No Flesh Shall Be Spared (7 page)

"Fuck," Slider exclaimed, letting it fall back in place with a sharp banging sound. "The place is locked up tight. Somebody had enough time to secure the joint before they took off."

"Or got themselves ate up," The Dog said under his breath.

"Maybe that was them up at the house," Lance suggested.

They all looked back at the farmhouse they’d just secured. From this distance, they could make out the shattered front door hanging from its hinges. A sudden breeze whistled through the eaves.

"Ah, who gives a fuck?" A-Rab said, sounding disgusted. He stepped forward and unceremoniously shot the lock off.

"What?" he said wryly and shrugged his shoulders. "None of yaz ever hear of the Gordian Knot?"

The pair of doors was thrown open and the group stepped back to give themselves some fighting room should anything be waiting just inside. Oddly, no livestock came running out. It appeared as if the barn were empty; inside lay nothing but the inky darkness. On both sides, stalls that looked as if they’d once housed horses or sheep or some other kind of livestock were lined up. The place smelled like sweet hay mixed with the rich odor of manure.

The men fanned out and secured each of the stalls one by one.

"Looks empty, Sarge," Lance said.

"Well, those dumbfucks outside were after something," Masterson said. "Slider, why don’t you take the Mossberg and check out the loft upstairs? The rest of you, check your magazines and reload."

"I’m on it," Slider said and he disappeared like a wraith into the shadows.

The squad pulled off their packs with a collective groan and set to swapping out their old magazines for fresh ones. No one had to tell them what it meant to be caught by The Dead with only a half-full weapon. Once the hardware was reloaded, they refilled their spent magazines from the ammo in their packs.

Soon, a shout from over their heads echoed through the empty barn.

"Nothing up here, Sarge. I did find somebody’s stash of old
Playboys
though." There was a long pause and then, "Hellooooooo, Miss October."

"Ok, fine. Leave the stroke books and get back down here. We’ll take fifteen to rest and finish reloading before we head off for the next farm."

Slider rejoined the men after a couple of minutes and the group soon fell into a congenial conversation.

"Look," Ray Dog said to Slider. "I ain’t sayin’ shit ’bout the effectiveness of your goddamn shotgun, you simple Jersey Fuck. I’m only sayin’ you shouldn’t be steppin’ up and standin’ in front of my ’60."

"Will youse all listen to this fuckin’ mulignane?"

"Careful with that mulignane shit, Cuz, or I’m gonna have to hang my size fifteens in your lily white ass."

The team laughed, having been longtime by-standers to this ongoing debate. Ray Dog was always complaining about having to check his fire because Slider would step into his firing line time and time again. He said Slider did it to take credit for his kills. Slider’s position was that The Dog thought of his weapon in the same way that he thought of his dick—big, black and mighty deadly. He felt he needed to show a little of what a white boy could do to help him out.

The dispute had been going on for as long as they’d been on the patrol.

As the two men argued and the rest of the squad listened amusedly, a small almost invisible door moved slightly on its hinges in the shadows at the back of the barn. It wasn’t anything anyone would have noticed unless they’d been looking right at it, but it did indeed move.

"Listen, White Bread, all I’m sayin’ is that if you ain’t careful, you’re going to get the smoking end of this bitch straight in the ass."

Again, the door shifted. This time though, it came off the door frame and opened slightly. Over the din of the men’s conversation, no one noticed or heard a thing.

Except Masterson.

The squad leader cleared his throat suddenly, and made a circular motion with his finger that told the men to continue talking. The men immediately raised their weapons and looked around in response. Masterson raised a finger and pointed into the shadows at the back of the barn.

"Shit, man, you know my ass is exit only," said Slider, continuing the ruse, as they all caught on to what was going down.

The small door continued to slowly swing open and deep in the shadows four dirty fingers slowly slid into view. As one, the team snapped their weapons to a firing position and waited for Masterson to give the go-ahead.

An older man slowly stepped out from behind the door. His face was smudged with dirt and sweat, his clothes matted with a dark oily substance. His expression was tired and his skin sallow. His cheekbones jutted out and gave him the appearance of someone who hadn’t eaten in days, maybe weeks. He looked like something out of Auschwitz as he raised his eyes to meet Masterson’s and slowly opened his mouth, yellow teeth flashing in the half-light.

Just as Masterson gave the signal to fire, Lance saw that the man’s pupils were clear and unclouded by Death.

"Dumb fucks," shouted Masterson. "Smoke ’em!"

Before Lance could say anything, the other five men opened fire. Bullets tore their way through the old guy and splintered the wood of the wall and door. Huge holes opened up in the wall, which only made the other rounds’ passage to whatever lay beyond all that much easier. The Mossberg blew pizza pan-sized craters in the wall while the M-60, the SAW, and the smaller rifles threw up a hailstorm of metal. The sound inside the enclosed barn was deafening and as the MP-5 and the Bushmaster all fell on empty, the team heard Lance shouting.

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. "Ohhh, you stupid motherfuckers! You stupid, stupid motherfuckers!"

The men all looked around, dumbfounded.

"He wasn’t fucking dead, man!" Lance cried out. "He wasn’t fucking dead!"

With the set of double doors in the front open and the Volkswagen-sized hole now blown in the rear, the wind soon blew the thick gunpowder smoke clear. The men all stood trying to sort out what the fuck Lance’s trip was.

"Say wha…?" Ray Dog questioned now looking small and uncertain somehow.

Lance ran up to the bullet-decimated wall and bent to check the man’s already rapidly cooling body. He waved his arm in an attempt to clear a bit more of the choking smoke.

"This guy wasn’t one of Them, you fucking assholes!" He ran his hand over his face, pulling his features into distortion. His eyes quickly welled up with tears as he cried out, "Oh, fuck… oh, God!"

Masterson stepped over to the now dead man and bent to check to see if what Lance was saying was true. They all felt their hearts sink when they saw the look that passed over his face.

Lance stood up and continued rubbing his face with his hands.

"Oh, God…" he cried. "You stupid fuckin’ fucks!"

He turned and kicked at the last remaining boards and stepped into the area beyond the shattered door. The place looked like the OK Corral. Bullet holes and splintered wood were everywhere.

Lance knelt down, trying to get beneath the last of the smoke. He coughed and continued to fan his hand back and forth in an effort to try and see more clearly. As the smoke finally dissipated, what he saw behind the obliterated wall was something that would haunt him until the day he died.

Lying on the floor were what was left of the dead man’s family: a woman about the same age as he’d been, a girl who looked to be about seventeen, a boy who was twelve if he was a day, and a smaller kid who couldn’t have been more than eight. The artillery had torn them into bits. Large, gaping wounds still bled and at even the most cursory of glances, it was evident that they were now just as dead as their patriarch.

Despite his best efforts to control his rising nausea, Lance vomited into the hay.

For a long time, no one spoke. Masterson walked away from the group and sat on some bales of hay, looking pale and flustered. He sat there for a long time and looked deep in thought as he regained control and considered all of the possible ramifications of this little fuck-up.

Finally, Masterson spoke up as he stood and began gathering his gear, "This place is clear, Gentlemen. We report it as such."

"Sarge," Lance shouted, "we just murdered these people!"

"Casualties of war, Son," Masterson said and the words sounded as if they tasted bitter in his mouth. "You ladies are to finish reloading. We move on to the next ranch in five."

The men all stood around and looked confused and a bit repulsed. Shooting zombies was one thing. This… This was something else entirely.

"Are we clear on this?" Masterson said and his gaze addressed them all sternly, especially Lance, and never wavered. "Gear up! You heard me, we leave in five."

"You can’t be serious?" Lance said unbelieving.

Masterson turned on him. He took a menacing step forward and none of them—Lance in particular—failed to notice how his hand drifted toward the pistol he kept holstered at his side. His eyes narrowed and his jaw grew noticeably more taut and firm.

"Son, we have a job to do here and we’re going to do it. Nothing is going to bring these people back, you hear me? This was a mistake," he said through clenched teeth. "A mistake that never happened."

Lance started to open his mouth to respond, but he felt A-Rab’s hand on his arm as if to say, "Some fights aren’t worth dying over, kid."

"Now… are we clear, soldier?"

Lance closed his mouth and reluctantly nodded.

"Good. Like I said, Ladies… Pack your shit. We leave in five."

As Masterson walked away, Lance felt a fleeting impulse to shoot the bastard in the back. God knew it would serve him right, but as the men slowly began to follow the Sarge’s orders, he knew that he wouldn’t do it. He knew that he’d do just as he was told and pray this whole thing would be over soon. With enough time and distance, it would all become just a vague memory of something that could only have happened in a dream. The squad would move on and someday The World would get a handle on all of this crazy shit. Life would go back to the way it had been before and all of it—The Dead, the killing, the bodies, and the blood—would fade from their memories.

But Lance knew today would be different, today would be with him forever. Deep down, he knew he’d remember the look in the old man’s eyes and that moment, the one just before the bullets starting flying, would replay in his mind—in his nightmares—again and again, and every time he remembered it, he would get the same sick feeling in the pit of his gut as he had now.

Today though…

Today, the world was falling to shit and for better or for worse he was still alive. If he intended to stay that way, he knew he’d need to keep his mouth shut and just follow the orders that were given. So, with his face set and his eyes looking downward, Lance gathered his gear and tried to prepare himself for whatever might be lying in wait at the next farmhouse up the road.

The Monkey Dance

The light fixtures set in the ceiling of the weight room were turned off in an attempt to keep the room cool against the remaining heat of the day. Just below the lights, blades of circulating fans churned the warm air like dark and malignant butter. The hottest part of the day had almost passed, but in this place the heat never fully went away. It was always oppressively hot, day or night, and any cool breeze, no matter how slight, was appreciated.

The fighters working out were happy for the respite after a long day too full of sun and the bright lights of the Octagon. What each of them wanted now was to have some peace and quiet and to remain uninterrupted while toiling in the relative calm of the gym.

Cleese lay on his back across the bench press and looked up at his spotter. Monk’s face floated there like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. It drifted there and his stern, upside-down expression was almost comical. Cleese closed his eyes and tried to shut out all external stimuli. He ran his fingers through his long sweat-dampened hair and, being too tired and too hot to do much else, sighed. They’d been at this for a good couple of hours now and even though he felt exhilarated by the exercise his muscles burned from tendon to ligament. His flesh was hot to the touch and the flush of exertion burned warm and red across his skin.

They’d had a quick, but strenuous five mile run on the compound’s quarter mile track to warm-up, then the two of them came to the gym to do some weight training and, more importantly, to try and calm their souls. Lately, Cleese felt like his nerves were on the short edge of frayed. Even Monk could tell how close he was to breaking. Damn, anyone with half a brain could see it. Too much had happened far too fast and he hadn’t had the chance to just chill out, sort through his thoughts, and centralize his concentration on something he knew and knew well… his body.

It had been only a short time since he was brought out here to the middle of goddamn nowhere and asked to adapt to a new paradigm and an entirely new routine. He’d been dropped into a maelstrom that was about as foreign to him as a jump shot was to a circus midget. The whole thing was like nothing he could have ever imagined. Sure, he’d seen his share of weird before. Hell, he’d bartered in some pretty bizarre shit once upon a time, but this… this was just out there.

This made weird look like weird was on vacation.

If pressed, Cleese would have probably said that he’d been happy in San Francisco, back when his aggressive ignorance seemed like bliss. He’d had some money, plenty of broads, and access to pretty much everything he could have ever wanted or hoped for. Yes, he’d given up pieces of himself over the years in exchange for those things, but life had been good.

More or less.

However, deep down he knew that it was all just an empty replacement for the one thing he most craved: a place to truly fit in and call his own, without ties or caveats.

But as they say, that was then and this is now…

Now, he found himself sitting square in the eye of a shit tornado and from the look of things life was going to get a hell of a lot worse—or at least a heck of a lot weirder—before it ever got better.