“I was just going over the topographic map before you came in
, and I saw the same thing,” Steve told her. “It’s a good plan, and while it sounds good saying it here, who’s going to be the person that stays at these choke points and keeps the Zs from following?”
“No one,” Heather replied. “I promised Brain not to steal his thunder
, so he’ll tell you what he has in mind. It should slow the dead up long enough for us to get away.”
Steve thought for a moment before saying, “If Brain’s got something up his sleeve, then we might have the beginnings of a plan beyond blowing a hole in the dead and running. Our first objective is to get as far away as possible, but there’s
still a lot of unknowns in front of us, so we’ll just have to adapt to whatever situation comes our way. The main thing I’m worried about is how to lose any of the dead that come after us. But if Brain has something we can use, we’ll just have to do like Tick-Tock always says and -,” They both finished in unison, “Improvise, adapt and overcome.”
“Now you need to quit feeling sorry for yourself and get
your ass moving,” Heather added. “You’re sitting in here doing nothing when there’s too much to do.”
Dropping his head, Steve said in a quiet voice, “I was mapping a couple of escape routes, but I had to stop because I couldn’t concentrate. I keep thinking about Mary, I should have been able to prevent her from getting killed.”
Heather stopped and studied Steve for a few second
s while she tried to decide which way to go with this. Knowing they didn’t have a lot of time, she opted for hardcore to pull him out of his depression and get him motivated.
Before he could say another word, in
a loud, sarcastic voice, she asked, “And who the fuck died and made you God?” She could see this startled him, and at least he was looking at her now, so she continued, “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent what happened to Mary. Sean was nothing but a coward, and they’re the most unpredictable. His actions killed her, not yours. But I’ll tell you one thing right now, you better get your head screwed on straight or you
are
going to be the one to get people killed. Everything bad that’s happened to us so far has just gotten ten times worse. We need to have you on the ball if we’re going to make it to Polk. Now pull your head out of your ass, get off your pity-pot, and go down and see Brain. When you’re done with that, you need to get your ass up on the roof and help us teach the others how to shoot.”
Steve felt anger flash through as he said, “
Bullshit, I should have seen what Sean did coming.”
“How?” Heather asked
as she threw her hands up in exasperation. “Do you have a crystal ball that you’ve been hiding from the rest of us? Sean acted like the little worm he’d always been up until the second he snapped. If anything, I would have guessed he’d hide on the floorboards instead of trying to drive through a herd of the dead, but panic and fear do strange things to people. You can never tell how they’re going to react until they do. Look at the rest of the people in his group, for example. They’re all stepping up now.”
Distracted from his thoughts of Mary,
he knew Heather was right, but a small tug in his gut told him different. He might be able to rationalize it in his mind, but his emotions didn’t listen to common sense. Instead of arguing the point further, he let go of his pride and asked, “How do you think the others will do?”
Picking up his M-4 from where it leaned against the wall and holding it out to him, Heather said, “There’s only one way to find out
. You need to get that cute little ass in gear and get to work.”
***
Tick-Tock stood by patiently as the last of his trainees reassembled their weapons. It would have been easier if they all carried the same model of rifle and pistol, but that was not to be. He’d had a rough time in the beginning as he, Heather and Denise had them all break down their rifles to make sure they were clean enough to fire without blowing up in their hands, and with the mish-mash of bolt action and semi-automatic weapons he’d had to deal with, he was amazed that they’d eventually figured out how to take them all apart to make sure the barrels, gas chambers and bolts weren’t jammed up or plugged and that the firing pins were intact. The pistols came next, but they had worked out a system by this time, so it went slightly faster.
When t
he last piece was finally snapped into place, as the man fumbling around with it finally figured out how to get the cylinder back on his revolver, Tick-Tock gave a silent sigh of relief. The trainee looked up at him as if expecting praise that he’d finally gotten it right, and Tick-Tock had to bite back an acid comment at this. He knew that if he had more time, he would break these people down before he built them back up, but he didn’t have time. Time was their enemy. He didn’t have the time to give them a thorough training, so he needed to use a combination of praise and a boot in the ass to get everyone ready to move. He wanted nothing more than to get down in this guy’s face like a drill instructor and scream that if he ever finished last again he would be doing bends and motherfuckers until he puked, but this was not to be.
Forcing a smile, Tick-Tock gave
the man a strained, “Good job,” before saying in a louder voice to everyone, “now we need to go through your packs and make sure you have everything you need and that you’re not carrying a bunch of crap that you don’t. I want everyone up on their feet with their weapons in front of them. If you still have a pack, put it at your right foot and your sleeping bag at your left.”
They all rose from the blankets and sheets they had laid out on the floor of the recreation room
to break their weapons down on and stood at a semi-posture of attention. Two of them picked up their packs and started to rummage through them until Tick-Tock stopped them with a barked, “Did I tell you to do that?”
The packs were immediately dropped
, and the whole group went rigid.
Lowering and shaking his head in mock disgust, Tick-Tock said, “We went over this before. We need to act and think as one. If you want to be an individual, you’re going to die like an individual.” Pointing at the first woman that had picked up her pack, he asked, “Why?”
Stammering slightly, she said, “I knew we were going to go through them, so I figured I’d pick it up and get started.”
“I’m only going to tell you this one last time,” Tick-Tock said in a stern voice. “You only do what I say to do when I say
to do it. Nothing more, and nothing less. I don’t expect you all to become some kind of Rambo, zombie killer ninja assassins, nor do I want you to be. That’s not what I’m trying to do here. All I’m trying to do is teach you how to survive. Your greatest asset is staying in a group, moving as a group, and thinking and acting like a group. To do this, you need to follow some simple instructions. If you learn to do that, we’ll all make it through this to safety. Are we clear on this?”
The
, “Yes, sir,” came almost as one voice, giving Tick-Tock hope.
Looking at Denise standing behind the
m, he raised one eyebrow. She smiled and blew a kiss at him before taking over. With a list in her hands, she said, “We told you all before to make up a new pack if you lost yours in the minivan, so I want everyone to pick up their backpack and dump it out in front of them. Get everything out of the side pockets, too. You might have been ready to go before, but that was in a vehicle. Now we’re going on foot, so you’ll need to carry only the essentials.”
When the contents of the
assortment of book bags, packs and even a few pillowcases they had scrounged were scattered in front of them, she continued, “I want everyone to place their bag in their left hand and pick up each item with their right and hold it up as I call it off. If you don’t have that item, raise your right hand.”
When they were ready, she called out loudly,
“One pair of pants.”
When everyone had
them in their hand, she said, “Roll them up tight and stuff them in.”
When they were done, she called out, “One shirt.”
Going down the list, she called out two pair of socks, one pair of underwear, two full water bottles and one knife. When she came to the knife, a half-dozen people raised their hands that they didn’t have one. Now it was Tick-Tock’s turn. Going up and down the three rows, he handed out the few hunting knives they had and gave the rest of his trainees whatever decent blades he had found in the kitchen. In addition to this, he also handed every third person a pencil sharpener
When he was done, he said, “I don’t have time to teach you knife fighting for a couple reasons
, the first being that I never learned how to do it since I prefer to stand well back and shoot my attacker.” The group laughed, so he added, “And the greater the distance, the better.”
After the laughter at this died off, he said, “
Your knife is a tool for making kindling to start a fire and any number of other things that I’ll go over later, and it’s only to be used as a weapon as a last resort. Don’t start thinking you’re Bizarro the magnificent knife-throwing god and do an overhand toss at an attacking Z because you’ll only be throwing a perfectly good knife away. The pencil sharpener is also to be used for making kindling. Find a stick the size of a pencil and use the shavings.”
When Denise was done with her list, the remains of the group’s belongings lay on the floor in front of them. Tick-Tock watched as they looked down at their property and then back up at him, waiting for him to tell them they could put the rest of their personal
items in their backpacks. Instead, he picked up a phone book from a pile stacked on the Ping-Pong table and tore off two inches from it. Walking up to the first person in the front row, he handed it over to him and said, “Put this in your pack.” When the man looked at him oddly, he explained, “That’s your toilet paper. Use it sparingly, since we might be on the road for a couple days.”
Hearing one of his trainees say in a questioning voice, “Phone books
,” without missing a beat, Tick-Tock said, “We’re using phone books because I couldn’t find any copies of Hard Choices, by Hillary Clinton, in the library.”
There were a few chuckles, and f
eeling that their training was winding down, a man in the back row raised his hand to ask a question. Tick-Tock had told the group at the beginning that they needed to save their questions for the end. He wanted them to just learn to do what they were told, but he reminded himself that these were not Marine Corps recruits.
Although they still had to learn how to hold
and fire their weapons in a safe manner, Tick-Tock decided to relax the mood a little, so he said, “Training’s not over yet, but go ahead.”
“How long will we be walking?”
he asked.
Without breaking stride as he moved to the next person
and ripped off another section of the yellow pages, Tick-Tock replied, “When I was in the Corps, on my last day of jungle warfare training, we got back from a three-mile run, followed by a forced march of ten miles through what was mostly swamp. We came back to camp and unassed all our equipment. All we were looking forward to was a shower and graduation the next day, but then our instructors came in screaming that we had to get our shit together and get ready for another ten-mile hike through the beautiful jungles of Panama.
“Most of us grabbed our gear and got ready, but a couple guys quit. They were bitching and whining about how unfair it was.
They were saying it was bullshit since we were all done with training. The ones that didn’t quit lined up outside and started off at a quick march. That’s one-hundred twenty steps per minute. We’d barely gone half a mile, though, when we came across a couple trucks parked to the side of the road with a bunch of guys hanging around a bonfire drinking beer and having a good old time. Our instructor stopped us just short of them, and that was when we recognized these guys as the men that had been training us in everything from ambush to improvised explosives over the past six weeks. That was when they came forward handing out beer and telling us we’d made it.”
Clearing his throat, Tick-Tock said, “
You won’t quit. You will walk as long as you need to, to get to where you’re going. Don’t project on the time or the distance. Set yourself a goal. Pick out a tree or a rock in the far distance, and say to yourself, ‘That’s my spot. That’s where I’m going.’ When you get there, pick out another spot and head for that. Always remember, mental projection is just like mental masturbation. You’re only fucking yourself.”
When he had finished handing out their impromptu toilet paper, Tick-Tock stood in front of the group and said, “Now I want everyone to put your pack down and pick up your
sleeping bag or blanket and shake it out. I’m going to teach you how to roll everything up nice and tight.”
***
Looking down at the white clumps studded with finishing nails sitting on the kitchen counter, Brain reached down and laid three fingers on one of them. Feeling no heat coming from it, he checked the wires to the radio duct taped to the formless wad. Satisfied, he said to Connie, “They’re ready.”
“But will they work
?” Steve asked from the other side of the kitchen.
Startled
at his sudden appearance, Brain jumped slightly. Regaining his composure, he said, “There’s no reason they shouldn’t.”