To their left, a series of silver silos were visible. Even from this distance, it was obvious that those silos had been converted to watch towers as well. They could do a huge circuit of the area, but Jody was pretty sure they would find that they would encounter more of the same.
“If they have enough manpower to commit to this, they sure as hell have more than fifty people,” Jess, always the realist, grumbled.
“Agreed,” Jody said with a pensive sigh. “Perhaps we should call this off and return to Hope and focus on our defenses.”
“How would these people know who we are or where we are from?” one of the red shirts asked.
“That is a good point,” Jess said after a moment. “I have an idea…”
A few minutes later, Jody and Jess were walking down the middle of the road towards the miniature fortress outpost at the bend in the road. They were still a few hundred yards away when five people on horseback emerged and began to gallop in their direction.
“This is a really stupid idea,” Jody said from the corner of his mouth.
“Why didn’t you say so before we walked out into the open and made ourselves known?” Jess shot back.
The pair came to a stop and raised their hands. They still had all their normal weapons on them because it would be really stupid for anybody to be walking around unarmed these days.
“Hey!” Jody called as the horses pulled up and fanned out around him and Jess. “Just passing through, we don’t want any trouble. In fact, we were sort of hoping that your place took in folks who were willing to work hard and carry their weight.”
“Is that right?” one of the men said with a nasty smirk. “Well, that might all be well and good, but since you weren’t brought here by Drew and the boys, something tells me you are full of shit. Most likely, you are part of some two-bit raiding crew. The problem is that you just bit off way more than you could chew.”
“You mean the guys we found dead back in those trees?” Jess asked, sounding more annoyed than nervous. “Hell, we thought you guys killed them.”
“What?” That exclamation came in a number of ways; each with its own individual expletive depending on the person.
“Yeah, we found four guys dead back in those trees and thought that they might have tried to cross you guys or something,” Jody continued with the story that they had decided on before approaching this place.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” the man who had been the spokesman of the group snarled. “Something about this doesn’t feel right.”
“You really think we would just walk out in the open like this?” Jess shot back. “Our community just got wiped out a few weeks ago by some group of lunatics. We figured our best chance at survival was to find someplace bigger and better equipped to deal with a group the size of the one that hit us. We knew of two large communities in the area and you guys were the closest, so we decided to give you a look.”
Jody kept his eyes locked on the man who had been doing all the talking. It was obvious that their story was not going over. He was getting a little worried…then the first bolts flew.
***
Entry Nineteen—
Maybe I should just throw myself off of one of the many cliffs around these parts. I want to believe that I am a good person and that I am acting for the benefit of humanity, but I think I am just becoming more and more like those I hunt.
This started because I discovered a terrible murder. I took it upon myself to do this. Nobody asked. I simply threw the cross up on my shoulders and began the journey. I keep telling myself that I was not hired and that I can simply pack what little I have into my backpack and find someplace else to settle down and call home. I certainly could have left after the girl finally succumbed to her injuries. I think she might have had some internal bleeding. Whatever the case, her death was certainly slow and agonizing.
As for the young man, he eventually gave me all the information I believed him to have and so I finally ended him through suffocation. Here is the kicker…at the time I was holding that piece of plastic tarp over his face and he was thrashing about, I was telling myself that it was better than if I’d slit his throat.
How sick has my mind become when I am rationalizing which method of murder is best?
Like I said, maybe I should just throw myself off a cliff. I actually went to one this morning. It was a perfect day. There was a mist weaving through the trees and it was like looking down into a big, fluffy pillow of cotton. I almost convinced myself that I wouldn’t feel a thing. I couldn’t see the ground below, but my brain flashed an image at the last second as I was leaning forward. In that split second, I saw those huge boulders and all the scree. Yes, it would hurt quite a bit.
Obviously I returned to my cabin. However, I am not sure how long I will be able to resist that voice in my head that tells me that my time has come and I have outlived my usefulness.
Entry Twenty—
I guess Kenneth has decided to take a more active approach in trying to discover what has been happening to his little minions. Had I been paying attention, the man would be dead and perhaps I would have been able to move in on those kids by now and change their mindset.
Yes, I have decided what my actual mission is here. I need to take down this Kenneth Mead and assume his role. My thinking is that these children are obviously very impressionable. If I can instill in them the spirit of hard justice that I have been practicing, then just maybe this will have been worth it.
I was out scouring the area for food when I heard the noise. I followed the sound of voices and came to the top of a hill. I was on one side of a massive ravine. On the other side was a man that looked to be in his fifties. He was standing up on a log and addressing a group of five youngsters. They were too far away to really determine their age, but I knew who and what I was looking at, so I guess my mind has filled in the details.
The man was the only one I could really see since he was the only one not wearing a hooded cloak. His long, gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he had a beard that would have made the guys in ZZ Top jealous. He was wearing jeans and what looked like a heavy denim shirt with metal bands sewn onto it. He had a spiked baseball bat over his shoulder. I mean, it probably was just a carved club with spikes, but it looked baseball batty.
The one thing that I saw that got my blood up a bit was one of the youngsters standing in front of him. It was obviously a female, and she was leaning with her back against the man’s legs. He was running his hands over her shoulders, caressing her in a way that implied intimacy. That punched a hole in what I’d been told. That also gave me the reason I needed to fully commit to taking that guy down.
It is simple fate that has given him one more day of life. Had I been on the other side in the direction of the place they call home, I would have been able to figure something out and end this human piece of crap.
I guess I am over the depression or whatever it was that has been kicking my ass these past several days. Suddenly I feel invigorated. I have a mission now. I am going to kill the leader of these New Aryan kids and teach them a new way. A better way.
My way.
Entry Twenty-One—
Today I made the long hike that took me to a spot where I could actually see the compound these little miscreants call home. I am honestly a bit impressed. I now think that perhaps this Kenneth person might have been in our military.
It is a well-patrolled base of operations. The roving security personnel are not on any sort of routine schedule that I could time and exploit. Also, I got a good look at the place and see how easy it would be for somebody that stumbled on this location to think that the other two buildings are occupied. It took me a while to realize that the movement I saw inside was not the living. I am not sure how he has managed to do it, but there are what look to be kids that walk past some of the windows. I have some very high grade binoculars, and that is how I saw that the supposedly occupied buildings are housing zombies.
I have given it a lot of thought. I really don’t want to kill any more of the followers. If I have to sit in these woods for a year, I will do what it takes to make sure that the next person I kill is Kenneth Mead.
I have dug out a nice hole and managed to camouflage it well enough that you would almost have to walk on it to discover there was anything here.
Now, I simply watch and wait for my chance…and hope it doesn’t rain.
8
Catie pointed to the left. Braden and Mario moved along the trench. The moans of the undead drifted on the night air, and for a moment, she was reminded of those early days.
“The more things change,” she whispered as she peeked up over the stone wall.
The walls of the community were visible in the moonlight. They had doused all their lanterns and such, but on a night like tonight where it almost looked like you could reach up and pluck the moon from the sky, that precaution was not doing the people of that community much good. She knew that dawn was just an hour or so away, so they had to move and move now to minimize the potential for losing any of her people.
It had been a rough few weeks, and the human cost was starting to weigh on her soul. Every day, she simply told herself that she was doing what she needed to do in order to have a safe place to give birth to and then raise her child.
A zombie stumbled past her and followed the dozen or so others that were heading towards the front gate of the community. Already the zombies were about ten or twenty deep almost all the way around the place. They were not going to breach this community’s walls, of that Catie was virtually certain. The construction seemed amazing, and if an eventual treaty could be made with these people, then she would have to talk to whoever had designed their perimeter defense.
She was not holding out much hope that it would be happening anytime soon. These people had gone so far as to send back the head of the woman she’d sent as a diplomat to try and at least arrange a sit down meeting with their leadership. Catie had known full well what was in the box before she opened it. However, it did not help to ease the pain she felt in her heart when she opened the lid and stared down into those filmed eyes riddled with the black tracers. The woman had of course turned after death and her head was animated, the teeth clicking and the eyes following her every move until she replaced the lid.
She’d had the head spiked and disposed of and then called the Beastie Boys. They had not been all that happy with having to bring their precious landfill of zombies out again. Plus, Chuck and Louis were still out in the surrounding countryside trying to round up the several hundred that had straggled off.
They had lost almost a quarter of the zombies during the siege of Montague Village. The smell of smoke still hung in the air from all the fires; not only the ones that she and her people had managed to set with flaming arrows, but also the ones from when the oil had been dumped over the south wall and then set ablaze to try and eliminate all the zombies on that side.
That had backfired on the people of Montague Village. The fire had not only caused a lot of the zombies to shift in that direction towards the conflagration, but it had also attracted a smaller heard of around five thousand.
“They’re doing the hard work for us,” Louis had crowed as they watched that new herd arrive and meld in with the other zombies surrounding the walls of Montague Village.
Catie understood the boy’s elation; she just could not share in it at the moment. She had become one of those people that Kevin had warned about. She was weaponizing the zombies.
“Once that happens, I think you can start the final countdown clock for humanity. It will prove that we are the worst of the planet’s creatures,”
Kevin had said.
On the fifth day, Catie had fired an arrow into Montague Village. To be more specific, she had fired it at a wooden beam right by where Marty was standing, barking orders. The note read simply: Your brother is dead. Surrender or join him.
He had decided not to surrender. In fact, as Catie had watched the man through her binoculars, she was actually really glad there was a lot of ground as well as several thousand zombies between her and him. In the end, it had not gone well for the citizens of Montague Village. Catie could not believe that so many of them preferred death to dealing with and accepting the immune citizens as equals. That was even more peculiar considering that Marty was one of them.
That second day when he’d tossed so many of the unknown over the wall into the waiting arms of the zombie mob had been enough for Catie. That was the day that she had ordered them to fire volleys of flaming arrows into the compound. Fire is a nasty thing and does not care who you are; it simply destroys anything it can feed on…sort of like zombies.
Later that week, Marty had waved the white flag. Catie had come out and climbed on a building well out of range of any possible flying arrows. The big man had seen her and waved frantically. Maybe she could have sent in the Beastie Boys and their noisemakers to try and pull the zombies away, but the time for that was past as far as she was concerned.
“But he is surrendering,” one of the people standing on the roof insisted.
“It is too late for that,” Catie had replied.
“But what about all those innocent men, women, and children?” somebody else had asked.
Catie didn’t have an answer for that, so she remained silent. She had stood on that roof and watched the fires grow and grow until they were obviously out of control. She forced herself to stay there as the first wall weakened and collapsed. When the zombies began to flood in, she continued to watch. She’d had to hand-select the people who would hold their post and take down those who tried to escape. The only exceptions were for women and children.
“I want all women and children, regardless of their status, to be brought back to the general living quarters. Get names, ages, and then have them all housed on the same floor if possible,” she instructed once she managed to select a team of people she believed would do the job and do it right. “Separate the injured just in case. If they start to turn, give them a humane option.”
Returning her attention to the situation at hand, Catie motioned her team to follow her. Getting up into a crouch, they all continued along a wide alley and out to an open field that had once been the grounds for a fairly large school.
Catie signaled her team to stop once again. She turned to Braden. “This is where you heard something?”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t zombies unless they have learned how to speak,” the young man said.
Catie motioned for him to lead the way and Braden headed for a large building set off by itself as if it might have been the gymnasium. They reached a pair of large metal double-doors and were surprised to discover them securely locked.
“Hmm,” Braden grumbled as he stepped back from the doors and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t encountered a locked door in so long, I almost forgot they existed.”
“You two,” Catie pointed to a pair of her team, “stay here. The rest of you, with me.”
“What are we supposed to do?” one of the young men she had told to stay behind asked.
“Watch the door.” She didn’t wait for any further questions and hurried down the building and around the corner. They reached another single door on one side and discovered that it was locked as well. By the time they had completed a full circuit of the stone cube, they had discovered three more entrances, all of them locked.
When they rounded the corner to the front, or at least the side of the building that they had originally approached from, they were greeted by absolutely nothing.
“Where did they go?” Braden hissed as he broke into a run.
The young man skidded to a stop where the two members of their team had been standing when they last saw them. Kneeling down, he brushed the ground with his fingertips and rubbed them together.
“Bloody,” he announced, holding up his hands. The fingers looked black in the lack of any sort of bright light, but it seemed like a valid assumption.
“I don’t care what you have to do,” Catie hissed, “get us inside.”
Braden stepped back and looked up. There were windows set in the building several feet above the ground. He unslung his pack and produced a grappling hook attached to a coiled bit of sturdy line. It took him three tries, but on the third attempt, there was a heavy clank and when he gave the line a solid tug, it appeared to be firmly secured. He started up, bracing his feet against the wall and walking up with slow and steady progress.
“Batman and Robin made it look much easier,” Catie stage-whispered.
“Who?” a young woman who could not be much older than her late teens asked.
Catie turned to the girl and opened her mouth, then closed it again. She started to say something a couple of times and then realized that she did not know how to explain it and not make it sound silly. She felt a pang of sadness as she realized just how much the new generation would never know about in regards to the world she grew up in. While some of it was not going to be missed, there were some simple pleasures like a good movie or being able to fly across the entire country in a matter of hours to see friends or loved ones that stood out. She glanced down at her slowly growing belly and added doctors with access to pain killers to that list.
She made a mental note to do a thorough check of the library when this was all over. Since it was supposedly mostly intact, she would see if she could find any comic books. For whatever reason that she could not nail down exactly if she had to put it into words, she felt it was important for her child to have access to some of the things that she knew Kevin used to love.
She watched as Braden vanished into one of the openings that had long been empty of glass. A moment later, there was the sound of chains being jangled.
“They have it secured with some serious amounts of chain. So even if I could figure out how to unlock this door, it would take me a week to cut through all these chains,” Braden’s voice came from the other side of the door.
“Then how in the hell did they sneak up on our people?” Catie pondered out loud.
“What about that?” another one of the team pointed a few feet away from where he was standing.
Catie walked over and noticed a manhole cover. How had she missed that?
Simple
, she told herself,
she wasn’t looking for anything of that sort
. It hadn’t crossed her mind, and that was a problem. She had decided to go to war, but she had not been thinking like a soldier. That had to change right now if she wanted to have a good chance of winning.
“Braden, get out here. We found something,” Catie hissed through the door. She received a quick rap on the door in confirmation.
Once he was back with the group, they all gathered around the manhole cover. Braden and another member of the team had to work together to move the cover. The metal disc came up with a metallic rattle and was moved easily enough once it was pried from its seat. She was only a little surprised to discover a few sputtering torches mounted on the wall of the old sewer or drainage tunnel that waited below.
Once everybody was down, Catie had the cover pulled back into place. Their direction was an easy choice as they followed the trails of blood that could be seen as fresh, dark smears along the floor of the tube shaped tunnel that they found themselves in.
The tunnel went on for a good ways, and as the torch’s sputtering became more and more feeble, she wondered if perhaps they were being led on some sort of wild goose chase; then she heard the echo of voices.
“Kill the torch,” she whispered. “Everybody take hands. Braden, you just keep moving forward. I would almost be willing to wager that we have maybe one more turn before we are on these people.”
“What if the tunnel splits?” Braden asked.
“Keep left,” Catie decided.
It proved to be a moot point. Before long they were at a ninety degree turn to the left and a dim glow of light could be seen. To their eyes, it was almost as bright as daylight.
“…but how did they get here?” a male voice was asking. “Why would they come to this building of all the places they could snoop around?”
“Maybe it has something to do with how you can’t keep your big mouth shut,” a female voice retorted harshly. “I told you not to say a word until we were inside.”
“But I was trying to tell you about those damn zombies. You know how the kid versions act all weird. There were at least twenty of the zee-brats in that clearing,” the male voice insisted.
“And they weren’t coming after us, so who gives a crap!” another male voice snapped.
Catie gave the person in front of her a squeeze and a tug to stop the group and then moved to the lead of her pack. It dawned on her as she walked past her group that only two of the fifteen had a weapon in hand. She had a lot of work to do with these people.
“Stay put,” Catie whispered as she started forward to scout around the corner. Braden grabbed her arm and gave her a tug.
“”What?” She turned around to see Braden shaking his head.
“I don’t think you are in any condition to try and sneak around.” His head bobbed a bit and she had to assume that he was indicating her baby bump.
“You just get everybody to ready their weapons and let me worry about what I can and can’t do.” Catie yanked her arm free and gave a nasty glare, though she doubted that he could see her facial expressions with what little light they had directly behind her and thus probably bathing her face in shadow.
She did not wait for him to respond and moved to the corner and dropped down to a crouch. She peered around and saw five people standing over the two bodies of their team members. Two of the five were holding what looked like some sort of glowing device that was about the size of an Old World cell phone and gave off an incredible amount of light for its relatively small size. She turned her attention to her people lying on the ground. At the moment, she could not tell if they were alive or dead; and then the female of the group spoke as she kicked one of the downed figures.