Floyd & Mikki (Book 1): Zombie Hunters (Love Should Be Explosive!)

by Tatner, Joseph

  Except for the part about doing laundry and taking care of the kids, Floyd couldn’t help but think that Mikki would fit in well here. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have hand grenades or dynamite. Mikki would probably go nuts if couldn’t blow something up every now and then. Of course, Floyd had no doubt that she’d still find a way, even if she had to mine the potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal herself.

  “So what’s your plan?” the ranger asked. “You gonna take on the raiders again, or head straight out to California?”

  “Those raiders pissed me off,” Floyd thought out loud. “But I don’t go lookin’ for trouble, neither, and I got no desire to get myself killed over stupid pride. That’s how I stayed alive this long.

  “Still, these raiders ain’t too bright. They’re good with brute force, but they have no tactics. Should be pretty easy to take them out if we work together and plan a good attack. If you give Mikki and me a couple of men, we should be able to take the rest of them out.”

  “Mikki? Wouldn’t you want to leave a girl like her in the camp?”

  “There is no girl like her. And do you want to be the one to tell her she has to sit behind with the women while the men folk all head off into battle?”

  “No, I guess that wouldn’t set too well with her.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. Besides, she knows what she’s doing, and she’s fiercer and more deadly than any raider. However, if we’re gonna do this, we should move soon, before they have a chance to regroup and rebuild. It’s already been a couple of days, so the sooner, the better. You’ve never tried attacking them directly at their camp, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then they won’t be expecting it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  John and Stan brought Leshawn and Pedro with them. Leshawn was a huge black man, former military, who handled all the weapons training for the camp and managed the ammo distribution. His wife had died in the original animal attack that also took the ranger’s wife and baby girl. Pedro had been in construction and designed the camp’s defenses. He also was an excellent shot and had proven himself to be fearless during earlier run-ins with the raiders. Bob and several others had wanted to come, too, but Ranger Martin didn’t want to leave the camp defenseless, just in case.

  Floyd led the way to where he had parked Freedom. He reached in and pulled out three of the four Mini Uzis and handed them to John, Leshawn and Pedro. “These will do better than those shotguns you brought,” Floyd explained. “Stan, you keep your sniper rifle.

  “These are loaners, for today only. We don’t have a whole lot of ammo, and you won’t need a lot anyway. Friend of ours custom-made this ammo. It’ll blow a man away with just a round or two. Fires 1,000 rounds per minute, so barely touch the trigger.”

  “I’d sure like to meet this friend of yours,” said Leshawn.

  “No, you wouldn’t. Only one way you can meet him now. He’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, a lot of good people are dead. Let’s try to not join’ em today, OK?”

  “Good idea,” Pedro agreed.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” Mikki announced. “One hour til ‘go’ time.”

  The crew headed out, sticking to the side of the road that led to the interstate. The raiders probably had someone else up in the tower by now, but with all the outside lights off to avoid attracting anything from the woods, they should be able to approach undetected. There was always the possibility of an attack en route, but any woodland threats in this area had been pretty much eliminated by the raiders or the Campfire Crew. Even the hordes of zombie bunnies had pretty much disappeared.

  Floyd and Mikki took point, with Pedro at the rear, looking behind them repeatedly. Floyd held up a hand to halt the team. He pointed to Stan and then pointed at the raider tower. Stan looked through his scope and Floyd through his binoculars, both men getting a good lay of the land.

  There were two raiders up in the tower, completely oblivious to them. They were facing down the long length of superhighway that led to Groverstown and beyond. They must have seen the flash when the town went nuclear, but they could have no way of knowing part of the road had been vaporized as well. There would be nobody coming down that road, probably ever again.

  There was a dim light coming from under the door of a small building. Four raiders were standing on the back wall, two were sitting in chairs drinking something near the barricade, and one was leaning up against the locked door of a shed. Most of whoever was left in the raider camp was probably in that small building. It was single story, shabbily built, and seemed to be a dormitory of some kind. Several of the tube-framed dune buggies and a number of motorcycles were somewhat lined up in an open area in the center. There was a large, open storm drain pipe that ran right under the interstate from one side to the other. They could use that to get to the other side unnoticed.

  The plan was fairly simple. Right at ten o’clock, Bob would cut the power line to the raiders back at the camp. That would be the signal to go. Mikki would take out the dormitory building, Pedro would take out the two guards by the barricade, Leshawn and Floyd would attack the four at the back wall, and John would take out the lone guard by the shed. Stan would also keep an eye out to pick off anyone else he could with his sniper rifle. The trick would be taking out the sniper in the tower and getting Stan up there unseen before everything else happened.

  At 9:45 PM, Mikki and Stan crawled through the pipe slowly and quietly until they came out the other side. Leshawn and John hunkered down close to the raider camp entrance, out of sight, waiting.

  Floyd climbed the back end of a nearby tree, moving up from branch to branch, until he had a clear view of the men in the tower. Stan might be a great shot, but Clyde was silenced and currently loaded with slugs in the box mag. Floyd would switch to drum mags to fire shot shells during the main battle.

  Waiting patiently, Floyd observed the two men in the tower through his scope. They were laughing and joking with each other. Finally, he saw his chance. The two line up perfectly and Floyd fired. The slug flew straight and true, silently piercing both heads with one shot. The bodies fell to the floor and nobody on the ground seemed the wiser. Stan would find no resistance when he climbed up into that tower.

  The ladder to the tower faced the inside of the camp, but if all went well, the raiders would be too busy to notice Stan climbing up. It was already 9:52 PM when Floyd silently descended the tree and joined Leshawn. The seconds passed by like glaciers during the Ice Age. Veeeeerrrrry sloooowwwly.

  Meanwhile, Floyd’s heart was pounding faster and faster in his chest. He had never been part of an operation like this, but he knew what needed to be done and was determined to do it. Besides, he was wearing his full body armor and was well-stocked with weaponry. He wasn’t really worried, but he was smart enough to know anything could go wrong. He was on edge, and that edge heightened his awareness of his surroundings.

  Right on time, the few dim lights in the camp went out. Before any of the raiders could say, “What the…?” gunfire erupted all around, directed right at them. Floyd and Leshawn had the farthest ground to cover, so they started running as soon as the lights went out. The raiders could see them running but thought it was just a couple of guys from their group horsing around. That is, until Floyd threw a grenade at the two farthest away on the wall. Mikki threw two grenades of her own through a window of the dormitory building as Stan headed up the ladder.

  The lone guard saw Stan and raised his rifle to fire but John took him out with one burst of the Uzi. All three grenades went off at about the same time. The building erupted and the two wall guards were blown off their perch. Floyd and Leshawn finished off the closest two wall guards before they knew what was happening. Floyd looked at Leshawn and said, “I love it when a plan comes together!” LeShawn fired the Mini Uzi to take out another approaching attacker.

  Pedro jumped through the barricade opening and fired at the two raiders in the
chairs. He had never fired an automatic weapon before and shot off way more rounds than were needed, nearly emptying the first mag. There wasn’t much left of the two when Pedro was done.

  A couple of raiders came stumbling out of the dormitory door, dazed and dripping with blood, but Mikki was right there to dispatch them with Bonnie. A couple of raiders who went unnoticed attacked Floyd and Leshawn from behind. One jumped onto Leshawn’s back and tried to stab him in the throat. Leshawn grabbed his arm, threw him over his shoulder to the ground, and nearly broke the man’s arm right off with one quick twist. You could hear the bone snap throughout the camp. Leshawn then snatched the knife and stabbed the raider with it.

  The other raider stabbed Floyd in the back, but the blade just stuck in the Kevlar jacket. Floyd turned around and Clyde relieved the attacker of his head. A couple of raiders who were sleeping in the dune buggies, woke up and headed at John. He turned around to see a pistol pointed at his head but the attacker went down thanks to a sniper bullet from Stan. John blew away the other raider just as he was raising a pistol to attack. A few other shots were fired from the tower and a few more raider bodies hit the ground.

  Suddenly everything was quiet in the camp. Stan came down out of the tower and Mikki used Bonnie to shoot the lock off the shed. As she suspected, it was full of ammo. Floyd inspected the outdoor machine shop area. It was complete with tables, a hoist to lift engines, and a large assortment of power tools. There was even a complete set of welding equipment.

  Ranger Martin and his men searched every inch of the camp, making sure all the raiders were dead or dying. They wouldn’t be wasting any of their precious medicine on these guys. Then Leshawn noticed movement in one of the buggies. He waved his hand in the air to get the attention of the others, then pointed. They slowly headed off in that direction, weapons ready. Mikki reached down and ripped away a leather jacket that had been draped over the cockpit of the vehicle.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” a pathetic figure begged. He was filthy with yellow teeth, wearing dirty jeans, a leather vest and no shirt. He didn’t appear to be armed, but he had five piercings in one of his eyebrows, a tongue stud, and other spikey doodads sticking out of various unnatural areas of his face. He had some kind of Celtic or Samoan tattoo around his right eye and forehead. He obviously had done his best to look as badass as possible. It didn’t work, especially with him crying like a baby for his life.

  “Just shoot him,” Mikki said.

  “No, please! I never wanted nothing to do with these guys! I’m not one of them! I’m a victim of circumstance. You gotta believe me!”

  “Yeah…just shoot him,” Mikki said again, and she raised her shotgun.

  “Hold on,” the ranger ordered. “We can’t shoot an unarmed man.”

  “Yeah, that’s right!” the pathetic excuse for a human being agreed.

  “You guys ever read Lord of the Rings?” Mikki protested. “Gollum? They didn’t kill him when they had the chance and he caused them nothing but trouble ever since. Just shoot the bastard!”

  John’s men kept looking from the ranger to Mikki and back again. John could see that Mikki’s argument was having an impact on them. “If we act like raiders, then we are no better than raiders,” he asserted. “They may be uncivilized, but we aren’t. How do we want to raise our children? What kind of example do we want to set for them?”

  Mikki could see she was losing them, so she appealed to their sense of reality. “And what are you gonna do with him, then? Build a jail? You yourself said you don’t have enough resources to feed and take care of somebody new. You gonna waste your food on this jerk?”

  “Give him a motorcycle and set him loose. Let the woods claim him if he can’t survive on his own, but we won’t have his blood on our hands.”

  “You gonna send me out there all alone with no way to defend myself?”

  “Or you can die right here,” Mikki offered, raising Bonnie’s barrel to the level of his eyes.

  “No, that’s fine! I’ll take a motorcycle.”

  “And if we ever catch you back here or anywhere around our campsite, we will kill you, understand?” the ranger asked.

  “Oh sure! I understand! No problem. Thanks!”

  “Better bring that motorcycle around to the back barricade,” Floyd suggested. “Road’s out in the other direction. He’ll just have to come straight back here if he leaves that way.”

  Gollum meandered over to the side wall and sat down as Leshawn grabbed one of the bikes. He wheeled it outside and around the camp to the other side of the back barricade, making sure the keys were in the ignition. He checked and saw it had a full tank of gas as well.

  “Get out!” Ranger Martin ordered.

  “Right away! No problem!” Gollum got up to leave, but as he did so, he opened fire with a pistol he had picked up from the body of a fallen raider near the wall. He fired off three shots as he ran to the bike, laughing hysterically like a madman all the way. He fired up the engine and put it into gear just as Mikki jumped over the back wall.

  She fired four rounds into Gollum before she even hit the ground. She tumbled and rolled and jumped to her feet in time to see the bike shoot out from under the dead body and skid to a halt on its side. Mikki kicked the body over to stare into the dead man’s glassy eyes.

  “Gollum,” she said, disgusted.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Mikki came back to find John sitting in a chair, with Leshawn wrapping a cloth around his bleeding arm. Floyd had taken the second bullet in the chest, but once again, the Kevlar jacket had protected him. Stan lay on the ground, half his head blown off.

  “Oh, no!” Mikki said sadly.

  John was crying with long, loud sobs. All pretense of authority and control was gone. He had done the right thing, and the right thing had gotten his only brother killed. How was he going to explain this to Marjorie? He kept sobbing over and over again, “My brother! My brother!” Everyone stood around, not knowing what to say or do.

  “Pick up the body and wrap it in a blanket,” Floyd instructed, taking control of the situation. We’ll bring him back with us and give him a hero’s funeral. He deserves it.”

  Mikki unzipped her jacket and pulled out one of the holy cards she carried. She tucked it into the pocket of Stan’s shirt as the men brought over a blanket from the dormitory. They laid the blanket on the ground, put Stan on top of it, and wrapped him up, nice and neat. Leshawn handed Mikki the borrowed Mini Uzi, slung the body over his right shoulder, and started heading back to camp. Pedro handed his Uzi to Mikki and followed Leshawn, stopping by to pick up the weapons they had left at Floyd’s truck.

  Mikki hung back and said nothing. This was no time for I told you so.

  “Come on, John. Time to man up,” Floyd said, eventually. “These people still need you. You gotta hold it together. You gotta hold them together.”

  John nodded silently, wiped away his tears, and laid a hand on Floyd’s shoulder. Floyd helped him to his feet. “Your camp is safe,” Floyd said. “You can take over this site and all its weapons and use them to protect the campground. When it comes time to head to New California Haven, you’ll have vehicles and an arsenal to make the trip. Stan didn’t die for nothing.”

  “Thanks, Floyd,” John said at last. “You’re a good man.”

  There was quite a stir when they made it back to the camp. At first there was excitement, but that disappeared pretty quickly when they realized Leshawn was carrying a body over his shoulder. He gently laid it down on one of the benches by the campfire. As John and Floyd and Mikki brought up the rear, Marjorie came out of one of the cabins, asking, “Where’s Stan? Where’s my Stanley?”

  Neither Leshawn nor Pedro would look at her, let alone answer her. They didn’t even look at the body. When John came into the camp holding Stan’s sniper rifle, Marjorie understood immediately whose body was wrapped in the blanket. She broke down into tears and fled back into her cabin. Two other ladies ran in after her to comfort her as
best they could.

  “Stan died protecting us all,” John announced, his voice trembling with emotion. Every eyeball was glued to him, and everyone knew that he loved Stan more than anyone (other than Marjorie). “We will bury him at dawn. The birth of a new day that Stan helped to give us. We scored a great victory tonight. We won’t ever have to worry about the raiders ever again.”

  If it hadn’t been for Stan’s death, that last line would have been greeted with cheers and applause. As it was, everyone just looked at the blanket-covered body. The community was small, and every life was precious. They had all lost someone since the disease hit, but Stan was especially liked. Next to John, he was also the most respected man in the little group. He would be mourned and he would be missed.

  Mr. Sourpuss stayed on the bench next to the body, keeping watch all night. His eyes, however, were glued to Floyd and Mikki, accusing them silently. He crossed his arms and stretched out his legs and prepared for a long, lonely vigil. His wife and bratty daughter each gave him a kiss on the cheek and disappeared into their cabin.

  John, Floyd and Leshawn commiserated for a bit, making plans for the next day as Mikki listened in from afar. Ordinarily, she would have jumped in with suggestions, but she still felt awkward about Stan’s death. Everyone in the assault party had heard what she said and everyone knew she was right, but even hardened Mikki was not so insensitive that she would push the issue. Not at the moment, anyway. But if it ever happened again, she would blow the jackass away and let people bitch at her afterwards—if they dared. She blamed herself for not shooting that Gollum bastard nearly as much as John blamed himself for preventing her.

  Soon, Floyd and Mikki headed into their tiny cabin. There wasn’t much room, but it was clean and cozy. One double bed in the center of the room with a small TV on top of a wardrobe. Of course, there had been no TV signal in forever. Still, everything was free of dust. The bed sheets smelled freshly laundered, while the sink and tub and toilet in the small adjoining bathroom were sparkling. Mikki immediately plugged her iPhone into an outlet to charge.