The Feral Children [A Zombie Road Tale] Box Set | Books 1-3

by Simpson, David A.

  Kodiak finally called a cease fire and opened a case of juice boxes. There was still work to do but he had a pretty good idea of the warehouse layout. They’d be able to get everything on Murray’s list quickly and fill the rest of the wagon with whatever they wanted. Old Mur was probably sitting on the porch watching for them, salivating at the thought of a big bag of chocolate and a warm Dr. Pepper.

  It was a good day, a good haul, and the guns from the dead guys were a good find. Murray would have a book with instructions on how to maintain them. With the tractor, they could carry more in one load than they could in ten using the lawn cart and wheelbarrows. One more trip before winter and they’d be set, living like kings. Now that he knew there was plenty of food, the next trip they’d get building supplies. Next week they’d have new doors and windows and freshly fixed walls. He’d never been to the building supply store but they’d probably have all the tools and everything else they needed to fix up the old house before it got cold again.

  “Lead the way,” he told Donny as he fired up the tractor.

  Everything was loaded and strapped, the warehouse was closed up tight and he was a little surprised Swan hadn’t shown up yet.

  25

  Swan

  Swan slipped into the adventure store and held the door for her wolves. She’d told the tribe she would get what they needed to repair and improve their armor but there was also something else she had to do. She was following a hunch about Gordon. She’d snorted when they warned her about the undead and ignored their concerns about the savage ones. She was out in the wild every week, sometimes for days. She could take care of the zombies and she hoped and prayed the wounded hyena would show its face. She hoped his mouth got so infected and swollen he couldn’t eat. She hoped he starved to death.

  They’d followed the bloody path of the savage ones to find out how they got in and found a few of them too injured to go on and put them down. They filled the burrowed holes with rocks and dirt then staked the bottom of the fence tightly to the ground for yards in both directions. Her tomahawk had worked its way loose from the hyena’s mouth and was laying in the weeds halfway across the field. It was gross, slimy with the hunchback’s bloody slobber, but she was glad to get it back.

  She tore open a few MRE’s to feed her pack and gnawed on a peanut butter bar as they ate cold chili mac. She laid the compound bow on top of a pile of mismatched military camos in the archery section and refilled her quiver with arrows. She tried to find every one she shot, there wasn’t an endless supply of them, but wasn’t always successful. The aluminum shafts were tough, but a strike off of bone or an errant shot that hit a tree would bend the shafts and render them useless. She thought about Gordon while she threaded broad heads into each of the arrows. Why had he been here that day the virus consumed the town? Why not the bank, or the town hall, or one of the trendy restaurants around the square? He always bragged about being from a gated town up north, so why was Mr. Snootypants slumming in an army navy store?

  She slid the last arrow into her quiver then grabbed a backpack. She stuffed it with every leather belt and most of the hard plastic armor they had. Hockey and soccer pads. Wrist braces from roller bladers and knee pads from soldiers. Satisfied her duty to the tribe was finished, she walked towards the rear of the store. She’d never ventured to the back section, there had been no need to; clothes her size and the archery section were near the front. The display cabinet with the knives that she’d taken her tomahawks from was right by the cash register at the front door.

  Mice skittered away as the beam of her flashlight fell over their tiny forms. Zero’s ears perked up at the little intruders, but a warning growl from Swan refocused his attention. She loved the playful side of the big wolf, but this was a hunt and there was no time for playing when the stakes were so high.

  She passed mannequins wearing surplus gas masks and World War II uniforms as she approached the door that led into the rear section of the store and the manager’s office. The flashlight picked up the claw marks in the wood and there was a musty, foul odor that permeated the place. Zero startled her when he sneezed and shook his big head, tried to clear his nose of the disturbing smell. She stroked his ears, more to calm her own nerves than for his benefit and panned the light around the large room.

  Curious as to the source of the lingering odor she followed her nose to a wooden box. An old, brown-stained ammo crate with dried flakes of waste still clinging to it sat in a corner. Zero growled, detected the scent of Gordon and his hackles raised.

  “It’s alright, boy.” She said and panned the light around.

  It was a cluttered office with boxes of goods stacked nearly to the ceiling in places. The flashlight danced over the pictures, plaques and posters that adorned the walls. There were a lot of awards from the Putnam Recreation League for sponsorship of different sports teams dating back for decades.

  The pictures were interspersed among the awards and told the life story of a robust young soldier proudly wearing his uniform as he aged into a kind looking potbellied old man who probably dressed up as Santa every year. Most of them were pictures of the owner with different people. Men in suits, men in sports jerseys, an Olympic girls’ volleyball team. Happy memories of a world that didn’t exist anymore.

  She studied one photo of the smiling man and a pleasant looking older lady standing in front of a cruise ship. They looked happy and she wondered for a second what it would feel like to be loved that way. To be with someone your whole life. To have adventures and grow old together. It made her sad, it reminded her a lot of her grandfather and his messy workshop. The office had been cluttered but organized before, now it looked like a giant rats nest. A rat named Gordon, she thought. Clothes, old food wrappers and drink bottles filled with a sickly-looking yellow fluid littered the floor. She realized the wooden crate was Gordon’s toilet and the bottles were filled with urine. She grimaced. This was where Kodiak had found him. Cowering in his own filth. Only the lowest of the animal species defecated where they slept and ate, and in her opinion, there was no lower form of life than Gordon Lowery. She used an arrow to stir around through the mess looking for clues. Zero padded out and waited for her in the store. She didn’t blame him. He maintained a low steady rumbling growl from his chest and bared his fangs. He loathed Gordon almost as much as she did, she thought with a wry smile. She rooted around looking for a discarded wallet or piece of paper, anything he might have dropped that would give her an idea where to find his sorry ass. There was nothing in the pile of dirty clothes that he’d used for a bed. Disgusted, she turned her attention to the desk shoved up against the wall.

  Kodiak had hidden Gordon’s shame from the tribe. He’d done everything he could to give him an equal standing and become one of them, but this filthy lair revealed the true nature he hid behind his designer clothes and fast talk.

  She plopped down in the worn leather chair and rocked it slowly back and forth, letting her light play over the mountain of clutter that covered the desk. Why were you and daddy Snootypants here, Gordy? What would bring two rich jerks into a business like this? She rifled through the pile.

  Papers, bills and flyers.

  Invoices.

  Purchase orders.

  Closeout sale advertisements.

  Final Notice.

  She took a closer look at that one. She scanned over the text until she reached the bottom of the page. It looked like the store owner was about to lose his lease. Her heart thudded in her chest when she saw what she was looking for. There in scrawling ink across the bottom, the signature of Gordon Lowery Senior. She looked around for the envelope that it was mailed in and found it in the waste bin beside the desk. Some business address in Minnesota. Not his home but probably pretty close to it. She’d never traveled that far north in her search for Gordon, but it made sense. With their ATV’s and a couple of spare gas cans, they could easily roam a hundred miles in any direction they chose. For the first time in a long time, she missed her cell phone. S
he couldn’t google him up and dig through his life. How did people do it in the old days when all you could do with a telephone was talk?

  She opened a drawer and dug through the desk. She found a rubber band bound stack of business cards and flipped through them, tossed each on the floor as she read it.

  Near the back of the stack, she found the one she was looking for. Gordon Lowery Senior. CEO. Lowery Investments and Realty. Smith Falls, MN. Her cold smile was downright icy. Now she had a town. Now he was within reach. She pulled out the drawer, dumped the contents on the desk and threw it aside. She was so close; this was the first evidence she’d found of Gordon’s life before the apocalypse. She tossed sales flyers, pocket change, books of stamps and more business cards aside as she rooted around. Nothing else with a Lowery name on it. She swept the desk clean with her arm and opened the next drawer. Inside there was a thick yellow book. She’d never even seen a phone book, if you needed to call somebody, you just googled their number, got it off the internet. She dropped it aside but the search revealed nothing else of any use. Frustrated, she sat back in the chair and sighed. She was so close she could taste it. If he was in Smith Falls, it would be easy to find him. How many gated communities were there in a small town? Her eyes fell on the phone book again. Her grandparents had books like this in the junk drawer of their kitchen. She picked it up and flipped it open. Rows and rows of tiny print. Last name first, address, phone number. She flipped excitedly to the L’s. She almost yelled when she found it. Lowery, Gordon Sr., underneath it Lowery, Richard Sr. They were neighbors. Bingo. It showed his street and house number. She finally had that rat bastard. She committed it to memory then tore the page from the book and folded it into her pocket.

  She grabbed her bow, the overstuffed backpack and checked through the windows for any undead. Satisfied, she opened the door for Zero and the cubs and slipped out behind him. A large black cloud of smoke was curling up in the far distance and her hand fell away from the door. It was miles away and coming from the exact direction of home. From the sanctuary.

  26

  Gordon

  Gordon and his gang had crept into Putnam under the cover of darkness and found the remnants of the Anubis cult at his father’s warehouse. There were only scattered bones and shreds of cloth, they’d been eaten by something, but the empty shell casings told how they died. A battle had been fought there and the Anubis people had gotten the worst of it. Gordon kicked a busted and gnawed skull as he cursed silently. He didn’t see any big animal bones or small skulls, anything that looked like it might belong to the brats and their beasts. He heard his father whispering in his brain. Those kids did this. They ruin everything you work for, yet you continue to hide from them. You aren’t worthy of the Lowery name.

  “Shut up!” Gordon said. “Just shut up! I’m trying to think.”

  His crew looked at him and each other. None of them had said a word. He glared at them, dared, even wanted one of them to say anything. He lightly touched the butt of the Smith & Wesson. They wouldn’t meet his eyes and looked away. The brats had guns and knew how to use them. This changed things. This made them even more dangerous. They might even come looking for him now. He chewed his lower lip and ignored the rantings of his old man. What did he know?

  “Follow me.” He grunted. “And keep it quiet.”

  They climbed on their ATV’s, kept the lights off and circled miles out of the way to come in a back road to the rear of the zoo. He was being careful, he didn’t want any of the animals to hear the engines and let them know company was coming. They had ruined his plans and probably got him put on a hit list with the Anubis Society. He wasn’t playing nice this time. He’d show them and his old man a thing or two. He’d show them what happened if they messed with a Lowery.

  They snipped the chain link fence and stayed to the deepest shadows as they made their way towards the house. They were dressed in their riding pads with camo clothing over the armor and their faces were streaked in hunters paint. Gordon kept expecting to spook the herds of gazelles but the overgrown fields were empty, nothing moved in them. The only sound was the breeze rustling though the trees and as much as he hated the animals it was strange not seeing any of them. Maybe they’d escaped or the brats ate them last winter. Either way, it was good for him, no dumb animals to send bounding away, maybe alerting them.

  They took cover on the back side of a slight rise. Far enough away they wouldn’t be scented but close enough to spy on the house. Gordon peered through the riflescope while his men settled in and tried to get comfortable. They had barely gotten situated before dawn and some of them had already nodded off to sleep. He didn’t really have a plan, everything had changed when he saw the dead soldiers and all the spent brass. He couldn’t get close if the kids had machine guns. Maybe he’d wait until they went out to feed the animals, then he’d snipe a few of them. He wasn’t sure how well the hunting rifles would take out the bears but everyone had one and if you shot it enough times you could kill anything. He was in a good position for some long distance shooting. He could pick them off one by one. He could see if they left the house to flank them and they had the cover of the hill to get away whenever they wanted.

  As the sun came up, he saw the damage to the house and the garden. Some kind of battle had happened here, too. He couldn’t imagine what had destroyed the place, broken all the windows and tore down the greenhouse. He was eager to count heads when they woke up, maybe most of them were already dead. Maybe the Society had already taken care of them. He waited and was surprised when nobody came out to feed the stinking barn animals and when he didn’t hear the stupid rooster start crowing he swung the scope over to the barn. The gate was wide open. All of the animals were gone. All of their food. Harper and Vanessa came out of the house a few minutes later and he tracked them as they went to their pens and saddled their companions. Harper was still alive, that was good. He had plans for her. He had a cold smile on his face as he stroked the trigger, the cross hairs on the big, stupid giraffes head.

  An engine fired up and he moved the scope over to the sound. He was surprised again when the whole tribe and all of the hated animals followed a tractor out of the front gate. None of them had guns, either. They still carried their spears and axes. He frowned and moved his sights over to Murray. Of course, the cripple didn’t go, he was on the porch with the three little ones, whatever their names were. Everyone else was gone and he’d bet money they were going to his warehouse to steal his food. That was okay. That gave him plenty of time to take care of things here. Those brats had suffered some losses, that was obvious, but they were about to suffer some more. He rolled ideas around in his head as he watched. They never should have messed with a Lowery. They never should have killed his people. He hadn’t liked any of them and couldn’t remember their names but that wasn’t the point. It was the principle of the thing. He was going to hurt them and disappear. In a few months after they started rebuilding, he’d come back and do it again. Break their spirits and demoralize them. Death by a thousand cuts. It was much better to see your enemy suffer than kill him instantly.

  That was a lesson he’d learned when he was eight or ten. It was so much more satisfying to keep the neighbor’s dogs and cats alive for days than it was to simply smash their heads with rock or poison them. He took immense pleasure helping distraught owners search for the missing pet when he knew the truth. He knew exactly where Fluffy or Fido were caged, hungry and afraid. He would have to control himself, pretend concern and help them hang up flyers for the poor lost thing. He’d look in their worried faces and control the hysterical giggles that wanted to bubble up. It was so, so satisfying. It felt so much better to keep the stupid animals alive for days. To experiment with various ways to cause pain. To burn it or dump battery acid on its face or break a few more bones with the hammer.

  He was breathing hard just thinking about it and snapped his mind back to the present. To know-it-all Murray who had let them kick him out. He could have died out
in the wild and they didn’t care. He’d never had a chance to experiment on a human. Murray would have the honor of being the first.

  He’d been angry when he’d ordered the boys to join him for a visit to the warehouse to find out what happened.

  He’d been afraid when he saw the remains of the soldiers and all the empty bullet casings.

  He’d been worried when they snuck into the zoo to try to figure out what had happened.

  Now he was happy. He would get a little payback and all their guns. The idiots had left them behind. He couldn’t wait to see the looks on their stupid faces when they came back with a wagon load of his food and faced down his men with their very own guns. The irony was delicious.

  The cripple was alone in the house and they had the place to themselves all day. He hoped the guns were hidden away and weren’t out in the open. He hoped it would take a long time for Murray to tell him where they were. This was going to be a lot of fun. He sent two of his men to watch the gate and sound the alarm if the tribe came back unexpectedly. He sent Cowboy to the garage to get some paint thinner and warned him to keep out of sight until they had disarmed the cripple if he didn’t want to get shot. The rest of his gang followed him to the house. He didn’t know where the three little kids had gotten off to and didn’t really care. They were too young to be of any use to him and too small to be a threat.