Del’s hand went up to his face. Once he brushed against the splinter, he winced in pain.
“Hold up,” Clayton said as he reached into a side pocket on the leg of his pants. After fiddling there for a moment, he pulled out a small zippered bag. Once he had it in both hands, he opened it and pulled out some medical gauze.
“Lean toward me and don’t fidget,” Clayton said.
Del did as he was told but wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next.
Clayton reached forward with his forefinger and thumb nearly pinched together and said, “This might hurt a little.” Despite his words, he delicately grasped the splinter and slowly pulled it free.
He handed Del a piece of gauze and said, “Wipe off the blood.” He fiddled with the bag and brought out a tiny spray bottle and waited for Del to finish cleaning off the blood before handing the bottle over.
“Spray that on your face, let it dry, then wipe it again,” Clayton said. “There’s not much more I can do.”
“Aren’t you the Florence Nightingale of battlefield medicine,” Del said.
“Infection’s no joke,” Clayton said. “Over in Iraq, you get some shit in a cut and you could lose a foot or an arm.” He zipped up the bag and placed it back in his pocket.
Del decided Clayton was in a mood, so he just said, “Thanks.”
“Once you’re done, go see how Mason did,” Clayton said.
“You’re not coming with me?”
“No, I need to make sure the soldiers don’t make a charge at us by mistake,” Clayton said, pointing in the soldier’s direction. “They have no idea we’re even here. They could get a wild hair up their ass and just open up on us.”
“Why didn’t they just call for help from the other soldiers?” Del asked.
“Maybe they did? Maybe their radio is knocked out? Maybe they ran out of batteries? Maybe reinforcements are on the way? We have no fucking idea. I want to get this show on the road. Get Mason.”
There was a brusqueness in Clayton’s tone that Del hadn’t heard before. Maybe killing people made him testy. It sure didn’t make Del’s day.
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Del said.
Clayton shot him a flat look that said this wasn’t the place or time.
“I’m going. I’m going,” Del said as he crept backward then headed off through the trees toward where Mason’s position was. At least, that’s where he hoped Mason was. In battle, plans were fluid, and there was a good chance that Mason had shifted his position.
In reality, even if he wasn’t up to Clayton’s standards, Del was no slouch in the woods. While he thought he sounded like an elephant stampeding through the forest, he was fairly silent as he drifted in among the trees and bushes.
If Mason was still somewhere near his designated place, he’d be about forty yards to the south of where Del had set up. As he went in that direction, he took peeks back toward where the soldiers had been sighted, but his path took him deeper into the woods, making spotting the soldiers nearly impossible.
He was closing on where Mason was supposed to be when someone back from where he had come shouted at the top of their lungs, freezing him in place. “Berry! Julian Berry, are you there?”
It was Clayton. It was a rather blunt approach tactic, but Del figured it was better than being shot in a furtive approach. Del stayed in place and listened.
No one responded to Clayton’s call. Del didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a bad one and figured only time would tell. His best guess was that the soldiers were playing it safe after being shot at by unknown assailants.
Clayton shouted again, “Zelanski. Private Zelanski. Can you hear me?”
A new voice shouted into the woods, “Who is that out there?” It was a deep resonant voice that carried quite well in the moist air.
“It’s Private Clayton Myers.”
Del held in place and listened, shifting back and forth as he stood by a tree, trying to get a sightline back toward the road, but only saw the wall of green that was the woods.
There was a short pause then the voice asked, “Private who?”
“Private Clayton Myers from Wright-Patt.”
There was a longer pause this time, and Del wasn’t aware that he was holding his breath. He had no idea what was going to happen. Maybe Clayton was mistaken and these weren’t the soldiers he remembered. Maybe they’d start firing on his position.
“Didn’t you desert your post at the Manor?” the voice asked. There was no way of really telling the intent of the question, but there seemed to be some challenge in the words.
“Why yes, I did,” Clayton said. “Because I wasn’t stupid enough to follow Kilgore’s bullshit.”
Del locked in on the exchange, hoping that Clayton could win his former compatriots over. In fact, he was so intensely following the exchange that, when a hand gripped his upper arm from behind, he let out a high-pitched sound that was halfway toward a scream but more like a yelp.
He didn’t even turn around, fully expecting the next sound would be the explosion of the gun that would blow off his head.
That didn’t happen.
“Geez, you scare too easy,” a voice behind Del said, and the hand let go of his arm.
When he turned around, he saw Mason standing directly behind him.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Del said. “I think I may have actually crapped my pants a little.” He looked down at his crotch and then back up to Mason.
“Situational awareness is a must. You need to be more aware of what’s going on around you,” Mason said. “I could have just as well been one of the bandits.”
“I thought we killed them all,” Del said.
“You killed your guys?”
“Well, I shot one. Clayton got the other two.” Del omitted the part where Clayton saved his ass.
“I got one of mine, but the other one got away,” Mason said. “I think I wounded him.”
One of the voices from the road shouted, “What are you doing here, Myers?”
Clayton responded quickly with, “It looks like I’m saving your ass.”
“How the hell are you doing that?” the voice shouted back.
“By taking out the men out here in the woods who were shooting at you,” Clayton said.
“How do we know you aren’t with them?”
“Because you would be dead, too,” Clayton yelled. “You’re not all that great at hiding.”
There was a long silence as neither Clayton nor the soldiers spoke.
Mason leaned close to Del and said, “What’s he trying to do?”
“I would say he’s trying to calm down those soldiers so that we can rendezvous with them.”
“You know, I don’t like this,” Mason said.
“I’m not a fan, either, but it’s the best play,” Del said.
“Come on. Let’s get closer,” Mason said as he started forward. Del hesitated but followed when he decided he didn’t want to be alone in the woods. As he moved along behind Mason, he listened to the exchange between Clayton and the soldiers, hoping they came to some accord. Del wasn’t up for another shootout.
“What the hell are you doing here, Myers?” a voice from the road shouted.
“These men that were firing at you attacked my convoy,” Clayton yelled. “We couldn’t move forward without knowing where they were.”
“Who are you with?” the voice shouted back.
Clayton didn’t reply for a few seconds, and Del wondered if maybe he was second-guessing playing his hand so soon. Revealing too much might put their people in danger.
“I’m with a convoy of very well-armed and motivated people,” Clayton said.
Well, that’s laying our cards on the table, Del thought. Except it was a bit of a bluff. Their people were motivated but far from well-armed. Between them, they had a handful of guns. Maybe the soldiers would share what they had? Probably not.
“I don’t know about this, Myers,” the voice shouted again. “We have
n’t seen you in a long time. Maybe you went native and are with these guys, and this is just a trick to get us to relax while you pull off some sort of sneak attack.”
“Tell you what, Zelanski,” Clayton yelled back. “You’re inside the cab of the truck, right?”
“Hey, how did you know that?” Zelanski replied.
“Because I’m looking right at you, you dumbshit.”
“Where the hell are you?” Zelanski asked.
As they moved closer to the road, Del envisioned a man ducking down inside the cab of the transport truck because that’s what he would do.
Clayton shouted again, “I’m going to shoot the side mirror off your truck, just to prove to you that I could have killed you a second ago but didn’t.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Zelanski said, and Del thought he detected a quaver in the man’s voice.
“Nah, nah,” Clayton said. “Seeing is believing.”
A moment later, a gunshot sounded, and it was followed by the breaking of glass and something metal hitting the pavement.
Mason slowed up and made room for Del to slide in next to him beside two thin maple trees. They now had a sightline onto the roadway, but Del only saw an empty road.
Mason must have followed Del’s gaze because he whispered, “To your right.”
Del corrected his view and saw the side of a troop transport truck about thirty yards down the road to their right. He thought he saw a couple dark forms inside the cab, but the back half was covered by canvas blocking any view there. Although, there was a set of legs dangling over the opening at the back of the truck. He also thought he caught someone hiding behind a tree on the other side of the road about twenty feet from the truck.
Del whispered out a question, “You see that guy off in the woods?”
“Yep,” Mason replied. “There’s two more on the backside.”
:“Okay, okay, you made your point,” another voice yelled. “What do you want?”
“Private Berry,” Clayton said, “I just want to come out of these woods and know that no one is going to shoot my fucking head off. After that, we can take it from there, okay?”
There was a protracted delay, and Del guessed the soldiers were discussing their options.
“Don’t take forever,” Clayton said. “Of course, you know a massive horde is about to roam right up our ass.”
“Okay,” a voice that Del took to be Private Berry said. “We’re good to have you come out.”
Clayton then said, “Just so you know, I’m not here alone. I have a crack team of special operators with me, so don’t think you can just shoot me and that’s it. They will take you out if that’s the case.”
Del looked to Mason and then pointed to himself and mouthed the word, “Special operator.”
Mason just shook his head and went back to watching the road.
“We’re not going to shoot you,” Private Berry yelled.
“Good,” Clayton responded. “I need to brief my team, and I’ll be right out.” Clayton paused then Del could tell that he had shifted his direction because his voice was clearer. “Operators, meet at the rendezvous point.”
Mason turned to Del and said, “Let’s go.”
“So, we’re doing this?” Del asked.
“Clayton had a point,” Mason said. “We’re not that far ahead of the horde. If we’re doing this, we need to get moving.”
Chapter 30
Meet and Greet
It was a quick walk through the woods for Del and Mason. The rendezvous point was two tall oak trees next to a large boulder. Clayton was waiting for them, sitting on the boulder when they arrived.
Mason was the first to speak. “You trust these guys?”
“Yes,” Clayton said. “You need to know there are A-Teams and there are B-Teams. This is the C-team.”
“How do you know that?” Del asked.
“I worked with most of these guys back on the base,” Clayton said. “Zelanski was a comm officer. There’s a guy named Ides who was the company cook. There were two more who always tended to work in the background whenever the shit came down. The other two I don’t know but suspect they are like the other two. Berry is the only real soldier there.”
“How did you guys survive so long with talent like that?” Mason asked.
“We were on a military base with good fortifications,” Clayton said. “But, as I said, these guys are from the bottom of the barrel.”
Del cleared his voice and said, “We don’t have time to go through their resumes. What’s the next play?”
“You two will take up positions in the woods down the road,” Clayton said. “I’ll go in and make sure it’s safe, and you’ll come in when I call you. Come in from separate spots, just in case.”
“What if it’s not safe?” Del asked.
“Then they’ll probably shoot me, and you can avenge my death by killing them all,” Clayton said.
Del said, “Thanks for calling me a special operator. It really boosted my self-esteem.”
“Bite me, asshole,” Clayton said. “Let’s go.”
Del and Mason found a position down the road with a clear view of the truck. The soldiers hadn’t moved much from their earlier positions. There was one more of them outside the truck and one civilian standing against the truck, looking out of place. His hands were behind his back, and he didn’t look very comfortable.
“That’s Gary,” Mason exclaimed.
“Who?” Del asked.
“That guy standing against the back of the truck,” Mason said. “He’s one of my people. When we were attacked, our groups got separated. He was with the one who was headed east.”
“What do you think he’s doing with the soldiers?” Del asked as he eyed the man Mason had pointed out. He looked a little disheveled, with his jacket hanging open and dirt stains on his pants. From Del’s perspective, he looked a little fidgety. Gary shifted in place and looked as if he could barely stand up.
“Those sons of bitches,” Mason said and was sure that the soldiers had roughed him up.
“Hold up,” Del said. “We need to find out the whole story,” he paused for a moment, “but only after we get this meetup done.”
“If they did something to my people…” Mason said but didn’t finish the sentence.
Del couldn’t help but notice that Mason’s knuckles had gone white from gripping his rifle tightly. He thought about saying something to calm him down, but he had been there when the soldiers held his people hostage at the Manor. There was no soothing someone when their people were in harm’s way.
Clayton yelled from the woods to announce his impending arrival. “Guys, I’m coming out. Please, don’t shoot my ass.”
Del scanned the woods for a few seconds and finally caught something moving among the trees. It took a moment for the form to become clear, but it quickly transitioned from a form to something more distinct as Clayton stepped out onto the road, his rifle held loosely at his side.
He took three steps onto the road and stopped, obviously assessing the situation.
The soldiers around the truck had become frozen in place, watching Clayton as if he were some kind of dangerous exotic animal. From what Del had seen about Clayton, he was quite dangerous, so the soldiers had that part right.
The scene stayed that way until Private Berry took a step toward Clayton, put out a hand, and said, “Clayton, my brother from another mother.”
Berry’s back was to Del, but something about Berry’s body language told Del that Berry was smiling. Berry was a big man with broad shoulders and wide hips. His legs seemed short and out of proportion with the rest of his body. His skin was dark brown with a sheen of sweat covering most of what was exposed.
Clayton took a step toward Berry but still seemed quite cautious. Berry must have decided he needed to break the ice, because he strode toward Clayton with his hand still out.
The other soldiers stayed rooted in place, watching rigidly as Berry closed on Clayton. Del wa
sn’t sure what to make of it, but at least they didn’t have their weapons up and aimed. Of course, Del knew that could change in an instant.
The scene seemed to dip down to slow motion for Del. Berry continued toward Clayton. Clayton stood like a statue on the side of the road, taking in every movement. Mason still held his rifle white-knuckle tight. The other soldiers stood transfixed, waiting for something to happen.
For Del’s part, he hoped this wasn’t some sort of trick, so he held his breath and waited with the rest of them.
Two seconds later, Berry’s hand slapped into Clayton’s as he outstretched it to meet Berry’s. Berry wasn’t content with that but grabbed Clayton’s hand and tugged him into a half-embrace, as they bumped shoulders.
“Clayton, you old son of a bitch, it’s good to see you,” Berry said as they separated.
It was as if someone had dropped the temperature in the area as everyone relaxed. Well, almost everyone. Del saw a soldier standing off the road near the back of the truck holding his rifle in both hands and looking more than a little tense in Del’s opinion.
Clayton said something that Del couldn’t make out, and Berry answered him, waving a hand in the air as if to take in the scene and its players.
“What are they saying?” Mason asked.
“I can’t hear,” Del said as he looked back at Mason, whose face was pinched and his eyes narrowed.
There was an exchange between Berry and Clayton, then Berry motioned toward the truck. A few seconds later, the door opened, but there was another delay before a soldier climbed out, looking as if he were trying to see in every direction at once. He was short and on the thin side with dark, very curly hair.
“Man, that guy looks like he’s about to piss himself,” Del said.
“Shhhh,” Mason hissed out.
The soldier stood by the truck for almost as long as it took him to exit before Berry yelled, “Zelanski, get your ass over here.”
The soldier named Zelanski slowly made his way over to where Clayton and Berry were talking. Once he made it there, he nervously stuck out a hand then withdrew it, and a moment later, he offered it to Clayton.
The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde Page 18