All That I See - 02 (4 page)

We didn’t have ice, and it wasn’t cold enough outside to make any, so I just put a wet towel on my arm and head to keep the swelling down. I took a seat by the gas logs. Sara brought me a glass of
wine
, then turned Corndog’s bag up and emptied the contents on the floor.

“Candy bars, condoms, a roll of duct tape…,” Sara said.

“And a walkie-talkie,” I said.

Sara picked up the two-way radio and turned it on. There was static. She tried a few channels then picked up a conversation.

“…back then we’ll divvy up.”

“I ain’t said I would yet.”

“You
going across the river
?”

“Going that way. I’ll stop in
Riverton
, more like.”

“Scope it out while you’re there. See if there’s trouble.”

“Hell, there’s always trouble.
I’m gonna want a nice piece-of-
as
s for this
.”

“You got it.”

“I said a
nice
piece-of-
ass, Wheeler. I don’t want none of that skank shit you traded last week.”

“I said you got it.”

“Hell, you ain’t got it to give.”

Static.

“You heard from Corndog?”

“Nah.”

“He checks in on channel 3, but I ain’t heard from him in a week. I guess the goons got him.”

Static.

“We’ll be heading north in two days.
Gay
field is a shit town. Ain’t a drop a liquor to be had. I think the whole town must be goons. If you ain’t checked in before then, we’ll just move.”

“Damn, Wheeler
, you gotta give me some time
. It’ll take me two days at least
if there’s trouble, and there always is
. These radios ain’t got range for shit.”

“I can’t stand this shit town. There ain’t a drop of liquor or healthy pussy nowheres. If you ain’t done scopin’ in two days, we’re takin’
it
north. Ready or not.”

Static.

The conversation ended. We listened longer, but there was no more.

“I think we need to let Wheeler and friends leave Clayfield before we go out again,” Sara said. “They don’t sound like a nice bunch.”

“Well,” I said, “any friend of Corndog….”

They arrived the next morning while Sara and I were having breakfast. We heard them pull up outside, and we both grabbed our rifles and rushed upstairs to get a better view from the roof. There was an armored Wells Fargo truck and a red Hummer on the road in the front of the house and a white van on the side street. Men got out. They were all masked and armed.

“How many do you see?” I said.

“Three on this side,” Sara replied.

“Looks like eight in all, then,” I replied.

Corndog was one of them. His shirt was bloody on the right side and he kept his arm in close to his side, favoring it. It gave me some satisfaction to see him hurt. I still had a headache from the night before, the bone in my left forearm was likely cracked, and even though I drank that cabernet, I didn’t get to enjoy it.

“Dammit,” I said. “We should have left last night. That asshole brought them right to us.”

“What
are we going to do?” she asked.
I could hear the nervousness in her voice. She had every reason to be nervous and afraid. We both knew why they’d come.

A few blocks away, someone started honking a car horn. They were giving themselves time by drawing the zombies away. We were going to need to act quickly, because there wasn’t going to be any negotiating with these men.

Corndog pointed up to the roof, and the men in front of the house looked up at us. Three of them went up to the front gate. The men from the white van circled around to the back of the house and started climbing the chain link.

We didn’t have a good get-away vehicle. The bus still had a lot
of
our supplies inside, but the hay truck had the best chance of getting us off the property. Both would be slow and cumbersome. We wouldn’t be able to pull through the gate and out into the street. We’d have to drive the vehicle through the yard, and then crash through the fence. It had rained the two days prior, and while it was sunny that particular morning, the ground was soft. I didn’t give us good odds on getting away like that. We’d probably get stuck in the mud before we made it to the fence.

Escaping on foot was our best option.

“We have to kill them all,” Sara said.

Well, there was that option….

I didn’t like shooting healthy people, but sometimes it was necessary…sometimes they deserved it.

“Okay,” I said. “Get as many as you can, but they have friends close by, so we can’t be all day about it.”

I hadn’t even finished my sentence before Sara put her rifle to her shoulder and took out two of the men coming in through the back. I opened up on the men in front with the M4. I should have made them count, but I was too hopped up on fear and anger to focus on aiming, and I just sprayed them. I fired high and put a jagged line of holes in the windshield of the Hummer. They returned fire. Sara and I both took cover behind the chimney. Of course, they would never intentionally shoot Sara, not in a “shit town” that was (
virtually
) devoid of “healthy pussy.”

“We’re going to get pinned down up here,” I said. “We need to run for it. We have—“

Sara fired twice and dropped the third man behind the house.

“We have to run,” I said, “and we have to do it while we still can.”

She nodded.

I stood and raked the top of the front fence with the automatic rifle while Sara made her way to the antenna tower. I hit one of the men below. The others ducked down behind their vehicles. When I saw Sara’s head drop down below the roof line, I followed her. She was starting to crawl back in the window.

“No!” I said. “There’s no time!”

She lo
oked up at me
then continued down the tower to the ground below.

We r
an north toward the back fence.

“The van!” Sara yelled over her shoulder and cut off to her left.

The white van in which the men had arrived would be our best shot of getting away quickly.

“Go!” I yelled. “Check it for keys!”

She kept running without looking back. The men at the front gate crashed through with their armored truck. I ran to one of the fallen men in the back yard and picked up a shotgun, and then I headed to the fence. Sara was already over and opening the van door. It had been a church van. It said ASHLAND CHURCH OF CHRIST, ASHLAND, TN on the side.

I held the shotgun in my left hand (my bad arm), ran, and jumped, grabbing the top of the fence with my right hand. I started up but slipped and dropped down and twisted my ankle. I tried to stand, but fell again.

“Leave the gun!” Sara shouted at me and cranked the van.

The four men came around the side of the house. Seeing Sara in the van, two of them ran back toward their vehicle in the front. The other two kept coming and one of them was Corndog.

“Just drive!” I yelled to Sara. “Go to Blaine’s!”

She hopped out and ran to the fence.

“Dammit, Sara! Go!”

She looked torn, but then she heard the truck start up out front. She pulled the rifle off her shoulder and fired at Corndog and the other man approaching me.

“They’re coming!” she said and
stuck her fingers in the fence as if trying to reach me. I pivoted on my butt and fired toward the men with the shotgun. I missed. They both ducked down, but kept coming.

“Go!” I yelled. “I’ll meet you at Blaine’s!”

“No, I—“

Then she looked up the street. The other men were coming.

“I love you,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

She ran to the van, jumped in and sped away. The Hummer came by after her. I made one last effort to help her. I pushed the barrel of the shotgun through the fence and pulled the trigger as the Hummer came by. I hit it, but it didn’t slow.

When I turned back toward Corndog and his friend, they were almost on top of me. I fired wild and took Corndog’s foot off.

“Gol damn! Gol damn sumbitch!” he yelled.

The last thing I saw was the butt of the other man’s rifle driving down at me.

CHAPTER 5

When I woke up it was dark. My headache was intense. I was moving. I tried to sit up, but my head hurt worse when I did that. I lay back down. I was on a metal surface. I could smell gasoline.

“Somebody…”

I blacked out again.

When I woke up
the second time
, two men were dragging me out of the back of the armored truck. They dropped me on the ground. One of them stood on my chest with a big steel-toed boot. Two more came up and looked down at me. One of them squatted down next to me. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and
a
NASCAR cap with a checkered flag on the front.

“What is Blaine’s?” he said through his mask. “And where is it?”

I didn’t answer. I figured this was Wheeler.

“You told her to go to Blaine’s,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about you,” he said. “I could spend a few more days here in
Gay
field just hurtin’ you. Or I could take you with me, just so’s I could hurt you someplace else...you know, someplace with class.”

“I’m not letting you get her,” I said.

“That’s a real number you did on Corndog,” he said. “That poor shit just keeps on tickin’, though.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Maybe I should let Corndog get at ya,” he said. “Eye for an eye, foot for a foot, and all that.”

I just stared at him.

“Feed ya to the goons?”

He stood. I didn’t know what to expect. He l
ooked around at the other men.

“Let’s lock him up in the cage with Cor
ndog. That’d be funny as hell.”

This “cage” to which he referred was a cattle trailer. They dragged me inside, dropped me, and left me in the floor with the dried, leftover manure. They closed the gat
e on the trailer and locked it.

I lay there for several minutes hoping my head would quit hurting and trying to get my brain to work despite the pain, but I never really got to that point. I could hear engines revving and roaring. Eventually, I crawled over to the wall and pulled myself up so I could see through the bars. My ankle felt weak from my fall.

We were at the Grace County Fairgrounds parked near the grandstands beside the racetrack. Because of the recent rain, the track was muddy. There were three people speeding around it on four-wheelers. A couple of men were leaning against the fence watching them.

They were making a lot of noise, and I didn’t understand how they were able to keep the undead away. Not only that, but we were within a mile of Grace County High School. I was surprised the noise hadn’t brought the group of survivors at the school over to investigate.

To the left of the grandstands was the ExpoCenter, a large metal building where the county used to host large indoor flea markets, craft fairs, and farm shows. There were a couple of men standing outside the entrance to that building.

I was scared, but not as much as I thought I’d be. Maybe I’d become jaded to all the danger and excitement. Maybe my adrenal gland shut itself off. Maybe I was starting to give up and just didn’t care anymore. More than anything, I was glad that Sara was safe. I was a little surprised to find that in that moment, I cared more for her life than mine.

There was some movement over at the ExpoCenter. The two men by the door parted to make room for another man pushing Corndog in a wheelchair. Corndog’s foot was wrapped up in a towel or sheet and held in place by silver duct tape; it was a bulge at the end of his leg like a bloody turban. He had a big plastic jug of cheap rum in his lap. My head was hurting so badly that I really couldn’t appreciate just how bizarre this situation was.

They wheeled Corndog to the back of the trailer then opened the gate. Two men pointed guns at me to keep me from trying to escape. I backed up to the front of the trailer. Corndog looked kind of glassy-eyed, but when he saw me he perked up.

“You! You done blowed off my foot an’ ever’thang!”

I didn’t say anything.

“Git me in there, boys.”

The other men laughed. They got on each side of the wheelchair t
hen lifted him into the trailer. Then they shut the gate and locked it.

“I’m all tore up over Helen. You said you’d help.”

“She was already gone,” I said.

One of the men fed a machete through the bars of the trailer and Corndog took it.