Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 10

I could have run but I'd only watched in shock. A fifth soldier hit me from behind, knocking me to the ground and put a knee across my neck.

"Clear!" someone shouted.

They gathered around my captor and me.

"That one was talking to it. Like they knew each other," a voice said.

"Peters?" a voice nearby said.

"Dead," one in the back said.

"Did you get the head?"

"Yup."

"How's Jones?"

No answer meant he must have been the crouching soldier.

"All right. We got what we need, let's hustle."

I counted eight pairs of boots shuffling past from my view on the ground. My neck was numb where the soldier had pinned me down. He hauled me up and I was cuffed with a piece of plastic that looked like a twisty tie for a garbage bag.

"What were you doing with it?" A young-faced soldier stood in front of me, his eyes older than mine. I opened my mouth but an answer that didn't result in a bullet in my head didn't come. I closed it and he hammered me in the stomach with the butt of his M-16, doubling me over. The world went polka-dot colored and if I'd eaten anything I would have thrown it up all over his boots.

They shoved me toward the wall and I saw a rope draping over. Instead of hanging me they made a makeshift harness and hauled me up. A sniper crouched at the top, covered with what looked like kudzu and green face paint.

Down on the other side I was tossed face first in the back of a jeep. I could see the right profile of a big, bull-faced kid with a permanent scowl and beady black eyes staring straight ahead behind the wheel.

"They ain't even comin' to the wall no more," the sniper said, piling into the passenger seat. His kudzu made rustling sounds when he moved. "I wonder why."

I knew, but I was keeping my mouth shut until whatever I knew could be used to save my life.

"Pauly says this one was talkin' to one of 'em. That it wasn't tryin' to eat him or nothin'." Bull-face put it in drive and we peeled out and the sniper turned to face me. "Lucky we got orders to bring back any and all survivors. I wouldda just shot your face off and left you for the birds."

It was a long, bumpy road from Van Dyke. There was an occasional gunshot. I figured it was one of the young soldiers in one of the other vehicles popping off until I heard a bullet ricochet off the jeep. We swerved hard then there were several more shots that sounded like the M-16s.

We pulled into what I guessed was a hangar and stopped. Bull-face yanked me out of the back of the jeep and pulled out a knife with a short, thick blade. I thought he was about to stab me but instead he cut off my clothes. I stood there as he and two others joined him in examining every part of my body.

It took only a minute, but they were very thorough. No doubt they were checking me for bite marks. For those of you who don't know, there are three different types of undead. Whether you buy Jack's explanation that the virus was something we all had that had been activated by radiation or that there was some kind of signal (there is a signal, but I'll come back to that) that made the dead rise was what I call the 'passive' zombie. I'm sorry, I know that really isn't a P.C. word to say. But with a passive z-word is someone who has died and his corpse gets up and starts milling about. The 'active' z-word is the one most humans know of and they mistake all undead for this type. This is the z-word that spreads infection by its bite and is by far the less common z-word. The active z-word is livelier than the passive, probably because the nature of the death was from turning via the virus. But counter-intuitively most active z-words are prols, whereas most passive z-words are hoi, like Jack and Ollins.