Survivors

by Z. A. Recht

  “With due respect to Clausewitz, Commander Harris, we need us a plan.”

  “Yes,” Harris said, still shaken. He looked around the trailer and saw all sets of eyes on him. Stiles’s none-too-subtle reminder of his former rank worked in him. These were his people. He needed to take care of them. As his resolve hardened, so too did his face.

  “Right. First off, did anyone hear what Stone said as the door closed?”

  “He said, ‘Be ready,’” said Hal. “What do you think it means?”

  Harris was already nodding. “I think, gentlemen, that a good man is about to shed his indifference. What do we have available?”

  Allen picked his head up. “Pipes,” he said. He went to the small kitchen area and pointed. “Under here, PVC. We got a sink.” He rapped on it with his knuckles. “Stainless steel. And if the water heater is still in here . . .”

  His voice trailed off as he opened panels, rummaging.

  “Fuck yeah. Two feet of copper whip right here. We just need to get it loose.”

  Hal stood, stretching. “Finally. I can contribute something.” He bent down and reached into his boot, removing a six-inch Crescent wrench.

  “What?” he responded to the looks aimed at him. “Mechanic, remember? Let me in there.”

  Two very tense hours passed as the survivors waited in the mobile home, coming to grips with their new weapons. Allen, who at one time had lived in a mobile home, had come alive, finding something for everyone to use. He and Wendell had taken turns whacking short lengths of PVC piping on the remains of the steel table to break and serrate the ends of them, making shivs. Rico then rubbed them against a piece of cinder block that had sat forgotten under the sofa, sharpening the ends and handing them back to Allen and Wendell. Stiles took a heater element out of the water heater, courtesy of Hal Dorne, and bent the metal until it snapped in the middle, making a wicked stabbing weapon.

  Hal got the flexible length of copper heating coupling (as well as his short wrench) and Harris found a piece of rope that he wound around the piece of cinder block (when the shivs were done) to create a formidable monkey’s fist with an eighteen-inch handle.

  “What?” he asked Hal, who looked at the monkey’s fist and then back to Harris. “Sailor, remember?” He turned and swung the monkey’s fist with all his might, smashing a panel in the kitchen.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s give these sons of bitches what for.”

  A violent impact on the door of the mobile home grabbed Stiles’s attention. They all came to their feet, gripping their makeshift weapons and ready for a fight. Seconds later, the door opened and Stone came through, holding his M-16 at the ready.

  “All right, it’s time to . . . Jesus. What are you, the Warriors? Follow me.”

  Rico pulled the door shut, getting between it and Stone. “Follow you? Fuck you, puto. How do we know—”

  “Rico,” Harris said, “stand down. Didn’t I tell you that Stone was one of the good guys? So what is it? Do you let us out of here and pretend that you don’t know what happened?”

  Stone straightened. “No, sir. I go with you. Kind of have to, now. The Chief won’t stand for any kind of insubordination, and I think knocking out the guard and letting you folks out would get me something harsh.” He held up two sets of keys. “These are for the APC and the wrecker.”

  “Thank God,” Hal Dorne said. “I call wrecker. Stiles rides shotgun with me.”

  Stiles nodded. “Speaking of, where’s my Winchester?” He missed the gun.

  Stone shook his head. “No can do. Your weapons, all of them, are inside the museum. Gravy’s brother is there with them, cataloging them into our collection.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Stone said. “Say we don’t get past him quietly? He sounds an alarm, the entire compound will be down on our heads.”

  “It’s what we talked about, men,” Harris said. “Except now we don’t have to try hot-wiring anything. Is there gas in those vehicles?”

  “Yes,” Stone said. “I filled them up earlier. We have to go. Shift change is in an hour and a half, so half of us . . . half of them are still asleep. The engines will wake them, but we should be able to make it out of here before they can dress and try to stop us.”

  The group looked around at each other. Finally, Rico said, “Fine,” and the other sailors nodded.

  “Well let’s go, then.”

  Stone opened the door and looked out, scanning the yard for wandering ex-compatriots. Seeing none, he stepped nimbly down and over the unconscious guard, Simon, whom he’d knocked out with the butt of his rifle. Stone’s face betrayed a slight twinge. Stiles knew Stone had possibly signed this man’s death order for letting them escape on his watch.

  The group of survivors filed out after him and headed for the vehicles. All except for Stiles, who began to limp determinedly toward the museum.

  “What are you doing?” asked Stone.

  “I’m going to get my rifle. All due respect, but I didn’t come through undead hell with the Winchester all this time to just give it up.”

  A slow smile spread across Allen’s face. “Oh, I like him.” He started after Stiles, and Wendell followed after. Rico, after a moment’s deliberation, followed as well. Stone looked from them to Harris, who was also smiling.

  “Boys and their toys. Come on, Hal.”

  Stiles turned back, seeing the Commander walk after his men, hurrying to catch up, with Hal jogging after.

  Cursing, Stone kicked at a rock, looking after the group.

  “Well, Stone?” Harris asked over his shoulder. “In for a penny.”

  Stone heaved a sigh and ran to catch up with Stiles.

  “Fine,” he said, “but let me get us in. I want to put off dying as long as I can, thank you very much.”

  Stone opened the door and went in, scanning the immediate area for men. Seeing none, he waved the survivors in and stalked forward, leading them to the weapons cache. “It’s right before shift change. There shouldn’t be anybody around. The Chief is still sour, and he tends to operate on a line-of-sight style of management when he’s in a mood, so everybody’s going to stay away.”

  Before long, they came to the room where Gravy’s brother stood, cataloging the weapons and ammo they’d stripped from the survivors. He went shirtless under a black leather jacket over jeans. Stiles stole a glance through the rectangular window and spun away quickly.

  “Good God,” he said. “He’s bigger than his brother.”

  “Tiny,” Stone said. “His name is Bronson, but we call him Tiny. Him and Gravy used to be professional wrestlers. Did you see your rifle?”

  Stiles nodded. “Yeah. Right behind him. He’s one of the guys from this morning, isn’t he?”

  “He is. Go get him,” Stone said, opening the door.

  Stiles gripped his metal stab and limped into the room. Tiny looked up, his face full of confusion.

  “Hey! You’re supposed to be locked up!”

  Lurching, Stiles ran at the bigger man, screaming as his weight came down on his bad leg, and then he was there, stabbing at Tiny with his piece of heater. The first jab met flesh and Tiny bellowed, lashing out. The back of his fist caught Stiles in the rib cage, lifting him from his feet and moving his entire body to the side. Stiles lost his grip on the suddenly blood-slicked heater element and swung his empty hands at Tiny.

  The bigger man took the hits on his forearms and shoulders, bulling in to grab Stiles around the waist. He lifted up, squeezing and crushing the military man. Stiles kicked at the length of metal sticking out from the man’s side, but that wasn’t enough to make him let go.

  “Fuck this,” Allen said, and he ran into the room, stabbing his broken and sharpened PVC at the big man’s unprotected side, but it failed to penetrate the leather of the jacket.

  “Move!” Harris said, hefting the monkey’s fist as he stepped into the room. Allen cleared away and Harris swung the flail, catching Tiny
in the side of the head, right behind his ear. He faltered, his grip on Stiles weakening.

  Wendell and Rico forced their way in, stabbing down at Tiny’s thighs, the PVC pipe making short work of the jean material there. The big man grunted and went down to his knees, letting Stiles go, who fell back onto the table.

  “Grab the guns,” he said to Hal, who stood in the hallway with Stone.

  Rico, Allen, and Wendell punched and stabbed down at Tiny until his large form stopped moving. Hillyard made his way around to stomp on the large head. Harris stood over the man, his face hardening again as he looked down at Katie’s executioner. He bent over and snatched the metal heating element out of the man’s side. He waved the quartet of sailors away.

  “You had no right,” he said, and stabbed it with a twisting motion into the man’s inner thigh. A bright red jet of blood shot out of the wound, Tiny’s life pulsing out onto the floor. They stood there for about a minute, watching the large man go pale as the pulses out of his leg got slower, less forceful.

  “You had no right,” Harris repeated, and turned to go.

  “Everybody strapped?” Rico said. “There’s more in there.”

  “More than we need,” Allen said, and Stiles laughed. “What?”

  “The world is over. There will never be more bullets than we need. But maybe there’s more than we can carry.”

  “We should go,” Stone said from the hallway. “Gravy will be along presently, and he won’t like this.”

  “Fuck what he likes,” Allen said, checking his MP-5. “We’re armed and dangerous now.”

  “Come on.”

  Stone led the group back out, fully armed and ready for action.

  When they hit the yard, there were two men standing over the still form of the sentry. One of them looked up at Stone as the survivors filed out behind him. He hit his partner and pointed, yelling something.

  “Not good,” Allen said.

  The pair of sentries raised their weapons and the survivors answered in kind. The man on the left let off a three-round burst from his rifle before he was cut down by Rico’s chattering MP-5, and Hal’s revolver boomed out once, taking the other sentry in the middle, the force of the blast folding him in half.

  “Not good at all,” he said. “Come on, we have to move!”

  Stone set out at a run, leaping for the door of the APC and yanking it open. Hal was close behind, into the cab of the five-ton wrecker and cranking the engine. The APC and wrecker roared to life as the survivors piled in and on the vehicles.

  A red light began to flash on the roof of the museum proper, and Stone grimaced. “Someone’s tripped the alarm!” he yelled. “They’ll be coming!”

  Harris whacked the roof of the APC cab and waved to Allen and Wendell, who rode the back of the wrecker. Their attention grabbed, he pointed at the light and then to the door, making a gun out of his hand. Wendell and Allen nodded and took firing positions as the vehicles began to move. Hillyard did the same from the back of the APC.

  Men poured from the doors of the museum only to be pounded back by a hail of bullets from the Ramage sailors. Hal turned the wheel to swing the nose of the wrecker close to the building, knocking one man back and crushing another.

  “Bye-bye fence,” he muttered as the front end of the wrecker met with the gate in a cacophony of rending metal and screaming men. Stone steered the APC out the same way, his eyes glued to the mass of infected in the Wal-Mart parking lot, the mass of infected drawn by the sudden noises, who now held their gummy, blank stares on the open gate of the compound. Ignoring the vehicles speeding away, they began to descend on the museum and the morsels waiting within.

  Abraham, KS

  29 June 2007

  1327 hrs_

  A PAIR OF MEN stood on a small rise overlooking the outskirts of a small town. One of them stood with his arms folded behind his back, a blank expression on his face. He wore black combat boots and similarly colored coveralls, a utility belt covered in ammunition pouches and a holstered pistol at his waist. A radio was clipped to an epaulette. A small neck knife on a chain nestled inside the thin body armor over his torso.

  The other man was not nearly as well dressed. His clothes were scorched and torn, and the growth of several days of beard stubble covered his face. He shifted nervously from foot to foot, eyeing the man in front of him. He could feel the difference between them.

  After a long moment, the man in black spoke.

  “You said these people were just townsfolk with pitchforks and hunting rifles,” snarled Agent Sawyer. “You said you could keep them under control.”

  “I could have,” said the ragged man. “But they had help. Soldiers. They killed my men—they killed my brother! My brother’s dead!” His voice took on a steely edge.

  Sawyer turned and backhanded the man across the face.

  Ordinarily, Herman Lutz would have killed a man who dared to show him such disrespect. He knew better than to try and fight it out with Agent Sawyer. The man would kill him without breaking a sweat, and he knew it. Instead, he reached up a hand and wiped the trickle of blood flowing from his lower lip away, spitting into the grass at his feet.

  “Control yourself,” said Sawyer. “You want revenge?”

  Herman Lutz nodded.

  “You’ll get it. More than just setting fire to a building or two. Though I don’t know why I’m bothering. I supplied you with everything you needed to keep that area under control. Look around. Chaos everywhere. I got you machine guns. I got you Semtex. I sent you men and supplies. And here you are, alone, your job unfinished. There’s not much use in this new world for a scum-sucker such as yourself who can’t even keep a hick town from rebelling. I was counting on you to keep order, and you failed.”

  “Like I said, they had help—”

  Sawyer looked as though he was about to launch another attack, and Herman Lutz allowed his voice to trail off to silence.

  “What was that?” growled Sawyer.

  “Nothing,” mumbled Lutz.

  “I said, ‘What was that?’”

  “Nothing, Sawyer. Nothing. Just give me another chance to show you what I can do.”

  Sawyer flashed Lutz a grim smile. “You’ll get that chance. Do you have any men left, besides yourself?”

  Lutz shrugged. “Maybe half a dozen, a couple miles behind me. They’re the only other ones who got away.”

  “Then we have the advantage of numbers, and surprise,” mused Sawyer. “They’ll be well dug in, but they’re expecting infected, not live opponents. We’ll take them fast. And then the cure will be ours.”

  Lutz said nothing, simply stood behind his superior, staring at the ground, his teeth clenched. “And I’ll be able to avenge my brother. I can’t wait to kill these bastards.”

  He saw a smile play across Sawyer’s hard-etched features. “Mason, Mason . . . I know you’re out there. And I’m coming for you.”

  Apparently, he had a bone to pick, too.

  Lutz followed Sawyer back to a clearing where his team was hastily erecting a command tent. Black-clad troops moved quickly and efficiently through the forest, bringing supplies from the trucks and HMVs that couldn’t make it past the trees that fenced the clearing. Aerial reconnaissance had picked out the area and the several trails through the woodlands that led close to it.

  The raider looked at the activity in front of him and had to give at least that to the man in black: when he had asked for resources, whoever was behind him had pulled out all the stops.

  “Go and get your men,” Sawyer said. “Bring them here and stand by until we’re settled in. We won’t move on Abraham until well past sunset, so that will give us plenty of time to plan our assault. You know things about the town, yes? Numbers, weapons, et cetera?”

  Lutz nodded. Sawyer answered with a grim smile.

  “Good. Now get your people. And Lutz?”

  He stopped and looked back. He’d already turned away to do as he was told, as much as it galled him to be ordered
around.

  “Try to stay out of the way, all right?”

  Biting back his reply, the pack leader went away to fetch his men. He knew Sawyer couldn’t have cared less. The raider felt inept under the government man’s stare. If Sawyer considered him to be good at things, he’d feel like an asset, but from the way Sawyer had talked to him. . .

  Lutz squared his shoulders. He’d show Sawyer how he had misjudged his usefulness. Even without his brother, who’d been killed by a small army contingent passing through this area, Herman Lutz was more than just a bad-tempered man with some men and guns.

  Agent Sawyer found his own team leader. “Huck! Sitrep.”

  Lieutenant Finnegan, whose new nickname was “Huck,” now that he’d been placed under Agent Sawyer’s command, always grimaced when he heard it. This scant evidence of the agent’s sense of humor was perhaps the only scrap he ever showed, and the LT could do without it.

  “Sir. Supplies are in place and the drivers are preparing to refuel the vehicles. The generator is set up and should be ready for you. Vasquez got a message from Command that the intel you requested has been sent, whenever you can retrieve it. Setting the watch and bunking the men down until the recon team returns.”

  Sawyer dismissed the LT and turned to the command tent. Huck followed him. The briefcase was there, set up near a compact communications stack that would connect the camp to the outside world. A nearby cell transmission tower was serving as their broadcast antenna; the RSA satellites had taken control of most others in geosynchronous orbit and the skies belonged to them. There were a few exceptions, of course: remnants of the old government hiding out at installations around the continental forty-eight that didn’t know when they’d been beat; one or two persistent hackers in northern California.

  Sawyer’s smile turned chilly, and Huck knew he was thinking about something violent. The LT turned on the laptop and saw the information he’d requested already in his inbox. He gestured to it, and as Sawyer paged through the files, the smile on his face grew wider and colder.