Running with the Horde (31 page)

…

              Later, after they’d successfully roofied Rosie against her will and she was peacefully snoring on her cot in the basement, Tegan got the rest of the bad news from Jeff.

             
The mysterious head-rolling zombie charmer had indeed made his way into the basement. All of Lance’s men had been killed including the man himself. Gunshot wound to the head, his body was found at the bottom of the basement stairs. Tegan considered this the glass half-full portion of the story. His only regret being he didn’t do the deed himself.

             
The twin he hadn’t bothered kidnaping, had told Jeff that the man in black appeared like magic in the basement and was working on unlocking the door to the cage with Lance’s keys when the girls surprised him. He somehow turned the tables on them resulting in everyone in the cage getting out, Daisy getting kidnapped, and Rosie getting locked in the cage with the zombie.

             
Rosie had not recognized the man. She described him as handsome but a little thin. Dark hair and bright blue eyes like a crazy person would have. Oh and he also had a bushy black beard. She also mentioned that she thought she might have shot him but she wasn’t sure. So that was hopeful.

             
“What about our man in the barn?”

             
“Dead.”

             
A perfect end to a really bad day.

Chapter 41

“A Broken Flower”

             
If the Flowers Mansion had been a vampire, the kidnapping of Daisy would have been the stake through its heart. Tegan knew it, his five remaining men knew it and even Rosie knew it to a certain extent. It was all over but for the ashy mess on the floor.

             
Sure Rosie talked about revenge, raged about it in fact. But she wasn’t a stupid woman. She knew as well as he did that Daisy was probably dead and seven people had little chance of doing any actual damage to the Swansons at this point.

             
They didn’t have much left in the way of resources, what little they did have was needed just for their own survival. They needed to look to the future, find someplace warm to settle down. They needed to leave the mansion.

             
The problem was Rosie refused to leave without seeing her father one last time. She wanted him to know about Daisy. But Henry Flowers was nowhere to be found, mysteriously absent since the night they captured Marcy and Tessa Swanson.

             
The days turned into weeks with still no sign of Henry. Tegan and the crew were so utterly prepared to leave that when and if Henry did show, they could be on the road within minutes of his arrival. Assuming the old bastard ever showed his face.

             
Patience and time were all running on fumes for the group as the days went by. Knowing the Swansons could strike them down for good at any time was the ever present thorn in their side. The world was a living nightmare yet nobody wanted to die.

             
Still Rosie was as stubborn as ever about waiting for her father. Tegan’s boys were fed up beyond reason. They were ready to leave without them, even Jeff and Mike. A line in the sand was drawn, if there was no sign of Henry by dawn of the next day, Tegan and Rosie were on their own.

             
Of course Henry showed up that very night.

             
Henry Flowers returned home a broken man, which was clear from just looking at him. He was a filthy, decrepit mess, Tegan observed as he watched the tearful embrace of father and daughter. Whatever he’d endured these past weeks on the road had shoved him past the point of no return the way even losing his wife and Violet could not do.

             
Hearing about Daisy, seeing his house in ruins, these things were only two new leaks on a ship with no hull. He was dying, that much was obvious. Whether it was from the self-administered hand amputation or some other cause, he would not say.

             
He was very much in support of Tegan and Rosie getting as far away from Minnesota as possible. He only asked for a few minutes alone with Tegan before they left.

             
“You don’t want Rosie here?” Tegan asked as they sat in Henry’s office, nursing his last two fingers of scotch.

             
“She and I have said our goodbyes,” he replied softly. “We were never big on those anyway.”

             
“Why did you want to see me?”

             
“I wanted to apologize, Tegan.”

             
“You don’t owe me anything, I did the things I did.”

             
“Ha! That’s why I like you, boy, I’m glad Rosie will be with you, you’re made for each other.”

             
Tegan looked away in shame, it appeared the old man was tearing up.

             
“Yet still I must apologize, for you see I lost my way. Did unspeakable things, made you do them too…did you know I shot Susan?”

             
Tegan didn’t know what to say, he’d just assumed Bill Swanson killed Susan.

             
“Didn’t mean to but I did it just the same,” he said glumly.

             
It was silent as a tomb in the room, after a moment Tegan thought Henry was done.

             
“Did I tell you about Violet?”

             
Tegan had just taken a sip of his drink and nearly spit scotch across the room.

             
“What about Violet?” he asked slowly.

             
“I found her you know, out there, that night in her friend’s house. She was one of them, I had to put her down myself.”

             
“But why did you…how could you…” Tegan felt that old slow angry burn heating up his face. He found it hard to articulate his thoughts.

             
“There, there boy, I see you’re getting all worked up, now you’re starting to see why I needed to apologize. I couldn’t tell the girls. I couldn’t tell Susan. So I just let it be a thing.”

             
“Where have you been all this time…all those other times?”

             
Henry didn’t answer right away but his face took on a glow, like what Tegan imagined Captain Ahab would have looked like when he thought about Moby Dick.

             
“I’ve been out there searching for him,” he said cryptically.

             
“Searching for who?”

             
“The man they’re looking for. The man with all the secrets.”

             
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tegan demanded.

             
But the old man had slipped into a combination, laughing and coughing fit. He collected himself as Tegan waited, spitting a gob of bloody phlegm on the floor. At last he held up his bandaged stump of a right arm.

             
“I’ve got it you know, the Sickness,” he absently scratched at the stump. “Damn bloody corpse bit me while I was hiding at the fucker’s house. I hacked it off but I wasn’t fast enough, some of the virus must’ve gotten through.”

             
Tegan took a step back in alarm.

             
“Oh relax, Tegan,” the old man scolded, “It is well beyond that now. I’d have to bite you.”

             
“Whose house were you in?” Tegan stammered.

             
“His house you idiot. I finally found it a few weeks ago. Someone changed all the city records but I found it in an old goddamn paper phone book of all places, they must have never thought to look there. Only a mile or so from my house the whole time, can you feature that? Trouble is, the bastard never came home, he could be dead or he could be anywhere, then I got fucking bit…”

             
Henry lapsed into another coughing fit as Tegan started to back out of the room.

             
“Wait!” he demanded.

             
Tegan paused as Henry laboriously hauled his old canvas pack onto the desk.

             
“I want you to take these, finish what I started.”

             
“Whatever, Henry, I don’t want…”

             
“TAKE THEM!” the old man screamed in an inhuman voice.

             
Tegan hurried over to take the strange items from the desk, the obedient lapdog until the end.

             
The larger object was in a small case and looked like a high tech fish finder, its label decreed it to be a
Sonic Barrier, Model 1
.

             
The smaller object was a strange looking device on a chain to be worn around a neck like a pendant. It looked like a cross between a flash drive and a small hypodermic needle. It was topped with a hard plastic safety cap so the wearer wouldn’t stab himself.

             
“What are these for Henry? Where did you get them?”

             
But Henry was slumped over the desk, drool making a small pool on his leather blotter.

             
“Go…lock the door behind you.” Henry slurred in a dreamy voice.

             
Tegan sighed, the Q&A session was over without enough answers. He grabbed the case and the pendant and walked out of the room, locking the door behind him.

Chapter 42

“Life without Walls”

             
“Henry is dead,” Tegan lied

             
“Will he come back?” she asked.

             
“No, I made sure,” he lied again.

             
“Good,” she kissed him softly on the lips.

             
“It’s time to leave now.”

             
“I know, we were just waiting on you, what are those things?”

             
“Just some things your dad gave me. He wanted you to have this,” he handed her the pendant.

             
“What’s it for?” she asked as she slipped it over her neck.

             
“Damned if I know, maybe just to remember him by,” he shrugged.

             
The fish finder thing and its case went into the trunk. Neither Tegan nor Rosie looked back as the group made their way out of the Rose Hill Neighborhood for the last time.

             
The seven remaining souls of Fort Friendly were packed into two vehicles with as much food and weapons they could carry from the basement. Their objective was simple, avoid zombies and find someplace warmer with no Swansons and just…live.

…

              Tegan wanted to add a decent sized RV to their little caravan so they at least had somewhere reasonably secure to sleep on the road. There was an RV dealership just off Highway 10 to the north in Raccoon Rapids. They would make their way there first and then head south down University. He had been out enough during his life at the Flowers Compound to know the interstates were a no go, jammed bumper to bumper in most parts with stalled or wrecked vehicles. He assumed Minneapolis was still off limits but wanted make sure before they went too far south.

             
The group soon discovered that life on the road was more miserable than they could have imagined. A day and a half later they discovered the RV dealership was nothing but an ashy hole in the ground. The only vehicles left weren’t even suitable for the scrap heap, let alone a rolling safe haven from zombies.

             
The small group had a very rough several weeks after that, living hand to mouth and sleeping in abandoned houses when they could and in their vehicles when they had to. Obstacles on the road were everywhere, preventing clear passage down many streets and highways. They went in circles, had to backtrack constantly and somehow wound up going north instead of south.

             
Attacks from zombies were constant. Sometimes it was just one or two but other times it was very large groups. Each time they barely managed to escape with their lives, though they did lose two men. Zombies would appear out of nowhere or in the last place a reasonable person could expect to find them.

             
They learned quickly that the undead were attracted to noise, smell and visual stimuli. In short, there was no safe place that matched the security of a heavily fortified building. A rotation of at least two people on watch was mandatory and the group had to be ready to move within seconds of notice.

             
On top of that, every day vehicle and bodily maintenance became a massive undertaking with life or death consequences. Tegan felt like his sole activity, when he wasn’t trying to sleep, was siphoning gasoline out of stalled vehicles. He mouth tasted like a dirty asshole. He kept a bottle of mouthwash in his pocket at all times but it didn’t seem to do any good. All he could taste was gasoline. Their existence became a grueling slow dance with death and Tegan just wanted it to be over. That is until things finally took a turn for the better.

             
He was with Rosie scavenging for the group’s exciting evening meal when he spotted a curious wanted poster nailed to a pock marked telephone pole outside a tiny and mostly empty convenience store.

             
He would have walked right by it on his way to siphon gas out of an abandoned sedan on the corner but then he saw it from the corner of his eye. That face! He knew that face! The poster’s color scheme was designed by a true marketing guru. It popped off the paper almost like it was 3D. That smug, smiling face hovered on the pole like a sinister floating head.

             
In today’s world there was no need to stop and read old advertisements. Whoever made it knew it had to be special for someone on the run from hordes of the walking dead to take the time to look at it.

             
In bold bright font across the top it said “
WANTED ALIVE!
” on the bottom the name,
GEORGE McCLOUD
. In the middle was that face! A face Tegan had only seen in his imagination from Rosie’s description. A face that conjured up terrifying memories of rolling severed heads, dead naked cooks and zombies feasting on the entrails of some of his closest comrades inside their supposedly secure compound.

             
Rosie would know for sure if it was him. She saw him. She spoke to him. She spent more than few agonizing moments with him in the basement just prior to the jail break and kidnapping of her sister. She blamed him for the entire debacle with the prisoners and Daisy. She hated this man as much as she hated the Swansons.

             
“Hey, Rosie, take a look at this.” he yelled quietly in the darkening gloom of early evening.

             
She cussed loudly in answer to his shout and sprinted over from the passenger side of the SUV, the shotgun she held looking comically large in her arms.

             
“Trying to wake the dead, asshole?” she said when she reached his side by the pole.

             
“Just thought this might interest you,” he said with a patient smirk, “I think it’s our kidnapper.”

             
Rosie didn’t say another word for a long moment as she stared at the poster but her face grew bright red and an angry vein popped out on her temple as she clenched and unclenched her jaw. Finally she very carefully removed the poster from the pole and folded it into the pocket of her jacket.

             
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she said. She didn’t spare him a backwards glance as she jogged back to their vehicle.

             
The ride back to their temporary residence, a functional split-level home straight out of 1982, was made in relative silence. Rosie just sitting there quietly brooding with Tegan wondering what to say. He pulled into the driveway after a couple of trips around the block to shed any unwanted followers, a tactic crucial to getting any kind of sleep at night. The engine clicked off a quiet rhythm as it began to cool down, neither person made a move to exit the car.

             
“You know what this means?” she said quietly as she stared into the gloom of the unlit house.

             
Tegan didn’t know what it meant so he just looked at her waiting.

             
“There is a chance Daisy is still alive. That George fucker either has her or can tell us where she is. We need to find him.”

             
“Yes, Rosie, there is a chance your sister is still alive. If so, she is locked up somewhere inside Castle Swanson where they are doing God knows what to her on a daily basis. We know where that is already. We don’t need George McCloud to tell us that. We don’t have the fire power to get in there and get her out. We’ve been through this already.”

             
Tegan didn’t mean to be so harsh but she needed to hear it. He hated that she was silently crying and wouldn’t look at him but he continued anyway.

             
“I know you don’t want to hear this but there is a much bigger chance she is dead. The whole thing is over. As far as the Swansons are concerned they won the war. Hostages are just one more mouth to feed, they would have no reason to ke-”

             
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” she shouted suddenly, cutting off his diatribe.

             
Tegan cursed and began looking around for zombies, she had to wake half the neighborhood with her yelling. She was openly sobbing now and Tegan was way out his depth. He patted her gently on the thigh but she viciously swatted his hand away and began telling him what he could do with himself in a low whisper. That was good, at least she remembered to be quiet.

             
“Let’s get inside,” he said gently.

             
Instead, she fished the poster from her jacket pocket and turned the visor light on to look at it more carefully. While Tegan kept his eyes peeled for zombies, she began reading the small print aloud in a voice that grew more excited the further she read into it.

             
“
Have you seen this man? George McCloud is a war criminal. He is to be considered highly dangerous and untrustworthy. He is wanted for crimes against humanity. George McCloud must be turned over alive to the authorities for questioning and prosecution. He is in possession of vital information crucial to the containment and eradication of the zombie pandemic. Anyone with knowledge of George McCloud’s location or known associates should turn themselves in at any municipal police station within the greater Twin Cities area and await further instructions from the authorities. Reward for information leading to the arrest of George McCloud will be relocation to the safe zone within the city of Minneapolis. Anyone aiding or abetting George McCloud will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, up to and including physical termination.”