Dead Faith (Book 1): Dead Faith

by Vee, Chadwick

  “No way, then you kill us and take our stuff.” Ponytail replied but the others seemed to be letting him speak for them.

  “Why do you say that? Was that your plan.”

  Ponytail looked surprised but finally stammered out an unconvincing answer. “What? No!”

  “Were you guys with the guys that had up the roadblock down the highway?”

  “Were we? That sounds a little past tense.”

  “Did you know they were raping teenage girls.”

  “What? No! We wouldn’t do that, we’s keeping people safe.” Kenny replied from inside the car.

  Slowly Ponytail began to let the smallest grin creep across his face. “Well, it is a brave new world.” The other white guy with Ponytail shared a laugh with him and one of the two black soldiers the next house down laughed too.

  “What the crap guys!” Blue Jeans said clearly in disgust.

  Gabe put his rifle up to his shoulder.

  “Wait just a minute, there is something you need to know.” Ponytail shouted.

  “What, what is so important?” Gabe waited for a reply but Ponytail just continued to smile at him.

  “What the??? Watch out!”

  The sudden warning from the guy in the blue jeans caused Gabe to glance over his shoulder quickly, but what he saw was a total surprise. Coming down the road from the same direction that Gabe and his friends had come was a crowd of zombies. There was already a dozen zombies within sight and while the houses blocked Gabe's view, he had a bad feeling there was a lot more of them around the corner.

  Taking all of this in took less than a second. Turning back towards Ponytail, Gabe opened fire as he saw him already diving for cover behind the car he had been trying to get to earlier. As soon as Gabe had pulled the trigger gunfire broke out all around him. The other guy who had come out of the house with Ponytail was hit several times. Gabe couldn’t be sure which of his friends had got him, but it didn’t matter. At the next house down, the two soldiers had never gotten far from the door they had come out of and both were able to make it back inside. Gabe was surprised to see the second guy come tumbling back out the door, apparently thrown out by the guy in blue jeans. If Gabe hadn’t turned around to deal with the approaching zombies he would have seen the soldier get up and run back towards the house, only to have the door slammed in his face. After pounding on the door and screaming to be let in he raised his rifle and shot through the door, and answering shots came from inside. It was clear from the angle they return fire came through the door and where they struck the soldier that Blue Jeans had retreated up the stairs and was firing down at the door. The soldier outside was hit in his right shoulder, ribs and hip and went down to the ground.

  Meanwhile, Gabe thought he had hit Ponytail but couldn’t be positive and he didn’t have time to be sure. He turned around and began to methodically shoot the zombies coming around the corner, getting more headshots than not. The rest of his friends stepped up and started shooting as well. Gabe shot and moved forward while trying to keep an eye behind them for any treachery from Ponytail or Blue Jeans. The rest of his friends were working their way forward and Gabe was the first one to get far enough to see down the street past the corner house.

  “Oh Lord help us.” Gabe said in a quiet prayer. “Back, in the name of Jesus!” The zombies in the first three or four layers stopped and then immediately began to stumble backward… but soon were being pushed forward again by those behind them. “In the name of Jesus, BEGONE!” More zombies stopped but there were so many of them behind them now that they got immediately pushed forward.

  “It’s all of them from the highway! Get inside the houses, hide, or barricade!”

  Gabe put a couple more rounds of ammo into the zombie horde to give his friends more time to get away. As he turned to run he felt something tear through his stomach and heard something else buzz past his ear. The pain was intense and excruciating and he instantly knew he had been shot in the stomach and nearly shot in the head. As he collapsed to the ground he saw Ponytail ducking back around the car across the street. From where he had fallen on the ground he was able to see under the car and could see Ponytails feet and legs as he squatted down behind the car for cover. Despite the pain he pulled his AR-15 up to his cheek and released a blast of full auto. He saw the blood appear and could hear the screams of Ponytail as the high-velocity ammo penetrated his legs.

  “Gabe, behind you!” Jack yelled at Gabe as he and Kevin came running back towards him.

  Gabe looked back towards the zombie horde and saw that one of them had gotten ahead of the rest and was about to attack him. “In the name of Jesus, I cast you out!” The zombie collapsed in a heap inches from Gabe’s outstretched legs.

  “We’ve got you!” Kevin said as he and Jack each took an arm and lifted him. Through his pain Gabe saw his friends running into a nearby house and was especially glad to see Jeannie make it inside safe. But he was much closer to the Hummer and his friends dragged him towards it.

  Jack got to the back door and lifted the handle to no avail. He pounded on the window, “Unlock the door now!” He tried the door again but still got the same result. “UNLOCK THE DOOR!” Gabe saw the zombies right behind them and tried to cast the demon out of the walking corpse but found he didn’t have the strength to talk this time and realized he was about to blackout. The last thing he was aware of as he slipped into darkness was the sound of the doors unlocking.

  Chapter 23

  The stabbing pain was so strong that it ripped Gabe out of the blackness of unconsciousness ready to fight. Trying to sit up and punch whoever stabbed him in the stomach Gabe was surprised to find himself held down.

  “Calm down Gabe, you’re through the worse of it.” Kevin was leaning over him and the guy named Kenny who had been with the soldiers was stitching up his stomach.

  “You got shot in the stomach but luckily he shot you right as you spun around so it just went in on your left side, and appears to have gone under the skin and came across the right. That guy is such a…”

  “Language…” Gabe managed to say through the pain.

  “What?”

  “He’s a preacher.” Billy said with a laugh from the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, sorry man. I mean sir.. or pastor…”

  “Gabe, just call me Gabe.”

  “Okay Gabe. Well that is the last stitch and you’re done! I don’t think you’ll be winning any sit-up competitions anytime soon, but you should be fine.” Kenny put the stuff he had been using to work on Gabe into a square bag with a red heart on it and pulled a little plastic blister pack out of the bag before shoving the bag under the seat. “Take these for the rest of the week and you shouldn’t get an infection.

  “Thanks.” Gabe said, not sure what to make out of Kenny.

  “Where we at Billy?”

  “Not even a mile from where we were. I’ve just been driving around the neighborhoods randomly so we don’t attract a crowd of zombies.”

  Gabe sat up and looked around. “Do you think we can plow through them in this thing and get our people?”

  “I don’t think so. This Humvee is pretty sturdy but it ain’t a tank. We might, and I emphasize might, be able to plow through them at speed, but if we slowed down to pick anyone up… I don’t think we would be able to get going again.”

  Gabe gently caressed his gunshot wound as he looked out the window and considered their options. A zombie was walking towards them down the street and moved to intercept them when it finally heard the engine noise. Billy easily dodged it and Gabe swiveled his head to watch it as they went by. The zombie stumbled forward in an uncoordinated lunge as it missed grabbing the Humvee and then continued to stumble after them. Gabe lost sight of the zombie as they went around the next corner.

  “I have an idea.”

  Chapter 24

  Jeannie slowly lifted the slats of the venetian blinds and looked out through the tiniest crack. The front yard was still full of zombies and they didn’t seem t
o be dissipating. The basement windows to the houses on this street were right on the ground level, but so far the zombies hadn’t been able to figure out that they could easily crawl on all fours and bust through those windows. Or maybe in their brain they just hadn’t made the connection between basement window equals inside with delicious live people.

  She wasn’t sure how long it had been since she had seen Gabe shot and thrown into the Hummer but she guessed they had driven off well over an hour ago. She was starting to give up the idea that they would come back. Or that they even could come back. She definitely didn’t want to consider what that meant. She gave out a sigh and was about to let the crack in her blinds close when something across the street attracted her attention. The roof on the house where she had last seen the two black guys seemed to be bulging. At some point early on she had seen that the zombies had gotten in the front door of that house. She could see that the front door had been shot up and realized someone must have accidentally shot the lock. She was pretty sure one of the guys had gotten eaten in the front yard but the other one had made it into the house. She watched with confusion for a moment until finally a boot kicked through the roof and she could see someone making an effort to kick the hole bigger. Jeannie ran down the hall from the living room to the bedroom at the end of the house. She had noticed earlier that the blinds in that room were open and that she could stand just outside the door to the bedroom and have a clear view of the houses across the street. As she got there she saw the soldier wearing blue jeans pull himself through the hole. She speculated that he must have successfully lifted the access ladder to the ceiling before the zombies got in as he didn’t seem to be in a panic trying to get away from anything. She watched as he immediately walked the perimeter of the roof, being careful not to get to close. When he came back around to where he had made the hole she could see even from as far away as she was the frustration and disappointment on his face. She couldn’t read his lips from where she was at but she was sure that whatever he was saying wouldn’t meet the approval of either Father O’Donnell or Pastor Gabe. He finally stomped his foot, put his hands on his hips and just stared straight ahead, making eye contact with Jeannie. Jeannie wasn’t expecting that and didn’t know what to do, so she slowly lifted her hand and waved with a big smile on her face. He looked a little surprised too but finally waved back and appeared to be laughing. He walked towards the top of the roof and set down.

  “Hey guys, come here! It looks like that one guy in blue jeans across the street survived.”

  “The one that shot Gabe?” Brad asked busting into the hall from a back bedroom.

  “No! The one that was down a house from him… didn’t seem to know about the abuses at the toll station.”

  “Oh!” Said Jill. “Good, he seemed nice.”

  “Crud, is he stuck on the roof?” Asked Manuel.

  “Looks like.” Jeannie responded.

  “Hey, he is waving and pointing.” Brad noted. At this point, as all six of them stuck in the house were trying to crowd in one doorway, Jeannie moved into the back of the room and Brad joined her as they tried to stay far enough back not to be seen by the zombies. The guy on the roof was up now, gesturing towards the top of the street.

  Suddenly a vehicle horn could be heard honking nearby. Kelly let out a yelp of joy for which she received 5 “shhhh’s”.

  Jeannie pushed through the doorway and ran back to the front room. Knowing the zombies would be distracted she was less cautious and shoved her fingers between the slats of the blinds and made a large opening.

  “It’s them!” She said in a hushed shout. Everyone else came and made their own openings in the blinds. A Humvee was at a stop at the top of the street honking its horn. As they watched the windows went down on the Humvee and Kevin and Jack leaned out and began yelling at the zombies and just all around making noise. The vehicle slowly began to roll back towards the main road again, away from the survivors in the house.

  “Wait!” Yelled Jill. She jerked the cord and yanked the blinds all the way up and pounded on the window while frantically pounding on the glass.

  “Stop!” Brad grabbed her arm. “Look, they are leading them away! It’s genius!” The zombies were turning around and walking towards the noise the car and its occupants were making. A few had stopped when they heard the pounding on the glass and were now coming back towards the house again.

  “Oh! Sorry.” Jill said, backing away from the window even though it was too late.

  The crack of a gunshot came from the Hummer and Jeannie saw a hand on the other side of the vehicle holding an AR-15, after waiting a few more seconds, it fired off another shot. The zombies that had been coming back to the survivor’s house turned around and began to follow the vehicle again.

  Everyone was quiet for the next five minutes as they watched the zombie horde slowly make its way out of the cul-de-sac and out of view around the corner.

  “Let's go make sure they all left the house of the guy on the roof.” Suggested Brad.

  Chapter 25

  As Billy and Gabe got out of the Humvee they could see everyone was sitting in front of the house they had taken refuge in. There were still dead zombies in the street but no live ones seemed to be around. Before Gabe could notice much more Jeannie came running up to him with a big smile on her face and stopped awkwardly just in front of him. Her arms fidgeted up and down a few times before she put her hand on Gabe’s shoulder. Gabe was pretty sure she had wanted to hug him and he realized he had kind of wanted her to.

  “Praise God! I can’t believe you are walking! I saw you get shot here.”

  Gabe felt the warmth of her touch through the bandages and the warmth started to spread through his body. He flinched away, surprised by what he was feeling for this woman he had been around so little.

  “Oh no, I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t hurt me, just.. “ Gabe didn’t finish his sentence as he didn’t want to lie.

  “Well took you long enough to come back.” She said teasingly. But before he could reply to more Humvees pulled up behind the one he had gotten out of and the rest of the group got out of the vehicles.

  “Where did you get these?” Asked Brad.

  “Kenny here,” Billy began to answer, coming between two of the vehicles gently pushing Kenny in front of him in a playful gesture, “Knew where those crazy military guys kept them so we went and got them.”

  “I see you guys got a friend too.” Gabe said.

  “Yeah, this is Omarion, he was the one that didn’t like it when he found out his friends were raping people.”

  “They weren’t friends of mine. And please, just call me Omar.”

  “Well good to meet you.”

  The group from the cars began to introduce themselves to Omar and the group from the house were talking to Kenny.

  While everyone was meeting and catching up, Gabe pulled Brad and Jeannie aside.

  “Are these houses clear?”

  “Yeah, at least we know these three here are, but there is no way to keep the door shut on the one Omar was in without just barricading it.”

  Gabe shook his head in acknowledgment. “Okay, well let’s stay here tonight, at this rate we won’t get to Covington before dark and I think we could all use the rest. We can continue tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Brad said as Jeannie shook her head and smiled.

  #

  Brad effectively divided everyone up between the three houses, confident that Kenny and Omar could barricade the door of the third house for the night and not willing to 100% trust them yet, he asked them to take the third house to themselves. Gabe was a little surprised at first to have ended up in a house with Jeannie but on retrospect realized it was probably inevitable unless he had been willing to give Brad direct orders to the opposite. Billy and Kelly also ended up in the house with Gabe leaving Brad with Eric, Manuel, Kevin and Jack. Gabe reflected that even though he had ended up in the same house as Jeannie, who clearly had feeling
s for him, he was glad that Brad had thought to separate the young unmarried couple of Kevin and Kelly.

  After they had settled in and made sure the house was secure, Gabe headed toward the kitchen. They had pulled all the blinds and curtains in the house and had lighted candles in all the rooms, still being cautious not to have them to close to the windows. The occupants of the house seemed to have not been home when the zombie apocalypse started, or at least they hadn’t noticed it had started when they had left. In addition to plenty of food in the cabinets and a nice supply of candles for thunderstorms, it reminded Gabe of his house on mornings when he and his wife had been leaving for the day. There were a couple coffee mugs in the sink along with two small plates and a butter knife. There was a bag of bread, long since gone green, sitting next to the toaster. Gabe really hadn’t had much time to think of his wife in the past couple days, getting ready for this trip and then the craziness that had since then. But seeing the coffee mugs in the sink waiting there until one of them got home to get cleaned… Gabe just stood and let the deep absence of his wife sink in along with the sadness it brought.

  “It’s tough, isn’t it.” Jeannie reached down and squeezed his hand that was resting on the counter. Gabe didn’t move his hand for a minute.

  “I know she wanted a divorce and was already living with another man, but it is just hard to reconcile that with our years of happy marriage.”

  “I know it might seem weird but I understand. When my husband died… was killed, I didn’t get to say goodbye.” She took a deep breath that almost turned into a sob. “He was just there, this vibrant strong caretaker of a man and then he was gone.”

  As she shook back tears Gabe put his other hand on top of hers and squeezed it reassuringly. She leaned her head against his shoulder and for a second he didn’t know what to do, but he finally relaxed and his head against hers. Gabe struggled with the fact that it had been less than a month since he had tried to get his wife to leave with him, and now here was this woman leaning on his shoulder. But he reflected that he would follow the Biblical teachings on relationships, he probably wasn’t living in a time where long courtships were a good idea. Courtships yes, he told himself, long ones… no. They stood there holding hands leaning on each other in silence for a couple of minutes when Billy came around the corner and opened a cabinet and started picking through the spices.