Dead Man's Land Read online

  “I don’t know,” Russell said, “but she didn’t come to our room last night. I’m guessing she would have left first thing this morning or just before first light.”

  “So, she could have an hour’s head start on us or more,” I said, feeling my muscles tensing in my shoulders. “Great. She’ll be in town already.”

  “But we’re going after her, aren’t we?” Russell asked.

  I hesitated for the briefest of moments, and his face showed signs of panic again. “Yes, we’ll go after her.” I looked to Brandon and said “Brandon, let’s get together a team. I’ll drive; you can….” But he cut me off.

  “No way,” he said, putting a hand in the air, “you’re not going.”

  “I’m in charge. I say that I’m going.”

  “And that’s why you’re not going. Generals never do field ops.”

  “Greg did.”

  “And you see how that turned out.”

  He had me there. “Okay, okay. Go ahead.”

  “I got this,” Brandon said as he reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “One thing, I don’t want him going along.” He pointed at Russell. This didn’t set well with Russell, or me, for that matter.

  “He needs to go,” I said. “He’s the best person to convince her to come back.”

  “Whatever you say,” Brandon said, sighing and raising his hands in the air, washing his hands of my decision.

  Chapter 10

  First Contact

  Norman had surveillance duty. It was dull and tedious, but Rex didn’t trust him with any advanced tasks with the soldiers, and he wasn’t up to snuff when it came to working on any of Anthony’s advanced electronic projects. While his limited intellect best suited him to watching monitors, his mental stamina was a bit lacking. His eyelids drooped after hours of tracking the bank of monitors in their security room. He desperately wished that one of his old shows would magically appear on one of them. He’d kill to watch some World Wide Wrestling. That or Big Brother. Hell, he’d even watch Project Runway or some other girlie show. Anything to keep him awake. Of course, those programs were distant relics of the past.

  His eyes had just about closed entirely when a truck appeared out of the thin veil of fog clinging to the highway. It was on the monitor for the northern camera. He nearly tipped over in his chair but righted himself by frantically pinwheeling his arms to regain his balance as all four legs of the chair slammed back down to the floor. The chair nearly broke in two, but it held.

  Anthony had tapped into the solar-powered video system of the house on the hill on the northern edge of town. He redirected those cameras to fit his purposes. Instead of surveilling the city, as they had originally been set up, the cameras now looked northward, acting as an early warning system. Getting the signal back to the command center was another electronic marvel, but it was the par for the course for Anthony. To Norman, it was like voodoo, but he just accepted it.

  The truck headed south on Route 23 and directly toward the city. A dutiful subject, Norman reported it immediately to Anthony and Rex.

  “It’s too soon,” Anthony said, “and we’re not ready for an all-out attack.”

  There was something in Anthony’s tone that Rex didn’t like. It sounded like fear. Rex watched the monitor carefully for a few seconds and then said, “It’s only one truck.”

  “Out of the way,” Anthony said as he shuffled up to the array of monitors in their security rooms, nudging Rex to the side. He had graduated from his crutches to a cane in the past week. His foot still ached terribly when he walked, but he felt he needed to man-up and show his troops he was back to near full strength.

  “Are you sure this is the only truck?” he asked Norman and then added, “These church people are a crafty lot.”

  “All the other cameras are clear,” Norman said, pointing to the monitors displaying views to the east, south, and west. It wasn’t an elaborate surveillance system, but it was a real feat in a world almost devoid of any sophisticated technology. It was a true testimony to Anthony’s genius.

  Anthony felt his blood pressure dropping. While he was confident he could protect his city from small bands of intruders, he didn’t think they could take on a full out assault. “Okay,” he said, “I do think that’s one of the truck’s used by the church people who left town, but I can’t be sure. Just to be safe, let’s meet these people. Shall we?”

  They knew they didn’t have a lot of time before the truck would be in town, so they only gathered enough soldiers to fill one school bus. Rex took charge of loading since he knew Felix would only screw it up. It still took longer than he would have liked.

  Anthony moved as fast as his cane would allow him, limping along a long dark corridor toward the loading dock, pain shooting from his foot with each step, but he just gritted his teeth and kept moving along. The long bag he was carrying didn’t help his balance at all. He was just about to enter the back loading bay when a large silhouette filled the end of the corridor

  “Where do you think you’re going?” the silhouette asked.

  “Rex, get out of the way,” Anthony ordered.

  “You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”

  Anthony came to a stop just a few inches in front of Rex. “Get out of the way.”

  “No,” Rex said, standing his ground.

  Anthony’s hand started to drift up to his control panel, but he let it fall away when he remembered that Rex didn’t have a collar anymore. Old habits die hard.

  Rex hadn’t failed to catch the gesture.

  The team Rex had set in motion scrambled around in the loading bay. Zombies moaned quietly as Roy herded them along like cattle toward a loading ramp that led up into the back of a school bus.

  “You and I both know you’re not fit to go out there,” Rex said.

  “You’re failing to remember who’s in charge here,” Anthony replied as he felt heat rush to his face.

  “You’re failing at being smart,” Rex said. “How foggy are you from your last pain pill? What happens if you get out there and you can’t see straight because the pain in your foot starts screaming at you? I’ll tell you what; it’ll be my ass out in the open, and I could get hurt.” He paused for a moment, then continued after taking in and expelling a large breath. “You need to be smart and trust me, boss man. I can keep in touch via the walkie-talkie. If things get tight, you can roll with a second team.”

  Anthony let these thoughts play out in his head for a few seconds before conceding that Rex had a bit more going on upstairs than he had ever given him credit. “Okay, but have a second set of soldiers loaded and ready to go.”

  Rex turned and shouted into the bay, “Felix, get your ass moving, and load up that second bus.”

  Felix sputtered out, “But…”

  “Don’t give me any lip, or you’ll have my boot up your ass,” Rex yelled, and Felix went into motion. How efficient and effective those actions were was in debate, but, at least, he was moving.

  “We’ll handle this,” Rex said, giving Anthony a reassuring smile. What’s in the bag?” Rex asked.

  “Oh, just a little surprise,” Anthony said, “A little secret weapon.”

  “If this is ‘need to know,’ then I think I need to know it,” Rex said.

  Anthony wanted to put his little surprise to use himself, but he knew that it would be effective with whoever put it into play. He also knew he was being petulant, but, with some reluctance, he told Rex about this ‘little surprise.’

  Rex’s away team consisted of the best handlers, which were Roy and Maggie. The newer recruits stayed behind with Felix. Rex only hoped Felix could handle them. Sometimes he wondered if Felix wasn’t just a liability, but he was moderately effective at times.

  Taking everything into account, the wheels on the bus went round and round, and they were out of the door in less than twelve minutes. That wasn’t too bad, considering they had just loaded up over forty zombies, along with a boatload of weapons and ammunition.

&
nbsp; He knew, of course, that the incoming truck would beat them to the city limits, but they had measures in place that would slow them down. Anthony had seen to that earlier.

  Chapter 11

  A Day Late and a Dollar Short

  “Get ready to rumble, folks,” Rex said over the walkie-talkie not hiding his glee. As predicted, Rex and his team had arrived too late to intercept the initial truck, but the camouflaged set of spikes Anthony had set in the street had worked to perfection, taking out the tires of the intruder’s truck. When the bus arrived on the scene, they saw the truck sitting in the center of the street like a beached whale.

  Three people, all with rifles, stood outside their vehicle, assessing the damage. A man with bushy hair sat in the driver’s seat, nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. The woman was tall and leggy with dirty blond hair. She looked like a cat about to jump in the air at the slightest of provocations. Of the two men outside the truck, one was a stubby little guy wearing a ball cap, and the other was big and broad, with a thick black beard and mustache reminding Rex of a wrestler. Rex sensed that if one of them meant trouble, it would be the big one.

  They reacted almost immediately when the bus eased onto the scene, pulling their rifles out and taking defensive postures beside the truck. From his view from the bus, Rex noticed that the woman looked the most afraid while the men seemed more perplexed. They had no idea what was about to come down on them, and Rex liked that.

  He quickly put his team into action, pinning down the intruders with some well-spaced shots from their assault rifles. The man with the beard took a chance and ran to the side of the street for cover. The woman with dirty blond hair fired immediately on the bus, peppering it with bullets. Roy returned fire, and she was forced to find cover behind the truck. The driver ducked down in the front seat.

  Too bad for him, Rex thought as he pulled out his rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Anthony’s toy box was filled with all sorts of surprises.

  As Rex aimed the RPG, the woman recognized just how much trouble she was in and sprinted away from the truck. The stubby little man waddled behind the truck for all the good that would do him.

  Rex pulled the trigger, and a split second later, the truck exploded into a ball of flame, sending pieces of metal in every direction. The man inside was toast. Blackened and burnt toast barely good for eating, but the zombies didn’t care. They’d eat almost anything.

  The force of the blast lifted the stubby guy off his feet and threw him ten feet down the road. A piece of the back panel, sent flying by the explosion, had nearly sliced his head off. A jagged piece of metal protruded from his neck. He ended up lying face down in an expanding puddle of his own blood, never really knowing what hit him.

  What was left of the truck burned freely. Two down, Rex thought, two to go.

  As the two survivors scattered for cover, Rex and his crew put their soldiers into action. The zombies, driven by the corrective shocks to the pain centers in their brains, bore down on the intruders as if it were a Black Friday sale and they were first in line. This was going to be fun, he thought.

  Brandon pulled the team together in a haphazard fashion, with men scrambling this way and that. He did his best to bring order to the chaos, but Paige’s expedition took them all by surprise.

  Russell wanted to leave right away, but Brandon insisted they gather a team and outfit it properly. Everyone had to have two weapons and a backup, along with enough ammunition to last in a small scale war. Russell fretted over every lost second. Brandon conceded and cut a few corners, leaving them a man short, in his opinion, and without a couple weapons he felt they should have.

  In the end, they were out and on the road in just twenty minutes. The air was moist and heavy with a thin layer of fog blanketing the road as they sped along. Brandon was at the wheel, and Russell had the shotgun seat. Travis and Devin were in the backseat. Devin looked his usual nervous self, fidgeting with his gun most of the way. They’d have left him home, but Brandon insisted that the team have at least four people. Travis, on the other hand, seemed distracted, looking out the side window for most of the trip. Brandon had questioned taking him at all, but he was one of the best marksmen they had.

  Brandon had the pedal to the metal, as the truckers used to say, reaching eighty on the straightaways and swerving in and around abandoned cars, barely keeping the truck on the road. Whereas preparation had been everything for Brandon, execution was a bit sloppy. This recklessness only added to Devin’s anxiety as he felt he was about to toss up his breakfast at any moment.

  They didn’t set a land speed record but made it to the edge of town in nearly record time. They only slowed on the final curve into town. (If they hadn’t, they would have most certainly ended up down in the ravine along the side of the road.)

  Just as they got around the curve, they immediately saw the worst of it. The picture was an ugly one. The truck Paige had commandeered sat just a hundred yards down the road, burning out of control, flames leaping into the morning sky. There was a body in the street beside the truck, and zombies surged toward the scene. The zombies weren’t alone. A spray of bullets came from somewhere in front of the burning truck and tore into it, sending pieces of safety glass into the air like a shower of glittering jewels.

  Russell watched in horror as the zombies approached.

  “Those are the controlled zombies,” Travis said, his voice rising with each word.

  “What?” Brandon asked.

  “Look at the wires on the sides of their heads,” Travis said pointing toward the zombies. “They use some sort of device to control them”.

  “What does that mean?” Brandon asked.

  “That means the guy who controls zombies is still alive.”

  Russell scanned the scene for any sign of Paige. Through the smoke from the burning truck, he saw someone moving and immediately recognized Paige as she stood and fired down the road through the flames.

  Brandon slammed the brakes, sending everyone in the truck forward as the truck’s tires smoked to a stop. Russell grabbed for his door handle, but Brandon pulled him back.

  “Not so fast,” Brandon shouted.

  “But Paige is down there,” Russell said.

  “You won’t do her any good rushing in,” Travis said, leaning over the back seat.

  “We need to know what’s going on first,” Brandon added.

  “There’s no time to plan,” Russell said, trying to pull away, but Brandon held him fast.

  Russell tried to pull away, but Brandon jerked him across the seat and said, “We don’t need to put it on paper, but we’re not rushing in there. Got it?”

  Russell tried to yank away again, but gave in when Brandon refused to let go and he slumped back against his seat.

  “We’ve got company,” Rex said over the walkie-talkie as he eyed a second truck come to a stop about a hundred yards down the road.

  The arrival of the second vehicle cut down on the ‘fun factor’ somewhat, but he’d deal with it. He decided it was a prudent move to check in with Anthony on this new development.

  “How many are there in the second truck?” Anthony asked over the walkie-talkie.

  “There’s only one truck. Maybe four to six at most.”

  “Do you have the soldiers deployed?” Anthony asked.

  “Yes, they’re on the move,” Rex said. He felt a small sense of pride at the efficiency of how Roy and Maggie had moved into action and put the zombies into play. Anthony’s constant demand for practices and drills paid off, he’d certainly gave the boss man credit for that. Before the Outbreak, Rex had been a beer swilling, mostly unemployed lout, barely keeping his ass out of jail due to his drinking and bad temper. Under Anthony’s tutelage, Rex had found his purpose: discipline and dealing out the pain -- in small and big doses. Having a purpose was good in Rex’s book.

  A shot winged off the front of the bus. Rex tracked it to the bearded man who had taken up a position behind an abandoned car, canted halfw
ay into the street and on the sidewalk.

  “No way, asshole,” Rex said and ran his fingers over his control keypad. A set of zombies split off from the main group, heading away from the burning truck and towards the abandoned car.

  Rex keyed his walkie-talkie and said, “Maggie, you keep moving your set down the left side of the road. Roy, take up a position behind the house on the right. Do not let anyone up the side street. You copy that?”

  Roy replied, “I’ve got it.”

  Anthony had planned this intercept point well, making sure the vehicle was disabled before they could get to an escape route on one of the side streets. It was a near perfect choke point. Intruders would have to either bull their way toward the Stag Bar on the west side of the road or the used car lot on the east side of the road. Rex and his crew would do everything in their power to make that as difficult and painful as possible.

  Rex reflected that he’d done a lot of good drinking in the Stag. He had also done a lot of good ass kicking in there, too. Today wasn’t going be any different. He felt the familiar giddiness he always experienced before he stomped someone’s ass into the ground. It tingled through his body, and he welcomed it.

  Brandon slammed the truck in reverse and sent it hurtling backwards.

  “Where are we going?” Russell shouted, his voice rising in pitch.

  “We’re sitting ducks out here in the open,” Brandon said as he angled the truck for a driveway, just off to the east of the road, behind a thick stand of trees. “That truck looked like it had been hit with something -- an RPG or a bazooka.” He jammed the brakes and brought the truck to a jerking stop.

  “Everybody out,” Brandon shouted and jerked his door open.

  Russell didn’t need any urging and jumped out immediately. Travis leapt out just behind him. Devin sat frozen in his seat.