The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins]

by L. D. King

  They all nodded agreement.

  “Okay, then. I know we have a long way to go, but we can stay here for one more day. We can go out to scrounge for better clothes and shoes, and like Floyd said, we can see if that raccoon had any family or friends out there that might want to meet us.”

  They had just finished their dinner when, out of nowhere, there was a knock at the door. The three of them practically jumped straight up out of their chairs, almost knocking the table over. Kimberly grabbed Floyd’s arm, holding a single finger to her lips as a sign to be quiet. She pulled them closer to her as she whispered, “Did you hear that? Did someone just knock on the door, or was that the wind? What the hell is going on? Have the zombies found manners by starting to knock on the doors before coming in to kill us? Okay, guys, get your spears. Go up the stairs a bit, Eddie, and Floyd, go back in the kitchen a little. Stand in the shadows, but keep an eye on this room. Both of you stay out of sight until I need you. If it comes to it, don’t be afraid to kill to stop whoever it is. I’ll open the door a crack. I can keep the chain on so it won’t open any further than I want it to. I wanna see who the hell has the nerve to be knocking on our door.”

  The guys took their spears and stood in their assigned places. Kimberly went to the door. She shouted through it first: “Who is it? What do you want?”

  “My name is Wayne Locks. I’m out here with my young sons. There’s just three of us, and we don’t mean you any harm. We just want to share some information with you… can we come in, please? We don’t want anything but to talk.”

  “Okay, hold on a minute. I’m going to let a little slack in this chain so I can see you.”

  Kimberly released the barricade that they had made. She kept the chain on the door, holding just a little slack so the door would open a few inches but not all the way. Standing there looking back at her through the crack in the door were three men. With authority in her voice, she spoke to them again.

  “Who are you? What do you want with us?”

  “We’ve been following you since the three of you walked through Rouge River a few miles back. We know that there are three of you. We were watching while you caught the raccoon. The three of you impressed us. Again, my name is Wayne Locks. These are my two sons, Berry, and my younger son, Bobby, standing behind me. Their mother — my wife, Betty — is back at our camp with the rest of our group. Please, do you mind if we come in? We mean you no harm. We’d like to talk to the three of you. We have something that you might find interesting.”

  “First things first. Do you have any weapons?”

  “Yes, we have two clubs, and I have a gun.”

  “You can come in, but I have to insist that you leave all of your weapons outside. Are you okay with that?”

  “We understand, and we don’t have any problem with that. There’s a chair next to the door. I’m going to move it away from the house to make you feel better. We are going to put our weapons on the chair.”

  “All right, you can come on in. I need to barricade the door behind you. Will you help me, please?”

  They helped Kimberly reset the barricade after the door was shut. She called Floyd and Eddie to come into the room. Everyone sat at the table where the three had just finished their dinner. Kimberly, still standing, started the conversation.

  “Okay… Wayne, is it? What’s going on? What does this have to do with us? Where are you from?”

  “Most of us are from the Battel Mountain area of Nevada. We believed that there would be fewer zombies in Washington state. That was our goal. We wanted to get to a place where there wouldn’t be so many zombies, but, let me tell you, we were wrong. We’ve traveled from Battel Mountain to here so far, and we’ve found that no matter where we go, there’s the same number of zombies everywhere. It makes no difference in where they are or how many they have in their swarms. We wanted to find a place where there weren’t any zombies to live out this outbreak, but they’re everywhere. Fewer in some places, more in other places. But from what we have seen was that they are everywhere.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “We gave up trying to get to Washington. We also knew that we couldn’t keep going in the winter in the snow. We made our winter camp not far out of town. Right now there’s 29 of us. We know how hard it is to survive when your numbers are low. When you only have a few people with you the zombies will pick you off one at a time. They look for any mistakes you make so they can pounce on one of your group. We started off with eight people. Along the way we lost a few to the zombies, and we added others. We do go out of our way to ask everyone that we come across to join us. We’ve been watching you for a while, and we like the way you all work together. We’d like to invite you to come take a look at our group. If you like what you see, we would like to you to consider joining our group. It’ll be up to you to decide if you want to be part of us or not. If you choose not to join us, we’ll understand. We will send you out with a little food to help you get along.” He smiled.

  “Right now it’s starting to get dark. We need to be leaving now. We have to be back at our camp before too many of the zombies come out to hunt. But please, take your time and talk about this tonight. We’ll be back at 10:00 AM tomorrow. If you want to join, please hang this yellow cloth on the door. If the cloth isn’t there, we’ll understand, and we won’t bother you again. I want to thank you for your time, we need to be going now. I hope you understand if we don’t answer any of your questions tonight. Tomorrow when we come back it will only be the three of us. We will take all of the time you need to answer all of your questions. If you are still interested in our group, we would like to invite you to our winter camp. We have a little way to go. Good night to you all.”

  After the three men left, Kimberly had Floyd and Eddie help her re-barricade the door again. They had so much to talk about. They would be up late into the night talking about what Locks had said.

  Floyd was the first to voice his thoughts. “Okay, guys. That was interesting, wasn’t it? I guess we should talk about the $64,000 question. What do you guys think? Should we go with them?”

  “I know Floyd. Yesterday or the day before we were talking about this very thing. But we never really talked about what kind of group we would want to join if the opportunity presented itself. He said their group has 29 people. I’d like to see how they do things, how their leadership is handled, how decisions are made… I’d also like to know what their long-range plans are. Things like how long have they been in this camp, where they’ll be going when they decide to move… The only thing we had planned was to keep going until we got to Washington, or maybe even Canada. From what they’ve said about the zombies, our plan doesn’t look so good now. If there are zombies everywhere, then we need to rethink our plan.”

  “Right now, without knowing anything else about them, I think I’d be okay with joining them after we look them over. I do know that I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I’m just worn out. With more people, it ought to be easier with more hands to help. Of course, that means there’s more mouths to feed. So I’m on the fence. I could go either way on this, Kimberly. I need more information to make up my mind. I want to see what they have to offer. I’d like to know what the rules are and how they’re enforced. The biggest thing in my mind is who’s in charge.”

  “Eddie, I’m good with that. I’d like to see more as well. I don’t want to make a decision to join before we know more. I want to see their camp, talk to their people, see who is holding the power. I’m willing to talk to them tomorrow. I think we should get out in front of this. Tomorrow we need to find a place that we can use as a lookout. I want to know if they come back with just the three of them or if they’re bringing a larger group. I want us to be up at sunrise. We can hang the cloth on the door, then we’ll set a lookout. We need to be ready long before they are due back. We’ll see if they hold up their end of the deal. I won’t make any decisions until I see their camp. I want to see how they run things.”

  They talked for anothe
r hour before the hot meal, along with the long day, caught up with them. They lay down to rest. Ten minutes later they were all fast asleep. They used their watches as an alarm clock. For once, they didn’t keep a night watch.

  As the sun rose, Kimberly’s watch started to buzz on her arm, waking her. She began to stretching as she woke up. She sat up and called out to the two others.

  “Good morning, guys. How did you sleep last night?”

  “I did okay,” said Eddie. “I woke up a few times thinking about this group. Do you want me to heat up some of the raccoon meat for breakfast? It would be nice to have eggs and coffee, but all I have is a little of the meat left from last night.”

  “Sure, I’d love that. The one thing I found out about raccoon was that I kept burping. The aftertaste isn’t so great. I guess raccoon is an acquired taste.”

  “When I finally got to sleep I didn’t wake up until you woke me just now,” said Floyd. “Yesterday was a good day for us. Having fresh meat was great, but breakfast was the last of the meat. The offer to join a group was fine with me. Right now I need to go pee, then I want to eat.”

  “TMI, Floyd. You go pee. Then you can help Eddie on the roof, and get a fire going to heat up our breakfast raccoon. While you are at it, find me a cup of coffee to go with my breakfast if you can, please.”

  Everyone had a job to do, so off they went. Both guys went up to the patio deck to warm up the meat. As they came down, Kimberly had the table ready to eat. As they were eating, they started talking about whether they were going to join the other group.

  “Last night was a good night,” said Kim. “I think I slept better that I have in a long while. The hot meal, as well as thinking about possibly joining another group… I think it could be a positive thing for us, after we get a few of our questions answered.”

  “You’re right, Kimberly. I think I’m right there with you on that. I want to know more about this group. I tried to come up with as many negatives as I could, but there weren’t that many. The questions I have are about the structure of their leadership, who makes what decisions when, what their long-range plans are. You know, things like that.”

  “I’m kinda tired of it being just the three of us. We did talk about a winter camp, just not one this far south of Eugene. I need to see what they have before I’m willing to commit myself. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been a group from the beginning. I’m not ready to break us up yet. Whatever we do, we do it together.”

  They finished their breakfast, such as it was. They quickly cleaned up the kitchen in order to be ready for the others when they came. The cloth was hung as had been asked. Then they left the house. Not far away was a three-story building. It was open, and after checking that it was free of zombies or anyone else, they climbed the stairs to the top. They found a set of stairs that led to the roof. From there, they waited for Wayne to come with his two boys. They had been up there since about 8:30 AM. As they were waiting, a light rain began to fall. There was a small overhang that they could huddle under to keep out of the rain. From the overhang, however, they couldn’t see the ground. Using the plastic sheet Floyd had brought, they took turns watching over the edge of the roof for Wayne. At five minutes after ten, they could see Wayne and his two boys. They were alone, walking towards their building. Floyd was on watch. He trotted back to the overhang, whispering to the others.

  “Guys, they’re here. It’s just the three of them. I can see where they came from. So far they have kept their word. No one else is with them.”

  “Floyd, did you see any zombies around?”

  “No, Kimberly. Not a one.”

  “Eddie, you’re the fastest of us. Run down and meet them. Tell them that we’re coming down. We can talk to them on the way back to their house.”

  Eddie took off running down the stairs to meet the three of men before they passed the building. He stopped them and told them that Kimberly and Floyd were coming down. They all stood under the building’s overhang to stay out of the rain as much as possible. In less than a minute, Kimberly walked out of the door, followed by Floyd. She invited them back to their house. They talked a little about how the walk over was, whether they had seen any zombies and other small talk. Once inside the house, with the door barricaded, they all sat at the table.

  Kimberly said, “Welcome back, gentlemen. My name is Kimberly, this is Floyd, and behind him is Eddie. We’re from Riverside, California. We were trying to get up to Eugene to build a winter camp. Next spring, we were going to decide what to do. We had planned to aim for either Oregon or Washington. Last night we talked a lot about what you offered us. We have so many questions that I don’t even know where to start. Floyd, Eddie, do either of you have anything to add before we start hammering them with questions?”

  “So far, you’re doing fine. We’ll let you lead the way. That's why you were paid the big bucks.”

  “Okay, thank you. I was a mobile news reporter for the Riverside affiliate of NBC. I talk a lot.”

  “Yes, you do, Kimberly,” said Floyd. “You’re never short of words.”

  “Thank you, Floyd,” laughed Kim. “Like I said, we have a number of questions before we can make a decision whether we join you or not. We’d like to see more of your camp; we’d like to know what your rules are, and who is in charge; how issues are handled when they come up; if we can come and see your camp, would we be allowed to walk around looking at it as well as talk to other people? We’d really like to do this first before we make a decision to join with your group. If it isn’t right for us, we want to be able to walk away with no hard feelings. If we join your group only to find out that it is not a good fit for us, would we have the right to leave? I know we’ll have more questions later as we learn more about us. Are we doing right by you so far, or are we asking too many questions?”

  “Kimberly, we totally understand. We actually came to see if you’d like to come and visit our camp. You can look around. We can talk more while we are there, and you can leave any time you want. If you decide to join us, and six months, ten months, a year later, for whatever reason, you decide to leave, you can. No strings attached. Our goal has always been to make our group better as we add others. If you’re not happy with us, we understand. It would be better for both sides if we parted ways as friends. Will that work for you?”

  “This sounds almost too good to be true. What would you like us to do now?”

  “If you are okay with this, we can start towards our camp. It is about a two hour walk from here. You can pack up your supplies, or you can leave them here for now if you’d feel better. Right now we’re in our winter camp. We’re planning to stay here until summer.”

  He continued, “It was our plan to go up to Washington state. We thought that a smaller population might have fewer zombies. We were wrong. By the time we got this far, we realized that we were very, very wrong. By then, the weather started to turn bad. Winter was on the way. We chose to stop so we could set up a strong camp for winter. We’re going to be here until spring or early summer. We’ll see what our options are at that time. Our plans might change when winter is over. Our camp is about eight miles from here. I need to tell you that we came with a group of six other people for security. They’re waiting for us about two miles from here. We’ve found that it’s better to travel with a bigger group. I didn’t want to spring a group of people on you the first day.”

  They packed up the meager supplies that Kimberly’s crew had and started out towards their winter camp. As the men said, there was a small group waiting for them. By 3:00 PM, they arrived at their winter camp. They were met by the camp members as they walked in. The evening meal was being prepared. Floyd was thinking that this might be where they would spend the winter, in a new camp with new friends.

  The winter camp was secure, with a decent fence completely around the main camp. The camp sat on five acres of farmland with several buildings. It looked like it might have once been a summer camp for children. There was a large, three-story do
rmitory for everyone to stay in. They had a building for storing, cooking, serving meals or holding meetings in. There were several outbuildings for tractors or other machinery. A small lake with clean water was behind the dormitory. With the number of people in the camp, there were enough people to patrol the fenced-in grounds.

  Wayne led them into the dining hall. As they entered, Wayne stopped just inside the door so they could see the room. He turned to speak to them.

  “Right now we’re getting ready to serve dinner. Afterwards, we’ll be holding a camp meeting. The meeting isn’t about you. We hold a meeting every week on Friday after dinner. It keeps everyone up-to-date with what’s going on with the camp. You’re welcome to stay to listen. If you do stay, you cannot participate because you are not yet a member of our group. Let me take you over to introduce you to some people here, however. When the meeting starts, I’ll introduce you to everyone who’s here. The members of our group will introduce themselves to you after the meeting is over. Please follow me.”

  As they made their way through the dining hall following Wayne, he stopped at a table. He held his open hand out towards a woman as he introduced her.

  “Please let me introduce my wife to you. Her name is Betty. She followed me from Salt Lake. Betty, these are the people that I told you about last night. This is Kimberly, next to her is Floyd, and next to him is Eddie. They’re from Riverside, California. They were on their way to Eugene or Salem to make a winter camp. Sitting next to my wife is Donnie Dodge and his wife, Mildred. They’re from Phoenix. On this side of the table is Derek Beasley and his wife, Jewel. They are from Boise, Idaho.”

  “We’re so glad to meet you,” said Kimberly. “Thank you for inviting us to your camp.”