by John Ringo
“Come back, Nora!” Lou shouted.
The sun was starting to rise above the ridge. She could see that the zombies’ path was an old animal trail that led down to the river. The brush was thin enough to step over or plunge through. She didn’t want the zombie to escape. He was yards ahead of them, taking the slope with insane leaps like his tail had been lit on fire. The shadows were tricky, though. She was a good woodswoman, but she had to slow down or break a leg.
“Let him go,” Pat called out to her. “We got two! Come on, honey. Let’s get back to the others.”
“Dammit!” Nora said. But her mind was cooling off. They turned around and headed uphill toward the blaring music. Lou led the way, brushing aside branches with his big arms and holding them for Pat and Nora to pass. He was a good man. If this went on long enough to get lonely, she would ask if he wanted to be a couple with her.
The path thinned down and diverged into a half dozen gaps in the greenery about twenty yards from the road. Lou made for the loudest noise, beyond a bunch of bushes.
As he pushed past a massive red oak, a skinny arm looped down out of the branches and grabbed him around the neck. With amazing strength, it hauled Lou off his feet. He kicked, trying to free himself. The arm hauled upward. Lou’s rifle dropped to the ground.
Pat screamed. They ran to take his legs and pull, but he disappeared up out of their reach. Through the leaves, Nora saw glinting eyes, one pair after another. At least three other alphas had been waiting there. They hauled Lou upward. He flailed and kicked at his captors.
“Help!” she screamed. “They’ve got Lou!”
“We’re coming!” Julian bellowed.
Luckily, no other trees stood close enough that the zombies could escape. They had to come down, but what would they do to Lou in the meantime?
Nora slung her gun over her shoulder and climbed after them. The red oak was thick and broad. Its rippled gray bark had plenty of hand- and footholds, obviously why the zombies had chosen it as their lookout. If it had been a month later, she could have taken a shot at the zombies and been sure of missing Lou, but the foliage was so heavy she could only see movement through the gaps.
The branches were thicker than her arms as steady as the earth, so she might as well have been climbing up stairs. She had spent plenty of years clambering around in the trees on her family’s property with her brother and sister.
“Do you see them?” Pat shouted.
“Yeah! Up about thirty feet,” Nora called back. She felt for another handhold.
“Go back down there!” Lou yelled. The zombies had dragged him up to the highest branch that would support them and hung him over the branch on his belly. Nora counted four, all men, their filthy hides soiling the sunlight that touched them. One of them leered down at her, grinning. His red hair was caked with blood and dust, but she would never in her life forget that face.
“It’s him!” she screamed. She braced herself on the branch under her feet and brought her gun up and around. The zombie mailman was no fool. As soon as he saw her rifle barrel, he moved up behind Lou. “The one who killed my family!”
“Damned fools for going up there where they can’t get out,” Mike said, moving around the oak’s huge bole. The dogs quested back and forth, some of them leaping for the lower branches. The odor of zombie excited them into a frenzy.
“It’d be smart if there were only a couple of us,” Julian said. “They could jump down on any side and run away before we could catch them.”
“Help me!” Nora shouted. “We have to save Lou!”
“We’re working on it, darlin’,” Julian called. “Somebody go get Troy. He’s got the beanbag gun.”
The big man was fighting to free himself. He had to choose between keeping his hazmat suit or his balance, and decided on the latter. One of the zombies yanked the yellow hood off with a triumphant howl. Lou scooted away on the branch and set his back against the tree trunk. The zombies clambered around like monkeys, making the same kind of hoots and grunts they did in the zoo. They made grabs for his face and ears. He bellowed as one of them gashed his cheek with a handful of ragged fingernails.
Nora couldn’t stand it any longer. She levered the gun to her shoulder and fired. The zombie that had scratched Lou gasped and dropped. He plummeted down through the branches, narrowly missing her. The body landed among the dogs, who swarmed over it.
The other zombies paid no attention to the fall of their neighbor. Lou took advantage of the distraction to swing down to the next branch and try to escape.
“Come on!” Nora shouted. “I’ll cover you.”
“I’m doing my best,” he said. The gash ran with blood. The zombies followed him avidly, trying to bite him. When she cocked her gun, the naked males’ heads perked up, and they scattered to hide behind branches. Nora tried to keep track of the trio, but they moved like squirrels. Lou gripped the trunk with both arms as he sought for a place to put his foot. Going up was a lot easier than coming down.
A shadow fell over his left shoulder.
“Look out!” she shouted, and raised the gun. One of the zombies, hanging head down, tried to hook Lou around the neck. His skinny chest was exposed for a perfect shot. Nora went to pull the trigger.
The gun flew up out of her hands. She looked up. The mailman grinned down at her and swung the rifle at her like a bludgeon. Nora turned her head just in time not to take the stock full in the face. The blow to the side of her head made her ear ring.
Another ringing sound echoed through the narrow valley. A body hurtled downward past her. Nora shook her head to try and clear it.
“Got him!” Troy cried.
When Nora got her wits back, she peered down through the leaves. The mailman lay unconscious among the milling dogs. Troy lifted the beanbag gun and aimed through the leaves, tracking yet another zombie. He fired, and the zombie attacking Lou dropped like a rock. On the ground, Brenda strapped the zombies’ arms and legs with the long plastic ties.
“Come on down here,” Julian said, beckoning. “C’mon, I’ll catch you.”
Nora clutched the bark with hands running with sweat under her protective gloves. Mike caught her and swung her off the tree as if she was a child. When he set her down, Pat came to pull her into a comforting hug.
“You okay?” she asked.
Nora looked up. “Not yet.” But as soon as Lou had dropped off the last branch and hit the ground, she ran to him and threw her arms around him. She felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. Then he put his arms around her, too. He dropped a kiss on top of her hood.
“It’s okay, little girl. We both lived, this time.”
The last zombie didn’t give a damn about its fellows, but it understood that it was defenseless. It had no intention of being a target for the big gun. Screaming like a chimpanzee, it fled up into the crown of the tree and vanished among the foliage.
Julian shook his head. “We’re not gonna get him. But we got four. That’s a good start. Management’ll have to be happy with that. Sun’s up. Every other alpha is gonna be hiding out until dusk. Let’s go back.”
Mike shooed the dogs to one side and picked up their rifles. “Thought you’d like to have these back,” he said.
Nora almost snatched hers out of his hands. “You had better believe I would,” she said.
She marched over to the red-headed zombie. Brenda had rolled him onto his belly and hogtied him so he couldn’t run away. When he saw Nora coming, he grinned up at her. Nora lowered the barrel of her gun until the mouth was touching the zombie’s forehead.
Julian came over and touched her lightly on the arm.
“You don’t want to do that, honey,” he said.
“I sure do,” she said. “I’ve been looking for this bastard for months.”
“Step back a moment,” he said. “This man’s a human being.”
“No, he’s not!” Nora screamed. All the horror of the security footage from her home came bursting back in her memory. Her husb
and and son, torn to pieces. “He’s a monster!”
Lou stepped up and crouched down beside the struggling zombie. The creature tried to bite him. Lou stayed out of reach.
“You could shoot him,” he said, looking up at her with the blood still wet on his cheek. “But that’s not you. You don’t kill out of vengeance. You’re sorry for every one of these zombies you’ve had to shoot. An eye for an eye’s wrong, remember? This is how you know you’re still a human being. Not like them.”
Nora’s eyes filled with tears. Charlie. Sid. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the hot drops spill down her cheeks. He was right. Badly as she wanted to take revenge, it wasn’t decent, and it wasn’t necessary. She was better than that.
“Let the scientists use him. If he dies, it won’t be your fault. It’ll be because the microorganism killed him. If he turns back into a man, he can atone for his crimes. You’ll get justice. One way or another.”
“All right,” Nora said. She lowered the gun and handed it to Lou. Then she brought her heavy boot back and kicked the zombie square in his face. Blood spurted from his nose. She kept on kicking him until the grin no longer looked like the grin in her memory. She turned away into the embrace of Lou’s other arm. “Let them have him now.”
On the Wall
John Sclazi & Dave Klecha
“Hi, Jim.”
“Hi, Keith. What’s up?”
“I’m here to take the watch with you tonight.”
“…You.”
“Yeah.”
“Taking a watch.”
“Yes.”
“On the wall.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“It wasn’t my fault we had a breach.”
“That’s what the ruling was, yes.”
“Then there’s no problem.”
“Where’s Jenna? She’s supposed to have watch with me tonight.”
“She’s in the infirmary.”
“What happened to her?”
“She broke her foot.”
“How did she do that?”
“She didn’t do it. Brandon did. Accidentally dropped a big ol’ pot of beans on her foot in the kitchen.”
“How bad is it?”
“Doc Kumar wants to keep her in the infirmary overnight to make sure there are no complications. Should be up and hobbling about tomorrow. But in the meantime she can’t take the watch.”
“You don’t have anything else you could be doing.”
“I don’t know how to break it to you, but it’s not like we have much need of a communications watch these days.”
“You could be monitoring the solar panels.”
“…It’s night, Jim.”
“They might need maintenance.”
“Which is Brenda’s job, actually. I’m just her helper monkey.”
“She might need help.”
“And if she does she’ll let me know. Or she’ll let Amy know, since Amy is also her helper monkey, when she’s not otherwise busy.”
“Fine.”
“Is there an actual problem here, Jim?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“The scavenger group that went out today saw a lot of active movement when they were out there.”
“We know the town’s got a lot of scurriers in it. That’s not news.”
“They said it wasn’t just scurriers. Roxie says she thinks she saw some runners. And she thinks some of them might have followed them home.”
“Have you seen anything yet?”
“No.”
“So it might be nothing.”
“It might be nothing. But that’s not the smart way to think about it.”
“So you’re worried about some runners making a sprint for the compound.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re worried about me because the last time we had a breach I was on the wall, even though what happened wasn’t my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you’re just implying the shit out of it, Jim.”
“You don’t stand on the wall much, Keith. That’s all.”
“No, I don’t. Some of us don’t. But you know the rules. No one stands a watch alone.”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s no one else to stand the watch with you right now.”
“Where’s Corrine?”
“She’s in the auto shop. The Wrangler is having issues again. She’ll be there all night.”
“Fred.”
“Sleeping. He’s got the next watch.”
“Andre.”
“Come on, Jim. Give it a rest. I’m here. You need someone on the wall with you. If you want to complain, then take it up with The Boss. But you know what she’s going to say. She’s going to tell you to tuck your balls back in and deal with it.”
“She wouldn’t say that.”
“I heard her say that to Eric just the other day.”
“Eric’s a whiner.”
“And what do you think The Boss would categorize complaining about a watch partner as?”
“…Point taken.”
“I thought so.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
“I got enough sleep last night. I’ll be good to the end of watch.”
“You sure? Coffee’s scarce.”
“I don’t drink coffee anyway. I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t drink coffee?”
“No. Never have.”
“Some sort of religious thing?”
“I just don’t like coffee. So I don’t drink it.”
“That’s kind of weird.”
“It’s not that weird.”
“It’s a little weird.”
“Well, I have some bad news for you, Jim. Soon enough, no one’s going to drink coffee anymore.”
* * *
“Jim, I can’t help but notice something.”
“What’s that.”
“You have a gun and I don’t.”
“It’s not a gun. It’s a rifle.”
“It’s a gun. Technically it’s a gun.”
“It’s a rifle.”
“Which is a type of gun. If we still had Wikipedia I could look it up and prove it to you.”
“You would be the sort of person who would say Wikipedia was authoritative about something.”
“Pretty sure the ‘Gun’ entry wasn’t contentiously edited. And you’re missing my point. A rifle is a type of gun.”
“That’s like saying that technically, you’re a mammal.”
“There’s no technically about it. I am a mammal.”
“I mean that describing you only as a mammal would be sufficiently accurate.”
“Depends on the conversation.”
“Fine. In this conversation, ‘gun,’ is not sufficiently accurate. I have a rifle.”
“And I don’t, which is what I was getting at. I don’t have a rifle. Or a handgun. Or a blunderbuss, for that matter. I don’t have a gun.”
“You don’t need one.”
“I’m on the wall.”
“So?”
“So when I’ve been on the wall before, I had a gun.”
“You didn’t need it then, either.”
“What if a bunch of runners come at the wall? That’s happened before. We both know that.”
“What did you do when the breach happened?”
“I yelled ‘Breach!’ and then other people took care of it, because I didn’t leave my post.”
“Right. One, you did the right thing by staying at your post, and two, you didn’t need a rifle.”
“But I might have.”
“What would you have done with it?”
“Well, if I had seen the runner before it was up to the wall and inside it, I would have shot it.”
“You would have shot it.”
“Sure.”
“You shoot much?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before all this. Did you shoot much? Go to the range? Go hunting?”
“I didn’t hunt. I didn’t see the point. Supermarkets existed for a reason.”
“Did you go shoot at a range?”
“I went to one once for a friend’s birthday party. Five or six years ago. Shot a Glock.”
“How’d you do?”
“I hit the paper.”
“How many times?”
“…Once.”
“Okay. What kind of rifle is this?”
“It’s a military rifle.”
“You might as well call it a gun.”
“I did call it a gun, if you recall.”
“What kind of military rifle is it? It an M4? An M14? An AK-47?”
“AK-47.”
“Wrong. It’s an M16.”
“That was a trick question.”
“It wasn’t a trick question.”
“It was a trick question. You didn’t list ‘M16’ as an option.”
“The point is if you knew which rifle it was, you would have known none of those options were correct.”
“We need a judge’s ruling on that.”
“Since you don’t know what kind of rifle this is, it’s a pretty good guess you don’t know anything about it.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
“What sort of ammunition does it shoot?”
“Bullets.”
“It shoots 5.56 NATO rounds.”
“I think you’re making that up.”
“I’m not making it up.”
“You’re doing that Star Trek thing where they give a bullshit name to a brand new subatomic particle.”
“5.56 NATO round. Do you know anything about the 5.56 round?”
“It disrupts a tachyon field when you hit a deflector dish with it.”
“The 5.56 NATO round is one of the most common rounds in the world. We used it in the M16, and the M4, and the M249. The British used it in the SA80. Germany used it in the G36. The French used it in the FAMAS. It means there was a lot of it out there.”
“Okay. So?”
“The M16 can also fire a .223 round, which is nearly identical, and was also incredibly common. What does this mean?”