The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (27 page)

Sadie snuck a glance back at Norman and whispered to Neil, “We should at least blindfold
him
.”

She was overheard. Norman loomed up from the back seat and asked, “Why? I’m not stupid. I know everyone here hates my guts. That’s fine with me. But I know you won’t kill me. Grey is one of the white knights and Neil probably couldn’t stomach shedding blood.”

“I’ve killed humans,” Neil said. “More than I care to admit.”

Norman gave him a condescending look, as if he wanted to pat Neil on the head like he was a puppy dog. “Sure, but I’m betting you almost pissed yourself doing it and probably had nightmares after. Face it, you guys are a bunch of goody-two-shoes. You won’t kill me and you won’t let the rest of these punks kill me either. And that’s good. That’ll work in your favor when I kill the River King.”

Next to Deanna, Sadie’s body tightened, drawing into herself, but she said nothing.

“Someone has to do it,” Norman said, shrugging. “For your sake I’ll make it quick, like maybe a crucifixion.”

“You’re a shit,” Sadie said, her gritted teeth.

“No, I’m a realist. Your dad is going to be the focus of a thousand angry people. They’re going to want retribution. They’re going to want to take their anger out on someone. The leader who denies that urge will be putting his own head in the noose next. Besides, there are worse ways to go than crucifixion. Do you know what impaling is? It’s when…”

“Enough!” Grey snapped. “We don’t need to hear you run your mouth, Norm.” He turned long enough to shoot a glare at the big man before asking Sadie. “Can you tell me where we’re supposed to be going?”

The girl fetched the map from the glove compartment and directed them to the nearest of the seven coordinates: a town three miles away called Tin Bluff.

It was a long, slow ride. The dark, and the shadowy zombies that seemed to appear out of nowhere, had them plodding along with dismal slowness. Deanna tried to remain awake during it but her eyes were heavy and before she knew it she was leaning on Captain Grey’s thick shoulder and snoring lightly.

She slept this way for over three hours and it was after midnight when they pulled up to the town limits. The truck coming to a stop woke her. “Are we there yet?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Grey said. Everyone squinted out into the dark and then turned to look at Sadie.

“Wait, all I have is the names of the towns,” she said, defensively.

“Towns?” Norman asked. “There is more than one?”

“The parts of the bridge are probably separated,” Grey said. A dry sigh escaped him as he gazed at the dark silhouettes of the town buildings. What could be seen of them sat in orderly rows like tombstones. Among them were the undead. “We’ll start searching at first light.”

Grey drove further down the road and found a Howard Johnson’s where the carpet was deep brown and the walls of the rooms were creamsicle orange. Everything else was tinged grey from a year’s worth of dust. The quiet of the building was cloying. It made the air feel soft and close. Deanna didn’t like it and made sure to stay close to Captain Grey.

There was another reason she clung to him, the other cage fighters were a wild and scary crew. Unshaven and unbathed, they were mostly beasts who couldn’t hide their beastly desires. Sadie felt their eyes on her as well. “You can stay with me, Deanna,” the Goth girl said. “Come on, I got us the first room on the right.”

Deanna had been lingering in the lobby, waiting on Grey, who was poised in the doorway. He wasn’t much more than a shadow and yet his strength was obvious in the dark. “Okay, I guess,” Deanna said. With reluctant steps she followed Sadie. The room was musty and the bed had the aroma of age. It was comfortable at least and Deanna slept straight through the night hours.

There was a dim hue to the room when Grey shook her awake. “Time to move,” was his gruff salutation. Though his beard was only days old, he was, in most respects just as beastly as the others and in one respect he was worse. His clothes were black with blood. In contrast, the white bandage at his neck stood out.

“You’re hurt?” Deanna asked and then wanted to slap herself.
Of course he’s hurt,
she chided herself. Duh!
Blood and bandages are sure signs, don’t you think?
Vaguely, she remembered his shirt being wet and dark the night before, but she had been so wrapped up with her pregnancy fears that she hadn’t thought to ask why.

“Yes. I got nicked up when we were escaping the prison. It’s not bad though,” he reassured before going to Sadie’s bed.

The Goth girl was bleary, disheveled and grinning. “You stink, Captain. Ever heard of bathing? It’s when you put water on your skin and take the smell off of it. It’s a wonderful invention.”

He grinned back at her. “Once
you
find the bridge, I promise to make myself presentable.”

“You want me to find the bridge?” Sadie asked. She ran a hand through hair that ski-sloped up weirdly on one side of her head.

“Yes, you know your dad better than any of us. Trust me, you’ll be fine.”

Despite his assurances, the bridge eluded them. The town was
hick
through and through, from the roadside Ho-Jos, to the feed-store arcade combo. It boasted a crummy two-aisle grocery store that had all the telltale hallmarks of a good, ol’ fashion looting. Two blocks down was the town’s volunteer fire house; it was blackened and charred and from one of its brick walls a crumpled fire truck protruded. Lastly, there was a rinky-dink elementary school that was only a few steps up from a one-room schoolhouse.

Behind this “Main” street, sat a smattering of dated houses, a few zombies that were easily destroyed by Grey’s expert shooting, and a trailer park that had suffered some sort of calamity that had left the rest of the town unscathed. Some of the mobile homes were tumbled on their sides, looking crushed and indented like old beer cans. Others were fire-touched—some with black soot spinning up from the windows and doors in ugly swirls and others burnt down to their twisted metal framework. Others were broken square in half, while one was stood up on its end like some sort of prehistoric totem. Nobody could make heads or tails over it.

Sadie didn’t hesitate; she went right to the war-torn trailer park. Norman tried to stop her. “Don’t waste our time. The pontoons are going to be too big to fit in any of those shacks. We’re talking sixty, seventy feet long and fifteen feet wide.”

This didn’t slow her marching feet for a second. “Captain Grey was right; I know my dad. If he’s hiding something it’ll definitely be in there.” Her instincts proved spot on. In two of the most ugly and trashed homes they found a smorgasbord of weapons, ammo, fuel and food. “It’s one of his
just in case
stashes,” Sadie said.

The men went for the weapons grinning and joking. The two women went for the food, Sadie digging into a package of Oreos until her teeth were black, and Deanna almost crying as she munched her way through a bag of Doritos using her right hand while spooning Campbell’s clam chowder soup into her mouth with the other.

Neil tried to rein them in. “People, come on! The River King isn’t sitting around and we shouldn’t be either.” He was roundly ignored.

Grey slung a scoped M4 over his shoulder, picked up a heavy ammo crate, and began barking orders. “Let’s get the truck packed up. Don’t just stare at me, move your asses!” What could fit into the truck was crammed in almost without regard to the human cargo. The men didn’t care, they had food and guns. But they didn’t have a bridge or even part of one.

The twelve split up in pairs to search every building in town. The town was so small that it’s didn’t take long. Next, they jumped five SUVs, gassed them, and then spread out looking everywhere they could think.

Neil and Sadie went to an open scar of land where the locals dumped their trash. Half the cage fighters fanned out to search the local farms and the other half drove hog-wild through the forests south of the town. Grey and Deanna went to a nearby lake on the off chance that the pontoons were just out there floating, perhaps disguised as docks.

The lake water was black with depth and empty other than a smattering of partially drowned zombies. A few more walked the beach toward them. Grey didn’t look too disappointed at not seeing the pontoons. He brought out the M4. “This is a good excuse to sight this bad boy without wasting bullets.”

While Deanna plugged her ears and stood a few feet away, Grey took a couple of shots, knocking putrid decaying flesh off the face of the closest zombie. He changed the elevation, adjusted for windage, and then killed three zombies with three bullets. He smiled at Deanna and joked as he thumped his chest, “Me mighty hunter.”

“You mighty stinky hunter,” Deanna said. She opened her hand to show a small square of soap she had lifted from the Howard Johnson’s. She tossed it to him before pulling her Glock from its holster. “I’ll watch while you get cleaned up.” A quizzical look passed over his face and she asked, “What’s wrong? I was just…” Her mouth stopped working as she realized how her words sounded. “No, I meant I’ll stand guard. I didn’t mean I was going to watch you bathe.”

He chuckled. “Pink is a good color on you.” She touched her cheek; it was warmer than it should have been.

Grey stayed in the water for long time and came out in his underwear with his clothes over one broad shoulder. At the sight of him, Deanna felt the heat spread outward from her cheeks and she was sure they were pinker than before. She tried not to stare at his thickly muscled physique…and only partially succeeded.

He didn’t seem to care. With one hand out, he said, “My gun please.” The first thing he did was pull the bolt partially back, checked the safe, and then looked her up and down. She was still wearing the frayed monster outfit that she had picked out with him days before; she was sure she looked disgusting.

“I think it’s your turn,” he said.

“Okay, but don’t peek.” She was more demure that he was; she waded out until she was up to her neck before stripping down. While she washed herself she kept an eye on him. He never looked once in her direction and she didn’t know whether that meant he was really a good guy or that he wasn’t interested in her straggly-looking self…and she didn’t know what to think about that.

Coming out of the water, she wore the long, torn up shirt, her panties, and nothing else. Her pants had clung to her and she was afraid of chafing; she wanted to let them dry. When he finally turned to look at her, his eyes hung on her slim thighs long enough to reassure her that she wasn’t so straggly now that she had bathed.

“I wish we could stay here for a few days,” she said, taking a deep breath of the warm air. “I’m so tired of it all.” The idea of swimming and fishing and just plain not fighting for their lives appealed to her. If it wasn’t for her friends being held captive she would’ve begged to stay.

“I would love that as well,” he agreed. She knew that a “but” was coming and her face fell. “But we can’t. People need us.”

They were an odd pair, him in his underwear, her wearing only a shirt as they drove back to town. He tied their clothes to the back of the cab, letting the wind dry them as they took the longest possible route back. They were the slowest to return; everyone stared as they got dressed.

“Mind your business,” Grey snapped. He didn’t bother to ask if anyone had found anything; their disappointed looks were obvious. “The pontoons have to be in the woods. It’s the easiest way to hide them.”

“We looked already,” one of the cage fighters said.

Grey stared at the endless stand of trees that marched away over the southern hills beyond the town. “Then we search deeper.”

Sadie shook her head. “No. The bridges aren’t there. My dad wasn’t one for the woods. He gets lost too easily. I think what we found was one of his emergency stashes. We should go on to the next town on the list.”

They all agreed, but first they went back to the stash in the trailer park and emptied it out completely. This put the men in a better mood. They laughed and joked as they climbed into the string of vehicles and headed west. They traveled much more quickly with the daylight and it was only a two hour trip to the town of Finch, Missouri. Again it wasn’t much of a town and they paused just shy.

The group piled out of their vehicles and waited on Sadie. She opened her mouth to speak, only just then there came the rattle of small arms fire. The sound, a mile or so off, which started as a rat-a-tat-tat grew over the course of a minute until a dozen or more guns were going at it, hotly. The gunfire then petered away until there were only a few shots popping off every few seconds.

“That’s not good,” Sadie said.

“No, it’s not,” Grey agreed. “Everyone stay here. I’ll check it out.”

“I’m going, too,” Deanna said. The words had just jumped out of her mouth as though they had been thought of by someone else. Grey began to shake his head but she stopped him. “Someone’s got to watch your back.”

For a second, Grey’s eyes narrowed and a
No
formed on his lips, but Deanna gave him a hard look that showed she was determined and would not be dissuaded. She was somewhat surprised that it worked. “Fine. You can come, if you can keep up. The rest of you get the vehicles out of sight. Do not start the engines! You’re going to have to push them.” The men began to scurry to do his bidding, and as they did Grey gave Deanna one more look, up and down, during which she stood straighter. He nodded as though she had passed some sort of inspection.