The Living and the Dead

by R. J. Spears

  “I know of that and when the time comes, I will get one free move, but I won’t waste that opportunity when I still have you.”

  “You make this seem like it is one big game,” Kilgore replied.

  “It is, and it isn’t. It is big though. A game for all the marbles. One I must win and this is your last chance or else I will be forced to do something drastic.”

  The hand was on the back of his head again and this time it felt as hot as a volcano. Kilgore screamed with no restraint. The pressure and the searing pain increased until his world went black.

  Chapter 6

  The Compound

  We were in a one and a half story red brick building that looked to have been built in the late 1950’s. It was a part of a small compound of buildings. As we drove past the first building, I thought I saw the name of that building. It was Logan or Mount Elementary School or something like that. That was the best I could do because I was looking through elbows, backs, and rifle butts. Our captors had forced us to sit in their pickups for our trip across the city.

  They drove us around the back of the main building to what might have been an annex or something. This smaller, squat building was solid and well-constructed, but there wasn’t a lot of charm to it. It didn’t help that the room we were being held in smelled of urine, shit, blood and fear.

  Yes, fear has a smell. It’s a combination of salty and B.O. Nothing makes you sweat like fear does.

  Our captors gathered us and our guns after the ambush on the highway, taking anything they could find including our hand-to-hand weapons. After that they hustled us into the backs of two different pickup trucks and they weren’t gentle about it. The only thing they didn’t find was the satellite phone hidden in my boot. I had made a cunning, little slit in the leather at the top of the boot and slid it in between the two pieces of leather. It was a very tight fit and rubbed my calf at times, but it was hidden. For all the good it did us. Who was I going to call - the Ghostbusters?

  Brother Ed and I were rushed onto one truck while Jason, Naveen, and Kara (who held onto Naveen tightly) were herded into another one. The transition into the trucks wasn’t the best example of customer service, either. Brother Ed and I both were slapped around with rifle butts in an effort to show us who was boss. Brother Ed got the worst of it. He took a nasty blow to the nose that brought on a lot of blood. I could only guess that it was broken. I had some sore ribs. It only hurt when I breathed. Just a little thing like that.

  We really didn’t need a lesson in power dynamics. They had weapons, and they had the numbers. I knew who was boss. All of us did. But, like all of life, there were some lessons you learned whether you wanted to or not and sometimes you had to learn them the hard way.

  They drove us through the town, all the while poking us with their rifle barrels. All during our brief trip, men on motorcycles, weaved into beside our truck, faces peering in at the new and fascinating animals being brought in from the wild. Or, at least, that’s how I felt -- like I was an exotic animal on display, in a rough and tumble traveling circus.

  The passage had been quick as this building was easily less than a half-mile off the highway. Any talking or questions had been discouraged with a whack or nudge from a rifle barrel.

  After arriving, our little gang was reunited and herded across a parking lot and into this smaller building and told to behave or else. (They used harsher language than “behave.”) We didn’t need to ask what the “or else” was because there was stark evidence of what these people were capable of.

  Just thirty yards away from the building where we were being held stood two wooden X’s, made of heavy wooden railroad ties. Both of the X’s were partially charred and hanging from them were the blackened bodies of what I assumed were humans. There was no telling if they had been dead or alive or undead before they were burned, but it was an ominous and obvious message.

  Another sign of foreboding was the barbed wire surrounded pen of twenty or so zombies that I had spotted on the way in. This pen was off to the side of the complex, nestled into the corner of a building. It had twenty feet of brick walls on two sides and ten feet of barbed wire on the other two.

  People with their own supply of corralled zombies, ready and waiting, didn’t seem to come across as people with good intent. They certainly didn’t have them as pets.

  Once inside, I felt I had to ask a question, “Where are you taking us?”

  “Shut your mouth, assface,” a beefy guy wearing motorcycle leather and carrying a shotgun said as he rammed the butt end of his gun into my back nearly knocking me over. His face was exaggeratedly round and his cheeks had a red blush making him look like a menacing Santa Claus. He certainly wasn’t jovial or cheerful.

  I decided to take his advice and kept my mouth shut.

  The corridor was narrow, and we huddled together for protection. There were two scroungy looking guys in front of us and neither of them looked back after my question and the other guy’s response.

  A fourth man, tall and rangy, wearing a motorcycle jacket and blue jeans, toting an assault rifle, followed biker Santa Claus. He didn’t say anything about my question or my treatment at the hands of his comrade. Maybe there would be suggestion box in the room we ended up in? Probably not, but you can always have hope, right?

  The front two guys slowed down and stopped. One of them pulled out a set of keys and opened a heavy metal door, then stepped aside.

  “Inside and no funny business,” biker Santa Claus said.

  No funny business, I thought. I could have a heyday with that but decided that my sarcastic wit was ill-fitted at that time and place.

  I moved to beside Kara, giving her cover as she went through the door with Naveen. Jason went in next helping Brother Ed along, his head bent low with small drops of blood falling from his nose. For good measure, biker Santa Claus put a foot against my back and shoved me forward into the room.

  An overwhelming sense of deja vu rolled over me as soon as I stumbled into the room. It was strong and almost palpable as I staggered along. It was like someone was holding up a split mirror with the two sides tilted slightly away from each other. On the one side was reality, but on the other was a skewed memory of something I had once seen.

  There was one thing that I was virtually certain of -- I had never been in the room before in my life, but so much about it was so familiar.

  The room itself was narrow and cramped. The walls were covered with piss yellow ceramic glazed tiles. These weren’t the stylish type. They looked like the lowest bid products. Opaque glass blocks near the ceiling allowed in a diffuse, dull light. The crisscross pattern of the glass blocks sent a pattern of light and shadow across the room.

  Huddled in the corner was a man, a woman, and what looked like a young girl, maybe ten or eleven years old. She looked no bigger than Naveen. The woman was wide-eyed with her mouth hanging open. The man wore a stunned expression, almost shell-shocked. The child lay across their laps and didn’t move at all. I thought I noticed some bruises on the girl’s arms and face, but the light in the room was dim, so they could be just shadows.

  It took me a few moments to finally realize that it was the room from my vision. Well, the room was the same, but the situation was different. There slight differences. The vision had been only a glimpse into a specific place and a specific time. The biggest difference was that Kara had been absent from the vision, but she was still in the room. The vision was at a different time and that time had to be in the future.

  There was a difference between them though. While the moment we were in was bleak, the moment of the vision was almost hopeless.

  The door slammed shut loudly jarring me out of my double vision and I was in the room fully. I knew it was useless, but I swung around and checked the door. It was locked tight.

  When I turned back around, I saw Brother Ed slump against the wall and Jason helped him half slide/half fall to the floor. During the descent, Brother Ed held his hand to his bleeding nose. His
eyes looked glassy and unfocused.

  Jason looked lost, and afraid. Kara only looked to me and her face seemed to be an open question; why did you let this happen to us?

  There was no answer. We could either be dead out beside the highway or be here. At the time I surrendered, I was certain the best answer was to surrender to live for another day. Once I was in this cramped and claustrophobic room with the bikers outside, I wasn’t sure death wasn’t a better option. My imagination flipped into overdrive with all the possibilities worse than death, but I shut that down fast. There was no need for me to start shrieking in panic.

  My head flowed with an endless supply of questions and I needed some answers.

  Since we were the newcomers and the couple with the child had some tenure in this place, I decided that they were the best place to start.

  But before I could go over to them, I had to check in on Brother Ed.

  “Ed, how are you doing?” I asked.

  It took him a moment, but he raised his hand and waved at me dismissively as if to say, “Don’t worry about me.”

  But I was worried. Most likely he had a concussion. If we had any hope of getting out of this room, I needed us all at full strength.

  “Joel, what are we going to do?” Kara asked as she grabbed my arm and pulled me close.

  I gave it a moment, then said quietly, “I’m not sure, but I’ve seen this room in a vision.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” She asked, seeming taken aback.

  “Well, we just got here.”

  “I mean about seeing a vision like this.”

  “I had no idea what it meant. Plus it wasn’t the most positive moment.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “It just was unclear, but it didn’t look good.”

  Then it struck me to ask Jason and Naveen if they had seen the room in a vision because we had experienced shared visions in the past.

  “Jason, Naveen,” I said, “have either of you seen this room before?” I asked, but then added, “In a vision?”

  Naveen said, “No,” and Jason just shook his head.

  So, God’s little broadcast had been for me and me alone. My own private cable channel, full of fear and loathing. What that meant, I had no idea, but it didn’t make me feel special in any way. No warm and fuzzies there.

  “Let me see what I can find out from these folks,” I said nodding my head toward the other people in our cozy confines.

  I took a glance over at the couple and the girl I assumed to be their daughter. He wore jeans, a dress shirt, and what looked like expensive boots. He looked to be around forty and was well kept. The dress shirt was relatively clean which was a change of pace for most folks living in the apocalypse. Something about him spoke of money before the fall of the world. There was a red stain on his shoulder and sleeve and I could see that his right eyebrow was swollen and split. The woman was in jeans and wore a denim shirt with an array of different colored stitching. She also seemed well taken care of, but whatever had happened to them recently had been seismic. Her face was a mix of wildness and fear.

  I took a step in their direction and she said, “I don’t know who you are, but you stay away from us.”

  I thought our entrance was fairly obvious, and that we were in the same boat as them, but maybe whatever had happened to them had made them cautious. A little caution never hurt anyone.

  I put up both my hands and said, “We are captives just like you. We just got grabbed off the highway.”

  I hoped that disarmed them, but she still had a look of leeriness.

  Kara stepped in and saved the day. “What’s wrong with your little girl?” she asked as she stepped around me. “Is there anything we can do?”

  The woman’s face lost some of its hardness, and she said, “No, we have things under control.”

  “We just want to know what is going on,” Kara said, edging slightly closer to the woman. “We have a little girl, too, and we’re scared just like you.”

  The woman’s expression softened some more and she looked to her husband for some support.

  He finally spoke, “Well, I hate to tell you this, but you are in a very bad place and there’s nothing we can do for you. I don’t know if any of us; your people or my family will make it out of here alive.”

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “They call it The Compound,” the man said. “They grabbed us two months ago. We had been living north of here, but we finally ran out of supplies and were heading south to maybe link up with my wife’s family. They came out of nowhere and they weren’t very nice about it.”

  “It sounds like we got the same treatment,” I said. “Who are these guys?”

  “I think they were a biker gang or something before…” he said and trailed off. We all knew what “before” meant. “Now, they’re just driving around from town-to-town taking what they want by force. They have a system of ambushing people on the highway.”

  “How bad are they?” I asked.

  “Bad,” he said and looked down to his daughter. “Did you see those bodies out there? Burned on those crosses?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Those people came in after us. They fought back, and they lost. They beat them to within an inch of their lives and lashed them to those crosses, doused them in gas and set them on fire. I think it was an example to us and anyone else in the area -- don’t fuck with us.”

  “Brent,” his wife said in a slightly chiding tone as she nodded toward their daughter.

  It amazed me how people still tried to be civil in a barbaric world. At least, she made an effort.

  “I think the only reason we’re still alive is that I’m a doctor.”

  “Brent, you’re telling too much,” his wife said again in the same tone, but more stridently now.

  “I’m a nurse,” Kara said, then corrected herself. “Well, I was in nursing school before.”

  He seemed to brighten at that news. “That could be your bargaining chip to survive here. The two people they burned had no useful skills. I think they considered if they kept them around as slaves or worse, they would just eventually become a drain on resources.”

  “But why were you beaten up?” I asked.

  He fell silent for a moment and exchanged a glance at his wife, then looked back to us. “I refused to treat one of their men. Their leader got angry. He knocked me around, but I was sick of being pushed around and still said no. That was my mistake. I thought they couldn’t hurt me too badly because they needed me alive and healthy. That’s when they came after my wife and Chelsea. He took Chelsea.”

  His wife reached over and clutched his arm, but any trace of hardness broke in her expression as tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks.

  “Their leader is the ruthless type. Plus he’s a sick bastard. He did things to her…” he trailed off and was unable to speak for a moment. “Now, I’m their private physician. And I have to be good at it. If he thinks I’m slacking or can’t help, then he’s threatened to take her again and do worse.” His hand went out to stroke Chelsea’s hair. “I don’t know how I can keep this up. They only have basic medical supplies. I was just a general practitioner. Sooner or later, whether I try my best or not, I’m going to fail them.”

  “Who is this leader?” I asked.

  “His name is Marlow. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but don’t underestimate him. He has animal cunning and caution. He can sense things like a snake. While he might come across as even a little charming, you can’t ever underestimate his ruthlessness. The two people out there did.”

  Oh great, was all I could think. Well, that was understating my reaction. I was edging toward terrified.

  Chapter 7

  Over the River and Through the Woods

  “Remember, you’re only back up support,” Schultzy said.

  “Uh huh,” Madison replied.

  They drove along the rutted road cautiously, bouncing back and forth in
the cab of the old pickup truck. Driving in the woods in the middle of the night with no headlights on demanded caution and some skill. Schultzy had left the lights off on purpose, not wanting anyone or anything to see him coming.

  They had crept out of the house while the old sisters snored away in their beds. The house had been set-up with a cache of weapons and supplies. They had been placed there in case the people at the Manor had to make a quick escape and were unable to take what they needed. Those weapons were about to become useful.

  As it turned out, most of the people at the Manor had made that escape only to be corralled by two well-arm and menacing attack helicopters that escorted them back to the Manor. All the while, Schultzy, the old sisters, and their charge, the thirteen-year-old Madison had watched and waited, keeping as quiet as they could.

  But strange dreams haunted old man Schultzy throughout the nights and these dreams spurred him into action. He had inklings of the origins of those dreams, but not being a religious man, he kept deep introspection of those dreams at arm’s length. He just knew his friends needed his help, and he wasn’t too feeble to avoid doing something.

  Of course, it was his actions that almost got him killed when he sniped a zombie that was about to munch down on one of his friends.

  Schultzy had stored their supplies in the old barn so they didn’t have to cart them out of the farmhouse. The old sisters didn’t hear too well, but he didn’t want to take any chances. They’d raise holy hell if they knew anything about his plan. They would have never let him take the girl along, and he wouldn’t have done it, either, but felt he had no choice. Ten years ago, he might have tried to go solo, but he knew better.

  “But I am a good shot,” Madison said. “Aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are,” he said, “but you won’t do any shooting tonight, will you?”

  “Only if I have to,” she said. Her father had been a state trooper. He had taught her how to fire a gun when she was just eight years old. Periodically, he would take her out and train her. By the time she was ten, he was really quite proud of how she shot and handled a gun. In fact, she was even better than Schultzy knew.