District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (7 page)

The familiar abandoned school bus in the roadside ditch was
a yellow blur as the new Chevy fishtailed through the slight S turn where
Center crossed 16 and became State Route 39.

In the passenger seat, Oliver was beginning to think he was
about to live out a scene from Bullitt or Gone In 60 Seconds. And as the
realization settled in that the man driving the pickup was not a trained
driver, let alone a stuntman, he began to wonder if
live out
was the
proper way of framing the upcoming experience. The prospect of Daymon taking a
corner too fast and leaving them alive and trapped in the crushed hulk and easy
prey for the walking dead was almost too much for him.

Glancing sidelong at his passenger, whose right hand was
curled around the grab bar, Daymon snickered and applied more gas, throwing the
truck hard through a left-hand sweeper. “You need to barf, Oliver?” he asked. “’Cause
if you do, it better not be in the gym bag.”

“What’s in the bag that’s so damn important?” Oliver queried
through tightly clenched teeth.

Daymon began, “A couple of things for Cade, a couple of
things for Duncan, and a couple or twenty things for Raven and Sasha.”

“What?” Oliver pressed.

Tongue firmly planted in cheek, he said, “If I told you
what’s inside the bag, I’d have to kill you.”

“It better not be full of effin Snickers bars and six packs
of Diet Coke. ‘Cause if it is …” Oliver made a play of grabbing for his carbine.
“I just might kill you.”

Near simultaneously—or so it seemed on account of how fast
Daymon was driving—the lower mine and upper quarry entrances both flashed by.
The former had come into view first off the left-hand side. Then, a tick later,
the brush-covered road snaking up the mountainside was in the rearview and
growing smaller by the second.

Woodruff

The fix-it shop was a handful of blocks east of Main Street
and only two long country blocks south of Woodruff’s northern boundary. Set back
from the two-lane and fronted by a large gravel lot, the once-white cinderblock
garage was now mottled gray from what Taryn guessed to be several decades’
worth of seasonal change. Rain, wind, and no doubt an inordinate amount of the
white stuff that had just recently come and gone had taken its toll on the
swaybacked structure. From the ground to roughly waist-level on Taryn, furry green
moss clung tenaciously to the red brick foundation.

She was leaning against the Raptor’s fender and looking in
the general direction of Main when she first heard the engine sounds approaching
from the south. That Wilson had just hailed the others to come and offer their
opinion on what they had found inside the shop led her to believe it could only
be the Graysons’ F-650. And that initial assumption moved closer to one hundred
percent in her mind when the vehicle was near enough for her to discern the
unique exhaust note. Still, trained ear or not, and the times being what they
were, she shouldered her carbine and aimed the business end at the nearest
intersection where the vehicle in question was sure to emerge.

Across the lot, Wilson was standing behind the rusted-out
shell of an old Studebaker pickup and aiming his carbine at the intersection.
Should their assumption be false, from where he and Taryn had positioned
themselves, any evasive maneuver the vehicle should undertake would expose both
the driver and passenger to a shallow crossfire from the pair of AR-15s.

Better to be safe than sorry was what the older folks were
always preaching. And after the ambush in Huntsville, the Kids had been more
than happy to take that advice to heart.

North and southbound traffic was regulated at the intersection
by a pair of stop signs. To the left, a late-model import sitting on four flat
tires and a waist-high white picket fence fronting a two-story house partially
blocked the vehicle’s approach on Main from view. However, once the matte-black
bumper and massive grill broke the plane, there was no mistaking the vehicle
for anything but the towering Ford.

Peering through the 3x magnifier atop his carbine, Wilson
confirmed the two in the truck were indeed Jamie and Lev. “Clear,” he called
out, still training the muzzle on the passenger door.

“Copy,” Taryn said, setting the rotters in the doorway off
on a new round of try-to-climb-over-each-other which sent the rest of the
automotive brochures spilling onto the ground outside the entry.

Lowering his carbine, Wilson smiled and approached the Ford
with one hand raised in greeting.

Once her window had powered down completely, Jamie asked,
“Whatcha got?”

“Follow me,” Wilson said, setting off for the short stack of
stairs to his right.

Jamie exited the idling truck, one hand holding a boxy
pistol, the other resting on the handle of her sheathed flat-black war
tomahawk.

Wilson and Lev formed up behind the women and followed them
up the wheelchair ramp fronting the building.

Disregarding the unruly pair of zombies stalled out in the
doorway, Taryn stopped and knelt next to the gaunt first turn. “I walked right
into a trap,” she said, turning the twice-dead corpse over so that its neck
faced the others. With the angled tip of her Tanto, she pointed to the gaping wound
where an Adam’s Apple should have been. “All three of these have been … for
lack of a better word,
silenced
. It’s as if someone took out their voice
boxes … or damaged their vocal cords so badly they’ve been rendered mute.”

“That’s why we bang on doors
first
,” Lev said.

Coming to Taryn’s aid, Wilson said, “She did. Three or four
times.” He moved closer to her and squared up to Lev.

“I waited the full ten-count before trying the door, too,”
Taryn added, her eyes flicking from Jamie to Lev. “Look here.” She probed the
creature’s left ear with the knife. Where there should have been the usual
canal and raised cartilage inside, there was now just a hole roughly the
circumference of a dime. It had well-defined edges and was partially filled in
with crusted blood black as marrow.

Jamie asked, “Is it the same on the other side?”

Grimacing, Taryn grabbed the shock of dirty hair atop the
corpse’s head and turned it over. Same thing. A neatly bored hole crusted over
with some kind of dried fluid.

The other two monsters continued battering themselves
against the doorframe, teeth bared in silent snarls. Both had puckered bullet
wounds peppering their torsos.

“Those holes aren’t the work of hungry larvae,” Lev said. “Someone’s
used them for target practice.” He took a step toward the doorway and craned to
see the handiwork up close. Quickly determined that the bullet wounds looked
new. And like the rotter at his feet, these two had had their ears drilled out
and their throats operated on.

 “So what’s keeping them in check?” Jamie asked.

“Let’s find out.” Lev drew a knife from a scabbard on his
hip. He set his right foot forward and leaned in like a fencer, jabbing the
dagger hilt deep into the eye of the corpse on his right. Instantly an awful-smelling
liquid seeped from the punctured orb and the shirtless Z collapsed vertically
into a heap, bony knees twisted Indian-style, sharp elbows and knobby vertebra
straining against pale, parchment-thin skin.

After dispatching the other Omega-infected monster in the
same manner as the last, Lev stepped over the tangled corpses and into the inky
gloom.

A handful of seconds after entering the bowels of the auto garage,
Lev emerged with the knife sheathed on his hip and a long, silver length of
what looked to be a plastic jump rope coiled around one fist.

“Did these two get tangled up in that?” Wilson asked,
crunching his boonie hat down over his red mane.

Lev shook his head. “Nope … same story inside there as the
rehab place. Someone picked the place clean. They didn’t stop there, however.
They left these two tethered to a four-by-four support beam with this plastic-coated
wire.” He deposited the end he’d been holding atop the corpses. “These two were
left with just enough leash to allow them to almost reach the door …
but
not enough for them to wander too far away from it.”

Jamie said, “Whoever did this wanted them to be close enough
to react to the light when the door opened. Fuckers wanted us to get our faces
chewed off the second we set foot inside.”

“Precisely,” Lev agreed. “This old boy,” he pointed to the
one that had reached the door first. “He slipped his tether when the skin and
flesh sloughed off his ankle and foot.”

“First turns,” Wilson said, covering his mouth and nose
against the stench. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to looking at ‘em.”

“Why booby trap this place? And how’d they do it without
getting bit themselves?” Obviously annoyed, Taryn hitched her camouflage coat
sleeves up, exposing the scaly dragons and sneering skulls inked in black on
her forearms. “I almost bought the farm,” she said, voice wavering subtly.

“They plucked them out of the wild when it was still snowing
… or at least still below freezing,” Jamie theorized. “Pretty easy to do
whatever it took to silence them and then run a power drill into their ears
when they’re not squirming and trying to take a bite out of you.” She moved
closer to Taryn, went up to her tiptoes and gently inspected the young woman’s
scalp.

“How bad is it?” Taryn asked in a near whisper.

“Not so bad. It could stand a little splash of hydrogen
peroxide, though.” Jamie looked the younger woman in the eye and her voice took
on a motherly tone. “First that crispy thing at the Shell station the other
day. Now this? Girl … you have got to be more careful. Especially when entering
automotive garages.” Flashing a smile of relief, Jamie turned to face the guys.

Lev suddenly went still and met the others’ eyes one at a
time. Body rigid, he rose from his haunches and swept his gaze over their
surroundings. After a quick glance at his watch, he stated, “I don’t like this
one bit. Too much organization went into preparing this. I’m going to call this
in to the compound.” He cast a glance up the street. Panned his gaze left to an
expanse of overgrown yard seemingly split by the shadow cast by the steeple
atop a nearby church. “Then I think we should head back to the post office a
little early. Clear it of dead and wait for Daymon and Oliver to get back. Once
they return we can all decide where we go from there.”

Heads nodded all around as Lev retrieved the CB from the
F-650 and placed the call. Then, once he had finished filling Cade in on their
findings, he used the two-way to hail Daymon and did the same. Finished, Lev
followed Jamie and the Kids to their waiting vehicles. Finally, less than ten
minutes after the Kids arrived in the Raptor, the pair of engines roared to
life, and the two-truck convoy wheeled from the gravel lot at a slow roll heading
west toward Main Street, the F-650 in the lead.

***

The watcher took a final drag on the unfiltered cigarette
and grimaced at the stale aftertaste it left in her mouth. Blowing the pungent
smoke out through her nose, she blindly stubbed the butt out on the windowsill
and shifted in her chair to get the blood flowing back into her numb backside.
The binoculars pressed to her eyes were trained on the group of four standing
beside a pair of vehicles parked on the gravel lot three blocks to the west.

The redheaded guy in the camouflage hat and the fresh-faced
girl with the ponytail who had arrived alone minutes earlier were doing most of
the talking. Judging by the group’s fairly relaxed body language as they stood
in a ragged circle conversing amongst themselves, the girl with the ponytail
who had initially entered the auto body shop alone had inexplicably avoided
becoming lunch for the
purged
. The less-than-urgent response her friends
in the big black truck had displayed while responding to the scene, and that
nobody down there was breaking out a first aid kit, all but confirmed to the
watcher that she wouldn’t be collecting anything as a result.

Part of her was happy the girl had survived her brush with
death. But the fleeting emotion wasn’t fueled by any kind of empathy she
harbored for the brunette. It was selfish and self-centered and born from the
knowledge that the long wait for the victim or victims to finalize their purge
and eventually stagger off in search of prey was not going to happen. But more
so than that, the fact that the brunette and her redhead friend were still
pure
and not scavenging claimed territory alone as the watcher had initially reported,
spared her momentarily from going through their personal effects—a necessary
task that always dredged up painful memories from the time before the
purged
had risen to usurp the unbelievers.

Shuddering at the prospect of eventually having to again relive
that
old-life
moment when all she had held dear had been violently
stripped from her, the watcher panned the binoculars left of the group and
scrutinized their vehicles. Sure they were probably full of supplies, their
tanks holding precious fuel, but the mere thought of siphoning them instantly
turned her stomach. Smacking her lips, she screwed up her face as a Pavlovian
response reminded her how awful it would taste in her mouth. Though the
cigarettes left behind after the purge were barely palatable, and what she was
required to do sexually to Mom and others in order to acquire them even worse,
she lit up another and inhaled deeply.

Down the street the small group of
uncleansed
—the
term Mom had bestowed upon those not like them who had survived the purge—entered
their vehicles two-by-two, closed their doors in unison, and motored off the
way they had come.

Two-by-two
, thought the watcher, smiling as the
figure of speech brought back yesterday’s lesson of Noah and Mom’s mention of
the space ark being constructed for the
Enlightened
.