“Let’s go, boy,” Jessie said. He didn’t have time for this. He was here at their request. If these jerks wanted to be rude, they could drive to Lakota if they needed to set up trade routes. He didn’t like the creepy feeling of being watched. He locked the metal teeth back in place and headed for his door. He heard the wood on wood scraping of the log across the gate being removed and stopped with a hand on the handle, the other hovering near his Glock. He wasn’t feeling any good vibes coming from this place. Not at all like Tombstone, where everything was straightforward and plain spoken. He watched, his eyes seeing easily into the deep shadows, as the big gate swung out. Men with guns. He snatched his door open and slipped behind it, putting the steel and Kevlar between them. Their weapons weren’t pointed at him so he kept his out of sight, but it was in his hand and ready to come up instantly.
“No need to get jumpy,” a gruff, bearded, man said. “We weren’t expecting company, so we had to check you out.”
Lie number one.
If anything, they were waiting to see if any zombies followed him. Which meant they were willing to let him fend for himself if some did show up, not offer him shelter.
“Had to run my plates through your database?” Jessie asked, behind the door, gun in hand.
“What? No,” he said. “We just wanted to watch for a minute, make sure you didn’t act suspicious. We didn’t know who you were. You can never be too careful nowadays.”
Lie number two.
A young man and his dog in a black chop top Mercury was the description Wire Bender had given everyone on his visit list. He was pretty sure there weren’t a whole lot of others running around that matched.
Jessie remained quiet, just watching the man and his three companions come out of the gate and approach him.
“I’m Colonel Norris,” he said and extended his hand as he approached. “Welcome to the compound.”
Jessie kept his gun in his hand, still hidden behind the door, and watched the other men. They were gruff, unshaven, and were watching the wood line. Whether for zombies or an ambush, he didn’t know, but he noticed two of them had their fingers on the trigger of their rifles.
Amateurs.
Jessie ignored the hand and reached down to calm Bob who still had a quiet growl in the back of his throat.
The colonel was nonplussed for a second but recovered quickly and swept the land with his outstretched arm.
“Beautiful view,” he said. “Just look at it. Hard to believe the woods are filled with the undead, hiding out and just waiting for a chance to take a man down.”
Lie number 3, Jessie thought. The dead don’t think and if they were in the woods, they’d already be running for them.
Jessie didn’t look.
He got down to business because he didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to.
“I have a list of renewable supplies the president has asked me to give to any settlements I can find. In return, he’d like a list of things you can supply in trade. I imagine up here, there is plenty of fur and venison.”
Jessie let it hang, giving the colonel a chance to brag, maybe ease the tension, and was a little surprised by the answer.
“We don’t go outside the walls, it’s too dangerous. We’ve lost men and those zombies are everywhere. Besides, we have plenty of long-term storage food. Unlike the rest of the world, we were prepared. We knew the apocalypse was coming. We’re not giving any of it up and we don’t need help. We’re self-sufficient.”
Then why am I here? Jessie thought.
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry to bother you.”
He clicked his tongue to Bob and with a jerk of his head, the dog jumped up to his place on the passenger seat.
“If you decide you want to join the rest of the rebuilding, give us a holler on the ham,” Jessie said and started to climb back in the car.
“Hold on, hold on, young man,” the colonel blustered. “It wouldn’t be neighborly of us to send you on your way without at least giving you a good meal. Don’t be hasty, come on in for a spell. It’s getting dark.”
Jessie was torn. These guys were rude and had already lied to him three times. Lakota didn’t need them, especially if they had nothing to offer, but he was supposed to be an ambassador of sorts. He was supposed to pull everyone together and it took all kinds. These guys acted like they were still scared of their own shadows. Maybe they’d come around. He relented, decided to play nice.
“That sounds good,” he said. “We’ve been living on canned food for weeks now.” He smiled his crooked smile. “Home cooking would really hit the spot.”
The colonel was happy again and waved the double gate open so he could get the car through. Jessie usually didn’t lock it up but when he parked by the other Jeeps and trucks, he flipped the kill switch that fed juice to the coil. It was labeled ‘lights’ in a panel of a dozen other switches. Hidden in plain sight. Nobody would be driving away with it and he actually took the key out of the ignition, where it had been since the first day he drove it out of the garage in Atlanta. Liars are thieves and thieves are liars, he thought as he latched the door, hoping the keys worked the locks to get back in. He’d never tried them to see.
“Um, one other thing,” the colonel said, half apologetically. “We can’t allow anyone to be armed inside the walls. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave your weapons in the car.”
Jessie looked at him, then pointedly at the three men with the rifles, none of them slung, two of the men with their fingers still on the triggers.
“No,” he said and held his eye. “That’s not going to happen.”
He saw the other men tense and grips were tightened on the rifles.
“But surely, young man, you don’t need all those guns inside the walls. It’s safe here. My Lord, you have two on your hips and I see bulges under your jacket. How many guns do you need?”
“All of them. But I’ll leave the grenades and rocket launchers in the car. How’s that?” Jessie asked and the colonel wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but could see the kid wasn’t going to be bullied. They really did need help, despite what he tried to portray. Otherwise he never would have contacted Lakota. He needed to get something going or his people were going to desert for greener pastures, and he couldn’t have that. He was in charge and he was going to stay in charge. He couldn’t have everyone abandoning the compound. He’d worked too hard for too long to give it up now.
“Well,” he said magnanimously, “I guess we can make an exception for a presidential representative. I guess you are your own bodyguard, after all.”
Colonel Norris led him to his study and the guards followed, posting themselves outside the door. It had previously been the manager’s office, a grand space with windows overlooking the valley and views for miles.
They talked about the world situation, and more importantly the United States situation, for hours. The Valhalla Compound, as the colonel called it, had over a hundred survivors. They’d been a separatist group, living in a couple of cabins and some RVs on some land they’d bought. They were militant doomsday preppers and had a plentiful supply of guns and food and ammo, just waiting until the government declared martial law. That’s when they would have risen up with the rest of the Patriots and taken the country back from the globalist scum and the Democrats. A second American Revolution. When the liberals didn’t take over and the zombies did, they had fled to the hunting lodge and commandeered it. The colonel had generously taken in all of the surrounding people and organized the building of the wall. They had a five-year supply of food for his militia, but with all the others he’d saved, they were getting low. They only had a few months of the freeze-dried left.
The story came out in bits and pieces, the colonel giving out information grudgingly at first, but his tongue loosed when Jessie pulled a large flask of Crown Royal from his jacket. One of the bulges the colonel had been concerned about. Jessie was discovering he had a knack for ferreting things out and puttin
g them together. He was learning to read the tales on people’s faces, when they were holding back, when they were lying. People seemed to think he was a little dense, maybe because of his scar or youthfulness. Maybe they thought they were getting the boy drunk when he matched them shot for shot. Whatever the reason, he learned things they probably didn’t mean to divulge. The conclusion he came to was the survivalists were a little nutty and had been living out their “we’re going to save the Republic” fantasies in the wilds of Idaho. Mostly harmless, the local law hadn’t found any reason to shut them down. They hadn’t been affected by the zombie virus, they were living off their long-term storage food and poaching. When they realized what was happening, the colonel had taken over the lodge, but he’d also taken in any survivors. Even the democrats. He might be an ass but Jessie couldn’t forget that he had saved a lot of people, even if he did run his compound like a mini dictator. Jessie also deducted that the so-called Colonel was a title he gave himself. Neither he, nor any of his militiamen, had served in the military. After training with soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines all winter, he had learned military discipline, the certain way a soldier carried himself, or moved in a certain fashion. These guys got all their training from YouTube videos or war movies. It took all kinds to make the world go ‘round, he kept telling himself. The guy wasn’t all bad. Just an ass. If there were laws against that, there’d be a lot of people in jail.
Dinner was a somewhat somber affair and the food was plain. Like the other places he’d visited, it was served cafeteria-style. It just wasn’t practical for everyone to cook for themselves, it was too wasteful.
Jessie sat at the head table, on a raised dais, with a few of the other “important” people. Although the food was bland, it was plentiful, but the people were kind of grayish. Many of them had on well-worn clothes, probably what they’d been wearing from the start, washed over and over again. The colonel hadn’t been kidding, they really didn’t go outside the walls. His militiamen had rigged up some sand filters for water, and there was a small spring-fed pond at the back of the property. They didn’t have power, everything was done as it was a few hundred years ago: from carrying water in buckets, to cooking over open flames in the fireplace. They were living like pioneers. That might be fun for a weekend, Jessie thought, but to live like that day in and day out would get real old, real fast. They needed to be self-sufficient, their way of life wasn’t sustainable, and the colonel was just now beginning to realize it. He needed help but was too proud to ask for it. Jessie wasn’t sure what was expected from Lakota, maybe just meeting with an outsider would get him thinking and planning about changes he’d have to make.
Jessie planned on leaving in the morning, his job was done and he didn’t particularly like these people, but when he saw the beaten down men and women listlessly eating the tasteless food, he knew he had to do something. There was no reason this couldn’t be a vibrant community like Tombstone or Lakota. It had been a long, hard winter but spring was here and they didn’t even have sprouts started. They didn’t even have a greenhouse.
“Give me ten of your best men tomorrow, Colonel. I’ll teach you guys how to gather supplies. You’re never going to make it if you don’t leave these walls.”
He wasn’t speaking loudly, but sound carried and everyone looked up at him. They hadn’t heard the broadcasts from Bastille, they had a half tank of gas left in one of their trucks and they only ran it when they needed to use the Ham radio. Only the Colonel heard them and had mostly dismissed them as untrustworthy. Propaganda and lies. His people didn’t need to have false hopes so he had kept them in the dark until things were starting to get desperate, until he decided to reach out. These people thought the rest of the survivors were hiding out like them, not taking the world back from the undead.
“There are too many zombies,” one of the men at his table said dismissively. “We’d be dead in no time.”
“You’ll be dead in six months if you don’t,” Jessie replied. “The rest of us are rebuilding, not hiding out. We have plenty of fresh food and all kinds of goods to trade, but we aren’t going to give it to you. You guys looking for a handout? You want welfare?”
The men shook their heads at that, most of them were hard working individualists who had scoffed at the food stamp crowd. Proud men and women, but they’d been beaten down by the colonel and his armed men, continually telling them how bad it was outside the walls. Screaming hordes of undead everywhere. They all remembered those first days and still thought it was like that. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
“I have thumb drives full of all the information you need to grow gardens, repair vehicles, rebuild firearms, make your own solar power, what herbs to use for medicine.” Jessie said. “It’s all there, but you need a laptop to access it. Before you get a laptop, you need electricity. Before that, you need a generator and the fuel to run it.”
The people in the hall had stopped eating and all were paying attention.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a hot shower?” he asked, to the laughter of some, and a few women who shouted out they’d kill for one.
“It’s not as bad out there as it once was,” Jessie said. “You need to get out and start living again, not slowly dying behind these walls.”
The eyes behind the binoculars took it all in. She was high up in an evergreen, her black leathers blending her into the night. She could see over the wall, straight into the dining area where they were eating. He had been easy to follow, his car noisy and usually kicking up a dust trail. At first it was just idle curiosity, who would be out roaming the roads in such an old vehicle. She kept her distance, the driver never realizing he was being tailed. Even when she lost sight of him, it was easy to tell when he turned. The roads were covered with dirt, blown in sticks, leaves and pine needles. His tires left tracks, especially when he went in a new direction. He was aimless, never going in a straight line for long and it turned into a game for her, something to do because she got the feeling he was on a similar mission. He was seeing what there was to see, trying to find survivor outposts, and generally taking an inventory of what was left of the country. She was doing the same thing, but she wanted to know where the pockets of resistance were before the teams of gatherers showed up. When he stopped for the night and made a small fire, she saw him for the first time and realized who he was. He was the one her father wanted her to eliminate, the same kid she’d pulled out of the labs months ago. She’d had a moment of weakness, and seeing him beaten half to death, she’d snapped. Gave him her own injections and set him free. She’d put that memory behind her, she had assumed he’d died in the parking lot where she left him. The car was the same one, she realized. Except much better now, the armaments well made, not haphazardly bolted on pieces of tin.
Curious, she trailed him. She wanted to know more. There was little else to do in the wastelands. Every town was dead and crawling with zombies. Every settlement was walled and bristling with guns. Recruiting new members was going to be more difficult in the States. They may have to change their tactics. That’s why she was here, though. Winter was over, it was time to expand and she was the forward scout to get a lay of the land. Now she’d found the Road Angel, the emissary from Lakota. She’d track him for a while before she took any action. He probably knew where more compounds were. It would be easier to follow and make notes than try to find them on her own.
22
Jessie
After a breakfast of powdered eggs and reconstituted bacon, Jessie met with a group of men and women who volunteered to go outside the wall. He’d been quietly asking around, trying to find out exactly who these people were before Z day. They were all just everyday folks. Despite a handful of them being in the colonel’s Militia, none of them had any military or police experience. They were wannabes pretending to be gearing up for Armageddon, but it was just talk. The only training they’d done is what they’d taught themselves and from watching videos before the fall. He tried hard not t
o fault them, they were doing the best they could with what they had. He knew he was lucky to have spent the last six months working with Lakota’s finest. His dad figured everyone that started the schedule last fall had learned the equivalent of a stripped-down Seal Team or Delta Force patch. Not the mental toughness or the peak physical conditioning, but the knowledge. The skills that were important in the new world. A lot of the guys were older, most out of shape, so the physical training wasn’t very intense for most of them. Nobody was planning on going hand to hand with a horde of zombies. Nobody was training for a twenty-mile road march with loaded packs or doing pushups with waves breaking over their heads. The instructors concentrated on what they were good at, each man had a different specialty from their times in the service or police force. They learned how to sweep a house, tear down and rebuild a hundred different weapons, clear a jam, fire a mini-gun, dial in a scope, hit targets at a thousand yards, basic field medicine, advanced knife fighting, and everything else that would help keep you alive beyond the barriers. They could hotwire older cars, drive trains, find water in the desert and knew where to find medicine.
He couldn’t believe how nervous, how afraid of the world beyond their borders the volunteers were. They’d lived in isolation for six months and had grown accustomed to it, had never ventured out beyond their walls, beyond doing some trapping or bow hunting close by. They were afraid to fire their guns to hunt, they thought they would bring a horde down on them. The walls wouldn’t hold against a sustained onslaught. They’d taken out a Boy Scout troop and the occasional zombies that wandered up the road with their compound bows. They were being careful. Playing it safe. They had convinced themselves if they stayed isolated and quiet, they would be fine.
The whole lodge turned out to watch them go, some of the women were actually crying. Jessie grinned his crooked grin. They were in for a pleasant surprise at how easy it was to stay safe in the wilds, if you were careful. If you knew what you were doing. Maybe he should ask Bastille to make a video to give out, showing what they’d learned the hard way about surviving among the zombies.
Zombie Road IV: Road to Redemption Page 15
