Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within

by James N. Cook

  He faced me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, where the hell is he?”

  “I left him tied to a tree.”

  He stared incredulously for a moment, and then threw up his hands. “Well go fucking get him before the goddamn walkers do.” He turned and grabbed a couple of recruits. “You two, go with him. Prisoner retrieval, move your asses.”

  I had a feeling that if Grabovsky’s cane had been in his hand, I would have felt the business end of it urging me on as I sprinted up the embankment on the far side of the road. Honestly, he would have been justified.

  Chapter 7

  Price of Freedom

  When I pulled back the cedar branches I had hidden my prisoner beneath, I half expected to find him dead of strangulation. As it was, he was lying on his side and shaking with silent sobs, tears dripping from between tightly squeezed eyelids. It was a good thing I reached him when I did. If the walkers had gotten any closer, he might have done something rash.

  I grabbed his foot and shook him. “Rise and shine, buttercup. Time to get you out of here.” He opened his eyes, glanced around in consternation, and then nodded vigorously. I cut the cord binding his legs, and the one at his throat, then pulled the gag out of his mouth and helped him stand up.

  “Think you can run?”

  He looked at me and nodded again.

  “Good. Now let’s get one thing straight.” I touched the barrel of my pistol to his temple. “Try anything, and you’re a dead man. Clear?”

  He swallowed a couple of times, and gave a single bob of his head. “Okay.”

  “Come on, let’s get moving.”

  The two recruits Grabovsky had sent with me watched our six as we trudged back down the hill as quickly as we could manage. I kept a firm grip on the prisoner’s arm and marched him ahead of me, occasionally having to catch him to keep him from falling. The moans of the infected grew louder and louder as we made our way down and, as we emerged from the treeline, Grabovsky saw us coming and shouted at the recruits standing with him to hold their fire.

  Three dozen gun-toting, hostile faces glared coldly at Grayson Morrow as I marched him through the perimeter and over to where Gabe and Grabovsky waited for us. The sight of the two grim, stone-faced warriors was enough to make his steps falter.

  “Keep moving,” I growled, shoving the barrel of my pistol into his kidney.

  I stopped him in front of Gabe, who looked the kid up and down briefly before turning his attention to me. “I want you to take him on the first wagon headed back to town. Get this kid to the police station and lock him up. Stay with him and let the sheriff know that this man is in federal custody.”

  “You sure you don’t want someone else to take him?” I asked. “There’s a lot of infected coming this way. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

  Gabe opened his mouth to speak, but Grabovsky interrupted him. “He’s got a point, Garrett,” he said. “Riordan can shoot the nuts off a hummingbird. We need him here.”

  The hardness in Gabe’s eyes said that he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with the G-man’s logic.

  “Fine,” he said, after a moment. “Have Sanchez and Vincenzo take him, but make sure they know to keep him safe. This prisoner is too valuable to lose to a lynch mob.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for my prisoner to get any paler, but he proved me wrong. His arm trembled under my hand as I walked him to the far edge of the perimeter and passed him off to Sanchez.

  “You’re off the hook, Sancho,” I said. “Find Vincenzo and head back to town with this guy as soon as the wagons get here.”

  The scrappy Mexican glared at Morrow with open hostility and stabbed a finger into his chest. “The only reason you’re still alive, cabrón, is because I’m under orders not to kill you. If it were up to me, I’d chain you to a tree and leave you for the fucking muertos. So don’t give me an excuse. Comprende?”

  Morrow kept his eyes down and nodded quickly, not daring to speak. I didn’t blame him.

  With the prisoner in Sancho’s capable hands, I jogged back to the center of the perimeter where Gabe awaited. He stood atop an olive drab crate, peering northward with a pair of binoculars. I climbed onto the crate next to him and brought up my scope.

  “You seeing what I’m seeing?” he asked without looking at me.

  I took a moment to sweep both sides of the road as it wound around a curve in the distance, and let out a tired breath. “Couple hundred of them, at least.”

  Gabe lowered his binos and reached over to pat my shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, amigo. We’ve handled worse than this by ourselves. This time we got help.”

  I looked around at the recruits. “Yeah. Yeah we do.”

  They had arranged the heavy crates in a circle and taken position behind them. Flannigan and a couple of others had scrounged up a few entrenching tools and were busy filling sandbags to use as bench rests. That was good thinking on their part. Having something to prop their rifles on would help everyone shoot more accurately, and save ammo. I just hoped the factory zero on their ACOG sights was as good as the manufacturer used to advertise.

  Not wanting to use up his limited supply of .308 ammo, Gabe swapped his SCAR battle rifle for Sanchez’s smaller and lighter M-4. The kid grinned as he handled the high-tech weapon, eliciting a stern warning from Gabe that if anything happened to his beloved rifle, he would visit a thousand flaming dooms upon Sancho’s head. The grin disappeared.

  I walked to the northernmost edge of the perimeter and found a crate that came up to the middle of my chest, set my rifle on its bipod, and dialed down the magnification on my scope. After conferring briefly with the two shooters on either side of me to designate lanes of fire, I settled down over my rifle, took a deep breath, and waited. Ahead of me, a host of shambling, ragged figures began to appear from between the trees, filtering down the hillsides and onto the highway.

  The landscape around us provided both an advantage, and a disadvantage. The natural steepness of the hills would direct the walkers down to the road—the dead tend to follow the path of least resistance—but it also meant that the troops positioned to the north and south would have to bear the heaviest volume of fire. As the dead grew closer, Gabe noticed the same thing and began barking out orders.

  Five people took up position on each of the two flanks facing the sides of the road, while the rest formed ranks along the blacktop facing north and south where the bulk of the infected would hit us. The idea was that each shooter would use up a full magazine, retreat to the back, reload, and wait for another turn on the firing line.

  Looking out, I saw that they were coming at us from all directions now, shuffling and moaning toward the sound of food. The walkers began to bottleneck as they converged, the faster and more recently dead ones pushing their way past their slower, less mobile counterparts. None of them moved faster than a brisk walk, but then again, they didn’t need to. Their strength was their numbers, and the fact that they would never, ever, get tired. I did a few breathing exercises to calm my nerves and heard Gabe’s voice booming over the cacophony of moans.

  “Remember, take your time and line up your shots,” he shouted. “Use the sandbags to steady your aim. Make every shot count. If your weapon jams, raise a hand and fall back. Either me or Sergeant Grabovsky will help you clear it. Keep your rifles pointed downrange at all times while on the firing line. If I catch you away from the firing line with your safety off, I will cram my boot so far up your ass you’ll taste my shoe polish.”

  He was smiling when he said that last part, drawing a few smiles and nervous chuckles.

  “Remember kids,” he went on, “this is just like we drilled. Stay calm, keep your head screwed on straight, and we’ll all get out of this just fine. Shooters on the front ranks, take up position and get ready to fire. Everybody else, check the person next to you and make sure your weapons and ammo are squared away before you step up to the line.”
/>   The recruits did as he said, looking each other’s rifles over and loosening straps on mag carriers. The tension in the air lessened under the sound of hands patting shoulders, and voices reassuring one another that they were good to go. It was a simple ritual that banished nervousness and made the recruits stand a little straighter, taking confidence in the man or woman next to them. In that moment, under the glare of the midday sun, I understood something about the military that had, until then, escaped my attention.

  There was a camaraderie there on that stretch of empty road that transcended any boundaries that might have otherwise separated us. We were alone, surrounded by monsters, and we had no one to depend on but each other. If I wanted to live to see another day, I had to count on the man standing next to me, and he had to count on me. It didn’t matter who he was, what he had done in his life, or what beliefs he held. We were on the same side, we would fight to the death to protect other, and that was all that mattered. It was us against them, plain and simple.

  “Shooters in the front, thumbs up if you’re ready,” Gabe shouted.

  I held up an arm, but not a thumb, using an altogether different digit. It took the big man a few seconds to catch it.

  “Go fuck yourself, Riordan.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice as heads swiveled in my direction to see what he was talking about. Laughs and chuckles followed, further breaking down the pervading atmosphere of nervous tension.

  “Anybody else does that, and I’ll break your fingers.”

  “All fucking around aside,” Grabovsky broke in, playing the part of bad-cop, “tighten your shit up. This is the real deal, ladies. Let’s do it right.”

  Smiles disappeared, eyes narrowed, and mouths set into hard lines as the recruits took deep breaths, shook off the levity of the moment, and settled down over their weapons.

  I peered through my scope and sighted in on the closest walker in my lane, centering the reticle just above its forehead. It was impossible tell what it had looked like in life, what its race had been, or even if it was a man or a woman. Its clothes were long gone, and its skin, what was left of it, looked like bleached saddle leather stretched tight over blackening cords of muscle tissue. A gaping hole spilled out from what had once been its abdomen, and its left arm was missing from the elbow down.

  As I looked at the walker’s face, with its yawning teeth and milk-white eyes, I felt all the old conflicted feelings bubble to the surface again. Revulsion tugged at the gag reflex in the back of my throat, pity twisted in my chest, and an icy, razor-edged ball of fear roiled in my gut, threatening to give me the shakes.

  I shoved it all down, took a deep breath, and tapped my fingertips against the cold metal of the trigger guard.

  Concentrate.

  “Enemy in range,” Grabovsky called out. From the corner of my eye, I saw him looking through a handheld rangefinder.

  “Roger that,” Gabe called back. “Soldiers on the firing line, mark range one hundred yards. Standby.”

  I slipped my finger over the trigger, breathing steadily. A few more seconds ticked by, and the ghouls shuffled ever closer, their moans drowning out everything but the hammering of my own heartbeat.

  “Eighty yards,” Grabovsky shouted.

  “Roger, standby.”

  The walker in my crosshairs grew larger, its eyes locked in my direction. I could swear it was looking at me. I willed my pulse to slow down.

  “Sixty yards.”

  “All right, this is it,” Gabe bellowed, his voice ringing out over the low valley. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we trained for. You’ve fought well today, but the day ain’t over yet. You all know what to do, now let’s see you do it. FIRE AT WILL.”

  A dozen rifles fired in rapid succession, the reports drowning out the wailing cry of the undead. I added my own rifle to the fray, dropping the walker I had been watching with my first shot. The walker behind it didn’t flinch or slow down, not even when brain and bone shards splattered into its face. I shifted my aim and sent another round downrange, hitting the mark and sending it to join its friend.

  The tightness in my shoulders loosened and I felt myself begin to relax, settling into a steady rhythm and pulling the trigger with metronome cadence. Not for the first time, a zenlike state descended upon me. The world narrowed down to the lens of my scope, the stock against my shoulder, and the cool roughness of the trigger under my finger.

  Aim, crack, down goes a walker.

  Aim, crack, down goes a walker.

  In thirty seconds, I fired thirty shots, and put down thirty infected. I almost reached for another mag, but I remembered that I was supposed to fall back and let another shooter take my spot while I reloaded.

  The man behind me settled down on the crate I had just vacated and began racking up a score of his own. I dropped my mag, stuffed it into a pouch, and popped in a fresh one. The two people in front of me were shuffling with impatience, anxious to get in on the fight.

  I smiled at their backs, thinking about how far these survivors of the Outbreak had come. When they were living their old lives, back before the world went insane, did they ever think they would be standing in formation behind a barricade of U.S. Army cargo crates, fighting off wave after wave of flesh-eating monsters? I shook my head.

  Of course they didn’t, no one did.

  But here we were.

  A cloud blew past in the sky overhead, revealing the sun and letting yellow light diffuse down to the world below. The rays that broke through were pale and weak, as though ashamed to waste their brightness on such a gruesome scene. If I had been a ray of light that morning, looking down upon the carnage on that lonely stretch of road in western Tennessee, my shine might have faded a bit as well.

  *****

  I wondered if before the Outbreak, had the Army been as well prepared to fight the undead as these militia recruits, how might things have gone differently? Could the National Guard have stopped the Phage in Atlanta, and prevented it from wiping out nearly the entire world?

  I guess we’ll never know.

  As it was, I only got three turns on the firing line before Gabe called a ceasefire to conserve ammunition. Thirty-seven rifles, mine included, had whittled the horde’s numbers down to just over a dozen. Gabe rounded up half that number of recruits, ordered them gather up an assortment of blunt instruments, drew his Falcata, and set out to split a few skulls. Where most people shied away from fighting the undead hand to hand, for Gabe, it was therapeutic. I watched his hulking form stalk toward the last walkers, naked steel in hand, and couldn’t help but chuckle.

  While dealing with the horde, not everyone had displayed the same level of marksmanship as I had (the average kill ratio was only about one ghoul for every two shots), but it was enough. Considering that they only had six weeks of formal training under their belts, the fledgling militia had performed amazingly well. Both against the infected, and against the Legion.

  My thoughts turned to the four recruits being carried back to town for medical attention, and I felt my stomach sink into my shoes. I knew what it was like to be in that position. Wounded, hurting, and wondering if tree branches cutting through sunlight would be the last thing my eyes would ever see. I offered up a quick prayer for them to whoever might be listening, and then got to work helping to clear the mass of dead bodies from the highway. As I was helping to toss the withered husk of one of the last corpses into a ditch, the crack of a whip and the urging call of a teamster at the reins echoed from the south.

  About damn time.

  Grabovsky had Sanchez and Vincenzo turn the first wagon around and take the prisoner back to town straightaway while the rest of the recruits started loading up crates. Gabe and I, along with a few others, patrolled the perimeter and put down any walkers that straggled out of the forest. There weren’t many of them, but it was enough to keep us busy, and enough to chip away at my dwindling supply of 5.56 NATO ammunition. When I got down to my last three magazines, I slid my M-6 around to my b
ack and switched to my pistol. It wouldn’t do at all to be out of ammo for my rifle if the Legion decided to show up again.

  The sun was low in the sky, and the eastern horizon was just fading into the dark blue of night, when the last box was finally loaded. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to ride back to town, so Grabovsky had the recruits form into ranks and follow behind on foot as the wagons trundled down the road. We were all tired, hungry, and a little dehydrated, and all any of us wanted was to find a quiet spot to lie down and rest for a while.

  Gabe and I stayed on patrol around the edges of the convoy, occasionally gunning down anything dead and hungry that strayed into our path, and generally struggling against exhaustion to keep up with the nervous pace the horses set on the way back to town. I was worried that the horses might break and run at the sight of the undead, but oddly enough, they were more spooked by our rifles than they were by the infected. Sad world that we live in when even animals aren’t impressed by the walkers anymore.

  Occasionally, as we walked, I looked at the faces of the recruits with their hollow, glassy eyes and vacant expressions, and it was clear that the day’s fighting was beginning to take its toll. Not that these men and women had never seen violence or hardship—they certainly had, as had anyone who had survived the Outbreak—but being in a firefight and seeing one’s friends wounded and bleeding and crying out in agony was enough to soften the resolve of even the hardest of fighters. Victory and glory are all well and good until the blood on your hands belongs to you or someone that you care about. When that happens, you realize just how dangerous of a game you’re playing when you take up arms against a determined enemy.

  I wondered if any of the recruits realized that, as tough as the day had been, this was only the beginning. We had drawn blood against the Legion, and had done so in spades. The Legion was bound to retaliate, and when they did, there would be no holding back, and no quarter.

  From here on out, the bloodshed was only going to get worse.