“He’ll be dead. That won’t matter.”
“I don’t think we’ll be here long anyway.”
The noises of passion ceased. Jocelyn left the card players’ conversation, contemplating what the one guy had said. Packs of eight at most? That jibed with how she couldn’t control more than seven. She must be the eighth.
Quickly, she looked through the rest of the store and counted ten more survivalists, including four guarding the front. The other six were busy filling bags with food and other items, including one clearing out the pharmacy.
She went back to the break room one last time to observe her sword and what was around it. It simply leaned against the wall, hilt up, tip down, in its scabbard on her shoulder holster.
“Brooke, we’ll leave soon, probably as early as later this afternoon,” the large man said as he put his pants on.
Brooke stopped in the middle of putting her bra on. “Where’re we headed to next, Ollie?”
“Back to the ranch. I expect the zombie attacks to get worse and don’t like the risk.”
Later this afternoon? To this ‘ranch?’ Probably much more defensible than this.
“We should have looted this place sooner.”
“Hindsight, my dear. There was a group here before us. We didn’t know what firepower they possessed, and we didn’t want to risk a fight.”
“But now we need to deal with zombies,” Brooke pointed out.
“Lamar thinks it’s now or never. Again, hindsight. Hopefully, we can clear out soon.” Ollie looked at his watch. “The van will be back in about ten minutes, depending on how long they took to unload.” He winked at her. “Meanwhile, I gave a few of us a much needed break but play time is over.”
Maybe they’d leave her sword behind, but if they didn’t, it would be very difficult to attack them on their way to their destination. Certainly not at their ranch.
And so, a plan was forming in her head. But it required getting a new van. Hopefully, the survivalists, or any other survivors, hadn’t looted the rental car place of its vans. She left the supermarket, and Willed herself to the rental car place. She could have “walked” there, but that would have taken up a lot of precious time. Instead, she appeared there instantaneously, which she could do when traveling to objects or people or places familiar enough to her.
There were still some vans left.
Jocelyn exited the safe room, and Clarence locked the door behind her.
To attack with the element of surprise, she would need a van to hold all of her draugar.
The draugar inside the finished basement slept scattered on the wall-to-wall carpet. The draugar stench permeated the room and she retched. She pulled Clarence’s zipped leather jacket over her nose. It seemed she would never get used to that odor and she guessed it would linger like cigarette stink long after the draugar had left. It wouldn’t surprise her to find that the odor had embedded itself into the walls.
She still felt the tingling, her bond to them, even as they slept. She commanded them to wake up and march upstairs ahead of her and that succeeded.
It was a clear day—it would warm up, she reasoned, into the sixties. But now it was morning and cold. She retrieved Clarence’s shotgun from the back yard and ventured forth onto the road.
Jocelyn trailed her draugar pack fifty yards as they walked north toward the rental car place. Although she saw none, she sensed draugar in her path, and she bonded with another pack further to the north, who were walking south toward her. Her original pack kept marching forwards, either aware of her and still not attacking, or, more likely, they just didn’t realize she was there. As a test, she called out, “Over here!” to the draugar. They turned around, spotted her by sight, and rushed toward her. So, they had no way to believe she was a draugar without being bonded.
Did they ever run out of energy?
She re-connected with her original draugar pack, the ones running at her now. She commanded them to turn around and march back north. They obeyed. She sensed the draugar pack to the north still walking, not running away from her, and reasoned that without a line of sight (or perhaps outside the range of scent) they did not understand there was a healthy human at her location.
She still sensed all the surrounding draugar within her range. There was one other pack to the east. Although she didn’t have to worry much about them, she ordered them to march east. Then she re-bonded with her original draugar pack.
To protect her from frightened or marauding humans, she ordered the draugar to form a tight ring around her. This traded one danger for another, as her draugar would attack once she broke the bond.
She wanted to test this, too, because she would need to break her connection with them continually to order other draugar to leave her “bubble.” She broke off the connection with the draugar surrounding her, and immediately some bared their teeth and hissed, while others snarled, and they rushed toward her.
And she had trouble re-establishing the connection.
Unable to raise her shotgun in time, a draugar grabbed her head and threw her down onto the ground, knocking the gun out of her hand. Her warrior training kicked in and she kept her head up and slapped her hands against the asphalt. Now she was disoriented, and it was impossible to concentrate. But she focused her mind as the draugar was jumping on her. In mid-air, she re-established the connection and ordered them all to stop attacking. The draugar landed on her with a thud, and the connection was broken yet again.
She fully expected the draugar to either grab or pummel her head, and she closed her eyes and waited for the blow. But before the blow landed, she was able to re-establish the connection, and she was instinctively willing the attack not to
