Dawn of the Apocalypse: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel (22 page)

            "Momma?" Timmy called.

            "Stay here.  Take care of your brother," I said.  Amy was looking at me with big eyes.  "I'll go check it out and let you know."

            I already had a round chambered.  As Sean would say, that was SOP nowadays.  But I took it off safety as I moved down toward my usual defensive position.  The general alert bell began ringing before I was halfway.

            That was the first time the bell was used.  It was an old dinner bell Bill had behind his cabin.  They moved it to the Meeting House after we fought off the mob earlier in the week.  That was the first time I'd heard it used other than in a test or quick response drill.

            "What's happening, Hector?" I asked when I reached my fighting position.  It was a fox hole on high ground above the last of three barrier fences we installed.  "Zombies or another mob?"

            "I don't know.  I can see movement down the road," he said.

            Hector Morales was a tall, brutally handsome man.  I didn't think Roger liked him, mostly because the women all swooned over him.  He was good friends with Sean, though, so must be okay in my book.  Being an avid hunter he'd proven himself in many ways to the community.  He only had a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38 Special revolver, so not much help at long range fighting.

            I could see a small part of the open space in front of the first barrier, too.  Using my scope, I studied the situation.  There were quite a few people on the road, mostly milling around as if agitated.  So, it didn't look good.

            "Another mob.  Damn," I said.  "I hope Bill can defuse the situation."

            "Not good.  Sean, Fred, and Bill did an inventory of ammo earlier," he said.  "We're getting pretty low."

            "Oh no," I whispered, thinking about how I'd run out of 30-30 ammo.  "We have to do something about that before we head off cross-country."

           
Ratta-tat-tat-tat!

            I dropped behind cover.  Bullets kicked up dirt around our position.  Hector and I shared a shocked look.

            "The mob has guns?" he said.

            We heard the community return fire.  I rose up, steadied the 30-06 on the log placed in front of our foxhole, and sighted through the scope.  I rejected the first four people the crosshairs fell upon.  None of them were armed.  The fifth man had a handgun and was firing up towards the Meeting House.

            I squeezed the trigger.  The rifled kicked the hell out of me.  I hated its recoil, but I quickly got my sight back on the gunman.  He was dead, and a young woman took up his pistol.  She couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty.  She had a whole life ahead of her.  Except she'd chosen to attack us, threaten to kill us.  So I shot her as tears rolled down my cheeks.

            Someone in the mob threw something smoking up the side of the mountain.  I braced for an explosion, but it burst into flames instead.  After the third one was thrown up, to no discernible effect, I figured out they had Molotov Cocktails.

            Our return fire continued unabated.  Men and women were dying left and right.  It was pure butchery.  I felt sick.

            The mob finally figured out they were in an untenable position.  They turned and headed away.  We ceased firing as soon as their attack ended.  I wiped the tears away; kind of embarrassed to be caught crying after all everyone had been through.  I didn't want the men thinking I was soft.

            "Do you think – " I started to ask.

            Someone in the mob had a bullhorn.

            "People up in the log cabin.  This is your only warning," he said.  I looked through my scope and tried to locate him.  I didn't see a single person out in the open.  "We will be back tomorrow, but with bigger and better weapons."

            "What do you want?" Bill called down.

            "Give us your food and weapons," was the answer.

            "Fat chance of that," Hector muttered.

            I nodded.  If we gave them our food and weapons, we'd be helpless to stop them from slaughtering us.  Surrender was not an option in the new world order.

            "We don't have enough to share," Bill said.  "We are barely getting by right now."

            "Tomorrow, you will either share everything and join us," he said.  "Or you will die!"

            As soon as I judged it safe to leave, I hauled ass to the Meeting House.  Something had to be done.  We couldn't allow them to come back up our mountain.

            I was the third person to reach the deck.  Amy, Rosa, and Sarah had the children all down in the basement.  They were told to keep the kids down there until told otherwise.  Everyone else was gathering to meet, though Sean ensured twice the usual guards were out watching the road.

            "What are we going to do?" Fred demanded before Bill could call the meeting to order.

            "We're going to build more foxholes," Sean said.  "Everyone who can shoot and has a weapon will be deployed to – "

            "Are you mad?" I cried, jumping to my feet.  "There could be hundreds of them.  Maybe thousands.  It won't take them long to figure out that road isn't the only way up the mountain.  They aren't stupid like zombies."

            "Now, Jenny," Sean said.

            "Don't now Jenny me!  I got two sons to protect," I said, feeling my face heating.  "We have to hit them before they hit us.  If I learned nothing else growing up as an Army brat, it was an offense is the best defense."

            "How do we attack them without committing suicide?" Fred asked.  "Whether they attack or we attack, they still outnumber us by a lot."

            "Sit down, Jenny," Bill said.  "Let calmer minds – "

            "Don't even finish that, Bill," I said, eyes narrowing as I pointed at him.  "I will not be ignored."

            "No, she's right, Bill," Sean said, looking thoughtful.  "We have to scare them off before they realize just how vulnerable we are, and then overrun us."

            "Exactly.  I've already heard we are running low on ammo," I added.  "Can we find a way to cause an avalanche or something?"

            "Maybe.  We'll need to find where they are spending the night," Sean said.  He looked down at the road.  "I think I know where they'll camp.  There's some level ground not too far below us."

            I looked over the rail, too.  My eyes lingered on all the dead bodies sprawled out in awkward positions.  I couldn't believe how much blood was covering the road.  A couple of fires still burned above them, the smoke dissipating in the breeze.

            Fire.

            "Molotov Cocktails," I said.

            "I saw them," Sean said.  "Worse than useless, but I don't think they have many other options."

            "No.  No," I said, mind running a mile a minute.  "They weren't effective because we were so much higher than them.  But since we are above them, then we can reach them."

            "And we have a lot of dead vehicles full of gasoline," Bill said.  "Brilliant!"

            Bill put Sean and Fred in charge of collecting all of the gasoline.  I was put in charge of collecting gas bottles.  I didn't wait around to find out who was tasked with finding material for wicks.  We didn't have much time.

Chapter 33

            The number of roadside businesses and homes began to increase as we approached Adamsville, Tennessee.  It was a just a small town of a couple thousand at most.  The town was big enough to have a few fast food places and multiple churches and banks.  I'd stopped at the Sonic there a few times in the past.

            I expected Adamsville to be deserted like most of the small towns we'd passed through.  Imagine my surprise to see five columns of smoke rising over the town.  And we needed to go through downtown to get to and take Tennessee State Route 64 east towards Chattanooga.

            "That doesn't look promising," Mike said.

            He was in the backseat.  Charlie was riding shotgun.  I rolled to a stop.  Our map wasn't detailed enough to figure out what streets to take to avoid downtown.  At least only three of the smoke columns were east of downtown.

            "I say we hit the gas and blast through before they know we're here," I said.

            "I agree," Mike said.  He would.  "Do you think zombies caused the fires?"

            I couldn't imagine zombies starting a fire on purpose, but they could by bumbling.  Fires spoke of a bigger problem than zombies.

            I shrugged.  "I doubt it, but it could be survivors fighting zombies.  We've used fire against them, too."

            I hit the gas.  Prior to seeing the smoke, I thought we'd stop and get gas and food.  It was just a one traffic light town, but there were a number of cafés, stores, and gas stations along 64, not to mention fast food businesses.  But that was not to be.

            "We have company," Charlie said.  "Two ATVs coming in at two o'clock."

            "More behind us," Mike said.

            I looked in the rearview mirror.  One ATV and five motorcycles were accelerating towards us, gaining quickly.  The other two ATVs came to a stop at the edge of the road ahead of us, and their drivers lifted handguns.  Charlie lit them up.

            "Whoa," I cried, swerving left and right as the riders behind us opened fire.

            Mike leaned out of his window and returned fire.  Charlie joined him a moment later.  I accelerated, trying to outrun them.  The intersection of State Route 22 and State Route 64 was just ahead, so I didn't want to go so fast I couldn't make the turn.  Then as the intersection came into view, I spotted two older model pickups cross to the east ahead of us.  The second one skidded to a stop to block access to 64.

            "Heads up," I cried, and turned the wheel sharply.

            We turned off Route 22 just shy of Main Street, which was Route 64.  There was a street sign that I failed to read, but it looked more like the alley behind the Main Street downtown businesses to me.  It was a short block over before I could try for 64 again.

            Men ran out of the back doors of a few businesses to shoot at us.  All of them looked like big outlaw bikers to me.  Most wore bandannas, with long hair and sunglasses.  One was shirtless and in his boxers.

            "Is this Biker Town USA?" Mike asked.

            As I came to the end of the block, I spotted Route 64 a short drive to the right.  Motorcycles, ATVs, and trucks turned off 64 and blocked that path.  I turned hard left, and took off toward what looked like rural country.  Homes with big plots of land lined the road, which had a sharp turn to the right ahead.

            "T-intersection ahead," Mike said after we rounded the curve.  "Go right to the highway."

            Our pickup had a lot more get up and go than our pursuit.  We were leaving the bad guys behind.  I almost took the T-intersection too fast.  We fishtailed as I floored it, heading towards Route 64 again.

            I was doing 45 MPH when I came upon the Family Dollar store on our left, and more cars and trucks skidded to a stop to block off the highway.

            Bullets riddled our truck as I turned into the dollar store parking lot.  The front right tire blew, and I lost control.  We crashed into a parked car.

            "Bail!" Charlie cried, and fired at the vehicles blocking the highway.

           
Ratta-tat-tat-tat!  Ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat!

            That made the bikers scramble for cover.  Charlie then opened up on the men chasing us.  Riderless motorcycles and ATVs went in all directions, and one of the pickups turned and crashed into a house.

            Across the highway to our right front was the Church of Christ.  To the left and a little further east down and across the road was the Sonic.  There were houses and open land between them.  I hesitated.  There were large-lot homes behind the dollar store.

            The pickup was still running, but I could hear more cars coming and more bikers were flooding out of the Church across the street.  We wouldn't get far on a flat tire, so I considered one of their vehicles.

            The bikers started shooting at us again.  Their vehicles were too well defended.

            "East!" I called and grabbed the red pack out of the bed.

            Leading the way north-east, I put the store between us and the bad guys.  There were more houses east of the store, all fenced in.  A six foot privacy fence separated us from escape.

            We didn't make it.

            "Halt!"

            A dozen big, mean looking men had us cornered in the corner.  There was no way to kill them all before they gunned us down.  We didn't have a choice.  We lowered our weapons.

            They jumped on us in a flash.  I fought with all I had.  Mike and Charlie fought for their lives.  But there were too many of them.  Soon, all I knew was fists and boots pounding into me until everything went black.

Chapter 34

            We were halfway across Route 64 before I came back to reality.  Every inch of my body ached.  Blood dripped from my nose, which I think they broke again.  Maybe it never healed.  Either way, it hurt worse than any other part of my body, and that was saying something.

            They dragged us into the Church of Christ.  Apparently some very non-Christian bastards had taken over the building.  The pews were all gone, leaving a huge empty room which they'd filled with long tables.  Upon the pulpit, or the dais since the lectern was missing, was another table.  A giant of a man sat behind it that the others referred to as Bjorn.

            They called him the President, whether that was of their motorcycle club or of Adamsville, I didn't know.  Yet.  I had a feeling I was going to learn far more about them than I wanted.