Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America (7 page)

Clint jumped back, but not before getting his boots completed swamped in a thick coating of viscous goo. Some would call it poetic justice.

Clint didn’t see the irony, but I could see he was tensing for another swing of the rifle butt.

“Clint, why don’t we take it down a notch?” Jeb asked.

I could see Clint vacillate between action and inaction for a couple seconds and then he selected inaction, relaxing his stance. He turned to his other men and said, “Joe, Pete, get this man back to his room.”

They did as they were commanded and after side-stepping around the puddle of vomit in the hall, grabbed Dave by an arm and dragged him back to his room. The lock snapped loudly as they set it. Why I didn’t notice that all the rooms locked on the outside, rather than the inside, last night was beyond me. Of course, I was drugged, but that excuse offered little consolation.

The giant nudged his rifle barrel toward me. I took the cue and stepped back in my room and watched the door slam shut in my face. The lock clicked loudly. I grabbed the handle, but it was locked in place.

“Why don’t you just take a rest, Grant,” Jeb said. “We’ll talk later.”

I listened intently for the next minute or so as Jeb gave the order to make sure all the doors were locked. He stationed to men at the end of the hall to guard us and the rest of their party dispersed.

I checked the door, the walls, and even the ceiling for any opportunities for escape, but found none. The window that I had failed to notice the night before was heavily barred. It would take a welding torch, a small bomb, or an industrial strength hacksaw to get through those bars. Unfortunately, I had none of these.

Surrendering for the moment, I sat on the bed when I felt something in the back pocket of my pants. I reached and retrieved it. It was Robbie’s coveted iPhone.

I pressed the on button and the screen came to life After getting past his main screen, I was taken to the last thing Robbie had been looking at on the phone. It displayed a web page. It was a site that chronicled doomsday cults around the world. Front and center was a photo of Jeb standing on a stage, his arms were spread wide and his mouth open wide and his face sweaty in zealous fervor, and in front of him was a group of people facing away from the photographer. Their arms were in the air in a gesture of exaltation.

The website called this group, The People’s Haven, just as Jeb had, but while Jeb had meant it to be welcoming and flattering, something about this website said that Jeb’s people were neither. Before reading in depth, I went back one page and then forward. The People’s Haven was bookended on each side by the Branch Davidians formerly of Waco Texas and Jim Jone’s People’s Temple in Guyana. This was a very, very bad omen. Nothing good ever came out of those two groups. In fact, it was decidedly bad. Jones group committed mass suicide and nearly all the Branch Davidians died in a fiery stand off with the FBI. I paged back to the People’s Haven and started reading. None of it was good news.

Jeb and his people had been run out of several states by the authorities for illegal activities, ranging from the sexual abuse of children to the ritualistic slaughtering of livestock along with other major and minor crimes. The site went on to state that they had also been suspected of several scams of defrauding elderly members out of the life savings. All-in-all, they looked like they were not upstanding citizens and we were now their unwilling wards.

I paged back in Robbie’s browsing history and found some more information about The People’s Haven and dramatic change in the tone of the beliefs and actions. The website was a fringe site and I doubted it had much credibility, but if any of what they were saying was true, this was a very scary group. Where they had once been dramatically fundamental, they seemed to have shifted away when Jeb joined the group and things had gone decidedly darker. Their posts included comments from former members of the cult and they said Jeb had changed the direction of the group, but the comments were vague and veiled. One mentioned a Satanic influence while another one said that Jeb had twisted the word of God in a terrible way.

I could have gone on reading for another half hour or so, but history wasn’t going to change our situation. We had to do something soon because my gut was telling me that Brother Jeb was practicing some bad mojo that would be very bad for my people. The question was; what could I do? I was locked in a small room with a solid wood door and a window with bars, so it looked like there was little I could do, but wait for an opportunity. I was good at waiting, so I powered down the phone, stuffed it into my boot, and checked the room for any weaknesses and after thirty minutes found none. I tried to get myself into a zen-state of calmness, then busted my knuckles up trying to find a way to pull the bars off the windows to no avail.

I tried again for measured calmness and laid on the bed waiting for what would happen next. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t have to wait for long.

I rested there, sucking the blood off my bleeding knuckles, feeling a cool breeze waft in from the window. I both contemplated fantastic and impossible escapes along with horrible deaths, feeling as powerless as I had ever felt in my life. It wasn’t a feeling I relished.

After about thirty minutes caught in the horrible theater of my mind, the adrenaline wore off and the sedative effect of the drugs took over and despite that fact that I was scared out of mind, I drifted off into a fitful sleep full of nightmares. Zombies roamed out of the cobwebs of my dreams, clawing the air, clutching for me as I stumbled around in a half daze. Like too many dreams, I moved in slow motion, fumbling in a endless black void. I tried to call out or scream, but all my efforts were choked off before they could leave my mouth as if there were no oxygen to carry the sound. I saw a dim light in the distance and made my way there, staggering along like a drunk. It was when I got close that I saw the horde coming my way. All of them were dead and all of them wanted me. When I turned to run back in the direction I come from, I saw another throng of undead coming out of the darkness. They swarmed around me, blocking every escape and I knew this was it for me, but the dream offered me no escape from my fate. The zombies closed in on me and each and every one of them took me apart, a piece at a time.

I jerked awake on the bed, not knowing how long I had been out, feeling disoriented with my heart hammering away in my chest. It took a good minute for my heart to ramp back down to something close to a normal pace, but when it did, I heard a door open in the hallway and several sets of boots coming down the hallway. There was no talking or any words spoken and that’s what made it even more disconcerting. The footsteps filled the hallway and someone stopped outside my door. I sat up on the bed and waited, trying to look nonchalant, but feeling a terrible unease in my gut.

I heard the jangling of keys followed by the sound of the key entering the lock. The locked clicked and the door swung open. Brother Jeb stood outside, his normal smiling self.

Some might say a smile is just a smile. Or they might say a smile is always a good thing, but there was nothing warm or inviting about this smile. Jeb’s was quite the opposite, in fact. A part of me would have preferred he be standing there with a scowl and a gun because I sure as shit didn’t trust that smile.

“Grant,” he said in a welcoming and smooth voice, “I’m so glad to see you fully awake.”

I restrained myself from saying anything smart ass and maintained a calm and even demeanor.

“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking a walk with me?” he asked.

“Do I have a choice?” I asked, not able to withhold my smart ass tendencies.
Hey, I deserve some credit for lasting that long, don’t I?

“Your humor is so refreshing,” he said with a slight chuckle. He nodded his head and Clint and the giant filled the doorway.

I put up my hands in surrender and said, “No need for that. I’m getting up.” I got to my feet and while I was considerably more stable than I was before my ‘nap,’ I still didn’t feel like all systems were one hundred percent functional.

Clint and the giant parted and let me me pass. There were four other heavily armed men along with Jeb, Clint, and the giant. All of them had on their game faces, their fingers tensed on the triggers of the rifles.

“I’m glad you decided to see it my way,” Jeb said, smiling again.

I grinned back, but both of us knew there was nothing happy about it.

“Let’s get the others,” Jeb said.

“Whatever you have to say, you can say it to me,” I said. “You don’t need to involve the others.”

“We only need a couple of them,” he said. He nodded to Clint who moved down the hall with two of the men to the door where I knew Dave, Joni, and the kids were. I took a step to follow them, but felt a vice clamp down on my shoulder, locking me in place. When I looked up to see what was holding me back, I saw the giant’s hand on my shoulder. He shook his head telling me to stay where I was. I considered trying to jerk away from him, but he had a hundred pounds and nearly eight inches on me and that didn’t take into account their guns. The odds for me to make anything other than token resistance were limited.

The two men with Clint took up defensive positions on each side of the door, rifles up, as he retrieved a set of keys and unlocked the door. Clint said something that I couldn’t make out. I heard Dave say something back.

“We want you,” Clint said, stepping back into the hallway and putting his hand on his pistol in his side holster.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere with you!” Dave bellowed.

“This isn’t a request,” Clint said with a full sense of command in his tone.

The tension level in the hallway went up about fifty percent and I could see Clint unsnap the holster strap over his handgun.

Another voice came from the room, “Oh I’ll go.” A moment later Joni bounded into the hallway, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a boxer. Her actions were so quick that it caused the men to take a step back in surprise. This all happened in a matter of seconds and the men did recover and took back the upper hand, but I had to admire Joni for her courage. I was glad that she was on my side.

Clint looked down the hallway and asked, “Who else?”

“Your choice, Clint,” Jeb said. “You chose.”

Clint stepped down the hall two doors and unlocked on door. “You inside, come out.”

“Who me?” a voice asked and I could tell it was Mo.

“Yes,” Clint said. “Get out here now.”

Whereas Joni came out with bravado and speed, Mo entered the hallway like a frightened sheep. I could see him shaking from where I was standing.

“What do you want?” Mo asked.

“Just a brief demonstration,” Jeb said as he nodded at Clint.

“One more,” Jeb said.

Clint unlocked the next door and opened it.

“Let’s move,” Clint said to whomever was inside. Robbie’s exit was a repeat of Mo’s, but he looked a degree less afraid. That wasn’t saying much because Mo looked terrified.

Clint gestured for him to join Joni and Mo to proceed down the hall.

“Let’s follow them, shall we?” Jeb said like it was a question, but it was really a command. I could have had resisted, but there was no point. I walked ahead of the men and joined Mo and Joni, with armed men in front of and behind us as we left the building into the light of the day. I blinked at it’s brilliance of the sun as my eyes watered.

There were more armed men outside along with a few women. Some of them joined in our little parade as the others hung back watching us. I didn’t see any kids, though.

I took in the buildings carefully as we strode down the narrow street that led through the compound. The buildings were packed together tightly. There was nothing about their exteriors that told of what went on inside them. I guessed most were living quarters, but one had the words “Medical Building” over its entrance and another was designated as the armory.

Armory? I thought. Why did these people need an armory?

I’m sure my question would be answered and the answer would bring about even greater reasons to fear these folks.

We cleared the main set of buildings and entered a field with tall grass, but our party walked on a broad dirt path with hard packed soil. A sparse amount of trees sat off in the direction we were headed with what looked like a steep drop off. I could see a wooden structure of some sort set between two stands of trees. From the distance we were away, it looked like stands for a baseball stadium. Steps led up from the sides onto a wide, central wooden walkway of some sorts that overlooked drop-off. There was a lot of room underneath the walkway to allow people to stand.

We made steady progress before I felt my guy tighten into a ice cold knot. I smelled them before I heard them. The thick musty smell of decay smacking me in the face and taking my breath away. This could not be a good. No way, no how.

“What is that?” Mo asked as he choked a little.

“My God,” Robbie said. “That’s awful.”

I saw Jeb take a sideways glance to Clint who maintain a stoic expression. Something was shared between them, but I was unable to decode the exchange.

The moans came next. They seemed muted, but were unmistakable as the chorus of the undead.

“What is that sound?” Mo asked slowing his pace.

It was obvious that he had never encountered a large congregation of zombies. I wished I never had.

“Keep moving,” the giant said shoving Mo along.

As we got closer to the wooden structure, I saw strange emblems painted in red decorating it. Some were very cryptic, but there was one that was familiar. It was a simplified version of a Satanic pentagram.

Robbie slid into beside me and whispered, “Did you check out my phone?”

I nodded my head and whispered back, “What’s up with these people?”

“They’re a cult.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said. Clint looked at the two of us and we shut up for a few seconds.

“They started one way and flipped,” he said.

“Flipped?”

“I thought you said you checked out my phone.”