by A. K. Meek
He took another swig and adjusted the pillow. He closed his eyes.
Another scream.
Gunshots cracked the night. But they weren’t the typical occasional celebratory random shots fired in drunken stupors.
Johnny sat up. Something more was going on. The lamp on the nightstand flickered. More gunfire then the lights shut off. And stayed off.
Johnny scrambled from his bed and peeked out the window that Janelle had escaped through. Muzzles flashed in the dark and various calibers rattled. A gun battle.
He ducked down and exited his room into the hallway. Through the windows, more flashes lit up the night. Screams added a whole level of creepiness. A window shattered and Johnny dropped to the floor. The Dog Pound was under attack.
His mind raced. Should he get a weapon? Stay here until it ended? From what he heard, he imagined a hundred people were attacking the pound. At any moment they would sweep through the buildings, killing everyone in sight. He needed to get out of here. He needed to make a run for it.
Slipping his arm from the sling, he attempted to crawl on all fours down the hallway but screamed and gave up the idea as a shockwave of pain rippled through him. He collapsed to the floor. He never was much for pain.
Hunched over, head swirling in an explosion of post-drunk starbursts, he scurried down the hallway like a rat with a wedge of rotten cheese in its mouth. Then he came to the door leading outside. Pausing, he considered leaving the relative safety of the building.
He had been around enough gunfire to know when bullets were striking close to him. From the zings and pops, it was close. Just then, to reinforce his experience, a larger caliber rifle punched a fist-sized hole through an obscenely thin section of wall. That helped make his decision.
He needed to double-time his escape. And he knew just what to do. A lot of people said he was slow or dim-witted. But he knew how to run.
The trailer door flew open and Johnny stumbled out, down the three wooden steps, and hit the ground running.
Bullet rounds shattered the night. Screams broke from all directions. Orders were barked out in desperation or uncertainty. People darted in shadows, their movements like their very life depended on getting away. He didn’t slowdown to see who they were. He ignored all that and ran to where the vehicles were kept, with one thought in mind: Roscoe’s truck.
There were over fifteen vehicles in the dirt parking area. Everything from trucks and four door sedans to a semi Gump had managed to acquire, abandoned on some interstate when the power had been shut down for middle Georgia.
The Chinese and their futuristic devices made sure of that.
He didn’t know how they worked. None of them did, but they didn’t need to know. All he knew was wherever the boxes were, they allowed electronics to come back on. That was how the Dog Pound was able to have power while the rest of the county went without. And to get these boxes, Bob had made a deal with the devil.
In this case, the devil was the Chinese invaders that attacked America with their secret technology. In fact, not far away, Chinese soldiers were tucked away with one of their massive mechanical robots. They were waiting for orders from their command. Until then, Bob took care of them with food and supplies. And sometimes people.
But all that didn’t matter now, except that Johnny knew Roscoe always had one of the boxes in his truck. And that would be his ticket out of the gunfight.
He wormed between the vehicles until he found Roscoe’s truck. It proved a little trickier since the utility lights had been shut off, but there was enough ambient light from a diffused moon for him to see.
Frantically he slid into the driver’s seat. Reaching under the seat with his good arm, he found the metal plate where Roscoe would attach his magnetic split ring. There the keys dangled until needed. Like now.
Gunfire closed in on him. Bullets plinked metal fenders, sending chills over him.
Johnny fired up the truck. He threw the gear in reverse and stomped on the gas. The truck spun out, its wheels kicking loose gravel, then finally bit into solid ground and lurched backward. Once clear of the rest of the surrounding vehicles, Johnny put it in drive and stomped on the gas again. He hoped to simply drive away from the gunfight and come back after it was all over.
But his bum arm coupled with the rapid acceleration and the wheel still being cranked hard left pulled him into a fast, wide arc into the side of the semi. He came to a violent stop and slammed his head onto the steering column.
Stars and flashes of light exploded and he thought he would faint. But the nearing gunfire drove his strong sense of self-preservation. He ditched the truck. The battle was right over his shoulder, about to consume him.
Without another glance backward, he bolted for some scrub trees, just behind a building. He dropped down into the shadows to wait out the firefight.
In the relative safety, he wondered who’d be stupid enough to attack the Dog Pound. A million thoughts raced through his mind, from zombies somehow acquiring a stash of guns, to the dogs turning on themselves in a poker game gone seriously off the rails. Whatever it was, he didn’t deserve to be a victim caught in the crossfire.
“Who are you?” came a voice from behind him.
His heart climbed into his throat as he spun around. All he could manage was not more than a croak. “Who?”
“Did you escape?” a woman’s voice said. Two women moved through the brush closer to him. “We’re so glad we found someone else. We can team up…” her voice trailed off as she came close enough to make out Johnny’s features.
Instantly she recognized the man who claimed Janelle, taking one of her kennelmates like someone would pick out a stray from the local animal shelter.
She screeched and produced a rock she had stumbled over while hiding in the shrubs. She brought it around in an arc driven by fear and a self-preservation drive just as strong as Johnny’s. The rock connected perfectly with the side of Johnny’s head. This and the trauma of his head connecting with the steering wheel minutes ago was enough to send him reeling.
His world swirled in lightbulb flashes and disorienting waves. He fell face down into thorny vines and foliage, unconscious.
The woman who knocked out Johnny hit him two more times with the rock, for Janelle.
Johnny awoke to rockets banging his head more fervently than his usual blackout drunk binges. And to Bob cursing him.
Johnny’s left eye had welded shut with blood and tears, and he swore one of his molars wiggled more than normal. He had been unceremoniously dumped on a patch of particularly rocky ground in the pound’s common area, high traffic ground where grass had been trampled away.
Much of the Dog Pound stood around him. A bonfire had been made. Cracks and pops said the limbs still had some green left. Charred wood filled his nose and reminded him of Sunday barbecues, and that he was hungry, on top of all the pain.
Mumbling rippled around the crowd that had been wrenched from an all-nighter in the most nerve-wracking of ways, by having to fire in straight lines while seeing double. Some, triple.
Fifteen of Bob’s dogs had various wounds, from debris in eyes to small caliber gun wounds to the legs. One critical. On top of that, over twenty of Bob’s assets—prisoners—escaped, fading into the woods surrounding the Dog Pound like vapor. Bob didn’t want to risk any more of his men getting injured rounding up the escapees. He could always get more assets. But good men were hard to find. And all that paled in comparison to his more immediate concern.
“I tell you,” Roscoe said, nursing a grazed shoulder with a semi-clean cloth, “I think it was Sheriff Cassidy.” He looked around for confirmation. No one could confirm nor deny. Alcohol bred indecisiveness. “Plus,” Roscoe continued, “they stole my truck.”
“Shut up, Roscoe,” Bob said. He considered Roscoe’s words. Inside, he thought Roscoe was on to something. Putting this on Kurt made sense. The nearest town, the sheriff arriving with deputies to check out claims of human trafficking.
Bei
ng a pillar of Bartel’s community for so long, Bob knew Kurt well. That was part of the reason he gave his bum of a brother, Johnny, a construction job. He didn’t have a hard time making the leap that Kurt would storm the castle walls, looking to slay the dragon. But this dragon wouldn’t sit around and let that happen. He had plenty of fire left.
But now Bob had the uncomfortable task of explaining to General Huang that one of his null devices had been destroyed. Another stolen. When he’d made the deal with the Chinese, sworn up and down he could gain control of this region, the general listened. Bob considered it lucky they listened to him and that they entrusted him with their devices. And other secrets.
A black Z28 with faded flames drawn in a shaky hand and painted with five cans of fire engine red tore through the busted gate and came to a skidding stop in the parking lot. A plume of Georgia red dust trailed away. Squash and a well-used biker chick by the name of Nomad leaped from the car. They jogged to Bob, their rifles clattering against gun belts strapped over their shoulders.
“Boss,” Squash said as he slid to a stop. “The truck went to Zombie Land. It stopped there,” he gasped as he caught his breath.
Bob slammed his fist into his open palm and yelled, “I want Kurt’s head on a platter.” To accentuate the severity of the situation, he pulled his service revolver—the one issued to him when he swore to faithfully uphold the lawful duties of his deputy position—from his holster and fired two stray shots in the air. Everyone ducked, afraid of being in the line of fire and on the receiving end of Bob’s wrath. He looked around angrily at the crowd that cowered around him.
“I want those zombies taken care of,” he said more calmly, putting his revolver back in his holster. He clicked the clasp, securing it. “Roscoe, you and a couple others go to Haven and release the Orange Angel.” When he started to speak he sounded unsure of himself but when he finished he sounded as sure as anything else in this world.
Roscoe looked at him like he had possibly misspoken. “Boss, you said release the Orange Angel of Death?”
Bob rested his hand on his revolver. “Did I stutter? I said get the codes, go to Haven, and release the orange angels, just like I showed you. If you can’t, or won’t, do it, I’ll find someone else more than willing to take your place.” He scanned the crowd.
Roscoe read between the lines and the repercussions of falling out of favor with Bob were loud and clear. He waved his hands like he was fending off an attack. “No, no, boss,” he said, dripping with apology, “not a problem. I just wanted to make sure I heard you right.”
With that he motioned to Gump and slapped Squash on his thin chest as he walked by. “Come on, let’s get your car and go to Haven.” The three jogged to the Z28 and took off, leaving a dust cloud behind.
Bob stared at the remnants of his dogs, the ones that had been so defiled by intrusion. It wasn’t so much people being shot, it was the fact Bob viewed his pound as a refuge from everything else happening in the world. And now he realized his Dog Pound was no different than any place else, no matter how special he thought he or it was. He was just as vulnerable to being taken down as the next guy running a human smuggling ring. That’s what scared him.
He walked over to where Johnny still sprawled on the dirt nursing his recent head injury, his arm still bandaged. Bob gave him a light but not too subtle kick in the ribs. “Get up Johnathon,” he said. “If it really is your brother that caused all this, you’re going with me to explain to the general. Maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll only want you punished for this.”
Johnny gulped and wished the rock the woman planted against its head had indeed finished him off.
04.04
ZOMBIE LAND
Kurt jumped from familiar but obscure farm backroads to side trails. He did this until fairly sure they weren’t being followed. Even though he knew Bob’s dogs would eventually work out they were from Bartel, he didn’t think heading right back there was the best idea.
“Hey,” Clive tapped the cab window. “You need to pull over,” he yelled.
“What’s up?” Kurt pulled off the road in the middle of nowhere.
Clive hovered over Telly. “He took a bullet.”
Kurt hopped out and peered into the truck bed. “What? Where?”
Clive was in the process of patting down Telly’s side. He raised the t-shirt that clung to his side with a paste of blood and sweat. “I can’t see much.” He wiped away blood. “Somewhere in his side. Can’t tell.”
Sandy, leaped onto the edge of the truck bed. “We have to get him to Bartel. He needs a doc.”
Kurt didn’t know the severity of the wounds, didn’t know if going back to Bartel anytime soon was the right choice. He was apprehensive at heading back there so soon after their half-successful rescue attempt. He felt that if he went there now, he would bring hell along with him.
“What’s that?” Sandy stood on her tiptoes and pointed into the distance.
Fires burned in the distance, among rows of pecan trees. Campfires. As a one they turned to Kurt. He knew what they expected—for the sheriff to make a snap decision. Another decision someone’s life depended on. He’d done it a hundred times before, and even though he held his own doubts and fears with each one, he swallowed it, keeping it to himself, while conveying assurance to everyone.
“Let’s go see,” Kurt said with grim determination. There would be no argument with his decision. “Maybe they have medicine. We don’t have an alternative.”
He jumped back in the driver’s seat. Sandy climbed back into the passenger side, her M-16 poking through the window like she held a lance ready for a joust.
Within a minute it became evident they were closing in on a settlement of some sort.
Eight to ten tents of various sizes and colors, mostly drab green and beige, were spaced out in an encampment among the orchards. Surrounding trees looked to have been used as fuel to burn. A couple smaller trees had been crudely chopped down and many more had limbs stripped except for the highest branches, the ones inaccessible except to skilled climbers. The camp looked like it had been here a while.
Two smallish bonfires crackled, greasy smoke disappearing into night.
Men and women shielded eyes or turned their heads away from the piercing headlights.
As Kurt pulled up he thought of footage he’d watched of POW camps, when everyone milled about, listless, staring blankly into the camera.
Their clothes were in worse shape than end of the world wear. Everyone was gaunt and malnourished. With expressionless faces, they watched Roscoe’s truck come to a stop, like they didn’t care if the devil himself would step from the vehicle and ask for a cigarette.
“Hello,” Kurt said cheerfully, then realized how ridiculous he probably sounded. “Keep your eyes peeled and your safety disengaged,” he whispered to Sandy. She nodded. Kurt stepped from the truck and made his way to the nearest camper, a woman who looked to be in her thirties, an out of control afro matted with dirt and a couple of twigs. Kurt couldn’t tell where her dark skin ended and dirt began. One arm was covered in weeping sores, giving off a wet sheen.
“Are you bringing more?” she asked. Her voice sounded hoarse, like she’d just got over a coughing fit. “If so, there’s room the next one over.” She motioned with her head to the west.
“More? No,” Kurt said, unsure of her meaning. “Our friend’s been shot. He needs help.”
She gaped at him. “What do we have here that you want? No one wants us.” She rubbed her pointy chin with her skeletal hand.
“We need a doctor. I’m not sure how bad he is.”
The woman considered Kurt. After a moment she whistled and beckoned with her hand. A man standing by a dingy mustard yellow tent stuck his head inside the flap. Within moments a young man with olive skin emerged and shuffled over to the truck, a limp slowing him even though he looked in his late twenties, early thirties, and physically fit besides his leg.
Despite his unkempt beard, disheveled clothes, and
sunken face, once he caught sight of Telly inside the truck bed, his mind seemed to kick into another gear. Quite nimbly, with a new sense of purpose, he hopped into the truck and immediately went to work on the injured young man. He had obviously done this kind of thing before.
“He was an EMT before all this happened. Now, he’s our local shaman,” the lady said, a laugh in her voice indicating she just shared the punchline of an inside joke.
Kurt removed his hat and wiped his head. Several of the other campers milled closer, rubbernecking the truck and their occupants.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked eyeing the gawkers.
The lady shrugged. “Waiting to die, I guess.”
Kurt shook his head because it didn’t sound so dramatic as it did realistic and true. “How did you get here? Where are you from? What’s your name?”
“They call me Ms. Momma,” she said. “I’m from Atlanta. I was just outside the city when the bomb went off. Going to get my hair done,” she added, instinctively reaching for her tangled mess. “A blast far overhead. I thought it was some kind of tornado.” Her voice trembled. “I thought I was dead for sure.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“Now I think I would’ve been better off. Once I got out of Atlanta, after a couple of weeks, I started south.”
“Hey boss,” Clive called out, “looks like Telly will be okay. This guy says the bullet went through his side. He bled like a stuck pig but it’s tapering off. Nothing important hit.”
“Thanks for the heartwarming report,” Telly said, his voice raspy and almost giving out. He ended his statement with a grunt as the EMT applied pressure to a tender area of his torso.
“Thank you,” Kurt said and held out his hand to Ms. Momma. At first, she examined it with an odd curiosity, then gingerly took it in her own and clasped it with her other. “How did you get here?” he asked, intrigued by this peculiar woman.
“I came across some people in cars. I was nearly starved and would’ve eaten a drowned rat if I’d found one. They fed me, wanted me to join them. But I should’ve ran when they took me to the Dog Pound.”