“Oh,” Art said as he mentally tried to feel his legs, not realizing that the pain meds blocked that kind of focused scrutiny.
“Will I ever walk again?” he asked, a slight quiver in his voice.
“Hell, yes; probably in the next few days even,” Julie said with a slight smile.
“Hop,” Danny said.
“Danny!” Krissy and Julie said in unity.
“What did you say, Danny?” Benson asked.
Danny looked as if he wanted to squirm right out of his own skin, but his expression changed to one of defiance before he spoke.
“Hop. You only have one leg now, Daddy, so all you can do is hop,” Danny said casually as the oxygen for the rest of them was sucked out of the room.
Benson’s hand started to shake slightly, but he stayed composed. The truth was that he didn’t really know how to react to such news.
“Danny, would you please go with Julie and find me a cold Coke?”
“Sure, Daddy,” Danny said.
Julie came around and took his hand, managing to give Benson a reassuring smile as she left. Krissy waited until they were out the door before she fell bawling into her dad’s arms.
“I tried to stop them, Daddy, I really did, but they said there was no other way.”
“I know, baby, it’s not your fault. We’ll get through this, okay? We’ll be fine.” Benson placated his daughter and prayed for truth in his words, while privately knowing his time as leader was done and his chance of survival and a future in the z-poc was almost non existent.
*
Knowing that the doctor would reveal himself, Dean simply watched and waited. He saw where he went to hide out for the night and could tell by the collection of dead in the street out front that he was probably still there. Dean waited in the shadows, cracking some pistachios as he watched and listened.
He had become practically invisible to the dead once he had coated his long coat with gore. Unless they heard him or were close enough to smell him beneath the coat, he seemed to be pretty safe. The eyesight of the zombies had diminished over the last several days to the point where they were only seeing motion, unable to distinguish things from shadows. The way they drifted told Dean that they may feel his warmth as they gravitated toward him, but slow and cautious movement allowed him to drift to another shadow, his presence instantly missed by the wandering dead. During the heat of the day, he could walk virtually free of harassment by the undead.
His fascination with the dead came from the way they had changed. They began as an unstoppable horde that threatened his very existence, but now they were going the opposite direction. They were devolving; he could see it. It began with their loss of eyesight then their joints stiffening, and then the breaking down of their flesh as the muscles atrophied. Dean wasn’t a doctor, but he trusted his eyes and what his eyes told him was hopeful for the future—very hopeful.
A flash in the distance pulled his attention back to the situation at hand. It was only a quick spot of color in his peripheral vision, but the action was deliberate and the colors matched his memory. He slowly moved out from the shadows, knowing that being covered in gore and within a group of undead would shield him from view.
It was only a few blocks before he realized that the doctor had a definite destination. He couldn’t guess where, what, or who was next on the creepy little fucker’s agenda, but Dean was going to find out.
He watched as Web checked his surroundings carefully before he snuck out into the open and quickly crossed a large plaza, hunched over and holding his elbow. Dean remembered the top of Shaaka hitting the doctor in the elbow and forcing him to drop the revolver. The impact could surely have been hard enough to break something. Web hardly slowed for a quick glance behind him before he sprinted down the roadway.
Dean crossed behind the good doctor, knowing that his presence was still unknown to Web. This was all a part of allowing his arrogance to work in Dean’s favor. He let Web think he had lost Dean last night, even though Dean knew that the doctor needed sleep as much as Dean himself did. Up early, he was in position to make the streets look as if no living being could be present. His coat smeared with zombie guts and the shadows of an early morning sun were his prime weapons that morning. He knew Web had more to show the world, and it was up to Dean to find out how much, where, and when.
Chapter 7
Lucky day
“Consider this your lucky day, Leon,” Lisa said as she saw the last of the refugees loaded up on transports, not having a clue if any of them belonged to Skit.
Skit had been rushed to a triage station, his wound severe but not quite life threatening. Lisa felt guilty that she couldn’t be with him, but she had other duties that needed her focus. Weapons were picked up and carted back to Mustafa’s crew so he could determine if the people from the housing complex were safe to put back in action. It was becoming difficult to get the pockets of survivors out of a certain mindset. They had buckled down and were determined to fight until the end. It was up to Mustafa’s crew to get them thinking about the greater good. There was no survival right now for the lonely; sign up or die were the only options.
“Where are you taking me?” Leon asked Lisa.
“I have been instructed to hang on to you until a couple guards can collect you to be brought back to the compound. If it was only one day earlier, we would have dealt with the situation permanently, but the council wants me to ease off, so it’s now your lucky day.”
“What the hell were you doing before?”
“You don’t want to know that, Leon. Keep moving toward that Chrysler over there.”
“Hey, don’t be mad at me because you got guard duty.”
“I don’t have guard duty, Leon. He has guard duty and he is going to hover right over your shoulder while you drive,” she said, nodding her head at Tonka.
“Drive? I’m not driving myself to jail; that would be crazy.”
“If you don’t drive then I have to shoot you in the knee so you can’t run. What’s it going to be?” Lisa said as she pulled the Rhino from her chest holster and pointed it at his knee.
“Calm down, now. I can drive, I can drive. Don’t think for a minute that I’m not going to be filing a complaint.”
“Yeah, good luck with that, Leon. Temp, hop in back there and get back to your studies. Did you help fight off any zombies?” Lisa asked Temple.
“Oh … yeah. I got a couple … I think.”
“You think? Whatever, Temple. I’m amazed that you made it this far,” Lisa said as she opened the back door and let Tonka position himself behind the driver’s seat. “Okay, climb in and don’t make any bad decisions, Leon.”
“Where are we going?”
“Down to the river where we should have been instead of dealing with a wannabe warlord in a piece-of-shit housing development.”
“Piece of shit?! Those townhouses had some of the highest property value in the neighborhood until they let all of those government subsidized people take over,” Leon defended.
“It just doesn’t fucking matter, Leon. All of your stress and hate, your judgmental attitude and desire to inflict harm on them; none of it matters anymore. The only thing that matters is you going up against the committee for being a whiny-ass piece of crap. Now shut the hell up before I decide to ignore the council.” Lisa got in the other side, continuing her rant. “Fucking city is filled with tiny dictators worrying about smidgeons of sod while their neighbors are getting eaten. Drive! Goddammit, Leon. When are you going to start using your head, huh?”
“I think that you can get into a lot of trouble for talking to me like that,” Leon said.
Lisa couldn’t hold back any longer and swung her right hand around in a wide arc, hitting Leon with an open palm across the top of his face. Her ribs twinged, and she missed Skit telling her to take it easy. If she knew for a fact that Leon had shot Skit, she would have done far more to him.
“Hey!” Leon protested and Tonka nudged him from behind
with a growl as a reminder.
“You had better wake the fuck up, Leon. If you survive the council, you are going to have to deal with the world how it now is. Not how it was last week or last year, but the here and now … and, baby, it is a different world. I can beat the fuck out of you now and nobody will care as long as I don’t kill you. So just you keep your eyes on the road, get us to the river, and my dog won’t eat you.”
“What do you mean survive the council?” Leon persisted.
“You’re lucky that you have survived this long, fool. Now shut up and—” She indicated with her hands the rest of the sentence. “Better yet, take us to Junction Bridge by the amphitheater.” Lisa sat back and tried to enjoy the ride for as long as she could.
Zombies and people both must have had their attention focused elsewhere because the street continued to be empty. Of course, eliminating a quarter of a million of them in one swoop had to have made a big difference. The decision to simply evade the zombies bearing down on the townhouse community was settling in nicely as all of the trucks and vehicles followed their predetermined courses.
“Stop the car,” Lisa said suddenly.
Leon brought the vehicle to a stop, allowing her to scan the riverfront.
“Don’t move,” she ordered as she got out of the car. She walked over to John’s Suburban, where Franc and Kibble joined her.
“What’s up, boss?” Franc asked.
“I don’t know, Franc, I have to make a phone call. You have that SAT phone I had you hold, John?”
“Yep, right here,” he said and handed her the phone.
Lisa dialed a preprogrammed number and immediately spoke when it was answered.
“Mustafa, what the fuck is going on down here at the river? There isn’t one operator in sight! Where are they?”
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, Lieutenant. Troops under Colonel Jeffers showed up and have pretty much taken over the show. There are pockets of resistance all over the city that they are trying to break up.”
“What the fuck? Who the fuck is Colonel Jeffers? No, no, wait … I don’t even care who he is. What channel are the operators’ headsets set to? All right, get ready for some backlash and if any soldiers give you a hard time, restrain them. I know, I know … we don’t have a choice, Mustafa. We’ve put our well-being into the hands of the committee; until they tell us we’re done, we keep going and I’m not going to let some tin star colonel of a dead army get in our way.” Lisa hung up the phone and paced back and forth before grabbing the radio that John held out his window. She handed him the SAT phone and moved the selector to channel nine. She took a moment to catch her breath and calm herself.
“This is Lieutenant Reynolds. I have a message for all of the collective forces of Hot Springs, Benton, and Little Rock, Arkansas. We left the security of the compound with an end goal in mind. That end goal has not been reached. Anybody who is not actively pursuing that end goal is, in my opinion, AWOL. It doesn’t matter that some soldiers showed up late to the party or somebody else feels they can call the shots. We have a game plan and the means to get it done, so I need every—” she paused, wondering how much venom she should actually show to what were her people, but then decided that if they were truly hers then they would know how to respond. “I need every one of you to get back on to your assigned roles, now! Carlos, you and anybody else with a gun is to shoot any soldier who tries to get in your way. We have come a long way together, folks; too far to let the federal government come in and screw it up. So get back on task immediately or you will face disciplinary action. Over and out.” Lisa turned off the radio, still fuming, and was almost pleased when she heard a series of shots in the distance followed by the rumbling of front-end loaders. Carlos came around a corner in his Humvee and skidded to a stop in front of her.
“What the fuck, Carlos?”
“I’m sorry, but they said they were working under federal order, Lieutenant.”
“To do what?”
“Well, they started to stop the locals from fighting so they could bring them in but they wouldn’t say what their actual orders were.”
“Isn’t that just like the Feds? Get back to your duties here and run this show. We have to clog that bridge and get those people off the rooftops.”
“Sheeese, there are a lot of Zs down there, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, there are; about three times as many as when we initially planned this, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”
The first of the front-end loaders came around the corner, followed by a couple of dozers and some skiddies. The large steel belt tracks from a Link Belt backhoe could also be heard.
“Carlos, send them to the next bridge to the north and tell them to stop them up or destroy them if they are able to. You stay and supervise them and remember that you are the one in charge. John, give me the SAT phone again.”
She pulled up another preset number, which typically brought her to Benson. She knew Benson was in the hospital still, so she wasn’t surprised when Cat answered the phone. She knew that Cat had lost her friend, but she didn’t know how the girl had taken it; to find her short and cold wasn’t a surprise.
“Cat, is Malcolm there with you?”
“He is and Mayor Boweaver too,” Cat said, very short and to the point.
“Good. Put me on speaker so you all can hear what I have to say.” Lisa waited for a couple of seconds and when the hollow sound of the phone suddenly went to a more open sound, she spoke.
“Colonel Jeffers is to be disarmed and detained until I get back; he is obstructing the duties of a peace officer.” She could tell that they heard her by the silence that ensued. She knew they were uncomfortable with the assignment, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. She didn’t tell them it was an order or give any signals this was a request. It was a way of controlling people that she was taught in SWAT training. Don’t offer an option that could turn it to a conversation. Issue your orders and expect it to be done. No discussion.
“Shouldn’t the committees be in on this?” Mayor Boweaver asked, reluctant to stir up her wrath or that of the colonel.
“I will talk to the committees when I get back later today or tomorrow morning, depending upon what I can get done here first. Be gentle but be firm and don’t let his guard get the jump on you, but do it and do it quickly or a lot of us are going to die.” It had been decided she should return in Benton’s absence; she wasn’t excited about it, but what Krupp was doing was more important at this stage of the game. She hung up the phone only to have it flash instantly with an incoming call.
“Ed, what can I do for you, sir?”
“Just touching base, Lieutenant. We had some regular army come through a couple of hours ago and now I’m getting reports that they are clearing the city and disrupting the requisitioning assignments. This could throw a real hitch into our operation, and I’m wondering if you can do something since you’re right there.”
“Yeah, we have already run into some—hang on a sec. Kibble, put some glass on the roof of the amphitheater and tell me how many people are trapped up there. Okay, I’m back. I found out there is a colonel back in Hot Springs who has sent his men out with their own agenda. They arrived yesterday in a C130 and what he’s up to is a mystery to me. I figure that someone with experience would know better than to interfere with an on-going field operation that they had just chanced upon, so I had him arrested.”
“You what?”
“Well, not yet, but I issued the order just a few seconds ago.”
“Well take it back!” Krupp spat, almost losing his cool.
“I can’t, Ed. He’s going to get people killed. You and I both know that our combat committee wasn’t to convene until our return, and Art is in the hospital, so he didn’t issue the order. Last I heard, he was sent to the reservoir to protect the hydro power, so if his men are down here, what’s happening up there? We need that hydroelectric plant running at full steam. We don’t have a choice. I hav
e to view him as a rogue in order to keep our people safe and get the supplies back to Hot Springs,” Lisa stated urgently. She wished she could have just issued the order but they had all agreed to work as a team and that seemed to be successful. They were the Hot Springs Police Force and were sworn in by the governor to uphold the laws of the constitution of Arkansas. They could possibly be the last civilian authority of more than one individual for several states around. It was important that they stay united and focused.
“Look … it’s just until I get back there, Ed, then we can make decisions. Hell, he can take over for all I care, but he can’t be allowed to interfere with an ongoing remote operation.”
“I don’t think that was a smart move, Lisa. An army colonel is kind of a big deal.”
“Yeah, I know. I have a feeling that I’m going to regret it. I don’t think that I had much choice though. If the governor—or the tops in Washington for that matter—are still alive, I will gladly face charges. Until then though, we cannot allow anyone to put our people or the procurement of resources at risk. This one is on me, all right?”
“I guess I have trusted you this far and you’ve been solid, but I have to tell you that this could lead to something bad.”
“Trust me, I know. We’re down at the Junction Bridge just up from the amphitheater. There’s a pretty large horde down here, and it appears that we have pockets of unarmed civilians on roofs and hiding in other places. We are going to block off this bridge and get these people out of here before I return and Carlos’s team moves into the warehouse district and hits the food distributors we talked about. I’ll call you after that unless something else comes up.” Lisa handed the phone back to John. “Keep Sally here to help you guard the trucks and protect Temple over there.”
“That dude? I haven’t figured out your angle on him yet,” John replied.
“Neither have I,” Lisa said before turning back to the group.
“I’m seeing probably a hundred and fifty people on roofs and high spots all over the place down there. They all look famished and sun baked like they have been stuck there for days, Lieutenant,” Kibble said as he handed her the binoculars.
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