Dead: Winter (27 page)

“A vote?” I protested. “It isn’t a vote when one person is the only choice.”

“Aye,” DeAngelo called, completely ignoring me.

“Aye,” Billy added.

It was quickly followed by a chorus of consenting votes. I looked around the room as they ticked off, one by one until it came to Jake and Jesus.

“Aye,” Jake said, with a step forward to emphasize his vote.

“I was always the last one picked in school,” Jesus grumbled. “Aye, dammit.”

“Okay—” Jon started.

“Aye,” Thalia and Emily said together as they came up beside me and each grabbed a hand.

There was a titter of laughter, but Jon silenced it with a look. He knelt before me and the girls. “Aye, what?” he asked.

“My
daddy
should be the boss person,” Thalia said with a very serious face.

I looked down at her and felt tears well up in my eyes. It had nothing to do with her vote, adorable as it may be, for me. It was the use of the word “daddy” that had my throat tightening. All this time, she had never used that word.

I realized with a flush of embarrassment that everybody was looking at me. Emily had an expression on her face that told me I’d just missed something. I hoped to God that it hadn’t been her saying the same thing. Granted, she already called me “Daddy Steve” when she referred to me. She even used it to call me when she wanted something. It was like she knew how to butter me up.

“So?” Jon was standing now.

When had that happened?
I looked around the room at the expectant faces. I guess they were waiting for me to accept my official role.

“Y-yes,” I said. Sure, it wasn’t ever going to go down as one of the great speeches of the Western Civilization, but it seemed to suffice.

“Then I submit to you as the newly elected commander-in-chief and await your orders,” Jon said.

At first, I really did think that he was joking. However, when he remained at attention, I realized that he was completely serious. As much as he made comments about just being plain old “Jon Saunders” instead of the Marine sergeant that he had been, he was still a military man. I guess he needed that sort of order in his life. So much the better for me.

“Send Jake and Jesus on that mission,” I said. And just like that, I’d given my first official order,

“Yes, sir,” Jon replied with a salute.

Okay
, I thought,
I will give him this first one, but there was no way I could live like this
.

“Steve?” Dr. Zahn stepped up as the two soldiers began equipping themselves for the cold. “As soon as possible, I have a list of things that I need to continue narrowing down the official cause of death regarding Teresa.”

“Give it to Jon, he can probably figure out the best way to go about obtaining what you need since he has been out there more than anybody,” I said.

“I have a—” she began. It was Melinda Cribbs who cut her off.

“We have incoming from the trees!” Melinda exclaimed as she came through the hatch that opened to the little lookout tower on top of our home. She jumped off the ladder from about halfway down. “It’s a lot!”

Everybody made for the door to the porch. Sure enough, coming through the knee-deep snow were hundreds…perhaps thousands. It was the largest mob I’d ever seen. It made my stomach clench up and my mouth go dry.

“Steve?” It was Jake. “Jesus and I are already suited up in winter gear. He and I will get down there and create a distraction, see if we can get them to follow.”

I looked around. All of a sudden, everybody had completely turned over everything to me. I would have to make a few changes, but now wasn’t the time to get into it. Instead, I had to send two men to their likely deaths. And even doing that was not a guarantee that we would survive. Still…

“Do it,” I agreed. “See if you can get them to the main road.” My hope was that, given the choice of two directions—three if you counted over the edge of the road and down that steep hill—they might scatter. Of course my main hope was that they just went somewhere else.”

“Yes, sir,” Jake said with a salute. He and Jesus faced one another and did a quick check of each other’s load out. Then…they walked out the door.

“Okay,” I turned to face everybody else, “grab the emergency packs and bring them to the front door. I want Thalia and Emily with Melissa, Dr. Zahn, Billy and Nickie. DeAngelo, you get the other two…Levent and Rabia? You get them and Melinda and Fiona. Brad, you, Christina, Sunshine and Jon will stay here with me.”

“What about Buster?” Thalia tugged at my arm.

“He stays here with me, sweetie,” I said. “I may need his help.”

Thalia hugged the dog who, despite all of the ruckus, still seemed content to lay in front of the fireplace. I gave her, Emily, and Melissa a kiss to send them on their way.

“What about Jamie?” Melissa whispered in my ear. He was back under sedation and out cold in bed.

“He wouldn’t do anything but slow a group down,” I whispered back.

“Like you?” She stepped back and looked in my eyes.

“Just get to the fall back point,” I said evenly. “I will do the best I can to get there as soon as possible if this ploy doesn’t work.”

One of the things that I had insisted on after the last herd came through were a set of fall back points up in the hills. They provided a view down into the camp. If our place was overrun, then the first rally point for all who managed to escape was just outside of a tiny town called Enterprise. There was an RV park at the north end of town which we had a small cache of stores laid up. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be enough to get any survivors a leg up on a new start. Unfortunately, I didn’t recall us stashing all that much winter gear when we’d set that place up.

As everybody headed out into the gloom of the early evening, I was actually more concerned for them facing the weather. I stepped out onto the porch. Jake and Jesus had just reached the bottom of the hill. I could hear them yelling and making all kinds of noise to try and distract the attention of the undead that were still pouring out of the trees.

Sunshine excused herself to go check on Jamie. Brad grabbed the bug-out packs for those of us staying and moved them all out onto the porch.

I began to wonder if there would be an end to their numbers. Had the entire population west of here massed up into one gigantic mob? Were there millions…not just hundreds?

“We’re staying because we will slow them down, aren’t we?” Christina had come to stand beside me.

“That is part of the reason,” I said with a nod. “But we also need to try and make sure that we have somebody here to defend our home if it becomes a manageable fight.”

That part was a bit of a load of bull. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her that we were indeed bait to give the others a chance to escape. If it came down to it, Jon would leave with Brad and Sunshine.

In our current state, Christina and I could barely move quicker than a gimpy zombie. The best thing we would have going for us is the fact that we might be able to navigate the snow better because we were aware of how to work through the treacherous footing.

As for Jamie, I hated myself for the thoughts I was having. However, if it came down to it, I would have to consider using him to allow Christina and I better shot at getting away.

Still, at the moment, we had to prepare for a possible onslaught. I couldn’t see Jesus or Jake any longer. Unfortunately, neither could any of the zombies farther back in the pack. That meant we had to hope that the single-mindedness we’d seen them demonstrate remained a prominent trait.

“I’m going up in the tower,” Jon announced. “I want to try and get a better look at what we are facing. Also, if it comes down to it, I want a good idea of which way to run, because, quite honestly, from here there doesn’t appear to be a way out except up into the mountains.”

“That’s where the fallback points are,” I said. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying that our people may be trapped up in the hills and that might be as deadly as those bastards.”

“But when we planned this—” I started.

“We didn’t really take this weather into account,” Jon cut me off.

As if to emphasize his point, a particularly nasty breeze whipped up and rattled the windows. The thought of Thalia, Emily, and Melissa out in that gave me a bad feeling.

Jon scurried up the ladder. Several uncomfortable moments passed. I had kicked our fire apart so that it was only a few glowing embers. I peeked out the window, trying to make out details. Unfortunately, the heavy overcast coupled with it being near sunset made the entire area one giant shadow. There were so many zombies that I simply could not make out any details. However, there was one thing that I was able to see; about a hundred or so had broken of like a single leaf falling from a huge oak tree. They were coming right for us.

The group that had detached were funneling up the narrow corridor between the berms. They would be winding their way up to the cabin. The problem we faced was that we needed to be able to take them down without drawing any more from the main horde.

Suddenly from behind me, I heard a strangled gurgle and then a splash. I turned to see Christina bent at the waist, a thick strand still dangling from her mouth. She looked up with a sheepish and very embarrassed expression on her face.

“Sorry,” she managed as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “I never have been good with stinky things.”

I had noticed the smell, but I was the opposite of Christina. I was the guy people called when the toilet backed up or the sink trap needed cleaning. One of my jobs as a kid during the summer when I was in high school was working for my uncle who managed a landfill dump.

“They are reaching the moat,” Jon announced as he let go halfway down the ladder and landed on the floor with hardly a sound. “If they logjam at that spot, it may bring more attention. We need to get down there.”

“I’ll get Sunshine,” Brad stepped in from the porch.

“Good, and I will get a few spears and head down,” Jon announced. “Steve, maybe you and Christina should start up the hill.”

“Nothing doing,” I replied. “If we work together, we might all survive this.”

Five minutes later, Jon, Brad, Sunshine, Christina and I were making our way down the hill. We could hear the occasional sounds of gunfire. That had to mean that Jesus and Jake were still doing their best to lure the main body away.

We could hear the moans, groans and cries down below. It was as loud as any stadium crowd. I had a momentary flashback of my childhood. My best friend’s dad took us to a football game in the Kingdome in Seattle. I remember the overwhelming wave of sound that poured out at us when we walked in the doors that opened to the actual interior of the facility. I didn’t realize how loud it was until we left and all I could hear was a high-pitched ringing in my ears. The only way my friend’s dad knew that the car had started was by placing his hand on the dashboard and feeling for the vibration. That is something you don’t get from just watching it on television.

“We need to lure them in,” Jon said as we reached the lip of the steep-sided trench that had been dug all the way around the base of the hill our cabin rested on. Thankfully, the one access point, where the road had started up and that I’d foolishly allowed to be left intact, had been removed. It was now the location of a bridge that we kept pulled to our side during the evening.

Across the way, several of the undead reached for us. It was difficult to make out too much detail in the shrouds of darkness that were wrapping up the world, but the snow has a wonderfully reflective quality about it that amplifies even minimal light. We could see well enough.

“I have an idea,” Brad whispered.

Before any of us could stop him, he jumped down into the ditch. Like lemmings, the zombies across the way started stepping off the lip of the trench. It was a twisted domino effect, but it was as if the plug had been pulled because the rest began to follow.

“Don’t just stand there,” Jon hissed. “Start sticking these bastards!”

With that, Sunshine, Christina and I joined him as we began plunging spears into the heads of the waterfall of undead that plummeted unwittingly to their doom. Meanwhile, Brad kept making little clicking noises and other odd sounds in order to draw attention. Zombies being stupid, they fell all over each other in pursuit.