Cajun Zombie Chronicles: (Book 3): The Kingdom Dead

by Smith, S. L.

  The newcomers from Baton Rouge, especially Lee, were also wondering how this monastic idea would work. “I’ve never been much of a church guy,” Lee said with a disgusted frown. “But,” he paused. “Being around Miss Abbey has me thinking and rethinking.”

  There was a mixed murmur in response to this. “So what?” Gill asked. “I’ve gotta start wearing a long dress or something?”

  “Church is just so stuffy,” Holly whined, as she picked at her nails.

  Jarrah was laughing, “A Muslim convert? Is that what I’m becoming? Insh’Allah,” he said, throwing his hands into the air.

  “You’re all welcome here, as well as to the Church,” Monsignor said after everyone had finished laughing. “After nearly eighty years, I’m not about to start forcing religion on people now. Morning prayer and Vespers, as well as Daily Mass, is a good way to structure our days and our community, but I promise nobody will be whipping you with rosary beads if you miss. Just please wait to receive the Eucharist until you’ve been received into the Church.”

  “Monsignor is absolutely right,” Miss Abby said, nodding deeply. “More is coming, too, and they’ll all be fittin’ in. Jus’ like he says.”

  “How many more?” Mrs. Lorio, Isherwood’s grandmother, blurted out.

  “I see,” Monsignor said, wrinkling his brow. “How do you know, Abby?”

  “They come to me in my dreams, chère,” she said. “It’s much clearer when I’m sleeping, but certain things still stick out.”

  “This is like Field of Dreams or something,” Patrick mumbled. “If you build it,” he said trailing off.

  “They come to you?” Monsignor asked. Then, with a smile, he added, “Maybe we won’t be needing the new radio equipment after all.”

  *****

  It was getting late. Miss Abby had apparently fallen asleep, and little bursting sounds kept popping from her lips. She was snoring ever so softly. Aunt Tad and Gran had started picking up everybody’s plates, and everyone started drifting away from the table. Just as Glenn was getting up, Miss Abby woke up.

  “Glenn,” she said. “Wait. Grab your sista, too.”

  “Wha …?” Glenn said surprised and a little spooked by the old woman’s sudden return to consciousness. “Oh, you mean Tad?”

  “Yes’m,” she nodded.

  “Okay, sure. Give me a moment.” Seconds later, Glenn returned from the kitchen. Tad peaked in from the kitchen. She took one look at Miss Abby and started taking off her apron. Soon, they were both sitting at the table on either side of the old woman in the wheelchair.

  “What did you need from us, dear?” Tad said, squeezing Miss Abby’s hand.

  “There’s something I’ve been carrying with me since Baton Rouge. Chet, too,” she said, nodding toward the one other person sitting at the table.

  Glenn and Tad’s heads swiveled down the table to Chet. They hadn’t even noticed he was there. Chet nodded back. He was having difficulty looking at them in the eye.

  “What is it, miss? Please. I’m not enjoying where this is going.”

  “It’s about your sister,” Miss Abbey said.

  “Tad?” Glenn said looking over to Tad.

  “No, chère. Not Tad.”

  “Please, Miss Abby,” Tad said. “We have … had … quite a lot of sisters.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN: GAS STATION

  For the first time, Isherwood was standing beside his wife and waving while others were leaving. Padre had waited until after Morning Prayer and breakfast to lead a group out to the airport.

  It felt weird not being with them, but it felt good, too. He never liked leaving his family. So much of his family had survived. It was as rare a luxury these days as a fresh Happy Meal, and he had barely taken the time to enjoy it. He was about to do just that. He and Sara were headed to the church’s bell tower for a long-awaited coffee date.

  Sara was still using the church’s steeple as a lookout point, which was well-suited for her skills with a bow. They could see most of the town from this height.

  “Man, the roads look great,” Isherwood said after taking a long sip of his coffee.

  “Yeah,” Sara answered. “Uncle Jerry’s pretty good with a pile of bodies on that new tractor of his.”

  “He’s burning them?”

  “I think so. We see the smoke ever so often,” she paused, grabbing her husband’s arm. “We always have the most romantic conversations.”

  Isherwood snorted on his coffee. He was quiet for a time after that, looking down onto the lake spreading out before them like a giant smile or frown, depending on your perspective, and the restaurant where their rehearsal dinner had taken place. “Remember when we’d spend our morning coffee dates checking our Facebooks on our phones?” He asked.

  “Things changed fast and hard,” Sara agreed. “Not all things for the worse, though. The death of social media wasn’t so bad, I guess, like quitting heroin. Watching all this unfold on Facebook and Twitter was insane, though, remember?”

  “Hashtag real zombies, hashtag apocalypse nigh … Yeah, I remember. The videos were terrible. Remember that live feed one of my college buddies posted. He dropped the phone or something, and it just kept recording.”

  “Turned into a real ‘live feed,’” Sara said with a shiver.

  “People just stopped posting after a while, like a wheel that slowly stops turning after a car wreck. It lasted for a while, though.” After a few minutes of quietly sipping his coffee – Sara had already finished hers – he asked, “How are the kids doing with all this?”

  Sara breathed in sharply. “Kids are kids, you know. They adapt so quickly. It helps being at the church, though, someplace familiar to them. I actually think Emma is enjoying the change. She gets to see Gran and the family much more often now.”

  “She still call them the ‘cut men,’” Isherwood asked.

  “Sometimes,” she laughed. “Her vocabulary has really expanded hanging out with Justin and Patrick’s kids.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, the other kids are starting to get restless and with that, mischievous. All the mothers, we’re talking about getting school going again.”

  “More trade skills than before, I hope. Jerry needs to teach the kids – heck, all of us – everything he knows about welding and farming before he croaks.”

  “Hey,” she scolded. “He’s still got plenty of good years left.”

  “Hopefully so,” he backtracked. “But still.” Isherwood took down the last sips of his coffee in a gulp and tucked the empty coffee mug in a corner of the bell tower. “You, uh, you like having your family back?” He said, repressing a smirk.

  Sara pulled him close in response. “I don’t think I’ll ever finish thanking you, Isherwood Smith.”

  “They’re my family, too,” he said, shaking his head. “Can’t tell you how glad I am to have your dad here. He might need to teach a few classes, too.”

  “Apprenticeships, more like,” she corrected.

  “That’s exactly right,” he said, inspired by the thought.

  Sara shook his arm to bring his thoughts back to her. “Pretty exciting that we haven’t had many zees along the fence, isn’t it?”

  “Zees, huh?” he asked.

  “Yeah, zees, zeds, zed-heads, ZZ tops, zips … we have all sorts of monikers floating around.”

  “You know what I’m gonna do today?” Isherwood said with sudden excitement.

  “Oh! That must be the coffee kicking in.”

  “It is. I feel like the blood vessels just opened in my brain. I’m gonna get maps and start designing this community of ours. Where the first round of walls will go, for one, and what fields there are in the city to farm.” He made to turn and climb down from the bell tower.

  “Not so fast, Ish,” she said, snapping him back to her side. “You’re still on the clock with me,” she said pointing at the next highest point in the town, the clock tower of the parish courthouse.

  “But that clock stopped working
weeks ago,” he protested.

  “And who’s fault is that?” Sara said accusingly. “Not mine.”

  *****

  Padre and his small team stopped at the gas station at the end of Hospital Road before driving the rest of the way to the small airfield. It was the same station that Isherwood, Justin, and Patrick had filled up at before Jerry had claimed his tractor at the nearby John Deere dealership. There had still been quite a crowd of zombies back then. That had been after they led thousands of them over the bridge, trapping them across the river.

  “While you two get the gas,” Gill was saying to Padre and Lee. “Holly and me will load up supplies from the store, capisce?”

  Padre looked to Lee to see if he thought he could cover him without their help. Lee nodded back, and called over, “Yeah, you go ahead. Grab me some smokes, okay?”

  Gill made an “okay” with her left hand. “Natty Sherms, right?”

  “Black and Gold, if they got ‘em,” Lee said, as he took aim at the first encroaching zombie. An older man in ragged overalls was stumbling through the ditch across the road. It was still thirty or thirty five yards away. He had switched out his handgun for one of the many .22LR rifles since it was so much quieter. With the scope, he could still freehand headshots at over one hundred yards with little difficulty. His pistol shooting skills more or less transferred to the rifle, but he still kept a pair of pistols in underarm holsters.

  “You got this, father?” Lee asked. Padre was already cranking on the hand pump.

  Padre nodded. “I’m good for ten or fifteen minutes at least.”

  “Sounds good,” Lee said. “I’m just gonna step into the road for some practice with this rifle.”

  *****

  “Ring a ding-ding,” Gill said, as the door slammed closed behind her and several bells wrapped around the door handle clanged noisily.

  “Hey, look at all these knives,” Holly said, as she spun a display case around on the front counter.

  “You know those are all crap,” Gill said, as she slid the collapsible bo staff from her belt.

  Holly frowned back at the older girl. As she turned, she let her arm drag the plexi-glass display case off the counter. In a moment, the case was slamming against the floor with an echoing thud. The plexi-glass didn’t shatter, but the case’s cheap hinges did. “But they’re so pretty, Gill,” Holly said rummaging in the mess she had made on the floor. “Look,” she said. “A Pokeman knife. This is an absolutely crucial accessory for the apocalypse. Come on,” Holly was saying as she turned and clipped the funny little knife atop Gill’s jeans. “Chet will think it’s so-oo cute, once his boo-boo is all healed up.”

  “Shut up,” Gill blushed.

  “You know,” said Holly. “For someone with such fair skin, you don’t blush much … until recently.”

  “Watch out,” Gill blurted out. Holly’s giggling fit abruptly squelched in her throat. She spun around in time to see a hobbled zombie staggering around the corner of the counter. Its backbone had been mangled somehow and it was staggering at a gruesome angle. If it weren’t for the ruined knife display, it likely would’ve collapsed forward onto Holly’s lower leg and started gnawing.

  Holly dove to one side in time for Gill to bring her bo down in wide crushing arc. The thing’s skull sagged softly inward in contrast to the loud thwack made by Gill’s bo.

  Gill was laughing at Holly as she scrambled to regain her footing, “Who’s blushing now?”

  “Jerk,” Holly said with an embarrassed smirk, as she righted the bulky glasses on her face. She stalked over to the bank of freezer doors and pulled on the door. It was still habit for her to yank on the door to overcome the suction, but the door instead lurched open with the yank and groaned on its hinges in protest.

  Holly grabbed a warm Coke Zero out of one of the long, angled trays. As she yanked the bottle towards her, a hand banged clumsily through the narrow opening between the trays and knocked the bottle out of her hand as it reached for her. She yelped in fright and then cussed pathetically as she watched her Coke bottle fizz and explode on the store’s floor in the half light.

  “Girl,” Gill shouted. “How many dead stock boys you gonna run into like that?”

  “It’s just … how many times did people get zombified in a stupid, c-store freezer?”

  “Watch out,” Gill cautioned.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Holly said as the thing came slowly spilling through another gap between the trays. Yoo-Hoo and Starbucks bottles can skittering off the shelves, as the zombie wedged itself through. The shelf quickly snapped off as the thing kept jamming its body through the impossibly tight space. The shelves under it quickly gave way, too, as the falling zombie gained weight and momentum. “Come on, little pumpkin head,” Holly was saying, as she put the freezer door between herself and the emerging zombie. The zombie lunged out head first, and the girl caught it between the door and its brass-colored frame. After a few slams, the skull collapsed inward and the madly lurching stock boy finally stilled.

  Holly stuffed the body back into the freezer with her foot. As she did, she grabbed a replacement bottle out of the freezer.

  “Going with the real deal this time?” Gill asked, as she stood watching the whole spectacle with her hands on her hips.

  “Yup,” Holly said, puffing stray strands of hair from her face. The bottle fizzed violently as the girl torqued the cap open. “That aspartame stuff will kill ‘ya, didn’t you know? Besides,” she said, hoisting her blue jeans back over her hips. “Think I’m losing weight.”

  It turned out there was only one more zombie in the place. Moments after Holly’s scuffle in the freezer section, they noticed a slow banging coming from the bathroom area. The store’s former occupants had managed to confine what was now a zombie into the woman’s bathroom by wedging a mop handle through the door handle and an adjacent fire extinguisher hanger. The thing was slowly trying to squeeze its softened skull through the narrow gap in the doorway. It was easy enough for Holly to stab a knife through the space.

  There were a few duffel bags for sale in the small sporting goods section. They loaded these up with canned goods. Gill also grabbed all the various flavors of Doritos chips.

  “Whoa, gotta love Louisiana,” Holly shouted as she discovered a stash of ammunition for sale behind the counter. It was mostly shotgun cartridges, but she sacked it all up. As Holly was leaving, she grabbed the Nat Sherman cigarettes for Lee, as well as some American Spirit for herself. When they left, there was still plenty left in the store. As with the rest of the town, there had been very little looting.

  Padre was still pumping when they emerged from the store with their third load of goods. He had just finished filling up the main tank of his Humvee, as well the auxiliary tank. They had recently discovered the second filler tube at the rear of the vehicle. They had later found the “FUEL AUX” switch on the instrument panel. Between the two tanks, the vehicle, Padre had guessed, held about fifty gallons.

  As the girls approached with plastic bags bursting with supplies, Padre was just calling Lee over to switch off pumping duties with him. They had five extra six-gallon red fuel tanks to fill, as well, and bring back to the church.

  There was a nice line of bodies beginning to mound up on the gas station side of the roadway, Padre observed as he pulled out one of his Henry rifles. He walked over to one of those flashing arrow signs with the illuminated message board. He leaned across the top of it, preparing to use it as a rifle rest.

  There was now a steady pace of zombies staggering towards the gas station, mostly all of which were coming down Hospital Road. The town, Padre thought, now seemed to be clearing up. There were at least no more large swarms, though they must not let their guard down. He, for one, wouldn’t feel truly comfortable until they had built some more walls. A lot more walls.

  About twenty rifle shots later, Lee called over to Padre that he was ready. As the priest turned back to the gas station, he could just see the fence of the airport crawlin
g along the horizon in the distance beyond the fields behind the station.

  He was suddenly struck looking at the fence in the distance. He stopped in his tracks. His arms were frozen above his head in the act of replacing his rifle in its holster.

  “Padre?” Lee asked timidly. The doors to the Humvee clanged open as the ladies leaped back out. In a flash of red hair, Gill was across the parking lot and over to the side of the gas station. She, too, was frozen at the sight.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: THE SCHOOL

  After another moment, they had all shaken themselves back into action. They had all rushed back into the Humvee. Lee splashed diesel everywhere as he quickly coiled up the hoses and tossed the hand pump into the cargo area of the vehicle. Padre helped him load the red fuel tanks into the back, as well, crushing a few bags of Gill’s Doritos in the process.

  “How they hell did we miss all that?” Gill said, leaning in from the back seat. Padre and Lee, however, weren’t talking at the moment. Their voices were still caught in their throats.

  The Humvee lurched back onto the roadway and idled there, like a dog that’s been shooed off but only so far. Padre and the others stared into the fields behind the gas station.

  “It’s not that we missed it,” Padre said, staring into the distance. “It’s that that many were out there at all.” As he spoke, there were rows and rows of zombies trudging towards them across the open field. They had been so focused on Hospital Road that they hadn’t seen the approaching swarm. Lee’s first rifle blast must have drawn their attention, with each successive shot drawing more and more. The leading edge had only now arrived at the back of the gas station.

  “What?” Holly was asking. “What’s that mean?”