The inner wall was constructed of all kinds of stuff meshed together; telephone poles cut in half and stuck vertically into the ground, sheet metal, plywood, concrete Jersey barriers, crushed vehicles, more razor wire, chain link and stockade fence, and lumber. It looked haphazard at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it was a goddamn work of art. There wasn’t a millimeter of open space to slip through, and hardly a place existed where you could get a finger hold, and those places were covered in razor wire or metal blades or spikes.
It was genius.
There were two towers made of shipping containers with aluminum sheds placed on top one on either side of the gate, and from this side I couldn’t tell how the bus could move forward and back with those towers there. What I could see is that those fortifications, and quite a bit of the wall were bristling with gun barrels, all pointed at us. Not one, but two huge machine guns had their business ends trained on us as well, as did a nozzle on a swivel that I would bet dollars to doughnuts was a flame thrower.
“Sorry, folks, Havre is closed today.” No introductions were made, and I could barely see any of the folks who could have shouted that.
Well shit.
“Uhh, Dallas? Any ideas here?”
“Yep. But I gotta get out.”
Dallas stood, hunched over because of his height, and opened the back hatch. He stepped out and closed it behind him. He moved to the front of the vehicle, put his shotgun on the asphalt, and his rebar as well, and turned in a complete circle. “I’m lookin’ fer Clara McInerney.”
“Who’s lookin’?”
“Name’s Dallas.”
“What do you want her for?”
“Got a message.”
“Give it to me and I’ll tell her.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Go git ‘er, I’ll wait.” The big bastard actually folded his arms.
There was some commotion, although I could barely see it through the slits in the wall. “Gonna be a minute.”
“I got time, but not too much, there’s a…” he paused, obviously thinking. He snapped his fingers and said, “Swarm! A swarm o’ dead folks ‘bout three miles back on the road. They’s headed this way.”
“How many?”
“A lot.”
“How many!”
“Hunerts.”
There was dead silence until a woman shouted over the wall maybe fifteen minutes later, “Who are you?”
“Name’s Dallas.”
“I don’t know anyone named Dallas.”
A gigantic grin crossed the face of our new travelling buddy as he looked back at us. He turned back and spoke to the wall, “Your husband Kevin does. Captain Kevin McInerney of the USS Florida? He tole me that you was home here in Havra,” (he pronounced it like that), “when the dead come back t’life. He was on board the Florida and couldn’t get here. He’s alive ‘n well on Alcatraz in San Francisco, or was when I left a few months back. He’s m’ friend, an’ he tole me to call ‘im Kevin, not Captain, or Commander or any of that. He said he misses you and Clyde.”
Dallas would tell me later he heard a loud sob, but all I heard was the sound of a bus engine. A smallish man dressed in coyote camouflage dropped over the side of the plate steel covered bus. He skirted right past Dallas when the big guy put his hand out for a shake. The little guy moved to the MRAP and climbed up on the driver’s side steps. He showed me a large bundle he had, waving it slightly. “C4. If you turn hostile, you go boom.” He nodded and I nodded back. He attached the bundle to the front windshield, and stepped away.
The bus moved forward, and a middle-aged woman, also in coyote camo, came running out and stopped in front of Dallas, looking up at him. A dog trotted out behind her and sat on the pavement, scratching his side. She slung her rifle, and threw herself at Dallas, her arms going around him in a hug. She couldn’t reach all the way around the guy, but she tried like hell. The big guy, taken aback, didn’t know what to do for a moment, then he returned the hug.
Seven men, all in that coyote camo, followed her out and looked us over. One of them hand motioned us to drive through the gate, and I did, stopping just inside.
“Gotta get out, buddy.”
I opened the door and Tim did the same. I brought my weapon, and the locals looked at it, but didn’t raise their weapons, which I thought was odd.
One of the guys came over and crawled up into the MRAP. He looked around and got out, nodding in approval. A different guy, older, with a beard full of gray stepped up to us. He shook Tim’s hand and then mine. “Any of you bit or scratched?”
The dog, a bloodhound, and a big one, came and sat at my feet, his gigantic tongue lolling. He looked up at me and I scratched his head. “No, sir. No bites or scratches.”
Two of the guys looked at each other, “Welcome to Havre, Montana, population just over sixteen hundred souls. Don’t get in no trouble and you can stay for a bit. Get in trouble and we’ll shoot you. Gotta get checked out by the doc and surrender your weapons before you’re allowed to walk around.”
I unslung the HK and checked the safety, then handed it to him. I gave him my Sig, and he looked at the suppressor, then at me with raised eyes, then sideways at one of his buddies. I unsheathed my SOG knife from my shoulder strap, and he put his hand out to stop me. “You can keep that.”
I thanked him and stuck it back in the sheath while he disarmed Tim.
Dallas brought the woman over. “Boys, this here’s Clara.”
I shook her hand and so did Tim. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing word of my husband. You must be hungry! Let’s get you to Eleanor’s for some breakfast!”
She took Dallas’ hand, pulling him down the street. Tim and I followed, me looking back longingly at the MRAP as the guys were now all over it like a flock of vultures. I heard it start up, and we turned a corner heading toward a small diner.
I smelled cooking, and suddenly I was starving.
Brewing Coffee and Trouble
When I had been on the road with Ship and Kat, we generally ate what we could find. Canned and dried stuff or MREs. The food at Atlantis, my new home, had been superior. Then I was a “guest” at Baldy Mountain, and the food had been standard cafeteria stuff. It was good. Reminded me of prison food. A lot of soups, cheese pizza, and pasta. Not a tremendous amount of meat, and the dairy products were substandard.
When Clara opened the door to the Havre House Diner and Grille, and the aroma of fresh breakfast food being cooked hit me; it was like a wet dream. Picture the unbelievable stench of a rotten zombie only in reverse. I realize you might think this is a terrible analogy, but it isn’t. The smell did the exact opposite of what the zombie stink does. It filled me with thoughts of good things and better times.
The door had one of those little bells, and it rang when we came in. Clara moved to a diner-style booth and took a seat. Tim sat next to her and Dallas and I sat across from them. A couple of guys were at the bar, and there was a young couple at a table with a little girl, but other than that the place was empty. Clara waved to everyone, and they all waved back. They also all had weapons. Even the kid, maybe ten, had a small pistol in a holster hanging on a hook. It had to be hers; the gun belt wouldn’t have fit anyone else in the room.
I heard the door to the kitchen open and Clara waved someone over. I expected it to be this Eleanor person, but she was behind me as she came to our booth. I was also expecting, much like you were, that Eleanor was an older woman with her hair in a bun, wearing an apron and wiping her hands on a dish rag.
Nope.
Eleanor was tall and tan and lithe. Auburn hair in a pony-tail, wearing jeans over cowboy boots with a button-down shirt buttoned to exactly the right position, no further no less. She was beautiful, and her smile made me feel like I was floating on a cloud of titties.
Fine, it may not have been her smile but this is my story.
“Mornin’ Clara, who’re your friends?”
“New-comers, they have news
about Kevin!”
Smile vanished. Instant suspicion, “Do they.” Not a question.
“Sure do,” Dallas chimed. He stuck his big Texas paw out to her. “Name’s Dallas.”
She shook his hand and gave a curt nod to Tim and I. “Eleanor. What would you like and what do you have?”
Seeing the blank looks on our faces, Clara explained, “We work on a barter system. Money is useless, so we trade in goods and services.”
I had a service in mind.
Dallas looked helpless, and I was thinking about a young lady friend on an oil rig a few thousand miles from here. Tim, with his ever-present logic and ability to totally pull shit off, pulled out a map of the area and a compass. Where he got that I will never know.
“Will this do?”
She looked at his stuff and told him it would work. “I don’t need it, but there are other folks around that will trade for those. What about you fellas?”
Dallas continued to look helpless, and if he was half as hungry as me, he was about to start crying. “I got a bunch o’ nuthin’”
Eleanor’s beautiful brown eyes shifted to me. “Uhh…I have…”
“I like that knife.”
She nodded toward my SOG. Now this girl was hot, but my knife? Nope. No way. I was absolutely keeping this knife. It was a Seal Pup for fuck’s sake, quite possibly the best knife on the planet according to Lynch.
But…boobs.
I detached the Velcro and put it on the table. “For both of us,” I said indicating Dallas.
She smiled and nodded. “We have fresh sausages and bacon to go with the fresh eggs. Milk or lemonade, and coffee, but it’s instant.”
Dallas and I both gave her our orders, and we didn’t skimp. Tim ordered big too, and Clara had a glass of milk, stating (jokingly) that instant coffee was a construct of the devil. When Eleanor brought us our food, we dug in with gusto, and Dallas began his story to Clara between mouthfuls. The food was fantastic, and listening to Dallas’s story again wasn’t horrible.
When he got to the part about meeting us, Clara let loose with a small exclamation, “Oh! Oh, I thought Kevin sent them with you.”
“No, ma’am. And beggin’ yer pardon, but Kevin dint send me neither. This here’s a favor, and he don’t know nuthin’ of it. Actually, he might by now iff’n Rick and th’ others got back OK. Kevin wouldn’t’ve asked me.”
“No he wouldn’t,” Clara said quietly. “He would have gotten you situated and come by himself.”
“I reckon that’s true.”
I heard the little bell on the door ring, and a shadow fell over us. It was the bearded guy from the gate, “Mind if I join you folks for a bit?”
Not waiting for an answer, he grabbed a chair from a nearby table and spun it around so the back was to us. He straddled it and sat, looking over his shoulder. “Can I get some of that coffee, El?
“Be right out, Sheriff!”
Excellent. The law.
His name was Dimitri Sabotino, a name which fit a Midwestern sheriff about as much as a cat screwing a dog. He told us the story of his town, which was probably the same as every other town across the country, except with their remote location, they were able to cordon off a section of the town when the first of the plague hit, and remain in relative safety.
“We were almost done walling up the whole town when trouble started. We had one death in the beginning. One death, and overnight four fifths of our population was infected. We lost half the town area too, but were able to fight off our friends and neighbors until we got a makeshift barricade up, and then a wall inside that. The wall is damn sturdy, but we have issues.”
I didn’t look at him as I used my fork to spear one of the grilled tomatoes I was about to shove in my head. It was tasty. “What kind of issues?”
He looked at me. “Funny you should ask. We used to get deliveries from Baldy Mountain. Bunch of military types would come in and give us supplies. Medical stuff mostly, and they never asked for anything in return. That truck you’re driving. It looks like one of the trucks from Baldy.”
“It is.”
“May I ask how you came by it?”
I sighed and pushed my plate away. Looking up, I noticed that the two guys at the bar were looking at our table.
“Baldy’s gone. Infected from the inside. Actually, the geniuses that ran the place thought it would be a good idea to study the infected, so they brought hundreds of them there to check them out.” I looked at the sheriff. “You seem like a smart fella sheriff. You can do the math on what happened.”
He nodded. “How many survivors?”
“Me and him.” I pointed to Tim, who was shoveling food in his face as fast as he could, probably expecting to be arrested or even shot.
He indicated Dallas. “And this fella?”
“Picked him up hitchhiking.”
“Saved me from the swarm o’ deaders that’re gonna be knockin’ on yer door in about an hour is more what happened.”
Eleanor brought over the coffee, and stood next to the sheriff. “There’s a swarm?”
Tim finished wiping his mouth with his napkin. “Couple hundred anyway.”
“We can handle a couple hundred,” Sabotino said, “but there’s something else.”
There always was.
“I need to borrow your truck.”
I looked at Tim, then back at the sheriff. “What are we talking about here, sir? You want to go run over the crowd of zombies that are coming?”
“No. I want to take a quick ride to the hospital.”
Sheriff Sabotino explained that when the town had been cut in half by the wall, not too surprisingly, the hospital was one of the first places to be overrun. The defenders had been forced to pull back, and were unable to rescue anyone in the hospital or the entire east side of the town. A municipality of ten thousand had been culled to less than sixteen hundred. All the rest had been infected.
“We need more medical supplies, and that hospital is full of them.”
I looked at him hard, “You’re damn right it’s full of them. Them being things that want to eat you. What’s your plan?”
“Drive the truck in, get the stuff, come back.”
I shook my head. “Good plan. Why didn’t the Baldy people ever clear the east side of Havre?”
“I asked them that. They said something about ‘unacceptable losses.’”
I harrumphed and looked at Tim. “Typical bullshit. Where do you think those cattle trucks came from, Tim?”
Tim’s eyes went wide and the sheriff asked what I meant. I told him about the trucks at Baldy, and he harrumphed too, “I’m wondering if the losses they were talking about were living folks or dead ones.”
“Sheriff, I would like to help, but I need the truck to get home.”
He nodded. “I understand that, son, I do. You have to understand I have a town to think about though. A lot of people depend on me, and your vehicle would help those people.”
I hadn’t noticed, but the place had gone extremely quiet. Everybody was looking at me, and I felt small.
Alright, don’t think I’m a dick. I’m a fantastic human being, I swear, but c’mon. Do you really think this guy was ever going to give me my truck back? Either he was going on a successful trip to the hospital and would figure out that the MRAP was too valuable to give back, or, just as bad, he was going on an unsuccessful trip to the hospital, and would leave my almost-tank in the midst of eight thousand infected. I really didn’t want to say no, but I needed to get home.
I looked at the two guys at the bar. One had picked up his rifle, and the other had his hand on his gun belt.
“Of course you can borrow my truck, Sheriff. But I want compensation.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the two guys take their hands off their weapons, “First,” I pointed at Eleanor, “I want my knife back. That means you have to come up with something to trade for it. And then I want six full diesel cans for the MRAP when I leave. Two hundred rounds of five-fifty-
six would be nice too.”
“Twenty gallons and your knife back. No ammo.”
I knew this whole dickering thing was bullshit, and I’m pretty sure Sabotino knew I knew it, but what could I do? I thought Eleanor was going to be pissed, but she was all smiles as she handed my SOG back.
“Deal,” I said and shook his hand, “when are you leaving?”
“Right now.”
He stood, and the two guys at the bar stood and left with him.
Clara sighed. “The sheriff is a good man, he really is, but there’s no way he’ll ever give you your truck back if he thinks it will help the town.”
“Not a chance in hell,” echoed Eleanor, who sat down in the seat Sabotino had left at the end of our booth, “but I might be able to help get it back.”
“Why would you do that? You just met us?”
“Because I want to come with you when you leave.”
“Me too,” Clara said quietly. “I would appreciate a ride at least part way to San Francisco. I have quite a few supplies we would be able to take as payment for a taxi ride.”
I looked at Dallas who smirked. “Well, I ain’t stayin’ here.”
The two guys that had been at the bar were our escorts. They showed back up about ten minutes after the sheriff had left and were very friendly. They said we had to see the doc and they brought us to him. We had gotten a once over when we were let in, but this guy was thorough. He noticed the bite scar on my leg, running his gloved fingers over it a few times, but the fact that it had healed threw him, and he didn’t even question me about it. We were cleared just about the time gunshots echoed across the town from the western gate.
“A few dead ones hitting the gate is all,” one of our escorts told us. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Them’s prolly the ones we drug with us.”
“Agreed, my large friend.” I looked at our guards. “What now, fellas?”
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 7
