by James Cook
“The last census was about six months ago. They put it at two-hundred twenty, but I know for a fact some people joined up afterward.”
Ethan nodded. “Sounds about right. I’d say we killed half of them in the field, and the other half are either crawlers, down in the ravine, or survivors who escaped.”
Zeb’s stoic mask began to crack, and his eyes filled with anger. “What kind of sick fuck would do something like this? They didn’t even steal any weapons or supplies. All the caches are still locked up. Nothing’s been taken. What the hell was the point?”
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know, Zeb. I’ve seen some crazy shit, but this…”
The three of them went silent. They stared at the gate for a while longer, as though standing in its presence might somehow unlock the mystery of its destruction. The silence became so oppressive that when Ethan’s radio crackled in his ear, he almost screeched like a little girl.
“Alpha, Bravo, how copy?” It was Holland.
Cursing inwardly, and fighting down his racing heartbeat, he keyed the mike. “Copy loud and clear, Bravo. You find something? Over.”
“Affirmative. We got a survivor, but I don’t think he’s going to last much longer. You might want to get over here fast.”
“Copy, Bravo. What’s your twenty?”
“North side of town, place looks like one of those pre-fab metal garages, only bigger. There’s a flagpole on the roof, but no flag. Should be easy to spot. Over.”
Ethan looked northward and saw the flagpole standing above the loose clusters of buildings less than a hundred yards away. “Copy. We’re on our way. Try to keep him breathing until we get there. Out.”
Zeb and Cole stared at him. The old sheriff’s eyes held a spark of hope. “Holland found a survivor. North side of town. We have to hurry.”
“Lead the way,” Zeb said. Ethan took off at a run.
Their passing caused a multitude of fleeting reflections to pass across the lifeless, staring eyes of the dead. High above them, the vultures continued circling, unabated and unconcerned. They were patient, those scavengers. There was no need for them to rush in, to risk landing when danger was nearby. They could stay right where they were, perfectly safe from harm until the loud, two-legged creatures below moved on.
Their meal wasn’t going anywhere.
*****
Holland waved to them from the roof.
The building he stood on was large and yellowish, and as he had said, it looked like a pre-fab steel garage, only about three times larger. The rolling doors were still intact, but a smaller side entrance lay bent and broken on the ground. Ethan entered first, shoving the battered door with his foot and sending it sliding across the concrete floor. As he walked inside, pale yellow sunlight filtered in through high windows, casting the room in a dull copper glow. The stench of rotting meat crawled into his throat, sticking in his nose and threatening to make him retch. Although he had smelled it hundreds of times, the odor of death still had the power to trigger his gag reflex.
“Over this way, boss.”
Ethan looked to his right and saw Hicks clinging to a ladder descending from a trapdoor in the ceiling. Ethan raised a hand. Hicks nodded once and climbed back up.
Looking around, he couldn’t tell what the building’s original purpose had been, but the people of Broken Bridge had converted it into a barracks. Rows of wooden bunk beds and footlockers lay all around in broken, overturned disarray. The kitchen area near the back was in shambles, and several nearby tables lay flat on the ground as though crushed by a massive hand. Thick, rust-colored streaks smeared the concrete from one end to the other, splattered on overturned beds and scattered sheets. Patches of ripped-out hair, torn gobbets of flesh, and discarded bones littered the ground.
Ethan spotted something in the shadows a few feet away and clicked on the small tactical light attached to his rifle. When he raised the beam, he saw a single amputated thumb standing on end, propped up on its ragged stump. It pointed straight up in the air, as though offering a cheerful welcome to the reeking slaughterhouse and the horrors within. Ethan grimaced and kicked it away.
He turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get to the roof.”
The others followed behind him, eyes wide and hands tight on their weapons. Every few feet, they spotted the remains of crawlers Hicks or Holland had put down during their sweep. One of them was missing its arms and legs, and the rest were so mangled they were almost unrecognizable as human.
“The infected must have got in here,” Cole said, stating the obvious.
“But where are all the bodies?” Michael replied.
Zeb spoke up. “Either outside the gate where we killed ‘em, or trapped in the riverbed. ‘Cept for those poor bastards.” He gestured at a dead crawler.
Ethan led the way up the ladder, emerging from the gloomy interior into the rapidly brightening morning. A few feet away, Holland knelt beside a man who lay propped against Hick’s backpack. The man’s clothes were torn and bloody, and one of his hands lay in his lap, swaddled in a thick wrapping of bloodied bandages. Holland poured water from his canteen into a metal cup and held it to the man’s lips. The man reached up with a trembling hand and drank from it, but pushed it away after a few swallows, sputtering and coughing.
“Alan!” Zeb said, emerging from the trapdoor and rushing over.
The man lying on the ground looked up groggily. “Sheriff Austin? That you?”
“It’s me, Alan,” he said, kneeling. “What happened to you?”
Alan reached up with his good hand and gripped Zeb’s sleeve. “I got bit. Don’t have much time left-” Another coughing fit wracked him, and Zeb had to wait a few moments while the stricken man caught his breath. “Listen,” he finally managed to croak. “You need to know what happened here.”
Zeb’s face went tight. He gripped Alan’s hand in both of his and held on. “I’m listening.”
“There was a horde. Had to be over a thousand strong. They got through the gate last night around midnight.”
“How?” Ethan asked. He was fairly certain about his rocket launcher theory, but wanted to know for sure. “What destroyed the gate? Did you see it?”
Alan shook his head wearily. “No. I was on watch at the southern wall, wasn’t close enough to see what happened. I caught a flash of light and heard a sound like a gunshot, only a hell of a lot louder. Then there was an explosion. Powerful as hell, my ears are still ringing from it. Blew the gate right off its hinges. The next thing I know, everybody’s sounding the alarm and there’s infected pouring in like a flood.”
“What about the charges on the bridge?” Zeb asked. “Why weren’t they triggered?”
Alan’s eyes opened wider. “Some bastard killed the guards at the gate. Scrawny fucker in a big coat, dressed like one of us. He knifed ‘em both, then the infected got ‘em. I saw it happen, but I was too far away to stop it. I tried to shoot the fucker, but he ran off too quick.”
Ethan felt a creeping coldness start in his gut, spread through his arms, and tingle its way up to his face. He thought about the front gate, and the blast marks, and the absence of the horde that destroyed the town. Looking at it from a distance, the pieces began to fit.
“They were the only ones close enough to throw the switch,” Alan went on. “By the time I got there, the dead were everywhere. We tried to hold them at the gate, but there were too many of ‘em. They broke our line, and everybody fell back. It was pitch dark, most of the torches were out. We were fighting blind all the way back to the southern wall. I got cut off and had to duck into the barracks. Bunch of other people followed me in, but we couldn’t all get up the ladder fast enough. They tried to hold their ground, but the dead just kept packing in tighter and tighter. I was the first one up, but by the time I reached the roof, everybody else was dead or dying.”
Alan stopped to take a few wheezing breaths and a sip of water. His face was ghostly pale, his lips so blue they were almost
translucent, sweat standing out in beads on his forehead. The shivers gripping him were rapidly devolving into convulsions, and his eyes were beginning to glaze over. Grimacing against the pain, he continued.
“The man at the gate, the one who killed the guards, he’s the one who did this. He led those ghouls here. He destroyed the gate somehow, and he turned them loose in the compound. You have to find him before he does it again, Zeb. You heard about them other towns, right? It can’t be a coincidence.”
“Are there any other survivors?” Holland asked impatiently. “Did you see anyone else escape?”
Alan turned his head, blinking lazily. “I don’t know. It was too dark, I could barely see my hand in front of my face. I tried calling out for a while after that son-of-a-bitch led the horde away, but nobody answered. Maybe the children got away over the north wall. I don’t know.”
The dying man turned his gaze back to Zeb and leaned forward, eyes bright. “He was laughing, Zeb. I heard him. While those monsters killed us all, he was sitting on top of the market shelter, swinging his feet like a little kid and fucking laughing. You find that bastard, Zeb. You find him, and you make him pay for what he did. You hear me? Promise me you’ll find that motherfucker.”
Zeb patted the man’s shoulder gently, but there was no softness in his eyes. “I promise, Alan. I’ll find him, and when I do, I’ll make him suffer. You have my word on that.”
Alan seemed reassured. He lay back down, his grip weakening in Zeb’s hand. In a few short minutes, he lost consciousness, and then rattled out his last breath. Zeb reached gently down and shut the dead man’s eyes.
“Uncle Zeb,” Michael said. “You know what we need to do.”
The old sheriff nodded slowly and stood up. He took a few steps away and rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead. “You mind doin’ it, son? I don’t know if I got the heart.”
Michael gripped his uncle’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”
Ethan motioned to his men to step away and pulled Hick’s pack from under Alan’s trembling body. Already, he was showing signs of reanimation.
“Go ahead.”
Michael drew a small pistol from under his coat and stepped forward. “I’m sorry Alan. I wish we could have gotten here sooner.” He raised his hand and pulled the trigger.
Birds took flight under a golden haze as the gunshot echoed into the morning.
*****
They spent the rest of the day looking for other survivors, but found only corpses.
At the edge of the wall where Ethan and Cole found the ladders and cranes, they discovered a semicircle of dead bodies stacked waist-high. Upon examining them, Ethan realized they were all the older, more ruined bodies of the horde that destroyed the town.
Behind them was a set of bunkhouses similar to the large barracks where they had found Alan, but smaller. Zeb explained that all of the town’s children slept in the bunkhouses near the escape apparatus, just in case. From what Ethan could see, it looked as if a group of defenders had formed a line around the children and held it while they escaped, but later succumbed to the horde. The ground in front of the wall was covered in a carpet of empty shell casings and broken hand weapons.
Ethan nudged a few of them with his boot and thought of his own son back at Fort Bragg. Andrea was probably cooking breakfast right then, sunlight shining in through the kitchen window and setting her bright red hair aglow. Aiden would have woken up hours ago, coloring in his books, playing with his toys, and asking when daddy was coming home. Ethan looked up at the sun, the same warmth shining on him and his distant family, and he tried very hard not to cry.
After exploring the ground outside the south wall, Zeb and Hedges found more than a dozen unique tracks leading across the overgrown field to the forest beyond. Most of them were small, but there were a few adult sized ones as well.
“Well, at least the children got away,” Ethan said when Hedges delivered the news.
“We’ll light a signal fire for them tonight,” the deputy replied. “If they’re still nearby, they’ll come back. You might want to have your men lay low, Sergeant. Those kids have a couple of defenders with them, and after what happened here last night, they might react badly to unfamiliar faces. You should probably let me and Zeb do the talking.”
Ethan nodded. “Fine by me. We’ll stay out of your way.”
Tired from a long day of fruitless searching, Ethan decided to pack it in for the night. After rounding up his men, he ordered them to restock their ammo from the town’s armory—Zeb had found the key to it on Alan’s body and opened it up to them—then scavenge some food and find a spot to make camp. Cole suggested the roof of an old fast-food restaurant near the eastern wall, well away from Zeb’s signal fire near the gate. They all agreed.
“What about water?” Hicks asked. “Ain’t like we can take it from the river.”
Ethan thought about the ghouls splashing around in the muddy stream and grimaced. “You’re right. We need to refill our canteens. Cole, let’s go take a look around and see what we can find. Hicks, you and Holland find some food and get a meal going.”
“Will do, boss.”
In a house less than a block down the street, Cole found a black plastic barrel with the words DRINKING WATER in white stencil across the front. Opening the lid, he leaned down and sniffed.
“Yep. That’s water.” He turned to look at Ethan. “Think it’s safe?”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. We’ll filter it and boil it anyway, just to be sure.”
They loaded the barrel onto a hand truck they found nearby and wheeled it back to camp. Hicks had found a small metal fire pit and hauled it to the roof, along with a few bundles of wood. Holland got a fire going, and set to work making a stew from jars of preserved vegetables and dried venison liberated from the town’s emergency supply. Ethan smelled the food and felt his stomach grumble, realizing he hadn’t eaten since before dawn. It was now nearly sunset.
They ate their meal in subdued silence, each man staring straight down at his food and thinking his own dark thoughts. Ethan finished his first bowl quickly and went back for another, eating it more slowly this time. He kept his mind on setting up the watch rotation, making sure everyone cleaned their weapons after dinner, and wondering how many survivors were going to come back through the gate that night. He did his best not to look around at the town, at what less than two days ago had been a thriving community, a place where hundreds of Outbreak survivors had carved out a life for themselves wishing only for peace and a safe place to raise their children. All gone now.
He thought about the destroyed gate, and the shape of the blasted doors, and the scorches on the archway. He thought about Alan, and his last words admonishing Zeb to find the person responsible for the death of this place. He thought about Alan’s description of the killer, a scrawny knife-wielding man in a big coat. He thought about the trail they had followed to Broken Bridge, and the fact that very few of the attacking horde had remained behind. If the horde was still following the madman responsible for all this mayhem, it wouldn’t be hard to pick up their trail again. Once they did, they might be able to figure out where the murderer leading the horde planned to strike next.
Tomorrow, he would talk to Zeb. If the old lawman was half as smart as Ethan thought he was, he had most likely come to the same conclusions.
It was a place to start.
SIXTEEN
Gideon felt like whistling.
He couldn't, of course. Whistling was an activity he'd left in the past, along with half of his teeth. A few key dental structures removed and one of a man’s most basic expressions, making music, was gone.
Still, he smiled as he walked. Even the gaps between his last few crumbling teeth couldn’t dampen his spirits. He felt light as a feather, twisting and dancing on the air. Whistling might not have been an option, but there were plenty of other things a man could do to entertain himself.
Killing was one of them.
&nbs
p; Smoking meth was another. For Gideon, the two were inextricably blended.
The town of Broken Bridge was miles behind him, a mission accomplished beyond his wildest expectations. It was a larger place than any other he'd attempted to strike, and when his finger fell on the trigger of the rocket launcher, Gideon was sure his time was finally up. No part of him expected to see the heavy gate fall so spectacularly, and his gap-toothed smile widened as he remembered the thick metal ripping away from the concrete supporting it.
Broken Bridge had been a place of order and discipline. At least that was what the people he captured had told him. A group of stranded soldiers had built the town, gathered other survivors together, armed them, trained them, and turned them into a small but lethal militaristic society. They had a fierce reputation, those people, and even the most daring marauders no longer bothered them.
A daunting task, killing such worthy opponents.
When Gideon struck, a swarm of ghouls at his back, it was with the expectation that he would die. High as he had been, and drunk on the rush of his own impending death, the sense of unreality gripping him had heightened to levels he’d never known. The amphetamines drove him, gave him the energy he needed to push past the pain, and the exhaustion, and his own flagging strength. He’d felt so goddamn powerful. But below that surreal elation, always burning bright and hot within him, was the anger.
The memories hit him again as he walked in the pre-dawn light. The fledgling brightness of the morning sun dimmed, going dark as he heard the echo of his long-dead doctor’s voice. The day when everything changed.
HIV, his doctor had said. Bad news, to be sure, and expensive to treat. But it’s not the death sentence it used to be.
He'd almost hit the man then. Not a death sentence, sure. But a lifetime of medicine and ridiculous precautions because of one night away from home. Because he'd been lonely and horny and had taken a risk. In what universe was that fair?