Enduring Armageddon (27 page)

“How do I look, guys?”

“You won’t be in any beauty pageants for a while,” Jordyn replied.

I tried to chuckle, but that hurt too much so I settled on a grunt. “Did they take all our weapons?” I asked.

Jackson pointed at my chest and said, “You’ve still got your big knife, but we don’t have anything else.”

I reached up and patted my trusty KA-BAR. “Alright, that’s one thing going in our favor. What time of day is it?”

“Later in the day,” Jordyn replied. “We’ve probably got about three hours left until dark.”

“You said they took everyone else. Did you see where they took them?”

“We were busy running for our lives, man,” Jackson said.

“You’re right, sorry. Do you think they took them to the camp?”

Jordyn glared at her brother. “Yeah, we’re pretty sure they took ‘em into the camp,” she acknowledged.

I adjusted myself so I could look Jackson in the eyes. “I’m gonna go in there and rescue our people. Can I count on you to back me up if I need it?”

He stared at the ground for a moment then looked up and responded, “Yes, sir. You can count on me.”

I reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “Alright, man,” I said as I pulled out my knife and handed it to Jackson. “I’ve gotta stretch out and I’m going to see if I can recon that camp a little bit. You guys stay here and keep outta sight.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

I rolled over to my hands and knees and pushed myself up. The pain in my side was intense but bearable. I pressed lightly into my ribs again and felt some of them move. There was nothing I could do about it right now though, so I just gritted my teeth and continued to feel my way along my body for broken bones. I was extremely sore all over, but I didn’t feel anything else that could lead to problems in the next few hours. I was willing to bet that I had at least a minor concussion since I’d been out for almost twenty-four hours, but I couldn’t do anything about it; Rebecca, Jesse and the others needed me.

I didn’t want to put my mask back on in case I had to run, so I pulled my undershirt up over my face to help block out the particles. I knew how difficult my lungs worked to draw in oxygen while I wore the damn thing and if I had to run I’d probably pass out. I’d trade speed for a little bit of radiation exposure any day.

I was amazed at how close we actually were to the camp. The children, God bless them, had dragged me about two football field lengths away from the top of the rise where we were initially seen. I assumed the men had left me because they either thought I was dead or too messed up to get away, either way, I planned on making them pay for their mistake.

I stayed in the wood line and crept within a couple hundred feet of the scavengers’ encampment. It really wasn’t that big. I counted a circle of about sixty cars and trucks surrounding two RVs and nine vans, which I assumed was where they slept. Finally, there was a livestock trailer with the four horses in it. That was it. I had no clue how many people were in the camp but I saw three guards sitting on the hoods of cars at various points along the perimeter. Several bodies lay right next to the perimeter and the beginning of a plan began to take hold.

I watched the camp for about an hour until I finally saw movement inside. The door to the RV opened and someone shoved a naked and bloody woman out of the door. She hit the pavement hard and I could tell that she was hurt. By her build, I guessed that it was Sam. It took every ounce of self-control that I could muster to not charge into the camp and get myself killed without helping anyone.

My restraint paid off when I saw a man pick her up by the armpits and drag her to the old maroon van in the center of the camp. A man stood up from behind it where I hadn’t seen him and unlocked the door to the van. She was shoved in harshly and I saw several people move inside the van and cover her with a blanket. Even at this distance, the quick flash of red hair told me that my Rebecca was in that van.

They must make their living by ambushing the people traveling the road. The horses gave them a level of mobility that most people couldn’t compete with, so anything they needed that didn’t come to them was easily raided from neighboring sites. I briefly considered trying to find another camp for assistance since I was sure that the two were at odds, but I threw the idea away. There’s no telling how far away the next collection of people may be and there’s an even slimmer chance that they’d be willing to help a stranger.

A twig snapped behind me and I whirled to see what it was. One of the zombies saw my movement and started forward towards me. I thought of Alejandro and whispered, “Hey, are you normal?” It didn’t respond.

I couldn’t believe my bad luck. Here I was trying to rescue my friends and a damned mutant was trying to get me. I picked up a stick and channeled all of my anger and frustration into the swing as I hit it squarely in the head. The thing staggered at the force of the blow and I quickly followed up with another one. Every swing I took knocked it down a little more, but the stick wasn’t going to be able to kill it. The creature stared at me from its knees and began to moan so I jabbed the stick into its throat and felt it pierce the back of the thing’s neck.

That shut it up so I pulled the stick out and rammed the end as hard as I could into its eye socket. The eye exploded in a fountain of blood and gore, but the stick hadn’t penetrated deep enough to do anything besides blind it. I silently cursed myself for leaving my knife and searched the ground for another branch that wasn’t as large as the one I held. I couldn’t see anything so I moved to the creature’s blind side and then came up behind it. I pulled the stick flush against its neck and pressed my knee into its back while I pulled with everything I had on the little cedar branch.

My ribs screamed in protest at the pressure as my abused abdominal muscles pressed against them while I took great gasping breaths. Finally, the goddamned thing stopped fighting me and died. I released my grip on one side of the stick and used the end I held to catch myself. I didn’t know what kind of fight I was going to face in a few hours, but I was sure that in my degraded state I wouldn’t be able to face a normal human being in a hand-to-hand fight. The creatures were strong, but they were dumb as hell and could be outsmarted pretty easily. People wouldn’t blindly keep charging into a swinging club.

The beginning of a plan was gnawing at the back of my mind so I stripped all the clothing off of my new dead buddy. I wished for my mask back though because the thing stank something awful. More than a half of a year of filth and excrement combined with dried blood and rotted meat from its last several meals to form the perfect mixture of vomit-producing aromas. I never thought that I’d appreciate the cold weather, but I did at this moment because it helped to reduce the rotting.

I returned to find the two of them huddled together against the base of a large cedar tree. Jackson held my knife out in front of him like a talisman to ward away evil spirits. I made a mental note that I needed to teach him how to use it like D’Andre had taught me those many months ago. But those lessons would only come if we survived the night.

I had the children gather up a bundle of straight and sturdy cedar branches and begin stripping the little twigs on the sides to make spears that we could use up close. While they did that, I used the knife to sharpen the ends. I had no idea if the scavengers increased their security at night, but I was willing to bet that they didn’t. I just hoped that we didn’t run into any more of the zombies while we tried to infiltrate the camp.

* * *

The three of us crept slowly across the snow towards the circle of vehicles. The fools had a large fire roaring in the center of their camp and the smell of roasting meat made my stomach growl loudly in protest. My mind wandered for a moment as I thought of the delectable venison or maybe even beef that they might be cooking over their fire. They obviously didn’t care that they were likely going to attract some of the creatures with either the fire or the fresh meat.

The guard nearest to us was silhouetted plainly against the light of the fire. When we were fifty yards away I grasped each of the children’s hands and gave a quick squeeze to let them know we were where our plan called for us to separate.

The night was as black as ink outside the circle of light so we were well hidden. I pulled the children’s heads close to mine and whispered, “Good luck. I know you can do this. All of our friends are counting on you to do this.”

“We’ll do our part, Chuck. Don’t worry,” Jordyn answered for the both of them.

“Okay, stay in the shadows. When you see my guy go down, you do your thing. Aim for the throat,” I advised.

Jackson took a quick gasp of air and then replied, “Yes, sir.”

I patted him on the back and moved off to the left. I glanced back and could barely make out Jordyn’s form moving away from her brother. The plan was to have Jackson as the base and the two of us would move in opposite directions until we came to our target and I’d initiate the kill and the two of them would follow suit.

Target
. It’s funny how the people we were getting ready to murder were automatically categorized as
targets
in my mind. They’d beaten me up, left me for dead, taken my friends hostage and raped—at a minimum—Sam. They were definitely
targets
. I believed Jordyn one hundred percent when she looked at me and said that she’d kill her man, but I hoped Jackson would be able to do it.

I slid along the perimeter just beyond the circle of light cast off by the roaring fire. The smell of food was stronger on this side of the camp and I inadvertently glanced into the night anticipating a zombie to come charging out of the darkness for the meat. I turned back towards the man I was set to kill in a few moments and counted out an extra two minutes to ensure that Jordyn made it to her location.

The guy had a rough beard that must have been growing for the entire apocalypse. He wore one of the duster jackets and cowboy hats. I wondered if he was one of the men who’d ridden out to our party yesterday; surely they didn’t all have the same jackets so he must have been one of the riders. This guy was directly responsible. That decision pushed aside any doubt I might have harbored.

At the end of the allotted time I rose up and stumbled out of the darkness into the flickering glow cast off by the camp’s fire. I wore the clothing of the zombie that I’d killed a few hours earlier and I hoped that the poor light would help to disguise my appearance. It worked just like I’d planned because the man slowly set his rifle down and picked up a metal bar.

I advanced slowly, continuing my zombie impersonation until I was within five feet of the perimeter and then I rushed the guard. My spear ran true and hit him directly in the throat. The adrenaline was pumping and all my aches and pains faded away. The force of my thrust carried the wooden tip completely through the back of his neck and lodged the wood enough so that I was able to pull him to the outside of the camp’s boundary instead of allowing him to fall inside and possibly alerting more of the men.

I yanked my spear out of the man’s collar and scanned inside the camp. No one was alerted and I saw Jordyn’s man go down much the same as mine did. I looked expectantly at where Jackson was. His man was still upright, half-turned towards the interior of the camp.
Fuck,
my mind screamed as I sprinted back around to the side of the camp where I’d left the thirteen-year-old boy to murder a man.

As I ran towards Jackson’s position I tried to keep an eye on the guard, but he continued to stare into the camp and not into the darkness where Jackson waited. I covered the distance to the boy in less than a minute and suddenly stopped short. By the dim glow I could see the wooden spear clearly embedded into the man’s head, right behind his ear. The end of the spear rested on the ground and held the man upright so he still appeared to be on guard. Jackson had done his job.

“Jackson!” I whispered.

“I’m right here with Jordyn,” he replied out of the darkness.

I groped my way forward and a hand closed around my ankle. “Watch out! You almost stepped on us,” Jordyn hissed.

I knelt in the snow and hugged both of them fiercely. “You both did great.”

“Thanks. Now it’s your turn. Go in there and save Rebecca and Sam,” Jackson said.

I nodded stupidly, even though they couldn’t see my movements. “Alright, you guys follow me. I want you on the inside of that ring of cars,” I murmured. “No telling what will come up here for that meat that they’re cooking.”

The children both stood up woodenly and I could tell that we’d need to talk about what they’d done later. We couldn’t afford to do it now, but sometime soon we’d have to let them work through their feelings about taking a life. I hopped onto the hood of an old station wagon and helped to pull each of them across. We carefully opened the driver’s door and they climbed into the back seat.

“Stay down,” I advised. Jackson answered with a nod while Jordyn gripped another wooden spear tightly to her chest.

I made my way into the camp towards the maroon van. I held my KA-BAR low so I could stab outwards quickly into anything that stepped in front of me. I didn’t see anyone else awake in the camp and I stopped just on the near side of the van. I was positive that another guard sat there; otherwise, how would they secure people inside a van?

Sure enough, when I peeked over the hood, a man sat low to the ground on a seat that had been pulled from a vehicle. I ducked back down and hoped that I’d been quick enough to not be seen. I crept towards the rear of the vehicle and saw that the doors on this side had been secured by two large ratchet straps that wrapped completely over the top and around the vehicle. No wonder they couldn’t escape, those things were meant to tie down thousands of pounds of cargo.

I risked a rapid glance into the interior of the van and saw several bodies lying under a couple of blankets for warmth. I accidently scraped my shoulder against the rear bumper of the van and I paused to determine what the guard would do. Evidently he was accustomed to noises coming from the van because I could still see his boots stretched out near the underside of the car.