Bill was bigger and taller than the other two bandit leaders, and he had a look about him that suggested he wasn't as crazy or short-fused as them, though he looked similarly disheveled. He strode with a measure of confidence but also quietness, and Sarah found him hard to read, especially in the darkness. Axel had sent a messenger to Bill's camp to tell him of their trip, and Sarah wasn't sure what he had been told.
"So how do you know him?" she asked Bill.
He turned his head. "Know who?"
"The Shadow Man," she said.
"The what?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The man in charge," she elucidated. "The one in black with the skull on his face."
Bill smirked. "Shadow Man..." he said. "That's a stupid name. His real name's Jack Glass. I used to do contract work for him, mostly in materials of the unmentionable sort."
"What kind of materials?" she asked.
"Unmentionable."
"So who was he?" Sarah asked, trying a new line of questioning.
"Military guy. Not one of the top, top people, but he had some pull."
"What happened to him? I saw part of his face before. His skin looked... burned."
"Don't know," Bill said. "Haven't seen him in years. But I wouldn't mind having a word or two with that son of a bitch."
"Why? What happened between you two?"
Bill kept his gaze on the path ahead of them the entire time, his face never betraying a sense of cool collectedness that he maintained. "Let's just say I'm the one who got burned."
He didn't seem to want to be any more forthcoming, and Sarah left him alone. They continued traveling along the last stretch of small road before they reached the woods leading up to the ridge at the edge of the base. They had made sure to get off the roads early as they got close, not wanting to be spotted or have another run-in with an outpost or patrol.
The night was almost completely free of a breeze and the trees stood motionlessly all around them. No noises could be heard and they knew that the base would be on a skeleton crew at this hour. They kept their eyes peeled for any undead lurking between the oaks, but so far the forest was empty.
All of them were armed, many with knives, knowing that this would be a stealth mission. Axel brought a machete along with him, the blade chewed and rusted. Old, dried blood crusted the length of it, including the handle, and it seemed like he got a lot of use out of it.
Tommy and Carly were both very quiet on the trip, sticking close to Sarah the whole time. They were afraid of what they were heading to do and of their company, and even Sarah herself couldn't say that she felt calm. But for her the rising sense of fear she felt was almost solely due to coming upon the horrible place that she had been trying to put out of her mind for the past two months. But if she ever wanted to see Wayne again or stop the evil march of this "Jack Glass's" abominable plan, she would have to face her fears.
They all glanced over their shoulders as they snaked their way through the trees and got closer to the ridge, checking to see if there was anyone around. Sarah gave directions to the rest of them, being the only one who had visited this particular spot before.
"It's just up there," she said.
The six of them walked up to the ridge and Sarah had to stop. Old memories haunted her from two months ago in the budding moments of spring. She stared at the spot were Ron got unexpectedly ambushed by a zombie and eaten, and her eyes traced down the path leading to the entrance of the base where Glass and his men had taken Wayne. A chill shook her heart and her legs became rubbery as she walked up the rest of the way to the ridge. The others had already lain down with their chins pressed to the grassy edge and Sarah joined them, lowering herself slowly and glancing around as she felt a panic rise up in her. The large and central building sitting in the middle of the base in front of them caught her eye first and she looked to the spot where the sniper had lain. She heard the bang again in her ears and her heart gave a churning leap. Her eyes darted to the left and saw her arm sailing through the air. She looked over the ridge and tried to find where it had landed, as if it would still be sitting here two months later in pristine condition, waiting for her. A sharp squeezing pain gripped her heart and then radiated to the left side of her body. She looked over and realized that the pain, quite intense, was focused in her left arm. As the others stared at the base ahead of them, not noticing that she was going through a traumatic moment, she stared at where her left arm should have been and became manic, not able to understand how she could still feel pain in an arm that wasn't there anymore.
Sarah pressed her forehead to the ground and let the moment pass. When she collected herself, she joined the others in looking over the base and figuring out just how they were going to pull this off.
The six of them were stretched out side-by-side on their bellies. Axel glanced over his shoulder at the dark woods behind them, then he reached out his arm and smacked Carly hard on the ass next to him. "Keep a lookout for us, would you?" he said.
Carly recoiled in surprise, rolling away from him and into Sarah.
He wore a wide grin of sparse yellow teeth and his eyes leered at her, holding a darkness in them behind the fury, like the black smoke clouding over a fire.
Tommy ground his teeth together on the other side of Sarah as he looked past the two of them toward Axel. His fists clenched, but he didn't say anything.
"If you touch her again, I won't be the only one missing an arm," Sarah told him.
Axel's grin turned into a grimace, and he stared at her long and hard.
Sarah put her hand on Carly's back and asked her to get up and keep watch behind them, not only because it was important, but to give Carly an excuse to get out of there and clear her head. She slid away from the ridge and got up, sauntering back toward the trees a little, her buttock tingling as she felt wretched and degraded.
"Where do you think he is?" Tommy asked, looking back toward the base.
"You mean Wayne?" Sarah asked, taking her eyes off the guard towers along the wall and scanning the large building. "I don't know. I don't know if he's still alive," she admitted, looking down.
"Wayne?" Bill piped up. He started laughing so loudly that the rest of them were afraid one of the soldiers guarding the base would hear them.
"Do you know him?" Sarah asked.
He looked over at her and grinned in the darkness. "You could say that. Wayne and I were old friends. We go way back."
"Were you in the Marines together?" she asked.
He ignored her. "Nobody told me he was here," he said. "Didn't think he'd ever get himself caught like this." He chuckled. "Well now this mission takes on a whole new meaning. I'm definitely in."
Sarah was heartened to hear his commitment, but she still had such trouble reading him and couldn't discern what kind of tone he meant by what he said. "He's been in there for two months," she said. She paused, then added, "Do you think he's still alive?"
Bill silently gazed at the defenses in the base, taking note of each point of interest. "Hard to say," he replied at last. "If I know Jack, he'll keep Wayne alive for as long as possible. The only question is if he's tough enough to have made it this long."
Sarah's heart sank as she thought about him. She had always known him to be supremely tough, but it had been two months, and that kind of time must take a toll on anyone.
"Let's get this shit over with, shall we?" Macklin said, getting impatient. "What's the plan?"
"I say we just run in and gut all them sons of bitches," Axel replied, slowly dragging his machete along the grass in front of them.
"We could do that," Sarah said, "but we don't know how many men they have. From what I've seen it looks like they have a pretty small personnel despite the size of this place, but I'm only looking at it from the outside. Who knows how many are in there?"
"If they're gonna have armed soldiers," Bill said, "they're not going to be hunkering inside in droves. Unless we're talking about a prison in there or something, the armed guards la
rgely go on the outside."
There were about a dozen guard towers along the top of the wall stretching around the perimeter of the base, all of them staffed. The entrance gate looked like it was just as full as the last time Sarah was here, maybe eight guards positioned there. And the patrols walking around the base were light, a few men apiece. There were no tests going on or shooting drills or trucks going in and out of the base tonight, but Sarah knew that it must have been about three in the morning and that most of the soldiers would be inside sleeping.
She nodded her head. "It's hard to say how many are outside of the base on any given day," she said. "We found a lab that they used inside Raleigh that used to have at least a good dozen or so guards before they abandoned it, and they probably have more labs around that we don't know about. I don't want to put a hard number on it, but I'd say we're probably looking at at least two hundred people in the base, maybe two-fifty, maybe three hundred. I don't know." She looked over at Macklin. "How many people can you get total? All the groups."
Macklin chuckled and looked at the other bandits. "All the groups..." he parroted to them and they smiled. "We're not as populated as we once were, lady. Around this area? You're looking at a hundred people, tops."
"A hundred?" she asked. "That's it?"
"That's it. Maybe more if we can convince the guys over in Durham to come."
"Well do it," she said.
"Like I said, if things were the way they used to be, you'd be talking to one guy, and his name was Jericho. But thanks to you, things ain't the way they used to be. Now you're stuck with us, and we don't exactly meet for afternoon tea every day."
"I told you in the first place, this is bigger than us," Sarah said, frustrated. "This is bigger than petty bullshit; we either do this and do it all the way or we're all going to feel the squeeze in every way you can imagine. So enjoy living out the rest of your miserable days, because they will be few."
Macklin pursed his lips then spit on the ground in front of him. There was a clear sense of deliberation behind his eyes, and he looked at the others to get a sense of what they thought. Axel's eyes were just as black as before, and he seemed more in it just to kill as many people as possible rather than for any actual purpose, and Bill just stared on, his face a mask of stone. "I'll talk to them," Macklin said at last. "I'll get you an extra hundred, hundred and fifty people, maybe."
"It'll have to do," Sarah said.
"Those boys won't do it for free, though, comin' all this way," he said.
"Just talk to them," she said.
He nodded. "Hell, those assholes about picked Durham clean already. Probably won't be long until they move into Raleigh anyway."
"So I, uh... I take it stealth is off the table?" Tommy said, speaking up next to Sarah. His voice was timid and the bandits looked at him with disdain. If there was one thing the bandits disliked, it was weakness. And Sarah could tell that Tommy tried his best to fit in and put on a tough persona, no matter how disingenuous it was.
"Hard to sneak into a place like this," Bill said. "If we were special forces, had blueprints of the place, and knew exactly where we were going, it might be a different story. But we don't even know what we're doing in there. We can pick off some soldiers here and there and squeeze some info out of them, but this job is a total assault if I've ever seen one."
Sarah nodded. "That's how it's gotta be," she said. "The only question is how?"
"Through the gate would be the easiest," Macklin said. "Also going to be the most heavily guarded. But once we start coming in and creating a ruckus, that's not really going to matter."
"We could also blow open part of the wall," Bill offered. "Cause a distraction and make them look one way and then come at them from another. By the time they know what hit them, it'll be too late."
"Maybe," Sarah said, running all the options through her head. She looked at Macklin. "See how many people you can get first. That'll factor into what we end up doing."
"Long as I get to use Belinda here," Axel said, lifting his machete and cleaving the ground in front of him with it. Sprays of dirt went in either direction and the others shielded their eyes.
"Okay, we're done here," Sarah told them, looking over her shoulder at Carly who was still standing over by the tree line and staring into the woods. She slid away from the ridge and pushed herself up to her feet. She was disappointed that there seemed to be no clear way to attack the base, and she began to have doubts that they would be able to pull it off at all. The task was herculean, but she knew it had to be done anyway, even if they were walking into their own deaths.
She turned and walked over to Carly as the others got up and came away from the ridge. "Let's go," she said.
The six of them headed back through the woods along the path they came. None of them said much, each one running through a list of scenarios in their head, and Tommy and Carly once again clung to Sarah on the way back.
Axel looked over with a hint of malice, stealing glances at each one of them and looking them up and down. His machete swung back and forth at his side as he walked, and his hand trembled, feeling the unshakable urge to use it.
None of them heard the dull footfalls on the forest floor or the occasional snapping of a twig until it was upon them.
Macklin spun around and thrust his leg out, kicking a scratcher away from him. The rest of them wheeled on the spot and pulled out whatever weapons they had on them. Axel grunted and groaned just as much as any scratcher as four more of them approached.
Bill pulled out a hunting knife, knowing that they wouldn't want to be heard using a gun this close to the base, and he stepped forward and slid the blade cleanly between the top vertebra and the base of the skull in the scratcher, retracting it and watching the zombie fall to the ground.
Tommy backed away in terror, and even Carly shrunk away a little, certain that they were done for.
But the bandit leaders got to work immediately. Their methods were crude and brutal, but they got the job done. Macklin pulled out a blade of his own and each person focused on a different scratcher, but still kept an eye on each other and made sure none of them were gotten to.
Sarah entered the fray, slipping her knife out of her sheath and thrusting it at one of the scratchers as it tried to tackle her. She stepped to the side and stuck it in the back of the shoulder, but it just stumbled forward then spun around, unaffected. It came at her again and this time she thrust higher, judging her aim better, and she struck it in the face. The blade penetrated its cheek and slid through its open teeth into the back of its neck. It struggled as it thrashed its fingernails at her and rushed her like a forward tackle, and she tried desperately to get the knife out of its face. She retreated as the zombie approached, then she spun the two of them around on the spot and pushed against it to put it off balance when she could as she yanked on the knife. It was a challenge to do with only one arm, and she was already getting exhausted from the incredible strength required of the back and forth.
The scratcher bit down on the blade in its mouth, preventing Sarah from pulling it out just as she had yanked it out from the muscles behind its throat. As she struggled, the scratcher stumbled forward and she had to continue sidestepping to keep the zombie from getting to her and taking her to the ground. The scratcher lunged at her again and she sidestepped again.
Then another knife sank down into the top of its skull and the scratcher's eyes slid up into its head. Its legs gave out and it fell to the ground, and its weight pulled itself off of Sarah's knife as she stood there in awe, the dark, diseased blood dripping off the tip of the steel.
Sarah looked up to see Bill give her a smug smile as he wiped the blade of his knife on his boot. Behind him, all of the other scratchers were on the ground, dead. Macklin was just pulling his knife out of one of their guts. He had cut it open from side to side and its intestines had spilled out into the moonlight. And Axel took a wide stance over top one of the unanimated corpses, hacking at it over and over. The blade
didn't cut very well, and it was clear that he had used it to the point of being almost dull, and somehow that made it worse. He showcased utter brutality as he needlessly rent the body apart, getting down to the bones and crushing them. Blood flew everywhere, but Axel didn't care. When he finally finished and turned around, Sarah could see not anger in his eyes, but pure and utter bloodlust.
The three bandit leaders had taken care of four scratchers before she could take care of one, and even then Bill finished the job. No matter how rough around the edges they were, they were pure killing machines.
As they cleaned up and continued through the woods, Carly began to shake. She was having major second thoughts about what she and Sarah were doing, and she was terrified to even be within any kind of proximity to them anymore.
But Sarah just grinned. To her, they would be perfect.
7
CONVOY
The road back was long and arduous. They had traveled for several miles to get to the base, and now that the excitement of their surveillance and the encounter with the scratchers was over, each of them felt their feet and their shoulders ache. The night was cool, even though it was beginning to warm up in the start of June. Macklin began periodically shivering, something that seemed uncharacteristic of him, and Sarah wondered if perhaps their encounter back there had shaken some of the bandits more than they let on.
They reached a fork in the road and it was time for Bill to go his own way. He bid them goodbye, in as gracious a way as a bandit could, then he took the left fork and went west for his camp.
The others continued northwest and Carly felt a modicum of relief at Bill's departure, now only being in the presence of two degenerates. Tommy was used to being surrounded by that ilk day in and day out, but for him the moment was one of tremendous excitement, knowing that he wouldn't be returning with Axel to his camp. He didn't know where Sarah was staying, and he didn't know exactly when they would be breaking off from the other two bandits and going their own way, though he hoped it was soon. A niggling fear clutched to his heart that Sarah hadn't been serious about wanting to take him away from the bandits, but he tried to keep a cool head for the rest of the trip, keeping his eyes peeled on the woods around them for any sign of trouble—anything that could impede his freedom.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 5): Scourge of Evil Page 5
