Time of Zombies (Book 2): The Zombie Hunter's Wife (4 page)

“Mr. Teddy, can you take the gun, please.”

He took the gun and put it in the holster as
little Dylan’s body convulsed and he leaned forward to throw up his breakfast.
Tears streaked the small, pale face.

“I’m sorry. Now the others will think I’m a wimp.”

Taking a step backward from the stinky mess, Teddy
reached for his handkerchief and gave it to the kid. He wanted to laugh at the
sorry look on Dylan’s face but it would just upset him more.

He set the child down on his feet and squatted in
front of him. “Even if the skinbags are dead now, they were once people. They
were mommies and daddies and kids. We should always feel something when we have
to kill them.”

Dylan’s dark eyes widened as he looked at him.
“But you come back from zombie hunting all happy, like you had fun.”

Teddy put his hand on the little one’s shoulder.
“Let me tell you a secret. At first I thought it was fun. Until I had to kill a
lady who looked just like my momma, and then I threw up just like you just did.
Then it wasn’t so much fun no more. But we have to do it. So I laugh and smile
when I come home because I’m home. Another day of the zombie apocalypse and I’m
safely home with my friends.”

“Can I tell the others you aren’t big and bad?”

He smiled and cupped Dylan’s face. “Let’s keep
that just between us, okay?”

The little boy nodded as Ripley reached them.

“Mr. Seth. Mr. Seth. I killed my first zombie,”
the boy piped up. He shot a quick glance to Teddy and his smile faded and a
serious look fell on the kid. “I mean. I put down a skinbag because it has to
be done. Just a job, you know.”

Seth matched the serious look on Dylan’s face as
Teddy fought and lost to keep a smile off his face.

“Yes, a very important job. Nice to know you can
protect the womenfolk and you’ll be able to be a zombie hunter when Teddy and I
are too old to go out into the wild lands.”

He punched the man in the arm. “Speak for
yourself. I got plenty of hunting years left in me.”

Seth winced from the punch and spoke up, changing
the subject. “Did you check out our dead friend yet?”

He nodded toward Dylan. “Was dealing with some
other stuff first. So let’s see how it got through the hum perimeter.”

“The hum perimeter?” Seth shook his head and
laughed.

“That’s what Emily and Mrs. Greggs call it,” he
replied as they walked to Dylan’s first kill.

He sniffed as they got closer. “It doesn’t smell
so bad. He’s freshly turned. Where do you think he came from?”

Seth squatted to the side of the body. He started
checking pockets and pulling the contents out and handing them to Dylan. “I
know you first tried courting during the Disco era, but you could just call her
Michelle,” Ripley directed to Teddy.

“She calls me Mr. Ridgewood. I’m just giving her
the same respect,” he answered, taking the papers from the little boy.

Looking at the papers, and then at the dead zomb’,
Teddy slapped his forehead. “He’s deaf. The notepad has I’m deaf on it and some
other notes I’m thinking he used back and forth between someone else. His
wallet has a card for The Deaf Learning Center in Oakley. The address is down
Neroly Road. Must be nearby.”

“Shit,” Ripley cursed as he stood up. “We’ve
passed it a dozen times when we’ve been out hunting. It’s in the church down on
the corner. About a mile or so, south of here. We’ll have to check it out.
There could be more of them in there.”

Teddy stared at the sky. “It isn’t even noon. We
could get a group and take care of it right now.”

“I want to help,” Dylan chirped, grabbing Teddy’s hand
and trying to pull him closer.

Ruffling the kid’s hair, he smiled down at him.
“Maybe next time. This time I need you to watch over your mom and the other
ladies.”

“Do I get a gun?”

“Not while you’re in the compound. But you can
stand guard and practice with your bow, okay?”

“Cool,” Dylan said as he ran back to the RV yard
ahead of the men.

“That little boy worships you, you know? The whole
Rogue Vantage does.”

Teddy stared up to the two women standing on the
wall. “Too bad they couldn’t share some of that with their mother.”

Seth returned the punch Teddy had given him
earlier. “Keep working on that. Some walls are worth breaking down.”

Teddy barely felt the punch as he continued to
stare.
Yep, some walls were worth whatever it took to break them down to get
to the treasure inside.

In less than an hour, Teddy and Seth had rounded
up the brother-sister team of Josh and Suz Logan. Paul Luther, the right-hand
man for the commander of the compound, joined them as well. These days you
never saw Josh or Suz without Paul. Teddy couldn’t quite figure out if Josh
loved Paul too, or if the man couldn’t live without his sister, Suz.

It made for an interesting topic for banter around
a campfire, their new replacement for the water-cooler at an office or the back
fence in a neighborhood, but he didn’t mind the trio having his back. They were
a lethal group to have for hunting skinbags. Working in unison without a word
needing to be spoken, the three of them had been seen taking out twenty zombs
in half as many minutes.

They’d arrived at the church to find the parking
lot a zombie central of shambling undead tripping over each other. He couldn’t
imagine how the one skinbag had found the compound because the rest of the deaf-school
kids were just milling around in circles and running into walls until their
group showed up. Then it was like someone set off a dinner bell.

The moans and the stench reached him at the same
time. The group was riper than their friend back at the compound. Teddy pulled
the bandana over his mouth and nose and leapt out of the bed of the pickup
truck. Two of them were on him before the thud of his boots finished echoing
over the blacktop.

He took care of one with his baseball bat and the
other one tripped and fell at his feet. One stomp and he was truly dead as well
as his friend. Scanning the parking lot, he grinned as the Logan siblings and
Paul had a pile of zombs and Ripley was adding his few to the mound.

“That wasn’t even a workout,” he complained as he
dragged his two to the gasoline-scented pyre being built in the center of the
parking lot.

A moan sounded from the church building and he
whipped his head around. “Some of the kids didn’t come out for recess.”

Teddy and Seth ran over to the door. A steady
thump echoed from the other side. Ripley counted down and he ripped the door
open. A zombified boy sat in a wheelchair, his struggling movements in the
chair causing the footrests to hit the door.

Straps held the thing into the seat. Seth took one
side and he took the other and they carried it to the now rapidly burning pile
of the finally dead. Teddy tried to pry him out of the chair, but chomping jaws
went for his face and fingers. In the end, they could only splash him with gas
and let the flames catch hold.

Suz huffed out a noisy breath. “Men. Always have
to make it so hard. You could have killed him first.”

He and Seth stared at each other, and then started
busting out laughing. Once the laughter died down, Teddy caught his breath at
the cry of a baby or small child from inside the building. He swallowed hard.
Man,
this job sucked.

They used rock, paper, scissors to see who would
go in. Teddy and Paul lost. He handed his bat to the man and pulled the machete
from his belt. Suz, Josh, and Seth split up to check out the perimeter of the
building for any strays, although they hadn’t seen any on the way here.

He’d had some dicey times as a bodyguard, but
hunting zombies was like constant ass-pucker time, as he’d called it back in
the before zombie time. Must be what it was like to be a cop. Going into a dark
building, not knowing what you would find, took balls. If they ever found a cop
left, he’d be sure to thank them.

The light from the open door ended a few feet down
the hall. Paul flicked on a flashlight and somehow that made it worse. Shadows
lurked in the corners and beyond the flashlight’s reach. He used his ears
instead to be on alert for moans, shuffling of feet, or other out-of-place
sounds.

Besides the child’s wailing, the building was
silent. Paul took the lead as they reached the main part of the church. A giant
cross hung on a wall behind the altar. Teddy crossed himself without even
thinking of it as they moved to the aisle. The pews sat empty except for dust
bunnies blowing across the wood expanse. Stained-glass windows cast a rainbow
of colors across the room.

He jumped as the cries echoed from a doorway on
the other side.

Paul swept a hand through his hair and whispered,
“Shit. I hate this. This is not going to end well.”

He had to agree. If there had been anyone alive,
they would have hushed the child by now. The odds that they would find a live,
uninjured child were too small to contemplate. With a shaking hand, Teddy
reached and opened the door. A small girl sat just beyond the doorway, tears
streaking down her dusty-brown face.  A tiny hand cradled her arm. An arm with
a giant bite mark. Something had taken a bite down to the bone. Black lines ran
from the wound, down her arm, and the flesh was turning a dusky gray. Her brown
eyes were opaque with a milky film. Her huffing breath carried a rotted scent.

“Oh, baby girl,” he cried. “Come to Teddy. Let me
look at that.”

He held out his arms and gathered her to his
chest. “What’s your name?”

“Phoebe,” she managed to get out between
hiccupping cries. “Where’s Michael? He went to get food. He promised he would
be back.”

Michael had to be the fresh undead back at the
camp. “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere,” he lied. “We’ll find him soon. He
took in a large, shaky breath.

“Phoebe, I’m so sorry,” he gritted out as he grasped
and twisted her delicate neck until it snapped.

Bile rose in his throat. Swallowing it down, he
refused to further befoul the sanctity of the church he’d desecrated with his sin
of murder. He gathered the small body and handed his machete to Paul. A quick
glance around and a short listen proved the little one had been the only one
left.

He made it to placing the body on the burning pile
before he turned to the side and threw up everything in his stomach. Dry heaves
left him still bent over when the others returned from scouting the area.

Pressing on his knees, he stood straight and
walked across the blacktop away from the group. What he’d told Dylan this
morning was true, anyone could lose it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stay
there and have Josh or Seth joke about it. He still felt too raw. Something was
terribly wrong in a world where killing that little girl was the right thing to
do. He would worry about going to Hell for his sins, but they were already
there.

He stared at his big hands. Was it a blessing they
were strong enough to end her life quickly or a curse that he could do it at
all?

Tears blurred his vision until the big yellow school
bus was close enough to see even through the wetness.

An enormous black man stood in front of the bus as
the driver hit the door release and Billy Joe Bennett hopped out. The man was
built like a football linebacker.
What diversity he would add to the new,
better gene pool. He could rise up a holy army with him as breeding stock.

He slid to a stop as four guns and a rifle came up
and pointed at him. His breath caught at the one female in the group. He would
love to add her to the congregation. She looked like a Barbie doll, but the
glare and the steady gun looked like Special Forces Jane. This was no meek lamb
led to the slaughter. She’d be one of those women you beat to death and she’d
still curse you to her dying breath.

One of the men held a hand up. The others relaxed
slightly, but left the guns pointed in his direction. His bearing screamed
former military. The man put his gun in a holster and stepped forward.

“Hi, I’m Paul Luther. We were just cleaning out
this church. What brings you this way?”

Like a good televangelist, Billy Joe could assess
a situation quickly and bring the right persona to the table, from humble and
begging for money for the poor to ranting and screaming of the coming of End of
Days. One truck, five people, no permanence to the church location. They were a
smaller group, part of a larger one. He may outnumber them, he may not, but
until he got more details, he was going with honest for this encounter. Or as
honest as he got.

“We saw the smoke from the highway. We’re looking
for a location to set up our church. When we saw this building, it was like God
spoke to me. Told me, ‘you’re home.’ But we will move on if you have claimed
this place first.”

Luther shook his head. “No, we were just killing
some skinbags. We have a location further down the road a way.”

The brown eyes glinted hard as the man kept his
cards close to the chest and gave nothing away. Billy Joe pulled out all the charm
he was capable of. He reached and shook the man’s hand between his two.

“I’m Reverend Billy Joe Bennett. But you can just
call me Billy Joe. We would love to use this wonderful church, if no one
minds.”

The man swung his hand and the others moved
forward. “This is my wife, Suz Logan and this is my husband, Josh Logan.”

His disgust must have shown on his face as
Luther’s face twisted into a calm rage he held in check. Billy held his hands
up in front of him. “Hey, I do not wish to impose my morals onto others, unless
they wish them. But this is why the old world has fallen. We are all in sin.
Some more than others. This new world demands we live the way the Bible has
told us to live.”
This group is steeped in sin. This is why the world fell. I
will cleanse them, one way or another.

“You can keep your morals and your Bible. This new
world is what we make of it,” the man said, hatred glaring in his eyes.

“This is Seth Ripley and this big guy is Teddy
Ridgewood,” Luther finished up in a harsh tone and spread his arms. “The
building is yours. Nothing left inside, but you might want to repair the fence
to keep out the skinbags.”

“No need,” Billy said as he smiled. “What others
are calling zombies and other wicked, uninformed names, we believe are the
Resurrected. They will protect us. The Bible has told us so. Did it not say the
dead would rise?”

Luther shook his head. “Whatever. We are down that
road over there. I’ll tell Commander Jack Canida about your group. I’m sure he
will visit you soon, if that is okay?”

Billy kept his smile plastered on his face. “We
have nothing to hide. We will count it as a blessing to greet your Commander
Canida and look forward to his visit. Perhaps we can visit your group as well?”

Luther stood still as a statue, anger radiating
off of him like heat from a furnace. “That will be between you and Jack.”

As soon as the truck headed down the road and
passed out of sight, Billy turned and yelled to the bus. “Roberta, get your ass
down here, right now.”

His wife jumped from the vehicle and ran to his
side. Her head bowed as she stood there. He made her wait, the tremors in her
shoulders an erotic sight better than total nudity of her more than forty years,
overweight and sagging body. Walking behind her, he breathed on her neck. Her
body twitched. The beating last night had proved women need discipline. He
should have started sooner. He would be sure to beat her regularly.

“Go into the building and make sure it is safe for
me to enter. See that it is suitable for our and God’s purposes.”

“But—,” she stuttered and stopped.

He leaned closer and bit her neck until he tasted
the salty, coppery blood. A whimper escaped her split lips. “Don’t make me ask
again.”

She ran, tripping over her feet to the open door.

He licked his lips, tasted warm blood, and
grinned.

He paced as he waited for her report. Not that it
mattered. This would be their new home no matter what she found. His glance
turned to the road the truck took.

They would be friendly. They would trade goods
and services. They would show they were to be trusted, to be allies. And then ...

The cleansings would begin.