“Oh, man, this isn’t what we need right now,” Tharinger said.
“Get that stuff downstairs, and when you’re done, have Hartman and Stilley take over,” Ballantine told them. “Tharinger, you and Guerra stand watch upstairs. Reader, you back them up.”
“You got it,” Reader said, still staring at the sobbing boy.
Hastings walked over and put a hand on Kenny’s arm, but the kid shook it off violently. The child tried to grab Diana, but she moved away from him, her expression one of near-disgust.
That pissed off Ballantine. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked her.
“I’m. Not. His. Mother. Asshole!”
Kay said, “Diana? Could you just hug him, please?”
Diana laughed acidly. “Are all of you stupid?”
Kay pushed past Ballantine with such ferocity that she almost knocked him and Hastings over. She put her face in Diana’s, moving in until they were only inches apart. Even though Kay was taller and at least thirty pounds heavier, the small Asian woman didn’t back down.
“You think you can take me?” Diana asked, glaring up at Kay.
“Could you hug him, please?” Kay said again. “Sorry for the inconvenience, little miss, but could you treat him like a human being and give him some comfort, before the zombies hear him and kill all of us?”
The two women locked eyes for a long moment, neither of them backing down.
After a tense few seconds, Diana relented. “Oh, fuck this shit. Come here.” She reached out to Kenny and drew him close to her.
He immediately began playing with her hair, and his outbursts ebbed right away. He still babbled to himself worriedly, occasionally glancing up at the people in the room, his eyes full of fear.
“Don’t you worry, little man,” Kay cooed. “We’re all going to help you out, okay?”
If Kenny heard her, he gave no indication. He merely continued to play with Diana’s hair, as oblivious to the look of scorn on her face as he was to everything else.
*
They had to shower in the dark. The civilians went first, with Kay and Diana teaming up to wash Kenny, who danced and hooted in the cold water. He’d had a small bloody bowel movement in his diaper, but the act hadn’t seemed to cause him any physical distress. In fact, Hastings hadn’t even noticed it until he caught a whiff while helping Diana get the boy upstairs. He had taken the soiled disposable garment downstairs to the kitchen, wrapped it in several plastic shopping bags, then tossed it into a corner. There was nothing else that could be done with it, and he certainly wasn’t going to leave it outside. The reekers would home in on it, and no one wanted that.
Getting the boy down the basement stairs took some doing, even with Diana’s halfhearted participation. Ballantine’s sons—Josh and Curtis—helped out, trying to entreat Kenny into the darkness of the cellar. But Kenny was obviously frightened of the dank darkness that welled below like some bottomless maw. Hastings turned on his red-lensed flashlight, and that made things easier. Kenny continued to babble to himself, uttering something that sounded like “koo-sha” over and over again. He kept Diana’s right hand in his left, never letting go of her even while Hastings panned his light around, illuminating everything for Kenny to inspect.
“Hey, there’s some neat stuff down here!” said Josh, Ballantine’s eldest boy. He reached for one of the LED lanterns on a shelf.
Hastings put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, holding him back. Josh would probably grow up to be a big strapping buck like his father. But at nine, he was just another skinny kid, all bone and angles.
“Don’t turn on one of the lanterns unless there’s an emergency,” Hastings said. “We don’t want any of the zombies to see the light.”
“Can they see us down here?” the boy asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, your light is on…”
“Mine has a red filter over it,” Hastings said. “Red light doesn’t travel as far as white light, and those lanterns are plenty white and bright.”
He shined his flashlight across the room, revealing the mattresses that lined the floor from the bottom of the stairs to the far wall. Folded blankets had been stacked on each mattress, and one of the soldiers had donated his modular sleeping bag to the effort. Hastings suspected that if he checked, he would probably find “Ballantine” written on it somewhere.
He helped everyone get situated then laid down some ground rules. “Don’t make any noise if you can help it. If Kenny starts acting out, try to calm him as much as possible. Don’t bother him, and let him do whatever he wants to do, so long as it doesn’t involve a lot of noise or any bright lights. If any of you have to go to the bathroom, you’re free to come upstairs. Just try not to wake everyone up. If you hear gunfire, stay here until one of us comes for you. In that case, you’ll need to use one of these”—he held up an olive-green bag—“which is called a wag bag. Basically, you do your business in it, toss in the toilet paper, and seal it, like so.” Hastings showed them how to open the bag then demonstrated how to close it and drop it inside the carrier bag, which was then sealed with an industrial-size zip lock. “Make sure the bag is sealed tight, so nothing leaks out. Believe me, you don’t want that. Then toss it in that trash can right over there.” He turned and shined the flashlight on a small white wastebasket one of the soldiers had brought down from the kitchen. “Any questions?”
“What about Kenny?” Diana asked.
“What about him?”
She rolled her eyes. “If he takes a crap in his diaper, should I wrap it up in one of those things and toss it in, or what?”
Hastings thought about that for a second. “No. I’ll bring some more trash bags down, and you can bag it in one of those before you toss it. Ah, that reminds me.” He picked up a white box of moist wipes. “These are for Kenny, since I guess he can’t wipe himself. The rest of you should use toilet paper. But remember, we have running water here because of the windmill out there that’s powering the pump, so we’re good for a while. Again, these are only in case you’re here for longer than we’ve planned.”
“How long will that be?” Diana asked. The tension in her voice was coiled as tight as a serpent waiting to strike.
“We’ll muster before dawn. We’ll have some chow then get ready to move out. It’s July seventh, so the sun should be up around five thirty. We’ll hit the road then. It’s currently”—Hastings checked his watch—“just about ten o’clock. You have seven hours to try to get some rest.”
“We’ll be fine,” Kay said softly.
“Speak for yourself,” Diana said. “You don’t have someone pulling on your hair all night.”
“Try and deal with it,” Hastings said. “Seven hours. That’s all you’ve got to get through before we jump out and try to avoid the zombies tomorrow morning.”
Kenny went “koo-sha” again in the darkness. Hastings panned the flashlight’s beam over to where he and Diana were sitting on the mattress by the far wall. There was nothing for the boy to play with but a rough surface on one side and Diana on the other. Hastings was beginning to think the cement wall might be the more appealing of the two. Kenny was already lying on his back, the fingers of his left hand undulating slowly in Diana’s hair. Diana looked more than a little strung out. Hastings attributed that to exhaustion, but for all he knew, she could be a heroin addict going through the early stages of withdrawal.
“Okay, it looks like Kenny’s getting ready for some down time,” Hastings said in a low voice. “Let’s let him get to it. Does anyone need anything? Mrs. Ballantine, you and your boys are good?”
“Yes, we’re fine, Captain. Thank you.”
“All right, guys. Sleep tight.”
Hastings glanced around one last time then left the cellar.
*
“Man, for such a little girl, she sure has big tits,” Tharinger whispered, peering through the PVS-14 light-intensifying scope on his assault rifle.
“They’re fake,”
Reader said. He sat on the floor behind Tharinger, his back to the wall, M4 lying across his legs.
“How do you know that?” Tharinger asked.
“Dude, they’re totally fake. Never seen an Oriental girl with a rack that big before, unless it was in a porno movie. Trust me, she’s got bags in her.”
“Huh.” Tharinger continued to scan the black terrain beyond. “Wonder if she was a porn star back before the world ended? That’d be awesome, having a living, breathing fuck muscle with us as the world ended.”
“Man, the shit you think about, Jay. I don’t remember you being so horned up all the time back home.”
Mike Reader and Jay Tharinger had known each other almost all their lives. They had both grown up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, gone to the same schools before they had enlisted in the Army to do great things and assassinate exotic people in the name of Uncle Sam. That they’d wound up in the same unit was something of a major coincidence, but they’d been happy to meet up again.
“I’ll bet she can go all night long,” Tharinger said.
“Maybe, but it ain’t gonna be with us.”
“Fuck, Mike. A guy can dream, can’t he?”
“Dude, you see the same woman I did? She’s a fucking nightmare, a total basket case. You see how she’s always bitching about that kid hanging onto her? She’s got a cold heart, man.”
“She just needs to meet the right guy,” Tharinger said. “Lucky for her, I’m available.”
Reader snorted. “You look in a mirror lately? You’re like five-six and weigh a buck-twenty with an overbite that would embarrass Bugs Bunny. She could lay you out by dropping one of those silicone bombs on you then shit in your mouth.”
“She can drop one of those bombs on me, anytime.”
“Hey,” Guerra’s whispered from the next room. “Shut the fuck up. Movement to the east.”
Reader gathered his feet under him and stood up, keeping his rifle at low ready. “Anything out there on your side?” he asked Tharinger.
“Negative.”
Reader walked out of the room and across the hall. He stepped into the bedroom Guerra was positioned in, sitting in a chair facing the window. Guerra held his rifle to his shoulder, peering into the night through the scope. Stilley was lying on the floor on his fart sack, breathing through his mouth. All the troops had taken showers, and even though the water had been more than a little cold, Reader was overjoyed to finally be clean, and for the first time weeks, he was ready to get his sleep on. He felt the exhaustion tugging at him, weighing him down, but he didn’t dare nod off while he was part of the overwatch team. Downstairs, Ballantine, Hartman, and the captain were keeping the main floor secure.
“How many you got?” he asked Guerra.
“About eight, so far,” Guerra said. “Walking down the road. Not paying any attention to the house, which suits me just fine, man.”
Reader lowered his PVS-15 night vision goggles over his eyes to take a look. Sure enough, on the road leading past the farmhouse, he could see figures staggering through the night. The reekers kept to the road, not for any tactical reason but because it was easier than floundering about in the dark fields. Reader spotted a few more in the distance, stumbling through the fields like old drunks wobbling home after a night at their favorite watering hole.
“Got more out in the field,” Reader reported.
“Yeah, I see ’em.” Guerra fell silent for a moment. “Whoa. It’s a fucking herd out there. Check this shit out.”
Reader focused on the road again. Where only a few reekers had been tottering along the last time he’d looked, a huge knot of them were shambling down the street. He stopped counting after he hit a hundred. “Fuck me,” he said softly.
“No, thanks. You’re not my type.”
Reader shook his head. “That’s… that’s a lot of them.”
“Yeah. They come this way, we are seriously fucked.” Guerra spoke into his radio. “Captain, it’s Guerra. We have reekers on the road, well over one hundred strong, moving past us. Over.”
“Roger, Guerra. Break. Reader, come down. Over.”
“Roger that,” Reader said. To Guerra, he added, “Shit, the last thing I want to do is go downstairs.”
Guerra snorted. “Try not to slip and fall, okay?”
“Wouldn’t that be a ball-buster? Survive the freaking zombie apocalypse, only to bust my neck tripping down the stairs in the dark.”
“Might be the best way to die, these days. ’Cause goin’ old and gray in your bed probably ain’t in the cards anymore.”
*
Hastings took Reader’s report calmly. If the reekers were walking past the farmhouse and sticking to the road, then that was probably about as good as things were going to get. After sending Reader back upstairs, he and Ballantine moved stealthily through the main floor and checked the barricades. The farmhouse remained as secure as they could make it, though Hastings didn’t doubt the reekers could gain access if they subjected the dwelling to one of their swarming attacks. The good thing about the animated dead was that they were incredibly stupid and tended to fixate on one access of attack. Because of that, Hastings was fairly certain the soldiers could either get the civilians out of the house and into the vehicles, or just pour on the firepower and blow the shit out of the reekers as they walked toward the house. The noise would attract more and more of them, but the last inventory Hastings had taken had assured him that they could, technically, take down twenty thousand of the fuckers before things got tight. Not that he was necessarily game to do so. Stealth and remaining off the reekers’ radar would be the linchpins to success. Hastings preferred to preserve his munitions for a time when they might be absolutely necessary.
“We’re good to go here, sir,” Ballantine reported.
“Roger that, Sergeant. We’re about as secure as we can be without being in a bunker somewhere.” Hastings looked at Ballantine through his night vision goggles. Both men were operating under severe light discipline, and that necessitated the use of night vision devices to see with. He thought the sergeant first class was holding up pretty well, but there was a drawn-out kind of anxiety around him. Having his family so danger-close while he was supposed to be tending to his duties was probably taking a hidden toll on him.
“Why don’t you knock off,” Hastings said. “I’ve got first watch. I’ll wake you in thirty mikes.”
Hastings motioned to the couch against the far wall, the same one Diana and Kenny had sat on a couple of hours earlier. It was the only piece of furniture they hadn’t used as barricade material. If it came down to it and exiting the house was not an option and the reekers were about to penetrate it, Hastings planned on dragging the lumpy sofa over to the stairs and using it as an obstruction. It would bottle them up and give the soldiers a perfect targeting window in which they could ice the zombies as quickly as their weapons would allow.
“I’m good to go, sir. Why don’t you sack out first?”
Hastings shook his head. “An order’s an order, Sergeant Ballantine. Get some rest.”
Ballantine fidgeted for a moment. “All right, sir. But maybe we should have Reader come down?”
“He’s fine where he is, Sergeant. Go on, man. Sack out for a while.”
Ballantine nodded. “Okay, Captain. Wake me if you need me.”
“Hooah.”
Ballantine unslung his M4 and sat down on the couch. After pushing his NVGs up on their swivel mount—the action put the unit in standby, preserving its battery—he removed his helmet and placed it on top of the couch back. He stretched out on the couch, cradling his rifle to his chest. After a few minutes, his breathing became deep and steady as sleep overpowered him.
Hastings looked past the pile of junk that served as a barrier for one of the living room windows. There was a small opening, a murder hole through which he could fire his weapon if the need arose. Through the green world of his NVGs, the dark world beyond was revealed as if it were no more than an overcast day.
Clumps of zombies tottered along the road, making almost no noise. Hastings imagined if the house were closer to the thoroughfare, he might be able to hear the shambling footfalls of all those lost souls walking through the night to whatever fate might await them. He was happy to hear nothing of any consequence, other than the trilling of nighttime insects and the occasional pop or click as the house settled in the night, shedding the heat it had accumulated during the day. The reekers were oblivious to the building, and since there was no moon, they might not even be able to see the dark structure sitting well back from the road. Overhead, stars burned bright in the verdant sky, providing all the illumination the night vision device needed. But to the unaided eye, the stars didn’t generate enough light to reveal even the most major features of the local landscape. The zombies were moving more or less westerly, which did not bode well for his unit since that was the same direction they would head in the morning. He put a coda on that thought, intending to discuss it with Ballantine when he woke the sleeping lightfighter for his turn on watch. They would need to plan tomorrow’s road movement and determine whether they should skirt around the zombie herd or fight through it.
He heard a slight sound behind him, and he turned as the cellar door creaked open. He rose to his feet, holding his M4 in the low ready. Diana emerged from the stairway, her eyes wide and unseeing as she turned her head in the near total darkness and tried to get her bearings. She made her way into the living room by feeling along the wall.
Hastings relaxed a little and stepped toward her. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
She started when she heard his voice, and he crossed the distance between them quickly, his boots whispering across the old, mangy carpet that still smelled of stale cigarette smoke and dog.
“Don’t get jumpy,” he said. “Reekers don’t talk; they just attack and bite.”
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t take it down there any longer.”
Hastings reached past her and gently eased the door shut. “How’s Kenny?”
These Dead Lands: Immolation Page 10
