LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (69 page)

As Greg turns to look at me, I can see his face in the pale moonlight melting out of the grimace of hatred and vengeance. His features soften and eventually go slack, his eyes looking through me, beyond me. It makes me terrified and as I slowly turn around, I already notice that the light is changing. Something is coming. Something is coming closer to us with light.

I turn and see it coming out of the town, coming closer. I stare with Greg as the others pick up on the fact that we are not alone. I’m not sure if Henry sees them coming, but I doubt that there’s much that Henry is seeing now other than blinding white light and excruciating pain. I reach for the gun at my hip, but Greg reaches out to me.

“No,” Greg says. “They might be like us.”

“Or they might be killers,” I hiss back at him.

“Doesn’t matter,” Lexi tells me, stepping up next to Greg. “If they’re approaching us, that probably means that we’re surrounded. They’ve got the upper hand right now.”

I don’t like it. I don’t like the thought of being in the middle of an ambush. I think back to the map that my father drew. The black crosses had to mean safety. Crosses were holy icons. Why should we be afraid of holy men? I look at the others and hope that I’m right. I don’t want to be victims of something terrible. I just hope they’re not flesh-eating maniacs.

The simple fact is that we don’t know how many of them are out there. I stare off down the barren road to where the three torches are approaching us. They’re not in a hurry and they don’t seem wary of us. All I know is that they’re coming to see what we’re up to. I figure that they’re the survivors of Tifton and they’re curious to see who has settled in their outskirts. I’m sure that if we explain ourselves, they’ll leave us alone. If we have to, we’ll give them some supplies to buy ourselves safe passage and never look back.

Instinctively I slip the hunting rifle from my shoulder and give it to Greg. He takes it and makes sure that the safety is off, refusing to look like a fool in front of me again. He pulls back the bolt a little and makes sure that a round is in the chamber. Everything is already set, but I’m glad to see him thinking. He’s not just playing soldier anymore. This is the real deal.

“The guy’s got a crossbow,” Noah says as the leader of the three walks in front of them. He’s holding it up with the stock by his hip, the tip pointed straight up into the air. The other men behind him are walking in what looks like crude body armor. I’ve never seen anything like it. One of them has a Pulaski over his shoulder as he holds up his torch to light his way. I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but if they mean to do us harm, we could kill them easily. I look over at Greg and realize that I’m the only one with a gun right now and who doesn’t have a fucked up hand. There’s a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach when I comprehend this. I’m out here as the sole guardian of the group while Henry is beaten within an inch of his life and the others are completely unarmed.

As they draw even closer I feel my heart racing. The man in the front is wearing what looks like a bed sheet that he’s bound with a series of thick leather belts, all of them holstering knives. As he approaches me, I notice that he has a black cross painted on the chest of the white sheet that he’s wearing, as well as a cross painted on his face. The line goes straight down the center of his face and the cross bar is over his eye sockets and temples. I don’t like this. I don’t like the look of it. He’s wearing armor that he’s made out of sheet metal and scrap. It’s crudely barbaric and I want to ask them where the nearest LARP convention is. The men behind him look like differing variations of the man in front, just one of them has an actual sword at his side and the other is carrying the axe with his chest bare, a cross painted on his skin instead.

The sight of them makes my skin crawl and as I grip my holstered Sig, I try to think of what the best solution to this little situation might be. I hate being the one in charge. I hate being the person who has to make these kinds of decisions. I wish that I wasn’t the one in charge of our group. I wish that Tony was still around. I wish that I wasn’t so scared of everything.

“Keep your hands where I can see them, young lady,” the Leader says as he gets near enough that we’re all bathed in orange light. I stare at him with terrified expectations, strange scenarios dancing through my head to an evil melody. I slowly take my hand away from my pistol and the bearded man grins. He has white chalk in his beard and his long black hair is pulled back into a knot. The men next to him are not so presentable. Their beards are braided and their hair hangs from their scalps in greasy tangles. None of them have expressions written on their faces, void of any kind of emotion. All I can see is the flickering fire in the glassy reflections of their eyes.

“Can we help you?” Greg asks bravely, fingering the rifle in his hands.

“You can keep your finger off of that trigger.” The Leader shifts his gaze to Greg, leaving me behind. “And you can keep the barrel pointed at the ground.”

Greg meets his gaze and the Leader slowly abandons the staring contest to look at Lexi and Noah, who are unarmed. The man seems to be sizing up our party, but I’m not sure what for. If he wanted to attack us, seeing that Greg and I are the only ones armed should have been enough. Why haven’t they stormed the truck? The men behind the Leader stare at the others as well, taking them in and drinking deep of their features.

“We saw you entering our town,” the Leader says. “Most visitors are welcome to pass through, but you stopped and kept to yourselves. We are fine with this, but our scouts saw your truck and told us that we should come investigate. When we saw that you were beating a man, word reached us and we decided to intervene. We do not hold with barbarism in our lands.”

“Your lands?” Greg says, letting a sarcastic grin spread across his lips. “Do you have a lord or something, old man?”

“Yes, we do,” the Leader answers, looking Greg in the eyes with a deathly certainty and conviction that makes me shudder. “We answer to the Lord, our God.”

I don’t like the sound of that. That’s the sound of a crazy person spouting religious fanaticism that he’s probably embraced thanks to the whole apocalyptic situation. I’m not sure what drives men into the arms of God when they think that things are at their worst. I don’t think that God wants us to be on our knees, begging for forgiveness under the scourge of oppression. That’s not love, that’s need. Whoever these people are, I don’t think I want any part of their God.

“How many of you are there?” Noah demands boldly, growing unwanted balls. I’m not sure why he suddenly thinks that he’s a big tough guy, but that would have been more convenient in helping save Marko than antagonizing the fanatics that might have us surrounded.

“We are legion,” the Leader answers with a mighty and proud tone in his voice. He’s a man who commands respect and power among his followers and it’s clear that he’s used to having people submitting to whatever he has to say. I don’t like him. I don’t like the kind of arrogance that he exudes. “You are surrounded by our brothers and sisters. This entire town is considered a sanctuary of the Children of God. You are trespassing upon our lands and yet here you are, taking our hospitality and betraying our kindness that we have offered you. You dare spill blood on holy ground.”

I don’t know what he means by that. Who have we killed and who have we betrayed? Just because this is what they like to call their land, that doesn’t mean we were supposed to recognize that or know that. How were we supposed to know any of this? I feel like shouting all of this at him, but as I look at him, somehow I know that he’s not going to answer any of my questions. Looking at him, I wonder what they plan to do with us. I’m not interested in falling prey to some madmen. I hope that Greg is with me on this and doesn’t get rid of his weapon.

“I demand that you relinquish your weapons,” he says to me, almost as if he could read my mind. I feel terror gripping my heart, its fingers wrapping around my muscles and squeezing softly. It’s enough to make me want to collapse.

“No,” I answer.

“Tell your woman to be silent,” the Leader says to Greg.

Greg smiles and shakes his head. “You’ve got this all wrong, bro,” Greg nods toward me. “She’s the one in charge. If you’re doing any negotiating, it’s with her.”

The Leader looks at me with disgusted eyes, almost as if he’s appalled that I’m the one he needs to speak to. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’m solely a woman in charge, but it pisses me off and I want to put a bullet through him just to see how it feels to kill a bigoted pig. The man looks over his shoulder to his escort and they silently say nothing, communicating with their eyes. I don’t like this. We should have killed them when we had the chance. I should have shot at them before they even took a step into our camp. I try to gauge how quickly it would be to grab my Sig and open fire on them.

“What crime has this man committed against you?” the Leader asks me, pointing his crossbow at Henry. “By what right do you beat him so mercilessly?”

“That’s none of your business,” I tell him coldly.

“Please,” Henry gargles out of his broken face, reaching out to the Leader for help. “Please, help me,” he mutters weakly, trying to crawl toward the white Leader. He looks at me with equally cold and shrewd eyes, like he’s sizing me up at a swap meet.

“You are on our lands,” the Leader reiterates to me, but I still don’t care. I keep my eyes on the two behind the leader, waiting to see if their eyes betray where their backup is. So far, they don’t look at anyone but the group of us in front of them. This leads me to two conclusions and I’m not sure which I like better. Option one is that they trust their ambush so completely that their faith in their comrades supersedes their nervousness in engaging newcomers with better weapons and more men. Of course, I’m not sure that the Power of God Club is that kind of brave. More likely, I think they’re crazy and that leads me to option number two. I think that there isn’t any backup. I think that they came out here alone to confront us. The Leader continues with his tirade. “On our lands, we hold people to the standard of a higher power, not the emotional grievances of a woman.”

It takes every ounce of strength in me not to pull my pistol and shoot him dead right where he stands. It sickens me to my very core that he would dare to say something like that. I glare at him, not afraid one bit of who he is or why he thinks he’s so high and mighty. I want to spit in his face and I’ve never had the urge before in my life.

“You should walk away,” I tell the Leader, no longer afraid of him at all.

“Come to me, my child,” the Leader looks past me and stretches his hand out to Henry. The very sight of him trying to offer mercy to Henry just because he’s a man makes me want to puke. I can only imagine what the women back at their little cult compound have to put up with. They’re probably nothing more than sex slaves to these perverted assholes. “Come and confess to your sins. The Lord offers you his forgiveness and his mercy.”

We all watch as Henry crawls across the ground like some revolting slug, leaving behind him a trail of spit, snot, blood, and tears as he crawls to his new master. I watch him slither past me and I resist the urge of taking out my Sig and ending him right there. I want to make Henry hurt as badly as possible, but I would rather kill him than let him get away with what he did to my father, to my sister, and to myself. He has betrayed all of us and I refuse to let him walk into the sunset. Henry crawls onto his knees and looks up at the man in white, putting his hands together and begging for the man’s forgiveness and mercy. No words escape his lips, only the bizarre animal sounds and wheezing of him trying to find words to beg for their help. I look at him and want to do it. I want to kill him. I’ve never had a violent bone in my body until the moment I saw Henry masturbating to my sister. I cannot stand the thought of what he’s done. I refuse to accept it.

“Confess, child,” the Leader smiles kindly down at the pervert at his feet.

“They never liked me,” Henry blathers to the man through broken teeth and torn lips. I look at him in revulsion. How dare he? My hand inches closer to my pistol. “They didn’t want to share their food with me, so they beat me and tried to kill me. They’re trying to get to this place in Dayton, have you heard of it?”

“I have not,” the Leader says and now I know that everyone here has to die. I have to kill all of them. I can’t have religious fanatics showing up at Dayton to try and convert everyone that is there. If we bring psychopaths behind us, they’re going to throw us out to the nut jobs and leave us to die. The Leader looks at Henry and holds that soft, sweet smile on his face. “Child, I need you to confess to your sins so that you may receive the Lord’s forgiveness.”

“That’s it,” Henry groans. “They hate me because I’m old.”

“No, my child,” the Leader says sternly. “Confess to us.”

Henry is silent for a moment, one of his eyes is swollen shut, but his one good eye searches the Leader’s face, confused and terrified all at the same time. I don’t blame him. This old man isn’t buying the lie that Henry is trying to peddle to him. He looks at Henry with a stern, yet loving expression on his face, like a father dredging up the truth from his child. Henry’s ruined lips quiver and the Leader lowers his crossbow, pointing it at Henry’s forehead.

“Lying is a sin to God the Father,” the Leader says strictly to Henry. “Lying is an abomination to the Lord. Those who lie do not deserve the forgiveness that the Lord offers his children and you will face the fires of perdition if you do not confess and embrace His undying forgiveness.”

Henry lets out a screaming wail before crumpling and sinking down, hanging his head as he drools a cocktail of spit, dust, and blood. “I’m sorry,” Henry wheezes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what, my child?” the Leader asks, his crossbow still pointed at Henry’s head.

“I touched myself,” Henry sobs. “While Lexi was sleeping, I looked down her pants and I started masturbating. I have a problem, but a guy has needs, you know? Since everything went to hell, I haven’t gotten any action so I’m stuck trying to get a peek and taking care of everything myself. It’s not easy. I have needs.”

“You son of a bitch,” Greg snarls, putting together two and two. “You were watching us. That was you back at home.”

“Silence,” the Leader orders, glaring at Greg with true fire in his eyes. His gaze softens as he looks down at Henry. He looks at him with the kind of gaze that makes my stomach churn and my heart pound angrily in my chest. It’s the look of forgiveness. “We are all sinners,” he says to Henry. “All of us have sinned against the Father and we have all betrayed His love and trust. It is why He has sent this scourge upon the planet. He is testing us to decipher who is worthy and who is not. By confessing your sins to us, you have asked for His mercy. You have asked for His forgiveness.” The Leader steps back and the man carrying the Pulaski stands in front of Henry, glaring down on him with a face that shows no emotion, no thought whatsoever. He might as well be a golem standing in front of Henry. Henry looks up at the man, his eye shimmering with tears as his ruined lips tremble. “Your sins are an abomination against man and God. He forgives you, but your crimes must be accounted for. You must know punishment.”