The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “I wonder who they are,” Micah said.

  In outrage, Austin said, “They’re fucking crazy people!”

  “Aside from that.”

  “Like their names? Why do you always want to know their names?”

  “Say Sonoma has a population of nine thousand people,” Micah said. “All of those houses we passed, roughly a third are inhabited. So about six thousand cleared out of town when they couldn’t get enough food, or got Sombra C and died, or got Sombra C and hid in there, et cetera. That leaves three thousand in the city. A lot of them are down in their homes gardening and raising animals for all they’re worth. They don’t have any interest in what goes on up here. They’re trying to survive. Let’s say that covers another two thousand. So you have the last thousand. Some are too young or old or too sick to be up here, or they don’t have a problem with Sombra Cs. Some have gotten killed off here already.”

  “Micah, I don’t care and neither does Corbin,” Austin said, which was an accurate assessment of how Corbin felt. This had nothing to do with how to get past those people.

  “I didn’t say I cared,” Micah said. “But these are the ones left over. About seventy at the north entrance, thirteen at the south path, and there’s probably a chunk over on the east side. Let’s say sixty to seventy there, too. So these are the last of that nine thousand, the only ones in that whole bunch who are truly crazy people. They can’t be all from Sonoma though. So never mind.”

  All Corbin could think about was how few people were keeping him out. If Micah’s guess was accurate, it was less than half the size of their senior class at Cloudy Valley High. Four or five classrooms of people, and that wasn’t anything. But the baker’s dozen sipping their soup had guns, and that made all the difference. Corbin was down to his bow and arrows, the stupid angel pistol with one round, and a handgun that had two shots left in it. Austin had the gun with the suppressor attachment, and that also had two shots. Zaley had a handgun with six bullets, and Micah had a handgun with three bullets and her semi-automatic. She had a single, untouched banana clip with thirty rounds inside.

  “There are only thirteen of them,” Corbin blurted. Thirteen was a whole different ballpark from seventy. He moved the binoculars over the guns the Shepherds had. Handguns on almost all of them; two had semi-automatics. The knives were irrelevant. One man wore a bulletproof vest. He was sweating in it.

  “We could get in on this side,” Austin said. “Maybe? If we shot them and ran into that corridor? We’d shout at the guard up there to open the door. There could be fewer of these guys at night . . .” Austin bit his lip and looked dubiously from the tall, dirty tents to the corridor. “If the guard doesn’t open it up, we’ll be trapped down there.” There wasn’t anything to use for cover by that door. That was putting a lot of trust in the harbor guard.

  They couldn’t do anything without Zaley, so it was a moot point for the time being. It was late afternoon and they had to get to shelter. “We should go back to the house,” Corbin said.

  “If they think someone was watching up there, we shouldn’t be in those trees or anywhere around-” Micah said.

  He interrupted. “That’s where Zaley will go. Let’s pick a place out here and I’ll go back to get her.”

  Wind rustled through the trees as the men talked over their soup. They weren’t seeking Sombra Cs, and there weren’t any bodies in the grass or the corridor. There could be other men stalking through the trees around here, but Corbin wasn’t seeing or hearing evidence of anyone. It was just these fools, who were circling the cauldron like vultures for seconds.

  They retreated from the harbor and picked their way down the slope. At giant piles of rock, some of it nestled into the earth and the rest more recently dumped upon this spot, they went around it and put down their things. Austin took off his boot and sock to inspect his twisted ankle. It was sore, but not puffy. Corbin expected complaints, but Austin just flexed it and propped it up on a rock. “Give me a minute and I’ll come with you.”

  “Stay here and rest it,” Corbin said. Rustling through his backpack for Zyllevir, he downed his and nearly put it away before remembering Zaley. He slipped another one into his pocket. Then he got his guns, the binoculars, and a flashlight. If something discovered Micah and Austin in his absence, they agreed to meet at the pinnacle.

  He retraced his steps along the south side of the harbor and then the western side. Zaley could already be there at the house or the ridge, turning around and wondering where the hell everyone had gone.

  On the chance that those people by the north entrance were staking out the house and the ground beyond it, he couldn’t just walk over there and leave himself open to being observed. His approach would be slow and cautious. If she wasn’t anywhere in those areas, then he’d have to mount a search. There weren’t any spit checks at the north entrance, but if someone on the east side had them . . . Zaley would either shoot and run for it, or submit and hope it came up inconclusive like it had the first time at the military base.

  Passing the pinnacle, he looked over to the guard. The man turned and stared at something else in the trees. Someone else. Rocks were clicking against each other as feet jostled them loose. Corbin took shelter behind a tree and quieted his breathing. Micah and Austin wouldn’t be sneaking along behind him.

  It was two Hispanic men, who spoke to one another in rapid Spanish. Neither had a stamp, nor did they carry backpacks. Each had a gun in a holster, and coiled ropes hanging from their belts. Corbin didn’t recognize them from the encampment at the north entrance, nor were they from the south path. Their clothes were too heavy for the weather, and they wore gloves. As the men struggled up to the pinnacle, the harbor guard in the nearest watchtower swiveled and watched an ascent he couldn’t see through the trees.

  Corbin had to move. He was plainly in view from the pinnacle. As they scrabbled past the bones, he slid around the trunk to stay out of sight. Then he crept away, but had only made ten steps when one called, “Hey!”

  “Hey,” Corbin said, and continued to walk away. His hand was on his gun, the good one in its holster. Rocks tumbled down as the men slid off and started through the trees.

  “Where you going?” one called in broken English.

  “Back to my tent. Dinnertime,” Corbin said. The guys exchanged whispers in Spanish. One slapped his own bicep and shook his head at the other one. Although Corbin didn’t speak Spanish, he heard no carne said several times. Carne asada, con carne . . . no meat. The second guy was arguing.

  They were talking about Corbin not being built up enough, one saying yes and one saying no. The man saying no motioned back through the trees and chattered. He wanted to go the other way. That was the gist of it; Corbin didn’t understand any more than that. A chill ran down his spine. His stamp was covered and there wasn’t any reason for them to be trailing after him and talking about his body. Trappers. They knew he didn’t belong to the camps around the harbor, and there was only one other reason for him to be here. He had to get the hell away. But he couldn’t walk into the camp on the north side!

  Going along like nothing was wrong, he weaved around the trees. He had forgotten about the lady’s pistol. They could see the handgun in his holster, but they might not have seen the bulge in his front pocket from the tiny one. Corbin slid his hand down and grasped it. One man sped up and said, “You like harbor, mister?”

  “No,” Corbin said with a show of incredulousness, and then a gunshot rang out. The sound came from everywhere and they whirled around at a thump, Corbin withdrawing the lady’s pistol as he did. The second man was down on the ground, rope tangled around his arm and part of his head blown away. The first man shouted and stared at the wall. Dirt gave way under his foot. His hand went to his gun as he staggered.

  With no idea what was happening, Corbin fired at the man. For such a small, shitty gun, it had considerable kickback. The man cried out and grabbed his shoulder, and then dashed away in terror.

  Still having no idea
where the initial shot had come from, Corbin ducked behind a tree. Rocks and pebbles rattled down the slope as the man sped away. No more mysterious shots followed the first. Corbin pressed the binoculars to his eyes and looked over to the wall.

  The guard was staring right at him. And it looked like he nodded, ever so slightly.

  It was so small that it could have been a trick of the light. But what wasn’t a trick was that the harbor guard had shot the trapper about to throw his rope around Corbin. The guard rotated smoothly to stare at something else. Corbin wanted to wave, but it was heading into evening and the man wasn’t looking his way any longer.

  Corbin stole along until he was within binocular sight of the house. Then he checked it over, going back and forth three times before he was satisfied that no one was there. Daring to move closer, he stopped to go over it again. No lights moved through the windows, nor was anyone outside. He passed through their sleeping nook of the night before and went to the rocky ridge overlooking the encampment. In the last gasp of light, he squinted at the dirt that he and Micah had smoothed. Fresh footprints were in it, a multitude of them going all over the place. Not even a leaf had blown over them yet.

  He paced around the outside of the house, following the footprints. The searchers had come up the driveway and trotted about everywhere. Corbin was the only one here now, so he returned to the ridge and rested on his belly to spy on the blocked doors to the harbor. A fire was going, people standing around it to cook. He searched through the moving shapes for Zaley. She wasn’t at the fire, nor was she at the doors.

  Lanterns were being set out around the tents. Then he caught a glimpse of Zaley and his throat constricted. She was in there, walking past a lantern and slipping into a tent at the periphery of the camp. Alive and well, but she hadn’t been able to leave.

  He watched over Zaley’s tent. She didn’t come out again. He had to make sure no man was letting himself in. But this wasn’t the confinement point. People were just going to bed or preparing food, sitting around or going behind the same set of bushes and coming out seconds to minutes later fixing their clothes.

  It wasn’t the confinement point, but this wasn’t a lawful society either. Police hadn’t come roaring up the road in response to gunshots. If something happened to Zaley here, no one was going to stop it or care. A guy passed her tent to the bushes and Corbin waited until he had returned to his tent and gone inside before looking away. Ferals bayed distantly. No one below reacted to them.

  Last night when Corbin was on watch, the searchers that came up the driveway to inspect the house were silent. The search party was made up of different people tonight, because Corbin was alerted to their presence long before they arrived. He slipped over the ridge and dropped down to the bushes there as boys laughed and moved the branches off the grave to shine their lights inside. After that, two of them came to the ridge. They pissed off it, droplets splattering against Corbin’s arm.

  “Oooo-wwwaaaaaa.”

  “I wish we could go after that one,” a boy said overhead, his voice breaking between a boy’s and a man’s. “Every damn night, I hear that oooowwwaaa dancing all around us.”

  “Think it’s coming from the river?” asked the second boy. “I bet it is. He usually stops over there. Let’s just go and look.”

  “Chipmunk got in trouble with Gander when he-”

  “Fuck Gander. He’s a pussy. He’s not in charge tonight anyway. East won’t go looking for that feral, so it’s up to us. Come on, let’s finish the other side and tell Monk we’re swinging over that way.”

  East. So there was a camp over there. After the boys zipped up and walked away, Corbin wiped off his arm. The search party reappeared within minutes down at the campsite, where they spoke to a man and then hared off down the road.

  He hadn’t brought any food along. Time passed with his stomach expressing its discontent at how he was watching people eat but not joining in. The fire was put out once everyone around it was done and his stomach kept complaining.

  Getting into the harbor on this side couldn’t be done. Even though there were far fewer people in the way by night, guys still blocked the doors and a shout would bring loads more out from the tents. The harbor itself was silent. Guards were still up there in the watchtowers, moving to unnoticed stimuli. Oddly, they kept the sunglasses on. Those obviously adjusted to the lack of light. The sky grew darker and darker, and he pinched himself when he began to doze. Then he got so tired that he forgot to pinch.

  Go. Falling into a light sleep as he leaned on the rock, he dreamed that Austin and Micah were sprinting up the wall as Corbin stayed here beneath the ridge. Mars bobbed along on Micah’s back, stuck there with glue. They reached the top and evanesced into the harbor. Someone yelled.

  No, someone was actually yelling. He straightened and banged his head on the rock. The search party had come back and was standing around a man. They made eager gestures down the road. A feral cried out, the same one as earlier, and he was closer. The search party and the man took off after it, snatching up lanterns on the way. A few others on watch got out their weapons, picked up more lanterns, and went after them, leaving only two men on the dirt road. Seated by a camping lantern, they were playing cards.

  Corbin was on the move before he’d thought about it. He flicked on his flashlight, pointed it straight down to the ground, and crept away from the rock. He was getting Zaley out of there, and he was doing it now.

  When he came level to the road, he paused beside a rocky outcrop. The campsite was very dark without the lanterns, which were swaying far down the road and getting smaller by the second. The men were engrossed in their cards, neither looking away from the hot game they had going over an overturned bucket for a table.

  Corbin turned off his light and crossed the road. The moonlight wasn’t supplying much for him to see by, and nothing shined down from the watchtowers. The harbor guards didn’t need anything to see but those glasses. Taking a rather poor cover behind squat bushes, he waited there at a scratching sound of feet on the road. Someone was coming to the harbor. It wasn’t a feral, because the person had a flashlight.

  It was a Shepherd, armed with a gun and wearing a loaded backpack. He passed Corbin at a jog and went along to the wall, calling, “Is everything okay? Didn’t mean to get back so late. We were setting gopher traps.”

  “All good!” said a man at the card game. “The boys went off to the river to see if they can’t kill that feral.”

  Corbin crept closer to the campsite, sliding his feet along the ground to move any trash aside rather than landing atop it. The man who just arrived had a booming voice, and he expressed his annoyance that the search party had taken so many lanterns again and left everything dark. Then he dipped into a tent and came out with a canteen. After speaking with the card-playing guys a little more about the lack of light, he said good night and vanished into his tent for good.

  Corbin focused on the shapes in the dimness from the remaining lanterns. One light was still at the bushes that he assumed were being used as a cover for a bathroom. Another was hanging from a tree just a little apart from Zaley’s tent. The tent itself was lost to blackness, but he had fastened the image of the campsite in his mind firmly throughout the evening. There were four major clusters of tents, and those dribbled off to smaller ones orbiting at the sides. She was in the farthest tent out, and only two tents were near hers.

  The weak moonlight wasn’t helping him any, but it wasn’t helping anyone else either. He ducked when a woman emerged in Zaley’s patch of tents, the bright beam of her flashlight shocking when the lanterns were so dim. She headed to the bushes. Corbin slunk to the road that separated him from the campsite and ensconced himself behind a tree as the woman went back to her tent. The two guys played obliviously.

  It was now or never. The searchers could start back down the road at any moment. And with the filched lanterns returned, Corbin would never slip around the camp unseen. He dashed over the road and crouched down at anot
her tree, listening hard for sounds of surprise or warning. There was nothing. Flicking on his flashlight low to the ground to show him the terrain, he turned it off a split second later. Then he slunk over to Zaley’s tent and dipped to the flaps.

  The cold muzzle of a gun was shoved into his chest as he let himself in. Her whisper was cold and dangerous. “Get the fuck out of my tent or I’m going to pull the trigger, you son of a bitch.”

  “Zaley, don’t scream. It’s me,” Corbin hissed.

  The gun vanished. “Corbin! You shouldn’t be here!” He crawled in the rest of the way and they embraced. It was so dark that they couldn’t see any part of each other, or themselves or anything else.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. There were just too many people around for me to get to you guys.”

  Urgency overcame him, sweeping away the relief of reaching her. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

  “Are the others-”

  “No, they’re on the south side of the wall. Shepherds are guarding it over there, too.”

  “They’re all over the east side as well.” She fumbled in the dark to get something as he lifted the flap. No one was going to the bushes. A couple of dim lights were coming down the road, yet were at a distance still. Corbin and Zaley had no time to waste. This was their only chance.

  “Let’s go!” he whispered. He caught her hand in the darkness and led her out. Since he couldn’t use his flashlight here, he relied on his memory to guide both of them back to the road. Then they sprinted across it.

  At the trees, he paused there only to flick his light low, memorize the ground, and smother the beam. Getting to the driveway of the abandoned home happened in short but rapid stages. Once upon it, he turned his light on and led them up to the house. They circled it and pressed to the ridge. He wanted to know what was going on at the campsite before they traveled to the south side of the harbor.

  “Ugh,” Zaley said, jerking up suddenly when she lay down beside him at the edge. “Want a somewhat squashed tomato?” It was down his throat in a hot second to join whatever was left of the energy bar turd. That plus a can of Pizoom would be the worst meal in the world. He remembered the Zyllevir, which Zaley swallowed dry.