Season of Rot (22 page)

“You’re going to have to take care of
yourself, mister. These greenhorns ain’t worth a load of cow dung
yet. It’ll be all I can do to take care of myself.”

“Nonetheless, I suppose I’m going to be a
part of your platoon now, according to General Alves.” Grant’s eyes
came to rest on the corpse tied to the post; it looked as if it had
been rotting for days. “My God... That thing really took a dozen
rounds and was still alive?”

“No, it wasn’t alive. But it was still
hungry. They’ll keep coming at you as long as they can move.”

“But it’s dead now?”

“Dead as a doornail. Destroy their brain and
they’re restin’ peaceful again like God intended.”

Grant kept staring at the corpse.

“Relax,” Hank assured him. “The only way you
can get the plague is if one of them bites you or scratches you up
pretty good.” He looked Grant up and down. “You sure you’re up for
this, newsboy?”

“Somebody has to be. People have a right to
know the truth about all this. Maybe then we can make sense of it
all.”

Hank laughed. “Right.” He realized he was
still holding his revolver and tucked it into the holster on his
belt. “We ship out at first light, newsboy. I imagine you’ve
already been on the road a while, so I suggest you try to get some
rest. There may not be any for a long time once we get started.
I’ll show you where you can bed down.”

The two men walked away from the corpse,
leaving it dripping blood onto the field.

Two

As the sun rose above the Mississippi River,
a line of heavy streamers and ferries discharged their living cargo
onto the western bank. A few dozen cavalrymen hit the shore first,
galloping off into the trees to make sure the surrounding area was
clear of the dead; a line of infantrymen followed off the boats.
Over two hundred strong, the men fanned out along the shore, taking
aim at the tree line to create a safe perimeter for the rest of the
regiment to come on land. The whole area was a flurry of activity.
Officers ran back and forth, barking orders as Gatling gun
emplacements were set up and everyone dug in. Soon the beachhead
was secure, with no sign of the enemy. Over a thousand soldiers
stood waiting for further orders, eager to push forward.

General Alves and his superiors were well
aware this would not be a conventional war. There would be no
organized resistance from the enemy. The regiment was to split its
allotment of personnel into smaller search-and-destroy platoons of
fifty or more men. These platoons would fan apart in a sweeping
motion, moving westward ahead of the main force. Many of the
platoons would be assigned a specific region or town to investigate
along the way before meeting at a pre-established rally point and
returning to the main force.

To form up their platoon, Grant and his men
fell in with another squad led by an officer named Simon Wayne.
Wayne was a distinguished graduate of West Point and would be in
charge of their unit with Hank as his second. The group consisted
of fifty men total, and their assigned destination was a town named
Canton.

Finally the orders came and the regiment was
on the move, breaking apart as it marched. As Grant’s platoon broke
off to head for their objective, he took one last look at the
shrinking body of the main force, hoping whomever had thought up
this operation had known what they were doing.

The platoon was over a day out and two days
from Canton before they found their first sign of the dead. A
corpse lay in the middle of the road, sprawled out beside a wagon,
which looked to have been headed east before it lost a wheel. The
body was badly decomposed, but one could see that more than the
birds had been at it. Pieces of the man lay everywhere, as if
they’d been carried off, gnawed on, and discarded. A young private
named Ben fell to his knees near Grant, and his lunch splattered
the dirt road. Many of the men in the platoon covered their mouths
while others stood strong with disciplined faces of stone.

“Damn, boy!” a soldier named Clint said to
Ben. “No sense in getting all torn up about it. He’s dead and
gone.”

Grant turned to face Clint, clenching his
fists and resisting the urge to strike him in the jaw. Instead, he
pulled out his notebook and pencil and began to sketch the horrific
scene.

Dalton, one of the platoon’s two trackers,
knelt beside the body to inspect it. “Been dead about two days.
From the looks of things, I’d say there were five of the dead. Took
him apart fairly easily too, as if they caught him off-guard. Poor
soul didn’t even have time to go for his shotgun in the wagon.”

“What do we do?” someone asked.

“Bury him,” Wayne ordered.

Grant approached Hank. “Why do you think he
didn’t get up? As one of them?”

“Look at his head.”

Indeed, a patch of the man’s skull was caved
in. Apparently as the things had pulled him to the ground, he had
smashed his head on the large rocks bordering the road.

Hank and Grant watched the men hastily dig a
shallow grave in the soft dirt of the woods. No one wanted to touch
the body. They had all been taught how the plague spread and they
knew it couldn’t be contracted by merely touching one of the
infected, but not all fears are rational, Grant imagined. Finally,
he offered to move the body himself. Hank helped him hoist the
corpse and toss it into the sad excuse for a grave. No sooner than
they were done Wayne began shouting orders.

“Okay, people, let’s keep moving. Be ready.
We know they’re around these parts for sure now.”

The platoon reassembled into a loose marching
formation and continued on.

Just before dusk, they made camp in a
clearing near the road. The troops were on edge whether they showed
it or not. Wayne ordered them to kindle numerous fires, preferring
the safety of the light over concealment. If the fires brought the
dead to them, it would be a good thing, even if it would be hard to
see the enemy beyond the glow.

Grant took a seat at one of the larger fires
beside Ben. The private couldn’t be more than nineteen years
old.

“This your first time in the field?” Grant
asked.

Ben nodded. “I signed up after the slave war.
I want to do something for my country, to make a difference in this
world somehow. I didn’t think it would be killing dead men.”

“It’s better than killing the living,” Grant
assured him.

Ben looked at him, his mouth dangling open in
shock. “You fought in the Civil War?”

“I did. I just wasn’t a soldier. The problem
with battles is that they pull everyone into them, whether you’re a
non-combatant or not, doesn’t matter. No one takes the time to ask
or care.”

Grant gestured at Ben’s weapon. “That’s one
of the new Golden Boys isn’t it?”

Ben handed him the rifle. “Winchester 1866.
Tube magazine, fifteen shots before reloading, sharper accuracy,
and much less likely to misfire than a musket.”

Grant whistled as he examined the rifle. “If
we had these a few years ago, the war would’ve been over a whole
lot sooner.”

Ben smiled and reached to take the rifle as
Grant gave it back. “You’re not carrying a weapon?”

“No. If things get bad enough for me to need
one, I expect there will be plenty lying around for me to use.”

A rifle cracked on the other side of the
camp. Both Ben and Grant hopped to their feet. The lingering rays
of the dying sun, combined with the firelight, lit the clearing
well enough to show what was happening at the edge of the camp. A
pack of dead men and women, numbering in the dozens, had emerged
from the woods and were darting towards the camp perimeter, howling
like starved animals in a rage. The sentries and several other men
were already letting them have it. Rifles blazed, their chambers
spitting casings onto the grass. The dead weren’t even slowing; in
fact, they seemed to be gaining speed, as if spurred on by
resistance.

“Aim for their heads!” Wayne was roaring from
behind the hastily assembled firing line. Hank shoved the shouting
officer aside and aimed his Winchester at the dead. His shot blew
open the skull of a middle-aged man at the head of the pack,
spraying blood and bone into the air. The man fell, trampled under
the feet of the dead behind him.

Hank’s action snapped the other soldiers out
of their panic by showing them the dead could die. It happened too
late though. Only around ten of the things took hits to the head
before the pack collided with the firing line. Men screamed as
cold, rotting hands dug into their flesh. A couple of them were
knocked to the ground and fed upon while the rest tried to
retreat.

Wayne drew his sidearm and dispatched an
elderly woman chewing on the cheek of a private. “Fall back!” he
urged as a man missing an eye leapt at him.

Hank stepped between Wayne and his attacker
at the last second, batting the thing aside with the butt of his
rifle. As he fell on top of the creature, he tore a knife from a
sheath in the top of his boot and, with all his weight, drove the
blade to its hilt into the thing’s skull.

Grant turned to check on Ben, but the boy was
gone. He’d raced forward to join the melee. Grant cursed. So much
for his plan of just picking a weapon off the dead. He felt exposed
and vulnerable. He knew he was too, and he had to do
something—anything. He couldn’t just stand here in the open.
To
hell with it
, he thought, and he charged into battle.

Not far from him, a dead woman had pinned a
soldier to the ground and was trying to get a clean bite at his
throat. Grant tore her off the man and shoved her away. She was on
her feet faster than he could believe.

Only the private’s quick recovery saved
Grant’s life. By luck more than skill, the soldier managed to put a
bullet into her left eye as she threw herself at Grant, and just
like that the camp was quiet once more.

Grant took a deep breath, recollecting
himself as he appraised the situation. Nine soldiers in the platoon
had died in the attack. Another fifteen or more received bites or
wounds and were just as dead. It was only a matter of time. Grant
saw Wayne and Hank, already off by themselves, having a heated
discussion. Grant headed straight for them.

Both of the officers fell silent and glared
at him.

“Gentlemen, surely you were given orders on
what to do with the wounded, considering the nature of the plague,”
Grant said. “This should not be a topic open to debate.”

“You know he’s right, sir,” Hank said,
seeming a tad less angry after hearing what the journalist had to
say.

Wayne scowled. “What would you have me do? Do
you think any sane, armed man is going to stand there and let me
shoot him?”

“It has to be done. The sooner the better,”
Hank said. “If one of them turns, who knows how many more of us
he’ll take with him.”

The rest of the platoon had already clearly
divided itself: those who weren’t injured wanted to be far away
from those who were.

“Good Lord,” Grant said, exasperated. “Did
they not give you a plan on how to deal with this?”

Neither Wayne nor Hank answered him.

Grant ripped the revolver from Wayne’s hand
and started over to the wounded. “You men are all dead. You know
it. The question is, are you going to die with honor in the service
of your country, or fight what must be done at the cost of those
who will carry on with this mission?”

Grant’s answer came in the form of a rifle
crack and a bullet whizzing by him; instinctively he dove for the
ground.

A new battle erupted in the camp between the
living and the dying. Men fell on both sides. Dalton, the tracker,
was one of the bitten. He turned on the other wounded near him and
rammed a knife into the spine of the closest soldier. As the man
collapsed, Dalton took his handgun from his hip and, his hand and
trigger finger moving like lightning, emptied the weapon into his
companions.

It was over quickly. As the smoke cleared,
Grant stood over Dalton’s body with Wayne’s gun and personally made
sure the corpse did not rise. It was the least he could do for a
man so honorable, even in the face of death. Grant tossed the gun
at Wayne. “It’s done now, sir,” he said coldly.

He walked away without another word, leaving
Wayne and the others to deal with the bodies.

Three

At the break of dawn, the remaining eighteen
men headed west once more. No one spoke. There was nothing to be
said that anyone wanted to hear out loud. They ate their midday
meal without stopping, and only as the sun was beginning to set did
the tired, beaten men pause to rest.

This time only one small fire was lit, and
everyone did their best to stay near its light. The night watch was
set up so that ten men were awake and combat-ready at all times.
Grant volunteered for the first shift. He carried a rifle as well
as a sidearm now, unwilling to put his life in the hands of someone
else. If another full pack of the dead attacked them, there would
be no survivors this time. They would be overwhelmed and there
wouldn’t be a damn thing any of them could do about it.

Grant found himself sitting with Clint, Ben,
and another soldier he didn’t know by name, listening to them
talk.

“We made good time today, didn’t we, Sam?”
Clint asked.

Sam nodded. “I figure we should reach Canton
before nightfall tomorrow.”

“Sam, is it?” Grant asked, extending his hand
over the fire to the leather-skinned man. “You look like you’ve
been through this before.”

“Reckon I have. I was stationed in the West
when the plague broke out.” Sam reached for the coffee brewing on
the fire and filled his tin cup. “I’m one of the few who made it
across the river before things got too bad and the quarantine line
was put in place.”