Elements of the Undead: Fire (Book One)

by Esmont, William

  He proceeded to strip off his extra ammunition, his boots, and his radio gear, placing it all in the bed of the truck. He ejected all of the ammunition from his pistol except one bullet, stacking the cartridges in a neat pile on the seat. With a final nod, he turned and strode into the desert, vanishing into the brush forever.

  Megan sniffed, wiped her eyes, and moved across the bench seat, taking her place behind the wheel. “You getting in?” she asked Mike. “It sounds like we’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  Mike waved his arm at the other truck to let them know they could continue without him, and then climbed into the passenger seat.

  With a last glance at the desert that had consumed Cesar, Megan put the truck back in gear and started driving north.

  She couldn’t stand to hear the shot.

  Twenty-Four

  Private First Class Jimmy LaTour put a finger over his left nostril and blew gooey chunks of dirt-infused snot on the dung-colored rocks at his feet. He jumped as a fast moving shadow flashed across the ground beside him. He looked up. It was only a hawk, riding a thermal on the hunt. For a second, Jimmy wished he was the bird, able to escape the bounds of earth and fly away. He chuckled at the thought.

  The last time he had seen a plane was shortly after he had hooked up with Hollister’s crew. It had been a momentary glint in the heavens, hurtling from east to west before it was swallowed up by the late-afternoon sun. Where it came from and who was flying it, he would never know. He had dutifully reported the sighting to his crew boss, and then promptly forgot about it.

  Not that it mattered anymore. Jimmy had long ago abandoned the idea of anyone coming to his rescue. Hell, if the US Army couldn’t even defend their own base, then what chance did anyone else have? He often wondered about the other soldiers in his unit, the men and women still in Afghanistan. Was it as bad over there? Were they still alive? Fortunately for him, he was on leave the day the world died, shacked up with his girlfriend Felecia in a cabin on Mount Lemmon. Felecia was gone now, dragged kicking and screaming from his pickup truck and dismembered before his eyes as they sat in a traffic jam at the main gate. Jimmy had managed to destroy the creatures eating her, but by then it was too late. He put two into her head as she began to claw her way towards him. From there, it was a frantic scramble on foot, ducking and weaving through the feeding frenzy and barely making it through the gate before it closed for good.

  That hadn’t lasted long either. By the time the night was out, the base was overrun, zombies swarming through every building, looking for fresh sustenance. Jimmy had hidden. Like a scared little boy, he locked himself inside a walk-in freezer in the mess hall. There he waited.

  The first challenge was the cold. That was solved at the end of the third day when the generators failed. Then the heat became a problem, exacerbated by the suffocating stench of rotting food and his own waste. Finally, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, when he reached the point where he figured it would be better to be eaten alive than to die like a trapped animal, he had ventured out. The zombies were gone.

  Signs of the battle were everywhere, bits and pieces of corpses, morsels of discarded flesh, and pools of congealed blood. But no one else was alive, and no infected ones remained. He was alone.

  Jimmy’s first thought had been to find out what had happened to everyone, to see if anyone else was still alive. That was a dead-end. Without power, communications were no longer an option. Fortunately, the Army was still a largely paper-based organization, and Jimmy found, after a little searching in the base commander’s office, a treasure trove of information about the final hours. What he read cemented his convictions that there was little chance of anyone else being alive.

  The infection had come out of nowhere, sweeping across the globe in a matter of hours. The first cases were reported in Sydney, Australia, but that meant little, because within hours, the infection appeared in New York, London, Moscow, and then Los Angeles. The reports were rife with speculation as to the source. A biological weapon run amok? A naturally-occurring pathogen triggered by environmental factors? No one knew, and there was no time to figure it out. It moved too fast.

  His final discovery was the most chilling. A set of orders from high in the Defense Department instructed the base commander to prepare for nuclear attack. The government was preparing to launch its entire arsenal of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons against domestic population centers in a last-ditch effort to eradicate the threat.

  But that was then. Today, Jimmy was perched high above Tucson, on the southern end of the Rincon mountains, searching for other survivors. Ever since Hollister had rolled into town, his life had regained purpose. He shrugged off his pack, dropped it to his feet, and began to dig around in the top compartment. A moment later, he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a small nylon pouch and brought it to his lips, giving it a loving kiss.

  From within, he extracted a green blown-glass pipe and a small plastic bag. He selected a bulbous crystal of methamphetamine and nestled it into the bowl. He struck his lighter and took a long, burning hit, drawing the vapors deep into the far recesses of his lungs. All of his synapses fired at once as the chemicals coursed through his blood stream, sending all thoughts of his old life away with the wind.

  I wonder if the undead can get high? he mused, before dismissing it as ridiculous. They didn’t seem to breathe as far as he could tell. Hell, some of them didn’t even have lungs anymore. Where would the smoke go? He chuckled at the image of clouds of sweet smoke billowing from a hollowed-out chest cavity. He laughed again, the high-pitched titter of someone tweaking along the razor edge of sanity.

  He took another hit, this time with his eyes open, and relished the sensation as the various shades of brown and muted green dotting the valley below snapped into focus. It was like watching an HD television beside an old piece-of-shit standard set. Reality held little interest for Jimmy at this point, and he was okay with that. Reality was for ordinary people, and he was anything but. He was a survivor, and he intended to keep right on surviving. But that all depended on how he performed in his new role as a scout. It was a big promotion from body-burning. Huge.

  Body-burning. What a disgusting job. He used to laugh at vegetarians. Not anymore. He was done with meat. Never again.

  That was life in Hollister’s army. Or whatever she was calling it today. It was only a few hundred people so far, but it was growing fast. They were absorbing refugees from the countryside, people who had survived the initial collapse but were now running out of food and ammunition, people who needed someone to follow. That’s why Jimmy was on the ridge; he was scouting Tucson for new recruits. From a safe distance, of course.

  Before things went to shit, he had always said that the world was fucked up, that too many people got away with doing too little. Well, that sure wasn’t the case anymore. If you didn’t pull your weight in the new world, then you became zombie-chow. Fast.

  Fuck. Tweaking hard. Can’t focus. Jimmy realized it was time to get back to the business of why he had hiked halfway up this godforsaken mountain in the first place. Scouting. He took a quick sip from the water bottle strapped to his waist and then peeled open the bottom half of his pack, exposing a long-range spotter scope. He had practiced with it before leaving Sierra Vista, and he had it assembled and mounted on its tripod in under a minute.

  The scope gave him a good view of east Tucson without having to go down into town and risk his ass. He unfolded a map and a small notebook and placed them on the ground beside the tripod. Rocks went on each corner to hold down the notebook.

  His job today was simple: Scan this side of the city, the entry and exit points, and put together a summary of what he saw, zombie clusters, road blockages, likely supply sources, and whatever else caught his attention. There was another scout somewhere else on the mountain. He didn’t know who, but he was sure their results would be compared when they returned. He wondered who it was. Hollister and Pollard were sneaky like that, always playing pe
ople against each other.

  Stop. Gotta stop obsessing over this shit. The meth had a way of doing that. If he didn’t concentrate, his thoughts would run away with themselves, and he wouldn’t get the job done. Then he would be back to burning bodies. Or worse.

  He counted backward from ten, settled down, and put his eye to the scope. He swiveled it north and started scanning. A few minutes later, he pulled back and yawned. What a boring fucking job. There was no way he could do it without the rock to help him focus. So far he had noted a handful of grocery stores still standing and at least one sizable cluster of undead stuck inside the chain-link fences of a city park. He checked his map. Lincoln Park. Baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and lots of fences to confuse the stupid bastards. Why the dumb fucks couldn’t find their way out, he didn’t know. Maybe they would wander around in there until they fell apart and rotted away to nothing. It sure looked as if some of them were on the way.

  He put his eye back to the scope and panned to the left, toward the south end of town. That’s when he saw it. Four SUVs were heading north on—he checked his map—Kolb, into town. They were passing the Air Force base. The vehicles went under a bridge and disappeared from view.

  “Well, hello there,” he said to the wind. “It looks like we’ve got a little company.” It was impossible to see where the convoy was heading; the edge of the mountain range obstructed his view, but north was a safe bet. He pulled out his radio, a military-grade two-way, and cranked up the volume.

  “Jimmy to base,” he said, before adding, “over,” like in the movies. There was no response for a moment, and then the radio squawked.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m at my scouting post, and I just spotted a convoy heading north into the city. Four vehicles, unarmored, I think. I don’t have an angle on where they’re heading, but they look like locals.” He didn’t know why he said that. It just came out. It was something about their speed and the way they were traveling together. He waited.

  “Got it. Good job.”

  “What next?”

  “Finish your shift and then come on in. Call if you see anything else.”

  Jimmy was puzzled. Weren’t they going to do anything? Was that it? Just note down what he had seen and go back to work? He paused, his finger hovering over the transmit button. After a long moment, he decided to let it go. Better not to ask questions.

  “Understood,” he answered. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Ride safe.”

  That settled, Jimmy turned his attention back to the scope. Then he changed his mind. One more hit, to celebrate. He pulled out his kit and began to reload…

  Twenty-Five

  Hollister put down her report and ran her fingers through her greasy, disheveled hair.

  “Fuck me,” she muttered with a frown. She poured two fingers of tequila into a red plastic cup and swirled it around before downing it. Then she poured two more. There’s no way these numbers are right. Three more people had vanished overnight. Counting the group she had executed on Friday, she was down twelve people for the week. She needed to grow her forces, and she needed to do it fast if she wanted to maintain her momentum. Unfortunately, she was going the wrong direction. The ungrateful bastards. The deserters pissed her off like nothing else. She took them in, fed them, and protected them, and all she asked in return was a little loyalty. Sure, life was tough right now. It was tough for everyone. But she didn’t ask anyone to do anything she wouldn’t do herself.

  Except maybe cutting rings and jewelry off of the fingers of the dead. She smiled. That job she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Pollard had asked her once why she wanted the jewelry, useless as it was in today’s world. The truth was, she didn’t really know. She didn’t have a good reason to collect it other than it made her feel good. For some reason, seeing the dead adorned in the accoutrements of their former life triggered an overwhelming sense of loss within her. The only way to make the feeling go away was to remove the jewelry, to take it from the dead and put it somewhere safe.

  She supposed she was sick. No. More than ‘supposed.’ She knew she was sick, but who wasn’t? And besides, she couldn’t march down to the ship’s counselor and schedule a therapy session, now could she? No. All she could do was run with it, see where it took her and trust it would turn out all right. There was a knock at her door.

  “Enter!”

  Pollard came in and stood at attention before her desk. He was a vague shadow of his former military self in stained jeans, a slightly less stained t-shirt, and scuffed brown cowboy boots. Thick leather gloves protruded from his pocket.

  “What is it?” Hollister asked impatiently.

  Pollard cleared his throat. He seemed to be having a hard time reverting to military formalities, as if it was some foreign concept rather than the lifestyle under which he had invested greater than half of his life. “I just got word from the radio room that one of our scouts spotted survivors in Tucson.”

  Hollister raised an eyebrow and sat up straighter. This could be a solution to my personnel problem, she thought. Right out of the blue. “Really? How many?”

  “Four vehicles, heading north on the southeast side. They were traveling in formation, according to our scout.”

  “Interesting…” She stood and went to the far wall where a map of southern Arizona was plastered. Tiny blue pins covered areas she had cleared. Yellow pins indicated areas yet to be investigated, and red indicated sectors deemed too dangerous, areas overrun with undead or too radioactive. There were a lot of red pins on the map. Tucson however was represented by a single yellow pin. It was the great unknown. She couldn’t have asked for better results.

  “How did the city look?” In her mind’s eye, she saw a burnt-out shell seething with undead. Although the bombs hadn’t rained down in this part of the state, it seemed that human nature in the face of crisis was to destroy everything, like a small child who destroys his own toy rather than share it.

  “Mostly intact, believe it or not,” Pollard answered. “A fair amount of undead. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  Hollister’s mood brightened. Although they were in a highly defensible location in Sierra Vista, well off the major undead swarm paths, she was very interested in securing a supply route into the sprawling Tucson metro area. Very interested. Food, weapons, and supplies would be abundant in the former city of a million. Sierra Vista, while well-stocked, just didn’t have the same depth to offer. Tucson also offered control over the main east-west transit route through this part of the country—Interstate 10. She turned to face Pollard.

  “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

  Pollard gave her a tight grin. “I’m already on it. We’re pulling together an armed squad to go in and find out who these people are and where they’re located.”

  Hollister thought about this for a moment. She held up a finger. “No. I’ve got a better idea.”

  Pollard’s face clouded over, his idea scuttled before it left the ground.

  “If they’re mobile, then they probably have good resources, both people and materiel. I’d like to send in a mole, someone discreet who can figure out who’s who and what their true strengths are, before we go up against them. A spy.”

  In truth, she was primarily interested in keeping her army intact, in not losing any more people, until she figured out a way to turn things around. She had to act fast to prevent the people in Tucson from learning about them, from presenting a more attractive destination for her people.

  She chided herself. She didn’t know anything about these others yet, and she was already making plans, getting ahead of herself. They could be stronger than her, though. She shuddered at the thought.

  “We need to tread carefully here, Andrew. I want to take these people, whoever they are, but I want to do it with minimal casualties on our side.”

  Pollard nodded. “I like it.” She could tell he was warming to the idea.

  She gave him a final nudge. “You ca
n do this, Andrew. I know it.” He stood up straighter.

  “Find someone you can trust. Give them a radio, and send them over. As soon as possible, tonight if you can.”

  Pollard chewed on his new orders for a moment before a big grin blossomed on his face. “I’ve got just the man.”

  “Keep me posted,” Hollister said as she poured herself another shot of tequila.

  “I will.”

  She held up a finger. “And one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “What about that boy you were going to bring me? Woo?”

  Pollard gestured at a chair. “Do you mind if I sit?”

  Hollister was curious. “Feel free.”

  He settled into the chair facing her desk. “I think I have a better use for him…”

  Twenty-Six

  Late the next night

  Jack hated I-10. Despised it. Like a straight shot through hell, it arrowed through the desert with barely a break. Traveling at night, he was making good time, though, far better than he had expected. Becka and Ellie were two days behind him now, buried in makeshift graves on the side of the freeway. He hoped he had gone deep enough to keep them away from the animals, but he wasn’t sure. He tried not to think about it.

  He was all alone now. Squeezing his eyes shut, he fought back the tears that had marked his existence since burying the last of his family. It worked this time, but just barely.

  The truck he was driving, an ancient Ford F-250, hummed along the ruler-straight highway like a cruise missile. The undead hordes of Albuquerque were far behind now, and surprisingly, he had seen very few since getting on the Interstate. The lack of zombies bothered him, but he wasn’t about to complain, not after Albuquerque. In places, he was forced to slow down to navigate around sand dunes that were growing across the roadway. The marks of man wouldn’t last long without maintenance, he realized. Still, he was surprised with the speed at which it was degrading.