Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  The other trap was a bit more complex, but no less diabolical. It involved sharpened railroad spikes, two-by-fours, leaf springs from a tractor-trailer, and a pressure plate hidden in the floor. Step on the plate without disarming the trap, and two concealed, spike-laden, spring-tensioned boards swing down from the roof to perforate the offending trespasser. To disarm it, one simply lifts the doormat and turns a lever to the proper position. When leaving, reverse the process, and the trap is re-armed. Simple, but deadly effective.

  I should mention here that Hollow Rock has very strict rules about theft. To put it mildly, Sheriff Elliott has no patience for thieves and does not abide their presence in this town. As far as the law is concerned, if a thief is injured or killed in the commission of a crime, it is the thief’s fault for creating the situation in the first place. Citizens have a right to protect their property by any reasonable means, up to and including the use of deadly force. Provided they post the necessary no trespassing signs, of course.

  It does not pay to steal in Hollow Rock.

  I unlocked the two locks, opened the door slowly, removed the shotgun string, set the lever to the safe position, and locked the door behind me. Taking out my flashlight, I shined it around the pitch-black room until I located an emergency lantern. Two minutes of winding the handle charged it, illuminating racks of weapons and equipment along the walls.

  Since the defeat of Free Legion and subsequent re-opening of nearby trade routes, travelling caravans now stopped regularly in Hollow Rock. I traded with them extensively, usually for items to sell in the general store such as clothes, ammunition, soap, candles, vinegar, booze, that sort of thing. But I also let it be known that I was a collector of firearms, and would pay good prices for quality weaponry. Consequently, through the course of trade and by merit of my own explorations, I had amassed a rather impressive private arsenal.

  The first thing I needed was NVGs and a good scope. The sun was down, and night would be falling quickly. Without night vision equipment, I would never pick up the killer’s trail. There were several to choose from, but for this task, only the very best would do. The model I chose had been loaned to me by the Army the previous year for use on a rescue mission. After the mission, the officer who issued them to me, Captain Steven McCray, had died in the fighting. I held on to them, figuring someone would ask me to return them sooner or later. But no one ever did. And considering the NVGs and accompanying scope were the most advanced models ever built, capable of both night vision and thermal imaging with adjustability between the two, I wasn’t about bring it up.

  Next was weapons. I chose a suppressor-equipped LWRCI M-6 chambered in hard-hitting 6.8 SPC as my primary weapon, along with six full magazines. 6.8 SPC is extremely difficult ammo to find, and I only use it in dire emergencies. My current predicament qualified.

  For a secondary firearm, I chose a venerable Beretta M-9, also suppressor equipped, and four spare magazines. I would have preferred my Sig, but .45 ACP ammo was in short supply. Nine-millimeter didn’t have the same stopping power, but it was good enough to get the job done.

  Next was my backup piece. Snub-nosed .357 Ruger revolver. Laser sight built into the grip. Paddle holster. No spare ammo. I figured if I had to use it, it meant I had burned through all the mags for the M-6 and the Beretta, and I was probably fucked anyway.

  Last was blades and body armor. Primary blade: Iberian falcata. Secondary blade: Ka-bar combat dagger. Also a little Spyderco folding knife, just in case.

  And for the grand finale, body armor. Dragon Skin. The best there is. Bought from a starving mercenary for the low, low price of a week’s worth of food and five-hundred rounds of 5.56mm ammunition. Deal of the century.

  I cleaned the weapons, checked them for functionality, outfitted a MOLLE vest with mag carriers and pouches, and donned the body armor. Last, I smeared Army issue face paint on all exposed skin, grabbed a rappelling harness, ghillie suit, and a length of nylon rope, and tied on a black headscarf. After a quick glance in the mirror, I reset the traps, locked the door, and headed out.

  *****

  The streets were empty when I left the warehouse. Night had fallen, and the icy wind had driven the townsfolk to their shuttered homes and the fireplaces within. Orange candlelight shone through windows, myriad beacons of hope and safety in the frigid darkness. The welcoming scent of wood smoke hung thick in the air, putting me in mind of hot food, comfort, good company, and a pretty brown-eyed woman with a heart-stopping smile, soft skin under a thick blanket, and the warmth of her body next to mine on a cold night.

  The urge to go home and explain why I lied grew strong again, hammering at the inside of my skull, demanding to be acknowledged. It didn’t have to be this way. I could apologize to the sheriff. I could ask for help.

  But then would come the questions. The judgment. The hostile eyes. The whispers. It had happened before, after I left the Marines. There had been a neighborhood barbeque, and my ex-wife, and too many beers, and a drunken conversation with another veteran. I could only talk about the war when I was drunk, and only to someone who had been there. It felt good to talk about it then, to commiserate with someone who understood what it was like. The sand, the firefights, the fear, the heat, the constant worry that the person on a cell phone across the street was calling your location in to insurgents. Because all too often, that was exactly what they were doing.

  We were loud. At first, the stories we told were the good-natured, funny kind. Stupid things people did in boot camp, drunken nights in dive bars, bare-knuckle brawls with squids on the waterfront. The usual bullshitting. But as we drank more and more, the stories grew darker and more violent. The times when we almost bought it, when we entered buildings on our feet and came out on a stretcher, when IEDs damn near blew us to kingdom come.

  A man came over and suggested we shouldn’t talk about those sorts of things in polite company. There were children around, after all. I threw a beer can at his head and told him to go fuck himself. He was just another useless civilian anyway. What the hell did he know about sacrifice? About pain? About watching your brothers get shot up and blown to pieces? Why don’t you go hide under your momma’s skirt, you fucking little cunt. You’re not even a man, you’re just a piece of shit. You need to keep your goddamn mouth shut when grownups are talking. I’ll snap you over my knee like a fucking twig. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?

  And then my wife’s hand on my chest, her angry words in my ear, the wide-eyed looks of shock from my neighbors. People who lived beside me, who had to share a neighborhood with a murderer. A monster.

  The smiles were always forced after that. The handshakes trembling and reluctant, even after I made the rounds and apologized. The man I insulted said it was no big deal, that he was sorry for provoking me. He was sweating profusely when he said it.

  It was sixty degrees that day.

  They teach you how to turn it on. To reach deep down and find the anger, the hatred, the fear. They teach you how to shape it, to use it, to turn it into something else. You learn your lessons well, they make sure of that. What they don’t teach you is how to turn it off. How to make the nightmares stop. How to live when you are dead inside and only ashes remain where your heart used to be, burned up by all that anger and fear. And by the time you realize what has happened to you, it’s too late. There is nothing left.

  I heard that sad, angry voice again. Saw the disappointment in Karen’s eyes. Felt the hangover pounding in my head on that hot summer day. The despair. The hopelessness.

  You are what you are, Gabriel. And you always will be.

  The door shutting, punctuating my failure as a husband. Then the drive back to my hotel, and the stop at the liquor store along the way. The whore across the street who marked me in an instant. The knock on the door after she had given me enough time to get good and roaring drunk. The money I gave her, and the shame the next morning when I realized what I had done. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Then came the month
s of-

  STOP IT.

  Enough.

  The less Elizabeth knew about my past, the better. This was my chance to start over, to build a new life for myself. And I was not about to let long-ago sins tear it apart. Not here, not now, not this time.

  I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and pushed against that shrill voice. I drove it far, far down, where its shouting was just a dim, unintelligible faintness in the distance. There was no turning back.

  I had a job to do.

  Time to get it done.

  *****

  My first obstacle was getting over the wall undetected.

  Armed and armored as I was, I couldn’t simply leave town through the main gate. My goal was to find Montford’s killer, deal with him, and get back without attracting any unwanted attention. A dozen guards watching me leave town after nightfall while sporting full battle regalia was not the way to accomplish that.

  There was an angled junction near the corner of Highway 70 and Dodd St. where the distance between guard towers was greater than anywhere else along the wall. Once the guards patrolling there crossed paths, they would turn around and walk back to their respective towers. The brief period when they would have their backs to each other would be my window.

  The guards converged, exchanged an all-clear signal, and began walking the other way. When they had gone far enough, I emerged from cover and sprinted to the wall.

  The inside edge of the perimeter boasts a six-foot trench, ostensibly to trap walkers if they somehow make it over. It provided perfect cover while I waited for the guards to make another pass. Beyond the wall, drifting over the spiked tree trunks and telephone poles that separate Hollow Rock from the rest of the world, I heard the distinctive moaning of infected.

  A lot of them.

  Not good.

  Minutes ticked slowly by. Eventually, the guards’ footsteps drew close again, louder and louder until they were directly overhead.

  “Cold one tonight,” one of them said.

  “Damn right. Wish I’d have worn an extra pair of socks. My feet are like ice. How’s things lookin’ on your end?”

  “Lots of walkers out there. Must be from that horde over in McKenzie. You hear about what happened there?”

  “Yeah, a little bit. Somebody at Stall’s place said Garrett’s crew ran into some insurgents.”

  “Yep, that’s what I heard too. Somebody told me they killed a few of them and took the rest prisoner. Not sure if that’s true or not.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me none. Not after what happened with those Free Legion assholes.”

  Shuffling feet. Deep, weary breaths. The conversation had lulled, and both men were probably looking out over the field, not making eye contact, waiting for one of them to end the awkward silence.

  “Well, I better get back to it. Shift’s over in an hour, thank God.”

  “Lucky you. I still got three to go.”

  “All right then. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Will do. You do the same.”

  Footsteps again, growing fainter and fainter.

  As they walked away, I tied a large monkey’s-fist knot into the end of the rope and swung it a few times to test its weight. The idea was to wedge the knot between two of the wooden support struts above me and hope it didn’t slip while I was climbing. A grappling hook would have been better, but it would have made too much noise. I needed to do this quietly.

  Coiling the rope in one hand, I swung the knotted end upward, aiming for the bracing joists. I missed the gap on the first try, but got it on the second, tugging hard to make sure the knot was stuck fast. Satisfied it was, I went up arm over arm, quick and quiet, relying solely on brute strength. At the top, I transitioned from the rope to a support beam, hooked my legs over it, and let go, hanging upside down. With my hands freed, I pulled the knot loose and rewound the rope.

  Waiting for the guards to make another pass was no fun at all. The boards dug painfully into my legs, pressure built in my head from the blood pooling in it, and although I had cinched my gear down tightly in anticipation of this moment, I kept expecting to see something come loose and fall noisily to the ground. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.

  The distant footsteps once again grew closer until they were right over me. The two guards exchanged another round of bored pleasantries before turning and walking away. I waited until the clomping of work boots on wooden planks faded, probably a few seconds beyond what was necessary, and then moved.

  Hanging sit-ups have long been a part of my exercise routine, and all the endless, sweating repetitions served me well as I leaned up, gripped the board I dangled from, and swung my legs to the support post. Gripping it tightly, I moved my hands to a support strut, then another, and then to the edge of the catwalk. Pulling myself up, I checked both ways to make sure no one was looking. Both guards were still walking away, backs turned. I swung a leg onto the walkway, levered up, and rolled onto my back.

  Standing up, I unslung the rope and looped one end around the post beneath the handrail. The boards were tough and sturdy, hand-cut from local hardwoods. Even as heavy as I am, I knew they weren’t going anywhere. Next, I threaded the unknotted end of the rope through a figure-8 loop on the front of my rapelling harness and tied a quick slipknot, which I clipped to a carabiner on the back. The other end, I tossed over the wall. I didn’t bother to check if anyone was looking. It was too late to turn back at that point, so I stayed focused on what I was doing.

  Keeping the rope taut in my hands, I stepped up onto the angled space between sharpened logs and leaned forward, letting the line pay out slowly. When my weight was balanced slightly below my feet, I started running face-first toward the ground. It took four steps to reach the bottom. Once there, I disconnected the rope from the carabiner, pulled it hand over hand until the other end fell to the ground, quickly rewound it, and looped it over my shoulder.

  Now I needed to get away from the wall, and quickly. The night was dark and cloudy, but the guards had powerful LED flashlights. If they heard me, the game was up.

  After donning my NVGs and putting them on their thermal imaging setting, I set off across the spike-strewn trench surrounding the wall. On the other side, through the washed-out black and gray of the FLIR imager, I saw dozens of walkers that had wandered too close to the trench, fallen in, and impaled themselves on thick stakes. Some of them were face-down, some backwards, others lying on their sides, wicked spear points protruding through their ribcages. One had somehow managed to land ass-first, the stake running upward through its torso and jutting grotesquely from its mouth. It reached for me with a withered hand as I passed it by.

  It was times like these I hated my perfect memory.

  Others had missed the stakes altogether and shambled aimlessly in the bottom of the trench. They would be easy pickings for the extermination crew in the morning, but right now, they were in my way. Problem was, I couldn’t kill them. If the morning crew found the dead bodies, it would send up red flags. For now, I had to go hand-to-hand. Never a pleasant prospect where the undead are concerned.

  That’s why God gave us boots and hard-knuckled Kevlar gloves. You’re strong. You’re in good shape. You can handle it. Now get moving.

  I stretched my neck and shoulders, took a deep breath, and started running.

  FIFTEEN

  Only three walkers got close enough to be a threat.

  The first was a little guy, so I leapt into a flying kick that sent him tumbling ten feet away. When you put two-hundred and fifty pounds of Marine behind a kick, it generates a lot of force. Especially if said force is concentrated in a striking surface the size of a boot.

  The second one was big, almost as big as I am. The last thing I could afford was to let it get its hands on me. With the kind of strength it possessed, I would never be able to pry it loose without killing it. I ran to within four feet of it, checked my sprint, rolled to the side, and popped up behind it. A quick stomp to the side of its knee buckled its leg nine
ty degrees the wrong way. I dodged its flailing arms and kept moving.

  The last ghoul was another small one, still recognizable as female, about Allison’s size. Oddly, it was dressed in a military flight suit. A reverse heel kick spun it around and dropped it on its face. While it was down, I grabbed it by the neck and waist, lifted it up, and tossed it onto a nearby stake. It landed face up with the stake piercing its abdomen and slid down, streaking the stake with gore until it lay flat on the ground, struggling like a bug on an entomologist’s pin board. The urge to put it out of its misery was strong, but I resisted. I had more important things to do.

  After climbing the berm at the edge of the trench, I paused a moment, crouching low, assessing my route. There were roughly a hundred yards of flat, empty field between me and the forest. Scattered across it were the cold outlines of hundreds of infected, some of them in clusters, some of them spaced far apart. My best bet was to dodge the knots of mini-hordes, move quickly, and kick down the ones I could not avoid.

  I had been concerned about leaving footprints in the snow, but it looked like I need not have worried. They would be indistinguishable amongst the innumerable tracks of the undead. Probably the first time in history a walker actually served a useful purpose. However, the problem with having lots of ghouls around to cover my tracks was that there were lots of ghouls around to cover my tracks. Worse, they had all heard me and were closing in.

  One of the strangest things about ghouls is how differently they act at night. They are more active, more relentless, and make almost no sound until they are right on top of you. Many of them have their throats ripped out, making them especially deadly in the dark. Despite my extensive experience fighting them, and everything I learned as an operative at Aegis, I have no idea what causes this. What I do know is that unless you have a death wish, it is never a good idea to travel at night. But that was exactly what I had to do.

  You won’t win by counting all the ways you can lose. You’ve been here before. You know what to do. Now do it.