The Dark Trilogy (97 page)

Military training and wrestling experience proved a pretty useful combination when it became clear that there were a lot more of the infected than there were of the living out on the streets of Cincinnati.

Though Shawn was sure he could do okay on his own, he realized hooking up with some other people might enhance his chances for long-term survival. When he met Michael and the small band of people traveling with him, he became Ben, the stoic giant who didn’t ask questions and did just about anything and everything to ensure that he and everyone else survived.

Ben had no inclination to become a leader, so he and Michael got along just fine. For Michael, it was clear that having this huge ally around was going to come in very handy. For Ben, it was easy to accept his role in this new little society. While he wasn’t sure he wanted to stick around with the group forever, he did like the idea of being needed. The cabin could wait. He would make his way there when he helped the others find a permanent safe haven and they became self-sufficient.

It was rough at first. The factory had been a really bad idea, and not one that Ben had favored, but he let that go because Michael believed it would work. After they fled from that nightmare, it was easy to see that the volume of infected in the vicinity of the city was going to overwhelm them no matter where they hid. They needed to migrate further east, toward the countryside.

Ben never made any unsolicited suggestions, but the others, including Michael, began to rely on him more and more for almost everything. His ability to hunt and live off the land was invaluable to the group of city and suburban dwellers. He was the only one in the group not afraid to stalk the wilderness, to forge ahead and find new and safe places to go. The world at large was a fairly quiet place now, with no loud wrestling promoters or deceitful wives to mess with him. Just the shadow people. They might not like him, but he always knew where he stood with them.

So when Michael brought up the idea of getting an RV in which to just drive off, Ben suggested they get several and find a place where they could hide them away from the rest of the world. It would be better than hiding out in some building they had to fortify and barricade to the point where they could never leave. They could circle the RVs up to offer a walled-in fortress and then flee in them if needed. Michael was skeptical at first—at least until Ben assured him that he could find someplace for them to station the RVs that would give them a chance to live unmolested.

And that was exactly what he did.

It felt good to be appreciated. Ben knew he was being used, just as he had been in the Marines and as a wrestler, but this was different. Michael was, for all intents and purposes, his boss, but he didn’t push. The others? Well, they just needed him, and they appeared to be grateful that he was happy to do everything they were unwilling or incapable of doing for themselves. They didn’t beg or wheedle, but smiled and were friendly, despite his reticence to say much of anything to them. Mostly, they were good people. Mostly.

Of the adults, Lydia was his favorite. The sweet woman treated him with respect and appreciated everything he did. She didn’t have to thank him for everything, but she did—every chance she got.

The little children she watched over were angels. Especially Sadie, whom Ben adored. He crafted little wooden dolls and toy soldiers, one of the few pleasures he could provide them. The fact that they were ecstatic with the results, despite the amateurishness of his efforts, made him feel all the more protective toward them.

The two teenage boys were good kids, and Ben liked them well enough. They left him alone for the most part, and even when they moved into his RV, they understood that he needed his space.

The new people were okay too, despite the instant dislike of Jeff that Michael and his two stooges clearly felt. Ben was tempted to suggest that Jeff just go with the flow and not push Michael’s buttons so much, but why bother? It was clear that both men were pigheaded, so nothing he said was likely to make much difference. It was easier to just sit back and watch what happened. Things would likely settle down within a few days between those two.

At least that was what Ben thought before Michael’s screwed-up expedition.

Ben wasn’t afraid of the stiffs. Not on a physical level at least. He was careful to wear a thick coverall when he went out on his little forays, and for the most part, the undead were weak and incapable of doing much to threaten him. What strength they had lay in their numbers and their boundless determination to devour everyone in sight. He could accept that challenge. Even though he was not fearful of them, he was no fool. He never assumed anything with the shadow people. They were dangerous, despite how pathetic they were.

Taking them out had always been easy … at least after he got past the queasy feeling that came with his first execution, which had been one of his neighbors. Ben still felt a vague sense of regret as he eliminated the undead, but his priorities were always clear. He estimated he had “killed” several hundred ghouls, though he did his best not to keep track of the number. It was just a morbid statistic he had come to accept as a fact of this new life he found himself living.

Ben respected Michael. The man had some good ideas, though at times he proved weak on his execution and needed a bit of assistance. He kept everyone organized and focused, and was a natural leader. Ben didn’t feel compelled to follow him, but it was clear that almost everyone still alive needed someone to take charge and assure them that it would all work out in the end. Michael was more than willing to do just that.

Unfortunately, there were some annoying side effects that went along with having the young man as a leader. Michael seemed obsessed with testing the loyalty of those around him. It was as if he believed he was destined to build some sort of society that would somehow take back the world from the undead, and he needed faithful subjects willing to do whatever he asked of them to ensure his victory.

So when the independent and opinionated Jeff came along, Michael felt obligated to put the newcomer in his crosshairs. That had to be the reason for the screwy food run. There was no other reason to send everyone out; Ben could more effectively procure food and other supplies for the camp alone than with a whole group of clumsy people following in his wake. Sending them all out was a power trip for Michael, pure and simple.

Ben almost questioned Michael on the wisdom of his decision, but after seeing the confrontations in the camp before they left, he decided not to get in the middle of things.

Now he was dealing with the unfortunate results of that hesitancy.

***

Ben was angry. Angry he had not spoken up and suggested an alternative to this snafu and angry he had not kept a closer watch on the little expedition as it moved into town. Instead, he had gone deeper into Manchester, surveying the various buildings and streets to convince himself things were as quiet as they had been for the past few weeks.

That was when he realized there was going to be trouble.

The ghouls he saw as he slunk from building to building were agitated, aroused like they hadn’t been since the survivors had first come to the town, rolling the RVs down the road and pulling off into the woods. The infected wandered the streets, bouncing off one another, where they had previously been content to bury themselves in the deepest shadows they could find.

Perhaps it had been the minivan that stirred them up when it had driven into the area the day before, and once again when it had been driven onto the road earlier, when the group going on the supply run had piled out of it and walked down the street toward town.

After seeing how many stiffs now wandered the streets of Manchester, Ben knew he needed to get the group out of there before the ghouls could pinpoint their position. He signaled to Michael over the walkie-talkie, but by that time, the rest of the group had already left the van and taken off on their idiotic scavenger hunt.

When he heard the first shots, Ben was already running at top speed, trying to get back to the group before it was too late—though he suspected it had been too late the minute the others had driven out of the camp on this fool’s errand.

Finding Ray and Jeff as they were about to be overwhelmed had only reinforced that belief. He managed to save them, but given Ray’s condition and the shit storm that had been stirred up already, things were ugly and were about to get uglier still.

***

Ben took off at a sprint across the road. He had chosen an alternative path back to the camp, a route he had mapped out a couple of weeks earlier just in case something bad happened.

Ray’s dead weight in his arms slowed him down only a little bit. He’d dealt with packs that were just as heavy under tense situations. He’d never faced a situation quite as perilous as this one, though. Ray’s lolling head and quiet whimpers as he bounced up and down were far more difficult for Ben to deal with than the challenge of bearing the boy’s weight on his shoulder.

Ben could hear heavy breathing behind him. He slowed to a fast trot to allow Jeff to catch up, knowing that if the other man fell behind, he might give away their position. The moaning was far too loud, but was still quite a ways behind them. The dead would continue to seek them out, but if they lost sight of them and couldn’t smell them, they wouldn’t know where to go.

Still, heading directly back to camp was a risky move. Finding a place to dig in and cover up for the night would probably have been the best thing to do. Ben had done that on a couple of different occasions—once just because he sensed the merest possibility that he’d garnered unwanted attention on one of his forays. On both occasions, the coast was clear by morning, and he never knew for sure if his ploy had been necessary. Even if he was overcautious, waiting things out guaranteed the camp would remain safe. So it was tempting to pull off into one the buildings he knew for certain was clear and wait things out with Jeff and the teenager.

But if he did that, Ray would perish out here.

The kid was dying. Ben was no fool and had no delusions that getting him back to camp would save him. The teen grew weaker every second, and in a few hours, maybe even sooner, he would stop breathing. Soon after that, perhaps within moments, he would turn into one of the shadow people, and Ben would be forced to smash his skull into the pavement or, at the very least, slip his hunting knife into the back of the boy’s skull. But if it was Ray’s destiny to die, he was going to die among friends, not in some dusty abandoned storefront.

Ben had heard the van when it departed without Ray and Jeff. The others—or rather everyone but Marcus—had made it out of that mess alive. Ben hadn’t seen that bastard Marcus’s corpse, but he could put two and two together. Jeff had been wielding the dumb S.O.B.’s shotgun, and as the old saying went, the only way something like that would happen was if he had pried it from Marcus’s cold dead hands. As far as Ben was concerned, Marcus’s death was no cause for sorrow. But that wasn’t how Frank or Michael would see things. They would be out for blood once they knew what had happened … even if the dipshit had gone and gotten himself bitten and the others had been forced to brain him to protect themselves.

Nope, things were about to get very messy back at camp, and not just because an entire town’s worth of undead were all riled up.

Sadie

Sadie was a good girl. A little angel. She knew that because her daddy had told her so time and time again. Now, after all this time, she could barely remember much else about him. He was just a shadow in her mind. There were no pictures, no recordings of his voice to refer back to, so she began making up new details about him. Little things about his hair and his kind and handsome face. For a time, he looked like Ben, though there was a little spot in her brain that remembered that he looked nothing like the big burly bear. And whether these were real memories or manufactured ones, she recalled how brave and strong he was, how kind and gentle he had always been …

All she knew for sure anymore was that he left their little two-bedroom apartment one day and never came back. She could remember him and Mommy arguing over his decision to leave, but even that was hard to recall clearly. It seemed so long ago to Sadie, even though it had only been a few weeks. When he did not return after a few hours, Mommy took it pretty badly for a couple of days, barely speaking or doing much of anything. She would still hold Sadie close and let her take portions of what little food they had left in the kitchen when she was hungry. Sadie remembered the first time Mommy smiled after Daddy left. That was when she told her what had happened to him.

Sadie knew her daddy had gone up to heaven to be with Grandma and Grandpa, who were taken away from them a year before. Mommy told her they would see him again real soon and that she should not worry about Daddy anymore. She cried as she said it, but at the same time, she told Sadie there was no more room for tears. They had to move on, because that was what Daddy would have wanted them to do.

Mommy had already taught Little Sissy, as she called Sadie, how to be real quiet all the time. It was a game they played, to see who could last the longest without speaking or making any noise. Sadie remembered Mommy telling her about a little girl named Anne Frank who had lived in an attic for years with her entire family without making so much as a single peep. Anne had to be quiet because of the bad people who were outside, just like the ones that were outside now.

Sadie could hear the bad people outside and pretended they were Nazis like the ones who wanted to get the little girl in a faraway land called Amsterdam. She even began to scribble in a notebook that her Mommy gave her, pretending it was her diary.

After a couple of days, pretending to be Anne got really boring, but Mommy was so proud of her little girl that Sadie did her best to continue playing the game. The two of them slept a lot and played board games in the dark with a flashlight. Sadie missed the outside world, she missed her daddy, and she missed the friends she had made in their little apartment complex, but Mommy told her everyone had left and was up in heaven, just like Daddy. Sadie and Mommy only had each other now, and that was what was important. Somehow, Sadie understood that it was true. No matter how hard things got, she still had Mommy, and that was good enough.