Zombie Rules (Book 4): Destiny (40 page)

Kelly gasped at about the same time I hit the brakes. There were hundreds of them. A lot were dead, strewn about Concord Road, from the radio tower to the school. But there were still plenty of them alive.

“See if you can raise them on the radio,” I said as I reached into the glove box for ear plugs. Kelly grabbed the microphone and began calling for them as I rolled down the window, stuck the barrel out of the grating and started picking off stragglers before she yelled at me to stop.

“I can’t hear anything with you doing that!” I paused in my shooting as I heard Justin speaking on the radio. I took an earplug out.

“What’d he say?”

“He asked for us to drive over to the radio tower. They’re out of ammo and there are still zombies around the house.”

I was glad we were in our Ford Raptor truck. The enhanced ground clearance and four-wheel-drive capability allowed me to drive over the corpses lying in the roadway and down the drive leading to the tower. There were about twenty zombies crowding the small house, trying feebly to get in. When they saw us, they turned and launched themselves at us.

“Okay, cover your ears,” I warned before shooting again. When the last one dropped, Justin emerged from the front door. He had to push some of the dead bodies out of the way to get out.

“Those sons of bitches attacked in the middle of the night,” he said. “I didn’t think they could see at night, just goes to show you what I know. We ran out of ammo about an hour ago.” I gestured toward the back.

“I’ve got a hundred rounds in here, all five-five-six.” The three of them, Justin, Ruth, and True hastily loaded their magazines before inserting them into their rifles.

“We tried calling you on the radio,” Ruth lamented. I looked at Kelly. She shook her head.

“We never heard anything,” I said and wondered if someone had turned it off.

“We’ve had contact with the school. They said they were completely surrounded but were holding them off.” Before I had a chance to respond, Kelly was on the radio. Marc answered after a few tries. He sounded frightened. I motioned for Kelly to hand me the microphone.

“Have they gotten into the school?”

“I don’t think so,” Marc responded. “But they’re all around outside. We’ve killed a bunch though.”

“Alright, tell everyone we’re coming, so don’t shoot toward us. Concentrate on the rear of the school only.”

“Affirmative,” he replied nervously. I swapped seats with Kelly and let her drive.

“These are all the rounds I have left, so let’s make ‘em count,” I said with a grin as Kelly maneuvered down the road and into the school’s parking lot.

There were dozens of them lying around. Most had singular headshots, which was a good sign of shooting discipline, but there were several with additional bullet holes in their torsos.

“Looks like around thirty or so, do it,” I directed. Kelly began honking the horn, causing several of them to turn toward us. A couple of them even began running. We made short work of them.

“Did you see how they were acting?” Justin asked. “They were trying to get the doors open, just like they were doing at the radio tower.”

“Those last few that we killed, they were trying to run away,” True observed. “They still stupid, but not as stupid as they was.” I chuckled at his unique assessment.

“Well put,” I said and spoke into the microphone. “Alright, Marc, tell everyone to cease fire. We’re going to circle the school and pick off the remaining.” Marc acknowledged, and we found three more attempting to break through the back door.

“It was a simultaneous attack on both the school and the radio tower,” Justin contended. We were all walking around outside, surveying the damage.

“What about the church?” I asked. “Were there any issues?” Justin shook his head.

“We went over there yesterday evening and brought them back. No problems.”

“We didn’t see any when we were there,” Seth added and then looked embarrassed.

“I didn’t want anyone to feel threatened by us, so we left all of our weapons in the Stryker. Unfortunately, it backfired. When they attacked, we were trapped inside the school.” We made our way to the guard tower. There were several corpses stacked against the tower. Goober had put up a hell of a fight. We found him inside the tower and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He was literally torn to shreds. A lone zombie, some kind of female in a former life, was straddling his torso, feasting on his intestines. She was so focused on her meal she didn’t even notice us.

“Oh my God,” Kelly gasped. I didn’t know if Goober had turned or was going to turn, but I took no chances. I took aim and put a bullet in both of their heads.

“He never gave an alert,” Justin lamented. “True and I split radio duty. Neither one of us fell asleep, I can guarantee that.” He glanced over at Seth.

“Yeah, they had the school surrounded as well.” He pointed at the corpses. “After we started killing them, the others figured out our kill zones. I guess they were simply going to wait us out.”

There was one solitary picnic table that was bereft of blood and gore. I sat on top of it, surveying the grounds. The others joined me. Kelly sat close, sobbing quietly.

“He was a sweet guy,” she said. I nodded silently.

“How many, do you think?” Justin asked. I shrugged.

“Two hundred, give or take,” I let out a heavy sigh. “I thought we’d cleared this area out.” We sat there in silence, dejected silence, for several minutes. True had been walking around the area and came jogging up.

“Them things came up the interstate from Nashville,” he said. “They came down the road and then split into three groups. One group went to the church and the other two came this way and split up between the school and the radio tower. Then, the church zombies came down here.” He paused a moment.

“I don’t mean to speak badly of the dead, but if I were to guess, I’d say they caught Goober while he was sleeping. There ain’t no way they could have snuck up on him otherwise.” He found a clean spot on the ground and sat.

“Them things are starting to scare me. Are we going to burn them?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “We’ll use a backhoe and a dump truck.” And it’s going to take a lot of fuel, I thought. Seth cleared his throat.

“Forgive me for the inappropriateness of changing the subject, but has everyone decided on whether or not they’re going?” I cut my eyes at him. “Sorry to ask, but if everyone is going to go, I say let’s give Goober a Christian burial and not worry about cleaning up the rest of this mess.” He looked around at everyone. Tonya, who had been standing nearby, spoke up.

“There are a few of us who intend to stay,” she said. “But, I can’t speak for everyone.”

“What have you decided, Zach?” Raymond asked tentatively. Kelly raised her head off of my shoulder and looked at me. It hurt me to see her sad. I squeezed her hand, didn’t answer, and changed the subject.

“We’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up, but first we need to bury Goober.”

I called Janet on the CB, and after having to give her the proper password twice, I convinced her everything was okay, told her to keep the kids away from the school due to all of the stinking corpses and advised we’d be home later in the afternoon.

“Don’t worry about damaging the bodies,” I told Sheila, who had volunteered to run the backhoe. “Just scoop ‘em up and dump ‘em in the truck. Oh, and if you have any kind of respirator mask, I’d strongly recommend using it.”

The soldiers provided security while the rest of us hauled off the bodies. We’d done this before, but I don’t think you ever got used to it. The stench was nauseating, and looking at those things and knowing they were humans once made it depressing. We settled on the rock quarry on the side of Nolensville Pike to dump and burn them. Everyone helped out, although there was some grumbling and complaining.

“I don’t understand why we’re going through all of this trouble to burn them,” Kate finally said in a huff. I glanced at her. She was covered in sweat and looked to be in a foul mood. “Well?” she demanded.

“Tell her, Sammy.”

“We’re burning the corpses to prevent the spread of pestilence and disease.” He pointed at the pyre burning. “In order to fully cremate a human body, you have to burn them at a temperature of at least fifteen hundred degrees. Since we have no way of doing that, we use tires, which there are plenty of around here. Tires burn at about seven hundred and fifty degrees, but the smoke is toxic, so you don’t breathe it.” Kate didn’t like the answer.

“You’re starting to sound just like him,” she quipped.

“Thanks, Aunt Kate,” Sam replied proudly. I gave him a wink.

“We really appreciate it,” Ward said as we watched the pyre burn. “If we were left with this mess to clean up, it’d take us a month or more.”

“You two are really going to stay?” Kelly asked. Ward and Marc nodded in unison.

“We see no need to relocate,” Ward said.

“Even after this?” Kelly pressed. They nodded again.

“It’s our home,” Marc said simply. I understood how he felt.

“At least we’ll have company,” Kelly said as we lay in bed.

“Yeah. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but the good news is we’ll have a lot less mouths to feed.”

“I guess we can do this,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but nothing ever is, I guess.” She snuggled up closer and was asleep within a minute.

I woke up with a start to the sound of a child’s laughter. Thinking the munchkins had somehow gotten out of their bedroom and were now getting into who knew what, I sleepily wandered into the den. When my brain registered what I was seeing, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

“Hi,” she said quietly, almost a whisper. Julie was sitting on the couch. Little Macie was in her lap and was laughing in the way a small child laughs, without a care in the world.

“Hi,” I answered.

“Come sit with us, Zach.” As if in a daze I walked over to the couch and slowly sat, not daring to touch her. She sat there, gently stroking Macie’s hair.

“She’s so beautiful.”

“Like her mother,” I answered. Julie turned and looked at me then.

“What is your destiny, Zach?” Her question befuddled me. She did that frequently, back when she was still alive.

“I don’t understand.” God how I wanted to hold her, but I was afraid she’d disappear if I tried. She smiled as if she knew what I was thinking and continued stroking Macie’s hair.

“Your destiny isn’t here.” I tried to touch her now, but I couldn’t move. I felt my eyes growing heavy.

The sun’s rays shining through the slits of the shutters awakened me and I found myself sitting on the couch. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, my brain became alert. It took a good minute or so to realize it was simply a dream. I started to stand but suddenly realized little Macie was curled up beside me, sleeping soundly. I had no idea how she got there, and yet, I did.

I was still sitting there when Kelly walked in. She looked at us in puzzlement.

“What are you two doing?” she whispered. I motioned her to come sit beside us. When she did so, I leaned close and kissed her gently on the cheek.

“We’re going,” I said. Her eyes widened as I explained.

“You have to be very careful with your knife when cutting it open,” I said as I slowly started making a cut. I glanced over at Sam, who was grimacing while holding his bandanna over his nose.

“Do you know why?” I asked. He shook his head and I explained.

“A cow’s intestinal tract contains harsh bile. If any of it gets on the meat, it’ll make it unfit to eat, and it smells awful.” I gestured downward at the plastic tub lying on the ground immediately below the hanging carcass. “We’re going to use that tub to catch the stomachs and intestines. How many stomachs does a cow have?” I asked.

“Uh, I don’t know, one?” I smiled and worked my blade down from the neck. After a minute or two of careful cutting, I had the interior exposed. I motioned for Sammy to come closer.

“A cow has four stomachs. These are the first two.” I pointed. “When a cow eats, they bite big mouthfuls of grass or hay and swallow it immediately. It goes into these two stomachs. They’re full of stuff called microbes.”

“What does microbes do?” He was still holding the bandanna over his nose, but he was curious and not shying away.

“They start breaking down the food in kind of a fermentation process. That’s why cows fart so much. Now, when these two stomachs are full, cows will find a spot to settle down, like under a shade tree, and then they’ll cough it up and chew it. It’s called cud, that’s where you get the phrase, chewing the cud.” Sammy nodded. “Once they chew it up, then they swallow it again and it goes into one of the two other stomachs. That’s them right there.” I pointed at the omasum and abomasum.

“Those two stomachs contain enzymes, which digests the cud differently from the other two stomachs. Cow stomachs are also edible, but I’ve never tried it.” I gestured with my knife again.

“Now I’m going to, as carefully as I can, cut them out without rupturing them. If you think it smells bad now, you won’t believe how bad it’ll smell if I cut one open.” Sammy responded by holding his nose.

“Normally, we’d keep all of this and use it. The fat can be rendered down for soap, the blood can be used in the compost pile, things like that. But for now, we’re only keeping the meat for our upcoming travel. I’ll teach you all about it at a later time. So, today we’re only going to harvest the meat.”

“Oh.” Sammy watched me work and I soon had the entire digestive tract removed from the carcass.

“By the way, did I tell you why I picked out this particular gal from the rest of the herd?” Sammy shook his head. “She was getting up there in years and I’d noticed she had less muscle mass than she did last year. It was her time. Always take things like that into consideration, right?” He nodded thoughtfully as he took in my lesson.

“Another thing to consider about the smell.” Sammy wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you never quite get used to it. So, if this odor gets in the wind, there’s always a possibility any zombies wandering around nearby can smell it too. If they catch a whiff, you better believe they’ll head this way, so you’ve got to be aware of that, right? After all, it’s not going to be too long before you become a full-grown man. You’ll have a lot of responsibilities and will be expected to know things like this, right?”

“Yeah, I mean, yes sir.”

“Good. Frederick is still a little young, but when he gets to be your age, I expect you to help me train him as well. You think you can handle it?” Sammy nodded excitedly now. I laughed and nudged him. “I think you can too.”

“Will we have to train Macie too?” he asked.

“Oh, absolutely,” I said and looked around, thankful there were no women around who would’ve heard my exclusion of Macie. It’d be yet another reason for them to call me a chauvinist. I nudged him again.

“Justin and I have been talking about you.” His eyes widened.

“You have?”

“Yes, we have. You’re the oldest kid in this group. I don’t know anything about those kids up in Virginia, but you’re going to be taking up a leadership role one day with this group. Being a leader is hard work, but we think you’ve got the potential to do it.”

“The other day Doc Parsons asked me if I wanted to train to be a doctor.” I paused in my work and looked at him. It irked me for a brief moment, but then I realized Grant was merely trying to find a suitable apprentice to pass along his talents to.

“What did you say?” Sammy shrugged his shoulders. I gave him a brotherly smile.

“That’s a serious thing to think about, so take your time. If being a doctor is something that would interest you, I’m sure you’d be a good one.”

“Zach?”

“Yeah, bub?”

“Are we really going to move?” I stopped working and motioned for Sammy to walk outside with me. There were a couple of stools sitting nearby and I motioned him to sit. Immediately, one of the goats trotted up, expecting a treat.

“Yes, we are.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain, but back when I was your age the world was moving along at a fairly rapid pace. Now, we’re slowly but surely regressing backwards. If it were just me and Kelly and a few of the other adults, that wouldn’t be very important, but it’s extremely important for you kids that it doesn’t happen.”

“Why?”

“When you start back to school, they’ll explain it a lot better than I can, hopefully.”

“When do we leave?”

“Three days.” Our conversation was interrupted by a loud slamming of the back door. I walked to the entrance of the barn and saw Kelly making a beeline toward us with Maria following close behind. I groaned to myself.

“Sammy, when you get older you’ll find yourself having to deal with adult things that are rather unpleasant.” Sammy started to ask me what the heck I was talking about but I quickly motioned for him to be quiet.

“Your mother-in-law is being an insufferable bitch,” she growled between clenched teeth. I gave Sammy a knowing look and winked. “You’d think she was the only person who ever cooked a meal the way she’s bossing Maria and me around.”

It wasn’t the first time Janet had angered Kelly and I always invariably suffered. Before I could say anything, Rachel and Sarah stormed out of the house, spotted us, and made a beeline in our direction. This time I groaned aloud.

“My mother and I argued all the time,” Kelly continued. “But she was a saint compared to that woman.”

“My mother was never that bad,” Maria added and then she saw the tub of cow guts. Holding her hand over her mouth, she ran over to the fence rail and wretched.

“You need to take that bitch on a long drive and dump her somewhere,” Rachel grumbled angrily. I took my butcher’s apron off and handed it to Kelly.

“Alright, why don’t y’all help Sammy finish butchering the cow, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Those little girls could use a lesson or two in the kitchen,” Janet declaimed as soon as I walked in. I nudged a chair out from the table with my foot and sat down, careful not to touch anything with my dirty hands.

“You know, Janet, this seems to be an ongoing problem. You’re going to have to be nicer to people, especially Kelly.” Janet acted like she didn’t hear me and stirred a pot of vegetables. “I’m serious. We’ve had this discussion before. We’ve all got to get along and you need to start making a conscious effort to be nice.”

“Fine,” she finally said. “But she needs to learn how to cook.” I started to retort. Kelly knew how to cook just fine and Janet knew it. I suspected it had to do more with Janet feeling the need to have some control. I placed my hands on my knees and let out a long sigh. Janet glared at me.

“Is there something else you feel the need to lecture me about?”

“Are you aware in just a few months it’ll be four years?” She stopped stirring for a moment until she realized what I was talking about.

“Of course I am,” she snapped and started stirring again.

“And you and I are the only two left out of the original group?” She didn’t answer this time.

“You’re the grandmother of my children. That makes you family. But, Kelly is family too and for the life of me I don’t understand why you act the way you do sometimes.”

Janet finally looked at me then and I could see her eyes watering up. I had some other harsher things to say, but at that moment, I couldn’t do it. She looked sad, lonely, older. The wrinkles on her face seemed more pronounced these days. I softened my tone.

“I don’t want everyone hating you, okay?” After a moment, she nodded and turned her back to me so I couldn’t see the tears falling. “Well, it looks like you’ve got everything ready. I’ll go round everyone up and we’ll set up outside.” Janet didn’t respond and busied herself with the food.

“All right guys, I’ve made a checklist of everything that still needs to be done and who is responsible for what,” I said as we ate dinner. Everyone who had decided to go was here, sort of a last meal I suppose. We had some Tiki torches for lighting and Josue had found some of those mosquito repellent candles and had them spread out. It helped.

I pulled out a notepad and opened it to the first page. Rachel moved her chair closer and snatched it away from me with a smart-assed grin and began perusing it. They were both in pretty cheerful moods lately. I glanced at Kelly who grinned knowingly. Rachel fanned through the pages and looked up.

“Zach, this so-called checklist is about a hundred pages long,” she exclaimed. Seth leaned closer and eyed it.

“One hundred and twenty-two, to be exact,” I replied in between mouthfuls. “The mission order is comprised of the last nine pages, of which I made copies for each vehicle.” She arched an eyebrow at me.

“You wrote this out in just one day?” Raymond asked. I nodded casually.

“You think you could just give us an overview for the time being, big guy?” she asked amid a few chuckles.

“Sure. We’re going to take a total of nine vehicles. That’s why I made nine copies, one for each vehicle.” Actually, only eight vehicles would be making the trip, but only a few of us knew that.

“Which cars are we taking?” Cutter asked. I glanced at him briefly. I was going to go over all the details, including which vehicles we were going to take as I laid out the mission and being interrupted was irritating, but I held off with a sarcastic retort. Instead, I exercised patience as I counted off with my fingers.

“The Stryker, our full-sized van, our work truck, Sarah’s Humvee, Justin’s Humvee, my truck, the eighteen-wheeler, the dually, and Jorge’s SUV. Captain Kitchens will be leading the convoy in his Stryker.” I looked at the two brothers. “I figure you two can ride in the truck and pull rear security, yes?”

“We can handle it,” Shooter proclaimed and got a fist bump from his brother. I retrieved my notepad back from Rachel. I had blank spots beside each vehicle and filled in their names for the truck.

“Alright, tell me who wants to ride in what vehicle.”

“I want to ride in the Stryker!” Sammy shouted excitedly. I looked at Seth who smiled and imitated the brothers by giving Sammy a fist bump. We went down the list and I dutifully jotted down who was riding in what vehicle.

“Why so many vehicles?” Kate asked. “I mean, I’m not complaining, but it seems like we could fit everyone in half the number.”

“You’re right, we could,” I replied. It was then I noticed she was wearing makeup. In fact, Kyra was wearing makeup too. It seemed foolish.

“Let me explain. First, we have the fuel. Now, it’ll be
all
of our fuel, but we must take into account that one or more of the vehicles may break down along the way. If that happens, and we can’t fix the problem immediately, we’re going to unload it and abandon it. Simple. And then, there is a possibility we may pick up people along the way, or if we’re really lucky, we’ll find an abandoned vehicle or two full of items we can make use of.”

“Alright, Mister Zach, what else?” Seth asked. He was smiling appreciatively or condescendingly, I couldn’t decide which.

“All vehicles need a CB radio with sideband capability and shortened antennas.”

“Why’s that?” Cutter interrupted. I reminded myself to be patient, but it wasn’t easy. I imagine I wasn’t much different from other nineteen-year-olds when it came to patience; mine had a short life. I held up a finger to signify that he should wait for the explanation.

“Seth and Justin can correct me if I’m wrong, military doctrine is to stagger out the vehicles when travelling in a convoy to reduce the risk of something like an air strike. In this case, the convoy will travel closely; the first vehicle will always be within eyesight of the last vehicle. We’ll use the radios to communicate but we don’t want their transmission range to extend any further than line of sight. So, the easiest way to do this is with CB radios equipped with a short antenna.”

“A short antenna?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, the wattage of a radio and the antenna is what gives a radio range. We want to limit our range.” I pointed at Josue.

“Josue has volunteered to take care of this. Jorge and I are going to help him.”

“No long talkie-talkie on radios with short antennas,” Josue said. “Short words only.”

“Why not?” Kate asked. She was being unusually inquisitive and had been argumentative on more than one occasion in the past. I couldn’t decide if it was Shooter’s influence or if she was a young version of Janet. “I mean, why are we limiting our range and why no long talkie-talkie?” She made quotation marks with her fingers when she mimicked Josue. Only Shooter laughed. Justin cleared his throat.