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

in the air, and more and more communities were being discovered. More survivors coming out of hiding and realizing there are others, tens of thousands of others, who had made it through the long, dark winter.

“Stay here, boy,” Jessie said as he approached the courthouse doors. The town was walled so he wasn’t worried about Bob wandering off and getting lost since he probably didn’t know what ‘stay’ meant and even if he did, would probably just ignore the command.

The mayor was pleased to see him when a woman showed him into the office. He stood, walked around his desk to shake his hand. Jessie avoided it, pretending like he thought the mayor was reaching for the satchel and handing it to him. He kept his hand free from anyone trying to grab it. That was one mistake he’d never make again and he told the part of his brain that was berating him for insulting the mayor to shut up. The wolf was prowling, looking for danger. He didn’t care who he offended. The mayor brushed it off, thinking the kid was just a little ill-mannered, but everything was fine. He was genuinely glad for the lists of goods and services offered by Lakota, the official proclamations of his status as Mayor by the president, and all the other paperwork in the case.

They passed the time, Jessie answering all of his questions about the new government and Lakota and their plans for eradicating the undead scourge. Cobb had been sending out train crews to run the tracks, pulling in vast hordes of the undead and then taking them out west to bake in the deserts of Texas and New Mexico. They theorized that once they had followed the trains for hundreds, even a thousand miles, they would be so broken down they wouldn’t pose much of a threat anymore. If the trains could pull them into the wastelands by summer, the harsh elements should hasten their demise.

Jessie asked questions about Tombstone, too. About their skilled labor and what kind of problems they were having. The town had been made up of hardened farmers and two-fisted ranchers at first, but more and more people came in over the winter. People fleeing the cities, people who ran out of supplies and people just drifting, looking for a place to settle.

“Your town looks prosperous. You’ve done a commendable job, Mr. Tackett,” Jessie said, sipping on the proffered neat whiskey. They didn’t have the electricity to waste on making ice.

The mayor nodded, taking the compliment in stride.

“You seem awfully young to be an emissary,” he said, “but I guess in these new times, things are different. Hell, last year I was cowboying. I’m a third-generation rancher, was running six hundred head of cattle. Now, I’m trying to keep my friends and family alive. It was touch and go for a little while, but I built this town without any help from any government.”

His eyes narrowed a little and his voice took on a hard edge, “And I’m not going to let them tell me how to run it.”

He stared Jessie right in the eyes, letting his words sink in.

“Now, we don’t mind trading and barter,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his point made. “Maybe even sending a few men to help if you’re putting together an army to kill zombies, but we’re not going to be told what to do in our everyday affairs. This isn’t the world it was six months ago. We do things our way.”

“If you’re concerned about some G-men coming in to shut down your whiskey stills, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jessie said.

The mayor looked a little surprised and Jessie continued, “I smelled the distillery when I came in. We’ve got guys in Lakota that already have craft breweries set up and Pack Rat has a moonshine still in his backyard. The president is from the Appalachians and rumor has it he was a whiskey runner when he was a kid. Our two doctors grow pot in the community greenhouse. Nobody cares about that stuff anymore, Mr. Tackett. I know the president pretty well and I can tell you unequivocally that he’s one of the biggest scofflaws you’ll ever meet. He isn’t a politician, they’re all dead. I don’t know who the next president is going to be, but they’re planning on having an election in November. We just want to know if you’re still part of the States, or if you plan on going it on your own.”

This boy kept throwing Tackett off. Every time he thought he had a bead on him, knew what he was about, the kid surprised him. He didn’t look much older than sixteen or seventeen, but the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, and the way he could match him glass for glass of Yukon Jack made him seem much, much older. Mature beyond his years. He had planned on getting the kid drunk so he could question him about Lakota and what their real plans were, if they had some grand designs about micromanaging everyone. He was the one getting snockered, though. He’d chosen the honey-tinged whiskey because it wasn’t as harsh as some of the others in his cabinet, it went down smooth and easy. He wanted the boy to feel grown up, drinking a man’s drink and matching the old cowboy shot for shot. The kid didn’t seem to be affected at all. His little plan wasn’t going as expected. The baby-faced youngster was drinking him under the table. He just wanted to be sure he wasn’t signing his town up with some illegitimate government, some group of wannabe dictators. It wasn’t like he could look them up on the internet anymore, see what other people were saying about them.

“Well, yes, we do like our whiskey,” the mayor said, “and other things, too. We’re not going to change that, either.”

They spoke at length and in the end, both came to