Refuge From The Dead (Book 1): Lockdown (19 page)

“Holy shit! Poston? Oh hell, buddy. What the fuck happened to you?”

Michael laid Harold Poston down on the ground beside the truck. There was what looked like a bullet wound on Poston’s right shoulder, still trickling blood. Poston looked pale, and was still losing blood. Michael instinctively pressed his hand to the wound, trying to stem the bleeding.

“You know this asshole?” Travis asked.

Ryan came around to aid Michael. “Holy shit, Poston.”

“Yeah, we know him. He graduated the academy with us. He’s from Buchanan Correctional Center, down near Grundy. We need to get him to medical if we want to…” Michael said. He was interrupted by Harold Poston grabbing on to his shirt. Michael grabbed Harold’s hand.

“Why didn’t you kill them? Why did you let them out?” Poston said, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

“What are you talking about, Poston? Let who out?”

“The inmates, Caine! You were supposed to kill them all! Do you realize what you’ve done?” Poston said, his voice gravelly and on the edge of choking. “They took over Buchanan Correctional and killed everyone.”

Michael felt a hot flash run through his body. He had an inkling as to what Poston was going to say, but prayed against it. “Captain Winston let them out, Poston. I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Michael said.

Poston pulled Michael down closer to him. His voice lowered. “They’re coming, Michael. They’re coming back here and they’re going to kill us all.”

AND NOW, A SPECIAL SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT INSTALLMENT

REFUGE FROM THE DEAD – FORTRESS

CHAPTER 1

Shit.

Rarely are there words in the English language that convey a myriad of meanings as much as curse words. Sometimes using the accepted, civilized terms that society has deemed “suitable” were horribly insufficient when it came to communicating in how much trouble one was. For example, saying
shit
when used as an exclamatory remark as in “oh shit!” usually meant one was surprised by the current situation in which one might be found. Michael Caine used the term somewhat, but rarely to the surprise that he had now.

With Captain Winston dead, Michael also had no way of expressing the sheer surprise that he legitimately had. There was no way to convey that surprise to Harold Poston. Details were fuzzy on what went on before he made it back to Black Mountain. In truth, Michael didn’t know the exact details of how Winston managed to get the inmates to leave, but there had been one pod full of undead, and another pod that held an inmate missing a sizeable portion of his cranial anatomy. It was a hell of a greeting to come back to. Never mind the fact Poston was even here. Two days after the world had went to shit, he shows up at the front door, damn near dead.

Poston bled somewhat, but it was more or less under control. God knows how long it took him to get from Buchanan Correctional to Black Mountain. While he most likely had some form of transportation, he’d arrived at Black Mountain bleeding and no ammo. He looked like death warmed over, beaten, and hung out to dry. Shortly after getting him to Medical, he’d passed out, leaving the people caring for him to wonder what else he might know.

What they did know was the inmates that Captain Winston had let out didn’t just go away. Far from it. They had traversed the fifty-five-mile distance between Black Mountain and Buchanan Correctional Center in a little under forty-eight hours. Once they were at Buchanan Correctional, they took it over for themselves, killing nearly everyone. Poston made it clear that Buchanan Correctional had followed orders, executing their inmates as they had been ordered to do. While that fact didn’t sit well with Michael, he’d heard stories about the warden at Buchanan, a man named Stanley. While Stanley wasn’t the brightest bulb, he was ruthless when it came to punishing the inmates. Probably did the job all by himself for the sheer pleasure of it.

Michael worked on Poston’s right shoulder. The 5.56mm round had torn through Poston’s right shoulder, missing any vital organs, but causing considerable muscle damage. Any more towards the center, and he might be one of the undead, but such as it was, he would be all right. Sore, but alive. Michael didn’t have much experience with sutures, so after the wound was cleaned and irrigated, he let Lindsey take over. She was an RN and much more knowledgeable about stitching than he was. Michael stepped back while Lindsey rendered care.

Ryan motioned for Michael to come to the door, away from Poston. Neither was sure if he was truly unconscious, but he sure as hell looked it. Michael tapped Lindsey on the shoulder and motioned to the door.

“Be right back, babe.”

Lindsey brushed a few strands of hair from her face. “All right. I’m going to start an IV and get some fluids into him. I don’t think he’s waking up any time soon, so I’ll keep him here. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Michael kissed her on the forehead. “Okay. Thanks babe.”

Ryan had made his way out to the boulevard by the time Michael left Medical. Michael stepped outside and met with Ryan, who was thinking the same thing he was.

What now?

Ryan held his hand out to stop Michael before he started. “I know what you’re going to say, and it’s bullshit. Winston let those inmates out, not you.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that we have a friend in there with a bullet in his shoulder, though. Does it, Ryan?” Michael said.

“I’m not saying that it’s not a shitty situation. It obviously is. What we have to do now is try to find out whether we’re going to do something about it or not.”

Michael frowned. “Like what? Raid Buchanan Correctional? We ain’t got time for that, and even if we did, we don’t have the manpower.”

Ryan paused for a moment. “What if we did?”

“What if we did what?”

“What if we had enough manpower to go after it? Do you think we could pull it off?” Ryan said, pacing.

“I don’t think we should waste what little resources we have on shit like that right now. Fact of the matter is – we are going to have to go out and get these people. They aren’t going to come to us. We’re going to have to go after them.”

“I’m just saying; let’s look at doing something on the offensive.”

“Why would we want to risk our ass for that? What would be the point?” Michael asked.

“Saving people worth saving. Not letting the bad guys win. Take your fuckin’ pick, dude. Those assholes from here didn’t deserve to live, but we didn’t have a say in that. Winston let them go. Granted, that meant your family could be here with you and we have a secure
and
safe area, but there’s families out there that don’t have that luxury right now.”

Michael held his hand out, trying to placate Ryan. “I know it’s shitty, but we don’t have the resources to waste. Maybe later, maybe not at all. I agree that we should start making runs to some of the outlying areas and get more people in here. It’s been two days and we’ve seen a grand total of zero people come here. I think rescuing people is the bigger priority right now.”

“All right, all right, all right. I get it. Play it safe until we know what we’re dealing with,” Ryan said waving Michael off.

Michael got close and lowered his voice. “No, not
playing it safe,
playing it
smart.
We don’t go looking for trouble right now. God knows there is plenty out there looking for us; we just don’t know it yet, Ryan.”

Ryan crossed his arms. “So how long do we go before we start finding out?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when do we start going on the offensive? We can’t just play defense from now til whenever. We need to start thinking about what’s going to happen when someone out
there,
” Ryan pointed indiscriminately, “decides they want this place for their own. The few people we have here don’t know shit about tactics, room clearing, or anything like that. Hell, some of them barely know how to shoot. It’s a wonder how they lasted this long.”

Now Michael folded his arms. “Good. Thanks for volunteering.”

Ryan was bumfuzzled. “Volunteering for what?”

“Take some of our new people out to the range and show them how to shoot. I’m not saying to burn through thousands of rounds, but give them a basic education. We have plenty of Glocks to go around, especially if they don’t have a weapon of their own. We owe it to these people to not only to protect them, but also to help them protect themselves. We both have plenty of knowledge that we could share with these people. I think we owe it to them to help as much as we can.”

Ryan grinned, ever so slightly. “You running for President now?”

Michael couldn’t help but smile. “Smartass.”

“All right. I will do what I can. What are we going to tell Poston when he wakes up? I’m sure he’s just gonna love to find out that we aren’t taking his house back.”

“Tough shit for now. Poston’s going to have to understand. I’ll talk to him when he wakes up.”

Ryan nodded. “Fair enough. So what is the plan for now?”

“Just keep everything normal for now, and don’t let anyone talk to Poston just yet. I don’t want what few people we have worrying about being here. They need to feel safe here. They don’t need to needlessly worry about someone raiding in the middle of the night. We will keep the tower posts and put someone on roving at night. Disconnect the headlights and taillights from the Explorer so it’ll give us a little more tactical advantage. We’ll extend the roving area down to the main road, too. As much as I would like to do a sweep of the entire area, I don’t think we’ll be here long enough.”

Ryan patted Michael on the shoulder. “It’s a shame that the world went to shit so early in your career, brother.”

Michael smirked. “Why’s that?”

“I think you would have made a hell of a CO, maybe even a good warden one day. Course, you pretty much are, Michael. You’re a natural leader and the people can see that. The only down side to that is they will look to you when the shit hits the fan. We need to look at the emergency plans and draw up our own. If the shit
does
hit the fan, we’ll be prepared. I’ll get a county map and we can start marking places to investigate. Gun stores, hardware stores, places where people might have holed up. We can start making runs in the next few days.”

Ryan nodded and walked off towards the front of the prison. Michael stood for a moment, contemplating what Ryan had just said. Since returning from getting Lindsey and Anna, he’d become the
de facto
leader at Black Mountain. Of course, that garnered him a boatload of responsibility that he neither wanted nor had any idea what to do with.

Michael had never been a leader his entire personal and professional life. Even his military days were just doing what he needed to get by. Sure, he’d tried to impress upon his superiors when he could, but after going above and beyond and having no one notice, he stopped trying so damn hard. There wasn’t much sense in being so high on integrity when all it did at the end of the day was make him tired.

A big part of him wanted to stock up the buses with whatever they could grab and hit the road now. No sense in waiting for the assholes at Buchanan Correctional to storm the trenches at Black Mountain. If they busted ass, they could have the biggest part of what they needed loaded up within the next two days. Fluidity and the ability to change plans wasn’t such a bad idea right now. Save what you can, leave the rest. Someone would take over Black Mountain eventually, anyway. The irony of inmates trying to take over the prison they’d been released from was not lost on Michael.

“Michael!”

Michael turned around to see Travis Pierce, his father-in-law, walking up the boulevard. Travis took care of Betty and Anna while Michael and Lindsey rushed Harold Poston to Medical. From the way he was approaching, he looked like he had a bone to pick.

Michael turned to face him. “Yeah, Travis. What is it?”

“Like you have to ask, Michael. You still going through with this ‘saving the world’ plan of yours? It looks like your friend there got run off by
your
inmates.”

“I didn’t let them go, Travis. That was Captain Winston’s deal. Not much point in taking it to heart, in my opinion.”

Travis straightened up. “Fair enough. Fact is we don’t need to be hanging around here any long than we have to. We’ve got two buses out front. Let’s load ‘em up and we will be out of here within a day or two. We can make short runs into Bluefield for the items we need that aren’t here. After that, we hit the road.”

“As much as I want to disagree with you, I can’t. I’m sorry, Travis. We should have hit the road already.”

Travis patted Michael on the shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard, Michael. We gotta be able to change plans quickly. C’mon, let’s get somewhere we can draw up some ideas.”

* * *

Charles Witwer watched from the kitchen. In all the excitement lately, he’d managed to sneak out of intake and over to the Staff Dining area. The COs always got better food than the inmates did, and now he could see why. After feeding his face for the last hour, he was ready to make his appearance. The doors were unlocked and there were only a handful of officers left.

Time to shine, Charlie…