Thunder and Ashes Page 27

  “What kind of problem?” Denton asked, dropping the body he was dragging and turning to face Krueger. “More raiders? Shamblers coming this way?”

  “Ah, no,” Krueger said. “Look, just get on your radio and get Sherman over here and tell him to bring Keaton and anyone who knows anything about bombs.”

  “Bombs?!” Denton said, eyes widening. “We’re going to blow up?! What kind of bomb?”

  “Radio!” Krueger shouted, pointing at the gadget on Denton’s epaulette.

  “Oh, right, right,” Denton said, visibly shaken. He clicked the handset and made the call.

  There were a number of people gathered near the sheriff’s office. Most had come to drop off bits and pieces of gear they’d collected from the dead raiders, but some had formed a circle around Krueger’s discovery: a brown hiking pack that was crammed to the seams with plastic explosive.

  As it turned out, none of the explosives were set to detonate. They’d found det cord, blasting caps and a plunger in one of the pack’s other pockets. The plastic explosive was inert. Just the same, Keaton and Sherman kept the curious onlookers at bay while Thomas and Krueger emptied the contents of the pack onto a folding table brought out of the office just for this purpose.

  “Jesus Christ,” Krueger said, as he pulled the last brick of explosive out of the pack. He and Thomas had formed a neat stack of brown-paper-wrapped plastic explosives on the table. Each brick weighed around a pound, and they had pulled fifteen of the bricks from the bag. “That’s one shitload of explosives.”

  “What is it, though?” Keaton asked, folding his arms and turning his back on the pressing crowd momentarily. “C-4?”

  “Worse,” Thomas growled, picking up one of the bricks and reading the fine print on the underside. “Semtex.”

  “Semtex? Isn’t that military?” crowed one of the onlookers.

  “No, not quite,” Sherman said, leaning in close to inspect the blocks. “It’s used commercially, too, but the military does use it. Strange, though—it has to be imported from the Czech Republic. It’s normally relegated to special operations, at least militarily. A very powerful explosive, and there’s pounds of it here. Enough to . . .”

  Sherman let his voice trail off.

  “What?” Keaton pressed.

  “Well, I was going to say, it’s near enough to blow up a town,” Sherman concluded, then shrugged.

  The crowd of interested onlookers took an unconscious step backwards from the table and quieted.

  Keaton nodded to himself, picking up a brick of the explosive and examining it for himself. “Yeah, that’d be Herman’s style. Come in, blow up a few of our most useful buildings, then get back out—bloody our noses, like I said.”

  “So that was the whole plan,” Krueger said, piecing together the battle in his mind. “Send the infected as a distraction, penetrate the town’s defenses as we’re distracted, plant the bombs, get back out, and blow half the town sky-high. That’s brutal.”

  “Actually, it’s almost exactly what you soldiers did to Herman and his raiders the other night,” Keaton mused. “He probably thought of it as poetic justice.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask him?” said a voice in the crowd. The townsfolk parted to let through Deputy Willis. He looked haggard and worn, and sported a fresh bandage on his forearm.

  “What do you mean?” Keaton asked.

  “I’m just coming from the town clinic,” Wes said, holding up his arm. “Got myself caught on a piece of that torn wire in the fence and thought I’d better get it cleaned up. All the wounded are there and Miss Barrington and that Rebecca Hall girl are trying to treat them all. Anyway, I’m sitting there waiting for one of them to check out my cut and I look over and see fucking Herman Lutz laying in one of the beds, dead to the world.”

  “Are you serious?” Keaton pressed, excited. “Lutz was one of the attackers, and we got him alive?”

  “Alive? Mostly,” Wes said. “The guy took a couple of bullets, but it wasn’t fatal. They—Nurse Barrington and Hall, I mean—gave him a sedative to knock him out since he was apparently cussing up a storm and trying to leave.”

  “Well, shit on me,” Keaton said, awed. “We got their leader.”

  This set the townsfolk gathered around to murmuring amongst themselves. As Keaton and Willis conferred, the murmurs grew into victorious whoops and shouts, and the little crowd dispersed to take the good news to their friends and neighbors.

  “This’ll mean the end of those raiders,” Keaton said, grinning widely.

  “The Lutzes were the glue,” Willis agreed. “They were the ringleaders. Now George is dead and Herman’s in our clinic, strapped down to a bed. We can transfer him to the jail tomorrow, at least that’s what Nurse Barrington says.”

  Keaton seemed speechless. He grinned, put his hands on his hips, and nodded to himself.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Keaton stammered after a moment. “Aside from the infected, those raiders were the biggest threat to our survival out here. Now—that’s it, they’re done with. Whatever or whoever remains out of their band will probably disperse after this. We’ll have our fields back, and it’ll be safer to travel. Seems like a dream come true after these past few months.”

  Wes nodded in agreement. “I feel like we’ve just been paroled—we can go out in the world again if we need to.”

  Keaton turned to Sherman, Thomas, and Krueger. “We couldn’t have done it without your help. If you want to, I’m sure you’re welcome to stay in Abraham. The offer goes for any of you. You’re friends here.”

  “I thank you, Sheriff, but I need to get myself back on the road,” Sherman said. “I told an old friend I’d meet her in Omaha.”

  “Omaha,” Keaton drawled. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay, Sherman? If what you told us about all the major cities is true, Omaha is probably a dead zone. You might be driving to your own death.”

  “Just the same, Keaton, I told her I’d be there,” Sherman said.

  Next to Sherman, Thomas nodded slowly in agreement.

  “Look, uh, I hate to be the prying type, but I just have to know—why turn down a relatively safe town to head out to what could be your own death?” Keaton asked. “I mean, I’m not offended you’re turning down the offer or anything, but I just don’t see your motivation.”

  “Hope,” Sherman said, smiling gently at the Sheriff. “Hope, Keaton. That’s why I’m going to Omaha. My friend—the one I promised I’d meet—is a doctor. She thinks she has a chance at creating a vaccine using a facility in Omaha.”

  “A vaccine?” Keaton repeated, his eyebrows rising. “Now, that’s something worth trying and dying for.”

  “Exactly my thoughts,” Sherman said.

  “Do you really think you’re going to find it? The vaccine, I mean? Or even your friend the doctor?” Willis asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sherman admitted, “but the chance is there and I can’t give it up. We’ve got to try.”

  “Well, the offer is open to you and your people,” Keaton said. “Anyway, you’ll have time to think it over. I’m sure the people are going to want to celebrate this victory, too.”

  “Oh, another night of carousing about Abraham, a night on the town,” Krueger chuckled. “Now that I’m up for. Especially if we can get Brewster to start drinking again.”

  2031 hrs_

  Keaton’s prediction about the town wanting to celebrate had come true. He’d dismissed a sulky Deputy Willis to his guard tower post just as the festivities were warming up. Someone had brought out an old iron grill and set it up over a campfire on the lawn of the town park and was busily barbecueing fresh venison, shot earlier that afternoon. Eileen and her husband had brought their pub outside—or at least rolled a few metal kegs out to the park and tapped them. One of Abraham’s eldest residents, a man who told everyone to just call him Buck, sat in a rocking chair near the grill playing a fiddle without a care in the world. The town’s younger folks clapped and danced in time to the mus
ic, and the smell of roasting meat and frothy beer drifted across the entire gathering.

  Sherman and his survivors were once again present, only this time they were treated less as conquering heroes and more as comrades in arms. The distinction was actually a pleasant one—they all felt accepted. It was something none of them had felt in months.

  Sherman sat near the edge of the party on a park bench, sipping at a pint of Eileen’s bitter lager and laughing at the antics of the people arrayed in front of him.

  Katie tried to drag Ron into a dance, wounded leg and all, and eventually the pair worked out a deal where Katie danced normally and Ron stayed in one spot, hopping up and down on his good leg and trying not to look too foolish.

  Jack and Mitsui were sitting at a picnic table with several of the townsfolk, sampling the barbecued venison. Mitsui hadn’t had the pleasure of barbecue before, and when Jack and the townsfolk figured that out the slightly built Japanese man suddenly found himself barraged with advice in the form of different bottles of sauces and which bits and pieces of the meat were best. He barely understood a word of it, but faithfully sampled each of the platters set in front of him, bowing and thanking each of the townsfolk in turn.

  Brewster, fully recovered from his hangover, was sipping as lightly on his pint as was Sherman but didn’t allow his lack of drunkenness to get in the way of having fun. He tried to flirt with some of the town’s young women, but was rebuffed each time.

  Krueger, on the other hand, leaned back against a tree and silently drank his beer—and was bombarded with requests from those same young women to dance with them. He turned down each invitation politely.

  “What the fuck, man?” Brewster asked, throwing up his arms in exasperation after the fifth girl walked away from the pair. “I’m trying my best and I’m not getting shit, and you’re doing shit and getting the best. What’s going on here?!”

  “You ever see Airheads?” Krueger asked around a sip of beer. Brewster shook his head. “Old comedy movie. Anyway, what I’m doing is ‘the quiet cool.’ You just lean back, act confident, pretend like nothing around you is worth your attention, and man, it drives the ladies nuts.”

  “So why do you keep saying no?” Brewster asked, putting his hands on his hips and glaring.

  “Adds to the act,” Krueger said. “Eventually word’ll get around that there’s this mysterious soldier who can’t be charmed, even by half a dozen young ladies, and when that happens, the real beauties will start swinging by to try and get me to dance. You’ll see.”

  “Fuck you,” Brewster said, holding up a middle finger.

  Denton was maintaining his distance, slowly circling the town park with his camera hanging around his neck. He’d dragged it out earlier in the day and had taken shots of the battlefield, and was now taking another opportunity to document his journey. Every now and then his flash would light up the park as he took photos of the dancing crowd, Buck the fiddle-player, a pair of young lovers on a bench, and one of Brewster glaring at Krueger, who was surrounded by adoring women.

  Rebecca was nowhere near the celebration. She was still at the clinic, along with Nurse Barrington and Mbutu Ngasy. The three were doing their best with minimal supplies to treat the wounds caused by the day’s violence. Two of the townsfolk had already died of their wounds, and they were put in the morgue until the next morning, when they would be buried. That still left a full dozen in the ward, and there was no real doctor anywhere nearby. Nurse Barrington was the closest thing the town had.

  Off on the border of town, Deputy Willis puffed on a cigarette—one of the few remaining in town—and stared out over the open fields. Behind him he could hear the music and the laughter of the party, and grimaced again at having to pull guard duty while everyone else enjoyed themselves. Out across the field, however, stood a stark comparison to the celebration in Abraham: a pile of blackened and charred bodies, smoke still rising off of their cracked and deformed limbs.

  Let that stand as a warning, Wes thought as he looked at the pile. Anyone coming into Abraham from now on will have to pass by that shitty sight. Let ’em. I don’t want to have to shoot another human being as long as I live, and if a pile of burned corpses is the only guarantee I can get, I’ll take it.

  Wes spat off the side of the guard tower and rested his arms on the ledge, sighing heavily.

  Near the center of town, close enough to the park to hear the music and smell the barbecue, Jose Arctura was busy in his shop. He had his end of a bargain to fulfill. His daughter was off enjoying the celebration, but he had closed himself up in his garage and was busy surveying the vehicles that Sherman and his friends had brought in.

  Jose looked over the sedan, grimaced, and wrote it off as a piece of junk that wouldn’t last much longer.

  The black pickup that Sherman and the rest had taken from the raiders was in nearly perfect shape. A few bullet holes had dinged up the exterior, but when Jose looked under the hood, he saw that everything was in working order and nodded to himself, allowing the hood to slam down. He moved on to the utility truck, the largest of the three vehicles.

  “You’re in a sorry state, friend,” Jose said, running his hand along the side of the boxy truck. “But we’ll see if we can get you back into working order . . . or better than working order.”

  Jose turned to a cinderblock wall covered in hanging tools and equipment. He pulled on a welder’s mask, freed his torch from a tangle of cables, and turned to face the utility truck. He sparked the torch and adjusted the flame, then lowered the mask over his face.

  “All right,” Jose said, approaching the truck with the blue-flamed torch in hand. “Let’s see what I can do.”

  Long into the night the sound of roaring tools and the clang of metal on metal rang out from Jose Arctura’s body shop, and didn’t cease even after the party had ended and the good people of Abraham had gone, full, sated and happy, to their beds.

  March 10

  1032 hrs_

  The town was slow to awaken the next morning, which was just as well. The weather dawned warm and humid, and low-lying clouds sprinkled the area with a steady drizzle. By the time midmorning had passed, the clouds were just beginning to break up and the first rays of direct sunlight began to shine through.

  Deputy Willis had spent all night in his guard tower, and midmorning saw him leaning against one of the rebar supports, eyelids heavy and drooping. The steady clank-clank of booted footsteps on the ladder leading up roused him from his doze, and as he turned he saw Sherman pulling himself up into the tower, holding a styrofoam cup in one hand.

  “Morning,” Sherman said, offering the cup to Willis. Wes accepted it and sniffed at it.

  “Coffee?” Willis asked. “Haven’t had a cup of this in about a month.”

  “It’s instant,” Sherman warned. “Keaton broke it out at the station this morning, said we could all use a little treat, even if it is only Sanka.”

  “Here’s to instant, then,” Wes said, taking a sip from the cup. He grimaced, but swallowed it down. “It’s not decaf, is it?”

  “Not at all,” Sherman chuckled. “So it’s not a total loss. You’ve been out here all night?”

  Wes nodded around another sip of coffee. “Keaton isn’t big on set schedules for us deputies. He’ll probably have a replacement around for me before noon. We tend to pull down about twelve hour shifts.”

  “So you missed the party last night,” Sherman said.

  “Yeah,” Willis shrugged. “No biggie. Someone had to stay on duty. By the way, I think you might want to swing by Jose’s shop sometime today. I was sitting up here at four in the A.M. and I could still hear him banging away in there. I don’t know what he’s up to but you might want to take a look.”

  “Well, he told us it would probably take a couple of days before he finished. Jack—wait, did you meet Jack?” Sherman asked.

  “Taller fellow, brown hair, about 180?” Willis asked.

  “That sounds like him,” Sherman nodded.


  “I think so,” Willis said. “What about him?”

  “Jack’s a contractor, handy with a torch. Said he was going over there when he woke up today to see if he could help. I’ll trust him to keep an eye on things,” Sherman explained.

  “I’m not suggesting you need to keep an eye on Arctura or anything,” Willis was quick to explain as he took another sip of his coffee. “It’s just that from the sound of the place he’s tearing right into that job—and from what I can remember before the pandemic, if a mechanic tells you it’s going to take a couple days what he really means is a couple weeks.”

  Sherman frowned and sighed. “Well, I can’t have that. I wanted to get on the road within the next day or so.”

  “Good thing that Jack guy’s going over there, then,” Wes said. “He’ll be able to move him along, keep the pace up. Though I’m betting that Jose’s grateful enough for what you did for him that he’ll keep up his end of the bargain.”

  “I’m hoping so, too,” Sherman said. “Well, I’m going to head over to the Sheriff’s office again and see what else is brewing— besides bad coffee.”

  Willis chuckled. “Thanks for stopping by. And remind Keaton when you see him that I’ve been up here since last night.”

  “I will.”

  Sherman was greeted by the sound of raucous laughter as he entered Sheriff Keaton’s station. Three of the deputies as well as Thomas and Krueger were gathered around the coffee pot sharing stories, and Keaton was in the middle of a tale about one of his small-town criminals.

  “So he’s just robbed Ruby’s convenience store just outside of town,” Keaton said between chuckles, “And I’m driving out there to respond when I pass this guy jogging in the opposite direction—completely naked!”

  The deputies, who had heard this story before, all stifled their laughter. Krueger and Thomas looked at one another incredulously.