Dying Days (8 page)

"I'm Darlene. Honey, what are you doing out here alone?" Darlene moved slowly toward her. The girl was clearly living and she didn't seem to be bleeding or have any noticeable bite marks. "Do you know how dangerous this is?"

The girl, still smiling, nodded and kept her eyes locked on Darlene's without blinking. It was unnerving.

"Freeze."

Darlene was too late to react when she felt the muzzle pushed against her side.

"Move a muscle and I'll shoot you, lady."

Darlene slowly raised her hands but kept the Desert Eagle. She turned her head slightly and looked. The shotgun ended in a boy, maybe twelve, with reddish hair and freckles. Behind him were seven or eight other kids, all wielding baseball bats, hockey sticks or steel bars. "I don't want any trouble," she said.

"Too late. This is our territory, lady."

"I understand. I'm going to turn around and walk out of here and no one will get hurt."

"If you take one step I'll fill you full of lead," the boy said.

Darlene wanted to laugh at the cliché he'd just said, and every other one he'd make before this was over.
Too much TV watching for this kid
, Darlene thought.

"Kid, where are your parents?" As soon as she said it she cringed. Of
all the stupid things to say.
"I mean, who's in charge here? You?"

He pushed the shotgun into her side, harder, and nodded. "I'm in charge here. This is my school and my playground and my town. You're trespassing. Do you know what we do with trespassers?"

Darlene shook her head, casually glancing at the other children. They hung on his every word, fear, awe and hunger clearly etched on their faces.

"We gut them and eat them."

"Bobby, don't say that. I'm not eating anyone," Stephanie said. "You wanted to lure the monsters in so we could kill them. She's not a monster."

"I make that decision, not you."

"Who said you were the leader of us, anyway?" another boy said. "You're only calling the shots because you have your dad's rifle."

"Don't challenge me, Brent, or I'll kick your ass."

"You can try," Brent said.

Darlene knew this would quickly escalate into in-fighting, with someone likely to get hurt. She didn't want any part of this, especially with kids involved. If Bobby accidentally pulled that trigger or turned the gun on the group and fired she didn't know if she could live with that. "After all I've been through, kids killing kids would suck," she whispered.

Bobby turned his attention back to her. "What did you say?"

"I said you and I need to talk."

Bobby smiled but Darlene could see he was scared. The muzzle brushed against her side but he couldn't hold it steady. "There's nothing to talk about. I'm in charge and I call the shots." Darlene watched in horror as his fingers kept flexing on the trigger.

"You do know that shotgun wouldn't do anything to me at this close range?"

Bobby looked down at the weapon, which was what Darlene was hoping for. She pushed it aside and had her Desert Eagle out and pointed at his chest.

The group scattered.

"That just broke my heart to put a gun to a child. But, Bobby, this standoff needs to end right now. I need to leave."

He nodded his head, tears starting to form. "I'm just scared."

"I know you are." Darlene took a step back and lowered the gun but reached out and grabbed the shotgun from his limp fingers. "We all are."

"Not you."

"I'm pissing my pants, Bobby."

He laughed at her joke and wiped at his face. "Stay with us, be our leader."

"How about you all come with me? I'm heading south before the winter comes."

"We live here. This is all I know and the rest. Besides, my parents are here somewhere. When this all started my mom drove out to get my grandma and my dad was on his way from work. I need to stay close to my house and take care of my sister."

Darlene nodded. "But you're a bunch of kids."

Bobby laughed. "A bunch of kids that have survived this long. We have a house full of food and water, and we built a tunnel. That's the only way into the garage now."

"I can't just leave you."

"It looks like we're doing better than you. When was the last time you ate something?"

"True."

Bobby called for Stephanie, who came running. Darlene put her Desert Eagle back in her waistband. "Sis, go get this lady something to eat from the house, and some water. Take Jimmy with you."

"I can't cut into your supplies like that," Darlene said.

"Just through the woods there is a shopping center. We cleared out all the food from the big store and all the small ones. We have three rooms packed with food."

"Thank you." Darlene said. "Sure you don't want to come?"

"We're fine here. These are my friends and they look up to me."

"You're a natural born leader, Bobby."

Darlene went and sat down on the picnic table. She was about to leave a group of little kids alone, to fend for themselves, during such trying times.

"All the rules have changed," she whispered and smiled when Stephanie approached with an opened can of corn.

Chapter Ten

Rear Guard

Darlene Bobich knew the fallacy in Barry’s statement.

“The living leave a heat signature, and I can easily pick it up with my scope. If they’re cold as, well, a fucking dead person, I blow their fucking head off. Case closed.”

“Recently deceased people still have a small amount of heat.”

“Nah.” Barry dismissed her with a wave of his hand as he scanned the highway behind them. “They die and the heat goes with them. It only takes a few minutes. My daddy was a doctor, trust me.”

“Your daddy was a doctor?” Darlene asked skeptically.

Barry winked at her. “He was a janitor in the state hospital in Rhode Island. Same thing. He knew stuff.”

“By that logic I’m a five star general.” Darlene held up her Desert Eagle semi-automatic. “I know how to shoot a gun at things.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Barry wiped the sweat from his forehead. Even in his early sixties, Barry had more energy than most of the people she’d met. His wiry gray beard stopped right below his large ears, his head bald and sunburned. A single diamond earring in his left ear was his only jewelry, his clothes nondescript. He wore over-sized work boots and carried a hunting rifle with his bedroll and supplies tied to his back. A Beretta PX4 was always in his hands.

They’d been moving steadily south for three days, with Barry and Darlene part of the Rear Guard. Six groups of two were spread out across a half-mile line, and the occasional sound of a weapon discharging had become so common that no one bothered to investigate unless signaled.

Darlene was the only female in the Rear Guard and only because she was one of the few females that had a weapon and knew how to use it. It was better than being on the Death Squad or on the Scavengers.

“It will be light soon,” Darlene said. She didn’t know if the nights or the days were worse; at night the undead would enter their flashlight range from out of the blackness, rotting limbs and gore-streaked clothing. The males were the worst, with engorged dicks and wagging tongues. During the day it was easier to see them, but it was easier to see how many followed the group. Sometimes the road took them past a large metropolis and hundreds of the former residents would get in behind them.

Barry estimated that they’d been leading over twenty thousand behind them at this point, shuffling slowly from New Haven, Connecticut to their present location just south of Baltimore. It was pretty impressive when you considered that they currently had about two hundred living people in their makeshift caravan. The odds were against them.

“We need to get moving a bit faster,” Barry said loudly. The rear walkers of their group were right behind them, the slow and the weak stragglers. Several times each night they would be yelled at, pushed and cajoled or risk behind left behind.

Darlene was reminded of the ambush in Weehawken in Jersey about ten nights ago, when scores of undead came from all sides and wedged them into a parking lot, where they used too much ammunition and lost too many living to escape. Most of the ‘back group’ had been sacrificed, torn to pieces as the healthier broke free and got away.

It seemed like every few miles another two or three living would hear them coming, see the spotlights from the trucks, buses and cars and join them, bringing whatever food and weapons they had.

There was no organization. Six military men, still in uniform and using their Army lingo and hand signals, were trying to lead the group toward an unspecified rendezvous point due south. Darlene hadn’t bothered to speak with them personally. They seemed either too shell-shocked or too arrogant to deal with.

Barry had been to the front of the group each day to get the same orders as the last: guard the rear, shoot the undead and keep people moving. So far they’d done a serviceable job of it.

Darlene had been in the group about three weeks, hooking up with them just outside of the Connecticut/New York border. At first she’d followed at a safe distance. The last large group she’d encountered before that had been in Buffalo, a militia faction from upstate that had taken the apocalypse as reason to kill the living and the undead. She’d escaped with her life and only a few bruises.

“Incoming,” Barry said.

Three silhouettes appeared just beyond flashlight range. “Living,” Jonathan shouted from their left. He was in his late teens, a gangly kid with glasses and a few wisps of a moustache. He’d been the first person to befriend Darlene and to recommend her for the Rear Guard.

They stopped and watched warily as the three approached. Lately the living were presenting problems as well, with beggars and thieves latching onto them. Two nights ago a man, who everyone thought had been paralyzed from his waist down in an attack and who rode on the back of one of the pickups, tried to highjack the truck with a box cutter. He had perfect use of his legs, running away when his robbery was thwarted.

One of the military men had put a bullet cleanly through the back of his head at fifty paces and they’d left the body.

“Hands where I can see them,” Barry said. When they got to within ten feet he stopped them with a raised hand. “How can we help you?”

The three were filthy. Darlene could smell the rot from where she stood, gun trained on the oldest one’s head. It seemed to her that the survivors were getting sorrier by the day.

“We need help, that’s all, some food and safety. I’m Russ.” He held his hands up and tried to smile. “We just need help.” Darlene thought he was in his late forties but it was hard to tell with all the dirt caked on his face and clothes.

“This is Tiff, she’s my daughter.” The girl looked to be around Jonathan’s age. She was looking down at her feet and her hands were shaking. Her dress had been torn and besides mud she had streams of dried blood coating it.

Russ turned to the third member of his party, another man covered in muck. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember what your name –“

Jonathan shot the girl between the eyes.

It took several seconds for Darlene to register what had happened. Russ wailed and fell upon his daughter’s body while the Rear Guard took a step or three back, guns before them.

“Did you smell her?” Jonathan asked.

“You did well. Believe me, you did well,” Barry said. “She was ripe and she would have been dead soon enough.”

Russ stood, tears streaking his dirty face, and made an angry lunge toward Jonathan. Darlene put her pistol to the man’s head. “She was dying and you know it.”

“She was getting better; we just needed food and rest. And you killed her.”

“She would have killed you,” Darlene whispered.

Russ turned his eyes to Darlene. “She was my daughter.”

“In a couple of hours she would have been like all the rest, and she would have killed you and everyone here if we’d have let you join us.”

Russ fell to his knees. “She was the reason I was alive, she saved me back there. She saved her father’s life.” He started to cry again.

Darlene pointed her gun at the third member of their group. “What’s your story?”