Last Man Standing (Book 2): Cordyceps (11 page)

Warren looks up from his scope. "Absolute tactical shit for brains. Damn idiot civilians can't do anything right.” He looks over at me. “Sorry, no offense, Tom. It's just... I mean, Jesus H Christ, what kind of idiot sets up a defensive position in a building at a damned four way intersection? And how dumb do you have to be to leave all the tall buildings around you unprotected? It's amateur hour in Harrisburg."

It's hard to argue with Warren's assessment. We're sitting beside our stolen ambulance on the sixth floor of the Market Square garage, across the street from the Crowne Plaza Hotel and just two blocks from the location of Warren's homing beacon. I can see the obvious weaknesses in the compound's defenses. I don't have the first clue about military tactics, but I know we can see - and could fire, if we wanted to - into every window on the front of the building. We might not have a clear shot into any of the rooms at this angle, but we could give everyone inside a damned good fright.

The Harrisburg Hilton seems to be the only building in the compound. We slowly coasted a few blocks around it as we arrived in the city, and by the looks of it there are strong, well defended blockades built from wrecked cars on each of the roads around the building, with guards stationed on walkways at the top of each one. It seems like it'd be nigh on impossible to breach the place by road without being cut down by the guards, but the compound is hardly airtight. The Hilton is surrounded on three sides by buildings that loom over it, and apart from having the doors bricked up they're all easily accessible to anyone who really wanted to get in.

"I could take out most of the guards from right here," Warren mutters, sighting down his scope, his finger well clear of the trigger. I can see four atop the two blockades visible from the garage, all dressed in civilian clothing and carrying a random assortment of guns. From the vantage point of the garage even I could probably take them out myself before they made it back across the open ground to the hotel. It really doesn't seem like a secure site.

"Is that the plan?" I ask, suddenly nervous.

Warren shakes his head. "Waste of ammo. We came across a couple of places like this in the last few weeks. Damn things started popping up everywhere soon as the cops pulled out." He sighs and pulls his rifle back over the edge. "They're damn near all run by dumbass survivalists who think they're playing some kind of video game. Not your hardcore guys, mind you. The real hardcore survivalists had their bunkers ready and waiting years ago. These guys are your part timers. Weekend warriors, y'know? They subscribe to the magazines, but they're mostly just losers who couldn't hack it in the real world." He peers over the edge. "They're well provisioned, though, and if they're anything like the others we've seen they'll have enough guns and ammo to take out a small country. Nah, a full frontal assault won't do us any good against these particular assholes. We just don't have the numbers."

A shot rings out without warning from the nearest blockade, echoing down the street. We both duck our heads beneath the wall and prepare for more. For a moment I can only hear the sound of my own heart beating in my throat, each pulse as loud as a shot, but nothing comes. It's thirty seconds before I finally dare raise my head, and almost immediately another shot blasts out, its echo bouncing off the walls of the tall buildings surrounding us. For the first time I consider that we didn't plan our escape from the garage, and as far as I know there's only a single exit. If the compound sends out scouts to find us we'll be sitting ducks.

As I glance over the wall and down to the street, though, I catch something out of the corner of my eye before I duck back down. Six floors below us a small group of infected wander towards the blockade, seemingly unaware that they're drifting towards death. From the top of the blockade a guard rests his rifle on the roof of a pickup, carefully sighting through his scope before taking potshots at the creatures. I raise my head again, and even from this distance I can see that his gun is trained on the street and not us. Another shot comes, a woman falls to the ground as if her legs have been swept out from under her, and the seed of a plan begins to form in my mind.

"Warren," I whisper, nodding down to the doomed herd beneath us, "what kind of numbers do you think we need?"

Vee spits the taste of Roy's musky sweat from her mouth the moment the denim gag leaves her mouth, and she struggles for a moment to hold back the vomit until she can finally take a deep breath.

"I'll fucking kill you," she gasps, straining against the ropes binding her arms and legs. "Let me the fuck out of here, now!"

The man looming over her holds up his hands to calm her, reaching down to her ankles to loosen the straps. "Please, please, ma'am, don't struggle. We mean you no harm." He quickly moves away from her legs as her ankles work loose from the rope, avoiding the flailing kick she telegraphed from a mile away. "Please, you have to believe me, I don't mean to hurt you." He carefully tugs loose the knot between her wrists and takes a few quick steps back as she finally frees herself.

Vee rolls herself off the bed quickly, backing into the corner and scanning the room as her captor cowers away. It looks like some kind of hotel room; comfortable but sterile, without any obvious weapons within reaching distance."Why the fuck did you take me prisoner?"

The man lets out a soft chuckle and shakes his head. "I didn't. I can only apologize, ma'am, on behalf of Roy. He was one of our less... disciplined residents. We didn't quite see eye to eye on a number of subjects, and we had no choice but to exile him after it became clear he didn't fit in with our little community." He looks behind him as the back of his knees hit a stool, and he calmly takes a seat. "I'm afraid Roy somehow got it into his head that we'd welcome him back with open arms if he brought us a peace offering, and I'm sorry to say that he intended you to be that offering. I'm so sorry for everything that's happened to you. Please... I assure you I'm not your enemy."

Vee feels the injured rage begin to drain from her, a sensation she doesn't really appreciate. She's happy to learn that her situation may not be as dire as she feared, but she feels a little cheated that she won't get the chance to have her revenge right away. She's been dreaming of that perfect punch since the moment she woke up in the trunk of the car, and the urge to throw it anyway is almost overwhelming.

Still... she can't deny that there's something oddly comforting about the man before her. Despite his quick, fearful withdrawal as he loosened her ropes it's clear he's in command here. There's something about the relaxed way he sits on the little beige stool by the dressing table that tells her he owns this room. Hell, he seems like he'd own every room he walked into. He seems so... so confident. Self-possessed. If she didn't know better she'd say he was accustomed to command. Military, maybe?

He's even a little good looking, she realizes. Well built. A little gray in his cropped dark hair. Old enough to look a little rough around the edges, but young enough to retain the sort of boyish looks that let Patrick Dempsey walk into a few roles his acting skills didn't warrant.

"Don't forget that I favor my left leg." he says, smiling. "An old war wound? A memento from a bar fight? Childhood polio?"

Vee blushes as she realizes he can read her just as well as she can read him. “Old habit."

He chuckles and lifts himself to his feet. "Don't worry about it, I size up everyone I meet, too. Doesn't matter, though. The old rules don't mean anything any more. You think you can do a Sherlock Holmes and figure out that I'm a high school math teacher because I have a chalk mark on my sleeve and my loafers haven't been polished for three weeks?" He slips out a full pack of cigarettes and runs his thumb around the foil until he finds the break. "Couple weeks back I met a math teacher with four dozen kills to his name. Day after that I saw a Marine so scared he put a bullet in the roof of his mouth." He finally tears the foil from the pack, opens it up and then reconsiders. "I don't think you can judge a book by its cover any more."

Vee smiles for the first time. She pats her pockets for her own cigarettes, finds she's been stripped of her belongings and happily accepts the tossed pack from the man. "Thanks. I'm Victoria. What do I call you?"

He smiles. "Call me the Chief." He sees Vee about to open her mouth and cuts her off. "Yeah, just the Chief. I'm ex-military, like you probably guessed. If this shit ever comes good and we get back to some semblance of normal I don't want my name dragged through the mud, you know? It'd be nice if I could just slip quietly out the back door, head back to base and pretend none of this ever happened. I don't think my superiors would be all that thrilled to learn I abandoned my post and started up my own little kingdom,"

Vee laughs as she lights her cigarette. "You and me both. I called it a day a little more than a week ago, but I doubt I'd ever go back even if everything went back to normal tomorrow morning. Too many bad memories. If I get through this I'm looking for a fresh start." Something occurs to her. "So, what happened to the guy who brought me here? I want to spend a little alone time with him, if it's OK with you. He needs to be taught a lesson, and I'm eager to teach it."

The Chief smiles and shakes his head. "I wish I could help, but that isn't the way we do things here. We don't kill within our walls. Our only punishment is exile, but as I understand you already inflicted injuries that will amount to the same thing once he leaves our protection. In fact..." He stands and strolls over to the window. "Yes, there he is. If you'd like to watch?"

Vee cautiously walks towards the window as the Chief raises his walkie talkie. "Yeah, it's me," he says. "Send the fucker out."

Vee looks out the window and sees she's a couple of floors above street level. She's looking down on the front of the building where an area has been cleared between the high roadblocks penning in the compound. A dozen or so armed men loiter in the street, and as she watches one of them breaks from the pack, walks towards the front door and, a moment later, returns dragging a struggling man. Even from four floors up she can tell it's Roy. He limps and struggles with the wounds she inflicted with her boot, and he clearly lacks the strength to put up a fight.

Another guard walks around to the back of the beat up yellow school bus that serves as the gate for the largest roadblock. He grabs a couple of loose cables, hooks them up to a car battery sitting on the ground and hits a button that starts an electric winch, tugging a cable taut and pulling the bus back until there's just enough room for a man to fit through the gap.

The Chief pushes open the window, and suddenly she can hear Roy's weeping and pleading. From this distance she can't make out the words, but it's clear he's begging the guards to let him stay. They don't respond. They barely even look at him. The guard who pulled him from the building simply drags him to the opening like a disobedient child, and unceremoniously shoves him out onto the street beyond the road block before a group of guards push the school bus forward until the gap is closed.

Now Roy seems insensible. He drops to the ground and tries to slide under the bus, but it becomes clear when he reemerges that there's something blocking the way. He then tries to climb the cars, but after just a few moments he falls back, exhausted and crying with pain. The front of his jeans are stained dark with blood, and even his hands are red with it.

A guard climbs slowly to the top of the roadblock, and for a moment he calmly surveys the street into the distance until he finds what he's searching for. About two hundred yards down the road a small group of infected mill around aimlessly, seemingly unaware of the presence of the living at the other end of the street. The guard slips two fingers between his lips and lets out a shrill, loud whistle, and immediately the infected snap up their heads and hunt for the source of the sound.

Vee feels her stomach turn over as they begin to run. There are four of them, all in the late stages as far as she can tell from this distance. They're too far gone to manage a full sprint, but their speed doesn't matter at this point. Roy is blocked in on all sides: the roadblock behind him, boarded up buildings to either side and the infected shambling towards him from ahead. Maybe if he was at full strength he'd have a chance of evading them, but it's clear he couldn't fight off a cold right now.

Now the group are just a hundred yards away, and Vee catches the sound of their snarls on the breeze. Inhuman. Hungry. Desperate. They look emaciated, like they haven't eaten in weeks, and they couldn't be more eager to help themselves to an easy meal.

"Stop this," she says, grabbing the Chief by the arm. "Nobody should have to die like that." She's as surprised as anyone by her words. She'd happily kill Roy by her own hand if she had the chance. She's put a bullet in his skull without a shred of guilt, but this is different. This isn't just execution. This is torture.

The Chief shrugs her off and concentrates on the scene below. "We have rules, Victoria. Roy broke those rules, and now he has to pay the price." He turns to her, and she's shocked to see that every scrap of the friendly, charming man she'd seen just a moment ago has vanished, replaced by something else. Something cold and calculating, almost reptilian. "I told him not to come back. This is what happens when my people disobey me."

The Chief is
enjoying
this.

The infected are just a few steps away now. Vee desperately wants to turn away but she just can't. Her eyes are locked on the scene, and she can't help but imagine her husband standing there as teeth tore into his flesh. She can't help but remember every one of her friends taken by the infected over the last hellish month. She can't turn away, and she can't close her eyes.

Roy falls to his knees, weeping and resigned to his fate. He doesn't even try to run. He knows there's no hope as the infected close in.

The first one reaches him now. It's a young man dressed in the torn, dirty rags of an oversized gray suit. He looks to be about eighteen years old. Boyish and fresh faced, probably on the way to his first real job when the infection took hold. He's missing his left arm up to the shoulder, but a spur of bone around eight inches long still remains. As he descends on Roy the bone swings around like a phantom limb, as if the boy isn't aware that the arm is no longer there and still tries to punch with it.

He's clumsy and uncoordinated, and when the second member of the group, an older woman completely naked and missing chunks of flesh from her torso, barrels into him from behind he tumbles forward onto Roy. The boy tries to steady himself with the missing arm, and as he falls the sharp spur of bone pierces Roy's stomach and vanishes inside his body. Roy lets out a piercing scream and tries to struggle away, but as he scrambles backwards the bone simply tears his midriff open wider. The final two infected reach him now, and they see his ripped open stomach as nothing but a buffet.

Vee feels bile rise to her throat as all four infected reach into Roy's body and begin to pull their share of his intestines out to feast. They drag the slippery pink tubes to their mouths, ignoring Roy's weak screams and kicking legs as they chew into the rubbery mass. They squabble over him, each of them jealously guarding their meal from the others. Each of them grab the offal from each other's hands, pulling it away, dragging more and more from Roy's body until the asphalt around him is swimming in blood, flesh and half digested slurry.

Still Roy is alive. Still he weakly cries out with agony, his eyes wide open and staring in horror at the glistening offal that spills from him. He holds out a weak hand to push his attackers away, but the youngest boy simply grabs the hand by the wrist and bites down on a finger, gnawing through the flesh until he reaches the bone.

Vee finally manages to tear her eyes away from the scene, her legs weak and her stomach turning, but the Chief continues to stare, smiling until one of the infected finally reaches deep within Roy's chest cavity and tugs until the wet, pink mass of a lung tears from his body. Finally his cries stop, and the only sounds that remain are the snarls of the dead and the moist slurping of their feast.

Vee steadies herself against the wall and flinches as five silenced shots ring out. She turns back to see the infected fall to the ground, their mouths still full of Roy. The fifth shot obliterated Roy's face, ensuring that he won't return to take his vengeance on the guards.

The Chief nods with satisfaction, turns on his heel and makes his way towards the door as Vee stares down at the pile of bodies beyond the roadblock. "You'll be happy here with us, Victoria. The women here are... quite comfortable, so long as they understand their role. I'm sure you understand that I can't release you now you've seen our operation, not now I know you're military." He stops at the door, and places his hand on the butt of the gun holstered at his waist when he sees Vee take a step towards him. She stops. "And if we can't make you happy, well..." He leaves the sentence hanging in the air.