by David Achord
Melvin did a sniff test and decided the teenager’s backpack was the least smelly one. He loaded it up with his findings and jogged back to the building.
He dumped the contents on the lone desk and set the backpack under the broken gutter, hoping the approaching rain would wash some of the stink off. He stuck his head in the back room and checked on Savannah. She’d moved the blankets aside, exposing her breasts. Even though he was the one who stripped her, he instantly felt like a peeping Tom and backed out of the room. He’d hung up her clothes the night before, but when he checked them, they were still a little damp.
As he finished off the remainder of the MRE from last night, the rain returned in force. With so much rain, Melvin surmised there must have been a hurricane out in the Atlantic before moving inland. Soon, the broken gutter was once again streaming with water. He knew it was going to be a little chilly, but he needed to bathe.
He hastened a quick peek in the back room to ensure Savannah was still asleep, got his toilet kit, a couple of towels, and walked outside. He stripped and stepped under the miniature waterfall. It was colder than he expected and he was quickly covered in goosebumps. He soaked himself, soaped up, and rinsed off quickly.
Grabbing the towels, he stepped back inside to see Savannah sitting in a chair, watching him. He hurriedly wrapped one around his waist.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked as he used the other towel to dry off.
“A little better,” she said and looked at her clothes hanging from bungee cords. “Did you take them off of me?”
“I did. Even though it’s warm out, you had a little bit of hypothermia going on last night. It was the only way to get you warmed up.”
“Oh.” Her tone was quiet, meek. She stared at him in silence as she watched him as he put a pair of underwear on under the towel and then put some jeans on.
Melvin had a lean but hard physique, typical of a Special Forces operative, which he once was. Standing at a hair or two under six feet, he weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of one-eighty, all of it muscle.
He had a couple of scars here and there, nothing major. His back had a few pockmarks, courtesy of shrapnel from an IED in Afghanistan. He earned a Purple Heart for it, but other than a bad case of jock itch during basic training, that was his only injury.
Melvin pointed at the stream of water. “You should get yourself cleaned up. I got soap here, and I think I got something you can wear until your clothes are dry.”
“I’m fine,” she said, somewhat defensively.
“Negative,” Melvin rejoined as he put a shirt on. “You smell like a monkey’s ass on a hot summer day.”
“I do not.”
Melvin chuckled. “Oh, yes you do.”
“It’s too cold. I saw you shivering and your dick even shrink up.”
Melvin gave her a frown. “Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately? Quit arguing and get yourself cleaned up.”
She looked down at the ground, causing Melvin to regret his tone.
“Are you going to watch?” she finally asked.
“Nope. Have at it.” He tossed her the towels and walked to the garage. Searching through his duffel bag of clothing, he found a football jersey and some socks. It’d have to do. He set them on the table immediately inside the door and glanced at her briefly. She’d soaped herself up, much like he did and was now rinsing off. He ducked back into the garage bay before she caught him looking and made himself busy.
“It’s a little big.”
He looked toward the doorway. Savannah was standing there, wearing the jersey. It hung loosely and came down to her knees.
“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll grow into it one day,” he said and chuckled at his own joke. She didn’t laugh. “Well, alright, it’ll keep you warm until your clothes dry out. Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. Although the sky was dull, it was lighter now and he got a better look at her. Her hair was a wild mess of light amber brown surrounding an oval sunburnt face with a pert nose and brown doe eyes. In spite of how skinny she was, it wasn’t hard to see a cute teenage girl under the mess.
Melvin reached into his pocket and retrieved his comb.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “There’s a mirror in the restroom.”
She subconsciously ran fingers through her hair before disappearing into the restroom and reemerged fifteen minutes later and looked at Melvin expectantly.
“Much better,” he said.
“I don’t smell like a monkey’s ass anymore?”
Melvin pantomimed sniffing and smiled slightly. “Nope. You smell like fresh petunias.”
He waited to see if she laughed, or at least smiled, but she merely stared at him.
“Alright, let’s eat something.” He led her to the table and tore open an MRE.
She sat and looked at the contents before choosing a food item. She nibbled at it and slurped water from the canteen.
“Oh, here, I made something for you.” He used one of the shop rags and took a canteen cup off of his rocket stove. “Drink some of this.”
Savannah looked in the cup. “What is it?”
“Pine needle tea, it’s rich in vitamin C. Oh, wait, you’re not pregnant are you?”
Savannah stared at him. “No.”
“Good. Here,” he said and handed it to her.
Savannah took a small, tentative sip and made a sour face.
Melvin chuckled. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, it doesn’t taste that great.”
She gave him a look. “You think?”
“I know, but you’re malnourished. Drink as much as you can stand, it’ll be good for you.”
She hunched forward in the chair and watched Melvin as she took small sips.
“Um, can I ask you a question?”
Melvin glanced at her. “Sure.”
“What’s with the zombie taped down to a chair on the front of your truck?”
“That’s Peggy, my wife, or what’s left of her.”
Savannah looked sideways at him, as if he was playing some kind of twisted prank.
“And you keep her with you?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story,” Melvin said. “But, the main reason is when there’re other zombies around, she can somehow sense them and she’ll start snarling like crazy. It’s a good alarm system.”
“But, she’s a zombie,” Savannah said.
“Yep.”
“Kind of creepy,” she remarked.
Melvin didn’t respond.
“Why were you naked last night?”
Melvin felt a little uncomfortable now. “Oh, well, I’d been out in the rain and got soaked, so I took my clothes off and hung them up to dry. When I spotted you and your friends, I didn’t realize you weren’t a zombie at the time, and I didn’t want to get another pair of clothes wet and dirty.”
“So, you ran out naked so you wouldn’t get your clothes dirty.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it looked weird.”
“A little,” she said. “I thought you were some kind of crazy pervert.”
“Anyway, they had some decent gear on them and one of the backpacks is still in pretty good shape. I created a kit for you and your clothes should be dry in another hour or two. Then you can get going.”
She stopped in mid-bite and looked at Melvin with sudden anxiousness. “What do you mean, get going? You’re getting rid of me?”
“Yeah, well, I mean I’m sure you want to get moving along. There’s plenty of cars around here, maybe I can get one of them running for you, if you want.”
She sat motionlessly, staring at him with her big brown eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“Don’t you want to get back to your family?”
Savannah’s features darkened. Her eyes started watering up again, but she quickly wiped them with the back of her hand. “My family’s
dead,” she replied. “The Blackjacks killed them. I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
She remained quiet and sat there, staring at the table.
“Tell me about it,” he prodded.
He didn’t think she was going to answer at first, but after a moment, she emitted a heavy sigh.
“Oh, not much to tell. I was living with my aunt and uncle near a bump in the road called Crozier. Have you heard of it?”
“I believe so.”
“Yeah, well, Mom and Dad split up when I was thirteen and I went to live with Uncle Ray and Aunt Pat.” She let out another sigh. “It’s a long story, but anyway, I liked them. They were good to me. They had a small farm and we had chickens, and cows, and I even had a pet goat. Her name was Daffy.”
“Sounds nice,” Melvin remarked.
“It was. Aunt Pat liked gardening and canning. So, when it all went bad, we were actually doing okay. Oh, and we had some neighbors next door who helped out a lot.” She gave a small, sad smile.
“Suzie was my cousin, but we acted more like sisters. We even shared the same boyfriend, Bobby. He was dumb as all get out, but he was cute and nice, and there weren’t any other boys around.”
“So, what happened?” Melvin asked quietly.
“Toothpaste,” Savannah said, her voice cracking slightly. “We’d run out of toothpaste and some other stuff. We bitched and complained, so Uncle Roy decided to do something about it. He and Bobby and Bobby’s father went into Richmond for supplies. Taz, that’s one of the Blackjacks, told me later they caught them coming out of a pharmacy. They tortured Bobby’s father until Bobby told them where we lived. Then they killed them.”
Her face was full of misery while she talked about it. Melvin had heard similar stories the past couple of years, but it still got to him.
“Anyway, I guess you can figure out what happened next. They came and killed everyone. Aunt Pat hid me and Suzie in the basement, but it didn’t do any good. They found us, took us prisoner, and threw us in a trailer with four other girls. The first night was the worst. They passed me and Suzie around like we were rag dolls.” Savannah tried to tell the rest, but was too choked up.
“How long ago was that?” Melvin asked.
She wiped her eyes again and took a deep breath. “I’m not real sure, about a month or two, I guess. They kept us locked up most of the time in one of those little travel campers. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“The only time they let us out was to do chores or when they wanted – you know.”
“Yeah. How’d you escape?”
“One day, they’d found like a couple of cases of booze and meth. I don’t know the circumstances; I can only guess they killed someone. So, anyway, they all started smoking that stuff and drinking and getting rowdy. They let us join in, but whenever we were let out, they handcuffed us. Anyway, everyone was fucked up and having themselves a good old time. After it got dark, they built a big bonfire like they didn’t have a care in the world. That’s probably what attracted them, the fire and all of the noise. Taz was sitting next to me when those things came out of nowhere. One of them ran up from behind us and latched onto his neck.”
“Are you sure they were zombies?” Melvin asked.
“Oh, hell yeah. I started screaming, and then Suzie and a couple of the other girls started screaming, and it was, I don’t know what you’d call it…”
“Chaos?” Melvin asked.
“Yeah, I guess that’s a good word. Chaos. It was chaos everywhere. Somebody started shooting, but there were a bunch of them, they were everywhere. I panicked and ran. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started running and kept going.”
Melvin thought it all over.
“Do you know where you were when you escaped?” he asked.
“No idea. I ran most of the night down some road. The next day, I was down there near a gas station,” she said as she pointed down the road. “There’s a cop car parked there and I was trying to get in it to see if I could find a handcuff key. Before I could even get in the car, those things were on me. I took off running again, but I didn’t have any energy left. I was barely able to get on top of that car I was on when you found me.”
Melvin listened as he thought of the Blackjacks. If they were still nearby, it could be problematic, he thought. He stared out of the window, wondering where they were. She interrupted his thoughts.
“Yesterday, I found a saw and kind of tried to cut one of my hands off, but I lost my nerve.”
Melvin stared at her now, wondering what he would do if he were in the same predicament.
“Do you think your cousin got away?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. When I was running, I heard her scream, and it was one of those blood-curdling screams, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Melvin answered. “Tell me about them. The Blackjacks. How many of them are there nowadays?”
She paused and looked at him. “Do you know them?”
“I bumped into a couple of them a few months ago, but I haven’t seen them in a while. Is Lonnie still their leader?”
“Yeah, and he’s scary as shit. One day, they caught some people and one of the men made some kind of smart-assed comment. Within like a microsecond, Lonnie grabbed the man, threw him on the ground, and pounded his head on the asphalt until there was blood and brains all over. It was awful. Taz said he used to be a pro wrestler.”
Melvin had heard something like that as well. The man was huge, Melvin gave him that; well over six feet tall, almost three hundred pounds and mostly muscle.
“Is Snake still around?” he asked. Snake was Lonnie’s de facto second-in-command. He was a little guy, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.
Savannah shuddered. “Yeah. He’s like the opposite of Lonnie, but just as mean. Lonnie’s big and loud, Snake is small and quiet. And he had a forked tongued, like a snake. One day, they’d caught a man. They tied him down, and Snake spent the rest of the day skinning him alive. It was sickening.”
Yeah, Melvin thought, he could see that. Back when he’d bumped into the Blackjacks, Melvin and Lonnie struck up a friendship immediately, but Snake merely stared at Melvin the whole time and never said a word. If Melvin ever encountered him alone, he knew he’d need to kill the little dude immediately.
“I don’t think I met all of them. Who’re the others?” he asked.
She paused and thought a minute. “Let’s see, besides Snake, there’s Pig, Taz, Dizzy, Tank, Hot-Shot, Crank, Topsy, Mako, Crash, Scooter, and Freak.”
“They sure love nicknames,” Melvin commented. It reminded him of street gangs. Nobody went by their real name; they had to create an alternate identity for themselves. Create a new persona, or something.
“Yeah, Taz told me one day there used to be more of them, but a few days before they found me and Suzie, they got into a big shootout with some people up in Staunton and some of them were killed. He said they were cops.”
“Cops?” Melvin asked in surprise.
“Yeah, they had a compound or something. Lonnie thought it’d be easy pickings.”
Melvin grunted. There was a headquarters office for the Virginia State Troopers in Staunton. He wondered if it was them and made a mental note to pay them a friendly visit sometime soon.
“What about the women?” he asked. “You said there were four more of them?”
“Yeah. The girls are Sunshine, Dimple, Fanny, and Leah.”
“How’d you get along with them, the women, how’d you get along with the women?”
Savannah made a face. “Fanny was the favorite, but that was only because they had a vote one night and decided she gave the best blowjob.”
She paused to make a gagging impression. “The rest of us got along okay, but sometimes they’d make us fight for food. It wasn’t fun.”
Judging from her emaciated appearance, Melvin guessed she seldom won any of those fights. T
hey sat in silence for several minutes while Melvin thought over everything she said.
Apparently, Savannah interpreted the silence as rejection to her earlier request. She slowly stood.
“Thank you for everything, Melvin. You truly saved my life.” She walked away and Melvin watched as she went into the front lobby. He got up and followed her. She took her pants off of the bungee cord and began putting them on.
“They’re still damp,” Melvin said.
“It’s okay,” she said and began putting her socks and shoes on.
“Hey look, you don’t have to go.”
“No, it’s okay, Melvin. You’ve been nice to me, but I can tell you don’t want me around here.”
She started to walk past him, but he stopped her by grabbing her by the shoulders. She jerked back, a hint of fear flashing across her face. He quickly pulled his hands back.
“Listen, it’s not that. I’m not much of a social person these days, but you’re welcome to stay here.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to stay,” he found himself saying.
She stared at him a long moment with her big brown eyes. “Are you sure?” she finally asked.
“Of course I’m sure.”
She stared at him, like any second now he was going to say, “Just kidding!”
After a few seconds, she realized he was being sincere. “You won’t regret it,” she said. “I promise.”
“Okay,” he said. “No need to get all gushy.”
Savannah didn’t make it much past breakfast before falling asleep. Still weak from the lingering effects of malnutrition and running for her life for the past two days, she’d lain her head on the desk after only eating a few bites and was out of it. He picked her up gently, put her back on the cot, and left a note for her in case he was gone when she woke up.
He hoped there weren’t underlying health issues with her and she was going to die in her sleep, but there was nothing he could do about it. He geared up, got the bike out, and headed back to the government building.
It was a one-story brick building and the unlocked door was located in the back. The rock had not been moved, which was seemingly a good sign. He parked his bike and opened the door.