DEAD: Confrontation (21 page)

Jon urged her to continue, but she gave a slight shake of her head and glanced at the bottle of water on the counter. I hadn’t given it much thought, but now that I looked closer, her lips were pretty chapped and I could tell just by her face that she hadn’t eaten much if anything in a while. I guess that went the same for water. Jon
grabbed the bottle and held it to her lips, allowing her to take as much as she wanted. I guess he was a one man good-cop/bad-cop team.

“And how about a little something to eat?” the woman asked after making this sigh that sounded like she had just found a small slice of Heaven.

“You give me some solid information and I will think about whether or not you will live long enough to merit me dishing out something for you to eat or not,” Jon said.

Hmm, I guess Bad Cop was
back.
For just a moment, I thought that she was going to shut down and clam up, but I imagine she was pretty tired of being kept tied up in a dark room with no food, and water only when somebody thought about giving her some. And by somebody, I mean Jon since he was not allowing anybody else to ‘visit’ the prisoner.

“Look, we were hungry…there were seventeen of us and we ran in to this guy
, Patton I think was his name, who told us that you people had kidnapped his daughter and then kicked him out of your camp. The whole team was ready to come in with guns blazing, but then some of his story stopped adding up. First he had found your camp by accident, then you people had raided his…just weird stuff. I mean, this guy could not tell even the simplest lie. He was really bad at it. Plus, we separated him and his friends and the stories were all over the place.

“So, long story short, our leader, Vern Tasker. Finally had enough and when he told this jerk he was no lon
ger welcome, the guy went crazy—”

“Just stop right there,” Jon interrupted. “You don’t think that we found them? The guys were strung up and the girl was missing? So if you want me to think that things got heated and that your people…this Vern Tasker or whoever, took the time to hang Patton and the men, but that the woman was spared?”

I saw the lady’s shoulders droop. She really did not have any idea who she was messing with. I bet she thought that Jon was just some guy…normal like Steve or me or Brad. She was dealing with a Marine. All I could do was sit back and watch. I could tell by the look on her face that she knew she was busted.

“We did it…alright?” she said after a long pause. “When we ran into Patton and his crew, we initially
were going to ask them to join us, but he was unhinged. The problem we had was that so were the others. It got ugly fast and before you could say anything, Vern had the guys strung up. He took the woman into his tent, but that isn’t what you think!” she said that last bit really fast. I could see the darkness on Jon’s face, and I imagine that the lady did as well.

“Okay…then
you
tell me what I
should
think.”

“She was in pretty bad shape,” the lady explained. “He was actually concerned that she had been snagged by Patton and his group against her will. She was pretty out of it.
I never saw her again. The next day, we found out that at least some of that lunatic’s story was true…you people did exist.”

“So you just decided to harness a mob of zombies and take us out,” Jon was stating more than asking.

“The zombies just turned out to be a lucky break,” the lady said, shaking her head at Jon’s accusation. “We got up early that morning to make our move and the herd was just passing by. We fell in behind them.”

Jon glared at her for what seemed like forever. Seriously, I don’t know how the woman did not wet her pants unless she was just so dehydrated…

“Okay,” she finally caved. “A few times, when they started to wander off course, Vern got the idea to send somebody around and ahead of them and lure them back on track.”

“Then maybe I should just throw you in a pit with a few and be done with you,” Jon said with an icy tone that I was certain could not be a bluff.

“I am telling you everything! I am telling you the truth!” she insisted.

“The
n tell me where your people make their camp.”

She seemed to squirm for a few seconds.
Jon gave me a nod and indicated that I grab her feet. I did not know what pit he might be referring to unless he meant the moat that circled our cabin on the hill, so maybe we were back to throwing her in the fire. I really did not want to be here at this moment.

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “The best I can do is give you the general area that we roam. We have not been able to set up a permanent camp yet. We tried twice, but got ran off by bi
gger groups. Believe it or not, there was some talk about trying to join up with your group, but our scouts saw the little girl and we just figured that maybe it was one more tiny piece of Patton’s story that was true.”

“If I show you on a map where we are—” Jon started.

“I can show you whatever you need to know,” the woman said. “Just, please…don’t throw me in a fire or feed me to one of those…things. I would rather you just shoot me and put me out of my misery than to go out like that.”

“I am going to put the gag back in, and I will be back in a few minutes. When I
return, I will bring a map. If you try to screw around, you go straight to the bonfire. Understood?”

She nodded. Jon gagged her and then motioned for me to follow him out. I gave her one last look on the way, I thought I saw tears in her eyes. Maybe Jon had actually broken her. But what do I know?

We stepped from the room and Sunshine was standing there with the doctor. I could tell right away that they weren’t happy.

“I thought we discussed this already,” Dr. Zahn said with a tight-lipped expression on her face
.

“Nothing happened…I did not lay a hand on her,” Jon said.

I was a little surprised. I mean, I get that the doctor is a tough old lady, but Jon is a Marine. They ain’t scared of nothing or nobody. Yet, he was definitely on the defensive. I guess I sort of expected him to just tell her that it was none of her business or something like that.

“You better not,” the doctor said with a scowl, then she pushed her way past
and went into the room.

“Sunshine, I told you I wasn’t going to hurt her,” Jon said as he took her hand.

I was not comfortable at all standing here in the middle of this. I searched the room, but where could I run? One way I had the kids, in the back, the women were all crying their eyes out over the losses of their husbands, Jake was nowhere to be seen and Brad was in the crow’s nest on watch.

“You mean you weren’t going to hurt her
again
?” Sunshine emphasized that last word and planted her hands on her hips. That was my cue to leave.

I headed for the door. It might be freezing outside, and there might be zombies…but that was a much better place to be than where I currently stood.

As I reached the door, I heard Jon call out, “Don’t go far, we still have things to deal with!”

At first I did not think he was talking to me.
But as I stepped outside, I realized…there were not that many other choices left. Like it or not, I had just moved up the ladder.

***

I was standing on the porch minding my own business, sipping my morning cup of instant coffee. We did not have much of this stuff left and I wanted to savor each and every cup.

I was trying to clear my head of everything that was busy trying t
o drive me bonkers at the moment. I could not wrap my mind around how things had gone so bad so quick. Just a couple of months ago, it looked like we had secured ourselves the perfect place. I guess nobody really thought about how tough the winter was going to be without the basics.

Basics…
now that is a laugh. It used to mean something a whole lot different about six or seven months ago. Damn, has it been that long?

So it turns out that Shelly Casteel—the lady prisoner—and her group were not doing too well. When they ran into Patton, I guess the group split on how to deal with him. The guy that took charge, Vern
Tasker, I guess he decided that they needed to take us out and move in. Anybody that argued with Vern got booted from the group or killed according to Shelly.

When the herd came through, Vern had some of the group help pave the way using some construction equipment that he had found and managed to get running. I guess they scouted us for a week, but could not get any good numbers since we were staying inside so much due to the bad weather. They thought there were only eight or ten at the most.

Jon had all the bodies of the people we killed from her group lined up in the snow. Vern Tasker was not among the dead. So now Jon wants to take me and Jake on our own scouting mission. If their numbers were what she said they were before attacking us, then there are only five of them left.

I asked Jon why me and why not Brad, he says that I show the good makings of a fine soldier. He says that if I were to have joined the Marines, I probably would have done real well for myself. When I said that I still did not understand why he chose me instead of Brad, he got a look in his eye that almost seemed to be anger.

“You follow orders, son,” Jon said. “Brad was one of those liberal types. He thinks he can talk his way through everything. Those days are gone for the foreseeable future. I need somebody who will do what they are told when they are told.”

“Is that why you brought me in when you threatened to toss Shelly on the fire?” I asked.

“You are a smart kid, Billy.” And then Jon turned and walked away. That was a ‘yes’ in my book.

Anyways, in the morning, we head out for the area that Shelly says they last made camp. Jon says that he does not e
xpect them to be there if they have any brains at all. That has me wondering
, If that is true, then why are we going out in this awful weather and risking death by zombie or just plain freezing?

***

“See that building with the red sign hanging down in front of it?” Jon whispered in my ear.

“Yeah.”

“That Dumpster beside it should allow you to climb up on top of the building. From there, I want you to move to that far corner and keep down. Jake and I are going to come around from either side of the complex and slip in one of the ground floor units.”

We had already snuck up to the rickety looking a
partment building and gotten an idea of the layout. It was a horseshoe-shaped complex. The ground floor units were set up with all sorts of trip lines. Those would obviously cause havoc for a zombie, but they would not do much against a person who knew what they were looking for.

A group of four people were inside from what we had seen after watching the place all day and night. The place they will have me
stationed looks right into the guts of that complex. The grounds are also heavily booby-trapped with all sorts of razor wire and cans hanging from strings. In the short time we observed, it looked like they rotate one person outside who walks back and forth on the balcony which runs the length of the center section.

“If I am not back by dark, you head home,” Jon said. And then he was gone.

I made my way over and climbed up to where Jon had directed me to go. Once I got up on the roof, I got a bit of a scare. I was crab-wading to the lip of the building where I would take my position when I heard a strange noise. The problem I had was that, without electricity, buildings are just as cold as anything else. There is no heat generated, so the snow was actually quite deep—almost to my waist (hence the ‘wading’ instead of crab-
walking
). I looked around but did not see anything.

I took a few steps and heard the noise again. Naturally, I froze. The sound stopped. I used my walking stick to poke around. The last thing I need is to step on a zeemine. (That is what we call the creepers buried in the snow.) After each step, I
poked around. About three feet from the edge, my stick caught on something.

I took a few steps back. I sure as hell didn’t want this thing to sweep my feet out from under me if it started flailing around with its arms.
Holding my stick out in front of me, I began to swish it back and forth to start clearing out the snow and give myself a easy shot at this thing’s head.

A dead hand came up out of the snow just as I was coming back for the fifth or sixth swish. The fingers were all mangled and crooked, and snow clung to the flesh in frozen clumps. I thought that just maybe this thing would be partially frozen so
lid. Then the head rose up and I fell back on my ass.

The best I can figure, whoever this person was, they tried to blow their brains out, but only managed to take a huge chunk of the right side (as I looked at him) of the face.
I swung hard and connected with the temple area. It was like smacking a ball of ice with a piece of bamboo. My hands buzzed like they’d been stung by a bunch of bees and the stick went spinning off through the air and over the lip of the roof.

Then I found out why this person had not only tried to blow his brains out, but also why he was a creeper. The snow began to roll like waves as a bunch of zombies started standing up. It was like they had been just sitting there when the snow came, and once it covered them up, they saw no reason to move and so they all just sat there…until I stirred up the pot.