Dallas nodded. “We either live in fear all our lives, or we take our lives back and start culling the herd. It’s been a long eight months out here. Does anyone want to imagine how it will feel to do this for eight more years? Ten? Twenty?”
Einstein cleared his throat again. Puberty made his voice rise and fall. “A zombie can live up to five years before its tendons finally give out. They don’t even really need skin. Even when their muscles have rotted, they can keep moving, so it isn’t until the tendons finally break down that they stop moving altogether. That could take five years, maybe longer, depending on the area.”
“Five years? Are you certain? That seems like a long time.” The woman named Mary asked as she looked to the group for some sort of confirmation.
Einstein nodded. “It’s basic human physiology. These things aren’t just going to rot away and fall apart. Their tendons have to wear out, and tendons are awfully tough. Their bodies actually have to stop working. That’s why one cut in half still keeps coming. It doesn’t register it’s dead. Unless our scientists can figure out a way to destroy their cerebral cortex, they’ll be dragging those limbs around for years to come.”
More whispered discussion occurred among the group.
Finally, Butcher stood up. “Here’s the deal, folks. It’s down to brass tacks. Dallas, Roper, Einstein, Luke, and I are going. We’ll take both the Fuchs and the yacht. You are invited to come with us or stay here. We’ll understand whatever each of you decide, but we’ve decided we are going to change our situation here. Plain and simple.” She reached for Roper’s hand, who grabbed on, slightly surprised she hadn’t reached for Luke’s. “We have what it takes to defeat a mindless mob. You’ve heard the stories. They’re all true. Those two women,” she waved her hand at Dallas and Roper, “will create an army that will slice through those fuckers like a hot knife through butter. I put my faith in them nine months ago and I’m alive today because of it. It’s a no-brainer to me. Wherever they go, so go I.”
Dallas nodded. “Thank you, Butcher. Does anyone have any questions?”
Several hands went up. “How do you know it’s not already overrun?”
“We don’t. But if they’re there, we’ll clean them out. Those things can’t get through cement. What was made to keep man in is where we need to live to keep man eaters out.”
“What will we do with the dead we kill?” another person asked.
“We’ll have to dig a pit and burn them. That’s an issue that’s going to plague this country if we don’t destroy the disease ridden corpses.”
“How will we get there?”
“Some by boat, others in the Fuchs. I won’t lie to you. Being on the move is dangerous.
We’ll have to fight off other survivors who want The Beast, our food, our supplies, and our weapons. I won’t downplay the dangers. At this point, the living are more dangerous to us than the undead.”
And so the questions went as people expressed their fears about leaving the relative safety of the bayou. Dallas answered every question and every doubt with calm patience. For eight months, they’d seen very few of the rotting, moldy creatures stalking the countryside. For the last eight months, people had been able to fill their bellies, sleep at night, and actually laugh around the fire.
But that was merely a temporary reprieve, and they knew it. What she was proposing was nothing short of a war––the living versus the undead––and she was certain that with the right place and enough ammo, they could, in fact, cut the numbers and make their country safer.
After adjourning the meeting, the core group remained around the fire. “That could have gone better,” Luke said softly.
“Change is scary,” Roper replied. “They’d rather exist in the swamp than fight for their lives.”
“Then we leave them.” Butcher’s voice was almost harsh, a fact that did not go unnoticed by those who knew her best.
“Give them some time,” Roper suggested. “They’ll realize this is the best thing to do. We could live a long time behind the safety of the prison walls.”
Dallas shook her head. “I’m not suggesting we stay there.”
Everyone stared at her in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” Roper said.
“You heard me earlier. I think we need to establish a mobile army that moves from prison to prison destroying those things. We can collect survivors along the way and it’s those people we leave within the prison walls. We create small cities within the prison system and systematically kill the hordes each and every day until there are more survivors than undead. It’s a doable solution.”
Roper blinked. “Looks like you’ve put a lot of thought into it.”
Dallas nodded. “If we don’t take our country back soon, someone else will. Then what? Will we be stuck in a concentration camp? Hunted down?”
She pointed out to the ocean. “Look out there. Those ships have never left. What are they waiting for? They’re waiting for us to lose the battle. They’re waiting to see how long it takes for those things to die before they swoop in here and take our land from us. Well I, for one, am not going to sit around waiting to replace one danger with another. Our people are alive out there! All we need to do is begin gathering them. We need to let them know there is a safe place and others who are willing to fight.” Dallas slowly shook her head. “I understand the irony of the saving of our country falling on the shoulders of those it turned its back on, but now we have a chance to right those wrongs. Now, we can create the change we wish to see in this world.”
Suddenly, Butcher rose. “You have my vote, Dallas,” she said as she started toward the stilted house. “And I say, the sooner we get the hell out of the swamp, the better. I’m sick of this fucked up place.”
As she walked away, Roper looked at Dallas. “What’s up with her?”
Dallas shrugged. “I’m thinking she wants to get the hell out of here.”
When everyone was gone, only Roper and Dallas stayed by the fire, their weapons lying across their laps, the gleam of the fire reflecting off the chrome.
Because the man eaters moved toward loud sounds and bright lights, a huge fire might pull in any that had successfully managed to scoot around the alligators and escape the muck. They kept their weapons within arm’s reach. It was standard operating procedure that had served them well so far.
“Well?” Dallas asked, tossing a stick into the fire.
“I thought it went well, but I’ll be surprised if we get one hundred percent.”
Dallas nodded, a tickle of failure on the back of her neck. “The Jones family?”
“Will stay for sure. They came too close to losing Karl when they left Nevada. They are happy here. Comfortable, even. They have no desire to take any risks.”
“Do you think this an unnecessary risk?”
Roper thought for a moment. “Risk is risk. Doesn’t much matter if it is necessary or not, ya know?”
Dallas tossed another twig in the fire. “I understand. Change is tough, but usually necessary, and I believe this is truly necessary.”
“You’re asking everyone to risk leaving what they consider a safe place to travel through the danger zone to another place that may or may not be safer.” She shrugged. “It’ll take a little time, like it did when we convinced them to go to the Superdome.”
“That was awesome.”
Roper smiled. “Yes it was. I journaled about that day. Want to read it?”
Dallas looked surprised. Roper had never shared her journal before. “Absolutely.”
Pulling out the leather-bound notebook from the backpack Dallas had taken from a store in New Orleans, Roper opened it up to the right page before handing it to her. “Read to right here.”
Roper’s Log
Today gave me (and the rest of us) our first glimpse of hope that we could, in fact, defeat these things on a larger scale. All our planning, all the logistics, all of our fears and worries, and still, it went off without a hitch.
It wa
sn’t easy getting the ZBs (zombie bait) to get out of the Fuchs, but who could blame them? There had to have been easily five thousand of the things moaning around and meandering near the Superdome, dragging their torn and blood-stained limbs across the pavement. It looked like a horde had descended on the area and picked it clean. There were half-eaten bodies and body parts all over the place and quite a few fresher undead milling about. It was an apocalypse, to be sure, and a thousand to one or more outnumbered us.
We had been doing this gig for so long, we’d became very good at telling newly undead from old undead—which was one reason why we went after them the way we did: too many newly dead. So we decided to use the Superdome as a sort of fireplace.
First, we sent out live bait, or ZBs. Einstein and Cassidy were the two with me. They knew the score going in and chose to be the bait anyway.
You gotta hand it to that kid. He has brass balls the size of soccer balls and nothing seems to scare him. He and that mop of curly red blond hair have become a staple in my life. I’ve learned a buttload about zombies from him, that’s for sure.
Anyway, sitting in the back of an old Chevy truck, they hooted and hollered as Luke drove through the streets. I stayed in the back with them for extra protection, but we didn’t need any. All we did was pique their interest, and the man eaters all started shambling over to the Superdome, moaning that eerie sound and dragging their feet along the ground. I think that’s the worst part…that sound. The combined sound of scraping soles and ghoulish moaning gives me nightmares.
By now, most of their shoes have worn off as well as the skin on the bottom of their feet, so the scraping noise is the sound of bone against pavement. It’s awful.
Dallas and Butcher took a different route, though with the same results: the undead followed the fresh meat. Before we knew it, the horde swelled up from a few hundred to a few thousand, to more than a few thousand.
Those who didn’t go into the Dome were shot with a single bullet to the forehead. One good shot in the head would put the bastards down forever. Truly dead. Didn’t really matter where in the head - a shot to the noggin’ put them down for good.
Once we got them all in the Dome, closed the door, and locked them in, we drove around the entire structure, throwing precious gasoline on it and lighting it on fire. I have to tell you, watching the Dome start burning like that felt better than sex. I hate them with every fiber in my body. I’ve been known to run them over and then back over them several times until their skulls are flatter than a Mississippi raccoon on the freeway.
Dallas prefers I take a higher road, but the truth is I don’t much give a shit who they used to be. They are nothing but soulless bags of bones who want to eat us.
The Dome went slowly at first, but once the zombies were caught in the flames, it was like ultra dry timber that needed just one spark before becoming a conflagration. I’ll never forget standing there with Dallas, holding her hand, and watching as fifteen thousand or so undead were finally put to rest. Fifteen thousand flesh-eating ghouls that would no longer be a threat to mankind were toasted like marshmallows.
“And I dug it.
“The smell of their burning flesh and hair was like an elixir. I was happy to hear their moans turn into screams and know their eyeballs were popping out of their heads, I hated them that much.
“I was hoping back then that our people might feel the need to start going after these fuckers. I had hoped the burning would inspire our group to continue on the offensive. I hoped…
One can only hope I suppose…and here’s one person who’s been doing a whole lot of it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
Roper shrugged. “Because I thought attacking was something that would happen organically after that. I was so damn certain we’d gear up to start fighting back that when we didn’t, I knew it was too late to suggest it. I just resigned myself to the fact that we were settling here for the long haul.”
Dallas brushed a stray hair from Roper’s forehead. She loved the shorter cut on her lover and thought it made her look younger. “I remember how happy you were those days after the burning. You were so––”
“Pumped? Yeah. I thought we’d go after them. I guess I thought we were all on the same page and wanted to leave the bayou. I never thought we would settle for such a Pyrrhic victory.” Roper stood near the fire and turned her back to it.
“And now? What do you think of this plan?”
A broad smile spread across her face. “Are you kidding? I love it. Angola is the perfect place to start. It’s north, so we can start luring all those from the south and midwest to it. Think of the damage that could be done. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, even.”
“It will only work if we make sure everyone has a job they are suited to do once we get there. We’re going to need gardeners, electricians, sharpshooters, cooks. We need everyone to work on digging a massive pit for body disposal. We’ll need cleaners, security detail, nurses. We need––”
“Everyone of us to go.”
Dallas nodded. “I think you’re right, but there’s no convincing Joneses.”
“He’s a turd on the wart of a mud frog.”
Dallas laughed. “Nice visual. He is a little homophobic, yeah.”
Roper turned and faced the fire. “Angola is a great idea, but we’ll need to clean it first and make sure we can adequately secure it or else we will have trapped ourselves. The logistics aren’t impossible, though. It just requires manpower I’m not entirely convinced we’ll have.” She turned her head as something crept into the water, making a slight kerplunking sound.
“We need to get more peeps.”
Roper nodded slightly, the light from the flames dancing on her face. “Get more. You know that means going into NOLA and looking for survivors.”
“I know.”
Roper slowly faced Dallas and extended her hand to help her to her feet. “Then let’s get started tomorrow.”
Dallas’s face lit up. “Seriously?”
“Absolutely. You want survivors, then we need to ferret some out. Just me and you. It’ll be safer that way.”
“That won’t go over well with Butcher and Einstein. You know how they hate being left behind.”
“I’m aware of that, but it’s safer for us if the man eaters just ignore us and walk away instead of making a beeline for our ZBs. We need to secure new survivors, not spend the time protecting the old ones.” Roper shouldered her rifle before folding her arms around Dallas’s body and pulling her into an embrace. “You got us here in one piece, baby. I believe you’ll do the same wherever we go.”
The squelch of a foot being pulled from the muck made both women instantly break the embrace, swiftly grab their rifles, and blast the head off the zombie struggling to free his other foot from the cement-like silt at the shore’s edge.
“Fuckers,” Roper muttered. “Tomorrow, we find us some survivors, and work on getting the hell out of here.”
Just as Roper had said, no one was happy that she and Dallas were heading out in the Fuchs alone, so when Churchill offered to come along and at least man the Fuchs while they helped get people to safety, they couldn’t really say no.
“Got my machetes all sharpened,” Churchill announced when he got in the back of the Beast.
Early on during their stay in the bayou, Luke and Butcher had spent weeks training everyone, trying to learn people’s strengths and weaknesses. It was no good handing a rifle to someone who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. It was a waste of good ammo and a hazard to the shooter, so they opted to give different people different jobs and different weapons. Churchill, while a decent shot with a gun, was a maniac with the machete and could cut the head clean off with a single stroke. As a baker, he had massive arms that made him a formidable force when swinging the machete.
Everyone loved Churchill. He was a smiling face and a warm hug whenever you first saw him.
“You can’t leave without me,” he said, gri
nning like a Cheshire. “I’ve got mad knife skills.” Churchill had come to them about a month after they’d arrived in Louisiana. He was incredibly frightened, having stood by weaponless while a zombie horde tore his family to shreds. When he finally grabbed a lead pipe, he kept swinging and swinging and swinging it, not realizing that the horde was not even attacking him.
It had been too late for his family, though, who succumbed to the attack and was left in blood soaked pieces.
Dallas had seen firsthand what he was capable of doing with a machete. When they’d first spotted him, he was covered slick in the blood of the zombies that had taken his family. He had dropped the undead left and right, crushing their skulls in one swing of his Popeye arm. The only part of his body not covered in blood was his tear-stained cheeks as he cried and swore, swinging and crushing his way to exhaustion. By the time she had reached him, two dozen broken zombies lay in a bloody heap at his feet next to his half-eaten mother.
“Stand back!” he’d cried, crushing the head of the nearest man eater. “For some reason, these motherfuckingcocksuckingshitforbrains won’t eat me. These fuckers won’t eat me!”
Dallas had walked through the crowd unscathed. This had finally gotten his attention, and Churchill lowered the piped to stare as she walked untouched by the remaining three zombies.
“The reason they’re leaving you alone,” she said, calmly plugging the remaining three in the head with her Glock, “is because you’re gay.”
“How the hell––”
“So am I.” Dallas glanced around at a couple of undead meandering across the way. “Look, there’s no time to explain. Come with me if you want a safe place to call home, but they’re gonna be crawling all over the place in about two minutes.”
And so he did, proving himself to be a valuable member time and time again with his one slice head removal program and his ability to throw a rock in a straight line the length of a football field. He was a great addition to the group, and now, he wanted to contribute.
Roper turned to him and gave him a quick thumbs up as he climbed into the Beast. “Glad you could make it.” She flashed him her best shit-eating grin.
Riders of the Apocalypse (Book 2): Burning Rubber Page 4