Snareville II: Circles by David Youngquist

There were more businesses, a couple of churches. One of the churches looked maintained. I radioed my people to be alert. A few more businesses started to show signs of use. We were in downtown now. Two story brick buildings all around us as we followed the road back west. Something didn’t look right. It was too clean. Nothing busted up. No windows out.
    Half a block ahead of us, a tractor dragged a semi trailer across the road. I heard curses through the microphone in my helmet as the groups at the rear were boxed in by a couple of armored pickups. We went on the defensive, but didn’t have any targets. We scanned the buildings and realized that we had gun barrels aimed at us from about every window on the second floor.
    A shot swung my attention back to the north. A woman stood in front of the trailer, SKS in her hand. She wore jeans full of holes and a ratty blue and gold sweatshirt. Greasy blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
    She held up a hand. “Only reason you’re alive is ’cause you look military.”
    “This good or bad?” I shouted over my rifle.
    “Don’t know yet. You boss?”
    “Yeah. Danny Death, of the Snareville Raiders.”
    “I heard a you. I’m Jessica Nelson, guess I’m boss around here.” She waved her hand. Guns pulled back from the windows. She took a step forward, hand out. I stepped around the hood of the HumVee and took it in mine. “You’re a long way from home. You shoppin’?”
    Her crystal blue eyes looked into mine. They didn’t settle in one place long. She was always on a glance somewhere else. I imagine I was the same the first year into the plague. Jumpy. Purple satchels hung low under her eyes.
    “Sort of,” I said. She glanced around at my group. Well fed and rested. Fully loaded arms. Clean clothes. I wondered when the last time was they’d been able to get a shower and wash their clothes in this town. “We’re passing through. Headed for Galesburg. There’s a few things we need down there.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.” More of her people had stepped out into the sun. There was a mixture of folks: teenage girls, a few boys the same age. Two or three old women and a few people like her, in their thirties probably. Not a real big group.
    “It’s only twenty miles down the road from here. Make in less than a half hour. You have time for a parlay?”
    I took a look around. We had time.
    I ordered my people to stand down. In an even fight, we’d have slaughtered the two dozen or so townies that milled around in their ragged clothes and mismatched guns. But they’d had the jump on us. And we were still blocked in. Jessica led me, Cindy, Bill and Wallace to a small storefront. A few of her people followed. No one disarmed. We sat in what had been an accountant’s office.
    “Why you want to go into Galesburg?” she asked.
    “Wait. I told you who we were. Who the hell are you?” I asked.
    Jessica grinned sideways. “We’re the Cock Blockers,” she said as she glanced around the room, then outside. “We’re the choke point, the blockers for this route. Some folks just end up dead. Others, we stop and have a parlay first.”
    “You’re more than a little outgunned. If you think you can take us.”
    “Doubt we could. Don’t really want to try. What I want to do is find out why you’re going into Hell voluntarily.”
    She didn’t believe in putting much gap between her words and it was a bitch to follow what she said.
    “We’re going into town to get some of the equipment from my old unit. Do you know if any of the military are still left down there?” Wallace asked.
    “Who’re you, Luey?” Jessica asked as she nodded at the bar on his collar. “Never mind, don’t want to know the dead. If there are soldiers left, son, they’re down there chompin’ like everyone else.”
    “Place is full of zombies then?” I asked.
    “Led by a demon from hell. He came and made it his home when the first minions were spat out from Hades. He leads them now.