“He’s worse,” Logan quickly responded. “Besides, I have it on good authority you snore too.”
Priss glared at Logan. “That is a bullshit lie.”
Logan shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’ve seen a video.”
Priss’s jaw dropped and she fixed a stare on her boyfriend. “You recorded me? And showed it to your brother?” After a moment she punched him on the arm.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she huffed.
Logan laughed gleefully as Priss punched Liam again.
“I didn’t see Zach’s tractor-trailer rig anywhere,” Liam said, hoping to change the subject. “But that doesn’t mean anything. If Zach is nearby, I have no doubt he’d hide it where it won’t be found.” He glanced over at Priss, who did not appear to be ready to hit him again. “How’d it look inside?”
Priss shrugged. “It’s quaint but nice. And spotless. She showed me the baby’s room too. It’s nice. I didn’t see anything that would indicate anyone else has been living with them.” She looked at the two brothers. “That’s probably why Fred sent me inside. That way I can report back to my dad that nobody else was living there.”
Logan chuckled. “Yeah, probably.” Liam grunted in agreement. “So, we’re going to retrieve the bodies and maybe have a look around since there’s no way we’ll get back to Weather before sundown.”
“I think we should probably have a baby,” Priss suddenly blurted out.
Liam’s eyes widened in surprise. Logan was about to make a smartassed remark, but Grace had said the same thing a couple of nights ago. He knew how his brother was feeling at the moment. They travelled a slow mile before Liam spoke again.
“What was that one big gal’s name? Zelda or something?” Liam asked.
“Yeah, that big corn-fed girl,” Logan added. “Zena, or something like that.”
“Zelida,” Priss corrected.
“Yeah, that’s her name. According to Roscoe, when they left Marcus Hook, Zelida was driving and her daughter was riding in back with the other woman,” Liam said. “She was a homely gal. Tortellini or something like that.”
“Tatiana,” Priss corrected.
“Yeah, that’s it. I remember Zulu during firearms training. She was a decent shot.”
“Zelida, dumbass,” Priss corrected. “She could swing a bat too. That time last year when we were scouting in Lancaster and those zeds attacked, I saw her take out four of them with a baseball bat. She wasn’t a pussy. The rest of them talked a lot of trash, but they depended on others to keep them alive. Zelida could handle herself.”
“So, she’s driving, but they stop the van,” Liam states. “We’re not certain, but most likely they see someone they know and are not wary of.”
“That’d leave out Zach or Fred,” Priss said.
“Most definitely,” Logan said. “Rochelle despised Zach.”
“Despised. Good word, brother,” Liam said. “And if they despised Zach, they’d naturally despise anyone who was close to Zach, like Fred.”
“The same would go for strangers. If they stopped for strangers, Zelida would be on guard and ready to shoot,” Logan said. “She’d warn the others too.”
The three of them agreed that this was a targeted attack, and they speculated who may have done it and who may have conspired to have it done. Their analysis of the facts and circumstances convinced them the perpetrators were people they knew and were not afraid of. That would mean it would have to be someone from Mount Weather, Marcus Hook, or someone living in one of the nearby communities.
It was a little before noon when they arrived at the location of the burned house. The van was still there, undisturbed, as were the bodies.
“How did Fred find them here?” Priss asked.
Liam repeated Fred’s explanation of the reason he took it upon himself to search for them and how he found them. They made a cursory inspection of the bodies ensuring nothing had changed before rewrapping them and loading them into the back of the truck. It wasn’t difficult; the bodies, what was left of them, were frozen stiff and could be easily manhandled by the brothers.
They then drove back to the area on the road where Fred believed they were ambushed and parked. It was now a little after noon and the three of them were hungry, so they elected to have lunch before searching the area. Their meal consisted of cured ham, butter beans, and cornbread, which had all been packed in plastic food containers. They sat in the cab of the heavy truck and ate. There was no talking now. They ate and scanned the area. It was second nature now, even while eating. Logan had his window slightly open to listen for any sounds, but the only noise came from the truck’s heater.
When they were finished, Priss and Liam began searching the area while Logan cleaned the plasticware with snow. Storing the items, he started searching in the opposite direction that Liam and Priss had walked. This went on for an hour. During that time, they discovered no evidence, nothing that might aid them in their investigation. Logan had walked a couple of hundred yards down the roadway. He turned back to see Priss and his brother looking at a derelict automobile, an SUV that had been wrecked long ago.
There were cars and trucks everywhere. Most, if not all, had been searched of anything valuable. Logan did a slow three-sixty. There were a mixture of commercial businesses and residential neighborhoods in this area. As far as he knew, there was nobody living nearby. There were certainly no footprints or recent tire tracks indicating human activity. He hadn’t seen any indications of zeds either. If there weren’t any food sources, they tended to wander. The latest intelligence seemed to indicate most, if not all, zeds in this area had left. There was speculation that once patient Eve and her baby had escaped, they had fled to somewhere where they wouldn’t be hunted by the humans. Nobody seemed to know where they were though.
Logan
