The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (34 page)

“All
right, you can come on in. I need to barricade the door behind you. Will you
help me, please?”

They
helped Kimberly reset the barricade after the door was shut. She called Floyd
and Eddie to come into the room. Everyone sat at the table where the three had
just finished their dinner. Kimberly, still standing, started the conversation.

“Okay…
Wayne, is it? What’s going on? What does this have to do with us? Where are you
from?”

“Most
of us are from the Battel Mountain area of Nevada. We believed that there would
be fewer zombies in Washington state. That was our goal. We wanted to get to a
place where there wouldn’t be so many zombies, but, let me tell you, we were
wrong. We’ve traveled from Battel Mountain to here so far, and we’ve found that
no matter where we go, there’s the same number of zombies everywhere. It makes no
difference in where they are or how many they have in their swarms. We wanted to
find a place where there weren’t any zombies to live out this outbreak, but they’re
everywhere. Fewer in some places, more in other places. But from what we have
seen was that they are everywhere.”

He
shrugged his shoulders. “We gave up trying to get to Washington. We also knew
that we couldn’t keep going in the winter in the snow. We made our winter camp
not far out of town. Right now there’s 29 of us. We know how hard it is to
survive when your numbers are low. When you only have a few people with you the
zombies will pick you off one at a time. They look for any mistakes you make so
they can pounce on one of your group. We started off with eight people. Along
the way we lost a few to the zombies, and we added others. We do go out of our
way to ask everyone that we come across to join us. We’ve been watching you for
a while, and we like the way you all work together. We’d like to invite you to
come take a look at our group. If you like what you see, we would like to you
to consider joining our group. It’ll be up to you to decide if you want to be part
of us or not. If you choose not to join us, we’ll understand. We will send you
out with a little food to help you get along.” He smiled.

“Right
now it’s starting to get dark. We need to be leaving now. We have to be back at
our camp before too many of the zombies come out to hunt. But please, take your
time and talk about this tonight. We’ll be back at 10:00 AM tomorrow. If you
want to join, please hang this yellow cloth on the door. If the cloth isn’t
there, we’ll
understand, and we won’t bother you again. I want to thank
you for your time, we need to be going now. I hope you understand if we don’t
answer any of your questions tonight. Tomorrow when we come back it will only
be the three of us. We will take all of the time you need to answer all of your
questions. If you are still interested in our group, we would like to invite
you to our winter camp. We have a little way to go. Good night to you all.”

After
the three men left, Kimberly had Floyd and Eddie help her re-barricade the door
again. They had so much to talk about. They would be up late into the night
talking about what Locks had said.

Floyd
was the first to voice his thoughts. “Okay, guys. That was interesting, wasn’t
it? I guess we should talk about the $64,000 question. What do you guys think? Should
we go with them?”

“I
know Floyd. Yesterday or the day before we were talking about this very thing.
But we never really talked about what
kind
of group we would want to join
if the opportunity presented itself. He said their group has 29 people. I’d
like to see how they do things, how their leadership is handled, how decisions are
made… I’d also like to know what their long-range plans are. Things like how
long have they been in this camp, where they’ll be going when they decide to
move… The only thing we had planned was to keep going until we got to
Washington, or maybe even Canada. From what they’ve said about the zombies, our
plan doesn’t look so good now. If there are zombies everywhere, then we need to
rethink our plan.”

“Right
now, without knowing anything else about them, I think I’d be okay with joining
them after we look them over. I do know that I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m hungry.
I’m just worn out. With more people, it ought to be easier with more hands to
help. Of course, that means there’s more mouths to feed. So I’m on the fence. I
could go either way on this, Kimberly. I need more information to make up my
mind. I want to see what they have to offer. I’d like to know what the rules
are and how they’re enforced. The biggest thing in my mind is who’s in charge.”

“Eddie,
I’m good with that. I’d like to see more as well. I don’t want to make a
decision to join before we know more. I want to see their camp, talk to their
people, see who is holding the power. I’m willing to talk to them tomorrow. I
think we should get out in front of this. Tomorrow we need to find a place that
we can use as a lookout. I want to know if they come back with just the three
of them or if they’re bringing a larger group. I want us to be up at sunrise.
We can hang the cloth on the door, then we’ll set a lookout. We need to be ready
long before they are due back. We’ll see if they hold up their end of the deal.
I won’t make any decisions until I see their camp. I want to see how they run
things.”

They
talked for another hour before the hot meal, along with the long day, caught up
with them. They lay down to rest. Ten minutes later they were all fast asleep.
They used their watches as an alarm clock. For once, they didn’t keep a night watch.

As the
sun rose, Kimberly’s watch started to buzz on her arm, waking her. She began to
stretching as she woke up. She sat up and called out to the two others.

“Good
morning, guys. How did you sleep last night?”

“I did
okay,” said Eddie. “I woke up a few times thinking about this group. Do you
want me to heat up some of the raccoon meat for breakfast? It would be nice to
have eggs and coffee, but all I have is a little of the meat left from last
night.”

“Sure,
I’d love that. The one thing I found out about raccoon was that I kept burping.
The aftertaste isn’t so great. I guess raccoon is an acquired taste.”

“When
I finally got to sleep I didn’t wake up until you woke me just now,” said
Floyd. “Yesterday was a good day for us. Having fresh meat was great, but
breakfast was the last of the meat. The offer to join a group was fine with me.
Right now I need to go pee, then I want to eat.”

“TMI, Floyd.
You go pee. Then you can help Eddie on the roof, and get a fire going to heat up
our breakfast raccoon. While you are at it, find me a cup of coffee to go with
my breakfast if you can, please.”

Everyone
had a job to do, so off they went. Both guys went up to the patio deck to warm
up the meat. As they came down, Kimberly had the table ready to eat. As they
were eating, they started talking about whether they were going to join the
other group.

“Last
night was a good night,” said Kim. “I think I slept better that I have in a
long while. The hot meal, as well as thinking about possibly joining another
group… I think it could be a positive thing for us, after we get a few of our
questions answered.”

“You’re
right, Kimberly. I think I’m right there with you on that. I want to know more
about this group. I tried to come up with as many negatives as I could, but there
weren’t that many. The questions I have are about the structure of their
leadership, who makes what decisions when, what their long-range plans are. You
know, things like that.”

“I’m kinda
tired of it being just the three of us. We did talk about a winter camp, just
not one this far south of Eugene. I need to see what they have before I’m
willing to commit myself. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been a group from the
beginning. I’m not ready to break us up yet. Whatever we do, we do it
together.”

They
finished their breakfast, such as it was. They quickly cleaned up the kitchen in
order to be ready for the others when they came. The cloth was hung as had been
asked. Then they left the house. Not far away was a three-story building. It
was open, and after checking that it was free of zombies or anyone else, they
climbed the stairs to the top. They found a set of stairs that led to the roof.
From there, they waited for Wayne to come with his two boys. They had been up
there since about 8:30 AM. As they were waiting, a light rain began to fall.
There was a small overhang that they could huddle under to keep out of the
rain. From the overhang, however, they couldn’t see the ground. Using the
plastic sheet Floyd had brought, they took turns watching over the edge of the
roof for Wayne. At five minutes after ten, they could see Wayne and his two
boys. They were alone, walking towards their building. Floyd was on watch. He
trotted back to the overhang, whispering to the others.

“Guys,
they’re here. It’s just the three of them. I can see where they came from. So
far they have kept their word. No one else is with them.”

“Floyd,
did you see any zombies around?”

“No,
Kimberly. Not a one.”

“Eddie,
you’re the fastest of us. Run down and meet them. Tell them that we’re coming
down. We can talk to them on the way back to their house.”

Eddie
took off running down the stairs to meet the three of men before they passed the
building. He stopped them and told them that Kimberly and Floyd were coming
down. They all stood under the building’s overhang to stay out of the rain as
much as possible. In less than a minute, Kimberly walked out of the door,
followed by Floyd. She invited them back to their house. They talked a little
about how the walk over was, whether they had seen any zombies and other small
talk. Once inside the house, with the door barricaded, they all sat at the
table.

Kimberly
said, “Welcome back, gentlemen. My name is Kimberly, this is Floyd, and behind
him is Eddie. We’re from Riverside, California. We were trying to get up to
Eugene to build a winter camp. Next spring, we were going to decide what to do.
We had planned to aim for either Oregon or Washington. Last night we talked a
lot about what you offered us. We have so many questions that I don’t even know
where to start. Floyd, Eddie, do either of you have anything to add before we
start hammering them with questions?”

“So
far, you’re doing fine. We’ll let you lead the way. That's why you were paid
the big bucks.”

“Okay,
thank you. I was a mobile news reporter for the Riverside affiliate of NBC. I
talk a lot.”

“Yes,
you do, Kimberly,” said Floyd. “You’re never short of words.”

“Thank
you, Floyd,” laughed Kim. “Like I said, we have a number of questions before we
can make a decision whether we join you or not. We’d like to see more of your
camp; we’d like to know what your rules are, and who is in charge; how issues are
handled when they come up; if we can come and see your camp, would we be
allowed to walk around looking at it as well as talk to other people? We’d
really like to do this first before we make a decision to join with your group.
If it isn’t right for us, we want to be able to walk away with no hard
feelings. If we join your group only to find out that it is not a good fit for
us, would we have the right to leave? I know we’ll have more questions later as
we learn more about us. Are we doing right by you so far, or are we asking too
many questions?”

“Kimberly,
we totally understand. We actually came to see if you’d like to come and visit
our camp. You can look around. We can talk more while we are there, and you can
leave any time you want. If you decide to join us, and six months, ten months, a
year later, for whatever reason, you decide to leave, you can. No strings
attached. Our goal has always been to make our group better as we add others.
If you’re not happy with us, we understand. It would be better for both sides
if we parted ways as friends. Will that work for you?”

“This
sounds almost too good to be true. What would you like us to do now?”

“If
you are okay with this, we can start towards our camp. It is about a two hour
walk from here. You can pack up your supplies, or you can leave them here for
now if you’d feel better. Right now we’re in our winter camp. We’re planning to
stay here until summer.”

He
continued, “It was our plan to go up to Washington state. We thought that a
smaller population might have fewer zombies. We were wrong. By the time we got
this far, we realized that we were very,
very
wrong. By then, the weather
started to turn bad. Winter was on the way. We chose to stop so we could set up
a strong camp for winter. We’re going to be here until spring or early summer.
We’ll see what our options are at that time. Our plans might change when winter
is over. Our camp is about eight miles from here. I need to tell you that we
came with a group of six other people for security. They’re waiting for us
about two miles from here. We’ve found that it’s better to travel with a bigger
group. I didn’t want to spring a group of people on you the first day.”

They
packed up the meager supplies that Kimberly’s crew had and started out towards
their winter camp. As the men said, there was a small group waiting for them.
By 3:00 PM, they arrived at their winter camp. They were met by the camp
members as they walked in. The evening meal was being prepared. Floyd was
thinking that this might be where they would spend the winter, in a new camp
with new friends.