by D. J. Molles
The two men met in the middle, their companions standing back a bit and keeping a watch not only for infected but for any other prying eyes.
Jerry extended his hand. “Professor, I’m glad to see you.”
White shook it limply and absently, as though he had weighty things on his mind that Jerry was interrupting. “Yes, thank you for meeting me.”
“Well.” Jerry clasped his hands together. “I say we cut to the chase and speak in very plain terms with each other. That will make things much simpler and more efficient.”
White regarded him with a quirked eyebrow but nodded.
Jerry continued. “I’m sure we have our different reasons for how we came to this position, but I think we can both agree that Bus needs to be removed from power, and Captain Harden with him.”
White grimaced. “I don’t know if Bus is a part of the problem here…”
“He’s a part of my problem,” Jerry stated calmly. “They have a symbiotic relationship, professor. You must remove both if you are going to remove either. They are viewed as one and the same. The original members of Camp Ryder support the captain only because Bus supports him. All the newcomers love the captain because he saved them, but they only support Bus because Captain Harden supports him. They’re two different ends of the same problem.”
White shuffled his feet a bit, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t want any more bloodshed.”
“Nor do I.” Jerry put his hands inside his coat pockets. The brass at the base of the shotgun shells was cold on his fingers. “But I also don’t wish to die, and I think you and I can both agree that that is the end result for the path Bus and Captain Harden have put us on.”
“We can just run. Avoid all the conflict. Band together and head for the mountains.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Jerry shook his head. “You’ve got a bunch of college students who don’t know anything about surviving in the wild. You haven’t accepted any of Captain Harden’s guns, and neither have I. We’ve got no supplies, no medicine, no way of surviving outside of the Camp Ryder Hub.”
White’s eyes widened. “But you heard the guy last night! There are millions of them coming this way. We’ll never be able to survive that many.”
Jerry held up a finger. “He thinks there are millions of them heading this way. It’s an unproven threat. Don’t fall victim to Captain Harden’s overreaction to these things. While he uses them as an excuse to take more and more militaristic control of everyone, you’re using it as an excuse to run prematurely. Both are equally dangerous.”
“As opposed to what?” White’s voice rose up a little bit and the young guy with the dreadlocks looked over at them. “Waiting until they attack us to start running? That’s ridiculous! If we wait until they’re here, we’ll never make it out.”
Jerry pursed his lips. “Captain Harden got one thing right. There will be a stream of refugees fleeing from the north, as these supposed millions move south—if they move south. That will give us all the warning we need.”
“That leaves supplies.” White scratched at his temple.
“The supplies are there,” Jerry said. “And there will be more.”
White considered this. “Harden will never just give you his supplies, and he will fight for them.”
“Captain Harden won’t be here.” Jerry smiled. “He’s recruiting more goons to go with him and start blowing up every piece of infrastructure he can get his hands on, the fucking idiot. Camp Ryder’s going to be empty. But he’s going to leave behind supplies, because the camp is going to need them. He said he’s going to be sending all the refugees to Camp Ryder, right?”
“Right.”
“That will be our window of opportunity.”
“To steal the supplies.”
“To take over Camp Ryder,” Jerry corrected.
White fussed and growled. “This isn’t a military action! We’re not taking over anything!”
“We have to.” Jerry looked at the older man. “Don’t you get it? You’re not waltzing into Camp Ryder and taking those supplies. Not without getting into a firefight. Captain Harden and his hit squads might be gone, but Bus still pulls some weight. If my people and your people are all united and they are all armed, we can take over. And once Bus is out of the way, we have control of everything in Camp Ryder.”
“You said it yourself,” White pointed out. “My people are just students. Besides, I don’t want them shooting at each other.”
“They won’t.” Jerry was confident. “With all of our people together, we’ll completely outnumber Bus and his supporters. We go in all at once, everyone armed, and we won’t even have to fire a shot. They’ll give it up without a fight. As long as Captain Harden isn’t there to convince them otherwise.”
“And then we can head for the hills?”
Jerry dodged the question. “We’ll have the supplies to do so.”
“All right.” Professor White looked off into the eastern sky, all the color melting out of it into a golden slag that ran across the horizon. It was already feeling warmer. “What do we need to do?”
CHAPTER 12
Rumors
Timber Creek seemed much smaller now. Staring out at the condominium complex from where his little truck idled at the front gates, Harper remembered how it had felt the first time he’d come there to scavenge. At that time, with nothing but a few weapons to split among everyone, a handful of cartridges, and relying heavily on Molotov cocktails, this place had seemed like an entire world of danger.
Now the burned-out buildings seemed small and familiar, like he knew every charred brick, every gutted car, and every broken piece of concrete that littered the complex. He’d been here so many times even before his first encounter with Captain Lee Harden. He remembered the man, exhausted, weaponless, blood running down his back from multiple lacerations.
Harper smiled grimly.
He remembered he’d told Lee to get lost… among other things.
Over the past three months, they’d been there many more times. It was Lee’s preferred spot to take them for putting some rounds downrange and to practice their squad tactics. And now Harper was here with the twenty volunteers from Camp Ryder.
To train them, apparently.
Harper had no idea how to train people into a working unit, so he did exactly what he remembered Lee doing: swept the complex for infected, split everyone into two groups, instructed one group while the other watched their backs.
The first ten lined up, facing one of the long brick condominium buildings. Harper took a roll of duct tape and pasted ten crosses at chest height, at even intervals along the wall. One for each trainee. Then he paced them back about fifteen yards.
As he did this, he noticed the almost military rigidity of the trainees, and it pissed him off a bit.
He was no firearms expert. And he sure as hell wasn’t a drill instructor. He didn’t know what these people anticipated when he told them he would be training them, but it wasn’t going to be any crawling under barbed-wire fences or bullshit like that. As far as Harper was concerned, that was great for what Lee referred to as “stress inoculation,” when you were trying to get Johnny Doughboy out of his comfort zone. But all of these people were already inoculated to stress in the worst way, and the proof of it was that they were still alive.
He crossed his arms. “Everyone relax,” he grouched. “You’ve all learned the basics of how to work and sight your rifle—stance, grip, trigger pull, good sight picture and sight alignment. Take your time. Put ten rounds in your target.”
He stepped back and waited.
It took everyone a moment to realize there weren’t any more instructions.
Then they shouldered their rifles and began sighting in at the duct-tape crosses staring back at them. The first fusillade rang out, always the loudest. It started with a single shot, then grew to a crescendo as everyone joined in. It tapered off and began to take a steadier pace as each trainee found their own rhythm.
W
hen ten rounds had been fired, Harper walked behind them and took a glance at their targets. Not bad shooting, overall. Of course there were a few people who needed help, but there were a few people who had punched out the entire center of their target.
“Again,” he called.
Ten more rounds fired out, slow and deliberate.
When they were finished, Harper re-taped the crosses and faced the trainees with a furrowed brow. They stared at him expectantly, rigidly, as though this were some intense military training. He didn’t know why that bothered him, but it did, and he needed to say something about it.
“Look… let’s get something out of the way here early on,” he said. “Captain Harden asked me to train you folks how to work as a team and how to shoot those firearms he gave you during combat. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a professional instructor. Captain Harden asked me to do something, and I’m doing it.”
He twirled the roll of duct tape in his hands. “I’m not going to yell at any of you. There’s not going to be any PT or punishment. This isn’t boot camp. You’ve already been through boot camp. It was called ‘surviving the end of the world.’ ”
There was a brief moment of laughter and the tension eased slightly.
“I’m going to try to impart to you a little bit of what I’ve experienced,” he said, feeling a little more comfortable as the people surrounding him began to relax. “When I put in my two cents, some of you may already know what I have to say. That’s fine. Hear me out anyways. I’m not going to act like I’ve been through more shit than you, because we’ve all been through enough in our own separate ways. At the end of this, there’s no promotions, no honors, no awards. You’ll just hopefully be a little more prepared for what’s coming. And that little bit might be the difference, right?”
The trainees rumbled in agreement.
“On that note.” Harper rubbed his beard. “Does anyone have any questions?”
The small crowd looked side to side at each other, assessing how open their companions were to asking questions. It didn’t seem like anybody was in an inquisitive mood, but then a younger guy stepped forward and raised his hand. He was a mousy-looking kid with red-flushed cheeks and shifty, nervous eyes.
“Yeah.” Harper gestured to him. “What’s up?”
The kid looked unsure of himself. “Do you think we’ll have to shoot other people? Like… real people?”
“Non-infected?” Harper ventured.
“Yes.” The kid glanced around at his peers. “You’ve done it before, right?”
Harper considered this. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, I think most of us have had to kill crazies before.” He shifted his weight. “But I don’t think many of us have had to shoot at real people. Do you think we’ll have to do that?”
The rest of the trainees were looking at the kid uncomfortably, as though they weren’t sure whether to tell him to shut up or not, but there was also the sense that most of them had the same question: Were they capable of killing a non-infected human being?
“There’s no difference,” Harper said steadily. As the words left his mouth, he wondered whether they were true or not. He remembered the young man at the roadblock when he’d gone with Lee to his first bunker. Back when Doc and Josh and Miller were alive. He remembered putting that rusted, pitted bayonet blade through the kid’s stomach and firing the rifle. He remembered the screams, remembered the feeling of absolute revulsion. Could he tell others about that? Could he tell these volunteers, when he hadn’t spoken of it since?
The kid looked confused. “Sure, there’s a difference…”
“No difference,” Harper said sternly. “The only difference is in your perception. Those people infected with FURY, they aren’t another species. They’re not animals. They’re human beings. And I don’t care whether a human being is in their right mind or their brain looks like Swiss cheese, if they’re trying to kill me, I’m gonna rip their goddamn heart out if I have to.
“The fact is, you may come into contact with normal human beings who want to hurt you, want to kill you, and want to kill your teammates. You need to decide right now whether you can pull the trigger on one of those people. Because in the middle of a shootout is not the time to discover that you can’t do it.” Harper looked at them all. “And there ain’t no shame in it. What’s a shame is lying to yourself and then making your team pay for it.
“You want me to tell you what to expect?” He shook his head. “I can’t do that. It’s different for every person. Some people feel guilt, some people feel elated, some people feel nothing at all. Just depends on the person. If you decide that you can kill a person, and if that opportunity presents itself and you take someone out, my advice would be to not make a big deal about it. Don’t dwell on it. People have been killing people for thousands of years, and only recently has our society decided that killing another person mentally destroys you. You hear that crap enough times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He pointed at the kid. “You gotta kill a man, maybe you gotta kill a girl… you do it and you get it over with. Ain’t no need to mourn ’em or think about them afterward. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”
That seemed to end it.
No one left.
Apparently they had all decided they were capable of killing a sane human being. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. It wasn’t for Harper to determine. He just wanted them to shut up, shoot straight, and learn how to cooperate with each other.
When he’d cycled all twenty through the warm-up, he had them take a quick sweep of the complex again to make sure nothing had been drawn in by the sound of gunfire. While they cleared the area, he re-taped the targets again. The brick siding was looking ragged and pockmarked. Holes were completely punched through in places.
When they returned, Harper was holding his own rifle.
“What we’re gonna do next is some ‘point-shooting’ or ‘snap-shooting.’ ” He turned so the trainees were on his right. “Having a good sight picture and sight alignment is great, but in all likelihood, when you are in a combat situation, either a shootout with non-infected or being overrun by a pack, you won’t have the time or the presence of mind to look through those tiny little sights and squeeze off a perfectly aimed shot. Instead, you’ll shoot instinctively.”
He motioned for the mousy kid to step forward. “It’s Devon, right?” Harper recalled.
A hesitant smile. “Yeah.”
“You know how to point at something?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know how to point-shoot.” Harper smiled. “I could go into a whole lot of technical mumbo-jumbo about why that is, but suffice it to say you don’t have to aim your rifle to hit the target. You just point and fire. You want the long explanation, you can talk to Captain Harden about it.
“Here.” Harper shouldered the rifle and faced the targets. “How I’m going to practice my point-shooting is by linking my body’s muscle memory between instinctive shooting and static shooting. So I’m going to take my time, get a good sight picture, aim, and fire one round. Then I’m going to drop my muzzle to a low-ready and immediately snap it back up and fire a second round without aiming.”
Harper demonstrated and impressed himself by putting both holes within an inch of each other. “When you start out, your two shots are probably going to be a little wide of each other. That’s okay. As you practice, the distance between your aimed shot and your snap shot will begin to decrease until you can more or less put them in the same spot.” He gestured for the line to step up. “Go ahead and do it.”
They picked up quickly. It helped that most of them had probably done this type of shooting before, though they may not have known what it was called. Harper walked behind them and saw the shots striking the target in rapid succession. He had everyone empty their mags and then switch groups. The next group completed the exercise just as well.
Everyone reloaded, and he took them through some other basic move-and-
shoot drills. Lee had explained to him once that he had always been taught to “aggress on the threat,” which meant that when a threat presented itself, you moved toward it while you were shooting. The action of aggressing on the target was effective because it forced your targets into a fear response, where they essentially froze up, torn between the decision to stand and fight or cut and run.
The only problem was that it was completely ineffective against the infected. You could not intimidate them, could not force them to think a certain way. They were there to attack you, and moving toward them only made their job easier. Lee had quickly learned this and nixed the “aggress on the threat” portion of training. Now they trained to move laterally and to back up. Any sort of shooting while moving was difficult, but the group picked up on it as fast as they had picked up on everything else.
It was a good group.
After several hours of drills, interspersed with sporadic sweeps of the Timber Creek condominiums, they took a break for some food and water. It was late morning, nearing midday by now. Harper took an old two-liter bottle full of water and a can of sliced peaches to the tailgate of his truck and hoisted himself onto it.
The mousy kid, Devon, joined him shortly.
“What’s up?” Harper asked as he struggled to get a fingernail under the pull tab of the can.
He expected the kid to have more questions about shooting and killing and frankly, Harper wasn’t really in the mood to talk about it anymore. Not because it was a sensitive subject but because he had already imparted what minimal wisdom he could on the topic. He’d already said the conversation was over. What else did Devon want?
But instead, the kid furrowed his brow. “Sir, have you ever seen Jerry go outside the gate?”
Harper stared at Devon for a moment. “First, just call me Harper. Second… yes. I’ve seen Jerry go outside the gate. Once. To get that fucking mattress he loves so much. Why?”