ALONE
The entire next day and night passed. No one coming back for them. The cages got uncomfortable real fast in that time. Now it was the end of another day and still no Emilio or his mysterious boss. Was anyone returning for them?
Gus sat, trying to ignore his swollen tongue, his protesting stomach, and the stench of the corner where everyone relieved themselves. Madison took turns sitting with him throughout the day and getting up and doing little laps inside the pen.
The pens were eight feet tall and over the top poles wound a generous amount of barbed wire . That, plus the threat of zombies being attracted to the noise, kept anyone from attempting to scale them. The couple of times a person tried that first day, one or two zombies always showed up before they made any progress. They would wander around like lost children before eventually shuffling off.
That first day Gus and Linda shouted back and forth, mostly to make sure each other were doing okay. Now the thought of shouting made Gus wince. Did these assholes plan on leaving them all here to die of dehydration?
After hours that seemed like days, the sky grew dark once again. Overhead Gus could see the small sliver of the moon peeking out among the stars. Madison returned to his lap. The kid looked on the verge of collapse. She nuzzled herself under his chin. He wrapped her up as best he could, trying to keep her warm.
Gus woke with a start. He didn't remember falling asleep. A pain, dull and distracting, raced up and down his back. He nearly spilled Madison out of his lap as he adjusted. He slept with his back to the fence they shared with their neighbor, and it dug into him something fierce.
A sound had woken him up. Something like a saw trying to cut through a metal tube. He waited, and it came again. He almost laughed out loud. That guy again, Mr. Snores-a-lot.
A part of the fence somewhere behind him rattled as if a person back there needed to release some tension. Seconds later a woman's scream broke the night.
His first thought was that ol' limpy might have returned. Other people around him began to fuss and carry on. It took what seemed like forever to get Madison and himself up to a standing position. When he turned, he figured out why the fence rattled to beat the devil.
At the far end of the set of fenced cages wasn't one lone zombie, or even two. A pack of seven pushed and shoved on the cage. A few of the people in the last pen were kicking them off, only for the zombies to return right back to attacking the fence.
It was like a dam broke and all the pent up terror held in check broke loose. Everyone wailed and screamed and lost their shit. The noise worked the zombies up into a frenzy. The people in the pen under attack shrank back to the opposite fence from the clawing hands and snapping jaws.
Across and through the chaotic mass of bodies Gus glimpsed Linda trying to calm everyone down. The loudest offender, the woman who started screaming first, wouldn't shut up. He saw Linda clamp her hand over the woman's mouth. It was too late. Mass hysteria coursed through the crowd.
The zombies, including ol' limpy who Gus spotted in the pack, put their combined weight against the fence. The fencing sagged in the middle, where a rather large zombie with a face like a rotted jack-o'-lantern, pressed so hard chunks of its grey flesh caught and ripped off in the links.
In a panicked craze people in the last pen attempted to scale the fence. Some pushed and trampled over the others, using them to get a boost up. The zombie wall groaned and links snapped. That side of the structure didn't touch the ground anymore. It had tilted over enough for the zombies to start crawling under it. One scaled the fence like a crazy spider monkey, a maneuver Gus hadn't seen them do ever.
The screaming somehow rose another notch. Gus stood, helpless to calm the crowd, helpless to do anything. He hoped to God in heaven that all this racket didn't attract the rest of the whole damn city on top of them. If only they had a gun, a bat, some kind of weapon. If only they hadn't been brought here in the first place.
The monkey zombie slowed as he got caught up in the barbed wire. One zombie, a woman who's long hair was so caked in muck it was colorless, ripped open her arm on some pointy bits as she dragged herself under the fence. Limpy somehow got a piece of fence wrapped around its neck. As it reached for a lady knocked out in the dirt, it ended up garroting itself. The remaining wiggled closer and closer to the living.
Two people escaping the attacked pen reached the next. One, who had to leave their coat dangling behind, bled profusely from several cuts.
Gus watched as a young man attempted to bound over the zombies to the outside. He stepped on the back of one crawling through the muck and almost made it. Something tripped him up though, and he fell face first on the other side with a sickening thud. A zombie who lagged behind the rest turned to attack this new, easy target.
The weight of the youngster finished off the fence. Its collapse was complete. The five zombies bounced under the fence as it landed. A woman gave a shriek of desperation, her foot now caught under a downed pole. The one zombie closest to her, decayed flesh shredded, wiggled close enough to clamp down on her leg with its teeth.
One man and one woman, who were about half way up the fence, turned to look down and then at each other. Like a pair of tag team wrestlers, the two jumped in tandem. Both landed square on a zombie feet first. Bones crunched and putrid black goo burst from both. Three zombies remained in motion. The two escapees each moved with care and proceeded to stomp zombie skulls into oblivion.
The man who had landed with a thud crawled away from the carnage and the zombie that now chased after him. "No, no," he wailed as he rose to stand, swaying like a dazed boxer. Two huge chunks of flesh were already ripped out of the man's shoulder. His shirt and jacket were black in the darkness. He held his hands over his wounds as if he could keep the blood inside.
Without another word the dazed man dropped his arms and ran towards the two who had escaped the pens.
The fresh made zombie took the man stomping zombies down before he even knew an attack was on its way. They both fell to the ground in a tangle. The human shrieked, then it ripped away his throat and voice, dangling in the teeth of the zombie.
The woman, Gus made out it was Lindsay, looked around, desperation in her movements. She grabbed up a metal pole that had snapped in several pieces and slid one part free of the clamps. She strode over to the new zombie and its victim, raised the pole with the ragged end pointed down, then rammed the makeshift stake through both of them. Impaled to the man it attacked and the ground, the zombie squirmed. Casting around, Lindsay found a large shard of broken glass. She took off her jacket, wrapped it around her hand, and picked up the piece. In one thrust she jammed the glass into the eye socket of the zombie, stilling it.
She came back to the pens, panting. Her face was pale and grim. She approached Gus, breathless. "I'm.... I'm going to get some help. See if I can't get everyone out of here. You all have to calm the fuck down, so I have people to come back and rescue."
Gus gave her a hard nod. He spoke, even though it felt as if he was being forced to swallow sandpaper. "You heard the amazon warrior. We need to settle back down. We have a chance of getting out of here now."
He wasn't sure he was even being heard over the general noise of the crowd. Linda took up words, then Henry, then Dr. Childs. In fits and starts the noise level dropped and became not much more than a whisper.
"Good luck," Gus said to Lindsay, with a little salute.
With a slanted smile and a toss of her violet hair, Lindsay ran off.
ROUND UP
"What the shit did you people do here?" Emilio asked. He approached the cages in halting steps as he surveyed the damage to the one end. "Speaking of shit, that smell is horrendous." The dead bodies of the zombies and the victims laid together in a tangled heap among the broken fencing and barbed wire.
Emilio and his gang had shown up as the day dawned, only a few hours after Lindsay had ran off. Gus hoped she didn't come back only to get captured again. That's if they didn't kill her outright
.
"You said you would be back the next day!" Linda called out from the other pen.
Emilio looked annoyed as he stepped up to the gate of Linda's pen. "Well, after I told the boss about your poor performance, he had other places for me to go. You all became lower priorities. Then, when I do come back, you have made a mess of everything. I wonder if I should leave for good. You can rot, next to your new dead friends."
Most of the people begged and pleaded for Emilio not to go, to give them food and water. Gus felt his stomach turn in pity and disgust, in equal measure, for his friends and neighbors.
Emilio walked the pens, a smirk on his face. With a wave to his six henchmen, who fanned out. Emilio stopped when he returned to where he started. "I tell you what. It's your lucky day. I think I'm going to take you back with me. Let Cash decide what he wants to do with you. I have to say, I don't like your chances. You're the most sorry lot we've found yet." Jolly laughter erupted from him. "And that's saying something."
A new guy ran into the area from behind the U-Haul, dressed all in black, with dark sunglasses and what looked like a sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. He came up and whispered something in Emilio's ear. Emilio's smirk turned into a shocked frown. He clasped the sniper guy on the back and sent him off.
"We need to vamos." Emilio twirled his finger in the air and let out a whistle.
One pen at a time, the townspeople were let out and led back onto the U-Haul trucks. As Linda walked by him, Gus gave her a raised eyebrow. Something spooked these guys, and Gus had a fleeting hope it was Hannah and JT. Why that should be, he didn't know, but it was there. Linda gave him the slightest shrug, like she didn't know what to think either.
That SOB picking on me again, or what? Gus thought. His was the last pen to open. Again he found himself stuffed into the back of the box truck. Behind him erupted the pop, pop of gunfire. He turned to see several zombies filing into the area. They must have been told this was the new hot spot in town.
"Stop, you stupid fucks," Emilio exclaimed. "You'll lead them right here. Get to your cars and go!"
As the door pulled down to seal them in, Gus wondered if they would be soon to join the undead realms. Left to die in the back of one of these damn trucks, or killed by whoever this Cash fellow was. Gus' mood blackened as the truck fired up and bounced around down the road.
SLEDGEHAMMER
The inside of the place made Gus think of Mad Max. Have I gone beyond Thunderdome?
Again they had spent hours jostling in the back of the U-Haul. Or at least it felt like hours. Some people passed out along the way, either from dehydration or hunger. Madison sat beside him in the total darkness. She didn't make a peep, which made him worried about how she was doing. She seemed limp and was unresponsive to any of his questions.
Once they stopped at whereverville, the gang herded them off one at a time. They slapped a water bottle into Gus' hand and sent him down into what looked like a large concrete sewer pipe. At irregular intervals there were camping lamps set on the damp floor. Gus followed the bobbing head of Madison, who looked as if she was about to pass out. He couldn't wait until they stopped, so he could get her to drink up. She hadn't even opened her bottle yet.
The tunnel led to a ladder which led to a good-sized room full of pipes. Beyond that Gus couldn't make out much in the vague light. They led Gus up the stairs, down a concrete hallway, and were now in a very large open warehouse of some kind.
Black support structures arched overhead, holding a dome like roof made of a grey metal. Strips of LED lighting of blue and yellow hung from the rafters. The floor was a cracked and dirty concrete slab. Somewhere a fire burned. Smoke floated above the throng of people.
Gus felt like he was entering a prison. The rough looking group of people that surrounded him shouted and called to him as he passed. Nothing nice either. The crowd split into two walls, and the townspeople traveled down the middle. He thought Madison had to be scared out of her mind. She didn't turn or reach out to him though. She stumbled forward, looking too much like limpy the zombie for his taste.
Ahead, the crowd opened up. When Gus came into the large gap, a stage sat in front of him. A large one, like you would watch a band perform a concert on, about neck high. No one was on the stage at the moment. Gus' eyes were drawn to a ridiculous looking red chair, over elaborate, like something you would find in a mansion. There was a round panel of bright red behind it, with some of those LED strips, these white, around the edge.
They were being directed to fan out in front of the stage, back just far enough so they had a clear view onto it. Gus stood next to Madison. He used the opportunity to take her bottle from her hand, open it, and raise it to her mouth. It was like feeding a baby. He wondered if the kid even knew where she was now. She drank a quarter of the bottle. He screwed the lid back on and placed it in her hand when one of the burly guards approached. The man gave him an expression of deep scorn before he took his place back against the stage.
There was lots of whoopin' and hollerin' behind Gus. It sounded like one hell of a party. Like they were having the end of the world celebration back there.
Fog seeped out from somewhere to envelope their legs. Madison had come around enough to scooch closer to him and take his hand. Gus wanted to search around for Linda, but forced himself to keep his head straight, eyes locked on the stage.
A man marched on stage, the fog swirled around his black leather boots with each step. At one time he had been large bodied, tall, and strong, but in recent years he had gone to seed and walked with a small stoop. With both hands he held a long, heavy looking sledgehammer. Its handle was all black and the head of it was all red, except for the silver edges at both ends.
His hair was short, curly and balding on his forehead, and he had a black beard that only adorned his chin. Even though he looked past his prime, Gus wouldn't want to meet him in a dark back alley.
The man looked down at them all with a single sweep of his head. He sat down in the red chair and laid the sledgehammer across both knees. When he spoke, it was in a thin, raspy voice that didn't match with his intimidating look. It was too high, almost as if he had taken a hit to his voice box that never healed.
"You are the ones I've heard about, the troubled ones? Is this right, Emilio?"
One guard at the end of the stage hopped up and went within a few feet of the man in the chair. "Emilio isn't back yet, Mr. Cash. He stayed behind to deal with another problem."
The man, Mr. Cash, took this information in with a blank expression. Without a word in reply, he waved the guard off. The minion scuttled off with a relieved look.
"Trouble, problems, complications. Maybe Emilio is right and I should cut my losses right here with the group of you," Mr Cash said.
"What you need to do is let us go," Henry spoke from the crowd. "You have no right to bring us here. We are no threat to you."
For the first time what one of them said broke the blank stare. Mr. Cash cracked a weary smile. "I do have the right. You are mistaken. I have the resources and now, I have the power." He smacked the handle of the sledgehammer into one of his hands. "Power of arms rules this world now, like it did back in the start of time. I am strong and you are weak, that is all the right I need."
Gus admired Henry at the moment, but also thought him a fool. What they needed to do was keep their mouths shut and with some luck this clown Cash would throw them together in a room or pen. There they might work as a team and come up with a plan of getting out of here. To his dismay, Henry kept talking.
"What could you possibly need with us? From what I can tell, it looks like you and your people are doing well. Just let us all go and-"
One of the guards rushed forward and grabbed Henry by the arm. Henry cried out in pain and tried to pull back. The guy must have had an iron grip on him, Henry didn't budge. The guard yanked and drew Henry to the stage.
"Okay, I get it now. I can help." Henry rattled on as they brought him onto the stage. He put up a st
ruggle, but it was doing him no good. "I'm an engineer. I will help you. I understand now."
The guard threw Henry to the ground before Cash. The man rammed the butt of his rifle into the square of Henry's back. A grunt escaped Henry. The volume of the crowd behind Gus fell to a hush.
Cash looked down at Henry from his seat like he was looking at a roach. He made a spectacle of rising slow, shifting the sledgehammer from his knees to his hands. He put one boot on Henry's back. The sledgehammer rose into the air.
"I can... can do so much for you. I have skills, hard to find skills-"
Smash.
It was like being front row at that old comedian Gallagher's show, except this wasn't watermelon juice splashing on the ground in front of him. Almost like a reflex, Gus threw his arm up over Madison's face. He couldn't block out the sickening squelching sound. Or the sound of people around him getting sick. Or the cheer of the crowd behind him.
Cash sat back down, not even breathing harder. The head of his hammer dripped red. Little bits of hair stuck to it. "Someone clean this filth up."
At that moment Gus wasn't sure if he would live till tomorrow. If this guy was that much of a maniac, he had no idea what Cash would do next. Since that was the case, Gus pulled Madison close to him, her face hugged into his side. She had seen worse after The Outbreak, but still there was no reason for her to dwell on the spectacle in front of them.
After they cleared away the body of Henry, Cash got up from his chair and stepped to the edge of the stage. He dragged his sledgehammer across the floor one handed. Again he looked down his nose at them.
"Emilio may be right. You may be the first worthless bunch we've found yet. I can't ask him though, can I?" Cash turned to his right and hollered in his high pitched voice. "Charr, get these people out of my sight. To the holdings with them, until I decide what to do."
The Outbreak Series (Book 4): Deadlocked Page 8
