“That is my grandmother you’re talking about.” Leave her behind? Or George? Bill and Sarah? “No. If they can’t come, then neither will we.”
He whipped around and gripped her with one meaty paw around her throat. He lifted until Chalice’s toes were barely touching the ground. “You’ll go where I say you’ll go.”
A crossbow twanged and imbedded into the man’s back deep enough for the metal tip to come through his chest. Four shots rang out from the direction of the truck. Five bodies in fatigues crumpled to the ground.
“Let’s get out of here.” Colton stumbled toward her, blood running down the leg of his denim jeans and under his leather chaps. “We don’t know how many more are out there.”
Chalice rubbed her throat and kicked her assailant in the ribcage. “Jerk. I ought to shoot you again.” She yanked Mychal’s arrow from the man’s back and carried it with her to the truck.
Bill, Sarah, Grandma, and their latest addition, the owner of the chicken truck, Rhonda raised their weapons in the air. “Maybe I can’t have a baby,” Grandma said. “But I haven’t worn out my usefulness yet.”
“And I ain’t got but one hand, but I took out that scoundrel,” George, Grandma’s boyfriend shouted. “Don’t bury us yet.”
Despite the horde of undead they’d stumbled upon while hunting for fresh meat, Chalice felt the safest she had in a long time. Knowing the able-bodied adults and teens outnumbered the kids gave her the most assurance.
“Mychal, you drive the Hummer while I take a look at Colton’s leg.” Chalice reached up to swing into the back of the transport truck and held out a hand to help Colton.
He reached upward and used her as leverage.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Grandma climbed up beside her. “You are too young to be fixing a gunshot on some boy’s upper thigh. I’ll do it. You go take care of the baby.”
“Good grief.” Chalice jumped down and went to drive the Hummer while Mychal sat guard. There wasn’t any room for modesty and old-fashioned values when the world was collapsing. “Move over.” She shoved against her brother.
“Colton told me to drive.” He shoved her back.
“Grandma is working on his wound, and since I’m the next oldest, I’m driving.” She glared. “You seriously do not want to mess with me right now. Somebody just tried to choke me, and I’m really pissed off!” She chose to ignore Grandma’s request to care for Angel. Hanna handled that job perfectly fine.
Mychal stared at her in silence for a moment then burst out in laughter. “The fact that a hundred zombies tried to eat us isn’t as bad as getting choked?”
“Yes, but I’m used to them. I’m still not used to fellow breathing humans trying to kill me.” She turned the key in the ignition and followed the transport down the Highway. They really needed to find a place to settle down.
*
Colton hissed through his teeth as Grandma poured peroxide over the flesh wound in his leg. He was lucky. A flesh wound wouldn’t keep him down the same as a bullet hole would have. Regardless of his desire to be a doctor and the pile of medical journals in a box, a bullet removal would have required someone with more skill than they had.
“You’d better not be getting too comfortable with Chalice,” Grandma said, taping a bandage over his leg. “She can be your girlfriend, if need be, but she isn’t going to do anything that will require her seeing you without your pants on. Got it? And this world is too upside down for anyone to think on anything permanent. Not just yet.” She pulled the tape a little too tight for Colton’s liking.
“Got it.” He winced. “But I have only respect for Chalice. She’s great.”
“That she is.” Grandma helped him sit up on the cot. “We need to make a stop. Baby is out of formula, and the hens have stopped laying. I don’t think they like the truck.” She put the medical supplies into a tin trunk. “If Angel were a few months older, we could give her milk, not that we’re any closer to finding any fresh milk, but she’s too young. I’m not comfortable giving her powdered milk right now, either. I don’t think it has enough nutrients.”
“Chalice mentioned the same thing yesterday.” He stood and tested his weight. Other than a painful pulling in the wounded area, he’d be fine. “We’ll have to stop and check every place that looks promising.” What they needed was an old-fashioned wet nurse or a cow.
He looked around the truck. There was absolutely no place to put a cow. Not with their growing numbers of children. They needed to find a place to settle. A safe, well-secured, easy to defend place. He might as well find them a house on the moon.
“Sit down and rest that leg,” Grandma ordered. “You aren’t going anywhere until we stop anyway.”
Bill and George had lined the walls with hammocks. Small “rooms” were partitioned off with metal shelving, full of supplies, bolted to the bed of the transport truck. Netting kept the cans from sliding onto the floor during travels. A regular moving hotel.
Colton lay back on his cot, folded his arms behind his head, and tried to close his eyes to catch up on some sleep. It was no use. All he saw on the back of his eyelids were zombies trying to bite his face off. Or Chalice’s. If he found the people responsible for the outbreak, he’d put a bullet through their skulls.
Angel cried, most likely needing a bottle or her diaper changed. Colton heard Grandma speak to her in a soft tone and soon the baby’s cries grew silent. They’d need diapers for her, too. Babies needed a lot of things that were disposed of quickly.
He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Bill, if you see a place that might have baby items, we need to stop. Over.”
“Got it. There’s a mall up a head.”
“Too risky.” It could be full of hostiles or zombies. Neither one of which Colton felt ready to deal with. “Try something smaller.”
The truck lurched, then slowed. Gravel pelted the undercarriage. “Will a daycare work?”
“Should, if it isn’t cleaned out. Over.” Colton hit the off button and stood, keeping one hand on the truck wall to steady himself until they stopped. Grabbing his rifle and axe, he rolled up the back of the truck and studied the surrounding area.
Looked clear, but he knew from experience that didn’t mean a thing. Zombies could appear in a second. “Grandma, gather the kids and keep them in here, all right?”
“Sure thing.” She put Angel in an infant harness, strapped the baby to her back, grabbed a gun and stepped outside to gather her brood. George was already herding them in her direction from where a few had ridden in the other vehicles.
Sarah, Eddy, and Mychal stayed to help keep the others safe while Chalice, Colton, Bill, and the dogs headed for the front door of a daycare called Little Lamb’s Day Care. Colton paused and sniffed the air. Not smelling anything dead, he reached for the door handle.
“Wait.” Chalice peered through one of the windows. “I thought I saw something move. I can’t kill a child, Colton.”
“If it’s a kid zombie, we’ll keep it in our cage,” he explained.
“I can’t watch you cut off its hands or knock out its teeth, either.”
Colton glanced at Buster. “The dogs aren’t nervous. Maybe it’s your imagination.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” She cupped her hands around her eyes and continued looking in. “Maybe we should send the dogs in first?”
“They’d be barking right now if something was in there.”
“What if they’re used to the zombies and won’t bark as easily anymore?”
Colton didn’t mind that she was extra cautious, but he didn’t want to risk Buster’s safety for her paranoia. “They’ll bark if we’re in danger. I’ll go in first. Cover me.”
He pushed the door open, careful not to let it slam against the wall, and stepped into a dark room that contained a desk and a couple of file cabinets. To his right was another door which showed several cribs and playpens. Nothing moved in either room. No blood splatters covered the floor or the walls. He stepped through the do
or to his left. A scurrying sound led him farther into the room and down a short hallway to the kitchen. The closing of another door proved he wasn’t alone. Zombies didn’t close or open doors.
“Hello?” His footsteps echoed in the silent kitchen. A whimper, quickly cut off, came from the door opposite him. His heart sank. A day care meant children, and they didn’t need the responsibility of more little ones. “My name is Colton. I won’t hurt you. I need formula and diapers, if you have any to spare.”
A thud came from his right. He whirled, axe firmly clutched in his hand. The door was padlocked. No one needed to tell him what was behind door number two. Instead, he opened the first door.
A woman in her twenties, surrounded by four children under the age of seven, stared back at him. Crap.
2
“We have two cases of formula and some diapers in a closet down the hall,” the woman said, tightening her hold around a little boy. “Take what you need and go. Just don’t open the locked door, please.”
“Zombie babies?” Colton shuddered.
“I couldn’t kill them.” Tears welled in her eyes.
Colton closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Opening them again, he spoke what he didn’t want to, but knew he needed to do. “There’s a small group of us. Half are children. A few adults. Come with us. We’ll do our best to keep y’all safe.”
Hope leaped in her eyes. “Women and children?”
“Yes. At least come with us until we find a safer place for you. You can’t stay here.” The banging on the locked door grew louder. How did the woman live with that sound every day? “Pack up as much food, water, and clothes as you can carry. Bill! Chalice!”
Within minutes, they’d joined him and the newcomers. Chalice paled once she caught sight of more children. Colton knew the burden of children weighed her down, but they couldn’t leave anyone they found behind. Not unless that person was a threat.
Her shoulders slumped before she held out her hand for a little girl to grasp. “Let’s get your stuff, sweetie. It’s time to go.”
“Thank you.” The new woman stood. “I’m Natalie Reed. I used to run this day care. We’ve lots of things a baby needs.” She sniffed and her tears on the back of her hand. “If we each take a room, it won’t take us long to gather up what’s useful.”
“We’ve three girls who can watch the little ones while we work.” Chalice ushered the children to the trucks for the older girls to watch.
Colton glanced at his watch. They’d already been there for half an hour. Staying put for too long in one place was never wise. Not unless it was somewhere they could hole up.
It took another hour before Mychal shouted out an alarm. “Nonbreathers!”
“That’s it. If we don’t have it now, we don’t need it. Get in the vehicles.” Colton tapped Chalice on the shoulder, drawing her attention away from the locked door.
She nodded. “Seems bad to keep them locked in there.”
“Seems smart to me. It’s that or kill them.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Me either. Let’s go.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her outside.
Twenty zombies shuffled across the yard, drawn by the group’s sound or smell. Whatever it was that drew them, Colton didn’t care. He hopped behind the wheel of the Hummer. His was the last door to close. In a cloud of dust and gravel, the Hummer led the way down the road back to the highway.
*
Chalice stared out the window of the Hummer, watching the zombies disappear through the car’s side view mirror. The sound of little feet shuffling behind a locked door would haunt her dreams. How many were there? Would it have been more humane to finish them off? Maybe set fire to the building?
She sighed. Eventually someone else would stumble across the building and maybe, hopefully, they’d do what she and Colton couldn’t.
There had to be a place for them to go. Somewhere they could clear out the dead and set up a home, such as they were able. Schools were out. Too many young zombies. Same with a nursing home. She didn’t want to kill babies or old people. Apartment complexes were too big. There had to be a place.
“I’ve got it.” She turned to Colton. “A YMCA. Rooms, showers, toilets. Shouldn’t be too hard to clear out either. The meteors hit on a Saturday, right? Everyone knew they were coming so they would have stayed home that day. It’s perfect.”
He grinned. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. Get the walkie-talkie and ask Bill if he knows of such a place.”
She unclipped the two-way radio from his belt. “Bill, do you know of a YMCA or something close? We could hole up there for a while.”
“Sure, there’s one about an hour’s drive away but it’s in the heart of Oklahoma City. We’ll have to go through a lot of non-breathers to get there. I know of something better, though. There’s a school for delinquents. Smaller, closer, and less likely to have a single person there.”
Chalice glanced at Colton who nodded. “Let’s check it out,” she told Bill. “As long as it’s fenced.”
“It is. Has a generator, too. My…nephew was there for a while.”
“Let’s check it out.” Chalice pressed the off button and clipped it back on Colton’s belt. The next time they stopped, she’d get her own radio from the transport. It was stupid not to keep it attached. What if they got separated? What if she found herself alone and in need of help?
For the first time since leaving Grandma’s house several months ago, she felt hope again. Even if for only a little while, maybe they’d have a place to call home.
Thirty minutes later, they pulled into a vacant parking lot on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. The silence was eerie. Nothing moved.
“This is good, right?” She leaned forward, peering closer out the window. “This means nothing is here, right?”
“I don’t know.” Colton opened his door, leaving the engine running. “I’ll check it out.”
She put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Let me. If someone is holed up inside, girls are less threatening.”
“What if they shoot first and ask questions later?”
“That’s cliché, and a chance I’ll take.” She forced a smile. “This group needs your leadership abilities. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll cover you from the front of the Hummer. That’s the best I can promise. I won’t stay in the truck while you approach that fence alone.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and slid from her seat. Dried leaves crunched underfoot as she made her way to the iron fence. A padlock on the inside of the double gate proved to her someone was barricaded inside. The question was … were they friendly and how many were there?
3
“Get right back in your truck, little lady, and git!” The largest black man Chalice had ever seen, dressed in janitorial coveralls stepped from a doorway and aimed a shotgun at her chest. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”
“Any non-breathers in there?” Chalice gripped the fence.
“I wouldn’t be standing here if there was.”
“Please. We need a place to stay. We have small children with us.” As if on cue, Angel wailed.
“You got a baby?” The man shook his head.
“And other little ones. We have food and water. We’re looking for a place to settle for a while.” He had to let them stay. Tears pricked Chalice’s eyes. She was so tired. Tired of running, tired of fighting—just tired.
The man cursed and pulled a ring of keys from his belt. “Tell them to hurry up. That truck engine is going to draw every dead thing for miles around.” He unlocked the gate and rolled it open.
Chalice ran through and waved the others forward. “Thank you so much.”
She eyed the zombies approaching from a nearby field. The iron fence seemed sturdy enough to keep them out. It even had spikes at the top of each bar. Yes. They could be safe there.
Within minutes all three vehicles were safely behind the fence and the rest of Chalice’s group, i
ncluding the children, stood and faced the solitary man.
“I’m Amos Lincoln,” he said. “I’m here alone, except for a woman out back in quarantine, so I suppose there’s plenty of room for all of you. I can’t turn away children.” He shook Colton’s hand and turned to Bill and George. “I’m mighty glad to see some adults. I wouldn’t take to babysitting very well. Let me show you folks around. There ain’t no playground equipment for the kids, but we do have a patch of grass I keep mowed down.” He headed away from the parking lot.
The school was L-shaped with the parking area in front. Around the corner was the square patch of grass. In it were three bright blue picnic tables under an oak tree that was quickly dropping its leaves to form a colorful carpet of autumn colors. At the end of the building was a basketball court.
“I use the doors back here, mostly,” Amos explained. “That way if someone decides to scale the fence, they have to at least get around the building before busting in on me.”
“Zombies don’t climb fences,” Mychal explained. “They’ll just stand there and groan.”
Amos glanced over his shoulder. “I ain’t talking about the undead, son. There are worse things out there.” He opened sliding barred doors in the back of the building. “We’ve got a cafeteria. The kitchen stove and cooler runs on propane so there’s hot food and cold storage. I need to make a run to get more propane, though. It’s getting low. Water stopped running a couple of months ago. There’re ten classrooms so we can divvy them up into bedrooms. Because we used to get the severe behavior kids, all the windows are barred. Ain’t nothing getting in here unless we let it in.”
Chalice glanced at Colton and grinned. “This is perfect.”
“Do you ever get intruders?” Colton asked. “We’ve run across folks trying to take our stuff a time or two.”
“Sure have. The fence deters a lot of them and this gun the rest. Haven’t had too big a show of force. Occasionally, I might run across a straggler or two. I usually send them on their way or put them out of their misery. Now, the woman in the storage shed out back, she was real sick. Running a fever, covered in blood, has some burns. I couldn’t tell if she was bit so stuck her out there for a few days. When she’s better, I’ll send her on or she can stay. Guess with y’all here, it doesn’t matter anymore how I feel about being alone.” He pushed open double metal doors. “Here’s the biggest room in the place. It’s the cafeteria. Kitchen’s through that door over there.”
The Zombie Awakening (Complete 6 Volume Series, plus prologue) Page 16