DEAD Series [Books 1-12]

by Brown, TW

  My plan was to bring James Sagar, Chet Bozer, Rachel Mint, Paula Yin, Katrina, Carol, and BP when we broke away from La Grande. Dr. Zahn and Grady would lead the rest of the group up along the mountain road and make their way to the old forestry center cabin and campground that had been our home what seemed like a lifetime ago. My group would go after Andy and Jerome. I had made it clear what we would probably have to do, and then given each of them the choice of whether or not they accompanied me. Nobody had backed down from the potentially unsavory task.

  We had no problems as we approached the tower that was closest to our house. I think a part of me was going to actually miss that metal spire. We’d certainly had more than a few events centered around it.

  I gave the signal for the group to halt. This part was to be all mine. I would take it as just one more ugly scar on my damned soul.

  Creeping along in the shadows, I reached the base and began the climb. I knew what needed to be done, and I’d certainly done worse in the recent past, but that did not mean that I would enjoy or take lightly what I was about to do.

  Each rung of the ladder seemed to almost burn my hand. I heard whoever was on watch up in the tower actually humming. This person had no idea that death was on the other side of the lip of the enclosed stand where they were probably just gazing out across the quite countryside, lost in thoughts. I shoved aside my brain’s attempt at humanizing this person.

  Peering over the top of the rail, I saw the dark shadow of whoever it was that had the misfortune of drawing the watch detail for this particular tower on this particular night. The person was sitting with their back to me, tapping his (I could tell it was a guy) fingers on the rail and humming a song that I could not initially identify. Just as I brought my knife up and had lined it up to plunge into the side of this poor guy’s neck, I recognized the tune. Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks.

  I felt my hand begin to tremble, and in a sudden change of heart, I flipped my wrist. The pommel came down hard on the man’s temple. He yelped and slumped to the floor. I scurried over and opened the pouch at my hip. Funny…the stuff we carry around these days. I produced a hard plastic zip strip and rolled the man over so I could bind his wrists.

  “Damn,” I breathed. It was Doubting Thomas.

  The human mind is an amazing thing. In the span of a few heartbeats, my mind had already laid out the likely outcome for this man. He already had a terrible reputation here in La Grande. When our departure was discovered, and it was revealed that we slipped through at his tower, he was as good as done. I wouldn’t put it past this place to execute the poor guy.

  Okay, so maybe my imagination was a shade on the overactive, if not dreary, side of things, but I still saw no result that did not end poorly for this man. Unscrewing the top of my canteen, I splashed his face with water. It took a few slaps as well, but eventually the man was sitting up, rubbing his temple.

  “What the…” he grumbled, and then everything seemed to hit him at once as he tried to scramble back while reaching for his weapon. Thankfully I had relieved him of it before rousing him.

  “You told me that you have my back,” I said as he stared at me in absolute confusion. “So I am going to give you a choice. My people and I are leaving. You can stay here, or you can come with us.”

  I thought he would need a second or two to think it over. I was wrong.

  “Let’s go.” He climbed to his feet, still rubbing the side of his head. “Man, I owe you one for this,” he said with a wince.

  “Yeah…sorry about that. The good news is that I changed my mind at the last second. I was gonna actually kill you.”

  I did not miss the sour look as the man climbed down over the side of the tower. Turning back to where the others would be waiting, I produced my glow stick and waved it twice before tucking it back into my pouch.

  BP was the first one up and paused when he did not see a corpse. I filled him in and told him to expect Thomas waiting when he climbed down. It took a bit longer than I would have liked, but eventually everybody was on the other side.

  We had to sort of loop around to get clear of the fringes of La Grande and then start across open farmland. The roads were really suffering from a hard winter and no public department of transportation to come along and fix things. I seriously doubted if many of the more rural roads would even be in existence five years from now. Hell, I wondered if the highway would still be intact. I knew of a few places already that had suffered from mudslides.

  We reached the spot where it was time to separate. My team sort of clustered around me, and all the goodbyes were said. I felt confident that the doc could lead the group back home.

  The nine of us—Thomas had begged to be a part of the team—headed east and into the foothills. The problem with travelling in the darkness like this, besides the whole not being able to see, was that everything and nothing looked familiar. That is why I never saw the trip wire and landed on my face. I rolled over to find myself looking up the barrel of Andy’s M4. I may have peed just a little.

  “What the hell are you doing creeping around in the dark?” the big man asked in a quiet whisper as he reached down and hauled me to my feet.

  The rest of my team had frozen in place in the few seconds all of that took to transpire. I am pretty sure that I heard James Sager chuckle. Brushing myself off, I winced as the man from La Grande who had been paired with Andy emerged from the shadows of some nearby trees.

  “We need to talk,” I leaned forward and whispered in Andy’s ear.

  “Carlos,” Andy called over his shoulder, I assumed he was talking to the man standing with his rifle slung casually over his shoulder, “keep the watch. I gotta chat with my man Billy for a minute.”

  My stomach churned and the acid stung the back of my throat. This had been bad enough, but now I knew the guy’s name that I was more than likely going to have to kill.

  I motioned for the rest of my team to hang back while Andy and I strolled into one of the two remaining long, empty tents. I was a little surprised to find that damn near everything had been packed and apparently stowed for transport.

  “I see you managed to keep busy,” I waved my hand at the seemingly cavernous and empty space.

  “Didn’t see the need to waste time and wait for y’all to show up and tell us to tear everything down,” Andy replied matter-of-factly.

  “So…” I felt my mouth go dry like somebody had just poured a bag of hot sand in it.

  “Aww fuck!” Andy snarled.

  The sudden burst of angry profanity made me jump. I cocked my head at the large man sitting across from me.

  “I ain’t killin’ Carlos, so you can just shut that line of thought down right now!” the Ranger exclaimed.

  “¿Que?” I heard a voice yelp from outside.

  “Wait…how…” I was stammering as Andy stood up.

  “We heard all that shit going down from up here. Sounded like a freakin’ war,” Andy spat with a shake of his head. “Now you and a few others show up and you’re looking like somebody shoved a fresh turd in your mouth. You ain’t the murderin’ type, kid. So before you say a single word that is going to make me hate you…and probably have to kill you…maybe you should think long and hard about what you want to say.”

  Just then, the tent flap opened and the man I’d seen outside just a moment ago entered with his hands in the air. Thomas and Katrina were with him, guns not actually pointed at the man, but held in a casually dangerous way across their bodies. Then the rest of the team came in. There was a wide mixture of expressions; everything from confusion to apathy.

  “Everybody just hold on!” I snapped. “Weapons down.” I’d made it past one potential killing without having to shed any blood, maybe there was a way out of this particular situation.

  The last person to enter the tent was Carol. She assessed the situation and then stepped past Thomas and Katrina to take a spot next to Carlos.

  “Mr. Ortega, I think there has been a misunderstanding
,” Carol said as she eyed everybody in the tent. She quickly explained pretty much everything that had happened in La Grande as well as her reasons for leaving. I would have probably taken twice as long and been half as clear. When it was over, the middle-aged Hispanic man smiled and hugged the woman.

  “Mr. Ortega has been my neighbor for pretty much his entire life. I still remember the day his mom and dad brought him home from the hospital. Even paddled his hiney a few times back when you could do that sort of thing without going to jail,” Carol said with a fondness in her voice.

  “And I deserved each one of ‘em,” the man said with an easy smile and slight shrug of his shoulders. “I had a knack for getting in trouble when I was younger.”

  “No,” Carol corrected, “you had a knack for getting caught and hanging out with children who let you take the rap for their mischief.”

  “Okay, as nice as all this is,” Andy interrupted, “it still does nothing to settle things. Where are Grady and the others?”

  “They headed on up the hill with that grouchy old doctor lady,” James offered. I heard a few snickers and caught Paula Yin covering her mouth.

  Huh, I thought, she is human.

  “So Grady is on board with this?” Andy asked.

  “One hundred percent,” Chet Bozer said in a gravelly voice that fit him perfectly.

  “Good enough for me,” Andy said with a shrug. He turned to me with almost no emotion on his face. “Nothing personal, but it has been my duty since this nightmare began to take care of that man and his little gaggle of geeks.”

  “No problem,” I answered.

  “Now…” Andy clapped his hands, “about the fella that is paired with Jerome…”

  ***

  The big black man was still wiping the sleep from his eyes as Andy was simultaneously wiping off the blade of his knife. The best thing, as far as I was concerned, was that at least the guy had probably never even been alert long enough to register that he’d been killed.

  “So now will you explain?” I asked.

  When Andy had said that the other man, Cyril Zimmerman needed to be killed, everybody else in the tent seemed to accept that as gospel and just followed the big man out and over to the neighboring tent. I think I had simply been too stunned to really react at all. I’d followed like everybody else and stood in the background as Andy strode up with purpose and plunged his gigantic knife into the sleeping man’s eye socket.

  “Don’t need to,” Andy said. And then he reached inside the dead man’s vest and pulled out a little notebook. “The piece of crap has been making notes and even thought that he was clever enough to hide a few of the choice items from the carts. Jerome is one hell of an actor.”

  “I guess the man figured that I was just some lazy brother…always dozing on my watch.” Jerome smiled big and flashed his dazzling white teeth. “Punk ass never even knew that we were drugging his dinner. That man would have slept through damn near anything. As it was, he never knew a thing about all the shit breaking loose down in the valley. We had him dosed at the time. Me, Carlos, and Andy sat out at the table and listened to a hailstorm of explosions and then all the shooting. We figured we might be starting our own compound up here by the sounds of it.”

  “Speaking of compounds,” I piped up, “I think it is time we start for ours. We got at least two days of hiking before we reach it if everything goes well. And I don’t think we will be able to take all the carts in one trip.”

  “Take the one with the green tarp,” Andy said. “That has the best of the weapons and all of the Claymore gear.”

  It took us another hour to get six of us harnessed in to act as the human mule train. Everybody would take turns, and those not pulling were more than ready to help with pushing when things got difficult. There were a few slopes and grades to climb that almost caused us to completely abandon the big cart.

  It was midday on the second day when a single gunshot sounded. The noise echoed from seemingly every direction due to this particular stretch of mountain road being little more than a tunnel without a roof. Jerome had been walking just to the left rear of the cart at the time and let out a yelp, clutching his leg and collapsing to the ground.

  The folks who had rigged these harnesses had obviously thought ahead. I and the others pulling the cart at the time hit the quick-release button on the harness. We all scattered; some going left, others right, and a few pressing themselves against the side of the cart.

  One of those who had sought refuge against the cart was Thomas. A second report of a rifle sounded, and the man took two steps away from the cart and then collapsed in the middle of the two-lane highway, a large pool of blood already spreading out from his still form. His death, while anti-climactic, had at least been swift.

  “Where the hell are they?” somebody, I think it was BP, hissed.

  I had sprinted for the edge of the road and dove into a ditch that was thick with brush and tall weeds. From there, I was able to see Thomas’ still form, Jerome under the big cart clutching at his leg, and Carol who had crawled under there with him.

  A head peeked up over the lane divider and I saw Carlos with a pair of binoculars to his face. He was looking back down the hill the way we’d come, but I wasn’t completely sure that the shots had come from that direction. We were in a bit of a canyon with sheer rock walls going up on either side for about thirty or so feet until it gave way to the first pine trees.

  I looked back up the hill towards the direction that we were headed and thought that I saw the glint of sun on metal. It could have been anything, but I kept my eyes on that area. Sure enough, a moment later I saw a crouched figure scurry from my side of the road to the divider and then over.

  I was about to call out to Carlos when the report of a nearby rifle caused me to start and scoot away. My head craned to my right to see Rachel Mint up on one knee, a fairly impressive hunting rifle jammed against her shoulder, her eye pressed to the scope.

  “Scratch one,” she murmured, and then looked down at me with a wink and a smile. And just that quick, she vanished back into the weeds.

  I caught a glimpse of Katrina as she moved up and behind a huge boulder. She gave me a wave to let me know that she saw me, and then disappeared from view. The next several minutes were energy sapping and frustrating as I continued to search the road ahead. I was now certain that was where the attack had come from.

  The minutes ticked away, and I heard little more than the wind. Every so often, Jerome would let loose with an expletive or two, and Carol would hush him; other than that, it was as if I were alone.

  “Everybody can come out now!” I heard Andy bellow.

  Rising slowly, I saw Andy, Rachel, Paula and Chet coming down the road. I glanced over at Katrina and shrugged. BP emerged from about ten feet away, Carlos stood from where he’d taken position on the other side of the lane divider, and James popped up from out of the back of the cart.

  “Five punks…nothing to be worried about,” Andy answered my questioning look. “Hell, Paula dropped three of them before I even got up and into position.”

  “Nobody left a damn thing for me,” Chet grumbled. “Bunch a greedy bastards.”

  We all made our way to the cart and gathered around. Carol had already taken care of dressing the wound on Jerome’s leg and the man had a light sheen of perspiration on his face.

  “The bullet is still in there,” Carol announced.

  “Can’t you get it out?” Katrina asked.

  “That is Hollywood stuff, dearie,” the older woman groaned as she rose to her feet. “I will leave it to Dr. Zahn. If I nicked an artery or something, the poor man would bleed out. I think it best that we let a professional handle it.”

  “Then let’s load the big bullet catcher onto the cart and get moving,” Andy said, giving Jerome a wink and an over-exaggerated roll of the eyes for which he received the one-finger salute in return.

  Twenty minutes later, we were once again underway. Late that afternoon, I began to re
cognize some of the surroundings. We actually almost went right past the turn off that would lead us to the old cabin.

  Turning down the familiar path, I felt a surge of excitement. As we wound along the narrow and almost overgrown access road that was now little more than a trail, I began to feel all of the tension and whatever else it was that had built up in me the past few months just start to drift away on the cool mountain breeze. As we passed the old watch stand that was still in place just off to the left and then broke through the canopy of pines, I could not keep the grin off my face.

  The two dirt berms still lined the entry road and led to the wide moat with the drawbridge. Up on the hill sat the huge forestry welcome center that had been home back in what seemed a dozen lifetimes ago. The ground was still littered with decaying bodies from the last big battle we’d fought here, somebody or perhaps the weather had knocked down our rooftop observation tower, but it was nothing that could not be fixed with a little hard work.

  A handful of figures stepped out onto the huge wraparound porch. I smiled as Thalia stepped forward and waved her arms enthusiastically.

  “Welcome home, everybody!” I called over my shoulder.

  18

  Vignettes LIV

  Onward the small herd walked. Over the days and weeks, their numbers had grown to over a hundred. It was the largest concentration of zombie children anywhere for thousands of miles, but they knew nothing of such things.