Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line (7 page)

Heinrich smiled. “You’ll have to get in line.”

*****

The next morning, Heinrich’s men cleaned out the refuse from the last group that had used the auction hall. The building was the largest in town, had a rectangular floor space of over twenty thousand square feet, and came equipped with tables, chairs, booths that could be put up by hand, chains, locks, meat hooks, and iron rings driven into the floor for slave auctions.

Necrus Khan arrived early while Heinrich’s men were still setting up and wheeling in the inventory. The slaves were already chained in place, awaiting their fate. The Khan examined his girl, found her satisfactory, and thanked Heinrich on his way out. The girl’s mother cried out and lunged for her daughter as she was led away, only to be laid low by a swift strike from Maru’s club.

“Stay down, you, or I’ll break your legs and leave you for the ghouls.”

Heinrich paid no attention.

His men set up two booths, laid out the merchandise for perusal, and established a perimeter in short order. Their flow of movement was well coordinated, no confusion, no wasted effort, minimal conversation. Maru barely had any work to do keeping them on task. Heinrich liked what he saw. His men had come a long way under his tutelage, and they would go even farther in the days to come. The problem, as he saw it, was there were simply not enough of them. He planned to change that.

Word had spread overnight what was for auction. The start time was early in the morning with reserve set for all items to prevent syndicates from driving down the price. It was an old tactic—the parties bidding on a certain item collaborate, decide who gets what, and only one of them makes a lowball bid. If no one else bids, the syndicate wins. By setting a reserve price, syndicate bargaining power was minimized. If that failed, Heinrich generally employed more forceful and bloody tactics. The last group who had pulled such a stunt were probably still nailed to the trees where they had been left to die.

The slaves were auctioned first, followed by guns and ammunition Heinrich did not want to keep. Then came the salt barrels. When the reserve was announced—a list of the things Heinrich was willing to trade for and the minimums thereof—more than a few auction goers cursed, spit on the floor, and departed. Some complained the price was higher than the value, others grumbled they wanted to bid but could not afford the reserve. Heinrich cared not in the least. There were still plenty of bidders on the floor.

There were only fifteen barrels up for auction, but the bidding went on well into the evening. The sun had set and the auction floor was awash in lantern light by the time the last barrel was sold. Heinrich had deliberately displayed his remaining forty-seven barrels in plain sight. He wanted every hired blade in the compound to see his wealth, and what it could buy.

That night, after a watch was set and the rest of the Storm Road Tribe’s wagons, livestock, and trade were secured in a warehouse under heavy guard, Heinrich turned his men loose on the town. His purpose in doing so was twofold: first, they needed to cut loose. Too much time on the road with no booze or women was bad for discipline. Second, he wanted them to spread the word he was recruiting. Not hiring, recruiting. There was a difference.

At noon the next day, the buyers showed up at the auction house with their trade. Men looking to sign on with Heinrich had been lining up since dawn. Heinrich set the time for the recruiting drive to start two hours after the trade exchange. He wanted the hopefuls to see, and fully understand, what they could earn fighting for him.

Wagon after wagon pulled up to the auction house. Some unloaded and left, but most stayed, livestock and all. A stir of excited conversation rumbled through the men in the recruiting line as the trade piled up outside the hall. Bags of feed for the horses, barrels of clean water, dried meat and fish, ammunition, guns, vegetables preserved in jars and cans, and most tellingly, nearly two tons of hard-tack bread. It was soon all too obvious what Heinrich was planning.

He was going on the march.

Gabriel

Sabrina sat on a stool behind the counter while I haggled with an old woman over the price of eggs. The woman seemed to think a dozen eggs should be enough to purchase a pound of dried fish from Kentucky Lake. I explained dried fish weighs next to nothing, meaning a pound of it is actually quite a lot, and with the proliferation of chickens in Hollow Rock, eggs simply did not command the same price they used to. Preserved meat, on the other hand, was highly prized. We settled on two dozen eggs for a quarter-pound of fish. After I weighed it, the old woman said it was a lot more than she thought it would be. I did not say ‘I told you so’.

“I don’t know how you put up with that shit,” Sabrina said after the woman left. She was staring out the window beside the counter at a robin perched on a limb of the old maple tree next to the general store. Its song was barely audible through the double-paned glass.

“It’s a living.”

“Like hell. You’re the richest man I’ve ever met. You don’t need this place. You don’t need these people.”

I scraped a hand over the three-day stubble on my face. “Sabrina, we’ve been over this.”

“Sure we have. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Before I could say anything else, she slid off the stool and left through the back door. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes.

Teenagers.

Things had gone well between us the first couple of weeks. She moved into the spare bedroom in my house. We talked a lot. She told me about her childhood in Maryland where her mother moved after we divorced. She remarried when Sabrina was three. The husband’s name was Patrick. He was a mild, jovial dentist with a big house and a wide green lawn and horses boarded out in the country and a BMW 7-series. He was nice. He liked to cook. Sabrina wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him raise his voice.

Karen took a job as a public relations coordinator with a small software company. I always figured she would end up doing something like that; she had an engaging personality and a smile that could light up a room. I told Sabrina that was what made me fall in love with her way back when. I asked her if she had been happy, and Sabrina said yes. Karen loved Patrick well enough, and Patrick was enamored with the both of them. The years they spent together were good ones. Sabrina had a happy childhood.

But that childhood ended the day of the Outbreak. They were in Baltimore at the time visiting her stepfather’s parents. They left when the riots started and fled to a small town where FEMA had set up an emergency relief camp. Two days later, the camp was overrun by infected and the Army was forced to evacuate. Patrick got bit protecting Karen and Sabrina. When the soldiers came the next morning to take him away, he said a tearful goodbye and left without protest.

Later, at another camp in West Virginia, they were overrun again and it was Karen who became infected. Same story, same ending. I took some small comfort in the knowledge she died quickly, and though it shames me to admit it, I felt a sense of closure, that it was okay to move on. Part of me still loves Karen and always will, and I know I will mourn for her in time. But knowing she is gone, not just wondering, but knowing, put the final mark on that chapter of my life.

Sabrina, for her part, took the loss hard. She hated the soldiers for killing her mother even though she knew it was necessary. And now that she had no one to protect her, she worried what some of the men in the convoy might try to do.

The day the president declared martial law was the day Sabrina abandoned the convoy. No one tried to stop her, and no one came after her. Everyone was running. Everyone was afraid. Nobody cared if people wanted to leave. Fewer refugees meant fewer people for the Army to look after, and fewer mouths to feed.

Sabrina spoke in vague terms after that. She said she ran for a few days until she found an abandoned town. At the time, she was starving and near death from dehydration. The houses she looted yielded food and water and the .22 rifle she still carries to this day. She decided to stay in the town for a while. That afternoon, not long after she had collapsed on a couch and passed out from exhaustion, she was awakened by the unmistakable howling of infected. She climbed up into the attic and pulled the ladder after her and heard a voice speak to her with a strange accent.

“You need to stay quiet,” the voice said.

Sabrina turned and saw a smallish man with black hair, brown skin, and eyes with epicanthic folds at the corners. He was aiming a pistol at her. She reached for her rifle, only to realize she had left it downstairs.

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “I won’t hurt you.” Slowly, he laid the gun aside. “What’s your name?”

“Sabrina.”

“I’m Manny. We’ll talk later.”

They said no more for the nine hours it took the infected to break into the house, moan and howl and grunt with impotent rage, realize there was no one to eat, and finally wander off. It was hot in the attic. They had only a liter of water between them. Nevertheless, Manny made Sabrina wait another four hours after the last of the thumping and scraping and growling stopped and they could no longer hear the undead screeching in the distance.

“They have good hearing,” he told her. “If we come down too soon, they’ll hear us and come right back.”

Sabrina had been too terrified to argue.

They stayed in the town a few more days living off what they could scavenge. Manny decided to leave and told Sabrina she was welcome to come with him. She had just turned eleven years old. She went along.

And so the pair of them traveled together for over two years. Manny had been a full-time diesel mechanic and a part-time martial arts instructor before the Outbreak. He was raised in Manilla and trained in Kali, Escrima, and Silat his entire life. He moved to the United States in his early twenties. Manny taught her how to use a blade and gave her the twin karambits that were her primary weapons against living opponents.

I asked her if she had ever killed anyone. She laughed and told me of course she had. At least twelve, maybe more. She was not certain of the exact number. When she cut someone, she didn’t stick around to see if they bled to death. She was usually too busy running.

I was relieved to find out she had never been raped or forced into prostitution. People had tried, but she had always managed to defend herself. I have met far too many women over the years who cannot say the same. Sexual assault was an enormous problem long before the world fell apart, and the lawless years since the Outbreak have done nothing to improve things.

As time went on, Sabrina became reluctant to give any more details about her life since the Outbreak. I asked her where she went while traveling with Manny, and she shrugged and said, “All over the place.” I asked her what happened to Manny, why they no longer traveled together, and she said, “Got bit. Had to put him down.”

“That’s tough. Sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks.”

And that was the last we spoke of it.

So the weeks passed and Christmas came. We had a feast at Allison and Eric’s place. Elizabeth joined us after she finished her duties with the town’s official celebration. We sat around Allison’s antique dining table, all twelve feet of it, and ate roast chicken and bread stuffing and squash and peas and homemade gravy. Eric gave Allison a wedding ring with a diamond the size of a blueberry. I had no idea where he found it, but it fit perfectly and Allison said she loved it.

I gave Elizabeth a pair of sapphire earrings and a matching pendant. Even though such things aren’t worth very much anymore, she seemed genuinely pleased. Sabrina rolled her eyes and shook her head and muttered something about spoiled townies. I shot her a look but otherwise let it go.

My gift was a framed four-by-eight photo of Sabrina and I standing on a hillside overlooking the town square, the landscape around us covered in snow. We were backlit by a dark pewter sky and the bare branches of oak trees in winter, both of us laughing at some joke I had made. I remembered Elizabeth taking the picture with her big digital camera, but never thought I would see it in print. Where she’d found the ink and photographic paper, I could only guess. Such things are rare and very expensive. When I looked at the picture, something tightened in my chest and I had to clear my throat before I could speak.

“This is perfect. Thank you.”

Elizabeth’s hand covered mine. Her brown eyes were warm and reflected the golden light of candles on the table. “You’re welcome.”

Sabrina leaned over. “Can I see?”

I showed it to her and felt warm inside when my daughter’s rare smile appeared. She asked if she could have a copy, and Elizabeth said yes.

Now it was mid-January, two months to the day from when Sabrina came into my life, and I had learned a few things about her in that time. Namely, despite the fact she never knew me growing up, we had several personality traits in common. For starters, she had a temper. Not a hot, boiling one that could get her into trouble, but the kind of low, simmering anger that can last for days when roused. Something I know a thing or two about.

She did not talk much. When she did, she said exactly what was on her mind and did not mince words. If she thought a question was stupid, or the answer should be obvious—even when it was not—she simply ignored the questioner. She was not a trusting soul. Her gray eyes, so much like mine, constantly scanned her surroundings, checking rooftops and windows, gauging distances, looking for exits and escape routes, assessing whether or not people were armed and with what.

Despite a bit of physical awkwardness, she did not have the demeanor of a child. She spoke and acted like a grown woman, and for reasons I cannot put easily into words, this pained me every time I noticed it. Which is saying something because, at this point in my life, not many things affect me anymore.

So I sat and listened to the silence in the store in the early morning hours and wished it was six o’ clock so I could go home. I wanted to talk to Sabrina. I wanted to explain why I was reluctant to talk about the future just yet. I wanted to tell her I had some plans in the works that might interest her, but I needed to make sure of a few things beforehand. The first of them being a caravan due to arrive sometime that afternoon, and a man named Spike.

*****

It did not take a great deal of imagination to figure out where he got his name.

A morningstar mace, forged from what appeared to be a tangle of sharpened railroad spikes, hung from a loop on his belt. It had an ironwood handle and a trailer hitch for a pommel. He wore leather armor riddled with sharp metal studs on the shoulder pauldrons, gloves, elbows, shins, toes, and the bottoms of his forearms. The helmet he carried under his arm looked like something from ancient Greece, only instead of a horse-hair crest on the crown, he had welded a short, wickedly sharp spear point. There were dark brown stains on the spear that looked like rust until I realized it was made of stainless steel.

“Good to see you alive, Garrett,” he said as he walked in.

I offered him a hand and he shook it. “Same to you. Run into any trouble on the way in?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Come on back. I’ll make us some tea.”

“On the house?”

“Of course.”

Spike smiled and motioned for me to lead the way. “Just making sure. Stuff is pricey these days.”

I turned the sign on the door to the side that said CLOSED, put the hands on the little red clock to indicate the store would reopen in half an hour, and went into the back room.

Spike pointed at a small refrigerator in the corner. “That’s new.”

“Yep. Put it in a few months ago. Runs on twelve-volt. Found an old Windstream trailer about twenty miles south of town. Had a hundred-sixty watt solar rig on the roof, this fridge, and a ten-gallon water heater. Stripped them and sold the trailer at auction. Young couple moved here from Michigan bought it. You should see what they did with it.”

“I hear Windstreams are popular. Easy to ghoul-proof.”

“Yep. Folks that bought it from me riveted sheet metal over the windows, installed escape hatches on the floor and roof, put in a composting toilet, and ripped out the dining table and benches and built a rocket stove. Even rigged a manual pump to the water tank. There’s a little plastic thing you step on and water comes out of the kitchen faucet.”

“Sounds like a nice setup.”

“A little cramped, but yeah. I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse.”

I cut the power to the fridge and plugged an electric kettle into an inverter. The deep-cycle battery connected to the solar panel was a wonderful convenience, but it only had enough juice to power one appliance at a time. When I had the tea steeping in cups, I unplugged the kettle and diverted power back to the fridge.

Spike accepted his cup and sipped it carefully. At five-foot-eight and two-hundred solid pounds, he looked about as delicate as a battle-scarred pit bull. Fought like one too.

“You got it pretty good here, Garrett.”

“That I do.”

“Maybe one day I can retire some place like this.”

“I doubt you’ll live long enough.”