The two men practiced what they should say, long forgotten words learned in their youth from grandparents slowly coming back to them. When they finally had it right, Scratch recorded the message then mixed it in at the beginning of the old Paul Revere and the Raiders Indian Reservation song. With a little tweaking and stretching the organ solo a little, it sounded like it belonged. He added their message to a few more songs with Indian themes: Indian Outlaw, Half-breed and Running Bear then put them in rotation. All they could do now was wait and see if the cliff top settlement got the message.
“They’re sending the airplane down to blow up Casey.” Lexi said in a whisper, repeating the story she’d overheard from Cobb, the one he’d made sure she would hear.
Dustin nodded and took the lunch she handed him, her pretense for climbing the wall during his guard shift.
“Hey, I’m going to take ten.” he yelled over to his partner. “You good?”
“Take twenty.” Arnie hollered back. “Nothing going on. I’ll cover for you if Phil shows up for a surprise inspection or something.”
He waved and walked over to a bench that was set up a few containers over. It was sheltered from the sun and had a nice view of the lake. It also got him away from the smell of the five or six zeds that were clawing at the wall. They’d have to eliminate them at shift change. All part of the job. New ones stumbled in every day, chasing after the trucks although not so many anymore. It was more of an aggravation than a threat but they had to clean them up before end of watch or the next crew would complain about it and they’d get reamed out by Phil.
“You going to let Casey know?” Lexi asked, drawing on her courage to confront him about something that had been on her mind for weeks now. She knew she had to say it in a public place, though. If things didn’t go well, she didn’t want to be alone with him.
“Of course, I am.” he replied gruffly, rummaging through the bag for a sandwich. “That’s our job ain’t it?”
“We don’t have to.” she said quietly. “It’s nice here, Dustin.”
He turned to stare at her, a dark look on his face.
“I thought we done talked about this. I thought you knew better.”
There was menace in his voice and she knew it was useless. She could withhold information she learned or tell him flat out lies but he’d find out sooner or later. Even if he didn’t, he was still in a position to do a lot of damage to the town. He could still open the gates and let the Raiders in.
She dropped her eyes and changed the subject.
“You’re right. It’s been so long since we’ve been with the Tribe, it’s easy to forget. I’m going native.” she laughed, but it wasn’t funny.
“They’re taking real good care of the baby at the daycare.” she added to fill the uneasy stillness. “She’s gained some weight and the doctors have fixed that cough.”
“’bout time.” Dustin said, wishing she would have brought him a beer. “Brat was keeping me awake.”
They ate in silence and she thought about choices: the ones she’d made to wind up where she was. She wasn’t a bad person, she just did what she had to do to survive she told herself. The months she’d spent in Lakota had changed her. It was the first time she’d ever lived a normal life. She’d grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, dropped out of school in the ninth grade and fell in with the wrong kind of people. Last year she’d been a gang bangers girl. After the fall, she joined a group of survivors in a warehouse district. The Raiders had attacked, killed most of the people but had taken her prisoner. She lived through it and became one of them. A few months ago, she was a hardcore Raider. She’d paid her dues and had been jumped into the Triple Gunners tribe. She’d adapted to their way of life, had become one of them because she was a survivor. She didn’t want to be a slave or cooked on a spit. She’d done what she had to do to be accepted by them, to become one of Casey’s, and now she was filled with deep sorrow for those things. For the people she’d watched get hurt and turned her head. For allowing the men to use her like she was a piece of meat. She wasn’t the same woman she used to be and he saw her kindness as weakness.
Life was full of hard choices and people can change. Dustin wasn’t going to change, though. Over the past week, she had hinted that maybe they could stop sending reports, stop helping the Raiders, maybe help Lakota win this war. She had never come right out and said it, not like she had today. He had told her to stop being naive. Casey was going to win. The strong always won in the end. Besides, if the do-gooders in Lakota ever found out who they really were, they’d be shot. He’d taught her a lesson just to make sure she got the message loud and clear. He knew how to do it with leaving bruises that showed.
Lexi had become accustomed to their new home. Had grown to love it. Had made real friends, not just glad-handing fake friends like Dustin. Life was easy behind the walls and if Casey took over, it would be mayhem again. They would destroy this town, this perfect little slice of civilization, and within weeks it would be another wasteland encampment without running water or electricity. A bunch of wild men would be doing whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted. She’d smell the sickly-sweet aroma of roasting human flesh again. Casey didn’t have any builders, he only had destroyers.
She couldn’t tell anyone what they were doing, or that she was different now. She couldn’t let anyone know who she had been. She could only imagine the disgust on her friends faces if she told them the truth. Dustin was right. She would be executed as a spy. One of their reports had already cost Lakota a convoy and a handful of men and there was no way to undo the damage. To take it back and tell them she was sorry. The Raiders had known just where to strike, thanks to them. People were dead because of her. The sheriff was hardnosed and she’d already hung a man, right there in her office. They would hang her too if she went to them, told them what she knew. At the very least, they would banish her. They would send her out into the wild on her own and take the baby away. They would put the mark of Cain on her. If there were some way to convince Dustin to abandon the Raiders, they could start being the people they were pretending to be. They could put the past behind them and become real citizens. The baby could grow up and be safe, she wouldn’t worry about anyone abusing her or eating her. Little Sara would have a normal life with school and dances and sleep overs. She’d have a chance at happiness, to be able to choose her future. Lakota could offer her all of that and more. All Casey could offer was a life of drudgery for a woman. She would have to cook and clean and be passed around from man to man when she was old enough. She would grow up hard and mean if she grew up at all.
Lexi had tried to make him see how living in town was so much better. She made his favorite foods but he complained that he wanted some human flesh. She commented on how easy it was to turn the faucet and have a hot bath. He didn’t care and she had to remind him to take one. She had tiptoed around the subject of them joining Lakota and turning away from the old life but he had taught her a lesson in loyalty. Dustin was Casey’s man. He’d never switch sides. He had too much mean in him and he didn’t care about anybody but himself. He would rather be Dirty Dustin, the Triple Gunners Raider with a hair-trigger temper instead of Dustin Cross, the hard-working family man.
He wolfed down his sandwich, ignored the sad woman beside him and was eager to for shift change so he could warn Casey. Warn him to have his guns pointing skyward when they heard the drone of the airplane coming for them.
He stood and she picked up the empty wrappers he’d tossed down when he was finished. He looked at her with a malevolent little gleam in his eye and she knew what that meant. He’d want to have his way with her tonight and teach her a lesson. It was going to hurt.
As they walked, she took his arm in hers and he barely covered his scowl. They were on display. The other guard could see them so he patted her hand and didn’t pull away.
“There’s a school play this weekend.” she said cheerfully, the sound carrying in the still air.
He smiled rig
ht back, playing his part.
“That sounds nice. Do you want to go?”
“Sure.” she said brightly. “Can we go to the barbeque at the Harrisons afterward?”
Dustin just grinned, so forced it looked like it hurt his face and when Arnie looked away, he cruelly pinched her breast, making her pay for making him agree to go to a stupid school function.
She grimaced in pain but didn’t cry out. She knew better. She guided him closer to the side while his mind was preoccupied with thinking of ways to hurt her that didn’t leave marks. None that couldn’t be covered up, anyway. When he realized she had led them to the edge of the container, right above the half dozen undead things, it was too late. Her hold on his arm became iron. He caught the look of fierce determination on her face, the mousey and meek look replaced with angry resolve. She said nothing, just smiled a bitter and satisfied smile then stepped off, pulling him over. His fingers clawed to get out of her grip but it was too late. He screamed all the way down.
“It has begun, your eminence.” The commanding general of the Anubis Armies proudly reported at the banquet table that night.
“Yes?” The Lord of the Jackals asked in a bored voice. “How many towns have you taken, Charles.”
“We will have three by tomorrow.” he answered smugly, throwing a dismissive, sour glance at Ricketts. “My plan to use the undead will work spectacularly, if I do say so myself. Our brave warriors will scale the walls and eliminate the greatest threats to you, my Lord. After I have successfully decimated all of their fighters, all that are left will happily join us and your mighty army grows even faster.”
“Excellent.” The man-god answered and sucked duck juices from his fingers then languidly stretched them out so one of his concubines could place more food in his hand. “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You will be rewarded greatly when we reach Lakota.”
Ricketts burned with anger, wanted to lash out at the corpulent little man who planned on gunning down hundreds, shooting them all in the back. The movement wasn’t supposed to be about absolute control, it was supposed to be about helping people. He’d stopped taking his devil’s breath supplements and none of the food served at the Lords table had any extra chemicals added to it. His mind was clearer than it had been in months and he understood why Scarlet had rebelled. He wanted to join her, to help put an end to the wholesale slaughter and forced slavery religion they had become. They relied more and more on the scopolamine to keep the converts in line, not their belief in the Movement. He kept his head down so they wouldn’t see his smoldering hate and forked a stuffed olive into his mouth. The roasted duck was delicious and the sautéed mushrooms were to die for. He snapped his fingers for more wine and a topless serving girl hurried over to refill it and smiled when he ran his greasy hand over her bottom and squeezed. She was new to the table girls, Anubis was finished with her and she was now free for anyone to have. She was still a little shy and huddled off to one side with a perky Mexican girl, whispering and giggling but watching to see if their services were needed anywhere. She was pretty and at least sixteen, maybe even a little older. Her eyes had that faintly vacant look of complete subservience that was a result of the food sprinkled with devil’s breath. He drank deeply from his goblet, kept his face neutral and listened to the small talk.
Charles, the butt kissing ass wipe, was bragging about his military dominance. Horace was bouncing entertainment ideas around for the victory ball. William plucked a slice of apple from the young girl stretched out on the lazy Susan that rotated slowly at the center of the table. Baily was going on about his plans to add the scopolamine to the drinking water once they arrived in Lakota.
Ricketts saw the decadence of it all and realized something.
He couldn’t give it up.
He wouldn’t try to stop the rapid expansion of the Movement. He could never go join Scarlet and be a rebel. He couldn’t live as a fugitive, eating scavenged food and being out there among the zombies. Who was he kidding? He had the world in the palm of his hand, all he had to do was shut up and follow the rules. He patted the young girls bottom as she refilled his glass, told her to come to his rooms tonight and bring her Hispanic friend. He needed to start taking his supplements again so he would stop thinking. He needed to take his scopolamine before he did something stupid to throw this all away.
“Run it on the second page, below the fold.” Bastille said, handing her the print out about a group of feral children a retriever had come across. “It’s not real news, the drunker he got, the more outlandish the story became. I’m not even sure if I believe any of it.”
“Applesauce does like his drink.” Darcy agreed and made a note.
Bastille thumbed through a small stack of papers with possible stories. He should write something about one of the trains picking up General Carson and the others that had been under Cheyenne mountain but it really wasn’t much of a story yet. It could wait until he interviewed one of them. Besides, Cobb had told him not to print anything about it, he didn’t want anyone knowing they didn’t have satellite coverage anymore. Not that he’d do whatever Cobb told him to do. Freedom of the Press was a first amendment right but he could hold off. There wasn’t much of a story there anyway and there was no reason to get on the old man’s bad side again.
They had more than enough to fill the six-page weekly and if they ever ran short, they’d reprint some comics. People seemed to like them more than the hard-hitting news stories that he splashed across the front page. Like the headline he’d ran when there’d been a mix up with the supply convoy. The headline had read: A TOWN IN CRISIS: TOILET PAPER SHORTAGE MAY LEAD TO PANDEMIC. He followed with an interview with Cobb demanding to know how it had happened. He’d had to edit most of the words out of the response and was lucky to walk away with his recorder intact but he’d gotten to the bottom of the emergency. Somebody was always to blame when there was a screw up and it was his job as journalist, the only one in town, to find out the truth. It seemed most people weren’t nearly as upset about the crisis as he had been. He didn’t want to be the butt of any more jokes so he wasn’t going to run with the wild children as a headline story. People liked animals though, so he’d make sure that part got mentioned.
“Write it as a human-interest story, not real news. Make sure you mention that it’s unverified.” he said.
“Yes, sir.” The only other employee of the Lakota Chronicle agreed. It was getting late, she needed to get home to make dinner for her adopted son. Her own family, like so many others in Lakota, had been killed during the first weeks. The parentless kids who survived were quickly taken in and cared for by the others. The routine of everyday life helped them all adjust and it didn’t take long before everyone had settled into jobs and homework, chores and volunteer service. She was a little too old to have any more children of her own and wasn’t sure if she wanted to. Providing she found a good man, of course. She’d taken in a young boy who’d been discovered by the truckers. He was fourteen, had been on his own in a strip mall for months and reminded her of her own lost son. She’d been a full-time mother, part time Walmart cashier and didn’t have any of the skills that so many of the other survivors had. She’d managed the HOA website in her community though and was responsible for putting together the newsletters for her Boy Scout troop and the PTA. She’d shyly asked Mr. Bastille if he needed help one morning when they happened to be having breakfast at the same time in the Sunshine café.
She’d been with him ever since and recently he’d started taking her to the Friday night movie at the Roxy and they’d spent a day on the lake with her new son. Bastille liked the kid and slowly, she hoped, they would become a couple, a family.
“I want the interview with Eustice Wilkins on the front page. You have a good picture of him with the airplane, right?”
“Yes.” she answered. “He and Lieutenant Cobb.”
Bastille eyed his assistant as he scanned the photos. Most of them were of the young Lieutenant. The young, handso
me, available lieutenant who wasn’t currently dating anyone.
“Okay.” he said and pointed one out that captured the two men in front of the old bi-plane. “Use this one and see if you can get an interview with whoever is re-cutting the football games. I think that will be a huge story if they have access to all the footage.”
She nodded and scribbled down some notes. She didn’t care much for sports but the games seemed to have most of the men excited. Someone at the Tower was pulling footage of past games off the internet, splicing them with different plays and different outcomes and it was seamless, like it was live, like it was really happening. Whoever was doing it claimed it was computer generated wins and losses based on fantasy football stats and they were going to put together a whole season, including a Superbowl. Only the computer knew the winner and the first game aired had been a smash hit, the two bars that had access to it were standing room only. The world was getting back to normal when there was time for tailgate parties. If you never left town, it was easy to forget that anything bad had happened.
“We need to write an article about the Navy settling in on San Clemente.” she said. “All the remaining ships are anchored there and they’re rebuilding the island.”
“We need a little more to run with.” Bastille said. “Try to find out anything else, poke around the courthouse tomorrow, see if you can get that idiot Scratch talking. He seems to know a lot about everything but always clams up around me.”
“You want I should ask Jeremy to catch him at the bowling alley? He’s always there playing video games, maybe he can get something out of him.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea, Darcy.” Bastille nodded and squeezed her hand. “He’s a been a big help around here, he seems to have a nose for the news business. We’ll make a reporter out of him, yet.”
She smiled and wondered if he noticed her new perfume. She was pretty sure he’d noticed the new pushup bra she’d picked up at the boutique. She’d caught him sneaking peeks. It certainly helped her fill out the blouse she’d chosen to wear for their meeting. The low cut one that would have seemed downright scandalous in her previous life.
Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache Page 12
