“Okay,” Mason said, and he raised his rifle, taking aim.
The leg sat motionless, looking like any normal leg. Clayton locked his attention on it as he took short slide-steps toward the dune buggy. He knew he had fired a lot of bullets in the direction of the dune buggy. He also knew that, if he were the driver, he sure as hell wouldn’t be lying there with his leg hanging out in the open like that. He was virtually certain that the driver was dead, but when the dead roamed the earth, anything was possible.
It took ten short, slide-steps before he was beside the driver’s door. The leg lay placidly, still unmoving.
Something in Clayton wanted to shoot it, just to make sure, but the logical portion of his brain told him not to waste the bullet. Instead, he pushed the barrel of his rifle toward the leg. He paused with the end of the barrel about an inch from the leg. For a few seconds, the barrel just hung there until Clayton found the courage to poke the leg. The leg budged a little, but the driver didn’t pop up and take a shot at Clayton.
Clayton took a long full-step and looked into the dune buggy’s front seat, where he saw a wide-faced balding man with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Blood rimmed the entry wound, and the man’s eyes were open wide as he looked up into the nothingness beyond.
Clayton paused, looking down onto the corpse, held by the man’s stare, nearly hypnotized. Who was this guy? Clayton thought. Who were any of these guys?
“What is it?” Mason asked, leaning forward even though he was ten feet away.
“Oh, this guy is dead. Very dead,” Clayton said.
Del shoved his rifle into the back of the man they had taken captive, forcing him along on a path back toward the road. His name turned out to be Austin, and he had been a cop before the world was filled with zombies.
Austin wasn’t too happy about having his hands tie-wrapped behind his back, but turn-about was fair play. At least Del and Jo thought it was. Austin, not so much.
They started getting glimpses of the road ahead through the trees when they heard excited voices filtering in from ahead. Del reached forward and tugged Austin back as he brought the two of them to a stop.
“Hold up,” Del said in a hushed voice. “We need to see if any of your friends are still up there.”
Jo looked back at Del and Austin and said, “I’ll go ahead and take a look.”
“I can do that,” Del said.
“No, stay with him,” she said as she pushed her way through the underbrush.
Del leaned in close to Austin’s head and said, “Don’t try anything or say anything. I’d just as soon shoot you, so don’t give me a reason.”
Jo slipped out of view, and the seconds ticked by. With each one, Del got more and more anxious. He considered moving forward with Austin, but Jo walked back into view.
“It’s all clear,” she said. “Let’s get up to the road.”
A minute later, Del shoved Austin through the edge of the tree line and onto the greenway beside the road. Just thirty yards to their left, a set of Donovan’s people stood, tentative expressions on their faces.
The one named Troy looked in Del’s direction and nearly jumped a foot in the air. He started to raise his weapon when a voice yelled, “They’re with us.”
It was Donovan. He had rushed to the side of the road and was looking down at Del, Jo, and their captive. There was a look of puzzlement on his face.
“Oh yeah,” Del said, “look what we found in the woods.”
Chapter 14
Negotiation Chip
“I say we shoot him,” Troy said.
“Hey, as much as I dislike the guy, and I barely know him, I don’t think it’s that simple,” Del said.
“Terry is dead,” Troy said, his voice rising and his face reddening. “They shot him in the back and he was my friend.” His breath came out in short heated blasts. In the anger, it was easy to see his grief, too.
Jo said, “I don’t like him or what he and his men did to our people. He nearly broke my shoulder in the woods.” She stopped talking just long enough to rotate her arm in a tight little circle, making sure it was still fully operational. “Listen, we don’t know where all his friends are. They could come back at any moment. He could come in handy.”
“You guys are crazy,” Troy said. “They would have killed us all.”
Donovan finally chimed in and said, “Del and Jo have a point. We don’t know where his people went, and we could run into them again. This guy could come in as a negotiation chip.” He stopped and rubbed his chin as he scrutinized their captive. Casey held him at gunpoint near the tree line about twenty yards away. A few of his people were starting to circle around Austin, and they didn’t look like the welcoming committee. “I don’t like any of what they did, but if they had wanted to really kill us, they could have really done some damage. If you hadn’t noticed, their first and second shots were aimed over our heads.”
“One sure as hell flew by my ear,” Troy said.
“I hear you,” Donovan said, trying to keep his voice calm and even. “I really do. We were scared out of our wits, but I’m telling you now that they held back. If they hadn’t, a lot of our people would have been shot or killed. That doesn’t excuse what they did, but they’re probably just folks like us who decided that taking things by force was a lot easier than working for them. It’s come down to a dog eat dog world. I know we try to take the high road most the time, but it’s obvious these guys have taken the low one.”
“You know, it sounds like you’re trying to make excuses for them,” Troy said.
“I’m not,” Donovan said. “I’m just trying to figure out who they are and how we can best handle them. If they are not all-out savages, we can reason with them. And I mean, reason with them at gunpoint and with one of their men held by us.”
“Why don’t we go to the source and find out what he knows?” Jo asked.
Donovan eyed Austin, who stood among his people looking exposed and defenseless. Up to that point, his people had been mostly hands off, but he got a sense from their body language that the tide could change and things could get ugly fast.
“Are we talking about an interrogation?” Donovan asked.
“Whatever it takes,” Troy said. “I wouldn’t mind busting his balls for a few minutes. Someone’s gotta pay for Terry.”
Donovan put up a hand and said, “We don’t have time for a torture session. Let’s just get a lay of the land.”
Troy said, “You’re going to go soft on him, and more of our people are going to die.”
Donovan whirled toward Troy and quickly got into his personal space. “We’re going to do what we have to do. If it comes to torture, we’ll do it, but we don’t have to escalate to the top rung on the ladder immediately.”
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Casey coming their way. She had relinquished her guard duty over their captive to a tall, lanky man with a shock of reddish-brown hair. When she got into the midst of the small gathering of people standing around Donovan, she pulled up and looked to the ground for moment, collecting her thoughts. When she looked up, she said, “I don’t know what you’re planning with that guy, but the others are ready to do something rash. Billy Pitts is leading a couple of the others, and they want to shoot or lynch him.”
“Can you get them to calm down?” Donovan said. “We may need that guy in case we run into his friends again.”
“I think I can,” she said, but he could see that there was something else.
“What?” he asked.
“Jody and Ed want to bury Terry.”
“That’s going to take some time,” Del said.
Donovan turned and faced Del. “He’s important to us.” He paused for a moment. “Was important.” Those two words came out like they cost Donovan some emotional cost.
“I understand, but we don’t know how much time we have,” Del said.
“That’s a great question,” Donovan said. “We haven’t seen this h
orde. Only you guys have. How much time do you think we really have?” He stopped then added, “How far away from them do you think we need to be to be safe?”
Jo said, “No place is far enough away for me.”
“I know, I know,” Donovan said, “but really, what is our margin?”
Jo looked to Del as if to divine some wisdom. With words, they communicated something, and Del said, “We probably have a few hours. Maybe four or five really. Our experience with the horde is really specific, and let me tell you, I agree with Jo. We can’t get far enough away, fast enough, but we have time. Our saving grace is that those undead bastards are slow.”
Donovan turned to Casey and asked, “Can you get that organized?” He paused and came back with a follow-up question. “Do we even have a shovel?”
“There were a couple on the trailer,” she said. “Since we didn’t have any weapons, we kept them.”
“Fate shines upon us for once,” Del said.
“I’ll get that started,” Casey said. “Will you want any ceremony or anything?”
Donovan looked down the road, and he could barely see their captive any longer. The crowd had closed on him, and Donovan was concerned that the situation was going to turn in a bad direction. He let out a long, slow breath and said, “I’m going to calm them down first.” He pointed to crowd surrounding Austin.
Twenty minutes later, a hasty grave had been dug in the soft soil just off the roadway. Donovan’s people milled around, their faces tight with grief. Those closest to Terry cried, but most of the group looked like they were in a state of shock.
They had survived the soldiers. They had been rescued from the basement back at the Manor. Sure, there was a massive horde of undead trudging their way, but they were miles away.
Short of an accident on the road, they should have been free of immediate death.
But now, life taught them that death could come by surprise. Out of nowhere. Unexpected and sudden. Cruel even.
The old world had a predictability about it. You got up in the morning, took a shower, and maybe had breakfast. At least a cup of coffee. Then you headed off to your work day, doing whatever you had to do to put a roof over your head and food on the table.
This new dead world had no certainties. There was no hot shower and no hot cup of coffee waiting for you on the kitchen counter. There was no job to go to, and predictability was out the window, seemingly forever.
It was a horrible lesson to learn over and over again, but the zombie apocalypse seemed to want to beat it into them relentlessly and without mercy.
Donovan cleared his throat and tried to pitch his voice between a shout and his normal tone. “Everybody, gather around.”
Quietly, they closed in on the mound of freshly dug dirt, conspicuously six feet long and three feet wide. It wasn’t all that deep, just enough, they hoped, to keep animals from digging it up.
Before starting, Donovan looked around the group, trying to make eye contact with everyone. He knew it was his job to maintain a sense of reverence while letting those most affected grieve. Jody was Terry’s sister, and she looked shaky. Ed, her husband, did what he could to hold her up, but he was a little shaky himself.
“We all knew Terry,” Donovan said. “He would have done anything for us. Lay down his life if he had to. He was a good provider for our group. It was the rare time that he left the compound that he didn’t bring some kind of game for us to prepare for dinner. Sure, he was a bit of a loner, but he always came home to be among his friends. Among all of us.”
He paused for a moment, and he seemed ready to break, but he pulled himself back.
“Jody, do you want to say anything?”
Jody had long, strawberry blonde hair and a narrow, pale face. Her eyes were red and raw, and her normally light colored lips were almost red from all the tears she had cried. She stepped away from Ed, who held a hand on her shoulder, and stood at the edge of the gravesite. She looked down to it. Just a mound of dirt, but beneath it was her brother, a boy she had grown up with and a man she had watched take care of her and the people in their group without asking for anything in return.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Silent tears ran down her cheeks again, even after she thought she had no more tears to shed. She tried again to talk but just put a hand in the air in a gesture of surrender then fell back into Ed, who hugged her tightly as he whispered words of comfort in her ear.
“I know this is not what people want to hear,” Donovan said, “but we have to get back on the road.”
A communal groan passed through the group as shoulders sagged and heads fell.
“I know, I know,” Donovan said, “but we have to keep pushing east. The horde is behind us. We have to find somewhere safe.”
Troy stepped out of a small pack of men just off the gravesite and said, “What about the son of a bitch who was with the men who killed Terry?” He pointed to the group’s left, where Del and Jo had guard duty on Austin on the roadside.
“Now, Troy, we’ve been over this already,” Donovan said, but he was interrupted by murmurs flowing through the crowd. He increased the volume of his voice and said, “We have no idea where this guy’s friends are. They could very well be in the direction we are headed. While I do not like this man we have captured, he could prove to be a valuable bargaining tool if we encounter his friends again. Plus, we talked about this back at our base. We are not killers. We will defend ourselves, but executing someone has to be a last resort.”
“Maybe he’s the one who shot Terry?” Troy asked, while looking around the crowd to garner support.
Donovan said, “It’s not likely it was him. He was on the north side of the road, and the shot that killed Terry came from the south.”
“Still, he was with the group that did it,” Troy said.
“Yes, he was, but for now, he’s our captive,” Donovan said. “We hold onto him until we know he isn’t of use.”
“What about after that?” Troy asked.
“Then we’ll deal with that question when we have to,” Donovan said. “Now please, everyone get back up onto the road and prepare to leave.” He looked over the group, hoping that they would go his way, and after making a quick assessment of the faces, he saw that the majority of them were, but a few didn’t look all too cheerful about keeping the man in their group.
“Listen up, folks,” Donovan said. “Despite losing Terry, something good may have come from this. We have one new vehicle for our caravan. Clayton says that, while the dune buggy has some bullet holes in it, it is still drivable. Ed and Jody, why don’t you and two others take it. The other bit of good news is that we have two more rifles and a couple handfuls of ammunition.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “None of this is a trade-off for Terry, but it will help.”
A metal-on-metal noise sounded down the road, and when everyone looked, they saw Ryan at the wheel of the tractor, tugging the overturned truck off the road with a heavy chain that they had found in the roof rack of the dune buggy. One was out of the way, and all it would take is for a couple men to push the dead car off the road. They had considered using it, but the engine had been wrecked, and there was no getting it running.
“Let’s go, people,” Donovan said.
The group held in place for a few seconds, and Donovan began to wonder if the influence of his leadership was slipping, but a couple of the people peeled off from the back of the group and headed up onto the roadway. A few more did the same, and it seemed like the tide had turned and they were going to mount up and head out for the journey ahead.
The only stragglers were Troy and two of his cronies, who sent Donovan some sideways glances as they headed up onto the roadway. Donovan knew that there was a likelihood that nothing good would come of that, but he had no time or energy to give it, so he just shrugged it off. He hope that it didn’t come back to bite him, though.
This sort of dissension never happened back at the compound, but the soldiers
had spoiled that when they had driven Donovan’s people out of there. Now, there was a whole new and terrifying landscape to be navigated.
Donovan knew that, once they got to a safe place, it would all sort itself out. The question was whether there was a safe haven to be found anywhere. The answer that there were no safe places left in this undead world was one he didn’t want to contemplate.
Chapter 15
Going to School
In life, transitions have always proved the biggest sources of slowdowns. Back before the world fell, getting the family out the door into the car just to go out to eat was a chore, sometimes with multiple delays. Someone would have forgotten their cell phone. Another person left their wallet or purse. It was always something.
While things were simplified by survival mentality, the transition from Terry’s roadside memorial to actually getting everyone loaded up and the convoy on the road ate up a lot of time. Jo felt a clock ticking away in the back of her head throughout the process as she watched people climb back into their vehicles and onto the trailer. A small squabble broke out about who would ride in the trailer and who would ride in the dune buggy with Jody and Ed. Donovan was forced to mediate a compromise. Ten more minutes burned away.
Thirty minutes after the ceremony, they were on the road again, with Jo and Del’s truck leading the convoy again. Two ATVs followed, with the dune buggy in the third position. Not too far behind was the tractor tugging the trailer along. It had been decided, since it was the softest target, it should be in the middle of the caravan. Their third ATV was behind the trailer, and Donovan’s jeep had the role of the caboose.
Their situation got compounded when they were forced to backtrack several miles then head north to a parallel road. It didn’t cost them too much time, but it seemed like every minute counted, and they were outside anyone’s experience of the territory, so they were just making up their path as they went along.
Jo was glad to be making forward progress again, but the pace was maddening. The tractor and trailer cut them down to a snail’s pace. The only saving grace was that it was faster than the zombies. She just hoped the margin was enough because the zombies never slept. Never stopped. Never got slowed by bad weather. They just kept moving along, like dark flood waters, ready to consume whatever they came in contact with.
The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde Page 8