Chapter 40
Rather, what was left of it. Nature had been staking claims on this property for years, and in recent times had made pretty good progress. But there were wide spaces and little cover, so it would be a good place to make a stand.
Behind us, the glass on the door shattered, and four little zombies shoved their way through the broken shards, slicing themselves silly on the glass. They were going to look worse than they already did, if that was possible.
Jake led us south through the parking lot and towards the small valley that was home to the big pond that swallowed our server. He went right up to the edge, and then turned around. Julia and I turned as well, but Jake shook his head.
“Nope. You two get down on the hill, further south and stay out of sight. We need an advantage here and with four to three odds, one of us will get killed if we stand together,” he said.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, pulling out my sword. “You can’t face them alone.”
“You’ll see. Just be ready to get up here in a hurry,” Jake said.
I shook my head, but I did as he wanted. Julia and I moved about fifteen feet away and then hunkered down just over the edge of the ditch. It was a steep ditch, so it wasn’t easy to stay in place, let alone get out in a hurry, but we’d have it to do.
Jake stood on the edge of the ditch, watching the little zombies streak towards him. I couldn’t see where they were, but I gauged how close they were by how tightly Jake was clenching his jaw. I could hear them moving through the grass, and their weird wheezing was getting louder and louder.
Suddenly, Jake jumped back, ducked down, and four little zombies flew over him and into the ditch. We all jumped up and out of the grass and stood waiting for the zombies to return. They fell nearly to the water’s edge, then scrambled as best they could for the grass and started up the hill towards us. In their haste, they slipped and fell a lot, spreading them out and making it easier for us to deal with them.
Julia killed the first one as it poked its nasty head over the edge of the grass. About ten feet to the left, another one reached the top, only to be cracked on the skull by Jake’s mace. Julia killed the next one, and Jake finished the last.
“No work for you, sorry,” Julia said sweetly.
“No cleaning of my sword, sorry,” I replied, just as sweetly. Julia frowned at that.
Jake wiped his mace off in the grass, and pointed at the door we had exited. Several zombies were getting out, and heading our way. “We need to settle that first; otherwise, the communities to the south and west are really going to be mad.”
“Got it,” I said. We ran back towards the building, and used our rifles to shoot down the zombies that had already gotten outside. When that was finished, we set up a system where Julia would shoot the zombies as they came out the doors, Jake would reload the rifles, and I would drag the zombie away so they wouldn’t pile up and cause a blockage. It was slow, tedious work, but since we lost the server, we really had nothing else to do for the day.
When the last zombie had crawled its way out, only to be shot dead for its efforts, we all stretched and took the long walk back to the truck. We spread out, scanning the grass for any additional threats. When none was jumping out at us, we finally relaxed and began putting away our weapons. Jake and Julia cleaned their gear while I stowed away the rifles and ammo.
We pulled away from the college. I couldn’t help wondering what it had been like when there weren’t any zombies around, and people came here to learn something.
We weren’t too bummed out about the server. While the money would have been nice, we really didn’t need it, and it wasn’t the first collection we had lost. There was a time in Chicago when Jake and I were trying to retrieve a silverware collection that wound up scattered over half of Michigan Avenue when I hadn’t realized the box had opened. Such was the way of things.
We drove north towards the capital, and we were all lost in our thoughts as the prospect of starting something new was now staring us in the face. We had an obligation to fulfill, as the very fragile country we were in was in need of help, and there was no one else to take on the job. The old guard, the ones who had fought the wars and survived the zombies, was getting older. While still able to fight, they would be outnumbered by the younger generation who hadn’t fought, and who hadn’t trained. These days, kids were taught avoidance, not confrontation with the undead.
This situation was to the advantage of those who wanted to use the zombies as a weapon for their own purposes.
As far as I could tell, we were the only ones standing in the way.
Chapter 41
“What do you mean you had it but it’s gone?” The man was clearly irritated at the news Jake had to report.
“If I tell you several times, it isn’t going to change the outcome, so you may as well pay closer attention to the last time I’m going to inform you of the whereabouts of the server,” Jake said deliberately. “There was a situation that occurred and the server is now at the bottom of a pond. You’re welcome to go for it yourself or hire another collector, but we’re done.”
“Do you know what that server meant?” The man, a short, squatty person with pig-eyes and a bad goatee, could barely contain his irritation. However, his ire was tempered by the fact that I was scowling fiercely at the way he was speaking to my brother, and I was easily head and shoulders taller than he was.
Jake shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. As I said, we’re all done. If it matters, it looked like there was a second server there, so you can send someone else out for it. Here’s your down payment, minus ten gold pieces for our trouble.” Jake tossed the man the tube of coins he had originally been paid.
“What? You fail, yet you keep twenty percent? What the hell? I guess I can believe what I hear about you collectors.” The man sneered in Jake’s face and I was sure Jake was going to pound him for it, but Jake remained calm.
“Consider it payment for information regarding the second server. I will, and I’ll ignore your insult and let you keep your face the way it is.” Jake’s eyes were dangerously narrow, and the next thing the man said would determine whether he kept all of his body parts in one convenient place.
The man considered that and survival conquered pride. “Well, it’s still steep, but perhaps you can recommend someone else?”
Jake snorted. “Not likely. But you can keep the rest of that coin yourself, and tell your investors we kept it as a non-refundable down payment. I don’t really care.” With that, Jake turned away from the man who was suddenly very interested in the coins.
I turned away in disgust and followed Jake, with Julia walking alongside. We headed down towards the information center, where we typically got our requests for collections. It wasn’t much, just a store that had been converted to bunch of bulletin boards. We rented a small space, and people tacked notes and information for us and we took those we were interested in.
“Hey, Bill!” Jake called. Bill was the owner of the information center, and charged a copper a month for a square foot of space, more for larger spaces. The church owned the largest, and it was full of notices of people looking for relatives or information about relatives. The hardest ones to look at were notices about children. There was usually no hope whatsoever, but people had to try something, if they weren’t willing to go out themselves.
Another space that was available for no charge was a missing person’s board, and there were a lot of notices about people who had gone missing. I looked over a few and noticed overwhelmingly they were girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty. A few older women were posted, but not many. I idly wondered where they all could have gone.
“Hey, Jake! How’s business?” Bill was an older gentleman, one of the founders of the new capitol. He had come along with our fathers, and he was a solid, dependable man. Truth be known, he was a good fighter, too, and had held his own against the last major zombie outbreak.
“Finished. We’re not collecting a
nymore.” Jake related what we had been through and what we suspected. He also spoke briefly, about what we planned on doing, and Bill had only one thing to say.
“About time. You need help. Just ask. There’s a lot of us old timers who have seen what we built start to slide back and didn’t know what to do about it. You need anything, just let me know.” Bill was dead serious, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was half tempted to join us.
“Thanks, but I think the fewer that are aware, the better. We’ll be all right. It’s what we’re supposed to do,” Jake said.
“Yes, you are,” Bill replied, and he nodded to each of us in turn. Julia took my hand and Bill noticed. He smiled and said to Julia. “Your dad would be very happy for you.”
Julia smiled. “I hope to tell him myself.”
Bill nodded. “He’ll be back.” Bill looked at Jake and me. “They both will.”
We shook hands and headed out into the street. The sun was just past noon, so we decided to treat ourselves to a meal we didn’t have to make ourselves. We stopped at the Constitution Café, so named for the document that was housed in the legislative building. That was a story in itself and one I don’t feel like relating.
We ate well, ignoring the curious glances our outfits aroused in the locals, and stepping out into the street we found ourselves staring at four men we had seen before. Carson Casey was standing in front of three other men, and he was grinning broadly. He spoke to Jake.
“Well, well. Thought I saw you in town. Good thing, too. I was missing that sweet piece of ass you got behind you.”
Jake didn’t say anything and he held up a hand to keep me from stepping off the sidewalk.
“Carson Casey. Well, I wondered where all the shit in town wound up,” Jake said, stepping forward.
Carson turned red and pulled a long knife from his belt. “I’ll cut that smart-ass tongue out of your mouth, boy!”
“You’ve got it to do.” Jake moved suddenly and Casey howled. A line thing line appeared on his forearm and started to bleed all over the place.
Casey grabbed his wound and stared at Jake, who stood casually waiting for Carson to move again. Carson snarled and lunged forward, stabbing his blade towards Jake’s eyes. Jake waited for the last possible second, and then knocked the blade away, stepping away from the lunge and stabbing Carson in the shoulder.
Carson howled and his arm hung down at his side, his knife useless. One of the men stepped forward with his hands raised and I took that moment to step up. I shot a punch straightforward, right past his hands and into his face. I felt his nose crunch beneath my fist and his head snapped back. His legs gave way and he crumpled to the ground to lie there and bleed.
Carson grabbed his knife with his other hand, and tried a cut at Jake. Jake easily dodged and rammed his knife forward, burying the blade in Casey’s throat. Carson fell to the ground, clutching at the hilt that protruded from his neck. He lay on his back, his feet drumming uselessly on the ground while he slowly drowned in his own blood. The drumming weakened, and then stopped altogether.
The remaining two men had seen enough, and they turned to run. One made it away, but the other fell to the ground with a thrown tomahawk in his leg. He screamed as I pulled it out and I punched him in the face to quiet him. When he was done, I placed the point of the spike end on his cheek and edged it towards his eye.
“Who’s your boss?” I asked.
“He was,” the answer came.
‘Bullshit. He was just muscle. Who gave him orders?’ I demanded.
“He got his orders from someone else, don’t know who.”
“Where do the orders come from?” Jake asked.
The man wet his lips, but gasped when I broke the skin just under his eye. “Zoomertown. He goes to Zoomertown.”
“New rules. You and your kind are not allowed here anymore. We’re coming to clean you out,” I said, and the man nodded carefully, never taking his eye off my spike.
I let the man up, and just as he scuttled out of sight, Lane Tucker showed up with four of his deputies. Lane took in the scene, and dispatched one of his deputies to talk to the customers of the Café to see if their story will match ours.
“Well. I’d say you stepped in it this time. Can’t say, as I’ll miss Casey, though. Never seen this guy before.” Tucker looked over the unconscious man and motioned to one of his men to put handcuffs on the man. The deputy returned from the café and spoke quietly to Tucker.
Lane addressed us. “Well, you’re free to go. Watch your back, though. You’ve beaten these guys once, and they’ll remember you.”
“I hope they do, Tucker,” I said.
Lane Tucker looked at me, and then nodded slowly. “It might be a good idea to see me before you go out after anyone.”
“Why?” Julia asked.
“As you are, you’re vigilantes, and we don’t tolerate that kind of behavior. But if, suppose, someone were to make deputies out of you, with special jurisdiction outside of the capitol, well, that might avoid some difficult questions,” Tucker said.
Whatever I was going to say had to wait. A young boy ran up holding a piece of paper. He goggled a bit at the two prone men, but remembered his mission quickly enough. “Are you Jake?” the boy asked me.
“Nope. That mean looking cuss is Jake,” I said, pointing at my brother.
“Mr. Jake, Mr. Bill sent this note.” The boy handed Jake the note, and took the copper Jake gave him.
Jake read the note, and then handed it to me. He spoke to Lane. “We have to move. There’s been a suspicious outbreak by St Charles.” Jake looked at Julia and me. “Let’s get moving.”
We followed Jake and Julia whispered to me. “Does this mean what I think it does?”
I gave her a hand to squeeze. “Yep. It begins now.”
The End
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Playground Politics
A throat-tearing scream raced through the school at the pace of a heartbeat. The shellacked cinderblock walls did little to dampen the terror entwined in the scream, rather echoing it further through the building, spreading more fear and confusion.
Five minutes earlier, everyone in the Montville Regional School Complex heard the tinny announcement of, “Teachers please hold your rosters. All teachers hold your rosters.” It was another Lock Down Drill, no more serious than an announced changed to the school lunch menu. The classrooms were closed, lights off and students and teachers huddled in the far corners in well-practiced silence. Everyone at Montville Regional had assumed the call for a school wide lock down had been nothing more than another of the numerous monthly drills that were conducted in the post-9/11 and Columbine world of education. They had slowly risen from their work and laughed until their respective teachers silenced and shuffled them into a corner away from the small, glass and chicken wire windows that centered their classroom doors.
The students and faculty were used to the principal or vice principal rattling the doorknobs, or pushing on the doors in comical attempts to portray the necessity of taking refuge from an intruder. Montville had seen its share of problems and even faced down a real one or two, but there had never truly been a need to lock down the entire school complex from an intruder. For the students and staff, Lock Down Drills held the same level of effectiveness as a 1950’s bomb drill; simply something to give people the thin veil of security to hide behind. They all knew that they were no safer from an intruder hiding in a corner than they were hiding from a Russian A-bomb under a cheaply made desk. And everyone at Montville knew they were no more likely to have a real A-bomb dropped on their school than they were to have an actual intruder.
But with the echo of one throaty, primal scream, the students and staff were snapped out of their complacent stupors of false suburban safety and thrust into a world where the realization that they could be harmed, possibly even killed, was more real than any of them cared to admit. This was not
a drill. Something was truly and profoundly wrong.
***
Seven hours before…
Gone were the days of the little red schoolhouse. All across the East Coast, former farming communities were finding themselves overrun by the pharmacological revolution and all of the annoying, newly rich worker ants that cropped up with each new factory. The already flattened fields, perfectly suited for building, were being snatched up by developers to make more prefab McMansions, all of which were given commercially trendy street names like Wanders’ Way; as if in some way to entice the drones to abandon their hectic city lives for the quiet wonder of the newly created Agro-Suburbs.
These communities experienced a population explosion that could easily double or triple their towns overnight. Services had to be rapidly expanded to meet the ever-growing needs of the community. Schools, once quaint and welcoming, were replaced with massive brick complexes with state of the art facilities and all the charm of an asbestos factory. Towns consolidated grades and schools into larger and larger complexes, literally creating schools within schools, all in the name of saving tax dollars.
Once two laned country roads were widened and expanded to make way to accommodate the now overwhelming morning rush hour, but as quickly as lanes could be built, they were jammed and soon the casual calls of the cows were replaced with a disconcerting concert of car horns and curses. And at the epicenter of this dissonance, was exactly where Sam Williams found himself Tuesday morning.
Sam leaned his head against the thin glass window of the bus and squeezed his eyes shut, in a vain attempt to shut out the insanity unfolding outside of the school bus. He used to look forward to the bus ride to school; it was a chance to talk to your friends without adults around, but with the coming of the new school year and the switch to the newly opened Montville School Complex, Sam had realized the noisy peace he had once enjoyed was no more than a distant memory. He had spent every morning for the last month sweating on a cheap, green vinyl seat of the school bus, while the mid-morning traffic surged around the bus. Sam wondered why no matter how much the town dumped money into their new school, none of it ever seemed to go towards better busses that did not have seats held together with duct tape or reeking of years of stale butt sweat.
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