DEAD: Reborn (30 page)

Shaking off the lingering after-effects of his most recent life experience, Kevin stood up straight and looked down at the much shorter Trent Lomax. He had not noticed before that the man was maybe, if he wore extra thick socks, a shade over five and a half feet tall; almost a foot shorter than Kevin when Kevin was wearing his boots like he was currently.

The man had reddish hair and ears that jutted out from under his beanie like a pair of radar scoops. His skin was splotchy with an overabundance of freckles that seemed to meld together in spots to form single giant freckles. He was missing a canine tooth and it gave him a bit of a redneck look. His eyes a
lmost looked to be pinching together on the bridge of his nose they were so close set. He was wearing a denim jacket that was soiled and stained—a lot of the blood, probably from the wound suffered by his friend Doug—and it was buttoned all the way to his neck.

With his most reassuring smile, Kevin placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. What he had initially mistaken for aggression and anger was probably just simple fear. This man needed a group to survive.
This man needed a leader and, like it or not, Kevin was the best equipped for the job.

It’
s funny
, he thought as he led the man back to the group,
before the zombies came, I’d spent my life craving the role of authority
. When it came, nothing was as he and his friends had imagined. It had taken him this long to firmly assume that role. The act of killing Derek suddenly began to feel like baptism.

Heather and Aleah were waiting when he walked back in the room. All of the children, even Sean and Deanna
, were snuggled into their various bedrolls. Cartoon characters, puppies, action heroes, and even a few zombie caricatures peered through the stains and grime of the different bedding; the room looked like the reject bin of an inner-city Goodwill store.

“Is it done?” Heather asked.

“Yep,” was Kevin’s short reply.

Catie waded out of the shadows and joined the others in a loose circle. Each of them took a few moments to process the past several
hours’ worth of events in his or her own way. At last, it was Kevin who broke the silence.

“Tomorrow, we head towards Chicago. We have a lot to do and there is going to be a laundry list of things we need to be in search of when we reach the suburbs. For one, travel on foot is fine in spots, but we need wheels. Cars and the like will be out of the question by now…the fuel will have turned. We need to be on the lookout for a large outdoor store or sporting goods place. If we can scrounge up some
bike trailers, we will be able to haul more supplies.

“I am going to divide us all up into teams once we get wit
hin sight of the city and choose a major landmark for us to use as a rally point.” He saw a few mouths open with either questions or protests, and he quickly silenced them with raised hands.

“I know the idea of splitting up is not one that everybody will like, but it is the most efficient. While we are not exactly on a time table, we do have some issues the later we go before reaching our destination.”

“Excuse me,” Trent spoke up quickly despite Kevin’s attempt to shut him down. “I ain’t been with you folks long enough…where exactly are we headed?”

“South Dakota,” Kevin said. He quickly explained the
reasoning and then resumed laying out his plan for the following day.

When he was finished, he looked at them all and gave the nod for them to present any questions or issues. Surprisingly, there were none…not even from Catie. It seemed that everybody was now prepared to let him assume his role as leader.

Since there were no questions, Kevin offered to take the first watch. Once a rotation was agreed upon, everybody retreated to his or her own bed.

It was about to get busy.

16

Life and Death

“It’s a boy!” Sunshine announced as she came out of the room.

There was a cheer that made me look around. I hadn
’t realized just how many people we’d accumulated in the past several weeks. With Simon’s group, we had to now be close to two hundred bodies.

Somewhere along the line, folks started to make plans for a big celebration. As I headed back to my room, I noticed som
ething else that had slipped by me these past weeks. There had to be at least fifty women in our group. Maybe more, but I had to say that at least a quarter of all the folks gathered were female. To add to that, we had about a dozen children under the age of twelve. I knew Thalia, Rabia, Levent, and Misty, but I could not name any of the others that I saw gathered together by Cheryl and some other lady.

“How you feeling?” a voice said from beside me.

“Honestly?” I glanced down at Katrina. “I feel like I got the crap beat out of me.”

“You almost got blown up from what I hear.”

“Yeah, I don’t really remember much. I think I remember hearing a hiss…and then…I woke up here.”

“That crazy guy had hundreds of propane tanks rigged all over the place. Most were just four-and-a-quarter pound tanks, a few were hundred pounders. The guy was a kook.”

We stood in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. I started feeling a bead of sweat trickle down my spine. I wished that Jamie were here, he always knew how to talk to girls.

“So I guess there is going to be a big celebration…” Katrina said, her voice sounding kind of strange.

“Yeah, all this over a baby. I guess we gotta find something to be happy about. Lord knows we have had enough lousy luck these past several months.”

I didn
’t exactly feel that way about the baby. I mean, it
is
a big deal. Steve’s child is here and that is symbolic of a lot of things…like how long we have been running. Also, there was the whole part about still being alive. After all, I bet about ninety percent of humanity can’t say the same thing right now.

“The rumor is that some of the folks have been getting t
ogether and practicing, there is going to be music…”

Please don
’t say dancing, please don’t say dancing!

“…and maybe even a little dancing.”

Damn!

“Sounds…”
like a nightmare
, “…fun.”

I looked over at Katrina and she was studying the toe of her boot as she traced designs on the floor that only she could see. I
’m not a total idiot. I knew where she was going with this, but for some reason, I couldn’t get my mouth to say the words. Give me a herd of zombies or a crazy soldier holed up in a booby-trapped fortress over talking to a girl any day of the week.

“Jesus, kid!” a voice barked from behind me. I turned to see Ed and Jake standing there with scowls on their faces. Ed e
lbowed Jake and smiled like a wolf who just discovered a sheep unattended in the field. “Hey, Katrina, if dumbass here ain’t pickin’ up on your vibe…I’ll take you to the dance.”

“Thanks, but no thanks, Ed,” Katrina said with a sniff.

“I’ll take you,” I said. For the life of me, I have no idea how those words made it out of my mouth with as tight as my throat felt at the moment.

I shot a glare at Ed and reached out to take Katrina
’s hand in mine. As she and I walked away, I felt her hand squeeze mine just a bit. It felt nice.

***

“So, if there are no other questions?” Jake said.

He and Dr. Zahn stood in front of the six of us that had been chosen to meet with the first of the other factions. It would be me, Katrina, Simon, Carol, Jamal, and Erik.

There were none. We had sent a person to each of the groups that we were aware of and decided that we would meet with them one at a time based on how quickly we received an answer.

“Billy, you will be doing the talking,” Dr. Zahn spoke up.

“He should be fine,” Simon offered. “He was a very good spokesman for your little group when he met with me. Quite the charmer…even more than I might have realized.” He shot Katrina a wicked smile and she actually blushed.

I refused to comment since I knew that nothing I said would come out right. I reached over and gave Katrina
’s hand a squeeze for assurance. She flashed me a grateful smile. I felt every single part of my body get warm.

“Then if there is nothing else?” Jake gave us one final m
oment to check our gear.

As we reached the gate that had now been fully repaired and waited for it to open, Erik reached in a pouch and handed us all these funky looking goggles. I turned them over in my hand.

“These will open up your peripheral vision a great deal, and they are anti-fogging.” He slipped his pair on as he spoke.

“Where did you find these?” Carol asked.

“They look like swimming goggles,” Jamal added.

“They were in a locker in one of the storage rooms. And yes, Jamal, they are usually used for snorkeling.”

“Nice,” I said as I slipped mine on.

“I showed them to Jake, but he said he didn
’t care. He prefers his riot face-shield. I just think that those are too cumbersome.”

We headed down the empty street. A few walkers took n
otice and began to stumble and stagger our direction. We fanned out so that the six of us were spread across the entire highway and made our way to the pre-determined meeting spot. We were in the northeast corner of La Grande where you came in from the mountains.

As we passed a charred husk of what had once been a Walmart, I saw a single red flare
arc in the sky to the southwest. I pulled my flare gun and fired one in response. I knew that we were being watched as we passed an old car dealership. There was movement in the shadows of the defunct vehicles, but no sign of any zombies.

“The park
should be up on the right,” Simon called.

It made me jump just a bit and I realized at that moment just how tense I was going in to this meeting. I needed to let some of that tension seep away. When I met these people, I needed to be confident and put of
f the right sort of impression. Also, I needed to be able to overcome the fact that these folks might look at me as a kid. I was almost willing to bet that they would be expecting Simon or even Carol to do the talking.

“There it is,” Jamal pointed.

“I can’t believe that is actually the name,” Katrina scoffed. “How freakin’ Seventies can you get?”

“La Grande Rendezvous RV Park,” I read the faded sign somebody had obviously torn down and mounted on the tall ba
rricade that separated this small location from the surrounding area.

We had to leave the highway and follow some sort of bus
iness loop. I noticed the gas stations in the area were almost leveled. The only thing that gave them away were the tall signs standing like a monument to their demise in the center of blackened husks of people and vehicles. It looked like this place got nasty early in the panic and folks hit it en masse. Considering where we were, I imagine that pretty much everybody that pulled in to those pumps was carrying a weapon. Somebody probably tried to cut, or maybe it was as simple as panic, but things went bad.

Some of the cars were in various stages of trying to leave
. There were small clusters of bodies that were little more than black skeletons in a heap. I tried not to look at how many were children. These were families. Most likely everybody was fleeing for the hills. I shook my head at the irony as we now sought to come down from the hills and inhabit this town.

“We got people,” Erik said from my left.

I snapped out of my thoughts and watched as five people broke away from a group of maybe twenty and headed our way. Beyond them, I could see some of the most interestingly modified mobile homes ever. These things were all miniature fortresses that could be placed in any
Mad Max
movie. I noticed towers on top of each one and catwalks connecting them that presumably allowed the residents to move from one trailer to the other.

It took me another minute to figure out that it was razor wire that was wrapped around each of the trailers that I could see. They looked like some sort of science fiction cocoon. I also saw that we were being watched by snipers in each of the towers that were close to the entrance.

“Showtime, kiddo,” Simon said under his breath.

We approached the waiting delegates or whatever they were and stopped about ten feet away. I had a few seconds to take them in. For one, it was all men; I wasn
’t sure if that was a good sign or not. They might be playing it safe…or they might be jerks.

“You come to
us with a couple of broads, an old lady, a kid, and a nigger?” one man snarled at Simon as he stepped forward with a scowl on his face that revealed a few missing teeth.

Well
, I thought,
at least I knew what I was dealing with
.

“Actually,” I stepped forward, “Simon here is just part of the e
scort party. You will be talking with me in this matter. The first thing I want to warn you about is your mouth. If that word comes out of it again—”

“You
’ll what?” the man growled as he took a step towards me.

I sized him up fast. I had him by about four inches, but he had me by at least fifty pounds. I was not sure whether to be amazed or impressed. Obesity might have been a societal pro
blem before the zombies, but it was all but gone nowadays. His midsection was not the jiggly type, though, it looked firm. If it came to the point where he and I had to exchange a few blows, I would not aim for the gut.

“I
’ll knock out the few remaining teeth in your mouth,” I said coolly.

Having played football most of my life in the trenches of the line, I was used to hearing a lot of talk. It all came down to what you did once the pads started smashing. I
’d never been bullied in school since I was always one of the bigger kids. Also, I am proud to say that I was never a tormenter of the little guys.

“Is that right?” the man said.  He looked over his shoulder to the others and spoke in a high-pitched voice that I guess was his impersonation of me. “I
’ll knock out the few remaining teeth in your mouth.”

There was a round of laughter from those that were close by, and I thought I even heard a few chuckles from the towers. I shot a look at Simon who had absolutely no expression on his face. Then my eyes drifted past to
Erik and I saw something puzzling. He was smiling!

“If you have been paying attention, you know that our group has control of that section of the town to the northeast. We sent a messenger to all of the individual groups here and are propo
sing—”

“I know what you are proposing,” the man snapped. Man, I hate being interrupted. This guy was pissing me off more each second. “And we only agreed to meet you to see what we would be dealing with. Our scouts saw all the women and children. And you might have gotten lucky clearing out that freakin
’ military post, but you won’t be runnin’ a damn thing in this town.”

“How have you lasted this long?” I asked. “I mean, you have absolutely zero social skills. You don
’t look to be in the best of health. I don’t imagine you could last on the run for more than a day or so without falling over from a heart attack.”

“Is that right?” the man bristled. “I been living just fine no thanks to those military goons that were running around the town acting all big. But where did that get them? Huh? Dead…that
’s where. Somebody screwed up and let one of them infected freaks put a mouth on ‘em. And then, whoever it was that got bit didn’t have the sack to end it and brought down the entire group. That’s why folks here in this clique are shot as soon as they are scratched or bit.”

“You do
know that some individuals have been showing a type of immunity to this, right?” I challenged. “You didn’t even wait to see if they showed signs of infection?”

“And then end up like those commando wanna-bes? No thanks,” the man snorted.

“Yes, well, this is your only offer,” I said, shrugging off all the other garbage. “You can join us, or we will ask you to pack up and leave.”

This was met with a loud chorus of laughter. The oaf stan
ding in front of me even made a show of wiping his eyes as if he’d been brought to tears. Those around him followed suit with the laughter.

I took that moment to scan everything that I could. I was b
ecoming almost certain that they did not have any women in the group; or at least not any that were allowed out and about. I shuddered inwardly at the thought of what might be going on behind their wall. On the other hand, I could also appreciate the work that had gone into securing their place. These guys were no strangers to construction. Their stuff was not simply pieced together. It looked sturdy and well built.