Fred was silent for a time while Rachel changed the subject and started chatting about the unique smells in the barn. Eventually, he tapped her on the side of the head with a finger so tough he could light a stove match off it. She turned her head and stared up at him.
“Why do you like me?” he asked.
“Not only do I like you, I love you, Fred McCoy,” she said, reached up and pulled his head down, kissing him on the lips.
“But, why? I’m old enough to be your father.”
Rachel rested her head on his hairy chest and began stroking it. “We’ve already talked about it.”
“No, not really. Every time I ask, you dance around the question and make goofy jokes, like you always do.”
“My jokes are not goofy. I simply have a zany sense of humor. Most people lack the intelligence to appreciate my hilarity.”
“So, you’re not going to answer,” Fred said.
“My father was a piece of shit,” she said after a long moment of silence. “He was a mean drunk, seldom around, and when he was, he had a habit of beating us, so suffice it to say I had no father figure in the household. The first person I was attracted to was a teacher in junior high. He was an older man who taught English and could recite poetry by memory. He was a classy man and was dedicated to the kids. He’d stay after school every day and tutor anyone who wanted it. And, it wasn’t uncommon for him to buy presents for some students.”
“I take it he bought you something special?” Fred asked.
Rachel chortled. “Yeah, I suppose you could say that. I had an accident one day. I’d started my period and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. You see, Mom never taught me about that stuff. So, I was sitting in his class and I see this mess and I was scared to death and having a panic attack. He put me in his office and told me not to go anywhere. He ran off and came back a minute later with the school nurse. I guess he’d already given her a heads up because she had an extra pair of nursing scrubs for me to wear and then taught me everything I needed to know when Aunt Flo paid her monthly visit. The next day at school, he discretely gave me a bag with a new pair of jeans and a box of tampons. That Christmas he bought me a nice full-length coat. It was the first new coat I’d ever owned.”
“He sounds like a nice man,” Fred said, hiding the skepticism in his tone.
“He took my virginity on my fourteenth birthday. It was in his office after class,” she said. “So, maybe he was a nice man, or maybe he was a pedophile. You decide.”
“What happened with you two?”
“I was in love with him and he told me he loved me, but he moved away suddenly without telling anyone, not even his wife. I never saw him again.”
“How’d things go for you after that?” Fred asked.
“Oh, the usual for a teenager. I went through the motions of high school, joined ROTC my junior year, and promptly began an affair with the commandant of the program. He was a retired sergeant major.” She looked up again. “You remind me of him, a little. Anyway, I enlisted after graduation. He died of a heart attack while I was in AIT.”
“What is AIT?” Fred asked.
“Advanced Individual Training.”
“Oh.”
“So, that was when I had my first lesbian experience with a fellow soldier. I was such a whore.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Fred admonished.
“It’s true though. I was fast and loose.” She smiled and waited to see if Fred had any additional comment, but he remained quiet. “Tell me about those zombie girlfriends of yours.”
Fred frowned. “They weren’t girlfriends.”
“What were they?”
“Nothing more than three female zeds who’d been dealt a bad hand. If I had to guess, it was a mother and her two daughters.”
“Zach said you were caring for them,” she remarked.
“Yes, I was. I’d kill a couple of rabbits or a deer and drop them off for them. It had to be fresh, raw meat or else they wouldn’t eat.”
“They never tried to attack you?” she asked.
“No, they didn’t,” Fred replied. “But I wasn’t doing them any favors. They were never going to get better and it was only a matter a time before they attacked a human. It’s like Zach said—all zeds have to be killed.”
“But they have the zombie female and her baby up at Fort Detrick,” Rachel said. “I heard that the doctors practically have her acting like a human.”
Fred grunted. There were a lot of rumors floating around about that zed and her baby. He asked Zach why they had not killed it and Zach said they believed they could learn more about zed behavior from her.
“It’s not right,” he said. “They think they can teach them to act like humans again, but that virus causes irreversible damage to the brain. There isn’t any cure.”
He was about to say more, but Rachel’s expression suddenly changed, and she gave his chest several taps with her hand.
“We’ve got company,” she whispered.
Chapter 14 – Team Joker
Their next stop was exit 235. They drove around the area, looking for people or zeds, and finding none, they chose a random building and stopped. Little Joe armed himself with a fireman’s Halligan tool and they approached the front of the business, which was a fast food restaurant. The glass doors had already been shattered. Little Joe set the prying instrument down and exchanged it for his handgun. They cleared the business of any hostiles and then searched the business for anything of value.
Finding nothing, they marked it with the FEMA X protocol and moved onto the next location. They kept at it all day. There was not much left. After almost a decade of society’s collapse, the survivors had picked everything clean.
It wasn’t a totally fruitless undertaking; they’d found some items. Roscoe had tasked the Fitzgeralds with searching for a specific type of circuit breakers. They located several in a landscaping business, along with a box of 10/3 Romex. Soon, they had their trailer almost full. They went back to exit 235 and unloaded everything in the fast food restaurant. Joker sent in a radio transmission to Mount Weather updating their status and then looked at his watch. It was after 1800 hours.
“We need to pick a spot to set up for the night,” he said. He gestured around. “This place stinks, but we can sleep in the SUV.”
“I’d suggest going down to exit 19,” Trader Joe rejoined.
Joker glanced at him. “What?”
“Let’s head down to exit 19. It’s only a few miles from here, it’s fairly close to Holston and we’re familiar with the area,” Trader Joe replied.
“Guys, it’s getting dark out,” Joker said.
Little Joe cleared his throat. “Do we really want to be sleeping in this SUV, all cramped up and listening to my old man? He snores like nobody’s business. You and me won’t get any sleep.”
Joker glanced between the two of them. “And you two are familiar with the area?”
Trader Joe nodded. “Yeah. There are some hotels at that exit. We slept there one night, didn’t we, son?”
“Yep. That one hotel behind the Cracker Barrel has outside doors and some of the rooms still have beds. We can get a room on the top floor like we did last time. It’s easy to put noisemakers on each end of the walkway. Besides, zeds can’t normally climb stairs.”
Joker thought about it for a few seconds. Honestly, he was not looking forward to sleeping in the SUV either. He knew from experience his back would be in knots the next morning. And both father and son were taller than him. Little Joe could handle it, but the older Joe would be worse off than him. Plus, the three of them had been sweating profusely all day and they were rank. Being cooped up in the SUV overnight, even with the windows open, wasn’t going to be pleasant to the nose.
“It’ll be hard to clear a hotel in the dark,” Joker remarked, “but I’d prefer to sleep on a mattress rather than in here. So, yeah, let’s give it a try.”
It was twilight when Joker turned onto exit 19. Trad
er Joe pointed toward the Cracker Barrel. “The hotel I have in mind is right behind it.”
It was one of those economical hotels. The second and third floors had an outside walkway that the room doors opened to. The men started on the ground floor and pointed their flashlights into the window of each room. They repeated it on the second and third floor. Satisfied there were no zeds occupying the hotel, they chose two rooms in the middle that had an adjoining door and prepped an evening meal.
“Are there any people living around here?” Joker asked as they ate a stew consisting of pork, beans, potatoes, onions, and some assorted spices. Considering all the ingredients were fresh, the meal was rather tasty.
“There’s a family by the name of Cranston who live on a farm nearby,” Trader Joe said.
“There’s two brothers that I played baseball with,” Little Joe added.
“Are they still alive?” Joker asked.
“They were the last time we saw them. That was a couple of years ago, right, son?”
“Yeah, two years, maybe three.”
“Are they friendly enough to pay a visit to?” Joker asked.
“I suppose so,” Trader Joe said. “But times have a way of changing people. You know how it goes.”
So true, Joker thought. Trader Joe continued. “We can save time with this neck of the woods. The whole area has been picked clean. Besides, the ammunition plant is only about thirty minutes from here.”
“You two have never really said much about Holston,” Joker said.
Trader Joe slurped down a spoonful. “It’s a big place. Those storage units, what do you call them, magazines?”
Joker nodded.
“Yeah, those magazines. There’s a bunch of them. They’re heavily fortified and locked up tight. We’d considered blowing the doors open, but we were always worried we’d activate the explosives inside and blow us to kingdom come. Are you sure you can pull it off?”
Joker nodded. “I’ve had some training and practical experience, but if I screw up you’ll never know it.”
Trader Joe stared darkly at Joker and scoffed. “I guess you think that’s funny.”
“They don’t call me Joker for nothing,” Joker replied and gave him a wink. “In the morning, we’ll go visit the Cranstons and then head to Holston.”
Joker caught the two men exchanging a glance. “Is there something wrong?”
“Not at all, I just wish there was running water in here. I don’t know if you noticed, but the three of us stink.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Joker said.
Chapter 15 – Team Mad Dog
“Are we going to try to drive through the night?” Logan asked. Melvin shook his head.
“We’ve made excellent progress, all things considered,” Melvin said, then pointed toward the south. “But that is one mean-looking weather front moving our way. We need to find a good place to hunker down.” He turned to True. “Have you seen any zeds?”
“There’s a few trying to follow us,” he replied. “They about a hundred yards down the road. Nothing to worry about.”
“Alright, stop the truck,” Melvin directed. “We’ll kill them off before we find a spot for the night.”
“Yeah, make it quick,” Liam said. “I need to stretch my legs and drain my fire hose.”
Logan heard him, stopped at an intersection, and set the brake. “Plenty of room here.”
Although each were armed with handguns, they kept them holstered and instead armed themselves with various fighting weapons. Melvin was armed with his trusted Chinese dadao sword he found in a martial arts dojo. He took a couple of warmup swings while the other three men spread out and stretched.
“Alright, are we ready?” he asked. The O’Malley brothers nodded eagerly while True responded with a singular nod.
Melvin began walking and then broke into an easy jog toward the zeds, which were now a block away and coming toward them. If the sight of the four men jogging toward them instead of fleeing for their lives registered in their brains, it didn’t show. Instead, they began ambling toward team Mad Dog.
The two groups closed the distance. The closest zed was a man about the size of Melvin. He was wearing heavy carpenter’s overalls that were grimy and torn. Closing the distance, the zed reached out toward Melvin as he emitted a raspy snarl. Melvin ducked under the outstretched arms and sharply pivoted. He swung the sword as if it were an extension of his arm. The zed’s head came off cleanly and fell to the road with a satisfying kerplunk.
“Nice,” Liam exclaimed as he approached another zed. This one was also a man, or maybe a teenager, it was hard to tell. Liam and Logan were both armed similarly; their left hand was sheathed in a thick welder’s glove and they had large Bowie knives in their right. Liam came up to the younger zed and stuck out his left hand. The zed took the bait, and as he lunged for it, Liam rammed the Bowie knife under the zed’s chin and into his brain. He quickly withdrew the knife and searched for a new target.
The third zed, another male wearing similar khaki-colored overalls and a dark blue hoodie, suddenly stopped and began back-pedaling. Melvin stopped and watched in curious bemusement. Liam and Logan hustled up, but Melvin held up a hand.
“No, wait,” he ordered. The four of them stopped and watched in bemusement as the zed continued back-pedaling for several feet before turning and loping off.
“I haven’t seen that before,” Logan said. “What about you guys?”
True and Liam shook their heads, but Melvin spoke up. “Yeah, I have. Did you see the look on his face? He was scared. I’ve seen that before too.”
Liam stared in confusion. “What are you saying? Are they regaining sentient thoughts and emotions again?”
“It looks like some of them are,” Melvin said.
“That’s what they been saying about the fifteens,” True said. “They starting to think again.”
“Alright, maybe you can explain this, Sergeant, because me and my dumb brother are confused,” Logan said.
“What, pray tell, are you confused about?” Melvin asked in mock seriousness.
“Okay, so we’re told the sabotaged batch of vaccines created the strain of zeds everyone calls fifteens.” Logan pointed down the road where the zed ran. “So, if that gentleman is a fifteen, did he come all the way from Ohio, or are all of the zeds evolving?”
“That is an excellent question,” Melvin said.
“Do you, perhaps, have an excellent answer?” Logan asked.
“Nope, sure don’t,” Melvin answered. “They have some theories, but nothing definite. That’s why they want us to take blood samples from any of them that seem to be acting like fifteens.” He pointed at the two zeds they’d killed. “I guess I’ll draw some blood from these two. Let me go get the kit.”
Liam took the opportunity to walk over to the curb and urinate. Logan made a tsking sound.
“If you’re trying to lure that other one back here to kill it, you aren’t going to do it with bait that small,” he said.
“Well, maybe True should pull his out then,” Liam retorted.
The three men watched as Melvin stuck the syringe into the carotid artery of each zed. The vials slowly filled with a black liquid. Once he finished, he stood and held one of the vials up.
“Nasty-looking stuff,” he remarked.
“Good thing you didn’t stick yourself, Sarge,” True said. “It’d be a shame to leave you behind.”
Melvin laughed good-naturedly and then looked up as drops of rain began falling. “Alright, let’s go.”
They found an overpass to park the Peterbilt under and began preparing for dinner.
“Sarge, I’ve been wondering. What’s the deal with that pregnant zed up at Fort Detrick?” Liam asked. “Nobody seems to know what’s going on with that.”
Melvin shrugged. “All I know is she gave birth. I don’t know if the baby is infected or not. They’re keeping it secret for some reason.”
“Well, that ain’t right. The old government w
as keeping all kinds of secrets. That’s no way for this new government to treat its citizens. I heard she was a looker, is that true?”
“I seen her when she was first captured,” True said. “I guess she could’ve been nice-looking once. She was young and had some muscle on her, like she was a college athlete.”
“Those nerdy scientists are probably banging her,” Logan said.
“I can only imagine what a zombie cooter smells like,” Liam quipped.
“Why are they keeping it a secret, Sarge?” True asked.
“I’m not sure,” Melvin replied. “All I can say is this. When I was active military, we had some classes on being taken prisoner and torturing methods. If the people torturing you are good, they can get you to tell them everything. Whatever is going on with that zed and her baby, it might be information they don’t want everyone to know just yet.” He paused a moment.
“Okay, what I’m about to tell you is not well known, and don’t tell Grace I know, but those satellites are picking up a lot of artificial light at night in some countries. That implies they are on the road to recovery at a faster rate than we are.”
“Which countries?” True asked.
“Israel, China, Russia. Those are the big three, but there are places in Europe as well. Mostly the northern countries. The point is, they are supposed to be our allies, but they won’t talk to us on the radio. Do you know the only country who has responded to radio messages is Norway? That’s it.”
“So, let me get this straight. They won’t tell us what’s going on with this zed mama because they’re afraid we might be caught by enemy forces and tortured?” Liam asked.
“It’s not as farfetched as you may think,” Logan said. The other three stared at him.
“What are you keeping from us, brother?” Liam asked.
“Well, I’m not supposed to say, but Grace told me they’ve recently monitored ship movements from Russia to Alaska.”
“Oh, shit,” Liam exclaimed. “Their population had to have taken just as big a hit as ours, but that isn’t stopping them from coming over to claim territory.”
Zombie Rules (Book 7): The Fifteens Page 8