The Living and the Dead Read online

  Decisions, decisions.

  “Get your guns, any extra ammo you can grab in the next ten seconds and then we’re heading over the guardrail this way,” I said, as I pointed to the guardrail to our east. I figured they’d have to dismount their bikes and the trucks would have to backtrack to the last exit to get down to our level. That cut out a group of them for a few moments.

  We all ripped our guns free from our backpacks, grabbed any ammunition we could get our hands on, and headed for the guardrail.

  “Women and children first,” I said as I stopped to watch the oncoming vehicles.

  “Really, Joel,” Kara said.

  Well, that was two steps back in the self-control area.

  “Sorry, Kara, Naveen, go. Jason next. Brother Ed and I will follow up the rear.”

  The roar of the motorcycles seemed all too close as I watched Kara jump over the guardrail then turn to help Naveen over. Jason went over at the same time as Naveen.

  The trucks were coming fast, but the motorcycles slowed down some. I could only guess they had seen our weapons and felt too exposed for a cavalry charge.

  “Your turn, Brother Ed,” I said as I guarded our flank.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “There’s enough room for both of us to go at once,” I said and vaulted the guardrail. I saw him do likewise out of the corner of my eye and the next thing I knew we were heading down a steep slope with knee-high grass.

  In front of us was a wide field of tall grass. With the trucks and the motorcycles just about on us, the field looked too wide to make it across. So, I opted for the mobile homes and the large metal building.

  “Head for the mobile homes,” I yelled while trying to avoid going ass over elbows as I traversed the downward slope.

  The motorcycles revved up for a few seconds and sounded as if they were changing direction. I had no idea what the trucks were doing, but, as a group, we hit the bottom of the embankment and were jetting down a gravel road toward the mobile homes running all out. I dared a peek up at the highway and saw the heads of a couple of men with rifles appear just over the top of the guardrail. They didn’t look happy, but no one shot at us. At least, not yet.

  At ground level, we were at least a hundred yards from the first mobile home, but we had cut that down to fifty yards. I found it strange that no one had shouted at us to stop or even taken a shot at us, but I wasn’t going to wait around to find out either way.

  We were down to twenty-five yards when I thought I saw a dark figure move by one of the windows in that first mobile home.

  I yelled at our group, “Hold up,” but it was too little too late because by the time the words left my lips they were just about to the first mobile home.

  It was then that rifle barrels appeared, almost in unison, aiming out the windows. Kara saw them before Naveen and reached and grabbed Naveen as they skidded to a halt. Jason hadn’t noticed anything, running with his head down, and nearly rammed at full speed into Kara and Naveen.

  I eyed the barrels aimed directly at us. I also estimated the width of the walls of a mobile home. Would they stop a bullet? Maybe, but maybe not. What I did know was that air would never stop a bullet, and we were surrounded by nothing but air, caught in the open with no place to go.

  I turned on my heels and looked back up to the freeway to see one of the trucks ease to a stop at the side of the roadway. Since my last glance up, more men were at the guardrail, but they now had rifles aimed at us.

  It was a pretty neat trick when I thought of it and they had covered all their bases. They had us boxed in. They probably had men in the buildings on the other side of the road, just in case.

  “Joel, what do we do now?” Kara asked under her breath.

  Our choices had narrowed down to only two options; fight or surrender.

  Fighting gave us the slimmest chance of escape. We’d have to focus only on the men in the mobile home and hope that we could shoot our way past them. If Vegas had odds on us to make it out of that scenario alive, I would have bet against us. In large sums.

  Surrender was the best option for us all to survive. But there were worse things than death. Images from Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” came to mind. Character names like “baby-eater” danced in my head.

  The show stopper came down to one word -- actually it was a name: Naveen.

  Had we all been adults out there, I might have chanced a shootout and run for it, but she had no fighting skills. She had all her life ahead of her. If we had a shootout, that life would be measured in seconds, most likely.

  If we gave up, I hoped it would be longer than a day or two. I just hoped it wasn’t a torturous day or two.

  A voice boomed over a bullhorn from up on the highway, “Drop your weapons or we will be forced to shoot.”

  I turned and looked back up towards the trucks. A man stood in the bed of one of the pickups. In one hand, he held a bullhorn, in the other, he had an assault rifle. All the others had weapons, too, varying from assault rifles to shotguns, with a couple Uzis thrown in for good measure. I’ve always found Uzi’s to be stupid weapons. Maybe they had watched too many movies and thought they were cool.

  I looked back to the rifles sticking out the windows of the mobile home and their barrels looked like cannons.

  “Joel?” Kara said, her tone balanced between insistence and fear.

  We really had very little choice. They had us outnumbered, outgunned, and out in the open. They had the high and low ground and we were sitting ducks.

  The thing that bothered me most was that they had this all prepared. What kind of people had death traps ready and waiting for unsuspecting travelers? Contemplating this question didn’t calm my nerves at all.

  We were about to find out. All I knew was that they couldn’t be good people, but maybe there was some way out of this. It’s funny the way you bargain with yourself when you really have no options.

  “Drop your weapons,” I said letting out a long sigh as the words came escaped my lips.

  Chapter 4

  The Conversation

  The guard eyed Jo almost with disregard, but he was the one with the weapon while all she held was a tray with cold food and cold coffee. She stood, waiting, but he didn’t say anything. The guard looked to be in his late twenties and had a thick beard and drooping eyes, either from fatigue or it was the way he always looked.

  “Could you open the door, please?” She finally asked. They stood outside a heavy metal door with no markings or adornment. Inside the room was Nathaniel Jones, former Sergeant and right-hand man to Colonel Kilgore. Jones had seen the Colonel’s descent into crazy town and decided that someone had to make a stand against the Colonel.

  That didn’t go well for the former Sergeant Jones and that’s why he was locked away for safekeeping until the Colonel decided what to do with him. The soldiers were taking polls. With the way the Colonel was acting and the fact that the Sergeant had asked for the Colonel to be relieved of command, half the men thought the Sergeant was dead meat. The other half couldn’t conceive that the Colonel would kill Jones, but dark doubts lingered in the backs of their minds.

  The guard’s expression seemed to say, “Whatever,” but he reached across her and used a set of keys to open the door. The door swung open and she saw the hulking form of Sergeant Jones sitting on his cot, staring at her as she stood in the doorway.

  She took him in. She thought he looked both formidable and defeated at the same time. His body spoke of power, but his body language told a different story as his shoulders slumped and his expression seemed detached.

  “Can I go in?” She asked the guard.

  “Yes, but leave the door open,” he responded.

  Jo moved into the room carrying the tray, but her elbow struck the doorjamb and the tray wobbled for a moment, then it started to stabilize. Jo tipped the balance and let the tray fall to the floor with a clatter, spilling the food and the coffee across the floor.

  “What the hell,”
the guard said in disgust.

  Jones barely reacted and just sat on his cot.

  Jo looked mortified. “I’m so sorry. Really, I caught my elbow on the side of the door.” She bent down, turned the tray over and started picking up the pieces of cold food and placing it on the tray.

  “I can get the food up, but the coffee’s everywhere,” Jo said looking up to the guard. “Hey, there’s a broom just around the corner at the end of the hall. Could you get it please?”

  The guard looked put off.

  “Please, this coffee is draining toward the bed and everything,” she said.

  The guard said, “Shit,” under his breath and moved down the hallway. There was no place for Jones to run because the guard had the rifle and Jones would have to run past him. She could almost see the gears running behind the guard’s eyes, weighing whether to just let the coffee drain wherever it went or to get the mop. He sighed heavily and started down the hall.

  Jo looked up, and stared directly into Jones’ eyes. They were dark brown and seemed fathomless. They told her nothing other than he looked very, very tired.

  She weighed her options and decided to take a chance. “Why is the Colonel holding you in here?” She asked.

  Jones broke from his brooding and said, “Why do you want to know?”

  Jo knew her time was short, and this was a big risk, but she decided that she had to go all in and do it quick. The guard was going to quickly discover that she had placed the mop and the bucket further down the hall than he had suspected.

  “You stood up to Killgore,” she said. “You think what he is doing is wrong, don’t you?” She paused, gauging his reaction, but he was still a blank slate. “You know we need your help.”

  She knew this could go one of two ways. He could call the guard, and turn her in to curry favor with Kilgore to get out of the doghouse or he could swing their way.

  “What I did and who I am are no concern of yours,” Jones said. “Besides, I can’t be of much help to you or anyone.” He spread his arms out to encompass the room and all its splendor.

  “But if you could get out, would you help us?” She asked.

  Jones had had a lot of time to think in his isolation. He was a career military man. The command structure was everything to him. The Colonel had been the best example of that form, but something inside the Colonel had soured and turned dark. If the command structure was what Jones served, then it was his duty to follow it or, if it has broken down, to make it right.

  “You can’t get me out of here and if you did, what good would I be?” Jones asked, still not willing to commit to anything. “I don’t have any weapons and you don’t have anything. Kilgore and his men have all the toys and you have jack shit.”

  The sounds of footsteps echoing off the walls of the corridor marked the guard’s imminent return. Jo glanced over her shoulder and saw the guard toting the mop in one hand and his rifle in the other.

  “I’ve seen how the men look at you,” Jo said returning her gaze to Jones. “They may be afraid of Kilgore, but they respect you.”

  “That and a bagful of shit will get you some fertilizer that’s nice for plants, but not a lot more.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself and what respect can mean,” she said.

  The guard was quickly approaching the door.

  “Something will be happening and I know you’ll want to come down on the right side of it.”

  She stood up, turned, and met the guard at the door.

  “This wasn’t where you said it was,” the guard said. “I can’t be walking all over hell’s half acre looking for a mop.”

  “Sorry,” she said taking the mop from him, then added, “Thanks.”

  Now was the moment of truth. If Jones wasn’t the man she thought he was, then her freedom and, possibly her life, were going to be cut short. A thin line of sweat rolled down her back and her hands shook a little as she put the mop to work cleaning up the spilled coffee.

  Jones watched her soak up the coffee with the mop and pondered her words. What could these people do? Kilgore had all the power, and they had nothing. He could tell that only a handful of them had the courage to make any type of stand. When Kilgore killed Aaron, he knew those numbers reduced drastically. Most of the people who had an inkling of courage before, now ducked their heads and decided to stay under the radar.

  But there was a few of them that he could tell had some fire left in them. Maybe, just maybe, they could make something happen. More likely they would just get themselves killed.

  Jo finished sopping up the last of the coffee spill and leaned over to get the metal tray when the mop slipped from her hand. Whether it was on purpose, the guard or Jones couldn’t tell, but Jones sprung from the bed. He moved faster than she had ever seen a man of his size move and he deftly caught the handle before it hit the ground.

  Jo heard a shuffling behind her and glanced back to see the guard stumbling backward, startled by Jones’ quick movement. The guard fumbled with his rifle for a moment, then saw that Jones went no further than grabbing for the mop handle.

  The guard’s face looked a little pink with embarrassment and he gave a little cough to clear his throat, then said, “I think it’s time you left. The mess is cleaned up.”

  Jones pushed the mop back in Jo’s direction and said, “You have to be more careful.”

  She took the broom back and again looked him directly in the eyes.

  “You have to be very careful,” Jones said, matching the intensity of her stare, but then he smiled broadly and added, “or else you’ll have a whole new mess to clean up.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I’ll be careful in whatever I do because I hate messes.”

  She turned and with the tray in one hand and the mop in the other, walked past the guard, and down the corridor. She felt an unnatural tingle in her stomach, waiting for Jones to shout to the guard, but she continued walking, not looking back.

  Jones followed her with his stare until the guard closed and locked the door, leaving him to his thoughts and no dinner. The food he could live without. He wished he could do without the thoughts. They could only lead to trouble.

  Chapter 5

  The Return of the Night Visitor

  The smell of sulfur filled Kilgore’s nostrils, triggering him awake, and skyrocketing his blood pressure.

  “Why always at night?” He thought.

  Like a child, he kept his eyes shut, thinking that if he didn’t open them, the boogeyman would go away and not harm him. He pulled his blanket up ever so slowly to cover his chin.

  The smell grew stronger, and he thought he heard the sound of footfalls next to his bed. There was a loud almost metallic click accompanying each impact, making Kilgore think of either hooves or claws. He couldn’t tell which, but both were equally frightening.

  He hated himself for being so terrified. He was a soldier dammit. Soldiers might be afraid and that was okay, but hiding in fear was not something a good soldier did. Still, he couldn’t help himself. He held his eyes shut tight and pulled the covers up higher.

  Night after night, the thing visited him, sometimes standing silently, sometimes talking, and sometimes touching him with its feverish hands. His own hands shook so badly, it was hard to maintain a good grip on the blanket.

  Tonight was a night of touching -- if you could call it that. There was never anything gentle or comforting about the way the Night Visitor touched him. Far from it.

  A powerful hand gripped his head, encircling it with its hot, rough fingers. Kilgore thought of the monstrously tall basketball players he had encountered in his life, their hands large enough to palm a basketball, then he doubled that size when he envisioned his night visitor.

  The hand sometimes just caressed him like someone taking a warm set of nails across his skin, but tonight the hand compressed his head like a vise. The temperature of the hand was near blistering.

  Kilgore’s mouth opened to scream, but he stifled it back somehow as t
he searing fingers applied an ever-increasing pressure. The temperature around his head seemed to have risen by eighty degrees.

  Still, he remained under the blanket, trying to hold back an eventual scream.

  Suddenly, the pressure and temperature dropped. A moment later, he heard a sound that made him think of a tree slowly cracking and toppling, but not striking the ground.

  A deep bass voice that seemed as if it were coming from a steam pipe spoke. “You’re not getting the job done.”

  Kilgore clenched his jaw down so hard he thought his teeth might break, but he stayed silent.

  “I can make you talk,” the voice said.

  A moment later, Kilgore felt a searing pain in his side, piercing him like a sword. This time he did scream. It was a tight, high pitched thing that he had to work to pinch off.

  “What do you want from me?” Kilgore asked, his voice quivering.

  “You know what I want,” the voice said and with each word, Kilgore felt puffs of hot steam on his face that made him think of a dragon’s breath. “I need Jason Carter”

  “I’ve done everything I can,” Kilgore blurted out. “I’ve lost a helicopter and a good man in the process. Jason Carter is gone. I can’t find him.”

  Something landed on Kilgore’s side like a heated anvil and the voice spoke again, forcefully, “That’s not an acceptable answer. You must find him.”

  “Why can’t you just do it and leave me alone?” Kilgore said sounding pitiful.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, there are things I can do and things I cannot do. There are rules.”

  “But can’t you break the rules?”

  “I can, but I don’t want to. Plus there is a cost and I don’t want to pay it when I have you.”

  Kilgore’s mind raced for a moment. “Who made these rules?”

  “I think you know the answer,” the voice replied, thick and warm. “They are as old as time. Maybe older. But it doesn’t matter because a direct answer would get you no closer to Jason Carter.”

  “But what if the other side broke the rules?” Kilgore asked. “A giant flock of birds swarmed one of my choppers. I think it took it down. That doesn’t just happen.”