LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (51 page)

“And once they’re gone, we pull stakes and get the hell out of here,” said Kate, voice serious. “No one needs to be around here if and when Starr gets back.”

“You think she survived that?” Ky asked absently, reaching down to scratch Romeo’s ears as he grunted under the table. I heard the faint thump of his leg on the dingy carpet.
 

“I’m sure of it,” she said. “Cockroaches always survive.”

“I hear a lot of planning here, but I got one question. Which truck do you think can make its way through a horde of the undead outside? ‘Cause I guarantee you, it ain’t the Chevy.”

I looked at Kate and we both stood and looked at Eli. He looked up, as if sensing the attention.

“Well. We had an idea about that too.”

***

“You think you can drive that thing?”

“Can’t be harder than the flatbed I drove on the dam, right?”
 

“I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I’ve seen you drive.”

“Oh really? Who’s the one that crashed on the open road out front?”

“That’s different.”

“Yeah? Why?”
 

She walked away from the window, the silence lingering as my only answer, and leaving me staring through the darkness at the large yellow machine parked serenely below. According to Eli, it had a vague, industrial name: a 563C Wheeled Feller Buncher. A machine designed to cut down a tree and then grab the trunk after it was separated from the base, hence ‘felling’ the tree and then ‘bunching’ it with others.
 

It could cut down and bundle up to 5-10 trunks, depending on the thickness.
 

But we weren’t dealing with trees today. Today, we were dealing with bodies.

The real attractions of the 563C—which I was now going to call Bessy because I had always loved that name—were the huge tires, the fully enclosed and hardened cab, and the
piece de resistance
: the huge saw blade located roughly a foot from the ground.
 

The machine looked like a front end loader, but instead of a shovel attachment, bore a large red bunching attachment on the front. Similar in appearance to a huge metal broom being held out and in front of the tractor by a large robot hand, the attachment had a spinning one inch-thick, and four feet-wide industrial grade saw blade on the very bottom. In professional applications, you approached the tree and placed the robot-holding-a-broom attachment parallel to the tree, and slowly sawed through the base. The giant claws would spread out, grab the falling trunk, and bundle it firmly against the metal broom, keeping the trunk from falling to the ground.
 

But for our purposes, we just needed those nice big tires and that wonderful saw blade. And the pincers would be helpful to gather the undead and force them into the saw, effectively removing their ability to pose a threat.
 

“Looks like fun,” said Eli, who had sidled up next to me.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I offered, not unaffectionately.
 

He shrugged once.

“No one left to tell me to go, I guess.”
 

I instantly felt like a real dick.

“Sorry kiddo. You hungry?”

“I ate some of those horrible things from that shrink-wrapped food.”

I chuckled.
 

“Well, that’s all there is. Maybe in the whole world, right now. Who knows.” I dug into the pocket of my cargo pants and produced a bag of Cheesy Nibblers, watching his eyes light up.

“Found these and saved ‘em for later. If you go to bed, I can part with them.”
 

“Deal,” he said, grabbing the bag and tearing into it. He started walking toward the sleeping areas then turned for a last question.

“Have you thought about how you’re going to get that big machine outside the fence?”
 

Sighing, I waved him off.

“One problem at a time, okay?”

Shrugging again, he wandered away, hopefully to sleep.

“He makes a good point,” Kate said, returning with a bottle of water from the tap, handing it to me as I nodded thanks.

“Yeah, that’s a hitch in the plan, huh?”

“I can only think of one way to make it work.”
 

“Me too, but I’m trying to ignore it. It’s not a great option.”

We were nearly alone. Ky was on the first watch, and looking down to the floor of the mill through the large picture window, I could barely make out her slim form in the moonlight pushing into the building. She sat down cross-legged on the floor, staring out through the crack between the two huge doors, watching and listening. Rifle and crossbow both laid in front of her, Romeo sleeping soundly beside her.
 

The group had disbursed throughout the upper floor, with the children and Susan and Reggie in the larger office, laying on old coats they found in a closet off the conference room. Ethan and Rhi had claimed a smaller office at the end, and Kate and I would share the conference room with Ky, since we were rotating watch.
 

Walking back to Kate’s side of the room, I laid down with my head on a cushion from a ratty couch in the third office, and Kate joined me with a similarly old, dusty pillow from the same source.
 

“Amazing what you consider a luxury after the world ends, isn’t it?” I joked, waiting for her to settle before asking the hard questions.

“Even now, I struggle to thank the gods for something that smells like rat urine. But I suppose it’s better than a twisted neck.” Even so, she wrinkled her nose as she lay her head down slowly.

“You want the full story, don’t you?” she offered, and I didn’t hesitate.

“Yes please. I mean, you can fill in the inconsequential gaps, at least. So far I know that you’re a meth-headed lesbian, so everything else is downhill from there.”
 

I managed to get a short laugh out of that. She took a deep breath and began.
 

When she finished, I lay staring at the ceiling, thinking yet again about how far humanity had fallen. In the better times, when we were all playing by the rules that we had made for our own comfort and survival, the idea of being ruled by our baser instincts seemed so foreign.
 

Now, it seemed that no matter where we turned, that veneer of civilization was being ripped down. Baser instincts were no longer to be avoided—they were to be embraced as the means of survival. They were the primal urges that ruled the day, and that protected life.
 

Kate guessed at what had happened to Starr and her other female soldiers in that town those many months ago, and I couldn’t disagree. Only trauma of the gravest extent could break people so thoroughly. Only horrors of a soul-crushing nature could alter the fabric of decent people—people who had sworn an oath to protect their fellow citizens from harm.
 

In the end, though, there was no excuse. No justification for the death and murders. For the rampant sowing of destruction among an entire gender. Men and boys who were just trying to survive. Who had already lost so much. Now brought low by someone who had been made to suffer at the behest of a sick, twisted individual.
 

No, for Starr and her soldiers, there was no redemption. But they traveled with children. Innocent girls who were simply trying to survive.
 

“What are you thinking?” Kate asked, her voice low and sleepy. She was exhausted from divulging her experience, but I know she felt safe with me.
 

“Well, first of all, I’m questioning whether it’s possible to somehow rescue the girls that are traveling with that maniac without putting them at more risk. The answer is probably no. So then, I’m wondering how much time we have to leave this place and disappear if this whole plan somehow succeeds. Not long, I wager.” These are all things we had discussed already, and she sighed and stayed silent.

“And finally, I’m thinking how hot it would have been to watch you make out with another chick. Even one as butch and crazy as her.”
 

The punch landed silently, and it forced the air out of my lungs with the speed of a freight train.

After the coughing subsided, I turned back to her, taking in the amused look before her eyes fell and her mouth turned down in sadness.

“Is this insane? Everything we’ve gone through, Starr, this herd, the fucking natural disasters. I mean Jesus…I know…” her voice cracked and fell, as if she were pushing these words through a wall of fiery, raw pain.
 

“I know she’s probably dead.” A deep intake of breath. “But I have to know, you know? I can’t give up. This is all there is for me right now.”

I simply put my hand on her arm, staying silent and letting her know I was there.
 

“The last time I saw her, I remember watching her walk away from me in the airport. I remember thinking ‘What if the plane crashes or I die on the way home—this is it’ and being horrified that that was how my life with my daughter ended. I remember the vivid terror in that moment—fleeting but very real—that I would have failed her.”
 

She let a brief sob escape before carrying on. “Now, with everything…”
 

“None of this is your fault. You’re a mother, not a god. You couldn’t have stopped any of this from happening …”
 

“I could have stayed with her father. For her. Plenty of people make do in loveless marriages. For the children.”

I shook my head adamantly. “If your daughter is even half the woman you are, she wouldn’t wish unhappiness on her parents for her sake. What kind of a life is that for a child, with two parents in the house hating each other, and maybe resenting the kid a little bit for keeping them there?” I leaned forward, making eye contact in the waning moonlight.
 

“You did what you could. You made it work in the best way it could. We all make mistakes. So be it. That’s life. But the measure of our quality is not in how bad we fuck up, but how well we recovery. You’re doing what you can now, against impossible circumstances, I might add. We just need to saddle up and get past this … little problem.”

She actually laughed amid the tears now, gesturing to the tens of thousands of walking corpses outside, whose moans were even now invading the solitude and peacefulness of our second story redoubt.
 

“Little problem. Well, I think little is a relative term, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”
 

Smiling as I lay my head back on my stinky pillow, I said quietly.

“That’s what she said.”
 

The barely audible sound of her clapping her hands together lightly (and sarcastically) in the darkness eased me off into sleep.

***

“How long do you think we have until they’re pouring over in numbers?” Kate asked as we hiked back up the road from the main gate. We had finished a quick patrol, ending at the entrance. Arms extended through the bars like tentacles, waving in hunger as we passed. The sound of constant moaning was a symphony of terror.

“In large numbers? Maybe eight hours … nightfall, possibly. Until they’re making their way over in ones and twos? Not long. Maybe half that.”
 

“You really think you can drive that crazy machine?”

I laughed as we approached the building and walked the perimeter to the rear, where the machines all sat, like sleeping monsters waiting to be awakened.

“I once drove a tank in one of my movies, I ever tell you that?”
 

I nodded to Eli as he waved from the cab of Bessy, and Reggie smiled briefly from across the yard. He was working on a beastly looking piece of equipment with a large arm and a series of rotating blades and grinding attachments on the front. It looked something like an unholy love child between a chain saw and a stump grinder—on steroids. I managed a glance at the model number: 325D-FM. But someone had written something on a piece of duct tape near the cab: Grinder 2.
 

“I can’t imagine that went well,” she said.

Chuckling as we reached the huge wheels of the machine I would likely be driving to my death, I turned and looked off into the distance.

“If I remember correctly, I was still drunk when I arrived on set. When the military advisors were giving me the crash course—one that was intended only to make it look as if I were driving it—I somehow managed to start the thing and throw it into gear. After we were all tossed around like bouncy balls in a dryer, one of them managed to find the brake and stop the chaos.”
 

“Jesus. Anyone hurt?”
 

“I had managed to crush the new BMW that belonged to the commanding general of the base. Took out some chain link fence too. But the best part—and the funniest—was what happened to the latrines. Took out the whole front wall on the men’s shitters—two guys in there had the walls ripped down around them as we drove by. One minute, you’re reading the news on your phone. Next minute—BOOM—tank takes away your door. And your toilet paper.” I laughed at the memory. “Classic.”

“They could have been killed!”
 

Waving a hand, I shrugged it off.
 

“I paid off the general—bought him a new car, bigger model—and took the blame. Bought all those men—the advisors and the shitters—new cars too. Movie docked my pay for the damage. No harm no foul.” I turned to her with a smirk. “All worth it for the story.”
 

“Jesus, Mike.” She was smiling and shaking her head at the same time.
 

“Yeah, glamorous, huh?”

Above my head, Eli popped out of the cab, face serious. “You gonna sit up here and walk through these controls with me?”
 

“I can’t wait,” I said, kissing Kate briefly and climbing aboard.

Bessy was about four feet off the ground, her huge tires providing plenty of clearance between the undercarriage and the earth. This was crucial, as the key reason vehicles bogged down was the grinding of the dead underneath the wheels, a critical mass of flesh and bone ultimately proving too much for even huge truck engines to manage. The two ways to avoid bogging down were high clearance or a plow of some sort to keep the bodies from going beneath the truck in the first place. I remembered our snow plow in New York with great fondness as I explored the controls of this vehicle.