A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  “Sure, and I’m not saying I mind. Just curious as to why.”

  He shrugged. “She’s always pinged my radar, for some reason. There’s just something off about her.”

  “You should have seen your face when I invited her to join us. It’s fun watching you squirm.”

  “You need to teach me that, Obi Wan. Asking someone to do something in a way that says it’s not a real invitation, I mean.”

  “It’s an estrogen thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

  He sighed. “Fair enough. So — I arrested a man for stealing corn today, did you know that?”

  “I may have heard something,” she allowed. “Sorry, I’ll stop. Your turn.”

  “I almost feel like it was a waste. Whoever his supplier is, he’s more afraid of them than he is of Larry or I. He wouldn’t tell us a thing.”

  She thought that over for a moment. “That says a lot, doesn’t it? Must be a rough bunch.”

  “I guess. Not like all our folks are saints. It’s not exactly a small suspect pool.” Miles winked at his wife. “Most of the nice guys and bleeding hearts aren’t around anymore.”

  Tish threw a piece of bread at him. “You ain’t as bad as you think, tough guy.”

  “Still nothing on your other patients?”

  Tish grimaced. Over the last few months, they’d found three people, unconscious with drug paraphernalia. All were still in the small hospital, unconscious, and fading fast. The demand had put a huge dent in their supplies of IV fluids. The medical staff was down to boiling water for the IV and trying to spoon-feed coma patients chicken broth. Even if Buck and his team brought supplies back before they faded away, it was no sure thing that they’d wake up. If they did, it was possible they’d be able to identify their supplier. Just in case, Miles had assigned a rotation of a couple of deputies to keep an eye on the clinic and make sure unauthorized people didn’t go inside. “It’s not looking good,” Tish admitted. “We’re doing what we can, but . . . To be honest, I doubt they all make it.”

  “Damn.” Miles shook his head. It wasn’t like they had the people to spare. “So, back to corn. Naylor knew it was just as stupid as I did. It wasn’t about the corn, it was about what he could get with it. And God help me, I was this close to torturing the guy to find out who he stole it for. Corn.” His face twisted into a grimace. “This is what we’ve come to.”

  “There is more to it than that,” Tish said. “It’s about the drugs, right?”

  He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I talked to your dad about quitting today, after we got done with Naylor. Larry told me I’m in this job because I have a different perspective, but the more I think about it, I don’t think that’s the best thing for a lawman.” He waved a hand. “Hell, I didn’t even recognize that your dad had a date tonight. I saw it and didn’t think anything of it. They’ve been making Bambi eyes at each other for months, and I was completely oblivious.

  “I’m not the right fit for this job. Ever since all this started everyone has looked to me like I have all the answers. They keep shoving me into positions of leadership, but I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time.

  “I told a kid today that he needed to keep going to math class. Was I full of it? Maybe I’m just kidding myself.” Miles held up his glass of water and twisted it, letting the light play through it. “This is just a glass. We can’t duplicate this, not in fifty years. The knowledge required to create the equipment that produced this, the skill to use the precise proportions of ingredients for something so pure, that’s gone, now. Civilization ended, and we’re just scratching in the dust pretending like the old rules matter.” He shrugged. “We turn a blind eye to the booze and the pot because, well, it’s not like any of us have anything else to blow off steam, what’s the big deal? Who are we to draw a line and say that meth isn’t the same thing? I’d never do it, myself, but if someone else wants to, what right do I have to stop them?”

  “It’s about our responsibilities,” Tish said, after a moment of consideration. “Would you want me taking out an appendix drunk off my ass? Same thing goes for the drugs. What happens when one of the wall guards gets hopped up on the stuff and decides to, I don’t know, start making all sorts of noise? Causes another breach?”

  “You wouldn’t do that because you’re responsible. Same for the wall guards.” Miles waved a hand. “The rest of these folks? Who knows? The people in the comas — who are they? What did they do?”

  “Lizzie Johnson worked — works — in the kitchen. JT Kepler, ah, I don’t know, I think he was a farmhand for Tom off and on.” She thought for a moment. “Not sure about Bob Gentry.”

  Miles nodded. “See, another thing your dad and I talked about. The people stepping up, doing things around here, are the same ones that have from the get go. Everyone else is just content to slide on through life.” He shook his head. “It’s not going to end well.”

  “So you’re going to quit then, and become a slider?”

  He winced. “Gee, thanks.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe it will be a shock to the system, get somebody to wake up out of their stupor and decide to do something positive.”

  Tish gave him a thoughtful look. Finally, Miles broke the silence.

  “I know, I know, stop being a whiner. But who else do I have to whine to?”

  She smiled. “Not what I was thinking, at all. I was thinking that it was a long winter. It’s spring, that’s liable to help right?” She reached across the table and rested her hand on top of his. “I think I’ll support you in whatever you decide to do. Just don’t jump off the bridge right away. Give it some time. And, finally — I think that we have the house to ourselves, tonight.”

  Miles raised an eyebrow. “I like that thought.”

  “I thought you might.”

  It was beef stew tonight, but Pete didn’t have much of an appetite. He ate half of it, then stirred the remnants around in the Tupperware until he grew tired of looking at it. Vinnie had carried it up after the students had left for the day and headed down to dinner for themselves. Pete knew he should try and eat more, lest he crush the boy’s feelings. He just couldn’t summon the energy to finish. With a sigh, he pressed the top back onto the dish. Maybe he’d eat it later.

  Every night, once he had the nest to himself, he’d set up his HAM unit on the workbench and let it scan through the frequencies. In the early days he’d amassed a solid list of people broadcasting. He’d even talked to a few of them, though more than a few spoke in foreign languages. As time went by, more and more of the stations dropped off-line, leaving him alone with the static.

  Pete glanced at the sky as the wind turbines mounted on top of the grain bins began to spin up. The light was fading fast, but he could make out a broad bank of dark clouds to the west.

  Storm coming in, he judged. Later tonight, maybe in the morning.

  He rubbed one of his stumps. The prudent thing to do would be to don his prostheses and climb down. Maybe play with his grand-niece and curl up in a real bed for the night. He had an old Army surplus folding cot up in the nest but there was a decided lack of creature comforts like, oh, windows. In the sandbox, he’d slept outside more often than not but you could hardly compare Indiana in the spring to a Middle Eastern evening in any season. He considered the ladder, then sighed again.

  Pete jerked the chair around and wheeled over to the other side of the nest. Earlier, he'd clamped a Newcon 60-power spotting scope/ range finder to the railing. He’d given his students an overview of estimating ranges based on visual cues earlier. He had a half dozen laser range finders in varying degrees of quality, but they wouldn’t last forever. On the bright side, they had enough scopes with mil-dot marks for Pete to teach range estimation. He wondered what the instructors from TBS Quantico would think about him passing their wisdom on to a group of junior high kids.

  On the bright side, they were good with math. A couple of the guys in his entry cohort had been hopeless. Pete chuckled and
looked over the scope. Cara, bless her heart, had offered to pack it up into its padded case before she’d climbed down for the day, but Pete had declined. He lowered his head to the eyepiece and wondered how she’d react if she knew his reasoning for wanting to keep the scope up.

  Given the position of the nest and the shape and size the settlement had taken, it was difficult for Pete to offer fire cover to the east wall. Any shot he took had to traverse three-quarters of the long axis. That was just too far to be effective, even with the .338. For that reason, most of their defensive firepower was in the eastern bunkers, with a small but not insignificant amount kept to the west. Generally speaking, Pete liked to keep an eye out in all directions, but his main areas of concern were with the north and south fences. Despite their height, he still regarded them as being minimal protection.

  Yeah, the creeks and their banks increased the theoretical height of the barrier, but just looking at the chain link gave Pete the willies. More than once he’d suggested beefing up those portions of the wall in meetings, but his fellows had voted him down every time. The walls were up, there hadn’t been a breach in years, and that was that. The three-person advisory council considered the issue tabled. He grimaced. Never should have gone along with the idea of the damn ‘council’ in the first place. Ain’t no room for democracy in a lifeboat. Jim Piper wasn’t bad, though he hemmed and hawed so much that Pete had often considered beating an actual position out of him.

  He swiveled the spotting scope and zoomed out. After a moment, he found the crumpled corpse of the zombie that Alex had shot this morning. He zoomed in to maintain some field of view while easing the scope up. He panned across the forest that paralleled the creek on the south side of the settlement. Oh Alex, you poor dumb kid. You’d have wet your pants this morning if you had any idea.

  He saw the motion first, a slow blur in the scope as he worked his way across, and he paused, licking his lips while he waited. There. In the deepening twilight shadows, he saw an emaciated figure, concealed behind one of the trees. It exposed just enough of its head that gray eyes could stare northward across the creek.

  So that it could study the fence.

  After a moment, other shadows began to form into recognizable shapes. A long branch moved against the wind, and become obvious as an arm. A round bulge on a tree trunk turned, and a head leaped into recognition.

  In the shadows, the woods teemed with the dead.

  Pete thumbed the range finder button on the spotting scope. 1907 yards — just over a mile. It was within the Savage’s range, but this . . . this was a whole other ball of wax.

  How many do you see? A hundred? Two? You don’t have enough ammo, for starters. And what happens when people start hearing gun shots in the night? “What if they rush the fence when you start shooting, Marine?” he muttered to himself.

  If anything, Larry or his nephew would climb up to see what the hell was going on, and then Pete would have to explain himself. And wouldn’t that just go over like a lead balloon? The council was sure to love finding out that he’d been keeping things so close to the vest. Maybe Jim would back him, and maybe not, but sure as the world, Calvin and that nitwit Norma would lose their minds instead of being effective leaders.

  No. It would be chaos down there. Pete knew that the others worried about him and his propensity to stay in the nest, but he knew how fragile things were down there. Before Z-Day, twenty percent of their population would have been in an institution. Many of the rest were functional, if shaky. For now, the facade had to remain, until he could either figure out what the creeps were up to or a way to get rid of them without causing a panic.

  Air strike would be good. Some A-10s or maybe a Spooky. Just rain down hell fire and damnation on the dead, burn them out once and for all. “Heh. Might as well wish for an aircraft carrier to sail up the creek. It’d be just as likely.”

  In the west, thunder rumbled.

  Chilled by the rising wind, Pete endured. Pete watched.

  Captain Adam Hanratty, United States Marine Corps, rubbed the grit from his eyes and tried not to yawn. “Back it up in the barn, there, Corporal. We’ll hole up here for the night.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” responded Corporal Greg Patterson. “Backing her up.” The big diesel of the LAV — light armored vehicle — whined, but the eight-wheeled personnel carrier still moved well. It was long overdue for depot-level maintenance, but Patterson’s MOS had been repairing the big machines since before the ball dropped. Given the lack of opportunities for career changes, he’d gotten quite good at keeping them going with little or no logistical support over the last eight years. Although, in all honesty, the duct tape was starting to overwhelm the interior.

  Once he had the vehicle centered inside of the rotting old barn, the Corporal shut down the engine. Noise discipline was a standing order these days. And more often than not, executed out of habit and reflex rather than from a superior’s command. The Marines who had needed reminders hadn’t survived this long.

  Adam turned in his seat and looked at his four passengers. Baxter, to no one’s surprise, was still racked out. The other three, also to no surprise, were completely awake.

  The personnel in the LAV were as jumbled as he’d ever seen. Patterson, at least, had been in Hanratty’s command structure for an extended period of time. The brass had attached Baxter to their team, even if it was only for this mission. The other three? Well, in a sense, they were just like Baxter — they were from a separate unit now attached to his small team. “You guys mind checking the perimeter while we set up?”

  Lieutenant Michael Ross, one of the few remaining members of US Navy SEAL Team 8, gave a silent nod. Hanratty might have outranked him, but both men knew that there was no place for rank on their current mission. On issues of the LAV, the SEAL deferred to the Marine. When it came to just about everything else, they were equals.

  “Let’s go, fellas,” Ross said in the smooth baritone that didn’t match his bushy beard and overlong hair. The Marines were scruffy, with a few days of stubble from their time inside the LAV, but the trio of SEALs took that to the next level. Back when the enemy had been muj, the relaxed standards just made sense. In certain parts of the world, clean-shaven men with close-cropped hair stood out like a sore thumb. Beards were just another form of camouflage. Despite the fact that the enemy couldn’t distinguish differences in appearance, the SEALs still went around looking like a biker gang. Hanratty figured the brass was either too busy or just didn’t care. Ross and his men clambered out of the vehicle through the rear hatches and secured them.

  He turned back to Patterson. “Blue Force Tracker up?”

  The Corporal glanced at the LCD display in the controls and nodded. “GPS signal is spotty, sir, but we should be able to get text through.” The radios in the LAV were iffy at best. Even with the spectrum cleared from lack of signal activity, they couldn’t reach more than a hundred miles or so. At this point, they were over twice that from base. The GPS satellites had been failing in piecemeal fashion for years, but more often than not the remaining units were enough to use the next-gen communications and control system. As things stood now, the LAV was a lone blue dot in an empty blank sea. If they scrolled further north there’d be many other accompanying blue dots but for the moment, the LAV was alone.We’re Recon, he reminded himself. Alone is what we do. “How are we looking forward, Rivas?”

  The LAV’s gunner — and the crew’s only woman — reported from her position up in the turret. “Looks clear from here, sir.” The vehicle commander’s normal station was up in the turret next to the gunner, but Hanratty preferred to stay down in the crew compartment.

  Though the LAV only had light armor, it was impervious to the infected. Before Z-Day it had been common practice for vehicle commanders to keep their hatch open. This provided a full field of view until it was time to get to work. In urban environments, this was a suicidal tactic against the infected. The dumb things would walk right off of rooftop
s. The chances of them landing on top of a vehicle were low, but enough crews had taken casualties over the years that doctrine now called for secure hatches unless in a known safe zone.

  To offset the inability to look outside, they'd wired small cameras into the turret to allow a supplemental field of view. The resulting images were then displayed on a flat-panel inside of the crew compartment. It was the definition of cobbled-together and never would have lasted in a fight against a modern opponent, but it was good enough for infected.

  “Lock it up, Private,” Hanratty ordered. “We’re done for the day unless our Navy friends come scrambling back.”

  “Roger that, Captain,” Rivas replied, and began unstrapping herself from the gunner’s position. Hanratty slid over to give her more room to extricate herself. The position was far from the most comfortable in an already uncomfortable vehicle. Hanratty was just a shade over six feet and extended time in the gunner’s seat usually put his legs to sleep. Rivas was maybe five feet in boots and he expected it wasn’t any better for her. The short and scrawny Rivas made for an interesting contrast to the tall and chunky Patterson. Warts and all, though, he wouldn’t trade either of his crew for any other Marine in the Corps. They’d been through far too much together, and he knew what they were capable of under pressure. That was more important than surface appearance.

  He’d been out of the Naval Academy for six months when the outbreak hit. Since then, he’d seen too many spit-and-polish Marines crack in the face of the infected to gig Patterson for his scruffiness, or Rivas for her lack of height.

  Someone rapped shave-and-a-haircut on the rear hatch. Hanratty racked the camera display back into its storage slot. “You two get the drone up, I want to scope out our target before we settle in for the night.” He glanced back at the figure curled up in one of the seats. Baxter was still out like a light with his uniform jacket off and over his head. “Let Prince Charming catch up on his beauty sleep. He’ll just get in the way, anyhow.”