Inside the restaurant, a few people looked our way, but no one really gave us too much eyeballing. The waitress was friendly and in a short time, we were eating some really good sandwiches.
“So what’s our next move?” I asked Jake around a mouthful of bacon, lettuce, and tomato.
“I’m thinking we hunker down around here and see what might be in that vial. After that I’m afraid we have nothing else to do but wait for the next outbreak.” Jake said, munching on a pickle.
“That seems so strange,” Julia said. “We have to wait for some idiot to go and cause death, rush to fight it, and hope we can find some clues to take us to the source.”
When she put it that way, I had to admit it didn’t make much sense. However, I really couldn’t think of an alternative, and said so.
“What choice do we have? If someone out there is causing infections, the only thing we can do is put out the fires, map the outbreak, and triangulate on the source. Can’t do that if we don’t wait for them to happen. No one around here is going to know what’s going on and there would be panic if they did,” I said.
Sometimes, I think I have a gift for trouble. Every time I open my stupid mouth, exactly what I was talking about seems to happen. I was just finishing my sandwich when a teenage boy poked his head into the restaurant, spied us, and ran over to the table.
“Jake! Aaron! Julia! The president needs to see you right now!” The boy panted.
“All right, son, catch your breath, we’re coming,” Jake said, standing up, his hands automatically doing a quick check of his weapons.
I did the same and Julia put a couple of coins on the table to pay for our meal. We left the restaurant and followed the boy back to the president’s home. President Jackson was on the porch, talking into a phone.
We waited a respectful distance away, but even at that range, we could hear words like “Okay, how many? When do you think it happened? Okay, I’m sending someone up right now.”
The president hung up and waved us over. He had a map in front of him, and we could see he had drawn circles
“No time to waste. There’s been an outbreak in Freeport. I need you up there now.” President Jackson didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“On our way. We’ll hit the armory and be gone within the hour,” I said.
“Did you drop off the syringe?” Jackson asked.
“We did. Freaked out a few people over there.” I chuckled at the memory.
“No doubt. They’ll send their report to me and I’ll let you know when I see you again. Stop at these three towns on your way to Freeport.” He indicated the towns on the map. “Go to their comm centers and if I have a message for you, it’ll be there.”
Jake nodded. “We’re gone.”
We moved quickly back through the city. I wanted to head over to the armory but Jake said no.
“Why the hell not?” I asked, perturbed.
“You want to just take what we can carry, or would you like to back the truck up and load it there?” Julia asked.
I felt stupid. “Okay, let’s get the truck.”
We retrieved our vehicle and made our way to the armory. A centrally located building that had a small office in the front, and a big warehouse in the back. If rumors were true, there was some serious firepower in there. One quarter of the warehouse was devoted to making ammo, and there were people whose job it was just to crank out round after round after round. No one knew why we needed to keep making bullets, but we did.
The man behind the desk was a pleasant, middle-aged man who took our note from the president in stride. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who were given access by the chief executive.
We told the man what we wanted, and in a short amount of time, we had over three thousand handgun rounds sitting in the bed of our truck. A thousand rifle rounds joined in, and we were as good to go as we ever were.
“You guys want automatic weapons? You’re authorized for them.” The man raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Jake looked at me and I shook my head. He turned back to the man. “We’re good. Besides, if things get bad for us, you’re going to needing them more than we are.”
We left the man with his mouth open, and boarded the truck. We had a good trip ahead of us, and I hoped we wouldn’t be too late. It was a hundred mile trip to Freeport, and under the best conditions, it would take us about an hour and half. Under present conditions, it would take us about three hours. We stopped at a communication center and had a message relayed to our aunts and uncles about what we were doing, and a request to look in on the lodge for us.
“Let’s get this rolling,” Jake said.
“Question for you,” I said as we pulled out of the capital and headed north to pick up the highway.
“Go for it.”
“Ever miss being a collector?”
“Only lately, old son. Only lately.”
Chapter 13
We stopped at two of the towns the president had mentioned, but we didn’t have any news. At the third town, there was a message that another outbreak had occurred in the town of Homer Glen. We were too far to do anything about it, so we sent a message to our cousins Trey and Kayla, and asked them to look at things for us. They had been trained, as we had been, their parents having spent years fighting alongside ours. If there was anyone out there we could trust to have our backs in a fight, it was those two. Trey was Uncle Tommy’s son, and he was a dead shot with rifle or pistol. His favorite mêlée weapon was a curved piece of metal about three feet long with a small wedge welded to the end. The last sixteen inches of the metal was sharpened, and it could take your leg off at the knee. Kayla was Uncle Duncan and Aunt Janna’s daughter, and she was a blonde knockout. She was also lethal with any bladed weapon, be it a knife, sword, or pair of scissors. It didn’t help she was a constant flirt, and several would-be boyfriends found themselves staring at the business end of something pointy when they tried to push their luck. They’d come with us on a couple of collections, but never got into it as seriously as we had.
I hoped as we travelled north that there wouldn’t be any more outbreaks. I didn’t know anyone else to send.
Julia interrupted my thoughts with an interesting question. “If there are enough outbreaks, do you think our dads will come back?”
I didn’t have an answer to that one, but I secretly hoped it could be the catalyst.
Chapter14
“Move, move!”
“Jesus, where the hell did these guys come from?”
“Just move your ass!”
“There’s nowhere to go, we’re blocked!”
“Son of a bitch!”
“Save it and fight!”
I whipped my tomahawk up and jammed the pointed end into the temple of a zombie that had gotten past my pile of corpses. My sword was stuck in the head of a zombie that was quickly becoming buried in a pile of corpses, and I had nothing left but my knife and tomahawk. I had my gun, but that was for dire emergencies and I didn’t want the horde to get bigger when other zombies heard the shots.
Suddenly, I heard a snap and the air filled with gunfire. The reports echoed off the buildings and came back to hurt my ears again. I turned my head just as seven zombies fell to the ground, each one wearing a hole in their foreheads.
“Follow!” Jake shouted. He jumped through the gap that had suddenly opened up and raced down the street.
I wasn’t about to argue so I dove after him, figuring I would retrieve my sword later. Right now, I had more important things to worry about, such as saving my neck. I caught up to Jake as we ran from the zombies.
“Nice shooting, by the way,” I said as I jogged next to him.
Jake suddenly stopped, and I skidded to a halt a few feet in front of him.
“What?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at the advancing horde of Freeport zombies.
“Aaron, I thought you shot them. I didn’t.” Jake looked at me funny.
I shook the surprise out of myself and g
rabbed Jake’s arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Whoever it was just did us a big favor. I’m not about to ask that gift horse to open wide.” I ran down the street, trying to get some distance between us and the zombies, and while I was moving, I was thinking. Who shot those zombies? There wasn’t anyone up here but the three of us, and right now I hope Julia wasn’t in as much trouble as we were.
We turned down West Main Street and headed east. I knew the river was somewhere nearby, and where the river was, there were bridges. At least with a bridge we could hold them at a choke point, and not worry about something coming at us from another direction. Of course, it would be easier to hold them with my sword, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud to Jake.
Some of the homes we ran past still had people in them, but they were wisely on the second floor, watching us run by. I had to think they didn’t have too much confidence in us if we were running away. However, I had a plan, and hopefully, it would be a good one.
“They’re still following us, Aaron,” Jake said.
I slowed to a walk. “Good. I want to draw as many as I can behind us.”
Jake looked back. The zombies were moving slowly, but they were moving, and since they were new zombies, they were faster with their feet than your average dead. Some of them were nice and clean, others had bloody gashes and bite marks on them. The clean ones had been deliberately infected, while the bloody ones had been unfortunate enough to run into the ones who had been injected. The whole situation was a mess, and every time I had to kill a zombie that didn’t need to have been a zombie, I was mad about it.
Someone named Ben was behind an effort to start the zombie apocalypse all over again. We had intercepted a couple of his outbreaks, but it seemed like they were getting worse. This mess in Freeport was a prime example. By the time we got up here there had to be at least a hundred people infected, and since the town barely had over five hundred people living here, that was a significant chunk of the populace.
We walked past a hotel, and started our way through the downtown area. There was a movie theater up a side street, and I lost my train of thought when I realized I had never been to a movie. I had heard about them and read about them, but never had been to one.
I could see the river so I pulled my sidearm and fired two shots at the zombies. I hit one of them, and caused a few more to trip, but I had no idea where my second bullet went.
“What are you doing?” Jake asked.
“I told Julia we’d be heading this way, and I’d fire two shots to let her know we were coming. She should have the rest of the town in the right place by now,” I said.
“Ah.” Jake’s reply was as concise as it was elegant.
When we had arrived, we had looked at the map and decided the best thing to do was to wander around as bait and try and collect the horde into one mass that could be dealt with at the same time. We killed the loners and the small groups, but as the numbers got bigger, we fell back to the plan, which was to get the groups into one horde and get them in a place where we could kill them at leisure. That was Julia’s job.
At the river, we turned left and waited for the horde to catch up. They tried their best, they really did, but there was no way a meal was going to happen for them. I just didn’t feel like being lunch today.
Jake spoke up as we turned. “Very nice. She did well.”
Since a compliment from Jake was about as rare as a zombie who could whistle, I had to figure he approved. On the bridge, in the middle of the road, were three flatbed trailers for semi-trucks. Julia must have insisted on some sort of platform, and the townspeople had delivered marvelously. Standing on one of the trailers, I could see a small blonde holding a spear, waving as we came down the road.
Behind us, the zombies lurched and slouched, dipped and bobbed as they moved as best they could. There were about seventy-five of them, and they made an awful noise as they groaned and snarled and screeched at us. When they saw the buffet tables on the bridge, they made even more noise.
Chapter 15
We jogged the last few yards to the trailers, and I climbed aboard the middle one while Jake took the last one. I gave Julia a smile and a thumbs up as I went past, and she dimpled at me.
I addressed the people on the middle trailer, although I made my voice loud enough to be heard on the other two.
“Keep your feet back from the edge, and use your weapons wisely. Stabbing them will take less effort than smashing their heads in.” Most of the people were armed with some sort of long weapon. A couple had just knives tied to long poles. “I know these are people you know. Keep in mind they aren’t that person any more. That person died and their body is just being used by the virus to try and make another host. That’s all they are. If you get sympathetic, you get dead.”
I had nothing to say after that, since the zombies were upon us. They surrounded the first vehicle, and then several drifted off to the second vehicle, and so one. Soon we were all surrounded, and were busy dealing with the dead. The trailers were tall enough, but some were able to climb up a little on the tires and reach much further. I took care of those on my flatbed while the rest of the people poked and smashed the rest. I was really missing my sword after a just a few minutes of fighting. We had to be on our toes, though, because the more we killed, the higher the zombies could climb.
One managed to get up on the trailer, and I kicked him off rather than kill him up here, just because there wasn’t enough room. A quick glance told me that the other trailers were having some of the same issues we were having.
The good news was we were winning. After a few minutes, the zombies had thinned out considerably; enough that Jake jumped off the back trailer and started dealing with the few that were not easily getting killed by the men on the flatbeds.
I followed his lead, slipping a little on one of the fully dead corpses ringing the trailer. Two zombies came at me and I adjusted my grip on my knife and my axe as I waited for them to come closer. The first one, a man about my brother’s age and just as ugly, fell under my ‘hawk as he came close. The second one tried to slip past the first, but I managed to turn quick enough to toss the dead zombie in front her. She was a slender, pretty teenager, and would have turned many a young man’s head if it weren’t for the fact she was missing half her face. Her shirt was a mess of blood and gore, and I wasn’t sure how much was hers and how much might have been someone else’s.
It didn’t matter in the end. As she struggled under the weight of her dead comrade, I came around and stepped on her chest. She hissed up at me and tried to take a bite out of my shoe. I wasn’t appreciative of her efforts, and drove my knife through her eye and into her skull in order to finish things.
Julia split the skull of the last one to attack her position, and in the brief silence that usually followed a good deal of fighting, I took a chance to look around. There wasn’t any activity I could see, and for a change, I was optimistic we could get this job done.
Jake brought me out of my scouting by pointing to a hill. As I looked, I was struck by the sight before me.
“Son of a bitch,” I said as I watched the figure walk slowly down the street. He was a young man, although a few years older than Jake. He was broad shouldered but lean, and dressed completely in black. His shirt was tucked into his cargo pants, held in place with a black belt sporting a silver buckle. I knew a Glock was on his hip, and I could see the several magazines that covered his left side. Dark sunglasses covered his face, but his blond hair was long and held back into a ponytail.
He looked like something out of a comic book, and he was carrying my sword. It was resting on his shoulder, and I wondered briefly, what I would have to do to get it back.
While he approached, I took the time to clean off my weapons and put them back in their sheaths. When I finished, he was close enough and both Jake and I went out to meet him.
Jake stopped in front of the man and looked him over before greeting him. “Hey, Logan. I guess those were your shots th
at made that hole for us,” Jake said.
“Thanks,” I added.
Our cousin, Logan Talon, paused to spit before he answered. “Heard you three were up this way, thought I’d see what you were doing. Good thing I did. Here’s your butter knife, Aaron.” Logan tossed my sword to me and I caught it out of the air. I didn’t bother to sheath it, since I hadn’t cleaned it.
“Thanks, Logan, you’re too kind,” I said. I didn’t particularly like our cousin, he was a bit too standoffish and nasty for me, but since he was our dad’s nephew, I cut him some slack. It didn’t hurt he was a dead shot with any firearm. Dad had said he got that from his father. We’d had a brief fight before, and we both knew who would win. Away from his guns, Logan wasn’t much good as a close quarters kind of guy.
That memory triggered another, and I spoke up in the brief but uncomfortable silence that followed the last words. “By the way, since we have you here…” I pulled out the Beretta at my hip and held it out to Logan. “Here you go.”
Logan didn’t move. “In case you got zombie goop in your eyes, I have a gun, and it just saved your ass. No thanks.”
I persisted. “You want this one, I’m sure.”
“No, I don’t, I’m sure. Knock it off.”
“It was your father’s,” I said, trying really hard not to say what was on my mind.
That changed things. Logan reached out and took the gun from me, holding in both hands near his chest. He looked at it for a long time before he spoke.
“How did you…How do you know…?” The questions didn’t come out completely, but I knew what he wanted to know.
“My dad left it for me, along with a journal of everything he had done up to the point where he stopped the invasion of the zombie kids. Your dad died saving all of us from becoming part of them. Your mom took you away before he could give it to you, and not knowing what else to do with it, he gave it to me,” I said kindly.
Generation Dead Book 2: What You Fear Page 5