We chatted a little more as the road unspooled before us, but I wasn’t really in much of a talkative mood. Maybe once we got these folks to the Safe Zone, I would find another job that needed doing. Without having to deal with the living.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“So you have kids who live here, and you don’t even know their names?” Casey said, and her voice held equal parts shock and humor.
“Yeah, so?” I replied absently, lying my ass off as I took the shot and moved on to a fresh target.
My idea of erecting a killing ground away from the compound turned out to be a pretty good one, if I do say so myself. This was a variation on what folks were calling the “Northcutt method,” and I was pleased with the progress in clearing out the immediate area.
Three days off our hasty return from Shepherd and we were already open for business. After excavating a ten-foot-deep hole and dumping some freshly killed zeds in the pit, we were able to attract the wandering zombies to this spot about a mile from the gate to Pederson. Ken hauled a forty-foot Conex to the site and we used it as a shooting platform. The scent of fresh undead fluids seemed to draw in the prey, and now I was working with Casey on her precision shooting skills.
“Just seems weird,” Casey said, pausing for her shot before continuing. “I mean, there’s like a dozen shorties running around, and you just pat them on the head and keep walking.”
“That’s Roxy’s project, not mine. There’s quite a few orphans turned up at the Zone, and Roxy used to be an elementary school teacher before she retired. So she agreed to take in a few. She teaches them and acts as their guardian, I guess. Not sure how the old girl worked that out, to be honest.”
Another shot, and another dead zed. We had only been at it for a few minutes, having circled around behind the Conex, parked, and mounted via the welded ladder. Since we only counted thirty-five shamblers today, I’d only hauled up four of the Rugers to use. Not much chance of the barrels getting hot with this few.
“So this is what you do?”
I nodded and took another shot before replying. I was happy for the change of subject. “Multiply by about a hundred, but yeah, this is it. Just sit back and let them come to me. Usually I have a CD boom box going, just to draw in from the surrounding area. They don’t have the best eyesight, but their ears still work fine.”
Casey grunted and took another shot, then cursed. I saw the bullet strike skull, but the corpse turned at the last second and she only punched a shallow hole in the cranium. Missed the brain.
“That happens sometimes. Problem with the small bullet, of course. Just take another shot,” I counseled, and fired at the next one I had lined up. Hit, and it was down.
“Why don’t you use something bigger,” Casey asked the old question, and I felt myself slip into lecture mode.
“What would you suggest? The 5.56 is just a hopped up .22 in a centerfire cartridge. Plus, the military folk need all that they can scrounge for themselves. I’ve got a bit, well, more than that, but eventually I’ll be competing with them to recover more. Maybe .308, or 7.62x39?”
“No … probably not. The .308 is overkill, and my Daddy called the x39 a haji round. Whatever that means. Not as plentiful as some others, anyway,” Casey replied after a moment. “Maybe use a carbine chambered in .45 ACP, or even 9mm? I used to have a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP and I loved that little rifle.”
I chuckled. Totally out of character for me, I know. The urge seemed to come up from nowhere, and I couldn’t help myself. Casey turned her head slightly to give me the evil eye, but I held up a hand in self-defense.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered as sincerely as I could manage. “I was just thinking the same thing the other day. That’s all. Nice to have another gun nut around was all I was thinking. I’ve stockpiled a ton of 9mm here and picked up some of those little HiPoint carbines where can I find them.”
“So you are thinking ahead,” Casey quipped. “I like that. You think we can win this?”
I took another shot and dropped another walking corpse. This one was particularly well-gnawed, and most of its right leg from hip to knee was bare bone. I tried not to pay attention to the way the dead were dressed, or how badly they were mangled in the end, but sometimes I couldn’t help myself.
“Depends on your definition of winning,” I finally replied. Just then, I heard something, a scratching, behind our position. Gesturing for Casey to be still, I levered myself around on the shooting pad and cast a quick glance over the back of our metal perch.
What I saw made my blood run cold. Hearing that certain First Wavers had developed rudimentary skills was one thing. Even seeing one sharp enough to dodge a capture stick made me nervous, but coming face-to-face with the shriveled, browned leather features of a determined monster as it clawed its way up the ladder nearly unmanned me.
Unmanned. Like my balls fell off and rolled away at the fright. Yep, pretty much.
The creature was only inches away from attaining the lip of the metal box and it gave a hungry hiss as it worked its still uncoordinated feet in the rungs of the ladder. Leathery, shrunken claws, curved into bony blades, rose from the edge to tear at the air. Still on my hands and knees, ass sticking up in the sky, I fought to bring my rifle around before the starving creature ate my face.
“Oh, fuck,” I managed to say in what seemed like a strangely conversational tone. Like I’d noticed the clouds gathering for rain, or my new car had bird shit on the windshield. I felt the form next to me shift, but I had no time to spare for a look. I needed every millisecond at that point.
I won the race by a hair, firing awkwardly but managing to send a pair of shots into the ruined and stretched face just as the creature gathered itself for a lunge. The rounds struck that face, tearing away chunks of rotted flesh and a black geyser of zombie blood, and the now quieted zombie fell backwards off the ladder without another sound. Brain dead, and dead again.
Casey squealed. Or squeaked. I’m not sure since I was barely capable of deciphering the difference at the moment. The rules were changing, and luckily I survived the learning experience this time.
Zombies do not climb ladders. Stairs, just barely, as the treads mess with their limited depth perception. Months ago, I watched a zombie falling upstairs, and yes, that is the best way to describe what I observed.
Awkward and slow, the monster wasted nearly half an hour navigating up to the first landing of the house where I was salvaging. It was funny and tragic at the same time. From what I saw, I deduced a zombie could just barely manage stairs, and only after breaking both arms and taking a dozen spills on the way.
As a reward for that perseverance, I shot it in the face and then exited the house with another armload of blankets for the compound. Hey, it was winter and the ladies needed the extra warmth. The kids, too, I guess.
But ladders? We left ladders down sometimes, because everybody knows … well, that would have to stop. I needed to get the word back to the Safe Zones. Their walls had a lot of ladders. The idea made me wonder if that was how the McKinney Safe Zone was penetrated. I know, hundreds of thousands of reanimated corpses could move the strongest barriers, but maybe this was one of the ways they were infiltrated. I would be taking a trip to “town” soon, but first we needed to deal with the rest of the immediate threat.
“Did that thing just climb up?” Casey managed to say, her voice once again under her own control. She was trying for cool and collected, and I would have to give her a C+ for the effort.
“Tried to,” I replied, trying to sound sure of myself. I was just hoping I avoided pissing in my pants.
“But they don’t do that,” the girl insisted, then had the intellectual honesty to look embarrassed at her words. I couldn’t pass it up, but I managed to respond gently anyway.
“Well, he tried really hard,” I said, and tried to muster up a grin. “Must have not read the rules is all.”
“Don’t do that,” she replied.
“What?”
I looked away and muttered under my breath, “Sorry. I don’t get much practice these days.”
After a long pause, I felt a tentative touch on my shoulder as I stood to turn back to the thinned crowd of waiting zombies. If they took note of their loss of the zombie Einstein, their poker faces were impenetrable.
“I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I looked over my shoulder at the girl, and she appeared younger than her eighteen years at that moment.
“Why are you sorry? It is just true. My smile is kind of rusty is all.”
Casey looked down and then away, but she finally spoke. “My dad used to give me that kind of goofy grin when he said something that embarrassed me. Or him. You just made me remember, that’s all.”
I shrugged, which was my go-to move regarding these young ladies. I didn’t know how to relate to them. Hell, I didn’t know back when I was a young man and it never got any easier. Glad we had a son, I thought suddenly. The thought came from nowhere and nearly caused me to gasp out loud.
“What’s wrong?” Casey asked, concern evident in her voice.
“Same thing, Casey. Family stuff. Just thinking about things best left in the past.” I tried for polite, probably getting to wooden or disinterested. I was usually so much better at keeping my memories leashed up, or at least out of sight. Of everybody I knew left in the world, only Roxy knew me from before, and knew what I left behind.
Oh, in the abstract, my story was no more horrific than what everybody else carried around in their heads, but I wasn’t of a habit to bring out my dead for display, or discussion. Some folks had an almost pathological need to talk about what they lost, and I guess in the world of before, when everybody shared everything on social media, that was still a reflex action. Of course, that kind of shit sickened me then and still does.
Not for me. I kept my own counsel. That was the only rule I steadfastly enforced around the compound. Keep your stories to yourself, or at least, don’t dump it on me.
“Please don’t be mad at me, Mr. McCoy,” Casey said softly. “I didn’t mean anything by what I said. And I didn’t …”
I looked over, and the girl still looked miserable. Maybe she thought I was going to throw her out and make her go back to one of the Safe Zones. Her friends might follow her, but they seemed to be happy at the freedom and openness of the Pederson compound and might not want to be uprooted.
“Shhh. Everything is okay, Casey. We are fine, and no harm done. That zed scared the hell out of me, and probably you too. Like you said, they don’t do that. Here’s something else just occurred to me, though. How did it get back there in the first place? Did it just happen to wander up when our attention was elsewhere, or did it wait and use the other zombies for bait? Use them to attract our attention so it could slip up on us?”
Casey was stunned by that idea. I could see the reaction in her eyes and the shiver that ran down her spine as the implication soaked in for her. If the First Wave zombies could do that, then we were well and truly screwed.
“So what do we do?”
“Finish killing these others for now,” I supplied helpfully. “Then I need to go see some people. Probably a couple of people. To let them know this latest and to get the word out. We use ladders a lot, to get to high ground, and we don’t always use the best care in securing them. Because before, we didn’t need to watch our backs with the dead.”
And now, we do. Things change, and not for the better, I realized. Shouldering the rifle, I got back to doing the only job that suited me in this fucked up world. Exterminating the dead, and trying to ignore the living.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Climbing the ladder? Seriously?”
I matched Dr. Singh’s frown with one of my own. We were standing in the outer office while the colonel dealt with some new disaster in his inner sanctum. I didn’t know the details, but given the looks on the faces of the soldiers who hustled inside, they weren’t happy campers.
“Yeah. And I think it used the others as cover to screen his approach. Every other deadhead was gathered out in front of the pit, like they were waiting for a bullet, but this fucker circled around behind. Like it was waiting for its shot at us.”
“At us? Did you have Patty or Ken up there with you? Or Roxy?”
Unlike most citizens of the Safe Zone, Dr. Singh knew my crew by name. He’d been willing to make house calls on the kids Roxy took in, so that allowed him special access. Plus, we’d had him out for a few dinners on a social basis. What can I say? Despite my teasing, I liked the guy. Few folks earned an open invitation to the Pederson Lakeside Marina and Resort, and Doc made that very short list.
“Nah, one of the newcomers. Casey. She’s helping out on guard duty and learning the pest eradication gig.”
“So, a protégé then? About time, I would say.”
“Say trainee instead. She still has a lot to learn. And speaking of learning, what’s the latest from Frankenstein’s workshop?”
Dr. Singh frowned again, and this time I think he really meant it. “I hate it when you call my new lab that, Brad. And I am not exactly the mad scientist type, you know?”
He paused, and the way he did it, I knew the teasing wasn’t why he was so suddenly disturbed. He knew something, and he wasn’t very happy with what he found out. So, I poked and prodded, asshole that I am. Still, I didn’t have long to wait before he spilled.
“They are all getting smarter. This is not just the First Wave as we initially thought. Or prayed. They are only the first, most advanced, examples.”
Well, shit. That was not the news I wanted to hear. I wanted more, and the doctor grudgingly complied.
“We’ve been able to detect definite improvements in cognitive function in about half of the subjects you brought us. We haven’t been able to isolate what factors make the difference, but my suspicion is it has to do with how badly the body was damaged during the initial infection. So maybe all of them will eventually show some improvement, though at a delayed rate. But that is just a hypothesis.”
“Does the colonel know this?” I asked, wondering if this was the bee they had in their bonnet.
“Yes. I shared my initial findings with Colonel Northcutt yesterday. As you can imagine, the man wasn’t thrilled to hear what I had to say. But he told me to keep looking.”
I guessed that was a huge understatement, but did not explain this sudden urgent response I was witnessing today.
“So how smart are we talking about here, doc? And do you have any sign they are recovering any memories? Are they going to turn back into the people they once were?”
The idea had some appeal, a chance to somehow regain some of what we lost, even though it would make me an even bigger monster. If these creatures could somehow recover some shred of their former lives, then that makes me one of the biggest mass murderers since Stalin’s heyday. Or maybe Mao. I’d have to check the history books to figure out my ranking in the butcher’s lineup. Whatever. Shit, shit, shit.
Doctor Singh seemed to sense my thoughts, for he reached out and clasped my forearm before looking me in the eye as he spoke.
No,” he said forcefully. “Those people are dead, Brad. They will remain dead. I’ve seen nothing to indicate the old personalities are returning. And no one with whom I am in communication has reported anything of the sort, either.”
He paused, as if choosing his next words carefully. “I can’t explain it. No one can at this stage. The changes we are seeing in infected brains are new neural connections coming into existence. This should not be possible.”
Then he laughed bitterly before continuing. “What is possible? Six months ago, I would have said the dead getting up and stalking the living was impossible. A stupid Hollywood horrorfest. So here we are now. But, this new development? It defies everything we thought we knew about how life and death and undeath, works. They are still decaying corpses, but somehow thei
r brains are evolving.”
I sighed, and felt the air go out of the room. “So how smart, doc? Are we going to see zombies driving cars, operating heavy equipment? Maybe voting for Green Party candidates?”
“We don’t know. The highest levels we are seeing so far are things like what you have reported. Opening doors, using very simple tools, or like you saw, trying to climb ladders. Basic problem solving mechanisms, in the main. They still seem driven by instinct and by their need to feed. The hunger never seems to turn off, or be satiated. Despite what we have been able to find so far, maybe they do derive some sort of nutrition from the tissue they consume.”
Flesh consumed by the zombies just seemed to rot in the monster’s dead digestive system until the thick, nasty semi-solid waste oozed out the other end. It was not something we liked to think about, and Dr. Singh had repeatedly assured listeners that the dead derived no use from the food they consumed. It was simply old lizard brain instinct that drove the zombies to eat, trying to feed an endless hunger. Except now, the good doctor seemed to be backtracking a bit.
“Well, that’s just dandy,” I said, for lack of anything better. “Anything new on the vaccine front?”
With a reluctant headshake, Dr. Singh let me know that was still a dead end. No vaccine if you can’t figure out what was causing this in the first place. Humanity might be on the ropes, but we still had some research centers intact and sheltered inside their own Safe Zones—labs and scientists and all their gear—but with nothing to identify the source of the infection, they were stuck.
Before I could say anything else, the door opened and Sergeant Lawrence stuck his head out.
“Doctor, you can come on in, sir. Brad, I didn’t see you waiting out here.” The sergeant turned his head and said something I didn’t catch. Whatever the reply, when the sergeant opened the door wider, he gave me a nod to come as well.
The colonel didn’t seem the kind of officer who held a lot of formal meetings with his subordinate commanders, so I suppressed a little start to see all four of his company commanders with their executive officers and the leadership of the local militia force all gathered in the small office. I knew most of the officers, at least in passing, and of course the three old men who ran the civilian militia.
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