that at least half that army is there by choice,” Seamus muttered as he scooted close.
“That means that half of them are not,” Vix pointed out.
“So what do you suggest?” Gable did not hide the dubious tone in his voice. “We just slip in and organize a revolt?”
“We either do something or we abandon this madness,” Vix finally snapped. “What is the point in simply following this army around the countryside and watching him conquer England?”
“There is no more England,” Algernon broke his silence. “There hasn’t been for years. No Spain, no Germany, no France.”
“Thank God,” Vix muttered, earning a chuckle from Paddy.
“I think I have an idea.”
Everybody turned. It was not often that Randi spoke out loud. She could manage a whisper, but to speak out loud appeared to cause her pain due to all her facial damage.
“Well?” Paddy finally urged.
Gable moved close to Randi and listened as she whispered in his ear. He nodded and then faced the group.
“Instead of following and trying to seek out a weakness to exploit, perhaps we take a page out of the playbook of our Vix.” Gable leaned in again. “We return to London and take the palace.”
“Why would we want to do something like that?” Paddy asked.
“That wanker couldn’t have possibly rooted out every single survivor in the kingdom. I say we beat him at his own game. We move back to the heart of the country and gather anybody we can along the way. We build our own bloody army and prepare for the grand assault. It is a story that has been repeated through history, and if I am judging this Dolph person correctly, he may be even more delusional than Adolph.”
The group had retreated from the hill and was making their way into some nearby woods as Gable recited this last bit. Vix was nodding, Paddy and Seamus were strangely stone-faced, and Algernon was pinching his lower lip like he always did when in deep thought.
“I say we either do that or it is time to cross the Channel and abandon hope.” Vix came to a stop just after they had all ducked under the branches and entered the copse of trees. “Perhaps we put it to a vote?”
They returned to camp and met with the rest of their little thirty-seven person army. Gable recited Randi’s idea once more for the entire group. More than once somebody groaned or grumbled about the futility of the plan. A few brought up how the previous attempts by other groups to try and retake London had all ended poorly.
“That was before Dolph did us the favor of leading the zombies away like the Pied Piper,” Algernon pointed out.
“Have we not experienced enough war and death?” Mike finally rose from the stump he’d been using as a chair up to this point.
Mike Sellars was not what most people pictured when it came to the leader of a group. He was average height, average weight, and soft spoken to the point where you often had to lean close to hear him. His left hand was missing and the limb capped with a hook that would make a pirate envious.
He’d lost the hand early on when his fellow survivors had made a terrible and eventually fatal mistake. He’d been bitten and one of them had insisted on amputating the hand in hopes that it might save him from turning. That had been before the knowledge of immunity spread and became better known by the survivors.
“If we run now, then we will do so again and again. That crazed and delusional man wiped out a settlement…one of the largest in existence I would be willing to wager,” Vix spoke, standing as her emotions surged. “Men, women, and children who had managed to rebuild their life and start something wonderful and new.”
“Using that same logic,” Mike countered, “if we fight, will we simply continue to wage war every single time somebody we don’t like pops up? Ideological differences are a reality. We might not agree, but—”
“That’s rubbish and you know it!” Vix snapped. “This is not about ideological