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CHAPTER SIX


“This guy is nuts. He’s, like, claiming to be the King of Miami and the ruler of the Kingdom of Florcubatamp, whatever the hell that is! He’s absolutely crazy! Where’s the military? How could they let this happen? How?”

From: Collected Radio Transmissions of the Fall,

University of the South Press, 2053



The best way to forget something as traumatizing as finding little Jacob’s remains was to focus on other things. Fortunately for me, we had plenty going on around our little Mountain of Fire - eARC.

As it turned out, Sister Anne had been a little too generous about the ingenuity of King Dale and his crew. It took them a full month before they figured out that the river was too deep and they would have to build a bridge to cross it. With autumn steadily dipping toward winter, their time was running out. They lost two men and almost a third before they figured out that the water was also too cold to swim across.

We celebrated Thanksgiving quietly. No turkey this year. While there were turkeys literally everywhere in the Alleghany Highlands, shooting the damn things was difficult. Camouflage really didn’t work with them, and they would see you long before you saw them. Plus, they were pretty much invisible until they decided to move. This is why turkey farms were such a big deal, pre-Fall.

It was hard to find things to be thankful for. Spam and potatoes? No chocolate? Ugh. Still, Sister Ann did her best, and a lot of the younger girls were simply happy to be alive. For them, I pretended to be in a good mood, to show them that Maddie the Shambler Slayer wasn’t someone to be afraid of. Lots of smiling and even a few hugs. I even read to the younger girls one night before bed.

Sister Ann said it worked, and they were starting to be a little more comfortable around me. I had my doubts.

With Rohena slowly on the mend thanks to the old penicillin we found in the admin building, and Ulla now on guard duty up on campus, I could keep an eye on King Dale’s bridge-building progress. Or what could be called progress, at least. Apparently none of his men knew anything about how to construct a bridge. To be fair, though, I think the only person left in the county who did have any idea was Emily.

King Dale’s makeshift construction project was slow going. First, they tried to simply throw some downed trees on the ruined bridge near where he and his crew first spotted us. That failed because, according to what Emily said after I reported in, it didn’t have a strong enough anchor point on both sides of the river. They tried getting fancy and found some old steel plates to put on top of it for stability, but the weight caused it to sink to the bottom of the river. Eventually, the logs floated back to the surface, sans plates, and were washed away downstream.

In the end, they simply lashed a bunch of logs together and made a floating bridge of sorts. It worked well enough, but before they could test it properly it floated away like the first logs. Nobody had tied it off. Again. It would have been hilarious except I knew why they wanted to get across the river so much. To be fair, zombies can be very distracting. Especially when they show up in a horde and without much warning.

Up until then, I hadn’t realized the city of Covington was still chock-full of aggressive types of zombies. Rex and his gang inadvertently brought down a mess of them when they started making all sorts of noise while building their bridge. Chain saws were noisy. Shamblers loved noise. It was a match made in heaven. The idiots thought that just because they didn’t see any shamblers at first that meant they’d all left or died or something.

In reality, the shamblers had all been down by Interstate 64 because one of the buildings there was solar powered and featured a tall pole with a lantern and a sign on top. While not the brightest light in the world, it was still the only one around and the zombies were drawn to it. Since Rex and his group had come the most direct route from Lexington, which meant over the hill along I-64 until they exited at State Road 60, they’d unwittingly avoided the shamblers—until the chain saws started, at least.

It was stupid, really. If they’d gone down I-64 farther, they would have found the rear entrance to the school. It wasn’t really that big a secret. Most local people knew about it. Or they could have even just waded across the river, maybe. Yeah, it wasn’t shallow, but it was easier than trying to rebuild a bridge using logs from the nearby lumber company cut onsite. To be honest, it would have been even easier if they’d crossed over and raided the partially collapsed paper mill plant right there next to the ruined bridge, and done the repair work from the mill’s side. Well, what was left of the paper mill, anyway. When the dam went, it had done a number on every building next to the river. Most of downtown Covington remained partially flooded, but still . . . for a guy who was supposed to be king, he seemed pretty dumb and not the most creative thinker.

He must have really wanted to make his grand entrance to the school with his stolen SWAT vehicle. Otherwise, he could have just made a simple rope bridge and crossed that way. Or a fancy one with wood. One of those guys had to have been in the Boy Scouts, right?

I was perched high in the deer stand at the river bend, watching King Dale and his men work on their latest bridge attempt, when the first shambler arrived from downtown Covington. These were not the same as the early ones we dealt with up at the school, but skinnier, and slower. Much slower. They weren’t the horror movie type of shamblers, though they were faster than what Lucia and I had dealt with in the admin building.

However, these ones were still moving fast enough to surprise Rex and his crew. It was interesting to watch precisely how they dealt with them—from a purely tactical point of view, I mean. I took mental notes because, well, I’d never seen anyone else handle shamblers before.

The first shambler hit the guy who was supposed to be on lookout but seemed far more interested in watching the bridge being built. He didn’t even have time to scream before the shambler had latched onto his neck and started chewing away. Between the noise from the river, the loud arguing of Dale’s men, and the one chain saw running there was almost zero chance they heard the poor guy get attacked.

Old King Dale must have sensed something, though, because he half-turned toward the lookout just as the man fell twitching on the ground, shambler latched onto his shoulder. He shouted an alarm as a large mass of shamblers appeared from behind the ruined old post office half a block away. The group turned and their weapons were up and ready—except for the dude with the chain saw—before the shamblers were too close.

I’ll give credit where it’s due: they knew what a proper firing line was. They were precise with every shot and didn’t seem to waste any rounds. They might not be the brightest bunch for following the self-proclaimed King of Appalachia around, but they knew how to defend against an oncoming shambler horde. Shamblers dropped in rapid succession as the men fired. Still, his followers were kind of the enemy if they got their bridge built and made it up to campus.

King Dale did make one huge tactical error, though—he forgot to make sure both the lookout and shambler on the ground were dead and not just injured. Sister Ann told me to always double-check the body. Somebody should have told Dale. After shooting the shambler that attacked the lookout, they’d just forgotten about him to engage the approaching horde. It didn’t take long for the lookout to turn, and even with the gaping neck wound the man was up and back on his feet in a matter of minutes. That was interesting. I hadn’t known someone could turn so quickly. Maybe it was because he’d been bitten?

The newly created shambler almost made it to Rex before the so-called King of Appalachia pulled out what looked like one of those chrome-plated Desert Eagles from his hip holster and blew the guy’s head off with a single shot.

With the new shambler down, Dale began barking orders to his men. I couldn’t hear exactly what he was shouting over the gunfire, but eventually they began focusing on the shamblers in front of the crowd. Golden rule of the zombie apocalypse: If you can bring friends to a shoot-out, bring lots of guns, and even more ammo.

I looked around my side of the river to see if I was still safe. No sign of any shamblers, but that meant nothing. Sometimes you could almost step on one without waking them up if you were quiet enough. Other than Lucia, I was probably the sneakiest girl on campus. More than once I’d stumbled onto a shambler nest and had to get out of there without waking the creature up. Fortunately, they stayed away from the railroad tracks that led into town. Back before the world ended, it was also the best route for some of the girls to sneak out at night to meet up with townie boys.

Not that I’ve ever done anything like that. I’ve just heard what the other girls say and stuff. I swear.

Somebody shouted and pointed in another direction. Turning, I looked to see what the fuss was all about. He was pointing up toward U.S. 220, the only road you could take to get to Warm Springs. I blinked, surprised. An ungodly number of shamblers were coming down the road. They were quicker than the original group. These shamblers were clearly better fed and in a hurry. There was also a lot more of them. I’d never seen that many in person.

Where are they coming from? I thought as I looked across the river. Alleghany County had maybe ten thousand people in total before everything happened. A lot of them died during the original outbreak of the Pacific Flu. There were a couple hundred in the seething mass coming down the road. Something else to talk to Sister Ann about. Shaking my head, I climbed down from the hunter’s blind, jumping the last few feet to save time. Landing on the loose gravel near the tracks, I crouched down and checked to make certain I hadn’t damaged Baby any. After a quick inspection, I was satisfied. The AR-15 didn’t even have a scratch.

It was time to leave. I didn’t want to get tagged by a stray round or a ricochet, and since Rex’s men were on a shooting rampage the odds were decent of that happening. Hightailing it along the tracks, I headed back toward campus. It was time to report in. Sister Ann was not going to be happy with the amount of shamblers still in and around Covington.


I was right. She wasn’t happy at all with the news.

“You saw how many?” Sister Ann asked, clearly bothered by what I had to say about the shamblers. She’d been planning exploratory scouting missions farther out from the school for a few days now, hoping the shambler population had died off some. This sudden arrival of more seemed to have everyone in a down mood.

“About two hundred at least, some more coming from Warm Springs,” I supplied in a quiet voice. The younger girls were undoubtedly listening in from the other room, even though we’d told them to stay away. They were as starved for news as everyone else was. The twice-weekly Wolf Squadron reports were nice, but they were also depressing. News from something close by, that they could potentially see and hear, was far more exciting.

“That’s not good,” Sister Ann murmured and leaned back in the chair. She glanced at the student council members sitting with us around the table. The nun was not going to cut the council members out of this meeting. Decisions were ultimately made by her, but she was slowly teaching us to come to a consensus without our usual bickering. “Still, they’re on the other side of the river with King Dale. We’re okay for now. I still want to explore the option of sending out search teams to some of the stores. What are some of our options?” she asked us.

“We’re good on supplies, though low on protein options,” Lucia answered immediately. She was looking down at the notepad in front of her. A frown was on her dark face. “I’d like to find more canned chicken or Spam or something. The canned stuff will last longer, but I don’t think the younger girls are going to like nothing but canned carrots and potatoes and protein shakes. The corn is a total loss, if I remember you saying correctly?”

“Yeah, it’s all gone. Those weevils got them all. Beans, too,” Kayla confirmed, Boston accent growing mildly thicker from the stress. “Bugs, I mean.”

“Then we’ll need more vitamin supplements.” Sister Ann sighed.

“At least we have pads and tampons now. If we want to keep on top of vitamins, though, we need to go out and find some, and soon,” Lucia said as she looked up from her notepad. “Sister? I think we should start hitting houses down by the Moose Lodge and take our chances that there might be shamblers inside them. The Moose Lodge had a good stockpile of canned goods the last time we volunteered down there. Plus, not a lot of houses down next to it. Maybe a half dozen. Those supplies still might be there.”

“If we get spotted by King Dale and his group, they’ll figure out there’s a way across the river,” Rohena pointed out. Though the spider bite had been over a month, she was still pale but looking loads better. I rolled my eyes but didn’t argue, even though I wasn’t too sure if her brain was back in it. She’d been pretty delirious. “If we head north, then circle back east and check the gas station up on top of the hill along State Road Sixty, we might get a few things if the zombies haven’t destroyed the inside yet and Dale won’t spot us. Even if those zombies came from Warm Springs.”

“Girl . . . I’m telling you, that one cute cashier is either a zombie or dead,” Kayla remarked with a smirk. “Even if he lived, there’s no way he stayed around here.”

“Talk all the crap you want, but they had a lot of canned stuff there,” Rohena said with a disdainful sniff. “Water’s probably gone, but they might have sodas. I know it’s not water, but it’ll add caloric intake a bit, right? Maybe some of those vitamin-laced smart waters? I don’t know. Point being, unless shamblers figure out how to use complex locks, it should still have some stuff in back. They’re only dangerous now if they horde up or get in too close.”

The fever must have made Rohena smarter or something. Other than wandering around where King Dale and hundreds of shamblers could get to us, it was a solid idea. Sister Ann must have thought so, too.

“Lucia, draw up a plan for checking out the gas station,” Sister Ann said. “It’s a low priority, though. At a minimum, Maddie on security and two older girls with hiking backpacks.”

“People gonna die,” Lucia muttered under her breath as she continued taking notes. I almost laughed but managed to turn it into a cough at the last moment, and started twisting my hair.

“Speaking of water . . .” Sister Ann continued as she pretended not to hear Lucia’s comment. “The well pump is still running decently?”

“Decently enough, Sister,” Emily responded. Not for the first time did I find myself happy she’d made it into the cafeteria bunker. With the knowledge of power being diverted over to the admin building, she was now looking for ways to stop that and maybe instead have lights in the bunker. Like I said, freaking brilliant girl. “I know some of the girls want to use the solar panel to heat the showers, but without the power from the solar panel we don’t have water for more than ten minutes. There’s a reason we shower in the daytime. They can either have cold showers, or no water at all. They need to quit bit—uh, complaining about it.”

“I’ll mention it again at Devotionals tonight,” Sister Ann promised. “What about hand pumps?”

“Yes, ma’am, sorry.” Emily leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her expression changed as she continued. “I understand the concept behind it, but finding water is actually harder than it sounds. Yeah, if we had a lot of back pressure, we could bring it up from Dunlap Creek. That’d be the easiest way but we would need mechanical pumps for that since the uphill incline is so steep. More electricity. I was reading about something interesting but we’d have to find a lot of pipes and a natural spring above us somewhere. Basically, water flows downhill, and we just build a gravity well with piping to direct it into the purifiers . . .”

“There isn’t a natural spring above us that I’m aware of,” Sister Ann pointed out.

“I figured you would have mentioned a natural spring flowing down the mountain if there was one,” Emily stated. “No manual well pumps for now, sorry.”

“How long do you think the well pump will last?” I asked, curious.

“Really hard to say,” Emily replied as she looked at me. I could see the worry in her eyes. A seventeen-year-old girl shouldn’t be under the stress she was. It was her responsibility to keep everything mechanical running. Then again, nobody should be doing what we had to in order to survive. I, for one, shouldn’t be running site security on the campus. “They’re built to last thirty years and this one was just installed five years ago. If the pipe doesn’t freeze or rupture, then we’re good for a long time. Last winter was mild. This year? I don’t know. Those woolly worm predictions are garbage, by the way. No offense. But the weather . . . for next year? Again, no idea. February is always the worst around here. If it gets too cold and a pipe bursts . . .”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes, Emily,” Sister Ann told us all in a gentle tone. She looked at all of us before continuing. “The time I’ve privately dreaded has come at last. I’d hope . . . prayed . . . done everything I could in order to keep everyone here as safe as I could. But . . . Maddie?”

“Their bridge is almost built, ma’am,” I told everyone gathered around the table, twisting my hair tighter around my finger as I spoke. Everyone around the table stared at me, scared. We’d been talking about the possibility of the bridge being completed for days. Now that it was completed, though, it suddenly became terrifyingly real. “That shambler attack slowed it down, but they’re pretty much done. Bet that they’re going to cross first thing once it’s finished fully. They’re expecting us to fight up here, on the mountain.”

“If they were smart they’d cross the bridge tonight and camp on our side of the river, establish a beachhead there,” Sister Ann murmured as she closed her eyes. After a few moments of silent contemplation she continued to speak. “Maddie . . . how determined did they look to cross?”

“Well . . .” I stopped and thought it over. I nodded slowly as the idea began to germinate in my brain. “He really wants to get up here with that BearCat thing, ma’am. Like, really wants this. Roll up on us like a boss and make us afraid. You once said fear is sometimes mistaken for respect. King Dale thinks making us afraid of him and his not-a-tank is a sign we respect his authori-tayh.” My inflection on the word made a few of the others giggle. That was a good sign. “He’s deluded.”

“Agreed.” Sister Ann smiled at me before looking around the table. “So how do we hurt him without a massive gunfight breaking out, putting us all in danger? Or actual killing of regular people?”

Silence. How did one beat a dirtbag hillbilly wannabe king? Especially when none of us actually wanted to shoot a real, living, breathing human being?

Shamblers didn’t count in my book.

“Uh . . . what about stealing his tank?” a small, timid voice asked from the end of the table. Everyone looked down to the far end of the table, where Finlay and Fiona had been sitting quietly together. Not sure which one spoke, I motioned for them to continue. The twins shared a look.

“Or blow it up.” That was Finlay speaking. The small black mole on her cheek was distinguishing.

Stealing it would be easier,” Fiona countered. Apparently this was not a new discussion between the two. When they’d talked about it, though, would be news to me. Unless the twins really were psychics . . . 

“Well, hold on a second,” Sister Ann held up both hands to forestall any argument between the siblings. “Forget blowing up the BearCat for a second, girls. Keep that around as Plan C. No, D. Let’s go back to the original idea, Plan A. Do either of you know how to steal a car?”

They looked at each other before Fiona answered. “Our mother’s lawyer advised us to not answer any questions like that without him or our mother being present.”

“Ha! I knew it!” Lucia laughed and clapped her hands together in delight. “Grand Theft Auto! My little cholalitas are criminals!”

“Okay, great, they might know how to steal a car,” I said once the laughter died down. “What’s stopping King Dale’s dudes from shooting us when we’re stealing it?”

“A distraction . . .” Sister Ann suddenly smiled. “A big one.”

“What’s a bigger distraction than stealing the man’s tank?” I asked.

Sister Ann didn’t reply. Instead, she looked back toward the twins. Her grin doubled in size.

It was . . . unnerving.


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