Bloodboots: A Breadcrumbs For The Nasties Short (2 page)

I didn’t respond. I knew better. I lowered my head and looked at the dirt.

The second soldier pressed his forehead to my nose and didn’t stop until he knew it was uncomfortable. He was shorter than me but as thick as his pal, looking up with steel eyes. “Man asked you a question…think you should answer him?”

I didn’t know what to do with my hands, where to put them. My breathing was ragged. I tried to hide it. Everything felt wrong. The gun in my back touched spine. Another jabbed me in the chest. They were asserting their dominance, proving they were in control. They were the alpha-males. It was their world now. My apartment didn’t matter to them. My car was pointless. If my girlfriend had been around they would have taken her and her beautiful ass. She would have gone willingly, probably enjoyed herself—strong with the strong and all that bullshit. 

I’d been replaced.

When I spoke it was a whisper, barely audible. “No.” It was exactly what they wanted to hear. 

“Damn right you shouldn’t. You’re alive because Cap’s decided to keep you alive. Your retard brother burns though our medicine because Cap’s letting him burn through our medicine. You get to piss and shit and breathe because Cap lets you piss and shit and breathe, understand? If you want that to change, we can change it, Slick. Just say the word. We can make your life a lot easier…make it all go away. You’ll never have to wait in line for rations again. Is that what you want?”

I knew my place. “No.”

“No, what?”

I knew how to survive. “No, Sir.”

I probably should have let them kill me, toss what was left over the wall and feed me to the dead. That would have been easier. A week later it got worse.

A week later everything went to hell.

The number of gimps outside the base was shrinking. Every night there was less. Unfortunately, they hadn’t found somewhere else to terrorize. They didn’t lose interest and stumble away. They were being taken. Every morning we’d find them torn apart, remains scattered everywhere, bits and pieces, bloody lumps of decayed flesh, bones picked clean. There were arms in the fence, hanging from the barbed wire, bodies nowhere to be found. One time I saw a head in the grass, just a head. It wasn’t dead. The mouth kept moving, milky eyes blinking. I swear it was looking right at me. The bastard had no body and it still wanted to eat. 

No one was coming to save us. 

The things in the forest, the howlers, were hungry too. They were stealing the gimps from right under our nose. Whatever was living in that forest was fast. They were quiet and they were hungry, and they would only get hungrier. It was only a matter of time before they had enough of the frozen section and came looking for something fresh. We all knew it. Tensions were rising. The divide was growing. On Thursday rations were suspended. On Friday there were back. Saturday they were gone again, and Sunday they returned. Monday morning we were instructed to remain inside our barracks. Anyone outside would be shot on sight. That’s what they told us. A small contingent of soldiers were tired of being ordered around. Communication with the outside world no longer existed. The old world was gone. Statuses meant nothing, titles meant less. The water was boiling. 

Monday night the gunfire started. It lasted till morning.

The next day was different. No announcements were made, no word of rations or rules, nothing. By the end of the day we were all on edge.

“I’m not going to just sit here! They can’t do this to us!”

Fifteen people remained in our barracks. Fred Felchus was one of them. Fred was once the CEO of a small start-up that blossomed into a big deal. His car had probably been better than mine, clothes more expensive. His wife had been a fifty year-old with a face stretched five times too many. I never had the luxury of meeting his mistress, but I bet her ass was incredible. His watch cost him seven figures. He still wore it. When I first met him I was jealous. After a year I found it sad. Fred had lived a life of luxury, unfamiliar with hardship. Shabby treatment never sat well. Fred couldn’t take it anymore.

“That’s it! If no one else has the balls to find out what the fuck’s going on, I guess I’ll have to do it myself!”

When he headed for the door his wife tried to stop him, pulled his collar, and ripped the pocket from his jacket. Fred was hardheaded, accustomed to having his way. None of it worked. When he left the barracks she followed. 

Neither came back. 

We sat in that room for three days, roasting in the heat, listening to the howlers and the gimps, the monsters outside. I was hungry. We were all hungry. When the forest screamed, so did Patrick. I did my best to calm him, but rubbing his head accomplished little. When he twitched he made noise. When he made noise he pissed off the guards. Sometimes they’d bang on the walls, cracking steel with the butt of their rifles. Other times they’d just scream. There was a moment, very brief, when I considered putting Patrick out of his misery. We still had pillows. He would’ve gone quietly, never felt a thing. It would have been so easy. 

I’m not proud of it.

On the fourth day they fed us like animals on the floor, picking at mush with our fingers. It didn’t matter what we were eating; there wasn’t a second thought. We were hungry. 

When everything is hungry, anything is food. 

When we were done they dragged us from the building and lined us up. I had to carry Patrick, arms around his waist, struggling to keep him vertical. The prisoners from the rest of the barracks joined shortly after, eighty of us, half-starved, barely able to stand. The sun was bright and hot, and it hurt so bad it took me a while to open my eyes. 

“Vacation’s over, people.” It was the little guy from before, the one who put his gun in my belly. Apparently he was in charge. Fantastic.

 “Three days ago Captain Stevens was officially relieved of duty. Captain Stevens was unwilling to adapt to the changing world around him. His ideas for the way this facility should be run were in direct conflict with the needs of the soldiers serving under him, and you. My name is Gerald Walker. You will refer to me as Mr. Walker or Sir. You will refer to the men and women serving alongside me the same. If it’s wearing a uniform, it’s a Sir. Do I make myself clear?”

No one responded.

Walker’s hand moved to the gun on his hip. The thirty soldiers standing behind him did the same. “I will only ask one more time! I expect you to answer and I expect you to answer with a Sir! Now, do I make myself clear?”

The group responded as best they could, throats raw, barely holding together. It wasn’t good enough. The soldiers spread out, hoisted their weapons.

“Not good enough! I want to hear a Sir, yes Sir!”

Steel clacked, feet stomped.

“Sir, yes Sir!”

We didn’t mumble.

I remember the smile on Walker’s face. I’d seen it a thousand times on the faces of friends and co-workers, and every morning when I looked in the mirror. He was in charge. We all wanted to be where he was, have what he had. We wished we were him and he knew it.

There was a strut in Walker’s step when he made his way to Patrick and me. He poked my brother in the stomach with the muzzle of his gun and grinned when he screamed. “From now on you will be working for your food! No more laying around! No more handouts!” 

He was talking to the crowd, looking at us. “Your beachside palaces are gone, people! No more vacationing at the summerhouse! There aren’t any maids here to clean your shit and tell you how amazing you are while you feed them pennies of what you earn! We are in a survival situation! In a survival situation there are no free rides! Do I make myself clear?”

“Sir, yes Sir!”

His voice lowered, eyes narrowed, whispering in my ear so close I could hear his lips smack. “You want the Bertie to eat, you work double. Got it?”

“Sir, yes Sir.”

His gun moved from Patrick’s belly to mine. “Louder.”

“Sir, yes Sir!” 

The muzzle dug deeper. “Say it again.”

“Sir, yes Sir!”

Deeper. “Again.”

“Sir, yes Sir!”

I did what I had to do. 

I’m not proud of it.

The next month I kept doing what needed to be done. The month after I did the same. Sometimes the jobs we were given had a purpose, like fortifying walls and structures, clearing gimps. Sometimes we were just being worked. I dug ditches for no reason, then filled them the next day. Twice I was told to stand, just stand, in the same place, all night. If I moved, I got hit. By morning I was so bruised I could barely walk. 

Different soldiers treated us differently. Some of them loved what they were doing; it was payback for their lives before it all collapsed, the wars we sent them to, our fat wallets, my girlfriend’s ass. We were human ladders. They needed us to fall down so they could climb up. Others were just following orders, trying to make it to the next day without turning into Captain Stevens, turning a blind eye to stay alive. It was easier that way. 

The hitters were testing us, seeing who would break, weeding out the troublemakers. If someone collapsed on the line, so what? One less mouth to feed. When someone died, they disappeared. No one really knew what happened to the bodies.  There were rumors, lots of them. A hanger near the east end of the base was considered off limits, always locked down, guarded. Sometimes we’d hear moaning. As much as I wanted to know, I also didn’t care. Whatever was happening to them wasn’t happening to me. That’s all that mattered.

The gimps outside the base were disappearing as well: bodies dragged to the woods, grass stained red, spattered with intestine and things so chewed they were unrecognizable. To make matters worse, the forest was moving. Left unattended, nature was taking the area back, everything creeping inward, bringing the monsters closer.  

Sooner or later one of them would find the nerve to come inside. We all knew it would happen. The soldiers probably thought they were ready for it. They were wrong. None of us were ready for what came over that fence. 

Or how many of us it would kill. 

I was working the fences when it happened, stabbing gimps through the eyes with what amounted to a sharpened stick. We weren’t allowed knives, certainly not guns. There were ten of us, hands soaked in blood and pus and gunk I couldn’t begin to identify. Things happen inside a body when it dies, disgusting things, even if that body comes back to life. 

The gimps smelled twice as bad on the inside as out. 

That night they were livelier than usual, gnawing at the links in the fence, teeth grinding steel. They knew something was up before we did, could sense it in the air. They wanted in.

They wanted to eat before there was nothing left.

The soldier guarding us was named Jackson—more specifically, Mr. Jackson, Sir.  He wasn’t a massive man, wasn’t small either. He was sturdy, arms carved out of granite, small enough to still be fast. His eyes never left the group, cold and dark, sunken deep into his face. His hands never left his rifle. He’d watched us before, had a bad attitude, and wasn’t afraid to show it. If he wasn’t beating someone up, he rarely moved. When he decided to move you knew you were in trouble. There was something angry in the way he stood, nastiness boiling just below the surface. He hated us, all of us. He was looking for an excuse to show how much. When the guy standing beside me collapsed from exhaustion, he saw an opportunity.

“Get up. Get yer ass up.”

His name was David, the guy who collapsed. I think. He was from another barrack. We’d only met a few times, whisper-bitched about the guards while digging a ditch, and went our separate ways. 

“Not gonna ask again.”

He was a skeleton, everything thin and frail, face drawn and tight, the same as the monsters he was stabbing. I wasn’t sure he was capable of getting up, not anymore. 

“I said, get your ass up!”

When Jackson took a step forward, the urgency set in. David planted his feet, a handful of dirt, used his stabbing stick as a cane. He tried to stand, grunted, stumbled, and failed. He tried again. His face was soaked in sweat, limbs jittery. When he coughed he spit blood. He wasn’t going anywhere. 

Suddenly Jackson was stomping in his direction. 

I probably could have helped David. He was right beside me, bumping my leg as he wobbled, nearly knocking me over. I might have gotten beaten, but I could have helped. I could have wrapped my arms around him and pulled him to his feet. It might have been all he needed. He could have found his second wind, maybe survived the night. 

Instead of helping I stepped to my left. When he reached for my leg I brushed his hand away. When he tried again I knocked him over, turned my head, and stabbed some poor son of a bitch who’d been dead a year straight through the eye. I kept my mouth shut and went back to work. 

I’m not proud of it.

The moment Jackson’s rifle connected with David’s head, it exploded. Blood sprayed from the gash, soaked my side, my arms and legs, and stained my boots red. David fell, limp, into the cage. The gimps broke his fall. Fifty dead fingers snagged his clothing, pulled him to the steel, strung him up like a scarecrow. At the promise of meat the dead frenzied. Their mouths went to work, snapping through the holes in the fence at anything exposed, nibbling the flesh from his body. Some guy farther down the line screamed. A woman cried. I watched as David’s body jostled against the steel, sections of head tearing like paper, bits of hair still attached. There was blood everywhere, so much of it. I couldn’t look away. I heard them swallowing, sticky tongues licking stickier lips, everything glistening. 

Jackson smacked me in the back of the head so hard I bit my lip. “Stop staring, asshole. Back to work.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He smacked me again. 

“Sir, yes, Sir.”

One more time for good measure.

“Sir, yes, Sir!”

He wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t saying it loud enough. Mr. Jackson, Sir didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual. 

He moved close, breath heavy, nostrils flaring. If the howler hadn’t shown up when it did, I might have ended up next to David.