Plague of the Undead

by Joe McKinney

  The afternoon had grown hot, and pollen and dirt stuck to his sweaty skin and clumped in his eyes and in his nostrils. The street was quiet, no wind to whistle through the empty buildings, but the silence didn’t hold. Two brown dogs trotted into the street about fifty yards ahead of them, their heads bent down, eyes narrowed on the Arbella riders. The dogs uttered a series of stuttering growls that quickly turned into furious barking.

  “Shit,” Taylor muttered.

  He raised his rifle and Jacob nodded. It would have to be done. They couldn’t let the dogs go on making that noise.

  But then something whizzed by Jacob’s ear, struck the corner of the house next to him with a wet thud, and blasted off a big piece into the grass beyond. Three more shots popped next to him, like somebody breaking sticks, and only then did Jacob realize they were being fired on.

  But the shots weren’t accurate. He couldn’t even tell where they were coming from.

  Jacob had been in plenty of scrapes. He’d even had some combat training after graduating school, back when he thought salvage was going to be his life’s work, but he’d never actually taken live fire before. Now he was in the middle of it, and the only thing he could think was: Huh, so this is how it feels.

  Then another round struck the house next to him, punching a huge hole in the wall, and Barry let out a groan loud enough to be heard across the street. Jacob turned around angrily, ready to berate the man, but stopped short when he saw the piece of wood sticking out of Barry’s cheek. Seeing all that blood cleared his head in a hurry. Jacob remembered his training and knew a man on horseback made a huge target. They needed to find cover, and fast.

  Meanwhile, Barry was turning pale. He had slumped over in his saddle and looked close to falling to the ground. Jacob turned his horse and came up alongside Barry. He grabbed the injured man’s reins. Kelly was beside him, trying to help him, but she had no idea what her husband needed. She only saw his distress.

  “I’ve got him,” Jacob said. “We have to get off this street.”

  “Where?” She turned toward the whooping and the screaming. “Jacob, what are they doing?”

  “Over here,” Taylor said. He was about ten yards away, near the gap between two houses, his rifle leveled at the chaos in the street. “Come on, move!”

  Taylor was about to turn the corner when they heard more screaming from across the street.

  Gunshots, pistol fire from the sound of it, came seconds later.

  Three riders, men dressed in jeans and long-sleeve denim shirts and floppy cowboy hats, came tearing out of a gap in the houses. They drove their horses right through the other Arbella column, sending Max and Nick and the others scattering in half a dozen directions at once.

  Complete chaos followed. The riders fired as they charged, but they weren’t trying to hit anybody. They were shooting into the air, and to Jacob they looked more like a bunch of drunken ranch hands out for a joyride than an organized cavalry. But they were brutally efficient at what they were doing, and soon, Nick and the others broke in panic.

  More riders, a dozen at least, came up from behind, yelling and shooting like the first three. A man in a red T-shirt and black baseball cap seemed to be the leader. He motioned for the riders to fan out, which they did, yelling and firing their guns like madmen.

  Jacob wrestled with Barry’s horse, but the shooting and the yelling had spooked it badly and it fought against the reins. Then the horse turned on him suddenly, pushing his own horse sideways so that he was facing the middle of the street. Owen, the anthropologist, had tried to make a break for it. He spurred his horse and the animal took off at a full gallop down the street. But Owen was not a great rider, and his pursuers looked like they’d been born on horseback. They caught him easily, circled him, and yelled for him to dismount.

  Owen was clearly terrified. Jacob could see that. His face was a twisted grimace of fear and confusion. He spun his horse around in mad circles, but he was blocked at every turn.

  “Get off your horse,” the man in the red shirt demanded.

  One of the other riders, a kid of about eighteen, darted forward and grabbed Owen by his coat.

  “He said, ‘Get off!’ ”

  The next instant Owen tumbled from his horse, landing painfully on his back.

  The younger rider slid down from his horse with a rope in his hands.

  Owen didn’t give him a chance to use it though. He jumped to his feet and ran screaming down the street.

  “You better get back here!” the guy in the red shirt said.

  The young man with the rope started to chase after Owen, but the other one told him to stop. “Just shoot him,” he said. “That one’s too old anyway.”

  Another man raised a rifle, leveled at Owen’s back, and dropped him with a single well-aimed shot.

  “No!” Jacob yelled.

  A few of the riders turned his way. The man in the red shirt pushed the brim of his ball cap up with his thumb. He was a stern, leathery-faced man in his early thirties, big and tough looking. He motioned for two of his henchmen to move on Jacob and the men peeled off to try and flank them.

  “Jacob, this way!” Taylor yelled. “Bring him. Hurry!”

  Jacob grabbed Barry’s reins and this time was able to bring the horse under control. He motioned for Kelly and Andy to go ahead and he followed after them.

  Meanwhile, Taylor provided cover for them. He fired his suppressed rifle and one of the men trying to flank them went down to his knees and folded over into the long grass. Taylor fired again, hitting the younger man who’d shot Owen. The kid went down screaming.

  Jacob and the others got around the side of the house as fast as they could, but it was slow moving with Barry. He rocked like a drunk in the saddle, his groans of pain audible even over all the shooting and yelling back in the street.

  “Hurry!” Taylor yelled back at them.

  “What about the—”

  But Jacob cut himself short. Taylor’s head had snapped back. The rifle slid from his hands and he sagged forward.

  “No!” Jacob said.

  He handed Barry off to Kelly and Andy and rushed to Taylor’s side. He grabbed the sheriff’s arm and held him up, but Taylor’s neck had gone slack and his head lolled on his shoulders. He’d been shot in the mouth. The bullet had ripped part of the man’s cheek and exploded his teeth like dice tossed down his throat. He tried to speak, but only managed a gargling sound that soon turned into coughs.

  “Sheriff Taylor,” Jacob said. “Stay with me, sir. Stay with me. Can you hear me, sir?”

  But he couldn’t. Not anymore. Even as Jacob talked to him, pleaded with him to fight, the light faded out of the man’s eyes and he went blank.

  “No!” Jacob said. “Sheriff Taylor, no!”

  A man crashed his horse into Jacob, grabbing him hard by the shirt collar.

  “Get off that horse,” he said, and tried to pull Jacob out of the saddle.

  Jacob grabbed the man’s arm and shoved him hard. But the man wouldn’t let go. He reached over with his other hand and pulled Jacob down even as the man’s horse backed up. Jacob was yanked right out of the saddle and thrown to the ground.

  He quickly rolled to one side to avoid getting trampled by the horses, but when he tried to run around the man to get back on his own horse, he got the heel of the rider’s boot in his face.

  His vision turned purple and he couldn’t stand up.

  He’d never been hit so hard in his life.

  From the ground he saw the rider charge Kelly and the others. He knocked Barry from his horse with ease, and then wheeled on Kelly. She slapped at him when he tried to put his hands on her, but he dismounted her in seconds.

  When he turned on Andy he flinched. The journalist had a pistol in his hand. He was trying to aim it at his attacker, but his hand was shaking uncontrollably. The fear on his face was horrible to behold. The other man yelled, “Fuck!” and pulled a pistol of his own from inside his shirt. The two men fired as one and b
oth went down.

  Jacob saw his chance and took it. He climbed to his feet, grabbed Barry, and told Kelly they had to move.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “That way,” he said, and gestured toward an overgrown lot that contained row upon row of concrete walls. He ducked a shoulder under Barry and took his weight. To Kelly he said, “Go that way. We’ll try to hide.”

  They ran as fast as they could while carrying Barry, but long before they made cover Jacob heard one of the riders yell: “Go on, get him!”

  The growling of a pack of dogs followed close behind.

  Jacob looked back to see several dogs running in his direction. They overtook him a moment later and tore into him. He fell to the ground and covered his face with his arms, twisting one way and then the other as the pack tore at his clothes and his skin, ripping him to pieces.

  “You, dogs, back!” someone said. “Go on, back!”

  The dogs stopped biting him, and they backed up, but they didn’t stop growling.

  Jacob rolled over and slowly pushed himself up to his knees. His clothes, and his arms beneath, were a shredded mess of blood and torn cloth. He looked over at Kelly, who was holding her husband in her arms. She too was covered in blood and fresh wounds.

  Jacob looked around.

  The dogs had him surrounded, all of them growling, teeth bared.

  Then the man in the baseball cap rode up. The others parted way for him. He told the dogs to shut up and they all went silent, though not a one of them looked like it had lost the desire to tear into Jacob once again.

  Jacob stared up at the man through a veil of his own blood.

  The rider had a hardened look about him, like a man well used to fighting his own fights, though he also wore the practiced air of one comfortable with giving commands.

  “We’ll keep those three,” the man said. “Search them, and make sure their belongings are secure.”

  One of the other riders came up alongside him, holding Taylor’s 300 Blackout. He held it out to the leader, the man in the black ball cap. “Casey, one of ’em had this.”

  Jacob caught the name.

  Casey took the rifle and looked it over, clearly impressed.

  “Which one of ’em had this?”

  “Old guy back there. He’s dead.”

  Casey grunted and nodded. “Nice gun. Built-in suppressor, military stock.” He ejected the magazine and checked the rounds. “Reloaded ammo. Good job of it, too.” He turned his horse to face Jacob and the others. “Who reloaded this ammo?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “You,” Casey said, nodding at Jacob. “Where you from?”

  Jacob just stared at the man.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “No hablo Inglés.”

  Casey laughed, and the others did, too. “Wow, we got us a comedian.” Casey handed the magazine to one of the other riders, and then turned back to Jacob. “You and I are gonna have a good time getting to know each other.”

  Then he flipped Taylor’s carbine around and smashed the stock down on the bridge of Jacob’s nose.

  For Jacob, everything went black.

  part three

  TRACTS AND BRIDEMEAT

  17

  Jacob, Kelly, and Barry were led back to the street. Nick, Bree, Eli, and Max were already there, surrounded by riders who had them at gunpoint. Now that the fighting was over, most of the riders looked tired and bored. Kelly had to support Barry. The wound in his cheek was bad. They hadn’t been able to remove the piece of wood impaled there, and his face had swollen up around it and turned an angry shade of red. Jacob limped along as best he could, but there was blood in his eyes and his mouth and his vision was fading in and out. Everything seemed to swirl around him. His arms hurt the most though. The dogs had really torn him up.

  When they got to the others, Bree rushed forward to examine Barry and Jacob. “Jesus,” she said. “What did you bastards do to them?”

  “Just a little getting to know each other party,” Casey said. “Now get back over there.”

  “Both of these men need medical help.”

  He adjusted his ball cap as he leaned back in his saddle. “Well, I don’t see no doctors around here. My guess is they’re just fucked.”

  “I’m a physician’s assistant. Let me help them.”

  Casey laughed at that. “You hear that, boys? Missy here is a doctor.” He looked around and the others laughed with him. Then he turned back to Bree and chewed on his bottom lip, regarding her all over again. “You’re a pretty little thing, ain’t you?”

  Bree didn’t respond.

  “Well,” Casey said, “if you’re gonna help him, go on and do it.”

  “I need my pack. And I need clean water to rinse out these wounds.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen, princess. We gotta move out directly. You do what you’re gonna do right here, right now, with what you got. And then we’re outta here.”

  “Can I at least have some water from your canteen?” she asked.

  “No, you may not,” he said. “You may be a hot little number, but you need to mind your place. You don’t ask a free man for nothing, you hear?”

  “We’re all free men,” she said.

  “Sweetheart, you definitely ain’t no man. And as of right now, ain’t none of you free. Now get busy with whatever you’re gonna do.”

  Jacob’s head was a soupy mess, but at Bree’s mention of her pack he rallied a little. He looked around, and for the first time realized that he and the others had been roughly searched and their belongings seized. He hadn’t even been aware that they’d searched him. Everybody’s clothes were in disarray. Nobody had their backpacks anymore. Through the blood and dirt he saw the riders holding the Arbella party’s horses by the reins, their belongings hanging off the saddle horns. He saw Bree’s defibrillator near the front door of a house on the far side of the street, smashed to bits.

  He groaned.

  “Are your ears ringing?” Bree asked him.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “Does everything feel kind of slowed down, like you’re moving in slow motion?”

  He nodded.

  “I think you have a concussion. I want you to stay awake, okay? I’ll help you as soon as I can. Just stay awake.”

  “They killed Sheriff Taylor,” he said.

  “I know,” Bree said, her voice was thick with emotion, but she was fighting hard to keep it together. “They shot Frank, too. He was trying to hide me under a house when they . . . they pulled him into the grass and just shot him.”

  Jacob struggled with what to say. The words felt unreachable, lost in a fog in the back of his mind.

  “Jacob,” Bree said. She gently patted his cheeks. “Hey, stay with me, okay? Stay awake.”

  “We’re moving out now,” Casey said. He turned to one of the younger riders and said, “Get ’em tied up and ready to move out.”

  “Where are you taking us?” Bree demanded.

  “You’re coming with us, little lady.”

  “You have no right to force us to go anywhere. We never did anything to you. You attacked us for no reason. You had no right.”

  He turned to the rider beside him. “You hear that, we got no right?”

  “We’re bad people, I guess,” the rider answered.

  “Why are you doing this to us?” Bree said. “What’s wrong with you people?”

  “We’re surviving. Doin’ the best we know how.”

  “You had no right to attack us. We weren’t doing anything to you. We’re not out here to hurt people.”

  Casey had been smiling, but he seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. His expression turned mean. “Right ain’t got nothing to do with nothing,” he said. “And if you’re not looking to do what’s necessary to stay alive, then that’s your own damn fault. We’re moving out.”

  “But these men aren’t well enough to travel.”

  “They’ll travel,” Casey said. “They’ll k
eep up or they’ll get shot.” He turned his horse and trotted off.

  “Bree,” Jacob said, his voice sounding slow and thick. “Don’t.”

  “Jacob, they killed Frank. They killed Sheriff Taylor. They had no right.”

  “We live to fight another day,” he said.

  A few moments later somebody grabbed Jacob’s wrists and lashed them together with a yellow nylon rope. It cut into his skin, but he was too out of it to feel pain. Somebody pushed him along, and before he knew it, he and the other Arbella survivors were being led single file down the road, flanked by riders.

  18

  They saw the birds first, the ravens, circling low over a dark line of vehicles at the edge of town.

  It was getting near dark, but it was still hot. Dust rose up from the road in sheets and matted to his bloody face. It got in his eyes and his nose and his mouth, making him miserable. His head was pounding, yet even with the pain he could barely keep his eyes open. Without the occasional jerk on the ropes that bound his hands together he might have fallen over and passed out right there. As it was, he hobbled along in a daze, his one clear thought one of surprise that a blow to the head from a rifle butt could cause such intense and persistent pain.

  Eventually, the caravan of vehicles came into view. They were a mismatch of wagons and RVs cobbled together from a bizarre collection of flatbed trailers and pickup truck beds and motorcycle tires, perhaps three hundred vehicles in all. And in between and all around the vehicles were packs of dogs and dirty children and men and women in filthy clothes. But Jacob could smell meat cooking over a fire pit, and the fragrance was enough to bring him part of the way back from the haze into which his mind had slipped.