After the Roads- Sidney’s Way

by Brian Parker

  She picked up her daughter and the blanket she’d been wrapped in. With a nod from her, Jake turned and picked his way over the sleeping bodies on the tent floor.

  They moved quickly toward the appointed meeting spot, a stretch of gravel roughly centered between two of the normal parking spots for military vehicles on the edge of camp. Behind them, on top of the wall, soldiers fired into the mobs of infected that were attracted to the base lights every night. Occasionally, large gouts of yellow flame lit the sky, sending Jake and Carmen’s shadows racing in front of them before fading away.

  It wasn’t easy to navigate the gutters, detritus, and sleeping forms without causing an alarm, but somehow, they made it to the link up point. Jake directed Carmen to stay in the shadows with the two kids while he walked forward to the edge of the gravel.

  A searchlight illuminated immediately as the rocks crunched beneath his feet. A speaker mounted on the front of a Humvee fifty yards away crackled to life. “Return to the camp.”

  Jake stopped and raised his hands above his head, but did not turn back. He knew one of the soldiers would leave the vehicle and approach him if he just stayed put. That was the brigade’s standard operating procedure as a way of de-escalating a potentially problematic situation.

  “Return to camp or you will be fired upon.”

  Still he waited with his hands raised into the air unthreateningly, but strategically positioned to shade his eyes from the bright searchlight. After a moment, he heard the creak of the armored vehicle’s door open and then the soft thud as it closed.

  “Sir, you can’t leave the camp. It’s not safe here. You have to return.”

  “Not safe my ass,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  He allowed his hand to drop slightly so the soldier could see his face. “Oh. Sorry, sir. I didn’t know it was you,” the man replied.

  “It’s alright, Specialist Mitchell” he said, dropping his hands completely so the medic could see him. “Staff Sergeant Wyatt is supposed to pick me and my informant up at zero four hundred. Have you seen her?”

  “No, sir,” Mitchell replied. “I, ah… I thought you had another two weeks or so, sir.”

  “I did, but that woman,” he gestured to where Carmen stood in the shadows, “has information about the resistance that Colonel Albrecht needs to know about. I coordinated with Sergeant Wyatt today for the pick-up.”

  “We didn’t hear anything about it.”

  “Of course you didn’t, Specialist.” Twin headlights in the distance brought his eyes up over the medic’s shoulder. “Looks like that’s her.”

  Mitchell turned and nodded. “Sure, that’s a Stryker, sir. But I can’t let you past me. You know that.”

  Jake ignored him and waved Carmen over. She walked awkwardly, carrying Patricia as Miguel stumbled along, holding her waist. When she was a few feet away, Jake walked casually to her and picked up the boy. “Just go with it,” he whispered, catching the almost imperceptible dip of her chin.

  “She’s an informant?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yeah,” Jake replied, looking once again at the Stryker vehicle that was still about a quarter of a mile away.

  “I don’t know, sir. I think I may need to get Sergeant Turner. He’s a few trucks over. Can you wait here?”

  “No, goddammit!” Jake hissed. ““Everyone in that goddamned camp has seen me leading this woman to a group of soldiers. She’d be dead within a few hours.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, sir. I just can’t authorize her leaving—or you for that matter.”

  The Stryker stopped and he heard the locks on the vehicle’s back ramp disengage. Then the ramp began to lower slowly. “I’m not going to risk this woman’s life,” the lieutenant barked. “She has information about the resistance and they are ready to strike against the military in a couple of hours.”

  “What?” Mitchell asked in shock. “Sir, I—”

  “Damned right, you didn’t know.” Jake grunted, bulling his way past the medic to the back of the Stryker. Behind him, he heard the gravel crunching as Carmen hurried after him.

  “Sir. Sir! What am I supposed to do here?” Specialist Mitchell asked.

  Jake turned back to him. “Tell Sergeant Turner to rouse the CO and meet me at the company in twenty minutes. Then we’ll all go see the brigade commander and let him know about the resistance.”

  He felt more than a little bit ashamed for lying to the young man and worse that he was going to abandon his brothers in arms. He’d tried to rationalize it in his mind that their position was unsustainable, and therefore it should be abandoned before the entire human race was destroyed. Besides, it wasn’t like he was going to a magical safe haven. He’d likely be killing hundreds of infected outside of the camp over the course of the next few days trying to make it out of the city.

  “Hey, Mitchell.”

  “Yes, sir?” Mitchell replied.

  “Do me a favor and keep clear of the camps, okay? This is gonna go bad really quickly. They’re armed to the teeth and pissed off. They won’t care if you’re trying to save someone’s life. Understood?”

  “I have to go with my platoon, sir. Our platoon.”

  “I know, but keep your head down. Can you promise me that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the medic replied, smiling hesitantly.

  Jake bit back a tear, both for the lives that would probably be lost to this insanity and for his own cowardice at leaving his men before things went to shit. Regardless of how much he told himself he wasn’t, that was exactly how he felt.

  He was a coward.

  17

  * * *

  NEAR TYRONE, OKLAHOMA

  OCTOBER 24TH

  “Damn. That was good while it lasted,” Tim groaned, shutting the bedroom door on the remains of their pet.

  “What’s wrong?” Russ asked, concern lacing his words. He was in the farmhouse’s kitchen cooking a slab of bacon and a few eggs for their morning meal.

  “Luwanda.”

  A fork clattered to the counter and Tim appeared a few seconds later. He glanced back and forth between the closed door and the look that must have been evident on Tim’s face. “Is she…”

  “Yeah. I guess she starved to death or something. Who the fuck knows with those things?”

  A small sob escaped his lips. Tim knew that his brother had cared for the looney, way more than was healthy. “Come here, big fella. It’ll be alright.”

  Russ fell into his arms as Tim hugged him. “We’ll get us another one.”

  “Luwanda was special though. I think she liked me. I mean, in her own way.”

  Tim patted the other man’s back dutifully, even if he did think that he was being a melodramatic loser. Maybe he was having such a hard time with this one because she lasted so long. They’d had her, what, a month, month-and-a-half? During that time, Russ had developed an odd bond with the infected female. He’d caught the other man in the bedroom talking to her as if she could respond on several occasions. It wasn’t healthy. The infected they captured, prepared, and cleaned up were supposed to simply be a living, breathing sex toy whose bodies still responded in natural ways to stimulation. That’s it. They weren’t supposed to be anything else, especially not a goddamned girlfriend or whatever Russ thought it was.

  “Okay, Russ. She’s dead,” he said, pushing the other man away. He was done comforting him. “It happens every time. They just don’t live long without eating…well, whatever the fuck they’re all eating out there in the wild.”

  The bigger man wiped at his eyes as he sat on a bench in the foyer. “I think I need a few days before we get another one.”

  Tim nodded. “That’s okay, brother. We can give it a rest. We probably need to go raid the pharmacy in town for more condoms and penicillin anyways.”

  “So what are we gonna do with her body?”

  “We can do whatever you need, buddy. The easiest thing would be to throw her in the kill pit and burn her like we’ve
done with all the others.” He sighed. “But I know she was special to you.”

  Russ considered it for a while until the smell of smoke from the kitchen made him jump up from the seat. He ran across the small space to the kitchen and soon began cursing.

  Tim walked into the kitchen idly, preferring the other man deal with the smoke and the mess. “Bacon’s burnt,” he said, pointing to the frying pan on the stove.

  “I know,” Russ grumbled. “It’s not really burnt though, so it should be okay.”

  “Alright then,” he replied, picking up a plate from the counter and wiping away the crumbs from last night’s meal. “So, what do you want me to do with Luwanda’s body?”

  Russ looked up at him, chewing on a crunchy piece of bacon. “Burn it. She wasn’t nothing but a looney that we used to get our rocks off.”

  Tim raised an eyebrow. “You sure? ’Cause five minutes ago, you was saying how much she meant to you and all.”

  “We’ll get a new one,” the big man said. “Maybe we can figure out how to keep the next one alive.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “What’d you come up with?”

  “What if we don’t get another one?”

  “Goddammit, Tim. You know I need a release that jerking off just don’t satisfy. I need—”

  “Shut up and let me finish. Damn, you’re impatient sometimes. It ain’t like we’ve got anywhere to be. You don’t gotta be at the shop to earn money or nothing.”

  “You’re right,” Russ said, properly rebuked. “I just don’t know what you mean. I thought we agreed that keeping a woman around was best for both of us.”

  “It is. But I’m done with having to keep gloves on a looney’s hands and making sure her mouth is taped up properly. Worrying about getting blood on me from all those wounds that won’t heal up. Hell, I’m done with wearing a whole bunch of condoms. I barely feel any of it.”

  “What do you want to do, then?”

  “Let’s get us a live one.” Russ stared at him in confusion so he clarified. “I mean, a woman who’s not infected. There’s that other camp on the west side of Liberty. They’ve got women. We should take one of them.”

  “We can’t just take one of their women, Tim. Old Man Campbell will come looking for her.”

  Tim shrugged. After the hell that they’d lived through, he wasn’t concerned with old Vern Campbell. The infected were slowly thinning out in the area, so maybe it was time they started preparing for the future.

  The old farmhouse they lived in had been well provisioned and the solar panels generated more than enough electricity for just the two of them, but after seven months, the freezers were slowly starting to empty. It was time the brothers began to seriously contemplate rationing or supplementing their mostly meat diet with shelf-stable products from the grocery store. Those damn Campbells had made it their mission to clean out the stores and take everything to their farm. They’d run into one another on various supply runs, each group warily watching the other.

  “Maybe there will be an “accident” the next time we run into them,” Tim stated. “Maybe they get rolled up by a group of infected and we get their women.”

  “Go on,” Russ prompted, obviously warming to the idea.

  “Maybe we just take what we want, kill the men and burn the bodies. Old Vern will be none the wiser and just think that his people got infected and runned off chasing noises like the rest of them.”

  “I been eying that Sally Campbell for years,” Russ replied. “You think we could grab her?”

  “If she’s one of the ones who shows up, yeah. If not, even that other granddaughter, the brunette—”

  “Katie.”

  “Yeah. She’s a looker.” Tim slapped the table. “Think about that. I imagine they’d appreciate a little action.”

  “I could give Sally a lot of action,” Russ said, his eyes glazing over as he was already thinking about what he’d do to her.

  “It’s settled then. We gotta do some housekeeping here, clean out that bedroom and all. We also need to finish mending that fence where those four infected got tangled up yesterday. Plus, it’s maintenance day for the solar panels and the battery bank. After that, we can plan our next move.”

  Russ nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll go get the wheelbarrow so we can take out the trash.”

  “Good man,” Tim said, leaning back to pat his stomach. “Maybe that Miss Sally will even do some of the cookin’ and cleanin’ around this place. Lord knows it ain’t had a good scrubbing since Momma died.”

  The mention of their mother sobered up his younger brother, as Tim knew it would. There was a lot of work to do today before they got lost planning their ambush.

  18

  * * *

  OUTSIDE OF TUCUMCARI, NEW MEXICO

  OCTOBER 28TH

  “What do you think, Sergeant?” Jake asked. He’d considered moving past the military rank structure since they’d gone AWOL, but so far, it had stuck.

  She handed the binoculars back to him. “I don’t know. Looks empty, like they all left, but that’s probably not the case.”

  “Yeah, I doubt it too. It’s a really warm day today, maybe the infected are staying in the shadows.”

  “Maybe. We could just drive up through town and see what we scare up.”

  “I don’t know what you two are discussing,” Carmen called from down inside the troop compartment. “But Sidney and I could both use a bath and that lake on the other side of town is just what we need.”

  Jake glanced at his gunner, Sergeant Wyatt, and grinned. He’d known what the women down below wanted to do from the moment they’d seen the large body of water on the map. The general lack of hygiene is all the two non-military women had talked about after only a few hours inside the Stryker’s belly when they left El Paso five days ago.

  They’d followed Highway 54 the entire way so far. Partly because it was an even, paved road headed away from the Safe Zone, but primarily because it went through a bunch small towns, avoiding cities that would have had a large pre-outbreak population. Even with that strategy, they’d had a couple of close calls in several of those small towns. The infected were a constant threat that always seemed to appear at the most inconvenient times—like when Miguel had gotten diarrhea and was shitting into an MRE box behind the truck. Two hundred infected pressed around a buttoned-up vehicle was a pain in the ass to move through, even with a .50 caliber machine gun taking out the edges of the crowd. Everything else was below the gun’s angle and had to be dealt with by rocking the vehicle back and forth, crushing bodies each time and wasting a lot of fuel.

  “Ahh, the simpler times,” he muttered.

  “What’s that, sir?” Wyatt asked.

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about better days.”

  “Okay. Great,” she replied in frustration. “What do you want to do about the town? Do we stay on 54 and go right through the center of town, or do we try to bypass it?”

  Jake considered the options. Bypassing it meant going on Interstate 40 to the south and then they could decide to stay on it and go back into Texas around Amarillo, which meant not going to the lake. The women would strangle him for doing that; Carmen might actually physically lay hands on him. There wasn’t a necessary advantage over bypassing the town, other than it had a population of about 5,500 people before the virus according to the little town data section. Certainly not all of those people would have wandered off.

  “Any hits on thermal?” he asked, trying to arm himself with more information.

  The sergeant dropped down and the .50 caliber began to rotate slowly beside him on the right. After a moment, Wyatt popped back up. “Nothing, sir.”

  “Hey, Dickerson,” Jake said into his mic. “Honk the horn a few times.”

  Dickerson responded immediately, pressing the horn rapidly for several weak blasts, then holding it down. Jake also grabbed the microphone for the loudspeaker mounted on the vehicle and whistled long and loud. “Th
at’ll get something moving,” he remarked.

  “Contact!” Sergeant Wyatt shouted.

  Jake saw them. There were about ten infected that emerged slowly from various buildings at the edge of town, the closest was about two hundred meters away. All of them were a pathetic excuse for human beings. He’d seen their kind sprinkled amongst the average attackers back at Bliss: emaciated, diseased, barely upright due to lack of calories. They shuffled forward quickly rather than running at a full sprint like most of the infected he’d dealt with.

  If he was being generous, he’d say it was a jog.

  “I’m gonna try to take them out with the M-2010,” Jake said calmly as he pulled the suppressed sniper rifle up through the hatch.

  “Got it, sir. I’ll continue to scan. Engagement orders?”

  “I want to keep it quiet, so give me an opportunity to get rid of these guys first.”

  “Understood.”

  Jake settled the rifle into the pocket of his shoulder and leaned forward across the top of the Stryker, using the roof as a base for his elbow. Peering through the scope, he sighted in on the closest of the infected, surprised to see that what had been two hundred meters was less than a hundred now. These things’ slow, but unyielding pace was deceiving.

  He fired, hitting the infected square in the chest. It faltered, then fell, tumbling forward several feet. He knew that .300 WinMag round might not kill the thing, but the massive exit it would likely cause would take it out of the fight until it did die.

  He opened his non-firing eye and scanned the area in front of him as he racked the bolt, cycling a new round. When he decided which of the fast walkers was the next threat, he focused in on a woman. She shambled quickly, practically windmilling her arms to give her more momentum to increase her speed. He took steady aim and hit her high in the chest, near her throat. The impact of the bullet knocked her upper body backward as her lower half continued to move toward him, her feet lifting off the ground. He watched until she fell onto her back and then began to seek a new target.