by Dulaney, C.
Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2)
Title Page
Part One:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two:
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three:
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Murphy’s Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2)
C. Dulaney
Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.
Copyright 2012 C. Dulaney.
Cover art by Conspirazy Digital Arts.
www.PermutedPress.com
Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
─Murphy’s Law
Part One:
Runners
Chapter One
March 15th: Somewhere in Ohio
“So, what’s the deal with your friend?” Devon asked Kyra, who was on the ground in front of the convict, washing his feet.
She barely looked up at him as he spoke; she had learned fairly early on never to meet his eyes directly when being spoken to, not unless she wanted a good beating. She dipped the sponge into the soapy water and continued wiping his feet, hoping to stall as long as possible. She didn’t really know Shannon, and frankly didn’t care. But her hate for this man was greater than the indifference she felt for the girl, and she wasn’t about to share any more information with him than she absolutely had to in order to survive. Everything she’d done since being kidnapped had been to ensure her survival. That was it.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” he growled.
“I don’t know,” said Kyra. “She’s been like that since I met her.”
This seemed to satisfy Devon; he relaxed and studied the wall of the tent behind her. They were in a small, one room tent that had served as their living quarters for the past month. It was cramped and drafty, but it was warmer than sleeping outside and kept Kyra separated from the other convicts. Devon was their leader, and he had taken Kyra as his own soon after the raid at Kasey’s. Of course she had bent to his will right away, knowing it was the only way to stay alive. Shannon, on the other hand, was deemed too crazy to be a breeder, too young and pretty to be killed outright. Or to be fed to the resident deadheads. Therefore the poor girl had been suffering the past four months as a plaything. Though, to Kyra’s delight, Shannon was perfectly capable of giving as bad as she received. Many a convict came away from their encounters with Shannon bearing deep scratches across their faces or, in more than one case, missing body parts. Eyes, ears, whatever Shannon could get a good grip on.
Kyra wasn’t sure of their exact location, but she knew they were in Ohio. After being dragged across West Virginia, making several stops to raid and pillage along the way, they finally met resistance just before crossing the Ohio River at Blueville. No, resistance was an understatement. It had been a knock-down, drag-out fight. Unlike many of the smaller towns they had passed through, this one was highly populated and heavily armed. They had defeated the prisoners easily. Devon and the cons closest to him escaped into the woods, taking Kyra and half a dozen of the women (including Shannon), with them. Devon waited until after dark, then led the group around Blueville, across the bridge, and into Ohio.
After traveling for a couple days, they eventually found the abandoned farm where they were initially supposed to meet up with the main group. It didn’t offer much in the way of cover (the house had fallen down), but the surrounding area was easy to patrol and the wide open land made spotting incoming nasties relatively easy. Devon and Kyra had the nicest accommodations (a one room, six-man, waterproof tent liberated from a sporting goods store a month earlier), while the other five convicts and the women had been staying in one large makeshift tent thrown together with tarps and poles. It was a terrible existence, and Kyra was miserable. She would bide her time until the moment was right, then she would escape. It would be even easier now that the men were fewer in number. She had already decided that when the time came, she would leave Shannon behind. The girl would just slow her down anyway.
They’d had surprisingly little zombie troubles, which Kyra attributed to the snow and freezing temperatures. Spring was just around the corner, so that would soon change. She’d overheard Devon on many occasions discussing this with the other men. How would they continue on and defend themselves with only a handful of men and weapons? Kyra was counting on the deadheads to give her the opportunity she needed to escape. Sooner or later, Devon and the others would be outnumbered and under attack. She would just have to keep her head down and do what she was told until then.
“Devon,” a gruff voice said from the other side of the tent flap.
Kyra looked up from her bucket and paused with the sponge just above Devon’s left foot. He waved it away and motioned for the towel. Kyra immediately dropped the sponge back in the bucket, slopping a little water out onto the ground, grabbed the towel off the side of the makeshift bed, and quickly dried his feet.
“Yeah,” he answered. Kyra was slipping his socks back on when the visitor walked in.
“Well, well, well, hello, Miss Kyra. Say, while you’re down there…” the con said with a leering smirk on his face. He sauntered over next to Kyra and pretended to unfasten his pants, then cackled when she cringed away. He would never even think of laying hands on the Bossman’s woman, no matter how much fun it was to torture her.
“What do you want, Shakes?” Devon was clearly annoyed by the mere presence of his fellow inmate.
That was something he and Kyra had in common; she hated Shakes more than all the others combined. Tall, lanky, and missing half his teeth, Shakes was the most twisted of the group. That was really saying something for a group that consisted of rapists and murderers. Devon had almost spilled the beans about Shakes’ incarceration to Kyra once, but was interrupted before he could finish the story. All she knew was that he liked to eat his victims once he’d killed them. That was enough for her.
“The boys want to know when we’re moving on.” He stared down at Kyra with drool threatening to drip from his scarred lips.
Devon stood and positioned himself between her and Shakes with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out. Devon was a scary beast of a man, hence the reason he was followed unquestioningly. Kyra took this as her cue to become scarce. She scooted backwards on her knees until she was sitting in the corner.
“The boys want to know, or you want to know?” Devon asked.
Shakes shrank back from reflex more than anything else. He rubbed his chin nervously and scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot, his eyes darting around.
Devon cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his massive chest. “Well?”
“Sure I want to know too, Boss, but the boys voted me to be the one to come and ask. No disrespect meant, sir.” Shakes slowly crept his way backwards towards the door flap.
Devon’s hand shot out and grabbed the other man by the shirt collar, then jerked him forward until he was nose to nose with him.
“Listen up, Shakes, and listen close ‘cause I’m only going to say this once,” he hissed. “We’ll move on when I say it’s time, not because you or any of the others are getting antsy. Got it? Now, get out of my face.”
The gangly piece of crap tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away and went down on his ass. Devon swept the flap back and towered over Shakes, first staring down at him, then taking a slow look around the campsite.
“And get a fire started, I’m hungry.”
Shakes scr
ambled to his feet and hurried over to the larger tent, shouted a few orders to the women inside, then stood guard as a few of the ladies began building a campfire. Two of the four remaining cons were out in the field on watch duty, and the other two were guarding the camp. They were laughing at Shakes and whispering to one another. He skulked around the edge of the campsite, mad and embarrassed, wondering if they would still be laughing if he were nibbling away at their hulking forearms.
Since he couldn’t satisfy that hunger, not yet anyway, he decided to take his frustrations out on the crazy girl. He was the only convict who actually enjoyed his time with her. The more pain she inflicted on him and the harder she fought, the more he hurt her in return. They were made for each other, at least in his eyes.
Little did Shakes know, Shannon was nearing the end of a downward spiral, one that began long before the zombies showed up. At sixteen years of age, she was the product of her mother’s constant berating and her older brother’s ritual sadistic beatings. For as long as she could remember, Tommy had been placed on a pedestal. In her parents’ eyes, he could do no wrong. Shannon, on the other hand, was treated like something Tommy had dragged in on the soles of his shoes.
The people back in Matias, her hometown, thought they were the perfect family. Her dad had been big shit in the community, and her mom was the type the other moms envied. Her brother, Tommy, had to knock the girls off of him with a stick, and Shannon would have been Homecoming Queen. Except the world ended before that happened. All in all, Shannon had pretended her way through a demented life rather well. In her ever-fading mind, zombies were just one more thing to add to the list. So were the prisoners who had kidnapped her. So was Shakes in particular; he reminded her of her brother. All of these things were nothing more than seasonings to a pot roast. Her sanity was gone and had been replaced with animalistic instincts tainted with a dash of Tommy’s sadism.
Shakes entered the tent, made sure Shannon was secured to the post that had been driven into the ground, and released his crippling hate.
As screaming commenced once again on the other side of the camp, and laughter from the inmates floated through the air, Kyra sat motionless in the corner of her tent and found herself thinking of Ben. Indulging in memories of their very short time together was a luxury she rarely allowed herself to enjoy. From time to time, when Devon was being especially cruel, or suicidal thoughts flooded her mind, she would think of him. Inevitably she would also think of the others; Nancy, Jake, Zack, Mia, and even Kasey. Were they looking for her? She doubted it. They were probably glad to be rid of the bitch and the crazy girl. Sure, she could be wrong. Ben had always held Kasey in high regards. If they were going to rescue her, wouldn’t they have done it already? She forced herself to keep these thoughts of rescue and even escape in mind, and lost herself in the world she had created within when Devon jerked her from the corner and threw her onto the straw-filled mattress.
March 15th: Central West Virginia
“I don’t see any way around them, Kase,” Zack said.
We were lying flat on our bellies on the crest of a hill overlooking I-79, studying a group of thirty-five or so deadheads that were staggering their way south along the highway. The cold temperatures had indeed affected them; having just thawed, they were much clumsier and slower than they had been in the fall. We had set out from Crousley’s a week earlier, having decided the weather was good enough for travel but still cold enough to hinder our main enemy’s movements. As it was, we’d have enough trouble tracking down the convicts without running into horde after horde of freshly thawed zombies.
“No, there’s no way around. This interstate cuts north and south through the majority of the state. There’s nowhere we could go to get around it without going so far out of our way we might as well forget about ever catching up with them, and it’s safe to assume we’ll start running into these bastards again no matter where we go,” I replied.
The morning was damp and cold. Two days of rain, with the temperatures swinging from forty in the daytime to twenty at night, made for some miserable weather and ridiculously thick fog throughout the day. After my house had been burned down by the assholes we were now tracking, we’d spent the winter months at my neighbor Crousley’s house, taking stock, making plans, and securing whatever supplies we would need for the long journey ahead. We also wanted to wait until the weather broke. None of us wanted to be riding around in the mountains in the dead of winter. The weather was bad enough now, in the spring.
Mostly we spent the winter trying to put the past behind us. To let go of our old lives, and all the people we had loved and cared for, so we could move on and survive any way we could. We had all made it through those first days of the zombie uprising, fought and bled over hundreds of miles to find each other, then we kept on fighting, scratching and clawing just to keep our heads above water when our Z-Plan went to hell.
As if that hadn’t been bad enough, a new enemy made itself known by killing one of us and kidnapping two others.
It isn’t until you’re forced into a tragic and life-threatening event that you finally understand what makes most people shut down and quit. Quit fighting, stop living. I had come to realize over the winter that it’s an inherent trait among human beings, this inability to let go of the past. Even to the point of going insane, curling up into a ball, and simply waiting for death to come. If it hadn’t been for Jake’s tendency to turn everything into one gigantic joke, I don’t think any of us would have made it off that mountain.
Jake, Nancy, and Mia were on the ground next to me, armed and ready. The horses and Gus were tied at the bottom of the hill and were remaining quiet for the most part. We had lucked out in finding three extra horses on a large farm outside Matias, giving us what we needed for mounts and packhorses. We made a pretty large caravan in all. Luckily, keeping to the woods and unpopulated areas had kept us nearly invisible to the rest of the world. We had picked up the convicts’ trail at the base of my mountain and went from there. Their trail was fairly obvious and could be followed with little effort.
Since then we had been winding our way through West Virginia, camping in heavily forested areas or abandoned farmhouses, scavenging supplies here and there as we needed them, and hunting small game for our meals. Out of the five of us, only Zack was having the most difficulty adjusting to this new way of life. Formerly a city boy, his version of fast-food had been McDonald’s, not a rabbit tearing through a briar patch.
“Well, I say we take ‘em out and stop screwin’ around,” Jake mumbled from beside me.
I had to smile at his cranky enthusiasm. The comedy relief supplied by both he and Mia had made the transition from the Old World into this new one much easier, for all of us.
I flipped my rifle’s safety off. “Alright, you know the drill.”
I could hear the others doing the same; getting into a comfortable prone shooting stance, the clicking of safeties being flipped, the working of actions to load their assorted weapons. The fog was thick; fortunately the deadheads below were close enough that their heads were visible. The others waited for me to give the signal, a stillness much like the heavy calm before a thunderstorm in spring settling over us. That was something else I had done over the winter: transformed my new family into efficient marksmen and women.
I lined my sights on the nearest, and tallest, of the group. Dressed in a suit and what had to have been a tie at one time, the zombie no longer resembled the man he used to be any more than a dog resembles a gorilla. What parts of him that hadn’t been torn away during his initial “death” had either rotted away or fallen off during the thawing process. Large portions of his skull were exposed, including both cheekbones and lower jaw. A thick, frozen piece of flesh hung from his forehead, covering the one eye he still had left. His shirt had been ripped open, revealing almost his entire rib cage. His exposed muscle tissue was no longer red. It had turned black from decomposition and freezing.
“Everything okay?” Zack whispered to
me.
I realized I had been obsessing over the deadheads’ appearance again (apparently I had taken to doing that a lot), and remedied this by squeezing off the first shot. The others quickly joined in, dropping the nasties before the moaning could begin. Less than a minute later, the horde had been eliminated, quickly and efficiently. We moved fast, knowing noise would attract any nearby zombies. Without a word to one another, we reloaded our weapons, snuck back down the bank, mounted up, and moved on, over the hill and across the interstate as proficiently as we could with seven horses and a dog lollygagging around.
From there we headed northwest, following the wide swath of trampled ground left behind by the convicts’ horses and the women they’d dragged behind. Every hour since leaving the house I had thanked God the hard winter had preserved the trail. We’d have been totally screwed if it had been a mild winter.
“Nancy, how far to the next town?” I asked after we’d traveled a mile or so in silence.
We were riding up a grassy hollow perpendicular to the interstate, boxed in by thickly wooded hills on either side of us. I preferred to stay in the trees, but I also needed to know how close the next town was. It wouldn’t be prudent to suddenly break out of the woods and ride headfirst into a hungry, freshly thawed gang of deadheads. After taking the map from her saddle bag, Nancy wrapped the reins around the saddle horn and let her horse walk on, spreading the map out in front of her and tracing our route with her finger. I moved in alongside her and scanned the area.
It was evident there had been some activity around here during the winter, not counting the trail left by the convicts. Off to our left there were several huge scorch marks on the ground. Further ahead there were a few fairly large piles of dirt, covering what I could only assume were mass graves. There were some vehicles parked here and there, turning the once vacant valley into a junkyard. To me it seemed like this place had been used as a dump and a cemetery. Perhaps a group of survivors from a nearby town had brought their dead here and burned them, burying some, and either towed or pushed these dead cars and trucks here as well, in an effort to clean up their neighborhoods. Of course this was only a theory. Unless we planned on traveling through all the bordering towns to look for survivors, we’d probably never know.
