This Dark Earth (15 page)

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“My name’s Tessa, sir.” She smiled again and pushed her arms together, making her tits swell. She had nothing except her body. And a bottle in her pocket. No daughter anymore,
since the captain found her. So in the end she had nothing.

He looked her over slowly, with a lidded gaze. He wasn’t tall or short or fat or thin. He was perfectly ordinary, she thought, looking him over. Cocoa butter brown with a complexion to match her own, freckles on his cheeks in a way that reminded her of Morgan Freeman but without the nobility, and a short-cropped afro going gray at the temples.

Standing in front of her, head bent just a little in the Bradley’s compartment, he unzipped his fatigues and pulled out his cock. It was unremarkable, if thicker than some she’d seen. He flipped it with his hands, toward her face, like a dog wagging a tail.

She took it in her hands, warmed it in her palm and pulled back the foreskin, licked its head, and then did what he wanted. She put it in her mouth. He tasted gamy and wild. She thought of biting it off, and for a moment, while he pushed it into her as far as he could, holding the back of her head, she imagined him castrated, squirming and bloody, on the metal floor of the vehicle. But he might live through that and she definitely wouldn’t. She’d do worse than unman him. He’d turn zombie before she was through. And he’d suffer first.

His cock pulsed in her mouth and the back of her throat, and when he came, she had trouble breathing. But she wouldn’t swallow that part of him. Never.

“You’re an old-school nigger.”

She coughed up his semen and wiped her mouth.

“You,” she said, voice hoarse. “You’re as black as me.”

“I don’t even have to ask you, you suck me off. You’re
like clay, ready to be shaped. Ordered. Ready to obey.” He grabbed her breast, massaged it roughly until it came out of her top, and then he pinched the nipple until she yelped and tried to move away.

“All I require of you is to be what you are, obviously, already.”

“Tessa. My name is—”

His fist caught the side of her face. In a world of abusive men, she’d never let any of them lay a finger on her. She knew how to hurt him with a gun or a knife. But she had nothing except her body now, and the bottle hidden in her skirt, and she didn’t want to die yet, not before she could finish her task and lay her burden down. Rid this world of a living monster. Punish him. She touched her cheek and tried to look at him meekly, tried not to let him see the real intention in her eyes.

“Your name is bitch, or woman, or whatever I want to call you, understand?”

His dick was soft now, and he started to tuck it back into his pants, then stopped.

“Clean me up. Show me you understand your situation.”

Face swelling, she used her hands, and he didn’t stop her, didn’t make her use her mouth again.

“You’ll give any man in the unit a tumble. Or head. You’ll feed us, take care of our clothes. You’ll bring me my dinner separate and stay with me until I tell you to leave. Only then will you take care of the other men’s needs. I won’t go after any other man. Your pussy better be clean for me. I don’t follow any man. Understand?”

Tessa nodded.

“You’ll stay in the Bradley while we scavenge. You know how to write?”

“What?”

“Are you literate? Or are you a stupid nigger who only knows how to fuck and suck dick?”

“I can write.”

“You’ll listen to the radio. Scan the stations. Write down frequencies and messages, if any. Quentin and Reeves will show you how to operate it. If you can’t get it, we’ll throw your black ass out. We won’t kill you. No. We’ll just leave you.”

“That’s killing me. But if these boys can run the radio, I sure as hell—”

This time he used his left hand, planting his fist into her stomach. She’d have to remember that: he could hit just as hard with either hand.

There was nothing to say to Mozark, and she had no air to speak with anyway. She coughed and wished she could get the taste of his come out of her mouth. She’d take a dip when she was alone, if she could find some.

“We’ve made camp, woman. Get up, and get some food ready for the men. I’ll expect you in my tent later.”

Tessa woke up
in a nest of wrappers and the smell of her own feces and urine in her nose. The convenience store was dark, but it was a clear night, and moonlight streamed through the lowered grate at the street. She and Cass had drunk most of the wine coolers from the walk-in and earlier, before bed, had progressed to the sweet Boone’s Farm wines. Her mouth felt
fuzzy, and her head pounded. She rose and went to the corner where they’d recently begun to relieve themselves; the toilet, ever since the water stopped running, was too full to use anymore.

When she returned to the nest of T-shirts and wrappers, paper towels and other soft items they had scavenged, she realized that Cass was gone.

“Cass? Where you at?” Her voice sounded scared, even to her. “Cassandra? Baby, where are you?”

Turning, she went to the front of the store and stared out into the moonlit street. The zombies were moving, down the wreckage of the old Vinita main street and toward the cornfields on the edge of town. Even now, at night, she saw the familiar faces of people she once knew beginning to rot and slough off: Cindy Cottar from the five-and-dime now missing her nose and half a cheek; Fred Anderson from Citizen’s Bank who had declined her home-equity loan, limping away on a footless leg; Stephanie what’s-her-name from Cass’s hair salon missing hunks of flesh from her arms, legs, and most noticeably, her neck. And more, all of them shadowed and wreathed by a black cloud of flies, maggots pooling in their mouths and eyelids, dripping from ears and spilling from open wounds.

Above the shuffling noise of the undead, the constant buzz of flies, she could hear in the distance the faint hum of something she couldn’t quite place.

A thrumming, insistent sound—she realized it was a machine. A big truck or off-road vehicle, maybe. An earthmover, maybe. It grew louder, and she could make out the higher-pitched whine of motorcycles or ATVs.

She ran to the back of the store, snatched up her purse, stuffed some cans of Skoal and one of the cleaner T-shirts from the floor into it, and went to the alley door behind the register in the storeroom. Cass must’ve gone this way to investigate the sound. The metal grate at the front of the store rattled far too much for her to have used it. They’d have been swarmed by zombies and Tessa would’ve awoken.

Weaponless when they’d first arrived, Tessa had found a broken old mop and stripped it of its gray cotton head. Now, in her flight after Cass, she grabbed it from the nook behind the alley door, snapped it over her knee, and stuck one half into the space between door and sill. If she and Cass needed to return, they’d still have a place. The other half of the handle, a jagged two-foot spear, she clutched in one white-knuckled fist.

The air was cooler here, and fresher than inside the store, even though the cloying stench of the dead hung in invisible streamers around her head. In some ways, the dead smelled better than her own shit.

She walked, quietly as she could, down the alley and toward the growing sound of engines buzzing in the corn.

“Zeds on the
horizon! Zeds on the horizon! There’s a cluster approaching camp, Lieutenant!” Jasper yelled. He lowered his binoculars and looked over his heavily muscled shoulder, back inside the perimeter, toward the command tent and Lieutenant Wallis and Tessa, boiling clothes in a galvanized tin basin, and the few off-duty men able to relax and sleep.

The camp lay miles from any town, so the cluster of
undead was strange. They found stragglers on the plains, and occasionally a small group, but a cluster meant something larger than twenty. Enough to batter their three-strand barbed-wire perimeter and pose a danger to the men. Especially at night. But the barbed wire was there just to slow them down enough for head shots—it snagged their flesh, what was left of their clothes, and set the tin cans hung from the wire to clattering. Sometimes they’d tumble and take other zeds down with them until the barbs ripped free of their flesh and they could rise again. They always rose again. It was obvious, at least to Tessa, that had they lived near Kansas City or Oklahoma City or Little Rock or Dallas or any metropolitan area, their defenses would never work, but they stayed in the farmlands and headed toward the mountains. They’d be all right as long as the barbed wire was there to alert them and the men remained vigilant.

It was a bright, blustery morning, with the wind freshening in the west and high, thin clouds skittering across the sky. The gray clouds that blanketed the heavens since the Big Turnover were gone, and the sun was warm. The clear day raised the men’s spirits. There’d been no signs of radiation sickness.

“There’s I’d say twenty-five of them, north of us a hundred yards. There’s stragglers behind them too, maybe five or six. Don’t know if the barbed wire will hold up if they all come battering.”

Lt. Quentin Wallis stood, turned, and barked, “James, Blevens, and Roscoe—I want you guys on ATVs. Now. Outriding! Close enough to distract them, draw them off.”

The three men jumped up and ran to the section of camp
designated as the motor pool. The buzz of engines sounded. The men turned their ATVs, the guards lowered the barbed-wire barrier that served as a gate to the camp, and the three buzzed out onto the plains, throwing dust toward the sky. They streaked away, over the rise, moving in oblique angles to the cluster of undead and then around their flank. Tessa shielded her eyes and watched, unmoved.

Lieutenant Wallis barked, “All men, north wall!” Some of the men snorted at his reference to the wall. “Hold fire until the outriders are out of the field of fire and the zeds are within range. No auto.”

The men tromped to the barbed-wire barricade, rattling with gear, helmets. Full-battle rattle, the brass called it. Loaded for bear.

“Fuckin’ trickass hos, these walkers waking me up from my nap,” Keb grumbled. He slapped Tessa’s ass as he walked by her as she worked. She slung the laundry paddle from the basin and hit his own backside with the steaming wood utensil. He jumped, unhurt but surprised, and wiped at the wet mark on his fatigues.

“They only nap you’re getting, Keb, is them in your hair,” Jasper said, low but not unfriendly. “Get your ass over here and take a target.”

Moving fast and always out of reach, the outriders circled the cluster of zeds. The undead moaned, groaned half-decayed words. They moved after the loudest target, drawn to sound and smell. One of the outriders peeled away, pulling a pistol, and began executing the straggling zeds.

Lieutenant Wallis raised his radio and said, “OR1 and 2,
over. Lead the revenants within range and await further orders. OR3, continue on their back trail. Exterminate any and all stragglers. SOP.”

“Copy that,” came the crackling reply from the radio.

Tessa could see the ATVs’ wheels, turning dust over at a median point between the cluster and the camp. The undead rotated slowly in a group and then shuffled forward. Their moans rose above the whistle of the wind on the plains.

Tessa put the laundry paddle down and walked over to stand behind the soldiers.

Keb said, “You come to give me some support, baby, while I kill these motherfuckers? Posted at the trap. The trap.”

She ignored his words. She didn’t like Keb even though she had to fuck him, and she didn’t appreciate his glibness when dealing with the extermination of what once had been humans. There was something wrong with that, but she couldn’t figure out what was so disgusting about it.

Wallis came and stood by her. “Steady, men. Wait until I give the signal.”

Keb snorted. “This some Shaka Zulu shit, Q-tip. Ain’t seen this many of them in a while.” He turned his M-16, popped the clip, checked and replaced it.

“Agreed. We will exterminate, strike camp, and move on to avoid other clusters. Gas supplies are fine now but will be running low by tomorrow. Montfredi, go notify Captain Mozark of the situation.”

A young man no more than seventeen, with big ears and a cowlick, flipped the safety on his rifle and bolted toward the command tent erected near the Bradleys.

Wallis watched the outriders with slate-gray eyes while Tessa watched him. He turned to her, smiled, and said, “Miss Tessa, please get this laundry and the food table packed and cleared away in the mess Bradley, ma’am. We need to be mobile quickly, just in case there are any more of these clusters about. It looks like they’re nomadic. Just like us.”

Tessa’s stomach turned with the lieutenant’s words; he did not scorn her for what she had to do here with the men.

God help her, Mozark would pay.

Montfredi scurried back among the men and said, “Lieutenant, the captain has asked for the whore—” He glanced at Tessa, then back to the frowning lieutenant. “He’s asked that Miss Tessa . . . attend him.”

“Private, what do you mean by ‘attend’?”

Montfredi blanched, shook his head wildly as if denying anything relating to the request. “The captain is . . . he’s, well . . .”

“Montfredi! Report!”

“He’s vomiting, sir. Looks like shit, sir!”

“Miss Tessa, please see to the captain.” He gave her a look, searching, and then added, “Montfredi will pack away the laundry and foodstuff.” Montfredi swallowed, looked from Tessa to the lieutenant, and saluted.

Wallis raised his walkie and pressed the button. “OR 1 and 2, return to camp.” He lowered the device. “Men! Once the outriders are clear, take aim and fire at will.”

The ATVs buzzed across their view and circled around to the gate, having lured the zeds into the field of fire. A soldier moved the barbed wire out of the way once more and they
rolled into the camp. Tessa paused, now watching the soldiers raise their weapons and begin to fire. Behind the men, with the wind at her back, the reports of the rifles sounded like popcorn in a microwave, small bursts and crackles, gaining intensity and dying like kernels in hot oil. The black figures of the undead stumbled and fell. Some kept moving, but with each revenant down, there were fewer targets and the remaining undead began to mist and slough off parts of themselves in the rain of bullets.