“No, that may be a bad idea. Odds are they had more office workers than service department employees. There should be fewer creepers in the shop than there are up front. Who’s got the crowbar?”
Andro raised the bar as an answer and Will nodded.
“Here’s what we’ll do. Mark, you’re with Tara. Joe, you stay with Danny, and Tatum, you’re with me. You guys stay close but don’t crowd- give us room to maneuver. What have you got for weapons?” Mark held up a machete, Tatum showed him a Marine Corps K-Bar knife and Joe had a two-sided hatchet with an ax on one side and the other a sturdy metal claw that narrowed to a wicked point.
Will focused on Joe. “You’ve fought these things a lot, right?”
Joe licked his lips and nodded.
“Good. I still want you watching to see how we work as a team instead of engaging.” He raised his voice and spoke to the whole crew. “Andro will pop open that wooden door under the service entrance sign. We’ll back off and fan out and see if any come charging out the door. If not, we’ll enter fast, one at a time. Once we’re all in and we see the layout of the shop, and find out if any creepers are inside, then we’ll know what to do next. Questions?”
There were no questions, so Will caught Casnadro’s eye and signaled him to go ahead.
It took the muscular Latino three pulls with the crowbar to break the door from its frame. With each pull, the screech of wood rubbing against wood was louder than the last. The noise sounded like a siren in the midst of the quiet that covered the earth like a blinding white snow.
“If there were any creepers in there they’d have heard that,” Danny said. He pulled his bowie knife and bounced on the balls of his feet. From inside came the sound shuffling feet and bodies smacking into inanimate objects.
“Oh, man,” Tatum said in a choked and whiny voice.
“You’ll be fine,” Will assured him without looking back. “Stay behind me and watch what we do.”
A creeper in a pair of tattered green coveralls stepped into the doorway. Its nose was gone and its gums and the skin around its mouth had withered, causing it to resemble a ghastly skull. It locked eyes on Danny and stumbled in his direction, teeth snapping and arms outstretched. Danny waited until it was almost on him and stepped aside. The creeper grasped for where he had been and stumbled forward; Danny lashed out with his foot, connecting with the creepers butt and sending it to the ground. Before it could right itself he stepped over it with one foot so he was astride it and pushed his knife deep into its ear.
Two more creepers hit the doorway and got tangled up trying to go through it at the same time. One went sprawling onto the gravel drive where Tara dashed forward and cleaved its head while it was still face-down. The other came at Will, snarling. The front of its coveralls was stiff with dried blood and gore. White bone glistened through a gaping wound on its thigh. Will waited for it to come close. Then, rather than retreat, he stepped to meet it, striking in an overhand swing with his combat knife. When the creeper fell he knelt beside it, ramming the blade in each ear.
More of the dead flowed through the doorway, twelve in all. Will’s team put them down with minimal effort. The only sign of trouble came when a Machete swing of Danny’s glanced off a creepers head and jerked his arm to the side, leaving him exposed with the ghoul less than a foot away. Before it got any closer Jiri freed his ax from the skull of a creeper at his feet and swung it in an almost casual backhand that split the creeper’s head three-quarters of the way in half.
The last two out tripped over creepers already on the ground. Tara and Andro dispatched them before they could get back up. Will scanned the parking lot to make sure the commotion hadn’t attracted any attention. Satisfied, he turned back to his crew.
“Let’s make sure it’s clear. Danny, you two,” he pointed to indicate Danny and Joe, “go to the left. Tara, you and Mark go right. Me and Tatum will go down the center. We’ll meet you at the rear, in the middle. Yell if there’s trouble. Jiri, you and Andro watch out front and be ready to come running if we need you.”
He entered the metal building and stopped a few feet in, so his eyes could acclimate to the gloom. Bays opened on either side of the garage’s center aisle; semi-tractors loomed in both of them. In front of each tractor was a work area made up of a long bench, several tool chests, and a myriad assortment of tools, fasteners, and parts. Will tread soundlessly across the length of the bay, knife in hand. When he slowed or stopped, Tatum bumped into him from the rear. The third time it happened Will turned to face him.
“You’ve got to give me room, buddy. Back off a few steps. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He tried to keep his voice pleasant and level so as to not work the kid up even more. He saw no point in adding to the poor guy’s anxiety.
They reached the rear of the shop, and the rest of the crew approached from their respective sides. There were no creepers still lurking around. Scattered around the back wall was an array of lifts, hoists and welding equipment. A shelf held three box-type battery jumpers- one of those would sure have been handy on the road, Will thought.
“What do you think?” Danny looked at Will with raised shoulders and a wrinkled brow.
“Load it up- all of it. Start with the hand tools but I want everything that can be carried out of here loaded on the trucks, even if it means two trips.”
“Why are we going through the trouble of loading and unloading stuff we can’t use?” Tatum’s face was even more pinched than usual. “Electric tools, air tools. My Daddy had one of those hammers that are connected to the little air hose. It took gas to run the compressor.”
“Just because we can’t use it now doesn’t mean we won’t come up with a use later. And it’s not as if we lack the storage space.”
Tatum was unconvinced. “I don’t know… it just seems like a lot of hard work for no reason.”
Danny had been standing with his back to Tatum. He spun around and advanced on him so fast that the smaller man let out a squawk and backed up into the side of a truck. “That’s what we do on these runs- we work,” Danny said through gritted teeth. He poked Tatum in the chest with an index finger. “We work hard. Not your version of work- walking from your cave to the food cave and back. We were out in the shit for seven months, working hard, bleeding, some folks dying.” Tatum cowered away from the unexpected onslaught, but Danny kept waded forward and punctuated each sentence with another poke to the newbie’s scrawny chest.
“And as for a reason, you don’t need one. ‘Because Will said so’ is all the reason you’ll ever need to do a job out here. You put some work in, put down some creepers, spill some blood- then maybe you can ask for a reason.”
Tatum had walked backward until his back was against the shop wall and he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Mark stepped in and squeezed between them. “That’s enough,” Mark told Danny. He held his ball cap in his hand and he spoke in a conversational tone, as if trying not to rile Danny up further. “You’ve made some good points but that’s enough. Get off him now.”
Danny didn’t acknowledge Mark; he continued to glower, red-faced and with his hands curled into fists at his sides, at Tatum instead. For his part, Tatum looked anywhere but back at his assailant.
Danny pulled his gaze from Tatum and eyed Mark. If the older man was intimidated he didn’t show it. He met Danny’s glare, neither showing aggression nor backing down.
Will had seen Danny fighting mad, and this wasn’t that. This was for show, to prove a point. Figuring they’d wasted enough time, he spoke one word, his tone calm and his voice even.
“Danny.”
The effect on his hired man was immediate. He backed up and nodded at Mark, then turned and walked to Jiri’s side.
“All right!” Will’s voice was loud and commanding. “Back to it. Let’s back the trucks up and get to loading.” Nobody questioned him and the new folks moved with an urgent speed. Will gave silent thanks that he had Danny at his side and started picking through tools.
Will Takes a Shower
* * *
Will stood under a makeshift shower, washing off the day’s dirt and grime and marveling another one of Cyrus’ inventions. No creeks or streams ran through the quarry there existed plenty of places to find water to purify. One of The Judge’s people, a lady named Marsha whom Will hadn’t talked with yet except to say hello, was in charge of sourcing the water, purifying it, and storing it in fifty-gallon drums. Her team placed two dozen rain barrels around the bottom to collect rainwater and drew it from the enormous underground water tanks installed by the factories before the outbreak. They brought water up from the lake Coy found. That water wasn’t safe to drink, even after boiling- no one wanted to test the long-term effects of ingesting water that contained decomposing creepers. But it meant Becky and the women no longer had to walk down the hill to the river under armed escort to wash clothes. And folks got to shower.
The leasing company that owned The Underground installed a communal shower for its employees in the men’s break room. (Will guessed the women that worked there just drove home dirty). Using a couple of pitchers kept on a rack attached to the shower room wall, Will scooped water from the nearby barrels and dumped it in a forty-gallon plastic bladder Cyrus had attached to the shower room’s ceiling. Some people warmed the water first over a contained wood stove in the corner, but Will never had the extra time.
There was a simple lever on the bottom of the bladder. When you pulled the lever, it moved a plug and allowed the water to flow through a six-inch tube into a large bucket with a couple of dozen holes punched in the bottom, and viola- instant shower. The water pressure wasn’t anything like taking one at home in the old days, and a three-minute time limit forced you to wash fast. But it beat cleaning yourself at a creek, wiping down with a wet towel, or — what usually happened during their time on the road — going to bed dirty and stinking.
As the days passed, Will found himself more and more intrigued with Cyrus. He was a smart-assed pig of a man with no manners and no people skills. The odds said one day, somebody — Danny, more than likely — would slit his throat. But he was a genius at creating devices that made it easier to get by without modern conveniences and he possessed an ingenuity for solving problems that vexed other people. He could be a huge asset to the group- if his attitude didn’t get him killed.
It had been a week since Will and The Judge sat on the limestone block near the entrance to Will’s tunnel. After that, the two groups joined forces to get a tremendous amount of work done in and around the quarry. The sound of hammers banging away filled the air as they labored to complete watchtowers- two by the entrance gate and three on the opposite side of the pit. When completed and manned, the towers would allow lookouts to see trouble, man-made or creeper, long before it arrived. Crews dug large pits in the grassy area on both sides of the entry gate. If the dead swarmed the quarry, a big percentage of them would end up in the bottom of the eight-foot-deep pits instead of making it to the bottom.
Jiri, with the chunky bleach blond Original Misty as his assistant, put a team together to count and record everything in the warehouses and factories. Misty was a surprise find. She had been an accountant before and proved adept at delegating in a way that made people glad to help. They had only finished two of the nine tunnels and already they’d found several items that even The Judge didn’t know about- including the lumber used to build the towers.
Will sent Danny, Justin, and Casandro out to map the area around the facility. They noted arable fields, sources of water, and houses that looked like good scavenging prospects. Will gave them strict instructions to put down any creepers they came across with melee weapons or to retreat. Under no circumstances could they fire a gun.
Coy left every morning before daybreak and didn’t return until late in the morning. He returned each day with a gutted deer or a turkey for supper. One day he brought back a young sow from a small herd at a nearby farm that had escaped their pen and gone feral. They feasted on fresh pork for two days. Becky, an old hillbilly from The Originals, knew more about salting and drying meat than Will knew about cattle and spent hours with Coy every day, teaching him her secrets and recipes.
The nearby boom of Coy’s rifle and the increase in activity and noise resulted in a surge in the creeper traffic. Tara, Mark, and Jax watched over the crews building the towers and digging the trench pits. Most days, the number of creepers they put down reached double-digits. The dead that tumbled over the edge of the bluffs rose from one every three or four days to between five and ten a day. One crew’s only job was to walk the perimeter once an hour and find the jumpers. They knifed them in the head if the fall didn’t destroy the brain, then loaded them in the back of a truck for burning at the end of the day.
Will was pleased with all they had accomplished their first week of working together. As he toweled off and slipped on a clean pair of jeans, his mind went over his upcoming meeting. It would go a long way to determining whether they would become a large and vibrant community.
Relaxing
* * *
Will sat on a blanket that did little to cushion his butt from the hard concrete. Becky shared his blanket and rested her head in his lap: the rest of the group was scattered around tunnel three in twos and threes. Outside, the snow continued to pile up and above the quarry the wind howled, but thirty feet inside their new home a light jacket or a blanket was all that you needed to stay warm. He tore a piece of off jerky off a fist-sized chunk and smiled at Becky as he hand-fed it to her.
“You know,” he said while she chewed, “there’s something to be said for a place where the temperature never falls below sixty degrees.”
“Oh, no kidding!” Becky agreed. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and mock shivered. “Can you imagine if we had to be out in the cold and snow, sleeping on the ground? Brrr.”
“It would suck up off the ground, in a house somewhere. If we were lucky we’d find a house with a fireplace, and we’d have walls to break the wind. But it’d still be miserable cold.” He picked a hunk of jerky from the bag and looked at it with resignation. If the world situation returned to a normal keel in his lifetime he was sure of one thing- he would never eat tuna or beef jerky again.
Becky interrupted his rumination. “What’s on your mind, Big Feller?”
He smiled at her and stroked her thick auburn hair. “Nothin’.”
“Nothin’,” she mimicked in a deep voice. “Just carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders and taking responsibility for everything.”
“I’m just thinking about all the things that need doing.”
She kicked both legs in the air and sprang to her feet, as light and lithe as the cheerleader she once was. She brushed loose dirt and gravel off her jeans and leaned over him until her mouth was at his ear. “I’d suggest you think us up some walls in here. If I don’t get laid soon I’m going to find me a fuck buddy.”
“But I like us all being together this way,” he protested. “It helps to keep the group strong.”
She leaned even closer so that her lips brushed against his ear and cupped her hand over his crotch. “The group’s strong. But I’m so horny Fat Cyrus is starting to look good to me.” For just a moment she went from cupping his crotch to squeezing it. Her tongue flicked out and circled his earlobe, and then she pulled away. “Walls, Big Feller.” She winked at him and turned, her hips swinging in an alluring fashion as she sauntered toward a group of women further inside the tunnel. Wrapped up in watching her walk away, Will jumped at the sound of Danny’s voice to his right.
“Sweet Baby Jesus with a hard-on, that was hot. The way she squeezed your nut sack at the end? I popped wood, by God. It looks like Mommy and Daddy need time away from us kids.”
Will ignored him. He pulled a can of chew from a jean pocket and thumped it between his thumb and middle finger a few times to pack the tobacco inside. Cupping the can in his left hand, he squeezed a large pinch of the wet leaves between the thumb and i
ndex finger of his right. He placed the pinch against the gum line on the left side of his mouth without spilling a grain. He wiped his index finger inside the front pocket of his jeans, replaced the lid, and held it out to Danny, who shook his head.
“No thanks.” He pulled his lips back and smiled, showing a gleaming set of teeth. “Just brushed.”
Will grunted and put the can back in his pocket. He moved the wad of chew with his tongue until he had it where he wanted it, then spit a brown stream into a Dixie cup half-full of the noxious, dark juice. He looked Danny over. His hair was damp- he had showered and brushed his teeth. His shirt and jeans looked clean, if a bit worn. The faint scent of cologne emanated from him and drifted through the air.
“Where’d you find a bottle of Aqua Di Gio in the middle of the zombie apocalypse?”
“Remember when we cleared the Hendrickson girls’ house?”
Will nodded.
“I cleared Mr. Hendrickson’s bathroom. By now it’s second nature to check medicine cabinets and drawers in a bathroom. He had a full bottle of this, a bottle of Polo, some Burberry and Ralph Lauren Romance. Somebody wanted the man to smell nice. What’s the use of living through the end of the world if I can’t smell like a male whore while mankind goes the way of the dinosaurs, right?”
“You have a troubled mind, my young friend.” Will looked him head to toe. “Why are you all dandied up?”
“I’ve got a hot date.”
“You’d better not be sniffing around Tess. Tara will gut you in your sleep and make you watch while she feeds your dick to the creepers.”
“Nah, it’s not Tess.” Danny tilted his head and seemed to think for a moment, then he pulled himself up to his full height and snorted. “But I’ll take her out if that’s what me and her want. I’m free and over twenty-one, and I can date whoever I want. And I’m not scared of Tara!”
“That’s great.” Will turned and walked toward the other group members. “I’ll find her and tell her how you feel.”
The Haven Series (Book 2): Haven Page 9