The Deadland Chronicles (Book 3): The Endless Dead, page 11
part #3 of The Deadland Chronicles Series
Eli’s back was turned to Henry and Ellen, so he was surprised when Jo’s face brightened, and she suddenly pushed by him with her arms out. Henry fell into her arms, and the two embraced in a long and hard hug.
“You did it, kid,” Jo said. “You got them here safe.” There was a softness in her tone.
Henry’s voice caught, but he said, “I’m so glad you made it.”
They were quiet for a moment, but Eli was not.
“I told you to stay over there,” Eli growled out.
Del jumped in and said, “We haven’t seen these people in weeks, and we thought we might not ever see them again.”
“I don’t give two shits about that,” Eli said as he locked his eyes on Henry. “I gave you an order.”
Donovan put a gentle hand on Eli’s shoulder, and said, “Sometimes, leadership is about stepping back and bending the rules a little bit.”
“I don’t need advice from you,” Eli said, shaking off Donovan’s hand. Despite sounding irked, he didn’t do anything to intercede in the reunion.
Ellen came up, and Jo broke her hug with Henry, and the two women embraced. They almost made cooing sounds as they hugged. While that was happening, Del clasped hands with Henry and gave him a man-hug that consisted of putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezing it.
Del’s expression changed, and he asked, “Lucy and Jimmy made it here safe, right?”
Jimmy was Del’s son, and Lucy was his girlfriend. When he had gone off on the mission with Jo, Russell, and Sergeant Jones, he had to say good-bye to them with no guarantee that he would ever see them again. Against all the odds, he had made it back to them, and there was nothing more that he wanted to do than see them.
“Yes, they’re here,” Henry said, glad that he could share some good news.
“Where are they?” Del asked. “I want to see them.”
A commotion sounded back into the midst of the group behind the rest of Jo and Donovan’s people. A girl’s voice could be heard.
“Get out of the way,” the voice said, “Move!”
When the crowd parted, Madison broke through a small scrum of people, and when she saw Henry, her face lit up like the Fourth of July.
“Henry!” She almost screeched and propelled herself forward like a human bullet. He barely had time to open his arms before she collided with him, spinning them both around like a top.
“Maddie, how are you?” Henry asked.
“I’m fine,” she said as she disengaged from him and took a half step back. “Man o man, it’s great to see you.”
“Same here,” he said, catching his breath from almost being hugged to death. He saw some movement over her shoulder, and a very thin teenage boy with a scarf around his neck appeared at the front of the crowd.
Madison saw him looking and followed the trajectory of his view. She said, “Oh yeah, yeah. You have to meet my...my new friend, Ryan.” She reached out and grabbed Henry’s hand and started pulling him back toward Ryan.
For his part, Ryan sported a slightly embarrassed blush of color on his face as he alternated from looking at the ground and looking up to Henry.
“Ryan meet Henry,” Madison said. “Henry, meet Ryan.”
Ryan was too awkward to make the next move, so Henry said, “Hey, glad to meet you. How did you meet Madison…and the others.”
Madison jumped in before Ryan could answer. “He was up at the old farm with the Benton Sisters and a guy named Clayton. Ryan and Clayton helped us when we took on the soldiers at the Manor.”
It was Henry’s turn to look a little awkward for a moment, then he said, “I’m glad you helped out.”
In his raspy voice, Ryan replied, “I’m glad I could do it.”
Henry wondered what was up with Ryan’s voice, but his ear caught a change in the conversation behind him.
“Why can’t we see our people?” Del asked.
“Hold up there,” Eli said, taking a step closer to Del and Henry. “Your people are here, and they are safe. We have put them up in a building north of here.”
Donovan asked, “What about my people? They should have arrived a couple of weeks ago.” There was an anxious energy behind his tone.
“How many are we talking about?” Eli. “We’ve had a lot of people show up here.”
“At least forty,” Donovan said. “There was a woman with them. Her name is Billie Sue.”
Eli nodded his head and said, “Yes, they’re here.”
“Can we see them?” Donovan asked.
“Not yet,” Eli said.
“Why not?” Del asked and the volume, and pitch of his voice escalated through those two words.
“All of you,” Eli said, gently waving a hand in the air, “are going into quarantine. That is our protocol.”
Ellen said, “But they haven’t seen their friends and families in a long time.”
“There are no exceptions to our protocols,” Eli said and then turned to Donovan and Jo. “I think Henry said something about you people having a compound or safe haven. Did you just let anyone in without first checking to make sure they weren’t infected?”
“No, but we just did a visual inspection,” Jo said.
“That’s not good enough,” Eli said. “There are way too many of you, and I can’t risk something being missed. If one of your people were infected, and they infected someone inside, we could have chaos.”
Donovan closed his eyes and surrendered to Eli’s logic. It would be the exact way he would handle it, too.
“Tell you what,” Eli said. “We can arrange for window visitations tomorrow.”
“What is that?” Jo asked.
“Your people inside can come to the window of our quarantine facility, and you can visit that way — mind you, at a distance.”
“That will work,” Donovan conceded.
Jo noticed that Eli had focused in on her, specifically looking at her midsection. Something about it made her feel uncomfortable, and she hoped that this wasn’t a harbinger of something still to come.
Eli lifted his hand and pointed to Jo’s waist. “What’s that?”
Jo took a step back and looked down at herself and asked, “What? What are you talking about?”
“That’s not a walkie-talkie,” Eli said.
A light went on in Jo’s head, and she said, “Oh, yeah. That’s a sat-phone.” She had completely forgotten that she had taken it from the truck before they were being processed.
“Who are you talking to with it?” Eli asked.
Jo lifted a hand to hear and actually scratched the side of her head for a moment. Then she replied, “You want to know the truth? No one really, but we have friends who split off from us. They have one and, well, we’ve been waiting...no, really hoping for a call, but we haven’t heard from them in months.”
“How are you keeping it charged?” Eli asked.
“I have a solar charger.”
“Hmmm, good idea,” Eli said. “Yeah, I’m going to need that from you.”
Jo took a half step back and pivoted her body in such a way to protect the satellite phone from him. Del noticed what was going on and stepped in beside her.
“I can’t have you talking to people I don’t know about,” Eli said. “That’s how your little friend, Henry, called you.”
“I don’t want to give it up,” Jo said.
“You’ll get it back,” Eli said. “I promise you that. I just can’t have you communicating with people or forces that I don’t know about.”
“I only have one person I can call,” Jo said. “It’s not like I have an army out there.”
Eli held her in a stare for a moment, tilted his head just a fraction, and said, “Okay. Think of it from my perspective. Your group could be a Trojan horse. You get inside. You call on your forces outside and feed them information. Then we are at risk.”
“God, you’re paranoid,” Jo said.
“I have to be,” Eli said. “Listen, I have trusted you enough to let you and your people in. You have to trust me that I will get you the phone back. And really, you don’t even know if your friends are still out there with the other phone.”
Jo sucked in a deep breath and considered what Eli had just laid out, and she realized that everything he said just made sense. If the roles were reversed, she’d play it the same way. So, in an effort to further build trust, she retrieved the sat-phone and extended it toward Eli.
“I want this back,” she said emphatically.
Eli took it and looked her in the eyes and said, “You will get it back. I promise you.”
The tension level dropped a few degrees, and Del used the time to examine the Sanctum from their internal vantage point. He took note of some specific items and finally said, “Hey, I’ve been looking at your walls. Are all of them around fifteen feet?”
“Most are,” Henry said, jumping in before Eli could, “but some dip down to ten and twelve feet.”
“That’s a weak spot for what is coming our way,” Del said.
“So, we’re back to that again,” Eli said with a loud sigh.
“There is no denying it,” Jo said.
“So you say,” Eli replied.
Jo ground her teeth for a moment and bit back her immediate response. “The only way to prove it to you, I guess, would be to show it to you. We don’t have time for that, and that would be a crazy risk to take just to prove a point. Del is right, I can see for myself that your place has some real strengths, but those shorter walls could be a big problem with the horde arrives.”
Eli shot his hands in the air and said, “Hold on, hold on, hold the hell on. You’re acting like this horde showing up here is a foregone conclusion. I don’t even know if there is a horde.”
Donovan spoke next, and he had decided to turn Eli’s logical approach around on him. “Okay, say you don’t believe us, but maybe what we are saying is true. Even if there were a remote chance of that, wouldn’t you want to be prepared?”
That gave Eli something to chew on for a minute, and Jo and Del decided to drive into the opening.
“How much ammunition do you have?” Jo asked.
“We had our own supplies and picked the surrounding area clean,” Eli answered back snappily. “We don’t have an endless supply, but we have enough.”
Del asked, “What about fuel?”
Eli looked to his feet for a moment, then said, “That’s an area where we will run out sooner than we will of bullets. It’s going to break down over time, anyway.”
“But what do you have on hand?”
“I would imagine, to build these walls, you have to have some heavy equipment,” Del said.
“Yes, some bulldozers and a couple backhoes,” Eli said. “What are you getting at?”
Del glanced at Jo, and something passed between them. Jo looked to Eli and said, “We can’t do much to the walls with the time we have left, but I was thinking we could build some trenches around the place. Maybe fill those in with some fuel. That would give us a fire moat.”
Del said, “Yeah, those undead bastards are still afraid of fire.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Eli asked. “That’s crazy. You’re talking about pouring a whole shit ton of our remaining fuel into some kind of half-assed moat.”
“It would protect you and your people,” Jo said.
Eli let out a long, hot breath through his nose, “There is no way that is happening. No way. No how.”
Jo closed her eyes and held them shut before she said, “If you knew what was coming, you’d do whatever it took.”
“Well, I think you think something big and bad is coming, but you’ve maybe spooked yourself,” Eli said.
Jo opened her eyes again, and Donovan looked to her and said, “We’re getting nowhere with this. We’ll have to rely on the walls and what weapons we have.”
“You know you guys are talking like I’m not here,” Eli said.
Donovan started to say something, but Eli’s walkie-talkie came to life. It was Bonds’ voice. “Eli, we have trouble.”
Eli welcomed the interruption and snatched up his walkie-talkie. “What is it now?”
“That chick who was raising hell earlier,” Bonds said, his voice showing some stress. “She’s been at the dorms outside the wall, and she’s got all those people riled up. I think they’re getting ready to storm the back gate.”
Eli looked to Henry and said, “You and that girl are making me regret I ever let you in.”
Chapter 21
Knocking at the Back Gate
It really wasn’t much of an army, but Molly had raised holy hell and roused the elderly people in the dormitory outside the walls into a tepid revolt. Some had waved her off, telling her that she was just being over-excited, but many listened and were alarmed. Of the ones who had been there before Henry and Ellen’s group had arrived, none of them had been told about the horde on its way and the inherent danger of being in buildings outside the safety of the walls. The truth be told, their group had only heard a rumor of it.
Molly told them that “Information is power.” Then said that if they didn’t get off their “old asses,” zombies would be eating them.
Once she had them mustered in the lobby of the dormitory, Molly headed them out the front door, and her aged army trudged up the slight incline that led to the back gate of the Sanctum. A few had canes, and a few others had walkers, so the march was a slow one. It really wasn’t much of an army, really.
Instead, she called them the “Gray Brigade.” Of course, she didn’t say that to their faces. There were a couple of them that has salt and pepper black and gray hair, but they were few and far between. She had done a count, but she estimated their numbers at around fifty people.
Molly had the lead with Lowell and Archie beside her. Lowell was tall and slightly stooped over with age. He was one of the slower ones as arthritis had a hold of his knees. Archie wasn’t all that frail, but his eyesight slowed him down.
“Are you sure about this?” Archie asked in a voice too loud for the distance between them, but Archie was hard of hearing, so he shouted practically every word. He also wore glasses so thick they slid down his nose every five seconds forcing him to push them back up in equal time.
“Do you old fu--,” she cut herself off before she offended their older sensibilities. She continued with, “Do you old farts want to die out there on your own?” Molly asked.
“Well, the building looks pretty secure,” Archie said.
“But IT is outside the walls,” Molly said. “Holy hell, you know what’s our coming way as well as I do.”
“I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes,” Archie said.
“Through those glasses, I’m not sure what you’ve seen, in like -- forever,” she replied with a sigh.
Lowell spoke next, “I’ve not seen it, but I trust that young Henry. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”
Molly rolled her eyes at the term, ‘Young Henry,’ and didn’t understand why old people said things that only made them sound older.
They continued to travel up the small incline toward the wall that surrounded the Sanctum when a voice shouted from behind the gate. “Stay where you are!”
Molly had no idea who it was, but under her breath, she said, “Fuck that noise.” Then she said in a much louder voice, “Just keep going, people.” She waved her arms forward to urge the ones behind her to keep moving.
Chapter 22
Cold Hard Facts
“What the hell!?” Eli said, a look of shock on his face as he watched through the back gate at the approaching parade of people.
“Let me talk to her,” Henry said, pressing close to Eli. “Please, let me talk to her.”
Henry felt a panicked ache in his chest. Molly had already had a run-in with Eli and his men. That almost didn’t end well for her. This most certainly was going to be a disaster.
Standing in the group with Henry and Eli were Ellen and Doc Wilson. The Doc insisted on tagging along in case anyone needed medical attention. There was also a large contingent of Eli’s guards. As per protocol, Jo, Del, Donovan, and the others had been shipped into quarantine. Eli was adamant about that. Essentially, they had to have some sense of order with the chaos happening at the back gate. At least, that’s what he said.
“I think the time for talk is about done,” Eli said. He took a step back from the gate and shouted to the men in the guard towers. “Do not open this gate for any reason.”
“Please,” Henry said, and he looked on the verge of tears. He saw this slowly slipping away, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
Eli turned his attention to Henry and said, “You have one minute to convince your little girlfriend that she had better turn her ass around and get those people back to the dorm or else. After that, I’m not sure what me and my men will do, but it won’t be pretty.”
Henry stepped up to the gate and peered out through the same small opening that Eli had just looked through. Molly and her procession of elderly people shuffled toward the entrance. They were still fifty feet away, but their progress was steady and true. He also saw that determined, fixed look on her face, and he wasn’t sure what he could say to get her to back down. He was beginning to agree with Eli, and this was going to end badly -- for everyone.
“Can you get Karen Gray here?” Henry asked Eli. “I want to talk to her.”
“Security is my call,” Eli replied as he crossed his arms.
“I think this is bigger than security,” Ellen said.
“You guys must have a problem with your hearing,” Eli said. “This is my call. Not hers.”
Henry saw that they weren’t getting anywhere with that tact, so he changed the approach.
“Well, thanks for giving me some time to talk to Molly,” Henry said. He looked to Ellen, and something passed between them. She just nodded her head and started backing through the crowd of guards milling about just inside the gate. Some looked eager for some action, and this made Henry nervous, but others look more than a little anxious.
