Dead Lands Pass the Ammunition (3 page)

“I want you to survive,” I said. I’d been trying to cover for the guy for years—since high school on the football field and in the classroom. He used to sit next to me in Mr. Alstatt’s algebra class and copy answers during our tests. I’d been trying to keep Mack afloat for too long, and figured this was just another in a long line of bailing out his sorry butt. All that bullshit about the future—children—my God. Maybe Mack came around before I did. Maybe he did get it, but visions of Sasha’s swishing ass and her devil’s eyes kept me from believing him. Maybe I was jealous and jealousy blinded me. Mack might have had his shit together. 

Either way, I must have struck a different kind of nerve because he didn’t kick me again. Maybe he heard some truth in those words. I don’t know. His big fists deflated, but his dark eyes still hammered against me like the twin barrels of Uncle Gary’s shotgun.

“You need to get your God-damned nose out of my business, P. We’ve been like brothers since—”

“Middle school,” I said.

“Yeah. Since Mr. Grinich’s homeroom. You invited me to your table at lunch when the rest of the damned school looked like it wanted to fling shit at me, the new monkey in the cage. I suppose I owed you one for that. I’m sure I’ve paid up by now.” Mack shook his head. “Just lay off Sash. We’ve got dreams.”

My stomach twisted, snake like.
Dreams
.  She’d filled his head with delusions of grandeur.

“Dreams,” I said. “Ambitions. Like maybe—”

“Don’t start,” Mack growled. “This is over.”

I nodded. Nothing was over. Nothing would be over for some time. Nothing except our friendship.

Everyone in camp knew exactly how many shots they had left.

I carried twenty-nine shells when I arrived at the Nebraska compound and hadn’t spent one since. The shells came from a Wal-mart in Concordia, Kansas. Mack and I had been traveling with an ex-GI who called himself Ghost, a skittish, thin fellow who claimed the rotters couldn’t function up north.

Ghost played too many video games and had Mountain Dew for blood plasma. He claimed strength in numbers because, as he said, “a guy had to sleep sometime.” Ghost had a car and when law and order fell apart in Manhattan—I can’t even imagine the shit-storm in a bigger city—we piled into his Camry and headed west. We passed one town—Clay Center—in flames. The bridge west on U.S. 24 had collapsed into the river, so we swung south and hooked up with U.S. 81. Concordia’s Wal-mart sat just off the highway.

I had the gun, my father’s old sixteen gauge, already. Damn hard to find ammunition for an odd gauge even in the best of times.

“Right here fellas,” Ghost said, steering into the lot. The whole damn town appeared deserted. A big brick building like a castle sat on a hill, watching the whole mess. Ghost explained a bunch of nuns lived up there—it was a convent or school or something. I wondered how long they were able to hold off the dead in their cloistered halls.

We loaded a couple carts with dry groceries before making our way to sporting. The place had seen some action—shelves and clothing and boxes strewn everywhere—but we held hope.

And it paid off for me.

We found a toppled display of shotgun shells, one of those hunting season specials, scattered across the floor.

“Looks like somebody’s been here,” Mack said. “Took most of this stuff.”

I knelt and started digging through the boxes. “Still some left… These are sixteen gauge.”

“It’s your lucky fucking day,” Ghost muttered as he climbed over the counter. “Your lucky day. Mack and me might grab some of these.” He gestured toward the rifle display. “Free for the taking.”

I’d shoved several fistfuls of ammo in my jacket pockets before we smelled them. They made noise, sure, a low, aching moan, but the smell really tipped us off.

Ghost was behind a counter hammering at the locks on a whole row of rifles.

“Let’s go,” Mack said. His eyes darted back and forth. We both scanned for the source of the stench.

“Just a minute,” Ghost said.

Hard to imagine a lumbering mob of undead
ambushing
us, but that’s as close to the truth as I can make it. They must have had a nest in there or something. Like some kind of hive. A big crash behind Mack grabbed my attention, and the bastards had us surrounded. Three snarling, grey-faced monsters lumbered toward Ghost down one aisle; behind and to my left, two more. Mack spun to face a sixth staggering on his right.

“Fuck it,” Mack said. A rack of baseball bats had been strewn on the floor nearby, and he stooped for one, aluminum. “Let’s go.”

The fleshbag closest Mack lunged, but Mack feinted left. He brought the bat up at an angle, landing a vicious uppercut on the thing’s jaw. The mandible snapped, crumbling with a wet pop. The body fell to the floor.

Blood pounding in my head, I shoved one more fistful of shells in my pocket and scrambled away from the two behind me.

Ghost grunted.

I turned. The quickest of the three coming toward him had him pinned against the counter. Ghost had managed the lock and now held a gun in front of him—unloaded. The fleshbag’s rotten mouth snapped open and shut inches from Ghost’s face. The other two bastards started tearing at Ghost’s arms with their nasty-ass hands.

The guy was dead meat. I knew it. I looked at Mack.

Mack’s face went red.

“Mother-fuckers,” he muttered. Swinging the bat, he came at the two nearest us. With one swift strike he sent the smaller of the two toppling sideways. It struck an empty shelf with a clatter and collapsed. The other sort of paused, almost like it was trying to understand what happened. Mack swung the bat with two fists, breaking the head of the second—a big, bullish meatwad with a beard—off at the neck. The skinny one started crawling toward us, but Mack hopped over it and headed for Ghost.

My hand swooped low and snagged a bat. I swung in one swooping down stroke like a guy might with a sledgehammer. Skull fragments and rotten flesh squirted to the side like black jelly. Ooze hit the floor with wet plops.

It was my first kill.

The first time I’d
killed
something that wasn’t dead, wasn’t alive.

I stared at the end of the bat, the black stain, my own hands…

Ghost howled in pain.

My attention snapped to the moment. Mack had managed two of the three baddies, but the last one, the one Ghost was fighting, latched his foul mouth on Ghost’s shoulder. Mack swung like a thresher, landing blow after blow on the rotten torso until the teeth came loose with a deep red spurt of Ghost’s blood.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” Ghost groaned.

“C’mon,” Mack said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I couldn’t move. My eyes flicked between the black mess in front of me and the slick flow of red on Ghost’s shoulder. Mack punched me in the arm.

“Time to go, P. Unless you want to hang around and feed the animals.”

We hurried through the store. Shotgun shells rattled in my pockets as we ran through the doors and across the lot. The earth rattled in my bones as my feet struck pavement. The sky, cold and grey and unsympathetic pressed down like a lid of iron. Once in the car, Mack fired it up and tore through Concordia. Ghost lay groaning in the back seat. I counted the shells in my pockets after the shaking went away.  

“Twenty-nine,” I said.

Mack grunted. We zipped past a “Welcome to Nebraska” sign, a blue blur against the grey sky.

“Twenty-nine shells,” I said again. I looked at my hands.

The silver bat rolled on the floor at Mack’s feet. “Better than zero,” he said.  “Damn lucky they had your size.”

Lucky.

Right.

~

I hadn’t fired the gun since living in the compound. Most of the fighting came in short bursts after the flesh bags gained strength in numbers and hammered away at the metal walls. I supposed those walls might not hold for long if we let them pound away all night and all day. The cocktails took care of most of the bastards, and before Mack splatted the lot that day, we’d simply wait for the fire to swallow the rest.

Besides, the damn things were too stupid to stop, drop, and roll. A dead body burns a hell of a lot faster with one still full of blood and piss and stomach juice to slow the flames down.

Safety lay tucked away in the compound, but the future stared at us each day with the sunrise. We’d run out of glass bottles soon enough. What then, take pot-shots at the meatwads until our guns went dry? Our ammunition was limited, too, and seemed a hell of a lot more precious than bottles. Each man and woman carried what he or she owned, never letting a cartridge out of one’s sight for fear it could be the lost bullet which might save one’s life. All sorts of mythology sprang up around our guns, but they’d be no more use than a fence post without shells.  Once the guns fell silent, we’d have nothing left but to fend off the meatwads with sticks and bats until their number swallowed us like a frothing red tide. And they would, too. If we couldn’t keep them off the walls, those walls would never hold.

A dream of dying in a flood of grey flesh woke me at least twice a month. It was the only dream I ever remembered in color. Hell, I could have closed my eyes and almost smelled that dream.

Part of surviving meant scavenging. We sent small bands down old U.S. 81 at least once a week. On occasion, they’d come back with a trophy head or two. Often they spent more ammunition then they ought.  They always spent more ammunition than they brought back, but sometimes they’d return with more than a trophy head. Sometimes, they’d come back with little snatches of the old world: a comic book, titty magazine, some canned fruit cocktail or even rock-hard Twinkies. We used to imagine Twinkies would survive right past the end of the world. We were wrong.  If you gave them a few years, they’d petrify.

Before Big D and Mack went on their hunt, we’d only lost one other member of the compound. He was a weasely guy with slick hair greased back into what Dad used to call a duck tail. I don’t know where the guy—name was Fischer—found the hair gel. I don’t know that it was hair gel. He stood tall enough to duck through any of the entrances to the shacks inside the compound. His gut used to poke out like Mom looked after about five months with my baby sister in her belly. The rest of him was toothpick thin. He never said much. His eyes always searched the edges of the trees like he was waiting on something which would flap into the air and fly away.

Fischer went out in a group of six; five came back three hours later, sweating and talking in quick, excited tones about the flesh bags gathering together for another attack. None of them noticed Fischer missing until they were safe inside.

Small bands went out into the wild at least two or three times a week, but Big D only made the trip on rare occasions, and he always waited until after we killed a few dozen in an attack. Being a smart guy, I suppose Big D figured after a raid was just about the safest time to venture into the woods. It would take a week or more for those bastards to form up enough strength to come at us. Big D’s trips were called hunting parties because he’d come back with at least one trophy which we’d mount on a pole on the high tower.

Real old school, that head on a stick trick. Reminded me of something we read in Phelps’s class about the clans in Scotland and how they put the fear into the Romans when the Romans had most of Britain conquered.

Big D always handpicked his hunting party, and after his show of stupid heroism, Mack made the cut.

I watched them go from my perch on the southeast corner of the wall. The midday sun glinted from Mack’s blade. He held it in one hand, and the other swung at his side. He had his rifle slung across his back. Just before they were out of sight, he turned and looked back at the compound. I’d swear on my sister Reanne’s grave the bastard looked right at me.

~

The threat of death—a violent, painful death—lingered on everything like stink on shit, but most of our lives were spent in mind-numbing routine. Those of us in our twenties were used to a life filled with constant entertainment and information at our fingertips. The end brought an end to everything. Sometimes I felt like I was just waiting.

Waiting for the meatwads to come back.

Waiting to squeeze off those twenty-nine shells before they grabbed me with yellow-brown nails and started tearing. Waiting for their teeth and the sound of my own skin ripping open while the blood gushed out all warm and sticky. Sometimes, while on guard duty, I’d try to imagine just how much pain could go through before dying.

Sometimes I tried to imagine heaven on the other side.

It was hard to see heaven when you have such a good view of hell.

~

We heard the shot after they’d been gone for about an hour. I stood on my rickety perch and peered along the wall to the southwest tower. A guy we called Easy-E waved at me and pointed toward the woods. Inside the woods was a small creek and beyond that the highway. Big D and Mack and the two other guys had hiked that direction once they left the compound.

A single shot. A tiny little echo.