Betrayal

by Michael S. Gardner

  When Trevor Spencer had first arrived at the Colony thirteen months and twenty-seven days ago, he initially planned on refueling and heading out to the Caribbean. But, just as the luck of every survivor, his plans were shot to hell by forces beyond his control. The fallout from the D.C., the last nuclear revulsion he’d had the pleasure of experiencing, albeit from nearly one hundred and seventy miles away from ground zero, had killed his hopes of skipping town and heading to one of his precious islands. Hearing the last radio transmission from an elderly woman named Wilma Bedford—a self-proclaimed prophet from Tampa whose “only purpose” was to cleanse the new world of corruption from any race other than almighty “Ha-hwaayte” congregation—about Russia, the UK, and damn near every other world power cleansing their nations with energy harnessed from the sun, grounded his immediate future.

  “I never asked for this shit.” Another swig brought out a string of profanity.

  More gunshots echoed; this time they came from inside the store.

  Trevor slammed shut his eyelids like a seven car pileup, remembering the humility of having his hands wrapped behind his head as the marines, led by the Supreme Gunnery Sergeant, brought him to the knees with promises of painting the grass with Trevor’s brains and the compost with his corpse. Those bastards stole his ride and forced him into service—unless he wanted to explore the deadlands on foot and unarmed. And now that the redhead with those small tits and nipples that would have any man writing novels of their beauty died from the fever, it was up to him to continue her legacy. And where the hell did that get him?

  Trevor shook his head. “Fuck this shit.”

  He began the startup sequence. Stomaching another look through the binocs, Trevor confirmed that the dead were pouring into the store where the Sergeant and his head goon were surely meeting their ends.

  Death had become commonplace over the last two years. He’d lost everyone and everything he’d ever cared about. Friends and family and luxuries he could only dream about were all stamped in the doomed timeline that had now become his reality. To say he felt little indifference to the death of these men would have been an overstatement; he simply shrugged it off and continued prepping the chopper for departure.

  Now, as the Huey ascended from the roof, after all the ties from those reckless bastards had been severed, Trevor found himself at a crossroads. The beaches of the Virgin Islands or even Puerto Rico were that much closer to becoming his—unless they had been vaporized—but there were many people relying on the chopper’s safe return. With food and supply. If he were to succumb to his selfishness, they were all sure to die. But weren’t they doomed anyway? He glanced back to the corner store; it was entirely surrounded now.

  With a sigh, he realized now wasn’t the time for selfishness. At least not yet. The fuel level was dangerously low, and he didn’t have enough supplies to get him anywhere near where he wanted to spend the rest of his days. And it wasn’t like he could go out and get all these things himself; he’d need help. Just like the survivors would need his help.

  Foregoing Bell’s rule of waiting four hours if contact had been lost, Trevor headed back to the Colony after switching off his radio.

  ***

  “You stupid son of a bitch, flyboy.” Bell gritted his teeth as he watched the Huey trail off into the sunlight. He looked at his radio and tossed it over the edge of the roof.

  Payton, halfway through the jagged opening of the duct, looked up and screamed a line of expletives at the cowardly pilot.

  “I thought,” said Payton, pulling himself on the roof of the Seven Day Store, “he was supposed to wait.” He looked up to Bell, who was making his way to the edge of the roof. “What the hell are we gonna do now, sir?”

  Bell looked back; only half his face was visible. “Starvation, suicide, or a miracle. Take your pick.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Six days after abandoning the marines, Trevor found himself standing over a metal table in the finished attic of the poorly maintained farmhouse centered in the Colony. He pointed to a section of the map in front of him that was circled in red.

  “Going here,” he said, tapping worn paper, “is inviting death. The hospital’s overrun with Zacks.”

  Carol Beswith, a middle-aged woman with short-cropped, silvery hair, frowned. “Trevor,” she said. “I’m afraid we don’t have any other choice. Sickness is already showing up. We’ll need more antibiotics if we’re to survive winter, not to mention fuel and consumables.”

  Trevor exhaled a short chuckle as he leaned in. “Listen, lady, it’s not your ass on the line—”

  “But it is,” Carol contested. She gestured to the window to the left. “All of our lives are on the line, and you’re our only pilot now.”

  The door to the attic opened with a creak. A six foot tall man with a shaved head entered. His dark, tan face and overalls were stained with black grease and oil. He nodded at Trevor, to which the pilot nodded back.

  “I’ve got both buses in working order.”

  Carol nodded this time. “That’s good, Jonathan.”

  Trevor raised a hand and pointed to the Colony’s head honcho. “Were you planning on leaving, Carol?”

  “If we can’t scavenge any supplies by the time winter comes, then I want to have all bases covered.”

  Trevor furrowed his brow. “You can’t possibly fit everyone on those two vehicles.”

  “All the more reason we need to try, at least one more time, to get supplies. Our crops and livestock are withering away like the rest of the world outside these walls, and everyone’s morale is right behind.”

  Trevor looked back to the map. The hospital was on the eastern side of the city, and he knew for a fact that the dead occupied nearly every floor. Sliding his finger across the faded paper he stopped on Stryker International, which was on the southern tip of the city. Glancing to the location of the police station and pushing back the image of the dead marines, he released a sigh. Whether he liked it or not, Carol was right: they needed supplies. He needed supplies.

  “Okay,” he said. “If this plan were to work, we’d need to first top off the fuel in the Huey. If we can’t do that, then we’re better off just taking the healthiest of us now and leaving in those armored buses Jonathan’s been working on.” He pointed back to the hospital. “Then, assuming we don’t get killed, we make our way to the hospital and do our best to get meds.” He looked up and eyed Carol. “But I’m warning you, this will not be an easy task. If there’s no hope of getting the meds, then there’s no hope.”

  Carol opened her mouth to say something, but Trevor stopped her before she could.

  “That’s just the way it is,” he said.

  “What about food and water?” asked Jonathan.

  “Assuming we’re still alive after everything else?” Trevor said. “Then we’ll scrounge what we can. Luckily those marines left us with enough ammunition to fight off an army.”

  Jonathan walked up to the table, planted his hands down, and leaned in to get a better look at the map.

  “Which is exactly what we’ll be doing,” Trevor continued. “Now,” he turned to Carol. “Who’s coming with me?”

  “Jonathan will be your second-in-command.”

  Trevor had to force down a laugh. The only thing he knew Jonathan to be good at was turning a wrench. Not once had he seen the man pick up a gun. Not once had he heard tales of him battling the dead. To Trevor, it was likely that Jonathan would be dead weight. The tall mechanic sensed this and stood straight.

  “I’m as able as any man left in this hellhole, and nothing will get in the way of me bringing back supplies for my family.”

  “That so?” said Trevor.

  The tall man nodded. Trevor scrutinized him for several moments; not once did the mechanic look away. He had a steely look in his expression. Only after returning did the pilot hear the news that Jonathan’s little girl was feverish. Winter, unlike it had been years ago, was now the nearly infallible hand of death. Preventable
sicknesses ushered numerous survivors into the next life, possibly even more than the dead did these days.

  After chewing it over and sizing the other man up, Trevor agreed.

  “And who else will be coming?” he asked Carol.

  “Rafael’s rounding up the rest.”

  Trevor slowly craned his head toward the Colony’s leader and squinted. “He’s not coming?”

  Carol shook her head. “He’s got the fever too.”

  Well ain’t that just the fuckin’ icing on the cake, Trevor thought as he rolled up the map and stuffed it into his coat’s inner breast pocket.

  “I’ll see you two tomorrow,” he said and made for the exit.

  “But—”

  Trevor dismissed Carol with a wave of the hand.

  Outside, the sun was slowly dropping toward the horizon and nestling behind the Harris Mountain range. Vibrant bursts of orange hues streaked the darkened atmosphere that, to Trevor, felt like the first sign of life up there he’d seen in a long time. Lately, with the changing of seasons, the heavens at dusk took him back to the first few nights after the bombs. The sky was awash in complete darkness, stars blocked out by the earth sucked up from each explosion. Back then, he’d wondered if he’d ever see sunlight again. A pit formed in his gut at the thought of how scared and helpless he’d been. When the whole world around you is unraveling, he thought as he passed an elderly pair making their way to the slop line, you just have to wait your turn to die.

  Now that the world was dead, he knew, waiting your turn was a daunting process. He nearly bumped into a family of three as he turned from the slop line, a converted detached garage that housed nearly all the Colony’s foodstuffs.

  “Sorry,” he said to a scruffy man. The wife scowled at him; their son was busy carrying on about how hungry he was.

  Turning toward the shacks and huts that served as this great society’s living quarters, Trevor felt his face contorting into a similar expression as the starved and angered woman’s face. This place is as bad as it gets.

  To complement his thought, a thirty-something woman with a sunken-in face, a long nose, and disturbingly thin lips caught his eye. Her frizzy brown hair covered the scar on her forehead. As Trevor recalled, it had been a gift received for withholding a payment her pimp nearly a decade ago.

  That’s about the only thing looking good on her these days, he thought as he eyed her medium-sized breasts. Trevor scratched his stubbly jaw, running his eyes over the woman. She saw him after passing a few of the huts and headed in his direction.

  “Hey there, flyboy,” she said with a smile that revealed several missing teeth and rotting gums.

  “What’s up, Janine?” replied Trevor, doing his best not to scowl at her rank breath.

  Janine looked back to the huts. “I was about to head back to my place.” She winked and rubbed her arms. “I could definitely use some company. Gets pretty lonely these days.”

  Trevor sucked his teeth. While Janine continued smiling and rubbing her arms, the pilot contemplated the proposal. Sure, this former hooker turned bad looker had the appearance of a corpse—not to mention the stink of one—but everyone needed some love. Word on the street was that this one was clean of any STDs too.

  It’s just a matter of if she deserves it, he thought as his eyes trained on the breasts beneath her ragged sweatshirt. Fuck it.

  “You ever been with a pilot?” he asked, grabbing her bony hand and shoving it in his crotch.

  Janine blushed. “My, you’re a big one, aren’t you?”

  Chuckling, Trevor said, “You have no idea, sweetheart. No idea.”

  Though this pathetic excuse for a woman was probably going to be the ugliest girl he’d ever fucked, it had been a few days since he’d bedded one of the colonists.

  He shrugged and grinned. Another notch on the belt for the flyboy.

  ***

  Mark Goodman, a twenty-year-old night watchman, sat on his ramshackle twin-size mattress in his home, which was nothing more than a few wooden pallets nailed together and covered by a polyurethane barrier. Rafael Hernandez, the head of security for the Colony, had just left a few minutes ago. News of the upcoming raid had put a bad taste in Mark’s mouth. And the fact that he had no choice but to embark with that prick Trevor and Jonathan brought about a sensation of feeling trapped.

  If the Sarge had asked him to go, he would have jumped at the opportunity. To Mark, the gunnery sergeant had been like a father. At least twice a week he would join the marines in their training. In fact, before the fall of all known civilization, Mark had planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the corps. The rising of the dead had drastically changed that, however. His parents had perished just two weeks after the infection reached Stryker City, and he was left to fend for himself for months. Just over a year ago, Staff Sergeant Bell and his men had rescued Mark, and ever since then he’d considered them his family.

  Now that they were gone…

  He knew that what he’d been tasked with was important, yet he couldn’t get past the brief flashes of memories of being chased and nearly killed on countless occasions. The world, it seemed, didn’t want anyone to survive outside the secure walls of the Colony. Going out there meant an up-close-and-personal encounter with things which only wanted to see you splayed open and screaming. Glancing to the nailed lumber serving as his dresser, he saw the three remaining cans of food and considered the options: starve in here or die out there. Neither was appealing. At all.

  Pulling his twin Beretta nine millimeters from under his mattress, he took them apart and began cleaning them. Though they hadn’t been fired since the last time he’d broke them down, the task itself would take his mind off the pains in his back from fitful sleeping, the emptiness in his stomach from lack of a proper diet, and the thought of going out to the city where the dead walk and the living die.

  ***

  Jared Gibbs set his crosshairs on a dead man that reminded him of Tom Arnold and squeezed the trigger. His assault rifle barked and the back of the dead’s head exploded in a shower of gore that caked those ambling behind it. With a grin he took another shot at a portly woman missing most of her face. He leaned over his post at the east end of the Colony and spit into the reaching crowd.

  “Yeah, you like that, don’t you?”

  The horde focused on him. Several screamed and raised their arms as high as they could go, yet none of them were even close to touching him.

  “Too bad you fuckers can’t climb, huh?”

  Shaking his head, Jared returned to his foldout chair and took a bite from his canned soup. He eyed the ten foot tall wall that surrounded the entire complex and was grateful for its construction. He’d heard tales of an old farmer named Jonah, the original owner of the property, and how he’d banded countless survivors together to stave off the dead while fortifying his home. Though Jared had never met Jonah, he’d heard his name spoken in reverence several times from some of the elder survivors.

  Having only arrived here three months ago, Jared was still getting used to life in the confines of safety. Out there, in the deadlands, survival was day-by-day. Here, there was order and that’s what he found the hardest to adjust to. He was to spend his eight hour shift observing the east end of the wall for any breaches. Never, not once, had he heard of such an occurrence.

  He tipped his hat over his eyes, feeling a bit tired from last night’s fuck fest with the O’Reilly sisters and Terrence.

  “The one thing about surviving,” Jared said, closing his eyes and remembering the moans of Shannon as she straddled him, “is enjoying the—”

  A tight grip squeezed his shoulder.

  Jared jumped out of his seat and met eyes with a sweaty-faced Hispanic man who coughed as he shook his head.

  “Sleeping on the job again, Mr. Gibbs?” said Rafael. “Tell me exactly why we’ve let you stay here again?”

  “Ah, come on, Raff.” Jared adjusted his hat and gave the head of security a shit-eating grin. “You kn
ow the ladies love me, and you know as well as I do that these walls aren’t gonna be compromised by those rotting pus fucks.”

  Between coughs Rafael said, “There are reasons beyond… your… understanding that we do what we do, Jared.” He gesticulated toward the camp. “These people need order.”

  “Order?”

  “Order gives semblance to what we once had.” Rafael stifled a laugh and wiped his lower lip. “Sounds crazy, yes?”

  Jared nodded, and Rafael stepped forward until their noses were millimeters apart.

  “If I were in better conditions, cabrón, I’d be teaching you a lesson about respecting order. But as it is, Carol and I have something else in mind for you. Follow me.”

  Jared lowered his eyes and tailed Rafael down the stairs and across the property.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Did you hear they’re planning a raid today?” Alicia Turner asked her older sister Kimberly. She plopped down on her mattress, picked up a magazine from beside the bed, and eagerly awaited an answer.

  Kimberly adjusted her bra in the cracked mirror hung over their table/dresser. “Don’t get your hopes up, sis.” She cupped her small breasts, pressed them together, and blew a kiss.

  Alicia frowned and opened up the magazine. “You don’t think they’ll find anything?”

  Brushing her dark blonde hair behind her ears, Kimberly turned to Alicia. “Didn’t find anything last time.”

  Eight-year-old Alicia turned to a page that displayed a snowy owl with its wings fully spread. She admired not only the beauty of the bird, she found herself transfixed in the tranquility of the light blue sky and mountainous terrain in the backdrop. Looking around the dimly lit shack in which they lived, another frown crossed her young face. Her skies were always gray; her weather was almost always gloomy. Alicia couldn’t recall the last time the sun had peeked out from its hiding place in the firmament.

  “Do you… Do you ever think we’ll be able to leave this place?” she asked.