by Bowie Ibarra
On the way, they had a chance to eavesdrop on the some of the soldiers’ conversation.
“This is bullshit, man.”
“Shut up, Burbank. The people are going to hear.”
“You know, if these people decided to revolt, I wouldn’t fight them. I’d run.”
“I’m not running.”
“Some of the guys, they’re thinking of running. If they do, I’m there.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Burbank. Do your fuckin’ job and quit bitchin’.”
Mike and Keri exchanged troubled glances as they pretended they weren’t listening.
The soldiers put them in a line to get their special ID cards. The line was currently about ten people long, and two tents were set up at the end. A soldier with a clipboard stood between the two tents and every few minutes shouted, “Next!”
Standing in front of Mike and Keri was the downstairs neighbor, Theresa. It took Mike a few minutes to recognize her. When he did, he tried to get her attention.
“Hey.”
She didn’t turn around.
“Ma’am?”
He took a more assertive approach and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Ma’am?”
For a second, he thought it was not Theresa at all. But when she turned around, he knew it was. Her face was stern, but slowly warmed as she recognized her savior.
“Oh, hey.”
“Hey. How are you?”
“I’m fine. You know, I don’t know how to thank you for helping me out yesterday.”
“It wasn’t a problem, ma’am.”
“Next,” the soldier with the clipboard said.
“That’s us. We’ll talk later, okay?” Theresa said. Then she sighed, “Why’d they have to disable all the phones?”
Mike had wondered about that himself. He shrugged.
A soldier appeared and tugged at Theresa’s daughter, Laura Jane.
“Wait,” Theresa said, “Where is she going?”
“Are you her mother?” the soldier asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Then you’re allowed to join her,” the soldier said.
Allowed to join her? Mike and Keri both thought, as if a mother needed to be given permission to be with her daughter.
The soldier escorted Theresa and Laura Jane to the tent on the right.
Mike took a moment to let his eyes wander, looking for a distraction from all the muttered conversations and the stubborn pain below his knees. He set his eyes toward the fenceline of the camp, where a new interior fence had been erected by the military that formed an additional division between the apartments and the road.
There were zombies along the exterior fenceline. They were grumbling and groaning and restlessly shaking the fence in a futile effort to penetrate. Looking past their heads, Mike could see more zombies shuffling down the road on their way to the apartment complex, eventually absorbing into the numbers already at the fence and uniting their efforts. He seriously doubted they could bring it down no matter how many piled against it, but the safety of his room had separated him from the reality of the world and this had become yet another thing to be unnerved about.
Keri noticed him uneasily shift his weight.
“You okay?” she whispered. “You can lean on me to take some pressure off.”
Before he could answer, the soldier with the clipboard said, “Next.”
Mike gave Keri a smile to show he appreciated the gesture, and kept the smile as he said, “Gee, is it my turn already?”
Keri took a step forward. “Can I come with him?” she asked. “He can’t walk too well on his own right now.”
“No, only one at a time,” the soldier said. “Don’t worry, we’re here to assist anyone who needs it.”
Keri nodded slightly.
The soldier took Mike under the armpit and aided him into the tent on the left.
After his eyes adjusted from the sun to the shadows, Mike noticed rows of partitions on both sides of the tent, the same privacy curtains found in hospitals. He was moved behind one of them. Another soldier stood there waiting for him.
Mike expected a doctor to show up, as if he was suddenly on the set of M*A*S*H*. Hawkeye or “Hot Lips” Houlihan would certainly appear and give a punchline.
But the purpose of a soldier instead of a doctor would soon become clear.
He did not introduce himself. Instead he said in a cold and rehearsed way, “Sir, in order to be sure no one within the perimeter has been infected, we need to check you for bites. Please remove all your clothes.”
For a moment Mike couldn’t move, standing there like a crippled mannequin in front of the two soldiers and their spotlights.
He had had to perform body searches back at the station, and though his dead partner Derek had often taken some sadistic pleasure in it, he never did. The shoe was now on the other foot. But it was another memory that made him hate the situation he was in even more.
It was a Thursday night several years before. He remembered it was a Thursday because he was going to miss the finale of Survivor: Samoa. The day did not start on the right foot to begin with. A fender-bender on the way to work was a subtle portent of what was to come. The strip-search of the elderly cripple later that evening was much worse than he could have ever imagined.
The man was a decorated veteran from World War II. He was arrested as a passenger in his own vehicle. His young grandson had taken advantage of his kindness and had been using the car. They were pulled over for speeding, and Mike and Derek found a large stash of pot in the back seat, drugs the boy was running for a local dealer.
The boy was unemotional and cold. He did not change his disposition at all when his grandfather, humiliated, crushed and disheartened in his grandson, threw a fit over the arrest. The fit was not necessarily over his grandson’s arrest, (he was fully supportive once he realized what was going on,) but that he was implicated as well.
Mike was sympathetic to the old man’s plight. But Derek did not take well to the disruption, and threw the old man to the ground before cuffing him and arresting him for assault. Derek made sure the cuffs were on tight, and the steel cut into the old man’s wrists, cutting them, blood surfacing.
After taking the old man back to the station, there was no more fight in him. Derek asked his superiors for permission to conduct a body search “for the suspected concealment of heroin.” Officials granted the request. And his partner, Mike, was expected to help.
The old man submitted way before the arrival at the station, and was totally compliant. As Derek took advantage of the old man, Mike groaned in disgust. The poor old man had already been taken advantage of by his grandson. His legacy. Mike remembered how the man stood in the police
room. He somehow looked like the creatures that were now walking around in mass. Sunken face, sad eyes, cruel scowls.
It was the same cruel, ashamed scowl that Mike now wore, standing awkwardly in total nakedness in front of the soldiers who examined every inch of his body for bites. They had him bend over. Spread his legs. Lift his arms. Lift his scrotum.
“What happened to your ankles?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Was hit by a car on the way over here.”
They were satisfied by the answers. “All right. Thank you, officer,” the soldier said.
In intense pain, Mike began to put his A.P.D. uniform back on.
—Humiliated and violated for his protection.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
1:07 PM
Lopez Auto Repair and Custom Cars
The crowd outside had grown significantly yet again. At each chain-link gate, large groups of twenty to thirty zombies had amassed, and shambling around the cinderblock walls on each side were probably twice that number. Their moans of infinite pain basked the hot spring air with woe. Their death funk drifted like a poison gas that would not dissipate. Every living person in the facility would be hit in the face by a gust of wind carrying the stench of the dead. Some would vomit. In t
he least, everyone gagged. Many wore their bandanas over their noses and mouths, making the facility resemble even more the bandit hideout that it was.
The special mission banditos had a very difficult time dropping off their prisoners. The new congestion was tough to work through, but they did it. They passed the captured American soldiers on to Sleepy before taking off to resume their mission.
Sleepy ordered the soldiers be taken to one of the garages and prepared in a very particular way.
Then Sleepy ate a leisurely lunch and swallowed it down with a Pepsi.
After lunch, Tiny accompanied Sleepy to the makeshift prison. Both men were anxious, filled with the evil anticipatory glee of participating in something that no one should even consider doing, but were about to anyway. For Tiny, it was much more frightening. But even though Sleepy was anxious about it, it was nothing new. What he was about to do was standard fare against those that exposed drug running lines or botched deals. Today’s atrocity was going to be much easier. In the old world, after you maimed and/or decapitated someone and threw them in a ditch somewhere in Mexico, you would have to worry about authorities. At least the ones who cared. Today, with the rule change, no one cared anymore. Today was going to be easy.
“Oye, ‘mano, you should just throw them over the fence. Let those pinche dead fucks eat the shit out of them,” Tiny suggested, perhaps subconsciously looking for a way to avoid what was about to happen.
“Nah, too easy,” Sleepy said, hatching a cruel idea as he walked to the garage door. Twisting the garage door knob, he lifted the gate.
Tied at the wrists by rope bonds and hung by those same hands on hooks attached to chains that held strong to the ceiling were Sgt. Nickson and Spc. Garrison. Their ankles were bound with gray duct tape. The light from the now-exposed afternoon sun blinded the men temporarily before their eyes adjusted.
“Como estas, babosos hijos de la chingadas,” Sleepy said, sarcastically asking them how they were before insulting them.
No answer came from the duct-taped mouths of the men. The only response came from their eyes. It was a combination of fearful anger, like the eyes of the victim of a bully, caught helpless and alone in a bathroom at a junior high in Anytown, USA, forced to stare into the eyes of a hungry wolf, an angry demon that was going to take out his own fearful anger from his past on the helpless, on someone that he, perhaps, wished he was.
In the eyes of Nickson and Garrison there was that feeling of helplessness despite knowing something should be said or done or both. It was the eyes that vowed reciprication for the injustices done if ever the opportunity arrived, but more from Nickson than Garrison. Garrison mostly just quivered and whimpered. In the eyes of fear that were Nickson’s, on the other hand, was a promise of vicious vengeance, a cruel payment of services rendered that were never requested.
Stepping to a table with a line of automotive repair tools, Sleepy stated, “I think it’s time to play a bit, homies.”
Tiny turned on the interior lights before shutting the gate and locking it again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
1:10 PM
Backroads and Brush near IH-35
The landscape was changing. Though there were still sights of the living trying to make a break for it on both the north and south lanes of IH-35, those sights were becoming fewer. Austin, a rocking and thriving home for the living, was slowly transforming into a sad and festering land of the dead. The Live Music Capitol of the World had become the Living Dead Groaning Bastion of the Planet. Even more than the day before, the dead began to line the streets, wandering around in a staggering search for the living.
Taking the main roads was becoming too dangerous. So when Fireteam Arnold had the opportunity to take to the brush near the highway, it was a welcome deviation.
“That signal still strong, Parcells?” Sgt. Arnold asked.
“Yes, Sergeant. It is still on Montopolis near William Cannon.”
“We’re close to Ben White,” Noble said.
“Well, at least we know a place where those things don’t like to be: here in the sticks,” Knight said.
“Don’t count on it,” Sgt. Arnold replied. “I think those foul fucks could wander in here if they had a reason. Let’s not give them one.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Parcells said. “When we were driving down here from Fort Hood, those things were smarter than we thought. I swear I saw one of them open a car door and try to start it.”
“Bullshit,” Arnold said.
“Swear on my mama’s grave.”
“And then she jumps out of it and bites your hand,” Knight chuckled.
“Not funny, man,” Parcells said.
“Hold up, people,” Sgt. Arnold said. Up ahead was a clearing, and before they were exposed there, the sergeant wanted to take a closer look.
Walking far enough through the brush but still not exposed, Sgt. Arnold was able to see the IRS building. Within the confines of the gates of the government building was a mass of humanity, confined and scared. Hundreds of people were now housed in what was clearly a FEMA camp. Lines and lines of cars congested the street outside the building, obviously belonging to many of the people on the inside.
Knight crept up beside his sergeant. “Jesus. FEMA?”
“Yeah. Not a bad facility.”
Before the outbreak, the building had already been surrounded by a large iron fence coupled with straight lines of barbed wire over the top. Curiously enough, the wires were laced on bars that slanted toward the interior of the facility, and not the exterior.
Zombies lined the fences, smelling the literal meat market of human flesh on the other side.
“They really got these things up and running pretty fast,” Sgt. Arnold said. “Pretty amazing.”
He was about to turn back when screeching tires attracted his attention. Barreling down the side street was a brown station wagon. A front tire was blown out and it scraped against the side of every vehicle it came near as it raced to the entrance of the IRS FEMA camp. It wrecked into the corner of the gate near the entrance. Soldiers quickly approached the gate to help the desperate citizens as a crowd of zombies gathered around the car.
“This is not going to be good,” Knight mumbled, waiting for the soldiers to open fire on the refugees with a better safe than sorry attitude.
But they did no such thing. Instead they began to pick off the zombies that were zeroing in on the family. The people in the car, numbering seven as they exited, coordinated in an effort to attack the zombies with bats, pipes, and other makeshift blunt and studded weapons. There looked to be three adults. One of them was female, probably the mother. The others were four children, ranging from young to older adolescent.
The mother reached the hood and pulled the two younger children to the roof of the vehicle in an effort to jump the fence and enter the facility. She was not using kid gloves when she placed her children on the barbed wire to hand to the soldiers.
The remaining four refugees, one man, an older boy, a younger boy and a girl, were holding their own to defend the mother as she handed the two toddlers over the fence. And despite the clumsy and spontaneous attack patterns of the zombies, the numbers game was becoming an issue.
One boy smacked a ghoul in the head with a two-by-four, which lodged in the skull. The board was awkwardly removed from the head of the monster, and Sgt. Arnold figured there were nails at the business end of the piece of wood—a latter-day mace.
“That’s really nice,” Sgt. Arnold said, with sincere admiration of the resourcefulness of the family unit. Noble and Parcells joined him and Knight in watching the throwdown.
The other boy had a helmet and shoulder pads and was knocking zombies down and out with spearlike tackles. Swatting and swimming out of the grasp of the zombies, small awkward piles were formed with ghouls knocked on their asses, American football style, buying valuable seconds for the family.
The adolescent daughter was next over the fence. Sgt. Arnold cringed whe
n the wire hooked and pulled at her shirt, tearing both the shirt and the skin. He groaned as blood began to drip onto her clothes and body.
The males were next. The three climbed onto the vehicle’s hood, then to the roof. The zombies surrounded the car.
As the father was tossing the nail-board wielding kid over the fence, grid-iron boy fell off the car and into the zombie mob.
“Oh, shit,” Knight said. “He’s dead.”
Without hesitating for a second, the father dove back into the undead fray with all the reckless abandon of a masked lucha libre superstar. A dangerous group of zombies was knocked down by the flying attack before they could get to the boy. Both men rose and jumped back to safety on the car, just missing the greedy hands of the living dead.
Fireteam Arnold let out a cheer, as if watching a sporting event at a local stadium. There were even several high fives passed among them.
As grid-iron boy scaled the fence to negotiate the barbed wire, the adult male held the zombies—who were now climbing the car—at bay with his large white PVC pipe. Blood and undead grime gave it some color. The man seemed to be enjoying himself, smacking the zombies around. With the power and precision he was striking each zombie with, every attack was a critical strike, disabling the creatures for good.
“Damn,” Sgt. Arnold chuckled. “That guy’s really regulating.”
The spectacle was quite enjoyable to the fireteam. Watching a man with a gory PVC pipe swatting zombies away like a demented Joe DiMaggio was the last thing they thought they were going to see on this day.
Before long, a stack of zombies piled around the vehicle like a kind of zombie dog pile. The adult took his time heading over the barbed wire fence.
Fireteam Arnold clapped in approval, like an audience watching Jack Nicklaus golf an eagle, or birdie.