Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
She guessed word had spread among the guards who didn’t know her that she was important to Jonny because she was allowed to wander pretty much wherever she pleased in the house itself.
Rather than return to the dormitory-style bedroom full of strangers, she found a couch in the library and curled up there for a nap.
Her sleep was full of nightmares and eventually she got up and went to the kitchen, where she found Devora, red-eyed with bags under her eyes, already working on prep for breakfast, which was hours away. “Can’t sleep either?”
Devora shook her head. “I’m too scared. We’ve been okay so far but I feel like things are breaking down, people are getting careless.
Jonny’s clearly distracted by this singer who latched onto him, which doesn’t help.
He may be acting like a barbarian warlord but at least up to now he had the situation under control. ”
Tamsyn wasn’t so convinced but she hadn’t been living in town so she kept her opinion to herself. Besides, she and Devora were allies right now but the situation could shift any moment and she didn’t trust Devora not to throw her under the bus to save herself if necessary.
Around 2AM she heard a vehicle approaching the house, horn blaring and then the sound of someone running up the stairs shouting. Curious, apprehension growing in her mind, she and Devora ran to the foyer together.
Benjy Slocum was there, shouting. “Where in the seven hells is Jonny? I’ve been trying to get a hold of him for the last hour.”
“What’s the matter?” Tamsyn asked.
His eyes cut to her and he seemed relieved to find a person he knew. “Scouts report a big damn swarm of the fucking infected coming up route 12. We ain’t gonna be able to hold them without reinforcements and it may already be too late. I heard a lot of blasters as I drove away.”
“He and Lally went to his suite hours ago,” Tamsyn said, pointing at the stairs.
Benjy rushed past her, running up the stairs.
She followed and halfway up the huge staircase stopped for a second to draw the blaster from her boot.
When she got to the top and ran down the corridor, Benjy was pounding on the door, cursing.
He backed up a step and kicked the panel in with a violent splintering of wood.
Growling, Lally leaped at him, sinking her fangs into his chest and taking him to the floor at Tamsyn’s feet.
She retreated a step, firing her blaster at Lally at point blank range.
The shot obliterated the singer’s forehead and she slumped across her victim, black ichor oozing.
Without any hope, Tamsyn edged past the bodies to check on Jonny but one horrified glance was enough to tell her the story of what had transpired in the master suite over the last few hours.
Lally had obviously turned and Jonny had been no match for her.
Only the locked door had kept the infected singer from rampaging through the house.
A hand gripped her ankle and Tamsyn screamed, weapon at the ready, but it was Benjy. He was trying to speak so she knelt next to him.
“Evacuation procedure,” he forced out through gritted teeth even as the light in his eyes dimmed. “Buses out back—” His flaccid hand fell away from her ankle and his head slumped.
She checked for a pulse and there was none.
Rising she put a shot through his head in case he was going to turn before she spun on her heel and ran to the opposite end of the hallway, which had a view of the rear of the mansion where the loading dock was.
Sure enough three Rosewater school buses sat there in a line, pointing down the service road, which she knew came out on a fairly big road.
To get to the town proper a driver would have to go left and eventually they’d reach the main road, which she guessed was now clogged with infected.
If the person turned right they’d have a clear shot north.
Running downstairs so fast she was afraid she’d fall, she ignored the questions from those who’d waited and ran into the dining room where she found Lally’s bus driver groggy but awake. “Can you drive a school bus?” she demanded.
He eyed the blaster in her hand. “What is this, a joke? Of course I can.”
“Can you hotwire it if necessary?”
“Yeah.”
“The infected are coming,” she said simply.
“It’s time to evacuate this place. There are three school buses out back.
If you have anyone else here who can drive one, grab him, but get the hell out there.
I’m going to sound the alarm and I’m guessing there’ll be a mad panic so take as many as you can and then go, understand? ”
“What about Lally?”
“She turned and killed Jonny sometime during the night. She’s dead now —I shot her.”
He blinked but accepted the grim news without protest. “Where am I going?”
“North. There’s supposed to be a big refugee camp near Glastine. You’ll have to figure it out because there’s no damn time.” She dragged him out of his chair by the elbow and hustled him to the kitchen. “Out there, bus, go.”
Pivoting, she ran to the office, where there was a central com she knew would broadcast to the entire mansion and the grounds.
Old Mr. Fafield, Jonny’s father, had enjoyed issuing orders to his staff that way.
She stood behind the big desk and took a deep breath before activating the com.
She whistled sharply into it to get attention and then said in as calm a voice as she could manage, “This is not a drill. The infected are on their way from the barricade and you must evacuate. There are three buses out back waiting. Don’t try to save anything, just run.
Jonny’s dead and this place is over as a sanctuary. Run for your lives.”
Outside the office door she heard screams and the sounds of people running.
Straightening her spine she ventured into the chaos.
She tried to direct traffic in the hall, to get people to go to the service entrance where the buses were waiting but there was so much panic no one listened.
Abandoning the effort as useless, she went to check the kitchen, finding Devora huddled inside one of the big pantries.
She yanked the other woman out of the space and dragged her in the direction of the exit.
“The infected will find you in there and then you’re done for.
You’ve got to get on the damn bus and hurry.
I told the driver to leave as soon as he had enough people. ”
From the front of the house she heard blaster fire and the eerie moans and cries of the infected, signaling the swarm had arrived.
Moving faster, she got Devora outside, to see the first bus close its doors.
Moving fast, she and Devora ran to the vehicle, pausing on the way to grab a crying child sitting forlornly on the grass.
Tamsyn thrust the toddler into Devora’s arms. “Your job to take care of her now.” They got to the bus and Tamsyn pounded on the door.
The driver opened it and Tamsyn shoved Devora onto the first step.
As soon as she saw the other woman was safe, Tamsyn fought her way out of the queue of people struggling to get onto the bus behind Devora.
The driver closed the door, the hydraulics of the bus overcoming the resistance of the desperate people trying to get on.
He revved the engine and accelerated out of the yard. .
Tamsyn reached the corner of the house and spared a second to look back.
The first bus was well away and the second had begun to move.
She hoped they’d make it. The third was surrounded by infected and she feared the vehicle would be swamped.
She glanced at the blaster in her hand but it wouldn’t do any good against such a mob.
“May the Lords of Space protect you,” she said and she turned and fled.
She ran through the gardens, heading for another small service road, thanking her lucky stars she’d spent so much time here as a kid and then when dating Jonny.
There was no one else around and no infected either so she dropped to a jog as the stitch in her side got painful.
She tried to think and make a plan but her stress and anxiety were off the charts after the events of the day so far.
Once she was off the estate, she jogged and walked through the small subdivisions, going generally east and hoping to find a working vehicle.
Jonny and his team of scavengers had been too thorough, however, and nothing left on the street was operable. She couldn’t even find a bicycle.
Resolved to get home to the ranch in whatever manner she had to travel, even if on foot, she set a steady pace.
Behind her there was a giant explosion as something blew up at the Fafield estate .
Jonny had been hoarding all kinds of things and storing his loot haphazardly from what she’d seen.
Not surprisingly something got touched off in the battle between humans and the infected.
The concussion knocked her to the ground, causing her to skin her knees and hands.
Rising, she froze as two infected came around the corner of a house across the street.
Carefully she ducked behind a burned out hulk and drew her blaster but the creatures made off at their best lurching speed, going in the direction of the explosion.
Guessing she now had a small window of time when the area would be clear of the infected, Tamsyn hurried in her chosen direction, not stopping to clean her small injuries.
Eventually she entered the area where Sally had lived and her pace slowed as she thought of her friend and wished yet again she could have persuaded Sally to move out to the ranch sooner.
She could have left Greg a note…but no one was thinking too clearly these days and Sally would have always wondered if she’d missed Greg by not staying home as long as she did.
She’d have been alive though.
Tamsyn remembered a casual block party she’d attended with Sally and she altered her path toward a green and white house a few doors past Sally’s.
The owners, whose names escaped her—Lamar?
Cynthia?—had been unable to stop talking about their latest camping trip.
Apparently the couple was avid hikers and campers and had all kinds of equipment.
The door was unlocked and she entered cautiously, blaster at the ready.
There was thumping from a bedroom door at the rear of the house but Tamsyn forced herself to ignore the sound as she rushed to the kitchen, where she spent a few precious minutes cleaning her knees and palms and extracting the gravel which had gotten embedded.
There was a first aid kit in the pantry so she was able to put antibiotic ointment and bandages on the worst spots.
The cupboards were bare but she’d expected that, knowing how Jonny and his men had swept the whole town for anything useful.
Her goal was the garage and when she walked in, the lights came on to reveal a whole wall of sports and camping gear neatly arrayed.
“Jackpot,” she said under her breath.
Working fast, she grabbed a sturdy backpack and filled it with a one person tent, a couple of water bottles and a mini filtration kit, an emergency blanket, a powerful flashlight, a knife and other useful items. Jonny’s men must not have seen any value in the gear since they were living at the Fafield mansion.
In a big container at the end of the storage area she hit the mother load of survival rations and nutrition drink packs.
Cramming as many of those into the pack as she could, Tamsyn stuffed a couple in her jeans pockets to consume as she walked.
She left the house cautiously, going out the kitchen door and circling through the already overgrown backyard, checking the street before she resumed her hike.
She was healthy, strong and fit and she reckoned she could walk twenty miles a day so she’d get to the ranch in 4 or 5 days.
The distance was daunting but Tamsyn couldn’t see any other choice except to remain in town, dodging the infected and any remaining members of Jonny’s ragtag ‘army’, which she wasn’t about to do.
Her animals were depending on her to get home to them.
As she left the city limits sign behind, a grim smile on her lips as she reflected how out of date the population figure was now, Tamsyn straightened her spine and squared her shoulders to settle the pack and bedroll on her back more comfortably.
The road stretched out in front of her as desolate and empty as the land she’d be traveling through. If the swarm of infected came this way there’d be nowhere for her to hide and no escape.
“I don’t care,” she said out loud. “I’m going home and that’s all there is to it. I’ll get there or die trying.”
And Tamsyn took the first step outside the Rosewater city limits.