Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Conflict (30 page)

“I’m
pretty sure this truck won’t break. Come on Jacob, it’ll be fun.”

“We
don’t run them down, and I’ve seen the front of trucks get crumpled, wrecking
the engine, because someone did that. Even hitting a deer will do it. But feel
free to run over any zombie squirrels you come across.”

She
snorted, loudly. Mary had to have done that on purpose for it to come across so
clearly. She might be rolling her eyes as well. The girl was spending way too
much time with Briana. Actually, a lot of the women seemed to be imitating her.
Maybe our core group was too close. At least no one seemed to be developing
Lizzy’s tendency to maximize the use of swear words.

I slowed
to take a look at the zombie. He was wearing clothing, fresh and clean. That
was very unusual, strange enough that I stopped. The corpse came straight for
me, arms outstretched, teeth clicking as the mouth opened and closed, eyes
covered with a sickly, gray film, almost like mucus. All zombies had eyes like
that, with the stuff appearing upon reanimation in a matter of seconds. It was
one of those little mysteries no one had a clue about, though the guesses were
almost without number.

A single
bullet to the forehead dropped the thing.

“What
are we doing?” asked Mary, after she stopped her truck beside my Jeep.

Drawing
a digital camera from my pocket, I snapped a few pictures of the body with a
close up of the face. There were bite marks on the left hand and upper right
arm. What looked like a severed artery was evident. I took a shot of that as
well. It might be enough to cause the person to bleed out.

“Clothes
are clean,” I explained, “aside from dried blood. He might have turned in the
past few days, and since he was coming from the direction of the fire station,
the people there, or the Ranching Collective, might know who he was.”

“Think
it’s one of them?”

“Don’t
know”

Tara was
scanning the area with a pair of binoculars – wonderful things, those – while
her brother held his rifle ready. I didn’t see any other zombies, or people.

“I’m
going to drag him off the road.” I grabbed the corpse by his boots and pulled
him to the shoulder. “What mile marker are we on?” I saw one in the distance
ahead of us and made a mental note. “Never mind. I got it. We’ll tell them
where to find the body if it is one of theirs, so they can bury it.”

We
loaded back up and continued on our way.

*
* *

“So,
you’re Jenny.”

She
stuck out a hand. The woman was short, about five foot three, and poorly
dressed. I’m no fashion Nazi, but it’s generally easy to find a shirt that will
go with jeans. She failed in this. Not only were the styles completely
incompatible, but the colors clashed. It takes effort to clash with blue.
Really, it does.

“I’m
guessing you’re Jacob.”

“That
would be me.”

“Unless
I’m Jacob in disguise,” said Mary.

“Yeah,
we’ll just ignore that.” I waved the teenager off. “Go be productive.”

“You
should stay,” countered Jenny, hurriedly.

I
stiffened.

“It’s
not safe outside.” She began to shuffle her feet.

“Why?”
asked Tara

“We saw
a zombie,” added Mary. “We killed him dead dead and took pictures. He might be
one of yours.”

“Mary, a
little more sympathy, in case it was.”

Her head
dropped. “Sorry about that. The clothes were fresh…”

I pulled
the photo up on the digital camera’s view screen and showed it to Jenny, but
she shook her head.

“I don’t
know him. He could be one of ours or someone from Salt Lake City. We’ve had
several who were bitten at some point die while driving here.”

“How bad
are things? Harlan got the messages, but they were limited.”

“I think
it’s worse than we told you,” she replied, softly. “I only know a little, not
getting much more than you, but it really does seem bad. Mr. Myers will be here
soon. He met with others in a face to face conference, and he’ll have details.”

“Tara,
Dale, get up on the roof and keep a look out.” I was having a bad feeling about
this. “Mary, go with them. If you see anything, radio me.” We had our handhelds
hanging from our belts.

They
headed outside.

“How
long until he gets here?”

“An hour
or two, at most,” replied Jenny.

I
settled down to wait.

*
* *

“I’m
glad you came by.”

“Not a
problem.”

I wasn’t
feeling anywhere near as relaxed as I indicated. Brent Myers had arrived with
Tim and eight other men, all of whom were well armed. There was no indication
they meant us any harm, the opposite in fact, but I pulled Tara and Dale off
the roof. I wanted them in the room with me. Mary wanted to stay up there at
first, until Tim started asking if he could join her. Then she suddenly
remembered that Briana ordered her to take detailed notes. She was now sitting
beside me.

“How
much worse is it than we’ve been told?”

Mr.
Myers absentmindedly brushed some dust from his cowboy boots. “Things are bad,
more than we’ve let on.”

So not
good.

“I’d
like to know about the women and children we sent your way first, if you don’t
mind.”

“There
was an accident on the bridge,” I replied. “Harlan told you about that.”

“We got
the list you provided, of the dead and injured.”

“No one
was hurt beyond that,” I continued, “and the injured are all doing better. Yvonne
says they should recover fully. We had one of our own, Sofie, die recently.
She’d been sick for a long time however, and we knew it was coming.”

“Still
hard to lose friends.”

I got
the distinct impression he had seen quite a few people fall recently, or maybe
in his past.

“We’re
leaving Nebraska.”

That got
his attention, along with everyone else’s.

“Where are
you going?”

“Can’t
tell you. We found a good, defensible, hard to reach spot. Only a few of us
know about it, and it’s staying that way. We already sent a small group to
begin building walls and barricades before we start on housing. The rule is
that no one has to go, but once there you are staying put. After what we heard
about Salt Lake City, we decided a hidey hole was the way to go.”

He was
silent for a time.

“Nothing
to say?” prompted Mary.

“I have
plenty to say. I’m just not sure how to proceed. I can’t fault your logic. It
makes sense, more so after I tell you what’s happened here. I need to know if
any of our folk went there.”

“A few.
No pregnant women, kids, or the sick, not on the first run. I have a list. All
their family are free to head over to the castle and we’ll take them there. The
rule about staying put is going to be enforced. This is a spot to run away to,
assuming the raiders aren’t dealt with. If that happens the entire secrecy
thing becomes moot.”

“If you
have any strong men you can spare,” I added, after a pause of my own,
“particularly husbands of women you sent us, I’d appreciate them. We have a lot
of people but not many who can do significant work. We really need them for the
new spot. We have to do the cabins fast, storage areas, all sorts of things.”

“I can
have a few here tomorrow,” said Mr. Myers.

Mary
smiled. “That’s good cause we’re leaving the day after that so we can get home
in time for Jacob’s birthday. We’re going to bake him a black cake since he’s
so old.”

“I’m not
that old, although listening to you go on and on and on makes me feel that way
sometimes.”

“Mary
talks a lot,” said Dale, uncharacteristically adding to the conversation.

“Only
most of the time,” protested the fourteen year old.

I found
the list of names Briana had prepared and handed it to Mr. Myers. “We are
leaving the day after tomorrow, but I’m sure I’ll be back, probably many, many
times.”

“Assuming
we’re still alive, that would be appreciated.”

The bad
feeling was growing. Maybe I’d be lucky, and he was just being overly
pessimistic.

“Go
ahead and tell me what’s been happening and remember, we are way, way out,
barely connected to your communication network, so we probably don’t have all
that much in way of background information.”

I’m
going to leave out the dialogue and instead provide a summary of what we
learned. This is primarily because I kept asking questions for clarification,
including many to which there were no answers. Mary’s exclamations of “no way!”
was a contributing factor. While justified, those were far too distracting to
include.

Here is
the deal. The Ranching Collective’s numbers had swelled to five thousand with
the addition of refugees from Utah. The smaller homesteads were evacuated, save
a few where the occupants refused to leave. While there had always been people
in the Yellowstone area, quite a few more relocated there. Due to the rugged
terrain and limited access, it was considered a safe zone.

Preparations
for war were ongoing at the larger ranches. Trenches were dug and the occupants
were stockpiling food and weapons. There were a lot of people determined to
hold onto their homes, with the Utah folk at the top of this list. They already
ran once and were disinclined to do so a second time. Additionally, there was
nowhere to go. A few could join us, but we simply weren’t set up or prepared to
feed thousands. Brent Myers did say that if things got much worse, they would
be asking us to take the dependents, children and the elderly, freeing others
to fight.

In
addition to the scouts previously mentioned, the raiders had moved a large
force over the state line, attacking and destroying a small ranch. This was not
the one previously abandoned, the one the ranchers were keeping a watch on in
case the raiders returned. Nearly forty people were butchered, but they did
manage to take seventeen of the prophet’s cronies with them, based on the
bodies left behind. A single woman witnessed what happened. She was on a
message run and hid herself before anyone spotted her. The group was large, perhaps
three hundred, and consisted exclusively of adults, most of them male.

We also
learned from those fleeing Salt Lake City that many of the bastards had indeed
gotten sick, forcing the prophet to institute some sort of quarantine of his
own. The fact he then sent people into Wyoming indicates, though it doesn’t
prove, that he has access to more men. Maybe there was another band that had
not been exposed to the virus, or perhaps he’d kept a group back as a reserve.
No matter what the finer details were, the prophet was alive and well, the last
sighting being five days earlier, and clearly bent on continuing his
destruction of everything and everyone.

There
was some new information about the makeup of the raiders as well. Fingerprints
taken from the seventeen who died were run through a police database. Remember,
law enforcement was instrumental in setting up the refugee ranches, and they
have most of their equipment on hand. This includes copies of the FBI
fingerprint database. I’m not sure how they got that, or if it is something
they are supposed to have. But whether they had a copy legitimately or acquired
it from some FBI field office, the officers were able to identify several of
the enemy.

The mix
is strange, but not too far from what I would expect. Four were members of a
motorcycle gang, all with long criminal records. Most of the stuff was minor
enough to avoid serious jail time or had been pled down to a lesser charge.
However, they were definitely unsavory, violent, anti-social individuals. I
would say they were the sort to not take orders from anyone, but they had been
part of an organized gang so that wasn’t necessarily true.

Another
two were listed as homeless, again with quite a few arrests, mostly
panhandling, petty theft, and drugs. One was also described as having spent
time in a mental institution. These were even less likely to take orders or
belong to a structured group. Yet, they were now among the prophet’s followers,
and everything we knew said he was in charge and obeyed.

From
this very small, isolated sampling, I developed a model for the raiders. Are
you ready for my poorly informed, built with absolutely no education or
training in this field, theory? Well, I’m of the opinion that the prophet
gathered outcasts to his banner promising them the ability to strike at all who
had abused, disdained, or otherwise contributed to their sorry state, the fact
they were most likely held down by their own criminal activities and bad choices
being irrelevant.

Real
gang members are probably the core of his group. I can see a lot of them
surviving the early hours and fleeing towns and cities on their bikes. They
could avoid traffic jams and dangers that would trap a normal car, permitting
them to reach safety ahead of most others. They then began to band together. I
wonder when the prophet found them, or vice versa, and how he ended up in
charge.