Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (36 page)

Yahoo! Mick ate breakfast on his own.

He wanted oatmeal but Hisa wouldn't allow it because she thought it would
be too heavy on his stomach.

I plugged the toaster into the power strip for the generator and toasted the last plain bagel I had in the freezer. I added a little strawberry jam and he gobbled it down faster than he should have
. It made him a little queasy. He wanted coffee. Hisa said that was fine, but he can have only one cup if it's caffeinated.

He's having trouble getting out of bed and is absolutely furious that he has to pee in a gallon jug. He says his hip and calf are killing him, but he's gonna sit down for brown pot
ty no matter what anyone says.

His broken nose isn't bothering him at all
, but the tape on it is driving him bonkers.

We've been talking since he woke up this morning and now I have the whole story. I'll write it out later today if I can
sit up straight in this chair.

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted since Mick woke up. I'm more tired than I've ever been in my life. Mick is awake! Thank you,
Lord!

His wounds are healing nicely
, but the area around the puncture wound is a little red and inflamed. It's oozing a tiny bit of pus and clear liquid. Hisa started him on a stronger antibiotic. She thinks the wound might be getting infected and wants to nip it in the bud as quickly as possible. We have to clean the wound three times a day instead of twice a day.

I'm completely exhausted and have no energy
, so I think I'll lie down and nap with him. Hisa finally gave him something for the pain and it's making him loopy and tired. I am so happy to have him back. See ya later.

6:15 PM...

That was a mighty good nap but I feel like I have a hangover.

Carisa came in to ask if she could sit with Mick while I go out and have supper with the rest of the group. I think it's a good idea and I'm gonna t
ake her up on it. See ya later.

10:00 PM...

I promised to write it out, so here's a compilation of Mick and Dane's stories about what happened after we left to avoid the horde.

Dane sat in a lawn chair near the pool, waiting for Mick's signal that the horde was approaching. He'd been sitting there all night, studying the landscape around him.

As soon as he heard the warning shot he poured gasoline into the moat and climbed up into the tree stand with his little arsenal of weapons. He had everything ready and felt a bit of exciteme
nt about the challenge ahead.

He knew the horde and gang wouldn't pass by peaceful
ly because the sun had come up.

The house at the top of the hill along with the newly installed fence surrounding it was as telling as
a newspaper boy screaming out "Survivors here, read all about it!"

He heard a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction and was surprised to
see the S10 with Mick driving.

Mick parked beside Marisa's trailer and went over to talk to Dane. He told Dane that he was there to back him up in case of problems. Dane tried to tell him to get the hell outa there but Mick wouldn't budge. They argued a little
but neither man would give in.

Neither of them intended to fight unless the driveway or fence was breached and the house was in danger. They both knew it was going to happen
, but neither of them would admit it.

Finally, Dane saw the front lines of the horde
approaching.

They came closer as the sun
rose slightly higher in the sky and he could hear their snarls, moans, and footsteps on the roadway as they came marching toward him like an army of the undead.

The HDI's at the center front looked almost like they were hypnotized. The line stretched across the entire road and out about twenty feet on each side. He prepared himself for battle and decided to go "all in" because he didn't believe that he would "come out of it alive and ki
ckin' but was sure gonna try."

Mick was hiding in the tree-line on o
ur left.

As the horde began making
its way along the fence line, HDI's began falling into the moat. As soon as he saw that many were climbing out, Dane sent several flaming arrows toward the moat and fire quickly came to life along the entire length.

The bulk of the horde lost some of
its cohesion, and a good number of HDI's started heading off in every direction.

A motorcycle came up fast alongside the horde and couldn't avoid the moat. It tumbled end over end before finally coming to a stop. Neither Dane nor Mick saw the rider but they heard his screams. HDI's near that section of the moat stopped trying to climb out and focused themselves on devouring the motorcycle rider inste
ad. The screams quickly faded.

HDI's in the moat began climbing on top of one another to get out. Many of them were in flames but the fire didn't quell their desire to find living flesh. Mick saw a flaming arm fall completely off a flaming HDI and land on a bamboo stake at
its feet. He could hear popping, hissing, and crackling of flesh as it burned, and the smell was almost overwhelming. He said it was like a scene from a high-budget horror movie with smell-o-vision.

Small crowds formed along the five-foot strip of land between the moat and the fence. Many HDI's were temporarily detained because they had bamboo stakes sticking up through their feet. Several of them, basically, pulled their feet completely free of their ankles and left them on the stakes in order to get to the fence.
The HDI's began pushing on the fence, trying to go through it instead of over it.

When a group of HDI's defeated a section of fence and started walking up the hill, Mick started shooting. Dane began shooting f
rom his side of the property.

A group of HDI's climbed the front porch of Marisa's trailer and began pounding on the outside walls, windows, and door. Several climbed on top of others and m
ade it onto the trailer roof.

Without warning
, the trailer exploded. Pieces of the trailer along with HDI body parts flew through the air. The remaining parts of the trailer caught fire and were still burning when our group returned later that day.

The center front of the horde kept marching alon
g like nothing was happening.

Dane said there were HDI's all over the Hobbs property and the big field beside it. He also saw HDI's walking into the c
reek and the Masterson's pond.

There were seven or eight motorcycles driving around, avoiding HDI's in the field. The riders were shooting any HDI th
at came too close for comfort.

Mick and Dane shot HDI's for quite a while before four motorcycles came weaving their way toward our property.

The bikes temporarily became bottlenecked at the driveway entrance. The riders had their weapons out and were randomly shooting at anything they saw moving on the hillside. By the grace of God, they didn't shoot the pool.

Dane used his last AR round to take out one of the riders coming through the bottleneck. He jumped down from the tree-stand to pre
pare for hand-to-hand combat.

He had his baseball bat and a large
Ka-Bar knife. He also had his pistol on his hip, and it was fully loaded. He says he couldn't use the pistol from the tree-stand because he's no good with a pistol at a long distance. I'm thinkin' he just wanted to get his hands dirty.

Bullets were flying everywhere.

Three riders were circling and taunting him. They shot first into the air and then toward the dirt at his feet.

Dane could've pulled his pistol and taken out one or two of them before being shot himself, but he knew he couldn't take all
three. He lunged toward one of the motorcycles and knocked the rider and bike to the ground. He landed on top and was trying to get the pistol out of the "s o b's hand" when one of the remaining riders drove his bike over Dane's leg.

Dane
was more ticked off than hurt. He gave it a herculean try and yanked the pistol free, but caught his finger in the cuff of the "s o b's jacket" and bent it all the way back. He heard it snap.

He became totally infuria
ted,

He rolled over on his side
and put a bullet into the face of one of the remaining riders. He turned back to the fallen rider, punched him in the nose until blood was spraying out, and then sent a bullet through his skull with his own pistol.

The last rider took off like a bat out of hell. Dane shot at him but missed. The motorcycle tires let out a squeal as the coward made the turn to leave our property and catch up wi
th the main body of the horde.

Dane used the last of the bullets from the rider's gun on HDI's who'd been drawn by the sounds of the battle, and then he started smashing heads with the baseball bat. He'd lost the
Ka-Bar knife somewhere between the tree-stand and the driveway.

The bat became slippery
and he dropped it a couple of times, so he started bashing HDI heads together until brain matter was flying. He took out a lot of HDI's with his head-bashing technique.

A motorcycle came racing up behind the last of the HDI's.
It wasn't traveling slow enough to avoid the moat, and the rider was devoured by hungry HDI's while his wheels spun in the air.

Mick was shooting HDI's when he was pushed from behind. He fell flat on his face. His leg landed on a bamboo stake and it went through his jeans and into his calf.
The pain was unimaginable and he almost passed out.

He lay there, stunned and in pain, for several seconds before three gang members yanked him to his feet and began beating the
living daylights out of him.

They tied him to a large pine tree
and continued to pummel him. He knew his nose was broken because he could suddenly "see" one side of it better than the other.

They hit him in the face, ribs, chest, shoulders
, and anywhere else they could land a fist. Blood was gushing down his face and onto his clothing.

One of them picked up a huge, knotty, pine branch and swung it like he was trying to hit a home run. Mick felt it hit the side of his head and heard the riders cheering as he lost consciousness. He doesn't know
when he got shot in the hip.

Between head-bashings, Dane
began to wonder where the remaining motorcycles from the field had gone. He hadn't seen them follow the horde, so he knew they were somewhere close. He heard shrieks of laughter from the tree-line half-way up the hill where Mick had been hiding.

The memory of Mick saving him from a hypothermic death came back to him and he decided he wasn't about to let Mick die. His blood ran cold and he began sta
lking the voices in the trees.

He headed back into the trees on the right side of the property, then high-tailed it to the top of the property and traveled behind the house and a short way down the left side. He could see a group of "punk s o b's" standing near a large pine. There was a body slumped over, tied to
the tree. He knew it was Mick.

Suddenly, he felt a soft touch on
the back of his neck. He turned and almost jumped ten feet in the air before he realized that a very large, animal nose was in front of his face. It was Buttercup and she'd come to help. She had burn marks on her legs but he couldn't recall seeing her anywhere near the moat or the fence line.

He had an idea.

He grabbed Buttercup by the mane and led her back to the top of the hill. He grabbed a rope from beside the laundry area and tied a makeshift halter around her head and neck.

Dane and Buttercup went back down the hill, outside the tree-line, until they were about thirty feet from Mick and the punk gang. Dane says he would swear on a stack of
bibles that Buttercup was tip-toeing.

He climbed onto her bare back and touched her flanks with his heels, just a tiny bit. She st
arted walking toward the gang.

As soon as Dane saw one of the gang members notice him and Buttercup, he jammed his heels into her flanks. She went at a
full gallop into the group of punks and bowled them over like bowling pins at a championship tournament.

He jumped off her back and began shooting. The gang members were in a panic and were shooting in whatever direction
their guns happened to point.

Dane still doesn't know exactly how many of them were there, but he knew that he left three of them dead on the hillside. One of the dead had his head bashed in by horse feet and the other two met up with b
ullets from Dane's pistol.

He knows that at least two more made it out, going full speed down the hill on their bikes. They almost laid those bikes down several times on their way outa there. He let 'em go because he was more concerned with finding out wh
ether Mick was alive or dead.

When he finally determined that Mick was alive
, he untied him from the tree, cursing the entire time because he'd lost his knife and had nothing else to cut the rope.