And even though sooner or later we were going to run out of Dinty Moore cans of mystery meat to scavenge, even after going house to house, we still had to devote at least one full raid each week to drawing down the stock of prepackaged junk leftover from the old world. So there we were, I think it was in a Handy Pantry, and to be quite honest we let our guard down, seeing as how we didn’t run into any Zekes on the way in, and the advance team had swept the store, so I let people goof off a little, strolling up and down the aisles with the stray shopping carts that were still around, acting as if we were just living like we used to, taking this incredible abundance for granted, not knowing where it came from or how it was going to get replenished, because gosh darn it weren’t we just so busy with the useless errands and problems that used to occupy our days.
Well, the store had been cleaned out sporadically by other scavengers, mostly in the early days before the lucky survivors got culled or took off for more isolated regions, and the stuff on the shelves was knocked around, and of course there was no lighting, so there was lots of shadows to hide trouble.
It was Roy that she got, and we knew It right away because he was strolling up and down the aisles, calling out the prices and telling us how much cheaper he could have gotten it for us wholesale and, ‘Hey Chief, would you like to fill out a credit app so we can get your very first order on the way?’
There was a scattering of boxes, stuff falling to the floor, that we only heard after he got bit, in that weird way that the mind puts together information out of sequence.
“Oh shit, I’m done,” he said, like a real pro. “Chief, you gotta come and kill this Zeke and say goodbye to Old Roy your friend foodservice rep.” Why he didn’t kill her right away is a mystery that none of us, including him, will ever be able to answer.
Right after it happened, we heard it scurrying away, making grovel grovel macking noises like it was chewing on the piece of Roy she took off of him. When I came around the corner, pistol up but tight to my body, I saw this little Zeke all curled up on herself and even though I had one eye on Roy to make sure he hadn’t gone full blown on me, I realized something was wrong.
Because Zeke really just couldn’t eat just one.
“Roy?”
“She — it — bit me on the leg, chief, ankle to be precise and it hurts like a mother.”
“But you’re not doing the hippie hippie shake are you?”
“No sir, but —”
“And she moved away from you after the first attack?”
“That’s right, maybe cause she’s small?”
“Nah, we seen pintsize killing machines before my friend.”
“You don’t think?”
I didn’t answer, but lowered my weapon and moved closer to the girl, taking my flashlight out of the belt loop and playing the beam on the floor in front of the mess of hair where I figured her eyes would be hidden.
“Hey there, little one, wanna play with the flashlight,” I said, keeping the beam playing on the tiles, wondering for a second if she had ever seen a real circus or even a play where they used to get the crowd oohing and aahing in anticipation of the main event.
“Pway,” she said, “wanna pway wit Wachel.” Her voice was cracked, as if she hadn’t used it in months, at least not in speaking to a real other person, much less an adult, because it sounded like her mind had retreated back from the five or six years old I figured she had to be, from her length.
“Rachel. I’m Zach. I’m here to take you home.”
“Howme?” Like the concept, of ever being safe, was lost in her memory.
“Roy, how you doing over there?” MY eyes were off him, and I realized, so had my attention and that was the first time I could remember being careless in the year or so since Zeke had come to town.
“I was thinking about heading over to the patent medicine aisle and checking on the bacitracin supply,” he paused. “Unless you think she’s a carrier as opposed to a full-blown Zeke.”
“Shit, that’s a scary thought. Seeing as how you just dodged the Z-bullet train express, you might want to see a therapist about your catastrophic mindset.”
“I’m good with the bacitracin if you are.”
“Go ahead,” with my attention away from her, the girl was looking up at me from behind a rat’s nest of hair, and I played the beam of light from her chest, hands and the floor so that she played with it, like a puppy might. “Rachel, we really ought to be getting you home now,” I said, using the universal kind voice for children I had even forgotten I’d ever possessed.
”’kay,” she said, and inched toward me along the floor.
“No knowing whether she could even walk, I bent down to her and said, “Hey, I’m gonna’ carry you … but no biting okay?”
”’kay.”
Chapter 6
I had saved plenty of people’s lives since Z-day, plenty of them just inches away from being eaten alive, but none of them felt like they’d been rescued from such distant odds. Chances were we’d never get the full story from Rachel herself. I checked her eyes as I carried her to my Expo, and they were hazel, not the blood black of a zombie, but I also knew that look in them from my previous life, and she had been through a lot of trauma, most of which, mercifully or not, kids never directly remember.
After putting her in the front seat and belting her in, I saw most of the crew standing around, staring. “Let’s go people — snap out of it! Nobody’s gonna’ want to admit to fucking up a miracle, so get your goggles back on and keep ‘em open until were back at the compound. Zeke don’t believe in Hallmark Cards.”
Over the walkie, I told Roy to go to a private channel. “Roy, how many zip codes did you cover in your previous stint of employment?”
“42.”
“I take it you’re still with us in the realm of the human, then?”
“Yeah, she’s no carrier.”
“That’s a little morbid, dude.”
“Let me be the first to talk to you after you’re bit by a feral child.”
“Fair enough.”
“Uh-hunh. And Zach — remember that asshole mathematician from the first Jurassic Park movie — the guy that used to talk about probability and when shit hits fandom you don’t know how weird it’s going to get?”
“Yeah, Jeff Goldblum, made for the part.”
“Uh-hunh. As an asshole, probably. My point is, I just don’t think Zeke is necessarily going to be the end of our troubles in this life.”
“Point taken, friend. And you’re probably right. But can you quit pissing in my cheerios, we got a righteous reason to celebrate today. But we should talk about what you’re thinking. Later on, though.”
“Check.”
Chapter 7
I was about to radio in the news of our unexpected find, when Peters came on air, which was sign enough there was trouble.
“Carter, we got a Zeke formation headed our way, approaching the north perimeter. Advise using southern entrance, we’ll have people there for you to cross.”
“How many?”
“Looks to be about a couple dozen, but that’s not the real problem.”
“Whad’ya got Ralph.”
“They’re being pushed in our direction by unknown aircraft.”
“Pushed?”
“Herded’s more like it. If it wasn’t so damned strange I might be scared.”
“Gotta’ be a point to it,” I said.
“And more of it where that came from, so for now I’m voting against shooting them down.”
“Copy that.”
“We were moving fast on the road, and were inside the southern gate in time to see the Zeke herding helicopter doing its thing. Since this scraggly bunch weren’t heading our way because they had caught wind of us, the chopper alternated between getting behind the crew of zombies and using the force of its engine to push them forward, and then jumping up and moving to the left or right to keep them in a tight group. Finally, one of the Zekes caught wind of whatever it
is that says human to them, and then they started at us on the run, like they always do, only this time it was kind of comical the way they had to get coaxed into it, so that it looked like a zombie special Olympics race, where every retard gets a medal, just for trying.
At this point Peters had one solid string of defense laid down around the entire outer perimeter he had planned, enough to stop some Zekes, and slow down the rest so that shooters could pick them off as they impaled themselves on the hooks and barbs he had welded together. The plan was to build several layers of the barrier, atop and then behind the first layer, but this was going to be a good tactical test.
Except for what the helicopter did next. As the Zekes came within a hundred yards of the barrier, the chopper shot toward us, climbing along the way, then pivoted to face the Zeke attack — and then opened fire with whatever crazy ass Gatling gun those things had before the Pentagon shut down for good, and put thousands of rounds into the Zekes, turning them into shop meat and, finally shutting down their brains as well. When the guns stopped spewing, there was nothing but a pile of road kill sizzling in the desert.
“Ralph, this is Carter, come back,” I said into the walkie.
“Yuh?”
“Your scout see anything further out — Zeke or otherwise?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Alright, copy you loud and clear,” I said, acknowledging what he hadn’t said. There was more of where this helicopter came from, which meant we should give the people landing inside the perimeter a cordial a welcome as you had to when superior firepower made an appearance in your war zone.
But Peters and I had privately worked out an arrangement. Since he was the chief of the tribe, and technically I was still a hired hand, I could be the wild card whenever a situation arose and I figured this was it.
The guy walking up to me was actually wearing a flight suit and aviator glasses, and just the way he was wearing them, like he had picked up a macho macho man outfit at the supply shed for a day out on the town told me most of what I needed to know about him. The technical term for guys like him is, was and always will be: douche bag.
I ignored the salute he fired off, because it was about as authentic as his uniform.
“You mind telling me what that was supposed to prove, asshole?”
His smile faded.
“When we see settlements like this sprout up, we like to pay them a visit and show them the United States Government is still a functioning entity.”
The enormity of what he was saying actually left me speechless.
“Are you saying, you motherfucker, that in the aftermath of humanity getting wiped within an inch from the ledge of existence that you scumbags still have space in your little fucking bureaucratic brains for a motherfucking turf war?”
I didn’t realize it at first, because the sounds of the chopper’s engine and rotors was still winding down, but I was screaming at this guy — and the hand that clamped down on my wrist told me I was reaching for my sidearm.
A sidelong glance revealed a guy in a more suitably beat up flight suit with sergeant stripes was standing next to me, which said two things. First, the guy was good enough to get to me without me seeing him, and second, that his boss was enough of an asshole that it was part of his job to keep people like me from killing him. So we immediately had the understanding of mutual respect that only middle managers in police and military hierarchies ever really share — that is, if we killed all the assholes we had to take orders from, then we’d be left in charge and would then become similar order giving assholes that our subordinates would have to kill and the process would never end until the fucking civilians were in control and since we all hate civilians, middle managers such as sergeants and street cops generally refrain from killing their asshole superior officers.
At this point, Peters pulled up in his quad with the tricked out Rolls-Royce grill, driven by his son Pete and her surprised me by looking every inch the regional governor.
“Carter, thanks for welcoming our guest to the largest colony of surviving human beings in the greater Albuquerque area.” He strode over to the bureaucrat with his hand out. “Ralph Peters, at your service.”
“James Breem, Refugee Coordinator for the Western Region of the United States of America,” he said, returning the handshake. I could swear the guy barely restrained himself from clicking his heels together.
Roy had been hanging back, mostly because he had collected Rachel out of the Expo, and when Peters saw her, I realized the power of what we had going here, and it made the negotiations go a lot smoother.
Chapter 8
The government man only confirmed what we already knew. Zeke had wiped out 99-plus percent of the population, most of the survivors were on the run or in hiding, and the only known cure was to kill ‘em all. Ralph’s burgeoning village was one of about twenty that had reached this size in this section of what used to be the United States, and we faced the same challenges everyone else did — keeping Zeke out and putting him down, and then feeding and watering the survivors.
We also learned the Feds, along with governments around the world, had taken to bombing its own cities, at first in an attempt to contain Zeke, but then to eliminate some of his raw numbers, and finally, though Breem didn’t go so far, they just kept dropping bombs because it was the only thing they knew how to do, the way a kid throws a chessboard when he realizes he’s been so easily beat.
“No nukes?” Jimmy asked. We were in Ralph’s council chambers, and Roy was hanging back, bouncing Rachel up and down on the knee of the leg she hadn’t bit. They were cleaning her up a little bit at a time, wiping her down with washcloths and even trimming her hair back once she got over her fear that the scissors were not the same as Zeke’s incisors. It probably would have been better to take her away and take care of her in private, but none of us wanted her out of our sight. She was giving us the courage we needed to handle what Breem the douche bag was about to ask of us.
“I’m sure you have the same question we all do,” Breem said, finally getting to it.
My arms were folded, but I was taking my cue from the tech sergeant, whose name was Rice, and was wearing a look that said, ‘this sucks, but it’s the kind of suckitude that we’re paid to take care of.’
“Right,” I said. “Where is the Zeke and two hundred and ninety nine million of his closest friends.
“Precisely,” Breem said. “As amazing as your story is — and you and the other settlements are all made out of mostly extraordinary human beings — the fact is we shouldn’t be here at all.”
“There’s not enough bullets or bombs to wipe them all out,” Jimmy said. “Or bolts.”
“Yes, and we don’t have the answer — we can see pockets of Zombies with our remaining satellite and aviation capabilities, but the numbers don’t add up, taking into account probable destruction and strength estimates.”
“You can’t find them?” I said.
“They don’t give of body heat like people, so we can only eyeball the ones we can visibly see, and …”
“You’re saying that Zeke goes dormant,” I said.
“In the absence of food supply or organized human activity, yes.” Breem said.
“Let me guess — you don’t figure Zeke dies of hunger,” Jimmy said.
“There’s no indication the infected actually need food to survive, nor do their bodies appear to deteriorate beyond what the virus initially robs from them.”
“So this is just beginning,” Jimmy said.
Breem was nodding, while Sgt. Rice looked like he was waiting for the big finale.
“In the absence of organized human activity,” I repeated Breem’s words back to him and he looked at me like a hopeful third grade teacher. “That implies strategy.”
Everyone waited for Breem to fill in the blank.
“We — we don’t know what it implies, and it could be our bias, that by looking at Zeke doing nothing, there must be a grand plan, but it’s also pos
sible that simply because they can’t strategize, and thus go marching for living people to take down, they go dormant.”
“But there is something weird about Zeke wiping out most of us and then just standing down.”
“It looks like there’s something to it, but we don’t understand it.”
“And you want us to find out for you,” I said.
Finally, Rice smiled.
Breem cleared his throat. “Well, even though the government is still functioning, we have limits as to what we can accomplish. The satellites for one, while still functioning, are only god to us as long as the earthbound computers and communication are still operational. And then there’s the question of aviation fuel …”
Zach Carter, Zombie Killer Page 3