Regeneration (Mad Swine Book 3) (10 page)

After a brutal attack by a group of
survivors, a vicious gang that sprung up after the outbreak and
aggressively grew ranks at the expense of other survivors, Phil had
no choice but to move his people to a more defensible area. He
thought that Randal Oaks had been abandoned; their scouts had
suggested that the larger majority of the residents had moved on
months ago, leaving only the ailing behind to fend for themselves.
Surely, they had all succumbed to the harsh winter. However, to his
surprise, Phil found the group alive, barely, and was able to
convince them that they were better able to survive if they worked
together.

It took much convincing. Although Sam
couldn’t stomach making a deal with the enemy, she knew that they
could not survive without them. The walls that protected them would
not save them from hyperthermia or starvation. The few of them that
could still defend would leave gaping holes in their lines and
would be overrun within minutes if Providence truly wanted to take
over the community. Kat took even more convincing. Her hatred of
the neighboring community ran deep; she had the scars, both
physically and emotionally that continued to remind her of the
terror.

Eventually, Kat came around. She was
nothing if not a realist. Having weighed her options, Kat knew
there was no situation in which they would survive the winter
without much needed supplies from Providence. She also knew that
those supplies would come at a price. In the end, it was not such a
high price, at all. Instead, Phil had made quite a fair offer.

Phil’s plan was simple. Come spring,
if we returned for Sam and Kat, and they wanted to leave, they were
free to go. In the meantime, Providence would share their resources
in exchange for taking up residence behind Randall Oaks walls,
thereby ensuring everyone’s survival.

In the few months that passed, the
new Randall Oaks had begun to extend the safe zone outside of their
walls. Using truck trailers, trash containers, and large shipping
containers from the shipping yard to the north, they set up
barriers that would keep out not only the hordes, but also the evil
men and women. Each day, they pushed their barriers out further to
the east and south. Phil explained that their hope was to
eventually connect with safe zones created by other communities
around them. The goal was to establish safe trade routes. To
connect to neighbors and take back the precious land that had been
lost to the hordes.

One of the first steps, though, was
to find a replenishable food source that would allow them to grow
what they needed within the safe zone and not risk lives or
resources having to scrounge and scavenge among the creatures. The
plan was to get the abandoned farm across from Randall Oaks
functioning again. The ground was still fertile and there were some
among their group who knew how to farm. By the time we’d arrived,
they’d already begun clearing the fields of the collapsing
structures and working on getting the abandoned machinery running,
but there was still a lot they could do by manual labor.

It all sounded great. Phil wanted to
begin expanding the safe zone to the west, in the direction of
Finnegan Farms. There was fertile land that way, and more open
trade routes and safer passage in those lesser-populated areas.
They would connect with their nearest neighbors, who would connect
with their neighbors and so on, eventually creating one big
inter-connected commune.

Although it was a good plan, I
doubted it would work. I explained to Phil that to the west,
Finnegan Farms was the nearest neighbor. Everything in between here
and the farm is dead or abandoned.

“That’s all right. We can build a
trade route from here to the farm straight up Route 20. It’ll be,
what, a fifteen mile long safe zone?”

“Twelve,” Brian said.

“Okay, so even better. Less road to
secure.”

I could see that Phil was excited
when he talked about his plan. As a leader, staying positive and
planning for the future, thinking about how to make things better,
was the one thing that kept you motivated. To my own ear, nothing
sounded better than taking back the land and uniting the living
against the dead. But it could not be done.

“A 12-mile safe zone sounds good,
Phil, it really does, but that’s almost impossible. Twelve miles is
a long way for trade. It would be very difficult to secure the area
in between. Even if we shared responsibilities, there were not
enough men and women to secure such a long stretch.”

Phil didn’t respond. His shoulders
slumped and his head hung. He was no longer that excited ball of
energy he had been a moment ago. I felt horrible for shitting on
his dream, but that’s all it was. All it could be.

“Listen Phil,” I said. “I’m not
saying that what you propose will never happen. It’s just going to
take a very long time to get there. We can start by combining our
people. You come to Finnegan Farms. We already have viable crops.
We have the equipment, but lord knows we can use more hands to work
the farm, to make it more successful.”

I put a hand on his shoulder now. “We
can take you in,” I said. “We can take you all in.”

He looked at me then and said,
“We don’t want to be taken in. We want to take
back
. We want to get out there
and take back what the walking meat has taken away from
us
. And it’s not
just about taking back land, it’s about rebuilding society. It is
about taking back our humanity. We can’t keep cowering. We can’t
keep hiding from those foul creatures, holed up in our little hidey
holes, scavenging food where we can. That’s no way to live. That’s
just waiting to die.”

* * *

“So why not move west first?” Brian
asked. Now that his hands were free, he fished a cigarette out of
the dwindling pack and lit it. “I mean, you guys had your fingers
in all the neighbor’s pies. Seems like they’d be a good place to
start.”

Phil was quiet for a second, then he
turned and walked toward the map. He stood in front of it and
looked it over for a moment, then said, “We had major footholds in
all of the new subdivisions to the north of Providence, as well as
those to the west and southwest.”

Joining him now, we looked at the
large area he indicated with the sweep of a hand. “Senior had
worked out deals with all of the leaders that brought us more than
enough supplies to last us for years to come.”

“You mean he swindled and stole from
them,” Brian said. He dragged on his cigarette and exhaled smoke in
Phil’s direction. “And killed. Right, Phil?”

“What happened was an accident and
you know that. We were all there?” Phil said. Now his face was
beginning to flush. “Things were crazy then, and things got heated
and it just happened. He didn’t mean to kill Charlie.”

“Is that what you tell yourself so
you can sleep at night?” Brian asked. “We thought you were good
people, but you turned out to be just like Senior and Frank. You
fucked us, Phil. You could have helped stop the war before it
started but you made your choice and you picked the wrong
side.”

His face fully red now, Phil
took a step forward. “You can’t honestly stand here and pin this
shit on me. It was
you
who taunted Senior when he came to you with a
compromise. It was
you
who laughed and spit in his face when he offered you
a way out.”

“
A compromise? He wanted our
supplies and in return he offered
nothing
.” Brian spat.

“You wanted too much in return. Did
you really expect he would turn over one of his men to you, to be
executed or worse? Would you, if the roles were reversed?”

“I wouldn’t have tried to extort
supplies from my neighbors. I would have put a killer on the
road—”

“He wasn’t a killer!” Phil
shouted.

“He pulled a gun out and shot Charlie
in the face for nothing!” Brian said and before I could react, he
shoved Phil hard enough for the other man to lift off his feet.

Phil landed hard on his ass and
slammed back into the wall just below the map. He sat stunned for a
moment.

“Stop this right now!” Sam shouted.
She stood in front of Brian with her hands out in front of her. “No
more!”

I offered a hand to Phil to
help him up, but he slapped it away. Struggling to his feet, he
pointed at me now and said, “It was you,
both of you
, that pushed us to war.
When we left that night, I convinced Senior that the supplies
weren’t worth the blood it would take to breach your walls. I
convinced him that I could patch things up and that we could be
allies again.”

On his feet again, he cupped
his hands over his lower back, obviously in pain from his fall.
“But you two couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. You waited almost a
week thinking we wouldn’t connect the dots. Then you came
into
our
community and killed Andy. You didn’t just kill him, you maimed
and mutilated him in his own god damn home!”

We all stood in stunned silence while
Phil’s words hung over us like thick fog. For a moment, I almost
couldn’t breathe. I felt my heart beating wildly in my chest and my
hands trembled slightly as the memories of that night flooded back
in my mind.

“What is he saying,” Sam asked,
breaking the silence. She looked first at me and then at my
brother. “Is this true? Did you go back and kill the man who shot
Charlie?”

Without hesitation, Brian nodded. He
reached out and took Sam’s hand. “He killed Charlie. He was just a
kid and I couldn’t let him get away with that. I just
couldn’t.”

Turning to me again, still holding
Brian’s hand, Sam asked, “And you knew about this?”

“He wanted to tell you, everyone, but
I wouldn’t let him,” I said. “I thought it would divide us, but we
needed to be whole to survive what came next.”

“The war you created,” Phil said.

Brian shook his head. His anger had
left him as suddenly as it flared up. “It was only a matter of time
before Senior came for us. We defied him. If word got out that we
stood against him, others might have done the same.”

Taking another cigarette and lighting
it, he said, “We were a threat to him and sooner or later, he would
have dealt with us. What we did was a preemptive strike. We just
landed the first blow.”

Suddenly an explosion sounded,
reverberating through the trailer walls, rattling within my
bones.

For what sin were
we now being punished
? I thought briefly
before the second explosion made Sam cry out and all hell broke
loose.

One

The metal frame of the trailer
trembled and I felt the vibrations of the explosion in the heels of
my feet before the tremendous sound of the explosion even reached
my ears. A moment later, a secondary explosion sounded, less
percussive than the first, but still audible within the
trailer.

Sam cried out just as the door boomed
open and Randy stood in the opening, framed in the maw with the sun
at his back.

“We’re under attack!” he shouted. “I
think they’ve breached the west wall!”

“Mount a defense! Hold them and push
them back,” Phil said, breaking his paralysis. To Sam he said, “Get
your people to form up in case they break through the inner gates.
I will take a group and try to flank.”

Sam grabbed his arm and stayed him
before he took more than a step. “This is over,” she said. “What
happened here, right now, give me your word this ends here.”

“It’s done,” he said, without
hesitation. “Now let’s move.” He pulled away from Sam’s grip and
exited the trailer.

Turning to both of us now, Sam said,
“Kat can never know about this. Promise me this stays between
us.”

“I promise,” I said.

“She’ll never know,” Brian said.

Out of the trailer and into the
street, we caught up with Phil and followed him toward the gates. A
squad-size group ran past us moving to the northeast. Over the
wall, I could see the bright orange flames licking toward the sky.
Thick smoke billowed over the walls, black and gray, smothering the
skyline. A breeze took up pushing to the north, thankfully, away
from us.

From the towers the men and woman
fired their rifles down into the street outside the walls. Phil
stopped, turned his face up and shouted for the woman, Crystal, to
give him a situation report. She paused a moment to look down at
him. Her cheeks were bright red and her breathing was heavy.

“We’ve got a truck broke through the
barrier, looks like it was loaded with infected. They’re all over
the place, running like god damn ants.” She turned back and fired
her weapon again, three or four times in rapid succession before
her rifle was empty.

As she reloaded, Phil shouted,
“Infected don’t shoot! Who’s returning fire?”

“There’s people out there, too,”
Crystal shouted as she slammed in a magazine and took aim. “They’re
running among the dead, for the love of God!”

“Our people?”

“Some ours and some that came with
the infected. Get some people out there now before it all falls
apart Phillip!” She continued to fire the rifle, aiming down the
sight and firing at will.

On the move again, we stopped at the
command post where a group of men and women were engaged in
conversation. Phil touched a tall man’s shoulder, turning him
around. “Don, what’s the situation?”

“We have a major breach. Infected and
people, Phil. They’re lighting us up all along the west wall.”

“Where the hell is Kat? I need
her.”

The man gestured toward the gate.
“She’s out there. She and first squad were on watch for the folks
working the field. I don’t know what happened to them out there or
if they’re even still alive. We have squads two and three on the
north walls. Sam just took a squad to try to flank, but we can’t
get them through.”