Zombie Rules (Book 4): Destiny (45 page)

“The key phrase is used to,” Joe said. “I’ve got no desire to be involved with any government of any kind, anymore.”

“Do y’all live in Bristol?” I asked. He shook his head.

“We’ve got a place out in the east end of the county. Bristol was too dangerous. I guess every city was about the same when the outbreak first began.”

“How is it now?” Earl asked. Joe shrugged noncommittally.

“It’s calmed down some, but you’ve still gotta be careful.”

“Yeah, Nashville is about the same,” I said. Joe stretched and smiled.

“Why don’t we do some trading?” he suggested.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Raymond replied with his own grin and motioned toward the van and trailer.

We watched in amusement as the two men soon became involved in the preliminary verbal jousting and I had to admit, Raymond was indeed a good bullshitter. He used a lot of preamble and foreplay before mentioning what we had available for trade. When he did, Joe actually emitted a small gasp and I could have sworn I heard his stomach growl. He recovered quickly and tried to regain control by throwing out a challenge.

“Well now, I’m not a man to call anybody a liar, but I’d sure like to see some proof of what you’re claiming.” Justin and Jorge helped me. Soon, we had one of Joe’s tables filled with several sirloin steaks and two mason jars of honey. Raymond smiled smugly, knowing victory was his.

When it was all said and done, we had all of the bananas and a goodly amount of strawberries to boot. When the bartering was completed, I suggested we go ahead and grill some of the steaks. Joe and Riley readily agreed.

“Do you want your son to join us?” I asked. Joe thought a moment and then gave a hand signal. After a minute, I saw a figure emerge from the dense bushes on the opposite end of the interstate. He too was wearing a homemade ghillie suit similar to Riley’s. He was a little bit shorter than me, lanky, with a ponytail similar to his father’s and a scruff of a beard on his chin.

“He’s named after me, so we call him Little Joe.” Introductions were made all around and then I went back to the trailer to get the fancy Weber grill I’d taken from the farm. I didn’t realize Joe and Riley had followed me until I heard a long low whistle from behind me.

“You people have a little bit of everything in there,” he remarked. I nodded affably and handed down the grill.

“We’re relocating; I didn’t see any reason to leave everything behind.” I jumped out of the trailer, shutting the doors and padlocking them. Joe seemed a little put off by that. He obviously wanted to look over everything we had.

“If you don’t mind my asking, why are you relocating? Is it that bad where you came from?”

“We had a few setbacks with cattle and crops, probably nothing you haven’t gone through as well.”

“Doesn’t seem like that would be the deciding factor,” he said as we walked back to the group.

“If I didn’t have family, I don’t think I would have left, but I have to take their welfare into consideration.” Before I could speak further, the little Tasmanian devil ran up from wherever he was and attacked one of my legs in a bear hug. I hoisted him up on my hip.

“This is why,” I responded as Janet walked up holding Macie. “These are my two kids and this is Janet, my monster-in-law.” Janet glared at me as Joe laughed and introduced himself. Macie hid her face in the cleavage of Janet’s shirt, which if I didn’t know any better I’d say there were a couple of extra buttons open that normally weren’t. Joe laughed again.

“She’s a shy one. So, your decision has to do with your kids.”

“Yep. There are several things that Mount Weather can offer that I can’t provide for,” I continued as we all walked back to the main group, which were all gathered around Joe’s van.

“Such as?” he asked.

“Medical care, a formal education for the kids,” and me, for that matter. “A military presence, and an overall greater access to resources.” I glanced at Janet, who was trying, and succeeding, in making pointed eye contact with Joe.

“Hmm,” he replied. Whether he was hmming at my statement or at Janet’s cleavage, I had no idea.

Jorge had rounded up some kindling, took charge of the grill and started getting a fire going. Josue had gotten our folding chairs out of the truck and everyone was getting comfortable. Little Joe had walked over to the side of his father’s van, stripped down to his waist and was doing his best to clean himself up with a washrag. Both Kate and Kyra were giving him the once over too, much to Shooter’s displeasure. Kelly pretended not to notice, which was nice.

“How about you guys, what kind of community do you have set up?” Seth asked.

“We have a few farmers, locals and their spouses.” He intentionally didn’t tell the specific numbers. Seth noticed and looked at me suspiciously, but he didn’t push it. Joe picked up on our tacit exchange.

“A couple of winters ago, we had a cholera outbreak. We lost a few people, but I’m not sure I’m trusting enough to tell you our actual numbers.”

“We understand,” I said. “May I ask how it happened?”

“When everything went bad, a group of us banded together. We had a decent operation going, for the most part. Everyone had job assignments.” Joe made a face and shook his head. “We had this one knucklehead, he was a poster child for laziness. We all know the type. Well, unfortunately, he was assigned water duty. Come to find out he wasn’t boiling the water we were drawing from a well.”

“And the well was contaminated,” Grant said. Joe nodded. “It’s a wonder all of you didn’t die.” He then gestured toward me.

“He distills his drinking water.” Joe looked at me questioningly.

“Filtering removes sediment, boiling kills bacteria, but only distilling can remove heavy metals.”

“That’s a lot of time and effort involved. Are you certain there’re heavy metals in your water?”

“I don’t have any test kits, so no, I’m only guessing, but think about it. The groundwater is contaminated by toxic spills everywhere. I think it’s prudent, especially when it comes to my kids.” Joe continued staring at me as he grunted thoughtfully.

“How did you people contain the cholera?” Grant asked, his interest now piqued.

“Well, sir, one of the first to get sick and die was our doctor. We quarantined the rest.”

“Did anyone who had become sick survive?” he asked. Joe frowned.

“Quite a few died. Riley got pretty sick, but she lived through it.” I looked over at her. She smiled demurely. At least she wasn’t glaring at me anymore.

“At one point, she’d dropped down to about fifty pounds.”

“Now, I’m stronger than ever,” she exclaimed and flexed her right bicep. She indeed had muscular arms, small, but muscular. Just like Andie.

“Nice,” I said. She smiled again and then I saw Kelly looking at me out of the corner of my eye. I turned to Joe and changed the subject.

“How has it gone with the infected?” I asked.

“About what you’d expect. Once we figured out they can’t do shit when it’s below freezing, we went on a lot of search and destroy missions. We killed off quite a lot.”

“We’ve killed the shit out of them,” Riley declared.

“We lost a few people though,” Joe said. “It hasn’t been easy.”

“Are you people everyone that’s left over from Nashville?” Riley asked.

“No, there’s a few who decided not to join us and stayed behind.”

“Any men?” she asked, and cast a quick glance at Jorge this time. Joe spoke up.

“My little girl is in heat.”

“Dad!” Riley scolded. Even through the grime, I could see her cheeks redden. Little Joe, who had emerged from the side of the van wearing a semi-fresh baseball jersey, chortled.

“Yeah, my son is too,” Joe added. His son was suddenly quiet and started blushing too. I pointed at the jersey.

“Did you play baseball in high school?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, thankful that I changed the subject.

“He loves his baseball,” Joe added. “He had the state record for homeruns and was going to have a full ride at Virginia Tech when it all broke out.”

“Now he hits homeruns upside zombie’s heads,” Riley said. “It’s gross when their heads bust open.”

“At least, he takes his sexual frustrations out with a bat instead of using all of our spare batteries on a vibrator.” Most of us laughed loudly now. Riley’s cheeks turned even redder. She stood quickly and grabbed the wash rag from her brother before disappearing behind the van.

“Starting about a year ago, we began noticing a distinct change in behavior in quite a few of them,” I said and told them some of the stories.

“Have you seen anything similar, Joe?”

“A little bit,” Joe admitted, but didn’t elaborate.

“What’s the largest horde you guys have seen?” Grant asked.

“I suppose the largest was during the initial outbreak. The whole city of Bristol seemed to be infected.” He thought for a minute.

“A lot of them died off after the first year. We ventured a little way into the city from time to time and tested the waters. The stench from the rotting bodies is just awful.”

“You got that right,” Little Joe said. “Riley’s BO smells exactly the same.”

“Asshole,” Riley retorted from behind the van.

“We’ve killed quite a few as well. Let’s see, I’d say in the last year the biggest group of them we’ve seen together at one time was about five hundred to a thousand. What do you think, son?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he answered. “I mean, I didn’t take the time to count each one of them and Riley can’t count that high.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from a dumb jock,” Riley retorted as she emerged. She’d wiped most of the grime off of her face and it looked like she’d even brushed her hair a little.

“How did y’all react?” I asked. Joe grinned and held his hands up in a shrug.

“We hid.”

“They came out of the city,” Riley said as she blew a tuft of hair out of her face. “They were all walking together.”

“We don’t know where they were going but they were walking south,” Joe added. I nodded and was about to give my opinion when Cutter spoke up.

“Yeah, we’ve been studying them,” he said with a little bit of puff in his voice. “There are some of them that’re evolving and they’ve figured out they need to travel in order to find fresh food sources.” Riley looked at him curiously.

“What kind of studying?” she asked. Cutter obviously wasn’t prepared for that kind of question and started stammering.

“Mostly through observation,” I said, hoping to stop him from making himself out to look like an idiot. I mean, we all knew he wasn’t all that smart, but he was a reflection of us.

“Although, we captured one a while back and conducted some rudimentary tests.”

“No shit?” Joe asked. I nodded and pointed at Grant.

“Doctor Parsons and these two Marines were with a unit called the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force when the plague broke out. Later on, they spent some time at the CDC. They’d conducted a lot of research.”

“Did anyone figure out the cause?” Joe asked.

“It is a previously unidentified virus, but a lot of data was lost or otherwise compromised. The group of scientists at the CDC had made significant progress.”

“I must admit, I’m confused,” Joe said. “Doctor, if you were at the CDC, doing research with other doctors. There were other doctors, correct?” Grant nodded. “Then why are you here, now, instead of at the CDC?” Joe looked at us, waiting for an explanation. The three Marines spent the next hour telling the story, but left out the part about my kids and me. When they were finished, the look on Joe and his kids’ faces was one of wonder.

“Well, now, that is one hell of a story,” Joe said.

“You must be one tough motherfucker,” Riley said while looking admiringly at Justin. I suppressed a smile when I saw Ruth’s eyes narrow.

“But you never did say if a cure was developed.” Grant moved his mouth a few times in that annoying way of his when he was preparing a response.

“Possibly,” he finally answered. “But, there have been no clinical trials and it has not yet been manufactured in large quantities. Yet another reason to relocate to Mount Weather.” Joe sat up in his seat.

“You said, not in large quantities? What does that mean?”

“Grant is one of those people that when you hear of something he does, you sit back and go hmm,” I answered. “One of the crazy things he did was he inoculated himself with a test serum.” Everyone who was listening started and I think there was even a collective gasp. Up until now, the only people who knew were Justin, Ruth, Kelly, and me.

“Well, does it work?” Joe finally asked. There were a few nervous chuckles, but even so, everyone was waiting for Grant’s answer.

“I administered the dose to myself back last winter. Six months and fourteen days ago, to be exact. I had flu-like symptoms for the next forty-eight hours, but as you can see, I appear to be healthy with no obvious side effects, but the only way to be certain is to be purposely exposed to the virus, under strict conditions, of course.”

“Are you going to do it?” Cutter asked. Grant looked at him and smiled ruefully.