“What’s up?” Jo said, feeling a shiver of fear walk up her spine.
“We have discovered a group of the road bandits,” Del said. “It looks like they have stopped a truck of the soldiers from the Manor out here on a country road.”
Jones leaned closer and motioned for Jo to push the talk button. “How do you know it’s soldiers from the Manor?”
Del came back quickly, “Clayton recognized a Private Berry, plus another guy named Zelanski.”
Directing her question to Jones, Jo asked, “Are those some of your guys from Dayton?”
Jones nodded.
Talking into the walkie-talkie, Jo asked, “What’s the lay of the land?”
Del came back with a brief but comprehensive view of the situation. Five road bandits had the truck pinned down on a country road near a one-lane bridge. Neither the soldiers nor the bandits knew that they were being watched.
“Why don’t the soldiers just drive away?” Jo asked.
“Don’t know,” Del responded. “I think their truck is out of gas.”
“How do you know that?” Jo asked.
“Just a guess. They don’t have the hood up, and all the tires look fine.”
Jo said, “I think you need to return to us. We can come up with a plan.”
“Clayton doesn’t want to do that,” Del said. “He wants to rescue the soldiers.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Jo responded.
Jones broke in and said, “I think it should be considered.”
Del came back and said, “Jo, we could really use that truck, and the bandits have to have a truck or SUV around. Plus, they also have guns and ammo.”
Clara Benton shoved her head over the seat and said, “You’re talking about killing those men.”
“This isn’t some parlor game,” Jones said. “This is survival.”
“Can’t we try some sort of negotiation?” Clara said, pain obvious in her voice.
“Who’s going to negotiate with people that have attacked and killed people in our group?!” Jones said, not hiding the anger in his voice. Clara eased away from the heat of Jones’ anger.
“Jo? You still there?” Del asked.
“Yes,” Jo said. “We’re still here.”
“What do you think?” Del asked.
“What does Mason think?” Jo asked. Jo knew that Mason would have no love for the soldiers after the way they had attacked their compound and kidnapped their people, but sometimes, the enemy of your enemy was your ally. At least she hoped that was the way it turned out.
“He doesn’t like the idea of rescuing the soldiers, but Clayton would have a shit fit if we just killed them. Besides, I think there are around six to eight soldiers. There are only five road bandits, and they have no idea we’re behind them.”
“I think I need to talk this over with Donovan,” Jo responded.
Jones put out a hand and placed it over the hand Jo held the walkie-talkie. He took a glance back at the preparations going on behind them to get the convoy back on the road.
“I don’t like bringing Donovan into this,” Jones said.
“Because you know he’ll say come back, or he’ll say take out the soldiers, too,” Jo responded.
“Maybe,” Jones said, but then he looked away. “Yes.”
“Jo?” Del asked again.
“We’re discussing this,” Jo said. “What makes you think you can take out the bandits so easily?”
“We have a plan,” Del said. “Or, at least, Clayton does.”
Jo rolled her eyes and looked to the ceiling and said, “What’s his plan?”
“We’d have to break up, but the bandits have no idea we’re behind them,” Del said. “Each of us can take out a separate group.”
Jo turned her attention back to the walkie-talkie. “That sounds very risky. Put Mason on.”
A moment later, Mason said, “Mason here.”
“Are you really good with this plan?” Jo asked.
“I’m not happy with the soldier part, but we could really use that truck, but I’m on the fence.”
“There not just going to hand over that truck,” Jo said.
“No, they’re not,” Mason said, “but they are stranded in the middle of nowhere with a horde of zombies on the way.”
Clara said from the backseat, “So you have to negotiate with them.”
Jones shot her a look, but this time, she did not back down.
“I don’t want to do that, either,” Mason said.
“But you don’t have much of a choice,” Jo said. “And Sergeant Jones and Clayton won’t go along with killing the soldiers. That is if you can take them. They have you outnumbered and probably outgunned.”
Static came through the speaker for a few seconds, and Jo finally said, “Mason?”
“I may not like it, but the best play is to negotiate.”
“Then that is settled,” Jo said. “Are you in agreement with Del’s assessment that the bandits are getting ready to make a move?”
“Yes,” Mason responded.
Jo looked over to Jones and asked, “Should we tell them about the zombie attack on the convoy?”
Jones said, “What happened here and what he’s saying just strengthens the case to make the move.”
“Is that a good thing?” Jo asked. “You’re just trying to save your soldier buddies.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Jones asked. “Not all of them are bad guys.”
“But some of them are, and some of them just went along.” Jo knew first-hand how bad the soldier’s had been, even the “go along,” ones, but Jones and Clayton were proof that not all of them were bad.
“It’s called following orders. If you’d been in the military, you’d know something about that.”
“You didn’t follow orders,” Jo said.
Clara said, “This argument you’re having isn’t helping things.”
“Mason,” Jo said, “I need to let you know that the convoy ran into a group of zombies.” She paused for a moment, not wanting to say what she had to say. “Tyler got bit.”
Mason groaned into the microphone of the walkie-talkie then said, “Oh no.”
“I’m really sorry,” Jo said. “Donovan has done what he can to make Tyler comfortable, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“I should have been there,” Mason said.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. It happened so fast.”
Jo let up on the talk button, and static came back across the tiny speaker on the walkie-talkie. After a few seconds, Mason said, “My people are stuck out in the open on that trailer. That’s what got Tyler bit. If we get this truck, maybe we can dump the tractor altogether. If we can get the bandit’s vehicle, then it would help us move a lot safer.”
“Can it wait until we get there?” Jo asked.
“No,” Mason said. “It looks more and more like the bandits might make a run at the soldiers any minute now. Who knows what the soldiers might do? Maybe they’d fight. Maybe they’d run. Either way, we lose the truck and whatever the bandits are driving.”
Jo asked, “What would Donovan say?”
Again, static came back across the speaker, but Mason said, “He’d say pull back. He plays it safe.”
“Too safe?” Jo asked.
“Sometimes,” Mason said.
“Should we tell him what you’re thinking about?” Jo said, her eyes closed.
“No,” Mason said, but Del and Clayton could see the ambivalence in his expression.
Chapter 28
Hunting Humans
Too soon, Del thought. It looked like the two men he was watching were ready to go on the move. Del didn’t know what it was, but they had been kneeling and looking through the trees, presumably toward the truck and soldiers. Now, they were standing, and there was an anxious energy in their body language.
Del, Mason, and Clayton had dispersed among the trees, taking up positions behind the road bandits. The plan was to attack
in about five minutes, but that was the problem with plans. That’s all they were - plans. Once they went into operation, you were at the mercy of whatever happened.
From Del’s perspective, this was a shitty plan. Sure, it was like shooting fish in a barrel because the bandits were so focused on the soldiers that they hadn’t thought someone might be stalking them from behind. That worked to Del’s advantage, but there was just something about that that didn’t sit well with him. Basically, he’d be shooting two men in the back.
Of course, of what he had learned of these bandits, they wouldn’t think anything of doing the same to him, but there seemed to be no sense of fair play. Then again, there were more of the bandits than there were of Del’s party, so he knew he had to put his silly notions from childhood away. This was life and death, not a schoolyard fight. They could just as easily turn and kill him.
Still, there was a sick feeling in his stomach as he brought his rifle up and started to aim at the back of the man on the left. A voice inside Del’s head told him to pull the trigger while something deep within his conscious held him back.
The words, Thou Shalt Not Kill, echoed around inside his very soul. His mother had taken him to church each Sunday, and the Ten Commandments hung on the front of the sanctuary for everyone to see. For everyone to learn and live by.
While Del had not been that devoted to Sunday services since returning from overseas, there was no escaping that ethos. Was there?
With the world no longer civilized and ordered, there had to be loopholes. Certainly, some rules no longer applied. He sure hoped so because he was getting ready to kill a man in cold blood.
Whatever held him back turned out to be for naught as a shot sounded off to his right. The battle was on.
The problem was that his two men now were aware that they weren’t the only people in the woods. As the one Del had targeted was turning, he was also bringing up his rifle. There was no doubt in Del’s mind that the next thing he would do would be shooting.
That took the decision out of his hands, and he pulled the trigger. The man who was turning flung his hands into the air, and his rifle went with them as he fell back onto the ground.
The problem came when Del pivoted his aim and found the other man was out of sight. Del swept his aim over the scene, but only saw trees, leaves, and bushes. That’s when he ducked behind his tree.
He felt as if he were in no man’s land. He liked it better when he knew where his enemy was, but now he was just as clueless as who he had attacked. Only that other guy now knew he was there.
Del’s thoughts ping-ponged between whether to stay back and wait or to go on the offensive. Staying behind the tree was the safest bet, but the fear of what was coming gnawed at him.
Cutting the difference, he poked his head around the tree he was hiding behind and saw the briefest of movement, and then it was gone. It could have been the other man, but it could have just as well been a shadow from a bird or some other woodland creature.
He pulled back and slid his head around the other side of the tree and saw nothing. No matter how hard he looked or how intensely he listened, he didn’t see or hear anything.
Once more, he positioned himself behind the tree and waited. The woods had gone silent as the birds and other animals had decided that the humans were making too much noise.
A shot rang out, and he nearly jumped a foot in the air. As it turned out, it came from off to his left where Mason was stationed. Del hoped the shot was Mason taking out his designated target. If not, then there’d be another wild card in the woods flipping the equation and hunting them.
He closed his eyes and listened as hard as he could. In his mind’s eyes, he envisioned invisible waves emanating from his eyes and drifting out from his body, sort of like some half-baked radar. Something rustled in the leaves in front of him, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a fluffy-tailed squirrel scurrying through the dried leaves that coated the forest floor. It scampered out of view, leaving him alone to listen and wait.
After nearly a minute of being in a holding pattern, he decided it was time to check again. He slowly slid his head around the side of the tree. A millisecond after he got a view on the woods ahead of him, a chunk of the bark exploded off the tree. The sound of a shot came next.
Splinters shot at his face faster than he could react, and he felt pinpricks of pain dot his left cheek. He only had time to close his eyes as self-preservation drove him back behind the tree. A soon as he was back in place, he shot up his left hand and brushed it across his face. The friction across his face stung like a son of a bitch, but he didn’t think it was too bad. His fingers fell onto a splinter embedded there, but he left it there as his hand came away with blood.
He had bigger worries than a splinter. There was someone hunting him, and they knew where he was, but he didn’t know where they were.
He decided to try to get a look around the other side of the tree. Del inched along the bark with his back against the tree, hugging tightly against it like a security blanket. He had barely eased out on the right side of the tree when he heard the crack of another shot and would swear later he heard the bullet whiz by his face.
He jerked his body back again as the bark of the tree bit into his back. He was pinned down with almost no place to go. There was someone behind him with a gun trying to kill him, and he had no idea if they were moving at that very moment to get an angle on him. For the next few seconds, he felt he was safe, but after that, all bets were off.
Another shot sounded, but it was off in the distance. He couldn’t pinpoint its location and decided to let that situation take care of itself.
The question came down to whether he should make a run for it or stay put. It was only a matter of time before whoever was shooting at him closed on his location. Del wasn’t even sure if the shot came from the left, right, or straight down the center. His attacker could be moving off at an angle to get a shot right then.
The next question was where to run.
Del cursed under his breath, hoping for some inspiration, but none came. So, he scoped out what he could see, which was more trees and woods. There was a clump of three small maples off to his right and a large sycamore to his left. Straight on were tall bushes.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. And the wrong one could get him killed.
Something was better than nothing, he decided. Since he didn’t know where the shot had come from, he decided he would head for the closest source of cover, which was the clump of smaller trees.
Now to find the courage to move. That required a few seconds of soul searching, and fear won out.
To get himself moving, he decided to do a countdown, starting at three.
He took a deep breath and silently said, “Three.” There was a pregnant pause before “Two,” followed with an even longer gap before he said, “One.” He hit zero, and he discovered he was still clinging to the tree.
Finally, he just said, “Fuck it,” under his breath and pounced away from the tree.
Two seconds later, a shot sounded, and he fully expected a bullet to pierce his back, then drive him face first into the ground.
But it didn’t. He sprinted full-out, heading for the three trees. They weren’t that far away, and his plan was to sprint through them and to keep going. Once he got a safe distance away, he’d find a new hidey hole and then take a look back from where he came, but after the gunshot, he pulled up at the three trees and spun around to see what was up.
He was close to hyperventilating when he turned around and started scanning the woods. What immediately caught his attention was a body lying on the ground less than ten feet behind the tree he had been hiding behind.
There was nothing recognizable about the body. The person was splayed out on the ground facing him, its arms outstretched and a rifle a few feet away, just out of reach.
There was no doubt in Del’s mind that this was one of the bandits. But who shot him?
He scanned quickly to the ri
ght and saw Clayton with his back to a tree, looking directly at him. Clayton shook his head dismissively and pointed at the body and then at himself.
There was no doubt that Clayton had taken out the bandit, and there was no hiding his judgment at Del’s attempt to run.
Del wasn’t sure what to do, so he just shot Clayton the ‘okay’ sign, making a circle with his index finger and thumb. He felt a little stupid doing it.
Another gunshot sounded off to the left, and Del hoped that Mason was holding his own.
Chapter 29
Voices from the Woods
Clayton glided among the trees effortlessly, moving like a wraith as he made his way to Del. He took a wide arc around the back of their perimeter, skirting the area where the bandits had been sighted just in case they missed one.
Del split his time between waiting and watching for Clayton and looking ahead for any movement from the bandits. That is if there were any bandits left. It all depended on how successful Mason had been. From time-to-time, he thought he saw movement deeper in the woods, and he guessed that was the soldiers.
The birds that had been quiet for the last few minutes were starting to let their presence be known, chirping away and flitting from tree-to-tree. Nature was that way. It knew instinctively when to get out of man’s way and when it was safe. Del longed for that kind of simplicity. Instead, he waited for whatever happened next, and that could range from Clayton’s arrival or a bandit popping out from behind a tree and shooting him in the face.
Leaves crunched behind him, and he whirled around to see Clayton slide around the trunk of a birch tree. Del let out a deep breath, and Clayton was beside him in a few moments, seeming not to make a sound.
“Thanks for saving my ass,” Del said.
“Yeah, you lost track of that second guy, didn’t you?” Clayton said.
“I guess I did.”
“You need to be better. These guys are playing for keeps.”
“I know,” Del said and then quite purposefully changed the subject. “How did you do?”
“I aced my one guy,” Clayton said. He paused as he looked into the woods then turned back to Del and said, “Your face looks like someone hit you with a pin cushion, plus you got a splinter coming out of your cheek.”
The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde Page 17