by Spriggs, Kal
Jack looked over at Warrant Officer Knighton and Lieutenant Baxter, and their faces were tense. "What do we do, sir?"
Jack looked back at the pit, where zombies continued to mindlessly topple to the lower levels. There were fewer of them, now, though, as more of the ones that had entered the building began to swarm back out to the sound of gunfire.
If they tried to find another way down, they ran the risk of running into some of the zombies in a less defensible position. Jack could see the walkway that led across the street, a floor down and over, but even if they could reach it, the men in the vehicles below would be able to see them as they tried to escape.
"We wait," Jack said.
Jack had wanted to see what was going on in St Louis, now it looked like he'd have someone to ask first hand.
***
They watched as a unit of armed men dismounted from the trucks. Jack noted that the group alternated fire while different teams reloaded. In that they looked pretty sharp, but in other ways he couldn't help but shake his head.
They must have burned through a thousand or more fifty caliber rounds on each of the three machine guns. Their squads were equally wasteful, blazing away and riddling zombies with bullets even after the undead fell disabled to the ground.
The couple times that groups or individuals of undead made it through the gunfire, the human defenders didn't react well, many of them scattering and continuing to fire, even at the risk of hitting their own people, rather than closing to finish the undead with hand weapons.
"Sloppy," Knighton grunted from next to Jack. "No rear security. If any other zombies come in, they'll be caught from behind."
Jack nodded. It was a basic thing, developed from surviving in the chaos where front lines no longer existed. Yet these men didn't even seem to have anyone covering their backs. Jack was almost tempted to just make a break for it as the flow of zombies dropped off.
Yet these men had obviously tracked them down. If Jack and his team made a run for it and got caught, it might be taken as a hostile or at least suspicious act. Best to be as above the board as possible, Jack thought. He nodded at Knighton and Baxter, "In position," he nodded at the side room, "give me some overwatch when they come up here."
He heard the sound of gunshots in the building now, as the team moved its way inside. Again it was a rattle of gunfire, as these attackers spent dozens of rounds to finish off zombies when a few chops of a blade would have done better. Jack wondered if that meant they had the ammunition to burn... or it suggested something else.
Jack went to stand in front of the pit and a moment later, he heard the trample of feet in the stairwell. Someone paused in the doorway to riddle the zombies that had been trampled, and then Jack heard a voice shout out, "Hello, any survivors?"
"Yeah," Jack shouted back, "Who are you?"
"Captain Carney of the US Army, who are you?"
Jack felt a bit of tension ease in his stomach, "Jack Zamora of the US Army. Formerly of Third Infantry Division."
A man stepped through the doorway. He wore a friendly smile and as he came up, he gave Jack a nod, "It's always good to see military survivors. One of our scouts reported some people crossing into the city. I was hoping to get to you before you ran into this stray pack of zombies, but..." He shrugged. "How are you doing, everyone make it alright?"
"Yeah," Jack said in as friendly a tone as he could manage. He didn't miss how the other man hadn't stated his unit. Nor did he miss how Captain Carney didn't have a sewn name tape on his uniform and he didn't have a unit patch either. He had a rank on his body armor, but that could have been stolen or looted.
"Glad to hear it," Captain Carney gave a friendly grin. The officer had a quick smile, yet something seemed off about it, more like he was amused. It didn't sit well with Jack.
"Looks like you guys have some serious firepower," Jack said, nodding his head in the direction of the armored vehicles. He couldn't see them, there weren't windows in this section of corridor, but he could hear the diesel engines, even five floors up and inside.
"Yeah, we came out alright," Captain Carney grinned broadly, "You guys all there are? No other survivors"
Jack nearly gave the default lie, the one that he had all his scouts give. Yet there was an edge to Carney's voice... as if he knew the answer. "No," Jack said, picking his words with care, "there's a few more of us. We're scouting, trying to find a safe place."
"Well, you came to the right town," Captain Carney laughed. "Come on, we'll take you back to base."
He gave a languid wave and turned away. Jack had to fight an instinctual urge to raise his shotgun and shoot the man in the back of his head. He didn't know where the murderous urge came from, but he somehow knew on an visceral level that the world would be a better place without the man.
Yet he didn't dare get into a firefight with these people. And whatever their goals, whatever their motivations, they seemed to want to win him over. I have to figure this out, he thought. He turned back to where his people stood, "Let's go," he said. As they came up, he spoke in a low tone, "Keep your eyes out and don’t trust these people."
He led the way across the beam and then down the stairs. Outside, the military group still had their trucks running, and several of the soldiers were high-fiving as they reloaded and cleaned their weapons. Yet there was a casual attitude to their behavior. They had none of the watchfulness of hardened survivors. They laughed, they joked, and they made far too much noise.
Jack stepped up next to Captain Carney, who was reloading a pair of his M9 magazines. "You aren't worried about any more zombies hearing you?"
Carney's grin looked vapid in the sunlight, his expression almost bovine. "What?" He looked around, "Oh, the engines and guns, naw, man, we did some distractions a few months back, lured most of the zombies out of town. Really sorry about this group, they shambled into town earlier this week and we hadn't been able to get them until one of our lookouts reported them pursuing you. Good thing we got here in time, right? There was a group these same bastards got a few days ago, bastards dragged them out of the truck they were in before we could get to them and save 'em in time."
"Oh?" Jack asked. It seemed too convenient for the man to drop information about the missing scouts so soon.
"Yeah, weird thing was, they were driving on the tracks, strange, huh?" Captain Carney shook his head. "Anyway, we don't have a lot of problems with the undead here in the downtown. We've got some barricades in parts of the town and lookouts to warn us when big clusters of undead approach, then..." he clapped, "we do a big distraction and lure them away again."
"Huh," Jack said. On the face of it, it sounded like a plan that would work, but he didn't see how they had enough people to watch the perimeter of the entire city... and everything about Carney seemed too calculating, despite his easy-going attitude.
"Anyway, looks like my guys are loaded up. We can take you back to base and you can speak with the Lord Regent," Captain Carney said, even as he signaled his men. Jack didn't miss the title. Apparently this Nadal Malik had more pull than his radio transmissions had suggested.
The ramp on the lead MRAP dropped and Captain Carney waved to it, "should be plenty of room in that one."
Jack hesitated. He recognized the design from his deployments, the hydraulic ramp gave access to the passenger area in the back of it. The problem was, it was easy enough to disable the controls in the back, they broke all the time. The driver or vehicle commander would have a set of controls for the back door... but it would be easy enough to seal Jack and his people up inside. Looking up the ramp, he saw that there was a stack of military gear that blocked access to the gunner's turret and the driver and vehicle commander's seats.
He turned back to Captain Carney, "How far we going?" Jack asked. "Maybe we could walk?"
"Not far," Captain Carney said after a moment's thought. "About five miles, be a bit of a hike, I suppose." Five miles would take more than an hour to traverse on foot. "I'll ride with you i
f you want... or we could walk, too, I wouldn't mind stretching my legs."
Any reservations that Jack might have about Captain Carney's lack of hardship vanished at how casually he mentioned five miles. Five miles of city for a survivor was hell. Any building, any doorway, any storm-sewer inlet could spew forth a dozen zombies. For whatever reason, Captain Carney didn't seem to view zombies as a real threat, despite the horde of them that his men had just exterminated... and the nest of them that Jack's people had found inside the building.
That bothered Jack more than anything else. Carney and his people were amateurs --buffoons-- who wouldn't have survived half the experiences that Jack and his people had been through... yet here they were, in the heart of a city which should be crawling with undead.
Something was very, very wrong.
Yet despite the possibility of a trap in the back of the MRAP, Jack didn't think Carney was going to spring something like that. In fact, the man seemed amused by how uncomfortable it made Jack, though he hid it behind his genial expression. He's screwing with me, Jack realized, he wants to put me on edge. The offer to ride with us won't give us time to talk about what we've seen in private.
"Sure," Jack said, fighting the crawling sensation between his shoulder-blades. "Let's ride."
***
Chapter Nine
They rode through empty streets, past the rail station where everything looked to be in order, and then turned north and passed into what looked like a park. Or what used to be a park, Jack realized. He saw that the grass lawns had been ripped up and planted with all manner of crops. He saw rows of pumpkin and squash, corn, and a variety of other crops he didn't recognize off hand. The fence around the park looked solid, but not what Jack would expect to hold out a serious wave of undead. The iron bars rose eight feet, but enough undead would rise over that barricade or knock it over by sheer weight of flesh.
There were people at work in the fields, picking weeds, what Jack knew would be brutal, hard work... the kind of thing that they made herbicides and pesticides for. He nodded out the window, "Workers?"
"Yeah, farmers," Carney grinned. "Some of us have fighting skills, others, well, they help out how they can, right?"
"Sure," Jack said as noncommittally as he could manage.
They rolled past a fenced area with signs out front that said "St Louis Zoo" and then turned the corner and drove up in front of a large, almost palatial structure. "This is it," Captain Carney waved. The back ramp dropped down and he walked down it before it even hit the ground, "Welcome to headquarters, Jack Zamora, welcome to our little safe haven of civilization."
Jack peered around and saw that someone had pulled down several signs and painted over others. Somebody had put up, in the tacky brass letters that could be found at a hardware store, "Lord Regent's Palace."
"Great," Jack said. Captain Carney led the way up the broad stone steps and paused in the entry way, looking in askance at Jack's people. "Would your people like to wait elsewhere?"
"They come with me," Jack snapped.
For a heartbeat, Carney's genial grin slipped, replaced by something uglier, but it happened so fast that Jack almost thought he imagined it. "Yeah, sure, no problem."
They came into the lobby area and Jack saw several armed guards, along with a row of booths. Captain Carney unclipped his rifle and then drew his pistol and put both in a box. "No weapons inside."
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sean McCune snorted. "No weapons, we're in the damned zombie apocalypse!"
Captain Carney's smile congealed a bit. He looked at Jack. "Captain Zamora?" Yet there was a tone of satisfaction in his voice. It was a small thing, but Jack understood it instantly. Either Jack ordered his people to disarm, or he showed he didn't have control over them.
Shit, Jack thought, I've been played.
"Lieutenant Baxter," Jack said, "You and Mr. McCune will remain here, with our weapons. Also, please report back to headquarters that we're meeting with the Lord Regent. Warrant Officer Knighton and I will disarm and go inside."
He began to disarm, a much longer process than Captain Carney had went through. It felt oddly surreal as he began the process, un-clipping his shotgun and dropping his bandoleer of smoke grenades into the first bin. His hooligan tool, his crash ax, and his machete went into the bin beside it.
Warrant Officer Knighton took a bit longer, filling four bins with weapons and then glowering at Captain Carney for a long moment. The Warrant Officer's glower seemed to accomplish more than Jack had, and Carney's smile slipped a bit under the weight of the disapproval. "Is that, uh, all?"
Knighton shrugged and looked at Jack, who nodded slightly. "I think so."
One of the guards came forward and wanded them down with a metal detector. As it buzzed down at Knighton's ankle, he coughed a bit, "Oh, yeah, forgot about that." He reached down and pulled a twelve inch Bowie knife out of his boot and set it in a bin. "Should be good, now."
The wand beeped again at his other ankle and this time the Warrant Officer didn't say anything as he pulled out a switchblade and dropped it in the bin.
The guard was more thorough for a moment, but it appeared that Knighton had offloaded all of his arsenal.
"Captain?" Carney asked with his false smile.
Jack waited patiently as they wanded him. He hadn't concealed any weapons, but the security and the thoroughness told him more than he would bet that Carney and this Lord Regent meant to show. This level of security wasn't what a man beloved by his followers would adopt. This was far too professional, the guards with the wands looked well-trained and experienced. The dog and pony show so far had been the carrot, but this was part of the stick... and this Lord Regent apparently ran the place from a "palace" which overlooked where his people worked the fields.
Jack wondered if he should have put load of buckshot through the back of Carney's head when he had the chance.
"All done," Jack said as the guard with the wand stepped back.
"Great! Right this way," Carney led the way past the security check point and then down the broad hallway. There were paintings along the walls, many with plaques, showing landscapes and people. Jack didn't miss the empty spots on the walls, here and there. "The Lord Regent didn't approve of the artwork?" Jack asked, pointing at an empty spot.
"Ah, no accounting for taste, right?" Captain Carney grinned oafishly, "I'm not much of one for art, but the ones he didn't like we just chucked out back in a fire." The casual way he said it told Jack all the rest he needed to know. Not caring about art was one thing, but these people had gone through the effort to destroy some of it. He paused at the empty spot and read the plaque, Nicholas Colombel, Christ Healing the Blind.
Captain Carney led the way to a large room which had been re-purposed as an office. A large desk, littered with handwritten papers and maps, took up one side, positioned to look out the broad windows that overlooked the fields.
A tall, balding man stood up from the desk. He wore civilian clothing and he had a friendly smile on his face, but the unease that Jack felt about Carney was even stronger in this man's presence. There was something wrong here, and every fiber in Jack's being responded to it.
"Welcome!" The Lord Regent spoke, "Welcome to our fair city!" He had a raspy voice, like someone who had smoked a pack of cigarettes every day of his life. Up close, Jack could see that he had a scar of some kind across his throat, mostly hidden by the collar of his shirt.
"St Louis is not exactly what I'd expected," Jack said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Yet even as he said the words, he saw both Captain Carney and the Lord Regent flinch a bit.
"We, uh, don't call it that anymore," Captain Carney said. "We call it New Paradise."
"That's... interesting," Jack said. Their reactions seemed far out of context for such a simple thing as a name.
"Well," the Lord Regent hissed, "from what I hear, you had a most dangerous first encounter in our fair city. I'm glad to hear that Captain Carney and his peo
ple were there to save you."
Sure, Jack thought, and expend ridiculous quantities of ammunition in the process. "Worked out well," Jack said neutrally. "It seems like you all are fairly well equipped."
"We were stationed at Fort Leavenworth, the post commander sent us to recon the city here, but the city had already been overwhelmed when we arrived. We found several National Guard facilities with their weapons and equipment intact. They must have died before they could assemble. We also managed to find plenty of ammunition and fuel in a convoy that got overwhelmed on the south side of the city. So we've had plenty of resources to utilize." Captain Carney spoke evenly, the words coming in a relaxed tone; he'd clearly used the same explanation several times before.
"What happened back at Leavenworth?" Jack asked, cocking his head. The base was the Army's Command and Staff College... but it was also where the US Military's main prison lay. Jack didn't know much about the place, but the only units there should have been support or officer training units... with the military police unit that ran the prison.
"We aren't certain," the Lord Regent spoke before Captain Carney could. "Possibly overrun. We haven't had communications with them for several months."
"What did they do with the prisoners?" Jack asked intently. "I don't imagine they'd trust them and extra mouths to feed might be a problem, right?"
He didn't miss how Captain Carney's eyes narrowed and for a heartbeat, the Lord Regent went still. They were slight things, but they provided the last clues that he needed. These weren't fellow soldiers. They were criminals. The United States Disciplinary Barracks held the worst of the military's criminals. Rapists, murderers... those sentenced to death or a lifetime of imprisonment.
