A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  The lead cannibal slid the locking bar to one side and pushed the door open. The hinges were oil-soaked and as quiet as a whisper. The door swung into the side of the culvert with the dull sound of metal on metal.

  Who needs a padlock, I said to the boys. They’re too dumb to open doors. “Idiot,” Dantzler whispered, and as though a switch had been thrown by the sound of his voice, the press at the end of the pipe burst into action. He couldn’t tell them apart, really, but he thought that the one that had opened the gate backed up and moved out of the way as the others lurched inside.

  He was already stepping backward when he realized that something else was horribly wrong. Though they still staggered, they were moving too fast. Not as fast as an uninfected human, but much, much faster than he’d grown accustomed to. Well, that’s not fair. A hysterical whimper escaped his mouth.

  Dantzler set his feet and raised the Beretta with shaking hands. His first shot went wide and sparked a ricochet off the side the culvert. He cursed and adjusted his aim. His second shot was true, and one of the lead cannibals fell. Usually, that was a good way to stagger or roadblock the ones behind, and a few did stumble, but just as many avoided the sudden trip hazard and kept coming. He backed up again and fired. He took down two more, then missed three in a row.

  Keep it together, damn it! He tried to slow his breathing as he kept stepping back. He paused to fire, but it was no use. The Beretta locked open on an empty magazine as his butt slammed into the edge of the workbench. If they hadn’t been so nimble, he’d have been able to plug up the culvert with the fallen, which would have given him an opportunity to fort up or even melee out. But they just kept coming on with that implacable, patient gait. The ones he hadn’t been able to take down, if anything, were more graceful than the ones he had. With dawning horror, he realized that they were toying with him. He couldn’t explain it, but they knew he had no way out, and they approached with a collective, almost shark-like, blank-eyed stare that chilled him to the bone.

  No. No. Not like this.

  Dantzler slid around the workbench and grabbed the pipe bomb. He glanced up but they were still a dozen steps out of reach. He unscrewed the end cap on the bomb and grabbed the rest of the plastic explosives. He’d wanted the pipe bomb to be just big enough to do the job before.

  This, he wanted to be freaking Biblical.

  He mashed the leftovers onto the end of the pipe. It was far more than could fit inside, which gave him something shaped like a stylized bouquet of flowers or an overflowing ice cream cone. Dantzler laughed hysterically and tucked the device under one arm as he picked up the detonator. With quick twists, he had both wires attached to the crank. He glanced up again; the leading edge would reach the workbench in seconds. He stepped back to get a little more separation and knelt down in the bottom of the culvert. One way or another, he wasn’t going to let them touch him.

  At the workbench, the passage narrowed so that there was only room for them to walk two abreast. Dantzler began to turn the crank to charge the detonator. As the leading pair reached the opposite end of the desk and reached out for him, he spoke. “Looks like I decided to leave this town one damn day too late, boys.”

  He pushed the button.

  The explosion flashed outward, channeled by the culvert as it followed the path of least resistance. The supplies and equipment that Dantzler and his team had stored were either consumed in the blast or pushed along before it. Ivan’s body — what little was left of it — shot into the gate and slammed it shut. If he had still been alive after the impact, the debris that followed after would have put an end to that. Shreds of fabric and pieces of metal and wood peppered the corpse and gate. A blast of flame seared the opposite bank of the creek, but the explosion-borne debris piled up to make a temporary but effective stopper. Stymied, the blast rebounded backward.

  On the opposite end of the culvert, flame belched through the vertical drain at the side of the highway. This opening was even smaller than the gate and was stopped up even more quickly by the storm of blast debris.

  Capped at either end, pressure began to build inside of the culvert. If the explosion had merely been the result of Dantzler’s bomb, its energy might have died down at that point. Amongst the supplies had been stores of diesel fuel — plenty of it, after his wheeling and dealing — alcohol, and kerosene. Aerosolized and consumed by the blast, the force increased in an exponential fashion. The culvert had essentially become a massive pressure vessel hundreds of feet in length.

  The dirt cradling the culvert bore up well. The workers who’d installed it had done excellent work, compacting the channel and lining it with gravel to aid in drainage. Had it not been co-opted as a clandestine meth lab it might have lasted for decades.

  By way of comparison, the dirt on top of the culvert was only a few inches deep. It bulged as the tube swelled, then finally ruptured as the tortured metal gave way. The southern half of the eastern wall was flash-lit by a vertical sheet of flame. The guards atop the bunkers recoiled; those that weren’t flash blinded were thrown to the ground by the concussion. The sound faded, but every building in the compound vibrated in its passing. Pictures fell from walls, books from shelves, and sleepers snapped awake.

  Pieces of shredded culvert rained back down to earth followed by lighter pieces of burning debris, dirt, and gravel. If there was any luck, it was the fact that most of the burning debris landed on ground that was somewhat damp from the spring rains. This limited secondary fires.

  The explosion had holed out a massive trench running parallel to the eastern wall. As much of the blast went upward, there was little damage done to the wall other than some scorched paint on the aluminum sheathing.

  At the southeastern corner, though, the dogleg in the drain brought it within eighteen inches of the wall. The blast pressure that there was little different than what hit the rest of the wall, except for the fact that there was much less dirt supporting it at that point. The wall leaned in, then rebounded.

  The crew that had erected the wall had been in a hurry, but not so much of a hurry that they skimped in their work. They'd sunk the telephone poles that formed the bones of the eastern and western walls four feet deep. The timbers and metal paneling attached to them represented a not-insignificant amount of weight. Supported across the entire width of the wall, this didn’t present an issue.

  The fence sagged forward. Timbers splintered and metal squealed. Enough of the wall still stood that the fall didn’t continue, though the last two vertical supports swayed outward at a 45-degree angle. For the most part, the wall remained strong. But the southeastern corner stood wide open.

  He made it over the fence and was about to flop on his back when he remembered the photograph in his backpack. Alex settled for flopping onto his stomach and savoring the feel of the grass on his cheeks.

  “Never thought I’d miss the fence,” he said as Cara dropped down inside next to him.

  “Next time you get a crazy idea, count me out,” Twigs announced. Alex pushed himself up onto his hands and knees before settling into a seated position. He grinned at his friend.

  “I know you don’t mean that,” Alex observed.

  “Yeah, maybe not,” Twigs admitted. He flashed a broad smile in return.

  “We need to tell someone,” Cara pronounced.

  Alex glanced at Twigs before meeting her eyes. “I know,” he said. “But who? You realize what’s going to happen to us when we admit we were outside of the fence?”

  She shrugged. “I know. But I’ll take getting grounded or some extra chores over something like that sneaking up on us. They were smart, Alex. Too smart. We almost blew it.”

  She was right, of course. That had been too close. Alex didn’t even disagree that they needed to tell someone what they’d just seen. The main problem with that was finding someone who’d believe what they said, and not pass it off as a child’s prank.

  “Will Pete believe us?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Him, mor
e than anyone else, I think.”

  “Okay,” Alex agreed. He climbed to his feet and sighed at the loss of comfort. His legs still burned from the sprint back along the creek bank.

  “Guys!” Trina hissed a stage whisper. “Are you okay?”

  The group turned to see the girl emerge from behind a tree.

  “Hey,” Alex said in greeting. “Yeah, we’re cool. Just had some weird stuff happen. Coast clear?”

  “Yup. Everybody is busy and quiet. I think you did it.”

  “We need to get away from the fence,” Twigs interjected. “I don’t know about you guys but I’m sick of wet socks.”

  “All right,” Alex said, “let’s go.”

  As Twigs and Trina headed away, Alex turned to follow, but a hand on his shoulder held him back. He turned to see what she wanted.

  As he turned, she got her free hand on his opposite shoulder and drew him close. “That was intense,” she said. “And I wanted to thank you for the adventure. And not wimping out on me.”

  And then, all at once, Cara’s lips were on his, warm and soft and mysterious. At first, Alex was so shocked that he didn’t know how to react, but she jerked him closer, and he settled for bringing his arms around her, to pull her even tighter. His hands fluttered as he tried to decide what to do with them – go high, go low, don’t touch? She kissed him first, so where should he . . .

  And then, in the middle of Alex’s first kiss, the ground vibrated and a flash lit the late afternoon sky.

  They pulled away from one another and turned toward the sheet of flame along the eastern wall.

  “What was that?” Trina exclaimed.

  “We need to get up the Nest,” Cara announced. “I don’t know what that was, or if it had anything to do with us, but we need to move, now.”

  “Uncle Pete’s not up there,” Trina said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cara snapped. “There’s a radio. One way or another, we can track him down.”

  One moment, Pete was walking toward Dantzler’s shack and hoping that he didn’t look as out of place as he felt. The next, he was lying on the ground and watching flaming debris arc across the sky.

  The booming echo of the explosion faded in his ears, and he blinked several times in an attempt to clear his head. He sat up as he became aware of distant screams and shouts. No — not so distant. His ears still rang from the blast that had literally taken his legs out from under him. The screams were all around.

  Charlie was lying face down on the ground just in front of him. The other man didn’t stir. Pete was about to check him for signs of life when he noticed Dantzler’s shack, and the wall it abutted.

  “Mother of God,” he whispered. He could hear himself, at least. Slow improvement. But it wasn’t looking like he was going to get much time to recuperate.

  The more heavily-built eastern wall had fallen out of true. That and the explosion had shredded the building where Dantzler and his men had been living. That was an afterthought, though, given the rest of the situation.

  The sag hadn’t created much of an opening, but it was there. If Pete hadn’t known what lurked in the woods to the south he might not have been so concerned. His blood ran cold at the sight of the breach. He abandoned all thoughts of bringing in Dantzler and his crew in a frantic rush as he struggled to his feet. He looked around in desperation. Charlie was beginning to stir. Vir had been behind him. As Pete turned in place, he saw the other man standing on shaky legs, brushing off debris.

  The help from the rest of the group would be of limited utility. Trey Peters was on his knees, loudly throwing up. What remained of John Keogh sat on the ground not far away, with most of the upper torso messily removed. Pete didn’t know what had hit him, but he hoped that it had been going fast enough that John hadn’t felt it.

  Jenny Faqir was pale with shock, but her face was set in determination. She’d be all right, Pete judged, though Brett Simmons had a glassy, thousand-yard stare that didn’t look promising.

  Well. If you’re going to die fighting back a horde, you’re going to have some company. Horatius Cocles had held a bridge with two companions against an army and received the thanks of a grateful Rome.

  Somehow, Pete didn’t think he’d be as lucky.

  “You good?” Pete snapped at Vir as he pulled the walkie from his belt and inspected it. Hopefully, his head had taken more of a whack than the radio. Vir gave him a thumbs-up and Pete nodded. He crossed mental fingers and hit the transmit button. “Gary, you read me?”

  Static, a heart-sinking pause, and then: “Yeah.” The other man sounded shaky. “What the hell was that?”

  “Be damned if I know,” Pete admitted. “We got bigger problems, boss. Wall breach, southeast corner. All hands on deck.”

  Gary must have been cursing off-channel because the pause was much longer this time. “Right. How big?”

  Pete studied the gap in the wall and fingered his pistol. “Bring two of the salvage buses.” If they could arrange them just right, they could park the armored sides in an L-shape and block the breach off long enough to get some equipment together repair the damage. At the moment, that was moot — he glimpsed slow, furtive motion behind the dissipating smoke. He let up off of the transmit button and barked, “Up and at it, Charlie. Danger close.”

  “Right. We’re on it,” Gary responded.

  “Gary,” Pete said as he flipped off the safety on his shotgun. “Make it snappy. We’re going to need some firepower here, and quick. Got some unwelcome visitors, and they ain’t Girl Scouts.”

  Chapter 33

  Grady tapped his knuckles on the doorframe and announced, “Frannie’s back. I’m heading over to grab supper. Want me to bring you something?”

  Tish considered for a moment and then shook her head. “Nah, I’ve been snacking all morning. If anything, I need to crash, I feel like somebody taped sandpaper to the inside of my eyelids.”

  Grady gave her a thumbs up. “I’ll be quick, and then you can hit the sack and recharge. Want me to see if I can talk someone into watching Trina?”

  “Thanks, but no.” She put her hand over her mouth as the reply threatened to turn into a yawn. “I’ll track her down after you get back. She’s a good kid, she’ll be happy enough to curl up with a book while I sleep. Hardest thing to do will be getting her to go to sleep at a decent hour before she gets too engrossed.”

  He nodded his understanding and headed for the exit. “Back soon,” he promised. Tish gave him an absent-minded wave as she resumed studying their inventory of supplies. Even with Vir’s bounty, the sudden inrush of patients had put a serious dent in their stocks. She chewed on the cap of her pen. Maybe when Miles gets back we can arrange another run, and do it right this time. If the Marines provided security, maybe they could get a big enough work crew to the river crossing to put a more permanent bridge in. Even if that didn't work, they could help keep the cargo trucks secure while they ferried supplies back and forth. The main concern other than the crossing was safety. A vehicle that the infected — her husband’s term had never quite worked for her — couldn't breach was a nice thing to have.

  The door whispered as someone stepped into the building. Without looking up from her lists, Tish commented, “They run out of food already?” When there was no answer to her greeting she looked up and resisted the urge to jump in surprise. She hoped her recovery was smoother than it felt. “Jaid, how are you? I thought you were Dr. Scott.”

  The woman looked as poorly put together as Tish had ever seen her. There were dark circles under her eyes and she’d pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail. She wore khaki slacks and a faded red sweater under a light rain jacket, but her pants had wrinkles. Mud stained the cuffs. Tish forced herself to make eye contact, but it was a pointless effort. The other woman had a vacant, thousand-yard stare. Finally, Jaid seemed to compose her thoughts and met Tish’s eyes.

  “I didn’t have a chance to come down before now,” she said. “It’s been so busy in the office . . .” Jaid
fell silent.

  Tish cocked her head to the side, confused. “Jaid, is everything all right?”

  “Well . . .” The other woman stopped and sighed. “We’ve been keeping it quiet, just for privacy’s sake, you know . . .”

  Panic rushed through her, and Tish resisted the urge to clench her fists. Good God, she’s not going to tell me that she’s having an affair with Miles, is she? She laid her pen down and stood up.

  “. . . But Carter and I have been seeing each other for a while.”

  The tension went out of Tish all at once, and she resisted the urge to sigh in relief. “That’s . . . that’s great, Jaid. And I can understand the privacy thing. This place is worse than an old ladies’ knitting circle sometimes.”

  Jaid gave her a faint smile. “Right. Well, we had words, last night, something stupid, and he stormed out. I guess he must have gone to have a few drinks, and then, you know.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “Is he going to be all right?”

  Despite herself, Tish found herself stepping forward and grasping the other woman’s hands between her own. “Oh, Jaid. We’ve still got him under. He’s stable, so that’s something. I can’t make any promises to you, but that’s a good sign. If we can keep him from getting an infection, he should be fine.” I hope. Tish wasn’t ready to out and out lie to the woman; everything she’d said was technically true, but Carter’s injuries were worse than, say, an appendix. And she wouldn’t have discharged Todd Jenkins unless she had desperate need of the room.

  An unrecognizable series of expressions flashed across Jaid’s features until she composed herself and said, “Can I sit with him for a while?”

  Tish didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. He’s in the exam room.” She took Jaid by the elbow and guided her in the right direction. “There’s even a chair in there. Stay as long as you like.”

  “Thanks,” Jaid murmured and stepped inside. Tish stood and watched her for a moment, then shook her head and turned away to the patient beds. She was due to check on her charges. What a strange world, in which someone she’d once perceived as competition and an enemy would come into her domain and she’d be able to treat her kindly with little or no effort. Any interactions they’d had before had been tense and filled with subtle, feminine venom. She’d been able to discard that without consideration and look at the other woman with unjaundiced eyes. How about that?