JB put his hands behind him and rocked back and forth. “Now, here’s how this works. One by one, you’ll approach the creature. You will walk up to the painted line and see what it does. If it attacks you, we’ll end your life quickly and painlessly with a shot to the head. We don’t cotton to letting them things eat us. If it ignores you, you live to help us rebuild. You are treated like a queen. You’ll want for nothing.”
“Except our lives back,” Roper yelled. “You fucked up motherfucker.”
“Roper, please. You’re not helping,” Einstein said.
Everyone turned and looked at Einstein, stunned.
He stepped away from JB and pleaded with her. “Please. I’m sorry, but this is how things are here. It’s what needs to happen. Stop being an ass and get over it.”
Roper’s mouth dropped and her body folded in on itself in defeat. “Not you, kid. Don’t tell me these morons got to you, too.”
Einstein looked hard into Roper’s eyes. “Why don’t you go first then? Just go for it, Roper. Do what you do best. We both know it won’t go after you. It’s kind of like Ben. Think of it that way.”
Roper cocked her head at Einstein. He was the only person who knew she had killed Ben back in Angola.
“Okay ladies, it is a simple test.Walk up to that painted line. Stand there. If he lunges for you, we’ll shoot you in the back of the head. It’s a painless death, really. Mericful.” JB nodded to Sarge, who grabbed Cassie’s arm. “This young one can go first.”
“Yeah,” Roper said. “Of course. Take the youngest, prettiest one first. Fucking backwater assholes.”
JB walked up to Roper and stood toe-to-toe with her, his face inches from hers, his eyes staring daggers into her. “Why don’t you go first, then?”
“No fucking way.”
JB grinned. “Oh, I think so. You don’t want the pretty girl to go first, you can take her place. Step on up, Roper.” JB nodded to two of the guards, who grabbed Roper’s arms and moved her to the gate. “Maybe this will shut your mouth forever.”
“Assholes,” Roper muttered, tearing her arms out of their grasp.
“If it means anything,” one guard said, “I look forward to blowing your head off your shoulders.”
Roper turned to him, reared her head back and head butted him, his nose making a horrific crunching sound and blood gushed from it as he stumbled backwards, hand to his face. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “She broke my fucking nose!”
“You won’t be blowing my head off today, buttmunch.” Roper stepped up to the painted line. She knew the zombie would ignore her. Einstein had let her know that he was just going along for the ride, and she was so glad for it. His mention of Ben let her know exactly what he wanted her to do…and that was precisely what she would do.
Roper toed the line.
The zombie walked right by her.
“Well glory be and hallelujah, praise the saints and the motherfucking Virgin Mary. I am one of the chosen ones.” Roper looked over her shoulder at JB before stepping over the painted line. Then she gave a finger wave to JB and jumped on the zombie’s back. “Ride ‘em cowgirl!”
Within seconds, she snapped its neck until the rotted skull popped off the spine. It stood there for a nano second before collapsing into a pile of bones and tattered flesh held together by the overalls.
“What the hell? Get that crazy son of a bitch out of there!”
Roper grinned at JB and allowed the guards to yank her from the cage.
“You are one crazy ass woman,” Clint said. “Now we gotta go round up another.”
“You wanted someone special? How’s that for special? He was a one twist wonder.” Roper laughed a laugh that sounded slightly manic.
“Goddam it, fellas,” JB said. “Keep a closer eye on them next time, will you? Rutherford, go out and find another one. Take the Duarte boys with you.”
“What about the rest of these ones?”
“Take them back to their rooms. We’ll try again after Rutherford brings one back,” JB said to Sarge. “Just get them out of my sight.”
As they walked back to the Dorms, Cassie whispered to Roper, “Thank you.”
Roper nodded. “We’re living on borrowed time, kiddo. Get out any way you can. Any way.”
“Roger that. Oh, and Roper?”
“Yeah?”
Cassie lowered her voice. “You’re my hero. I love you.”
“I love you right back.”
Zoe left the Lexus among a bunch of cars just outside the warehouse district. The entire way, she stayed off the main road where the others had been captured, and when she found a good place to dump it, she took it.
The entire drive back, one word kept banging around inside her head.
Captured.
She shook her head at the madness of the situation. After a year of fighting flesh eating zombies, they had, as Burnett had predicted earlier, turned on each other.
And Zoe was no exception.
She didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about killing Eddie. He deserved it. He was dangerous and disloyal. Deep in her soul, she knew it was wrong to slice him up that way, but who was around to judge her? It was, after all, survival of the fittest and she was determined to stay fit. To do so would require Dallas and her people who had taken her in, trusted her with a weapon, and given her responsibilities beyond anything anyone had in her real life.
Her real life.
What a joke.
Moved around to fourteen schools in five years, she’d become rebellious and hard to manage. Arrested at twelve for her first shoplifting offense, she spiraled out of control until she turned eighteen, when she started an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop. Her life had slowly righted itself. She’d managed to stay clean of substance abuse, with the occasional inhalation of medical marijuana her friends got for her. She had baggies of it in her backpack, and she and Hunter had gotten high several times back in Angola once all the craziness settled down with the military attacks.
Her life had finally started moving out of the gutter of bad decisions when everything went to hell. Now, she was fighting zombies, marauders and the good old military.
Where was the U.S. military now?
Zoe crept along the outer perimeter of the warehouse district. She realized they had cordoned off an area of a couple of blocks. This explained why there were so many undead still in the area. They went where the food source was and this little burg was like a little corner market for the undead. Given the lack of truly dead zombies, these folks operated on a much different principle than Angola, where eradication was the goal.
To eradicate this virus meant killing one hundred percent of the undead. That would be statistically impossible, given the fact that they were everywhere you could see and everywhere you couldn’t. But until such a time as their numbers were smaller than the living, they would always have the upper hand. One zombie could start the cycle all over again, and if Einstein’s calculations were correct, which she was sure they were, one zombie could potentially infect twenty people or more in a twenty-four hour period. That meant those initial twenty would become four hundred in a day, which would become eight thousand the next day.
This exponential increase was why she found herself creeping around the outskirts of an area that had been cordoned off to protect the inhabitants from the man eaters.
Inhabitants.
Nice word for assholes.
So far, her reconnaissance had revealed an area guarded by men wearing police riot gear and sporting high end artillery along with police tasers.
Who on earth could they be tasering? And why? It made no sense.
Something else that made no sense was the absence of women. There were none walking around, none used for guards, nada. It was as if they didn’t exist within the walls.
That could mean only one thing, and Zoe’s blood chilled at the thought.
The tasers were meant for the women who must be kept inside.
As she continued her surveill
ance, she came to the far corner where she saw a pole and chain in the middle of an area enclosed by a chain link fence.
“What the fuck,” she muttered, examining the worn circular path from a safe distance. It was evident someone or something had been chained here and walked mindlessly in circles.
Mindlessly.
“Oh hell no. No fucking way,” she said to herself. She wondered why anyone would keep a man eater in a cage. Ever.
Zoe heard the voices of a couple of men headed her way and scurried across the street to hide behind a dumpster.
“I so don’t believe some chick did that shit,” came the high voice of a young man.
“It happened, Willy! I heard she walked right up and twisted its head plum off.” The second voice was deeper and had a thick accent.
“If that’s true, that’s one bitch I won’t be fucking.” The third voice was more manly the either of the other two.
The first voice chuckled. “Like you have the goods.”
“Fuck you, man. I scored two backpacks fulla arrows and shit from the bus. I got me enough goods for at least a blow job.”
“No shit?”
“I got my eyes on that young one. Casey or something. Give me one more good find, and I’ll have enough for the whole shebang..”
“Shh. I think I hear one. Get that thing ready.”
Zoe wanted to look around the dumpster, but the men were too close. She considered shooting them, but what would be the point?
Zoe heard the tell-tale scuffing of feet that told her there was a zombie nearby. She pushed her back up against the building and pulled her short machete from its sheath.
The eater was after the flesh of the three men, not hers.
“My turn,” the one who wanted the blow job said. He had the voice of a mama’s boy—sort of prissy and feminine.
The sound of scuffling made Zoe look.
What she saw made her skin crawl. Two men used a snare pole like dog catchers use to catch the zombie while the third acted as bait, taunting the zombie. They were putting a chain around its neck when she peered around.
Zoe leaned back, mortified.
“Got us a fresher one this time. Harder to snap his neck. This dude couldn’t be more than what? Three weeks gone?”
“Maybe less, but I’m telling you, none a those women coulda done it. Not even that big quiet one. Urban myth, I say.”
“Say what you want, but that little filly has a list of a dozen guys who want to break her.”
“I don’t get that shit, man. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
His accented friend laughed. “Hate to inform you, dude, but neither of you are.”
Zoe was relieved when the men left, leading the zombie by its chain and realized her hands were shaking, and not out of fear, but out of anger and loathing.
Blow jobs for goods? Is that why there were no women to be seen? Had they been captured to perform sexual favors?
The thought made her sick to her stomach. Not Dallas and Roper. The thought— Zoe vomited behind the dumpster.
Whatever game these guys were playing with zombies chained to a pole had to be stopped.
The bigger question was how was Zoe going to stop it?
Butcher was finishing her rounds of fence security patrol with Luke when Otis sounded the alarm that visitors were coming.
“Been a while since we’ve had vehicular visitors,” Luke said as they both quickly made their way to the front gate.
The row of cars lined up to prevent people from driving up to the main gate stopped the vehicle long before it reached the prison gate.
“Otis?” Butcher yelled up to the crow’s nest. “Whatcha got?”
“They stopped at the road block. Getting out now.”
Butcher ran to the yard. “Henry?”
Henry, the man Dallas left in charge of the weapons training was already in place, gun at the ready. Sixteen sharp shooters were in position and ready for the order.
“All over it, Butcher. They come armed, they’ll leave without any.”
“It’s…holy crap. It’s Hunter!” Otis yelled.
Butcher looked at Henry. He did not give the stand down order.
“And Wendell!”
Henry ordered them to stand down.
Panic seized Butcher’s throat and goosebumps covered her arms. She ran to the main gate, fear pushing her. Her arms churned and her legs pushed harder than they had in months.
“Butcher—” Luke yelled. “You don’t know—”
“Open the gates!” she yelled, never breaking stride. “Open the fucking gates!”
“Butcher, get back here!” Luke caught up to her and grabbed her arm. “What are you doing? You can’t just go running outside.”
Butcher pulled her arm away. “Like hell I can’t. If those two came back here, that means something’s gone wrong, Luke. Horribly wrong.”
He grabbed her arm again. “Running out in the open isn’t necessary. They’re on their way in. Wait here. Please.”
The two lovers locked eyes in a battle of wills.
“Fine.” Butcher paced up and down the length of the gate, her heart racing, her fear wrapping its arms around her chest. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t feel anything but frightened.
“They’re okay. They’re okay. They’re okay. They have to be okay.” She paced like a caged panther, repeating the mantra over and over. Question after question plagued her. Where were Dallas and Roper? Why were the guys in a Prius? What happened to the Beast? What went wrong?
“Babe—”
“I should have been with them, Luke. I should have—”
“You need to calm down. We’ll get answers in a minute.”
Butcher wheeled toward him. “That’s just it, Luke. I’m not sure I’m prepared to hear the answers. What if they aren’t okay? What if—”
Luke headed for the gate. “Open it up.”
Hunter stood outside the gate with Wendell barely behind him. “No need. We’re not coming in.”
Butcher ran to the gate. “Where’s Dallas? What the hell happened? Please tell me they’re okay.”
Luke grabbed Butcher’s hand and squeezed it. “Let him tell his story.”
“We were ambushed by a bunch of survivalists,” Hunter said. “They got the Fuchs and everyone in it.”
“Oh my god.” Butcher covered her mouth with her hand. She didn’t want to ask. She couldn’t bring herself to ask, but she had to know. “Dallas and Roper? Are they…dead? If they are, just say it. Just say it, goddamn it.”
Hunter shook his head. “I…I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
Butcher grabbed the cyclone fence. “God damn it, Hunter, what in the hell are you doing here?”
Hunter placed his hands over the top of hers. “We came to get you.”
Dusk was shift change in the warehouse compound. Guards changed positions, people were instructed to get off the streets. Someone lit the tiki, and the women were put in lockdown after an hour of exercise.
Dinner was served in their rooms. Roper set the plastic tray on the vanity. The food looked and smelled delicious, but she was certain the food was drugged, and had no intention of eating any of it. She was starving and the food did smell good, but she couldn’t, she wouldn’t trust them. After she’d snapped the zombie’s neck, JB pulled her aside and told her to find a way to come to terms with her situation or things would go badly for her.
Her situation.
What a crock.
This was no situation. This was kidnapping by a mob of outlaws who had no idea what in the hell was going on. But it was more than kidnapping—it was breeding by rape—the lowest of lows men would sink to. Even the people who kept their zombie children locked away in hopes of a cure were less disgusting than these men.
No, this was no situation. This was a life or death game-changer that was about to mean the death of Cassie if Roper couldn’t get out of this room.
It wa
s only a matter of time before Cassie had to face that tied up zombie. Roper couldn’t even imagine the fear Cassie must be feeling.
Roper had saved her once. How many more lives did Cassie have? Hell, for that matter, how many more did Roper have?
After an hour of staring at the food she wouldn’t eat, the door opened and in walked a slightly more than middle-aged woman wearing a black apron. Her salt and pepper hair was pulled back in a bun. She looked slightly Amish. Or more like an Amish librarian.
“I’ve come for the plate, hon.”
Roper stared hard at her. “You, you’re free?”
The woman chuckled. “Oh hon, no one is truly free anymore, are they?”
Roper handed her the tray of food. The woman looked at it and shook her head. “You gotta eat. Soon, you’ll be eating for two.”
Roper lowered her head. “I thought it might be drugged.”
“Oh it is,” the woman said. “But only with a mild sedative to help relax you. If you relax, it’ll be over in no time at all.”
“It. You mean the rape of innocents?”
“This great nation was built on sacrifice, my dear. People willing to give up everything to make it what it was. We grew weak, though. We stopped fighting. Now here we are. We must each sacrifice now if we are to not only return America to its once former glory, but also save this great planet of ours.”
“And you think raping women will do that? You’re as fucking crazy as he is.” The woman smiled, and Roper was reminded of the movie The Stepford Wives.
“Perhaps I am. He is, after all, my brother. Good luck to you, hon.”
Roper stared at the door as it shut behind the woman. The old bag didn’t realize how much she’d told Roper.
Whoever was coming for Roper was coming tonight.
And she’d be ready.
Butcher convinced Hunter and Wendell to come into the prison and get something to eat and drink.
After Hunter and Wendell were examined by Nurse Meg for any scratches or bites, they sat down and inhaled their food in silence while Butcher paced outside.
“Let them eat, Butcher. Then you can pepper them with as many questions as you like.”
“How can you be so flip? So cavalier? Our people have been abducted!”
Riders of the Apocalypse (Book 3): Eat Asphalt Page 7