by Joshua Guess
We were nearly ready to go when I noticed the same guard looking more tense than before. I sidled up to him. “Can I peek around you?”
He considered, eyes sweeping the area in front of him. “Crouch down behind me and look from my right. Stay as low as you can. If I give the word, fall backward and out of sight.”
“Sure,” I said, and did as instructed.
My view wasn’t the best but I could see the general shape of things. The other trucks were lined up in a rough semicircle with ours, rear ends backed close to buildings that presumably held supplies. Close to the gate, a number of enemy soldiers were crouched in a defensive position behind a small armored vehicle I hadn’t seen before. The angle was tough to judge, but I thought we’d have enough room to squeeze by them and make it through the gate, which wasn’t yet open.
The colonel stood atop the central truck with several of his men, rifles held steady on the armored vehicle. There were no warning shots, no bravado. I had no doubt that the men behind the small truck would be shot it if they poked their heads out, but until then why waste bullets?
The one guard platform on the wall I could see was empty—no. Not empty. The guard there was dead. His arms dangled over the edge of the small metal box. Another dozen men crouched next to the central truck, waiting for the colonel to act. The problem was clear; the colonel had the high ground, but getting down would only happen one of two ways.
Either he’d leave himself completely open to incoming fire by climbing, or risk seriously injury by jumping.
“Which truck is that?” I asked. “I mean, what’s going in the one he’s standing on?”
The guard glanced down at me briefly. “Every truck but this one is a mix. We set it up that way so losing one wouldn’t cost us all our spare ammo or food. Why?”
“Because this thing is armored, right? It should shrug off those bullets?”
The guard saw where I was going. “Not perfectly, but it’ll hold up better than he will. But we’re not doing that. We’re not driving this thing across the field of fire to pick them up.”
“No, obviously not,” I said. “The colonel wants this truck to get free no matter what, and there are orders. But assuming you have, you know, a radio? One of the other trucks could do it. Drive over with their ramp halfway down so the guys on the ground could get in, and the ones on top could just run over and lay flat. Not perfect, but it might save some of them.”
“Last box,” someone said behind me. “We’re getting in.”
The guard smiled. “Remember that part where I said nothing you could come up with would be better than what Phillips could?”
“That was like ten minutes ago, so yeah,” I said.
The guard raised a hand to a radio toggle on his lapel. Before he pressed it, he looked at me again, eyes twinkling. “I was right.” He hit the switch in a short pattern burst.
The truck furthest from us roared to life and slewed across the courtyard. I felt an inappropriate pang of unease as a few rows of potato plants were chewed up, then ducked back as gunfire erupted.
The guard backed up, nearly tripping on me. “We’re moving now! Everyone on the bus!”
26
We piled into the back and I had one of my questions answered immediately, namely how this heavy beast was going to get very far. Sitting at the far end of the trailer, plugged into a port that surely had an outlet leading to the truck itself, was a cluster of spare fuel tanks. High pressure tanks full of some volatile and probably lethal gas.
Garcia saw me staring. “Yeah, we better hope the armor holds up.” She put her hands together and pulled them apart in the classic sign language for an explosion. She even made the noise.
“Thanks,” I said. “Being shot at was getting boring. That really spices things up.”
She sketched a little bow. “I live to serve.”
The interior of the trailer was packed tight. The boxes filled one side from end to end. The rest was people. Every doctor and soldier in the clinic was there. I hunkered down and grabbed one of the many cargo rings set into the floor. It was far from ideal, but lacking any kind of restraints, it was the best option.
Bullets pinged off the walls. And by pinged I mean sounded like the worst hailstorm you can imagine had sex with a death metal concert and the trailer was being attacked by their child. You know that old saying about not wanting to know how the sausage is made? I was hunkered down trying my hardest to push back all the research and testing I’d done for firearms manufacturers and companies that produced armor. I knew enough about the stopping power of armor and what it took to overcome it to push me right up to the edge of losing my shit completely.
Not being able to see what was going on outside was deeply unpleasant. Especially when a thunderous crash, muted by the metal walls, washed over us.
“What the fuck was that?” I gasped.
A nearby soldier, the guard I hadn’t talked to, winced along with everyone else at the noise. “Front gate. If we didn’t get anyone in place to open it, plan was for the lead vehicle to run right through.”
I was too confused to be properly horrified. “How? It’s a giant steel plate. Even if a truck did manage to break through, wouldn’t that wreck the truck in the process?”
The soldier grunted agreement. “That’s why we had Jones rig it to pop right out of its track when it got hit from the inside. Made sure it couldn’t lock shut, too.”
I had to respect the cleverness of that. Without the sort of close look only someone like Jones would give it, doing that would just leave the gate a big, awkward freestanding wall held in place on one of its four sides. If that side was disconnected from the gate mechanism, the whole thing would pull loose pretty easily. Probably wouldn’t be too badly damaged in the process, which would be good news for the poor fuckers left behind.
A few random bullets slapped into the back of the trailer, then gravity shifted direction a little. Everything wanted to slide toward the cab of the truck. We were going downhill. Down the ramp leading away from the fort. I knew when we hit the bottom, because the driver took a suicidally sharp right turn onto the surface road. Judging what was happening outside by what was going on in our dark little box was tough and disorienting.
On a deeper level, it scared me. Because though I was free of my cell, I was still no more in control of my situation than when I was locked up.
Once we were relatively clear—by which I mean people weren’t shooting at us for the moment—I stood and made my way over to my pack. It was one of many piled against the right side wall. The bulky assortment of them shoved together made the space seem even smaller, but it struck me that for everyone else around me, those packs represented the majority of their worldly possessions.
I found it deeply sad. Not the lack of things in and of itself. I’ve never been one to romanticize owning stuff. Just that along with the deaths of so many people, the loss of knowledge and the wonders of civilization, those of us left behind can still find more to lose. Those with me had just lost their home. By choice, yes, but that was the point. It was the circumstances forcing that choice, the broader context of the world we now lived in, that drove the sadness home for me.
“You okay?” Garcia asked as she knelt down next to me.
I looked up at her. “Uh, yeah. Why?”
There was something like real worry on her face, or as close as she got to it. “You knelt down to get your bag, stopped moving, and now you’re crying. I’ve seen people go catatonic after being scared for their lives before.”
“No, I’m okay,” I said, wiping my cheeks. “Just kind of overwhelmed by today. I realized just now that I’ve had something most of you haven’t.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
I sat and pulled the bag onto my lap. “A home. Something tangible left over from before Zero. Bastion is way different now, but it’s still my place. My home. I think I was more open-minded about being taken at first because I was looking at the fort as the same thing. I
saw it as a place where you guys made a home. Where you built something. I identified with that a lot.”
Garcia considered this. “Also didn’t hurt that you saw us as people. Most of the ones we took, especially the men, liked to cast us as villains. It’s easier to hold on to anger that way.”
“I thought that was what I’d do, too,” I said with a rueful chuckle. “It’s one thing to hate a concept, another to hate people you see every day. And it just takes so much energy.”
Garcia’s eyes had a playful gleam in the dim light. “Does that mean you’re rethinking this safe zone idea?”
“Fuck, no. I still hate the thought of people out there snatching up innocents, no matter how well-intentioned it is. If I had the ability to stop them, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“Good to hear,” Garcia said. “If it’s any comfort, I think there are probably a lot of soldiers out there who’re just as unhappy about it as you are.”
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“No, seriously,” Garcia insisted. “Yeah, you’ve been used as a lab rat against your will. But where do you think the other researchers out there find test subjects when patrols can’t locate any?”
We rolled to a stop a few hours later. A palpable wave of relief ran through the trailer. We had a bucket and a hastily-erected curtain in lieu of a bathroom, which only one person had used so far. Everyone else was waiting for the stop. And wait we did. Five minutes. Ten.
“What’s taking so long?” I wondered aloud.
“Let me poke my head out and see,” Garcia said. Rather than put down the back ramp and expose us all to vampire mermen or whatever other bullshit the apocalypse decided to throw at us, she climbed the shallow ladder to the roof hatch. My stressed and tired brain had a fair amount of lag, because it was only after Garcia was gone that I realized she could have just used her radio.
Fact: causing a group of people packed into a small, enclosed space to panic is a bad idea.
I decided to do a little ascending myself and followed her right on up.
I found myself staring at a vaguely familiar area. A quick scan showed me the edge of a mostly hidden high-pressure tank. We were at one of the weird little refueling stops. The potential consequences of stopping here cascaded through my head. First among them was that the soldiers we’d left back at the fort would know exactly where this place was and that we’d need to use it. That was what you’d call a medium-term fear, though, because the immediate problem were the zombies.
Like, a lot of zombies. The fuel tank was tucked between several trees in the expected alcove off the main road, but that didn’t stop at least fifty of the things from congregating around it. Wasn’t all that surprising; zombies often clumped up in places humans frequented. But it was super inconvenient.
“Why isn’t anyone dealing with this?” I asked.
Garcia blanched in what I could only interpret as embarrassment. “We’re short on melee weapons. Don’t want to use guns because if there are more within a mile, it’ll draw them in.”
I took in a deep breath through my nose. “If you guys didn’t have a stock of hand to hand weapons, where did you get the ones you gave me? Was that all of them or something?”
She reddened further. “Things happened in a rush and it looks like most of our guys were worried about being able to shoot back. Most of us have knives. A few batons, and I know two guys who never leave their rooms without a machete, but that’s about it.”
Relief spread through me. “Shit, that’s doable. You had me thinking this was some Mission: Impossible type stuff. More like Problem: Surmountable.”
“We’re used to fighting them like we did at the gate. With pikes and shields. Out here we always have Reavers to keep them away. We’re not as used to getting in close with them the way you are.”
I could appreciate that. “Fair enough, though I have to point out that if you guys plan to join up with us, you’ll have to get used to it. Give me your radio.”
Ten minutes later I stood at the back end of the trailer with Garcia. The few other soldiers in the space stood well behind us as a line of defense for the scientists and doctors. Garcia held my baton, while I hefted one of the other presents from the apocalypse gift basket Phillips had left for me. I generally prefer blunt instruments, but the hatchet’s rubberized grip felt perfect in my armored glove.
Yet as the gate lowered—only to the halfway point, because we weren’t idiots—the familiar thrill was gone. My heart was heavier, my body more tense. The sense of purity which usually came with a struggle for life and death was nowhere in evidence. The weirdest part? I didn’t yearn for that simplicity. My taste for black and white had faded.
My willingness to do the work hadn’t vanished, though.
The gate stopped at just the right point to give us a level platform to stand on. It was too high for zombies to climb on, proved by the fact that the slow and noisy process attracted many who tried to do just that. The tallest of them was only able to lean over and scrabble its fingers across the ridges stamped into the metal.
“Watch the hands,” I said. “Break fingers if you have to, but don’t let them get hold of your ankles.”
“Thanks, I never would have thought of that on my own,” Garcia grumbled.
“You’re kind of a smart ass,” I said. “I’m into it.”
The dead crowded the ramp. Whatever survival instinct still floated in their atrophied brains kept some of them from shattered digits as we stomped our boots at them. The smell of human beings wafting from the trailer must have been overpowering, because what looked like every zombie in the area converged on us.
Which was the idea.
I moved in a bent-kneed crouch, keeping my center of gravity low in the awkward position, and swung with the hatchet. The blade sank into the head of the zombie closest to me, a bit harder than sinking it into wood. The thing fell where it stood.
Fact: direct trauma to the brain is only part of the equation. The other half is how much secondary trauma you can impart. The blade of the hatchet certainly did harm, but the shock of the impact rattling the gray matter had an enormously disruptive effect as well. It was why even smaller caliber bullets were able to drop the undead. They lacked the robust brain activity of a living person. Where we drove Cadillacs, they puttered along on mopeds.
“Come on, fuckers,” I shouted at the undead, trying to draw as much of the horde’s attention as possible. I hit a second and a third, carefully aiming each shot. By the fourth hit, my hand was getting sore and my arm tired. The nylon cord wrapped around my wrist chafed, but at least if my hand slipped I’d be able to hang on to my weapon.
The possibility I didn’t consider came to pass on my seventh kill. A loud shout from one of the soldiers sneaking up on the back of the swarm, taking advantage of Garcia and I getting their attention, caused me to look up and fumble slightly. I got a brief look at the eight or nine men picking off the stragglers from the fringe of the crowd just before the hatchet went through a skull with more force than I intended and got bound up.
When the zombie dropped, the cord running through the haft yanked me by the wrist, and I fell into the mass of hungry ghouls.
27
“Son of a bitch,” I gasped as I fell.
Lucky for me, I was sort of attached to a zombie. Its body crumpled beneath me, the torque on the blade of the hatchet growing strong enough to wrench free. I pushed myself away and scrambled beneath the ramp.
“Ran!” Garcia screamed.
I scooted back on my ass, putting my back against the truck and pulling the hatchet into my hand. One enterprising zombie followed this series of events and worked his way over the body I’d just dropped, scrambling on his hands and knees with teeth gnashing relentlessly as he approached.
Kicking from a crouch is hard and vaguely similar to a Russian dance move, but I stabilized myself by putting a hand on the ramp above. My boot bent his arm at the elbow and put his face in the mud. The tight confines made
my swing abbreviated. It took three tries to kill the thing. All during this, Garcia continued to yell for me.
“I’m a little busy down here!” I screamed back.
In the distance, over the rasping cloth and flesh of the milling bodies, I heard someone reflexively respond with, “That’s what she said!”
Quotes from The Office, like cockroaches, were always destined to survive the end of the world.
A second zombie noticed me and slithered in. The light wasn’t great, so it took a few seconds to realize it was another one of those zombies with the weird growths all over it. It moved easily—better than most of its kind, as a matter of fact. I put a boot in its face, but a clawed hand knocked it away.
I threw my left arm out to catch myself, and the fucking thing snatched it out from under me and bit into my exposed wrist. Teeth pierced my skin, those weirdly clawed fingers digging in. I howled in pain as the bite scraped bone. It only took a few seconds to reorient and put hatchet to head, but those seconds cost me.
I swore in six languages as the sudden smell of rich blood began drawing the attention of pretty much every zombie around. I pushed my two victims in front of me in a weak attempt at forming a barrier.
“Fucking bastard,” I muttered as I took a quick look at my wrist. The bite missed the major blood vessels, which was a relative state of affairs. I didn’t have the time to treat it or the ability to baby the wound.
With a sigh, I let my mind fall into that mental space where the Shivers was something I could reach for.
Forcing a physical reaction with pure mental effort is something monks and preachers have been doing for centuries. The first caused it in themselves while the second specialized in making it happen in others. I let my nearly perfect mental recall dip into the trove of painful, terrible memories always floating beneath the surface of my thoughts. Flashes of my cell below the church, the thick vibrations of the knife in my hand as it plunged into the thigh of my attacker, the piled-up years of being afraid of the world while desperately wanting to be part of it.
