Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (27 page)

“
Oye, ‘mano
, you should just throw
them over the fence. Let those
pinche
dead fucks eat the
shit out of them,” Tiny suggested, perhaps subconsciously looking
for a way to avoid what was about to happen.

“Nah, too easy,” Sleepy said, hatching a
cruel idea as he walked to the garage door. Twisting the garage
door knob, he lifted the gate.

Tied at the wrists by rope bonds and hung by
those same hands on hooks attached to chains that held strong to
the ceiling were Sgt. Nickson and Spc. Garrison. Their ankles were
bound with gray duct tape. The light from the now-exposed afternoon
sun blinded the men temporarily before their eyes adjusted.

“
Como estas, babosos hijos de la
chingadas
,” Sleepy said, sarcastically asking them how they
were before insulting them.

No answer came from the duct-taped mouths of
the men. The only response came from their eyes. It was a
combination of fearful anger, like the eyes of the victim of a
bully, caught helpless and alone in a bathroom at a junior high in
Anytown, USA, forced to stare into the eyes of a hungry wolf, an
angry demon that was going to take out his own fearful anger from
his past on the helpless, on someone that he, perhaps, wished he
was.

In the eyes of Nickson and Garrison there was
that feeling of helplessness despite knowing something should be
said or done or both. It was the eyes that vowed reciprication for
the injustices done if ever the opportunity arrived, but more from
Nickson than Garrison. Garrison mostly just quivered and whimpered.
In the eyes of fear that were Nickson’s, on the other hand, was a
promise of vicious vengeance, a cruel payment of services rendered
that were never requested.

Stepping to a table with a line of automotive
repair tools, Sleepy stated, “I think it’s time to play a bit,
homies.”

Tiny turned on the interior lights before
shutting the gate and locking it again.

1:10 PM

Backroads and Brush near IH-35

The landscape was changing. Though there were
still sights of the living trying to make a break for it on both
the north and south lanes of IH-35, those sights were becoming
fewer. Austin, a rocking and thriving home for the living, was
slowly transforming into a sad and festering land of the dead. The
Live Music Capitol of the World had become the Living Dead Groaning
Bastion of the Planet. Even more than the day before, the dead
began to line the streets, wandering around in a staggering search
for the living.

Taking the main roads was becoming too
dangerous. So when Fireteam Arnold had the opportunity to take to
the brush near the highway, it was a welcome deviation.

“That signal still strong, Parcells?” Sgt.
Arnold asked.

“Yes, Sergeant. It is still on Montopolis
near William Cannon.”

“We’re close to Ben White,” Noble said.

“Well, at least we know a place where those
things don’t like to be: here in the sticks,” Knight said.

“Don’t count on it,” Sgt. Arnold replied. “I
think those foul fucks could wander in here if they had a reason.
Let’s not give them one.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Parcells said.
“When we were driving down here from Fort Hood, those things were
smarter than we thought. I swear I saw one of them open a car door
and try to start it.”

“Bullshit,” Arnold said.

“Swear on my mama’s grave.”

“And then she jumps out of it and bites your
hand,” Knight chuckled.

“Not funny, man,” Parcells said.

“Hold up, people,” Sgt. Arnold said. Up ahead
was a clearing, and before they were exposed there, the sergeant
wanted to take a closer look.

Walking far enough through the brush but
still not exposed, Sgt. Arnold was able to see the IRS building.
Within the confines of the gates of the government building was a
mass of humanity, confined and scared. Hundreds of people were now
housed in what was clearly a FEMA camp. Lines and lines of cars
congested the street outside the building, obviously belonging to
many of the people on the inside.

Knight crept up beside his sergeant. “Jesus.
FEMA?”

“Yeah. Not a bad facility.”

Before the outbreak, the building had already
been surrounded by a large iron fence coupled with straight lines
of barbed wire over the top. Curiously enough, the wires were laced
on bars that slanted toward the interior of the facility, and not
the exterior.

Zombies lined the fences, smelling the
literal meat market of human flesh on the other side.

“They really got these things up and running
pretty fast,” Sgt. Arnold said. “Pretty amazing.”

He was about to turn back when screeching
tires attracted his attention. Barreling down the side street was a
brown station wagon. A front tire was blown out and it scraped
against the side of every vehicle it came near as it raced to the
entrance of the IRS FEMA camp. It wrecked into the corner of the
gate near the entrance. Soldiers quickly approached the gate to
help the desperate citizens as a crowd of zombies gathered around
the car.

“This is not going to be good,” Knight
mumbled, waiting for the soldiers to open fire on the refugees with
a
better safe than sorry
attitude.

But they did no such thing. Instead they
began to pick off the zombies that were zeroing in on the family.
The people in the car, numbering seven as they exited, coordinated
in an effort to attack the zombies with bats, pipes, and other
makeshift blunt and studded weapons. There looked to be three
adults. One of them was female, probably the mother. The others
were four children, ranging from young to older adolescent.

The mother reached the hood and pulled the
two younger children to the roof of the vehicle in an effort to
jump the fence and enter the facility. She was not using kid gloves
when she placed her children on the barbed wire to hand to the
soldiers.

The remaining four refugees, one man, an
older boy, a younger boy and a girl, were holding their own to
defend the mother as she handed the two toddlers over the fence.
And despite the clumsy and spontaneous attack patterns of the
zombies, the numbers game was becoming an issue.

One boy smacked a ghoul in the head with a
two-by-four, which lodged in the skull. The board was awkwardly
removed from the head of the monster, and Sgt. Arnold figured there
were nails at the business end of the piece of wood—a latter-day
mace.

“That’s really nice,” Sgt. Arnold said, with
sincere admiration of the resourcefulness of the family unit. Noble
and Parcells joined him and Knight in watching the throwdown.

The other boy had a helmet and shoulder pads
and was knocking zombies down and out with spearlike tackles.
Swatting and swimming out of the grasp of the zombies, small
awkward piles were formed with ghouls knocked on their asses,
American football style, buying valuable seconds for the
family.

The adolescent daughter was next over the
fence. Sgt. Arnold cringed when the wire hooked and pulled at her
shirt, tearing both the shirt and the skin. He groaned as blood
began to drip onto her clothes and body.

The males were next. The three climbed onto
the vehicle’s hood, then to the roof. The zombies surrounded the
car.

As the father was tossing the nail-board
wielding kid over the fence, grid-iron boy fell off the car and
into the zombie mob.

“Oh, shit,” Knight said. “He’s dead.”

Without hesitating for a second, the father
dove back into the undead fray with all the reckless abandon of a
masked lucha libre superstar. A dangerous group of zombies was
knocked down by the flying attack before they could get to the boy.
Both men rose and jumped back to safety on the car, just missing
the greedy hands of the living dead.

Fireteam Arnold let out a cheer, as if
watching a sporting event at a local stadium. There were even
several high fives passed among them.

As grid-iron boy scaled the fence to
negotiate the barbed wire, the adult male held the zombies—who were
now climbing the car—at bay with his large white PVC pipe. Blood
and undead grime gave it some color. The man seemed to be enjoying
himself, smacking the zombies around. With the power and precision
he was striking each zombie with, every attack was a critical
strike, disabling the creatures for good.

“Damn,” Sgt. Arnold chuckled. “That guy’s
really regulating.”

The spectacle was quite enjoyable to the
fireteam. Watching a man with a gory PVC pipe swatting zombies away
like a demented Joe DiMaggio was the last thing they thought they
were going to see on this day.

Before long, a stack of zombies piled around
the vehicle like a kind of zombie dog pile. The adult took his time
heading over the barbed wire fence.

Fireteam Arnold clapped in approval, like an
audience watching Jack Nicklaus golf an eagle, or birdie.

“That was crazy,” Knight said.

“Bad ass,” Parcells added.

“It’s kind of touching,” Sgt. Arnold said,
waxing poetic. “It’s nice to know you can still get a break in this
fucked-up world.”

3:45 PM

Rooftop of the H.E.B. across the highway

from South Point Apartments

“The military’s there,
‘mano
. They
turned it into a prison.”

The banditos were extremely surprised to find
the apartment complex, their destination, fortified and looking
every bit like a concentration camp. Two cholos were looking at it
from the roof of the H.E.B. they had turned around to when they saw
the apartment complex was in a much different condition than it
should have been. They parked next to a ladder that led to the top
of the building, and the entire expedition was now up on the roof.
The zombies below were having a difficult time negotiating the
jacked-up vehicles. The few that made it to one of the beds
shambled about or fell back off trying to reach for the ladder.

“You think we should go in there?” Mousetrap
asked.

“Shit, I ain’t going in there,” said his
friend, Ducky.

“What are we going to tell Sleepy?”

“I don’t know. You’re going to fuckin’ tell
him.”

“I ain’t tellin’ him shit.”

“Don’t be a pussy, Mousetrap.”

“You—”

“Asshole,” Ducky grumbled.

“Well, one of you had better do something!”
Nick Lopez interjected. “My wife and daughter are in there!”

“Relax,
‘mano
,” Ducky said. “I’m on
top of it.”

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed
Sleepy.

3:45 PM

Lopez Auto Repair and Custom Cars

Spc. Leo Garrison screamed in bloody terror.
Sleepy had removed the tape in a clear effort to hear these cries
of murderous anguish.

“Quit crying, you little bitch,” Sleepy
muttered, slapping him across the face. “You’ve already lost the
other two anyway.”

Tiny and Sleepy laughed at the two tortured
souls. The cosmic payback against the soldiers was in full swing,
and the two thugs were reveling in their nefarious high. Wicked had
found wicked, and the tables were now turned.

Sgt. Nickson had already zoned himself out,
praying for that one shred of hope that he would make it out alive.
Duct-taped, bound, and helpless, he could only stare at the floor,
knowing his number would be up, but all the same praying for that
one chance of escape despite the clearly hopeless situation.

Right now all Sgt. Nickson could do was
concentrate on something else. A distant beach. A phantom smile. A
dot on the floor. A dot that became increasingly bigger in dark red
splotches from the ripped, cut, chopped, and torn body of Spc.
Garrison.

Garrison could not help but feel like this
was some kind of divine retribution, a spiritual connection of
punishment and atonement for his sins. Everything this man was
doing was unnecessary. It was absolute torture—perhaps beyond
torture if there was such a thing. It was torture for torture’s
sake and torment for torment’s sake. It served no other purpose
than to maim and humiliate because one man could. But what made him
the saddest was that his leader, Sgt. Nickson—the one person he
thought was his friend—was making no effort to stop the
carnage.

Rule change.

And that one man, the thug who not one day
before was sitting in jail, would not face any retribution.
Ever.

Sleepy slapped Garrison again. “Shut the fuck
up, you little bitch.” Then slapped him again. And again. And then
again. Each time, the slap gained velocity. Strength. Each one was
leveling Garrison to the brink of submission. This was the ultimate
form of masochism. It was the adult version of catching a fly and
tearing off its wings one by one, or burning ants with a magnifying
glass, or stomping bugs. The feeling of power, of anger unleashed,
was thrilling. Garrison was drowning in guilt, feeling as if he
deserved every tortuous element of punishment.

“I got something that will shut you the fuck
up,” Sleepy said. He moved to the chain release that sent the
hanging Garrison to the floor.

Sensing an opportunity for escape, Garrison
began to flail and squirm in a futile attempt. Tiny jumped on
Garrison’s legs and Sleepy mounted his bound prey, punching and
elbowing Garrison in the face. Lacerations formed on his cheeks,
chin, and forehead. He quickly stopped squirming, but Sleepy
continued to beat him until the strikes to the face and the
pavement popping the back of his head knocked him unconscious.

Sleepy grabbed some duct tape and tore off a
long piece. He placed the fingers he had just cut from Garrison’s
hands on the tape. He then punched Garrison in the mouth again, for
fun. His two front teeth came loose. Blood dripped from their
former home, dripping down his throat. Sleepy then stuffed the
fingers into Garrison’s mouth and taped it shut, wrapping the tape
around his head several times until only his eyes and nose showed
through.