Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line

by James N. Cook

  “I missed your pretty face, Ferguson.”

  The big man laughed. Heinrich was reminded of rocks tumbling down a mountainside.

  “Heard tell you were in Kansas a few weeks ago. Must have found something good to hump it all the way back here.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  An amused grunt. “Fine. Be mysterious. Not like I won’t get a cut anyway.” Ferguson turned and looked up at the men operating the cranes. “They’re on the level. Let ‘em in. And move your asses, I want this caravan inside before nightfall.”

  The men shouted acknowledgment and set to with urgency. A foreman cursed them for their laziness and demanded they work faster.

  “Come on. The Khan will want to see you.”

  Heinrich motioned for Carter to follow, then glanced at Maru. “You’re in charge. Get the men settled, remind them to stay alert, and tell them no more than three drinks tonight. First round is on me.”

  “Right, Chief. Any women?”

  Heinrich began walking away, following Ferguson. “They’re rich men, now. They can buy their own women.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  *****

  Necrus Khan sat in a chair upholstered with goose down and human flesh. Heinrich and Carter sat across from him in similar chairs. A desk carved from a single, massive oak tree squatted between them, ornately carved with depictions of damned souls writhing in agony, unspeakable acts of torture, naked bodies in every sexual position imaginable, and at the top of each corner, a human skull. Only the skulls were not carvings, but the remains of four of the Khan’s enemies. The room smelled like a week-old corpse. The walls were stained wood boards festooned with shelves covered with more skulls, organs, and genitalia suspended in fluid-filled jars. There were mounted animal heads, skins, furs, and an assortment of demented carvings. At the back of the room, incongruous with the macabre décor, was a large metal safe and a filing cabinet.

  The Khan leaned back in his chair, his tooled Italian leather boots atop his desk. The only hair visible above his neck was a goatee and a pair of thick dark eyebrows. His skin was brown and swarthy, his bare scalp gleamed in the dim lamplight, his teeth shone perfectly white, his custom-tailored suit would have looked at home on a wealthy rancher from the late nineteenth century, and everything from the clasp of his bolo tie to the tips of his boots bore the shine of flamboyant silver inlay.

  Heinrich was reasonably certain Necrus Khan was not the name the man was born with. Before he had killed his predecessor and taken control of Parabellum, he’d simply gone by Necrus. Why he called himself a khan instead of a chief or governor was a mystery. Perhaps it had something to do with his ethnicity, which Heinrich could not quite place.

  “So,” Necrus said. “Salt. Interesting. Wonder where it came from?”

  “Don’t know,” Heinrich said. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

  “Come on, Heinrich. Don’t expect me to believe you didn’t keep a few alive.”

  “Just a Blackthorn and a few slaves. None of them could tell us where the cargo originated.”

  The Khan glanced at Carter with a wry expression. “I’m assuming you handled the interrogations?”

  Carter said nothing, his expression neutral. Necrus laced his fingers behind his head. The arms of his suit jacket bulged with knotted muscle.

  “Well, we both know salt is too valuable to turn away. And even though I could just kill you and your men and take it for myself, I’d lose more than half my number in the process. Can’t afford that now can I?”

  “No, you can’t. And we both know you won’t try. So can we cut the shit already?”

  Necrus laughed, his voice deep and genuinely entertained. “A confident man. I like you Heinrich. I might have to kill you someday, but I like you.”

  Heinrich felt himself growing impatient. The tough talk was just that—talk. Necrus no more wanted him dead than any of the other marauder chiefs who brought him trade and kept him wealthy. The Italian boots returned to the floor and the Khan pulled his chair closer to the desk.

  “I’ll set the tariff at ten barrels.”

  “Two.”

  “Don’t insult me, Heinrich. Eight, and my choice of ten of your seized guns and a thousand rounds of ammo.”

  “Don’t insult me, Necrus. That’s the same price. Make it three.”

  “Eight.”

  “Four.”

  “Seven, five guns, half the ammo.”

  “Five, and no more. You sure you want guns and ammo? I told you I brought slaves.”

  The Khan raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. Mr. Ferguson?”

  The door opened and the giant poked his head inside. “Sir?”

  “Do we have a manifest on Mister Heinrich’s slaves yet?”

  “Yes sir. Just came in.” Ferguson disappeared for a few seconds, then came back and handed Necrus a sheet of rough parchment half covered in charcoal writing.

  “Hmm. Says here you have a nice blond girl. Green eyes. Not quite sixteen yet.”

  “Five barrels and the girl.”

  “How about the barrels, the girl, and five hundred rounds of my choice?”

  “Only if I get use of the auction hall for two days, starting tomorrow morning.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  Heinrich pretended to think about it. The tariff was far lower than he’d expected, confirming his suspicion that Necrus did not realize how valuable the salt really was. Spends too much time holed up in this place. Losing touch with the wider world.

  “Done.”

  The two men stood up and shook hands. Necrus Khan had a grip like a pipe wrench. It was a useless gesture, Heinrich knew, just Necrus reminding him of his physical prowess. It was also stupid. It showed weakness. A smart man wants his enemies to underestimate him. Only an apprehensive fool would make a show of strength when none was needed.

  “A pleasure as always, Heinrich. If you’ll accept my hospitality, Ferguson will show you to your room.”

  Only if I were suicidal. “I’ll arrange my own accommodations.”

  A shrug. “Suit yourself.”

  Heinrich and Carter followed Ferguson through the building, down a set of hallways, through a large room full of naked women chained to the walls, and out the front door. As they walked away, Carter said, “I’m going to skin that bastard alive one of these days.”

  Heinrich smiled. “You’ll have to get in line.”

  *****

  The next morning, Heinrich’s men cleaned out the refuse from the last group that had used the auction hall. The building was the largest in town, had a rectangular floor space of over twenty thousand square feet, and came equipped with tables, chairs, booths that could be put up by hand, chains, locks, meat hooks, and iron rings driven into the floor for slave auctions.

  Necrus Khan arrived early while Heinrich’s men were still setting up and wheeling in the inventory. The slaves were already chained in place, awaiting their fate. The Khan examined his girl, found her satisfactory, and thanked Heinrich on his way out. The girl’s mother cried out and lunged for her daughter as she was led away, only to be laid low by a swift strike from Maru’s club.

  “Stay down, you, or I’ll break your legs and leave you for the ghouls.”

  Heinrich paid no attention.

  His men set up two booths, laid out the merchandise for perusal, and established a perimeter in short order. Their flow of movement was well coordinated, no confusion, no wasted effort, minimal conversation. Maru barely had any work to do keeping them on task. Heinrich liked what he saw. His men had come a long way under his tutelage, and they would go even farther in the days to come. The problem, as he saw it, was there were simply not enough of them. He planned to change that.

  Word had spread overnight what was for auction. The start time was early in the morning with reserve set for all items to prevent syndicates from driving down the price. It was an old tactic—the parties bidding on a certain item collaborate, decide who gets what, and only
one of them makes a lowball bid. If no one else bids, the syndicate wins. By setting a reserve price, syndicate bargaining power was minimized. If that failed, Heinrich generally employed more forceful and bloody tactics. The last group who had pulled such a stunt were probably still nailed to the trees where they had been left to die.

  The slaves were auctioned first, followed by guns and ammunition Heinrich did not want to keep. Then came the salt barrels. When the reserve was announced—a list of the things Heinrich was willing to trade for and the minimums thereof—more than a few auction goers cursed, spit on the floor, and departed. Some complained the price was higher than the value, others grumbled they wanted to bid but could not afford the reserve. Heinrich cared not in the least. There were still plenty of bidders on the floor.

  There were only fifteen barrels up for auction, but the bidding went on well into the evening. The sun had set and the auction floor was awash in lantern light by the time the last barrel was sold. Heinrich had deliberately displayed his remaining forty-seven barrels in plain sight. He wanted every hired blade in the compound to see his wealth, and what it could buy.

  That night, after a watch was set and the rest of the Storm Road Tribe’s wagons, livestock, and trade were secured in a warehouse under heavy guard, Heinrich turned his men loose on the town. His purpose in doing so was twofold: first, they needed to cut loose. Too much time on the road with no booze or women was bad for discipline. Second, he wanted them to spread the word he was recruiting. Not hiring, recruiting. There was a difference.

  At noon the next day, the buyers showed up at the auction house with their trade. Men looking to sign on with Heinrich had been lining up since dawn. Heinrich set the time for the recruiting drive to start two hours after the trade exchange. He wanted the hopefuls to see, and fully understand, what they could earn fighting for him.

  Wagon after wagon pulled up to the auction house. Some unloaded and left, but most stayed, livestock and all. A stir of excited conversation rumbled through the men in the recruiting line as the trade piled up outside the hall. Bags of feed for the horses, barrels of clean water, dried meat and fish, ammunition, guns, vegetables preserved in jars and cans, and most tellingly, nearly two tons of hard-tack bread. It was soon all too obvious what Heinrich was planning.

  He was going on the march.

  SIX

  Gabriel

  Sabrina sat on a stool behind the counter while I haggled with an old woman over the price of eggs. The woman seemed to think a dozen eggs should be enough to purchase a pound of dried fish from Kentucky Lake. I explained dried fish weighs next to nothing, meaning a pound of it is actually quite a lot, and with the proliferation of chickens in Hollow Rock, eggs simply did not command the same price they used to. Preserved meat, on the other hand, was highly prized. We settled on two dozen eggs for a quarter-pound of fish. After I weighed it, the old woman said it was a lot more than she thought it would be. I did not say ‘I told you so’.

  “I don’t know how you put up with that shit,” Sabrina said after the woman left. She was staring out the window beside the counter at a robin perched on a limb of the old maple tree next to the general store. Its song was barely audible through the double-paned glass.

  “It’s a living.”

  “Like hell. You’re the richest man I’ve ever met. You don’t need this place. You don’t need these people.”

  I scraped a hand over the three-day stubble on my face. “Sabrina, we’ve been over this.”

  “Sure we have. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  Before I could say anything else, she slid off the stool and left through the back door. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes.

  Teenagers.

  Things had gone well between us the first couple of weeks. She moved into the spare bedroom in my house. We talked a lot. She told me about her childhood in Maryland where her mother moved after we divorced. She remarried when Sabrina was three. The husband’s name was Patrick. He was a mild, jovial dentist with a big house and a wide green lawn and horses boarded out in the country and a BMW 7-series. He was nice. He liked to cook. Sabrina wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him raise his voice.

  Karen took a job as a public relations coordinator with a small software company. I always figured she would end up doing something like that; she had an engaging personality and a smile that could light up a room. I told Sabrina that was what made me fall in love with her way back when. I asked her if she had been happy, and Sabrina said yes. Karen loved Patrick well enough, and Patrick was enamored with the both of them. The years they spent together were good ones. Sabrina had a happy childhood.

  But that childhood ended the day of the Outbreak. They were in Baltimore at the time visiting her stepfather’s parents. They left when the riots started and fled to a small town where FEMA had set up an emergency relief camp. Two days later, the camp was overrun by infected and the Army was forced to evacuate. Patrick got bit protecting Karen and Sabrina. When the soldiers came the next morning to take him away, he said a tearful goodbye and left without protest.

  Later, at another camp in West Virginia, they were overrun again and it was Karen who became infected. Same story, same ending. I took some small comfort in the knowledge she died quickly, and though it shames me to admit it, I felt a sense of closure, that it was okay to move on. Part of me still loves Karen and always will, and I know I will mourn for her in time. But knowing she is gone, not just wondering, but knowing, put the final mark on that chapter of my life.

  Sabrina, for her part, took the loss hard. She hated the soldiers for killing her mother even though she knew it was necessary. And now that she had no one to protect her, she worried what some of the men in the convoy might try to do.

  The day the president declared martial law was the day Sabrina abandoned the convoy. No one tried to stop her, and no one came after her. Everyone was running. Everyone was afraid. Nobody cared if people wanted to leave. Fewer refugees meant fewer people for the Army to look after, and fewer mouths to feed.

  Sabrina spoke in vague terms after that. She said she ran for a few days until she found an abandoned town. At the time, she was starving and near death from dehydration. The houses she looted yielded food and water and the .22 rifle she still carries to this day. She decided to stay in the town for a while. That afternoon, not long after she had collapsed on a couch and passed out from exhaustion, she was awakened by the unmistakable howling of infected. She climbed up into the attic and pulled the ladder after her and heard a voice speak to her with a strange accent.

  “You need to stay quiet,” the voice said.

  Sabrina turned and saw a smallish man with black hair, brown skin, and eyes with epicanthic folds at the corners. He was aiming a pistol at her. She reached for her rifle, only to realize she had left it downstairs.

  “Don’t worry,” the man said. “I won’t hurt you.” Slowly, he laid the gun aside. “What’s your name?”

  “Sabrina.”

  “I’m Manny. We’ll talk later.”

  They said no more for the nine hours it took the infected to break into the house, moan and howl and grunt with impotent rage, realize there was no one to eat, and finally wander off. It was hot in the attic. They had only a liter of water between them. Nevertheless, Manny made Sabrina wait another four hours after the last of the thumping and scraping and growling stopped and they could no longer hear the undead screeching in the distance.

  “They have good hearing,” he told her. “If we come down too soon, they’ll hear us and come right back.”

  Sabrina had been too terrified to argue.

  They stayed in the town a few more days living off what they could scavenge. Manny decided to leave and told Sabrina she was welcome to come with him. She had just turned eleven years old. She went along.

  And so the pair of them traveled together for over two years. Manny had been a full-time diesel mechanic and a part-time martial arts instructor before the Outbreak. He was raised in Manilla an
d trained in Kali, Escrima, and Silat his entire life. He moved to the United States in his early twenties. Manny taught her how to use a blade and gave her the twin karambits that were her primary weapons against living opponents.

  I asked her if she had ever killed anyone. She laughed and told me of course she had. At least twelve, maybe more. She was not certain of the exact number. When she cut someone, she didn’t stick around to see if they bled to death. She was usually too busy running.

  I was relieved to find out she had never been raped or forced into prostitution. People had tried, but she had always managed to defend herself. I have met far too many women over the years who cannot say the same. Sexual assault was an enormous problem long before the world fell apart, and the lawless years since the Outbreak have done nothing to improve things.

  As time went on, Sabrina became reluctant to give any more details about her life since the Outbreak. I asked her where she went while traveling with Manny, and she shrugged and said, “All over the place.” I asked her what happened to Manny, why they no longer traveled together, and she said, “Got bit. Had to put him down.”

  “That’s tough. Sorry to hear that.”

  “Thanks.”

  And that was the last we spoke of it.

  So the weeks passed and Christmas came. We had a feast at Allison and Eric’s place. Elizabeth joined us after she finished her duties with the town’s official celebration. We sat around Allison’s antique dining table, all twelve feet of it, and ate roast chicken and bread stuffing and squash and peas and homemade gravy. Eric gave Allison a wedding ring with a diamond the size of a blueberry. I had no idea where he found it, but it fit perfectly and Allison said she loved it.

  I gave Elizabeth a pair of sapphire earrings and a matching pendant. Even though such things aren’t worth very much anymore, she seemed genuinely pleased. Sabrina rolled her eyes and shook her head and muttered something about spoiled townies. I shot her a look but otherwise let it go.