by TW Brown
“Hey, big guy!” Juan turned to see JoJo coming down the beach with a full assortment of blades and a pair of spiked bats dangling off of him.
“What’s the word, JoJo?”
“We have a number of deaders starting to gather on the far side of the bridge,” JoJo reported. “Thad and I wanted to take them down before dark so they don’t start shoving each other into the water. As many as there are, they could knock over our fence if enough end up in the river.”
“That many?” Juan asked, genuinely concerned. They hadn’t seen any significant numbers near their island in quite a while.
“Thad says that he thinks they are the remnants of a larger group that passed through a few days ago. He said that a herd of well over a thousand came up that winding road that runs along the south side headed west.”
“Well get a few of the others then,” Juan called down. He turned to Mackenzie, “And I better go, too.”
“You are our fearless leader,” Mackenzie said in mock adoration. Juan’s face scrunched up in embarrassment exactly as she knew it would.
“It’s not that,” Juan protested. “I’m not trying to lead or be anybody’s boss. My only concern is that you are safe. So that means when something like this happens, I have to go.”
“I know, now get moving before they start without you.”
After a quick kiss, Juan was leading a band of seven to the ruins of the bridge. A cold wind blew in their faces and a steady rain began to fall. Juan didn’t like it. He was becoming very superstitious lately. Things like bad feelings and omens were starting to feel much more real than they had before.
Almost on cue, a pair of ravens cawed and launched themselves into the sky ahead of the group.
Chad stepped back from the blaze. While the heat felt great, the stench of burning bodies severely hampered the enjoyment of the experience. He couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder at the window he knew to be his.
Ronni’s fever had finally broken some time in the middle of the night. He hadn’t left her side since that day last week until this afternoon. She was in and out of consciousness during that time, but hadn’t said so much as a single word the first two or three days.
For the third day in the last six, they’d had small groups of zombies stumbling into Yosemite Village. There was talk that perhaps they’d been followed up the mountain by the zombies from down below. Chad didn’t think that likely, but he really didn’t care. Until he was confident that his daughter was better, all that mattered was being with her.
Now that she was past the worst part, some of her attitude was returning. Already she was complaining about eating nothing but broth; she wanted something she had to chew, or at least take a bite from.
Chad turned back to the fire. It hadn’t burned so long that he couldn’t still make out a few of the faces. Among the recently dead, Col. Leonard Morris was the biggest casualty. He’d been pretty much running the show since they’d set up at Yosemite Village. He was a good man and a good leader who listened to everybody. Penny Doucet, the heavyset blonde with a bad attitude and a wonderful heart. She’d been his go-to person lately in matters regarding his daughter.
There were others, but those two were irreplaceable as far as Chad was concerned. Then there were the bodies they had been fighting. One stuck out in particular. She couldn’t have been any older than six. Her dark hair was still in braided pig tails. She was missing an arm. He couldn’t begin to imagine the horror the child felt the moments when she was being torn apart. Had it been strangers? Would it be worse if it had been loved ones? Family? Her mother or father?
As the last of the bodies were thrown on, Chad decided to return to the room and see if Ronni would like anything for dinner. Some of the women had managed to come up with enough ingredients for a hearty stew that would actually have some meat in it.
Brett, Scott and a few of the others had scored a few rabbits. Or was it hares? He couldn’t honestly say that he knew the difference. In any case, tonight was a welcome change. The meals were starting to get a bit chincy in Chad’s opinion.
There were rumors that the food supply was running low. Of course you couldn’t believe everything that you heard, and this was becoming like any other small community. There were people who worked, people who didn’t.
And gossip.
Lots and lots of gossip.
He stomped his feet as he entered the hotel that he, Ronni, and about thirty others called home. On his way in he passed a couple of guys who he had never really cared much for since their arrival. One of the bunch looked familiar, but as hectic as things had been the past several months, that could be chalked up to any number of things.
“Hey, Chad!” one of the pair called out. Chad thought the man’s name was Frank.
“Hey,” Chad acknowledged as he headed for the stairs.
“I was wondering if you could answer a question for me,” the man moved to cut Chad off as he started up.
“Love to,” Chad said, “but I need to get to my daughter. She hasn’t been feeling well, and I wanted to see if she would like some of the stew they have prepared.”
“I’ll only take a minute or two,” the man insisted.
“Another time, really,” Chad said, making a move to brush past the man.
“I hear you were a child molester,” the man said just a bit louder than a normal speaking voice.
Chad turned to face the man. His hands casually drifted to the blades he had strapped to each hip. His eyes naturally appraised the two men. One was skinny and had a really bad comb over. He was standing just a few steps below and apparently didn’t go outside much, because he wasn’t carrying any visible weapons. The other, the one he was almost certain was named Frank, was almost a foot taller, but looked like a stork with a beer belly. He was carrying a curved blade in his belt without a sheath. Chad could tell that it was dull just by looking at it.
“Then look me up in the database,” Chad quipped. “Oh…wait…I hear that the internet is down.”
“We got a pedophile with an attitude, Jonas,” the one man said over Chad’s head.
“Maybe you should show him his place, Frank,” Jonas urged.
Chad didn’t wait; one thing he’d learned in prison was that if the guy is doing a lot of talking, chances are, he didn’t want to fight. In one smooth motion, he drew the larger of his two knives and had it pressed up against Frank’s throat.
“Yeah, Frank,” Chad hissed between clenched teeth. “Why don’t you show me my place?”
“Easy, f-f-fella,” Frank stuttered. “We didn’t want no trouble. Just thought you might like to know there are rumors goin’ ‘round about you. And with you having that young girl in your room—”
“That young girl is my daughter, you fuck!” Chad cut the man off.
A thought started to bloom in Chad’s mind. He stared into Frank’s eyes and saw something there that made his stomach churn. With a flick of the wrist, he cut the man’s throat just under the chin. He could have just as easily sliced the jugular, but he only wanted to scare the man…in case he was wrong.
Chad took the stairs two and three at a time all the way up to the third floor. As soon as he reached the hallway, he noticed another man standing just across from the door to his and Ronni’s room. The man spotted him instantly and took off up the hallway towards the emergency stairwell.
Chad reached his room and threw open the door. What he saw made him almost vomit on the spot. The only thing that prevented it was the overwhelming rage. Ronni had been pulled from her bed and was on the floor with her pajamas torn away and a pillow over her face. The man who Chad thought he had recognized was between her legs.
Before the man could react, Chad grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head back, and slit his throat. This time, he had no intention of scaring the man. Blood gushed in rhythmic jets to spray the wall, the floor, and the pillow covering his daughter’s face.
He tossed the man aside, ignoring his
gurgling attempts to say something. He moved the pillow to find his daughter’s eyes closed. He quickly checked and was relieved to discover a pulse. As he scooped her up, she moaned softly. He carried her out of the room and down the hall. He had to find somewhere safe to lay Ronni down, and then he had three more people to find and add to the fire outside.
Samantha pushed away from the microscope. She’d seen it twice now. If it happened this time, she would call the other two in to confirm her findings. She checked her timer and sat back to enjoy a few crackers with liberal amounts of peanut butter.
Reading her notes, she dutifully checked all her data. This was not something that she wanted to be wrong about. Her eyes drifted up to the monitors as she considered the ramifications. The numbers had grown to the point where the cameras couldn’t take them all in. From this view, it looked like the sea of bodies was endless.
Getting up and walking over to the monitors, she looked closer at some of them. Their injuries were beyond anything that science could hope to repair. Even if what she might have accomplished (there was still a few tasks that would need to be performed even if this most recent test proved successful), it would do nothing for the millions…billions already affected.
There was always the possibility that what she thought she was seeing through the scopes was not entirely accurate or supportive of her hypothesis. Truth be told, they were all flying by the seat of their pants and none of them expected to make significant headway. It was like all those scientists and medical minds who had toiled for years to find a cure for the AIDS virus. They’d found ways to stabilize those who were stricken, but they had not discovered a viable cure.
“Putting in overtime?” Darlene asked as she came out of her section of the lab.
“Just got on a roll and thought I would push through to my third or fourth wind,” Samantha replied.
“How much longer do you think we can do this?”
Samantha looked over at the other woman. Her dark hair was a mess; the unfurling remnants of a braid starting to curl in on itself. She imagined that she didn’t look much better. How long had it been since she’d taken an actual shower. Not the DECON misting they endured every time they entered and exited the labs, but an honest-to-God shower.
“Funny you should mention that,” Samantha pushed herself up out of the chair and walked over to the wall of monitors. “I guess the biggest question is whether or not any of it matters.”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?”
“Look at this.” Samantha pointed to one of the lower screens.
Reaching down, she fiddled with the controls. The image zoomed in on one of the horde pressed in around the bunker that would allow entrance to their underground facility. The body in question was frightful. It had been a dark-skinned man. His face was void of any expression. His mouth opened and closed—was he a moaner or a crier?—and his hands reached up at something out of view of the cameras. His left arm was torn apart from the elbow down and both radius and ulna were clearly visible. Not fatal if it had been treated. But there was no denying those dark things dangling from a rip in his abdomen just below the ribcage would have ended his hope for survival.
“And they go on and on.” She zoomed out as far as the camera was capable. The sea of bobbing heads appeared as vast as any ocean.
“But surely the people who put us in here have some sort of plan in place,” Darlene insisted.
“Then why haven’t we heard anything on the radio they put in that useless room since the first day we all woke up after being abducted, injected with something that put us under for who-knows-how long until we came to down here?” Lena asked as she stepped out of the very room she’d just labeled as useless. “I ran our required diagnostic check and the other nodes don’t even register as defunct anymore. We are the only ones.”
“I’m sure they have some sort of plan,” Darlene countered. “They wouldn’t just put us down here and not have something set up.”
“Why?” Lena challenged. “Because they are the government and always think things through? Or is it because up to now, whatever they did put in place has a twenty percent success rate…or survival rate…whatever you want to call it?”
“They had something in mind when they put us here,” Darlene said firmly. “If I didn’t believe that, I would just give up. There wouldn’t be any point in anything we are doing.”
“They gave us live test subjects, Darlene,” Samantha said. “They might have had some miniscule idea in mind when they put this on paper, but I have a feeling that those responsible are probably either as trapped in whatever godforsaken compound they created for themselves, or like those poor bastards out there.”
There was a long and uncomfortable silence. Eventually, Samantha was left alone as both of her cohorts returned to the section of the facility where the living quarters existed. She watched with a touch of anxiety as the minutes ticked away on her pre-determined countdown.
The next hour seemed to take forever. When the time finally came, she found it difficult to look in the scope. If her findings were correct, this was a huge breakthrough. If not, then she would be starting over. She didn’t know which result she feared most.
Holding her breath, she looked.
With a sigh, she sat back in her chair. There was only one thing left to finish her testing. Opening the small refrigeration unit, she plucked the next vial from the plastic holder and set up a new syringe.
Glancing at the clock, she noted the time on her clipboard. After only a moment’s consideration, she stepped into Darlene’s lab. For this to really be a proper test, she decided on the most extreme method of exposure and presented her hand to the splayed creature squirming on the exam table after removing the rubber gag.
The immediate pain was terrible. She quickly decided that she had no clue what people who had a biting fetish saw in such things. She pried the jaws apart before the thing could take a chunk of flesh.
Looking at her hand, she noticed a little bit of blood well up in the imprint of teeth. Returning to her chair, she pulled the harness out of her desk and strapped herself in. If her findings were flawed and she became one of them, she didn’t want to endanger the others.
“We can’t linger on the losses,” Chuck insisted. “It was a rough run, but the problem resides in the fact that we are busting our asses, risking our lives, and taking heat from the locals for not doing enough to keep them safe.”
“That is well enough, Mister Monterro,” Captain Timothy Gould spoke from behind his desk. While he acknowledged the usefulness of Charles “Slider” Monterro, he refused to address him with his former military rank. The man was still a civilian. “However, these citizens are not trained for the field and would be more of a hindrance than a help if we did as you suggest and incorporated them into our teams.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Chuck replied with as much respect in his voice as he could muster for this college boy trying to play soldier, “the recruiting offices are closed. We won’t be graduating any more boots.”
“Then perhaps we have found a billet that you can fill,” the captain said with a smile.
“I don’t follow, sir.”
“Sergeant Rafe suggested in his report that we are in dire need of men. You have parroted that statement and I am no fool. The men look at you with a certain degree of reverence because of your service record.” Captain Gould pushed back from his desk and stood up. “You make little suggestions and the men jump on them. This smells of one of yours.”
“I don’t—” Chuck sensed a trap coming.
“You are about to become Bald Knob’s very own recruiter.”
“But, sir—”
“And when you have a suitable number, you will become the commander of this new boot camp,” the captain continued, ignoring the protest. “There will be an announcement distributed to all citizens tomorrow informing the population.”
“But—”
&nb
sp; “Additionally, the bulletin will inform the fine citizens of Bald Knob, Arkansas that if a suitable number is not reached voluntarily within thirty days…an emergency draft will be instituted.”
Chuck “Slider” Monterro wanted to ask the captain if he understood the ramifications of what he was calling for, but he was fairly certain that the young man was very aware. Additionally, he was also certain that the man did not care.
He had been wrong in his assessment regarding the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 153rd Infantry. While young and inexperienced, he was no fool. He had a firm grasp on the job his men were tasked to perform.
The perception of the men—largely fueled by his own comments, he had to admit—was that the captain was too green to be an effective commander. He had no idea what the battalion faced each day. He was isolated from the real job facing the soldiers on a day-to-day basis.
“My great uncle served under one of the greatest tank commanders and military leaders our nation ever knew,” Captain Gould said with just a slight smirk. “I chose to forgo the academy in order to stay closer to home and deal with a dying sister and an alcoholic mother.”
“Sir, I…” his voice failed him as shame dried his mouth.
“Do you think that you are the first seasoned enlisted man to take shots at the green captain?”
“It’s just—” he tried to speak and was interrupted.
“It’s just behind us, Sergeant Monterro,” Captain Gould produced a small parcel of folded pages. “You will stop playing games and re-enlist in this man’s Army. You will resume your rank and help me keep this cluster fuck in some semblance of order. You will work with me to maintain that order.”
“Yes, sir,” the newly re-dubbed sergeant agreed.
“Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“Good, now sign these papers so I can give you your first assignment.”
Chuck cocked an eyebrow and gave the captain a questioning look. The man remained silent and simply unfolded the papers. He produced a pen and slid the sheaf across the desk. Once they were signed, the captain scooped them up, tapped them on the desk to straighten them, and then folded them and returned them to a pocket inside his jacket.
