Crusade (Eden Book 2) Read online

  “Okay, Clinton,” Damar said. “So what exactly is your fuckin’ point?”

  “Zombies man.” Steve shook his head. “They’re killing my sex life.”

  “This is a Smith and Wesson revolver, Nelson.” Eva dumped the cylinder in her hand and snapped it back into place then passed the hand gun to her nephew. “It’s called a Lady Smith but don’t let the name fool you. It’ll kill a zombie or a man just as good as any other weapon.”

  He took the gun and looked at it, somewhat in awe. It wasn’t as heavy as he’d thought it would be.

  “This part is called the grip. Wrap your hand around it. Like that. Your index finger goes in there. Like that. Now squeeze the trigger—don’t worry, it’s not loaded. No, squeeze, don’t jerk it. You want to be smooth. Try it again. Good. Smooth. Again. Nice.

  “See this thing that turns each time you squeeze the trigger? That’s the cylinder.”

  “That’s where the bullets go?”

  “That’s where the bullets go.” Aunt Eva nodded and smiled in approval. “There’s two ways to fire this. You can squeeze the trigger and—”she nodded and the boy squeezed the trigger, the hammer falling on an empty chamber, a loud Click—“boom. Or you can cock the hammer back like this—this is the hammer. Pull it back like that and it’s ready to fire. All it’ll need is a little pull and—”

  “I thought you said don’t pull the trigger?”

  “You’re right. I meant to say squeeze the trigger. Anyway squeeze the—good. Did you see how easy that was?”

  “Yes, Aunt Eva.”

  “Good. Now these are bullets. This gun you have in your hand, its capable of firing three-fifty-seven bullets and these. These are thirty-eights.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The power. A three-fifty-seven is a lot more powerful than a thirty-eight. But you know what? It doesn’t matter to a zombie. A thirty-eight is good enough.”

  Nelson smiled, though he watched the approaching zombie warily.

  “Don’t worry about him, baby.” Eva showed him how to open the cylinder. “Okay, these go in this way first, all right? Go ahead, baby, load the pistol. Keep the barrel facing down and away from anybody. That’s right, good. This revolver only holds five bullets, so you need to keep track of how many bullets you fire, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, now close it like this and keep it down because, now, if you pull—I mean squeeze—the trigger, it’ll fire.”

  Eva looked up and judged the zombie’s distance from them.

  “Okay, baby, in a minute you’re going to get a chance to use this revolver. How’s that sound to you?”

  “Cool!” Nelson looked happy.

  “Two things. One, you can’t think of these things as people. Because they’re not people.”

  “But they were people, right?”

  “Right. They were people. But not anymore. And we shoot them because if we don’t—”

  “—because if we don’t they’ll eat mommy and Nicole and Victor and Aunt Eva and Maurice and Damar and even Steve, right?”

  “Right. Now, maybe we wouldn’t miss Steve,” Eva and the boy laughed, though her nephew’s laugh was somewhat nervous now the zombie was almost upon them, “but we don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone else, right? Even Steve.”

  “Right.”

  “Good.” She stood and took up the five foot animal control pole with both hands. “Stand here and keep the gun pointed down until I call you over.”

  “Okay, Aunt Eva.”

  She strode over to the zombie and hooked the loop of the animal control pole around its head. The beast groaned and reached for the loop but clawed at it futilely. It tried to walk forward but she held it in place, her firm grip of the pole keeping the thing at bay.

  “Come over here and stand next to me. Don’t be afraid. It isn’t going to hurt us.”

  Nelson went and stood next to his aunt. She had told him to keep the gun aimed muzzle down, but he had seen guns fired and wanted to aim it at the creature struggling at the end of the pole.

  “Do you know what a recoil is Nelson?”

  “Hey, watch this,” Steve said to Maurice as Damar walked back to the jeep. Damar had taken a piss on the other side of the road where the boy and his aunt couldn’t see him. “Shake my hand.” Steve offered his hand to Damar.

  “Why?” Damar raised an eye-brow.

  “Just trust me.”

  Damar shook Steve’s hand.

  “Okay. What?”

  Steve smiled. “Smell your hand.”

  “You son of a –”

  “Guys,” Maurice said.

  “What’d you do?” Damar stood looking at his hand, holding it out away from his body.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothin’ much. I just touched myself is all.”

  “Where’d you touch yourself, nigga?”

  “Behind my balls. Been a long, hot day. Smells like vinegar.”

  Maurice looked like he was going to vomit.

  “Well then, I don’t feel so bad,” Damar said as he forgot about his hand and got back into the jeep.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Cause I just dropped a dooky and wiped my ass with my hand.”

  If he thought he could shock Steve he was wrong. The driver raised his own hand to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Ahhhh…”

  There was a single gunshot and all three looked to the woman and boy off on the side of the road. A zombie lay twitching in the grass, head shot. Eva walked over to it and stomped on the thing’s head with her boot until it stopped moving.

  “Man,” Steve said. “If there’s one thing I can appreciate it’s a hot broad who can kill zombies. Why does she have to play for the other team?”

  “Don’t let her hear you talkin’ like that,” Damar said. “She’ll kick your ass.”

  “I wish.” Steve studied his nose hairs in the rear view mirror.

  “Here, trim those bad boys bro.” Damar handed him the surgical scissors from the pocket of his camouflage cargo pants.

  Steve thanked him and started snipping at the longer hairs sprouting from his nostrils. Maurice had to look away and put his hand over his mouth as he laughed.

  “Man’s gotta keep himself lookin’ GQ,” Damar said. “If he’s gonna see four hundred and twelve”

  “Five hundred and twenty eight,” corrected Steve.

  “You a playa.”

  “I’m not a playa.” Steve concentrated on his nose. “I just fuck a lot.”

  “Somewhere out there,” Maurice said, “there’s a fat motherfuckin’ rapper rollin’ over in his grave.”

  “What are you talking about, Mo?” Steve squinted through his shades in the rear view mirror as he trimmed his nose hair. “Fat Joe still alive. I think.”

  “Fat Joe?”

  “You were quoting Big Pun, Steve-O,” Damar said, “not Joey Crack.”

  “Nah, man, that was a Fat Joe joint.”

  “Look, Steve.” Damar exhaled. “Don’t no white man try and lecture the black man on rap.”

  “Oh, what? Cause I’m white I can’t like rap music?”

  “Nah, nigga, you can like you your Eminem, your Third Base. Hell, I’ll even grant you Vanilla Ice.”

  “Vanilla Ice?”

  “Yeah, now please just shut the fuck up before I get all Suge Knight up on your ass.”

  “Would you niggas both just shut the fuck up?” pleaded Maurice.

  Eva and Nelson climbed into the back of the jeep.

  “That was some good shootin’ young-un.” Damar told the boy and he beamed.

  “I’ll talk to your mom,” Eva told her nephew. “Maybe I can convince her you’re old enough now to have your own gun.”

  The horizon purpled into early evening and cicadas buzzed in the trees.

  “Steve, any chance we can get this thing rolling sometime soon?” she asked. “I don’t want to be out here on the road at night.”


  “You ask, I obey.” He scrunched up his nose in the rear view mirror one last time, handed the scissors back to Damar, and cranked the jeep up.

  Maurice turned and asked Damar, referring to his shaved pubic region, “How’s that working for you?”

  It took them nearly an hour of back tracking to reach the convoy. When they returned early evening was upon them and the sky was going from purple to a deep dark blue. They crested a rise. There it was before them: dozens upon dozens of vehicles formed into a giant, tight circle in the parking lot of what had been a Wal-Mart or something. Recreational vehicles, mini-vans, jeeps, municipal buses, luxury vans, tow trucks, station wagons, sports utility vehicles, panel trucks, every kind and type of vehicle was represented in the fleet. Flat bed trucks carried a front end loader and cars in various states of repair.

  The camp was a flurry of activity. Within the circle of cars, trucks, and vans was a relatively safe area. Children ran around in the pollen and grasses and flowers sprouting up between the tar and cement, chasing one another, playing tag, watched over by armed adults. Smoke from cooking fires rose to the darkening sky. Men and women with rifles were spaced out along the perimeter, outside the vehicles—the first watch. When they had to spend their nights in areas with many zombies, the watch stood atop the vehicles.

  Sheets of metal had been welded to the sides of the vehicles to keep the undead from crawling beneath and infiltrating their billet. The metal sheets could be moved and placed on either side of a vehicle, depending on the configuration of the convoy, for any particular evening.

  The guards stood watchfully and waved to them as they pulled in. A handful of zombies staggered across the immense parking lot towards the camp. There was only one thing Maurice hated more than pulling guard duty and having to while his hours away dispatching any Zeds that got too close for comfort. And that would be waking up after a relatively peaceful night’s sleep to find the convoy surrounded by hundreds of undead, standing around, groaning, motioning, hungry, the air thick with flies and stink.

  “Ya’sou malaka!” Standing smoking a Newport, Markos greeted them as their jeep pulled to a halt at the front of the line. Steve flipped him the bird and the Greek laughed heartily.

  Maurice, Damar, Steve, Eva, and Nelson gathered up their gear and crossed to an opening between a former ice cream truck and an RV.

  “Hope you enjoyed your trip out with us today,” Maurice said to the boy.

  “It was great!”

  “Remember, shorty,” said Damar, “the only good Zed—”

  “—is a dead Zed!”

  Damar smiled and held up a palm for a high five. “My nigger. Give it here.”

  “Damar,” she snapped.

  “What?”

  “The only good Zed is a…?”

  Damar showed his palms. “My bad.”

  “Maurice, maybe you could do me a favor.”

  She wasn’t asking. Maurice wondered what she’d need. He wanted to get back home to the van he shared with LaShawn and Demetrius, get some food in his stomach.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Could you walk Nelson over to Sonya’s? I need to go to the council and report in first.”

  “No doubt.” Maurice was pleased. Chances were good Lauren would be over at Sonya’s at this hour.

  “I’m going to the council too,” said Steve. “Come on.”

  “Nelson, go with Maurice. He’ll take you to Mommy.”

  “Okay. Hey, Aunt Eva, today—thanks!”

  “Tell your mommy I’ll be home in a little while.”

  “Yo, Steve,” called Damar. “You and your roommates holla at a nigga, yo.”

  “He’s a cute kid,” said Steve as they walked.

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “Listen, let’s stop over at the trailer for a second. I gotta talk to Mason.”

  “Okay, but let’s make this fast.”

  Steve nodded.

  As they walked he and Eva waved and greeted the children and adults they encountered. It was funny, Eva thought, between the lines of vehicles at night you had no clue the world was inhabited by billions of zombies waiting to tear you limb from limb and devour you.

  “Hey. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Sonya talk to you much about me?”

  “You mean things like, Steve, that stallion, I wish he’d stop by more often and give me the high, hard one—”

  “Okay, fine, thanks. A simple no would have worked.”

  “I’m just messin’ with you, Steve. Sure, sometime she mentions you.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, what she say?”

  “She asked me once what you looked like.”

  “And you said?”

  “I said despite what you thought about yourself you were most definitely not God’s gift to women.”

  The wind went out of his sail, but only for a second.

  “What else did she say?”

  Eva laughed. “Well, when I told her that, she said, consider it a mercy fuck.”

  “A mercy fuck?” He sounded flabbergasted. “I’m a mercy fuck?”

  “I’m just fucking with you. She never said that.”

  He smiled.

  “No, actually, you know what she said to me?”

  Steve fell for it, beaming, expecting a compliment. “What’s that?”

  “She said Damar has a much bigger dick than you.”

  “You’re real funny, Eva, you know that?”

  “But seriously, Steve, can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s nighttime. Why don’t you lose the sunglasses?”

  He took off his mirrored shades, looked up at the sky. He squinted and licked the side of his lips. “Nah.” He put the shades back on.

  “Hey, Eva, you listen to rap music?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Nothin’.”

  When they reached the Coach bus with tinted windows they went right in. The interior was artificially lit. The windows were painted over inside with scenes from children’s books: a very hungry caterpillar, a pig named Olivia, a train named Thomas. When the convoy was on the road during the days, a hybrid school and day care was held on the bus. Most of the children had gone home for the evening but there were still half a dozen milling about with a couple of adults who were waiting for the kids to be picked up.

  “Steve-O!” Mason called out to them. “Miss Eva.”

  “What’s going on, Mason?”

  “Oh, another day of edification and shaping young minds. Know what I’m saying?”

  Three little white boys had spotted Steve and ran over to him, clinging to his legs and trying to climb up his body.

  “Oh-oh-oh, easy now, easy now!”

  “Steve! Steve! Steve!” they cried out in their enthusiasm.