by Rod Redux
Her name was Betty Vaughn. If there was ever a real Nurse Ratchet, she was her. Brusque, efficient-- not exactly unkind, but certainly unsympathetic-- she was the type of nurse that made you want to get better as fast as you could just so she’d quit looking at you like you were some kind of faker.
The wound in his leg was healing nicely, they agreed, though his head injury was still draining, he saw, looking at the yellow-brown stains on the gauze.
“You’re going to have a dent in your head when it’s completely healed,” she opined, poking at his skull with her rubber gloved fingers.
“Great. Like I’m not ugly enough already.”
“Mmm-hmm…You don’t have enough hair to comb over it either,” she added, compounding his misery.
Nurse Ratchet taped fresh bandages to both wounds and then cleaned up her mess of used tape, gauze and plastic packaging, tossing the ball of soiled linen and wrappings into the trash can.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Lesser?” Nurse Vaughn asked. “Are you having any discomfort? You want some pain medicine?” The way she said it, Mort felt like she was implying he didn’t need any, but if he wanted to be a big baby, she’d go get him some.
“God, yes!” Mort groaned. His entire head was pulsing like a rotten tooth by then. It felt like an invisible man was standing over him, stomping it with cleated boots. She left the room, returned with some pills in a little paper cup. He swallowed them eagerly and lay back, letting his eyes drift shut.
“Looks like your hair’s starting to grow back,” Nurse Ratchet said as she fussed with the dressing on Mort’s head. “Except for the big circle on top that’s bald.” Was she actually teasing him? Nurse Ratchet had a sense of humor then. Mort smiled. Let her tease. Her voice was floating away like a helium balloon released into an April sky… or a vampire flitting across a burning city.
That’s weird. Why did he think “vampire”? They were called Archons.
No matter. It felt too good to just lay here and drift off.
“All right then, Mr. Lesser. You get some rest,” Nurse Ratchet said. “I’ll bring your dinner later. Looks like you’re having stew and lime Jell-o tonight.”
He would have griped about that lime Jell-o—even to grumpy Nurse Ratchet-- if he were still awake.
14
Scout Crew Unit Two
Officially, the work crew Pete had volunteered for was Scout Crew Unit Two, but some wiseacre who’d worked in the unit before Pete had nicknamed it “Screw U 2” and it had stuck. It was even spray painted on the side of one of the trucks.
Maybe it wasn’t the most clever pun in the world, but Pete thought it was pretty cool. It had, in fact, become a point of pride among the scout crew teams to pull some tours on Screw U 2. The reputation the squad cultivated was that they were the wildest, baddest, horniest motherfucking zombie killers in the world. And the truth was, they might just have been.
Scout teams had three primary duties, ordered by mission priority: one, find survivors and bring them home, two, kill zombies with extreme prejudice, and three, gather supplies for the growing population of New Jerusalem.
Only men and women who were immune to Virus Z were allowed to serve on scout crews. If your body produced the enzyme, detectible by blood test, you could sign up for outcamp scouting duty. There was a three day course in firearm proficiency and self-defense (called zombie-jitsu) and then you were cut loose to ride out in the scout crew caravans to comb the surrounding towns for survivors and supplies.
Pete, who was too lazy for real work, preferred the scout crews to any other work detail. He’d rather risk his hide than break his back slinging hash in the cafeteria. And the brief stint he’d pulled in the administrative building, helping register new arrivals and assign them quarters in the dormitories on Yellow and Blue, had put him to sleep. He’d actually gotten discharged for sleeping on duty when the bitch in charge of registration caught him snoozing in a supply closet. Well, fuck her. She was a dyke anyway. Pete marched his ass right over to the outcamp barracks and signed up that day!
In all, there were fifteen scouting crews. The teams were organized in a quasi-military fashion. Each unit consisted of about ten vehicles—jeeps, trucks and flatbeds—and a squad of twenty armed men called Scouts. Scouts reported to their Squad Leader. Squad Leaders reported to Squad Masters, who coordinated five Units each from the field. Squad Masters reported to Squad Major, who sat his fat ass in the Administration building and probably spent his afternoons jerking off and chasing his secretary around the desk.
A Scout could quit any time he or she wanted. It was hazardous work with no pay. But if you quit the Scouts you had to do something. New Jerusalem was in essence a communal society—for now. Everyone who could work had to work. That was the rule. If you weren’t disabled, you had to sign up for some kind of duty crew or you didn’t eat. Simple as that.
Despite the danger, Pete was happy being a Scout. The fresh air was nice. Most of the time there really wasn’t much to do but ride around and enjoy the scenery. Every now and then, they’d have a hairy shootout with some deadheads, but the zombies were winding down now. Their altered biology, though extreme, was only a little hardier than ordinary living creatures, and subject to the laws of physics like everything else. When they ran out of fresh human brains and flesh to eat, the virus began to devour them from the inside out. In fact, most of the deadheads Pete had seen in the last few days were little more than shambling bones wrapped in beef jerky.
Not that they couldn’t get you.
They were still dangerous in large groups. Even the really burned out ones. And you never knew when a fresh one was gonna come busting out a barn door at you, howling its crazy head off and running straight for the juicy brains in your skull.
The virus was not gone. It was just running out of people to infect.
The Scouts had a pretty smart system, though. Whenever they moved on to a new town, the caravan would roll through the streets at about fifteen miles per hour. A loudspeaker attached to the top of the lead vehicle played country music. For some reason, country western music drew the zombies better than any other genre. Especially Conway Twitty. Conway Twitty drew them in groves. When the zombies started shagging ass toward the trucks, the Scouts opened fire. You got one point for every clear headshot, but you had to claim it right then, and your H.S. partner had to verify. Ten H.S.’s got you a pack of smokes. Fifty H.S.’s got you a blowjob from Vicki Rungold, the only female Scout currently in their squad, and not just a fine-looking piece of ass, but a sharpshooter herself. Vicki liked sucking dick, and she liked shooting zombies. Both activities, she said, got her pussy wet.
While Conway played on the first truck’s loudspeaker, a second loudspeaker broadcast a looped message: “If there are any survivors in the area, do not run toward these vehicles. You will be shot. Find a high, safe place and try to flag us with a bright colored object. We will find and rescue you. If you shoot at these vehicles, we will return fire. Repeating: If there are any survivors…”
There weren’t many survivors. In a town of five thousand, like the one they’d just left, they had located one. A little boy, half-starved, who had hid out in his tree house. It had just about broke Pete’s heart, seeing the little tyke, with his sunk-in belly and hollow, haunted eyes.
“I look at him and I think, fuck, there can’t be no God. How could He allow something like that if there was,” Pete said to Vicki later that night, sitting out back of the caravan, drinking a beer. “I know there has to be, cause of the angels and all, but damn, why’s He got to be such a prick?”
Vicki had taken Pete’s cock out of her mouth and asked, “Are you about to cum? My jaw’s starting to get sore.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Pete had mumbled.
One little boy, and they’d shot about two hundred zombies. Mombies and Dabbies. Grambies. Kibbies. Just regular human beings turned to monsters, all ages, all colors, mindless things dressed in rags and looking like those Holocaust pictures from
World War 2 in his Grampa’s old war magazines.
Pete was an expert marksman turns out, and he could blow out their brains without half trying. Blam! There goes a redhead in a mumu dress. Blam! There goes grampa running starkers through his front yard. Blam! There goes Aunt Petunia in her Sunday finest, her clothes streaked now in gore and filth and hanging off her in ragged strips.
Mostly, though, the victims of Virus Z lay motionless where they finally dropped, just piles of dry bones, devoured first by the virus, then later by nature’s clean up crew: buzzards and bugs and possums.
Sometimes at night, wrapped up in a blanket in the back of his truck, Pete would turn his face into the crook of his arm and weep silently.
He missed Mort. Mort had a way of listening that made him feel better, even when the smartypants didn’t have anything to say back. Pete didn’t think he’d miss the lardbutt, but he did, and he decided he’d go see the slob when his two week tour was up and his unit went back to New Jerusalem for a week off. The guys—and gal—in his unit... Well, they were pretty much just like Pete. They were all balls and bluster and wouldn’t show their sensitive side if you paid them a hundred bucks. Not that money meant anything anymore. They used money to start campfires now. Or wipe their asses on, if they were out of toilet paper.
He’d tried to get in to see Mort two or three times after the angels brought them to New Jerusalem, but the hospital staff wouldn’t let him. They said, with Mort not being immune to Virus Z like Pete was, that Pete was just as dangerous to Mort as Mort’s injuries were. With his immune system compromised by all the medication he was on, it was very possible that Mort could get infected with the zombie virus without even being bit. His body would just quit fighting it and he would die.
Pete didn’t think he could stand to see Mort go zombie, so he had stayed away.
Hopefully, when he was back home for some R and R, Mort would be stronger and they could hang out together.
November 28th, Pete was roused by one of his squad mates in the early predawn light. He snapped awake—like all the Scouts did now—thinking they were engaging some deadheads, but when he sat up in the back of the flatbed, his blankets falling away from his head, he saw that it was snowing.
“Look at that,” the Scout who woke him said. “It’s the first snow of the season.”
He was a young guy, maybe twenty-six. Thin, Caucasian, still a little wet behind the ears and not a very good shot. His name was Travis Bentley, though everyone had nicknamed him “Get Bent” because he was kind of annoying and whiny. There was a running wager how long he’d last in the Scout Crews, but Pete was hard pressed to be impatient with him this morning, for the snow was something of a minor miracle.
The air was still. It was the kind of stillness that made you feel like a kid, but drifting down through that heavy calm were the biggest, fluffiest snowflakes Pete had seen in his entire life. The sun hadn’t yet climbed up over the hilly horizon but its glow was there, a kind of bluish lavender orange, and that strange multicolor hue was limning the edges of those big fluffy flakes, making them seem dreamlike and fantastic.
“Cool, huh?” Get Bent said in a hushed voice, nudging Pete with an elbow.
“Mucho cool,” Pete agreed, his words coming out in little puffs of vapor.
They were parked on the shoulder of a wooded blacktop highway, County Road 23 on their map. They’d made camp about fifteen miles east of a little burg called Cooper’s Hollow. They were planning to ride through Cooper’s Hollow later that day.
The trees on both sides of the road were mostly birch and pine, and there was a house and barn perched atop the ridge to the south, kind of hazy with distance: all the snowflakes drifting between it and their unit.
Mort could have looked around and known what fancy words to use to describe the scene he was enjoying, Pete thought to himself. Mort could have made it sound like poetry. Pete, who knew his vocabulary was woefully limited, could only say it was pretty.
Get Bent hopped down from the flatbed and stepped across the ditch onto the narrow margin of wild grass and underbrush that bordered the woods. Grinning, he turned in a circle with his tongue hanging out.
Pete laughed. “You better watch it, Bent, ‘for something grabs ya!”
He no sooner said it than it happened.
Something streaked out of the shadowy woods with a snarl, knocking the young scout into the ditch. Whatever it was, it was big and black and mean. Bent didn’t have a chance. One second he was catching snowflakes on his tongue like a grade school kid, the next second he was wrestling with a big shaggy horror the woods had birthed in his lap.
Pete yelled in surprise, began to fumble around for his rifle.
The scouts on guard duty yelled too, and someone took a shot, but no one had a clear line of sight. There was nothing anyone could do to save the kid. It just happened too damn fast.
Get Bent let out one breathless cry and then the beast tore his throat out and swallowed it.
Pete scooped up his rifle and ran to the end of the flatbed. He jumped down to get an angle.
The animal’s turned to snarl at him, its muzzle streaked with wet gore. Its lips were peeled back from yellow curved fangs. Bentley lay between its front paws, staring up at the fat drifting snowflakes with an expression of pain, but still, deathly still, his eyes already empty and lifeless.
A wolf! Pete saw. But it was a zombie wolf. Its eyes glazed and sunk. Its coat hanging limp and kind of empty off its spindly bones.
It growled, low and dreadful, then it took a step toward him.
Pete fired off a round and the animal’s top lifted off its head like a hat someone had set a firecracker under. The dead canine fell on top of Bentley, hind legs trembling.
Pete cussed and spit into the ravine. He was shaking with the aftereffects of adrenaline rush. His heart thudded in his chest. The rest of the squad was yelling, asking what happened, running toward them to catch a look-see at the early morning carnage.
Then from the woods surrounding the caravan, howls rising to the snowy heavens. Haunting and soulless, the chorus of cries made Pete’s hair stand up.
“Zombies!” Pete yelled at the top of his voice, running down the caravan of trucks. “Zombie fuckin’ wolves!”
Looked like he was earning his keep today.
15
The Dormitory
Mort was discharged from the infirmary the day after Thanksgiving. After four weeks in the compound’s makeshift hospital, Doctor Whalen (New Jerusalem’s only physician and a very tired one at that) pronounced him fit. Or rather, fit enough. After a few rounds of hugs and well-wishes from the staff, Mort was shown to the door.
He limped out onto the sidewalk in front of the building, shivering a little in the late November chill. A light snow was falling and he could see his breath in front of his face, but he was dressed warmly (jeans, sweater and coat from the dispensary) so it was not exactly like they were putting him out in the cold. Only it felt that way. Nobody accompanied him past the infirmary’s reception area. There was no welcome wagon waiting outside. He was set loose with vague instructions on how to get to the housing office so that he could be assigned a room in the dorms, and that was the end of that.
Feeling lonely and a little depressed, Mort set his shoulders and began to hobble his way toward the administration building.
The sidewalks were not icy, thank goodness, but he used his cane anyway, just to be safe. He felt strong—certainly healthy enough to get out on his own finally. The medical crew wasn’t giving him the bum’s rush. Still, his right leg was probably always going to be a little tricky, and the sudden cold made his head hurt, despite the toboggan he’d been given to wear.
There were a few people out in the sharp, wintry air, he saw, hurrying between buildings, running errands, running to meet new friends or new lovers. None of them paid him a whit of attention. All were strangers to Mort.
He heard the joyful sound of children playing. Their squeals and the high-p
itched babble of their voices. Several small kids—three boys and two girls—were chasing each other in the white-dusted grass between buildings. New Jerusalem had no playgrounds. It looked like they had settled for tag. Watching them play in their toboggans and scarves and thick padded winter coats cheered him. Especially the sight of their red noses and rosy cheeks.
An elderly woman shuffled out the front door of one of the dormitories, calling, “Drew! Drew! Come in for a little while and get warmed up. You’re going to catch your death of cold!”
Mort continued on to the administration building, trying to limp as little as possible. He didn’t want anyone to see his infirmity and feel sorry for him.
To the west, the Unicoi Mountains were draped in white, low-hanging clouds, looking ethereal. Some of the peaks of the mountain range were tipped in white, but most of the summits were below the snow line and forested in second-growth hardwood and pine. New Jerusalem inhabited a region that was primitive and undeveloped, though the camp had all the modern amenities: lights, running water, technology. The DOD camp bordered the Cherokee Nation Forest, was almost perfectly centered in a vast tract of wilderness and riverways. Standing in the middle of the compound, a person could turn 360 degrees and see not one sign of human civilization beyond the twenty-foot-high prison-like fences, just a couple meandering one lane roads and a few close outbuildings. The great empty wilderness that surrounded the government facility only added to Mort’s sense of isolation and loneliness.