LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation
Page 38
Eli sat next to her, reading silently and quickly in the dim light of a flashlight through several machinery manuals he had found in the mill. In one of the back offices, the children, Margaret, Davey and Tommy, were being taken care of by Susan and Reggie. The two weary adults were trying earnestly to get the small ones to sleep after a light meal of more chips and some MREs pulled from Kate and Ky’s packs.
If not for their full supply rations, the whole group would have been seriously hurting for sustenance. They all thanked fate that the packs had remained unmolested by the river.
“Think they can break through?” Rhi asked as Kate came back inside from a quick patrol. She tilted her head noncommittally as she leaned her rifle against a table in the corner and gathered her hair in both hands, resetting her pony tail as Ethan grunted across the room.
“I ain’t never known those stupid shits not to get what they wanted. And they want in here to eat our asses. So my money’s on them.”
“Thanks for the sunny report, but I was hoping someone with actual intelligence could answer,” said Rhi, turning back to Kate. “How’s it look?”
Kate shook her head, taking a seat next to me at the conference table as I took one more look at the map in front of me, folded it, and put it in my cargo pocket.
“No breaches yet, so that’s good. It’s a thick metal fence. I doubt they’ll push it over. And the trees help—particularly on the rear of the property. They help them get critical mass and they even help prevent them from stacking up. But that’s our real threat in front. Not that they’re going to get through the gate, but that they’ll start trampling each other and create a ramp for themselves.”
“We saw this in DC,” I said. “Didn’t matter much to us, since the walls were a lot higher, but they did this against the sides of the Pentagon. Were about three or four feet deep, in the end. That was with millions of them out there, but still. A couple feet is all they need here before a few start toppling over. They’re clumsy and stupid, but eventually their persistence will get us.”
“And the front is a liability because it’s got very little tree cover, so it doesn’t help break up the press at all. Plus, that’s where they saw us come in. The entire back wall of this place is still clear. They’re just trying to press in this side because that’s where the know the food is.”
“So we could still escape over the back wall?” Reggie asked as he reentered quietly from the children’s room. His dark features were worn and drawn, the stress of protecting his children clear on his earnest face.
Kate shook her head.
“We could, but it’d be suicide. No vehicles, and a thick forest that will eventually be full of them. Just think about our friends out front like the leading edge of a tide. If you put a sand castle in front of it, the water will eventually push past the sides and fill in against the back—there’s just too much water and too little castle.”
“So what? We sit ‘round here watchin’ our man parts get smaller, waiting to die?” Ethan’s voice was annoyed and cranky, and he continued to eagerly scratch at his wounded leg.
“You’d be bored something fierce if that were your entertainment,” Rhi answered wryly. “Like watching an ant shrivel. Sooner or later, it gets so small, you can’t see shit with the naked eye.” She turned to the rest of us as Ethan guffawed loudly.
“We’re saying that they’re eventually going to get in,” her voice was a statement, not a question, and it had a note of resigned finality.
“Yes,” I said, not sugar coating it. “If they didn’t know we were here, they would be gone by tomorrow night. Now, though…” I trailed off, glancing over my shoulder. “The whole herd has likely stopped and will be surrounding us soon.”
“So maybe we should run,” said Reggie, sitting heavily at the head of the table, and putting his head immediately in his hands, his eyes haunted by the prospect of having to protect his children from the tens of thousands of creatures outside.
“Didn’t you hear them, boy? Ain’t gonna be better that way. This place is likely already in the center of the herd. Just ‘cause they’re not at the fence don’t mean they’re not out there.” Ethan’s comment was a rare agreement with me, and I nodded once in his direction.
“We need to figure out a way to shore up the defenses here and to distract them. Pull them away from the fences. It’s the only way.” Kate said, putting her arm around Ky as she sat down next to her at the table. I smiled at the love there, happy to have found my family again.
“These things are drawn by noise and light. That’s why they were drawn to the volcano. We just have to find something that looks a lot more attractive than a seemingly abandoned old building. They only want in here because they saw us go in. Now they can’t count, and they always follow the latest and greatest treat. So if we can get a vehicle outside the line, hopped up with noise and light, it stands a chance of pulling them off—maybe all of them.” I tried to keep my voice even, not letting the fear intrude.
I intended to be the person outside the line, pulling them away. And even though I had previously done some stupid shit—like wading into the herd outside the gates of the fortress in Seattle—this seemed like a much worse idea.
“And where do they go from there? Where does the driver of this mystery vehicle take the herd of the undead? And how do they escape?” Rhi squinted at me as if knowing who the driver would be … would have to be, to have any chance at surviving the trip.
I pulled the map out of my pocket and pointed.
“This road. It leads due east and it’s only a mile to our south. We pull them away, send them in that direction. Once they’re far enough away from here, we park the vehicle, and they’ll keeping moving toward it. Eventually, they’ll forget us and keep moving toward the volcano.”
“And once they’re gone, we pull stakes and get the hell out of here,” said Kate, voice serious. “No one needs to be around here if and when Starr gets back.”
“You think she survived that?” Ky asked absently, reaching down to scratch Romeo’s ears as he grunted under the table. I heard the faint thump of his leg on the dingy carpet.
“I’m sure of it,” she said. “Cockroaches always survive.”
“I hear a lot of planning here, but I got one question. Which truck do you think can make its way through a horde of the undead outside? ‘Cause I guarantee you, it ain’t the Chevy.”
I looked at Kate and we both stood and looked at Eli. He looked up, as if sensing the attention.
“Well. We had an idea about that too.”
***
“You think you can drive that thing?”
“Can’t be harder than the flatbed I drove on the dam, right?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I’ve seen you drive.”
“Oh really? Who’s the one that crashed on the open road out front?”
“That’s different.”
“Yeah? Why?”
She walked away from the window, the silence lingering as my only answer, and leaving me staring through the darkness at the large yellow machine parked serenely below. According to Eli, it had a vague, industrial name: a 563C Wheeled Feller Buncher. A machine designed to cut down a tree and then grab the trunk after it was separated from the base, hence ‘felling’ the tree and then ‘bunching’ it with others.
It could cut down and bundle up to 5-10 trunks, depending on the thickness.
But we weren’t dealing with trees today. Today, we were dealing with bodies.
The real attractions of the 563C—which I was now going to call Bessy because I had always loved that name—were the huge tires, the fully enclosed and hardened cab, and the piece de resistance: the huge saw blade located roughly a foot from the ground.
The machine looked like a front end loader, but instead of a shovel attachment, bore a large red bunching attachment on the front. Similar in appearance to a huge metal broom being held out and in front of the tractor by a large robot hand, the attachment had a sp
inning one inch-thick, and four feet-wide industrial grade saw blade on the very bottom. In professional applications, you approached the tree and placed the robot-holding-a-broom attachment parallel to the tree, and slowly sawed through the base. The giant claws would spread out, grab the falling trunk, and bundle it firmly against the metal broom, keeping the trunk from falling to the ground.
But for our purposes, we just needed those nice big tires and that wonderful saw blade. And the pincers would be helpful to gather the undead and force them into the saw, effectively removing their ability to pose a threat.
“Looks like fun,” said Eli, who had sidled up next to me.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I offered, not unaffectionately.
He shrugged once.
“No one left to tell me to go, I guess.”
I instantly felt like a real dick.
“Sorry kiddo. You hungry?”
“I ate some of those horrible things from that shrink-wrapped food.”
I chuckled.
“Well, that’s all there is. Maybe in the whole world, right now. Who knows.” I dug into the pocket of my cargo pants and produced a bag of Cheesy Nibblers, watching his eyes light up.
“Found these and saved ‘em for later. If you go to bed, I can part with them.”
“Deal,” he said, grabbing the bag and tearing into it. He started walking toward the sleeping areas then turned for a last question.
“Have you thought about how you’re going to get that big machine outside the fence?”
Sighing, I waved him off.
“One problem at a time, okay?”
Shrugging again, he wandered away, hopefully to sleep.
“He makes a good point,” Kate said, returning with a bottle of water from the tap, handing it to me as I nodded thanks.
“Yeah, that’s a hitch in the plan, huh?”
“I can only think of one way to make it work.”
“Me too, but I’m trying to ignore it. It’s not a great option.”
We were nearly alone. Ky was on the first watch, and looking down to the floor of the mill through the large picture window, I could barely make out her slim form in the moonlight pushing into the building. She sat down cross-legged on the floor, staring out through the crack between the two huge doors, watching and listening. Rifle and crossbow both laid in front of her, Romeo sleeping soundly beside her.
The group had disbursed throughout the upper floor, with the children and Susan and Reggie in the larger office, laying on old coats they found in a closet off the conference room. Ethan and Rhi had claimed a smaller office at the end, and Kate and I would share the conference room with Ky, since we were rotating watch.
Walking back to Kate’s side of the room, I laid down with my head on a cushion from a ratty couch in the third office, and Kate joined me with a similarly old, dusty pillow from the same source.
“Amazing what you consider a luxury after the world ends, isn’t it?” I joked, waiting for her to settle before asking the hard questions.
“Even now, I struggle to thank the gods for something that smells like rat urine. But I suppose it’s better than a twisted neck.” Even so, she wrinkled her nose as she lay her head down slowly.
“You want the full story, don’t you?” she offered, and I didn’t hesitate.
“Yes please. I mean, you can fill in the inconsequential gaps, at least. So far I know that you’re a meth-headed lesbian, so everything else is downhill from there.”
I managed to get a short laugh out of that. She took a deep breath and began.
When she finished, I lay staring at the ceiling, thinking yet again about how far humanity had fallen. In the better times, when we were all playing by the rules that we had made for our own comfort and survival, the idea of being ruled by our baser instincts seemed so foreign.
Now, it seemed that no matter where we turned, that veneer of civilization was being ripped down. Baser instincts were no longer to be avoided—they were to be embraced as the means of survival. They were the primal urges that ruled the day, and that protected life.
Kate guessed at what had happened to Starr and her other female soldiers in that town those many months ago, and I couldn’t disagree. Only trauma of the gravest extent could break people so thoroughly. Only horrors of a soul-crushing nature could alter the fabric of decent people—people who had sworn an oath to protect their fellow citizens from harm.
In the end, though, there was no excuse. No justification for the death and murders. For the rampant sowing of destruction among an entire gender. Men and boys who were just trying to survive. Who had already lost so much. Now brought low by someone who had been made to suffer at the behest of a sick, twisted individual.
No, for Starr and her soldiers, there was no redemption. But they traveled with children. Innocent girls who were simply trying to survive.
“What are you thinking?” Kate asked, her voice low and sleepy. She was exhausted from divulging her experience, but I know she felt safe with me.
“Well, first of all, I’m questioning whether it’s possible to somehow rescue the girls that are traveling with that maniac without putting them at more risk. The answer is probably no. So then, I’m wondering how much time we have to leave this place and disappear if this whole plan somehow succeeds. Not long, I wager.” These are all things we had discussed already, and she sighed and stayed silent.
“And finally, I’m thinking how hot it would have been to watch you make out with another chick. Even one as butch and crazy as her.”
The punch landed silently, and it forced the air out of my lungs with the speed of a freight train.
After the coughing subsided, I turned back to her, taking in the amused look before her eyes fell and her mouth turned down in sadness.
“Is this insane? Everything we’ve gone through, Starr, this herd, the fucking natural disasters. I mean Jesus…I know…” her voice cracked and fell, as if she were pushing these words through a wall of fiery, raw pain.
“I know she’s probably dead.” A deep intake of breath. “But I have to know, you know? I can’t give up. This is all there is for me right now.”
I simply put my hand on her arm, staying silent and letting her know I was there.
“The last time I saw her, I remember watching her walk away from me in the airport. I remember thinking ‘What if the plane crashes or I die on the way home—this is it’ and being horrified that that was how my life with my daughter ended. I remember the vivid terror in that moment—fleeting but very real—that I would have failed her.”
She let a brief sob escape before carrying on. “Now, with everything…”
“None of this is your fault. You’re a mother, not a god. You couldn’t have stopped any of this from happening …”
“I could have stayed with her father. For her. Plenty of people make do in loveless marriages. For the children.”
I shook my head adamantly. “If your daughter is even half the woman you are, she wouldn’t wish unhappiness on her parents for her sake. What kind of a life is that for a child, with two parents in the house hating each other, and maybe resenting the kid a little bit for keeping them there?” I leaned forward, making eye contact in the waning moonlight.
“You did what you could. You made it work in the best way it could. We all make mistakes. So be it. That’s life. But the measure of our quality is not in how bad we fuck up, but how well we recovery. You’re doing what you can now, against impossible circumstances, I might add. We just need to saddle up and get past this … little problem.”
She actually laughed amid the tears now, gesturing to the tens of thousands of walking corpses outside, whose moans were even now invading the solitude and peacefulness of our second story redoubt.
“Little problem. Well, I think little is a relative term, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”
Smiling as I lay my head back on my stinky pillow, I said quietly.
“That’s what she said.”
***
“How long do you think we have until they’re pouring over in numbers?” Kate asked as we hiked back up the road from the main gate. We had finished a quick patrol, ending at the entrance. Arms extended through the bars like tentacles, waving in hunger as we passed. The sound of constant moaning was a symphony of terror.
“In large numbers? Maybe eight hours … nightfall, possibly. Until they’re making their way over in ones and twos? Not long. Maybe half that.”
“You really think you can drive that crazy machine?”
I laughed as we approached the building and walked the perimeter to the rear, where the machines all sat, like sleeping monsters waiting to be awakened.
“I once drove a tank in one of my movies, I ever tell you that?”
I nodded to Eli as he waved from the cab of Bessy, and Reggie smiled briefly from across the yard. He was working on a beastly looking piece of equipment with a large arm and a series of rotating blades and grinding attachments on the front. It looked something like an unholy love child between a chain saw and a stump grinder—on steroids. I managed a glance at the model number: 325D-FM. But someone had written something on a piece of duct tape near the cab: Grinder 2.
“I can’t imagine that went well,” she said.
Chuckling as we reached the huge wheels of the machine I would likely be driving to my death, I turned and looked off into the distance.
“If I remember correctly, I was still drunk when I arrived on set. When the military advisors were giving me the crash course—one that was intended only to make it look as if I were driving it—I somehow managed to start the thing and throw it into gear. After we were all tossed around like bouncy balls in a dryer, one of them managed to find the brake and stop the chaos.”
“Jesus. Anyone hurt?”
“I had managed to crush the new BMW that belonged to the commanding general of the base. Took out some chain link fence too. But the best part—and the funniest—was what happened to the latrines. Took out the whole front wall on the men’s shitters—two guys in there had the walls ripped down around them as we drove by. One minute, you’re reading the news on your phone. Next minute—BOOM—tank takes away your door. And your toilet paper.” I laughed at the memory. “Classic.”