We were locked inside the large open room that was lined with the sections of landscape timber walls. If this were Rome instead of Johnson City, we would be standing smack dab in the middle of the Coliseum.
“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” I kept telling myself. Hadn’t we learned that nobody could be trusted?
“We’re caught.” I said.
“Yup.” Jane said.
“We’re screwed?” I asked.
“Yup.” Jane answered again.
“Set up, you think?” I asked.
“Yup.” Jane said.
I turned to look at Jane. “Can you say anything else other than yup?”
“Yup.” Jane said.
“And what would that be?” I asked.
Jane nodded towards the other end of the room as Chester ducked under the raising wall. As soon as he was through, the wall lowered back down.
“Are your guns loaded?” Jane asked.
THEN
DAY 43 OF THE INFECTION
ONE
As I have stated earlier, I don’t sleep much at night. I used to get up and go sit with whoever was pulling night watch. I thought it would help to keep them awake and also it meant that I wouldn’t have to just lay there, in my bed, bored out of my mind. Eventually, however, I started getting questions that I didn’t want to answer. “You’re here all night and up all day, when do you sleep?” “Do you sleep?” “Is there something wrong? Is there something troubling you?” And my all-time favorite, “Do you need to talk about it?”
Do I need to talk about it? Really? Well, if you have to know, then I guess the answer is yes. Yes, I need to talk about it, but there is a problem with that option. You see the person I need to talk to is currently lying dead on the interstate with his throat ripped out. Can you solve that problem for me?
I made the decision to not come out at night anymore. I opted to just lay in my tent bored all night, every night. But back on day forty-three when we first saw the bikers I was still sitting with the night guards. That night it was Jack. He and I talked many nights away during that golden period of my insomnia. This night as I made my way from my tent to the look out post, I could see that Jack was watching something in the direction of the bridge with his night vision goggles. I sat down, and he took a moment to give me a nod.
“Check it out. There’s a guy on the bridge talking to a man on a Harley.”
I picked up one of the other pairs of night vision goggles and gave the bridge a look. The men were just a few feet apart. One was sitting astride a big metal behemoth of a bike. The man without the motorcycle was talking animatedly. Reading his body language, it seemed that there was a fight going on. This went on for a few more minutes, then the bikeless man jumped and looked around as the sound of other bikes began to filter into the area. I looked over to Jack and he looked to me.
“That guy better run.” I said.
“To late for that. He better attack and steal the other guy’s bike.”
I put my goggles back on and could see that the bikeless man was looking around for the motorcycles he could hear getting closer. The man still sitting on his bike had his hands up in the air in the universal gesture of “Hey man, it’s no big. Nothing to worry about.” I assume he was trying to sell the story that the other bikers were coming to have a small picnic as the sun came up, but the other guy was not buying it. He was looking more and more on edge as each second passed. Eventually I saw four headlights sweep into the area and stop just short of the first biker. These four new guys walked over the first guy and slowly circled around him, cutting off any chance he had to flee.
“All over now.” Jack said.
“Wonder what he did.”
“Doesn’t matter, he’s as good as dead.”
The first guy threw a punch at the biker directly in front of him and the others fell upon him like it was feeding time at the zoo. In a matter of minutes, it was over. The original biker finally got off his Harley and began to pull ropes out of some storage thing he had on his bike.
“What the hell?” I asked. Jack was quiet for a minute, before saying, “maybe they’re going to lynch him.” That was what I had been thinking as well, but it wasn’t his neck that the ropes were tied to, it was his arms. The other ends of the ropes were tied to two of the light poles that bracket the bridge. This left the man hanging about five to six feet in the air across the interstate.
“What are they going to do? Use him as target practice?” I asked.
Jack was quiet.
“Jack?”
“I think they are planning something much worse than target practice.”
The Harley man walked over to look at his fresh made piñata. I saw the gleam of metal as the Harley man drew out a knife and slashed across the hanging man’s stomach. Blood exploded from the body and something chunky fell out of him. The five bikers all got back on their rides and left the bridge. They just went far enough to safely watch the show.
“We have to go do something?”
“What do you suggest we do?” Jack asked.
“What’s going on?” Amanda said from behind us.
“We’ve got to go save him.”
“Charlie, we don’t even know this man. Who’s to say he hasn’t killed somebody and is now paying for that crime?”
“Who?” Amanda asked.
“Amanda and Jane could take care of those five bikers and we could go untie that guy before the dead eat him up.”
“Charlie, think. Even if we could kill the bikers and cut the man down we couldn’t save him. Not in this day and age. That belly wound they gave him was the end. There is no coming back from that.”
“Would somebody please tell me what is going on.” Amanda said. You could hear that her patience was just about used up and the next time she asked it would be accompanied by some form of physical trauma. I handed her a pair of night vision goggles and just said, “The bridge.”
Looking back through my goggles I could see that the smell of the man’s insides was beginning to grow him a rather large following. They were shambling down both sides of the bridge towards the hanging man filling the empty night with their low moans. The man was kicking and thrashing around trying to pull himself free of the ropes but all it was doing was slinging more of his insides onto the bridge below and whipping the early bird zombies into a frenzy as they attempted to gnaw through his boots and pants. It didn’t take long for one to hit pay dirt. The teeth sank in the man’s leg and the scream that he bellowed had everything you’d expect it to have living inside of it. The rage of his helplessness, the fury of his rage for being tied up and left like this, the desolation of knowing he was as good as dead, and the mourning of all of his now dead dreams. The scream rolled its way into the night and washed up onto the residents of Wal-Mart like a red tide in a beach town. I lowered my head and sat my goggles down.
“Somehow I find it hard to believe that he was a killer.” I said.
“Of course, you do. You’ve got a bit too much Sass in you. That man could have done anything. We can’t save them all Charlie.” Jack said.
Man, how did those words sting. I remember when this first happened getting nose to nose with Sass and saying loudly, “We. Can’t. Save. Them. All.”
“You’re wrong. I don’t have too much Sass in me. It’s not that I see good or bad in that man. I see what’s being done to him. Evil is evil whether the people doing it, and the reasons its happening, are good or not. And what’s happening down on that bridge right now is evil any way you look at it.”
“You have a point, but it would not be smart for us to draw attention to ourselves trying to save a man whose fate we can’t change.” Amanda said, setting her goggles down as well.
“What’s going on with all the yelling?” Sass asked from behind us.
“Bikers strung a guy up to the bridge, now zombies are eating him.” I said flatly and handed Sass a pair of goggles.
“Whoa!” Sass said. “We just let this
happen?”
Jack laughed, “Do you two think we are the new Johnson City Police Department?”
Sass gave Jack a look then put the goggles back to his face.
“This is bad.” Sass said.
“It’ll be worse if they see us up here.” I said.
“On that point I agree with you.” Amanda said still watching the bridge.
“Bikers are coming back.” Jack said. I put my goggles back to my eyes and saw the five bikers killing the zombies that were on the bridge. The man hanging by ropes was no longer being eaten but the damage was done. He was already puking blood and his skin was quickly taking on a yellow tinge.
“He’ll be dead by the time they take him down.” I said.
“At least it will be over.” Sass said.
The bikers took the two ropes that were knotted to the man’s arms and tied them off to two of the motorcycles. Two more ropes were produced, and the man’s legs were tied to two of the other bikes.
“No.” Sass said in a whisper.
“Guys, please. Don’t let them do this.” I said looking to Amanda and Jack. They both never took the night vision goggles from their face.
“I will not risk exposing us in order to keep a corpse from being dismembered.” Jack said. The words were cold. I had no doubt what it would have sounded like had Jack ordered me to defend a bridge to the last man after hearing this voice.
“He’s right Charlie. If we can just sit tight hopefully they will finish and their insanity will go back to where ever they came from.” Amanda said. At least her voice had a hint of compassion in it. I heard the motorcycles fire up. They revved higher and higher. I refused to look. I would not watch this, but I could imagine the smoke pouring off the motorcycles rear tires. Then the brakes were released and the man who we thought to be dead let out a scream that first stopped then shattered time. In that moment, deep in my heart, I hated Jack. I hated Amanda. And, truth be told, I hated myself. We did nothing to stop this. This man, whatever he did or didn’t do, did not deserve this. I couldn’t imagine the pain that quite literally ripped through him at the end. The motorcycles shut off again and the early morning hours seemed much too quiet. I tried not to pick my goggles back up, but it was a fight I lost. As I looked at the bridge again I saw the bikers untying the ripped off limbs. They were laughing as they carried them towards the edge of the bridge. The two that were carrying the arms had a short mock sword fight before throwing the arms over the side and down to the wreckage that lay beneath the over pass. The other two lobbed the legs over as well and they all stood watching them fall to the ground below. The five men walked back over and looked down, I am guessing at the remains of the man they had tortured, infected and dismembered. They were laughing again. After a few minutes of discussion, the five men got back onto their bikes are roared off towards Kingsport.
“Do you think they noticed us up here?” Sass asked.
“I don’t think so. But, just in case, I think we should concentrate on adding a more aggressive layer of defensive measures around the building today.” Jack said.
“Just in case?” I asked.
“Remember rule number one of the survival guide Charlie. Live life like a Boy Scout.” Jack said.
“Yeah…” said Sass, “…a Boy Scout with a bazooka.”
TWO
We didn’t bother going back to bed. By the time the show ended, and the bikers left, sunrise was just over an hour away. It was decided to start working on our defenses as soon as Jane was awake. It wasn’t a long wait. Within thirty minutes Jane was sitting beside me with his bunny slippers on listening as Jack recapped the evening’s events.
“Damn. That’s hardcore. I was in a gang for years and never saw anything like that.” Jane said.
“There were cops to consider back then.” Sass said.
“We weren’t afraid of cops.” Jane answered.
“But you were afraid of jail.” I said with a smile. Jane gave me a look before answering. He held his thumb and pointer finger close together.
“We were scared of jail just a little bit. But still, as rough as my guys were, we would have never done anything like that.”
“The question isn’t what you would have done. The question is, what can we do to keep their violence from spreading to us.” Amanda said.
Amanda did not like Jane. She was the alpha dog of this group, at least until Jane showed up. Now there were two alphas. I think the fact that he didn’t seem to care who was top dog drove her more nuts than the fact that he was every bit as deadly as she was.
“Well, there are a lot of cars out there in the parking lot.” Jane said.
“And?” Said Sass.
“A lot of cars mean a lot of gas tanks. Gas tanks go boom, people get hurt. Seems simple enough. You ask me what we can do, we can build ourselves a kill zone. That good enough?”
Amanda glared at Jane, “It’s a good start. We will need more.”
I have no clue what more Amanda wanted because I spent most of that day doing nothing but pushing cars around Wal-Mart’s parking lot. Sass and I were the ones creating Jane’s kill zone while the man himself made the bombs. I am not an explosives expert; I don’t understand how Jane does what he does. However, I will be the first man to stand up and tell you that explosives are scary. You marry the explosives with Jane’s ability to manipulate that volatile medium and its Freddy Krueger scary. By the time the sun went down two things were certain. I was dead on my feet and our three military peeps were feeling good about us going up against some sadistic bikers.
Personally, I hoped I would never see those five men again, but fate and I, we have an arrangement. If she ever gets a chance to screw me over, she takes it.
THREE
We didn’t go to bed that night. Instead we gathered at the wall over looking the interstate and waited for the bikers to return. We listened for the thrumming of the motorcycle engines and counted the minutes and seconds as the moon slowly slid its way across the sky and the wee hours began to disappear into the grey haze of dawn.
As the grey settled in to stay and the sun toyed with the horizon I could just make out the metallic rumble of bikes. In perfect sync we all reached for a pair of goggles. It took a few minutes before the first one rolled into view. It was the same five as the day before. They roared onto the bridge and parked almost exactly where they were the previous day. The Harley Davidson man reached into his saddle bags but this time instead of rope he removed a six pack of bottled beer. The five men walked over to where their victim lay and began to point and laugh. Harley Davidson opened up all six of the beers passing them around and sitting the sixth one down onto the bridge, I am guessing beside the new born zombie. The five of them stood around the dead man talking and laughing while they drank their beer. As each one finished they threw the bottle onto the road. We could hear the glass shattering from where we sat.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“It’s a wake.” Jane said.
“They’re having a wake for a guy they killed?” Sass asked.
“This is not a good thing.” Jane said and then got quiet.
As the last man finished his beer all five men unzipped and began to piss on the zombie laying before them. After they finished giving things a healthy shake they all zipped up, got back on their bikes, and rode away towards Kingsport.
“I really hope they didn’t notice us up here.” I said.
“With all these tents, how could they miss us?” Jane said.
“We should scout out where they’re coming from. We need information. How many are there? How well armed are they? How far away are they?” I said.
“Whoa, Charlie.” Jack said. “You’re getting way ahead of the situation at hand.”
I looked at Jack with contempt. “To win, know your enemy and know yourself.” I said. Jack frowned at me. “I knew I should have never taught you Sun Tzu. The thought is a valid one, however this situation is vastly different. You are suggesting that we d
o something which is reckless, and you want it to be decided without any deliberation and forethought. Mister Tzu preaches strongly against both of those actions.”
“It is not reckless. I have thought about this since last night. We are in the dark in this situation. We can’t adequately prepare for the coming battle because we have no clue how large of a force we need to be preparing for.”
“Charlie, we don’t even know if there is going to be a coming battle or not.” Jack said.
“I am pretty sure there will be.” Jane said.
“Agreed.” Amanda said.
“Jack, you don’t want to face this, but you have to. We have it good up here. We have far better than ninety percent of the people out there in the world. People are going to see what we have, and they are going to want it. Now these bikers are guys who are used to getting what they want. Whether it is through intimidation or force they are used to getting their way. If they saw us, and it will be a miracle of they didn’t, they are going to want our resources if nothing else. Charlie is right. We need to know.” Jane said.
“Can you even track them back to where ever they came from?” Sass asked.
“Yes. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick, but it can be done.” Amanda said. Jane nodded his head. “And that brings up another sticky point. It should be Amanda and I that go, and we should go loaded for bear. However, with us gone, your defenses will be dramatically affected. We are your only two snipers. I am your explosives expert. I don’t mean to sound full of myself, but with both of us gone, if those bikers show up things will proceed much differently than if we were here.”
“So, basically what you’re saying Jane, is we need to decide if the information we could get would be worth weakening our defensive capabilities.” Jack said.
Jane stood and stretched, grimacing as his back cracked a few times. “Yup, that’s the question of the morning. Should we stay, or should we go?”
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