At one time, only seventeen people lived at this end of the quarry- the group that came in with Will. Everyone else lived across the pit in a tunnel with the Judge, the man who led the community when Will and his group arrived. The two leaders had a falling out. Will gave them the choice of staying with the Judge or changing tunnels and living under his rule. The community members considered a string of poor choices the Judge made and the safety measures Will instituted since he arrived and moved across the quarry. Only twelve people chose not to stay; even Cyrus, The Judge's mad inventor, moved his workshop and lab into the empty shaft next to Will's.
Up to then, Will led the community in deed if not in name. He deferred to The Judge on all matters that didn't involve safety or fighting the creepers. Afterward, he was the undisputed head of the quarry. Rather than rule like an autocrat, he formed the informal Council to run things.
The damnable part of it was that after they fled the ranch the night the dead overran it, the last thing he wanted was to be President of a small group of people trying to ride out the apocalypse. Even now, if he could he’d hand over the decision-making to someone else and concentrate on planting the crops and raising the livestock they would need for the group to grow any bigger. But he'd been a natural leader all his life, and people looked to him to make the decisions and take the actions that would keep them safe, warm, and fed. And he hated the idea of someone else making the choices that could affect the safety and security of his family.
Danny's voice rang out from inside the tunnel; he yelled something unintelligible and a volley of laughter followed.
A ghost of a smile played on Will’s lips. “That damned kid.â€
Jiri spoke up. "Have you ever considered how far he might've gone if the world stayed normal? If the dead didn’t come back to life?"
Will shrugged his shoulders. "It's hard to guess. Everyone that interacted with him loved him, and there wasn't anything he couldn't do. On the other hand, I never saw much ambition in him beyond where the next beer and the next woman were coming from. But that probably would have calmed down some as he finished growing up. He never talked about wanting anything more than his own ranch."
"I, for one, am glad he stayed with you instead of going off to college or out to Western Kansas to start a spread of his own. He’s gotten us out of some pickles we may not have made it through without him.
Will nodded. "He’s saved my tail on a number of occasions, there's no question about that. I wish we had a hundred more like him for this mess coming up."
17
* * *
Terrence stared at the bluff wall across the quarry and listened to the conversation with one ear. The tunnel-dwellers looked at the coming attack in one of two ways; with dread, or as a hard, nasty job that had to be done. Not Terrence, though. He reckoned he was the only person in the community that looked forward to the attack with anticipation and a savage lust for revenge.
He was a tall black man with a square jaw and a nose flattened by repeated breaks. After graduation he joined the army alongside Riley, his best friend from childhood. They fought with distinction through four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Army, they returned to St. Louis and got into the business of bounty hunting.
For the most part, they hunted down bail jumpers. They were talented investigators who didn't hesitate to throw a punch or pull a weapon, and their business grew by leaps and bounds. The outbreak brought that to a screeching halt. He and Riley fought the dead back-to-back in the streets of St. Louis, working their way out of the city and through the suburbs.
One night they found a man sitting in a ditch on the side of the road, crying into his cupped hands. The man, Steve Elliott they later found out, and his fourteen-year-old daughter were bicycling along in search of blackberry brambles when a beat-up Chevy Nova passed them going the other way. The Nova turned around, came up behind the Elliotts, and forced them into the ditch. It stopped and three men got out. They beat Steve until he couldn't walk, then turned on his daughter. One held a rifle on him while another raped her and the third waited in line, cheering them on. Then they switched places. When they finished, they bashed her head in with a rifle, jeered and laughed at Steve, got in their car, and drove away.
Riley was one of the friendliest and outgoing white men Terrence had ever met. He was a prankster with a corny joke for any occasion. His gregarious personality masked that when the situation called for it, he was a stone savage and as deadly a fighter as Terrence had served with. His soft and friendly eyes grew hard and bitter as he listened to Steve's tale. He had a big, sloping forehead and wore his hair slicked back. As he listened to the distraught father, he ran his hand through his own hair again and again until it was a spiky mess that pointed every which way.
The ex-soldiers buried the teen's body on a little rise back off the road. They begged her father to ride with them until they got to one of the small settlements that dotted the highway between Columbia and St. Louis, but he refused. They left him where they found him, sitting in the ditch and morning his only daughter.
Without talking about it, they drove off in the same direction as the men in the Nova. They caught up with them three days later, drinking at a little makeshift bar in the town of Jonesburg on Interstate 70. Terrence and Riley joined the trio and paid for several rounds. Riley was loose and friendly, telling joke after joke and laughing often. He told a joke about a nun on a bicycle. It wasn't particularly funny, but the men from the Nova guffawed and slapped their legs- anything to keep the beer flowing, Terrence imagined.
Riley took a big pull on his beer, set the mug down hard on the table, and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. "Speaking of bicycles, me and Terrence saw the damnedest thing the other day. Didn't we, T. B.?"
"We did indeed,†said Terrence.
"Yeah?" Said one of the rapists. Terrence fingered him as the leader because of the way the other two deferred to him and because he talked the most. "What did you see?"
"A dad and his teenage daughter forced off their bikes. Somebody beat the dad, raped and murdered his daughter." Riley's body language remained the same- he was leaned back and slumped in his chair, appearing as relaxed as could be. But his tone had changed. The jovial disposition and laughter were gone; his eyes burned into the man across from him.
The rapist drained a shot and raised his hand for another; he stared back at Riley. His cohorts blanched when Riley spoke their crimes aloud. One played with his shirt collar, his eyes moving back and forth between the two men. The other stared at the table with hooded eyes, his shoulders slumped.
"Where was that? The leader asked.
Riley finally moved, leaning over and supporting himself with his elbows. "You know where, you murdering son of a bitch. You left the dad alive and he described you and your car. How many neon green 1972 Chevy Novas with three assholes inside you think there are running up and down I-70 these days?"
For a long moment, nothing happened. The leader wore a shitty little grin and gazed at Riley; the other two eyed their boss. Their leader jumped up, knocking his chair back with a crash and grabbing for the sidearm on his waist. The man to his left followed a split-second later. Number three gaped at his partners, a stricken look on his face.
As they reached for their weapons, Terrence shot them with a thirty-two he'd been holding on them under the table for several minutes. Working left to right and then back, he fired seven shots. He didn't know how many hit their mark but all three men fell to the floor, clutching their legs and screaming.
The bar's other patrons scrambled away from the action, some throwing themselves on the ground and crawling away. Terrence kept an eye out for trouble, moving in a slow circle with his weapon in front of him.
Riley sauntered around and peered at the men screaming and writhing on the floor. "Damn, Terrence you got this one guy right in the dick. There's no coming back from that." He pulled his own handgun and double-tapped each of them in t
he head.
They looked around the room. People gawked at them from underneath tables and around corners.
Riley snickered. "Relax everybody- we got who we came for." He looked over at the bar. "Mister barkeep- come up from behind there, hands first.â€
The bartender, a portly fellow wearing a stained and filthy apron, raised himself up slowly with his is empty hands raised high.
"What’s your name?" Riley asked once the man stood all the way up.
"J-J-Jack," the bartender stammered.
"Jack, is there a law officer in this town?"
Jack shook his head no, his bushy mustache trembling as if he might cry.
"The ones the biters didn't get all ran off," added a man peering out from behind the corner to the men's room.
Riley shook his head as if that's what he expected to hear. "Those men were rapists and murderers. We gave them justice. Nobody else here has anything to fear from us."
The pair backed toward the exit, walking slow, their eyes always on the move, searching for a threat.
As they neared the door, the man who told him about the police spoke up. He was an older man with a long, crooked nose and a thinning batch of white hair. "We thank you then, if what you said is true. We're in enough trouble what with the biters roaming everywhere and no police. Anybody who would take advantage of the situation and hurt a young girl, why, they don't deserve to live."
Terrence tipped his hat to the old man as he and Riley backed out of the bar. They hurried through the parking lot to their truck. Riley jumped in and started it while Terrence stood behind the bed and kept his gun pointed at the bar door. The truck rumbled to life and he got in. The big Chevy kicked up gravel and a cloud of dust until it hit the pavement. Terrence and Riley blasted off into the night.
18
* * *
With that, Terrence and Riley found their calling.
After the outbreak, civilian control broke down at different times in different places around the country, but by late spring there was no law enforcement anywhere. They heard different rumors about the military. Some people said it was working from the east coast to the west, rolling up the dead as it went. Others said the creepers overran the military across the country. Still others said the President disbanded all four branches and sent the soldiers home. One thing was for sure- they weren’t around and keeping order, at least not in East or Central Missouri.
A truism Terrence learned in Afghanistan and Iraq said if no one was around to police the bad guys, the bad guys ran amok. As a result, individuals and small communities across mid-Missouri were desperate for someone willing to chase down those who committed heinous acts. A man trying to keep his family safe from the dead had a local gang that extorted his food on a regular basis. A woman fighting for survival beside her sister woke up one morning to find the woman raped and murdered. People banding together in a small community are helpless to prevent men with heavy arms from taking every female from fourteen to thirty. Terrence and Rileys were stunned to find out that a network of slave traders thrived across the Midwest, kidnapping women to sell as sex workers and men as slave laborers.
Folks trying to survive amid a horror they thought existed only in the imagination of writers and moviemakers would give everything they owned to get their spouse or children back. They fed the ex-bounty hunters and kept them in liquor, guns, and ammunition. They even offered payment in the form of sexual favors, though the pair always turned those down.
"If some hottie wants to roll around under the covers with me to forget about the dead for a while, that's one thing," Terrence told Riley one day. "But as payment for going out and trying to find her kid? Man, just give me a bowl of soup and we'll call it good." Riley concurred.
They were careful to never take more in payment than those hiring them could afford to give. The pair didn't need much, anyway. They had a network of people they helped from Columbia to St. Louis; they took most of their meals in towns and homes that belonged to that network. Clothes hung on the racks in malls and stores all over. In a short amount of time they built up a massive supply of weapons; mostly what they needed in return for their work was ammunition.
Hearing his name shouted interrupted Terrence’s recollection. He snapped to, surprised to see Jiri laughing and Will examining him with a curious smile.
"Are you all right, buddy?" Will asked. "I said your name four times."
"Oh." Terrence rubbed his temples. "What do you need?"
"Jiri and I were discussing our defenses and we wanted your opinion. What were you daydreaming about, anyway?"
Terrence scrunched up his face and shook his head. "Nothing. It's not important." He looked at the ground for a moment, thinking then looked back up Will. "Hey, let me ask you a question. Are you certain that the people attacking us are the same ones who sent the guy that killed Riles?"
"As certain as I can be without seeing it myself. When they had Coy, the woman in charge told him they tried to take me out a couple of different ways. Once, they sent a shooter with a sniper rifle through the tunnel."
Terrence nodded his head and took a deep breath. "Then we can't lose this thing. And after it's over, if they're still alive, I want some time with the people that sent that guy." He could feel Will peering at him in the darkness.
"Are you going to stay on, after it's over?"
"You couldn’t make me leave."
Will clapped him on the back. "Then spend all the time with them you want."
19
* * *
Kayla sat behind her magnificent mahogany and cherrywood desk in her sumptuous office that took up half of the second floor of the church. She looked at the diamond rings on her fingers and the fine art on her office walls. She had over twelve hundred people at her disposal, subjects that served her every whim. She thought about the hundreds of square miles that she called her territory — the Kingdom of Kayla, if you will — and the hard-bodied and handsome man nearly twenty years her junior who shared her bed last night.
She considered all that and still felt discontented.
After checking her reflection in a mirror she kept in the top drawer of her desk, she fluffed her hair and picked a wayward clump of mascara out of the corner of her eye. She closed the desk drawer and pushed a button on her desk.
"Yes, ma'am?" The cultured and elegant voice answered immediately.
“Come in, and bring water."
"Yes, ma'am." Her assistant clicked off.
Less than thirty seconds later there was a soft rap on the door that separated their offices. Olivia walked in with a clipboard in one hand and a bottle of Dasani in the other. She twisted off the cap and offered the bottle to her boss.
Kayla wrinkled her nose. "Are we out of Voss and Icelandic?" she asked, referring to her favorite brands.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry. Would you like Carl to organize a mission trip?" Mission trip was the code phrase for sending a crew of hapless peons out into the zombie lands to obtain the finer things Kayla required.
She sighed and drummed her blood-red nails on the desktop. "No, I'll make do. We leave in a week, anyway- it would be just one more thing we'd have to tote over to the tunnels." She pointed at the clipboard in Olivia's other hand. “Is that the weapons report?"
"Yes, ma'am. Would you like me to leave it on your desk?"
Kayla waved her off. "You know I find that sort of thing stupefying. Summarize it for me, dear."
Olivia recited without checking the report. "We have 300 semi-automatic rifles in good repair. 250 broken or unreliable semi-automatics. A little over 100 single shot rifles, and 300 handguns in various sizes. We have a shortage of ammunition for the semi-autos and little ammo for some of the handguns."
"And my baby?"
"The armory has eleven shells for the mortar."
Kayla gave her a brisk nod. "Very well."
Her assistant paused and pursed her lips, then spoke. "If I may, ma'am, there are repo
rts of complaints about our weapons supply. It seems some people are concerned we're not as well armed as we should be."
Kayla gave an exasperated sigh. "One thing I've learned since I became a leader is that people will always complain. For God's sake, it's a safe bet that those caves will be deserted when we get there. In that case, I'll take them without firing a shot. But if there is resistance, it will come from BB guns and rocks. They have almost no weapons.
"Pick three men to put together three twenty-person teams. Their mission is to find more guns and bullets- after we make the move. And put out the word that we are laughably well-armed considering the opposition we face."
"Very well, ma'am." Olivia took a breath, hesitated, they continued. "What will be my role during the attack, ma'am?"
Kayla regarded her. An elegant twenty-two-year-old with thick black hair and big green eyes, her dress was always impeccable. Kayla found her invaluable. She anticipated Kayla’s needs, kept her opinions to herself, and never talked to anyone about the things she saw and heard. Kayla's trust in the young girl was absolute and her presence was essential to keeping Kayla on an even keel.
"You're certainly not going to be up front where the shooting is, my dear," Kayla answered. "You'll be in the back with your own guard detail, along with Cook, Chet and a few other people whose safety is paramount."
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