The doors to the stockroom swung open and a rotting female stepped inside. Before the door could close, she was joined by two more.
There was no way Randy could fight through the horde, as there was another dozen or more right behind. Even if he got out into the street, he might die anyway.
Randy bashed in the rotting head of the lead zombie with two strikes, his mind racing to formulate a good plan. Nothing came and he attacked the next zombie in line, but he’d tire quickly and there was no end in sight to the zombies.
He glanced at the back door but knew he’d never make it over the fence before he was shot. His only chance was to kill the zombies.
The door to the stockroom was open with the press of unwashed dead trying to get their filthy hands on Randy, and his swings were knocking them down but not keeping them at bay. For every step he took they got closer, and in a few seconds he’d be cornered and the press would make his weapon useless.
Randy had no choice but to open the back door, putting his hands up after closing it behind him.
Zombies slammed into the door on the other side.
The bat fell to the pavement.
“I’m unarmed. Don’t shoot me. I surrender or whatever you need me to do,” Randy yelled.
There were two men with rifles on the roof across the alley and they were still aiming at Randy’s head.
“If you’re going to kill me, just fucking shoot already. I’m cold and tired and I just lost my only safe place thanks to you douche bags,” Randy yelled. He was tired of all this bullshit. He put his hands down and closed his eyes.
It would be easier to just die right now. There was nothing left. Hadn’t he woken with the thoughts in his head? Without Lyssa he had nothing anyway, even though he’d just met her. His life was getting worse and worse.
“Climb the fence. Hurry up.”
Randy opened his eyes to see a blonde with clear blue eyes and a shotgun pointed at his crotch. She was standing on the other side of the fence and had snuck up without making a sound.
“What?” Randy asked stupidly. He’d heard her. He was trying to waste time and access the situation.
Two guys on the roof, three more in the alley plus the woman. All with weapons and all aiming at Randy.
“I won’t ask you again,” she said.
Randy nodded and began to climb. He didn’t know who they were and hoped they weren’t the group Lyssa was spending her time trying to eliminate.
The way his luck was going, she’d pick today or tonight to carry out her extermination plans on those in the warehouse.
Chapter Eleven
Christoph rubbed his temples and tried to concentrate. The migraines were back and worse than ever. He could feel his insides rotting away and it wasn’t from the zombie virus.
Inoperable cancer, the doctors had told him. You won’t live more than six months, they’d said. That was two years ago and he was still going. Maybe not going strong but he woke each day and thanked God he was still breathing. Today, like every other day, he needed to be strong. They’d lost too many people in the last few weeks and some of them had turned into zombies.
The coffee was nearly gone and Christoph had diluted it down to brown water, but he needed a few sips each day to continue. Even if it was a mental game he was playing. Jose had been a heavy smoker and, if she were still with them, Christoph knew she’d be miserable to be around. He remembered the six weeks she’d quit in the late 1990’s and how unbearable it was to live with her.
The thought of Jose made him sad. She’d taken the guilt of his cancer to her grave, despite the doctors telling her second-hand smoke hadn’t been the main cause. But it had been part of the equation, and Jose couldn’t look at her husband most days without tearing up. He didn’t even have a picture of his wife anymore. The house, the business and everything associated with his life had been put to the torch by looters or, inadvertently, by zombies. He was still trying to figure out which was worse.
“I have nothing to live for and yet here I am,” he whispered like he did every day, once the thoughts of Jose and his past life surfaced. He needed to push them back down and get to work. He had a group of survivors to help.
Christoph went to the roof and sat in the bent folding chair behind the makeshift wall, picking up a pair of binoculars. Each day, before nightfall, he’d scan the area for signs of life. It wasn’t his job but he liked to do it. Even in the biting cold of winter, he’d spend an hour looking for something. He didn’t know what, though.
He’d caught a few glimpses of people moving in this part of the city, searching inside the other warehouses in the industrial end of town. A few had been eventually invited into their midst, while others let pass and a few killed for stealing or trying to kill the survivors first.
Not everyone is bad, Christoph thought. He wasn’t some loser on a power trip. He didn’t need a fancy title nor have the others fear him. He was simply the oldest, and a natural leader. Everyone knew he was going to do what was best for the group as a whole, and he made the hard decisions quickly without pause.
They’d survived this far and this long because of some of these moves, and they were not only surviving but thriving.
Christoph saw movement and scanned with his binoculars. It was Zara and it looked like she had another prisoner.
He sighed. Zara would need to be pulled aside yet again and told not to do things like this. If the person was an enemy, best shoot them in the head and let the zombies take care of the body. If they were friendly, invite them to join us. Never let the enemy into camp.
By the time he got downstairs, they’d be gathered around the prisoner, everyone talking loudly about what they needed to do and why.
Christoph needed to get to them before something stupid happened. He remembered during the blizzard when a man and woman climbed the fence, looking for shelter from the cold and zombies, and they’d been shot. Dark times.
Christoph wasn’t delusional. He didn’t think the world could be saved. Your loved ones were dead or zombies now and they weren’t coming back. There was no cure and, even if there was, it was too little, too late. The most you could hope for was to die in your sleep.
He stood and got light-headed. Christoph had been diagnosed but fought going through with the chemo treatments.
The morning everything turned upside down he’d been unable to get out of bed and Jose called for an ambulance that never came. By the time Christoph had gotten his feet under him and spent an hour in the bathroom vomiting, the world had begun its collapse.
Jose helped Christoph get into the car. She was going to take him to the ER, but he wanted to go to the restaurant they owned. The news reports told Christoph what he needed to know: rioting and terror had taken hold. They needed the money in the safe and the shotgun under the counter and an open road to escape Pittsburgh.
The zombies didn’t kill his wife. A looter, no more than fifteen, with a tire iron had taken Jose from Christoph. All over the money in the register and a flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. Both items were useless in the grand scheme of things, and, in the end, Christoph felt guilty for being so stupid and putting his wife in danger.
He left the cash and the shotgun was long gone by the time they reached the restaurant, and Christoph drove back through town in a daze and buried his wife next to her parents in the cemetery. He’d thrown up from the cancer and the pain of losing his wife, and, if a zombie or looter had stepped in his way, he would’ve gladly killed.
Christoph had more important things to worry about right now, like Zara. She was going to pull down the walls around the survivors unless he did something drastic about the woman. She was starting to rally the people to her cause, which was becoming increasingly erratic. She wanted to go door to door and kill everyone, living or undead, and raze the city of Harrisburg.
Zara wanted to be in charge. She was a woman who’d never had anyone look up to or ask for her opinion, and Christoph knew he’d made a mistake giving her
control of the scouting parties. She’d used it to her advantage by slowly talking some of the members of the tribe into wanting to expand and create a new world, when the world they lived in was hard enough without grand schemes and complications.
Christoph took a moment with his eyes closed and the spinning in his head finally stopped. He opened his eyes and sucked in a deep breath of fresh air. Outside, on the roof, the smell of unwashed or rotting bodies couldn’t reach him. He spent more and more time up on the roof, even though most days it was hard to climb the stairs.
No one else ever joined him on the roof unless they were assigned as a lookout for guard duty. They only came to Christoph when there was a dispute or a question. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat and had a normal conversation about the past or the weather or anything insignificant. He had become their leader but they no longer saw him as human. He was the Answer Man. The Settler of Disputes Man. The Leader.
Christoph decided to take his dinner with everyone else tonight. It was just as much his own fault. He’d had a coughing fit weeks ago, during dinner, and barely kept food down, even on his best days. Eating in the privacy of his room was better. The others couldn’t see his weakness and his failing health.
Or could they?
Some of them stared when they thought he wasn’t looking, and no one had made a fuss when Christoph had stopped eating with the group or questioned when his plate was barely touched when he’d gone to the kitchen.
He thought the end was near, either because of the cancer, or because Zara was going to take over and ruin everything.
Christoph moved as quickly as the cancer and fatigue would allow, to get to the main level, before something bad happened.
Chapter Twelve
Randy was relieved to see the old guy walking slowly to where he was being held. The chick had ignored his questions or threatened to put a bullet in his head. She wasn’t very helpful, but it looked like she wasn’t the actual leader of the warehouse people.
“Zara, can we have a private word?” the old man didn’t look like he was really asking. He looked pissed, and Randy hoped it would keep him alive a bit longer.
The woman – obviously Zara – looked equally pissed as she gave Randy the stink-eye before wandering off with the old man.
“Now what?” Randy asked the three guys with guns. A crowd had gathered and he counted no more than three dozen people. He wondered how many they’d started with.
“You shut up and let Christoph and Zara talk it over,” one of the guys said. He was pointing his rifle at the ground but his fingers were close to the trigger.
Randy smiled at a few faces and about half of them smiled back. These weren’t evil people. They sure weren’t the Hellfire Club.
“I’m Randy Jackson.”
“Like the black dude from American Idol?” someone asked. As much as Randy hated people saying it, he knew it was a great ice breaker and, hopefully, they’d get comfortable with him and no one would shoot.
“No. Like the guy in the band.”
“What band?” the guy with the trigger-finger asked.
“Zebra.” When everyone looked confused, Randy sighed. Tough crowd. “They were popular in the eighties. Great rock band, kind of like Led Zeppelin meets Rush. They had a couple of minor hits. From Long Island, New York.”
Not one person said they knew the band, but it really didn’t matter. Randy could see people visibly relaxing now. He wasn’t a threat, just a guy like them. A survivor.
“This is bullshit and you know it,” Zara suddenly screamed and pointed a finger at Christoph. “I should’ve shot the bitch in the face and took his shit.”
Zara stormed off and everyone went quiet, staring at Christoph.
Randy held his breath as Christoph turned and stared in his direction.
He’d been in this spot before and it never ended well. Crow was the biggest asshole who came to mind, but it had been bosses and teachers and too many other people in Randy’s life to count.
“Zara tells me you were spotted with the woman who’s been killing us,” Christoph said to Randy. “You left town with the woman but returned alone. Where is she?”
“She’s gone,” Randy lied. He didn’t know why. If Lyssa reappeared, and it was more than likely she would, they’d kill him. If it wasn’t already in the plan. As much as he hated Lyssa right now for leaving him alone and not protecting his ass, he thought he still cared for her. Did he love her? Maybe. The old world rules didn’t apply anymore. You didn’t have time to date and fall in love and go to a movie. You found someone breathing and you hooked up and watched each other’s asses.
Lyssa had left his ass, but he still wasn’t going to betray her. Even if it meant a bullet in his own head.
“Gone? That seems a bit convenient to me. There’s a reason you came back by yourself. I need to know what you know, or these people are going to get really antsy with their trigger-fingers,” Christoph said.
Randy knew by the look in the old man’s eyes he wasn’t going to tell anyone to shoot, but Randy wasn’t taking any chances one of these trigger-happy bastards wasn’t going to step up and do it. If Zara came back, Randy knew she’d put a gun to his head without hesitation.
“She’s dead,” Randy said simply, looking down at his feet and hoping he could act his way out of it. He’d worry about Lyssa coming back when or if it happened. Right at this moment his survival was more important. Randy felt like a coward, but it wasn’t an uncommon feeling.
Christoph looked around the room at everyone gathered. “I want double the patrols and eyes on the roof. If he’s lying, we’ll soon find out.” He turned and stared at Randy, but it wasn’t a hateful glare. It was a compassionate and tired look. “You’ll stay inside until I see your story checks out.”
“Am I your prisoner?” Randy asked.
Christoph shook his head. “You’re a guest. We don’t keep prisoners. You’re either a friend or foe, though. We’ll make the decision about you. Tell me… would you rather leave and fend for yourself out there?”
Randy was about to tell Christoph he wanted to leave but paused. He looked around at the faces of the men, women and children. They didn’t look malnourished or living in fear. Some of the children even looked happy and he could tell they were already bored with the new stranger and wanted to run off and play.
“Tell me why I should stay,” Randy said.
“We can offer some protection. Food and a warm bed. Conversation with someone other than yourself,” Christoph said.
“And in return what do I do?”
“You help. Pitch in and do whatever is asked of you.” Christoph smiled. “I can see by the look on your face you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. You think we’re harvesting zombies in a secret lab or a bunch of cannibals. Maybe we sacrifice virgins to our death gods? We’re just a group of survivors who found a spot with chain-link fencing to keep the zombies out and us safe at night. Well, as safe as we can be. But we need more resources and more able-bodied men and women to fight and hunt and scavenge. The world outside is being depleted and the ground is too cold and hard for us to plant just yet. But once this weather breaks and stays warm we can begin the next phase of our existence,” Christoph said.
“You make the rules?” Randy asked.
“We all make the rules. The same laws we’ve always lived by. The Ten Commandments is the start for us. It pretty much covers any situation. When in doubt, we refer to Pennsylvania State laws,” Christoph said.
“What happens if someone murders or rapes?”
“They are dealt with swiftly. They are killed and burned,” Christoph said. “We learned early letting the bad seeds go only invited trouble. They knew the setup and our defenses, and we were raided a couple of times before we finally killed them. We’re wondering if the woman we see glimpses of shooting at us used to stay with us. Has she told you?” Christoph asked.
“She didn’t say. I only spent a few hours with her. She seemed ver
y unstable,” Randy said. It wasn’t a lie. Lyssa was a handful and he didn’t think it was necessarily all because of the zombie apocalypse. She’d been short a few screws in her head before this shit. “I think she’s just angry at the world.”
“What would you do if she came back?”
Randy shrugged. “I just want to live in peace and not sleep on a cold cement floor. She didn’t mean anything to me. Just another brief encounter before she was gone. I lost count of how many people I cared for are now dead or missing. Nothing personal, but someday we’ll part ways. I’ll go on to something else. Another group or another crazy woman for awhile. Nothing lasts anymore.”
“We’re creating something important here. Something that will last. Carving a small safe niche for our children, and our children’s children. Without interference from the zombies or the people who would try to take what we’ve rightfully earned. We don’t go looking for trouble but we will defend what is ours,” Christoph said. He put up a hand and began to cough, finally walking away.
Randy smiled at everyone, who seemed to be giving him the benefit of the doubt for the moment.
Perhaps I can live with these people and prosper, Randy thought. It wouldn’t be so bad. Adult conversation will be nice, and I can help in whatever way I’m needed. I’ll finally be needed again.
As Randy started to walk, he noticed Zara on the catwalk above, staring at him.
Chapter Thirteen
The two guys had been watching him for days as he helped out in the kitchen. Randy knew there’d be trouble and even though he’d made friends with the men and women in the warehouse he was still the outsider.
When Zara walked into the kitchen and closed the door behind her, everyone scattered.
Highway To Hell 2 Page 5
