Black Tide Rising - eARC (11 page)

“I sure do,” she said. “I’ve been looking for this bastard for months.”

“Step back a moment,” he said. “This man’s a human being.”

“No, he’s not!” Nora screamed. All the horror of the security footage from her home came bursting back in her memory. Her husband and son, torn to pieces. “He’s a monster!”

Lou stepped up and crouched down beside the struggling zombie. The creature tried to bite him. Lou stayed out of reach.

“You could shoot him,” he said, looking up at her with the blood still wet on his cheek. “But that’s not you. You don’t kill out of vengeance. You’re sorry for every one of these zombies you’ve had to shoot. An eye for an eye’s wrong, remember? This is how you know you’re still a human being. Not like them.”

Nora’s eyes filled with tears. Charlie. Sid. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the hot drops spill down her cheeks. He was right. Badly as she wanted to take revenge, it wasn’t decent, and it wasn’t necessary. She was better than that.

“Let the scientists use him. If he dies, it won’t be your fault. It’ll be because the microorganism killed him. If he turns back into a man, he can atone for his crimes. You’ll get justice. One way or another.”

“All right,” Nora said. She lowered the gun and handed it to Lou. Then she brought her heavy boot back and kicked the zombie square in his face. Blood spurted from his nose. She kept on kicking him until the grin no longer looked like the grin in her memory. She turned away into the embrace of Lou’s other arm. “Let them have him now.”

On the Wall

John Sclazi & Dave Klecha

“Hi, Jim.”

“Hi, Keith. What’s up?”

“I’m here to take the watch with you tonight.”

“…You.”

“Yeah.”

“Taking a watch.”

“Yes.”

“On the
wall
.”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“It wasn’t
my
fault we had a breach.”

“That’s what the ruling was, yes.”

“Then there’s no problem.”

“Where’s Jenna? She’s supposed to have watch with me tonight.”

“She’s in the infirmary.”

“What happened to her?”

“She broke her foot.”

“How did she do that?”

“
She
didn’t do it. Brandon did. Accidentally dropped a big ol’ pot of beans on her foot in the kitchen.”

“How bad is it?”

“Doc Kumar wants to keep her in the infirmary overnight to make sure there are no complications. Should be up and hobbling about tomorrow. But in the meantime she can’t take the watch.”

“You don’t have anything else you could be doing.”

“I don’t know how to break it to you, but it’s not like we have much need of a communications watch these days.”

“You could be monitoring the solar panels.”

“…It’s
night
, Jim.”

“They might need maintenance.”

“Which is Brenda’s job, actually. I’m just her helper monkey.”

“She might need help.”

“And if she does she’ll let me know. Or she’ll let Amy know, since Amy is also her helper monkey, when she’s not otherwise busy.”

“Fine.”

“Is there an actual problem here, Jim?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“The scavenger group that went out today saw a lot of active movement when they were out there.”

“We know the town’s got a lot of scurriers in it. That’s not news.”

“They said it wasn’t just scurriers. Roxie says she thinks she saw some runners. And she thinks some of them might have followed them home.”

“Have you seen anything yet?”

“No.”

“So it might be nothing.”

“It might be nothing. But that’s not the smart way to think about it.”

“So you’re worried about some runners making a sprint for the compound.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re worried about me because the last time we had a breach I was on the wall, even though what happened wasn’t my fault.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you’re just implying the
shit
out of it, Jim.”

“You don’t stand on the wall much, Keith. That’s all.”

“No, I don’t. Some of us don’t. But you know the rules. No one stands a watch alone.”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s no one else to stand the watch with you right now.”

“Where’s Corrine?”

“She’s in the auto shop. The Wrangler is having issues again. She’ll be there all night.”

“Fred.”

“Sleeping. He’s got the next watch.”

“Andre.”

“Come on, Jim. Give it a rest. I’m here. You need someone on the wall with you. If you want to complain, then take it up with The Boss. But you know what she’s going to say. She’s going to tell you to tuck your balls back in and deal with it.”

“She wouldn’t say that.”

“I heard her say that to Eric just the other day.”

“Eric’s a whiner.”

“And what do you think The Boss would categorize complaining about a watch partner as?”

“…Point taken.”

“I thought so.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I got enough sleep last night. I’ll be good to the end of watch.”

“You sure? Coffee’s scarce.”

“I don’t drink coffee anyway. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t drink coffee?”

“No. Never have.”

“Some sort of religious thing?”

“I just don’t like coffee. So I don’t drink it.”

“That’s kind of weird.”

“It’s not that weird.”

“It’s a little weird.”

“Well, I have some bad news for you, Jim. Soon enough, no one’s going to drink coffee anymore.”

* * *

“Jim, I can’t help but notice something.”

“What’s that.”

“You have a gun and I don’t.”

“It’s not a
gun
. It’s a rifle.”

“It’s a gun. Technically it’s a gun.”

“It’s a rifle.”

“Which is a type of gun. If we still had Wikipedia I could look it up and prove it to you.”

“You would be the sort of person who would say Wikipedia was authoritative about something.”

“Pretty sure the ‘Gun’ entry wasn’t contentiously edited. And you’re missing my point. A rifle is a type of gun.”

“That’s like saying that technically, you’re a mammal.”

“There’s no technically about it. I
am
a mammal.”

“I mean that describing you only as a mammal would be sufficiently accurate.”

“Depends on the conversation.”

“Fine. In this conversation, ‘gun,’ is not
sufficiently accurate
. I have a rifle.”

“And I don’t, which is what I was getting at. I don’t have a rifle. Or a handgun. Or a blunderbuss, for that matter. I don’t have a gun.”

“You don’t need one.”

“I’m on the wall.”

“So?”

“So when I’ve been on the wall before, I had a gun.”

“You didn’t need it then, either.”

“What if a bunch of runners come at the wall? That’s happened before. We both know that.”

“What did you do when the breach happened?”

“I yelled ‘Breach!’ and then other people took care of it, because I didn’t leave my post.”

“Right. One, you did the right thing by staying at your post, and two, you didn’t need a rifle.”

“But I
might
have.”

“What would you have done with it?”

“Well, if I had seen the runner before it was up to the wall and inside it, I would have shot it.”

“You would have shot it.”

“Sure.”

“You shoot much?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before all this. Did you shoot much? Go to the range? Go hunting?”

“I didn’t hunt. I didn’t see the point. Supermarkets existed for a reason.”

“Did you go shoot at a range?”

“I went to one once for a friend’s birthday party. Five or six years ago. Shot a Glock.”

“How’d you do?”

“I hit the paper.”

“How many times?”

“…Once.”

“Okay. What kind of rifle is this?”

“It’s a military rifle.”

“You might as well call it a gun.”

“I
did
call it a gun, if you recall.”

“What kind of military rifle is it? It an M4? An M14? An AK-47?”

“AK-47.”

“Wrong. It’s an M16.”

“That was a trick question.”

“It wasn’t a trick question.”

“It was a trick question. You didn’t list ‘M16’ as an option.”

“The point is if you knew which rifle it was, you would have known none of those options were correct.”

“We need a judge’s ruling on that.”

“Since you don’t know what kind of rifle this is, it’s a pretty good guess you don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s not necessarily true.”

“What sort of ammunition does it shoot?”

“Bullets.”

“It shoots 5.56 NATO rounds.”

“I think you’re making that up.”

“I’m not making it up.”

“You’re doing that Star Trek thing where they give a bullshit name to a brand new subatomic particle.”

“5.56 NATO round. Do you know anything about the 5.56 round?”

“It disrupts a tachyon field when you hit a deflector dish with it.”

“The 5.56 NATO round is one of the most common rounds in the world. We used it in the M16, and the M4, and the M249. The British used it in the SA80. Germany used it in the G36. The French used it in the FAMAS. It means there was a lot of it out there.”

“Okay. So?”

“The M16 can also fire a .223 round, which is nearly identical, and was also incredibly common. What does this mean?”

“It means there’s a lot of ammo out there the M16 can shoot.”

“No. It means that there was a lot of rounds that were
manufactured
that the M16 can shoot. Which meant our scavenger crews were able to find it more often than some other rounds. Right now we have about four thousand rounds that work with this M16.”

“Which is a hell of a lot.”

“It’s really not. More to the point, it’s not enough to train you on the rifle.”

“It doesn’t take much training to point a rifle at a runner.”

“No. It takes training to hit one. And once those rounds are gone, they’re gone. We don’t have the capability to make more here. So you don’t get a rifle. Or a shotgun, for which we have even fewer rounds.”

“This is a ‘macho former Marine’ thing, isn’t it?”

“No. This is a ‘give the weapon to the person who has training on it’ thing.”

“So what do you want me to do if a runner makes for the wall?”

“I want you to do what you did before. I want you to call it out.”

“And then you’ll shoot it.”

“If it makes sense to shoot it, yes. Otherwise, we have other options.”

“I still think this is a macho bullshit thing.”

“Fine. Here. Take the rifle.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“I want you to hold it.”

“…Okay. I’m holding it.”

“Aaaand you just shot off your foot.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you took the rifle, you put your finger on the trigger and you pointed it at your left foot. You just shot off your foot.”

“Except that I didn’t. See? Left foot intact.”

“That’s because I’m not stupid enough to hand you a rifle with live ammunition in it with the selector switch in any position other than ‘safe.’”

“I didn’t shoot my foot off before when I was on watch.”

“Was the selector switch in the ‘safe position?”

“…Possibly.”

“‘Possibly.’ Meaning that you didn’t have the first clue as to whether you could fire your rifle at all.”

“I think you’re being unfair.”

“I’ll give you five seconds to find the selector switch on that rifle.”

“And then what?”

“Then I punch you in the shoulder and take back the rifle.”

“What if I find it?”

“Then I take the rifle back before you can shoot yourself in the foot because
you still have your fucking finger on the trigger
.”

“Look, just take it back.”

“Thank you.”

“I still want a weapon.”

“We can start you on the bow.”

“How are
you
on a bow?”

“Terrible.”

“That makes me feel a little better.”

“That’s nice. Now shut up and look for runners.”

* * *

“Do you ever wonder which famous people made it?”

“Made it?”

“
Made it
, Jim. Survived.”

“Oh. No.”

“Never once?”

“I’ve been kind of busy.”

“We’ve all been kind of busy. Doesn’t mean you don’t think about these things.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, think about it now. Which famous people do you think survived?”

“…I can’t think of any famous people right off the top of my head.”

“Do you live in a cave?”

“No, I live in an improvised fortress in the suburbs of Detroit, surrounded by goddamn zombies and a general apocalypse.”

“If you don’t have hobbies in a situation like that, you’re gonna go a little crazy.”

“Thinking about former celebrities is not a useful hobby.”

“Hobbies aren’t supposed to be useful. That’s why they’re
hobbies
. And why do you say ‘former’?”

“It’s the zombie apocalypse, in case you haven’t noticed. No one’s going to the movies anymore. No one’s listening to Top 40 radio. No one’s watching
Entertainment Tonight
.”

“I don’t think
Entertainment Tonight
still exists.”

“
Nothing
still exists, entertainment-wise. That’s what I’m
saying
.”

“Indulge me, here. We have six hours to go in the watch. There’s nothing moving out there. I’m a little bored.”

“The alternative is worse.”

“If you mean things moving out there, then yes. Otherwise we disagree.”

“Fine. Name a celebrity and I’ll tell you if I think they made it.”

“Justin Bieber.”

“Jesus Christ, man. You can’t just
lead
with Justin Bieber. You have to work up to that kind of shit.”

“Deep end of the pool, Jim. Come on. You think Justin Bieber’s survived?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you sure? Fact: He had bodyguards. Fact: He had money to escape to an isolated area. Fact: He’s owned a monkey.”

“What the hell does a monkey have to do with anything?”

“Irrational crap-flinging primate. I suggest that’s decent training for dealing with runners.”

“One, no it’s not. Two, he abandoned his monkey in Germany.”

“The fact you know that and yet say you don’t follow celebrities is something we need to revisit at a later time.”

“Three, if you think those bodyguards stuck with him after everything started to fall apart, you’re delusional. Four, money stopped doing anyone any good really fast. No. He’s dead. Dead and probably eaten.”

“Concur. George Clooney.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. He had that villa. Maybe it was defensible.”

“Jay-Z and Beyonce.”

“I have to think they made it to an island somewhere.”

“Any of the Kardashians.”

“Eaten. All of them. Every single one.”

“Harrison Ford.”

“He’s a pilot. He may have gotten out.”

“He crashed on that golf course, though.”

“He walked away from it.”

“The members of Metallica.”

“You know what? Once I would have pegged them to survive. But then I saw that
Some Kind of Monster
documentary. I think the runners were feasting on Lars Ulrich’s sweetmeats on, like, day two.”

“Ted Nugent.”

“Eaten.”

“Come
on
. This is
Ted Nugent
we’re talking about, here.”

“Look. I don’t want to say he didn’t talk a good survivalist game. He did. But I think he’s a prime candidate for being overconfident. I bet he thought he could just bowhunt the crap out of the runners, and they probably trapped him in a ravine or something.”