Six Feet From Hell: Unity: 6FFH Book #5 (2 page)

CHAPTER
2

April 17, 2022 – 1439 Hours

Joe and Rick approached the southeast side of town. As they neared the hospital, they could see the wall. The hill the former hospital stood on made for a good vantage point, but it hadn’t been secured, so it sat derelict. It was a creepy sight after so many years of nonuse. The once bright whites of the exterior walls were replaced with a film of dingy green slime. The overgrown grass and trees complemented the off-colored hospital, showing the world that it no longer needed man’s help. The hospital sat only a hundred yards away from the edge of the wall, but it might as well been a hundred miles. The workforce that it would take to move the wall around the building was just not feasible now. Between security for the workers, clearing the building, and physically moving the wall itself, it would be a massive undertaking.

As they walked by, Joe studied the hospital carefully. It would be a nice addition to the walled-in area of the town, if he could find a use for it. The motel was large enough to accommodate the residents, but it was getting a little crowded inside. Two and three people to a room were starting to grate on people’s nerves. The citizens were used to not having any privacy, but it still unnerved them. It wouldn’t be long before there would be a few more additions to the populace, with three of the town’s women pregnant. One was due in less than a month; the other two had just begun to show a small pooch, probably close to four months along.

There had been talk of stretching the boundaries of Tazewell’s wall since shortly after Joe and his team had arrived. The consensus was to leave it alone, but since the weather had begun to warm, the people were restless. There were only so many hunting parties, scavenging crews, and guard duties to keep residents busy. It was better to keep them occupied with a long-term goal then some immediate need.

The
undead were less of a presence in the last few months. There had been few incidences with zombies at the wall and even fewer narrow escapes with them. No one had been bitten in the last four months, thankfully. The residents of Tazewell were not immunized. For reasons unknown to Joe and his team, the residents had not been vaccinated. Shortly after imprisoning Captain White, everyone received a checkup, with none having the “V” on their right arm. It was unsettling for Joe, but the rest of town seemed not to notice. It had been long enough since they became aware of what being bit or dying meant; they took all necessary precautions. Bodies were buried outside the wall, more than a mile away. As soon as a resident passed away, they received a railroad spike to the skull, and then taken away to the improvised cemetery. Graves were marked with whatever was available; usually two-by-fours nailed together did the trick.

Joe
came to the threshold of the wall and looked for the sentry on duty. There was not one be found. Annoyed, he banged on the wall with his makeshift door code. After banging out
J-A-C
in Morse code on an aluminum trailer side, the guard appeared. He was a kid, maybe twenty, named Boyd. Boyd had a penchant for being a little overzealous when it came to his guard duty, so whatever had taken his attention away from the wall must have been interesting.

Boyd
bounded up to the catwalk and darted his head left and right before seeing Joe and Rick standing about five feet away from the wall, about twenty feet away from him. Dressed in digital ACU camouflage from head to toe, including a patrol cap. Nearly every person in town had the same getup; camouflage was the fashion of choice in the post-apocalyptic world. You could dress it up how you wanted, but it still didn’t sway from the fact the most everyone had the same outfit. Boyd slung his rifle, a weathered Marlin model 336, over his shoulder. The lever-action 30-30 was a little worse for wear, but was deadly accurate nonetheless.

“Sorry,
guys! Didn’t hear y’all coming! I’ll go get the ladder!” Boyd bounced back down the catwalk and yelled for someone on the other side to hand him the aluminum stepladder. Boyd grabbed it and slid the business end of it towards Joe and Rick.

Rick
stepped up the ladder first, clanging metal the whole way up. He shoved the turkey over the top of the wall towards Boyd, who admired the day’s catch.

“Woo!
We are gonna have a good dinner tonight, fellas! How’d ya’ll bag such a big sumbitch? This fucker must be thirty pounds!” Boyd noted.

“Because
I had to track the damn thing for almost four hours before I finally got a shot on it,” Joe said as he reached the top of the ladder. Rick extended a helping hand out to his father and helped pull him up. “I’ll take that now, Boyd.”

Boyd
handed the turkey back to Joe quickly. “Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry Joe.”

“Don’t
mention it. Just want to get this cleaned and cooking in time for dinner. Have a good one, Boyd. I’ll see you at supper.” Joe tossed the turkey over his shoulder and started away from the wall.

Boyd
fidgeted with his rifle for a moment before hollering out. “Hey Joe! I got a quick question for you!”

Joe
stopped and turned to face the young man. “What is it, Boyd?”

“Well,
I’ve been talking to Larry about helping out a little more here and I just wondered if you could put a good word in for me with him. I’d love to get outside the wall some, and I’m a hell of a shot.” Boyd quickly spoke and eagerly waited for Joe’s response.

“I’ll
see what I can do, Boyd. No promises, though.”

“Thanks
man! If you ever need one of your knives sharpened, just holler at me! I’ll do yours for free!” Boyd’s voice carried louder as Joe walked away. Joe threw a thumb up back at the kid as he continued towards the other side of town.

Once
they were outside earshot, Rick leaned in towards his father. “You aren’t gonna let him outside the wall, are you?”

Joe
chuckled. “Why not? He’s older than you are and you get to go out all the time.”

“I
don’t know, he just seems a little…off,” Rick replied.

“In
a world where the dead come back to life, the term ‘a little off’ needs a little more clarification. Boyd pulls more guard duty than most of us do. I think we should reward hard work like that. Don’t you?”

Rick
shrugged his shoulders as they turned left towards their “chow hall.” The chow hall was the only building within the walled town where food was brought and prepared. It was also the only building in town that had a working gas grill to cook. There was an ample stash of propane tanks and natural gas to cook with stored behind it. In the pre-apocalypse days, it had been a grocery store with a full deli and plenty of food-filled shelves. Now it sat full of tables, chairs, picnic tables, and other places to sit and eat. It was located about a mile from the motel, so working up an appetite going to breakfast was not a difficult task.

“
I guess if you trust him, then I should too, right?”

“I
never said that I trusted him – he hasn’t had a chance yet – so I say we at least give him a chance to prove himself. We don’t have too many people begging to go out and the ones that do get to are starting to resent when they have to. I think it may be time for a changing of the guard, so to speak. It’s stressful enough around here without having to hate your job on top of it,” Joe pointed out.

“So
does that mean I can change jobs if I want to?”

Joe
playfully smacked Rick on the back of the head. You’re stuck with me, boy.”

Rick
playfully nudged Joe back and grinned. “Whatever, gramps. I was just gonna ask when I can take over your job, you old fart.”

Joe
let out an amused whine. “Son,
nobody
wants my job.”

“What
are you talking about? I’d love to have your job. You get to make the decisions; you get to figure out how things are run around here. You and Larry pretty much run this place by yourselves.”

“No,
the people run this place. Larry and I just make sure that they have what they need to do what we ask of them. It’s the way government is supposed to work, not the way that it
used
to work.”

Rick
waved dismissively. “Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about being elected. The people pretty much just choose whether or not they want you to keep running this place.”

“Yeah,
and God forbid they should change their minds. I don’t think they’d bother with impeachment; they’d probably just shoot me and be done with it. That’s why we keep as many people happy as we can. We compromise when it’s necessary and we hammer our point hard when it’s not. People might think that I have the final say in everything, but they don’t realize that it’s
them
that have the last word.”

“Well
you’d better hope that Reggie doesn’t have the last word when it comes to that.”

Joe
frowned. Reggie had been a particular thorn in his side since coming back with Captain White. As soon as the team had come back with one more than they left with, he had started complaining. A hardcore liberal, Reggie had declared that we had no right to hold Captain White against his will, despite the atrocities that Joe told about. Joe told of the conscripting, the raids, and the murderous plot against his ZBRA team, among others. Joe had no basis for the argument as both of the perpetrators had been killed before they could carry out the mission. Mike reconsidered and managed to keep Curtis alive, his last full measure of devotion was what kept Curtis among the living. Wagner had taken it upon himself to work for “The Captain” not knowing that he was walking into a trap of his own. From what little information Joe had gathered from Captain White, he’d intended to kill Wagner once the job had been completed.

Reggie
represented everything that was wrong with the world before the end. He was in favor of trying to strike a deal with Captain White and the Peacemakers, obviously not caring that they would do to him what they had planned to do to Wagner. Reggie had a few sympathizers, but was by far not the majority. Joe thought that it irked Reggie badly. In the days before, Reggie seemed like he would be the person to take up a cause for the simple reason of pissing someone else off. He would have been for gun control when everyone around him was against it. He would be the lone dissenter when there was an easy decision to be made. He would be the one to complain that killing the wildlife around Tazewell was not only cruel, but against God’s will. If the Good Lord wanted the human race to be taken out by the Romero Virus, then who were they to argue.

Reggie
did not eat with the rest of the town; instead, he grew his own. He rarely traded with anyone in town apart from taking a few seeds to keep his stash of food and marijuana plentiful. Reggie had grown pot for several years, according to Larry. In another life, Reggie had been an attorney, prosecuting the people for the very plant that he now possessed. When it happened that he needed meat, he would fish from the small section of the Clinch River that was within the confines of town. He never left the safety of the walls. He did not have a gun, a conscientious objector to the bitter end.

“Reggie is just happy being Reggie. I don’t give a shit if he wants to take up a donation for PETA; he’s still just gonna be the lone dissenter when it comes to anything I do. I’ve tried talking to him, I really have, but he won’t listen. Besides, he doesn’t have anything that we want and we sure as shit don’t have anything that he wants. As long as he keeps his bullshit to himself, it’ll be live and let live.”

“See,
that’s why you are one of the people in charge around here. If it was me, I would’ve kicked his ass out by now,” Rick said half-joking.

“Well
we can’t just kick people out because we don’t agree with what they say. That was one of the big problems
before
the world went to shit. You can’t just stuff your beliefs down someone else’s throat and then bitch and moan when it doesn’t work. This country was founded on the principles that ‘all men are created equal’ and I think it’s high time that we start getting back to that.”

“Amen
to that, dad. I’m all for equality and shit, but just don’t expect me to respect that kind of behavior from him. He doesn’t do shit around here and probably never will. That laziness just doesn’t sit right with me. I work my ass off to bring people food and whatever else they need; I just expect a little respect in return. As long as he don’t ask for stuff from the rest of us, God bless him. Let him get good and stoned one night and drown in the river for all I care.”

Joe
laughed. “What’s got you riled up today?”

“I
got guard duty after dinner. And trust me, nothing would suit me better than to just put a bullet in Captain White and be done with him, too.”

“Well,
I can’t be picking favorites around here or people might get the wrong idea,” Joe replied. They were less than a quarter-mile from the chow hall now, the giant tan-colored building in sight. Before the zombies, it had been a Food Lion. “I tell you what, Curtis and I will come by and play cards with you some tonight and pass the time. Sound good?”