DEAD: Reborn (18 page)

One of his top priorities was to dispose of that bad crate of dynamite. It wasn’t that he did not think Sean was a smart, r
esponsible kid, but he was still just that: a kid. All he had to do was decide one day that he could “probably” handle that unstable dynamite with the proper care and end up blowing himself to bits.

Just before he climbed the fence, he glanced back at the crowd. Heather was laughing and smiling. Aleah was holding a little boy or girl—the kid was simply too dirty to be able to tell—and acting amazed at whatever it was that the child was telling her. Catie had separated herself from the group and had climbed up on the stone entrance to the crypt area. She was still looking back in the direction where the black cloud from the fires burning at the fairgrounds continued to rise high in the sky.

Kevin imagined that the fire would probably spread and burn for at least a few days. Given that the nearby fields had never been trimmed back or cut away from the wall, they would be fast fuel. Fortunately, things were not too dry. Otherwise, it was very possible that the fire could actually make life difficult for these kids. Glancing skyward, he saw one more ally coming their way. A long line of dark clouds were bearing down on them from the west. He could see the rain bands already.

Kevin continued heading to where the dynamite had been hidden. There was a large farm with a few silos on the property. The dynamite had been hidden in one of those silos.

He limped along and noticed that a few lone walkers could be seen. They were all headed in the general direction of the fairgrounds…unless they spied him, then they changed course. Kevin drew his machete. There had not been any zombies here when they had come that first time. He would need to be a bit more careful.

Perhaps I should have brought somebody with me
, Kevin thought as he waited for one of the nearby zombies to come within range of his blade.

This particular zombie had been a big guy. He was easily over six and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds. His coveralls were just rags now. The body was riddled with bullet holes
, and it looked as if he’d taken a shotgun blast to the face, but at a distance where all it had managed to do was pepper him.

Kevin was about to swing and take this one down when he heard a mewling cry from right behind him. The start caused his swing to come down wrong
, and the machete buried itself in the shoulder of the big zombie. It shattered collar bone and almost severed the arm, but that did nothing to dissuade the zombie from its intended meal: Kevin.

Having no other choice, Kevin dove. As he did, he saw what had made that sound: a child.

Crawling out from under some rotting sheets of plywood was a little boy of no more than five or six. His once blond hair was matted and a filthy brownish color. A bite had taken away most of his nose and his left arm was gone about midway between the elbow and shoulder. The stump was jagged and ugly looking. Only the waistband from his underwear remained. Everything else had been ripped away.
Or possibly even rotted
, Kevin thought as he looked at what had to be the filthiest zombie he had ever seen. But he did not have time to really analyze it much further.

Billy-Bob Zombie was tottering his way. If it toppled and fell on him, he would be totally helpless. Kevin rolled and went to his hip where he kept his emergency hand ax. He scooted away on his butt until he felt he was far enough away to get to his feet.

He steadied himself just in time and swung down as hard as he could. The ax went deep into the forehead of the massive zombie. It fell and tore the weapon away from his grip, wrenching his wrist. He could not bite back the yelp of pain.

Shaking it off as quickly as it came, Kevin knew he was not out of the woods yet. He reached for the machete that still jutted from the huge shoulder of the downed zombie and spun to face—

Nothing.

The child was gone.

10

Pain and Suffering

Moving through the woods
, I started to doubt my sanity in volunteering for this mission. For one, I had my field pack on. Not that I haven’t carried a thirty pound pack for literally hundreds of miles by now…but this was a constant and steady uphill trek. Add in the fact that I was in my protective gear, and that it was uncommonly warm and sunny, and I was melted Jell-O.

I pulled up on top of a rocky outcrop and popped open my canteen. The water was just
on the cool side of lukewarm. So far, there had been absolutely no sign of zombies. However, I also saw nothing to indicate that I was getting any closer to the people who had been following us. I was starting to wonder if maybe they had gotten spooked or something.

“When you finished working on your tan, why don
’t you come with me?” a voice whispered almost in my ear.

I jumped and went for my gun. By the time I could reme
mber how to work my hands properly and managed to get untangled from the shoulder harness that the M4 dangled from, I was staring into three spear points.

“Just keep your hands away from that weapon and you come away without a new set of holes to try and breathe through,” a man
’s voice came from one of the black silhouettes. The sun was keeping me from getting a look at their faces.

“Maybe we should take that from him,” another man
’s voice said.

“Would you want to be running around without a weapon these days, Ed?” the first man
’s voice asked.

“Naw…guess not,” Ed, the owner of the second voice, r
eplied.

“Besides, if he is from that group down at the rest area, I imagine that he is here to talk?” the female voice that had whi
spered in my ear spoke.

“My name is Billy Haynes.” I figured that it might help if I started with the formal introductions. “Yes, I am from that group.”

“Little young to be the leader,” Ed snorted. “They send the most disposable?”

“Knock it off, Ed,” the woman said with what sounded like authority in her voice. “My name is Katrina, the guy with the breath to match his attitude is Ed, and
the ugly one is Hank.”

I made a show of putting my arms out to the sides to ind
icate that I was not making a move for my gun, and I stood up. They trio stepped back a few feet, presumably to give me some room.

“I came up to see if you were following us out of curiosity or if you actually had a reason.” I figure Jon or Jake would say something with much more authority, but it was all that came to mind. It was at that moment that I realized I had not made any plans for what I would say once I finally encountered somebody from this group.

“And you just came on your own?” Hank asked.

Now that I got a good look at him, I had to smile. The guy had those disgusting “pretty boy” good looks like a Brad Pitt or Leonardo Dicaprio, but the post-apocalyptic world was doing its best to curb them. There was some pretty scraggly growth on his face. That only made the fact that you could tell he was a pretty boy worse. He had eyes that were blu
er than any girl I’d known, and teeth that were television commercial white. I do not think I had ever seen teeth
that
white before, now that I think about it.

Of course that brought on something else that I was not pr
epared for; all of a sudden, I was very self-conscious about how I must look…and smell. That was made worse by the fact that all three of them seemed to be making an effort not to wrinkle their noses at me. Man, we’d only been on the road for a couple of days. Was I that bad? And what’s more…how were they staying so clean?

“Well?” Ed urged. I realized that I was probably just stan
ding there with my mouth open like an idiot while these thoughts went through my mind.

“We had a meeting and I volunteered to go.” That was all they needed, and I was being generous giving them that much.

“Well we saw that you have a handful of kids,” Katrina resumed control of the conversation. “Also, there were what appeared to be a few dozen women.”

“Which means that you guys might not be like some of the animals that we have
observed…or dealt with.” When Hank said that, I heard something in his voice like I am used to hearing from Jon and Jake. I guess the pretty boy was also a possible bad ass.

“Couldn
’t believe some of the stuff we’ve seen,” Ed said as he leaned back against a tree and began making a show of cleaning under his nails with a knife that was ridiculously large. It was a wonder he didn’t cut part of his finger off.

“Yeah…I can.” I guess it was my turn to start posturing. But I was not going to waste a bunch of time on nonsense. Either they were interested in joining us, or they weren
’t. “We just took out some guys who had some sort of medical experiment thingy that they wanted to do on one of the ladies in our group that is pregnant.”

As soon as I said the
words, I wanted to bite my tongue off. I had just given them some pretty major information. Maybe Jon was right…maybe I was still just a kid. The look on the woman’s face was nothing short of stunned.

“How far along is she?” Katrina asked. I had already said too much and just stared back at her. “Look, we have had three pregnancies…and none of them lasted to term. And one…” Her voice trailed off and I noticed both men had suddenly started finding very interesting things to examine on the ground.

I weighed out the choices. The need to keep information close to the vest versus the fact that these folks were seemingly being very open and out front warred briefly.

“She is ready to pop,” I said. “In fact, we almost delayed our trip a couple of days because it is likely that she will probably have this baby while we are on the road.”

“You guys were up at that campground,” Katrina made it a statement, not a question.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “You already knew about us, though.”

I had a hunch and decided to play on it. After all, the worst that could happen was that I would be wrong, and that happens several times a day anyways, so no biggie.

“We scouted you just before that last big storm came. We were headed that way when we heard what sounded like a pretty nasty gunfight taking place,” Hank spoke up. “Since we didn
’t know who was on what side, we chose to fall back and wait. We were about to send a scout up to look around when that storm hit. For the last one of the season, it had quite a load to drop. We would have starved if that warm front hadn’t come through and brought rain to wash some of it away. We were actually stranded in a double-wide…the bunch of us.”

“And how many is a bunch?” I asked.

“Well, seeing as how we already have at least an approximate of your numbers, that seems like fair information to trade,” Ed joined in the conversation. “We have twenty-three men and women…” He got a look on his face that looked like real sadness; the kind that hurts physically. “No children.”

Something told me that they
’d had at least one, and that the loss was still fresh enough to be painful. I stayed quiet, not because I was trying to draw out any information, just simply because I didn’t know what to say at that exact moment.

“It was just a cut…” Ed whispered. “But it kept getting worse and pretty soon started to smell awful. We did our best to keep it clean…we just didn
’t have anything. Not like you can just pop in to the Rite Aid for some anti-bacterial ointment these days. One day, she just didn’t open her eyes…wouldn’t wake up. Hell, we didn’t even have a thermometer to take her temperature…” His voice choked off and he began to cry. He didn’t try to hide it or anything, he just started crying.

Hank and Katrina both moved in and put their arms around Ed. If I had to guess, I would say that he had some sort of pe
rsonal relation to this girl…maybe a daughter, sister, or niece. Hank and Katrina both looked sad, but Ed was in pain. His hurt was much deeper.

I waited until he recovered. It took a few minutes and I didn
’t really know what to say or do, so I just stood there. It wasn’t like I could step in like his friends and offer any sort of condolences.

“So, I guess the question is, do we join your group or not?” Hank spoke after patting Ed one last time and stepping away to give the man some space to compose himself.

“Well, that is up to you,” I said. “However, I would suggest that you decide now. My group is not going to be okay with your people hanging up in the woods following us all the way down into La Grande.”

“Why would you want to go down there?” Katrina asked. “That place has been a war zone for weeks…months. There was a pause for a while when the weather took a nasty turn, but you can see and hear stuff going on down there all the time. I realize that you folks have formidable numbers, but why walk away from where you were and walk into a war?”

That was almost the same question that I had. I didn’t have an answer for her because I didn’t know myself.

“There is a belief that the entire town can be reclaimed if the right people come in and make it happen,” I said. That was the best I had; oddly enough, it seemed to be working. All three of them were nodding.

“I think we can agree to meet with your group and see if this is a good match,” a new voice spoke from behind me.

I spun to discover five more people standing less than a dozen feet away. I had no idea how long they had been there, but I felt stupid…and scared. Stupid because I had totally dropped my guard with these folks—a mistake like that can get a person killed in a hurry—and scared because each of them had bows or blades in their hands.

“Jesus, Simon!” Katrina snapped. “You just about scared the crap out of this kid!”

Now I could add annoyed to my list of swirling emotions. Once again I was being referred to as “a kid” by people. Sure, this was the case that I had made for being the best choice for the mission…

“This
kid
moved past three of our scouts without being seen.” Simon closed the distance between us, making sure to slide his weapon—a wicked looking curved sword that reminded me of the
Sinbad
movies—into a loop on his belt. “And considering the fact that he is packing serious firepower along with the fact that the group trusts him enough to send him up alone…I wouldn’t underestimate him if I were you.”

I actually had to bite back a smile now. This guy was seeing things in me that I had always hoped to have seen
in me by those in my own group. Not only that, but somehow, I had managed to “slip past” some of his scouts. I wasn’t about to tell him that it had been sheer luck and through no effort made by me.

“Name
’s Simon Paul,” the man introduced himself and offered his hand. I shook it as he continued. “My parent’s had a sense of humor.” When I just stared at him, he shook his head. “Too young to remember…probably listened to that damn rap music.”

I took a good look at this guy. He was just a regular looking sort. Brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail that hung a few inches past his
collar. He was a couple inches shorter than me, but had wide shoulders and his grip was strong. It wasn’t like he was trying to crush my hand or anything, but I could tell that he was pretty powerful.

“Not really into that sort of music,” I said with a shake of my head. “Actually, I was really into some cool indie stuff. Most of what I had on my phone or iPod came from groups that were local and self-produced their own
demos.”

“Eclect
ic music tastes, I can dig that.” Simon nodded as he let go of my hand. “So you’ve met these three. I’d introduce you to these other knuckleheads, but why waste the time. Your people are probably waiting for you to come back. So, I guess you and I should head down the hill and meet with whoever is in charge of that little army and see what’s what.”

“Uh, Simon…you think that is a wise choice?” one of the people who had come up behind me with him asked.

“This kid came up here alone to meet us and see what our intentions are.” Simon shrugged and shot me a smile and a wink for some reason. “I figure the least I can do is return the show of confidence. If they thought we were actually bad guys, they would never have sent this guy up here on his own…unless they were hoping he would get himself killed.”

Hmm…that was not an angle that I had even remotely co
nsidered
. Either Simon was joking around, or he was on to something.

“Let
’s go meet your people,” Simon announced and headed into the trees like it was no big deal.

***

“You folks got into a pretty nasty fight a while back.”

S
imon was walking a few steps ahead of me. We had hiked down the hill in silence for the first few minutes. I was still trying to figure out what the heck was going on when he broke the silence. I was still trying to figure out what to say when he continued.

“You play it close to the vest,” Simon spoke with a hint of something in his voice. I was pretty sure that there would be a big smile if I could actually see his face. “Smart. I mean, you don
’t know me from Adam. You got no reason to trust me with a dang thing.”