Man Eaters (Book 2): The Horde Read online

  Dallas had been so deep in thought, she hadn’t heard the smoke house door close.

  Roper stood close to six feet tall and had recently cut her hair in a short bob that gave her lanky cowgirl frame a more boyish look. She was not as tall as Dallas, nor did she possess Dallas’s broad shoulders, but she was every bit as strong. That woman could wrangle a ‘gator if she had to. She always joked that a ‘gator was nothing compared to a bronc.

  “What’s got your synapses firing this time, love?”

  “I was just thinking about how much longer we were going to stay here.”

  Roper wiped her hands on her jeans before stepping in front of Dallas and tucking a stray piece of hair behind Dallas’s ear. Dallas had kept her hair in a ponytail ever since they met and now it was halfway down her back. “Getting restless?” She flashed Dallas a smile.

  Roper, like the others, went by her nickname instead of her real name, which nobody knew, not even Dallas. It was one way to remind the survivors that no matter how normal life seemed right now, it wasn’t. She’d earned her moniker back when she participated in rodeos, specializing in barrel racing and steer roping. She was a dead eye with the lasso.

  Once the virus took root, Roper was all she ever went by. After that first day on the Bay Bridge in California when she’d first met Dallas and her teenage sidekick, Einstein, Roper had never gone by anything else. Even in bed, Dallas called her that.

  “I don’t know which is worse,” Dallas answered, “Hiding down here or making a run at getting our lives back.”

  Wrapping her arms tighter around Dallas, Roper hugged her. “Either way is dangerous, love. Every day we stay here, we come one step closer to being the only ones remaining. Leaving brings with it obvious obstacles and dangers.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life here.”

  Roper pulled a piece of smoked venison from her back pocket and tugged on it with her teeth. “Then it sounds as if you’ve made a decision.”

  Dallas watched as Old Man submerged himself completely. It still amazed her how silent those modern age dinosaurs were. Silent and deadly. She changed the topic. “How was training this morning?”

  Roper shook her head. “That new family is a little squeamish about decapitation. I’m not at all sure they’ll be able to pull their weight in a brawl.”

  Dallas nodded. “Not everyone can slice a head off the way you can. What else can they do?”

  Roper pulled out a small tablet that had seen better days. “Dad’s a mechanic, so I have him looking over the Fuchs. The mother and daughters are pretty useless out here, so Cass is showing them how to collect wood, Spanish moss, and things like that. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Dallas leaned in and kissed Roper’s lips. The humidity made them softer than when they’d first met. She’s fallen in love with those lips the first time they’d kissed, and even though life was one big scary moment, she made sure to kiss Roper as often as the times allowed.

  They had started this blood-soaked journey through hell as strangers, then as survivors, then friends, and finally, lovers. Along with sixteen-year-old gamer, Einstein, whose zombie knowledge had kept them alive, and Butcher, an ex-Army medic and veteran of the war in Iraq, the four of them were the nucleus of the group—a group that deferred to Dallas for leadership. So far, she’d managed to keep them alive. As a firefighter in her old life, Dallas was used to successful teamwork. She was used to organization, to planning, to having special contingencies. There was always a Plan B during a fire. Those elements were the key to survival, so she reluctantly led their bedraggled group of survivors through the desolate wasteland of the United States, often having to make the tough decisions about who to pick up and who to leave by the side of the road.

  One tough call she had to make was to turn away a trio of football players from Tulane. They’d come seeking shelter, but when it became clear to the group that the three young men had no interest in doing some of the shit chores that every community needs done, they were asked to leave. There was no vote. It wasn’t a democracy. They’d get nowhere in a democracy. This was more of a benevolent dictatorship.

  “You’re a great second-in-command,” Dallas whispered softly, kissing the tip of Roper’s nose. “You have no idea how many times I look over at you and wonder how incredibly hard this would be without you by my side.”

  “By your side. On top of you, sitting between your legs. Get used to it. I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

  Dallas wrapped her arms around Roper and kissed her salty jerky after-tasting mouth. “Nice touch.”

  “I was hoping to make you hungry enough to want more.”

  Dallas laughed. “I always want more, but I refuse to have sex in this swamp.”

  “Aw man, where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Biting Roper’s neck, Dallas growled. “I’ll show you adventure.” They kissed for a few more moments before Dallas reluctantly pulled away. So often, she felt like a finch that landed on the ground to eat seed, pecking at a seed and then looking around, pecking and looking, pecking and looking. In the wild, prey creatures were ever vigilant about their surroundings.

  So was Dallas.

  As they made their way through the mud and muck of the swamp, they checked on several of the snares they set daily. It was from these snares they managed a surplus of smoked meats in any of the three smokehouses they’d built when they first arrived. The bayou, rough living if ever there was, supplied the survivors with fish, wild pig, deer, and of course, the occasional alligator for food, though they had stopped killing the alligators once they realized the creatures would eat the rotting flesh from the man eaters.

  The brackish water was filtered and boiled for potable drinking water, and the houses built on stilts long before the virus gave them ample security from the man eaters, who could not climb. Once they were able to feed and protect themselves, the survivors returned to the task of living…and even loving, and Dallas loved loving Roper.

  “You thinking of going into the city today?” Dallas asked. She’d known Roper long enough to know when the woman was getting antsy. Roper had always kept her finger on the pulse of the virus and the only way to do that was to see what was happening in the cities, most of which were deserted. With the exception of those zombies who weren’t following the trail of living flesh, New Orleans was a ghost town.

  “You’re getting to know me too well. Yeah. I was thinking about it. We haven’t gone in a week and it’s important we continue to collect as many survivors as we can and see what’s changed.”

  Dallas nodded. Cities were far more dangerous than any place else in the country. Even if the horde had moved on, there was always the chance that one or two stragglers had gotten caught in a store or a house, incapable of figuring a way out. Those were the ones who could undo every piece of progress they’d made.

  “It would be good to get away for the day.” Throwing her arms around Dallas, she hugged her tightly and nuzzled her neck. “Come on. You just admitted it. You want to get out of the swamp if even for a day.”

  That was when they heard it. The unmistakable sound of a foot being pulled from the silt.

  Dallas turned to Roper, who already had her magnum out. “How those fuckers make it this far is beyond me.”

  Dallas backed up to her so they stood back-to-back, weapons out in front of them at the ready.

  “It’s coming from over here.” Roper moved to her left. Dallas moved with her as if they were dancing a macabre dance with death.

  A gurgling followed the sucking sound…the sound they all made when they exited water for the first time, like the sound of coke being poured from a bottle. These creatures did not breathe. They didn’t have to. They were, for all intents and purposes, dead. They expelled the water in order to do that one thing they all did regardless of where they were: moan that hideous sound.

  “See it yet?”

&nb
sp; “No. Not yet. Jesus, when did that low fog roll in?”

  “Must have been when you were flirting with me.”

  “I was not flirting. I do not flirt.”

  “What were you—”

  Then came the moan.

  “Over there! It’s over there.” Dallas knelt to one knee and took aim, but someone blew the thing’s head off before she could pull the trigger.

  “You two could wake the dead.”

  They both whipped around to find Skeeter standing there with a rifle in his hands, two knives strapped to his thighs, and his clothes held together by dirt and grit. He was nearly toothless, completely bald, and had eyes that looked like they belonged on a chameleon.

  “Skeeter!”

  The old man shook his head as he made a tsking sound. “I was makin’ my way to see ya’ll when I heard ya trampin’ around out here like two blind elephants. You two ain’t learnt a damn thing from me.”

  They’d met Skeeter when they’d first arrived on the river. He was one of the few who refused to leave the bayou after Katrina and was convinced it was the only safe place in the country. The only place, that is, except the military zone in New England, where it was rumored the remaining United States government was safe and secure from the hordes of man eaters stalking the countryside. The military had pulled back all its forces once it realized it could no longer contain the man eaters nor the angry survivors who refused to live in a police state. Once the true nature of the epidemic and the role the military had played in eliminating even healthy citizens was discovered, the survivors began fighting back.

  “Haven’t seen you in weeks, Skeeter. Where’ve you been?”

  Skeeter ran his gnarled hand over his scratchy salt and pepper growth of beard. “Me an’ the boys been to the city ‘fer supplies. They been pretty picked over, ya know?”

  “Supplies? Why didn’t you just come to us? You know we have plenty.”

  Skeeter spat brown goo from his tobacco that kerplunked into the water. “Not them kind. We was lookin’ fer copper pipes, tubin’, thingsa that sort.”

  “Find what you were looking for?”

  “That and more. Them things is movin’ east. In groups. I remembered when ya’ll first got here you mentioned somethin’ ‘bout hordes. Well, they’s sweepin’ through the city on their way east…like a mindless herda’ cattle. Thought you’d wanna know.”

  Dallas and Roper exchanged worried glances. “You don’t think they’re coming here?”

  “Hell ‘naw. Not ‘nuff meat fer the size of them groups I seen rollin’ through, but they’s headed somewheres and I bet my bottom doller ya’ll know where.”

  Roper sighed loudly. If the horde was on the move, that meant no road trip today.

  Skeeter spat once more. “Yeah. I done thought as much. I thought you oughtta know that now ain’t the time to be hittin’ the road.”

  They chatted with him another couple of minutes before Skeeter returned home through the brush as soundlessly as he had approached.

  “Shit. What’s your take on it?”

  Dallas shrugged. “I don‘t really know, but we do happen to know someone who might.”

  “Come on love. Let’s go ask him.”

  ****

  Einstein and Cassidy were gutting the fish they’d caught earlier that morning. Einstein, so named by Roper because of his vast knowledge about zombies, had seldom been wrong about them and had proven to be an incredible source of information.

  He had seemingly matured overnight. Once a geeky redheaded gamer who had watched every zombie movie ever made, he was now more of a man, taking on responsibilities no teen should have to endure. He had, as they all had, been forced to watch friends eaten or turned into the man-eating ghouls, and he had had to deal with survivor’s guilt once they’d settled down here in the bayou.

  They had picked up Cassidy when they stopped at a family’s house that had decided to hunker down in a bomb shelter. Cassidy didn’t like living underground so she took off and joined Dallas and her group. At eighteen, she was two years older than Einstein but worlds away wiser at the inner workings of human beings.

  Together, they made quite the pair.

  He and Cassidy had bonded almost immediately, and had become the best of friends, though everyone seemed to think Einstein would have liked more.

  “So, what do you think?” Roper asked Einstein after he finished cleaning the fish. “If they are still moving to the east, what does that mean to us?”

  Einstein studied a cuticle on his finger. “When Butcher first explained that the man eaters act like white blood cells and group together to attack the perceived threat of us, I thought she’d blown a gasket. However, when Dallas asked us all to journal our experiences, I had to concur with what I found myself describing. They coalesce just like cells and migrate toward the perceived threat. I’m thinking they are following survivors who are trying to get to the military zone.”

  “In essence, the survivors are leading the zombies right to the safe zone.”

  Einstein nodded and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Precisely. The eaters will go where the food source, or in this case, their perception of the virus is. Seems everyone is heading in the same direction…and that’s not good.”

  “So basically, we’re talking two hundred million or so zombies attacking the million to six million who survived and are huddled behind fences in New England?”

  He nodded. “But that number isn’t the number of survivors, just the ones who might have made it to the compound in New England. That number doesn’t account for the number of folks who are in hiding all across the nation.” Einstein did the math in his head. “Hawaii and Alaska are probably free of the epidemic, but their demographics were low to begin with. Getting to either state is impossible. I’m thinking two hundred million is a low estimate by now, but if you’re asking me if it’s a possible scenario, that the horde is collecting itself to make one final attack on the largest group of survivors, then yeah, it is.”

  “God damn it,” Dallas said. “What in the hell has the military been doing all this time?”

  “The military zone has its back to the water,” Einstein explained. “They’ve backed themselves into the proverbial corner, thinking they are better prepared to not only defend, but to escape.” He shrugged as he wiped his knife blade clean of blood. “Problem is, there’s no place to go. It’s not like our guards will let them into the waters. The guards keep them pinched in.”

  The guards were what Dallas and company called the global army positioned all around the perimeter of the country.

  Dallas held up one finger. “Wait. Let’s think about this. Isn’t that a good thing? If the zombies are all in one place, then killing them becomes a lot easier.”

  Einstein shook his head. “The Military Zone will be overrun before they can defeat them all. No way the MZ can withstand half a million man eaters, let alone twenty or thirty million. They’ll be crushed in less than a day. It’s a bad idea, and unless they move, they’re screwed.”

  “What about our President and his cabinet? What will they do?” This came from Cassidy as she chopped the head off her fish. She had long ago stopped polishing her nails even though Einstein had stolen a bottle from a local store. At eighteen, when most girls were concerned about their looks, Cassidy let Butcher cut her hair in a short bob so there was no fuss or worry.

  “They’ll probably board a ship off the coast and surrender to the global army.” Dallas turned to Roper. “This whole thing has given me an idea. Would you do me a favor and round everyone up for an early dinner?”

  “Even those who don’t eat fish?”

  Dallas nodded. “Even those.”

  ****

  Roper’s Log

  When Dallas first asked us to journal our experience, I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Who’d be around to read it? If we fail here, the good old U.S. of A. has screwed the pooch and will be run by some other country rubbing
its fat hands together in anticipation of all the goodies we have.

  Who could blame them?

  In less than 300 years, we’d made a mess of a lot of things and fucked over plenty of other countries. We’ve used more resources, contributed the largest carbon footprint, threw out more food in a day than people in most countries eat in a week, and had butt our know-it-all noses into so many other countries’ government affairs we’re like some old busy body with nothing better to do.

  And the world had let us, until it discovered our scientists had created a biological weapon that would infect only a certain kind of DNA, while leaving agriculture, architecture, and businesses intact. It was a brilliant concept for a bioweapon, really. Kill the people but keep their property intact is a good strategy. If you can keep your weapon a secret. Well, apparently this information leaked to other powerful countries who decided it was time to rid the world of the plague called the American government. It is easier to destroy a super power government when there are no longer people to govern.

  As a result, ten canisters of the shit were released in ten major US cities. I doubt if those countries knew then what they know now, that they’d have unleashed a modern horror for which there was no antidote, but they did. It’s too late now. Once the virus got into the general population, the man eaters were everywhere, killing everyone and growing exponentially by each passing day.

  We’re guessing that NATO believed the antidote would keep this thing contained. After all, if our government was going to use it, they surely must have created a workable antidote, right?

  Wrong.

  The only problem was the antidote had not yet been perfected, so when our own government tried to use it against the man eaters, it worked with only minimal success. Some died, but most just carried on, dragging bloody limbs from one place to the next looking for flesh to tear from someone’s bones.

  So here we are. Stuck in the Louisiana bayou for the last eight months hoping to wait this thing out. Recently, Dallas and I talked about leaving here in order to see what’s going on in the rest of the country. Are we just prolonging the inevitable? Not sure what we expect to find when we go out there, but it’s time we got an idea of the lay of the land outside of New Orleans. As much as I have enjoyed playing house with Dallas and the others, I’m starting to go stir crazy here. I can’t stop wondering if we shouldn’t be looking at the bigger picture. I mean, what’s the point of surviving if we aren’t doing our damndest to save the rest of the country?