Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (15 page)

Trudy looked thoughtful, and a sadness crept into her
eyes. “Your father had great respect for Michael. They actually had a lot in common.” She paused and forced back the tears that threatened to flow again. “Dad told him about Jack’s manual. It had to be very early in the pandemic because the phones were still working. I think his family had a close call on the mainland, so he took everything Jim said to heart. Michael is a typical Carboni—smart, bullheaded, and able to do the work of about twelve people at once. Do you know he left some high-powered executive job to run a bed-and-breakfast and be a fishing guide? He did end up running for town council . . .”

“I think I do remember something about that,” Christy answered, “but I guess I was too caught up in my own life to pay much attention.”

Trudy looked her daughter in the eye. “He could have made it. We know there must be pockets of survivors scattered around, and you’re right about the bridge to the island. I am certain that Michael Carboni used the information from your father to secure himself and his family, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he managed to fortify an entire community against the infected.”

Christy glowed with satisfaction. “I knew it. I just had a feeling when Father O’Brien told Gracie he’d made contact with a group of survivors on an island in Lake Huron—“

“I don’t mean to keep repeating myself, but don’t be so quick to jump to the conclusion you seek,” Sal cautioned. “Do you have any idea how many islands there are in Lake Huron?”

“A gazillion, I’m sure,” Christy replied, “but how many do you think have huge radio towers? How easy do you think it is to get a signal from up in Lake Huron
down to Middle Bass?”

Vicki
e looked from Christy to her husband. “It’s plausible” she conceded. “We shouldn’t underestimate the advantage of following Jack’s protocol, especially early on. That, and the ability to communicate large distances by radio—“

“I think ‘plausible’ is a bit of a stretch, but I’d agree to ‘not impossible’ at this point,” Sal interjected.

Christy flipped a piece of bacon at Sal. “I’ll take it,” she said. “Not impossible is a start. Before we leave, I’d like to get a message out to Father O’Brien.”

Trudy reached out and covered
Christy’s hand with her own. “I’ve really missed your stubborn streak, Christy Esmeralda Carboni Smith.” Christy cringed at the mention of her middle name. Trudy sighed. “You know Esmeralda was your grandmother’s name, and there’s not a darn thing wrong with it.” Her eyes flickered before she added, “Did you know that Michael’s middle name is James, after your father?” Almost instantly, the clanking of silverware and the shuffling of feet ceased; the room fell totally silent as everyone around the table remembered Jim—how he lived, and how he died.

The spell was broken when Addison walked over to Christy and climbed in her lap. “I miss my dad too,” she said, “
but I think I’ll have a little piece of him back some day when I have a baby.” She patted Christy’s stomach. “You will let me babysit, won’t you? I’m really great with babies. I used to have twin baby brothers, and my mom told me they loved me better than anyone else in the world.”

Christy teared up once again, but this time there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. “Of course you can babysit—in fact, I’m counting on it. It seems you have a lot more experience than I do.”

Addison smiled and hopped down. “Did you know you can take hot showers here? I think a hot shower would be good for you and the baby.”

“We run garden hose through our compost pile, and all that horse manure really heats things up,” Trudy explained
, dabbing at her eyes. “Addison, why don’t you and Jenny give Sal and Vickie the grand tour while Christy takes that shower?”

“I’ll have to let Sal take the tour without me,” Vickie explained. “My ride to The Castle should be here any minute.” As if on cue, a tan SUV pulled in the driveway.
Vickie hugged everyone before heading for the door, relieved for the opportunity to focus on cold, unemotional science for a while. When she got to the vehicle, she was surprised to see Doc Redders himself behind the wheel, looking unusually pale and disheveled.

“Thank God you’re here,”
he said as she climbed in the passenger seat. “You’re not going to believe what I have to show you.”

CHAPTER 9

Maddy snorted
, then quietly announced, “Well, it’s official: we have cowboys!”

“What are you talking about?” Zach asked
.

She turned from the scope, “See for yourself.”

He let out a mock sigh of exasperation as he stepped over to take a look. Sure enough, humans on horseback were interspersed among the massive herd. “Of course, somebody has to keep all those cattle moving.”

Luke frowned, “Why was
n’t I focusing on the people we knew would have to be directing the cattle? I mean, it’s not like we thought the cattle were being moved along like the hunters.”

Maddy shrugged,
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. We’ve been pretty busy looking for Barnes and being overrun by an army of the infected. The massive cattle herd was an unexpected bonus. I mean, we knew they were out there, but they weren’t really on our ‘to-do’ list.”

“
I should have thought of it,” Zach mused. “When I was a little kid I wanted to be a cowboy. I used to watch old westerns and daydream about it.”

“Hey,” Maddy joked
, “We really don’t care about what you were dreaming of last year; we have to plan for the here and now.” She squirmed uncomfortably and lowered her voice. “Luke doesn’t like killing people.”

Zach looked surprised, “
Good lord, I don’t want to kill a living person either! And, for the record, I was over the cowboy thing by the time I hit Little League.”

“
Too bad you didn’t follow through with that cowboy thing, Zach,” Luke added. “We could use some of those skills right now.”

Maddy interjected, “For what it’s worth, I
think I can ride a horse. I have a bunch of mini 4-H ribbons to prove it. I was nine, but I haven’t ridden one since.”

“I did get some horse training back at The
Castle,” Zach explained, “but that’s the extent of my real-world riding experience.”

“Yeah,” Luke add
ed, “my only experiences took place out at Trudy’s ranch too.” He looked thoughtful. “Being able to ride a horse may or may not come in handy right now. We need to figure out a way to disrupt the movement of these cattle, cowboys or not.” He peered through the scope for a minute, then turned back to his friends. “So here’s the plan: we keep watching their progress, and we put our heads together to think of some ideas about how to start a stampede without having to confront the humans guiding the herd.”

An
hour later, the house the teens were hiding in was awash in a sea of cattle moving through the upscale neighborhood. Luke found it difficult to not picture himself in the midst of a real-life western as the sounds of the massive herd and its cowboys floated through the air just outside the door of the mudroom. He’d left Zach and Maddy watching the cattle while he guarded the first floor of the house. His friends were top-notch killers of hunters and all other flesh-eaters, but neither of them had ever been forced to fight humans trying to kill them. Luke didn’t want either of the two trying to figure out if they had the stomach for it when they were surrounded by what seemed to be an infinite number of cattle and dozens of cowboys.

The hands on Luke’s watch slowly passed midnight, and three more hours crept by before what he had feared might be an endless herd of cattle finally finished moving through the neighborhood on their way toward the Ohio River. Maddy had just come downstairs to tell him that, though it was hard to be sure in the cover of night, it looked like the herd was being halted to rest on the relatively flat ground north of Rineyville. She was heading back upstairs when Luke first heard the unmistakable sound of horseshoes clattering on the streets outside.

“Go get Zach and you two
back me up from the hallway,” he whispered.

“What about the front door?”

“I pushed a bunch of furniture up against it when I first came downstairs, then I stuck screwdrivers and butcher knives through the trim. They’ll probably look for the path of least resistance and come in the way we did.”

Maddy nodded her understanding before heading off to get Zach, and Luke considered their options as he listened to what seemed to be numerous horses and men moving about the neighborhood. He assumed that most of the cowboys would be looking for food and shelter while a smaller group guarded the herd. With dozens of houses in the area the enemy horsemen had plenty of homes to choose from, but sure enough, within a few minutes he heard footsteps approaching the back door.

Maddy had already told him that all of the cowboys appeared to be wearing NVGs, so Luke knew that he wouldn’t have an advantage in the dark. He had shut the interior door leading into the kitchen from the mudroom, and now he pushed himself into the shadow of a large buffet set against the wall next to the entrance. With no way to let Zach and Maddy know what he was planning, Luke could only hope that they followed his lead without this situation developing into a noisy melee.

Moments after hearing the back door swing open, followed by footsteps in the mudroom, Luke watched four cowboys cautiously enter the kitchen with pistols in hand.

“Holy hell!” one of the men exclaimed. “This place stinks like a dead possum.”

Another voice
—one still transitioning from boy to man—cut through the darkness, and Luke noticed that it belonged to the shortest of the cowboys. He was leaning over the infected woman’s corpse still lying on the tile in the middle of the room. “Right here, Larry. Somebody busted the brains outta this thing, and it wasn’t too long ago.”

All of the men gathered about the dead body to gawk for a moment,
then Larry gave the corpse a hard kick that sent it sliding into the cupboards. The other cowboys jumped at the sudden movement, and Larry roared with laughter. “You’re all still a bunch of jumpy little girls,” he sneered. “I’m so sick of all you greenies. Probably one of your little friends stopped in here earlier and didn’t see fit to let anybody know we have zombies in the neighborhood.”

“Let’s pick a another house,” a different voice suggested, and Luke breathed a sigh of relief.

Larry scowled. “So what do you other boys think? You wanna go find a nice, clean kitchen?” He grabbed the smallest cowboy by the collar. “What about you? You’re the little bitch who stopped me from shootin’ that stray dog. I say we need to toughen you up.”

“Aw, leave him alone, Larry
—“ the young man who wanted to move on started to say, but his voice was cut short by Larry’s fist to his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

“None of you boys should even think about tryin’ to tell me what to do.” He glared at his companions and spat on the ground. “
Y’all need to learn about discipline, and followin’ the chain of command. I’m in charge here, and you’ll do whatever I say. I say junior here should go check out the rest of this place, and we can make a game of it.” He slapped the youngest cowboy on the back. “I bet you’ll pee your pants in less than five minutes.” He gave the boy a little shove and barked, “Get a move on!” 

Luke knew it was now or never. He still felt a visceral disgust at th
e thought of harming living humans, but he loved Maddy and Zach more than he hated hurting the people who’d joined up with Barnes. He thought about Gracie and everyone else he loved back home, all of them counting on Jack’s handpicked team to protect them. Within a few seconds he determined that he just needed to deal with the older man, then reassess the situation.

He
cleared his mind and allowed the coldness of righteous anger to flood his system, then calmly used the edge of the buffet as a shooting rest as he carefully shot Larry through the neck with his silenced .22. Luke’s bullet hit the spine he was aiming for at what he estimated was a distance of ten feet. The short, stocky cowboy immediately fell to the ground, only able to bobble his head and gasp for breath. His men had no idea what had happened, and they looked to one another in confusion.

Luke quickly flipped his NVG’s onto his forehead and switched on a powerful flashlight, the beam blinding the
young cowboys still wearing their night vision.

“Hands in the air
now, or I will shoot you too!” he demanded.

The thoroughly surprised
and now blinded young men did as they were told.

Luke’s voice rang out again, cold and menacing. “Lie down on the floor, then place your hands behind your heads.”

Once again, the cowboys followed the hidden shooter’s commands without hesitation.

“Zach, come out here and zip-tie their hands behind their backs. Maddy, keep your gun on them. If any of them make
s any move at all, blow their brains out. I’m keeping my gun on them from this angle.”

A few minutes later the prisoners were securely tied and disarmed, and Luke had pulled his ever-present wad of duct-tape out to cover their mouths.
Even though Larry appeared to be dead, Luke put a second bullet into the back of his skull. He then told Zach to lead the others into an interior bathroom one-by-one as Maddy covered them with her pistol. As soon as the prisoners were secured, Luke went into the mudroom and blocked the back door as well as he could with the items at hand. A kitchen chair wedged between the bottom of the door and a small gun-safe looked as if it would hold for a while, so he switched places with Maddy and told her to come and get him if anybody tried to force their way inside.

Luke went into the bathroom and told Zach to assist Maddy; then he made sure there were no windows before closing the door and turning on his flashlight again. He propped the device between two shampoo bottles so that the beam was reflecting from the mirror over the vanity, a trick that lit the entire room well enough to clearly see the prisoners huddled near the toilet. Two of the cowboys appeare
d to be about his age, and the third looked even younger. Luke crouched down on his heels and explained the situation to his captives.

“Me and my friends specialize in killing the infected, not humans. We don’t like to kill people, but Larry looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t have surrendered without a fight so I felt like I had to take him out.
”

The three frightened young men nodded their understanding as Luke continu
ed, “We’re General Barnes’ enemies, and you’re herding the cattle that feed his monsters.”

The prisoners hesitated for a moment before finally nodding their agree
ment with what seemed to be a sense of shame. Luke filed that information away before going forward with the interrogation.

He looked at the youngest cowboy and gently explained, “I’m gonna remove the tape from your mouth so you can talk to me. If you shout, or make any loud noise, I will kill you instantly.” He pulled his dagger for effect, looking carefully into the kid’s eyes to make sure he understood the consequences.
The boy looked scared but nodded his agreement, so Luke slowly pulled the strip from the prisoner’s mouth and waited a moment to see what he would do now that he could speak.

“Mister,
please just listen to me for a minute. None of us likes General Barnes or approves of what he’s doin’ to the country.”

Even though the young man sounded sincere,
Luke tried to look skeptical. “Okay, go on,” he prompted.

“Me and my granny were livin’
with a purty big group of survivors down on the Cumberland River in Tennessee. A soldier showed up in a helicopter and called us rebels, said if we didn’t surrender they’d attack us. Next day they sent thousands of infected against our fort, the fast, strong ones. We killed a bunch of ‘em, but more just kept comin’ till they got over our walls. It was a slaughter. Maybe half of us escaped on boats and started headin’ downstream. Granny was sick, so I stayed with her when we came to the small settlement these fellas and their families was livin’ in. The rest of the folks from our group kept movin’ down the river. After hearin’ our story these people decided to surrender when the same soldier showed up at their place a few weeks later.

“The soldiers under
General Barnes’ command forced us to start workin’ the fields, threatenin’ to feed family members to the infected if we didn’t do what they said. When some officer came through a few weeks later and asked for volunteers to herd cattle I joined up, same with these two guys. My granny died ‘cause they wouldn’t feed her when she couldn’t work the fields. I ain’t got anyone back there, but these fellas was told that their families would be hurt if they ran away or anything.”

The young man finally stopped talking so Luke asked, “Where were you taking these cattle?”

“I ain’t a hundred percent sure, but the word goin’ around was that we were drivin’ ‘em up into Indiana.”

“Why would you be doing that?”

“Larry said that Barnes uses the cattle to keep his monsters fed when he’s movin’ ‘em around the country.”

“And
you obviously know that he’s using those monsters to kill or enslave other groups of survivors?” Luke accused.