Season of Rot (7 page)

Eleven other men shared the small pen with
him. Most of them sat around, lost in their own thoughts like he
was. Buck and Hank played cards with a tattered deck for which
they’d been able to bribe the guards. Hank had traded a section of
flesh from his left thigh in order to get it. The bandage he wore
had yellowed, and Scott guessed that soon Hank would succumb to
infection and die. He had seen a lot of men die over the three
weeks he’d been trapped here. The guards didn’t seem to care, as
long as they had one or two healthy males.

The women that had been taken alive were
treated much better than the men. Scott had never been inside their
actual quarters, but he knew it was inside the breeding center, out
of the sun. It had plumbing and was kept clean and free of disease.
Unlike the pig slop the men were fed, the women were given real
food. It all made sense in a sick kind of way. The dead guards
needed the women to make babies, more “cattle” for the pens,
whereas they only needed one man to knock them all up.

Of all the men in the cage, only David stood
at the fence, peering through it at the hills beyond the compound.
He was a newcomer to the breeding center and still hoped that
someone would rescue them. He dreamed of escape. It was a dangerous
thing. Scott knew there was no way out other than death; it was
just a question of how one died and ended up on the other side of
the fence.

If someone perished in the pen while the
guards weren’t around, Scott and the other prisoners made damn sure
the corpse didn’t get back up, even if it meant bashing its head
with a stone until they were covered in blood. The newly risen dead
weren’t always as evolved as the guards, and they often went on a
feeding frenzy. Stopping that from happening was worth the lashing.
The men took turns so that no one was overly punished or outright
put to death for the deed. It was Scott’s turn now, and he figured
it wouldn’t be long before he was bashing open Hank’s skull.

The guards mostly stayed inside the compound
proper. Whatever force had reanimated them had also greatly reduced
their rate of decay, but hadn’t stopped it. Being outside in the
heat of summer was unhealthy for them in the long run.

Scott watched as “Chief Hole in His Neck”
peeked out of the compound door for the hourly check on the pen;
the dead man had gotten his name because his throat was torn open
and his rotting windpipe dangled out. He was one of the few guards
who couldn’t speak, but he held a high rank among the dead and was
easy to get along with if you stayed out of his way and didn’t
cause trouble. The dead man’s gaze lingered only for a moment on
David, who still stood at the fence, then the mute guard popped
back inside, closing the door to the air-conditioned compound
behind him.

Scott tiredly pushed himself to his feet,
wiping his hands on the pair of tattered black jeans he wore. David
didn’t notice his approach.

“You’ve got to stop doing this,” Scott
warned.

David jumped at the sound of his voice. His
bloodshot eyes stared at Scott in shock. “Doing what?”

“Hoping,” Scott answered. “If you don’t,
they’ll likely have you for dinner soon. It makes them nervous when
one of us shows any bit of spirit left. Just be thankful you’re not
one of them already and get over it.”

David started to respond, but Scott had
already turned his back to the newcomer and was headed towards his
spot, where he planned to sit and wait for the cool of the
night.

2

The dead were getting closer. Riley ducked
farther down in the brush, which grew on a hill above the gravel
road. Two jeeps, flanked by a number of creatures on foot, crept
their way up the mountainside. The whole scene was very troubling.
Just how desperate were the dead getting for food if they were
sending hunting parties this far out, and did it mean that all the
cities had fallen at last?

The hunting party had stuck to the road so
far, and Riley doubted they would stray into the woods, but his
cabin was only a few miles north of the road. He counted eight of
the things, including the drivers, all heavily armed. He couldn’t
face a force of that size by himself, and even if he miraculously
took them all out, more would come in search of their brethren, and
likely in greater numbers. Then they would surely find his
place.

Riley kept still and waited for them to pass
by. When they were well out of earshot, he began to sneak back the
way he’d come.

As he reached home and emerged from the
trees, he saw little Brandon playing in the tall grass surrounding
the cabin. The boy’s face lit up when he noticed his father. He
dropped the stick with which he’d been hacking at the wild flowers
and ran towards Riley with his tiny arms open. Despite his worries,
Riley couldn’t help but smile as he swept Brandon up from the
ground and clutched him tight to his chest.

“Where’s Mom?” Riley asked, cutting off his
son’s litany of questions about his scouting trip.

Crestfallen, Brandon motioned towards the
cabin, keeping one arm propped on his father’s wide shoulders.
“She’s getting ready to cook dinner.”

Riley frowned and placed Brandon back on the
ground. The last thing they needed were smoke signals pouring out
of the cabin’s chimney today.

Brandon followed as Riley walked onto the
porch and stuck his head inside the kitchen through the open front
door. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he called out, trying to hide his
concern from Brandon.

Hannah looked up from the vegetables she was
chopping and greeted Riley with a smile, which died on her lips as
she saw the fear in his eyes. “It’s time isn’t it?” she asked.

Riley nodded. “We both knew this day would
come sooner or later.”

She moved to take Brandon’s hand. “How long
do we have?”

“I don’t know. An hour, a week, there’s just
no way to tell. They may never find this place, but they’re close
enough for us to be better safe than sorry.”

Hannah leaned down and kissed her child on
the forehead. “Brandon, honey, would you please go play in your
room for a few minutes? Mommy and Daddy need to talk, okay?”

As the boy marched off deeper into the cabin,
Hannah got back to her feet and turned to face Riley. “Where are we
going to go?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

3

It had been a tough decision but ultimately
Riley had chosen to leave the truck. It was in great shape, perfect
for off-road travel, and he had stored enough fuel to fill it up
twice. But the dead controlled the roads now, and the truck was too
risky, even out here in the wilderness. It was better, Riley knew,
to set out on foot. They would travel slower and they wouldn’t be
able to carry as much, but it would be far safer. On foot, they
could stick to the trees and stay clear of the roads; they would be
nowhere near as noticeable should they come across a group of the
dead.

Hannah prepared some rations, and the family
divided the load of food and water, with even little Brandon
carrying a canteen of his own. Riley also let him carry a hunting
knife, though Hannah had protested. The knife would be of no use
against the dead as Brandon didn’t have the strength or the skill
to drive it into someone’s skull, but it made the boy feel safer
and that was what mattered to Riley.

Hannah carried an old-fashioned .30-.06
rifle, which once belonged to her father, and she also strapped a
.38 revolver to her hip. Riley carried two holstered .45
automatics, an M-16 he’d bought illegally before the world fell
apart, and numerous spare magazines for all three weapons in his
backpack.

Leaving this place wasn’t easy for any of
them. They’d been up here alone for a full three months since the
dead first began to rise. In a lot of ways, it felt more like home
than the house they’d lived in for years before they fled for the
high country.

They made their way into the woods, and Riley
watched a tear slide down Hannah’s cheek as she looked back at the
cabin. It cut into his heart like a blade.

They still had no idea where they were
headed. There was no logical place to head for, so Riley and Hannah
had merely decided to set out east for the coast and hope for the
best. If nothing else, maybe Brandon could see the ocean once
before they all died.

Riley swore to himself the dead would never
take his family alive, even if he had to kill them himself.

4

It was feeding time in the pen. The sun had
long sunk beneath the surrounding mountains. Two of the dead guards
emerged from within the compound, carrying a large bucket filled
with slop as runny as cream corn. With the help of a third guard,
they emptied the bucket over the fence onto the ground of the pen.
The human prisoners pounced on it like hunger-maddened animals,
scraping it up from the dirt with their bare hands.

Scott and David did not participate in the
fight for their evening meal. David remained at the pen’s far side,
staring at the roadway that lead up to the breeding center. Scott
sat Indian style on the ground with his arms across his legs, palms
open towards the stars. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow
and steady. Scott would find leftovers later, or he would fight
with the flock at the morning meal. He doubted if David had any
thoughts in his head about food, and he didn’t care. Let the
newcomer starve if he wanted to. There were worse ways to die.

All that mattered to Scott at the moment was
finding a shred of peace. Meditation could take him away from the
horrors of this place.

Earlier in the day, he’d told David to stop
hoping, that it was a lost cause, but now he wondered: wasn’t he
himself seeking hope by leaving the pen, if only in his mind? He
sighed and opened his eyes. The guards were already headed back
inside the breeding center and the frenzy among the men for the
slop was dying down. Scott slowly got to his feet, ignoring the
taunts of his fellow inmates that he’d missed the meal.

This time David saw him coming, then turned
back to the fence as Scott reached his side. “How dare you tell me
to stop hoping?” David whispered. “Hope is all that’s left to any
of us now.”

Scott accepted the stinging words as if he
deserved them. He nodded towards the road leading out of the
compound. “What exactly is out there that you want so badly?
There’s no place left to go. The dead are everywhere. In here, we
know we’re not going to be cut open and chewed on.”

“What’s the point of being alive if you can’t
live?” David shot back.

“Hank and Buck, those two rednecks over
there, would argue with you that we are living. They get fed, have
their friendship, and once every couple of days they get to have
the orgy of their wet dreams with the ladies inside.”

“But would you argue with me?”

“No,” Scott answered. “No, I would not.”

David grinned. “Then what are we going to do
about that?”

Scott offered his hand, and the two men
shook. “I’m Scott. Scott Burgess.”

“And you can call me David.”

“I know.” Scott laughed. “Well, David, it
looks as if we have a lot to talk about.”

5

Steven placed the half-full bottle of whiskey
atop his desk. All he wanted in the world was the feel of its fiery
embrace as the alcohol slid down his throat, but he couldn’t bring
himself to open the bottle. Too many people depended on him. He
hadn’t asked for this job, but the
Queen
was his ship. She
was all he ever loved in his life, and when the time came he’d go
down with her. He knew every inch of her like the back of his hand,
and yet she’d changed so much over the last few months he barely
recognized her.

Once upon a time, she’d been a gleaming
beauty of magnificent white hulls, a floating paradise where dreams
of love and adventure thrived. Now her hull was spotted with
makeshift plates of armor and the scars of battle. Gun emplacements
lined the length of the main deck on all sides. Where once she’d
held hundreds of vacationers, she now contained barely one hundred
refugees, tired, frightened and desperate.

Someone knocked, and through the open door of
the captain’s quarters Steven noticed O’Neil standing in the
hallway. In one fluid motion, he swept the bottle off the top of
his desk and into the drawer where it belonged.

O’Neil shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry to
disturb you, sir, but I have the inventory of our supplies that you
asked for.”

“Of course.” He motioned for O’Neil to take a
seat across the desk from him. “And how do things look?”

O’Neil slumped into the offered chair. “Not
as bad as we thought. The last dock we raided gave us enough fuel
for another two weeks or more.”

“And it only cost us the lives of six men,”
Steven added bitterly.

O’Neil continued with the report. “Our
ammunition stockpiles for small arms are holding up remarkably
well, and Luke assures me that the new torpedo tubes he set up on
the forward hull will work if we need them. Our only real pressing
concern is food. Even with a rationing system in place and the
reduced number of passengers and crew onboard, we’ll be out again
in less than a week. The priority of the last raid was fuel for the
Queen
, so we didn’t have time to stock up like we
needed.”

“They came crawling out of the woodwork,”
Steven chuckled.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“The dead, Mr. O’Neil. Regardless of where we
put into port, they’re always there, waiting. We never have enough
time.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t like the thought of
touching land again anytime soon.”

Silence lingered in the room for a moment
before O’Neil finally said, “Well, sir, what are we going to
do?”

“Pray,” Steven answered. “Pray our little
hearts out... And while we’re at it, bring me a map of the area
we’re in now. Going back ashore is really our only option, isn’t
it? Since the damn fish are just as dead as the rest of the world.
Besides, even if they weren’t, you know we couldn’t catch enough to
feed everyone aboard this ship. It’s just not possible with our
limited equipment and resources.”