Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  At a glance, I could tell the shelves were still well stocked, nothing knocked over or in any kind of disarray, except for a few display stands just inside the entrance. The door had knocked them down on the way by, scattering orange hats and camouflage beer cozies across the dusty floor. The blast also shattered the front windows, but the ones on the sides of the building were still intact. The dust on the floor looked undisturbed for the most part, no telltale footprints betraying the presence of others. Fuller and I made a quick circuit of our side, carefully working our way toward the checkout counter. As we approached it, I heard Eric call out all clear.

  At the counter, I stopped and lowered my rifle. The place looked like someone had simply closed up shop and never returned. The guns were still on the racks, ammo still on the shelves. Nothing had been disturbed.

  “This is really weird,” Fuller said. “I haven’t seen a gun shop like this since before the Outbreak. You know, not trashed and looted and shit.”

  I nodded, feeling my eyebrows come together. It didn’t make sense. During the Outbreak, frightened, desperate people had descended on places like this in droves and taken everything they could carry.

  “Maybe the town was evacuated before things got bad here,” Eric said, stepping around a tall shelf. “I remember one of the Legion raiders saying something about that.”

  “Then where did all those walkers come from?” Fuller replied.

  I turned and looked out the shattered doorway to the transport. An idea began to form, and I didn’t like where it led.

  “I’m not sure, but I know someone who might be able to tell us.”

  FOUR

  His name was Patrick Folsom.

  I might have said it was a fake name if not for his Illinois driver’s license. He carried it in a worn leather wallet along with credit cards, some family pictures, old business cards, and a few rumpled dollar bills. The address was 1310 Joliet Drive, Aurora, IL. The pictures showed a plump, beardless Folsom with a pretty young woman and two pre-teen boys. The edges were worn from frequent handling, the images faded.

  “I’m assuming this is your family?” I asked.

  He was propped up on one of the benches, hunched forward, arms and legs still bound. We were alone in the passenger carriage except for Hicks, who looked on silently with his rifle aimed at Folsom’s head.

  “They were,” the prisoner replied.

  “Outbreak?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He looked up, laughing incredulously. “Really? Well that just makes my fucking day. How about you untie me and we can hug it out?”

  I put the pictures back in the wallet and held it up where he could see. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve met since the Outbreak who still carries one of these things. Most people threw them away a long time ago. Any particular reason you still have it?”

  He gave an incremental shrug cut short by his bindings. “Sentimental I guess. Just wanted something to remind me of better times, back when I had a life.”

  “In my experience, most people try not to think about those days. Makes it harder to deal with their present reality.”

  “Good for them. Now are you gonna tell me what you want to know, or what?”

  I had been monitoring his body language, and had not noticed any classic signs of anxiety or deceitfulness. He seemed, if anything, merely annoyed and physically uncomfortable from being hunched over. That in itself was an opening, but I would have to approach it carefully. Start out the easy way. If I didn’t like what he told me, I could always beat the truth out of him later. I wanted to avoid that, if possible. There was no rush, and torture doesn’t always yield the best information. People will say anything to make the pain stop.

  “What did you do before the Outbreak?” I asked.

  Again, the smile. Shake of the head. “I worked for a bank. Loan officer. I golfed on the weekends, went to my kids’ baseball games, ate fattening food, drank too much, fucked my wife every chance I got, and told my sons I loved them every day. Then the world went to hell. When the Outbreak crossed the Mississippi, we packed our shit and ran along with about twenty million other people. We had an SUV full of water, clothes, food, camping gear. The one thing we didn’t have was a gun. My wife always hated the things, said she didn’t want one in her home.”

  He laughed then, but there was no humor in it. His eyes grew raw, gazing back across the barren distance of post-Outbreak years. For a brief time, he forgot his continued existence hinged on the next few sentences out of his mouth. I rapped a hand on the bench beneath me, bringing his attention back to the present. When he glanced at me, I made a twirling motion with my index finger.

  “Most people stopped at the refugee camps in Topeka and Wichita,” he continued, “but we kept going. Our third day on the road, we blew a tire somewhere on I-70. Middle-of-nowhere. A couple of guys in a truck stopped and offered to help us, but as soon as they saw what was in the back, one of them drew a gun and pointed it at my oldest son. Told us to back off or he’d shoot him. So we backed off. They took everything, all of it. My wife begged them to leave us some food and water, but they just laughed. They drove away and left us with nothing. So we did the only thing we could do; we started walking. Found an abandoned farm. The house was burned down but the barn was still standing. We holed up there for a few months, melting snow for water, eating whatever we could scavenge. My wife found a gun in a trailer park and, lo and behold, decided it was a good idea to keep it. In December, she came down with a cold that got worse and worse until it turned into pneumonia. She died in her sleep. My kids got sick a couple months later from some bad water we drank. They died hurting, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it. I held their little bodies while they burned up with fever, and I cried like a baby. When it was over, I dragged them down from the loft and tried to bury them, but the ground was frozen and I was too weak to dig a grave. Then, as if losing my whole goddamn family wasn’t bad enough, a pack of wild dogs showed up. Three pit bulls and a couple of half-dead looking mutts. I tried to scare ‘em off, but it didn’t work. Bastards damn near killed me. I had to hide in the loft and listen to them tear my kids apart. I almost killed myself then; I had the gun in my hand, barrel against my temple, round in the chamber. I couldn’t protect my wife, couldn’t protect my kids, could barely protect myself. But I didn’t do it. I waited until the dogs were gone, and then I left. Now, here I am.”

  He kept his head down while he talked, staring at the ground. I leaned back against the wall and watched him for a long, silent moment. His story was bad, but it was far from the worst I had heard, horrifying as that is.

  “That’s a lot of information, Mister Folsom.”

  “I figured it would save time,” he replied. “Now, how about we get to the part where you ask me what you really want to know?”

  “You in a hurry?”

  “I’m tired. Tired of being cold. Tired of being hungry. Tired of being scared. I’m sick of the fighting and stealing and running and never getting a goddamn decent night’s sleep. Ever since my kids died, not a day goes by I don’t ask myself what the fuck I think I’m doing. You ever think about that? What the point of all this shit is? There’s nothing left to live for. Nothing but hunger, and fighting, and pain until eventually I get sick, or bit, or somebody kills me for my shoes, or some fucking animal gets ahold of me, or I grow old and can’t do for myself anymore. Then where will I be? No. Fuck it. You’re just going to kill me anyway, so ask your questions. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. All I ask in return is you make it quick. I’ve suffered enough.”

  He was looking at me now. No challenge or defiance, just resignation, eyes hollow and empty, staring out from that desolate place we go when things get bad. That place of recognition when you look down and see that yes, indeed, that is a bullet hole in my torso. Yes, that RPG really did just disembowel me. Yes, those really are my intestines dangling around my ankles like deflate
d balloons. Yes, the nice policeman really did just say my father was killed in a mine collapse. No, I’m sorry son, your mother’s cancer is inoperable. Yes, those really are the walking dead, those mindless, fearsome, unrelenting things I fought in so many third-world hellholes and yes, this is a worst-case scenario. Then the phone rings and it’s ‘Hey Gabe, there’s some serious shit going down in Atlanta. Red Plague. Yes, I’m sure. Grimes got bit, man, I just wasted him. I’m bugging out. See if you can’t get in touch with the old team, okay? Later.’

  And then there is the sitting in the chair, and the disbelief, and the urge to scream, but you don’t. You look at the gun, and you think about the future, and you make a decision.

  For some, the survival instinct is always there and it will not be denied. It is insistent, strident, an irresistible force. It says NO, you will not give up after all this. Not after what you’ve survived. Suck it up, pick up the phone, and do what you have to do. You still have one friend left in the world. Tell him what he needs to know. Then you take your hand away from the gun and you get your ass moving. Survival instinct is a tough lady, hard as nails and sharp as a lover’s bite, but she keeps you hanging on.

  Then again, some people shuffle that voice aside. Beat it, simmer it, send it down the road until it’s just a shrill little noise whining in the distance, too faint to listen to or care what it’s saying. That’s when people go for a high dive with no pool. When they play William Tell with their cerebellum. When they knot a rope, and stand on a chair, and carve something into a wall before they jump.

  But not me, not yet. Gabriel Garrett’s iron is not bound by faulty welds. This tall, muscled, calloused, scarred, scruffy, loose-limbed, hard-fighting scrapper doesn’t go down that easy. But he knows every man has his limits, and he’s never had any children. Never had anything with a woman that lasted more than a year. And he has certainly never watched his family die or listened to his children’s corpses being torn apart by ravening dogs. He can’t imagine living with that kind of crippling dysphoria. He can, however, see how it might take the fear of death and reduce it to an annoyance no worse than the prospect of indigestion after too many hard drinks.

  Not for the first time, I wondered what it would take to drive me to that point.

  “I won’t say I’m not going to kill you,” I said, “because you never know how these things will work out. But it’s not my immediate intention. I want information, and if you give it to me, I might let you go. Or I might take you into custody and turn you over to the local sheriff.”

  “Sheriff? You fucking kidding me? There’s still cops around here?”

  “Of a sort.”

  He laughed. “Well don’t that just beat all. Where the hell are you from, anyway? Where’d you get this…thing we’re sitting in? You with the Army or something?”

  “I’ll ask the questions.”

  “Right. Well, go ahead and ask them already.”

  I drew my knife and stood up. Folsom’s eyes grew angry. “What kind of sick fuck are you, man? I told you I’ll answer your questions. You don’t need the knife.”

  “Relax.” I bent down and cut the ties binding his ankles. He was able to separate his feet and sit up a little straighter.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I sat back down and cleared my face of all emotion. It was a trick I had practiced extensively during my days with the CIA. Smooth out all the planes and lines, relax the brow, tilt the head down slightly so my cheeks and jaw appeared shadowed, set the mouth in a firm, straight line. Because of my pale gray eyes—think Siberian husky or timber wolf—it produces quite the dramatic effect. As if to say, no matter what you have been through, no matter how bad you think you have suffered, things can always get worse. Much worse. And I am the harbinger of your misery. The effect was not lost on Folsom.

  “Who was the man I shot?” I asked.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “His name was Jimmy. Don’t know the last name, everybody just called him Jimmy.”

  “You don’t sound too broken up about his death.”

  “I’m not. Guy was a belligerent asshole, always running his mouth and doing stupid shit. Nobody liked him, but he was good in a fight, so we kept him around. Said he was a marine back in the day, served in Iraq. We always sent him places to get stuff. Food, medicine, booze. He liked doing that kind of shit, liked the rush. We took turns going with him. You know, to keep it fair.”

  “Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning?”

  “The crew we were travelling with. There’s seven of us now, seeing as you killed Jimmy.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Not far from here. I could show you on a map.”

  I reached back and rapped a hard-knuckled tactical glove against the wall. Cole asked me what I needed.

  “Can you bring up an area map on your tablet and bring it in here, please?”

  “No problem.”

  I turned back to Folsom. “Are you part of a larger group?”

  “Yeah. The Midwest Alliance. You probably heard of them.”

  “I have. What are you doing this far south?”

  “Scavenging. Scouting. Trying to stay alive.”

  I nodded slowly and leaned forward in the cramped space until my face was only about a foot from Folsom’s. He looked up as I drew close and I could see the striations of dark brown iris around his wide pupils. The next question was important, and I wanted to be close enough to catch him in a lie.

  “Where were you leading that horde?”

  Folsom went still, just for a moment. Tiny flick of muscle above the cheekbone, slight dilation of the pupils, barely perceptible intake of breath. But it was there.

  “Look man, we were just trying to get away. Those fucking things came out of nowhere. We saw your vehicle and thought, you know, what the hell. Figured you and you men were dead anyway. I know it’s a shit thing to say. But that’s how the world is, you know?”

  I kept my gaze steady as I sat back, expression blank. Fabricated a slight narrowing of the eyes and a nod, as if confirming some inner debate. Despite the cold, Folsom began to sweat.

  “What else?”

  “That’s it man, swear to God. Like I said, I’ll tell you where to find the others.”

  “Of that I have no doubt.” I was still holding the knife in my fist, knuckles perched on the edge of my knee. The black-coated blade lay parallel to the ground, a clear line of delineation between what Folsom was hoping for and what I had the power to give him, quick or slow. I let the knife and the silence sit there for a while, its own dire suggestion.

  “I’m pretty good at spotting lies, Folsom. I believe you about your family. I believe you about Jimmy, and the people you’re with, and the Midwest Alliance. What I don’t believe is you didn’t have anything to do with that horde.”

  “Look, man-” he started, but I held up a hand, the one with the knife in it. His eyes locked to it, a bead of sweat dangling from one worried eyebrow.

  “Here’s what I think,” I said. “I think if I was going to send people to round up a horde and lead it somewhere, I would send a team of no less than six, but no more than a dozen. Eight sounds about right. It’s hard, dangerous work with a strong possibility of casualties. A man would have to be highly motivated to attempt something like that. Desperation, greed, anger, extortion, and old-fashioned bat-shit lunacy are the usual culprits. You don’t look desperate to me; you’re too well fed. Greed is a possibility, but it doesn’t feel right and I trust my instincts. Extortion doesn’t make sense because you don’t have any family left. And I’m going to go ahead and say you’re not crazy, which only leaves one culprit. How am I doing so far?”

  He remained silent, eyes locked on the knife. The door opened at the back of the transport and Cole appeared in the doorway. “Got what you need, boss,” he said, holding the tablet out to Hicks, who took it and brought it over to me. On the screen was an interactive map of McKenzie and the surrounding area. I t
urned it around so Folsom could see it.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen, Mr. Folsom,” I continued. “You’re going to show me where the other people in your crew are. You’re going to tell us everything we need to know to take them prisoner, peacefully. Then my men and I are going to move out and apprehend them while you and a couple of my best guys stay behind. If your intel turns out to be wrong, or you lead us into a trap, or I don’t radio back with a pre-arranged password at a pre-arranged time, those men are going to go to work on you. You will beg for death before they’re done, and when they are, they will feed you alive and screaming to the infected. If you want to live, or at least get that quick death you were talking about, you had better damn well deal on the level. Do I make myself clear?”

  Folsom paled visibly. “Yeah. I understand.”

  “Good,” I said, offering my least friendly smile. “Let’s get started.”

  FIVE

  They were spread out over three locations.

  Each one was a waypoint where a two-person team waited to take over leading the horde. While they did so, the rest of the team would set a hard pace and move ahead to establish new waypoints further down the line. There, they would snatch a brief rest until it was time to take point again. It was a surprisingly well-coordinated operation, considering they had no radios and no long-range communications. They operated solely by experience, and by being able to predict what the other members of their team would do in any given situation. The kind of thing that takes practice.

  Lots of practice.

  I drove the transport to within a mile of the nearest waypoint, which put us four miles from McKenzie. My plan was simple: Riordan, Cole, and Fuller would come with me to take down the first group of Alliance goons. Sanchez and three of his men would move to the next waypoint and apprehend the insurgents there. Same story for Thompson, Holland, Vincenzo, and Page. Hicks and the rest of the troops would hang back with the transport to keep Folsom under guard and respond with reinforcements where necessary. If all went according to plan, they would be in for a very dull wait.