Outpost Season One

by Finnean Nilsen Projects

[RL: The use of secretaries as ammunition runners is a fun way of showing the immediate needs that would occur right after the outbreak. We tried to pack all that stuff in, to really make it feel real. The last thing you’d want to do is run out of ammo, and you can’t waste guards doing it, so what do you do? Fucking have the secretaries run it out!]

  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.”

  [TK: This was the start of a long conversation between Ryan and I. How many people, stacked up and leaning on the fence, would it take to bring down the outer fences?]

  [RL: Yeah, we explore it in a bit more detail later, but in the end what we did was just get all of our friends, line them up, and mow them down. Fortunately for the fence, we didn’t have enough expendable friends to bring it down.]

  [TK: The clothing optional was a good idea, though.]

  He raised his barrel away from the fence below, sighting on the shadowy figures as they lurched and dragged themselves through the newly fallen powder. Slapped the man next to him, pointing at them, instructing him where to fire. Settled back into his stance and started raking them methodically. At that distance, he couldn’t tell where he was hitting them, but they were going down just the same.

  That was enough in his book.

  So long as they didn’t start getting back up.

  [RL: That’s really the important part, huh?]

  Two

  Chris Reed stalked behind his select group of guards, watching as they cut down the hoard. Ran a hand through his short, cropped blonde hair, snow clumping on his head as it fell.

  “This ain’t play day at the rifle range, boys,” he said. “As fucked as it sounds to say it: these are real life zombie mother fuckers that want to feast on your insides. Give them one, two – or ten, if that’s what it takes – but try to conserve fucking ammunition.” He stopped and punched a guard in the shoulder. “You,” he said, “aim high. Take out the head and upper body. I don’t want wounded, I want dead.”

  He continued on.

  He watched as the lights rolled over the corpses at the fence, their bodies making a hill of shattered flesh. It was starting to get high. Easily seven feet. A few more and they could just walk over, torn from razor wire, and be inside the first line of defense.

  He thought about that, rubbing his arm as he did.

  “You,” he flagged a guard who was reloading. If you got them firing, they couldn’t hear a fucking word. “See if we can get a few guys down there to fire from ground level. I know it’s fucked up work, but we need to make sure no one makes it over, and we need to keep that pile from getting any bigger.”

  The guard nodded and disappeared.

  “These fuckers killed eight of our brothers today,” [TK: Well seven would be more accurate] Chris explained as he started pacing again. “And if you see any of them – and you just might – you put them out so the Lord can help them in. All the others, you put them out to save your own asses. This isn’t about prisoners anymore. This is about survival.”

  He stopped next to a man who had broken down, kneeling, sobbing. His name was Mike Poterus. His right knee was soaked through from the snow, his uniform bruised with condensation. Chris bent down next to him and took him by the shoulder.

  “What?” he asked.

  “My daughter,” Mike explained. “My daughter’s out there.”

  Chris stood up, sighted down his rifle and searched the crowd. He found her quick. Seven years old. Pretty cute kid. He had seen pictures. She was wearing a little girl’s night gown. As the light swept across her, he thought it had Strawberry Shortcake on it. She was still carrying her favorite bear. Slowly making her way to the pile by the fence.

  He sighed, letting the exhalation steady his arm.

  Fired once.

  Her head let out a mushroom of brown that covered the snow behind her. Then she collapsed, knees buckling, falling face first into the cold, wispy snow. It puffed around her as she hit, and then settled back down.

  “No she’s not,” he told Mike. “Not anymore.”

  [RL: A brutal scene, and one that I really love. I’m probably saying that a lot: “Love this scene…” but I guess that makes sense. If I didn’t love it, why would we put it in?]

  [TK: That is a rough scene. What would you do? Could you pull the trigger? Even if it was the best thing for them? How far would you be willing to go? Questions for later.]

  Three

  "He was born December twenty-eighth," Erin Gibbs told his cellmate, Tall Bill Mahone. "Two days after Christmas. Nina said 'Santa was late this year.'"

  Erin imagined Bill nodding in his bunk beneath. Erin in the top bunk, orange pants, white shirt, gray skin, blanketed in darkness.

  "How old is he?"

  Erin thought a moment. It was hard to judge time inside. He thought he'd been in five years, which would make Blake... "Ten. He's ten."

  "Never visited?"

  Erin was silent a moment. "No," he said. "Let's not talk about him."

  "Deal. What about your wife? Nina, was it?"

  "It was." Erin nodded. "Also no,” he said. “Her lawyer brought the papers for me to sign so she wouldn't have to see me."

  "Brutal."

  Erin shrugged, even if no one could see him. "Not really," he said. "We were just two dumbass kids anyway. We probably wouldn't have stuck it out, even if things had turned out differently."

  "How old were you?"

  "Twenty-five. Hot shot cop with a hard on. She was twenty-three, worked at her old man’s deli. Used to see me come in and her eyes would get all wide." Erin shook his head at the memories. "I knew what I wanted," he said.

  "To get married?"

  "Hell no. To get laid."

  They shared a laugh.

  [RL: *laughing*]

  "I never really thought of it as a permanent venture,” Erin explained. “You know, they teach you in school it might come to that, but it's always like getting struck by lighting or winning the lotto: it's always going happen to someone else. Then you get a knock at the door and she's there, her mascara tracking down her cheeks, her old man next to her, shotgun in hand, telling you that he doesn't give a shit if you are a cop, he'll shoot you just the same. And before you know it, there you are: a newlywed. They don't call them shotgun weddings because they're quick."

  Bill laughed again. "Right," he said.

  "About six years later, we're still okay. Argue a bit. Hard to get along, bills wise. But okay. I get a call ‘shots fired.’ Haul ass to the crime scene. See a kid running away. I chase him a bit. He's going through yards and all that, so the cruiser's out. Finally, after telling him to stop fifty fucking times, I draw, tell him ‘stop or I'll shoot.’" Erin was quiet a moment. "He spins - it's dark as hell, can't see shit - maybe he's got something in his hand, maybe not. I fire. Kill him.”

  Erin shifted in his bunk.

>   "Turns out he's unarmed,” he said. “Honor roll student, all that shit. No one knows why he was in that neighborhood at that time of night, why he was at the crime scene, why he ran. Just he was such a good kid cut down so young. Some asshole says I profiled him - which I did: he was leaving a crime scene so I assumed he was a criminal – and claims racism. I'm white and I shot a black kid, so obviously I'm a registered fucking white supremacist..."

  "Even though you're half black..."

  "My dad was white, so I must be too. And BAM-O. First degree murder."

  [RL: The argument has been made that this is an unlikely scenario. But it’s one that works well for the overall plot of the series. It reinforces Erin as being detached from the other prisoners, and as will be explained by Warden Bowers later makes him the perfect choice for a position of power.]

  Erin paused for a minute, then continued, "The last time I saw her, we fought. They were offering second degree before they gave it to the jury. All I had to do was admit it was racially motivated and apologize. She wanted me to take it. I told her to go to hell."

  [TK: Tough choice, I’m sure I could lie to keep my ass out of prison, but if it was between 40 years, cop a plea or roll the dice and hope to get off altogether? Might have to stick to the truth, unless the deal was sweet.]

  Erin shifted on his bunk again, said: "The story of my life. Literally."

  "Sorry, man."

  Erin sighed. "I'd say ‘it's not over yet,’ but..."

  [RL: Yes, I feel the need to comment at the end of every scene.]

  Four

  “Status report,” Warden Bowers said into the microphone. He was in the prison’s Communications Room. Behind him, leaning casually against the wall, was Dave Sanders, Brinnick’s Com Specialist. He was taking the whole outbreak in stride. Calmly. God Bless Him.

  He was also single, and childless.

  “We got the better of them taken down,” Watkins reported. “Other towers reporting about the same. Few stragglers coming out of the woods, but we can handle them.”

  “Took you long enough. Damn near sunrise.”

  “Think that’s the only reason they stopped, sir.”

  “Integrity of the fence?” Bowers asked. “I want that standing.”

  “There’s a pretty big pile.”

  Warden Bowers nodded. Then, into the mic: “I want you to organize a team from maintenance, ready to move out at first light, to keep that fence up. If these things really don’t like the light, I want to know.”

  “Should we take a few alive?”

  Bowers laughed. “I’d rather let Mr. President himself in here than one of those fucking things,” [TK: Sometimes, Mr. Bowers, we don’t get what we want] he said. “No. They’ll go out, toss the bodies, and in range of our towers we’ll find out if the uglies’ll come out in daylight.”

  [RL: I think the Stones said that well, Tom.]

  “Roger,” Watkins returned.

  “I want a team of you and some good guys – not your best, I need them here – ready to move at first light, too.”

  “Roger. Where to?”

  “Wherever I say,” Bowers told him, set the microphone down and left the room.

  Five

  Mercedes lay in her dark cell, rubbing her belly. Beneath her, Jessie had been asleep for hours. Her rhythmic breathing helping Mercedes relax. But she didn’t sleep, she couldn’t, the world was too confusing.

  Who did she think she was?

  A mother?

  That was a tall order by any standard. She had never thought of herself in those terms, and wondered if she could.

  God, if she was anything like her mother… she couldn’t even think about it. It’s every child’s worst nightmare. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She had to consider that her mother was a person, not some demon. She had had problems. She had tried to deal. She was probably doing her best.

  [RL: This is somewhat of a throwaway paragraph as written, but it says a fuck ton about what Mercedes life was like growing up. Reread it and you can probably understand where we’re going to go with it. Remember that Mercedes is a gorgeous young woman, who had been raped by a pimp while working as a prostitute. It doesn’t take a giant leap to see how dysfunctional her home life was. In the end, Mercedes is incredibly strong, and a survivor. I personally never thought she should be judged negatively for her crimes (either of them). And I think the connection that you feel with her in the end only makes Chris look even more like the piece of shit he is in their opening scene of the Pilot.]

  Mercedes rolled to her side, her deep black hair folding over her ebony face until she brushed it off.

  It didn’t do anyone any good to think about it. There wasn’t a fucking thing anyone could do, least of all her. She could bend it and twist it and flip it upside down and inside out, but couldn’t change it one way or the other: they were going to take her baby. She would never be a mother. Just a woman who gave birth.

  And what would that be like? Could she do it? Hell yes, she could. But could she feel it grow inside her? She would. Could she get it out, alive and healthy? She’d have to. And when she did, could she let them take it?

  She wondered.

  Could she let it go to people she had never met? Taken from her arms only seconds after it took its first breathe? Let them just take away the only good thing she had ever done, the only thing in her entire life that might – someday – mean something?

  Could she do it?

  Or could she just kill them all before they took her baby away?

  [RL: We see here, in this scene, the inner workings of a mother in one of the strangest possible scenarios. Again, she’s a fighter and a survivor. Here she is pregnant. In a maximum security prison, and she can’t tell anyone who the father is. And yet she’s a mother, even if she hasn’t given birth yet. Her thoughts are instinctively for her child. And her first and last line of defense when someone tries to hurt her – and by proxy, as a mother, her child – is violence. I thought this was a powerful scene.]

  Six

  “We’ll stay locked up tight as a newlywed and keep it that way until we know what the hell is going on,” Warden Bowers told the group. “I couldn’t give half a rat’s ass what anyone thinks about it, either. We’re prepared to deal with a single enemy at any given time. Most times it’s from our population. Right now it’s not. I’m not spreading us thin dealing with both.”

  “Warden,” Sam said, raising his hand, “I was thinking about what happened last night.”

  The sun had broken over the horizon a half hour before, and the creepers had all but disappeared. Save for the fallen. They remained where they fell.

  “Two things,” Sam continued. “One, we’ve got our boys in those towers using two-twenty-threes now. It’s better for ammunition, but I think if we’re going to have our boys in harms way, tossing those bodies, we need stopping power.”

  “You want thirty-aughts in the towers?” Bowers asked, furrowing his brow. “Because we don’t have a hell of a lot of them.”

  “I want an escort for maintenance.”

  Each member of the group looked at Sam. Eric Dubluis, head of maintenance, seemed to be nodding to himself. Dave Sanders, coms chief, just leaned, pressing his glasses back up his nose with his pointer finger. Chris looked dumbstruck. Warden Bowers glared.

  “If they needed escort, I would have ordered one,” he said.

  “Warden,” Sam pleaded, “I’m not questioning orders. I’m saying this is not something we ever saw coming. Chris,” he turned to him, “how fast can they move?”

  Chris looked uncomfortable with the question. “Fast,” he said. “They smell blood, we’ll have hundreds – maybe thousands – on us in minutes. Seconds, maybe.”

  [RL: This is a departure from the original zombie concept. Over the years, we’ve begun to see the “fast zombie” permeate the genre. I prefer the fast to the slow, because there is – to me – nothing all that fucking scary about something stumbling after me as I run. Sure,
I’m a smoker, but in real life by the time the tortoise gets to the finish line not only has the hare won, but he’s fucked the tortoise’s girlfriend. I voted for fast zombies. Tom? I don’t think we ever actually discussed it.]

  [TK: Slow zombies are fine, if the location is a major city, cause you need thousands of them to corner people in and overwhelm them. You can go with way less if they’re fast. Plus it’s creepier when they’re fast, cause you can’t out run them for long. We revisit this concept during Season Two.]

  Sam nodded and turned back to the warden. “Too fast for five men in a tower,” he said. “Especially for two. And especially if they’re shooting NATO rounds meant more for target practice then putting something down.”

  Bowers stopped glaring, leaned back and stroked his stomach. Something he was fond of doing. “Four man team,” he said. “Led by Chris. And not because you asked for it, Watkins,” he told him, leaning forward, in Sam’s face. “Because I’m not wasting a single bullet, and shooters on the ground are more accurate than shooters a hundred fifty feet away.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “I want a scout team,” Bowers continued, “set and ready to roll. Watkins, you’ll be on lead. Pick three others to go. Again, not your best, I need them here, but good men you trust. Chris will be your number two.”

  “I need more,” Sam said. “They’ve already…” he picked his words a moment, “overwhelmed two teams that size.”

  “And what – in your vast experience – would be a better number?”

  “Double. Four trucks, in case we bring back survivors. That would be two men a truck plus one in the bed of front and back trucks with AK’s to lay down fire.”

  The Warden studied him carefully. Leaned his head back. Sighed. Said, “Done. Sound good to everyone?”

  They all nodded again.

  “How long to clear the fence and check integrity?”