Carla shook off Rosalita’s hand and spit out, “I meant what I said.”
Jeb stepped closer to her. “We welcome you into our fold with open arms.” He nodded at one of the women and she stepped forward and came up to Carla. She took Carla by the arm and led her from the room.
“Just like this child, all of you are welcome,” Jeb said, but all the rest of us knew better. He continued, “Maybe tonight you will change your mind as you will all be a part of our great ceremony of transfiguration.”
“What the hell is that?” Dave asked.
Jeb said, with a hint of malevolence in his eyes, “Oh, you shall see. You shall see.”
I had a very bad feeling about what we would see and what would happen.
The rest of the day was spent locked up in our rooms. I must have looked out my window a thousand times for any sign of Chuck and his grand plan, but saw nothing other than the guards who marched around our building at regular intervals. I searched for any way to escape, checking the doors for weak spots and seeing if there was anyway to get the bars off the window, but struck out. The truth be told that even if I got out, the best weapon I would have to fend off the guards was a pillow. Maybe Chuck Norris could take out an entire army with his belt, a pillow, and his feet and hands, but I knew that wasn’t going to work for me. In the end, there was nothing to do, but wait.
On my 999th check of the window, as dusk was just beginning to fall, I heard a voice whisper my name, “Grant.”
I looked around my room when the voice spoke again and I realized it was coming from outside my window. It was a male’s voice and my heart leapt with hope that it was Chuck and he had Seal Team Six with him along with the 10th Armored Division, but when I heard the voice whispered again I recognized it as Randell’s voice. He was in the room next to mine.
“Grant,” he said in a forced whisper from the window of the room neighboring mine.
Pressing my face against the bars, I whispered back, “What is it, Randell?“
“What do you think this transfiguration thing is?”
I hesitated with telling him what it really meant and decided to be vague. “It can’t be a good thing.”
He saw through my sham of a diversion, “Does it mean that he’ll turn us into a zombie or let us be eaten by them?”
“Most likely the latter,” I responded.
“Good, I don’t want to be one of those things.”
“It’s not going to come to that,” I whispered back.
“Come on, Grant. We’re locked in these rooms. They have complete control of us. We could join them like Carla did, but they would probably see through anyone of us faking it.”
“Do you think she’s faking?” I asked.
“I think she’s half crazy like her folks, but who could blame her after what she’s been through.”
There was a lull in the conversation as fireflies blinked away in the dark and crickets chirped their busy little chirps.
“I should have had us make a run for it instead of coming back here with them,” I whispered. “That livestock trailer should have been a real giveaway. I mean it stunk like the zombies.”
“What choice did we have?” He asked. “You saw the guns they had. They’d have cut is down like dogs. Besides, none of us saw it.”
Well, not really. Chuck did, but I didn’t want to mention that because I didn’t want to give Randell any false hope.
“You did the best you could,” he whispered. “We wouldn’t have made it this far if it hadn’t been for you.”
It was a small consolation. ‘This far’ didn’t mean a lot in my book. We had fought and scratched, barely getting out of Texas. We laid low in Oklahoma too long and should have left there as fast as we could and just kept going, but hindsight was 20/20. Still, I knew I’d spend the rest of my life beating myself up for getting us into this mess, even if the rest of my life was only measured in hours or minutes.
I started to speak again when the sound of doors opening came from the hallway. They were coming like before, but I knew this time would be different. A lot different.
And it was.
This time they wore long hooded robes, reminding me of Franciscan monks. The robes were heavy, made of thick cotton or wool and were charcoal gray. They all had their hoods up shadowing their faces. Just like before, they came armed to the teeth. The rifles gave off a dissonance, clashing with the monk vibe the robes provided, but this wasn’t Project Runway and no one was asking me. Still, I’d mark them down on style points.
We knew the drill and there were few words spoken as my people complied with the commands given. Clint and Jeb kept the talking to minimum. After we were all in handcuffs, we were led, single file, out of the building and into the compound. Unlike our last trip to the pit, there were a lot of people out including the woman and some of the older children. A few of the women were armed, too. Jeb must have called for an all hands on deck, and who wanted to miss this show anyway?
Despite the oppressive heat of the summer over the previous days, there seemed to be a chill in the air and a thin gaussian mist hung at ground level. The coolness sort of made me want one of those robes, but none were offered. I guess the air being a bit nippy was the least of my worries.
“Mom, where are we going?” Martin asked.
“Just out for a walk or something,” Joni responded, but she had both his and and Jessica’s hand held tightly in hers as they walked along. Dave looked a little shell shocked.
“I sort of dig the robes,” Jay said. “What do you think, Grant?”
“They clash with the rifles,” I said.
“Keep your mouth’s shut,” Clint said as he stepped in between us with a deadly serious expression on his face.
I just shrugged.
We made past the core set of buildings, but we stopped before getting too far into the field. A tall robed figure stood next to another smaller figure about twenty feet into the grass. Both of them had their hoods up. The guards fanned out in a wide arc around us, while the rest of the group made a complementary arc just behind the tall man and the short figure.
No one spoke a word, but the tall man pushed back his hood and revealed himself as Jeb. There really wasn’t much of a surprise there.
“My people, this is a monumentus night,” he said loudly, slowly raising his arms into the air and left them outstretched. “This is a night of transfiguration. The Lord of the Air requires a sacrifice to maintain the balance between light and dark. It is exactly as I told you and he has provided us that opportunity with our visitors.”
He dropped his arms and took an exaggeratedly long pause, taking in our group and then his.
“The only way to avoid being selected is to join us,” Jeb said, clearly addressing our group.
“Been there, done that,” I said. “Didn’t like it.”
“You are glib now,” Jeb said in a chiding tone.
“Okay, if you want to get serious,” I said. “If you need a sacrifice to appease your Dark Lord or whatever his name is, why don’t you take me?” I stepped forward.
“No, no, Grant,” Rosalita said as she took a hobbling step forward. “I am old and I can be the one they need.”
“Shit man, it might as well be me,” Jay said as he stepped up.
“Me, too,” Jane said moving in beside Jay and taking his arm, but she looked obviously scared. No one else spoke for a few seconds.
“I am Spartacus,” Robbie said taking a step forward, “take me.”
“No, I am Spartacus,” Randell said.
I started to giggle. I didn’t see that coming. Dave laughed, too and Joni smiled as did Jay and Jane.
“This is not a time for jokes!” Jeb shouted, his face contorted in rage as spittle flew from his lips.
Clint nodded his head at one of his men and the man put the butt of his rifle to Robbie’s back. Robbie grunted loudly and toppled face first, barely getting his hands out in time to break the fall. Randell moved toward Robbie, but anothe
r one of Clint’s men pushed him away roughly.
“You must take the Lord of the Air seriously or else you all may end up in the pit,” Jeb said, speaking in a low even tone, but still held all the malice as before.
That sucked any of the funny out of the air. I took one step toward Jeb, but Clint raised his rifle and aimed in it my direction while shaking his head at me.
Jeb took a moment to compose himself. “You cannot volunteer. He choses. Through me.” He stopped speaking for a moment, letting the weight of his words sink in. “But this time will be different. Our newest member will make the selection.”
He put out a hand to the small figure beside him and the figure removed its hood. It wasn’t much of surprise as we all knew it was Carla. What happened next wasn’t a shocker, either.
“Who does the Lord of the Air want you to select?” Jeb asked leaning over slightly and getting close to Carla.
She stepped past him and raised her right arm and pointed directly at me and said, “He will be the sacrifice. He deserves the transfiguration.”
Somehow, I don’t think their Dark Lord had much impact on that choice. Old grudges die hard.
“The choice has been made,” Jeb said in a serious, but satisfied tone. But he didn’t let end there. “And you all will be witnesses.”
Two men moved up behind me and grabbed me by each arm and moved me to the head of the line. I tried to yank one of my arms free, but for my troubles, I got a barrel of a gun up the side of my head. The light show wasn’t like before, but it was impressive. My knees went weak as I wobbled for a few steps, but the two men kept me aloft.
“Let us proceed to the altar,” Jeb said pointing across the field and we started to move. The hooded figures closed in around our people and the party got started with me as the special guest.
I wished I had never been invited.
The sun hung onto the horizon as if its existence depended on it, a thin orange line in the distance. Jeb’s people started a solemn chant like a wordless hymn. It certainly wasn’t going to be in the American Top 40, but it gave me the serious heebie-jeebies.
What was coming up in just a couple minutes amplified my unease by a thousand fold.
The sun winked out and several of Jeb’s people popped on flashlights and lanterns. It wasn’t that long of a walk across the field, but darkness and the fog made it seem like an endless tunnel. Jeb’s people kept up their monotonous chant though, making our passage even more unsettling.
Jeb’s goons kept pushing me along as I contemplated what was left of my life. I re-played the scene on the highway a few more times. I wondered why Chuck had abandoned us. I kicked myself for not asking out that hot red-headed U.S. Marshall who worked two offices down from mine. All these and more can be seen in my little theater show of regret for the low, low price of nothing.
I considered making a break for it, but I knew they’d either shoot me or beat me into submission. If by some miracle, I did escape, then one of the others would have to take my place. No, it was the steady and inevitable path for me. Maybe the fall into the pit would break my neck? I sort of doubted it.
Something caused me to come out of my navel gazing introspection, but while in my haze of self-doubt and recriminations, I didn’t recognize it immediately. Had Jeb’s people changed the tone of the chant or did they suddenly go horribly off-key?
It took me a few more seconds to recognize this addition to the music and it definitely was not any human chant. Or, at least, the chant of the living.
I stopped dead in my tracks and one of Jeb’s goon, while not paying attention, slammed into my back. I was jostled forward, but then held my ground, pushing back on him.
“Keep moving,” a gruff voice sounded behind me, but I ignored it.
Instead, I focused my eyes on the inky blackness ahead of me. The mist had thickened somewhat, causing it to be even more challenging to discern what was ahead of us, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a good thing. Something in my gut told me that.
“Don’t force me to carry you,” Clint said coming up beside the other goon.
I put up my handcuffed hands in a gesture of ‘wait a minute’ and asked, “Do you hear that?”
“Quit stalling or else you’ll get the butt of my rifle upside your head,” Clint growled.
“I think we need to go back to compound,” I said, my throat drying up.
“This is your last warning,” Clint said leveling his rifle at me.
I said, “Just shut up and list---,” but I cut myself off.
Forms came out of the darkness. Shambling and shuffling human forms. I had seen these forms before. They were unmistakable and were never good news.
“What is the hold up?” Jeb asked from behind me.
“It’s time to get the hell out of here,” I said.
“What in the name of…” Jeb said, but his words got caught in his throat.
They came out of the mist like wraiths. Zombies, lots of zombies, shuffling their way across the field at us. I didn’t stop to count them, but it was a small horde, at least. To make it worse, I was unarmed and handcuffed. I didn’t like this.
“What the--,” Clint said.
“Oh my God,” another voice said.
“What do we do?” Another voice asked.
What we should be doing and what we did were two different things. We should have been doing was an immediate about face and then hauling ass back to the compound. What we did instead was freeze in place, unable to move from the fear now gripping our not very merry little band.
A woman cried out, a shrill piercing scream full of fear, warbling up and down like bird. A man shouted something I didn’t make out, but I could hear the terror in his voice. I started backing up, but was stopped by two forms behind me.
The horde gathered speed and I could see the rows of the undead streaming towards us. The barrel of a rifle appeared beside my head and a second later whoever was holding the rifle pulled the trigger. A nuclear blast went off just beside my ear and was followed by the ringing of a thousand church bells as I bought my hand to cover my ears. I was a dollar short and a day late.
Somehow, I followed the trajectory of the shot and saw a zombie spin sideways, a small plume of blood erupting from its shoulder as it stumbled a few feet, but then righted itself and continued on towards us as did the rest of the horde. Another shot was fired, but this one was a few feet away and didn’t rupture my eardrum like the last one. A zombie stumbled from the impact of the bullet to its chest, but kept coming.
More of Jeb’s men moved up to fire on the zombies. I used the distraction to back pedal out of the line of fire. The men started firing in earnest at the oncoming undead, but very few of the zombies fell. Jeb’s men apparently weren’t well trained on going for the headshot. A few of the men were clearly petrified in fear, their shots going wild into the dark or just kicking up dirt in front of the zombies.
To say those moments were chaos would have been an understatement. It was chaos inside pandemonium wrapped in bedlam. Some people broke and ran while others stood doing nothing. I scanned the crowd, trying to catch the attention of my people and when I did, I jerked my head back toward the compound. I caught Joni’s attention and she got Dave and the kids moving backwards. Jay and Jane didn’t need any coaxing and were already stepping backwards through the crowd of Jeb’s people.
I was nearly through the biggest pack of Jeb’s men when I ran into something solid. A vice-like grip fell on my shoulder and I looked up to see Jeb’s giant looking down on me, his face drawn in a horrible grimace.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
“The hell out of here,” I said. “Just like you and the rest of you crazies should be doing. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a shitload of zombies headed our way.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said and increased the pressure to such an extent that I felt like he was going to crack my collar bone and pop it through the skin.
I sta
rted to pivot to take a punch at him when I saw a robed figure move up behind the giant. This new robed figure was swinging something above its head in a fan like circle, the motion creating a slight whistling noise. The robed figure flicked his wrist forward and there was a hollow sound like someone dropping a hammer on a marble floor. The giant’s eyes flickered for a moment and the lights went out of them and he went down, collapsing like a skyscraper. Fortunately, I side-stepped his body as it smashed into the ground face first.
The robed figure let what it had held in his hands drop to his side and I immediately saw that it was a set of nunchucks. I also noticed that were several more robed bodies lying on ground behind the giant. All of them were unconscious.
The figure brushed back the hood on his robe. It was Chuck. He didn’t even seem to be breathing hard.
“I never suspected you would be a badass ninja, Chuck,” I said.
“This is no time for talk,” he said as he opened his robe. Attached to his torso was an impressive array of weapons. I saw two assault rifles criss-crossed on his chest attached in some sort of harness, along with several handguns and enough ammunition to supply a platoon.
He reached into a pocket, retrieved something that jingled together, and tossed it my way.
Instinctively, I grabbed it. It turned out to be handcuff keys which I used to unlock my handcuffs When I looked back up, Chuck was surveying his bevy of weapons and extracted what looked like a tear gas grenade. A second later, he pulled the pin on it and then heaved into the ranks of Jeb’s men who were firing on the zombies with their backs turned to us.
“Look away. Close your eyes and cover your ears,” Chuck yelled.
I was slow to comply, but did get my eyes closed.
Two seconds later, it went off. Despite the fact that my eyes were closed and I had my ears covered, a searing white light nearly burned away my retinas and an explosion almost blasted away what was left of my hearing. And that’s when the screaming started, seemingly far off and muted. When I re-opened my eyes, I saw that many of Jeb’s men had dropped their weapons and clutched at their heads, half blinded and deafened from the explosion of the flash bang grenade. Some writhed, nearly insensate on ground from the shock of the blast while others screamed in pain.
Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America Page 8