Ed’s heart raged. He stared into the shadows, but could see nothing but amorphous shapes.
Help.
Close now.
Ed froze.
This wasn’t right. None of it.
He suddenly realized that they’d dropped their guard behind them.
He turned.
A growl came from inside the store.
Ed suddenly grasped Jasper by this backpack and shoved him out of the doorway.
Behind him, screams pierced the air.
The carrier charged through the doorway, knocking Ed on his back. A snarling, stinking deadwalker landed on top of him as the bat flew from his hand.
Reflexively, Ed thrust his hands up, pushing the thing away. It gnashed its teeth as it strained to get to his throat.
Ed heard a gunshot, followed by another.
The carrier went limp as it fell on top of him. Warm blood dripped on his cheek.
The weight above him lifted as Jasper rolled the dead carrier off. He extended a hand and lifted Ed to his feet before handing him the baseball bat. “Go!”
The two men ran, leaving the dead carriers and the nightmarish little town behind them.
* * *
Once far enough away from the scene of the attack, Jasper and Ed collapsed while they caught their breath.
“What the hell was that back there?” Jasper exclaimed. “That thing fucking talked!”
“I know. I heard it.”
They panted for a few more moments, weak from exertion. Eventually their breathing became more regular. They sat, waiting for their strength to return.
“Jesus…what was I thinking?” Jasper finally said.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“That was stupid.”
“Yeah, but don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“I could’ve gotten us both killed.”
“But you didn’t. Besides, I should have stopped you.”
“I probably wouldn’t have listened to you.”
“I won’t disagree with you on that one.”
“Well, I’m glad you decided to save my dumb ass back there anyway, otherwise I’d be pushing up daisies right now.”
“So we’re even?”
Jasper smiled. “Not even close, man.”
“I figured as much.”
A minute of silence passed before Jasper spoke again. “This changes everything, you know.”
“Come again?”
“You know what an apex predator is, right?”
“Sure. Top of the food chain. No natural predators.”
“Exactly. Humans have been the apex predator of the planet for thousands of years. Then the virus came along and knocked us off the top of the food chain. The deadheads took the top spot.
I know sometimes I come off as a downer on the human race, but I always figured that once the deadheads died out we’d come back. Because we have something the deadheads don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Language and social skills. Social skills are what allowed us to form tribes. To hunt in packs. Language made us invincible. But talking deadheads changes everything. If these things can plan an ambush like the one we walked into back there then they’re capable of a whole lot more than we thought they were.”
“Apex carriers,” Ed said.
“This could be the human race’s extinction event,” Jasper said. “We could end up wiping ourselves off the face of the planet.”
* * *
Several hours later, they found Danny’s body. Rotting in the sun for days had turned it into something almost unrecognizable. Putrid and bloated, it looked tragically comedic dressed in what was now tight-fitting clothing. Approaching from downwind, Ed and Jasper smelled it well before they saw it.
“A full-grown man,” Jasper said, holding his nose. His voice took on a nasally pitch. He leaned it, inspecting the body more closely. “Looks like a gunshot wound took him out. But it’s definitely not one of your boys. Or your girl, for that matter.”
Ed’s face remained pensive.
“Relax. It’s not them. That’s a good thing, remember?”
“I know.” Ed stared at the body, wanting to pull his eyes away, but unable able to. Flies had already blown the corpse, depositing their eggs inside the soft, rotting tissue. Little white maggots squirmed in the man’s eyes and mouth. He turned away, wanting to vomit. “I’m gonna look around and see what I can see.”
“Good idea.”
A few minutes later, Jasper bent and retrieved an item lying in the weeds a few feet away from the railroad tracks. “Take a look at this. Looks recent.”
Ed stood and stared at the empty can of creamed corn. “It’s theirs.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. We loaded a bunch of it onto the train before the bombs went off. They had to have picked it up from the train wreckage.”
Jasper inspected the empty can. “This is good.”
“But this dead body isn’t.”
“We don’t know anything yet.”
Ed nodded.
“Come on, let’s get a move on. This poor bastard here is reeking to high heaven.”
* * *
They found Max’s body later that day, not yet as bloated, but also rotting in the sun. Between the various injuries, the copious amount of dried blood and the decomposition of the body they couldn’t identify the cause of death, but both men could see it had been violent.
Filled with a sense of dread and foreboding, they silently searched the area for any other bodies. Ed felt almost outside of himself, detached from reality as he combed through weeds, desperately hoping he would not find the bodies of his children.
A tense half-hour later and they came up empty-handed. They regrouped, this time upwind of Max’s rotting corpse.
“At the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to say it again. Not finding bodies is a good thing. It means they’re still out there somewhere.”
Ed nodded.
“You have to focus on that. No conspiracy theories or daydreaming about what might have happened. They’re not here and that means we need to keep moving and keep looking until we find them.”
Ed took a deep breath. In the end, he knew Jasper was right. He turned his back on the body. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Fifty
Before the virus, Jason’s uncle Rollie had been a psychiatrist. He also happened to be a drinker. One summer night in Jason’s parents’ backyard, after an evening of barbecue and a lot of beer, Rollie had talked about one of his patients. A man with no remorse and no conscience. No ability to empathize. Rollie said he kept a loaded gun in his desk drawer during their sessions, just in case.
After spending the last several months with Glenn’s outfit, Jason now knew why.
Rollie told him that night that ten million people in the United States alone simply had no conscience. Jason hadn’t believed him at the time, but now he was convinced Glenn was of those ten million people. He’d heard stories of the horrific things Glenn had done to innocent people in his custody. He’d seen firsthand what Glenn had done to the St. Louis guard.
Although it sickened him, he had to fit in if he wanted to survive. He had to pretend to be one of them.
And so he found himself escorting a freshly washed and tightly bound woman into the clutches of an egomaniacal sociopath.
“I can’t go back in there,” Beth said. “You gotta help me.”
“Shut up,” Jason said. He kept his eyes forward.
“Come on, man. Just let me go. Tell them I escaped. Please.”
“Stop talking.”
“Just let me go. I can’t go in there. I can’t do this. I won’t do this. I can’t go back to that again. Don’t you understand? I CANNOT GO BACK TO THAT AGAIN!”
Jason stopped walking and yanked the girl back by her wrist binding. “Stop yelling or they’ll kill us both.”
“Just let me go, please-”
Jason pushe
d Beth up against the wall of the hallway. He squeezed hard on the girl’s cheeks, focusing her eyes on his. “Listen to me. You gotta shut the fuck up, understand? You gotta keep cool.”
Beth remained silent.
“You need to get your shit together. Whatever happens in there, you forget when you walk out. You weather the storm. You get by. You deal with it.”
“But-”
Jason shook his head. “No buts. You just do it.” Leaning in toward the girl, he lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “It’ll be over soon.”
Beth nodded as a tear streamed down her left cheek.
A wild idea popped into his head. Could he take the girl with him and just walk away? Just walk out when they weren’t looking? He considered Clint’s proposal earlier. They wanted out too.
“You won’t be in here forever.”
“But I will. It’ll be like prison again. I can’t go back to that.”
He shushed her. “I’ll think of something. But for now you have to do whatever you need to do to stay alive.”
“You’ll get me out of here?”
“I’m telling you to go with the flow for now. You need to trust me on this.”
Beth nodded.
Jason wiped a tear from her cheek. “Pull yourself together. Your life depends on it.” He straightened her negligee. Her skin felt soft. “You have a date to keep.”
* * *
Jason led Beth into Glenn’s office, stopping just inside the door.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Glenn said, smiling. He stood tall in front of his desk. “Don’t you look adorable.”
Across the room, tied to the wall, stood Ryan. A rope bound his hands, tied off to a large eyelet mounted in the ceiling.
“Your boyfriend and I were just having a little chat. Unfortunately he’s not much of a conversationalist.”
Jason felt Beth’s muscles tighten as she tried to pull away. He yanked her back and held her tightly in place.
“This dreamboat of yours, what’s his name? Ryan? Right. I was just asking him about that woman and her kids. You know, the ones you two had tied up.”
No one replied.
“Well, suffice to say, you both know who I’m talking about. We all have a little kink in us, so many of us that I hesitate to even call it that. The momma wasn’t half bad, but the kids? That’s sick, brother. Really sick.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Beth said, glaring.
“Sure, sure.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Whatever. What I really want to talk about is why you’ve all ended up right here, right now. Standing in this room with your roles set out before you.
“Tell me, Ryan. Do you know what separates you from that woman and her kids? I’ll tell you. I have a use for them. They’ll carry their own weight. They’re going to learn how to bake bread. How to cook green beans. They have something to offer. But you…what do you have to offer, Ryan?”
Ryan only stared at Glenn.
“Nothing? Nothing at all? Did you even have a job back in the old days?”
Glenn shook his head in disgust. He lit another cigarette from the pack in his desk and took a deep drag. The burning tobacco crackled in the quiet room. He pointed at Beth. “Now you, baby doll. You got something to offer.”
“Fuck you,” Beth spat.
“Feisty. I like that. Hell, I admire that. You whores act like it’s beneath you, but it’s honest work. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
“I’m not a whore.”
“Fine. Sex worker, then. Whatever. Point being, is that at the end of the day, you’ll contribute more to the world than your asshole boyfriend ever will.”
“Leave him alone!”
Glenn chuckled. He blew a smoke ring, waving it away with his hand. “You know what I did before all this? Corrections. Spent years beating down thugs like your boyfriend in prison. But the warden, he was a pussy. I should have been running the place.
“Then the virus came along and killed damn near everybody, including the warden. But not me. Not only did I not die, I thrived in spite of it all.
“Do you know why I thrived? Because this is my world. I own it. I’m the fucking warden here. And you are a part of my world only because I allow you to be. Understand this and you’ll understand your place.”
Glenn crushed the cigarette out. “Ryan, I want to be sure you understand the way things work around here, so let’s start with lesson one. You have no possessions unless I allow them. Case in point: your girl over there. She’s not your girl anymore. Now she belongs to me.”
Ryan twitched, yanking on the ropes tethering him to the eyelet above. He mumbled as his eyes glazed.
The sight chilled Jason.
“Bring me my girl, soldier.”
Beth resisted. “No, no, no,” she repeated, shaking her head.
“Move it,” Jason said as he pulled Beth toward Glenn.
Once within reach, Glenn grasped Beth’s bound wrists and dragged her toward him, spinning her back toward him and wrapping her up in a headlock.
Beside him Ryan thrashed against his ropes, moaning loudly.
“Go stand by the door,” Glenn said to Jason.
“You don’t want me to leave, sir?”
“If I wanted you to leave, I’d have told you to leave.”
“Yes, sir.” Jason stood by the door as instructed.
With unexpected swiftness, Glenn spun with Beth in a half-circle, bending her over the desk. He pushed her face down against the desk’s hard surface, turning her head toward Ryan.
The two locked eyes.
Ryan groaned louder and began talking rapidly to himself.
“You see this, you prick! She’s mine! My little whore!”
Jason’s muscles tightened, but he forced himself to stay put by the door.
“Hold still, whore!” Glenn yelled. He tore at Beth’s panties with his free hand. She flailed, fighting against Glenn’s grip.
“I said hold still!”
Beth squirmed, harder this time.
Glenn’s grip loosened.
Beth slammed an elbow into Glenn’s ribs. He recoiled. Groaned. His grip loosened further.
She threw another elbow into Glenn’s nose. He staggered back a step, his hand to his face.
Eyes wild, Glenn drew back a fist and released. The blow connected with a dull thud against the back of Beth’s head. She dropped hard back onto the desk.
Ryan thrashed wildly against the rope, screaming.
Jason stood, horrified, unable to look away.
Grasping a handful of Beth’s hair, Glenn lifted Beth’s head high before driving it down face first on the hardwood desk.
Blood splattered.
“You fuck with me? I’m gonna fuck you back!” Lifting her head again, Glenn slammed Beth’s face against the desktop harder.
Now blood literally poured from her nose.
Ryan’s screaming filled the room.
“You like that, whore?” With the handful of Beth’s hair still firmly in his hand, Glenn lifted Beth’s limp head and brought it down a third time.
Jason thought he heard bones crack.
Ryan wailed, the rope burning bloody bracelets into his wrists.
Glenn tossed Beth violently to the floor. She hit hard, her skull thudding against the tile with a sickening thud. She lay on her back, blood covering her face like a mask. She slowly opened her mouth; only a wet gurgle escaped.
Breathing hard, Glenn wiped his nose with his sleeve. It came back red.
Teeth clenched, Glenn lifted his boot.
Ryan’s screaming, incessant now, overtook the room.
Jason stood, frozen.
Glenn dropped the boot heel on Beth’s face. Her head rolled to the side as blood poured from her decimated nose.
Ryan’s screams turned to sobbing.
Another drop of the boot.
And another.
Beth’s face became a demolished mess of bloody tissue.<
br />
Panting, Glenn stopped. He ran his hand through his hair. He locked wild eyes on Jason.
The eyes of a madman.
“Take that asshole back to his cell!” Glenn bellowed.
Jason could only nod, unable to move.
“Now!”
By sheer force Jason propelled himself forward. The world around him seemed very far away. As if watching himself from afar, Jason unhooked Ryan from the ceiling before leading him past the bloody mess that had been his girlfriend.
Glenn straightened his hair and uniform. “When you come back I want this mess cleaned up!”
By the time they passed through the doorway Jason was virtually carrying Ryan.
* * *
Clint lay awake in his bed, contemplating the demise of the plan.
The new guy, Porter, had concocted a hell of a scheme. One that might actually work. But without Clint’s inside man, the plan was a bust.
Before the virus, Clint had solved problems for a living. But this problem wasn’t something he could solve with logic alone. He needed luck and not a trivial amount of persuasion. All the skills of a salesman, not a computer programmer.
A knock sounded at the door.
Clint glanced outside. Darkness covered the land outside, lessened only by the moon overhead. Who would be knocking so late?
Clint walked to the door. Put an ear to it.
Another knock caused him to jump.
“Clint!” A whisper from the other side.
“Jay?”
A pause. Clint almost asked if he was still there. Then he heard the two words he’d been dying to hear.
“I’m in.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Ed hadn’t expected a parade or a marching band to be waiting for them when they arrived in Kansas City, but he surely hadn’t expected it to be completely empty.
After entering the Amtrak station south of downtown near dusk, they found forklift trucks sitting idle beside boxes never shipped to St. Louis. Cots with slept in blankets lined a section of the station floor. Cups with standing water littered the table tops.
“Why is nobody here?” Jasper asked. His voice lightly echoed throughout the station.
“I don’t know,” Ed replied. “Somebody should be here.”
“Is this place HQ?”
“No. The headquarters are set up in an old college residence hall, south of here. But this is where they shipped everything from. They truck it to and from the school.”
Badlands Trilogy (Book 2): Beyond the Badlands Page 21