America the Dead (3 page)

The sun was high when we reached the outer gate and Simon was impressed with our earthen wall. I could see him running an experienced eye on its effectiveness and I saw him nod his head in approval. As we approached the lodge, I could see Simon openly nodding.

“Very nice,” he said. “Was this place a tourist spot before the zombies came?”

I gave him a short nod as I put my bike away. “This place has a lot of history, but the short version is we found it empty, realized its potential, and settled in. We could have done worse and nobody has laid a counter claim to it.”

“Not yet,” Simon mumbled, but quickly smiled to cover it. “Looking forward to seeing the rest,” he said amicably

Charlie led the way and we climbed the stairs to the second floor, then worked our way down to the main room. Simon whistled at the size of our common area, then walked over to the window to admire the view. I shrugged off my backpack and took off my vest. Charlie did the same, although he put his used tomahawk near the fireplace in the center to burn off any trace of the virus from the Z he killed. I motioned Simon to settle in at the big round table we used for discussions and he sat down, relaxing into the chair after his long hike. He pulled a bottle of water out of his pack and took a drink, his eyes glancing around at his surroundings.

His pose was casual, but I could see he was tense. It seemed as if he had some knowledge that he wanted to let go of, but didn’t know where to start. For my part, I figured I would just wait, seeing where the silence took me. It was an old trick I had used to good effect once upon a time as an administrator. Those with guilty consciences tended to need to release their guilt and the longer I waited without saying something, the harder it was for them to keep it in.

Charlie sat down at the table, pulled his Glock from its holster, and placed it on the table. The move wasn’t lost on Simon, and he leaned forward, placing both hands on the table while leaving his firearm holstered. I chose to stand away from the table, leaning on a low wall that separated the main room from a bar area. My casual pose put my hand close to my SIG and on Simon’s right. If he tried to get into action, it would be hard for him to bring his gun to bear before I shot him. Ordinarily, I wasn’t so cautious, but the man had reacted a couple of times a little out of the ordinary, so I wasn’t taking chances.

“Where do I begin?” Simon asked suddenly.

“Your survival story, I will assume, is pretty much standard these days. You figured out what was going wrong, got the hell out of dodge, fought a few zombies, and ended up someplace you didn’t like. Along the way, you have heard my name, and you have an interesting story to tell about a certain ‘Major’,” I said, starting the ball.

Simon blinked, then he fully smiled. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

“Not really. Why don’t you pick up where you left off on the way here. You said you were taking to the hills when the Upheaval started,” I supplied.

“Right. I had spent a bunch of time up in the mountains around the Tahoe area and I figured maybe with the terrain, the plague hadn’t hit so hard. Well, I got to Tahoe all right, but one look around had me running for the hills again. Seems like a lot of people had the same idea and one of them was infected. The whole slaughter had started again and I barely managed to escape the zombies by climbing the expert slope on Heavenly. The zombies weren’t great climbers and I got ahead of them pretty quickly. Last I looked, there were dozens of people trying to escape the undead by swimming out into the lake. Trouble is, the lake is cold, and I am sure most died of hypothermia while the ghouls waited at the edge.

“On top of Heavenly is a lodge and I stayed there for a time while the world died around me. The place had been abandoned and I was able to break into their food stores and live for nearly six months. By that time, the weather was turning and it was getting pretty cold at night, so I started to venture out. The first person I encountered was a zombie. But it was cold enough that he couldn’t chase me and was moving so slow that I was able to take a large branch and knock him down the mountain. By the time he reached the bottom he was in about six pieces.”

I smiled at the description and imagined a Z cartwheeling down the mountainside with limbs flying off and leaving a grisly trail of smashed-up zombie chunks.

Simon continued. “About the time my food ran out, winter was starting to hit the mountains pretty hard. I figured I needed to move on and do it quickly before the passes were closed. I took one of the maintenance trucks that had been left up at the resort and started my way down the mountain. I was hoping to get into Carson Valley and maybe find a decent place to hole up for the winter. There wasn’t a large population in that area and I thought that I could winter there and then move on. On the way down the mountain I passed several cars that had reanimated people inside them and more than one family car was covered in blood as a sick family member came back and ate his relatives.

“Carson Valley was relatively untouched by the virus and I spent the winter with a couple who had been living there for a while. They had been monitoring the progress of the disease by the internet and we spent countless hours going over plans and preparations. When winter broke I planned on heading north to the rough country, then maybe going to Colorado. I had heard the military had made a stand there and were welcoming survivors. Rumors told me there were almost a hundred thousand people in the mountain and the military was going to start heading back out to take on the threat.”

I paid close attention at this point, because it coincided with information I had found at State Center Bravo in what seemed a long time ago.

“I killed my next two zombies that winter. The couple I was rooming with? Yeah, they went out to their neighbors’ ranch and came back with the sickness. Virus took them both out in a short time, then they came for me. I killed the woman with a shovel and beat her husband’s brains in with a length of fence post. They were good people.” Simon drifted off for a second at the memory, but recovered quickly.

“I took what I needed from the house and left that evening. I drove through the night and when I ran out of gas the next morning I figured I was in Colorado. That’s when the Major’s men caught up to me.”

Charlie and I shifted at the mention of the Major. “Who is the Major? Is he the commander of the remainder of the military forces?” Charlie asked.

Simon’s eyes got dark. “No, he isn’t. I found out later that the military was wiped out completely, that there are a hundred thousand ghouls trapped in a mountain in Wyoming, just waiting for some fool to let them out. No, the Major is just some guy who likes to be called Major and he runs his little operation like a military base, although neither he, nor his men have any military experience. But that doesn’t stop him from acting like it or using it to dupe people into believing he’s the sole authority left in the United States.”

That was interesting. I ruminated on the possibilities and if a group could pull it off, they could effectively take over a good portion of the country.

Simon continued. “From the beginning, I knew something was wrong. Men and women worked the fields and tended to the animals. There was a rough fence to keep the zombies out, but the Major’s men managed that pretty well.”

“What was wrong then?” Charlie asked. “Seems like you managed to get to a place of safety, regardless of who was in charge.”

Simon glared at Charlie. “It wasn’t safety, it was slavery. And those bastards used the worst methods to keep people in line. If a family showed up or was brought in, the husband was immediately beaten and the wife raped by the Major’s men. That was standard. If there were children, they were used as leverage. Women who resisted found themselves bound and gagged in a room, with their child put in a dark room next to them. They got to hear their children scream for their mothers. No one resisted long after that, especially if it was a baby left alone to cry.”

My hands involuntarily clenched into fists as I thought briefly about Jake locked in a room to cry for his daddy who couldn’t get to him. I could see Charlie was just as upset.

Simon looked down. “But the older kids, the ones who were between twelve and fifteen, they got separated from their parents and were held in a different part of the camp. The boys were used for labor and the girls…”

Charlie leaned forward, his eyes hard. “What about them?” His voice was flint and I had no doubt he was thinking of his own daughters, living and dead.

Simon looked up and sighed. “They were reserved for the Major. Seems he liked them young and ‘unspoiled’.” Simon looked out the window. “The girls were brought to the Major and when he was finished with them, they were broken. If they had spirit before, they were broken afterwards. The life was taken from them.”

Simon stopped speaking and I had to rein in my emotions. My first impulse was to pack up and head west, not stopping until I had a chance to confront this mess of vipers, but my more rational side realized it was futile. I couldn’t go two thousand miles across country to fight a pedophile bastard and his cronies.

My attention was diverted as Tommy and Duncan came spilling into the room, joking like a couple of teenagers. They glanced over to the table and their expressions turned serious as they felt the mood of the room. They came over to the table with curious looks to Simon and sat down with questions in their eyes at me. I shook my head as I motioned for Clays to continue.

“I was there for twenty months and it reached a point where I couldn’t stand it any more. There were women’s screams every night and children crying for their mothers. In the bunkhouse where I shared sleeping space with the fathers and husbands, there would always be one or two crying rage and shame at their helplessness. More than once rebellion was contemplated, but it was tamped down because of the kids’ camp.

“I finally decided to leave on a night I knew the guards would be distracted. One of the scouting and foraging parties had come across a large group of people who had been travelling. There were a lot of women and children and the men were licking their chops at the new flesh. That night, I ducked the fence, smashed a guard across the teeth with a rock, and took off into the night.”

Simon shrugged. “I guess I survived because it was winter and the zombies were frozen. I moved as far as I could every day, and slept only a few hours at a time. I stuck to the country as much as I could, figuring the Major’s men would be too lazy to search off the roads. Chances are they never missed me or just didn’t care.”

I nodded, thinking about what I had heard. It was horrible, no doubt, but in all seriousness, none of my business. One thing nagged at me, though. “When I told you my name, you acted like you had heard of me. Why is that?”

Tommy chimed in. “Hell, you’re the biggest badass zombie killer in the country, everybody knows you!” He elbowed Duncan and they both chuckled, but silenced when I scowled at them.

Simon chuckled as well, but answered the question. “One of the men in the bunkhouse talked about you. Ever have a neighbor named Todd?”

My heart sank. So Todd survived a cross country trip, only to fall into the hands of a bigger monster than the zombies themselves. I forced myself to ask the next question. “He had a wife and two girls. One his own, the other one picked up after her parents had been killed.” That was a long time ago, but I still remembered the deaths at the drugstore clearly.

Simon shook his head. “He only had one daughter and she went to the major. His wife was used badly by the major’s men and died. He committed suicide when he attacked the guards. They shot him down without hesitation.”

I dropped my head. It was too bad, they were a good family. I said a silent prayer and remembered the other question I wanted to ask. “You said ‘Not yet’ when I said no one has laid a counter claim to this area. What did you mean?”

Simon looked sideways at me. “You don’t miss much, do you? Well before I left, I had overheard the guards talking about the major looking to relocate, finding someplace where he could set himself up as ruler of the country, since he figures he could do it with the men he has. From what I understood, he was looking to come east. Where specifically, I don’t know, but definitely closer to the center of the country. If he hears about this place, he might just take a shine to it and decide you need to go.”

I thought about all the macho things I could say at that point and settled on, “I think I would object.”

Simon shrugged. “The Major has seventy-five men, all of them well armed. You’d get a few for sure, but those kinds of numbers will eventually work against you.”

“I’ll take my chances. Besides, I have a few surprises of my own.” I smiled as a loud growl sounded up from the forest floor almost on cue as the cougar hunted in the growing evening.

Simon’s eyes got huge and I nodded. “Good thing you decided to stay at Matthiesson last night. You might have run into the boogeyman over here. And this one is very pointy in certain places.”

Charlie spoke up. “Well, it’s a hell of a thing, but the chances of this major finding us are pretty slim and if he does, we’ll deal with it.”

“There’s one other thing.” Simon said cautiously.

“What would that be?” I asked.

“The Major is not entirely sane. He had been getting a lot of people in camp lately that have been yelling about their rights and he can’t do what he’s doing. ‘This is America’ and all that. Usually the voices have been silenced quickly enough, but some managed to get overheard by the Major. In his warped mind, he probably figures if he destroys the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he will be able to set himself up as ruler, and no one can challenge him.”