Battlefield Z (Book 2): Children's Brigade

by Lowry, Chris

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  We caught up with the others twenty miles later. Or to be more accurate they caught up with us, having pulled over to hide and wait. They were close enough to hear the bullets and some of the screams, and Brian pointed at Anna's driving as she roared past. The school bus lumbered out after us, but she was so focused on the road in front and me in the back that she didn't bother to use the mirrors. Any of them.

  When she finally did pull over it was on the outskirts of another town, smaller yet than Cuthbert but with a strip of downtown that squatted on both sides of the road.

  Lumpkin. There was more town further east, probably more developed but that meant more Z.

  We had been through enough today.

  She pulled me out of the car and helped me prop up against it as the school bus shuddered to a stop.

  Brian was the first off, all grins and congratulations but his face took a serious turn like tasting something sour when he caught full sight of me.

  “You made it,” it almost sounded like a question.

  “Something like that.”

  “We need morphine,” Anna took charge, pulling Byron aside as he came off to deliver instructions. “More medicine, stronger if we can find it. Bandages. Supplies.”

  Her voice was creeping up into panic, her worry for me making her short circuit and grasp at immediate solutions. I liked that she worried.

  “Lord Byron,” I called to him, or croaked as the case might have been and got a slightly mad giggle in exchange.

  “Technically, I'm King,” he grinned as he approached. “It would be proper to call me Mi'Lord.”

  “A king without a kingdom.”

  “Your highness will do,” he kept on with the joke and I smiled back knowing he was.

  “What does that make me?”

  “Regent,” he said, his face falling as serious as Brian's. “My warlord and chief adviser.”

  He bowed.

  I think he meant something by it.

  I lowered my head as far as I could because if I bowed I'd end up with a face full of asphalt and one road rash a day is enough for any man.

  He accepted it though and motioned for his squad to follow as they fanned out to the houses, two by two, and scavenged for supplies.

  “Is it smart to do that?” Brian asked. “Play into it.”

  He wasn't quite harmless, the boy who called himself king, but I didn't see the harm in letting him feel in charge. Brian would, or might. He had aspirations to a kingdom himself.

  Me, I just wanted to heal up and get moving.

  “You did it?” Hannah stepped off the bus. She made Harriet stay on to watch the kids, and she put her head next to Pegs as they whispered secrets to each other.

  I wondered about that too for a moment, about Peg's past, and Brian's future.

  But it was all too much to care about today.

  “I tried,” I told the little girl.

  She looked up at me with luminous eyes and blinked back a few tears.

  “That's enough for me. Will he come again.”

  I tried to shrug and it hurt. I tried to shake my head and that hurt worse.

  So I stuck with talking.

  “He might. We'll just have to be ready for him. And he won't have cans to follow after so he'll spend more time hunting.”

  Byron sprinted up the street an item in each hand, like stolen treasure. He presented the first to Anna and the second to me. Anna showed me fifteen Vicodin pills and planted a kiss on Byron's cheek.

  He beamed to match the sun.

  “Your zip line saved me,” I told him then. “They took down the ladder.”

  And though I thought it was impossible he grinned even bigger and ran off again to hunt for more booty.

  “Aren't you glad you didn't kill him?” Hannah whispered.

  I put my hand on her shoulder, just as she had done mine back in Cuthbert and squeezed. I might still have to kill him if he decided the adults were a liability. But she didn't need to have that voiced, because she was a smart kid and probably knew it deep down.

  I was tired of killing today. I didn't like it. I hated that I was good at it, and getting better with practice. But the pills he found would ease the pain to a bearable level, and the boy had found me a beer. It was dust covered and slightly warm, but I popped the top and took a long swallow to wash down two Vicodin, then passed it to Brian who took a sip and passed it around. Anna. Peg. Harriet. They handed it back to me to finish it off and the last sip tasted as good as the first, or at least as good as warm canned beer can taste.

  “Shelter,” I said to Brian. “Food. Weapons.”

  It was a familiar litany.

  “The scout, Tyler says his family has a cabin on the Chattahoochee River on the Alabama side. That's thirty miles from here.”

  We could make it today and still have time to scavenge.

  “You need to turn it over to them,” Anna said. “Time to give the king back his crown.”

  She was kidding, I could tell, but Brian frowned at that.

  I tried to nod, but it started to feel wobbly. Then I realized that Vicodin on an empty stomach washed down with beer was a damn fast delivery system because I couldn't feel my back, or my ankle, or my shoulders or anywhere it still hurt.

  That made me smile.

  “We need to get you cleaned up too,” Anna added. “You're scaring the children.”

  Byron's boys made it back with a dozen backpacks full of supplies and Tyler directed us over the bridge into Alabama and down a dirt road to his parent's cabin in the woods. It was a couple of hundred yards from the shore of the riverside, with a fishing pier that jutted out and was surrounded by forest.

  “No neighbors for miles,” Tyler told us in a shy voice.

  It had a bonus that none of us expected. The boy directed Anna and I into the master bath and demonstrated the solar water heater. She began to peel off my clothes one piece at a time, and Brian showed up with two beers this time, one for me, another for him and we toasted each other.

  “I'm glad you're back,” he said.

  I answered with a swallow and a rueful grin. I wasn't planning to stay longer than it took me to heal up a little, and we were one state closer to home. But right now, I had a beer, a hot shower and a pixie warrior peeling off the blood crusted work pants to put me under the stream of water and I would worry about the rest later.

  THE END

  Thank you for taking the time to read BATTLEFIELD Z - CHILDREN’S BRIGADE. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated. Thank you. Chris.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  I had planned to include Anna's story here, a stand alone short, but it's starting to turn longer so I'll either come back and add it later, or combine it with Brian's, Peg's, Harriet's and Hannah's tales to make a novella collection.

  Instead I want to tell you about what I was reading while I finished this up. Battlefield Z started as an idea a couple of years ago when I wrote a script called Wave of the Dead, about a man in florida going to Arkansas to pick up his estranged kids. I dusted it off after binge watching the Walking Dead on Netflix (seriously, no spoilers, I haven't caught up on last season yet!) last November. I cranked out about 10k words, then went to work on another project, and when I came back to Z, I thought the time had passed.

  I still wanted to write it, but I was just going to finish it, publish it and add to the series later. Turns out, Zombies are huge!

  After I pulled BZ to the forefront and finished it off while reading AMERICAN GODS by NEIL GAIMAN, I shot through HARRY POTTER and the SORCERER'S STONE in one afternoon and picked up an original copy of THE GUNSLINGER by Stephen King from my Dad's house in Texas.

  My dad is dying of cancer, or maybe dying isn't the right word. He's got stomach cancer, but made it past the four month mark so he could live another ten years or ten days. It spread to his liver, and they're managing it too. I remembered read
ing the Gunslinger so many years ago, this very copy lifted from my father's shelf, in his house in Arkansas. The craggy etched face of the obsessed man chasing after the man in black was back in my mind after the announcement of the movie with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey.

  So I picked it up again, and read it.

  But I couldn't stop thinking about Zombies. Specifically what the Dad from Battlefield Z was going to do next. I knew he had to make it through Georgia, and I knew he had separated from the group. But what follows is a week's worth of writing written in a fever fueled spell as I suffered from food poisoning, chills, aches, pains, and the endless trips to the bathroom. I kept the book in there, covering a chapter at a time and would return to the sofa, wrapped in blanket, cold fingers on the keyboards as I thought about this Dad, thought about what I would do, how I would do it, and even if I would ever be that selfless.

  II hope you enjoy it.

  I've been thinking about what happens next, you can probably tell from seeds scattered throughout, though in the movies they're called easter eggs. I'm going to let it marinate a little bit, finish up the story I set aside for this one, and get the first draft done before November ends.

  Let me know what you think. I answer all my email.

  Chris

  Chrislowrybooks@gmail.com

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  About the Author:

  Chris Lowry is an avid adventurer and ultrarunning author. He divides his time between Florida, Arkansas and California where he trains for 100 mile Ultramarathons. He has completed over 68 races, including 18 marathon's and 12 Ultramarathons and is planning a Transcontinental Run across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City in 2017. He has kayaked the Mississippi River solo, and biked across the state of Florida. When not outdoors, he is producing and directing a documentary film about adventure and writing. His novels include Sci-Fi thrillers, Spy thriller's and mainstream fiction. He loves good craft beer and meeting with reading clubs and running clubs, especially if the aforementioned beer is offered.

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