Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  “So that’s how you spotted me, you sneaky son of a bitch.”

  Inside the lodge, I found a pair of binoculars hanging on a nail by the window, a bed, a small table and chairs, a grill connected to a makeshift ventilation hood, a pile of blankets that reached up to my waist, and a large trunk. The trunk had a padlock on it, but I easily defeated it with my lock pick. Within it was a random collection of weapons and personal items, including jewelry, figurines, knives, pistols, rifles, and a few boxes of ammunition. In one corner, there was a Crown Royal bag full of what appeared to be human teeth. By the smell, some of them had been removed recently.

  “What the fuck…”

  Putting the bag down, I felt a strong urge to wash my hands. Back at the house, I removed my NVGs, hung a blanket over the window, removed a small wind-up survival lantern from my pack, and turned it on. The light allowed me to see the intruder’s face clearly when I pulled off his balaclava.

  Other than his larger than average stature, there was nothing overly remarkable about him. Caucasian, mid-thirties, thinning hair the color of mud, pale hazel eyes, average features on the face, the kind of guy you pass on the street a thousand times and never notice. A quick search of his clothing yielded no clues to his identity, but around his neck, I found a small brass key on a thin nylon cord. The kind of key sold with padlock sets. My mind immediately went to the shed out back. On a hunch, I went outside and tried it. Sure enough, the key fit perfectly and the lock clicked open.

  With NVGs in place and leading with my pistol, I stepped into the shed and then immediately stepped out, overwhelmed by the stench of the place.

  “Motherfucker.”

  Recovering quickly, I tied my scarf over my face and went back inside. There were tables lining both sides of the room with lumpy shapes on top of them. I looked closer and nearly jumped in horror when I realized the shapes were hands, feet, and an assortment of arms and legs neatly cut apart at the shoulder, knee, and elbow joints. I took a few dazed steps backward and looked above me, seeing more shapes dangling from the ceiling. Instead of limbs, these were headless, limbless torsos in varying states of decomposition. At the back of the room, carefully arranged on shelves like bowling balls, were close to a dozen severed heads.

  Heart pounding, breath coming in gasps, struggling against the bile rising in my throat, I edged out of the shed, closed the door, and attempted to lock it. It took me a few tries because my goddamn hands would not stop shaking.

  After moving my gear to another room away from the dead man, I spent the rest of the night sitting propped up in a corner, NVGs at the ready, ears straining, rifle clutched tightly in my lap. I did not move from that spot until the first pale glimmers of dawn brightened the window.

  Before I left, I stared at the dead intruder’s body and considered dragging it into the shed before I torched the place. Deciding it was too much effort, and knowing I would rather shoot myself in the foot than look upon that reeking horror again, I took the path of least resistance and burned the house down around him, then set fire to the shed. Just for good measure, I marched back to the hunting lodge and burned it down too.

  After a cold, tasteless breakfast eaten near the warmth of the inferno, I turned northwest and trudged away into the frozen morning. Behind me, tall black plumes marred the clear morning sky.

  I did not look back.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Barely five miles from the border of the Chickasaw NWR, I reached the edge of a large patch of forest and was confronted with a snowbank nearly ten feet tall. It was piled up against ranks of maples, cedars, and pine trees, most likely blown there by strong prevailing winds out of the north. I tested it with a few hard shoves and found it was packed tightly enough to climb over.

  So I scrambled up the bank, slipping one step for every two I took, and at the summit, launched myself over the other side, sliding down like a human sled and letting loose a giddy laugh. At the bottom, I wiped off my goggles, looked up, and felt my heart freeze in my chest. Across the road in front of me, populating a broad clearing for as far as I could see, was a horde of at least a thousand ghouls.

  There was a brief pause, a moment of confusion among the undead as they stared at me, rotten brains trying to process whether or not I was food. The closest one was maybe a hundred feet away, and I swear I saw his eyes flicker with recognition just a split second before his mouth opened and he let loose with an ear-splitting howl. Within seconds, the other walkers took up the call, the noise becoming so loud I could feel it rattling my sternum.

  Scrambling to my feet, I looked left hoping there were less of them that way. No joy. They wrapped all the way around the edge of the field and into the forest. To my right, the situation wasn’t any better, just more ghouls. Looking ahead, I realized the walkers were not densely packed, maybe twenty or more feet between them. I drew my falcata and stood rooted to the spot, trying to figure out what to do.

  Option one: Turn tail and run. If I put enough distance between me and the horde, maybe I could circle farther south and get around them. But that would add a day or two to my journey, something I did not want.

  Option two: Go right through the fuckers. If I kept a fast pace and relied on my axe and short sword, there was a good chance I could clear the horde. It would mean I would have to set a hard pace for the rest of the day to outdistance them, but it would save a lot of time.

  I scrambled back up the snowbank and stood up, surveying the terrain. From there, I could see the edge of the horde about a quarter-mile away, near the edge of a barren field.

  Ah hell, I’ve fought through worse than that.

  After taking a moment to unlimber my axe, I slid back down the snowbank, tied my scarf around my face, and set off at a jog.

  The snow was much thinner once I crossed the highway, probably because most of it was piled behind me at the forest’s edge. The ground beneath me was frozen, making for solid footing and allowing me to avoid buried obstacles.

  I angled away from a knot of six ghouls, but my path took me toward two more I couldn’t dodge. When I reached the first one, rather than break stride to kick him out of the way, I sidestepped left and hit him with a backhanded slash from my falcata. The top of his head went spinning away, flinging a trail of reddish-black blood as it flew. Before the walker’s body hit the ground, I attacked the dead woman behind him and smashed her skull with the axe, causing one of her eyeballs to fall out of its socket. A spinning shoulder-check freed my weapon and sent her tumbling limply away.

  By this point, the call had spread throughout the entire horde, and I could hear moans coming from all directions. The noise was deafening, like being in some kind of hellish stadium filled with screaming undead fans. Cursing myself for not putting in my earplugs, I sprinted another fifty yards or so and engaged the next set of walkers.

  The lead one was short, incredibly fat, and had been dead a long time. Like most ghouls, a great deal of the flesh on his face, chest, and arms had been eaten away, and one leg dragged behind him, the flesh almost too destroyed to support his weight. He reached for me as I drew near, eyes bulging wide, mouth open and gnashing, hands grasping. I spun my sword in a figure eight pattern, severing both his arms at the elbow, then finished him off by continuing the motion into an overhead slash. Before he could fall, I booted him in the chest and sent him rocketing back into the ghouls behind him, bowling them over like tenpins. Several became stuck under the obese walker’s tremendous weight. A few running steps and a strong vault carried me over them to hit the ground running on the other side.

  For the next couple of hundred yards, I managed to serpentine my way through the walkers’ ranks without having to fight, but as they pursued me from all sides, they were starting to pack in more tightly. Estimating I was about halfway through, I increased my speed to an all-out sprint.

  For the last couple of hundred yards, technique went out the window. If a ghoul got close, I smashed it, favoring my falcata over my axe. At one point, confronted with
three ghouls I couldn’t dodge, I swung the axe too hard and it lodged in the sinus cavity of what had once been pre-adolescent girl. Unable to wrench it free, I grudgingly released it and kept moving.

  Now I could see the edge of the horde about fifty yards away, growing closer, the thinnest section packed two ghouls deep with only inches between them. There was a clear patch about ten yards around me, but the pocket was closing quickly, and I knew I would not be able to clear the last line with just my sword. Stabbing it in the ground in front of me, I reached back for my rifle, switched it to semi-auto, and went to work.

  Breath in, hold it just briefly, halfway out, squeeze the trigger and wait-

  -crack-

  -for the shot to surprise you. Now do it again, breath in…

  -crack-crack-crack-

  Four down. There’s a big one, two more on his heels. Drop him, and you’ll have the gap you need. Breathe in, aim, and…

  -crack-

  Now grab your sword and go, go, go!

  A hand brushed my jacket as I sprinted clear of the horde, leaping over the pile of tangled limbs I created with my last shot. I came down hard and kept running, lungs heaving, mouth wide open to draw in as much oxygen as possible. When I had gone a hundred yards, following the road just past the treeline, I slowed down and risked a look over my shoulder. The horde was well behind me, converging into an arrowhead formation as the faster, less damaged walkers outdistanced their slower competition.

  Unwinding my scarf, I leaned over, put my hands on my knees, and drew big, deep breaths, trying to slow my heart rate. Once recovered a little, I took a moment to clean the gore from my sword with a few handfuls of snow and dried grass. Taking out my compass, I took a quick bearing and referenced the map in my head. If I turned a little to my left, that would lead me on a northwest vector directly toward Blackmire. With any luck, and barring further hordes, I could be there by nightfall. After a quick check of my gear to make sure I hadn’t lost anything other than my axe, I set out at the same forty-steps-walking, forty-steps-running pace I had kept up for the last few days.

  An hour later, the sound of the horde was a faint echo in the distance.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Walking into a place like Blackmire is all about attitude.

  It is a den of vice and greed, populated by a host of nefarious characters who would just as soon kill you as look at you. So if you show up and appear nervous or frightened, it is like blood in the water, and the sharks come a-runnin’. But if you maintain the proper thinly-veiled aggression, the fuck-with-me-and-I’ll-kill-you glower, head slightly tilted forward, eyes burning beneath hooded brow, mouth set in a contemptuous sneer, hands dangerously close to your weapons, then the snuffling curs will keep their distance. The smart ones will, anyway.

  The three men standing between me and the main gate were not smart ones.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” one of them said, probably the leader. He was a little shorter than me, strongly built, glaring with mean little black eyes, head shaved down to stubble, thin beard, yellow teeth, dirt caked in the creases of his neck. The two men on either side of him were even uglier, one a tall skinny fellow with his front teeth missing, long hair tied back under a head scarf, and a beard that hung down to his chest. The other one was nearly seven feet tall, shoulders as wide as a doorway, and obviously accustomed to intimidating people with his size.

  I said, “If you don’t get out of my way, I’ll be the last thing you ever see.”

  He chuckled, unimpressed. “You got a mouth on you, I’ll give you that. But you see, the thing is, there’s three of us and one of you. So I’m thinking if you want to get in that gate over yonder,” he pointed at the wooden palisade behind him, broken by a narrow opening just wide enough to permit a horse-drawn wagon, “your gonna have to pay a little entry fee.”

  I made a show of looking over his shoulder and pointing. “That’s funny. I could swear that guy in the black outfit over there is the town guard. You assholes don’t look like guardsmen to me. You look like a bunch of inbred, sister-raping dumbshits.”

  The little grin disappeared. He raised a hand and jammed a finger into my chest. “Listen up, smartass, here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna put down that pack and all your guns, and your boots, and that fancy pig-sticker you got there, and if you’re real nice about it, we might not take turns stomping a mud hole in your ass. And if you don’t, then me and my two friends here are gonna-”

  I’m sure he had some dire threat in store for me, but he never got it out. Instead, he emitted a spray of spittle and blood as my pocketknife slashed his throat open, showering the men on either side of him with arterial spray. As he stumbled backward, I took advantage of his friends’ temporary shock by whipping my falcata out of its sheath and swinging it in two quick strokes. Both men’s eyes went wide with shock as my blade passed through their necks, just a split second before their heads tumbled from their shoulders. They collapsed in a heap, followed not long after by their dying leader.

  Stepping back to avoid the blood, I cast a glare at the small crowd of onlookers. “Anybody else?”

  The looks on the faces around me ranged from amusement to wide-eyed awe. There were a few seconds of silence as they regarded the dead men at my feet, then it was as if the crowd collectively shrugged their shoulders and carried on, dismissing the incident as unimportant.

  Must be one hell of a rough town.

  Stepping around the pile of bodies, I continued on toward the main gate. Once there, a smirking guardsman dressed from head to toe in crudely-dyed black combat fatigues held up a hand.

  “Hold up a minute, fella. You been here before?”

  I shook my head, fingers dangling close to my pistol.

  “All right then, there’s a few rules you need to know about. First, ain’t no fighting allowed inside the wall. Kill whoever you want outside it, but once you go through that gate, you mind your fuckin’ manners. Got it?”

  I gave a single, silent nod.

  “Second rule: thieves hang. So don’t go gettin’ sticky fingers.”

  A shrug. “Fair enough.”

  “Last rule: you make a trade or take a contract, you stick by it. Somebody stiffs you, take it to the magistrate. But if you do, be aware that any ruling the magistrate makes is binding and final. Understood?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “One more thing. You break the rules, you get punished. Up to and including ten lashes from a scourge. You know what a scourge is?”

  “It’s a whip with little blades braided into it.”

  “That’s right. You ever seen what one of those things can do to a man?”

  I shook my head again. “No.”

  “It’ll take the skin right off your fuckin’ back. Right down to the bone. Most men don’t survive it. It’s a shitty way to die, fella. Believe me when I tell you, you don’t want that.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Anything else?”

  The guard stepped back with a smile and made a grand gesture toward the entrance. “Welcome to Blackmire, my friend. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  *****

  The layout of the town was exactly as the slaver I captured, Smart Guy, had described it. Four-sided wooden palisade wall surrounded by a trench, steep berm, catwalks and guard towers, archers and riflemen, interior trench bristling with stakes, wooden fence to keep drunks from stumbling into it, signs posted here and there with the town’s few rules clearly on display, taverns, stalls, livery, and other assorted businesses laid out in a concentric grid around a wide central plaza, and within the plaza, a large raised dais complete with iron rings and manacles.

  The slave market.

  It was empty now, but according to the nearby wooden sign, painted black and scribbled over with chalk, there would be an auction held in three days’ time. Gritting my teeth, I kept walking.

  According to Smart Guy, Blackmire had only been around for a year or so, and while not officially
affiliated with the Alliance, they did a lot of business with them. The town’s leader, who was also its namesake, rarely appeared in public, but was nonetheless well known to all permanent residents and business owners. Most of the population on any given day consisted of visitors looking to trade their ill-gotten gains, re-supply, or just indulge a few vices frowned upon by more prudent communities. For a price, a man could get just about anything he wanted in Blackmire, including slaves, which were the main source of municipal income. Slaves weren’t cheap, and the tribune, as Blackmire’s despotic leader styled himself, got a percentage of all sales. Typical auction house setup.

  Since it was getting late, I spent the remaining daylight hours casing the place, committing the layout of the narrow, muddy lanes, locations of gates and guard towers, and the number of black-clad guardsmen to memory. If the mercenary I mutilated a few weeks ago survived long enough to make his way back here, there was a possibility I could be recognized. A remote possibility, but a possibility nonetheless. Should that happen, having a detailed mental map would greatly increase my chances of escape.

  The largest building in town had a large, hand-painted sign above the entrance proclaiming it as Blackmire Office of the Tribune and Magistrate. To my surprise, I saw the top of an antenna array jutting up behind the building. A walk around the block and a quick trip through a series of alleys, and I found myself peering around the corner at the space between the Tribune’s office and the surrounding structures.

  Two large military vehicles were parked there, one painted traditional olive drab, and the other the dun brown of desert camouflage. The green vehicle was a tanker truck with a massive, oblong cylinder of fuel mounted to the rear frame, while the brown vehicle was a flatbed upon which sat a portable antenna tower and a generator the size of a small car. Looking closer, I noticed there were bullet marks on the armor along the sides of the vehicles, and smears of blood on the interiors and door handles. Even the big generator was stained red. Realizing the implications, I had to fight the urge to level my rifle and exact retribution. If these guys were raiding military convoys, they must have some very serious firepower. The Army needed to know about this place.