“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.”
-Aleister Crowley
”One, two, three, and HOIST!”
Dezba pushed down hard with his left foot heard a loud grunt as Batista’s hands strained to hold him. At the top, the waiting arms of Whitman and Morris were waiting and helped pull him over the parapet. This consisted of hoisting him over the last two feet of the wall until he could get his legs over and stand on the improvised walkway. The two-by-fours creaked under their combined weight, but seemed sturdy enough to support them.
Morris shook his fingers as soon as Dezba let go with his left hand. The grip of the metal fingers was clearly more than he was used to.
“Sorry about that,” he muttered.
“Quite the Kung Fu grip you got there, Sarge,” he replied.
Dezba moved to another section of the walkway and brought his weapon around. Majorca was next up, leaving only Batista to get up the wall with the help of a running jump. Morris and Whitman were there to catch him and pulled as hard as they could until he cleared the wall’s edge and made it over.
Dezba surveyed their immediate surroundings while the others grabbed their weapons and began moving towards him. Directly beneath them, a road that had at one time encircled the small town ran. Now it was little more than a alleyway that sat between the wall and the nearest set of houses.
The doorway was just to their left now, several massive sheets of plywood screwed together with more two-by-fours and braced with what appeared to be a former flagpole. On the ground, some metal rods secured it to the concrete, and chain was fastened where the pole met some metal braces.
“Alright, squad,” he said, addressing them now that they were all on top of the wall. “Batista, you’re on lookout. The rest of us…” he looked around them for signs of a ladder. None were immediately visible. “Shit, I guess we’re jumping down then.”
Passing his M4 to Whitman, Dezba crouched low and dangled his feet from the walkway. Grabbing hold of the wood platform, he began dangling his body slowly down. Even fully extended, his feet were about a meter from the ground, and his prosthetic was feeling like it might come loose at any second. The attaching mechanism just wasn’t secure enough for all this climbing.
He would have to be sure to raise the issue with Andrews later, assuming the man would even see him. After all they’d put him through, he was likely to still be feeling a bit sore.
Letting go, his boots slapped against the asphalt and he fell backwards, landing on his pack. He checked his ankles to make sure they were both still in working order. Satisfied, he rolled back onto his feet and reached up. Whitman adjusted the strap on his weapon and began passing it down into his waiting grasp.
He did a quick shoulder check to make sure the commotion was not drawing the attention of any unexpected guests. Nothing was approaching from the nearest properties, living or otherwise.
“Batista, any signs of life?”
Batista lowered his binoculars and shook his head. “Nothing on the main strip, nothing inside the houses. Not that I can see from here.”
Not a good sign, he thought. At this point, any kind of activity would have been preferable to all this quiet. Dezba looked back up just in time to see Whitman’s legs dangling down in front of him. His wandering boot nearly caught Dezba in the nose, sending him back a foot.
“Dammit, Billy! Warn me before you start dangling down.”
“Love if when you talk dirty, sir! Now could you please catch me?”
“Pussy,” Dezba grumbled, grabbing Whitman around his knees and easing him down,
* * *
“Shit, these things are stuck!”
Morris and Batista struggled to get the bolts clear while Whitman removed the bar from the door. Dezba and Majorca kept watch while they worked, ensuring that their backs were kept clear. The sun was now beginning to climb in the sky, turning the low lying haze into fully-fledged heat devils. They could see to the edge of the settlement from here, the eastern wall standing in the far distance and reaching across the road.
From this angle, the walls were only two hundred meters apart, running perpendicular to the road the settlement straddled. They extended far further from north-west to south-east, which corresponded to the general layout of the old town. In the old days, some 500 people have lived here, before the First Wave had hit. By the time the walls had gone in, that number had dropped to about 100, but slowly trickled back up as survivors were resettled.
And now, it was a ghost town…
“I hate this,” said Majorca, his SAW aimed low.
“What do you mean?” asked Dezba.
“I mean, walking into a place like this, no goddamned idea if its infested, if anyone’s even alive or not. Half of me wants to just set off an incendiary, burn the whole place down.”
“That’s no good, Corporal. Plenty of people could be living here someday soon. We don’t want them to inherit a pile of ashes right?”
“Yeah, and there could actually be some still hiding in here somewhere,” he said. “That’s what I hate. The uncertainty. The thought that we’ll be clearing them out one by one while those tankers just roll on through.”
A loud clank from behind him caught Dezba’s attention and made him look over his shoulder. A quick check revealed that one of the bolts had finally yielded.
“We got one!” Whitman yelled triumphantly.
“Good, I was worried we’d have to get a fucking tool kit in here!” said Morris.
Dezba chuckled. “That’s good, but could you pick this up? We got people waiting on us.”
“Not our fault, sir. These damn things are rusted to shit. Won’t budge without a fight.”
“Forget tools, some lube would work. I should have brought the gun oil.”
Dezba noted the use of the word lube and waited for Whitman to crack a crass joke. Surprisingly, he emitted nothing but a series grunts as he and the others triple teamed the second bolt.
“You know what would work?” Majorca said next. “You remember that pheromone the Doc’s and his people made for us?”
Dezba nodded. Even though his own experience with it had been limited, due to his extended convalescence, the stuff had been hard to forget. It smelt like ass and drew every Whiskey within a hundred yards to its location, without fail. He remembered quite clearly how enamored they had looked, all those rotting, white-eyed bastards running to an open canister like kids to a pile of candy.
“If we had some of that, we could just pop it off in the middle of the road up there. Wait for all the fuckers to wander out and face us. If none came, we’d know for a fact this place was clear and be able to take the rest of the morning off.”
Dezba smiled and felt like voicing his agreement. But something along the road caught his eye, moving against the background of the far wall. It was hard to make out at this distance, and what with the heat devils rising in front of him. But a quick check through his scope confirmed that something was there.
“Sir? What is it?”
Dezba didn’t answer and stepped a few paces closer to it. He kept the scope trained and waited for the whites to appear. The figure was moving slowly, ambling, but he wouldn’t be sure until he saw those telltale dead globes. Even through a scope, they were unmistakable. Even across a wavy, sun-baked distance…
“Squad!” he yelled. “Get that door open. We got company.”
All heads turned to look at him at once. No questions followed, but none were necessary. Ever member of the squad had come to trust his judgement in these things. Whenever the bastards were present, he always seemed to know. It was a strange connection he had to them, one which he dared not explain.
Dezba heart quickened as the sight of two more entered his field of view. Scanning with his scope, he increased that tally to five more, then eight, and then. Beside him, Majorca raised his SAW and began aiming down his sights. He must have spotted them too, because his breathing suddenly became constricted. Whatever uncertainty he had had was suddenly gone.
“Don’t think we’re going to be needing any pheromones today, Corporal,” he said. “Looks like they’ve managed to sniff us out.”
