Roxanne's Story (Book 1): Survival in the Zombie Apocalypse (40 page)

Morgan sighed, “Well, I guess this meeting is over,” and everyone began to leave the dining room to attend to their duties. Roxanne took her staff from the sideboard and Lucky joined her as she began to walk out.

Mutt went in the opposite direction, causing Roxanne to stop and look behind her when she saw Mutt run up to Brandon as he was leaving to go to Jenny. Brandon stopped and glanced down at Mutt and then looked back at Roxanne, both surprised at Mutt’s decision. “Is it alright?” Brandon asked. Roxanne shrugged her shoulders, “It appears that he has made his choice.”

Lucky waited until they were away from the house before speaking up, “If it was your intention to hurt me, you were successful.” Roxanne stopped and looked at him, “Hurt you?” she questioned. “That was not my intent,” she began to walk again. “I’m going by instincts, by a gut feeling that the Mill is the safest place. It’s not that much further up river and if it turns out to be a mistake we haven’t gone that far out of our way.”

“But we keep getting further and further away,” Lucky said. “Just coming here was in the opposite direction, continuing to go west instead of east.” As Lucky was talking Roxanne was looking to her left past his shoulders at a large trunked tree along the path where she thought she saw movement. She let him continue to talk but never took her eyes off the tree. As they passed it a zombie silently stumbled out from behind and she quickly shoved Lucky out of the way. She raised her staff and began to circle in front of the zombie to draw it away from Lucky.

Lucky quickly regained his balance after she pushed him and turned to see Roxanne run her staff through the neck and back of the skull of the zombie. It had been completely silent even in death as Roxanne killed it, but Lucky should have picked up the scent of rotting flesh. He was surprised by his lack of attention and a chill ran through him that the zombie could have easily bitten him. “Why didn’t you say something?” Lucky asked. “I could have handled it.”

“Sorry, I acted on impulse,” Roxanne answered. “Let’s drag him to the pool and then we better check the rest of the property.”

Brandon walked with Mutt to the Levee where he saw Toby and Smokey talking. “When do you want to make that run back to the barge again,” Brandon asked.

Toby turned to look at him, “We were just talking about that. Ordinarily we would all go on my tugboat, but if Lucky is serious about going to the East Coast then you and he can follow in Jenny while you train him how to pilot.” He shook his head, “Damn fool. I don’t know him well enough to know what’s going through his mind. He’s your friend Brandon. You’ve traveled with him for a long time. Okay, he has a theory that could be correct, but he does not have the means to get to the East Coast. He would be putting both his and Roxanne’s life in danger,” he looked down, “and Mutt.”

“It sounded to me that Roxanne has made up her mind not to go with him,” Brandon said. “When did you want to make this run up the canal?”

Toby scanned the sky, “It’s early morning yet. We can do it today. From what I hear about you experience in that Park and how quickly it was overcome, it sounds as if the best laid plans can go astray and you didn’t have enough time to prepare, so why don’t we do this now. See if you can find Lucky and if he is agreeable you can train him and tag along behind us. The four of us can go, leaving Larry, Morgan and Roxanne to protect the group. From what I can see, Terry is useless, Caleb does his best as a young boy and Gretchen uses the nearest household item to keep a zombie at bay until someone can kill it. Nice lady, but I know that I can count on Larry.”

Lucky was reluctant when Brandon approached him. “We found a zombie on the property,” he said “and I’m not comfortable with leaving right now.”

“Go with him,” Roxanne said. “I can handle it. Besides, that zombie looked as if he could have worked here and has been wandering around in the vicinity. I’ll get Caleb to walk the grounds with me. If you don’t want to go, then I will because one of us needs to learn how to pilot Jenny.” She smiled, “For some reason Jenny has become special to me and I would hate to leave her behind because neither of us were trained. She’s a good vessel to have since she doesn’t need gas, even if we can’t leave the river with her. If push comes to shove we can keep moving up and down the river to avoid Ze’s.” She turned and looked out over the horizon, “They’ve got to die off sometime” she whispered then turned back to them. “Won’t they?”

Roxanne waved them off as she stood on the upper deck of the mansion. Mutt had decided to go with Brandon and Lucky, a decision that puzzled her since he had always been by her side. Perhaps Mutt had decided that she needed less protection than they since it had been Roxanne who managed to feed them during their three months of running.

She was two hours into her shift when she began to notice a flashing glint in the woods across the road. The front of the house had a lawn with a white fence that bordered a 2-lane highway. On the other side of the road was an overgrown field of farmland until it met up with the forest. It was too far away to see into the forest but she could not remember seeing something in that area that would flash when the sunlight hit it before. She paced the deck trying to get a better look but it was useless. She tried to convince herself that it was some piece of farm equipment or tool that the sun had picked up and she had never noticed it before or that she had never been in the same position on the portico to see it, but the unknown was driving her crazy.

She looked down on the grounds but could not see anyone. “Where the hell is everyone?” she thought. It was against the rules that anyone should venture out alone until they learned more of the property beyond the estate, but Roxanne’s curiosity got the better of her and she decided to check it out. She knew that Morgan and Caleb would be along in an hour to relieve her and was beginning to think that these stake-outs were a waste of time since they had only seen two zombies in the week that they had been there.

She picked up her newly painted staff and descended the three levels to the grounds and then walked over to her cabin to retrieve her crossbow. She would be careful not to approach the open field where she could be seen by anyone in the woods. Since the flashing had not moved she did not feel that it was a human watching the house but more of a stationary piece of equipment. Perhaps it was part of an irrigation system that they could use to draw water but she would use caution and approach from an angle in which she could stay well hidden.

There was tension between Lucky and Brandon during their journey to the barge and both of them could feel it between them. Lucky seemed to think that he had learned how to pilot Jenny by watching Brandon during the trip down Huntington Creek and Brandon wondered if Lucky had agreed to pilot because he wanted Roxanne to be dependent on him. They did not discuss the meeting of that morning and the fact that Roxanne had said that she would follow the rest of the group to the paper mill but Brandon could see that Lucky appeared to be both distracted and irritable.

Retrieving the remaining fuel from the Barge also did not go well. The sun was blazing hot for so late in the season and they had to be cautious not to touch the steel hull. A few Ze’s gathered on the levee and fell into the water, sliding down to Jenny’s hull. Brandon wasn’t afraid that the Ze’s would board Jenny, but he was afraid that they would get caught in her paddlewheel and keep her from moving again. There was also great disappointment after their hard work and profusely sweating that the barge only produced a half barrel of fuel.

When Brandon told Lucky that he should start Jenny and to navigate her away from the barge in order to avoid the Ze’s in the water, Lucky took the wheel but often lost his temper and yelled profanities whenever he made a mistake. Once they were in the River and had turned toward the plantation Brandon finally spoke up. “What’s going on with you today Lucky? I’ve never seen you this stressed out about anything, nor have you ever not been willing to learn new ways of survival.” Lucky poured water over his burning face and wiped his eyes but did not say anything. “Is it Roxanne?” Brandon asked.

Lucky appeared to be struggling with himself and finally looked over to Brandon, “Remember when we got back from destroying Chen Le and Roxanne and I walked away from the rest of you to go to her cabin?” Brandon nodded remembering that Lucky had given them the finger as he walked away from the group. Lucky turned back to watch the river, “She told me that night that it was only in her cabin that we were Roxanne and Lucky. That outside the cabin we were a team and that I should never get the two confused or I would start to make mistakes.” He looked back at Brandon, “Do you know that she can actually do that, Brandon? That she can divide herself like that, become two different women.”

Brandon had a lot to say about that but he kept quiet knowing that Lucky needed to get this out of his system. “I watch her get dressed in the morning and with each piece of equipment or weapon she arms herself with, I see the change come over her. By the end, she even uses a different tone of voice with me. What pisses me off is that she is right. I’ve been trained to disassociate myself with emotions in order to make a good decision, yet I can’t do it around her. Oh, yeah I give her orders like anyone else on the team, give her assignments and know she can handle it…..” he paused and looked down. “Except…” he whispered…. “except that once when everything went so bad.”

He straightened and looked ahead, “She’s right and she makes a better leader than I am. To try to prove to her that I saw her as part of the team, I went in the opposite direction and gave her the hardest assignments. I let my emotions get the better of me and made mistakes, became confused as to whether she was lover or team member. She was able to divide it. Me? I just made a mess of things between us. She’s right about going to the Paper Mill. She took the facts, analyzed it and came up with the logical answer that if a lone person opposed a plan that was agreeable to the majority of the group, then it was time to walk away from them. I admire her for that as a leader but it breaks my heart that the lover would be so quickly abandoned.” He turned and looked at Brandon, “You see why I’m not fit to lead? The woman has messed my head up, big time.”

They had an hour of daylight left when the levee came into view outside the mansion. Lucky and Brandon could see the group gathered at the top, waiting for them. They looked at one another in confusion since the barrels were never unloaded from the boats. “Something’s wrong,” Lucky said and became very nervous when he did not see Roxanne with the group. “Take over Brandon. I’m jumping over to the dock before you have a chance to tie this thing up.” He went out to the deck where Mutt was already waiting to jump over, anxious to get back on land again. Morgan came down the steps on the levee to grab the line as Lucky threw them out for him to catch. “What’s wrong?”

Morgan looked up as he was pulling in the line and Lucky could tell that he was worried. “Roxanne’s missing.” Lucky’s heart went to his throat as both he and Mutt jumped to the dock at the same time. “Best we can tell, shortly after you left. She wasn’t on the portico when we went to relieve her but we didn’t get worried until Larry came to relieve us and he hadn’t seen Roxanne since she went on duty. We’ve searched the grounds without success and our last hope was that Mutt could pick up her scent.”

Morgan finished tying off Jenny and Brandon jumped over. “You heard?” Lucky asked.

“Yes, I think Mutt is a good solution but I’m confident she must be on the grounds somewhere” Brandon said. “There’s too much outside the estate that we haven’t explored or become familiar with and Roxanne knows the rules of not going outside the perimeter alone.”