“It’s not the kid’s fault Zach. Besides, what if it’s your baby?” My eyes widened, and my jaw probably dropped. I lost all interest in her breasts, which I thought would never happen.
Julie put her hands on my shoulders. “Do the math Zach. You two hooked up in late November, right? Perhaps, about nine months ago?”
I was shocked to the point where my brain was going into vapor lock. I had to count on my fingers, and then counted twice more. “What does Macie say? Does she know?”
“She doesn’t know, and she’s scared to death of how you may react.” Julie said.
Julie lay back beside me and put her head on my shoulder, which caused her breasts to be pressed up against me. Okay, I liked her breasts against me even better than my chest being rubbed.
“Do you want her to stay?” I asked. I felt her head nod. “Okay.”
Julie sat up again. “You mean it?” I nodded again. Julie responded with another kiss. “You won’t regret it Zach. Fate has thrown all of us together you know. We’re a family now.” She snuggled closer now, kissed me harder, and put a leg over my waist. As tired as I was, I could not resist her wiles. When I finally did go to sleep, I was out like a light.
College Grove was a sleepy little community in between Eagleville and Nolensville. It grew up in a fork in the road, and eventually became the intersection of two state highways. I sat in the parking lot of the old country store watching the sun come up. There were approximately a dozen corpses on both sides of the road. I drove close to a few of them and saw distinctive bullet holes in the head. None of them had been burned though. The putrid stench had all but abated.
I got out, stretched, and waited. Someone had spray painted “W-E.” on the front of the store. I peeked inside, and as expected, the store had been completely looted. Andie drove up as I poured a cup of steaming coffee out of my thermos. She parked a few feet away, looked around everywhere, and then stared at me.
She was driving a Jeep Wrangler with a few modifications. There was a rack of large lights mounted on top, a winch mounted on the front, and everything had been spray painted flat black. There were the same letters stenciled on the doors. I saw a couple of radio antennas as well. I waved. She got out and tentatively walked toward me.
“Would you like some coffee?” I asked as she walked up. She was wearing the same clothing she had on a couple of days ago, camouflage pants, boots, black tank top, and no bra. Her breasts were small, but the taut fabric left little to the imagination. At least her face was freshly scrubbed, and without those stupid looking black streaks under her eyes. Her hair was a little longer now. I kept from staring at her pert breasts as I held up my thermos.
“Sure.” I refilled my cup and poured a second. She nodded in thanks and was quiet as she blew into her cup and took small sips.
I motioned toward the graffiti. “W-E. What does that stand for, do you know?”
“Ward’s Empire. It’s the name of our group. The Captain ordered us to start marking our territory.” She said. “It’s his last name. Ward. Charles Ward. I used to call him Uncle Charlie, but nobody dares call him by his name anymore.”
I grunted. Any opinion I had of them claiming territory I kept to myself. I changed the subject and pointed toward the back of my truck. “We got lucky with our gardens this summer. I brought a basket of assorted vegetables and a few watermelons. I hope you brought some stuff as well.”
She smirked at me. “Yeah, I figured you’d want something in trade. I brought some reloading equipment and some weed. Do you get high?”
I shook my head. “I don’t get high, but I can always use reloading equipment. Fred believes marijuana would possibly be a good trading commodity. How’s that working out for your group?”
Andie set her cup down on the hood of my truck, fished a joint out of her cargo pocket and lit it up. She inhaled deeply and offered it to me. I shook my head again. It got a laugh out of her.
“You’re such a square.” She said and took another long toke.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, I guess so. C’mon, I’ll show you the vegetables.” We walked to the back of the truck and I pulled the tarp off. She picked up a plump tomato and sniffed it. She then aimed for the front door of the store, threw it, and giggled in glee when the tomato splattered all over the door’s new markings. I laughed at her antics and walked over to her jeep. She had two large plastic bags full of cartridge casings and primers.
“It’s all in twenty-two caliber. I saw the way you were shooting that pistol the other night, so I took this out of the armory. You like?”
“Oh yeah, I like.” I said. “Will the Captain miss this stuff?”
“Yeah, probably.” She inhaled and held it in as long as she could before exhaling.
“Wait, does he not know you’re here meeting with me?” I asked. She shook her head.
“It’ll be our little secret.” She grinned and took another toke before continuing. “We’ve not traded anything with anyone. When we’ve encountered survivors, they’re scared shitless of us. They give us what we want or they run and hide. The Captain said you’re the only one who has stood his ground. I think he actually admires you.”
She smoked some more and smirked. “He was pissed the other night when you guys didn’t meet up with him. He thought it was disrespectful.”
“Was he going to rip us off?” I asked.
Andie shrugged and chuckled. “Probably.”
“Is he the one who gave you the black eye?” I asked.
She looked at me sharply. “You’re full of questions aren’t you? I bet you want me to tell you everything about us.” She looked at me for a moment. I said nothing as she took another toke.
“Yeah. He’s the one who hit me.” She finished up her joint and tossed the roach on the ground. She walked closer to me, until her body was pressed against mine and put her hands on my waist.
“So, you wanna fuck?” She was looking at me coyly now, with a hint of a smile.
I was taken aback, but I recovered quickly. “I don’t think my girlfriend would understand. Besides, I’m betting a good looking girl like you already has a boyfriend. Which one is he, one of the dudes on the bus maybe?”
The smile left her face and she turned away. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” She was quiet now.
Damn, I thought. I sure do have a way of saying the wrong things sometimes. I tried to repair the damage. I fought for the right words.
“If I’ve hit a sore spot, I apologize.” She leaned up against the truck and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I figured it was about time to leave when she spoke again.
“There are fifteen of us. When the outbreak hit, there were more, but some of the group became infected. The Captain killed them, which left us with twelve men and three women. There were six women at one time, but one escaped and two killed themselves. The men take turns with the women. Except me. The Captain saves me for himself.”
I started. “Wait, I thought he was your uncle?” She nodded while looking at something on the ground. “By blood or marriage?”
“He’s my mother’s brother.” She replied. “It’s okay, really. If not him, it’d have to be someone else. Hell, he might have even made me one of the camp whores.”
I didn’t know what to say. The Captain was somewhere in his forties, Andie was maybe fifteen or sixteen. So, he didn’t mind having incestuous relations, and he didn’t mind using women as sex slaves. His vision of a new world order was sounding less and less pristine.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I leaned up against the truck beside her and decided to change the subject. “Why does everyone call him the Captain? Was he a soldier or something?” I asked.
Andie scoffed. “He was a captain at the Rutherford County Workhouse. He’s never been a soldier. There’s one dude in our group who was a Marine.” Andie saw me frowning and laughed. “Don’t underestimate the Captain though. He’s ruthless.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt.” I gestured with a hand. “
Why’d he hit you?” I asked.
Andie fished another joint out of her cargo pocket. “Because that’s what he does.” She said, as she lit it. She took a couple of puffs and then inhaled before continuing. “Maybe I looked at him wrong. I’ve stopped asking. Sometimes asking will get you another backhand, or worse.” I could see her eyes watering up. She turned away and dabbed at them quickly.
I was going to ask her more, like if she thought her uncle was a nut job, but I held off. After all, she may still believe in him and was merely being a rebellious teenager when she wanted to meet with me. After a moment, she seemed to have regained her composure.
“So, tell me about your group. Are you the leader?” She asked.
“We’re a very small group and we have no hierarchy of leadership. We work together in order to survive, and we have no interest in conquest.” I motioned toward the back of my truck. “We’re attempting to set up trade networks with the survivors. Which reminds me, you said you guys have encountered other people. Can you tell me about them?”
She shrugged as she smoked her joint. “Yeah, we’ve only seen a few people. You, the black family at the tire shop, and there’s a man with a couple of kids living in a house on Rocky Fork Road. He said his wife is dead, but the Captain thinks she was hid out somewhere. We’ve been through some businesses in Eagleville. When we’ve gone back, it’s obvious someone else has been there, but we don’t know who. They’ve been doing a pretty good job of hiding from us. George, he’s one of the Marines, is going to set up a patrol to catch them.”
“What then?” I asked.
Andie shrugged her shoulders. “I imagine the Captain will make them an offer to either join us or pay taxes. If they refuse…” She shrugged her shoulders again and then looked at me. “They’ve been trying to find out where you live too.” I nodded in understanding. Fred and I had already figured as much.
We talked some more about inconsequential issues, mostly about where we went to school and if we had any friends in common. We didn’t. Andie noticed me looking at my watch.
“Do you have a date waiting?” She asked.
I looked up. “What? Oh, no. I just have a lot of work to do back at the farm.”
Andie looked at me. I couldn’t read her face. “Can we meet again in a few days?” She asked.
“Sure. How about a week from today? If either of us can’t make it, we can call on the radio.”
She shook her head now. “I don’t want anyone knowing I’m meeting you.”
We ultimately agreed to coming here once a week at sunrise. If the other one doesn’t show up within an hour, we’d try again next week. I helped her load up the basket of vegetables and turned to say goodbye to her. She grabbed me and kissed me.
“My real name is Andrea.” She said before she got into her jeep and drove away.
Chapter 7 – A Near Ambush
Andie’s kiss lingered in my thoughts as I drove, and I paid little attention to the intermittent abandoned automobiles left haphazardly in the roadway. I should have been focusing more on my situational awareness. I also made the mistake of going back the same way I came to College Grove. These transgressions led to what can be described in scientific terms as a royal screw up.
The only roads I’ve seen with cars piled up were on the Interstate and some areas of the inner cities, like Nashville and Franklin. On this particular stretch of highway, there were cars here and there. Most were parked on the side of the road. Others were left wherever they ran out of gas. I had no trouble maneuvering around them. But as I neared one particular group of automobiles, I realized there was something different now from a couple of hours ago. My mouth went dry when I realized what I was seeing. Some of the cars had been moved!
Someone had pushed four or five cars together and used them to create a chokepoint. An ambush, I was sure of it. There was no way around it, both sides of the roadway had fencing and there were cars wedged against them. The only way was right down the middle.
I made a snap decision and floored the accelerator. About the time I entered the narrow gap between the cars, a dirty woman wearing a tattered dress of an indiscernible pattern stepped out in the roadway. It was hard to tell her age, but she definitely was not a zombie. I’ve no doubt whoever set this up assumed I would slam on my brakes and stop before hitting someone so pitiful looking, especially a helpless looking woman. Once I stopped, the ambush would be sprung. The only problem was, I remembered at least two movies with this exact same scene. I never let off of the gas.
Her facial expressions told the story. First, a tale of downtrodden woe, designed to induce pity. It quickly changed to realization, and then, terror as I bore down on her. She was catapulted up in the air and knocked forward approximately twenty feet before landing on the asphalt. I ran over her body as I sped off and leaned down in my seat. A few shots rang out, and I heard a couple of distinct thuds from the impact of the bullets. Another thump and my rear window shattered.
There was no doubt the woman was dead or dying. I was disgusted and angry at myself. When I was about five hundred yards away I slammed on my brakes and skidded sideways to a stop. It was time for long range work. I grabbed my trusty Winchester and exited the truck.
Macie’s late boyfriend, Jason, had damaged the scope on it in an attempt to kill me. I killed him instead. But, even though one of the reticles was cracked, I could still use it fairly effectively. I sighted in. There were three of them. One of them was crouched down beside the motionless body. The other two were merely standing there looking at me, guns in hand. No long range rifles though, only handguns.
I shot the one on the left. He was the ugliest of the three. He took the round squarely in the chest and went down as if someone had gut punched him. The other two immediately began running and hid behind the cars. I waited, and could have waited all day. Except for one thing.
The putrid stench hit my nostrils before I saw or heard it. I turned around right as it lunged at me. He still had a little bit of his face left, but all I could really discern was it was a short, very fat male. His tee shirt might have been white once. Now it was heavily soiled and stretched to its maximum allowance due to his extremely swollen belly. I sidestepped quickly, and came within a breath of being bitten.
His hands were nothing more than bony nubs. The tissue was all but gone. I raised the rifle and butt-stroked it in the face. The zombie’s lower jaw dislodged and he fell with a heavy thud. I guess you’d say I was extremely angry now. I stomped on his head until it cracked open. Black goo started oozing out and got on my boots.
I looked around for any other zombies. Finding none, I put my scope back on my living adversaries. They were making quick peeks from behind one of the cars. I was breathing so heavily I could not aim. I kept looking and saw their car had an antenna.
I thought, why not. I turned my CB radio to channel nineteen and grabbed the microphone. “Are you idiots listening?” I looked back at them through the rifle scope. I watched as one of them crawled to the door and opened it. A guttural voice filled the radio’s speaker.
“You’re a dead man, you cocksucker!” He snarled. I responded by putting a round through their radiator. He screamed more obscenities into his microphone. I put bullets in the other car facing me and shot out the tires of the other two. Either he or his friend figured out the more he cursed me, the more I was going to shoot. He shut up and I reloaded before speaking again.
“I got a good look at your faces. The next time I see you two, I’m not going to be so nice.” I said.
“You ran over my woman, you son of a bitch!” One of them snarled.
“That was your fault. You put her in that situation, you suffer the consequences.” I replied tersely. I got my breathing under control and made a decision. As much as I wanted to play with these two mutts, I had a multitude of farm chores to do. Besides, the sounds were going to draw more zombies.
I fired one more round through the windshield of the car with the antenna and drove off. I
made a point of running over the zombie as I left. His belly made the sound of a large water balloon bursting.
I was mad, frustrated, and not a little disgusted with myself. I rationalized my actions; if I had stopped, I would have been relieved of all of my possessions and perhaps killed as well. But still, I had just killed a woman. It didn’t seem right. I didn’t care about the man, he deserved it.
I put distance between us and was out of sight within seconds. Once I was sure I was not being followed, I switched to a sideband channel. “Come in Saigon.” I said. It was my code for Julie or Macie, indicating it was okay to respond.
“I’m here.” Macie responded.
“Heading back.” I said curtly, but then I realized I wasn’t quite ready to go back. I needed time alone in order to decompress. “Check that. I’ll be back in about two hours.”
“Okay, I mean ten-four.” She said.
I drove aimlessly, trying to clear my head. I stuck to the back roads with no destination in mind. My brain almost did not register it. I drove by a house and happened to observe a swing set in the back yard. I backed up and pulled into the drive. I stared looking at the swing set. Whoever had once lived here had kids. We had nothing for a kid, other than a few cases of disposable diapers.
I did my standard approach and entry. I started with driving right up to the front door of the house. After getting no reaction, I got out and knocked on the door. I left the rifle in the truck but had my hand firmly attached to my holstered handgun. After a minute of silence, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.
I cleared the house without any surprises. There were two badly decomposed corpses in the master bedroom. It appeared as though they had killed themselves in the bed. The man still had a revolver gripped in his hand. I wrenched it free and then went back to the children’s bedroom. Their kids were gone. I had no idea where they were. I found a picture of the family. They were a good looking yuppie couple. Their kids looked to be around two and three. I was hoping the family had not gotten rid of any baby stuff. A search found all of it stored neatly in a spare bedroom. I bet they were planning on having more kids one day.
Z14 (Zombie Rules) Page 6
