"Can you give me a hand with Greene, we need to feed him something and give him some water"
"Sure," Tommy shrugged.
"Lucas, do you need anything else?"
"No, Ira will be back soon."
They climbed back into the Hummer and together set Greene upright against the back of the modified rear section. Tommy grabbed a slice of protein loaf and a canteen of water while Robert carefully removed the gag.
Licking his cracked lips with a dry tongue Greene stayed unusually quiet. He took a mouthful of water and held it in his mouth a moment before slowly swallowing it. Then bit a small mouthful of the proffered bread, and so on until he had eaten the last bite pinching Tommy's finger between his teeth despite their attempts at caution.
Robert gave him a final drink of the cool water and started to put back the gag.
"I have to go to the bathroom." Greene spat while he still could.
“Hold it.” Robert said his voice short and crisp.
"You can't let me foul myself, you don't want to smell that any more then I do."
Shoving the rag into his mouth and tying it before he answered Robert leaned close. "Hold it. You can go when we are out in the desert where it is nice and flat. You'll do it with two guns on you and if you try anything other than taking care of your business we'll shoot you and leave you there to rot."
They got up to leave but he turned back to Greene and added "Unless you feel like making a run for it there, that you can do."
Stepping back out into the light they had to shield their eyes, despite the scattered covering of clouds the sun was bright and cast gray shadows wandering across the ground like wraiths.
Jackson was grunting on the ground while Lucas sat on his back trying to hold him still. They both ran over and tried to help hold his legs while Ira knelt on his left arm.
There was a loud groan of pain from Jackson and his whole body thrashed, they tried to hold on as tight as they could as they were jerked around.
“Okay, it’s out, it’s out!” Lucas exclaimed dropping the arrow off into the dirt.
The tip looked vicious, it was fairly straight at the front, a normal smooth arrow shape but behind the point it was twisted and barbed just like Lucas had predicted.
Jackson had calmed down slightly but moaned and gasped around the stick he had clamped between his jaws. Lucas flushed the wound with water and packed it with a warm green mush that he had prepared using the boiled water and plant extracts that Ira had gathered.
When he was done he covered the area with a clean square of fabric and wrapped it with strips from the first aid kit.
“Okay that should hold for a day or two, then your doctors can do as they need.”
Jackson turned over, spitting out the stick and pushing himself up on his left arm, cradling his right to his chest.
“Tommy see if you can find something for a sling wouldya?”
He nodded and went to search through the compartments.
“How are you feeling?” He asked Jackson.
“Okay I guess.” He tried to move his injured arm around a little. “Better.”
Tommy returned with a blanket, “This is all I could find.”
“That’ll do, let’s get it on him first before we stand him up.”
They fashioned something as best they could to take the weight off of injured limb and by the time they got him back onto his feet Fallon and Baudoin had returned.
They stood on the rocks surrounding the squat little canyon each holding satchels and weapons.
“The Father says that we should stay with you,” Fallon said calmly. There was no anger in her voice as she spoke, not like before when she had been told to go to with them to Helheim.
Robert wondered if it had to do the story she had told an hour or so ago. The story may not have helped her, but it definably did him - he thought he understood her a little better now and her implicit hatred of the city by the sea.
“We appreciate the offer, but there is no need.” he said calling quietly up to them.
Ignoring him they made their way down to them. “The Father insists that we escort you home safely, we will travel with you and journey home tomorrow.”
Before he could offer any further objection Lucas stood wiping his hands clean on a rag. “Now that you mention it, I was curious myself. If you have no objection, I wouldn’t mind seeing this bunker of yours.”
Smiling he conceded, whilst not technically outnumbered his team were in no shape to argue – not that they would, having actual surface survivors coming with them they would be able to answer many more questions than one simple excursion could provide.
Baudoin threw a spare pack to Ira and they quickly gathered everything back inside the Hummer. Taking his time again backing out Robert carefully turned the behemoth vehicle around and started the long journey home.
XXV
Having made the journey once Robert drove faster home than they had driven out, he had to slow himself several times after taking a dip a little too fast and jarring the whole vehicle violently.
Jackson even offered to drive but Robert declined, he was just getting the hang of things and driving in a straight line through mostly flat terrain where the only obstacles were weeds was a far cry from the narrow streets and valleys they had had to traverse before.
They stopped as promised for Greene to relieve himself, he was temporarily untied and allowed some privacy to go but didn’t try to escape.
He was allowed to feed himself and drink a little from his canteen before he was restrained again. Putting up a small struggle when Lucas went to retie him, the quick surgical application of a fingertip to a cluster of nerves ended the resistance instantly.
With him safely stowed away the others were able to relax a little and go themselves before they loaded back up and carried on driving eating a dry lunch.
“How much farther is this place.” Fallon asked from the passenger seat next to him.
“We should get there before dark, if we can keep up this speed. Hopefully they have the Radio antenna up, even if it isn’t working we’ll be able to see it and it’ll make it a lot easier to find.”
Slowing down a little he turned around to the back “Hey speaking of that, Tommy do you want to try the radio again?”
“Sure, if you want to slow down a little and try not to kill me.”
“Sorry.” He replied turning back to look ahead of them and trying to follow a smoother path so that Tommy could get up without hitting his head.
He could hear but he didn’t really listen as Tommy broadcast and rebroadcast a message and listened to the silence that was the only response.
When Tommy was done and he returned to his seat he said “Nothing.”
“Yeah I heard, listen, look at the map for me would you and try to work out where you think we are.”
They drove on in relative quiet for a while, Jackson and Tommy talked a little looking out of their respective windows and discussing landmarks, finally he said “I think it’s about 60 miles, we’ll have to slow down a little bit going through Red Rock again so I would say another couple of hours.”
“Okay, thank you,” he said, watching the road ahead and the gauges on the dashboard, his face crinkled in thought.
They had driven slowly before southward through the unfamiliar terrain before, and he should probably be driving slower now but he was worried.
It was strange that they had had some limited communications a day or two before but they hadn’t managed to get anything since then. Whatever the issue was they should have had it fixed by now.
Could something have happened? Could a shambling Walker-Ghoul have stumbled along nearby while they were out working on the antenna and been drawn by the unusual activity? Maybe they were having a problem with a brown out – could the new equipment caused some kind of power failure?
He didn’t know and up until now he had had too much on his mind to even think about it but now in the relative silence and h
um of the massive vehicles passage over the sandy terrain e began to question everything.
There had been a lot of new discoveries, false assumptions and rude awakenings in the past few days, the world had moved on on the surface in ways that had not been predicted.
The Plague Virus that ravaged mankind was not what they thought it was, they had not waited it out. Full-fledged carriers still walked the earth decades after their mortal lives had ended.
They had been prepared for something like the inhabitants of Helheim but only in smaller numbers, small raiding parties – bands of mercenary killers, that is one of the primary reasons why they had taken guns… but to have encountered them in such numbers, working together however dysfunctionally, in large groups. Warring with each other on a grand scale – it was unimaginable.
The extent of the civilization they were expecting to see was the mountain village, they had hoped they might find some vestige of mankind like that and not only had they, but they turned out to be highly skilled Zombie killers.
Then there were the Inhabitants of the Sanctuary, the decedents of society’s worst criminal offenders transformed into a race of peace loving vegetarian monks… who also happened to be possibly the most lethally efficient killing machines ever to walk the earth.
They had some tall tales to tell when they reached home, worthy of Baron Munchausen himself.
When they got to Red Rock Canyon Robert thought about stopping for a break where they had the first night, but decided to get passed the mountains first.
They ended up stopping further out into the flats and consulting the map again while they stretched their legs and backs. It should be a pretty straight shot from where they were out to the bunker, whereas before they had taken their time and meandered - too much had happened now for the journey home to be so casual.
Climbing back in Robert fixed on a point on the horizon in his mind and used that as a guide and headed straight for it. He let his foot be a little heavy on the accelerator and kept his eyes firmly on the terrain ahead so that they wouldn’t have any accidents but he constantly kept the same outcropping of rocks directly ahead of them.
The day was just starting to darken when the radio antennas finally came into view, apparently they had left the old one up as well and erecting the new one. Robert was glad because after a day of driving and endless miles of nothing he almost missed them, his brain had started to automatically return recycled images of the blank interchangeable desert.
After he was sure that he wasn’t seeing things he slowed the Humvee and aimed directly or them, slowing it still further the closer they got.
There was nobody outside that he could see, nobody working on either of the antennas – they must all be inside, perhaps they had ruled out a problem with this equipment and were focusing their efforts on everything inside? Maybe they had given up on it all together?
That didn’t sound right though, it didn’t sound like Pennebaker. Even if they knew the team was coming back they would be getting things working for future expeditions.
He wondered if when they pulled up people would come rushing out to meet them, if the door was open someone should hear them coming. Thinking about it, hadn’t the plan been to have someone keeping watch for their return? He didn’t see anyone.
As they approached the mouth of the ramp down he slowed to a dead stop and waited in case anyone was coming up the ramp to meet them not realizing how close they were.
Nobody came. He glanced in the rear view mirror at Tommy who despite the disfigurement of his swelling looked worried too.
“Something isn’t right.” he voiced his fear looking around the rest of them. “There should be a sentry and someone should have come up by now.”
“Maybe they had to close the doors for some reason?” Jackson offered halfheartedly.
Slowly Robert pulled the vehicle forward until the doors came into view disproving that theory, they stood wide open like something from Dune he thought, the giant mouth of a languid Sandworm just laying there waiting to swallow them whole.
After several seconds of silence he drove on further, squinting his eyes against the relative darkness inside but seeing nothing.
When they were all the way inside and still no one had come forward to greet them a strange sensation came over him, a surreal feeling that if he had to, could only describe as a four dimensional vertigo. A rush of thoughts and fears had unleashed a flood of chemicals into his system. He felt outside himself. Offset in time and space, somehow disconnected from everything as if - if he knew how perhaps he could propel himself around the universe like a ghost, transcendentally traveling through time.
As the seconds rolled slowly, irreversibly forward more and more of the sterile safe explanations of what could be happening fled - leaving only the more ominous possibilities behind.
With a stomach turning jolt he slid back into himself and had to fight not to throw up at the sensation.
He didn’t need to verbalize his fears, there was something intangible in the air that they all had breathed and even those that were strangers here knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
They all started to get out and as soon as they opened the doors the smell hit them. It wasn’t that strong at first, a smell of metal in the air not out of place in the machine shop but there was something else too, something that made it unlike the normal smell of the ‘shop.
It took a few more seconds for their eyes to try and adjust to the dim light cast by the ancient bulbs but slowly more and more detail came into view like a photograph being developed.
There was something else too in the air too, a sound. Robert leaned back inside the Hummer and shut off the engine and strained in the silence to listen.
He couldn’t quite make out what it was, he had never heard anything quite like it. His eyes wandered the room trying to find the source of the noise. Then he saw it, not what was making the noise but the slightly out of place smell, there was blood sprayed about the room. It was on the floor and the walls, across the radio equipment and scattered vehicle parts.
With a final sickening realization he knew what the sound was, it was distorted by distance and warped by the cement walls of the bunker but he knew that it was screaming.
XXVI
They all recognized it and without saying a word they grabbed weapons and ran into the main corridor which led into the bunker complex.
The corridor split off in two directions to the left the upper level, primarily housing storage and mechanical rooms, the beating heart of the underground complex. Off to the right were the stairs and elevator down to the lower levels with the dormitories, family quarters, library and everything else.
Standing at the junction Robert looked about quickly. “Lucas, you Ira and Tommy why don’t you wait here. Sweep the area to make sure it’s clear while the rest of us grab more ammunition from the armory.”
They nodded agreement, separating quickly.
Robert led the others down the hallway to the left, his scavenged shotgun in poor shape pointing out in front leading the way.
His stomach had settled with the realization that his home was under attack but a sickening thought suddenly struck him, it could be being attacked from within. Somehow had the virus infiltrated the bunker? And now that it was here it could spread through the population and the ghouls he was likely to be facing would all be people he knew. He would have to look into the eyes of friends and colleagues and pull the trigger.
He almost stopped when he thought about his own family, what would he do if he came across his own mother or father in one of the dark hallways, would he have the conviction to do what had to be done?
With that thought as fuel he moved faster down the hallway, maybe if he moved fast enough it wouldn’t be something he ever had to find out. The screaming they heard meant survivors, whatever had happened people had resisted this long and the quicker they moved the fewer would die.
Back in the Machine shop Ira, Tommy a
nd Lucas swept the room, checking every shadow in every corner and found nothing but dried blood and scattered tools.
Going back to the Hummer Tommy climbed inside and carefully slipped the gag out of Greene’s mouth.
“Listen up Greene – there’s something going on out here -”
“No shit, genius, untie my damned hands and let me outta here.”
Tommy laughed, “No way Asshole. I just came to let you know we’re gonna lock you in here, you’ll be safe until we come back and get you.”
“Now wait just a second you simpleton! I’m not gonna just lay here and wait to be ripped apart –”
His yelling degraded into formless profanity but Tommy wasn’t listening. He slipped the keys out of the ignition and locked all of the doors from the inside before climbing out.
From the outside the screaming was muffled but he could still make out the odd profane insult and he just smiled to himself as he slipped the keys into his pocket.
“All clear?” he confirmed with Lucas.
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Through the front window of the Hummer Greene watched them walk towards the main corridor and continued to hurl every indecent insult he could think of at the fat little moron until they were out of sight.
Shifting he tried to keep an eye on them for as long as he could and then trailed off when he was sure that they were gone. Satisfied that they wouldn’t be coming back right away he slipped his folding pocket knife from where he had moved and hidden it when they had had untied him to use the toilet and started work on cutting the ropes.
He kept an eye on the large entrance to the rest of the complex for movement as he sawed at his restraints with the little blade that he kept razor sharp. Smiling at the thought that the little red handled knife was the only thing that had been handed down to him through the generations that worth a damn.
Long Live The Dead Page 15