Generation Dead (Book 3): Beyond The Gates (19 page)

Chapter 47

Morning found Julia and me a tangled mess of arms and legs.  Despite her protests to the contrary, Julia was a very active sleeper.  I have been kicked, elbowed, rolled over on, slapped, and scratched by her constant movement.  We had to have king size bed at home just to make sure I survived the night.  Once I hugged her to try and get her to settle down, but she head butted me so hard it nearly broke my nose.

I slipped out of bed and took a quick shower.  The water was warm enough, but I had learned not to soak.  When I was finished, Julia had awakened and took my place, teasing me as she passed by with a flash of her breasts.  I shook impure thoughts out of my head as I gathered our gear and took it outside to the Jeep.

I found Jake and Kayla already out there moving things around, trying to decide where the best place was to put things.  Jake wanted to have the weapons within easy reach, and Kayla wanted to have supplies in easier reach.  I looked inside the Jeep and said we had a solution for both. 

I showed Jake and Kayla the hooks that were on the roof, just above the windows.  Taking a length of cord, I tied one end to a hook and ran it over to the other hooks, criss-crossing the roof.  Jake nodded and got the idea, helping me secure the cord.  Once it was in place, we had added another storage space above our heads.  The rifles and long weapons could go up there, being within easy reach and also out of the way.

Kayla smiled and kissed me on the cheek.  “I knew you were the smarter one,” she said, winking at Jake.

Jake smiled and picked Kayla up, kissing her fiercely enough to cause her to wrap her legs around his waist.  When they broke for air Jake added his two cents.

“That’s all he’s got on me,” he said, while Kayla giggled.

“Care to arm wrestle, little brother?” I asked sweetly.

Jake snorted.  “Right after we have a knife throwing contest.”

Julia chose that moment to come down, her hair still damp but pulled back into a ponytail.

“Who’s throwing arm wrestles? What?” she asked, frowning at our laughter.

“I’ll explain later,” I said, heading towards the office.  I found the bald man in exactly the same position I found him in yesterday.  If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was wearing different clothes, I would have thought he had spent the night in that chair, reading the same book.

“Good morning!” He smiled, standing up and coming to the counter.  “Did you sleep well?”

“Fine, thank you,” I said.  “I need to settle the bill and get some information.”

The man’s eyes darkened a little as he took in my gear.  I was wearing my gun again and had my knife and tomahawk on as well.

“Umm, okay.  What would you like to know?”  he asked.

“Where can we find the local authorities?” I asked, reaching into my belt for coins. “What do we owe you for the rooms?”

The man relaxed somewhat, checking his price sheet.  “For two rooms, I usually take some kind of food stock, maybe a tool if I have a need.  Ammo is always good for currency,” he said, looking at my gun.

“How about hard cash?” I asked.

“Old coins are no good anymore, you know that,” the man chided.

“I have new ones from the capital.  We have been dealing in copper, silver, and gold coins for nearly twenty years,” I said.

“Really?” The man was incredulous.  “Nobody trying to trade eggs or anything?

“That still happens, but not as much,” I said.

“What size coins?” The man was very excited now, and I showed him a few that I had.

“The size was regulated at a half ounce, being easier to carry.” I showed him a copper coin.  It was plain with a simple decoration of an eagle on one side, the letters NC on the other. 

“What’s the exchange rate?” he asked, fingering the coin.

“Done in tens,” I said.  “Ten coppers will get you a silver.  Ten silvers will get you a gold.”

“What does ten gold get you?” the motel owner asked.

“Trouble in the wrong part of town,” I said.  “Based on this, what will you charge for the rooms for the night?”

The man looked at the coin again, and sighed.  “I’d love to get one of each, just as a memento, but that would be asking too much.” He put the coin down.  “Three copper pieces, and we’re even,” he said.

I slid the coin back to him and gave him two more.  He picked them up and looked them over, marveling at the weight and simplicity. 

“Now then, the authorities?”  I asked.

“Oh, right!  Head on out towards the end of the street, take a left, and you’ll be at the sheriff’s office.” The bald man spun one of the coins on the counter, his thoughts far away.

“Thanks.  See you around,” I said, stepping out of the office.  My last look showed me a man trying to spin three copper coins on the counter all at the same time.

Outside, Jake was by the Jeep, standing in front of three men who did not look like they had good intent.  One of them was the large man I had scared off the other night.  I had hoped he would have stayed away, but sometimes lessons have to be learned the hard way.

“I’ll just wait right here, then.  What do you plan to do about it?” The man leaned against the Jeep, actually causing it to tilt to one side.  His friends grinned but offered no offense that Jake could act on.  I could see Jake fingering the hilts of his knives, but unless there was cause, Jake was unable to do anything.

“Take your hand off my property,” I said, stepping up to the man.  I stood looking up to his eyes, but I had no fear of him.

The man took his hand off in mock submission.  I had seen this sort of thing before, and had no patience for it this morning.  Julia had a hand on the grip of her gun, and Kayla kept her hands in her coat pocket.  I knew she had a small handgun in there, and if the other men started something sneaky, she’d deal with it.

“State your business.  You came to see me, I’m here, what do you want?” I said.

“I’ll get to the point.  I want you out of town.  We don’t want your kind here.  We’ve seen your types, and all you do is cause trouble.” The man looked at his friends, and then back to me.  “Get out, while you can.”

Before I could formulate a reply, a voice came from behind me. 

“Brent Barlow, if I catch you on my property one more goddamn time, I will shoot you dead then fuck your corpse.  You read me, you dumb shit?” 

In the doorway of the office, the manager stood with a Winchester in his hands.  His aim was right at Brent’s face, and I could almost smell the sweat that suddenly appeared on his forehead.

The two men with Brent suddenly backed away, leaving him all alone.  He licked his lips, his eyes never leaving the steady rifle barrel pointed at him. He tried to bluster, but the manager wasn’t listening. 

“Get moving, you sack of crap, before I turn your head into a bowl,” he said.

Brent stumbled backwards and shuffled off, leaving us looking back at the hotel manager with gratitude.

“My thanks,” I said. Jake nodded in agreement.

“Every once in a while Brent gets it into his head he’s a bad man who’s seen some things. He ain’t seen shit.”  The manager absently scratched his scars as he walked back into the office, throwing us a wave as he sat back down in his chair.  He left the rifle on the counter, pointed towards the door.

I winked at Julia, and we climbed aboard the Jeep, having had our adrenaline dump for breakfast.  If that was how the day was going to start, I wondered where we were going to find ourselves when the sun finally set.

Chapter 48

We followed the directions given to me and soon were standing in front of a small brick building.  The sign outside said Jerome Police Department, and a single, well used cruiser sat in front like an obedient horse.  Jake knocked, and we entered on hearing a single command.

“Come in!”

As we walked inside, Julia and I shared a look.  That was a woman’s voice.  This would be interesting.

Inside the office, there was a single woman sitting at the desk.  She was a short, brown haired woman of about forty-five, with very blue eyes, and a weary air about her.  She smiled at us and her practiced eye took in our weapons and clothing.

“Can I help you?” she asked.  She wore the uniform of an officer, and her name badge said Conners.

Jake spoke first.  “We need to speak with the sheriff. We were told he would have some information for us.”

“Well, you’ve accomplished half of your task.  I’m the sheriff.  Celia Conners.” The sheriff extended her hand and gave Jake a warm smile, obviously intended to ease any tension he might have. “What information might I be able to provide you with?”

I spoke next. “We’re looking for a person who might be able to provide us with some information about a place.”

“Okay, well, I’ll see what I can do.  Do you know anything about the person you are looking for?” Conners asked, sitting back down at her desk.

“Just that they were from Enterprise, Oregon,” Jake said.

If he had dropped a blue, polka-dotted lobster on her desk, I doubt the reaction would have been as extreme.  Conners jumped back, whipping out her revolver and pointing it directly at us.

“Who are you?  Why are you here? Did
they
send you?” Conners face had transformed itself from genial peace officer to crazed woman with a gun.

We all held up our hands at the same time. “Whoa! Whoa!  We’re not here for that!  We’re not from there!” Jake was trying very hard to calm the woman, keeping his hands away from his weapons.

Conners calmed down some, but kept the gun up. “Who are you, then? How do you know about that place?”

Jake kept his hands up.  “We came from the other side of the mountains.  We were just seeing the sights when we stumbled across a dead man who had been shot in the back.  He was clutching the numbers that led us here.”

The sheriff shook herself and holstered her weapon, she slumped down, and put her head in her hands.  After a minute, she put them down, and her eyes were looking back through the past for a moment, a look of fear and pain.  I had seen that look before, usually in the eyes of a veteran fighter, recalling a time when the zombies ruled and loved ones were lost.

“What do you want to know?” she asked again.

“Well ,we need to talk to the person we were told was from there,” Jake said. “Can you point us in the right direction?”

Celia Conners waved a hand over to the empty chairs in her office.  “Have a seat, you’re looking at her.”

I needed the chair she offered because I felt like I was going to fall over.  Julia and I took chairs from adjoining desks and brought them over. Jake and Kayla did the same.

Conners looked at Julia and Kayla and another memory passed over her eyes.  It must have been painful, because she wiped a small tear away.  Then she faced us directly.  “Before I talk about that place, I need to know who you are.  How did you get here, and more importantly, why are you chasing this ghost?”

I took that question, describing who we were and where we were from.  Conners had a lot of questions, and I did the best I could to answer them all.  When I got to the part about facing the shooter in the dark, her eyes got wide.

“You killed a hunter?” she asked in a small voice.

“No,” I said.  “I nicked him really good, judging by the blood on my ‘hawk. Pity, really.  Another inch to the left, and I’ve have brought him down.”

Conners shook her head.  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.  You’re lucky it didn’t return to finish you.”

I thought it odd she referred to this hunter as an ‘it’, but I kept it to myself.

Jake shrugged.  “Anyway, that’s pretty much what brings us here.  There’s been some obvious murders, an attempt on us, and we’re trying to figure out if this is worth looking into or just leaving alone.”

Sheriff Conners shook her head.  “You’d be better off leaving it alone.  You’d need an army, and even then it wouldn’t be easy.”

“Why don’t you tell us why?” Kayla asked.

The sheriff looked at the ceiling and then back to us.  “Why not?  You’re adults. Maybe you can make a difference. Who the hell knows?” She took a deep breath and began her tale.

“Back in the early days of the dead rising, there was a bunch of us running from the cities, running into the mountains. The zombies were right on our backs, not letting us sleep, just pushing, and pushing.” Celia looked at Julia and Kayla again. “I had two daughters, they would have been about your age now.”  She wiped her eyes again. “Sorry.”

“Anyway. We followed the passes and stumbled into this place called Enterprise.  We had been on the run for two weeks, the snows were starting, we were out of supplies, and had nowhere to go.  The people of Enterprise took us in.  The zombies that had pursued us turned to chase someone else, and we thought we were safe.  I was grateful we hadn’t brought death with us to a place that really seemed like salvation.”

“What happened after that?” Julia asked.

“Life was pretty normal.  We lived quietly, trying to survive the winter, and keep the zombies from discovering us.  A few years passed and we started to think the threat was slowly going away.  A traveler from the east talked about an army making its way across the plains, but we never knew if it was true.”

“We were thinking about sending a scouting party out to see if there were any other survivors in the mountains we could connect with when the Clan came.”

“What’s the Clan?” I asked, not liking the sound of that.

Conners smiled ruefully. “The biggest mistake we ever made.”

“How’s that?” Julia asked, resting her chin on her knees that she had drawn up.  She sat like that when she was about to receive what she thought was bad news.  Celia didn’t disappoint.

“The Clan was a group of about fifteen people that showed up one day.  They were dressed alike, but we didn’t take much notice, figuring them to be some sort of religious group.  They seemed harmless enough, and in those days you never turned away refugees, figuring any help fighting the zombies was good help,” she said.

I had to agree with that line of thinking.  Every survivor would be another soldier in the fight against the undead.

Sheriff Conners kept talking. “Right away they insinuated themselves with the leaders of the community, making suggestions, making changes, taking over essential duties.  We didn’t mind at first, thinking that the more they wanted to do, the more time we would have for gathering food and getting ready for winter.  But then things turned sideways really fast.  The leader of the Clan, a woman from California, began talking about how we needed to follow a single leader, that one person needed to make all the decisions.  Up to that point we had been using a council that we all had elected at first, and then we were taking turns being on the council, making decisions. 

“She made her declaration when she was on the council, and by some trick, the rest of the council agreed with her.  Suddenly she went from refugee to being the leader in a single vote.

“Once she had the power she wanted, she had her followers gather all of the weapons in the community.  If you owned a gun or bow or anything that could be used against them, it was taken in the general interest of the community.”

Jake shook his head.  “I imagine that didn’t go over well.”

Conners nodded.  “Several men resisted, and they were overwhelmed by the Clan members.  The men disappeared, and their families were left to fend for themselves.  After that, the rest fell in line. People tried to curry favor by spying on their neighbors.  Anyone who gave information about a possible rebellion was rewarded with extra food, better housing.  People didn’t know what to do.  They couldn’t leave, since the zombies were still out there, and survival was what we all wanted.”

“What about the hunters?” Jake asked.

Conners actually shuddered. “Cold blooded killers.  I don’t know where they came from, some people say the leader of the Clan liberated them from prison during the Upheaval, trading service for freedom.  They were skilled trackers and hunters, and if anyone tried to leave, a hunter went after them.  The hunters were told not to come back until they had killed their prey.”

Celia looked down. “They always came back.”

“Always?” I asked.

She nodded.  “They came back after my husband tried to escape, tried to get help.  They came back after my oldest daughter tried to find help.”

“After they took my other daughter away for ‘re-education’, as they called it, I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I was more dead than alive, anyway, so it really didn’t matter,” she said.

“What was this re-education?” Jake asked, his face dark.

Conners sighed.  “That was what they called their indoctrination program.  They took the kids for education, and when they came back—if they came back—they were brainwashed into little robots for the Clan.  I don’t know what they did, none of us did, but we couldn’t stop them.  The kids who came back were violent, moody, and deeply changed.  My other daughter didn’t survive the re-education, they told me; they said she wasn’t strong enough.” Tears swelled in the poor woman’s eyes as she recounted her memory. 

“How did you get away? Especially when they hunters always get their prey?” I asked, curious.

Sheriff Conners unbuttoned the top two buttons on her shirt and pulled the material aside to show a massive scar just below her collarbone.  It looked exactly like a bullet wound.

“I didn’t get away.  I just wasn’t killed. The hunter never bothered to check if I was dead,” she said, re-buttoning her shirt. “I crawled a mile before I gave up, figuring to die out on the plains, when a couple of ranchers from Jerome found me.  They brought me here, patched me up, and never asked questions about what had happened.  I repaid the kindness of the community by serving them the only way I knew how.”

“You were an officer before the Upheaval?” I asked.

“Portland County deputy sheriff,” Conners said, with a little pride.  “When the fall came, we fought until our ammo ran out.  Some went to sea, others took to the hills.”  She looked out the window.  “I wish sometimes I had taken my family to the sea.”

Julia held the woman’s hand for a second, understanding that hard choice.  We’d all heard stories of the same sort, people who second-guessed what they had done, to the point of insanity.  If they just hadn’t opened that door, if they had taken a left instead of a right, if they had only whatever.

We were silent for a moment, then Jake spoke up.

“I think we need to see this for ourselves.  If people are willing to take the risk to try and escape, trying any way they can to get a message out, even in death, then we might need to set things right,”  he said.

Conners shook her head.  “You four aren’t enough.  You’d need two dozen people just to get a foothold, and then you’d just be meat for the hunters,”  she argued. “Just go home.  Let this go. It’s what I had to do.”

I nodded.  “I understand your point of view, and I appreciate you wanting to talk us out of it.  But as our wives will tell you, us brothers are pretty stubborn, and when we get notion in our heads, it kind of sticks.”

“Well, if I can’t stop you, then I can give you some advice,” Conners said.

“What’s that?”

“Kill them all.”