Life Among The Dead (44 page)

A quick check up on Jack reveals the kid is still asleep. He figures he has time to get cleaned up before the boy awakes. He opens a new beer and is about to head to the bathroom in the hall when he hears them. Tires come to a stop outside and an engine idles. His heart drops to his stomach.

The soldier has his .38 in hand as he creeps to the window in the foyer, staying low. He can see the tops of large vehicles from over the wall. He is relieved for an instant that it isn’t the redneck raiders coming for him. It’s the military. His heart rises out of the pit of his stomach and swoons into the heavens. He smiles broadly. The intercom squeals and a female voice speaks through it, the device makes her sound tinny.

“
This is the United States Army, please respond.” She begins. Dan is off the floor and about to run to the door, forgoing the use of the voice box, to greet his fellow soldiers.

“
We are gathering all survivors and taking them to Eagle Rock. Please respond.” What she has just said gives him pause
. Fuck Eagle Rock,
he screams at her in his mind.
I’m going to New Castle.
Dan looks out the window again.

Soldiers and civilians have disembarked; he can see their heads roaming around on the far side of the road. Some of them are tossing a football back and forth. Some are staring at the house.

Dan realizes he is still in uniform as he resumes his post on the floor. He is also AWOL. Albeit with good enough reason as he sees it. The military tends to be a bit hardnosed and touchy about such things, especially during troubled times. Dan heard that the penalty for treason during war is still death. He is so close he can’t be delayed. He decides to just ignore them, and hope they go away.

“
No, they can see the graves.” Dan bets they know someone is inside.
Who else dug the fucking holes?
He considers taking the uniform off and talking to them.
I’ll just tell them this is my home, and I won’t leave.

“
Attention! Any and all survivors are to be escorted directly to Eagle Rock with no exceptions… unless… of course you have been bitten…”

The female soldier’s faltering words don’t put him at ease at all. Dan looks at the wound he had made on his hand with his teeth back at the temple. It seemed like such a brilliant idea at the time
. Who the hell is going to believe I bit myself? Who is that fucking stupid?
Dan is frantic.
They’ll put a bullet in me without a second thought.

The soldiers aren’t making any moves towards the house just yet, they just mill about in the late afternoon. The sky is clouded over and it is still snowing, now more heavily. The army men playing catch have let the pig skin get away from them. The oblong ball sails over the top of the stonewall and bounces into the yard. In the early twilight the outside lights come on.

“
Fucking sensor lights!” Dan can see the female soldier who speaks at him from the gate. She motions to one of her comrades and he starts to climb the bars. He is halfway up when a red blur speeds past the convoy. It looks to Dan as if one of the men in uniform has been hit. All the others are gathering around on the street. Even the climbing soldier joins them as they try and aide the fallen man.

Dan holds his breath, waiting to see what happens. All the people are scrambling to the vehicles. The engines are roaring to life as the drivers rev them awake. The last to enter a vehicle is the woman who spoke over the intercom. She stands over the hit and run victim, draws her pistol and fires once into his head. Dan can hear the report of the firearm and he figures the man was dead before she had fired.
She just wants to keep him that way.

Two men are ordered to collect their dead before they take off. The olive green trucks speed after the red vehicle. Dan doesn’t like the fact one of their guys had to die for them to leave, but he is very relieved that they had departed. The shower will have to wait, Jack is now awake and Dan wants to get moving.

15

“
Where the fuck did he go?” Sergeant Rashida Steele punches the steering wheel. Her eyes scan the road ahead for any place the red truck might have turned off.

“
Long gone, Rash.” Sergeant Ezekiel Lynton replies. The two are leading the convoy of military vehicles in an olive green jeep. The plastic and canvas covering does little to keep out the cold. Lynton is huddled up in his field jacket trying to keep warm. Rash is too hot with anger to notice the frigid breeze that enters all around them through the creases of the zippered doors.

The female soldier has the accelerator floored, hoping to catch the vehicle that took one of her men, and forced her to put a bullet into his head. She insisted on taking the body back with them to Eagle Rock, that slight delay is why she lost sight of the truck.

“
Slow down.” Lynton tells Rash as he leans his head on the window trying to catch some sleep, they haven’t found much time to rest in the past couple of days. The snow is falling heavier now. It’s accumulating rapidly on the pavement before them and Lynton doesn’t feel much like crashing.

“
We have to catch them!” She insists.

“
Why? Retribution? They’ll get theirs.”

“
What if they don’t, and they do it again to some other survivors?”

“
What if there are no other survivors?” Lynton rationalizes. “Take that last house. Someone dug those graves, there were cars in the driveway, and yet…”

The jeep slows. Rash is defeated. Her anger abates leaving only her exhaustion. She is feeling the cold now. She tries to turn the heat on again. Her numb fingers fumble with the levers and knobs as if a special combination of moves will get it to work this time.

“
Put your gloves on.” Lynton suggests. His eyes are closed as his head gently bounces off the soft plastic film that serves as a window.

“
I got it to work before.” She blows into her fist.

“
I remember. It was a great five minutes of comfort.”

Rash uses her teeth to slip on her black leather gloves while maintaining one hand on the wheel. The cold has stiffened the material making it feel like she is steering while wearing oven mitts.

The driver is silent as her partner sleeps
. Zee is right,
she contends
. Getting these people back to the post is top priority.
Since the onset of all the madness search and rescue/destroy missions have been running around the clock. Troops have been sent out in all directions to find survivors, and take out as many of the mobile dead that they can manage.

At the post the civilian population has been rising as fast as the soldier population dwindles. Willing volunteers are asked to join up on the spot and given a quick training. Many of the men and woman of uniform have fallen during this. A lot of them have gone AWOL.

Lynton says the deserters are just pussies. Rash finds it brave. They strike out alone to join their families, leaving security for uncertainty. She can’t blame them. If her family lived closer she would be with them now.

A rustling from the back seat reminds Rash how this particular mission differed from most. They were ordered to bring back a specimen along with any refugees. The eggheads in lab coats want a ‘live’ specimen, one that had died of natural causes, and had come back.

A woman lies on the back seat. Thick layers of duct tape secure her hands and ankles. Another heavy layer is wrapped around her head to guarantee there will be no biting. All Rash can see of the girl’s face in her rearview is her eyes. From her nose down to her chin is a shroud of silver.
It was such a bitch trying to catch her.

It was all planned out in theory. They would find one that they suspected to be an unbitten zombie. One of them would play bait, the other would come up behind it and throw a sack over its head. It proved to be a lot harder than that.

They found her in the small town of Poland Creek. She was in a little market and was just what the doctors ordered. She was behind a deli counter and had apparently slit her own wrists.

Lynton was to be the bait. It seemed like it would be rather safe since the girl was trapped behind a counter. She was alone inside, Rash and Zee made sure of that. They put down the two patrons who were wandering the aisles. The men were outside, eradicating the citizens of the town.

Lynton stood by the counter and kept the girl’s attention while Rash found her way around back. The female soldier found a walk-through freezer, but the door that would lead her to the counter was jammed. She couldn’t budge the large cold door. She had to go back to her comrade so they could rethink the situation.

Rash located a length of clothesline from a display in an aisle of cleaners and cleaning supplies. They could lasso the dead girl. Lynton tied a slipknot and tossed the loop over the zombie’s head. The strong soldier easily yanked her over the glass counter.

Her body fell limply to the floor. She rose to her feet, choosing Rash as her meal. The petite soldier backed up trusting her partner to keep the girl on a short leash. Once all the slack was taken out, and the girl couldn’t advance any further, Rash threw the bag over her head. The dead girl didn’t like that at all.

Mary, as her nametag stated, began to thrash around. She clawed at the cowl, blindly trying to free herself. The soldiers never would have expected this reaction. It was like she was claustrophobic. Her flailing body was difficult to control, even for someone of Lynton’s size.

The door dinged as the automatic device opened them. Rash looked towards the entry with premature relief, thinking it was back up. Her time to breathe easy was short lived when she saw the dead coming in like shoppers. They weren’t interested in the two for one special. The dead proved to be more than the men outside could handle and the soldiers were driven back.

In preparation for retrieving the girl, Rash and Zee had laid their weapons down on the counter. The scavenger hunt would have to wait because Rash couldn’t get to the rifles and the market was filling up with zombies.

Rash ordered Lynton to drop the rope and follow her down one of the aisles. Zee was stubborn and refused to let his quarry go. He dragged her along the ground like a disobedient dog. She slid along the worn linoleum on her back as her legs kicked blindly knocking the wares off the shelves.

The dead followed the meat towards the back of the store. They took different aisles as the living ran to the back corner. The soldiers were trapped among the sodas and beer with no escape.

Lynton pointed to a yellow mop bucket as he wrestled with the girl under the hood. Rash took his cue and dumped the brown water on the floor. The snack aisle became flooded and the dead slipped and fell to the ground on the slick and filthy cleaning agent.

Rash and Zee had no time to waste. They stepped on the backs of the dead like rocks of a shallow river, sprinting down the aisle of chips and cookies. The corpses tried to grab the passing feet of the living, but were unable to get a hold of them. The deli girl was dragged through her fallen brothers and sisters like a doll.

The front door continued to ding as more entered the building. The soldiers had to dive over the very counter that had entrapped the girl they were fighting so hard to capture. Lynton lashed the girl’s tether to the meat slicer as the zombies gathered around.

Guns in hand, the soldiers were able to drop the dead using controlled fire. They had learned that only headshots would do. It was a good thing because it saved ammo that way.

“
Good times.” Rash says shaking her head in the jeep.

“
What?” Lynton asks sleepily.

“
Nothing.” She responds. She takes a left towards Eagle Rock. This has been their longest run yet. Each one takes them out further and further, they find more and more unfortunates, and less and less survivors.

Rash hopes the eggheads will have some break through.
They had better since we went through so much trouble to get her for them
. They still don’t know what has caused the plague, if it is a plague. They run samples and perform tests, but so far have come up with nothing.

Lynton sits up in his seat as if he can sense they are getting close to home base. “I was just thinking about this whole outbreak.” He says rubbing his eyes. “You know what I think it is?”

“
What?”

“
Terrorists.” He looks at her, waiting for a response. She just furrows her brow thinking about it. “What better way to kill your enemy, than by letting them do it to themselves? Do it to each other.”

“
It sounds plausible.” She admits.

“
It’s perfect. They could have sent out sleeper cells with it, and then had them release it at once.”

They are silent again. Headlights are heading towards them fast. A jeep full of bundled up soldiers speeds past the convoy without slowing.

“
I wonder where they are going.” Rash says.

“
I don’t know.” Zee says. “Don’t care. I am going to grab food, a shower, and get some sleep.”

Fort Eagle Rock is ahead of them. The gates open, a guard in a little booth waves them in. He reluctantly leaves his warm post not wanting to go out in the cold, but it’s his job. He had to check them in.

“
We expected you hours ago.” He says, squinting his eyes as snowflakes drift down around him.

“
There’s a lot of road out there.” Rash says in explanation.