Zombies! (Book 3): Violence Solves Everything

by Merritt, R. S.

  “Let’s go!” Tom yelled as he grabbed his backpack and a box of ammunition out of the back of the truck.

  Pete jumped over the side of the truck with his pack on then reached back in to grab the box of grenades. Kyler stood up and shot at the leading Zombies coming at them from both directions. He jumped over the side of the truck then had an idea when his boots hit the ground. He reached back into the truck and grabbed the box of grenades. Sorting through them he grabbed the last fragmentation grenades and a couple of the smoke grenades. He pulled the pins out of all of them one by one starting with the smoke grenades and tossed them in the back of the truck. Then he turned and followed Pete and Tom at a full-on sprint as they smashed their way into the woods.

  Behind them came the loud explosions as the truck bed was ripped apart by the exploding grenades. Kyler hoped the grenades would start a chain reaction, but it didn’t sound like that’d happened. It’d been pretty loud though. He knew the smoke bombs would be pouring out smoke by now. He hoped the smoke would confuse the Zombies even more and help throw them off their trail. He caught up with Tom and Pete who were leaning against trees trying to catch their breath.

  “Nice job on the grenades.” Pete said with a thumbs up in between his panting.

  “Yeah. Now we just need to work our way north around this group and get the whole mob of them moving again. What a cluster.” Tom said. “You did good Kyler. That was fast thinking.”

  A Zombie came bashing through the weeds behind them. It managed to come out of a bush right beside Pete who was waiting for it with a raised machete. He brought it down hard directly in the center of the Zombies skull. The Zombie dropped down to the ground with a thud. It was dead before it hit the ground. Pete tried to work the machete out then gave up when they heard other rustling in the bushes around them.

  They stopped talking. They snapped and strapped their loud weapons back into place and pulled out their preferred melee style weapons. Kyler had a hatchet in one hand and a short knife in the other. They all took one last breath before Tom led them north in parallel with the road. All they had to do now was get around this new group of Zombies and set the whole dangerously flawed plan back in motion again. Assuming they could find a truck and some more noise makers along the way.

  Chapter 21: The Best Laid Plans

  Randy stared down at his wife and daughter sleeping in the bed. Zoey was turned sideways beside her. They’d found a house a few miles from the herd and managed to get into it without being discovered before the sun came up. Tony had set himself up in the living room and told Randy and Kelly to go spend some time with their little girl. Zoey had fallen asleep in Kelly’s arms on the way to the house. Randy and Kelly both wanted to quiz Zoey on where her sisters were but hesitated to do so.

  For one thing, Zoey needed sleep. Who knew how long she’d been stuck in that nightmare scenario surviving in a bathtub under a pile of rags surrounded by monsters? They were also both a little scared of the answers Zoey may give. Something had to have happened for Caitlyn or Brenda not to be with Zoey. They also couldn’t get past just staring at her sleeping. Randy couldn’t take his eyes off her. Kelly snuggled with Zoey and ended up falling asleep staring at her. The rough and tough sleeping habits of their little pre-tween would typically lead to them tossing her down to the foot of the bed. Neither of them could care less now.

  Randy took a tiny foot to the nose and decided that was his cue to go get some water and see how Tony was doing. Carefully extricating himself from the bed to avoid waking anyone he padded on bare feet out to the living room. The light from the sun coming up filtered through the tightly drawn curtains. Tony had already gone around and made sure that all the windows were covered as well as he could.

  “Anything going on outside?” Randy asked Tony quietly. Tony was sitting in a comfortable looking recliner he’d dragged over beside one of the windows.

  “A Zombie went wandering by down the road earlier but otherwise I haven’t seen anything. How’s Zoey?” Tony asked.

  “I really don’t know. She seems healthy overall. She’s exhausted and dehydrated from being in that tub and drinking that nasty water but that should go away with some rest and fluids. She’s been asleep since we got here so we haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet. Once she wakes up, we’re hoping she may know where Brenda and her sisters went off to.”

  It was left unspoken by both of them that the most likely answer to that was the sisters and Brenda hadn’t gone anywhere. They were either wandering around the house they’d discovered Zoey in as Zombies, or their bodies were lying around somewhere in that same house. Neither Randy nor Tony was able to come up with a likely scenario that didn’t revolve around everyone being dead except for Zoey. Randy could even picture Caitlyn or Myriah being the ones who hid her in the bathtub before they were overwhelmed and killed.

  Randy grabbed a couple of warm bottled waters Tony had found somewhere and headed back to the bedroom. Kelly was sitting up in bed running her fingers through Zoey’s hair. Zoey was still fast asleep. She didn’t look like she was planning on waking up anytime soon either.

  “We found her.” Kelly said looking up at Randy. Her voice cracked a little as she said it. Randy rushed to sit in the bed and hold her as tears started streaming out of her eyes. He intuited what she was thinking, and he started running his fingers through her hair in a mimicry of what Kelly was doing to Zoey.

  “We’ll have the others soon enough. Caitlyn and Myriah and Doreen wouldn’t be far from Zoey. Once she wakes up, we’ll find out where they’re at and go get them.”

  Kelly nodded in an absent way that told Randy she really wasn’t listening to him. That was fine he was just trying to fill the air with comforting words at this point. After a few more mumbled platitudes between the two of them they sat there in a comfortable silence watching Zoey sleep. Neither of them quite believing they’d managed to get their little girl back. In a world so full of death it was miraculous they’d found her. Now they just needed the miracle to be a repeated a few more times until their family was complete.

  Randy looked over at the window to the bedroom and saw that it was curtained up tightly already. Tony must have slipped in during the night to verify they were secure. He glanced down at Zoey. Both her eyes were wide open staring up at him. He smiled expecting a big smile or a hug or a kiss. Instead her hand flew up and grabbed his nose hard. Then she yanked on it. Randy reached up and gently grabbed her wrist away before she could grab any other parts of his face.

  “You’re real! Mommy too!” Zoey blurted out as she spun over on her side to stare at her mom. Kelly smiled and pulled Zoey in close for a long needed snuggle. Randy piled on top of both of them to get in on the snuggle action. They must’ve gotten a little too loud because Tony came into the room and cleared his throat to get them to quiet down. When Randy looked up at him, he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Hey honey. This is Tony. He helped mommy and daddy make it all the way back to Florida to find you.” Kelly politically left out the part about how Tony’s journey had begun as a hostage kidnapped at gunpoint by them. Zoey broke out of her mom and dad’s grip to jump down on the floor and run across the floor to give Tony a huge hug.

  “Thank you for helping my mommy and daddy! I missed them so much. I dreamed about them all the time. I thought last night was just another dream when I woke up. Thank you so much!”

  Tony looked like he may have gotten something in his eyes. He blinked a few times while awkwardly patting Zoey on the back. Zoey said thank you to him again before rushing back over into Kelly’s arms. Kelly didn’t look like she planned on letting go of Zoey anytime soon. An awkward silence filled the room while each of them tried to think of the best way to ask Zoey about her sisters and her grandma. Zoey saved them all the hassle by launching into her story on her own.

  “Are we going to go rescue Caitlyn and Myriah and Doreen and Ali now? The bad men who killed grandma have them. We need to get to them soon before they h
urt them.” She blurted out. Kelly and Randy shared a quick glance.

  “What bad men honey?” Kelly asked her. She was trying to process the other news Zoey had just casually dropped in their laps. Brenda was dead. The air seemed to have been sucked out of the room with that announcement. She wanted to ask Zoey more about how her mom had died but she knew that would lead to tears and they’d get off track. Brenda may have died but she’d kept the kids alive long enough for Randy and Kelly to have a chance to reunite with them. Kelly knew her mom would’ve been proud of having the girl’s survival as her legacy.

  “The ones who kept chasing us everywhere. They came in the house we were staying in. I hid in the tub and they took everybody.” Zoey’s lip started to quiver as she told them about losing her sisters. Kelly wrapped her in a tight embrace and let her cry for a few minutes. When she seemed to be under control again Kelly very gently asked if she knew what’d happened to her sisters. After some back and forth with a tearful Zoey it became obvious, she had no idea where the men may have taken her sisters.

  “It’s probably the same guys we ran into on the road.” Tony chimed in quietly. He’d been hanging back after the hug Zoey had given him. He knew this was a powerful moment for Kelly and Randy. He wanted to give them some family time but at the same time he sensed the trail was growing cold to find Zoey’s sisters. He’d never really thought they were going to find any of them, so he was surprised at himself for how determined he now was to rescue the rest of them. A plan started to form in his head as to how they might be able to find the others.

  “Yeah that’d make sense. They seem to be controlling this area for now. We need to figure out where they’re keeping the girls at and go get them.” Randy said.

  “What if we don’t go to them?” Tony said. The plan forming in his head had a ton of holes in it, but he wasn’t coming up with anything else. He knew it wasn’t a great plan, but a bad plan well executed would work better than a good plan they came up with too late. It wasn’t like they’d planned most of what’d happened that allowed them to find Zoey in the first place. He was working through his idea in his head when he noticed he had Randy and Kelly’s complete attention.

  “You going to let us in on the plan? I can see the hamster wheel in your head spinning.” Kelly asked. She said it with a smile, but she was feeling the urgency to do something. Having found Zoey and knowing the rest of her children were within her grasp was driving her crazy. She needed to get to them and make sure they were safe, and she needed to do it right now.

  “I don’t know if I’d call it a plan so much as the beginning of a pretty suicidal set of ideas.”

  “That’s more than we’ve got.” Randy answered for him and Kelly. They were both staring at Tony now mentally willing him to have a better plan than he was letting on.

  “We don’t go to them. We get them to come to us.” Tony said to blank stares from Kelly and Randy. “They’ve found the girls a few times based on what Zoey said. They were able to coordinate and ambush us on the road. That means they must be watching the area. I’m not sure if they’ve got regular roving patrols, or they’ve accessed the CCTV system or they’re flying drones around or whatever but they’re obviously monitoring the territory somehow. That means we just need to drive around outside, and they’ll eventually come to us. Then we get them to take us to wherever the girls are.”

  “So, your plan to free the girls is to get us captured and locked up too?” Kelly asked. The expression on her face revealing her opinion of his plan.

  “Remember I said I didn’t necessarily have a plan. Just the beginning of one, I think. I can’t think of a way to find them without one of us getting caught. We have to get them to come to us somehow since we have no clue where they’re based out of.” Tony wandered off staring at the others. Now that he was saying it out loud, he was realizing what a horrible idea it was. There was a huge list of things that could go wrong with it forming in his mind. He saw the same list forming in Randy and Kelly’s minds. Zoey was staring at them all waiting for the adults to make everything alright.

  They talked about it. They argued about it. Voices were raised and Zoey cried again. Finally, it was decided that Randy and Tony would be the ones to wander out the door to try and attract the attention of the men who’d taken the other kids. They didn’t want to risk Zoey being caught up in this and Zoey needed someone to take care of her. If Tony and Randy died, then Kelly would be the one to figure out if her and Zoey should cut ties and leave or if they would try to reunite with the other kids another way.

  Neither Kelly nor Zoey were happy with the arrangement. Kelly didn’t like Randy putting himself into the kind of position he was talking about getting into. Zoey didn’t want to lose her daddy so fast after finding him. They all thought this was crazy. In what kind of world do you have to risk being killed or taken prisoner to try and rescue your kids. In what part of crazy town do you purposefully wander aimlessly around in streets crawling with Zombies trying to be seen by some unknown party who may or may not be looking for you.

  They threw some other ideas around but the only plan that seemed like it had a chance of working was the one where they wandered around until caught and taken prisoner. After a tearful goodbye Randy found himself jogging down streets and through the alleys between homes with Tony. He was wondering if they may need to show themselves a little bit better when he saw something glinting up in the sky. He pointed it out to Tony, and they kept moving down the same road they’d been on before. They went another mile dodging around groups of Zombies before breaking through to the other side of the herd where the streets were mostly deserted. They began walking down the street checking car doors to see if they could find something easy to get going in.

  Fifteen minutes after spotting the drone up above they heard cars coming their direction. Tony looked back at Randy who pointed at a house they were currently walking past. They ran up the sidewalk leading towards the house and tried the front door. It was locked so they took turns kicking it until it finally opened up. They heard the sounds of cars pulling up into the driveway as they sprinted into the house and threw themselves behind the moldy couch in the living room. Breathing hard they squatted there waiting for the men outside to come in looking for them.

  “Do we fight them when they come in?” Tony asked. He had a pistol in his hand and a wild look in his eyes.

  “If we shoot at them then they’ll shoot back, and we’ll have Zombies all over us. We need to get them to take us but not take our weapons. Go with the ‘we want to join up plan’?” Randy answered uncertainly. It was occurring to him how supremely stupid this all was. There were way too many things that could go wrong. They put their backs to the couch and waited. It was going to be a play it by ear and try to keep their cool kind of engagement. The couch shifted slightly with both of them leaning against it.

  Suddenly Tony sprung into the air squealing in fear. Randy spun around pointing the shot gun he was carrying in the general direction of Tony’s feet. A fat black snake that had to have been at least six feet long casually slithered out from under the couch. They watched it slither across the fake wood tile in the living room and disappear into the garbage on the kitchen floor. Tony wasn’t a fan of snakes. Randy was motioning for him to squat back down behind the couch again.

  The front door flew open and a group of men rushed in yelling and waving assault rifles. The men were all dressed in camouflage with balaclavas covering their faces and rugged looking leather gloves with the fingers cut out. Randy found himself being pushed to the ground and his hands being zip tied behind him. Someone yanked him back to his feet and shoved a sack over his head. He was marched out and pushed into the back seat of a running car. Within seconds he was sitting in the car with the sack over his head feeling the breeze as the car started moving quickly down the road.

  Randy took a deep breath to calm himself. He was in the back seat of an enemy vehicle with a sack over his head and his hands tied together behind him. He
had no idea where he was being taken. He hoped it was the same place they’d taken his kids and the other girl Zoey had told them about. Ali, the niece of the man who’d protected his daughters until he’d died guarding Myriah from a group of Zombies. They obviously owed Eric so if they could find his niece, they’d take her with them as well.

  Riding down the road with the sack over his head and his hands painfully secured behind him Randy felt something he wouldn’t have anticipated feeling. Despite the circumstances he was filled with confidence they’d be able to find his daughters and rescue them. Every bit of common sense hinted at them being executed gangland style on the side of some random dirt road, but he felt like they were going to be able to pull this off. He didn’t know how but he knew he’d get it done. He really didn’t have a choice since his daughter’s lives depended on it. He’d make it happen somehow.

  Chapter 22: Spare the Rod

  Myriah was in a sturdier closet than the one they’d locked Caitlyn up in. This one was in a main hallway, but it still smelled like piss and pine sol. The floor was hard concrete, and the walls painted concrete block. The small space had just enough room for her to stretch out in. She’d been tossed into the closet by two guards. She’d been sitting there wondering what to do next when the door had opened, and the guards had tossed in a blanket and a bottled water. She’d gone through the same process with the water as Caitlyn. She turned the cool water into a bottle of warm pee she slid into the corner of her closet.