Gordon swallowed hard, eyeballed the hand on the gun. He had to spin this.
“Calm down, man. Everything is gonna be fine. We’ll get another chance at them, catch them off guard. We’ll have those girls and our revenge. I’m really sorry about the boys that died but think about it. Less people to feed and drink up the booze. Less people to share the girls with. It’s not so bad if you think about it like that.”
“They were my friends!” Richard shouted.
“My friends, Gordy.” he said quietly, “And you’re stupid if you didn’t learn a lesson from that ass kicking we got. Ninety percent casualty rate if you didn’t notice. Ninety percent of our entire community is dead or maimed. Countries have unconditionally surrendered for less, Gordy. I’m just glad they don’t know where we live. They could walk in here and finish us off. Hell, one of them alone could. We’re broken, Gordy. And you did this.”
Richard raised the pistol and on cue, the rest of the gang hobbled and limped out. They wanted to watch the show. Gordon heard the half-frozen moans of the undead behind him and realized what was happening.
This wasn’t an argument.
He wasn’t being told to leave.
They were going to execute him.
He hadn’t thought to ask who the others were crawling around in the empty pool but from the eager and evil smiles on their faces, he knew they had done this before. He was going to be their Friday night entertainment.
“You gonna jump or do I need to shoot you first?” Richard asked. “Either way, you’ll become one of them. You won’t bleed out before you turn. Just ask dear old dad.”
There was no way out. The rest of them were in a semi-circle behind Richard, out of his line of fire no matter which way he tried to run. He’d get shot and then tossed in, there was no way around it. No amount of begging, no swearing to change, no leaving and never coming back promises would work. Nothing would change their minds.
“Can I go off the diving board?” Gordon asked, trying his best to act cool. To buy a little time so he could think of a way out. “You know, walk the plank? I always had a thing for pirate movies.”
There were murmurs of approval. That would be different. They usually had to shoot whoever was sentenced to the pool and push them in before they died.
“Yeah, Gordy.” Richard said. “You can walk the plank. After all, we’re family.”
Gordon nodded and reached for the wine glass. Richard tensed, almost pulled the trigger, but relaxed when his cousin raised it in toast.
“I’m sorry.” he said, “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Nobody softened.
Nobody looked down at their feet and started having second thoughts.
Nobody cared.
He put the glass to his lips, drained it and moved to set it back on the table. When he was close, almost out of the line of fire, he struck out at the gun. In the same instant, he spewed the wine he’d been holding in his mouth into Richards face. He kicked him in his wolf chewed leg as he pulled the trigger but the bullet went wild. Richard was blinded by the alcohol and excruciating pain of all his stitches being ripped open. He screamed and fought for the pistol as the others ran to help.
Gordon ripped the gun out of his grip, twisting and snapping his trigger finger backward and clubbed him across the face with his splint. They both roared in pain but Gordon managed to grab the chair and jerk it forward, throwing Richard to the concrete inches from the edge of the pool. He scrambled backward, away from the reaching arms, but when he grunted to his feet Gordon had the gun pointed at his belly.
“Goodbye, cousin.” he said, and pulled the trigger.
Richard only screamed for a few minutes as they all stood around, stunned by the turn of events and wary of the only person holding a pistol.
“There’s a new sheriff in town.” Gordon said, watching them. “Any objections?”
No one said anything.
“Go get Pole.” he said.
There was a moment’s hesitation and he waited. This was the deciding moment. If they did what he said now, they probably always would. If they didn’t, he’d gun them down until he ran out of bullets. The two healthiest of them finally broke off to drag him out as gently as they could. He was burning up with fever and delirious.
“Toss him in.” Gordon said and motioned to the pool.
They wouldn’t. Gordon waited.
“He’s dead anyway.” Misty said. “You’d be doing him a favor.”
“She’s right.” Jester said. “Just do it before you get us all killed.”
They did.
His eyes sprang open a few minutes later and he jumped to his feet, clawing at them. He kept falling and it didn’t take long before the bone was sticking through his pant leg again. He didn’t seem to notice.
As they filed back into the house, Misty came over to him.
“Let me check your bandages.” she said. “You’ve started bleeding again.”
He sat back down in his favorite chair as she fussed over him and Jester set a cold beer down beside him.
“Here ya go, boss.” he said, giving him a slight nod.
“Things are going to get better.” Gordon said. “Winter will be over soon. Let’s drink up, heal up and get ready for spring.”
They raised a toast to that.
Authors Note
We hope you’ve enjoyed this tale of the children and their companions. This story grew from their interaction with Jessie and Scarlet way back in Zombie Road 5. Wesley has written a few stories set in the Zombie Road world and wanted to expand on the kids who had managed to survive in the wild animal safari park. As of this writing, May of 2019, we are hard at work on the second book in the series.
I wanted to take a moment and really, really thank a few people that made this book happen.
First off, Wesley. All he had to work with was a few chapters from the Zombie Road book and a couple ideas I threw at him. From that, he created the whole safari world and most of the characters in it. He gave them personalities and names and made us care about them. He can be reached at [email protected]
Next, the cover artist. Erick doesn’t usually do book covers, he is a tattoo artist with incredible talent. I’d already commissioned two different covers from two different artists and they were rather dreadful. With a release date looming, my daughter showed him what I was going to have to use, there was no time to hire another artist. He said “hold my beer” and two days later, he had created the cover that graces the book. Beautiful. He’s agreed to do the next two covers for the trilogy and I can’t wait to see what he does with Swan and her wolves. Or Donny and his panther. Or should it be the little kids and their foxes? Murray and his monkeys? Vanessa in full African battle rattle riding Ziggy as she cuts down the undead? Harper and her giraffe? The twins with their sawblade axes charging through a Walmart on their polar bears? We may have to write more books just to get to see the covers!
Erick Holguin owns the Tattoo Dojo in Atlanta and has been inking for over nine years. If you need skin art, check out him or any of his talented crew. His portraits and detail work are world class. Follow this link and book in advance. A guy with his skill set stays pretty busy. https://www.thetattoodojo.com
Tamra Crow is my third set of eyes and editrix extraordinaire and Valerie Lioudis helped sort the cover layout.
If you would like to sign up for the Simpson newsletter, and get a free book with a few short stories, follow this link: https://subscribepage.com/r2r8n0
Although to be honest, it’s not much of a newsletter. I don’t fill your inbox with spam, just a note a few times a year letting you know when there is a new release or if there is major news about the game or movie that we’re working on.
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ebsite (that doesn’t get much love) is www.davidasimpson.com
As always, if you could leave a review, that would be awesome. Amazon really does place a lot of emphasis on the number of reviews a book gets, it’s how they decide whether to promote it or make it more visible for shoppers.
Have fun, live life and don’t get hit by a bus
David A. Simpson
5/19/2019
Feral Children 2
Savages
A Zombie Road Tale
This is a work of fiction by
David A. Simpson
and
Wesley R. Norris
ISBN: 9781672846554
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No portion of this text may be copied or duplicated without author or publisher written permission, with the exception of use in reviews
Cover by Ryan Schwarz
www.thecoverdesigner.com
www.facebook.com//groups//thecoverdesigner
Copyright 2019 David A. Simpson
All rights reserved
Prologue
July
10 Months After the Outbreak
Kodiak hunched low over Otis’s back as the big bear lumbered through the night. The strange procession that followed the savage boy and his massive bear moved rapidly with barely a sound. Occasionally the click of a claw against a rock or the plod of a hoof marked their passage to anyone or anything that was paying attention.
The scent of animal lather competed with the smell of blood seeping from torn stitches and the stink of infection from vicious wounds that hadn’t been properly treated nor had time to heal. Modern medicine was gone. You made do with what you could scavenge, or you went without.
The young warriors rode on the backs of armored beasts painted with stripes and symbols. The riders appeared little more than animals themselves in their mix of furs and battle-scarred armor. Their faces were streaked in war paint and soot. Their hair was adorned with feathers, beads and other mementos woven into braids. They carried Warhammers, tomahawks and primitive weapons they built themselves. Machetes and knives hung at their hips, were slung across their backs or lashed to saddles.
Anyone from the fortified towns would be laughed out of their favorite bar if they swore they saw a feral beauty barely in her teens with flowing white hair and Nordic tattoos riding a polar bear. Surely, the bartender would cut him off when he told of the tiny girl riding in front of her with a baby doll clutched in one hand and an icepick bunched in the other.
Kodiak peered through the darkness ahead, his eyes alert for the undead or signs of an ambush by their enemies. They pushed hard and ignored the exhaustion. They were in a desperate race against time. The tribe was down by two members. He couldn’t lose another. He was nearly overwhelmed with grief at the loss, at his failure, but he pushed it aside and let rage fill the holes in his heart. He resisted the urge to scratch at the rough stitches that itched under his armor.
His mind drifted as the miles disappeared behind them and moved them closer to what could be their last stand. He’d give anything to go back to those simpler times before the zombie virus wiped out most of the world, but that wasn’t going to happen. This was reality. Fighting and scratching out an existence in a post-apocalyptic world just for the chance to see another sunrise.
He thought about one of his most cherished memories before all of the blood. Before the undead walked the earth and the creatures of the forest went insane with unnatural hunger. At the time, it had been one of the worst and best days he’d had in his short life. He ran his fingers lightly over the stitches, swayed gently with the motion of the bear and let the memory replay in his mind. He pulled resolve from those fateful words. With what was to come, he didn’t know if he’d have another chance to visit old memories.
He remembered.
“When the mountains turn blue, it’s as cold as it gets.” Derek said with a laugh and twisted the top off a bottle of Coors Light.
He handed it to the gangly teenager sitting beside him on the bank of the Mississippi River. The soft gurgle of the slow-moving river was hypnotic and was the perfect spot to unwind after a hard day.
“Go ahead. I won’t tell.” Derek clinked his bottle against Cody’s, and then took a long pull. He smacked his lips and uttered an ahh.
Cody took a tentative sip. Ugh. The first swallow of his first beer went down hard. Burned his throat and the carbonation tickled his nose. He pressed the cold bottle against the black eye he was sporting.
Derek grinned at the look on the boy’s face. “The second one goes down a lot smoother.”
He was right. The second swallow did. By the fourth swallow the bottle was near empty and Cody decided beer was a good thing. He felt the warmth of his first alcohol buzz as it dulled the throbbing in his split lip and bruised eye. He let out a hearty belch and sighed.
Derek pulled himself another one from the cooler.
“You good?” He asked the boy.
Cody nodded. He was already in enough trouble and showing up drunk would only make it worse. He felt mighty fine from the beer though. If only he wasn’t dreading the impending doom his mom was sure to visit on him over his three-day suspension from school.
Derek watched the boy out of the corner of his eye. He’d had it rough in his short life but he was a good kid. His father was gone, he’d lost his life on the job as a fireman. The insurance settlement was a joke and his mom worked eighty hours a week to make ends meet. The boy had practically been raised by his surrogate family at the zoo.
“Buddy, I know I’m not your dad, but there’s things a young man needs to know, and your mom asked me to talk to you.” Derek flicked the wheel on the US Coast Guard engraved lighter, then snapped the lid shut. He didn’t smoke but always carried it. It had some special meaning for him that he’d never shared with anyone. He sat silent for a moment and gathered his thoughts.
Cody stared out across the river, slightly embarrassed. Was this gonna be the birds and the bees talk? He was a teenager, he already knew about that stuff. Had Mom recruited Derek to break the news to him that she was shipping him off to reform school for fighting and being a troublemaker?
“You’re at that awkward point in life. Not really a boy anymore, but not a man either. Not sure where you fit in the world or if you fit at all. But today, you did the right thing. Standing up for that other kid took courage.”
“Yeah, but I got my ass kicked.” Cody muttered.
His pride hurt more than his injuries. Mom had made him leave the principal’s office while she talked to them. Well, maybe talked was an understatement. He’d heard her icy, angry voice directed at the school administrators but couldn’t make out the words. She’d slammed the door on the way out of the office and hadn’t said anything to him on the drive. She surprised him by taking him to the zoo and not home to be loaded down with extra chores and grounding him for the next five years. She’d simply parked the car, spoke to Derek for a moment then walked to her office.
“What did you expect? Three on one is never a fair fight.” Derek chuckled. “Don’t let it get you down. No shame in getting your ass kicked when you are fighting for what’s right.”
“Mom is going to murder me and ground me forever.” Cody said forlornly.
She was probably going to take his Xbox away for a year.
Derek raised an eyebrow at him. “You might be surprised. Murder you? I doubt it. Ground you, possibly. But even if she does, it’s not the end of the world. Before you know it, you’ll be out of high school and off to college chasing girls and going to keggers. You’ll be making your own way in the world and all this stuff you’re feeling now will just be a memory, if you even remember it at all.” Derek said.
Cody nodded, unsure.
“But,
doing all that and turning eighteen don’t make you a man. That’s something you gotta earn. You follow me?”
Cody shrugged.
“What I mean is, it ain’t easy. Every decision you make has a consequence. Every choice means something and sometimes every choice is a bad one, but you still gotta choose. Deep down you had to know they were gonna win, but you couldn’t stand by and do nothing either.” Derek paused. “I’m proud of you kid.”
Cody watched the beads of perspiration slide down the nearly empty bottle. Why had he stuck his nose in it? He didn’t even know that kid. It just pissed him off when he walked in the locker room and saw the three football players with the much smaller boy jammed up against the lockers.
“Life happens fast. I remember when your mom first started bringing you to the sanctuary. You were all snot nosed and toddling around. Trying to eat the animal’s food and getting into everything. Now look at you. Damn near six-foot-tall and breaking all the girl’s hearts. Enjoy it pal, before you know it, you’ll be an old man like me, and those girls won’t be so easy to get.” Derek tousled his hair.
Cody punched him in the shoulder. He was barely thirteen and had no idea what to say to a girl even if he got up the nerve to talk to one. Derek loved to tease him about girls because he knew he was scared to death of the fairer sex.
“You ever made a bad decision?” Cody asked him seriously.
“Yeah, I did, and people got hurt. A couple even died. I carry that every day in my heart. It was back in my military days, but it feels like yesterday. Thing is, I wouldn’t forget it even if I could.”
The Feral Children [A Zombie Road Tale] Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 32