powerful zombie used less powerful ones as his eyes and ears. A paternal zombie could share some vision and sound with his minions, but that was always by choice.
'I don't suppose we could talk this out?' Red offered.
'That depends on what you want. You seem to be evading my only question.'
Again Red stopped talking. The pitchfork fell out of him as the weight of the handle dragged the tines out of his back. Red absently kicked the tool to the side of the barn and answered, 'It's not that I don't want to answer, I just don't really know.'
'Well what brings you here? Why aren't you heading east like all the others?'
Red's quiet laughter greeted the man's questions, 'Why would I do that? You already know I am a leader in this mess, not a follower and what is going down out east is not to my taste. I was slowing it down, trying to give the people there time to prepare their defenses against the coming wave.'
'Why'd you stop? You could still be there now, doing whatever you were doing.'
'I ran into a force more powerful than myself. I lost my friends. They worked with me, helping as best they could. They weren't as strong as me, but we had a plan. Another zombie showed up while I was taking care of…a friend. By the time I got back one of my companions was dead, the other was dominated, and I was outmatched.'
'That so? Sorry if I don't seem so gullible, but not many of us help out the living.'
'Aren't your rifling my brain right now?' Red asked. He had felt like something was going through his head, sorting out his thoughts as he stood there. Almost immediately he felt the presence withdraw.
'It's not like that.'
Red nodded to his unseen companion and said, 'Sure it isn't buddy.'
'I can't really go through your mind, I was just trying to see if you were lying to me.'
'And?'
'I don't think you were. You felt offended when I implied you were lying.'
'Does that mean we can talk?'
'Yeah. Don't kill him V.'
Red carefully looked around and saw a young woman in the loft, she had a shotgun pointed at him and what looked like a broken off blade from a paper cutter tucked into her belt. She was standing less than twenty feet away. Nodding to her, Red raised his hands and stepped out into the courtyard.
'So, I can't read you, but that only means you're more powerful than we are.'
'You got that bit about the fish.'
The large man on the porch had a rifle, he lowered it while laughing, 'You know what I got? I saw an image of a fish, swimming out of your fingers.'
'Well it's good to know my secrets are safe. Or are you lying to spare my feelings?'
'I wouldn't do that to you. What's your name?'
'Red.'
'Jimbo. The boy is Bobby and the woman is Veronica.'
'Jimbo sounds like a name from my part of the country. Is it a nickname?'
Jimbo nodded, 'Yeah, it got hung on me after I came back. I don't like it, but I keep it.'
'So you won't forget where you came from?'
'Something like that. To keep me humble.'
'Did Veronica hang it on you?'
'No, she, well, her and I share a 'mother'.'
'Oh? Where's mom?' asked Red looking towards the house.
'That bitch is dead. I killed her myself; I take care of my own shit jobs.'
'What about the boy? He yours or did he come after?'
'Mine, but he came after. I wasn't thinking too clear about things back then or I would never have done that to a kid.'
Red lowered his hands and brushed off his sleeves, looking at the blood stains on his shirt, 'I'm not in any place to judge you. You know that.'
Jimbo looked him up and down again and said, 'Well, you'd best come into the house. Then Veronica and I can hear your story out of the sun.'
The heat didn't bother Red, but standing around talking in the dust swept driveway seemed uncivilized so he followed Jimbo into the house.
'So this isn't your place then?' he asked as they went inside.
'No. We came up from Denver and stopped here a couple weeks ago. The animals were about dead and we'd all seen enough of killing to last us awhile so we started taking care of them. The power went out ten days ago, but this place has an old fashioned water pump right alongside the faucet in the barnyard. Now we're farmers. I don't know what we will do when the grain runs out.'
'Kill them?'
'I hope not. We found a few books on 'Country Living' the next house over, it looked like wanna-be farmers lived there. The books are a good start.'
The men moved into the kitchen, which struck Red as the most natural thing to do. They sat down at the utilitarian Formica table. A moment later the young woman from the barn came in. She didn't put her gun down like Jimbo did; she kept it nestled in the crook of her arm, a threat not lost on Red.
'So, you got whipped and ran huh?'
'No, I…well, it didn't come to a fight. I could just feel him and knew he could kill me. Hell he coulda dominated me, maybe. And he had a few friends.'
'That sucks. Why'd you come here?'
'I was following the highway and decided I didn't want to deal with any crap in Cheyenne, so I set out across country and ended up here.'
Jimbo chuckled. 'As good a reason as any. What are you going to do with yourself?'
'I don't know.'
'Okay, let me rephrase that, what do you want to do?'
'I want to go back there and kill the son of a bitch who killed my friend.'
Jimbo's eyebrow rose, 'You haven't seen enough killing?'
'One more won't make much difference.'
Both men stared at each other for a moment in silence. Red didn't feel the other man pressing against his head and he refrained from trying any form of mental push as well.
Finally, Jimbo nodded, 'You know I could help you.'
'Jimbo!' the woman spoke for the first time, in a sharp voice.
'Ah, Veronica, why do you think everyone who comes along is out to get us? The Nancys of the world are few and far between.'
'Your mother?'
Jimbo nodded, 'Yes. You're not the first super zombie we've run into after killing her. You're the first one we haven't successfully put down.'
'You haven't seen enough killing?'
Jimbo laughed, 'Touche. We think of it more as self-preservation. Besides you're the first one who offered to talk to us. It's the god damned wind, it threw my shot off, otherwise we'd be digging you a new spot in the garden out back.'
'That's cold.'
Outside they heard a boy's laughter, followed by some barking. Together they rose and peered out the window into the yard, where Bobby and Reilly were running around a tree in the long grass.
'That's the first time the boy's done anything but play his damned video games since we got here.'
'I thought the power was off?'
'Shit. Veronica, he is going to get all our secrets out of us with my big mouth. The power is off, but there is a generator in the garage. We don't need the major appliances, but having the video games for the boy and lights at night is pretty nice.'
