Shades of Gray (2 page)

“Well whatever the plan is, we better do it now. That fence is starting to break,” Mia noted.

Surrounding four houses almost in the center of town was a privacy fence, just like the ones used to separate backyards from nosy neighbors. From the information Michael had gathered from these survivors, they’d moved into these four homes a few weeks after Z-day because they were very close together, and had erected the fence shortly afterward. How they had survived this long was anybody’s guess. I suppose from raiding all the other houses and scavenging what they could from the store in town. There were fourteen people in total living in those houses, including five kids and an 82-year-old man.

Outside the failing fence were thirteen and a half runners. I say half because one dumb bastard had somehow become separated from his legs. Most likely that one wouldn’t be a problem, unless it was just as fast on two hands as the others were on their feet.

“We’ll have to be quick. No way we can get them all out on horseback, so if they don’t have transportation, we’ll have to call for an Evac,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face.

We’d been working closely with the National Guard the past eight months, searching for other survivors and sniping deadheads when we could. Mostly we killed zombies; living people were in short supply. Our leader, Michael and his right-hand man, John, had set up a long-range radio back at the club, thanks to the good Captain Waters, and had so far located twenty pockets of survivors. We’d been working in groups of three, going down the list, traveling to their locations by riding through the back country, and trying to bring them all back to the prison. That’s where an Evac might come in. If the survivors didn’t have vehicles or horses, the National Guard flew in and picked them up.

We were left to clean up afterwards.

And yes, that
is
as messy as it sounds.

So far, we’d saved about half the dwindling population. The other half had either been killed before we arrived, or shortly afterward during evacuation. It all depended on how many runners had beaten us to the punch; how well we could hold the runners off once the helicopter landed. We thought their appetites were ravenous before? Now that their food supply was becoming increasingly limited, their appetites had become hideously insatiable.

“There’s only a dozen or so, shouldn’t be a problem,” Jake said as he attached the suppressor to the end of his barrel.

I snorted and looked over my shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you? Stop saying that.”

“’Bout 375 more times oughta do it.”

“Alright, ladies, let’s get this done and get down there.” Mia dismounted, her suppressor already attached.

I pulled mine from inside my coat and screwed it into position.
Thank you, West Virginia National Guard.
After repositioning myself on the cold outcropping, and making room for the other two, I set my bipods to the correct height and found the runners in my scope. The fence was about to give way. Thankfully it was still upright. Basically.

“Take out the ones on the fence first, then work your way out. No sudden movements,” I whispered.

Mia and Jake were nodding on either side of me, both dead-steady and looking through their scopes. Small puffs of white came from our nostrils as we exhaled, the bitter cold air turning our cheeks red and making our noses run. We were bundled up ridiculously; Jake’s grandmother, Nancy, wouldn’t have let us leave the house otherwise. Lying on my belly against a frozen rock reminded me to thank her later for her incessant nagging and worrying.

After hearing Jake and Mia flip their safeties off, I flipped mine and found the first zombie with my scope. It was a guy about my age, wearing a WVU sweatshirt and jeans with a hole in the knee. He looked fresh and intact, except he was missing a boot. Other than that, and the way he was screaming and throwing himself against the wooden fence, he could have been just another college guy coming home for the weekend. This was, and would probably always be, the hardest part. Killing the first one. After that, a cold numbness settled in and you were no longer aware of what or who you were killing.

I sometimes thought we were turning into the very things we had come to hate. Mindless killers. The only difference being the deadheads didn’t have a choice in what they were. A year was all it had taken. A year of running, fighting, and killing. Some would argue it wasn’t murder if you were protecting yourself or those around you. Hell, I’d be the first to defend that. But we struggled with the decisions that had to be made. Are the zombies still people? Do they think? Do they feel pain or fear? They’re the walking
dead;
don’t they deserve the same respect we have always paid our dead?

After a year of this shit, we no longer cared about any of these questions. Hardened and cynical, we moved ever forward, never looking back, never considering the morality of what we were doing…what we were forced to do.

Eliminate the enemy.

These things that had once been people simply became targets.

“Get this train movin’, Kase. My nuts are crawlin’ up inside me,” Jake whispered.

This interruption distracted me and I flinched just as I was about to squeeze the trigger. I exhaled sharply and snapped my head to the side to stare at Jake.

“Shut. Up.”

“I’m just sayin’…it’s fuckin’ cold, dude, hurry up.”

I couldn’t help but notice his grin, crooked as usual, while his body and head remained frozen in place, one eye shut while the other looked through his scope. I bit my tongue and returned my attention to the runners below. I found WVU guy again and took the shot. I watched him pitch to the right and fall against another runner as Mia and Jake opened fire. The runners didn’t show any sign of hearing us; our shots were beautifully muffled by the sound suppressors. And they didn’t seem to notice their brothers and sisters dropping like flies all around them.

We didn’t have to reload considering we had fifteen rounds between us, and there were only thirteen runners. Well, thirteen-and-a-half. Why waste ammo on half a deadhead? We’d take care of him later. Even if we’d had to reload, I doubt they would have heard it. We were far enough away that the sound of a shell being clicked into place could have sounded like anything from down below. A rock falling, a chipmunk playing. Three minutes later, the runners were down and the fence was still up.

Jake breathed a sigh of relief beside me, still looking through his scope, and mumbled, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Mia and I both snorted, waiting a while to see if there were any stray runners lurking about, before heading down to Laurel Grove.

* * *

About an hour later, and after weaving our way through the blinding-white outer edge of town, we rode up to the privacy fence at an angle, putting as much distance between us and the dead runners as possible while still keeping them in sight. They had been pushing against the front side and corner, and from our vantage point on the opposite side, we could see why. Two of the four homes making up this camp faced us, their matching black shutters coated heavily with wet snow. There was an absurd amount of garbage in both front yards, some stacked nice and semi-neat against the fence itself, becoming gradually more scattered the closer it approached the front porches. As if, after a while, the people inside had said to hell with it, and just started throwing shit out the door.

In the corner, where the majority of runners had been pushing, were the remains of at least one body.

“I hope there’s a good reason for that,” Mia breathed.

I glanced at her but didn’t bother with a reply. Even though the snow covered most of the corpse, an arm and part of a head were clearly visible. It wasn’t old either. At least they hadn’t tossed it off the porch like they’d apparently been doing as of late. My eyes turned slowly towards the upstairs windows of both houses. They were empty. No watch on this side, which was weird considering there had been an undead Baker’s Dozen hollering and pitching a fit out here only an hour or so ago. There was smoke coming out of both chimneys, yet no one keeping watch? It wasn’t the weirdest situation I’d ever been in, though it was beginning to rank a close second.

“Free Bird One to Laurel Grove Camp, respond,” Jake said quietly into his walkie talkie.

We were tuned in to the channel the National Guard had approved, and the same channel we’d been communicating on with all the survivors. Our call sign, however, was not military issued. It had been Jake’s idea.

“They didn’t answer the first time, Jake. They probably won’t answer the second time either.” Mia stared through the small opening between the fence and the house, trying to see through to the next pair of homes in this camp.

I glanced at Jake and nodded for him to keep trying, then twisted in my saddle to take a look behind us. Nothing but white.

“Anyone inside Laurel Grove, come back,” he repeated.

We listened for several minutes, not for a reply, but for any stirrings or noises coming from inside the houses. Nothing except the sound of the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

And the sound of a body half-sliding, half-dragging itself towards us.

“Shit, I’ll get it.” Jake turned his horse in the direction of the legless runner we’d forgotten about.

The horse snorted a few times the closer it got, then stopped and pawed at the ground, kicking up snow and a little dirt. Jake pulled a crowbar from a strap close to his saddle, leaned over, and brought it down hard on the runner’s head, all the while fighting his horse for control. He hit the zombie again, just to be sure, then straightened in the saddle and let his horse jump away.

“Come on, let’s go around.” I gave Daisy a nudge and let her take us around the back of the neighborhood at her own pace. She’d been my faithful companion even before the Z-uprising, proving her worth a thousand times over since then.

I made a few hand gestures to the others, reminding them to keep sharp eyes on the upper level windows as well as the lower. We rode back down the sidewalk, leaving hoof prints in the snow, took a sharp right, and basically made a big circle, riding around the block and coming to the fence at a different location. This vantage point was directly in between the two pair of houses.

“Sonofabitch” was the first thing that fell out of my mouth.

“Well hello there! Where’d you folks come from? Snuck right up on me,” a thin, balding, middle-aged man shouted to us in an equally thin and high-pitched voice.

He was standing on the porch of the farthest house, on the backside of the encampment, waving to us like his hand was on a hinge and wearing only shorts and flip-flops. In
November
. His other hand was planted on his hip and holding something that resembled a meat cleaver.

“Jake,” I said, my voice flat.

He was one step ahead of me: the walkie was to his lips and he was trying to raise the Guard before his name even left my mouth. The shirtless wonder was making his way off the porch and strolling over to us before Mia had time to register the same alarm we already had. Her sense of smell was almost nonexistent now. She blamed it on breathing dead stink for over a year, saying it had killed her sinuses or whatever.

But Jake and I had smelled it.

And it wasn’t the dead.

I raised my rifle when the man was thirty yards away. “That’s far enough, mister.”

Jake and Mia were ready, but their weapons were still lowered. The man followed my order and stopped, his face twisted with something that would normally have me laughing my ass off. If it hadn’t been for the heavy sweet stink in the air, I probably would have.

“I was just gonna open the gate for you, Miss. I don’t mean you any harm. No, none at all.”

The tip of the meat cleaver bumped against his leg, forcing me to notice the blood I’d missed before. My heart was thumping hard, and for a moment I was frozen.

Did I really miss that blood, or am I seeing shit? And if they’re real, what the hell do we do?
This guy was a survivor, and we were supposed to bring them all in. All living people who hadn’t been bitten. But this?

“Just stay where you are,” I said, stalling for time. “What’s your name?”

I didn’t want to handle this. Captain Waters wouldn’t want me handling this considering what had happened the last time we’d run into a similar situation. The first thing, hell the
only
thing I wanted to do was put a bullet between this psycho’s eyes. The smell in the air, this crazy dude’s appearance, the blood, and the meat cleaver made it pretty obvious to me why no one had been keeping watch, why no one had taken care of that swarm of runners and why no one had answered our calls over the radio. My group had only encountered this once before, and that was two months ago. Out of the seven people that were supposed to be in that camp, only three were still alive when we reached them. Those three had opened fire on us immediately. Of course we returned fire, and had killed them pretty easily. When we went inside to investigate, it’d been pretty clear what had been going on. That isn’t something a person ever forgets.

“Andy Johnson, ma’am. Pleased to meet you. Why don’t I just open that gate and let you three in? Got a fire going, nice and warm inside. C’mon, you don’t have anything to be scared of,” he said. Then he smiled. A big, toothy grin.