. Great, he thought, now I’m a politician, lying to get what I want. “If you want to continue your current jobs, then, please do so. If you would like to volunteer for missions outside the wall, speak with Larry or myself. If you would like to be trained in some of the combat operations, let me know as well. We will be teaching house clearing, explosives, communications, and medical training, so if you have any experience in these areas, let us know if you would like to help. I’ll let ya’ll get back to breakfast now.”
Joe hopped down from the table, as did Larry. The looks from the disgruntled crowd had dissipated some, but angry voices were still heard. Joe expected to have some disagreement about the arrangements with Captain White, but the thought that the townspeople didn’t want to help Jim and the residents of Camp Brown was a little unforeseen. They had welcomed Joe and the rest of his team in with open arms. Of course, they had something to give the people when they came. A rifle in the hands of a resident not only assured them security but also gave them something to hunt with, furthering the food supply.
Joe pulled Larry, Boyd, and Rick off to the side. “I want to get everyone together to sort this out. Larry, it’s your town, so you decide who goes and who stays. I don’t know how many volunteers we are gonna end up with, so let’s be conservative on the estimates of who goes where. I will figure out a way to train and outfit whoever wants to help. I know all of my team is in,” Joe said as he looked around for his team. “Where are Curtis and Jamie?”
Larry shrugged his shoulders. “Not sure. I saw ‘em when I got up this morning, but not since then.”
Rick was ruffling Kane’s fur, scratching the dog’s ears. “Jamie said something about going to his house to get some more guns and ammo.”
Larry frowned and laughed nervously. “I hate to break it to Jamie, but we cleaned out his house a couple years ago. There wasn’t anything left of use, so we never went back. I hope he doesn’t have any hard feelings; we just did what we had to do.”
Rick stood. “Yeah, he said he figured that. He says he’s got a safe hidden with something that’ll come in handy, but he didn’t say what it was.”
Joe chuckled. “Knowing Jamie, it’ll be interesting.”
CHAPTER 6
April 18, 2022 – 0820 hours
As Jamie walked along the long-familiar route that he had done years before, he got a strange feeling. He was nervous. He felt like he was going on his first date. An uneasy feeling in his legs grew into a full-blown shake. He felt a nervous shiver run up his spine, and it wasn’t from the cool air. He had no idea what he was so agitated over; it wasn’t as if he was going to find anything out of the ordinary. Of course, the “ordinary” ship had long since sailed. He shivered again, this time more noticeably.
“Do you need to go pee or something?” Curtis asked.
Jamie glanced over to Curtis as they continued up the road. “No. Why do you ask?”
Curtis held his rifle at low ready, slowly looking back and forth at the derelict houses and overgrown lawns. The countryside was finally turning from the dark, gloomy grayness of winter into the lush, green brightness of spring. It was easy to see the foliage coming back to life, even with the light drizzle and overcast sky. He drew his stare back to Jamie.
“You just look like you gotta take a piss. You keep shivering like you need to go. If you need to, just go wherever. Not like anyone is gonna give a shit one way or the other,” Curtis said.
“Nah, I don’t have to go. Just nervous for some reason.”
Curtis frowned. “Why’s that? We’re not gonna find some long lost girlfriend tied up in the basement are we?”
Jamie sputtered a laugh, barely able to hold it. “That, my friend, I can assure you won’t be a problem. I let her out before I left town.”
Now Curtis guffawed. “Well, then. I didn’t know you had it in ya, Jamie.” He patted Jamie on the back as they made their way up by the abandoned chiropractor office at the end of the street. Jamie’s house was within sight a hundred yards or so down the road.
The morning was silent and unspectacular. As both men trudged up the street, the steady drizzle gave way to a light mist. The overgrown sight of the houses gave the area a macabre look. Even though they were only two hundred yards outside the wall, it kept them on their toes. Two hundred yards might as well have been two hundred miles. The street was not in line of sight with the wall and as soon as they made it halfway down Smith Street, both men noticed. They were in an entirely hostile area, one that had not been brought into the confines of the town. Curtis hitched up his rifle a little further and brought it into his shoulder. Jamie did the same, keeping his finger off the trigger and scanning back and forth.
“How much further to your house? This street gives me the creeps, man,” Curtis asked.
“It’s the single-story brick house up here on the left.”
As they walked up the street, the house came into full view. In its heyday, the home would have been a one-story ranch style house, but now it was completely overgrown and abandoned. A picture window in the front of the house was gone, the glass shattered and missing. The front lawn was a mess with chest-high grass and bits of trash mingled within it. Cattails and other weeds choked out most of the visibility to the front door. A covered garage poked out of the side, a single tan-colored vehicle still parked in the driveway.
“Here we are. We should go in the side door. Once we get inside, it’ll be a lot easier to get into the basement,” Jamie said, pointing to the covered area with his rifle.
Curtis leaned to his right and looked at the garage. “Basement? Don’t you think I should wait out here and make sure we don’t have any visitors?”
Before Jamie could answer, an unfamiliar howl emanated from the world around them. Neither man could point out exactly where it came from, but it was not far off. Jamie scanned around them with his rifle, looking through the ACOG scope. He looked up on the mountainside, desperately trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. The howl repeated itself, echoing through the hills. The echo made it almost impossible to pin down a location.
Curtis was doing the same with his M4, desperately looking around him for the culprit, to no avail. “What the fucking hell was that?”
After a fe
w seconds, Jamie lowered his M4, sliding it behind his back and moving forward. “I think you are right, Mr. Lowe. You stay out here and I’ll go down in the basement. I only have to pick up three or four things while I’m down there. It shouldn’t take me but just a few minutes, assuming I can still get the safe open.”
Curtis moved forward, walking behind Jamie towards the house. “Safe? After what I’ve seen you carry around, I’d hate to see what you have locked up, brother.”
“Well assuming that I can still get to it, I’ll let you use one of ‘em sometime.”
Curtis’ face brightened. “Shit yeah! Ain’t nobody gettin’ down there, brother.”
Jamie stepped into the covered area, grabbed his sling, and took his rifle off, setting it down beside the Ford Taurus in the garage. He turned to Curtis and held out his right hand. “Lemme borrow your .45 for a minute. I promise I have a handgun down there that I will get, but I don’t wanna go in blind.”
Curtis drew his 1911 .45 and handed it to Jamie. “Don’t let it end up like the last one you had.”
Jamie snickered and grabbed the .45. “Oh don’t worry. I’m guessing there isn’t anything down there, so I hope I won’t even have to use it. I’ll be right back.”
Curtis’ eyes narrowed. “Famous last words, brother.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I’m not dead yet, then I don’t figure those to be my last words.”
Curtis patted Jamie on the back and turned back towards the driveway. The far-off sound of the residents of Tazewell coming to life gave him a little more courage than he’d manage to muster so far this morning. It wasn’t the fact of the undead that bothered him, just the uncertainty of not knowing what was out there. The residents of town had been talking among themselves for a few days now about the Mountain Men and Snake Handlers that had been roaming around the area. He had only been able to catch bits and pieces of conversation, but it was enough for him to worry just a little more than usual. He could fight the dead, but he feared the living more.
Jamie disappeared into the house a few seconds later. The side door had been torn off its hinges and lay just inside the house. As Jamie looked around in the low light, he instantly had flashbacks to better days. The kitchen nook off to his right where he had spent many a morning preparing his food was intact. The small table that he would eat at was still there, if some worse for wear. The entire house smelled of dankness and mold. The last near decade had not been kind to his former residence. Most everything in sight was shades of gray or black from decomposition, including the carpet.
He slowly moved forward and off to his left. A short hallway was in front of him, with two doors off to his left and one to his right. The first door on the left was the entrance to the basement; the second was his former bedroom. The far right door at the end of the hallway was the bathroom. God only knows what the bathroom looks like, Jamie thought absently. He proceeded over to the first door on his left, the basement. Gripping the .45 in his left hand, he grabbed the door handle with his right and swung the door open. More dank smell greeted him as he did so. He slowly proceeded down the stairs, taking each step precariously, and reached the bottom of the stairwell. He took a deep breath as the darkness enveloped him.
* * *
Curtis sat on the trunk of the abandoned Ford Taurus, his feet resting on the bumper. His M4 lay in his lap with his right hand on the pistol grip of the rifle. Jamie had only been gone for a minute, but he still felt very much alone. The occasional noise coming from town let him know that normality – or as close to it as he was going to get – was just a few hundred yards away. It was strange how going outside the wall now felt so alien to him. He had become accustomed to the life inside the wire, and he had to admit that it was enjoyable. Aside from having to hunt for and grow your own food, it was a self-sustained community. Everyone had a job, including him. Larry had charged Cornbread and him to do the police work for the town. Being the closest that they had to law enforcement wasn’t easy; many “crimes” weren’t even punishable before the world went to shit, let alone now. He pretty much had to get a confession or catch someone in the act of doing something to have any effect on the outcome of the situation. Nevertheless, it was a job and it made him feel more at home in Virginia than he had at Camp Dawson.
Despite the reassuring feeling that came over him, the ever-present undead wouldn’t let him let his guard down. A lone zombie made himself known by slowly shambling out of the weeds in front of him. The singular walker had gotten to his feet slowly at the sight of Curtis and was making a feeble attempt at pursuing him. Weed and vines were tangled in its legs, actually grown and intertwined with muscle and sinew, as if the zombie hadn’t moved in months. It moved its arms, stretching out towards Curtis and trying to growl. Only a choked gurgling sound came out. It was hopelessly anchored to the ground, immobile and harmless. Curtis calmly strolled over to the rooted zombie, pushing his rifle aside as he did. Stopping a few feet short of the creature, he observed it for a moment. The non-irradiated zombies were still not decaying at a rate anywhere near normal. It was as if the putrefied flesh and muscle of the zombies had stopped decaying almost entirely. Since arriving in Tazewell, the undead were less of a threat, but still the odd zombie popped up in strange places. They stay in one place until provoked or stimulated in some way.
Curtis watched for a few more moments. He shook his head and unsheathed his battle-worn but trusty Ka-Bar. He grabbed the zombie by the neck and placed the tip of the large knife between its eyes. Steel pierced through soft bone as he shoved the knife through its skull. He twisted the handle, creating a gaping hole in the zombie’s head. It fell shortly after, sliding off the knife as it did. Slick, foul-smelling, black ooze and lumps of brain dripped off the blade. Curtis wiped the Ka-Bar off on his pants leg and returned it to its sheath. He walked back over to his spot near the garage and continued to wait for Jamie, staying ever vigilant but taking up a seat on the back of the car for a moment.
Curtis laid back on the trunk of the Taurus and stretched his aching back muscles. The mattresses at the motel weren’t exactly top-of-the-line comfort, but it beat sleeping on the ground. He guessed the unnatural crunching and popping sound that he heard in the mornings was his back working its way back to the way it was supposed to be, before years of sleeping on less-than-optimal bedding. He stretched out his legs and readjusted the rest of his body in the same popping and crunching manner. It felt good to relax for a few minutes, to let his guard down.
Screaming took that relaxation away quickly.
Curtis shot up from his seat on the trunk, instinctively throwing up his rifle as he did. The scream was not the same sound he’d heard previously. The one earlier sounded like a man, possible a coyote. This one was neither; it sounded distinctively female. Curtis swung his rifle around to his left; it was the location of the sound as best he could tell. The problem with the sound coming from that direction was that it wasn’t coming from town. It was coming from the wooded area on the hill, about a half-mile off in the distance. The road they were on ended in a dead end. After that dead end, the earth went at a 45-degree angle, up a steep embankment. The other side of that embankment held nothing special, just a few miles of wooded areas and an eventual run-in with a steep ridge of the Appalachian Mountains.
Curtis hopped down quickly from the car and stalked down to the end of the driveway. Once he reached the end, he lowered the rifle and tried to listen. Only Jamie’s footsteps behind him as he exited the house greeted him. Curtis spun around, his rifle at low ready.
“Whoa! It’s just me, Curtis!” Jamie said as he trotted down the driveway. “What are you doing?”
Curtis lowered the rifle as Jamie approached. “I heard a woman scream; something coming from up in the mountains over there.” He waved his rifle and nodded off to his right.
“Screaming? Mountain lions around here sound a lot like a woman screaming. If the sound close by, they’re usually far off and vice-versa.”
“This sou
nded far off,” Curtis replied.
“Then we better grab the stuff I got from the basement and get back over the wall. Mountain lions ain’t nothin’ to fuck with,” Jamie said, waving Curtis back towards the house. “C’mon, I’m gonna need a hand here.”
Curtis did as he was asked and walked back towards the house, not taking his eyes off the hillside. He wasn’t certain that it was a mountain lion made that sound. In fact, he would have bet his paycheck – if he had one – that it was a woman made the noise. As he approached the garage, he saw what Jamie had procured from his former home. Jamie hefted up the gigantic rifle by its carrying handle as he approached.
“Is that what I think it is?” Curtis asked as he pointed to the gray and black rifle.
“Yes it is. Barrett model M82A1, a .50 caliber piece of anti-everything machinery. I kept it in a fireproof safe down in the basement. I had a couple things in the safe that I couldn’t take whenever we left years ago.” Jamie hefted up the Barrett. “Big sumbitch weighs over thirty pounds unloaded; it woulda been too heavy to do any good. Now that we have the wall, it can be used for long-range and anti-vehicle purposes. Plus I had to get a new sidearm.”
Curtis grinned at the sight of the rifle. The Barrett M82A1 was a favorite of snipers of all branches of the military. The huge .50 caliber round was primarily anti-material, but would take out damn near anything in its path. It used the same .50 BMG round the Ma Deuce did. He looked on Jamie’s side, his new handgun sagging down his belt. Jamie had lost nearly seventy-five pounds since leaving Tazewell nearly ten years ago. The life of staying on the run combined with no fast food and constant walking had done the big guy well.
“Is that a Desert Eagle?” Curtis asked, pointing to the oversized handgun.
Jamie grinned. “Yes it is. I kept it locked up for a special occasion. I figure it’s about time that I break it out.”
“That thing is a beast!”
