America the Dead (27 page)

22

Seven hours later, as the sun was winking its last under a darkening sky, Sergeant Milovich was looking over the preparations for the night. The men had travelled quickly and managed to reach the small town before nightfall. The town had been abandoned long ago and anything useful had since been rendered stolen or useless. The town actually sat in a small depression in the land, surrounded by trees. Off in the distance, Milovich could see the arching concrete arteries which once fed the nation, now just graveyards of cars and people.

He had stationed men up near the ridgeline to keep a watch for Talon. The ambush was going to be simple. As soon as the enemy reached the center of the town, they were going to cut him in half. This was going to be easy work.

Milovich was setting up his quarters in an abandoned house for the duration when Corporal Kazinski came bursting through the door.

“Sarge? Sarge?” he called.

“Right here, corporal. What is it?” Milovich’s exhaustion was evident in his voice.

“Found a couple of survivors, sir, thought you might want to see ‘em,” Kazinski announced. He pushed forward a man of about medium height and build, with a long ponytail hanging down his back. His hands were secured behind his back and his eyes darted over Milovich’s uniform and weapons before settling on the floor.

Milovich dismissed him as irrelevant and turned his attention on the other prisoners. They were two women, one blonde and the other brunette. The blonde was an attractive, buxom young woman of about thirty and the brunette was a leaner specimen, with a hard look about her. Both were bound as well, which seemed to be a good thing, since both were literally festooned with edged weapons. The blonde had a number of what appeared to be scissors attached to a wide belt which wrapped around her waist.

Milovich nodded approval and was about to order the two to be given to the men when an idea formed in his head. He let it marinate a while then smiled at the blonde, who looked back in such defiance that the sergeant nearly put a hand on his gun.

Milovich nodded to his corporal. “Good work,” he said to Kazinski. “Take the man out to the edge of the town and get rid of him.” The man’s eyes turned wide and he opened his mouth to protest, but Kazinski’s fist slammed into his head first, stunning him and bringing him to his knees. Two other soldiers grabbed him by the arms and dragged him away.

Milovich noted that neither of the two women even flinched at the violence. Excellent. He turned to the blonde and tried unsuccessfully from looking too obviously at her chest.

“As you can see, I’m in charge. Whether you live or die depends on how cooperative you both are willing to be. I need you two to be part of an operation that should be taking place in the next few days. Swear to cooperate and I can guarantee that you will leave here unmolested,” the sergeant said.

“And if we don’t?” the blonde spoke before her friend, nearly spitting the words at him.

“Then you will be given to the men to enjoy until they tire of you, which might mean several days, depending on your stamina,” Milovich said, noting the flashes of hatred both women gave him. “What will it be?” he asked.

The two women exchanged glances and covert nods. It was obvious they figured to cooperate in order to avoid being raped to death, but they didn’t know that Milovich had never kept his word in his life.

The blonde spoke. “We’ll do what you want, just don’t hurt us.” She tried to sound defeated, but the sergeant didn’t believe her for a minute. He figured she would stab him as soon as she could find the opportunity.

Sergeant Milovich smiled. This was icing on a cake that already was tasting sweet. Talon was as good as dead.

23

“Question for you.”

“What?” I asked, without trying to fully wake from my rest.

“How come the young Z’s are so damn fast?”

I opened my eyes and stared at the underside of the kitchen table. I had taken to napping on the bench as opposed to climbing up into the secondary sleeping area. I could sleep nearly anywhere, a throwback to my college days when I
did
pretty much sleep anywhere.

“Dunno,” I replied. I slid my feet to the floor, slowly pushing myself up to a sitting position. “Maybe it has something to do with the different body chemistry,” I said, scratching my head. My hair was starting to get a little shaggy without Sarah around to trim it up. I blinked and looked at Duncan, who was standing by the table.

“What do you mean?” Duncan asked, leaning back on the sink.

I looked at him closely for a second, wondering if he was serious. I glanced around and saw Tommy driving, so I knew he hadn’t sent Duncan on any joke missions. Zeus the cat was up in a storage bin, his pale yellow eyes looked at me as if to say,
You’ll probably regret this.

I shrugged. “Keep in mind this is just speculation, but kids have different body chemistries than we do. Youngsters bounce back more quickly from serious illnesses than we could ever hope to. Some say that their immune systems are hyped up because they need the protection to get to adulthood, which results in different wiring. But I couldn’t say for sure, because it makes no real sense. The older kids, teenagers and such, they aren’t much faster than the really old ones. The brain dies and that’s it. That’s what the virus has to work with, just rudimentary responses to stimuli.”

Duncan looked down. “What about what we saw at that apartment?”

“The doorknob turning?”

“Yeah, that.”

I leaned back. “Been giving that some thought. If the zombies are actually starting to learn, then we’ve got to jump start our timetable and get moving to the final phase.”

“That bad?” Duncan looked somewhat concerned.

“If the Z’s are able to problem solve, then all our defenses won’t matter for crap, because the Z’s have nothing but time on their side. There is one thing I haven’t seen yet, but I get the feeling it’s just a matter of time.” I took a swig from my water bottle.

“What’s that?”

“Zombies taking shelter during the winter, or finding hidey holes to wait out the cold.”

Duncan, a veteran of nearly every zombie fight I could think of, actually shuddered. “Good God,” he said, as the implications hit him. “We’d have to hunt them out of every sewer, attic, basement and drainage area. And when we found them, they’d be still active.

I shook my head. “Nothing about this whole mess makes me believe in a benevolent god anymore. Want to hear the worst of it?”

“Not really.”

“When was the last time you saw a lone zombie?”

Duncan thought a minute. “It’s been a while, but the last one was in the parking lot back home. The one you killed. Why?”

“They are learning on more ways than one. They are laying ambushes, like we saw recently and they are attacking in groups. They seem to have learned the strength of numbers and how vulnerable they are attacking one on one.”

Duncan’s eyes got wide and I just nodded. “We need new tactics,” he said.

I smiled and eased my way up to the front of the vehicle. Tommy was driving and he looked up as I sat down next to him.

“What’s the plan, boss?” he said soberly. I figured he had heard the conversation between Duncan and myself.

“We need to stop a bit, I want to go and stretch my legs,” I said, picking up a map. The road we were on was empty and there were large swaths of land on either side. Here and there were farms and barns, but I didn’t feel the need to stop and see if anyone was alive. Eventually we would have to, but not on this trip.

“Where are we?” I asked. I knew we were swinging south to avoid Columbus, but as to our current location, I had not a clue.

Tommy pointed to a sign as we lumbered past. “Township Highway 160, whatever the hell that means, since a minute ago it was Carson Road and ten minutes earlier it was Township Highway 160.” As we discovered, it was a running joke to try and figure out who named the stupid roads in Ohio. Currently, if the road was running East-West, it was named one thing. If running either Northwest-Southeast or Northeast-Southwest, then it was named something else. The general consensus was to just keep moving east. We wanted to eventually hit Route 50, since that would take us to the heart of DC.

“Right.” Looking at the map, I indicated a stopping point. “When we get to the interstate, let’s stop for a bit and have a look around.”

“You got it.” Tommy was another old campaigner and would be able to get us out of any trouble we happened to come across. “Hey, John?”

“Yeah?” I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.

“What if the zombies aren’t really dead?” Tommy asked seriously.

“Explain.” I hadn’t travelled this course of thought before.

“What if they caught the virus and instead of truly dying, went into a deep coma, where the virus took over the brain functions. Technically, they become brain damaged due to lack of oxygen to the brain, but they are still alive, with the body responding to the virus’ impulses to survive,” Tommy said.

I considered it. “Not sure about that. All early reports said this virus killed people. What about the people we’ve seen who have been ripped in half and still coming at us? What about those with the awful wounds that don’t bleed, or those with missing organs?” I didn’t want to play the devil’s advocate, but what Tommy was suggesting was creepy.

“Suppose the virus shuts down non-essential systems and slows down the heart rate to a beat or two a minute. There wouldn’t be much blood flow and the virus could thicken the blood to prevent loss. That would explain how arms and legs could keep moving. The nervous system has shut down, save for movement impulses, making the victims immune to pain and they are decaying because the skin is not being maintained as a vital system. The bone weakness we’ve seen is the virus not paying attention to supporting systems, just looking out for number one.

“Basically, the virus makes the victim resemble a truly dead, back from the grave zombie, but is actually living, just not with what we consider life,” Tommy concluded.

“So what you’re saying is these things, which we have always believed to be dead, are actually still alive on a sub-normal level?” I asked, mulling over the theory. In a way, it made sense and actually restored my faith a bit. Seeing these creatures as victims of a plague as opposed to something Hell spat forth was oddly reassuring. But one part didn’t make sense.

“What about the still-living zombie heads? Remember the fight at McCard’s? Those kids had a pit full of severed zombie heads, which they used to kill Kevin Pierce.”

Tommy thought about that one. “Not sure, but maybe the virus goes on overload for survival when the host is truly dead, animating the leftovers for as long as possible, in the hope that another victim might be infected. For all we know, a severed zombie head will live for a while, then be truly dead.”

I had to admit it was possible and made a certain amount of sense as far as reasoning goes, but for the time being, I was going to kill any zombie I came across, actually dead or not. But it was worth thinking about and gelled fairly well with the way the zombies were acting lately. I wondered if they were starting to recover, with the body actually able to fight back from some small enclave of resistant cells, which led them to increased cognitive functioning. This was going to make things really interesting and we were running out of time.

Of course, we could be wrong, they were just reanimated corpses and God hated all of us.

We pulled up onto an overpass which crossed Interstate 71. It was a big highway, four lanes separated by a grassy median. We were the only vehicle on the crossroad and I could see for miles in either direction.

I decided to get up as high as I could, so I climbed up to the top of the RV and pulled out my binoculars. To the north I could see a long line of cars stuck on the road behind an overturned semi, the unfortunate accident which held up a large exodus from Columbus. The other side of the road was full of cars travelling in the same direction, They were stopped by another series of accidents. I could see many ruts in the grass and in the surrounding fields, footprints of those who tried to escape the deathtrap of the roads. I could see the outline of the city, but I had no desire to go into that mess. We had spent a good deal of time already on the road and I was anxious to get back to my family.

As I was looking around, Nate poked his head out of the hatch. “Anything interesting?” he asked, climbing up out of the hole and sitting cross-legged on the roof. He had another pair of binoculars and unfolded a map across his lap.

“Not so far, I was just wondering where all those people went who got away from the interstate,” I said, looking around.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I see lots of cars, but no zombies.”

Nate brought up his own binoculars. “Seriously?” he asked. I could understand his incredulity. Normally when we encountered a large line of cars from a major population center, there were a lot of casualties and dead people walking around. Interstates were usually fenced, keeping the zombies from wandering off.

“Seriously. I have been looking around for a while and haven’t seen a single one.”