Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (13 page)

Ten minutes of playing mechanic, a couple of busted knuckles
and half a book’s worth of expletives later, Duncan had the dead battery from
the Cruiser swapped with the one from Daymon’s backpack.

Doubting the swap would lead to instant success, he trudged
back around the open door, got in and punched the all-powerful
Engine Start/Stop
button.

The starter whined and the engine turned over.
Victory.
Hard as it was for Duncan to believe this tired-looking thing was basically new
off the lot a few short weeks ago, the motor sounding as strong as it did gave
him confidence that—despite its thoroughly battered exterior—the thing would
make the relatively short round-trip to Huntsville and back.

As he sat in the Cruiser monitoring the voltmeter’s needle
on the dash cluster and basking in the tepid air now filtering through the
vents, he could feel the compulsion welling up within him and, before he knew
what he was doing, the glove box door was open and his fingers were caressing
the smooth glass bottle.

Nearly rocketing out of his skin as a result of three sharp
raps on the glass to his left, Duncan slammed the door shut and turned that
way, no doubt wearing a kid-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar kind of look
on his face.

“Cade Grayson … you trying to give a fella a heart attack?”
he drawled, punching the power window the rest of the way down.

“If Glenda hasn’t killed you yet,” Cade said, wearing a
grin. “Nothing I do is going to hasten your trip to the grave.”

Hoping Cade hadn’t seen the bottle, Duncan changed the
subject. “Well, the 4Runner started right up. This princess ... not so much.”
He thrust both hands out the window, displaying his knuckles. “I put the new
battery in. Good call bringing it.”

“Looks more like you got into a street fight,” Cade said. He
took hold of Duncan’s hand. “Are the shakes back?”

Duncan made a face. Pulled his hands in through the window
and folded them in his lap. “No … why do you ask?”

Cade said nothing. He studied his friend’s face and deduced
that if the two of them were standing nose-to-nose the older man would have
probably crossed his arms defensively and most likely shifted his gaze away and
up prior to spewing that last line of bullshit.

“How long have you been standing there?” Duncan asked, his
voice barely a whisper.

“Long enough, Old Man,” Cade answered.

Duncan sighed. It was a remorseful from-the-gut kind of
sound. “I was just about to pour it out,” he lied.

Cade leaned forward and placed his crossed forearms on the
Cruiser’s roof. “Looked to me like you were giving it a hand-job.”

Duncan removed his glasses. Tossed them on the dash where the
air from the vents gave them a quick fog. When he turned back, in a serious
tone he asked, “Did I ever tell you how much I
loathe
that nickname?”

Cade turned his head and looked at the rest of the crew, who
were now sitting on the road and passing around MREs. He started drumming his
fingers against the roof. “Did I ever tell you how I loathe being called by my
full name? My mother did it ... and when she did, I knew my ass was grass.”

Duncan chuckled. “Brook does it too. Doesn’t she?”

Cade nodded. He said, “Look at it on the bright side, Old
Man. Every time someone calls you by the nickname your brother coined, he’s
being remembered in a small way.”

Duncan said nothing. Unconsciously he broke eye contact with
Cade, passed his gaze over the other survivors who were now standing in a loose
circle in the center of the road, and then fixed a hard stare on the glove box
containing the fifth of booze.

Seeing this, Cade said, “I’ll leave you two alone to talk
things through.” He pushed off the vehicle, turned, and walked away.

Duncan wanted to say something. Anything. But his innate
ability to conjure up a witty quip or think of a prescient observation to get
the conversation moving in another direction failed him. The proverbial cat had
his tongue and was swallowing it whole.

All he could do was stare at Cade, who had already covered
about a dozen paces. Saw him shift his carbine to his right hand and glance at
the ever-present black Suunto on his left. Then, saving him from doing
something he would regret, the former Delta operator said in a booming voice,
“We’re Oscar Mike in five.”

Still watching Cade close the distance with the other five
survivors, who were now policing up their gear, Duncan leaned over and snatched
up the bottle of Jack. He closed the glove box door and, muttering under his
breath, twisted the cap ever so slowly. The paper tax-label tore; then, with a
practiced chop of the palm, he spun the cap off and caught it one-handed
mid-flight. Instantly the scent of sour mash, heavy with charcoaled oak, hit
his nose and froze him in a moment of indecision that lasted all of two
seconds.

“God grant me …” he stuck his arm out the window and,
finishing the prayer in his head, turned the bottle upside down.

The bailiff, if you could call him that, was a skinny little
runt of a man with a prominent forehead made all the more noticeable by the
thin ring of gray hair riding up high on his misshapen skull. Why Pomeroy
hadn’t scrounged up an official-looking hat and uniform for the guy had Dregan
wondering how serious the self-important prick was taking his new approach to
justice.

As the bailiff’s bugged eyes trolled the room, first
scrutinizing the gallery where Dregan sat among a half-dozen other Bear River
citizens, then passing over the jury of twelve, he couldn’t help but think how
much the guy, who had to be pushing sixty, reminded him of the late actor Don
Knotts. Not the younger Barney Fife version, even though, like the
Shakiest
Gun in the West
in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, the bailiff’s Colt Python
revolver also wore him. But more so like the older, shifty-eyed, Ralph Furley
character of Three’s Company notoriety.

Though a trio of propane-powered heaters worked hard to heat
the converted bookstore, Dregan couldn’t get warm. Shivering on the folding
chair, he passed the time waiting for the show to get on the road by watching
his own breath roil from his open mouth.

At 11:59, a murmur rose from the jury seated left of the judge’s
large wooden desk and a shadowy form eclipsed the frosted glass of the
storeroom door immediately behind it.

Furley’s body went rigid when the doorknob rattled. Then, as
the door swung inward on well-oiled hinges, a little more enthusiastically than
need be—in Dregan’s opinion—the Don Knotts lookalike put a cupped hand to his
mouth and called out, “All rise for the honorable Judge Lucius Pomeroy.”

The rustle of fabric mingled with the steady hissing of the
heaters as nineteen people rose, and though Dregan’s arthritic knees were
suffering horribly from the sudden change in weather, he followed suit.

The judge entered first, followed closely by an African
American bailiff who was almost twice the size of the first, yet still gave up
a hundred pounds and a couple of inches to the judge. The bailiff wore a tag
that read:
Mason
. He pulled a chair from the kneehole and stood rigid
and silent while the rotund judge plopped some papers on the desk, looked up
over the top of his square-framed glasses, and gave the room a cursory glance.
Finally, as the first bailiff closed the door, the judge adjusted his black
tent-sized robe and sat down with an audible grunt.

As the chair’s springs groaned in protest to the three
hundred pounds settling on it, Mason stepped forward and said, “You may
all
be seated.”

The Don Knotts look-alike bailiff remained standing, left
hand perched on the Colt, while Mason walked the aisle between the folding
chairs and exited through the papered-over front door, closing it quietly
behind him.

Dregan sat back in his seat with an audible groan, the pain
seemingly going in equal opposition in real time to the falling mercury. For a
long minute, the judge didn’t look up. Maybe he was praying, thought Dregan as
he tried massaging the blood back into his knees.

Finally, Judge Pomeroy scooped a manila envelope off the
desktop, opened it, licked one sausage-like finger and began flicking through a
dozen sheets of what looked to Dregan like ordinary printer paper.

***

A few minutes went by before the judge finally looked up to
address the jury and give instructions. Fighting the urge to nod off, Dregan
listened half-heartedly as the judge went over the evidence and testimony that
would be admissible in the case.

The oration was short; once the judge finished, the front
door opened and Mason was back, leading the accused in with the help of another
of Pomeroy’s recruits—a younger man Dregan recognized but didn’t know by name.

What was wrong with the way they’d been doing this?
Dregan had asked anybody who would listen, in the days prior to the court
system being brought back by popular vote.
Busy work
, he decided, after
seeing that first trial drag on for two days and end exactly as it should have,
with the thief losing a hand and then immediately being taken
kicking-and-screaming to the State Route and exiled as a reminder to all of
what would happen if one of the Ten Commandments was broken.

One less mouth to feed, Dregan supposed as the bug-eyed
bailiff called the plaintiff’s name and read off the charges.

Dregan winced as each horrendous offense read aloud created
a visual he couldn’t purge. Towards the end of the long list he was seeing
Lena’s face transposed on the shocking images in his mind, and it took every
ounce of self-control in his body to keep from walking forward ten feet and
throttling the cannibal baby raper himself.

The prosecutor, who supposedly had been a real
honest-to-goodness lawyer at a big firm housed in a mirrored tower in Dallas,
Texas, before everything fell to pieces, rose and adjusted her rumpled navy
pantsuit. One at a time, she called two credible witnesses, let them say their
piece, asked a couple of questions and then rested her case.

Next, the witnesses were cross-examined by a
reluctant-looking town member acting as defense counsel.
For fuck’s sake,
get on with it
, thought Dregan, as the man droned on, not totally into it,
but still going through the motions.

Finally, the defendant, a twenty-five-year-old malcontent
who had allegedly grown up in a boy’s home and escaped from a correctional boot
camp after the dead began to walk, threw his hands up and said, “Let’s just get
this fucking joke of a trial over with so you can banish me and I’ll be on my
merry way.”

“What are you trying to say?” asked the judge, steepling his
fingers, a gleam in his eye.

“I did it. It was done to me and therefore I do it to
others.” He laughed. A kind of high-pitched squeaking that went on until the judge
struck the desk with the square-headed meat-mallet acting as a gavel.

“Order,” the judge said.

“I guess that settles that,” said counsel, nervously
adjusting his loosely knotted tie.

“I have nothing to add,” stated the lady lawyer.

Thank God
. Dregan sat up and his chair creaked,
drawing nervous glances from the jury and a woman on his right who had been
knitting an infant-sized jumper.

Judge Pomeroy raised his makeshift gavel and again pounded
the desk with it. “The prosecution rests. Defense?”

The man in the tie nodded and organized the papers in front
of him without regard to the slack-jawed defendant to his right. “Defense
rests,” he finally said, and took his seat.

Out of his side vision, Dregan saw Bailiff Mason move
forward from near a carousel filled with used paperbacks and take up position
behind the self-confessed cannibal and habitual child rapist.

“Having been found guilty by your own admission, I, Judge
Lucius Pomeroy, on behalf of the good people of Bear River, do hereby pronounce
you, Dewey Ford, guilty of
coveting,
thereby breaking the Tenth
Commandment. I hereby sentence you to death—”

Ford bristled when the judge said
‘coveting’
and then
rocketed from his chair when he heard the severity of the sentence. In a flash,
Mason had drawn a bright orange gun-shaped item from the holster on his hip.
Before Ford could shove his chair back, the smaller bailiff was rushing to
protect the judge from the front and fifty thousand volts were coursing through
Ford from the rear, the charge being delivered through a thin filament
stretched a dozen feet between the TASER in Mason’s hand to the metal barbs
lodged firmly between the condemned man’s shoulder blades.

As the defendant’s limp form lay on the floor, pants soiled
in front, Judge Pomeroy finished the sentencing spiel. “Dewey Ford, I hereby
sentence you to death by biter. And I hope they start on your privates.”

“They’re not
active
right now,” said Mason, still
holding the TASER.

The judge rose and looked a question at Dregan.

Dregan nodded, corroborating what the bailiff said.

“Bailiffs ... I want him held in custody until such time as
the sentence can be properly administered.”

As if he was trying to make a second break for the door,
Ford started to twitch. Then the soles of his shoes made a cringeworthy
squeaking noise against the floor tiles as his legs spasmed uncontrollably.

Staring daggers across the desk, the judge motioned Dregan
forward.

Dregan nodded, then rose on legs half-asleep and shot
through with pins and needles.

“My chambers,” said the judge.

The back room of Armchair Family Books
, corrected
Dregan in his thoughts.
Pretty far removed from the United States District
Court for the District of Utah.