Sam realized he wasn’t breathing. He inhaled sharply, and as he did, Warden Bowers rocketed up from the couch and lunged at his phone. Snapped it up, hit the proper extension and roared: “Get that fucking team back! Get Chris back now!”
Thirty-Five
Chris took a carefully placed step and then stopped, scanning the trees with a hunter’s eye.
Over to the west, ten feet away, a human form sat in the brush. He communicated as much to his men through hand signs, and crept forward, crouching low.
Eight feet.
It was a woman. No, girl – teenager – judging by the size.
Six feet.
She was sitting with her back to them. She was hunched over, making grunting noises.
Four feet.
They arched around her, weapons trained.
She was covered in blood. Chewing on a human leg.
“Jesus Christ,” Rick exploded. The girl startled, dropped the limb and lunged at him. Shock slowed his reactions. The girl caught him by the neck, ripping his throat out with her teeth. Blood exploding from the wound, rolling down Rick’s chest and frothing around her mouth as she drank.
Smith: “What the fuck!”
Will: “Get her off him!” He ran forward and tried to pull her off, but her jaw was locked on Rick’s throat in a death grip. Blood continued to gush out. Soaking Jones. Rick. The girl.
Smith: “What the fuck!”
Will: “Do something!”
Smith: “What the fuck!”
Will: “Someone do something!”
Chris snapped out of his daze. Lowered his rifle. Took two steps, pulling his pistol as he did. Snapped off the safety. Raised it to the girls head.
Fired.
Three bodies slumped to the ground as Will’s weight brought the two dead down on top of him.
Smith: “What the fuck!”
Will: “Get them off of me!”
Around them, the woods came to life with staggering, lurching, gray bodies.
Smith: “What do we do?” He dragged the bodies off of Will and the two stood, watching the growing swell around them.
Chris did the same, unsure. He holstered the pistol and took back up his rifle. There were so many of them. What would a jury say? He had witnesses to testify the girl had murdered Statham, but these people? Could they just shoot them?
Smith: “God Damn it, Chris, what do we do?”
Chris’ com unit garbled to life, Sander’s voice announcing: “Warden wants you boys back. Stat. Get out of those trees and get back to the gate.”
The creatures were getting closer, twenty feet away max. On all sides. The forest a sea of cracks and snaps as they made their way through the brush.
Chris: “We’re surrounded.”
Smith: “Can we fire?”
The men huddled closer together as the hoard approached.
Will: “Can we fire?”
Smith: “Jesus, Chris! Give us orders!”
A man, his skin sagging, eyes dull and glazed, lurched forward, crossing five feet in a single movement, reaching for Will.
Will fired.
Smith fired.
Chris joined them. They cut down the man and three people coming behind him with automatic fire. The bodies pulverized by the onslaught. Chris turned to cover their rear. The three man team assembled their backs in a triangle to cover all sides. Chris put a bullet in a woman’s face – skull and brain exploding from behind her - tracked right and put two more in a fat man. They weren’t enough. Chris held the trigger down until his man turned to pulp and slumped to the ground. Dropped his clip, snapped another in and went back at it.
Will screamed from behind him and then was gone in a rush of bodies. Chris and Smith quickly compensating by holding their backs flat against each other. Chris caught sight of four creatures tearing Will apart and emptied another magazine into the mass. The bodies stopped moving.
Something grabbed his left arm and clamped down. He pulled his pistol and shot the crown of the skull four times, blood spattering over his uniform and face. Kicked the attacker until the mouth came free, and tracked right with the nine millimeter and left with the rifle. Firing into the crowd.
Smith and Chris shot until their guns ran dry, reloaded, and shot more. Until they were surrounded by a pile of lifeless human forms.
Finally, the trees were silent.
“Holy fuck,” Smith breathed. “There were hundreds of them.”
Their backs slowly separated as they moved out, scanning.
“Warden wants us back to the gate,” Chris said absently, nudging a body with his toe. “What the hell are we supposed to tell him about all this?”
Smith turned to him. “It was self-defense,” he said. “You saw what they did to Rick and Will.”
“I know, but...”
“What’s that?” Smith asked, pointed at Chris’ arm. “Did one of them bite you?”
“Yeah, I got his ass, though.”
Smith started backing away. “I’m going back to the gate,” he said, “you stay back.”
“Smith...”
“Those were fucking zombies, Chris. No other way to explain it. A thousand zombie movies, and one constant: you get bit, you turn.” Smith took three more steps back.
“You can’t leave me out here!”
“I’ll tell the Warden what happened. See if he wants to get a medic to look at it. Okay? Trust me, I’ll send someone back for you.”
He turned and started out of the woods. Chris watched his back as he made his way towards the light of the wood’s end. Just before Smith crossed into the field, Chris raised his rifle.
He fired until it ran dry.
Thirty-Six
"That's bullshit," Tall Bill said.
Erin only shrugged. "That's life," he said. "Literally."
“So run it down for me again. First degree?”
Erin shrugged again. “The prosecutor threw the book at me. It was a really politically charged case. I couldn’t afford a lawyer, and no one wanted it pro-bono because of the death threats. Hell, even if I could have afforded one, I couldn’t have gotten one.”
“Holy fuck, I remember that,” Bill burst. “It was all over the news for like a month and a half. You shot that…”
“Black kid,” Erin stopped him.
“Right.” Bill nodded. “You shot that black kid that didn’t have a gun.”
“How they expected me to know that, I’ll never understand.”
Bill shook his head. “That’s the fucking government for you: always out to fuck you over. They said you were white…”
“Halfway there…”
“It suited their purpose.”
“Guess so.”
“That’s why I don’t trust these guards. ‘The nine most frightening words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Erin laughed. “That’s good,” he said. “I like that.”
“Ah, I can’t claim it.”
“Who said it then?”
“Reagan, man, Ronaldus Maximus.”
Erin looked at him, blinked a few times.
“What? I told you I followed politics.”
Erin shrugged and shook his head. “I just…”
“What?”
“I’m just surprised to hear a felon quoting Reagan, that’s all.”
“Why?”
Erin looked at him again, dumbfounded. “How exactly,” he finally asked, “did you get in here?”
Tall Bill Mahone sighed. “Stupid,” he said. “I’ve been a hard drinker most my life. And I know you’d think I’m a nice enough guy with the conversation here, but I’m a mean drunk. That’s why I spent so much time in places like this.” His finger went in a circle in the air, to indicate the concrete and bars. “But shit happens,” he said. “It’s usually a bar fight or a DUI or something like that. I’ve got seven, by the way.”
“Seven DUI’s?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “I think i
t’s a record or something. Anyway, I should’ve learned my lesson. And I hadn’t driven in a while. My old lady hated me for it, but I wasn’t about to get popped again. Go back to the clink. So I had her run me around. Couldn’t get a job because I couldn’t drive to work. One night, she just starts laying into me about what a ‘lazy sack of shit’ I am and how I was ‘so drunk’ I ‘couldn’t even fuck her half the time.’”
Bill cracked his neck at the insult. “I lost it,” he said, shamed. “But not on her. Her car. I left the house and got in her car – a brand-fucking-new Subaru. I used to joke she loved it more than me. Probably true, in the end.
“I took it as fast as it would let me and mowed down every damned sign, brushed every guard rail, and clipped every fender I could on the way. Just fucked that car in every damn way.”
He stopped. Grimaced. Continued: “I wasn’t even looking. I was so pissed. I didn’t even care. The kid shouldn’t have fucking been there in the first place. It was ten o’clock at night. Who lets their kids out at that hour?”
Erin felt a sadness settle over him.
“Fucking little bastard,” Bill said, wiping his eyes. “He ruined everything.”
Bill sat there a moment, looking at the ceiling. Erin just watched him.
“I… I tried to… I don’t know…” He was quiet again. Then: “I felt him get cold while I was holding him.” Bill looked into Erin’s eyes with an intensity he couldn’t describe. “I could feel it. It was real. I felt him die. In my arms. I felt it. Like he got lighter. Like…”
“First degree due to extenuating circumstances,” Erin quoted from memory. He understood the charge. It fit.
“Yeah,” Tall Bill said. He blew air out and rubbed his face. “Sent me away for life. What about you? You said first degree, you didn’t say sentence.”
“Forty years to life, whichever comes first.” Erin sighed. “But that was for my crime. All the people I’ve had to toss in here, it’s longer.”
“They hit you for those?”
“The ones they didn’t ask for.”
Bill nodded. “So,” he said, “how long, exactly?”
Erin looked at him with baleful eyes. “Until I die,” he said, “or the end of the world. Whichever comes first.”
Thirty-Seven
Tim Harper said: “Warden wants to see you,” when Chris pulled up to the gate. Chris looked around, at the empty truck and his blood soaked appearance.
“That all?” Chris asked.
Tim shrugged at him and triggered the gate.
“Tell him I’ve got to get cleaned up first,” Chris told him. “Change my shirt.”
Tim shrugged again and Chris pulled forward. He parked, got out, and started the long journey in. At each gate – save for the main one – he got increasingly speculative looks and comments.
At the first gate: “Where’s everybody else?”
At the second: “What the hell happened to you?”
He entered the Admin building and each person in attendance pulled in a gasp. He ignored it and kept on. There were two locks separating him from the locker room – with showers and a shirt change.
First, he dealt with Ed: “Jesus, you look like you just partied with Ozzie Osborn.”
“Open the lock.”
“What’s the other guy look like?”
“Open the fucking lock! Ed! Now!”
He opened the lock.
Next he had to appease Mystique – not her real name – and try and get her to open the doors without a lick: “Please, Myst…”
“Mystique.”
“Please. I’m tired and… Look at me. I need a shower.”
“I love a disheveled man. Two minutes. Tops. You’ll be in and out – so to speak.”
“Warden’s waiting for me.”
The lock opened.
“Thought so.”
He entered the locker room and disrobed. Went to his locker and took out a new shirt, left the pants. Went in the washroom, found the iodine, poured it over the wound and bandaged it. Then put on the new shirt. The arms rolled all the way down to his wrist to hide the mark. He made sure it wouldn’t bleed through by putting on a jacket.
He left the washroom with blood still on his face. He had forgotten to wash it off.
Thirty-Eight
“Well,” Warden Bowers said, “what do you think?”
“I think this a completely fucked situation,” Sam Watkins reported. “Completely fucked.”
“’Completely fucked’? Is that a professional term?”
“In light of recent events – I say we make it one.”
There was a knock at the door. A very quiet, respectful, rapping. “Sure,” Warden Bowers said.
Chris entered. His shirt was neatly pressed and clean. His pants were soaked to brown with clotting blood. His face a tapestry of drying plasma. He didn’t say a word as he sat in one of the Bowers’ plush chairs.
“And?” Warden Bowers asked. “I hear just you made it back.”
“Sir,” Chris said, nodded. “Don’t have to say I’ve never seen anything like it. Not one person on this earth has ever seen something like I saw today.”
Bowers sat heavily behind his desk and laced his fingers. “I’m glad you made it back, son. But we need to know exactly what you found in those woods.”
“Zombies,” Chris said, looking up. “Hundreds of them. I know it sounds insane, but that’s what they were. We found a girl – a teenager, maybe – and she was eating a fucking leg. And the leg had a uniform pant on it. It was our maintenance men, sir. She was eating one.”
Bowers nodded and looked at Watkins. “We saw the surveillance tape,” he said.
“And she attacked Statham,” Chris continued. “She went and tore out his throat. Jones and I tried to help, but it was no good. Smith went and shot her in the head.”
“The right thing, under the circumstances,” Sam assured him.
“Right,” Chris said, nodded again. “But we all got separated in the rush. There were hundreds of them,” he repeated. “By the time I made it out, it was just me.”
Warden Bowers nodded at him and rubbed his belly. Sam Watkins started pacing.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why would they stay in the woods until we were that close? The boys from maintenance had basically danced all around out there and suddenly when they get to the cell tower those fucking… things come out. It’s bullshit – is what it is. A great big distraction.”
“Maybe,” Bowers said absently. “Maybe they don’t love the light.”
Sam stopped pacing and looked at the Warden.
Chris said, “It’s called ‘nocturnal.’”
“What was that?”
“When animals don’t hunt well in light. It’s called ‘nocturnal.’ Like an owl: it can survive in light, no big deal, but it likes darkness better. The forest is dark. The field is light.”
“During the day,” Sam finished.
“Jesus Christ,” Warden Bowers said. “It’s almost dark.”
EPISODE 2:
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
One
Sam Watkins never realized how many fucking people there were in the world until they all started trying to eat him.
“Fire!” he boomed, and the night lit up with muzzle flashes and the popping of rifles. The twenty guards huddled around him on the tower’s ledge pouring down murderous fire. Murderous, if they hadn’t already been dead.
Around them, glistening with every explosive burst, snowflakes fell in ever increasing numbers. The small, crystalline discs, fluttered away in a rush at the muzzles as the guns fired like frightened jellyfish and danced their way to the ground. That meant there would be a heavy fall: big flakes = lots at once; small flakes = lots more, over time.
Sam pushed the stock of his rifle – an Aptomov Kalashnikov 1947 – lined up on what had only days ago been a boy no older than eleven, and put two shots into its head. From the height of the tower, he only saw a flash of black a
nd a smear of the same on the snow as the boy fell.
The spot light swept across the mass of bodies. The men continued to fire. Blood soaking through the newly fallen snow, turning it a sickly deep brown with the lack of oxygen in the fluid.
But they kept on coming. Fifty feet down and a hundred ahead, hundreds and hundreds of what the guards had started calling “Creepers” were pressing against the prison’s chain link fence. Trying to get in.
“Don’t be shy,” Sam told the guards. “They want some, they get some.”
He let his rifle run dry into the mass. Dropped the clip out and let it fall to the floor. Reloaded and started firing again. A secretary skittered over – sliding in the snow – picked up the spent mag and pressed a fresh one into his belt.
Sam paused his firing, nodded at her, then went back to work.
He tried to pick his targets. Not necessarily pick, but have one before he fired. Chris hadn’t been any help in identifying what type of shot ended the bastards. Sam hadn’t actually had any experience with one up close, but Chris had. In fact, he was the only one to survive out of nine. He’d come back shaken, ashen, and a bit jumpy.
That’s what happened when you watched your friends get torn apart, Sam figured.
Sam had also been a bit jumpy lately, but the distraction of the creepers had given him purpose and cleared his mind.
He had settled in on head shots – just to be safe – and instructed his men to do the same.
He executed an old man, and then an old woman – possibly his late wife – both in their pajamas, and tracked right to keep going down the line. From the forest he could see the tracks. The light rolled across them again and the shadows showed perfect scratches through the snow. They came from the forest spread out, bunching up as they reached the fence. All searching for the only warm bodies they could find: those in the guard towers. Four more dark shapes had just emerged from the tree line.
“We gotta get ‘em before they hit the fence,” he shouted, “or the weight will bring it down.”
Outpost Season One Page 5