We walked the perimeter of the rooftop, scanned the distance for infected, and conducted radio checks with the other squads across campus every half hour. Near the halfway point of our watch, a knot of four walkers heard our boots crunching on the tiny rocks covering the roof and wandered close. To Rojas, I said, “What should we do about those things?”
He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “What do you mean? We draw ‘em close and kill ‘em.”
“Won’t they start making noise if we do that?”
“You never seen a walker up close at night, have you?”
I shook my head.
“See man, at night they don’t make noise until they get right on you. Makes it easy to take ‘em out if you can spot ‘em in time. Here, watch this.”
He tapped his foot a few times, sending muted thumps out into the night. I watched through my scope as the walker’s heads snapped up and they increased their shuffling pace in our direction. Just as Rojas predicted, they made no sound.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Told you, man,” Rojas said. “When they’re close enough, take ‘em out.”
I let the undead approach to within fifty yards. By that point, I had lain down on the edge of the roof so I could fire from the prone position. The undead were a mixed group: one white guy in his twenties, a black girl no older than twelve or thirteen, an Asian woman who must have been in her nineties when she died, and a middle-aged Hispanic man with a great bushy moustache. Their wounds showed up black against the grainy green night-vision image. I let my breath ease out and squeezed the trigger. The little girl fell. The rest of the ghouls marched on heedlessly.
I kept the reticle on the girl for a few seconds, thinking about how long it had been since I’d shot a walker, and after everything I had been through, how little the killing affected me. It was as if the part of me that used to feel sorry for them, some kind of emotional sympathy gland, had atrophied during the long months in Colorado Springs.
“Nice shot,” Rojas said.
In response, I cracked off three more rounds in less than four seconds, each one finding its mark.
“Damn, kid.” Rojas’ teeth flashed white in silver of the moon. “You’re not a rookie, you’re a killer.”
I stood up and brushed myself off. “Something like that.”
FIFTY-ONE
We marched parallel to I-25 until we reached a road that ran under a highway overpass. It was early morning. The yellow circle of the sun was hazy and muted behind a gauze of powdery gray clouds. A bracing chill in the air kept us cool as we set a hard pace.
Rojas marched ahead of me as we turned off the highway and followed an access road up the slope of the Rampart Range. The altitude increased sharply for half a mile, then the lead squad turned right onto another road marked by a green sign gilded with ornate black ironwork, reading Aspen Applause Way. Another sign with tarnished brass letters announced we were entering Aspen Acres Luxury Homes.
LaGrange called the platoon to a halt and radioed for his squad leaders to meet him at the head of the column. While they talked, the rest of us sat down and drank some water. During the march, I had noticed a long, cylindrical bundle wrapped in brown canvas lashed to Rojas’ pack. Curious, I asked him about it.
“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.