DEAD: Reborn (21 page)

“Mama!” a voice cooed from behind.

The adults all turned to see Xander sitting up in his hammock with arms outstretched. Mel went over and scooped the child into her arms, nuzzling the little boy’s neck.

“That was not much of a nap,” she scolded, ruffling the b
aby’s fine, blond hair.

After a bit of squirming, Mel reluctantly set her son down. She was getting a bad feeling from this strange woman who was making no move to take
Cynthia up on the offer for clean clothes. From experience, she knew that bloody clothing was not something a person wanted to stay in any longer than necessary.

Before she could react, her son took off for this woman. In Mel’s mind, she saw a deadly viper.
Xander sort of staggered to a halt and stared up at the woman with his head cocked to the side.

“Icky!” he squealed and turned to run back to his dad. Kyle caught him but kept him at arm’s length since he was not much cleaner. A second later, the little boy seemed to realize this as well. “Daddy icky!”

Kyle set his son down and smiled as the little boy hurried back to his mother. He glanced down and seemed to realize for the first time that he had blood splatter on himself as well.

“I need to clean up and change as well,” he announced. “Ann, there is a water basin in the other treehouse along with clean clothes. Why don’t you go ahead and go first.”

He looked at the woman who had not seemed to move except for that one step back that she had taken when she seemed to be concerned about whether Cynthia had been bitten. She was almost like a statue, but he was pretty sure that she was staring at Xander. It struck him like a bolt, children were basically non-existent these days. The woman was probably in shock.

From Mel’s vantage, she was seeing something else entir
ely. That woman was studying her baby behind those mirrored goggles. Sirens and bells were clanging in her “motherly danger zone” portion of her mind.

“How old is the child?” Ann asked, breaking what was quickly becoming an uncomfortable silence.

“Two-and-a-half,” Kyle said with that beaming smile he got anytime he spoke about his son.

“Remarkable,” Ann whispered and then moved closer as if to take a look at the boy who was now nestled under his mot
her’s chin.

“Perhaps you should clean up first,”
Cynthia spoke, causing the woman to start.

Ann turned on the woman who was seated about five feet away. The tension in the room instantly amped up to a palpable level for everybody. Kyle moved
instinctively between Ann and his wife who held his son. Glenn, who had remained mostly silent stepped beside his wife and placed a hand on her shoulder. This stranger had done nothing except turn to face the person speaking to her, yet, for everybody present, there had been a sudden feeling of menace that poured from the small figure still dressed in her studded leather jumpsuit, gloves and those mirrored goggles.

“Apologies to you all,” Ann said as her gaze scanned those around her.
She pulled off her eye protection causing everybody to gasp involuntarily.

***

Chad woke with a start and quickly realized there was something wrong. The first clue was that he could see—it was that gray gloom just before dawn, but the lighting was such that he could see just fine. Sitting up he looked around frantically for Dustin; or, more accurately, what he expected to find that remained of the man.

Just a couple of yards away, another hammock swayed ge
ntly. Dustin was in it and asleep! Now he was confused. Had Dustin woke him for his watch and he returned to bed as soon as the man had fallen asleep? Was he so out of it that he could forget something like that?

Looking down to the ground about fifteen feet below, he saw three walkers stumbling along. They were not looking up; instead, they seemed fixed on something to the south. They stuck together in a tight cluster as they moved, often stumbling over each other in their drive to get to whatever was drawing them along.

Even though the morning was just breaking, he could tell that all of these zombies had been around for a while. Two were completely stripped naked and all of them had a variety of wounds decorating their bodies. One of them had what looked like an entire kitchen drawer’s worth of forks and knives jutting from her torso. Most of these utensils were deeply embedded in the pathetic creature. Obviously each time it fell, the utensils were driven just a bit deeper or bent over which made him think of a cross between an armadillo and a porcupine with how some of the objects had been bent to almost form a sort of protective armor, yet others still stuck out obscenely.

Once he was certain that the creatures were gone and a good distance away, he hissed for Dustin. The big man rolled over and wiped at his face. He did not move for a few seconds, then sat up with such a start that Chad thought the man would fall out of his hammock.

“What the heck happened?” Chad asked. “Did you get me up for my watch and I fell back asleep or something?”

“Actually, I decided that we would be okay. You were e
xhausted, brother. I tried to wake you and you were just out too hard. I imagine the stress and the fact that you just came back from that run took its toll.”

Chad nodded and rolled out of the hammock. When he landed, his ankles reminded him that he was not getting any younger by sending little tendrils of pain up his legs. Dustin fo
llowed suit and started up the hill where they had left the horses in a large fenced field. The animals were grazing peacefully, occasionally galloping off when the lone zombie that had gotten in would get close. They quickly put the gear on the horses and headed back to retrieve their packs and hammocks.

“Even the animals don’t hardly seem afraid of them
anymore,” Dustin observed.

“I wonder how long that thing has been in there after them,” Chad said as he climbed over the fence. It would not do if the animals were still tired from yesterday’s ride.

“I went up and checked on them before I turned in. They seemed fine then and the moon was bright enough for me to see pretty well. Nothing was in there then.”

“I still wish you would have woke me,” Chad grumbled.

“I know, and maybe that is showing my lack of experience being outside the fences. I just figured that we were both up in them trees and about as safe as we could be.”

“But if those things get on to you, they don’t go away
unless something else draws them. If we woke to fifty or a hundred of those things around the trees, we would have been screwed. There is no way we could have fought them from up in the hammocks.”

Dustin glanced sheepishly at the two crossbows sitting on a rock a short distance away. They could have been on the moon for all the help that they would have been if they would have ended up surrounded by a pack of zombies.

“You really haven’t been out in this very much, have you?” Chad asked as he climbed up onto his horse.

“Saw what I needed to see on the news…until the telev
isions went off the air. Then I listened on radio…but those eventually went dark. Then we lost power for good and I just kept waiting for it to come back. I think I waited about a month before I realized it might not ever go back to normal.

“Saw our share of them things over the year, but I had most of my stuff in place before
, so all that we really did was extend the perimeter and around summer time, we put up those tall fences and the towers. A construction site was about four miles away and we found almost everything we needed. At first I felt bad about taking what was not mine, but we lost a couple of folks on one of the supply runs and that was a kind of wake up.”

Chad listened as Dustin told his story. He was stunned at how out of touch the man had been early on. He wondered what the man would have thought if he’d seen a fraction of what he had witnessed. He was actually surprised that the man had lasted this long. Even as he spoke, it was as if he could not believe some of the words coming out of his own mouth.

They continued to ride in an expanding circle that radiated out from the compound. The fact was that, if she was still alive, Ronni could not have gotten far. He tried to remain hopeful as the day dragged on, but it was not looking good as the sun reached its apex and started to head on its downward journey.

Just as Chad was about to give up hope, a zombie lurched from some nearby brush. He didn’t know the name, but he re
cognized it as one of the children from the compound. She was maybe twelve and had long, dark hair that had been drenched in blood and clung in dried clumps to her face almost completely hiding her eyes.

“Kaja,” Dustin managed around the tightness that had seized his throat.

The girl had been torn apart pretty bad. Her head was almost resting on the left shoulder because so much of the throat had been ripped away. One outstretched hand was missing all the fingers and her insides were dangling at her knees in ropy strands.

Chad climbed down from his horse. The zombie did not a
dvance, but seemed to be watching him…observing. It sent a chill down his spine when she began to sway back and forth. The part of his mind that tried desperately to cling to its sense of humor quickly imposed the image of Axl Rose.

“What are you waiting for?” Dustin breathed. “Kill it!”

***

“You aren’t coming,” Jody said as he did a final check of his gear. “And it has nothing to do with your…condition.”

Selina’s pregnancy was now the talk of the town. Jody had known full well that Danny could not keep his mouth shut. There seemed to be a steady procession of people coming by to wish them well.

“Then why can’t I come?” Selina at on the edge of the bed with her arms folded across her body tightly.

“We are going to be running almost the entire time to get there fast. Danny and I know how to communicate with our hands and we are treating this as a military search-and-rescue detail. I won’t have time to explain things as we go. I know you are fully capable. In case you haven’t noticed, your name is still on the patrol rotation. I haven’t done anything to treat you like you aren’t able to work or do your part.”

“You act like this is some
super-secret Delta Force operation,” Selina scoffed.

“Like it or not, we are treating this as a rescue operation and we have to go in assuming the possibilities of hostile forces pr
esent. Remar may be a lot of things, but he is not stupid or incompetent. His not being back yet has me concerned. This is not just a walk in the woods.”

Jody headed for the door and paused to kiss Selina. She got up and threw her arms around his neck. He felt her shaking against him and tilted her face up to his.

“Why are you crying?”

“I just have a terrible feeling,” she sobbed.

Before he could ask, the door to the gymnasium flew open and several people came flooding in, all of them trying to talk at once. Jody peeled Selina’s arms from around his neck and raised them to quiet the crowd.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted above the din.

“Come look!” a voice called.

Jody made his way to the door. The crowd parted before him as he approached. He stepped outside and noticed a bunch of people standing in the parking lot of the school looking east with their hands shaded against the morning sun. He stepped out from behind the school and looked east.

A black cloud was climbing skyward.

Danny came running up in full gear. The big difference for them both were the crossbows in place of the automatic wea
pons.

“Think that’s our guy?” Danny asked.

“It is the right direction.”

“Then we better get moving. We got a four mile run ahead of us.”

“I still don’t understand, now more than before, why you won’t take the horses,” George said as he signaled for the gate to be opened.

“Because those horses are pretty vital and not replaceable. If we have to hide, they are as good as gone. Right now, those a
nimals are a vital part of our lives. Going on foot will only take a little while longer,” Jody explained for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Well you two ain’t all that replaceable either,” the big man grumbled.  Selina made a noise of agreement.

“Then trust me when I tell you that we will be more able to keep our location a secret and to maintain an element of surprise should it come to that if we are on foot.”

Jody did not want to say anything about the possibility that Remar had used this run as an opportunity to separate himself from the folks at Cash. He knew that there was a chance that a shootout would occur. He didn’t like that possibility, but he did not think that anybody beyond he and Danny were prepared to do what was necessary if it came to that.

The two split to opposite sides of the highway and began the long, steady jog towards that pillar of smoke. In the fields on either side, only a few zombies could be seen; most had turned in the direction of the cloud and were slowly heading that direction.

Less than an hour later they were turning
on to what the crooked street sign announced as Flemon Rd. By now, the smell of wood and a number of other things that gave off a noxious odor was overwhelming. Up ahead, they could see the entrance to a housing development. That was supposed to be where Remar’s group had gone. Now, it looked as if the entire place, every single house in that project, was ablaze.