Dead Wrangler (17 page)

"Let me search his cell," James said.

"Why?"

"I'm a bit of an expert on where people hide things in these cells. I know the places to hide things when you really don't want the guards to find them," James said.

Hendrix shrugged. "Guess it can't hurt. Go for it. Now leave."

"I'll need a screwdriver," James said. Hendrix grunted in a way James decided to interpret as yes. Hendrix started thumbing through a report.

James stood up and saluted. Hendrix gave a parody of a salute, and James turned to leave. Two MP's escorted him to Melville's cell.

Melville's cell was the same as every other cell; sparse, hot, and dank. It held the few pathetic possessions the resident had managed to keep.

James started at the top. The walls were all concrete, of course, but it was good to be thorough. He didn't see any signs of digging. The cell had the normal layer of dust up here; Melville hadn't been doing anything clever up here. He descended down, screwdriver in hand. He pried off the metal gasket that covered the gap between the wall and the pipe. He jammed a finger in the gap–nothing like the tolerances accepted in government work–and felt his way around. Nothing. He hammered the gasket back in place with the butt end of the screwdriver. The toilet got the same treatment. Nothing again. He opened the drain trap, which was not a popular spot. While the guards never checked it, it was hard to get your item back. A plug of nasty old hair almost blocked the pipe. He pulled it out–what long haired freak had lived here James thought–but it was nothing. He threw the cud on the ground with a muttered curse. The MP's were glaring at him, thinking they would have to clean it. James picked it up and flicked it into the trash.

He was starting to feel a mounting desperation to find something. Major Hendrix would laugh his balls off if he didn't find anything. He felt under the bed–nothing. He stabbed open the pillow. Nothing. The mattress was next, and the MP's eyes were bugging out of their head as he threw polyester wadding all over the cell. Two little baggies of meth. He recognized the grinning monkey on the sticker, and he tossed them to the guards.

"Not Melville. Roger's been dead for weeks, but that's his stuff," James said as he turned to scan one last time. He was convinced there had to be something–but where? He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

'When I open my eyes, I will see the cell as the cell is. I will see every detail. I will assume nothing. I will not just see, I will observe.' He thought to himself. He inhaled slowly, and exhaled loudly. Again, ignoring the polyester fluff tickling his noise. Again. He opened his eyes.

A toothbrush. An almost empty tube of Crest. Splatter on the mirror from Melville spitting into the sink. A thin layer of yellow around the toilet. The oldest, nastiest pair of shoes he'd ever seen.

They should have smelled him after so long, or heard him, or just stumbled into him. It was miraculous. The man was sobbing in the corner as James grabbed his flashlight and scanned the basement. He was naked, except for a pair of nasty tennis shoes.

Those were the same shoes he had been wearing. They had been the only things he had been wearing. They were worn past all use, and he could have gotten a new pair–shoes and clothes were about the only thing they had too much of these days.

He reached for the shoes, and pulled out the insoles. Nothing. He snarled, then stopped himself. See what is. He turned the shoes over, and he noticed a gash on the inside heel of the left shoe. He stuck his finger in and hit a sharp edge. He grinned. Ingenious hiding place, James thought. He pulled it out. It was a folded Polaroid. He straightened it out and tried to see it.

He felt his brain seize up, like a blown transmission. His eyes saw, but he couldn't understand what he was looking at. It made no sense. Bizarre explanations zipped through his head–maybe the family had a terrible skin condition–maybe it was photoshopped somehow–maybe it was from the set of some movie–but he chewed his lip and worked through it. His brain started to come back together and he realized that the photo was what it was. He needed to adjust to it, because it wasn't going to adjust to him. He stared for a long time, and then turned to the MPs with tears in his eyes.

"Take me to him," he said, voice firm as the world shook.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Pistol Tick

Pete woke her up in the middle of the night. She woke with a cold dread. "They didn't make it to Fort Wineca did they?" she said.

Pete was taken aback. "They got ambushed on the way. A couple of guys got killed, but Tabitha and a few others are ok. A person named Meghan was in the car with your daughter, and they ended up going south and connecting with a guy down there. They're fine too."

Janet started crying. She was so relieved on the one hand, and felt so guilty to feel relieved on the other. Gary hadn't gotten good news. He'd just died in his sleep. But at least Diane was ok.

"Where is my daughter?" Janet demanded.

"Some guy, guess he's some kind of operative cause they wouldn't say much beyond that."

"Operative?"

"I can't tell you."

"What is all this secretive bullshit about? Who the fuck do you think I'm going to tell?" Janet snapped.

Pete raised an eyebrow and said, "I didn't use the word ambush by mistake. But that doesn't matter. I thought you'd want to know that your family is safe."

"But!"

"But nothing. I won't tell you to go to sleep, but I've already said more than I should."

"But where is Diane? Who is she with?" Janet demanded, voice raising and hitching with tears and frustration.

"Oh, I guess you won't believe this, but trust me–if they're with who I think they're with, they are infinitely safer than you or I tonight. Now that really is the end of it," Pete got up and left, ignoring her exclamations.

She twisted her blankets around and tried to be angry, but she couldn't sustain it. Diane was safe. The rest of them were safe. They had some cold war paranoia going on but who could blame them.

She snorted. Operative. Secrets. You never heard of Fort Wineca. Keeping secrets from a bunch of meatbags that couldn't understand a map if you gave them a four year course in cartography. Silly men playing silly men games. But they meant well enough.

She wouldn't have thought she would be able to sleep, but she could. Pete hadn't had the air of someone trying to bullshit her; he'd been truthful when he said that Diane was safer than they were. She was with Meghan. Meghan, the survival machine. If Meghan had been chased by hot-tubbing zombies, she wouldn't have collapsed in exhaustion in a shitty little house. She'd have found a way. With that thought in mind she drifted off for a few hours before being gently kicked awake by Pete.

The daily routine was for everyone to get one baby wipe to clean what they could, or maybe a hot washcloth and a bar of ivory soap if they had a fire. Propane was not to be wasted for something as frivolous as hygiene. Even though she felt dirty all the time, and her hair was a knotted and disgusting mess, it kept them clean enough.

They slept in the back of two of the trucks; campers. They slept on the tiny beds and on the floor, two in the cab, either on the bench seats or leaned back. Two men sat on the roof with compound bows with what they said was a "target illuminator" and night vision goggles. Every so often in the night a pale green light shined through the camper windows, and she could hear the thrum of a bow. Most of the time the zombie didn't even know they were there before it got shot. Tidying up for the day was quick; packing up the blankets took about as long as recovering the arrows in the daylight.

They were on the road as the sun peaked above the trees. Snow still clung to the ground, and a truck with a snowplow attached cleared a slow but steady path for them. Janet stared out the window and thought. They had told all their safe stories, it seemed like. Before stories brought up too many painful memories for casual conversation. After stories were usually too awful. So people kept to themselves, or flipped through whatever ragged books they had found along the way or managed to hold on to. Bibles and cheap grocery store paperbacks were common. Books were in libraries and people’s houses. It was difficult to convince anyone to break into a building populated by monsters to pick up a copy of Crime and Punishment. They made do with what could be found in places they did visit, like grocery stores or gas stations. Even though those places were ransacked of anything useful, people were ok with risking their lives to go there. Now that she thought about it, it didn't make any sense logically, but emotionally it did. The houses were private tombs. You weren't supposed to have fire fights in libraries. They weren't desperate enough to break the taboos. Yet. But food was growing thin. If they stayed out here much longer she would mention it. Maybe they just needed someone to say it out loud. She wouldn't have minded some Dickens.

She had been a regular church goer once, but it had never been a big thing for her. If you had asked her then how she would have responded to the things she had been through, she would have thought she'd have prayed all the time, or hated God for taking her child. She felt nothing either way. The only reason she even realized it was an issue was because of the fervent way some people read their Bibles. It reflected her apathy. She was puzzled by it. Many people, maybe most, were convinced that this was the End Times, and scoured the Bible for succor and hints of prophecy. The apocalypse had intensified their religious interest. The theological implications of what had happened were immense. She could see that, but she just couldn't care. She felt stunted somehow, but that didn't prevent conversations about souls and the Anti-Christ from boring her to tears.

What it boiled down to, she thought, was that it didn't matter. God or no God, she was going to do what she had to do to protect her remaining child as best she could. Whether Gary was in heaven or not, she would still grieve just as hard. Whether a zombie had the soul of the person it once was or was just a pile of disease, she would not let it bite her. She felt neither gratitude nor guilt for being alive. She didn't think she was so unique as to merit special treatment above the billions who had died. Nor did she fear death enough to think she was all that better off than those who had died.

So in the end all the religious speculation was like listening to people discussing college football; byzantine yet meaningless.

Survive. Find Diane. Get her someplace safe. Then maybe she could care about higher meaning.

They stopped after a few hours and she got out in a hurry, barely remembering to sling her rifle behind her back. She had to pee so badly that she wet herself a little bit with every step. She hustled out to a copse of trees while undoing her pants. She sighed with relief as she squatted. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it, even the cold air. When she opened her eyes she noticed something strange–a long line of people marching three ranks deep into the trees half a mile away. She squinted, worried she was hallucinating. She hadn't seen that many people in one place since before. But there was something wrong about how they moved–and yet they were organized. She gaped, not quite making sense of what she was seeing.

It wasn't until the wind shifted and she heard the moans that she realized that line was zombies. They looked like soldiers on parade. She almost screamed, but it caught in her throat. She fell on her face and wrestled her pants up, getting snow both up her shirt and down her pants. Her breath was quick as she crawled back to the trucks. She hissed and waved at the men. The look on her face said more than anything else, and they were on alert immediately.

"How close?" Pete asked.

"Half a mile east. Thousands of them, all walking in a line."

"Walking in a line?" Pete asked, eyebrows scrunched together.

"Yes," Janet hissed. Pete crouched low and headed down to the copse. He pulled out a small pair of binoculars he always carried in a pocket and scanned. His crouch deepened as he looked, and he crawled back up to the trucks.

"She's right. They're marching like it’s a fucking parade," Pete said to the men, who had gathered behind the U-Haul.

"What the fuck?" John said. The other men grunted in agreement.

"I don't know. They don't know we're here. They aren't acting agitated. I'm going to get closer."

"For fucks sake, why? Let's get the fuck out of here before they see us," John said.

"Because I've never heard of them doing anything like that. There has to be a good reason for it."

"Fuck the reason, there's too many."

"The whole reason we're out here is to gather intelligence. Give me the Nikon."

"Pete, man, come on. Snap some shots from here and then let's get the fuck out. We're a day away from home!" John pleaded.

Pete shook his head. "Exactly why we need to know."

John paused. The men took it as a point scored, and the issue was settled. They seemed to know what the drill was, and half went to the driver's seat and half stood in the beds with binoculars and bows. They started backing the trucks up, and were soon around the bend. Janet realized she was still standing there with Pete, who was fiddling with the camera.

He turned and saw her. "A volunteer! Just stay quiet and watch my back while I snap pictures. The lens on this thing is spectacular, so we won't get too close."

Janet gulped. She'd had no intention of volunteering for anything, but she was trapped now, unless she wanted to look like a complete coward. So she nodded and followed him as he set out on foot, rifle still slung across her back.

She realized he was making a crescent loop around the marching line, so that the zombies were never quite out of sight. They kept behind hills as much as possible, with Pete working his way to lie at the top of a hill with a pair of binoculars. She crouched at the bottom of the hill, rifle resting against her knees as she scanned for movement. John had given her a suppressor he had made out of PVC pipe and spray painted a mottle green and black. It was big enough to ruin the iron sights, so he had also given her a laser sight that stuck out from the base of the little telescopic sight. She had almost no idea what she was doing with the thing, but they hadn't had the time or the ammunition to let her get in some target practice. She chastised herself for being here; not only was she useless but she was a danger to Pete too. But then he knew better than most how useless she was, and he seemed happy she had 'volunteered.' She guessed two pairs of eyes was better than one.

They had been moving for an hour without a zombie in sight when Pete settled down on the fourth or fifth hill. He scanned with his binoculars, when he said "What in the fuck?" in an unbelieving tone. He kept watching for a long time, then gestured down to Janet. "Come up here. Stay very low," Pete said.

She crawled up the hill. Pete gestured that she should look through the binoculars that he held. She did, and in the scene she saw a thing... a horrible thing. It stood tall on thin gray legs, and its mottled and disfigured head bounced up and down like it was nodding. On its hands were long black claws, like daggers. It stood at the edge of a pit, and the line of zombies they had seen ended at its feet. With one hand it was grabbing their head and pulling the chin up. With the other hand it jabbed its claw into its eye, then let the corpse fall into the pit.

No, she realized. It wasn't at the edge of the pit. It was in the pit. And it was standing on bodies. The pit was the size of a football field, and it was half full. The thing just kept stabbing, and the zombies quietly and peacefully accepted their fate.

"Look to your left," Pete whispered. She turned the binoculars. Black mounds, the same size of the pit, surrounded the Herder. At first she thought the mounds were black earth, but a breeze made the mounds rustle. They were leaves. She didn't quite have the words to describe them, but they made her sick to her stomach.

Pete took the binocular away and plugged a wire into the iPad, then screwed it to the binocular. The scene she had seen appeared on the iPad. He was recording. He scanned the whole scene, concentrating on the thing, which was still going about its business. After he had gotten what he wanted, he gestured for her to go down. He crawled back down.

Janet was terrified, and confused. She didn't understand what any of it meant. What was that thing? What was it doing? What were those black things growing from the ground? Pete was pale as well. He held his nose with his hand, and seemed lost in thought.

She realized that nobody had been watching their backs for a good twenty minutes. They had been too absorbed in the scene above. She twitched her rifle up and scanned. Nothing.

After a while, Pete looked up, grim. "We keep going. We've got another three hours of daylight, enough to move a bit further and get back before sunset."

Janet was taken aback. She had just assumed they would go back immediately.

"Shouldn't we go back? They need to know what is going on," Janet stammered. She wanted to go back.

"Who knows what else is going on over there. Command will need as much intelligence as they can get. This is totally unprecedented." Pete yanked a radio from his backpack.

"Pete, Recon. Come in."

"Roger. Signal 5," Janet thought it was John, but she couldn't be sure.

"Found some Grade 5 activity." He rattled off a string of coordinates. "Per Orders, relay immediately to command. Going to gather more intel, expect to be back by sunset. Over."

"Roger. What activity? Over."

"Too weird to explain on this channel. Make it clear to command this is only a grade 5 because they don't have a grade 6. Very weird shit. Saw one Jungle Snake conducting. Zed playing first chair. Over."