his knees near Grant, and his lunch splattered the dirt road. Many of the men in the platoon covered their mouths while others stood strong with disciplined faces of stone.
“Damn, boy!” a soldier named Clint said to Ben. “No sense in getting all torn up about it. He’s dead and gone.”
Grant turned to face Clint, clenching his fists and resisting the urge to strike him in the jaw. Instead, he pulled out his notebook and pencil and began to sketch the horrific scene.
Dalton, one of the platoon’s two trackers, knelt beside the body to inspect it. “Been dead about two days. From the looks of things, I’d say there were five of the dead. Took him apart fairly easily too, as if they caught him off-guard. Poor soul didn’t even have time to go for his shotgun in the wagon.”
“What do we do?” someone asked.
“Bury him,” Wayne ordered.
Grant approached Hank. “Why do you think he didn’t get up? As one of them?”
“Look at his head.”
Indeed, a patch of the man’s skull was caved in. Apparently as the things had pulled him to the ground, he had smashed his head on the large rocks bordering the road.
Hank and Grant watched the men hastily dig a shallow grave in the soft dirt of the woods. No one wanted to touch the body. They had all been taught how the plague spread and they knew it couldn’t be contracted by merely touching one of the infected, but not all fears are rational, Grant imagined. Finally, he offered to move the body himself. Hank helped him hoist the corpse and toss it into the sad excuse for a grave. No sooner than they were done Wayne began shouting orders.
“Okay, people, let’s keep moving. Be ready. We know they’re around these parts for sure now.”
The platoon reassembled into a loose marching formation and continued on.
Just before dusk, they made camp in a clearing near the road. The troops were on edge whether they showed it or not. Wayne ordered them to kindle numerous fires, preferring the safety of the light over concealment. If the fires brought the dead to them, it would be a good thing, even if it would be hard to see the enemy beyond the glow.
Grant took a seat at one of the larger fires beside Ben. The private couldn’t be more than nineteen years old.
“This your first time in the field?” Grant asked.
Ben nodded. “I signed up after the slave war. I want to do something for my country, to make a difference in this world somehow. I didn’t think it would be killing dead men.”
“It’s better than killing the living,” Grant assured him.
Ben looked at him, his mouth dangling open in shock. “You fought in the Civil War?”
“I did. I just wasn’t a soldier. The problem with battles is that they pull everyone into them, whether you’re a non-combatant or not, doesn’t matter. No one takes the time to ask or care.”
Grant gestured at Ben’s weapon. “That’s one of the new Golden Boys isn’t it?”
Ben handed him the rifle. “Winchester 1866. Tube magazine, fifteen shots before reloading, sharper accuracy, and much less likely to misfire than a musket.”
Grant whistled as he examined the rifle. “If we had these a few years ago, the war would’ve been over a whole lot sooner.”
Ben smiled and reached to take the rifle as Grant gave it back. “You’re not carrying a weapon?”
“No. If things get bad enough for me to need one, I expect there will be plenty lying around for me to use.”
A rifle cracked on the other side of the camp. Both Ben and Grant hopped to their feet. The lingering rays of the dying sun, combined with the firelight, lit the clearing well enough to show what was happening at the edge of the camp. A pack of dead men and women, numbering in the dozens, had emerged from the woods and were darting towards the camp perimeter, howling like starved animals in a rage. The sentries and several other men were already letting them have it. Rifles blazed, their chambers spitting casings onto the grass. The dead weren’t even slowing; in fact, they seemed to be gaining speed, as if spurred on by resistance.
“Aim for their heads!” Wayne was roaring from behind the hastily assembled firing line. Hank shoved the shouting officer aside and aimed his Winchester at the dead. His shot blew open the skull of a middle-aged man at the head of the pack, spraying blood and bone into the air. The man fell, trampled under the feet of the dead behind him.
Hank’s action snapped the other soldiers out of their panic by showing them the dead could die. It happened too late though. Only around ten of the things took hits to the head before the pack collided with the firing line. Men screamed as cold, rotting hands dug into their flesh. A couple of them were knocked to the ground and fed upon while the rest tried to retreat.
Wayne drew his sidearm and dispatched an elderly woman chewing on the cheek of a private. “Fall back!” he urged as a man missing an eye leapt at him.
Hank stepped between Wayne and his attacker at the last second, batting the thing aside with the butt of his rifle. As he fell on top of the creature, he tore a knife from a sheath in the top of his boot and, with all his weight, drove the blade to its hilt into the thing’s skull.
Grant turned to check on Ben, but the boy was gone. He’d raced forward to join the melee. Grant cursed. So much for his plan of just picking a weapon off the dead. He felt exposed and vulnerable. He knew he was too, and he had to do something—anything. He couldn’t just stand here in the open.
Not far from him, a dead woman had pinned a soldier to the ground and was trying to get a clean bite at his throat. Grant tore her off the man and shoved her away. She was on her feet faster than he could believe.
Only the private’s quick recovery saved Grant’s life. By luck more than skill, the soldier managed to put a bullet into her left eye as she threw herself at Grant, and just like that the camp was quiet once more.
Grant took a deep breath, recollecting himself as he appraised the situation. Nine soldiers in the platoon had died in the attack. Another fifteen or more received bites or wounds and were just as dead. It was only a matter of time. Grant saw Wayne and Hank, already off by themselves, having a heated discussion. Grant headed straight for them.
Both of the officers fell silent and glared at him.
“Gentlemen, surely you were given orders on what to do with the wounded, considering the nature of the plague,” Grant said. “This should not be a topic open to debate.”
“You know he’s right, sir,” Hank said, seeming a tad less angry after hearing what the journalist had to say.
Wayne scowled. “What would you have me do? Do you think any sane, armed man is going to stand there and let me shoot him?”
“It has to be done. The sooner the better,” Hank said. “If one of them turns, who knows how many more of us he’ll take with him.”
The rest of the platoon had already clearly divided itself: those who weren’t injured wanted to be far away from those who were.
“Good Lord,” Grant said, exasperated. “Did they not give you a plan on how to deal with this?”
Neither Wayne nor Hank answered him.
Grant ripped the revolver from Wayne’s hand and started over to the wounded. “You men are all dead. You know it. The question is, are you going to die with honor in the service of your country, or fight what must be done at the cost of those who will carry on with this mission?”
Grant’s answer came in the form of a rifle crack and a bullet whizzing by him; instinctively he dove for the ground.
A new battle erupted in the camp between the living and the dying. Men fell on both sides. Dalton, the tracker, was one of the bitten. He turned on the other wounded near him and rammed a knife into the spine of the closest soldier. As the man collapsed, Dalton took his handgun from his hip and, his hand and trigger finger moving like lightning, emptied the weapon into his companions.
It was over quickly. As the smoke cleared, Grant stood over Dalton’s body with Wayne’s gun and personally made sure the corpse did not rise. It was the least he could do for a man so honorable, even in the face of death. Grant tossed the gun at Wayne. “It’s done now, sir,” he said coldly.
