Plague of the Undead (13 page)

The caravan turned into a frantic hive of activity. Jacob was able to slip back to the slave area unnoticed, where he found the others waiting, confused, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do. The other slaves were packing up the few belongings they’d managed to squirrel away—a blanket here, an extra coat or hat there—but the Arbella survivors had nothing like that.

Kelly was the first to see Jacob. “Oh, my God, Jacob, what’s going on? Where have you been?”

“We have to get ready. They’re moving us out right now. The herd’s coming back.”

“What?” Nick asked. “But how? Didn’t they lead it out of town?”

“I don’t know,” Jacob answered. “One of their riders came back saying they were only three miles away.”

“Where did you hear that?” Kelly asked.

Jacob took a breath and told them about the conference he’d overheard. “They said we’re going someplace called Dexter.”

“Yeah, it’s due west of here,” Nick said. “I don’t know why though. There’s nothing there. Not according to the maps, anyway.”

“They must know something we don’t,” Kelly suggested. “They’ve seen more of this land than we have.”

“Maybe,” Nick said. He didn’t look convinced though.

“They’re looking for some kind of pump,” Jacob said. “I heard Casey say that the one they’ve got is busted. Apparently, they need a new one or they’re not gonna have any drinkable water. And his wife is about to give birth. He was looking for some safe place to halt the caravan while that happens. There are other caravans out here, too. Apparently, they fight each other whenever they meet.”

“Not good,” Nick said.

“So what do we do?” Kelly asked. “Do you think we can use the herd as cover to escape?”

She looked at Jacob and he felt himself lock up inside. Make the decision, he told himself. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do, but he couldn’t make himself speak the words aloud.

He didn’t get the chance anyway, for just then some of the riders came around with tangles of leather straps in their hands. They grabbed Jacob and Nick and pulled them to the middle of the slave clearing, where the bodies of Max and Barry still stood.

“Put these on,” one of the men said.

“What? What is this?” Jacob asked, holding the knot of leather straps up in confusion.

“Put it on,” the man repeated. “You’re on tract duty.”

When he still didn’t understand, the man grew angry and turned him around. Then he tossed the straps over Jacob’s shoulder and cinched the buckles tight at his back. Only then did Jacob realize he was wearing a crudely modified draft horse harness.

“What the hell is this?”

“Stand still,” the man said, and then clipped a series of leather reins to him. Other slaves fell in line, all of them wearing similar harnesses, and before Jacob knew it, he and Nick were tied in as draft animals, and told to start pulling.

“You tracts better get to moving,” one of the free men said. He marched up and down the line of slaves, yelling at them like a drill sergeant. “If those zombies catch up with us, we’re all running and leaving your dumb asses here to slow ’em down. Now move!”

Jacob glanced behind him, trying to spot the advancing zombies. He could see the dust cloud rising high above the line of vehicles, and he could hear the distant moan of the herd, but they had hooked him to a flatbed trailer topped with a huge orange tent, and it dominated his view.

Beside him, Nick had stopped pulling.

“What are you doing?” Jacob said.

“Look at her,” he said, and pointed at the young girl they’d seen that first night. She was still coughing her lungs out and curled up in a ball like a wounded animal. “Hey, what about her?” Nick said to one of the free men.

The man didn’t even look at her. “She either walks or gets eaten.”

“You can’t do that,” he said. “There’s room on the trailer. Throw her on there. Come on, man, show some decency.”

“Why don’t you show a little enthusiasm for pulling? You ain’t got much time before that herd is all over this place.”

“Let me carry her,” Nick said.

“What?” the man said.

“Nick, what are you doing?” Jacob said.

Nick ignored him. “Let me carry her. If you won’t let her ride, let me carry her. It won’t put you out any.”

The man looked like he was actually giving it a lot of thought. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure. Go ahead. But if you don’t keep up, we’ll cut you loose and let you both die.”

“Fine,” Nick said.

He tried to veer off toward the girl, but the other slaves wouldn’t budge from the line they’d set.

Nick turned to the man behind him and said, “Hey, come on, give me slack.”

The man just shook his head and bent into his work.

Nick fought against the reins, but they held him firm.

“Hey,” he yelled to the girl. “Come on. Come to me. I can’t reach you. You have to come to me.”

At first, Jacob thought the girl was just going to lie there and watch them, but then she slowly lumbered to her feet and stumbled into Nick’s arms. “That’s it,” he said. “Got you.” And he put her over his shoulder.

He glanced at Jacob and winked. “It’s the Code, right? Everybody watches the other guy’s back.”

Before Jacob could respond, a huge swell of voices rose from the caravan behind them. At first he thought the herd had caught up with them, and the people back there were being slaughtered, but then he saw slaves and free men alike with their faces turned to the sky. Some of them were pointing.

Turning as much as the harness allowed, he saw the airship—or one just like it, he thought—gliding soundlessly toward them from the east. It was immense, like one of those aircraft carriers he’d read about back in school, and the span of its cloth wings was many times its length. Even at this distance, he could hear the faint popping noises the wings made in the wind.

The huge airship moved with the silence and grace of a bird riding the thermals. When they’d seen it the other night, it had been brightly aglow with neon lights of every hue. It had sparkled like a diamond in the sky. But now, it seemed far more a machine of unimaginable power than some glittery jewel. The top of its hull was made of curving black sheets of metal that dappled in the sun. A row of tall turrets and towers and sensors ran down the spine of the ship, ending in a giant rectangular tower that might have been a caudal fin, or just as easily might be something else.

The underside of the ship was in stark contrast to the top. Whereas the towers and turrets on the top of the ship were restricted to a narrow line running down front to back along the spine, the underside had an almost skeletal appearance. There were lights all along the length of it and blinking out from every nook and cranny. They just weren’t as bright as they had been during the night. Jacob couldn’t see weapons anywhere down its dull black metallic hull, but he had little doubt they were there.

And then, without making a sound, the airship changed course and veered toward the approaching herd.

For the first time, the airship made a sound, a long, low bass note that Jacob felt in his bones more than in his ears. He, and all the other slaves yoked in with him, took a few steps that way.

They caught themselves at the same time. Jacob shook his head. He’d felt like something had grabbed his guts and pulled him.

From behind him, Kelly said, “Jacob, did you feel that? Did you? It was like it was pulling me. I can still feel it.”

She closed her eyes, spread her arms, and let out a long, slow breath.

And fell forward two steps before catching herself.

She opened her eyes. “If you stop thinking about it, it pulls you.”

Kelly ran up to him, excited, despite all that had happened. “And did you see those sails, the way they reflected the sunlight. I think those are solar sails. They generate electricity from the sun. Back home, we’ve been working . . .”

But she stopped there.

Jacob read the pain in her face and knew her memories were flooding back again, grief hitting her with all its suddenness and cruelty.

He looked away, embarrassed.

On the opposite side of the caravan, slaves and free men alike had walked away from the vehicles, pointing and cheering. The herd, in all its enormity, had turned like a school of fish to follow the great metal beast as it tracked its way across the sky.

The diversion, they all realized as one, had bought them some time.

In the excitement of the moment, nobody but Jacob noticed Bree walking along the backside of the vehicles. She had no interest in the airship. Her gaze was fixated on something Jacob couldn’t see inside the open door of one of the wagons.

“Kelly,” he said, and nodded toward Bree.

“Oh, no,” Kelly said. “No. No, baby, no.”

But it was too late. Bree had reached the door, leaned inside, and came out holding a black revolver that looked as big as her forearm. Holding the gun in both hands she walked like a woman in shock through a gap in the caravan to the other side, where Jacob saw two of the men that had forced themselves on her the night before.

What followed seemed to him to play out in slow motion. Bree called out to the two men. They turned at the same time, the joy of watching the airship route the zombies away from them still shining on their faces, only to have that shine change to terror at the sight of the pretty little blonde with the dead stare and the enormous gun.

She leveled the weapon at the nearer man’s balls and said, “I’ve got something for you,” and fired.

His legs flew out from under him and he landed face-first in the grass.

Then she turned on the other man. She was probably aiming for his balls as well, but she only managed a gut shot. Still, the man folded into a ball, a hollow scream dying on his lips. She fired twice more, silencing that scream forevermore.

By then other free men had got their wits about them and pulled their weapons. From somewhere near the head of the column Jacob was pretty sure he could hear Casey screaming for them to stop, but it didn’t happen. A dozen gunmen at least opened fire on her, causing her body to jitter and dance with the music of bullets.

She finally went down under the spray of lead, the huge pistol falling useless in the grass. Her face was a pale and twisted mask of pain and, strangely, the glory of release.

Jacob turned away. Failure and self-loathing and contempt for his own inadequacies overwhelmed him, and it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

“What the fuck is this?” cried Mother Jane.

Jacob opened his eyes.

The matriarch was storming down the line of wagons, swollen and pained ankles be damned.

“Who shot her?” she demanded. A pause. “Well? Who the hell shot her?”

She stared around the group of free men, all of them with their rifles still smoking.

No one spoke. No one dared to.

“Goddamn it,” she said. She turned on Casey, who was right by her side. “You see this? Do you see this? You remember this when that baby comes. You remember this right here.”

She looked around at her boys, the disgust plain on her face.

“Damn wasted opportunity is what that is. Damn shame.”

And then she stormed off to her wagon.

They pulled the wagons for hours at a time, resting only long enough for a taste of tepid water. There were eight slaves in Jacob’s team, tracts, as the pullers were called. At times he was able to see portions of the caravan ahead and behind him, and he saw that horses pulled the heavier vehicles, the RVs and bigger trailers. The smaller trailers, like the one they had him yoked to, had human tracts.

It was exhausting, mind-numbing work, and when they at last pulled up to the outskirts of Dexter, just before sunset, Jacob felt like his legs had turned to water. Every inch of him was wet with sweat and grimed over with road dust. His clothes were already showing signs of wear, and it was little wonder the other slaves looked as tattered as they did. If only one day of tract work had done this to him, it was a wonder the others still had what little rags they had left. It was a wonder they were alive at all.

But Jacob said nothing by way of complaint. All the work he had done Nick had done, too, and he had done it while carrying the sick girl. Jacob had heard him talking to her, reassuring her, but she’d said little beyond a few pained grunts and moans.

After they made camp, all he wanted to do was fall over and go to sleep, but he knew he couldn’t afford to do that. If he was to survive here, with these people, he’d have to learn their ways. And so he stayed awake, and alert, watching and listening for anything he could use to stay alive.

Throughout the day he’d seen riders ranging across the prairie, and occasionally he’d heard the clap of a distant rifle shot. Evidently they’d been hunting, for there were campfires burning throughout the caravan, and he could smell the succulent aroma of roasting meat. Water seemed to be in short supply, though. Clean water at any rate. The water they’d been given was cloudy and warm. And probably loaded with bacteria, he thought. Kelly had warned him about using it to clean out the dog bite wounds on his arms, but there was little else he could do. Already the wounds were turning fiery red and raw looking, and in places he saw boils forming. Without clean water, the infection was likely to spread and swamp him over.

A lot like it had done with the sick girl Nick had carried all day.

Which was another thing.

Nick seemed to have made it his mission to care for the girl. He’d set her up on a flat section of grass and put a coat under her head for a pillow. He’d fought another slave for a pitcher of water, and now he was giving it to her a few small sips at a time while mopping the sweat away from her forehead.

“She’s burning up,” he said to Jacob.

Kelly grumbled beside him. “Nick, what are you doing?” she asked, gesturing at the girl.

“She’s sick,” he said, like that explained it all.

“We’ll all be sick soon, I think.”

“Yeah, but she’s sick now, and none of these people will help her. It’s inhuman the way they treat each other.”

There was no arguing with that. Jacob hadn’t stopped wondering the same point since the moment they met their first rider. How could people live this way? Why would they want to live this way?

Growing up in Arbella, he’d been taught that survival was a group effort. Everybody pulled his or her weight, everybody looked out for the other guy. There was no room for those who wouldn’t work, and there was no room for those who betrayed the trust of their fellow man. To live like these people did was to invite misery and death.

And for those it didn’t kill, life wasn’t worth living.

But for now, he thought, it was his life, too. Until he and the others could figure out a way out of their situation, they all had to live here.

“What’s her name?” Kelly asked.

“She said it was Chelsea.”

“She’s just a girl,” Kelly said. “She can’t be more than seventeen.”

“About that, yeah.”

“She won’t be well enough to come with us when we bust out of here.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper as she said it. “I’m thinking we go tonight.”

She glanced at Jacob, and then at Nick.

Both men nodded.

“You shouldn’t,” Chelsea said.

She rolled over to face them and tried to sit up. Her dark brown hair was long and stringy and dirty. She looked weak from hunger and bleary eyed with fever, and when she spoke, her voice had a tremor to it.

“They’ll be watching you tonight.”

“They haven’t posted guards,” Kelly said.

“They don’t have to. The slaves will be watching you. They want you to try to escape. All of them will be wanting to do what Chris did.”

“Who’s Chris?” Jacob said.

“My older brother,” she said. “The one who shot your friend yesterday and was made a rider for it. The others will be waiting for a chance to do the same.”

Jacob and Kelly traded a worried look. A quick glance around the slave area was enough to back up what she said. The others were watching them. Not overtly, not making a scene of it, but they were watching.

“I don’t understand,” Nick said. “He’s your brother? Why didn’t he take you with him when they made him part of their gang?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she said, and hugged her belly and groaned. She coughed hard, and when she could finally open her eyes again, they were red and teary from the pain. “You have to be invited into their family. They wouldn’t want me.”

“But he’s your brother.”

“Not anymore. Not for a long time. This life changed him.”

“Yeah, I bet,” said Nick. Something caught his eye. “Hey, check that out. Looks like dinnertime.”

The nightly ritual began again. The ravens descended on the slave area. Dogs and more slaves began to appear at the edges of the encampment. The canoe was brought in, and this time it looked mounded with meat. The foraging parties had done well, apparently. Free men and women, fewer this time around, but still plenty, gathered to watch the show.

“God, I’m hungry,” Nick said.

“We all need to eat something tonight,” Jacob agreed. “We’re gonna have to go in there and fight it out.”

“Oh, God,” Kelly said. She looked positively ill with dread.

“You stay here with her,” Jacob told her. “Nick, you think you’re well enough to help me out?”

“Hell, yeah,” Nick said. “Let’s go get dinner.”