The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde

by Spears, R. J.

  Casey stepped up and shook a pointed finger in Donovan’s face. “I can’t believe you brought them here.”

  Mason stepped in to take the brunt of the onslaught. “That’s on me. Donovan didn’t know.”

  The ire of the crowd shifted from Donovan to Mason, and it was as if someone had turned a heat lamp on him. There was nothing pleasurable about all this attention.

  The crowd’s reaction ranged from, “Are you crazy?” to “There’s no way I’m going with those soldiers,” to “We need to kill all those sons of bitches right now.” (The latter came from Troy.)

  Mason decided it was best to let them vent, hoping they would work off all their frustration, but it seemed as if their anger was endless. Like Donovan, he didn’t blame them, but he also knew the most important thing was getting everyone to safety.

  Mason was about to shut it down, but Donovan beat him there.

  “EVERYONE! Shut the hell up!” Donovan shouted as loudly as he could.

  Surprisingly, it worked -- at least for a few seconds. The people started to ramp up again, but Mason hit his limit and fired his rifle into the air.

  “You all need to listen!” he shouted. “There is no other way. Every minute you ride on that trailer out in the open, you are at risk. Time is running out, and there’s no taking the truck by force. There may be fewer of them, but they are well-armed and better trained.” He knew he stretched that last bit some.

  He hoped that things were going better with Sergeant Jones and Jo and their negotiations with the soldiers.

  Clayton turned from looking at Mason and Donovan talking with their people and said, “That looks to be going well.”

  Jo shot him a hot stare and then switched her attention to Berry and Zelanski, who were representing the soldiers. “What’s the bottom line?” she asked as she eyed Stanz, who stood beside the truck, his eyes looking like black holes on his face as he looked down the road at Donovan’s people. She didn’t like that at all but knew she had to focus on the task at hand.

  “My men are not riding with those people,” Berry said. “They’ll slit our throats in our sleep or something.”

  “Can you blame them?” Jo said. “You attacked their compound and took them hostage.”

  “That was Kepler,” Zelanski said. “None of us were involved in either the attack or with leaving people in the basement.” He stopped and gave a sideways glance toward Stanz. “Kepler did that to piss off Braden. He was an asshole that way. Plus, he knew they’d find a way out of that basement.”

  “They really don’t care,” Jo said. “They just know you didn’t do anything to stop any of it.”

  “We were just following orders,” Berry said.

  “You’re going to use that old saw?” Jo asked.

  Jones balanced on his crutches off to Jo’s side. “Soldiers follow orders until they shouldn’t.” He turned to face off Berry and Zelanski and said, “You should have stood up to Kepler.”

  “Yeah,” Zelanski said, “we saw how that worked out for you when you went up against Kilgore.”

  Jo threw her hands in the air and turned to Clayton. “Can you talk some sense into these guys?”

  Clayton held his hands clenched together in fists in front of his waist as he stepped forward. He cleared his voice and said, “Here’s how it’s going to go and don’t argue with me because you don’t have a choice. Well, it’s that or walk as far as you can until the zombies catch up to you. You guys are giving up the truck--”

  “No way in hell,” Berry said. “We’ll push the thing until we find a place to fill the tank first.”

  “You’re not listening,” Clayton said, locking his eyes on Berry’s. “You are giving up the truck, but you and your men will take the SUV we took from the bandits. It’ll be cramped, but you can have the ATV, too.”

  “Wait,” Jo said, “we didn’t discuss this.”

  Clayton pivoted toward Jo and asked, “Do you have a better solution than that? Really? The truck will be packed, but it can take all of the people who were on the trailer. But we can’t get something and not give something in return.”

  Jones said, “Berry, you and your men have to accept those terms.”

  “No, they don’t,” Clayton said. “It’s a take it only deal. There is no leaving it. Or else they walk.”

  Berry said, “You’re acting like we don’t have a choice. We still have those people outgunned.”

  “Not if I go with their side,” Clayton said, motioning back to Donovan’s people. “You may have better weapons, but there’s more good fighters on that side.” He swung his arm forward and put his hand on Berry’s shoulder. “Besides, it’s not coming to a shootout. You’re going to accept the bargain, and we’ll be on our way. Won’t you?”

  It was more than apparent that Berry didn’t like the deal, but it was equally obvious that he had little choice. He had a truck that was truly running on fumes. He had an angry group of people that could go from reluctant allies to enemies in a moment. Plus, Clayton was right. His men were soldiers, but they weren’t really fighters. In any sort of combat with Donovan’s people, they’d probably take heavy losses. And for what? A truck over an SUV?

  Berry shook his head but said, “That truck’s tank is about dry, so it’s about as useful as a boat right now.”

  “We can drain the tank on the tractor,” Jo said.

  Jones looked to Berry and Zelanski, “So, we have a deal?”

  Berry said, “Yes.”

  Chapter 36

  Deal Breaker

  Jones, Del, Clayton, and Jo went to Donovan to break the news of the deal they had just brokered with the soldiers. It wasn’t the best of news, so they walked slowly. Still, it was a long walk for Jones, who still had to use his crutches to get around.

  As they got closer to the small crowd, Jo could tell that Donovan’s people were still agitated. Troy’s face was suffused with red as he shook a finger in Donovan’s face. Even the normally calm Casey was letting Mason have it.

  “I can’t believe that you’re even considering letting them ride with us,” Casey said. “You weren’t down in that basement. You weren’t there!”

  “This doesn’t seem to be going well,” Clayton said under his breath.

  Jo said, “Let me talk. They may associate you with the other men.”

  “It’s all yours,” Clayton said as he ducked his head and took a step back.

  Jones went at the group head on, but he had the shield of not being one of the soldiers that had been a part of the attack on Donovan’s compound and the subsequent hostage taking.

  “I understand,” Mason said, trying to mollify Casey, but she didn’t seem very receptive.

  “No, you don’t,” Casey said. “You could never understand.”

  “I lost my best friend down in that basement,” Mason said, and you could tell he was starting to lose his patience.

  Donovan said, “You need to be reasonable. We can’t let our emotions rule us in this decision.”

  Jo stepped up to Donovan and said, “We have a proposition for your group.”

  All eyes went to her. Some of those eyes were apprehensive, and some were blazing with anger. Jo felt on stage, and she had never wanted to be a representative or a leader. She just wanted to go through this life with her head down. Now that Joel had headed to parts unknown with key members of their group and the rest of their leaders were dead or unaccounted for, somehow the weight of leadership fell on her.

  She cleared her throat and said, “We’ve spoken with the soldiers--”

  “You can’t trust those assholes,” someone from within the group shouted. Another person shouted something that Jo couldn’t make out, but there was a lot of heat in the person’s tone.

  Donovan shot his hands in the air over his head and waved them back and forth. “Please people, settle down and listen. Just hear Jo out.”

  While the crowd grew silent, anger still simmered in the people, threatening to boil over again at any second. />
  “We spoke with the soldiers,” Jo said, “and they are giving us their truck to use.”

  A few of the angry faces calmed a little as they looked at each other in disbelief. Certainly, these brutal monsters couldn’t surrender their truck. Could they?

  “We convinced them that we needed to get the people riding on the trailer out of the open air,” Jo said. “Plus, we can move a lot faster with the truck.”

  She watched as people’s faces softened even more. Jo felt like she was winning them over.

  With the exception of one.

  “What do they get out of the deal?” Troy asked loudly.

  A man next to him nodded his head and looked to Jo, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The soldiers would want something in exchange for handing over their truck.

  Del spoke up and said, “We’re giving them the SUV we took from the road bandits.”

  “Why can’t they just walk?!” Troy asked, and again, the man next to him nodded his head in agreement.

  “We can’t leave them out here without a vehicle,” Jones said. “That would the equivalent of killing them.”

  “That would be fine with me,” Troy said. This time, he had more than a few people in agreement.

  Casey said, “Can’t they take the tractor? That was good enough for us.”

  “Yeah,” a man in the crowd said.

  Jo said, “We need the fuel from the tractor to fill the tank on the truck. The tractor and trailer are at the end of their line.”

  “This sounds like a shit deal,” Troy said. “There are more of us than there are of them. We should just take both vehicles and--”

  “And what?” Mason said, stepping up into Troy’s face. “Kill them?” He let the words sink in. “Are you doing that?” He stopped and cast a long glance over the crowd. “Are any of you doing that? And are the soldiers going to lie down and just let us kill them?” Again, he paused for effect. “They will fight us tooth and nail, and they are better armed than we are. Some of our people will die, and many could be hurt. And for what? Because we’re pissed? Well, I’m angry too, but this is one of those cases where you’re just going to have to swallow that anger because we need that truck to survive. The only way to do that is to take this deal.”

  The faces in the crowd softened, contemplating Mason’s words. They looked over their friends in the crowd and must have weighed their lives with the deal that was on the table.

  “This is the only deal we’ll get,” Mason said. “I don’t like it any better than you, but it’s the best one.”

  Casey had been looking at the ground for the last few seconds, but she finally looked up at Mason and asked, “Does this mean we have to ride with them?”

  “No, but there is strength in numbers,” Mason said.

  “I don’t think I can ride with them,” she said.

  “I know I can’t,” Troy said.

  A voice came from within the crowd and said, “Not after what they did.”

  Donovan cough and cleared his voice. “Okay, we won’t ride with the soldiers, but we have an arrangement.” Like Mason, he took a moment to survey the crowd and saw what Mason had seen - bitter resignation. These people had just been forced to swallow the worst tasting medicine of their lives, and it burned going down. He turned to Jo and said, “Who’s letting the soldiers know they’re not riding with us?”

  “I can,” Jo said.

  “Okay, get it done,” Donovan said. “We have a lot of work to do before we get on the road.”

  Jo nodded her head and pivoted around to walk back to the soldiers. Jones and Clayton went with her. The group moved slowly to accommodate that fact that Jones was on crutches. As they walked toward the soldiers, they noticed that Berry and Zelanski were walking slowly out to meet them.

  “I don’t like this deal,” Jones said. “We’d be stronger together.”

  “Me either, but it beats a shooting war, which is where we were headed,” Clayton said.

  Jones asked, “Can we hold up a minute?”

  Jo and Clayton came to a stop. When she turned back to Jones, she saw something in the set of his face that made her think she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  She looked to the approaching two soldiers then back to him and asked, “What is it?”

  “I’m going with the soldiers,” Jones said.

  Jo’s mouth fell partially open, and she started to object, but Jones cut her off.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Jones said. “I’m a soldier, and I stood up to Kilgore because it had to be done. I know it cost me, and I don’t know if they’ll accept me or not, but I have to be back where I belong.”

  “But you rebelled against them,” she said. “They’re not going to just welcome you back.”

  “I think things are changing,” Jones said. “I think these men are more about survival now. Kilgore kept the military mindset going, but that’s gone the way of the Dodo bird.” He paused and looked at Jo imploringly. “I need to mend these fences.”

  “It’s your life,” she said.

  “I’m going with them, too,” Clayton said.

  “We need you two,” Jo said as she deflated.

  “Like Sergeant Jones, I need to be where I belong, too.”

  Jo’s expression was one of immense heartbreak. She had been with Jones through a lot of trials, and not having him around was going to leave a hole in her life that she hadn’t expected. She had nearly lost him once and didn’t want to lose him again.

  “There’s no talking either of you out of this, is there?”

  “Not for now,” Jones said. “They could kick my ass out before it even starts, but going with them doesn’t mean we won’t meet again. Hell, with a zombie horde running up our asses, that could be sooner than we know it.” He tried to sell it with a smile, but it had all the integrity of a used car salesman.

  Jo capitulated because she had no other choice, so she turned to watch the two soldiers heading their way.

  Berry and Zelanski were about thirty feet away and closing quickly. Both men wore serious expressions, and Zelanski looked more than a little nervous as they pulled up to a stop.

  “They going to shoot us?” Berry asked.

  “No, we talked them out of that,” Jo said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “What is the deal?” Zelanski asked, looking like he was expecting the worst.

  Clayton spoke first, “They took the deal -- they get your truck, you get the SUV...but they won’t ride with you. There’s just too much shit that’s gone on, and they won’t let it go.”

  “Maybe we didn’t want to ride with them,” Zelanski said, puffing out his chest a little, but they all knew it was false bravado.

  Berry said, “When’s this happening?

  “As soon as it can,” Jo said.

  That’s when she heard the report of a gunshot, and a millisecond later, Zelanski’s head exploded.

  Chapter 37

  Blow Up

  Jones shoved off his crutches and into Jo, ramming her to the ground, knocking the air from her lungs. The sounds of more shots filled the air, and Jo could hear both the bullets whizzing overhead and the screams of people in the direction she had come from.

  This was bad. Very, very bad, she thought.

  Zelanski’s body lay just four feet away, and she saw that the top half of his head was missing. She couldn’t help but notice that his body was spasming involuntarily, his legs jerking.

  “What the hell?!” Jones said.

  “It’s Stanz,” Berry said. “He’s gone ape shit.”

  “This is going to fuck up everything,” Clayton said.

  Shots were being returned from the direction of Donovan’s people. Jones, Clayton, Jo, and Berry felt like they were in a proverbial no man’s land as bullets flew over their heads. A line of shots zippered in the dirt next to Clayton, and he rolled away from it cursing loudly.

  “We have got to put an end to this and fast,” Jones said, with his body nearly cover
ing Jo’s on the ground.

  “What’s the situation?” Jo asked, trying to get up, but Jones was covering her. “Sergeant Jones, you can let up a little.”

  “You need to stay safe,” he said.

  “Berry, you got two men down, down the road from the truck,” Clayton said.

  “Shit,” Berry said.

  “One of them’s moving but just barely. The other one isn’t moving at all.”

  “It looked like it’s just Stanz,” Berry said. “The rest of the guys took off running for the SUV. Stanz is behind the truck.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Clayton said as he lay on the ground, looking back toward the soldiers.

  “No, no,” Berry said. “Let me take care of this. It’s the only way we have a chance of salvaging any of this shitshow.”

  “It’s all yours, brother,” Clayton said, “but let me see about getting you some cover fire.” He rolled into a firing position and let off a volley of bullets. A second later, he said, “He’s behind the truck on the left side. I’ve driven him into hiding. Berry, you got your chance.”

  “Who’s going to keep those assholes from shooting me in the back?” Berry said.

  “That would be me,” Jo said. “Nate, you’re going to have to let me up.”

  “I don’t want you to get shot,” he said, and she heard something in his voice. “I’m not losing you.”

  “Well, someone needs to do something because this is going to get ugly quick,” Jo said as she looked back toward Donovan’s people. They had scattered when the bullets started flying, with most of them just hitting the ground for cover. She saw two of them kneeling and popping off shots. She guessed it was Donovan and Mason.

  She pulled her pistol from her holster and handed it to Jones and said, “Use this to keep Stanz from shooting me.”

  Jones took the gun and said, “No, let me go back.”

  “You’re in no condition to run, and Clayton and Berry need to take out Stanz.”

  She saw the turmoil behind his eyes, but he said, “Just be safe.” He reached out and squeezed her arm. Something passed between their eyes, but this was neither the place nor the time.