What Zombies Fear 3: The Gathering Read online

  Tookes’ mother looked skeptical and had her arms crossed as she asked, "What if you get swamped in there?”

  "We would have to build the train with that in mind,” said Marshall and paused. “Now that I think about it, we could build it to withstand a significant siege.”

  "How sure are you?" asked Leo, and Marshall shrugged.

  “Sure enough,” he said.

  "Well, I'm sure," Tookes said, trying to convey confidence. "We have a few more items to discuss. We need to hold funerals for the men that died and come up with some way to honor them. I'm open to suggestions." Vic took another bite of his sandwich, amazed once again that his mother could take almost nothing and make it into a miraculous dinner. She always had the ability to take what she had on hand and turn it into something fabulous and delicious, even with something as basic as venison. Even though it seemed small, this lunch with his family warmed Tookes’ heart. It was another glimmer at the potential that life could return to some sort of semblance of “normal.”

  "We're going to start a wall, right?” Leo suggested. “We could name a tower or section of the wall after them.”

  "We could build a tall tower in honor of all those who have and will lose their life in this mess," was Marshall's suggestion.

  "I like the idea of a tower," Tookes said, taking another bite of his sandwich and wiping mustard from his face. "Maybe in the center of the east wall, the direction of sunrise, to represent the new life they died to build.”

  “That’s awfully poetic, Vic,” Leo said, raising her eyebrow.

  “Well, it seems fitting to me. Let’s all put some thought into this and talk about it in a couple of days. I’m open to suggestions.” He took another bite of his sandwich and then pushed his plate away, “Now, item number two on the list is home place security. With Bookbinder gone and compromised, we need to change up everything. We need to change our patrol routes. We need to change our personnel, and we need to invent new tactics. Bookbinder knows how we train, so we need new training. We basically need a new Bookbinder. He was a good friend to me, but he’s a big threat to our security."

  "If Sean was here, he could train ‘em up right," John murmured.

  "I wish he was, and he will be soon, John,” Vic said, clapping John on the shoulder. “Until Sean gets here, would you mind setting up a training schedule? We need someone competent."

  “Not sure I’m the best choice for that.” John laughed and added, “All right, mate.”

  "What about Ken Leuty?" asked Marshall. Tookes knew Marshall had the best relationship with the settlers; he spent a lot of time down at the barn when the four of them weren't out trying to exterminate the planet’s infestation. Marshall was a very talented carpenter. He had built beds and chairs out of the scrap lumber from a two hundred-year-old barn we had torn down several years earlier. He was an amazing craftsman. The talent to take ancient barn wood and turn it into exquisite furniture was a unique and wonderful gift. Seeing Marshall work with his hands was a treat to anyone who watched. His skill was a combination of patience and attention to detail. He would spend hours sculpting and carving a headboard until it was just right. Almost all of the furniture the settlers used daily was handmade by Marshall. It was his labor of love, and the settlers regarded them as prized possessions.

  "Leuty? He's pretty young, isn’t he? Do you think he can handle it?" Tookes asked.

  "He handled himself in the whole Frye situation better than Baker did. Leuty showed initiative and tried to take control of the situation. He was doing well, but the whole crew was out-maneuvered. I don't think there is a better man to fill in,” Marshall said and then ate half of his third sandwich in one bite. Leo giggled from the other side of the table as he chowed down.

  "Okay, let’s name Leuty as commander of M1. We should pull the guys from M1 aside and let them know. Can you take care of that, Marshall? John and I need to go to the library, and I have a special task for Leo."

  "Sure,” Marshall said. “Oh, can you pick me up a book with woodworking patterns while you’re there?"

  "Sure, bro,” Tookes said. He looked around the table and asked if anyone else had any other questions. “If we're done here, we need to get a move on. I don't expect a lot of trouble at the library, but I'd like to be back before dark. Mom, did you have anything else? Do you need anything?"

  "I'm pretty well set up here. If you happen to find any seeds, could you bring them with you? We could use seeds from any vegetable or herb. But we have a lot of time for that kind of thing."

  "Okay, we'll keep an eye peeled," Tookes said as they all stood up from the table. "Thanks for this lunch, Mom. My sandwich was amazing. And potato chips? Did you make them by hand?"

  "Oh, it was nothing,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I fried them this morning to keep the sweet potatoes in the house from going bad.”

  “You amaze me every day, Mom,” Tookes said and embraced his mom, kissing her on the cheek.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Tookes," said Leo as she stood.

  The group of friends all walked out, and Marshall headed off towards the barn to deliver the news of Leuty's promotion. Tookes and Leo stayed behind as they spoke.

  "Leo, I need to know a couple of things about your power, but I need you to do your testing pretty far away from here,” he said. “About one hundred miles from here, you'll find yourself in the Jefferson National Forest. It's almost two million acres of forest. The zombie population should be low there. I need to know how big or how much weight you can teleport and how far you can go in each bound when you’re by yourself and if you're carrying something or someone else.”

  "You got it. But I can tell you most of that now," Leo said, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall.

  "I also want you to really use your power. Part of why I'm sending you so far away is to see if I can feel it. I've never really paid attention to it before, but when I think about the times we've really used our powers, there's a tickle in the back of my head. I want to see if that's what it is."

  "Okay, I don't need a lot of arm twisting to be sent off to the middle of the woods for some alone time," Leo said with a smile.

  "Try to be back before dark. And let me know also if you feel like you're getting stronger with use. We're all getting stronger, but I’m not sure if it’s our continued exposure or if it’s used like a muscle."

  "Sure thing, Vic,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him on the lips before running off. Tookes felt her body flinch awkwardly as their lips touched but thought nothing of it.

  It is remarkable how little Victor sees, Leo thought as she jogged away. The way he held his lips when they kissed felt foreign and forced. One of her favorite things about Victor was the way he would kiss her. When their lips would touch, it was as if nothing else mattered in the world other than what was happening in that very moment. However, something was different between them now. He needed time to himself to think and figure things out with Max. She understood that. Nevertheless, everything about him had changed in such a short amount of time, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she had done something wrong without realizing it.

  ----

  John and Tookes loaded up in the Jeep and headed towards town. Tookes needed many different books. He had a lot of reading to do before they boarded the train. He needed at least one book on trains and a book on planes, specifically navigation, flight lanes, air speeds, and fuel capacities. He needed world maps, and he hoped to check out a bunch of books for Max. The two of them spent the entire afternoon at the library and brought back more books than they had originally intended. They made it back to the house just after dark without incident.

  John picked up every book he could carry that detailed military tactics. One book compared the strategies of every general in history, and another one detailed modern Special Forces training. He picked up a stack of books on hand-to-hand combat and martial arts. John's recent close-range combat with Dan at the Crazy’s encampment made him a little insecure and th
at, in turn, made Tookes a little nervous. Perhaps I should read all those books too, he thought.

  Late that night, after a supper of beef tips and gravy over rice with peas, everyone retired to their rooms. Leo had stopped in her room briefly to grab a clean tank top for the next morning. As she came out of her room and around the corner, she made brief eye contact with Vic, and she smiled at him. Tookes looked right past her as if she wasn’t even there. Her smile fell as he turned into his room and abruptly shut the door. Leo could feel her heart shatter as she took a step back. She shook her head as she turned around and walked back into her room, feeling confused and frustrated. With defeat resting heavily in her mind, she shut the door.

  Tookes started reading a book called Study Guide for the Locomotive Engineers Exam. A lot of it had to do with traffic control. Other than trying to figure out how the switches worked and how to make sure he ended up on the right tracks, he didn't have a lot to worry about with traffic on the rails. The controls of a locomotive, it turned out, were fairly simple. However, starting up the huge diesel generators that made the massive amounts of electricity to power the thing was very complex. There was an exact start-up sequence required. It reminded him of the old 1960's Adam West Batman. Turbines to Speed! he thought.

  -----

  "Max, wake up. Steve is here; he's waiting for you across from the river."

  Max rolled out of his bed and put on his shoes. He grabbed a jacket from the chair in his room, in case it was cold, and padded quietly across the bedroom and down the stairs. Once he was outside, it wasn't hard for the small boy to make it across the lawn. He stopped once for a group of soldiers and then again for the returning patrol.

  He hid behind a bush until the returning patrol passed by.

  "I can't believe they put Leuty in charge," one man said as he walked by.

  "They've been in the shit deeper than any one of us, and they've made it out every time. I'd follow any one of those four through hell and back," said another.

  "I'm not saying they made a mistake. I'm just saying I don't understand why Leuty."

  "Maybe Tookes read his mind and saw something."

  "Can he do that?"

  "Absolutely."

  Max almost gave himself away giggling. Daddy can't read anyone's mind. At least not like that, he thought.

  When they had passed, Max ran as fast as he could to the barn office, around the back, and down the hill to the river. He waited about ten minutes for the patrol to go by. This time, they walked by in silence. They were so quiet that he almost missed them. Max had to think very hard about hiding. He thought about looking like a tree stump with dark, textured bark. He imagined what it would be like to have his feet turn into roots and to grow deeply into the ground and have plants growing at the base of the stump.

  Anyone staring directly at him when he concentrated would have seen the little boy's eyes light up with a pale blue light and then seen his shape shimmer for a second. When you blinked to clear your eyes, you would have realized you were only looking at a stump and not a little boy at all.

  Baker nearly tripped over the unfamiliar stump. "Who put that fuckin’ stump right in the middle of the fuckin' path I've been fuckin' walkin' for four fuckin' weeks?" he said, passing by.

  Max almost giggled as he waited for them to be out of earshot before calling out to Steve.

  "Come bite me. Come across the river and give me all your e-clays."

  “Thank you, Max. The time you’ve given us and your kindness towards us showed us that humans don’t have to be exterminated. We will transfer ourselves to you to strengthen you. You can always count on us,” Steve said.

  “Thank you for being a good friend. I’ll miss you, Steve,” said Max. He wasn’t sure this was right, but his bugs told him it was the only way.

  Steve did as he was ordered. When he had transferred the last of his E'Clei to Max, the shell that had been Steve fell to the ground, dead forever. Max screamed when Steve bit him; his bugs had been too sick to fully mask the pain.

  "What the fuck was that fuckin' noise?" asked Baker. He and his team immediately started running back towards the source of the sound. When he found Max, he was laying beside Steve's corpse, unconscious. Max felt as if he was two hundred degrees in Baker’s arms as Baker ran up the hill towards the manor house, screaming for Victor and Mrs. Tookes.

  Chapter 2

  Purpose

  Tookes was in his room, sitting at the desk. There were two candles burning on either side of a book, and he was completely absorbed in his studies when he heard Baker screaming as he ran full speed up the hill and across the back lawn. "Mrs. Tookes! Victor! It's lil Maxie. He's been fuckin' bit." His voice cracked, and Baker sounded desperate.

  Tookes leaped out of his chair, turning the antique wooden desk chair over in the process. On the way to the stairs, he quickly glanced into Max's empty room and then took the steps three at a time to meet Baker on the back porch. Baker was holding the quivering child in his arms. Max’s face was red and flushed, beads of sweat coating his forehead and upper lip. There was an angry-looking bite mark on Max’s arm. There were marks where a pair of incisors had broken the skin. Two small streams of blood ran down the small boy’s arm, joining at the elbow. The bleeding had stopped, but the bite looked painful.

  "He's real fuckin' hot, Tookes," Baker said as Tookes took his son from him. Max was so hot he was nearly burning his hands.

  Oh, fuck. Max, come on, Max. You’re strong, buddy. You can beat this, he thought desperately.

  The man ran back upstairs, carrying the small boy and gently laying him down on the floor of the bathroom. He immediately started running the last of the day’s hot water into the tub. Everyone had learned to shower in the late afternoon, when the water in the five hundred gallon black plastic tank on the roof was as warm as it would get. Now fully dark, the water in the solar heater would have cooled some.

  Tookes knew he had to get his son cooled down, but if the water was too cold, it could throw the small boy into shock.

  “Victor!” Candi yelled at the top of her voice. “Max is burning up!” She swiped the temporal thermometer across his forehead again. “This thing says he’s at 105.”

  “Let’s try the other kind,” Vic said, digging in the closet for the old under-the-tongue style thermometer. He shook the thermometer as he had seen his mother do his whole life and stuck the end under Max’s tongue. “Hold that there. It takes like three minutes,” he said.

  “He feels like his skin is on fire!” Candi was nearly hysterical with worry.

  “Remember when your sister’s son had that fever so high he had convulsions? She said their doctor told them to put him in a warm bath and alternate Motrin and Tylenol every two hours. I’ll start the tub.”

  Victor shook himself out of his memory. He stripped the small boy’s clothes off. By the time he was done, there was two inches of water in the big tub and Sharon was there. Leo stood just outside the door, leaning against the frame. She needed to stay out of the way, and as much as her heart was in her throat to be next to Victor, she knew that it was not her place. Being there for him after this took precedence, and she would always be there for him no matter what.

  "He's got a huge fever, Mom,” Tookes said to Sharon. “Last time Max was bitten, I caught it early and got Tylenol into him. But I don't think his fever went this high. What if this bite is worse? What if this bite is too much for his body to fight off?"

  Sharon grabbed her son’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. She wasn’t going to leave their side.

  Tookes could feel himself approaching panic and took a few breaths before he lifted Max gently over into the water. His son was still unresponsive and his skin bright red, flush with the heat. Victor ran his hands across his son’s light hair and asked, "Mom, do you have any liquid Tylenol or Motrin?"

  "Maybe down in my bathroom," she softly replied. She still held her son’s hand in hers. He’s such a good father. He loves that boy so much, Shar
on thought. I wonder if there’s anything Victor can’t accomplish.

  The shower curtain blew outwards towards the door, and less than two seconds later, Leo was back by the door with a bottle of baby Motrin in her hand. She tossed it towards him, and Tookes caught it with ease. He read the label. The dosage for a two-year-old was half a teaspoon, and that was as high as this bottle went. It was for babies, not children, but it would have to be enough. He opened his mouth and poured about half a teaspoon, closed it, and rubbed his throat to make him swallow it. Vic repeated that process three times so Max drank a total of a teaspoon and a half.

  Once the medicine was in him, he sat back and waited. There wasn’t much else that he could do. Sharon dug up a thermometer from a first aid kit in the hallway and checked his temperature every fifteen minutes. Max soaked nearly two hours in the tub. Shortly after they gave him the second dose of medicine, his fever dropped below a hundred-four. Tookes lifted him out of the tub and cradled his son in his arms. Leo had gone into Max’s room and grabbed some fresh PJ’s, which Vic lovingly put on him. He carried his son back to his room and put him in his bed, covering him with a sheet and a quilt. Tookes fell asleep sitting on the floor beside Max’s bed with his arm under the back of his neck.

  Sharon checked on them both during the night.

  Vic checked Max’s temperature the moment the sun rose the next morning. There was no change. It had been four hours without fever reducer, and his fever was still a hundred-four. Tookes administered more Motrin and watched him for a few minutes. Again, he ran his hand through his son’s hair and down the side of his face. Max’s breathing was slow and steady, and his chest was rising and falling steadily. Zombies didn't breathe. He put his hand on the tough little boy’s forehead. He was still hot and sweaty. Hot is better than cold, thought Victor. Zombies don’t produce much body heat.