Dead Lands Pass the Ammunition (6 page)

“Claws… Yeah.” Hadn’t I said the same thing to Mack?

And what had Mack said about growing up? That we all needed to grow up? The world had gone to shit. The countryside was loaded with living dead monsters who wanted to make ol’ Pete into a snack. I shot a man—what once was a man—in the face, and I still wasn’t grown up. My guts were a stew. Was Mack growing up? Did he really understand? All that shit he told me about women like Sasha… I hated how logical it sounded, even after replaying it dozens of times.

“What’s eating you?” Ellen asked.

“Mack.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

“Great joke. Really. Do you ever think about it? Think about what it would be like to be bitten?”

“By one of them?” Ellen’s nose wrinkled. “Hurt like hell, wouldn’t it? I figure it’s got to be a lousy way to go. But you’re armed. You can either knock a few heads off those bastards or take one for yourself.” She opened her mouth and stuck an index finger inside, mimicking a gun. “Pow.”

“Great. Sounds like a helluva way to go. But I’ve seen someone bitten. Bled like hell.”

“What happened to him?”

I closed my eyes, trying to push down the memory of my brother. I should have never mentioned it. My brain grabbed the nearest memory which might lead away. “His name was Ghost. A nickname. Mack left him on the side of the highway a few days before we landed here.”

“Had he turned?”

I shook my head. “We just left him. I thought about…” The words
shooting him
died in my throat.

She nodded, slow and easy. “I’m worried about you, Peter. Look, Sasha was telling me something the other day. Mack’s going to ask you to go out with him. To go hunting like Big D used to, but not quite. Something about food.”

My intestines twisted. “I haven’t been out of the compound for months. Not since we got here. Mack knows more about me than anybody else in this whole fucked up world. Anybody left alive, that is. He knows I’m a chicken shit. Why would he want me to go with him?”

“Good question.” She held out a hand and grabbed my wrist. “I was asking myself the same thing.”

The blood throbbed in my head. I rubbed one temple. Her fingers tightened against my skin.

“What are you doing?” I asked, not pulling my hand away.

She lifted her shirt and slid my hand across her naked belly and underneath her tattered bra. Her breast felt small and warm and smooth against my skin.

“Just feeling you, Peter. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt much of anything.”

I squirmed. My dick stiffened in my pants.

“Shhh…” She held a finger to her lips. “Just enjoy the sunrise.”

~

Three days later, I woke to a crisp cold dawn.

Had I known—really known—I’d be shot in the back, I might have stayed in my bunk.

The plan, Mack explained, was to catch a couple of the wild boars some of the expeditions had seen. We’d catch them and bring them back to the camp, build an enclosure, and hopefully have roast pork on some invented feast day. It would have to be an invented holiday because truthfully, dates meant nothing. In two years, we’d regressed to a system governed by seasons and little else.

The camp would raises its own pigs, one of Big D’s ideas before D became dead.

The plan, Mack explained, required some of the best guys. Fighters. If we didn’t come against any flesh bags, the boars might give us problems.

He asked me to go.

Ellen’s warning itched like a mosquito bite in mid-August.

But what was I going to do, say no? How could I say no to Mack? How could I say no without rousing suspicion? I was going to risk my ass for some barbeque and middle school memories.

I cleaned my shotgun one more time before leaving the bunk house for the gate. My gaze climbed to the south tower, my tower, and held there for a moment. The silhouette of another guy, maybe Rex or Lennie, waved back. Water splashed around my boots. Rain had come in the night, and puddles dotted the packed camp paths. Mack and Donnie and another guy, a fidgety prick we called Rabbit, waited at the gate. He stood to Mack’s shoulder, but was as thin as one of his thighs in the middle of his chest. If he was a rabbit, he’d be one of those skinny, freaked-out bastard’s Aunt Penny had in her backyard.

When I saw Rabbit, Ellen’s warning gave me an extra kick. Best guys? Rabbit could hardly take a shit without losing his cool. Now, he was covering my ass? Outside the walls, the undead waited. Outside the walls, death would mock our strides and howl in our ears as Coach Freeman did at Manhattan High. Gutless, it might call me. Chicken shit. Afraid.

Yes, afraid.

Ellen’s warning, coupled with the tiny hole in Big D’s big dead back, had moved me action. I’d taken a detour through the armory the night before. I gathered a little something I never thought I’d need… It proved the smartest thing I done since the world came to an end.

~

“All right. This is what we’re going to do,” Mack said before we pushed back the gates and let the wider world swallow us whole. He spoke like a playground quarterback, like he was drawing up plays like we used to on Saturday afternoons. “Donnie and Rabbit have this net. I figure those pigs live in the thickets down around the creek bottom. They’ll come around on the creek side with the net, and we force one of those little squealers downhill into the trap.”

“The woods?” I asked. Yes, the woods. Yes, I knew. I felt like it was a last second plea bargain for life without parole instead of… What? Was Mack going to leave me out there for the flesh bags? I shook my head, trying to dislodge some of the more stubborn cobwebs. Maybe Ellen was wrong… Maybe jealousy drove her to confide in me. Maybe…

“Yes, the woods.” Mack straightened, standing tall. “You have a better plan?”

No, I didn’t. I wasn’t trying to play for position, but I figured Mack was showing his behavior for what it was—a power grab. A simple power grab.  Politics of the apocalypse… What would one want with the leadership of a dysfunctional band of apocalypse survivors?

Nothing, of course.

I had no expectations. I didn’t even have an expectation I’d live until sundown.

“No,” I said.

Rabbit scratched the stubble on his chin. “You really think we’re gonna to run a hog farm up in here? Stink to heaven. Hogs don’t lay no eggs. They ain’t good for much other than barbeque.”

Mack cast a crooked glance at Rabbit. For a moment, I thought maybe both of us were food for the worms. “But we need to eat. A handful of vegetables won’t keep us fed and prosperous. The dry provisions—canned goods and boxes—are running low and we’ve stripped every house and store within a day’s travel. Once we get a couple of cars up and ready—”

“Cars?” I asked. “What cars?”

“That heap you and I drove in with, for one. A couple trucks parked near the old house. We’re going to modify them.”

Donnie nodded. “Bio-diesel.”

“Is this part of the hog operation?”

Mack shrugged. “We need to eat more than anything, but if we manage to get those trucks and Ghost’s old Camry running, we might be able to really beef this place up. Make it a palace instead of just a place to hide.”

Ambitious?

Yes.

Did I believe him?

What choice did I have?

~

Any other time, I would have enjoyed a nice walk through the woods. Any other time—some life where the dead didn’t come back and munch on the living—I would have reveled in nature.

It had been winter when Mack and I joined the camp, so the fresh spring growth—weeds and leaves and all—caught me off guard. We trekked without speaking, pounding our feet over the rocky path leading toward the remnants of U.S. 81 down a ditch and into the trees. I knew the trees must follow the creek as they did in Kansas. Near the water was the only place trees grew well out in the open prairie.

The trees brought shade; shade brought a chill colder than the lack of sun. We continued on a rough path into the woods, one fashioned from repeated ventures into the trees. I figured it must have been the same trail Big D took on the day he was shot. Maybe I was wrong, but it felt right. The woods smelled like murder. They smelled like the dead.

Rabbit caught my eye. “The beast is out here,” he said. “And it’s hungry.”

I offered a weak smile and nodded. We trundled along until the path broke apart, leaving us groping through aggressive underbrush. New branches tugged at our clothes like the fingers of the dead. Sweat spilled from every pore, but it wasn’t likely seventy-five degrees. We tromped maybe fifty yards before Mack, leading the way, paused and faced us over his shoulder.

“Big D figured there must be a nest down here near the creek.”

I held my breath. Mack met my eyes—a quick, cold glance—and then turned and stepped away from the path. A branch snapped to my right, and I turned, feeling the stock of my gun.

“Jumpy,” Rabbit said, sneering. “Fucking jumpy. Bet you wouldn’t fire that gun nine times of ten with Big D’s big undead ass bearing down on you. Bet you got lucky is all. Lucky and alive.”

Another snap dragged my head to the other side. Mack was gone. Donnie was long gone.

The gunshot came like a long gone summer firecracker, snap, and Rabbit lurched forward.

His mouth opened, and a little sound tumbled out. Ungh. Just ungh. The whole thing happened kind of herky-jerky, like I’d been flipping a hand drawn comic book.

I didn’t hear the shot that hit me in the back.

As I fell forward, driven hard by the impact of the bullet, my brain flashed to one name.

Ellen.

Nobody really expects to be shot in the back, let alone feel the impact of the mossy, leaf-covered ground and live to spin a story about it. Usually, when a guy is shot in the back, it’s treachery at its most treacherous. Usually, the shooter finishes the job and leaves nothing behind—no half-dead victim to dust himself off and seek revenge.

Most guys just don’t expect to be shot in the back, much less cover themselves with not one but two vintage army surplus flak jackets.

Had it been a hunk of lead from Mack’s rifle or another big caliber shooter, I would have bled out on the Nebraksa dirt while waiting for the meatwads to munch away at my still steaming parts.  Maybe I’d still be alive when the chewing started. Maybe I’d get a really good sense of just how bad it hurt.

I’d made my little detour through the armory before going on Mack’s hunt. Two vintage flak jackets and a small caliber weapon added to one stiff Pete and maybe a broken rib.

I didn’t stand at first, but lay there, nose in the dirt. The soil gave me a good, stiff whiff. Funny how dirt—worm shit after all—can smell so warm and wholesome. The first few breaths came in stiff, staccato shudders. White hot pain danced across my back.

“Fuck,” I muttered.  A louder shot crawled around in my mouth, but I thought better of it and kept my trap shut. If any flesh bags had been stumble-strolling through the woods, they’d have heard the shots and come close enough for their rotten noses to take over. I didn’t need any more trouble. My right hand crept forward until fingertips touched polish wooden stock.

They’d left my gun.

I listened.

Quiet. Rabbit hadn’t stirred either. Sometimes a guy’s ears would play tricks and suggest the undead were shambling his way, but I listened, sure to hear a cracking twig or grunt or groan, but nothing came. Nothing came.

I sucked a big, deep breath into my lungs and, wincing against the pain, struggled to all fours.

Somebody had shot me—I was pretty sure it wasn’t or couldn’t have been Mack from where I saw him standing last. Donnie maybe? That might make sense because Donnie’d been a real weird asshole since I met him. But motive? I don’t suspect Donnie had much reason to off me.

I forced my hands from the ground and, squatting, dusted my filthy palms against my knees. The pain throbbed like a hammer tapping a sore finger,
thud, thud thud
. I closed my eyes, squeezing them tight. The dim awareness that the flesh bags might still be coming sparked in my head. I couldn’t stay there, alone, exposed.

Rabbit groaned.

I stooped for my gun and limped to his side. He lay face down, his back dark and matted with blood.

“Unngh…”

“Quiet,” I whispered. “Quiet.”

“Fuck… Somebody…”

“Shhhh. I’ll get you out of here.”

“Y-you?” He tilted his head slightly so I could see the side of his face. His eyes flickered and rolled back in his head.

“Pete.”

His mouth opened again, but instead of words, another groan tumbled out. There was another sound, not from Rabbit, but somewhere behind us. A twig snapping. Footsteps.

My throat closed off. I couldn’t feel my legs for a moment, but the pain in my back vanished, too. The meatwads were coming. They were coming, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My right hand tightened around the stock of the shotgun. My left hand patted the thigh pockets of my worn BDUs. The shells. Whoever shot me hadn’t taken the shells.