THEM (Season 1): Episode 3 (9 page)

I struggled to grasp that last bit, and had to play it back in my mind to be sure I heard correctly. The colonel’s voice rang out again in the still silence that followed his brief speech. “Take him to the pit.”

A four-man detail carried the stretcher out of the compound, accompanied by a squad of militia carrying rifles. The sergeant major came along; however, the colonel stayed behind. The lot of them marched a few miles south and east of the compound, out to a residential area just the other side of the base perimeter. They stood me up, and as they did I saw there were several metal shipping containers stacked in an odd array behind what was once a very nice upper-middle-class home. I noticed some old discarded pool furniture lying around, as well as a wooden swing set that was tilted at an odd angle, with one of the legs sunk into the ground such that the swing seats on that side were touching the ground.

They walked me at gunpoint up to a ramp on the edge of the shipping container wall, and the low moans that I heard from the other side told me exactly what they had in store me. I laughed to myself, and allowed them to march me up a ramp to the top of the wall; once I reached the top, I could see that the “pit” was an old half-drained swimming pool, with murky green water in the end closest to me, and a half dozen or so zombies milling around in the shallow end. I noticed as well that two of the deaders in the pool were wearing faded and torn Army fatigues. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who’d deserted the militia recently.

I looked around me and saw pity in a few of the soldiers’ eyes, but mostly I just saw indifference. I knew there would be no clemency for me, no last-minute reprieve, no mercy based on common human decency here. I glanced down in the pool below and saw that a few of the deadheads had noticed us, and that they were starting to moan at a higher pitch. These deaders were hungry.

I looked over at the sergeant major, who was eyeing me with a cold heartless stare, and shot him a bloody grin. “I’ll see you in hell, Marsh. Tell Leakey that old Scratch sends his regards.” Then I turned around and jumped into the deep end of the pool, straight into the murky, algae-covered waters below.

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That concludes Episode 3 of THEM Season 1...

Find out what happens to Scratch, Gabby, The Doc, and Bobby in Episode 4!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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M
.D. Massey has been a soldier, an emergency room technician, a fitness trainer, a truck driver, a martial arts instructor, a cook, a consultant, a web designer, and a security professional. He also spent six weeks in law school before deciding that, if he was going to lie for a living, he’d do it honestly as a fiction writer. M.D. lives in Austin, Texas with his family and a huge American Bulldog who keeps him company while he writes the sort of books he likes to read.

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http://MDMassey.com

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