100 A.Z. (Book 2): Tenochtitlan

by Nelson, Patrick T.

She didn’t go to bed that night. She stayed up looking at imagery, but not of the herd. Sal had neglected to collect a few drives that Ellie had stashed from her previous task of looking at Western Government cities. She carefully kept watch over her shoulder as she loaded the imagery. Once it finished she had Colorado Springs in front of her. It was from February the year prior. Snow covered the ground.

  One thing had plagued her since finding out Sal had been changing dates on the imagery—why had he given her new imagery for Colorado Springs? Yes, he mistrusted Sara, so he was making sure she wasn’t pulling anything, but why entrust that job to someone else? Why didn’t Sal look at Colorado Springs himself?

  She wondered what had happened to the analyst who’d first discovered that cities in the Rocky Mountain Government were turning to ghost towns. Were they buried outside the wall somewhere?

  And how had Sal kept it a secret? Sure, communication was bad between the different cities. They didn’t trust each other and were essentially competitors. Wasn’t there some trade, though? Didn’t people talk, gossip or otherwise spread word? Weren’t there any survivors? People like Obevens’ security team—didn’t they ever come across any clues while out in the field? It made no sense.

  She fell asleep at her desk with her questions unanswered.

  Sal was at home with his fourth wife. Her name was Debbie, the youngest of them. Behind her back, Sal and his other wives referred to her as Number Four. The other three were at their homes with their respective children, sleeping soundly. Sal couldn’t sleep, though. He couldn’t shut his mind down. This was a familiar problem, and usually he silenced it with some brandy, but that night he wasn’t in the mood. Something was troubling him. He slipped up from the creaky wooden bed and wrangled his coat on. Rolling over, his wife groggily asked him where he was going.

  “I’ll be back,” he growled, irritated she was still so clingy. She shrank at his response and retreated back to her side of the bed. Good, Sal thought. Learn your place. The other wives had.

  He stepped out into the cold Los Alamos night and made his way to the perimeter wall. It was fairly crude, built with rocks arduously gathered from the surrounding landscape before his time. Sal went to the ladder on the west side of the installation. It was the only way off the compound right now, with the gate closed for security. A guard manned the ladder. Sal barely acknowledged his presence. The guard knew the drill and threw a rope ladder down the other side of the wall. Sal climbed up the interior ladder and then down the rope ladder on the outside. He drew his handgun from his belt and made his way by moonlight.

  He was only walking a half a mile from the wall but took it slow and cautiously. It would be easy for a stray walker to be waiting in his path. It wasn’t cold enough for them to start going into dormancy or going through the freeze/thaw cycle of night and day, so he had to be careful. He tripped on a rock and let out a grunt, then paused, listening for any response around him. After a minute of silence, he went on.

  He saw the faint outline of buildings in front of him. He headed to one of them in particular. It was a small building and didn’t stand out from the others except for an ancient solar panel and an antenna sticking up from the building’s top. The door had two rusty, pre-outbreak padlocks on it. Sal was the only one with keys. The lock scraped, and the door hinges creaked. He scolded himself for continually forgetting to oil them as he let himself in. He could almost hear his father reprimanding him. He went inside and shut the door behind him.

  He lit a few candles and pushed a small button on the wall that showed him his battery levels on a foggy light meter. They were fully charged. He settled into his chair and turned on the radio equipment covering the table.

  As the old machine crackled to life, Sal sat there for a moment and thought. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Yes. He was done thinking. It was time to talk.

  He cleared his throat and leaned in to the microphone.

  “This is Sal. I need to speak with Dav.”

  Chapter 7

  “Should we yell out for them?” Carlos asked Hog.

  Hog looked at Carlos and shook his head. “It would bring every walker in the area.”

  “But maybe John and Mark, too.”

  Hog looked back to the river they’d just crossed. The undead were massed on the other side. They would stay there for a while, locked in on the last thing to pique their interest. Hog wondered if he was any different. He put his mind to something and continued after it even when all hope was washed away.

  He shook his head. “No. We have to keep moving. Those zombies will eventually cross that river, we need as big of a lead as we can get. We’ll find them again, I think.”

  Carlos reluctantly agreed, and they moved on, hoping they weren’t abandoning two friends to their doom.

  Silently they marched through the dense jungle. A half hour later, with neither saying a word, they passed a dead body on the ground. It was a man, stabbed in the chest, no sign of having been a walker. He had a circle tattoo on his inner arm. One half of the circle was the sun and the other side was the moon. Hog grunted and motioned for Carlos to keep moving. Carlos saw the tattoo, as well. Hog didn’t say anything, but he knew the tattoo was for the Red Mouths.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Hog said. He was encouraged that it was a dead one, as that meant someone else didn’t like these cults. Unless it was just another cult.

  Three nights passed. Hog caught a monkey in a snare and they split it. Both felt like they were being followed, but their investigations didn’t reveal anyone.

  Neither said the obvious. They were being followed.

  “Carlos,” Hog said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know about the Red Mouths?”

  Carlos scrunched up his nose. “No.”

  “I know, it’s a stupid name. Translates funny. They are bad guys. We’re in some trouble here,” Hog said quietly.

  “Trouble…”

  “Especially as foreigners. Man, I wish we hadn’t come this way. They sacrifice young women and feed foreigners to the dead. It’s all something to do with some prophecy. I wished I paid more attention to that guy who explained it. All I know is they are capitol “K” crazy.”

  “Crazy doesn’t start with a “K,” Carlos corrected.

  “With these guys it does. The King of Tenochtitlan profits off them, sells them women and foreigners. Bad juju.” Hog stopped, thinking he heard something. After pausing a minute he began again. “They think they can control the dead. They sorta can, but its unreliable. Can’t explain it.”

  Carlos was taking it all in when he saw them.

  “Look!” Carlos motioned into the dense jungle on their left.

  There they were.

  Three men wearing nothing but loincloths standing still in the jungle. They were smeared in blood like body paint. They were watching Hog and Carlos.

  Hog didn’t like the look in their eye.

  “Keep walking.” Hog pulled his hammer out of his belt.

  The three men were whispering, but not to each other, to the jungle around them. One emitted a loud, joyless laugh, cutting through the silence.

  “Fools are going to get us all killed,” Hog muttered.

  He felt a subtle prick on the bottom of his bare foot. They had lost their sandals in their hasty river-crossing. He paid it no mind until Carlos too lifted his foot and pulled out a small thorn.

  “Aww, crap. They got us,” Hog said. They heard the laugh again fifty yards back. Carlos had a puzzled look on his face and said, “Huh?” as he looked back to the extracted thorn.

  “Come on!” Hog exclaimed as he frantically searched for a vine. He saw one down the hillside to their right and they slid down the steep hill to get it.

  “We don’t have much time. The hallucinogen will take effect within the hour,” Hog said. Carlos wasn’t sure what that meant but could tell it was bad. “If we stay together, we’ve got a chance. These guys are cowards. They like poison and getting biters to do th
eir work.”

  Hog pulled the vine down and began collecting more until they had enough for what he had in mind. “Go to that huge tree.” Carlos complied. Hog began securely tying a vine around Carlos’ waist. He then tied the other end to a strong, low branch on the tree, giving Carlos a few feet of slack.

  “This is so you don’t wander off.”

  Wander off? Carlos thought.

  Hog tied himself to the other side of the same tree. He made sure there wasn’t enough slack to get to Carlos’ side.

  Once he was done he began to explain. “You’re gonna start seeing weird stuff that isn’t really there, and thinking things that aren’t really true. You have your club?” Carlos affirmed. “Swing at whatever comes at you. Whatever! They can’t sneak up behind us. Like I said, they aren’t fighters, they’re sneaks. We’ve got to hold out until this stuff wears off.”

  “I don’t feel anything. What do you mean ‘wears off?’”

  “You’ll see, trust me.”

  ***

  Carlos swung at the walker in front of him. It looked exactly like him. It was him. When his club cracked open its skull and the body crumpled to the ground Carlos was overcome by a deep bottomless sorrow.

  “I killed it!” he blurted. His chest tightened with overwhelming feelings of remorse.

  Hog heard him, but was lost in his misery. Crying over his dead wife and how she’d died because he had never given her enough attention. If only he’d sat with her more, listened to her, she would have lived. A fly land on his arm and he went totally still, sure it was there to teach him something.

  The three Red Mouths had arrived on the scene and sat on the hillside above watching the two hallucinating men. They had brought two herders, who were steering biters toward the tree. It was an amusing way to spend the afternoon.

  “I killed it, Hog! It’s dead!” Carlos shouted out as another zombie approached him. He didn’t want to kill the next one. It looked like his mother.

  Hog struggled to look around the tree. “Who are you?! Kill them! Kill them all! They took her! They took her from me!”

  Hog had been right in keeping them on other sides of the tree. Carlos swung wildly as the walker approached. He missed, and the biter grabbed his hand. Carlos’ eyes lit up with affection at the creature he thought his mother. She went to bite him and he recoiled back before smashing her head in. Then he went limp and fell to his knees sobbing like a little boy, wracked with guilt. He retreated to the tree, shivering at the sight of the jungle covered in snakes, all looking at him.

  “She’s dead! Be a man! That’s what I did! We’ll bring her back! They’re never dead! No one ever dies! I will never die!” Hog yelled, as he studied the fly on his arm. His mood swung, and suddenly he grew angry at the fly as he remembered them swarming on his sweet love, his beautiful wife. He swatted at it, and it easily dodged the blow and landed on his shoulder. He swatted at it again, but it went to his leg. It was just like the world, he thought, filled with suffering and inability to stop the things trying to devour you.

  The observers on the hillside made some comments about the proceedings and sent a handler off to get another tool in their arsenal.

  He returned with a young woman. Her eyes were dark and her mouth downturned. She’d been fed this same hallucinogen for years until her whole mind was twisted to their will and obeyed their orders. They gave her a knife and pointed her toward the two tied men. She understood and was about to go to them when a walker approached the group from the area. She smiled and went for it before one of the Red Mouths stopped her and redirected her back toward Hog and Carlos. The Red Mouths spent years brainwashing their captive girls to love the undead. They gave them hallucinogens and told them lies. It made their final sacrifice at the harvest festivals all the easier. Having a girl die in front of a crowd with no fear reinforced to the community the power of the Red Mouths.

  The girl slinked toward Hog. His wide eyes locked on her.

  “Betty? Betty?” Hog wept, hope nearly lifting him off the ground. “You aren’t Betty!” Hog yelled.

  She bared her teeth at him and hissed like a zombie would. She jumped at him, but Hog was quick with his hammer into her arm, breaking it. She screamed in pain and fell back clutching her arm. The walker approaching the scene became interested in her, but the handler steered him back to Carlos.

  The pain sobered the young woman for a moment. The Red Mouths said she would never feel pain if she did what they wanted. She would only experience freedom once they let her be bit. This pain in her broken arm didn’t match any of those lies.

  One of the Red Mouths saw her conundrum and shouted down to her in Spanish. “The pain is only because you are not doing what we say. Attack him again!”

  She obeyed, and Hog kicked her to the ground, jarring her arm and sending jolts of pain through her. The Red Mouths shook their heads in disappointment at her. She was another in the long list of failures who were not brave enough to bring back the true King of the Undead. The current King of Tenochtitlan was an imposter.

  The prophecy stipulated that three events would bring the true king, the first being when a woman pure of heart saw danger and still walked forward. The second was when a foreigner was killed yet still lived. Lastly, the foreigner would be unaffected by a walker’s bite. All three conditions created a culture trying to force these circumstances to occur, often at the expense of the people, mostly young women.

  The Red Mouths stood and left, having done their chore of bringing together foreigners, a young woman, and the undead. The combination did not succeed, as many times before. Their search was not over.

  The girl, seeing her failure, ran after them along with the handlers. This left Hog and Carlos alone to ride out the sickening wave of hallucinations that attacked them. By the end, both would be exhausted and only held up by the vines around their waists, but alive.

  The following days involved them passing through the Red Mouths’ territory. They traveled unmolested, as word had been put out these two were no help in bringing about the prophecy. Hog and Carlos were okay with failing in that respect. They knew this was small consolation, as the herd was only a day or two behind them, having been delayed by the river. Everything they looked upon now would be destroyed, trampled under by hordes of the living dead.

  Everyone about them mentioned Tenochtitlan, the only safe haven. There they would be protected. There was safety. Hog and Carlos knew there was no other choice. They must head to Tenochtitlan or die.

  Chapter 8—November 100 A.Z.

  Sara marched her forces relentlessly over the following week. She saw no reason not to. Their progress was unchallenged. The only people they encountered were farmers from small villages, who mostly fled. Her scouts came back with the same report every day: No sign of enemy forces and only small pockets of humans. They hadn’t even seen many undead.

  The map she’d acquired from the fort was invaluable. It showed the best route by foot or cart to Mexico City. The loss of men, walkers and time had been well worth it for the map.

  In his mind, the problem was simple. She’d told everyone they were going to capture territory on the coast. Now they weren’t. She hadn’t explained the shift to the men. This meant the men began to wonder. When they wondered, they filled in the gaps with conjecture. This led to all sorts of rumors that didn’t help morale. And these were only the rumors Bowen was privy to. Who knew what he wasn’t hearing?

  Sara didn’t care. She believed in the loyalty of her men and the value of her cause, she said. Bowen had wanted to ask “What cause is that?” but bit his tongue. He would let Commander Drew ask the question.

  Bowen sent a runner to bring him Obevens. The captain rode in the cart behind Sara under the watch of some of her guards. When Obevens got the summons, he hopped down from his cart and waited for Bowen to reach him.

  Bowen had the second largest personal cart in the army, only outsized by Sara’s. It had ample covering and was good for private conversations once
the general sent his guards away. A private conversation was what Bowen needed.

  As Bowen’s cart trundled by, Obevens grabbed the side and pulled himself up. “Captain,” Bowen greeted him.

  “General,” Obevens replied cordially.

  Bowen winced internally every time he heard the title. There had been no General before Bowen. Sara had made the title just for him. It felt fake. “Have you ever been to Mexico City?” Bowen said, getting right to the point.

  “Never,” Obevens replied promptly.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is that ‘nothing’ like the ‘nothing’ you knew about Fort Huachuca and the storage facility?”

  “No. Really, I know nothing. That village we passed three days ago was the furthest south I’ve been. Sal didn’t have us doing any work down here.”

  Bowen frowned.

  Obevens met his gaze.

  “Captain, I’m not sure you understand the danger we are in,” Bowen began quietly.

  “The danger you all are in? Or the danger I am in? Those two are separate things.”

  “Our danger is your danger now. You are tied to her decisions as much as we all are,” Bowen said.

  “Are you concerned about being tied to her decisions?” Obevens asked.

  Bowen looked down and scratched his forehead. In their meetings, the two often skirted around the problems with Sara’s changing goals but had never dived in. This time, he answered.

  “Yes. I think there might be issues. The men are beginning to wonder why we are heading to this place. All the hopeful talk about a beach is gone. Now we are marching on a powerful and probably well-defended capitol.” He shifted in his seat. “Yes. The ‘beach’ situation may not have been what she described it to be, but at least I had time to think about what would happen once we got there. Now morale is dropping, and the questions I thought I had more time to answer are coming up.”

  “What do you mean the beach situation isn’t what she described?” Obevens asked.