by D C P Fox
“Ollie told me they’re smart enough to know they can’t take us, after we slaughtered them yesterday.”
“Hell, that’s something, at least.”
“He’s still worried, though,” said the smaller man. “And we haven’t been here long enough to know for sure.”
“He always worries.”
“It’s his job to worry. Anyway, he thinks it may be only a matter of time before they gang together into larger packs. So far, since they came back to town, they never attacked the ranch by more than eight at a time. Eight we can handle, as long as we keep a lookout. But 15? Maybe. 30? Not a chance.”
“And then there was that psycho bitch,” said the larger man. “What was up with her? They said she attacked us after we slaughtered the zombies. Makes no sense.”
“People will do strange things now. Things are different.”
“You’re smart. Are you gonna be the leader if he dies?”
“I don’t know,” said the smaller man. “It’s me or Brooke. And since he’s fucking Brooke . . .”
“He’ll be dead. That won’t matter.”
“I don’t think we’ll be here long anyway.”
The noises of passion ceased. Jocelyn left the card players’ conversation, contemplating what the one guy had said. Packs of eight at most? That jibed with how she couldn’t control more than seven. She must be the eighth.
Quickly, she looked through the rest of the store and counted ten more survivalists, including four guarding the front. The other six were busy filling bags with food and other items, including one clearing out the pharmacy.
She went back to the break room one last time to observe her sword and what was around it. It simply leaned against the wall, hilt up, tip down, in its scabbard on her shoulder holster.
“Brooke, we’ll leave soon, probably as early as later this afternoon,” the large man said as he put his pants on.
Brooke stopped in the middle of putting her bra on. “Where’re we headed to next, Ollie?”
“Back to the ranch. I expect the zombie attacks to get worse and don’t like the risk.”
Later this afternoon? To this ‘ranch?’ Probably much more defensible than this.
“We should have looted this place sooner.”
“Hindsight, my dear. There was a group here before us. We didn’t know what firepower they possessed, and we didn’t want to risk a fight.”
“But now we need to deal with zombies,” Brooke pointed out.
“Lamar thinks it’s now or never. Again, hindsight. Hopefully, we can clear out soon.” Ollie looked at his watch. “The van will be back in about ten minutes, depending on how long they took to unload.” He winked at her. “Meanwhile, I gave a few of us a much needed break but play time is over.”
Maybe they’d leave her sword behind, but if they didn’t, it would be very difficult to attack them on their way to their destination. Certainly not at their ranch.
And so, a plan was forming in her head. But it required getting a new van. Hopefully, the survivalists, or any other survivors, hadn’t looted the rental car place of its vans. She left the supermarket, and Willed herself to the rental car place. She could have “walked” there, but that would have taken up a lot of precious time. Instead, she appeared there instantaneously, which she could do when traveling to objects or people or places familiar enough to her.
There were still some vans left.
Jocelyn exited the safe room, and Clarence locked the door behind her.
To attack with the element of surprise, she would need a van to hold all of her draugar.
The draugar inside the finished basement slept scattered on the wall-to-wall carpet. The draugar stench permeated the room and she retched. She pulled Clarence’s zipped leather jacket over her nose. It seemed she would never get used to that odor and she guessed it would linger like cigarette stink long after the draugar had left. It wouldn’t surprise her to find that the odor had embedded itself into the walls.
She still felt the tingling, her bond to them, even as they slept. She commanded them to wake up and march upstairs ahead of her and that succeeded.
It was a clear day—it would warm up, she reasoned, into the sixties. But now it was morning and cold. She retrieved Clarence’s shotgun from the back yard and ventured forth onto the road.
Jocelyn trailed her draugar pack fifty yards as they walked north toward the rental car place. Although she saw none, she sensed draugar in her path, and she bonded with another pack further to the north, who were walking south toward her. Her original pack kept marching forwards, either aware of her and still not attacking, or, more likely, they just didn’t realize she was there. As a test, she called out, “Over here!” to the draugar. They turned around, spotted her by sight, and rushed toward her. So, they had no way to believe she was a draugar without being bonded.
Did they ever run out of energy?
She re-connected with her original draugar pack, the ones running at her now. She commanded them to turn around and march back north. They obeyed. She sensed the draugar pack to the north still walking, not running away from her, and reasoned that without a line of sight (or perhaps outside the range of scent) they did not understand there was a healthy human at her location.
She still sensed all the surrounding draugar within her range. There was one other pack to the east. Although she didn’t have to worry much about them, she ordered them to march east. Then she re-bonded with her original draugar pack.
To protect her from frightened or marauding humans, she ordered the draugar to form a tight ring around her. This traded one danger for another, as her draugar would attack once she broke the bond.
She wanted to test this, too, because she would need to break her connection with them continually to order other draugar to leave her “bubble.” She broke off the connection with the draugar surrounding her, and immediately some bared their teeth and hissed, while others snarled, and they rushed toward her.
And she had trouble re-establishing the connection.
Unable to raise her shotgun in time, a draugar grabbed her head and threw her down onto the ground, knocking the gun out of her hand. Her warrior training kicked in and she kept her head up and slapped her hands against the asphalt. Now she was disoriented, and it was impossible to concentrate. But she focused her mind as the draugar was jumping on her. In mid-air, she re-established the connection and ordered them all to stop attacking. The draugar landed on her with a thud, and the connection was broken yet again.
She fully expected the draugar to either grab or pummel her head, and she closed her eyes and waited for the blow. But before the blow landed, she was able to re-establish the connection, and she was instinctively willing the attack not to occur. The draugar continued to sit on her, awaiting further instructions.
She then instructed all the draugar to stop the attack and ordered the draugar atop her to get off.
She realized breaking the connection had been a dangerous move, but she now had some valuable information. They seemed to stop their attack before the orders, stopping solely in response to establishing the connection, although she wasn’t sure of that.
After retrieving the shotgun, she sent them ahead again, broke the connection, called out to them, and observed them run to attack her. She re-established the connection without giving an explicit order to stop the attack. They stopped running, instead just walking toward her.
This meant she could form a bubble around her while walking toward the rental car place—a moving bubble that kept her safe, like the stationary bubble she’d formed around the safe room. This moving bubble was even more exhausting and required a lot of concentration.
Once she finished testing, it took twenty minutes to finish the walk to the rental car lot without incident. She picked out a van with a key fob on top of the center console. She stepped on the brake and pressed the Start button.
Nothing happened.
After a few attempts, Jocelyn started the hybrid van
, its battery low. She knew it would recharge as the internal combustion engine operated.
As she drove back to Clarence’s house, draugar loaded in the back, shotgun on the passenger seat, she reflected that it was beneficial that the self-driving car effort failed. If the van didn’t have a manual drive mode, she couldn’t navigate off the road and onto the median strips around all the traffic jams to get back to Clarence’s place. Instead, it would remain blocked on the road. The self-driving zealots did not take a zombie apocalypse—or any apocalypse—into account, especially if GPS failed. That, however, at least still worked, and she saw herself in the right position on the map on her view screen.
As she pulled up to Clarence’s house, she remembered she had left the cat in the old van in her carrier. Shit. She’d have to retrieve her after she retrieved the sword. If both of them survived.
Committed to helping Jocelyn in her quest, Clarence agreed to help her retrieve her sword, even though her plan was risky and dangerous. He drove the van with Jocelyn and the shotgun on the passenger seat. Seven zombies crammed in the rear seats, the windows open to diffuse the zombie odor. Because he didn’t need them much for Jocelyn’s mission, and he didn’t want to risk breaking them, he left his eyeglasses in the safe room.
The van, traveling south, approached the strip mall on the left where two armed survivalists guarded the front entrance of Beaver Park Market. Two others, unarmed, carried grocery bags toward a flatbed parked out front.
With large beards and green fatigues, the survivalists looked like something out of a Duck Dynasty rerun—except if these people had been wealthy before, they weren’t anymore. Then again, controlling an entire grocery store passed for wealth nowadays. Clarence vaguely wondered at what level of the Dow Jones trading had stopped.
One guard spotted the van and alerted the other. The two carrying the shopping bags looked their way, dropped them, and ran into the store. The two guards readied assault rifles, as Jocelyn expected. As long as they don’t ready their shotguns . . .
As soon as the van was in the parking lot, with a clear path to the front, Clarence gunned the engine and closed in on the front of the store as fast as he could.
The survivalists opened fire. Perhaps they’d interpreted the van’s acceleration as hostile. Both Clarence and Jocelyn ducked down, Clarence’s head exposed just enough to drive the van. Some gunfire hit the van, but nothing seemed to do any serious damage. A bullet hit the windshield but did not shatter it. Clarence turned ninety-degrees while slamming on the brakes, sending the zombies careening toward the left inside the back of the van. Now incessantly peppered with bullets, the van screeched to a halt right in front of the market. Jocelyn cried out, but given her healing ability, Clarence didn’t give it a second thought.
Clarence pushed the button to open the sliding van door. The zombies poured out and stalled in the face of the assault weapons fire. The guards did not switch to shotguns, probably because then the zombies would overtake them, so they were at a temporary impasse. But one zombie broke through to one of the guards, who gave a blood-curdling scream. Clarence stomped on the gas pedal, and Jocelyn cried out again as the accelerating van tossed her around—neither of them had fastened their seat belts.
Clarence continued north around the corner of the market at the end of the strip mall. He slowed the van, as they were no longer in a hurry. They needed time, in fact, for the rear guards, if any, to leave and join the fight. He turned around, now heading south toward the rear entrance of the market.
As the back door of the supermarket came into view, Clarence’s heart sank in horror as two survivalist guards began to shoot at them with assault rifles. Attempting to avoid the weapons fire, and deciding to retreat and re-assess the situation, Clarence turned the van to the left into a parking lot aisle. But he took the turn faster than the van could handle, and, losing control, plowed into several parked cars.
The airbags exploded.
The van came to an abrupt halt.
He felt a sharp pain in his knee before he passed out.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Day Eleven
Clarence woke up to strong hands pulling on his body, extricating him from the van. He fell onto the asphalt, knee in excruciating pain, eyes squinting in the sunlight as he looked up at a survivalist with red hair and beard standing over him.
Red-hair kicked Clarence in the ribs, and Clarence cowered from the extra pain, shutting his eyes and clutching at his knee.
“Get up,” red-hair said.
“I can’t,” Clarence gasped. “My knee.” He heard gunfire in the distance.
Red-hair kicked him again, jumped onto him, and punched his face and jaw several times. Most of Clarence’s body flared in pain, especially his wrist. Once the punches stopped, he opened his eyes, shading them with his hand. Red-hair had backed away and was pointing a gun at him.
“What the hell’d you do, grampa? I swear to fuckin’ God, I’ll blow your cock-suckin’ brains out if you don’t get up and start movin’ right now.”
Clarence attempted to get on his feet but his knee caused him to crumple. He braced himself with his good knee and pulled himself up, but he couldn’t put much weight at all on his right leg. Clarence gave the man a pleading look.
“Ah, shit,” red-hair said. “Bring the girl here!”
Clarence braced himself against the van as he saw Jocelyn being brought out at gunpoint. Faint shotgun fire sounded from inside the store. Clarence wondered why she hadn’t resisted, and then he took stock of his own predicament and realized they would shoot him if she tried anything. She would have been better off without him.
“Shouldn’t you be helping them?” Clarence asked, pointing in the store’s direction and the gunfire.
“Shouldn’t you shut the fuck up? You wanted us to go in there, didn’t ya?”
Red-hair said to Jocelyn, “You help him over to the back door, or we’ll shoot both of you. Fred, shoot her if she tries anything. I’ll keep grampa covered . . . and don’t miss.”
Jocelyn helped Clarence take the weight off his right side and onto her shoulders.
“Cam, I think we should kill them now,” Fred said.
“No, they came here for a reason. Didn’t ya, grampa? Well, you’re going in there with us. Just where you wanted to go.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll lose the battle without you?” Clarence asked.
Fred sighed heavily and said into his walkie-talkie, “Ollie, do you copy? You need help? Over.”
“Jesus, Fred,” came the reply. “We lost eight of us, but the zombies are all dead.”
Jocelyn gasped. Clarence guessed she had expected none of them to die, but he knew that was wishful thinking.
Ollie’s voice on the walkie-talkie continued. “There’s only me, Brooke, and you two. Did the van come by out back? Over.”
“Yep, I caught two critters here trying to sneak in the back. One’s got a blown knee. Over.”
“Bring them in,” Ollie said. “Over.”
“Shouldn’t we kill the mother fuckers? Over.”
“I said bring them in!”
“Holy shit!” Clarence could now place a body to the voice of Ollie. He was the largest man of the three—by girth, at least. All three male survivalists were white and had large, unruly beards. They all had thinning hair, though Ollie was older than the other two that had captured them. The woman, who must have been Brooke, had short hair, almost a buzz cut.
Blood and brain tissue covered Ollie and Brooke, and while Ollie had done his best to wipe off his face, Brooke hadn’t.
Clarence spied Jocelyn’s sword, in its scabbard in its shoulder holster, leaning against the wall. He guessed his own shotgun had been left behind in the van.
While the two guards pointed their assault rifles at Clarence and Jocelyn, Ollie’s shotgun pointed downward until he got a good look at Jocelyn. Then he cocked the shotgun and pointed it at her.
“We buried that girl,” he said. “She’s d
ead!”
“No, she’s very much alive,” Cam said, gun pointed at Clarence. “You must be mistaken. Maybe she’s her twin sister.”
“Maybe, but given all the crazy shit that’s happened here, I’m betting it’s her . . . Brooke, do you remember where we buried this girl?”
“Yeah, Ollie.” Brooke was more stunned than Ollie, unable to keep her eyes off of Jocelyn.
“Well, go check. See if you find her in the grave.”
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Jocelyn spoke. “You buried me alive.”
“We checked her, Ollie,” Brooke said. “I swear to god, she was as dead as roadkill.”
“Oh, I believe you, Brooke. I saw her. We shot her in the back of the head. Right here.” Ollie put his finger just below the crown of his head. “Now there’s no wound to speak of. You two sit down in one of them chairs over there. Put your hands behind the chair and don’t move . . . Shoot them if they so much as move in the wrong direction. Shoot them in the head. Aim for the head. That seems to at least knock them out for a while.”
Clarence was concerned that Ollie was figuring all this out very well.
Clarence and Jocelyn complied, and soon they were sitting on the same side of one of the lunch tables, their wrists held together with zip ties behind the back of their chairs, about six to eight feet apart from each other.
Ollie sat across from them. He smelled of blood, sweat, and zombie. Clarence tried to keep from retching, but when he succumbed, Ollie just laughed.
“Now where do I start?”
“You don’t seem angry with us,” Clarence said when he finished dry heaving.
In response, anger flashed in Ollie’s eyes, and he nodded at Brooke, who gave Clarence a wallop of a painful punch to his jaw.
“I want to pulverize you two. And maybe I should at that. But I’m insanely curious about a lot of things I don’t understand. And if it’s one thing survivalists do, it’s learn and adapt . . . Now, you gonna tell me your story, why you came here, how you got the zombies to attack us but not yourselves, or do we have to soften you up first?”