“Just like your people killed a family of four in a barn less than ten clicks from here!” Cruze barked as she cocked her carbine and placed the barrel against the woman’s right temple. “Another freaking word out of you and I’ll make sure you join them.”
“Cruze, put your freaking weapon away!” I snapped. “She’s no good to us with a bullet in her head.”
She ground her teeth together and slowly pulled her carbine away from the girl’s head. “All right … fine. But we’re going to have to do something with her. She’s a liability.”
I glanced over at Melanie Dixon. She’d taken off her combat shirt and there was a field dressing bound tightly onto her left shoulder. “You okay, Mel?” I asked.
She glanced down at her shoulder and her eyes panned over to the prisoner. “I’d like to know where the hell they got a fifty cal from.”
“No shit,” said Sid, as he lit a cigarette. “That’s serious hardware.”
I hopped into the carrier and flashed a menacing glare at our prisoner. “We need to fuel these pigs up, and you have diesel, lady. That front end loader doesn’t run on unleaded. How much is in the tanks at the gas station?”
Her eyes blazed furiously, and then she spat in my face. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”
I took a deep breath and wiped my forehead with a rag. Then I glanced over at Cruze and said, “Organize the team. Get the Jerry cans prepped. I want everyone ready to move out with five minutes’ notice. In the meantime, we need to figure out how they got that gun.”
Cruze nodded and lifted herself out of the hatch as Melanie Dixon twisted her legs over the edge of the rear door and jumped out onto the gravel. In seconds I could hear Cruze barking orders to my section while Mel kept a close eye on the prisoner, her carbine in one hand.
”Do you have a name?” I asked.
The girl’s lips arched up into a thin maniacal grin, and she mouthed the words fuck you. Any other time I would have admired her defiance, but not this time. We needed answers so I decided to take a less antagonistic approach. I reached under the tarp and pulled out a foil envelope containing sliced peaches in syrup. I tore it open with my teeth and then fished out a large slice with my Buck knife. I edged forward and held the dripping slice of fruit a few inches away from the woman’s mouth.
“We’re not the enemy,” I said, jiggling the peach slice like a worm on a hook. “Your people shot at us first. What do you call this place now – is this Eden?”
Her eyes panned from the peach slice on my end of my knife, over to the pouch. I could have sworn I heard her stomach rumble, so I pulled the slice away and slipped it into my mouth.
“We’re what are left of the King’s Own,” said Mel. “We busted out of Calgary yesterday morning, and -“
“You’re from Calgary?” she said, sounding astonished. “You actually made it out of there?”
“Barely. We had more than fifty people when Day Zero happened. We’re heading north – going as far the hell away from built-up areas as we can get.”
“You won’t make it,” she said still eyeballing the foil pouch.
I said nothing, choosing instead to let the effect of the foil pouch sink in. There was silence for about a minute when she narrowed her eyes and gave me a cold, hard once over. She glanced around the inside of the carrier and then finally said, “Day Zero, huh? That’s what you’re calling the first day of the outbreak?”
“Yeah … what do you call it?” I answered.
She snorted, “This is the part where you try to get all chummy with me and spout off about the dead being the bad guys followed by a lovely talk about how we all have to work together to fight a common enemy. I’ve heard it before so save your breath.”
I shrugged and then gently placed the envelope of fruit on her lap. “You can have those if you want. But I need you to answer some questions.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Why should I tell you anything? You’re going to shoot me anyway – you might as well get it over with.”
I shook my head. “We aren’t murderers. If we could have slipped through undetected we would have done it in a heartbeat. Your people started shooting at us and we had to defend ourselves. Where did you get that machine gun from and what exactly is this Eden?”
“Okay, first off,” she said, sliding her back up against the engine panel. “You’re riding around in armored cars with guns pointing at us. We thought you’d come to wipe us out. You could have hoisted a flag or something to show us you had peaceful intentions.”
Mel snorted. “Peaceful intentions? You guys have a fifty caliber heavy machine gun. That isn’t exactly a peaceful farm implement.”
“And these are our fucking farms!” she snapped. “The land you’ve been driving on has been claimed by survivors of all the farms in the region. While the world burns we’re trying to rebuild – it’s not utopia, but it’s something.”
“No, it’s the new Garden of Eden,” said Melanie with an uncharacteristic smugness to her voice. “It’s just going to be heaven on earth isn’t it? Never mind that you assholes work hand-in-hand shooting at anyone who is an outsider.”
“It’s a fucking start,” she spat at Mel. “This territory has been named Eden because those of us still alive have been given a chance for a new beginning. Anyone who wanders onto our land is a risk to every last one of us still alive. Ever since the end came, Eden survivors have cleansed our farms and villages of the monsters and we have lost people in the process.”
“So have we!” Melanie shot back. “Christ, Dave – just get the information we need so we can get out of here!”
I motioned for Mel to calm down and then drew my attention back to the prisoner. “I’d be more inclined to believe your noble purpose if we hadn’t found a family murdered in a barn a few miles back. Oh … and the way you just string up innocent people on a cattle fence at Highway Two? Classy.”
She clenched her jaw tightly and said, “They probably got caught by one of the security patrols. The same thing with the two up at the highway – nobody from Dinsmore was involved.”
I gave her a small shove. “You say that like it suddenly makes everything okay. Two little girls were murdered – two freaking kids!”
“Bullshit! None of our people would ever do such a thing. Fuck this … I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you morons. There’s no freaking chance you’re going to make it off Eden land alive. The patrols are the law here, and while I don’t agree with their methods, they don’t shoot trespassers … only looters. We have to protect what’s ours if we’re going to survive. Nobody has the right to steal from us and you know something? You’d do the exact same thing if you were in our position.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong about protecting vital food and ammunition but shooting looters? We’d all agreed that we had to protect our provisions with our very lives. There wasn’t a giant leap between protecting your provisions and dispatching a harsh form of justice. Even I wasn’t naive enough to believe that. Then again, who made them or anyone the judge, jury and executioner? If Eden was an attempt to start over, you’d think the survivors would have come up with something better than roving patrols making arbitrary life or death judgments on some poor unfortunate that made the mistake of showing up on their radar.
Sid Toomey appeared at the rear doors, Jerry cans in hand. “We’re all good to go, Dave. How’s the prisoner?”
“She’s just about to tell us where to find some diesel because she knows that we’re going to disappear as soon as we fill our cans. Take Kenny and Cruze and scrounge whatever fuel you can find – I’d start with that front end loader. Oh … and take the bolt out of that fifty cal – we can always use the spare parts. Take the barrel too.”
“Will do,” he said as he trudged off.
I glanced at the box of rations poking out from underneath the tarp and I chewed my lip. I’d planned on releasing her as soon as we’d fuelled up our carriers – she was a security risk for everyone on the team, not to mentio
n another mouth to feed. At the same time, we knew nothing about these security patrols save for the fact they were armed and would be a tactical threat: if they’d somehow managed to scrounge a fifty caliber heavy machine gun together, then it was entirely likely the survivalists were in possession of other dangerous weapon systems and ordinance.
Then it hit me.
These people had run into the Army before, or maybe a former military unit had defected to the Eden tribe, bringing all their weapons with them. That was the only explanation I could think of. If some military elements had defected after Day Zero then we’d be riding into any number of ambush sites or worse, properly defended positions.
She had to come with us.
Not as a hostage, but as a guide. The prisoner was our only source of information about Eden, their defenses and their weapons. If we were going to make it through the land they’d claimed as their own, she was our only hope.
“I can tell by the look on your face that you’re starting to understand just what you’re up against,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice. “Don’t you just hate it when the cold hard truth comes up and gives you a swift kick in the nads?”
“Shut the hell up!” Mel snapped.
I fought back the urge to tell our prisoner precisely where to go and instead, focused on trying to gather as much information as I could before I broke the news to her that she was coming with us.
“Do you have a name?” I asked again. “Mine’s David. The person standing outside the rear doors with her carbine aimed straight at the center of your visible mass is Melanie. I strongly recommend against pissing her off.”
Her eyes panned over to Melanie who stroked the butt of her carbine for effect. “Dawn-Marie,” she said after a short moment of silence. “Are you going to cut these handcuffs so that I can eat the peaches?”
I reached into my web belt and pulled out my KFS set. I removed the fork and the knife and slipped them back into the frog on my web belt, and then I dropped the spoon into the pouch of sliced peaches. I glanced back at Mel and said, “Cover her. If she does anything stupid, you know what to do.”
“Not a problem,” said Mel as she pulled the carbine into her shoulder.
I took the bag of peaches and placed them a few feet away on the tarp as I took out my Buck knife. She twisted her body over to the right, exposing her hands, and I slipped the blade between the two cable ties and cut them. Dawn-Marie exhaled heavily as she slowly raised her hands above her head. I eased myself back out of arm’s reach and pointed to the peaches with my knife.
“There you go – eat.” I said firmly.
Dawn-Marie reached over and snatched the peaches off the tarp. She dug into the pouch with my spoon and started stuffing herself with mouthful after mouthful, the syrup dribbling down her chin.
“These are better than what we’ve been eating,” she said, as she gulped down another spoonful of fruit. “I haven’t had sliced peaches in months. We’ve been surviving on a shit pile of canned stuff – mostly beans, pasta and canned meat.”
“We aim to please,” I said. “Now I want you to answer some questions.”
She lifted the envelope to her mouth and drank down the remaining syrup. “Such as?” she said as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Seventeen. How old are you?”
“I’m sixteen. Mel over there is fifteen. The oldest person in our group is the same age as you – that’s Sid. He’s the guy who smoked you in the head with his carbine.”
“Just a bunch of orphans … sort of like me after the monsters killed my family. The only family I had left are dead thanks to you people.”
Melanie snorted. “You assholes started it!”
“And your little military unit ended it, didn’t you?” she said venomously. “But you won’t last. Those patrols will hunt you down and kill all of you!”
I snorted. “Then we’re just going to have to do our level best to avoid your so-called patrols. That machine gun … you’ve got some military people with you.”
She made an enormous effort of rolling her eyes. “No shit, Sherlock. Machine guns don’t exactly grow on trees and neither does ammunition.”
I nodded. “What are these patrols using to get around? Do they have armored personnel carriers like us?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’ve ever seen – huge waste of fuel. Some are on horseback and others are using ATV’s and light vehicles.”
“How many are in a patrol?”
She threw me smug look. “What? Do you think I’m going to tell you everything? The hell with that! Your little band of weekend warriors will find out soon enough.”
Mel climbed into the back of the carrier, her weapon trained on Dawn-Marie. “She’s playing you, Dave. Don’t fall for her BS – she’s trying to mess with your head.”
I studied the girl’s face and noticed that the defiant glare was still burning, as furious as ever. “Do you have cable ties in your kit, Mel?”
She reached into her rucksack, pulled out a pair of red cable ties and tossed them to me. I swiped them off the tarp and showed them off to our prisoner.
“Give me your hand,” I ordered.
She huffed and stuck out her right hand. I slipped a cable tie around her wrist and pulled it tight. I slipped the other one underneath and then fastened her wrist to a welded tie down beside the engine panel.
“Here’s the thing about your patrols,” I said doing my best imitation of the voice of doom. “If they start shooting at us, you’re going to be inside a carrier with our crew. If we come into contact with any of your patrols then you’re going to be stuck inside a big-ass lightly armored rolling target. That means if they hit this carrier and it brews up, you’ll burn alive. Have you ever seen an armored vehicle brew up, Dawn-Marie? It’s not a pretty picture.”
She tensed up as the entire color drained out of her face. “So I’m a hostage then?”
I shook my head. “Taking hostages would imply there’s someone out there to negotiate with and you’ve made it pretty clear that your people don’t negotiate.”
“And if I refuse to cooperate?” she asked.
I leaned in until I was no more than an inch from her face. “Then we’ll make a decision about what to do with you, but don’t worry. You said we were all going to die out there once your patrols find us, so put two and two together.”
She didn’t even hesitate in responding to my veiled threat. “The closest patrol outpost is ten miles away.”
“And I bet they heard the shooting,” said Mel. “We need to head out, Dave.”
I crawled to the rear doors and hopped out of the carrier. Mel kept a close eye on Dawn-Marie as I gazed over to the barricade to see Sid Toomey and Kenny Howard carrying what looked like two full Jerry cans of diesel each. Pam covered them both from a gap in the wire as they plodded around the smashed cars and over to the nose of Ark One.
“It would appear that our scrounging efforts have yielded us some diesel,” I said shifting my gaze back onto Dawn-Marie, who now looked like all the fight had been taken out of her. Cold hard truth tends to have that effect on people. “We’ll top off the carriers and move out in fifteen minutes. Oh … and Mel?”
“Yeah?”
“Be kind to our guest,” I said. “But not too kind.”
20
Sid told me there was enough fuel in the front-end loader to top up the carriers as well as our Jerry cans. It would be dark soon and I wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and Dinsmore. After a quick consultation with Cruze, we decided we’d keep going for another hour or so. Our destination was a thick stand of trees about 20 km to the northwest. We’d be hatches down for a second night – not entirely desirable, given that every one of us was dead dog tired of being crammed inside the APC’s, but necessary, given the threat of armed patrols.
So we pushed on, bouncing across farmers’ fields and traversing at least half a dozen grid roads.
The temperature had plummeted – small flecks of snow began falling, landing on the hull and then melting from the heat of the engine. We’d covered nearly five hundred kilometers since we broke out of the city. I wanted to take comfort in our success, but what about Eden? My gut, which was rumbling almost as loudly as our engines, told me that for a huge group of survivors to band together so quickly – well, it just didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Every instinct a survivor possesses is to protect what they’ve got. Why would farm families create a makeshift society when so many would slit your throat for a freaking can of beans? The Eden tribe possessed military hardware, they’d laid claim to land stretching for miles in every direction, they’d cobbled together roving security patrols. There had to be a central figure that was pulling the strings. But no leader, however skilled in the art of diplomacy or how inspiring he or she might be, could rebuild so quickly after the last one disintegrated unless they had expert help that could only come from one source: the army.
I needed more information from Dawn-Marie.
We pulled into a hide deep inside a thick stand of poplars that stretched for about three clicks across a ridge overlooking dry, frost covered farmer’s fields. When I crawled into Ark Two, it was shortly past nine o’clock. Melanie Dixon was fast asleep against the rear door and Kenny Howard was perched up in the turret, keeping a watch on things with the infra-red.
“Everyone been fed?” I asked, as Cruze made me a cup of hot chocolate from a small pot on her mountain stove.
She handed me the steaming tin mug and I blew on it before taking a sip. “Yeah, everyone’s had some chow – even our honored guest.”
I glanced over at Dawn-Marie, still fastened by one arm to the hull tie-down. She looked like she’d been crying, and I wondered if the tears were genuine or if she was trying to play Cruze’s team. She stared blankly at the rear doors through puffy red eyes as I gestured for her to take a sip of my hot chocolate. She shook her head and sniffled.
“You’re smart, Dawn-Marie,” I said quietly. “By now you must realize we didn’t want to get into a fight with your people.”
The North: A Zombie Novel Page 15