The Rising

by Eli Constant

  Hunter knew what I was looking at and explained that it was worked on every day by a crew who scavenged for materials to complete and reinforce their defenses. They’d used most of the abandoned cars nearby and had used a few cars from the survivors who’d found safety at the fort.

  “If we’re lucky it’ll be done by winter and we can all sleep that much better at night.” Hunter approached a woman holding a drill, her face partially covered by a large pair of glasses. She lifted them off her eyes to perch atop her head when he started speaking.

  I moved behind Hunter, not getting close enough to eavesdrop on his conversation with the woman. My black hair was sucking up the heat from the sun, drinking it all in until my scalp felt like it was going to boil my brain. I needed a hat. I had a hat, once upon a time. My favorite hat. Of course, it had been black also; not much good at reflecting the sun, but at least it shaded my eyes- helping my sunglasses do their job.

  “AJ, come over and meet Leanne.” Hunter waved me forward and I closed the gap I’d intentionally created between us.

  Leanne was a tall woman, large built and sporting Popeye-style forearms. Her dirty-blonde hair hung around her face in two loose braids and dark freckles dotted her face like little ants that never moved. “Nice to meet you, AJ.”

  “You too.” We shook, her giant hand making mine disappear. “Everything you guys have done here is so impressive. I still can’t get over how short a time you all have had to secure this kind of place.”

  “We couldn’t have done it without Hunter. And Martha, too. She’s an organizing queen. Says it’s from all her couponing.” Leanne set the drill she was holding down, reaching for a large water bottle. The liquid had to be hot as hell inside the plastic; it had been sitting in a direct line of sun, no shading to protect it. She drank it like it was cool, sucking it down with a sort of unbridled slurping.

  “Your cooler need more ice?” Hunter was eyeing the bottle as well.

  “Yeah. I’ll send Ned to the club house in a bit to fill up the water bottles and get more.” Leanne capped the now-empty container and tossed it into a bag that was hanging from the side mirror of a busted-up Toyota. Then she looked at me. “Hunter says you’d be real handy to have around.”

  “He’s told me that himself,” I nodded, confirming.

  “But no inclination to stay.” She made it a statement.

  “Duty calls.” I shrugged.

  “You lawmen and your duty.” She sighed, picking the drill back up. “Look around, AJ. Law doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “You know that I disagree with that statement, Leanne. Law is more important than ever,” Hunter said, a note of understanding in his voice.

  “Yeah, Hunter. I know how you feel about law and order,” Leanne said, a hard note coming to life in her words.

  “Don’t say it like that, Leanne. Even you agreed to the way we’re running things here.” Hunter reached out to her, placing a light hand on her shoulder.

  “Doesn’t mean I have to wake up every day and like the situation. Fucking death outside our walls. We don’t need it inside of them too.” She dropped her sunglasses over her eyes and stared at him a moment. The oil-slick reflective surfaces of the lenses showed me and Hunter looking at her. I wasn’t facing Hunter, but I could see his expression because of this. And he looked unhappy.

  The two didn’t say anything more to each other. I wanted to ask about the exchange, but I didn’t. It left me wondering once more if there wasn’t more to this community that was hard-won from the monsters. I’d been to an establishment in Mexico. It was peaceful. An oil painting of perfection on the surface. But when I looked closer, I’d found drug dealers and pimps. Child prostitution and domestic abuse. It was only the illusion of perfection. And beneath that, a controlled rot that couldn’t stay hidden forever.

  Hunter talked to a few more folks and then headed back to the Ford. He walked slow, hand on his gun. I kept pace beside him.

  “Takes a tough person to work this back area. First few days, this section back here was a constant firing range. Blood. Bandages. If you could still shoot, you stayed. It’ll be a relief when the barricade is as strong here.” He turned away from the truck, only a few yards from it, to look back at the men and women working. “Then, hopefully, we’ll only have to really worry about losing people when they go out scavenging. That’s still a volunteer job. I can’t bring myself to force someone to go out gathering.”

  “Forcing people into those kinds of situations, when they aren’t ready for them would be a disaster, Hunter. You’re doing the right thing.” I say something comforting, because I think that’s what he needs. Even hard-as-nails retired Rangers need reassuring now and again.

  “Yeah. Come on, few more stops to make and we can head back for lunch.”

  Five minutes into riding, Hunter applied the brakes and pulled an old set of Nikon binoculars out from the back seat. I watched as he scanned the terrain in front of us, past a large area of homemade fencing in the distance. We were sitting at the top of a hill, the three-car-high wall not tall enough to block the view. In the distance, I could see military vehicles scattered across the terrain beyond the compound.

  We seemed to sit there forever, but finally Hunter brought down the glasses and just stared into the distance, making no indication that he planned to drive further.

  “Something wrong?” I leaned forward, trying to decide if there was something subtle he’d seen that I hadn’t. The way his body was positioned, slightly leaned forward, not a muscle relaxed, I could tell he wasn’t comfortable. I just didn’t know why. “Hunter, is something wrong?” I repeated my words, adding his name for good measure and hoping that would pull him out of his silence.

  The interior of the Ford was still silent. I moved in my seat, pushing my back against the chair and turning slightly towards him. “Hunter?”

  Finally, he answered. “You know. This thing used to happen when I was out in the field, right before the shit hit the fan. Hairs went up on the back of my neck, stood at attention so full of damn life it was like a current across my skin. When I looked down range just now, same damn thing happened, but damned if I can see anything. Probably just getting a little old and jumpy.” He apparently dismissed his gut feeling, yet he still didn’t start rolling the truck forward.

  I really didn’t know this man from Adam’s house cat, but he’d survived thirty years in one of the toughest jobs in law enforcement. Hand-selected and bleeding Texas loyalty, Rangers were known to be wily and tough. So, if something was bothering him, then it sure as hell was making me uncomfortable. I fiddled with my hair, pulling the ponytail over my shoulder and running my hands down the strands. It was a nervous gesture, something I’d broken myself of years ago. I’d gotten rid of a lot of girly habits courtesy of my personality and my pageant days to really fit in with my job and the other agents.

  Dropping my hair, I unzipped my pack that was tucked against the floorboard and took out my monocular. It was small, compactable, didn’t take up much space, but it also wasn’t as powerful as Hunter’s. Sometimes, size does matter.

  Looking through the glass, I got a pretty clear view of the area. I studied each detail slowly, my gaze roving over the vehicles in the distance, the few bodies that were rotting in the sun, becoming barely-moist jerky even the carrion birds wouldn’t desire. I didn’t see any movement, however, nothing that would explain Hunter’s intuitive alarm bells.

  “I’m not seeing anything.” I lowered the monocular and looked over at Hunter. He was still staring, his eyes squinting, his forehead furrowed. The binoculars were forgotten things in his lap, his right hand resting atop them loosely.

  “Yeah, just wish I knew what’s got my brain binging like a coyote on crack.” He looked a while longer, and then lifted his foot off the brake so we began to inch forward.

  “Intuition’s pretty much everything when you’re law, but with the current situation, I think it’s hard not to jump at shadows.” I replaced the monocular
in my pack and then pushed the bag a little with my foot to sink it further into the front of the floorboard and less near me. It still nearly brushed my calf.

  “I’ve never jumped at shadows, girl. I don’t plan to start now.” He continued to let the Ford drive forward. “Only a rookie does that.”

  My knee-jerk reaction was to take his mention of ‘rookie’ personally, even though I’m sure he didn’t mean it directed at me. As a retiree, anyone unseasoned by decades probably seemed like a rookie to him.

  As he drove, he set the binoculars between us and replaced it with the gun from his holster. The .45 nestled between his legs, easier to get to, ready to use. I didn’t like that he was still on such high alert despite the absence of obvious danger. I unsnapped the holster on my Glock.

  The big diesel engine thrummed like a contained stallion as we crept forward. Hunter began to fiddle with the grips of his automatic as he moved down the hill we’d been perched atop. Every rotation of the wheels brought us nearer the makeshift wall. Hunter stilled his hand, stopping the idle nervousness of its movement. I knew it was his way of ensuring he could get the gun into play in a split second, but I also knew that showing the nervous twitch wasn’t something he’d normally do. Again, I wondered what he was sensing that I wasn’t. After what seemed an eternity of creeping forward, we came to a stop about twenty feet from the wall and he put the truck into park.

  “Keep your eyes peeled, take the shotgun, leave the bag, and don’t close the door all the way when you get out.” Hunter spoke at normal speed, but a heightened intensity in his words.

  “Do you have people watching this part of the wall?” I did as instructed with no debate. He was my de facto team leader at the moment. He knew his compound, had experience in this area. Sometimes, no matter how big and bad you think you are, you have to step down and follow.

  “Yep. Three men should be out this way, just like the first defense point we checked. They stay low normally, don’t give me much indication they’re here until I get up close. Just a mirror flash normally. This time, going down that hill, nothing. These boys like the commando stuff.” There was no humor in Hunter’s voice. “Think it makes the situation a real hoot. Even paint damn Rambo stripes on their faces.”

  “So maybe they’ve taken it a step further. Moved the…” I hesitate to say commando or Rambo, “bad ass act onto active playing fields instead of a boring border wall.”

  “These boys are all talk, AJ.”

  I nodded in response. I’d known a few agents like that. They talked a big game, bled red, white, and blue and swore no one would cross the border on their watch. First sign of a fight and all that bad-assery went out the window.

  We were nearly to the wall now. There wasn’t a ladder here like at the front gate and bus. Here, they’d staggered vehicles into a faux staircase that only a giant could mount regularly. A single dark blue sedan in front of a double stack of hatchbacks leading to the triple wall, held together by the same wire fencing and salvaged metal as the wall.

  As I stepped out of the truck, leaving the passenger door ajar, I checked to ensure a round was up the tube of the shotgun and the safety was off. Quiet as church mice, we met at the front of the truck; the soft thud of our shoes against the terrain was the only sound. The greenery of the golf course ended here, translating into rusty red soil punctuated by sparse-looking plants that were dying from lack of sun- the wall providing too much shade.

  Hunter had his Colt held down at his side, but there wasn’t anything sloppy about it. He didn’t look down at the dying flowers and bushes. His eyes were Eagle-trained, staring at the wall in front of him and looking for any sign of his men. I turned my focus on the task.

  “Where do they normally hole up? There’re not a lot of places to hide here.” My gaze roved the length of the wall as far as I could clearly see from left to right.

  “They got the idea to cut entrance holes into the top of several of the vehicles. They hide in there, shooting out the broken windshields whenever there’s trouble. Good idea, planning to implement it at other sections of the wall.”

  “Yeah, that’s sort of brilliant. Guessing you all use silencers? Something to keep the gunfire from alerting more of the monsters?” I watched as Hunter gave a quick nod, answering my question, and then mounted the blue sedan. “But, if they were here now, they’d have made some indication?”

  “Yes.” The single word from Hunter made its way from his mouth to my ears, snaking into my mind and twisting my stomach into one large ugly knot.

  After a few seconds Hunter glanced at me and I started to follow, climbing up the first car. My brain and body were both buzzing, waves of vibrations keeping my muscles energized, flashes that brought every detail into my consciousness.

  The smell of death hit my nostrils as I joined Hunter on the double stack of cars that served as the second stair mount. It was a sickeningly sweet stench—freesia planted over a mass grave, a grave where the bodies were only days old and the soil covering was barely a whisper to cover the massacre. A light breeze brought the odor to me, brushing against my face and permeating my skin. It was then that a cawing drew my attention upwards. Carrion birds circled, a dance of five of them.

  “Hunter, you smell that?”

  He didn’t reply, but his gun perched in both of his hands—a mimic to the coal-hued bird that had just alighted on the roof of the truck directly in front of him—was answer enough.

  “Georgie?” Hunter said the name, slow and steady, letting it resonate and bounce off the metal around us. When he spoke the second name, the knot in my stomach thickened as if it was absorbing my fear. “Shane?”

  No response.

  “Willy, this ain’t the time to pull a disappearing act.” Hunter lifted his gun higher, almost on level with the matching bird in his sight lines. The winged, pitch black animal opened its beak and cawed, the sound running through me and punching my very core. It stole my breath.

  Then, finally, when I’d lost hope that any of the three men were alive—the smell of their blood and guts fanning out against me like acrid perfume—a single word left the confines of the vehicle in front of Hunter.

  “Trap.”

  It was a whisper in the daylight, a choked sound like the speaker was hanging on for literal dear life and swimming in his own blood. Hunter backed away, dropping off the double layer of cars to join me on the single blue sedan. “Run, AJ.” His order was a dagger into my heart.

  I dropped off the vehicle, holding the shotgun in both hands to ensure my grip didn’t fail, and high-tailed it to the silent Ford truck. I wondered if Hunter had the keys on him or if he’d left them in the ignition. I couldn’t remember. Dammit, I couldn’t remember. Which meant if he did have them and a monster took him down, then I’d be shit out of luck.

  So, with heart thumping in my throat like a mad, overused thing, I turned and I found the retired Ranger. He was also down from the vehicle, running in my direction.

  What was behind him couldn’t be ignored.

  Four of the kid creatures, their bodies in various states of burned with one being so sun-exposed that his skin had begun to boil and peel away to uncover muscle and other, wetter things, were crawling quickly down the staircase of cars. I recognized one of them; the boy from the military barricade, the one who’d ripped off an adult zombie’s arm just so he could beat the body with it.

  I lifted the shotgun and aimed, going for the child monster closest behind Hunter.

  My shoulder slammed back as I fully depressed the trigger, sending a load of shot at the once-a-boy with the sparse, scorched-off hair and face that looked like it was melting away from the bones beneath. The buckshot caught him in the left shoulder adjacent to the clavicle. It tore into him, tearing away flesh and bone as the lead expanded and fragmented. The boy didn’t fall, though. His body jerked back, he almost lost his footing, but he didn’t. He kept coming, a relentless train on a track that could not be stilled in time to save the walker on the rails.<
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  Hunter turned as if my firing had been his cue.

  He brought up his gun, the flashy 1911 that I’d assumed was a retirement gift, and loosed a single round. He hit the once-a-girl behind the monster I’d shot. The 230 grain .45 slug slammed into her chest. The entry wound was relatively small, but the exit wound was softball-sized, the shell ripping out of her back and sending a spray of blackened blood to wet the dark cars behind her. She screamed.

  She screamed as she fell and the sound reverberated off everything around us. The metal holding the cars together shook with the impact, shaking like a manmade storm on an old movie set.

  I aimed and sent another load flying at one of the other Z kids. This one was a guided missile, finding the bullseye in the center of the boy’s forehead. He was once blonde with stringy strands of limp, unhealthy hair falling around his ears and eyes. He looked at me through that thin curtain and I was reminded of a horror film I’d once seen, then his face was gone as the .12 gauge did its job—a girl climbing from a well, never showing her face, killing everyone who was unfortunate enough to watch her film.

  I didn’t ask to watch this film.

  I didn’t ask to be alive when the world went to shit.

  Hunter was firing, beside me now and standing his ground. His face was fierce, his body moving with the memory of a job he’d served longer than most. It was built into his body now, that drive to action, that drive to survive, that drive to kill and protect.

  I didn’t have that yet. I was still selfish enough to want to run, to want to survive.

  But I would do my damn duty.

  I fired again. Hunter fired simultaneously. And, together, we took down the last advancing monster child.

  The girl had screamed, though.

  She’d screamed and I knew more would answer her cry. The small monsters and the tall.

  And, if we couldn’t find a way to stop their course, then this safe place that Hunter created would become a free-for-all buffet.