S. Davis - 900 Miles

“Yes, I think we will,” he said, tapering off.

Pulling the scope to my left eye, I saw the camp across the field. Out in front, horizontally to the tree line, were a series of six wooden crates. Three in a straight line on one side, and three on the other, creating a ten-foot gap between them. Standing six feet high and six feet wide, they made a nice cover for Gordon’s men who were moving around behind them. Slowly sliding the scope back and forth across the camp, I could see the full setup. Gordon had no intention of walking away empty-handed. He had to have had his whole force out there.

It wasn’t until I noticed an arm sticking out of one of the crates that I realized what the wooden boxes were filled with. They were the same ones Jarvis had mentioned earlier.

They’re collecting them , Jarvis had said.

Shifting my weight from one boot to the other, I looked to the ground below. Our walls were clear and free of the dead.

They had collected them all.

“What the hell are they gonna do with the Zs?” I asked out loud, while placing my scope back to my eye.

Kyle grunted, but didn’t say a word as he still stared out through his own scope, trying to sort Gordon’s plan out.

Pulling my attention from the scope and back to the Yard, I heard screaming from below us. In a panic, many of the people inside our walls were fleeing back toward the large metal blast door which would seal them inside the bunker. Believing they’d be safe from the opposing force, hysteria gripped their minds like a tightening vice, squeezing out any and all rational judgment. Avalon would be nothing more than a mass grave if we simply tried to hide. Our countermeasures inside the bunker would be useless if we couldn’t cut Gordon’s forces down in size.

In the middle of it all, I watched as Richards crawled up on the same broken-down car that Mr. Trash had now fled from. Holding his arms straight up in the air in an attempt to capture everybody’s attention, he called out to the crowd to reason with the madness. Trying to loosen the vice’s grip.

It wasn’t working.

Losing his patience, Richards pointed his rifle up in the air and took three shots, stopping everyone in their mud-covered tracks.

Looking out to the crowd, he raised his voice and said, “We have to fight! There is no way out of this. There isn’t anything stopping this army from pulling the door right off the bunker. There’s no running from this one.”

He had a hell of a point.

With his rifle now held across his chest, Richards glared out into the crowd before saying, “No able-bodied man or woman will be hiding this one out. We will stand up against this force. We will have to fight to get out of this. We’ll have to kill every last one of those bastards for us to survive.”

Speaking slowly, as if letting the words slip through his teeth, he said, “Together we live. Together we die.” He shifted his finger over the trigger and raised his head to challenge the crowd.

Water dripping into a nearby puddle was all that was audible in the Yard as we all froze. I watched a woman across from me, the same one wearing the black leather jacket, reach down and pick up a discarded pistol as she started to walk toward Richards. Reluctantly, most of the others followed her, crowding together around the car as Richards slid his finger away from the trigger.

He had our army pulled back together. Now we’d have to see what he could do with it.

Thinking back to a time before all of this, when I’d still worn a tie to work, I found myself reminded about how often leadership would change. I went through a year where I literally had three bosses. Some were better than others were, but at the end of the day, us little worker bees would always be able to adapt to the new person in command. We’d be able to fall in line behind the new priorities, new rules, new leadership.

Humans are programmed to follow.

At that point, I couldn’t help but remember that Richards was a politician. He had charisma. I hadn’t trusted him because of it. However, before I knew it, he had teams of people ready to jump at his instructions. Some armed, some not. All had a purpose, and all were ready for what came next, unified under one simple thought. If we didn’t stand to fight, then we’d be dead by dawn.

He had us all.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed as an orange glow danced across Kyle’s face. At first, I thought I was seeing things, but my attention was quickly drawn to the madmen across the field from us. Looking through the scope on my rifle, I witnessed a man with a black rubber-like suit, holding a flamethrower, standing in the opening between the boxes. He was blasting it out in the direction of Avalon in giant bursts, singeing the still-wet grass in the field. The men at the tree line howled to life with delight as each flame illuminated the trees dancing in the wind.

Lifting my face from the scope, I shook my head and rubbed both hands down my legs. Dropping my eyes to the crenellation, I watched a bead of sweat slide down the tip of my nose before splashing into the concrete.

Not wanting to look back up, one single thought passed through my mind, Please, no more fire.

The group across from us began chanting. At first, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I felt it more than I could hear it. Then it struck me. I knew what they were screaming.

“Nowhere to run! Nowhere to run! Nowhere to run!”

Letting out an exaggerated breath, I realized they were right.

Looking at them from my perch, I couldn’t believe that these men were following Gordon, sticking with that murderer. I’ve often thought about why all those people, his army, would follow such a monster. They had to have been decent humans at one point, before the world turned to shit. No way so many of them were as crazed as he was.

In the end, I’ve landed on one simple fact. Gordon was a leader, a showman. He knew what it took to rally the troops, give them a common cause. If we still had TV in this world, his face would have been plastered across every flat screen… and he would have loved it. The bastard had spent a lifetime controlling people, and he knew one simple fact. We were bred to follow. In the distance, I could see five men ushered into some temporary lighting that had been erected near the ten-foot opening between the boxes. Even from our perch, I could tell they were prisoners. Lifting the scope back to my face, I realized that all five of them were wearing animal furs.

Badly beaten and broken, the five men were on their knees, held down with long dog-wrangling poles—the same ones that we’d seen Gordon use with Mr. Mullet.

Right away, I could see the old man that had blinded us back at the tree fortress. He limped along, his eyes nearly swollen shut, and he held one hand over his stomach. Gordon had left the orange stripe prominently displayed on each of their arms.

I watched as another group of Gordon’s soldiers stepped behind the men with an armful of armor and helmets. Gasping, I had the sudden realization of what was about to happen.

The Arena battle seven months earlier flashed into my mind.

Not believing my eyes, I watched as one by one, all five men had the familiar spiked armor and metallic faceplates with razor teeth violently forced over their bodies. The same Z Death Armor that Gordon had used for sport back at the Arena. I could hear their screams echoing into the night as Gordon’s men used large wooden mallets to drive the long spikes through their chest plates.

All except the old man, that is. He let out a horrific filthy laugh even as the metal shards from the helmet dug into the flesh covering his face. “I’ll be seeing you soon. I’ll be seeing you soon!” he repeatedly yelled just before the mallet came down on the spike.