by Bowie Ibarra
They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore, Nickson mused.
The father easily interpreted the smirk he saw. “You always gawk at underage girls like that?”
Nickson turned to him. “Shut your mouth, old man. Does it look like I’m playing games here?”
“Then don’t you look at my daughter like that again.” He made a mental note of the position of his revolver in the back waistband of his jeans, hidden from the soldiers.
The young girl opened the back door. When she did, the noise of gunfire intensified to the point of deafening.
The massive Rodriguez was leveling Virals in the backyard with his SAW. It was as if the SAW was an extension of his own hand, spitting out rounds like a hot metal death dealer, ripping undead bodies to pieces right where they stood.
He let off the trigger and turned around to see the now-open door. He signaled to Garrison, then said to the girl, “Well, hello sunshine.” He and Garrison entered the home, closing and locking the door behind them.
“Lead the way, toots,” Garrison said.
“Follow me,” the girl groaned, as if the mere fact that she had to execute this simple chore in the midst of the darkest days the world would ever know was a complete waste of her time. Despite the impudence, both men eyed her as they followed.
Things in the living room were growing tense.
“Listen to me, old man. We’re making the rules right now, and—”
“This is my home, asshole!” the father shouted. “You don’t tell me what to do in my own home! Get out!”
“Jared, please,” his wife said, voice breaking, “just listen and do as he says.”
“No, Sarah. This is my house and my family, and they will show respect for us.”
The daughter, suddenly realizing the gravity of the situation, shook out of her stubborn state of being. She looked over to see Garrison was still eyeing her posterior. His beady eyes scared her, and his gray-haired goatee reminded her of the devil. She had to glance down at his feet to make sure he didn’t also have hooves. She turned back to her father and pleaded, “Dad, please stop it.”
“Andi, stay quiet.”
When he turned he had exposed his back to Garrison, and Garrison saw the revolver in the waistband of his jeans.
“He’s got a gun!”
The soldiers lifted their weapons at the father.
The father immediately pushed his wife into the nearby hallway and dashed behind her, pulling his gun out and firing three unaimed shots. The daughter screamed and dashed into the kitchen.
The soldiers took cover and returned fire, popping holes into the wall that was serving as cover for the husband and wife. Puffs of insulation fluttered around like snow.
Behind the wall, three more shots were fired and the revolver clicked empty. However, the final bullet punched through Rodriguez’s nose, bringing the massive man to his knees before his head slammed face first on the tile floor, cracking what was left of his nose and spilling a tremendous amount of blood. It pooled around him like water refilling a dry basin after a dam burst.
Sgt. Nickson and Spc. Garrison stood quiet as they listened for any sign that the father was reloading.
“Rodriguez?” Garrison whispered, briefly casting his eyes down at his unmoving partner. “Rodriguez? Rodriguez?” Then: “Jose? Oh, man.”
“He’s gone, soldier,” Nickson gritted. “Keep your head in the fucking game.”
Talltree sat quietly behind the Lay-Z-Boy, fuming at the atrocity unfolding in his presence. The anger was somehow already familiar, internal, embedded in his conscience. It was as if he was at an event in the distant past, witnessing something that most certainly happened to his ancestors during the early days of the conquest of the new world by its European invaders. Was this how his ancestors responded? With fear? Inaction is still action, is still a choice made. He closed his eyes and prayed for wisdom. Despite taking a moment to concentrate, the choice was clear. Numbers were against him. He needed to wait for his moment.
All three soldiers heard a kind of muffled choking sound. Then after a few seconds, silence.
Nickson and Garrison advanced to the hallway. Nickson looked in.
Both the father and mother had been peppered with bullets. None had been head shots, but all would have been serious enough on their own to provide instant death.
Sgt. Nickson decided to make certain that the enemy combatants—the picture of the standard American family—would not rise again by blasting their heads with two short bursts from his HK416. Empty casings clinked across the floor. Some danced into the pools of blood, splashing merrily like hot demons in a warm pond of red life force.
No one talks to me like that, Nickson thought. I’m a goddamn American soldier.
The new rules of the world dictated that no one would ever talk to him like that and not be punished for it. For so long he had had to restrain himself against rulebreakers, resisting the very training his father had indoctrinated into him. It was his father that had taught him that a rule breaker must be punished. Before he was Sgt. Nickson, he was just Roger Nickson, and when he broke Raul Nickson’s rules, he was punished by a belt across his rear. He had talked back to his father just as this father had talked back to him.
He had to regulate.
His father taught him to be a regulator, a punisher of those that did not follow the rules. His rules. From the playgrounds in elementary school to the locker rooms in high school, everyone followed his rules. He won more fights than he lost, but gained respect from each and every one. It’s the way the world had to be. There were things you did do and there were things you did not do. Talking back was one thing you never did, at least not to him.
It was the simplest explanation for why he had to silence the old man. The way the old man talked to him had been a quick road to regulation. Nickson had no problem with what he did. In a world with no rules—of rule changes—some rules very definitely needed to be established and enforced. Anarchy was not an option.
After the shots were fired and the empty casings finished clinking across the tile, whimpering could be heard.
“Garrison, get the girl,” Nickson said.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Nickson gazed at the body of the beast that had been Specialist Jose Amos Rodriguez. The hole out the back of his head was large enough that Nickson could see inside it. It was a sight not many people ever had a chance to witness. It reminded him personally of cooked cauliflower. He stuck a finger in the hole to feel the texture.
Spc. Garrison entered the kitchen. The whimpering was clearly coming from there.
He found the girl crouched in the corner, clutching a steak knife near her chest, breathing hard. She glared at him with red, watery eyes. Loose strands from her ponytail clung to her cheeks. “Come on out, sweetheart,” Garrison said, lowering his HK416.
Yeah, come on out. I’ll hold you. Just press those fit tits of yours right up against me. I’ll put both my hands on your tight bottom and snuggle you closer. You need a hero—and I’ll be that for you.
“Everything’s going to be okay. We all know you’re not in any way responsible for what your parents did.”
He crept towards her, his accompanying smile blatantly insincere.
Andi was like a cornered and wounded animal: scared and desperate. The man was much bigger than her. His eyes were that of a liar, and it was appropriate he sported a goatee just like the Prince of Lies. His lying eyes told her what his words were not. It was the same eyes and the same words two boys had used before at a high school party when she was a freshman. Naïve enough to believe them, she was put in quite a tight spot. But she defended herself in that situation. Those men were cowards. And so was this man. But this man was stronger, filled with more evil, darker lies, and more sinister motives. She knew what the bottom line was: she was in serious danger.
“Come on out, sweetheart,” he said.
And she did, pouncing like a lion.
For any untrain
ed person, the attack could have been effective. But it was the standard knife attack a panicked civilian would use, and Garrison had trained for it countless times.
Her attack was met by a block with his rifle, followed by a counterattack from the butt of the rifle, striking the girl across the jaw. She crumpled to the floor.
Garrison leaned over her and kneeled down. He poked her on the cheek to shift her head away. It didn’t shift back. He placed his finger under her nostrils. After a moment he could feel subtle puffs of air.
She wasn’t dead. Only unconscious.
His eyelids narrowed.
He let his gun dangle from his shoulder as he took hold of both her wrists and dragged her back into the living room. He let go of her there, not bothering to catch her head. She groaned.
“She resist?” Sgt. Nickson asked.
“Obnoxious brat,” Garrison replied.
Nickson scowled down at her. He said, “Teenagers nowadays show no respect.”
“No fucking discipline at all, Sergeant,” Garrison agreed.
The two men looked at each other for a second, then refocused on the girl.
“Pick her up,” Nickson said, angrily. “Take her back to one of the
bedrooms.”
Garrison suppressed a grin, but his heart fluttered and his groin tingled as he lifted the semi-conscious girl and draped her over his shoulder.
He thought, Always did want to taste some fine, vintage sixteen year-old.
Nickson turned to Talltree and said, “Watch those doors, Big Chief.”
Talltree frowned and lowered his head.
Nickson took a couple of steps down the hallway toward the bedroom Garrison had entered, then stopped. He turned around again and said in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, “You watch that door for us, and if you want to come back and get a piece when one of us is finished, you can. If not, you keep your fucking mouth shut about it. You hear me? And if you try to stop us, I swear to God I will shoot you dead and scalp you like your ancestors did to mine. I’ll put your red corpse on a goddamn funeral pyre and do a goddamn rain dance around it. You understand me?”
Talltree didn’t reply.
Nickson continued to the bedroom.
That was enough. Talltree knew the moment he had been waiting for had arrived.
While Nickson and Garrison were occupied, he pulled a small hatchet out of his belt and walked through the kitchen and to the back door.
Once there, he paused.
He suspected they would let the girl live when they were done with her. But that was hardly satisfactory recompense for him—and certainly not for her. But he knew that if he tried to intervene, he and the girl would both be dead. He knew this. He knew Nickson and Garrison considered young, pretty women to be in short supply—a valuable commodity for the new world they were anticipating. She had a chance to live.
This was the only way.
He could leave the back door open—allow the beasts to infiltrate the house and attack. But the men had enough firepower and skill to survive, even if they were taken by surprise while their pants were down. And the girl would suffer even more.
No, the one thing that would hurt Sgt. Nickson most was to fail at this mission—to not settle his vendetta against Sgt. Arnold. And what would be even worse than Nickson failing his mission was if Talltree finished it all by himself. Sgt. Arnold and his men were going to be dead anyway, that was for certain. They were just up against too many hostiles. Yes, their end at Talltree’s hands—a merciful end sans all the torture and suffering Nickson yearned to inflict—would be the ultimate insult, the grandest slap in the face, the best revenge. And though revenge was certainly not a Mohawk tradition, it was a human one.
And then, once Nickson’s failure was complete, Talltree would harvest his life.
He hatched a plan. A gambit. It was perilous, but could work. With hatchet in hand, Talltree opened the door. He locked it from the inside and closed it behind him, quietly.
He moved to the front yard. Only one Viral saw him approach amid small, scattered crowds on the street, yard, and sidewalk. Talltree charged the creature and buried the hatchet in the middle of its head. The body fell limp. Talltree dragged it behind a large bush by the house, out of sight.
He looked down at the corpse. Theorizing by the nametag still pinned to its shirt, Cliff Farkas had been the assistant manager at the Circle K convenience store just down the road. Most recently he was a flesh eater. Somehow, Talltree was not pleased about the description used to describe the Virals. When the foreign invaders conquered his homeland, the Mohawk Indians were known as “flesh eaters” and “man eaters” due to their tradition of eating the liver of deceased opponents in a ritual to consume their souls. The Algonquin and Narraganset word for “man-eater” was Mohowawog, which became Mohawk. But Talltree would not be eating flesh.
At least not yet.
He ripped open the corpse’s shirt. Using the blade of the hatchet, he cut an incision down the length of its chest. He tore open the belly with both hands as if stretching leather.
He removed chunks of Cliff Farkas’ rancid and rotting flesh; discarding the solids, leaving the liquid. He began to smear his clothes with the blood, forming abstract patterns of gore all over his uniform.
The ripe aroma of death wafted all around him. The smell alone would make most men vomit.
But Talltree had the constitution of a vulture. He squeezed blood from a chunk of flesh onto his pants before wiping them down with it. He covered as much of his clothes with gore as possible, but did not dare allow it to come into contact with his face. He knew he was already risking infection, and using gore to camouflage his face as well would be pushing things too far. Instead, he placed a bandana over his nose and mouth and tied it in the back.
Nearby was a garden hose attached to a spigot. Despite the viral dangers of the flesh and blood, he needed to keep the blood off of his skin. Since little to nothing was known about the virus—or even whether it was a virus or not—it was best to keep all blood off his skin. Especially open wounds.
Talltree unscrewed the hose from the spigot and rinsed his hands and arms of the filth, even going so far as cleaning his hatchet. He then took a deep breath, coughing at the aroma wafting all around him now. His gambit was about to be put to the test.
Hatchet in hand, he stepped out of hiding and into the front yard.
Virals cast glances.
Talltree glanced back at them.
None made distinct efforts to attack.
He proceeded down Riverside, carefully watching their behavior.
But none came near, despite clearly seeing him.
Talltree was literally walking with the dead, strolling past creatures who offered not even a hint of a threat towards him. He did not need to shamble or shuffle to blend in. He walked with a deliberate stride, but did not want to risk running. It was as if he was walking in the spirit world, with the magic of his ancestors guiding him, shielding him from danger, leading him to his destiny.
In the same manner that native shamans turned themselves into werewolf-like creatures using the skins of a wolf, Talltree had likewise become a skinwalker. Whether it was more ritual magic over actual transformation made no difference to him. The skinwalkers were real people. And now, as his spiritual leaders before him, Talltree became like the skinwalkers of the past, absorbing the mystery of monsters unto himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
6:55 AM
Morris Office Building, 7700 S. IH-35
“Did you hear that gunshot?” Knight asked.
“I’ve heard gunshots all night, man,” Noble replied. “What’s the—”
“Aw, never mind. You’re right.”
The soldiers were putting on their gear. Feeling as if they were being pursued, Sgt. Arnold woke them early so they could stay well ahead.
He explained, “Sorry to get ya’ll up at this ungodly hour. I know you probably thought you were finished with this shit when you gradua
ted boot camp, but I’ve just got a knot in my gut, like we’re being chased.”
“I’ve been feeling the same way, Sarge,” Noble said. “They wouldn’t have stopped with just that sniper. They’ll be coming after us.”
“Yeah,” Arnold said. “But we’ve got to find that Humvee. Hey, Parcells. That GPS thing show where its at now?”
Spc. Parcells examined the device. “Still in the same place. On the corner of 6th and Las Palmas. We’re going to have to roll back up the main highway... unless there’s some backroads we can utilize.”
“There is,” Noble chimed, taking her new title of ‘road map girl’ to heart. “We just need to head back on Riverside ‘til we hit Montopolis. It’s a straight shot over a bridge before we turn left on Sixth.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Parcells said.
“We’ll see about that,” Sgt. Arnold said, mentally measuring the dangerous possibilities up the road. “But it has been my experience that nothing is ever as easy as it should be.”
The new four-person team mobilized, hustled downstairs, cleared the makeshift barricade, and charged out. There were several Virals from the night before still knocking and scratching in a most pathetic effort to infiltrate the building. They were met with gunfire. Other than the initial small group, more Virals were spread out along the parking lot and street. There were enough that if a crowd was drawn near, things could get dangerous quick. The few that shambled down from the highway were put down with measured efficiency.
The team moved back up the road to Riverside and crossed the bridge. The amount of moving cars on the highway was minimal at this point. Roads had become automobile morgues. Every style, brand, make and model littered the highways like a collection of Hot Wheels on a toddler’s bedroom floor.
Sgt. Arnold looked down the highway from the bridge. On both the northbound and southbound lanes, traffic was completely stopped. Some vehicles were left abandoned, others were hulking masses of smoldering wrecks. Many were on fire. But all had some evidence of human remains, blood, or other remnant of the being inside and the tribulation they had endured. Far in the distance, two vehicles could be seen bravely trying to maneuver through the wreckage while zombies pursued them.