Time of Zombies (Book 2): The Zombie Hunter's Wife (3 page)

The Fruitful Harvest Church

Highway 4, between Antioch and Oakley

Canvas snapped in the constant wind. The moans of
the Resurrected carried from the cages on the edge of the encampment. The tent
filled with the cries of the captured women before a few well-placed slaps from
the men surrounding them brought silence.

Billy Joe Bennett slid his leg down from the arm
of the chair. Sitting up straight, he turned to the woman beside him.

“Is this all, Roberta?”

She nodded. “Yes, Reverend. A heavy march of the Resurrected
has been through here. The men found this group in a broken-down car up the
highway.”

He pushed off from the chair and marched to the
sniveling group on their knees in the middle of the tent. Two men stood guard
at the flapping entrance. The three young women were one of each—a blonde, a
brunette, and a redhead. The fourth female had salt and pepper strands of hair
covering her head and face in a tangled mess.

Reaching down, he grabbed the blonde’s chin and
yanked her head up. Dark-blue eyes were the best feature in a plain face. His
hand dropped away and he moved on. The brunette had promise, if her
waist-length curls were any indication. He leaned down and grasped a silky
handful. She moaned as he pulled her head back. The face of an angel glared
back at him with the devil in her eyes. Good. He liked them with spunk. It made
it so much fun to beat it out of them. He hated red hair, even his own, so he
walked right past the last young woman huddled in a ball on the ground.

He placed himself in front of the last female. Shaking
hands reached up and pushed the gray-speckled dark hair out of her face. A face
that had lived a long lifetime with the lines and wrinkles to prove it stared
back at him. The gentle face of a grandmother or beloved aunt.

“If you’re going to kill me, do it already,” she
cried out.

Billy Joe took her hand and pulled her up. “I
can’t kill you, for you have not sinned against me, old woman. I can only give
you resurrection.”

“I don’t understand ...” she managed to get out as
he pulled his knife, yanked her in close, and stabbed her in the chest.

The body fell to the ground, twitched a few times,
and went still, her eyes glazing over in death. A hush filled the tent until a moment
later she rolled over and rose with moans and a snapping of her jaw.

Cries of ‘hallelujah’ rang out from his group, along
with the screams of the captured females sitting by the newly-risen as he wiped
the blade on his pants.

Two of his men rushed over and restrained the
woman, tying her hands behind her back and with some difficulty getting a gag
into her mouth. They dragged her out of the tent as the younger women settled
down into hysterical whimpers.

He grew light-headed as the blood rushed to his
racing heart. The power of life, death, and resurrection had been placed in his
hands by God. Only he could decide which was granted.

With a spreading of his arms, the women were
grabbed and yanked to their feet. A glare at them and silence reigned again in his
canvas cathedral. He turned and walked back to his chair, sitting and leaning
against the high back, like a king on his throne. Bubbling laughter escaped
him.

Pushing down the glee, he grew serious and turned
his gaze on the sniveling females. It just reiterated his belief in the faults
of the weaker sex. Females needed men to be in control. The world had been
going in the wrong direction for too long. The influenza pandemic and the virus
that raised the dead just reset the world, back to where it belonged.

“God sent a plague upon us. He wanted to cleanse
the Earth of its evil. This church, Fruitful Harvest, is the new beginning. A
return to the ways of our forefathers. A return to the right way. A return to
man as the master and woman as the obedient servant, the bearer of his children,
the submissive sitting at his feet, waiting to provide his every wish.”

He pointed to each of the young women. “You will
each be chosen as a bride of the church, a bride of man, or one of the anointed
Resurrected. I alone have this power. God has given me the right to choose your
future path.”

Pushing away from the chair, he walked toward
them. Their tears increased, music to his ears. He had been given the power of
life and undeath. He stepped in front of the redhead. Grabbing her chin, he
forced her to look at him.

“What is your name, woman?”

She glared at him and refused to speak.

In a split-second the knife was under her chin,
piercing the skin, a bead of red running down the blade. “I will ask one more
time, and then you will be joining the Resurrected. What is your name?”

Her throat convulsed as she swallowed. “April.”

His hand dropped and he slid the knife into the
sheath on his belt. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m sure this next
question won’t be either. Are you a virgin? Think before you answer. If you
lie, you will not be resurrected, you’ll just be dead as your lies will be a
sin against me.”

The young woman’s face turned beet red, bright
enough to match her face. Her ‘yes’ was low, but he didn’t need it, her blush
had proclaimed it loud and clear.

“Elias,” he called to a large, ugly man standing
to his left. “I believe you are in need of a wife as Abigail proved infertile
and joined the Resurrected ones. April is yours. Claim her and mark her as your
wife and helpmate.”

The girl tried to pull away, but her meager
strength was no match for the two men, the one holding her and the other now at
her side. One held her wrists in his large hands as the man named Elias stepped
up behind her and grabbed a handful of her long auburn hair.

The man pulled his knife from his belt and turned
to the group. “I claim April as my wife and helpmate. I mark her with her shorn
hair to show her fidelity and loyalty as a good wife.” The knife slid through
her hair with ease and the man dropped handfuls to the ground.

Billy Joe grasped his hands in front of this mouth
to hide his smirk.
Good riddance. Her shining, copper-tinted hair was too
much of a reminder of his whore-mother. Her glossy hair, red-painted lips, and
skintight outfits as she strutted across the stage of his father’s steel and
glass cathedral.

He pulled himself back to the present as Elias
finished and the young woman was left with ragged and uneven tufts of hair, the
luxurious tresses in a pile at her feet. Her whimpering cries filled the tent,
but were soon drowned out from the ringing ‘amens’ from the church members.

Walking up to Elias, he placed his hand on the
man’s shoulder. “Go with God and may you find your wife submissive and pure.”

“Go with God and may you find your wife submissive
and pure,” echoed the congregation.

The large man grabbed the young woman by the arm
and dragged her from the tent, her squeals and struggles ignored by the group.

Once they were outside the flap and the girl’s
cries died away, Billy Joe moved on. He strolled to the blonde. It wasn’t that
she was ugly; she was just what his daddy would have said, ‘was rode hard and
put away wet.’

“What is your name?”

“Teri.”

“Are you a virgin?”

“Yeah, like five or six years ago,” she said, and then
spit in his face.

He backhanded her and smiled as she hit the
ground. Nodding to a young man, he grabbed a handful of greasy hair and pulled
her to her knees. One of his men came over and pulled her arms behind her back.
Billy Joe held on to her hair and stretched her neck. A simple nod and the
young man lifted his ax and brought it down on Teri’s neck. He jumped back as
the blood spurted from her decapitation across the canvas floor.

He raised her head with his hand still wrapped in
her hair. “This is the face of evil. Don’t forget it. Woman was made to be pure,
wedded, or dead; there is no other state of her being. Her purity belongs to
God until a husband claims her.”

Dropping the head like a piece of garbage he was
done with, he moved to the last young woman. She stared straight ahead, her
eyes glazed and shocked.

“What is your name?”

“Maya,” she stuttered out.

“Are you a virgin?”

She nodded her head.

He glanced at the body and head a few men were
removing. “You see the penalty for lying, don’t you?”

Her head came up and she glanced in his eyes.
“Yes, I’m a virgin,” she spoke up loud and clear.

He grabbed a handful of long, dark curls and
pulled her to his side. He pushed on her until her knees hit the ground and he
held her there at his feet.

“I’ve heard the word of God and he has told me
that Maya is to be a bride of God, to be my bride. I am to mold her and make
her into a shining example of what it is to be a wife and helpmate.”

His now-first wife, Roberta, came to his side and
placed a hand on his shoulder. “Go with God and may you find your wife
submissive and pure.”

The congregation repeated the benediction. No one
but Billy Joe felt Roberta’s nails digging into his shoulder, which was the
only reason she still had a hand to be squeezing his shoulder with.

He smiled as the congregation congratulated him.
There
was more than one way to punish an unruly first wife. Like making her watch as
he deflowered number two.

Rule #2  
Don’t baby the children; they have to
grow up to be zombie-hunters, even if you don’t want them to be anything but
children. That time is past.

RV Storage yard

Oakley, California

Michelle gripped her hands together and pressed
her lips hard. She would not embarrass Dylan again by demanding the men not
teach him to shoot and stab the skinbags. No, not the men. Teddy. The giant man
was down on one knee behind the little boy, holding on to his thin arms as he
fired a gun.

She jumped again as the gun fired and the sound
carried from the practice field to where she stood atop the wall. The shooting
range had never made her jump when she was the one doing the firing. But there
seemed something wrong with teaching a six-year old to shoot for survival.

Her gaze had been so intent on the boy and the strong
man at this back that she would have missed the stumbling zombie headed their
way, tripping over the sun-baked dirt, if not for the gasp in her ear.

Her mouth moved but no words tumbled out. No
scream of a warning. She stared in horror as Emily reached over her shoulder
for the ever-present crossbow she no longer carried. Footsteps thundered down
the boards of the scaffolding as Emily’s husband, Seth joined them. He pulled a
gun out of the holster on his belt, his finger tightened on the trigger, and
then nothing.

He couldn’t take the shot with Dylan and Teddy in
the way, she could see that. Emily yelled down to the man, “Teddy, your two
o’clock.” Her fingernails dug into her palms as the man’s head swiveled to spot
the zomb’ just feet from his position. In a move that was almost too quick to
follow, he grabbed Dylan to his chest and raised his foot to hit the undead in
the stomach and pushed him away.

Before anyone could do anything else, Dylan raised
the gun still in his hands and shot the skinbag in the head. The zomb’ dropped
at their feet.

Her mouth dropped open as Dylan and Teddy
high-fived each other with great big grins on their faces. Her hand itched to
smack them both. Didn’t they get it? Zombies weren’t supposed to be able to get
this close. The repel sound Jed Long ran twenty-four hours a day through the
mounted speakers was supposed to keep them away—far away. God knows it was
supposed to do something useful for all the aching teeth and headaches they had
to put up with to endure the ultrasonic hum all the time.

Seth hugged Emily and gave her a quick kiss before
he scrambled down the ladder and she assumed out the gate to check out the now
dead skinbag with Teddy and Dylan. Her hands shook as she grabbed the
binoculars from where they hung on her neck and pressed them to her eyes. Like
looking through a rain-streaked window, her tears blurred her vision until she
blinked a couple of times.

Emily was happy. She deserved to be happy. It just
hurt so much to watch the casual way the married couples hugged and said
good-bye, like the other was just going off to work. Just as she’d said
good-bye to Mitch and he’d only come back as the undead. Nothing should be
casual anymore. Nothing.

She turned slowly as she scanned the area and
listened to Emily use the walkie-talkie to tell the other watchers to be on the
lookout for skinbags slipping through the hum’s perimeter. A fire sent a small
wisp of smoke into the air to the far south. A coyote slipped through the trees
much nearer the compound, stalking a wild pig. Seth appeared, running to
Teddy’s location and the coyote high-tailed it deeper into the trees until a
high squeal revealed the winner of that contest. Nature was taking back the
abandoned spaces. A bobcat had been spotted in a tree a couple of days ago.

To the southwest, the street ran in front of the
RV yard. With most of the nearby trees removed and the houses burned to the
ground, Michelle could see past the hum’s perimeter, marked with red spray
paint on the asphalt. A group of zombs stood just beyond the line. One took a
step over the line, and then turned, stumbling back into the group, knocking
some of them to the ground.

She took the binoculars off and handed them to
Emily, pointing in the direction she’d been looking.

“The hum line seems to be holding. So how did the
thing down there get through?”

Her friend looked for a moment and nodded her head
before handing the binoculars back. “You’re right. Nothing is coming closer.”
She turned to look at her husband in the field. “I guess we’ll have to wait to
find out. They don’t look like they are coming back anytime soon. Unless you
want to go down there and hear whatever they are talking about?”

Michelle put the binoculars’ strap back over her
neck and let them fall to her chest. “I think I should stay up here and keep
watch, at least until Dylan gets back inside.”

Her friend’s arm came around her shoulder and pulled
her in tight. The sigh Emily gave said it all, even if she didn’t say a word.
She was hiding away, thinking she was safe and cozy in the compound. It was all
just an illusion and someday she might be forced to make a choice. A shudder
ran down her spine. She tried to hide from the thought in her mind that even
then she might not be able to make the right choice.