In the early days when such things were still an option, both hired engineering firms to fortify their properties. They bought out land from their neighbors. Paid off city and government officials to look the other way on some pretty major city code violations.
They actually consulted each other on strategy and even shared resources on multiple occasions, putting aside petty differences in favor of protecting their hard-earned legacies.
Things were actually looking up for a renewed alliance. While others who could afford it took their families and ran for places far away and supposedly safer, The Flowers and the Swansons hunkered down and prepared to ride out the storm, thinking they could snag a large piece of rebuilding efforts.
They had no idea just how bad it was going to be.
Both men hired private security firms to live on site and guard their properties temporarily until things blew over. Bill, the great humanitarian, was somehow able to forcibly evict other owners from his complex and gave their homes to favored friends and extended family.
Henry had no interest in friends or relatives. He insisted his twins move home from their downtown condo. They were frightened and therefore happy to oblige. He was pleased as punch in his fortified home with his wife, girls and hired guns.
He also had the ingenious tunnel idea. Bill might have his own fortified luxury townhome complex with an actual moat surrounding it but he didn’t have a secret escape tunnel that led to a large pole barn more than a block away filled with vehicles and weapons.
With all the food and supplies they had, both men believed they could survive for months if they had to.
Things got bad when the Sickness hit but were still going according to plan as far as the two men were concerned. Then things got real bad, people panicked and both places went into total lock down.
Violet saw her plans of a life with Danny beginning to wither and die on the vine. She wasn’t going to let that happen. While they still had cell service, they had made a worst case scenario plan. They would meet at a mutual friend’s house located halfway between them and head south and maybe run all the way to Mexico.
It was not a brilliant plan in theory or execution. They never discussed when they would make a break for it or how long one should wait at the friend’s house for the other one.
Most importantly they never discussed what they should do if they encountered zombies while in route to the friend’s house. They can’t be faulted for that though, the undead had not yet appeared on the stage while they lovingly texted away.
The world had been under siege by the undead for almost three days when Violet made a break for it. While I was huddled vigilantly at my peephole in my living room, she was making a mad dash for a friend’s house in the once pleasant Bethany neighborhood of Legend Heights.
Her dad found the note she’d left for him and Susan on her pillow when he went to wish her good night. It was short and sweet and signed with love but made very clear her intention to run away with Danny.
Henry, instantly enraged by grief and terror, made his first foray into madness that night.
He organized a heavily armed search party made convenient by his tunnel system. After grilling the twins he discovered they had known about the plan but didn’t think Violet would actually go through with it. One had only to look outside over the big wall to see the deranged crowds howling and roaming the neighborhood to know it would be suicide to go out there.
Armed with maps and a list of possible friends’ houses to check (the twins knew the plan but had not paid the strictest attention to details when Violet had relayed it to them), Henry and his mini-militia began to search the streets of the town for his baby girl.
What began as a rather amateurish song and dance routine by a bunch of former soldiers who were used to dealing with a certain kind of enemy, turned quickly into a brutal education into the proper ways to safely engage and evade mobs of the undead.
Henry lost some men but gained loyalty from those who survived as he showed a knack for strategy and leadership in very unfamiliar battleground territory.
Over the course of time they had crossed all but two houses off the list. The second to last house, marked only as Amy’s house, would be where they would find the only sign that Violet had indeed been there. Her bloodied jacket and the tattered remains of her once fashionable backpack were located in the trashed living room of the modest one-story home but they never did find Violet.
Henry stood grief stricken in the overgrown lawn of Amy’s house enraged that his daughter should have found her untimely demise in such a place. It was on that night as he watched it burn to the ground that something snapped in his mind and Henry became a different kind of walking dead.
Fueled by a desperate need to understand why Violet had disappeared so recklessly, Henry could think of only one person to ask, the cursed spawn of his former friend turned enemy that had stolen his daughter’s heart.
Thus began several attempts to gain entry to the Swanson compound down the road to question the boy, all of which were rebuffed with prejudice. It wasn’t long before Henry started to suspect some darker motive was keeping him from talking to the boy. This paranoia grew into a multi-headed monster that stalked Henry in his sleep and planted seeds of trouble in his mind.
If Danny Swanson wasn’t among the dead or undead already, he soon would be.
Because Henry and Bill had been so helpful in sharing information with each other about their security arrangements, Henry thought he knew exactly where to hit Bill’s compound. His first coordinated attack of the luxury townhome complex came two days later.
It was an unexpected but surprisingly ineffective attack that the Swanson camp quashed quickly because of the greater numbers of Bill’s security team.
As it would turn out, that skirmish and the several that followed were only distractions to cover a surprise attack that resulted in the death of Bill’s only son Danny, who unlike Violet, had been too terrified to leave his family after the zombies appeared outside the complex.
In the chaotic aftermath that followed, Bill stood by helpless as he watched his shrieking wife hold their son in her arms, dead from multiple stab wounds. He vowed to God and anyone who would listen that he would crush Henry Flowers and utterly destroy his people.
After the attack Henry, in spite of his new unstable mental status, experienced several hours of sane clarity. He quickly quashed the brief regret at what he and his men had done to Bill’s son and rushed his people back to his fortified mansion. Once safely home, his wife and the twins treated the wounded while the healthy hunkered down and prepared for the inevitable retaliation from the other camp.
Because he had less territory to guard and therefore fewer men, Henry was unable to completely secure his property, this would prove costly. Bill for his part was true to his word to make his enemy pay and also made good use of his knowledge of Henry’s compound. His attack came only a few days later and would prove just as devastating as Henry’s had been.
Instead of watching one of his two remaining children die, Henry had the misfortune of seeing his wife catch a bullet in the head. She died instantly.
Bill hadn’t exactly planned it that way. He found himself elated yet wistful on his triumphant return to his complex. He always had a secret thing for Susan.
These violent and ridiculous skirmishes escalated over the next several weeks. Both sides sustaining heavy losses. Both sides resorting to scouring the surrounding areas recruiting any healthy people they could find.
Those wandering few were more than happy to join forces for the perceived safety in numbers inside the fortified locations. Unfortunately for these newcomers they were likely far safer on their own instead of being embroiled in a conflict for which they could have no possible understanding.
This mini-war culminated in a final reverse ambush by the Flowers Camp, during which Marcy Swanson was lost to the zombies. Bill’s daughter Tessa and her would-be-boyfriend Steven were taken along with
several others to the Flowers Compound.
Enter me and my insane assault on Fort Friendly (A.K.A, the Flowers Mansion).
Somehow in my desperation to renew my connection to my fellow man, I had managed to stumble upon the worst human beings still alive in the world.
So I thought at the time. Now I realize they were just regular entitled folks turned rotten by zombies and circumstance.
As Daisy revealed the tawdry details of the entire affair I found myself recalling one of the recurring fantasies of my youth. As a boy I dreamed of inventing a time machine, as man I sat with Daisy in our filthy storage closet and rued the shame of unrealized dreams.
Chapter 23
“Bill Swanson Sucks!”
The next three days passed by slowly like a train with a thousand cars. Steven wasn’t so bad anymore. To a certain extent he became quite servile, checking on us a few times a day for food and water. I even convinced him to bring us a fresh bucket to exchange for the now full chamber pot bucket.
We were really living.
I won’t say Daisy and I became friends in that little room but we certainly got to know each other. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t developed feelings for her but she could be an exceedingly irritating human being so I could never be completely comfortable with her.
I don’t think she had always been this way but most of the time she acted like a spoiled kid in an adult’s body. She was constantly moving and grew bored instantly. With literally nothing to do but talk to me, she was essentially always bored.
We both stunk and were itchy. The room was always too hot or too cold. I spent a lot of my time doing push-ups and sit-ups or just lying on the cement staring at the ceiling while Daisy pretended she was a ballerina.
It was long past the dinner hour that final day in the storage room. Daisy and I were on our 5000th match of thumb wars when we heard the sound of raised voices and many pairs of feet marching in our direction. We looked at each and clambered quickly to our feet. The lock rattled in the door and I stepped defensively in front of Daisy as it swung open.
It looked like our hour of reckoning had come at last.
There stood Tessa dressed in fatigues. She was red faced and angry brandishing a bloody machete. I wondered what it would feel like passing through my body.
Crowded around the door with her were a handful of strangers, mostly men and all of them armed and pissed off. It would appear Mr. Flowers had finally made his response to my jail break a few weeks back.
Steven stood in the back of the group looking sheepish with one eye swollen shut. I felt bad about that.
In spite of her obvious anger, Tessa stumbled back and gagged when she got a whiff of the room.
Holding her nose in disgust she hissed, “Bring them,” as she elbowed her way back through the mob.
Two large and very displeased men entered the room, each grabbing one of my arms. They began dragging me out the door and down the hall following Tessa. They were not gentle.
A small but mean looking woman corralled Daisy, who was crying softly, and prodded her after us with a gun to her back.
No blindfold this time. I wasn’t coming back to the smelly little storage closet. Considering that I believed my death was the planned alternative, I thought I would miss it. There had been a perverse form of peace in there with Daisy. I would even miss Steven a little.
We marched up one long flight of stairs and exited a heavy fire door into barricaded foyer that had once been the decorative lobby of the luxury condominium complex.
More people waited for us there. The air was charged with angry energy. Something bad had happened and we were to be punished for it.
The men that had been escorting me stood aside as Daisy was pushed into my arms. We stood there together in front of the main entrance, the floor to ceiling glass was covered in plywood and sheet metal.
I had my arm around her shoulders as we looked into the faces of what Frankenstein would have described as angry villagers. The crowd had a taste for blood, I could hear it their harsh conversations.
Tessa reappeared and the room fell silent as she made her way to the front with Rory in tow. Good old Rory, fitting he should attend my execution. He held a stained and ratty old-fashioned hat box in his hand. He set it on the ground next to Tessa who stood in front of me and Daisy. She gave us a big smile, so pleasant it was creepy.
Daisy edged even closer to me while Tessa turned to address her people.
“Tonight we lost two more good people,” she said solemnly. I could see eyes lower and heads nod in agreement.
“Over these last few months we’ve done terrible things. Things we would have never even imagined before. But we did them because we had to. We did them because we were forced to! Forced by Henry Flowers and his stupid dead wife Susan and their three skanky children. We did these terrible things to survive!”
At this part in her speech the crowd was really getting revved up and were shouting support back to her like she was preaching.
“I promised you three things when Danny died.”
“Yes you did!” someone yelled from the crowd and everyone cheered.
“I promised we would stand together and end this fight for good. We did that tonight!”
More joyous shouting.
“I promised you Henry Flower’s head!”
The crowd had been really pumped up but the air seemed to leave the room when Tessa reached into the hat box and pulled out a severed head by the hair.
I had never seen Henry Flowers before but I assumed this was his head when Daisy started screaming and buried her face in my chest.
Tessa turned and gave me a look of mock concern.
“Tell your girlfriend not to worry. She’ll be joining her father real soon.”
She tossed the head at us. I flinched as it hit me in the arm and bounced off.
Tessa had really lost the quieting crowd at this point but she didn’t seem to notice. Some of the murder had left the faces I could see in the crowd. They were now looking at her like they just realized she was bat-shit crazy.
“That brings me to my last promise. I promised when this was over we would feed sweet little Daisy here to the deaders outside the wall in honor of my dearly departed little brother Danny!”
The people in the room looked at Daisy in my arms as she quietly whimpered. It did not seem like everyone was onboard with this idea but Tessa wasn’t negotiating.
I cleared my throat and really hoped I didn’t come off as selfish when I said softly, “What about me?”
It was probably the wrong thing to ask. Even Daisy looked up at me like I was a total douche and took a step away.
“You’re going over too, you fucking stupid lying lunatic.”
This cold statement came from a truly unexpected source to my left.
It was Rory.
I looked over at him shocked; I thought we had a good vibe. I almost fainted when Tessa laughed and shouted, “You tell him, daddy!”
With this the crowd was once again all in. Men started ripping plywood down and soon the doors were open and the crowd pushed us outside.
Daddy? Rory was her Daddy? That could only mean that he was….I was lost in my own head trying to puzzle this out when I stumbled into the cold night air, down three steps and lost my footing. I fell onto my knees knocking Daisy over in the process.
Hands yanked us to our feet. We were in what used to be an open grassy field but was now the walled in yard of the compound. Tessa had acquired a torch and now marched out in front leading us toward the fence some fifty yards away.
I could hear the zombies outside the fence, a low roar that seemed to overpower the auditory senses. The hand holding my right arm gave me a painful pinch as we trudged forward. I glanced over to see Rory or I guess Bill was his real name, he was giving me his best shit-eating grin and seemed quite proud of himself.
I had to hand it to him, he had conned a conman, kidded a kidder, grifted a grifter and so on. I had to
respect his skills, of course, but now I hated him.
“I wasn’t lying to you,” I hissed at him between deep breaths.
He bared his teeth at me and said, “I know you weren’t, I just don’t fucking like you, dickhead.”
That was that I suppose. I wondered why he hadn’t killed me days ago.
Fucking Rory.
We made it to the wall in good time.
They had erected a gallows with a staircase leading up to it. The platform was level to the top of the wall.
We climbed the stairs at gunpoint. Daisy looked like she might faint again. I was really hoping she didn’t. I climbed up to the platform and helped her up behind me. Tessa was already up there surveying the scene and trying to act like she wasn’t terrified of what she saw. Bill (A.K.A. Rory) dragged his sorry ass up there along with a stone-faced Steven and two others for support in case I tried to fight back.
Tessa hadn’t been exaggerating, the undead were a sea of troubled water as far as the eye could behold. Everyone was nervous up there looking down into the face of hell. That included me, even though I was fairly certain I would be fine when they tossed me down there.
To be fair though, I always got nervous in crowds.
Some caring fellow had troubled to attach an actual diving board off the end of the platform. I was puzzled as I was pushed toward the edge until I looked down and noticed the moat below the wall. Apparently, they didn’t want me and Daisy swimming to our freedom.
It was rather pointless overkill as far as I was concerned. The moat was so full of zombies they had displaced all the water. In addition, their moat would be useless when the winter freeze came which would be any day now.
Daisy and I stood on the edge of the platform in front of the diving board. Tessa, Bill and their people stood in a semi-circle holding us in place with guns. Daisy was visibly shaking, I felt sorry for her and tried to comfort her by gently squeezing her arm but she didn’t notice.
“Please, you don’t have to do this,” she begged.
Running with the Horde Page 11