Man Eaters (Book 2): The Horde Read online

  That Zoe is an interesting duck. She seems to prefer Hunter over everyone else, and they have become fast friends. He spends a great deal of time showing her how to use her now pink crossbow (don’t ask me where he found pink paint), and she’s become incredibly accurate.

  The other day, however, she tried to create an arrow that shot fire, and I guess Hunter gave her shit for it. She said, “You never know when you might need one.” I guess he called her Robin Hood or something. I swear to God, if they were straight, they’d be in love. To her credit, she did get one going and lit a small pile of hay on fire.

  The victory over such a huge horde has spurred us forward in our goal to be a working army. Hunter and Zoe are crossbow trainers while Fletcher trains others in how to make bolts and arrows. We’ve created quite a stockpile. Every piece of wood we can find has gone into making more bolts and arrows. We also retrieved our bolts and arrows from the undead we killed, so that was good. The bonfires blazed morning, noon, and night these last four days until all the dead were but ashes. Everyone had to participate in that job. It was gross, but necessary, and everyone was sick of the smell of burnt hair and flesh.

  The horde victory gave us the confidence that we do have a solid plan and can pull it off.

  Not only can, but must.

  It is too easy to become complacent—too easy to settle for a life inside a prison. Dallas reminded us of that last night. She wants to take the garmy out to fight. Luke thinks we ought to work our way toward the Military Zone because the hordes are moving toward the larger populations.

  Like Angola.

  But we’re small potatoes compared to the tens of thousands we think are living in the Military Zone. We can only hope the military is as effective a killing machine as the garmy.

  I suppose only time will tell.

  ****

  In the two months they’d been at Angola, they’d quadrupled their population to over six hundred, and had suffered minimal losses and casualties. They had fought off two more, smaller hordes of nearly three and four thousand apiece, and managed to lose only two fighters in the process: one who was trampled, and the other fell off the crow’s nest.

  Dallas felt they were ready. They had six hundred and sixty-two survivors. Seventy of those made up the garmy—and the garmy was quickly becoming very efficient…so efficient, in fact, that other survivors took notice. It was their first realization of the growing importance of the gay and lesbian survivors and what they could do to rid the country of the zombies.

  In the beginning of the third month, Dallas was doing her rounds when she heard the alarm sound.

  When Dallas got to the crow’s nest, Otis said, “Military coming!”

  Dallas wasn’t sure she heard right, so she yelled up to Otis. “What?”

  “Military coming! Three black military Jeeps!”

  The entire fighting unit gathered near the gate, at the ready, eager to defend their home. “I’ll take the Fuchs out to meet them.”

  “Not alone you won’t,” Roper said, riding up on Charger, the bay mare she had finally tamed. “You’re taking a whole platoon of soldiers.” A platoon in their world was a contingent of a dozen.

  Dallas looked around at her choices. “Butcher, Roper, Einstein, and Churchill, grab a partner and come with me.”

  Luke’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously? You’re taking the kid and not me?”

  Dallas moved really close to him. “If something goes south, I need you to keep a level head and take over. Will you do that for me?”

  He blinked once, then nodded. “It’s your call, but nothing better happen.” He glanced over at Butcher’s rotund belly. “They’re not getting this place or anything in it.”

  By the time the Jeeps made it to the front gate, the Fuchs was blocking it. Churchill manned the turret, the others readied their rifles, and Dallas waited as the ZBs behind the fence pointed every weapon they had at the three vehicles.

  “I’m pretty sure they are shitting their pants at the number of weapons aimed at them.

  We’re going to let their leader come to us. Churchill?”

  “Yeah, Boss?” He yelled down.

  “You see one weapon, blow one of those Jeeps to hell and back.”

  “Roger that.”

  About five minutes later, the driver’s door slowly opened and a uniformed officer stood behind it. When the passenger door opened, Churchill swung the machine gun around. “Uh, uh, uh,” Churchill said. “Just him. Get your ass back in the vehicle.”

  The soldier hesitated until his commander nodded.

  “Leave your sidearm on the hood,” Churchill said. “We won’t shoot you unless you give us reason to.”

  He did, and then locked his fingers behind his head.

  “Walk to the back of the vehicle.”

  As he did, Roper lowered the ramp. When the soldier came to it, he faced seven rifles. “Welcome to Angola,” Dallas said, motioning for him to enter and take a seat.

  Roper slid into the driver’s seat and both Butcher and Einstein kept their weapons trained on him as the ramp closed and clicked into place.

  “Captain Earl Garnette,” he said.

  “I go by just Dallas, Captain. You can put your hands on your knees. Now, what brings you to our neck of the woods?”

  The captain swallowed hard as he eyed all of the muzzles pointing at him. He was a tall, angular man with serious brown eyes and a scar that cut his left eyebrow in two. He might be called handsome in a room full of nerds.

  “Ma’am, we are not here to do anything except check out the veracity of the stories we’ve heard about another safe zone in this great country of ours.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “As you can see, we are quite successful here, so let’s cut the bullshit, Captain. We’re very busy, so what is it you’re really here for?”

  His cheeks colored and he hesitated.

  “Captain, time is ticking here. Why are you here?”

  Clearing his throat, he replied, “I’ve come to tell you that the United States military will be taking this facility over.”

  The interior of the Fuchs was silent.

  Dallas blinked once, looked at Butcher, then at Roper and they all busted out laughing. When the laughter died down, Dallas said to him, “Oh. Wow. You were being serious?”

  They all laughed once more.

  “Ma’am, the United States military is in the process of reclaiming—”

  “Reclaiming shit. If you think for one second that three Jeeps full of soldiers is even remotely enough to take us on, you’re smoking crack,” Roper said. “You came a long way for nothing.”

  Dallas lightly touched her shoulder. “What my partner means is…no fucking way we’re turning this place over to you or anyone else. So…shall we start over? Like…well…the beginning.”

  Captain Garnette stared down at a cuticle. “Word reached command central about a very successful enclave of survivors. We came to check it out, investigate, and see why you’re successful, and….um—”

  “Take us over.” Butcher added for him.

  “Well, we’ve already determined the latter isn’t going to happen, so what now?” Dallas leaned forward, elbows in her knees.

  “Ma’am, maybe if you’d just let me take a look around, ask the folks some questions, see how you’ve—”

  “Captain, do I look mentally deficient? Perhaps you’re not clear about the different sides we’re on. The United States military is our enemy. A year ago, you killed undead and living alike. You hunted us down in an attempt to contain an epidemic you are responsible for.” Dallas leaned back and watched his face contort with the realization that she knew the truth.

  “I don’t know where you got your intel, but—”

  “But it’s true. The virus got away from you and our entire country has paid the price for it. We have collected people who are willing to fight back for our country, not hide behind the skirts of those who put us in this position.”<
br />
  “Fight?”

  Dallas nodded. “That ship that blew up outside of the bayou a few months back? Was us. We know damn well how this whole tragic thing started. Then you tried to contain it by killing the living as well. Well, Captain, we made it in spite of your best attempts. We are nobody’s collateral damage so please don’t insult our intelligence any further or we can just end this here and now.”

  The captain nodded, making eye contact with everyone in the Beast. “My apologies. I…we weren’t expecting any push back or this level of organization.”

  “Oh, we are very organized, Captain, and we have a great deal to teach you and the rest of the military about how to defeat these things.”

  “The United States military is working around the clock to eradicate—”

  “No, you’re not. It’s been over a year and they’re still here. Why is that? Because you don’t know how to defeat them.”

  “And you do?”

  Dallas nodded. “We do. If you come with us, we’ll show you. At least that way you can return to your government with some answers about cleaning up their mess.”

  He looked out the window. “I can’t leave my men.”

  “Sure you can. This is like the wild west. We make up the rules as we go along.”

  He thought about it a little too long.

  “Look, Captain, if we wanted to kill you, we already would have. We’re just trying to help you gain some understanding of what you’re up against.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but me and my men have been fighting the undead since—”

  Dallas raised her hand. “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about us. These people.

  We are not who you think we are. We are not rebels. We are, in short, achieving what you are merely attempting to do.”

  “And what is that?”

  Dallas smiled softly. “Saving our country.”

  ****

  They’d been traveling in the Fuchs a little over an hour when they came upon four undead stragglers lumbering through an empty field. Dallas turned to Roper and nodded.

  “You’re up.”

  Grabbing just her machete, Roper waited for the ramp to lower.

  “Are you mad?” Captain Garnette asked. “Look, there is no need to put your people at risk. I know you’re all tough and that you’ve made it this far, but—”

  Roper laughed. “You don’t know shit.” Nodding to Dallas, Roper stepped out onto the field a good twenty yards away. “Be back in a flash.”

  When Roper stepped away from the ramp, Dallas closed it. “Now, pay attention, Captain, because we’re not showing you again.”

  “This is suicide. It’s absurd. It’s—” He stopped talking when he watched the zombies walk right by Roper, not even giving her a second look. “What the—”

  Roper came behind them and walked with them for a moment, pretending to be one. They never even looked at her, but just kept trudging through the fields.

  “What the hell?”

  Dallas nodded. “Just watch.”

  In less time than it took for the ramp to lower, Roper beheaded all four and was back in the Fuchs in under one minute. When she looked over at Captain Garnette, she shook her head. “Havin’ a hard time believing what you saw, Captain?”

  He blinked, then slowly turned back to Dallas. “They should have torn her apart.

  How…what…?”

  Dallas started back toward Angola. “That, my friend, is classified information, but as you just witnessed, we are not some group of insurgents getting in your way. We may very well be the only people standing between getting our country back and losing it to those vultures waiting around the nation’s perimeter for us to die.”

  Captain Garnette was still too stunned to reply so Roper patted his back patronizingly. “While you guys hunted your fellow Americans down, we were busy figuring out how to destroy the real menace.”

  “They…they ignored you. I’ve…in over a year of dealing with them, day in and day out, I’ve never seen—”

  “Sure you have, only you didn’t quite understand why. Think about it, Captain. Have you had any men or women who were bitten but didn’t turn?”

  He shook his head. “Wait! Yes. A corporal came to base, having been bitten during a botched rescue.”

  Dallas leaned toward him. “Let me guess. He was in a crowd, possibly even holding the person you were rescuing and that was when he was bitten.”

  The blood drained from his face. “How…how could you know that?”

  “Again, you’re asking the wrong questions. How come he didn’t turn?”

  “We don’t know. Our doctors could not determine the reason.”

  “It might surprise you to know that we know why.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he shook his head. “Never saw anything like that and now, this. Would she be willing—”

  “No. The reason we gave you this little demo is so you and your bosses understand that, while we are not the enemy, we will be if you try to take Angola from us. You need us more than we need you. It would be wise to keep us on your side. Not only will we not go down without a fight, we will thin your ranks considerably. We’re a force to be reckoned with, Captain.”

  When Captain Garnette spoke again, it was a good three minutes later. “Is it…just her? Is it something about her alone? Does she posses the key?”

  “No, it’s not just her. There are many of us, and we’ve taught our people how to shoot and fight hand-to-hand. And those who can’t shoot well are proficient with bow and crossbow.”

  “Bow and —”

  “Ammunition is running scarce, isn’t it, Captain? To get to army bases in order to collect it is a sketchy endeavor. Bolts and arrows are retrievable ammo.”

  He gazed out the window. “I gotta hand it to you—you people have thought of everything.”

  “Not everything, but enough to keep us alive. Look, the rest of the world loves the idea of splitting us up like it did Germany after the first world war, but everyone frowns on anything that smacks of genocide. You and we know they are all waiting for the zombies to defeat us. We are doing everything we can to prevent that.”

  “Dallas, I don’t think you realize just how many of them there are out there.”

  “Sure I do. We’ve killed nearly twenty thousand just from here. We are well aware of how outnumbered we are, but have chosen to fight. What we don’t need is a government that put us in this position in the first place to think it’s going to swoop down here and take our home from us, because Captain, I don’t think that’s a game you want to play.”

  He studied Dallas a moment before replying, “I don’t know if you folks are the bravest people I’ve ever met or the most foolish.”

  Dallas shrugged. “A little of both, I suppose. So, go back to your bosses and tell them Angola can be friend or foe—it’s your call.”

  “You’d really take on the United States Military?”

  Dallas leaned closer to him and lowered her voice. “Can your people do what Roper did out there?”

  Before he could answer, they pulled up to Angola. The men and their Jeeps were gone.

  The Captain stood at the ramp and glared out the window. “Where are my men? If you’ve done anything to them—”

  Just then, Luke loped up.

  “Uh, Luke?”

  Luke flashed her his best grin. “Don’t panic. We invited them in to have a cold drink and a little snack.”

  “A little snack?”

  Luke nodded. “We’re not barbarians. Just because we’re not under lock and key in New England doesn’t mean we have no manners.”

  Captain Garnette started to retort, then thought better of it. “It is the only way to keep people safe. We can’t have people wandering around.”

  Luke chuffed and stepped back. “That’s what I thought. Your safe zone is no different from our prison, only more so of one.”

  Just then, Gary led the group of eleven men to
the front of the base.

  “Captain,” One of the soldiers said, running up to the ramp as it lowered. “They have everything here. Cows, eggs, even refrigeration!”

  Captain Garnette waved them back to their vehicles parked just inside the gate. “Thank you for treating my men kindly and for showing me something I still can’t believe.” Turning from the opening, he leveled his gaze at Dallas. “What happened out there? I really need to know. How was it they didn’t attack her?”

  Dallas walked down the ramp and motioned for him to follow. “I’m sorry Captain, but seeing as you came here as an enemy and not an ally, we won’t be trading secrets this time around.”

  “Dallas, I don’t think you realize what we’re willing to do to take over a safe installation like this. You people are just civilians.”

  This made Dallas laugh. “Do you hear yourself? Just civilians? Captain, you and your men are alive because these civilians allowed it. Next time, you might not be so lucky.” Dallas smiled. “Remember what we did to that destroyer, Captain, because we’ve only just begun.”

  ****

  When the Jeeps were gone, Dallas turned to the others. “Well?”

  Henry shook his head. “They were regular fonts of information. Call for a meeting of department heads. I think everyone should hear this.”

  Half an hour later, the heads of each group sat around the big mahogany table in the conference room. “I’m going to turn the floor over to Henry and Luke. Hold your questions until they are done. Henry?”

  Henry remained seated as he began. “According to the soldiers we fed, the New England safe zone is run more like a concentration camp. It’s more like a prison than Angola ever could be.”