Snareville (17 page)

Ed was screaming something at me. I didn’t hear his guys coming, but when I turned, I saw my troops had them both pinned to the wall with the muzzles of their rifles.

“
Do you know that blonde?” I asked Ed.

“
What?" he cried furiously. "What the hell're you talkin' about?”

“
Who
was
she? What was her name?”

“
She was a whore I was makin'
money
on, ya fucker!”

Ed reached into his pocket for something. I stuck my pistol under his nose.

“
I asked you what her name was.”

Ed stood frozen, hands in the air. “Carly somethin'.”

“
You're half right," I whispered. "Her name was Carly Jackson. She was my sister. She came up here three years ago to go to school and dance. Two years ago, she dropped out of school to become a junkie. A year ago, we lost contact with her.”

Ed's eyes went wide.

“
Who the fuck
are
you?” he managed.

“
I’m Danny Death. These are my Raiders.”

I watched the color drain from his face. Our reputation preceded us.

“
I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

I pushed the pistol against his forehead. He started babbling. Something about how he had to make a living somehow. I pulled most the slack off the trigger. No one stopped me. Another pound of pressure; that’s all it would take.

Then I heard a sob from one of the live girls. That broke my rage.

I blinked as I let my finger off the trigger. “Keys."

“
You can’t take my girls! I’ll lose suppliers!”

“
I can kill you and
then
take them, if you prefer."

Ed dug out his keys and handed them over. Pepper, Catfish, and Boss Connie disappeared behind me. They returned with four girls in tow. One of them, no more than thirteen years old, looked sick. Pepper removed one of the vials from her backpack. She pulled a couple cc’s into a syringe and shot it into the girl’s arm.

“
Did you infect her?” I seethed. My gun pressed in under Ed's nose again.

“
This mornin', man, just this mornin'! Chloe was gettin' a li'l rotten, see?”

He jerked his thumb toward the black girl, and I whipped my pistol across his face. He stumbled, crying out. Blood pumped from the gash in his cheek.

“
You sick fuck,” I said.

He straightened and found the muzzle centered on his forehead again. Pepper laid her hand on my arm.

“
Let’s go,” she whispered.

Ed stood frozen, eyes wide and locked on mine. I twitched the sight aside as I squeezed the trigger. The gun roared in the small room. It sounded like a cannon. A bloody half-circle appeared in Ed’s right ear, and the bullet spattered a crater in the concrete wall. Ed screamed.

“
Clean this fuckin’ mess up,” I said. “Next time I come up, I’ll check on you. If you're still runnin’ whores, we'll take our meat somewhere else.”

I turned around to find a pile of hooker clothes discarded on the floor. The girls huddled together, wrapped up in freezer blankets against the cold. We loaded into the pickup. It was a tight squeeze.

In front of Ed's store, I hopped out with Pepper. We took the young girl she’d inoculated. With a turn of the key, the dump truck fired. We dropped an open-mouthed Bernie back at the university, and we headed out of town.

“
You know we'll have to kill her if she starts to turn,” I told Pepper.

She sat between me and the girl. The girl shivered against her, wrapped up in the blanket.

“
Yeah,” Pepper said. “But we couldn’t leave her there. At least now she has a chance.”

“
Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t convinced. The pistol rode in my lap.

“
I’m sorry about your sister,” Pepper managed. She tried to say more, but my eyes were already running by then. She wrapped a hand around my face and kissed my cheek.

“
Me, too,” I choked out.

A week later, we put Ella to bed in the downstairs bedroom where Pepper used to sleep. She was only twelve. She hadn’t seen her folks since June. None of Ed's girls were older than eighteen. Two went to live with Boss Connie and the Mennonites. The other girl, Charlie, stayed with Tony and Cat. Four more additions to the family.

Rain dripped on the roof of the little porch outside our window. I snuggled into Pepper’s pillow as I drank in the scent of her hair. My right hand cupped her breast. Jenny’s arm encircled us both at the waist. The babies were asleep—a luxury we didn’t get too often these days.

I smiled as I listened to the rainfall. It was good for the garden.

Then the sound changed. The pitter-patter intensified, like someone had turned up the spigot. Weird rhythm. Choppy, like—

“
Guns,” Jenny whispered.

I woke up a little more. Then I heard the dogs barking. Rifle fire punctuated the morning. Someone cut loose on the M-60. It has a slower cyclic rate. I could hear each of its shots:
da, da, da
. It shredded the morning air. Someone opened up with a Squad Automatic Weapon. Smaller bullet, but man, it’s a faster gun. They call it a SAW for more than one reason.

From there, more guns joined in. Sounded like they were west of us.

“
Am I hearin’ a firefight?” Pepper mumbled into her pillow.

“
Sounds like it,” I said.

Outside, our dogs added their voices to the racket. Jenny rolled out of bed on her side.

“
Those idiots are gonna wake the babies.”

She pulled on some pajamas and headed into the hall. I heard her say something to Heather as they met on the way to the nursery.

The radio crackled to life beside the bed as Pepper swung her legs over the side. “Cap’n Death? You there?”

I picked up the mike. “I’m here.”

Heavy gunfire rattled in the background. “We got Zeds everywhere, Sir.”

More shots.

“
We got ‘em inside the fence. I don’t know how many. Still comin', sir.”

“
Where you reporting from?” From the sounds of the fight, I already had a pretty good idea.

“
Private Wilson on the southwest gate, sir. I think Peoria found us.”

More gunfire.

“
Fuck,” I muttered.

It wouldn’t be long before we had people rolling toward the fight. The noise had to be waking everybody else up, too. Pepper started to pull on her fighting gear.

“
Sir?” Wilson called again.

“
Yeah, Private?”

“
We got Savages here too, Cap’n Death. They came in with the Zeds. Hit us first, then rolled out of the way as the swarm boiled in. I don’t know where they went.”

Fuck again. “Okay, Private. Shoot 'em on sight, too.”

“
Yessir.”

Not ten seconds later, the fire siren went off in the center of town. Kenny was monitoring the broadcast. He'd turned on the generator and hit the whistle. I flipped the radio to link with the command net. Over the winter, my brother Tom brought a lot of presents to us down in Snareville from the Rock Island Arsenal. Along with gear and supplies, we now had about a hundred troops stationed in town. He was using Snareville as a staging ground to exterminate Zeds and establish order. A year after the outbreak, we Raiders were now a militia attached to what was left of the U.S. Army.

A curse from Pepper got my attention.

“
What?” I asked as she struggled into her body armor.

Pepper yanked up her top and tried to close it. “These vests aren’t made to cover milk jugs. Your son hasn’t had his breakfast yet.”

Couldn’t help myself—even in a Zed storm, Pepper could make me laugh.

“
I don’t think they took that into consideration when they made them for combat soldiers.” I walked over to my wife and helped her zip up. “I could milk ya, if you want.”

“
Very funny, farm boy,” she said.

We both finished dressing. Tommy, now Major Tom Jackson, had brought us some 1980s era woodlands BDUs his guys had stored in mothballs for the last ten years. He also brought us boots and modern K-pot helmets. Our comm-link was wired into the helmets, so I could talk with anyone in town. Reports from the other commanders began to come in. I ordered everyone to link up at the fire house. Kenny, now Major Kenny One Shot, would meet us there.

Downstairs, the dogs went berserk. We heard pounding at the doors. Moans drifted up. Glass shattered out of a window. The Zeds had found us. We were only two blocks from the gate, so I figured it wouldn’t take long.

“
I hope we locked up last night,” I shouted. From somewhere else in the house, someone affirmed we were tight. It was spring. Warm weather. We were jumpy anyway. Now the babies started to cry. I glanced at Pepper.

“
You can stay with Michael, if you want,” I said.

“
We already worked this out.” Pepper picked up her MP-5 and slung her bandolier of ammo over her shoulder. “We’ll be back. Jen’s staying.”

I picked up my rifle and slung on my own band of magazines. I topped it off with four WP grenades I got from Tom. The pounding downstairs intensified. Bill passed through the hall into the nursery and slid open the window to the porch above the kitchen. I heard shots begin as he dropped deaders from the second floor.

“
You’re a good woman,” I said to Pepper. I kissed her before she lowered the face shield of her helmet. “I love you.”

“
Love you too, Baby. Now let’s get rid of these pests, so I can feed your son.”

I lowered my shield, too.

“
We got Zeds all over the yard out here, Boss,” Bill crackled over the net.

We met Heather in the hall in her combat gear, her rifle in hand. Jenny was in the nursery with Sandy. The two of them would watch the babies and take sniper shots from the upper windows. I glanced down the hall, out the north window. Two figures trotted through the yard across the street. They had hair and carried guns. I dashed down the hall, flung open the window, and stepped out onto the roof of the porch. My rifle came up. My first shot blew the head off the guy on the right. The second one whirled, shotgun up. My second bullet smashed through her leg. She went down, leg pumping blood, face covered in her buddy’s brains. She screamed and started to reach for her fallen shotgun. I put a bullet through the action. I saw a deader start across our yard for her, and I dropped it.

“
You better get in that house behind you and lock it down!” I shouted at her. “You won’t get a second chance!"

She hurled a curse my way, but she scrambled backward on her ass through the mud. She made it inside as a half dozen Zeds found her partner. A couple followed her up onto the porch and started to bang on the door behind her.

“
Should've killed her,” Jenny said as I stepped back inside.

“
I want info,” I said. “Like how they came to be working with the deaders. Can’t do that if she’s dead.”

“
Still…”

“
I know. They wouldn’t do that for us. We have to go, Baby.” I flipped my face shield up, kissed my other wife, and wrapped her in my free arm for an instant. Then four of us raced downstairs. Sandy followed. Jenny stayed upstairs to distract the Zeds. I heard her step out onto the roof and start shouting. Zeds moaned and shuffled off the porch. God, they were annoying.

We quietly opened the door to the garage and quick-stepped to the back wall. I clicked my comm off briefly and listened at the back door we'd cut into the wall. Nothing but the rain and birdsong. I listened a heartbeat more, turned my comm back on, and nodded.

There’s a time for fast action and violence, and there's a time to be sneaky. We slipped out the door on cat feet. Sandy shut it and bolted it behind us. For a moment, we paused. From the south boiled a wall of Zeds. They hadn’t seen us yet, so we moved north along the wall of the house. I pulled point while Bill covered the rear, the ladies between us. I peeked around the corner of the house and looked into the eyes of a dead man. He stood ten feet from me on the front porch. Before he could let out a moan, I drilled a round through his skull. That drew some attention.

We ran. Straight north, past the cluster of deaders feeding on the dead Savage. Past the house the gal had dragged herself into. I cued the comm-link.

“
Third platoon, this is Danny Death. On the move north. Rally in East Park.”

“
Roger that, Captain. Will meet there soonest.” Sergeant Mauer clicked off. He was one of my regular army troops stationed here.

Rain pattered on my helmet. My feet squished on the long, soggy grass. We ran the block to the park as five more of my troops trotted in. I heard more shots. All across the east of town, gunfire rose from the houses. Zeds swarmed around the homes they found occupied, including ours. A number of corpses had followed us and now shambled toward the park.

“
Report, Dog.”

“
Not good, Boss.” Sergeant Dog Smith stood beside me with the people from his house. They were a mixed group, but they didn’t have babies yet. They were content to practice making them. Their house lay on the far east of town. “We barely made it here. We got deaders all over this end of town. How the fuck did they get in?”