Snareville (9 page)

“
Normally, you could make Chicago in a couple hours. Don’t know what it takes these days. The CDC up there said they’d take you.”

Kenny leaned against the roof of the car. Mueller stared straight ahead.

“
Taylorville, Indiana is a few hours farther along. You’ve got the directions. They said they’d take you, too. Those're your choices.”

“
Great. Another hick town like this one, or pushing a broom at the CDC. Who’s going to take care of Daffy?”

“
Your girl will be fine,” Tony said from the other side of the car. His deputy badge still hung around his neck. “She’s got friends she can move in with. They’ll have room for when the baby gets here.”

Mueller's eyes shifted. “You’re all going to die out here. Peoria isn’t that far south, you know, and Princeton is still full of walking dead.”

“
Maybe,” Kenny said. “But at least we won’t have
you
around.”

They turned to the sound of hoof beats coming up behind them. Cori thundered up on her Thoroughbred. She was decked out in riding togs with a whip tucked into the top of her right boot. She swung off her horse and walked over to the driver's side of the car.

“
Rachel wanted you to have these,” she said.

She handed a jelly jar through the open window. Inside the clear liquid floated two pale, pink orbs.

“
She says this way, you’ll always know where your balls are.”

Gagging, Mueller took the jar. “You’re all a bunch of ignorant savages.”

“
Yep,” Tony replied, grinning. “And we’re okay with that. You better get goin'. And, you come back here, you’ll be shot on sight.”

“
Fuck you.” Mueller looked at Corri. “And the horse you rode in on.”

The others stepped away from the car as the professor put it in gear and drove off.

An explosion got my attention. It wasn’t a gunshot—no report to it. More of a deep boom than a sharp crack.

I keyed the two-way radio and put my team on full alert. It was mid-September, almost five months since the outbreak. A lot of the Zeds in Princeton had moved on. We pretty much owned the north end of town. That was why the explosion surprised me.

We were on another supply run to Wally World. We always left the back doors to the tire-and-lube center unlocked, so we could get in and out in a hurry. We'd barricaded and chained the front doors of the main building long ago. Now it sounded like someone wanted to open those doors the hard way. No telling what we might run into out there.

Rounding the corner, we saw them. There stood a group of scavengers. A group of
bad
scavengers, from the looks of them. I saw an open-top Jeep, an old pickup with hog panel wiring welded over the windows, and an old Cavalier. Ten people argued in front of the doors, decked out in the best of the post-apocalyptic look: leather vests, chains, shaved heads, heavy makeup, lots of tattoos. A bunch of Mad Max wannabes.

They were too involved in the argument over the failure of their little joke of a bomb to pay us any attention, so I had my five armored pickups roll into position behind them. None of the group even looked our way. They probably didn’t hear us. Explosions tend to make one a bit deaf for a little while, and my trucks still had the stock exhaust on them. I don’t like to draw any extra attention to my crew when we pull a raid.

Finally, though, I had Bill blow the horn. That got their attention. They turned to find themselves looking down the barrel of my AR-15.

“
You folks realize that little blast just alerted every Zed on this side of town?” I asked. “Now we’ve all got about ten minutes before they find their way into the lot.”

“
Hey, look,” said one of them. “It’s Jerry Garcia.”

“
Naw,” another replied. “Too young. He’s a blonde Tommy Chong.”

“
Chong’s old, too. He looks like Garcia.”

Another argument began. I was wrong about this crew. Less Mad Max and more Beavis and Butthead.

“
Boys,” I broke in, “we either gotta leave now or move faster before the deaders come for dinner.”

“
We’re not boys. We’re Bone Crushers. Watch your mouth, asshole. I’m Worm. This’s my crew.”

The leader sported a sky-blue Mohawk that stood up tall from the top of his head. War paint covered his face, and his outfit, like those of the others in his bunch, was made up of chains and leather. I supposed he probably scared the hell out of some types of people.

“
Worm, is it? You name yourself after your dick or your IQ?”

He bristled. “Nobody talks to
me
that way! Now you're gonna die, and we're gonna take that pretty truck of yours!”

Yeah, he was dumber than I thought.

I slapped the roof of my truck. Twenty-five Raiders stepped from the cabs, all armed with AR-15s stoked with thirty-round mags.

“
Do I have your attention now?” I asked.

Worm just nodded.

“
Now, as I was saying, we’re down to about eight minutes before the Zeds come to investigate. We work together, or we leave.”

Out of necessity, an agreement was reached.

We pulled around back to the shop area. We backed in two of my trucks, plus Worm’s old pickup and Jeep. A few guys set up a perimeter outside. Ten of my crew members disappeared inside the store to do our shopping. Five of Worm’s groupies did the same. The rest of us stayed outside to man our positions.

It wasn’t long—five minutes, by my watch—when the first Zed stumbled around the corner. I dropped her with a head shot that splattered her black brains all over the blue wall.

More corpses followed. My crew and I had made this run a couple times, and we didn't have too many problems. But we'd done it quiet. This time, Worm and his crew drew way too much attention.

Before long, the Zeds converged on the parking lot from all directions south and west. My crew is trained for disciplined fire. We only take head shots, and only when the deaders are in range. One hundred yards or closer. Worm's ragtag bunch of scavengers, on the other hand, just threw a bunch of lead downrange and hoped they hit something. Pretty soon, a hundred or better deaders were stumbling our way.

After five minutes of holding them off, I ran into the shop to see how far along we were. Not far enough. We’d have to come back when this shit storm died down.

Back outside, the gunfire intensified. More Zeds. I went back out to check on the progress.

Two of Worm’s scavengers nearly ran me down as they backed out their beat-up Cav. Another three stood beside my trucks. I turned around to see Worm’s Jeep and the pickup blast out from the garage door. The vehicles peeled around the corner, and the car took up the rear. His guys on the ground screamed after them. Two of them took off running as the vehicles hit the street. I don’t know if they really expected to just run right through the swarm of deaders, but they didn’t make it.

The Zeds fell on them and started their meal in no time flat. Their screams rose above the moans of the swarm. My crew members know the rule: you get infected within rifle range, you die. Our bullets shattered the skulls of Zeds and scavengers alike. Left behind to stand with us, one of Worm’s boys turned his gun on me. Young guy. Looked Mexican. Eyes painted black, tall Mohawk painted purple, leather vest held together with chains. Yeah, the Mad Max look was gaining popularity these days.

“
Don’t blame me, kid,” I said. “I’m not gonna let them join their new buddies and come after us.”

The guy lowered his MP5, then swung it toward Worm's convoy as the runaway vehicles blasted down the street. A stream of curses followed the bullets. Neither did a thing. I could still hear Worm laughing as they raced away.

Asshole
.

I leaned across the hood of my truck and put the red Aimpoint dot on the back of Worm's skull. They were at fifty yards and pulling away. Seventy-five. I took the slack out of the trigger. One hundred. Worm turned to shout something out the window, and I fired. One hundred and seventy-four grains of diplomacy took the back of his head off. The round splattered idiot brains on the driver and punched a hole through the windshield.

The driver fought for control of his rig, squealed around a corner, and was gone. I looked at the guy they'd left behind.

“
They call me Danny Death,” I said, “and I don’t deal too well with morons. Let’s go see how the rest of the crew is doing.”

He followed me around the corner to the shop while the rest of my crew held back the swarm. Inside, most of the group was loaded into the trucks. We hadn’t grabbed much this time, but we couldn’t stay.

“
Where’s Jen?” I shouted at Bill.

“
Still inside. She wasn’t far behind us. Don’t know where she went.”

“
Damn,” I muttered as I ducked into the store. “Wait for me! I’ll be right back.”

Worm's boy stuck with me. We dashed through the store. I knew what we were looking for, and I headed for the far side. I hoped I wouldn’t pass her in the dark, but figured I’d see her flashlight. Sure enough, halfway there, I saw her light come bobbing from the back of the store as she ran toward us.

“
What the hell’s going on? We need to go
now
!”

“
Your son is using my bladder for a kickball.”

I did a double take. “Oh. Well, c’mon. Things’re getting' hot out there.”

“
So I hear.”

The gunfire outside kicked up another notch.

“
You pregnant, lady?” the Mexican kid blurted.

Jenny laughed. “Slightly. Birth control is in kinda short supply around here.”

The kid swore as we ducked back into the tire-and-lube shop. The garage doors stood open wide. I yanked one down, shoved Jenny into the cab of the truck, and grabbed the kid under the arms to lift him into the bed. Through the leather vest, I felt boobs.

“
Hands off the software, asshole!” she snapped.

“
Sorry, I… didn’t realize,” I stammered.

I heard Jenny laughing inside the cab as I slapped the roof. Bill sped out of the garage. Beth pulled the door down behind us. I keyed the radio, called my crew back, and we left town the long way. I didn’t want the Zeds to get any ideas about where we might be from and come knocking on our door back in Snareville.

An hour later, we rolled into our first checkpoint ten miles from Wal-Mart. We burned all that gas just for a half-assed supply run. I was still pissed.

We swung through town in my truck and headed over to the old high school.

“
Whatchoo gonna teach me, Mister?” the girl asked as we rolled to a stop.

“
Nothin’ right now,” I said, “but it looks like we’re stuck with you. Your buddies left you, and I’m not turning you loose out there by yourself. You’re welcome here, but you’ve gotta spend a week in quarantine.”

“
Quarantine
? Fuck that. I’ll take my chances out there.”

She started to leave. We insisted she stay. After a brief struggle, we got her disarmed, took her inside the school, and locked her in a classroom. She cussed us out the whole time.

“
What a cunt,” I remarked to Jenny as we walked over to Kenny’s office for our after-action report.

Jenny grinned. “You love it, and you know it. Bet she’s even got a set of whips she’d love to use on you.”

“
Funny,” I said without a smile. “She stinks, too. Wonder when the last time she had a bath was.”

Jenny shrugged. “It’s tough out there, baby. Not everyone’s as lucky as we are. Probably a lot of traumatized survivors doing the same thing her group’s doing.”

“
Great.”

We reported to Kenny One Shot about our unsuccessful raid and determined we'd have to go again soon. But we had enough of what we needed to get us by for now. We weren’t in dire straits, but we needed to stock up on supplies and clothing for the women who needed them. Sure, a lot of the guys needed new clothes, too. We’d worn out a lot of what we started with, but the repairs were easy. It was maternity clothes we were really after.

For the rest of the week, I kept fence patrol on the dead-watch from three to seven o’clock in the morning. Everyone took turns riding fence, four of us per shift per night. Two rode horseback clockwise from one starting point, and two rode counter-clockwise from another. That way, we always had someone on at the fence.

I had George with me—dogs have good noses—and rode Charlie. Both horse and dog adapted to the new routine pretty quickly. We spotted a number of Zeds as they wandered close to the fence, and we dropped them before they could call any of their buddies. Things got pretty quiet in a hurry. Outside Princeton, we stopped seeing deaders.

I ended my ride each night at the high school. She called herself Bitch, I learned, and along with the black, studded collar around her neck and the attitude she wore, the name fit. I usually took her breakfast, which consisted of eggs and hash or eggs and fish or oatmeal. By the fourth day, she'd finally showered, so my eyes no longer watered while I talked to her.