Threat Ascendant

by Brian M. Switzer

  "I agree- Chanel Number Five it ain't." Jiri inserted the note in the baggie and placed the baggie in the hole. He returned the stone to its original position. "Let's go. Stay behind me and I'll lead you out here."

  Neither spoke as they negotiated their way through the trash, clumps of weeds, and broken asphalt behind the restaurant. When they made it back to the street, Jiri clicked off the flashlight and clipped it in its pace on his belt.

  As they made their way back, Danny spit and cleared his throat. "What do you think she'll get that note?"

  "Her little spy said they check that drop every day. So she should get it tomorrow."

  "What if she can tell Rohon didn’t write it? What if he supposed to write a code in each note to show it's really from him?"

  "You can ‘what if’ something like this all you want, and all you’ll do is make yourself nervous and unsure. We had Rohon so scared I doubt he had the presence of mind to lie or omit something important.”

  They had passed the old, rundown houses and were near the railroad tracks. On the other side of the tracks, a parking lot made of base rock was laid out next to the road. A big copse of trees separated the parking area and the spot where the river turned north and ran alongside the road for a short distance.

  Just after the tracks, Danny stopped. He tilted his head to look Jiri in the eye and spoke in a plaintive voice. "I'm pretty sure I'm in love with Tara."

  "Uh huh. And I'm in love with Will."

  "I'm serious, man. She has a hard edge and comes across as mean, but I've gotten to know her and that's a front. And you can't deny that she's beautiful."

  "Jiri laughed and shook his head. "No, I can't." He threw his head back and laughed some more.

  "What's so damn funny?"

  Jiri choked back his laughter long enough to speak. "Have you talked to her about your feelings?"

  "Shit no. That's one of the reasons I think I'm in love. I've never had a problem approaching any woman. But when I get around Tara my belly knots up and I can't think of anything to say."

  Jiri couldn't help himself. Hearing Danny, of all people, talking like a lovesick teenager was too much. He put his hands on his knees and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. Danny stared at him with a puzzled expression and politely waited for Jiri to finish so they could continue the conversation. That was such un-Danny like behavior that made him laugh even harder. Eventually, he landed on his butt in the road, holding his aching belly while he tried to turn laughter off.

  "I'm glad I could be such a source of amusement," Danny said in a hurt tone of voice.

  Jiri struggled to catch his breath and regain his composure. "I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry. It struck me wrong. Who knew that all this time the way to your heart was to be mean as shit to you."

  "See, that's just it- she's not really mean." He offered Jiri hand and helped him to his feet. "That's a cover she puts on so she won't get close to anyone. She's not mean, she just doesn't want to lose anybody else important to her."

  "Yeah, that much is obvious. But how are you going to—"

  Danny tensed up and put his hand on his knife.

  Jiri spun around. Three creepers had emerged from the trees next to the parking lot and fixated on the sound of their voices. The dead shuffled towards them, their haunting moans echoing through the night air. He pulled his two-sided ask ax from its cover over his shoulder and popped off the blade covers. "I guess we should have known we wouldn’t make it there and back without running into these guys."

  Danny's combat knife hung loosely in his right hand. "Yeah, but you can always hope.” He peered at the approaching creepers. The one on the left wore a dirty smock stiff with dried blood. The blood appeared to be its own- its left breast and most of its left shoulder were missing. "I'll take Mrs. One-Titty there, you get the two on the right." As soon as he said that several more creepers shuffled out of the trees. He did a fast count. "Whoa! That makes seven… nine of them."

  "I see them. Let's swing to the far side of the road and head up the hill. We'll put down any that get too close."

  "You lead the way."

  They backed up side-by-side until the gravel on the shoulder crunched under their feet, then turned toward home. Danny took two steps and faltered. "Shit." A mass of creepers, at least twenty, covered the road fifty yards away and headed in their direction.

  He turned to warn Jiri of the threat to the north as the Professor cried out a warning of his own.

  “Danny! A bunch more came out of the woods."

  4

  * * *

  They fought back-to-back, covered in blood and gore. Downed creepers laid all over the road and along both its sides. They tried to head north, but every time they made two steps that way, the dead caused them to take four back.

  Jiri concentrated on holding onto his ax. His hands were wet with sweat and blood, and twice the taped handle had slipped from his grasp as he swung. Danny tried to ignore the white-hot pain in his shoulder. The professor had lost track of him at one point and sliced it with his ax on a backswing. He was tiring and there seemed to be no end to the dead that flowed at them from two directions.

  Two creepers reached for him. He grabbed the nearest by the throat, bracing it away from him, and swung his knife twice, slicing into the ear and brain of both. Dropping those two gave him a bit of breathing room and he made a quick decision.

  "I'm calling it," he yelled to Jiri, fighting to keep the desperation out of his voice.

  The effect on the Professor was electric. He flung his ax away, and as it bounced and clattered across the asphalt, whipped his Beretta from its holster. Danny stuffed the Bowie knife back in its sheath, drew his own nine millimeter, and fired at two creepers coming at him from his left, dropping both. The loud, flat report of gunfire sounded behind him. He fired twice more; one of his targets was a reanimated girl of about seven. Its hair was still in a pigtail on one side. He moved away from it three times but it pursued him with the hungry determination all the dead shared. His bullet entered its forehead above its left eye and it slumped to the ground.

  There was an opening on their left- the shoulder and ditch on that side were free of the dead. They could loop around and have a clear path up the hill. He fired at three more coming from his right. One shot missed, and a creeper with long, stringy hair and a gore-matted housecoat was nearly on top of him before he fired again and it fell. He risked a glance back and to his right to check on Jiri and his chest tightened.

  The Professor skittered backward in the face of a wave of creepers and fumbled with a magazine he was trying to insert into his gun. Danny forgot about the path around the dead. He walked with long strides toward the creepers threatening Jiri, firing with each step. When a trigger pull resulted in a dry click he grabbed a new mag from a pouch on his vest and slammed it home without missing a beat. He continued to walk and fire, dropping three-quarters of the dead grasping for Jiri. The Professor got his new magazine inserted and put down the rest.

  Danny spun back to the north just as a creeper submarined in from that direction, hitting him hard and low. The momentum took him to the ground with the creeper on top of him, clutching at him and snapping its teeth. He got an arm between them and held it back with his forearm to its throat. Its cloudy eyes bulged and it snapped viciously, shredding its own lips and gums with its bites. But his arm was tucked away out of danger under its chin and it wasn't strong enough to reach him. With an icy coldness, he placed the barrel of his gun in its ear, turned his head and closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. Warm body fluids splattered his chest and neck. He shoved the creeper aside, rolled over, and sprung to his feet as Jiri fired five more shots.

  He couldn’t help his friend because a trio of the dead in the road shuffled toward him and two more came from his left. The three coming straight at him were closer, so he took them first with three quick shots from left to right. Blood or sweat ran down his forehead and burned his e
yes. He swung the gun to his left and, with one eye squeezed shut and the other in a squint, tried to focus on the threat from that direction.

  He had barely refocused on the creepers when a vague shape, something big and fast, hurtled past him and crashed into them without slowing. The impact was terrific. They flew through the air and landed in broken heaps twenty feet away. Danny clawed and rubbed at his eye as the figure bowled through the creepers pursuing Jiri, scattering them in every direction.

  A familiar voice filled with urgency rang out in the darkness. "Get on," Meghan told Jiri. "Hurry!"

  His vision cleared as the shape returned to him, and he realized it was Meghan aboard Taffy, her favorite bay.

  The teen jerked the horse to a stop next to him and she looked down, her eyes fierce. "Get up here behind Jiri."

  Danny jumped as high as he could, hooked his arms around the Professor's chest, and tried to swing a leg up over Taffy's back. He succeeded only in kicking the dark brown horse in the butt. Jiri got a hand under his armpit and pulled while he clambered up Taffy's side, looking for some purchase. The horse, irritated at her treatment and afraid as the creatures shuffled ever closer, pranced and threw her head, making the job that much tougher.

  "Come on!" she growled, fighting to keep her mount straight and still. "We’re running out of time."

  With Jiri pulling and Danny kicking, he finally got his left leg over the horse's back and pulled himself to a sitting position. "Go, go, go!"

  Meghan prodded Taffy into gear and she took off with a start, weaving through the dead stumbling in the road.

  He clutched Jiri's midsection as he swayed, first one way, then the other. Jiri put bullets in the brainpans of the creepers that were too close on the right, Meghan pulled the horse to the left and they were in the clear with the dead behind them. He relaxed his hold on Jiri's waist and the teen slowed Taffy to a trot.

  He looked back to gauge the distance between them and the dead, then leaned around Jiri to talk to Meghan. "How did you know to come get us?"

  She answered without turning. "I didn't. I followed you the whole time. I was too scared to help until you were in bad trouble."

  Jiri turned and gave him a stunned look. Danny shook his head and laughed. They were three-quarters of the way to the entrance when three trucks came roaring around the curve and accelerated up the hill and out of the quarry.

  "Here comes the cavalry," Jiri said. "They must've heard our gunfire."

  Danny laughed again, happy to be alive. "Just in time.”

  5

  * * *

  Reports of the harrowing encounter with the creepers spread through the quarry like a flame through dry grass on a hot summer day. The sound of gunfire traveled far in the quiet of the apocalypse, and most of the tunnel-dwellers heard the dozens of shots the Danny and Jiri fired.

  Almost everyone who lived in the quarry now had lived through the creeper attack three months previous. The whole community knew someone weaponized the dead, releasing creepers into the tunnels in an effort to scare them into leaving. Only a select few new Kayla was behind that attack; to everyone else, the person responsible for the first attempt could very well have tried again.

  Danny and Jiri cleaned themselves up, changed clothes, and reported to Will. He looked them up and down through hooded eyes. Satisfied, he gave them a smile. "Are you guys okay?"

  Danny nodded yes for both of them.

  "Have you been through screening yet?"

  Danny rolled his eyes. "Come on, Will. You can trust us to tell you if we got bit."

  Anytime a community member left the quarry, they had to strip down to their birthday suit and submit to an inspection for bites when they returned. It was Doc Joseph's idea, and when he suggested it at a Council meeting Will was mortified he hadn’t thought of it himself.

  "Nope. The rule applies to everybody. Go get yourselves screened, and then come back and we can talk."

  "That means walking back up the hill again." The screenings took place in a little booth constructed beside the north tower at the entrance gate. The crews that rotated tower duty went through an extensive training on what to inspect for and there was always at least one woman on duty so that women could be screened by women and men by men.

  Will shrugged his shoulders. "I don't care."

  "It doesn't make sense to-"

  "I don't care."

  "But-"

  "I don't care."

  Danny kicked at a spot on the floor. "Dammit." He gave Jiri a morose look. "Come on, you have to go with me."

  "I'd be halfway there by now if I hadn’t stuck around to watch you pitch a fit."

  Danny glowered at him, then spun on his heels toward the exit. Jiri followed.

  They only made a few steps before Will called out to them. "Fellas?"

  They turned back to face the boss.

  "It seems odd that a herd as big as you guys describe would be hanging around less than a mile away. Is there any chance someone contrived your run-in?"

  Jiri pursed his lips. "We're all good, boss. I don't know where they came from or why, but it had the feel of something natural. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't just one herd. It seemed like two of them came together with us in the middle."

  Will accepted that with a nod. "Good to hear. Okay- go get checked. I'll hold the meeting until you get back, so hurry.“

  6

  * * *

  The rest of the group informally referred to as The Council milled about the meeting room next to Terrence's office in small groups until Danny and Jiri returned. When the pair returned they were greeted like heroes and the other council members gathered to hear the tale of the epic battle with the creepers. Will alternated between pacing about and drumming his fingers on the table with impatience while they answered questions and soaked up praise. He was at his breaking point when a lull in the conversation developed. Jiri made a show of clearing his throat. “Let’s pick this up later. We have a ton discuss and even more work to do, so if everyone will grab a seat…” He shot Will an exaggerated wink as the scrum broke up and the attendees found their usual chairs.

  Will smiled to himself as he sat down at the head of the table. He waited for the others to get settled, pour their drinks, and arrange the tablets of paper in front of them. When all eyes were on him, he spoke. “Danny and Jiri delivered the note before they mixed it up with the creeper herd, so we’ve set the bait. From this point on we’ll treat this like a real thing, which I’m ninety-nine percent certain it is. We’re on day one of a fourteen-day clock.”

  Tara leaned forward to speak. “What if it’s a feint? Has anyone considered she might be trying to scare us into leaving and nothing will happen if we don’t?”

  “Not really. Coy said the women seemed crazy and dead serious. And her top man took a shine to him and warned him it’s for real. So we’ll operate under the assumption that they will attack.”

  "Anything else?" Will looked around to see if anyone wanted to speak. Finding no takers, he continued. "I have a couple of ideas to run by you, then we'll brainstorm for a while. We’re looking for booby-traps, ways to prevent their retreat, intelligence, communication… Here's the rough draft of the plan so far."

  Doc Joseph rose to his feet. "You guys are missing the forest for the trees, Will."

  Will gave him a tight, mirthless smile. "How's that, Doc?" The two had a strained but cordial relationship, stemming from the way the Doc had joined the group. He saved Jiri's life when the professor took a bullet to the leg. He later came to the quarry while holding a gun on Jiri and Danny, due to a series of miscommunications. The Doc's friendship with the Judge prevented a tragedy and the situation was sorted out without bloodshed. Any hard feelings would have settled over time had Will not promised he’d cut Doc Joseph's head off if he ever again pointed a gun at one of Will's men. The pair had coexisted since then, but not made any e
ffort at friendship. Now the crusty old country vet stood and threw a wrench into Will's plans. "How many folks are you counting on for your counterattack?"

  "We have one hundred and seventy-six people over the age of sixteen. I thought you had access to the census reports, Doc. I'll check and see why you haven't been getting yours."

  "I'm perfectly aware how many people live here, but thank you for your consideration. My question was how many folks are you counting on. How many fighters do you have?"

  Will saw where he was going and shifted in his seat with discomfort. He gave the Doc a blank look. "Are you contending there'll be people who won't pick up a gun and protect their home and their family?"

  "Have you asked them? Outside this room, does anyone know what's going on? Or will you just hand them a gun in two weeks and tell them to point it at the people they don't know? Will you conscript people and force them to participate if they don't want to?"

  Danny blew out a breath and looked at the Doc with his upper lip curled into a sneer. "What are you, a pacifist now? Are you afraid to fight for what we've made?"

  "Asking a few questions doesn’t make me a pacifist."

  Will held up a big hand in a stop gesture. "No, it doesn't. That's a good point, Doc. It hadn’t occurred to me there might be some people that don't want to fight."

  Danny gaped at him with wide eyes. "Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to fight? Do you really think folks would give this place up without fighting for it?"

  "Sure they would. Not everybody shares our goals or is here to build a community. I'm sure some people are here because this was the safest option that came to mind. And if it's no longer the safest option, they'll choose to look for someplace safer instead of risking their lives."