AniZombie 3 Read online

  Dana handed John the binoculars and pointed to the bus. “That bus is what the team from the refuge uses to go on missions,” she explained to John.

  John studied the bus for several long moments, and then he lowered the binoculars and reached out for his bolt-action rifle with its powerful scope.

  “Are you going to kill them?” Dana asked hopefully.

  “No, I want to see them better. The scope is more powerful than my binoculars,” he responded.

  John studied the bus for so long that Dana lost her patience. She said, “You should rally your men to go and kill or capture them. If you can take them hostage, you can force the guards to lay down their weapons and open the gates of the refuge.”

  John lowered his rifle and turned to face Dana. “Don’t tell me how to conduct my business. I know my line of work quite well. For example, when you look at their vehicle, you just see a bus. I see the gunner sitting up top near the front. I see the firing slots that are visible in the side that’s facing us. I see reinforced steel mesh over the windows, which would make breaching them when trying to take Bennett’s team alive next to impossible. No, we can’t take them hostage as long as they are inside their vehicle, not without leverage of some sort, which we don’t have at the moment.”

  “So you’re not going to do anything?” Dana asked.

  “Watch and learn,” John said. He took his rifle with him as he exited the RV and called to some of his men.

  Dana stood at the window and watched what happened. She saw John and a couple of his men climb inside the van he had used to visit the refuge the previous night. Then they went to the gate and the guards opened it to let them exit.

  John’s driver drove the van up the road, approaching the bus from the refuge at a slow rate of speed. It stopped about forty feet from the bus and John climbed out onto the road. She knew it was John because of the color of his clothing. He was wearing camouflage pants and a yellow t-shirt. She had teased him earlier about the sharp contrast in his apparel. She assumed the man who exited the bus and walked forward to meet John between the two vehicles was Herb Bennett, but she couldn’t be sure. The magnification of the binoculars was inadequate to zoom in enough to help her confirm the identity of the man from the refuge.

  She wished she could hear the conversation between the two men. She would have to settle for waiting and learning what had been said when John returned.

  When Herb saw the van exit the fenced in base camp and head toward their bus, he had his team prepare for trouble and gave Bill a set of special instructions. However, the van stopped before reaching them and John got out. Herb exited the bus and moved forward to meet John midway between the two vehicles.

  “Hello, Bennett,” John said. “I see you found our little camp. Would you like to come inside for a visit? We could share a meal.”

  “Thank you, but we have to get back to the refuge before dark, so we can’t stay long.”

  “Did you learn what you came to learn?” John asked pointedly.

  “We were out on patrol when we spotted your camp and stopped to check it out. Now that we know it’s yours, we may as well head back home,” Herb said.

  “I’d like to talk to you about the possibility of us joining forces,” John said. “Your place is a lot bigger and better defended than ours,” John said.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Herb responded. “There’s no way we could take in 173 new people now. That would stress our food stores this winter. Maybe next spring something could be worked out. Then we’ll have crops planted and a renewable food source in the works.”

  “Yes, this winter is going to be tough, but we would be bringing in a substantial amount of food and other supplies,” John said in an effort to persuade Herb to reconsider.

  “That might make a difference to the council,” Herb said, as he appeared to be thinking over what John had just told him. “I’ll be sure to let them know about your request. A decision of this magnitude requires the entire council to approve it.” Then Herb changed the direction of the discussion when he asked, “Have you inoculated all of your people yet? Oh, and how are your wounded personnel?”

  “We gave our people the shots when we got here,” John answered. “Our wounded were the first to get their cures. They are getting better, but our medical people say they aren’t out of the woods yet.”

  “You’ll need to watch them carefully for a few days. Generally speaking, the shots will clear up any trace of the parasites within a few hours, but there can be some exceptions.”

  “We’ll do that. I hope to hear from you soon regarding the council’s decision,” John replied.

  “Herb, it’s getting pretty late,” Randy interjected from his position in the gunner’s chair. “If we don’t start back now, we may not make it back to the refuge before dark.”

  “Have a safe trip home,” John said.

  “Thank you. Randy is right. We need to get going.”

  “I’ll see you at the refuge in a day or two,” John said. “We’ll bring our supplies with us.”

  “It would be best to wait and see what the council says. We’ll notify you via radio,” Herb insisted.

  John shrugged and said, “We need to change locations anyway. It would be best for us if you agree, but either way, we need to leave this area. We’re too close to Forest City. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t come under attack by either zombies or people who think they can take what we have built for ourselves.”

  “You should be careful traveling,” Randy said, speaking up again. “We passed a burned out car on the way here. The poor guy driving it had been murdered, and then someone set fire to the vehicle with him inside it.”

  “Crime is out of control these days, but you can travel safely, if you take adequate precautions,” John said. Then he looked Randy in the eyes and smiled. “You should be careful up there. The gunners usually take the first shot when they encounter savvy opposition.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Randy said.

  Herb said goodbye at that point and returned to the bus. John watched the Mercedes Sprinter as Hernando turned it around with expert precision and headed back toward the refuge.

  “They’ll search the van now,” Hernando observed when he was out on the open road.

  “You’re probably right about that,” Herb agreed. Then he asked Bill if he had succeeded with his mission.

  “Yes, I did,” Bill reported. “I sent the radio signal to activate the self-destruct while they were driving out to meet us. It should be a small lump of metal by now, and the destruction of the device would have made it fall off the vehicle.”

  “Good, it served its purpose. I’d like to have kept it on the van, but I think Hernando was right about them searching their vehicle. We turned up at their camp the day after they visited us. That’s bound to make them suspect that we had a means of tracking them. I just hope they don’t spot the remnants of the tracker and realize what it is.”

  “Well, it won’t look like a tracking device by now. It will look more like a small piece of metal from a bad auto accident,” Bill explained.

  ***

  When John reached the RV, he found Dana waiting to hear what had transpired. He filled her in on the conversation in the hopes that her experience with Bennett might give her an insight into what he was doing. He didn’t believe for a moment that they had just stumbled upon them during a random patrol.

  Dana told him that she wasn’t sure how the team had located their camp, but she was aware that they made extensive use of radios, so it was possible that someone who knew of their camp had given them directions.

  As Hernando predicted, Big John had the van searched for tracking devices. There had been ample time during their visit for one of Bennett’s men to place one under their vehicle. However, the search yielded no answers to the mystery when the men failed to locate anything suspicious or produce evidence that a tracking device had ever been attached to it.

  In the end, Bi
g John informed his people to prepare for a trip to the refuge the next day. He planned to get the answers he wanted, even if he had to carve the truth out of Herb Bennett’s hide.

  Meanwhile, the people of the refuge weren’t the only ones who knew how to utilize radios. He would make a few contacts of his own.

  Chapter 9

  The hunt.

  Shaunna stopped at the intersection and sniffed the air. Beside her, the anizombie Shepherd did the same. The scent it had been tracking for hours had turned onto a smaller road, but then it had returned and taken another direction. The canine turned its head in the direction that had the strongest scent and took a few steps in that direction as it tested the air.

  Thanks to the enhancement of the Akins’ parasites, Shaunna’s sense of smell was many times better than that of any human. Yet, the anizombie Shepherd’s was as superior to hers as hers was to humans. This is because the average person has 5,000,000 scent receptors, compared to a German Shepherd with 225,000,000. The parasites couldn’t cause the receptors to multiply. Instead, they enhanced them to make them much more effective. Therefore, the gap in the skill level between species would always exist.

  Shaunna watched the anizombie, just as she had watched Lily when she was her companion. When the German Shepherd stepped in the direction of the freshest scent, Shaunna moved to follow her. The lesser zombies followed the Alpha female.

  The zombies had been following the trail of their prey for over an hour and a half when the anizombie stopped and turned its head to face an open field with a small patch of scrub brush in the center. It smelled what it considered good prey out in the twelve acre field that had once been used as a pasture for a farmer’s cattle. When the farmer stopped tending the herd of milk cows, several of the animals, distressed because they hadn’t been milked, broke down a section of the fence and returned to the milk barn. The anizombie headed for the breach in the fence. Shaunna and her minions followed her.

  Shaunna was aware that the anizombie had quit the trail she had been following and was now going after new prey, but she didn’t stop it. She needed to feed. They all did, and she was ready to follow her instinctive desire to eat. She led the lesser zombies on another encircling maneuver that was similar to the one they had utilized to attack the pack of feral dogs. The anizombie had wanted to charge right into the half acre of brush in the middle of the field, but Shaunna had placed a restraining hand on its shoulder and it had obeyed her unspoken command to stay with her as they circled the prey.

  The creatures the zombies had encircled had become aware of their presence when the faint breeze carried their scent to the prey. Shaunna heard them scrambling around in the labyrinth of brush that varied in height from a couple of feet to over six feet tall. She also heard occasional grunting sounds.

  When the rest of her minions were in position, Shaunna squatted down and placed Lily’s body on the ground. The anizombie’s body had grown putrid, but the Alpha female paid that no heed. Lily’s fur was falling out in places as well, and her eyes had turned milky white. None of that altered the devotion of the Alpha female to the dead Yorkie.

  Shaunna glanced down and stoked Lily’s head once, and then she got to her feet. She released the German Shepherd and permitted it to begin the hunt.

  The anizombie had waited, obedient to the will of its master, but it waited impatiently. Its burning hunger to feed was a powerful temptation that was difficult to resist. Therefore, when Shaunna released it and crooned encouragement, the animal launched its body into the brush without hesitation. It was followed by Shaunna, who screamed in eagerness to get at the flesh that was tantalizing her sense of smell. It never occurred to her that her army needed to eat this meal in order to prepare for the confrontation with the woman she hated so much. That would have required much more complex thoughts than she was capable of as a zombie. No, she wasn’t planning ahead for future need. She just knew that she was hungry and the prey in the field smelled so very good.

  Loud squeals of anger and fear permeated the maze of brush as the zombies entered it and began to close their circle, thus forcing their prey into an ever-tightening ring of life.

  Shaunna placed Lily on the ground as she always did when going into battle, and then she followed in the wake of her anizombie German Shepherd. Around her, the other zombies crashed through the scrub brush in a much more clumsy and disorganized manner. Their lack of skill and technique gave their prey no advantage because they had them surrounded and were approaching almost shoulder to shoulder, en masse. Any animal wanting to escape the closing circle would have to get past a minimum of two of the hunters before they could escape.

  Soon, the prey had been forced into the center of the copse of scrub brush. The sheer numbers of the sounder of wild boars, concentrated in such a small area, trampled down most of the vegetation. As Shaunna drew closer to the center, the anizombie Shepherd returned to her with a thirty pound juvenile pig held in her jaws. She laid it at her master’s feet. Shaunna reached down and held the proffered gift in place with her left hand, and grasped the Shepherd on the shoulder with her right, as she moaned at the sight of the pig. The anizombie then released the pig, wheeled around, and launched its body back toward the intense fighting it had just left.

  Shaunna felt the young pig squirming in her grasp. She grabbed its snout in her right hand, moaning in anticipation of the feast. She bent its head back at a sharp angle, and then she bit its shoulder, savoring the flow of fresh blood that spilled into her mouth. She took another bite and she would have eaten the whole thing, but the Akins’ parasites always drove zombies on toward new victims when they were available. Therefore, after tasting the juvenile pig’s blood and meat, she dropped the wounded animal, which scrambled to its feet and ran away.

  Not one of the zombies near Shaunna attempted to take the prize that she had discarded. Like the Alpha female, their instinct was to go after fresh prey as long as it was available, and the squeals and grunts emanating from the brush just ahead of them as well as their scent, gave proof that there were plenty of untouched animals near them. Like Shaunna, they moaned as they advanced.

  Shaunna reached the sounder of wild boars and saw the German Shepherd downing another of the animals. She moved to fight by its side, grabbing an old boar that ran up to her and tried to gouge her thigh with its tusks. Shaunna batted its head aside with a savage blow just below its ear. This stunned the boar for a moment, and that was all the time she needed to beat it to the ground with repeated blows of her fist. Once she had it on its side, she dropped to her knees on its ribcage, constricting its lungs in the process. This made it difficult for the thrashing animal to breathe. Then she began to tear at its throat with both hands. When she succeeded in drawing blood, she held the boar’s head down so it couldn’t get at her with its tusks, and then she bit down into the wounded throat.

  Shaunna’s victim went wild when she bit it. With a herculean effort, it managed to throw her off its body and get to its feet.

  Shaunna crouched on the ground with her left hand supporting her upper body. The blood of the boar stained her lips and chin as she regarded her prey, which was still dangerous to her. The enraged animal’s poor eyesight caused it to take several seconds to locate the enemy that had wounded it, but when it spotted her, it charged from just a few feet away.

  When Shaunna fought, there was no conscious thought involved. Instead, she was operating on an instinctual level. As before, the Alpha zombie timed her blow perfectly. Once again, she knocked it to the ground and proceeded to strike it blow after blow. This time, her blows landed on its ribcage, breaking bones with every savage strike. The boar was stunned by the onslaught. It still thrashed about and attempted to gouge Shaunna with its tusks, but its struggles were growing weaker by the moment.

  Shaunna grabbed the weakened boar by one of its hind legs and started pulling it out of the brush, away from the fighting that was winding down as the last of the razorbacks were slaughtered by her zombie followers. The
wild boars had not been easy kills for the zombies. Many of them had sustained wounds that would have killed a living human being. In the end, the superior numbers of the zombies was enough to ensure that they prevailed. As Shaunna walked away with her prize, the rest of her small army settled down to eat their fill.

  When Shaunna reached the spot where she had left the juvenile pig, she paused and stared at the bloody ground as she searched for it. Now that all of the fresh prey had been taken, the one she had released earlier regained her interest. She followed the droplets of blood, which left a trail that she could have followed with her sense of smell alone had the need arisen. That trail led her to the spot where she had placed Lily’s body earlier. When she saw that Lily was missing, Shaunna let out a blood-curdling scream of rage.

  The anizombie German Shepherd was feasting on the boar that she had killed when she heard her master scream in anger. She wheeled about and raced back to her. She found Shaunna with her nose close to the ground sniffing the air. She needed no close proximity to the spot to know what had happened. The canine could smell the juvenile pig that she had carried to her master. She also smelled the small anizombie body that Shaunna had carried with her. Her former prey had carried Lily’s body away.

  The anizombie Shepherd let out a growl of sorts, and then it struck off at a run as it followed the scent of the pair it sought. Shaunna followed behind the canine, dragging the dying boar with her as she went. The Shepherd soon outdistanced her, but she could track it by smell alone if needed.

  When Shaunna screamed, the rest of the zombies looked up from their feasting, but then they resumed fighting among themselves over the meat. Although almost a score of wild boar had been killed, many had been young and were not that heavy. Therefore, the ravenous zombies were not about to leave the feast.

  When the juvenile pig that Shaunna had discarded had fled the zombies, it had come across the body of Lily. Accustomed to having to compete with all the other pigs in its group, it was quick to grab the carrion in its jaws and run away to consume it. The creature was intelligent enough to have learned in the past that to linger in the vicinity of its sounder with a meal was to lose it to the others. Therefore, it ran a good distance to where it felt safe beneath the shade of a tree on the edge of the pasture before stopping to eat. By the time it sensed danger and fled once more, it had eaten most of Lily. Abandoning most of its prize, it carried with it only a small portion that it had torn free.