The man who’d said “oh, shit” was tall and heavyset. He wasn’t fat, just big-boned, as a famous cartoon character was oft inclined to say. He had long brown hair and a beard, both streaked with silver, and one of those hangdog faces that must always look slightly morose, even when he was happy. His entire upper body was embellished with tattoos. Mostly biker-type ink. Naked women. Skulls and snakes. All a little fuzzy and saggy. He might once have been an intimidating man, but drooping pecs and a small potbelly had tempered some of that fearsomeness.
The second man was handsome and fair, with a bit of blonde scruff on his cheeks and chin. He was about Brent’s age, with shoulder length blond hair and a good physique. His might have been movie star looks back in the old days, before his teeth had rotted. A scar wriggled from his chin to his left eye, puckering the flesh of his cheek. It lent him a rakish, somewhat piratical air.
The third man was a skinny black fellow with a badass set of dreads. He was rail thin and dark as coal, with delicate, almost effeminate features and very long bony fingers. His eyes and mouth were slightly too large for his face. He held his body as if he were inclined to withdrawal.
For a long moment, none of them spoke.
“Don’t let them smell fear on you,” Ghost-Harold said unexpectedly. The imaginary voice was so real that Brent lurched. He looked instinctively over his right shoulder, where the voice seemed to issue from.
“Men are like dogs. If they smell your fear, you’ll be their bitch from here on out.”
That time the voice sounded as if it had come from his left shoulder.
“Got it,” Brent said aloud. He turned to face the trio and saw that they were looking at him suspiciously.
“Who you talking to, buddy?” the biker asked. The bearded one was numbered 282. The number was on the upper part of his left pec, in the space between a black widow spider and a pinup model wearing black garters and little else.
“No one,” Brent said.
“It sure sounded like you were talking to someone.”
“Nah,” Brent said. “He’s dead.”
The black man looked at the biker, his eyes comically wide. The handsome one leaned forward in his seat, smiling at Brent as if he were waiting for the punch line.
“So what’s your name, buddy?” the bearded man asked.
“Brent.”
“Brent what?”
“Scarborough.”
“Where you from?”
“Tennessee.”
“How’d you get here?”
“I walked.”
“Running Home?”
Brent nodded.
“Me, too. That’s how they caught me. I was trying to gas up my hog when a meat wagon rolled up on me. Been here five years now.”
“What’s your name?” Brent asked.
“Vickers,” the biker said. He thumbed the blond. “This is Jamie. And this guy with the cool dreads is Ian.”
“I know. Weird name for a brother, right?” Ian said.
Brent shrugged. “I had a black friend named Poindexter when I was in college. We called him Dex.”
“So… why’d they put you back here with us, Brent?” the biker dude asked. He looked at the playing cards in his hand, scowled, laid them on the table face-down.
“I don’t know,” Brent said. “Don’t they normally keep the guys together back here?”
“No,” Vickers said.
“Normally they eat them,” Jamie said with a grin. “We’re the stud service around here. They call us the roosters. We keep the hens laying, if you know what I mean. It’s the sickest fucking thing you could ever imagine, but it keeps the corpse brigade from chewing on our asses.”
Brent feigned ignorance. “The fat one just said to take me in the back. I thought they were going to kill me, but they wrote a number on my chest and marched me back here.”
“Good, good,” Ghost-Harold said. “Just keep playing dumb.”
Jamie stared at him for several seconds, eyes narrowed. “I think he’s lying,” he finally said. “I think they’re planning on retiring one of us. You know how they do things around here, Vick. They always kill the males as soon as they haul them in. They just keep the three of us for breeding.”
“Maybe they mean to fatten him up a little,” Vickers said. “Look at the poor bastard. He’s skinny as a rail.”
Ian nodded, blinking from Vickers to Brent and back again. “Yeah, that must be it. Look how skinny he is.”
“Which one of us is it, guy?” Jamie demanded. “Which one of us is getting the axe?”
“I told you I don’t know!” Brent yelled. “I don’t know anything except they killed my best friend!”
“Pull your hair out,” Ghost-Harold said.
Brent grabbed his hair in both hands and pulled, his face twisted up in anger and frustration. He growled through his clenched teeth. His face turned red, and the veins in his temples puffed out. His theatrics was only about five percent acting.
Ian stepped back, eyeing him nervously. Jamie looked amused. Vickers seemed more concerned than anything. The old biker half-rose from the card table, making a soothing gesture with his hands. “All right, dude. Take it easy. No need to get yourself worked up. We didn’t mean to give you the third degree. We’re all buddies here.” He looked at his companions. “Right, guys?”
“Sure,” Ian said, nodding his head rapidly. “We’re all bros. You watch my back I’ll watch yours.”
“Jamie?” Vickers said.
Jamie didn’t respond. He just stared at Brent and grinned.
15. Dinner
The roosters treated Brent with kid gloves after his little outburst. They invited him to sit down at their table, supplying him with a couple of plastic milk crates for a seat. Vickers gave him a smoke, lit it for him with a match. The trio continued to ply him with questions, neglecting their card game for the moment, but they didn’t question his internment with them, merely his history, and how he’d gotten apprehended.
Brent was open with them about his past and the circumstances of his capture. He just played dumb when they asked him why his life had been spared.
The zombies, the roosters explained, always slaughtered male captives immediately on their arrival. They hadn’t kept a male since Ian, who had been spared to replace the last rooster, a guy named Jack Beachum, who had keeled over with a heart attack the previous spring.
“They only keep three males at one time,” Vickers explained. “Jamie here took over for Brooks, who got killed trying to escape. It’s just dumb luck. They don’t care if we’re fit or smart or good-looking so long as we can fuck. That’s why I don’t understand why they didn’t kill you. Unless they think there’s too many women for us to service now.”
“They didn’t tell me anything,” Brent said, drawing on his cigarette.
They talked about themselves after they got Brent’s story. Vickers was from Arkansas. He had owned and operated a bike repair shop. He was somewhere around fifty, he said, though he couldn’t remember just exactly how old he was anymore. He was captured with his wife, but they’d killed his woman when she couldn’t get pregnant.
“She had a hysterectomy when she was thirty-five,” he explained. “Endometriosis. She kept it a secret from them for a little while, but they’ll only keep the women so long if they don’t get pregnant. It’s like we’re livestock here, and if we’re not productive…” He ran a finger across his throat.
“How did you get here?” Brent asked. “Why didn’t you stay in Arkansas? Or go west, out into the desert where there’s not so many zombies?”
“We were headed for the east coast. That’s where her family lives. But then we heard those radio broadcasts, and we decided to run for Home instead.” Vickers lit another smoke and looked thoughtfully at Brent, head cocked. “Sometimes I wonder if there really is a Home. Sometimes I think it’s just… you know, bait. To bring the meat out of hiding.”
That thought had occurred to Brent as well.
Ian was a native of Western Kentucky, he said. He’d gotten captured running for Home, too. He was only seven years old when the pandemic took place. He had stayed in the backwoods of Kentucky, living off the land, until his parents died, first his mother, who had perished during childbirth, then his father, who had contracted the Phage during a bout of the flu. He had run for Home mostly out of loneliness, he admitted. He couldn’t bear living alone.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I’m glad I got caught,” he confessed. He laughed guiltily, ducking his head. “I wouldn’t be saying that if they’d decided to eat me, obviously, but this place is better than how I was living before. It’s better being here than being by myself.”
Brent, who also hated being alone, could sympathize—though he couldn’t imagine ever becoming accustomed to this place, to this human meat farm.
Jamie, a native of New York City, had been on a flight to New Orleans for a business convention when the outbreak occurred. His flight got rerouted to Nashville during the chaos, and he had found himself stranded in an unfamiliar city, surrounded by several hundred thousand of the hungry dead. He had kept himself alive by banding up with different groups of survivors, abandoning one for another as necessity demanded. He was slowly making his way back home when he was captured. He didn’t know that New York had gotten nuked until Ian joined their group.
“My dad had a solar-powered radio,” Ian explained. “That’s how I knew about New York City. Atlanta, Georgia got blasted, too. And some city out west. I can’t remember the name now. Seattle, maybe? My dad used to listen to the news all day. Until the radio stations quit broadcasting, anyway. He had a journal, and he would write down everything he heard in it, all the important stuff. He kept a big map of the United States on the wall of his office, and he’d take a red marker and scratch out cities on it if they got blasted. He called them dead zones. Said they were uninhabitable now because of the radiation, like some place in Russia called Chernobyl. He was really smart, my dad. Our cabin had a fallout shelter and several years’ worth of supplies. Vickers said he was a doomsday prepper.”
The door of their quarters swung open as they chatted. Brent turned in his seat and watched as two women stepped inside. They waited with their heads down until the guards had shut and locked the door, then advanced into the room, a young blond with the number 344 on her forearm, and a brunette with 352 scrawled across her forehead. The blond was carrying a large plastic bowl. The brunette was carrying two metal pails. Judging by the slant of the brunette’s shoulders, one of the metal pails was heavier than the other.
“Five minutes,” the guard at the door growled.
“Grub,” Vickers announced, standing to greet the women. “Paula,” he nodded to the blond, lowering his voice. He took the plastic bowl from her hands. “You coming back to see me tonight?”
The blond blushed. “I wish,” she said. “I think I’m out of rotation for a little while.” She touched her stomach with a meaningful expression and Vickers looked surprised. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved me again.”
Vickers grinned. He set the bowl on their card table and gave her a rough hug. “You’re welcome, hon,” he said. He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re safe—even if it’s just for a little while. I’ll miss our little visits, though.”
The blond giggled.
Brent watched the exchange with something like horror. He wasn’t horrified by the behavior of the two, only by the grisly fate awaiting their child. The blond was happy to be pregnant because it meant she would live a little longer, even knowing that her captors would probably devour the baby shortly after its birth. Vickers was pleased that his “services” had helped the young woman. He was proud of himself. Necessity had forced them to accept their roles, but it did not make the situation any less terrible.
And then he wondered: would he be so casual about it in a few years’ time?
Assuming he lived so long...
Ian had taken the metal pails from the brunette’s hands. He set the heavy one on the stainless steel deli counter by the back wall, exchanging it with a lighter one, then carried the second pail to the far end of their living quarters. He ducked behind a section of shelving, then returned, carrying a different bucket.
“Here you go,” he said, passing it to the brunette.
She wrinkled her nose. “Thanks,” she said sarcastically.
“Vickers had diarrhea last night,” Ian apologized.
“Time’s up!” the zombie at the doorway barked.
Vickers and the blond embraced quickly, reluctant to part. The blond ran to the deli counter and grabbed an empty bowl, then trotted toward the entrance. “Bye, Vick!” she called. “Thanks again!”
The brunette shuffled after her with her sloshing bucket of offal, grumbling under her breath.
“You going to eat?” Ian asked, before the smell of their waste bucket had even dissipated.
Brent looked into the plastic bowl the blond had brought to them. He sat back with an expression of revulsion. The bowl contained food—vegetables, fruit, meat, all of it from cans-- but it had all been chucked in together. It looked more like dog slop than dinner.
Ian noted the expression on his face and shrugged. “That’s about as good as it gets, mate. Zombies aren’t exactly gourmet chefs.” He smiled at his own wit, picking bits of vegetable directly from the bowl.
“You need to eat,” Vickers said, returning to the table. “You gotta keep up your strength.” He used his hands to tear off a chunk of processed meat and brought it to his mouth.
“For what?” Brent asked.
Vickers grinned but did not answer.
Two zombies entered sometime later, as the daylight—wan as it was already—dimmed even further toward night. They shuffled in carrying a single mattress. They didn’t approach the roosters, but tossed the mattress down just inside the door.
“There’s your bed, I think,” Vickers said.
One of them tossed a wadded blanket on top of the mattress, then they withdrew. They shut and locked the door.
“And there’s your blanket,” Vickers said. He smiled at Brent strangely. The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I guess you’re moving in.”
16. Roo
Shortly before nightfall, as Brent sat squinting in the dark with the roosters, there was a metallic snapping sound from the front of the supermarket, and a wan yellow light brightened the ceiling and upper walls of the building’s interior. Brent looked up wonderingly, as it had been a very long time since he’d seen electric light. For the last six or seven years, candles and campfires had illuminated his nights.
The light barely penetrated the living quarters of the male internees. It showed mainly in the gaps and chinks of the wall that separated them from the women, casting shutter-like stripes across their bodies and the contents of their living space. Like a set from an old noir film, the smoke of their cigarettes drifted through those glowing bands like ghostly kelp. Still, it was a marvel, and he imagined how it must be at Home. He imagined its bright and shining lights—on the streets, in every window.
“The gals will be coming soon,” Vickers said, rising from his chair. He took a last drag of his cigarette and smashed it out in the ashtray. “Time to go to work, boys.”
“Let’s see if they send one in for Brent tonight,” Jamie said. He grinned at Brent, his eyes gleaming in an incandescent stripe.
“So what if they do?” Vickers said. For the first time that evening he sounded annoyed by his cellmate’s paranoia.
“You need to watch blondie over there,” Ghost-Harold whispered in Brent’s ear. “Forget Vickers. He’s a teddy bear. It’s that Jamie guy you need to keep an eye on.”
Brent nodded subtly, agreeing with his imaginary friend. Vickers posed little threat to him. He might have been a hell raiser in his salad days, but Vickers was old now, and the years had made him soft. He would not be a danger unless his back was to the wall. Ian looked like he was poised to jump out of his
skin at any moment. Raised in solitude on his father’s prepper estate, he was unaccustomed to conflict and saddled with an innate gentleness that would only be a detriment in the bitey world they lived in now. Jamie was the dangerous one. The former real estate broker would let no one get in the way of his survival. Even worse, he was a paranoid with a pro-active sense of self-preservation. He might possess a charming grin, but for all of its charm it was a crocodile’s grin, and he had a matching pair of reptilian eyes to go with it. Jamie was a danger to all of the men locked up with him. His two cellmates just didn’t know it.
They heard activity in the guard walk, the croaking of their zombie keepers. Feminine voices spoke softly in reply. A moment later, the rattling of the padlock. The door swung open and the women marched in. Brent counted them, as he knew Jamie would be doing. One, two, three… and four.
Jamie sat back with a laugh. He shot Vickers an I-told-you-so look.
“One hour,” the guard snarled, and it swung the door shut with a bang.
Once the guard dismissed them, the demeanor of the women became more casual. They proceeded into the room with an air of familiarity. There were two younger women, thin but not bad looking, an older heavyset gal with dishwater blond hair, and the young black girl who had pleaded with Brent at the walkway earlier. She alone held back, chewing on a thumbnail.
“Vickers,” the heavyset gal said, a twinkle in her eye.
“Maudelle,” Vickers nodded.
She walked past him, catching him by the waistband of his boxers. “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “Hannah is about to bust, and I need to be there if she goes into labor tonight.”
“Hannah?” Ian asked as he glanced toward the intervening wall.
“Yep,” Maudelle said, pushing through the swinging door of their sleeping quarters. She didn’t say anything else about it. Apparently there was nothing more to say.
Brent eyed the remaining women fretfully. For the past four or five years, his only sexual partner had been a gal named Rosie Palmer—a satisfactory lover, though not much of a talker. The last actual real woman he’d been with had been a fellow survivor named Trisha Schneider. She’d died when she and Brent stumbled across a militant group. The rape gang had shot at them as they fled, and Trisha took a bullet in the back. The slug must have hit her heart or some other vital organ because she was dead before she hit the ground. She wasn’t a very attractive woman-- or rather, she just wasn’t Brent’s type-- but the sex had been a comfort to both of them.
Cattle (The Fearlanders) Page 8