The mountainside was littered with thousands of bodies caught in crevices and shrubs which covered the hillside. It was like a landfill, but instead of trash the bloated remains of humans lay piled about. Dark carrion birds leapt back and forth, fat and well fed.
Henderson looked abashed, then with hope at Joseph. “I heard there was a cure, Doc? Is it true?”
Joseph shook his head. The loss of life was staggering. “No cure. Show me to your leader.”
Henderson led Joseph to a smaller tent next to the command tent. Officers buzzed in and out. Joseph sat in a foldable chair and waited, but not for long. A short, wide-shouldered, bald white man pushed through the tent flaps and immediately sized Joseph up. His thin tight upper lip quivered for a second yet remained in place.
“I am Colonel Jackson. I am the commanding officer of the remaining 34th Brigade Combat Team, comprised of the 1st Battalion, 113th Pennsylvania Artillery, and the 1st Battalion, 175th Pennsylvania Infantry. The ‘Ole Bloody Anvil Brigade.’” He stood in front of Joseph, looking down on him.
He continued with his resume-based harangue. “We are a portion of the 28th Infantry Division, known as the Iron Division, that is stationed throughout Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, and formerly New Jersey. My men tell me you are a doctor, and that you were traveling alone. Is this true?”
Joseph took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. “My name is Dr. Joseph Jackowski. Although I’m probably not the kind of doctor that you are looking for, I am a virologist with the CDC. I escaped from the Mount Eden FEMA Facility with a group of survivors who were ambushed and captured by bandits.”
“Damn, is nothing left?” Jackson spat.
Joseph didn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t know. The infected were everywhere,” he said, feeling a bit embarrassed for not knowing.
“We have been having problems with personnel at FEMA Camp Hope. You see, before we knew how to deal with these things, our doctors and field medics were infected. I sent my only remaining physician to help the civilians, but now the facility has been shut down. Permanently.”
“Why is the facility shut down?”
“Overrun. No one came back. We lost a lot of good soldiers trying to hold that place.”
Joseph gulped.
“This is like no war I’ve ever seen, but in some ways wars are all the same. And I need a doctor to keep my units operational,” Colonel Jackson said. His cold eyes demanding of Joseph.
“I would be honored to help our servicemen and women, but I’m afraid that my mission is of more importance. I am traveling to Michigan to track down a lead on Patient Zero. I could use your help in getting there.”
Colonel Jackson held up a hand firmly. “Doctor Jackowski. Who gave you this mission?”
“Uh, the United States Congress?” Joseph lied.
Colonel Jackson stared through him. “We must be in bad shape if Congress is sending a lone virologist on a mission of such importance with nothing more than a tire iron to defend himself,” Jackson said sternly.
Joseph didn’t know what else to say and did not have the opportunity.
“You can see that I have very little to spare in the way of personnel. My numbers are strained due to infection and desertion. The 128th Support Battalion down river is doing an excellent job of keeping us supplied, but I cannot risk the lives of my men on such a risky task. Even if I could spare the troops, I can’t let you enter the quarantine zone under Presidential Directive 6642. But, I do have a use for you here. It is imperative that we maintain our quarantine of the city, or the infected will break through,” Colonel Jackson said. He started to pace and stopped at a map hanging on the tent wall.
“Desertion?” Joseph wondered.
Colonel Jackson grimaced, “How can I ask men to do their duty when their families are being slaughtered? And we don’t know where the next reinforcements are coming from. I am going to be honest with you. Things are bad. We haven’t heard from Quarantine Base Adder, Boa, or Cobra in two days.”
He thrust a meaty finger onto a map of Pittsburgh. Question marks surrounded red-drawn circles indicating bases that surrounded the city.
“Full infantry brigades completely offline. What I would give to have just a fraction of the 59th Stryker Brigade Combat Team here. They were ushered over to Philadelphia. Haven’t heard from Colonel Hartman in a while either.” Colonel Jackson stared thoughtfully at the map, seeming to wonder and despair at once.
“I must continue on,” Joseph stammered.
Colonel Jackson glared. “You will not continue on. Having a doctor will give the men hope. It will give the men courage to fight on. You, Dr. Jackowski are a key ingredient to this mess. You will stay here and aid this operation. As an American, you have a duty to these American soldiers. Under the Martial Law Act of 2002, I hereby conscript you into the United States Army.”
STEELE
Backbone Peak, WV
Rancorous laughter rose above the bonfire’s flames. They both died down as the night ticked away. Steele slunk through the trees on the outside of the camp. His steps were calculated and slow as if he were learning the footwork of a complex dance. He was in a dance of shadows where any misstep meant death. Any twig break or rustle of leaves in the wind could mean nothing or the impending approach of the dead … or worse, the men in the camp. He was the hunter, the outsider, but he felt like the prey.
The trees provided him good concealment, but he didn’t think any of his enemies were awake now. Orange coals lay in the fire pits, glowing tiny orbs of light. The form of a man lay near the fire. Bastard is probably passed out.
As he crept closer, he was sure it was a moonshiner. The man sawed away, snoring with his mouth hanging open. Steele crouched down and watched patiently. Planning an attack was a prudent man’s game. Rushing would get him and Kevin killed. He waited until he was sure the man was sound asleep before he moved.
Twenty yards from the camp he came to hastily placed barbwire. The barbwire wasn’t meant for people like in the battlefields of World War One. The three-rowed wire was made for common farm animals or livestock. The spiked barbs would poke and cut the unknowing, hindering access to the camp, but would not keep any determined human out, alive or dead.
Steele picked up a twig from the ground and tossed it at the lowest rung of the sharp-knotted metal. The stick bounced harmlessly to the ground with a crackle of leaves. No hum of electricity sang forth. Good, no current.
Sliding out some wire cutters from his pocket, he snipped each of the three rungs. He chanced a glance at the fire pit. The silhouette of the passed-out man lay still. Steele inched closer and closer to the camp. Maybe I should gut this guy in his sleep. Give them something to think about.
He closed the distance, his eyes focused on the man’s sleeping form. A thin taut wire snagged his ankle, sending him off his feet.
“Houff,” he gasped as his body hit the earth. His hands braced his fall. Dirt and dried leaves crushed beneath him. He held himself motionless. You clumsy idiot. His heart sped up as he scanned the forest floor. Long pointed wood stakes were centimeters away from his nose: a trench of short spears placed in haphazard fashion. Lucky you’re short or you’d be a dead man. They have tripwire.
“Case, you hear that?” came a voice in the dark. Men sat still near the fire. Steele breathed heavily through his nose.
“Hear what? Owen, I swear on Christ almighty you are the scarediest idiot I’ve ever met,” Case said.
“I thought I heard one of ’um out there,” Owen said, his speech slurred.
“So what? We’ll get the slave boy to clean it up in the morning. Come on, let’s see if we can get our hands on some of Old Barnum’s secret stash,” Case said.
“Where’s he got it?” Owen said.
“Follow me,” Case said.
The two men left their sleeping comrade and tramped away in search of their liquid treasure.
Steele crawled back to the tripwire and cut it free. It twanged away, curli
ng up in a coil.
That should be enough to give the undead a head start; they only need to traverse a trench of stakes. A couple will get tangled, but the others will walk over them.
When Steele crawled, stalked, and climbed his way back to where Kevin waited, he almost called off his plan.
“You good?” Steele asked. He could tell Kevin was nervous in the dark.
“Yeah, its good up here.”
“I know. I cleared the fences. A nice open route.”
“Thanks,” Kevin said. Sarcasm surrounded his words.
I am putting Gwen in danger. I am certainly putting Mauser and Ahmed in danger. They are practically chickens in the coop. But if I don’t do this, we will be going in blind. Kiss all of our asses goodbye.
“You’ll be fine,” he said to Kevin. Kevin snorted in response. The two men hunkered close to the earth, each left to his own thoughts.
Early morning hung over Puck’s camp like a thin gray sheet. Nothing moved below. The fires were mere plumes of smoke. Steele almost found peace in the waxing light. Almost. Knowing that his enemies camped below, and the infected roamed the land, meant that no peace could be found. No peace here. No peace anywhere.
Near dawn, he and Kevin parted ways. The high school history teacher trooped off into the morning. Stay fast, buddy.
Thirty minutes later, Kevin’s lanky form weaved between the trees. He glanced over his shoulder. Interspersed throughout the trees behind him was a pack of infected, who struggled their way through the forest. He led them near the cut fence and then peeled off, staying low. As he hid behind a tree, the dead passed one by one and Kevin button-hooked back up the mountain. Steele sat stoically as Kevin approached, panting from the effort.
“Good work, buddy,” Steele said.
“Remind me.” Breath. “To never.” Wheeze. “Do you any favors again,” Kevin gasped.
“I don’t ask them lightly,” Steele said, his voice soft.
“I thought they were going to catch me,” Kevin said hoarsely.
“Thank you. Pop a squat. This party is about to get started,” Steele said, gazing through the binoculars.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. I’m gonna need a drink,” Kevin coughed, letting his head fall between his legs. “More than one.”
Steele was silent watching the camp below. His breath fogged in the morning light. He hadn’t noticed the encroaching chill in the night that surrounded them now. A chill that had threatened his life only days ago.
The shapes of dead foes moved through the trees. The infected followed one another in the search for fresh, unsuspecting victims.
Steele watched the spectacle with grim determination, judging his enemies’ every move and response to danger. A man stood near the trees, relieving his heavy morning bladder. He yelped when they brought him down.
The dead forced their way into the camp. The pack of slow movers was hell bent on the destruction of the humans. They clambered in between the cabins, searching for prey.
Steele checked his watch. Three minutes had passed and no one had yet responded to the obvious threat. The pissing moonshiner became a rapidly decreasing pile of steaming guts. A woman screamed as the dead pounded on windows and doors, and the alarm finally sounded out.
GWEN
Backbone Peak, WV
When light barely reached over the windowsill, she stirred. Puck snored loudly next to her, and nature called her to action. Gently, she shook his chest.
“Puck. Sweetie, wake up,” she whispered. “I have to pee.”
His dark black beard hung matted to his chest by drool that settled in the corner of his mouth. What a revolting human. Gwen gave him a punch in the shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t get a black eye for her effort.
“Puck, please,” she said louder. “I’m going to piss the bed,” she whispered.
He whimpered, smacking his lips, and scratched his giant hairy belly beneath a filthy stretched-out tank top.
She pulled herself upright, trying to angle her arm in a position that gave it some relief from its stiffness. Her handcuffs rattled on the rusty bed frame. She clinked them back and forth on the frame above Puck’s head.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” she yelled at him. His hand unconsciously wiped the corner of his mouth. Frustrated, she stared out the window. The camp still slumbered.
The light breached the darkness. The night retreated before it, revealing shoddy cabins. Mauser and Ahmed were strung up on the other side of her cabin. Not having them in view gave her anxiety. Her anxiety grew even worse not knowing the status of her women in the shed. Her bladder throbbed and her gut roiled with anxious thoughts. I have no way to tell if they are alright or even still in the camp. They could have killed them in the night, and I would know nothing.
A shadow in human form passed close to the window of her cabin. Jesus. She put her free hand to her chest. The shadow continued on, hobbling like a man who was bound to a cane. It was the way the person moved that made the hair raise on the back of her neck.
Another tormented shadow brushed by the window following the first. His skin was gray. Tendons of his neck were exposed by mouth-sized holes in his flesh. Infected.
Her mind raced with alarm. “PUCK, wake up. Infected!” she yelled. He murmured in his sleep but didn’t wake up. She punched him in the chest repeatedly as if she were trying to restart his heart. A black eye is better than dead.
“Wake up, you big dummy. INFECTED,” she screamed. More shadows lumbered past the window, skimming it with hunched shoulders.
An infected noticed her and started slapping the glass, as if he were insulted by Gwen. His eyes were sunken in his skull, leering like sour milk, and his lips were gone, worn away long before, uncovering teeth and gums that oozed blackish gore.
Puck opened his eyes a crack. “Damn it,” he shouted. He leapt out of the bed and was at the door in two long strides. He hefted a wood axe from the corner and ran out.
“Wake up you stinkin’ bastards,” he yelled outside.
The infected glared down at her. His hand smeared the glass with filth. Within moments, it shattered onto Gwen. She crawled to the corner of the bed, handcuffs preventing her escape. The thing’s flesh caught on the glass, flaying his skin up his arm. Bloody hands stretched down through the window and grabbed for her. Its yellow, cracked fingernails nicked her neck and face. She hardly felt the blood finding its way to the surface of her skin.
“NO,” she screamed at him, but it didn’t care. It hated her. That was the only way to describe it. Blind angry hate, hell bent on her demise.
Stretching painfully across the bed, she scrambled on the floor. Using her other hand to pull on her steel bracelet, she yanked harder and harder on the handcuffs. Any more and her wrist will break. If I dislocate my thumb, I can slip my hand free.
Her breath came out rough and forced. She pressed down on her thumb joint. Pain built up as she applied pressure with her other hand. The fiend’s flesh peeled backward, a shave with glass gone wrong. Its hand inched closer. Its mouth gaped in death’s smile and then its jaws clamped together.
In an instant, the fiend was ripped back through the window like it was sucked from a hole in an airplane. Gwen lay paralyzed across the stinking bed. Puck’s scraggy beard-covered, watermelon-sized head replaced the infected’s. Seconds passed as her eyes tried to decipher if he too was infected.
“You okay?” he ground out.
“Yes,” she exhaled, and he was gone.
STEELE
Backbone Peak, WV
An enormous man with a long black beard bellowed at his comrades. He swung a wood axe into the skulls of the infected intruders. Gunshots rang out as more men of the camp were brought into the action.
The giant man worked over the infected with violent efficiency, swinging a two-handed wood axe like it was a wiffle-ball bat. He decapitated an infected with a single blow. Its head rolled away from its body.
That guy is too large to take one on one. I’m
going to need some help, or go for his joints. If he gets his paws on me, I may as well be facing a grizzly bear. Steele gritted his teeth.
Once the entirety of the camp was brought into play, the battle was over. Only a single moonshiner perished in the undead assault. Steele was pretty sure old Black Beard could have taken on all of them by himself.
Steele dropped the binoculars. “You did good out there,” he said.
“A little too good. They caught that guy as he was taking a piss,” Kevin said.
“I’m not sorry for it.”
Kevin looked at him and frowned. “I’m not very enthusiastic about killing my neighbors. No matter how felonious they trend.”
“Those are evil men down there. They have killed innocents, of that there is no doubt. I will execute their sentence if needs be. I won’t ask that of you.” There will be a need. I must live with that.
Kevin didn’t look convinced by Steele’s explanation. “Maybe you should be the runner next time,” he said.
Steele eyed his new friend. It was easy to hold people in the same light as he would other agents or soldiers. Kevin was only a school teacher. Everyone had the capability to be brave or to be a coward. He had already asked so much of his new acquaintance. I shouldn’t have pushed him so hard. But what choice do I have? I need his help.
“I’m going to have to kill people down there.” That big one for sure. “What they are doing is wrong and I have to stop them. More importantly, I need to get those innocent people free. But I can’t do this without your help,” Steele said, putting a hand on his new friend’s bony shoulder.
The End Time Saga (Book 2): The Breaking Page 11
