The Reanimates (Book 2): The Highway

by Rudolph, J.

  Todd and Will nodded. Will added, "We aren't the only two security guards who got stuck. You get more people from the groups to stand too; we'll get more from ours as well. We'll go out with a big bang if that's what it takes." His eyes sparkled with excitement and I knew he had a plan. We sat there with smiles on all of our faces feeling that same excitement when we realized how late it had gotten. No one wanted to arouse suspicion by having them found here way late, so we said good bye to our new allies.

  When we cleaned up and got ready for bed, we did it with a spring in our steps. There was a new sense of laughter and hope. Trent, Matt, and Lucas were going to put the word out to the people that had been vocal about the need to leave and we were going to start planning this out.

  We needed weapons. While we still had the majority of our guns and some ammo, there was no way we could outfit everyone that needed them. With Matt and Lucas in heavy equipment there was access to scrap parts including some of the larger farming machines that they were sure they could scavenge from. There was no way to take the work home with them, so they had to be careful on where to hide their projects in the shop. Trent was in the wood shop and knew he could build some sharp things like spears and arrows. He didn't like the idea of having to resort to pointy sticks, but a pointy stick would be better than nothing at all. DaWayne made a comment about how it's not the size of the tool, but let it drift off incomplete when his mom gave him a sharp look.

  There was something that Will said that made me wonder as we bunked down for the night.. He had this look in his eyes when he made the going out with a bang comment. Did he have a way to blow something up? Was that something that could even be done here? I giggled just thinking about the walls blowing up and us riding out in a cloud of smoke like in a movie, but that giggle stopped quickly when I considered what was on the other side of those walls; the hordes of zombies. I thought about the people that seemed happy about this place. I didn't want to leave them without defenses. I didn't like this place, but I didn't want to destroy the thing that people were using as a way of life for the ones that wanted to stay.

  It was hard to build an opposition with several groups of people that could never meet. It wasn't like we could rent out a meeting hall and start talking openly about the plan. We had a lot of work to do and it needed to be coordinated but any attempts to coordinate it would only raise the alert that we were up to something. Nothing could be in writing. All we had was word of mouth and hope that mouths were going to be careful with how and to whom the words were repeated.

  By the middle of April we had amassed a good supply of weapons. There was a charge in the air. There was a spark in the eyes of others.

  This had not gone unnoticed.

  Bart and Roy were suspicious. They seemed to be around a great deal more than they had been. There were other men who seemed to be following us. Trent told us one night that there was a new transfer to the wood shop who didn't have the slightest clue about wood working or the tools and Lucas said that there was a similar man in their area. Come to think of it, there had been a few people claiming to feel sick in the medical center that didn't seem to be actually sick. They were on to us.

  Brother Michael hadn't been seen much lately. Jody would stay away for days with him. One day, I saw him walking from his place to the storehouse and he seemed to be having issues. He was talking to himself and waving his hands around. Every once in a while he would spin around to face something I couldn't see behind him, yell something, then return to his path where he maniacally paced back and forth.

  We saw less of Todd and Will. It seemed they were always assigned to other tasks. The new escorts said nothing to me when I asked how they were. Will came in with a cut finger a week after the last time I had heard from them. I thought that it looked like it was self-inflicted to be an excuse to talk to me. As I cleaned it out he whispered, "I'm almost done. I need one more week."

  I nodded slightly to indicate I heard him. I placed the last bit of tape over his bandage and said, "Alright friend, that should do you. I need to see you back in a week for a wound check, OK?" He grinned at me. I probably said it a little louder than I would have normally, suspecting that there were people listening. This gave him an excuse to have to come back and give me a heads up on getting this rolling.

  "Oh, the new escorts you guys have? They're on our side. We had them get us reassigned. Keep acting like they have you scared though, because it will look good for Bart and Roy. They saw us come out of your camp and think we were up to no good." I think the relief on my face was like I put a Zen mask on. It did explain why we had new escorts and the clueless worker spies.

  A week later Will came back for his wound check. When we got settled into an exam room and the door was shut, he handed me a brown paper bag.

  "These are a string of fire crackers. On Thursday, after 3:00 PM, set them off. Todd and I will come over to investigate a strange noise. Tyreese and DaWayne are going to take our weapons and march us to Brother Michael's house. You may have noticed that there are almost no black people in Heartsvale. Brother Michael is afraid of them." I must have given him an odd look when he said that, because he started laughing at me. "Yeah, it is ridiculous but what ya gonna do? It's probably why he settled here way before. The demographics in Heartsvale before the zombies were 92% white. Needless to say, having those guys walk in with you with a gun to our heads is a definite recipe for getting him unsettled. Alarms are going to be rung at Michael's which will draw Bart and Roy over there. While are doing this, your other guys need to get your vehicles to the gate. They will know to drive when a screaming bottle rocket goes off, which I'll give you on Thursday. I couldn't figure out how to get those in stealth-like today. Let everyone who wants to leave know the signal and get to the gate and bring every weapon they can." Will's eyes sparkled. "Everything from that point on is going to be pretty dynamic. There are only three people, and you know who they are, that can open that gate so either they are going to do it willingly or dead when we take the keys. Door number three is the final option, if my little side project has to go off. Remember that line from that movie that says something like with enough soap you can blow up just about anything? Fertilizer works too. This place is so full of shit that it could go nuclear sized explosion." He laughed a little.

  I laughed a bit too, but thought again of the people who might decide to stay. "Will, I want to make sure that as few people get hurt as possible. I want people to have the choice. Don't go too overboard with blowing stuff up, alright?" I smiled at him and he laughed back.

  "I don't want to see the worst case happen. I want these people to have their walls if they need them. For some people, this place is one big security blanket. I don't want to take that away from them if I don't have to. I don't, however, want to be trapped at the very end by something that I could have prepared for. I think that the walls are most important to them as well and they won't risk the loss of them. I may have to scare them a bit, so each chunk of the wall I rigged up is restrained to individual containers. If it comes down to it I plan on starting high with the explosion and work my way down."

  I liked that, it helped make the idea of messing with their defense easier to accept.

  My biggest issue I had with this idea was that it was Tuesday. Thursday seemed to be forever away.

  The Fight

  Wednesday was an incredibly long day. I barely had my head in my work and I wondered if everyone else felt the butterflies that had taken root in my stomach in theirs. I wondered how the others were taking the information to their contacts in each group. I wondered if now that it was go time, were the people that talked about wanting to leave actually going to do it, or were they a member of the “complain about it but don't do anything about it” club. I felt eyes on me all the time and I wondered if there was something in my eyes that was giving away all my secrets. I never did develop a decent poker face and I was terrified that the words were all over my face and the secrets were screaming out in neon w
ith every smile. At the end of the day, I was immensely relieved that this was my last shift at the center, grateful that my schedule had me off on go-day anyway. As I walked out, I hoped that I taught the girls well. I thought about the potential traumas that would be coming into the center after the escape went through, and I worried over the idea that I hadn't shared enough for them to patch up the wounded. I hoped I had. The medical center was bound to be a busy place tomorrow.

  When I got back to our quarters I let out a sigh of relief, no one had come to me at work to make an example out of me. All the nervous energy that had been building up had me bouncing around picking up stuff from our area. I regarded what we were going to leave behind. I thought about how safe it had been even with living with a knife at our throats. We were giving up a known set of dangers for an unknown set.

  When the guys got back from their shift, we set to preparing the cars for a bug out, taking care to have it seem that we were doing general maintenance. Trent took Drew with him to make it look like a father/son bonding moment, showing him how to read a dipstick. Tyreese followed Trent's lead by grabbing Liam. They made sure that the bus, the mini-van, and the SUV were ready to go. They topped off the tanks and checked the oil and coolant levels. I had been worried that there had been some sort of sabotage on our vehicles but found no evidence of any foul play. We double checked that the bed box and all of our supplies were just the way we left them. We pulled out more of the guns and stashed them strategically in the bus.

  Over dinner we discussed the plan for the next day. I smiled before I started the speech I had put together in my head over and over.

  "We are going to take advantage of the minimum work day they have on Thursdays. The guys are going to bring home some of the weapons they have been building, but most of the resources that were built are going to arm the others. We are going to have to rely heavily on the stuff we brought in.

  "Now the main part of this plan is that we are going to take Todd and Will hostage after we set off our signal. Matt is going to come with me as my back up, while DaWayne and Tyreese are the muscles behind the hostage situation. As it turns out, Brother Michael is a bit of a racist, not in the hate way, but the scared way, which I find funny as hell. Here he is, a man who communes with God, but doesn't have a brain in his head when it comes to people.

  "Trent is going to stay back to look for the signal to roll out, which is going to be a bottle rocket that Will is going to give us right before we leave here. When that goes off, everyone needs to be in the vehicles to roll out to the gates. I want everyone to stay as low as possible so they aren't a target. I want the kids to be under the seats in the bus as much as possible so they are as protected as they can get. I want the teens to be armed but still low. Lucas will be taking over the SUV to get it going and Tanya will be the driver for the mini-van.

  "I think this will be relatively safe. The risks are there, but overall the residents here are unarmed. The real risk is going to come from the guards who are loyal to the place, and they most certainly are armed. The guards directly on gate duty are sympathetic to our cause. I don't know if they are going to leave as well, but they are going to step aside and let us out. The only way we are getting out that gate is if we have someone unlock it, and there are only three people in the compound that have that power. This is why we have Will and Todd ready to play hostage, we are hoping that it will be enough to sway Michael to open the gates himself, but I am not counting on it. Will says he rigged up a plan that in the worst case he will blow a hole in the gate for us to get out, but we all agreed that this is not what we want to do as a primary exit strategy. There may be gunfire, I hope not, but it might happen. Be alert to everything." I took inventory of the looks on everyone's faces after my little speech. It was the best plan we had to go with and I read that in the eyes of everyone else. I was really counting on the power of the many to sway the events that were about to happen.

  That night when we all bunked down for bed I tossed and turned instead of getting any sleep. Trent did the same. After a while the sheer exhaustion of the day caught up with me and I fell into a fitful sleep ripe with dreams about the apartment complex and what could happen tomorrow. The worst dream was one of God floating down to squish us all for wanting out.

  We went about our morning as though nothing was different, knowing that we were still being monitored. The guys went off to work. I was so happy that the shops closed up at noon on Thursdays, probably why Will chose it, so they would be home soon. I didn't want to be alone today.

  When they got back we had only hours to go before the showdown. I was tense and worried about what we were going to face.

  As the clock approached 3:00 PM, Trent pulled the string of firecrackers out of the bag and stared at them. "Well, 'the time has come, the walrus said.' It's time to get this show on the road. Cali, I want you to know that I love you very much. I hate that you are the one to have to do this. I wish I had taught you how to drive the bus so I could go to negotiate instead of you. I'm scared of sending you out in the line of fire."

  "I know, hon. I don't like this either. It's the best thing we can do though." I replied. I wrapped my arms around him and held him close for a moment. "I love you."

  Trent whispered back, "I love you too." Neither one of us wanted to entertain the thought that there wasn't a guarantee that this was going to be our last chance to see each other. "Alright. It's go time." Trent fished the lighter from his pocket and went outside to the side of the building that wasn't in the line of sight of the security guys. I knew he lit the fuse when there was a rapid fire of cracks and booms that erupted close by. Within moments we heard the sound of feet running to us and the door swung open to allow the runners to come in. Todd and Will breezed in. Will grinned. "Easy as pie so far. Let's go."

  They tossed their weapons to DaWayne and Tyreese and grinned. Todd added the off-handed comment, "There's no other time I would ever give up my gun like this. Good thing I have a spare." He lifted his shirt to show the hand gun tucked in his waist band. We all laughed which helped to burn off that bubbling over anxiety. Will handed Tyreese the bottle rockets and a lighter which he dropped into a pocket in his pants.

  DaWayne and Tyreese got into position next to their captives. Matt and I took point. We marched the group over to the house that Brother Michael was in, only a few blocks away from what became our home.

  Brother Michael lived in a moderate sized home at the end of a cul-de-sac that was mostly vacant. Bart and Roy were the other two residents. This street was a couple blocks from the main gate, which was visible from the end of the street, and was probably chosen for that reason. The house was set back on the property with a wide green lawn standing between the street and the front door. With such a stretch of space, sneaking up on them was going to be a trick. It had been a pretty house. It was off white with a deep chocolate brown colored trim. Rose bushes were arranged in rows under the windows. They needed to be trimmed but even so, red blooms started to open showing a splash of color. The lawn took advantage of the warm weather and had grown in, almost erasing the winter destroyed brown patches. It needed to be mowed at some point, which I imagined was on the to-do list since Bart's already was. We walked quietly over the grass to the front door.

  I knocked loudly and clearly on the door. It was a satisfying sound, a solid thud against the solid oak. We could see someone through the frosted decorative glass that sat on either side of the door. Bart was the one who opened the door, and his eyes registered surprise when he saw us on the other side. His look of astonishment turned to irritation when he finished taking in the scene before him and learned that the people outside had his men at gunpoint. His irritation turned into anger when he realized the guns that were pointed at the security guys were the same kind of guns that were issued to the security team.

  "Really? Not only did your dumb asses get captured, but your guns got taken away from you as well?"

  "Bart, move it. We're here to see Brother Michael
, not you." I said with a snark. He looked at me like I had lost my mind for talking to him like that. We pushed through the door and past him to the living room. We heard voices coming from the den, so we strode past the living room to where the sounds were coming from.

  The people in the room were arranged in a circle with Brother Michael, sitting with his legs crossed Indian style in a green chair at the farthest seat from the door. His eyes sparkled with life and his face was animated as he lectured the group. "God is with us in everything. He was working through the demons to make the world simple again. We all lived such a life of decadence that we were lost. We had all become the rich man that the Bible warned us about, we were trying to shove a camel through the eye of the needle. We aren't anymore. We have returned..."

  Brother Michael stopped short when he looked up to the door where we stood. He looked at Matt and then to me. He smiled warmly and asked, "So are you finally ready to hear what God wanted you to know?" I looked at him with irritation. Matt and I stepped through the doorway and revealed the people standing behind us. Will and Todd tried to look sheepish as they stood with the guns pointed at them.

  "What do we have here?" Brother Michael asked, a tone of anxiety colored his question. He was not expecting to see guns and hostages in his house. Tyreese and DaWayne were hamming up their role as hostage taking thugs.

  "Well, you're the all-seeing prophet. You tell us." Matt said flippantly.

  "Brother Michael," I began, "we intend to leave today. We are asking that you unlock the gate. I ask this nicely and calmly, because I don't want to see anyone hurt. I really don't." I made sure my tone read that we would do whatever it took if it came down to it though.

  From the corner of my eye I saw someone stand up from where they were seated. It was Jody. "Cali? What are you doing here? Why are you doing this?"

  I knew that she was at the house with him but I still felt a sinking feeling when I saw her. It was easier when the whole out of sight thing was going on. Seeing her there reminded me about her choices. I felt my heart fall when she crossed the room to stand with Brother Michael instead of us.