Dead Nation

by Joshua Guess

  “We were just a few miles south of the Canadian border,” he continued. “When the Sons showed up about two years ago, they didn't act like marauders. They weren't. Not to us. They offered us a deal. We provided food, since that's pretty much what my group had to offer, and they protected us.”

  “And did they?” I asked, already sure of the answer.

  Colin nodded. “My people hunted. We farmed. There were sixty of us. You know how much work that many people can do when they don't have to worry about anything but the job? Deer population was crazy out there since the collapse. We brought down ten, fifteen a week. That's not counting everything else we hunted. The Sons held up their end.”

  I watched his face as he worked up the right words to tell me the next part. “But it didn't stay that way, did it?”

  Colin shook his head, and when I saw his eyes again, they were haunted. “You know how people used to say the Germans got caught up in mass hysteria? I never bought it. I do now. The Sons started getting more people.”

  “More showed up, you mean,” I suggested.

  Colin shrugged. “Know that now. At the time none of us knew there were more than a few hundred of 'em. We couldn't keep up, and they were ready to move on. Made us an offer to join. Get trained. Be part of the new community they were gonna build.”

  I leaned forward, probably dangerously far, and got my face much closer to his. “At what point did you figure out it was a pyramid scheme?”

  Colin, as it turned out, realized that the Sons were slowly swallowing up larger and larger communities fairly quickly. After a bit more conversation, I let him down and took him inside the Castle itself—still tied up, of course—to have a more civilized conversation.

  The entire team was there, though by agreement I was the only person who spoke to the prisoner. The ladies sat or stood around looking intimidating, which was not a stretch for any of them.

  Colin was fairly young, not yet twenty-five. He had joined up happily at first, thinking that strength in numbers was a pretty good trade for leaving his home behind. Hard to blame him for that; it was the same mindset that made Haven and the Union possible.

  “Started getting doubts pretty early,” he said, sipping at a glass of water with his bound hands. “You hear stories, you know? Really messed up shit. It was hard to believe most of it because the bosses were so harsh on anyone who got caught breaking rules. Anything that looked like marauder behavior was...not treated kindly.”

  He put the cup down and leaned back in his chair, still obviously uncomfortable but with the air of a man finally relieved of the burdens of his crimes through confession. “It was about six months later that we all realized how bad things were really getting. We'd swallowed up two whole groups of survivors by then, most of them joining up too. There were thousands of us, and the leadership had no idea what they were doing. The city they wanted to found was probably a bunch of bullshit at first, but by then they had to make it real. Settling down and farming a piece of land permanently was the only option for so many people.”

  I crossed my arms but showed none of the satisfaction I felt as a puzzle piece fell into place in my head. “And they stopped taking new members then, right?”

  Colin fidgeted in his seat. “Well...yeah, I guess. Everyone who was with the group up to that point was one of us. A Relentless Son. Everyone after that was...”

  I grimaced. “Disposable?”

  Colin shuddered. “The ones we didn't kill, we took. Well, you know, don't you? Taking kids captive to keep the parents in line. They still managed to keep the rest quiet for a long time. We thought robbing was the end of it. Had no idea they were killing kids. Not until it was too late to get out.”

  I let some of the anger I was feeling show on my face. “You could've left. Just walked away. You're some kind of specialist, aren't you? That's why you were out here wrangling zombies? If they trusted you to do that, you'd have had any number of chances to run.”

  “You don't get it,” Colin said with far more force than I expected from the pale, thin young man. “You leave, they hunt you down. They have a whole fucking unit of guys for that, almost fifty of them. And you don't die pretty when they catch you. That's what they've become. What we've become. I don't think they were really all that bad when this started. It was just one thing after another. Constant escalation.”

  This was where my knowledge of psychology, sociology, and basic human nature as applied to unwieldy organizations came in. “The people up the chain had to come up with one solution after another, right? That's why it got so harsh and the Sons turned into what they are. A whole lot of people being controlled by a tiny group with worse and worse tactics.”

  “Yes,” Colin said emphatically. “I came out here because honestly I thought it might just be better to die. I was too afraid to fuck up on purpose, but I'm telling you there are a lot of people inside those walls who'd jump at the chance to fuck their shit up.”

  We were beginning to veer into dangerous territory. Assuming my people weren't mauled to death by the swarms of the dead, our plan rested on a very delicate balance of forces. Including the one Colin touched on. The only way this worked was if we could manage to mobilize an army from the inside, but in a way that didn't kill all the captives.

  So instead of grabbing on to that thread and pulling it, I nodded. “Well, hopefully that's the case Other captives have said the same thing, but you can never really know for sure secondhand. I need more information, Colin. More than layouts and locations. I need intel on everyone in power inside that building.”

  Colin frowned in a thoughtful sort of way. I would have thought he was stalling but for the fact he'd been as forthright as a human being can from the moment he opened his mouth. Everything about him read as genuine, and I rarely make serious mistakes with body language.

  “You'll never get to King,” he said after a few long moments of thought. “You shouldn't even try. He has two hundred guys, all old members of the Sons from before the end of the world, and another hundred of the hardest dudes from Artemis. Real soldiers, not just military contractors phoning it in. They're in a separate wing of the building and it's built like a goddamn fortress. Nobody goes in there they don't let in, you understand?”

  “Yeah, so I've heard,” I said. “What can you tell me about Andrew King?”

  What I knew about the leader of the Sons was mostly hearsay, with enough overlapping details to make me think the worst of it was true. Old school biker, but not the Hollywood depiction. King was a Marine back in Desert Storm, a green recruit at the time. Supposedly he stayed in for a decade and became pretty fucking scary. Now he was a big guy in his late forties who'd taken over a massive criminal organization before his first gray hairs came in. Everyone I talked to said he had a reputation for being damn near impossible to take in a fight. Which partly explained how he'd managed to wrest control of the Sons fifteen years ago.

  “If he runs,” Colin said, “you should fucking let him. King doesn't show his face much, but when he does it's always to make sure everyone understands why he's in charge. A few months ago one of his guys, a friend for years from what I understand, raped a woman. King trotted him out in front of almost a thousand of us and broke every bone in his arms and legs using just his own hands and feet. He wasn't fast about it, either. Never blinked. Didn't hesitate. When he was done, he tossed the guy over the wall while he was still alive.”

  I thought back to that last group of scouts we'd captured. Here's where I'm supposed to darkly ponder whether or not the similarities between King and myself makes me a monster like him.

  This wasn't my first time dealing with people like him. Not my fiftieth. I've had those long moments of introspection time and again. I'm pretty self-aware, and here's what gets me through the day: yes, I am like him. Yes, I am a monster.

  I'm just a monster on the side of the angels.

  18

  This time when the zombies came for us, we were ready. My people spent most of three
days hunting down the packs and killing the people herding them. When you're not worried about consequences, turns out to be pretty easy to put a bullet in someone's head with a sniper rifle from a few hundred yards. Well, easy if you have the skills. A lot of people on the strike force did.

  We weren't alone this time, either.

  I crouched on top of what my friends in Haven had lovingly nicknamed a Tank. No, it's not original, just accurate. Take a standard pickup truck or SUV, add some strategic armor plating, strip away everything you don't need, and load it up with gear for mowing down zombies.

  We didn't care about any of that. Any dead zombies from the chain flails whirring away were bonus points as far as I was concerned. We had a weapon far more powerful.

  “Eat this, assholes!” Tabby shouted as she lobbed thin glass spheres filled with the cure. Okay. I'll be honest: they were Christmas ornaments. Look, when you need something to definitely break; you go with what you know.

  Looking out at the corpses walking around us took me back to something Colin said. He knew the Sons were too large a group to carry on the way they had, only leeching off communities. That King and the rest of his lieutenants never considered actually joining a community that could handle them was no surprise; they'd have to give up power as well as do the work.

  Originally I intended to use the zombies outside the wall as cover for a few talented infiltrators. Plans always change in the field, however, so I didn't feel too bad about ending the local zombie threat once and for all.

  Tabby and I crouched low, knuckles white as we held on to the steel rings welded to the top of the tank. Over the last several days, the dead had attracted more of their kind. Not too many thanks to the cold weather, but enough to swell the ranks annoyingly. Rather than waste ammo, we just called in the reinforcements a little early.

  “How long will it take?” Tabby asked. “I've never actually sat around and watched.”

  I shook my head. “You've been living in Haven for like half a year. And you were in New America when we signed the treaty. We made fucking pamphlets! Do you have any idea how hard it is to make pamphlets in the apocalypse?”

  Tabby grinned as she tossed another ornament. “It's like ten days, right?”

  “Jesus Christ,” I moaned. “Try a day at the outside. This stuff cuts right through the specialized Chimera cells that run up and down the brain stem. Cuts off the food supply to the stuff in the head, which dies off. And once they're gone, there's nothing to guide the Chimera laced through the body. No brain controlling it.”

  “Nerd,” Tabby said.

  I threw my last ornament and slapped the top of the Tank. “Very mature.” A head popped out of the passenger window, the armor sliding neatly down and back. It was Jo.

  “What's up?” she shouted. “You guys run empty?”

  I nodded. “Back to base. We need to give these guys some time to simmer. And tell Jackie to double-time it. They're gonna follow us all the way home.”

  “Will do,” Jo said—then had to throw herself back inside as a trio of bodies slammed into the side of the truck. The flails at the front didn't reach them. The three zombies managed to judge the low speed of the truck, its direction, and how best to approach to avoid the whipping chains that would break their bones and leave them helpless—a right angle was the only option.

  One of the New Breed hit and fell away. The rear flail took care of her instantly. The other two hung on, however, and one had its entire upper body inside the window while the other climbed its companion's back toward me.

  I wasn't stupid enough to punch or kick from that position. There were too many variables and most of them ended with me a gross splatter on the ground, slowly being eaten by a bunch of dead assholes. No, wait. I mean, the dead people are the assholes. Not that I would be eaten by their assholes.

  Anyway.

  I did the smart thing and pulled my pistol with my free hand and shot the climbing zombie in the face. Physics did the rest. Instead of trying to hang over the cab and pull the New Breed back out through the window with almost no leverage, I just pulled myself forward far enough to pop the roof hatch. Tabby grabbed hold of my leg and gave me a curt nod. She' make sure I was secure enough that I didn't tumble away and die.

  I pushed my torso through the hatch and found myself looking at Jo, who was on her back and desperately pushing at the zombie trying to maul her back. Jackie was trying to help from the driver's seat but couldn't slow down. If she did, the swarm would begin to catch up. Jo was actually doing okay; she was smart enough to wear her armored coat and gauntlets.

  I didn't have quite enough room to hook my elbow around the dead man's neck, so I reached down with both hands and grabbed with every ounce of strength I could manage. I had an absurd moment where I felt like Homer Simpson strangling Bart—that show had a disturbing amount of child abuse in it, now that I think about it—though of course there was no air flow to cut off.

  I fucking pulled. I yanked that zombie up toward me and then wrapped my arms around its head. The effort was intense.

  “Knife, screwdriver, something here,” I grunted. “Any time now.”

  And without missing a beat, Jo pulled her weapon and got up on her knees. She didn't accidentally stab me as she found just the right opening and slipped the thin tip of the screwdriver in the zombie's ear. Considering we were in a moving vehicle and the dead man wasn't being super cooperative, I want to call that a minor miracle.

  The Castle was not in much better shape than the wild between it and the compound. It had become my team's primary base and an obvious target thanks to all the traffic in and out. We'd taken care of most of the herders and strike teams, but the remaining zombies could smell us there. Clusters of the dead were one of the drawbacks of moving operations closer in as we tightened the noose around the Relentless Sons.

  Though I was beginning to accumulate a number of injuries, I slapped the top of the truck and said, “Come on, ladies. This mess won't clean itself up.”

  Beside me, Tabby let out a small groan. I waved to Marie, who sat atop the turret and kept watch. She had a bow in her hand and an arrow nocked. “We got this,” I shouted up to her. She nodded.

  Every time we left the Castle, a dozen or so zombies showed back up. We kept killing them and burning the corpses—basically letting the smoke turn into a giant black arrow pointing right at us in the process—and they kept on coming back. We tried ammonia. That didn't drive them off for long. Damn things must have been near starvation. Usually the smell of burning zombie bodies is enough to keep them at least cautious, but no. Seems the Sons figured out just the right balance to keep their pet dead people obedient enough not to attack their handlers while hungry enough to bull their way through things that would normally ward them off.

  If it wasn't a tactic being used against my people, I'd have been impressed.

  I grabbed my shield and zombie beatin' stick from the small rack welded to the back of the truck. The stick was about three feet long and slightly knurled at one end thanks to the fist of steel cladding there. I guess you could call it a mace if you wanted to, but I don't care about classifications.

  I bounded off the side of the truck and raised my shield. The nearest zombie predictably seemed more concerned about the weapon in my right hand than the shield on my left arm, which was of course the entire point. I let the zombie work its way to my left side and watched it tense up just before the expected strike.

  In the moment where its arms dipped just before the pounce, I flipped my arm up and punched right at its throat. The shield was designed for exactly this use. The forward momentum of the dead man and the power of my own swing was enough to send the hardened, sharpened edge of the shield completely through its neck. It must have looked pretty fucking cool.

  Internally I was just thankful it worked this time. There was a 50/50 chance whenever I tried it. The other half of the time, the edge bit into neck bones and the zombie was hardly bothered. I let the relief wash through me
as its headless corpse fell to the dirt, and sighted my next target.

  Tabby landed next to me, her pistol drawn. The extended magazine held thirty rounds, though she wouldn't waste bullets unless something went wrong. The double handful of zombies was not the threat it might have been if we were caught unawares.

  I took down another one a few seconds later with a shield bash to the face to stun followed by an overhead swing from my stick that smashed its skull like an egg. The broad point created from the ends of the metal cladding being brought together in a welded seam was a nice force multiplier.

  Jackie and Jo hopped out of the truck and waded into the fray with minimal concern in their body language. We'd done this a handful of times over the last few days, and the years before put the total number of zombie encounters in the thousands.

  Tabby kept pace with me as I took up the right flank, matching speed and movements to Jo, who in turn matched hers with Jackie. Our line was small but effective. Jackie laid into zombies with armored fists, knocking them off balance to allow Jo cleaner kills. It only worked with these small groups, but the sight of flawless teamwork never failed to make me smile.

  When the last zombie ambled toward us through the sprawl of its dead companions, not blessed with the intelligence of its more evolved peers needed to understand it couldn't possibly win, I felt a moment of pity for the thing.

  Then an arrow sprouted from its skull. I glanced up at Marie, who shrugged. “I got bored.”

  Deciding to worry about the bodies of the slain zombies later, the team went inside with me. It wasn't even time for lunch yet but I was tired. Tired physically, but also mentally. No matter how tough you are, injuries drain you and being away from my family sucked a lot.

  As I sat down at the table spread with all the gear retrieved by another team from our last base, Tabby surprised me by dragging a chair over to the other side of it and sitting down. Usually the others left me alone when I started poring over the data and tweaking plans.