"Hold still you twitchy fucker." Another blast rang out. "Goddamn it!" followed by a third, "Got the fucker Paige."
Ahead the rattle of automatic weapons fire heralded the arrival of the National Guard Soldiers.
A quarter of a mile behind them the Caliber came to a stop just in front of the twitching zombie girl. Mo saw the booted feet step out of the car and approach her head, where they stopped. A tall man in bloodstained, torn clothing squatted down in front of her and said, "You must be Mo. Hello Mo. My name is Jake. I knew your sister."
Chapter 45
The National Guard surrounded the buses, rifles pointed towards them while other troopers formed a perimeter facing the outside to fire at the smattering of zombies around them. The soldiers seemed nervous and close to firing on the living humans, one of their superiors stepped forward and yelled, "Come out of the first bus one at a time."
His men and women troopers were quietly calling out to each other to be careful and stay alert. They had not found any living humans in the past month, almost all of the ones who showed up were super zombies trying to pass themselves off as humans so they could get into the land of the living. And super zombies died hard, if the buses were full of supers they could be in a lot of trouble.
It started at the rear bus, one of the men yelled for their commander, who yelled for the lieutenant, who told everyone to stop what they were doing to stay absolutely still as he jogged back to the third bus. Dora stood a few feet outside of the emergency rear exit of the bus, behind her Paige was resting against the bumper, gingerly touching a small bloody stain on the back of her shirt. The body of a man with several shotgun wounds was crumpled on the ground, he had a hunting knife sticking out of his lower leg.
The lieutenant stopped in his tracks when he saw the women.
"What the fuck is wrong with you people? We have a bunch of kids who have been shot in there and you are standing around with your thumbs up your asses."
"Excuse me ma'am." said the lieutenant, "I am Lieutenant Strafer. John Strafer." he said holding out his hand.
Dora looked at it, then at Paige and said, "What the fuck?" she took his hand for a brief shake and asked, "What the hell is going on?"
"You've reached the newly formed first company of the third battalion of the first division of the mid-western army. We are the third platoon and I am in charge of it."
"So? Can we come in or not? 'Cause if we can't I am going to be mighty pissed off."
"You can come in. You of all people…" he glanced at Paige, "You two of all people are very welcome, if you are not contaminated."
"Do I look contaminated to you? Cut me, I bleed, if you want to check. What is going on Johnnie?" The men behind the lieutenant smiled, trying not to laugh.
The lieutenant said, "Excuse me ma'am, but your name is Dora, right?"
"Yeah. But I don't have any monkey's named Boots or friends named Diego. All I've got is a Paige." said Dora pointing at the young woman leaning against the bus.
"No, ma'am, but you're 'the' Dora?" Strafer asked, "out of Kansas City? Your husband is Roger?"
"Oh fuck, I might have known! Did that bastard start some rumor about me? Let me guess, 'shoot to kill'?"
"No, it's from the video. From what Ned filmed, about two months ago? You remember that?"
"I am dirty, sore and tired, not suffering from Alzheimers. Of course I remember Ned! What ever happened to that son of a bitch?"
"He died."
"Oh."
"We thought you did too. No one could find you when the horde came in on highway seventy. We just assumed you and everyone with you were lost."
"Well, we weren't. Can my kids be unloaded now? While we are sitting here jawing they are laying there dying."
"Right away ma'am! Medics! We have wounded!"
Several of the soldiers pressed forward to snap pictures of Dora and Paige, most did it covertly, but several asked for others to take their pictures with their phones. Dora acceded with ill grace until she learned that the last of the people on her bus had been offloaded and brought across the military zone to an impromptu medical station. All of the survivors had to pass a quick blood test, which was a piece of plastic with a needle in it, the device turned green if you were alive, and black if you were not. Dora passed the test that Strafer gave her and moved up towards the wall that separated Iowa's territory from that of the zombies. Before passing through the gates she ran into Becka, who was arguing with two soldiers.
Lieutenant Strafer was shadowing Dora by then, not leaving her side. "What is going on Becka?"
"I am not going in."
"What? Why not? We made it!"
She shook her head, "No, you go in. I am going to go back and you can't make me stay."
Dora looked at the lieutenant and raised one eyebrow, he answered by saying, "She hasn't passed into our territory yet, we won't force anyone in who doesn't want to go. But she'll have to be tested again if she comes back and once she is in…well citizens have to stay, for their own safety."
Stopping in her tracks Dora looked at him, "What? And you were going to let me walk in there without telling me?"
"We need you Dora." Strafer said, a pleading tone in his voice.
"Me? Why?"
"You are good news. You know how much bad news we have had recently? You're getting to us is the first good thing to happened in two months, it will raise morale, everything will be a little better. Your interview was the last one Ned did and was re-broadcast constantly in the days after Kansas fell. Everyone wondered about you, what happened. Everyone thought you were dead, but didn't want to admit it, now you're alive and we can use that. To make people happy."
Slowly Dora nodded, "I suppose I can see that. But I thought I could come back out here if I needed to. You see Johnnie; I have a little unfinished business to attend to. Now that I know better I will stay with Becka, walk her back partway, and try to figure out what the fuck she is doing."
"Please…" began Strafer, then he saw the look in Dora's eyes. "Third Platoon, we are going out with Dora to provide cover for her, form up around us now!" the men and women around them groaned, but did as they were told turning to march back towards the buses where other soldiers were offloading the luggage into Army trucks.
"What, you aren't keeping the buses?"
"It's a quarantine ma'am. We have to go through all of your stuff, remove bio contaminants, then clean the buses and put them back into service."
They approached Becka's motorcycle, still sitting next to the pickup trucks where she had parked it. Becka went to the pile of backpacks and poked around a little, then cried out with joy at discovery that her own pack was there. The young woman slung it across her back as she came over to Dora.
"Stupid, Becka, real stupid to go back out there." Dora said to the girl offering her hand. Becka took it and they shook, "Why?"
"Jake is out there."
"Are you in love or something?"
"It isn't like that. He made a promise to me."
"Yeah to all of us."
"Who's Jake?" asked Strafer.
"A super zombie, he helped get us here."
"One of them helped you?"
"Oh lighten up Johnnie! I did what I had to do, you would have done the same thing." turning back to Becka, Dora said, "So, Jake and you are going to…what?"
"Go get Father Cruz."
"Shit. You could have said something this morning; we would have swung by there and got him."
"We didn't think about it until after the bridge. No one did. Not even Mary."
"You know I wonder if the twins were keeping the zombies away from him or if it really was his faith?"
"It was his faith." Becka said firmly. "Look." she raised her arm to point at the blue Caliber sitting a quarter mile down the highway, "He knows I am coming."