The Passenger (Surviving the Dead) (19 page)

Fire, dammit. Before they get here. You're
mine
, motherfucker
.

TWENTY-ONE

Darkness had fall
en over Steel City.

For several
hours the night before, Hicks and Holland had maintained surveillance. When it became clear the Ragman wasn’t going anywhere, Ethan called them back to town. A few hours’ sleep and a quick meal later, they left again, worried the Ragman might have moved on.

He didn’t.

He lay right where they last saw him, sound asleep.

Around noon, Hicks called in that the Ragman was awake and headed toward Steel City, but had left the horde behind. A couple of hours later, he was less than half a mile away studying the town from a hilltop. Davis and the guards carried on business as usual until they finally got word that the Ragman was go
ing back to retrieve the horde. That was when they put the governor’s plan into motion.

All visitors were turned away with a warning that a horde was
inbound. Those with too heavy a load to flee were permitted inside, but kept under watch. The guards closed the main gate, then had a small team of forklift operators move the secondary gate out of the way and replace it with two well-loaded shipping containers. A few more containers were positioned outside the main gate to seal the trap once the horde was in, but the operators didn’t have night vision equipment, so Ethan called Hicks back to coordinate with them. After that, it was a waiting game.

Where the guards normally patrolled on the main gate, Davis had
put two mannequins dressed to look like his guards in lawn chairs. It wasn’t the best strategy to fool the Ragman—the ruse wouldn’t have worked for a second during the day—but under cover of darkness, the madman might not notice the difference. If he did, Ethan was the insurance policy.

For long hours, he sat still in his sniper hide on the outer gate, hidden behind a battlement. Through his night vision scope—dropped off
via helicopter thanks to Colonel Lanning—Ethan watched the forest at the edge of the concrete lot. Just after midnight, he spotted movement.

Waving, staggering forms flowed through the forest like a flood in slow motion. At their head, just as he’d hoped, wa
s the man he was looking for.

The Ragman.

In his crosshairs.

“All stations, Echo L
ead. I have visual on the Ragman. Repeat, visual on the Ragman. All stations stand by.”

Which is to say, nobody fucking move.
In fits and starts, the scrawny, wasted figure approached the main gate while stopping frequently to let the horde catch up before setting off again. Ethan began to hear a few faint, distant moans as the ghouls drew closer. Behind the murderer, he saw a tall, gaunt-looking ghoul in shredded clothes drawing ahead of the horde. It lurched along far faster than the average walker, and seemed to move with greater purpose. Through the scope, he saw its unblinking eyes locked on the back of the Ragman, hands extended, fingers curled into claws.
That’s weird.

Finally, the Ragman sprinted ahead, faster this time, and stopped to unsling a canister from his back.
LAW. Just like I thought.
Ethan watched him fumble with it in the dark for just a moment, and then raise it to his shoulder. There had been a time when he’d thought the designers of such weapons to be geniuses for making them so easy to use, but now he was realizing that rockets didn’t care who they killed. And when they fell into the wrong hands, they were the stuff of nightmares.

He ducked deeper behind cover and keyed his radio. “Brace for impact!”

First came the
crack,
high and piercing, almost like a firecracker but infinitely louder. Less than a second later came a terrific
BOOM,
deep and powerful. The shock of it traveled through nearly eighty yards of steel and thumped upward into Ethan’s stomach, rendering him breathless and causing a hollow pounding in his chest.

Fuck me.

He sucked in a deep, painful breath and leveled his scope again. The Ragman had already run through the gate, his gaunt face shining with glee, smiling through broken teeth. The horde swarmed in behind him, filling up the narrow hole where the secondary gate used to be and cutting off his escape. He sprinted a few feet further, no doubt nearly blind in the darkness, and stopped short just before hitting the inner wall. His face transitioned from unbridled joy, to confusion, and finally, to panic. Behind him, one of the ghouls—the same tall, fast one from before—was nearly on top of him.

Ethan grinned.
Gotcha motherfucker.

“All stations, Echo Lead. Ragman is in the cage. Repeat, Ragman is in the cage. Perimeter team, hold position and stand
by. I want to trap as many of these ghouls as we can. Acknowledge.”

Hick
s’ voice spoke in his ear. “Copy, Echo Lead. Perimeter team standing by.”

Ethan sat up, positioned
his rifle comfortably on the battlement, and settled in to watch the show.

*****

Gideon stared at the place where the flimsy inner gate should have been.

Not only flimsy, but
open
. Instead of an easy entry with an army of the dead at his back, before him lay a wall of unforgiving steel. The dust and flickering embers around him from the rocket's explosion were details so minor they were non-events. The gate was gone. That was the only fact that mattered.

Time slowed to a crawl. He tried to wrap his addled brain around the reality before him. He'd seen it, sure enough. Watched men and women move through it. There was no question the gate had existed, but now?

Nothing.

The dim, suppressed part of his brain responsible for rational behavior clamored for his attention, but Gideon paid it no mind. The shock of finding his easy path into Steel City not blocked but
gone
, vanished as if it had never been, was just too much.

His slack-jawed stare couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, but they felt like an eternity. Cold realization hit his veins in a wave of ice water. Things were
n't going his way. This was bad. Really bad. Gideon looked around for someone to blame, head swiveling on rusty hinges, but of course, there was only him.

Then something grabbed his back, and Gideon screamed.

Fear invaded him for the first time in ages as the strap across his chest pulled tight and he leapt forward.
The gun
. His attacker had the rifle. He writhed as he moved away, twisting his torso down to slither out of the rifle's strap. His hand darted to his belt, flashing silver on the return trip, and in less than three seconds, Gideon was free of his attacker, armed with a blade, and facing the enemy.

It was one of his ghouls. The thing stood there
staring at him, which by itself was unnerving as hell. It held the rifle in one wasted hand, fingers gnarled tight around the barrel just above the forestock. Behind the ghoul, the rest of the dead moved on ungainly legs toward them. The sight of his own army in front of him rather than at his back sent Gideon into a rage. The blame fell on this fucking thing in front of him, the idiotic corpse holding his gun. Just a lucky snatch at an easy meal by one dead man out of a thousand.

Whatever bonds held the monster in check fell away. Gideon felt the last strained threads of his sanity fray and break.

He stabbed at the dead man. The first thrust caught the rifle, almost as if the dead man moved to intercept. The gun clattered to the pavement as he jammed the knife forward again, a scream of rage spraying flecks of spittle across the dead man's face.

The second time was the charm. Gideon felt the knife slide home, point gouging through flesh and bone, the grind of steel muffled and wet.

In his excitement, he'd forgotten the most important rule—maybe the
only
important rule—in dealing with the infected.

Always go for the head.

The ghoul's eyes locked on his as the thing wrenched its hand away. Gideon lost his grip on the weapon, which pierced the dead man's hand all the way to the hilt.

He was running before the creature could grab at him again.

*****

Gideon ran from me, but rather than the frustration of losing him again, I felt the thrill of the hunt. He'd stopped as soon as he stepped through the smoldering remains of the front gate as if dumbfounded by what he saw.

Our little tussle had left him weaponless, as far as I knew, and terrified. Grabbing for the rifle gave me a sense of victory that came with a full-body high, but smelling the trail of fear-soaked sweat he left behind topped it.

I wanted to be disturbed by that. Really.

Knife jutting through my hand, I summoned my rage and pushed as hard as I could to follow. The narrow lane between stacks of containers was devoid of people. I heard and smelled the cluster of dead men and women working their way through the shattered gate behind me. There wouldn't be much time; they'd catch Gideon's scent easily.

My body moved in a rolling, awkward run. It wouldn't win any gold medals, but for outpacing the rest of the shambling corpses behind me, it worked. The dank odor of the man grew stronger as I worked my way around the broad curves of the killing floor. The wide circle defined by the path in front of me suddenly stopped. Another shipping container sat astride the way forward, creating a dead end. Gideon had his back to the wrinkled steel wall of the thing, hands spread wide and breathing hard. It wasn't the first good look I'd had at the man, but it was certainly my last. Whatever else happened, the dead moving behind me were a sure bet he wouldn't walk out of here alive.

He turned to face me, whites showing all around his wide pupils, filthy hair plastered to a forehead streaked with clean places in the grime where sweat poured down. I savored the moment. Every strained line of his face was a moment of joy. The crazed tension in his body a spring waiting for the catch to be released.

This was a man who kn
ew he was going to die, and that his dying would be hard.

I approached him at a walk, tasting every fresh breath of terror wafting between us. Away from the majority of the swarm, Gideon's panicked breathi
ng was all I could hear until I got a little closer. My body's attuned senses picked up a sound so low a normal human wouldn't have heard it. Nothing major, just a thin scrape of fabric against metal, weirdly amplified by the steel walls around me.

I knew the directi
on, of course. I looked toward the man watching us from above and saw him peering at me through the scope of a rifle. Throwing caution to the wind and hoping like hell he wouldn’t pull the trigger, I raised a hand to him in a short wave. The hand in question had six inches of steel jammed through it, but it was the best I could do. Gideon's head jerked to the side, looking for whatever I'd seen, desperate hope written on his face.

Seizing the opportunity, I lunged forward.

His throat parted like a rare steak, salty blood coursing down my face. The ragged beard ripped away as I gnashed again and again, and when the burbling scream rose from his chest, the wind of it blew from a gaping hole in his neck and into my mouth.

All control
vanished. I didn't need it anymore, didn't want it. I'd wandered aimlessly for days—weeks—with no hope of ever being more than I was, just a man trapped in a body.

Now, a murderer was dying between my teeth, and I felt a dark satisfaction. I couldn't remember my own name, nor that of my child. My wife was a treasure that kept me going, but as I surrendered to the urges pouring in from my body, I knew it was not enough. Old memories aren't what keeps us going even in the best of times. It's making new ones, truly living, that pushes us forward. I was beyond that. The admission came hard, even if only to myself.

So I gave in. I let go. My mind relaxed like a clenched fist slowly expanding. I felt my body begin to invade, tearing away at the edges of every emotion, and thought, and memory that had made me who I was. The man I had once been. I let it all burn, consumed by the festering infection that had taken my life away. Better oblivion than this constant fight.

Gideon died beneath me, but my body kept on. For an unknown time, I fed. Gideon struggled, the
n went limp. Others joined me. When the hunger abated, I summoned the last vestiges of my humanity and stood up. I turned back toward the man hiding above me with the big scope on his rifle. I raised my hand again, imploringly this time. He shifted and brought his rifle to bear.

The last t
hing I heard was a muffled crack.

And t
hen darkness.

TWENTY-TWO

The sound of gunfire echoed long into the morning.

Just after dawn, two Chinooks arrived with forty troops from the 82
nd
Airborne and a crate of ammunition. When they touched down, Ethan met with the lieutenant in charge and briefed him on the situation. Ten minutes later, the lieutenant had his men form neat ranks on the inner and outer wall, and gave the order to open fire. While they worked, the governor and Sheriff Davis organized a work detail of over a hundred people to begin excavating the mass graves where they planned to dispose of the bodies. The forklifts would make moving them from one place to another easy, but the digging still had to be done by hand. Watching them work, Ethan wondered how big of a hole it would take to bury over a thousand corpses. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Cole, Hicks, and Holland
gathered on the wall near the main gate where they had a good view of the extermination. They took no satisfaction from watching the ghouls die; it was just something that needed doing. Tedious and grotesque, but necessary. Normally they would have participated, but after forty-eight hours with nearly zero sleep and very little food, they were ready for a break.

Following
a brief meeting with the governor—who made a show of expressing her sincere gratitude to the Army as loudly as she could to the throngs of people standing nearby—Ethan said his goodbyes and joined his troops on the wall. Zeb and his men made their rounds and then followed soon after.

“I appreciate all your help, gentlemen,” the old sheriff said, shaking each soldier’s hand in turn. “Don’
t know if we could have pulled this off without you. I know we got off to a bad start, but I’m damn glad we ran into you fellas.”

“Likewise,” Ethan replied. “I’m just glad we stopped that crazy bastard before anyone else got killed.”

The smile faded from Zeb’s face. “Yeah. I just wish we’d stopped him sooner, you know?”

Ethan nodded. “We did the best we could
Zeb. We saved this town, and there are a lot of people alive today who wouldn’t be if not for us. Don’t forget that.”

Zeb
stared at his boots while Hedges and Michael said their goodbyes. When they were finished, he tipped his hat to Ethan and led his men back down the ladder. A few minutes later, they rode their horses through the gate and turned north, back toward Fort Unity. To the east, the sun rose higher in the sky and cast their shadows long across the pale brown grass.

“So now what?” Holland asked as he watched the lawmen ride away.

“Now we go retrieve our gear,” Ethan said. “Head over to the governor’s office and radio FOB Harkin for pickup. The helo should be able to put us down near where we left our packs. After that, we’ll see about catching up with the U-trac.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Holland turned and began climbing down the ladder. “I can’t tell
you how excited I am about riding that goddamn thing again. Eating shitty food, barely sleeping, sucking down jet fumes, getting shot at. I’m getting a hard-on just thinking about it.”

Hicks chuckled quietly and shouldered his rifle.
“Reckon I better go with him. Make sure he stays out of trouble.”

“I
’d appreciate that,” Ethan replied.

The gunshots kept up a steady cadence as the
troops from the 82
nd
went about their business. Cole and Ethan stood side by side and watched them while they waited for Holland and Hicks to return. At the main gate, a team of workers had already removed the section of wall damaged by the LAW rocket and were busy welding a new pedestrian entrance out of steel plates. True to the governor’s word, they would have the gate fixed in just a few hours.

Ethan’s expression grew troubled as his mind wandered back to the previous night’s events.
He’d tried to put it out of his mind, but now that things had quieted down, the memories were breaking loose from their cages. Over and over again, he saw the last seconds of the Ragman’s life and the strange ghoul that killed him. Ethan didn’t doubt his sanity or his eyesight, but he was having a hard time coming to grips with what he’d witnessed, and what it might mean. Everything he knew about the walking dead had just been turned on its head, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

“Something wrong?”
Cole asked, noticing his squad leader’s distraction.

Ethan opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it, and then tried again. “It’s just…I saw something weird last night. You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

“What happened?”

“I was over there by that battlement when the horde came in. The guy leading them, the Ragman, he was right below me when the ghouls got him.”

“Okay. So why is that weird?”

“The one that killed him…it
uh…I think it might have waved at me.”

Ethan turned to look at Cole, expecting some kind of joke or his friend’s usual boisterous laughter. Instead, the big man’s expression was somber. “Tell me what you saw.”

“Well, the Ragman was right below me, like I said, and the ghoul that got him was way ahead of the others. It moved faster than I’ve ever seen one of them go. The damn thing was almost running. When it got close, I shifted my aim to take it out, and I think it heard me. It looked right at me, Isaac. I swear on my mother’s grave, it looked right at me and it raised its hand like this.” Ethan waved a hand in the air, demonstrating. “Like it
wanted
me to see it. The Ragman looked where it was waving, and then
bam
, the ghoul was on him.”

Ethan drew his jacket tighter around him, jamming his hands in his pockets. It was a cold morning, but the chill he felt had nothing to do with the weather. “After it killed him, when the other ghouls showed up, it stood up
. That was the weirdest thing, I’ve never seen one of them do that. You know how they get, right? They get a hold of food, and they’re like fucking rats—you can’t pry ‘em off with a crowbar. But not this one. It stood up, it looked right at me, and it waved again. I know you think I’m yanking your chain, Isaac, but I swear to God, that’s what happened. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

Cole’s expression hadn’t changed. “What did you do then?”

He shrugged. “I shot it. Thing is though, I think that’s what it wanted. I think it
wanted
me to shoot it.”

Cole was silent for a long time after that, his eyes distant. When he finally spoke,
it was slow and hesitant. “I don’t think you’re crazy, Ethan, and I don’t think you would lie to me about something like that. But that’s pretty goddamn strange.”

Ethan shuffled his feet. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know, man.” Cole shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The two
soldiers watched quietly for a while as the detachment from the 82
nd
wiped out the last of the horde. When their work was done, they piled into the Chinooks and took flight back toward FOB Harkin, but left their crate of ammo sitting in the market square. Ethan had a feeling it wasn’t an accident.

He and Cole
climbed down from the wall and were silent as they walked through the main gate. Hicks and Holland joined them a short time later, and they shared a quick meal of MREs while waiting for the helicopter. No one spoke as they ate, all of them lost in their own thoughts. An hour later, a Blackhawk touched down in a field nearby, and after letting Ethan and his men retrieve their packs, the pilot turned the chopper due west on an intercept course with the U-trac and the rest of First Platoon.

As the ground sped by below, alternating between forest canopy, overgrown fields, and abandoned towns, Etha
n thought about Broken Bridge. He thought about those poor murdered people, all dead because of one madman’s desire to kill. It was unfathomable to Ethan what could drive a person to do such horrible things. To burn and destroy for the sake of burning and destroying. And the worst part about it, the thing that frightened him the most, was it had just been
one
man. Just one. What if there had been more, working together? He shivered at the thought.

The Blackhawk passed over Charlotte on its way to the Tennessee bord
er. Below it, a million walking corpses craned their necks to watch it pass, their undead eyes locked to it as it traced through the sky. It continued westward, growing smaller and smaller on the horizon.

Eventually, it disappeared.