The next door had at least one thriller stuck behind it. It had heard the gunshot in the family room and was frantic to feast. Bill shot a line of bullets across the door, and the pounding stopped. Q shouldered the door open, and Jake and Terry came in to finish what Bill had taken out at the knees. It was an office with attached library. A large mahogany desk dominated the far wall, with windows behind it. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the wall to the left, and there was a bar there, next to the desk. Halfway down the same wall was a small square library that was empty. In the corner immediately next to the office entrance was a seating area with two high-back leather chairs and a small table in between. The five thrillers had been alive at the time they’d gone in, and at least one had turned and attacked the others. There was dried blood—and presumably piss from the smell—on the Turkish rug laid across the center of the room.
Upstairs, the first door they came to was a guest room with two thrillers, a male and female. The next room was empty and looked like it belonged to a teenage girl. In the master suite was a female body on the floor of the bathroom, lying face up. Her neck had been eaten away, and the vertebrae between the jaw and the clavicle were exposed. She also had defensive bite marks on her hands and forearms. Bill shot her in the head, as she hadn’t reanimated yet. This made Bill’s stomach clench and burn as his heart sank.
“Guys, I think I’m going to be sick. We could have avoided this.”
“Yea, the one in the family room was just reanimating as we walked in,” Q agreed.
“Fuck, man, how am I going to tell Charity? If we hadn’t fucked around in Montgomery for a fucking day, we could have saved her goddamned fucking family. From the looks of it, I would guess aunts and uncles were here too. Jesus fucking Christ, what a fucking shit show this turned into. She told me her family was pretty close and she was the black sheep for moving away to start a career. This is my fucking fault.”
“Bro, don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“No, that’s not how this fucking shit works. You are all looking to me to be a leader. I don’t know what I did to deserve that honor, but at the same time, making mistakes gets people fucking killed, and I have to fucking live with that shit.”
“Yea, I get it, but we talked about it before you made the announcement to stay there for the day. Again, nobody argued with you because they knew that it was the right thing to do. We needed the break, and everyone could see the benefit of it and how it would save our own lives.”
“You’re right. I just hope she forgives the fuck out of me. I’ve really started to value her friendship.”
Back down the hallway, the other guest room and game room were clear. Bill was not shocked by the contents of the game room after seeing the rest of the house. A pool table dominated the center of the room, and a dart board had been set up so the throwing lane was along the narrow side of the pool table at the far end of the room. There were also three classic pinball machines standing along the exterior wall, with a window looking onto the neighbor’s house between two of them. The house was clear, and they could hear sporadic gun fire from outside.
The four headed back out to find re-dead here and there. Charity was in hysterics, crying and in Anna's embrace at this point, because one was her cousin, one her brother, and a third was her dad. The others she didn't know, but she presumed they were country club members based on clothing choice for a Saturday morning. It was now clear to Bill why the back door was open.
“Char, I’m sorry. There was no one alive inside.”
She just nodded, threw her arms around Bill’s neck, and squeezed him tightly. They stood like that for a while. His feet started to ache from standing in one spot for so long before she finally let go.
“Please come with me. I need to see who was here so I can say goodbye.”
“Sure. You know I’m here for you, and now I always will be.”
In the living room was an aunt, uncle, and two cousins. The lady in the family room was married to her favorite uncle, and he was one of the five in the office. Once they got to the master suite, she held her mother’s body as her whole body was wracked with sobs once again. Bill closed the bathroom door on his way out to give her some privacy and time to grieve. He waited in the bedroom because he promised he wouldn’t be far. After she re-emerged, they walked down the hall to her old bedroom. Her mom had kept it just the way Charity had left it so many years ago. The walls were adorned with awards won in high school and posters of a pop star. Just like he’d already noticed, it was a teenager’s room in a perfect family.
“Well, it’s official. I’m an orphan now,” Charity said, a little more composed but with puffy, red eyes.
“Yes, while that may be true, it happens to all of us at some point.”
“But it’s not supposed to happen when you’re thirty years old,” she replied, and then she broke down again.
“It’s going to be all right. Everyone has lost someone, some more than others, and some more will still be lost along the way. The best we can do at this point is live each day to the fullest. What do you say we go get to know our new friends that picked us today?”
With a slight nod and a sniffle, she slipped her hand in his, and they walked side by side back outside.
Night watch was posted, and everyone else sat or stood in Charity’s parents’ dining room. The room was dimly illuminated by a single hurricane lamp in the center of the table. Jane went around and made sure that all the curtains were closed so they didn’t attract any thrillers with the light. The bodies of her deceased relatives had been moved out to the fairway behind the house. Nobody had the time nor energy to give them a proper burial. Most introductions had already been made, but for the benefit of those on watch, they were made again over the coms. Mike, Shannon, Brandy, and Steve were the newbies.
Mike regaled them with the story of their last week: the fire that the convoy had seen in Campbellsville had been the local jail. Mike said the convoy had been right to go around it the way that they had. The bad men he’d spoken of earlier had started using the jail on day ZP2 as a base of operations once they realized that nobody was going to stop them. Men were collected and used for slave labor. All were beaten and starved to make them submissive. Some of the men were “straight up prison raped” as a way of making them feel inferior and malleable. The women were also raped but not for the pleasure of the men. Mike said they were to be bred in an effort to repopulate the earth according to the “Grand Master’s plan.” He said that the women at the jail were like the Grand Master’s harem and were not to be touched by any of his minions. The four of them had been friends since junior high, and when Mike and Shannon had gotten captured by the GM’s minions, Steve hadn’t wasted any time and had set the jail on fire as a diversion.
Papaw was pleased by this and made sure everyone knew. They weren’t sure how many people had made it out alive, but they knew they needed to get as far away from that place as they could. They had helped as many as they could, but they also knew some had been recaptured. That had been mere hours before they’d seen the convoy. The GM had his men blocking off the streets to set up traps, and Mike said the convoy had been lucky to not get caught in one.
“Oh, by the way, the saw blades you have on that last trailer are very efficient at cutting off thrillers’ legs if they get pressed in too closely. We had a hell of a time keeping up in that last town because of driving over all the bodies.”
“That was Bill’s idea,” Papaw said, and then he explained what they hoped to accomplish if they ever needed them too.
“Wow, I’m glad we found you guys, then.”
The conversation carried on for a few hours while a few drinks were had. Then another fantastic meal was prepared by Memaw, and finally, everyone retreated for the night, because, tomorrow, they would head west.
Then Bill’s phone rang unexpectedly.
“Cootch! Man, it’s good to hear your voice again. And it’s good we have a signal for a while. You ok?”
“Yea, we’re great here. Tess and the kids are starting to go batshit stir crazy though. They keep asking when Uncle Billy is going to come rescue us.”
Bill opened up his laptop to the maps he’d downloaded the last time he’d had Wi-Fi.
“HAHAHAH, yea, that’s funny shit right there. We’re trying, man. We added four more survivors to our numbers today. In the last week, they had it pretty rough. Bu t we should be there in…” He looked at the map to judge the mileage. “A day and a half, two at the absolute most if we run into trouble.”
“Fuck. So close. Hey, uh. Listen, I, uh, I almost hate to ask this, but I need a favor. You can totally say no, and I will not hold it against you. Trust me, I want out of here as much as they do. But I, uh, I heard from my folks, man. They are alive up in Buffalo, New York, and I was wondering if there is any way you would be able to swing by there and pick them up. My brother and his family are there, and so is my sister. I don’t know how—we didn’t talk long ’cause their phone was dying—but they all got together last night and finally thought to use their car to charge their phone, so they called.”
“HAHAHAHAHA, swing by? It’s not really that easy anymore. Last week, it would have been another day added to our drive from where we are now. Listen, I got you, man. We will go get them. I’ll figure something out. When I get to your house with your parents in my car, you are going to give me the best angry handy J you’ve ever given in your life.”
“Dude, it’s a deal.”
“All right, you guys take care. We’ll be there in a few days.”
Beginning of the New Beginning, Vol 1 Page 13
