The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (23 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked away a moment, gathering his
thoughts, then looked back into her questioning eyes. “You and I
hadn’t become… intimate …yet and I didn’t want to burden you with
that knowledge. It was my own to shoulder.” He paused again. “I
guess I also didn’t want you thinking any less of me.”

“I would have understood. I thought it was a
Loony too.”

“And I understand what happened to you here
today.” He smiled sympathetically.

Tears poured from her eyes in earnest and she
threw her arms around his neck, pulled herself into his warmth, and
kissed him hard on the lips. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered
into his mouth.

Dontela had the young girl lying on a couch
in the living room with a comforter over her and a soft pillow
under her head. She had removed the girl’s boots, coat, and gloves
before laying her down. The fire was roaring brightly as she sat
down on the couch next to the girl’s head. She ran her fingers
through the girl’s thick curls trying to settle her down. She had
covered the corpse of the man in the hallway with a blanket and
tried to drag him some place out of their view, however, he was too
heavy for her to move by herself.

“I’m sorry about your daddy,” she whispered
to the little girl as she stroked her head.

The child swiveled her head on the pillow to
look up at the black girl. “He’s with my mommy and my brother now,”
she said knowingly, her eyes still moist with tears.

“Yes, he is, honey. They’re all in a much
better place.”

The girl nodded silently.

After a moment the girl swiveled her head
back up to look at Dontela. “Why are you people in our house?”

“We didn’t know it was your home. We thought
no one lived here.”

“Oh,” the girl replied. “I’m Angela Doria
Peterson,” she said after another few moments of silence.

Dontela smiled at the girl warmly. “That’s a
pretty name. I’m Dontela.”

“Are all you people going to live in our
house now?”

Dontela shook her head. “No honey, we’re
leaving in the morning.”

The girl sat up and stared at the older girl.
“What will I do? There’s a lot of bad people out there.”

“You don’t have to stay here, honey. You can
come with us.”

The girl’s shoulders sagged. “But this is my
home.”

“It will always be here for you, honey, but
you can’t stay here alone.” Dontela’s heart was breaking for the
girl, although she was also amazed at the child’s resiliency after
just losing her last parent.

“Close your eyes and get some sleep. We’ll
figure it all out in the morning.”

The girl nodded her head and turned her face
into the pillow and closed her eyes, silently crying herself to
sleep.

Steven came into the room a few minutes later
wearing a pair of gray sweatpants. Dontela put her finger to her
lips and shushed him so he wouldn’t wake the girl. She got up and
steered him back to the hallway near the covered body.

“We need to move him out of the hallway,” she
whispered in his ear.

He nodded understanding. “We can drag him
into the woods behind the shed.”

A look of consternation clouded her face and
she reached up and rapped him on the top of his head with her
knuckles. “You gonna take that girl’s daddy and dump him in the
woods for all the animals to gnaw on before she has had a chance to
tell him a proper goodbye?”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked at her
sheepishly.

“We’ll drag him downstairs and put him on the
pool table. She can get up in the morning and tell him goodbye,
then we’ll give him a proper burial.” she stated, daring him to
protest.

He didn’t.

The burial took most of the morning and
Angela was comforted by the act, especially when Dontela read
several verses from their family bible and Steven placed a wooden
cross that he had constructed from some discarded lumber at the
head of the grave. The girl laid a bouquet of plastic flowers from
the dining table on his grave after the brief service and hung her
head, weeping quietly. They had dug the shallow grave next to two
others that they could tell had been tenderly cared for. Angela
Doria Peterson sniffled as tears carved wet paths down her cheek
and said a last goodbye to her daddy before turning away.

Kera had approached Angela that morning and
tried to tell the disheveled little girl how sorry she was.
However, the girl had spun away with a flick of her dark curls,
giving her a cold shoulder. Steven tried to reassure Kera that the
girl would forgive her over time, nevertheless it still broke her
heart.

They found out from the girl that her and her
family had been at home when the pandemic hit, and the mother and
brother had become sick. The father had been able to overpower and
tie up the two when they turned and had locked them in the root
cellar until he could figure out what to do. He had tried to
explain to Angela that the things in the cellar were no longer
Mommy and her brother, that they had been replaced by the bad
people like they saw outside on the road. The decision was finally
made for them on what they were going to do with the two when the
mother, repeatedly throwing herself against the slat-wood door had
finally broken through, forcing the father to kill both the mother
and older brother to keep his daughter safe. Angela said he had
always been different after that.

She told them that she was seven years old,
would be eight in June, and that her daddy had told her that she
was old enough now to start learning to take care of herself. He
taught her how to split wood and to use the 20 gauge shotgun to
kill small game, clean it, and cook it. He taught her about the bad
people and how she was to hide from them and if she couldn’t hide,
to use the gun to stop them. Since they weren’t real people
anymore, it wasn’t a sin to kill them.

The two of them had been out that day
scavenging for food at a gas station/convenience store on the
interstate up toward Charlottesville. They had been late getting
back because of a group of bad people who were travelling on the
highway. When they arrived back at the house very late at night,
her daddy had found the broken window and had told her to hide in
the woodshed while he used his key to go in and see what was going
on. She had grown frightened and crept to the door when she hadn’t
heard anything after a couple of minutes, and at the sound of the
gunshot she had rushed in.

They found the scavenged food in a green Army
duffle bag stuffed in the woodshed and had added the supplies to
their own. The added provisions would allow them to travel without
scavenging for a few more days. They all realized that limiting the
exposure they had to human dwellings except when absolutely
necessary for food or shelter would keep them all from pushing up
daisies sooner rather than later.

Dontela had finally convinced little Angela
that it would be better for her to go with them, and that they
could keep her safe from the bad people. She cried quietly as they
left the only home she had ever known and the gravesites of her
beloved family to the ghosts of her memory. She was still weeping
when the last vestige of it disappeared from view behind her
forever.

Chapter Nine

The procession of vehicles moved along the
interstate and stopped short of the Front Royal exit lane. Lamar
got out of the Escalade and stood on the running board to stare at
the large Walmart complex that sprawled north near the highway.
None of the creepy-creeps were in sight.

The trip out I-66 had gone smoothly once they
had bypassed the large pile-up the day before. The scattering of
cars and tractor trailers that had been abandoned along the way had
for the most part been pulled off the side of the road by their
previous owners. They had made several raids on farmhouses during
the trip for food and whatever weaponry they could collect. The
smattering of creepy-creeps they had come across had been easy
targets for their guns and proved good sport for his crew. They had
spent the night in one of the scattered wineries that dotted the
rolling hills in this area of Virginia, killing the handful of
creepy-creeps that had charged at them when their entourage had
pulled into the gravel parking lot. They had made a roaring fire in
an outside firepit near the wine-tasting area using all the old
wooden furniture that had decorated the place, then proceeded to
get shitfaced drunk on the gallons of wine that were there for the
taking.

The setting sun seared into Lamar’s eyes,
compounding the headache that pounded in his temples. He climbed
back into the driver’s seat of the big SUV.

“We need ta be gittin’ ourselves sum more
food fo it gets too dark,” he stated as he sat back into his
leather seat, the dark sunglasses hiding his hard, lifeless
eyes.

2-Stroke smiled that irritating smile at him,
his face otherwise expressionless behind his Ray-Bans. “You think
it uh good idea we be goin shoppin’ at sum mofo Walmart?” 2-Stroke
shook his head, “Nigga please!”

Before he could reply his sister spoke up
from the back. “Shit JJ, ah think it be a bumpin’ idea. Ah gotta
piss sometin awful.” Takeisha knew that Walmart usually kept pretty
clean restrooms.

“Fuck bitch, git out n piss on da road,”
2-Stroke told Lamar’s sister with a hint of menace in his voice.
That
fat
bitch
be
always
runnin’
her
mouth
complainin’
, he
thought to himself.

“Fuck you 2-Stroke!” she hissed back at
him.

“Bitch, I bout had enuff o yo shit.” He
lifted the AK off the floor and over his head pointing the barrel
at the girl in the back, causing her to duck behind the seat and
squeal in terror.

2-Stroke felt the hard barrel of Juice’s
Glock 19 pressing into his temple. “Put dat shit down
motherfucker!” Lamar told him in his commanding voice.

2-Stroke turned his head to look at
Juicy-Juice and that gold-toothed smile spread across his face
again. “Sho cuz, ain’ no thang.” He lowered the AK and stuck it
back on the floorboards. Lamar held the gun on the man for a moment
longer then shoved the piece back into his waistband.

“We don’ need ta be stoppin’ ever time we see
uh house n gittin’ food n shit. We do it all at once in Walmart n
be done wit it., Lamar stated matter-of-factly, the decision final.
He put the Cadillac in gear and headed up the Interstate off-ramp
and the rest of the vehicles fell in behind him.

They pulled into the Walmart parking lot
right in front of the doors and turned off their engines. The place
looked abandoned and lifeless. The sun was going down quick and
Lamar figured they had maybe an hour or two of light left before
they needed to split and find someplace to crash for the night. He
grabbed his Tec-9 from under the seat and jumped out of the
vehicle. The rest of his crew was pouring from their cars and
trucks carrying a variety of firearms as they gathered around
him.

He ordered them to get in and out quick and
grab as much food as they could get in a cart. He would hit the
ammo counter and take everything that they needed. They’d have to
stay in groups of two in case they ran into any creepy-creeps.

N
dat
nigga
2
-
Stroke
be
wit
me
cuz
ah
straight
-
up
don’
trust
dat
homeboy
.

They approached the doors as a group, many of
them holding onto their guns nervously as they eyed the dark
interior through the windows. The automatic doors had long ago
stopped working when the power had failed and that presented them
with their first obstacle. Lamar and Crazy-8 jammed their fingers
into the rubber seal between the sliding glass doors and tried to
pull them apart in opposite directions to no avail.

They continued pulling with all their
strength until finally 2-Stroke shook his close-cropped afro’d
head, picked up a shopping cart, and threw it into the glass of the
door. It made a loud crash and bounced off the glass leaving a web
of thread-like cracks radiating out around the impact point. He
picked up the cart and slammed it into the glass again and the
window came apart in a cascading shower of glass. He strode
triumphantly through the empty pane and entered the store with his
AK held low in his hand then glanced over and sneered at
Juicy-Juice. “Cum-on nigga, time be wastin’.”

They came out of the darkness like dark
wraiths, some on all fours. Before 2-Stroke could turn around the
first one launched itself at him with an animal growl, its clawed
hands spread wide, and slammed into his back, wrapping its
emaciated arms around him with an inhuman strength. It bit into the
back of his head and 2-Stroke could hear its teeth sliding and
grinding over the bone of his skull as the pain exploded in his
head. It yanked its jaws back with a mouthful of 2-Strokes’s
hair-covered scalp clenched between its teeth. 2-Stroke roared in
pain and flung the creature from him as another barreled into his
legs while others swarmed past him. He toppled over backwards,
still roaring his scream of pain.

Lamar saw the movement in the darkness of the
store behind 2-Stroke when the man turned toward him, and before he
could yell a warning the first of the creepy-creeps was on the
gangster. With the Tec-9 in his left hand Lamar deftly pulled the
Glock from the waistband of his pants with the other hand and
extended both weapons to arm’s length, pointed at the wave of
creatures bounding past the big black man in front of him.

He pulled the triggers simultaneously,
watching with a dark satisfaction as the white bodies of the
creepy-creeps erupted with red-puckered holes and fell before the
onslaught of his bullets. Behind him the rest of his crew who had
clear shots were shooting at the horde of bodies pouring from the
dark cavern of the store.