by Z. A. Recht
They approached the group on tangents to each other, overlapping their potential fields of fire without stepping into each other’s way. The easy method by which they corralled the group of survivors showed that they had done this before and were supremely confident in their ability to deal with threats.
“Everyone thataway,” the younger man said, gesturing deeper into the museum grounds. They started moving, and the two men followed at an easy pace, tracking each of the survivors in turn with the ends of their rifles.
“There’s no need for this,” Harris said as they marched forward. “All we came for—”
“Shut up,” rasped the younger man. “It’ll keep until we get inside. We try to keep it quiet out here, you understand?”
Lips tight, Harris nodded and continued forward.
They came to a roll-up door. The older man clicked the radio he wore on his lapel twice, and there was a metal sound on the other side. Quickly and quietly, the door came up on a dark interior and the survivors were ushered inside.
Upon seeing the yawning gulf of shadows, Rico gulped and lowered his hands. “No way, vato. No more dark and scary places for me.”
The younger man stepped up behind Rico and placed the barrel of his rifle in his back. “Hands up and inside, Jack, or I drop you.”
“Nah-ah,” said Rico. “You already said you guys like it quiet.”
The older man grinned and unsheathed a kukri knife from his back, the wicked and curving blade gleaming in the dying light of the day.
“Come on in, Rico,” Allen said. “Show ’em how we play nice.”
Raising his hands again, Rico entered the building.
Once the door slid all the way shut, lights came on, filling the long warehouse with blazing fluorescence, and the survivors got their first good look at the men that had captured them.
The younger man, Stone by the name on his shirt, was powerfully built. The old-style BDU shirt he wore was tight at the shoulders and loose at the waist, and when he moved, he did it with the grace of a jungle cat. Under the harsh fluorescent light the gray in his beard and high-and-tight haircut stood out, more so than under the fading light of day. Strapped to his side was a sheathed machete on the left, a black .44 revolver on the right. As he watched the group, muscle bunched at his jaw.
The older man, Gravy by the tattoo scrawled across the back of his fist, was a study in contrast to Stone. While still a powerful man, judging by the size of his hammy forearms, he was also slovenly and didn’t care about it. As he watched Stone evaluate the survivors, he itched at his beard and hitched up his ill-fitting trousers. Finally, after long moments of watching, he spoke.
“Come on, Stony. We ain’t got all night to figure this out. Supply run is tonight, and you know how he gets when we fuck up his timetable.”
“If there’s anyone fucking up the timetable,” Stone said in his gravelly voice, “it’s these people here.”
While they talked, Hal took in the interior of the museum. At the sight of a beautifully preserved (or restored) M2 half-track, Hal whistled.
“This place, was it yours? Before . . .”
“Shut up, old man,” Gravy said, and Stone waved him off.
“Take it easy. I’ll watch them. You go and get the Chief.”
Grumbling and staring daggers at the group as a whole, Gravy lumbered off deeper into the museum building. Watching his retreating back, Hal imagined crosshairs at the base of the man’s back.
“To answer your question, no. The owners of this place were long gone by the time we got here. They’re probably safe and secure in a mountain retreat with a tank parked in their driveway. So this place is ours now.”
“So, you don’t have any need for, say, that half-track there. Or the APC. I saw an armored personnel carrier in the yard,” Hal said, his tone conversational. However, there was a tightness in him, a need he could feel deep in his gut to try and jump this man and get out of there.
But he held back. Something about the way the man moved, the way he held himself, even in the face of eight captives who were still armed with assault rifles . . . he was dangerous, and Hal could feel it. But he was also earnest.
“I can’t make that call, sir. I can’t even say if you’ll be leaving here on your feet or feet-first. The Chief will decide that when he gets here.”
“I’m here now,” a voice rang out at the group. It came from a short man, compact in the same way a bullet is and just as tough. He was fast approaching the group, with the older man in tow. “Gravy says you found these guys trying to sneak in?”
“Not quite,” Harris said, speaking to the man. “We were sneaking around, yes, but the sun is setting and you have an army of the dead on your front porch. Would you recommend we march through, calling out cadence as we went?”
The Chief walked right up to Harris, stopping three inches from him. He looked up with a grin.
“Cadence. Nice. You the leader here?”
“I am. Commander Harris of the USS Ramage, at your service. These are my men. And woman.”
“And retiree,” said Hal.
Eyebrows shot up on the Chief’s face. “The Ramage, oh. How nice for you. That’s a ship, right? Floats on the water?”
The naïveté of the question took Harris off his guard for a second. “Er, yes. What—”
“You’re in Nebraska. You didn’t sail here. I think perhaps you introduced yourself as a commander and used your ship name to try and evoke some kind of solicitude on my part. After all, the men call me Chief, which is another naval rank.”
A thin smile rose on Harris’s face. “Guilty.”
“Well,” the diminutive man said, producing a Glock 9mm and aiming it up at Harris’s face, “I don’t appreciate it. If I had the time, I would question each of you separately until someone gave me a wrong answer and then execute the lot of you as spies and thieves. And imposters.
“But I don’t have time. And now I’m a man short for my scavenging run, which perhaps throws off my timetables. That, Commander Harris, puts a bee in my bonnet. Stone!”
“Yes, Chief,” he answered.
“Take these people and relieve them of their firearms. Put them in the trailer. You will be their watch for the evening while we conduct the run.”
With that, the Chief turned sharply and walked away, Gravy staying behind to help.
“This has been a horrible trip,” Allen said. “Remind me to fire my travel agent.”
One by one, Stone took the survivors out of the museum proper and escorted them to the trailer in the yard. Gravy stayed inside, cradling his AK-47 and watching the remaining members of the group as if he hoped one of them (or all of them) would step out of line and he would finally get to shoot somebody.
“Come with me,” Stone said to Stiles, who was next in line, ushering him out a side door. The yard of the museum compound was a silent graveyard of old military vehicles. A half-track, twin to the one Hal had noticed earlier, sat next to a pair of German boat/cars with deflated tires. Past that stood an APC, loaded down with some sort of rocket system mounted on its back. Each of the heavy vehicles out there (at least a dozen of them) was slowly settling into the dirt. The former hardpack was suffering from a lack of maintenance; Stiles put that together in his head.
They’re not using these vehicles for anything.
On the way out to the improvised stockade, Stiles could feel Stone’s eyes on him, watching the way he moved.
“You’re going to have to give up that rifle when we get there.”
“Well,” Stiles said, “do you have anything else I can use? A crutch would be nice. Maybe a long two-by-four? I’m not picky.”
Stone was shaking his head. “No, no. I don’t think you’ll get your hands on anything you can use as a weapon. Besides, there will be no place for you to walk to. The Chief is going to keep you good and locked up until he gets back and decides what to do with the lot of you.”
They arrived at the trailer and Stone twirled the tumblers
on the combination lock fastened to the door. He stepped back and swung it wide, M-16 at the ready for an attack from within. When none came, he smiled and waved to Stiles.
“In you go. Leave the rifle.”
With a sigh, Stiles leaned the Winchester against the side of the trailer and hopped inside. The door thunked shut behind him and he could hear the lock being set back in place. Illumination inside was thrown weakly from a single Coleman lantern hanging from the ceiling.
Hal Dorne sat in the trailer home, peering through the gloom at Stiles.
“Well, that went well.”
Stiles barked a laugh. “You’re telling me. I wonder how they get to wherever it is they run off to? They sure don’t make use of the vehicles they have here.”
“You noticed that, too. It just breaks my heart to see those machines out there, wasting away. Just two of them would be plenty. Did you see the wrecker? Five-ton beauty.”
Stiles leaned against the wall and let himself down so he could sit. “Fuel. Got to be fuel.”
“There’s a whole parking lot full of fuel out there!”
“Yeah, and it’s being watched over by guard dogs that don’t sleep. Be real, Hal. How would you get past all those infected?”
Hal Dorne pursed his lips and shut up, dejected.
Stiles took the place in, eyes roaming over the newly installed walls that severely cut the twelve-by-sixty of the mobile home into a much smaller space. There was a small kitchenette and sofa where they were, as well as a table that had been ripped from its moorings and lay on its side.
Just then, the lock rattled against the door and the air in the trailer home moved around a bit as it opened. Rico came in, propelled roughly by unseen hands, and the door slammed shut.
His eyes met Stiles’s and a small smile bloomed on his face. “I made a little bit of a scene about having to go out in the dark. Gravy volunteered to ‘escort’ me. That fat hijo de puta can move, man.” He sat up, rubbing his shoulder where he’d landed on it, looking around the trailer. “Nice digs. Really wonderful accommodations, as Allen would say. What the fuck are we in for now?”
Hal remained silent, eyes hooded and thoughtful. Stiles just shook his head and gestured at the entirety of the mobile home.
“If we were with the Army group, they wouldn’t have taken us so easy.”
“Nah, man. They would have. You saw how many dead fuckers there were in the parking lot,” Rico said. “Maybe there might have been a fight once we were inside, but not before. Not even you dumb shit grunts would want to bring that whole horde down on us.”
Mark Stiles blew out some air and leaned his head on the wall. “Yeah, maybe. Still. I can’t believe how fast that short Chief shut Harris down.”
Hal’s sharp reply was cut off by the door opening again. In stumbled Katie and Ron together, a thin trickle of blood coming from Ron’s nose matching a red mark on the side of Katie’s face.
“What happened to you two?” Hal asked as the door slammed shut. “That fucking Gravy—”
“It wasn’t him,” Katie said, helping Rico get Ron to the ground. “It was the other one, Stone. He wanted me to go next, and R-Ron wouldn’t let me go without him. He tried to push Stone, and the next thing I knew—”
“Whoo, yeah,” Ron said, his voice sounding muffled. “Tone has one hell of a short jab. I think my node id broken.”
Katie sat next to him, rubbing his back in circles and crying silent tears.
“Allen and Wendell came to their feet pretty quick, but by then Gravy had his AK-47 out and was practically drooling,” she said. “We got to watch him. He seems like he’d fit right in with the raiders.”
Ron reached up with his free hand and patted the hand that Katie had on his shoulder. “It’d okay. Jut my node.”
The door opened again, this time with Harris calmly entering the mobile home.
“They’re speeding up,” Stiles said.
“Yes, they’ve worked out a system to get us in here faster. The fat one, Gravy, he was harping on it, about how upset the Chief would be if they didn’t get their asses in gear. You okay, Ron?”
Ron, with his eyes still shut, nodded an answer to the question. Stiles knew he and Katie had been a couple since before Morning-star hit their little town, spent a couple of weeks holed up together in a theater there until Sherman and his band had come through, and then stayed behind together in Abraham when they’d continued on to Omaha. There was no way a puissant band of squatters was going to separate them now.
Harris nodded, seeming to understand this, almost as well as Stiles, who had been there for the daring rescue from the theater. “Well, we can’t predict what they are going to do. And we can’t plan anything ourselves, really. We have to—”
“What do you mean, we can’t plan?” Rico said, interrupting. “Once we’re all in here, what’s to stop us from putting our heads together and coming up with something?”
From the floor, Stiles said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
“No pla—that’s right, Stiles,” Harris said, glancing down at the tired soldier with admiration evident in his face. “We don’t know how many of them there are, or what they’re like. We’ve only seen the Chief, Stone, and Gravy. If they’re like Gravy, then we’re sunk no matter what. If they’re like Stone, well . . .”
The door opened and Allen came stumbling in, followed shortly by Wendell and Hillyard. Allen looked back with a grin and shot the middle finger at whoever closed the door behind him. Taking a halting step into the mobile home, he looked around and took it all in, the grin fading.
“Wonderful accommodations.”
“Hah!” Rico barked out. “I coulda just won a bet.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying your tour through the postapocalypse Hilton chain,” Wendell said, “because it looks like we’re going to be in here for quite a while. That short shit Chief came back and snatched Gravy away, complaining that Stone was taking too long. He said the ‘raid’ was going to take all night.”
“Good,” Stiles said. “I’m getting some shut-eye.”
“You can sleep in a situation like this?” asked Wendell.
Stiles smiled with his eyes closed.
“As long as you keep it down.”
29 June 2007
0927 hrs_
Hal was asleep on the floor of the mobile home when the door was yanked open with a loud clatter, bright light streaming in to sear his eyes. The doorway was darkened momentarily as Gravy’s bulk filled it, then again by the Chief. He strode into the small space, thunderclouds on his brow.
“You bastards. You owe me one. Him,” he said, pointing at Ron, sitting up on the couch with Katie. “Drag him out.”
Gravy started forward, a sadistic grin on his face as he reached for Ron. Katie screamed, jumping in his path.
“You leave him alone! Leave him be!”
She balled up her fists and swung at Gravy, who took the punch on his shoulder and backhanded her with a meaty slap. She fell and Ron erupted from the sofa, driving at Gravy with fists and feet.
Gravy was more than a match for the tired traveler, though, and quickly caught Ron’s arm, twisting it behind him in a hammerlock.
“Leave him alone!” Katie cried again, leaping at Gravy.
“Fine,” the Chief said from the doorway. “They don’t want to be separated? We’ll see to that.”
Laughing, Gravy dragged Ron and carried Katie to the door.
During the time it took for that to happen, the group was on their collective feet and shouting. The Chief walked back into the trailer and leveled his black Glock at Harris’s nose.
“Enough. Calm your people.”
Harris put his arms in front of him, palms out. “We’re calm, we’re calm. What is this?”
The Chief thumbed back the hammer on the automatic in his hand, a black matte 9mm. “My plans were upset last night. I was a man short on my raid, and—”
“There was no need to lock us—”
“Shut the fuck up!” the Chief bellowed at Harris. “I was a man short last night, and as a result, one of us died. So now we even up.”
The Chief backed to the door quickly, keeping a bead on Harris, and stepped out.
As soon as he was over the threshold, Wendell, the closest, launched himself at the door to keep it open, Hal and Allen right behind him. What Hal saw in the yard in front of the trailer made him sick, because he knew what was coming next.
Ron was on his knees in front of Gravy and another, larger man, Katie next to him, and they held each other as they looked down a pair of gun barrels.
The Chief continued to back away from the mobile home, his gun trained on the doorway. Harris and Hal looked out over the sailors and both shouted.
“You might wanna look away,” the Chief said, and passed his gun to the larger man, who turned it on Katie. “Now.”
The nine-mil and AK roared as one and Katie and Ron both jumped from their knees, slumping together to the mud. Their blood, immediately slowing to a trickle, ran from the still-smoking holes in their heads and mingled in the cold morning.
“Lock ’em back up, Stone.”
With that, the Chief turned and walked away. Gravy stood in the mud, looking down at the bodies and cradling his AK-47 as if it were his child and he was very proud of it.
He looked up into the stunned faces framed by the doorway and raised his rifle.
“Hold on,” Stone said, crossing in front of him. “The Chief said to lock them up. All right? No need to lock them up if they’re dead, right? Right?”
Slowly, Gravy lowered the rifle, still staring wide-eyed and crazy at the group in the doorway.
Stone walked over and closed the door.
“Be ready,” he whispered before it shut.
Wendell kicked the inside of the door.
“I cannot believe this shit!”
“Come on, man,” Hillyard said, approaching Wendell from behind. He reached out for him and was stopped by Stiles.
“No, he’s right. Let him get it out of his system, because we all need our heads on straight.” He turned to Harris, whose face was as ashen as Wendell’s; he never got used to losing people and he never would.