by T. W. Brown
Jerome Burgess was a carbon copy of Andy starting with his dark chocolate skin. He was always smiling, but his eyes belonged on a hawk because he did not miss a trick. He had the coolest set of throwing knives; and when asked, he happily gave a demonstration to prove they were not just for show.
Rachel Mint was a plain-Jane blonde at first glance. However, I’d seen her shove past both Andy and Jerome without them raising a fuss. In fact, they gave way with a visible respect. I was willing to bet she had some pretty awesome stories. I doubted I would ever hear them. I was also willing to bet that those two well-used looking hatchets she wore on her belt had seen some serious action.
Chet Bozer was short, squat, and looked like his face had been used as a battering ram. He never smiled. His hands looked like they had been shoved into a garbage disposal. I’d seen him in the parking lot when people had started pushing and shoving. Some guy almost a foot taller had shoved Chet. I wondered if that dude had woken up yet.
James Sagar was the least likely of the bunch. He had a mop of dirty blonde colored hair, laugh lines from actual laughing, which he did often and usually at the end of one of his own jokes, and blue eyes that matched the smile on his face in their brightness. James was also some sort of explosives expert.
To be honest, it was Andy who suggested the easy going man. I would have completely passed over him.
“The guy dropped a freaking bridge with crap he found in a garage,” Andy said, the awe ringing true in his voice. “That bastard could probably blow up the city of La Grande with a few scraps he dug out of a public bathroom.”
Sure, it was a gross over-exaggeration, but the point had been made. I wasn’t sure if we would need an explosives guy, but it sure did not hurt to have that option.
The last person I picked came from a recommendation that I got from Jerome. Her name is Paula Yin. Paula is not much taller than Thalia. If she is over four and a half feet tall, I will kiss a zombie on the lips. Paula was not in the military. However, she was on some sort of competitive shooting team. I guess Grady’s people found her in some rinky-dink town well south of here. She was up in a church steeple picking off zombies with a rifle.
When they arrived, the first thing they noticed was that there was almost a ring around the entire town made entirely of dead zombies with nice, neat holes in the middle of their foreheads. That had caused them to use caution and actually make a complete circuit around the town where they continued to find more downed undead with the same exact kill shot.
Venturing into town, they came to a halt when a voice called from a megaphone for them to come no further. Long story short, after four hours of yelling back and forth, Paula had dropped a dozen more zombies that came to investigate, and Grady had convinced her to join them.
Paula does not miss. It is not bragging or overstating things. It is a simple fact. James says he wants to be there when she does just so he can see the look on her face and confirm that she is not a cyborg or freakish human-machine hybrid. (Those are his words, not mine.) Personally, I don’t think that I ever want to see her miss. I would not want to know what force of nature might be capable of causing such an event.
“Glad to see you finally made it,” BP quipped.
“Yeah, well we were paid a visit by Graham,” I explained. “When this is done, I guess I have to lead some expeditionary force in order to secure the entire city of La Grande. After he left, I decided to wait until dark just in case there were eyes on our house.”
“You think they were watching you?” Gable whispered, fear apparent in his shaky voice.
“Of course we were,” a voice spoke from the darkness to our left.
As one, my entire group spun, weapons up and ready to start punching holes in people. Graham stepped forward into the soft glow that the moon offered, hands raised. I was not in the least bit surprised to see Tish step out of the shadows to join him. However, when Carol emerged along with six other guys, I went from almost relieved right back to nervous in the span of a single heartbeat.
“Easy, Billy,” Carol said, obviously seeing my discomfort. “We are here to help in whatever this is that you felt the need to sneak out and do. This will solve a few problems. First, it will clear the air of whatever secret you think you need to keep from us, and second, a few of my boys are in doubt as to your capabilities. I believe this should settle things nicely.”
I noticed one man in particular sort of snort and give a dirty look. I had a feeling who the Doubting Thomas was that Carol was referring. Personally, I could give a rat’s ass what some stranger thought of me.
“So you were watching the house,” I said as I stepped forward.
“Sorry, Billy.” Carol nudged Graham aside as she moved forward to face me directly. “I realize that trust is tough to come by, but you have to understand that we have the same issues. And when you suddenly have a house full of absolute strangers that were slipped past our quarantine, you must appreciate that we have some questions.”
She did have a point. And I imagine that I did not do anything to help matters by sneaking out in the middle of the night without so much as a word. Still, if I was such a security risk, why would she want me leading a group of her people on this mission to secure the town?
“We have a great deal to discuss,” Carol said out loud. “You and I will talk later,” she whispered just to me. “But perhaps we can start with the simple question of what exactly you all are doing?” This was said in a very neutral tone, but I could tell that she would expect an honest and complete answer.
Fine, I thought, if I was so sick of the secrets and silly games that folks were playing, maybe it was up to me to lead by example. I pulled Gable up beside me and related everything that I knew. I shared the entire story as he had told it and even included some of my own questions and concerns.
“But if the guy who hooked up with Jon wasn’t Jake…” Carol obviously had some of the same questions that I had. It was good to see that somebody else was stumped and that it was not a simple case of me being an idiot.
“This is part of the new way of things,” I said with a shrug. “No calendars, no way to really keep track of things. We have no idea how long Jon was out there before he came to us. It could have been days or weeks. We only know that he was a recruiter in Boise when it all started, and that he was in a place and things went bad. He arrived with two others that he said he located at a FEMA center that fell in the first ten days, but as far as details, we know next to nothing about what happened between points A and B. That leaves an awful lot of time unaccounted for. Hell, he could have been anyplace…done who knows what! I feel sorry for anybody who tries to go back and record history for future generations.”
“I still don’t really understand why we are doing this,” a voice spoke up. It was Doubting Thomas; big surprise.
“My mom and a few others are kept back at wherever we are camped when the team goes out on a mission. A detachment is left to guard them. Basically they are held as insurance that we return and don’t desert the group,” Gable explained. “Some of the people we have collected along the way were from raids. They were given a choice of join or die. Those who joined and had friends or family…”
“We didn’t ask you to come,” I spoke up when it was clear that Gable was struggling to keep his emotions in check. “You are free to return to the compound or wait here. I honestly don’t care. However, we have someplace to be, so if you will excuse us.”
I didn’t wait for a response, I looked at Gable who pointed in the direction we needed to go and then started off. Less than a block later, Carol was at my side.
“That is why I want you to lead one of our groups,” she said from the corner of her mouth in a voice barely above a whisper.
It took us another two hours to reach the spot where Gable said put us within a few hundred yards of the encampment. Zombie presence had been almost nil the entire way.
We had gone up and into the woods in the foothills of the pass that led b
ack to our old home. I signaled for everybody to halt and took Gable and Andy with me to scout up ahead and get a look at what we were dealing with. To say that I was disappointed would be putting it mildly.
We managed to skirt well around the few fires that marked the camp. I was trying not to laugh. These clowns did not seem to know a damn thing about what they were doing. The sentries were standing in clear view with the flames making them all perfect targets. I came up with an idea as we did the complete circuit and pinpointed the five individuals standing the late night watch.
“Okay,” I said as everybody gathered around, “this is the plan…”
I finished and asked if there were any questions. I was actually surprised that not one person, not even Doubting Thomas, had opened his or her mouth.
Now I was actually grateful for Carol and the people that she had brought along with her. If we did this correctly, it would be the easiest mission in history. I tried to slam the door on that thought as soon as it came. Sure, I knew I was being silly and superstitious, but I was scared to jinx what looked like an amazing stroke of luck.
I had teamed with one of Carol’s people and insisted that one of mine be matched with one of hers. I left Carol and Graham with Gable back at a dry creek bed as a rear guard. I wasn’t fooling anybody. I left them because I would not have any of her people operating without one of my own on hand. I’m pretty sure that everybody knew it. I wasn’t bringing Gable because I did not want to risk an emotional outburst; we had no idea what we would find when we took the camp.
I crawled on my stomach to a spot under some thick brush that was just starting to bud. The mostly bare branches scratched at my face. I had my goggles, but they were currently on my forehead since I needed to see as clearly as possible. I felt my companion move up beside me and wriggle a bit as he brought his crossbow into position.
The sound of an owl came from the darkness. Thank goodness James Sagar could do a passable impression. That was the signal and I nudged the guy at my side. I heard him take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and then there was the swishing “thwang” as his string was released and the bolt zipped through the night. The shadow just over fifteen yards away made a soft grunt and collapsed to the ground. I scurried out with my machete drawn and rushed to the downed figure. Not bothering to look, I paused just long enough to plunge the tip of my blade into the side of the person’s head. However, I did see enough to be impressed with my cohort’s shot. The bolt had gone through the soft depression at the bottom of the dead man’s throat.
Looking around, I saw five rows of long, olive-green military-style tents. There were three tents in every row, and these looked like they would each house fifteen or twenty people easily. My eyes scanned for any signs of movement.
I did not hear anything. However, I heard some low moans and a few baby cries coming from just to the left of the camp. Pointing and motioning for everybody to follow, I headed that way and discovered a huge pen that could have been a horse corral. It wasn’t. There had to be at least a few hundred zombies packed in so tight that they could hardly move. The ones at the edge had their arms sticking out through the metal rails that made up this fence.
The zombies were in all shapes and sizes. A young boy of eight or nine had his face smashed against two of the middle rails. He was snapping and gnashing his teeth at me, but our arrival had caused a bit of a surge in the corral’s occupants and I watched his head slowly elongate and eventually become crushed in the press.
“So it’s true,” I heard James Sagar whisper as he stepped up on one side of me to get a glimpse at what I imagined the pits of Hell to look like.
“Seems to be,” I whispered, turning back to the long tents.
I reached the first one and waited as the rest of my team joined me. I held a finger to my lips needlessly and ducked into the first tent. We moved down the center aisle past cot after cot. Each one was obviously empty except for one on the left and two from the end. I pointed and one of my group slipped over and quickly dispatched the person. We moved to the next tent and repeated the process until we had made the run through each one and killed fifteen more people.
The last thing left to do was to enter the tent where they kept the hostages. From Gable’s report, there would only be two sentries on watch inside the tent. So far, things had gone exactly according to plan. As I gave the countdown on my fingers to signal our entry, I realized that I could not actually recall any time that a plan had worked without at least one hiccup.
I threw the flap open and the five people with crossbows went in crouched down low. The sounds of the strings thrumming came before I even made it inside and I walked into the tent to see a man and woman with rifles still at their side where they sat pinned to the chairs they had been sitting in at a small wooden table. They’d been playing cards!
A few heads rose from cots, and I saw that instant look of fear. I imagine opening your eyes to discover a group of strangers armed to the teeth standing in your bedroom is one of the more unpleasant ways to wake up.
“My name is Billy Haynes,” I announced. “I am not here to harm any of you. I am here on behalf of Gable Matczak. Is his mother, Sylvia Matczak…is she here?”
“I’m Sylvia, but I don’t go by Matczak any longer. I took my maiden name. It is Sylvia Peretti now.” A woman raised her hand from a cot towards the rear of the tent. In the soft glow of the lanterns hung down the center of the tent, there was enough light to see pretty well. In my opinion, she looked just like a mom should look. Her short dark hair was mussed and streaked with a bit of gray, she had the beginnings of crow’s feet on the edges of her eyes, and her stern face held just a hint of worry.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” I said with a polite nod. “As I said, I am here with your son. We are from the compound that they raided last night.” I saw looks of hopeful expectation and felt an acidic sting in my gut as I related the next bit of news and information. “I regret to say that Gable is the only survivor that I am aware of, but each of you is free to join us or go your own way. I have no idea what you were told about us, but we are not the bad guys.”
I gave that last sentence a moment’s thought. We weren’t, were we? I mean, we’d just conducted a quick strike assassination raid on total strangers. Sure, we gave ourselves a good reason for it, but I am certain those raiders were justifying their reason to hit us in the first place. The lines had become so blurry; it was getting more and more difficult to discern between good and bad, right and wrong.
“Gable is here?” Sylvia said with a tremor in her voice.
“Not right here, but he is close by,” I clarified.
“We got incoming!” somebody from outside the tent called. “Zombies.”
I actually felt a shiver of relief. As long as the numbers were not anything crazy, zombies were far easier to deal with than humans of the living variety. I turned for the flap that led outside and called over my shoulder as I went out to help deal with the incoming low-level threat, “Gather what you can carry and be ready to leave in ten.”
Outside, I saw James and Darla moving to intercept a pack of a few dozen zombies that were emerging from the darkness of the surrounding trees. Their assigned partners were dutifully by their side, joining in the fray.
I assessed the situation and decided that they had it under control. I grabbed my guy and went to the five wagons that were parked in the very center of camp. Rocks had been wedged under the wheels as makeshift brakes, but I doubted these babies were going anywhere. They sat on flat ground and looked to be heavily loaded with an assortment of supplies that included some nasty looking weaponry.
“Freaking boxed Claymore sets,” my companion breathed in awe.
“Wonder why they did not bother to set them around the perimeter of this place,” I speculated out loud.
“There are maybe thirty complete rigs that include the mine, blasting cap assembly, and firing device,” came the answer, as he sifted through the cart he’d been inspecting. “The
days of infinite reloads and ready-to-use supplies is long gone. They were probably waiting until they were settled. That’s what I would do.”
Sounded reasonable to me. I climbed up on my cart and untied the leather thongs keeping the tarp lashed into place. Throwing back the blue plastic, I could not help but whistle appreciatively. They had cases of ammo in metal boxes that were clearly stamped.
The other three wagons revealed similar treasures that included huge quantities of first aid gear and MREs. It was obvious that they had made a run on a military outpost; all of this stuff was Government Issue.
“We don’t have enough manpower to roll these back to La Grande,” I determined. With the people from the hostage tent herded outside, I told James and Jerome to remain here with their teammates to keep an eye on the place until we could send enough people back to roll these big wagons to La Grande.
“I also want you to torch that pen of zombies,” I said, pulling James aside before I left. He gave a grim nod.
“Will do, Boss,” he said, glancing over in the direction that we knew the pen to be located.
There was a tearful reunion for Gable and his mother. Unfortunately, there were only tears for the others in the group. Graham did let it be known that a few prisoners had been taken, and that he would allow the new arrivals to get a look. I had serious doubts that lightning would strike twice, much less fifteen more times.
The trip back home was sort of anticlimactic, and it wasn’t until I was peeling away from Graham and Carol that I realized this mission had been pulled off without a hitch. I made promises to meet with the dynamic duo in the morning, but, at the moment, and with the sun just beginning to rise, I made it clear that I meant tomorrow morning.
We reached the house and I told Gable and his mom to take the people we’d just brought back and head over to the house across the street. It looked empty, and if anybody had a problem with it, they could take it up with me just as soon as I had a free moment in my schedule. Sure, I knew that I was completely ignoring the protocols of this place, but I did not care.