"So who are you and what are you dressed up in those outfits for?" Stewart asked
"I am Michael, that's John, Craig and Whitney, the little kids are my brother Matt and Whitney's sister Lauren, the girl with the bow is Aggie, for Agnus. The guy is Ron and the wounded one is my friend and Ron's older brother Jacob."
Stewart passed along the names of the people traveling with her and prompted, "Where are you parents? And you still haven't said where you got those swords and other weapons?"
"Oh, sorry, no, the weapons are from our houses, we are really into the SCAA, fantasy stuff, like Lord of the Rings and the medieval period, you know. Our parents never came home from work, the zombies, you know, they were breaking into the houses dragging people out into the street. I figured we had better band together and last night I got almost everyone to come over to my house. Today we went and got Whitney and Lauren. No parents, they were all at work, they called at first, then nobody called and nobody answered when we called them. We decided to get out of here. We were thinking of holing up in the mall or maybe a 'club' store somewhere."
"So you didn't even really know how to use the swords or anything? You just busted out with em and started hacking?" Shaking her head Stewart saw some measure of almost anger in the youth's eyes before she continued, "That takes guts man, look at all of the ones you killed, that was amazing. How far have you come from home?"
"Well we live over on south Kilmore, about four miles east of here."
"Four miles! That is freaking insane! Four miles with seven of you, plus two little kids? Good job Michael. We came from the Mac Co. building in the Denver Tech Center, not too much further than you have walked. What happened to your friend?"
"Jacob? He got caught and pulled under a car like you, only the zombie bit him all up. We tried to pull him out, but it was too late. Ron is sick with worry, I mean we all are, you know?"
"Yeah kid, I know, sorry!" Stewart saw Michael's eyes flash with anger at the word, 'kid' and she hastily back tracked, "I mean I am old enough to be your...aunt at least, I didn't mean anything bad by it."
Michael's face softened into a slight scowl, "Yeah I know, but lady if you had seen or been through half the stuff we have, well even Matt and Lauren have had to adapt and we tried to shield them. You know, we can't though, if we do they won't stay alive, they gotta see and hear and...smell, all this stuff! There are no little kids anymore, just alive people and dead people. And undead people."
A woman in a a typical nurse's uniform came to the front of the office and asked, "Is there anyone else who needs to be looked at? The doctor wants me to do the triage and get you in there in worst case order first."
Stewart looked around and said, "No I think we are all okay, other than a few bruises and scraps."
The nurse gave Stewart a look like she was humoring a little kid, Stewart thought, 'Now I know how Michael felt just a few seconds ago.' then the nurse said, "And I suppose you normally bleed from your leg? C'mon officer don't play the tough dike routine with me, you know wounds can get infected and at the very least that will need to be cleaned up," Pulling up Stewart's pants leg she revealed an ugly mass of bruised and torn flesh where the zombie had Stewart pinned beneath the car. "Probably this is going to need a stitch or two as well, it looks ugly lady. You'll have a scar, but not like your friend in there."
Stewart looked at her leg, amazed that it had not hurt before the nurse pointed it out. 'Adrenaline, it will keep you going until someone rubs your face in the fact that you should not keep going.'
"Fuck." said Stewart, "I didn't even realize I was wounded. Okay put me on the list and don't let Tom in there off easy either he strained his shoulder and I know our little stunt in the parking lot probably hurt him more than he would like to admit, he feels bad because he thinks he got Max shot. Any word on our friends condition yet?"
"Darling" the nurse replied, "You ain't been here but five minutes and you want a diagnoses? My best hip shot is that everyone is going to make it, usually if they get here breathing, they leave breathing too. Things have changed though, so don't hold me to that." While she said the last bit she was looking at Michael intently. He got the message and just nodded.
The nurse proceeded to examine everyone else, made sure the younger children were going to be inside the doors, not in the parking lot with the 'adults' and then started back inside the clinic. She took about two steps before turning and saying, "And thanks. Thank you for not letting them get us, it was just a matter of time, you know?"
Everyone mumbled embarrassed, "Sure, no problem" or "You are welcome" and the nurse turned and proceeded inside.
Chapter 36
A night had passed for Jimbo, Fred and Bobby and most of the next day as well, pickings were plentiful in this part of suburbia and Fred felt no need to rush or move on any faster than they were.
"Fred, how're ya feeling?" Asked Jimbo, "You all full for today and ready for some mental lessons?"
Fred and the boy gathered around Jimbo in the garage, a nice empty three car garage, well empty now because they had pulled two cars out onto the driveway. Bobby pulled up a lawn chair and sat with the two men, who were likewise seated next to a small 'dormitory' style refrigerator. The fridge was full of beer and while Jimbo had not yet checked to see if he could still drink beer or become intoxicated, he was going to find out very soon.
"Well guys I think we need to explore the whole mind control thing a little more. It seems like magic of some sort, being able to control others with just a thought and I have to say I don't much like the idea myself. I don't want to be Nancy's puppet or, begging your pardon, even yours Fred and you seem like a pretty decent guy. So I think we owe it to ourselves to see what we can do to each other and what we can block from each other." That said Jimbo proceeded to give them a pretty frank assessment of what he had done to both of them when he first realized he had these newfound abilities. At some point in his life Jimbo had read a story dealing with mental powers, he recalled the word psionic and liked it, so he introduced the word to Bobby and Fred, calling their new powers psionic powers of the mind. It was as good a name as any. Jimbo had decided to come clean with Fred fully and to an extent with Bobby. After their second house break in, Fred had started to grow much more intelligent and made a few attempts to get through to Jimbo. He seemed to have figured out that he was a direct predecessor of Jimbo's and realized the implications of what that meant.
After the third house, their current house, Jimbo thought Fred could break through to his mind if he gave it enough effort, so honesty was probably the best policy if he hoped to have an ally and not a master. Bobby was pretty oblivious to everything. You could make a ten year old a zombie, but not make him smarter than a ten year old. Not that Bobby was a stump or anything, he just lacked the experience his more devious partners had when it came to dealing with other people and problems. Bobby also lacked the world view, the context of the way things worked in the past, to him the past was going to school and playing video games. Jimbo know that Bobby held high hopes of playing more video games in the near future too.
They played round robin for a bit with each person trying to get through the other's mind fog. After Jimbo explained how he imagined his mind obscured by clouds they both tried it and while that made it harder for Jimbo he was still pretty easily able to brush aside Bobby's defenses and could work his way into Fred's mind too, but only just. Jimbo was satisfied too, Fred was not going to get any stronger, he was sated and at his peak. That meant that Jimbo might actually outweigh Nancy in the psionics power department if push came to shove. With Fred at his side and guarding his back, he knew he could beat Nancy hands down. Unless she still had those other little young bitches around her. They all continued the mental play until dusk, when they had worked up a bit of an appetite again. Jimbo discovered that his taste for beer was still there, though it seemed to give him gas, 'So nothing new there.' he thought wryly then belched loudly. 'No real buzz either though', he had drank f
our beers and was not feeling any sort of effect, 'Perhaps I just need more beer?'
He was interrupted by Bobby, who said, "So who do we eat next, I am getting hungry again. Could we try what we practiced on other zombie-people and see what happens? What are we going to do?" Both his companions turned to look at him and Jimbo smiled, this was working out great, he always knew he had leadership potential.
"Well Bobby I am glad you asked. Here is what I was thinking, we try our mind stuff out on other zombies first, we feed second, and find you someone your size to hang with us, then maybe we head over to the mall or a Best Buy and do a little shopping, I know you were wanting video games, can't we get you a game boy or something like that?"
"A DS! Can I have PSP too? My cousin had one, it could get on the internet and play songs with swear words in them. I want one of those."
Jimbo had no idea what the boy was talking about, so he said, "Well, lets just see what they have, okay?"
Chapter 37
It was a day later that Nancy and the girls left from the house in suburbia and it had been two days since Nancy had gone from head of marketing to her new profession, queen of the dead. In that time the area south of Denver known as the Tech Center had gone from an area packed with office buildings housing accountants, stock brokers, engineers, and health care companies, to a city in chaos. Abandoned cars packed the streets like fallen dominoes. Smoke filled the air and trash freely tumbled along, pushed by the wind.
In just a few short days the number of dead walking the streets had increased exponentially. At first Nancy had her gang of girls destroy each and every zombie that came across their path. It soon became evident that they were fighting a losing battle. It not only drained the girls of their energy, but for every zombie that fell another five stepped up to take it's place. Their appetites were still being sated however they had cut back on killing everyone they came across. As they fed more it felt like they needed to eat less and could go longer between eating, as if they were getting permanently 'full'.
Nancy's original plan had been to march right back to MAC Co, find Fred and that fucker Jimbo and let the girls chop them into little pieces. However, Nancy was worried about Jimbo, he had taken off on his own and he was probably out there eating as many as he could to get stronger too. The question was what would happen when they met? A fight was probably a good bet, however finding the fucker was going to take some time and effort. In the end she decided to put finding Fred and Jimbo, on her 'B' list of priorities, she would probably never find them. Now her plan was to take the girls out and establish an empire, if she still could; finding prey was becoming harder and harder. Nancy gave the girls orders to not to permanently kill the next three girls they each took, thereby increasing her gang size to twelve, plus her, for thirteen. After that she might let each girl make two more zombies, when she had fifty or so she was going to wield some real power. As for the lessening food supply, well there were still many parts of suburbia that were unexplored.
The hot July days caused everything to radiate heat, the pavement, the abandoned vehicles, the office buildings, everything was a blur of red, orange, and yellow. The burning sun also expedited the aging of their dead skin. For these reasons Nancy had opted to rest, not that the dead needed rest, during the day and hunt under the cool blanket of night.
Earlier that day they had been resting at what used to be a night club called 'Cool Water'. It's lack of windows and overall dark and cool motif made it a perfect place to lay low and wait for nightfall. During the day Nancy had heard sporadic gun shots from the north. As soon as the sun set behind the Rocky Mountains she sent Veronica and Julie to scout it out. It was not long before the two returned with good and bad news. Half a mile from the night club three men were occupying a Conoco gas station. The bad news being they were armed with rifles and hand guns. These were weapons Nancy would really like to have, adding firearms to her super human strength was a very good plan, so the gang set out towards the gunfire.
Even before they reached the gas station they could see bright flood lights and hear gun fire. The Conoco was located at a corner of a small strip mall. The gas station was comprised of one small building in the middle flanked on either side by fours sets of gas pumps. The red and white Conoco signs lit up the evening sky. The windows and doors of the gas station were boarded up and the only movement that could be seen was on it's flat roof. A parking lot filled with rambling zombies separated the gas station from the rest of the buildings.
'Such a waste.' thought Nancy, 'Someone needs to make zombies stop making zombies or we are going to run into a serious food shortage.'
Nancy and her gang hid in the shadows and watched for a little while as the people, men, Nancy thought, shot the zombies milling about in the parking lot and empty streets. Veronica's report had been accurate. There were three men atop the gas station laughing and drinking beer as if they were on a camping trip in the mountains. She watched as a zombie stumbled into the parking lot attracted to the energy the men gave off like a moth to a flame.
Nancy gave the girls orders to back her up if she looked like she needed help, emphasizing her commands with a mental nudge as well, then she crept into hearing range. Surprisingly this was farther out than Nancy would have thought, so her hearing was improving too? Or the men were just loud braggarts...
"Hey Jake, who's turn is it?"
"Um, I think George's."
"Bullshit, he got the last one, the fat nurse bitch."
"Come on Tony, you've got him by over a hundred fucking points" Jake insisted.
"I still say it's bullshit, fucking bullshit. You had better start writing this shit down." Tony shot back and took a long swig of beer which ended with him tossing the empty can over the edge of the roof.
"Hey maaaan, don't get your panties in a ruffle. You'll get your turn." George said. He moved over to the edge of the roof and took aim on the approaching zombie with his hunting rifle. When he had finally lined up the shot he paused for a long moment as though something was bothering him. The bullet sailed over the left shoulder of the zombie.
"Shit!"
"Minus five points dick hole. My turn." Tony insisted.
"Naaa man, I get one more shot, that's the rules baby, you got to O-bide by the rules man. Not to worry, I think smoke got in my eye." George said removing hand rolled cigarette from his mouth which he flicked over the edge of the roof.
"I'll stick something in your eye." Tony mumbled.
"You would too. Fucker." George's second shot was true and split the zombies head in two. "Give me fifteen big ones Jake."
"Ten asshole, your first one missed." Jake corrected.
"Fuuuck, what ever man. What-eva." George grabbed a beer, returned to his lawn chair and started rolling another cigarette.
The men had several hunting rifles and hand guns. When they weren't shooting zombies they argued, drank beer and talked about bitches. Nancy watched five more zombies get disposed of in the same manner as the first. She was formulating a plan on how to get the men down from their secure perch when Veronica touched her shoulder.
Veronica sneaked up to Nancy and pointed across the parking lot, "Look" she whispered. There was a dark figure leaning against a car. "He's been there since we arrived." Even with the bright energy of the gas station illuminating the parking lot Nancy could see that this man was void of energy. Other zombies looked dull and almost blue black in color, the living were a swirling pattern of bright energy that were easy to spot. 'Another stupid zombie, great. Or rather maybe a more intelligent one, if he were not in the streets milling about he probably was a second tier zombie already.' thought Nancy.
"Yeah, thanks V, now if you don't mind we've got work to do." Another shot rang out and another zombie fell to the ground, fifteen points for Jake.
Nancy decided to wait until it was once again George's turn before she moved from her hiding place. She straightened her dress and started towards the gas station.
Nancy was surpris
ed at how close she got to the men before Jake took notice of her. She could hear them arguing over "who had fucked the fattest chick."
"Shit George, your turn and you only get five points because she's so damn close that even your mah-ther could nail her."
"Who nailed George's mom?" Tony joked.
"Hey boys don't sh..." was all Nancy managed to get out before a bullet ripped through her left thigh. The impact knocked her backwards where she fell over a body.
Nancy screamed then yelled, "Help! I can't believe you shot me! It hurts! It hurts bad!"
"Aahh shut it. You're ugly and I don't need an ugly bitch telling me what to do. I was married to one for thirteen years." Tony called down to her.
"Heeey man, it was my turn"
Tony turned to George, "You know what? I'm getting pretty damn sick of this 'my turn' shit" and threw his nearly full can of Coors Light at him. It flew way over his head a fell to the ground below harmlessly.
"Dude, your aim sucks." George said and three men broke out in laughter.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Jake said "Aw crap man that was funny, finish her off T."
"Hey, hold on man, she ain't a zombie, maybe we should help her?" George interrupted.
"Shit, now you really remind me of my wife. 'Help her!' 'Help her!' What a dumb ass! She didn't bleed right, she had that brownish shit in her like all the others, that makes her one of them. So you are not only as ugly as my ex, but you are just as stupid as her too." Tony said before reloading his rifle.
"Fuck you asshole, I know you couldn't see anything it is too goddamn dark, you shot a woman man, a living woman!" said George.
Tony looked through the sight on the rifle and was surprised when he couldn't locate Nancy. "Shit. Yeah, you're so smart if she was a woman where the fuck is she? She was zombie man, all the way." This got George and Jake's attention. All three men leaned over the edge of the roof craning their necks trying to spot her.
Outbreak: The Zombie Chronicles Page 16
