Free Dead Wrangler by Justin Coke Page A

precarious to put up with the prisoner's normal bullshit. The prisoners he deemed most dangerous received visits. Bricks told them that they were to save any acting out for the cell blocks, away from the soldiers.
    Martinez had been a second tier member of a gang that had disappeared in the 80's. He had been at the end of his thirty-five year crack sentence when this all went down. The day he was supposed to get out he had been forced to stomp his best friend's head in when he turned. Somehow he didn't seem all that surprised by zombies.
    "De que tocan a llover, no hay más que abrir el paraguas," he said with a shrug. James didn't speak Spanish, but he assumed it was something fatalistic. Martinez hadn't been a power player before this, but everyone above him was dead. But he agreed to keep the Latinos in line. The same strange rules of politics had made James the unspoken head honcho of the white prisoners. The two surviving Aryan Nation guys bitched and moaned. James gave them the dead eyed smile that had been getting bullies to back down since elementary school. Or maybe they remembered Demarco. Prison was a lot like high school, with lots of petty bitching and plotting over the smallest thing. Except being popular wasn't about the football team. It was based on power, which was based on money, which was based on drugs, which was based on violence. The most popular guys in Penitentiary High tended to be the most psychopathic, because they were the best at violence.
    The problem was that these days the guys who were the best at violence was the Army. The Army did not give a wet shit about the politics and scorecards of the prisoners. If anybody did something to make them care, they would suffer for it.
    The prisoners were the gophers for the Army; they did the laundry, they cooked the meals, mopped, ran errands and messages. They were not given guns at all for a few weeks. Sgt. Andrews watched them, read their files, watched them some more. Some of the more trustworthy prisoners were given some bolt action rifles and taken along on patrols. More and more prisoners merged into existing platoons. Only a few of the older men and the more useless younger inmates were left on permanent maid duty. James was one of the last to get taken. He was merged into an ersatz platoon made up of random guys the 52nd had somehow picked up during the chaos outside. There were two guys whose specialty was manning anti-aircraft radar towers. Three Air Force guys whose expertise was fighter jet maintenance. Six guys from the National Guard who hadn't found their unit. The 52nd had found them trapped in a stalled Suburban, trying to get their commanding officer to send a rescue party. Their commander hadn't thought they were worth the effort, and gave them to the 52nd.
    In spite of their ineptitude, or perhaps because they were expendable, they were given the most dangerous job. They were the decoys.
    The prison was a way station and quarantine stop for civilian survivors. The army sent out patrols; usually airborne drones, because that was cheap on precious aviation gas. They looked for crowds of zombies, fires, or any other sign that real humans were still around. Then a patrol went out, usually consisting of two Hummers full of soldiers and one empty Stryker. The Stryker was an eight-wheeled beast designed to fend off machine gun fire and RPGs. The zombies presented no threat to it at all; it was the escape vehicle.
    One Hummer would post half a mile away from the zombies. The decoys, James included, started blaring the Jefferson Starship's Greatest Hits. It was the only CD they had. They would scream, yell, shoot off a burst from the .50 cal. Anything to attract the attention of the local zombies, get them turned their way. Once they had the attention, they piled into the Hummer and moved another half mile, music blaring. This way the other guys in the other Hummer could wipe out any lingerers and get the civvies in the back of the Stryker