Dead Wrangler (18 page)

"Roger Wilco. Play it safe. Over."

"Roger. Pete out." He flicked off the radio and stuffed it back in the bag. He stuck a flash drive into an adapter. He fiddled with the iPad for a minute, then gave her the stick.

"Janet, if we get separated, head towards the sun. It will get you to the highway. They are around mile marker 68, so head that way. Give them this," Pete said with a gravity she'd never seen before. "It's incredibly important they get this."

Janet nodded. While she was at a total loss at explaining what she had seen, she knew it wasn't good for the human race. She stuffed it in her inner jacket pocket, and zipped it.

"Now, follow me. If you see any zombies, get me if you can. I know you aren't the best shot with it, and if it hasn't spotted us let me take the shot. Be very careful. We're about to do something very stupid." Pete stood and started moving. She followed him down the bank of a dried up creek. Soon they were at another hill. As Pete crawled up, the moan of a zombie sensing prey rang out. Janet twirled as Pete cursed, looking for the source, but it was coming from above her. Hidden behind the leaves of the tree was a zombie. She could see it move, but not much more. She moved closer, looking for the shot, and soon she was at the base of the tree. The zombie was missing all of its limbs, and it was tied to the tree with cheap rope. It wiggled its stubs and snapped at her. Its shriveled eyes somehow still worked. Pete ran to her side.

"Fuck. Fuck. Run. Run. We're blown." He started jogging.

"I'm so sorry," Janet sobbed. She felt responsible for not seeing it.

"I didn't see it either. They wouldn’t put a sentinel up if there wasn't going to be something to come check on it. Run." He kept jogging, not even slowing down. If she didn't want to lose him she'd have to go. So she did. Soon she forgot to worry about blaming herself. She was too worried about breathing through her nose and catching up to Pete. She was twenty feet back from Pete when the thing appeared. This was different from anything else she had seen; it was an oval shaped insect the size of a golden retriever. One of its claws was huge, almost the size of the rest of the body. It opened the claws and snapped it on empty air. The sound was so loud it made Janet scream. Pete dropped like a rock, and the thing jumped on his limp back. Her ears felt like they were bleeding, and she felt like she'd been punched in the face. She knew she didn't have time to get her legs under her. Her view was blocked, but she just knew that the thing was about to bite Pete with its foul fangs. She brought her gun up as she fell prone, and as soon as the little red dot shone off its black carapace she pulled the trigger. With the suppressor the gun sounded like someone dropping a coin on concrete. The thing didn't even slow down until she put another round into its side, then it skittered to face her with shocking speed. It had blank and milky eyes, and its mouth was made of three parts; two bulky triangular chunks and a fleshy tube. It brought its gigantic claw up, and started cocking it back open. It moved in jerks as it opened, like it was being slowly ratcheted into position. She put the red dot on one fleshy eye and pulled the trigger. The eye exploded in chunks of wet flesh, like cottage cheese. It staggered back, off of Pete's back. Another shot. She was sure it was good but she didn't see a wound. Third shot, and a hole appeared in its shell. Brown goo oozed out. Another shot, another hole. It tried to skitter away, and she started pulling the trigger, barely aiming, just hoping to hurt it as much as possible. Some of her shots landed home, and it moved slower and slower as she emptied her magazine, and her shots became more accurate. She ran out of bullets and watched it try to scrabble away, using its huge claw to kluge its way forward until it lacked the strength to lift even that. She switched magazines, and sprinted to Pete. He was unconscious, but his heartbeat was firm.

She couldn't wait. She grabbed his torso and lifted him above her soldiers. He was a light man, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. It hurt her badly, but she could lift him. She began trudging, making a circle around the still twitching monster. The butt of her rifle banged on her knees but she kept going. Going towards the sun, like he said.

The strain was terrible. Her shoulders ached, and with each step her lower back got worse. It already felt like it was made of hot glass that was dying for the chance to shatter, and each step made it worse. Her legs quivered, and her calves burned. Her heartbeat edged up and up, until she was drenched in sweat. Every step felt like the last one, but she kept telling herself she would quit after that tree, and then when she got to that tree, she picked another one. She'd gotten half a mile or more before the debate intensified. Pete would have wanted her to get that flash drive back at all costs. She kept picturing what was chasing them, and how fast it must be moving. She was already surprised they hadn't found them yet. But she couldn't just prop him up against a tree and go either. One more tree, she thought, and I'll leave him. Then the next tree. The sun was low when Pete's head lifted.

"What happened?" he slurred.

"This... giant spider tick thing was in that tree. It knocked you out with this really loud bang it made with its claw," she said between gasps.

"What?" He sounded out of it.

"You're hurt. I'm carrying you."

"Oh," he said, and puked all over her. She didn't even mind because it reminded her to put him down.

"Sorry," Pete said.

"Don't worry about it. Can you get up? They are after us."

"Yeah, ok," he gulped. He got out a canteen and washed out his mouth, then drank half the contents. He got up to his feet clumsily, and fell back. But he stabilized himself and looked around. She pointed towards the sun. He nodded, and started shambling a lot like a zombie would toward the goal.

She pulled the radio out of his pack and flicked it on.

"This is Janet," she said. There was a long pause.

"John. What's wrong?" the voice said. She remembered all that military gibberish from the last radio conversation. She'd seen enough movies to imitate it, she thought.

"Pete is hurt. Probably concussed. We're headed back to the highway, probably got God knows how many zed after us. Be ready to drive the instant we get back," she said. "Over."

"Roger. Pete ok? Over."

"He's walking. Still really out of it. Over."

"Do you know where you're at? Over."

"No. Still a couple of miles from the highway I think. Had a bad hour, couldn't really tell you what direction except mostly west. Over."

"Roger. If you find any landmarks let us know. We'll come to you. Over."

"Ok. Over. Out. Will call back when I can," she said.

"Roger. Good luck," John said.

They kept trudging, and as they went Pete's pace got a bit faster and a bit faster. They found a trail, just a foot of bare dirt that went the right way, and they followed it. Without the sound of snow and wet leaves, she could detect the guttural barks and moans of excited zombies. They were behind them, and not far enough for her tastes. Pete must have heard it too, because he went faster than ever. Soon she lost control of her breathing trying to keep up. Pete glanced back and slowed down.

"Feeling a bit better. Got a motherfucker of a headache and I want all the water, but much better. We're very close to the highway. Give me the radio," Pete said. The glaze had left his eyes. She handed the radio over. He kept it turned off and turned to run, but at a little slower pace. Her breathing leveled off, and she knew she could keep this pace for long enough. The moans faded, but soon the sounds of something coming through the woods like an angry bear could be heard. She had forgotten Pete's rifle when he had been knocked out, so he pulled his .45. She brought her rifle up.

"It's probably that gawky fucker with the claws, so watch out. I have no idea what it's capable of. Get behind a tree and have your rifle ready," Pete whispered. He hid behind a rock in front of her.

Shaking, she stood behind the tree. It burst from behind a tree. It was the thing that had been killing the zombies. It looked at her with the strangest blue eyes. The eyes would have been beautiful in any other face, but this–its face bulged in the wrong places and caved in at all the wrong places. It looked like the Elephant Man. It had marble white skin with blue varicose veins snaking through its face like rivers on a map. It opened its mouth, which was full of sharp shards of teeth, like a shark that had bitten a manhole cover, and screamed. The roar of the zombie's response was faint, but noticeable. Janet had stood transfixed by its eyes until that scream, and she pulled the trigger. The little .22 worked well against zombies; just enough force to penetrate and bounce around the skull. It didn't seem to bother this thing. The shot went in one of its fleshy bulges, and no blood came from the tiny hole. It charged, eyes locked on hers. It was so fast she only managed to get one more shot in before it was on her.

That was when Pete stepped out, pistol at arm’s length. The thing only had time to glance at Pete before the .45 barked. The .22 might not have been enough, but the .45 was just right. The shot was from three feet, and the back of the monsters skull sprayed across the trail and snow. Its blood was black. It dropped in a heap. Pete put another round through its chest, then picked it up in a fireman's carry. Janet gaped, as if he were crazy.

"Intel," he shouted as he ran. The long claws on the thing’s dangling arms seeming to stick out of his back like the fantail of a terrifying bird. She went after him. The moaning was louder now; much louder. There were a lot of them, she could tell.

It only took a few minutes to get to the highway. They were at marker 71. Pete was on the radio before she could despair. Three more miles!

"Mayday Mayday Mayday. At marker 71. Get the fuck here now. Over."

"Roger wilco."

"Let's go." He dropped behind a bush on the other side of the highway. "We'll be coming back this way. If we can get it we get it. If not, not." He took out the iPad and took a few hurried photos of it. Then they started running again. She had a side stitch from her belly button to her eyeball, but she started running again.

They saw the trucks after two minutes roaring towards them at 80 miles per hour. She stopped running, both out of relief and exhaustion. She just stood there and breathed until they got there, and with one last sprint she was in the truck. She wanted to cry. Pete got in beside her. She noted with jealousy that he only had a light sweat.

"Stop at marker 71 if we can. I got a specimen," Pete said. The fucker wasn't even winded, Janet thought.

"What the fuck happened?" John said.

"I'll show you, but we got an unknown quantity of zombies heading for that exact spot, so hustle," Pete said. John grunted and gunned it. Soon they were at ninety miles per hour, and in only a minute or two they were back at marker 71. Dozens of zombies were at the base of the trees, about to start the climb up the hill that lead to the highway. Pete cursed.

"Stop the truck," Pete said.

"Like hell!" John replied.

"I can get it before they get up. Stop the truck. Command will have your ass in front of a court martial if you don't."

"Fuck," John said as he slammed the brake. Janet could hear the other truck's wheels screaming as they hit the brakes at this unexpected stop. Pete was out before they came to a stop, sprinted to the bush and grabbed the corpse by its neck. As he sprinted back its limbs bounced and skittered against the pavement. He hurled the corpse into the bed of the truck and was back in a flash. The first zombie up the hill watched them peel out with its mouth hanging open. It had barely made the shoulder of the highway when the last truck zipped past.

"What is that thing?" John queried.

"No idea," Pete said.

"Then why did we need it?" John asked.

"You should be more curious," Pete said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Trisomy

One thing to keep in mind about zombies is that they have no body heat. They are room temperature all the time. So if there's one in that house or one hundred, a thermal detector isn't going to tell you.

When I had recovered from the hangover from the post-bombing party, I went out to check on my decoys. I was so cocky I went out on my own.

The first decoy was there, still cuffed and moaning. The second was fine. The third was lying down on its back, not moving. I got closer. Still not responding. I threw a rock at it. No response. I got closer. Had someone come along and shot it? I was starting to hope maybe they weren't as immortal as we thought. There was no visible wound, so I got closer. Had the dumb thing broken its own neck somehow? I grabbed its hair and lifted to see the back of its head. It turned over in an instant, and grabbed my arm and went in for a chew. It got so close to my arm. In that moment I was sure I was going to die.

I peed myself a bit, screamed a bit, fell on my ass a bit and started scooting away as fast as I could, but it had its grip and it wasn't letting go. It opened its mouth to bite and I saw its mouth. Someone had jammed two razor blades in its gums. Even though I had knocked out its teeth, it could cut. I put my other arm under its chin and pushed it away.

I managed to get to my feet. I sort of folded him onto his back, his legs beneath his back. I put one foot on its chest and jerked myself free. After that it got one shot to the forehead.

The handcuffs were gone. The chain had been hidden beneath the zombie so I couldn't tell it was free. Whoever had set this trap even did the zombie the favor of giving it teeth again. And a normal person could never have gotten the zombie to play dead like that. This was a herder. I felt eyes on me, and realized that maybe the herder had stayed to enjoy its trick. I was back on the ATV and hauling ass back to base before you could say spit.

My report made most of the commanders nervous. They didn't want to believe it. That was too much control, and too much intelligence. I could tell they wanted to think I was crazy. But it was enough to get the base on higher alert. The plan now that Columbia was safe was to get as much material as we could out of Whiteman. The bombers carried bombs, but not to drop. Every plane they could get in the air was being stuffed with anything worth taking. The place was hopping.

A few days after the incident with Razor Tooth, around 2 AM, the alarms went off. I immediately went back to that night at the Wal-Mart, and headed outside fully armed. There was much less panic this time. Floodlights started popping on, and I gasped. Not more than fifty yards away there were thousands of zombies. The chain link fence with pillars that had been intended to prevent suicide bombers was down. The chain link was on the ground, being trampled beneath hundreds of feet. The horde was inside. I dropped to a knee and started firing, but I was like a fart in the wind.

I knew I'd have to do something more than pop away with my shotgun. I ran for the trucks with a fifty foot lead over the zombie horde.

Now the napalm had been such a crazy hit that we had gone a little napalm crazy. All the vehicles had flamethrowers in them, ready to go and loaded with napalm. I grabbed a few guys, who were a little more lost than I was, and got them headed that way. Now the camp was spread out over three or four buildings. Those buildings were now surrounded, and people were taking shots from windows and wailing. We went to the trucks. Several people had the same idea as I did–or so I thought.

What they were thinking was to get the fuck out of there and leave the rest to their fate. I was planning more of a rescue. I had to do it at gunpoint, but before long we had a convoy going to the helicopter pad. We got there just as the helicopter there was taking off.

If they had left, we would have been lost. I couldn't have kept the deserters at bay, and I'm not sure I should have. There wouldn't have been a whole lot of good options. I knew what it was like to try to drive through thousands of those things. Napalm wasn't going to be useful when I had to worry about setting real people on fire. So I have to admit, I was about an inch away from bolting as I watched that helicopter take off. But it stopped, hovering. The radio in the truck crackled.

"Son, if you want a ride that's not going to happen. We are full. Start driving," the voice said.

"No, I want you to save them."

"How the hell do you propose we do that?" he asked.

"Well, you go pull them off the roof and bring them here. We have flamethrowers and napalm, and as long as we don't have to worry about setting real people on fire we can use it. Most of us came on these trucks, and we have enough capacity to take everyone if we can just get them here."

The helicopter hovered and hovered. Finally it descended and a few airmen got out. They shot me vile looks. The helicopter took off towards the buildings.

"Things are about to get hot over here. Grab a flamethrower, and for fucks sake be careful with it. Hit them as soon as they are in range."

"What’s the range?"

"I have no idea," I replied. I strapped one on myself. Turns out I didn't even know to turn the thing on. One of the guys I had picked up knew his way around them well enough to get us working. Once I was ready, I fired a burst. Thirty yards. I have to admit I was hoping for a bit more.

As we got ready I started thinking about all the flaws in the plan. None of us knew what we were doing; I didn't know if we even had enough napalm, and I didn't know how long this was going to take.

Now, earlier I had talked up how we had quite the fortress. In hindsight I was far too impressed with the fence. But we still have some serious, serious obstacles. For each building we had sealed all but one door, and reinforced that one. No one slept on the bottom floor. The stairs had been gutted, and step ladders were the only way to get up or down. I felt pretty positive that most of the people were still alive. The helicopter came back about fifteen minutes later. Around ten people jumped out. With them came the horde, tailing the helicopter like a dog chasing a car. At this point I was used to it, but having nothing but a wagon-circle of trucks and APC's made me a bit more nervous than usual. Most people who ended up in my situation ended up dead. Caught in the open with a horde.

Perhaps it was just me being paranoid, but I felt some dirty looks coming my way from the people I had dragged into this. 'We could be driving away. Sure we'd feel sad. We'd get over it,' this dirty look seemed to say.

Fuck it, I thought. It's done now.

The zombie's strength is that it never stops attacking. Its weakness is that it never stops attacking. The flamethrowers started firing a bit early as people got a feel for the range, but that didn't slow the horde down one bit. They ran right into that napalm and caught on white hot fire.

Trivia question: how long can a zombie run as it combusts into ash? Answer: about ten yards. At 1000 °C, even zombies fall apart pretty fast. As the zombies fell they made a little barricade of burning bodies. The zombies who tried to climb it got it twice over; from their ex-comrades and from our flamethrowers. The corpses piled up in an ashy barricade.

This time they didn't run away, and they didn't stop. Seems like the herders were willing to expend this little horde to try to get us. And they almost did. Do you know how hot it gets when you are in the center of a 1000 °C fire? We were all sweating rivers. By the time it got up to 80 °C, I was ready to switch weapons just to cool off. Machine guns were mounted on all of the trucks, and if you wrapped a shirt or two around your hands you could even operate one without giving yourself a nasty burn.

The machine gun is a bad zombie weapon. But it was better than adding to the fire that was broiling us.

The bonfire was hurting both of us. The zombies could only hurt us by throwing themselves on the fire, and we were getting cooked by our own fire. My God, it was hot. You couldn't touch anything that was metal. The guys in the APCs had to clear out. And the zombies kept coming. As the helicopter brought more people, it got even hotter.

We were there for two hours before the helicopter landed for the last time. By then we had a new problem, which was how the hell did we get out of the inferno.

A hundred and fifty people crammed into a pretty tight space, and a fire burning hot. Did I mention I get panicky when I'm in a crowd?

For me this was about the worse part of the whole war. It was so hot and we did not have enough water. What we did have was hot enough to brew tea.

But when a fire burns that hot it burns fast. An hour later the trucks were cool enough that they wouldn't burn too much to the touch. The APC went first and drove through the pile of ashes and bones. The rest followed in his footsteps. It was a lot easier than I had imagined. What horde was left was dispersed, and before long we were driving out of the hole in the fence that the zombies had made.

So, the Whiteman Raid:

Fourteen human casualties. Zombies eliminated: two million. Lives save: at least three hundred, and who knows how many other real people those two million zombies would have killed. So maybe thousands or tens of thousands of lives. If you counted the zombies killed with the supplies we recovered, the number would be much higher.

The Whiteman raid was without a doubt the most successful military action against the zombie up to that time.

There were a lot of promotions made off that raid, and they deserved them. I got bumped up from a Civilian Analyst to a full-fledged intelligence officer.

The party for our arrival was excellent, the debriefing was not. They hunted for someone to blame for the zombies getting through the gate. Even they, who knew more about herders than anyone, did not want to believe they were that smart. They didn't want to believe they could cut fences, and they most certainly didn't want to believe my story about Razor Tooth. There's nothing harder than convincing someone of something they don't want to believe. They grilled me hard, trying to get me to admit I was exaggerating.

Even people who have seen herders don't want to believe that they are smart. Among the majority of people who have only heard whispered stories they are considered an urban legend. I now believe that those New Yorkers who had talked about demons leading the zombies–I think those guys were more or less spot on. I wonder what they saw. It would be fascinating to see the herder in an environment where it was in total control and safety. I bet it would have been pretty interesting to have seen what those New Yorkers saw.

The herders had figured out breaking and entering somewhere, is what I'm getting at. I think they cut their teeth in places like New York.

Now, back to the herder biology.

This is another thing that people have kept secret, but the herders were in some sense human. I guess the right term is hybrid. The plague DNA and the DNA of unborn children were hybridized. Sometimes (I think this worked only rarely), when a pregnant woman turned, her fetus... sort of went sideways. The thing, I hesitate to use the word child, grew up expressing the DNA of the plague and the child.

Every herder has trisomy–which is to say it was two strands of human DNA and a third strand of plague DNA.

This meant that unlike zombies, herders were living things in the same way that I am a living thing. It had organs, and a skeleton. It could be frozen, or die from starvation. It could be killed the same way you could kill any other living animal.

There are some stories that even suggest it's possible for the herder to catch the plague. Herders that were stupid like other zombies, and were difficult to kill.

I'd like to believe these stories, but nobody ever managed to show up with a body or film. I'd like to believe them, if only for the irony of it. But I suspect that the stories are fabrications, intentional or not. I'd have to see a body before I would accept that. To me it seems, living amongst the plague like they do, they would all have caught it if they could.

My theory is that the zombified herder would be the result of a birth defect; a herder that didn't quite make it. But then undead things don't grow, so my theory is as problematic as theirs, I guess.

In any case that was our opponent; ourselves, turned against us. And they knew more about us than we knew about them.

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