Siege (As the World Dies #3)(71)

The woman blinked in confusion. “Huh?”

Jenni lifted her eyes to truly look at the woman. She was probably a few years older than Jenni, but those had been hard years. She had lank dark blond hair and pale blue eyes.



“We were returning to our fort and this helicopter swooped down and blinded us. We had an accident and woke up here. We were pretty much kidnapped.” “Fort? Do you mean a real fort?”



“Well, more like four blocks of a downtown walled in, but the big hotel is pretty damn nice,” Jenni answered.

The woman double-blinked. “Are there lots of people?” Jenni furrowed her brow. “I think may be close to two-hundred and fifty people now. I’m not real sure.”

The woman slowly exhaled. “Wow. We really thought we were the only ones still alive out this way. But why would the army take ya if you weren’t in trouble.”

“I think whoever runs this place wants the fort. Or at least that is what my friend Bill says.”

“Well, damn, that would be the Senator. But then, it has been real tough here,” the woman confessed.

“How long have you been here?” Jenni shoved her plate of food away with one hand and tried to eat something that looked like toast.

“Since the first day. We were over at that yonder civic center first. When the news started getting bad, FEMA said to go there. It was a rescue center. At first we didn’t pay no attention. It was just crazy talk on the TV, but then this man came and started trying to get in our back door. Troy, my husband, he shouted at the man to get lost, but this guy kept hitting the door. Hitting it so hard he was busting his hands open. We could see it through the window. My kids started screaming. Troy keeps threatening to shoot the guy with the shotgun, but the guy keeps banging and making these noises.”

“Oh, God, what did you do?”

“Well, Troy grabs the shotgun off the fridge and opens the door and waves the gun at the guy. But this guy has his guts falling out and he just lunges into the house. Troy shouted for us to run,. So me and the kids run out the front door. Troy runs, too. That guy, the messed up one, falls on his own innards.”

Jenni made a face and shivered. “Damn.”

“So we get into the truck and Troy is getting into the truck when he sees Mabel, our neighbor running to us. She’s got some nasty folks after her. Troy shouts her name and reaches out to her. And she bit his hand! So he cold cocks her one and we see her back is all tore up. He gets into the truck and we hauled ass to the civic center.”



“So if the rescue center was the civic center, how’d you end up here?” Jenni was enraptured by the story and reached for another piece of stale toast. “Soldiers came and got us after FEMA took off.”



Jenni mulled this over. “FEMA took off?”

“Yeah. They gave us milk and cookies and told us to sit down in the auditorium. They took the worst of the messed up people into this reception hall or something. I dunno. They said Troy wasn’t hurt enough to go back there with the volunteer doctors and nurses. I heard all sorts of rumors that the hospital wasn’t taking no more patients.” The woman sighed. “We just sat in there and it was real scary. All we heard was gossip and shit. I heard someone was gonna come and give us all shots so we wouldn’t get rabid, too. Troy starts getting a fever and the kids were all antsy and it was just plain shitty. Then the damn FEMA people started packing up their stuff and told us that we need to sit tight and wait for the Army to come get us and take us to another place. So they bail and we get stuck in the auditorium just waiting.” A few other people began to draw closer to listen. Jenni became aware of one older black woman vigorously nodding her head. “Oh, yeah. I remember that!”

“So Troy gets sicker and so do some other people. Finally the Army does show up, but it’s just a few guys. They start getting on the radio trying to figure out what is going on. One of them comes in saying that the doors to that other room are locked and there are those things in there.”



“FEMA just up and left us with a whole bunch of those zombies in that back room. All those doctors and nurses got ate up,” the black woman cut in. Jenni thought back on Katie’s decision not to go to the rescue center in Madison and was she ever grateful for her friend’s intuition.



“Right, right. So then more soldiers show up, but they are looking for a place to be safe, too. Then a few more. And it gets real clear to us that none of them know what is going on. Then that one guy shows up.”

“That handsome Kevin,” the black woman put in with a grin.

“Yeah, and he finds out about those things in the back room and he just says that we are all going to the mall. So they load up the old people in the trucks. The soldiers start going and asking people if they are bit or not. And all the bit people are made to go to another room. Including my Troy,” the woman took a breath, looking ready to cry. “The kids are crying and it’s just bad.”

“Uh-huh, real bad,” the other woman agreed. “Well, we got into lines and filed outside. The trucks were taking people back and forth to the mall. It’s only like two blocks away, but they wanted us to be safe. You got a ride on a truck, didn’t you, Ethel?”

“Thank you, Jesus, yes, or I wouldn’t be here today,” Ethel answered.