Zombie Rules (14 page)

             
“He’s a little upset. Try to calm him down.” She said in a low voice as she walked by me. Try to calm him down? I was ready to throttle that spoiled little brat of a daughter she had. Maybe someone should try to calm me down.

             
He started as soon as I walked through the doorway. “I tell you Zach, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.” He punched the side of the barn with enough force I thought he might have broken his hand. He was not just a little upset. Rick Sanders was pissed. Pissed, as in, he could have chewed up broken glass and shit it out without a second thought. I did not have to ask why, he started right in.

             
“The son of a bitch froze up!” He pointed with his thumb toward the driveway. “We had found that damn truck. It runs good. And, it has a generator and a welder on it. It was parked in the garage of a full service gas station. I tell you Zach it was a sweet find. We got a shit load of tools and got all the gas cans filled up. We were just about to get the truck out of the garage and head back home, but the garage door was chained. There was Janet trying in vain to use the bolt cutters on it, and here comes the zombies.” He pointed with his thumb again. “I’m in my truck, Janet needs help getting the chain cut, and he wouldn’t even get out of the truck to help!”

             
“You saw zombies? Were there a lot?” I asked.

             
Rick’s eyes widened and he started gesticulating with his hands, which he did whenever he got excited. “Oh hell yeah.” He slapped his forehead. “I’ll start from the beginning. Downtown Nashville is covered up with them Zach. We drove right into a massive horde. There must have been thousands of them. We just got away by the hair off my ass. We can’t go into downtown anytime soon, not without an army and some air support. Oh, by the way. One of those things got caught up under the truck when we were escaping. I drove two or three miles with it stuck under there. The entire lower part of the torso had been torn off, but when I pulled the upper half out of the wheel well, the son of a bitch was still alive! It came damn close to biting the shit out of me!”

             
Rick paused to scratch his presumably hairy ass. Larry ran over and sniffed. Rick was not amused and swatted him on the snout. “Anyway, there is no dang FEMA camp. At least, not anymore. It was all bullshit. So here’s the real kicker, we’re heading back and we’re in the Melrose area. I don’t see anyone or anything around, so I tell them we need to at least do a little scavenging while we had the chance. We find this garage right there on 8
th
just a couple of blocks from Wedgewood. But sure enough, we make all kinds of racket trying to get the dang door open and here they come. I shot a few, helped Janet bust the lock, and shot a few more so she could escape. You know what she did? She jumped in the driver’s seat of my truck. My damn truck!” Spittle flew as he yelled.

             
I looked around to see if anyone had walked in the barn, Rick noted my concern, took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “Zach, I think she was going to drive off without me!”

             
Oh man. Warning alarms were sounding in my head. I had him repeat the details. He told me about having to jump in the back as she was driving off. He was not suspicious at the time, he thought they would stop once they got to a spot without zombies, he’d jump into the cab of the truck, and off they would go. When it did not happen he actually had to threaten to shoot her. “Zach, I would have too. I don’t care if she was the last woman on the planet. I would have shot the bitch dead if she hadn’t have stopped right then and there.”

             
“What did you do then?” I asked.

             
“I was going to make her get in the truck with Don, but he parked about a hundred yards down the road and refused to drive back to us. So I gave in and made her move over to the passenger side, but not before I took her gun away from her.”

             
“Did she say anything, you know, try to rationalize her actions?” I asked.

             
He snorted. “She just said shit like, ‘close call’ and, ‘you really saved our bacon.’ You know, disingenuous shit like that.” He snorted again, which Larry decided was a cue for him to snort at well.

             
I was amazed, amazed he knew what disingenuous meant. Rick looked forlorn at Larry. He must have felt bad about swatting him, so he bent down and scratched him behind the ear. Larry returned the favor by licking his hand. “She never mentioned the fact I had to point my gun at her. You know, like, if I don’t mention it, it never happened. Goddamn it all Zach, this is fucked up.” Rick was not a deeply religious man, but he never used the Lord’s name in vain unless he was really agitated. I waited a minute for him to calm down a bit. Then, I inhaled and filled him in on Julie’s antics. He worked his leg while I talked. I could see it was hurting. The pain, and his current disposition, meant the whiskey was going to flow tonight. When I finished he and Larry did a double snort. “Spoiled little brat.” He said.

             
“Alright, I think we agree. This group has got to go.” I said.

             
He nodded his head vigorously. “You got that right. There ain’t no woman this side of hell worth this kind of shit.” Rick looked out of the open barn door. He smacked his forehead and gasped. “They got guns inside. You don’t think…” I did think. From the barn door we could see the kitchen window. There was light coming out. Someone had lit one or more of the lanterns. Good. They were not savvy to tactics. If they left the interior of the house dark, they would have a good tactical advantage over anyone walking through the door.

             
I watched the windows while we devised a plan. I walked inside a few minutes later. My feet left tracks in the snow. It was coming down hard now and the dirty gray sky was quickly turning dark. The interior of the house became brighter. Someone had just lit another lantern. Outside it was dark. They would not be able to see Rick and what he was doing. I repressed a smug grin.

             
They were all sitting on the couch waiting. Don had his shotgun sitting across his lap with his hand near the trigger and pointed toward the door as I walked in. I left the door open behind me. He stared at me flatly. “I suspected you would be armed when I walked inside Don.” Don’s eyes shifted nervously. It just confirmed Rick’s suspicions.

             
“Where’s Rick?” Janet asked. There was a hard edge to her voice. No more friendliness, no flirtatious smile. I glanced at Julie. She seemed very nervous. They were planning something alright.

             
I sidestepped away from the open door. “He’s outside with a rifle pointed at you. You’ve seen how good of a shot he is. I wouldn’t make any sudden moves if I were you. Oh, and you have about five seconds left to toss the shotgun on the floor at my feet.”               Don looked out the door in sudden alarm. Rick was crouched behind one of the trucks with the rifle leveled across the hood. Realization dawned on him. If he made a wrong move, he was a dead man. I could see it in his face. “Two seconds. He said he was going to shoot you first Don, and then Janet, you’d better do something quick.” Janet hurriedly reached out and swiped the shotgun onto the floor. I held up five fingers.               “Don, ladies, I just gave Rick the signal for five more seconds. Place your hands on your knees and do not move.” They did not like it, but they complied. Julie kept looking at her mother with condemnation. Or maybe it was how she always looked at her mother, hell if I know.

             
I then motioned for Rick to come inside. He shut the door with his foot and kept his rifle ready to use. I had kept my handgun in my holster. I put my hand on it now. “Would all of you please slowly stand up?” Nobody moved. Little Tommy was looking to his mother for direction.

             
“Get up!” Rick growled. They quickly stood in unison. Julie now looked like she was ready to piss on herself. There was a handgun hidden under her thigh. I walked over and grabbed it. “They were going to kill us Zach. They were going to kill us and take everything we worked so hard for.” Rick’s tone was murderous.

             
I agreed. “Sure looks that way.”

             
Don was pale. Janet pleaded. “No, you got it wrong! We thought that you were going to kill us!”

             
Rick started to raise his rifle. I held up a hand and stopped him. “Let me see if Rick and I understand your logic correctly Janet. We find the four of you, lost, dirty, and hungry. Instead of turning you all away, we show some true southern hospitality. We let you into our home. We fed you. We went out of our way to accommodate you bunch of ingrates. And you thought we were going to turn on you for no reason and kill you? Bullshit. You are a Goddamn liar.”

             
I looked at Julie. “Suddenly, your behavior makes a lot of sense. You’re just like your mother.” She tried to maintain eye contact with me, you know, one of those evil stare downs idiotic teenage girls liked to do, but she could not pull it off. She dropped her head and started silently crying. Tough shit. I had no sympathy.

             
I was mad. Rick was beyond mad. Nevertheless, we weren’t cold blooded murderers. I looked at Rick. He looked at me and shrugged, as if to say, whatever you want to do with them is fine with me.

             
“Alright then. Don, go into the bedrooms and get your family’s belongings. Bring it all in here. If you happen to latch onto anything that doesn’t belong to you, I’m going to have Rick cut your hands off with that axe over there.” I said and nodded toward the fireman’s axe, which was currently embedded in the Xbox.

             
His jaw dropped. “Well how do I know what belongs to us and what belongs to you two?”

             
“If it looks like it belongs to a woman or a ten-year-old kid, it wouldn’t be anything that we would own, now would it? You should hurry. Rick is an impatient man and you guys want to be on the road before it gets too dark out.”

             
“You’re really making us leave?” Julie finally asked. Her voice was small sounding now. All of the earlier defiance was gone. I stared at her contemptuously. She did not get it. They were close to being shot. All of them. I did not bother answering.

             
Janet spoke next. “Would it be possible to get some food before we have to leave?” I nodded reluctantly. “How much?”

             
“We’re not in a negotiating mood Janet. You’ll get whatever Rick and I decide to give you. I don’t expect you to thank us because I just don’t think y’all are the grateful types. You’re all nothing more than selfish ingrates. We could give you everything we had and I still don’t believe you would be appreciative. Don’t even think of asking for gas. Your daughter ruined that for all of you.” Janet frowned. I pointed at the Xbox again. “She doesn’t seem to think things through. She burned precious fuel running the generator while sitting on her lazy ass playing a video game all day.” Julie gasped. I don’t know why, it was true. I scoffed. “Pathetic. All of you are pathetic.”

             
Janet continued scowling at me, but then I saw something I had never seen before. Her expression suddenly changed from a vitriolic scowl to a pitiful, pleading look. It stunned me for a moment. To actually see the sudden metaphysical change of emotions, like suddenly shifting a car into reverse while driving down the road at fifty miles an hour. It unsettled me a little bit.

             
“You’ve misjudged us. We’re good people” She said quietly. Rick had told me about women like this during one of his drunken diatribes. He tried to explain it to me. I did not understand it at the time, but it made perfect sense now.
              I cleared my throat. “I disagree. It is you all who have misjudged Rick and me. We had suspicions about you all from the very beginning, but in spite of our suspicions, we offered our help. We were going to fix you guys up in your own house and help you survive through the winter. Now, you’re on your own. Since you feel like you have to arm yourself against us in our own house, consider this a tremendous favor we’re doing for you.”

             
“You’re handing us a death sentence.” Janet said sadly. I almost fell for it. Rick brought me back to reality.

             
“That’s your fucking fault!” Rick screamed. “Don’t even try to twist it around.” Everyone was quiet then. The only sound was Don’s shuffling around in the bedroom. After a minute, he slowly walked back into the den carrying two suitcases. He sat them down, bent over stiffly, and opened them. Rick looked over the contents and gave me a nod. “Keep an eye on them please Rick.” I grabbed one of the suitcases and walked down into the root cellar. I went through the shelves of mason jars and selected various items for them. Rick and I had done a shit-ton of canning this past fall. Hell, we had enough to last just the two of us for a few years. Our only problem was going to be dog food. Those little bastards sure did eat a lot.

             
Rick then directed them to their minivan. I got a five gallon gas can out of the truck and carefully poured it into their tank. Rick glared at me, but did not object. “It’s not enough to fill your tank, but it’s enough for y’all to get far away from here. Zach is being nice. As far as I’m concerned, if I see any of you heathens again I’ll pretend you’re zombies and put a bullet in your head.” They said nothing, quietly got in the car and started it. Rick stood off to the side and kept his rifle handy. I unloaded the shotgun and pistol. I knew that if they had any chance at all of survival, they would need the weapons. I put them in the back of their car.