Season of Rot (23 page)

“You’ve fought these things before then?”
Grant pressed, his reporter’s instinct getting the better of
him.

Sam stared at him with the eyes of a veteran.
“We’ll be better off when we reach Canton. Fightin’ the dead in the
open is suicide. The bastards are too hard to kill. Guess no one
told that to the folks at home when they was puttin’ this mess of
an operation together.”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Ben said aloud.
“I really didn’t. It ain’t right.”

“Ain’t nothing right about the dead gettin’
up and tryin’ to eat ya. Pull it together, boy,” Sam warned. “The
shit ain’t even started for us yet. Last night was nothing. Wait
till you see a herd of those things, over a hundred or more strong,
come tearin’ at ya. Then you’ll have a memory that’ll really haunt
ya.”

“We’re gonna kill those bastards and send ‘em
back to Hell where they belong. All of them,” Clint promised,
gritting his teeth as he cleaned his rifle.

“This town, Canton,” Grant cut in. “Do you
know anything about it, Sam?”

“Not much. Think a couple hundred folk called
it home. It’s one of those towns that just sprang up in the rush
west. The odds of us getting in and out of there alive ain’t too
great, but like I said: at least there we’ll have somewhere to
fortify and make a stand.” Sam sipped at his coffee. “You boys
should be getting some rest. Our watch is over and I bet we’ll all
be pressin’ it hard again tomorrow.”

The night passed with no sign of the dead,
and just as Sam had predicted, the next day was filled with a
rigorous march. As the squad drew nearer to Canton, their
expectations of another attack rose, but none came.

Wayne himself was on point as the group
entered the town. The place stank of rotting flesh and death. There
was no question that the dead were lying in wait, and quite likely
a large number of them.

Wayne surveyed the closest buildings and
picked the one that looked the most secure. “Clint, Ben: go check
out the jail. I want it secured as fast as possible. Everybody
else, hold your positions and be ready to move in on their
signal.”

Clint and Ben darted for the building and
disappeared behind its door, which swung in the breeze.

Hank tapped Grant on the shoulder as they
waited. “See that?” he asked, directing the journalist’s attention
to the eastern side of town.

“I’ll be damned,” Grant muttered. “Tell me
that’s not what I think it is.”

“Wish I could,” Hank said, frowning. “It’s an
orphanage all right. A big one from the looks of the thing.”

“You don’t think...” Grant couldn’t bring
himself to finish the sentence.

“I sure do. The plague doesn’t give a crap
how old you are.”

A gunshot echoed inside the jail. Five more
rang out in its wake. Wayne was on the verge of ordering more men
into the building, but Ben popped into the doorway and gave the
all-clear sign. Almost en masse the squad sprinted for the cover of
the building. Grant and Hank entered last, pushing the door closed
behind them.

Hank spotted a heavy looking desk. “Gimme a
hand!” he ordered. Grant and two other men helped shove the desk in
front of the door, wedging it as tightly shut as they could. “That
should at least give us some warning,” Hank said, satisfied.

Ben fought through the gathered men toward
Wayne. “The place is clear, sir. We only found one of the dead in
here, and it was locked up in one of the cells.”

“What were all the shots then?” Wayne
asked.

“Ben panicked,” Clint replied, emerging from
the rear of the building. “And we had a hell of time hitting the
thing in its head, what with it slinging itself against the bars,
trying to get at us.”

“What’s the plan?” Hank asked Wayne as he
walked up.

The dead stirred in the streets outside.
Their howls seemed to come from everywhere at once. The gunfire
undoubtedly had alerted them.

Wayne stood in front of his men. “We have to
hold this place if we want to stay alive. I want that door and the
rear entrance better secured. Use anything you can find. Get them
barricaded off!” After a brief pause, he said, “In the meantime, I
want men on the roof. We should have a clear view of the
surrounding area from up there and should be able to pick off the
dead without actually engaging them face to face.”

Hank snapped into action, directing the men
and making it happen. Only Grant stayed with Wayne, not taking part
in the bustle of activity.

“That’s a good plan,” Grant said.

“No one asked your opinion.”

“I’d just like to point out the dead are
going to swarm around this jail like flies. We may not have a way
out of here when the time comes.”

“There’s always a way out,” Wayne said
curtly.

Hank was the first to make it to the roof. He
rushed to the edge and peered down at the streets below. The dead
were coming out of the woodwork. He counted over a hundred before
he gave up in frustration. “Get your asses up here now!” he shouted
at the other men he’d assigned to the roof. Then he dropped to one
knee into a firing position and splattered the brains of a former
clergyman racing towards the jail’s main door. The other men joined
him and soon the roof was a cloud of gun smoke, but the howls of
the dead only grew louder and more numerous as shell casings
showered the rooftop like rain.

Something thudded into the door of the jail
so hard it shook the desk braced against it.

“They’re here!” a soldier shouted in
warning.

The door began to shake as the things
hammered on it from outside.

“Get the ladder to the roof taken down!”
Wayne yelled. “Those men up there need as much time as we can give
them! Be prepared to retreat into the holding cells. We can back
ourselves in where they can’t reach us, but we’ll still be able to
blow their asses to Hell. And damn well make sure someone thinks to
get the keys!” he added.

Dead fists punched through the door with the
sound of splintering wood, and the heavy desk was easily pushed
aside under the weight of the mob. The men opened fire as the dead
started to pour in, bottlenecked by the doorway; the soldiers
didn’t even wait for Wayne’s command.

Grant scurried up to the roof and then kicked
the ladder to the floor. There was no way in Hell he was going to
lock himself away, surrounded by those things straining to get at
him. Hank and the others were far too busy blasting the dead in the
streets to notice him. Grant choked on the acrid clouds of gun
smoke, which hung in the air all over the roof. “Ammo!” he heard
someone yell.

“Ain’t no more, son!” Hank called back. He
noticed Grant and snatched the journalist’s rifle from his hands.
“Here!” Hank tossed it to the soldier. “Make it count!” To Grant,
he said, “Get us some more ammo up here!”

“I can’t!” Grant screamed over the gunfire.
“They got in! It’s a bloodbath down there!”

“Shit!” Hank paused to think for a second,
then shouted for the men on the roof to hold their fire. The
soldiers stared at him in confusion, and he peered past Grant into
the jail below. The howls of the dead around the building were too
loud for him to hear what was happening downstairs. All he could
see through the hole was a surge of dead people pushing over one
another towards the cells at the rear of the building. His face had
become a mask of stone. “We’re dead,” he finally admitted.

“How many are left in the streets?” Grant
asked.

“Too many. They’re packed half a dozen thick
all around the walls of this place.”

“But they’ve stopped coming?”

“Just about. Guess most of ‘em are here by
now.”

Grant raced to edge to see for himself. “We
just need to get off this roof and make a run for it.”

“Through all of them?” Hank pointed at the
sea of snarling faces looking up with hungry, hollow eyes.

“You gentlemen didn’t happen to bring along a
Ketchum did you?”

Hank laughed. “No. Grenades aren’t safe to
carry on a mission like this, but... I think we can make something
that’ll work just as well as what you’re thinking. We’ll need a
distraction though.”

From the soldiers around them, Hank hastily
gathered the components he needed to fashion a homemade bomb. It
was going to take most of their ammo, but he hoped it would be
worth it. “Any volunteers for the distraction?” he asked without
looking up from his work.

“I’ll do it, sir,” Ben said, stepping
forward.

Grant started to protest, but Hank somehow
sensed it and cut him off. “Good on you, boy. If any of us make it
out of this Godforsaken town alive, I swear your sacrifice will be
remembered.”

When Hank was ready, Ben lowered a rope over
the west edge and climbed down to hang just above the reach of the
creatures, screaming and taunting them with his dangling legs. The
dead swarmed beneath him in a frenzy, and more and more drifted
around the building to converge beneath the young private.

Hank lit the fuse on his bomb and tossed it
into the street on the eastern side. Another rope followed quickly
after it, even before the explosion came. The roof shook—Ben,
unable to hold on, fell into the grasping arms of the dead, and on
the other side of the roof, men slid down the rope to the now
mostly cleared street below them. Those who hit the ground first
took potshots at the closest dead to buy time for the others. Then
as a whole, the remnants of the platoon ran towards the edge of
town and the cover of the trees.

#

Inside the jail, Wayne and two other men were
using the last of their ammo on the dead. The things flung
themselves over and over into the cells, stretching their arms
between the iron bars. One of the other two soldiers had already
been scratched, but Wayne was waiting till the last possible second
to put him down. He wanted as many of the dead sent back to Hell as
he could manage.

When the explosion hit the street outside and
shook the building, it caught Wayne and the others off-guard. The
soldier who wasn’t wounded careened into the hands of the dead, and
Wayne saw them tear open his throat. Blood sprayed into the
air.

The explosion weakened the building’s
structure just enough for the cell door to give way under the mass
of bodies ramming against it.

A rotting hand grabbed Wayne’s face and
shoved its fingers into his eyes. He shouted in the face of death,
fighting even as he fell.

#

As the men from the roof neared the edge of
town, their legs pumping beneath them and their breath coming in
ragged gasps, they saw movement in the trees. A flood of small
figures emerged to meet them.

“Sweet Jesus!” someone cried out. “They’re
just children!”

More than three dozen orphans stood between
the men and their hope of survival. They were all dead.

“Keep moving!” Hank ordered. “Fight through
them!”

The soldiers and the children collided in a
running brawl. To Grant’s right, a child grabbed a man by the thigh
and sent him sprawling. Before he even had a chance to scream, the
children climbed all over him, tearing him apart with their tiny
hands.

A young girl, who must have been no older
than twelve when she died, dropped the doll she’d been cradling and
reached out for Grant as maggots swam in the gray flesh of her
contorted face. She growled, baring red-stained teeth, and Grant
shot her in the head with his Colt. He didn’t take time to watch
her body fall.

“This way!” someone shouted, and Grant
changed his course to follow the sound of the voice.

Four

Grant collapsed on the ground of a small
clearing in the woods, his muscles burning from being pushed past
their limits.

“I think we’ve lost them for the moment,”
Hank said as he and the other four survivors finally came to a
stop.

“About damn time,” Clint spat and dropped to
the ground, checking his rifle. They had been on the run for nearly
two hours and were exhausted.

“We can’t stay here long,” Sam said.

“I know,” Hank agreed. He rested his weight
against the trunk of a tree. “We’re never going to make it to the
rally point. It’s too far, especially since we just backtracked
away from it to stay alive.”

“This mission has gone all to Hell.” Clint
loaded his last rounds into his rifle. “I vote we hightail it home
while we still can.”

“There has to be some farmsteads in these
parts,” Sam thought aloud. “It’s possible we could find some horses
left alive while we head east. Make the trip a lot faster.”

Hank nodded. “That settles it then. Let’s get
going before we have company.”

Grant wearily pushed himself to his feet as
the exhausted men got back on the move. “Anybody got anything to
eat?” he asked.

Hank handed him a hard biscuit from the pouch
on his belt. “Go easy on it. There may not be anything else for a
while.”

Grant thanked him for the food and nearly
shattered his teeth on it. Stale or not, he had to admit the bread
tasted wonderful. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten,
and his body needed something if he was going to keep moving. He
cursed himself for spending far too much time behind his desk at
Harper’s.

“Wait!” Clint said suddenly. “I think I know
where we’re at. We passed this area on the march in. If I’m right,
there should be a farm not too far from here to the north.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Hank asked.
“Lead us to it.”

The farm was a large one. Fields of corn and
wheat rustled in the wind as the men approached its barn. The horse
inside had long ago starved to death, and flies buzzed over their
remains. The house was empty as well, but at least they’d found a
place to take shelter for the night. After a quick raid of the
house’s pantry for a cold supper, they opted to stay in the barn
despite the smell, sleeping high above the floor in the
hayloft.