Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within

by James N. Cook

  “Keep your hands where I can see them. Move backward toward the sound of my voice.”

  I hesitated. Not because I was afraid, but because that was what a real intruder would have done.

  The voice hissed, thickly accented, “There is a rifle pointed at your fucking head cabrón. You run, and you die. Now back up toward my voice, slowly. Do it now. I won’t tell you again.”

  I could almost feel the laser sight bouncing around on the back of my head. I did as the sentry ordered, moving slowly backward with my hands up.

  “Down on your knees, hands on top of your head.”

  Just as the sentry said that, the door opened and one of the perimeter guards leveled his M-4 at my face, blinding me with a tactical light. I smiled.

  “Drill Instructor Garrett. Password is white balloon,” I said.

  The bright LEDs lowered, leaving me sightless in the dark room. My night vision was shot to hell.

  “Sorry about that, sir,” the recruit at the door said.

  I waved off the apology. “Don’t be sorry for doing your job, recruit.”

  The kid straightened a bit and looked almost proud of himself. A red-lens flashlight clicked on behind me, bathing the entrance in dark crimson. I turned around to see who had gotten the drop on me.

  “Well I’ll be damned, Sanchez. You’re growing less useless by the day.”

  Sanchez grinned. “Thank you, sir.”

  I reached out for his flashlight. He handed it to me and I shined it on the other sentry. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, recruit?”

  “Yes, sir. On my way, sir.” He closed the door. The sound of booted feet running over grass pounded away from the barracks as he sprinted back to his post.

  I swung the flashlight over to Sanchez. “You’re the watch commander tonight, correct?”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Come with me.” I turned and walked into the small office near the entrance set aside for instructors. It was small, consisting of a metal desk, file cabinet, a few chairs, and a cot barely large enough to sleep on. I motioned toward a chair.

  “Shut the door and have a seat, recruit.” He did as I told him.

  Most of the time, when I pulled someone into my office, they were pants-shitting nervous. No one ever got invited there so that I could sing their praises. If someone was seated in front of my desk, it was because they had fucked up, and I was about to explain to them why they were stupid. That usually got people sweating. But in Sanchez’s case he was calm, his expression unworried.

  Whatever he had been through during the Outbreak, it made life here in the camp seem like a walk in the park by comparison. I had files on each of my recruits, having interviewed them all before training to assess their skills—military or otherwise—and his story was a tough one.

  An up-and-comer on the professional boxing circuit, he was living and training in Nashville when the Outbreak hit. He had fled westward when Nashville was overrun and, according to Sheriff Elliott, he had shown up at the north gate with a couple of cans of food, a crowbar, and an old .38 revolver. His gun only had three bullets in it, and he was barefoot, his shoes having fallen apart on the long hike.

  Most of the people fleeing Nashville had headed south to Jackson, which was also overrun a short time later. When asked why he’d chosen to go west instead of going along with the evacuation, he’d simply shrugged.

  “The Army couldn’t handle the muertos in Nashville, and they’d had more soldiers then,” he had said. “Jackson wasn’t going to be any different. I figured I would be better off on my own, maybe all those people going south would draw the hordes away.”

  I had nodded, agreeing with his simple pragmatism. His willingness to strike out on his own alluded to a toughness and independence that makes for good soldiers—something I knew a thing or two about. I decided right then that I wanted him in my militia and had been watching him closely since. He was one of the few recruits who never slowed down, never showed fatigue, and never complained, even during the most grueling parts of training. Whatever else anyone might say about him, the kid was tough.

  “So explain to me what your strategy was,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “You obviously gave some kind of signal to the perimeter guards to hold off and wait, and then close in when you caught me. How did you do it?”

  He shook his head, not quite managing to keep a smirk off his face. “Actually, sir, it was the other way around. They saw you coming and signaled to me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Clever. And reassuring, I thought I’d gotten by them unseen. How did you pass the signals?”

  He picked up his carbine and tapped the laser sights, flicking them on and off a few times. I watched the little green light appear and disappear on the ceiling.

  “I told all the sentries to keep an eye on the door,” he said. “If they saw you, they were supposed to light up the window over the front door three times and wait for you to close it before approaching.”

  I nodded. “Mmm hmm. So the sentries were watching the door. Who was keeping an eye on the perimeter?”

  “They were doing that, too, sir,” he said, defensively. “They took turns. One of them watched the door while the others covered his lane.”

  “And how long was it between when you saw the signal through the window, and when I came through the door?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. A few seconds.”

  Busted. I had hidden in the shadows, slowly creeping up on the door for at least ten minutes. If they had spotted me approaching, they would have given the signal long before I reached the entrance. I leaned forward in my chair and rested my arms on the table.

  “Well, Sanchez, I’ll give you credit for this much. You caught me. I can’t deny that. But I do have a few issues with how you set this up.”

  I held up a finger. “One: you knew I was coming. It’s easy to set up an ambush for someone you know is going to show up. You even knew which ingress point I’d be using, so what you did tonight wasn’t anything special.”

  I held up another finger. “Two: I still managed to sneak by the guards. I thought maybe they caught me for a second there, but from what you’re saying, they only saw me when I went through the door. And even that was probably a lucky break.”

  Sanchez narrowed his eyes, his cockiness beginning to wane. “And most importantly,” I pressed on, leaning further across the desk, “there was only one of me. What if there had been more, waiting from a distance? Your sentry would be dead right now.”

  The kid shifted his gaze down to the floor. If he was half as smart as I gave him credit for, he was seeing the holes in his scheme. I went through this song and dance every night with whomever Grabovsky—one of my drill instructors—had put in charge of the watch. The watch commander was free to set up the perimeter and barracks security any way he or she wanted. Later on in training, I would be teaching them more effective tactics, but for phase one, I wanted to see what they could come up with on their own.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking, recruit.”

  He was silent for a long moment. “The problem is, you got too close before we spotted you. You didn’t need to get inside to do damage. You could have set the place on fire, blocked the door, maybe planted a bomb or something.”

  “Anything else?”

  He looked up, his black eyes angry. “If you’re sneaky enough to get by the sentries, then you’re probably sneaky enough to take one or two of them out without alerting the others.”

  “Bingo,” I said, pointing a finger at him. I stood up from my chair and walked around to sit closer to him on the edge of the desk.

  “There are two lessons I you want to take away from this tonight,” I said. “The first is that there is a world of difference between setting up an ambush and establishing a secure perimeter. The former is a fuck-ton easier than the latter. A good perimeter requires layers, alert sentries, and proper planning. All you need for an ambush is the other guy’s location, a place to hide, an
d the means to kill him.”

  Sanchez nodded slightly. I continued, “The second lesson here is that while you can never plan for every single thing that could possibly go wrong in any scenario, if you focus too much on one single threat you will ignore all the others. That’s a good way to end up dead. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” I gave him a light pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, this is the last time you’ll have to play watch commander. Starting next week, we move into phase two, and you’ll learn how to do this shit the right way. No more pulling ideas out of your ass.”

  I went back around the desk and sat down again, waving a hand at the door. “You’re dismissed, Sanchez. Get back on watch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He stood up to go. I waited for him to lay a hand on the doorknob before speaking again.

  “One last thing.”

  He turned halfway around. “Sir?”

  “Except for a chosen few, upon graduation, everyone in this militia will start out at the rank of private. When training is over with, me and the rest of the staff will choose a few people to be NCOs.”

  I let that hang for a moment. Sanchez watched me silently, his eyes intent. “Everyone in this militia will fight,” I went on, “but a few of them will be charged with bearing the burden of leadership. We’ll be looking for people who are willing to step up. People who aren’t afraid to take on responsibility. Anyone who wants to get noticed should probably start thinking about ways he can help his fellow recruits succeed. Start doing things to build trust and confidence.”

  I fixed him with a level stare.

  He said, “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

  “Good. Now get your ass back on watch.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Chapter 5

  Escalation

  I woke up long before my wind-up Donald Duck alarm clock was set to start ringing, so just before dawn I reached over and turned it off. No sense in waking Allison up unnecessarily. She was lying on her side, facing away from me, wrapped in her blanket and snoring softly. I placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and kissed the side of her neck. She stirred in her sleep, lips curling into a faint smile.

  I took my clothes into the living room to get dressed. It was still dark, and I had to light a couple of candles to see where I was going. After I had armored myself against the cold and tied on my sturdy hiking boots, I crunched across the frost in the back yard to my newly constructed outhouse.

  My current toilet situation, located a prudent distance away from the back door, was the result of water restrictions that Mayor Stone had implemented in recent weeks. Hollow Rock was fortunate enough to have running water—gravity-fed by a water tower on a nearby hill—but rainfall had been sparse during the summer, and as a result, water reserves were low. So low, in fact, that wasting it on things like showers and toilets was no longer an option. Hence the outhouse.

  It was a good outhouse, as far as things like that go. Made out of pine studs, plywood, and asphalt shingles on the roof. Nearly as big as a tool shed, it even had vinyl siding, insulation, and wood paneling on the inside. The seat was low enough to accommodate Allison’s shorter legs, and it boasted a cushioned lid that I had scavenged from an abandoned home improvement store a few miles outside of town. Tom had helped me build it—as well as two others for him and Gabe—and for a place to do one’s business, it was aces high. There was even a window I could open if things got a little too emotional.

  Sitting there in the quiet, my dwindling supply of toilet tissue as my only company, my thoughts began to wander toward the recently signed treaty with Central Command, and how it was going to affect the fight against the Legion. The signatures hadn’t even dried yet, and already we had Chinooks riding into town dropping off supplies, Navy SEALs, and one grizzled old Army veteran with a star on his collar. I had no doubt that the raiders skulking around in the woods had seen the chopper coming this way and had reported it back to whatever passed for leadership among them. If we were lucky, maybe those leaders would decide that Hollow Rock was too tough of a target and look for greener pastures elsewhere. But even that thought made me clench my fists in anger, someone else suffering in our place. The scars on my ribcage were all the reminder I needed of just how ruthless those marauding scum could be.

  No, I decided. I hoped they took the Army’s presence here as a challenge, and I hoped they did something stupid, like try to attack. If they did, we would be ready for them.

  I finished my business and tried to banish the dark thoughts dwelling in my head. The last thing I needed was to be distracted while teaching the morning class … and then it occurred to me that it was Sunday. There wasn’t going to be a morning class. Sunday was visitors’ day, when the recruits’ friends and family could come to the camp to see their loved ones and hear about their training. And considering that General Jacobs and the men who flew in with him would be at the camp to meet with Gabriel and the new militia, things were shaping up to be especially interesting.

  Before I left for the day, I started a fire in the stove for Allison, put some chicken jerky and cold flatbread in a cast iron skillet to warm up, and refilled the big metal mixing bowl in the kitchen that we used as a washbasin. Little things like that were important her, and she had no qualms about showing me how much she appreciated it when I remembered them.

  My rifle hung from its customary spot next to the door, along with my pistol and web gear; cleaned, oiled, and ready to go. I rarely went anywhere without them, even if only for a few minutes. The world had become a deadly place, and it was never a good idea to leave home unarmed, no matter how safe things might seem. I geared up, checked my weapons, and stepped out the front door.

  My breath fogged in the chill morning air, and the sun was just beginning to crest over the eastern sky, bathing the gently rolling hills in amber and gold. Birds took wing in the distance, calling to one another through the dissipating haze. Closing my eyes, I turned my face to the sky and breathed in it, letting the warm sunrise wash over me. In that place, standing under the light of another day, for just a brief moment in time, I was a man at peace.

  I like to imagine that the lines on my face smoothed, the creases in my brow relaxed, and I looked more like the man I had been before the Outbreak—young, confident, and carefree. Before I had watched the end of the world, and before the first time I had done murder. When I was a man who had known sorrow but was ignorant to the true meaning of hardship. A man who had never known the biting cold of a hungry winter or the aching desperation of love in a world gone mad.

  If I had known how the rest of the morning was going to go, I would have stood there for a good while longer.

  *****

  Gabe wasn’t alone on the Grinder when I emerged from the gravel path leading to the camp. Groggy recruits were unloading two wagons full of supplies under the watchful eye of Sergeant Raymond Grabovsky—one of the two soldiers under Steve’s command who had traveled with him from North Carolina. The squat Green Beret walked in precise circles around hives of activity, constantly tapping his ‘teaching aid’, a slender length of cane, against the outside of his boot.

  Although I stood nearly five inches taller than he did, he probably outweighed me by a good twenty pounds, and none of it on his waist. Nearly as wide through the shoulders as he was tall, Grabovsky was a dense, bulky, fireplug of a man.

  “Took you long enough,” Gabe said as I pulled the brakes on my bicycle and stopped next to him, standing on one leg.

  “Hey, it’s my day off. You should be kissing my ass for showing up at all. Where’s Marc and Curtis?”

  Marcus Cohen and Curtis Wilkins were the other two drill instructors. Marc was an ex-Marine and current sheriff’s deputy, and Curtis was the second Green Beret under Steve’s command.

  “They’re with the general’s men at the old pawn shop doing inventory,” Gabe said. “Got another
supply drop coming in today at around noon.”

  “They send us any uniforms yet?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. Hopefully they’ll come with today’s drop. We did get some rifles, though, and a couple of crates of ammo.”

  “M-16s?”

  “No, M-4s. Also a few grenade launchers, claymores, and a couple of M-240s.”

  “Good. Now you just have to teach these kids how to use that stuff without blowing themselves up.”

  Ahead of us, a recruit dropped a box of food he was carrying, and Grabovsky cracked him on the back of the leg with his cane. “Watch what you’re doing, knucklehead. Those supplies are worth more than your life.”

  The offending recruit rubbed the back of his leg and glared at Grabovsky before picking up his box and carrying it to the mess hall.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea, letting him do that?” I said, keeping my voice low. “Sooner or later, he’s going to hit the wrong person and things are gonna get ugly.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Gabe replied. “That stick saves time and effort getting the point across. How many times have you seen someone make the same mistake twice around Grabovsky? And anyway, I’d put money on him against any one of these kids. He’d break ’em in half.”

  He had a point. The Army veteran’s methods may have been harsh, but I couldn’t argue with the results. And if any of these recruits had delusions of grandeur and tried to step up to the G-man, well … it would be over quickly, at least.

  I stepped off my bike and pushed it over to the instructor’s barracks. I didn’t bother locking it up; no recruit would be stupid enough to risk stealing it. Gabe would rain death and fire on their heads if they tried. The smell of hot butter and frying eggs wafted from the mess hall, making my stomach rumble in response. Breakfast would have to wait, however. I wanted to see what kinds of goodies Uncle Sam had brought us.

  On the way to the supply building, the distant thup-thup-thup-thup of the Chinook carried to me faintly over the treetops. I stopped and looked westward, catching a speck of movement against the far horizon. Gabe walked over and stood next to me, looking in the same direction.