American Revenant (Book 2): Settlers and Sorrow (13 page)

Chapter 17

            “Are
you sure we can trust them?” Lisa asked.

            “I
wouldn’t have invited them to join us if they didn’t seem trustworthy.  It will
take some time to really get to know them, but I think they’re ok.”

            “Alex
is a bow man,” Dean added, “could be a very useful skill to have.  I mean,
several of us shoot bows, but this guy is more than a casual shooter.”

            Everyone
had gathered at the main house as soon as Gordy and the men returned home, and
Gordy wasted no time in telling them about Alex and his family.

            “We
need more people, that much is certain.  Not only is it ‘strength in numbers’
but we also need more people to help build this place up, hands for
constructing and scavenging.  With building the wall, tending gardens, and
scavenging for supplies we are going to be spread pretty thin.”

            “You’re
right, we do need people,” Mike said, “but we also have to be careful about it.”

            Gordy
agreed with Mike, and the group spent a considerable amount of time discussing
how to best handle future survivors that wished to join them.  They finally
agreed that should the situation permit, they would decide as a council who
joined the group and who did not.

            “I
wanted to bring something up that Rick and I have been talking about,” Calvin
said as the previous discussion began to wind down.

            All
eyes were on Cal, which always made him just a bit uncomfortable.  “We’ve been
talking, and, well, what would you guys think about building an area outside
the fence that is double gated.  One gate is closed, the other opened to let
people pass through.  It would have the same palisade walls we’ve been
building, but it would create a choke point for anyone who might be thinking
about hurting us.”

            “A
kill-box, Cal?”

            “I
didn’t want to say that, but yeah, Jimmy, a kill-box.”

            “I
think it may be worth looking at,” Gordy told them.

            “So
what are we going to do about the food situation?”

            “Thanks,
Lynn, I was getting ready to ask that myself,” Tam said.

            “We
might be able to reach Hannibal from Highway 61, but if we have to go that
route, I think we might want to check out New London and Frankford first.  Both
are really small, New London is, I think, about one thousand people, and the
population of Frankford has never gone over four hundred or so.”

            “Hell
yeah, sounds good to me,” Jimmy said.

            “There’s
Bowling Green and Louisiana to think about as well.  We would have further to
drive, but we might have more luck actually getting to them,” Gordy said.  “We’ll
spend tomorrow getting Alex and his family here, along with anything he has to
bring along.  We can also take the time to check out the little stretch of
houses on Marble Creek Drive.  Once that’s done, we can plan a trip to New
London.”

            For
the first time in months people were excited.  The prospects of increased food
stores from the small towns surrounding them as well as new members to the
group lifted everyone’s spirits.

            The
next couple of days were busy ones for the group and its newest members.  Using
two pickup trucks, and the De Soto they made several trips to Alex’s home, as
well as surrounding houses to gather everything of value.  Nothing was left
behind that could be of use to the Camp.

            On
the morning of the Humbell family’s second day at the camp several people
requested that Alex demonstrate his skill with the bow.

            He
agreed, setting up several targets on the baseball diamond.  Using a basic
longbow, a recurve bow, and then a hunting compound bow he proved that he was
an exceptional bowman. 

            “Would
you mind teaching archery to other people in the group?” Gordy asked.

            “Sure,
I could do that, and Evie is nearly as good as I am, so she could help.”

            They
agreed to have an archery class three days per week, for anyone that wished to
learn.

            That
afternoon people sat down to plan out a trip to New London.  Using the
knowledge they shared of the area, which was limited, they made plans to go
through the town in sections, clearing out each area before they moved on the next. 
Mike, Dean, Gordy and Rick would go for this trip, using three vehicles. 

            Early
the next morning Gordy told those remaining at the Camp, “This is going to be
an all-day thing.  Don’t expect us back until later in the day.  Make sure to
lock the gate as we leave, and listen for us when we come back. We’ll pull up
to the gate and each car will honk their horn twice, anything but two honks
from each car and don’t open the gate.”  Though he spoke to everyone, he
expressly looked at Jimmy and Calvin.

            “We
got it, Big Man,” Cal said, poking his dad in the stomach.

            “Watch
it, punk, besides, I’ve lost a lot of weight since this all began,” Gordy said,
patting his much smaller stomach.” 

            The
men quickly hugged their families, climbed into the vehicles and left in a
trail of dust down the gravel road.

Chapter 18

            Coming
in from the east on State Highway V, the men moved quickly from house to
house.  They focused on food and medications, though they were lucky enough to
find the occasional box of ammunition or guns. 

            Rick
stood facing the next door, with Mike standing to the right of him, suppressed
rifle at the ready.  Gordy and Dean watched behind them, seeing several zombies
shuffling through the streets at a distance.

            Rick
tapped the door as usual, and then tapped again, slightly louder.  Hearing
noises from inside he said “Hot house”, meaning something was inside, alerting
the others to be ready as they breached the house.

            Like
a majority of the homes they found, the door was unlocked.  He twisted the knob
slowly, feeling when the latch slid free of the strike plate. Gently pushing
the door open, he immediately saw one zombie moving towards him, with another
stepping out of a hallway from the left.

            Mike
stepped forward, sighted on the first zombie, a woman in a bloody housecoat,
snapping a shot into her forehead, just left of center.  “Shit, I miss my
red-dot sight,” he whispered.

            Rick
came in right behind him, while Dean and Gordy backed up to the door, still
keeping watch on the area behind the group.  They expected surprises around
every corner, and from every direction.  Not good surprises like a cake, or
strippers, but the kind of surprises that eat your face.

            Rick
stepped right up to the next zombie, bringing up his Ka-Bar fighting knife and
plunging it into the forehead of the dead man.  He let the body fall, the
weight of it pulling away from his knife.  He wiped the blade on the dead
woman’s bloody housecoat, as it was still cleaner than the gore encrusted shirt
of the man.

            Gordy,
then Dean stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind him.  They took a
moment to listen to the house, hoping that it was empty.  When they heard
nothing they proceeded to clean out the kitchen.

            The
pantry next to the kitchen was well stocked with canned goods, mostly
vegetables and some fruits.  They also found a large spinning rack of spices,
and cabinets filled with boxed cereals, pastas, and many other food items.

            They
gathered all of this in plastic bags they pulled from a hand-sewn dispenser
made from a kitchen hand-towel.  There were a few empty cardboard boxes set by
the door that led to the back yard, and they filled these as well. 

            After
placing all of the foodstuffs in a pile by the door, they went to check the
rest of the house.  A single plastic bag held everything from the bathroom
cabinets. 

            Checking
the last few rooms, Dean opened a door with a heavy metal music poster on it. 
He expected to find the room of a teenager.  He didn’t expect the undead
teenager to still be in the room.

            The
dead thing stood there in the middle of the room, turned sideways and unable to
see the door.  Dean was carrying the Cold Steel Recon Scout that Jack had found
in the jon-boat in Hannibal.  He slowly withdrew it from its sheath, ready to
stab the zombie in the temple from behind, when Gordy whispered “Wait” from
behind him.

            “Look
at it,” he said softly, “it can’t hear us, that’s why it’s just standing
there.”

            Gordy
pointed out the large headphones on the zombie’s head covering its ears, a
small MP3 player dangling from the wire hanging down at its side.  Though the
music player was dead, the large headphones prevented the zombie from hearing
them.

            “Yeah,
but what if it turns around and sees us?”

            “I
know, we still have to kill it, but maybe this tells us that they have no sense
of smell.  They can’t smell us; they hunt and feed by sight and sound.”

            Dean
nodded, understanding what his father was saying.  “Good stuff, Dad, lesson learned. 
Can I kill it now, so we can move on?”

            The
zombie teen never moved as Dean stepped up behind it and punched the blade
through its temple. 

            Back
outside they breached the next house, finding two dead bodies, but no zombies
to harass them.  Once again they cleared the house, piling everything they
found by the door, ready to be picked up and loaded into one of the vehicles.

            They
went like this from house to house, sometimes finding zombies inside, sometimes
dead bodies, and occasionally nothing at all.

            Following
the plan they had created, they stayed on the north side of Highway V,
intending to go as far Business Highway 61, which bisected the small town north
to south.  They would clear everything they could on the east side of 61 before
moving to the far side of the highway.

            Once
they finished off one square block they would bring a vehicle up, load
everything they had found and move on to the next.  The noise of the vehicles
would often bring out a few zombies from where they had been lurking, but Mike
took care of these easily from a distance with the suppressed rifle.

            They
filled the beds of both trucks, and had begun to pack things into the trunk of
the De Soto when Gordy declared that they should be heading back to Camp.

            About
halfway back to the turnoff for Highway T, which led to N then to Highway 79
and home, Mike, who was riding with Rick in the first truck, said, “Cows!”

            Rick
looked at him curiously, “What?”

            “Look,
over there, cows!  Stop the truck.” 

            Rick
stopped, not bothering to pull over to the side.

            The
other two vehicles pulled up close and Gordy leaned out the window, asking what
was wrong.

            Mike
just pointed in the direction of a large field, where several cattle could be
seen.

            Gordy
and Dean joined the other two men, and they stood there staring out at the
grazing cattle.

            “I
didn’t see those on the way here, did anyone else?”  Gordy asked.

            “I
know I didn’t,” Rick said.

            Neither
had Mike or Dean.

            “You
think someone let them out here?  I can’t see how they could have survived that
winter without care and shelter.”

            “I
would think someone has to be taking care of them,” Dean offered.

            “We
need to see if we can find that person, and soon, before someone else sees
those animals and decides to take them.”

            “You’re
right, there, Gordy,” Rick said.  “Maybe we could convince them to join our
merry little band.”

            “We
can’t do it today, but in the next couple of days we need to shorten our trip
to New London and see if we can’t find the owner of those cows.  If they won’t
join us then maybe we can work out some sort of trade for milk or meat.”

            They
returned home that evening to happy people, both for their return home as well
as the food they had brought back. 

The men went back out early the next morning, making
the ten mile drive to New London without incident.  They did not spot the cows
as they drove by.

The men began where they left off the previous day. 
Since they were not wasting time on anything but food and medications, with a
quick search of the homes for guns and ammunition, they were able to come to
the end of the first section of their search before noon.

They stood near their vehicles at the end of a long
dead end street, looking at a mobile home park. 

“Guys, I have to say I really don’t want to go through
these,” Mike told the others.

“Aww, come on Mike, why not?  You afraid of a little ‘Zombie
Trailer Park’ action?” Gordy asked in a mock movie-intro voice.

“It sounds like a bad cliché.”

“Let’s do this street quickly.  Shouldn’t take us long
to clean all of these out, and we can move over to the other side of V and get
a good way into that before we go home.  Unless you wanted to look for the
cattle owner today, Gordy.”

“I’m thinking we make that a priority tomorrow, Rick.”

“Ok, good deal, let’s get on with this.  I don’t like
standing out here in the open.”

The first three trailers were empty of humans or
zombies, and yielded little in the way of food.  The fourth trailer had a good
stock of food, as well as a few bottles of medicine for Jan to add to the
dispensary.

Dean tapped at the door of the fifth trailer, and
heard a moan from behind the door.  “Hot house, or uh, trailer.”  Just as they
began to open the door more dead voices began to moan, slowly increasing in
volume until it was a din that drowned out any other sound..

All four men backed away from the trailer as it began
to rock on its loose footing, the cinder blocks the home rested on cracking as
whatever was inside tried to get out.

“What the hell, how many are in there?” Mike asked.

“That is a really good question, and one I’m not willing
to answer,” Dean replied, his voice tight with nervous anticipation.

The men turned, heading back to the trucks, when
Gordy’s feet slid out from under him in the loose gravel of the little drive
next to the trailer.  He fell hard, slamming into the small car sitting there,
the barrel of his FN P90 smashing a window.

            Moans
erupted from the trailer they were backing away from, far louder than before. 
Windows smashed, bodies tumbling out, they could even see the door bulging from
the weight being forced against it from the inside.

            Dean
reached down to help his father up, and they made it to their vehicles just as
the first zombies began to stand up after falling out of the windows.

            “Holy
crap!  Why the hell were they all in there!”

            “Hell
if we know, Dad.  Are you hurt, your knees or ankles messed up?”

            “No,
I’m fine, but…damn!  That makes no sense, a trailer full of zombies…”

            “Maybe
they got together for some beer and a few hands of cards.”

            “Fuck
you, Mike,” Gordy said, but laughed despite the trip-hammering of his heart.

            They
followed First Street all the way to Maple Street, which connected First to
Highway V.  “Think any monsters are due here?”

            Rick
looked at Mike, who was riding shotgun with him this time.  “What?”

            Mike
chuckled at him, “Not a Twilight Zone fan, huh?”

            Rick
smiled at him, and said, “Nerd.  Besides, the monsters are already here.”

            Having
crossed back to V, they went down to Depot Street and began to clear the south
side of the state highway. 

            This
section was much smaller than the first and they had little trouble with it,
until they came to the end of Fifth Street.

            “You
hear that,” Dean asked, “what is that sound?”

            They
listened for a moment, when Mike suddenly ran up to the corner, looking south
down Main Street.

            “Someone’s
running this way.  About five blocks from here.  They are pounding it pretty
hard.” 

            The
others joined Mike, watching the runner draw slowly closer, until they noticed
the horde of zombies behind him.

            A
massive pack of zombies, approximately fifty to sixty, were following the
runner. 

            “I
swear,” Rick told them, “those things are faster in groups.”

            “We
have to help him,” Gordy said.

            “How
are we going to do that, we can’t stop that many.  Hell, we can’t even slow
them down.”

            “We
have to do something, Mike.  Eventually that guy will get too tired to run,
then they’ll catch him. We can’t just let that…”

            “I
have an idea,” Rick interjected.  “Gordy, you have that flare gun right?”

            “Yeah,
I keep it in my day kit, why?”

            “See
the above ground fuel tanks over there at that little auto-shop?”

            Everyone
looked at the tanks, and back to Rick.  “We don’t have any idea how much damage
that will do; it might blow us up in the process.”

            Rick
had leaned into the truck he had been driving, pulling out the Accuracy International
L115A3 Lapua .338 Magnum.  “Everyone, back here.”

            The
three men joined Rick behind one of the office buildings that fronted Main
Street.  He was standing on top of a large heating and cooling unit, holding
the rifle out.  “I’m going to climb up, Mike, pass this up to me when I get up
there.  Dean, get the flare gun from your dad and follow me up.  Hurry, we don’t
have much time before they’re in front of the tanks.”