Snareville II: Circles

by David Youngquist

  Pepper watched the gun crews go to work. One big brass shell, like a giant rifle round, was loaded into the breech, the cannon was slammed and locked closed and a crewman would fire the gun. The monster leapt into the air with recoil, dust spurted out from everywhere to wrap the people in a cloud. Concussion rings spun out into the morning air from the muzzles. It was an amazing sight. Each crew waited a minute between shots. It was simply choreographed violence.

  Her headset chirped.

  “Boss, this is Teeny. We got company comin’.”

  Teeny was one of the guards on the north tower. Little girl, she was five foot nothing with long black hair, but she ran an M-60 and a SAW like she had been born with a trigger in her hand.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Pepper asked into her mike.

  “No, Boss. Bunch of ’em on Harleys. Coming in from the west road along the fields.”

  “We blew that bridge first year.”

  “Like I said, they’re on bikes. Probably dragged them across the crick, mounted up, decided to pay us a call.”

  “Shit.” Pepper paused. “How many?”

  “Lot, Boss.”

  “They look friendly?”

  Teeny watched them through her field glasses. Leather vests, chains, automatic weapons. “No, not looking like the friendliest bunch.”

  Pepper cussed again. “Okay, make sure the gate’s locked. Fold in to the city wall. We’ll meet you there.”

  Teeny pulled the pin on the mount of her M-60, scrambled down the ladder and checked the chains and locks around the tall steel gate. Everything was tight. She climbed aboard the quad runner, fired the engine and blasted back to town. She was a mile down the road when the group got to the locked gates.

  Pepper put out a call to all the women in town to gather arms and head for the north wall. There was a deep defensive trench along the top third of the wall. Slits built into the top of the wall allowed protected access to the north facing trench. Mortar positions and machine gun posts were constructed along the line. It was two miles between walls. The people on the outside would have to get through the gate or over the wall to pose a threat. Women got to their stations. Most were in some stage of pregnancy, so it was a slower process. Jinks rolled in from the hospital, followed by Ella.

  “What the hell’s going on, Pep?” Jinks asked. Teeny rolled up on her quad, scrambled up the hill and got into firing position with her sixty.

  “Looks to be over a hundred of them, Boss,” Teeny gasped. She cocked the gun, sighted back the way she came. “I saw some gang colors on some of the vests, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Look like old school bikers though.”

  “I bet it’s the Mongols,” Pepper said. “Wallace told us they were up north of him when he left. I hope this doesn’t mean Savanna’s gone.”

  “Me too,” Ella said.

  “They’re through the gates, Pepper,” Teeny said. “Guns out. They ain’t comin’ for tea and crumpets.”

  “Where the hell did a kid your age hear about tea and crumpets?” Pepper muttered as she watched the Mongols ride in. “How good are you with that 203, Jinks?”

  “I can part your hair at two hundred yards with it. Well, if you had hair, Boss.”

  “I’ve got hair.”

  “Yeah, it’s shorter than Dan’s.”

  “Focus ladies,” Ella said from her position on the line.

  “Right. Jinks, they get in to two hundred, send them a welcome.”

  “Right, Boss.” Jinks rolled prone, cracked the breech of the grenade launcher under her rifle. She stuffed a high explosive round into the tube, closed it and flipped up the sight. “Ready.”

  Teeny waited behind her M-60. Other women fell into position behind the berm, Cherry included with her AK-47. Pepper’s headset chirped as each team leader reported in. She told them to hold for orders. The Mongols rode in. Across the second creek, closer now. One of the women set the sight of her MP5 on the wall and cut loose. It was the same gun Pepper used. She wondered what the lady hoped to accomplish at three hundred yards. They passed one of the barns the Raiders used to keep their garden tools.

  “Take ’em,” Pepper said. She watched through her field glasses as Jinks fired her round. The grenade streaked out from the line. It trailed smoke all the way to the target. For seconds it was spot on. Then it flew past the leader’s shoulder and exploded behind him in the ditch. Bikes swerved, but kept coming. Most gave it some throttle and they closed the distance faster.

  “Part your hair, eh?” Teeny asked.

  “They’re movin’ too fast. I’m not used to having to use that much lead.” Jinks stuffed another round into the tube.

  “Teeny, give ’em something to think about,” Pepper said.

  “Yes sir,” The girl pulled herself into the gun. With a squeeze of the trigger, the pig woke up. Ella helped feed the belt of brass into the gun. Teeny started with a three round burst to get her range. A bike vomited gas as bullets punched through the tank. Fluid splattered onto hot exhaust pipes and burst into flame.

  Along the line, other rifles came to life. A storm of bullets reached out to sweep the Mongols up in violence. Jinks got the range down and added to the misery. Bikes fell, people fell. Teeny held down the trigger of her sixty and swept the roadbed. Cherry started a sweep from the opposite direction. A dozen of the bikers turned off the killing ground and rolled into a small farmstead fifty yards from the wall. They grabbed their guns as they ran into the barn. Another twenty turned back north and raced for the first wall on the other side of the creek and fields.

  Teeny and some of the others sent bullets screaming after them until they were out of range. Several bodies left a trail of retreat along the road. Gunfire came from the barn. Mostly shotgun blasts. It stirred up the dirt of the wall and little else. Shots from the rifles used by Pepper’s troops punched holes through the wood. After a few moments of silence, she called a cease fire.

  “You in the barn,” Pepper shouted. “You got two choices: you come out and disarm, or we blow the barn apart around you.”

  “Fuck you, bitch,” came the reply.

  “Jinks, put a round through that window on the east end, would you?”

  Jinks nodded. The round raced through the air, shattered the glass and exploded on the interior wall. Wood splinters and shrapnel blew fifteen yards in every direction. Curses filled the air behind the blast.

  “Last warning,” Pepper shouted again.

  A shotgun poked out the door, muzzle first. The owner flipped it into the dirt. It was followed by several other guns. Pistols, shotguns, one rifle and an MP5 landed in a pile outside the barn. “We’re comin’ out.” A man shouted.

  “Cover ’em,” Pepper said into her com link. “They try anything, hose ’em.” She stood. “Cherry, Ella, Sammie, you’re with me.”

  The four women climbed out of the trench, walked around to the gate and let themselves through. A group of eight Mongols waited in front of the barn.

  “Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers,” Pepper ordered. “We’re going to pat you down.” She holstered her pistol. “Sammie, you start on that end of the line, I’ll start with this one. Cherry, Ella, watch them.”

  They worked their way down the line. Slow. Neither wanted to miss anything. Once one was patted down, they were moved away from the group and were covered by two dozen rifles. Pepper moved one of the ladies away from the group and turned to one of the men. His long black hair ran in a tangled mass down between his shoulders. His beard was shot through with streaks of grey and matted in places.

  “You split tails are makin’ a mistake, doin’ this,” the man said.

  “You didn’t give us much choice,” Pepper said. “You came to us.”

  “We don’t like bein’ prisoners. You take us, you’ll have the rest of the Horde down on you.”

  “Last I looked, a lot of your Horde was laying out there in the road. Shut up and stand still.” He stood with his fingers woven into his hair. Pepper
began her search. “Your mistake then,” he rumbled.

  In a flash, he pulled his hands out of his hair and spun, his right fist wrapped around the handle of a knife he had stashed in the top of his vest. Pepper stepped back, tried to draw her pistol, but the man buried the blade into her side before she could clear leather. With a curse, she dropped to her knees, as Cherry opened up with her AK. The man went down in a storm of bullets. He twitched for a moment, gagged blood and died.

  Pepper wrapped her fingers around the handle of the knife. Her hand came away sticky with blood. Ella was on her knees beside her. “It doesn’t hurt.” Pepper looked up at her daughter. “I thought it’d hurt more.”

  “Jinks!” Ella shouted. Jinks was already on the move. She hurtled over the trench and raced down the wall.

  “The rest of you strip,” Cherry barked.

  “Fuck you,” one of the women shouted back. “Why we have…?”

  Cherry lay on the trigger of her AK. A half dozen rounds tore into the Mongol woman. Her body jumped with the impact. She spun a drunken pirouette and fell face down. “That was not a request. Strip,” Cherry said.

  The rest of the group peeled naked. Their clothes were thrown in a pile. From there, a dozen of the women marched them to the high school to lock them in quarantine.

  Jinks checked the wound, pulled a small med kit from her pack and pressed a sterile bandage around the wound.

  “Can you walk?” Jinks asked.

  “I think so.” Pepper said.

  Cherry slung her rifle over her back. She took one arm, while Ella took the other. Together they lifted. As they did so, the crotch of Pepper’s pants got soaked.

  “Tell me you just wet your pants,” Jinks said.

  “Don’t think so, Kid,” Pepper said as she stood. She doubled over with a grunt. “This boy wants to see his daddy.”

  Jinks cussed. Put her shoulder under Pepper’s arm. “Ella, run back to the hospital. Tell Leary what’s going on. Grab a golf cart and get back here.”

  “Better hurry. I think this baby’s coming.”

  Jinks snarled a curse again. They tried to walk as Ella dashed off. The three made it a block before Pepper doubled over with a contraction.

  “This ain’t goin’ to work,” Cherry said. “We got to find a place.”

  Ella panted up to the doors of the hospital. A crash of glass greeted her as she slid to a stop outside the door. She yanked the door open. Snarls and shouts rose from one of the rooms. She dashed inside to find Doctor Leary trying to pull Tess off the top of Cindy. Blood smeared across his green scrubs. There was a cut through the material on his chest. Blood seeped into the shirt.

  “Thank God you’re here!” he shouted. “Help me get Tess into the bed.”

  Ella yanked her feet from the floor where they had been stuck, slid her arms around Tess’s belly and with Leary, lifted her bodily from the ground. She came away snapping and clawing. A metallic ring echoed across the room as someone kicked the scalpel. With a final curse, they dropped Tess into the bed. Leary strapped her down with heavy restraints. She laid there, snarling and trying to get loose as Cindy sat on the floor, face in her hands and cried red tears.

  “What the hell happened?” Ella panted.

  “I heard something, came in here and found them both loose, Tess trying to carve Cindy up.”

  “It’s Fred,” Cindy sobbed. “He got into our heads. Tried to make us kill our babies. I woke up. Tess is still asleep.”

  “What happens if she stays this way?” Ella asked.

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t,” Leary said as he lifted Cindy from the floor. “Not that I’m not glad you showed up, but what are you doing here?”

  “Oh, shit. Yeah. Momma Pepper got stabbed and went into labor. I need the cart.”

  “Well get back there, girl. I’ll be ready.”

  Ella ran back outside to get the cart as Cindy lay down in another room. She was tired again. Leary secured her with the same restraints, just in case.

  More troops rolled out to cover the wall. Soon there were two dozen guns facing the north. A mortar crew set up in their position. They’d retake the far wall later on.

  “I don’t want to take that knife out,” Jinks said. “I don’t know what it’s stuck in.”

  Pepper straightened up. She tried to fall back on her nurse’s training, but it was hard to do when she was the patient. “No, you can’t pull the blade until we get to the hospital. Can you tell if it’s in the baby?”

  Jinks knelt beside Pepper. She lifted the bloody shirt, then the bandage. Doesn’t look like it, Boss. I think it went between you two.”

  “Okay, skin and tissue then,” Pepper said. “Come on, we have four blocks to go.”

  They started to walk again, as Ella blasted up with a golf cart. Pepper sat in the front beside her daughter, as Cherry and Jinks climbed on the side. Ella spun the thing around to dash back the way she had come.

  Chapter 22

  God, it was a beautiful sight to watch those rounds scream in. With the shell burst set for five feet, the shrapnel sliced some of the zeds in half anyway. What was left was engulfed in a cloud of grey mist. I tried to watch through the binoculars, but it was a heavy fog and there wasn’t much wind. Now and then, it would thin a bit and I could see corpses lying on the ground. The last salvo roared overheard, I heard another headed south. Wally looked at me and nodded.

  I whistled to my troops. They stood from their hiding places. “Let’s go boys. We need to do a check.”

  I unslung my rifle and headed for the roadbed. Cody walked beside me. Wallace stayed hidden in case we needed another round.

  “What we doin’ out here, Boss?” Cody asked.

  “My granddad would call it a ‘possum hunt.’ I want to see if there’s anything left moving. We’ve never tested this juice on a crowd this big.”

  We waded into the mass of bodies. They were in various forms of decay. Some old and shriveled, as if they had been first infected in the outbreak, some pretty fresh. I wondered if they’d found a few stray survivors on the way here. The thought made my stomach churn. The old ones all looked alike. All pale. All missing parts. All loose in their skin. Nothing moved.

  “We going to bury all these things, or burn ’em?” Cody asked.

  I stepped over what had to have been a lawyer: expensive suit and tie, shiny shoes. Now covered in death juices. “I think we’re going to have to bring out a bucket tractor and make a big pile. I don’t want that much zed juice in the ground. Take forever to rot.”

  Cody grunted his approval. The fog had mostly dissipated by now. A crazy laugh echoed down the road. We both heard it and looked up.

  “I’m cured! I’m cured!” The man’s voice came to us from a few yards away. I stepped over a few bodies to stand beside him.

  A man with a black beard and worn suit looked at up at me from his knees. He pulled free from the bodies that lay over the top of him. A woman rested to either side.

  “Thank you, Sir,” he said as he looked up. His green eyes were clear. “For the first time in three years, I feel myself. I thank you.”

  “You’re Fred?” I asked. Cody watched. I could feel the blood in my face. A few of my troops knew what had been going on with Tess and Cindy, Cody was one.

  “Yes, yes. Fredrick Howe.” He held up his hand for me to help pull him up. “I was an attorney before this… ”

  A bullet from my rifle punched a hole in his forehead and blew out the back of his skull. One eye popped from Fred’s face from the shockwave and he flopped to his side across one of his women.

  “I wondered when you were goin’ to do that,” Cody said. I stared at the corpse. Red blood ran from the wound onto the asphalt. In a few days, it wouldn’t matter. He’d be ash for the field. “C’mon, Boss. We need to check the rest of these.”

  I stepped over Fred’s body and worked my way up the road with the troops. No doubt Doctor Leary would tell me that I was backsliding in killing the fucker. Like I gave a shit
right then.

  We walked to the end of the killing field. Not a zed twitched. Not a finger moved. We found no other survivors. No captives. No meals on hoof. O’Shea’s formula worked. Every corpse fell where it had stood, except for those cut apart. I radioed to the artillery crew the results of their work. Cheers came over the com link. Gibson’s voice carried over with the same results on his side of the front. Cody grinned and slapped me on the back.

  “We might live through this yet, Dan,” he said.

  I wiped the moisture from my eyes with the ball of my hand. “Yeah.” It came out in a gasp.

  Cody’s smile faded. He nodded behind us. “Fast mover,” he said.

  I spun, rifle up, thinking it was a zed. A quad runner blasted along the edge of the cornfield. A rooster tail of dust stretched out behind. It got closer. The rider cranked the handlebars and sent it into a powerslide. It rocked to a stop beside us.

  “Cherry?” I asked.

  “Get the fuck on, hold tight, don’t ask questions.”

  It wasn’t good, whatever it was. I flung a leg over the machine as she hit the throttle. Wind whipped away any conversation I could shout. We were eight miles out of town. In the time it took to cover the ground, I came up with a half-dozen worst case scenarios: Cindy and Tess died when I shot Fred. Zeds snuck up on us from the north. One of the cannons misfired and blew the rest of the crews up.

  We slid to a stop in a flurry of gravel outside the hospital.

  “Birthing room,” Cherry said.

  I handed her my rifle, ran in. I peeled armament off as I went through the small building. I ducked through the door. Pepper lay on her side in the bed, nothing on but a gown. A bloody knife lay in a pan near the bed. Her uniform was on the floor in a corner, soaked dark red along one side. She cried and reached out for me.

  “…what?”

  “She got knifed.” Leary said as he bent over her side. Light blasted down into the wound. Pepper was wide open. He was cleaning and stitching something inside her as Jinks held the wound open. “We got hit by Mongols while you were out on the other end of town. The girls won, took a lot of prisoners. While your crazy wife was patting one of them down, he got a blade in her. On top of all that, Tess and Cindy woke up out of the drugs while you were shelling. It was quite a mess for a few minutes.”