by R. J. Spears
“Good idea,” Greg said and retrieved a flashlight of his own, clicked it on, and started searching.
Jo moved up beside me and pointed to a spot on the carpet a few feet in front of me. “What’s that?”
I aimed my flashlight in that direction and caught a reflection of something wet on the floor. It was more blood. I moved up and inspected it and saw a trail of small splotches of blood, which led along the floor to a closed door. When I moved the flashlight up the door, I saw a bloody handprint.
Greg moved quietly up beside me and put a finger to his lips, telling us to be quiet. He stepped up to the door but turned back to us. He brought up his hand with three fingers extended, then turned back to the door, and gripped the doorknob. He held his gun at the ready as all three of us silently counted to three.
On three, he jerked the door open and took a shooter’s stance in the doorway. A bracing wind rushed over us from an open window on the other side of the room, telling us that Billings had gone out the window. A gust of wind pushed the curtain covering the window slowly back and forth.
Greg snatched up his walkie-talkie and keyed the talk button and said, “Guard stations, report in. Has any of you see anyone leave the building in the last three minutes?”
A man’s voice came across the walkie-talkie about five seconds later, “This is Steve Hampton from observation south. I saw someone walk away from the building a minute or two ago.”
“Why didn’t you report anything?” Greg asked.
“It could have been anyone,” Steve said. “I figured someone wanted to take a leak in the woods.”
I walked over to the window and pulled the curtain aside to look out. There was flat, clear ground for about fifty feet then some trees that got thicker the deeper if a person went into them. A thaw over the past two days had melted away much of the snow. A pale blue moonlight gave the ground a ghostly glow. I couldn’t see anyone moving at all.
Greg sighed deeply and then said, “Did you see which way he went?”
“Yeah. He headed off into the woods just southwest of the front of us.”
“Jo, round up some more people and have them follow us into the west woods,” Greg said.
“Okay,” she said and headed out of the room as Greg stepped out of the window. My hand slapped down on the windowsill, and I felt a thick, sticky substance. I splashed my flashlight beam and saw blood.
“He’s losing a lot of blood,” I said, as I climbed out the window. “And fast.”
“With that much blood loss, I figure he couldn’t have gotten far.”
“Flashlights or no flashlights?” I asked.
“Let’s go with none for now,” he said. “We don’t want to advertise that we’re coming.”
The grass was moist, and the ground felt somewhat mushy under my feet as we made our way to the woods. He could have gone into the forest anywhere, but everyone inside knew of several paths in the woods surrounding the complex. We hoped that Billing stumbled on one of them and followed it. If he stumbled wildly into the woods, we might not find him at all, depending on his condition.
Just before we entered the woods, Greg stopped and leaned in towards me and whispered, “We need to be as quiet as we can. I’m going to play the odds and say he made his way to a path. Be ready for anything. He may improvise some sort of weapon and counter-attack us.”
I brought up my pistol and shook it in the air in front of his face. He just shook his head.
The path was narrow, so we went in single file with Greg in the lead. While there were no leaves on the trees at this time of year, the limbs cut down the intensity of the moonlight considerably. It took a good minute for my eyes to fully adjust to the dim light.
It was slow going. We had to find a way to navigate as quietly as we could on a bed of dried leaves that covered much of the path. Greg had coached me about how to walk silently by rolling my foot from heel to toes, but I still managed to crunch down on several balls of dried leaves. While he was as quiet as a ninja, I’m certain I sounded like the ninja’s elderly, half-crippled grandfather.
We were about fifty yards in when I caught something out of the corner of my eye: a flash of light about twenty yards off to our right. I reached out and tapped Greg’s back softly.
He stopped and turned back to me. I made a hand gesture to where I had seen the light. He didn’t follow, so I leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “Saw something. A flash of light. It could be moonlight reflecting off something, but I don’t think so.”
“Where?” he asked.
I pointed off into the dark at large tree with an expansive trunk. “There.”
A dim light flashed on again.
“Okay,” Greg said. “We’ll split up and come up at it from two different angles.”
He broke away from me and went off at a ninety-degree angle, and I did the same, knowing we would try to converge on the same point from different directions. I was barely twenty feet off the path when I spotted the light again, and I froze in place. The light was very dim, but yellowish white, only a foot or two above the ground. The source was small, only a few inches at most. I saw the light rise slightly but then fall. It rose again but not as high as before, then fell again and winked off.
I decided to continue and almost immediately brushed by a thick branch of dried leaves that must have sounded as if I were pounding on a snare drum to whoever was hiding in the woods just ahead of me. I cursed myself and moved on, trying to monitor my foot placement to avoid crunching any more dried leaves while also maintaining some directional instinct for the light I had seen.
As I made my way closer to the light source, I wondered if it might be some sort of trap and that I would become so focused on the light that Billings would be able to brain me with a rock or a tree limb. The tension in my neck went up exponentially as I imagined a large limb bashing against the back of my head. I started swiveling my head from the left and right, and after a few seconds of that, I decided if I kept it up, I’d end up with self-inflicted whiplash. So, I focused on the spot where I had seen the light.
The closer I got, the slower my progress as my eyes tried to make sense of the shadows around the base of the large tree. I was within fifteen feet of the tree when I saw the slightest sliver of yellow light flicker and disappear. I also could make out the outline of a form there. A human form. It sat with its back against the tree with its legs splayed out in front of it. Darkness masked its face.
I slowed to a snail’s pace and eased my way towards it, my gun aimed at its torso, and my finger on the trigger. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears, drowning out everything else.
At ten feet, I could see that whoever it was, his head was slumped down, his attention focused on something in his lap. He made no move to acknowledge my presence.
From five feet away, I was certain it was Billings. I was just waiting for him to flash into motion and skewer me with a homemade spear.
But that didn’t happen. Nothing did. I stood frozen in place, my gun still aimed at this person. The sound of a phone ringing broke me from my trance. The ringtone was a standard issue set of muted electronic chimes. The light that had drawn me in flashed in Billings’ lap, corresponding with the ring.
I was completely dumbfounded. I hadn’t heard any sort of phone, landline or cell ring in over a year. It was as if I were being contacted either from the past or from some distant future where the world had reset itself, and things were good again.
I caught a motion out of the corner of my eyes and looked up to see Greg quietly creeping towards Billings from my left. Like me, his pistol was held in front of him, his focus on Billings.
Billings tried to lift the phone, but it was if it weighed a thousand pounds because he was only able to move it a few inches before he dropped it back into his lap. The phone continued to ring.
I looked to Greg who was inching closer and closer to Billings’ still form.
“Answer it,” Greg said quietly.
�
�What?”
“Take the phone, and answer it,” he said.
I transitioned my gun to my left hand and moved in tight to Billings. The phone rang again, and I slowly extended my right hand for it, ready to jerk it back if Billings went for me.
He didn’t. My fingers wrapped around the phone, and I snatched it from Billings’ grasp. It rang again.
“Do it,” Greg said, the barrel of his gun just inches from Billings’ head.
I brought the phone up to my ear and thumbed the receive button and waited, saying nothing.
“Billings, why did you hang up on us?” a male voice asked.
I didn’t say anything but just looked at Greg who took his attention away from Billings and glanced at me. I looked for some sort of cue from him, but he had his hands full guarding Billings.
“Sergeant, are you there?” the voice asked again. Again, I didn’t respond. “Are you hurt?”
I stuck to my silent act. I had no idea what Billings had said. That is if he had said anything at all. He looked as if he were at death’s door.
“Billings, dammit, answer me.”
I had no idea what this call meant, but I knew it was vitally important, so I decided I had to try something. I had read somewhere that whispers are harder to discern, so I pitched my voice low and hoped that I could pull off this impression. My mind raced back to our interrogation of Billings as I tried to remember what his voice had sounded like. It was deep, but not too deep. It had a raspy quality like that of a life-long smoker. Up until then, my best voice impression had been of that one famous French mime — before or after he died really didn’t matter. I sucked at impressions.
“I’m here,” I whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” the voice asked.
“People near,” I said, wondering how long I could keep up two word sentences.
“Are you in danger? We can get a team to you if you need it.”
“No. Safe now.”
“So, you’re still on the mission?”
“Yes,” I said again, breathy and tight.
The voice came back with a showstopper of a question. “Have you seen Jason Carter there?”
Chapter 29
The Futility of It All
“We just can’t wait around here,” Paige said. “We have to do something.”
She stood a dozen feet in front of the burnt ruins of the church. It had been two days since the attack on the church, and the air still reeked of smoke and charred wood. They had been there twice before to see if they could find any survivors but had come up empty.
“Like what?” Russell asked.
“Find this guy and kill him,” she said.
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll just do it.” She knew how petulant that sounded, but she didn’t care.
The fire had spread from the church to the tiny houses along Roosevelt Street. They had burned, too. The only thing that kept the fires from spreading farther was a soaking thunderstorm that passed through on the night of the attack.
Russell had been very reluctant to make this trip. He thought it exposed them too much. They had no idea where this guy stayed or even if he patrolled the town. In addition, the attacks and fires had riled all of the undead in town. Getting past them unmolested was like threading a bent needle through sheet metal, but he did it because Paige had insisted. She had to go.
He could empathize with what she was feeling. He had wanted nothing more than to strike back at this fiend after he had killed Cody and the others. But he knew that was folly. He was one guy. Really, half a man with a bad arm. What could he do? Survive was the best he could do.
“How could you just hide in the house knowing that he was out there?” she asked as she shouted at him.
They had been over this before. He knew the anger, and he felt the shame.
“He killed your brother.”
“Don’t you think….” he shouted but caught himself and looked to see if any undead had noticed them. “Don’t you think that went through my head every day?” he asked back in a low voice.
She caught on and in a half whisper said, “Why didn’t you do something?”
“We already talked about that. My right arm was useless. I was weak from blood loss.”
“But what about now?”
Yes, what about now? His arm, while not fully functional, was healed, and he had learned how to do a lot left-handed. He did what he had to do. He scrabbled around, kept his head down, and made it day-by-day.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said. “You saw what he did. He’s got an army now. And not just zombies.”
“What if we got help?”
“From whom?” he asked.
“From the people who left us and went north.”
They had been over this, too. “You know there’s no way to contact them. It’s too far to walk, and you’re not even sure where they are.”
“Maybe we could find a car that still runs?”
“I’ve tried a lot of cars,” he said, “but everyone has a dead battery.”
“We have to do something,” she said, and the tears came as they had many times over the past two days. Cautiously, he moved next to her and put a hand on her back. She didn’t jerk away as she had before. After a few seconds, she leaned into him and sobbed.
Feeling her in his arms made him feel both less afraid and more scared at the same time. While he was no longer alone, he now had someone he was responsible for. Someone to keep alive. Someone even to care about.
They held that embrace for almost a minute before he heard something moving behind them. When he looked, he saw a lone zombie shuffling along towards them. It was a half-block away, but he knew there would be more. They rarely walked alone.
“We have to go,” he said quietly into her ear.
With her face streaked with tears, she looked him in the eyes and broke from him. “We have to do something.”
“Okay,” he said, “we will.” He just didn’t know what.
Not knowing what to do, I hung up the satellite phone. Maybe it wasn’t my brightest hour or swiftest move.
“Who was that?” Greg said.
“I don’t know. He sounded military.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to know if I had seen Jason?”
The phone began to ring. I felt as if I were holding a live rattlesnake.
“What else did he say?”
“He said he could send a team to get him if he was hurt or in danger.”
The phone rang again, and I wanted to be as far from as it as I could.
“You have to answer it,” Greg said.
“Why?”
“Because he could send a team. Maybe to help us.”
“And maybe to find out why we locked up, tortured, and shot one of his soldiers. How is he, by the way?”
The phone rang. It seemed louder with each ring.
Greg looked to me and then to Billings. He reached out and gently touched Billings’ shoulder. Billings slumped over onto the ground, thumping down like a sack of grain. His eyes stared blankly up, empty and devoid of any life. We could add killed to the list.
The phone rang, and this time I hit the receive button. Then, I wondered what the hell I was doing. I had no game plan after answering the phone. Was I going to have a nice chat with the guy on the line?
“Billings?” the voice asked on the other end of the line. “Billings!”
I brought the phone up to my mouth and mumbled, “Yes.”
“Billings, why the hell did you hang up on me?” This guy was pissed.
“Someone came,” I said still trying to mask my voice.
“Okay, okay. You didn’t answer my question. Did you see Jason Carter?”
“No.”
“Do you think he’s there?”
“No.”
“Okay, stay with them. See if there are any others. Give it a couple more days; then report in. If you don�
��t see him, move on to the group to the east.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line went dead, and I blew out a big breath. I turned the phone off and put it in my pocket.
“Is he dead?” I asked, looking at Billings.
“Yes.”
Chapter 30
Aftermath
At first light, we came back out with a team and retrieved Billings’ body. Greg found a hidey-hole in the tree where we had found Billings. Greg surmised that must have been where Billings hid the satellite phone. A camouflaged wire led out of the knothole and wound up the tree to a small solar panel facing skyward. We could only guess that Billings must have used it to keep the phone charged.
To say things were in an uproar at The Manor was a bit of an understatement. Between Brandon’s injuries and the late night chase of an escaped prisoner, just about everyone was up and on edge. If tensions had been high before, we were now at Defcon 1. In other words, the natives were restless. Very restless.
“You have been keeping things from us,” Brother Ed shouted.
“Secrets!” Steve Hampton shouted.
“Not secrets. Lies,” Mrs. Hatcher chimed in, “flat out lies!”
The dining hall was crammed with people, and not one of them looked happy. I didn’t see any easy answers, and I didn’t think Brandon could shoot our way out of it this time. We, the Gang of Seven minus one because Brandon was down in the infirmary recovering from his concussion, all sat behind a dining room table while the rest of the residents of The Manor sat in the audience in folding chairs.
“Okay, we’re going to lay it all out for you,” Greg said. The leadership team had met briefly and decided to tell everything. It was risky with hot-heads such as Brother Ed out there ready to pick the meat off our bones, but we saw no other choice. Withholding information was a short game that just couldn’t be sustained.
“What do you want to know about?” Greg asked.
The shouts and questions came fast and furious until Greg raised his hands and motioned for silence. It took nearly a full minute for the room to calm down to a low rumble.
