“I’ll deal with you later,” he replied menacingly to Ruth and focused back on me.
“You will turn over your children immediately or I will kill everyone here, one by one.”
“Just like you did back at my farm? Just like you killed my wife and friends?” I asked. He smiled again. He was smiling too much, and the more he smiled the harder it was for me to keep up the façade.
“So, I see we understand each other,” he replied, almost boisterously. “When we arrived at your quaint little home back last September, I tried to deal with them in a reasonable manner.”
“If I understand correctly, you ordered my children be handed over, or else.”
“I see Corporal Bullington has told you what happened. Did she tell you your petulant little wife had the audacity to call me a vulgar name before firing a shot at me?” he asked. He made it sound like Julie had committed a heinous sin and scoffed in contempt.
“There was nothing more to do but eliminate the obstacle, and as with all obstacles, I remove them and complete the mission.” He stared at me dispassionately.
“In the end, I will win again and we will pick up where we left off.”
Our plan was working, sort of. He had just admitted to his responsibility for the massacre. He said it loud and clear, everyone heard him. Everyone except Sarah, who was three hundred yards away staring at us through the scope of her sniper rifle, waiting for the signal. Once I raised my hand, she was going to put a bullet in his head.
And then, before any of us could say or do anything, Janet did something that was totally unexpected. Standing close beside the Colonel, a rather small piece of a rectangular metal object appeared in her hand from nowhere. It was seemingly a graceful, innocent act. One might have thought she was wiping a smudge from her lover’s face as she reached up to him. The edge of the straight razor caught a sliver of sunlight as it glided across the colonel’s neck. He instinctively grabbed his throat and looked at Janet in confusion.
“That’s for murdering my daughter, you sonofabitch,” she icily declared.
He held his throat with one hand and tried grabbing for her with the other, but he was too slow. She deftly stepped back and watched dispassionately as he slowly fell to the ground, the pulsing blood squirting out between his fingers. Everyone was in shock. The lone Marine manning the machine gun was the first to react and turned it toward her.
“Wait!” I shouted. It was too late, but he was lucky. The bullet hit the Marine’s machine gun right at the feed tray. He jerked back in surprise as shrapnel spewed out from the impact. I had no idea if Sarah was that good of a shot or her aim was off. Either way, it worked, it frightened everyone. That was the signal, and most of our group reacted quickly by retrieving their hidden weapons. A couple of CDC people grabbed their assault weapons.
“Don’t move!” Sergeant Smithson shouted. “Take your hands off of those weapons if you want to live. That’s an order!”
“We have snipers deployed,” I quickly added. “Don’t do anything that’ll get you killed.” There was confusion written on all of their faces, but they reluctantly obeyed as Cutter and Shooter aggressively pointed their weapons at them. It was obvious they were eager for action. Marc and Ward, not so much. The women, even Tonya, had opted not to arm themselves when we’d planned this out. It was hoped this would work out to their advantage if we were on the losing end of this goat fuck.
We held them at gunpoint as Ruth and Tonya disarmed them. Thankfully, there was no resistance. Their collective body language was not that of hostility or aggression; I didn’t even see an angry sneer.
"Private Mann, stand down and join the others," Justin ordered. The young soldier complied without complaint, looking around nervously as he did so. I guess he was wondering where our snipers were and if he was about to be shot at again.
At about that time, Janet seemed to come out of her reverie. She dropped the straight razor and plopped heavily to the ground. I looked around at this group of people carefully. None of them seemed particularly interested in Janet, or the colonel for that matter. They looked tired; their faces were etched with a greasy mixture of grime and fatigue. The death of the colonel increased their level of anxiety exponentially. I knew I had to do something and made direct eye contact with each of them as I began speaking.
“Listen up, you people. We’ve no quarrel with any of you,” I proclaimed. “Unless you were involved in the massacre of my family.” I glanced at Justin, who was now armed with one of the soldier’s compact assault rifles and eyed the newcomers closely. “Sergeant Smithson?” I asked.
“Zach, with the exception of Private Mann here, all of these people are from the CDC. Private Mann was on guard duty back at Fort Campbell on that particular day in question.” I looked over at the young enlisted man. If he enlisted right out of high school, he was probably around twenty or twenty-one, well under six feet, as dirty as the rest, maybe even more so, and skinny as a rail. I wondered why he was still a Private. Marc spoke up.
“Zach, I don’t recognize any of these people either,” he said. Ward and Tonya voiced their agreement. “None of them came to the school that day.”
Justin walked over and stood in front of one of the soldiers, looking him up and down. He was wearing combat utilities that had a different pattern than Justin’s and his nametag said Caswell.
“Do you know that one?” I asked. Justin nodded.
“He's Regular Army and somehow ended up at the CDC. How are you, Caswell?” Justin asked.
“Not so good, Gunny,” he replied. “It's been a long, rough road lately, even more than usual.” In fact, he didn’t look so good. As with the rest of his comrades, his face was in bad need of soap, water, and a shave. Ruth walked over and stood by Justin.
“What happened after we left?” she asked. He shook his head tiredly.
“I’ve no idea when you guys left,” he replied, “but the fight lasted for a full three days and I don’t think any of us slept the entire time.” He looked over at the colonel’s lifeless body. “Well, most of us.”
“Damn,” Justin muttered. From the look on his face, I sensed he was feeling a little guilty for leaving his comrades.
“Yeah, it was bad.” Caswell gestured around. “Some others escaped, they took the LAVs, but as far as I know, this is all that’s left.” He then pointed over at a freckle-face woman with brown hair peeking out from under her Kevlar helmet. It was hard to tell what her age was, I guessed somewhere around thirty.
“That’s Sergeant Benoit.” Sergeant Benoit touched her finger to her helmet in the form of a salute. Sergeant Caswell continued. “She’s been the ad hoc commo officer for the past couple of months.”
“You’re the one I spoke to last night,” Justin said to her. She nodded.
“Tell them about POTUS,” Caswell told her. She cleared her throat and took her helmet off, causing a whole heap of dirty brown hair to fall out.
“After the attack, Colonel Coltrane directed me to contact POTUS with a SITREP.” She saw some confused looks and explained.
“A SITREP is a situation report. When we informed them what’d happened, POTUS, the President, ordered us to relocate.” She paused and hastened a glance at Colonel Coltrane. The pool of blood continued to grow steadily around him. His face was now only a vacant contorted stare, his brain's fading electrical impulses firing an occasional twitch through his lifeless body. Janet sat motionless on the ground, staring into empty space.
“We were supposed to go directly to his location, but the colonel had other plans.” Her voice drifted off at the last and she couldn’t stop staring at the now lifeless body.
“Alright, all of you listen up," I said loudly and pointed at the colonel. "Not very long ago, that man ordered the abduction of my children and me, and then ordered the massacre of five people, which he just admitted to in front of all of you. Now I’m no expert on military law, but I’ve been told what he did is tantamount to a war crime which is punishable by death.�
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“I don’t know what tantamount means,” Sergeant Caswell said quickly. “But we had no part in your people being killed.”
“I believe you,” I said. “That’s the only reason you’re still alive.” He nodded but it didn’t stop any of them from looking around nervously. I smiled inwardly, knowing we had successfully planted the belief we had several snipers deployed rather than only one. Our plan was working. Even more so since Janet decided to get in on it.
“Where is the President currently residing?” I asked.
“A place known as Raven Rock,” Lieutenant Benoit said. “It’s one of those underground bunker facilities located in Pennsylvania.” I nodded thoughtfully and looked at Grant. He shrugged.
“News to me, but it seems logical.” I didn’t see any reason for her to lie about something like that; I’d talk it over with them later. I gestured at her rank.
“I see you have more stripes than Sergeant Caswell.” Sergeant Benoit nodded.
“I’m an E-6, a Staff Sergeant. Sergeant Caswell is an E-5.”
“That would make you the ranking NCO in charge of your group, am I right?” She reluctantly nodded. “What are you going to do now?”
She looked confused, as if the rank hierarchy of their group meant little. She brushed a strand of hair out of her face and frowned a moment.
“I suppose we’ll continue with our original mission and relocate to Pennsylvania.” She looked at Sergeant Caswell for confirmation. He didn’t look like he had the energy to offer any type of input on the situation and didn’t even bother acknowledging.
“Fair enough,” I said. “I have a suggestion though. It would be a shame for you people not to enjoy a healthy meal before hitting the road, maybe even get a shower and a good night’s sleep first.” Their first response was a muted expression of disbelief. Sergeant Caswell finally looked around at his comrades and cleared his throat.
“You’re inviting us to stay?”
“Listen up,” Justin said authoritatively. “You all know me, so you know you can take my word when I say you can trust these people.”
“When’s the last time you all have had a good meal?” Ruth asked.
“Not since the attack,” Sergeant Caswell replied. “I guess a good meal would help out,” he said and looked around again. There were several nods of agreement now.
“What about the colonel?” Sergeant Benoit asked. My expression hardened.
“He belongs to me.” There was an open challenge in my tone, but nobody argued.
Justin and I wrapped the colonel’s body in an old dirty blanket and loaded him into the bed of my truck. We used some baby wipes that’d expired two years ago to wipe the blood off of our hands and Justin started to get in the truck before I stopped him. I motioned for Tonya and Ruth to come closer.
“Let me talk to you three,” I said in a low voice. “If you don’t mind, why don’t y’all stay here?” I suggested. “You and Ruth know those people. The soldiers might be questioning their duty and obligations right now and you two know how to talk to soldiers. Y'all can straighten them out and calm them down.” I looked around.
“Besides, those two knuckleheads might start agitating them into a fight.”
“If you’re referring to Cutter and Shooter, I’ll take care of them,” Tonya said. I nodded gratefully.
“Yeah, okay, it makes sense,” Justin said. “What’re you going to do with the colonel?”
“Rule number eight, Sergeant Smithson. You have to burn the corpses.”
Janet insisted on riding with me. That was okay because I was going to finally take care of her, like I should have done a long time ago. I radioed Sarah and brought her up to speed. She replied that she was going to stay on her perch for a little while longer and keep an eye on things.
The church was out of the question. I wasn’t going to bury this man on consecrated ground, oh no. Instead, I drove a couple of miles down to an old rock quarry on Nolensville Pike. We’d used it before.
There would be no honorable funeral. I dumped him out of the truck without ceremony, threw a bunch of debris and fuel on top of him, and set it on fire. Janet watched me in silence. As I watched him burn, I contemplated how I was going to kill her. Shooting her would be the most humane, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste the bullet. I decided I was going to slit her throat just like she did to the Colonel and throw her body on top of him. It would be a fitting end. But, as I started to reach for my knife, she started talking.
“When those armored vehicles drove up the road back on that day, Julie had ordered me to take the kids down into the basement. I hid like a coward while she tried to protect us. When they killed everyone and found us, I begged him for my life,” she said. “He was going to kill me anyway until I told him I was the kids’ grandmother and I could care for them. He seemed to find something funny about it, but it worked and he took me with them. All I wanted to do was protect the babies, but I also wanted revenge.
“At first, I thought the key was the major. I thought I could recruit him as an ally and he'd help me, so I seduced him.” She was staring straight ahead, but hastened a brief glance at me.
“It’s not hard to seduce men like him, but it was a wasted effort. It took me a week before I realized Major Parsons was nothing more than a lamb. He was a follower, one doctor among other doctors. ” She gave a short, humorless scoff.
“Realizing he couldn’t help me, I intended to kill him one night in his sleep, but he really isn't a bad person.
“I thought about it endlessly. I knew the only way to save the kids was to kill Coltrane, and I'd have to do it on my own. So, the first thing I did was seduce him.” She gave another short, humorless laugh.
“I was successful the first time I flirted with him, and that was about an hour after I’d slept with the major. You see, I did it because I wanted to gain his trust. At first he just used me as his own personal whore and would throw me out of his room after he had his way with me. But I stuck with it and he soon became comfortable with me. But, every time I had the opportunity, I lost my nerve. Plus, I knew I'd be killed afterward and I still wasn’t sure how the kids would be treated.”
I listened quietly. Tears were running down her cheeks, but I don’t think it was because her recently deceased lover was sizzling and crackling not ten feet from us. She waited as I drug a log over and tossed it on top of the pyre before continuing.
“It was pretty chaotic when those things attacked us. We were trapped for a little over two days. When we made it down to the ground floor, one of those soldiers told the colonel he saw Grant and the other two leaving with the kids. When he heard that, he went nuts.”
“So, I was right about him,” I said, mostly to myself. Janet nodded. “You were planning on killing him all along?” She nodded again.
“The kids were the only obstacle at that point. I could have done him any number of times while he lay there asleep beside me, but I didn't chance it. I had no idea who was with Grant at that time, but my intuition told me they were going to come back here.”
“You decided to wait,” I surmised. She let out a long sigh.
“Yes. I didn't know what to do at first, and then I hatched a plan. An ingenious, evil plan that even you would admire.”
“You're the one who talked him into coming back here,” I exclaimed suddenly. Her lips stretched into a tight thin line; perhaps it was supposed to be a smile.
“Yes. I had to be certain they were okay. When we drove up and I saw you, that's when I finally knew. See, I thought you were dead too. That's what they’d told me. When I saw you, I knew you had the kids and I knew it was time. When you brought up Julie’s murder and he…” Her voice cracked and she started sobbing. “He smiled. The bastard smiled about her death. He stood there, smiling like he’d done something wonderful.”
She didn’t have to explain further. We watched his remains burn in silence.
Chapter 25 – Janet
I couldn’t kill her.
“We’re going back to the school and I’m going to ask if they’ll be gracious enough to put you up for the night.”
“Zach, what about my grandbabies, are they okay?”
“Yes, they’re fine. They’re with Kelly.”
“Kelly?” I nodded. “I thought she was killed too,” she said quietly.
“So did everyone else, but she’s alive and well. I’ll tell you about it sometime. You should know, she and I are together now.” I let that sink in and waited to see if she had some kind of snide remark. If she did, I was going to kick her out of the truck right then and there. Thankfully for her, she kept any opinion she may have had in the matter to herself.
“Can I please see the kids?” she asked pleadingly.
“Not today. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“And then what happens?” Yeah, it was a good question. I sighed deeply as I thought it over.
“I’m going to discuss it with Kelly and I’ll ask her if it would be okay if you lived with us.” I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, nor could I imagine this bitch living under my roof.
“With my grandbabies?” she asked. I nodded. “I’d really like that,” she said quietly.
“If she says no, I’m going to respect her decision and I’ll get you located somewhere else.” I stopped the truck and stared at her.
“I want you to understand this next part very clearly. If she agrees, I expect you to be a positive influence in the family, especially with your grandkids.”
“You can count on it, Zach.”
“And, I don’t want to see any of that old Janet Frierson crap.” She looked confused at this statement, so I jogged her memory. “Like the time you plotted to kill Rick and me, remember that?” Her face paled a bit and she looked at the floorboards. “That kind of bullshit is over with. Do I make myself clear?” She swallowed heavily before responding.
Zombie Rules (Book 4): Destiny Page 20
