by Dirk Patton
The scrape of feet on the desert floor. The low, guttural snarls from the males. The frequent sound of a body falling as a male tripped on something. I happened to glance up and 20 yards away a pair of males bumped their way around the closest bend in the wash. While I was looking up, three more fell over the edge, landing with dull thuds on the sand. Within moments they were getting back to their feet and resuming their march in my direction.
The hole wasn’t even three feet deep, but I was out of time. I had scraped it out in the shape of a shallow grave and threw myself into it, hoping I wasn’t tempting fate. Wiggling around I got on my back and pulled as much sand over my body as I could before having to go absolutely still and silent. I lay on my back, rifle on the front of my body. The Kukri was in my left hand and Ka-Bar fighting knife in my right.
The males approached, dragging their feet through the loose sand, constantly stumbling in the difficult footing. I watched the first one approach, dragging his shoulder on the far wall as he moved. It seemed to take forever, but he passed me without pausing. The second one followed in his footsteps. Number three was also using the wall as a guide, but was on the same side as the cave. I was watching him approach when the sound of a pair of feet landing in the wash drew my attention.
A female had jumped down from the edge and was stalking along with her head lifted and slightly tilted to the side. From ten yards away I could here her sniffing the air, and she was moving directly for the cave. The male had continued, rubbing the sandy wall as he moved. When he reached the cave he tripped over the bush I had stuck into the ground, falling face first to the ground right next to me. I gripped my weapons tighter and held my breath.
It seemed to take him forever, but he finally pushed off the ground and slowly clambered back to his feet. He started moving away from me and I silently exhaled, then drew and held another breath as the female approached. She was moving stealthily, her actions and body language reminding me of a cat stalking its prey.
The male kept moving, and I shifted my eyes to check for the other two I’d seen fall into the wash. They had stopped a short distance from me and stood in the dark, swaying back and forth. Something had to have alerted them and I suspected they were listening and smelling for any prey in the immediate area. The female kept moving closer, finally coming to a stop directly between the mouth of the cave and me. I could see her looking around and hear her sampling the air. She knew we were close.
Suddenly she snapped her head to the side and looked directly at the bush hiding my group. I had heard nothing, but perhaps someone had made the faintest of sounds that had alerted her to their presence. She turned to fully face the wall of the wash, back to me, and reached out to touch the bush. As her fingers started to wrap around a branch I moved.
One of the things that I’d been taught most of my life, first in football, then later in the Army, is that when it’s time to go, you GO. Fast. Hard. Explosive. And that’s what I did, coming out of the hole and shedding sand like some kind of subterranean monster. At least that’s what I was going for. Truthfully, I was probably a tad bit slower than I used to be, but I was still fast.
As I came up I released the Kukri, leaving it lying on the sand and reached out with my free hand. Grabbing a fistful of the female’s hair I pulled with all my strength. Her head wrenched back as she started to fall backwards onto me. Before she could scream I stabbed into the side of her throat with the Ka-Bar, slashing out and severing her trachea and both carotids.
Letting the momentum take us, I fell back into the hole and pulled her on top of me where she thrashed and twitched. I scooped the Kukri out of the sand so I had a weapon in each hand again. Blood fountained out of her neck and rained back down on both of us. Soon I was soaked, but she spasmed one final time and lay still. When her heart stopped the twin geysers of blood stopped, then the smell of her voided bowels and bladder hit me.
My kill had been quiet, and I was sure it hadn’t drawn attention from the passing herd, but the two males that had been hanging back listening had heard us and were stumbling forward in the sand. I lay perfectly still in my shallow hole with the dead female on top of me. Blood covered my face and had run down and pooled in one of my ears, but I didn’t dare move or make a sound as the males approached.
I wasn’t worried about being able to defend myself against them. I had two blades, a pistol and a rifle. What I was worried about was having to defend myself, and in the process draw the attention of the whole herd, which would come flooding into the wash and overwhelm all of us in seconds. The males came to a stop next to the dead female, sniffing the air as they stood swaying.
32
Roach was in a near panic as he drove away from the water treatment plant. His heart was racing, hands were shaking and a cold, greasy sweat covered his face. He hadn’t planned. Hadn’t prepared. Had killed too close to home and had gotten sloppy. He’d been seen.
He’d taken care of the witness, but what would he have done if the man had been armed and willing to fight? What if there had been two men there working? Slamming his palm on the Humvee’s steering wheel he screamed in frustration at his own weakness. Weakness that had led him to get rid of Synthia without thinking it through first.
Yes, she was a liability. She had known things that could send him to the gallows, but had he really needed to kill her? Yes. He had. He had needed to correct his mistake of bringing her along. She had seemed like a good partner at first. Mature beyond her years. Then the immaturity of the teenager had revealed itself when she didn’t get what she wanted when she wanted it. Why had he been so stupid?
Roach suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing the Hummer to a shuddering stop in the middle of the road. What would he tell people? Not that he and Synthia socialized, but people knew about her. How would he explain her disappearance? There was no logical way off the base, so he couldn’t say she left after an argument. If she left him, she’d still be somewhere on the base.
He sat there, staring out the windshield. Trying to solve the problem of what lie to tell that would be accepted without question. The more he thought, the more angry and frustrated he became as he realized there wasn’t any lying his way out of this. If someone looked closely enough at him and Synthia, and couldn’t find her, there would be questions asked he couldn’t answer. Sure, they couldn’t prove anything, but…
A sudden rapping on the window next to his face startled him. A young female Airman stood there wearing a Security Forces badge on her Air Force uniform. Then Roach noticed the idling Hummer sitting behind him with Security Forces stenciled across the base of the windshield. Shit, he’d been sitting in the road and drawn the attention of a cop. He popped the door open, rather than rolling the window down, and stepped out onto the pavement.
“Are you OK, sir?” The Airman asked, taking a step back. “Are you hurt?”
“Hurt?” Roach was confused, looking down at his body where her eyes were focused.
He was covered in his second victim’s blood. He had thought he was being careful to stay clean, but he hadn’t been careful enough. Looking up he met the young woman’s eyes and saw only concern, not suspicion. Glancing to his left he confirmed she was riding alone before turning back to face her.
“No, I’m fine.” He said in a pleasant voice, shuffling a step closer to her. “I was just over at the…” Roach lunged.
The woman was young, barely 19, and had only become an Air Force cop a couple of months before the attacks. She wasn’t experienced. Wasn’t hardened by the job and most definitely wasn’t prepared for Roach’s lunge. As he had started shuffling forward, he had reached into his pocket looking for a weapon. The first thing his fingers had found was the pair of pliers he’d taken out of Synthia’s purse.
Now he wrapped his hand around them and punched the side of the woman’s head with all his strength. She didn’t even have time to scream before the strike and was knocked unconscious, collapsing to the pavement. Returning the pliers to his pocket, Roach s
cooped her up and placed her on the rear floor of his Humvee. Looking around he spied a small parking lot adjacent to the base chapel and hopped into her vehicle and drove it into the lot where he parked it behind the building so it was hidden from the road.
Running back to his Hummer he jumped in, took a deep, calming breath and started driving again. Slowly. He couldn’t afford any more attention from the Security Forces right now. He knew how lucky he was that it had been a young, inexperienced woman that had come across him. A cop that had been doing the job for a few years would have had their weapon out and ready as soon as they saw the blood on his clothing.
Quickly reaching the house he had shared with Synthia, he pulled into the driveway and shut down the engine. Taking a minute to look around he was thankful to not see any neighbors. Getting out of the Hummer he slowly walked to the front door, still looking around, and opened it. Walking back to the vehicle he did a final scan, still seeing nothing. If anyone on the street was home, they were occupied with something indoors.
Grabbing the young woman he lifted her and quickly carried her into the house, kicking the door shut behind him with his foot. He went straight to the small bedroom where he dropped her on the bed. Removing her weapon he also used her handcuffs to secure her to the headboard, then walked back out to the living room and locked the front door. Stepping to the window he checked the street again, but still saw no one moving.
Excitement mounting he returned to the bedroom and stripped the woman naked. He had to unlock the cuff on her wrist for a moment to get her vest and uniform blouse off, relocking both hands over her head with the cuff chain looped around a bolt he’d secured in the headboard for when he tied up Synthia. The woman was still unconscious, so he gagged her then tied each foot to a bedpost with strips of a sheet.
Looking her over, he frowned when he saw the tattoo on her right hip. It was large and multi-colored and he couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be or what it represented. But it was distracting and he decided to do something so he wasn’t bothered by it when they began playing. In the small bathroom he began looking for something to cover the tattoo, glancing up into the mirror and seeing the blood on himself. He took a few minutes to clean up, changed clothes, then grabbed the pancake makeup Synthia had used to cover her ink and set to work. A few minutes later he stepped back to survey the results. It wasn’t a perfect job. He could still faintly see the tattoo, but it was good enough.
Roach liked his women conscious and aware of what was happening to them. That was the excitement for him. The fear in their eyes. The terror as they realized what he was about to do to them. The resignation when they finally accepted their fate. The final moment when the light in their eyes blinked out, which if his timing was good was at the same moment as his release into their body.
Hoping she would wake soon, Roach moved back into the kitchen and set about preparing a meal. He had already killed twice today, and was about to indulge in the pleasure of a third, and he was ravenous. Laughing to himself as he worked, he soon had a large steak and baked potato ready and took the plate into the bedroom to watch the woman while he ate. Sitting on a small chair, he balanced the plate on his lap and cut into the steak.
Roach sat and ate the entire meal without taking his eyes off the woman’s face. Several times he had drifted into fantasy, and the face morphed into Katie Chase. The thought of her made him think of the Major, which soured his mood and dampened his excitement. Why was he spending time on this whore when it could be the beautiful redhead tied to his bed? He’d made another mistake.
Standing he walked to the kitchen and washed the cooking pan, plate and utensils he’d used. Putting them neatly in their place, he walked back to the bedroom and looked at the woman who was just starting to show signs of regaining consciousness. Yes, he’d made another mistake taking this one and he needed to correct that error. Retrieving a thin bladed dagger from a dresser drawer, he stepped to the side of the bed, placed his hand on the woman’s chest to make sure he had the right spot, and plunged the blade directly into her heart.
She died instantly, and there was very little blood. Roach knew that once the heart stopped, bodies didn’t bleed, despite what Hollywood like to portray. Dead bodies might seep blood, but it didn’t come flooding out of them in great gushes unless an expert was draining the corpse with the right equipment. Wiping the dagger clean, he returned it to its place and from a different drawer pulled out a sheet of painters plastic.
In only a few minutes he had un-cuffed the body, placed all of the woman’s clothing and equipment on top of it, and had worked an edge of the plastic under her hips. Moving quickly, he wrapped her up like a mummy, using duct tape to secure the bundle tightly. Corpse ready, he stepped into the bath to check himself in the mirror. No blood this time.
Leaving the body lying on the bed, he walked into the small, untended back yard. The previous occupant of the house had left some cheap garden tools leaning against the back fence and Roach made use of a shovel to dig a grave. The Oklahoma soil was dark, rich and soft. Easy digging for the first four feet, then he hit rock. Deciding four feet was good enough, he went back into the house and got the wrapped body.
Some men like Roach will stop to say a prayer over their victims. Some will thank the victim for their sacrifice. Others will even cry for the dead. Roach was none of these. Walking up to the hole he’d dug he unceremoniously dropped the woman’s corpse into the ground, and without a second’s pause began shoveling dirt in on top of it.
He worked for close to an hour. Filling the hole, then stamping on it with his boots to compress the dirt. He repeated the process several times, finally finishing with a pile of dirt that was smaller than the space the body occupied in the ground. There was also a rake resting against the fence and he quickly spread the dirt across the entire surface of the yard, ending at the narrow concrete pad that served as a back porch. Looking over the area, he was satisfied it would pass a casual inspection. Leaving the rake against the back of the house he headed inside for a shower and to figure out how he would take Katie.
33
The males stood there for what seemed like forever, but couldn’t have really been more than a couple of minutes. Try lying perfectly still and silent with a corpse on top of you and blood pooling in your ear. One minute feels like an hour. Eventually they started moving away, but I couldn’t relax. More males were falling into the wash as they moved across the desert.
There was now a nearly constant parade of infected moving through the wash and I hoped everyone in the cave would stay absolutely quiet. Of all of them, I was the most worried about Irina. When I’d first met her in Los Alamos she had not seemed to be used to seeing or dealing with the infected. I was concerned she would panic and make a sound that would draw the attention of the passing bodies.
I was lying there, concealed by the dead female, worrying about the group compromising their position when a male stepped off the edge of the wash directly above me and crashed down on top of the corpse that was on top of me. Shit, that hurt, and the son of a bitch wasn’t in any hurry to get up.
He finally started moving, reaching down to push himself up. His hand pressed on my left arm and he paused for a moment. Then he actually squeezed my arm. What the hell? I’m not a goddamn roll of Charmin! What was he doing? Could he tell by feel that I wasn’t dead and wasn’t another infected?
His squeeze became a grip that tightened enough to hurt and a gurgling snarl burbled up out of his throat. Somehow he knew that he had his hand on an un-infected arm. Or perhaps he wasn’t sure, but would just react to anything that felt like a meal. He started pulling, trying to drag me towards him, his snarling growing louder.
It was time to do something before his agitation drew the attention of other infected. Working my right arm through the sand and out from under the corpse, I stabbed with the Ka-Bar at where I thought his head was. I felt the tip of the blade penetrate flesh, then skitter across bone without hitting anything vital. His
only response was to grip my arm even tighter and crawl fully on top of the female.
She was lying across my body at a slight angle, shoulder at my chin, and in his squirming he wound up with his face directly over mine. For once I wasn’t thankful for the night vision that let me clearly see. He had apparently turned some time ago. His lips and most of his nose were missing; exposing teeth and cartilage that made him look like something out of a macabre nightmare. My stab with the blade had torn a long gash in his cheek and left a flap of skin hanging down, blood from the wound dripping onto my face and beginning to cover the NVG’s lenses.
Pinned under the weight of the two bodies, all I could do was stab with the knife again. This time I could partially see my target, and aimed for his ear. The razor sharp steel met some resistance, but I put every ounce of force I could into the strike and it pushed through, the hilt coming to a stop against the side of his head as the blade sliced into his brain. He went limp and I cursed as more blood dripped out of the new head wound and completely covered the NVGs. Now I had two corpses on top of me and was blind as a bat.
I had some limited movement with my right arm, but other than that I was stuck. I couldn’t reach my head to remove the goggles, but maybe that was best. There was still an occasional drop of blood splattering onto them from the dead male, and they were all that was protecting my eyes. Sure, I’d had the vaccine against the Voodoo Plague, but there were any number of other nasty viruses that could be transmitted by body fluids.
Forcing myself not to think about HIV or Ebola or Hepatitis, I concentrated on listening to the feet of the infected moving in and near the wash. It was easy to tell the males from the females. The males constantly dragged one or both feet, routinely stumbling on the uneven footing. The females sounded just like a normal, uninfected person. Their steps were quick and steady. And what the hell was that sound?