by catt dahman
The man dropped a shambler and ran right up to the SUV, and before Cory could react, opened the back door and slid in.
“Drive,” he demanded. He was under thirty, had dark hair, was well dressed, and looked good for an apocalypse survivor.
“No hello and nice to meet us? You wanna just snap orders at me?” Cory motioned with his finger for Stevie to shoot the man while he kept him talking.
She narrowed her eyes, letting Cory know she had it covered and that the man would be dead within seconds; she wouldn’t miss.
“I’m Dave. Sorry, I can’t welcome you to Hopetown; we got the shit beat out of us. I don’t think anyone else is left but me.
Well, there has to be a lot more, but I dunno where the hell they went; we all panicked when we started losing the battle.”
Cory motioned Stevie to wait. “You lived here?”
“For now, I mean I did for a while. This was home.” He paused. ‘It looks bad, but man, it was a great place with tons of food and activities, and people were happy. We had a community.”
Stevie uncocked her revolver.
“You weren’t staying here for good?”
“I couldn’t,” he chuckled a little. “I had this nutty mission; I guess I’ve spent years trying to find a couple of people, and I finally got a line on where I could find this chick named Hannah so that maybe she could help me with some ideas….”
“Hannah?”
“Sorry, I was looking for this woman named Hannah who is like almost a legend in these parts, but no one was willing to point me the right way for the longest time. I knew her long ago.”
“You knew Hannah?”
“A long time ago, she and her brother helped me try to rescue some friends; we got one out, but the rest, well, it was bad. I went off alone to wander. I thought about tracking down the ones we let go and killing them, but I didn’t.
Then one day, I decided to track them again because, well, I kept getting a weird feeling about them and having nightmares, which sounds weird.”
This is the truth, and I thought Hannah had an idea of where to look, but I didn’t find her here. So I was resting up before going to Jefferson where she is.” He ran his words together. “I figured out where the people I was tracking went, but I can’t go after them alone, and Hannah might still carry a grudge against them.” He sat back and took a drink from a bottle he had in his pack.
“You needed to find her?”
“Right, I guess that’s crazy ‘cause she’s a legend, like I said, but she’s also the type who would listen to me and remember me.”
“Slow down. Can you tell me her brother’s name?”
“Sure. Jet: tall, dark hair, Gothic dude. And the guy we rescued was a pal of mine named John Ponce. Any more names you want? What’s yours?”
Cory didn’t know what to think. “You know Hannah and Jet and Ponce?”
“I did. We rescued Ponce. I was still really messed up and needed some time alone after what we saw that day. This family was feeding zombie kids in their basement, and we were the food; that situation screwed with my head.
I escaped, and Hannah and some black chick and some others went with me. We got Ponce out, but we had to kill the zombie kids and most of the family, and some more got killed. It was bad.”
“Black chick named Andromeda?”
“Holy shit, yeh.”
“I’m Cory, and this is Stevie.”
Stevie finally spoke. “Isn’t that the story we tell about Hannah? How she went after the cannibal family? That is one of the biggest story we tell about her. She and Jet got in trouble for going in without support, but they got Ponce out.”
“You know Hannah?”
“She’s my sister,” Stevie told him proudly. “Jet is my big brother, and John Ponce is Hannah’s husband.”
“Your sister? No shit? No way.”
“Yup, she’s amazing, but we were visiting her and giving them things: oranges, salt, and fish, and well, they got taken away.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“What? Taken away? By whom? Why?”
Cory asked both to hang on until they got to a safe place. He drove around the compound, found no one else alive, so he headed to a place outside of the city where they could rest.
Dave cleaned Stevie’s injury again and looked it over. He said that the bullet had gone through and had not hit the bone. While he put stitches in, she cried pitifully, but he said the wound looked a little infected, so he dug out antibiotics from his pack and made her take them. Once she was bandaged again, she said it still hurt like hell but also felt better.
“Sorry, I’m a baby. I am a baby with pain. Thanks for the help.”
“You’re brave. I know that hurt, and my stitches aren’t exactly easy.
Cory’s arm was not infected and looked to be healing, but his scratches and cuts were puffy, and he was running a fever with a deep cough. Dave handed him antibiotics as well.
“Looks like you pissed someone off,” Dave said.
“Pissed two off the first time and a half dozen with boots the second. They left us for dead.”
“I would be dead if Cory hadn’t pulled me across the yard and yelled until I got to the car. He is the only reason I’m alive.”
“If you’re Hannah’s sister, then you have balls, ummm, you know what I mean. You’re tough.”
“So you were saying?” Cory asked.
Dave wasn’t tired of talking. “I met them, and they helped me. I puttered around a while; then, I got it in my head that the three we let go weren’t right.
I figured if they survived, they would be dangerous, wild, but I really didn’t think they would. I gave up and thought they were dead which was a good riddance, but then I caught a rumor.”
“About?”
Dave looked at Cory and then decided to trust them, “There was a military group out of Fort Sill that was gathering people: survivors and helping them. They were setting up a community and were safe, just trying to put the country back together.”
Cory sighed, “Colonel Cox, son of a bitch, he isn’t safe at all. He’s the one who shot us.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, damn.”
“I had a weird feeling about them anyway when I found out the leader, the
Cox fellow, was married to a woman named Elizabeth and that the other big wigs were Samuel and Rebecca: common enough names but all family?”
“Who are they?”
“The three we let go from the cannibal family,” Dave said. “Or so I am guessing. I don’t know, but it was enough of a rumor that I thought if I found Hannah, she would wanna know and maybe do something.”
“The fuck you say?” Cory blurted. “Sorry, Stevie. Bad language.”
She laughed.
“So this Colonel Cox happens to be married to a girl named Elizabeth, and Samuel and Rebecca are the leading big wigs, and those just happen to be the names of the three that my sister and Ponce dealt with eight years ago? And Cox just happens to appear at my sister’s compound and happens to want her and Ponce to go with him? What are the odds, Cory?”
“About a billion to one, Stevie. I guess they were disappointed not to find Jet and you, Dave.”
“I was going to find Hannah, tell her, and see if she would help me figure it out, and maybe go after them. They are seriously screwed up people; they fed people to the zombies and thought it was a Biblical event, scary shit.
So if you get those nuts with a group of military nuts, what do you get? I thought I had time and stayed here resting and enjoying Hopetown. I haven’t ever eaten so well or felt so safe as here, I mean after Z day,” Dave said. “I waited too friggin’ long.”
“You didn’t know,” Cory mused. “What happened to Hopetown, man? This was home to me. It was a safe place. I mean, man, it was home. Stevie was born here.”
“ A week ago happened,” Dave said. He told them one night the guards had gone into panic mode, and everyone began locking everything down and going into the shelter and grabbi
ng guns.
Thousands of zombies gathered at the gate: tens of thousands. It would have been a fair fight, but along with the stench, oozing wounds, and moaning, the zombies brought something else.
“What?”
“There were Berserkers.”
“Buzzes. We call ‘em a Buzz for Berserker,” Cory said. “Hybrids who go mad, part human but full of rage and hunger.”
“The bastards were controlling the horde somehow, I guess. The Berserkers cut the fences. They cut them!
The zeds poured in, and Berserkers opened the doors, and, shit, they let them in on us. We were surrounded and over-taken before we could even think. I mean hell, with that many, it would have been a close fight, but we could’ve won but not with their cutting fences and opening doors; people were just slaughtered.”
“Everyone? Two thousand people?”
Stevie shuddered. “No way.”
“I guess some escaped and ran away, but the Buzzes came in so fast and with so many that they were everywhere at once, and we had no chance,” Dave said.
He had seen families with children ripped to shreds, women disemboweled while screaming for help, and men eaten alive as they tried to fight back. The creatures, led by the more intelligent, agile Berserkers, had ferreted out every one from every hiding place and bitten or eaten them.
“How? Why?”
“I don’t know anything, but this was after Cox and his military douches were here, trying to find out where Hannah was and asking about Jet and the rest. They didn’t give me up, and nothing happened, but isn’t it a little too coincidental?”
“I agree. Smells fishy.”
“What now?” Stevie was curled up, upset again, and in pain, worried about Hannah. Cory handed her another painkiller. “I don’t like that Cox took Hannah, Bella, and Ponce away. That’s my family.”
“Well, we rest and work on healing, we go to the zoo and get help, and then we find Hannah, get her and Ponce and Bella away from those nuts, and then go home to Port A. Work for you, Dave?
And while we’re at it, we make sure we kill those three if they are the same ones, and we take Cox, and we feed him slowly to the Zs so that he screams for days.”
“Works for me; I don’t have anything else to do. Besides, the more I think on it, the more I want to hook back up with Hannah’s people, you guys. And I agree Cox needs to die slowly. I can’t believe he did all that to those people.”
“He did.”
“Do you think I could join up?”
Cory studied him, “If you are loyal, hard working, dependable, honest, and willing to defend your friends.”
“I am all about that, so….” He held a hand out to shake with Cory and Stevie. He was fascinated to hear that Stevie’s parents were Kimball and Beth, who were also legends when people told about the first days of the infection.
Stevie was glad Dave was brave and wanted to help her sister and Ponce. Dave was really old, like over twenty and almost thirty maybe, but he was pretty cute and nice. As she let the pain pill work and began to fall asleep, she decided she wouldn’t be gay and might brush her hair the next day. Maybe.
If she survived this pain.
Dave talked some more, chattering about various subjects, but the droning helped Cory fall asleep; he awoke only when he coughed, his chest aching. As bad as he ached, his worry was for Stevie who had a fever and stayed pale from the pain in her leg.
She was brave when she let them scrub her bullet wound, not screaming, but making fists and weeping silently; Cory thought she was getting sicker.
4
Zoo
“What do you think?”
Dave looked at Cory and shrugged. “I think it looks strong and secure. I like the iron gate and rock walls. I don’t like the shamblers hanging around the gate, and why is no one there asking who we are?”
Stevie adjusted herself to look out the window curiously but groaned as the pain hit her. Cory had helped her by cleaning the wound again, and the stitches Dave had put in were holding, but the hole in her leg oozed greenish pus and throbbed constantly. It worried Cory and Dave.
“The place feels deserted.”
Cory drove around the side.
“Look, I think Berserkers have been here, too,” Dave pointed to the broken fence. Bodies lay around the opening. “Do you see anything?”
“No, a few zeds. I think we could handle them.” Dave was unsure. He knew his companions were out of the game.
“Look.” Cory thought about shifting into reverse and leaving, but Stevie needed some medical attention, and he was running out of ideas rapidly.
He liked Dave okay, but if the guy turned on him, Coy was too beat up to save Stevie, and he was too beat up to save himself if the Zs got them. “Something is moving inside and not shambling. We should look it over.”
Inside, figures darted behind a shed and then moved to a pile of rocks.
Two zombies went down with shots to their heads. Cory drove carefully through the opening; the metal of the fence was scraping alongside the SUV with a screeching noise. One of the people looked at them, and in that second, Cory yelped. Rolling down his window, he yelled, “Robert! It’s Cory.”
“Cory? Is that you?”
Five people ran at the SUV; they opened the door locks so the people could pile in. Robert scooted Cory to the side so he was in the driver’s seat. Cal, an older black man, got into the back with Dave, and a woman followed him. At the back, a man popped the tailgate, and two men and a woman climbed in.
Dave stared with shock at what had just happened. Did Cory know everybody?
Robert drove for them, moving to the side and running over a shambling zombie so that its head popped open under the tires. He parked to the side behind a shed. Without saying anything else, he grabbed Cory in a hug, hurting Cory’s arm, but it didn’t matter.
“What is going on?” Stevie asked.
“Switch places,” Dave said. He got out, scooped Stevie into his arms, and moved her into the seat with him. He motioned the man to get in the passenger seat, and Dale gladly moved to that seat, hugging Cory. Dave didn’t know why, but he felt protective of the girl and thought she should be close to him.
He had found her first.
“Robert and Dale, I’ll be damned,” Cory grinned and said. “You make a brutha feel welcome.”
“We’re crowded,” a woman in back complained.
“I’m driving,” Robert said, “I’m so happy to see you, C Man, even if the circumstances suck.”
“What happened?”
“It was a mass of ‘em, several thousand, and we might could have handled that, but there were fast ones; what do you call them?”
“Buzzes. Berserkers.”
“Those. We had them opening shit and breaking in, and then the things just poured in. We were hit by tons of them, all moaning and biting, and some of them running and opening things.”
“Hopetown is leveled, Robert. It’s all gone. Dave is the only one we found there.”
“Good to meet’cha, Dave. And this?”
Cory laughed, “This is one of Beth and Kim’s girls.”
“Damn, time has moved on. Hello, Little Miss.”
“We’re all that’s left here,” Robert said. He rubbed his head. “We lost everyone else. The fields are a mess, trees are burned, just a mess. We had a lot who were bitten, and we had to put ‘em down; it was horrible.”
Robert pointed things out as he drove on the walkways. The fences were down, and the animals: cows and goats, chickens, and pigs had either been eaten or had run away. Everything they had built was in ruins.
“Over there, you can smell them; they have the elephants we left: two cows. Poor things never had a chance.”
“Elephants?” Stevie asked, “I wish I had seen them.”
“They worked hard and were like big ole dogs, best cows you’d ever find, maybe the last two on earth, who knows?”
Robert came to a stop outside a building that was still inta
ct and jumped out, aiming for one of the creatures that reached its dirty hands towards him. Brains blew out the back of the thing’s head. Dale helped Cory and Dave carry Stevie in his arms as they ran inside, shooting shamblers as they went.
Robert told them they could share stories after he checked the injured. Stevie’s leg was swollen and still leaked pus. Her fever concerned Robert. He gave her a shot of antibiotics and put an IV into her arm.
“It’s old, fifteen years old, but it’s still gonna hydrate you. I’m gonna piggyback an antibiotic pack, and I doubt it is still good after all this time, but it won’t hurt to try.” He cleaned the wound, checked the stitches and had to cut a few because of the swelling, and then covered the hot flesh in salve after cleaning it. He used a lot of soft bandages and gave her a couple of pills with some water. “This will knock the pain out; it still works. Who did the stitches?”
“Ummm, Dave.”
“He sucks as a doctor, but they aren’t too bad. I could train him.”
Cory coughed, groaning with the pain in his lungs.
“Pneumonia. I am gonna give you a round of a Z pack, and if it’s still good, that will knock it back. I have a series of steroids I want you to take, too. They’ll help your arm, but it’s looking good anyway. If you and she hadn’t come here, you’d have died in less than a week. She would have lasted another two days tops.” He frowned.
“You’ve become quite the doctor. And it’s not like we tried to get injured, yanno.”
“You remember Wheeler? He wanted me to learn medical stuff, and I did.”
He jumped a little when they heard a gunshot. “That was Tom taking care of Ellie. She had a deep scratch from one of the zeds and was showing that stinky infection; he did it kindly ‘cause we can’t have the infected here with us.”
Corey caught up with Robert, Dale, and the rest and told them his story. Dave chimed in with his story as he sat with Stevie, holding her hand. Cory cast curious glances at Dave, wondering why the man was holding Stevie’s hand, and because she was Cory’s responsibility, he planned to ask Dave his intentions.
It was better to be sure than to screw up and face Kimball Decker if someone took advantage of his daughter.
