Siege (27 page)

“By who?”

“That old woman with the devil’s eye.”

“Nerit?”

“I figured it out. She’s the Amazonian queen.”

Travis considered this, then shrugged. “Probably, but no, I’m not wired.”

“Eh…what do you want to know?” Calhoun asked and shot a cat with a spray of milk.

The cat lapped up the rich milk from its whiskers with relish.

“The army. How long have you known about it?”

“Um, army has been around for a long time,” Calhoun answered. “Started back when we fought against the alien overlords that were possessing the English king.”

“I mean, recently. The helicopters.”

“I TOLD you the government was kidnapping people for cloning. And the clones got fucked up and now they’re zombies.”

“Do you know where the helicopters were coming from? Which direction maybe?”

Calhoun looked up, studied Travis long and hard and said, “Madison.”

“Madison? So they are at the Madison Rescue Center!”

“Yeah. Madison. They’re always blathering on the radio to each other.”

“The radio?”

“Military channels. I monitor all the time. I will not be caught unaware again!” Calhoun squirted the two dogs. He muttered for a few seconds about zombies, clones, the mayor and the possessed government.

“You’ve been listening to military channels?” Travis blinked slowly and almost laughed.

“Yep. Madison Mall. They’re all holed up in there and some Amazonian overlord is running the whole shabang. She wants the fort so she can buy her way into paradise. Talks all high and mighty to some nitwit out in some place called Central. They keep telling her that they want her to stay put.”

“Why doesn’t she take a helicopter to Central?”

“Cause they’d shoot her ass down. BAM BAM BAM!” Calhoun made a great show of this happening, complete with a demonstration of how the helicopter would fall to earth. “Zombies would have barbecue. Anyway, she’s all sweet talking them, telling them how important she is, trying to do her voodoo. They told that old bitch that the clones follow any kinda vehicle. Car, truck, motorcycle, plane, helicopter and they don’t want her dragging stinkbags down on them. I think they got alien spaceships patrolling.”

“This Central place?”

“Yeah. Because between the overlord and Central are butt loads of what they call zombies. Messed up clones is what they are.”

Travis frowned and said, “Okay, so this Amazonian overload is at this Madison Mall place and she has the military working for her?”

“Something like that. I don’t listen too much to her. She’s just begging to get out. I just listen so I know where they are gonna be. I don’t want them near my stuff. Bad enough dealing with the aliens and the zombie-clones. Don’t need to be dealing with the Amazonian overlord’s helicopters. I seriously think she has mental powers to control people.” Calhoun pointed to his hat made out of foil. “She ain’t gonna get me.”

“Do they have Jenni?”

“Yep. And Bill. Heard that this morning,” Calhoun began to milk with earnest now.

“Bill?” Travis felt a sense of relief, but he knew what that meant for Roger and Felix. His stomach did a slow roll. “Okay. And what are they gonna do with them?”

“Use em as pawns, Travis. What else? Yer kinda slow sometimes. Lucky yer woman is smart. Okay, gotta fix the kiddies chocolate milk now,”

Calhoun said standing up and snatching up the bucket.

“Anything else to tell me? We’ve been trying to contact them, but there hasn’t been an answer.”

“Yep. They are a coming to visit. That’s why I brought the animals in. Figure if we’re gonna pull an Alamo might as well have fresh eggs and milk.” With a grin, the old codger was off toward the hotel, a trail of kids, dogs and cats behind him. “Y’all should have listened to me when I first told you all this. Now we’re gonna have to fight down to the last man.”

Travis walked slowly, turning over Calhoun’s words in his mind, trying to make sense of them. Katie and Nerit came down from the guard post to walk with him.

“Well?”

“He’s plum nuts, Nerit.”

“Yes, Travis, but did he say anything enlightening?”

“He says the military is at the Madison Mall like we suspected. He’s been monitoring the military channels.” Travis hesitated and took Katie’s hand gently. “He says it’s Bill and Jenni at the mall.”

Katie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Nerit merely nodded her head.

“He says they are going to use them as pawns. He said something about a woman being in charge of the military and the mall and that this woman is trying to get to a place called Central. I’m not sure how much to believe. He sees the world in a really warped way. He’s convinced we’re about to do another Alamo.”

Nerit shrugged. “Maybe. I have a feeling that a lot of what he is telling you is important, just twisted to fit his theory of how the world runs.”

Katie shook her head. “Okay, what do we do?”

“I guess get ready for the military to come knocking,” Travis decided.

“Calhoun says he overhead them talking about coming to see us today. Maybe they’re gonna finally answer us.”

“And I get to be John Wayne,” Nerit decided with a gleam in her eye, but a stoic expression

“Oh, no, no, no, Nerit. I want to be John Wayne,” Travis protested. Nerit considered this. She shook her head. “No. I’m John Wayne.”

Katie looked back toward the people gathered to pet the cows. She knew in these moments of ridiculous brevity there was serious concern. They were going to have to take to heart something she had read somewhere that John Wayne had said, “Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway.”

They were going to have to saddle up.

Sweeping her hair back from her face, she could only wonder what Bill and Jenni were experiencing in this very moment.

What were their thoughts? Were they saddling up?

1. Tales of the Madison Mall

Jenni poked at the lumpish gray stuff in her bowl that she was certain was supposed to be oatmeal. It looked nothing like oatmeal, though the smell was similar.

“Army food,” a woman said sitting down across from her.

Jenni was surprised that someone was talking to her. Everyone the day before seemed to regard her with suspicion. But she was grateful for the company. “Not all that great.”

“Makes me really appreciate the army,” the lady said with a wry smile. Her eyes flicked to a soldier strolling by in full battle fatigues. “Where did they rescue you from?”

“I wasn’t rescued. They kidnapped me,” Jenni said with a frown. The woman blinked in confusion. “Huh?”

Jenni lifted her eyes to truly look at the woman. She was probably a few years older than Jenni, but those had been hard years. She had lank dark blond hair and pale blue eyes.

“We were returning to our fort and this helicopter swooped down and blinded us. We had an accident and woke up here. We were pretty much kidnapped.”

“Fort? Do you mean a real fort?”

“Well, more like four blocks of a downtown walled in, but the big hotel is pretty damn nice,” Jenni answered.

The woman double-blinked. “Are there lots of people?”

Jenni furrowed her brow. “I think may be close to two-hundred and fifty people now. I’m not real sure.”

The woman slowly exhaled. “Wow. We really thought we were the only ones still alive out this way. But why would the army take ya if you weren’t in trouble.”

“I think whoever runs this place wants the fort. Or at least that is what my friend Bill says.”

“Well, damn, that would be the Senator. But then, it has been real tough here,” the woman confessed.

“How long have you been here?” Jenni shoved her plate of food away with one hand and tried to eat something that looked like toast.

“Since the first day. We were over at that yonder civic center first. When the news started getting bad, FEMA said to go there. It was a rescue center. At first we didn’t pay no attention. It was just crazy talk on the TV, but then this man came and started trying to get in our back door. Troy, my husband, he shouted at the man to get lost, but this guy kept hitting the door. Hitting it so hard he was busting his hands open. We could see it through the window. My kids started screaming. Troy keeps threatening to shoot the guy with the shotgun, but the guy keeps banging and making these noises.”

“Oh, God, what did you do?”

“Well, Troy grabs the shotgun off the fridge and opens the door and waves the gun at the guy. But this guy has his guts falling out and he just lunges into the house. Troy shouted for us to run,. So me and the kids run out the front door. Troy runs, too. That guy, the messed up one, falls on his own innards.”

Jenni made a face and shivered. “Damn.”

“So we get into the truck and Troy is getting into the truck when he sees Mabel, our neighbor running to us. She’s got some nasty folks after her. Troy shouts her name and reaches out to her. And she bit his hand! So he cold cocks her one and we see her back is all tore up. He gets into the truck and we hauled ass to the civic center.”

“So if the rescue center was the civic center, how’d you end up here?”

Jenni was enraptured by the story and reached for another piece of stale toast.

“Soldiers came and got us after FEMA took off.”

Jenni mulled this over. “FEMA took off?”

“Yeah. They gave us milk and cookies and told us to sit down in the auditorium. They took the worst of the messed up people into this reception hall or something. I dunno. They said Troy wasn’t hurt enough to go back there with the volunteer doctors and nurses. I heard all sorts of rumors that the hospital wasn’t taking no more patients.” The woman sighed. “We just sat in there and it was real scary. All we heard was gossip and shit. I heard someone was gonna come and give us all shots so we wouldn’t get rabid, too. Troy starts getting a fever and the kids were all antsy and it was just plain shitty. Then the damn FEMA people started packing up their stuff and told us that we need to sit tight and wait for the Army to come get us and take us to another place. So they bail and we get stuck in the auditorium just waiting.”

A few other people began to draw closer to listen. Jenni became aware of one older black woman vigorously nodding her head. “Oh, yeah. I remember that!”

“So Troy gets sicker and so do some other people. Finally the Army does show up, but it’s just a few guys. They start getting on the radio trying to figure out what is going on. One of them comes in saying that the doors to that other room are locked and there are those things in there.”

“FEMA just up and left us with a whole bunch of those zombies in that back room. All those doctors and nurses got ate up,” the black woman cut in.

Jenni thought back on Katie’s decision not to go to the rescue center in Madison and was she ever grateful for her friend’s intuition.

“Right, right. So then more soldiers show up, but they are looking for a place to be safe, too. Then a few more. And it gets real clear to us that none of them know what is going on. Then that one guy shows up.”

“That handsome Kevin,” the black woman put in with a grin.

“Yeah, and he finds out about those things in the back room and he just says that we are all going to the mall. So they load up the old people in the trucks. The soldiers start going and asking people if they are bit or not. And all the bit people are made to go to another room. Including my Troy,” the woman took a breath, looking ready to cry. “The kids are crying and it’s just bad.”

“Uh-huh, real bad,” the other woman agreed.

“Well, we got into lines and filed outside. The trucks were taking people back and forth to the mall. It’s only like two blocks away, but they wanted us to be safe. You got a ride on a truck, didn’t you, Ethel?”

“Thank you, Jesus, yes, or I wouldn’t be here today,” Ethel answered.

“My kids were crying real hard for their Daddy. We younger folks were the last to go and just as the trucks left with some people, the doors behind us start banging hard. We look and those things are trying to get out of the Civic Center. So the soldiers shouted ‘run.’ And, girl, we ran.”

Ethel nodded her head. “We got into the mall and the soldiers were all shouting and telling us to keep moving. Was bad.”

“We were running like crazy down the street. A whole bunch of us with some soldiers. Then those doors got knocked down and those things came running. And everyone was screaming and crying. People were tripping. The soldiers were trying to shoot...” The woman steadied herself emotionally and Ethel took her hand.

“Take a breath, Amy, take a breath,” Ethel said softly.

Jenni looked around to see their table was now not only packed with people but others were gathering around to listen. Most were nodding their heads, obviously remembering the horror of the first day.

“And my little boy said, ‘Look, Mommy, Daddy is coming, too’ and I looked back. It’s not my Troy anymore. He is all messed up and screaming. We just keep running and I could barely breathe. One of the soldiers grabbed my kids and just yanked them up into his arms and ran. And I was running hard. And people...started…to fall back…then we could hear them getting…getting…ripped up…”

A big black man leaned forward, taking over the story as Amy sobbed into Ethel’s shoulder. “So we made it to the mall and the soldiers were closing the gates the city council had put in to keep vandals from doing graffiti on the mall.”

“Probably the only thing they ever did right,” someone huffed.

“We just had that one gate to get in and the soldiers were shooting and we just ran, ma’am. We just ran,” the black man continued.

“They shoved cars up against the gates to keep them closed and kept those things out,” Amy said.

“Later, the helicopters came,” the black man added.

“Oh, yes, they were shooting those undead bastards for hours. Almost ran out of ammunition,” Ethel added.

“Those soldiers didn’t know what they were doing at first,” another woman said. “They were scared, too, but once they got it safe and those things weren’t getting in, they tried to calm us down.

“Fed us…”