Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Simpson, A. (pride and prejudice read txt) 📖

“No,” the man clarified. “There were three of them. They walked with the pack and were not disturbed by it. They controlled them, brought them to us, and then left. We thought it was you at first, taking your revenge.”

Gunny cocked his head at this news. “Are you sure?” he asked. “It wasn’t some well-preserved zeds that looked human?”

The man was insistent. Adamant that someone had learned how to be among the dead and not be attacked.

He thanked them over and over, all the way up the ladder, until they were over the top and climbing down the other side.

“What do you make of that?” Griz asked as they dug more ammo out of the panel van and started reloading their magazines. “Somebody knows how to control the zeds?”

“Dunno,” Gunny replied. “Doesn’t make sense. They were probably imagining it, freaked out from the sheer number of them slamming into their walls.”

In the distance, they heard the oncoming roar of a muscle machine coming down the road.

“That’s Scratch,” Hollywood said. “Man, this place creeps me out. Let’s get loaded up and get the hell out of here before that horde comes back.”

“I second that,” Bridget said.

3

Jessie

Jessie was sweating in the crisp morning air as his feet pounded out a steady rhythm on the dirt road that ran along the inside of the container wall. Bob panted at his side, easily keeping pace, his wounds healed and not seeming to bother him at all.

“Take it easy,” they said.

“It’s only been a few months,” they said.

“Don’t overdo it, you’ll hurt yourself,” they said.

He ignored all of their advice and pushed himself. He knew he should be finished, should be exhausted, should be gasping for every breath and ready to barf up breakfast, but he was barely winded. He felt no worse than he would after a hundred-yard dash: breathing hard but feeling good. He didn’t know what was in that morphine drip he’d been given by the weirdos in the cult, but the SS Sisters were beside themselves to get to the bottom of the mystery. They said it was a miracle drug. They said broken bones didn’t knit themselves back together in a month. Gunshot wounds didn’t scab over and scar in a matter of weeks. Bruises and cuts didn’t heal and disappear in days.

But they had.

His dad had hobbled around on a broken leg all winter. The other people he’d met, Hollywood and Bridget and all the rest, spent long months recovering, but Jessie had felt fine by Christmas.

Healed.

The best shape of his seventeen years he’d ever been in.

He’d started off that morning with his daily routine at the gym turned rehab center but needed to get out and stretch his legs. He’d done some running with the rest of the guys, the soldiers who had been hunting Jihadis during the big Lakota battle back in November, but they didn’t go this far. They usually just jogged around town or maybe a little way along the shoreline. He had continued straight, along a guard path worn along the water when they all turned and headed back toward the gym. He ran the beach trails toward the wall, some four miles distant. He could see the coils of concertina wire staked out in the water a dozen yards offshore. Triple rows that would stop any undead trying to stroll up the banks or any boats if the radicals tried to attack again. He’d heard all about the prison escapee called Casey, how he had a huge price on his head. No one seemed to think he’d be back around, though. The last they saw of him, he was high-tailing it west.

Jessie kept up a steady pace, breathing hard, but not out of control. He still had a long way to go to get back home, back to the opposite side of the peninsula. He’d heard somebody say it was nearly five miles long and three miles wide at the wall, the narrowest point. Seventeen square miles. Over eleven thousand acres. The town itself was starting to fill up as people kept coming in. Many of the houses and apartments in the downtown area were already taken. There were hundreds more on the outskirts, but everyone seemed to want to bunch up together. His dad was one of the few who had picked a place way out away from everyone, a few miles from the center of things. Most of the people didn’t even have cars anymore. They said they didn’t need them, there was no place to go. They had driven them to a marina outside the wall and abandoned them, didn’t want them taking up garage space. Everyone rode bicycles or had golf carts to get around.

Last night’s whiskey was sweating out of his pores. He’d walked back home after shutting down Pretty Boy Floyd’s like he’d been in the habit of doing. He was the last to leave, Pam finally telling him it was closing time. He’d only had a few, he hung out there as an excuse not to go to bed. To sleep. It was a quieter pub than Up Jumped the Devil, Stabby’s place that was always loud and rambunctious. Pretty Boy Floyd had background music, old men playing checkers and dogs were allowed. Up Jumped the Devil had the music cranked and they danced with abandon.

He was honoring the promise he’d made to quit hitting the bottle so hard. He’d been drinking a lot, it helped him sleep and took the edge off, but he never seemed to get drunk anymore. Even slamming whiskey or Scotch, it didn’t have the same effect as it did before he’d had the miracle IV.

Before the zombies, he’d tried drinking a few times with his friends when they’d have an all-night gaming session at someone’s house. Three or four shots and they’d be laughing at everything and getting their asses