“You can’t stifle the press,” she said, loud enough that everyone could hear. “This is America.”
AK-47 Leader Dude smiled, but his expression was as cold as hers. “Not anymore.” He pointed the gun straight at her. “Put. The. Camera. Down.”
She complied with a scowl and I sighed in a mixture of relief and irritation. So much for making a good impression on our new “friends.” Now we’d have to do some serious damage control.
“Look, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” I started as I moved forward a couple of steps.
The guys in front of us all lifted their weapons slightly and I stopped my forward momentum immediately. Apparently that wasn’t such a good idea.
I lifted my hands higher. “We’re not zombies; we’re survivors just like you.”
“You’re not just like us,” one of the women behind us called out. “And you’re on our land.”
Dave’s brow wrinkled as he kept his gaze on the first guy who’s spoken to us. Leader Dude. “Funny, I was under the impression we were on a public road.”
“Hey, asshole, did you notice there ain’t a government anymore? That means no fucking public anything!” one of the men standing behind Leader Dude snapped. His gun lifted in a menacing fashion and I tensed as I readied for crazy-person gunfire.
“Hey, Carl, I’ve got this handled,” Leader Dude said as he gave the one I now was calling Crazy Carl a meaningful look. Crazy Carl’s gun trembled slightly and then he nodded.
“Sorry, sir,” he mumbled.
Leader Dude turned back to us with a slight smile. “Public roads, not public roads, it doesn’t really matter. The road you were traveling on goes through our territory. And we like to make sure everyone going through our territory are the kind of folks we welcome here.”
I blinked at the weirdness of that statement. “Look, mister, we aren’t going to stay in anyone’s territory. We’re just passing through.”
“Yeah,” Nicole added from the other side of the SUV. “All we want to do is stop at the camp that’s supposed to be in these parts, pick up some supplies, and then keep moving. We’re not trying to hurt anyone.”
The men in front of us (including Crazy Carl, who got that crazy look in his eyes again) shifted and looked at one another in a way that made my heart leap. Apparently we’d said something they didn’t like because they started whispering and grumbling unintelligibly in the distance.
The leader, though, he seemed less bothered. In fact, his smile grew. “Well, you’re in luck then, little lady. See, the camp is exactly where you’re going.”
I bit my lip. Great. Once again, in a world full of pods of survivors, we’d managed to find the crazies in the mix. It was like a special gift. Like X-Men gone all fucked up.
Why couldn’t I have been able to control the weather instead?
“Rod, Michelle, you two drive their SUV,” the leader continued as he motioned his head toward some of the people behind us. The ones I was trying not to look at since I didn’t really want to freak myself out more than I was already. He looked at Dave. “Mister, you come with me. You ladies can ride with…”
I shut my eyes. Not Crazy Carl, not Crazy Carl, not Crazy Carl…
“… Alan,” Leader Dude finished.
Although I was relieved not to have Carl as my escort, I immediately started to shake my head. I wasn’t about to be separated from my husband, but Dave turned toward me and gave me a quick look. He held my stare for a long moment and then smiled.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “Just go with Nicole. We’ll see each other at the camp.”
I swallowed as he reached out and squeezed my hand, then walked toward Leader Dude and the big-ass truck he was motioning to. You know the kind, the ones you used to see on the road with the huge tires. They were ridiculous back in the “old days,” but now they actually had their purposes. Like riding off road, pushing other vehicles, smashing zombie heads, kidnapping harmless survivors. The usual.
I continued to stare after them as Dave got in, but I didn’t get to watch them take off because another guy, Alan I guess Leader Dude had called him, came up and shook my forearm.
“C’mon, you heard Lex, come with me.”
I snatched away my arm as I looked at the guy who was taking us… hostage—one way to look at it, I guess. Although that requires some kind of demand in exchange for release and there wasn’t exactly anything to be traded for us… except for maybe the cure I still felt jingling beneath my T-shirt. Best to keep that detail to myself.
Alan was younger than Leader Dude, who now had a name. I would guess early thirties. He was blond and wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He also had a very nice set of 9mms on a double holster at his waist and some kind of machine gun gripped tightly in his hand. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was awesome.
“So, Lex,” I said as I walked toward Alan’s vehicle, “is he your leader?”
Alan grunted, which I guess was supposed to pass for an answer. Men. Typical.
“And what’s that short for?” Nicole asked as we climbed into the car’s backseat.
Alan got into the driver’s side and slammed the door. “What?”
“Lex,” Nicole repeated with a roll of her eyes. “Duh.”
“It’s just Lex,” Alan snapped with tension in his voice.
“Like Luthor?” I asked.
Next to me, Nicole let out an appreciative snort of laughter that made me like her a lot more, but Alan just glared at us in the rearview mirror as he put the car in gear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he glowered.
“You know, Superman?” I said but was met with stony silence. “Man of Steel’s arch enemy, Lex Luthor? Don’t you read comic books, dude?”
Still nothing and I rolled my eyes.
“Great, we’ve been kidnapped by a man with no sense of history,” I muttered.
“Or at least literature,” Nicole added helpfully.
Alan glared at us again. “Look, just shut up, okay. We’ll be at the camp within the hour and you can talk to Lex about history or literature or whatever.”
I shook my head, but I figured that was probably enough poking of the bear, at least for a little while. At least I knew Leader Dude’s name, Lex, and that was something. Although I still couldn’t help but think of Dave, stuck in a car with that weirdo. If we knew what these people wanted, that would be one thing, but without that info… well, we were pretty vulnerable and Dave didn’t have any backup.
“So what’s the deal with the highwayman act?” Nicole pressed.
I guess she thought the bear could take a few more pokes. And maybe she was right… she was the reporter, after all. Of course, several of her interviews had ended in what the British used to call “fisticuffs.”
Okay, so I had watched her show a few times. I wasn’t going to tell her, or her biggest fan, David, that.
“It’s a new world, lady,” Alan said with a shrug as he powered his car down a dirt road behind a line of our other “escorts.” “There’s no way we can take chances. We’ve gotten burned before.”
I raised my eyebrows. Nicole might come in handy, after all, if she was able to extract tidbits of information like that from people. If this group had been burned, whatever that meant, we’d have to be extra careful until we earned their trust.
Or escaped their clutches, whichever came first.
We rattled along in near silence for another twenty minutes. I tried to keep track of all the twists and turns of the road, making note of landmarks just in case we had to peel our way out of here in a pinch. From the corner of my eye, I could see Nicole doing the same thing.
I had to give her points; she wasn’t useless.
“So my friend here is injured,” I said, motioning to Nicole. “Are you guys so burned by your sad little past with trusting people that you won’t let us trade for some antibiotics?”
His gaze came up in the rearview mirror a second time. “That wi
ll be up to Lex and the council.”
“The council,” I repeated blankly.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Nicole whispered, nudging me with her bloody elbow and leaving a splotch on my shirt.
“Oh dear God,” I muttered under my breath. “Not another fucking cult. I hate fucking cults.”
Nicole’s eyes widened. “Another cult?”
I shrugged. “It’s a long story; I’ll tell you some other time.”
“We’re not a cult,” Alan said as we slowed down.
I craned my neck to see that we were approaching a tall gate. There were at least ten people standing guard with weapons ranging from more AKs to machetes that were already stained with what I hoped was zombie blood. As each car approached, they showed some kind of… ID, I guess.
Shit, I didn’t even have a driver’s license anymore (it’s not like I carried a purse in the apocalypse; although I could have, Coach and Gucci had lost considerable value and were a literal steal now).
We passed through the gate (with the guards glaring at us like we were in some post-apocalyptic B-movie or something) and into a section where cars were parked here and there. Not too many, though, probably fewer than twenty in total, and that gave me some hope. Maybe if there were only a handful of people here, we’d be able to escape with our skin intact.
As we pulled to a stop in the line of cars, Alan said, “Okay, ladies, out.” His voice was low and grim as he opened his own door.
Nicole and I exchanged a quick glance, but since this was an order, not a request, and since there were a ton of guns involved (none of them ours)… well, we didn’t have much choice. I climbed out first, with Nicole right behind me.
I craned my neck, trying to find the big truck where Dave had gone with Lex. And there it was, probably a hundred yards away. Both of them were already out and walking toward us. Since Dave didn’t look any worse for wear, I let out a sigh of relief.
“Pretty small camp,” Nicole said as she gave our guard a little smile that had probably opened quite a few doors for her in the past.
He laughed and then another gate opened and revealed the camp within.
We were actually up on a slight incline, so as the gate swung open, we got a good view of the camp below. It was huge. At least as big as the New Phoenix camp, and that one held about five hundred people at last census. I sucked in a breath as I stared out over the sea of tents, broken up by narrow corridors. It appeared there were actually street signs at the intersections, like these people had gone so far as to name the lanes as if this was a real town.
“Holy shit,” Nicole breathed.
I nodded silently, then glanced at Dave as he made his way to my side and joined us as we looked down over the expanse together.
“This is not good,” Dave muttered.
I had to agree, but did so silently as the group who had taken us under their control got behind us and herded us like lambs into the great unknown of their camp.
Unfortunately, I felt like we were lambs going to a slaughter, not about to frolic in a field or something.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Half-crazed survivors, zombies after your ass… these things are not small stuff.
Here.”
I looked up as a woman entered the big army-style tent where we had been taken. You know the kind, like the ones you see in movies where the general can stand straight up and plan his attacks and pace around and shit. Not your typical “family outing” tent.
I stared at the woman. Her once-blonde hair was unkempt, hanging around her face in stringy and dirty braids. Her clothing was torn, thin like it had been washed too many times, but at least she was wearing clothing. Shoes, not so much.
Clearly, this “camp” didn’t involve the trade of clothing. It was all a little Clan of the Cave Bear for me.
She blushed like she knew her fashion sense (or lack thereof) was being judged and scowled first at me, then at Nicole before she held out a big tube of antibiotic ointment and a box of gauze and tape.
“Um, thanks,” I said, confused as I took the items.
She spun on her heel and pushed from the tent, flopping the flap behind her and leaving us alone without further comment. With a shrug, I turned toward Nicole and Dave. Outside there were three heavily armed guards (we had checked) but inside… just us.
“Well, why would they give us this if they were planning to kill us right away?” Nicole asked as she reached for the materials.
“Good point,” Dave said.
He turned away slightly as Nicole lifted her shirt and started to squirt the antibiotic ointment onto her scrapes. She let out a sigh of contentment as the topical painkiller in the goo hit her mangled skin.
“Yes, we all know Nicole is brilliant.” I shrugged. “But what do we do now? We’ve been here for three hours and the only person who’s come in to see us is that cavewoman girl without shoes.”
Nicole lowered her shirt and set what was left of the first-aid supplies to the side. If we got out of here, I was taking that shit with us. Some antibiotic ointment was the least of what these freakazoids owed us.
“Maybe the rest of them are in that council that the guy who drove us over here was talking about. What was his name? Adam? Arkin?” Nicole muttered.
“Alan?” I said with a thin smile.
She blinked. “Alan Arkin? The actor?”
I bit my lip almost hard enough to draw blood. “No. Just Alan.”
She shrugged. “I guess so, whatever.”
Dave nodded slowly and I could see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to think of a way out of this. “Lex mentioned the council to me, too. It sounds like it’s their form of government.”
“Or their form of crazy-person cultism.” I shivered. “Are we going to have to jump off more roofs to escape? Because I’m not sure I’m up for that.”
Dave chuckled as he gave me a grin, and all my jealousy toward Nicole faded. She might be cute and semifamous, but she certainly didn’t have a history of running for her life or ass-kicking with my man. No one could change our messed-up past together. Who knew that the living dead would be the ties that bind?
“You guys are weird,” Nicole sniffed. “What do we do about this?”
“Nothing,” Lex said as he flipped the tent flap back again and ducked into the small room. He seemed taller than I remembered him being.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Dave asked.
He had tensed and now he was standing up really straight, his whole body stiff and ready to attack, even though we all knew by now that doing that wouldn’t result in anything but pain and quite possibly death. We were at a distinct disadvantage with these whack-a-moles, both in numbers and weaponry.
“I mean that the council has decided what to do with you,” Lex said with a look toward us that implied he thought we were pretty stupid not to understand his cryptic ass.
“Hey, jerk off,” I snapped as I started toward him. “We. Don’t. Know. What. The. Fuck. You. Are. Talking. About. Got me? I don’t know what the hell your council is or why you think it has the right to decide what to do with me or my friends.”
Lex had been looking at David, but now he turned, almost in slow-motion movie style, and speared me with a look that almost froze my blood. There wasn’t hate in his eyes. There wasn’t even insanity. There was nothingness. I was meaningless to this man. A fly or a bug that could be set free or squashed, but he would instantly forget about the decision the moment it had been made.
“There was a little town here before,” he said softly. “And then outsiders came in and brought this plague that killed everyone but those of us left in this valley. Ten percent of us lived through the outbreak. Ten percent. We had to burn our own town, kill our own families and friends—”
“But we did, too,” I interrupted as a brief thought of Dave’s sister passed through my mind. I’d shot her months ago, and memories of that horrible moment still woke me up some nights. I knew they woke my husband up, too. “We�
�ve all suffered. But none of us caused this.”
Lex shook his head. “But you did cause this, Sarah. People like you brought this into our town. People like you came to us for help and we were foolish enough to offer it. People like you, holding out your hand like we owed you somehow.”
I shook my head, but it was Nicole who spoke, “But we’ll trade—”
“Why trade for what you can just take?” Lex interrupted, so calm and collected you’d think he was talking about an upcoming retirement party, not the destruction of three people.
“So you’re pissed at us for what happened to your people, and you have to punish us to, I don’t know… appease your gods or something?” Dave said with a roll of his eyes that even impressed me, queen of eye rolls. “Does that mean your council has decided to set us free outside the camp without weapons so the zombies can sort it all out? Or are you going shoot us in the town square? What?”
Lex smiled. “Actually, it’s a bit of both. But now it’s getting late. Tomorrow at dawn, you’ll see. You’ll understand. There are cots here—”
“Wait!” I burst out. “You think we’re going to go to sleep and just wait for our fate tomorrow?”
He arched a brow in my direction. “If you try to run, you all die. The men stationed outside of your tent are very clear on that order. But if you don’t make the stupid attempt to flee, then you face the punishment and maybe some of you get to live. It’s really your choice. Good night.”
Then he left, the tent flap swinging shut behind him as he strode out into the fading light and the freedom he’d said we’d never have again.
The three of us stared at each other, but for a long time no one spoke. There was nothing to say, really. Outside the door were the guards Lex was so proud of, and even if we made it past them, there were another what? Probably five hundred people driven to keep us exactly where we were. There was no way we could fight them all.
Finally, it was Dave who spoke. “Okay, you know what, let’s just get some sleep. At least we’re safe here.”
“Safe?” Nicole repeated, turning her sarcasm on him for the first time since he’d gone all fan boy on her earlier in the day. “Are you drunk? How is ‘We’re going to punish you in some mysterious way for not being part of our clan’ anything remotely close to safe?”
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