by catt dahman
littered one spot where the Reconstruction Army had shot at people as they
had run away.
To one side, markers of graves leaned; some had been knocked down or
taken away. Under the bridge or the overpass, scores of bodies had been
stacked:victims of gunshots and victims who had tried to get away from zombies
or the RA; they long ago had rotted and had been scavenged by predators.
Kim looked at a spot he remembered well. He had caught men of
the Reconstruction Army in a tent where some friends, including Mark and Andie,
had been handcuffed and left to fate and the zombies.
Kim also remembered how he had explained what he had seen these
men do. “For entertainment, they took people…African, Americans, Mexicans, Asians… woman…children…gays and the disabled…once a girl with Down’s syndrome…anyone expendable in their eyes, and they played gambling games. It might be whocould run
through a bonfire the best or who could survive the most zed bites before turning;
everyone in the games died screaming. I watched them peel a little baby like a grape.”
One man had a necklace made of small, human finger bones.
While he didn’t recall the rest because his rage had taken over, Kim knew
he had killed the three men slowly with a knife and left them there, chained to pole.
The pole was now leaning to one side, and a few lumps were in the over-grown grass,
but no color was left and no hint of what happened. It had been one of Kim’s worst days.
“Can you handle this?” Matt asked Kim as they stopped outside the airport a place where Kim, Len, and Nick had been taken by the Reconstruction Army to be tortured and almost crucified. The cruelty of the evil group had no equal; they had brutalized innocent people worse than the zombies ever could have done until they were finally stopped.
Kim nodded.Sometimes the bones in his hands still ached during cold weather
or when he used them for small jobs, and scars still deeply marred his pain and the
back of his hand.
After ten years, he could recall the pain just as clearly as when he suffered it. After feeling the first spike, there was no keener torture than the seconds before the next one split bones and skin.
Long ago, they had been held while the neo-Nazis tried to use them as blackmail to get them to turn over a little boy whom they were interested in because of his abilities.
The men had been held down while their torturers nailed spikes into their hands; the pain had been sharp enough to take their breath away and cause them to weep.
Kim never could have imagined such agony, but the nailing of the spikes had been nothing, compared to the misery of being lifted vertical to hang by those same spikes, with blood coating his arms.
When all hope was over, zombies had saved Kim, Nick, and Len from the men of the Reconstruction Army by infecting or eating the RA men alive. It almost had been comical to be glad to see the zombies.
“You were the one weapon they had not expected,” Matt said to Ponce. He had been with Kim, Nick, and Len, but the three men had sent Matt home because he was only nineteen and still was learning to be a warrior.
Thinking of how they had not hesitated to choose Matt to leave and be the one
to tell the people at Hopetown what the RA wanted still amazed him. The three had known they would be tortured, and they hadn’t even minded letting Matt be the one
to be freed.
That had been a sacrifice.
“Do you know Hannah had suggested I be the secret weapon?” Ponce responded as he looked at the asphalt littered by old, rotten bodies that were mostly yellowed bones and shreds of cloth.
“I’m not surprised. She could be cruel and smart, and she had never known her place in the world,” Julia said.
“I came in and found a man alone; I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I bit his arm and shot him with his own pistol. He bled out but was back on his feet in less than a minute,” Ponce told them.
“Was it horrible?” Julia asked.
“Yes, I wasn’t into biting people, but that’s all I had to use to get you out. I had
to do what I had to. Colonel Davis had been pretty excited by it. I felt sick and had been scared by what I had done, and it hit me what I really was…infected.”
“He had known at once what was going on, and he had finally taken the chance to
blow off that Norman Pope’s head…pervert,” Kim said.
Hopetown had once been Norman Pope’s Popetown, but he had left it, and the
survivors had taken it over, had cleaned it up, and had thrown out the child porn that the self-proclaimed prophet had hidden.
“Colonel Davis had known he wasn’t going to get out, and we hadn’t thought he
would either; he surely had been happy that the bad guys weren’t going to win all,
hands down. You have done him proud, Ponce.”
Ponce looked at all the moldering corpses, long worn away by the elements. “Despite everything, we had that in common; we didn’t want the RA to win.”
“They had taken over the army we had; they had been bad, and some had
been hybrids.” When the fight broke out, people had bitten on one another, had shot
each other, with no pattern, just people killing and killing.”
Chapter 12
Ten Years Before--Chaos and Z Year 10--Things of Nightmares
Kim remembered the chaos.
From the building, zombies had shambled out, their bodies bloody and torn. They moaned and searched for live food. Some were women that the RA had abducted and had made into sex slaves; they had been somehow better off as creatures of revenge, than victims.
As horrific as the sight and sounds of the creatures had been, a lot had been
going on.
To one side, the leader of the Reconstruction Army, Lucas, and his deformed son had yelled and scrambled to get free of the mysterious fire that had surrounded them; Nick had sung an old Johnny Cash song at the top of his lungs about a ring of fire, making Kim sure Nick had been insane and had imagined the whole episode.
“Ring of fire….”Nick had howled happily. Pascal, the child with the melted half-face, had screeched and hissed like an angry cat, and had been furious that he was trapped behind the flames.
Pascal wasn’t Satan, but he had been as much of a devil as Kim had ever wanted to meet.
Len had contorted his body to reach for the pistol he had strapped to his calf,
and he had fired at the other leader of the Army, dropping the man.
Kim had kicked at a body he thought was that of Frank, the man who had terrorized survivors while they were hidden in the remains of a hospital and had cannibalized those who had crossed him. Being shot had been way too easy of a
death for the man who had burned people alive, raped, and initiated slavery again.
With memories burning brightly, Kim stomped at the man’s skull, finding satisfaction in the breaking of the old bones. He shook with rage.
Big Bill patted his shoulder. That was what Big Bill was supposed to do:
be the strength and back up.
“Before he died, he had been shot and bitten; Alan had gotten Nick free.”
“Why had the President of the United States been with the Reconstruction Army?” Carl asked. It was a good question, and that had made Kim remember how amazed he had been to see the President.
Kim had not known exactly. Nick had hardly recognized his brother when he
had seen him but hadn’t had time to learn why his brother was with the group, but
he had said that the man they saw had not been the brother he had known.
Nick had been loyal to the survivors he had lived with. Alan had been the one
who had been forced to press the buttons and destroy the United States with bombs;
he had been the one who had l
ocked the people away who had forced him to press the button, burying them alive. He had been the one to see his country and his
responsibility in shambles and populated by zombies.
Alan hadn’t protected or saved his country, and he hadn’t recovered mentally, had thought that his entire family, including Nick, was dead.
Only at the end, before he had died, had Alan sounded and looked like the brother Nick had loved. “I think he checked out mentally. This was all way too much
for him to deal with,” Kim told them.
Kim’s hands had been shattered, and he had been bleeding out from a bullet to his leg, but a Humvee had appeared, and Juan had been there to throw him into a fireman carry and get him away from the carnage. Kim had agreed to be carried to safety and cared for; he had been in way too much pain to fight or be a hero.
“I helped carry your sorry ass to the truck,” Carl told Kim with a big grin.
“Hey, I lost weight,” Kim said.
“I couldn’t tell. Damn.”
“Len had shot Dr. Diamond, but he had let me and another guy walk away,” said John Ponce as he walked over to a spot. “Right here. He called us even…like we were even on things. I helped you all, and he let me live.”
“Must have been close but not here,” Matt said, “nobody was here. Hey, it was ten years ago and a bad night.”
Ponce turned in circles. It was one of the worst nights of his life, and his memory was branded. It was right at this spot that Diamond had been shot.
Ten years had passed, so it was possible he had forgotten specifics, but he didn’t think so. Maybe the dogs and wolves did carry the corpse away and leave all the rest. Kim was already looking at each body.
“Diamond had had on trousers and a scrub shirt with a while coat,” Ponce said.
Bones and scraps were everywhere, but no clothing fit that description. That bewildered Ponce.
“He had been wounded and crawled back inside; the Zs got him,” Rae suggested. “That’s what happened, I bet…makes sense to me.”
“This here is Roy. Remember his stupid old yellow glasses?” Big Bill pointed out the body with tiny bits of plastic about the head, amid the trash and dirt. “I don’t see
no Doctor Diamond.”
“Roy could have been with us; he was a tireless fighter, but he just bumped heads too much and wanted to do some stupid things.
When the bombs hit, he had sworn it was an earthquake for a long time,” Julia said. “He had always argued every point. He even had called me names.”
“You and he always had fights, and he had called you spic chick, and you had
cursed him in Mexican; it had been pretty funny,” Kim said.
“Spic chick?” Matt laughed.
“Hey,” Teeg called to them, “I didn’t see it, but you said the fire had burned
up Pascal and Lucas, and the dogs had run in and attacked. But a lot had been going on, and people had been in pain; it had been dark outside.”
Kim looked at the remains of a big man who was dressed in black or grey. “That must be Lucas; he was Pascal’s father…pure evil; the position of the body is right, but where is Pascal?”
Carl cursed and re-positioned his ball cap as he looked around. It had been ten years, and animals, zombies, and people must have been through this place. There
had been storms, and people had forgotten details.
Although Kim and Ponce had remembered places where many of the bodies were located, some inconsistencies were bound to happen. The only other explanation was that Pascal and Diamond hadn’t died on the tarmac.
“Neither one,” Carl reported, “so we looked inside. Maybe they had gone there.”
Guns ready, the group walked towards the building. The zombies who could have walked away were gone, but a door was broken, forming a barrier; from inside, they heard moans.
Rae and Teeg took the shots without a problem. Inside were several bodies:
the two dead zombies and a zombie who had rotted away and died long ago, but whom they still had spared a head shot for. The dogs and wolves had chewed on some of the bodies, leaving very little parts of the bodies as they cleaned up the place.
“We had a big fight in the next area. I expected Zs,” Ponce said, remembering. He took the lead, slamming open the door and entering.
On her knee, Rae took several down with bullets to their legs so the rest could take headshots and then finish off the zombies who shambled about.
“Looks like another is dead. I guess it’s true that they do die,” Julia said, “wonder which ones?”
“I’m no doctor, but I’ve talked to Steve some. We think maybe the ones we find dead could be the ones who had brain problems or something; the prions couldn’t run the brains anymore,” Matt said.
In one room had been where the Reconstruction Army had kept the women captive as sex slaves. The women still bore the scars and open wounds that handcuffs and shackles had caused as they had tried to free themselves.
A few still had moved quite well but had been put down, and some had been eaten down to the skeleton; the brains had been consumed so they couldn’t get back up.
Julia had felt rage at how these women had been abused. They had been locked away and used, and sometimes, they were visited by hybrids that had infected them in their private parts, so they had suffered horribly. When they were used up or turned or died, they had been tossed aside like rubbish.
Room by room they searched, killing all the creatures they found, but the doctor and the crazy child with the half-melted face had not found.
“I know Len didn’t miss that shot,” Ponce said, “the damned doctor fell right beside me.”
“Okay, but he had been a hybrid and had not been capable of being infected. Let’s say he had been wounded. Let’s say Pascal had not been killed. Then what do we have?”
“We have the impossible,” Julia said, “in ten years, wouldn’t they have shown up, and wouldn’t we have heard of them or something? You think the kid helped Diamond, and they got away? They would still be doing crazy things, and we’d have heard about them.”
Kim shrugged. “They sure as hell aren’t here. As for why we haven’t heard from them, maybe they were killed right afterwards or later; no reason to think if they had survived this, they would still be alive, right?”
“But we’re all wondering now,” Matt said. The doctor, his insane experiments, and the demon-child had been the things of nightmares.
As they walked outside for fresh air, Matt looked at the derelict airplanes. When all this had been planned, he had been only nineteen and never had flown on a plane but had known many business people who had considered air travel a regular thing.
When his children had learned about air travel, they had giggled, thinking it was a big joke. They couldn’t imagine people riding up in the air. The buildings, glass, and concrete would fall apart, and the airplanes would rust, but the wreckage would remain for a hundred years or more, maybe a century. The plastic would remain a thousand years, the glass, albeit broken, would be here forever, tin cans for hundreds of years, and Styrofoam maybe forever.
They suggested theories and ideas as they rode away, but there were many silent thoughts as well.
Chapter 13
Another Settlement Lost: No Rules Dealing with a World Filled with Flesh Eaters
On the third day, a lone rider hailed them, one that they were glad to see. Len, handsome and self-assured, waved.
“I heard you were coming,” Len said and shook hands all around, “I heard a
red-headed cowboy and a bunch of well-armed, mean-looking folks were coming
our way; I knew it was you all.”
I didn’t think Andromeda was that unstable, or I would have handled it,” he said as a way of apology. “Hannah knows better, but she’s been alone a long time; it’s ain’t like she can find a boyfriend like other girls her age. I know Beth can beat this; she’s strong.”
They had plenty to
tell him.
He nodded. “I can see why you want hold of this boy…bad news.”
Len invited them back to the settlement he was helping for a day or so. He tried to go around and help settlements defend themselves better and make themselves more efficient and secure.
This settlement was once a large estate behind rock walls and iron bars where a group gathered and built a permanent home. They had well water and gardens, supplies stored, and a large place to live, but the lack of communication, shortages of ammunition, and limited resources made the people suspicious and nervous.
Cal, a middle-aged black man, was the leader, a man who once was a minister of
a small congregation. He had a rich melodious voice, a no-nonsense approach of hard work, kindness and respect, and a dedication not to allow cultish behavior.
Now, he was less like a preacher and more like an elected leader who looked at
all sides of problems.
It was no surprise that people listened to this man. He welcomed the newcomers with a smile and sat down with them, explaining how much they appreciated Len’s help with securing their walls and making effective weapons for themselves.
For a while, Cal and Len just listened, only asking a few necessary questions.
Cal said he understood the need to find the young man and Hannah. Len said he would join in to find Hannah and help get her away from the man she was riding with.
Cal drew some figures on a sheet of paper that he handed Len. “We have heard only bits of news that scared us, but the secret whispers are that a man, here on the map I drew, is a doctor and is trying to find a cure. It could be the one you’re looking for, or he may know where the man is or what happened to him, but I can’t promise he’s the one you want to find.”
“People around here speak of the doctor sometimes, afraid to have hope anymore. I think we have the ideas of how to do better for ourselves but not for the place or the strong decision-makers in place. We haven’t made choices as good as I would wish,” Cal added.
“No help for choices now, it’s hard,” Julia added.
“We’ve heard about supposed doctors and scientists still being around but have not believed much, not after ten years. Anyone left would be trying to survive and not trying to find something impossible with nothing left anyway.”
