“Leo, given that we’re in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, I hope you will. Sit me up, I can walk,” I said. “But be careful!”
She sat me up, and moved around to my back. “Did it go through?” I asked when I could catch my breath. The pain was excruciating if I moved any part of my upper body. “I think my collar bone is broken.”
“Clean through. Pretty ugly back here, you’re going to be laid up for weeks, you big dummy. We have to get you off the roof and get the bleeding stopped. This is going to require some pretty serious stitching, and I’m not very qualified.”
“It’s going to have to be you or John,” I said, teeth clenched. “I’d rather it was you. At least you could do it quickly.” I grinned.
“Oh, Leo, I got you a backpack; you’re going to have to carry it for me though. And don’t forget my new rifle please!!”
I walked over to the access door, and wondered how in God’s name I was going to get down the ladder. I reached for the key before remembering I’d been shot. Moving my arm was a very bad idea.
“Leo. The key to the door is in my pocket. I can’t reach it; you’re going to have to get it.”
“Oh sure,” she said. “I have to do all the work,” she said as she reached into my pocket and retrieved the keys.
She put the pink camo backpack on her shoulders and picked up the Barrett. ”My God this thing is heavy.”
Clutching my shirt with my bad arm, I hobbled down the ladder with my other hand. I could barely walk. My back was shooting stabbing pain down my spine, my bullet wound was on fire, and my collar bone was poking the meat of my chest.
“Let's go get Sammie and meet my remaining captors,” I said. I felt like I was going to die at any moment. The only thing keeping me going was anger at whomever or whatever was behind this. There were not many humans left. Killing any of them was senseless, forcing me and my friends to kill living humans made me angry. Very angry, but that was nothing compared to how angry I was that someone might have been building an army to come get Max.
Inside the gun shop I limped over to the counter and dug out a can of trigger zip ties for making guns safe. I wished I had a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, I was about to get medieval on some hillbilly ass.
18. Information
I stood up straight, grabbed the hem of my shirt to give my arm some support, and walked towards the two unconscious figures on the ground, filled with righteous anger.
“Let’s get them inside,” I said. “I don’t want to be out here in case there are more of them coming back.” Leo and John dragged the two inside, and set them up in a couple of chairs from the back room.
I smacked the first one across the face and yelled, “Wake up!” His head rolled to one side, and I slapped it back the other way as he started to come to.
“What’s your name, son?” I asked, my voice deadly cool. He was not bound, but I didn’t expect any trouble with Leo and John standing behind me.
“Butch,” he said.
“Butch. Tell me what was going on here.”
“They’ll kill me,” he said with a frightened look in his eyes.
“Butch. I’m going to kill you if you don’t tell me the truth. I may kill you by tying you to a tree along the road. Hopefully you’ll die of thirst before a zombie finds you.” Calm and cool, my only chance at getting the information I needed to keep Max safe was to be a bigger threat than the zombies that were controlling these humans. I’d spent the last several minutes wracking my brain trying to figure out what hold the zombies had over these people.
Leo stepped forward and put her hand on my good shoulder, and I shot her a look.
“Butch, tell me what’s going on,” I said coldly. “Why are you working for them?”
“They… They… They have my family.” he stuttered.
“Where? Where is your family?”
“At the high school in Culpeper. There are thirty or forty of them smart ones. The zed in charge is Watley. All the other zeds that can talk call him Mr. Watley.” he gushed.
“Butch, three of us took out your whole crew here. There are more of us, we can free your family, but you have to tell me what’s going on.” I said, softening my tone a bit.
“I don’t know nothin’. Alls I know is they said to come here and find some little kid, and tell them where he was, and they’d let me and my family go.”
“What was this kid’s name Butch, do you know? Do you have a description? How were you supposed to find him?”
“His name is Max. I don’t know what he looks like, ‘cept he’s blonde haired. One of them got a look at him somewhere, but he was in a silver truck and the window was all fogged, all he could tell was that he was blonde.”
With the front passenger side window of my truck shot out, there’s no way a back window could have been fogged. How could it have been fogged? Could that be what Max meant when he said he was hiding from them? I needed to have a talk with him, but I was so afraid of frightening him. He’d handled all of this so well, with maturity way beyond his years.
“When you found this ‘Max’ kid, what were you supposed to do?”
“You’re gonna go get my family? Give me your word.”
“Butch, if you tell me where there is a group of zombies who are looking for some human kid to do harm to him, I’m going to go kill them.”
“We was supposed to take the kid back to Mr. Watley. He was real interested in the kid.”
“Why? What did he want with the kid?” I asked, trying not to give away that it was my son they were looking for.
“He never said nothin’, and I ain’t ask. I just did as I was told, hoping to get away or do what they wanted and get my family back.”
“Leo, I’m done with Butch here. The other one is waking up, would you drag Butch out back and get rid of him?”
Butch screamed as Leo dragged him out of the room “You said! You gave me your word!”
“I’m a man of my word.” I said calmly as Leo took Butch out back and let him go.
“You! What’s your name?” I said as I slapped the second man back to consciousness.
“Huh? What? I’m still alive?” he stammered. “That chick, she moved like a zombie. I thought I was a goner.”
“Shut up. What’s your name?” I asked in same cold voice as before. I’d lost a lot of blood by now and was starting to get a little woozy. I had too much to do and no time for this injury. I had a two mile walk ahead of me, and one more interrogation to complete.
“Lance, Lance Fitzgerald. My buddy Butch and I, we were just walking through town, just the two of us, when this big zed jumped us. We thought we were dead, but he just said, ‘I’ll let you live if you go take over this gun store for me, just bring the guns back’…”
I cut him off with a slap across the cheek. “Don’t lie to me, Lance. Do not lie again.”
“Look man, I don’t know what you want to hear. Butch and I were jumped heading into to…” This time I hit him with a closed fist. Butch had too many details to be lying to me. He knew too much.
“Lance, I’m going to give you one more try,” I said as I took the big black .40 caliber pistol out of my waistband. “Don’t lie to me again. I’ve done a lot of killing today. My friends have done a lot of killing today. What’s one more?” I leveled the gun at his head. “Lance, if you lie to me again, I’m going to do you the favor of shooting you in the head so you can’t become one of them.”
This third time around, Lance told me the exact same story as Butch.
“Lance, thank you,” I said. ”Leo? Can you handle this one? We have a long walk, and I have to go get my rifle back out of the yard.”