Running with the Horde (10 page)

             
Daisy was getting upset now too and fidgety. She had her gun in one hand and was holding it down by her side. She looked like she wanted to give her sister a hug but couldn’t decide if it was appropriate, taking a step toward her and then backing away.

             
I was trying to watch her from the corner of my eye without being too obvious while I stared pleadingly at Rosie’s face.

             
“Stop it! You’re making her cry! You’re making Rosie cry!”

             
Daisy then went from zero to sixty on the emotional speedometer into full meltdown mode.

             
Rosie had gotten herself under control but still wasn’t sure if she wanted to shoot me or let me continue my errand for her father.

             
Daisy wasn’t having any more of it as she took a step up to me and slapped me hard in the face.

             
I was on her before she could react, pulling her in and spinning her around in a choke hold as she screamed, dropping her gun.

             
Rosie was real anxious to pull the trigger now. I could see it in the outraged expression she had on her face.

             
But she couldn’t, I had her sister held firmly between me and Rosie’s gun.

             
For her part, Daisy had gone limp in my arms which did not help me whatsoever, I had to hold her around the waist and the base of the braid to keep her upright.

             
I backed up slowly past the freezer door along the wall toward the curtain.

             
Rosie looked like she was going to hyperventilate.

             
“Okay, Rosie,” I said gently. “It’s very important you calm down. Everything will be fine as long as you do what I say. First, I need you to count down slowly from ten and focus on breathing in and breathing out.”

             
She did as requested but still held the gun on me. Her arms were straining from holding the heavy weapon up so long. When I could see she was visibly calmed down I spoke again in my best authoritative voice.

             
“Now, Rosie, I need you to put your gun down on the ground very slowly and kick it over to me. If you don’t, I will break Daisy’s neck. I need you to believe me. Do you believe me, Rosie?” I emphasized this last point by dramatically readjusting my grip on Daisy’s braid.

             
I wasn’t going to break Daisy’s neck.

             
For one thing I had no idea how to do that and for another, I could never have done such a thing but Rosie didn’t know that. Right now I was a monster who held her sister in a very rough embrace.

             
“Please don’t hurt her,” she whimpered.

             
“Trust me, Rosie, I don’t want to but I will if I need to.”

             
Rosie nodded and lowered her gun to the ground. She wiped snot from her nose as she kicked the gun over to me. She was pretty even with snot on her face.

             
“Will you let her go now,” she pleaded.

             
“Not quite yet,” I responded. “Do you know what key goes to that door?”

             
She said she did and grabbed the ring of keys I’d dropped.

             
“When you find it, I want you to unlock the padlock and open the door. If you do that then you and I will be done and I’ll let Daisy go.”

             
The lady in question was beginning to squirm in my arms, I really needed Rosie to pick up the pace. She located the key, stood to her feet and began unlocking the door. I heard the lock pop and she turned to me with it in her hands.

             
“Obviously you’re not one of Lance’s guys so you must be with the Swansons. You’re not one of them but your with them right?” she asked.

             
I shrugged, I had no idea who the Swansons were.

             
“I don’t know how the fuck you got in but I should have shot you right away,” she whined, “Daisy liked you so I didn’t.”

             
I moved closer to the freezer.

             
Listen,” she pleaded, “You don’t want to let these people out. They are bad people! They killed our mother and our baby sister. Whatever they promised you, my father will beat it.”

             
I was only half listening to her, just wanting to get in the freezer, get the people out and figure out how to get us all away without dying.

             
“You let them out, they’ll kill you too, I promise,” she said forlornly.

             
With a very awkward two-person bow I bent at the waist and retrieved Rosie’s gun and stuck it into my empty holster, it didn’t fit well but would do for the moment. I looked around for my gun but didn’t see it.

             
Mark another X in the lost weapon column.

             
“Okay, Rosie, I want you to grab that lantern off the table and open the door. You’re going in first.”

             
She complied but was getting very angry that I hadn’t let her sister go yet. Daisy was awake again and I whispered gently in her ear to stay calm so I wouldn’t have to hurt her. Rosie did as she was told with the light and opened the door.

             
The air that expelled out from the makeshift jail cell was stale with a hint of unwashed bodies but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. They must have worked out some type of ventilation system.

             
It was pitch black beyond the little circle of light from Rosie’s lantern, I heard someone cough from the darkness and a child started crying. I was getting angry, dark thoughts playing across my face like a movie screen.

             
Rosie saw my face and her eyes got wide.

             
“We didn’t do nothing to them!” she pleaded, “They are the bad ones, you’ll see.”

             
“Just get in there,” I commanded roughly.

             
It was another deep room. At one time it may have been a wine cellar but now it was dank and smelled of fear and desperation. Large kennels ran down the length of both sides of the room.

             
Most of the kennels had people in them, two were empty and one of the very last cages held a zombie who had once been a teenaged girl. She was growling softly and crouched at the door of her cage.

             
“Unlock these doors now please,” I told her quietly.

             
As she did, I mustered up my most soothing voice and said, “Rosie is going to let you out. If you are able, please exit calmly, walk past me and wait in the next room. The faster you do this, the quicker we can all get out of here. There are still armed men upstairs. It is very important that you wait quietly for me in the next room.”

             
As Rosie opened the cages, people began filing slowly past me. Some helping others who couldn’t walk. A slight woman about my age stopped in front of me and glared into my eyes. Then she looked at Daisy, who had once again gone limp in my arms and spit on her before stomping past me.

             
I stood in the doorway. The prison room was now empty save for Rosie and the zombie girl still locked in the last cage. I wasn’t sure what to do with her and needed a moment to think as I backed out fully into the storage room with Daisy in tow.

             
My newly released friends had not stood quietly and waited for me as I’d requested. Instead some were rooting through the weapons crates while others were tearing into the food. I had to assume they were very hungry. I counted nineteen men, women and children as they exited past me, way more than could have been on that truck. Some had likely been there for weeks.

             
It probably wasn’t a bad thing they were arming themselves. Worst case scenario we could hold off a small army down here for a long time with all the weapons and food available. I was thinking through my escape plan when a small explosion went off behind me and something hammered me in the shoulder throwing me down on top of Daisy.

             
As I tried to roll off her my body stopped obeying my commands. I glanced down at Daisy, she was covered in blood. I couldn’t tell if it was hers or mine. The woman who had glared at me in the cell, flew past me and slammed the freezer door shut on a charging Rosie.

             
I had time to see Rosie’s hate filled eyes as she raced toward me waiving my missing gun before the door sealed her in. A tall young man, who’d been severely beaten recently, hurried over and put the padlock back in place as the woman held the door.

             
My consciousness was fading quickly. My body was in shock but that was quickly dissolving into a cold numbness that was spreading from my shoulder. The room was getting fuzzy, I’d ridden in this rodeo before, I was about to pass out.

             
A woman and man were talking about what to do next. I heard the word tunnel, then the woman’s face appeared before mine. I registered her as pretty in a farm girl kind of way. She slapped me but I didn’t really feel it. She was shouting questions at me, shaking me with both hands on my sweatshirt collar.

             
I didn’t answer her, though I tried. I just couldn’t make my lips form words. The end had found me at last. Oddly enough, I was peaceful as I faded off to my eternal rest.

Chapter 21

“Tessa Swanson”

             
Pain.

             
Mind blowing pain pulled me from the sweetest dream. I was in a dark cave lying on the ground. It was hard and cold but I was so hot.

             
Someone had speared me to the ground through my right shoulder. Another person was stabbing my hip with something jagged. The skin above my eye burned like I’d been branded, my body sore like I’d been beaten.

             
I screamed for them to stop but nothing came out. I thrashed wildly, trying to get free but my struggles only made it worse, igniting pain so complete I could only be still and try to endure it. I gagged and vomited, feeling hot liquid spill down my cheeks and neck. I started choking.

             
This was hell. I was in hell where bad people are tortured and die over and over again. Then arms, gentle but firm in the darkness grasped me around the neck and torso forcing me to sit up. They held me in place as I puked up bile.

             
A woman’s voice soothed me though I couldn’t understand her words. I sagged back on my angel or my demon and found calm in the softness of her embrace.

             
I vacillated back and forth forever on a sea of pain and nothingness. Each time I awoke I knew I was closer to dying. It was only a matter of time. I wanted nothing but for it to end yet still my body struggled against death. I heard shouting a few times and a woman crying and screaming, relentlessly banging on a door.

             
The darkness took me again and I felt nothing for a long time.

…

              When I woke again I was in a well lit room. The pain was still there but dimmer. A dull headache percolated behind my eyes. My entire body felt like it was floating. My eyes were crusted shut but I forced them open, shutting them again quickly in the harsh glare of a large light above my face.

             
I went to shield them but found my left hand shackled at the wrist to a metal bar. I could feel the cold pressure of an IV line on top of my hand. Someone had removed the spear but I could still feel it’s ghost pulsing below the surface of my shoulder. I eased my eyes open again until I could bear it.

             
I was in a dirty bed in someone’s bedroom. I could tell I was naked, covered only with a thin army blanket made of itchy wool. The sheet I was laying on was damp with sweat and covered in dried blood. I assumed I was the source for both. My right arm was numb and unmovable, bound in a sling. My feet were cold and poked out from under the blanket. I noticed my toenails needed trimming.

             
A tacky 1970’s picture of a doomed ancient schooner trying to ride out a dark ocean storm hung on the wall opposite the bed. It was crooked and there was a crack in the glass. There was a message in that picture. I was the ship about to be crushed by the waves of the powerful storm. I was reminded yet again, no matter what I do, things will get worse.

             
A thick handmade quilt covered the only window in the room.

             
I was wishing they had made opposite choices as to what covered me and what covered the window when an older man popped his head briefly inside the partially open door.

             
“Go tell Tessa he’s up,” I heard a voice say from outside the room.

             
The bag on the IV stand looked like it had been empty awhile. That explained my gnawing thirst and headache. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Tessa.

…

              “You should be dead.”

             
It was the first thing she said after staring at me in silence for a minute at the end of my bed.

             
I wasn’t sure if it was a judgment or an opinion of my medical condition, she had a strange look on her face.

             
Turns out Tessa and I had already met. She had been in the cellar. She had been the one to shut the door on Rosie. The older man who’d looked in on me stood behind her in the doorway. Next to him was a tall younger man also from the cellar.

             
He looked mostly healed from when I’d met him. He stepped around Tessa up to my bed chewing on his tongue and playing with a large knife like he wanted to use it on me.

             
It made me wonder how many days I’d lost.

             
“The only reason I wasted my time and antibiotics on you was Daisy,” Tessa said evenly. “You seem real important to that dimwit of a girl so you must mean something to her father. You have her to thank for your temporary return to the living.”

             
I was very confused. “I saved you,” I croaked out over my sore throat.

             
“Bullshit!” she hissed, “You don’t think we know what a Trojan horse is? We lost three more people just getting out of your stupid fucking tunnel. You are gonna pay for those lives…George. Fucking. McCloud. You and your little whore Daisy.”

             
I wondered how she knew my name when I remembered my wallet.

             
She was red faced and snarling during her speech, flecks of spit hitting me in the face from over six feet away. As if to accentuate her point, her colleague poked me with his knife in the shoulder. I saw stars and was briefly transported back to Pain Universe, my hoarse scream sounding inhuman in my own ears.

             
“Enough, Steven!” she yelled at the man. He pulled the knife back but continued to glare at me. I could feel fresh blood oozing out of a wound there.

             
“He’s fucking leverage you moron! He’s no good to us dead! Now get me some clean bandages, we need to redress his wound before he bleeds out.”

             
Steven grinned at me and went to get the bandages.

             
For the next several minutes, Tessa and Steven roughly cleaned and dressed my wound while I tried not to pass out again. The old man watched from the end of the bed.

             
I kept asking what happened to my shoulder but no one would answer me. I just kept asking in my irritating frog-like voice until Tessa grabbed my face in both hands and screamed at me from two inches away that I’d been shot by Rosie Flowers.

             
Then it all came back to me. Getting surprised by the twins in the basement, getting the jump on Daisy, making Rosie unlock the cages and finally, having Rosie shoot me.

             
When they were finished with my shoulder, Steven and the old guy left the room while Tessa changed my IV bag, grumbling about having to waste fluids on someone like me. I was getting very irritable because the pain was edging back up to a ten.

             
“If I was with those guys then why did Rosie shoot me?” I spat the words at her through clenched teeth.

             
“Don’t take that tone with me, shithead. I’ll call Steven back in here and have him work you over again,” she replied.

             
I didn’t remember the first working over but it might explain why my entire body hurt so badly, including my face.

             
“You don’t see a lot of blue bandanas these days so the ones I do see I remember. Just like I remembered yours when you poked your dumbass head into that cellar four days ago. The only thing missing was that cowboy hat you were so proud of.”

             
I stared at her confused.

             
“No reason to try selling me your bullshit because my store is full in that department. Best thing you can do is keep your trap shut and try not to piss me off so I don’t have to kill you sooner than I plan to,” she said as she smiled and gave me a painful pinch on the cheek.

             
She finished changing my bag and gave me a shot of something in the IV port. I laid there in stunned silence as she turned and walked from the room slamming the door behind her. The ship picture jumping in its frame.

             
I had no idea what she was talking about. The pain was receding and I was getting fuzzy. As I was falling asleep I remembered the cut on my forehead and taking the blue bandana. My last conscious thought was a realization.
Shit! She thinks I am the cowboy hat guy!

             
The next eight days I spent in that room. Tessa and Steven took shifts interrogating me with questions I couldn’t answer while the old guy treated my wounds and in general looked after me.

             
He didn’t speak or answer any of my questions when we were alone but I felt like if I had any chance of changing the fate Tessa had designed for me, it would come through him.

             
So when the queen bitch and her minion were out of the room, I explained my side of the events that took place that troublesome night of my rescue attempt. I assured him over and over again that I was not the cowboy hat guy.

             
This approach seemed to have no effect and I soon came to believe the old guy was simple.

             
Instead, I started giving him an unabridged oral rendition of my life story. Because this was unsolicited and usually progressed without interruption for hours at a time, it sort of felt like a book on tape. I didn’t know if I was becoming a human being to him or not because he seemed like the kind of guy who was kind no matter what.

             
He fed me, watered me and kept me clean like I was a favored family pet. When I grew weary of rehashing my own life, I would add interesting tidbits about him. I started calling him Rory because I thought it suited him. I told him he must have been a physical therapist before the apocalypse because he really had a gentle touch.

             
I blended his life of service into my own, adding funny anecdotes of bedpan mishaps and catheter adventures. I even made him chuckle a few times but he never spoke and I never asked him to help me. When the other two were rough on me, I could tell it bothered him a little.

             
Progress!

             
Tessa grew more anxious and irritable as the days went by with no new information from me. Steven seemed to be constantly flexing when she was in the room when he wasn’t busy chewing his tongue like a cow chews her cud. I thought maybe he had a thing for her.

             
I was worried they would soon resort to pain and torture again to get at the secrets they were sure I was hiding.

             
It was about time for me to start making shit up to make Tessa happy.

             
The source of their anxiety was an abnormally large crowd of undead that had accumulated outside their walls over the last two weeks. The irony that any amount of undead outside one’s walls should be considered normal was apparently lost on them. That comment got me slapped by Tessa but I could see Rory smiling behind her, trying to hide it behind his hand.

             
I had felt a weird constant swelling of energy every day since I’d finally retained consciousness. I knew the zombies were out there but I didn’t say anything. I just waited for Tessa to tell me. I didn’t want to freak them out any more than they already were.

             
In any case, Tessa was convinced that Daisy’s father, whom she and Rosie referred to creepily as Daddy, one Henry Flowers, had devised a way to draw hordes of the undead outside the walls of Tessa’s camp.

             
The assumed purpose of this plan was to spring Daisy and according to Tessa, me.

             
Though I tried desperately to talk her out of it, she was also convinced I was deeply immersed in the plot, demanding that I reveal Mr. Flower’s master plan. I tried lying to her, negotiating with her and even begging. She was unmoved by anything I said.

             
My attempts to ask after the wellbeing of Daisy were met with curses and slaps. I stopped asking after a while, not sure why I even cared.

             
I had my answer soon enough. On the morning of my ninth day in that room, Tessa gave me a cursory inspection with her hands and eyes. In her medical opinion, I was recovered enough to return to the cell where she felt I belonged until they were through with me. Steven agreed and Rory said nothing.

             
My nasty clothes were returned to me in the same condition I’d left them. I almost puked putting them on. It irritated me when Rory chuckled at this, it wasn’t like him. Then I was blindfolded and led by gunpoint down hallways and staircases to a dank room that smelled terribly familiar.

             
I remembered that smell, I was home!

             
It was Steven who removed my blindfold and gave me a nice shove into the dark storage room. My freshly healed injuries reminding me I wasn’t quite in game-day shape yet. Steven grunted and gave me the finger as he slammed the door. Before he did, I noticed a person shape balled up in the corner.