by R. J. Spears
They moved slowly through the woods, using the darkness to cover their movements. The truck made more noise than he liked, rattling more like an old railroad steam engine than a semi-modern pickup truck. Still, it beat walking, which he was sure he couldn’t do.
When they made it as close as he dared, he found a thick canopy of pine trees and nestled the truck in among them. Now came the fun part, he thought.
Both of them got out of the truck and moved to the tailgate. Schultzy lowered it and revealed an array of weapons. Greg had been generous in setting up this remote arms cache. It included four assault rifles, three single action rifles, several handguns, and enough ammunition to fight your way back to the Manor or to make an escape. He’d keep his rifle and a handgun held back for his own protection.
The truth be told, he didn’t want to fire any of the weapons. He just wanted to get them close enough to the Manor to be of use by someone other than himself. He knew he was too old to even consider that one-man Army shit that Stallone and that big over muscled German guy pulled off in their action flicks. Those movies were the things of history, lost to time.
The truck ride had been tedious but now came the hard part -- getting all those weapons close enough to the Manor. At least, he had been smart enough to bring along two wheelbarrows. He hoisted them off the back of the truck and he and Madison rolled them into the loading position.
“You up to helping load these?” he asked.
“Don’t treat me like a weak little girl,” she said reaching into the bed of the truck and grabbing a rifle.
“Ahhh, okay,” he replied and started loading the weapons into his wheelbarrow.
She actually made better time loading her wheelbarrow than him, but he ordered her to make her load light. They had nearly a half mile to push down a soft dirt trail and he didn’t want her exhausted before they made it to their destination. He hoped his hips and legs would allow him to make it. The damp night air wasn’t kind to his old bones.
He liked the front end of his plan but hated the last part. He hated anything he couldn’t do himself, but age and decrepitude had taken away so much of the man he was, but it hadn’t taken away his guile. Too bad it wouldn’t take away the risk to Madison.
Chapter 8
Meeting the Enemy
They came at night just as we were starting to calm down in our unsettling situation.
I had wrung as much out of the doctor and his wife as I could -- which wasn’t really much more than he had already told me. The doctor’s name was Brent and his wife was Linda, by the way.
The biker gang ranged from sixty to eighty in strength. Marlow had an uncanny sense of who would fit in and who would not. Those that did not were either killed or beaten badly and sent off dazed and wounded into the undead wastelands to fend for themselves. And these were just people who happened to wander into Marlow’s territory.
For those that stood up against Marlow and his gang, they either had one of two different fates. If they survived whatever fight they put up, they were burned alive as an object lesson or they were forced to fight for their lives against captured zombies. It was the modern day coliseum, Brent said. Only without the pretty lions.
The spectators seemed to love it, though, and that’s all that mattered to Marlow.
Brent told us that few survived the zombie death matches. Most were taken down and killed. The vast majority of the ones that defeated the zombies were bitten in their struggle and ended up turning. Marlow kept the ones that turned for future matches, figuring they were “real fighters.” The ones that defeated the zombies unscathed were beaten to within an inch of their lives and deposited somewhere outside the area, or so they said. Brent thought they were probably killed. Marlow didn’t want any potential rivals out there.
Our first encounter with Marlow started when the heavy metal door of our room burst open and clanged against the wall. The noise shocked everyone out of their sleep and back to full wakefulness in an instant.
What I saw in the doorway was a shockingly large silhouette of a man. I assumed it was a man, but it seemed more like an ogre or a half-orc. His shoulders almost spanned the entire width of the extra wide doorway. He had his legs spread wide, amplifying his size.
“Wakey, wakey,” a deep bass voice said, half filled with mirth and half filled with menace.
A child’s voice cried out, and I knew it had to be Chelsea. Her cries were followed by hushes from Brent and Linda. She calmed down to a whimper.
I could make out several other forms behind the gargantuan black cut out in the doorway. I could just tell one of them was biker Santa. The others were just forms. Menacing forms with weapons.
The silhouette’s large arm shot out from its side and in the next instant, an intense spotlight shone directly in my eyes. For the next few seconds, I blinked away brilliant orbs of light dancing in my eyes.
I didn’t want to seem completely defenseless, so I stood. It was a shaky performance, but I was upright. Certainly, that had to count for something.
Maybe it didn’t?
When my eyes finally adjusted to the light, I looked across the room and took in Marlow. He was every bit as big as his silhouette shown and then some. His legs were tree trunk wide and his arms were massive. There was a lot of meat on him.
No, you wouldn’t call him fat. Beefy might be a better word.
His hair was a tangle of black with a sprinkling of gray. I wouldn’t say he had a uni-brow, but it was close. (Although, I’m sure no one ever mentioned it. At least not in his presence.) Surprisingly, it looked like he had all of his teeth and they were almost white.
“Welcome to the compound,” Marlow said, his voice had a deep gravelly resonance and there was no sense that we were really welcome.
He lumbered into the room and biker Santa and another tall lanky guy with a stringy ZZ Top beard stepped in behind him. They held lanterns along with assault rifles. They stepped around their gargantuan leader and placed their lanterns on the floor.
Marlow was unarmed, but from the size of him, it seemed like it would require a ballistic missile to take him down. The lanterns on the floor added to his malevolent look, casting his enormous shadow across the ceiling and gave his deep-set eyes an almost demonic glimmer.
I took the awkward silence as my invitation to speak, but I was at a loss for words. If what the doctor had said was true, Marlow was going to quickly evaluate us for our usefulness. Sort of like some kind of biker Darwinism.
“We don’t want any trouble,” I said, “we’re just passing through the area on our way north.”
Marlow’s face crinkled into something that could be mistaken for a crooked smile. “You don’t want any trouble? No trouble? You hear that, Duke?” He asked biker Santa who was now named Duke.
“Sure ‘nuff,” Duke replied.
Marlow fixed me in a stare and said, “You aren’t the trouble. I am the trouble.”
“Maybe I started off on the wrong foot,” I said. “We just want to be left alone to go on our way.”
“Well, you’re passing through my territory and I own everything in it, including you,” he said.
I wasn’t about to start a debate about the illegalities of slavery.
“I know this is going to sound sort of crazy, but you need to let us go. It is in your best interest and maybe that of humanity that we are able to head north and do it soon.”
Again, he wrinkled up his face, and I got the sense he was just toying with me.
“What is so damn important that you need to get north?”
“Would it help to say we are on a mission?”
He snorted then asked, “What kind of mission?”
I knew it sounded bad as soon as the words came out of my mouth. It was akin to throwing a hand grenade. There was nothing to do after you toss it out, but watch. “A mission from God,” I said
I thought they’d never stop laughing. Marlow nearly buckled at his knees, he laughed so hard, tears streamed down his face.
His laughter must have been infectious because his buddies joined in. This went on for almost thirty seconds and it took Marlow a moment to recover as he wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Listen, that’s a good one,” he said. “I have to give it to you. I haven’t had a laugh like that in a long time, but you need to know one thing...there is no God. And if there is one, it’s me.” He stepped towards me, blotting out my view of the ceiling. “The sooner you know that the better off you will be.”
Any mirth or laughter left his face and the tone of the room changed quickly.
“I hear what you’re saying,” I said, “but what I said is true.”
“You religious fucks make me sick,” he said. “It’s God’s will that this happens. It’s God’s will that this doesn’t happen. Well, if you hadn’t fucking noticed, God got up and left. It’s just us against the dead and the rest of us battling for what is left. I aim for it to be me and my people who get as much of what’s leftover as we can.”
“Okay,” I said. “What if I said pretty please?”
His eyes turned to narrow slits, and I was sure I was about to be punched, but he just shook his head a little. “I’ll give you something. You have some stones to try to joke around with me. Now, I have some questions. Like where did you come from?”
“South of here,” I said, not wanting to give away anything.
“That’s not very specific. Where south of here?”
“Portsmouth,” I said lying but wishing I had said Athens or Cincinnati. I doubted that he would go after our folks, but there was no use taking chances.
“Down on the river,” he mused. “We haven’t had any Portsmouth folks come these ways in a long time. So, where did you come by your weapons?”
“We picked them up here and there.”
He leaned in towards me and said, “Now, don’t lie to me. Those were assault rifles, military quality, and they were in good condition. Some folks had those before the world went to shit, but they wouldn’t just be lying around.”
I didn’t want to give any indication of where they had come from, but I wanted to say something. “Well, let’s just say, we took them from some folks who would have rather kept them.”
“Well, well, aren’t we the tough ones,” he said adding a jovial laugh, but he cut it off. “Just don’t get any idea of trying any shit here. Or else you’ll end up on a cross in our yard a little darker and a little charred.”
“No, we won’t be any trouble.”
“I’m sure you won’t be,” he said and neither of us said a word and he just looked at me for several seconds. It was if he were trying to measure me, taking stock of me.
“Where does that leave me and my group?” I asked.
“Well, fucked,” he said. “Unless you have some usefulness to me and my people.”
I knew this was coming. Of our entire group, Kara was the only one with skills Marlow’s group didn’t already have. From what the doctor said, he had enough fighters, but he did say that Marlow was always ready to take on more. That is, if they proved to be loyal and up to fighting for Marlow’s cause.
“I’m good in a fight,” I said. “This is Kara,” I said pointing back to her. “She’s a nurse. This is Brother Ed, and he’s a fighter, too. Jason’s not half bad either.”
“He looks like a stiff breeze would knock him on his ass,” Marlow interrupted.
“He’s tougher than he looks,” I said.
“What about the girl?” Marlow asked, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at Naveen.
“She’s just a girl,” I said.
Marlow’s eyes drifted over Naveen so long that Kara reached out and pushed Naveen behind her body in a protective gesture.
“Mama Bear protecting her cub,” he said and that mirthless smile returned to his face. “So, are you willing to take up my cause and pledge yourself to us?” He asked.
“We’d really rather be let go,” I replied.
“Wrong answer,” Marlow responded holding up an index finger that looked as big as Naveen’s wrist.
I decided it was only folly to continue to ask to be released. “We’ll do what we have to do to survive. If it means joining up with you, then that’s the way it has to go.”
“Better answer,” he said. “We’ll see. We’ll see.” He paused and looked over my group again, his eyes lingering on Naveen. “I’m going to give you some time to think about what I said.”
He took a step back from me and then turned and they left the room, shutting the door and locking us in.
“Well, that went well,” I said, trying to break the tension.
“I don’t like him,” Kara said in a quiet tone.
“What is there not to like, except he seems about as cuddly as a rabid pit bull.”
“You don’t want to challenge him at all,” Brent said, his voice shaky. “He will err to the side of caution and kill you just to make sure he’s taken care of a potential threat.”
“I got that,” I said. “What do we do?” I asked, directing my question to Brent.
“You do whatever he says if you want to live.”
“And what are our chances of that?” I asked.
“Fifty, fifty,” he said. “Maybe less.”
It took us a while to calm back down. I quizzed Brent further on what he thought. He told us that the only thing we had going for us was that we didn’t fight back on the highway. If even one of us had fired on his people, he would have most likely had us killed right then. At the bare minimum, he would have had us killed as soon as we got back to the compound. That was for the ones that survived the gunfight -- which would have been maybe one of us.
Brother Ed still seemed half out of it and Jason just looked smaller than ever. My biggest concern was for Naveen. Marlow’s eyes seemed to relish something about her. Maybe it was her exoticness, the caramel color of her skin. Maybe the fact that she was so young. The whole feeling put an icy pit in my stomach and made my skin crawl.
After a while of rolling through what had happened and considering any of our options, I was spent. The past two days felt like an extended version of a medieval torture session. Despite wanting to stay awake and alert, I started to drift down into a restless drowsiness when I felt a hand on my arm. My body started to jerk back awake when the grip tightened on my bicep.
“Shhhh,” I heard a voice in my ear. When I turned in that direction, I made out Brent’s face in the dim light.
“You have to be quiet,” he said in a whisper. “We don’t want to wake the others.”
“What is it?” I asked back in a whisper.
“Your group is in trouble. I didn’t want to speak to you when they were all awake.”
“Tell me something I didn’t know.”
“You have to take this seriously,” he hissed out.
“I do. Believe me, I do.”
“He was assessing you. Checking you out for strengths, weaknesses, threats.”
“And?”
He paused and glanced away into the darkness, then turned back to me. “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”
Who wanted the truth, really? Especially since, at times like that, it was usually bad news, but there was no avoiding it. “Yes,” I finally said.
“He sees you as a threat. You’re the obvious leader. That can be a bad thing and it can be a good thing. He’s always looking for loyal lieutenants. The key word is ‘loyal.’ He will test you and find something to hold over you or some way to break you.” He stopped for a moment and rubbed his hand over his face and then continued. “He sees no use for your friend, Jason. Brother Ed could go either way.” He spoke in that remote and dispassionate way that doctors use when they are delivering bad news. I’m sure it was a defense mechanism, but it felt cold and aloof.
“What do you mean, no use?”
“He’ll do what he always does. It’s fighting zombies and dying, or surviving and getting beaten, then cast out.”
“Shit,” I said. “What about the o
thers?”
He continued, “As for Kara, he probably sees her as useful, which is a good thing.”
He stopped, and I got the sense that he had something else to say, but was holding back.
“What else?” I asked. “There’s more and I need to know.”
“He’s coming for your girl. I can see it in his eyes. It’s the same way he looked at Chelsea.”
My mouth went dry. I looked over to Naveen, peacefully asleep, her head in Kara’s lap. What had I done?
Chapter 9
Compulsion
Kilgore’s head felt like it was on fire and there was the pungent smell of burnt hair in the air. He could also taste his own fear, but this time it was more like terror, acrid and electric.
He had felt terror before, but so seldom, he could barely remember the last time. There had been one time in the Middle East, though, that was a lot like this one.
He had been in some serious situations in Afghanistan, caught up in the mountains, and surrounded by Taliban forces. Against the better judgment of his subordinates, he had flown on a mission to an outpost deep in Taliban held territory. It was past the Korengal Valley and was one of the real hotspots in the war on terror.
He figured if his men could fly into the danger zone, so could he. It was good for morale, both his and his men.
The mission had been a simple one, fly supplies in, and pick up a couple wounded men then return to base. In and out, easy peasy, he had told his men.
Only it wasn’t. As they were on their way in they took on heavy fire from the crags of rock on the mountains, unable to pinpoint where much of the bullets were coming from. The shots peppered the bottom of the V-22 Osprey and those inside were buffeted around as the pilot took evasive action. He shot the craft up and then banked the huge chopper sharply, jerking everyone inside around like puppets.