by David Rogers
“Why don’t you just hold off on the fence?” Darryl asked her, working hard to keep his tone from drifting into accusation or challenge.
“Because if we get the fence finished, that’ll free up hundreds that don’t have to guard the perimeter.” one of the men said. Glancing at him, Darryl noticed a badge was pinned on his belt next to a holstered pistol. “The construction teams are doubling as guards too, so like it or not we need them in place to both work and guard. With how many zombies we’re having to deal with, if we slack off on patrols the streets are going to be covered in them bastards in no time.”
“You could seal up some buildings maybe.” Darryl tried.
“We considered it, but the safest option is to keep them completely out of the town. If we let them get a foothold, we could be split up by buildings and blocks and people will start starving to death while trapped. We don’t have any places big enough to put both people and supplies together. Not in the numbers we’re dealing with. We’ve got to keep the town safe for distribution.”
“Before the news dropped out, word was Athens was already crawling with zombies.” Darryl said, trying to think. There were other towns in the area, but getting to them and back would take a while. Quick runs in and out might not be an issue, maybe, but he knew without even having any actual clue as to the real numbers Watkinsville needed a lot of food. Fast. And the Dogz couldn’t afford to wait either, because if Vivian was right, their sick didn’t have long.
What news Darryl knew had been coming hadn’t been too focused on smaller towns. The Dogz hadn’t scouted that far out because they hadn’t needed to. Even if a way to get to one and back quickly, with food, could be found; there was no guarantee those towns weren’t already having their own problems. Survivors in those areas could have stripped the stores by now, or there could be zombies infesting them. Or worse; both. It could be a big waste of time none of them could afford to spend without result.
Athens was close, but it was dangerous. That same danger probably ensured the stores there hadn’t been looted. Who had time to do that when the streets were a macabre horror show buffet? Zombies were an issue around here, but nothing like some of the images coming out of Athens had shown. Not even close.
“Have you scouted Athens?” Darryl asked as his thoughts raced, trying to find a solution. The Dogz hadn’t bothered getting very close to the town; they’d had plenty of other, safer, pickings that hadn’t required chancing the university town.
“Yesterday.” Merrill replied. “We’ve got a couple of semi-trucks, and we sent one up with the people we thought we could spare. They shot their way to within two miles of Loop 10 before they had to stop.”
“You fucking kidding me?” Low said.
Darryl gave him a sharp look that oozed angry threat, and the other biker fell silent. Turning back to the mayor, he frowned. “How many did you send?”
“Forty.” the man with the badge said. “Four trucks, the semi, and six cars; all full of armed men. We ran into a fucking wall of bodies there was no way through. We barely got the semi turned around so we didn’t have to leave it behind.”
“I trying to be reasonable, and I need to make a deal, but if forty guys can’t get through, I don’t see what adding my thirty are gonna change. We ain’t brought no truck full of ammo, just what we can carry. We bikers, not soldiers.”
“It’s not just getting through. We have to get the truck loaded too. With forty guys, I didn’t see a way to do that while holding everything off at the same time. I think we could have probably shot our way in, but holding safe on the store while trying to grab food, then getting back out . . . that wasn’t going to happen. Not with what we had. Not with as few as we had.”
“Craig’s the new Chief of Police.” Merrill said, gesturing at the man with the badge. “He’s in charge of all our militia.”
“Forty or seventy, it still sound like a real good way to get killed.” Darryl said reluctantly.
“Here, look at this.” Craig said, reaching into his back pocket and producing a folded paper sheaf Darryl recognized instantly as a road map. Going over to one of the trucks, Craig started spreading it out on the hood. Darryl and the others followed, several of the Watkinsville people reaching to hold the map’s edges down against the light breeze.
“We tried to go up US-441.” Craig said, tracing the road that ran north past to the west of Watkinsville before it hit the main highway that encircled Athens, commonly referred to as the Loop or Loop 10. “Here’s where we had to turn around. But I was thinking, if we came in from Daniells Bridge, it lets us stay more to the edge of the city.”
“There ain’t no way to get from there over to the Loop.” Darryl objected as he followed the man’s finger. The indicated road didn’t intersect with the ring road around Athens. Instead it turned west and ran away from the city along US-29. “We was messing around out this way a few days ago.” he continued, tapping US-29. “There was a lot of zombies all over it.”
“No, see, on the map the two roads don’t meet, but I’ve been a deputy out here for two years. This stretch here is just grass.” the man said, indicating where Daniells Bridge curved away from the Loop. “Not even a ditch, and there’s no guard rail or anything either. Even the semis can get across it if they take it easy.”
“Okay, so you can get on the Loop.” Darryl allowed. “There still gonna be zombies.”
“Yeah, but look.” Craig’s finger moved a little inside the Loop where he’d indicated they could get onto it. Along Highway 29, which continued along through Athens. “There’s a supermarket here, another one a few blocks further, and a Wal-Mart a few blocks past that. We can make the Loop and take the exit that’s right there. That puts us at the first store almost immediately. We’ll barely be in Athens at all at that point.
“We hit the store, and get around to the back, where the loading dock is. Clear the area behind the store and use the cars as barricades to seal it off. You fellas hold the fort while we go in and load up.”
“Us?” Darryl asked, again keeping his tone conversation and without skepticism with effort.
“I told you, we can’t load and fight at the same time. But with you, we can clean out the store while you’re holding the trucks and loading area safely so we can work. I’m not asking for a frontal assault; just a holding action from a fixed position.”
Darryl gave the map a long look, carefully eying the roads and studying the distances. He felt eyes on him as he found the map’s scale bar down in the corner and put his thumb on it before taking some rough measurements of the distances involved. Finally he stepped back from the truck. There was no way to know how many zombies might be there, but the man was right about how quick it should be to get across the Loop and to the store. The spot was in Athens, but only on the edge.
Pulling his cigarettes out, he tapped one free and stuck it in his mouth before trading the pack for his Zippo and lighting up. Having everyone watching him, waiting on him to decide, was more than a little unnerving. It was beyond strange, and definitely uncomfortable. What made him better suited than anyone else to pick a path? But waiting they were. On him.
“What about the front doors? On the stores?” Darryl asked as he exhaled, trying to keep his voice calm and even to avoid betraying the hesitation and uncertainty twisting at him.
“What about them?”
Darryl shrugged. “If they open, and there zombies roaming around, they gonna come in the front at everyone through the store. That fuck up what you trying to do, and put us all where we gonna be surrounded.”
“We’ve got a lot of vehicles we can burn on this.” one of the other Watkinsville men said. “At least forty off the top of my head. Enough that five or ten can be left blocking the front of the store to stop anything from getting in that way. They don’t even have to be guarded, or retrieved when you’re done.”
“In fact, it’s probably better if they aren’t.” Craig nodded. “Everything we’ve seen says the zombies are i
nvariably drawn to people. Cars will keep them from wandering in, at least not in any great numbers, and we aren’t planning to go advertising our presence inside the store. If we can get to the back dock, and if the store itself isn’t crammed full of zombies, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“How long to load a truck?” Tank asked skeptically. Darryl glanced at him, then back to the ‘police chief’.
“We’ve got the trucks because they’re owned by guys who live in town.” Craig said. “They say they usually spend less than an hour at a store when they make a delivery.”
“An hour?” Darryl asked, this time unsuccessful at keeping the rising note of concern out of his voice. “I went to UGA you know. Athens had something like a hundred thousand people in it. Even figuring on a lot of dead-dead ones, you talking about a shit-ton of zombies wandering around. We squat there for an hour, we might be stuck until we run out of ammo and get swarmed under.”
“We won’t be there an hour.” Craig said quickly. “Half that, tops. Thirty minutes. I’m going on this trip when we make it, and I don’t want to get trapped any more than you do. Trust me, we ain’t going to twiddle our thumbs while we’re in there. And we’re bringing our own boxes and pallets, plus we’ve got a forklift for each truck. It’ll go quick, especially since we’re only interested in getting food and less on being neat about it.”
“Now you want to go in with both trucks?”
“Well, yeah. If we can get in with one, there’s no reason we can’t do it with two. Saves a second trip and brings back twice the food.”
“Twice the risk.” Darryl sighed.
“Mister . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” the mayor began, then looked at him questioningly.
“Darryl Jacobs. Call me DJ.”
“Mr. Jacobs, we don’t have a whole lot of choice about this. We’ve got people to feed and keep safe. This is the only real option we can think of for doing all of that without getting surrounded and cut off by a horde of zombies. And leaving the rest of the town to either starve to death or get turned into a second Athens as them damn corpses get through the barricades and start beating on all the buildings here. Obviously if you and Craig get there and find thousands of zombies, it’s not going to work. But with your help, it should be possible.”
Darryl sighed again, then shrugged slowly. “We need to talk it over for a minute.”
“Take all the time you need.” Merrill said graciously.
“We ain’t got a whole lot of time neither.” Darryl told her, then jerked his head at the Dogz with him. He headed back to the bikes and made a come here gesture with his hands. The bikers crowded into a circle and Darryl looked around at the faces.
“They want us to run guard for them to go into the edge of Athens and bring back two trucks full of food.”
“Semi-trucks.” Tank added.
“Yeah, right. Big rigs.” Darryl agreed. “They got a way in that look okay to me, but I don’t see how there ain’t gonna be anything less than a whole lot of shooting. They thinking in and out in like half an hour, but they trying to sell it is what I think. We probably talking about an hour, maybe more, for them to get what they need into them trucks.”
“Into Athens?” 180 asked.
“How many zombies they talking about?” Juice wondered.
“A lot.” Stick said flatly.
“What’s a lot?”
“Hundreds.” Darryl admitted. “They say they won’t push through with it if there more, but we sit on them stores for an hour and who knows what gonna happen. We could end up dealing with a lot more than just hundreds.”
“Man.”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck DJ, an hour?”
“Against how many?”
Darryl waved his hand for silence. “The way they’re telling it, they as desperate as we are. They ain’t got enough food to feed themselves. I can try to talk them into something else, but they seem real eager for this to happen. I ain’t for sure they gonna want anything else we got to offer.
“How we gonna take on all the zombies in Athens?” Burnout asked.
“Yeah, we ain’t got that much ammo.” Goat pointed out.
“I know. I handle that one. But we ain’t got a lot of choice unless we gonna go back and start digging graves.” Darryl said.
“Fuck that, we can make some more runs and keep looking for whatever Vivian say she need.”
Tank stepped forward. “You think she and DJ ain’t already thought of that?” he demanded, glaring at everyone, but particularly at Weasel. “Why you think we here if there something else we could be trying?”
“We got brothers depending on us.” Darryl told them as Weasel squirmed uneasily under Tank’s gaze. “Tell me now, who willing to go along with this? Because if you ain’t, then you turning your back on the Dogz. We ain’t got time to fuck around. You either in, or you all the way out.”
“The fuck?”
“For real?”
Darryl nodded soberly. “No shit. This how it is. Throw in or you gone. There ain’t no other way it can go. Get on your ride, or you gonna help make this happen so we can get their doctor over to the house.”
The faces staring back at him varied from calm and serious clear through to scared and nervous, with multiple stops along the way between the two extremes. Darryl waited, projecting the toughest, most matter-of-fact expression he knew how. Seconds ticked by and turned into half a minute, and no one spoke. No one moved. Finally Darryl nodded.
“Alright, we doing this. For the Dogz.”
“Dogz first.” Tank said.
“Dogz forever.” Evil said, louder.
“Dogz!”
“Yeah, for the Dogz.”
“Hang tight.” Darryl said, flashing a fierce grin to disguise the fear twisting his heart. He meant every word he’d said, but that didn’t mean what was on order didn’t scare the shit out of him. There just wasn’t any other way that looked possible.
Darryl went back over to the Watkinsville group and shrugged. “Okay, here the offer. We ride with you and do this, but we got conditions.”
“Now—”
“Tim, shut up!” Merrill said quickly.
“Dottie—”
“I’m the mayor, and I said you’re out of order. Shut up.” she snapped at him. Craig turned and gave Tim a long look, and the man subsided unhappily. Facing Darryl again, the mayor gestured for him to continue. “I’m listening.”
“First, your doc’s gonna be rolling out with us when we get back, whether or not the thing worked. This your plan, not ours; so if we go, when your people and us get back, the doc gonna head over to our house and get to work. If nobody come back, then he still gotta go over there tonight and fix our people.”
Merrill nodded. “I understand.”
“Second, you gotta supply cars and ammo for us or this a no go. We ain’t riding bikes into no damn zombie horde, and we ain’t bring the kind of ammo you talking about using up on this. We looking at needing enough ammo for a lot of shooting, at least two hours of killing. You say you can load quick, and that fine, but you just assuming it gonna go quick. It don’t, and we all gonna be there longer. That means we probably be fighting off zombies longer, and that means bullets.”
“We’ve got weapons and ammo, what we’re short on is able bodies who aren’t too rattled or shocked to be effective.” Craig told him. “Whatever you need short of explosives and flamethrowers, we can have here in less than fifteen minutes.”
“Third, we gonna want a long term arrangement with your doc. This work out, and after you and us all back on our feet, there can’t be no emergency shit and last minute negotiations like we all stuck fucking with now. Doc needs to be on-call if we run into medical problems.”
“That’s—”
“Fine.” Merrill finished, overriding the abrasive Tim once more. “That’s just fine. We’ll be looking for ongoing support on a variety of issues, including the possibility of longer ranged supply runs
to places less dangerous than Athens. If your club is willing to support us on those, which will be scheduled and planned days in advance, then we can make medical expertise available on a regular basis and for emergencies.”
“You give us notice and include us in the planning, and a share of what get brought back, and we can put at least as many guys as we got here now into anything like that you come up with.” Darryl said.
“That’ll work out just fine.” The mayor repeated, cocking her head at him calmly, politely. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Darryl said, ignoring the slightly strangled noise Tim made behind her. “I gonna send one guy back to our crib with word of what we doing, and the deal. We doing this because we need help, and you want us to do it because you need help. Your doctor don’t show up tonight, and . . . I ain’t gonna say the Dogz can take on your whole town, but they gonna be looking to make life as fucked for you as they can.”
“Threats is it?” Tim sneered.
“Facts.” Darryl said, finally giving into his emotions and letting his voice go dangerously flat. “What you asking like to get us in a world of shit. We doing it because our people need help. The price we charging is they gonna get help; you getting the food back ain’t the price. Us going the price. We gonna stick with you, but your doc gotta fix our people whether or not your plan work out. It your plan, not ours.”
“Mr. Jacobs, I respect that, and Watkinsville agrees.” Merrill said, holding her hand out.
Darryl reached and shook. “Okay then, what we standing around for. Daylight burning.”
* * * * *
Jessica
Sun on her face woke Jessica. She raised her head and glanced around. The bedroom was peaceful, and quiet. The armoire was still in place before the door, and when she listened for several seconds she heard nothing except a faint wheezing. Candice lay tucked in between her and Austin, though before the girl had dropped off Jessica had done what she could to make sure the girl would flop over against her and not the injured bodyguard.