“More behind!”
Before Chambers could take command, the desert night lit up with shooting at three walkers. This kept happening all night. A couple here, a few there. The men’s nerves were shot. They began arguing with one another about what to do concerning the dwindling ammunition. None were willing to use hand weapons until they’d used every last round.
As the faint glow of the sun rose in the east, the men saw what was happening. The flat landscape allowed a clear view. Every direction they looked there were small groups of the undead headed in their direction. Only groups of two or three, all at various distances but clearly headed straight for them. Every five or ten minutes one of these groups would reach their camp and they would have to put them down. Around ten in the morning, the last round of ammunition was spent. The men pulled out their clubs, knives and hammers. None of them looked confident with the weapons.
“Where are they coming from?!”
Sal was silent. He acted concerned but not surprised. Ellie wondered what he wasn’t saying.
In the early afternoon, the men were getting fatigued. They’d been fighting with hand weapons for only three hours. That was when the next threat showed itself. It happened as they waited for a group of four walkers to finally reach them. They were about a hundred yards off and moving slowly.
“Hurry up, I want to sit down,” one of the men complained under his breath.
They watched the group shuffle slowly toward them when one of the men flinched and then fell to the ground in a spray of blood. Another man beside him suddenly crumpled. They had been shot by something. Something silent.
“Snipers!”
“I can’t see anything!”
Everyone scrambled to their tents, hoping that this would conceal them from snipers. Walkers were still coming, though, and the snipers would have to be braved to dispatch them. The men got out of their tents. No more shots. On the next wave of zombies, no more shots. It wasn’t until the third wave of walkers came that another two men were killed. They were down to eight men.
They decided to stay in their tents. The walkers weren’t deterred and began climbing on the tents to get at what they knew was inside. The group cowered as one-by-one men got trapped in their tents and cried out for help. No one went to their aid. This continued until the evening. They finally agreed it was better to not be in the tents. They were down to Sal, Chambers, two men, and Ellie.
Ellie looked out onto the dusk and the black figures moving toward them. She thought of Los Alamos, her computer, Obevens. All of that was about to be over. She had hoped that…Her thought was interrupted by the last two men falling to the ground as shots came. She dropped down to the one nearest her and held his hand as he slipped away. He was so young and couldn’t understand why this was happening, what it was all for. Chambers grabbed Ellie by the arm and lifted her to her feet. He handed her a club. Both Sal and Chambers had weapons, too.
“They’re late,” Sal said, finally revealing he knew what this was about.
“They’re making a point,” Chambers replied.
“W-w-wha–”
Sal sighed. “Oh shut up, Ellie.”
Chapter 16
“Left!” Tock barked to Carla and John, as they reached another junction in the maze. They’d been cleaned up after the last fight, allowed to eat and rest, and then transported to a different arena. John was in the front with a long iron bar. He plunged it into the nearest biter’s head. Carla delivered a straight kick into another’s head that sent a skull fragment into its brain.
They turned left and were faced with yet another junction. The path to the right was blocked by four walkers with chains around their waists hooked to stakes in the ground. Last time Tock had been in one of these mazes, the correct path was always the one with the zombies.
“Right!” he ordered.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?!” Carla accused, as she ducked the arms of a zombie and then delivered a fierce elbow to its temple.
“You wanna lead!? I bring you into my gig and you just boss me, woman?” Tock bellowed, as he threw a walker to the ground and stomped on its head.
“Just like a man, threatened by a woman with an opinion!” Carla snapped back.
John stayed out of their way and used his bar whenever needed. On the walkways above, the crowd was screaming and placing bets at a frantic pace. John tried to make sense of all their cryptic hand signals for placing a bet, but it meant nothing to him. He needed to focus on the maze in front of him, anyway.
“Climb!” Carla yelled as they approached a barrier of rocks. She climbed over it. A zombie grabbed her arm as she reached over the top. She grabbed its wrist and ripped its arm out of the socket before she stood to kick it in the face. When Tock got to the top of the pile, he surveyed from the vantage point.
“Over there, there’s the exit!”
The crowd noise grew in volume as new bets were placed and odds changed.
They dropped down onto the other side of the rock pile, and Tock punched through two walkers while Carla gave a roundhouse kick to the head of a third.
“Tick Tock, Tick Tock,” Tock sing-songed happily, as he grabbed a walker and dashed its head on the wall. “Ka-boom!”
They made a dash in the direction Tock had pointed and he navigated them through the final turns. Five walkers were tied to the brick wall near the exit and the three combatants made quick work of them before jogging out of the death trap.
Guards were waiting for them with guns trained on them. They were immediately tied up with rope.
They were going back to the holding cell with no cleanup.
The crowd on the walkways above went suddenly quiet. The voice of a single man screaming and shouting echoed throughout the building. He was throwing a tantrum and punching the wall. The crowd stared at him for a moment and then went back to their business.
“He lost money,” Tock noted.
Before they exited the building, a gunshot was heard. It was the Tenochtitlan zombie regulators. The crowd scattered as the regulators repeatedly fired into the air. Tock, Carla and John were rushed from the building and into the back street. The guards slammed the rusty metal door behind them and used John’s metal pole – which they had promptly relieved him of – to wedge it shut. The regulators banged on the door and shouted as the three were whisked away into the morass of the city.
John hadn’t seen much of the city, and as he was led at gunpoint he admired the tall ruins. Everything was so tightly packed in, and people were everywhere. They passed a man selling potions to ward off the undead as well as potions to attract the undead. The smell of food from street vendors caught his attention, and the rotting human waste on the gutters repulsed him. They passed some drunk people who pointed at John and laughed. The city was in turmoil, yet in many ways daily life seemed to go on.
“Who was shooting in the building?” John asked.
“The zombie regulators. They control the use and sale of the undead. In shortages, people aren’t allowed to destroy them, and they crack down on the fights. Well, they don’t really crack down. The fight organizer must have forgot a bribe.”
The guards thought it would be better to take Tock, John and Carla to a different location. They put hoods over their heads, as this was a safehouse kept for situations like this.
The hoods were taken off, and they inspected their fellow prisoners. Most didn’t look like fighters, but rather all types of non-locals. The three sat down, tired and aching from the match, and tried to clean off a little.
“I get sick of this,” Carla said, looking at her bruised elbow covered in walker juice.
“Yeah, no joke,” Tock said, as he inspected his knuckles and thought how it was probably only a matter of time before he accidentally punched one in the mouth.
John saw a boy about Mark’s age. John flinched as an image of his son, holding up his hand to show a bite mark, flashed through his mind. The boy saw John staring and shrank away to hide behind
the crowd. John looked at the poor wretches and was filled with rage. Once again, he’d lost a loved one. Those who ruled tore up the lives of the weak for their own benefit. It was the slave trade that had motivated a man like Hoskins to pretend there was a cure for John’s wife. It was the greed and ambition of northerners that weakened the defenses stopping the Panama canal herd. They simply destroyed anyone in their way. It infuriated him.
He really had no right to be angry, though. It was his fault Mark was gone.
They spent the night in the cell and awoke to some water and a bean and corn mixture provided by the guards. Everyone eagerly ate the small portions. In the afternoon, a group of men came by to inspect the slaves. With them was a large man wearing a black mask.
“Hey, that’s Polo,” Tock whispered excitedly, standing up.
“Who?” John asked.
“The official zombie fighter of Tenochtitlan and Tock’s hero,” Carla mocked.
Polo was about five feet seven inches but built like solid brick. He looked like he ate well and was impeccably dressed. His clothes were new and clean, and he even smelled good. He looked over the sad mass and pointed to Carla, Tock and John.
Polo said something in Spanish and motioned to the three. The guards grabbed them.
“These men will clean you up and bring you to my office. I have an event for you,” Polo said in clear English.
“What event?” Tock asked.
Polo gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re choosy? You can go back in the cage if you want.” He gestured graciously back at the door.
Tock said nothing and tried to contain his desire to punch a hole through Polo’s mask.
Polo walked off and the other men did as Polo said.
The friends were cleaned, fed, given new clothes, and taken to Polo’s office. It was in the oldest part of town. The buildings looked ancient to John, ancient even for this world.
They were seated in a nondescript room with skulls lining the shelves on the walls. They each had something written under them that looked like a name. Carla elbowed John to stop gawking.
“Look smart, this could be our break,” she said.
“Break to what?” John asked.
“Something better,” she replied.
“It’s too late for that,” John muttered darkly.
“Don’t forget your other boy. You’re fighting to get back to him now,” Carla said.
“Quiet! Here they come,” Tock shushed. They stood as Polo and four bodyguards entered the room. The bodyguards were all the same size as Polo, and John wondered how they bred such stocky folk in these parts.
Polo sat down at his desk and took off his mask. It revealed a puffy, scarred face with droopy eyes. One of his ears was partially missing. His voice was soft and didn’t seem to match the obviously dangerous man behind it.
“Thank you for meeting with me. There is a project I want to talk to you about. Something to drink?” Polo motioned for his guards to bring out various beverages. There were fruit nectars and a fermented agave water.
They declined warily.
“The king has asked me to put on an exhibition to honor the ‘Martyrs of the Flood.’ Do you know of this battle?” He took of sip of the agave drink.
The three of them shook their heads.
“It was 20 A.Z., and this city was called ‘Ciudad de México.’ The people had suffered greatly from the undead. All hope was lost. People had long since retreated to the skyscrapers. They were easier to defend than the ground-level, as they could seal off stairwells or destroy them entirely. With no hope for a better future, people began looking to the past. They learned our capitol used to be an island on a lake before invaders drained it. They decided to flood it again and rename it Tenochtitlan. This was the name prior to being called Mexico City, prior to these invaders. They thought once the undead were washed away, they would drain some of the water away to recreate the island. Everything would be ‘peachy,’ as you gringos say.” He snorted. “It was a hope built on faith in the past.” Polo took another sip and cocked his head. “Ironically, now it is only the poor who live out in the skyscrapers…hunting cats for food.”
“Cats?” Carla asked.
“Never had cat? I grew up on it. I lived and hunted in the skyscrapers when I was a kid. Now I can’t stand it. Reminds me of where I came from.” He took another sip of the agave water and looked her over. “When they flooded the city, they expected all the undead to get washed away like a flood. It was much slower than that, though. The water rose gradually and many of the undead made their way into the skyscrapers. They don’t like the water, you know.”
“We know,” Tock said somewhat forcefully.
Polo nodded and stared at Tock like he understood the private conversation the two were having. “Yes, you know. This meant the people were trapped in the skyscrapers with the walkers. They had to rid the skyscrapers of the undead to take back the city. There was one building, a hotel, which was particularly infested because it was at a slightly higher elevation, and the walkers were drawn to it. There were six people trapped in the top. They were armed with weapons and fought their way down to the seventh floor before succumbing. People in the other buildings wanted to help, but no one could get to them. For three days, the neighboring buildings heard shotgun rounds throughout the day and night. After they were killed and others managed to get into the building, they found the remains of scores of zombies they had destroyed. The people of Tenochtitlan wept for the loss of the six, the valiant fighters. They called them ‘The Martyrs of the Flood’ to honor their fighting spirit. This is the spirit the king wants to revive. You will re-enact this battle for the people, to remind them of their heritage. They need to remember they are fighters.” Polo lit some sort of acrid cigarette. “Not spoiled, indulgent children who won’t take responsibility.”
The three looked at each other, unsure whether to speak.
“There is an army out there who wants to invade Tenochtitlan. The people think the giant herd will destroy this army and save them, but I am not so sure. We are trapped on this island. Our farming is out there, and we are dependent on rain to keep our water supplies full. This is a dangerous time. You are going to help in this small way.” He sent puffs of smoke into the air above him. “If you survive, you will earn your freedom.”
Carla and Tock looked at each other. John didn’t buy it.
“Any questions?” Polo asked.
They were given a few days to rest and clean up. None of them had eaten so well. Tock joked that this was what he’d been fighting for. The respite wasn’t long enough, though.
On the fourth day, they were taken outside the city walls and then by boat to the skyscraper section of the city. The remains of the towering buildings shot up into the sky. Their bottom floors were still underwater, as the elevation out here was lower than at the city center. The boat men pushed the undead in the water out of the way as they floated on. The skyscrapers creaked and crumbled all around them. Cats peered down at them from the long-broken windows. John looked back at the second boat with the other three people who were going to be on their team. There were two men and a woman. The two men were dark skinned like Tock, and the woman was brown skinned but with a flatter face than most of the people of Tenochtitlan. One of the oar men saw John looking at them and rattled something off in Spanish before chuckling. John shook his head that he didn’t understand.
“He says you are looking at the last friends you’ll have,” Carla said. She made a disapproving sound and shot something back at the boat oar man.
He chuckled again and made a face like “We’ll see!”
The boat man pointed to a building and told Carla that was their destination. She shivered. For now, though, they were going to the building next door. He navigated the craft through a large window and docked it at the base of a stairwell. Guards awaited them.
After the second boat had docked, the guards motioned for the fighters to follow them up the stairs. They slowly and lab
oriously climbed up thirty flights of stairs to the top of the building. It was concrete, and mostly intact. At the top, they sat down to rest and drink water. After ten minutes, the guards forced them up and outfitted them with shotguns and machetes, accurate to the history of the Martyrs of the Flood. They were also made to change into period clothes. They would go shoeless, as the original Martyrs had. The guards then walked them to the edge of the roof.
“Dang.” Tock gawked at the swaying rope bridge strung to the roof of the adjacent building, where the zombies awaited them. It dangled hundreds of feet above the water and stretched a few hundred feet long across the chasm. They could hear the growls of the undead waiting for them in the bowels of the former hotel. They also could hear something else—music. It came from the surrounding buildings. Laughter cut through the sound of the groaning walkers, parties going on in the skyscrapers around them. It was the crowd.
“That’s cold,” Tock said, referring to the jovial noise all about them.
John looked out over the scene in silence. It only deepened his conviction that evil people had the power and privilege.
“Beard, you been awfully quiet lately,” Tock commented.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They shared a final meal on the roof of the building. As they finished, the king’s spokesman appeared at the top of the stairs, carried by two soldiers. They put him down in the center of the building. His voice cut through the laughter and all fell silent.
“Today we show our respect for the Martyrs of the Flood. Let this re-enactment be an inspiration to those who live, and an honor to those about to die!” The onlookers cheered maniacally. Tock and Carla were used to fighting in front of poor people. The rich seemed more bloodthirsty.
The guards barked orders at them, time they crossed the rope bridge onto the building. Once they were all across, the guards cut the bridge. The team watched as it swung down and hit the side of their building.
100 A.Z. (Book 2): Tenochtitlan Page 11
