Divided We Rot (One Nation Under Zombies Book 3)

by Raymond Lee

  Trey nodded. “The fence is out in the open and the few structures directly along it are just guard stations where they keep artillery. People are in and out of the hospital at all hours making it hard for them to bring people in and out of isolation without others noticing, although I suppose it’s possible. My money is on the church or David’s house.”

  “People are in and out of the church every Sunday,” Damian said. “And to my understanding we’re welcome to go there at any time. David’s house would be the most likely. We were inside that creepy-ass house today. We didn’t hear anyone screaming for help.”

  “Maybe they aren’t screaming. Maybe they aren’t in the house but locked up in a basement under it, or there’s that big barn behind his house. It’s right in the middle of everything, the perfect place to keep someone you don’t want to sneak out and get away.”

  “True,” Damian agreed, “but with it in the center of everything it seems they’d be scared of people finding out, and how would they get people there unseen?”

  “They do it in the middle of the night.” Trey looked down for a moment, making circular patterns in the feed in his palm before he sniffed and tossed it out to the goats, watching them with sad eyes as they scurried to collect each tiny morsel. “I’m in Block C. I knew a guy a while back. He recognized my voice when we were talking and figured out who I was. He didn’t tell anybody though and I didn’t tell anybody I thought he was gay. Someone found out though because I was up when the guards came for him. I’d eaten these awful bran muffins this old lady here makes and I was in and out of the bathroom all night. I was in there when they came for him in the dark. I saw them put a cloth over his nose and snatch him right out of the bed. They didn’t see me because it was dark and they weren’t expecting anyone to be up.”

  “Leah didn’t even come to the hall for dinner yesterday. She hadn’t eaten since morning and after they’d taken her off by herself to show her where she’d be staying it makes no sense she wouldn’t want to find us again. The other women with us have been staying in the hospital all this time and she didn’t visit them. At the meeting with David this morning he told us she attacked Elsie this morning and that’s when they put her in isolation.”

  “If she’d just arrived and they knew what she was so soon they could have walked her right over to isolation. If she had no idea where they were taking her she wouldn’t have fought. It could have looked very natural.”

  “We should have never came here,” Damian said, flinging some corn to the goats, not getting what was so enjoyable about it.

  “Someone in your group needed medical attention. They’re good people here except for the isolation stuff.”

  “How can you even say that?” Damian fought to keep his voice down. “You may have ended up marrying a woman and having some kids but you like men, at least you did at one time.”

  “That’s a part of me I never fully embraced, Damian. If they are doing conversion therapy I’m sorry for the people going through it, but I have a bed and food here. As long as I keep my head down and don’t give them a reason to throw my ass in there too I’m all good.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  Trey laughed, the sound rough and choppy. “The whole damn world is messed up. It’s a simple question, D. Do I feel safer with the monsters in here or the monsters out there? The monsters out there will kill me no matter what the hell I am.”

  “So you don’t care about anyone but yourself?”

  “Everyone I cared about is dead.” Trey stared at him with dead eyes before taking the cup of corn out of his hand and placing it inside his empty one. “I feed these goats every Sunday because it’s what my little girl would do if she were here. She loved feeding animals at the petting zoo back home, never knowing the world would become a zoo and the animals would eat her. I warned you to keep your head down and that’s about all the fuck I have left to give about anything anymore. I told you what I know and for what it’s worth, I hope you get your friend back and you live happily ever after but don’t even ask me to help any more than I just did. My days of trying to protect people are over. I wasn’t much good at it anyway.”

  Damian shook his head in disgust and started to walk away, stopping when he remembered he hadn’t asked what had happened to Trey’s friend. “Hey, have you seen your friend since he was taken?”

  Trey lowered his gaze to the ground before shaking his head. “No.”

  “Shit!”

  Sky opened her eyes, quickly realizing she’d fallen asleep. It didn’t take her much longer to also realize something was wrong as Richards slammed on the brakes then immediately started racing the SUV backwards. “What’s happening?”

  “Get down!” He shoved her head down with one hand while white-knuckling the steering wheel with the other. Gun blasts sounded from outside the vehicle as they continued racing backward. “Fuck!”

  “What’s going on?” she cried as she felt them whirl around and Richards floored the gas, increasing their sped as they drove forward in the opposite direction they’d been going when she’d awakened.

  “Fucking bastards set up a barricade,” Richards explained, continuing to speed away as he flicked a glance into the rearview mirror. Gunshots still sounded but farther in the distance. “You can sit up now.”

  Sky straightened and turned in her seat as far as she could without removing her seatbelt. In the distance she saw what looked like multiple cars that had been left where they’d wrecked along each side of the interstate. A narrow lane between them appeared to be the only way to get through. Two motorcycles sped out of it. “Richards?”

  “Shit, I see them,” he said, looking at the rearview mirror. He tightened his hands around the steering wheel and leaned forward. “Hold on and for chrissakes, if they catch up to us keep your head down so they don’t blow it off!”

  The engine revved as Richards smashed the gas pedal into the floorboard, his gaze continuously shifting between the stretch of interstate before them and the rearview mirror indicating the danger approaching them from behind.

  “Are they chasing us?” Sky asked as she watched the motorcycles via the side view mirror, chewing her bottom lip as her palms sweat. “Who was shooting? Why were they shooting?”

  “I’ve seen this type of thing before. My unit called them ravagers. They set up traps to catch people, rob them, and do whatever else they want with them. From a distance it looked like cars had wrecked and were just left behind like we’ve seen all over, but they had it set up to where you had no choice but to go through one lane between the cars to get through. I guarantee you if we’d gone all the way through they would have had a big truck there to roll over and block that exit as they surrounded us. Those bikers are their scouts. They’re clearly not happy I didn’t fall for their trap.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Richards flicked a glance toward the rearview mirror and let out a string of curses. “There should be an exit coming up. I’m going to get off and lose them, then we’re going to take a longer route to Nebraska, most likely through Kansas. There’s the exit. It’s gonna be a hard turn so hang on!”

  Sky gripped the dashboard tight as Richards attempted to quickly bring the SUV down to a slower speed and turned the wheel sharply while they were still moving fast. The vehicle started to careen out of control but Richards made several quick corrections, keeping the SUV from flipping or smashing into anything as he worked to turn it around without slowing down enough to get caught in the process. The quick side to side motion combined with the smell of burnt rubber sent Sky’s belly into turmoil. She covered her mouth with one hand while using the other to lower the window.

  “Sorry, kid,” Richards apologized as they sped down the off ramp.

  Sky didn’t respond, busy trying to keep from erupting. The second the window was lowered she unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned out of it to vomit.

  “Hurry, kid. I don’t want your head hanging out if those assholes catch up to us. Y
ou’re a pretty good target like that.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” she said as she settled back into her seat, her stomach still rolling but not threatening to produce any more bile. She fastened her seatbelt and raised the window. “Never do that again.”

  “I hope I won’t ever have to. Hell, I hope there’s still tread left on the damn tires.” He looked at the rearview mirror. “I think we might have lost them. They would have ate pavement if they tried the same move I did on those bikes. They might have other scouts in the area or sent someone from beyond that barrier to get off another ramp though so we still need to be careful.”

  “Why do they want us so bad?”

  “Not for anything good, that’s all I know for certain.” He hooked a right, driving much slower than he had on the interstate but still moved along at a decent clip. “That barrier was set up right before we would have entered Nebraska. Whoever is behind it is probably trying to catch people headed toward the camp that used to be in Lincoln. If it’s a big enough group they probably have traps like that set up all along the state line. Let’s hope it’s not a big group.”

  “If it is?”

  “We do what we gotta do.” He looked at the gas gauge. “I’m going to find some more gas and take a look at the map, figure out a new route.”

  “So we’re still going to Nebraska?”

  “It’s still our best option, and probably the most likely place to find Raven. We might be able to jump back on the interstate when we get to Kansas and then jump back off when we get close to Nebraska. We know to expect ravagers now so we’ll be all right.”

  “You didn’t know to expect them even though you’ve come across them before?”

  “I never came across them set up at a border like that and I’d hoped all the ravagers had frozen to death over the winter. I’d hoped the zombies would have frozen too.”

  “We all did.”

  He cast her a sideways glance. “You haven’t really told me a whole lot about how you and the people you were with survived the winter.”

  “That’s probably because we aren’t friends,” she said, not even thinking or really caring how she came across.

  Richards shook his head, grinning. “You are so like your sister.”

  Small, sharp jabs of pain filtered through Cruz’s hazy brain as he fought to swim back into consciousness. He floated in an ocean of red as the voice from his nightmares laughed, the sound ricocheting off his skull, doing nothing to ease the painful throbbing consuming his head. He didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there, but he was drowning in the red and knew instinctually that if he went fully under he’d never come back to the surface. An intense pain stabbed him right in the temple and he opened his eyes to look directly into the gluttonous eyes of a vulture.

  “Fuck!” Cruz scrambled up to put distance between himself and the vulture pecking at his head. Another vulture jumped off his chest, startled by the sudden movement. “What the fuck?! I’m not dead you fucking parasites!”

  He kicked at a vulture as it moved toward him and cringed as the monster inside him laughed uproariously. Its voice seemed ten times louder than it had ever been before, its presence stronger as well. He lifted his hand to his temple and winced as his touch intensified the pain coming from the wound he found. He lowered his hand to find his fingertips coated in blood.

  It’s time to play, Cruz. It’s finally time for me to take over. First, we’re going to have fun with the girl. We’re going to make her scream, then we’re going to make her bleed.

  “Fuck you,” Cruz growled as the interstate blurred around him. He backed up until he bumped against the back of the van he’d bashed his head against and sat inside it. Red paint splashes coated every part of himself he could see and a small lake of it covered a section of the road, even some of the vultures showed evidence of having gotten into the mess. Above him the sky was also painted red with strokes of yellow and orange thrown in.

  Night time, Cruz. Time to kiss Raven good night.

  “I told you to shut up,” Cruz snapped, wincing as his own voice assaulted his brain. He grabbed the pill bottle out of his pants pocket, shook out two capsules and dry swallowed.

  That won’t work anymore. I’m almost free.

  Cruz gritted his teeth and waited for the pills to do their magic and block the monster’s voice. Instead, the voice grew louder, the laughter engulfed his mind, drowning out his own thoughts. Images of him grinding against Raven as she screamed, her eyes bulged out in terror flashed through his mind quickly followed by an image of his hands wrapped around her throat as blood vessels threatened to burst beneath her pale skin. When he came back to he found himself on his knees screaming, his hands clasped tightly around his head as if trying to squeeze the evil out of his brain. He gasped, falling forward. His palms hit the red pavement, catching him before he fell flat on his face. The vultures fled, no longer finding him a wise choice of snack.

  “You’re never getting out,” he said, his voice a rasp as he dry swallowed two more pills and managed to slowly rise to his feet, the world around him spinning as the redness he’d been drowning in while unconscious tried to pull him back down.

  The monster inside him laughed in pure delight, the sound sending ice cold chills down the length of his spine as he struggled to overcome it, but knew deep inside the monster was too happy, too sure of itself. He was losing the battle and it knew it.

  “Please stop me,” he whispered to someone he hadn’t bothered speaking to in more years than he could remember as he shook the pill bottle, the last couple of pills mocking him with their tinny sound. The thing inside him screamed in rage and clawed at his cranium. Tears streamed down his face as he grabbed a bucket of paint and a brush from the van and worked quickly before the thing inside him could succeed in overtaking him.

  “Pimjai seems better,” Damian said as he, Hal, and Janjai walked along the perimeter of the farm.

  “It was just yesterday she had pains,” Hal reminded him. “It’s best she stay here under the doctor’s care while we handle everything else.”

  “I know. I just hate leaving anyone. We’re all scattered. I hate it.”

  “We will be fine,” Janjai said, voice low, as she discreetly covered her mouth with her hand. She’d changed into the dress she was given that morning but had kept her coat which she’d bundled herself into before leaving the hospital to take a walk with the men.

  “Pimjai and Janjai are completely safe,” Hal agreed. “They’re both widows which gains sympathy, plus Pimjai is with child which really piles on the concern. Throw in the fact people think they can’t speak English and they aren’t considered a threat at all. It works in our favor that they and Elijah will be staying behind when we leave. There’s less reason for David to be suspicious if he knows we’re leaving our own people here.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Damian murmured as they saw David walking down the path toward them.

  “Stay calm,” Hal told him. “We don’t want to cause a scene.”

  “I’m always calm,” Damian replied indignantly. “I never cause scenes.”

  “Really? I distinctly remember you stabbing a man in the face with a rock hammer and setting off about a thousand fireworks in the center of Wally’s Club.”

  “Do you also remember the horde of zombies that crashed Wally’s Club? If you don’t let me remind you. They’re the dead bastards who’d been eating your ass if I didn’t set off those fireworks, causing that scene to snatch their attention before they made you all their buffet. And Kurt would have killed us all if I didn’t kill him first.”

  “Fine. Simmer down, and watch your language.”

  David strolled toward them, the picture of nonchalant as he casually walked their way with his hands tucked into his coat pockets for warmth. He smiled at them but the smile didn’t seem to quite reach his blue eyes. “Well, this is a surprise,” he said. “All I’ve heard is this one doesn’t leave her sister’s side. I hope this
means her sister is doing very well.”

  “Pimjai has had a good day according to the medical staff,” Hal answered as they all paused to converse. “I thought Janjai could use a nice walk, get the chance to take a look around at more than just the inside of the hospital so this place isn’t so foreign to her. If she asked anyone around here for information they might not be able to understand her, but we’ve been together long enough to have kind of worked out a system of communication. I thought it best we show her around just in case she wanted to step out for a stroll every once in a while.”

  “I imagine the air is doing her some good. I’ve never cared much for being stuck inside all day myself,” David said, studying them. “So I’m sure you’ve heard about the way we do things around here by now. Everyone is assigned a job to do to pull his or her weight. Given the medical situation and language barrier these two ladies won’t have to worry about that for a while, at least not until Pimjai has delivered and weaned her baby. We’ll work with them on their English. Your young friend is old enough for work so the three of you can come by the farmhouse tomorrow morning after breakfast and we’ll work out your assignments.”

  “We’d appreciate that,” Hal said, smiling his most charming smile.

  “Oh, there’s going to be a mixer Wednesday afternoon. Elsie says everyone in your group is currently single.” He frowned. “I imagine out there it was just a struggle to survive, but we like for everyone to have their very best life here. What do you say to getting married and having babies before the year’s out?”

  “Having babies?” Damian’s eyes grew round as saucers. “You know there’s monsters all around us eating people, right?”

  David laughed as he clamped his hand on Damian’s shoulder. “Have faith, my brother. The Lord brought you through this and led you to our community. We are all safe here and together we will rebuild the civilization those monsters tried to take away from us. I believe we are in a time of trial. We were the meek and we are now inheriting the earth. Those that wish to destroy us will not survive and when they are gone we will be here more bountiful than we ever were before. Can you feel it?”