Running with the Horde (12 page)

             
Instead of watching one of his two remaining children die, Henry had the misfortune of seeing his wife catch a bullet in the head. She died instantly.

             
Bill hadn’t exactly planned it that way. He found himself elated yet wistful on his triumphant return to his complex. He always had a secret thing for Susan.

             
These violent and ridiculous skirmishes escalated over the next several weeks. Both sides sustaining heavy losses. Both sides resorting to scouring the surrounding areas recruiting any healthy people they could find.

             
Those wandering few were more than happy to join forces for the perceived safety in numbers inside the fortified locations. Unfortunately for these newcomers they were likely far safer on their own instead of being embroiled in a conflict for which they could have no possible understanding.

             
This mini-war culminated in a final reverse ambush by the Flowers Camp, during which Marcy Swanson was lost to the zombies. Bill’s daughter Tessa and her would-be-boyfriend Steven were taken along with several others to the Flowers Compound.

             
Enter me and my insane assault on Fort Friendly (A.K.A, the Flowers Mansion).

             
Somehow in my desperation to renew my connection to my fellow man, I had managed to stumble upon the worst human beings still alive in the world.

             
So I thought at the time. Now I realize they were just regular entitled folks turned rotten by zombies and circumstance.

             
As Daisy revealed the tawdry details of the entire affair I found myself recalling one of the recurring fantasies of my youth. As a boy I dreamed of inventing a time machine, as man I sat with Daisy in our filthy storage closet and rued the shame of unrealized dreams.

Chapter 23

“Bill Swanson Sucks!”

             
The next three days passed by slowly like a train with a thousand cars. Steven wasn’t so bad anymore. To a certain extent he became quite servile, checking on us a few times a day for food and water. I even convinced him to bring us a fresh bucket to exchange for the now full chamber pot bucket.

             
We were really living.

             
I won’t say Daisy and I became friends in that little room but we certainly got to know each other. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t developed feelings for her but she could be an exceedingly irritating human being so I could never be completely comfortable with her.

             
I don’t think she had always been this way but most of the time she acted like a spoiled kid in an adult’s body. She was constantly moving and grew bored instantly. With literally nothing to do but talk to me, she was essentially always bored.

             
We both stunk and were itchy. The room was always too hot or too cold. I spent a lot of my time doing push-ups and sit-ups or just lying on the cement staring at the ceiling while Daisy pretended she was a ballerina.

             
It was long past the dinner hour that final day in the storage room. Daisy and I were on our 5000
th
match of thumb wars when we heard the sound of raised voices and many pairs of feet marching in our direction. We looked at each and clambered quickly to our feet. The lock rattled in the door and I stepped defensively in front of Daisy as it swung open.

             
It looked like our hour of reckoning had come at last.

             
There stood Tessa dressed in fatigues. She was red faced and angry brandishing a bloody machete. I wondered what it would feel like passing through my body.

             
Crowded around the door with her were a handful of strangers, mostly men and all of them armed and pissed off. It would appear Mr. Flowers had finally made his response to my jail break a few weeks back.

             
Steven stood in the back of the group looking sheepish with one eye swollen shut. I felt bad about that.

             
In spite of her obvious anger, Tessa stumbled back and gagged when she got a whiff of the room.

             
Holding her nose in disgust she hissed, “Bring them,” as she elbowed her way back through the mob.

             
Two large and very displeased men entered the room, each grabbing one of my arms. They began dragging me out the door and down the hall following Tessa. They were not gentle.

             
A small but mean looking woman corralled Daisy, who was crying softly, and prodded her after us with a gun to her back.

             
No blindfold this time. I wasn’t coming back to the smelly little storage closet. Considering that I believed my death was the planned alternative, I thought I would miss it. There had been a perverse form of peace in there with Daisy. I would even miss Steven a little.

             
We marched up one long flight of stairs and exited a heavy fire door into barricaded foyer that had once been the decorative lobby of the luxury condominium complex.

             
More people waited for us there. The air was charged with angry energy. Something bad had happened and we were to be punished for it.

             
The men that had been escorting me stood aside as Daisy was pushed into my arms. We stood there together in front of the main entrance, the floor to ceiling glass was covered in plywood and sheet metal.

             
I had my arm around her shoulders as we looked into the faces of what Frankenstein would have described as angry villagers. The crowd had a taste for blood, I could hear it their harsh conversations.

             
Tessa reappeared and the room fell silent as she made her way to the front with Rory in tow. Good old Rory, fitting he should attend my execution. He held a stained and ratty old-fashioned hat box in his hand. He set it on the ground next to Tessa who stood in front of me and Daisy. She gave us a big smile, so pleasant it was creepy.

             
Daisy edged even closer to me while Tessa turned to address her people.

             
“Tonight we lost two more good people,” she said solemnly. I could see eyes lower and heads nod in agreement.

             
“Over these last few months we’ve done terrible things. Things we would have never even imagined before. But we did them because we had to. We did them because we were forced to! Forced by Henry Flowers and his stupid dead wife Susan and their three skanky children. We did these terrible things to survive!”

             
At this part in her speech the crowd was really getting revved up and were shouting support back to her like she was preaching.

             
“I promised you three things when Danny died.”

             
“Yes you did!” someone yelled from the crowd and everyone cheered.

             
“I promised we would stand together and end this fight for good. We did that tonight!”

             
More joyous shouting.

             
“I promised you Henry Flower’s head!”

             
The crowd had been really pumped up but the air seemed to leave the room when Tessa reached into the hat box and pulled out a severed head by the hair.

             
I had never seen Henry Flowers before but I assumed this was his head when Daisy started screaming and buried her face in my chest.

             
Tessa turned and gave me a look of mock concern.

             
“Tell your girlfriend not to worry. She’ll be joining her father real soon.”

             
She tossed the head at us. I flinched as it hit me in the arm and bounced off.

             
Tessa had really lost the quieting crowd at this point but she didn’t seem to notice. Some of the murder had left the faces I could see in the crowd. They were now looking at her like they just realized she was bat-shit crazy.

             
“That brings me to my last promise. I promised when this was over we would feed sweet little Daisy here to the deaders outside the wall in honor of my dearly departed little brother Danny!”

             
The people in the room looked at Daisy in my arms as she quietly whimpered. It did not seem like everyone was onboard with this idea but Tessa wasn’t negotiating.

             
I cleared my throat and really hoped I didn’t come off as selfish when I said softly, “What about me?”

             
It was probably the wrong thing to ask. Even Daisy looked up at me like I was a total douche and took a step away.

             
“You’re going over too, you fucking stupid lying lunatic.”

             
This cold statement came from a truly unexpected source to my left.

             
It was Rory.

             
I looked over at him shocked; I thought we had a good vibe. I almost fainted when Tessa laughed and shouted, “You tell him, daddy!”

             
With this the crowd was once again all in. Men started ripping plywood down and soon the doors were open and the crowd pushed us outside.

             
Daddy? Rory was her Daddy? That could only mean that he was….I was lost in my own head trying to puzzle this out when I stumbled into the cold night air, down three steps and lost my footing. I fell onto my knees knocking Daisy over in the process.

             
Hands yanked us to our feet. We were in what used to be an open grassy field but was now the walled in yard of the compound. Tessa had acquired a torch and now marched out in front leading us toward the fence some fifty yards away.

             
I could hear the zombies outside the fence, a low roar that seemed to overpower the auditory senses. The hand holding my right arm gave me a painful pinch as we trudged forward. I glanced over to see Rory or I guess Bill was his real name, he was giving me his best shit-eating grin and seemed quite proud of himself.

             
I had to hand it to him, he had conned a conman, kidded a kidder, grifted a grifter and so on. I had to respect his skills, of course, but now I hated him.

             
“I wasn’t lying to you,” I hissed at him between deep breaths.

             
He bared his teeth at me and said, “I know you weren’t, I just don’t fucking like you, dickhead.”

             
That was that I suppose. I wondered why he hadn’t killed me days ago.

             
Fucking Rory.

             
We made it to the wall in good time.

             
They had erected a gallows with a staircase leading up to it. The platform was level to the top of the wall.

             
We climbed the stairs at gunpoint. Daisy looked like she might faint again. I was really hoping she didn’t. I climbed up to the platform and helped her up behind me. Tessa was already up there surveying the scene and trying to act like she wasn’t terrified of what she saw. Bill (A.K.A. Rory) dragged his sorry ass up there along with a stone-faced Steven and two others for support in case I tried to fight back.

             
Tessa hadn’t been exaggerating, the undead were a sea of troubled water as far as the eye could behold. Everyone was nervous up there looking down into the face of hell. That included me, even though I was fairly certain I would be fine when they tossed me down there.

             
To be fair though, I always got nervous in crowds.

             
Some caring fellow had troubled to attach an actual diving board off the end of the platform. I was puzzled as I was pushed toward the edge until I looked down and noticed the moat below the wall. Apparently, they didn’t want me and Daisy swimming to our freedom.

             
It was rather pointless overkill as far as I was concerned. The moat was so full of zombies they had displaced all the water. In addition, their moat would be useless when the winter freeze came which would be any day now.

             
Daisy and I stood on the edge of the platform in front of the diving board. Tessa, Bill and their people stood in a semi-circle holding us in place with guns. Daisy was visibly shaking, I felt sorry for her and tried to comfort her by gently squeezing her arm but she didn’t notice.

             
“Please, you don’t have to do this,” she begged.

             
She implored Tessa with her big beautiful eyes. I imagined the two of them playing together as children.

             
Tessa was not moved but she did manage a sneer.

             
Daisy turned her attention to Bill who was looking at me with impatience like he wanted this to be over with.

             
When he noticed her staring, his look softened and he stepped up to her with a kind smile on his face and tilted her chin with his hand.

             
For a moment he was good old Rory again until he said, “I seem to recall Danny begging the way you just were,” he paused to wipe his watering eyes.

             
“I never liked you or your sister much. I always thought you were spoiled little bitches. And you’re wrong, Daisy, I do have to do this. I have to do it for it Danny and for my wife.”

             
I thought about kicking him in the crotch at that point. He was definitely close enough but I didn’t want to risk them shooting us. The little group took a step forward and I understood that to be our signal to jump off the board.

             
I pulled Daisy to my side and half dragged her down the length of the diving board. It was very important we jump together. She wouldn’t last five seconds on the ground without me. I wasn’t entirely sure she would last five seconds on the ground with me but I figured there was at least a chance.

             
I hadn’t been on a diving board in years and it was way more bouncy than I remembered. We almost fell into the moat halfway to the end of the board because Daisy was struggling so hard. I regained my balance and pulled Daisy tight in a bear hug until she stopped squirming. I whispered in her ear to please trust me and everything would be okay, she gave me the slightest of nods. I prayed I was right.

             
We backed our way slowly to the end of the board. It bowed deeply under our combined weight. Tessa and company were gathered tightly at the edge of the platform, the greedy looks on their faces urging us to step off.