“So, tell me, Tonya, if we came to you and Benny first and presented you with the facts, what exactly would you have done?”
“We would have dealt with it,” she said after a long pause.
“What does that mean exactly?” I pressed. “Be more specific.” I waited for her to answer, but her only response was to break eye contact for a moment and recheck the gauges on the boiler.
“I’m going to speculate here. If we had come to you first, you would have probably given him a good scolding with a few empty threats and that would have been the extent of it. Eventually, he would have found someone else to rape, torture, and murder. You know it, and I know it.” She continued staring pointedly at me for a long moment before speaking.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it was wrong of all of you to exclude me from the decision-making process which ended in his death.” I nodded in mock understanding. The truth was, I didn’t give a shit what she thought about it. Her brother was an evil piece of trash and deserved what Fred did to him. I thought that was the end of it, but she continued pressing the issue.
“I’d like to ask you something, are you to be held to the same standard that you and Fred held my little brother to?”
“I’ve never raped anyone,” I responded quickly, icily.
“Oh, I believe that. But, you’ve killed. You’ve killed more people than Anthony, I’m betting.”
“And if someone threatens or brings harm to my loved ones, I’ll kill again,” I responded in a deeper tone. I felt myself clenching my teeth. “But comparing me to your little brother, a piece of shit psychopath, is out of line. I consider it an insult.”
“Oh, you do?” she retorted. I didn’t bother responding. Instead, I stared at her hard, my hand edging closer to the lock blade knife in my pants pocket.
“Alright, point taken,” she finally conceded. I could have said more, much more, but as far as I was concerned, what was done was done. Besides, I had an ulterior motive for even socializing with these people and it wouldn’t do any good to get into a confrontation with her. At least, not yet.
“Do you think we were involved in the deaths of everyone?” she suddenly asked.
“I hope that you weren’t,” I responded quietly. If I knew for a certainty they were, I was most assuredly going to retaliate. I wondered if she sensed it.
“We didn’t,” she responded pointedly. “You know there was no way we could have stopped them even if we knew what that damned colonel was up to, right?” I didn’t answer. Tonya took a deep breath. “When we found out what had happened, we were all devastated. If we had tried to stop them, they would have killed all of us. No doubt in my mind, they would have killed us.”
I slowly nodded, she was right. I didn't want her to be right, for some reason I wanted her and the rest of them to be culpable and I wasn't sure why. Maybe I'd talk it over with Kelly.
“What happened to Benny?” I asked with her same suddenness. Her mouth tightened.
“Zombies got him when we were searching for the boiler.” That was it. No other explanation. I didn’t push it. I liked Benny, but I had other things on my mind.
“I want to make something else clear,” she said, breaking me out of reverie.
“Yes?”
“The school is mine,” she asserted. I arched an eyebrow. “I know you started the plan, but I’ve taken it and developed it. Even you have to admit that much.”
In fact, I didn't want to admit it at all. They were homeless when we allowed them to live here, and that little fact seemed to have been lost in history. But, what was I going to do, tell them it's mine and they had to leave? The truth was, I didn't need the school and I was pretty sure I didn't need them.
“Fair enough,” I replied. She folded her arms as if she’d just made a significant conquest.
“While we’re making things clear, perhaps there are some things I need to make clear as well,” I said. Her expression was wary now, suspicious.
“I have roughly fifteen hundred acres which belong to me. That includes everything on it. So, if I see any of my cattle where they shouldn’t be, I’ll consider it rustling and will take appropriate measures.” Her eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?” I pointed across the street where the radio tower stood and the field surrounding it.
“As we drove up, I saw six cows with yellow and orange colored ear tags. Those are mine. The Parsons, those were the people who originally owned the farm, they’ve been using those tags for years. Nobody else around here uses that color scheme. Those are my cattle.”
Tonya frowned. “We got those when we thought you were dead.”
I scoffed. “And when you found out I was still alive, you didn’t load them up and bring them back, now did you.” Tonya stared out across the street.
“We need those cows,” she quipped, as if that were a satisfactory explanation.
“Tonya, you are a very intelligent, driven woman, I admire that. Hell, I wish we were friends, I could learn a lot from you. You want to establish boundaries, I get it,” I said, “but it’s a two-way street.” I pointed again.
“Don’t encroach on my boundaries again or there will be consequences.” She looked at me icily. I returned her stare. “I don’t think I need to spell it out, you know what I’m capable of.” I paused a moment.
“So, do you have anything worthy to trade for them or should I load them up and take them back home with me?”
Tonya suddenly broke out into a chuckle. “I’m sure I can come up with something. If I may ask, how in the hell are you and Kelly going to be able to manage fifteen hundred acres on your own?”
“I can handle it,” I retorted. Tonya chuckled again.
“I suppose you can at that.”
“None of the horses have blankets on,” Kelly observed. After leaving the school, we drove down to the once magnificent horse farm located at the Franklin Pike intersection. “They’re going to freeze to death.”
“It’s a common misconception that horses need blankets in the winter. As long as you let them grow their winter coats, they’re fine.” I gestured at the horses and counted twenty-eight of them. “They’ve got nice thick coats, but there used to be over a hundred horses out here. I don’t see anywhere near that number. Let’s go take a look.”
The horse stalls were open, but they’d not been mucked in quite some time. On the other hand, all of the tack and saddles had been neatly stored. I loaded up some of it.
“Are you going to take any of the horses?” I shook my head. “We could use a few,” she said.
“Yeah, we’ll pick up a couple more later, but not right now.” I looked around the barn. There were a few farm tools I could use, but held off and instead spotted a trailer. I pointed at it. “I’ve been toying with an idea having to do with golf cart batteries and that trailer will come in handy for hauling them. We’ll come back for it later. Right now, let’s see if we can find Bo and Penny.”
We headed back down Franklin Pike and I soon took a series of side roads.
“Where are we going?” Tonya asked.
“Bo’s house,” I replied.
“I thought he lived at the horse farm?” she asked with a small amount of confusion in her tone.
“He did, but he also had a small farm in a community called Duplex.”
“Duplex?”
“Yeah. I’ve no idea why it was named that, but for obvious reasons, he didn’t tell anybody where it is.”
We made it there twenty minutes later. The entrance to his home was a long, winding gravel driveway that had sections washed out. It was a bumpy ride. I stopped a decent distance away from the house and tapped on the horn. There was no response from the house.
“It’s not looking too good,” Kelly said apprehensively. I nodded.
“Alright, let’s clear the house.” She started to open the truck door but I stopped her. “If they’re in there, they might have gotten attacked or something. If they’ve turned, you can’t
hesitate, okay?”
She nodded nervously and exited the truck. It was a small house and we cleared it easily. There was nobody home.
“You’re becoming pretty good at this stuff,” I commented. Kelly looked at me.
“Really?”
“Yeah, much better than the first time when we went into Cool Springs Mall.”
“That means a lot, coming from you,” she said with a heartwarming smile. "I must admit, I was scared to death that day. I thought at any minute I was going to hurl chunks, but you made me feel safe." She smiled and I grunted.
“Alright, enough mushy stuff.” She nudged me as I looked around. “Someone’s been living here.”
“Did you see the bedroom in back?” Kelly asked. I frowned, not knowing what she was pointing out. “Oh, Zach, how short your memory is. Didn’t you see the changing table and the crib?” I straightened in realization. “Yeah, Penny’s given birth.” She waved a hand around. “But it looks like they’re gone now. Where in the world did they go?”
I sighed. “I’ve no idea. They’ve bugged out, but I’ve no idea why or where they went. This is weird.”
We searched the house thoroughly for any clue that might’ve let us know what was going on with them. We found nothing.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Well, the house is spotlessly clean and it’s been prepped for winter. The water pipes have been drained and there’s even some antifreeze in the toilet bowl.”
“Yeah, and there’s no food, not even any rotting food.” Kelly looked around. “I think they plan on coming back someday, but where the hell did they go?”
It was the question of the day, and we had no answer.
“Why don’t we leave a note?” Kelly suggested. It was better than nothing. I wrote a couple of sentences but Kelly felt my brevity was inadequate and added a several more paragraphs. Thinking of nothing else, we secured the house and headed home.
Chapter 5 – Batteries
The cart barn was kind of inappropriately named. It was actually the ground floor of a private country club located on Franklin Pike. It had two commercial steel roll-up garage doors, but no windows. When we popped one of the doors open, two infected things lunged out at us. I backed up quickly, drew my sidearm, and made short work of them.
“Golfers,” I grumbled sarcastically. Kelly giggled and Floyd looked at me with surprise.
“You’re mighty quick with that gun.”
“I had a good teacher.” He nodded in admiration and peered inside cautiously.
"You must be talking about that gunslinger friend of yours. Ward talks about him all the time."
"Yeah, that was Fred. He was quick as lightning." I wish he hadn’t have mentioned him. I missed Fred almost as much as I missed Julie. He and Rick had profound impacts on my life and they were both long gone. Thankfully, he changed the subject.
“It’s dark as all get out in there,” he observed. He was right, there was absolutely no ambient lighting.
“Yeah, this isn’t going to be easy. Just because we’ve made a bunch of noise out here, it doesn’t mean these two are the only ones left.” I used my flashlight and shone it inside. The garage was full of golf carts, neatly parked and plugged into their individual chargers. It was a good sign. If I was correct, the batteries had been all charged up back before.
“Alright you two, this is going to be a slow tedious process.” I looked at Floyd. “I’m thinking Kelly stands watch out here and the two of us clear this place out.”
“I’m behind you all the way,” Floyd said with a straight face.
“Yeah, fine, just don’t shoot me in the ass by accident,” I replied. “Kelly will take it very personally.”
It took us over an hour to clear every nook and cranny. It was time consuming and took a lot of energy, so afterward we took a lunch break consisting of a couple of cans of pork and beans.
“Floyd, tell us a little bit about yourself,” I suggested. He shrugged as he wolfed down some beans.
“Well, it’s a typical story I guess you’d say. I wasn’t married and didn’t have no kids, but I came from a large family. We all lived in Marshall County on the family farm. My big brother was a decorated veteran of Desert Storm. When he came home, he took over his father-in-law’s car dealership in Shelbyville. Some of the family worked there and the rest of us ran the farm.” He ate some more and his face darkened.
“All of them are gone. Some of them got sick and died, some of them got sick and turned into them zombies. My brother did the deed and killed all of them, but then he got infected somehow and I had to kill him.” Finishing his lunch, he leaned back against the rock wall lining the cart path. A slight breeze was blowing from the west and the sun was bright in the sky now. It was pleasant, but still cool enough to require a light jacket.
“So, I was making a go of it by myself.”
“You didn’t have a wife or a sweetheart?” Kelly asked. Floyd shook his head.
“There were a couple of gals here and there, but nothing special. I ain’t the most handsome guy out there, so I didn't never attract very many women. Anyway, back this last spring I’m working a field with a disk harrow and got too close to a utility pole. I caught a guide wire and it somehow got wrapped around me and the tractor and trapped my arm. I got the tractor stopped, but damned if I could work my arm out of the cable. It was tighter than Dick’s hatband and had cut the circulation off. I sat there for about seven or eight hours, totally helpless. It was getting dark and I was getting scared. Then, God smiled upon me, I guess. The pole finally snapped in two and it gave me enough slack to get my arm out, but the damage was done.” He motioned at his right arm. “I can wiggle it a little bit and flex my fingers a little, but it doesn’t work no more.”
“That must have been rough,” Kelly said sadly. Floyd nodded ruefully.
“Yeah, you might say that. If that wasn't bad enough, my dog died during all of it. He was my buddy and all I had left in the world. I was pretty depressed and convinced myself I wasn’t going to be able to survive on my own with only one arm. I’d heard those radio transmissions a few times and made a decision. I loaded up, hopped in my car and made my way to the school.” He chuckled.
“That Tonya, she can be a real bitch, but I got to say, she’s probably the smartest woman I’ve ever met.” He paused a moment and cleared his throat. “They’ve told me some stories about Tonya’s little brother, but I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, if you don’t mind.”
I told him the entire story while we worked. The batteries were big and heavy, and with Floyd’s bad arm I did most of the lifting and loading. Kelly kept watch with a pair of binoculars.
“So, he was a real life serial killer?” Floyd asked when I was finished with the story.
“Yep.”
“Damn,” he said in quiet amazement. I looked over the trailer.
“Well, Floyd, I don’t think we can load up any more batteries without the tires bursting.”
“I’d say you’re right. What are you going to do with all them things?” he asked as I began tightening down the loading straps.
“I’m going to hook them up to a solar energy set up we have and increase our power storage.” Floyd looked at me in wonder, like I was talking about alchemy or something just as magical.
“You can do that?” he asked. I nodded. Floyd slapped his thigh. “You’re something else, Zach.”
“I’m a survivor, Floyd,” I said. “Just like you.”
"You was just sixteen when all this stuff started, right?" I nodded. "Well, how in the hell did a teenage kid all by himself manage to survive?" I smiled.
"Well, it all started with that same teenage kid and a man named Rick Sanders."
I spent the next hour regaling the two of them with stories about my friend, Rick. We laughed together at Rick's antics and even Floyd misted up a bit when I told of how he died.
"I would have been right proud to have known him, I believe," he said.
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"I think he would have liked you as well."
We sat there enjoying the sunshine, talking about life. We had a good view of a portion of the golf course and there were several horses grazing. I chuckled and pointed.
“Well, I’ll be. Those are Bo’s horses. At least now we know they haven’t been eaten.” After a while, I looked at my watch and suggested heading back when Floyd suddenly frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Kelly asked.
“Well,” Floyd replied haltingly, “Tonya told me if I was going to skip out on the day's chores I shouldn't come back home empty handed. She's likely to give me all kinds of grief.”
I sympathized and thought it over. Kelly piped up.
“Why don’t we go check out the kitchen in this place? I bet they have some expensive commercial cookware. The pots and pans at the school look like they’ve seen better days.” I looked over at Kelly and then at Floyd. His face lit up in hopeful expectation.
As soon as I popped open the front door, we were greeted by seven of the stinkers. They stumbled over each other in their effort to get to us, which made it easy. I shot three of them before Floyd got a shot. He had trouble reloading and Kelly helped him out while I took a closer look at the ones we’d just killed.
“Any differences?” Kelly asked.
“Not really. These look emaciated, like they hadn’t eaten anything in a while.” There were two more in the cooler along with a corpse that appeared to have been chewed on extensively.
“I guess when they turned, their brain couldn’t figure out how to open the door,” Floyd remarked. He was probably right on the money. It was an inconsequential bit of information, but I was still going to jot it down when I got home.
“You know, I’m glad we’re interacting with the school people again,” Kelly said. We were lying under the blankets in front of the fireplace. It had become our favorite nocturnal spot.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I replied after a moment. I felt Kelly’s head move and sensed her staring at me. I told her of my suspicions. She listened in silence as I explained everything. She analyzed it, probed me with questions, analyzed some more, and finally shook her head.
Zombie Rules (Book 4): Destiny Page 4
