by D. J. Molles
Josh pulled a Ruger LCP out of his back pocket and held it out toward Lee. It was a tiny pocket pistol that could fit in the palm of his hand, and essentially worthless on a moving target past a range of about twenty feet. Just as Lee was about to take it, Josh jerked his hand back and looked at him suspiciously, an expression that didn’t quite fit on his face. “I’m gonna get this back, right?”
Lee honestly didn’t know, so he just looked to Bus for clarification.
Bus shrugged back at him. “I’ll get you something better when we have time.”
“Then I guess you’ll get this back,” Lee said to Josh and accepted the gun. He pulled the magazine out of the well. It was a .380 caliber with only four rounds left in the magazine, plus one in the chamber. He would have to get in close to use the thing effectively. Still, it was better than a microscope. He shoved the magazine back into the gun and stomped his feet into his boots. The GPS device he slipped into the pocket of his athletic shorts.
Josh pointed out to the darkness of Camp Ryder. “I think we got most of ’em.”
Bus just shook his head. “We don’t know that. Get everyone in the square.”
“A’ight.” Josh spun on his heel and ran off into the night.
Bus looked Lee over. “You okay? Didn’t get bit?”
Lee gave himself a quick once-over before answering. “Think I’m good.”
“Let’s get moving.”
Lee followed the big man out of the cargo container at a jog. “What’s ‘the square’ and why is everyone going there?”
“This ain’t the first time we’ve been attacked,” Bus said cryptically.
Lee found himself just rolling with it, the way one rolls with the nonsensical facts in a strange dream, simply accepting the unacceptable because there are no other options. Lee felt like he was about to understand, anyway. He was about to get a crash course in how Camp Ryder dealt with attacks.
In a way, Lee felt strangely at ease being the follower. Over the course of the four days, it hadn’t just been about his own survival but the survival of everyone in his little group. Angela, Abby, Sam, and until recently, Jack and Tango, had all depended on him to survive. Now it appeared that Bus was the head honcho, the man with a plan, and the absence of responsibility was like dropping an eighty-pound rucksack off his shoulders. And Lee had to admit, while he didn’t know Bus well enough to say he trusted him completely, the man had a rock-steady attitude about him. There was something hard and unbreakable inside of him, and Lee could respect that.
Outside of the shipping container, he could see the stretch of gravel and dirt that made up the center of Camp Ryder, like some Main Street in an old western movie but much narrower. To either side of the gravel stretch, the survivors had used anything and everything they could find to construct small shelters for themselves and their families. It reminded Lee of the shantytowns he’d seen in third-world countries.
Who am I kidding? Lee thought numbly. This is a shantytown. And America is a third-world country now.
Lee noticed that the shantytown was beginning to churn with bodies, like an anthill after you scuff the top layer off. People in raggedy clothes were emerging out of cars and shacks and tents. Everyone carried flashlights or lanterns in one hand and a weapon in the other. A few had firearms, but mostly it was axes, shovels, crowbars, and baseball bats. It felt like a lynch mob. The townspeople heading out to find Frankenstein’s monster.
They ran past Lee and Bus, toward the center of Camp Ryder where a large but shallow pit had been dug and lined with bricks and stones. A fire pit perhaps? It appeared to be full of ash. Lee guessed correctly that this was “the square.”
Suddenly remembering something, Lee stopped and began craning his neck around, trying to see through the jostling crowd and the darkness. To Bus, he spoke with a measure of urgency: “Where’re Angela and the kids?”
Bus motioned for him to keep walking. “Josh is telling everyone to gather in the square. They’ll be there.”
As they walked, Bus snatched an ax handle from where it was leaning up against a tent. It was thinner toward the base of the handle and thicker toward the top where the metal ax-head was missing, which made it perfectly weighted for a striking weapon.
“Harris!” Bus yelled.
A man in the growing crowd of people looked up.
“Captain Harden is borrowing your ax handle.”
The man nodded and gave a thumbs-up.
The ax handle was pushed into Lee’s arms. He noticed that someone had written on the handle in Magic Marker: BRAIN BUSTER.
Cute.
Lee cinched the drawstring of his shorts up tight and stuck the little Ruger LCP in his waistband. Bus stepped in front of the crowd and looked like he was hurriedly counting heads. Lee estimated about fifty, which was close to the number Bus had given him last night. As he looked out over the crowd, he could see a tangled mess of blond hair on the other side of the crowd. In the glimmering lamplight, he could see Angela’s face, etched in worry. As the crowd shifted, he glimpsed the two children, standing to either side of her.
A fear he hadn’t realized he’d been harboring released its vise-grip on his stomach. He thought about calling to them but decided against it. They were here with the group. They were relatively safe. For now.
Josh ran up beside him and stopped to catch his breath for a brief second. “That’s everyone.”
“Hopefully,” Bus murmured.
“So…” Lee looked around at the gathered mass of people. He noticed that everyone had their backs to the fire pit and had placed their flashlights at their feet, creating a bright, noisy gathering. Lee was about to ask what the plan was but suddenly managed to figure it out on his own. He turned so his back was also to the fire pit and got a solid grip on the ax-handle.
He looked at Bus and shook his head. “I can’t say I like this idea.”
Bus only shrugged and then shouted to the crowd. “Alright folks, call ’em when you see ’em!”
Lee saw stony faces, all etched in harsh light and deep shadows. Glimmering and fearful eyes stared out into the darkness. Weathered hands twisted tighter and tighter grips on an assortment of opportunistic weapons. Those with firearms were at the front, pointing their hunting shotguns and deer rifles out at the suspicious stillness.
Circling the wagons.
The quiet of the night felt forced. Like a breath taken and held for fear of someone hearing. Even the night birds and chirping crickets were conspicuously absent.
Lee shifted his weight and tried to focus on anything that lay beyond the ring of light created by the dozens of flashlights.
The silence stretched uncomfortably.
Someone whispered, “Why aren’t they attacking?”
And another: “This is weird.”
And still another: “Are you sure there are more?”
Someone’s dog began barking.
Then a shout: “I see movement!”
The group collectively tensed.
“Over by the trash bins!”
Heads turned, everyone simultaneously spinning in the same direction. Lee followed suit because he didn’t know where the “trash bins” were. He saw a collection of old steel shipping containers, identical to the one that held Doc’s medical station. The tops of the containers had been removed so that they looked like big, open sardine cans. Several of them were filled with the monumental amount of trash that came from refugees all jam-packed in and living together.
In the murky shadows of the trash bins, Lee strained to see the movement.
A couple of the stronger flashlights probed the darkness but didn’t reveal anything. The darkness was becoming disorienting. He realized he still wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t operating like normal. The injury and the lack of food and water had taken more of a toll on his body than he’d thought, and he was only just beginning to recover. He kept repeating in his mind, It’s time to do work. It’s time to do work. Because that was what he used to tell his
squad when they had to focus on completing a mission.
It’s time to do work.
“There!” someone shouted.
A flash of movement between two trash bins.
“I see it!” A man with a deer rifle stepped forward a bit, but then hesitated. “Why isn’t it coming at us?”
A chunk of trash suddenly shifted and that strange, unearthly screeching sound echoed out at the band of survivors. Lee couldn’t see any details of the figure, but it ran straight at them. Just as it was within twenty-five yards of them it suddenly stopped and veered off. For a moment, it trotted along the edge of their lights, like a wolf probing a herd for weaknesses.
The entire crowd seemed frozen and perplexed, like everyone was trying to figure out what the hell this one was doing.
“Shoot it!” Bus shouted at the man with the deer rifle.
The rifle barked.
Lee watched the dirt at the infected’s feet explode. Sympathetic gunfire followed the rifle shot as the tension became too much for some trigger fingers to handle. The night was abruptly engulfed in a volley of shotgun blasts and rifle fire. A scattershot of rounds caught its legs, then ripped into its shoulder, pummeled its chest, and finally split its head open.
It wasn’t until that moment when Lee watched the miserable thing collapse to the ground that a small, familiar voice cut into his brain, dissipating the fog of disorientation and reminding him of who he was and how he had been trained.
Watch your lane.
When learning to operate in a squad, each member would have a designated “lane of fire” to watch for enemies. If you were constantly checking to make sure that your buddy wasn’t missing things in his lane, then you were probably missing things in your own lane. In other words: Stop worrying about everyone else, and do what you know you’re supposed to be doing.
Squad Tactics 101.
Watch your lane.
Lee spun around just in time to see two clawlike hands latch onto a young teenage girl and yank her backward. Lee watched the girl’s dark hair fly up like it was suddenly in zero gravity as she was pulled to the ground. Her eyes locked onto Lee, and he saw a scared indignation, as though she were thinking, This isn’t supposed to happen to me.
The infected was an older female. It hunched over the younger girl and lunged for the neck. The girl let out a small cry and her hands came up, trying to block the infected’s mouth from reaching her jugular. The old woman bit down hard on the girl’s wrist and Lee heard tendons snap.
He managed to yell, “Behind us!” and then swung for the fences. The ax-handle connected just behind the ear and left a deep hollow in the old woman’s skull.
It was only then that Lee realized there was a second infected. It lunged out of the darkness and seized hold of the teenage girl and began to backpedal, trying to drag her away from the crowd, looking at the other survivors and hissing aggressively. It pulled her by the shirt collar with one hand and hammered the girl’s face with the other, knocking her unconscious after two or three blows.
Lee jumped forward and wound up for the swing. A gun went off just to the right side of his head. The infected’s throat exploded and it collapsed into a writhing ball. Lee instinctively recoiled from the noise of the gunshot so close to him. As Lee clenched his jaw against the ringing in his ears, the crowd swarmed around him, yanking the girl away from the infected and then bludgeoning it to death.
He looked to his right, where the gunshot had just come from, and saw a man drop a small revolver to the ground. His face was ashen. He rushed past Lee and slid to his knees next to the girl and began to wail.
The gathering erupted in confusion.
Everyone was yelling and pressing forward to hover over the girl. A younger man in the crowd turned and looked at Lee with accusatory eyes, as though Lee had done something wrong, as though it was his fault that the girl had been attacked. In a flash of anger, Lee thought about using the ax-handle on him, too. But in the back of his mind he thought, Isn’t it your fault? Shouldn’t you have been paying attention? You’re the professional here…
Over it all he heard Bus yelling, “Steve! Steve!” and the man who had fired the revolver wailing: “Oh Jesus! Oh fuck! Come on, baby! Wake up! I’m so sorry, baby!”
The girl’s father?
Bus tried to push past with the rest of them but Lee was thinking a little bit more clearly now, thinking about how those infected had hid from them and flanked them. There could be more. And if they didn’t find where the intruders had come through, there would be more. He reached out and caught Bus with a firm hand to his chest. “Are there any others?”
Seeming to ignore him, the big bearded man craned his neck to see the girl on the ground, then abruptly realized that Lee was speaking to him. “What?”
Lee pulled the man closer, speaking low so as not to be overheard and start a panic. “Are there any other infected?”
“Uh…” He tapped his Colt 1911 against his thigh and wiped his sweaty brow. “Shit. God. I don’t know.”
The group was already scattering to the wind. Doc and Jenny were pushing people out of the way and Doc’s skinny voice was needling at the crowd: “Everyone get the fuck outta the way! Someone help me lift her!”
More people than necessary to carry a 120-pound girl stepped in. Everyone was trying to get a hand in to help and becoming more of a hindrance. The girl’s father cradled her head in his arms as they moved her quickly toward the medical trailer.
Bus was staring at the girl again, so Lee shook him gently to get his attention. “Grab a couple guys. We need to close whatever hole those fuckers came through and then do a perimeter sweep.”
CHAPTER 2
Investigation
Bus seemed to gain his senses again. He reached out with a thick arm, coarse with wiry black hair, and grabbed Josh as the young man attempted to run past and join the crowd as they whisked the bitten girl off to Doc’s medical trailer.
“You’re with us,” Bus said, and when he spoke he had returned to his normal steady tone. “We gotta find where they’re coming through the fence.”
“But what about Kara?” Josh’s eyes were wide and concerned.
Bus looked the young man in the eye. “Let Doc handle that. You can’t do anything for her right now. We have other things to take care of. Now let’s go.”
Josh didn’t argue further. He nodded once and then both men turned toward Lee.
He quickly surveyed his surroundings and made a decision. “We need a fourth…” Lee spotted a familiar face. Miller, wasn’t it? The man in the red bandanna who had helped them escape Timber Creek with the use of some Molotov cocktails. Lee waved him over. “Hey! Borrow you for a second?”
Miller took a second to recognize him in the darkness, but after shining his light a few times in Lee’s face, he came running over, hand on his holstered .38 Special to keep it from flopping around on his belt. “Yeah?”
He was roughly the same age as Josh but taller, and his features were more gaunt. While Josh gave the impression of someone much younger, everything about Miller was older, from the squint of his eyes to his confident-but-not-cocky stride. There was something else there too. Something in the tilt of his head, in the set of his jaw. Miller liked to fight.
Lee pointed to the fence behind the trash bins, as it was the closest section of fence to their current location. “We’ll both start there. Run the fence line in opposite directions and see if we can find where the infected are getting through. If you find the hole, post up and secure it as best you can until we all meet back up.”
Three heads nodded quickly.
“Bus, you and I will go clockwise. Miller and Josh, you guys go counterclockwise.” Lee and Bus took off for the fence at a trot and began walking briskly along it, inspecting the integrity of the chain links as they went.
Lee had asked for Bus to team up with him because he wanted a chance to talk to him. There were things about their most recent encounter that disturbed him and he wan
ted to get Bus’s thoughts on it.
While they walked, Lee spoke. “What happens to the girl now?”
“Kara?” Bus mumbled absently. “Doc will amputate and hope for the best.”
Lee almost stopped in his tracks. “Amputate? Are you kidding me?”
Bus shook his head, looking briefly run-down. “No. The faster they cut off Kara’s arm, the better chance she has of not contracting FURY. Doc figures it works about half the time, which is better than a hundred percent chance of infection. Only problem is that most of the time the amputation goes septic. Or they lose too much blood.” Bus swore bitterly. “We just don’t have the medical equipment. It’s like the fucking Stone Age again. Like Civil War surgeons just hacking off limbs with saws and crossing their fingers.”
Lee couldn’t think of anything else to say. The concept of amputation to prevent bacterial infection through a bite or open wound seemed to be a reckless medical maneuver, but when faced with the certainty of turning into one of them, the amputation had a cold practicality.
Lee pressed on. “Did you notice anything about those last infected?”
Bus didn’t answer immediately. He stalked along and painted his flashlight over the length of fence before them but found it to be secure. When he finally spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I remember how they were a month ago.” He stopped walking and turned to look at Lee. “They were disjointed and confused. Lost. Insane. They attacked one another just as often as they attacked us. I don’t know what the hell is going on or how it’s happening so fast, but the groups are changing. Learning. And they’re doing it quickly.”
Lee pictured the dark shape darting out of the trash bins and circling the edge of the lamplight while they sat in their encirclement, weapons pointed out. The cold, blood-crusted talons dragging that young girl to the ground and the other trying to carry her off.
“Like a wolf pack,” Lee said, almost more to himself than to Bus. “Adaptation. Evolution. It doesn’t seem like they’re mindlessly attacking anymore. It seems like they’re hunting us.”
