The Last Town (Book 5): Fleeing the Dead

by Stephen Knight

  “Oh, yes. Very well.” Sinclair shuffled his way past the other men, taking care to stay away from the edge of the walkway that ran behind the parapet. It was a hefty drop to the ground below, and there was no protective railing. Lennon followed him, and he took position off to Sinclair’s right when he came to a halt.

  “This should be good, yes?”

  Lennon nodded. “Yeah, this is fine.”

  “All right, then. Go ahead and get whatever footage you need before the event begins.”

  Sinclair raised the camera and focused in on a clutch of ghouls as they shuddered about in the tight embrace of the razor wire. The fidelity of the picture was fantastic, which served to make for a sickening scene; Sinclair had no problem seeing every detail of the ghastly wounds the dead had inflicted upon themselves as they tried to fight through the barrier. His stomach roiled again, and he tasted the bitter tang of stomach acid in the back of his throat. He was happy that the men who had come for him that morning hadn’t allowed him to drink a single cup of tea.

  He panned the camera around the line of zombies, taking care to focus on each face. Every one of them was committed to digital memory; the old housewife who still had vestiges of makeup around her glazed eyes. The young college student whose lips had been almost slashed away by the razor wire, exposing irregular, dirty teeth. The portly man who wore the remains of a police officer’s uniform. The young woman with the gaudy wedding ring, half the hair torn from her head, her scalp a black mass of congealed blood. It was all so very disgusting, but each face had a story behind it, and Sinclair fancied that he might be able to discover a few once the emergency was over.

  “Any day now,” Lennon said, his voice dry and humorless.

  “Right, I think I have what I need,” Sinclair said. He zoomed in tight on the midget. Its head was totally bald, and its face was half-hidden behind an absolutely gigantic beard of truly epic proportions. The beard was full of crusted blood and particles of desiccated flesh. The bantam ghoul had apparently fed well.

  “Let’s do the cop first,” Lennon said, raising his voice. To Sinclair: “Get on the police officer. Fourth from the right.”

  “Have him,” Sinclair said.

  “Okay, leave the midget for last,” Lennon said. “Take out the cop.”

  To Sinclair’s right, a rifle spoke and he jumped, fouling the shot. By the time he refocused the camera on the zombie, it was sagging into the wire, a bullet hole clearly visible in its forehead. Lennon clucked his tongue.

  “Sinclair, you did know we were going to start shooting, right?”

  “Yes, of course. I was just … caught off guard, I suppose,” Sinclair said. He felt a flush of embarrassment.

  “I’ll call out the targets so you can focus on them,” Lennon said. “There’s going to be more gunfire. Try not to jump around so much, all right?”

  “Yes, yes,” Sinclair said, trying to steel himself against the loud noises that were sure to come. “I just hope my ears can take it.”

  “I’d offer you some hearing protection, but I don’t want your limey ear wax on mine,” Lennon said. “Deal with it.”

  Sinclair’s response was an acidic, “Fine.”

  For the next few minutes, Sinclair spent his time focusing on the zombies and capturing their demise as best as he could. He still jumped during the first few, but he found he was able to control his reflexes a bit better as time wore on. Rifle shots cracked through the air, and bullets cracked through skulls below. It really didn’t take very long. If the men on the wall hadn’t been waiting to coordinate with Sinclair’s camera, the small horde below could have been wiped out in a few short seconds. Sinclair dutifully captured each new death, his stomach churning with disgust. He doubted the gunslingers on the wall would bat an eye if the order came to kill living people. There was a cold, calculating methodology to their work, and Sinclair was certain they enjoyed doing it.

  Heartless bastards, he thought.

  Finally, the only zombie left alive was the midget. It writhed and hissed in the razor wire, its movements accelerating into a near frenzy as the final gunshots echoed their last. Sinclair heard its dry rasping above the metallic clanking of the fence as the ghoul struggled against the wire. It only succeeded in flaying off even more flesh. It oozed black ichor onto the desert floor.

  “Okay, give me your camera,” Lennon said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, give me your camera. You’re going to take out the midget.”

  Sinclair was scandalized. “What? What’s gotten into you? I’ll do no such thing!”

  Lennon reached out and pulled the camera away from him. Sinclair held onto it, trying to pull it back, but the chilliness in Lennon’s eyes overpowered his momentary courage and stomped it flat. In the end, Sinclair let him have the camera.

  In return, Lennon held out his black rifle.

  “Really, what is the point,” Sinclair protested.

  “No point, other than the fact you’re going to need to this anyway—everyone will. I’d rather you had some experience to fall back on when push comes to shove,” Lennon said.

  “What, shooting zombies?”

  “Yes. Shooting zombies,” Lennon said. “Now take this weapon, Mister Sinclair. Keep your finger off the trigger, and bring it to your shoulder.”

  Sinclair slowly reached out and accepted the weapon. It was lighter than he thought it should be. Indeed, it felt almost toy-like in his hands. Hardly at all like the weapon of vast destruction he believed it to be. He pulled the weapon to his shoulder. It felt awkward holding such a device, but his hands automatically closed around the pistol grip and the forestock without any difficulty. Ergonomically, it was dead-on. He found he instinctively wanted to put his right index finger on the trigger, but he remembered Lennon’s instruction to avoid that.

  “All right,” he said.

  “Aim at the midget. Use the sight on top of the weapon. You should be able to look through it without any trouble.”

  He was right. Sinclair had no issue looking through the electronic aiming sight. A red dot was right in the center, and he presumed all he had to do was place it on the zombie that still thrashed about inside the wire.

  “So you want me to shoot it?” Sinclair asked. His legs felt weak.

  “By your right thumb is the selector switch. Move it to the next setting.”

  Sinclair did as instructed, and the switch made a metallic click as it moved into the next detent. “Done.”

  “Put the red dot on the zombie’s head, and hold it there.”

  Sinclair moved the rifle a bit. The zombie was thrashing about, so holding it on target was difficult.

  “Once you’re lined up, put your finger on the trigger and shoot,” Lennon said.

  “Are you sure you want me to do this? What if I miss?”

  “You’ll have thirty more chances to hit it,” Lennon said. From the corner of his eye, Sinclair saw the man was holding the camera up. He was recording Sinclair holding the rifle, then he swung it around to focus on the zombie. “Shoot when ready, Mister Sinclair. Take a breath, hold it, and squeeze the trigger. It won’t take a lot of effort on your part.”

  “Yes, yes,” Sinclair muttered, a little pissed at the jibe. He tried to line up the shot, and found he was trembling now. Holding the rifle made him feel ill, and the fact that he was being told to shoot a person—or what had once been a person, anyway—was difficult for him to process.

  “Do I really need to do this?” he asked, and his voice sounded a bit petulant even to him.

  “Fucking do it, you pussy!” Lennon snapped. “It’s a zombie! Kill it!”

  Sinclair fingered the trigger, and the rifle cracked as it snapped off a shot. Sinclair fairly screamed at the same time, and through the sight, he saw his bullet travel right past the zombie and strike the ground behind it, kicking up a small cloud of dust that was clearly visible in the light of the rising sun.

  “Again!” Lennon said. “Line up and shoot
!”

  Sinclair did as asked. He found a good opportunity, and fired again. And missed again. He missed the next two times, but the third round after that ripped right through the dwarf-zombie’s left ear. The creature thrashed, apparently unaware of the damage.

  “Good God,” Sinclair said weakly.

  “Come on, Sinclair!” Lennon said. Sinclair thought the former military man was enjoying his duress. “I’ve seen old ladies shoot better than that under more difficult circumstances. The thing’s caught in razor wire, for God’s sake. Hit it!”

  Sinclair fired again and again, doing his best to keep the sight lined up on the target. There wasn’t a huge amount of kick from the rifle—it was actually quite manageable, but when he fired faster, his accuracy suffered. But Sinclair was pissed now, pissed that Lennon had forced him into this, pissed that Meredith was now a self-styled gunslinger, pissed that he was trapped in this ridiculous little town that was ruled by gunmen with heavy fists in the name of Barry Corbett.

  And he was also pissed with himself, angry that he couldn’t even shoot a midget zombie trapped in razor wire.

  Several of his rounds missed the little demon entirely. Others slammed into its body, making it jerk in the wire, but otherwise seemed to do no damage. He hit it in the neck, which stopped it from snarling. Then he hit it in the jaw, which seemed to shock it. For an instant, it stopped writhing, looking up at Sinclair with flat, stupid, vacant eyes.

  “Head shot!” Lennon said. “Hit it in the head!”

  Sinclair fired, and this time, he struck the creature right in the middle of its wide forehead. A small hole appeared in the pale skin there, and then, the grotesquerie slumped into the wire. Black drool leaked from its mouth in thick streams.

  “Dear God.” Sinclair lowered the rifle as the rest of the men on the wall with him gave him a round of golf claps and sarcastic cheers. He looked down at the tiny figure hanging motionless in the wire, and felt sick to his stomach. And, truth be told, a little elated. He had met the dreaded AR-15, and the encounter had actually been a bit exciting.

  “Take this wretched thing, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to have my camera back,” he said, holding the rifle out to Lennon.

  “How’d you like it?” Lennon asked. He took the rifle in one hand and passed the camera back to Sinclair with the other.

  “The power,” Sinclair said, a quaver in his voice. “It’s … it’s so powerful!”

  Lennon snorted. “Let’s not get too carried away. It’s not much more than a beefed up .22 round, Sinclair.” He engaged the rifle’s safety, then looked down at the gangway they stood on. Expended cartridges lay everywhere. “You wasted about half a magazine on that thing. You’re going to need to pony up some testosterone next time.”

  “The hell you say!” Sinclair snapped back, thoroughly enraged at the jibe.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll edit to make yourself look like a regular dead-eye,” Lennon responded. “It doesn’t matter to me. Okay, Mister Sinclair. You’ve had your encounter with a dreaded ‘assault rifle’, and you seemed to have survived the encounter—though all the thanks should be extended to the razor wire and the walls, not your ability to service targets. What do you think about it?”

  “Thank about what?”

  Lennon raised the rifle. “About this. Still the scourge of America?”

  “Is that what this is about? Trying to change my mind on the wisdom of allowing citizens access to military weapons?” Sinclair belted out a bitter laugh. “As if our current circumstances could ever change the wisdom behind that ridiculous assertion. Let me ask you this—since the Second Amendment was written well before any such weapons were about, where does it say weapons such as those are allowable?”

  “Right next to the word muskets,” Lennon replied. “You know what? Forget it. You’re not even an American. We’re done, Sinclair. Don’t break your neck climbing down the ladder.”

  “Oh, not to worry. You won’t be rid of me that easily,” Sinclair said.

  “Actually, Sinclair, we can be rid of you anytime Corbett wants,” Lennon replied. “Don’t forget that.”

  ###

  The work continued.

  The walls were extended toward the airport and eventually encircled it. In the town, secondary walls were erected, compartmentalizing the community and turning it into an establishment with multi-layered defenses that included funnel points that led to kill zones. The rationale behind this was that, in the event of a substantive breach, the invading zombie hordes would follow fleeing townspeople into specific engagement areas where they would be killed en masse. It was an old military tactic that Corbett and his people knew well.

  Aside from the defenses, more construction took place. Additional housing was established to take on the overflow population from the reservation. Power generation, water, sanitation … everything was re-engineered to function in an environment where the luxuries of American life had to be replicated, or at the least, substituted. Not everything was as it was before, of course. But the people were aware that they had it much, much better than most.

  In a relatively short amount of time, the town of Single Tree was turned into a self-contained fortress.

  ###

  On one chilly November night, when the desert was covered completely in darkness, Victor Kuruk made his way from the Single Tree police station to the southernmost wall that surrounded the town. He would make spot checks of the structures every night, ensuring that the walls were manned, that the sentries there had what they needed, and that all was well. For most of the past week, he’d driven down the narrow transit corridor that connect the town to the airport and checked the defenses there. It was totally unnecessary, but the airfield was a big place, and a break-in would be tough to detect without constant surveillance. While Corbett had brought at least two of everything, electronic surveillance devices had been hard to come by, at least in sufficient number to observe every inch of wall where a zombie horde might somehow gain entry. So that meant manned patrols had to go out. And they did; there was no functional reason for Victor to see to these items himself, but he found he slept better when he did.

  Tonight, the southern wall was as quiet as it had ever been. The air was cold and sharp, hinting strongly that winter was coming. It would be a cold one, he knew. They always were, especially in the higher elevations, but this time there would be no winter sports season to see the town through. During his periodic inspections of the town, Victor knew that additional snow plow packages were something Corbett’s people had brought with them. The man had thought of virtually everything, and Victor found that impressive. Barry had done a much better job than Victor would have, even if Victor had the man’s unlimited budget.

  As he parked his Dodge truck at the foot of the wall and stepped out, he pulled his leather jacket tight and zipped it up. Cold, bracing nights like these were things he enjoyed. The bitter bite of lowered temperatures invigorated him, made him feel ten years younger, while the hot desert summers lately seemed to serve only to sap his strength. He sighed. His had not been a wasteful life—at least, not once he’d aged past his drunken, combative formative years—and on the whole, he had done some things that had been eminently worthy. If death were to strike, Victor hoped it would come on a night like this, when he felt more like a warrior than some Native American elder who wasn’t that far away from the great retirement home in the sky.

  As he scaled the ladder that led to the top of the wall, he heard a rumbling in the distance. He frowned in the darkness.

  Thunder? It happened sometimes, even in the higher elevations, but not enough to considered more than a rarity. And almost never at night. He could recall that happening only once, during a time when El Nino visited in the late 1990s.

  There were four men manning the wall that overlooked the highway approach, and they stirred uneasily as he clambered onto the upper deck. Victor looked at them, their expressions hidden in the darkness. All were facing the desolate roadway that
extended away from the town.

  The thunder rolled again, distant and tinny. Victor narrowed his eyes as he stood there in the night, listening. Not thunder. Gunfire.

  “It’s from Ridgecrest,” one of the men said.

  “No way, man,” another said. “Too damn far. Even if they were shooting artillery pieces, we wouldn’t be able to hear them.”

  “Well, it’s military, whatever it is,” responded the first.

  “What makes you say that?” Victor asked. He didn’t know the man.

  “It’s definitely a military unit down there. I can hear the Mark Nineteens. They’re in a fight,” the man answered.

  Victor grunted. He had no doubt the man was right. The night was dark and still, and mountainous terrain served to amplify the sounds of even distant combat. It was just a low murmur, but Victor had no trouble now discerning it for what it was: a pitched battle.

  It was unsurprising. While Single Tree had no contact with the encampment down in Ridgecrest, Victor did not doubt it was sizeable. Given that the Navy had a large presence in the community thanks to their weapons testing site, he imagined it was as likely to hold out against the zombie hordes as the town was. Perhaps even more so, depending on what kind of manpower and ordnance they had at their disposal. But if a military unit had been caught outside its walls, then that unit would have one hell of a fight on its hands.

  Or was Ridgecrest already overrun, and the unit fighting out there had been making a run toward us?

  The possibility of that set Victor’s nerves on edge.

  Zombies had been walking up on the town, as well. Small groups, never more than ten or so, would entangle themselves in the wire. They would be shot, and the corpses were dropped into pits where they were burned. It made sense that the hordes would have found Ridgecrest, and perhaps overran it.