As he stood outside the tent, Jon scanned the camp. It was pitch dark, all but for a couple of lanterns lit near the front gate. He moved carefully toward the camp entrance, making as little noise as possible in case anyone loitered outside.
He spotted his bike sitting under a carport to his right. He would get it, but he needed to take care of the guard at the gate first.
A man who Jon had only briefly seen around the camp stood at the gate. Jon guessed he was in his late 20s. The man was a little bit shorter than Jon, though around the same weight.
The guard stood at the broken gate with his back facing the camp. He’d been instructed to alert the camp of any intruders by ringing a bell that had been fashioned for such warnings. Jon crept up on him, moving across the dirt carefully so as not to get his attention. He moved so quietly that he could hear the man breathe as he arrived behind him. But his boots crunching the dirt finally caught his attention.
“Huh?”
Before the guard could turn around, Jon wrapped his arms around his neck. Using his right hand, he covered the man’s mouth so he couldn’t scream.
“Where’s the Vultures’ camp?” Jon asked. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth so you can answer me. Do not scream.”
Once Jon removed his hand, the guard breathed heavily.
“I-I’ve only been up there once. But if I remember right, you just take the highway up to Duncan Road. Drive down a little ways, and you’ll eventually come to the camp. Trust me, you can’t miss it. Why? What are you doing?”
“That’s not important. What is important is that you pretend like you never saw me. Don’t go run and tell the others that I left. It’s for their own good, and yours. You got that?”
Breathing heavily, the kid said, “Yes.”
Jon then let him go, and the guard stood up straight. He massaged his neck, finding oxygen with deep breaths.
Jon hurried over to the carport, still trying to be somewhat quiet but less careful than he’d been before. He grabbed the handles of the bike and rolled it over to the gate. He looked into the guard’s eyes as the kid continued to rub his neck.
“Do the right thing,” Jon said. “Keep guard here, and don’t say anything.”
Then he continued out of the camp.
Jon waited until he was about a hundred yards from Hope’s Dawn before getting on the bike. He took one last look back at the camp encased in darkness before starting the bike. The engine roared to life and he sped away, kicking dirt up behind him as Hope’s Dawn became nothing but a memory fading in the distance.
Jon basked in the silence of the barren dusk, the sun only now starting to come up. The wind hit his face as he turned onto Duncan Road, and all he heard was the sound of his bike. The ride to the Vultures’ camp wasn’t a long one, but for Jon, it felt like he was riding across the entire state of Tennessee.
Somehow, he found a way to be in the moment. To enjoy the peace all around him. No zombies lumbered near the road, either, allowing him to pretend for these moments that they didn’t exist at all. He didn’t think about Hope’s Dawn or Brooke. He simply lived in the moment.
That sensation faded when he spotted the gate of the camp ahead of him.
Keeping the same speed, Jon continued toward the camp. A ten-foot-high gate guarded the settlement with barbed-wire stretching across the top of it. Posted outside were wooden signs with warnings like “Keep Out” and “We Will Fucking Shoot You” written in red paint.
Jon came within ten yards of the gate and stopped the bike. A balding man wearing camouflage pants and a gray t-shirt stood on the other side with a shotgun pointing through the chain-link fence.
“Don’t you fucking move!”
It wasn’t as if it mattered if the man shot him at this point. He’d be dead anyway. The guard would regret it more once Judah found out who he had shot, pissed that he hadn’t kept Jon alive. Jon calmly put his hands in the air.
“I’m here to see Judah,” Jon said.
The guard scoffed. “No one sees Judah, you fucking prick.”
“Yeah, well, something tells me that he’ll want to see me.”
The man on the other side of the gate tilted his head. He smiled, one of his top front teeth missing.
“You’re the Savage.”
Jon said nothing, remaining on his bike with his hands still in the air. The guard laughed.
“Holy shit! Ah man, Judah is going to be so happy to see you!”
The guard turned around and yelled to some others in the camp. Two other men approached the gate and the guard explained who Jon was. They all smiled as they opened the gate and approached the bike, the guard’s shotgun still aimed at Jon’s forehead.
“You better not try a goddamn thing, or I swear to fuck that I’ll blow your brains out.”
“I’m not gonna do shit,” Jon said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The two other men went behind Jon, yanking his hands down and binding them together with a zip-tie. They then pulled him up, making him stand and nearly knocking his bike over in the process.
The toothless guard lowered the shotgun and moved into Jon’s personal space. He smiled, emitting a deathly odor into the air from his breath. It didn’t faze Jon.
“Let’s go show the boss who we’ve got, boys.”
31
Jon kept his head high as the three men led him through the camp. He didn’t want any of these assholes thinking he was scared. Several of the bastards had come outside of their homes and work sheds to watch him march through their settlement, his hands bound behind his back. He didn’t look any of them in the face, keeping his eyes forward, but
