All the bad men had funny drawings on their foreheads.
“Charming!” Emily called as his head hit the ground.
“He can’t hear you, miss,” said one of the bad men. “He’s too busy dying.” He laughed and the rest of the bad men laughed along with him.
Was he really dying? Was her savior dying? That’s not how the fairytale was supposed to go.
But this was no fairytale. This was not pretend anymore.
She noticed she was absent-mindedly scratching around her bandaged arm wound. She stopped as she remembered Janice had told her not to do it, especially when others were around. She should keep her wound covered in public. Because people shouldn’t know that she might become a zombie.
It still throbbed in pain.
Nobody was helping Charming! She ran toward him. Someone needs to help him! She heard someone say, “Let her go.”
But she didn’t know what to do. She asked him a few times if he was dead. He didn’t respond. She shook him a few times, but he just wouldn’t wake up.
“Help him!” she cried to the others. “Somebody please make him not dead!”
Dead. Like her brother, her father, and her mother.
She looked at Janice, who was doing nothing. “Ms. Fernley! Make him not die! You need to stop everyone from dying!”
“Please, let me go to him,” Janice begged one of the bad men.
“He’s dead already,” said a bad man.
“You have to let me help him,” Janice said as she nodded in Emily’s direction.
“Sorry lady,” said another of the bad men. “Only the kid. And he’s dead anyway.”
No!
Vin still had his gun, and Emily stared at it. It was right there in a holster at his side.
“Don’t think about it, little lady. You’ll be dead before you have a chance to raise it.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Day Nine
Jocelyn lay face-down on the ground, not moving at all. Alexander wondered if Jocelyn was actually dead. If she wasn’t, she was either unconscious or doing a good job of faking. He hoped everyone in the group had sense enough not to check on her. Could she survive a gunshot wound to the head? It would stand to reason she could, if she possessed the healing powers of the zombies.
Vin was most likely dying, and although he also lay face down on the road, his stomach obscured his right hand. Could he also be faking it while staunching the bleeding with his hand?
Emily hugged Vin. Alexander hoped she didn’t hug him so hard that she squeezed any blood out of him.
And would the neo-Nazis kill them all, anyway?
Alexander could tell they were neo-Nazis because they all had unprofessional, sloppy swastika tattoos on their foreheads, with various lines around them, below their shaved heads. They were white men, wearing jeans and t-shirts, in their twenties and thirties, except for the one who had let Emily go, who was older. He looked around. “Corporal Brien, where is Private Spearman?” he asked.
One man, whose swastika was decorated with a horizontal line on top and then a vertical line on the right crossed by two horizontal lines, and looked to be in his thirties, said, “Private Spearman is dead, Captain.”
“Shit,” the Captain, the one in his forties, said. “We’ll take his body back.” He smirked. “We can put him in a back seat with the woman and child.”
“Are we killing any of them, Captain?” Brien asked.
“No.” He pointed to Jocelyn and Vin. “Leave these two to rot and die. The rest are slaves and should be addressed as ‘Slave.’” The last part he said while turning his head around, clearly announcing this to everyone.
“And the van?”
“Loot it and leave it. It won’t be of any use. Who knows what kind of shape it’s in? And without Spearman, there’s no one to drive it.”
Alexander said, “I can drive a car.”
“What’s your name?” The Captain asked.
“Alexander Williams, Captain.”
“You will not address me that way, Slave Williams. You will use ‘Slave’ when referring to another slave when in the presence of a non-slave, and you will use ‘Sir’ when addressing non-slaves. Except everyone addresses The Führer as ‘Führer’ or ‘Mein Führer’” He raised an eyebrow. “Understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” Alexander said.
The Captain gave a broad smile. “That goes for the rest of you slaves. A bar underneath the swastika indicates a slave. Anything without one is not a slave, understood?”
No one said anything. “Good, let’s get moving. Cuff the slaves. And no, Slave Williams, you won’t drive.”
While they looted the van, Brien said, “There’s a cat in a carrier here, Captain.”
“We don’t need no cats. Leave it to starve.”
“But, Captain, we could eat it?”
The Captain got a disgusted look on his face. “I don’t think we’re that desperate yet.”
When they had finished their looting, Alexander noted they never found Jocelyn’s sword underneath the middle seat.
Marty was a dead man if they ever identified him as a county sheriff. Handcuffed and riding in the Colfax County Sheriff’s car, Marty sat next to Alexander, also in handcuffs, in the back seat.
He hoped most of the six thousand Colfax Country prisoners perished, but he realized that a prison was probably one of the safest places to be when the apocalypse occurred.
The car reeked inside of pot smoke, though no one was smoking. They were privileged enough to be driven by the Captain.
Marty leaned over to Alexander next to him and whispered in his ear, “I’m not a sheriff.” Alexander nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Where are you taking us?” Marty said aloud.
“Where are you taking us, Sir?” the Captain corrected.
“I’m sorry, where are you taking us, Sir?”
“To the Führer. He’ll want to talk to you, seeing as how you’re the first people we’ve met outside of the valley.”
“How many remain in the valley, Sir?”
“I’ll leave that information for the Führer to give, if he wants to.”
“How are you dealing with the zombies? Um . . . Sir?” Alexander asked.
“Zombies, eh? That’s a good word for ‘em.
