The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned

by Hetzer, Paul

  “Those men are dead and not going to hurt anyone else. Now go get yourself cleaned up, honey. I’ll watch the child.”

  Katy nodded and backed into the darkness of the hallway and Dontela heard their door open and then softly close.

  “Well, what are we going to do with you now?” she asked under her breath, staring at the little girl.

  Kera sat on the foot of the bed in a daze. Bloody smears where the girl had hit her covered her abdomen like obscene testaments to the pain and sorrow she had inflicted.

  “What’s happening to me, Steven?” She gazed up at him with a deep sadness in her eyes.

  “Nothing is happening to you. You made a mistake. It’s going to happen with the times we’re living in. It could have been any one of us that made that mistake. Unfortunately, this time it cost an innocent man his life. However, next time if you hesitate to act, it could cost one of us ours.” He sat down on the bed beside her and put his arm around her shoulder, hugging her lovingly. She shivered in the cold air of the room. Becoming aware of her nakedness, she pulled a sheet up and around her.

  “It wasn’t anyone else, it was me, and I orphaned that little child,” Kera said flatly, fighting to control her emotions. Tears started to roll down her cheeks again and Steven reached up to wipe them gently away.

  “How am I ever going to look that little girl in the eyes after I took her father from her?

  ‘It’s something that’ll become a part of you and unfortunately you’ll carry it with you for the rest of your life. Nevertheless, you will deal with it and get past it, I promise. You really don’t have a choice.”

  Steven thought back to the day the two of them had fled the pharmacy and the man in the boxers they had spotted walking drunkenly toward them. He had shot the man down from a distance, assuming wrongly that he had been a Looney. He had never told Kera the truth about that day; when he had checked the man’s eyes and found them to be porcelain white. The man’s face was now burned into his memory forever, along with the guilt associated with his death. The thing was, he knew he would do it again if faced with the same circumstances. You couldn’t take chances that the choices you were making were the wrong ones. Hesitation would get you and your loved ones killed.

  “How can you promise that?” Kera asked, looking at him questioningly.

  He took a deep breath and decided to tell her the truth. “Remember the day we left the pharmacy?”

  She nodded her head. “It’s a little foggy, but yeah I remember it.” She had been recovering from a concussion so some of the events in those days were a bit jumbled in her mind.

  “Do you remember that Loony I shot who was wearing nothing except a dirty pair of boxers?”

  She nodded her head again. “Yeah, I remember.”

  Steven sighed and looked her hard in the eyes. “He wasn’t infected. He wasn’t a Loony.”

  Kera’s eyes grew large. “What? How do you know?”

  “I stopped and checked him. His eyes were clear and there was no bleeding in his gums.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He looked away a moment, gathering his thoughts, then looked back into her questioning eyes. “You and I hadn’t become… intimate …yet and I didn’t want to burden you with that knowledge. It was my own to shoulder.” He paused again. “I guess I also didn’t want you thinking any less of me.”

  “I would have understood. I thought it was a Loony too.”

  “And I understand what happened to you here today.” He smiled sympathetically.

  Tears poured from her eyes in earnest and she threw her arms around his neck, pulled herself into his warmth, and kissed him hard on the lips. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered into his mouth.

  Dontela had the young girl lying on a couch in the living room with a comforter over her and a soft pillow under her head. She had removed the girl’s boots, coat, and gloves before laying her down. The fire was roaring brightly as she sat down on the couch next to the girl’s head. She ran her fingers through the girl’s thick curls trying to settle her down. She had covered the corpse of the man in the hallway with a blanket and tried to drag him some place out of their view, however, he was too heavy for her to move by herself.

  “I’m sorry about your daddy,” she whispered to the little girl as she stroked her head.

  The child swiveled her head on the pillow to look up at the black girl. “He’s with my mommy and my brother now,” she said knowingly, her eyes still moist with tears.

  “Yes, he is, honey. They’re all in a much better place.”

  The girl nodded silently.

  After a moment the girl swiveled her head back up to look at Dontela. “Why are you people in our house?”

  “We didn’t know it was your home. We thought no one lived here.”

  “Oh,” the girl replied. “I’m Angela Doria Peterson,” she said after another few moments of silence.

  Dontela smiled at the girl warmly. “That’s a pretty name. I’m Dontela.”

  “Are all you people going to live in our house now?”

  Dontela shook her head. “No honey, we’re leaving in the morning.”

  The girl sat up and stared at the older girl. “What will I do? There’s a lot of bad people out there.”

  “You don’t have to stay here, honey. You can come with us.”

  The girl’s shoulders sagged. “But this is my home.”

  “It will always be here for you, honey, but you can’t stay here alone.” Dontela’s heart was breaking for the girl, although she was also amazed at the child’s resiliency after just losing her last parent.

  “Close your eyes and get some sleep. We’ll figure it all out in the morning.”

  The girl nodded her head and turned her face into the pillow and closed her eyes, silently crying herself to sleep.

  Steven came into the room a few minutes later wearing a pair of gray sweatpants. Dontela put her finger to her lips and shushed him so he wouldn’t wake the girl. She got up and steered him back to the hallway near the covered body.

  “We need to move him out of the hallway,” she whispered in his ear.

  He nodded understanding. “We can drag him into the woods behind the shed.”

  A look of consternation clouded her face and she reached up and rapped him on the top of his head with her knuckles. “You gonna take that girl’s daddy and dump him in the woods for all the animals to gnaw on before she has had a chance to tell him a proper goodbye?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked at her sheepishly.

  “We’ll drag him downstairs and put him on the pool table. She can get up in the morning and tell him goodbye, then we’ll give him a proper burial.” she stated, daring him to protest.

  He didn’t.

  The burial took most of the morning and Angela was comforted by the act, especially when Dontela read several verses from their family bible and Steven placed a wooden cross that he had constructed from some discarded lumber at the head of the grave. The girl laid a bouquet of plastic flowers from the dining table on his grave after the brief service and hung her head, weeping quietly. They had dug the shallow grave next to two others that they could tell had been tenderly cared for. Angela Doria Peterson sniffled as tears carved wet paths down her cheek and said a last goodbye to her daddy before turning away.

  Kera had approached Angela that morning and tried to tell the disheveled little girl how sorry she was. However, the girl had spun away with a flick of her dark curls, giving her a cold shoulder. Steven tried to reassure Kera that the girl would forgive her over time, nevertheless it still broke her heart.

  They found out from the girl that her and her family had been at home when the pandemic hit, and the mother and brother had become sick. The father had been able to overpower and tie up the two when they turned and had locked them in the root cellar until he could figure out what to do. He had tried to explain to Angela that the things in the cellar were no longer Mommy and her brother, that they had
been replaced by the bad people like they saw outside on the road. The decision was finally made for them on what they were going to do with the two when the mother, repeatedly throwing herself against the slat-wood door had finally broken through, forcing the father to kill both the mother and older brother to keep his daughter safe. Angela said he had always been different after that.

  She told them that she was seven years old, would be eight in June, and that her daddy had told her that she was old enough now to start learning to take care of herself. He taught her how to split wood and to use the 20 gauge shotgun to kill small game, clean it, and cook it. He taught her about the bad people and how she was to hide from them and if she couldn’t hide, to use the gun to stop them. Since they weren’t real people anymore, it wasn’t a sin to kill them.

  The two of them had been out that day scavenging for food at a gas station/convenience store on the interstate up toward Charlottesville. They had been late getting back because of a group of bad people who were travelling on the highway. When they arrived back at the house very late at night, her daddy had found the broken window and had told her to hide in the woodshed while he used his key to go in and see what was going on. She had grown frightened and crept to the door when she hadn’t heard anything after a couple of minutes, and at the sound of the gunshot she had rushed in.

  They found the scavenged food in a green Army duffle bag stuffed in the woodshed and had added the supplies to their own. The added provisions would allow them to travel without scavenging for a few more days. They all realized that limiting the exposure they had to human dwellings except when absolutely necessary for food or shelter would keep them all from pushing up daisies sooner rather than later.

  Dontela had finally convinced little Angela that it would be better for her to go with them, and that they could keep her safe from the bad people. She cried quietly as they left the only home she had ever known and the gravesites of her beloved family to the ghosts of her memory. She was still weeping when the last vestige of it disappeared from view behind her forever.

  Chapter Nine

  The procession of vehicles moved along the interstate and stopped short of the Front Royal exit lane. Lamar got out of the Escalade and stood on the running board to stare at the large Walmart complex that sprawled north near the highway. None of the creepy-creeps were in sight.

  The trip out I-66 had gone smoothly once they had bypassed the large pile-up the day before. The scattering of cars and tractor trailers that had been abandoned along the way had for the most part been pulled off the side of the road by their previous owners. They had made several raids on farmhouses during the trip for food and whatever weaponry they could collect. The smattering of creepy-creeps they had come across had been easy targets for their guns and proved good sport for his crew. They had spent the night in one of the scattered wineries that dotted the rolling hills in this area of Virginia, killing the handful of creepy-creeps that had charged at them when their entourage had pulled into the gravel parking lot. They had made a roaring fire in an outside firepit near the wine-tasting area using all the old wooden furniture that had decorated the place, then proceeded to get shitfaced drunk on the gallons of wine that were there for the taking.

  The setting sun seared into Lamar’s eyes, compounding the headache that pounded in his temples. He climbed back into the driver’s seat of the big SUV.

  “We need ta be gittin’ ourselves sum more food fo it gets too dark,” he stated as he sat back into his leather seat, the dark sunglasses hiding his hard, lifeless eyes.

  2-Stroke smiled that irritating smile at him, his face otherwise expressionless behind his Ray-Bans. “You think it uh good idea we be goin shoppin’ at sum mofo Walmart?” 2-Stroke shook his head, “Nigga please!”

  Before he could reply his sister spoke up from the back. “Shit JJ, ah think it be a bumpin’ idea. Ah gotta piss sometin awful.” Takeisha knew that Walmart usually kept pretty clean restrooms.

  “Fuck bitch, git out n piss on da road,” 2-Stroke told Lamar’s sister with a hint of menace in his voice. That fat bitch be always runnin’ her mouth complainin’, he thought to himself.

  “Fuck you 2-Stroke!” she hissed back at him.

  “Bitch, I bout had enuff o yo shit.” He lifted the AK off the floor and over his head pointing the barrel at the girl in the back, causing her to duck behind the seat and squeal in terror.

  2-Stroke felt the hard barrel of Juice’s Glock 19 pressing into his temple. “Put dat shit down motherfucker!” Lamar told him in his commanding voice.

  2-Stroke turned his head to look at Juicy-Juice and that gold-toothed smile spread across his face again. “Sho cuz, ain’ no thang.” He lowered the AK and stuck it back on the floorboards. Lamar held the gun on the man for a moment longer then shoved the piece back into his waistband.

  “We don’ need ta be stoppin’ ever time we see uh house n gittin’ food n shit. We do it all at once in Walmart n be done wit it., Lamar stated matter-of-factly, the decision final. He put the Cadillac in gear and headed up the Interstate off-ramp and the rest of the vehicles fell in behind him.

  They pulled into the Walmart parking lot right in front of the doors and turned off their engines. The place looked abandoned and lifeless. The sun was going down quick and Lamar figured they had maybe an hour or two of light left before they needed to split and find someplace to crash for the night. He grabbed his Tec-9 from under the seat and jumped out of the vehicle. The rest of his crew was pouring from their cars and trucks carrying a variety of firearms as they gathered around him.

  He ordered them to get in and out quick and grab as much food as they could get in a cart. He would hit the ammo counter and take everything that they needed. They’d have to stay in groups of two in case they ran into any creepy-creeps.

  N dat nigga 2-Stroke be wit me cuz ah straight-up don’ trust dat homeboy.

  They approached the doors as a group, many of them holding onto their guns nervously as they eyed the dark interior through the windows. The automatic doors had long ago stopped working when the power had failed and that presented them with their first obstacle. Lamar and Crazy-8 jammed their fingers into the rubber seal between the sliding glass doors and tried to pull them apart in opposite directions to no avail.

  They continued pulling with all their strength until finally 2-Stroke shook his close-cropped afro’d head, picked up a shopping cart, and threw it into the glass of the door. It made a loud crash and bounced off the glass leaving a web of thread-like cracks radiating out around the impact point. He picked up the cart and slammed it into the glass again and the window came apart in a cascading shower of glass. He strode triumphantly through the empty pane and entered the store with his AK held low in his hand then glanced over and sneered at Juicy-Juice. “Cum-on nigga, time be wastin’.”

  They came out of the darkness like dark wraiths, some on all fours. Before 2-Stroke could turn around the first one launched itself at him with an animal growl, its clawed hands spread wide, and slammed into his back, wrapping its emaciated arms around him with an inhuman strength. It bit into the back of his head and 2-Stroke could hear its teeth sliding and grinding over the bone of his skull as the pain exploded in his head. It yanked its jaws back with a mouthful of 2-Strokes’s hair-covered scalp clenched between its teeth. 2-Stroke roared in pain and flung the creature from him as another barreled into his legs while others swarmed past him. He toppled over backwards, still roaring his scream of pain.

  Lamar saw the movement in the darkness of the store behind 2-Stroke when the man turned toward him, and before he could yell a warning the first of the creepy-creeps was on the gangster. With the Tec-9 in his left hand Lamar deftly pulled the Glock from the waistband of his pants with the other hand and extended both weapons to arm’s length, pointed at the wave of creatures bounding past the big black man in front of him.

  He pulled the triggers simultaneously, watching with a dark satisfaction as the white bodies of the creepy-creeps
erupted with red-puckered holes and fell before the onslaught of his bullets. Behind him the rest of his crew who had clear shots were shooting at the horde of bodies pouring from the dark cavern of the store.

  It ended as quickly as it began. Over two-dozen partially clothed or nude bodies lay dead or dying on the cold tile floor. Lamar slammed another clip into his piece and put an end to any of the creepy-creeps that were still struggling on the blood-soaked floor by injecting a hot lead projectile into their heads. When he finished with the last one he spit on it with contempt.

  “Motherfucking cracker creepy-creeps!” he bellowed at it and spit on it again.

  In front of him 2-Stroke got shakily to his feet, probing the back of his head with his hand and coming back with his fingers dripping blood. “Mothafucker!” he yelled and kicked a couple of the bodies that were piled around him.

  “Look like dey mistook your dome fo’n apple,” Takeisha giggled from the doorway.

  When 2-Stroke glared at her with a killing hatred the giggles died in her throat and she looked away.

  “You b a’ite?” Lamar asked as blood dripped onto the man’s shoulder, staining his gray hooded sweatshirt in an expanding patch of red.

  “I ain’ dead, but dat motha took uh piece of me.” Most of the bravado had gone out of his voice. He lifted up his hood and held it to the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

  “Roshawna,” Lamar called to a grossly overweight woman.

  She ambled forward, an AK similar to 2-Stroke’s gripped in her meaty hands. “Wut you need, Juice?”

  He motioned to 2-Stroke with his Glock. “Git dat boy fixed up inside.”

  She pushed past Lamar and took the injured man by the arm. “Cum on, 2-Stroke, I fix yo sorry ass up.”

  Lamar assigned two of the newjacks to tag along with 2-Stroke and Roshawna in case there were any more of the creepy-creeps inside, and the group headed off into the darkened interior to find the first-aid aisles.