by Brown, TW
I have dug out a nice hole and managed to camouflage it well enough that you would almost have to walk on it to discover there was anything here.
Now, I simply watch and wait for my chance…and hope it doesn’t rain.
8
The Geek’s Wife Declares War
Catie pointed to the left. Braden and Mario moved along the trench. The moans of the undead drifted on the night air, and for a moment, she was reminded of those early days.
“The more things change,” she whispered as she peeked up over the stone wall.
The walls of the community were visible in the moonlight. They had doused all their lanterns and such, but on a night like tonight where it almost looked like you could reach up and pluck the moon from the sky, that precaution was not doing the people of that community much good. She knew that dawn was just an hour or so away, so they had to move and move now to minimize the potential for losing any of her people.
It had been a rough few weeks, and the human cost was starting to weigh on her soul. Every day, she simply told herself that she was doing what she needed to do in order to have a safe place to give birth to and then raise her child.
A zombie stumbled past her and followed the dozen or so others that were heading towards the front gate of the community. Already the zombies were about ten or twenty deep almost all the way around the place. They were not going to breach this community’s walls, of that Catie was virtually certain. The construction seemed amazing, and if an eventual treaty could be made with these people, then she would have to talk to whoever had designed their perimeter defense.
She was not holding out much hope that it would be happening anytime soon. These people had gone so far as to send back the head of the woman she’d sent as a diplomat to try and at least arrange a sit down meeting with their leadership. Catie had known full well what was in the box before she opened it. However, it did not help to ease the pain she felt in her heart when she opened the lid and stared down into those filmed eyes riddled with the black tracers. The woman had of course turned after death and her head was animated, the teeth clicking and the eyes following her every move until she replaced the lid.
She’d had the head spiked and disposed of and then called the Beastie Boys. They had not been all that happy with having to bring their precious landfill of zombies out again. Plus, Chuck and Louis were still out in the surrounding countryside trying to round up the several hundred that had straggled off.
They had lost almost a quarter of the zombies during the siege of Montague Village. The smell of smoke still hung in the air from all the fires; not only the ones that she and her people had managed to set with flaming arrows, but also the ones from when the oil had been dumped over the south wall and then set ablaze to try and eliminate all the zombies on that side.
That had backfired on the people of Montague Village. The fire had not only caused a lot of the zombies to shift in that direction towards the conflagration, but it had also attracted a smaller heard of around five thousand.
“They’re doing the hard work for us,” Louis had crowed as they watched that new herd arrive and meld in with the other zombies surrounding the walls of Montague Village.
Catie understood the boy’s elation; she just could not share in it at the moment. She had become one of those people that Kevin had warned about. She was weaponizing the zombies.
“Once that happens, I think you can start the final countdown clock for humanity. It will prove that we are the worst of the planet’s creatures,” Kevin had said.
On the fifth day, Catie had fired an arrow into Montague Village. To be more specific, she had fired it at a wooden beam right by where Marty was standing, barking orders. The note read simply: Your brother is dead. Surrender or join him.
He had decided not to surrender. In fact, as Catie had watched the man through her binoculars, she was actually really glad there was a lot of ground as well as several thousand zombies between her and him. In the end, it had not gone well for the citizens of Montague Village. Catie could not believe that so many of them preferred death to dealing with and accepting the immune citizens as equals. That was even more peculiar considering that Marty was one of them.
That second day when he’d tossed so many of the unknown over the wall into the waiting arms of the zombie mob had been enough for Catie. That was the day that she had ordered them to fire volleys of flaming arrows into the compound. Fire is a nasty thing and does not care who you are; it simply destroys anything it can feed on…sort of like zombies.
Later that week, Marty had waved the white flag. Catie had come out and climbed on a building well out of range of any possible flying arrows. The big man had seen her and waved frantically. Maybe she could have sent in the Beastie Boys and their noisemakers to try and pull the zombies away, but the time for that was past as far as she was concerned.
“But he is surrendering,” one of the people standing on the roof insisted.
“It is too late for that,” Catie had replied.
“But what about all those innocent men, women, and children?” somebody else had asked.
Catie didn’t have an answer for that, so she remained silent. She had stood on that roof and watched the fires grow and grow until they were obviously out of control. She forced herself to stay there as the first wall weakened and collapsed. When the zombies began to flood in, she continued to watch. She’d had to hand-select the people who would hold their post and take down those who tried to escape. The only exceptions were for women and children.
“I want all women and children, regardless of their status, to be brought back to the general living quarters. Get names, ages, and then have them all housed on the same floor if possible,” she instructed once she managed to select a team of people she believed would do the job and do it right. “Separate the injured just in case. If they start to turn, give them a humane option.”
Returning her attention to the situation at hand, Catie motioned her team to follow her. Getting up into a crouch, they all continued along a wide alley and out to an open field that had once been the grounds for a fairly large school.
Catie signaled her team to stop once again. She turned to Braden. “This is where you heard something?”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t zombies unless they have learned how to speak,” the young man said.
Catie motioned for him to lead the way and Braden headed for a large building set off by itself as if it might have been the gymnasium. They reached a pair of large metal double-doors and were surprised to discover them securely locked.
“Hmm,” Braden grumbled as he stepped back from the doors and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t encountered a locked door in so long, I almost forgot they existed.”
“You two,” Catie pointed to a pair of her team, “stay here. The rest of you, with me.”
“What are we supposed to do?” one of the young men she had told to stay behind asked.
“Watch the door.” She didn’t wait for any further questions and hurried down the building and around the corner. They reached another single door on one side and discovered that it was locked as well. By the time they had completed a full circuit of the stone cube, they had discovered three more entrances, all of them locked.
When they rounded the corner to the front, or at least the side of the building that they had originally approached from, they were greeted by absolutely nothing.
“Where did they go?” Braden hissed as he broke into a run.
The young man skidded to a stop where the two members of their team had been standing when they last saw them. Kneeling down, he brushed the ground with his fingertips and rubbed them together.
“Bloody,” he announced, holding up his hands. The fingers looked black in the lack of any sort of bright light, but it seemed like a valid assumption.
“I don’t care what you have to do,” Catie hissed, “get us inside.”
Braden stepped back and looked up. There were windows set in the
building several feet above the ground. He unslung his pack and produced a grappling hook attached to a coiled bit of sturdy line. It took him three tries, but on the third attempt, there was a heavy clank and when he gave the line a solid tug, it appeared to be firmly secured. He started up, bracing his feet against the wall and walking up with slow and steady progress.
“Batman and Robin made it look much easier,” Catie stage-whispered.
“Who?” a young woman who could not be much older than her late teens asked.
Catie turned to the girl and opened her mouth, then closed it again. She started to say something a couple of times and then realized that she did not know how to explain it and not make it sound silly. She felt a pang of sadness as she realized just how much the new generation would never know about in regards to the world she grew up in. While some of it was not going to be missed, there were some simple pleasures like a good movie or being able to fly across the entire country in a matter of hours to see friends or loved ones that stood out. She glanced down at her slowly growing belly and added doctors with access to pain killers to that list.
She made a mental note to do a thorough check of the library when this was all over. Since it was supposedly mostly intact, she would see if she could find any comic books. For whatever reason that she could not nail down exactly if she had to put it into words, she felt it was important for her child to have access to some of the things that she knew Kevin used to love.
She watched as Braden vanished into one of the openings that had long been empty of glass. A moment later, there was the sound of chains being jangled.
“They have it secured with some serious amounts of chain. So even if I could figure out how to unlock this door, it would take me a week to cut through all these chains,” Braden’s voice came from the other side of the door.
“Then how in the hell did they sneak up on our people?” Catie pondered out loud.
“What about that?” another one of the team pointed a few feet away from where he was standing.
Catie walked over and noticed a manhole cover. How had she missed that? Simple, she told herself, she wasn’t looking for anything of that sort. It hadn’t crossed her mind, and that was a problem. She had decided to go to war, but she had not been thinking like a soldier. That had to change right now if she wanted to have a good chance of winning.
“Braden, get out here. We found something,” Catie hissed through the door. She received a quick rap on the door in confirmation.
Once he was back with the group, they all gathered around the manhole cover. Braden and another member of the team had to work together to move the cover. The metal disc came up with a metallic rattle and was moved easily enough once it was pried from its seat. She was only a little surprised to discover a few sputtering torches mounted on the wall of the old sewer or drainage tunnel that waited below.
Once everybody was down, Catie had the cover pulled back into place. Their direction was an easy choice as they followed the trails of blood that could be seen as fresh, dark smears along the floor of the tube shaped tunnel that they found themselves in.
The tunnel went on for a good ways, and as the torch’s sputtering became more and more feeble, she wondered if perhaps they were being led on some sort of wild goose chase; then she heard the echo of voices.
“Kill the torch,” she whispered. “Everybody take hands. Braden, you just keep moving forward. I would almost be willing to wager that we have maybe one more turn before we are on these people.”
“What if the tunnel splits?” Braden asked.
“Keep left,” Catie decided.
It proved to be a moot point. Before long they were at a ninety degree turn to the left and a dim glow of light could be seen. To their eyes, it was almost as bright as daylight.
“…but how did they get here?” a male voice was asking. “Why would they come to this building of all the places they could snoop around?”
“Maybe it has something to do with how you can’t keep your big mouth shut,” a female voice retorted harshly. “I told you not to say a word until we were inside.”
“But I was trying to tell you about those damn zombies. You know how the kid versions act all weird. There were at least twenty of the zee-brats in that clearing,” the male voice insisted.
“And they weren’t coming after us, so who gives a crap!” another male voice snapped.
Catie gave the person in front of her a squeeze and a tug to stop the group and then moved to the lead of her pack. It dawned on her as she walked past her group that only two of the fifteen had a weapon in hand. She had a lot of work to do with these people.
“Stay put,” Catie whispered as she started forward to scout around the corner. Braden grabbed her arm and gave her a tug.
“”What?” She turned around to see Braden shaking his head.
“I don’t think you are in any condition to try and sneak around.” His head bobbed a bit and she had to assume that he was indicating her baby bump.
“You just get everybody to ready their weapons and let me worry about what I can and can’t do.” Catie yanked her arm free and gave a nasty glare, though she doubted that he could see her facial expressions with what little light they had directly behind her and thus probably bathing her face in shadow.
She did not wait for him to respond and moved to the corner and dropped down to a crouch. She peered around and saw five people standing over the two bodies of their team members. Two of the five were holding what looked like some sort of glowing device that was about the size of an Old World cell phone and gave off an incredible amount of light for its relatively small size. She turned her attention to her people lying on the ground. At the moment, she could not tell if they were alive or dead; and then the female of the group spoke as she kicked one of the downed figures.
“What are you immunes doing here? How did you find our secret entrance?”
There was a moan and then something unintelligible. That earned a second kick.
“You don’t expect me to believe you just accidentally strolled up to our secret entrance, do you? I want to know who is giving you guys your information. If you talk now, I promise you won’t be tortured. We will negotiate with whoever is leading your little army against us and arrange your release.”
There was another bit of mumbling and the like that echoed off the walls and was absolutely impossible for Catie to decipher from this distance. However, she now had the information that she needed.
She pulled back before standing and then returned to the group. “There are five of them. They are on their feet and our people are on the ground.” As if to punctuate that statement, a low wail was heard from around the corner. “I want one alive. To make this easy, there is a woman. She is about six feet tall so you can’t miss her. She is wearing a lot of gear, so you might have to do a bit of a dog pile-on-the-rabbit with her. I want her. Kill the rest.”
Catie turned her back on the group and just hoped they would follow. By the time she reached that corner, she could feel them moving up behind her. So far, so good.
She held her right hand out to the side so it could be seen in the little bit of light. Opening her hand, she curled first her thumb and then each finger in a countdown. As soon as she was making a fist, Catie charged around the corner.
She almost stumbled when a roar came from the men and women following her into battle. The five individuals who had abducted their people all turned, their faces showing obvious surprise. Catie reach the first man who had a large mallet in his hand that looked like it had seen a lot of use over the years. He never had a chance to raise it as she brought her own blade up and slashed the man across his exposed and bare throat. The man was on his knees clutching at his neck as she passed; technically he was not yet dead, but she had no doubt he would be in just a moment, so she did not spare him another thought.
Catie did not really trust her inexperienced crew to take down the woman that she had chosen as the primary target. That meant
that she would have to try and do that herself. Normally, that would not pose a problem and she would move in with all the confidence in the world. The baby’s series of untimely kicks caused her to actually falter as doubt crept in at the worst possible time.
She felt something grab her by the shoulder and she was instantly frozen with fear. She had been careless and the man she had slashed and then dismissed as soon-to-be-dead had obviously been hurt much less than she had assumed. She knew that she would turn just in time to see that mallet come down and crush her skull.
Instead, she saw Braden’s figure whip past her. Her eyes registered the fact that the man she’d attacked was indeed on the ground, his glassy eyes absorbing more of the light than they reflected. She now followed Braden with her gaze as he launched at the woman who was easily six feet tall and looked like an Amazonian wet dream. Her clothing was molded to her skin and showed way too much curviness. Catie instantly hated the woman and was certain that she probably dressed that way on purpose and knew damn well that she turned heads.
Braden zigged suddenly and almost ran perpendicular to the ground for a second or two as he shot up the curved wall of the tubed-shape tunnel that was this passage. The woman had no time to react and caught his fist right in the center of her face with an audible crack that Catie could almost feel.
The woman staggered back as her companions were being chopped down around her. She barely noticed and amazingly shook off what had been a very solid punch to the face. She pounced on Braden who had skidded to a stop and was shaking his hand in obvious pain. Catie was not sure who the blow had hurt worse.
In a flash, the tall woman had a blade in her hand. She lashed out at Braden who moved just enough to avoid most of the attack, but the blade still skidded up the metal bracers he wore on his forearms. Realizing that he still had a fight on his hands and that his opponent was not feeling any of the constraints of trying to take him alive, he danced back. His hands fumbled for the pistol-sized mini-crossbow that he kept on one hip and he brought it up, firing a shot at the woman’s above average center mass. It plinked off harmlessly, striking the studded leather corset that she had on under her animal skin cape.