Books of the Dead (Book 3): Dead Man's Land (4 page)

Chapter 6

Military Intelligence

“They don’t think we can see them because they’ve stayed inside.” The colonel said as he stood over the drone control console, watching the drone glide over the countryside like a ghost.  The drone turned, and the Manor came into view.

“Dumb asses,” an extra-large man wearing army fatigues said.  “Haven’t heard of thermal imaging?”  The man’s name was Jones.  His skin was dark brown, and his head was shaved, catching a gleam of the dim lights in the room. He was the colonel’s second in command and a solidly built soldier with broad shoulders and an overdeveloped upper body from lifting weights.

“Switch back to thermal,” the colonel said.  His was the voice of confident command.

The drone pilot reached forward, switched a toggle, and a thermal view of the Manor appeared.  The screen displayed a vibrant swatch of colors, ranging from dark blue, to purple, to magenta, to bright oranges, and yellows. Yellow bloomed from the interior of the Manor, the obvious heat signature of an inhabited building.  Small specks of orange and yellow moved at the fringes of the building, the telltale signs of living, breathing humans. The drone glided over the buildings and across the countryside as quiet as an owl.

“Do you want to make another pass over the buildings?”  Jones asked the colonel.

The drone pilot looked up from his seat at ‘the stick.’  He sat in the center of an array of video monitors displaying different views from the drone.  His right hand firmly held the control joystick, making minor adjustments that sent the drone into a gentle turn, banking it over a shallow valley.             

“We have enough over them,” the colonel said as he rubbed his chin.  “Keep going in that direction.  We need to see the neighboring vicinity.”

The pilot redirected his full attention to the task at hand.

“Do you think they have something to hide?” Jones asked.

“We lost Hackett south of there, and Billings’ last report was there,” the colonel responded.

“So, do we send in a team?”

“Let me sleep on it.  We don’t want to lose any more men needlessly, but we need to find Carter.  We need him back.”

Chapter 7

Out of the Ashes

His skin itched and burned all the time. It was like a swarm of fire ants were crawling over him, biting and tickling him at the same time.  It took everything in him to resist clawing at the burn wounds, but he resisted.  He had to dig deep, though.  Very deep.

At least what was left of his foot had finally stopped aching.  There were times that he still felt his toes.  He even wiggled them. He knew that was the phantom limb effect, but it was when he awoke that he felt them the most. Then the cold hard reality that a grenade had blasted away those toes hit him, and he felt a slow simmering anger start to work on his psyche.

“Rex,” he croaked out, his voice still hoarse, even after three weeks.  He heard no movement, so he called again, which made his throat burn.  He moved his fingers over his chest control panel, but was surprised when he only found an empty hole where the control button for Rex once sat. Then he remembered.  He’d have to call his second-in-command the old fashioned way.

“Rex!” His throat felt like someone had jammed a wire brush down it.

A few seconds later, Rex’s over large and meaty head filled his field of vision.

“What took you so long?” Anthony asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

“I was training the new recruits,” Rex said. “That new one, Maggie, is a feisty bitch.”

“Help me up,” Anthony said.

Rex leaned down, and more gently than most people would expect, lifted Anthony to a sitting position. 

Anthony’s burned skinned felt like someone had doused him in gasoline and set him on fire again, but he only grimaced, biting back the pain. 
              Anthony had worked with Rex to modify a seat on the bus so that he could recline when they were in the field training.  Rex had urged him to stay back at their base, but Anthony had insisted on being a part of the training sessions.  He did very little, but it kept him in the game and distracted him somewhat from the pain.

“How are the other new recruits?” Anthony asked as he looked out the windows to watch them work to master control over the small groups of zombies.  Rex had broken the three new recruits down into separate areas in the field.  They all worked with full knowledge that at any moment, and with any slight mistake, they could receive a “corrective” jolt from their control collars.  You only needed to be shocked once to be able remember that, and they had all experienced ‘the lightning’ as Anthony called it. Some more than others.

The new woman, Maggie, was working with Roy.  She was a handsome woman, around thirty, whom they found roaming the streets, foraging for food.  She had come into town from one of the outlying communities. 

The teenage boy, Ryan, whom they had taken from the department store, was working with Rex ,but was now on his own.  The boy was acquitting himself well with no one watching over him.  He drove the zombies in his control like a herd of sheep, zig-zagging them across the field.  Anthony guessed his skill with the controls came as a by-product from playing video games before the Outbreak. The last one was a tall beanpole of a man.  His name was Norman.  He was unique because he had shown up at their base, asking to be taken in. (This was a first.)  While he was a bit slow on the uptake, he was totally compliant, taking punishment without complaint and eager to please.  His limited intelligence restricted his usage as a full asset, but Anthony figured he could become fodder for the zombies if the need came to that.  Norman was paired with Felix who had been a part of the team since Anthony had “recruited” him.

Each one wore his control collar, and Rex was, as always, ready to deliver any correction if it were needed. Or if he just felt like it. 

“They’re no different than the others -- scared shitless and looking for any chance to run.”

“But are they learning?”

“Yes. The kid is great.  Watch him for a second.”  They did, as the Ryan brought his team of zombies to a complete stop , then marched them backwards for forty paces and then reversed them, making them march forward for nearly one hundred yards. The zombies moaned and groaned, but in low tones and not the excited sounds they made when food was near.  Anthony knew this lot was getting used to being controlled and conditioned more and more each day.

“Maggie’s doing really good, too,” Rex said. “She may bitch and complain, but when she puts her mind to it, she makes things happen.” 

The rapport with Rex was a bit too chummy for Anthony, but they had an agreement.  It had been an agreement with the devil for both of them. It galled Anthony even to remember the night he had been forced into it. 

It had been a bad night for him.  Very bad, indeed.

He lay next to the charred bus, his body burnt and broken.  Soot filled his nostrils, and he found breathing a challenge.  Things had gone decidedly bad for him.  He had ambushed a group of the church people and had them trapped in the street, but then another group of people had come upon the scene, turning the tide against him.

Just hours before, he had found himself inside his precious bus.  Where once it had been a safe harbor, it had become an inferno.  Ammunition exploded around him, and his left foot had taken the brunt of a grenade explosion.  It was only through the force of base animal will power that he had even made it off the bus alive, but not intact.

He didn’t know if or when Rex would show up. There was a good chance another zombie would come upon him and decide it was time to feed.  He had used up all of his remaining energy fending off the one attack. That zombie body lay across his legs, pinning him to the ground. 

The stars above him were starting to fade as a hint of the sun suffused the sky with its far off glow. His foot ached, a pulsing deep wedge of pain that overwhelmed him at times, sending him into unconsciousness.  He came out of one of these black dreams and saw a shadowy face hanging over him. He reached for his knife, but it had slipped off his body into the darkness while he had been out of it. 

He reconciled himself to being taken by one of the creatures that he had once dominated when the creature spoke.

“How you doing, boss man?”

“Rex?” Anthony said in soft, raspy whisper. The pain of talking tore at his throat.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Rex said.

“Get this thing off me,” Anthony said, referring to the zombie he had dispatched with his knife earlier. 

A moment later, he felt a weight lifted off his legs, but it had brushed his damage foot, and he let out a choked scream.

“Man, that foot looks bad,” Rex said. “Really, it looks like a part of it is gone.”

Anthony had been afraid to look, but he suspected as much. 

“And you’re looking a little toasted around the edges,” Rex said, and there seemed to be some mirth in his tone.

“Help me up!” Anthony said, anger surging through him as his hand went to his control panel in search of Rex’s control button. This whelp needed some discipline.

Rex shot out his hand and grabbed Anthony’s hand.  “Ah, ah, ah, I wouldn’t do that.”

The anger swelled within Anthony, but Rex held his hand back from the button.

“Listen up,” Rex said, “I know what you can do with the touch of a button.  I also know that you own me because of this collar.” He pointed to his own control collar. It hung on him like a yoke, ready to burn the life out him.  “But we need to come to an agreement ‘cause I ain’t never done nothin’ to show you any disrespect.  I don’t want any more than I have right now, but I can’t go ‘round the way things are.  I know what you can do to me and what will happen if I try to take this collar off by myself, but I need out from under this thing.”  He tugged at his collar, unconsciously.  Anthony had built a fail-safe into the collars.  If one of his subjects tried to remove his collar, he would receive a lethal electric shock.

“There will be no agreement,” Anthony said in a low hiss.

“If we can’t come to an agreement, it’s going to end badly for you and probably for me, too,” Rex said.  “But neither of us wants that.  You’re good at what you do. I don’t mind being your second. I’d like to think I’m sorta good at it. But, if you don’t agree to take this thing off me, I’ll walk away from you and make a lot of ruckus while I do it.  I’m sure the zombies will find you and have their own little barbeque, munching down on your ass.”  He paused and let that sink in.  “Yeah, I know you’ll probably torch me, too, but I think we can come to an agreement. Can’t we?”

Anthony knew doing anything else but agreeing was mutually assured destruction, but it didn’t make the pill any easier to swallow.  After years of being on the wrong end of the stick and then owning the stick -- lock, stock, and barrel, he didn’t want to relinquish any power or control.  His anger nearly boiled over, but he held it in check. 

“Do we have an agreement?” Rex said, leaning down into Anthony’s face.

“Okay,” Anthony hissed out.

“I don’t want to be a pain in the ass, but I need you to say it.”

This was getting to be almost too much, but, once again, Anthony stuffed his fury back down inside.  “I agree to remove your collar. Now, get me the hell out of here.”

“Not so fast,” Rex said, “first, the collar comes off.”

“Here?  Now?”

“It’s the only way.”

“But once you have that off, you can do anything you want to me.”

“You’re going to have to trust me,” Rex said, and his mischievous smile returned.

They had come to terms.  Anthony took Rex through the steps to remove his collar, and Rex stayed good to his word. He got Anthony back to their base and nursed him back to health.  It was touch and go as Anthony came down with a serious infection, but together they beat that back, and Anthony seemed past the worst of his injuries. His foot, though, would never be the same, and the scarring from the burns on his back, neck, and arms weren’t a pretty sight to behold.  His stamina had yet to return to full strength and he tired easily as the pain took its toll on him, but he endured.    

Anthony felt their “working relationship” was even better than before, but it was hard for him to trust it.  He had never trusted anyone in his life, except his mother, and he knew he would never truly trust Rex.  At some point, when his full strength returned, he’d have to find a way to change the power differential again, but for now, he let it be.  Rex was necessary for keeping his little empire growing and prospering.

“Would you look at that?” Rex asked in astonished frustration. “Felix has just about got Norman boxed in by those trees. These controls are only so good.”  Across the field, Norman was frantically back-peddling as his group of zombies streamed toward him.  He wasn’t aware of Ryan’s group just behind him, and it would only be seconds before he stumbled into them. 

Rex bounded off the bus, shouting at Felix.  “Felix, you dumb ass.  If you get Norman killed, I’ll personally let the zombies eat your ass.”

Anthony couldn’t help but smile.  Rex was a great second-in-command. He was brutally efficient and, while not all that smart, he had an animal cunning that served them well.  Too bad, he didn’t know his place, but that would have to wait.  Revenge took precedence over everything except owning the city.  It was a close second, though.