by J. W. Vohs
Sal and Vickie Martinez were an interesting couple. Vickie was a petite Puerto Rican doctor, while Sal was 6’6” and nearly three hundred pounds of mostly muscle. He was a pacifist though, a former peace studies professor who disliked fighting but did it well when he needed to. Their sons were nine and seven, and they bore expressions similar to those worn by the Alberts children.
Finally, everyone learned about Father O’Brien, who’d been rescued when they found Gracie and her father under attack in St. Bernadette’s Catholic Church. The elderly priest had been a fisherman on Lake Erie as a young man, and his knowledge and experience on the water had been critical to their escape from Cleveland. When they had finally reached the rapids on the Maumee and had to take to the canoes to continue their journey, O’Brien had chosen to return to Middle Bass Island. The group had previously rescued nearly twenty survivors there by exterminating all of the infected as well as a pair of lecherous criminals who had preyed upon a couple of local girls. The old priest had decided that he would only slow David’s group down on the river, but believed he could be very helpful to the fledgling community on the island that would be struggling to learn how to make it in the new world. David had promised O’Brien that he would send supplies and a radio to him so they could more easily make contact, figuring that friends on an island in the middle of Lake Erie might be a good thing to have in the future.
Once the members of David’s group had shared their stories, Jack told the newcomers about the events that had taken place in Noble County since the appearance of the virus. There had been a number of very sharp engagements and dangerous fights before they had led the infected from the southern half of the county to the walls of The Castle by using fire trucks and their sirens, but the epic battle fought here dwarfed everything that had happened previously.
Well over ten thousand infected had been destroyed by eighty-five armored fighters and several hundred support personnel. Jack’s warriors had killed the monsters until their corpses filled the ditch beneath the earthen wall and basically formed a ramp that the remaining creatures used to finally overrun the fighters at the top. Trapped in their buildings overnight, the soldiers broke free the next morning by cutting their way to the top of the west wall where they formed a circle and stood shoulder to shoulder as they fought the surviving creatures in a vicious, day-long struggle. Finally, through valor and strength many of them never knew they possessed, they won their fight by killing every single enemy.
One by one Jack introduced the squad leaders and other key members of his small army. Carter Wilson, who’d been by David’s side since they survived the outbreak in Afghanistan. Marcus Goodwin and Bruce Owen, fierce-looking Rangers who’d served with both Carter and Jack and had years of combat experience. Stanley Rickers, a young vet who’d organized a group of civilians into a deadly outfit of zombie-killers—a man whose parents had died with pikes in hand while covering their son’s escape when the wall was overrun. John Shea, the Rangers’ former commander in the war, and his wife, Tina, an Iraqi veteran who had led the small force that killed over three hundred zombies in what had come to be known as the Battle of Hunter’s Ridge.
Bobby Crane and Todd Evans, also former Rangers, were snipers who had provided invaluable firepower at the most critical times during the early fights and the Battle of The Castle. Zach Kinstler and Maddy Johnson, two teens who’d had their graduations interrupted by the outbreak, had proven to be smart, tough, and most of all, highly efficient killers of the infected. The older Smith brothers, Carey and Tom, had transformed themselves from successful businessmen to strong and competent soldiers who had each found a niche helping to maintain an impenetrable perimeter defense around The Castle, recently concentrating on fortifying a nearby state park.
Doc Redders had saved lives and healed injuries after the battles, and Jack’s sister, Sarah, had picked up where her unfinished med school training left off and become an invaluable assistant to the doctor. Carter’s wife, Deb, was a nurse who had helped design The Castle along with her husband and Jack. She had also recruited the doctor, set-up the infirmary, and, having lived in The Castle since before it was completed, she had become the de facto facilities manager of the place—she was the go-to person for everything from organization and disposition of fighting supplies to assigning who slept where within the compound. Carter’s mom was basically everyone’s mother, and a grandma to the younger kids. She was nurturing and kind, and all the people at The Castle sought her out for sage advice on life as well as for her great cookies.
Bill and Sally Haines had been rescued in the first days of the outbreak, along with their infant son. Bill had immediately joined the fighters and was now an experienced and deadly veteran, while his wife helped Deb keep track of supplies and maintain records of the inner workings of the operation. Tyler Matlin was sixteen and hard as nails, having fought off a pack of zombies with nothing but a mop handle as Jack had hacked his way through five of the creatures to rescue the teen and a small group of customers trapped in a convenience mart when the virus first appeared in Noble County. Tyler’s grandfather, his guardian and only reliable family member, had died defending his grandson, so Jack had basically adopted the boy and put him into combat training. The young man was accompanied by Jade Andrews, a high school student Jack had found nearly dead from a gunshot wound while driving from Albion to The Castle. Jack had killed over twenty zombies to rescue her and bring her back to Doc Redders.
Then there was Andi Carrell. She and her two daughters had been living in a small house a few miles away when Jack found her while inviting neighbors to come to The Castle for protection. A high school history teacher and former college athlete, she was intelligent, beautiful, and compassionate. She had joined the fighters and proven herself to be a tough, competent soldier several times over, but it was her obviously special relationship with Jack that drew careful attention from the members of David’s group as they listened to the tales of survival from the people of The Castle.
The story-telling and introductions finally slowed down near midnight, and with the members of David’s group losing their struggle to stay awake, everyone reluctantly agreed that it was time to find their beds. Jack demanded that David and Christy take his room, while the rest of the newcomers found basic but comfortable bunks out in the barn that were luxurious compared to the conditions they’d endured for well over a week on the lake and river. Soon enough, Jack assured them, everyone would have a house to live in as more of the countryside was brought under the control of his small army. With thoughts of a future of hope now filling the places in their minds that had spent weeks struggling to keep despair and grief at bay, the brave people who had shared David’s journey drifted into the most restful sleep they had enjoyed since leaving Cleveland.
Chapter 2
The next morning brought clear skies and cool temperatures for August in northern Indiana, reminding everyone that the hot summer without air-conditioning would eventually give way to a Midwestern fall and winter. After breakfast David and Luke had wandered over to the training ground outside the barn and watched some of the soldiers rehearse the ancient tactic of forming into a tight phalanx of warriors, presenting the enemy with a solid wall of shields and spears. Others were practicing archery, and members of another group were sparring with one another with mock axes, maces, and short swords. After about ten minutes Jack came walking up and asked, “Ready to have a go with some of those folks down there?”
Luke shook his head, but was obviously excited about the prospect. “I’m taking the day off, but I’d sure love a tour of your Castle!”
Jack grinned at Luke’s declaration and offered, “David’s been here before, but we’ve made a few changes since then. I’ll show you both around, and then you can give the tour to the rest of your group later.”
Jack led Luke and David to the top of the east wall and pointed out over the horizon, “That’s the direction the zombies came from, over ten thousand of them.”
&n
bsp; “How many fighters did you have?” David inquired as he squinted out into the distance.
“Eighty-five fully armored soldiers, twice that many bringing water and weapons to the line. By the time we were forced off of this wall many of the support-folks were fighting for their lives too.”
“Did you lose many people?” Luke respectfully asked.
“Twenty died here; half that at other battles before this fight.”
Luke slowly nodded and gazed out over the corn fields stretching to the east, trying to picture what those thousands of infected must have looked like as they approached The Castle moaning and howling. “Were they hunters or zombies?”
Jack cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Luke explained, “we’ve been calling the creatures that have evolved, you know, the strong ones that seem to be organized in packs, hunters. We call those that are still slow, like the ones we first saw at the beginning of the outbreak, zombies.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully, “We’ve just called the new ones “fast-movers” since they first appeared, but I like hunters better; it describes them perfectly. We faced some fast ones here during the battle—some of the earliest hunters I suppose. To be honest, I think we would have lost here if most of the infected we faced were ‘hunters’. We’ve been fortifying positions back in the Chain-O-Lakes state park behind us in case another army comes our way. We can use water and terrain to our advantage there, and the park boundary starts less than a half-mile from our walls. We don’t plan on getting trapped in here again.”
As they continued to walk along the wall inspecting the progress of the palisade, David explained, “Me and Luke have been working on some theories about the infected. The bottom line is that we believe your Colonel Barnes was working on a virus designed to turn people into some kind of super-soldiers, hunters of humans that need nothing but protein to fuel their development into efficient killers that are impervious to all wounds but those that destroy the brain. I mean, we think they do need some oxygen, but respiration is so slow they seem to be zombies when they’re actually biological organisms.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “we’ve seen all of this too, and basically reached the same conclusions. I suppose you’ve noticed that even the weakest among them will start to heal and strengthen if they can get enough to eat?”
“That’s what we were thinking,” Luke offered, “but we haven’t exactly been able to test our hypotheses yet.”
Jack nodded as he grimly explained, “We’ve captured a few and fed them raw meat. They do evolve and heal, but there does seem to be a limit to their abilities.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“Just that they aren’t going to regenerate missing limbs, or any other body parts for that matter. If a knee is smashed the wound heals over with that pink scar tissue I’m sure you’ve seen, but the joint itself is fused, and that hunter isn’t ever going to run again. Basically, given time and good food, a zombie with no debilitating wound is going to eventually evolve into a strong, fast version of the human they were, or would have been if they had enjoyed a more efficient diet before they were infected.”
David quipped, “Just like the Army, huh? They’re becoming all that they can be!”
Jack grimaced, “Guess the Army finally figured out the perfect way to help folks maximize their physical potential. But they won’t become more than that; they don’t grow sharper teeth, or sprout wings and claws; they just grow as fast and strong as their bodies will allow. And they crave human flesh over any other.”
“Yeah,” Luke sadly agreed, “we noticed.”
“Sorry about your dad, son,” Jack quietly offered. “But you can count on David, always, and I intend to become part of your family too. Carter is like a brother to me, and he’ll have your back no matter what. Most everyone here has lost loved ones, often right in front of them, so we do know what you’re going through.”
Luke’s eyes brimmed with tears as he looked at Jack, “We can soldier on, or we can die; this new world won’t allow an existence anywhere between those two choices. Dad would want me to live, and help others live too. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Jack gripped the teen’s shoulder and gave a tiny smile, “Guess we have the counseling out of the way—just don’t let it get around that I have anything approaching a sensitive side.”
Luke couldn’t keep a smile from his own face, and David let out a small laugh as he added, “Don’t worry; I doubt anyone would believe us.” He folded his arms across his chest and continued, “We don’t need any shrinks to tell us who has post-traumatic stress anymore; everybody still alive is going to be a hot mess! Of course, we’re all too busy trying to stay alive to worry about the fact that we don’t have any Zoloft.”
As Jack smiled, Luke asked, “Do you still have the hunters you captured?”
Jack let out a long sigh and his brow furrowed as he muttered, “Yeah, one of ‘em.”
David remarked, “Seems like you’re not happy about it.”
“You’re the lawyer little bro, didn’t they teach you about ethics in school?”
“Don’t tell me you’re worried about being sued over your treatment of the infected! I mean, you killed ten thousand of them out here by blowing them up, crushing them, burning, you name it.”
Jack scowled as he explained, “There’s still the Golden Rule, David.”
Luke jumped in, “If you were infected you’d want to be euthanized.”
Jack nodded, “I’ve been torn between knowing they wouldn’t want to live like this, and assuming that they’d want us to learn all we could about them in order to protect survivors, especially their loved ones.”
David sighed, and his tone was somber as he asked, “How’d you make that determination?”
Jack sat down on the hard-packed earth on the top of the wall and motioned for the other two to join him. He matter-of-factly explained, “I knew the first one.”
Luke’s eyes grew wide as he whispered, “You knew someone who turned and still let them live in that condition?”
Jack looked off in the distance and let out a slow breath, “It wasn’t exactly like that. I’d gotten to know the county sheriff a little bit in the early days of the outbreak. When he was bitten over at the clinic in Albion, he asked me to become the interim sheriff. I accepted, and then watched him slip away after we cuffed him to a bunk inside a holding cell. I wanted his remaining deputies to see what we were dealing with, you know, make sure they understood that the infected weren’t human any longer after they turned. I didn’t want to kill the creature in front of anyone who knew him well, so I left the job for later. Not too long after that his wife came up and asked about where we’d buried him; I lied to her, thinking that it would ease her mind. I told her wed buried him even though he was still cuffed in that cell.”
David and Luke looked horrified as Jack continued, “I made a lot of mistakes early on you guys, and that one didn’t even get anybody killed.” He looked thoughtful for a moment before he continued, “Turned out I didn’t ease her mind after all. Her husband, Bob, while he was still lucid, told his wife he wanted to donate his body to the doc after we took care of it proper—you know, made sure his brain was dead after he turned.”
Luke stared carefully at the dirt as he gently asked, “So what happened?”
“As Andi and me geared up to head into town to take care of it for real, we ran into the sheriff’s wife again. She actually asked if we could dig him up. Andi spilled the beans right then and there, and Mrs. Gates actually seemed relieved. She came up with the idea of bringing him back, well, alive for lack of a better word. She said we needed to study the creatures, find out their strengths and weaknesses. She said that she knew that’s what he’d want; if there was any chance of his death helping people in this county survive that’s what he’d want. Took two days to convince me, but I finally went along with it.
“When we got to him he coul
d barely move he was so weak with hunger, so it was fairly safe to move him to an area we’d secured as sort of a fortified holding cell where Doc Redders could keep an eye on him and run experiments. First thing he did was implant a chip that would allow us to monitor body function, just to see why dead creatures needed to feed. We couldn’t get him to eat at first, he just kept eyeing us and moaning. Finally we put a wounded rabbit in there and got out of sight, and the creature proceeded to kill and eat it in short order. After that it would eat fresh meat when we it put in there, but only after it became convinced that it couldn’t catch us.
“Doc was looking over the monitors after the first feeding when he picked up the heartbeat. Very slow, but strong, the heart was beating maybe a couple times a minute. Didn’t seem to be any respiration going on, and from what we’ve experienced in combat since the infected evolved into hunters, their brains continue to demand food long after the head is removed from the body. Doc suspects that the brains and muscles don’t need much, if any, oxygen, or that the creatures get it from some process other than respiration.”
David interrupted, “Where’d you get the medical equipment?”
“Carter’s wife, Deb, had basically stocked up for a full clinic when we designed The Castle, but Doc and Sarah haven’t been shy about asking for all kinds of that stuff, so we’ve made several salvage runs on the local hospitals. Turns out our little sister actually learned a few things before she dropped out of school—Doc says she’s brilliant, but we haven’t told her that.
“Anyway, we watched as the creature got stronger and faster, and we also noticed that he could learn, too. He finally stopped throwing himself against his cage every time a human came into sight. Now he just sits in the corner growling, waiting for us to toss him meat That’s about it. He hasn’t done anything different for the past month. For a while he was having stare-downs with Doc, and he’d get excited now and then for no particular reason we could figure out, but he hasn’t done that for weeks. These days I seem to be the only one who gets him riled up, so I try to stay away. Sooner or later we’re gonna have to put him down because letting him live like this really bothers me.”