Roads Less Traveled (30 page)

“This is Nancy, go ahead.” She sounded distressed and very tired. Yeah, didn’t we all?

“We think the danger has passed. The deadheads are moving west, and they passed the end of the driveway without so much as a blink. Hmm, I wonder if they do blink,” I said, half teasing and hoping to put a smile on the older woman’s face. Although I couldn’t see it, I could hear it in her voice when she replied.

“That’s great news, Kase. I’m very relieved to say the least,” she said, and chuckled a little before letting her finger off the mic. I smiled, suddenly very relieved myself, and very tired. To hell with putting in a full day’s work, just get yourself all worked up and your nerves in a bunch if you want to wear yourself out in a hurry.

“We’re going to keep an eye on the situation tonight, then head out in the morning. We’ll give you a shout at daybreak, or before if something happens. Until then, keep a couple of people on watch, and at least one of the outside lights on, preferably the one that shines down the driveway,” I instructed. Nancy told me she understood, and that she would talk to me in the morning. I signed off, grabbed Jake’s Coke, and headed back up the hill.

* * *

I woke up the next morning with a horse’s nose in my face. Daisy was nuzzling me, shoving and pushing my head from side to side, but at least she hadn’t started licking me yet. I chuckled and pushed her away, opened my eyes, saw it was just coming daylight, and sat up to see where Jake was. After reassuring ourselves that the zombie horde had moved off to the west, we had taken turns keeping watch during the night, and had grabbed a quick bite to eat. Jake was nestled between two rocks up on the ledge, watching the road below. I pushed myself to my feet, rolled up my sleeping bag, stowed it on the packhorse, and walked up to meet him.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” he said cheerily. I grumbled something at him about being so damn happy in the morning, he laughed, then switched places with me: I stood watch while he relieved himself behind a bush, rolled up his own sleeping bag, and got the rest of his things packed up. This was going to be a long trip without coffee.

Jake whistled when he was ready, so I walked back down the bank and met him at the horses. The coast looked clear, so I called the house and let them know we were on our way again. After another round of ‘be carefuls’ and ‘talk to you soons,’ we mounted our horses and headed north again.

Chapter Seventeen

October 16
^th

“Jesus-jumped-up-pony, what now?” Jake cursed. We had been on the road for roughly a day and a half total, about a day since the fiasco in Matias, and everything that could go wrong,
had
gone wrong. Everything from zombies jumping out of bushes and scaring the shit out of us and the horses, or coming up on hillsides too steep to maneuver (which never failed to take us hours out of our way), running into creeks that had flooded out of their banks (again forcing us hours out of our way), and Jake eating some berries he knew he shouldn’t have, but being the crazy bastard that he was, ate them anyway (which again took some time from our traveling each time he felt the need to squat behind a bush).

This new obstruction was of the human kind, but we had yet to determine whether it was living or dead. We sat on our horses at the top of a grassy knob overlooking a valley below, and some two hundred yards straight ahead was a figure moving slowly through the high grass. We had been trying to decide the best way to navigate around the meadow; we’d already had our fair share of zombie scares, and really didn’t care to run across one hidden in the weeds, legless but still perfectly able to bite. Halfway through our ruminating, Jake happened to spy this new problem, which of course resulted in a string of curses from him, and some good natured laughter from me.

“Hell, I don’t know. Let me grab the binoculars,” I said and twisted in my saddle to dig through my bag again. I raised the binoculars to my eyes and studied the figure. It was a woman, and she was moving along pretty well. Probably not a zombie, yet anyway.

“It’s a woman, and she looks beat to hell,” I said and handed him the binoculars. He studied her a long time before finally snorting, lowering the glasses, then raising them to look some more. I was beginning to lose my patience just when the woman fell to the ground. I pulled my rifle from the case strapped to the side of my saddle, and told Jake to stay there and keep the packhorse with him. He began to protest, but zipped it quickly after seeing the look on my face.

I dug spur and started Daisy out at a slow gallop down the sloping hillside. I scanned the immediate area around us at all times for lurking nasties, yet kept the location of the woman directly ahead of us. After covering the first hundred yards, I slowed and walked us the rest of the way, rifle raised and trained steadily on the spot where the woman had fallen. I began to pick out bits and pieces of her the closer Daisy and I got; flashes of green I assumed was her shirt, red hair, no shoes. I decided to play it safe and stop about twenty feet from her. She was moving, struggling to get back to her feet, but from the looks of her I wasn’t surprised she was having trouble. Someone had beaten the shit out of her, or else she was extremely clumsy.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked. Idiot. Of course she wasn’t okay. She tipped her head back and tried to look up at me, but with the sun at my back, all she could see was a hulking form in front of her.

“I won’t hurt you. What’s your name?” I kept talking, hoping a female voice would settle her down. I was wrong. She started crawling backwards on her belly, or rather, she
tried
crawling backwards. Mostly she just squirmed around on the ground, one leg and one arm obviously injured, and made whimpering noises as she tried to get away. I eased Daisy closer and looked the woman over as well as I could. It didn’t look like she had been attacked by zombies; no discernable bite marks, but several bruises and cuts, mostly around her face and neck.

“My name’s Kasey, just relax okay? Seriously, I’m not gonna hurt you,” I said as I climbed slowly from the saddle and walked the few feet to the woman’s side. I stood back far enough that she couldn’t kick me with her feet, but pointed my rifle barrel at the ground and held out my free hand, palm facing her, as if to say “take it easy, lady.” I could see immediately she was older than me, but younger than Nancy. She had flipped over onto her back and was holding herself up on her elbows, kicking at the dirt and grass with her feet, and silently crying as if she was afraid I’d hurt her if I heard her sobs.

I spared a quick glance around us, checking the high grass and making sure we were safe for now, then looked back at Jake. He was still waiting patiently with the horses, so I decided to leave him there until I figured out what this lady’s deal was. I could call him on the walkie when I had more information. I knelt down on one knee and laid my gun on the ground. The woman was studying me very intently, apparently trying to make up her mind whether I was okay or not. I smiled and began talking to her again.

“Are you hurt? We can help you, if you are. We also have food, if you’re hungry. We’re just passing through ourselves, where are you headed?” I waited while she bit her lip and darted her eyes around. Clearly she knew she had no choice but to trust me, but it was tearing her up having to do that. I immediately felt pity and compassion for her, things I rarely felt for my fellow human beings.

“I’m Teresa,” she said, her voice raw and raspy. She shocked me by speaking, but I covered it well and replied with a smile.

“I’m Kasey,” was all I said in return. I got to my feet slowly and walked back to Daisy. I slid the rifle back into its case, then rooted around in the saddle bag until I found a bottle of water and another Heath bar. I took these back to her and sat down on the ground (not too close), while she drank and ate greedily. I waited until she was finished before speaking up again.

“Would it be okay if I called my friend down here? It’d be safer if we stayed closer together.” For a second I thought this was going to send her into another crying fit, but she sucked it up nicely and nodded.

“Sure,” she said. Jake had been sitting up there for about ten minutes, so when he saw me head towards Daisy and pull the walkie out, he had his to his mouth and was already talking before I could give him the go ahead.

“What the fuck’s goin’ on down there? Better not be a zombie, cause if it is, I’m gonna seriously start doubtin’ your judgment girl,” he said. I had to chuckle a bit before telling him to come on down. He wasted no time and kicked his horse into gear. I went back to Teresa and knelt down again next to her.

“Have you been bitten? By zombies, I mean?” What a ridiculous question that would have been two weeks before. She looked at me funny for a moment, probably trying to understand what I meant by zombie. By the time Jake got to us, she was shaking her head and saying no, she hadn’t been bitten, hadn’t even tangled with any of those things. I introduced her to Jake, and instructed him to set up camp.

“Uh, yeah, a minute, Kase?” he said and walked some distance away from Teresa. I smiled at her, then got up and went over to him.

“Are you crazy?” he whispered and grabbed my arm. I raised an eyebrow at him, looked at his hand, then stared hard at him until he finally got the drift and let go.

“No, I’m not crazy. Are you?” I asked rhetorically.

He just huffed a little, looked over my shoulder at Teresa a few times, and asked “What’s her story?”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t been bitten, but she’s been beat up pretty badly. And judging from the way she reacted towards me, I’d say she’s scared to death and running from someone. I don’t think she’s a danger to us,” I explained. Jake frowned and shook his head.

“That’s all well and good, you wantin’ to help her, but what the hell are we gonna do with her? Or did you forget we’re kinda on a mission here? And I don’t think she’ll be wantin’ to go into Gibson with us. Shit, she’d just end up gettin’ us or herself killed anyway.” He had his hands planted on his hips while he spoke, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Teresa, who was sitting up now and trying to straighten out her shirt.

“I’m not sure what we’ll do with her. But for now, we can feed her, let her get some sleep, and find out where she’s been. She was coming from that direction,” I said, pointing north, “and Gibson is less than a day’s ride from here. Chances are she knows something about it, and a little news could really help us.”

Jake’s face smoothed out and he agreed I had a good point. So, he went about setting up camp, and I returned to Teresa. After helping her to her feet and making sure she could walk on her own, we joined Jake by the fire he had just started and waited for the coffee to finish. We ate a supper that consisted mostly of beef jerky and assorted junk food, including a few pastries I couldn’t bear to leave the house without, then sat together in silence as Teresa told her story.

* * *

“We should send her back to the house,” Jake was saying while I packed up the sleeping bags and other campsite supplies and was stowing them on the packhorse. I had been mulling over our options since daylight, and none of them seemed satisfactory. To me, at least. Each one had its disadvantage: leave her on her own, and she wouldn’t last long, take her with us and she would be more of a hindrance than anything else with her injuries, or send her back to the house and hope she didn’t wind up leading a pack of nasties straight to the others.

I knew Jake wanted to send her home, not only because of his feelings regarding our decision to stand by and let Tommy Hoskins die, but also because he was quite taken with Teresa. A blind man could have seen that much halfway through her story the night before. His chivalrous, protective side had come out, and he wanted nothing more than to help her, no matter what the cost. This slightly annoyed me, that he was willing to put the others at risk for a single stranger we knew almost nothing about. But, I had to admit, after what happened to Tommy, it would be nice to make a different choice this time.

“Alright, Jake. But you give her the instructions, you take the responsibility. You make damned sure she knows where she’s going, and that she absolutely, no matter what, does not lead any zombies to the house. Give her your walkie, make sure she knows to call ahead before she gets to Matias. Tell her what she should say, whatever. You take care of it, I’m gonna scout ahead,” I said, then mounted Daisy and started north. I said a quick goodbye to Teresa as I passed, then turned my focus on the task at hand. I wanted to make sure our route through the meadow was secure, and take a look over the far ridge, before Jake finished up with Teresa and caught up with me.

As I crossed through the meadow with my pistol drawn, my eyes scanning back and forth around and in front of me, I recalled the story Teresa had told us. She’d said she had been a prisoner of the Cedartown convicts, and that she had escaped two nights ago. They had been camped several miles on the other side of Gibson, which obviously caused Jake and I great alarm; last thing we needed was to run into those bastards. However, she did say she’d overheard some of the men talking earlier about heading west. Jake and I could only hope that’s what they had done.

Teresa explained this was where she had gotten the beating; the men had a habit of beating the women after raping and torturing them. Well, the women they deemed “clean,” which were all the
living
ladies. Yes, they had added dead females to their entourage. Teresa said this was their version of torture; the men would threaten any woman who wouldn’t do as they were told by shoving them into a tent with the deadheads or tying them up close to one of the zombies, which were kept chained up to protect the prisoners.