The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (32 page)

“That’s
Fort
Polk Corporal,’ the Captain told him in a haughty manner.

“Yes, sir,” he replied
, as he realized why subordinates fragged their officers in the field. “Fort Polk, sir. It will never happen again, sir.”

Holding out his hand for the communication, the Captain said, “See that it doesn’t. Dismissed, Corporal.”

Once the radio operator had saluted and left, the Captain opened the folded piece of paper and scanned it quickly. He felt no excitement at reading about someone being immune to the HWNW virus, and in fact, was glad that the dead walked the earth. Eight months ago, he had been a Second Lieutenant in charge of counting mess kits and now he was in charge of the communications center that served the Pentagon. He was one of three people who filtered the information and passed it on to the higher ups that made all the decisions regarding the war.

Considering his duties, his honor, and the fact that it was almost quitting time, he tossed the message on top of a stack of papers already sitting on his desk. Rationalizing that if someone was immune today
, they would still be immune tomorrow; he decided to deal with it in the morning.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Happy Hallow Insane Asylum:

Steve, Heather and Tick-Tock leaned over the
papers and maps laid out on ping-pong table. Grimm had made them a sketch of the grounds and the area surrounding the asylum, and while it wasn’t to scale, it gave them a good representation of what they had to work with. With no other option left but to stay where they were, they were laying out their defense.

Pointing to the map on the table next to the sketch, Steve said, “To the east
, we have a large group that’s in a static position, so we’ll discard them as a threat for now. To the west, we have a large group coming toward us that’s probably trying to join the group to the east. They’re at least three or four days away from us.”

From where she sat on a couch, Grimm said, “Like I told you, they pass through here all the time.”

Steve nodded in acknowledgement and asked, “But what was the biggest group?”

“A few dozen,” she answered.

“Well, this is a few thousand,” Steve told her.

Sitting upright, Grimm said with excitement, “A few thousand
? The reaping will be great.”

“As long as we’re not one of the
reapees,” Tick-Tock muttered.

Steve drew their attention back
to the map, saying, “Show me where you ran into the group coming from the south. They seem to be the closest.”

Tick-Tock traced his route on the map with
his forefinger until he tapped the paper and said, “It was right here. I remember because we were coming through all these curves. Like I told you before, I would estimate there was between eight hundred and a thousand that we could see in the first wave. And there was another group further down the road that looked to be about that size too.”

After studying the spot for a second, Steve said, “That’s
only a days walk from here, two at the most. That gives us until tomorrow to get ready.”

“Get ready for what?” Grimm asked.

Knowing that they would need Grimm’s help, Steve said, “My plan is to let the group from the south hit the fence. We’ll attract them away from the gate, and then escape with as many as we can once we’ve thinned them out.”

“Escape to where?” Grimm asked

“We’ll head south, just like we’d planned, and then head east through Kirbyville,” Steve told her. “We’ll be past the Z’s so the way should be clear. You’re more than welcome to come along with us you know.”

Grimm shook her head and replied, “I’m happy here
, in my home. The raggedy twins will stay with me but Igor will come with you because he must guard the girl.”

“But what happens when the group from the west comes through here?” Tick-Tock asked.

“I will deal with that when it happens,” Grimm told him. “I’m not afraid of dying and going to Hell, since Satan still has that restraining order against me.”

With a laugh
, Tick-Tock said, “The offer’s open.”

“I’ll be fine,” Grimm told him as she approached the table. Looking down at her sketch, she said, “Now we need to figure out the best way to defend my home and get you out of here.
You may be able to lure my children away from the gate, but they’ll still be a threat to me. Like you said, the gate faces south, so that’s the area that they’ll hit first. If we plant some explosives in a staggered pattern across the field beyond it, we should be able to clear out a lot of them and then use our weapons to take out the stragglers.”

“If we had explosives,” Steve said.

“I have a case of dynamite that I scavenged from my wanderings on the road,” Grimm told them. “Around here, they use it to blow tree stumps out of the ground. It’s not that uncommon.”

They all looked at her in surprise as Steve asked
incredulously, “You have dynamite?”

“I just said so, didn’t I?” Grimm said
with a laugh. “The problem is that I only found five blasting caps.”

“Do
we need blasting caps?” Heather asked. “Can’t we just shoot it to set it off?

Tick-Tock shook his head and said, “It doesn’t work that way. You need a smaller explosion to set off the big boom. You have to have a blasting cap
to do that.”

Studying the
sketch, Steve asked, “How many sticks in that case of dynamite?”

“One hundred,” Grimm answered. “With five blasting caps, we can do
five bundles of twenty.”

“What about wire?” Tick-Tock asked.

“They only had a small spool in the truck I took the explosives out of, but we’ll need some more for what we have planned,” Grimm told him.

Turning
his attention to Grimm, Steve said uncomfortably, “I saw that you put the storm panels up over the first floor windows, but aren’t there supposed to be bars over them?”

“No,” she replied
with a laugh, “We aren’t violent here at Happy Hallow. We aren’t the type to cut our mom’s head off and leave it on the fireplace mantle for dad to welcome him home from a hard day at work. The glass is double pane shatterproof with wire mesh in between, but the windows can be opened with a key. There are alarms and motion detector lights all over that are hooked into the central security center, but they don’t work anymore.”

Steve stood silent for a moment as his mind went over all the information he had. When he
finally decided he’d taken everything into consideration that he could, he pointed to the sketch and said, “We dig shallow holes to plant the dynamite on the south side of the fence and string the wire back to one common point. We can use one of the car batteries to set it off. I want two people to go out and scrounge enough wire to do that. Twenty sticks are going to make a pretty big bang and I want to keep it as far away from the fence as possible. That fence is our first line. If we can keep them from crossing it, we have a chance.”

Taking a breath, he continued, “Our plan isn’t to kill them all. We just need to take enough of them out to
leave Grimm and her crew in a good position and to clear the road so that we can get out of here in the trucks and the vans. We take two of each and pile everyone in. We only take three days of supplies to lighten the load and hopefully give us better gas mileage. I want everyone on the ground and ready to go when they hit us. Since Grimm and the twins are staying, we have to make sure we secure the gate behind us after we go through. If the Z’s do get over the fence and we can’t hold them off, I want everyone to fall back to the house. If we have to, we can pick them off from the second floor windows and the roof until we’ve cleared enough of them to get away. I also want someone to drive south and check where the Z’s are, so we can figure out when they’ll get here.”

“We don’t have a lot of ammunition left,” Heather told him.

“I might be able to help with that,” Grimm told them. “I have found much in my travels.”

Steve gave her a sideways look and asked, “Why are you helping us with the dynamite and the ammo?”

With a light laugh, she said, “Because you are going to help me bring so many of my children home.”

***

Steve rested on his shovel as he watched the truck drive down the lane. When Tick-Tock spotted him, he steered off the gravel and bounced across the grass, stopping only a few feet away.

Tick-Tock rolled down his window and asked, “How goes the pla
nting farmer Brown?”

“This is the last of them,” Steve replied. “Did you find wire?”

Tick-Tock nodded and said, “Didn’t find anything on the road, but then we came across a burned out farm a few miles back. The barn was still standing so we checked it out and found all kinds of good stuff.”

“Get it to Brain so he can finish
setting up,” Steve told him. “He was only able to get two done with what he had.”

“How many more holes do you have to dig?” Tick-Tock asked.

“This is the last of them,” Steve said. “When I’m done, I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep before I have watch.”

Denise leaned across the seat and asked, “Did you hear from Heather yet?”

“She radioed back about a half hour ago that the Z’s are still heading this way,” Steve told her. “I figured out the time and distance between where you each saw them and calculated that they should be here sometime before noon tomorrow. She told me she’s going to track them for a couple hours just to make sure.”

Tick-Tock opened the door
and held his hand out for the shovel, saying, “Take a break. I’ll finish this and then we can give you a ride back to the nut house.”

“No, I’ve got it,” Steve told him. “What I really need you to do is -.”

He was cut off by a loud voice calling out that he needed to talk to him.

They turned
and saw Sean striding across the field with Grimm trailing him.

“Oh, shit,” Steve said. “What now?
I really don’t need this guy’s bullshit right now.”

Sean stopped a few feet away and said indignantly, “This entire plan
of yours is unacceptable to the committee. We just met, and we demand that you change it to protect our safety.”

“And what changes did the committee recommend?”
Steve asked sardonically.

“Changing the plan is up to you
. Approving the plan is up to us,” Sean told him with a superior tone in his voice.

“No problem then,” Steve said. “
Change in plans. You can all stay here and we’ll go.”

“
They’ll stay here over their dead bodies,” Grimm said firmly.

Steve shrugged and said in a matter of fact way,
“Looks like that option is out too. I guess you’ll have to take off on your own then.”

“That’s not part of the deal
,” Sean whined. “We wouldn’t last a day. We’ll be dead before the sun sets.”

From behind him, Grimm asked, “
Then would you like for me to save you the pain of dying at the teeth of my children and reap you now?”

Spinning around with
an indignant look on his face, Sean looked at the hooded figure carrying her scythe at the ready only a few feet behind him. His arrogance quickly turned to fear and he stammered out, “N-n-n-no. That’s good. I’m fine.”

“
Then do as you’re told,” Grimm said in a low voice. “When Steve and his people leave, you won’t be welcome here. My suggestion would be to go with them and do what they tell you.” Tilting her head to one side, she added with a laugh, “Or go off on your own right now. I think my children would find you…tasty.”

Seeing he was beat, Sean raised his head high and
spun on his heel before marching back to the gate with Tick-Tock’s laughter following his every step.

“Make sure all of your people are ready and in front of the house at nine o’clock tomorrow morning
or they get left behind,” Steve called after him.

***

Steve stood at the top of the steps and took one last look around to see if he’d missed anything. They had decided to take the time to bury the wires where they lay exposed outside the fence to keep the dead from getting tangled up in them. His eyes followed the raw earth from the closest landmine to where the wires started to run above ground inside the compound, and he could see they wouldn’t be torn up by anything less than a backhoe. He’d also had Brain drive a tall stake next to each of the dynamite bundles to get its exact range. This way, they wouldn’t have to guess when the best time would be to set them off. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter, since the entire field would be covered from one end to the other with the dead, but he wanted to be able to do the maximum amount of damage.

They had nailed additional two by fours over all the first floor openings
of the mansion and had a supply next to the door in case they had to retreat inside. If that happened, they would take to the high ground and pour fire down on the dead until they wiped them out. To aid in this, Grimm had led them to her armory and told them to help themselves.