Zompoc Survivor: Odyssey (6 page)

“I’m coming out,” I said as I let the door open an inch or two. Slowly, I pushed the door open the rest of the way and watched to see what they’d do. Del brought his rifle up and aimed it at the door while Tad pointed his shotgun at it without bothering to aim.

“You get the hell away from my kids, mister,” Del said. “I want you off my property now!”

“Near as I can tell, the biggest danger to your kids is you,” I said as I stepped out onto the porch.

“You have no right to tell us how to raise our kids,” Penny said from behind her husband.

“I was talking about your husband and your son pointing guns at me without knowing where your other two kids are,” I said as I turned and moved to my right. Their guns and their eyes followed me. “Now, I’d love to be as far away from you folks as I could get right now, but you’re standing between me and my truck.”

“I think we’re standing between you and
my
new truck,” Tad said. Amy darted from the side of the house as he brought his shotgun up a little higher for emphasis. I paused and looked at him for a moment. I still needed time for Amy to get the drop on them, but Tad was just as impulsive as she was. If anyone was going to start shooting, it was him.

“Son,” Del said slowly.

“I want that truck Dad,” Tad said emphatically. “Think of all the stuff in it.” Del nodded after a moment, and Tad smiled.

“Right now, kid,” I said slowly as I saw Amy pull the camper’s rear hatch open, “I’d be thinking
real
hard about the Golden Rule.” The comment had the desired effect, as father and son exchanged glances.

“You get your daughter and you get the hell off our land,” Penny snapped after a few seconds. “If you know what’s good for you,” she added with a smirk.

“Hell, you ought to be grateful we don’t just shoot you now,” Tad said. All three of them froze in place when Amy racked a round into the Mossberg.

“Funny,” she said, her voice tight. “I was just about to say the same thing to you assholes.” All eyes went to her, and I brought the revolver up. As I sighted on Del’s back, I wondered if I was going to survive Maya’s reaction when she saw what two weeks with me had done to her little girl.

“Drop the guns,” I said as I pulled the hammer back. It wasn’t necessary, but it got the point across. “Now.” Tad almost threw the shotgun down, while Del took the M14 by the barrel and laid it down on the ground in front of him. “Turn around and put your hands against the truck.” All three of them glared at me, but they did it. I stepped down off the porch and picked up the shotgun and broke it open. Once I’d extracted the two shells, I dropped it and picked up the rifle. Amy came around to my side as I dropped the magazine and pulled the charging handle to clear the round from the chamber. With their weapons empty, I pulled the handcuffs from my pocket and threw them on the ground between Dell and Tad.

“Cuff yourself to him, right hand to right hand.” Amy handed me the other set of cuffs, and I tossed them next to Penny. “You do the same, left hand to left hand with your husband.”

“You better think real hard about what you do to us,” Del said. “Because once I get loose, you’re gonna regret it.” Beside him, Tad was red faced and shaking, whether from fear or anger I couldn’t tell. I pretended to think for a moment before I answered.

“I recall someone thinking I should be grateful that they didn’t just shoot me,” I said. “So I was thinking about that.” Tad let out a moan.

“I wasn’t part of any of that, I swear!” he blubbered. “They made me go along with it!”

“Relax, kid, I’m not gonna shoot you. But I meant what I said about the Golden Rule. See, I have some rules of my own. Rule Twenty Three goes something like this: Don’t walk away if someone needs help. So, what am I going to do with you? I’m still not sure. But I think I know where to look for some ideas,” I said as I held up the book.

Chapter 3

Karma

~ At his best, man is the noblest of animals; separated from law and justice, he is the worst. ~

Aristotle

“You can’t do this to me!” Penny screamed from the other side of the basement door. I sighed as I closed it and made my way through the kitchen, picking up two bowls of oatmeal as I went. In the dining room, three children now sat at the table, each one studiously not looking at anything but the bowl in front of them. I went past as quietly as I could, but halfway down the hallway I heard the clinking of silverware on plates stop. Amy’s voice came from the dining room, soft and reassuring. The sound of eating still didn’t resume until I was halfway up the stairs. The door to the little boy’s room opened easily under my hand, and Del looked up at me from the same spot his younger son had been chained yesterday afternoon. Like his son, he only wore a pair of jeans. The red marks from the beatings I had given him stood out on his back and shoulders, and he shivered from the cold. I set the bowl down at the edge of his reach and stepped back.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” I asked as he reached for it.

“You got no right to do this to me, and if I get loose, I’m gonna beat the shit outta you,” he growled. I nudged the bowl out of his reach with my foot.

“For treating you like you treat your own children,” I said. He glared at me. “Everything you told me I couldn’t do to you, you did to them. The way I see it, this right here, the last eighteen hours or so…
that’s
what you have a right to for the rest of your life.” I nudged the bowl back toward him.

“No one tells me how to raise my kids,” he said around the first spoonful of plain oatmeal. I turned and walked to the door.

“You let Bethlehem’s book do that for you already,” I said from the doorway. “Funny how his methods are okay to use on your kids, but it pisses you off when I use them on you.” I pulled the door shut and went to the next one. Tad was curled up in a sniffling ball in the corner. His head came up when the door opened. I set the bowl down in easy reach of him and stepped back. Unlike his parents, he’d been spared the beatings, the dousing with water and had been fed at the same time as the other kids.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” I repeated.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said as he grabbed the bowl. “It was all Mom and Dad, they locked my brother and sisters up. There wasn’t anything I could do about it.” I shook my head at the litany. He’d turned on his parents before we even got them into the house, and told us about Lena, his older half-sister who had been locked in the basement since she was a little girl. An embarrassment to her mother because she was born out of wedlock, she’d been hidden away all her life. If he’d been hoping for some mercy from me by betraying his parents though, he’d been disappointed.

“You didn’t do anything,” I said. He nodded quickly, looking up at me with a hopeful smile. “That’s your crime. You let your brother and your sisters suffer while you enjoyed a normal life.” His face fell at that, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t disappointed in himself. Still, if there was hope for any of them, it was with him. I took a deep breath, then pulled the key to his handcuffs from my pocket. “Finish your food, then go and unlock your parents. Meet us out front.” I walked out and went down the steps. Amy waited for me with a bowl of the same stew the other kids had been eating.

“No thanks,” I said. “I don’t have much of an appetite right now.” She nodded.

“Me, either,” she said as she turned and took it into the dining room. The other three kids were sitting in the front room, huddled on the couch and looking worried. I walked past them and out to the front porch.  The morning sun was casting long shadows across the fields, and mist was rising in long, narrow patches from the ground. It should have been beautiful. Amy led the three kids out onto the porch, and for a moment, I got to see them smile like normal kids. Then the front door opened and Del walked across the porch, his head down. Penny followed him, and as soon as she saw the girls, she moved toward them.

“You worthless little-” was all she got out before I punched her. She staggered back and fell off the porch.

“You will never lay a hand on those kids again,” I said. She got up and stared daggers at me.

“You won’t always be around, you self-righteous son of a bitch,” Del said. I came off the porch and shoved him against the side of the truck with my forearm across his neck.

“But I will be back,” I said as he struggled. “And if either of you so much as touches one of these children in anger, I swear to you. I. Will. Bury. You.” His face went pale at that, and he stopped fighting against me. I stepped back and let him fall to the ground, then turned to Tad, who had been the last one out. He was ashen faced and stood stock still.

“You,” I said sternly. His eyes locked on me. “You didn’t do anything. That ends now. If they’re not treated the same way you used to be, you speak up. You do everything you can to stop it. Do you understand?” He nodded quickly. Finally I turned back to Del.

“You have one week, maybe two before I come check on you,” I said, my voice trembling as I fought to keep from hitting him again. “If these children aren’t all alive, healthy and on the mend when I come back, I’m going to chain the two of you to the floor in one of those rooms and leave you there to die. Am I understood?” His eyes narrowed, but he nodded slowly. I stepped back, and felt a creeping sensation up the back of my neck. Amy stood, and I turned to look over my shoulder. She trotted to the edge of the hilltop and looked down, then turned back to me.

“Ghouls!” she called out. I ran to the truck and pulled the Deuce and Amy’s sword belt from the cab. “You read my mind,” she said as she buckled it on.

“I need to leave them with an example they won’t forget,” I sad as I drew my blade. “But I need you to stay out of this fight and keep an eye on the Manson family here.” Her jaw clenched as she frowned at me. She nodded and stepped back a couple of paces with an expression on her face like she’d just eaten a raw lemon. I moved forward and looked down the hill at the trio of ghouls that were racing up the slope toward us. Two wore t-shirts and jeans, and one was clad in the remains of a waitress’ outfit. The one in the lead was uttering a low growl as he came at me, and all too soon, he was coming over the edge of the hill. I held the blade with both hands and stepped into the swing. The blade caught him just above the shoulder and sliced through the front of his torso with a snapping sound as it clove through bones. The ghoul went down, its feet whipping forward as it fell on its back from the force of the blow. The other two stopped as they crested the edge of the hill, and did something I hadn’t seen any stage one infected do before.

They stared at me. Their milky eyes seemed to move back and forth, and their noses twitched as they seemed to test the air. Then, as if that wasn’t enough weirdness for one moment, they turned and ran. I transferred the sword to my right hand and grabbed my .45 from its holster as I went to the edge of the hill. The first ghoul dropped with one shot, and the second fell after I put two rounds into it. I dispatched the one I’d first killed with a stroke from my blade across its skull, and finished the other two off with a pair of short chops to the back of the head before I wiped my blade clean on the shirt of one of them. When I crested the hill again, all six members of the family were gathered by the truck.

“Okay, how did you pull that off?” Amy asked as I walked up beside her.

“I wish I knew, but I don’t think it was just me,” I said while I wiped the blade clean on the lead ghoul’s shirt. “They’re running in packs, maybe they’re smart enough to know when they’re facing whatever we are.”

“I’ve never seen the fast ones run from anyone before,” Tad said as we approached. “How did y’all know they were coming?” He looked at me like he’d never seen me before, and I wondered if I’d grown a second head or something. Even Penny was keeping a safe distance from me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We just…do. We’re really good at killing zombies. Those three probably broke through a fence last night somewhere. You might want to see if you can fix that.”

“Um…how many have you killed?” Tad asked Amy.

“Seventy two,” she replied. His jaw dropped for a second, then his mouth closed almost as quickly. I tossed the Deuce into the truck and pulled the magazine for the M14 from my pocket.

“Take care of them,” I told Del as I handed it to him. ”I don’t need to remind you what’ll happen if you don’t.” He shook his head.

“I’m not an idiot. But you’d better pray I never get the drop on you again, because I’ll kill you the second I see you.”

“I’ll make sure you don’t,” I said. I made the decision not to tell him I’d field stripped both of their guns. Del stepped back, leaving Penny to stare at me with hate in her eyes. Tad went back to the porch and hovered near his brother and younger sister while Amy and Lena spoke softly. They shared a brief hug, then Amy went to the truck and got in. I got in on my side and started the truck, then backed up and headed for the road down.

“Do you think we actually did any good?” I asked her once we cleared the gate.

“No,” she said after a few moments. “Are we really coming back?” I nodded.

“If we don’t, I’ll find someone to come back in our place. No matter what, if we can find a place for those kids, we’re not leaving them there.” We drove in silence for another minute.

“Are you mad at me for pushing things?” she asked. “Should I have left things alone?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not mad at you. Mad about the situation, mad that we couldn’t take those kids with us, mad about a lot of things. But not at you.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said.

“Kobayashi Maru, ensign,” I said softly. “There was no right solution.”

“Well, if they put Lena back in that basement, they’re going to be in for a surprise,” she said with a smile. “I hid one of my Spikes and a handcuff key behind a brick in the basement. I told her where to find it when she hugged me.”

“Good job. Now you’re starting to think like me,” I said. “You’re mom’s going to kill me. But seriously, you did more good than I did back there.”

“I just about got us killed,” she said. “How do you figure I did more good?”

“To those kids, I was the violent stranger who kicked their doors in,” I told her. “They were more frightened of me than of their parents. You…I needed you to be what I couldn’t. The one they trusted.”

“I wish they knew you like I do,” she said. “They wouldn’t be afraid of you. I just don’t get why we can’t take them with us.”

“Same reason I didn’t want you coming with me when I left KC. Keyes and the DHS or whoever he works for are still looking for me. For now, all we can do is pray that things don’t go really bad before we make it back.” We drove along in silence after that, and turned west at the intersection where we’d found the sign. I still wondered who had painted it, but like so many things I wondered about lately, I resigned myself to not knowing.

The road we were on turned from a numbered highway into a dirt road, so we turned north to stay on US 75. A couple of miles further up, we found a sign that showed Auburn was less than twenty miles away. The road was mostly empty until we hit a little café with a small group of infected in the parking lot. They ran out into the road when they heard us coming, but the truck made short work of the three ghouls that got in its way. Twenty minutes later, we were pulling into Auburn, a town that boasted a population of a little over three thousand. The streets were empty, a contrast to the bigger towns we’d been to. Smoke rose in thin strands from deeper in town, but most of the place seemed intact. I slowed down as we hit J street, and started looking at signs. A shopping center loomed on our right, but it only seemed have a dozen or so zombies wandering around in the parking lot.

“Dave, look,” Amy pointed to my left. A small, gray building labeled itself as “The Farmer’s Pantry – Bulk Foods.” No cars were parked in front of it, but a Ford truck was parked just behind it. I pulled into the parking lot and drew the SOCOM. Amy got out as I screwed the suppressor onto the big pistol’s barrel and got out. Nothing seemed to be moving, so I made my way to the door. A white rectangle was taped to the glass from the inside.

“If you’re alive, come on in and take what you need. Gale and I don’t have much use for it now. Try to leave a little for the next person if you can, but if you take the last of what’s here, please take this note down. Don’t worry, we’re not inside.”

The door opened easily, and I stepped inside. The SOCOM’s tac light illuminated half empty shelves. Whoever had been here before me had evidently taken the note to heart, and had left at least half of everything. Five gallon buckets of bulk foods like beans, flour and rice were stacked along one wall, while sacks of corn and grains took up half of the adjacent wall. Spices and canned goods were on the shelves on my right, and a display of grinders was on the counter in front of me. A lot of what was there, we wouldn’t be able to use on the road, but some of it would come in handy later. Following the example of the person before me, I took one of the two grinders and only some of what was left, partly out of respect for the owners, and partly because we didn’t have a lot of room in the truck.

“Next stop, a gas station,” I said as I climbed back into the truck.

“There’s one just up the street,” Amy said. True to her word, there was a Casey’s a hundred yards up, next to a pharmacy and across the street from a vision clinic. The pharmacy was gutted, the front doors and windows shattered. The convenience store didn’t look much better, but it was worth checking out.