by Lowry, Chris
Brian volunteered to go with me, and Sparky stepped up to stay behind to keep an eye on things.
The walk that took two days to reach Livingston took an hour and a half to drive back.
We stopped two miles away, hid the truck and hoofed it to spy and scope it out.
"You could just knock on the front door and tell her the dirty deed is done," Brian whispered.
"Dirt cheap," I added under my breath.
There was a reason these two got on so well.
"She would just kill me," I answered.
"Or try."
"Yeah, or the kids."
While I watched.
"She's as crazy as the Mayor," said Brian.
"A different kind of crazy. She was the brains behind the operation."
"Think she'll just let your kids go?"
I thought about it for a moment.
"No."
"Then we do this," he said. "How do you want to do this?"
I spied an old friend opening the gate to go on what must have been a patrol."
"I have an idea," I said and motioned them to follow me back into the woods, finger beside my nose to remind them to be quiet.
My buddy was one of the two guys who walked me into the woods to turn me loose on Livingston.
The idea was to capture and interrogate him.
It was easy.
I stepped out on the trail in front of him. When he stopped, Brian whacked him with a branch.
"Knock him out, don't kill him."
"Sorry," Brian shrugged.
He hefted the branch like it was the stick's fault.
"You don't know your own strength."
He helped me lift the body.
The guy came around tied to a tree. I sharpened the end of a small thick limb to a fine point using a smooth rock.
"I forgot my knife," I told him. "But I think this will work."
I showed him the roughhewn point of the branch.
"Do you remember what happened to your friends?"
His head bounced up and down like it was on a spring.
"We can avoid that unpleasantness," I stood up and took a step toward him.
"You don't have to do this. I'll tell you whatever you want. I'll tell you everything."
"You know who my kids are."
"Yeah."
"Where are they staying in your camp?"
I had a plan that involved avoiding their vicinity.
"They're gone," he licked his lips.
He started crying when I stepped in close and pressed the point of the stick into his forearm.
"What. Do. You. Mean. Gone?"
He hiccupped and sobbed, flinched away from my face.
"Hey," Brian put his hand on my arm.
He took a step back when I turned my face to him.
"Mags sent your son to Nashville with some others," the man on the tree slobbered. "The girl disappeared right after."
I let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding.
When he said gone, my mind flashed to the worst. She killed them out of spite.
But they were out there.
Somewhere.
Again.
"Why Nashville?"
"Another supply depot," he sobbed. "I can get you the street."
"The girl?"
"She left with the other kid. They snuck out."
They.
Tyler. They ran away. Maybe to follow the boy.
"The address."
"Let me go first man, you have to let me go."
I jammed the stick into his thigh and leaned against it. He screamed.
"There goes the element of surprise," said Brian.
"I want them to know I'm coming," I told her. "Where is it?"
He told us.
"Cut him loose," I instructed Brian. "Wait here."
"Where are you going?"
But I marched off instead.
Two miles in fifteen minutes. Too long. They would have heard the scream and doubled the guard.
Twice the number of guns, twice the number of eyeballs.
I started the truck and lumbered to within half of a mile from the gate.
I could count twelve guards by the fence, four or six more moving in the yard behind them.
This was stupid.
It was a dumb move.
Brian stepped out of the woods, huffing and wheezing.
"Get back," I yelled out of the open window.
We heard the hornet buzz of a bullet and the sound of a shot a half second after.
He ducked behind a thick oak.
The AR-15 wasn't as accurate at this distance but that didn't mean they couldn't get lucky.
I unscrewed a quarter inch drain plug on the bottom of the still and stepped back as Sparky's hard work puddled in the dirt.
Then it was back into the front of the truck. I wedged the gas pedal down with the blood-soaked tip of the torture stick.
I popped the emergency brake and the truck spit up a rooster trail of dust as I aimed for the gate.
I ducked down in the seat as bullets started to fly, hoping their panic threw off their aim., and the engine block caught the rest.
At a ten count, I rolled out of the door and hit the ground in a hard tumble.
The guards kept shooting at the truck.
I flicked a lighter and dropped it in the thin line of hundred proof.
The fire swooshed after the truck as it crashed through the gate and plowed into the compound.
It crashed into a brick wall and came to a smoking screeching halt. I ran after the trail of flames, a pistol in each hand.
The shots were quick, double taps. Four guards went down before they thought to shoot back.
Six down when they stopped panicking and their aim got better.
The still exploded. I expected it.
They did not.
Panic, screams, smoke and bullets filled the air.
The gas tank in the trunk went up next which caught me by surprise and knocked me sideways as a wave of hot gas expanded over me.
It turned three of the guards into running, wailing matchsticks and I used the distraction to get up and finish the rest.
I traded my pistols for three of their rifles and kept going inside to the arena.
Mags stood on the platform, a hundred yards between us.
"I should have known it was you."
Her voice was difficult to make out at that distance.
I kept walking. Six guards around her. All armed. All watching me come closer.
They should have shot me.
No one expects a frontal assault to be so calm, quiet.
It was dumb not to do it.
Curiosity killed the cat. It's an old wives’ tale.
When I reached thirty yards, it killed them too.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The giant stepped out from behind the platform and raised his hands, as he regarded the various poses of his once living comrades.
"Headshots," he admired. "They won't be dead walkers."
I kept the pistol trained on him. I would be there were more than a few others still back there. Aimed at me.
The fact they weren't firing yet meant something.
He held his hands higher.
"No hard feelings."
I lifted the pistol and raised my voice to match.
"The Mayor is dead. Mags is dead. You can go about your business. I'm going to go get my kids."
He started to lower his hands and I let him.
"If you try to stop me, I'll kill every last one of you. If you hurt any of my friends, I'll come back here and kill every single one of you."
I know they heard me.
But not all of them believed me. Because I saw a pair of glasses and a ball cap behind a rifle barrel trying to aim at me from the side of the platform.
I dropped to a knee and sent a three round burst through the plywood. A guy I didn't know flopped on the ground squealing as his guts leaked out of his stomach.
I swung on the giant.
"Whoa. Whoa. I didn't know he was going to do that."
It could have been a lie.
But I was tired of killing.
And out of bullets.
Better to let him think I was convinced and kept the pistols up as I backed out of the arena. I scooped up more rifles and ammo that was left in the yard.
I was going to need it.
There was a yellow school bus parked a quarter of a mile up the driveway.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
I checked the magazine in the rifle and started consolidating. Then Brian stepped off the bus.
He jogged to meet me halfway, which was good because I was tired and it meant he could watch anyone at my back.
“That was loud,” he huffed.
“It was supposed to be.”
“I’m not going to ask if you feel better,” he said as he swung in beside me and took a couple of the rifles from my shoulder. “But I’ve got some good news.”
“The good news is we have an address,” I said.
It came out harsher than I meant, but he forgave it because he was my friend and he knew what I was thinking about.
The Boy.
He stopped me in front of the bus.
“I don’t know if you think this will be better,” he said.
Then she stepped off.
Anna.
She moved next to me and grabbed me in a bear hug, planting her head against my chest.
Peg stepped off the bus and took a rifle from Brian.
Hannah stepped out next, followed by Byron.
He took the rifle from me and checked the action, then stood at attention as he stared at me.
King Byron the wicked.
“Nice necktie. If I’d been back in time,” he told me. “You wouldn’t have fought alone.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
"We're being chased,” Brain told me.
The dog pawed out of the bus and ran over to sit at my feet.
“Kinji,” I smiled past a lump in my throat.
Anna ran her finger along the thick purple welt that circled my throat.
"What do you mean?"
"Her husband, the preacher. He threatened to kill her and he's coming after us. He's got it bad for you."
I shook my head.
It was too damn easy to make enemies out here. Where was my cabin in the woods, just me and the kids and a couple of close friends fishing for food and making our own beer for nights on the deck.
"We've had one of those before."
"More than one. You do tend to piss people off."
He smiled. God I missed this guy.
"It's easy when you practice."
"I say you turn pro in the next season."
"When is it going to end Brian?" I sighed.
I felt my shoulders slump a little.
I still had my youngest to find, but people kept pulling my children away from me, kept trying to keep me from them.
I felt like one step forward, two steps back. Or a kick in the nuts every time I caught my breath.
Anna put her hand on my back.
Just holding it there, pressed against the good flesh between the scar tissue. I could feel the pressure of it.
Then Brian leaned against me, propping me up, hand on my other shoulder.
"It might not," he offered. "It might be hard."
"Cause it's been easy so far."
My voice cracked on the laugh. It was soft, easy to miss, but they noticed.
"You won't do it alone," Anna said.
Her voice firm in my ear.
"Not anymore," added Brian. "We're all in this with you. Get your son. Go find your daughter. All of us. Together."
Friends.
I hadn't had many before the fall.
And the bonds established after were like spider webs.
Easily built and just as fragile.
This felt different.
My stomach gurgled.
"Hungry?" Anna asked.
"When did you last eat?" Brian was just as concerned.
I shook my head.
It wasn't hunger making that noise. It was something new, something moving in next to the rage.
It wouldn't supplant it, or move it out, not until I found my kids.
But something made me warm inside, touched me. I felt renewed. Reinvigorated.
With friends like these by my side, nothing was impossible.
I let that feeling wash over me, pulling strength from Brian and Anna, and from Hannah and Byron who stood waiting, and Peg who held herself on the outside of our little group, watching.
"You going to stand here all day making goo goo eyes at us, or are we going to get moving?" Brian cracked a smile again.
It was good advice.
So we took it.
Continue the Adventure
RENEGADE ZOMBIE
BATTLEFIELD Z SERIES
Book 8
By
Chris Lowry
Copyright 2017 Grand Ozarks Media
Orlando FL
All Rights Reserved
Direct all inquiries to [email protected]
Get great tips on Twitter @Lowrychris
RENEGADE ZOMBIE
CHAPTER ONE
I'm pissed.
I'm not worried about my kids, at least not my two oldest.
Scattered to the wind again by another crazy survivor.
She sent my boy to a depot in Nashville, and his older sister abandoned the township in the company of a scout I trust, another kid I'd crossed half the country with.
Everyone was scattered to the wind, but it gave me purpose.
And anger.
What should have been a simple drive across the country, pick up my two oldest, drive back to grab my youngest and find someplace to hide out the end of the world had turned into a cluster.
Most of it wasn't even my fault.
I just piss people off. I guess it's my face.
Granted, before the zombie apocalypse I was only considered marginally handsome by a select group of genius women.
Even as my hairline receded, they blamed it on excess testosterone and told me I looked like my father.
Since the end of the world, I'd been shot, blown up, grazed, beaten, bullied, made fun of and even hanged.
Those tend to leave scars and now, though I could not often see my reflection, I looked more like Frankenstein's monster than I did the C-suite ladder climbing salesman I was before it all started.
Or maybe just a really unlucky boxer, one who wasn't that great at fighting, but was tenacious.
A real life Rocky fist fighting for life against Z, mad militias, religious nutters and assorted maniacs that gravitated to power after the Armageddon stole almost all the good people.
Which made me wonder why I was so good at surviving if all the good ones were gone.
Philosophy would come later.
First, find the boy.
Save the boy.
Second, find Bis.
Save the world.
My world at least.
And yes, those were nicknames for the kids, which stuck.
The girl's based on the banana fana song, and the Boy by the fact of being the only one in the mix.
I thought I'd have to do it alone.
Find and save my kids.
But after I used some samurai logic on the madwoman in Kentucky and her group of Colonel's that sent the boy to Nashville, a yellow bus popped up on my horizon.
I planned for another fight and got a pleasant surprise.
It was more people from my second family, there to help.
CHAPTER TWO
"My kids are gone," I said to Brian.
"We'll find them," Anna rubbed the small of my back.
She knew touch was going to keep me grounded, something instinctual.
I imagined they could hear my heart pounding against my chest, breath constricted in fe
ar.
The Boy, lost, sent away by Mags on a fool’s errand.
Bem and Tyler missing, gone after him perhaps.
Or killed and hidden.
Bis somewhere on the East Coast.
Every turn, someone trying to stop me from reaching my kids, someone trying to keep me from making them safe.
How many men had I killed who stood in my way?
I lost count.
A thousand zombies. Maybe more.
I'd kill a million more if that's what it took.
The rubbing on my back stopped.
"Something in the woods," Anna breathed.
Her brown eyes were pools of darkness as she stared through the afternoon shadows trying to pick out what it was.
I ran my hand along the back of her waist, pulled a pistol she had tucked there and stalked to the front of the yellow bus.
My look shut everyone up.
Brian's hands waved them down to make smaller targets or get ready to run.
I leaned against the edge of the hood to use as cover, scanning the tree line, trying to look for patterns, searching for whatever didn't fit.
The shadows under an oak shifted, moved.
Bodies.
Lumbering through the trees, slow.
I lifted the pistol, aimed and got ready to fire.
The body moved under the darkest part of the tree, half hidden by the trunk.
Coming this way.
