THEM (Season 1): Episode 1 (2 page)

The thing blinked, twice, and then its face contorted in a rictus of amusement. “I know you, human,” it said in a voice like a rattlesnake’s tail shaken with a straight bourbon chaser. Despite the creep factor inherent to having a superhumanly strong corpse with ass breath get up close and personal, I sighed inwardly.

It would figure that I’d get a talker. I hated talkers. Most nos-types were quiet, calculating predators that I believed operated on a base animal intellect. But some were smarter than others, and those bastards liked to talk, especially when they were about to gank you. I think they got some sort of twisted thrill out of it or something. Anyway, it usually just bored me to freaking tears.

The creature’s breath was cold and rank with the fetid smell of rotting blood as it continued. “You’re the one they call
Scratch
... the one who marks his kills.”

This was true. I’d taken to scratching the number of each kill on the corpses I left behind at the edge of the territories I worked. I left them as a reminder and as a warning, to let Them know they weren’t the apex predators, not anymore. Apparently, it was working.

Well, as much as I hated dealing with talkers, thankfully this time it would work in my favor. The nos’ kept yammering on about how it was going to drain me of blood and then take my head back to its colony or some such. Whatever. All his talk served to do was to give me time to twist my sidearm up into its abdomen, affording me a decent angle under the rib cage and into its vital parts.

I fired multiple times, registering the shock on the creature’s face as I hit center mass from inside its guts. Using a modified mount escape I’d learned in Army combatives training, I rolled the thing off me and reversed our positions, pinning it with a knee on its chest.

And damn it if the thing wasn’t still talking. Must’ve been an old one, because the older they were, the tougher they were to kill. It kept on yammering in its raspy voice, even as it was dying. “You have no idea what’s coming, hunter,” it told me with a laugh as the embers in its eyes began to dim. “None at all! You think you’re winning this war. But something much worse than either of us is coming for you, and...”

Bam!
I cut the thing off mid sentence with a round fired up through its chin, straight into the brain pan. Like I said, I hate talkers and I’d had about enough out of this one for the evening. Besides, I never wasted my breath talking to them. It was what they wanted, and damned if I was going to let them get their rocks off at my expense.

But as I rolled off it and assessed myself for injuries, the short and one-sided conversation had me thinking. We
had
been seeing a slight increase in the more dangerous occult species over the last several months. They seemed to be coming out of the east and northeast, presumably from the largely abandoned metropolitan areas of Austin and San Antonio. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were scouts probing our defenses.

That being said, we’d never seen an organized assault from Them before, at least not here in the southern States. I’d heard talk from folks who fled the north, raving about organized attacks led by ’thropes and other creatures, but I just chalked it up as rumor and nothing more.

Even so, maybe it was time to plan a little scouting mission of my own. Even on the remote chance that they were organizing, it was worth checking out. I just prayed that I was overreacting, because I doubted we were ready to fend off an attack en masse. God help us all if there was a shred of truth in what that thing had said.

- - -

[2
]

I
waited for dawn, wrapped the carcass of the nos’ in an old tarp I’d packed in for the purpose, and then tied him to the back of my pack mule. We were on the edge of the safe zone, but I wanted to take him out a ways and stake him up so the warning would come early for any strays who might decide to wander this way.

It might seem like I was inviting trouble, but honestly, this far out most of the thinking monsters were looking for easy prey. If they suspected trouble from an experienced tracker or hunter, they would likely steer clear and try to find a lone settlement or wanderer instead. So I trekked a few extra miles out of my way and staked the carcass up Vlad the Impaler–style on an old speed-limit sign, a few miles outside of the safe-zone boundaries.

Then, I unsheathed my bowie knife and carved “XCIV” in the dead thing’s chest. This was nasty work, and I sure didn’t enjoy it, but I did take pleasure in the fact that leaving little warnings like this might save a few lives down the road. The corpses actually lasted a good long while; something in the blood and fluids of the things seemed to preserve them, even in the hot Texas sun.

Unfortunately, sunlight didn’t make them burst into flames like the ones on television and in the movies. However, all of the undead occult species were averse to sunlight, making it more or less safe for decent folk to work and live their lives during the day. After nightfall, though, you wouldn’t find many people out in the open like I’d been the night previous. Instead, people holed up in fortified homes and makeshift bunkers, even in densely populated settlements and safe zones. You were never completely “safe” these days; safety was always just a relative term.

Once the grisly deed was done, I mounted my mule and pointed her toward the settlement to collect whatever pay in barter they could offer. On the ride back, I wondered again at what the nos’ had said to me the night previous, before I sent it to the Second Death. Talkers often spoke in half-truths and fabrications, using their powers of speech to mentally torture and toy with their prey before feeding. However, something about what the creature had said didn’t quite sit right with me, and I knew I wouldn’t rest easy until I took a scouting trip east and north to see for myself what was brewing, if anything.

As I pulled into the settlement I could see the local residents moving about their daily lives, which amounted to either fending off monsters, scratching out a meager existence, or fighting for some sense of normalcy. This settlement had once been a small unnamed burg in the middle of nowhere, a pimple on the asshole of the Hill Country. It’d consisted of a bar, a combination post office and volunteer fire department, a small gas-station convenience store, and a scattering of homes dotting about a quarter mile of
caliche
. About fifty souls or so lived hereabouts, protected behind a makeshift fence-wall made from chain link, barbed wire, and the occasional shipping container salvaged from a big rig. I rode up to the building that served as the HQ for the local government, such as it was, hitching Donkey to a fence where she could graze while I took care of my business.

The town constable, Donnie Sims, met me at the front step. Thumbs tucked into his gun belt beneath a prodigious gut, he spat from the side of his mouth at my feet and spoke. “Any luck?”

“Nos’, sneaky bastard too. Here.” I tossed him a baggie with two bloody incisors, gum tissue still attached. Donnie looked like he was juggling a hornet’s nest as he fumbled with his fat fingers to catch the bag. Folks around here knew and trusted me, but I still kept up the formalities of proof before payment. “No worries; there’s not enough blood on those to infect you.”

“Yeah, well... never can be too careful. Good work, Scratch, good work. People can sleep feeling safe now around here, and that’s something. We really appreciate you.” He tossed me an old poker chip from the prewar era. “Here’s a chit that you can take to the storehouse; Janie’s working today and she’ll fix you up with some supplies to take home with you.”

“I was hoping for some of those Fredericksburg peaches I heard you got in.”

Donnie chuckled and returned my smile. “Just don’t take ’em all. I got my heart set on some peach cobbler if the wife and I can scrounge up enough flour and sugar soon.”

“I’ll leave plenty behind for you. Promise.”

“Sure enough, Scratch, sure enough. You headed right home after this?”

“Not just yet; I wanted to see if there were any caravan hands around I could talk to before I leave. Something the nos’ said has me curious about what they’ve seen out east.”

“Sam Tucker has been hanging out at the Scalded Dog. You might hit him up for some scuttlebutt. Kara was asking after you anyways, so you may as well stop in there and see what she’s overheard, too.”

“Thanks for the tip, Donnie. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Hopefully not too soon, but don’t be a stranger, either.”

- - -

L
ife wasn’t always this way, and I can still remember what it was like before the Great War. But then some asshat got voted into office who thought it’d be a good idea to let countries like North Korea and Iran develop nuclear arsenals. Now
there’s
a novel idea, give a psychopath the means to start World War III. Brilliant.

So, it started with North Korea dropping the bomb on Seoul. Then, emboldened by the lack of an immediate counteraction by the US, Iran began posturing towards a similar action against Israel, which our friends in yarmulke weren’t having. They bombed Iran back into the Stone Age, following that age-old Israeli tradition of “do unto others before they do unto you,” which subsequently pulled Russia into the war. Soon after, America bombed North Korea into oblivion as a warning shot over the bow for Russia and China, which backfired and resulted in our losing Washington, New York, and a lot of the Eastern seaboard.

Before the smoke cleared, we were all screwed. It was amazing how much the world’s economy relied on computers and the Internet, but no one seemed to think about that when they were pushing buttons and sending ICBMs helter-skelter. Immediately, infrastructures collapsed worldwide, due to the lack of communication networks necessary for continuity of supply chains.

Lots of people died in the bombings, more in the nuclear fallout that followed... but tens of millions died of starvation and the ensuing violence. Ever think about the fact that there haven’t been any regional warehouses stocking foods and dry goods in the States since the advent of the digital age? Ever wonder where those groceries that used to hit store shelves just in time each week came from?

Ever wonder how long it would take for your local grocery or superstore to run out of food when the trucks stopped rolling? Yeah, neither did anyone else, and the majority of Americans found the answers to those questions the hard way after the bombs dropped. Tens of millions of people died from nothing more than a disease called “learned helplessness.”

Thankfully, I was always a little paranoid; a few tours fighting someone else’s wars will do that to you. After I got hit with shrapnel and lost part of my vision in one eye, I got discharged on a medical. Soon after that I got a place out in the sticks, where no would bother me and where I could work out my inner war in the peace and quiet of nature. I had a lot of food, weapons, and ammo stockpiled. Like I said, I was always a little paranoid.

Turns out it came in handy when the SHTF. At first, it was just a matter of watching weather patterns to avoid potential fallout and hunting to supplement my meals with wild game so I could make my stored food last until things got better.

Then, those
things
got set loose in the world. And quite literally all hell broke loose with them.

- - -

A
s I was headed over to Kara’s, I caught a commotion coming from behind one of the settlement houses. I could hear a man yelling, a kid crying, and a woman’s voice pleading with the man to leave. Now, Donnie Sims was an alright fella to have in a firefight, if that’s what you needed, but unfortunately he was a piss-poor lawman. He tended to take “minding your own business” to its furthest extent, which meant things happened on his watch that I couldn’t abide.

Most women these days were tough, and you had to be to survive. But lots of women got widowed and left raising kids on their own, which was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone in this world. Combine that with the fact that a lot of able-bodied men got killed in the War or fighting Them after, and the result was some women ended up taking in any man who might help protect and provide for them and their kids.

But sometimes, the solution ended up being worse than the problem. Hard men roamed these lands, and most weren’t exactly what you’d call savory types. Lots of them were drunks, almost all of them were violent, and quite a few of them had developed some very uncivilized ideas on how to treat a lady. Having a constable that preferred to leave folks to their own designs didn’t help.

The woman sounded desperate, so I led Donkey around the corner between two houses and tied her off on a low tree branch. Then, I checked my Glocks to make sure I had a round in each chamber, and also loosened them in their holsters. Chances were good that I wouldn’t need to resort to shooting anyone, which was fine by me since that was generally frowned upon in the settlements. However, it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

As I snuck back around the house and took in the scene, I saw a group of three caravaneers standing in a semicircle around a lone woman and a young girl of maybe five or six. I sized up the threat first; the one in the middle looked like he might be competent, as he had that military or law enforcement look about him and he was in decent shape. The other two looked to be amateurs though, out of shape and unprepared. All three were armed.

Then I looked over to the victims. The kid was crying, and the woman was shielding her from the men. Her dress was torn, and there was a large red mark on her face. I could also see some blood trickling down her chin.

That decided it for me; the constable could kiss my ass. Nothing got me hotter than to see my own kind taking advantage of those weaker, when they should be protecting them from the undead instead. I drew both guns and stepped out from behind the house silently, waiting to see what happened when they realized they weren’t alone.

The larger of the three stood in front of the woman, and I could see him raise his hand at her again as she flinched away. “I don’t give a shit what you thought—me and the boys want what’s coming to us. We paid you for a meal and a place to sleep, and we’ve decided that we’d like some company while we’re here.” He gestured to his left and right without taking his eyes from the woman. “Right, boys?”