Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (23 page)

“Pick her up,” Nickson said, angrily. “Take
her back to one of the

bedrooms.”

Garrison suppressed a grin, but his heart
fluttered and his groin tingled as he lifted the semi-conscious
girl and draped her over his shoulder.

He thought,
Always did want to taste some
fine, vintage sixteen year-old
.

Nickson turned to Talltree and said, “Watch
those doors, Big Chief.”

Talltree frowned and lowered his head.

Nickson took a couple of steps down the
hallway toward the bedroom Garrison had entered, then stopped. He
turned around again and said in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, “You
watch that door for us, and if you want to come back and get a
piece when one of us is finished, you can. If not, you keep your
fucking mouth shut about it. You hear me? And if you try to stop
us, I swear to God I will shoot you dead and scalp you like your
ancestors did to mine. I’ll put your red corpse on a goddamn
funeral pyre and do a goddamn rain dance around it. You understand
me?”

Talltree didn’t reply.

Nickson continued to the bedroom.

That was enough. Talltree knew the moment he
had been waiting for had arrived.

While Nickson and Garrison were occupied, he
pulled a small hatchet out of his belt and walked through the
kitchen and to the back door.

Once there, he paused.

He suspected they would let the girl live
when they were done with her. But that was hardly satisfactory
recompense for him—and certainly not for her. But he knew that if
he tried to intervene, he and the girl would both be dead. He knew
this. He knew Nickson and Garrison considered young, pretty women
to be in short supply—a valuable commodity for the new world they
were anticipating. She had a chance to live.

This was the only way.

He could leave the back door open—allow the
beasts to infiltrate the house and attack. But the men had enough
firepower and skill to survive, even if they were taken by surprise
while their pants were down. And the girl would suffer even
more.

No, the one thing that would hurt Sgt.
Nickson most was to fail at this mission—to not settle his vendetta
against Sgt. Arnold. And what would be even worse than Nickson
failing his mission was if Talltree finished it all by himself.
Sgt. Arnold and his men were going to be dead anyway, that was for
certain. They were just up against too many hostiles. Yes, their
end at Talltree’s hands—a merciful end sans all the torture and
suffering Nickson yearned to inflict—would be the ultimate insult,
the grandest slap in the face, the best revenge. And though revenge
was certainly not a Mohawk tradition, it was a human one.

And then, once Nickson’s failure was
complete, Talltree would harvest his life.

He hatched a plan. A gambit. It was perilous,
but could work. With hatchet in hand, Talltree opened the door. He
locked it from the inside and closed it behind him, quietly.

He moved to the front yard. Only one Viral
saw him approach amid small, scattered crowds on the street, yard,
and sidewalk. Talltree charged the creature and buried the hatchet
in the middle of its head. The body fell limp. Talltree dragged it
behind a large bush by the house, out of sight.

He looked down at the corpse. Theorizing by
the nametag still pinned to its shirt, Cliff Farkas had been the
assistant manager at the Circle K convenience store just down the
road. Most recently he was a flesh eater. Somehow, Talltree was not
pleased about the description used to describe the Virals. When the
foreign invaders conquered his homeland, the Mohawk Indians were
known as “flesh eaters” and “man eaters” due to their tradition of
eating the liver of deceased opponents in a ritual to consume their
souls. The Algonquin and Narraganset word for “man-eater” was
Mohowawog
, which became Mohawk. But Talltree would not be
eating flesh.

At least not yet.

He ripped open the corpse’s shirt. Using the
blade of the hatchet, he cut an incision down the length of its
chest. He tore open the belly with both hands as if stretching
leather.

He removed chunks of Cliff Farkas’ rancid and
rotting flesh; discarding the solids, leaving the liquid. He began
to smear his clothes with the blood, forming abstract patterns of
gore all over his uniform.

The ripe aroma of death wafted all around
him. The smell alone would make most men vomit.

But Talltree had the constitution of a
vulture. He squeezed blood from a chunk of flesh onto his pants
before wiping them down with it. He covered as much of his clothes
with gore as possible, but did not dare allow it to come into
contact with his face. He knew he was already risking infection,
and using gore to camouflage his face as well would be pushing
things too far. Instead, he placed a bandana over his nose and
mouth and tied it in the back.

Nearby was a garden hose attached to a
spigot. Despite the viral dangers of the flesh and blood, he needed
to keep the blood off of his skin. Since little to nothing was
known about the virus—or even whether it was a virus or not—it was
best to keep all blood off his skin. Especially open wounds.

Talltree unscrewed the hose from the spigot
and rinsed his hands and arms of the filth, even going so far as
cleaning his hatchet. He then took a deep breath, coughing at the
aroma wafting all around him now. His gambit was about to be put to
the test.

Hatchet in hand, he stepped out of hiding and
into the front yard.

Virals cast glances.

Talltree glanced back at them.

None made distinct efforts to attack.

He proceeded down Riverside, carefully
watching their behavior.

But none came near, despite clearly seeing
him.

Talltree was literally walking with the dead,
strolling past creatures who offered not even a hint of a threat
towards him. He did not need to shamble or shuffle to blend in. He
walked with a deliberate stride, but did not want to risk running.
It was as if he was walking in the spirit world, with the magic of
his ancestors guiding him, shielding him from danger, leading him
to his destiny.

In the same manner that native shamans turned
themselves into werewolf-like creatures using the skins of a wolf,
Talltree had likewise become a skinwalker. Whether it was more
ritual magic over actual transformation made no difference to him.
The skinwalkers were real people. And now, as his spiritual leaders
before him, Talltree became like the skinwalkers of the past,
absorbing the mystery of monsters unto himself.

6:55 AM

Morris Office Building, 7700 S. IH-35

“Did you hear that gunshot?” Knight
asked.

“I’ve heard gunshots all night, man,” Noble
replied. “What’s the—”

“Aw, never mind. You’re right.”

The soldiers were putting on their gear.
Feeling as if they were being pursued, Sgt. Arnold woke them early
so they could stay well ahead.

He explained, “Sorry to get ya’ll up at this
ungodly hour. I know you probably thought you were finished with
this shit when you graduated boot camp, but I’ve just got a knot in
my gut, like we’re being chased.”

“I’ve been feeling the same way, Sarge,”
Noble said. “They wouldn’t have stopped with just that sniper.
They’ll be coming after us.”

“Yeah,” Arnold said. “But we’ve got to find
that Humvee. Hey, Parcells. That GPS thing show where its at
now?”

Spc. Parcells examined the device. “Still in
the same place. On the corner of 6th and Las Palmas. We’re going to
have to roll back up the main highway... unless there’s some
backroads we can utilize.”

“There is,” Noble chimed, taking her new
title of ‘road map girl’ to heart. “We just need to head back on
Riverside ‘til we hit Montopolis. It’s a straight shot over a
bridge before we turn left on Sixth.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Parcells said.

“We’ll see about that,” Sgt. Arnold said,
mentally measuring the dangerous possibilities up the road. “But it
has been my experience that nothing is ever as easy as it should
be.”

The new four-person team mobilized, hustled
downstairs, cleared the makeshift barricade, and charged out. There
were several Virals from the night before still knocking and
scratching in a most pathetic effort to infiltrate the building.
They were met with gunfire. Other than the initial small group,
more Virals were spread out along the parking lot and street. There
were enough that if a crowd was drawn near, things could get
dangerous quick. The few that shambled down from the highway were
put down with measured efficiency.

The team moved back up the road to Riverside
and crossed the bridge. The amount of moving cars on the highway
was minimal at this point. Roads had become automobile morgues.
Every style, brand, make and model littered the highways like a
collection of
Hot Wheels
on a toddler’s bedroom floor.

Sgt. Arnold looked down the highway from the
bridge. On both the northbound and southbound lanes, traffic was
completely stopped. Some vehicles were left abandoned, others were
hulking masses of smoldering wrecks. Many were on fire. But all had
some evidence of human remains, blood, or other remnant of the
being inside and the tribulation they had endured. Far in the
distance, two vehicles could be seen bravely trying to maneuver
through the wreckage while zombies pursued them.

Movement at the mouth of the bridge where the
team was approaching caught Arnold’s eye. Without hesitation, he
fired off a shot that put down a Viral.

“C’mon, people. Let’s keep moving,” he said,
waking up.

* * *

Talltree heard the shot. It was not like the
sporadic gunfire he heard all around the neighborhoods along
Riverside. This one had been measured, controlled. He guessed it to
originate eight blocks down the road. He knew Sgt. Nickson was hot
on his tail, but his intuition told him it was not him.

He dashed to the closest building, a
restaurant called
Taqueria Vallarta #3
. The front door was
locked. He peered through the tinted window and could discern
movement in the kitchen. The restaurant was habitated—but by who or
what, he didn’t know.

He moved around the side of the building. The
edges at the corners were constructed so that the bricks jutted out
at regular intervals. It was not meant to be scaled and, in
reality, offered very little foot and finger space to use for
climbing. But the little that was provided was more than Talltree
needed.

Still cloaked in the filth of their gore, he
ignored the few Virals that watched him with curiosity. All
eventally turned away, distance being the obstacle to confirming
their suspicions.

Once on the roof of the building, Talltree
found a very secure hiding spot, and waited.

* * *

On the grounds of the Texas State Capitol,
Captain Barrigan was scrutinizing intelligence reports in the
communications tent. Computers hummed as men analyzed on-screen
data and sorted verbal information filtering in through their large
headsets.

One man flicked off his headset and turned to
the Captain. “Sir, a special message has been sent to you from Fort
Hood. They say they’ve lost contact with
Regal Beagle
. They
asked me to write down the following message and give it to you.”
The man handed the captain a slip of paper.

Barrigan read it.

The doll is in the toybox
.

It was a code he did not want to receive.

It meant Plan B was missing.

7:30 AM

Lopez Auto Repair and Custom Cars

“What did I say to you, huh?! What did I say
to
everyone
, huh?!”

Sleepy held one of the ex-cons face down on
the greasy concrete with one hand while his other hand pressed a
gun to the back of the ex-con’s head, burying the barrel deep.

The man replied, “Respect his shit. That’s
what you said, Sleepy. You said
respect his shit
.”

“That’s right. I said
respect his
shit
. So I hope you enjoyed your Coke,
pendejo
, because
breaking his machine just cost you your life.”

The man had no time to respond before Sleepy
put a bullet in his head. His body twitched once, then was
motionless.

The entire camp watched in respectful awe.
Justice was served. The crime: breaking into one of the Coke
machines and stealing a can of soda. The penalty: death.

Sleepy walked toward the group that had
assembled to travel to Nick’s apartment complex and help him find
his wife and daughter. The vehicles they chose were four jacked-up
and customized Ford Heavy-Duties, waiting near the gated exit. Nick
stood nearby—honored, but scared. Considering what Sleepy had just
done, he did not want to make a wrong move or say the wrong
thing.

“
Ay
, you be careful out there, okay?”
Sleepy told him. “My thoughts and prayers are going out to your
family, okay?”

“
Gracias
, Sleepy,” Nick said.

The other members of the expedition packed
into the vehicles. Nick rode in the truck that would bring up the
rear, jacked-up and strong. Emblazoned on the hood was a custom
painting of
La Virgen de Guadalupe
. The middle truck had a
brown image of Emiliano Zapata on the hood. Painted near Zapata
were two buxom bandana-wearing
cholas
, holding the same
lever-action rifle as he, as well as matching bandoleros. The other
middle vehicle had a giant Mexican flag painted across the hood.
Each vehicle had massive grill guards. The only one not airbrushed
was the military Hummer that was captured that morning. It would be
the lead vehicle that would crush anything that stood in their way,
if needed.