Snareville II: Circles

by David Youngquist

  Dan squeezed two rounds from his rifle at some fast movers that ran into the park behind them. “Let’s go,” he said. He pushed the buckskin into a trot and as they got further from town, into a lope.

  All the way around town, out into the prairie the horses cantered along. It wasn’t fast, but it ate up the miles. Soon, Prophetstown was a cluster of trees behind them. At a small feeder creek to the Rock, Dan pulled up.

  “Let ’em have a drink, but don’t let them fill up,” he said as the horses heaved. “I don’t want someone dropping out on a colicky horse.”

  “What about a colicky person?” Jinks asked.

  “You okay?” Dan asked.

  “Just nerves, Boss. Ain’t been in a swarm in awhile.”

  “Did good, Kid. Just like ridin’ a bike, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, if the seat of your bike is trying to eat you.”

  Dan chuckled as he dismounted. He led Cherokee down to the small stream. The other horses followed. Each took a few long pulls, then lifted their heads to watch their back trail. Dan was jumpy as well. Zeds didn’t give up easy. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the swarm as possible. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and began to slosh water up onto Cherokee’s body where bits of zombie stuck, or zed juice smeared across his hide.

  The others, seeing this, began to do the same thing. Cherry waded into the stream a few feet up from the horses. She knelt in the water and started to wash a wound on the back of her hand. Blood ran red from a wound, black slime ran from her arm and her hand. She shook, flexed the fingers. She shook it again. Droplets of blood flew from her fingers, into the water around their legs.

  “You okay, Cherry?” Wally asked.

  “Yeah, fine, Boss.” She gasped as she tucked the wounded hand under her arm. “Just washin’ up is all.”

  “Oh, okay, well, let’s go.”

  They climbed the bank of the stream, paused while Dan got the bearings.

  “We came up, we just trotted through town.” Dan held a compass on a map unfolded in front of him while he sat his horse. “We hadn’t heard of any zeds up this way since fall and Tom did a flyover two days before we left. Nearest pack he knew of was in Plano. It was clean over here.” He pointed to a town nearly to Chicago.

  “Where you figure we are, Boss?” Jinks asked.

  “From what I can tell, we’re two miles east of Prophetstown. We’ve got to circle around, get across the highway and head back north a little. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  They flicked the reins on their horses and started off the direction Dan led them.

  Chapter 4

  We rode on for a few miles. The adrenaline rush wore off. Nothing like close quarters combat to make the old blood pump. Every now and then the perverse thought comes into my head that we’d be really screwed if the zeds ever learn how to use a gun. That’s the only thing keeps us on top. I sometimes wonder how they do it in Europe and England and places like that where only the government had guns. Got to be frakkin’ medieval by now.

  Ella rode up beside me on her mare. “You okay, Kiddo?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Dad. Kind of a rough one.”

  “We ain’t been in a swarm for awhile. You did fine.”

  “Thanks. Uncle Tom’s training just kicks in.”

  “Helps you’ve been in more than one fight. Helps too when your horses are used to gunfire.”

  “Yeah.”

  She went quiet for a few minutes. She chewed a fingernail. I knew something was bothering her, but I wasn’t going to pry.

  “Dad, are we just breeding more food for the zeds?” She glanced at me for a quick second. I knew what she was thinking. Both Pepper and Cindy were pregnant, as were a lot of the women back home. She and Jinks were looking at the future. Right now, the only thing that we could see as a future was fighting zombies and surviving one winter to the next.

  “No. We’re not just making zombie chow. We’ll come out of this eventually. We’ll make it. Humans came back from the Black Plague. We’ll come back from this.”

  “Yeah, but in the Black Plague, the people who died didn’t get up and try to eat you. Kind of a difference.”

  “True, but same principle. Plus, we get a way to pump out Doc’s anti zed juice, we really got ’em on the run.”

  She grinned then. I hoped I’d set her mind to rest, because some days, I felt the same way she did.

  Another couple miles and the horses cooled out. We kept our mounts in good condition. Not only did the training keep the boredom at bay, it kept us in shape as well to put in five or six miles a day on horseback. When we could, we rode on patrol or rode out to the Plow Ridge, the Mennonite settlement.

  Practicality had become a big part of our lives in the last couple of years. It was a hard adjustment at first, but we were used to the way things were now. Most folks looked back with nostalgia at things like cable TV, shopping trips simply for the sake of shopping, or vacations. Almost like it was part of a different world.

  Ella glanced over at me. “Daddy, what would you say if I wanted to get married?”

  This was new. I didn’t want to overreact. “Why?”

  “’cause I do. Billy Jaques asked me to marry him.”

  “You must not have said yes, or you wouldn’t be askin’.”

  “No. I didn’t say yes.” She looked at me again, shifted the rifle to her other shoulder. “I said I wanted to ask your permission first.”

  “Shouldn’t he be the one asking?”

  “Kind of hard to ask your commander if you can marry his little girl.” She smiled then. She knew how to work those blue puppy eyes of hers.

  “True.” I thought for a moment. I knew they had been seeing a lot of one another. They were only in their teens. Still, when you’ve only got about five percent of the population still alive, things tend to move a little faster. “I’ll have to talk with the boy when we get home.”

  “That’s not a ‘no’?”

  I smiled. “That’s not a ‘no’.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. I told him you wouldn’t…”

  We were interrupted as Cherry puked and fell off her horse. The stud peeled away from the rest of the pack. Her rifle popped as she hit the ground. A round sizzled into the air. Our horses jumped, Wally put heels to his horse to go catch the other stud. By the time he got back we were on the ground. Cherry puked again.

  “What the hell?” Wally asked as he rode up.

  We took the AK away from Cherry. Her eye stared straight into nothing. Her body shook as all the color washed away. Jinks propped her head up on a blanket she took from her pack.

  “Shock,” Jinks said. She felt along Cherry’s wrist for a pulse. “She got her ass bit. Didn’t tell us.”

  “Probably didn’t want a round through the head,” Wally said, his voice soft.

  “Don’t need one.” Jinks reached into her medical pack. She pulled a syringe from the pouch, filled it from a small vial, yanked Cherry’s pants down low enough to hit a cheek and stuck the needle home. Cherry jumped a little as Jinks hit the plunger and sent the antivirus into her system. By morning, the virus would be dead in the girl’s blood.

  “We got it in plenty of time,” I said.

  “That’s not the main problem I’m worried about, Boss,” Jinks said.

  “What’s that?”

  “We got the zed virus taken care of. Problem is what all those rotten bastards are carrying around in their teeth.” She lifted up Cherry’s hand. Even though the bite had crusted over, there were red streaks shooting up from the edges already. “Secondary infection is going to kill her unless we get something in her right now.”

  “You’re awful young for a doctor,” Wally said.

  “She’s been studying under our two docs,” Cody said as he knelt beside the women.

  “She’s the closest thing we’ve got to a medic right now,” I said. “What you suggest, Jinks?”

  “We got the antivirus, like I said. We’re low on antibiot
ics. We didn’t bring any with. What we got back home would work, but we’re a day and a half from home.”

  “Call Tom and have him airlift some in?”

  “You know exactly where we are to give him air coordinates?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. We passed a drugstore downtown Prophetstown when we came through. Best bet would be in there.”

  “You want us to ride back into that mess and get penicillin?” Wally asked.

  “You want to watch her die?” Jinks shot back.

  Cherry rolled her eye up to look at Jinks. “D-d-don’t send them. Leave me.” Her teeth clanked together. Ella pulled a blanket from the pack, wrapped the girl in it.

  “We’re not leaving you. You’re too valuable. You’re alive. We’re going to keep you that way. Aren’t we, Daddy?”

  I looked down at the three. “You don’t ask much, do you?” I looked back up at the guys. “We’re going in. I remember where the store is. I used to drive past it pretty regular. Gear up.”

  Everyone shifted equipment around for easy reach. Jinks and Ella would stay with Cherry. All the guys would ride into town. I pulled my rifle from the scabbard on Cherokee’s saddle. Handed it and the magazines to Ella. My battle axe was looped through my web belt. Cody swapped his M-4 Carbine for Jinks’ M-203. The grenade tube would most likely come in handy. Bill left his rifle. He shifted his second pistol around front; both he and I hung our second handgun from rigging on our chest.

  I nodded to Wally who was about to leave his AK with the women. “That thing run full auto?”

  “Yeah, Boss.”

  “You hit anything with it wide open?”

  “Anything I put the front sight on.”

  “Bring it. This might get a little hairy.”

  Bill cocked an eyebrow at me. “A little hairy?”

  I grinned. “Okay, a lot hairy. Don’t worry. We’ll get out. The women would kill us if we didn’t.”

  He grinned. “Hey, you’re Danny Death. I trust your judgment.”

  “Good. I’m glad someone does.” I swung into the saddle and shifted my weight to settle. “Ella, if I don’t get back, marry Billy. Tell your mothers I love them both.”

  She looked up at me, eyes washed through with emotions. “You’ll be back.”

  I nodded. Handed Jinks my satellite phone. Direct uplink with brother Tom. “Give us two and half hours. Call Tom, give him the best directions you can to get here and airlift her out. If we’re not back by then, we’re not coming back.”

  Jinks looked up at us, face set. “I’ll do my best, Captain.”

  We turned the horses back toward town. Started at a trot, eased them into that ground eating lope. We followed the road back in. Along the shoulder, gravel scattered under hooves. I was trying to remember exactly where the drug store was. Second block of downtown, if I remembered correctly. If most of the zeds had piled down to the north end of town, we ought to be able to sneak in, sneak out and be back where we left the girls in the time frame I gave them. Simple.

  “This’s nuts, you know, Captain,” Wally said. “You got a plan?”

  “It’s not crazy, Lieutenant. We have more zeds than we know what to do with. What we don’t have enough of is healthy humans. We need to save as many as possible, if it’s possible. And yes, I do have a plan.”

  At the first sign of residential, we slowed the horses. Two blocks in and there were more homes. I was looking for a building I had seen as we rode through a week ago. A small barn. Apparently town had grown around a farm, like so many do, but the owners had left one of the outbuildings standing. Behind the building, there was about an acre fenced in. It looked like a horse set up, so I turned into the drive.

  We dismounted. It was a long drive. Something I would have hated to shovel in the winter. Cody and Bill checked the house. All the doors were locked and none of the windows were busted out. We eased over to the barn. We didn’t get a welcoming committee, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a pack of zeds in hibernation mode inside. We went in four stacked and found nothing.

  Small barn, tight, old. Probably built a hundred years ago. Three stalls and a set of cross ties were in the main part of the building. A hay loft and storage made up the rest. We led the horses in, rolled the door closed behind us and picked stalls. Wally’s stud went on the far end, Cherokee next to him, Cody’s mare at the opposite end, Bill’s mare in the cross ties. I hoped the stud would keep his mouth shut. We found some hay that hadn’t gone bad and tossed each horse a couple of flakes. Should keep them occupied until we got back. If we got back. If we didn’t, leaving them here was a death sentence.

  We met in the drive. “How fast can you boys run a mile?” I asked.

  “Why?” Bill asked.

  “It’s about a mile to where we need to go from here. We jog in, grab the stuff we need, haul ass out.”

  “That’s a plan?” Wally asked. “I could have come up with that.”

  “Improvisation. We need to be quiet and we don’t need to draw attention. Horses, especially ones that have just run a few miles, put off a hell of a heat signature. On foot, we can make the run easier, cover one another and be a lot more quiet.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Wally said. He was getting used to the way I did things. “Lead on, Captain.”

  We started our jog into town.

  Chapter 5

  We dogtrotted into town. The first few houses had big yards and were a good distance apart. I had both pistols tucked away, cocked and locked, ready to go. I carried Smitty’s battle axe in my right hand. There was a welding shop in town. A few of the boys started taking lessons from the Mennonites and came out pretty good blacksmiths. The axe was one of Smitty’s first accomplishments. Double bitted, long beards gave the blades about eight inches of cutting edge. Said he got the inspiration from an old album cover. The handle was two feet long. Perfect length to swing in a zed swarm. Bill carried his own custom tomahawk.

  We picked up our pace as we started to run through yards. Every so often we’d stop to listen. We didn’t hear any moans. When you’re headed into a place where you know there’re zeds, you have two ways to do it: sneaky and quiet, or fast with all guns blazing. We didn’t have enough people to blast in with guns going, nor did we have any vehicles, so sneaky it was.

  The road took a turn around a park when we saw the first batch. They were hanging around the small ice cream stand on the edge of the park. One of them saw us, let out a moan and came at us. There were only a half-dozen in this pack. Wally started to raise his rifle, but I held up my hand to stop him.

  “We don’t want to draw any more this way,” I said. “Cody, get your ’hawk.”

  We went right at them, blades swinging. The first guy that reached for me lost his arm from the bicep down. Wally turned his rifle around, bashed one in the chest, followed with a club to the head. It lay still. I split another one through the neck. His head bounced onto the ground as his body fell the opposite direction. The head still snapped at me, until I put the heel of my boot through it.

  I felt a cold hand clamp onto my shoulder. I shrugged out of the moldy grip, spun and buried my axe in the skull of another zed. She fell without a twitch. Bill and Cody dropped their last ones. We’d barely lost stride. It was quiet again, but the stench didn’t make the afternoon pleasant. With hand signals, I ordered the group to move out.

  We started to hit buildings now. Newer ones were built individually before they ran into downtown proper. We got up against the edge of the red brick buildings as the business district began. I signaled for silence, told the boys I wanted to take a look. I eased my face around the edge of the brick. For three blocks, businesses of Prophetstown stretched north. We were on the west side of the street. Halfway through the second block, was the pharmacy. All the buildings connected downtown. One ran into the next with shared walls. The pharmacy was flanked on one side by a clothing store, a card shop on the other.

  At the far end of the third block, a taver
n stood, door wide open, plate glass windows shattered all over the sidewalk. A zed stumbled out, followed by two more. They stood and gazed down the sidewalk, as if they were trying to decide which direction to go. I pulled back from the wall a little, just enough to still see them. Finally they shambled off to the north. I let out a breath and turned back to my guys. I signaled that Cody and I would run across the street first, Bill and Wally would cover. When we hit the door and got inside, we’d cover while they ran across. I nodded, drew my pistol and we dashed out.

  A block and half never seemed so long. It was like one of those dreams where you’re running like hell, but can’t get to where you’re going. Our boots pounded on the asphalt street. Footfalls sounded like cannons. The echo bounced against the buildings and blasted back into my ears. I glanced to the north where I saw the zeds go and sure as shit, they’d heard us and turned around. They brought buddies with them.

  We slammed against the building, Cody turned, flicked a switch on the M-203 and launched a 40mm grenade down the street. The explosion blew windows out down the block and vaporized several zeds. I holstered my pistol, pulled the axe and opened the door. Glass shattered. I reached through and flipped the lock as Cody loosed hell again. Bill and Wally were halfway across the street. Wally opened up with his AK. In a combat crouch, he fired into the zeds at they came at us and advanced the whole time. They joined us in the doorway.

  “So much for sneaky, eh Boss?” Bill asked.

  “Hey, we almost made it,” I said. “Cody, you and Wally cover the door. This shouldn’t take long. Bill, come with me and help toss the place.” They nodded and went to work. Controlled fire can wreak havoc on a mass of deaders. One dropped after another as the high velocity rounds tore into them. For fun, Cody would drop a grenade in now and them. Downtown was quickly getting a coat of black zed juice for paint.

  Bill and I dashed into the back of the store. It was dim, but there was enough light to read. We snagged a few items in passing, but what we needed would be behind the counter. A quick inventory of the shelves, I found what I wanted. I started to stuff bottles of antibiotics into my pockets, more into my magazine pouch. They were a tough commodity to come by and we weren’t able to manufacture them on a large scale yet. A pistol shot followed by a curse got my attention.