“Apart from the ‘No More’ again and the sound of a baby crying far away? Nope, not a damn thing. Are we leaving any time soon?” Duncan asked. He was trying to calm down a very poofy and frightened Tucker.
“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Whoever was here has gone someplace else.”
“Well, that’s a relief. So what about the people who seem to be left behind?”
“I think the shadow and the cold air are what’s left of them.”
“Like I said, such a relief.”
We walked down the hallway passing by the kitchen doors. Tucker seemed to have calmed down, and we were moving quietly past some banquet rooms. The air was stale, and the old tables seemed forgotten by time. Family reunions from a long time ago that would never happen again made the place seem very lonely.
At the end of the dark hallway there was a small closet. Duncan looked inside, and he tapped me on the arm.
“Well, I think I know where the ghosts came from,” He said.
I looked inside, and tucked beside the extra chairs and tables was a small corpse. She was hiding in the chairs and was holding a small bundle. A closer look showed me that the small bundle was another corpse, a small baby.
Both of the bodies did not look to be harmed in any way. They must have hidden here away from zombies in the area and died of dehydration.
Not a pleasant way to go, but when you feared to move, you didn’t have much choice. If I had to guess, I’d say the girl was the baby’s sister and she ran here, not knowing what else to do. How could a ten or twelve-year-old know what to do when the world ended? If she had run to the woods, she might have had a chance, but then what would a kid do? Run toward where they felt safe, whether or not it was the smart thing to do at the time.
“Come on Duncan. Let’s go outside and see if we can find Tommy and Charlie. And then let’s see if we can find a place to bury these two together,” I said.
“Well, let’s hope those are the last we find around here,” Duncan said.
“If you really believe that, then we need to have a talk,” I said.
I opened the back door and was pleasantly surprised to be looking at the back of the trucks. Our little side trip took a lot longer than I thought, and the sun was dipping below the tree line on the far side of the horizon. Charlie and Tommy were just coming back to the trucks, and I walked down the stairs behind Duncan who was holding a very wide-eyed kitten. I could see Tucker’s little nose bouncing as he took in all the smells of the new area.
“How’s the lodge?” Charlie asked. He sprayed one of his tomahawks with some kerosene and burned the Enillo right off of it.
“Haunted as hell,” Duncan said, stopping at a truck to put Tucker away.
Tommy looked at me. “Seriously?”
“Serious as a heart attack,” I said. “Shadows, cold air, disembodied voices, and some poltergeist activity. All the fun stuff.”
“Damn. Wonder why?” Tommy asked.
“Small girl hid with her baby brother or sister. Probably got too scared to move, and dehydrated right there,” I said, pulling out a small shovel from the back of the truck. “I’ll go dig a grave if you two want to go get them. There’s some tablecloths right where they are, so you can wrap them up pretty easily.”
Charlie shrugged. “Whatever. Probably nothing up there.”
Tommy went with him. “Never saw a ghost before,” he said.
“You aren’t going to now, trust me,” Charlie said.
I went over to the side of the parking lot and found a good space for a grave. I was digging for about a half hour with the sky getting darker all the time. When I finished, I looked over at Duncan, who shrugged and looked back up at the lodge.
Five minutes later, Charlie came out carrying a small body wrapped in a tablecloth. Tommy carried a much smaller bundle wrapped the same way. They walked over to me, and their faces were stony.
Charlie placed the girl in the grave without a sound and walked over to the truck. Tommy placed the little baby in the girl’s arms, and together we covered them with earth. I dislodged a couple of flagstones that were at the edge of a walking path that ran parallel to the parking lot, and placed them over the grave as a kind of marker.
“What took you guys so long?” I asked.
Tommy took a deep breath. “Charlie wanted to explore, so we went through the lodge. On our way back, the air got freezing, and we kept hearing a baby crying. While we were looking for it, Charlie suddenly points at the balcony and says, ‘Don’t move!’”
“What was it?” I was curious to see if they saw the shadows, too.
“It was a little girl, holding a baby, and she was trying to shush it from crying,” Tommy said.
“What?” I said, not really believing it.
“Yeah. She vanished an instant later,” Tommy said.
I was taken aback. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Yep.” Tommy agreed. “Charlie just saw his first genuine ghost.”
“Want to spend the night in there?” I asked.
“Fuck, no,” Tommy said.
“Me either. Let’s get up on the platform and camp up there. I figure we’ll be here for a couple of days,” I said, walking back to the truck.
“I always liked Kentucky.”
We spent three days at the lodge in Kentucky before we could see the first signs of the army heading our way. Charlie was in his element and hunted every day. We ate well on venison, wild turkey, and bass. We cleared out as much as we wanted from the lodge, bringing out cooking gear, usable supplies, and an amazing cache of various wines. Normally I just leave that sort of thing, but I figured the army could use it to take a break.
We camped up on the platform and were well protected from the rain. The platform was at least fifty feet across, and the huge water tank above us spread out like a great canopy. Duncan wondered if there was a way to get the water out, as he wanted a shower, but the rest of us tackled him before he could shoot a hole in the bottom of the tank.
In the middle of the fourth day scouts began arriving in the woods. We could hear them moving around, and we could see them through the trees. They were in small cars, modified to have a higher wheelbase so they could go overland if they had to. The interiors were customized, with the rear seats taken out and a hatch built into the floor. The windows were reinforced, and they had extra supplies packed inside. If they had to, they could stay inside those vehicles for up to a week. The only problem with the vehicles was we only had six of them. The man who made the customizations died of a heart attack after the sixth one.
Two of the scout vehicles pulled into the parking lot. They saw our trucks and drove over to them. The scouts climbed out of the cars and stretched, something they always did. They looked over the supply piles and started up the stairs to the lodge when Charlie hailed them from the platform.
“Here!” he yelled.
The two scouts ducked and reached for weapons before they looked up and saw us waving from the platform. They walked over to the base of the tower. Charlie and I descended the circular stairway that made a complete circle of the six supports that held up the huge tank.
“Sir! Good to see you, sir!” the first scout said, and saluted. She was a teenager with long dark hair that she wore in a single braid. Her companion, an older woman of about thirty-five, saluted as well.
“You, too, Mel.” I returned the salutes and looked over at the older woman. “Good trip so far, Beth?” I asked.
“’Cept for the choir we had to listen to while we cleaned up Lafayette, can’t complain, sir.” Beth looked up. “Nice place you have here. Something wrong with the lodge?”
“Haunted,” Charlie said.
Beth’s eyes got wide. “That so? Who?”
“Little girl and her infant brother. She’ll spook you any time you go in there. This lunatic found her in the dark.” Charlie jerked a thumb in my direction.
I held up a hand to defend myself. “I had no idea she was in there. Dunc
an and I found her and her brother in a closet. Dead from dehydration. She just doesn’t realize she’s dead.”
Beth shivered. “I hate when that happens. Remember the one in Cicero who seemed to follow us?”
I shook my head. “That was creepy. That book that flew across the room?”
Beth nodded vigorously. “Oh my God! Yes!” She turned to Mel. “John, Sarah, and a couple of us were clearing this old house in Cicero. Nothing major, just an old house. But the second we went upstairs the place went nuts. The clocks started chiming, chairs fell over, it was crazy. We were standing in the library upstairs when a book rose from a table and floated across the room, slowly landing in a chair.”
Mel’s eyes were big. “What did you do?”
Beth nodded in my direction. “John got mad and said, ‘Knock it off before I burn this place to the fucking ground!’”
I smiled. “Not exactly diplomatic, but it seemed to work.”
Our conversation was cut short when the other scouts started to show up. We waited for them, joined by Tommy and Duncan. They seemed to be having an argument all the way down the stairs.
“All I’m saying is how hard is it to share?”
“Are you still on that?”
“We have gone through so much together, and yet that was when he decides to be greedy.”
“So you are still stuck on that?”
“The man carries two axes and six knives. How hard would it have been to cut off a piece?
“Why didn’t you ask John for the other one?”
“There was another one?”
“Yeah, he didn’t want it.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
“Sorry.”
Duncan came down from the stairs and stood staring hard at Charlie and me. When he didn’t say anything, I ventured a guess.
“Is this about the package of Ho-Ho’s?” I asked quietly.
“Yes! Yes! It’s about the Ho Ho’s!” Duncan yelled.
Tommy came up grinning. “What did you do with the second package, Charlie?”
Charlie shrugged. “Shared with you, I thought. Didn’t you give some to Duncan?”
Duncan bared his teeth, then controlled himself. “I hate you all,” he managed to say.
We shared a laugh, and Charlie pulled off his pack. He rummaged inside and pulled out a small package of Ho Ho’s. He gave it to Duncan, who smiled like he just fell in a pile of Christmas toys.
“There was a third package, Duncan,” Charlie said.
Duncan looked up at the sky, and his eyes moistened.
“Friendship. Is there anything greater?” He asked.
We all had a laugh as the scouts converged. I met with each pair, and we compared notes on the terrain and path ahead. They gave me a general idea of where the army proper was, and I sent them back to find the commanders and let them know where I was. It was time to change the direction of this campaign.
The sun was just about at its zenith when the three commanders arrived. They were riding in small RV’s no bigger than a regular cargo van. I was glad to see they were not in some ridiculous transportation. I would have had to fire them on the spot, for my worst fears would be coming to pass.
“Commanders.” I said, when the three men came over. They saluted, and I returned the salute. I grinned and held out my hand to each man, who shook it in turn.
“John, it’s good to see you,” Tom said.
“Same here,” I replied. “Let’s go upstairs and have a chat, there’s something I want to run by the three of you.”
“What about the army?” Ted asked.
“There’s a bunch of cabins here, they can figure out where they want to stay. The lodge is for anyone, but it’s haunted, so it’s up to them,” I said.
“Haunted?” Ed asked, looking over at the building.
“Long story. Let’s go, shall we? I’d like to hear your thoughts,” I said.
We went up to the platform where Charlie and I had brought up a couple of plastic tables from the lodge. There were five chairs, and we all took a seat. Tommy and Duncan stood on the side watching, but definitely part of the group.
There was a large road map of the United States spread out over the tables. Charlie had been marking in arrows and circles places we have been, places we have seen, and the relative strength of the enemy we were facing. Some of the cities had numbers written across them. Charlie had cross-referenced other road maps and had placed relative population numbers on the larger communities. Anything under five thousand he didn’t bother to list.
The three men looked over the map, nodding as they looked at some of the towns. On the bottom of the page, Charlie had written ‘seventy five mil?’” That was a rough estimate of how many zombies were between us and the coast of the Gulf. That was if every single person south of where we were had been turned. Hopefully the number would be a lot less.
“So, John, what was so important? I know you’ve been doing what you do, and the army has been better for it. By the way, there’s a really pissed off guy in Lafayette wanting you arrested for killing his friends,” Ted said.
“His friends were going to be zombies, and he was going to follow right quick if we hadn’t put them down,” I replied, irritated.
“Well, he was annoying enough that we promised to look into it when we caught up with you,” Tom said.
“Oh, really?” I said.
“Yep. I just looked into it, and I’m convinced my first assessment is the correct one. He’s an imbecile,” Tom said.
We all laughed, and I got down to business. I swept a hand over the map. “Anything on the other side of the Appalachians is a waste of time. We don’t have the resources for the number of zombies that are there. Maybe in twenty years when they’ve decayed away, but not today.” I continued, “The only thing we need to do is get the locals to seal off the passes. Shouldn’t be too hard, all things considered.” I brought a hand down to the southern portion of the map. “What we’ve been doing has been good, but it’s too slow. I was thinking about what my crew has been doing, and I think we can actually make it work on a larger scale.”
“How’s that?” Ted said, looking at the area of the map to be covered.
“What we can do is split the army into three parts. A center, right, and left units. Each unit will have two scout vehicles to move ahead when the main force reaches a population center. When moving through the countryside, the force spreads out and covers a greater territory. We can make sure that nearly every house and small community is purged of zombies,” I said. “Plus, we can recruit a lot easier that way.”
“Not to mention deal with the little ‘kingdoms’ that have sprouted up here and there,” Tom said to the nods of the others.
“What I propose is we put one group here.” I pointed to the area just east of the Mississippi, south of Evansville. “They control and contain the area all the way south. Their operations do not go anywhere but in between the river and Interstate 65. I know it spreads out a little toward the full southern end, but that’s the way of it,” I said. “The second group will go from the east side of 65 to the base of the mountains. They will follow that route south until they reach the gulf. Between the two groups, that’s a front nearly three hundred miles wide, and the land will be covered as well as can be expected from the Mississippi River to the Appalachians.”
“What about the major cities?” Tom asked, looking at the map.
“We don’t have the resources to deal with them, that’s the plain and simple fact. There’s too many, and we’re too few. Even if we were fifty thousand strong, we’d not survive a straight on confrontation,” I said. “But we have the resources to protect a crew that will just contain them. Far enough out of the city, a crew will create a barrier of either earth or debris that will contain the zombies. By the time they figure out what’s going on, the damage is done, and they are stuck. I know cities are prime scavenging targets, but they aren’t worth dying for.”
“What about the
third crew?” Tom asked.
“They are going to follow the trail to the north, right down the path of the mountains, then circle back to cover the other half of the trail. The three crews will merge back at the northern end of Indiana, head through Michigan, cross the Upper Peninsula, and swing back south through Wisconsin, and then home,” I said.
It was a bold plan that relied on a lot of things going the right way. The biggest crew that was taking the most risks was the crew heading to the north. There were a lot more populous areas in that direction, and the chances of getting through unscathed were slim.
The three men digested the plan in its entirety. I could see them coming up with questions then answering themselves as they worked out how they would solve their own problems.
“I was thinking we were moving kind of slow,” Haggerty said.
“Agreed. We can pick up recruits along the way, strengthening the army without straining the overall resources,” Hanley said. “So who takes which path?”
Charlie spoke up for that one. “John and I decided that we’d let you three decide which route you wanted to take based on simple personal preferences. Baker, I know you’re from Atlanta, so I figure you might be taking that area on.”
Baker nodded, and I could see him already thinking ahead as to how he was going to approach the city and the surrounding areas.
Ted spoke up. “I have experience with the northern section of the country. My wife’s family lives up there, and we would spend summers traveling through the area.” Ted looked down. “Well, at least we used to.”
Tom snorted. “Well, I guess I’m heading to the river.”
“Do you have any experience with that area at all?” I asked, concerned that he might be slower than normal just trying to get used to the terrain.
“Not much, but I do know a few soldiers that come from that area, and I swear I heard about a Cajun regiment somewhere,” Tom said.
“That’d be in my battalion,” Ted said. “You’re welcome to them. They can make a meal out of anything, and by God if it doesn’t usually taste like something set fire to your mouth.”
I cocked my head. “I’m going to reserve judgment until I see how it all turns out. Since that’s settled, I’m going to leave you three to work out the splitting of the regiments and platoons into three equal chunks.”
The Zombie Wars: Call To Arms (White Flag Of The Dead Book 7) Page 12