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

on the greatest mystery of all. He was going to find out how the dead remained mobile, animated, and vicious. A beneficial arrangement was reached and months later Scarlet realized her dad was already plotting his rise to godhood, even during those first chaotic days.

When he led them through a series of underground flood control tunnels and dried out sewer passages, they started to believe even stronger in his message. He claimed he’d had a vision, showing him the way.

Ricketts had supplied him with a map.

As the weeks, then months, went by, they kept finding survivors and making them converts to the new religion. Those that resisted visited the good doctor and never returned. It didn’t take long for the mostly starving people they rescued to start believing. He had concentrated his efforts on pulling people out of the city. Survivors in apartment buildings, surrounded and cut off. No water. No electric. No food. They saved hundreds the first month but by November, those in the city had succumbed to starvation, dehydration, or their hurriedly constructed defenses finally collapsed. They expanded the search, pulling in people from the countryside. Most of them had to be forced, they didn’t need rescue and didn’t want to go live in the underground.

They were doing just fine.

Thanks, but no thanks.

The Scientist demanded new test subjects every day. He kept telling them he was close to a breakthrough, so they no longer asked people they found if they would like to join. They took them by force. It was all for the greater good.

The last of the braids came out and the servants starting running brushes through her hair, getting the tangles out. It pulled and her scalp hurt, despite their care. Never again, she thought for the hundredth time. Next ceremony, if there is one, I’m wearing a wig.

She stared out over the dead landscape and could see the outlines of darkened structures by the moonlight. Theirs was the only building with lights, the casino generators quietly humming in the basement. It was one of the tallest in the Two Rivers area, built on a corner of the tiny Chippewa Blue Earth reservation, just on the outskirts of town. The wastewater and flood control tunnels tied the casino to the rest of the little city and for the first few months, they had stayed hidden and warm from the roaming hordes. As the Anubis army came together, the roughest of the men volunteering to be fighters, they had lured most of the undead away in armored cars taken from the bank. Another team had blown the bridges over the Minnesota and Blue Earth Rivers after the horde passed over chasing the trucks. Once the majority of the undead were gone, the roving patrols kept the smaller swarms under control. Ricketts and Scarlet would round up the most preserved specimens, the freshest, and bring them back to the lab for Stevens to run his experiments. They kept him a secret at her father’s behest. The believers didn’t need to know about him, he said. It would bring discord and cause dissent among the people. He was right, and once the doctor started requesting living patients to test his vaccines, they saw the wisdom of the decision. The devout didn’t need to know how the sausage was made, it might tear their whole community apart before it had a chance to become strong.

That was when they started forcibly taking prisoners. They had early versions of the super soldier serum and it gave them the motivation, the drive to want more. To become stronger. If a few more unwilling patients had to die to get it just right, so be it. Things had progressed so quickly, sometimes she thought she was the only one left who was still sane. Now, she wasn’t even sure of that. She’d just willingly, and with foreknowledge, been part of mass murder. She knew what she’d been told, that it was necessary to cement the faith, but it was all a lie. Why did they have to keep up the charade of Egyptian gods and messengers and phony prophecies from hieroglyphics and five different religions? Did no one see that it was careening out of control? Six months ago, did hundreds of people think they’d be living in an Indian casino, worshipping cats and jackals, cheering as their fellow citizens were eaten alive because they were deemed unworthy? Did they really believe the stories her dad was telling them?

Yes, they did, she concluded. They did because they wanted to, maybe even needed to. They were committed, and her father was a charismatic mad genius himself. He’d gotten them to believe a lie, to rejoice in murder, then celebrate with sex. They’d never go back to who they were. They had drunk the Kool-Aid.

10

Gunny

They were running fast and light again, driving hard, headed west and eating up the miles. Another distress call. No one within a thousand miles to help. Gunny and the Lakota Crew were on the way, but it would take days. There needed to be more settlements, or he needed to find someone that could pilot some attack helicopters.

Gunny was still a little amazed at how fast nature was reclaiming the earth, it hadn’t even been a year. The road they were running was covered in tumbleweeds and drifts of sand in places. Fort Sumner was only a few miles ahead, their next fuel stop. These beasts of machines they were driving stayed thirsty, but that didn’t matter much, not when gas was still plentiful and free. In a few years, if they couldn’t get a refinery back up and running, everyone would be driving diesel-powered war machines. Diesel would still be good enough to use a decade from now, long after the gasoline had lost all its octane and would barely burn, let alone power a vehicle.

They came to a convenience store with pumps and Gunny swung in. This was the town where Billy the Kid