Wanted: Dead or Undead (Zombie West)

by Angela Scott

  Still, though cloaked in darkness, he was easy prey and probably in more danger than she was.

  Damn. Not a sound broke the night, other than the crackle of fire that licked at the zombie body and sent up a plume of putrid smoke. He took a few quiet steps backward, then turned around and started back for his camp on the ridge.

  Chapter 5 – The Makings of a Posse

  Red surveyed the small valley below from her position on the rise. A dozen or so wagons parked in a circular formation, but there appeared to be no signs of life. A good thing, in some ways, as no movement meant they wouldn't have any walkers to contend with. Even so, the disheartening silence raised a few goosebumps on her arms.

  There should have been a number of people down there—men, women, and children—cooking food, watering animals, playing stick games, taking a rest from many days of travel on their way out west. Normalcy.

  But nothing about the situation below appeared normal. No people. No animals. No sound.

  She sighed and slumped down a little lower in her saddle. The caravan appeared abandoned, but Red couldn't fathom the idea of that many people walking away and leaving all their possessions behind. Things should have appeared more hopeful heading west, but the silent wagons below cut deep into that hope.

  The sound of a quick, low whistle from behind brought her upright. She turned with her guns ready, and let out an aggravated sigh.

  It was him—Cowboy. What's with this guy?

  She debated whether or not to put her guns away. He had supplied her with enough fresh food to sustain her over the past day and a half. Still, annoyance crept in and she had a mind to shoot him for following her.

  He raised his hand with a wave of sorts, before trotting his horse up beside her. "I thought I'd give you a warning, so you didn't shoot me accidentally."

  "If I shot you, it wouldn't be accidental." She slipped the guns back into her holsters."What are you doing here?"

  "I could ask you the same thing." He removed his hat, ran his hands through his dark locks, and smiled. "I figured you'd be long gone by now. Are ya stalking me or something?"

  She huffed. What a piece of work. "You're the one who came up on me, not the other way around."

  He winked at her and placed his hat back on his head. "What's going on down there?" He motioned to the scene below.

  She shook her head. "Sadly, not a thing."

  He scanned the area for a moment. "Where do you think they all went?"

  "Everything looks the same as they would have left it." She pointed toward the wagons. "See the clothes hung out to dry, the fire pit in the middle, untouched supplies? Every wagon looks to be intact as well. If it were Indians, it wouldn't look this tidy."

  "Zombies?"

  "Nothing else makes sense."

  "A whole wagon train, turned?" He shook his head. "There'd be bodies lying around, you know? People shooting each other, trying to survive."

  Red shrugged. "It's the strangest thing I've ever seen."

  "Should we go down and check it—"

  "Did you see that?" A flicker of movement from inside one of the wagons, the third one from the left, caught her attention. She swore the wagon shifted from side to side.

  "What? I don't see—"

  "There. That wagon." She pointed, but when Cowboy followed the line of her finger, the wagon stopped moving. "I'm positive I saw it move. Just give it a second."

  "I don't know, it looks pretty dead down there, pardon my expression."

  She kept her eyes on the wagon, but it didn't move. Maybe it was the wind? The air hung around them, calm and still, not even a hint of a breeze.

  "You don't think the wagons are full of sleeping zombies, do you?" The smirk on his face told her that he wasn't serious.

  What an idiot. "Of course not. If there were zombies down there, they would've smelled us by now and clamored over one another to feed on us."

  "Then let's go check it out. What're we waiting for?"

  "That." Red nodded in the direction of the moving wagon once again.

  Someone moved around down there. The perplexed look on Cowboy's face gave her great satisfaction.

  "You need to trust me more." She feared that, at some point, Cowboy would get the two of them killed.

  He tipped his hat at her. "You're right. From now on, I will."

  "What do you mean, 'from now on?' We're not traveling companions."

  Before Cowboy could respond, a young man jumped out of the end of the moving wagon, threw a bag over his shoulder, and took a few steps into the middle of the ring. Red's horse neighed, alerting him to their presence, and he quickly dove behind a wagon for shelter, pistol drawn.

  "You sick?" His voice echoed from the valley below.

  Cowboy raised his arms in surrender, or perhaps in an act of peace. Red trained her own gun on the stranger, establishing equality between both parties. She'd put her hands up for no one.

  "Nope!" Cowboy yelled down. "We're clean. You?"

  "I'm clean. No bites."

  "You alone?" Red yelled. With so many covered wagons, anything was possible.

  "It's just me. That's all. Everyone—gone. I needed supplies."

  "Can you both put the guns away so we can come down and check things out, too? We could use supplies as well." Cowboy made the negotiations, but Red didn't intend to put her gun away unless the man she trained it on put his down first.

  "Yes, yes. Come down! There's plenty!" He put his gun in his holster, stepped out into the open, apparently trusting she wouldn't shoot, and waved them forward.

  Cowboy turned to her and smiled. "A new friend. Ain't that nice?" He urged his horse to descend the hill and headed into the valley ahead of her.

  Red didn't like it one bit. Cowboy was too eager and trusting. She couldn't help but wonder if they were setting themselves up for an ambush.

  "Come on." Cowboy gestured for her to follow him. "If he wanted to kill us, he would have shot me by now, don't ya think? You know, get the man out of the way and keep the pretty girl as a plaything?"

  Boy, I really want to shoot him. If she needed a friend, maybe she could swap him out for the Asian man waiting for them below. "You think you're funny, don't you?"

  "I'm not?"

  Smug, son of a—nope, she wouldn't go there. He wasn't worth her energy. She would get away from him as soon as possible.

  "Your humor's gonna get you killed, you know."

  Cowboy shrugged. "Sounds like a mighty fine way to go, if you ask me."

  "Well, when your humor puts a bullet in your hind end, I'd like to be as far away from you as possible."

  He laughed. "Come on. The guy looks harmless. Besides, it's getting late and I can't think of a better place to set up camp for the night. There's bound to be some pretty nice bedding in some of those wagons. Just think about sleeping up off the ground—wouldn't that be a nice change?"

  She didn't respond, but guided her horse to follow close behind his. Although she holstered her gun, her left hand perched on top.

  Cowboy climbed off his horse and approached the man with his hand outstretched, full of city boy manners. "Anything of use?"

  The other man smiled and clasped Cowboy's hand in between both of his own and shook it eagerly while he nodded his head. "It's very strange." The man swung his arm around, indicating the campsite. "It looks as though they were here one minute and then vanished the next. Food, supplies—they left it all behind."

  "What do you think happened?" Cowboy took off his hat and held it in his hands as he scanned the dozen or so abandoned wagons.

  Red climbed down from her horse and stood a few steps behind him, listening to the conversation. She remained cautious and kept her eyes and ears open. Someone had to.

  The man shook his head. "Not sure. But whatever it was, it couldn't have been good." He looked them both over. "You guys come from the east?"

  Cowboy nodded.

  "How is it back there?"

  "Not good. The disease is spreadi
ng like wildfire. That's why we're"—he glanced at Red, but she just glared at him—"I'm heading west."

  The man squatted and held his head in his hands. "But there are survivors, right?" He looked up at them, his almond-shaped eyes pleading.

  Cowboy shot a warning glance to Red, and then nodded. "I'm sure there are."

  The zombie-to-human ratio on the East Coast was now roughly two-to-one, perhaps more. The plague thrived where a higher concentration of people congregated, the reason so many folk headed westward, loading up wagons in hopes of outrunning the plague.

  The man stood up again, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. "My sister and her husband live back east, and I had hoped the situation was better there." He sighed again, appearing to come to terms with the news. "It's not good, is it?"

  "No," Red said. Cowboy cast an incredulous look her way, but she couldn't give the man a false sense of hope and ultimately send him to his death. "It's not good at all. It's getting worse every day, actually. Those who survived the initial outbreak left a long time ago. No choice, really. If your sister and her family are alive, they're not back east anymore, I can promise you that."

  The man crumpled onto the packed dirt, not crying, not doing much of anything. He needed a moment.

  Cowboy attempted to change the focus and lighten the mood. "What about California? How's the situation there?"

  The man looked up at them and shook his head. "Not good there either, though better than the east, it sounds. There are a few camps in the mountains for the unaffected. A few in Oregon, too, but they're dwindling fast. There used to be several hundred set up. Now, I think there may only be a dozen or so. They're quite selective too, careful about who they let in. Depends on who's in charge."

  "What do you mean 'who they let in'?" It seemed easy enough to Red. "Anyone who's unaffected should be let in, right?"

  The man smirked. "They wouldn't let me in. Apparently, I'm too 'yellow.' The Indians are finding it just as difficult. The blacks, too. It depends on which camp you go to. But after being turned away from four camps, I got the picture." He shook his head. "I'm on my own, but you should both be allowed in."

  Cowboy reached down to help the man to his feet. "It doesn't sound like a place I'd much like to be myself, I can tell you that. This sure as hell isn't the time for that nonsense. It's the living against the non-living—that's all."

  "I appreciate that," the man said. "But it doesn't change a thing."

  Red released a frustrated sigh. "There have to be other camps. Maybe farther north, in Canada?"

  "Yeah, maybe." He shrugged. "Up until now, my plan was to find my sister. Not sure what I'm going to do at this point."

  "Not sure what I'm doing myself," Cowboy said. "Maybe we should just stick together until we figure it out. Safety in numbers, you know."

  Red didn't like the sound of that—putting together a posse. She tried to avoid this kind of thing.

  "My name's Wen," he said before Red had a chance to stop him.

  Her breath caught in her throat. She would have been content to call him "the man" until she left in the morning. Now she knew his name. Wen. It made a difference.

  "I'm Cowboy." She found it interesting that he used his nickname. "This here's Red."

  Wen laughed. "Seriously? You look more like a city fella to me. Your ma must've had some sense of humor."

  "She should've called him Jackass." Red smiled. "I know I would've."

  "Seems more fittin'." Wen tipped his head back and smiled.

  Grateful for the change in his demeanor, she couldn't help but smile back. She and this stranger now had something in common—a shared joke at Cowboy's expense.

  "Hey, wait right there." Cowboy turned to Red. "Really? You think I'm a jackass?"

  She shrugged and tried to ignore the fact that he seemed hurt by her comment. "Don't push me, or I'll start calling you Jackass right now."

  Cowboy pointed at her with a serious expression on his face, though Red could hardly take it as such. "That's it," he said. "You can't have any more of my potatoes."

  Chapter 6 – Lavender

  Cowboy ignored Red for the remainder of the evening. He didn't talk to her, or look at her. When he finished cooking dinner, Cowboy slid some potatoes and meat onto a plate for Wen, but didn't offer any to her. Fine. The angrier he became with her, the better. Maybe he'd go his separate way and leave her alone for good.

  She nibbled at some hard tack and potatoes of her own—well, technically they were his too—and listened as Cowboy questioned the stranger about the land out west and what might lay ahead for them. Red stood, gathered her empty dishes, and went off to clean them. The trio had found darn near everything they could hope for in the abandoned wagons—tubs for washing, wooden barrels full of water, clothes, bags of beans and rice, and lots of flour and cornmeal.

  Yet no matter how useful it all was, a horse could carry only so much. The less weight Classy had to carry, the longer she could travel, and the sooner Red would reach California and find her brother, Davis. She had no problem leaving behind perfectly good supplies to ensure a well-rested, fast horse.

  As the blood-red sun dipped below the western horizon, she left the men and climbed into a wagon she hadn't searched earlier. She found plenty of food and a couple of clean shirts, but what she most longed for was a nice bar of lye soap to wash her hands and face. She sighed. Soap. Such a small thing.

  She opened a chest near the front of the wagon and searched through the contents, mostly dresses and children's clothing, nothing of use to her. Then she brushed her hand over a large, leather-bound book. A family Bible.

  She lifted it out of the chest and placed it on her lap, turning the pages and reading the scrawled names of strangers: Joseph W. Bell, Martha Jane Williams, their children Samuel, Ella, James, and Mary. Dates detailed births, deaths, and weddings—decades of family genealogy. Further on in the Bible, portraits of people had been inserted between the pages. Red looked at one after another, sad to know that these particular people were gone.

  Her fingers brushed over the picture of a young boy dressed in knickers held up by brown suspenders. A school pail dangled from his fingers. The laugh in his eyes and the tuft of blond hair poking out from under his cap reminded her of her youngest brother. She held up the picture and examined it more closely. For a moment, it brought the image of her brother back to her, which she feared she'd forgotten. A tear threatened to escape the corner of her eye, but she wiped it away before it had the chance.

  She shoved the pictures into the book, just the way she'd found them, and placed the book back inside the chest. She didn't need a Bible. She needed soap.

  Red moved onto a second wagon. She only stayed inside for a moment—the baby clothes, toys and dolls proved too difficult to rifle through. She left each small item where it had last been placed.

  The children bothered her most. They turned faster than grown adults, the feverish sickness ravaging their tiny bodies so quickly that their whole makeup changed in a matter of minutes. They were also faster and hungrier than their adult counterparts. Every time she had to shoot a child, it tore at her heart. They would find peace only in death, but that didn't make it any easier. She hated it above all else.

  The third wagon looked more promising. A soft mattress with a large comforter covered the floor of the wagon, and Red claimed it for herself. Cowboy would be jealous, but it served him right. She searched through the contents of the wagon for anything of use and found a small suitcase buried beneath wool blankets and loose clothing. She opened it and sunk down onto the thick bed with a smile.

  Soap.

  She lifted the paper-wrapped package to her nose, and closed her eyes while breathing in the flowery fragrance. She actually moaned with pleasure at the scent of lavender—the best thing she'd smelled in months. The suitcase also contained a hairbrush, comb, and other toiletries and ointments. She pulled out a tube of cherry-red lipstick and twisted the bottom until the color surfaced from it
s metal encasing. Proper ladies didn't wear stain on their lips. Her ma never did and probably would've slapped the lipstick from her hand had she been there.

  Red turned her head and listened through the canvas covering the wagon. The men continued to talk outside, seemingly unconcerned about her whereabouts, so she tipped the tube toward her mouth and rubbed it lightly over her lips—first the top and then the bottom. She smacked her lips together and was amazed at how heavy it felt. Feeling self-conscious, she drew the back of her hand over her mouth and removed the color, then rolled the lipstick back inside its tube and tossed it out the front opening of the covered wagon.

  Red couldn't wait to wash the grime and filth out of her hair and off her body, so she climbed out and went in search of water. She found a small metal tub and filled it with cool water from one of the barrels. She considered warming it up over the fire, but didn't want to interrupt the male bonding still taking place next to the pit. Besides, she'd bathed in water far colder than that found in the barrels.

  Cowboy glanced up at her as she passed by, but he didn't say anything, so she ignored him.

  Inside the wagon, she wriggled out of her clothes and sat in her dingy undergarments. She'd been thrilled to find a replacement pair during her earlier search, and couldn't wait to put them on after she cleaned herself. She might have offered up a prayer of gratitude for having come across these abandoned wagons, if she still believed in God.

  With the sun descending in the sky, she lit a small lantern and placed it on a crate out of the way. She unwrapped the soap, dipped it into the water, lathered up her hands and ran it over her body, washing her arms and neck. The wagon began to smell like tiny purple flowers—it reminded her of the hills behind her home.

  She didn't want to think about that. Not any of it. Nothing good came from remembering what she'd lost.

  She hung her head over the washbasin and vigorously scrubbed her curls, weaving her fingers between the strands to remove the accumulated tangles and dirt. She felt almost human after ridding herself of the weeks of travel and grit that coated her body.