Crusade (Eden Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  The baby trilled in joy.

  Edward had crossed to the kitchenette.

  “Give me a second and I’ll fix you a plate.”

  “Thanks, Edward. You’re a gentleman and a man of honor.” She looked at Maurice as she said this. When he looked up at her she gave him a dirty look and he looked away. Lauren nudged him with her elbow.

  “No, Mommy,” Nicole said. “Those are five-hundreds. These are your hundreds.”

  C.W. sang about eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.

  She sat and watched the Monopoly game. She watched Maurice pet the dog with Lauren next to him, thought about how she’d eat and help Sonya put the kids down for the night, clean her guns and talk to her sister, try to avoid an argument but probably fail. She’d go to sleep, get up, and do it all over again the next day.

  The Strangers

  Buddy hadn’t said much all day. He’d trudged along behind them, always back there, always bringing up the rear, the bayonet mounted on his AK. When he’d gotten close enough at times they’d been able to hear him talking to himself, a low, guarded tone, few of the words coherent, and they’d all seen his eyes darting around in his head, side to side, suspicious, scared.

  Buddy scared? Gwen couldn’t buy it. She’d been there, in Eden, when he and Harris had come in together. Buddy was the only man who could stand up to Graham and his brute thug Markowski, and he had. Her husband, Bobby, had told her once that Buddy was like a bad dream, but someone else’s, not their own.

  Bear led them up the road, past the occasional car, through the snow. He walked ahead of their little group, and, she thought, was like Buddy, equally a part of it but apart from it.

  It never ceased to surprise her how they could go for hours without ever seeing a zombie then there’d be pockets of them, dozens of them, all gathered in one place. She was used to the walls of Eden, thronged by thousands of the undead, their cries breaking the silence of the night when she’d tried to sleep in bed next to Bobby, her man, her protector.

  She laughed to herself. Her protector. A quaint concept. Life in zombie-land had taught her she could care for herself. If she hadn’t been able to, she wouldn’t have made it as far as she had. Bobby had been kind of old fashioned in a sense, and really saw it as his duty to be her provider and protector, and he did that as best he could in the relatively short time they’d had together as husband and wife.

  Who had been there to protect Bobby? Gwen thought. No one. Her Bobby had died down in Markowski’s basement. Harris’ basement, she corrected herself. Harris and Julie had moved into the Pole’s house after, well, after Buddy killed Markowski down in the dark of the sewers. What had really happened there, she wondered. She’d heard stories, from Camille when Sal had come back from underground, stories about how Buddy had marched Markowski handcuffed into the blackness. How he’d come back with Markowski’s head. She’d seen Buddy execute Graham.

  Her Bobby never got out of that basement. She figured it out later. Her man had been concerned about Harris and had gone to check on him. And she didn’t think Harris had meant to kill Bobby. He probably just didn’t want Bobby to interfere with his plans. But he had killed Bobby, her Bobby, and her Bobby was gone from her now.

  She thought of this as she walked with Mickey and Julie and contemplated the baby in Julie’s womb, Harris’ baby. It would be all too easy to bear a grudge against Julie. Julie’s man had been responsible for her man’s demise. All too easy, and all too human. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew Julie had had nothing to do with Bobby’s death, and that baby in her belly—that baby was innocent of all this.

  “…you see the way they’re looking at you…”

  “…don’t listen to him, Buddy, he’s trying to goad you…”

  Buddy’s face twitched and he sniffled.

  “…you want to know something truly fucked up, jig?”

  “…leave him alone goddamn you…”

  “…you think that’s your boy’s baby in there, huh? Heh-heh-heh…”

  “What?” he asked but the sound he made bore no resemblance to the word what.

  “…you think that’s your friend’s child inside that bitch?”

  “Buddy.” Julie had turned and walked back to him.

  “Jule-Julie,” he stammered.

  “You’ve got to be cold.” She reached out and drew either side of his jacket together and zippered it. He stared at her stomach jutting out under her clothes and coat.

  “You want to feel the baby?” Julie saw he was intent on her belly. She took one of his hands and made to place it on her stomach but he drew the hand back quickly, surprising her. “Okay. It’s okay. You keep up.”

  They had left the tracks earlier that day and their trek over the last two hours was slow going, all uphill on a curving mountain path. They lost sight of the river amidst the tree and rock outcroppings and did not encounter any undead. The freshly fallen snow here was unmarked—a reassuring sign that no one, living or dead, had come this way.

  They passed a one-story Tudor-style building on their right. Snow had slid free to reveal the steep-gabled slate roof. The roof and the stucco-finished walls looked the worse for wear. Two flag poles were set in the ground at the former toll house.

  “Hey,” Mickey said. “Let’s think of some songs we can sing for him when he pops out.”

  “Mickey.” Gwen shook her head. “Pops out?”

  “I was there when my son was born. That’s basically what happens.”

  “For him?” asked Julie.

  “For him who? Or is it whom?”

  “No, you said let’s come up with some songs for him. See, now that’s funny, because I have this feeling she’s a she inside there.” Julie caressed her stomach through her layers.

  “You think it’s a girl?” Gwen asked.

  “I don’t know why,” admitted Julie. “But, yeah, I have that feeling.”

  “What does your stomach look like—without your clothes on I mean?” asked Mickey.

  She looked at him like he was crazy.

  “No, I don’t mean that in a weird way,” Mickey said. “I mean, don’t they say its all how your stomach hangs? Kind of indicates whether it’s a boy or a girl? You know, if you look like an apple versus a pear?”

  Gwen and Julie laughed.

  “Mickey,” Julie explained. “I think what you’re thinking of is if the stomach is up high or hanging low.”

  “That whole pear-versus-apples thing is about bodyfat distribution,” Gwen said.

  “Okay, whatever.”

  “And that’s bogus anyway. Guessing a baby’s sex by the mom’s belly.”

  “Oh, but if a mom thinks she’s going to have a girl, that’s enough of an indication, huh?”

  “Call it mother’s intuition.”

  Gwen nodded and said to her, “You’ve earned that.”

  “Okay, songs,” Mickey said. “How about this one? Tick-tock, tick-tock, I’m a little coo-coo clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the clock strikes ONE!”

  “I hadn’t heard that one before,” Julie said.

  “The second verse is easier than the first,” Mickey said, and he continued the song, Gwen and Julie joining him.

  Bear lumbered through the snow ahead of the others. He heard Mickey and Julie and Gwen behind him singing about the wheels on the bus. Buddy was behind them, following the group.

  He was worried about Buddy. As long as the man could put one foot in front of the other, and so long as he wasn’t a threat to any of their group…

  He crested a rise and saw the span of a suspension bridge across the river ahead in the distance. He’d been up this way a few times before, long ago, on his chopper. The Bear Mountain Bridge. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t asked for the nickname. It had been given to him.

  The span looked free of zombies from this distance. He looked to the sky and judged they had a few more hours of light. The road wound down from this point to the bridge.

  A half hour lat
er the road turned and let out onto the main span which was nearly five hundred meters in length. The cables, pylons and deck trusses were all steel. The two vehicle lanes were twelve feet wide apiece and the shoulders, separated by low concrete walls, added another eight feet to either side. Two massive eighteen-inch cables ran either side of the bridge, suspending the entire structure above the Hudson.

  As he stepped onto the bridge he saw he had been wrong. There was a zombie on the span, a little one. It had been a midget and it was naked and it just stood there. When it saw him it opened its mouth and rasped but didn’t move and he wondered if the little thing was frozen in place.

  He approached the thing cautiously, scanning either side of the bridge, looking for other undead, but this one was apparently alone. How long it had stood here, why it wasn’t moving, and why it was naked, he would never know. It growled at him as he stepped up to it and he swung down with the mace, his aim slightly off, knocking the thing’s jaw off its face.

  The little zombie shook its head and blinked, its jaw laying fifteen feet off in the snow. It made eye contact with him and from somewhere deep inside its core it growled. Bear brought the mace down with greater accuracy this time, clumping the thing on the crown of its head, and it dropped like a suit of clothes slipped from a hanger. He was pretty sure it was finished but just to be certain he clobbered it a couple of more times.

  “You ever see a midget zombie before?” Mickey asked the two women as they passed the crumpled naked body.

  “I think I saw a dwarf zombie,” Gwen said. “Dwarves have the big heads, right? And midgets are, like, perfectly formed, right? Just smaller than other people?”

  “I think that’s it.”

  “I saw a black albino zombie once,” Julie said.

  “How’d you know it was a black albino?”

  “You never saw a black albino before?”

  “No. And you’re not kidding me, right?”

  “No, I’m not kidding you,” Julie said. “My brother wrestled in high school. He always said the toughest guys he had to wrestle were—”

  “Black albinos?” Mickey said.

  “No, the blind.”

  “The blind? You’re brother wrestled blind guys?”

  “Yeah. What, you think blind kids don’t wrestle and play other sports?”

  “As long as they’re not playing darts.”

  “Not funny, Mickey,” Gwen said.

  “My brother always talked about this one blind kid, wrestled in the one hundred and eighty one pound class, a blind albino. State champion a couple of years in a row. Said the kid was tough as, well, he said the kid was tough.”

  “This is a beautiful bridge,” Gwen said, looking down into the river, then around at the broad expanses of trees and white. The mountains loomed behind and ahead of them to their left.

  “Come on ladies. One-two-three! London Bridge is falling down…”

  At the opposite end of the span was a New England-style brick house and two toll booths. Bear felt like he was being watched as he approached the small building. He didn’t stop but he did sling the mace over his back and draw one of his Glocks. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire it. If he did the gunshot would bring whatever zombies were within earshot.

  He heard it before he saw it. It must have been a brain and it lay in wait in one of the two toll booths, in the EZ-pass only lane. As he tread closer the thing peeked through the window of the toll booth and quickly dropped down. It made a lot of noise, nearly gleeful in its expectation, and he was reminded that as smart as the brains were, they weren’t all that smart.

  He decided when it attacked him he would take it out with his hands and forego the pistol, unless there was more than one around.

  “—the ants go marching four by four,” the ladies and Mickey were singing, Mickey the loudest, “the little one stopped to shut the door, and they all went marching—”

  “Oh shit!” Mickey pointed. “Look!”

  The zombie came tearing out of the toll booth up ahead and ran straight at Bear. It was wearing a children’s party hat, an elastic band securing it under the chin. The snow, nearly knee deep here, slowed it somewhat. Bear didn’t give up any ground. He squared his stance, lowered the hand with the pistol, drew back his free hand, clutched his gloved fist and—

  “Oh shit!” Mickey said as Bear punched the thing in its face and knocked its head off its body. “I’ve seen him do that before! But it never ceases to—Damn!”

  The body dropped in front of Bear. Its head and the party hat lay a few feet apart from one another in the snow.

  “I’m glad he’s on our side,” Gwen said.

  Julie turned around and looked back at Buddy who had just started across the bridge behind them. If the other man had seen any of what just went down he gave no indication of it.

  “Come on Julie,” Gwen said.

  Bear was moving up ahead and they had to follow.

  “Circle to the left, the old brass wagon,” sang Mickey. “Circle to the left, the old brass wagon…”

  Julie placed one hand under her belly and moved forward, Gwen next to her.

  “…circle to the left, the old brass wagon…you’re the one my darling…”

  “So,” Gwen said. “What are you going to call it?”

  Julie shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about that.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mickey said. “You’re like, what, due in two months and you haven’t thought of what you’re going to name the baby?”

  They sat around a fire on logs Bear and Mickey had dragged into a loose circle. The three of them sat bunched together. Buddy sat across from them on the other side of the fire, his gaze downcast, mumbling to himself, rocking back and forth slightly. He had a Zippo lighter in one hand and was rubbing his thumb over the side of it.

  “There’s just been so much, so much going on…”

  “When that little baby gets here,” Gwen smiled, “she’s going to need a name.”

  “What do you think about Hunter or Ethan?” Mickey asked.

  “I don’t know, not…not my style.” She wanted to say not Harris’ style, but didn’t. Harris, she thought, would have preferred what he’d have considered more “common” names, like Matthew or Justin.

  “How about a good solid name, like Michael?”

  “Hey,” Gwen said. “Isn’t Mickey diminutive for Michael?”

  “You mean is it short for Michael? Sometimes, yeah, I guess. But not always. Like me. I’m just Mickey.”

  “Why do you assume my baby’s going to be a boy?”

  “I don’t know. Just a feeling.”

  She smiled and asked him, “Would you be disappointed if it’s a girl?”

  “No,” he said. “I’d love them both equally.”

  The three laughed quietly while Buddy muttered something and swayed in place.

  “Hey, Julie, you know what I always wanted to ask him,” said Mickey. “Was Harris a last name or a first name?”

  “A surname,” she said. “A last name.”

  “Hey, Buddy,” Mickey called over to the other man. “That’s a nickname, right? What’s your real name?”

  They looked and waited but if Mickey’s question registered he gave no indication.

  “Well.” Mickey placed his auto-shotgun barrel up against the log he sat on. “Let me see if I can’t go help Bear scare up some wood for the fire. It’s gonna be a cold one tonight.”

  “Okay,” Gwen said. “Be careful.”

  “I got my strap.” He smiled, patting his waist line where he had his 9mm tucked between his thermals and his jeans. He walked off beyond the illumination of the flame, into the pines and Atlantic White Cypress, thinking to himself about the Undying Monster of Hammond Hall, reciting from memory, “When stars are bright, on a frosty night, beware thy bane on the rocky lane…”