The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (34 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly when the
others glared at her.

She pushed the door gently shut this time and
peeked out the curtained window of the door, back to where she
thought she had seen something moving. There was nothing there
now.

Probably
just
my
imagination
, she said to herself and stepped back into the
kitchen area of the home. She was always jumpy anymore. It was a
never-ending nightmare she had to endure every waking hour. She
simply wished they could go someplace where there weren’t any of
the M80s. Someplace safe. Maybe find a place where there were other
people and she could hook up with a nice boy and settle down. She
was tired of the goddamned walking too. Her feet were aching and
sore with blisters and the numbing cold. She was always hungry. Oh,
and a hot shower or bath, God, she would do anything for one. She
was so stinky and filthy and her hair such a matted mess that she
didn’t even feel human anymore. She was barely twenty years old and
it felt like her life had come to a screeching halt.

“We need to find a way to secure that door,”
Steven said next to her, shaking her out of her reverie. She nodded
and stepped out of the way.

They decided to shove the large refrigerator
over to block the broken door. It took three of them to move the
heavy machine into place and Katherine felt a rush of relief when
the door was finally blocked. HAD she seen something out there?

It turned out to be a fortuitous pick of
homes. Not only was there a cord of wood stacked in a carport next
to the attached garage, the house had propane for cooking and
heating water and it was on city water, which still was pressurized
from the nearby standpipe. Katherine’s dream of a hot bath would
become a reality that evening. Without electricity, the home’s
propane furnace was inoperable, however the freestanding woodstove
in the family room soon had the interior temperature a comfortable
70 degrees. There were canned and boxed foods in the pantry, at
least enough for close to a week of consumption by the six people
who now inhabited the house.

“We still need to make a run and get some
better winter footwear and maybe a couple of sleeping bags to
replace Melody’s and Angela’s blankets,” Steven told them after
they had finished eating a light, hot lunch. A Target based
shopping center sat less than a half mile from their front door.
They decided that first thing in the morning they would do a
scavenging run and gather what they could if the area appeared
clear of the Loonies.

“We can stay here for a while, can’t we?”
Katherine asked, warming her bare feet near the radiating warmth of
the woodstove.

“You saw them tracks earlier,” Dontela spoke
up. “I ain’t about to be hanging out near that large of a crowd of
them M80s, no matter how nice our new digs are.”

“She’s right.” Steven sighed. “It would only
be a matter of time before they found us.”

“Just a couple of days,” Katherine pleaded.
“We don’t have to go out and could be really quiet in the house.
They wouldn’t know we’re here.”

“I’m with Katy,” Kera said from beside him,
“We could all use a couple of days to recoup. We are all
road-weary, our feet are trashed with blisters from walking so many
miles in bad fitting and wet shoes. We all stink to high heaven.
This is a good place, better than most places we’ll find.” She
sighed and stared up into his dark eyes. “I know you want to find
Jeremy as soon as possible. I do too, but killing ourselves on the
road is not going to accomplish that. He’s probably already at your
farm waiting for you. Taking a little longer to get there is not
going to change anything.”

Steven stared at the burning embers in the
stove through the glass of the door, trying to tame the turmoil of
his thoughts.

“I like it here too,” Angela chimed in,
dipping a spoon full of peanut butter into a jar of strawberry
preserves before licking the spoon clean with a look of utter
ecstasy spreading across her face.

“Me too.” Melody smiled. The swelling and
bruising on her face had faded and her looks were returning to
normal, revealing a handsome, if not pretty, olive-complected woman
with a sharp Romanesque nose and large, bright, hazel eyes.

“You people are bent if you want to stay here
anymore than one night,” Dontela said sharply. “I know I’m gonna be
jumping at every noise I hear outside while we’re here.”

“No,” Steven said reluctantly. “They’re
right. We need to recoup our energy, get cleaned up, and not be
living on the edge of starvation for a few days. That will give the
snow time to melt and make travelling easier on all of us also.” He
smiled fondly at Kera. “And you’re right, a few more days isn’t
going to make a difference in our search.”

It was an hour before sundown when they heard
the noise outside, a rumbling vibration that strummed the nerves of
their bodies like plucked violin strings. They all peeked out the
windows and watched a huge swarm of Loonies stamped back up the
road in the opposite direction that their footprints had shown them
taking earlier. They were amazed; not only at their numbers, but
also the fact that many of them had taken clothes, drapes, and
blankets, and had wrapped them around themselves forming crude
coverings to protect against the biting cold. Very few were wearing
any sort of footwear. It took nearly fifteen minutes for the fast
moving swarm to disappear up the road.

The sight had left them all with a feeling of
uneasiness and a sense of foreboding. After dinner they tried to
wash away those uneasy feelings by taking hot baths and showers.
Later they split off into the home’s three bedrooms for the night,
and fell into light, fitful sleeps.

Outside, as the temperatures dropped and the
dark of the night deepened, a bundled figure crunched through the
crusty snow to the back door of the home. It glared in a kitchen
window, and not seeing anything, crept around the walls of the
house, listening or peeking in when it found a window without a
shade or curtain pulled. The only sounds it made were of its cloth
wrapped feet breaking through the thin layer of ice that had formed
on top of the snow and its hoarse breath that snorted in puffs of
steam through its nose. Finally it trotted off into the
darkness.

The following morning the six occupants of
the house gradually emerged from their rooms after daybreak.
Dontela and Angela, who were becoming as close as sisters, were the
last to appear from their shared bedroom. Dontela discreetly told
them that the little girl had cried herself to sleep again last
night, longing for her dead family.

Steven had already stoked the woodstove and
added an armful of wood to the glowing embers in its box so that
the room was warm by the time everyone gathered there. Hot oatmeal
and farina was heated on the propane cooktop, along with tea and
coffee. They sat down in the family room and consumed their first
hot breakfast in almost a week.

“Are we still going shopping this morning?”
Dontela asked from where she was relaxing on the couch after her
meal. She stared at the others over a steaming mug of coffee that
she had both hands wrapped tightly around to absorb the heat.

Kera nodded. “Yeah. I think we should. I feel
better about going knowing all those Loonies are gone from this
area.”

“Me too,” Dontela admitted. “I’ll be able to
rest a lot easier tonight.”

“We can’t get too complacent,” Steven
cautioned. “They may come back, or some could still be around out
there.” He stood by the woodstove with nothing on except a thick
flannel robe he had found in the master bedroom. Kera stood next to
her man wearing a matching robe and sipping hot tea.

“If you all don’t mind, I’d rather stay
here,” Katherine said in a timid voice.

Dontela stared contemptuously at the girl,
whatever bonds that had formed between the two girls through
necessity over the past months were falling apart a little more
each day.

Steven pretended not to notice the building
friction. “Okay. I was going to suggest that Melody and Angela stay
here anyway.” A thought sprang into his mind. “Wait here a minute.”
He went back to his room and a moment later reemerged with Holly’s
AR rifle that he had carried for so long in his backpack. He
cleared the gun and handed it to Katherine.

“It’s easier to use than your lever-action,
although not as powerful. However, it is faster and you can put
more lead into your target.”

Katherine took the black rifle like it was a
venomous snake and held it at arm’s length away from her body.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, girl, it ain’t going
to bite you!” Dontela admonished her.

Katy glared at the gun in her hands; she felt
as terrified of it as she did the M80s. She had been raised in a
liberal household that was very anti-gun. She had been taught from
a young age that all guns were evil killing machines whose only
purpose was to kill people or innocent animals. She had overcome
her fear enough to carry the hunting rifle with the wooden stock.
It didn’t look that scary, and besides, she hadn’t had to use it
and really didn’t plan on it. Let the other people here shoot the
M80s. In some way they were still people and she just didn’t think
she could bring herself to shoot them. But this thing! A military
assault weapon? This gun represented the epitome of all the
anti-gun rhetoric she had been fed. Even if it was the end of the
world and she was the last person alive surrounded by a thousand
M80s, she wouldn’t use this cold, evil, killing machine.

“That’s alright, I’ll stick with the other
gun,” she said uneasily and shoved the gun back into Steven’s
hands. Dontela just rolled her eyes and turned away.

“I’ll take it,” Melody said softly. She had
appeared in the doorway from the kitchen. She walked over to Steven
and he held it out to her.

“Do you know how to operate it?” he
asked.

She shook her head, wrapping her slim hands
delicately around the black metal and took it from him, holding it
reverently, as if it was some sacred relic. She looked up at Steven
and grinned. She sensed a power flow from the cold steel up her
arms and course through her body. She knew with this thing in her
hands, no man would ever subjugate her again, never again would
they take from her without her giving freely, or hurt her or those
she loved. She felt empowered.

“Will you show me how to use it?”

“Of course we will,” Kera said kindly, seeing
in her another warrior woman being born.

“How about me?” Angela asked.

“What about you?” Dontela snorted, putting
her arm around the pretty little girl.

“I need a gun too. My daddy let me shoot
before.”

“Kids shouldn’t be playing with guns,
sweetheart,” Katherine said firmly. They had carried Angela’s 20
gauge shotgun on the toboggan, although they had kept it from her
since they first discovered her.

Dontela spoke up before anyone else, “She
needs to be able to protect herself.” She said this despite the
fact that she kind of agreed with Katy. However, since she was a
bit agitated with her friend, she would have taken the opposite
side in any argument right now.

“Dontela’s right. She’s going to need to
learn to handle a firearm safely and be able to defend herself,”
Steven said in a dry matter-of-fact tone. “However, that will have
to come later. We don’t have anything to fit your small hands right
now, and the shotgun is still too big for you.” He was thinking of
finding a small .22 rifle for the child, hell they even made pink
ones. If all else failed they would cut down the barrel of the
shotgun for her.

An hour later Steven, Kera, and Dontela
slipped out of the attached garage and headed up the driveway in
the direction of the distant shopping center. All three failed to
see the extra set of footprints that circled the house along with
their own.

On the roads the snow was melting rapidly
where the sun was hitting it, yet the shaded areas were still snow
covered and icy, so they took their time crossing the treacherous
spots. Their muffled footsteps sounded incredibly loud in the dead
silence that surrounded them. They carried with them a list of
supplies that they needed including shoe sizes of the three girls
that had stayed behind.

Katy and Melody stood in the open doorway of
the garage and watched the three disappear out of sight when the
land dipped down on the other side of the road behind a screen of
trees and shrubs. Melody had the short-barreled AR slung around her
shoulder and felt comfortable in the theory of its operation, even
though she had only been able to dry-fire it. She now had a thirty
round magazine loaded in the mag well and a round chambered; it
gave her a newfound confidence.

They slipped back into the warm house,
unaware of the eyes on them.

When the door closed, a group of individuals
emerged from behind a snow-covered clump of bushes, led by the
bundled figure that had braved the freezing temperatures overnight
to case the home. No words were spoken, as that ability had been
wiped from them like letters from a chalkboard. Yet still, some
sort of communication took place. Through a sneer or a growl or the
flash of a bloodshot eye, the alpha male directed the lesser male
and the four females to follow him. By his sheer will, he had kept
not only himself, but also the other five from charging after the
other creatures when they had emerged from the dwelling.

The alpha, a tall, muscular black man with a
dirty afro and corresponding beard crawled forward. His head poked
through a hole that he had chewed through the center of a thick
pleated comforter and a piece of wire held it in place around his
waist, an amazing feat of intelligence for one with a barely
functioning brain. The others to a lesser extent had mimicked him
and sported their own cold weather dress.