Tester and Tye growled, but with a look from Milly, dropped to their knees. “You’ve killed enough people today, haven’t you Tye?” Milly said. If he hadn’t provoked the man, Peter would still be alive.
A man wearing jungle camouflage head-to-toe emerged from the forest with the fanciest gun Milly had ever seen held before him. He leveled the weapon at each of them and examined Peter’s corpse. “Too bad you morons don’t understand English. I don’t like shooting clean folk.” He picked up Peter and Kat’s guns and put them in a bag and slung it over a shoulder. “I knew that little girl would lead me to something.” He looked around. “Say, where is that little thing with the long black hair?”
It was then that Milly noticed Hansa had slipped away again, and it made her happy on several levels. She was safer away from this nightmare, and it wouldn’t bother Milly one bit if she never laid eyes on the girl again. Hansa had inadvertently led this psycho to them and then disappeared as fast as she had reappeared. Perhaps the girl was bad luck.
A zombie sprang forward at Robin, but didn’t reach her. Their captor yelled and brandished a small black box. The monster screeched, and fell to the ground, thrashing about in pain just short of its prey. “You lost soul piece of shit,” the man said. “Been shocking that fuckwit for years and he still doesn’t get it. The dogs caught-on in a week.” The zapped viral stared at the man with cold hatred, slime and blood dripping from its mouth, eyes as big as bottle caps.
“I’m Sargent Maxwell, but my grunts call me Axe.” The man’s thick black beard hung to his chest, and it was beaded with gold and silver filled teeth. “These virus-ridden maggots are like owning wolves. Even with the juice collars. They’ll take a jolt to get a bite out of you.”
He approached Tester, who trembled with fury. “That your girl?”
Tester said nothing. Blood dripped from his clenched fists.
“You military?”
Tester said nothing and Axe moved on to Tye. “Big blackie. You were definitely military. A real thoroughbred. Might be racist but all that hard work slaving made you physically superior. Except in this case, I got this. My trusty M4 carbine.” Axe caressed the rifle.
“Little blackie and the Beaver,” he said to Jerome and Ingo, and moved on to Robin, who he sniffed, but continued on without saying anything. When he got to Milly, he stared as if in a dream. He reached out his hand and caressed her face with the back of his hand. Milly wept, tears leaking down her cheeks. Axe didn’t appear to notice as he examined her.
“Adaline,” Axe said. “Is it you?”
“Who is Adaline?” Milly said.
“My daughter. You…” He held out his hand again.
In her peripheral vision she saw Tye and Tester moving closer, but Axe lifted the rifle casually and fired a ribbon of bullets into the ground before them.
“Please don’t kill them,” Milly said. “Adaline doesn’t want you to.”
Axe swung the gun across his chest until it was pointed at Milly’s head. Tears streamed down Axe’s face, and his eyes burned like cinders. “What did you say?”
“Adaline wouldn’t want you to,” Milly said.
The slight modification appeased him, and Axe lowered the weapon. “You’re Adaline. Don’t mess with me Adie,” Axe said.
“Sorry,” Milly said.
Axe smiled. “Today is your lucky day assholes. Because my daughter Adaline wants you spared, you will live.” He pulled rope from his pack. “You, the tall one with the long greasy hippie hair. What’s your name?”
Nobody answered.
Axe brought up the M4 and pointed it at Tye.
“I’m Tester.”
“Well, Tester. Tie up your friends.”
Milly walked next to Axe, followed by Tye and the rest of the party who were strung together, wrists bound. They were surrounded by the forlorn souls of the infected, and their stench turned Milly’s stomach. At her insistence, Axe had agreed to allow four of the diseased to stay behind and bury Kat and Peter. Axe wanted to leave them to the birds, but had explained to the group that his daughter was kind hearted, even in a time when kind hearts got crushed. Once Axe was gone and the threat of shock no longer applied, her dead friends were probably hog chow, but what choice did she have? Axe had insisted she shouldn’t worry, and that he told his slaves he’d check, and they’d be shitting blood for a month from all the juice he’d put into them if they didn’t do as he’d asked. Milly didn’t think the half-dead people understood.
“Axe, I’m not…”
“Call me dad,” Axe said.
The man’s delusion was full on, but it seemed to calm him, make him less erratic. He hadn’t shot and killed anything since Milly had taken the starring role of Adaline. “Dad, can you let my friends go? Please? I’ll stay, but they need to go.”
“No,” Axe said. “Don’t mention it again. They’ll live in the old fort and I won’t hear no more about it. You wanted them alive. They’re alive, but they’re your responsibility. You’ve got to clean up after them. Get their food. It’s no picnic. You sure you want them?”
“I just want to go,” she pleaded. “Why can’t you let us do that? What do you want?”
“I want my daughter close, and if she needs pets, so be it. I can’t let your friends go because they’d try
