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  She liked to come up top when being cooped up in her office made her stir crazy. She didn't have to interact with anyone nor show interest in things she didn't give a shit about.

  The region south of town was farmland, fertile and flat. A mile to the south, the terrain rolled downhill to a river bottom. Otherwise, the land was flat and there were no tall objects to obstruct her view.

  She liked that the territory she claimed extended farther than she could see when she was up here. Lord knows it hadn't been easy to do- driving out or killing the different factions that used to claim her land as their own, devising living environs that kept her people safe from the demons, providing food and water, locating the fuel the whole operation depended on. It was over a year of trials and tribulations and just plain hard work. She'd sacrificed the lives of thousands and lost a husband and four daughters along the way.

  But at the end, here she stood, the most powerful person she knew of within thirty miles in any direction. There was one thing preventing her from expanding and laying claim to the entire four-state region- the lack of a place of complete safety, a fortress impenetrable by men or demons.

  Such a place existed. Right now a bunch of riffraff controlled it under the leadership of a yahoo cowboy. She had no doubt she would make it hers. The same way she had built the rest of her territory, by hook or crook and the absolute willingness to do anything necessary, she would make it hers.

  Four

  * * *

  They named the house of worship The Glorious Church of the Redeemer.

  Before the outbreak, it was a popular and successful full Gospel worship center referred to around town and by its congregation as G-CORE. Kayla served as G-CORE's Finance Director; her husband Randy was the Associate Pastor. To the public, Kayla was an important part of the leadership of one of Carthage's biggest churches. But twenty years of blackmail, the careful doling out of sexual favors, and other unsavory machinations made her the power-to-be and behind-the-scenes leader.

  Kayla and Randy were married for twenty-six years and produced four smart and beautiful and daughters. They purchased a nice home for each girl as a wedding present and set them up in the business of their choosing.

  Then came the outbreak. Things broke down so fast, Kayla remembered. It started as weird news reports and horrifying clips on the Internet and the next thing you knew the country was awash in monsters who had risen to feast on the living.

  Two of her daughters never made it home- they could be dead, stuck somewhere and unable to get home, or one of the creatures walking the streets. One died in Kayla’s home. She came to them for safety, but when her own three-year-old daughter slipped out of the house and walked across the street, her mother ran to retrieve her. Kayla watched as the monsters swarmed over both of them, Randy holding her back as she screamed, kicked, and fought to save them. The fourth daughter, Kayla's weakest, committed suicide after her husband and two-year-old son never returned from a trip they took to the park on the day the outbreak exploded across Carthage.

  And then there was Randy. He fought his way through the dead to get them to G-CORE. He thought the church body would see it as a haven and gather there, frightened and in shock. Her beautiful, smart, kind, husband saw the worship center as a place for humanity to come together and begin to fight back.

  He led teams into town for food, clothing, and building materials. He supervised the construction of a perimeter fence around the grounds to keep the creatures out (by this time Kayla referred to them as demons along with most of the members).

  A month after the outbreak, seventy-five families called it home. The makeup was a 50-50 mix split between members and area families that sought refuge there when they ran out of food or the dead overran their own homes.

  People straggled in every day in ones, twos, and fours. It was a struggle to feed them all and find room for them to sleep, but her husband insisted anyone who asked for shelter be allowed to stay. And that's what led to his death.

  A family of four made it to the church from their home on the east side of Carthage. The father acted odd, but they wrote off his behavior as fear or concern for his family.

  That night he died, turned, and rampaged a downstairs dormitory. He attacked six people before they put him down, killing three of them outright. Randy was the third. He slipped in a puddle of blood while trying to restrain the demon and stumbled right into him. Driven by savage hunger, the lifeless man sunk his teeth into Randy's throat; Kayla’s husband took his last breath before she made it to his side.

  She mourned him for a month, and spent much of that time deep in thought. On the thirty-second day after his death, she climbed a flight of stairs and knocked on the door to Morgan Walker's office. Morgan was G-CORE's pastor and, with Randy's death, the sole leader of the refugees huddled in the church. He was also madly in love with Kayla and mortally afraid of her.

  She spelled out a series of ideas she had while she mourned her husband. He argued and fought each one, but as always, Kayla wore him down.

  By now over six hundred people lived in the worship center or on the grounds. The sanctuary seated three hundred. The once-gleaming building was noisy and filthy and filled with desperate people without enough to eat. It was a tinderbox waiting for a match to ignite it. Kayla wanted to redirect the anger, fear, and loss into something productive.

  That many people in such a small a space were a demon magnet. They surrounded the grounds 24/7, moaning, snarling, and batting their hands against the chain-link fence. Kayla proposed they put them down.

  Until then, the attitude regarding the creatures was to destroy them only if a life was at risk. No more.

  Morgan pleaded with her. "Kayla, we can't just slaughter those things. How do we live with ourselves once there's a cure? If we do this we are murdering people that can be saved if we’re patient. How many people will die because of our actions?"

  She paid him no mind.

  The next day a team of thirty men went about turning every piece of wood or metal they found into a sharp object. The following morning, one hundred people gathered at the fence, lethal weapon in hand. It took twelve hours of poking homemade spikes and pointed two-by-fours through the holes in the fence. When they finished, lifeless bodies piled four deep in some places ringed the church grounds. Another team collected and burned them.

  After that, large, rotating teams patrolled the grounds armed with all manner of knives, baseball bats, tire tools, and even a crossbow. They returned the demons to hell as they arrived rather than allowing them to accumulate. For the first time since the building grew overcrowded, people came and left as they pleased.

  Coming and going was a necessity for her next step. A quarter-mile west of the church's property line, straight down a shiny new blacktop street, sat the entrance to Robin Ridge.

  Robin Ridge was a sprawling subdivision filled with tract homes for middle-income families. Within its four-square-mile boundaries, builders constructed 1200 fashionable houses with all the amenities the modern middle class expected.

  During phase one of Project Robin Ridge, they sent a score of teams into the development to scour every uninhabited home for food, clothing, medicine, and household items. The teams had instructions to not damage the houses. No kicked-in doors, no broken windows, no knocking holes in the walls to search for hidden objects. They could leave them cluttered, but the punishment for unnecessary damage would be severe.

  Phase two ran concurrent to phase one. The teams that searched from house to house carried two other assignments. The first was to put down any demons they found in the houses.

  "Release their spirit back to God and drag their bodies to the curb," Morgan told them, parroting Kayla word-for-word. "A second team will go out tomorrow and collect them. But it’s vital we have complete confidence there aren’t any dead walking the homes in that subdivision."

  The second assignment proved unpopular. "We've given each team two cans of spray paint. We need you to mark, with a
big black X, houses where people live. You must do this on the side of the house that faces the street."

  The team members traded uncomfortable looks and muttered to one another. Finally, a skinny man in his thirties spoke. He had a bald head and a length of tape held the nosepiece of his glasses together.

  "Beg your pardon, Pastor, but don't you think it will piss people off if we spray paint their homes? I know I wouldn’t like it. It seems we’ll be begging people to shoot at us.”

  A pained expression passed over Morgan's face. He stared at the floor, then shot a yearning glance at a whiteboard propped up beside him, as if he hoped to find an answer to the question scribbled on it. Not seeing one, he excused himself and disappeared into the bank of offices at the rear of the sanctuary.

  He reappeared a few minutes later wearing a pleased expression. "You each have note cards and a pen. Instead of applying paint on the homes where they are living, record the address on your note card and handed in when you return."The ransacking of Robin Ridge took place over three cool and rainy days in March. Each address on the note cards was assigned to a five-man team along with clear instructions- drive out or kill the current residents and bring back anything useful. The scavengers separated their loot into piles as they returned to the church. When it was done, they had a small mountain of canned and boxed food, another enormous pile of clothing, an assortment of medicine, and a vast supply of useful items like baggies, light bulbs, and cleaning supplies.

  They lost six people over the course of the three days. Demons attracted by all the activity tore two men apart. Two others received bites, an unavoidable death sentence. One man died when a homeowner opened fire with no warning. And a woman was killed by a booby trap left behind in one of the houses. When she opened the door, she pulled a string tied to the inside knob. The other end of the string was tied to the trigger of a shotgun pointed at the doorway. The shot almost tore the woman’s arm off and she died of blood loss on the sidewalk out front.

  Morgan despaired any loss of life. Grief-stricken, he reported the casualties to Kayla. She saw his drooping shoulders, his anguished countenance, and the way he has eyes teared up when he relayed the news and barely hide her contempt.

  She murmured the right words, held him while he shuddered and sighed, and even managed to look upset herself.

  But while she appeared heavy-hearted, she was having different thoughts. Six dead? That's a walk in the park compared to what comes next.

  Five

  * * *

  "I won't allow it, Kayla," Morgan said. "You’re talking about a probable death sentence for people who've done nothing to us and I won't go along with that."

  They laid side-by-side and naked on a fold-out bed in the corner of what used to be Morgan's office and was now his living quarters. A sheen of sweat covered the pastor; when he reached for a glass of water on the nearby coffee table Kayla noticed his hands trembled.

  She felt frustrated and unfulfilled. If they were in her room she’d kick him out and masturbate, or call in one of the younger guards if she could find one whose stench wasn't unbearable.

  This is what it's come to, she thought. After twenty-three years of great sex with Randy I have to debase myself with old Morgan here, and I don't even get an orgasm out of the deal.

  Morgan wasn’t physically unappealing. He was slight and balding, but he had attractive features and took care to keep what muscle he had toned and lean.

  His wife, Patricia, or widow now, had been prim and proper and Morgan had been fanatically faithful to her. As a result, the Walker’s sex life had consisted of little to no foreplay followed by a three-minute-long wiggle session. Kayla knew this because that's what sex with Morgan was like for her. If she ever asked the poor guy to whip her, cum on her tits, or, God forbid, put it in her ass, the top of his little bald head might blow off.

  "It's just not right," Morgan said for at least the fourth time.

  "Look around outside, Morgan. It's not about right or wrong anymore."

  "It would be the same as going over with a rifle and killing them myself."

  She leaned up on one elbow and drew circles on his chest with a long, red fingernail. "You’re seeing it wrong, Morg. If you look at it right, we could be doing them a favor."

  "How is driving them out of their homes doing them a favor?"

  "Because right now they're hunkered down in those houses, living in the dark, wearing the same pair of underwear every day, and eating dog food. If we force their hand, send them out into the world, we give them a chance to find something better."

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. "We’d give them a chance to get killed and eaten by the dead."

  "And to that, I'd say tough luck. We invited everybody in that neighborhood to be part of our community. All they had to do was pledge their loyalty and agree to work. They refused. They made their choice."

  She was wearing him down. This is how it always went. She fucked him and then told him of her plan. He resisted. She ran her roughshod over his arguments and won him over.

  She had considered just killing him and eliminating the damn pre-show more times than she could count on both hands. But she needed Morgan. The community needed to believe her ideas came from their trusted Pastor. Half the people there would dismiss her ideas out of hand if they knew she was their source. What does a woman know about survival? Plus, Morgan's death would set off a power struggle among the men who would want to replace him. And a replacement might be less malleable and harder to manage.

  So Morgan lived, as difficult as that fact might be to swallow at times.

  She began her closing argument. "I'll make it as simple as possible. Far too many people live in this building. We can’t keep the place clean, it's not sanitary, the overcrowding breeds disagreements and fights. Folks can't breathe out there, Morgan."

  "That doesn't mean-"

  "Let me finish. Twelve hundred houses are sitting empty a half-mile from here."

  He interrupted. "One thousand one hundred and three. Ninety-seven of them aren't empty."

  She resisted the urge to slap him silly. "Twelve hundred unoccupied houses," she said, her voice calm. "We move our people over there. Our people, Morgan. Your people, your congregation, the people who turned to you when they didn't know what to do and had nowhere to take their families.

  "We move them out of the church and into the subdivision. We get our church back. If we moved every soul in the church there would still be plenty of empty houses left, meaning we can grow our community. We put together teams and send them out after food, after clothes, after medicine. We assign some of them to grow crops, some to raise chicken, some to raise pigs. They have food, jobs, and safety in numbers. Those are the reasons why the rabble in there now have to go."

  "Do the ones who own their homes get to stay?”

  She slapped his chest with exasperation. "No. They do not. The teams checked when they were going house to house. They didn’t live there before the outbreak- almost all of them are squatters who were chased in there by the dead, or showed up for some other reason, and stayed."

  He peered at her, his eyes wide with surprise. "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I'm sure!" In truth, she had no idea- she made the story up out of whole cloth. But it was working, and she wasn't going to backtrack now. Her mind raced as she thought of the team members she needed to get with later to fill in the backstory in case he asked, and what it would cost her. "That's why I'm pushing this so hard. They're squatting now- they can go squat someplace else. We need this, Morgan, for all the reasons I've mentioned. Those who aren't part of our community can’t live among us. It would lead to strife and disagreements. Dealing with that crap will take all our time, time that should spend making our people's lives better."

  In the end he caved, like always. On a cold, brittle January morning teams of eight to ten armed men spread out among the subdivision. They pounded on the doors of the occupied homes; when the people inside opened them, th
ey learned they had thirty minutes to gather their belongings and leave.

  The lack of resistance surprised them. Most of the people facing eviction were docile and obedient. Kayla surmised the things they had seen and done left them broken and reverted to their animal instincts. If you're a raccoon and a bigger and stronger raccoon comes along and wants your den, you move out if you want to keep breathing.

  Some squatters argued and threatened, but most of them nodded their heads and gathered up their few belongings. Of the ninety-seven occupied homes, residents of just six resisted to where the team shouldered their rifles,

  Kayla organized one more visit to those six households- a late night mission that Morgan never found out about.

  Well past midnight, when the rest of G-CORE was fast asleep, twenty heavily armed men broke from their hiding spot in a trailer near the edge of the church grounds. Four of the twenty were ex-military; Magnus led the way. They attacked the holdouts with overwhelming force and without mercy. In all six houses they killed everyone inside- men, women, and children.

  That operation cost Kayla dearly. Sexual favors, future promises, and side deals for illicit drugs, hard-to-find medicine, and extra rations were all part of the price she paid for it to happen, and happen without Morgan's knowledge.

  But the victory was worth the price. It was worth it for what her community gained. And because it set the next phase of her plan in motion.

  Six

  * * *

  Once they controlled Robin Ridge and populated the subdivision with G-CORE members, it came time to put the biggest and hardest part of her plan in effect. When Morgan heard it he argued. He wailed. He threatened. He cajoled. She almost killed him. On three separate occasions she had a plan for his death in place; once, she held a knife to his throat as he slept. But she couldn't kill him. She still needed him.