Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain Read online

  Scott longed to act, but knew doing so was suicide. Even with the element of surprise, the numbers were too far in favor of the cannibals. From the scattered conversation, he knew this group to be only a part of the mass of raiders who’d wiped out the string of camps along the river. They were waiting for the trucks to come, retrieving them and their prizes back to the main camp.

  Maybe I can cut one off from the herd, Scott mused. He wanted a prisoner, and he was thinking about ways to secure one without exposing his men to the wrath of the much larger group. That would be a problem.

  Unlike what people saw on television or in movies, just hitting someone on the head was a poor option for taking a prisoner, or knocking someone unconscious. You either hit too hard, killing the target, or more often, not hard enough and just pissed them off. Scott carried a lead shot weighted cosh, so he knew he wouldn’t have a problem with the latter, but he wanted more options.

  As was often the case, opportunity came to Scott in the form of imminent danger. He noticed the corpse on the spit was nearly carved to bare bones and someone went to retrieve another dead body from the pile near the road. Others split off from the groups and began to gather more sticks and tree limbs for the fire. One spied the broken tree trunk Scott was using for his hide and started ambling that way.

  The male was a sad example of the cannibal tribe, and seemed to barely manage to walk the hundred feet to the tree trunk, despite recently gorging on fresh meat. Scott watched with muted horror as the blood-encrusted creature approached his hide, his tottering steps barely pushing through the thin barrier created by the brittle, late season stands of grass. Under the blood and filth, the creature might have been fifty, or seventy, and sported a dingy gray beard flecked with bits of corpse that dribbled down his filth-encrusted tee shirt.

  Moving at a glacial pace, Scott withdrew the lead weighted sap from the hip pocket of his multicam fatigues under the Ghillie suit. He was afraid if he struck with the butt of his PTR-91, he would cave in the skinny white man’s skull. With the cosh, he might have a little more control over the force exerted.

  Just as the scarecrow shape cast his emaciated shadow over the watcher’s hidden position, a noise from the road seemed to fill the small clearing. The cannibal pivoted on unsteady legs as the familiar yellow form of a battered school bus drove into view.

  From his vantage point, Scott could barely make out the movement, but he resolved to take advantage of the situation. Seeing all attention directed to the bus, the prone fighter shot out one gloved hand to grip the cannibal’s filthy jeans and jerked, making the motion seem like the standing male merely tripped over his own feet. As the blood-encrusted face approached like a falling tree, Scott extended his other gloved hand with his cosh, the leather bag full of lead shot, and carefully slapped the weight behind the creature’s ear.

  Not stopping to see if the male still lived or not, Scott pulled two pair of flexicuffs and deftly affixed them first to the hands, then feet, of his captive. This was a practiced move from his law enforcement training and the former wildlife officer performed this move without rising more than six inches above the earth, aand he had the cannibal under control in seconds. Looking at the filthy captive, Scott unfastened a short length of paracord and fashioned a gag using a piece of the prisoner’s own crusty shirt, and he was again glad for the gloves he was wearing as he searched the creature for weapons. Then, using his shoulders to shift the insubstantial weight, Scott stuffed the body under the lower limbs of the sheltering tree. He didn’t care if the stinking pile of body parts took injury and noticed that fresh cuts and abrasions marred the monstrous male’s pipe stem arms.

  Now, he just had to wait as the remaining cannibals loaded up their fresh kills and hauled them to one of the waiting buses. Scott tried to look away as the grisly cargo was packed into the rear door of the vehicle, but he did notice a sloppy slogan spray-painted on the side of the bus facing his position.

  LIBRATION ARMY

  He read the words and saw where someone had half-heartedly inserted an “E” into the first effort at writing the name, making it LIBERATION instead. Illiterate fuckers, Scott thought, and tried to focus on breathing through his mouth so as not to smell the stink of this wretch now sharing such a close space. He could swear his skin already itched from the lice migrating to fresher pickings.

  After twenty minutes of grab-ass and seemingly pointless delay, the two buses belched to life once again and headed out, their noses pointed east. Scott wrote it down in his book and waited for nightfall. Trying to infiltrate the camp in daylight had been a risky move, and one Scott would have never tried had the opposing force been anything other than these wretched, clueless zombies.

  Now he had a prisoner, and whatever secrets this creature held, he would know them all eventually. Nick and Dar would need to know whatever this cannibal had to say, and Scott had no problem extracting that information. His only regret was he wasn’t able to secure two prisoners to cross-check what was said. Still, he would get it all in the end.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The ride back that night went in silence as Scott rode with Mike in one Humvee while Keith and Ben claimed seats in the other. Scott’s transmission for an earlier pickup, accomplished via a radio click code on one of the channels constantly monitored by the Guard troops, wasn’t unexpected since no one really knew how long the mission would last, and they had a two truck element at the prearranged location soon after midnight.

  The prisoner had lived, and after waking, Scott immediately ordered the thing gagged for the duration and tossed in the back of the lead Humvee. He would have that talk later, under different circumstances. For now, he was restrained in a plastic body bag with the zipper halfway closed. Still, the stink was atrocious.

  Scott thought about his men, and how they had functioned. There would be a debrief later, but for the moment, the team leader was pleased with their work.

  Clearly, all three of them had been horrified by the scene at the camps, and Scott had not protested when Keith silently began digging a grave for the bones of the butchered child. Burying the remains was a clear violation of operational security, but Scott understood and silently helped gather the gnawed remains of two other victims before helping shovel in the soil. Some things just had to be done, and some niceties needed to be followed, meaningless though they might be. Scott knew all too well that this was one of the things separating them from the monsters they hunted.

  The route back was circuitous and accomplished under blackout conditions, with the two drivers operating with night vision goggles like what Scott and his men carried. These devices, courtesy of the Arkansas National Guard, were treated as holy relics, babied in their carefully cushioned packs until needed. Scott understood and whole-heartedly approved, since they represented technology not likely to be duplicated any time soon.

  Scott was nearly asleep when the Humvee came to a halt for the final time and he found himself getting out of the seat. They were at the improvised motor pool, and the driver stopped before pulling into their open stall. With the threat of drones, the Guard and their civilian auxiliaries tried to stay under cover as much as possible.

  “Go on in, Sergeant,” the driver said, and Scott looked around before realizing the driver was addressing him. Scott had never been a sergeant in the Marine Corps. and the designation threw him off. His highest rank was corporal, and that august promotion came upon him shortly before his discharge. On the current Table of Organization, though, Scott was a sergeant in charge of the scouts for the civilian self-defense force. Not a militia, everyone stressed, but a civilian auxiliary overseen by the Arkansas National Guard.

  Scott and his three teammates walked into the same room they’d used to plan the reconnaissance mission and found Lieutenant Conners still seated in the same position Scott saw him last. Scott and his men were exhausted, but Conners looked like he’d been there with them, minus the sweat stains and face paint.

  “So, you got a prisoner,
Sergeant Keller?” the officer announced, his voice full of congratulations. Like Scott had pulled off some particularly difficult feat. For his part, the scout leader felt like he’d mugged a drunk in an alley. Not that he wasn’t prepared to use a blow torch and pliers to extract information. Seeing that child being roasted burned away any sympathy he might have otherwise felt.

  “Yes, sir,” Scott replied. He knew some of the formality was for the men, to help ease them into the idea of military discipline and courtesy, but he could also tell Conners was pleased. “We need to get the subject cleaned, I mean deep cleaned, before we try to question him, though.”

  “That bad?”

  “Biohazard bad, sir. We stuffed him in a body bag to prevent his parasites from migrating. And honestly, the stink is indescribable. Worse thing I’ve ever smelled that was still alive. So, clean him with long brushes and lots of anti-bacterial soap and maybe lye. Then we can talk to him.”

  Actually, Scott wondered how much use they would get out of the creature. He also wondered if the prisoner was some kind of junkie. The others had looked nearly as bad and still, they’d managed to overrun those campers and murder everyone they’d found.

  “Any sign of survivors?” Conners asked, and he knew it wasn’t idle chitchat. Scott imagined Katrina was agonizing over that very question.

  “Some. We saw lots of foot traffic to the river and such, of course, but when the team cut a circle around the camp, we found what might have been a few folks fleeing the slaughter. We didn’t have time to track any of them, but there’s some hope.”

  “Alright,” Conners finally said, suppressing a yawn. Then he directed the next words to the entire group. “Good job out there, men. Get cleaned up, grab some chow, and compare notes. Sergeant Keller, I’ll need to see you at 0800 with your report. The rest of you, unless Nick needs you, take tomorrow off and get some rest.”

  Since they were civilians, Scott and his men skipped the salute and made for the door. Scott was last in line and the lieutenant called out before he was through the door.

  “Scott? You got a second?”

  “Yes, sir,” Scott replied automatically, pivoting on one boot heel. He had seen the man had something else on his mind, so he’d halfway expected the call.

  “That lady, Kat, she’s still in the quarantine shed. I know she would appreciate it if you took a moment to fill her in on what you saw. The possibility of survivors, I mean. Not, you know…”

  Yeah, skip the pile of bodies and the cannibal feeding frenzy. Scott figured out that part on his own, too.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that. Any idea what to do with her?”

  Conners shrugged. “She got any skills?”

  Scott wrinkled a brow. “I thought she said she worked for a buyer at one of the department stores. No real useful skills, but her family managed to stay alive and she doesn’t look to be malnourished.”

  “I don’t have any use for her,” Conners answered after a beat. “Talk to your brother, see what he has to say would be my only suggestion. I know you, we are already bulging at the seams.”

  Scott nodded. The community was already maxed out on accommodations. In addition to absorbing the arrivals from Branson, the community also took in twenty-plus school girls from Oklahoma, trapped in Bentonville when the lights went out. Add in the fifteen or so family members brought in by the National Guard troops, and just about every house on this stretch of road was already dealing with sleeping pallets on kitchen floors.

  Plus, just about any spare lumber went to constructing or converting barracks-style buildings from old machine sheds and previously disused barns. Maybe next year they could construct new cabins but at the moment, the best any newcomers could hope for was living in tents. Unless they expanded their perimeter to absorb more territory, and take in more intact housing, the winter already looked to be a whole lot colder than any wanted to think about. Scott knew from experience his own barracks was devoid of insulation, but at least they had a wood burning heater. Most others lacked even that amenity.

  But, the unspoken exception would be made for proven fighters. They would make more room on the floor for men, or women, who showed the skills and who could secure a sponsor in the community. Prior service carried an advantage, but a young man named Luke showed them that this fallen world bred a new kind of warrior just as deadly as anyone coming home from the streets of Fallujah. The Guard was still recruiting, and so was Nick.

  Scott drew back from his thoughts and responded to the lieutenant, if a few seconds late.

  “I’ll talk to Dar in the morning after we meet up. I gotta tell you, it was very bad. They are definitely cannibals, Lieutenant. We watched them cook up a dead child, and then tear the corpse apart.”

  Conners paled, but offered a short nod.

  “I figured something was up. Those boys of yours were too quiet. You think they’ll be okay?”

  “Mike and Ben saw signs of such when they were traveling, but this was the first time any of them witnessed something like this up close. Me too, for that matter. I think all three of them considered just opening up on the bastards, and I probably would have if the numbers weren’t so lopsided. I know we’ve called them zombies before, but this time it really fit.”

  “But can they do their jobs still? Are your boys still fit for duty?”

  “Shit, Nathan, I don’t know. Are any of us? What are we going to have to do to protect these people?” Scott sighed, the stress and the sleepless hours catching up with him as a soul deep exhaustion.

  “I keep thinking I’ve seen the bottom,” he continued, his voice almost a whisper,” the absolute worst that men can do and still, they manage to find some way to lower the bar. I know they are starving but still, to eat the corpse of a child they just murdered? I sometimes think this is Hell, and we are all suffering for our sins.”

  Conners blew out a gust of air and shook his head.

  “Forget that nonsense. If this is Hell, then what is Isabella doing here? Or any of those other children your family has taken in here? This is not Hell, just another bad day on planet Earth. Go see that poor Ms. Warren, muster up some reason to give her some hope, and hit the rack. Morning will come soon enough.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. To tell the truth, I want to be well-rested when we get a chance to drop some hurt on this so-called Liberation Army and their zombies. Like my boys, I’m looking for some payback.”

  “I got a feeling you will get your chance, and then some.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The quarantine shed was a simple wooden box built close to the front gate, consisting of a corrugated metal roof over four rough-hewed log walls- one with a locking wooden door and a one-foot tall window featuring three vertical pieces of rebar cemented into place to act as bars. Nothing fancy and if necessary, the whole structure could be torched without the community being out much in the way materials. The little hut was not escape proof, but anyone getting out before their time was going to catch a bullet. No Tasers or pepper spray, and no second chances.

  Scott expected Katrina to be asleep, but he found the woman standing with her forehead pressed against the bars. He couldn’t tell if she was resting or just too tired to hold up her head. He hadn’t thought to bring a torch or lantern, but the moonlight gave enough for his dark-adapted eyes to make out the shape of the woman inside.

  “Katrina?” he said her name softly, and the prisoner jerked as she looked up. The wan light of the half-moon left her eyes in shadow, but Scott could see her lips move.

  “Did you find them? Are they dead?” She sounded resigned to bad news, and Scott didn’t feel like stretching out this conversation. He gave her the news straight out.

  “The camps at the location you provided were all overrun, and some of the residents were killed, but I didn’t see any bodies that matched the descriptions you gave us of your parents. I won’t lie, ma’am. They likely didn’t make it, but we did see signs that at least a few of them got out in time. We couldn’t stick a
round to try to find them, not with that much hostile activity. Did you ever discuss a rally point with your parents, in case the three of you got separated?”

  It was too much to process all at once, Scott figured. After a long moment, he could just make out the motion as Katrina shook her head.

  “We didn’t have any place special picked out, but if the camp was overrun like you said, I would guess they would eventually make for the shelter in Gentry. They could get a meal and a place to sleep indoors there, for one night at least.”

  Scott nodded, and he went on to assure Katrina that he would ask the shelter guards to keep an eye out for the Warrens, or any other survivors from the massacre. In truth, he was curious to get their account of the attack and what went down after their daughter left the scene.

  “I just wish…” Katrina started, then her words faded off for a second. “I started to say, I wish this never happened, but then, everybody says that. I used to say it at least twice a day, after the lights went out. But wishing never made any difference before, and sure won’t now.”

  “Katrina, you need to have hope,” Scott replied, but the words felt hollow even as he spoke them. “Well, at least, you need to have something to believe in.”

  The laugh that followed wasn’t as bitter as the game warden expected, but he still took a step back at the sound. As he thought about it, the laugh just sounded worn, and tired. Eroded by the constant, unrelenting stress of just staying alive in this pitiless world.

  “So what do you believe in?” she finally asked.

  Scott squelched the first response on his lips, thinking it too hurtful for the woman. “My family,” would have been his uncensored response, but he decided to go for a ‘bigger picture’ answer.

  “I believe in a lot of things. The people on this farm, and in this community. I believe in my friends, and my family.”