Aftermath - 02

by D. J. Molles

  The entire crowd seemed frozen and perplexed, like everyone was trying to figure out what the hell this one was doing.

  "Shoot it!" Bus shouted at the man with the deer rifle.

  The rifle barked.

  Lee watched the dirt at the infected's feet explode. Sympathetic gunfire followed the rifle shot as the tension became too much for some trigger fingers to handle. The night was abruptly engulfed in a volley of shotgun blasts and rifle fire. A scattershot of rounds caught its legs, then ripped into its shoulder, pummeled its chest and finally split its head open.

  It wasn't until that moment when Lee watched the miserable thing collapse to the ground that a small, familiar voice cut into his brain, dissipating the fog of disorientation and reminding him of who he was, and how he had been trained.

  Watch your lane.

  When learning to operate in a squad, each member would have a designated “lane of fire” to watch for enemies. If you were constantly checking to make sure that your buddy wasn’t missing things in his lane, then you were probably missing things in your own lane. In other words: stop worrying about everyone else, and do what you know you’re supposed to be doing.

  Squad Tactics 101.

  Watch your lane.

  Lee spun around just in time to see two claw-like hands latch onto a young teenage girl and yank her backwards. Lee watched the girl's dark hair fly up like it was suddenly in zero gravity as she was pulled to the ground. Her eyes locked onto Lee, and he saw a scared indignance, as though she was thinking, this isn’t supposed to happen to me.

  The infected was an older female. It hunched over the younger girl and lunged for the neck. The girl let out a small cry and her hands came up, trying to block the infected's mouth from reaching her jugular. The old woman bit down hard on the girl’s wrist and Lee heard tendons snap.

  He managed to yell, "Behind us!" and then swung for the fences. The axe-handle connected just behind the ear and left a deep hollow in the old woman’s skull.

  It was only then that Lee realized there was a second infected. It lunged out of the darkness and seized hold of the teenage girl and began to backpedal, trying to drag her away from the crowd, looking at the other survivors and hissing aggressively. It pulled her by the shirt collar with one hand, and hammered the girl’s face with the other, knocking her unconscious after two or three blows.

  Lee jumped forward and wound up for the swing. A gun went off just to the right side of his head. The infected’s throat exploded and it collapsed into a writhing ball. Lee instinctively recoiled from the noise of the gunshot so close to him. As Lee clenched his jaw against the ringing in his ears, the crowd swarmed around him yanking the girl away from the infected and then bludgeoning it to death.

  He looked to his right, where the gunshot had just come from, and saw a man drop a small revolver to the ground. His face was ashen. He rushed past Lee and slid to his knees next to the girl and began to wail.

  The gathering erupted in confusion.

  Everyone was yelling and pressing forward to hover over the girl. A younger man in the crowd turned and looked at Lee with accusatory eyes, as though Lee had done something wrong, as though it was his fault that the girl had been attacked. In a flash of anger, Lee thought about using the axe-handle on him, too. But in the back of his mind he thought, isn’t it your fault? Shouldn’t you have been paying attention? You’re the professional here…

  Over it all he heard Bus yelling, "Steve! Steve!" and the man who had fired the revolver wailing: "Oh Jesus! Oh Fuck! Come on, baby! Wake up! I'm so sorry, baby!"

  The girl’s father?

  Bus tried to push past with the rest of them but Lee was thinking a little bit clearer now, thinking about how those infected had hid from them and flanked them. There could be more. And if they didn’t find where the intruders had come through, there would be more. He reached out and caught Bus with a firm hand to his chest. "Are there any others?"

  Seeming to ignore him, the big bearded man craned his neck to see the girl on the ground, then abruptly realized that Lee was speaking to him. "What?"

  Lee pulled the man closer, speaking low so as not to be overheard and start a panic. "Are there any other infected?"

  "Uh…" He tapped his Colt 1911 against his thigh and wiped his sweaty brow. "Shit. God. I don't know."

  The group was already scattering to the wind. Doc and Jenny were pushing people out of the way and Doc's skinny voice was needling at the crowd: "Everyone get the fuck outta the way! Someone help me lift her!"

  More people than necessary to carry a 120-pound girl stepped in. Everyone was trying to get a hand in to help and becoming more of a hindrance. The girl's father cradled her head in his arms as they moved her quickly towards the medical trailer.

  Bus was staring at the girl again, so Lee shook him gently to get his attention. "Grab a couple guys. We need to close whatever hole those fuckers came through and then do a perimeter sweep."

  CHAPTER 2: INVESTIGATION

  Bus seemed to gain his senses again. He reached out with a thick arm, course with wiry black hair, and grabbed Josh as the young man attempted to run past and join the crowd as they whisked the bitten girl off to Doc’s medical trailer.

  “You’re with us,” Bus said, and when he spoke he had returned to his normal steady tone. “We gotta find where they’re coming through the fence.”

  “But what about Kara?” Josh’s eyes were wide and concerned.

  Bus looked the young man in the eye. “Let Doc handle that. You can’t do anything for her right now. We have other things to take care of. Now let’s go.”

  Josh didn’t argue further. He nodded once and then both men turned towards Lee.

  He quickly surveyed his surroundings and made a decision. “We need a fourth...” Lee spotted a familiar face. Miller, wasn’t it? The man in the red bandana that had helped them escape Timber Creek with the use of some Molotov cocktails. Lee waved him over. “Hey! Borrow you for a second?”

  Miller took a second to recognize him in the darkness, but after shining his light a few times in Lee’s face, he came running over, hand on his holstered .38 Special to keep it from flopping around on his belt. “Yeah?”

  He was roughly the same age as Josh, but taller, and his features more gaunt. While Josh gave the impression of someone much younger, everything about Miller was older, from the squint of his eyes to his confident-but-not-cocky stride. There was something else there, too. Something in the tilt of his head, in the set of his jaw. Miller liked to fight.

  Lee pointed to the fence behind the trash bins, as it was the closest section of fence to their current location. “We’ll both start there. Run the fence line in opposite directions and see if we can find where the infected are getting through. If you find the hole, post up and secure it as best you can until we all meet back up.”

  Three heads nodded quickly.

  “Bus, you and I will go clockwise. Miller and Josh, you guys go counterclockwise.” Lee and Bus took off for the fence at a trot and began walking briskly along it, inspecting the integrity of the chain links as they went.

  Lee had asked for Bus to team up with him because he wanted a chance to talk to him. There were things about their most recent encounter that disturbed him and he wanted to get Bus’s thoughts on it.

  While they walked, Lee spoke. “What happens to the girl now?”

  “Kara?” Bus mumbled absently. “Doc will amputate and hope for the best.”

  Lee almost stopped in his tracks. “Amputate? Are you kidding me?”

  Bus shook his head, looking briefly run down. “No. The faster they cut Kara’s arm off, the better chance she has of not contracting FURY. Doc figures it works about half the time, which is better than 100% chance of infection. Only problem is that most of the time the amputation goes septic. Or they lose too much blood.” Bus swore bitterly. “We just don’t have the medical equipment. It’s like the fucking Stone Age again. Like civil-war surgeons just hacking off limbs with saws
and crossing their fingers.”

  Lee couldn’t think of anything else to say. The concept of amputation to prevent bacterial infection through a bite or open wound seemed to be a reckless medical maneuver, but when faced with the certainty of turning into one of them, the amputation had a cold practicality.

  Lee pressed on: “Did you notice anything about those last infected?”

  Bus didn’t answer immediately. He stalked along and painted his flashlight over the length of fence before them but found it to be secure. When he finally spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I remember how they were a month ago.” He stopped walking and turned to look at Lee. “They were disjointed and confused. Lost. Insane. They attacked each other just as often as they attacked us. I don’t know what the hell is going on or how it’s happening so fast, but the groups are changing. Learning. And they’re doing it quickly.”

  Lee pictured the dark shape darting out of the trash bins and circling the edge of the lamplight while they sat in their encirclement, weapons pointed out. The cold, blood-crusted talons dragging that young girl to the ground and the other trying to carry her off.

  “Like a wolf pack,” Lee said, almost more to himself than to Bus. “Adaptation. Evolution. It doesn’t seem like they’re mindlessly attacking any more. It seems like they’re hunting us.”

  Bus stopped and looked Lee in the eyes. “Bullshit,” he said.

  Lee shrugged. “Think about it. That’s the first time you’ve ever seen them come from both directions. Usually they’re in one solid group and they just charge you. This was different. It was like they were trying to distract us so the other two could get in close.”

  Bus didn’t answer. He just started walking along the fence line again. The truth was that the words were bitter. It was not an “ah-ha” moment, it was an “oh shit” moment. The infected were bad enough as a mindless herd. The thought of them in small packs, hunting them like prey, was a hard pill to swallow.

  But Lee wasn’t willing to ignore the situation either.

  “This is the first time we’ve seen them maneuver like that.” He followed along with Bus while he spoke. “When the situation changes, your tactics need to change along with it. If they’re getting smart enough to get past your chain link fence, we’re going to need to think of something else to keep them out.”

  Bus shook his head fiercely. “Even a dog can dig himself under a fence. That doesn’t mean anything. They’re mindless shells of what once were human beings. They’re just running on auto pilot now. There’s no evolution in this.”

  He sounded distraught, as though he were attempting to convince himself. I reject your reality, and substitute my own. Lee decided not to push it. He just hoped Bus had other things on his mind and wasn’t this unreceptive all the time.

  Lee had to admit to himself that it was difficult to tell with the infected. Sometimes their actions seemed like the result of logical thought, and other times it just looked like instinct. Most of them appeared to be able to manipulate tools, but they weren’t using them properly, they were simply using them as blunt objects to strike out with. Just because a monkey can strike somebody in the head with a wrench, doesn’t mean it can fix your sink. They all seemed to hold on to some rudimentary intelligence, but it also seemed to vary from individual to individual. Just as some were more aggressive than others, some were more intelligent than others. But then the question arose again, was it intelligence or instinct? Lee kept coming back to the example of a wolf pack. When a pack hunts, singles out the weakest prey, and then flanks it to take it down, is the success of their hunt based on a premeditated plan, or ingrained animal instinct?

  A voice came hollering across the compound. “Bus!”

  Bus and Lee both looked and saw Miller running up, breathing heavily. “I think we found where they came in.” He took a big gulp of air. His eyes darted back and forth, carrying grave meaning. “I think you should take a look at it.”

  Miller turned on his heel and started jogging back across the compound. They followed behind him, their flashlights strobing up and down as they ran. Lee took a sidelong glance across the center of the compound and saw the crowd at the medical trailer being pushed out by a man Lee didn’t recognize. From inside the trailer Lee could hear screaming, high-pitched and wretched. Doc had begun the amputation.

  “Right here.” Miller had stopped and was pointing.

  They turned the corner of a shanty made out of aluminum siding and blue tarp. Lee and Bus looked forward as they slowed to a walk and approached what Miller pointed at. Confusion passed over their faces followed by a deep, dreadful uncertainty. They looked at each other and then back at the object of their attention.

  An opening had been peeled back from the fence, from top to bottom. The chain-links had been pulled away and rolled up like two sides of a scroll. Only they weren’t pushed inside, but pulled outwards and tucked in so neatly to create the man-sized breach in their defenses that it left little room for question about who or what had done this.

  It was then that Lee and Bus both noticed a low, husky voice, quietly intoning some strange narrative: “...but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves...”

  “What the fuck is that?” Bus glared and shot his flashlight towards the sound of the voice. The flashlight played around a bit and then found the culprit. Nestled in a patch of overgrown grass at the corner of the shack was a small black CD player, round and glistening like an insect’s head, the two bulbous speakers stared up at them like compound eyes.

  “...the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible...”

  Bus moved swiftly forward, raising his foot as though to stomp the thing out of existence but Lee’s hand shot out and grabbed him by his arm, hauling him backwards. Bus looked at him like he was about to turn that foot on Lee, but then understanding dawned.

  Lee nodded. “Might want to check that out real good before you go stomping around it. Depending on who put it there, it could be booby-trapped.”

  Bus managed a halfhearted smile. “That’s why I keep you around.” He gestured towards the CD player. “I’m guessing you have much more experience with booby-traps than I do. You tell me.”

  The voice, supremely ignorant of the circumstances, continued its droning: “...the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake...”

  Lee gave the big man a humorless smirk and leaned forward with extreme caution. He shined the flashlight first around the immediate area of his feet, then lit up the patch of overgrown grass. When he saw nothing to alarm him he stepped forward and peered down into the nest of grass, working the flashlight around at different angles.

  “...the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude...”

  Lee let out a long breath and relaxed a bit. Then he knelt down and stabbed the top of the CD player with his finger. The black cover popped open and the disembodied voice went silent. Underneath, a white disk spun madly at first, and then came to a gradual stop. Lee reached his hand in and plucked the CD from the tray, looking at the title and reading aloud: “Moby Dick by Herman Mellville. It’s an audiobook.”

  Bus’s face was made of granite. “Hilarious.”

  Lee shook his head. “I don’t think it was a joke.”

  Miller chimed in, pointing to the neatly clipped ends of the chain links. “Pretty sure someone cut their way through this...looks like bolt cutters.” Bus regarded Miller with a dubious look, to which Miller responded, drably, “I wasn’t always the upstanding citizen I am now.”

  “Milo?” Lee suggested.

  Bus crossed his arms. “I don’t see who else would be interested in fucking with us, and given our recent tiff, I think that’s a pretty good deduction.”

  “Why not just attack us?” J
osh finally spoke.

  Lee offered a possible answer. “Because a day attack is too easily defended and they know they can’t be out in the woods at night because of the infected. So they use the infected. Cut a hole in the fence. Put a CD player with just enough volume to attract the infected, but not get noticed by us.”

  “Kind of clever if you think about it.” Bus stared grimly out at the dark woods. “Audiobook just sounds like some guy talking. Music would have caught our attention.”

  Everyone that had survived up to this point seemed to know that the infected had nearly superhuman hearing at night when they became more active. Lee had to assume that because of this, Camp Ryder enforced noise discipline at night. Even at the low volume it had been set, the CD player had probably been the loudest noise coming out of the camp, though it probably would have gone unnoticed by regular ears or dismissed as a quiet family discussion.

  Lee stood up and stepped to Bus’s side. “I think maybe you should tell me about Milo.”

  Bus nodded, then pointed to Miller and Josh. “You two patch up that fence. Only one of you working at a time, the other keep watch. Don’t let anyone else sneak in. I’ll send someone else down to help you.” Bus turned to Lee. “Walk with me.”

  ***

  The two men walked through the darkness, their flashlights casting a dull glow off the ground before them and just barely illuminating their tired faces. Most everyone had gone back to their makeshift homes, but a few stragglers still made their way through the dark. Unlike the deep silence of early morning, there was still a whisper of excitement: quiet voices echoing out of wood and tin shacks, holding furtive conversations. Lee had to wonder how many other infected were in the area to hear those barely audible whispers?

  Lee looked up at the sky and saw the faint glimmer of dawn to the east, or perhaps it was his imagination. It wasn’t until you spent time outside of the comfort of civilization that you began to realize why people in ages past feared the night. The night was long, it was uncomfortable, and it was dangerous. The dawn marked the end of the dark misery and the return of warmth and safety.