“At least they took our Vienna sausages, so we’ll have plenty to eat.” Drew said smiling at the face Yue made.
Chapter 33: Story Time
LeBron was taken away first thing in the morning. Drew and Yue watched with dread as their younger brother followed Blaze out the open back doors of the truck and disappeared around the side. A few minutes later the doors were shut and sealed from the inside. They felt the shudder of the engines starting as the truck came to life. Charani had them sit down on a couple of crates in front of a plush leather recliner. Charani sat in the recliner and looked at them both.
“Either of you have any special talents or skills? Hobbies we should know about? Medical problems or anything like that?” She asked them.
“I was a waitress going to college and my brother’s an athlete.” Yue answered.
“I like working with wood.” Drew added. Charani didn’t look impressed.
“Have either of you killed anyone?” Charani asked with a bored expression. Her eyes lit up and she leaned forward attentively when Drew and Yue exchanged a guilty glance.
“We’ve both killed the infected. Our dad was a cop and a soldier before that. He taught all three of us to shoot.” Yue finally answered. Charani could tell there was more but chose not to go down that path quite yet.
“Being able to shoot is a good thing. For the next little bit, I want you to use your listening skills. Feel free to ask me questions. I won’t bite. We have nothing to do today while we bounce around in the back of the vardo. Unless the ringmaster sees another bright yellow Hummer that he wants.”
Charani was a born storyteller. She spent the next hour patiently answering their questions while filling them in on what was going on with the strangely painted trucks. The trucks that the clan called vardo. They weren’t a real gypsy clan. Like she’d mentioned before they were more of a sideshow. Blaze was the majority owner and the manager of the group. Depending on who they were negotiating with he was called a ringmaster, CEO or a Gypsy king. Whatever title got them to the most money the fastest was what he was.
The clan mostly called him Blaze now. He’d answer to pretty much any honorific you wanted to throw out there. As would most of the clan or troupe or whatever you wanted to call them. They were all multifaceted actors ready to pretend to be a wandering group of the Rom or a small circus as needed. They’d mostly played large music festivals as a sideshow. They regularly had people flying back and forth to Vegas doing different acts like juggling, magicians, cat shows, mentalism and the like. They also got calls to do private shows for the rich. Those could get a little risqué but also brought in some pretty big dollars.
Vardo was the gypsy word for a wagon. Blaze had adopted it to mean their trucks. He enjoyed taking aspects of the Rom and the circus and blending them into a semi-secret language only the clan could follow. Each vardo had a leader. Blaze was the leader for the first vardo and Charani was the leader of the vardo they were currently riding in. Harley was the name of the giant muscular dude riding with them. He actually owned the second vardo. It was stuffed with supplies not people, so he chose to ride with Charani instead.
The clan had been in New Orleans when the news came that the crawlerz were coming up through Central America. At first, they hadn’t taken it seriously. Enough of them had relatives scattered across the world that pretty soon they couldn’t just ignore it anymore. They’d loaded up the full caravan minus anyone who had some other home worth going back to. They’d set out with seven fully loaded trucks. A flotilla of smaller vehicles kept pace. Blaze had taken them all to a remote campground to setup and see what happened. They’d thought they had plenty of time.
When they tried to leave the state, they were turned back twice by state troopers heavily reinforced by the military. Reading the signs based on the news blackouts and talking to their contacts Blaze knew they had to either get out or find a solid place to hide. The remote campground they were in had seemed good enough. Good enough hadn’t cut it. They’d been there a week longer than Blaze had hoped they’d be. They’d been fairly silent the whole time. With that many flamboyant personalities wandering the site it was impossible to keep the noise level too moderated though. Not that it was just noise that attracted the crawlerz.
They’d come an hour after sunset. Just a few of the crazy fast homicidal freaks. That’d been all it took to wipe out a third of the clan. Screams and gunfire had ripped through the night. Everyone panicked and ran around shooting and screaming. Charani remembered seeing a guy who made Harley look small get his head twisted around so far that he was looking backward before falling dead to the ground. The crawler that’d done it was a ten-year-old girl.
“I still remember how her eyes bored into me. I lost all my nerve. My knees turned to water and I slammed the back of the truck closed and locked it. I heard some people screaming outside but I never opened the door until the next morning.” Charani said. She paused then to stare off above their heads. Yue and Drew waited respectfully for her to come back to them. They both knew about that horrifying soul baring gaze the
