American Revenant (Book 3): The Monster In Man (8 page)

The milling crowd of
gut-suckers pressed against the fence, teeth gnashing at the links,
gray-skinned faces pressing against the wire mesh, cutting lines and angles
into the flesh.  Though the creatures pawed and moaned at the gate, grasping
and groaning their hungry needs, they were not as fervent in their action as
normal.

“What’s the deal, why
aren’t they tearing the gate down?”

“No idea Calvin.  They don’t
seem as animated as usual,” Rick replied.

Even as they watched,
several zombies in the back of the bunch began to move away, turning toward the
armory building. Minutes passed, the men watching silently as zombie after
zombie peeled away, moving back to the armory to rejoin the massive horde that
was still pressing the front of the building.

They could hear glass
shatter, and the low groan of the crowd increased, thrumming in their eardrums,
making them feel like their heads were vibrating from the noise. 

Soon there were just a
few stragglers left right at the fence, all others had rejoined the group that
was now pushing into the lobby of the armory, turning down the wide hallway.

“It has to be the smell,”
Dean said.  “Dad and I were wrong.  I don’t know why, but we were.  The smell
of these things is masking our scent,” he said, pointing to the hanging zombies
on the fence.

“If that’s the case, then
we can just smear zombie guts all over us and walk the fuck out of here,”
Calvin offered.

“Great idea, lets hack
one of those things open and just dive right in,” the sarcasm in Jimmy’s voice
unmistakable.

“You have a better idea,
dickhead?  Or you just going to sit over there and let everyone else figure it
out?” 

Jimmy smiled at Calvin, a
slow and dark lifting at the corners of his mouth that gave Calvin a chill. 
Cal looked away, watching the last few undead on the fence.

“It’s a great idea,
sure,” Mike said, “except, well, fuck that!” His voice low but forceful.  “Even
if that crap
would
work there’s too much risk of getting sick.  One tiny
ass cut and you’re done.  You really want to go smearing that shit on you,
Cal?”

“Was just a thought man,
throwing stuff out there is all.”

Gunfire popped from
inside the armory, followed by a chorus of screams, rising, rising, then
silenced with more gunfire.  The men crouching beside the ring of cars inside
the fence peered over, around and through the vehicles, though they were unable
to see anything other than the last few zombies at their gate.

Dusk had come and gone,
leaving the men to wait in nearly fully dark.  The moon was high, providing
just enough light to watch the horde of undead in and around the building. 

“We have to do something
to draw these fuckers away.  Get them moving so we can get back to our vehicles.”

“Dean’s right,” Mike
said, “but we also came for whatever’s in that armory.  We still need to get in
there, see if there’s anything left worth salvaging.”

“I don’t know about you
guys,” Alex said, “but I really don’t feel like spending the night here in our
little cage.”

Rick cast his eyes around
the line of cars, thinking, but before he could say anything, Jimmy spoke up. 
“Alex, can you make a car blow up?”

All eyes went to Jimmy,
then Alex.  “Uh, yeah, pretty easy really.  We can’t blow one up in here
though.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jimmy
sighed, “I’m thinking we send a car down the hill, right at the pond.  If we
tie the wheel off then we can cut a hole in the wire to send the car through,
zip tie the hole closed when we send it down the hill.  It hits the water, or
just explodes down there, hopefully drawing the gut-suckers down after it.”

The others were quiet for
a moment, thinking about Jimmy’s suggestion.  “Shit, anything’s worth a try at
this point,” Mike said.

“I agree, Mike.  We have
to try something.”

“First we need to get rid
of our three stooges that don’t seem to want to rejoin their party,” Jimmy said
indicating the three zombies still standing at the gate.

“I’ll handle those,” Dean
offered, Rick saying he would help.

“I need a smaller car, one
with a gas tank that isn’t completely full.”  A couple of the men eyed him
quizzically.

“Wouldn’t you want a full
tank, for a bigger explosion?”

“Actually, Dean, no.  A
partial tank has buildup of fumes, a full tank doesn’t.  Those fumes are what
will give us that nice, big POP,” Alex said with a grin.

Dean shrugged and went to
join Rick in their task, while Mike and Jimmy went to work opening a hole a car
could fit through, but they could close up easily.  Alex and Calvin focused on
finding the right car for the job.

Crouching low, Dean and
Rick drew knives from their sheaths and took several deep breaths.  “We do this
fast, so they can’t start moaning, drawing in more.”  Dean nodded his
understanding, and both men pushed up on the car hoods in front of them, diving
forward to bury their blades deep in the faces of two of the zombies.  Steel
sang against chain link as they withdrew their blades, careful to avoid
splattering blood over themselves.  As soon as their knives were free both men
lunged at the final zombie, Dean’s blade going low in the face, Rick’s high,
just above the left eye. 

They slowly slid back
over the hoods and to the ground, wiping their steel clean on pants legs
stained from hard use. 

Once the gut-suckers were
down the other four men went to work quickly.  Calvin and Alex selected a late
eighties Civic, something easy enough for them to maneuver.  Calvin searched
inside several of the cars until he found a filthy t-shirt bunched under a
seat, which he gave to Alex.

The fence was set up in a
triangular shape, with the three points cut off.  The longest of the flattened
points faced the small pond, which lay at the bottom of a slope.  When the car
was pushed out it would descend the slope rapidly, dropping into the pond,
hopefully exploding right before it splashed.

Jimmy and Mike worked
quickly at the fence.  Jimmy used his Leatherman multi-tool to snip a line
about four feet long halfway up the fence, parallel to the ground, while Mike
used his own multi-tool to work from where Jimmy started high up on the fence
straight to the ground following the line pole.  The constant snipping made
their hands and wrists ache so they switched hands every few cuts for relief. 

Dean and Rick had moved
to help the two men working with the car.  After much pushing and shoving,
stifling grunts and wheezes the men had moved the Civic into line with the
opening of the fence.  They worked together to push away the large generator
that blocked the fence.

“Car’s ready,” Alex said.

“Almost done,” Mike told him,
finishing his last few snips.  When he finished he looked at the other men to
be certain they were ready and folded the stiff wire back.  “We can run from
here, make our way across the park, and through the woods without setting this
shit on fire.”

Jimmy eyed his friend
closely for a moment before saying, “We need what’s in that building man, so
let’s just do this.”

“As soon as that car
passes, we zip tie this wire back in place and wait for the Zoms to move by.”

Everyone nodded, as Rick
moved to the front gate, and began to cut through the plastic ties holding the
chain in place.  With one left to cut he said, “Ok, do it.”

Mike folded the chain
link back, careful not to let it scrape on the concrete pad of the parking
lot.  Jimmy stood back, watching as Alex lit the cloth hanging from the open
gas hatch. 

Dean and Calvin pushed
hard as soon as the cloth took the flame, rolling the car through the gate,
letting the slope take it as soon as it was past the fence.

Mike and Jimmy stepped
forward and used several more zip ties to hold the fence in place.  They knew
that should zombies press the fence the ties wouldn’t hold long, but it might
give them enough time to get out.

The car was nearly
halfway between the lot and the pond when Alex said, “I don’t know how long it
will take the fumes to catch the burning rag, I just hope…”

A loud
crump
and
the rear of the car jumped high in the air.  It looked as if the car were going
to flip tail over tip before it slammed back to the ground.  The trunk had shot
straight up, the rear panels of the car bursting from each side.  Windows
shattered, the rear tires burst, gas spewed up into the air, creating a
momentary fireball that lit the night, hurting their eyes.

The car continued rolling
forward, the rear rims digging shallow furrows that filled with fire, stopping
nearly one hundred feet from the pond.

“Damn, I hope it’s far
enough away,” Alex grumbled.

Noise from the zombies
around the armory rose up, their combined groans creating an oppressive roar. 
The men remembered where they were and dropped low, below the line of sight,
hugging the cars closely.

First just a few zombies
wandered past the fenced enclave, then more and more as the last of the horde,
what several of the men thought to be at least two hundred zombies, moved
toward the conflagration.  The car burned hot and brilliant, as everything that
could burn caught fire.  For a moment the smell of gasoline and burning plastic
and cloth, wire and rubber, overwhelmed the thick odor of rotting bodies.

The men huddled closely
together behind the car nearest the fence, waiting for several minutes,
ensuring that no other straggling shufflers were coming.  When they were
satisfied that the last had gone by Dean quickly snipped the last zip tie and
pushed through the gate.

Holding weapons at port
arms, they ran straight for the smashed front door of the armory, only glancing
back as they entered the building to make sure they had gone unseen by dead
eyes.

A hard charge down the
wide hallway brought them to a large open staging and storage area.   Several
zombies stood in front of a bank of heavy wire cages that were initially used
to store and secure food and munitions, weapons and ordnance. 

The few zombies that
remained were transfixed by the cages and what they held, pawing at the thick
wire mesh, or forcing a hand in, only to peel their own skin away.  The men
stepped swiftly and silently across the big room, bringing knives to bear,
unwilling to use guns and risk drawing the undead masses now outside at the
burning car.  

The gut-suckers were
dispatched easily, and the men stepped forward.  They too were transfixed by
the cages, but unlike the zombies wanting a meal, they stared in horror,
struggling to process what they saw.

Chapter 13

A long row of heavy wire
cages runs along the north-east wall of the large storage room.  These cages,
approximately five feet by five feet square were used to store everything from
MRE rations, to weapons and ammunition.  Each cage has a large keyed lock on
the front, set into a plate welded into the thick wire of the cage.

The six men stood there
looking at the cages, disgust apparent on every face.  The items normally
stored inside the cages had been moved out and stacked along the walls and in
the middle of the floor.  Pallets of MRE rations, stacks of ammunition, even
weapon lockers had all been moved out of the wire enclosures. 

The cages had been needed
for the people that now lay dead in them.  Each of the eight cages held at
least one person, though several were occupied by two corpses.  Most of which
were beginning to reanimate, even as the men watched.

“Jesus, they kept these
people in here like animals,” Alex said, noticing the filth covering the floor
of the cells. 

“This was their
workforce, the ones we saw gardening and fishing.  The sick fucks slaved them,
just stood around while they did the work to keep these jackholes alive.”  Mike
looked around the room, noticing the dead men in the military uniforms, some of
whom were turning as well.  “Guys, we need to take care of these before someone
gets chewed on.”

Mike and Jimmy set to the
grim task of spiking each body strewn about the floor in the head, stilling
those that were beginning to turn, ensuring others would not.

Rick stood in front of
the second cage, looking down at the long, thin female form crumpled on the
floor.  Several bullet holes stitched their way down the woman’s chest and
abdomen, soaking the filthy white tank top she had been wearing.  “Arianna,” he
said quietly. 

As if hearing her name
woke her from a long sleep, the thing that had been Arianna opened her eyes,
looking directly at Rick.  Rick took a step back, startled. 

“No worries there, Ricky,
she can’t get you from in there.” 

Rick nodded, turning his
head to see Jimmy grinning at him.  “Piss off, Jimbo,” he said pushing Jimmy’s
hand off of his shoulder.  Rick drew his knife and reached through the wide
mesh, trusting his bite-guard to protect him, plunging the knife through her
eye, instantly halting her forward movement.  He yanked the blade out, stood up
and shot Jimmy a look that seemed to say,
“Not a good time, asshole.”

Dean walked up to Calvin,
who stood staring into the fifth cage in line and said, “Oh damn, that’s
nasty.”  Calvin swiveled his head slowly, looking at his brother, eyes
distant.  “Uh, yeah,” was all he could say in response.

One of the caged men had
apparently been snagged by a zombie, which pulled his leg out through the mesh,
to the knee.  From the knee all the way to the filthy tennis shoe the leg was
completely gone.  Every bit of flesh had been gnawed away, leaving pearlescent
blood-streaked bone hanging out of the cage. 

The leg moved as the
brothers stood there watching, first just twitching for a moment, rattling bone
on the wire.  Then the leg began to draw in, scraping the macerated bone across
the heavy gauge wire, producing a hollow, grating
thrum
. The men
cringed, feeling the noise in their teeth, the pressing pulse of it in their
ears causing a moment of dizziness.

“Oh fuck me,” Jimmy said,
walking up to the cage, reaching in, and with a quick jab silencing the
horrible noise.

“Guys, we have a live one
down here,” Alex called from the furthest cage.

“Then kill it and let’s
gather what we can,” Mike told him.

“No, I mean a real live
one, as in human, not zombie.”

The men rushed to Alex,
gathering around the cage, looking in at a man that could be twenty or forty,
it was difficult to tell from the grime that covered his clothes and dark scabs
and bruises on his face.

The man looked back, his
eyes cloudy and distant, though not the gray-white cataracts of an undead. 
“Water,” he rasped, his voice a raw whisper.

Dean passed a water
bottle through the mesh, loosening the cap.  The emaciated man looked like he
might not be able to open the bottle.  While the man drank deeply, coughing
several times, Rick told the others, “We have to find the keys to these cages. 
There’s no way we can pry this open, and I sure as hell don’t want to go
banging on it.” 

“Oh, I bet you can guess
who had the key.  He’s probably the one laying out there with a neat little
hole in his head where Mike shot him.”

Rick eyed Jimmy for a
moment, thinking.  “You’re probably right.  I can’t see a guy like that giving
control of anything to anyone but himself.  Jimmy, take two guys, one at the door,
one on your back, see if you can find the keys.  Mike, you want to help me
start looking through this mess, see what we have here?”

Jimmy opened his mouth,
about to say something sharp in reply to Rick’s order, then he closed it,
saying, “Cal, Alex, come with me.  Let’s find these damn keys.”

Calvin posted at the
door, M4 up and ready, his eye cast down the hill at the still burning car and
the zombie horde.  Alex followed Jimmy out, on full alert, straining both eyes
and ears for threats.  Jimmy walked straight to the corpse of the man called
Greer and stood there for a second looking down at the dead man, studying the
hole in his forehead. 
“Mike did it right,”
he thought and spit in the
corpse’s upturned face.

It only took him a moment
to pat through the pockets and find a ring with several different keys,
supposedly to the inner doors of the armory, though some looked like car keys. 
He glanced downhill, seeing that none of the horde had noticed them he took the
time to appropriate Greer’s sidearm, a .45 caliber Remington 1911, and his
rifle. 

He looked at Alex and
shrugged, whispering, “He’s not gonna need them anymore.”

The three men made it
back inside without incident to find Rick, Mike and Dean looking through crates
of weapons and ammunition.

“Find anything good?”
Calvin asked.

“Mike looked up from a
crate of ammo and smiled. “Uh, yeah, you could say that.  Check this stuff
out.”

Jimmy tossed the keys to
Rick and followed Mike and Calvin, curious to know what they had turned up.

Keys rattled faintly as
Rick tried each until he found the correct one.  Mike led Jimmy, Calvin and
Alex around the room while Rick and Dean helped the man from the cage.

“Thousands of rounds of
5.56, case after case of MRE’s, several more rifles, we even found boxes of chained
.50cal rounds, but we haven’t found a .50, yet.”

“We’re going to have to
get the big truck up here,” Alex said, wondering what they would do if the
horde didn’t move on.

“Yeah, I was thinking
about that,” Mike said.  The other men waited for Mike to share his thoughts. 
When it was clear he was not going to Jimmy said, “And?”

“Still thinking,” was all
Mike replied before moving on to a pallet of MRE meals.  Using his pocket knife
he slit the tape on a carton and pulled a bulky brown package from the box. 
Mike read the labeling on the bag, “Beef Teriyaki, hell I’ll try it.”  He
grabbed another bag, and took it to the man now sitting on the floor leaning
against a pallet of ammunition cans.

“We can’t hump anything
out of here this late at night,” Rick was saying.

“We can block up the
door, and hunker down here for the night,” Dean offered, tearing open a food
pouch for the man rescued from the cage, too weak to do it himself. 

“What’s your name?” Rick
asked the man now spooning cold tuna casserole from the pouch into his mouth,
holding it close, as if he might miss a morsel. 

“Maxwell Eberdine.”

“Well, Max, you’re…”

“Fuckin’ hate “Max”,” the
thin man said around a mouthful of food.  “Sounds like a dog, Call me Maxwell,
or Eberdine, or Eb, just not Max.”

The men standing around
glanced at each other briefly, before Rick said, “Sure thing, Maxwell.  As I
was saying, you’re gonna have to hang with us here tonight.  You are more than
welcome to come back to our camp with us in the morning, unless you have
somewhere else you’d rather go.  Family or friends nearby?”

“No one close, no
family.  Was passing through town when my car broke down.  Things were bad
already, couldn’t find anyone to fix it.”  He paused to take a long swallow of
water.  “Got a room in a motel, ended up meeting some others, we stayed
together, survived the winter.” 

Dean and Mike walked
away, letting the man tell his story while they searched for a way to block the
only open door into the room.  The steel door hung canted on its hinges, the
force of the horde that had smashed through twisting them out of shape.

Using a bright yellow
manual pallet jack instead of the small gas powered forklift, the two moved a
double stacked pallet of goods in front of the door, setting it flush against the
doorframe.  Leaving the pallet jack under the pallet, lowered all the way to
the floor, they rejoined the group listening to Maxwell’s story.

“…and that’s when these
bastards found us.  We fought, but they had us outgunned.  We didn’t stand a
chance.  Most of the people I was with died there.”  His gaze went distant,
remembering the horror of that moment.  “They were the lucky ones.” 

“Door’s closed up tight,
we should be good in here for the night, as long as we keep it quiet,” Mike
told the others.

Dean and Jimmy spent time
prowling through the inventory while the other men slept, taking stock of
everything they could find.  Dean nearly shouted out loud when they found a
large crate that held the .50 caliber M2 that the belt ammo was for.

It was a piece of good
news to share with the others when they woke up.  Good news was a rare
commodity, and if the Oko Tipi group had other people to trade with good news
alone would have been considered of very high value.