by Chris Lowry
Peg put both hands on Harriet's shoulders and began cooing and comforting her, trying to calm her down.
"I'm not with them," Anna squirmed. "Anymore."
Peg pulled Harriet back and Brian moved between the two women offering some protection for Anna.
"Tell us what you know," he said.
Anna rubbed her neck where the bunched up fabric had dug in and made a thick red line. It was going to bruise, probably already had started. Remind me never to cross a momma when she's protecting her cub.
"It was more than a witch trial," she coughed. "They were going to use us as...sacrifices."
"Human sacrifices?" Brian scoffed. "Where in the Bible does it say that?"
She shrugged her petite shoulders.
"The part about the bull in Exodus. The Preacher said he was going to be the new Moses and lead us to the promised land after our tribulation in the wilderness. This wilderness. We needed a sacrifice so God would send down the new commandments to him."
"That's not quite how it goes," Brian said.
She shrugged again.
"I didn't read it," she said. "I was just repeating what he told us."
Harriet pushed past Peg and got in Anna's face again.
"I heard what he told us," she spit. "Where would they take my girl now that he's gone."
I moved in close next to Brian. The three of us towered over tiny Anna and she backed against the tree. But that was sort of the point. She needed to be scared. There was a little girl out there who needed our help, and in the clutches of a cult that wanted to sacrifice her.
Hannah, so much like my daughter.
I could feel the rage simmering. I breathed in deep and let it boil up.
Anna caught the look in my eye and quivered.
I tried to feel bad about it but couldn't. She needed to know what she was dealing with.
"They would be close," her voice was shaking. "We used the park, but we wanted a church. The Preacher wanted to use a church. Like the one we passed yesterday."
A church. It was four or five miles away.
Depending on what time they grabbed Hannah, it could be too late. And if Anna was lying to us or wrong, then we would be too late.
Harriet didn't wait.
She turned without a word and began jogging back up the road we traversed yesterday. Peg and Julie fell in with her. Brian gave me a look and shrugged.
"Do you want me to leave?" Anna asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
I turned to look at her and she shivered again.
"No," I said. "I want you to help."
She gave a tight little nod then took off after the others. I grabbed her hand and brought up the rear.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Anna held my hand as we walked through the woods and under any other circumstance outside of a kidnapped kid in a Z apocalypse it might have been nice. Even romantic.
“I wasn't in a cult before,” she sulked but kept pace.
“Didn't say you were.”
“But she made you think it. I was almost out of school.”
“High school?”
“UCF,” she smirked. “People think I'm younger because I'm small.”
“Lucky they didn't kidnap you then.”
“Who said they didn't?”
I stepped over a branch and stopped, gave a short whistle to haul up the others. A lance of pain speared behind my right eyeball and nearly knocked me down.
“Are you alright?”
“Is any of us?”
“What is it?”
Brian and Peg shuffled through the layer of leaves toward us.
“We can't go in there with just our hands,” I bent over and lifted up the branch. It was as thick as my forearm, sturdy and almost five feet long.
“It's not a pike,” Brian said.
“I don't plan to stop Z with it,” I took out my knife and began whittling a point on one end. It was hacking really, no artistry to the work, just a simple sharp end of a stick.
“What if they have guns?”
I arched up one eyebrow and glanced over at Anna.
“They don't.”
“They might after you killed their leader,” Peg shot back.
She was right. Religious nutters were that for a reason. They didn't follow the normal line of logic.
“I don't think so but maybe,” she leaned against the tree and watched us.”
Harriet stomped back to us and huffed.
“We need to hurry.”
I took one last swipe at the spear and checked it for balance. It wasn't going to win any contests but it would do.
We fell back in line behind Harriet as she kept us in the trees on the edge of the road. I kept my eyes open for a second branch that I could turn into a weapon.
When I found it, I let Anna carry the first one while I sharpened it on the move. She passed it back to me when I asked without trying to escape or hurt anyone, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she was on the up and up.
Loyalty buys that from me.
The five miles to the abandoned church churned under us. I think Harriet would have sprinted the entire way if she could, but I could tell by the way she kept looking back at me, she had something on her mind. Something she wanted to say.
We made the path where we exited the tree line just the day before and used the raised roadway for cover.
The church was quiet, still looked abandoned except for one window where the board was removed and placed like a ramp up to the doors.
It wasn't like that yesterday.
“I watched you with the Preacher,” Hannah stood next to me and glared at the church. “I saw what you did with that Army man. You didn't hesitate. You turned into a monster in the blink of an eye. That's my little girl in there. I want you to get her back.”
I didn't nod. I didn't say yes.
She knew I would do it. She was a mother. I was a dad. She knew I wanted to find my children. She knew how I ached inside just as she knew exactly what I was capable of becoming.
Of who I was.
Of what I was.
She was asking me to become her monster, like her own personal Frankenstein.
I would.
There was a little girl in the church, probably scared out of her mind. Terrified of what these people were going to do to her, or what they were already doing to her.
I thought about them trying to do it to my little girl.
Maybe it took longer than the blink of an eye. But I doubt it.
“Stay here,” I stood up. “All of you.”
No one argued.
No one said a word.
I stepped out of the woods, hefted the sharpened sticks in each hand and stalked toward the front door of the building.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
The ramp up to the porch was slick with muddy bootprints that tracked and leaked over each other so I couldn't tell how many there were. If they had picked up a couple of extra loonies on the chase, then I'd be in trouble but I expected eight or so. Maybe up to a dozen. It was easier last time. I had a pistol. The noise and sudden brutality of killing the preacher had bought me time to save Hannah, her mother and the others.
It might not be so easy this time. I had two sticks.
If they had guns, it wasn't going to go well for me.
I could use another distraction like the fireball our Caddy made, but I didn't have time for one. The truth is I didn't know what I would find when I went through the doors. Hannah could already be gutted and spread out on the altar, and the cultists armed so that when I went in, they killed both of us. Then I would never learn what happened to my kids.
Worse, what if religious idiots had my kids now. What if they were being abused, or sacrificed or hurt in any way.
And here I was wasting time worrying about possibilities when the reality was there was a little girl in there who needed my help and the faster I saved her, the sooner we could get back on the road and I could get to Arkansas.
&
nbsp; These damn nut jobs were in the way and causing problems and there was only truly effective way to deal with problems in this new world.
I marched up the ramp, drew back a mud covered hiking boot and slammed it into the door.
The damn church was full of zombies.
Z's turned toward me. Twelve of them wandered in the pews and all turned toward the door as it slammed against the inside wall with a resounding boom.
There was a fence between the altar and choir area blocking it off from the congregation and six cultists stood behind it with Hannah tied to the alter. I swear one of the guys shot me the bird and smiled.
That's all I had time to see before Z were shuffling toward me, the sounds of their moans growing as they sensed prey.
I backpedaled off the entryway and kicked the ramp down to the ground. I was marginally better at jumping than the Z, but another lance of pain almost sent me to my knees when I landed.
I heard two bodies plop in the mud behind me and tried not to scream as fingers slid along my pants leg. I jumped up and jabbed down with the sticks, the sharp ends sliding through their skulls as the rest piled off the raised entry and landed hard. I backed away and got two more with the spears before the rest made their feet and began chasing me.
I say chase, but it was more a relentless lumber. They weren't fast, they weren't slow, they just kept coming. I circled around the church just a few steps ahead of the lead Z and ran around the corner. Then I doubled back and waited for him to turn the edge.
I stabbed him in the eye and gagged as it popped out the back of his head. He fell and jerked the weapon out of my hand. The next Z moaned and stepped over him.
I used a two handed grip to poke through it's mouth and out of the back of it's head, but this time kept a grip on the shaft as it fell. I pulled out the point with a sick slick pop and moved for the next corner.
Half dead in the first minute. Not too shabby. I got two more with an ambush on that corner and ran around so I was back at the front of the church. Eight down, four to go.
Only two of them hadn't seen me go around the first corner of the church, so they didn't follow. Instead they were wandering around in what once was the parking lot, at least until they saw me move, and then began their slow beeline toward my hiding spot, and two more were making steady progress toward the corner.
I didn't know if I could get all four with the last spear. If I could keep them separate in pairs, and could keep the spear in hand, then my chances were good. But I only had about ten feet in either direction to make a choice.
I chose the third option and jumped up in the entryway and went back into the church.
The pilot of the bird got agog. It is not often that one sees someone go bug eyed at your appearance so it must be appreciated with the proper word. His eyes bugged out, he stared at the gore that dripped off the point of the spear, and I would almost bet he really really regretted flipping me off.
He pulled out a blade in his shaking hand, a giant bowie knife that looked like it was made for killing grizzly bears and not little girls. It was the kind of large knife fans of Crocodile Dundee carried, or men with really low self esteem. I wanted it.
"I'll kill her man," he said in a shaky voice sounding for all the world like Shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoons.
I almost offered him a Scooby snack.
"I'll give you once chance to walk out of the front door," I said trying to sound tough.
It worked.
One of the women pulled out a little .38 revolver, a silver Saturday Night Special and aimed it at me. Her hand shook too, which made me wonder if they were all high on something. Wouldn't that be religious of them? High on meth or bath salts and about to make a human sacrifice to appease the gods or God, both of which I'm pretty sure didn't give a damn about what went on down here off of Olympus.
I shifted my weight to my back foot and rolled my grip around on the spear.
She pulled back the hammer on the pistol.
I launched it at her and she flinched.
In my dreams the spear slid between the fence bars and caught her in the throat, she fell and dropped the pistol and the surviving cultists ran away to get high another day.
And maybe that's how I would tell the story to Brian and the others when I got out of here.
But what really happened is the spear toss turned sideways and crashed against the fence bars in a loud clang. She did flinch because she gave me way too much credit for accuracy on spear throwing, which I guess could be a modern skill set honed by Spartan races, but was not one of mine. The flinch made the pistol yank upward, her finger clenched on the trigger. The loud shot in the narrow confines of the square walled room bounced around and made our ears ring.
One of the cultists screamed as splinters from the wall peppered their face as the bullet went through the wood.
Before she could recover, I darted to the fence and hit it with my weight. It was designed so that when Z pressed against it, their effort pushed it against a part of the wall and made the fence hold stronger. I noticed that and pulled.
It fell down with a louder clang and trapped my spear underneath.
"I'll kill her man," Shaggy boy said as he two stepped across the floor toward Hannah tied on the alter.
"You said that," I grabbed the arm of the pistol girl in one hand and pointed it at him, and slammed a fist into her eyebrow with the other.
She snarled and head butted me back.
Stars exploded behind my eyes, and the graze wound on my head did a star thing of it's own. My wobbly knees tried to buckle.
She thought I was taking it to the floor for a grappling match and wrapped her legs around my waist while yanking on my arm. We fell. Or rather I fell on top of her, my other arm bent in an accidental V that drove into her solar plexus with all my weight behind it.
She gagged, gasped and let go of me and the pistol as she struggled to breath.
I picked up the .38 and pointed it at Shaggy.
He dropped the knife and hightailed it for the front door.
Apparently in all of the confusion, he forgot the ramp was down as he ran straight off the open entry and fell into the plywood with a whacking sound. The waiting Z did not wait long to grab him and Shaggy was not long for this earth.
His screams seemed to sober up the others and they backed up against the wall, hands held high.
I pushed off the ground and grabbed the giant knife. Bending over was a mistake and though it may have been less dignified, I should have scooted across on my knees. The stars around my head when super nova and I pitched forward.
Luckily I was able to turn it into a roll and kind of ended up on my side on the floor.
None of the cultists moved, except for pistol girl who started sobbing as she caught her wind.
It took me a few long moments to get up again, but once I had my feet it was a straight shot to the altar and the knife sliced through the rope like it was gossamer.
Hannah started sobbing as I helped her off the wooden slab.
"Not yet," I said.
She wiped the back of her hand across her leaking nose and kept crying as I led her toward the door. I stuck the knife in my belt and made a mental note to get a sheath somewhere along the way. The damn thing had an eleven inch blade and I didn't want to cut off anything important.
I opened the chamber on the pistol and counted the bullets. There were five left in the six shooter, so I stood in the doorway and played fish in a barrel with the four remaining Z.
The shots would probably draw more of them, but I didn't plan on us being around here long enough to wait.
Hannah shouted as she saw Harriet run across the road and through the parking lot. I helped her down and then sat on my butt to scoot off the porch because jumping and kneeling and running had sapped me so much, I didn't want to drop in the mud and leaking Z gore around the entryway.
Brian and Peg followed with Anna as we met on the edge of the lot. Harriet did that mother thin
g where she ran her hands all over Hannah to check for wounds, check for bites, check to make sure she was real and safe and really with her. Anna did the same with the graze on my head and patted the oozing blood with a bandana. Apparently I broke open the wound or something.
"You're going to need stitches," she said.
"We need to get going, " I answered.
There would be time for stitches later. First we had to find a food and shelter, a place to hide for the night. I felt like hiding for a week, healing and sleeping but every delay just ratcheted up my anxiety level higher.
Brian held up his hand.
"Hear that?"
The rumble of diesel engines reverberated through the woods as a giant something roared down the road. Maybe more than one something by the sound of it.
"Into the woods, now," Brian said and we started for the trees next to the church.
Six camo clad soldier's stepped out of the shadows and trained their weapons on our group. We froze.
Two smoke belching Troop Transports pulled into the lot and parked on either side of us, one by the church, one blocking the road, trapping us in a triangle with armed men on all three sides.
"How many bullets you got left?" Brian whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
"One."
"You better be good with that knife."
I sighed. I just got the thing and now it looked like someone wanted to take it away. Did I mention how much I hated this new Z world?
A man stepped out of the cab of one of the trucks and stared at us. He singled me out and took a few steps closer. He had iron gray hair, stood ramrod straight, his granite face wrinkled with a perpetual scowl.
"That him?" he asked.
"Yes General," answered the driver, one of the men from Brushy Beard's gang.
The General marched toward me but stopped at a respectful distance.
"You killed my best man, motherfucker," he snapped. "Get ready for a world of hurt."
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
"You boys come on in here and get a look," said the General.
He never took his eyes off me.