by Urban, Tony
It was easier to stay quiet.
Aben saw Juli before she saw him. She was a hundred yards or more from Grady's encampment and even further from the zombies, all alone in the desert, sitting at the edge of a dry creek bed and staring into space. She looked small against the landscape, like a lost child. And although Aben couldn't read emotion from that distance, he imagined she was melancholy.
"Damn, that chick hasn't aged well," Mitch said over his shoulder.
Aben wished he was alone, but Mitch's assessment was true. Juli's once raven-black hair was over half gray and her tanned skin etched with wrinkles. It was like fourteen years had passed since he last saw her, not four. He scanned the area again, triple-checking to be certain no one else was around, then Aben and Mitch pushed toward her.
They'd halved the distance before Juli caught on to their presence. She flinched, then scrambled to her feet, almost falling in the loose soil before regaining her footing and balance. She was on the verge of running when something in her eyes shifted.
Aben held up his hands. "Hello there, old friend."
"Aben?"
"I'd hate to think someone else out there is as ugly as me."
"Oh my God." She started toward them, slow at first then shifting to a quick jog. She mostly ignored Mitch, but threw her arms around Aben's broad chest, burying her face in his beard. "I'm not dreaming this, am I?"
Aben wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I could think of better dreams."
"Me too." She let him go and when she pulled back he saw she was crying. She looked toward Mitch, blank at first, then shocked and curious. "Mitch?"
He nodded.
"You're so tall. So grown up." She stared at him, unblinking.
"And I have a fucked-up face. You can say it. My feelings won't be hurt."
Her eyes dropped. "What happened?"
Mitch opened his mouth to answer but Aben took over.
"That's a long story and not a relevant one at the moment. We need to talk about Grady. And his zombies."
Juli bit her lip and the trickle of tears coming from her eyes turned into a river.
Chapter 44
Juli refused to take them to see Grady. She knew that if she did, Grady would cast them in to the undead, where their sins, and their flesh, would be consumed and they would then join his flock. She cared about them too much - even Mitch - to do that. They deserved better than becoming sacrificial lambs.
She told them as much as she could, but it was enough that she knew the men would return from where they came, filled with stories of past horrors and coming doom. In a way, she thought that might be for the best. Maybe it would keep everyone away so that Grady's long march to the promised land would be through vacant towns and no one else would need to die. But in her heart, she knew better.
As dusk came around, she asked Mitch if he'd mind giving her and Aben some time alone. Mitch obliged without protest, without even a lewd remark, and she found herself a little surprised at the man he'd grown into. She'd had such low expectations for him.
Once the two of the were alone, she decided it was time to plead her case.
"I know you came here with a plan in mind. I'm asking you to abandon it. Stay out of Grady's way. Tell everyone from here to the Rio Grande to do the same. If there's no one to get hurt, maybe this can all end... Less bad."
Aben swatted a gnat away from his face, but never took his eyes off her. "That's not my call, Juli. This affects a whole lot more people than me."
"I know. But they sent you, so they must trust you. Tell them to go away. Go east or something. It wouldn't have to be forever either. It's going to happen soon. I can sense it when I'm around him. The... excitement, or whatever it is, it radiates off him like a heat lamp. Whatever Grady's visions have shown him will happen in a matter of days, not months."
"And what if it doesn't? What if it's just more insanity and nothing happens. Where is God going to send him next? How many more people will die to become his army of undead God warriors or whatever the hell he thinks they are."
"He's saving them. The living and the dead."
"You don't buy into that horse shit. It's written on your face clear as glass."
"I do. I've seen so many things that would be impossible without God behind them."
"Like what?"
"Start off with dead people coming back to life!" Her voice was high, her frustration bleeding into anger. "Five years ago, would you have thought that possible?"
Aben scratched his beard, then combed it back in place with his fingers. "I don't see God in that at all."
"It goes as far back as the bible. Jesus resurrected Lazarus from the dead."
"And he came back as a man, not a monster."
Juli shook her head. "Then what about Grady getting bit and not turning? It's happened again and again. He's been chosen."
"He's got an extra immunity gene or something. That's all." Aben reached out and grabbed her hand, swallowing it up in his own. "A couple years back, I was a dead man. I was nine tenths naked and three fourths froze on the middle of a snow-covered forest in Bumfuck Pennsylvania. And just after I laid down to die, a man came along and saved me. Now if you want to look for a miracle from God, that's your miracle. Not letting zombies bite you like some Hillbilly preacher drinking strychnine and taking up serpents and jumping around yelling that God is protecting you. That's not God. That's crazy."
Juli pulled her hand away. She couldn't find words to respond.
"If you really believe in Grady O'Baker, then look me in the eyes and say it."
Juli did look him in the eyes. "I..." Her own welled up with tears. "I have to believe in him, Aben."
"Why?"
"Because I killed my husband. Because I saw my children become zombies. Because I lost everything I ever had or cared about. There has to be a reason for that. For all this. I have to believe because that belief is all I have left."
He reached for her again, but she pulled away before he could catch her.
"Juli, come with me. Get away from this craziness for a couple days and see if you really think this is what you need and what you believe in.
Juli jumped to her feet and put a yard between them. She knew she needed to get away, that if she stayed near him too long she might lose herself. "Go now. Go catch up with Mitch and get out of here and I won't tell Grady you've been around."
"Stop this." He took a limping step her way. "Don't act like this with me. I know you stayed with Grady because you pity him. He was like a wounded animal you latched onto to try to heal because you needed to make yourself feel better. But that was a long time ago."
It was true. She'd stayed with Grady at the Signs Following Church because she couldn't bear to leave him all alone. He was too fragile, too innocent. And while he was neither of those anymore, he was still the only constant in her life. "I said go. Go right now or I'll run back to camp and send them after you."
"I know you wouldn't do that."
Juli pulled back her shoulders and straightened her spine. How dare he think he knows her mind? "I spent about four months of my life around you, Aben. Four months out of almost fifty years. You don't know me at all."
She expected him to get angry, but he only looked sad. That was much worse. She backed further away because she knew her resolve would fade if she was pushed much further. "Please, just go. And tell the others to keep away from us. If they don't, whatever wrath that comes down on them will be of their own doing."
"Well then, I'll say the same to you." He turned halfway around, paused. "Goodbye Juli."
She gave no response and he didn't wait for one.
Juli watched until he was a speck in the moonlight, crying all the while. Then, she returned to camp. Most everyone was asleep and that was good because she didn't want any of them to see her swollen, red eyes, or hear her hoarse voice. She spread out her bedroll and wept herself to sleep.
In the morning, the sounds of the others packing up camp woke Juli. She was
surprised she'd fallen asleep at all and assumed it must have been sheer exhaustion. The events of the previous evening weighed her down like a boulder on her back and she avoided everyone as much as possible while she gathered together her own belongings.
Less than an hour later, all of them, the humans and the zombies, were on the move. It was a long, boring day of walking through the desert, but she needed that. The monotony of the trek allowed her to space out, as her twins would have said (not really), and not think about anything other than putting one foot in front of the other and not tripping over a rock or stepping in a hole.
By the time they stopped for the day, Aben coming to her seemed almost like a dream or a delusion, at least that's what she told herself. So, when Grady handed her a bowl of cold soup and a plate of beans and canned fruit, she was able to look him in the face with no shame. Well, almost none.
"Everything went as planned?" He asked.
"It did." Juli thought maybe she'd find something in his face, maybe remorse or close to it. But Grady's expression remained blank and doll-like.
"That's good."
"I still don't know why we can't simply go around them."
"Because that's not what needs to happen."
His tone was flat and matter of fact and that made Juli want to smack him. "Then tell me everything, Grady. You talk about these visions and this grand plan God has for us, but it's like you're reading me every other page in a book. How am I supposed to make sense of any of it?"
Grady cocked his head and Juli thought maybe there was something, not emotion per se, but an acknowledgment in his eyes. "It's not supposed to make sense. That's the point."
Juli gave an exaggerated sigh. "More riddles."
"This is our trial, Juli. It hasn't been easy and it's not going to get any easier. God is testing us to see if, through it all, we can keep hold of our faith."
"I'm tired of being tested. And I'm tired of people dying."
"Without death, there is no rebirth."
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"
"Not me. God."
Juli couldn't do anything but stare. Every once in a great while she wondered if Grady was putting this all on, but most of the time, like now, when she looked at him she saw nothing but innocent, unquestioning belief. She wished she could believe in this mission completely, that her faith could be as strong as his. Maybe that would make this burden easier to bear. But she doubted it.
Chapter 45
While Aben and Mitch ventured northeast, Wim spent the days mixing chemicals with Mead, creating their homemade explosives and pouring them into five gallon pails. It was simple enough, a task that any monkey could have accomplished, but Aben had asked them to do the work and they obliged.
The worst part about the tedium was how it allowed Wim's mind to wander. He thought too much about the past. About everything and everyone he'd lost. This foreign landscape didn't help matters any either. Everywhere he looked it was flat and rocky and tan. He missed the color green. There was no green out here aside from a random cactus and that wasn't hardly the same.
He knew that, back home in Pennsylvania - and even though he'd been gone from there for almost five years, it would always be home - the leaves would be changing, bursting with reds and yellows and oranges. His fields would be turning golden. And the wind would be crisp and cool, not dry and dusty like this piece of Mexico that was his current dwelling.
He tried to stop thinking at all, to just focus on mixing the right amounts of powder, but that was as impossible as turning back time.
"I don't know how much of this crap Bundy had in the van, but I'm sure we're beating it by a shit ton." Mead had become a bit more like his old self and Wim hoped, for the man's sake, that acceptance was pushing aside some of the pain. But he suspected it was more likely that recent events had just taken Mead's mind off his loss. Even still, it was nice to see Mead less wounded.
"He certainly liked his bombs," Wim said.
"They never worked out quite right though, did they?"
The memory of Bundy blowing up the ambulance, and saving them, wasn't one Wim cared to recall but it came back anyway. "No, they did not."
"It's a shame about Mina. She never liked me much and I guess that was mutual, but I didn't expect her to end up this way."
"Me neither." Wim desperately wanted to destroy the zombified head of the woman he'd once known. To put it out of its misery, but that wasn't in his place. And Saw's people never let them get far out of view even if he was bold enough to try it. Which he wasn't. "But then, I wouldn't have expected her to take up with a character like Saw either."
Mead finished off a mixture and reached for a new bucket. But, before he got back to work, he stared at Wim so long Wim found himself getting uncomfortable.
"You all right, Mead?"
Mead paused, still staring. "I didn't picture it this way, you know."
"What's that?"
"The apocalypse. I thought it would be all mano y zombo action, at least for the first several years. Until the majority of the zombies were destroyed. I didn't think it would turn so fast."
"Uh huh."
"And don't get me wrong, I always thought the biggest extent of the population sucked ass. I guess I just hoped something this terrible might pull people together. Instead it pushed them further apart." Mead grabbed some fertilizer and aluminum powder and started mixing. "You think there's any chance that Grady fellow's right? That he's really got God on the speed dial?"
That surprised Wim. He'd never heard Mead talk much about God, but when he did it was usually in a derisive or disbelieving manner. "No. I don't. Not at all."
"Do you even believe in God, Wim?"
Wim thought about his answer before saying it aloud, but even with time to think it was hard to find the right words. "I was never a church-going man even when my Mama tried to make me. I didn't care much for the people there. They were all right outside of church, good folks the lot of them, but put 'em in side that box and they took on airs. They'd judge what you were wearing or gossip about you if you came in late or if you drifted off to sleep during one of Pastor Warren's long sermons."
"Speaking from personal experience there?"
Wim grinned. "They'd laugh, in a mean way, if you couldn't pronounce the words right when you were picked to read a verse or two. Or if you couldn't name all the descendants of Moses forwards and back. It was like they viewed piety as a contest."
Wim fell silent a bit. Long enough for Mead to prod him. "That's interesting and all, but you ducked my question."
"I thought you might not notice."
"I'm too sharp for that."
"Well then, far as God goes, I always assumed he was there. I prayed, maybe not every day, but I tried to thank him when the notion came to mind. I did believe, in my own way."
"That's past tense though."
These were thoughts Wim had been wrestling with for months, maybe even years, but he'd never verbalized them and had never intended to. He thought about brushing Mead's version of twenty questions to the side, but felt he owed him honesty. "I haven't seen any evidence of God down here for a good, long while now."
"Does that mean you've lost faith?"
"No. Not entirely. Maybe he's just taking one of those - what do you call them, sabbaticals?"
Mead laughed. "I never thought about that. I wonder how much vacation time God gets."
Wim shrugged his shoulders. "Or maybe he's the one that lost faith in us."
Mead's smile faded, and Wim felt bad for possibly putting a damper on the man's good mood. "But what do I know? I'm nothing but a below average farmer."
"You're a lot more than that Wim. A whole lot more."
Wim thought he felt his face get hot and turned away in case a blush was coming. "How about you answer your own question. Do you believe?"
"I believe in myself. The man upstairs? Well, I guess I'll find out when my time runs out."
"Let's hope that's not s
oon."
Mead's smile returned, along with a spark in his eyes. "Yeah. Let's."
Wim decided that hoping wasn't quite enough. Instead he said a silent prayer to a God he was no longer sure existed.
Chapter 46
Aben knelt on the floor and sliced open the bag of dog chow. After sifting through it for a few seconds to ensure there weren't any bugs or worms, he was relieved to find it was critter free, as locating a fifty-pound bag had been hard scrabbling. He'd already filled up the bathtub with water, along with several buckets and pails of varying sizes. It seemed like he should do more, but he was out of ideas.
He looked over at Prince who laid on the tile floor in Saw's kitchen, his head resting on his paws. When Prince caught him looking, his tail began to thud.
Aben smiled. "I've got you set up about as good as possible. It's up to you to pace yourself."
Prince's tail turned into a whip at the sound of the man's gruff voice.
"Yeah, I like you too." He reached over and scratched Prince's right ear, then his left. The dog rose to its feet, then climbed onto him, his front paws on Aben's shoulders.
"You're the best thing that's happened for me in a good, long while. Maybe even forever. That's why I'll do my damnedest to come back here for you."
Prince cocked his head. Aben doubted the dog could understand what he was saying, but he did a good job of faking it.
"I think the term 'good boy' is overused when it comes to dogs, but you're the real deal, Prince. And I love ya." Aben put his hand behind the dog's neck and pulled him in close, tilting his forehead into the dog's face, not even minding how his fur tickled. He felt a little weepy but knew giving in to that would mean he was more skeptical about this coming battle than he was ready to admit, and he pushed them away.
