Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  The few horses who survived were rounded up, fed, watered, brushed down, and quartered in the town stables. I asked Joe Steinman if I could have a couple of them, and he said I could take them all as well as their saddles and kit. A light bulb came on over my head, and I mentioned the weapons and equipment and other possessions the Blackmire men and the Crow Hunters had left behind. He said he would talk to the sheriff.

  An hour later, there were two piles in front of town hall, a structure I had previously known as the comms building. One consisted of things too mangled and destroyed to be of use, and was scheduled to be shipped to one of a few working foundries along the Mississippi and sold for scrap. The rest, which constituted quite a significant heap—not to mention a sizable fortune—lay piled on the other side. Sheriff Tucker stood with my men and me and told us it was ours.

  “Take as much as you want,” she said. “You deserve it after all you’ve done for us.”

  We looked at each other, the three soldiers, the militiaman, and the aging Marine, and shook our heads. “I’ll take a horse and a one-twentieth share. That sound fair to you?”

  The younger men agreed. I turned back to Sheriff Tucker.

  “My men here will take the same. That’s four horses and twenty percent of the spoils. The rest goes to the town. After all this, you’re going to need it more than us.”

  A tension I hadn’t noticed earlier faded from the sheriff’s face, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Garrett. Thank you.”

  We left it at that.

  *****

  With the division of profits settled, there was one more loose end to tie up. I asked a question of Joe Steinman—who had been a federal judge in his previous life and continued that vocation here in Brownsville—and after a moment’s consideration, he gave me the green light.

  Powell was where I left him, sitting next to the radio, under guard. He looked at me as I entered the room, much of his previous nervousness faded.

  “So what happens now?” he asked.

  I turned to Lily Garner, one of Sheriff Tucker’s deputies. “Did he radio Blackmire?”

  “Yep,” she said, staring hard at Powell with dark brown eyes. “Told him his men were safely quartered and currently partaking of the prisoners. Blackmire said he had matters at home to attend to, and would call again in a few days. And not to use the women too badly.”

  I nodded and seethed. “All right then. Come on Powell. Let’s go.”

  His eyebrows came together, but otherwise, he didn’t move. “Go where?”

  “You held up your end. You’re done. Outta here. Let’s go.”

  He stood up and cast a quick glance around the room. “Um…do I get to take anything with me? Maybe some supplies?”

  I got an inch from his nose. “What the fuck do you think?”

  He walked in front of me down the stairs and out the front door. We continued on outside the gate and turned west on Highway 19. There were no infected to impede us, being that all of them close enough to be a problem were currently occupied devouring the remains of the Blackmire guardsmen. When we were around a quarter mile from town, I stopped.

  “That’s far enough,” I said, as I drew my pistol and fished its suppressor from my vest. “Turn around.”

  He obeyed slowly, the glowing relief on his face vanishing. He began to back away, one hand raised defensively. “Wait…wait just wait a minute now. We had a deal. You said if I cooperated nothing would happen to me.”

  “Actually, that’s not true. I said you wouldn’t be prosecuted.” Finished with the suppressor, I raised the barrel and centered the three white dots on his forehead.

  “And you won’t be.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Clouds rolled in the next day, dragging the temperature from the low thirties to the low twenties. There was no telling how long it would stay cold enough to immobilize the infected, so the town awoke early and got to work.

  Among the many items seized from the Crow Hunters, Sheriff Tucker found a dozen Marlin model 60 rifles and an entire crate of ammunition. It consisted of over 60,000 rounds of .22 long rifle, worth a fortune all by itself. The sheriff handed all five of us a rifle and two bricks of ammunition.

  “There are a lot of infected out there,” she said. “Most everyone in town is going to be digging graves today, and every one of them lost a husband, son, father, granddad, or nephew. The sight of men working amongst them might have a…difficult effect.”

  I nodded in understanding. “Not to worry, Sheriff. I think we can keep ourselves occupied.”

  We were a silent crew as we marched out the west gate and turned southward where the bulk of the ghouls had congregated. Cole and Thompson worked as a pair, as did Sanchez and Hicks. But as for me, over their objections, I opted to work alone. As cold as it was, the dead weren’t much of a threat, and I had some thinking to do.

  From what Powell told me, fifty-two men comprised nearly half of Blackmire’s forces before Hicks and the others showed up to rescue me. Then there was the ensuing ambush on Highway 19. Deprived of all those men, Tanner’s forces were now down to maybe ten to twenty insurgents. Maybe more if he managed to recruit replacements. Either way, he was badly understrength, and not exactly well loved among the people he lorded over. Perhaps I could use that to my advantage.

  As we worked, the cracking of unsuppressed rifles eventually became tedious, so I put in my earplugs. It took us three hours to use up all of our ammunition, a good portion of that time being spent reloading.

  Even after expending four-thousand rounds, there were still a significant number of infected littering the forest beyond the flat fields surrounding Brownsville. We went back for more ammunition, each of us emptying our pack and filling it up with as much ammo as we could carry. Then we returned to the woods, spread out at five yard intervals, and began walking expanding concentric circles around town.

  The noise from the fighting had brought the undead to Brownsville in hordes, to the point where Joe Steinman and Sheriff Tucker were concerned they might breach the wall through sheer force of weight. It was just dumb luck the weather and circumstance conspired to present an opportunity to clear them out with minimal risk. If there really was a God, perhaps he decided to cut the survivors of that small, beleaguered community some well-deserved slack.

  I kept my mind blank as I worked, doing my best to ignore the rolling, milky eyes of the dead as I placed the barrel behind their ears and pulled the trigger. The Marlin was small and light enough I could fire it one-handed, like a really long pistol. The pouch where I normally kept my first aid kit made an excellent ammo bucket, which I had to refill every half-hour or so. By the time the sun went down and we called it a day, my left hand was killing me from all the abuse.

  That night, just before I went to bed, I peeled the bandage off and surveyed the damage. There was a thin pucker of flesh held together by neat sutures—like the stitching of a jacket—stretched over a nub of bone. The wound must have been pretty ragged, but Thompson did a good job of removing the shattered bone, trimming the flesh, and stitching the viable tissue back together. I could move it, although it was badly swollen. After wiggling it around a bit, I cleaned it and wrapped it up in a fresh bandage.

  Next, I checked the wound in my side. A little swollen from the day’s exertions, but otherwise not bad at all. I could probably have the stitches out in a week, barring incident.

  Lying on my bed, I thought about Tanner, and Elizabeth, and Sean Montford, and Sheriff Tucker, and the women of Brownsville. I thought about the attacks on Hollow Rock, and the Midwest Alliance, and the complex power play between them and the Union, and how the Republic of California fit in to all of it. They had been suspiciously silent, that faction, and I didn’t like it one bit. You don’t just show up in a giant flotilla, annex a chunk of landmass nearly the size of Texas, declare the people there your subjects under pain of death, and expect there to be no consequences. I sincerely doubted the people of California
, Oregon, and Washington went along willingly. In fact, it would not surprise at all me to learn there were still pockets of resistance fighters, quite likely working hand-in-hand with Union forces. Food for thought.

  Whatever the ROC wanted, whatever their agenda was, it did not bode well for the Union. And bearing in mind my promise to General Jacobs, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be embroiled in the conflict. Not exactly a pleasant thought.

  But mostly—and I’m not proud to say this—I thought about my finger. I thought about how it was gone, and how I would never get it back. I thought about how when I moved it, it felt like the missing part was still there, as if I could scratch myself with it.

  Going forward, wielding two melee weapons at once was going to be tough. With most of my ring finger missing, the strength of my grip on that side would be forever diminished. I just had to hope that over time I could strengthen the hand to compensate. Not like I had much of a choice.

  As I drifted off, it occurred to me that if not for Sebastian Fucking Tanner, my left hand would still be whole, Sean Montford would still be alive, the people Hollow Rock lost in the walker attacks would still be alive, the menfolk of Brownsville would still be alive, Elizabeth wouldn’t have a hole in her lung, Sanchez wouldn’t be sporting a gunshot wound to his leg, and Eric and Private Fuller would not have been wounded. Taken in aggregate, it was a hell of a lot of damage.

  And it was not going to go unpunished.

  I had been sloppy the first time. I moved too quickly, driven by anger, focused solely on results and not nearly enough on methods. It was a long litany of mistakes I made, but the thing about mistakes is you can learn from them. The lesson had been hard, one I would remember for the rest of my life, but by God, I had learned. And I was not going to make the same mistakes again.

  Decision made, I slipped beneath the waves and slept like the dead.

  *****

  “Gabe, there’s no need for you to do this,” Thompson said as he watched me pack. “Blackmire is on Central’s radar. Cole sent them a video of those bodies. You don’t even need Sheriff Elliott anymore, the prisoners took one look at what the Crow Hunters did and flipped. We have their sworn testimony on record. As soon as Pope or FOB Harkin can free up a few air assets, Blackmire is as good as toast.”

  “And how long is that going to take, Ethan?” I asked, not looking up from what I was doing.

  “Not more than a week or two.”

  “And you think Tanner won’t figure out what’s going on by then? You think he’s going to stick around?”

  “What difference does it make? We have his description. It’s not like a guy with a ten-inch scar on his face and one fucking eye can go incognito. There are bulletins going out to every loyalist community on record. He has a gigantic bounty on his head. If he shows up anywhere south of the Illinois border, he’s a dead man.”

  “Exactly my point. If we don’t get to him in the next few days, he’ll flee to Alliance territory and disappear.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was an inch from Thompson’s face. “Look out that goddamn window Sergeant! Look to the west side of town! There’s about a hundred fresh graves over there with their wives’ and daughters’ and mothers’ tears still wet on the soil. You look at that, you take a good hard look, and explain to me why we should let that son of a bitch get away.”

  He paled, expression brittle as flint. There was a flash of anger, then the well-oiled gears began to turn. I took a step back and watched his eyes fall to the ground, hands clenching and unclenching. A long moment passed, then he rubbed his forehead, passed his fingers through his hair, and walked over to the window.

  “Okay. You have a point. I get so caught up in the strictures of things, sometimes…I get a little near-sighted, you know?”

  In a rush, I remembered my own days when I was his age and rank, and the weight of guilt when I made a bad call and people died. It was a wound that had never quite healed, and I did not envy the young man his position.

  “You have a great deal of responsibility on your shoulders, Staff Sergeant. I understand that. I’ve been there. I didn’t mean any disrespect. You’re a good, brave man, and the world could use a hell of a lot more like you. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

  He looked at me then, bemusement crossing his face. “I’m sorry. Is that an apology I just heard? From the great Gabriel Garrett?”

  Against my will, I smiled. “Yes. I guess I’m evolving, or something. Or maybe just getting soft in my old age.”

  Thompson crossed the room and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Gabe, when I’m your age, if I’m half the man you are, I’ll consider my life well lived.” He stepped back, picked up his radio, and clipped it onto his belt. “Meet me in the dining room in an hour. I’ll gather the others and we’ll see what we can do. Fair enough?”

  I gave a grateful nod. “Fair enough.”

  *****

  Sanchez was a no go. A classic case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak.

  Thompson had to stay in Brownsville to help coordinate relief efforts. With most of the town’s defenders interred in the ground, the shattered community was in very real danger of being overrun again. To address this, Central Command authorized a force of forty troops, drawn from both First Platoon and the Ninth TVM, to garrison within the town. But even with both of Hollow Rock’s transports ferrying men and equipment back and forth, it was going to be at least a few days before they were at full strength. In the meantime, Staff Sergeant Thompson was in charge of the town’s defenses.

  “Isaac, I want you to stay here with Thompson,” I said.

  The big man frowned. “What, you don’t think I got enough sneak on me?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not that. You’re a wrecking ball, Isaac. If anyone tries to attack Brownsville before the troops get here, you’ll rip them to pieces. I’ll sleep a lot better at night knowing you, Ethan, and Sancho are here to protect these people.”

  “I don’t know, man,” The Pride of Hermosillo spoke up. “Seems to me like these chicas can handle themselves pretty well.”

  “They’re brave enough, that’s for sure,” I said. “But you three are disciplined, well-trained, experienced professionals. You’ll catch things they might miss. You’ll see enemy tactics for what they are, and you won’t get suckered in by any tricks or traps. You know how to stand your ground when every instinct screams at you to run. In short, you’re soldiers, and damned good ones. These people need you until reinforcements get here, and I know I can count on you to protect them. That’s why I want you to stay.”

  There was no chest puffing or immature banter. They accepted the compliment with silent nods—not because they didn’t appreciate it, but because they knew it wasn’t puffery. Just a simple statement of fact.

  I turned to Hicks. “What do you say, Caleb? You in the mood to pick a fight?”

  The enigmatic young soldier grinned, and his teeth were all fangs.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Having grown up in Kentucky, I’ve had my share of experience with horses. During the summers, when I wasn’t learning the finer points of the barber’s trade from my uncle, I was mucking dung out of stalls for extra money.

  One of the breeders I worked for took a liking to me and gave me free riding lessons. She was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, had inherited the farm several years earlier from her deceased husband, and treated me with a great deal more kindness and respect than most of the other people I worked for. I always thought she was just a very nice lady until I showed up for work a few days after my sixteenth birthday—by which point I was already six-foot-three and over two-hundred pounds—and found a note tacked to the barn door informing me she had a present for me, but I had to go inside to get it.

  Upon entering the house, I called her name, and heard her answer from upstairs, inviting me up. So I went up and called to her again, and pinpointed her voice beh
ind one of the doors. When I knocked, the door opened and there she was, wearing a pair of strappy red high heels, perfume, and not much else.

  It wasn’t my first time, but it was the first time with a real woman who knew what she was doing. The experience damn near ruined me for girls my own age.

  I clung to the warm glow of that memory, among many others, as Hicks and I rode toward Blackmire. The weather turned on us less than an hour outside of Brownsville, and we found ourselves riding through high winds and driving snow. According to Hicks’ little tablet, it was nineteen degrees with eight inches of precipitation expected in the next twelve hours. Not exactly ideal traveling weather.

  We huddled in our coats, covered as much skin as we could, wore goggles to keep the snow out of our eyes, and tried to keep our teeth from chattering too loudly. Our one consolation was we didn’t have to worry about the infected. The horses could smell them when we got close and steered clear, tails whipping in agitation.

  There was a brief stop for lunch, then we plodded on, keeping well away from the highway and using Hicks’ GPS to stay on course. Despite the weather, we set a good pace and reached the outskirts of the Chickasaw Refuge by nightfall.

  After searching around a while, Hicks spotted a building through the thick stands of pines we had been riding through for the last half hour. As we drew close, I saw a sign for the Walnut Grove Baptist Parsonage, and a squat, sturdy looking little brick house behind it. The distinctive outline of a chimney rose up on the opposite side, and I shivered in anticipation of building a fire. Doing so would be a risk, but as cold as I was, I quite simply did not give a shit. If anyone showed up with bad intentions, I would shoot them down and piss on their grave.