Our loot was seven serviceable rifles, three damaged ones we could strip for parts, nearly a thousand rounds of ammunition, five pistols of varying calibers, and the gunmen’s tactical vests and their contents. We even took their boots. A decent haul, but hardly worth a good man’s life.
Staring at the black bags bulging with salvage, I was once again struck by the nature of the world I now lived in. Before the Outbreak, if we were caught with any of this stuff, we would have gone to prison. But now, no one would question where it came from. Abandoned military equipment could be found anywhere, making it impossible for anyone to say for certain where a particular item in a market stall came from. Bloody boots were barely worth batting an eye at. Bullet riddled tactical vests were sold at a discount, an additional ten percent off if you couldn’t wash out the stains. Throw in a box of 5.56 ammo, and it was worth a gallon of purified water and half a pound of venison jerky. Squeamishness has no place in the scarcity of the new barter economy.
Later, we searched the rooms on our floor looking for something to use for bedding. We had cached our sleeping bags, along with the rest of our gear, on a hillside where they weren’t doing us a damn bit of good. If we wanted a decent night’s sleep, we would have to improvise.
One of the doors we opened revealed a teacher’s break room, complete with two vinyl sofa’s, a blank television, and a vending machine. Neither of the sofas were big enough to sleep on, so we drew knives, cut out the padding, and laid it on the floor. My legs dangled over the edge from the knee down, but it was better than nothing.
Most of the food in the vending machine was inedible, but at the bottom were two rows of little cans of Vienna wieners. We busted the glass and devoured them greedily, undeterred by the coagulated fatty goop they were immersed in. My father once told me you would be amazed what you will eat if you are hungry enough. As usual, he was right.
Afterward, Tyrel said he would take the first watch. Too tired to argue, I gratefully lay down on my makeshift mattress, covered myself with my ghillie suit and a long wool jacket taken from one of the dead gunmen, and focused on clearing my head. Too much had happened that day. I needed time to process it, put it into perspective. But that would have to wait. Exhaustion had come calling, and it was not going to leave until I paid the rent.
I watched Tyrel pull a chair up in front of the door, sit down, and lay his rifle across his lap. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll wake you up in four hours. Get some rest.”
I closed my eyes and slept.
*****
In the halfway space between awake and asleep, I felt warmth on my face and heard the sound of boots with dirt in the treads grating over tile.
Startled, I reached for Rojas’ pistol. I had placed it next to me before lying down, arranged so I would not fumble for it in the dark, the grip turned toward me, the top of the barrel pointing at my feet. All I had to do was lay a hand over it, and muscle memory would do the rest. But muscle memory is useless when a size twelve boot comes down and arrests your efforts.
“Easy, Caleb. It’s me.”
Tyrel’s voice. I blinked at the brilliant sunlight pouring in between the blinds. The boot took its weight off my hand.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Tyrel said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
His silhouette sat down in front of the window. I blinked rapidly, trying to force my eyes to adjust to the light. “What time is it?”
He held up his wrist. “Just after eight.”
“What!”
“Relax. I’ve been up all night.”
I looked around, eyes toning down the glare to something manageable. The room was the same as I had seen it last night, stripped sofas pushed into the corner, shattered glass from the vending machine kicked against the wall. I sat up and looked at what Tyrel held in his lap.
“Where did you get that?”
He leaned forward, holding the object out so I could see it. It was a rifle, but not an ordinary one. There was no wood in the stock or foregrip, only composite plastic with shock absorbing springs in the butt plate. A Leupold scope sat atop a rail mounted over the barrel. It was bolt action, and, judging by the barrel, large caliber. A bloodstain covered the chamber, stock, and a section of Tyrel’s right sleeve. I knew immediately what I was looking at.
Sniper rifle.
“This is the weapon that killed Rojas,” Tyrel said.
I went still. A quick examination of my old friend revealed ice on his Army surplus fatigues, dirt and pine needles stuck to the fabric, and dark face paint with unwashed brownish-red spatter staining his cheeks.
“Ty, where have you been?”
He laid the rifle across his legs and patted it as if I had not spoken. “Took me a while to find the piece of shit. Had to wait until you were asleep and the infected were frozen.”
I stared, eyes finally adjusting to the light. There was some kind of sticky, rusty brown matter encrusted in Tyrel’s knuckles and matted in the hair on his fingers. My eyes moved to the Ka-Bar dagger on his vest, the stains on the sheath, the smudges on the handle. I said, “Ty, where did you go last night?”
“Hunting. I went hunting.”
The next question was obvious, so I didn’t bother asking it. We sat in the cold silence of the room, Tyrel’s fingers drumming on the rifle’s foregrip, until finally he said, “The Rot finally stopped crooning about 0100. Gave ‘em another hour just to be sure, then went down to check out the hallway where Rojas got shot. Found the slug in the wall; a .308, or maybe a .300 Win mag. By the size of the hole in the wall, it had to have come from less than 300 meters.” He shook his head. “Went straight through him, the poor bastard. Never had a chance. Round like that, at that range, doesn’t much matter where it hits you. Anyway, it gave me a good idea where the shot came from. Weren’t too many angles a sniper could have used, not with all the other buildings in the way. So I worked my way to the north side of town, used the buildings for cover. Took a while. Finally got to where I was pretty sure the shot came from and started searching with the night eye.”
He patted the night vision scope on his carbine. “Spotted him on the third floor of an office building. Had a nice setup, rifle rest on top of a desk, nice comfortable chair to sit in.”
His hand strayed to his Ka-Bar and touched the blood smudges. “Took me about half an hour to sneak up on him. Grabbed him from behind before he could do anything about it. Told him, ‘You killed my friend, you son of a bitch. Now you’re gonna die.’ Then slit his throat.”
Tyrel made a cutting motion across the front of his neck. “You wanna hear some shit, though?”
I did not like the look on Tyrel’s face. “What?”
“It wasn’t a him. It was a her. The sniper was a woman.” He laid the rifle on the ground with shaking hands and stared at it. “Wouldn’t have changed anything, though. Even if I had known, I still would have done it.”
The room was silent for a time. Birds welcomed the dawn outside, chirping and whistling back and forth, oblivious to the doings of man, alive or dead. The sun coming in through the window grew brighter until I felt warmth through the leg of my pants. I picked up the sniper rifle and said, “Tyrel, it’s warming up. We have to go.”
He nodded and stood, hands balled into fists at his sides. “I still would have done it.”
“Tyrel, we need to move.”
He looked up, eyes bloodshot, marked underneath in shades of black, “But if I had known, I don’t think I would have cut her throat.”
I studied the flint-sharp lines his face, half illuminated in gold, the other half in shadow, and wondered which one of us he was talking to.
FIFTY-EIGHT
The wagon was moving away from us.
I drew my pistol and fired a single shot into the trees. Even from a hundred yards, I could see the driver jump. His initial reaction was to lay flat against the bench, snatch a rifle from the buckboard, and take aim in our direction. Tyrel and I both raised our hands and waved them over our heads.