by Spriggs, Kal
"The Hand of God has commanded that I increase our forces. Sometimes you get more flies with honey than poison," Nidal smirked. Both his followers were too limited. He saw that clearly now. Nidal had eliminated some of the more capable, but ambitious, escapees after their arrival here in St Louis. In part, that had been at the direction of the Hand of God. But it had also been a necessary step towards consolidating his own power. The forty surviving escapees had been easy for Nidal to manipulate and after the Hand of God had restored Nidal's body, he'd been able to move from a planning role to that of the leader.
“Did Doctor Madison try to say anything untoward?” Nidal asked.
“No, Lord Regent,” Captain Carney grinned. “I kept her well in hand.”
Nidal only grunted. He despised the female doctor. Not only was she a symbol of the old world, the science and medicine that his new God viewed with distrust and derision, but she was a woman. Nidal could not stand women in any position of power. They were weak-willed, too easily swayed by false religions and by their own emotions. He would never need to use her services again, anyway. The Hand of God had healed him and granted him the powers to remain healthy.
Yet one man could only do so much and he had no desire to spend his days healing the sick, much less delivering babies. So Doctor Madison remained valuable, despite his distrust for her. “Keep an eye on her,” Nidal said. “If you even suspect her of betraying us, feel free to make examples of any of her patients that you wish.”
It could be dangerous to give Carney that much freedom. The man delighted in his tortures, but Nidal didn't want the female doctor ruining things for him.
“Captain Hudson, have your scouts reported any other survivor bands?”
“No, Lord Regent,” the big black man answered.
Nidal sighed at that. There were several enclaves to the northwest that his people had scouted. There would be no one coming from the south and west, though. Nidal repressed a shudder as he remembered what the Hand of God had told him about those lands... and what had happened to the one patrol he had sent there.
It seemed that most of the enclaves and survivors to the east had either been overwhelmed or had gotten wind of his people snatching anyone who dared to pass through the city. There had not been many new people in several weeks, other than a small family that his people had captured earlier in the morning. Nidal's people had not processed them yet, Captain Carney waited for a few more survivors to make it worth the effort... and to make it more entertaining.
“Very well,” Nidal said. “We shall hope that people will hear my transmissions and will come to our promised lands.”
Captain Carney grinned at that. He is not a true beleiver, Nidal thought, but he still has use and he will be my head of secret police as my new nation grows. He had already planned out how his empire would grow. Hordes of blessed undead with a core of well-armed holy warriors, supported by thousands of workers laboring over the fields and workshops, all of them praising the name of their one, true God.
Jack Zamora and his train will be the key to that.
***
“This, Jack Zamora, is our armory,” Captain Carney smiled.
Jack had come to hate that smile, but still less than he hated the man himself. It was a condescending, amused smile, for a man who clearly felt like he knew far more than anyone else.
Jack pushed past the other man, knocking him back a bit as he stepped into the room. He pretended to ignore the flash of hate across the other man's face. He doesn't like being ignored. Jack filed that observation away for further consideration.
Jack and Knighton had spent the night inside the “palace” while he'd told Lieutenant Baxter and Sean McCune to accept rooms at the barracks. He'd met with both of them earlier this morning, and they'd compared notes out front. Jack didn't like the situation and his feelings for it had only grown worse in the light of a new day. There wasn't anything he liked about Nidal's operation.
Jack had to admit though, that he envied them for the weapons and ammunition he saw. He walked down the rows of neatly stacked weapons, careful to keep his hands away from the well-oiled weapons, even as he watched the two armed guards out of the corner of his eyes. They watched him, their weapons ready but not up. He wondered if they had orders to shoot him if he tried to do more than look.
He saw a lot of M4's, all of them with ACOG scopes, almost all of them with the PEQ night vision targeter. Jack looked to the far end of the room and he saw bags of night vision optics hanging from pegs on the wall. Neither of those two sets of devices would be of much use without the special batteries, but their very presence was interesting. Most National Guard armories wouldn't stock those devices, they were too expensive and too much of a specialty item to be commonly found.
The makeshift armory also had pallets of ammunition in a quantity that left Jack drooling to himself. He didn't much care about the many boxes and ammunition cans of five-five-six, but the pallets of fifty-caliber for the ma-deuces... And there they are, Jack thought. Heavier racks held five fifty-caliber machine guns, the military's M2. Jack would have traded a kidney for one more and a few hundred rounds to go with it. There were ten empty racks next to those five, and Jack could guess that the three trucks he'd seen held three of those ten guns. The other seven, though... that was a question that bothered him. Nidal might be using those guns to guard his compound, but the self-proclaimed Lord Regent hadn't seemed that worried about security.
“Like the hardware?” Carney leered at him.
Behind the officer, Jack saw Tom Knighton looking over an open crate of grenades. Best to keep the attention focused on me... “Adequate, I suppose,” Jack said dismissively.
Jack had read Carney right. The other man flushed with anger and stomped over to a stack of green military hard-walled cases. “Oh, yeah? What about this?”
Jack followed him over, and his eyes widened a bit. The case held a Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. The anti-vehicular weapon would do a number on just about any vehicle short of a tank. He didn't want to think about what it would do to one of his train cars.
“And this?” Carney shoved the crate to the side and waved at the box below it. C4, Jack saw. Worse, the box next to it contained detonators, and there were wheels of det cord and shock tube. These guys are idiots.
Jack took a step back and gave Carney an incredulous look. “Do you want to kill yourselves?”
“What?” Carney asked, looking confused.
Jack pursed his lips, “It's a special kind of stupid to store detonators and explosives together... it's even worse that you've got them stacked in together, underneath your ammo for the Carl Gustav. Army detonators are pretty stable, but still...”
Carney's face paled, especially as he realized how he'd been throwing around boxes. He gently set the one crate down to the side. “It's... it's that dangerous?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “On the odd chance that you get some kind of electrical arc or serious shock to set off a detonator, you'd probably launch this building into low orbit.” That was a bit of an exaggeration, but with the number of crates, it wasn't all that much of one.
“You two,” Carney snapped at the guards, “get over here, separate this...” he gestured vaguely.
“You probably want to move the detonators to a whole different room,” Jack said. “And keep them and the shock tube and det cord separate. Maybe several separate rooms so one accident doesn't take out your whole supply. The C4 itself is relatively stable.” That was an understatement. You could light it on fire and it would burn cheerfully without exploding. Jack took more than a little pleasure at seeing Carney so dismayed.
A glance back at Knighton showed the Warrant Officer standing with his hands in his pockets looking rather nonchalant. If he hadn't swiped something, Jack would be disappointed.
The two guards started to move the equipment and Carney seemed to realize that he'd lost control over the situation. “Stop. Call upstairs to have a detail come and take care of this, go
back to watching our... that is, escorting our guests.”
“Sir,” one of them nodded.
A few seconds later, a half-dozen of Carney's men arrived and started going to work. Jack noted how Carney spelled everything out to them and how most of them seemed terrified at the duty. They're either very inexperienced with this stuff, scared of Carney, or a bit of both.
Jack wandered the rest of the armory while they worked, one of the guards close behind him. Jack couldn't help but wonder what he could accomplish with the weapons and ammunition he saw here. He could fortify the train, make it so that they'd be able to blow through any zombies or annihilate any raiders in their path. It was almost a heady feeling... but it was a lie, he realized. The ammunition would wear out long before the hordes of undead. These are not a final solution... they'd just be a little bit of help. We need to keep moving.
At that thought, Jack felt everything fall into place. He couldn't trust Captain Carney and he couldn't trust a man like Nidal, who employed him. They were escaped prisoners, building themselves a feudal state with themselves at the top. Jack wouldn't subject his people to their rule... so that left one other option. We are approaching the time to leave.
***
“We've a variety of cattle, sheep, and goats, plus some of the stranger animals from the zoo,” Captain Carney gave a wave through the bars at a herd of giraffes. “Takes a bit of getting used to, but some of them are tasty enough.”
“Hmmm,” Jack said. “I can see why you kept the herbivores, but why the predators?” He waved at the other side, where a big male tiger paced back and forth. None of the animals looked happy, all of them were on edge. Jack was more than a little surprised that the animals hadn't fled when presented the opportunity. The rest of the city was empty of everything but bugs. That was how most cities were... animals could sense that something was wrong.
“Well, we have to feed them a fair bit of meat, but that's manageable, if you're smart,” Carney giggled in a knowing fashion. Jack tried not to think about it, but he felt a dread suspicion. “But the Lord Protector wanted to keep them alive, for breeding purposes if nothing else.”
“Huh,” Jack grunted. He decided not to mention that he'd encountered other escaped zoo animals on their travels. A tiger had attacked them at one of their stops. With how big predator cats bred, Jack wouldn't be too surprised to see a big enough breeding population of them for them to survive and thrive.
Besides, he didn't trust the explanation. There was something more here, something he didn't understand. Somehow it had to tie into how these reprobates had managed to clear the entire city of undead. What am I missing...
“Do you have any zookeepers?” Jack asked as they continued the tour.
“No,” Carney shook his head, “well, we have a couple of country veterinarians, but mostly we have the farmers handle the livestock. I tend to manage the big cats. They respect me.” The way he said that, Jack imagined that he probably used methods that animal rights people would have condemned. Why am I not surprised?
They came to what looked like the bear cages and Carney led him away from it before Jack could get a look inside. “That completes the tour of the zoo, would you like to tour the farmland?”
“No,” Jack forced himself to smile in reply. He hates me, Jack realized, he's faking that smile just as much as I am. He glanced at Knighton, “I think I'd like to talk with my people, let them know what we've seen and check in with them.”
“Of course,” Carney's expression slipped a bit. He knows I don't like him, he's wondering if this is a trap of some kind...
Carney and his guards walked them back to the palace area, and a few minutes later, Lieutenant Baxter and Sean McCune arrived, festooned with weapons and escorted by a squad of guards. “A moment?” Jack asked as politely as he could manage.
“Of course,” Carney nodded. He and his men drew back a short distance. Jack's eyes narrowed, though, at the direction they'd chosen. They blocked the obvious route off the grounds. They were trapping them here. No, he realized, they're trapping me here.
“Well?” he asked.
Lieutenant Baxter scowled under her helmet, “Bunch of condescending assholes, sir. Two of their men tried to get frisky and they don't like no for an answer. I almost had to break the one fellow's wrist.”
“Couple of them have been chatting me up,” Sean grunted. “They seem to think I might be more... corruptible, I guess? They talked about how the farm women don't get much say. That a strong man like me could take any of them he wanted at night and throw them back during the day... and a couple of them mentioned a harem up at the palace.”
“Full of women who volunteered, I'm sure,” Jack spat to the side. He glanced at Knighton. “What did you grab?”
Knighton gave him an innocent expression, “Me, sir?” When Jack gave him a level look, the big man shrugged, “A couple of thermite grenades was all I could get my hands on, everything else was locked down. I figured they'd be good for a distraction. I stashed them in our room, Captain, under the mattresses.”
“Good,” Jack nodded. The thermite grenades weren't really going to be useful as a weapon, but they'd do for burning Nidal's palace down around his ears. And I'd like to shove one right down Carney's throat. “Okay, I think we've done all we can here.” Jack looked between Baxter and Knighton. “They're not going to let me go, but I think if we time things right, you two can make it out for certain.” Jack looked at Sean, “They won't let me stay alone, but since you aren't military, if something goes wrong, they might give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Sean scowled as he looked around at the group. “You want me to stay here while they get out of this joint?”
Jack shrugged. “You and I will go together, but it's going to be dicier. There's a loading dock at the back of the palace, they have a couple of vehicles there...”
The salvager didn't seem to like that at all, but he didn't argue. Either he figured he could make some kind of deal with their “friends” if they got caught or else he'd just betray Jack the first chance he got.
“When do we do this?” Knighton asked.
Jack's gaze went to the bell-tower, visible not far away. It had just begun to tone for noon. That bothered Jack, especially since the escaped prisoners didn't seem particularly religious. Something about the sound of the bell seemed off, too... and the day seemed grayer during the deep tolling. “Give me thirty minutes,” Jack said. “Meet me at the Alton Bridge after you break out. If you have time, wait until dusk and then cross. If I'm not there by then...” Jack shrugged. He'd probably be dead if things went badly. “Tell Captain Wachope that he's in charge.”
Neither Knighton nor Baxter looked happy to hear that. Josh Wachope would be less happy. But that was life in this fallen world.
“Take care,” Jack gave them nods, “and if you get caught, destroy the radios.”
Lieutenant Baxter looked offended, “Of course sir. Two bullets for the radio, and a grenade for myself.”
Jack gave her a nod, then turned to walk over to Captain Carney. McCune paused to remove his sword belt and pass it over to Baxter. She gave him a nod as she took the basket-handled broadsword. Jack rather hoped that they'd be able to retrieve his weapons from the barracks where they'd taken it last night during his stay at the palace.
“Okay, Lieutenant Baxter is having a bit of difficulty transmitting back to our people. She's going to try to get to a better spot. Warrant Officer Knighton was going to help her out, and Mister McCune,” Jack put a note of distaste in his voice, “volunteered to join me for lunch with your Lord Regent.”
Carney's eyes flickered between Jack and his people. Jack could see wheels moving behind the man's eyes. He was wondering what they were up to, wondering how to stop it. “Well,” Carney said after a moment, “we could try to download your radio fill onto one of our radios, we have better range...”
Jack shook his head, “No, that could go wrong too easily, you know how temperamental military
radios are. That'll just lead to unnecessary worry on the part of the rest of my people.” The statement was all the better for the fact that it wasn't a lie. Military radios were extremely finicky and it was only too easy to zero out a radio and clear all of it's encryption instead of transferring it.
“Right,” Carney gave a nod, clearly disappointed.
I'm sure you'd love to have our radio fill so you could listen to what we say to each other. Jack wondered if the man thought he was that stupid or if he'd simply been told to ask.
“Let's get lunch, shall we?” Jack asked, walking towards the former art gallery. McCune fell in beside him and Carney hurried to catch up. Jack deliberately lengthened his pace and the shorter man had to almost jog to keep up... and he hadn't snapped out orders to his men. Two of his guards fell in on Jack and McCune, but the escort for Baxter and Knighton stood there, looking uncertain while Lieutenant Baxter moved away, making a show of trying to talk on her radio.
They got back into the lobby and Jack waited patiently while the guards there patted him down and searched him for weapons. Carney seemed to collect himself then. He didn't give them time to head to Jack's room, which was too bad, since he would have liked to get the thermite grenades.
Instead, Carney led them to the dining room again. He glanced at the big grandfather clock that stood against the wall, “Well, I suppose the Lord Regent is still busy, I guess we're a little early. Perhaps we could chat a bit?”
The man sat on the edge of the table, his plump face smiling and friendly... but his eyes mocking. He knows I don't trust him. He knows I hate him.
Jack was tired of the whole charade. He checked the time on the clock and looked over at Sean McCune. Twenty minutes down. Carney had left the guards at the door. Jack could spend another ten minutes chatting to the man, but he was tired of the charade. Besides, this might be the best chance the two of them had.
Jack walked forward, “Sure.” He looked past Carney's shoulder at a painting on the wall, “Hey, is that...”