by Brown, TW
“And when do we leave?” Ahi asked.
“At dawn.” Aaheru picked up a stone and tossed it into the crowd. “You and the men will gather the most infirm of the residents and bring them to my tent for a feast this evening. We will celebrate their long life and praise them for their service to the glory of Egypt.”
“And then?”
“In the morning they will be taken to the south wall and made to stand.”
“But, and forgive me, my brother,” Ahi risked the wrath of his leader, “there are far too many outside the walls. How do you expect us to escape? It is a difficult enough task to get a handful of men out who are travelling light to search for supplies. The caravan you have in mind will move slowly. The dead will return before the last of us can be through the gates.”
“I have determined the order by importance.” Aaheru faced his most trusted subject with a grim expression. “If we stay here any longer, we will all die. Every day, more of those abominations to Allah come. Soon, they will not be tens deep, but hundreds. They abandon the city by the thousands. Many come on the heels of those we have sent for supplies. We are fortunate that this City of the Dead is so vast. Much smaller and it would already be too late.”
Ahi looked out at the faces that stared back up at him, so many with mouths open emitting sounds that reminded him of a babe crying for its mother’s teat. Yes, he thought, there were more every day. He knew that Aaheru was correct, but that still didn’t make him comfortable with killing more living, breathing souls. Yet, if he opposed Aaheru, he might find himself in that tail end of the departing caravan.
“It will be as you say, my brother.” Ahi jabbed his spear into the face of a woman whose burka had been reduced to rags that were rigid with long-since-dried blood.
***
A series of shacks sitting on stilts that looked like telephone poles cut in half were scattered in a rough circle in the center of what had once been a city park. Walkways from one to another kept all of the tiny residences connected. A wall of cars and trucks formed a fence-like barricade as the first line of defense. Juan could make out several coils of barbed and razor wire wrapped around the defunct vehicles. Inside that, he thought he could see the shadow of a trench.
In the center of the elevated huts was a decent sized fire pit. Playing near the fire were at least a dozen children. Juan went to take a step forward, but Thad grabbed his arm.
“We’ve been spotted,” Thad hissed.
“Huh?”
“There, in that big pine tree, on the platform.” Thad pointed. Juan followed his finger and spotted the man with the complicated looking bow pointed their direction.
“He ain’t the only one,” Keith breathed. “To the left I spot another.”
Juan raised his hands above his head and took a few steps forward. When nobody fired, he took a few more. This time, an arrow punched into the ground a dozen feet in front of him.
Unstrapping his weapons, he made a big show of tossing each one back to Thad and Keith who had not budged. Lifting his coat, he did a full circle to show that he was unarmed and took a single step forward. After waiting to ensure another arrow wasn’t going to be fired, he began to walk slowly towards the ring of cars and trucks.
“We got company!” Keith called.
“Deal with it,” Juan said over his shoulder. “I’m kinda busy right now.”
“We can’t leave you like this,” Thad shouted. “Forget these people and maybe we try again later.”
“You two do what you have to do,” Juan yelled as he continued forward. “We finally found some other survivors…I gotta at least talk to them.”
Juan began walking at a regular pace, mostly convinced that these people weren’t going to shoot him…yet. As he reached the circle of rusting cars and trucks, he was further impressed to see that concrete had been poured into them. He’d seen a herd of deaders move a vehicle aside and imagined they would have a much tougher time of it with these.
A man was waiting for him in the concrete-filled bed of a pick-up truck. He had a pistol in his hand with a scope on it. Juan tried not to smile. Who puts a scope on a pistol? he thought.
“You the folks living out on the island?” the man asked.
“I guess,” Juan said with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
“Where you send them others?”
“They’re dealing with some deaders that are on our tail.”
“You come here for a reason?” Juan noticed that the man was starting to sweat. Considering he was in a short-sleeved shirt, and it was barely over thirty degrees, that was curious.
“Looking for supplies and seeing if there might be any survivors who want to join us.”
“We can’t join you,” the man whispered. He dropped his eyes and seemed to find something fascinating on the grip of his pistol.
“Why not?”
“We got three infected children.” Juan felt his guts twist just a bit at that revelation. “Their mamas won’t leave till they pass. One of them says she will take care of her child even after it turns.”
“Take care of?” Juan didn’t like the sound of that at all. “She knows the kid will be a deader, right?”
“Everybody knows,” the man said with a grim-faced nod. “Folks are trying to talk sense into her, but it ain’t making a dent.”
“Looks like you have a pretty secure set up here,” Juan said, changing the subject.
“It does okay,” the man agreed. “Things get a little hairy when one of those mobs comes through, though. That’s why we filled all the vehicles with concrete. Had one a few months ago that moved cars out of the way. Damn things just squashed one another until some of ‘em popped like ticks, but the cars started scooting. We had to stay out of sight in our tree-huts for almost three weeks until it thinned out enough to go down and take out the ones that stayed.”
A cold breeze swept through, carrying with it the familiar stench of undeath. Juan looked around for where the source might be originating. The man must’ve smelled it too, because he swiveled his body around and raised his pistol.
“Maybe you should be heading back with your people,” the man suggested. “Oh…and one more thing,” he called as Juan turned to go. “I’m just gonna ask this once, have your people salvage some place else. We sorta figure this area to be ours.”
Juan nodded. He understood the man’s point. Besides, Juan could see movement in the shadows of the nearby streets as an undeterminable number of zombies were moving in the direction of this little cluster of survivors. These folks were in for rough times. Not only were deaders on the outside of their barricade, they were about to have them inside also. There was no way that could end well. He didn’t give them more than a couple of months.
Winding back to the water’s edge, he found Thad and Keith loading a pair of rickety shopping carts full of various odds and ends into the boat. A half dozen bodies lay sprawled around the landing.
“So what’s the story?” Thad asked as Juan stepped in to help load the newly acquired booty.
“Probably come back in a few months and have a shitload of supplies to pick through,” Juan answered.
Keith’s head came around sharply. “What do you mean?”
“They got infected kids inside their fence and nobody will put them down,” Juan said. “And as I was leaving, it looked like a couple hundred were coming. They’re screwed.”
The other two men looked back towards the direction of the encampment. Already the moans of the dead could be heard over the sound of the winter wind blowing through open windows and busted out doorways.
“People are stupid,” Keith muttered.
“No,” Thad disagreed. “They just can’t evolve quickly enough.”
***
The sounds of screaming were faint, but in a dead world, sound carried in a whole new way. Chad dropped the armload of wood he’d been carrying up to the hotel and took off in a sprint. He knew the sound of his daughter’s scream…and the one that had jus
t pierced the air was definitely hers.
He drew the military-issue .45 from its holster and clicked the safety off. The rules were strict about using firearms: last resort only. If his daughter was in danger, that qualified in his mind. He ejected the magazine and ensured that it held nine rounds by seeing the brass casing in the third hole down. Shoving it back into place, he pulled the slide and let it push the first round into the chamber.
Ahead he saw a few more people on the run. One of them was Scott Colson. Scott had joined up with the group back in Modesto. He had also almost gotten everybody killed when they had sought refuge in a school when he’d gone searching for the cafeteria and some possible supplies. Ever since that incident, Scott hadn’t spoken much to anybody.
Chad watched as the man reached the top of the ridge ahead and came to an abrupt stop. Whatever Scott saw, it had frozen him in his tracks. When the man began to backpedal, Chad just knew that he would never reach his daughter in time to save her. Something in his gut told him that she would suffer the same fate as her mother.
Forcing himself to move faster, he sent snow flying as he plowed ahead through the shin-deep powder. When he finally reached the top of the little hill he stopped beside Scott. Down below, the small creek where laundry was done ran by, heedless of the carnage happening on its banks.
Scanning the scene, his eyes fastened on his daughter. She was standing in the middle of the stream, pulling the arm of a young man who was caught in a terrible tug-of-war. The other arm was being pulled by a zombie that was still wearing most of its hiking gear.
As he ran down the hill, Chad noticed blood running down his daughter’s face. He was halfway when Ronni lost her grip on the young man and fell back into the icy water, vanishing from sight for a second. That second was all it took for the zombie clutching the young man to sink its teeth into his forearm as that pair tumbled back to the slushy banks of the stream.
Chad never even briefly considered helping the young man. He plunged into the freezing water and scooped his daughter into his arms. She was limp, but the water had done something wonderful; it had washed away the blood. The girl didn’t have a scratch on her! That meant all the blood had belonged to somebody else. God have mercy on him, Chad didn’t care.
He slogged to the bank, but as he reached it, a pair of undead youngsters—recent additions to the ranks, one of them vaguely recognizable—met him with outstretched arms. Having no choice, he dropped his daughter at his feet and brought his knife up from its sheath in one fluid motion, driving the steel blade up under the chin and into the brain pan. Not bothering to try and keep his grip on the knife, he brought his pistol up and jammed it against the forehead of the second threat and squeezed the trigger. Even muffled by being pressed firmly against the creature’s head, the shot echoed through the mountain air.
Glancing around, he saw dozens more of the cursed things pouring from the trees. It must’ve been a herd; brought, most likely, by the noise made as Ronni and the others did clothes in the stream while laughing and just being teenaged kids.
More of the adults from the village were arriving now. It was like watching two armies of old clash on the field of battle. The living ran into the wall of dead with axes, mauls, and wicked blades of all sizes. There were shouts and screams from the living mixed with the moans and cries of the undead.
Chad noticed several heads turn in his direction—both living and dead—in response to the report of his firearm. There would be some pissed off people when this was over. He didn’t care. His first and only priority was the protection and safety of his daughter. Besides, what were they gonna do? Kick him out? For just a moment his mind toyed with that possibility before discarding it as ridiculous.
Picking up his daughter again, Chad saw the young man she had been tugging on moments ago rise from under a pair of blue-grey skinned zombies. The young man’s remaining insides spilled out of the gaping hole in his midsection, landing in the slush in a still-steaming pile. One arm was gone, and the throat was torn.
He shook his head as he marveled at the lack of blood visible from the neck wound. Movies had loved showing bright, spurting jets of red shooting from those types of wounds. However, the reality was that, once a person was dead, the heart stopped pumping. There were surprisingly little incidents of spraying blood. Usually, as in the case of this poor lad, there was a residual trickle at best.
One of the residents of the village that Chad didn’t recognize—and there were more each day—came up and crushed the back of the young man’s head with a long-handled sledge. The zombie toppled and the living assailant brought the heavy head of the hammer down twice more, shattering the skull and bringing to mind a comedian who once ended his shows with a watermelon smashing extravaganza.
Chad started back towards the village as the residents finished off the last of the small zombie herd that had found them in this remote hideaway. On his way, he passed a man kneeling beside a woman who had an ugly bite on one arm.
“…might be immune,” he was pleading.
“I’m not,” the woman insisted. “I can already feel it, like rancid oil in my veins. I can taste the death.”
“But—” he began, and she cut him off.
“No!” The woman reached down and clasped the man’s hand that still held a dripping machete. “I won’t end up like them. Do it.”
“I can’t,” the man sobbed, pulling away. He rose to his feet and ran off; not towards the village, but instead down the trail that disappeared into the white-coated pines.
Chad paused as he and the woman made eye contact.
“Please,” the woman whispered.
Looking around to ensure that the coast was clear, he set his daughter down and approached the woman. All he still had besides the pistol was a hand axe. He fingered it dubiously, staring into the woman’s eyes.
“You sure?” he asked as he approached.
The woman nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. She closed her eyes, but just as she did, Chad thought he caught a hint of black in the whites. Maybe he just wanted to see that. Maybe he wanted self-justification of what he was about to do as he raised the axe high in the air.
He brought it down hard in the center of the woman’s forehead. Unlike a zombie, the woman cried out briefly, and her body began to shake and twitch violently. Also unlike the undead, a living person whose heart still beat sent quite a bit of blood in the air. Chad looked at his hands and let go of the axe, leaving it jutting obscenely from the woman’s forehead.
Stepping over to an area of snow not soiled with blood, he plunged his hands in and scrubbed them furiously. He couldn’t touch his daughter until he was clean. Only, it seemed that every time he examined his hands…his fingers…under the nails… there was still the blood of that woman staining them like he was a modern day Lady Macbeth.
A hand touched his shoulder and Chad spun, prepared to strike. Scott Colson put his arms up to block any possible blow. Chad let out the breath he couldn’t remember holding and took a step back.
“We lost a few,” Scott said, hiking a thumb over his shoulder back to the scene of the battle. “Is your daughter okay…?” He seemed unsure of what to say, and his mouth hung open for a moment before he continued. “I saw the blood.”
“It wasn’t hers,” Chad said flatly.
Scott looked down at the girl sprawled in the snow with a peculiar scowl. Chad didn’t have time to waste trying to explain, he scooped his daughter back up and headed to the village. He needed to get her inside and warmed up. Looking down, he realized why Scott had that dubious look on his face, her skin was turning blue and her lips were a horrid purple.
Twenty minutes later he had stripped her of her wet clothes and bundled her in several blankets and comforters. Her color was returning to normal, but there was a new problem…she wouldn’t stop shivering.
***
Darlene set the bone saw down and removed the two inch square of skull she had cut in the top of the cranium of her subje
ct. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but she let out a gasp nonetheless. A blackish syrupy substance seeped out of the square and spread across the linen she had placed under the creature’s head. She still considered them “creatures” and she refused to succumb to Lena’s insistence that these things were horror movie monsters.
Squirting saline to clean the exposed brain, Lena traced the thick black tracers that she knew would be found all the way to the core of this brain. Still, the thick fluid was something new. She would have something different to run tests on at the very least.
Peeking over the screen, she stared down into the milky eyes of her current research specimen. She had placed a gag in its mouth to keep it quiet. This one was one of the criers. They were the worst. That sound was so unnerving. The first time they’d heard one of the specimens make that noise, all three doctors agreed to close the lab early and retire to their rooms to drink alone.
Darlene had slipped out a couple hours later and returned to the lab. It was still on the table exactly as they’d left it. When she entered the room, it was already straining against the straps that held it in place. Its head twisted back and forth violently, which she found to be odd considering how slow the creatures moved when they walked. She had made a ball from a towel and gagged the thing. It still made muffled noises, but at least that crying was silenced.
Since then, two more of their test subjects had demonstrated that trait. They were of both genders, so that was ruled out. Samantha had done extensive exploration of their mouths, throats, and lungs, but nothing stood out as what could cause some of them to make that awful noise. From that day forward, the standing rule was to gag all specimens.
This one was staring up at her. Darlene shuddered when she realized that she had been daydreaming. That sort of carelessness would get you killed. Returning her attentions to the exposed brain, she deftly began removing small samples of the ruined gray matter with her scalpel. She marveled at how the creature expressed little or no reaction to having bits of the brain cut away. They had learned early on that damage to the Pons and Medulla would render the specimen useless—in other words, absolutely dead. Of course, enough overall damage would also accomplish the same thing, but they had not actually discovered a specific “breaking point” where the cumulative damage would cause a shutdown. So far, results had varied according to the subject.
