Stage 3 (Book 3): Bravo

by Stark, Ken

  Addison allowed a smirk. “Sure, Mace. But just so I'm clear, you will face down a man with a shotgun without batting an eye, you'll put your life on the line for veritable strangers on the say-so of a woman you just met, and you'll wade into a swarm of alphas with nothing more than an over-sized stick, but this is where you draw the line? Asking a woman if she needs a tampon?”

  Mason could only shrug. “It's... different.”

  Addison cocked an eyebrow. “Dude, we share living quarters. We've all seen each other in various stages of undress. Hell, we've seen each other pee in the middle of the road, for crying out loud!”

  “And your point?” Mason asked gruffly, manhandling the third eighty-pound jug of fuel as if it were a toy.

  “No point.” Addison forced a noncommittal shrug. “No point at all. Everyone has boundaries. Boundaries are good. It's just nice to know where yours lie.” He hid a grin and turned to go, but then he met Sarah and Mackenzie coming in the opposite direction and he could hold it in no longer. “Tampons! Ha!” He laughed aloud as he passed them by.

  Sarah spared a curious glance back at the retreating man, but Mackenzie's attention was focused where it usually was – namely, on the big Irish Setter. The two were inseparable. Where Mackenzie went, so went Clancy, though he went now with his nose to the ground, panting happily away as he sniffed out the myriad scents of this new place.

  It had been accepted as gospel that no one in the group would ever be unarmed, even in sleep, so Sarah and Mackenzie each had a gun on their hip and a rifle slung over their shoulders. Sarah's rifle had once belonged to another man, but it was hers now, and though the thing was as big as a howitzer, she could wield the massive weapon like a surgeon's blade.

  Mackenzie's was smaller, thinner, lighter, but no part of the pairing had to do with the tiny hands or underdeveloped muscles of a ten-year-old girl. No, that slim-barreled .22 might not look like much, but with a sharp eye on the sights and a hundred-round magazine to keep it fed, that unassuming little rifle had saved their collective asses more often than all the other weapons in their arsenal combined.

  They both came up behind Mason in full conversation, and Mason heard Mackenzie say as they approached, “It's too bad. I like them. Especially Jesse. She's awesome!”

  “Mack, we can't go around picking up every stray we come across.” Mason interrupted the conversation with a huff, setting the last empty jerry can aside and screwing the lid down tight on the fuel tank. “We don't have the food, we don't have the water, and we sure as hell don't have the room.”

  “Oh, c'mon, Mace!” the girl snarked back. “We have lots of food and lots of water, and we can always make room.”

  As usual, when dealing with Mackenzie, Mason found himself completely at a loss. Somehow, this tiny little girl not only knew the right thing to say, but she always found a way to say it as if she were the green-eyed conscience riding on his shoulder. Fortunately, even as he struggled for some way to upend her entirely rational statement, Sarah stepped in with an arm around the girl's shoulder.

  “They don't want to come with us, Boo. They want to go home,” she said. Then, she flipped a glance up to Mason and told him without apology, “Yes, I made the offer. But don't worry, Mace, they have no desire to join our roving band of misfits. All they want is to get back to Pescadero.”

  “And what's in Pescadero?”

  “Weren't you listening? No, I guess you were out draining the last diesel from the tanks by then. Well, Daniel and Jesse live in Pescadero. They have a strawberry farm down there. It's just the two of them. Apparently, they hadn't been away from the place in months, so Jesse finally convinced her grandfather to come to the city to get a break. And... well...”

  “They chose the worst day in all of history to go on a road trip,” Mason finished the thought, but then a sudden notion had him arching an eyebrow. “So, what did he tell you about this farm of theirs. Is it fenced? How big, do you think? Did it sound like a good place to spend a couple of days?”

  After. He didn't tack on the word after because he knew he didn't have to. Did it sound like a good place to spend a couple of days... after? After he'd led them all on a snipe hunt. After this ridiculous quixotic adventure was over. After the few of them who will survive this wild goose chase were back on the run. And just like that, he realized why he and Sarah and none of the others ever, ever used that word. By tacit agreement, the very concept of after was anathema. By definition, that simple word encompassed not only every single second of life from this moment on, but every hope and every dream any of them would ever have. And just as everything before was smoke on the breeze, everything after was a deception. There was no after. There was only ever a now. The exact length of time from one heartbeat to the next.

  “I didn't ask, Mace. It's their home, not a drop-in center for wayward orphans.”

  “I'd sure like to see Jesse again.” Mackenzie turned her big, green eyes up to Sarah. “Can I ask if it'd be okay? Can I?”

  “You can ask, Boo, but don't get your hopes up. Even if Daniel says it's alright, we might not be anywhere near.”

  After... Mason added inside his head.

  The girl's lips turned down in the beginnings of a pout, but just as she opened her mouth to complain, she suddenly snapped it shut again and held up a finger for silence. She pointed under the truck just as Clancy started to growl, and just like that, Mason produced a seven foot length of solid rebar from out of nowhere, Sarah swung her rifle off her shoulder, and all three of them took several steps back from the truck.

  “Only one,” Mackenzie hushed, crouching down on her haunches to get a clear view under the truck.

  One of the modifications they'd made to the big Peterbilt was a sheet of aluminum welded to the bottoms of the fuel tanks on either side, in order to avoid just such a situation. But they'd had to strike a bargain between safety and utility. Christopher had argued for a floor-length skirt, but Mason couldn't abide the idea of getting the truck hung up on a curb or a median. So, they'd struck a deal. They'd gone with a midi rather than a maxi. The half-length sheet of metal helped, but it still left a pretty good gap between skirt and ground.

  Mason crouched down, and sure enough, there it was. He didn't know where Mack had come upon her supersensitive Vulcan hearing, but he'd long ago stopped doubting its efficacy. Just like she'd said, a single alpha was crawling under the truck, with room to spare.

  He and Mack used to refer to these things as 'wilders,' but Sarah's name for the living dead monstrosities had quickly been adopted by the entire group. It might not fit any better or roll more trippingly off the tongue, but he couldn't argue that the name 'alpha' held considerably less dire overtones than 'wilder.' And so 'alphas' they'd become by consensus.

  This used-to-be man crawling toward them under the truck was still clinging to life, so it was an alpha. Acute Loss of Frontal-lobe Activity. Acting Like a Fucking Animal. Either way, the name fit. This poor bastard struggling along on its elbows should be curled up in a ditch somewhere, waiting to die. But the virus that ate away its higher brain functions kept it going right up to the end. So, on it came, snapping its jaws and clawing blindly at the air, even as it spilled its guts along the ground.

  Mason assessed the alpha's speed and strength, and quickly did the math. Not an immediate threat. Wait thirty seconds until it clears the skirt, then skewer it through the head. Easy-peasy. But then, he'd just have to drag it clear. Why make more work for himself? So, kill it while it was still under the truck, then. The gun on his hip would do the job, but every alpha for a mile around would hear. Alright then... crawl under the truck and meet the alpha halfway. Or better yet, turn Clancy loose and let the faithful hound finish the thing off.

  No. Both were feasible, but both held risks, and as far as Mason was concerned, risks were the things you took when you had no other choice.

  He uttered the single word, “Mack,” and in a flash, the tiny girl had her rifle off her shoulder and up to her eye. A tiny
finger flinched, and a little red spot appeared between the alpha's eyes.

  With no explosion, and no sound that would echo like cannon-fire through the streets, the .22 went off with the abbreviated snap! of two hands clapping, and the creature collapsed to the ground, perfectly still and perfectly silent.

  Mason stayed in a crouch and looked past the dead thing to four pairs of legs on the far side of the truck. Behind them, more were coming. He counted seven. Two alphas probing. Two more hobbling along as best as they could. The other three were echoes.

  Echoes. That name was Sarah's, too. He and Mack had dubbed the dead things 'creepers,' and the name fit them to a T. But again, they deferred to the less provocative nomenclature. Echoes were clinically dead, so with no air in their lungs, there were no snarls and howls. The only sounds they made came from the shuffling of their feet and the gnashing of their teeth. But with the virus at the helm, these unliving horrors were utterly relentless. They came, no matter what. They were drawn to the nearest human like moths to a flame, so there was nowhere to hide. Lying low and maintaining noise discipline might keep the alphas guessing, but the dead things always came.

  Always.

  “Want me to clear the rest of them?” Mackenzie asked, as sweetly as another child might ask if she could help set the dinner table.

  Mason heard a crunch from behind and tossed a glance over his shoulder to see the old man just emerging from the truck stop. “No, it's okay, Mack,” he said, giving her as gentle a fist-bump as anyone had ever given. “Why don't you go hang out with Jesse for a bit? Maybe there's something they need that we have.”

  The girl's face lit up, and she flung the .22 back over her shoulder with an abbreviated, “K!” But before she left, she turned her face down to Mason's and said, “By the way, Mace, where would you be right now if you didn't pick up strays?”

  And without waiting for an answer, she spun on her heels and hurried back inside.

  Her words were like a hard smack on the back of the head. Where would he be, indeed?

  Sarah offered him her hand. “She's not wrong, you know.”

  “Is she ever?” Mason scoffed, letting her pull him to his feet.

  The old man arrived and half-doffed his imaginary cap at Sarah, then, he stretched out a hand to Mason. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, Mace.”

  Mason pretended not to see the proffered hand. He turned his back to the man, stepped up to the truck, and slid the seven feet of rebar back into its cradle behind the cab.

  “You don't owe me a thing, Daniel,” he said over his shoulder, cracking the driver's door of the Peterbilt just enough to retrieve the twin of Mack's .22 rifle from beside the seat.

  “Oh, but I do, sir! I most assuredly do! Why, here I thought I was doing a decent job of it, but I guess I was just fooling myself all along.”

  “Nonsense,” Mason said, folding himself cross-legged on the ground and bringing up the .22’s sights. “You kept yourself and your granddaughter alive in a virtual shit storm. In my book, that makes you something of an expert.” He lined up his sights on the knee of one of the alphas pinned to the far side of the truck, and fired a single round. The creature dropped to the ground, howling and snorting with rage, but a second round sent pin-balling around the inside of its skull silenced it.

  “Not at all, sir, not at all!” Daniel protested, one eye keenly turned to the gathering swarm. “We came to the city because I love Jesse dearly, and she does so much for this tired old man without a single complaint. So, when she said that it would be nice for us to get away for a day… well, there's nothing I wouldn't do for that special young lady.”

  Mason coolly set his sights on another knee, and followed it up by drilling a hole through the bridge of a dainty little nose.

  “We know the feeling, Daniel,” Sarah offered with a smile.

  “Yes, I'm sure you do. Mackenzie is a remarkable girl. But what I'm trying to say is... Jesse and I... the two of us... well, I try to do my best, but we are both wholly out of our element!”

  Mason took down two more alphas in quick succession and ended their snarls with another pair of handclaps. “We're all out of our element, Daniel,” he said, taking aim on the more distant alphas and dropping all four with as many shots.

  “Oh, but Mace,” the old man said, almost pleading now, “we are barely clinging to life! There are times when we are holding on only by the very tips of our fingers! We have no idea what we’re doing at all, or if what we are doing is right!”

  The echoes were too close for Mason to get a headshot from under the truck. Since it often took two or three rounds to a knee or hip to get one of them on the ground, it simply wasn't worth the ammunition.

  He stood up, leaned the rifle against the cab, and turned to face the old man. “Daniel, all of us are barely clinging to life. All of us are hanging on by our fingertips. Believe me when I say that no one alive knows what the hell they are doing, and I can speak from personal experience that there’s no way on God's green Earth that we can possibly know whether or not what we are doing is right. If you're looking for advice or a pep talk or a pat on the back, brother, you've come to the wrong place.”

  The old man looked to Sarah, but she merely shrugged. “Yeah, he's a bit of a work in progress.”

  Just then, a young man came out of the building. Tall, lean-muscled, young enough that his clean, handsome face might never have seen a razor, and with an AK47 slung over his shoulder.

  “Hey, guys,” Christopher said around a long piece of licorice dangling from his mouth, “Beverly found a camp stove in the back, and my mom says she has all she needs to whip up a big batch of spaghetti. So, she just wants to know if we're leaving right away or if we have time to eat. And not to tip the balance one way or the other, but everyone's pretty hungry, and you know how Alejandra gets when she's hungry. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.”

  Mason looked from the licorice bobbing from the young man's mouth to the rest of the pack clutched in his hand. It took a few seconds, but Christopher finally got the message and let Mason help himself.

  “You can tell your mom to put the kettle on, but then come back and bring Alejandra and Addison with you.”

  “Yeah? Whatcha got going on?”

  Mason hooked a thumb over his shoulder to the far side of the lot where two big rigs were parked, minus the trailers. Christopher nodded his understanding, but Daniel screwed up his face and gave his bald head a shake.

  “I don't think so, friend. I had the idea of swapping my old pickup for one of those beauties, but they're locked up tight and no keys anywhere. Hey, any chance you know how to hot-wire one of them babies? Why, if you could do that...”

  Mason stopped him right there. “I'm not after the trucks, Daniel. I'm after their fuel.”

  “But if you could hot-wire one of them...”

  While Mason stewed, Sarah answered in his place.

  “We don't know how to do that, Daniel.”

  “Yet!” Mason aimed a stick of licorice at her like an accusing finger. “I'll figure it out eventually. There's just so many damn wires and stuff...”

  “I know,” Sarah said, giving him a motherly pat on the back. “You'll figure it out. Eventually...”

  “It's a bit of a sore spot,” Christopher hushed to the old man, but one look from Mason sent him scampering away.

  Before he got far, Mason called after him, “Hey! See if you can find a couple of buckets while you're at it. The bigger the better.”

  Christopher stopped just long enough to fake-salute. But just as he started off again, another call halted him in his tracks.

  “And if you find any Kit-Kats while you're digging around in there, I call dibs!”

  Christopher threw him a wink and a grin, and he disappeared inside.

  “How much do we have?” Sarah looked to the empty jerry cans.

  “This tank's nearly full, but I'd sure like to have both of them topped-up before leaving Ingleside. The last thing we want to do is run sh
ort in the middle of the bottleneck.”

  “Oh, Gloria,” Sarah said, patting the metal fuel tank as tenderly as she would an expectant mother's belly. “You certainly are a thirsty bitch.”

  The old man watched them both with something akin to awe. At last, he produced a well-used handkerchief from his back pocket, drew it across his brow, and gushed, “My word, I wish I knew how you do it.”

  Sarah cocked her head. “Do what, Daniel?”

  “How you make it look so easy. You've built this amazing team around yourselves, and you just make it all look so… so easy!”

  They both scoffed at once.

  “My friend, none of this easy,” Mason said, almost in a laugh. “We might look calm right now, but we're paddling like hell just below the surface. Believe me, Daniel, absolutely no part of this is easy, and God help us if it ever becomes easy. In fact, if you ever cross paths with someone who isn't scared shitless every waking moment, and tormented by nightmares every night, you'd best put a bullet in that man's head. Because I guarantee you, he is a worse monster than anything else you'll ever come across in this world.”

  “And we didn't build a team, Daniel,” Sarah hastened to add. “We made friends. It's that simple. We made friends.”

  Sarah laid a hand on Mason's shoulder, and Mason's hand went up to embrace it. It was such a natural, tender display that someone who didn't know their history might have thought they'd been together for years. And apparently, Daniel was one of those people.

  “Well, it's a fine thing that you two still have each other,” he said, idly thumbing the gold band on one calloused finger. “My Ida passed from this life too many years ago to count. To tell you the truth, though, I'm almost glad. Oh, many's the time I would've done anything the good Lord asked, to have her back with me. But with the way the world is now, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, let alone someone as sweet as my Ida. She was like you, Sarah. She couldn't wait to meet new people, make new friends. Why, she had me put up a stand by the side of the road so she could sell baskets of fresh strawberries to folks passing by. But it wasn't about making a few extra pennies. She liked people. She genuinely liked people. And if someone stopped by, more often than not, they'd end up in my sittin' room with a glass of lemonade and a plate of cookies.”