by Joshua Guess
Then I heard the whispered moans of the dead.
“Goddammit,” I said.
8
The room was not absolutely dark. The thinnest possible light filtered in through a badly joined seam in the metal walls. I managed to catch the faint outlines of stacked crates and barrels as my eyes began adjusting, so I knew that while this was a trap, it wasn't only a trap. The Sons were clever to put this warehouse out of the way and use irregular delivery schedules to make it hard to pin the place down. They were even smarter to realize that someone might hit it anyway and plan accordingly.
They expected a team to enter together, because that was the sane and careful thing to do. Which said a lot about me, I guess.
“Mason, are you okay?” Tabby asked loudly through the wall where the door used to be. Her voice was raised but even, no sign of panic. I felt a moment of pride. That was stupid; I had nothing to do with the steel in her. It was more just the general pride of seeing a friend be amazing and loving them for it. I've seen soldiers lose their cool for less than this. Having a friend spring a trap and get locked away had to be jarring.
“I'm good,” I said as I felt my way to a stack of wooden crates and scrambled up them. “There are some zombies in here and it's totally dark, but I should be fine.”
I really should have expected the pregnant silence which followed. When you say things that sound as dumb and frankly suicidal as the shit that comes out of my mouth as often as I do, you get them a lot.
“That doesn't really sound fine,” Jo said. “How do we get you out?”
I heard the shuffled and scrape of feet moving across concrete and stray limbs brushing against the various storage containers. There was no way to avoid the dead in an enclosed space. Even if I were completely silent, they'd smell me. Outside you had a chance the wind would favor you or that your scent would be diluted enough by the open air to mask your location. Stuck in a steel box? Might as well be sitting in a barbecue pit with a nice southwestern seasoning. I was already starting to sweat from sheer nerves.
“I don't know,” I admitted. “The plate over the door is heavy and it locked in place. There's probably some way to unlock it, but the zombies are gonna make that impossible. If I were building this place, I'd put other exits in and hope the dark kept the idiot who sprung the trap from working them out. I think the best thing would be to cut right through the side of the building somehow. It's fairly thin sheet metal.”
Jo's snort was loud enough to just be heard through the wall. “We didn't bring a fucking saw with us, Mason.”
Zombies bumped up against the bottom of my two-crate stack. I was just high enough to avoid the tips of their fingers. “It's fine. You'll figure something out. We've got some extrication gear back in the van. I'm perched on top of some crates right now. I should be cool until you guys come up with a solution.”
There was muffled conversation outside, obviously not directed at me. Finally, Tabby spoke in a clear—and slightly irritated—voice. “That's great and everything, but what if they manage to push it over? Or what if there's a New Breed in there smart enough to climb?”
“I...didn't think of that,” I admitted. “I'm just gonna see if I can reach the roof joists. You two, uh, see if you can hurry to the van, okay?”
“Stay alive,” Jo shouted through the wall. I heard the scuff of boots against concrete. Then I was alone. Not just alone, but in the dark with a small herd of starving cannibals surrounding me.
“Fucking Mondays,” I murmured before carefully rising to my feet and reaching up to feel for the joists. My fingers found nothing on my initial pass. When I turned, however, my face had no problem locating one of the beams supporting the roof. Thankfully I didn't smack into it very hard, or I'd have knocked myself right off the box and into the waiting claws of the dead. I wasn't afraid of death, but I did find the idea of a stupid and careless passage into the great beyond embarrassing as hell.
With a grunt of effort, I hauled myself up onto the nearest joist and began to slowly work my way toward its center. After about six feet I ran into a big piece of plywood spread across several of them. It took a little work to slide myself onto it without knocking the damn thing away or flipping into the air, but I managed.
It was only when I was on my back and breathing heavily from the work of maintaining my balance and moving in pitch darkness without losing my shit that I remembered the contents of my left cargo pocket.
Yes, friends, cargo pants survived the apocalypse. And they're damn useful, providing you remember the stuff you put in them exists in the first place. With a mental note to swear Jo and Tabby to secrecy about getting myself trapped should I survive today, I unzipped the pocket and removed the small bundle of glow sticks. They were actually military grade and had a brand name, but I stopped giving a shit about that a long time ago. I pulled one free and snapped it into a fierce, bright white illumination.
At the edge of its glow I saw a zombie climbing the backs of its fellows, hands already searching the top of the crate I'd been sitting on. It glared at me with milky eyes, which then locked onto the joist. With a sudden upward lurch, the zombie crouched on top of the crate.
“How is she always right about this stuff?” I asked myself.
This is where I'm supposed to tell you I summoned the void inside my head and went cold, jumped down into the crowd and proceeded to fuck up the zombies in an amazing battle by the light of my glow stick.
Look, if that was my only option, I would have. I promise. Given any other choice, there was no reason to take the risk. I stayed up in the rafters on my plywood and created some distance from the zombie slowly trying to work its way onto the rafters. I managed this feat by lying at one end of the plywood with the glow stick clamped between my teeth as I pulled the sheet forward across the joists. It was super difficult, far harder than I expected it to be when the idea popped into my head.
And I was about ten feet away from my starting point when another thought struck me. The zombies were held in some kind of pen, something strong enough to keep them from breaking out and mauling the workers and guards who manned this place. Which meant it was strong enough to keep me safe until help arrived.
A glance showed the New Breed had given up its attempt to climb the joists in pursuit, which was actually more worrying. The thing climbed down somehow while I wasn't looking and was pacing below and just behind me. The rest of the herd stayed well back—clearly the weird and barely understood method of control New Breed had over other zombies was in effect here. It wanted first crack at me if I fell. That alone was strange until I thought about it. New Breed usually let other zombies do the work and came in when the danger was over.
But this one clearly understood gravity and its effects when a human body dropped onto a hard floor. I briefly wondered if I was the first person stuck in this situation here and whether this particular zombie had seen someone else fall from above. Maybe it was a residual memory from its time as a living person. Or it could have just been that smart. New Breed were known for their cleverness.
Whatever the reason, I pushed on. Or pulled on, in this case. My arms ached and burned from the effort, but after about ten solid minutes of work the cage came into view. I had to pop another light to give myself enough to work with, and I chucked both of them through the open door.
The thing was made from sturdy, heavy wire welded together at every intersection. It looked like a holding cage at a jail, the walls a grid of squares formed by the wire. Each was about an inch on a side. The door stood open, with a makeshift release snaking from the handle and up to the roof before its cable vanished into the darkness past my little island of light.
I stopped about five feet short of the door. I needed to get as close as possible without risking a fall onto the door itself. Getting down was going to suck. No way around it. I'd have preferred to hang from the joists and step onto the top of the cage before dropping inside it, but apparently the people who put the thing here knew their
pet New Breed was a climber. The cage was fully enclosed. The door was the only way in.
I considered falling onto the cage itself. It would keep me away from immediate danger. Of course, I'd be in the same situation as with the crate, but way closer to the ground. I took a long look at the New Breed, which stood back a few paces. Its eyes lingered on me, and then deliberately moved to the cage door. Then back to me.
I know what you're going to try, that look said, and I'll be there every step of the way.
That might be true, but I wasn't going to make myself an easy target. I needed to pull the release cable from the door handle and figure out a way to keep the zombie from opening the damn thing from the outside once I was in. Actually getting in wouldn't be that hard so long as I didn't break an ankle on the way down. Staying in there might be pretty tough if I couldn't lock the door.
I was stumped until I took a look at the inside of the door itself, which had a drop bar built into it. I just had to get inside and slam the thing down, and I'd be good to go.
With a little preparation, I was ready to go. I worked my way off the plywood and onto the joists, ready to lower myself down and hang so I could fall more safely. Before I dropped, I removed a small glass ampule from a padded pouch at my waist and chucked it at the ground, hard.
The smell hit a few seconds later as the pure ammonia billowed out across the room. The New Breed reared back, and I let my body fall. The shock of my weight coming to a sudden stop hurt the living shit out of my arms, but they held. I'd been a little worried all this exercise might have weakened them.
Once my downward momentum was gone, I let go and dropped straight down. I had to bend my knees deeply and bleed off some energy by rolling sideways. I was back on my feet before the shock of the fall had really worn off and moving toward the cage. Just five feet. A nothing distance.
And then the zombie grabbed my coat.
“Fuck!” I shouted into the eerily silent warehouse. I lashed out with my left hand, slamming a backhanded fist into the side of its head. I surged forward, lacing the fingers of my left hand into the interior side of the door and yanking it shut. With my right I threw the drop bar.
I tried to pull my hand free of the wire door, but it was stuck. The zombie appeared on the other side with the speed and predatory grace of a pissed-off cobra. I instinctively closed my fingers, trapping my hand in the door but not giving the dead man an easy way to get my digits.
Except for my pinky. The thick glove and its armored top were caught in the wire somehow, leaving that finger extended. I barely had time to understand the situation before the zombie pulled itself forward and snapped its jaws shut around the finger. It didn't manage to bite it clean off—the fabric was rough and the armor stopped some of the force before two of the plates separated—but it hurt like ten kinds of hell.
I pulled the screwdriver from the back of my belt and drove the tip through the door as hard as I could. The zombie saw it coming and darted back. I uncurled my fingers and did the only thing I could, which was yank my hand free of the glove. Without an easy meal, the New Breed didn't bother trying again. Instead it just looked at me. Watched me. And I could swear I saw it gloat.
The damn thing had walked right through the ammonia. It knew what was about to happen and planned ahead. I should have anticipated the possibility. My dangling, useless finger was broken and bloody, and I deserved it. I could have just stayed up top where it was safe.
I took it as a lesson about overreaching. One I would remember in the days to come.
9
When Jo and Tabby finally got back, they didn't use a saw or any other nonsense to get through the wall. In true badass fashion, they melted a fucking hole right through the side of the building. How, you ask? Did they suddenly develop superhuman powers or find some kind of scifi laser to do the job? No. Nothing quite that cool; they grabbed a couple containers of thermite paste, also called thermate.
The stuff isn't that hard to make, really. It's pretty boring work for even an untalented chemist. But it's useful as shit. They slapped a big ring of the stuff on the outside of the metal right between two studs and the resulting several thousand degrees of heat burned through in a few seconds. I mean, it was made to cut through tank armor. A sixteenth of an inch of sheet metal wasn't gonna do better.
I didn't get to see what happened with the zombies. There were no gunshots, but neither did either woman make so much as a peep as they handled the small swarm. The sudden rush of oblique light drew them like moths to a flame, and at a guess I figured they used the narrow opening as a bottleneck to keep the zombies from swarming out. One body drops across the hole and it makes the trip through twice as hard for the next one.
All I knew for sure was that it took about five minutes for them to clear the zombies and another five to haul the bodies clear of their makeshift entrance. Once I heard Jo call the all-clear, I raised the drop bar and moved into the warehouse again. I had to turn around and grab my glove. Nearly forgot the traitorous thing.
“What the fuck happened to your hand?” Tabby asked as I stepped into the large pool of light made by the open bay door. They'd been busy in the minute it took me to reach them. Jo looked up from the barrel she was trying to pry the lid off of, and then stepped over to me. She grimaced as she took my hand in hers. Her touch was gentle, but her face was stormy.
“Definitely broken,” she said. “These look like teeth marks. How'd you avoid getting this bit clean off? Your glove?”
I nodded. “Got unlucky when the finger was caught in the door, lucky when the New Breed couldn't quite close the deal. It'll be fine.”
Jo reached up and grabbed my face, turning my chin to face her. Friends, let me explain to you how ingrained some things are in a soldier with as many years behind him as I have. The movement was surprising. Not painful but certainly uncomfortable. My brain read it as an attack and it was only because Jo was looking right at me that I could head the firing neurons off at the pass and stop the instantaneous desire to fight. Jo was one of my closest friends in the world, someone closer to a daughter than anyone I'd ever had in my life before Hannah, and I almost took her head off.
But I didn't show it. She would never know.
“It won't be fine if you keep taking stupid risks,” Jo said, her words sharp but calm. “You could have lost that finger. You probably should have. The Chimera in your body makes you too reckless.”
My brow wrinkled. “What? Come on, it almost killed me when I took all those injuries. I know I have to be careful.”
“Nah, you don't,” Tabby said. “You say that, but it's not like your finger is gonna grow back. I think Kell told you the excess tissue would reabsorb into your body and you took that to mean you were good to go.”
I opened my mouth to argue some more, then snapped it shut. They were right—completely so. Just an hour before, I'd berated myself for moving away from the safe spot I had and risking the drop to the floor just so I could get inside the cage. Yet any time someone called me on stuff like that, my first instinct was to fight against it.
“You're right,” I said. “You're totally right.”
“I know,” Jo told me in a gentler voice. “You have a family now, Mason. More importantly, you're in charge of this entire strike force. You're a general now. Not a front line guy. We can't afford to lose you.”
I snorted. “General? I'm a mid-level SOCOM officer at best. But I get your meaning. I've done everything I can to make sure these guys can operate without me, though.”
Tabby slapped me on the back of the head. “Not the damn point, Lurch. You're the best out of anyone in the strike force, but that doesn't mean shit. There are a lot of them and only one of you—you're their leader. You hold it together. Or you should. We need every body out here. No one is saying you shouldn't be in the field. But no more Lone Ranger stuff unless absolutely necessary. I want to get my son back, and you're the best chance I have.”
Jo frowned at this. “That's a cheap shot,
is what it is.”
I raised a hand and shook my head, forestalling an argument. “It's not. She's got a point. I can't forget the stakes here. None of us can. I'll be more careful, and no more going into strange buildings alone. Okay?”
Jo frowned but nodded her agreement to let the subject drop. Tabby only shrugged. She was older and more experienced, less inclined to judge people's errors. Or rather, more inclined to forgive them. She had tried to kill me once, after all.
Eager to change the subject before anyone could get second thoughts, I waved a hand at a nearby barrel. “Who wants to look and see what we found?”
The barrel took a little work to open, and when the top finally came off the three of us stared down into it stupidly for a few seconds. Then Jo, adventurously—definitely not because she was young and reckless—reached a hand into the contents and brought a small pile of crystals to her nose. Then her tongue darted out.
“Are you insane?” Tabby asked, swatting Jo's hand away from her mouth. “You don't know what that stuff is!”
Jo a year ago would have bared her teeth at this behavior. Instead she gave the older woman a sardonic grin. “Thanks, mom, but I think my system can handle a little salt.”
“Whoa,” I said. “They've got like sixty barrels of it here. This shit's like post-apocalyptic gold.”
Tabby didn't look convinced. “Really? Salt?”
Her confusion was understandable. She hadn't been part of the larger network of survivor communities until recently and even then it wasn't as if the mutating economics of the new world were a daily concern for her. We always have salt in Haven thanks to several enterprising coastal groups who were also Union members.
“It's a big trade commodity,” Jo said, sounding like she was reading from a textbook. Unlike Tabby, she spent her formative years out here dealing with reality. “Spices are too, but people can live without those. Salt can get you twenty times its weight in food. More, if you're smart about who you trade with.”