by Greg Dragon
Nobody looked at Connor like that. Not anybody still alive, anyway. He’d put up with assholes like that when he was a kid, people like his own father, but as soon as he got big enough and mean enough, he’d learned how to fight. He got good at it, too, using his size, grievances and general bad attitude to his advantage.
The last guy who’d looked at Janet like a lovesick rabbit had ended up dumped into the river, and as far as Connor knew the bastard was floating in the Gulf of Mexico to this day. And it served him right, Connor muttered. Janet might not be much, but she was his, and she was going to stay that way.
At least until he was ready to get rid of her.
And that led his thoughts back to that little whisper of a plan he’d gotten while the biker giant had been talking about the town. That would be a good place to ambush somebody. Get them in the right situation, and the zombies would take care of the evidence for him. It would be the easiest thing he’d ever done.
Still, he was going to have to bide his time. He couldn’t get Janet out of the truck and into a deserted alley. There were too many people around, and he’d have no excuse to take her away. That damn black bitch wouldn’t allow it.
Well, she couldn’t read minds, so she had no way of knowing what Connor was thinking about. Once they got to the camp, and everybody got busy getting the place livable, he’d find a way to get Janet alone. Something that wouldn’t make anybody suspicious.
Up ahead, he could see the bikers split up into two groups, one going on either side of the road. He knew they were getting close to town, so he followed the lead of Dara and Ted in their old moving van and slowed down. They needed to give the bikers time to distract the infected, and then the convoy would move through, if the road cleared.
Connor had to admit, the big guy had a pretty good plan. The bikes were noisy, which should work to attract the infected people’s attention. They were fast and maneuverable in the close spaces of a town. If things went right, they would draw enough of the zombies away to let the convoy through. It was a small town, only a few blocks long.
Once they were through, and the bikers had met back up with them, then the group would push to get up the mountain and to the camp. They wouldn’t arrive until late, but it wouldn’t matter. Connor figured people would crash wherever they could.
He’d have to round up Janet, to keep her where she belonged, but that wouldn’t be a problem. She knew better than to defy him over anything.
Thoughts of having a night alone with Janet without the busybodies from the motorcycle club up his ass make Connor squirm on the seat. He’d been careful to not attract attention, but he needed to get laid, and tonight was going to be it. Janet could bite that pretty lip of hers all she wanted—an action he should probably start beating out of her, he thought idly. She was going to spread her legs tonight, or she’d live to regret it.
Or maybe not, he debated.
No, the part of his brain that kept him alive and out of jail, for the most part, warned him about doing anything around the club, and especially Dara. He had to play it smart, and not do anything that could land him in trouble with the likes of George. Connor knew that biker that had his eye on Janet would like nothing more than to administer a little Wild West justice on Conner.
His mind drifted back to that germ of an idea that kept growing inside his brain. Soon enough it would turn into a complete plan, and then he’d get rid of all his problems.
Just see if he didn’t.
Chapter Thirteen
The bikers gunned their engines and entered the smoking ruins of the town with a roar that reverberated like the inside of a jet engine. The effect on the wandering infected was instantly noticeable, as they started to turn and search blindly for the source of the sound.
Micah had a moment of panic when he saw how many of the undead had gathered in the area. It was a small town, and he wouldn’t have thought there could be that many people living there. It could have been that news of the spreading sickness had brought people from outlying farms and villages into town, in hopes of finding help.
He shrugged to loosen up his shoulders. The reason didn’t matter now. The town was halfway destroyed; there were what looked like thousands of infected people congregating along the main thoroughfare. Those people were a danger to his friends. His job was to get them moving, to clear the road for those following behind.
That’s what he had to focus on. He had to have his mind in the game, or he was going to be a danger to himself.
Micah shifted his bike towards the right side of the road, slowing down slightly and revving up the engine a little. He could see heads turning towards him, the mindless eyes of the undead somehow latching on to the sight of living flesh. Like sports fans doing a wave motion, the horde began to shift and follow the bikers.
As George had ordered, the bikers were leaving large gaps between themselves, trying to extend the effect of the noise and draw as many of the undead as possible. George called them zombies, in reference to popular culture, but to Micah they were still people. They might be dead, even if they could still move and think on some primitive level, but they were still people.
He didn’t like to think about what had happened to them, about the disease that had run rampant throughout the world. It had struck without a care for class, education, race or religion. The last reports he’d heard revealed that entire smaller countries had fallen, France and England were lost, and the rest of the world’s great nations were close behind.
Micah considered himself lucky, in that he seemed to have immunity from whatever this scourge was. He hadn’t had so much as a sniffle in years. He’d worked closely with people who showed symptoms and later died, and yet he went on.
The vagaries of fate? Or was there some larger plan in play, some stage upon which he would walk and complete the role he was assigned?
Micah didn’t know. Maybe he had survived to be there when Janet came into the picture. She needed someone to help her, to save her. He didn’t know if he was the one to do it, but he hoped it was the reason he was there when George made the decision to race to the rescue at the motel.
At any rate, Micah knew he had to put his mind on the current task. He wouldn’t do anyone any good if he ended up dead in this no-name blip on the road. With another rev of the engine, he swerved and wove back and forth to attract as many of the infected as he could, and began to pull them away from the highway, working them towards one of the side streets.
George had given them an idea of the layout, warning the bikers to avoid several areas that lead to dead alleys and streets blocked with debris from the burnt buildings. Micah had fixed as much detail as he could in his mind, and settled on one street that would lead out of the downtown district into a small neighborhood.
If he kept his head about him, he could get the infected moving in the right direction, and then double back through the residential streets and meet up with the back of the group’s convoy. With any luck, the infected wouldn’t have time to reach them before the last of the vehicles had cleared the town.
* * *
From her place in the caravan of mis-matched vehicles, Janet couldn’t see what the bikers were doing, but she could hear them. The motorcycle engines were revving and growling, echoing down what remained of the town. If the plan worked, the road would soon be cleared of at least the majority of the zombies that George had told them filled their path.
She eased up on the brakes as the old moving van Dara was driving began to move. That must mean that the road was clearing. Janet glanced at the side view mirror to see if Connor had noticed. She knew he was watching her, even closer than he usually did. It was hard to ignore, since he was always by her side, or had angry eyes focused on her if he couldn’t be there.
It was maddening, really. Before this plague had struck, she hadn’t even thought about it anymore. Had let Connor’s control run her life, and his anger slide over her like oil on water. She’d long stopped caring that her every movement, e
very thought was guided by what Connor said. What Connor wanted.
Never what she’d wanted. Never what she’d needed.
Now that she’d been freed from the cocoon she’d lived in for years, she couldn’t imagine letting herself live like that any longer.
As Dara began picking up speed while the sound of motorcycle engines faded, and Janet followed, her thoughts turned to Micah. He was among those trying to save the group, up there with the undead. What was happening to him? Was he safe? She had no way of knowing. Janet could only hope he was being careful.
Why, she really couldn’t say. It wasn’t that she felt anything romantic for him. She wasn’t interested in starting a relationship so soon after her awakening, but she had to admit she was intrigued by the quiet biker. He had a story to tell, and someday she wanted to hear it.
She had a feeling that day would come soon. Even tucked up close to Connor earlier, while George laid out the plan for getting through the town, she’d felt the man’s eyes on her. She had stolen looks at him as well, when she thought Connor wasn’t paying attention. It was a risk, but her curiosity about Micah was too strong to overlook the danger she was courting.
Micah didn’t seem to fit her idea of a motorcycle gang member, but then, neither did any of the others. Even “Big Bear”, George Andropolous, was more like a football coach than a biker leader. The whole group—even those George had admitted had criminal pasts of one kind or another—struck her as far less dangerous than the man she’d spent the last five years with.
Which was funny, but somehow reassuring. It said that her fears about other men were largely unfounded. Janet had let herself accept a lot of what Connor did as just the way men treated women. Deep in her mind, she knew that wasn’t so, but time and enough blows tended to override reason. Thinking that another man would be different had come close to breaking her, once before.
Much safer to accept that this was how things were.
Janet’s dark thoughts were broken by the realization that Dara had begun to pull too far ahead of her. The plan had been to not let great distances break up the group, in case more infected strayed into the area and surrounded someone.
Connor’s angry blast on his horn made her jump, and she goosed the pickup until she had closed most of the distance. A glance in the side view mirror showed that Connor had kept up with her, and just past him she could see the rest of the vehicles matching speed and separation.
Janet couldn’t help the lurch her stomach took. Connor would be pissed when they stopped again, and he’d make sure she paid for her inattention. It made her angry. It wasn’t like it had been much of a gap, after all, and they hadn’t even made it inside the town yet. She hadn’t done anything that would hurt anybody. It was just a few extra feet of empty space, for goodness sake.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, Janet turned her focus to watching the moving van ahead of her more closely. The lapse wouldn’t happen again.
* * *
Connor fumed as he watched Janet drift further behind the vehicle in front of her.
Couldn’t that bitch do anything right?
As much as he hated not being included in the planning of this little maneuver, he was determined to do what it took to make it through the dead town. How could he follow through on his own plans, if he let that stupid cow screw everything up?
He sighed and thought about cold beer. He could use a couple right now, to get him through this rough spot. A beer, or maybe a fat joint rolled just right. He could feel how great that would taste, burning his nostrils as he held the smoke in as long as possible. Let these young punks vape their shit. He liked going old school.
The memory of the last weed he’d smoked was strong, almost strong enough to mellow him out just by thinking about it. He cracked the window of the truck just enough to let a little fresh air in, just as he would have if he were actually partaking. To hell with orders. He needed a breeze.
While he chilled and thought about better times, which he hoped to be recreating very soon, Connor zoned out and turned to the thing uppermost in his mind: what to do about Janet and her pretty boy admirer. He refined his plan as they finally made it into the destroyed downtown area and he could finally get some actual details to work with.
Connor kept one eye on Janet, and took in the burned buildings on either side. There were places where parts or all of a building had fallen, creating interesting dead ends and places where it was conceivable to stage a zombie attack. It was a perfect battlefield for a paint ball battle. His mind was already planning where he would advance, or where he’d hold position. Where there was cover, and where he’d be a sitting duck.
Instead of paint ball, with guns that shot pellets filled with colored liquid that marked your targets as dead, he’d be playing with real bullets, and his opponents would be the swarms of walking, breathing undead people.
It excited him in a way few things had, and he couldn’t recall feeling this much anticipation in years. He hadn’t been in the military, having no need to serve nor pretend a patriotic fervor he could never feel.
But he’d been in his share of wars on the paint ball field, which to his mind was much more fun, and certainly more indicative of any expertise in military strategy. After all, he’d been in charge, he’d made the decisions about strategy and tactics. In the military, he would have been just another grunt following orders.
Planning out what was to come was certainly fun, but the best part was figuring out how to get Janet in the right position without her suspecting what was in store for her. The look on her face when she realized what was going to happen, that she was going to die and he was going to watch, would be priceless.
It was a memory that would sustain him for a long while, as he put the second part of his plan into place. He was going to get rid of Dara and Ted next, he decided. Or maybe he’d kill that Micah. The pretty boy. Connor would make it clear that messing with Janet, even just to look at her or say hi, in the most innocent way, had signed his death warrant.
Then he’d take out as many of the other bikers as he could, and offer the others a choice: join him, or get out. And if they wouldn’t leave, then he’d just kill them, too. What were a few more bloody corpses, after all.
The world was filled with them now.
Connor could tell the bikers had gotten further away, which meant they were far down the side streets now. They should have most of the infected people in the town out of the way, so the group should begin moving faster.
Almost as soon as the thought formed, the two vehicles ahead of him began to pull away, and he pushed harder on the gas pedal. He didn’t really care if anyone behind him made it through. The fewer that got to the hunting camp, the better. If he was lucky, some of the bikers would fall to the undead, which would make his job that much easier.
Connor watched the stores and offices sliding by as he followed Dara and Janet through the last of the little town. It didn’t take long, as they were ironically going the speed limit posted on the signs that lined the road. He had to laugh at that. Even with the world dying, they were still obeying laws that meant diddly squat in the new world order.
The rules that had governed civilized society before the infection had begun to spread were just words on paper, locked away forever. When he was done, Connor was going to be the new lawmaker. He would decide who lived and who died, and anybody who didn’t like it…
Well, the punishment for open discontent would be death.
Chapter Fourteen
The town was behind them, the danger forgotten as the group looked forward to getting to the camp and settling in for the night. It would be late by the time they arrived, and dark. Dara knew it was going to be another tiring job getting everyone parked and tents set up. They needed to eat, and they needed to rest.
It had been a tiring day, considering all she’d really done was drive. The stress of being responsible for so many others had stretched her nerves to the breaking point. She knew she couldn’
t have done it without the help of the biker club’s leader. People seemed to follow him as a matter of course, which helped keep the dissent down, and made dealing with an already horrifying situation easier.
Dara was so glad to finally see the turn off to the mountains she nearly cried. They were almost there, so close now that she began to believe they would actually make it, despite the problems they’d had that day. She knew that people who hadn’t been able to get out of the cities and towns were either dead, or suffering terribly. Pity made her heart sore, but knowing she had gotten Ted out, had saved him, gave her the strength to push on.
The sun was setting as the group drove up the winding mountain road, and nearly behind the shortened horizon by the time she was the old, nearly invisible turnoff to the hunting camp. The last time she’d been up here, on one of their many trips to fix things up, she’d taken an old sign, the printing faded and unreadable but bright enough to see in low light, and nailed it to a tree just before the turnoff.
She’d had enough trouble finding the exit every time she and Ted had driven up here, that she felt there needed to be some kind of indicator, but she didn’t want to put something up that would scream “here we are” to anyone who might be passing by. Best to let people think there was nothing there, she decided.
George had nodded his approval when Dara had explained what she’d done, the sign he should be looking for. He’d been even more excited that she’d kept the turnoff as unkempt and unused as possible, even going so far as to throw dirt and pine needles over the area whenever they’d left to go back to the city.
It was George and Micah leading them up the road now, and they slowed enough to show the rest of the convoy where to make the turn. Dara eased the moving van into the small, dirt road and began the slow trek to the camp. The road was in such disrepair that it would be foolish to pick up speed now, when they were so close.
