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

kicked by eight-year-olds in Call of Duty. Now, he barely felt it. It dulled his senses, but that was about it. Ever since he’d had that injection, he’d changed. He healed faster, didn’t feel the effects of alcohol, and felt good. Really good, all over. For a few months, he’d had the nightmares and dreams every time he closed his eyes. He tried to drink them away and told the SS Sisters he was in a lot of pain so they’d keep giving him the pills, the OxyContin, but they saw right through him. They couldn’t believe he’d healed so fast, but they sure did think he was lying when he said he needed the pills. The nightmares slowly went away, or at least he didn’t remember them so vividly. Bob helped a lot. He seemed to know when the dreams were bad and more than once he’d awoke to a slobbery tongue and stank nasty dog spit covering his face.

He turned, following the jeep path, when he got to the container wall. One of the guards shouted a greeting down to him and he waved, never breaking stride. Bob spotted a rabbit in the field and took off after it, barking his fool head off. Jessie kept pounding the dirt, one footfall after another, trying to figure out a plan.

His mom had tried to baby him at first, tried to make things go back to the way they used to be. He guessed she wanted him to sleep till noon, spend hours every day playing on his Xbox, and have to be told a dozen times to set the trash out. She wanted him to go back to school. She wanted her boy back. That wasn’t happening.

He had seen things.

He had done things.

He had put away childish things.

They’d had a big argument at the dinner table a few nights ago, before his Dad took off on another rescue mission. She was nagging him about his drinking, telling his old man that he needed to tell everyone in town to stop serving him. He was underage. He was going to become a drunk. He needed to finish his education and learn a trade. A few months ago, Jessie would have blown up, yelled back and threw a fit, probably stomped off and slammed the door to his room. He had just smiled at her a little sadly, his jagged scar pulling his mouth into an ugly snarl.

“I’ve been looking at some of the empty places in town, mom. I’m thinking about moving into one of them.”

She had started to protest, he saw it building up, but his dad had just reached over and covered her hand with his. That didn’t happen very often, it seemed like she usually bossed him around, but that was all it took. The wind went out of her sails, he could see the tears threatening to spill over, and she had excused herself.

He and the old man finished dinner slowly, neither one of them hungry anymore.

“It’s hard for her to let you go so fast,” he said, stirring the peas around on his plate. “Normally she would have you a few more years before it was time to cut the apron strings, take off for college.”

“I know, dad. But I can’t go back to how it used to be. You understand, right?”

His dad had nodded. “More than you know, son. Have you got a place picked out?”

“Yeah,” Jessie answered. “Slippery Jim showed me a really cool boat repair shop near the water. It has a big office and a couple of bathrooms. I can take one of them and convert it to a real bathroom with a shower, I think. I kind of want a place where I can work on the car. I want to make some improvements so if I need to go back outside the wall, it’ll be ready.”

His dad had nodded again. When Jessie tried to give him the keys to the old Mercury a few months ago, the old man refused. Said it was his now, he’d earned it. It had been in the garage all winter and they’d gotten it back into shape, had it tuned up and running good.

“Let your mother help you decorate, pick out the curtains and paint and things like that,” he said. “Let her be a mom.”

Jessie nodded. He had already hung his name on the fence that surrounded the brick building, claiming it, but he needed to get down to the courthouse to register it so it would be official. His mom worked in that office, assigning the new people houses, and he needed her approval to make it legal and show it occupied in the books. He’d been avoiding doing it, dreading her reaction.

“You plan on going outside the wall?” his dad had asked.

Jessie knew it was no use hem-hawing around, the old man would see right through him.

“I can’t go back to school, dad. I’m not going to be an electrician, or a farmer, or a truck driver. I don’t want to join the army, I don’t want to be around other people. I know I’ve got to help out, to do something to stay here, but I can’t go back to being a student. I don’t know what I want to do yet, but it’s not going to be staying behind the wall.”

His dad had pondered that for a minute before he said, “The mayor wants to set up a courier service between here and the Hutterites. There are a few other communities we’ve established communications with on the Ham and we need a way to transport things quickly back and forth. That might be something you could do for now.”

“Be a mailman?” Jessie asked.

“More like the Pony Express riders,” the old man had replied. “Lots of danger and hard driving. I need an emissary to evaluate all these new communities, too. Make sure they’re not a bunch of cutthroats. That is, if you’re up for it.”

Jessie had smiled