This Is Not The End: But I Can See It From Here (The Big Red Z Book 1)

by Thomas Head

  With lanterns they brought them, they examined every square inch of the gut-soaked rocks and bloody meat heaps. Bits of hide or bone were scattered here and there, along with stones, and the ends of fingers and tattered clothes lay everywhere over the black patch.

  In the end, they found nothing, not one single thing to indicate any trace of the lost woman, until Doc caught sight of a tiny, blue ribbon atop a piece of rusty metal.

  Kicking it aside, Doc picked it up.

  On the lower end was one of Tyler’s old dog tags.

  Doc would confess it took him a moment to reveal it. He would have rather had felt the point of a dagger, shoved in his ear, than have shown that simple thing to Tyler.

  But Doc did.

  Tyler nodded, grimaced maniacally, then just nodded again.

  Then the sky fell out. The snow broke upon them in white billows, blotting out everything. They spread a sheet on the ground to preserve any marks of the little camp, but the drifting wind drove them indoors and they were compelled to cease searching.

  * * *

  All night long, Tyler and Doc sat before the roaring fire of the hunting room. Both of them were at a loss for what to do. He just leaned forward with his scarred chin in his palms, saying few words.

  Doc could only offer futile suggestions, uttering mad threats.

  Chapter 26

  They spent a long, melancholy night waiting amid the roaring of the northern gale, driving through any gap it could find in the hall. It seemed as if it would wrench all the eaves from the roof. It shrieked across the garden like malignant spirits. And all the while poor Tyler kept rushing into the blinding whirl.

  Outside, though, he could not see twice the length of his own arm, and the servants and Doc begged him to come back.

  As long as the storm raged, he would pace back and forward the full length of the hunting-room until his eye would be caught by some object Emily had cleaned with or otherwise handled. He would put this carefully away, as one lays aside the belongings of the dead.

  Then he would set himself down, gazing at the leaping flames of the log fire.

  Doc felt nothing but the agony of their utter helplessness.

  Afterwards, the lanterns that they had placed on the oak center table, began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell, and morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts, crusted over by the frozen sleet. It reflected the white dazzle and burned the eyes shut. Great icicles hung from the naked branches of the sheeted pines, and snow was wreathed among the cedars.

  * * *

  After lifting the canvas from the camping ground, they sought in vain for more trace of his girlfriend or a ransom note.

  There was none.

  They dispatched a dozen different search parties that morning, Tyler leading those who were to go downriver. Doc took some well-trained rangers upriver. They were picked from the municipal guard, who could track the forest to every Zombie haunt within a week’s march of Goback.

  A few of Addly’s men came. They both knew they showed up more out of curiosity than to help, but they needed help. Doc put them on a boat with a dredge with instructions to report back that night.

  As soon as they left out, Doc hunted up an old Chinese fellow. Batt was a hunting guide Doc used now and again. Grizzled, stunted and chunky, he was not at all the picturesque figure of grace that Doc had once thought typical of Asians. He wore a stocking cap with earflaps tied under his chin. His long shirt was an ill-fitting garment, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above the beaded skin shoes favored by mountain men four centuries prior. The old fellow was as silent as an animal, named Bat, but the men hereabouts had nicknamed him The Mute. Or perhaps his name was Mute, and they called him The Bat. Doc could not recall which. Doc just knew that what he lacked in speech, he made up in an almost animal-like acuteness of the senses. It was commonly believed that Batt possessed some nameless sense that big game possess, by which he and they could actually feel the presence of a zombie before ordinary folk could.

  For his part, Doc would be willing to pit that “feel” of Batt’s against the nose of any hound dog.

  “Batt, old man. Good to see you,” Doc said. He was puffing one of the old Marlboros to calm his nerves. “I wish I could say I called you it was for one of our regular hunts.”

  The old man nodded.

  “Listen, let me get right to it. Somebody took Emily a day ago. And they did it without so much as a foot print. We need to find them.”

  As Batt digested the information, he began lick the air, as if tasting it for an answer.

  Doc raised his eyes imploringly, hoping he had something.

  Batt just fixed his eyes on an invisible spot in the snow and ruminated even more. In time, he hitched the baggy trousers up, pulled the red scarf that held them to his waist tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for him to go on.

  “Um… well, yes. Let’s see. We think the blackwaters took them. We found a blue ribbon she used to wear. It was intact, um, like she took it off. So we’re pretty sure she didn’t get chewed—”

  “The girl drop it you think?” Batt asked, speaking for the first time Doc had ever heard. “Maybe she wasn’t wanting ribbon eaten too.”

  “Maybe. That would have been a clever trick for someone getting eaten alive.”

  The Mute’s eyes went back to the snow.

  “Listen, Batt, let me get to it. Before we take off after these bastards, we need to make sure that you’re not right. We need to know if she’s Shado now. I’ll make you a rich man if you help.”

  Batt’s eyes looked up with the question of how much.

  “Rich,” Doc said.

  No sooner was the word out of his lips than he darted off into the forest like a rabbit.

  “Well, damn it, man.”

  Doc did not follow before he lost sight of him; but he knew his strange, silent ways, and Doc confidently awaited his return.

  How he could get two pair of binoculars inside of five minutes, Doc would not attempt to explain. At any rate, he was back again, equipped now for a recon hike. He and Doc laced on the binos, Doc having to watch and imitate him.

  And before long, they were skimming over the drifts like a boat on water.

  * * *

  In the maze-like confusion of snow and underbrush, no one but Batt would have found and kept that tangled path. At places, there were great trunks that had fallen across the way, but Batt planted his pole and took the obstacles in a leap. Then he raced on at a gait which was neither a run nor a walk, but an easy trot common to soldiers. Doc had been schooled to a swift pace from boyhood, growing up with the McCarthys, and he kept up with him at every step. However, to be honest, they were going so fast Doc lost all track of his bearings.

  They might have been in some crystal-walled cavern as they pressed over the brushwood, now packed with snow and crusted ice. Snow-crusted branches snapped like glass when they brushed past.

  Doc tried to discern a trail by the broken thicket on either side, but that was in vain. Then he noticed that his guide was keeping his course by marks, which were cut into the trees. At one place, they came to a steep, clear slope. The earth had fallen away from the sheer hillside and snow had filled the incline.

  Prodding forward to feel if the snow-bank were solid, Batt promptly sat down on his rear end and slid quick as a hiccup down to the valley.

  Doc came leaping clumsily from point to point with his pole, risking his neck at every bound. Then they coursed along the valley, the Mute’s eyes still on the trees. Once, he stopped to emit a gurgling laugh at a badly hacked trunk, beneath which was a snowed-up sap trough.

  Honestly, though, Doc could not tell what Batt’s mirth was about.

  “Where to, Batt?” Doc asked with a vague suspicion that they were heading for a compound that many suspected had been infiltrated by the blackwaters near Leafy Lore. “To Leafy Lore?”

  Batt agreed with a grunt.

  Then he whisked suddenly around a headlan
d up a narrow gorge, which seemed to lead to the very heart of the wooded hills and might have sheltered any number of fugitives.

  In the gorge, they stopped to take a light meal of dried herrings and biscuits. By the sun, Doc knew it was long past noon and that they had been traveling southeast. Doc also vaguely guessed that Batt’s object was to intercept the Longmongers, if they had planned to slip away from the Red River through the bush, where they could meet southbound mini barges. But not one syllable got spoke on the matter.

  Or any other matter.

  Clambering up the steep, snowy banks of the gorge, they found themselves in the upper reaches of a mountain-like hill, where the trees fell away in scraggy clumps and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the crest. Batt grunted, puffed on of Doc’s cigarettes significantly and pointed his pole to the hilltop.

  Suddenly, Batt shoved him backward with the end of his pole and a curious expression showed on the dull, pock-pitted face.

  “What?”

  “You right. The nice blackwaters no get them.”

  “What? I don’t… the traders? You think the Shado chewed her?”

  “No. I thinks mean blackwaters came! And they no came by the river.”

  “Walked?”

  “No, uh ugh. Gone too fast. No tracks. They fly.”

  Doc stood on the embankment and peered into the lengthening shadows of the valley.

  “To Nashville.”

  “Yes. You go, Mister Doc. Go get boat and go downriver. Get them.”

  The Mute, wise old bastard, then began to cry. He seemed to understand Doc did not want to get them back. He needed to get him back. Perhaps this was the truth, or he may have just felt the disturbing tension of Doc’s half-wild heartbeats, but whatever the truth, the old man sat back on its haunches , lifted his head, and let out the most miserable howl imaginable.

  Doc hurried down the gorge as fast as his boots would carry him.

  “Oh! Goooo! Mister Doc,” the guide said. “Gooo or he die, mister. Oh, he die if you no get her back!

  Chapter 27

  Doc and Jickie stood in the melting snow an hour later, above the zombie nest where he and Tyler had found his dog tags. Tyler was below, still crawling around, hunting for some passage that led under the house.

  Doc was relating his experience with the Mute, recounting how even he was certain it was longmongers. But, being highly successful in all his own dealings, Jickie seemed all but irritated by the fact that it would boil down to a best guess. He could not tolerate guesswork. And yet two days of vigilant searching had yielded not the slightest inkling of Emily, or even how the longmongers had gotten her, so maybe the aggravation of it ignited all fury of the uncle’s fiery temperament.

  “We’ll find who did this. I won’t stop till I’ve chopped his head off and cleaved him in two, Doc!” he continued. “Make it a point to knock the balls off anything that stands in your way—”

  “Dangerous business, dealing with the longmongers. We’ll be venturing as far off as Nashville, right into their neck of the woods.”

  “Danger is my business, Doc! I’m Jickie Fucking McCarthy!”

  “But you don’t suppose …”

  “Suppose!” he roared. “I make it a point never to suppose anything. I act on facts. And the fact is I’m not sitting around here. I’m waiting for more of those bastards to pick us off one by one. What the hell are they doing that for anyhow!”

  “Who knows…”

  “I know you better hack the balls off anything that opposed you.”

  “You’ve said that several times already, Mr. Jickie,” Doc put in, having a touch of his own peppery temper from his mother’s side.

  The uncle looked at Tyler emerging from the ground, then said with uncharacteristic softness, “Call me uncle. Now go. Get the boys together.”

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Tyler rested neither night nor day. In the morning, he would outline the plan for the day with a few hurried words. At night, he rode back to the lodge, or emerged from the zombie nest, with eager questions in his eyes, and Doc knew he had nothing better to report to him than he did to him.

  After a silent, meager meal, he would ride through the dark forest on a fresh mount. How he passed those sleepless nights, Doc did not know.

  Chapter 28

  Not even someone who had lived in the Old World, the world of air conditioning and the McRib, would have trouble imagining what the eyes around this table had seen. No one who had seen a documentary about chimpanzees would have any difficulty understanding the cost of fighting something that was five times their equal in strength, but thirty times as aggressive. Certainly no pampered history professor would doubt that medieval lords and earls ever waged more ruthless war on each other than the zombies and commandos during those years. The savagery and sorrow seen by the eyes around the table would not be eclipsed for centuries.

  But it did not damage the hearts of these old bucks.

  Uncles Jickie, Rocco, Gig, and Kenzo were the sort of men who were still pulled by the life of the cutter. They still wanted to rise up and salute their destiny with a growl. They were still ravenous for danger and barbarity. They still felt the stirrings of youth, the places where they had faced down and laughed at death, and roared out the inexpressible depths of defeat’s anguish. But since they had taken their seat at a table behind Gig’s Hall, they sat silently across from Tyler and Doc, just looking.

  They were positioned in a mossy and rock-strewn clearing, along the long wall of Fort Campbell, which was casting them in the moon’s dim shadows. They sat for long minutes, perfectly still, all of them, still just staring in the lone candle before them. Beside it was a mason jar of goat’s blood, to be drunk should any oaths be sworn this night.

  Gig harrumphed quietly at the head of the table. He cocked an eye at Kenzo, a dour old man whose hair had not yet flecked with the slightest bit of gray. “Well?.... What the fuck are we waiting for?”

  All of them, silent and rapt, turned to Tyler. He made a strange wincing expression and seemed to study the sky.

  “Boys, I can’t ask this of you… of any of you.”

  “Fuck that! Here, Here!” Uncle Jickie thundered. “Once more, boys! Once more to the filthy fucking joys of war!”

  “Here, here!” they all cried.

  And each of them, in turn, drank from the jar of goat’s blood.

  Chapter 29

  In making his oath, they had decreed Doc their leader, and Doc took up the role with an enthusiasm that prompted more than a few eager nods from the leathery band of adventures. Indeed, a horny young fellow, on his first escape into the night with a young woman, could not have been half as exhilarated as Doc was to have so venturesome a quest before him. With Tyler’s bar of gold, he provisioned them with every worthless trinket and flashy trifle that could tempt the local hillbillies and rednecks into aiding them with supplies or the secrets of the forest. And if these things should fail, Doc added a dozen fine as new hunting knives, which everyone knew could corrupt the soul of even the most hardened backwoods bruiser. Doc also equipped them with a box of wicked-looking samurai swords. He placed these things in square cases that were slow to open, which would surely add to their aweing power.

  As to their needs, Doc secured a twenty foot rubber raiding craft from Addly, who happened to be the son of an old Navy Seal. The compact vessel had a somewhat flat canvas bottom, specially designed for the river. It was lovely thing with a hull about five feet wide, a small 25 horse outboard at the stern, and a triangular gun mount made of titanium, on which a pair of M4s were mounted, supported by two rope crutches that it ran like a rafter from a sailing vessel down the center of the craft

  And for all their posturing, preparation, and searching the week prior, it seemed like no time before the at all before the unlucky number of six of them were loading the craft with every manner of supply: Tents, blankets, bows, arrows, flints, pipes, marijuana, shotgun shells, flour, deer jerky.

  The Feis
ty-Uncle was a genuine military ship, worth more than the bar of gold, so despite the handsome cost, Doc had to suppose that Addly harbored no grudge against his good friend—for he obviously looked on it with love and memories of his father, and Doc believed that he even reinforced the sides with some Kevlar plating for them right before they bought it. From a distance, the vessel looked lean, and somewhat knifelike, but when you were aboard you could see how it flared outward so that she sat on the water like a shallow bowl rather than cut through it like a blade. Even with her belly laden with several stout men, their weapons, food, and supplies, she needed very little depth.

  Testing it, the commandos went out rowing with the full load of men and supplies. They chanted an old song Doc did not know about how it was time to Ramble On as they rowed, before pounding out the tale of some place called Hotel California. It was a good tale and its rhythms took them down the river in spirit not unlike teenagers itching for a brawl.

  They were going northwest, against the current, still testing things out. The ride was placid, and the sun was warm, despite the river’s margins being thick with ice. Once in a while her motor would scrape on gravel, but by keeping to the outside of the river’s sweeping bends they were able to stay in sufficient water. The mast had been replaced with a long aluminum river pole, so that, on the outside of the river’s curves, they could slide under the overhanging trees without becoming entangled.

  A few of the guards from Goback rode horses, keeping pace with them on the eastern bank. They had gone so far north as the Clinton Dam, where they let themselves rest.

  A lone hunter stood on the rise before them, and for a moment they just watched him work. His name was Dale, a fellow who had come to Fort Campbell for reasons that were his own.