Dutch paused for a second then realized Gunny had seen the Eagle, Globe and Anchor tattooed on his forearm.
He laughed, the relief of rescue and hunger making him giddy then said, “I hope you ain’t Chair Force. I’d never live that down.”
“Not all of us are Dogfaces,” Griz said over his shoulder, shaking hands with another man through the bars. “Semper Fi, Marine. Glad you made it.”
“How come those two are dead?” Gunny asked, indicating the two bodies that were reeking near the entrance.
The inmates got quiet. The giddy happiness in the air evaporating instantly. There was something wrong, Gunny sensed. Something horrible? Something shameful? He glanced at Griz. He felt it, too. He played his light over the cells, really taking them in this time, not just looking for undead or survivors. The cells on the left, the drunk tanks, didn’t have any sinks or toilets. The ones on the right did. A man could live a few weeks, maybe a month, without food. But not without water. Three days. Four, at most, and the body would shut down. Swollen tongue, severe cramps as the intestines and stomach dried out, unable to even cry tears from the pain. Nose starts bleeding as the mucous membranes dry and crack. Blinding headaches as the brain shrinks from lack of fluids. It’s an agonizing and slow way to die.
He shone his light to the cells with the toilets and sinks. The bunks were bare. He could see pieces of blankets torn into strips stacked near the sink. In the corridor were other strips, some still damp, trampled by the undead that had been down here. It didn’t take much to put it together. The inmates with the water were soaking down pieces of blankets and tossing them across the corridor, over the heads of the constantly reaching zombies, and into the other cells. Some of them hadn’t made it all the way across, but enough did so they could suck the moisture out of them, enough to keep the men alive.
“Damn,” Griz said under his breath when he put it together, unable to imagine being in a situation so desperate or hopeless.
Gunny said nothing, played his light over the silent men with haunted eyes gripping the bars, slowly making his way back up to the beginning of the hallway. He scanned the cell where the two dead men lay. There were no pieces of blankets inside, just a few trampled in the corridor that had probably been tossed from one of the cells far down the hall. It would have been futile. The angle was wrong and you couldn’t even reach out to grab a near miss with all the undead clawing through the bars at you. He shone the light across the hallway to where a small guy wearing glasses and a man bun stood, shielding his eyes from the beam. The cell was oversized, easily as long as two of the others. There were four bunks, but he was the only prisoner. His bed was complete. Unmade, but a sheet, a pillow and a blanket lay on it. There were a toilet and a sink in the corner. There were books scattered around and pictures from magazines hanging on the wall. He saw toothpaste and shaving cream on the shelf. He could see empty cookie boxes, potato chip bags, and candy wrappers. There were Tuna pouches and protein bars. Things a long term resident would be allowed to have. This man had been in here for a while.
Gunny thought back to when they were coming down the stairs. The urgently whispered words he’d half heard. Now it made sense that the first sounds from the men weren’t shouts of joy at the rescue, but angry words of warning from someone. Someone who was awake and heard them approach. Someone not sleeping, not weak from hunger or thirst. This someone standing before him. This mild looking man who had casually watched two men die in one of the worst ways possible, and did nothing. Had he just threatened the survivors if they said anything? Death threats to their family, if they were still alive? Probably.
“I think we found them,” Scratch said, hurrying down the stairs with a key ring in his hand.
He headed for the door where Gunny was standing, getting ready to open it.
“Not this one,” he said, all the pieces to the puzzle clicking into place in his head.
“Why not?” Scratch started to say, but stopped short when he saw Gunny just standing there with his rifle aimed at the floor, but his finger was tapping on the guard, ready to put it to the trigger. He was staring at the little man. There was a twitch under his left eye and Scratch could see that he was pissed.
Royally pissed.
“I’m going to put a bullet in your stupid man-bun face” pissed.
He backed up, went behind him and started for the other doors, throwing a questioning look at Griz. He just shook his head once. He looked mad enough to kill, as well. Lars and Stabby could feel the tension as they came down the stairs, so they kept their mouths shut and helped the weakened men up the stairs and out into the sunshine.
Griz and Gunny just waited for them to clear out, said nothing, but nodded to the men, at their heartfelt thank you’s, as they made their way past them.
When Dutch walked by, leaning on Stabby for support, he spat out “uk-a-sha-na” at the little man. Asshole.
“Ask him why he’s in here,” he said. “Ask him about that little girl. She was only 14.”
When the last of them had made their way up the stairs, just he and Griz remaining, the man finally spoke.
“I’m sorry about what happened, but it’s not what you think,” he said, trying to make them understand, his East Coast accent coming through clearly. “I didn’t hurt her. I was her teacher, it was consensual. She wanted me to.”
The two men said nothing. Just stared.
“Look,” he tried being reasonable again, glancing to the keys in Gunny’s hand. “The people here are so backward. We didn’t really do anything wrong. Even if the law says I did do something that was technically illegal, I deserve my day in court.”
“And I just bet you wanted the venue changed to the ninth circus, didn’t you?” Griz asked.
The man flinched then ignored the question. “You can’t just leave me here,” he said, stating a fact.
Griz turned and walked off, heading up the stairs.
Obviously, he could.
Gunny pointedly turned and looked at the two dead men in the drunk tank, the flies buzzing lazily, feasting and laying their eggs.
He tried smiling at Gunny. Surely this man would see it wasn’t his fault. Surely he must understand desperate times demanded desperate actions.
The bearded man just stared at him. Judging him. There was no more anger in his eyes, no sympathy either. His face might as well have been carved in granite. He looked at him like he was less than nothing. Like he wasn’t worth the effort to waste words on, or have an opinion about.
The little man gripped the bars harder, his smile fading, his face tightening with alarm.
“I didn’t know how long we’d be down here!” he said, his voice going up an octave and cracking with fear. This hard man with the hard eyes had judged him and found him wanting. “I couldn’t give my food to them. It’s better for one to maybe survive than none, right?”
Gunny pulled the key off of the ring for the little man’s cell, walked across the hall and tossed it in. It landed on one of the bodies, causing a cloud of angry flies to buzz up before they settled back down to their feast. He didn’t even look in his direction as he headed out of the basement and away from the stench. The man’s pleading and denials of doing anything wrong were cut off abruptly when Gunny closed the soundproof doors at the top of the stairs.
Chapter Twenty-One
No one said a thing as Gunny came up alone and closed the door behind him.
“Find anything good?” he asked, when he saw them gathered around the forced open weapons locker.
“Nothing special,” Griz said. “Some ammo and a few shotguns. Mossbergs and revolvers. But they’re Smith and Wesson and we’ve got a lot of new people joining us.”
“I think I saw a gun shop down the block, let’s keep clearing. We’ve still got a lot to do,” he said and they went back out to the street where Bastille was videotaping and interviewing the former prisoners.
“Hey!” Griz yelled at him. “Get them some food out of my truck then rad
io back for the SS sisters to come take a look at them.”
“Eat slow, boys,” Gunny told them as they walked up. “Dutch, you know the drill, right? Keep these guys alive. I’m sure you Leathernecks had some survival training. It wasn’t all coloring books and crayons was it?”
Dutch grinned at him, nodded and gave a mock salute from where he was sitting on the trailer, still weak and shaky.
“Yeah. Don’t want to die now of a busted stomach or biochemical imbalance,” he said, enjoying the sun and being out of his cage. “I paid attention in class when I wasn’t eating the glue.”
“Headshots are the only thing that will put them down,” Lars said as they laid the small cache of guns and ammo on the lowboy. “But the cab of the truck is safe if you happen to see a bunch of them.”
The men were still in awe of the bloody carnage on the steps of the courthouse. A few of them looked like they could have thrown up, that’s if there had been anything in their shrunken bellies to be able to do so.
“We’re going to keep clearing,” Gunny said. “Stay here on the street. Our medics will be here in few minutes. Don’t go in any of the houses, we’ve got teams all over taking out the trash. You might get yourselves shot.”
With that, they headed over to the next building in line, a three-story brick that held law offices.
There were few surprises the rest of the day, mostly just drudge work of going room to room, checking closets and basements. They came across a few zombies and drug them out to the street once they’d been dispatched, so the cleanup crew could load them onto Griz’s lowboy in the morning. It was strange going through peoples’ private places, seeing how others lived, and in some cases, how they died. They’d all been to other’s houses in the past, of course. Friends and family. But other than maybe your closest buddies, whose house did you really know? Whose house had you been in every room, knew what was behind every door? Seen the private areas that weren't necessarily secret, but were off limits simply out of respect?
They came across an older couple in the apartment above the café that had killed themselves. They were in bed, holding hands, both with gunshots to the head.
“We’ll mark the door,” Gunny said. “They don’t deserve to be tossed in the pit with the zombies. Preacher can give them a decent burial.”
When they finally got to clear the Gun Shop, Griz was ecstatic. It was small and mostly stocked with hunting rifles, but since this was the county seat, it was probably the biggest one for miles. It was well equipped for gun smithing with a benchtop 3-in-1 lathe and mill and drawer after drawer of fine instruments, specialty tools, reloading equipment and dies. The shotgun style building had a single lane shooting range in the back. Griz kept saying, “Thank you, Chesty” every time he opened a cabinet and found more tools or boxes of parts. They finally had to drag him away, but he laid claim to the shop and the apartment above it. He hastily scrawled “Griz’s Gun Works” on a piece of cardboard and taped it to the door.
“I wish I hadn’t gotten it like this, but it’s always been a dream of mine to have a little shop,” he said, his eyes nearly spilling over, his big grin splitting his bearded face.
“Feds woulda had you shut down in a week,” Gunny deadpanned. “Illegal modifications. I can just see you building a grenade launching Gatlin’ gun or something.”
They continued clearing until near dark, finally finishing the entire downtown area and declaring it zombie free. As they trudged back toward the truck, tired, but relieved the job was over, other teams were already waiting. Their sectors were cleared, bodies stacked on the streets and awaiting tomorrow's crew to do the cleanup work. The sun was an orange ball sinking below the horizon, casting long shadows in the town. As they gathered around the trailer, waiting for the last few teams to finish up their areas and studiously avoiding looking at the carnage on the courthouse steps, a ragged group appeared at the top of the stairs.
It was the people from the fallout shelter, and they shielded their eyes as they came out into the fading light.
Gunny waved. “Come on down,” he yelled up to them. “The town is almost cleared. It’s safe.”
Deputy Collins was reloading one of her magazines from the boxes of ammo laying out on the trailer. She called up to them to take the side door. It wasn’t quite so messy.
They decided that would be a prudent choice and after a few moments, joined up with the dozens already gathered around the truck. They were hesitant at first and Gunny guessed a few of them had stayed hidden, possibly even had guns pointed at them. That’s what he would have done if confronted with a group of heavily armed strangers, if you weren’t entirely sure they were as friendly as they appeared.
He walked up to the man who appeared to be their leader and introduced himself.
“Hi,” he said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and sticking out his hand. “I’m John Meadows.”
They shook and the man introduced himself as Mayor Winthrop.
The small group that was with him were mostly women, a few men. No children. It must have happened fast here. Too fast to do anything but run for your lives and hope you made it to the shelter before you were ripped apart. They were all either staring at the ground, or away from the killing field on the courthouse steps. The men and women in Gunny’s group were nearly immune to it now, they no longer viewed the undead as any type of human. Killing them was less of a moral dilemma than stepping on a poisonous spider. If you didn’t kill them, they would certainly kill you. Even though they had a human form, Preacher had assured them all that they were soulless creatures, best to be quickly put out of their misery. Griz had trained them all to react and dispatch instantly, these creatures were not to be pitied or grieved for, but put down like the mad dogs they were.
The Mayor and his entourage were still trying to come to grips with people they had known being splayed out in gruesome fashion all over the courthouse steps.
Gunny could see their discomfort. Their hesitation. Their fear.
“Look, I’m sorry for your losses but there really is no other way of dealing with these… um… things. We’ll have a cleanup crew out here in the morning,” he said. “We’ve dug a mass grave and they’ll be buried a few miles north of town. Why don’t y’all camp out with us tonight, we can help you get settled back in your houses tomorrow.”
The Mayor nodded, unsure what else they could do. After lengthy discussions in the shelter and spying on this group of people, seeing there were a number of women with them, they had decided to take a chance. In the end, they only had two options. Introduce themselves and hope this group of hard looking people weren't going to do them harm, or turn tail and run away. They really had no place to run though. The Mayor signaled to some people still hiding in the building and another half dozen joined them after a few minutes.
The SS sisters took them all to the front of the truck where there would be a little bit of privacy and started checking them for any bites or scratches in the beam of the headlights.
Collins came up to Gunny, Griz and the boys a few minutes later, announcing that the last of the teams had returned. All present and accounted for. They’d be ready to go as soon as Sara and Stacy finished up with the Mayor and his people.
“Mount up!” Griz hollered at the lounging men and women who were swapping stories and introducing themselves to the newcomers. “Let’s get some chow!”
That was met with more than a few grimaces. It was hard to have an appetite with so much death just a hundred yards away.
Dinner was a festive affair, another all-out effort by Cookie and Martha. All day long, the people in the camp had heard sporadic gunshots and had only had the one radio transmission from Bastille asking for the medics. They were nervous, worried and concerned. They tried to keep themselves busy, but there was an edge of fear that was finally alleviated when they gathered around the truck to watch the men and women unloading from Griz’s lowboy along with some new people. There were shouts of relief and joy as the tea
ms were led into the circle of trucks and given the best camp chairs near the fire. There was much hand shaking and back patting from everyone as some of the darkness hanging over many of them from the day’s grizzly work started to lift.
After dinner, Gunny found Stabby deep in the shadows outside the edge of the firelight. He was leaning against a truck, smoking one of the cigarillos the boys were fond of.
“You hiding out? The kids are looking for you, they want a story” he said.
“Nah, mate. Just ain’t feeling it.”
Gunny sat on the battery box step of the rig and pulled out his own fixings for a cigarette. He rolled slowly, sprinkling the tobacco with care in the flickering light. He had an idea what Stabby was going through, what everyone went through their first time in a heated battle where the outcome was unsure. Where it could have just as easily been you face down in the dirt, your enemy victorious.
The kid would talk if he felt like it. Wouldn’t if he didn’t. Gunny gave him time.
“How do you guys do it?” he finally asked. “All this killing doesn’t bother any of you. I know they need to die, I know we’re doing the right thing, but they were still people. Does it get any easier?”
Gunny thought about that last question for a minute before he answered.
“Yeah, Jody, it does,” he said, exhaling the fragrant smoke of pure tobacco. “You gotta remember, me and Griz were in the killing business for a lot of years. Scratch was only over in the ‘Stans for six months, but his unit was in the worst of it. Hollywood must have seen some pretty sick stuff from the Cartels down south.”
“I guess you get used to it,” Stabby said, a little resignedly.
“Sad to say, but you do,” Gunny replied. “I remember the first man I killed. I still think about him sometimes. I still remember the look on his face, what he was wearing, the way he held his hand up to try to stop me. He needed killing, there was no doubt. He’d been planting IED’s along the road and we caught him red-handed. I remember it like it was yesterday, but the rest, I couldn’t tell you about. I reckon I got used to it.”
The Zombie Road Omnibus: The Road Kill Collection Page 50