Bill strolled up, a cigarette between his lips and leaned against the barn. “You’ve got a regular little army here. A couple of them are kind of young, don’t you think?”
“They’ll grow faster than they should.” Mychal lunged forward, imbedding his spear into a bale of hay. “I wish we had pistols for all of them.”
“They’d shoot themselves in the foot or each other.” Bill clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re doing a good thing here. Skill brings confidence and less fear. It’ll help having a bunch of little stabbers lining the vehicles.”
Eddy laughed. “Little stabbers. I like that.”
The group practiced for an hour before the younger kids rushed off to bed. There was a lot of work waiting for them in the morning with loading the trucks. The women had already started piling what they didn’t immediately need. It would be a crowded trip.
“The first thing I’m doing when we get to the mall,” Eddy said. “Is to find a new pair of shoes. The bottom of these have a hole in them.”
“I’m going to search the refrigerators for a hamburger. I don’t care if it is frozen.”
“Your sister might have something to say about that. You know they’ll insist the food be rationed.”
As it should. “Yeah, but I don’t think she’ll mind if we all have something a little different the first night.” Although Chalice valued his opinion at sixteen, he couldn’t wait until he was a couple of years older and actually had more say when the adults met. One thing he’d insist on was regular fighting drills. Not only for the kids, but for the adults, too. Killing zombies needed to be as easy to them all as breathing. Easier, if he were honest, considering the new flu virus.
He made his way back to the farmhouse, stopping in front of the porch. He’d miss the big old house. The first semblance of home since leaving the place he’d grown up. He shrugged. The mall would feel like home after a while, too.
“Mychal?” His sister’s voice came from the downstairs bedroom.
He stood in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“I’m not going to be much use tomorrow, so I need you to help assign which vehicle everyone rides in. Make sure there are skilled fighters if each one except the livestock trucks. Can you do that?”
“Sure. Are the kids all riding in one?”
She nodded. “We have two trucks suitable for livestock. I’ve heard of the training you’ve been doing with the kids. Put them in one. They can fight through the slats if they have to. There are also horse transports that can be pulled behind trucks. That school bus is big enough for most of our supplies.”
“Is that how you’ve been resting? Figuring all this out?”
“Yes.” She handed him a piece of paper. “I’ve written out what needs to be done. Colton is going to be busy checking weapons and ammo. You can get Eddy to help you with this. The doctor said there is another way to the mall but it will take a full day. I want to leave early the day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll make sure it’s done.” He flashed her a grin, and then left to go over the list with Eddy. They’d be kicking some zombie ass if any of them tried to interfere with the groups moving on. Even those sprinters couldn’t break through the livestock trucks. For once, thanks to him, the kids would be of more use than huddling in a corner and screaming.
Hanna passed him in the hall and sneezed. “Where’s the doctor? I don’t feel very well.”
9
Chalice pushed out of bed. Had she heard right? Hanna was sick? She stumbled into the hall.
Mom had a hand against Hanna’s forehead. “You’re burning up.” She sent an anguished look toward Chalice.
“Is it the flu?” Chalice leaned against the doorjamb. After all they’d gone through the past year, would it be an illness that wiped them all out?
“I don’t know.” Mom led Hanna to the room Chalice had just left. “You’ll have to move to the sofa. Your sister needs to be quarantined.”
“You need a mask.” Chalice stepped aside.
“If it is the virus, it’s too late.” Mom pressed her lips together and closed the door.
“I’ll get the doctor.” Mychal dashed away.
Chalice perched on the edge of the sofa, her hands hanging between her knees. If she lost one of her siblings, she’d die. Now, after finding her mother after thinking she had died in the meteor showers, she might lose her again. She sat back and rested her head against the back of the sofa while the other adult women scurried around gathering food, blankets, and foodstuffs for the move.
She felt helpless, but any move jarred her shoulder and sent nausea rolling through her. She’d be no good if they were attacked on the move. She glanced at the ceiling.
Where was God in all this? Was this a part of the book of revelation? God’s punishment on a corrupt mankind? She didn’t know much about the man upstairs, but it didn’t feel right to think God would do this to His creation. No, it was easier to believe that humans had brought it on themselves.
“Are you all right?” Colton sat next to her and cradled her head against his chest.
“I’m tired. Very tired.”
“We all are. Hopefully, the mall will give us a place of rest. At least the kids can be kids for a while. Did you see the toy store?”
She chuckled. “It’ll be Christmas every day. We’ll have to put some kind of limit on things or Hanna will lead Faith and Alyssah into every fashion store there.” A sob choked off her laugh.
“None of that. Hanna will be fine. The doctor knows what he’s doing.”
She nodded, wanting to believe him, but three bodies outside the barn said the doctor’s skills were not enough sometimes. Colton moved and grabbed a fuzzy afghan from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around her. Soon, sleep overtook her and with it, temporarily, the dread of tomorrow.
When she woke, the room was in the predawn light of a new day and Colton was gone. She tossed aside the blanket and listened outside her sister’s door. “Mom?”
“I’m here.” Mom came from the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand. “Hanna is fine. Her and the kids got into the cellar and ate a bunch of the chocolate. She had nothing but a bad stomachache.”
Chalice took a deep breath, glad for once for the stupidity of kids. “How’s the loading going?”
“We could leave tonight if we wanted to go under the cover of darkness. Colton and Bill are considering it because of the military group you ran into.” Mom handed her the coffee. “Come eat. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I could keep watch.”
“No need.” Mom sighed. “Non-breathers are gathering at the fence like the homeless at a soup kitchen. It’ll be hard going when we leave.”
After eating a small breakfast of eggs and toast, Chalice moved to the front porch. The air was filled with the sound of growls and the muffled conversation of those loading the trucks. The fence shook with the force of the undead pushing against it. There would be no waiting until morning. The fence might not hold that long.
She moved across the yard to where Colton was forcing the milk cow into a horse trailer. “How much longer?”
“At least a couple of hours.” He glanced at the fence. “Hopefully, we have that long.”
“What are the kids doing?” All the children, eight and up were jabbing spears through the holes in the fence. “Why are they killing zombies?” The violence at which they stabbed soured her stomach.
“Mychal taught them that. Don’t make them stop. They’re doing more good than harm, and we need all the help we can get.”
Chalice shuddered. Every one of the kids was covered up to their elbows with gore. Alyssah and Faith were counting off how many each of them had stabbed. It looked like some kind of macabre children’s party. It wasn’t right. The older girls should be off somewhere fixing each other’s hair and talking about boys.
The scene made her want to vomit. Chalice whirled and stormed back to the house, not caring that each jar of her foot on the ground set her shoulder on fire.
She needed someone to vent her anger on, someone to lash out on with her words. She spotted her brother in the kitchen stuffing his face with eggs. “What right do you have teaching those children to kill?”
He glanced up and shrugged. “It’s a kill or be killed world. It’s paying off today, isn’t it?”
She threw a wadded up dishtowel at his head. “They’re losing their childhood!”
He rose so fast his chair slammed the wall. “They lost that the day the meteors fell.” He shoved past me and back outside.
Mom watched from the kitchen sink. “Sit. You need more coffee.”
“It’s wrong.”
“Yes, there’s a lot that is wrong with this world, but every undead those little ones kill is one less after their flesh.” She handed me another slice of toast, this one spread thick with butter. “They’ll go back to being children when we arrive at our new home.”
Chalice hoped so. She really did. She glanced out the window at the swaying fence. “We don’t have much time.”
*
“Doc, you’ll ride in the first truck with me and Chalice,” Colton said. “We need your directions on the back way to the mall.”
The doctor nodded and tucked a pistol into his waistband. “Let’s get this show on the road before the fence totally gives.”
Ten vehicles lined up. A regular convoy of humans, livestock, and supplies, a moving buffet line for the non-breathers. Last time Colton had peered over the fence from the safety of the watch tower, he’d stopped counting after fifty. At least half of those were sprinters.
After making sure Adam was tied up with the supplies so he didn’t do anything foolish, Colton climbed on the hood of the Hummer and faced the following vehicles. “Go slow and steady. Don’t stop for anything, and keep your windows up. This is going to be nasty.” He met the grim look of Bill driving the truck full of chickens and pigs, then pulled the latch on the gate.
It swung open with a bang, forced off its hinges by the sheer strength of the undead. Colton slid into the Hummer and rolled up his window. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the gas pedal and began the slow progression through a growling, groaning hell of decaying flesh.
The Hummer’s massive grill plowed over the non-breathers, flattening many under the tires. The other vehicles followed close enough none could squeeze them. Instead, the undead bit at the windows and left trails of oozing body fluids along the glass.
Miraculously, the convoy moved across the pasture without a hitch. No vehicles were overturned, no windows broken. Soon, the front tires of the Hummer reached the asphalt, followed within seconds by each of the others.
He grinned at Chalice. “Easiest drive we’ve ever had.”
“It’s about time.”
“Take a right instead of a left at your first intersection,” Doctor Hooper said. “You’ll be on a dirt road for most of the way. Loggers used it once upon a time. That road will come out onto the interstate.”
They turned the corner. Filling every inch of the dirt road was the undead. Like a great migration they streamed in the direction of the farm, almost as if an invisible beacon drew them.
“How are we going to get through that?” Chalice asked.
“The same way we left the farm, inch-by-inch.” Why were so many headed to where the survivors had lived? Did they have a means of communicating that the living didn’t know about? A way of telepathically telling others that there was food to be had in that location?
Colton shook his head. There couldn’t be. Except for some small part of their brain that refused to tell the body it was dead, they had no other brain waves. Right? In every movie, every book he’d read, the message was the same. Zombies were shuffling idiots bent only on their next meal. Violent and insane from the virus they focused only on eating.
Once the following vehicles resumed their chain effect, leaving only inches between each other, Colton moved the Hummer forward, praying the heavy grill on the front would hold. The horde stopped and turned as one to stare at the coming convoy. Had something told them their meal was leaving? Would they follow the survivors to the mall, trapping them inside by their sheer numbers?
He broke out into a sweat. Perspiration dripped into his eyes. Through the rearview mirror he could make out spears going in and out between the slabs of one of the bigger trucks. Little good the children’s efforts would have. They’d tire way before making a dent in the undead. The smell of the kids must be driving the non-breathers crazy with lust.
The walkie-talkie on the dashboard crackled. Chalice grabbed it with her free hand. “What’s up?”
“What the hell is going on?” Bill asked. “Every freak within a hundred miles must be here. It’s some kind of damn party.”
Chalice handed the device to Colton. “Just keep moving forward, Bill. They can’t flip us unless we stop moving. Over.”
Bill cursed. “I’ll pass it on. Over.”
The Hummer moved through the horde, shoving aside mangled bodies. Several had no bite marks or ripped limbs, showing that they’d succumbed to the new virus. Colton shook his head. He’d long ago stopped looking at them as once being human. To do so could make a person hesitate and hesitation would get you killed.
It took over thirty minutes to get through the throng. Behind the convoy, dust rose, the cloud hiding the undead from view. The silence in the Hummer after the groaning of so many non-breathers was almost deafening. Colton drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the gun at his waist. His eyes flicked from the rearview mirror to the road. Twice they’d made it unscathed through insurmountable odds.
“The you-know-what has really hit the fan,” Chalice said after several minutes. “I thought it was all a crazy dream.”
He glanced at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. The doctor joined in. Soon, their laughter bordered on hysterics.
“That was a good one, Chalice,” Doctor Hooper said. “My wife would’ve bust a gut.” He sniffed. “But, I’m glad in a strange way that her journey is over. Maybe you young people can make something out of this new world, but some of us are too old to start over. Lucy hardly slept anymore, she was that scared.”
Colton understood. Sometimes, he wondered what they were all fighting for. Without the warm blood of humans and animals, the zombies would die off and the earth could become home to a new species. He grinned, imagining a world overrun by insects.
Now that the road ahead of them was clear, Colton increased his speed, wanting to arrive at the mall before dark. No matter what, they didn’t want to be caught out after dark. Not with the way the undead seemed to know where the living gathered.
“Hey.” The walkie-talkie beeped. “Colton?”
He grabbed it from the dashboard. “Yeah?”
Bill sighed. “Back up. The bus has a flat.”
10
Chalice perched on the doorframe of the Hummer as Colton left her and the doctor to help change the tire on the bus full of supplies. Hurry, hurry. Those things would know where they were and come in droves. Stopped as they were, they would be practically defenseless against such numbers.
“Don’t worry,” Doctor Hooper said. “They’ll get it changed in time.”
Was that a non-breather moving in the trees? She scanned the thick forest on each side of the road. No birds twittered from the trees. The snap of a twig sounded abnormally loud. The sun hung high in the sky signaling the noon hour.
Bill tossed the flat in the back of his truck, sending the chicken in their crates to squawking. Colton rolled a spare to the rear of the bus where it sat jacked up and lopsided. A cloud of dust appeared on the horizon. Death was coming.
“Let me out!” Adam screamed from the back of the bus. “If you don’t, I’ll scream until every freak within hearing distance descends on us.”
The idiot would be the death of all of them. Chalice met the doctor’s weary gaze. He nodded. She slipped from the door and rushed to the back of the bus.
“What are you doing?” Colton grab
bed her good arm.
“Get that tire changed. That mass of non-breathers is headed our way. If Adam wants to die, that’s his choice, but I won’t stand back and let him be the cause of anyone else joining him.” She pulled her knife from her belt and opened the rear door of the bus.
“Are you sure, Adam? If I cut those ropes, we can’t allow you to cause trouble,” she told him. “If you do, we’ll have to send you away.”
“I won’t cause trouble.” He held out his hands, and she cut through the ropes binding him. “I’ll do what needs to be done to save my son.”
His words sent a chill down her spine. Foreboding settled like a cloud across his features. “What are you doing to do?”
“Whatever I need to.” He jumped to the ground and stared in the direction they’d come.
The dust hovering above the trees thickened as the first non-breather shuffled into sight. Chalice tapped Colton on the back. “They’re here.”
“Tires on.” He straightened. “Everyone back to their vehicles. Now!”
Three sprinters burst through the slower zombies and made a beeline for the survivors. They wouldn’t get the trucks started in time.
Adam grabbed one of the pigs from the livestock truck. “Kiss my son for me.” He set the pig down, slapped it on its rump and sent it squealing into the trees. Two of the sprinters dashed after it. Adam walked to greet the other one.
“No.” Chalice reached for him.
Colton grabbed her around the waist and dragged her back to the Hummer, then shoved her inside. “No,” she screamed. “We can’t let him do this. We can get away without him dying.”
“He’s already dead. He died when Lacey did.”
Chalice watched through her tears as Adam opened his arms and seemed to embrace the sprinter. As he fell, Colton started the Hummer’s engine. They rolled away before the majority of the undead crested the hill. Ahead of the horde raced the sprinters, their faces dripping with the fresh blood of a young pig and a father who had no more desire to live.
Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. She didn’t care if she showed weakness. Being brave and closing off her emotions left her drained. In today’s world, you died one of three ways: the flu, a non-breather, or old age. Very few succumbed to the later.
The Zombie Awakening (Complete 6 Volume Series, plus prologue) Page 27