Books of the Dead (Book 3): Dead Man's Land (13 page)

“Was I speaking with you, corporal?” the colonel asked.

“No, sir, but....” Workman started to add, but was brutally interrupted when the colonel shot out a fist that connected with the side of his head, knocking him off his feet. 

Workman lay stunned on the pavement, barely moving. The other men knew better than to confront the colonel. While he was in his early fifties, the colonel could still outrun, out muscle, and out punch anyone on the base with the exception of Sergeant Jones. But the colonel was probably tougher. Once, in a test of strength, the colonel had broken a man’s arm during an arm wrestling challenge. No, they knew better than to mess with the colonel.

“Okay,” the colonel said, “now, that is settled. Carter was there, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir, he was,” Baker said.

“I’ll expect a full and detailed briefing at HQ in a half hour. I may have to take care of this myself since you fucked it up. I damn well want to know what I’m walking into this time.”

Chapter 19

The Six Ps: Proper Pre-Planning Prevents Poor Performance

It took two days for my head to completely clear, but my back still burned as if someone were working on my shrapnel wounds with a blowtorch.  It only hurt when I breathed, though.  Too bad I needed to breathe.

Over those two days, we worked to double our defenses and security. Many people asked what the hurry was about, but there was no time for a blue ribbon committee and report.  Trouble was coming, and I wasn’t sure how ugly it was going to be. I only knew it would be ugly.

The only problem with not answering all the questions was that people began to supply their own answers, letting their imaginations run wild.  One rumor that came back to me was that I was insane and that I was going to be deposed as leader at any moment. I’m not sure I could argue with the first part of it.  Other rumors had me burning the building to the ground, a la Waco and David Koresh and his wacky tribe of nut jobs. 

I guess whatever faith Greg had in me carried the day, because most people listened and did as they were told.  I also guessed my track record was speaking for itself.

Brandon had done as he was told and acquired the heavy metal cable that I had asked him about.  Although they thought I was crazy, I supervised a team as they pounded metal stakes in the ground outside of the buildings. They took the heavy metal cable and wove it around the stakes in geometric patterns, crisscrossing from stake to stake at about ankle height.  At ground level, a person couldn’t get a true appreciation for the design, but from the third floor, it looked like a giant spider web.  I made sure they made a clear path every fifty feet or so. This path led from the outside to the inside.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Brother Ed said, coming up beside me in the guard tower.  “This is such a waste of time.”

“I might not know either,” I said, “and maybe I’m addled from the explosion.”

Kara nudged an elbow in my side.

“It’s a part of a defense system,” I said.  “I think we’re going to need it.”

“What are you not telling us?” Brother Ed asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I just know we need it.”

“I find your inability to communicate what you’re thinking quite frustrating,” Brother Ed said as he eyed me from a side angle. 

“That makes two of us,” I said.

Why he took that was beyond me because it was certainly out of his character. Maybe he planned to address it at the leadership team the next day? Too bad that meeting would never happen.

The rest of the day passed like any normal day in the zombie apocalypse -- slow and tedious. I went from guard station to guard station, making sure our people were as ready as they could be. I had no idea of which would really hit first -- the living or the dead? I also had no idea which threat frightened me more. They both had their ups and downs.  The dead were usually predictable, but now that this Lord of the Dead was leading them, they were even more dangerous. The living were totally unpredictable. I half expected soldiers in tanks to come ramming their way into the complex at any moment. Basically, I was expecting the worst, and that’s what we got.

After finishing my rounds of the complex, hitting each guard station, and double checking our doors, I headed up to my room to attempt to sleep. It was all my body needed, but as soon as I entered my room, I heard a muffled scream come through the wall. I stopped in place and listened intently. 

Another scream sounded. It was coming from Kara and the girl’s room. Whatever fatigue I had been feeling evaporated as I felt both fear and adrenaline pulsing through my veins. I rushed across my room to the door that separated my room from theirs, unlocked it, and pushed it open. The room was dim, but I saw a dark figure bent over a bed in the corner.  The figure clutched at something on the bed, and my heart sank, thinking that maybe we had another outbreak like the one with Paige and one of the girls had turned. I fumbled for the light switch with my one hand, while I reached for my pistol with the other.

A second later, a door across the room burst open, and a light snapped on, splashing across the room. Kara stood in the doorway. I blinked away the temporary blindness caused by the brilliance of the light and saw Madison standing over Naveen’s bed, reaching down and gently shaking Naveen.

“Wake up, Naveen,” Madison said, “wake up.”  Her voice quavered.

Naveen seemed unfazed and continued to thrash and scream. Before I could react, Kara was on the move and beside Naveen’s bed. 

I moved in behind Madison and grabbed her shoulders, gently pulling her back, and said, “Let Kara handle this, honey.”

Naveen let out a yelp as her feet ran in place in the bed.  Kara settled down on the side of the bed and reached out a hand to touch Naveen’s shoulder.

“Naveen,” Kara said, quietly at first. “Naveen, you need to wake up.” 

Naveen was in full-out panic mode, throwing her blankets completely off the bed and her legs and arms flailing around almost spasmodically.  She alternated between whimpers and screams.

Kara looked around at me as if to ask what to do, but I had nothing until I saw a pitcher of water on a table across the room.  I hated what I was about to do, but I grabbed the pitcher and dowsed Naveen’s head and shoulders.

She sputtered for a few seconds, but her body stilled. Her eyes fluttered open, and she slowly came back to consciousness, but her face was filled with terror.

“They were after me, again,” she said. “Oh, Kara, they got me.” She burst into tears, and Madison followed.
              Kara gently pulled Naveen into a hug and started rocking and shushing her. “No one’s getting you. We’re here. We’re here.”

I pulled Madison close and whispered into her ear, “You did a good thing trying to wake her.”

It took about five minutes for Naveen to get herself composed. Kara got a towel and dried Naveen off while I took Madison off to Kara’s bed, where both the girls would spend the rest of the night. 

I came back into the room and approached Naveen and Kara, when Naveen shot out a hand and grabbed my wrist, pulling me close.

“Joel, something’s about to happen. I just know it. I don’t think we’re safe here anymore.”

“Sure we are,” Kara said. “We’ve done everything we can to be prepared. There’s nowhere safer.”

“No, something bad is coming. I know I won’t be able to stay here,” she said, edging back toward crying, but then checking herself.  “I see myself in that hospital. I see myself running. Jason is there as are you and Joel.  A bad man is chasing you, Joel.  The monsters are there, too and they’re after me.”  She looked to Kara and me, imploring us to make it better.  “I think they get me.”  Then the dam burst, and the tears came again.

Kara worked diligently, rubbing Naveen’s back and telling her that everything was going to be okay. It took ten minutes for the tears to subside, but I’m not sure if it wasn’t exhaustion that wore Naveen down this time. She was almost asleep when I took her from Kara’s arms and carried her into Kara’s bed, where I laid her down like a limp doll next to Madison who was already asleep. 

We stood over them, watched, and waited until we finally heard Naveen quiet down into a regular breathing pattern. This feeling I had for these two girls was intense, and it made me wonder if the feeling was what my parents felt for me when they watched me sleep when I was young. These two were not my own, but I felt a bond that seemed parental with them, especially with Naveen. Something inside me swelled and ached, and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. 

I knew that I would do anything to keep them safe, even if it meant sacrificing my own life. But I also felt helpless. The world before the zombies was dangerous enough.  The one with them was exponentially more perilous, and there was only so much of me to go around.

I felt all the responsibilities starting to gather, ready to collapse on me, when Kara grabbed my arm and pulled me into the girls’ room.

“What is she seeing?” Kara asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not what I’m seeing. There’s going to be an attack. Soon.  I just know it.  I’m doing everything I can to be prepared, but I’m beginning to think that whatever I do won’t be enough.”

“It has to be.”

“But what if it isn’t?”

“What choice do we have?” she asked, and there was no challenge in her tone. It was an honest question.

“We could re-locate.”

“Where?”

“I have no idea.”  I ran a hand through my hair and felt the tension bunched in my shoulders, taut like the metal cable we had worked with earlier in the day. “I’m not sure I could get any of the others to move anyway.”

“So, we ride it out here?” she asked.

“For now,” I said, “at least until I can come up with something else.  I’ll bring these concerns to the leadership team and see how it goes.”

She looked down for a few seconds, then took my hand in hers and looked up into my eyes.  “We need to talk.”

“That’s no way to start a conversation,” I said, feeling a sense of dread come over me.

“It’s not bad,” she said.

“From the set of your face, I can tell that it’s not entirely good, either, right?”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“You’re not making this easy,” I said, trying to remain calm.

“Okay, you asked for it,” she said, exhaling loudly, “I think I’m pregnant.”

Chapter 20

The Calm Before the Storm

The fact that zombies were real sort of raised the bar for shocking news.  A person had to reach high for something to beat that standard, but Kara’s news did just that.  It was like a mental earthquake combined with an emotional hurricane all at once.  I’m sure my jaw nearly reached the floor.

I staggered back a step and said, “You’re what?”

“I hoped you’d react differently than that,” she said, her expression guarded.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. I’m sure my mouth was wide open.

“Well, you could be happy.”

“I could, but….” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

She pulled away from me and ran for the door. Like the dolt I am, I stood as quiet as a scarecrow.  I finally went into action when she flung the door open.

“Wait, wait,” I said catching up to her and grabbing one of her arms and spinning her back around to face me.  “How did this happen?”

“You have to ask that?”  she asked. “It’s a natural thing after what we’ve been doing.”

“I know, but I assumed you...you used some sort of protection.”

“That’s what all the boys say,” she said as she pushed by me and went to the window, where she kept her back to me and stood rigidly with her arms crossed.

“Okay, okay, let’s start over,” I said. 

“How do we do that?” she asked with some ice in her tone. “This isn’t something you get a do-over on.”

I approached her slowly from behind. “Listen, I’m sorry about how I reacted. It took me off-guard. You know I love you, right?”

There was no reaction as she kept her attention riveted on the darkness outside the window.

“This is a dangerous world. Bringing a child into it sort of freaks me out a little.”

“What about Naveen and Madison?  They’re basically our kids.”

“But they’re already here.”

“
This baby is here
.  There’s no making it disappear.”

“I know that, but….”

“There are no ‘buts,’ Joel.  We’re having a baby.  Or, at least,
I
am.”

I had played this badly, and I knew it.  I desperately searched my mind for a way to salvage this. I replayed the arguments that I had seen my parents have, and I tried to remember how they had recovered. The scenes were pale and translucent. From my current place in time, they seemed like ancient history.

As I searched for words, Kara searched for the door and found it, leaving me alone in the room, still looking for the magic words that wouldn’t come and couldn’t be found.

Miles away, the colonel heard someone enter his room, breaking him out of a sound sleep. But no one could do that, unless they had a key or broke through the door. Regardless of these very real facts, there was someone in his room. He left his eyes closed, but he reached ever so slowly from under the blankets to the nightstand beside his bed for the .45 he kept there each night.

“You won’t need that,” a voice said. It sounded like a strange combination of crushed gravel and smooth liquor, a warm liquor that burned on its way down. 

Something inside him believed the voice, so he withdrew his hand from the gun and rolled over. Still groggy, he sat up in the bed and saw a dark, silhouetted figure sitting in a straight-backed chair by his desk. The only light in the room came from under the door, seeping in from the hallway. Oddly, while that light was cool, it seemed as if the figure were rimmed in a glowing red light, but only faintly. There was also a faint red glow to his eyes, like coals that had just about cooled.

“Who are you?” the colonel asked.

“Does that matter?” the figure spoke.  Before the colonel could speak, the figure added, “It’s more about what I can do for you.”

“And what is that?”  He eyed his gun, measuring if he could get to it fast enough.

“To tell you to get your ass in gear if you want to get your hands on Jason Carter.”

“Where is Carter?” the colonel asked forcefully.

“Right where you think he is, but not for long, if you don’t do something about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Again, with the questions. There’s no time for questions, only action.”

“What do I need to do?”

“Act.  Act now.” 

That’s what the colonel decided to do as he rolled out of bed in one fluid movement while snatching his gun. He spun around, his years of training kicking in and took aim on the figure, but there was no one there. There was no figure. No glowing eyes. The only thing in the room that wasn’t there before the colonel went to bed was the slight scent of sulfur, acrid and bitter.

Rex sang in a gravelly, off-tune voice as he watched the teams load the soldiers onto the three trucks and two school buses. The tune was the theme song to the campy and long off-the-air western TV show
Rawhide
.  No one else at the loading dock knew the song, but he didn’t care. No one thought he could sing either, but again, he didn’t give two shits. The song made him laugh.

“Keep those doggies rollin’,” he sang as he watched Roy running a set of zombies up the ramp, into back of the bus. They moved up the ramp, single file, as dutiful as a row of school children.

Felix, on the other hand, was having difficulty getting his group onto the back of the semi-trailer. Rather than neat and orderly, they seemed to be a mob, bumping into each other like unruly kindergartners. One of them hung up on the trailer door, his new hardware caught on the hinge.

“Felix,” Rex said, breaking from his song, “for shit’s sake, get that one off that hinge before he rips something off.”

Felix fumbled with his control unit, and the zombie caught on the hinge jitterbugged back and forth for a few seconds. Things were reaching a critical point when the creature froze, standing as still as a statue.

Rex looked over his shoulder at the catwalk, which ran along the back wall of the loading dock.  Anthony stood there, glaring down at Felix.  He held a master controller in his hand, working away on the tiny buttons, ‘the puppet master’ at work. 

“There’s no time for this,” Anthony yelled down onto the floor.  Everyone, except Rex, jumped a little. 

The zombie shuddered in place for a few seconds and slid free of the hinge.  A small wisp of smoke curled up from one of the wires leading into its skull. These wires led directly into the pain center of the brain, bypassing the deadened natural wiring of nerve fibers and bundles killed off by the zombie virus. It was Anthony’s genius that saw past what many people had missed. Yes, the zombies felt no pain, but he figured out how to make them feel it, and that’s what put him in control of a small army.

“We’re on a schedule,” Anthony said.

Rex went back to singing. 

I stayed with the girls, not wanting to leave them alone after Naveen’s nightmare. The other reason was because I felt useless and stupid. If there were a worse way to handle the conversation with Kara, I’m not sure I could have found it.

The minutes ticked by as I sat on the bed, waiting and staring into the darkness outside the window.  More minutes ticked by and I lay back on the bed. I closed my eyes, telling myself I would rest my eyes for only a few minutes, but a lot of minutes went off the clock as I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

I really don’t know how long I was out, but I came back to the land of wakefulness when I felt a hand on my shoulder, rolling me over in the bed. Ordinarily, I’d probably have jumped out of my skin, but I was just too tired.

After I was finally able to focus, I saw Kara sitting on the edge of the bed, turned partially toward me. She had pulled back her hand and hugged herself tightly. Moonlight cast its pale blue light across the bed, giving her face a ghostly look. I could tell she had been crying.

I sat up and reached out a hand, touching her on the shoulder as gently as I could. .

“I’m sorry I didn’t react better,” I said in a soft whisper. 

“Oh, it’s not you,” she said, “I should have told you earlier.”

“I
am
happy, but I’m also scared. Bringing a child into this world gives me the heebie-jeebies, but there’s no one else I would want to do it with.”

She wiped a tear away from her cheek.  “You know how to charm a lady.”

I pulled her close, and she came willingly. We didn’t do anything; holding her tightly was enough. I breathed in the familiar scent of her hair and closed my eyes, trying not to think of anything else but being with her at that moment. I tried to block out the zombies, the soldiers, and the imminent threat of a zombie horde descending on us. 

She had cried herself out and was asleep in minutes. I held her and played with the thought of what it would mean to raise an infant.  Back before the Outbreak, I would have been frightened out of my wits. I could barely keep myself alive and functioning.  In this zombie-infested world, the task of raising an infant seemed overwhelming. Keeping Naveen and Madison safe seemed a job in and of itself.

But I did let myself consider, for the briefest of moments, the possible joy of holding my own child in my arms. I let my mind wander back to some of the reflections of my parents as they had told me about how much they had enjoyed having me. It was hard to wrap my head around it, but watching out for Naveen and Madison had given me a taste of it, and that hadn’t been too bad. In fact, it had been some of the best moments of this fucked-up, zombie-infested world outside the private time I had shared with Kara.

I considered the possibilities and drifted off to sleep, thinking maybe, just maybe, this baby thing would turn out well. When they said all good things must come to an end, they must have been talking about sleep, because some annoying buzz woke me up less than an hour later.  

This time, it was the blare of a staticky, half-muted voice that broke me out of my slumber.

“Joel, come in.  Joel, come in.”  It was Brandon, and his tone was insistent.
              I wanted to ignore the call, but a sinking feeling in my gut told me not to. I grabbed my walkie-talkie and keyed the talk button.  “What is it?”
              “Our spotter down on the road says there are some vehicles on the highway, coming up from the south.”

“How many?”

“He’s not sure, four or five maybe. They look like trucks. There’s a heavy fog covering much of the road. ”

“Put out the alarm,” I said, looking at Kara and nodding my head.  “I think this is it.”