by Evans, Mike
“We are under Martial Law now," the soldier said. "You're not going anywhere, ma’am. Until we know more about these things, no one is crossing between states. The President made a speech—President Reagan said the best thing we can do is stay in our homes and give the military time to work things out per his advisors.”
Jude leaned out the window from the back and said, “Look, son, we haven’t seen any Presidential addresses. We've been out putting these things down. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news lately, but we were on it not more than an hour ago. We were giving advice on how to kill these things. Because there’s only one way, and I don’t think a cure is in the cards, unfortunately. We just need to get through, please.”
The man held his rifle a little tighter. He looked behind him, and that was all it took to get five fellow soldiers to back him up. Jude knew from his time in the military that when you were outnumbered and you had the option, you should always call in for reinforcements. This was especially true when the opposing side—in this case, Jude and his friends—were not cooperating freely. Jude said, “Just hold on, kid, we can talk this out.”
The man aimed his rifle and said, “Deciding who to let through is out of my paygrade, sir. The five of you need to exit the truck and place your hands on top of your heads. We have a safety center where you can stay for the time being.”
Jude stopped opening the door. He repeated, “A safety center? Like, where you're putting everyone you come across?”
“Yes, sir, we have a school gymnasium and a separate sick bay, and as many staff as we have been able to fly in. By nightfall, it should be fully functional. The army gets things done, sir.”
Jude nodded slowly, thinking the words sick bay over and over again in his head. “You do realize what happens to the sick, right? What I mean is, what happens after they’ve been bitten or drink the water?”
“Look, you don’t seem to understand that I am under orders, sir. You're going to get me in trouble if my commander comes this way and sees you disobeying. I don’t know if you were in the military, but getting on someone’s shit list ain't what I’m shooting for, and it isn’t going to happen to me today. There’s enough shit going on that I’m going to keep as close to this base as possible and stay out of trouble. Most of the men who left the base didn’t come back. The ones who did complained about being bitten. They were escorted by the military police to the back of the school. A few minutes later, I heard a few gunshots...they came back, the bitten soldiers did not. What do you think happened?”
Jude said, “Well, why don’t you guys just pretend that we weren’t here? We’ll head back into town. You can just forget we were ever here, and we'll be good to go.”
The soldier was done talking. He stood back, aiming the rifle, and shot two bursts into the front and the rear tires. The truck sank to one side, and he aimed for the radiator, sending a final burst into it to ensure they would not be going anywhere. Steam rose into the air and, when it cleared, the rest of the soldiers surrounded the truck. One slung his rifle and opened the door quickly. He ran back a step when he saw the hardware they were carrying. The soldier looked back and yelled, “These guys are armed. There is blood all over these damn things—they’ve been on a killing spree. They're serial killers or some shit.”
Jude stepped out, hands up, ready to lose his shit, but could do little. He yelled, “If you guys could just fucking listen to us for one minute, you might see that we aren’t killers and that we actually know what we're doing. Have a look in the back of the truck. You want to know what that is, or do you want to pray that the man who has more stripes on his sleeve than you is smarter yourself? Do you want the answers you need to survive this, what you need to do so you can see tomorrow?”
The soldier smiled, throwing Jude off-guard, and walked forward, gripping his arm and pushing it back behind him. The soldier slammed Jude's face into the hood and grabbed one of the many pairs of handcuffs he had. He tightened them until Jude would not be a issue. This soldier was smarter than the security guards at the news building. He had put the chain through the back of Jude’s leather belt, knowing that he would not be getting it off. Jude was thinking of how he’d freed himself at the building, and prayed above all else that when they put them in the confinement zone, they would take off the cuffs.
The soldiers pulled out the rest of them one at a time, securing them and stripping them of their weapons. Chuck marched up close to Jude, whispering, “You realize that everyone going into this place is going to die, right?”
Jude said, “Yeah, I’m more than aware that they don't have a fucking clue what is going on. They figured out that if someone's bitten, they're as good as dead, but what are we going to do to get out of here?”
“Hell if I know. We're going to have to see what it looks like on the inside. There’s a good chance you might not have helped us out too much, being an asshole to them.”
“Well, Chuck, the idea of being locked up might have pushed me over my edge. I don’t have time for this. Every minute we're out here and not on the road is one more minute Patrick and Maria are on their own. I don’t care what I have to do—I can be judged for it later, but I need to be released—they need to let us go. I'm going to demand that they let us see someone in charge, someone more than a fucking private who has to be told they can shit and piss before making a decision!”
Joann said, “You get more flies with sugar than vinegar, you know.”
“Well, after the week we've had and the endless zombie killing today," Jude grumbled, "I have to say I don't have a whole shit-ton of sugar to spare.”
Joann nudged up closer against him and said, “Then maybe, just maybe, you should let us do some talking.”
“Do whatever you need to, just make sure we get out of here. If they brought those people in bitten, I am quite frankly surprised none of them have turned into those freaks.”
Joann said, “Were you listening when he mentioned taking people out behind the school when they came back bitten? They're discreetly taking them somewhere and putting one in their head. For all you know, they have suppressors.”
“Really making me feel better, sweetheart.”
“Jude, if people are bitten, it's a good thing they're taking them down. With no cure in the works, they're saving everyone a lot of trouble.”
The soldiers walked the five up the long path to the confinement building. It was surrounded by makeshift gates of expandable barbed wire fences. Jude would have been impressed, if it had not been another obstacle he was going to have to deal with later.
Chapter 11
When the five of them got to the front of the building, there were even more soldiers waiting. They walked in and were instantly separated from each other. The men went to the right and the women to the left. Jude said, “Wait, are we going to come back with them? What I mean is, we're together, and prefer to stay that way, please.”
A soldier in a full biohazard suit pushed Jude, not saying anything. Joann yelled as she disappeared, “Sugar, Jude, sugar.”
Jude nodded, giving a thumbs up, and they were taken into a locker room and asked to strip off their clothes. Jude, trying his best to go through what he figured everyone was doing, could help but ask. “So why is it that we need to strip?”
A soldier, who had spent all day going through this with hundreds of citizens already, was short on patience. “Look, sir, you can take off your clothes yourself, or I can cut them off of you after I crack you upside the head. It's your choice; we aren’t the enemy, but we got procedures.”
Jude sized the man up. He couldn’t be over twenty years old, and he was doing only what he was told to do. If it had not been for the massive number of infantry, Jude would have taken this man out and walked right out the front gates, with them none the wiser. He stripped off slowly, still not feeling comfortable about it. Chuck and Charlie did the same, while the soldier held the gun on them.
A doctor in a yellow biohazard suit came in, and Chuck said,
“Hey, doc, that wedge out of my ass was from a sliver of glass—no zombie butt bites, got me?”
The doctor bent down, inspecting the wound thoroughly, and nodded. “You need some stitches down there, son.” He peered at Chuck's hand, as well. “You're having a hell of a day, aren’t you? What happened to your hand?”
Chuck said, “Oh, there was a building we were in when we were trying to warn the country about what's happening. Anyway, after we got on the news to tell people how to stop these things, there was a helicopter that came down and smashed a wall of glass, and I got some glass shrapnel in the hand.”
The doctor stopped looking at his hand. He was the first person they had spoken to who had more than one stripe. He looked up slowly and said, “What do you mean, you were telling people how to stop these things, son? Are you being straight with me?”
Jude said, “He doesn’t come any other way, sir. He tells you like it is, and that is the truth.”
“So speak.”
“Well, it’s a pretty short story," Chuck said. "We were in Sedalia, which is just back east. Anyway, we went out and got shit-faced like you wouldn’t believe, and come to find out there were all kinds of damn zombies walking around the town. The waitress, Kindra, Jude was going to lay his pipe to, well, she got her ass bit, and she tried killing him. We found a chemical truck out at a graveyard, and that was who was responsible for the dead coming back. Then we met the two lovely ladies y'all took away from us and came here and got on the news.”
“You said you knew how to take care of them. What I mean is, how to put them back to rest, so to speak.”
“Yeah, putting them to rest means you either chop their head off, you slice their head open and stomp on their brain, or—last but not least—you shoot them enough times in the head that their brains fall out. That was until this afternoon.”
“There's been a change? What did you learn? Did you not tell these men that you had information?”
The soldiers all backed up a few feet at this, not wanting to have the sewn-on name patches on their chests right in front of the doctor to see and remember later. Jude stepped forward slowly, hands still in front of him so no one got jumpy and shot him in the back. “Yeah, to tell you the truth, doc, we’ve been telling people since we got here that we knew how to stop them, and we now know even better how to take them out.”
The doctor knew he wasn’t going to get an answer he liked, but asked anyway. “Can I ask what they said when you told them?”
“I got a burst into each tire on the left side of my truck, and then one into the radiator. They put handcuffs on us and, for good measure, slammed us into the damn truck’s hood.”
The doctor gave an eye-fucking to the men in the room. One was quick to say, “We've been in here with you all day, Officer Barnes. You know we have, sir. We didn’t do it.”
Barnes shook his head. “Then I suggest you go and find General Hoffner and tell him we have some men here who might actually know what they're talking about.”
Jude raised his hand slowly, getting his attention, and said, “Not to be pushy sir, but is there any chance that you could get the girls we were with and bring them to us? I don’t feel real comfortable having them away from me. There’s too much that can happen too quickly right now. Oh, and if you have any brilliant scientists, can you bring them here? We need to talk to them about a simpler method of taking these things out. We cut trees for a living, and it's a bit out of our knowledge zone.”
The doctor thought about it and said, “Yes, sir, I think we have just the person for you.”
“Don't call me sir—Christ, I’m Jude; the guy with a hole in his ass is Chuck, and the kid there is Charlie. Can we put our clothes back on?”
The doctor lifted the bloodied, ripped, and putrid smelling clothes and shook his head. “You boys aren’t doing anyone a favor putting these clothes back on. You two privates, go out and round up these men some fatigues and unmentionables. One of you go and find Dr. Steward. If there's anyone here who'll know how to help, it's going to be him.”
Jude and the men dressed quickly once the fatigues were brought in, and other than the scruff on their faces, they could have been soldiers. The doctor applied proper bandages to Chuck, explaining they would fix him up later when time allowed. The men all agreed his ass cheek was okay to stay the way it was for the time being.
They were reunited with Leslie and Joann, who had changed clothes, as well, in a empty cafeteria which seemed to be the main intelligence center for the makeshift camp. Joann saw the three of them sitting at a table and she sprinted to Jude, squeezing him in an embrace that blocked his breathing. She kissed the top of his head, not letting up. “Oh, my God, I didn’t think we would ever see you again. Like, ever again. If we did, I thought it was going to be when they took us out back to put a bullet in our heads.”
Dr. Steward held out a hand, making quick introductions to Joann and Leslie. He said, “Well, in our defense, we had to get more recruits in, as we didn’t know how this spread, or that shots to the chest were of little to no use. Jude and Chuck were just explaining that blinding them seems to have been the most effective thing yet to help take them down.”
Joann and Leslie both nodded. Leslie said, “Yes, actually. Before, we thought slicing through their kneecaps was the best way to stop them. But my sweet man here, Chuck, figured it out, and since then we've been doing better. The only problem is that the extinguishers don’t last all that long. Seems like there are more dead out there right now than fire extinguishers.”
Dr. Steward said, “Well, I don’t think you have to worry about that. I have a full lab here, with every chemical you can imagine to blind these things. I'm not talking about temporary blinding, either, I am talking permanent and water-resistant. It won’t matter if they walk into rain or not, they'll stay blinded. It will give us more time to take out the threat.”
Chuck cut in, not waiting for anyone’s opinion. “You know, that's great and all, but you do realize you army boys are only going to be able to make it so many places in the time we have. What I'm saying is, the longer this thing goes on, the longer the dead will have to multiply, infect, eat, etc. etc.”
Dr. Steward said, “And the point of all that is?”
“That you need to come up with some clever shit. What I'm saying is, if people could make something at home with common household stuff, you’d be good to go. Think about this, you could have only the army know the secret and have the materials available, or you could play it damn smart and have anyone with a kitchen, garage, or cleaning supplies capable of making whatever it is you need. Think about having millions versus thousands—do you think it'll be in our favor, doc?”
Dr. Steward thought it over and came back to the table a few minutes later. He showed them the household items he had on hand. “Can anyone think of anything more basic than this, once you add water to it? Or do you think this will do the trick?”
Charlie said, “Seems like we probably ought to try it out, give it a go, and we can let y'all know about it.”
Steward said, “Well, unfortunately for us, we have a plethora of the soon-to-be-dead here. We can grab one of them, blind them, and if that works, we'll give you a truck—since we ruined yours—and you can be on your way. I heard you had some important people to get home to.”
“My boy and my sister-in-law are back in Iowa. I have to get back to them. They're probably hiding in the basement, terrified. I can’t imagine what's going through Patrick’s mind right now—he must be so scared, with all this happening.”
They walked out to the back of the school; there was no shortage of piles of the dead. A man who had been bitten lay comatose on the ground. He had visible wounds on his arms and legs; it was obvious he was going to become one of the dead soon. Jude said, “How long has that fella been out here?”
Steward said, “We brought him out the minute you boys told Dr. Barnes that you had a way to cripple them. He is out of his pain now.”
Jud
e watched as the man slowly rose to his feet. It yanked as hard as it could on the chains binding it to a pole. When it realized that it was surrounded by fresh meals, it leapt toward the closest guard. The man fired off a shot at its stomach from reflex.
Chuck yelled, “Yeah, soldier, sir, that ain’t gonna do a lot of good, considering he’s dead and all.”
The soldiers took a step back. Jude's crew walked forward, followed closely by Dr. Steward. When they were within five feet, Jude pumped the small weed-sprayer up with pressure and shot a quick spray across its face. It instantly began clawing at its eyes, ripping the skin from its face, and then sat still. Now that it could no longer see the guards, its desire to go after them diminished. One of the soldiers stepped within a few feet of the dead. "Hey," he said, "It's blind. It can't—"
The dead man reached forward quicker than the soldier thought it could. It gripped the soldier by the first thing it could wrap its hands around and drew him in, clenching its teeth around the soldier's neck. The soldier screamed, batting at it, trying to push away, but when it pulled back, it was only because of the chunk of meat it had in its mouth had been severed. The soldier fell to the ground, gurgling on blood. His two army friends knelt down, trying to give him first aid.
Jude stepped forward, gripping a shovel from where it had leaned against a nearby fence, and brought it down as hard as he could on the dead man’s newly bloodied face, knocking the dead off its feet. When it tried to get back up, Jude brought the shovel down with all his hate for its kind. The shovel cut halfway through its neck, the head barely dangling on. Jude struck one more finishing blow, separating the skull, and then put the chomping head on the shovel blade, chucking it as far away from them as he could.
