Hollaway asked, “Is she always this way?”
“Yes,” Henry said, and it came out in a long-suffering way.
“Bite me, Henry,” Molly replied.
Darke took another half-step toward Grayson and asked, “What made you this way?”
That’s when Grayson started to laugh, but it was the most disturbing sound any of them had ever heard. In vocal quality alone, it sounded as if he were choking and coughing at the same time. There was not one ounce of joy or mirth to it, only a dark malevolence.
Molly jumped toward him with her rifle pulled back and ready to swing away. “You better cut that shit out, or else I’ll clock your ass.”
Grayson continued to laugh, but he did let it decay as he ended up smiling at Molly. “What can you do to make it worse? I’m already half-dead.”
“Well, I can knock your damn teeth out,” she said, still holding the rifle at the ready.
Henry hurried to her and pulled her back. “This is not helping. We need him somewhat intact if we’re going to find out anything.”
“Henry, this is just a bullshit wild goose chase,” Molly said. “By the time we learn anything from this dead fucker, this place will be swarming with the real dead.”
“There is some time,” Hollaway said as he raised an index finger in the air. “This is not, how do you say it, our first rodeo with the dead.”
“What have you done with them?” Doc Wilson asked.
“Well, we have tried numerous small-scale experiments, such as trying different types of poisons, either through direct injection or via gas. We had some traditional poisons. Things like snake venoms, arsenic, and some acids. The acids did destroy skin, nerve cells, and even bone, but they didn’t kill the zombies until it got to the brain. That ended up not being all that different from just using the conventional means of just shooting them. We’ve tried a number of insecticides and pesticides, but they had no real effect. We have even tried some nerve toxins.”
“And did they work?” Doc Wilson asked.
“They temporarily incapacitated some of them, but our testing was inconclusive.”
“Why didn’t you run more tests?” Doc Wilson asked.
“Mainly because our supplies are very limited, and Eli wanted to hold some back in case we encountered a severe threat from the living. They are a worst-case scenario.”
“But this creature is a whole new ballgame,” Doc Wilson said. “Can’t we try some tests on them?”
“Oh yes, we can,” Hollaway said.
“Nothing can stop us,” Grayson bellowed.
“I can tell you this, you ugly son of a bitch,” Molly shouted back. “A bullet to your brain will drop you deader than a doornail.”
Doc Wilson turned to Henry, “Perhaps you can take Molly outside for some air?”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” Molly said, her face a scowl.
“Let’s just take a short walk,” Henry said. “Okay?”
Molly shook her head for a moment but then said, “Alright, I can’t stand the stink of that dead fucker, anyway.” With that, she stormed out of the room.
Henry took a step to follow her, but stopped and looked imploringly back at Doc Wilson, caught in indecision.
“Go with her,” Doc Wilson said.
Henry hurried to catch up to Molly, and the door slammed behind him.
Hollaway said, “Shall we get to work?”
Chapter 10
Preparations for the Dead
Jo watched from the west wall as a man in a backhoe cut a deep trench in the hard-packed dirt approximately thirty feet from the wall. The man had been at it for four hours straight without a break, pushing the machine back and forth as the backhoe belched smoke into the sky.
Far off in the distance, she saw thick black smoke covering the landscape and filling the skyline, blotting out the trees and farmland. Through the smoke, she saw flames fighting their way through the black and gray clouds of smoke drifting toward them, looking ominous and filled her with foreboding. Despite looking into the fire, she felt a chill pass through her body. Her grandfather used to say someone walked over your grave when that happened, but she knew better. The dead were behind that fire and that smoke.
It was her fervent hope that the forest fires they created diverted the horde away from the Sanctum. But she knew that was a childish wish. Some may turn south or north, but most of them would just power through the conflagration. That was their way.
The Sanctum was going to take a direct hit by a mass of thousands of zombies, and their hope depended on setting up the best defenses they could. Ergo, why the backhoe was cutting a trench. The plan was to fill it with gasoline, then light it afire just as the zombie arrived.
“Do you think any of this is going to work?” A voice asked, startling her a little.
When she turned, she saw Willow, the woman who had fought beside her when the first group of zombies assaulted the Sanctum. She was a handsome woman in her mid-thirties who spent a lot of her life out in the sun. She had the telltale wrinkled and bronze skin of a sun worshipper.
Willow had a good question. If Jo were honest, she would have said she thought nothing could stop what was headed her way, but she knew she couldn’t say that. Killing someone’s hope wouldn't help anyone.
“We have a chance,” Jo said. “If some of them peel off because of the fires and if the defenses we’re setting up work, and we all work together, we have a good chance.”
Willow’s face brightened a little from the sober expression she wore. “You really think so?”
“Yeah, I really do.”
Willow looked off into the distant fires for a few seconds, then asked, “Have you fought a lot of zombies before? I mean, a group like what is headed our way?”
Jo shifted her feet and tugged at the rifle hanging from her shoulder.
“Honestly, not one this size, but back when we were at the Manor -- that was where me and my people used to stay. Anyway, we faced off a whole shitload of the deaders.” She looked Willow in the eyes. “If we work together, I think we can do this.” She added a smile to really sell it.
The backhoe chugged away as it cut another long line in the dirt. The man driving it along had hours more work or until the zombies showed up.
Willows asked, “Do you see that?”
When Jo looked to her, she saw that Willow was looking off in the distance, toward the bridge. It was a main artery into the city and ultimately into the campus and the Sanctum. A small caravan of vehicles started over the bridge. When she counted, she saw five vehicles. They all looked like trucks or SUVs, and there was no denying that they were on their way on a course that would bring them to the Sanctum.
Jo turned and shouted to Del, who was working with a small group of men to hoist containers of gasoline to the top of the wall. These were to be used as a desperate option to pour down on the zombies if a breach looked imminent. No one liked the idea of setting a fire this close to the Sanctum. If it came to that, then she thought they were screwed, anyway.
“Del, we have five vehicles on their way in,” she said. “Someone needs to call Eli and Karen.”
Del grunted as he tugged a rope that made up an improvised winch system that allowed the men to pull the ten-gallon cans of gas to the top of the wall. “I’m a little bit busy.”
One of the men said he had a walkie-talkie, and he could do it.
Jo went back to watching the caravan as it crossed the bridge. In the lead was a dark SUV that triggered a thought in her mind. “Hey, Del, didn’t you say that those marauders had a dark SUV?”
“Dark SUVs are a dime a dozen,” Del said as he made the final pull to get the gas can to the top of the wall. Another man at the spot on the wall pulled the gas can onto the top of the wall.
“Come up here and take a look,” Jo said.
“Do you know who this could be?” Willow asked.
“We ran into road bandits on the way here,” Jo said. “I don’t know i
f I could say that this is them or not, but Del went face-to-face with them.”
Del climbed the ladder and walked down the small catwalk-like at the top of the wall to where Jo and Willow stood. By then, the last vehicle in the convoy had made it across the bridge. Del locked onto the lead vehicle, a dark-colored SUV, but only got a glimpse of it before it was blocked by trees and buildings.
“I only got a glance, but it could be them,” Del said.
“Who else could it be?” Jo said.
“Couldn’t it be people like you on the run from the zombies?” Willow asked.
Jo turned to Del and said, “Del, this is Willow. Willow, this is Del.”
“Glad to meet you,” Del said, but he kept his eyes forward, trying to track the caravan coming their way.
“Same,” Willow said.
“I would imagine that this horde is clearing a lot of people out from their hidey holes,” Del said. “We won’t know until they get closer just who they are, but if it’s any of those assholes that ambushed us on the road, I say we send them packing.”
“Don’t we need every fighting person we can get?” Willow asked.
Jo turned to Willow and said, “That may be right, but they could be more trouble than they are worth. Besides, it will be up to Karen Gray and Eli. This is your place, and we are just guests.”
“Well, it seems like you have settled in nicely,” Willow said.
Del broke in and said, “Speak of the devil.” He turned his head and was looking into the interior of the Sanctum, where a jeep was weaving its way through the people rushing to prepare for the onslaught of zombies.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Del said. “You get with Eli.”
Jo replied, “Sounds like a plan.”
Jo split from Willow and Del and made her way to the ladder. Her feet hit the ground just as Eli brought the jeep to a stop in the street behind the wall.
“Who’s coming?” Eli shouted as he jumped out of the jeep.
Karen Gray dismounted from the jeep in a more deliberate fashion.
Jo walked to meet him and said, “We’re not sure. Del thinks it could be some of the road bandits we ran into out on the county roads on our way here.”
“Shit,” Eli said under his breath. “We don’t need this right now.”
“Are you sure it’s them?” Karen Gray asked.
“No, not sure, but Del thinks it could be them,” Jo answered.
“If it’s them, they have been a pain in our asses for months,” Eli said.
“It was not a pleasant encounter for us,” Jo said. “Donovan lost one of his people in a gunfight with them.”
“Wait,” Eli said. “Didn’t you capture one of their men and bring him in with you?”
“Yes,” Jo said. “I think his name was Austin.”
“And we have him in our brig,” Eli said as he reached for the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “He will be able to identify if these were a part of his crew.”
Del shouted down from the wall, “They’re coming up the hill. Yeah, they’re coming right to us.”
“Don, are you there?” Eli said. He looked to Jo and said, “Don used to work at the prison. He’s in charge of our brig.”
“Don here,” a tinny voice said over the walkie-talkie speaker.
“I need you to get the guy that came in with our latest big influx of people,” Eli said. “His name is Austin. I need you to bring him to the west wall.”
Don responded that he would do this.
Eli looked up to Del and asked, “How soon will they get here?”
“Two minutes tops,” Del said.
Eli brought the walkie-talkie back up to his mouth and said, “I need twenty of our best shooters to the west wall A-S-A-P.”
Chapter 11
Unwanted Visitors
The caravan of vehicles beat the twenty shooters to the front of the Sanctum by a couple of minutes, but it really didn’t matter. There was a wall between the visitors and the people inside, and that’s what made all the difference. The people inside felt protected and safe -- most of the time.
“Space out,” Eli said. “We want multiple shooting angles.”
Del and Jo stuck close to Eli for the moment. Jo noted that Donovan and Mason had shown up, and they grouped up on Eli, too. The small place on the top of the wall had gotten quite crowded, and Jo didn’t feel entirely comfortable. They made an awfully easy target if the men outside decided to start shooting.
Fortunately, whoever had engineered this front section of the wall put up the sturdy scaffolding with enough room for their small group. Still, Jo felt more than a little nervous about how packed in they were.
A few of Eli’s men had made it there under two minutes and climbed up to take positions on the wall. Most of them had lowered down to one knee to reduce their exposure to anyone outside the wall. They also had their weapons ready.
“Del, do you recognize any vehicles?” Eli asked.
“That lead black SUV does look familiar, but like I said, there’s a lot of them out there,” Del said. “They seemed to be the preferred vehicle of the apocalypse.”
Eli spoke into his walkie-talkie, “Don, where are you with the prisoner?”
He lifted his thumb off the talk button, and two seconds later, a voice sounded.
“On my way,” the voice said. “It’ll be a couple of minutes.”
“Make it one,” Eli said, and he stowed the walkie-talkie away.
The five vehicles outside consisted of the dark-colored max-sized SUV, a dual cab pickup truck, two more midsize SUVs, and one minivan that had seen better days. The lead driver pulled into the street in such a way that if things got hot, he could just press the accelerator and speed away. The other drivers followed his lead and were aimed in such a way to make a quick exit, too. All five vehicles emitted a low rumble except for the minivan. Its exhaust system was totally shot, and it sounded like a street racer, rattling and rumbling at the same time.
No one moved or got out of their vehicles, but they just sat in the street. Jo imagined they were using walkie-talkies to communicate their next move. With each passing second, Jo could feel the tension rise among the people on the wall. In her mind, she visualized a thermometer, and the temperature had just passed the one hundred and three-degree mark.
“What’s happening up there?” Karen Gray asked from ground level. It had been determined that she would stay out of any potential fight. Her strength wasn’t with guns. It was with planning and diplomacy.
“We’re waiting for more of my men to get here,” Eli said, then added, “and for them to make their intentions known.”
That seemed to be an unspoken cue as the driver’s door opened on the lead SUV, and a tall man with thinning hair, a mustache, and a goatee stepped out. He kept the door open and one foot still inside the car. He was also conspicuously unarmed. Jo conceded that he could have a gun hidden under his jacket.
A cold wind took that moment to whip in from the east, and Jo caught a scent of the fire in the distance.
Eli half-whispered in Del’s direction, “Do you recognize him?”
Del examined the man for a few seconds but ended up shaking his head.
“I’m almost positive I recognize the guy standing outside the lead SUV,” Mason said. “He was with the group that attacked us and killed Terry.”
“Are you sure?” Donovan asked. “Things happened pretty fast in the firefight.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “I’m almost positive. We should take these guys out.”
“Wait, wait,” Eli said as he put up a hand, “We only have so much ammo. We don’t want to waste it in a shootout with these guys.”
Jo turned to Mason and said, “Eli’s right. These guys can’t get inside. They aren’t a threat.”
“They sure were threatening us when they killed Terry,” Mason said, glaring at the man standing beside the SUV.
Donovan put a hand on Mason’s shoulder and said, “Let’s wait a
nd see how this plays out.”
Mason shrugged off Donovan’s hand and stepped away from the group.
“What do you want?” Eli shouted down from the wall.
The man’s eyes glided along the top of the wall, taking in all the guns pointed in their direction. He licked his lips and said, “We’re looking for some shelter. As you can see, there's a huge forest fire tearing through the state forest, and there’s a whole shit ton of zombies behind that.”
“Why are you here?” Eli asked. Almost as soon as he asked the question, he turned away and asked in a half-whisper, “Where the hell is Don with that prisoner?” He quickly redirected his attention over the wall.
“We’re looking for a place that we might take shelter?”
Eli looked over his shoulder into the depths of the Sanctum as if he were making an assessment. When he looked back to the man outside, he said, “We’re at capacity here. I’m not sure we can take any more people.”
“Hey, we’re good fighters,” the man asked. “We’ve been killing zombies and surviving out here for months. We are battle-tested and tough as nails.”
“I would guess that,” Eli replied. “But our resources are stretched to the limit now. I’m not sure if we can take in more people.”
By this time, four more fighters had arrived at the wall and taken up positions down from the other people on the wall. Eli knew there was no need for a firefight with these people. The people on the wall could just duck down out of view, and there was not much the men outside could do about it.
“We can really help you out, man,” the man beside the SUV said.
“I need to discuss this with my people,” Eli said.
“Don’t wait too long,” the man said as he looked up at Eli.
For his part, Eli hoped they didn’t have any surprises up their sleeves. He didn’t want to use up any of their precious ammunition. Their supplies were deep, but he feared they would need a great deal of it for what was headed their way. But he also knew that if these were the road bandits terrorizing the roads about the city for the past few months, he couldn’t just wave them off as a threat.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 5