Zombie Dawn II: A Zombie Apocalypse Sequel (4 page)

I knew that Jack would prepare the
Farm for an attack, but I was amazed at the number of zombies that Santos was
accumulating here in Burlington.  We had already killed thousands, but there
were so many.

One thing he did was release the
zombies from cars up and down the highway.  There were thousands.  We’d tried
to end the car zombies, but there was never enough time.

Mariana seemed to recognize any
special abilities immediately.  She’d put her wolves in charge of about a dozen
shamblers, and brains in charge of a dozen or so wolf packs.  There were other
levels as well.  It was chaotic, but there was some structure to it.  It seemed
to work.

She ended up with a control group of
about ten or twelve, all female, directly beneath her.  They looked sort of
like her, almost human.  They never spoke.  They would come to Mariana, usually
in small groups but often all of them at once.  They’d stand silently around
her for a few minutes, then leave.  After they left, Santos would appear, since
he kept a close eye on Mariana.  He’d been watching all along.

I began to think of them as the
“Inner Core.”  Mariana, Santos, and the lead group of females.  I bet that Jack
would come up with something like the “Cougar Club” instead.  I miss him.

There was no way for me to count how
many zombies there were, but it was thousands.  Almost too many to shoot, I’d
think.  Whenever the “girls” left Mariana, the activity level would change
immediately as they distributed her orders down the line.

As for the humans, Santos would send
out packs of wolves to locate and surround groups of survivors.  Most of them
were well armed, many of them were total skanks, like the guys we’d tried to
remove from the new gene pool.  Mariana would send in a few waves of zombies,
and they’d either wipe out the group or get them to surrender based on Santos’
promise of “mercy.”  He’d then kill the very old and the very young.  Anyone
who was not healthy.  Anyone who was not “normal,” whatever that meant to
Santos.  Take the men and stronger women between fifteen and sixty and make
them soldiers.  Take the rest and make them hostages or slaves.  Control the
soldiers with the threat of harm to the hostages.  Prove the threat by harming
many of them.  Just like a fucking Nazi.

No way to tell how many, but he has
one hell of a lot of humans under his control.  Enough that he chooses a random
hostage most days, usually one who stepped out of line, or got injured.  Santos
has his guys torture him or her in front of the combined group, and throws it
to the zombies as a snack.  Keeps the humans in line and the zombies on their
toes.

These “humans” are like rats or pigs,
not humans anymore.   So glad to live another day that they’ll do anything. 
Like the Jews in the concentration camps who ended up helping the Nazis.  I
guess your entire value system shifts when survival is at stake.  I know mine
has.

I get to see it all, because Santos
literally keeps me on a leash and with him most of the time.  He does it to
mess with Mike.  I know that Mike has thought about killing me and Santos to
put me out of my misery, but he won’t do it, I think, if there’s still hope. 
While we’re alive, there’s at least some.  I hope Mike thinks so, too.  I won’t
give up.

We’re heading to the Farm.  I hope you’re
ready, Jack.

Chapter 9:      Santos’ Army

Santos had gathered the remnants of
over thirty bands of survivors and had hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, of
human soldiers, including a bunch of ex-military, for the attack.  The group
was well armed, since Mariana’s second in command, Joumana, a tall slim zombie
who could almost have passed for human, lived in a subbasement deep beneath the
St. Alban’s armory.  Santos and Mariana lived there too.

Mariana could keep wolves and brains
and the other high level zombies from eating humans, but it was always a
problem with the basic shamblers.  So the humans were grouped with wolves and
brains into assault groups.  The shamblers herded by wolves.  Ian and Mike as
the lead snipers, roaming around and killing leaders.

Santos never slept, at least not for
long.  Shame swept over him each time he closed his eyes.  Shame at raping
Mariana.  Shame at leaving her outside for the zombies.  Shame at Mariana’s
pregnancy.  But mostly, shame that Jack somehow knew what Santos had done.

In the morning, Santos hoped to kill
Jack and end his anguish.

Chapter 10:    Mike’s Journal—The
Battle of the Farm

During the battle, they kept me
moving, shooting the defenders.  I was on a direct radio link with Santos or
even with him in person.  He did lead from the front, I’ve got to give him
that.  Mom was usually right there with him.  Any hesitation, any bad shooting
on my part and he’d hurt her.  I intentionally missed Uncle Jim with a shot and
the bastard clipped off the tip of her left pinky.  She screamed and passed
out.

That gave me a minute to scope things
out.  Santos wasn’t watching me for a second, and Marvel and Brittany were
trying to revive Mom, so I picked off five of his brains and two of his key
humans.  Right in the back of the head, seven for seven.  Too much shooting for
Santos to tell who was shooting whom.  I was getting pretty good with that
.338.

I could tell pretty soon that Dad’s
forces would win.  They had the high ground, one hell of a lot of weapons, and
they were fighting for their freedom.  But the battle was gruesome, and Santos
sent everything he had.  Our humans had good weapons, too, and Santos had the
numbers.  Wave after wave.  No real subterfuge, either.  Direct frontal attacks
for the most part, as far as I could see.

Santos had some tricks up his
sleeves.  Ultra light planes.  Boats.  Heavy equipment.  I shot as many of them
down as I could, but I could tell they were doing serious damage.  Maybe it
wasn’t so clear that Dad would win.

My last memory of the battle was
Santos holding a straight razor to my mom’s throat after I’d missed a shot at
my Dad.  This was way at the end.  I knew he’d do it, she was already bleeding
pretty good, so I had to take a kill shot at Cleve.  I just added that to Santos’
tab.  Didn’t even feel that bad about it.  I even tried a kill shot at Dad.  He
moved, it was a miss, and Santos cut my mom, deep, as Marvel knocked me out.

Chapter 11:    Jack’s Journey—The
Toothache

I immediately got a good feel for
Micah.  He was an open book.  Happy as my old black lab, Molly, to see another
person, really.  I missed that old mutt.  Funny, that connection with your dog,
who mostly values you for food and few pats on the head.

I realized how exhausted I was and
yawned, popping my last handful of scrounged-up painkillers.  Micah asked if I
wanted to sleep.  I threw caution to the wind and told him I’d love to.  He
brought me into the storeroom and showed me the basement where he lived.

It was a brilliant setup.  The floor
was wide pine, with gaps between each board.  But there was a trap door set so
well into the floor that you couldn’t tell where it was.  Micah slipped a
little rope between two boards, pulled it back a bit until the knot at the end
caught, and pulled the floor open.

“You can’t see it when it’s closed. 
I can even have a light down there.  I checked.  One time, I left the door open
upstairs and some a them walkers got in up there.  They shuffled around for a
bit but never found me.  I ain’t been that scared since my daddy brought me to
the movies and we saw that movie “Scream.”  Those ladies sure were pretty,
though!”  This with a look of pensive reflection.

“Lead on, Micah.  This looks good so
far.”

“Another time, I heard some mean men
upstairs.  One of them was Sheriff Sam.  He was looking for me.  I heard him
say “That idjit Micah is in here somewhere.  Let’s find him and he can be our
butler!”  The others laughed like that was real funny.  But he didn’t sound
funny.

“Jack, what’s a butler?”

Without waiting for an answer, Micah
continued.

“Anyhow, I could count that there
were four of them.  Sheriff Sam, his brother Billy, another guy I didn’t know,
and Black Jake, who was usually locked up at the police station.  Billy was a
deputy and always mean to me and saying stuff about Daddy.  Jake was called
Black Jake because he was black.  He was always drunk ‘n stuff. ”

Micah gestured to a steep ladder,
like a ship’s latter, and I started to go down it while Micah double checked
the upstairs.

Micah continued.  “Those men looked
all over for me.  They even tapped all over on the floor.   They pushed over
all the shelves.  Made lots of noise.  Ruin’t lots of good stuff.  Said mean
things about me and Daddy.”

He paused to come down the ladder and
pulled the trap shut.  It was pitch dark down there.  You could actually feel
the air compress when the trap shut.  That door was so tight, no light got
through from upstairs.

“What happened with those guys,
Micah?”

“Well, they never really found my
trap door, but I think they knew I was down here.  They started talking about
burning me out.  They were sort of laughing and stuff, I think to scare me.  I
was real scared, so I ran out the back door and hid in the bushes across the
street.”

“Black Jake and the rest came out of
the store and Billy started to shake some gas onto the front steps.  They
really were going to burn me out!

“They were drinking booze like Daddy
used to have and laughing and playing around.  But it wasn’t funny.  They was
fixin’ to burn a store and a person.”

Micah lit a candle and I could see
the confused and troubled look on his face.  “Jack, why would they want to burn
me?”

“I don’t know, Micah, but I’m sure
glad they didn’t.  What happened next?”

Micah got a sly look in his eyes. 
First time I’d seen it.  “Well, they weren’t paying any attention, and a bunch
of them walkers started sneaking up on them.  These walkers was different, they
was sneaky and quiet.  I stayed quiet, too.  “Not a peep” was what Daddy used
to say, so I made not even a peep.  After a bit, those four mean men were
surrounded, and the walkers jumped on ‘em and ate ‘em.  I stayed right there in
the bushes, not a peep, for two nights and two days.”

“You know what happened, Jack?  After
the four guys were dead, the other walkers left.  Sheriff Sam was all ripped
up.  One of his arms was off, and they tore off most of his face and his neck. 
But after awhile, one or two hours later, he started to move.  I almost yelled,
but I stayed quiet.  Sheriff Sam sort of shuffles over to the guy I didn’t
know, and starts to eat on him.  The guy comes alive again, but he’s not mad at
Sam or nothing, and the two of them move over and start to eat Billy.  They ‘et
up Billy so bad that he didn’t get up, ever, but after a bit Black Jake wakes
up and the three just walk off, real slow.”

“I was real lucky, huh, Jack?”

“Yes, Micah, you were lucky but you
handled it just right.”

This earned me a look of pure
gratitude.

That was it for the night.  Micah showed
me a hammock where I could sleep.  I looked into his big brown eyes for a
moment, hoping to be able to into his soul.  Could I trust him?  How the fuck
could I tell?  A good liar could lie right to your face and get away with it. 
You can’t tell anything from looking at someone eyes, other than whether they
have pinkeye, or a lazy eye, or a glass eye.  So fuck it.

But I needed sleep so I hopped into
the hammock and dropped right off.  Aided by those very strong painkillers.  My
last thoughts were that I could—almost—not feel my tooth, that my rescue
mission might end right here, that I wished for the old days.  I wanted my Kate.

As I slept, memories of that single
sighting of the sniper at the Battle of the Farm kept torturing.  How could I
know that was Mike?  Why did I believe that Kate was alive?  Was this just a
fool’s errand?

Chapter 12:    Mariana—The
Inner Core

They were all around her.  The Core. 
Surrounding her.  All she wanted was to be with Santos.  To raise their baby. 
Yes, the baby growing in her was forced on her, but she already love it more
than anything else, except for Santos.

She hated the Inner Core, for their
strength, for their beauty, for their connection to Santos.  Only for him did
she even deal with their corruption.  The real leader was Joumana, Mariana
intuited.  She was taller, stronger.  Beautiful.  More powerful than Mariana. 
Mariana could tell that Joumana wanted to kill Santos, to be the ruler of all,
to kill all living things.  But Santos would not listen to her.  He was
interested only in Jack.

Mariana’s anger grew.  No one but her
could ever be with Santos.  No one but Santos could ever be King.  Except,
maybe, their baby.  The Heir.

Chapter 13:  Kate’s Diary—Zombie
Babies

After the battle, when we returned to
the armory, they made me work in the most bizarre place I’d ever seen—a zombie
nursery.   There were a dozen or so zombie babies in there.  The star tenant of
the nursery was Joumana’s baby, but I could tell that all were waiting for
something even bigger, stronger, more important.