The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) (7 page)

“It’s too late,” Arlene mumbled. Her arms were crossed and each hand had a grip on her bare flesh, making indented half-moon nail marks. There was blood on her left calf where the BDUs she had picked up at Fort Campbell were torn. The blood was already a dark maroon and sticky to the touch.

Neil shook his head. “It’s never too late, Arlene. You never know.”

Grey knew that this time Neil was wrong. He had heard of only two instances that a person was blooded by a stiff and lived. One being Neil’s friend Ram and the other had been a private under his command the year before during their long retreat north from Santa Fe. That had been a hellacious three weeks of no sleep and running battles, desperately trying to keep their dwindling brigade between the stiffs and the fleeing civilians. The private, a mere boy in Grey’s eyes, had been trapped along with his entire squad in the basement of a suburban tract house in some dusty, desert town. With supplies being rationed down to a few hundred calories a day, they were as famished as wolves and had gone scavenging, only to be separated from the main force and trapped.

The boy was the only one to return. When he did, his eyes were empty, his cheeks hollow. There was no more fight left in him. He hobbled everywhere because he had cut all the toes off his left foot with his Ka-bar. As his story went, the squad had fought to the last bullet in the dim and cramped basement. When the zombies had broken through the door, the other men had started swinging their M16s like they were clubs in order to allow the private, Yeager was his name, an opportunity to escape. He had wriggled part-way through a squat little box of a window when a stiff had caught him by the foot as he had struggled out into the daylight. The beast had ripped off his boot and had bitten his toes down to the bone.

Grey didn’t buy the story. He was sure they’d been trapped and he was sure that Yeager’s toes had been bitten, but there was a lie somewhere in the tale. For one, properly laced combat boots couldn’t be simply ‘ripped’ off, no matter how strong the zombie was. For two, Yeager hadn’t been so well-liked that the other men in his squad would lay down their lives for him. What was for sure was that his toes had been chopped clean off and he had come back without a single bullet on his person.

Arlene wasn’t going to be as lucky; she was going to lose a lot more than a few toes. As the others milled and talked about the battle, Grey took Arlene to the driver’s side of his five-ton; he kept his med-bag stuffed in the small space behind the seat. Quickly, he pulled out scissors, rubbing alcohol and a roll of gauze bandages. Had this been any other injury he would’ve dug out more: bacitracin, a scalpel, a suture kit, sterile gloves, and antibiotics—all that would have been a waste with Arlene.

The second he cut away the lower leg of her BDUs he saw the bite was raggedly deep and the edges looked like hamburger. Equally dire was that at least fifteen minutes had passed since she’d been bitten. The virus had to be in her system.

“It’s bad, isn’t it,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

He couldn’t lie to her. “I think so, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try. This may sting a little.” He had a large supply of rubbing alcohol and so he didn’t hold back; he poured it generously into the wound. She didn’t gasp in pain as he had expected not even when he worked the alcohol into her raw flesh. She only stared out at the ugly scrub-like landscape.

“Hey! Arlene!” he barked, trying to bring her around. If there was one thing he knew, attitude played a huge role in any healing process. He needed her alert, talking and hoping for the best. “Look at me. You can’t give up.”

“I think I want to,” she answered in a ghost of a voice. “I’m tired of all of this...and there are so many of them. From the back of the truck we saw all those thousands of zombies and at first we thought it’d be ok since we were driving away from them, but then we went in that circle. We knew we were going back into the horde. We tried to keep quiet and those near the gate scrunched down, but it didn’t matter. They piled up and up and up and up. We prayed and hoped that they wouldn’t see us, but someone panicked, Jackie, I think. She started yelling for Michael to do something. He had been just sitting there for the longest time and we were stuck, defenseless.”

She grabbed his arm and squeezed, hard. It was an urgent, pleading squeeze. “It didn’t make any sense to just sit there with all those zombies climbing over each other to get at us.”

“Yes, I agree it didn’t make...”

As though his voice was only a passing wind, Arlene spoke over him: “They kept getting higher and so the people with the biggest guns went to the gate and started shooting. It was so loud and the guns were bright; me and some of the other girls just huddled in the back with our hands clamped over our ears and we would’ve been safe for a while but then one of
them
stuck an arm under the canvas and grabbed Fred. He screamed and started shooting the canvas.

“We all fell to the other side of the truck, but the people there pushed us off and there was all this shoving. I don’t know what happened next. All I knew was that the canvas was being shredded by the bullets and the zombies were ripping at the holes, making them bigger. Then everyone was shooting and people were knocking each other about...and that’s when I got bit. I was on the bench trying not to get shot or knocked over, only something tripped me and, and, and I lost my balance, and they had me by the foot and they bit me...and...and...”

Her chest was heaving and her heart rate was skyrocketing, spreading the virus further into her system. He took both of her hands into his and said: “Shush now. You have to try to relax.” Like a dishtowel, she went instantly limp and would only a mumble ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from then on.

He bandaged her leg and then went to look for someone to watch over her. No one would except, Sadie, who looked just as friendless as the doomed woman. The Goth girl wasn’t well liked among the Renegades. They blamed her, at least partially, for her father’s evil, and it didn’t help that in the previous couple of days since her daring escape, she had been quiet and aloof. Some thought of her as stuck up. And now she had killed Lindsey. Although no one saw her as criminally guilty they were still swayed by the descriptions of the killing spread by Joslyn.

“Thanks,” Grey said as Sadie came up, still holding Eve. “Try not to get her too riled, but don’t let her sink into a depression either.”

“Keep her luke-warm?” Sadie asked, listlessly. “I can do that. We’ll talk about the weather.”

Grey thanked her again and went to find Neil who was attempting to get a bullet count from the crowd of renegades. Deanna stood next to him with a pen in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other. When the last bullet had been accounted for she summed up the numbers, and all the while, the tip of her tongue, pretty and pink, stuck out between her lips.

“We have 1,276 rounds that fit into six different types of guns,” she said, adding lamely: “It’s not much.”

“We need to take the short route,” Neil stated at once. “One more attack like this and we’re done.”

Deanna didn’t like the idea, her deep frown said as much, but she didn’t fight it. “What are we going to do about Arlene? She’s a good person.”

“That was never in question,” Grey said. “Right now, Neil has to think about the safety of the group. No one knows when her viral load will hit critical mass. Even before she turns into one of them, she’ll be able to spread the virus. An accidental scratch could be a death sentence for somebody.” They both turned to look at Neil.

He made calipers out of his fingers and touched the bridge of his nose as a pained expression swept across his features. “Critical mass or not, we don’t shoot her until she goes into the delirium phase, unless she asks to be shot, that is. Then we do it quickly and humanely. That begs another question of who is going to…but I suppose, I mean, I guess I should, uh, be the one who does it. Pull the trigger, I mean.”

If it wasn’t such a sad subject, the idea of Neil as executioner would’ve had Grey chuckling, but just then with Arlene sitting in the grass and staring out, unblinking, and looking somewhat zombiefied already, a laugh was the furthest thing from his throat. “No, Neil. You’re the leader here. You can’t also be the executioner. It’ll undermine your credibility. I’ll do it. I’ve done it before. You get the people ready to go. I’ll go talk to her.”

It was a subject that wasn’t easily broached. Sadie and Arlene were sitting in silence. Arlene had the thousand yard stare of a man pulled out of the line after a month of straight combat. Sadie matched the stare with one of her own. Perhaps because of all the excitement, or perhaps because she’d been ignored, Eve was fast asleep in Sadie’s arms. There was a small red mark on the top of her head that Grey noticed only in passing.

“Sadie, I got this,” he told her.

“She wouldn’t talk,” Sadie said as she struggled up without waking the baby. “I tried.”

Keeping his voice pitched low and somber, he told her: “Thanks. I’m sure you did your best.”

Arlene heard the change in his tone and though her eyes remained diffused and locked on something miles away that no one else could see, her right eyebrow went up ever so slightly. “What happened to keeping a positive attitude?” she asked. “Did you finally figure out that you’re going to have to kill me?”

“It’s a conversation that we should…” His voice caught as a tear, fat as a raindrop slid out of her eye and laid a track down her cheek to her chin where it hung for a moment until a second and a third joined it. It then slipped off and splashed onto her shirt. Possibly, in the most cowardly moment of his life, Grey said: “No, I mean, it’s too early. It’s a conversation for down the road.”

She sniffled and nodded and then kept sniffling and nodding until he added: “Would you like to ride up front with me and Neil?” Her next nod was of greater depth and the sniffle louder.

Arlene asked for the window seat. It was a request that couldn’t be refused even if it meant Neil got carsick. He kept a plastic bag open on his lap and he frequently had to take large steadying breaths to keep his breakfast in place. Arlene didn’t speak. She only stared out the window as her time among the living counted down.

Size played a role in the progression of the
Super Soldier Virus
; the smaller the person, the quicker they succumbed. She was small and slim to the point of being frail—her time wouldn’t be very long in coming.

Not only was Arlene quiet, so too, were Neil and Captain Grey. It was just the three of them up front. Because Jillybean could be unexpectedly nasty, Deanna volunteered to ride in the back with her. Although there was room, no one else jumped at the chance to sit in the front; Arlene was already dead to most of them.

“Sure is a pretty day,” Captain Grey said. It was. Nothing else needed to be said on the matter. Neil, who was normally the resident optimist, saw the perfect blue and felt a wisp of cool,  morning air and all he could think about was that he had lost two people and it wasn’t even ten—he too was counting Arlene among the dead. It made it hard to strike up a conversation.

The silence drew out as they retraced their route. The quiet was only broken when they finally saw the barn they had slept in the night before and Brad’s herd of zombies which was no longer arrayed in great circle. It was more of an amorphous blob. They knew it was Brad’s because of the riders among them with their tall wings and shining armor. Arlene started weeping again at the sight of the blob and for one moment, Neil wondered if he would have to pay Brad for her.

The thought by itself made him a horrible person. Again, he pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t have a migraine, it just helped calm him for some reason.

Grey stopped the truck a good quarter mile back from the mob of zombies. “He’s going to be an ass, you know it.”

“Yep,” said Neil. “But I should be able to handle him. You forget, I was the original corporate raider back in the day.”

The soldier raised an eyebrow as Brad came galloping up wearing a huge grin. “You think that’ll help you in some way?” Grey asked.

“Not in the least,” Neil replied with a grin. “We both know he’s got me by the short and curlies here. I should get going to talk to him and uh…Arlene? I need to…” He faltered when Arlene didn’t budge or act in any way as if she had heard him. Grey opened his door and slid out.

“You want me to go with you?” Grey asked.

Neil cast a glance at Brad. The horseman was running his fingers through his long blonde hair; he was so high up he seemed like a giant. Amazingly, Neil felt a stab of jealousy. He hadn’t felt jealous since the old time in the old world. Since then he had been either too busy to even consider jealousy as an emotion or he’d been with Sarah and jealousy was what everyone else was feeling. She had been that beautiful.

He sighed, picturing her when he had first met her in the Illinois River; she’d been streaming water from her torso while only wearing a white shirt…with nothing underneath. Another sigh, and then he said: “No, I got this. How do I look?”

“Well, you’ve looked worse.”

“Yeah,” Neil replied. The day they had escaped from the River King he had looked more like a zombie than most zombies. Those injuries were mending, slowly, but he was beginning to see himself beneath the swelling and bruising. In preparation for his meeting with Brad, he tucked his shirt into his pants, adjusted his sweater vest and then marched forward, mentally readying himself. He was going to be screwed in the negotiations, there was no getting around that. His one job was to minimize the damage.

“So, you’re back?” Brad asked, rhetorically. He leaned over his saddle and smirked in the direction of the three trucks. Neil glanced back; the trucks were splashed all over with black blood and there were ugly rags of flesh hanging from the axles. “Looks like you guys ran into a little trouble right off the bat.”

“That?” Neil pretended to be a little shocked. “Please, that was nothing. Just a few stiffs; nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times. No, we simply had a change of mind. We took a vote and more of us have decided that the shorter route might be better. So we’ll accept the one-eighty a head.”

Brad looked confused as if they hadn’t agreed on the number three hours before. “Huh? One-eighty? No, that was the old amount. You got to realize that these sorts of things change, depending on need and availability. I had something come up. Some of my men are otherwise engaged. I’m sure you understand how these things go. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to charge two-fifty a head.”

Neil blew out a long breath. “And that’s as low as you can go?”

“Yep.”

That’s some hardball, he’s playing
, Neil thought. “Then I suppose Captain Grey will take it. I will let him know.” Neil walked away without glancing back. He was playing his one card: the walk away.

“Hey, Neil,” Brad called after him. “What are you talking about? Hey…hey…what do you mean Captain Grey? Is he in charge, or what?”

Behind him, Neil could hear the clop of the horse, following after—a good sign. He stopped; it wouldn’t do to lead Brad all the way back to the trucks where Fred would undoubtedly say something to ruin any chance at haggling Brad down. “Captain Grey will continue on with you, the rest of us are heading south east. We’re thinking Louisiana. I’m not a fan of the bugs and snakes, but the shrimp should be plentiful and there are many islands in the Mississippi that we can fortify. Best of all, we won’t have to worry about winter. I’ve always hated winter.”

He turned to leave and Brad spurred his horse around to cut Neil off. “You’re not going to haggle? That’s shortsighted as a leader, don’t you think? And Louisiana? You must be crazy. Where do you think all those stiffs in the Mississippi go? You couldn’t pay me to go to New Orleans. I bet there are a few million zombies roaming that city.”

“Hmm, I never thought about that,” Neil replied. “Well then, maybe Pensacola, Florida. My parents took me there once as a kid. It was beautiful. Thanks for the advice, Brad.” Neil gave him a smile and a wave and went back to walking.

“Hold on,” Brad said in a hissing whisper. “If it’s the money…I can do two-thirty.”

A thrill like Neil hadn’t felt since his business days went through him. He had always loved playing
The Game
. “It is the money, Brad but it’s also about saving face. Two-thirty is as bad as two-fifty. How am I going to look going back to them saying that I just got fucked in the ass?” Neil never cursed unless it was for effect during negotiations. For some reason men admired other men who sprinkled vulgarity lightly in their conversations. Too much and you were without class, too little and you were a wimpy prude.

“Two hundred then,” Brad said. “Even they have to realize things have changed.”

Brad’s horse was way too close to Neil and seemed very curious. It was snuffling its big nose along Neil’s sweater vest. Neil took a step back—usually a bad sign in negotiations, but he was already at such a distinct disadvantage, being in such a low and submissive position, that it didn’t matter all that much.

“If I bring back any offer above one-eighty then the only thing that will have changed in their eyes is that they’ll realize that you can’t be trusted. That you will take advantage of people and will likely cheat them every step of the way to Colorado. So if you can’t come down, then I think this is goodbye.”

The horse swung its head as Brad clutched the reins tight—a show of irritation on Brad’s part. This was unbelievable. Neil could actually feel Brad begin to cave. As a further way to cement his ‘walking away from the table’ bid, Neil stuck out his hand to Brad. “Thanks anyways and no hard feeling.”

The big man clucked his tongue at the hand and said: “Well, fuck. I guess we could do one-eighty, but I’m really getting screwed on the deal. You know that.”

Neil knew the exact opposite was true but he went along. “Yeah, but sometimes that’s how business works.” The two men stared at each other and there was no love to be lost between them. There wasn’t even a smidge of ‘like’ and Neil felt that he had won only the first battle in a long war between them.

Once the price was settled, there came a long interval as Brad rode away to make arrangements for the crossing. His horsemen broke up the mob of zombies and set them to walking across the plain. Then in a long line, they sat on their steeds staring at the renegades and whispering to themselves. Sometimes they would point or laugh.

This didn’t bother the renegades who had been in a jolly mood ever since Neil explained they were being given safe passage to Colorado. They had cheered loudly at that. The idea of being safe in any regard very much appealed to them and no one grumbled over the price, especially since they had figured it would be so much more.

The sun was straight above their heads before Brad rode up in a Toyota Camry the color of road dust. He was no longer dressed in armor and his wings were gone. As a replacement to the fantastic outfit, he wore a mad swirling of colorful scarves as did the three women in the car with him. The outfits, especially on the women, were beguiling. They flowed and shimmered so that the bodies beneath were only hinted at and yet those hints were tremendously alluring. Even to Neil, who had assumed he was beyond such things since he was still feeling the sting of Sarah’s passing.

Two of the women had hair that had been teased into a 1980’s mass that made their heads look overly large. The third was bosomy in a manner that wasn’t likely ever going to be replicated now that every plastic surgeon in the country was dead. Her chest pushed out the scarves to a ridiculous degree and yet Neil found her the least attractive. Her face was washed out and plain, while her hair hung limp and plastered wetly to her head as if a cube of lard had melted on her crown.

The women mingled with the renegades smiling and chatting as if they were old friends. They were very curious over everything and everyone, especially Eve and Jillybean. “There are no children among the Azael,” Brad explained.

“It’s not allowed?” Deanna demanded to know, her arms folded in front of her. She appeared strangely angry to Neil.

“It’s not illegal,” Brad explained. “It’s more uh, frowned upon. The King and pretty much everyone else feels it’s too early to take a chance on getting pregnant. You know, for the woman’s sake.” Deanna didn’t look mollified by the answer and so Brad glossed over the entire subject. “But that isn’t something we have to worry about. Right now, we are coming to a great adventure. The plains can be dangerous. We’ll see zombies in the millions. If you fall into one of those herds they’ll tear you apart and strip the flesh off of you in seconds, just like a school of piranha. But it’s not just the mega-hordes you have to be careful of. The land is utterly barren. There isn’t a drop of gas between here and the Rockies. As well, practically every well and every river is poisoned with the decaying bodies of the undead. And to make matters worse, there are bloodthirsty bandits who won’t think twice about killing you. Lucky for you, I will be your guide. Only I can keep you safe.”

This last brought cheers from the renegades.

Brad was all smiles, warm assurances and glib talk of an easy trip across the plains under his guiding hand and to the renegades, whose reality had been constant strife and storms, his words were all sunshine and rainbows. They were happy at their sudden good fortune and, as they climbed up into the baking hot five-ton trucks, they were giddy and laughed. Even Deanna, who looked upon Brad with all the suspicion a sparrow has for a cat, managed to smile in hope.

They plowed down the road, the Camry leading the three trucks, and Neil was just starting to think that this time everything was going to be all right when he glanced in the side mirror and saw the second truck in the line flashing its lights.

“Oh, boy,” he whispered. Louder he said: “Grey, you better stop. Something’s wrong.”

There were four of them in the cab. Sitting next to Grey was Jillybean, who had been on her best behavior—meaning she was acting like her old self. Neil was next to her and then came Arlene staring lifelessly out the window; she was even whiter than ever and there was perspiration in her lank hair. She had to be feeling the virus start to kick in.

Out of habit, Neil supposed, Captain Grey pulled over to the side of the road. It wasn’t at all necessary, there wasn’t any other traffic on the road besides the usual scattering of stalled-out cars that sat low and hunched on flat tires. From a distance, they had a predatory look, like lions on the verge of pouncing. Up close, the illusion gave way to reality. Invariably, the cars were littered all around with brilliant shards of glass and, most of the time, the ground was strewn with the possessions of the one-time owners. This never failed to depress Neil. Though what was worse was when the road was stained black with old blood or when there were bones bleaching in the sun on its hot surface or when they came across ragged sheets of discarded skin looking like rat-chewed piles of dusty clothes.

Grey stopped just opposite one of these metaled corpses. It had been someone’s baby. A four-door Mercedes which, at one time, had the same value as the average three-bedroom house. Now it sat covered in dust, its tires flat and the trunk popped open. Lying on the hood was the half-consumed corpse of a baby boy. From one of the windows, a torn, blue blanket flapped in the breeze. The captain didn’t give it a second glance as he leapt down out of the cab.