“I’ve told you, I won’t be able to find you gifts every time I go out.”
Dartagnan frowns. He seems to throw a temper tantrum with just his eyes.
“Say ‘hi’ to Emily.”
Dartagnan’s face screams in refusal.
“Dartagnan,” he snaps.
“Hi. Emily.”
“What do you say?”
Dartagnan’s face returns to a resounding no expression.
“Dartagnan.”
“Welcome to my home. Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you. I would.” Emily almost curtseys to the young boy. “Is he your son?”
“Just how old do you think I am?” He snaps at her. “He’s a kid I found.”
“He has no gun,” Emily notes.
“Qualified to carry has one exception. He can close the fence and lock it if he needs to. Dartagnan’s a special case.”
“So he slops hogs?” she asks.
“No.” He pulls out a cloth bag and hands it to the boy.
Dartagnan unwraps it in slow motion. His face lights up at the model paint vials. “No red.”
“Dartagnan,” he snaps.
The boy responds to this. “Sorry. Thank you for what you could find.”
“And,” his tone works like a switch.
“I appreciate what you find since there are no more stores.”
He races inside, calling out, “I still need brown.”
He recognizes the question growing within Emily. “I won’t be nice or do any coddling of the boy. He responds better to my harsh tone. Like he respects it or needs it. His mommy babied him. I’ve run across plenty of normal people who never lasted as long as he did after the undead shattered his customary routine mom set for him. He had to adjust, and those kinds of kids don’t adjust.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing as far as I’m concerned. In the old world my job would have labeled him autistic, I think. But he controls his pee, so he can function on his own.”
“The watches?”
“He keeps his own schedule now, but it’s healthy.”
“You said everyone works.”
“The young Dartagnan is quite possibly the hardest worker within our camp.”
Emily follows him into the house. The once living/dining room space has been converted into a group of tables for a scale model of the camp being built on top of them. Dartagnan has already opened the vials and is running the brush over a building.
“He works on this. And every building, every tree, matches real life.”
An open toolbox full of tape measures rests on a chair. Emily doesn’t ask but wonders how this job is essential to survival in the apocalypse.
“What he does, and this’s where his real gifts come into play, is to calculate what we need to keep us alive. How many cattle we need. How much land and feed we need for the cattle. His mind is some kind of mathematical calculator. I bring in a new person such as yourself and he tells me what I need to feed and clothe you. Before I arrived with those boxes of shells he knew the exact number of bullets inside the fence.”
He turns on the fluorescent bulbs suspended over the model, allowing Dartagnan to work in better light.
“You have electricity.” Emily hasn’t seen a non-generator powered light in months.
“The Salt River was dammed for hydroelectric power. We have lights for as long as the dam holds and the river flows. We keep the dam closely maintained and the entry gate at the dam ends heavily fortified.”
“People would storm this place just for the power.”
“They would fight to get in, ultimately destroying what they covet and then none of us would have anything. We still have to do a lot of the labor by hand. Gas is in short supply and vehicles won’t run forever. I’ve never seen a battery-powered tractor. We need to get this place up and growing food so after processed foodstuff has expired we won’t need much from the outside.”
“So Dartagnan’s job is to math all this out.”
“He determines what we need and what I must find.”
“And the model?”
“Somehow it keeps his mind focused.”
The right side of the model ends or begins with the house they stand in and the growing colony expands to the left and remains unfinished.
Emily walks around the model. “Why don’t you want to expand this way?”
“The best answer, some twenty-five miles that way, is the Mississippi river. Give or take a few miles. Without human interference the river will flood. We shouldn’t have a problem from flooding this far inland. Besides, strategically, this location is where to build a wall.” He points to a growing stack of cargo trailers being built into a cliff side along the river north of the farmhouse.
“Wall will keep all biters out.” Dartagnan smiles.
“Current fortifications do refocus a bit more against a siege mentality. We expand inward as we need to, and recapture homes, farms, and soon even a clinic, but in no way will we be able to return to life the way it was before.”
Emily looks somewhat confused at his plans.
“Eventually I hope to reduce the number of guards, adding to our workforce, but for now safety is priority. If we aren’t secure then it doesn’t matter how well our tomatoes grow.
Dartagnan scribbles on a legal pad. He uses a ruler edge to tear the perforations perfectly straight. “Here are the things you’re going to need.”
He takes the paper and reads down the list. “Most of the items should be in the distribution center.” He hesitates at the last item. “Why so many?”
“The girl. The vet assistant. The small animal trained girl. She doesn’t think many cows are pregnant. Without new births to replenish the herd, their resources to our food supply will severely diminish.
“Can we feed this many cattle?” He asks, before mumbling, “If it’s possible to find this many in one location.” The biters have scattered whole herds if they haven’t eaten them.
“The new fence expansion will open more grass to graze. The exact area I can measure after the fence is up since I am not allowed on the outside to measure. I can determine how much grass we need once I measure. You can cut down some of these trees.”
“That’s a national forest. We only cut down the dead ones for firewood. Plus that ground is too rocky to farm, and there are deer.”
Dartagnan’s face flushes. Somehow the advent of deer upsets him. “I haven’t calculated for deer. Could throw all my numbers out of balance. Must keep the camp resources in balance. Humans never keep balance.” Dartagnan shakes from anxiety.
“Dartagnan, do you want to have to go to the chair?”
“No.”
“Then calm down. We can guestimate the number of deer if I get some of those motion cameras for tracking.”
“Okay.”
He looks at Emily. “That’s why we’re in this mess. The human race has always been unable to balance itself with nature.”
Dartagnan returns to painting.
“Okay. I’ll get the cattle, and we’ll get more grass to feed them.”
“How?”
“You let me worry about that.”
SOLDIERS LOAD GENERATORS and water pumps into cargo trucks. Travis surveys the engineers as they scoop out wet mud from the bottom of the pond. The material adds to the bank wall creating a much deeper pit. Dump trucks back up to the empty pond. They pour in burnable materials. Soldiers stack shrouded bodies like cordwood among the garbage. When the garbage becomes covered by the unmoving dead more dump trucks scatter broken wooden furniture and other broken boards on top of them. A chemical truck sprays used motor oil over the wood.
Travis’s fist crumples the side of the envelope he holds.
Choice: noun—an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. On paper such an easily defined word. The reality of this becomes grander as he stands before the growing number of weak and defenseless people filling his base.
“Colonel.”
“You should return to base command, George,” Travis suggests. “All this noise will attract them.”
“I won’t abandon my commanding officer, Colonel.” The major stands next to his friend.
“I will make it an order.”
“I will follow my orders, but I won’t change what has to be completed here.”
Bulldozers scoop out more dirt to expand the far side of the pit.
“Just following orders didn’t work at Nuremberg,” George proposes.
“We won’t face a Nuremberg. In the end there won’t be anyone left to put us on trial for what we are about to do here.”
“We’ll persevere and defeat this,” George assures his commanding officer.
“Not this enemy. Not one constantly gaining soldiers as our forces deplete.” Confident, Travis states, “We won’t come back from this.”
Personal transport carriers pour from the base. “Washington authorized this?” George asks in disbelief.
“Everyone who’s ill, not expected to recover, all kidney dialysis cases, any in a coma, and other medical conditions requiring hospital care or constant monitoring are to be the first.”
George chimes in with his strongest argument first, “Hitler did the same thing with mental patients and homosexuals.”
Travis snaps, “You think I don’t know history? I told you, if you can’t do this you’re dismissed. Nothing will change the fact that all these people are walking dead already. There’ll be no more medicine manufactured. In a few days they’ll die and convert to the enemy. Traitors without a choice but to seek flesh. They’ll bite and convert more followers. As our resources dwindle we must select who we protect.”
George understands the burden of following command decisions. This is the first time in his career he’s ever felt it necessary to question an order and before he follows it he has to be sure.
“No commander should have to order the execution of Down syndrome children. Old men should be allowed to pass away peacefully in their sleep.” The cargo trucks unload ancient and sick civilians. Most have to be helped from the truck. Several with Down syndrome, and scraggily women with small children climb out. Two more cargo trucks bring even more sickly dregs.
“It is your duty to refuse to follow any unlawful orders, sir.” George challenges the colonel.
“The Uniform Code of Military Justice Article Ninety-Two makes my duty clear. What we’re presented with was never speculated in the Constitution. We defend against all enemies, foreign or domestic.”
“It also clearly says no person should be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law. These poor souls are not yet the enemy.”
“There’s the rub. They soon will be. In one of those trucks are five people with dialysis issues and in the next load of supplies there won’t be medicine or machines left. They will die. They will become the enemy. They don’t get a choice.”
“Colonel, I’ll follow whatever orders you give, as long as you believe in them. If you have a doubt, don’t do this.”
“I wanted to reread the entire manual, not just the parts on following orders and even the Constitution itself, but I’ve reread the signed orders and they do support the Constitution. This has to be done as a first line of defense. The crime perhaps lies in the fact it has taken nine months to give these orders. How many people died because those with terminal diseases weren’t eliminated immediately?” Travis gives George no chance to answer. “The growth of an undefeatable enemy is predictable and has an intimidating, unstoppable force. We don’t have the soldiers to protect all these people. We won’t have the supplies to feed all these people. Then we’ll be facing two enemies. We’ll have to shoot more innocent people.”
George releases the greater danger plaguing the survivors. “They’re cutting more than just kidney meds.”
“Rations and some other medicines. I’m having the medical staff preparing a manifest of who will die without pills. They’ll be a part of the next group we dispose of. I’ve been examining essential personnel to rebuild after the apocalypse is over.”
“Who do you choose to feed to keep humanity alive?”
“Civilization, or something like it. Humanity dies when we march people into graves and shoot them in the head.”
The soldiers march the ragged worn huddled masses into the pond turned mass grave. The sick helpless people have nowhere to run. Machine gun fire tears through them. The screams are quick. No one has time to plead for redemption.
“There will be no turning back now.”
“I never had a doubt. There’s no other solution.”
Hannah slides the bedroom window up and leans out. The drop from the second floor looks to be about twelve feet. If she dangles her body as far as it stretches her drop becomes about seven feet from her toes to the ground. The lower floors are now barred as a precautionary measure. She straddles the sill as someone bangs on her door.
“Hannah. You okay in there?” Corporal Nick Jameson calls from the other side of the door.
“I’m fine, corporal... Just changing!” She hopes to keep him from barging in. Had her father been able to immediately assign a female detail to her she doubts she’d be changing clothes alone. But whatever orders were sent from Washington took precedence over carrying out his duties as a father.
Hannah knows she shouldn’t look down. She should just swing her other leg out, drop away from the building, catch the ledge with her hands and descend to the ground. She glances at the grass. Her brain shoots warnings throughout her body causing a freeze in her muscle movements. She hesitates. Fear of falling consumes her. She imagines slipping. The landing of her flattened body on the ground. The force of her ribs pushing up inside her chest cavity, air forced from her lungs through her mouth and nose along with splatters of blood. She feels the tug of gravity, not from below, but from the side as she falls onto her bed. Corporal Jameson pins her down.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demands.
“Someone has to help those refuges,” Hannah says.
“I’ve orders to keep you here.”
“If I scream right now, what do you think your punishment will be?” Hannah threatens.
The corporal realizes the door’s shut and to a passerby, it looks as if he’s sitting on top of a struggling underage girl. Her screams would at minimum banish him to the stockade. He jerks back to his feet on the floor, clasping her by the wrists.
“I can’t let you leave Headquarters.”
“You could accompany me. The colonel wants you to protect me.” She bats an innocent eye.
“Not what he meant,” Jameson snaps.
She relaxes her fist and he releases her wrists.
“He may have put a stop to the gambling, but the Bowlin brothers are still operating a sex ring. There’re too many poor girls being violated. I want to show my dad more evidence. So he will kick them out.”
“Not a good idea. Kade won’t be as nice to you a second time.”
Something in Hannah’s brain matures. She flails her fists on his chest forcing him to catch her arms and draw her closer to prevent her punches.
“What’s wrong with you?” He shoves her back to the bed effectively pinning her against him to prevent more cuffs.
She reaches up with her lips and touches his. Caught off guard Jameson doesn’t move allowing Hannah to slide her tongue into his mouth. He jerks his head away upon the tingling feeling of the poorly executed kiss. Even when it’s bad it’s still good, his platoon buddies’ voices echo in his head. Get Some! Her lack of experience becomes evident with the lousy pass of tongue and reminds Jameson she’s just a little girl.
Hannah shifts to her innocent mode. “What did I do wrong?”
His eyes lock with hers. “You’re just a kid.”
“I’m fifteen, and you’re what, nineteen, twenty?”
“Back end of eighteen.”
“If we were in high school right now lot
s of seniors date freshmen.”
“They do for one reason, only.”
Hannah slides her hand down his muscular chest toward his belt. “If you help me I’ll suck on you.”
He moves himself back to regain his composure. “I doubt you know how.”
“It’s like licking an ice cream cone.” Her hand falls to the bulge in his pants. “You just tell me how you like it.” Hannah sounds like an experienced madam.
Jameson forces himself away from her. “I don’t know how I’d like it.”
Hannah props herself up on her elbows. “You’ve never had a woman do that to you?”
“You’ve never performed that before either,” he retorts like a kid on the playground.
“Yeah, but I’m fifteen. You’re a United States soldier.”
Embarrassed, Nick admits, “I’ve never screwed a girl.”
“No way.” She holds in a giggle. “Never?”
He looks ready to cry. “It’s embarrassing. I’d never live it down if the guys in my barracks found out.”
Hannah blurts out, “But you are so hot.”
“Wish the girls I went to high school with thought so. They thought I was their best friend.”
Hannah knows what it means to have jammed him into the friend zone. He would never get anywhere with them because he was too nice, and too nice was not the kind of guy any high school girl wants to date. “Well, they were wrong. And now you get to have some special girl and not some cheerleading slut.”
“Where exactly am I going to meet a special girl?”
“We’re still out here. Actually the choices of special should be a lot greater because the dumb ones have been eaten.”
He cracks a smile. “I can’t let you go back to the refugee’s side of the base. And there’s no way I’ll allow touching between us.”
“We could talk here for a while. Tell me about those dumb girls and why they thought you were locked into the friend zone.”
“Why do you want to hear about that?”
“I like knowing people. You better open the door first. Or you will see the inside of a stockade,” Hannah warns.
Jameson sprints to the door swinging it wide, fumbling with a book to prop it open.
No Room In Hell (Book 1): The Good, The Bad and The Undead Page 9
