It made me wonder how many days I’d lost.
“The only reason I wasted my time and antibiotics on you was Daisy,” Tessa said evenly. “You seem real important to that dimwit of a girl so you must mean something to her father. You have her to thank for your temporary return to the living.”
I was very confused. “I saved you,” I croaked out over my sore throat.
“Bullshit!” she hissed, “You don’t think we know what a Trojan horse is? We lost three more people just getting out of your stupid fucking tunnel. You are gonna pay for those lives…George. Fucking. McCloud. You and your little whore Daisy.”
I wondered how she knew my name when I remembered my wallet.
She was red faced and snarling during her speech, flecks of spit hitting me in the face from over six feet away. As if to accentuate her point, her colleague poked me with his knife in the shoulder. I saw stars and was briefly transported back to Pain Universe, my hoarse scream sounding inhuman in my own ears.
“Enough, Steven!” she yelled at the man. He pulled the knife back but continued to glare at me. I could feel fresh blood oozing out of a wound there.
“He’s fucking leverage you moron! He’s no good to us dead! Now get me some clean bandages, we need to redress his wound before he bleeds out.”
Steven grinned at me and went to get the bandages.
For the next several minutes, Tessa and Steven roughly cleaned and dressed my wound while I tried not to pass out again. The old man watched from the end of the bed.
I kept asking what happened to my shoulder but no one would answer me. I just kept asking in my irritating frog-like voice until Tessa grabbed my face in both hands and screamed at me from two inches away that I’d been shot by Rosie Flowers.
Then it all came back to me. Getting surprised by the twins in the basement, getting the jump on Daisy, making Rosie unlock the cages and finally, having Rosie shoot me.
When they were finished with my shoulder, Steven and the old guy left the room while Tessa changed my IV bag, grumbling about having to waste fluids on someone like me. I was getting very irritable because the pain was edging back up to a ten.
“If I was with those guys then why did Rosie shoot me?” I spat the words at her through clenched teeth.
“Don’t take that tone with me, shithead. I’ll call Steven back in here and have him work you over again,” she replied.
I didn’t remember the first working over but it might explain why my entire body hurt so badly, including my face.
“You don’t see a lot of blue bandanas these days so the ones I do see I remember. Just like I remembered yours when you poked your dumbass head into that cellar four days ago. The only thing missing was that cowboy hat you were so proud of.”
I stared at her confused.
“No reason to try selling me your bullshit because my store is full in that department. Best thing you can do is keep your trap shut and try not to piss me off so I don’t have to kill you sooner than I plan to,” she said as she smiled and gave me a painful pinch on the cheek.
She finished changing my bag and gave me a shot of something in the IV port. I laid there in stunned silence as she turned and walked from the room slamming the door behind her. The ship picture jumping in its frame.
I had no idea what she was talking about. The pain was receding and I was getting fuzzy. As I was falling asleep I remembered the cut on my forehead and taking the blue bandana. My last conscious thought was a realization. Shit! She thinks I am the cowboy hat guy!
The next eight days I spent in that room. Tessa and Steven took shifts interrogating me with questions I couldn’t answer while the old guy treated my wounds and in general looked after me.
He didn’t speak or answer any of my questions when we were alone but I felt like if I had any chance of changing the fate Tessa had designed for me, it would come through him.
So when the queen bitch and her minion were out of the room, I explained my side of the events that took place that troublesome night of my rescue attempt. I assured him over and over again that I was not the cowboy hat guy.
This approach seemed to have no effect and I soon came to believe the old guy was simple.
Instead, I started giving him an unabridged oral rendition of my life story. Because this was unsolicited and usually progressed without interruption for hours at a time, it sort of felt like a book on tape. I didn’t know if I was becoming a human being to him or not because he seemed like the kind of guy who was kind no matter what.
He fed me, watered me and kept me clean like I was a favored family pet. When I grew weary of rehashing my own life, I would add interesting tidbits about him. I started calling him Rory because I thought it suited him. I told him he must have been a physical therapist before the apocalypse because he really had a gentle touch.
I blended his life of service into my own, adding funny anecdotes of bedpan mishaps and catheter adventures. I even made him chuckle a few times but he never spoke and I never asked him to help me. When the other two were rough on me, I could tell it bothered him a little.
Progress!
Tessa grew more anxious and irritable as the days went by with no new information from me. Steven seemed to be constantly flexing when she was in the room when he wasn’t busy chewing his tongue like a cow chews her cud. I thought maybe he had a thing for her.
I was worried they would soon resort to pain and torture again to get at the secrets they were sure I was hiding.
It was about time for me to start making shit up to make Tessa happy.
The source of their anxiety was an abnormally large crowd of undead that had accumulated outside their walls over the last two weeks. The irony that any amount of undead outside one’s walls should be considered normal was apparently lost on them. That comment got me slapped by Tessa but I could see Rory smiling behind her, trying to hide it behind his hand.
I had felt a weird constant swelling of energy every day since I’d finally retained consciousness. I knew the zombies were out there but I didn’t say anything. I just waited for Tessa to tell me. I didn’t want to freak them out any more than they already were.
In any case, Tessa was convinced that Daisy’s father, whom she and Rosie referred to creepily as Daddy, one Henry Flowers, had devised a way to draw hordes of the undead outside the walls of Tessa’s camp.
The assumed purpose of this plan was to spring Daisy and according to Tessa, me.
Though I tried desperately to talk her out of it, she was also convinced I was deeply immersed in the plot, demanding that I reveal Mr. Flower’s master plan. I tried lying to her, negotiating with her and even begging. She was unmoved by anything I said.
My attempts to ask after the wellbeing of Daisy were met with curses and slaps. I stopped asking after a while, not sure why I even cared.
I had my answer soon enough. On the morning of my ninth day in that room, Tessa gave me a cursory inspection with her hands and eyes. In her medical opinion, I was recovered enough to return to the cell where she felt I belonged until they were through with me. Steven agreed and Rory said nothing.
My nasty clothes were returned to me in the same condition I’d left them. I almost puked putting them on. It irritated me when Rory chuckled at this, it wasn’t like him. Then I was blindfolded and led by gunpoint down hallways and staircases to a dank room that smelled terribly familiar.
I remembered that smell, I was home!
It was Steven who removed my blindfold and gave me a nice shove into the dark storage room. My freshly healed injuries reminding me I wasn’t quite in game-day shape yet. Steven grunted and gave me the finger as he slammed the door. Before he did, I noticed a person shape balled up in the corner.
I felt my way over in the dark until I found her. As gently as I could I sat down beside her and felt around her neck for a pulse. I found it beating, slow and steady. She was either sleeping or unconscious. Her face seemed swollen and I wondered what type of abuse she’d been subjected
to in my absence. I wondered further if she didn’t deserve it. I didn’t really understand her part in all this.
She groaned softly as I pulled her head into my lap. I vaguely recalled someone doing the same for me as I hovered on the stoop of death’s door. A favor for a favor seemed appropriate. I adjusted my position and fell asleep against the cold cement wall holding her.
Hours later I woke up having to pee. I was also dry mouthed and thirsty with Daisy still nestled against me, loose hairs from her head tickling my cheek. I extracted myself from her as gently as I could with Daisy muttering a protest in her sleep.
The only light in the room was from a tiny crack under the door. I edged my way toward it on hands and knees and used the light as a starting point to scout out the room we were in. It was slow going but eventually I found a bucket Daisy had been using for a chamber pot.
While it was an unpleasant discovery, I made use of it then continued my search of the room.
A water bottle with a swallow of water left next to an empty paper plate was my next happy discovery. I took the water over to Daisy and forced her to sit up and drink it. She coughed but kept it down. I made my way back to the door and started hammering on it.
No one came at first but I kept at it.
I heard angry footsteps approaching the door. A key rattled in the lock and the door opened. There stood Steven looking irritated, chewing food and holding a gun in his right hand.
“The fuck you want?” he asked with a mouthful of sandwich.
I had my hands up in a non-threatening manner as I squinted back at him through glare of the bright light.
“Just some water please. Enough for both us,” indicating Daisy on the floor behind me.
He swallowed and belched as he said, “Ain’t giving you shit.”
I sighed and looked down, “We already have plenty of that in here, I just need some water.”
“Fucking smartass,” he said and made to close the door.
“Wait!” I pleaded. He paused briefly as I continued. “Look, Tessa made it clear she wants to use us as leverage, right? You were there. You heard her too. In fact, I recall you usually agree with whatever she says.”
He just stared at me.
“Hey, I get it, man, you like her, you want to take things to the next level but she keeps putting you off, right?”
He shrugged sullenly.
“Well, how pissed is she going to be if we die of thirst or starve in here before she has a chance to do whatever it is she wants to do to us?”
His panicky expression told me I was getting through to him.
“That one,” indicating Daisy again, “she is already almost dead because she hasn’t had enough to eat or drink. I used to be a paramedic before the zombies happened. She is close to death. I know what I am talking about. Think about it, dead leverage equals no leverage.” I nodded gravely as I said this like he and I were old friends and I was just looking out for him.
I had not been a paramedic and did not know what I was talking about but I was a good bull shitter. He considered me gravely for a moment before giving me a gentle shove and shutting the door. As his footsteps echoed away down the hall I shouted a reminder for him to bring food too.
Fifteen minutes later he came back with a cart loaded with water and food. He made me stand in the back of the room while he pushed it in.
With ceremony I would not have thought him capable of, he lit a candle on the cart and backed out of the room.
“Bon appetite,” he said as he bowed sarcastically and shut the door.
With the room now softly aglow, I waited until I was sure he was gone and hurried to the cart. Steven must have really been into Tessa. So much so that the prospect of her being angry at him made him pull out all the stops for me. He left us six bottles of water, four cans of chicken and two cans of peaches. There was even a small first aid kit, some peroxide and a few rags. I drank a bottle of water and ate a can of peaches.
They were divine.
I made Daisy drink water until she started gaging. Then I propped her up the best I could and set about washing her face and cleaning her wounds with peroxide and the first aid kit. By the time I was finished she was fully alert and very crabby.
She struggled to be patient with me as I basically fed her by hand but I did not try to start any meaningful conversations. I suspected she had information I needed to know about our current predicament but knew she wouldn’t be talkative until she was good and ready.
We spent the remainder of the day in relative silence just trying to stay comfortable. The only activities that broke the monotony were some very awkward chamber pot episodes for both of us.
When Steven refreshed our food and water. I begged him to leave the lighter so I could relight the candle if it went out. He wasn’t going to until I explained that starting fires would only result in me and Daisy burning alive. He saw reason in this and finally relented. He wished us goodnight told us not to have sex as he chuckled and showed himself out. After witnessing Daisy’s last go around with the bucket, sex was the furthest thing from my mind.
We feel asleep again huddled together in the corner trying not to breathe in too deeply. It was damn cold in that room.
Chapter 22
“A Requiem for a Back Story”
The next morning Daisy was feeling much better and once she got to talking, she wouldn’t shut up. That was when I learned how completely in the dog shit I was, trapped in a melodrama only a bad Hollywood script writer could conjure up.
Some of it I had been able to piece together through the questions Tessa asked me and bits of conversation she shared with Steven and the ever silent Rory but Daisy filled in the narrative that completed the tragic folly.
The camp in which I was currently residing was located in the luxury townhome complex on Central Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets. I’d witnessed its construction from the road not all that long ago. I had never been inside any of the homes but they were located on a bluff above a grassy clearing just west of Legend Heights High School overlooking the glorious Legend Trailer Courts and the neighborhood burger joint.
There had been two families both quite wealthy for the area. The Flowers, Henry and Susan and Tessa’s folks, Bill and Marcy Swanson. They had been long time friends, had even grown up together. Both families were active in the Minneapolis community and were fairly well known if not by me personally. Their children had all attended the local catholic school for the rich and had also run in the same elite Minneapolis circles.
The Flowers owned the big mansion in the Rose Hill neighborhood of Friendly and the Swansons owned the entire development I was currently convalescing in. They lived in the detached building situated behind but above the townhome complex. My guess is at some point in time they’d had a notion to revitalize a downtrodden neighborhood located a convenient seven miles north of the big city but that had never come to pass.
Their complex was like the hope diamond in a chest full of old costume jewelry, really just kind of a confusing eye sore. This poor investment choice may have been what led to an eventual falling out between the two families. Maybe money changed hands and was never repaid or maybe it was just haughtiness and pride but ultimately things went south and the two families started feuding the way only proper folk can do.
Wealthy people aren’t allowed to have a rough spell financially or play a losing gamble. It’s just poor taste. Gossip starts at social gatherings, nasty rumors abound. That’s how things soured with the Swansons and the Flowers.
The rich never really stay down for long. In time the Swansons recovered from their losses but the relationship with the Flowers never did. The two families despised each other. That was all fine and good. People are allowed to hate each other. Usually it doesn’t mean murder or blood feuds. However, for the Flowers and the Swansons two things pushed them from sniping at each other over cocktail-party martinis to sniping at each other behind fortified walls.
Those two things we
re love and zombies.
Henry and Susan Flowers had been blessed with three daughters. The twins, whom I’d already met and their youngest, Violet. Did I think he played a little fast and loose in selecting his daughters’ names? Yes. But for all his faults, according to Daisy at least, he was a decent dad.
Henry loved the twins but Violet was the apple of his eye. Still in high school getting ready to start her senior year, Violet was everything a proud parent could want. She was beautiful and smart, involved at school with an eye for social injustice (within reason). She was almost perfect as far as daddy was concerned.
His baby girl really had only one flaw. She claimed to be in love with Danny Swanson, the youngest child of his former friend turned nemesis, Bill Swanson.
And oh…Danny loved her too.
Both sets of parents reacted stoically at first, gently discouraging the new couple. But as the relationship bloomed like spring dandelions, they grew very concerned. Ultimately, their love was forbidden, Romeo and Juliet style.
Henry and Bill, united on this front, went to great measures to ensure contact was cutoff. Each assuming time would erase the passion of the young. Henry even made plans to have Violet attend a new high school in the fall. The kids appeared to take this forced separation in stride accepting the fate of their doomed love and moving on from each other.
But secretly they carried on, hot and heavy as ever. In a world where technology disadvantaged the old in favor of the young, they made plans to run away together.
In time their union may have brought the two families back together but we’ll never know. June happened, then July and then world blew up with zombies.
…
The patriarchs of the two families didn’t find success in life through lack of preparation. Word came down through certain clandestine circles that something big and nasty was going to hit Mother Earth with a good old one-two punch. No one could say exactly what was coming but it would be big and devastating. The two men determined on their own that when the shit hit the fan, they would be ready.
Running with the Horde Page 10