by W. J. Lundy
At the top, he saw two men lying in a valley of the roof with a rifle rested over the peak. Spencer stepped through the hole and moved close to them, looking back toward the railroad intersection. The road was covered in thinning white smoke. The stumbling zombies had moved out and were filling the intersection, wandering aimlessly in search of the men who were no longer there.
“What’s with the smoke? You all set something on fire?” he asked. In previous encounters, his shooters had put rounds into vehicles and managed to set them ablaze. It was an unintended consequence, but one he didn’t mind. They preferred to not destroy functioning vehicles, but sometimes it happened. His job was to not let anyone pass the intersection. If people died in the process, it was still a win… sometimes even preferred.
“No, they popped smoke. Took off headed east.”
“Popped smoke?” Spencer said. “Like they hauled ass or like they had smoke grenades?”
The sniper looked up from his rifle. He was young. Corporal Billy Adams had only been in the forces for a few months and had followed Spencer here all the way from Pittsburg. The kid was under twenty years old, still in high school when the fall happened. The boy next to Billy, Private First Class Douglas Jones, was no different. There were a lot of young men in the New Republic Regulars, young men who volunteered to join the battalions, and only the best were selected for the recon elements. It was a way to get fed, and the volunteer money went a long way toward taking care of the families they left behind.
Billy stared at Spencer and said, “Yeah, smokes and military rifles. They knew what they were doing.” The boy grinned. “But they still ain’t get past us. They ran just like the rest of ’em.”
Spencer shook his head. “I doubt that.” He stepped higher on the roof. “What direction did they come from?”
“West,” the kid answered. “They used smoke and suppressing fire to keep our heads down while they ran. Most of their shots went wide though; they couldn’t hit shit.”
“Dammit! Those were Texas scouts!” Spencer said. “You idiots should have woken me up.”
“But, sir, you said not to bother you.”
“I said don’t bother me for stupid shit. Texas scouts is the entire reason we’re here.”
He reached for the radio and keyed the button. “Hey, Marcus, you still there?”
“I’m here, buddy.” Spencer rolled his eyes.
“This last group; they might be scouts. They moved in from the west, had military equipment, and fled moving east.”
“You sure about that, Spence?”
He shook his head and looked at the two boys. “How many were there?”
“Buncha dudes, two trucks—one had a trailer on it,” Billy said.
Spencer nodded and put the radio back to his mouth. “Yeah, I’m sure. Two vehicles; one with a trailer. Military gear. My guys shot at them, but they popped smoke and hauled ass.”
“Shit! Okay, buddy. On our way; be ready to move when we get there.”
Spencer cut the radio and clipped it back to his belt. He waved a hand at the boys to gather their gear and meet him back in the bedroom below. Then he moved to the ladder and dropped back into the lower room. He stuffed his handful of things back into his assault pack then moved to the mattress and pulled it away from the window. He leaned out and looked left and right to make sure nothing had managed to get onto the lower porch roof. He found it safe and stepped out onto the roof, waiting for the boys to join him.
He could hear the two young men joking inside the room. He looked back and saw one of the boys crawling through the window with a fistful of women’s underwear. “Boy, get rid of that shit! Just because we’re leaving doesn’t mean it’s safe, so stop screwing around,” Spencer scolded them.
The boys’ grins vanished. Douglas tossed the women’s garments underhand off the porch roof and into the zombies below.
“What about the block?” Billy asked, looking at Spencer.
Spencer stopped fumbling with his pack and looked back at the boy. “The block was set up to locate the advance Texas elements… we did that.”
“So now what?”
Spencer smiled. “We’re going to track down the scouts, get what information we can, and then kill them.”
A rumble from up the road turned Spencer’s head. A large armored car, followed by a pair of woodland-camo, two-and-a-half ton military trucks, was moving toward them. Spencer slung his pack over his shoulders and waited for the small convoy to approach. The armored car moved just past their position and stopped while the first of the military trucks drove close to the covered front porch and stopped.
“Well, this is our ride, boys,” Spencer said, moving to the edge of the porch. A man in the back of the truck had already raised up an aluminum ladder for him to climb down. The zombies outside the truck had become agitated and were pushing on the vehicle. Aside from the wobble of the ladder, it didn’t concern Spencer much. They’d performed the same procedure dozens of times, and the slow-moving, nearly dead Primals they called zombies had never been able to get into the vehicles.
He dropped down into the rear troop compartment and waited for the two boys. Billy helped the man stow the ladder, and the truck pulled away from the house. They moved onto the road and continued south toward the intersection, where they took a left turn to travel east—the direction they’d seen the earlier vehicles go. Spencer unclipped the handheld radio from his belt, watching it and expecting a call from Marcus when, instead, the trucks slowed and eventually squealed to a stop.
Spencer stood and looked out over the high rails of the vehicle. They were in the center of a cleared blacktop road. They’d moved into the cover of trees and, looking behind them, he could see no evidence of the zombies following. Spencer moved to the back of the truck and undid a latch, opening a small gate. Not bothering to drop the handmade steps, he grabbed a handle and swung down to the ground with the rest of his team following him.
He moved forward to the armored car and found it with the double rear doors opened and Marcus looking over an old road map. The man looked up as he heard Spencer approaching. “So they turned east; where you think they were headed?”
Spencer stepped up and into the armored car, the boys staying outside to stand watch like bodyguards. It was an old bank delivery vehicle. The steel shelves inside had all been removed, and a large steel table was now bolted in the center. Spencer moved around the table and grabbed a thermos that was bungee-corded to the wall. He shook it and, finding it half full, poured himself a cup of coffee. He turned back toward the map and could see that Marcus had circled the Monster block in red wax marker and had their current route traced in yellow.
He sipped at the lukewarm coffee and moved closer. “My guess is they’ll take the next available route north. They weren’t expecting the roadblock, or they would’ve fought us. We forced them to flee. They’ll get away, and then try to get back on course.”
Marcus nodded in agreement and traced his finger along the road, stopping at another bold line. “Here then; it’ll take them right back up and into Michigan.”
Sucking his teeth, Spencer leaned down over the map. He traced the route with his finger and pointed. “One Twenty-Four. It’s a good route, take ’em straight to 33. It’s damn near a better route than if we’d just let them pass.”
“Well, we’ll just have to move quickly and stop them.”
Spencer smiled.
“Something funny?” Marcus asked.
“We’re traveling in slow, hard-to-maneuver vehicles; they have a pair of light trucks,” Spencer said matter-of-factly. “What do you think the odds are that we’ll catch them?”
“So, what do you want to do then?”
“Most of that ship has sailed… the right thing to do would have been to set up an ambush, not a damn Monster block. But like I said, it’s all water under the bridge now.”
“Hey, Monster block worked. We spotted ’em, right? It worked, didn’t it?”
“Did
you think they would just see it, stop, and wait for us to go collect them? We’ve got nothing. The better part of recon is intel. You want to go back with what we’ve got?”
“Hey, you think you know so much then tell me, what do we do?”
Spencer sighed, holding back on what he really wanted to say. “Okay, yeah, it worked. We spotted the scouts, and now we need to catch them. I know of an outpost; it’s just twenty miles from here. Three Corners they call it; drop my team off there. I’ll get me a faster vehicle, take my team north, and try to cut those scouts off. You make comms with battalion and give them updated coordinates. Then, loop back and do whatever you can to get eyes on the main force that’s most likely headed this way.”
The man shook his head. “No, absolutely not. The scouts were the mission,” Marcus said. “Not search-and-destroy the enemy’s main force.”
Spencer sighed and rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead, warding off a headache. “I’m not suggesting you search and destroy anything. But what good is it if we go running away with our dicks in our hands and leave the back door wide open for their main body? The battalion is at least a half day away at the railhead. A lot can change in a half day.” Spencer sipped at the coffee, trying to adjust his tone. “Tell me, you think it would be better for you to report back to the railhead and tell them where you think Texas is headed, or call on the radio that you’ve got eyes on them?”
This time it was Marcus who smiled. The man looked down at the map again then up at Spencer and nodded. “I like the way you think, Spencer. That’s that good army training right there. You always thinking about the shit that I miss. We make a hell of a team, you and me.”
Spencer looked away, trying to hide the disgust on his face. “So… what do you think then? Three Corners, I’ll procure some wheels and pursue while you go after the main body. You lead the battalion to victory this time, put an end to all of this before it even starts,” he said, knowing there was no place to lead the battalion if he couldn’t get useful intel from the scouts. The odds of Marcus finding anything without him were slim to none. There were hundreds of routes the main elements could be taking north; for all he knew, they could be moving through the now abandoned roadblock behind them as they sat there discussing tactics.
“Three Corners, huh? Been a bit since I been that way. They got tasty food there?” Marcus asked.
“Last I heard they had a running tavern.”
Marcus nodded his head and grinned. “Okay, get back to your ride. We’ll make for the outpost then.”
Spencer tossed the rest of his coffee out the back door and left the cup on the table. As soon as he jumped from the back of the armored car, the driver slammed and locked the doors shut. Spencer moved between the boys on the street, who’d stood behind him during his conversation with Marcus.
“Is that how it was during the war?” Billy asked him as they walked back to the truck.
“The war?” Spencer asked. “What you mean? Iraq?”
Billy nodded his head. “Yeah. Was it like this hunting down terrorists?”
“Nah, boy, it was nothing like this. Now come on, let’s try to get some rest before we hit Three Corners. I have a feeling this won’t be an easy trip.”
Chapter 18
South of Lancaster, Ohio. The Dead Lands
Sean pulled his rifle onto his lap and dropped the magazine. He checked the tension on the rounds and reinserted it then checked the safety before placing it back between his knees. They were racing north up a two-lane county highway. Soon after entering Ohio, they found the interstate too congested and had opted for the less crowded back roads. He let his eyes drift to the abandoned homes on the sides of the route. There were no people, no wildlife, and no Primals.
“You won’t see any of them,” Riley said from his seat.
Sean looked at the man. “What do you mean?”
“They don’t run around out in the open the way they used to. Like Dylan said, ‘The times they are a-changing’.”
Sean looked at the burly, bearded man. He looked more like a biker or a nightclub bouncer than someone who fit out in the wild like this. Riley presented himself as a sort of blue-collar, family man, but Sean still wasn’t buying the story, and he knew Brooks had concerns of his own. He’d met enough people in the military to know that outward appearances didn’t always tell the full story of a man, so he was trying to give him an honest shot.
“You ever been to one of them deer farms?” Riley asked.
Laughing, Sean shook his head. “No, why? Do people have farms just full of deer?”
Riley scratched at his matted beard. “I guess that’s what they call it. Maybe it’s conservation or something like that. Anyhow, back home they had this place. This old guy, he raised deer, all kinds of ’em, and you could pay to walk around the farm, and they’d eat right out of your hand. Kids loved it.” Riley paused, looking down at his folded hands.
Sean watched as the man clenched his eyes and shook off a thought.
He cleared his throat and continued. “Yeah, loads of friendly deer. You could pet them, pat ’em on the back if you wanted… Just try doing that out in the woods; you won’t even get close to a white-tailed deer in the forest.”
Brooks looked back at him from the rearview mirror. “What, were they tied up? Or in cages?”
Riley laughed at the comment. “Nah, man, not at all. It wasn’t like they were in cages or sitting in pastures. Nothing like that. But it was, ya know, they just moved around like they were secure, you know? Like when you see a peacock at the zoo. They don’t run from you because they know they’re safe.”
“Until you shoot at them,” Sean said.
Riley pointed a finger at Sean. “Exactly. And that, my friend, is why you don’t see Primals just out and about anymore. They started figuring out we could hurt them, that we can kill them if we need to.”
Brooks grunted. “Not exactly additional information, Riley; Primals been changing since day one.”
Nodding in agreement, Riley turned to the window. “Yeah, they been getting smarter, but things have changed. Before, it was like they were just here—just popped into the food chain where they don’t belong. Like a pack of lions escaped from the zoo and ended up in some unfamiliar environment where they didn’t fit. They didn’t belong, like in some bad movie. Not anymore; now they’re part of the balance of the food chain—top of the food chain, and they know it. Like wolves or a grizzly—they know they can hurt us, but they also know we can hurt them. That’s why now you only see them when it’s on their terms. Like with a grizzly.”
“Been seeing a lot more of the dead ones—the creepers,” Sean said. “And more of the Primals are attacking when they didn’t used to.”
“It’s because they’re starving, and that’s when we need to worry,” Riley said. “We saw a lot of that out east too. There’s more of them than the local wildlife can sustain. Lots of Primals all summer long, but once the winter came…” He shook his head. “Well, you know how they are. Instead of lying down to die from exposure, they come out zombies. I’m not sure what it is, or how it is some evolve and know how to survive in the wild and others don’t. But that’s the awful thing about it—you’d think they would just go away, but no, they just become something else to terrorize us.”
Brooks grunted. “They’re not zombies. They do die.”
“Yeah,” Riley said, his voice growing quiet. “They die, but they sure take their time doing it. The thing you really need to worry about is when Primals starve, they attack.”
Brooks drove the truck to the shoulder of the road, slowing as they moved past a makeshift roadblock. The vehicles used in the roadblock were burned down to their shells. There was a third vehicle pressed into the two that had formed a V to block the road. Riley lowered his window and looked out then pointed at spent brass on the ground and a badly decomposed body near one of the cars. “Someone had one hell of a fight here. Wonder how long ago this was; a year maybe?”
Sean nodded. “Year at least. You see a lot of that out on the roads,” he said.
Riley sighed. “That you do.”
Turning in his seat, Sean looked at the man next to him. “Tell me again how it was you found your way out here.”
The bearded man shrugged nervously. “I was taken from my home, forced to work for Carson’s people when they took our compound.”
“So, you were a raider then,” Brooks said, looking back from the front.
“I wasn’t a damn raider,” Riley spat back. “I was laborer. I just worked for them.”
Sean pointed to Riley’s gun belt. “Tell me about your six gun there.”
“What about it?”
“It’s a nice piece of iron, and you got a holster for it. I’m guessing you didn’t steal it.”
“Nah, I didn’t steal it. Everyone that worked the walls had a gun,” Riley scoffed.
Brooks laughed. “So you were security then. You worked the walls, you carried a gun. Hell, sounds like a raider to me.”
“Screw you; you don’t know shit about raiders.”
Sean held up a hand, silencing Brooks. “You said you’re all out of ammo.”
Riley nodded. “Yeah, used it all up during the escape. Place was on fire. The walls were down, everyone was running, they had zombies and Primals inside… Things got real crazy, really fast.”
“Who’d you shoot?” Sean said. “Texas was attacking, right? How many of them Texas boys did you kill?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
Sean pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. “Hell, them Texas boys were out for blood. I’m sure it was in self-defense. You or them—am I right?”
Riley clenched his hands into fists. “I told you I didn’t kill anybody. I shot some of them damn zombies trying to get me, that was it. I ran and shot some more. By the time morning came, I was out of bullets, and I stumbled upon Henry. The old man shared his fire with me and gave me some food.” He put his hands on his pant legs and rubbed his thighs. “You know what? If you all don’t trust me, just stop. Leave me here; I’ll take my chances on my own.”
