Surviving the Dead (Novel): The Hellbreakers

by James N. Cook

  The shooters on the line went through little rituals, some doing stretching routines, others making small adjustments to their weapons and optics. I pulled my arms across my chest to loosen the muscles in my upper back, massaged my neck, wiped sweat from my brow with the bottom of my shirt, and settled down over my rifle.

  “So this is how it’s done,” I said.

  Morris looked at me with a small smile. “Yep. Just like eating an elephant. Ever heard that old joke?”

  “Yeah,” I said, peering through my scope. “One bite at a time.”

  *****

  We took a lot of bites that afternoon.

  Thousands of them.

  By the time the fight was over, we had retreated eight miles along I-10 toward the Pacific Ocean. There were no beaches and rolling waves to greet us at the end of the day, however. Only a long, reeking pile of corpses and the shadows of vultures circling overhead.

  I don’t remember how many I shot. I don’t remember how many I killed with a spear. It was midday when I started. The sun was descending behind the western hills when the last ghoul fell. The clear, vivid memories of the first few engagements faded into a hot, dazed blur. I remember runners bringing us water. I remember the barrel of my rifle radiating heat through the handguard. I remember taking deep breaths through lungs filled with fire and trying to relax muscles flooded with pure acid. My clothes could not have been wetter if someone had pushed me into a pool—an indignity I would have welcomed gladly. I could only imagine what I smelled like.

  At the end of it, Father Cortez radioed all stations to stand down. Everyone on my platform, including me, stowed our spears. The cruciform spikes were dripping with gore, the hafts dark from sweaty hands gripping them. My shoulders had gone numb, my forearms felt like they were going to explode, and someone was digging several sharp, invisible knives into the muscles of my lower back.

  Sergeant Morris slumped next to me as I leaned against the rail. We both sat in silence for several minutes, catching our breath. On the ground, the riders had returned again, this time armed with rifles. They began dispatching the last few dozen infected while the platform crews took a well-deserved rest.

  “Gonna be sore as a bastard tomorrow,” Morris said. He leaned his head against the rail and closed his eyes.

  “Talking about me or you?”

  A laugh. “Both. Hell, all of us.” His head turned toward me, one eye squinting open. “You did good, new guy.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m serious. Last folks we picked up were living in a treehouse outside Flagstaff. Tough folks, all of ‘em. Strongest one, big fella named Barska, barely lasted two hours his first fight. Back seized up on him. The rest fell out long before that.”

  “I suppose I should find that encouraging.”

  A shrug. “All I’m saying is you got some iron in you. Which is good. You’re gonna need it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “What are we going to do about all those bodies?”

  “Drag ‘em to the shoulder. Take some of ‘em down to the city limit and stack them up about head high.”

  I processed that for a few seconds. “Obstacles, right? When the next horde comes, we want them to break up and spread out. That’s why you stack the bodies.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Who’s gonna do that?”

  A long sigh. “We are. But probably not until tomorrow morning. It’s getting late. Commander’s gonna want to circle the wagons and make camp for the night.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “You’re lucky it’s your first day.” Morris took a kerchief out of his shirt pocket, raised his hat, and mopped his forehead.

  “Why is that?”

  “You won’t have to stand watch tonight.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The next morning I awoke to a hand shaking my shoulder.

  “Hey, new guy, wake up.”

  I looked up. It was Sergeant Morris.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Another day in paradise. Come on, we got work to do.”

  I sat up and looked around. I had spent the night on the platform along with the other fighters from the day before. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but I had fallen asleep with no trouble at all. I was dead on my feet when I had finally called it a night.

  Sitting up was more than a little difficult. The feeling was familiar, like the aches and pains of recovering from a hard-won fight.

  “How you feelin’?” Morris asked.

  I rubbed the small of my back. “Like I got run over by a truck.”

  A quiet laugh. “Sounds about right. Just wait until tomorrow. That’s when the real fun starts.”

  I got my feet under me, stretched, winced, and massaged an aching shoulder. “So what now? Breakfast?”

  “Probably won’t eat for a few hours yet,” Morris said. “First is work detail. Another horde could come at any time. We need to be ready.”

  I looked across the highway toward the Phoenix skyline. Dozens of people on horseback were already among the fallen dead, hitching corpses to harnesses and urging their mounts to drag the bodies away from the road. They dropped the corpses in the dirt to dry out and mummify in the arid, sweltering heat, then went back for more. Other teams wearing some kind of leather armor worked on foot driving oxen to accomplish the same task. Beyond them, perhaps three-hundred people worked in teams of two, rolling bodies onto tarps and dragging them out of the way.

  The night before, dead ghouls had lain like a thick, reeking carpet all over the broken asphalt. Now, they had been cleared for nearly a hundred yards to the east.

  “Your people work fast,” I said to Morris.

  “Have to,” he said, climbing down the ladder. “Never know how much time we have. Grab your weapon and get moving.”

  I untied my axe from the rail I had lashed it to the previous day and slung the harness across my chest. That done, I followed Morris down the ladder and walked beside him as we proceeded eastward.

  The troops we passed barely noticed us, preoccupied as they were with their work. There was no banter, no joking, no laughing or singing or anything else. Just a lot of tired eyes, grim mouths set in hard lines, and grunts of effort. Occasionally, someone would find a ghoul still moving and dispatch it with whatever weapon they had on hand—hatchets, in most cases.

  What little conversation I overheard was directly work-related. An atmosphere of urgency hung in the air like heavy mist, and I began to feel a creeping anxiety in response.

  “So what’s our job?” I asked. Behind me, I heard the rest of the fighters on the platform stirring and beginning to make their way to the ground.

  “We’ll walk the line down about a hundred yards past the last clean-up team. Kick bodies, look for groaners.”

  “Groaners?”

  “Ghouls that aren’t dead yet. Sometimes they get hit and disabled, but they’re not really down for the count.”

  “I’ve seen that before. Shot one of them through the neck and severed its spine. Mouth was still chomping when I walked up to it.”

  A nod. “Exactly. Some of them can still use their arms, which means they can still grab a leg and bite someone. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  We passed the last of the clean-up teams. A stout looking black woman who could have been anywhere between twenty-five and forty years old tilted her chin up at Morris and raised a hand.

  “’Sup Morris. You here to relieve us?”

  A smile. “Hell no. Figured you were doing such a good job I’d take the day off.”

  “In your dreams, asshole.”

  Morris gave a mock salute and we kept walking along the hardpan at the side of the highway. When we had covered a hundred yards past the last clean-up team, Morris stopped and drew a hatchet with a hand-carved, two-and-a-half foot handle. I unslung my axe.

  “So here’s the drill,” he said. “I start on this side and work that way. You start on the other side and work this way. Kick e
ach ghoul you come to. And I don’t mean gently either. Really nail the fuckers. If it moves, or groans, or so much as flutters its eyes, put a chunk of steel in its head. Got it?”

  I raised a thumb. “Got it.”

  We went to work.

  *****

  Noon.

  The sun had risen near its zenith and glared down on Arizona with fiery hatred. I stood under its assault, Foreign Legion hat absorbing sweat from my brow, and kicked a ghoul hard in the side. I didn’t know if it was the hundredth or thousandth or what, but I knew the tally was getting high. The ghoul turned its head toward me and reached up a jerking, spasmodic arm. The milky eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, as though trying to focus in a dark room. The head kept snapping to the left and twisting at the neck, a snake-like hiss venting from its mouth while rows of black teeth reached for my leg. One side of its cranium had been carved by a bullet that had, apparently, not done enough damage to kill it.

  I raised my axe, watched the sun glint off its gore-crusted steel, and let it fall. There was a crunch, a shudder, and the ghoul was no more.

  “Heads up.”

  I looked over to Morris. He stood astride a corpse’s torso and pointed westward. I shaded my eyes with one hand and looked. A single rider was headed in our direction at a slow trot. When he was close enough for his image to resolve, I saw it was Lieutenant Downs.

  “Sergeant,” he said upon reaching us, “take Muir to the wagon train. His platoon leader wants to speak with him.”

  Morris turned to me. “Better do what the man says.”

  Downs turned and rode off without another word. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind.

  Morris wiped his hatchet on a ghoul’s tattered shirt and then cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. I borrowed the little clear plastic bottle from him and did the same with my axe. Finished, we slung our weapons and set off for the wagons.

  I drank from my water pouch as we walked. It had grown light on my back, telling me I needed to refill it soon or risk dehydration. Along the way, we passed the same crews from before, still going about their work with silent diligence. The interstate now had a neat row of stacked corpses along either side that extended half a kilometer to the west. The militia had, thus far, thoroughly impressed me with how fast and how efficiently they worked.

  A few minutes later we arrived at the wagon train. Morris asked a few people if they had seen the squad leader for Delta Seven. A tall, strongly built woman in a sleeveless shirt overheard and said, “Hey, Morris.”

  He looked. “Ah, here we go.” He gestured for me to follow him.

  We approached the tall woman. The closer I got, the more impressive she became. Six-foot one, perhaps a hundred and sixty pounds, bronzed skin stretched over lean, whipcord muscle, small breasts, and powerful legs under snug-fitting jeans. From the neck down she reminded me of a decathlete I had dated in college. But the body was where the similarities ended. Her face boasted high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and wide-set brown eyes. She pushed her hat back, revealing a shaved head with a tattoo of the Hellbreakers’ emblem just above her left ear.

  “So you’re him, huh? The water man.”

  “That’s me. Name’s Alex.”

  I held out a hand. She stared at it a few seconds before giving it a strong, calloused squeeze.

  “Welcome aboard.” Her gaze shifted to Morris. “He worth anything?”

  I bristled inwardly but held my tongue. No sense in antagonizing anyone at this juncture. For all I knew, if I offended the chain of command they might put me on a spit and roast me for dinner.

  “So far he’s kickin’ ass and takin’ names,” Morris said. “Good with a rifle, and he lasted the whole fight with a spear. Hell, I think he outworked me.”

  The woman looked me up and down. “You look fit. That’s good. It’s hard work we do.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that.”

  A small smile. “I’m Sergeant Christina Hahn. You can call me Sergeant. I’ll be your squad leader.”

  I nodded.

  “Man of few words?”

  “I guess so, Sergeant.”

  “Good. I hate a blabbermouth.” She looked at Morris. “I like him already.”

  “Great,” Morris said. He slapped me on the shoulder. “He’s all yours, Hahn. See you around, Alex.”

  Morris walked away. “See you,” I said to his back.

  “We have some rules around here,” Sergeant Hahn said. “Anyone go over them with you yet?”

  “No.”

  “Follow me.” Hahn took a radio from her belt. “Cason, we got a new guy.”

  “Copy,” came the reply.

  “Gonna drop him off for briefing.”

  “Roger. He worth a shit?”

  A light laugh. “Morris vouched for him.”

  “Good enough for me. Send him on in, Sergeant.”

  Hahn led me to the far side of the wagon train where seven other people stood around a small fire with a pot of beans and rice dangling over it. Nearby, a muscled whip of a black man squatted over a charcoal grill and tended to some kind of bread frying in a skillet. The smell was enough to make me swoon. The black man stood up and stared at me with dark, amused eyes.

  “You my new guy?”

  His accent was deep-south and reflected the humor on his face. I found myself smiling back.

  “Seems so.”

  He laughed, revealing a missing canine on the left side. “You must’a done pissed somebody off. Got the Lord himself mad at you. What’d you do, man?”

  The others laughed. My smile deepened.

  Hahn said, “Mister Muir here found us the water you’re drinking. And he’s here to replace Jefferson.”

  The laughter abruptly ceased. Smiles faded and the tone around the fire became somber.

  “All right, Boss,” Cason said. “We get him up to speed.”

  Hahn nodded once, turned on her heel and left.

  I looked at Cason. “So what now?”

  He scraped a flap of bread as big as my hand onto a metal plate and held it out to me.

  “You hungry?”

  I was. And it was the best damn bread I had ever eaten.

  NINETEEN

  The odor of rotting flesh mingled with the stinging scent of sage on a strong desert breeze. A pair of polarized ski goggles protected my face. There was a long strip of t-shirt cloth tied around my mouth, gloves covered my hands, and a canvas apron stretched down to my knees—standard militia issue for what they called C.P.

  Corpse patrol.

  “First rule is no fighting,” Cason explained as we rolled a dead man onto a tarp. The man’s clothes had disintegrated until there were only a few ragged strips clinging to his shoulders. I only noticed a single wound on his lower leg; clearly the bite that turned him.

  Must have been bitten, ran away, and then holed up somewhere.

  “Guess I already broke that one.”

  Cason laughed. “Ain’t no thang, brother. Big man had it comin’. ‘Sides, you wasn’t militia yet.”

  We lifted the tarp. The striated sinew comprising Cason’s arms and shoulders rippled like eels under shallow water. I had to lock my core and keep my back straight to pick up the heavy load enough to move it. Cason didn’t even take a deep breath. It was becoming clear he was half again as big as he looked, and twice as strong.

  “What’s rule number two?”

  “You got a problem with somebody, you got to solve it at the lowest level possible. So if you can’t talk something out with somebody face to face, you take it up with your team leader. Team leader can’t solve it, you go to your squad leader. And I warn you right now, don’t bother the sergeant unless it’s life or death. She liable to rip you a new asshole, you come at her with some stupid shit. Feel me?”

  I nodded.

  “Now that bein’ said, you see a safety issue, like could get somebody killed, you speak up. Better to be wrong than sorry. That’s the only time it’s cool to jump the chain of command. Understand?”

/>   “Understood.”

  “Third rule is no stealing. And I mean absolutely none. After your squad throw you an ass whoopin’, Cortez be showin’ you the door. No trial, no second chances. You get your papers and a few days’ worth of food, and yo ass goes for a nice long walk. We clear on that?”

  We reached the line of corpses extending toward Phoenix at the side of the highway. I grabbed one side of the tarp, Cason grabbed the other, and we gave it a heave. The dead man rolled away and settled on his side. Dust and sand covered his pale gray skin and matted in his hair. I stared for a moment and felt a knot in my chest. In death, the man’s face looked almost serene, the insane light of reanimation gone, leaving behind a ruined facsimile of the living, breathing human being he once was. I wondered if he had a wife or children. I wondered if he’d had any hobbies. What had he done for a living? What was his favorite food? Was there someone out there still mourning him?

  Was this how I would end up?

  “I got it. No stealing.”

  “I’m not sayin’ you a thief or nothin’. Just lettin’ you know. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  We walked back toward the killing ground. The sky was clear in the late afternoon and the eastern sky was darkening with the onset of night. I had been moving corpses since lunch. Time had ceased speaking to me except through the crunch of pebbles under my boots, the scrape of the tarp over coarse sand, and the buzzing of flies feasting on an army of the twice-dead. A shadow passed, and I looked up to see a flight of vultures circling.

  “I keep track of trade for our squad,” Cason said. “So you find somethin’, let me know. I make sure you get credit for it.”

  “Caroline told me the militia takes what it needs from salvage sites.”

  A nod. “That’s right. We always low on food, ammo, raw materials, shit like that. You find anything, keep it on the down-low until the squad gets a look at it. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Every squad for itself, is that it?”

  Cason shook his head. “No man, just give our people a chance to get what they need before command steps in. Increase our survivability, that kind of thing.”