Ploughshares Into Swords: Survivor Chronicles 2

By Mike Sutton

Year One on the new calender has passed.

With his family safe and secure in their new paradise, Jason once again feels twinges of wanderlust drive his feet. Sometimes though, it's just better to stay home. Meanwhile, a new force arises in the south. An army of survivors marching across the countryside towards the dead city of Jefferson. Swords in hand they cleanse the land of the walking dead, burning the nameless towns of the waste as funeral pyres for our lost civilization. Even as they try to forge a new one out of the ashes.

Second chapter of the series.

146,000 Words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Sutton
• Release date: Aug 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476339719

Mike Sutton

A biography eh? Well we'll keep this short and down to the bare essentials. Mike likes shiny objects. Is a passably proficient drooler. And is thankful to the Computing Gods for the benevolent gift of spell-check software to our unworthy species. Since you're interested enough to have gotten this far, kindly leave some feedback in the form of ratings and reviews.

Book preview

Ploughshares Into Swords: Survivor Chronicles Book 2

Mike Sutton

Published by Mike Sutton at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Mike Sutton

ISBN: 9781476339719

But war which takes away the easy supply of their daily needs is a rough teacher, which brings most men’s character down to the level of their circumstances. - Thucydides

Jason’s long anticipated rambling was put on hold for a few weeks as spring bloomed around them. There were more important tasks ahead and they came before his exploring.

He had thought that mixing and pouring of the cement to make up the house’s foundation had been a difficult task. And it was. But it didn’t much compare to busting sod all day and then tilling the earth beneath.

The infestation of tall grass, which covered much of the valley floor, was adamant that it did not wish to be moved from where it grew. Even with four strong, young people, steel shovels and the lawn tractor they had liberated from their closest neighbor, making enough garden space to feed themselves, plus any newcomers who might happen along, took three weeks. This included turning the soil and planting the crops.

They had finished the planting when Douglas noticed their next problem. Deer. Deer would eat just about everything they planted if they didn’t take some sort of preventative measures. ‘Preventative measures’ was Douglas’ wordy, long-winded way of saying that they needed to ‘build a fence’. Ralph figured it out almost at once and decided that a split rail fence would serve best considering their resources and distaste for another attempted foray into town. They hadn’t yet forgotten the result of their last.

That was how Jason found himself helping to fell trees and dragging them across the bridge that they had built over the creek using leftover cinder blocks and lumber from the house and garage. The garage had been built between the end of October and the first snows. The clearing of the trees would help them, two-fold. First, it would give them the lumber they needed to build the fence, secondly it would open up more space in their little clearing for more growth.

The work was hard, but good. Rewarding. Jason wondered if this was how life felt like on the frontiers two hundred years before. Hard work and exhaustion doubled with a deep sense of accomplishment as they dropped off to sleep at night after a long and tiring day of trying physical labor. The near constant ache in his arms and shoulders. Jason felt like he lost ten pounds of fat and gained five pounds of muscle over the weeks of toil. He even considered growing out a beard before remembering that his utmost undertakings at raising a good crop of facial hair had ended disastrously in the past. In truth, he looked as if he glued hair to random spots on his face. His was a pathetic sight to behold. Well Lynn Billy had laughed their asses off each and every time he struck out to cover his baby face with a fresh crop of manly whiskers. The rest of humanity was somewhat kinder as they shook their heads and hid a grin as they passed him on the street. He looked like a sixteen year old boy trying to grow his first beard.

Jason resisted the urge to grow facial hair and wear overalls, as difficult as it was, and got on with the work. After the fence went up, they started working on Lynn’s apple orchard.

She had talked them into putting up a small orchard of ten trees for fresh fruit in the fall and over the winter months. At least they would have the fruit a few years down the road. Fruit trees needed years to mature according to Amy, who to Jason’s astonishment had grown up in the country.

Lynn though insisted on having the trees planted now, even if they wouldn’t get any real use for the intervening years. That was Lynn, thinking years ahead of the game. While it seemed like the rest of them were still worrying too much about what had happened only the day before, to even stop and consider tomorrow.

Jason didn’t mind much. After removing the several acres of sod, planting a few trees was a cakewalk. Besides, he loved fresh apples. There were few foodstuffs that tasted better than a good apple. Though he was disappointed that there weren’t any Braeburn trees available. They got Northern Spies instead. Spies were delicious apples, if not quite as tasty as Braeburns, but they would do.

Jason’s feet began to itch more as the spring began to pass him by. Even though the work here had meaning, there were other duties for him to perform. They had discussed it over the winter months, when they could tear themselves away from playing games and watching movies, and everyone had decided that their little community needed more people. Jason had of course immediately volunteered to go out and try and recruit some when the snow cleared up. All that kept him in place was the huge amount of work required to get a farm up and running before the summer took over in full and the growing season passed them by.

May had begun, or so they calculated, before Jason finally had a chance to give his motorcycle a solid road test. The journey took him away from the farm for several days straight as he checked in on a few small towns that dotted the hills along the minor state roads. In Copper Point, a minor village that was barely worth the name, he found his first survivors, a pair of puppies. Lynn and Amy were overjoyed to get the dogs, as was Ralph, who saw their potential as guards right away. Douglas complained that he was allergic, making it clear that the dogs would not be staying in the house with him. That was ok with everyone else, since they were already beginning construction on a handful of smaller cabins for the privacy of the couples. Soon enough, Jason was going to have the big house to himself at nights. At least when he was at home.

Jason remained on the farm for a full week. Cooing to the babies. Helping put windows into a couple of the cabins and some other construction chores that needed an extra pair of strong hands. Playing video games with Lynn and Douglas, he had nearly gotten Barbie her perfect pair of shoes to go with her little black dress before her big date with Ken. And eating actual home cooked meals (a huge improvement over the freeze dried fare to which he had become accustomed in his roving). He spent the week enjoying the company of his family before another attack of wanderlust overcame him, sending him out once more into the world.

He left behind his sword. He didn’t think that it would do him too much good anyways, considering the large number of zombies still walking the earth. Worse yet, there were the other humans. Jason slid his rifle into the scabbard that Ralph had secured to the front of his bike. The shotgun went across his back, and his trusty .45 was on his hip. A couple boxes of shells went into his saddlebag, and the spare magazines for the pistol were in his coat pocket.

Jason gave everyone a hug, kissed Lynn on the cheek, and said farewell.

Keep in touch Jason, said Lynn as he mounted his bike. He held up the radio and waved to them all before kick-starting the engine and starting on his way.

When he rolled out of their driveway and onto the he felt a lot like the Mel Gibson character Mad Max. A bad-assed leather clad, holocaust surviving, road warrior out to traverse the wastelands that arose out of the wreck of human civilization. Except, Jason was well fed, armed to the teeth and not surrounded by the arid deserts of the Australian outback. Even so, there were the marauders to look out for.

Thinking about Mad Max made him wonder about himself. Mad Max had been a selfish anti-hero, a man who was only out to survive and save his own neck. Such a character made for good cinema, but Jason worried about becoming that hard assed himself. Ever since he killed the man in the gaming shop, he wondered what he was becoming. The act of violence, taking another human being’s life, had been exciting for him. Sickening, but exhilarating none the less for all of the nausea that he experienced, brought on by the bloodshed.

What if it happened again? Would he feel that same thrill? Would he crave more blood, would he become a mindless rabid animal that delighted only in hunting and killing other men? Jason worried that he would grow to like killing. The fear boiled his stomach, as he lay awake at nights mulling it over in his mind, picturing situations that grew more and more terrible as he drifted off to sleep.

Trying to decide which would be the worst fate was a difficult process. Whether it was being a zombie and preying on the remainder of humanity, or becoming a bandit and doing the same. In the end, he chose zombie as the lesser of the two evils. The undead at least didn’t know what they were doing and had no real control. They were enslaved by their instincts. The marauders however did have options open to them, but instead sold their souls, discarded their humanity, and become beasts.

It struck Jason then and there, nearly causing him to lose control of his bike and spilling himself into the ditch that ran along the roadside. Wild and rabid beasts needed to be hunted and killed when they endangered the world around them. Damn it. He knew he was about to embark on something very stupid and even more dangerous, and he did not care for the road that he was setting himself to travel. Not in the least. He realized that the unease wasn’t going to stop him from his own chosen path. Death aside, it looked like nothing else would either. Jason slapped himself for playing the romantic fool once more and then drove off down the road, eager take up his quest.

While he was hunting the bandits of the world, he decided that he would kill zombies too. Making the world a better place, one walking corpse at a time.

######

He stuck to the back roads and the rinky-dink villages that randomly dotted the countryside like a handful pebbles dropped from the heavens. Each time he came to one, and most had been no bigger than a hundred or so people in their heyday, he would stop his bike well outside of the village limits and scout ahead on foot to make sure that he didn’t give himself away and leap straight into an ambush.

The little towns were small enough for him to take by himself if he was careful, and he was. Walking from building to building, room to room. Shotgun in hand, and wishing that he had something smaller. The shotgun didn’t make the best close quarters weapon, and when he hit a body, it tended to shatter and blow apart, making a huge mess. He had the .45, but ammo for it was scarce.

Jason took it slowly and worked methodically. There were no mad rushes, or last stands against hundreds of shambling corpses. He would clean the streets, finding every stay zombie that he could before moving onto the buildings. First he would walk the perimeter of the house, peering into all of the windows on the ground floor, until he found every zombie in the building. Then he would return to the front door and let himself in, whether it was unlocked or he had to kick the door down. Then, one room after another would be neutralized, cleansed and repainted with human gore well enough to make Jackson Pollock proud. He followed the same pattern a hundred times. Killing, what he guessed was over five hundred zombies. By the time he was done, he had given the shotgun a name. Sleep Bringer.

Being the North Country as he was, every little gas station seemed to carry shotgun shells, so ammunition was never really a problem. Nor were rifle bullets. He even found a couple boxes of spare rounds for his .45. Very good, because he had used up all of the shells that he had brought with him in the first day of his hunt.

He cleared Anchor, Sands Corners, Jed’s Crossing, and Harlow of zombies in the first ten days of his journey. With each town he cleared, he marked it with a red ‘X’ on the road map that he carried with him. He stopped each night to eat, if he could manage to keep down any food, and clean his weapons before going to sleep. He usually bedded down in one of the buildings that had been completely empty when he arrived on the spot. If there were any. He had no real interest in staying in a house where he had re-painted in the style of a modernist master artist. In the morning, he would look around the town one more time before moving on the next morning. Looking for the next town that was in need of liberation and sanitation.

In those four towns, there were no people. Living ones anyway. Jason fell into a slight depression at the end of the first week. The constant report of his shotgun, and the bloodbath that accompanied it, wore on his nerves. He began to miss the sound of the human voice. Ten days, four dead villages and the loneliness of life as a solitary avenger all wore away at his mind. So much so that when he rolled into the town of Elk on the far eastern edge of, and heard the laughter of children playing, he was sure that he had finally snapped and gone insane.

The first thing he noticed was that the streets of Washburne’s Place, a village that had at one time housed perhaps a seven hundred and fifty hundred souls, was that they were completely clear of the undead. Which was a first in his experience, even counting that little no-name crossroads, Junction 42, that the had passed through briefly three days before.

The main drag into town was blocked off by barricades of automobiles that had been pushed onto their sides and then wrapped with barbed wire. Jason drove up to the barricade and halted. After skimming along the outskirts and scouting around the first couple of homes, Jason drove back out of town a little ways.

Somebody had made a lot of effort to keep others out. Yet there were no guards that he could see. Strange. It made him wary. The wariness made his hackles rise, as if he knew that he was being watched.

Jason turned his bike around and drove away from the barricade, about a half a mile back up the highway. He could feel eyes upon his back as he went, and that made his shoulders twitch as if they knew that at any second they were about to receive a bullet between them. He turned off the road into the trees.

Both sides of the highway were forested with evenly planted rows of tall pine trees. Handy work of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. The government had taken thousands of unemployed volunteers from all over the country and put them to work replanting forests all along the north. The straight lines of trees looked forced and unnatural, almost a blight on the landscape in some respects. Well groomed wilderness, a living oxymoron.

The little town was actually in the center of one of the great CCC planted forests. Settled in a small clearing, with row after row of fifty-foot pine trees, straight as a pole, towering on all sides. The barricade had actually been erected to fill the span between the walls of lumber that lined both sides of the asphalt river. He supposed that he could have gone around the barricade, but had decided that it was better to step through the front door. Doing so would appear to be less suspicious. Anything that wouldn’t get him shot by trigger-happy town defenders was alright by Jason. Even if it did require a bit more walking on his part.

The tall lines of pine trees were easy to navigate, so he drove his motorcycle in perhaps a half a mile, before he found a likely place to hide it. He dismounted his bike, leaving it leaning against a tree for a moment as he sorted himself out. He had located a nice shallow depression and laid the bike down on its side in the hole. He flicked on his walkie-talkie and the CB radio that he had been carrying and scanned the channels looking for chatter. He found it, channel seven on the walkie-talkie.

There were guards, and they had had him in their crosshairs. Several people were asking why they didn’t shoot when they had the chance, others suggesting that if given a second chance, they should take it. Listening to the discussion made Jason shudder. He liked his head where it currently was located.

He unslung the bandoleer carrying the shotgun and extra shells from across his shoulder and left it hanging from the handlebar of his bike. The leather jacket followed. Jason hid the bike using fallen tree branches as makeshift camouflage. He left most of his weapons behind, except his sidearm. Jason didn’t want anyone’s fingers getting itchy when he walked up and knocked.

The weather that day was warm and the coat would only make him appear to be concealing something underneath. Check that. Those fingers were already itchy enough as it was, he didn’t need to make it worse for himself.

Jason walked back out of the road and stepped from between the trees. He had clipped his walkie-talkie onto his belt and his hands at his sides as he walked. He’s back again! There he is! Four different voices yelled almost at once. Instantly the debate began anew, with several voices calling for an end to him. Jason faltered for a moment, mid stride as a woman screeched for the snipers to blow his head off where he stood. No shot came. He set a comfortable pace for himself towards the barricade.

He had to hitch his belt up a little as he squeezed through a gap between two of the cars. On the other side of the barrier, he stopped and held up his hands for a moment. The chatter intensified. He had an impish idea, one that would likely get him into trouble with those folks intent on ganking him right then and there. But he couldn’t help himself.

Jason picked up the walkie-talkie from where he had clipped it onto the belt, lifted it to his mouth, pushed the button and said, Hello? Is anyone going to come and greet me? He grinned widely when the airwaves exploded with noise as everyone in town tried to speak at the same time. He clipped the walkie-talkie back onto his belt, crossed his arms, leaned back against one of the cars the formed the barricade behind him and waited, enjoying the sunlight and the cool breeze as he did. It was a good day to die.

The wait wasn’t a long one. Within moments a group of well-armed defenders exited a large brick building and was marching down the street with their weapons trained on him. Jason tried to look nonchalant and maybe he succeeded, he didn’t know. He did know that his heart was racing as he waited and he was beginning to feel a little sick and lot nervous. He managed not to piss himself, and that was a start. Wouldn’t it just a case of sweet irony if he had just walked into a town run by the same assholes he was looking to gun down.

He wished fervently that he had considered that before he left his shotgun with his bike and then sauntered into town and announced himself. Talk about all the stupid… The leader of the guards hailed him mid-thought Something we can help you with there guy?

Jason raised his hand and waved back, sending a ripple through the oncoming crowd as gun barrels tracked him and his moving hand. Jason mentally kicked himself again. ‘No sudden movements dummy’. The grin from his earlier little prank had long since faded into a sickly shadow if its former self. He tried to keep the smile, but not wetting himself and whimpering was about all Jason could manage for the moment. Some of his guards looked more than a little bloodthirsty.

The men spread out in a semi-circle in front of him, with their leader at the center. A man with a weathered face full of gray speckled five-o-clock shadow. He was wearing heavy work Carhart overalls, despite the day’s heat, and holding a full-length double-barreled shotgun which he was blessedly pointing at the ground. The man was fairly intelligent and realized that he didn’t need seven guns pointed at a stranger who was standing naked in comparison.

The leader spoke again, I said is there something we can help you with?

Not shooting me and then violating the nether regions of my corpse would be a nice start.

A look of expression confused disgust appeared on more than one face, the spokesman not the least of them. What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Well there’s a gang of you all, pointing guns at me and you look rather intent on doing me ugly. And if I read your radio chatter right, there’s even more of you out there with rifles. If you don’t want company, say the words and I’ll be off and won’t bother you again. The guards looked at one another.

Why are you here? The spokesman waved for his people to relax a little and lower their guns. Mostly they ignored him, though a couple did comply and eased off a bit. The lack of discipline left Jason feeling even more naked and anxious. What if one of them just decided to grease him then and there. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Jason stomped it down as hard as he could. He was sweating enough as it was, there was no need to lose control of his excavation functions.

Looking for other survivors.

What?

I’m part of another colony of survivors, and I was sent out to find other living breathing human beings. An emissary or ambassador I guess.

Are you now there buddy?

Aye, preferably friendly ones.

And what if we’re not friendly?

Well, then I’ll have to inform you that you’re all under arrest. Jason found himself channeling Billy again and the smart assed comment was out of his mouth before he could stop it. He waited for the explosion of gunshots and the inevitable pain that it would bring, or if he was lucky, silent blackness.

Instead the leader grinned, and he brought on a few chuckles. More of the guards lowered their weapons and smiled at him. Not all of them, but most.

What’s your name buddy?

Jason. It was a start. They hadn’t shot him yet, and if they did, they could at least put a name to the corpse. And they hadn’t yet informed him that ‘he had a real pretty mouth’. I come from a small homestead to the south east of Eagle Rapids.

Well welcome to corpse-free Washburne’s Place Jason. I’m Rick, and these are the Main Street Irregulars. Jason bowed and waved to his hosts, and received another chuckle in return. Rick waved for him to follow and led Jason and the guards back towards the building from which they had come from. My apologies for your rough treatment, but we’ve had some unpleasant company in the past.

Marauders?

Yep, ain’t it just shitty how good folk turn bad so fast? You folks had trouble with them out your way?

Not as such, we ran into a gang when we were requisitioning supplies from Eagle Rapids.

They hit ya hard did they?

They tried. We killed at least two of them when they jumped us in the store, and shot two more in a chase through the streets. They made it clear that they were intent on killing me and raping my two friends.

You been out wandering long guy?

A little less than two weeks.

Any luck?

This is the first town I’ve found that wasn’t left to an army of zombies. It was looking bleak up until an hour ago.

Well, would you like something to eat? You look like a fellow who can enjoy a good meal.

That would be nice, I haven’t had anything but cold canned food and that freeze dried stuff since I left home.

Rick led him to the empty dining room of an old antique store/restaurant. The entire building was lit by the large picture window that faced the street. The building smelled of cooking. Maps and papers covered many of the tables. The eatery gave the distinct feeling that it had been in heavy use for town meetings and other gatherings of that nature.

######

The man set his long handled war hammer on the grassy bank before taking off his leather gloves and jacket. The hammer was a fine weapon, made of hand-forged steel with a solid hickory handle. A good heft and spring, able to crush any foe so unfortunate to fall beneath its path on a downward stroke. A weapon with history, one that had seen heavy use in the few months since he had picked it up and made it his own. Perhaps even a weapon deserving of a name, like in the Viking sagas of old.

He leaned over the small clear stream that was babbling cheerfully at his feet, watching the minnows play in the shallows as some bugs skimmed across the surface. His reflection stared back at him, deep-set eyes stared back out beneath a dark set of brows with a full day’s worth of stubble covering his chin and the top of his head. He looked like he had suffered through a hard life in his short forty-seven years of being alive, in this case appearances were not at all deceiving.

The man looked as if he had spent hard time in prison, or living alone on the frontier or some other such dangerous lifestyle. People were often surprised to find out that he had at one time been a scholar at a well-accredited private university. Spending his time prodding his graduate students and trying to nudge them in directions that he felt they should follow, which usually meant in a path similar to his own, like any good advisor. He was also highly skilled at avoiding undergrads.

Let the rest of the faculty deal with the undergrads, he had always said, I’ll wait until they have a few more years of education, preferably after they’ve grown out of the drinking phase that the young often seemed to be enveloped in. Onlookers never seemed to realize that most of the lines that marred his face had arrived only with the past year of life.

Barry removed from a plastic bag his strait razor and a bar of soap. Muttering a prayer, he wetted down his face, lathered up the soap and began his grooming ritual, scraping away all the whiskers on his chin. Then he lathered down his closely cropped hair. With cupped hands, he rinsed his face and head with water scooped from the stream.

Clean and smooth once more and ready for another day of labor towards repentance. Waving away the flies that were swarming above the surface of the waterway, he splashed some rubbing alcohol on his cheeks and scalp, nearly enjoying the stinging as it cleansed his skin.

He was leaning over the river and drinking water from the palm of his hand when he heard the footsteps approaching him from behind. Carefully he reached for his hammer before turning around to greet his new guest. A tall slender man with closely cropped blonde hair and a submachine gun in one hand and a machete at his hip stood about fifteen feet away. He was wearing a leather jacket of his own with a pair of leather gloves covering his hands. The slender man saluted Barry by holding his right fist over his heart before snapping to attention.

What is it Victor? asked Barry as he put his coat back on and stood up, turning in the direction of the camp. He tried to keep the warmth from his voice as he was fond of the younger man, most of the camp was, but it would be improper to form a deep friendship with a subordinate. Instead, he tried to act as a teacher, or even a father.

He could tell that the young man was nearly aching to spill the information that he had gathered at the morning’s meetings. Victor was an eager young man, ambitious, perhaps bordering on fanatical when it involved the cause. In Barry’s eyes these were excellent traits in his second in command. Zeal was to be succored, and the flames of spiritual desire to be fanned. Their work was difficult, but it must be done, and it would take a strong faith as well as body to see it through to the end.

Sir, the scouts have returned and reported their findings!

Is that so? Barry motioned to Victor and they both began to walk through the woods back towards their base camp. They danced over the roots that had entwined their way across the small deer trail that meandered through the thicket between the field beyond and the stream within. Barry shrugged on his jacket, storing his gloves in the pocket. He would not need them just yet.

Yes sir!

What news did they bring?

They have found a small village about fifty miles to the north west that is crawling with the damned.

Crawling? Barry grunted, his scouts might need to be disciplined again, they were becoming sloppy with the intelligence. Intelligence was their most important asset. Good intelligence had always meant the difference between life and death for an army. In this war death in battle meant eternal damnation. Did they say how many?

My words sir, not theirs. They estimated around two or three thousand of the damned were walking the streets of the town, as well as an unknown number inside the buildings. Barry nodded. This town would truly need to be cleansed soon.

I shall need to take a look. Any other sightings in our perimeter?

They said that they encountered a scattering of the corpses, but that they were all quickly dispatched back to hell! Yes indeed, zeal burned deeply in the young man, he would eventually be a fine leader, and the next one to take the cause out of Barry’s own hands. At least after he was finished absorbing the rest of the important lessons of the crusade. Barry rubbed the iron medallion, a pair of swords crossing under burst of a flame, that hung at his belt and quietly recited a prayer asking for God’s blessing and strength for the day’s work ahead.

The two men stepped out of the trees and into the camp. Answering hails and well wishes from their fellow crusaders. These were his people. He had begun gathering them soon after the coming of the Day of Judgment. A bus full here, a couple more there. Until they numbered a few thousand strong, a literal army fighting for God against the hellish forces that Satan had unleashed a few short weeks before. He had spent his time with his flock shaping them, and forging them for the fight ahead. Giving their broken lives new meaning. It was their holy duty to rid the world of all the walking damned, and all of those who might join them. Crush them with steel. Purify the world with fire.

I want to take a look at the area ahead before we move the camp for the retribution. Barry stopped and turned to look back at Victor. "Have your sister prepare her scout team for another trip out in the field with me, and have my gear prepared for the journey. I want all the nonessential camp gear packed, loaded into the trucks and ready for the move before I get back from my reconnaissance.

Sir, you need not risk yourself with such a paltry mission. Allow me to go in your place. Ah Victor. The man so preferred to be out there on your feet in the front lines fighting with the soldiers, when your place is in the rear. A man of action. He needed to be guided yet, so that he remembered to look before leaping.

I need to see the infestation with my own eyes. I need to walk the ground so that there will be no surprises. They have great numbers, but they no longer have minds or souls to give them strength. There will be time for you to carry war to the, until that time comes Victor, I will do my duties to God. You are in charge of the camp until I return. See to your duties.

I’ll not fail you sir. Victor said as he saluted before hurrying off to tackle his assigned tasks, leaving Barry alone. Barry knew that Victor would never fail so long as there were even the slimmest chances of success. He stepped back through the main gate and into his stronghold.

He stretched his arms and shoulders as walked the inside perimeter of the camp, inspecting their defenses with his own eyes. The camp was well protected by a sturdy ten-foot tall chain link fence that ran around the entire perimeter, as well as a deep spike filled trench on the outside of the fence. The fence was designed so that it could be easily disassembled and loaded into the trucks, and then once more reassembled around the next camp.

Neither the trench nor the fence would completely protect them from a horde of the damned. It was a flimsy barrier at best when dealing with the limitless strength of an army of walking corpses. They would all but ignore the trench and the spikes within. Still, the barriers would hold them back long enough for the defenders to get organized and counter-attack. There were towers around the inside perimeter of the fence that would allow the defenders to throw down rocks and fire arrows and bullets at the horde outside until the army was able to sally forth and meet the threat. There was only one gap in the trench, at the entrance in front of a large sliding gate.

The center of the camp itself consisted of ordered rows of tents. It was less of a camp and more like a small moving city. The Semi trucks that carried all of the heavy gear and supplies from one site to the next stood in the center of the tents alongside the huge tankers that held their gasoline and emergency supplies of water. Mechanics and blacksmiths worked at repairs.

Blacksmiths, now they were truly a sign from on high and a gift from God. He had managed to find and rescue a family of blacksmiths near the beginning of the war and they had put their skills to use making weapons and other needful equipment, teaching others. They were the ones responsible for the fence and the spikes lining the bottom of the pit. The blacksmiths gave steel arms to his people and made them strong.

The camp was in fact a moving city and he had gotten the idea for it from books about the Romans that he had read a long time before. Every time they stopped at a new location, they put up their chain link palisade, dig a trench, and set up their tents in the exact same way. It gave his people order and routine. Order and routine gave them normalcy and drained away the fear that had nearly drowned them. Nodding his head as he returned to the point where he had first started, the camp was well ordered. Barry made his way back to his tent.

######

Victor had done well, all of the equipment necessary for the scouting mission was laid out and ready for him when he finally returned to his tent from his tour of the camp perimeter. He quickly changed, removing his old soiled clothing and getting into a pair of old and worn jeans and a t-shirt that he kept aside especially for days like this. They were his work cloths that he had donned whenever working in his yard back home. Clothing that could get filthy, perhaps even with blood, and it would be no real matter. Next went on his heavy-duty work boots and over them leather chaps, followed by the heavy leather belt he used to carry his weapons.

Barry examined his 9mm berretta, making sure it was clean and loaded. He silently enjoyed the scent of the oil before placing it in the holster on his left hip next to the pouch full of extra magazines. The pouch that was getting lighter with each passing battle. Soon they would be down to the ancient weapons entirely, without these modern tools of death and vengeance. After putting away the gun, he put the war-hammer through the leather loop at his right hip, patting the head fondly a couple of times as it hung loosely at his side. Last to be pulled on was his leather coat and gloves. Barry picked up his field pack as he left the tent to meet with the scouts.

The scouting team, too, was ready for him when he arrived, chatting with one another patiently as they waited. They stood alongside their mud-covered motorcycles, with their leather coats unzipped to try and capture what little breeze there was on the warm summer day. Barry put his backpack and hammer into the trailer attached to the four-wheeled ATV that he always took on such excursions. Then he walked around to the other side of the vehicle and removed his M-14 from its scabbard on the side of the machine. The rifle was in excellent condition and he quickly returned it to its place, once again enjoying the subtle smell of the oil. Once again noting that he only had two extra full magazines for the rifle available, in case they ran into unforeseen difficulties. That was fine, he preferred to use his hammer whenever possible. It was always better to get dirty when the Lord’s work than it was to stand back at a distance and watch.

He took a moment to look over his first team of scouts, three women and seven men who had proven their skill in their duty for several long months on campaign. They were constantly dust covered and streaked with mud, a hazard of living their lives as wanders on the back roads.

Each one of them was wearing a leather jacket, with chaps over their jeans and a pair of leather gloves. The leather exterior was all as much to protect them from the walking dead as it was any accidents they might have. If they wanted, they even wore helmets, though most of them seemed to prefer not to obscure their vision. The leather kept the teeth of the damned away from their skin, very important since a bite from one of the creatures would only lead to a deadly infection. The teeth could still do some serious damage even through the shell of leather, but with the jackets on, getting bitten was no longer sentence to eternal damnation. Just a painful reminder not to let the creatures get too close next time. Few needed that reminder more than once, and most not even the first time.

For weapons they carried a mishmash of semi-automatic 9mm handguns and submachine guns. They were only allowed 9mm caliber firearms, in order to save space and allow a maximum level of flexibility in the field since the ammunition was interchangeable. If one member of the team ran out of bullets, they could always get some more from another member of their squad. When ammunition supply became an issue, it would occur at a time when it was usually better to have more people shooting than it was to save the rest of the rounds for a later encounter. Besides, their job was to scout out the terrain and report back. They didn’t need anything heavier with a longer reach. The only constant between all of his scouts was that they each received a cavalry saber. It seemed to be the perfect weapon when riding on the back of a motorcycle.

The scout team noticed him and came to attention, saluting and awaiting his orders. He returned their salutes and told them to be at ease and to move closer. Tell me what you’ve seen, he commanded and they did just that, in a concise and professional manner. The town was listed as having around four thousand five hundred people according to the last census that had been published with their state map. Maps were still useful for finding the towns, but less so for finding towns full of the damned. Many of the small towns that they had investigated over the past months had been abandoned. Disappearing into the mist. There had been many towns, all of them smaller than ten thousand people, all of them cleansed in the end. The Legion had yet to test its mettle in a large city, one in which hundreds of thousands, if not millions of walking corpses still resided. First things first, they needed to rise above the challenge currently before them.

The town straddled a minor state highway. It consisted of several streets, a small commercial area in the downtown sector and one supermarket on the east end. From what they could determine it had been the county seat, and was home to a courthouse. The homes, they said, were mostly timber-framed houses that would be easily put to the torch. The streets were by in large paved and lined with large leafy trees as well as the walking damned. A large number of the damned, the scouts told him, were hanging out around one of the large stone buildings in the downtown area. They seemed to feel that perhaps there were some survivors holed up still in the upper floors making their last stand in the courthouse since it was probably the most defendable building that they could find.

The only other feature of consequence within the town proper was the stream, the same one that Barry had shaved in only a short time earlier, ran through the town on the west end. About a mile outside the borders, to the south, there was a solitary mound shaped hill. The scouts all felt that it might make a good place to lure the damned and then ambush them, cutting them to shreds. Even the untiring walking corpses would have a difficult time traversing the steep slope. Overall the land around the town was flat and full of neglected farm fields.

Haley, Victor’s older sister, the leader of the scout team, finished up