by catt dahman
“Now, this is when the stories get interesting and will show you our theory about your Reconstruction Army is true,” Derek told them. They met people with stories, but they also had seen strange things for themselves.
Sometimes people would be in groups, and they did terrible things to those they found. They raped, tortured, killed, and ate humans. But they looked like normal people; they infected those they raped or bit.”
“But there are bad people out there in the world:before and now,” Len argued.
“Before Z day, how many would do those things?One in a few hundred? Seriously. With so few survivors, does it make sense that so many are just criminally insane and capable of those things?
The RA was a big group. Did you have that many bad men just waiting around who happened to be immune to the infection and then they just joined up? To have fifty of them is bad, you’d have to have...what…ten thousand survivors?”
Mark looked over to Len. Matt did the math again. Quite a few were with the RA, and all of them were violent to the point that they committed unspeakable actions.
Julia spoke, “That is way too high of a number. We didn’t have that many around here when that army got together.”
“They were all from the prisons then,” Mark replied.
“That would be a lot of prisoners immune in the first place and then able to get out,” Len thought out loud.
Jessie nodded. Several times, they had seen dirty, rage-filled people who attacked them for no reason, and if they got to them, they raped, killed, and then bit the victim who was then infected.
“They were zoms,” Matt said.
“No. They were not zoms. They screamed, ranted, and raged. Zoms don’t scream obscenities. Zoms don’t run either. Zoms don’t flank their prey, use weapons, or think,” Jessie said, “and they don’t scream in pain, back away from weapons, or run away when they are injured.”
“Then, they were humans,” Beth said, “the people were infected because…contamination or something. The people were infected from something else?”
“I saw it for myself,” Jessie said. He explained: “Two ran at them, yelled jumbled words. One was bitten before they killed the two.
Alongside, two more flanked them and jumped out of the alleyway. This was an ambush. One tried to rape a woman; it was killed, but its blood went all over her face.
The other was killed quickly. Both the man bitten and the woman with blood in her mouth and eyes turned and were destroyed.
They met others with similar stories.
“The RA, some of the members may not have been what they were, but they had the inoculation, and, therefore, were more violent and allowed themselves to give in to more base instincts.”
“If that is so…not saying I think either way…not all hybrids are that way,” Matt said, “I mean….”
“Carla and Robbie. They did terrible things and attacked people. They were hybrids,” Kim recalled. He traveled with the pair, unaware they were inoculated.
Carla and Robbie both were brutal killers, but Kim thought they were just tough fighters until they went crazy and attacked people of the compound. They caused the death of Len’s girlfriend, Maryanne and her adopted daughter, Toni.
Beth killed Carla and Robbie for that. Kim remembered how Carl was prone to fits of temper and irritability, quick to leap into a fight, kill people, and eat them as well.Beth also had hidden that information from Kim.
“Ponce?” Matt asked. He thought back. Did the man do things strange and violent? How would they know since he was in and out of Hopetown?
“No. I haven’t seen anything,” Kim said, “I don’t know though.”
“Hannah?” Matt asked.
Beth looked at Kim, her heart beating faster. Andie, before she died, accused Hannah of terrible things, including killing her parents, brother, and sister when they weren’t infected.Andie even found proof that Hannah killed a woman who kept criticizing Hannah, but it could have been an accident or so Beth told herself.
Beth never asked Hannah about it. Hannah did enjoy chopping zombies and bad humans with a sword; she loved the hunt.
And for a fact, Hannah violently dispatched the doctor and guard who inoculated her against her will and were proud of it. The bastards needed that for forcing people
to take an untested treatment.
Jet, Hannah’s adopted older brother and adopted son of Beth and Kim, finally spoke. He didn’t tell them that in a mission, he thought Hannah and Ponce ate some
of a dead girl to stop the cravings; that was the stuff of nightmares, but he did add some remarks. “We know Hannah has…moments. It could be the hard time she had as a child…or maybe the serum…or both.”
Beth reached for Jet’s hand. He loved Hannah and had been her biggest defender until they went out and he saw her as someone else.
“Have you seen many who are inoculated?”
Jessie nodded. “Way too many. They gave that shit out a lot.” He looked down. “It’s hard when you have a child like that...looks normal…I’m not a doctor. But I think in some people, the serum makes them more Red than human. Their children are more deadly, I think. Maybe.”
“Enough breeding and they could become a dominant species,” Mark said. “That’s very dangerous for us if they are more violent and act out. They’re like fast, smart zoms.”
“Who can pass for humans?”
“Interesting how we say humans to mean us. Like they aren’t humans now,” Julia said to Beth. She knew Beth had problems with the fact Hannah wasn’t a human.
“What do we do about Hannah and Ponce? I can say that no one is going to kill my sister unless…you know…she does something we all see,” Jet said.
“I knew Adam. He was the man who was here and was part of mom’s being shot.Dad hunted him down, and Matt took care of him,” Jet explained to the three men.
“Adam was cool when we met. But he changed. I think that before, he was a
very good person; the inoculation changed him.”
“Imagine that Diamond used that damned disease and altered it; what kind of person injects people with anything to do with being a zom? How could anyone take humanity from a person and leave that person alive like that?” Julia was almost yelling. “Chingada Madre.”
“That’s my Jules talking sweet….” Len laughed.
“Some are like Reds from the beginning, and some gradually change. The things
in their brains take over in time,” Derek said, “you are here, and you take in new people. How do you know who is secretly a Pink?”
“They have a number on their necks,” Beth said. She knew because she was the one who removed the tattoo from Hannah’s neck to protect her.
“Not all. And the kids don’t. In ten years, we are fucked,” Derek said.
Mark thought: No way could he convince 2500 people not to allow anyone else in and telling them that they might have hybrids, or Pinks, with them already.
They had a time bomb ticking. “Do you realize the work involved in clearing highways of cars and rubble from here to the coast? And then the zooms and the hybrids. And there’s the packing? We’d have a wagon train of a mile or more.And we would have to decide who would go with us and who stayed?”
“And Hannah and Ponce could not join us,” Jet said, “that’s what it would mean.”
“Would it help to tell you we have figured out the gasoline and can make it usable with additives, and then you can drive?”
“Wow,” Mark whispered.
“This is something we all have to think about and talk over. Can we plan to meet with you same time tomorrow?” Len asked the three visitors.
They nodded. Jet asked Manuel, “Would you like me to tell you about what a hero Juan was and things he did?”
“Very much.”
“I am gonna go with them, show them more things, and tell Manuel about Juan. Mom…Dad…whatever you decide is fine by me. Just make sure it is what Matt wants, too. And Mark. And Len.”
He grinned. They left the room.
For a few minutes, they all stared at one another, and then they all spoke at the same time. Finally, they began to discuss what they heard and the possibility of leaving.
Chapter 25
First Trade Route: Texas: State Line Clear Route to the Coast
Len presented the facts to the community, and as expected, a division of opinion existed. He was serious when he told them some would be going out to clear roads and would make a clear route to the coast.
“I can’t keep people from following, but some of us are going on and settling some other places, and only a few will be welcome there. It’s the way it needs to be in order to clear this state. First Texas, and then the whole United States. We’ll take it back.”
Some cheered over that.
“Is Mark going?”
Len dreaded that one. “He hasn’t decided, but if he does, then we’ll find a new Governor, and we ask that everyone nominate someone; then, we’ll vote. The idea is to have the settlements work together. Zooville….” He chuckled at the name. “Zooville is our sister settlement. We need more like that.”
“What if we have hybrids here already?”
Another difficult question. “I hope they are honest with us. You all know the stance on crime. If someone gets violent and you think he is a hybrid, then isolate him.
If he turns rabid, you know what to do. We are leaving capable people to handle any settlement we set up. But this is our calling: to set up more and take our state back.”
There was a lot of chatter then. Len looked to Mark, who shrugged. The idea of clearing roads was daunting, hundreds of miles to clear. Then, they would have a wagon train a mile long and be exposed. A few places would be found to camp safely. They would have children to protect.
Mark spoke, “If we continue this way, we will have this, but what will happen? It’s large, and people will split opinions. We can’t stay in this small area and let the zombies have the rest of the world. We deserve to have it all back.”
“We were the original group that formed the US Militia and fought hard to make a safe place. We lost some good people along the way. We owe it to those brave people who gave their lives to expand and not just survive but to thrive,” Len said.
“Imagine a trade route. People on the coast can bring in salt, fish, and sand that we need. From here, you grow fruit trees and have cattle. Over at Zooville, the members have sheep and wool. We can do better.”
Someone called out, “We have enough to support a few other settlements until they can get going. I know some fresh shrimp would taste mighty fine.”
There was laughter after that.
Len and Mark sat for hours with Matt, Jet, and the rest, offering ideas for building the vehicles that Jessie and his team said they could run with modifications to the fuel.
The main idea-man was named Max, and he was old enough to remember the Mad Max movies that Jet was too young to remember. Each time Jet came up with an idea, someone would yell, “Do it, Mad Max.” Since they wanted Max to fabricate Jet’s good plans for vehicles.
Despite the fact that the main group reinforced the knowledge of how dangerous
it was outside the fences and added that some of the creatures were fast and deadly
and tried not to encourage anyone to go south, people were interested. Some initial
concern was that there would be an exodus, but many wanted to stay and hold a safe
area; the ones who wanted to go seemed to be the same people who started this
compound.
Len made the team’s schedules but wasn’t fully happy that Rae and Rev were with him. He appreciated the help and trusted them to work in sync with him better than just about anyone else, but they were a couple and had children, which was not what he asked for. He asked for team members without children.
Carl, DeVon, and Rae drove the big trucks, pushed stranded cars and trucks out of the way and off onto the side of the road while the rest either walked the road or rode in the backs of other trucks with rifles at the ready. They also had long spears that were effective at putting down a few zombies when they shambled forward.
“Where did Rae learn to drive?” Len asked as she joined them for a water break.
“Not in the US,” Rev said, and the men did a high-five.
“You have made that same joke a dozen times,” said Rae and gave them dirty looks
as she stabbed a zed in the eye; it was twitching on the pavement while the men watched.
She stabbed him again.
“I didn’t know we had to stab them in the balls after scrambling their eyes,” Len noted, “did you know?”
“I do now,” Rev said, “maybe the joke is getting old.”
Rae patted his shoulder. “Good man.”
“Good sized group ahead…Ponce and I have it if we can borrow a driver,” Hannah said. Since the debacle with her following Adam, his argument with her mother, then Andie shooting Beth, and her father, Kim, hunting her down, she was on her best behavior.
With the information about the inoculated hybrids going bad, she knew she might be tossed out of the group at any time, never to see her family again. Honestly, she worried that the inoculation made her do things she normally wouldn’t have done.
“On it.” Mad Max and Jet jumped into a truck so Hannah and Ponce could get
in the back.
Max counted seven moaning and stumbling over their own feet. Not often would just two fighters approach seven creatures to battle them, but then no one else was immune like Hannah and Ponce. Swinging her sword, Hannah split open two heads in
a second or two while John Ponce used a spear to stab one in its eye; the woman he
hit stopped in mid-moan as she fell to the ground, her tattered clothing bagging around her. The jellied brains and slimy blood made an unclear furious stench.
When Ponce felled another zombie, breaking its legs like old twigs, Max drove closer so the wheel of the truck crushed its skull. The closer reach enabled Jet to poke
at one near his window and push it to the ground where his sister split the head open.
A small zombie of indeterminate age or gender, covered with dried bodily fluids, and moaning, fell over its own feet so Max was able to angle over and drive over the skull with a satisfying thick crunch. Hannah got the last one, a naked man who was emaciated and purple with bruises or filth.
Ponce yelled to her, “Heads up, Hannah.” He saw the man who came at them,
but it took a few seconds to realize what he was seeing. Then, it was as if time stopped as he took in the sight.
The man wasn’t filthy, but his clothing was dirty and faded: cargo pants, a long sleeved shirt with a few torn-away buttons. Because his feet were bare, they were beaten up badly with two of the smallest toes on his left foot torn off long before and now partially healed. The other foot was scraped and looked puffy with some sort of infection. It oozed pus as he walked. Scraped raw and dirt-caked, his hands had one pinky and one thumb half-removed.
His face was a study in horror: shaggy hair was matted and tuck on his face; lips were ripped, mashed, and in some places, missing; tip of his nose was gone, so it had grown over in a rounded blob in places and was open in others. His eyes were those from nightmares. They were so far gone into insanity that they glittered and danced with impulses, taking in everything and nothing at all. There wasn’t so much cruelty
in those blue orbs as there were chaos and pure hatred. Everywhere on his face were the white lines of old and new scars against sun-bronzed flesh.
He wasn’t a creature with slow reactions and stupid brain functions; he wasn’t
a human with interest and knowledge.
Ponce could imagine this man in an airplane, going down, but laughing maniacally as he aimed at a schoolyard of children. He was a portrait of hunger.
Hannah took a step back. As she saw his face, she imagined this thing as herself.
If the serum worked its
way into her brain wrong and if she were, at heart, a bad person, then this was what she would become: a running, filthy, vaguely-thinking hunter of anything or anyone warm blooded. She would shred her own face and body for a kill. Shivering violently, she took a second to get her breath, and the thing was almost on her; Ponce ran at them, lowered his shoulder and pumped his legs for a hard tackle.
Falling hard, the zombie knocked Hannah down with him. Jet was out at once, yelling at the man and waving his arms, but the zombie lowered his head and nipped
at Hannah as she pushed him away. “Is that all you have?” She was crying and laughing at the same time.
She might have tasted the same as his victims before, but her laughter confused the man; he stopped and stared at Hannah; prey didn’t react this way. They either fought back or screamed, or both, but they didn’t laugh. Ponce used that hesitation to send his spear into the man’s eye socket and then wiggle it brutally as he cursed the creature that was a hybrid.
“Ponce, he is us,” Hannah said, still in tears as Jet gave her a hand up.
Jet slapped her hard enough to sting but not hard enough to really hurt. “Say that shit again, and I’ll beat your ass.” He walked away with a salute to her and Ponce. He was one of the few people who could get through her thick skull when he needed for her to understand something.
As John Ponce cleaned her wound, he smirked. “Got a slap, huh? Teach ya some manners.”
Hannah gave him a weak smile but thought Ponce was scrubbing the wound with more enthusiasm than was required to prevent infection from the dirty teeth. The injury was no more than a scratch but could become septic easily. She might be immune to Red, but she wasn’t safe from a regular infection, and bites were always a problem, even back before Z day.
“I never knew anyone could be so rough in applying antiseptic cream…wow.
That is only eclipsed by your painful bandaging.”
In the truck, Max asked Jet, “All okay? You gave her a hard pop.”
“She needed it. That fast bastard would have taken one of us out if we had frozen.”
“I would have been out there to help, but Len, Mark, and Matt lectured us for