“Most nocturnal animals hunt at night because they see better at night. So they go out and search and hunt at night, because they don’t have the sun blinding them. Humans aren’t like that, but once they’re dead, their pupils blow up and they can’t see in daylight.”
“So…”
“So, we bring a big ass light with us, and if we get in a pinch, we blast them with it. Deer in the headlights.”
“Or they go straight for the light.”
“Which will make us more fucked, how?”
Bowers knew everyone was at the edge of exhaustion, so he had loosened his protocols on free speech. Just a bit.
“Good point,” Bowers said. Set the microphone down and turned to Sanders. “How tough would it be to rig a couple flood lights on to those trucks?”
“What?” Sanders asked. “I’m a mechanic now?”
“You’re whatever the fuck I tell you to be. It’s all electronics, isn’t it?”
Sanders sighed and picked up the phone. Hit the extension and waited. Then said, “Warden wants to know how long it’ll take to rig up flood lights on some trucks.” He listened. Took the phone from his ear and held it to his chest. “They say they already have search lights.”
“I didn’t say ‘search lights’ I said ‘flood lights.’”
“He didn’t say ‘search lights’ he said ‘flood lights.’” He listened again. Took it away and put it back on his chest. “They want to know what the difference is.”
“The fucking difference…” Bowers huffed a moment. “Oh, hell, give me the damn phone.” He snatched it from Sanders and held it three inches from his mouth. Shouted: “Get me the biggest fucking lights you have on those trucking and do it now, or I’ll lock you up with the animals for an hour and let them get their rocks off on something tighter than a blow hole.”
He tossed the phone at Sanders. Took back up the microphone and keyed it. “I doubt we’ll have lights on those trucks by the time you get back. I’ve had ten separate requests by head of households wanting to go check on their families. And the only reason I haven’t got more is I told them the next man that asks will be reprimanded. We need to get into that town. I can’t wait for lights.”
“Roger.”
Bowers sighed. “Progress report.”
Chris came back: “Cleared the first tower. Team two should be about the same. That leaves three. About forty minutes out. Maintenance says it’ll take another half hour at each tower to check integrity. Should we move on ahead of them or stick close?”
“Move on,” Bowers said, nodding. “I already told you: we don’t have time. The towers can protect the crew.”
“But Watkins…”
“…Works for me.”
There was a silence. Then Chris said, “Roger.”
“And Chris.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Good job.” Bowers dropped the microphone and left the communications room.
Eighteen
“You can’t all go,” Sam told the assembly. Around him, every man who wasn’t guarding cells was asking what was happening. Why they were still at Brennick. Where the next shift was. And could they check on their families.
“I’m taking eight. That’s it.”
“Eight?” someone shouted from the back. “Fucking eight? My kids need me!”
The mass grumbled their agreement. Sam glared at them, sweeping the faces of the front row.
“I’m taking eight,” he repeated. Short. Clipped. “Plus me, and Chris.”
“So you get to make sure your honey’s okay?” the man right and three over asked. His name was Clancy Thompson. He was a good man. Tall, lean, always clean shaven. But he was pissing Sam off.
“It’s not seniority,” Sam explained. “Warden specifically asked for Chris and I. Chris’ the most experienced in this case.” Sam swallowed a bit of bile at the admission. “And I’m second in command,” he continued. “Obviously the fucking Warden’s not going out there, so I have to. We need eight more men – Warden’s orders – and we’ll check on everyone’s families.”
They grumbled again. Sam continued, “Warden wants my most reliable officers. I say you’re all my top picks. There’s not a man – or woman – in this prison I wouldn’t ride into hell with. So I’m letting you all decide. I need men who can go out there and not be stupid. Ask yourselves: ‘Can I do the job despite the consequences?’
“And let me explain the consequences: The stories are true. There are… zombies. And they’re fucking… everywhere.”
Silence settled over the room like a mist. Sam gave it a moment, but no one protested.
“We lost guards yesterday, colleagues.” His voice was strong, but clearly somber. He wasn’t sure what part of him was speaking, but he thought it appropriate. “Friends. And they’ve turned. Turned into… whatever those things out there are. We call them creepers, because we don’t know what else to call them. Now, some of you have seen them, others haven’t. But let me tell those who haven’t: they were once people, and there’s a damn good chance you’ll have to kill what’s left of people you knew, to survive.”
He rolled his gaze over the crowd.
“Who can do that?” he asked.
Nineteen
“What was that?” Jessie asked. She pulled a red lock of hair out her eyes with her left hand. “Back in the cell?”
Mercedes cleaned another dish, not looking at her friend and cellmate.
“What was what?” she asked.
“The ‘work detail’ thing?”
“What about it?”
“You seemed awful worried about us having ‘work detail,’ is all.”
Mercedes shrugged. “Never had it before,” she said. “Surprised.”
Jessie stopped rinsing and leaned against the cold, steel sink. “Yes, you have. Warden calls you out all the time for work detail. I always assumed it was no big deal. Then you look at me when we both get called, and get all nervous. What’s going on?”
“We’re washing dishes.”
“I know that, but there’s something you’re not telling me. In fact, you’re flat out lying to me.”
Mercedes didn’t say anything, instead she scrubbed the bottom of a pan that didn’t have a smudge.
“It’s fine,” Jessie said, and returned to rinsing. “You don’t trust me.”
“Jesus fucking Christ! It’s not that I don’t trust you. Would you just stop being a nagging bitch for two seconds and leave it alone?”
“Sure,” Jessie said, nodded. Turned to Mercedes again. Said: “Just what kind of ‘work’ was he having you do?”
Twenty
Sam watched the two trucks pull in, prisoners loaded in back. Chris pulled the lead truck in, switched off the ignition, got out, and lit a smoke, leaning against the door. The prisoners hopped down as best they could, rifles trained on them, and began their shuffle. One of them said “Watts” and Sam turned to him. He recognized him but was having trouble placing the name.
“Gibbs,” Sam said, nodding, “how you doing?”
“Not great,” Gibbs told him. “You see what it’s like out there?”
“I was out there all night.”
“You look tired.”
“Thanks, I am.” Sam looked at the guard leading them, said, “Take the prisoners away, please,” and the line got moving again.
“Where’s maintenance?” Sam asked Chris.
“Checking the fence,” Chris told him, blowing smoke. “Warden wanted me back so we could hit the town.”
“I wanted them to be protected.”
Chris looked uncomfortable again, glancing around. “You hear that?” he asked.
“No,” Sam said, grinding his teeth.
Chris stopped checking around him and said, “Right. Warden told me to come back.” He shrugged. “Warden’s the boss.”
Sam stared at him a moment, hating him with every ounce he had. He didn’t have any desire to go back to that town, and definitely not with Chris, and most o
f all not with the Warden being a ball buster.
He wasn’t afraid of what they might find in town. That didn’t really scare him. He had seen first hand what it was and wasn’t all that broken up about it. Half the fucking people deserved what they got, and the other half… Well, they got it anyway. His little speech about them being people and precious and all that shit was just to appease the troops – who were all sleeping like fucking babies right now anyway.
No. He wasn’t worried about what they might find. But the other part was making his head split open. His insides torn to shreds. His hands shaky. His mouth dry.
It was what he knew they would find.
And it had nothing to do with zombies.
“Oh fuck it,” he said. “Let’s get this shit over with.”
Twenty-One
“Guards look like they’re ready to fucking eat each other,” Tall Bill Mahone told Erin Gibbs.
“They’ll be fine,” Erin said, and laced his fingers behind his head. Bill had taken up his old position with his back pressed against the bars. Lately, though, there weren’t many guards passing by.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” Erin told him.
“You’re thinking about the bodies out there, right?”
Erin sat up. “Fucking of course I am,” he spat at Bill. “What the hell else should I be thinking about? Hooters girls and hot summers at the beach?”
“I would recommend something along those lines.”
“So you’re saying you’re not thinking about them?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then what the fuck are we talking about?”
Bill shrugged. “You got a weird kind of look in your eyes out there,” he said. “It wasn’t like you’d lost hope. I mean, I guess. But you’ve been a hundred-mile stare kind of guy the whole twenty-four hours I’ve known you. But… Looked like you died inside out there.”
Erin shrugged this time and laid back down, returning his hands to their proper place.
“You said you don’t know where they are,” Bill said. Sighed. “It’s a big world out there. Even if things were normal, chances of finding them are next to getting hit by lightning. Twice. At noon. On a Sunday. With no clouds.”
“I get it.”
“Now… Well…”
“I fucking get it.”
They were quiet for a long time.
“Still,” Bill broke the silence, “for your boy, may be worth it.”
“For my boy, anything is.”
“Like running?”
“Put it this way,” Erin said, not sitting up, staring at the ceiling. “They let me out that gate again, and it’ll take a hell of a lot more than chains and machine guns to get me back in.”
Twenty-Two
“So what you’re saying,” Jessie said, and dropped the dishes into the sink, “is that I really don’t want to know, or that I don’t need to know or that it’s safer if I don’t know? Which is it?”
“If I choose any of those I’m saying it happened,” Mercedes said, and pushed a rack of dishes into the industrial washing machine.
“Which you just did.”
“No, I didn’t. I overreacted. I just get nervous when people start throwing things around with ‘Warden said’ before or after.”
“You didn’t get nervous, you got scared.”
“When’s the last time someone said: ‘Warden said’ you get to have a bubble bath?”
Jessie shrugged. “Never,” she said.
“Or ‘Warden said’ you get steak instead of dog meat? Or ‘Warden said’ you’re a beautiful woman who deserves to be treated better than an animal? It doesn’t happen. This is Brennick, and Warden’s a fucking asshole and anything he says is probably bad. Fair?”
“Fair.”
They let that sit. The only sound the clinking of dishes. After a moment, Jessie said, “What the fuck do you think is going on?”
Mercedes looked at her a moment, then wiped the sweat from her dark face. Steam trailed up from the dish washer and ensured the sweat replaced itself. “Like what?” she asked.
“Like what’s going on? Why are we here?”
“Because we’re both murderers. Though, in my case, it was justified.”
“The guy said I paint like a six year old,” Jessie spat. “Sticking a brush in his eye was totally justified.”
“Lighting him on fire…”
“Was overkill. I get that now. But it takes time to truly mature. That’s not what I meant. Why are we working in the kitchen? This is as max as it gets, they don’t let prisoners do anything here.”
“And?”
“We’re doing dishes. Like you said: When does Bowers let us out of our cells?”
“When he feels like it.”
“And it lasts?”
“Five minutes, until someone offs the other side and then we’re back locked up.”
“And who’s allowed out of their cells during lock down?”
Mercedes shrugged and kept working. She didn’t have an answer. She didn’t feel like talking anyway. She was just glad Jessie wasn’t interrogating her anymore.
“No one,” Jessie answered for her. “Until now.”
Twenty-Three
“What do you think crawled up Watkins’ ass?” the guard next to Chris asked. He was medium all around. Not dark, not light. Not tall, not short. Not thin, not heavy. Even his hair danced along the line of not being long, but not short, and not brown, but not blonde. His name was Phillip Craig. Chris wanted to call him “Blah” but never had to his face.
“It’s the exhaustion,” Chris explained and cut the wheel a hair, banking around the carcass of an animal no longer identifiable. “Guy hasn’t slept in well over a day.”
“Still,” Phil rubbed his knees, “seems awfully keyed up.”
“You volunteered for this work?” Chris asked him.
“Sure,” Phil said, shrugging. “I’ve given Resident Evil like three months of my life. Seen all the movies. Plus Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Walking Dead, Shawn of the Dead – which was awesome – Twenty-Eight Days Later, Twenty-Eight Weeks Later, Zombieland – also awesome…”
“I get it.”
“… I fully plan on naming my first born ‘Romero’ – boy or girl, doesn’t matter.” Phil shrugged. “Anyway, I figure it couldn’t be worse than CGI makes it out to be. Hell, might be better.”
Chris looked at him. His right hand fingering the wheel. The road was straight for a mile, he knew. But he kept staring. A voice in his head was telling him to look back at the road, a turn was coming up. But he couldn’t. There was an artery. Right there. In the neck. He could see it, pulsing. He could… taste it…
“Holy fucking hell!” Phil screeched.
Chris turned, saw the road swerve left, and corrected. The truck kissed the guard rail for a moment and then they were back behind the others. As if nothing had happened.
“Keep your fucking eyes on the road, man,” Blah scolded him. “Stead of checking me out. Fag.”
Twenty-Four
“The fuck was that?” Sam shouted into the microphone as they neared the town. Chris’ truck had hit a guard rail and nearly tossed the shooter in the bed.
“No big deal,” Chris came back. “Lost my train of thought.”
“Well, find it. We’re passing city limits.”
Around them the wood had given way to exit ramps and fields. Farms unfolded lazily in the pale, winter sun.
“Look at that,” Clancy said, pointing. “Whole fucking cow hollowed out.”
“More than one,” Sam told him. To the left of the highway a half dozen were strewn across a long, rolling field. “They all probably got it in the end.”
Clancy gripped his rifle stock until his knuckles turned white. His knee started rocking slowly.
“Stop it, you’re making me nervous.”
“I can’t help it,” Clancy said. “I am nervous. Not one fucking car. Not one person. Not
hing.”
“Everyone was told to stay home,” Sam explained. “The cars are in the driveways, I would assume.” Sam reached behind him and opened the window to the back. “Stay sharp,” he told the guard, Will Stockton.
Five and a half feet of muscle and mustache nodded back.
They took the second exit, Sam guiding the trucks through the turn, and dropped into town on the main road. In the distance clouds bruised the sky, moving in fast.
“Shit,” Sam said. “Clouds coming in.”
“So?”
Everything looked deserted. Cars still lined the main boulevard, but they all sat empty. The shops were empty and dark. Bits of trash danced listlessly in the breeze. The motorcade crept past a few broken windows. The drug store, now a smoldering ruin. Local bar: door hanging open, crooked, on a single hinge. Gun store: windows shattered, bars streaked with dried blood, sidewalk a frozen waterfall of dark brown.
“Where we heading first?” Clancy asked him.
“Sheriff’s office.”
Twenty-Five
“Chow time,” the girl said, and passed a tray through the slot in the bars.
“Hot damn,” Tall Bill said. “They went and upgraded the cooks.”
Judging by the clothes, numbers fading on the right breast, she was an inmate. She was beautiful in the old ways: Soft. Sensual. Slightly fragile.
“Just take your fucking food,” she spat, “and stop ogling me.”
“Ooh,” Bill purred, “I’ve loved you all my life, I just didn’t know it until now.”
Erin passed him and took the next tray. “What’s going on?” he asked. “They’re having inmates help out now?”
“You saw what’s going on,” Bill said, punched him. Erin glared at him, and Bill moved off to eat.
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