The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (30 page)

Dese
racist
motha
-
fuckers
be
thinkin
they
still
kings
of
dis
world
.
Look
how
dey
lookin’
at
me
like
I’s
a
piece
of
shit
.

He sneered at the thought, not quite breaking
the deceitful smile that was plastered across his face. The anger
filling his heart finally detonated in a blast of emotion. He
continued to grin deceptively as he approached, his left hand out
as if seeking a hand to shake while his right reached behind him
and gripped his piece.

The closer man, a tall, skinny, sharp-faced
man with a short brown beard reached his hand out tentatively to
shake that of the big black gangster’s, while he asked where they
were all from. Lamar grabbed the man’s hand hard and yanked him
forward while he drew his pistol and shoved it into the startled
man’s chest. The muffled blast when Lamar pulled the trigger
stunned the man, then his eyes grew wide with the pain and
realization of what had just occurred, and the life drained out of
his face. He dropped hard to the ground. The other man, a younger,
heavily-built dude that appeared Mexican to Lamar, tried to pull
his handgun when his head exploded in a spray of blood and brains
as Roshawna sent a volley of bullets into his face.

Two of the women who were pushing the carts
with the small children in the kid’s seats raced off between two
abandoned semis, shoving the full buggies before them. One of the
newjacks brutally shot down one of the mothers and her cart fell
from her lifeless fingers, racing ahead a few yards before rolling
to a stop, the child all the while screaming wildly for its mother.
Several of his crew mob-tackled the two remaining women to the
ground amid their piercing screams for help. The little
cracker-baby’s cries grated on Lamar’s nerves and he
single-mindedly walked up to the child where it sat crying in the
abandoned cart and put a bullet through her brain. He was amazed at
how the little blonde head literally came apart when the bullet
tore through it.

One
less
cracker
in
the
world
to
grow
up
an
cause
us
trouble
.

The other mother, a brunette with long,
disheveled hair, was still running down the road with two of his
crew in chase. Within moments they tackled her hard to the ground
and then dragged the sobbing woman and the cart back to Lamar.
Roshawna pulled the toddler out of the cart and smiled coldly at
him. He was whimpering in her beefy hands while she cooed softly at
him and then without a hint of emotion, she lifted the dark-haired
boy over her head and slammed him face-first onto the pavement. The
little boy was still moving and making a mewling noise through its
busted and bloody face. Roshawna raised her thick-booted foot and
stamped down on his head, crushing his skull and causing the
child’s brains to shoot out from under her heel. The boy’s mother
let out a long, anguished cry and her legs collapsed beneath her.
Roshawna stepped over to her and kicked her hard in the ribs with
the same bloody boot that had moments ago stomped the life out of
her child.

Lamar looked around. They had captured three
of the women without too much of a problem. He walked up to the
young black boy with a bushy afro who had shot the fourth woman and
slammed him across the face with his pistol, busting open his cheek
in a bloody, ragged tear. The boy collapsed to the ground with
tears bursting forth into his eyes.

“I tol all you not to fade any dem white
bitches we sees. Now next time you know betta.” He told Crazy-8 to
get the white women onto the back of the pickup truck. The three
sobbing women were laid out on the ground, tied up with a variety
of cords and rope, and dragged back to the convoy of vehicles. The
mother of the little girl was bawling hysterically and struggling
vainly to break free of her restraints. She shot a look of daggers
at Roshawna as she was dragged away and told the fat gang member
that she was going to kill her. Roshawna reached down and
backhanded her with one of her meaty hands hard enough to snap the
woman’s head back sharply.

“Nuff a’dat shit!” Lamar barked at Roshawna.
She stared at him vacantly and then helped Crazy-8 get the women up
into the bed of the pickup.

They took the guns and ammo they found on the
two men and another rifle from one of the carts, plus the group’s
food and water. They left the cooling dead bodies lying on the cold
asphalt and got back into their vehicles. They started south again
down the highway, grinding the bodies beneath their heavy tires
when they remorselessly drove over the corpses while pulling away
as if they were no more than discarded garbage.

In Lamar’s mind, indeed, that was all they
were.

Steven and the girls had finally found a gas
station/convenience store on an exit off of westbound Interstate 64
to camp that first night after encountering Angela and her father.
They had avoided one small band of Loonies that were moving down
the opposite side of the highway. The group of survivors had run
deep into the woods to hide until the threat had passed. They had
lost almost two hours waiting, as the creatures didn’t seem to be
in any hurry to go where ever they were headed.

The little girl had completely avoided Kera
the entire time. Instead, she had held tightly onto Dontela’s
long-fingered hand as they slowly covered mile after mile. Jane was
walking on her own, seeming to take a strong interest in the little
curly-haired girl. Her pace had quickened and she ended up walking
next to the girl and Dontela. By late afternoon Jane was holding
onto the girl’s free hand and walking with a look of peace on her
still healing face. Angela took the attention in stride and had
taken the quiet woman’s hand without a word of protest.

When they approached the small store they
could see that it had had its front door pried open sometime in the
past, a sign that maybe other survivors had been there first. There
wasn’t much left of viable food in the store. However, there were
toilets that they could use with water gathered from a small creek
that ran behind the building. A cold rain had started falling from
the heavy gray sky an hour before they had stumbled across the
place, soaking them all in its chilly embrace. They decided
immediately that it would be their refuge for the night and would
be more than adequate to keep them dry and relatively warm. Plus
they could block the door and achieve a bit of security from any
Loonies that were in the area. Tomorrow they had the mountains of
the Blue Ridge to cross and with a front pushing through it would
probably be a cold, damp walk. They all hoped that the rain would
die out overnight, yet the cold north wind that was pushing down
out of the mountains promised a miserable day either way.

They built a small fire under the canopy of
the gas pumps, using what damp wood they could find in the dark,
dense forest of trees that pressed in tightly behind the gas
station. They started it with some engine starter fluid from a
spray can they found in the store. Steam rose from their damp
clothes as they crowded around the fire and ate a hot meal that
helped chase some of the chill from their bones.

Later, as Dontela sat on one of the car tires
that they had laid around the fire to use as benches, with Angela
cuddled up close to her trying to absorb her warmth, Jane stiffly
approached them and sat on an adjacent tire, facing the little
dark-haired girl instead of the heat of the fire. The woman
tentatively reached out and brushed the girl’s damp hair back from
her forehead and smiled at her. Angela turned her head and looked
inquisitively at Dontela.

“She lost her daughter not too long ago,”
Dontela told her quietly.

The girl nodded and looked back into the
other woman’s lonely, pained eyes and smiled up at her.

A smile played at the corners of Jane’s mouth
for the first time since Dontela had seen the woman at the rapist’s
camp.

Jane reached out again and this time gently
palmed Angela’s cheek. “I’ve missed you Diana,” she said in a
hoarse voice.

Angela glanced back at Dontela, who just
warned her to not say anything with a shake of her head. Angela
looked up at the woman’s pained face and tried to smile again
through brimming tears. “I miss my mommy too.” She choked on a sob
and threw her arms around the battered woman’s neck and hugged her
tight. They clung to each other in mutual sorrow, tears spilling
down their cheeks.

Steven, Kera, and Katherine appeared around
the side of the building, arms laden with branches and twigs for
the fire, and stopped short when they spotted the woman and little
girl sobbing in each other’s arms while Dontela looked on
uncomfortably next to them.

Dontela put her finger to her lips and
motioned them forward. They walked under the shelter, dripping
water from the icy rain, and quietly laid their loads next to the
crackling fire, moving in close to warm their wet, chilled
bodies.

Finally, Jane pulled back from the little
girl and stared at the expectant faces that had been watching them.
She smiled a strong smile, “Everything is okay now; my baby is back
with me.” Then she became aware of Steven and her dark eyes focused
on him, a look of fear sweeping over her face.

“You!” she hissed. “You stay away from my
baby!” She grabbed Angela and pulled her tightly to her damaged
bosom, causing the little girl to cry out in fear. “Don’t worry,
Diana. He won’t hurt you ever again.” She never took her baleful
eyes off of Steven.

Angela struggled to get out of her grip and
finally slipped away from the confused woman.

“I’m not Diana. My name is Angela.” she said
to the woman after moving out of reach.

Jane stared at Angela with her mouth agape.
“Diana, get back over here, now!”

The little girl shook her head and took
Dontela’s hand. “I told you my name is Angela and you’re not my
mommy.”

The woman’s confusion deepened and she looked
sharply at Dontela. “Who…? Where…?” she stuttered, trying to
assemble the pieces of conflicting information that swirled through
her mind. She stared hard at the curly-haired girl and then gasped
in disbelief. It
wasn’t
Diana. Diana was older and her hair
not as dark, nor curly. Then it all came back to her like a punch
in the gut. She moaned, tears welling in her eyes.

“They killed Diana, didn’t they?” she asked
of no one in particular. “They killed my baby.”

Kera sat next to her and hugged her
tight.

“I thought it was a nightmare,” the woman
whispered. “Who are you people?”

Her eyes cleared of the unfocused and muddy
look that they had been masked with since she had first been
rescued.

“You’re with friends,” Kera said. “You’re
safe now.”

The woman peered over at Steven again with
his two day growth of beard and brown hair cut short. He didn’t
really look like those men; the ones who had done the unspeakable
to her and her baby.

“Where are they?” she asked in a whisper.
“Where are the animals that hurt my little girl?”

“We made sure they would never hurt anyone
again,” Kera reassured her.

They found out that the woman’s name was
Melody and that she and her daughter, along with her husband Tony,
had been travelling westbound on Interstate 64, escaping the
horrors of Richmond when their truck had run out of gas. They were
on foot approaching Charlottesville when they had been found by the
men from the camp. At first, they acted friendly enough and offered
to get them to the other side of the city and help them scavenge
some food. The family eagerly agreed to go along with them, however
Melody soon became concerned with the way one of the big, burly men
was staring lewdly at Diana, who was only twelve years old but with
a body that was developing way ahead of her years. She had
whispered this worry to Tony as they sat cramped in the front seat
of the pickup while one of the men drove and the other sat behind
them in the back seat.

Tony had asked the man to not look at his
daughter like that and an argument ensued. The truck had been
stopped and the passengers ordered out. Melody had felt relief to
be getting out of that truck and wanted nothing more than to get
away from the two men, as every instinct in her body was on fire
with a feeling of mistrust. They had thought that they were going
to be let out and the men would simply drive away and it would be
done with. However, the man in the back got out and began angrily
yelling at Tony and without any indication of what he was going to
do, he pulled a handgun and shot her husband in the chest. When
Tony fell, the man had shot him once more in the head. The driver,
who had been standing a few feet away from her, had wheeled on his
heel and punched her hard in the face. She had woken up in the camp
with her daughter tied up next to her. The gruesome horrors that
started after that went on for days. No one in the group asked and
she didn’t tell exactly what those horrors were.

Melody appeared to grow stronger, both
physically and mentally, as she related her story to them and
seemed to be coming to terms with the grief over the loss of her
family and the pain of her ravaged body. She would never be the
same person she was before, nevertheless, they all realized that
she would now survive the horrible trials that she had
experienced.

They slept that night in the cold interior of
the store, wrapped up in blankets and sleeping bags while a heavy
late fall snow fell silently outside, purifying the landscape in a
blanket of white.