Deadland's Harvest (17 page)

The Fourth Deadly Sin

We held Tack’s funeral the following morning.

Griz had used his Ranger skills and somehow managed to climb onto the riverboat and cut down Tack’s body sometime during the attack without getting caught. Tack had been executed—shot in the head. That he hadn’t been beaten was little consolation to any of us.

Deb refused to leave Tack after he was brought on board. When I stopped by to offer my condolences while she was preparing his body, she seemed oblivious, completely lost in her own world. By morning, she’d regained her composure and now stood strong, her blotchy cheeks and swollen red eyes the only outward signs of her mourning.

Even Manny and his people joined all of Camp Fox on the towboat’s deck, just off the back, where the water was deepest. Frost and Wes had spent the night building a heavy casket out of wood leftover from pallets and various metal parts found on the barges so that Tack would find permanent peace at the bottom of the river.

Griz led the service. He and Tack had been best friends, and Griz had to stop several times during his speech to take a deep breath before continuing. After he recited a prayer, he asked everyone to share a story.

No one spoke. Then, after a long minute, Tyler stepped up and told everyone about Tack, the skinny new recruit on his team who wasn’t expected to make it a week. He ended by finally sharing Tack’s real name. Corporal Theodore Nugent. Yeah, the poor guy was seriously named after a rock star. No wonder he’d always gone by his nickname. We all laughed. Even Deb cracked a smile, though it was still a sad expression.

After Tyler, the stories came easily. Some were short like Frost’s straightforward proclamation, “I’d have been proud to call him my son.” Others, like Benji’s, took fifteen minutes or more. For his story, the young boy went into detail about how Tack had shown up with a foam football for his birthday. Benji went so far as to run back to the barge, with Diesel at his heels, to reclaim the purple ball so we could all see the special present.

Jase talked of the time Tack had gotten him drunk for the first time in his life, and they’d tried to catch a possum with their bare hands. Jase showed us the scar on his hand that I’d always thought bore a striking resemblance to sharp teeth marks.

Clutch and I talked about the time the three of us ran through Chow Town and, by some miracle, managed not to become dinner for five thousand or so zeds.

The service lasted for hours, and we took snack breaks. Everyone was there except for the scouts on duty, but Tyler had instituted one-hour rotations to ensure everyone had a chance to say good-bye while remaining on full alert for herds and the
Lady Amore.

We cried and we laughed as we celebrated Tack’s life. When everyone had finished, Griz turned to Deb. She was the only one who had known Tack well and hadn’t spoken yet. “Would you like to say anything?” he asked softly.

She looked across the faces and then touched Tack’s casket. “I’m carrying his baby.”

A lengthy pause followed. There was nothing that could be said after that. Finally, eight volunteers slid the weighted casket onto a makeshift ramp of two-by-fours. “Lord, grant Tack peace,” Griz said before shoving the casket off.

We all watched from the edge of the deck as the casket splashed into the water. It floated for only a second before it descended into the darkness. Bubbles came to the surface, the final glimpse we had of Tack, aka Ted Nugent, a Corporal in the United States National Guard.

I looked up at the zeds surrounding the
Aurora.
There were only a few dozen, having been drawn in by the dark smoke. A few tried to walk through the water and were carried away by the current. Most had a basic sense of preservation and simply stood on the bridge over the river, swaying from side to side as they watched. The herds weren’t here yet. Kurt’s last scouting run put them out several days. The closest herd had stopped at a large river town, buying us time. If we didn’t clear the zeds now watching the camp, they’d surely draw the attention of a herd.

But that wasn’t our biggest problem.

The
Lady Amore
sat in the water about a mile south of us, an ominous reminder that we had her beloved captain locked up below decks. The riverboat hadn’t shown any aggression since the attack. It simply waited, likely for its missing captain.

“All right,” Tyler said. “We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do. Unless you’ve volunteered for a cleanup job, everyone stays in barge Number One until the zeds move on. Got it?”

People complained and dragged their feet as they headed back toward the barges.

“We’re not doing this for fun,” Tyler yelled out. “We’re doing this to save lives.”

His words cooled down the grumbling a bit, but people still weren’t thrilled about being cooped up in a dusty, steel barge.

The
Aurora
was in rough shape. The deck of the boat, with its heavily shellacked wood, was charred in several places. Only one flare had burned through the deck and into the equipment room, which accounted for most of the smoke we’d come across yesterday.

The deck had been repaired, but barge Four, which had taken the brunt of the damage, was a different story. A flare had landed on hay bales, which had lit a fire. Our livestock had been decimated. No animals survived. Most of the animals had died from smoke inhalation, and the cooks were working non-stop to save what meat they could.

Still, we’d been counting on eggs for our breakfasts. Several cattle and hogs had been pregnant, and all of them died in the fire. Finding livestock after the outbreak was tough. It had taken us over six months to pull together the thirty head and several dozen chickens. To replenish our stock would take a miracle. It would take a bigger miracle to hunt and fish enough meat until we could rebuild our livestock.

At least no one had died from the black fumes, although Clutch and I had both suffered from killer headaches all night. We’d gone through a pot of coffee this morning, and it had only taken the edge off our throbbing headaches.

I pulled myself to my feet. “Want to go bug Jase with me before we join the cleanup crews?” I asked Clutch.

He gave a crooked grin. “Hell, yes.”

I wheeled him toward the galley, giving him a twirl when we reached the door. He pulled himself up on his crutches, and we headed inside and went below decks. When we reached the equipment room, Clutch called out before he walked through the door. “Hey, Jase, coming in.”

Jase waved at us, without taking his rifle off his prisoners. “Hey guys!” He was currently on guard watch over the three prisoners from the
Lady Amore
. The temporary brig was in the towboat’s equipment room and was in no way set up to hold prisoners. It wasn’t the ideal location, but we figured it would be more difficult to escape than from any barge near civvies. Rather than bars, the prisoners were all handcuffed to chains that had been wrapped around thick pipes. It had a medieval feel to it, but we had to make do with what we had.

Clutch stepped unsteadily down the few steps, using his crutches and upper body strength for support. Since his back injury, his upper body was stronger than it’d ever been to make up for the lack of strength in his legs. He’d also lost weight, making the contrast in muscles all the more obvious. I liked the look of his biceps. His tattoos wrapped around his arms in a sensual way. But his legs were too thin from lack of use, and I worried about how long it would take for him to rebuild muscle.

Jase stood and offered the box he’d been sitting on to Clutch. “How’d the rest of the funeral go?” he asked.

“It was nice,” Clutch said as he took a seat.

“Griz did a really good job. The stories were great,” I added. We’d worked alongside Tack for several months. When I’d heard the stories from the other residents, I’d realized just how many lives the man who’d rarely spoken had touched. He had truly been an example of actions speaking louder than words. I hated that one more good person had been unfairly stolen from the world.

I turned to Sorenson, who sat on the floor, his wrists cuffed in front of him. His two men sat next to him, one on each side. Their chains were long enough to allow some mobility so that they could reach the single bucket that served as their toilet.

They all watched us. Sorenson with a blank look, the man to his right glowered with disdain, and the man to his left simply looked exhausted. My jaw tightened, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “You killed a good man. A man who would never hurt an innocent.”

Sorenson blinked a couple times, but his gaze didn’t connect with mine. It was distant, dull. “I lost my daughter yesterday.”

“There’s no one left alive who hasn’t lost someone they love,” I said.

Sorenson’s gaze sharpened as his brows furrowed. “When I left Nikki with the
Aurora,
she was alive and vibrant. When I watched those two men bring her back,” he eyed Jase, “She-she was gone.”

“It was an accident,” Jase said. “I’m sure Tack would’ve told you that.”

“I am sorry about your man. When I saw what had happened to Nikki, I couldn’t bear it.”

“And so you killed an innocent man,” Clutch said, anger dripping from each word.

Sorenson gulped, frowned, lowered his head, and then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. I can’t bring him back any more than I can bring my little Nikki back.”

“It does matter,” I said. “Nikki slipped and fell. It was an accident.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Clutch added.

“What happened to your daughter sucks, but it was an accident. What
you
did was murder,” Jase said.

Sorenson scowled. “Is there even such a thing as murder anymore? We kill those who used to be family and friends every day, just because they get sick. Who are we to judge what constitutes murder and what doesn’t?”

I shook my head. “Tack wasn’t a zed. He was a young man who’d done nothing except help return your daughter’s body to you.”

Sorenson climbed to his feet and backed up several steps. “She was everything to me. Everything I’d done, taking passengers onto the riverboat, all of that was for her. She was the only reason I helped anyone.” He picked up the now-lax chain and held it in his hands. He looked up. As long seconds passed, his distant gaze narrowed with intent.
“
I have nothing without her. Nothing!”

In a sudden rush, he wrapped the chain around his neck and sprinted forward.

I lunged to stop him, but wasn’t fast enough. When the chain was pulled tight, Sorenson was yanked back, and he collapsed onto the floor.

“Captain! No!” His men each moved to kneel by him. One pulled the chain from around Sorenson’s neck while the other watched as the man on the floor convulsed. I took a single step closer but didn’t get within reaching distance of the prisoners. Sorenson’s eyes were wide as he fought for breath that wouldn’t come. His body shuddered on the floor. After a minute or two, his body became still and his hands fell.

“Is he—?” I asked, afraid to voice the word aloud.

“He’s dead,” one of his men said without looking up.

“His windpipe was crushed,” Clutch said quietly at my side. “There was nothing anyone could do.”

I stared at the now-slack chain and then at Jase and Clutch. By their wide eyes, they were as shocked as I was. I swallowed. “Shit.”

We were going to have a war on our hands.

* * *

“Cash? You around here somewhere?” Clutch’s voice cut through the fog.

“Over here,” I answered.

“Where’s here?”

“At the stern,” I said.

I could hear footsteps, then a dark shape morphed into Clutch. He took a seat on the deck and set his weapon down next to him. He’d swapped his wheelchair and crutches for a cane yesterday. The swelling on his spine had finally subsided enough that he had decent control over his legs again. He couldn’t jog, but at least he could put one foot in front of another. I’d been terrified that he’d never reach this point, which would’ve killed his spirit.

“There’s not much I can do in this fog,” I said. “I can’t see five feet in front of me. I feel like I’m just sitting on my ass instead of being on duty.”

“At least if we can’t see them, then the zeds can’t see us. Besides, we can hear better than they can.” He handed me a thermos.

“Thanks.” I took a sip of the steaming tea and burned my tongue. I winced and screwed the cap back on.

Since Clutch had dropped off his wheelchair with Doc, his mood had improved a hundred-fold. While I still believed he suffered from depression—and he clearly suffered from PTSD—it was nice to see him not staring off blankly into the unknown quite as often.

“This fog could save us,” he said. “The zeds may move on since they can’t see us.”

Until the zeds left, there wasn’t much we could do besides quietly get the
Aurora
back into shape. It was too foggy to go ashore or even down the river on any scouting runs. We’d used up a ton of fuel putting out fires and making repairs. The herds would be passing through any day now, so we couldn’t go in search of any livestock. Thank God we still had the grain, though the lack of complete protein this winter would be hard.