Z Chronicles (Books 2 & 3)

by A. L. White

  “Don’t you all see the truth of it all?” she screamed into the night.

  “Baby, let’s get back into the bus and talk about it,” Jermaine pleaded with her.

  “Talk? There is nothing for us to talk about! We all know the truth, and it is time to accept it!”

  From behind them, the zombies were making their way towards the group, following Taquisha’s voice. “Look, honey. We need to get moving now. Can we talk about this later?” Jermaine continued.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Hey, Doc. Are you down there?” a voice yelled down the stairs. Doc swung around from the lunch counter, and walked over to the bottom of the wide, old stairway.

  “I’m here,” he replied, squinting his eyes to see who it was, then recognizing the voice had belonged to Charlie. He smiled up at him. “Was this morning successful?”

  Charlie started down the stairs to meet him as Doc started up the stairs.

  “We lost Juan and his son. They must have walked in on a bunch of creatures on the last house of the street. There wasn’t a whole lot of them left. Boo and I found the church secretary hiding in a closet at the preacher’s house. I can honestly tell you that if it wasn’t for Boo, I would have ended up like Juan. He must have been hell on wheels thirty or forty years ago!”

  “Charlie, I am so sorry to hear about Juan and his boy,” Doc stated with a rare tear running down his cheek. Since moving all of the survivors to the old school, Doc had appointed himself as the caretaker of all who resided here. It was him that woke every morning and made the rounds to check on them. He cleaned up after them, nursed them back to health when they needed it, and healed them when he could. Juan had been a great help to him in keeping the place going, and as far as he could tell, Juan was one of the few that Beau trusted to touch the boiler.

  “What kind of shape is the secretary in? Wasn’t her name Donna?” Doc asked

  Charlie shrugged his shoulders, because he didn’t know the woman’s name. Annie had always wanted to go to church, but had never pushed the subject very far. Mostly, she went on her own and left Charlie to do as he pleased. Deep down, Charlie knew that it wouldn’t have hurt him to give in to her and regretted a little not going with her.

  Doc started up the stairs without another word until reaching the top, “Where did Beau take her?”

  “I think he’s headed over to the nurse’s office, or--I mean--your office,” he replied with a smile. Doc smiled back at their inside joke. That joke was from a bygone time that existed only in their memories; Sunday morning coffee meetings. He would miss those. Doc led the way toward the nurses’ office.

  They found Boo going over his field dressing of the secretary’s wounds. Stepping next to him, Doc took over from there, “What are your thoughts?”

  “Oh, I think she will survive well enough,” Boo replied, stepping out of Doc’s way.

  Doc took a long look at the avulsions on each of her finger tips, mumbled to himself a few times, and then led the woman over to the sink.

  “This may sting a little, but only for a few minutes,” Doc explained to her, looking deeply into her eyes for any sign that she understood what he was saying. Seeing nothing, he took her left hand first and held it under the cold water. With no signs of any discomfort, he added in the kitchen soap that was sitting next to the faucet. Then Doc noticed a slight attempt to pull back, followed by a barely audible wince. “So you are in there someplace,” Doc stated as he quickly moved on to her right hand. Once he felt they were cleaned out enough to meet his personal standards, he pulled a clean towel from the drawer and lightly dabbed them dry. “Charlie, in that cabinet behind you, there is some gauze and a bottle of antiseptic ointment. Be a good fellow and grab them for me, will you?”

  Charlie retrieved the items and handed them to Doc. It was amazing to watch Doc in his element, taking care of people. There was no way that Charlie could deal with this day in and day out. This was what Doc did for over thirty years or more of his life.

  “OK, my dear. Why don’t you lie down over here and rest awhile, and we will find you a bed of your own,” Doc stated as he led her to one of the old nurse’s beds for sick students. Once she was safely in the bed and covered up with an old blanket that Doc had found, he gave her a Vicodin to help with any pain she might be feeling. Since she could not, or would not, tell the pain level she was feeling, Doc only gave her one. He also knew needed to save as many as he could for more serious injuries that would come up down the line.

  “Well, let’s get out of here and let the young lady rest. Later on I will ask Tressa to make her something light to eat, like broth, if we have any,” Doc said, ushering them out of the room into the hall. Once there Charlie asked, “Tressa?”

  “While you boys were out, a few survivors came in from the east.”

  “How many?” Boo asked looking concerned

  “I think about fifteen, maybe twenty,” Doc replied.

  This brought Boo to a dead stop, shaking his head no. “Doc, you need to be careful about who you let in here until they are checked out! How in the hell did they even know we were here?”

  “Not sure, Beau. You could ask any of them yourself if you really feel we need to know that type of information.”

  Boo’s face was turning beet red as he tried to control himself, feeling his temper boil to the top. “Yes Sir! We do need to know that info from everyone that comes in; we need to know where they came from as well! There are people out there that were not so nice when the world was intact… do you think that they have ceased to exist now? Do you honestly believe that if they were evil then, that all of this has changed that?”

  Doc was flabbergasted. No one had ever spoken to him like this in all his years. “Follow me, please,” Boo stated more as an order than a question. “I want you to get a good look at something. Maybe then you can get a handle on the predicament that we now live in!”

  *****

  Taquisha turned her back to Jermaine and raised her hands towards the sky to pray. Long ago he had learned not to interrupt her during prayer. Taquisha had put up with all his screw ups in life with hardly a word that held him accountable or discouraged him from trying to do better the next time. No matter what, she had stuck by his side when others had called for her to dump him and move on in hopes of finding a more conventional man that went to work every day. Instead, she had stuck by his side while he went in and out of jail. The one thing she did not tolerate, was any interference with her relationship with God. Jermaine knew better and did not interfere and that is why they stayed together; at least that was why he thought they did. Jermaine knew that she would not move until she was either done, or there were zombies nearly on top of her. Jermaine turned to go wait by the RV door. He could keep a good eye on things from there and react accordingly if he needed to. This gave Taquisha the space she would need, and him some peace of mind.

  “Should I send the dogs out there to watch over Taquisha?” Virginia asked when he reached the door.

  Jermaine chuckled a little and then replied, “Not unless you want to make the ride ahead that much more unbearable.”

  “I didn’t think that was possible to do,” Virginia replied with a slight smile.

  “Oh trust me with Taq, all things are possible in that area.”

  They both laughed for a few seconds, as they watched her, illuminated by the flames of Joey’s funeral pyre.

  Then the oddest thing happened in front of them and neither was prepared to act with the speed to stop it. Taquisha, with her arms still raised, screamed out, “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned against you!” then started sprinting toward where the zombies were gathering, just behind the slight drainage ditch. They were barely visible without looking hard for the movements of shadows in the darkness. Taquisha’s scream brought them out of the shadows and into the light; both Jermaine and Virginia could see that it was a decent sized herd now.

  Before either of them could react Taquisha was in the center of the herd, surro
unded, with no way out, still screaming to the lord. The last thing Jermain heard as he sprinted toward his wife was, “If God wills it!” …then nothing. Not even a cry for help.

  Reaching the periphery of the herd, Jermaine smashed his fist through the skull of the first zombie. The partially decomposed facial bones crushed inward beneath the force of his strike and collapsed around his hand. It made a suction sound as he pulled his fist back out of the cranium, coated in what had once been brain tissue. He did the same on another as the herd now swallowed him, much the same way it had Taquisha. Jermain didn’t know or care about what was happening around him. He was ready to fight his way to Taquisha and pull her out at all costs. Even if the cost to save his wife was paying with his own life; Jermaine would see it paid in full. There were no feelings of pain or fear in that moment, only a deep rage that boiled over. His large stature made it nearly impossible for the herd to pull him down like they had Taquisha. In no time he had fought his way to what had been his wife’s body. There were so many zombies feasting on her that there was no way to tell what kind of shape she was in, or if she was even in one piece anymore. None of this mattered to Jermaine. He would reach the woman he loved and pull her from this unholy place. Taquisha would want this, he kept telling himself.

  The first zombie he pulled off of her had a large piece of her intestines in its hands as he threw the creature off of her, knocking down several other zombies. The second had what Jermain had thought was her beautiful face. The very face that kept him going during each jail term he had spent back in the day. Seeing that beautiful face made his knees go weak with the realization that there was hardly anything left of Taquisha. The weight of the herd now pulling and ripping at his own flesh finally began to bear down on him, bringing him to the ground. Reaching out, he grabbed Taquisha’s hand and held it in his. He would die holding her hand. Something ripped at the flesh on his back, causing a surge of pain to ripple throughout his body, and Jermaine thought it would all be over soon. Only the guttural growling noise from the zombies, and the hand of his wife in his own were clear in his mind. He failed to even notice that he was holding a hand attached to a disembodied arm wrenched from her body by the zombies.

  A deeper, more vicious growl, brought him back to his senses; something more animal than monster. Rapidly the weight on his back disappeared. The herd retreated slightly, opening up a large circle around him, and a warm tongue licked the tears streaming down his face. Jermaine was looking at Perseus.

  Circling around him, snarling with the look of a menacing, black killing machine, was Zeus; keeping the circle of zombies from closing back in on them. One… then two more zombies fell to the ground with arrows in the eyes. As he looked back up, Virginia was standing next to him. “I think we need to get going while Zeus has them held back! Follow Perseus toward the others!” she ordered Jermaine.

  “Taquisha is…”

  “She is dead, and there is nothing we can do about it. People die, Jermaine, and we that are living move on! If you ever loved her, then get up and run for the others!”

  Jermaine pulled himself up off the ground and looked at the little girl beside him. Not a little girl, he thought; more of an old soul trapped in a teenager’s body. Too old of a soul for a person her age.

  “We need to move!”

  Jermaine ran for the RV as Perseus cleared a path, Zeus keeping pace behind them, maintaining the herd at a distance. What had taken seconds to get into seemed like it was taking a life time to get out of; only when he noticed the zombies on either side of him were falling to the ground did he begin to feel like this part of the ordeal was coming to an end. He was sure of it when he saw Lori and her bow firing arrows all around them as they came out of the herd into open space. At that point the real firepower opened up around them. The sound of all the guns going off was deafening, while music to his ears at the same time. A few minutes ago, Jermaine had accepted that it was his time to meet his maker and join Taquisha. Now he wanted nothing more than to be safely in one of the vehicles, moving as far from here as possible.

  By the funeral pyre, a tug pulled on what was left of his coat sleeve, causing him to snap around with fists raised. It was Virginia, holding his sleeve with a funny look on her face.

  “What is it?”

  She pointed toward the funeral pyre and then toward Jermaine’s right hand. He was still holding the severed arm that had belonged to Taquisha. The tears began to flow freely again as he looked at what was left of her.

  “I don’t think that Joey or Taquisha would mind this part of her sharing a final resting place with Joey,” Virginia said as she patted his shoulder lightly with a warm caring look on her face. Jermaine was taken aback by this side of her; a side that he had not seen since joining them back at the old farm house. He thought for a few minutes, and said a quiet prayer to himself as best he could. Then, with a heavy heart, Jermaine walked up to the fire and laid the arm onto the pyre.

  After a few minutes, Jermaine placed his hand on Virginia’s back and said, “Thank you.” They turned back on their way to the RV, where they were ushered inside.

  From what Jermaine could remember before they had stopped here, they were as close as maybe four or five more hours from the next stop on the map Lori had showed him back at the farm house. It would be good to reach a safe place where he could mend his body, and his heart, without being cooped up with all these people. Most of them had grown on him, a few had not. As for the new ones from the drive in, well, he would have see how that all played out. The one thing that Jermaine knew for certain was that he would stay with this group and help out as much as he could. Deep down there was a part of him that wondered about Virginia and the dogs coming to his rescue. No one had ever put their life on the line to save his life before. Taquisha tried to save him spiritually, lord knew that she had tried. That was different. Virginia ran into that herd--and the dogs followed her—just to save him. This day would live in his memory for the rest of his days. The bravery of a young woman and her dogs had moved Jermaine in a way nothing in his old life ever had; a power larger and stronger than anything he had ever known.

  CHAPTER 11

  Boo led them up to the roof of the old school to a place he had taken to calling the ‘Eagle’s Nest’ due to the unobstructed view it offered of the surrounding countryside. He stopped close to the three foot high wall that ran the entire way around the roof and pointed out towards the farms to the east of Rivers Crossing.

  “Take a good look out there, boys, and tell me what you see,” Boo ordered them. When no one answered, he prodded them on, “Go ahead now, don’t be shy.” After waiting for what felt like an eternity extending his finger out towards the nearest farm Boo stated, “That mass moving around out there could be confused with a prized herd of Holsteins!”

  Charlie could finally see where Boo was going with this so he replied, “They’re still a few miles off, Boo.”

  “Moving closer every day. We need to start planning things around here a little better if we are going to survive, fellas. This isn’t a game, or a community center where survivors check in to be taken care of by the local Red Cross or FEMA. We are, for all purposes, a city state like in ancient times; we need to start acting like one,” Boo stated what he felt was an indisputable matter-of-fact.

  Doc shook his head no a few times, “What if there is some part of the government left out there?”

  “We can wait for the cavalry to arrive and save the day. Or we can plan on saving ourselves and still be around if, and when, the cavalry arrives. It would be a sad thing if we all perished holding on to the false hope that someone is coming to save us, Doc.”

  “I think I agree with Boo on this one, Doc. We haven’t seen anything that has even looked like help for weeks,” Charlie added.

  Doc went into his deep thought process, a process that Charlie had seen a million times during discussion at the Sunday Morning coffee meetings. Those seemed to be a life time away now. Charlie knew when Doc went
to that place and got that blank stare on his face you could bet the farm that he was going to come back with something so irrefutable that you had just wasted your time making the argument.

  “Ok, I can see your point on the whole thing, Beau, but I am not saying that I agree with you one hundred percent. I think we should elect a city council and a Mayor as I have stated before.”

  “If you’re going to do that, we should probably do it before any more outsiders show up. I like to think that, for now anyways, we would be governed by locals,” Boo replied.

  Doc smiled a little evil looking grin at the two men. “I can see your point completely. We will appoint the first council with people that we want on there so that we can point the city in the proper direction.”

  “That’s fine by me. You go ahead and pick your council. Make yourself the Mayor while you’re at it; but the first thing you need to do is create a guard unit so we can watch over and protect what it is that we have here. Someone to man this post twenty-four hours a day so that nothing can take us by surprise,” Boo added.

  Charlie was shocked at what he was hearing. They were deciding the fate of every survivor in Rivers Crossing without even including them in the process. This may have been how Boo did things, but it wasn’t how the Doc he knew conducted business or his life.

  “So we are setting up a dictatorship?” he asked.

  “No, no! Not at all, Charlie! We will appoint the first council and Mayor so that we can create our own little Constitution, and ensure that no one in the future can become a dictator. If Beau here is correct, and I sincerely hope he is not, then we need to plan for a future without the life we knew before. One where everyone will have a chance at life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I was talking this morning with the woman in the cafeteria--her name is Tressa--and I realized that there are only a few of us doing anything to keep the place going. We can’t function that way.”