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  “Yes, this is Eric. His wife and his two kids are going to be here for a little bit.” The sheriff responded.

  “You’re the guy we saw at the supermarket.” Eric stated.

  “We thought for sure you would all be stiffs by now.” He turned to Elijah, “Has Doc seen them yet?”

  Elijah just stared at him.

  “You never know.” Jacob got the point. “Look no offence, but we have to look out for our own and you were just not in a position to where we could get to you and insure we weren’t going to get bit ourselves. I hope you can understand?”

  “I understand. We were about to hit that store and get some supplies for ourselves when you and that loud ass truck came barreling through. Have you ever thought about silencing that thing?”

  “Yeah, we just haven’t taken the time to actually put another muffler on it.” Jacob’s attention was focused on something else when he hollered to one of the men passing by. “Joe they fucking made it!”

  Eric recognized Joe as being the heavier set man that distracted the undead for Jacob at the grocery store. The heavy man came strolling over to them. “Wow, I thought for sure you were going to be creeper food. How did you make it out of there?” Joey is a very tall man and his body frame matched his height. Red patches of stubble outlined his jaw bone as if he was desperately trying to grow a beard, but having no luck at all.

  “I did what everyone else would have done. Ran.” Eric was short, but apparently everyone in the motor pool had talked about the poor family that had just gotten eaten.

  Elijah stepped into the conversation. “He is a mechanic in the Coast Guard. He’s going to be joining us, so please make him feel comfortable, because you know we could all use the extra help.” He looked to Eric, “If you need anything just come up to the RV and see me.” He patted his shoulder and walked off.

  “So where do I start?”

  “You brought your wife and kids? There were two of them right?” Jacob responded to his question while he wiped his hands with an oily cloth that hung from his back pocket.

  “Well I’m not married and they’re technically not my kids.” Eric felt as if he was being quizzed or being given some sort of test, so he answered the question openly. “No ring on this finger.”

  “So how did you meet up with the lady and the little ones?”

  “Well I met Naomi and Sam when I burnt their house down with them in it.” The eyes of Joe and Jacob widened and Eric could see their brains spinning with questions. “Naomi is the older taller women and I have known Drew for about four years now. His father was with us originally, but he wasn’t able to finish the trip.”

  “Elijah said you were married and they were your kids.” Jacob fired this statement off quickly and Eric knew he was going to come back to the, I burnt their house down comment.

  “Well he never asked if I was. He just assumed we were.”

  “So I have to ask, you burnt her house down?”

  Eric laughed and Jacob and Joe just looked at each other. “Yes I did. An entire street of undead was trying to knock down their front door, so I threw a couple Molotov cocktail bombs into the middle of them and a couple of them managed to make it to the porch. The few on the porch lit the house on fire. The boy that’s with us, Drew, actually pulled an extension ladder out of his ass and rescued them.”

  “So what can you do?” Jacob responded wiping his hands again with the same oily rag from his back pocket and just managed to smear the same grease evenly on his hands.

  He was not ready for this one and had to switch gears and think, pausing for a few seconds. In the Coast Guard he did a lot of different things, but most of it was just the basic preventative maintenance. He did consider himself a jack of all trades though. “I can do just about everything that you would really need I guess.”

  “Do you think Jesus was a zombie?” Joey tossed a curve ball into the conversation.

  After being tossed around with random and quick questions this one really stunned him. Eric was never the type of person to attend church regularly, but he is a devout Christian and believes there is a heaven and hell. “I believe a lot of things, but that is not one of them.” Eric said in response.

  “Think about it. He died on the cross; they buried him, and a few days later he was up and walking around.”

  Eric could tell Joe had thought about this for a very long time and has had this same conversation countless times. This is something someone brought to his attention, because Eric got the feeling he probably never even opened a Bible let alone actually read one. “You know everyone is entitled to their own thoughts and opinions, but that is one thought I am not going to entertain, so no Jesus was not and is not a zombie.”

  “There is a reference that says all men will seek death, but death will escape them.”

  “Were does it say that?”

  “Revelations.” He continued with his scripted conversation, “So people would actually try to kill themselves, but can’t die. They would jump off of buildings or shoot themselves and just continue to live all fucked up, like the zombies do now.”

  “A lot of things happen in Revelations and I am not familiar with that passage, but if it is written in Revelations it may have something to do with when the end times do get here and Jesus left the earth with all of his people, then the demons probably will not allow the people left on earth to die.” He thought for a second and added just to confuse Joe. “What if the zombies aren’t actually dead and they are actually wishing for death, but death has” He made quotation marks out of his fingers, “escaped them. What if they are conscious of everything they are doing, but this is the sentence they were dealt because they were not believers.” Eric laughed to himself, as he saw the red eyebrows of Joe reach his thinning hair line.

  Jacob reentered into the conversation. “Do you have any weapons?”

  “I have this.” And he pulled his pistol from his back belt, “an axe and a twenty two rifle in my tent. Why?”

  “We may actually need somebody religious next time we go out, so you’re coming with us. Keep the gun and go get that axe and come back were getting ready to bounce.” Just as Jacob turned to walk away he turned back around. “Don’t ever call me Jacob, I hate that name. Everyone here calls me Jay.”

  Eric nodded in agreement and left to get his equipment.

  Chapter 15

  Conflict

  The road led north and then took a sharp turn west that followed the coast just beyond a curtain of thick woods. During the trip Eric studied and took note of everything they passed. He pictured himself and his three companions eventually traveling down these same streets. They passed through the woods and over a few open fields that eventually led to a paved road that didn’t have grass growing over it or large mud puddles. He sat in the back of the red truck with Joey, Jay, and another man who introduced himself as Mike.

  Mike has a muscular, slender frame and is a little taller than Eric. The black beard that wrapped around his face is meticulously trimmed evenly up to the bottom of his ears. He is a quiet man, but what he lacks in communication skills, he makes up for in his ability to design and weld. All the permanent staging that is built was created by him and they all are very sturdy and would take a truck to knock them over. The huts on top are another story. He wanted nothing to do with building the huts.

  They began to slow when they started passing streets that were filled with large single family houses and vehicles lined the sides of the road. The cars they passed were all faced away from them with the trunks facing their direction on both sides of the street. They were parked so close that no living or undead creature could squeeze in between them. As they continued down the street the large single family houses turned into rows of small store front buildings, and small town family restaurants.

  “So how does this picking up the fuel thing go?” Eric asked.

  Jay grabbed a clear hose that was about five feet long and one of the many plastic red fuel cans that littered
and bounced around their feet. “This one is yours.” He handed a plain hose to him. “You stick this end into the cars gas tank and you suck on this end until you see the gas come out. Once you see it you put it into the gas can until nothing else comes out.”

  “I’m very much aware of how to siphon, thanks.” He pointed to the cars with one of the bitter ends of the hose. “I mean the cars, why are they parked like that?”

  “Well if we can, we push the cars off the side of the road and park them as close as possible. This makes it easier for us to travel to the next location later on and also makes a wall against any undead that may come out of the stores later on. They can’t fit in between the cars and they can’t hide in them if they can’t get in them.”

  “So my job is going to be to siphon and then what?”

  “Then we all push the cars where they need to be, so next time we can travel a little bit further.” Jay stated. “You’ll see. Nothing to it really.”

  They traveled the vacant vehicle lined street for what seemed to be a few miles until the road ended with a single green car blocking the road. The truck slowed to a stop and just when Eric was about to jump out of the bed it was put into reverse and did a three point turn, so it faced the direction they had just come from. “Just in case we need to bounce in a hurry.” Jay said answering Eric’s confused look. “It also helps us push the cars.”

  They all jumped out and Jay was the first to the car and Joey was right behind looking into the windows of the vehicle, standing guard over him. Jay acted as a skilled professional, quick, fast and in a hurry. The red gas can was open before it was placed on the ground under the car’s gas tank and he pulled a clear hose from his pocket. He had a squeeze pump on it and after shoving the hose into the car he began to pump gas into his can.

  “Why do you get a pump?” Eric asked holding his clear hose.

  “You find one you can use it.” He pumped it until it began to flow freely. When the cars tank was empty they pushed the car to face the side walk and then the truck pushed the car off of the street and up against the curb.

  Joey wiped the sweat from his forehead and tapped Eric, “Now we continue to do this until we fill the rest of the cans.” and moved on to the next car which was only a few feet from the one they had just pushed.

  Three cars emptied, three cars pushed and five cans filled, two undead were alerted by the noise of the truck pushing the cars off the road. Their groans were calling out with enthusiasm and from an alley between a shoe store and a restaurant another pair of moans was heard. The man behind the wheel of the truck hollered to the people filling the cans, “You better pick up your shit or start sucking a little harder.”

  Joey and Mike grabbed the weapons from the bed. Joey picked up his bat and Jay’s machete, while Mike grabbed the two axes one smaller for him and Eric’s medieval handmade battle axe.

  Mike leaned Eric’s wooden handled axe against the car he was siphoning, “I’ll watch over you.”

  Eric felt, with Mike watching over him nothing was going to get close to him. Even though he had just met this man a few hours ago, Mike’s confident demeanor would not allow him to fail. Just as the flow of fuel bubbled and slowed to a stop the two undead traveling down the alley stepped into the street. A dozen undead answered the call of the first two and were moving between the unorganized cars up the road in front of them and were faster than the first two. Twisting the cap on the gas can making it click closed, Eric picked up his axe.

  “We got a runner!” The driver screamed. Ronny was the full time driver. He has been with the village for a month and has been working in the motor pool since he got there. He was not capable of doing much anything and almost immediately after working in the fields he sustained an ankle injury. No one was sure which ankle it was because he has been spotted favoring both legs and was not able to run, so he was restricted to driving the trucks. When he was asked to perform any physical activity he immediately got a flare up in his ankle and according to Ronny it was a disabling pain. Due to this he received very little respect, but Jay’s crew was stuck with him, because no other crew would entertain the thought of even watching him for the slightest period of time.

  Everyone’s head turned to see how fast it was coming down the street. From the direction of the way they came, a skinny male, covered with crimson blood from it’s last victim, came running up the middle of the street and as soon as their attention was turned on the runner it let out a shriek that bounced off all the store front windows, echoing from every direction, sounding as if there were multiple undead running from all directions.

  The driver realized there were four undead making their way toward them and would soon be on them with another dozen moving between the cars on the street catching up quickly. He pressed down on the gas and floored the red truck toward the frenzied undead, to make a little bit of distance between them and the runner. The bloody ghoul ran toward the truck as if to attack it. It ran wildly ripping at the air with its torn button up shirt waving behind it as if it were a small cape. The truck collided with the zombie sending black tar like blood splattering across the windshield, when its head smashed on the hood of the truck. The truck skidded to a stop and the ghoul was sent flying back and tumbling head over heals down the road. The windshield wipers were in high gear, as the driver tried to clean the windows, but only managed to smear the ghoul’s thick blood evenly across the window.

  Mike ran to the two traveling down the street and Jay ran toward the two from the ally. Joey stutter stepped, but ran behind Jay. Eric looked at both and then to the truck. Black blood was being thrown from the sides of the windshield in a mixture of window cleaning solution and blood and then he saw the undead’s roll stop in the middle of the street. The ghoul rolled to its knees purposely, as if it were an acrobat and then stepped forward into a full blown sprint back toward the truck. When it looked up and broke into a sprint, Eric could see, the ghouls forehead was smashed in and black blood poured from the gash and down over its face.

  Ronny had no idea the zombie was back on its feet because the thick blood blocked his vision. Eric sprinted toward the truck hollering for him to back up. The undead ran to the driver’s side and reached into the window grabbing at Ronny. The truck started to drift forward as the crazed creature tried to pull him from the window. Eric ran toward the creature, but the truck was drifting away from him. He switched his grip on the axe and was preparing for an awkward swing, when the ghoul spotted him and turned its attention on Eric.

  With a sharp scream it let go of the Ronny and ran at Eric in mid off handed swing. The axe’s neck just short of the blade connected with the zombie’s head, knocking it sideways into the red truck, but it continued forward toward him.

  Eric stepped to his left, but not fast enough before the ghoul grabbed hold of his shirt. The zombie was incredibly strong and pulled him toward his gaping maw. The wooden handle was thrust into its mouth. It bit down and teeth mixed with blood fell from its lips and the axe. Eric was pulling back and as the ghoul pulled him close he was able to side step and create a small space between them. Eric’s back was now toward the truck and he pulled the axe handle from its mouth and pushed the axe head under its chin. The zombie pushed forward and Eric felt the butt of the weapon smash against the red truck. The weapon created a barrier between them, but the ghoul pulled at his clothing and Eric ducked his head sliding out from his shirt.

  The frantic ghoul reached and clawed at Eric, but the axe kept it just out of reach. Eric pressed himself against the truck and held onto the handle keeping the head against its neck. He pressed against the truck, as if he were trying to mold into the Ford. The wide curved axe head and long hammer end stopped the zombie from getting around the barrier. Eric focused on keeping his weapon straight and level with the undead’s neck. He turned to Ronny just in time to see him make his way out of the passenger side door and run from the fight.

  Eric screamed for him. He screamed for him to come back and help, but he r
an down the street in the direction of the village, away from the other battles. The zombie snapped its mouth and screamed in frustration, but as the butt of the axe dented in the metal panels of the truck the tips of its fingers started to scrape at Eric’s face. Just as the ghoul was able to paw at Eric, off in the distance he could see Jay making a wide turn behind the undead.

  Eric turned his head and pressed the side of his face against the truck as the cold wet and sticky finger tips of the ghoul scrape his cheek. Jay ran up behind the frantic zombie and imbedded the end of his machete into the base of its neck, severing it’s spine, paralyzing it immediately. Eric felt the axe head get forced down and he lost his grip on the handle, letting it fall to his feet.

  Jay looked at Ronny running from the fight. “It looks like his ankle is a lot better.”

  **********

  Days turned into weeks and those weeks turned into a month or more. The atmosphere of the village began to change. Eric was welcomed into Jay’s crew and now running his own missions for scavenging materials, gas and food. Naomi was able to maintain control of her class room just as long as Dan stayed on the other side of the village and as far away from her as possible.

  Eric managed to convince Mike to build a new set of staging next to the garage that overlooked the vehicles and even influenced him to build a shelter on top of it big enough for Eric and the other three to live in. Eric fit perfectly into Jay’s crew and with the extra set of hands, began making some improvements to the motor pool. First thing he did was change the muffler and made adjustments to the red Ford to make it quieter, the second thing he wanted to do and with Mikes help, made a wind powered generator. This powered a few car alternators they picked up on the way that charged a battery bank and provided power for all of the motor pools tools and the roach coach.