"No! Don't come near me. I'll shoot, I swear to God I will!" The hidden woman practically screamed her threat at Frances.
Frances looked at me and Jeff and rolled her eyes upward in exasperation. I waved a hand flat out in front of me and shook my head. She walked toward the aisles anyway. "Miss, I'm walking along the rows of shelves. Tell me when you can see me.”
Frances had placed herself in great danger, and I didn't like the risk she was taking. My right hand hovered near my Glock, and my palm and fingers tightened on the butt.
A light beam Frances threw lit the narrow walkway between two rows of books. "There you are," Frances said softly. "I'm going to lay my pistol on the floor so we can talk peacefully."
We all heard the thunk sound her Glock made as she squatted and gently tossed it onto the multi-colored commercial carpet. I slowly moved sideways to the end of the aisle Frances stood near and motioned for Jeff to join me. In an uncomfortable move for me, I raised my hand away from my handgun to reassure the frightened woman. The woman's head was all I could see in the shadows: dirty blonde hair, thin face, prominent cheek bones, and pale skin. She looked frightened and shifted her glances between the three of us.
The plaintive female voice whimpered, "Please leave me alone. I only came here to get books for my children. They have nothing else to entertain them, and they're sick of staying inside the house for months and months on end."
"I understand. Is there a group you and your children live with?" Frances asked.
"No. There's just the three of us. Please don't hurt me, my children need me."
"I promise we won't harm you. My name is Frances, what's your name."
The mousey blonde stepped to the center of the aisle. She was medium height and thin. Her right hand gripped a huge long-barreled, chrome revolver pointed in our general direction. "Lindy. Lindy Caruthers. My children are Barry and Carla."
I spoke, "Lindy, I'm Tom Jacobs. Would you and your children care to join us at our compound in Iowa? You'll be welcome there and safe. Your children could go outside and play and spend time with other kids. How old are they?"
"Barry is twelve, and Carla is eight."
"About half of our kids are in that age range. All nine are schooled by a certified teacher. Barry and Carla would join them in age appropriate subjects."
"How about it?" Frances asked again in a soft, friendly tone. "Do you want to come with us?" She turned her light on Jeff and I and then onto herself before shining back to Lindy."
Lindy's hand cannon pointed to the floor, and she sounded ten times more confident, "Yes. We would love to join you."
"Alright," I said, "give us an hour to explore the section with historical research volumes, and then we'll follow you home and get your things and Barry and Carla."
Lindy appeared cheerful and relieved. "We don't have much to take, so it won't take but minutes to pack. We do have a few cases of food to contribute. It's in our garage."
Two hours later, we loaded several more boxes of books into the SUV. Without further incident, we followed Lindy two miles to her house. She was armed with two revolvers, a .38 caliber and a long-barreled .45 caliber. She claimed she knew how to use them and was a fair shot. I figured she must be a capable shot, or she and her offspring couldn't have survived so long on their own.
The modest white clapboard house looked to be four or five rooms and stood in an older neighborhood. It sat off the street a hundred feet in a small thicket of pines.
Lindy parked her dented and faded green Subaru wagon on gravel beside the front porch steps. I pulled to the right behind her and stopped for Jeff to get out. He went with Lindy to get the kids and help pack. Quickly, I backed down a gravel driveway to a one-car garage attached to the house by a short glassed-in breezeway. The sun still shone through intermittent clouds and a slight breeze moved the pine branches lazily.
Frances and I stopped talking as the engine shut down. We exited the truck to get the supplies from the garage. Loud rough and tumble noises from inside the house preceded two large caliber gunshots. We looked at each other in shock and bewilderment and ran to the front of the house. Male and female screams poured out the open front door as we leaped to the porch decking. Inside the living room Jeff and Lindy were in the throes of death as their futile struggles ended a losing battle. A huge male zombie had overpowered Jeff and was ripping the back of his neck apart with its teeth. A whole-bodied female zombie lay in the middle of the room; it had been shot in the forehead. Lindy lay on her back with a male and two child zombies tearing at her body. The small zombies appeared to have been about eight and twelve. Lindy's screams subsided to feeble moans of pain and then she was silent.
Frances and I each shot the huge male and saw it flop forward on top of Jeff. At the sound of gunshots, the other male zombie and both children diverted their full attention from Lindy to us. All three turned to the source of fresh meat with their bloody maws chomping incessantly. Our handguns blasted again and again until the three undead were prone on the floor and unmoving.
We
