“That’s my pride and joy,” he said, grinning. “You’ll see it when it’s time to kill some walkers.”
I raised an eyebrow, but let the matter sit. A few minutes later, Tyrel came back over.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” he said. “Third and fourth squads will head north and set up overwatch on the far side of the development. First squad will head east and hang back in reserve. LaGrange will monitor comms and direct operations as usual. Our job is to approach from the west and find out what we’re up against. Henning saw infected in the neighborhood when he reconned the place, but he didn’t get an accurate count. So keep your eyes open and stay on your toes. Rojas, I want you and Hicks on point. Show the new guy how we do business.”
“Works for me,” said Rojas.
“Caleb,” Tyrel continued, pointing at me. “Follow the man’s lead. He’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but he knows his job.”
I acknowledged with a single nod. Tyrel said, “Any questions?”
Silence.
“All right then. Let’s do this.”
The other squads broke off in their various directions. By Tyrel’s reckoning, we were directly south of the development, which meant we would have to turn left off the highway and travel upward through dense woodland to reach our destination. As we walked, Rojas told me climbing the side of the mountain was a good thing despite the effort involved.
“The walkers don’t like climbing,” he said. “They’ll do it if they’re chasing something, but otherwise, they follow the path of least resistance.”
“You seem to know a lot about the infected,” I replied.
“In this line of work, you have to. Keep your eyes open. You might learn something.”
We passed signs informing us we were entering the Aspen Acres Nature Trail. Tyrel turned onto a dirt path that took us east down a set of long switchbacks, then up again over a ridge.
As we topped the ridge, I stopped and stared at the valley below. Nestled in the bottom were clusters of what my father would have called McMansions, big ostentatious monstrosities of homes lacking in character or charm, completely incongruous with their natural surroundings. They sat on half-acre lots with paved U-shaped driveways boasting four-car garages and swimming pools choked with leaves, algae, and debris. Infected wandered the streets, tiny as ants in the distance. Rojas stopped beside me and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
“Looks good,” he said. “Nothing burned down. Should be plenty of salvage.”
“Quite a few infected down there.”
“You wanna earn, you gotta take some risks.”
A quarter of a mile from the tall metal gate surrounding the development, Tyrel held up a hand for the squad to stop, signaled for silence, then pointed at me. I took the hint and moved up until I was close enough to kneel beside him.
“Fix your suppressor,” he said in a low voice.
“What’s wrong?”
He pointed ahead through the woods. I followed the line of his finger and saw the problem.
“Shit. Infected.”
He withdrew his suppressor from his vest and tightened it down over the muzzle of his M-4. I did the same. “Had to happen sooner or later,” Tyrel said. “Let’s try to do this quietly.”
Tyrel ordered the rest of the squad to fan out in diamond formation and watch all approaches. While they obeyed, the two of us worked our way down the hill, watching the infected the whole way. The ghouls moved in our direction, heads turning and twitching like deranged birds. I guessed they heard us, but had not pinpointed our position yet. This meant we would have to work quickly; if the infected got a fix on us, they would start squawking and bring every walking corpse in the valley down on our heads. When we were about fifty yards from the closest of them, Tyrel signaled a halt.
Leveling his rifle, he held up two fingers and made a go-forth motion over his shoulder. Taking that as a cue, I peered through my scope, sighted in on what had once been a fifty-something man with a bushy white beard, and squeezed the trigger. To my right, the muted crack of Ty’s M-4 broke the silence.
Wasting no time, I picked another target and fired. Before it fell, I caught sight of its eyes through the magnified view of my scope. Its milky gaze was fixed firmly in my direction, looking right at me. Or so it seemed, anyway.
Half a magazine later, the infected were all down. A couple of them started making odd chuffing, croaking noises, but we shot them before they could work up a head of steam. Tyrel glanced back at me, gave a thumbs-up, and signaled to fall back with the rest of the squad. On the way, he radioed third and fourth squads for a status. They were in position, so Tyrel asked them to fire a few rounds to get the attention of the infected in the streets below. Seconds later, three sharp cracks echoed from the north.
“That ought to buy us some time,” said Tyrel. Back with the rest of the squad, he said, “Rojas, I want you to take Hicks and move straight down the hillside.” He pointed due east from where we sat, directly toward the development. “Radio when you’re close enough to make an assessment.”
Rojas stood up. “Will do. Come on, new guy. Class is in session.”
I got to my feet and began following him down the hill. Behind me, Tyrel said, “Head on a swivel, Caleb. Got it?”
“Got it.”
*****
Rojas put his back to the wrought-iron fence and laced his fingers at groin level. “Up you go.”
I stepped into his hands, gripped the cold black fence poles, and levered myself up until I could put a boot on his shoulder. Once there, I stepped up, grabbed the support crossbar ten inches below the spear-shaped tips of the fence, and pushed until I was lying halfway over. The thick material of my MOLLE vest kept me from being skewered.
Throwing my legs over, I planted my boots against the fence and slid down. “Okay,” I said to Rojas. “Your turn.”
Leaning against the poles, I reached my hands through and laced my fingers as Rojas had done for me. He climbed up nimbly, pushed off my shoulder, and threw himself over the spikes.
I said, “Looks like you’ve done this before.”
He looked smug. “Once or twice.”
As I turned toward the street leading into the neighborhood, Rojas hissed for me to stop. He dropped his pack, unlashed the bundled cylinder, and carefully rolled it out onto the dead brown grass. When he stood up, he was holding a three-and-a-half foot double-edged sword.
“Hicks, meet Penelope.”
I stared. The sword looked nothing like what I had seen in books and museums. Its blade was wide and thick like a Roman Gladius, but much longer. I could have called the leather-wrapped hilt two-handed, except it was far more than that—four-handed, maybe. The crossguard was a simple rounded rectangle of aluminum, just wide enough to keep the wielder’s hands from slipping up onto the sharpened edge. The blade’s color was a dark reddish-black, like something forged from the leaf springs of a large truck. I had a feeling that was probably not far from the truth.
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
A grin. “Ain’t she a beauty?”
“I don’t know which is more worrisome. The fact that you named it, or that you think it’s a girl.”
He laughed. “She’s named after the first girl that ever gave me a blow job and swallowed. We take good care of each other.”
“What a beautiful story.”
“Don’t be jealous.”
“The hell did you find that thing?”
“Had it custom made. Cost a small fortune, but it was worth it.”
I thought about the rubber-tipped spears my father had trained me to wield, and asked, “Who made it for you?”
“I’ll introduce you to him when we get back to town. For right now, we got work to do. Let’s go, new guy.”