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

were no windows, no other way in. The Kingdom Hall was solid brick and mortar. The doors large, heavy, and thick: the only slightly decorative flourish on the church. The parishioners tended to spend their tithes on mission work instead of ostentatious decorations.

“Suicide pact?” Bridget asked, as unsure as the rest of them. “You think they gave up and killed themselves? Some kind of Jim Jones thing?”

“That, or they’re a bunch of ungrateful louts,” Hollywood fumed and kicked at the door.

“You want to bust it down or forget about it?” Griz asked, running his fingers through his beard, trying to get the drying blood to flake out of it.

Gunny pounded on the door and yelled, “Open the door!” in Arabic. The others shot glances at him, backed away, and pulled their pistols.

“You think it’s Hajis in there?” Griz asked, taking cover behind a column holding the entryway roof.

“That or they’re all dead,” Gunny replied. “There’s no other explanation.”

He raised his fist and pounded again, this time calling out in Farsi. “Open up or we’ll smash the door!”

“We don’t want trouble,” came a muffled reply in accented English. “Please. We don’t want trouble.”

“OPEN!” Gunny yelled again and stood aside, drawing his own gun when he heard the locks start disengaging. He leveled it, head height, and waited.

There was a crowd of people, all shielding their eyes from the early evening brightness. A few candles burned inside the sanctuary, the only light they’d had for days. It was mostly women and kids, with a handful of men at the front of them. Brown skinned, black hair, dark eyes. The enemy that had tried to kill them all with the infected meats.

They stood, eyes downcast, the men with their hands raised. They said nothing, just waited for judgment from the Americans. These fierce warriors who had killed thousands with their guns, then killed the rest with their knives. Only four of them, armored and angry, bloodied and soaked in gore. The people standing in the church looked tired, hungry, and lost.

Defeated.

Lips were cracked from dehydration, cheeks were hollow from starvation. The children were lethargic and uninterested in what was happening, most of them looked like they wanted to go back to sleep. To retreat to a place where they didn’t hear the monsters moan and their bellies didn’t hurt.

These people were nearly finished. Another day, two at the most, and they would have started dying. Gunny could smell death coming from inside the walls, so some of them had already succumbed. Probably the oldest and youngest, he thought.

He had a situation and wasn’t sure how to handle it. These were the same ones that had nearly killed the whole world. They had known what was coming, they had all been hidden away in one of the fortified mosques, and they did nothing to prevent the outbreak or warn of it. The women had been waiting for their Jihadi fighters to destroy Lakota and they would have moved right in. Hosed the American blood off the streets and set up their new society. Gunny didn’t want any prisoners of war, there was no one to take care of them. He thought of Tiny and his last, dying, moments. He thought of Gumball and Ozzy and Billy Travaho. He thought of Jessie and his permanently scarred face, and the darkness inside of him now that hadn’t been there before. He remembered nuns nailed upside down to church doors, the children raped and beheaded. Shaytan wanted to make them pay. His finger hovered on the guard, part of him wanting to move it to the trigger and finish this. These people were the cause of the thousands of rotting corpses he had just helped slaughter. The undead that had nearly killed him and his friends. The undead that should have killed these people, too. That would have been justice.

Griz and Lars kept their guns steady, unwavering in their aim, they were ready to open fire, ready to follow Gunny’s lead.

Bridget lowered hers. She wouldn’t kill unarmed people, not women. Not kids. It didn’t matter who they had been. The war was over, it was time to bury the hatchet, not continue the hate.

“Gunny,” she said softly. Hesitant, afraid of the wrath on his face, the way he kept his gun centered on the man’s forehead.

Gunny closed his eyes, took a breath, and lowered his Glock. He holstered it and the others followed suit.

“Thank you,” the man said, finally raising his eyes. His voice trembled with emotion.

“What’s your name?” Gunny asked.

“Mohammed Shammas,” he said, slowly lowering his hands.

“Not anymore,” Gunny said. “In the past, when immigrants came to our shores, they took Americanized names to help them blend in. Pick an English name. Do things our way. Don’t draw attention to yourselves. Practice your English. If others find you, they won’t be so forgiving.”

He stared into the man’s eyes, trying to see if he understood. If he was defiant. If he was just playing possum and waiting for an opportunity to strike again. Gunny didn’t think so, the tears flowing down his cheeks would be hard to fake. His relief, and everyone else’s, was real.

“Welcome to America. Don’t make me come back,” Gunny said and turned to leave. His business was done here.

As they neared the ladders to climb back to the top of the trailers, the man came rushing up, clutching the nearly empty water bottle he’d been chugging. They waited, hands near their guns, as he approached.

“My friends,” he said, looking at each of them, speaking in his accented English. “I wanted you to know, we are grateful. We will not squander this chance you have given us. You are Johnathan Meadows, yes? The president, yes?”

Gunny nodded and the man rushed on. “You need to know, the soulless were led here by the living. They walked among them and were not attacked. They brought them to our walls and slipped away. We did not shoot at them because we did not understand.”

“You mean