Death Springs Eternal: The Rift Book III Read online

  The kid shook his head.

  General Bathgate sighed and rolled his eyes. “What really happened, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Like I said,” replied Pitts, “the kid gave me lip. He made fun of me for not saying fuckin’ oh-nine hundred.” He waved his hand at the group of workers who stood rapt at attention, their expressions fearful. “In front of his friends. To impress the little fuckers, I think.”

  The general looked up at Pitts as if he smelled something rotten, and then breezed past him, drawing close to the young soldier. The kid withdrew, holding a hand over his ruined nose.

  “Stand at attention, soldier,” said the general.

  The kid complied.

  “What’s the first rule?” General Bathgate asked.

  The kid looked baffled.

  “What’s the goddamn first rule?”

  With his lips trembling, the kid said, “I…I don’t remember.”

  The general closed his eyes, his throat rumbled, and he began pacing a circle around the young soldier. “First rule of the Warrior’s Creed,” he said, “is that no individual of lesser stature shall ever question the authority of their superiors. That is the rule, soldier. The restoration of our greatness cannot survive insubordination. It will not be tolerated. Do you understand this?”

  “Y…yes,” stammered the kid.

  “If you in fact do, then why did you accost Lieutenant Pitts?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  The general paused, then said, “What’s your name, soldier?”

  Sheepishly, he replied, “Harry.”

  “So, Harry, do you know what happens to soldiers who break the first rule?”

  Harry shook his head.

  “They’re not allowed to be soldiers anymore, even if you’re COC.”

  In a feat of quickness that left Pitts at a loss for breath, the general grabbed Harry by the back of his hair with one hand, yanked his sidearm from its holster with the other, forced the kid’s head back, stuck the pistol in his mouth, and fired a single shot. Thick red chunks plummeted to the pavement behind Harry, who teetered when the general released his grip. The boy’s eyes bulged, watery yet empty, and smoke swirled from his gaping mouth. Then he fell over, face-first. Pitts winced at the sound of his skull splitting when it hit the ground.

  Pitts spun away from the sight, not wanting to see the cavernous exit wound in the back of Harry’s head. In that instant he regretted reacting to the kid’s prodding the way he had. He should’ve let it go, turned the other cheek and reiterated his point. Watching zombies die was one thing. It had become a near-daily occurrence over the last few months, after all. But people…that was another story; though, because of his close personal relationship with the general, he saw plenty of that, as well.

  Not that he liked it.

  He heard the general’s loud voice pipe up, addressing those who’d been deconstructing the tent. “This is what happens,” he said, the way a stern father would to his children, “when you disrespect authority. We will have none of that here! Do you all understand, or do you want to end up like Harry?”

  All at once there were proclamations of agreement that seemed much too prompt to have been brought about by anything other than fear. Pitts managed to crack a half-smile. At least they’d learned their lessons. None of those bastards would question him again.

  “Lieutenant Pitts,” the general’s voice announced. “Turn around.”

  Pitts did as he was told, slowly pivoting on his heels and bringing his eyes down to meet his friend’s. The general stared him down coolly, though not without compassion. But Sergeant Jackson was a wholly different matter. The general’s new favorite gawked at him in much the same way Harry did earlier, but he had the presence of mind to do it behind the man’s back. He even went so far as to flip Pitts the bird, which really got his ire up.

  The general approached him, his hands once again clasped. When he was inches away he tilted his head, leaned forward, and whispered, “Greg, get back to your bunk. Pack up. I’ll have Cody take up your duties for now. It’s been a stressful day. And don’t you worry, I’ll straighten this mess out with Handley. It’ll never happen again.”

  With that Pitts stepped back, saluted, and marched away, heading for the Holiday Inn that had served as command headquarters since they arrived in Roanoke Rapids. All he could think about was that General Bathgate, who never called anyone but him by his first name, called Jackson Cody. Not a good sign at all.

  Even after he shut himself into his room, stripped off his jeans and heavy leather stirrups, and splashed water from the metal basin on the table over his face, it was still on his mind. He couldn’t understand why, until the image of Greta Fredericks, the one who got away, popped into his head. That tiny blonde firecracker of hotness had been his on-again-off-again girlfriend for the two years he worked as a DJ at Tiny Bottoms, a lower-end strip joint in Atlanta. They’d spent tons of time together, and he loved the way she said his name, focusing on the “s” in Pitts and drawing it out like a snake. It killed him when he’d hear her speak to other clients the same way she spoke to him, even though she promised that when she was with him, she was with him alone.

  Pitts’s cheeks flushed when the realization came over him: he was jealous.

  He plopped down in his chair and stared out the window. In the distance he heard gunshots and shouting, coming from the other side of the river. More zombies, probably, wandering down the road the way they always did, mindless as ever. In some ways Pitts envied those undead hordes. He was certain they didn’t let things like jealousy or honor or military procedure worry them very much.

  He thought of the first time he saw the general, standing on top of the armored Humvee, assault rifle pressed against his shoulder while he fired on the swarm of undead surrounding him. There were so many of them, a living sea of flesh that seemed to go on forever. Every one the older man cut down collapsed on top of the previous, forming a staircase of human remains. Pitts had watched this from afar, sitting in his rig, an old industrial snowplow his buddy Tree Trunk had purchased at auction and tricked out with thick steel piping, hoping to use it to win the Demo Derby. (Of course Trunk, never one to read the fine print, didn’t take into account that driving a six-ton hunk of steel might be against Derby rules, which was how it came to be in Pitts’s possession.) At first he debated whether to help the guy out or not, but when he saw the first undead bastard realize that if he placed his feet on his dead brothers he could rise up higher, Pitts hit the gas.

  His rig slammed into the wall of flesh. The wedged plow blade drove into the mass, jettisoning flailing bodies to either side. The sheer numbers caused the rig to slow down, and the cab lurched each time he ran over one of the fallen unfortunates, but he didn’t let up. Soon he was a few feet from where the strange, gray-haired man was trapped.

  “Jump on!” he’d exclaimed, and the military man complied, leaping from the roof of his vehicle onto the hood of Pitts’s rig. He fell down and grabbed tight to the engine compartment seams as Greg steered the vehicle across the sea of undead, his stained-brown plow blade pulverizing everything in his path.

  Later that night, as the two men sat before a small fire in the back of a dump truck nestled in the middle of the old junkyard Pitts had come to call home, they became friends. The general introduced himself as Alexander, told him about his service in Iraq and Afghanistan, about how his entire platoon had been macerated by the Wraiths during the invasion. Pitts explained how he’d held his ground at Tiny Bottoms, killing the fuckers with a sledgehammer, even as they slaughtered virtually every other patron in the place. It had been only two weeks since that day, late November if he remembered correctly, and everything was still fresh: every rapid heartbeat, every flash of gunfire, every shriek of fear that had penetrated his eardrums. As they sat there talking through the night, all he could feel was relief that he wasn’t the only one.

  Pitts exhaled deeply, stood up, and turned away from the window. He swallo
wed hard, trying to make himself think he’d had it good. He’d been with the general since that day, the first member of the SNF, survived the rain-drenched winter and watched him rally survivors, civilians and soldiers alike. The general promised them security and bound them together into what was now, five months later, a living army of close to ten thousand men, women, and children. He’d given Bathgate everything of himself, done things he had never thought himself capable of, and even indulged the man with his obsession for Klan literature, which Pitts couldn’t understand. He’d never had a problem with black folks in the past, but now they were outlawed, as were Arabs, which seemed a little random. He knew it wasn’t right, but many of those who were folded under the SNF umbrella included members from the multitude of armed militia groups that had formed over the years, from anti-government folks to white supremacists to good-ole-boys who just loved to play at being survivalists. They dictated a large portion of the public morality, even though the majority of the rank-and-file had no clue…or at least pretended they didn’t. And the general’s own personal beliefs didn’t help matters any. There were times where Greg thought the murder of these people was downright evil, but he dealt with it as best he could. Be thankful, his conscience ordered. You’re alive and safe when so many others are dead. That’s what matters. So stop with the woe-is-me crap.

  “I know,” he muttered, and flopped down in bed. He needed to pack his things in preparation for the long trip ahead, but his desire to rest his weary bones overrode all else. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to find sleep, but all he could see was a battalion of rednecks and ruffians, pressing ever onward, dragging the discarded pieces of his soul away with them.

  * * *

  The sun rose, baking the landscape even though it was still early in the morning. General Bathgate stood in front of the hotel and glanced at the mist still hanging in the air, cringing at the thought of the haze growing as the day went on. The heat would be virtually unbearable again, much too hot for springtime, even in North Carolina. He wondered for a moment how Captain Hawthorne and the rest of the troops he’d sent to the southern coast were dealing with it, but the oppressiveness brought him quickly back to the here and now. Good thing the Hummer still has air conditioning, he thought. Too bad the rest of the public transport vehicles, the buses and vans and hollowed-out tankers they’d commandeered over the last few months, did not. He worried for his followers and how comfortable they’d be on the treacherous journey, but eased his mind by repeating his mantra: trying times breed strong souls.

  And no time was as trying as the here and now.

  Pitts pulled alongside him in his reinforced snowplow. He leaned out the window and looked down at him, appearing petulant as sweat poured down his forehead. Bathgate saluted, and Pitts returned the gesture.

  “The rig’s all set,” said Pitts. “Is Dante gonna meet us here? He’s driving my baby today, right?”

  The general shook his head. “No, Lieutenant. I think you should take point this time. I had Dante join the Peacemaker crew. See if the wily old bastard who drives it can impart any of his…wisdom…to the boy.”

  Pitts blanched. “What? The Peacemaker? You already got five bastards on that crew! You know you can’t fit more than that in the thing. It’s a freaking tank, not a bus. And you know Randall won’t teach the kid anything! He never does. I mean come on, I always ride in the hummer with you, dude!”

  “Are you questioning me?” asked Bathgate, his hand drifting unconsciously to his sidearm. “I sure as hell hope not.”

  “Uh,” said the lieutenant, mustache twitching and eyes wide. “No, sir. Not at all.”

  With that, a plume of black smoke puffed from the plow’s stack as Pitts hit the gas, heading for the incredibly long line of vehicles that sat idling on the main drag. Bathgate felt the hard plastic of his pistol’s handle and shivered. He hadn’t realized he’d put his hand on it, and it surprised him that he’d been so hostile toward his oldest friend. I have to teach him a lesson, he thought. Order trumps friendship, after all, and Greg’s been slipping. I need to reign him back in before I have to do something drastic.

  A few minutes later, his Hummer pulled up curbside. Much to Bathgate’s surprise, Private O’Leary, his usual driver, was nowhere to be found. It was Sergeant Jackson behind the wheel instead. The ambitious young soldier smiled wide.

  “To what do I owe the honor, Sergeant?” asked Bathgate as he opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. “What happened to O’Leary?”

  “The Private had a change of heart, sir,” Jackson replied, his voice oozing with cynicism. “He’s riding in the med-cart, instead. His jaw’s hurting something fierce, I guess.”

  The general tilted his head. “How badly did you injure him?”

  “Not a lot. Enough to teach him a lesson. He’ll be fine in a week or so.”

  “And this attack was unprovoked, I assume?”

  Jackson grew pale at the coldness of Bathgate’s accusation, but it took only a second for his color to return. “Not at all, sir,” he replied confidently. “I told him I was driving the presidential vehicle, and he said no, I wasn’t. That’s disobeying an order from a superior, right? So I taught him a lesson. But he’s still alive. I’ve seen you be harsher than that, sir.”

  Bathgate gazed at the fanatical grin on Jackson’s face and grinned himself. Sergeant Jackson was an unruly sort, though his lithe frame and longish blond hair suggested otherwise. He was quick to anger and even quicker to react when the call to violence came. He was a brutal soldier, but undyingly loyal to Bathgate’s cause, and he possessed an ambition the general admired. The kid had risen through the ranks quite fast since he and the lieutenant had found him in Macon, leading a faction of the People’s Militia against the undead hordes. The general thought it would be prudent to send a search party of men north with Jackson once they reached their destination, just as he’d sent one south under the leadership of Captain Hawthorn. It was a plan that made sense. Jackson had helped compose the SNF charter, adding his own personal touch to the byline of the new ruling class. He could lead people, and was more than twice the soldier Pitts was, though Pitts still maintained authority over him because of their past together.

  That could all change, he thought, if the lieutenant doesn’t get his head out of his ass.

  Bathgate slapped the dashboard. “Very well then, soldier,” he said. “Let’s get this caravan moving.”

  Sergeant Jackson steered the Hummer out of the hotel parking lot and drove alongside the motorcade of idling vehicles that stretched as far back as the eye could see. The general took in the varying array of buses, vans, trucks, and armored personnel carriers as they passed by, watching the heat sway across their steel forms. In the center of the line were twenty oil rigs containing the fuel that powered their five-hundred-plus vehicles. They were a point of pride to the general, a symbol of his undying attention to what was important. Anything of use that was found along their travels would be taken, by force if necessary, and Bathgate assumed that seeing as the refineries no longer pumped black gold from the Earth after the end of civilization, gasoline was by far their most precious resource.

  As they drove, the general opened his window, felt the stifling air, and lifted his arm up, fist clenched. He heard hoots and hollers echo all around him as his people raised a cheer in his honor. He smiled and pointed forward, just as the Hummer approached the front of the line, where Pitts and his rig waited. The old snowplow bucked into motion, as did the rest of the convoy, as Jackson steered the Hummer into a gap between vehicles. A single walking corpse emerged from the trees, staggering mindlessly into the middle of the road, only to be cut down by the ricochet of gunfire. It collapsed, and the onward trekking army reduced its body to a puddle of rotten flesh.

  If only everything could be so easy.

  With the fleet in motion, the general rolled up his window and blasted the air conditioning. The cold air assaulted his flesh and made him shiver with joy. It was a com
fort he’d enjoy on the long drive to Richmond, the future capital of the new country he was soon to make his own. When that happened, all would sing songs to the glory of the Soldiers of New Freedom, and his name would pass into the realm of legend alongside Alexander the Great himself.

  CHAPTER 2

  DREAMS, AND STAYING ALIVE

  IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD

  It didn’t take Josh Benoit and the rest of the survivors from Dover, New Hampshire long to realize that the world had changed greatly over the long, cold winter.

  They traveled south along I-95 in the two SUVs they’d lifted from the dealership in Norton, Massachusetts. From there it was a quick jaunt into Rhode Island, where they found a massive pileup blocking their way. The wreckage seemed to stretch on forever, a winding snake of jagged metal and burned plastic that built upon itself, as if those fleeing the scene had ignored the coming obstruction and kept the gas pressed down in the hope that they would somehow teleport through the mess. The snow had done a pretty good job of melting away by then, revealing the smashed windshields of hundreds of cars and the bodies trapped within. They stood there for a good long while, deliberating what to do, before Emily, the old woman with faded blue eyes, shrieked and pointed down the debris-crowded freeway. The rest followed her finger, watching some of the corpses begin to move. Josh didn’t have to say a word for everyone to jump back into the cars and get the hell out of Dodge.

  The group backtracked, sticking to the minor highways and service roads that weaved in between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Josh hoped beyond hope that the pileup had only been a minor glitch, that once they got into Connecticut things would clear up and there would be no more trouble.

  The first part of that wish came to pass. The second…not so much.

  When they crossed the border into Connecticut, they discovered a roadway surprisingly clear of obstacles. Accident scenes were few and far between, cars and trucks abandoned on the side of the road even rarer than that. It struck Josh as odd, until he remembered that when the army of Wraiths first attacked, they’d come from the south. It all clicked in his head. Most folks probably had the same thought as he at first—head inland, north, up to the mountains, where they might find a semblance of safety. He shivered.