State of | Book 2 | State of Ruin

by Martinez, P. S.

  Maybe a little food would help.

  Chapter Five

  Welcome to the 19th Century

  Shocked was the understatement of the year.

  A plate of real eggs and real butter on homemade bread stared back at me from my plate and I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Especially after the previous night’s trip into I-never-wanna-dream-again land.

  The moan of ecstasy was a real and justified thing when I bit into the bread, which I had thoroughly soaked in egg yolks. If I had been sure I wouldn’t have scared the poor lady half to death, I’d have kissed the cook right on the mouth.

  “Looks like you’re enjoying that.”

  Not even Michael Hatten could ruin my good mood though.

  I smiled up at the leader of Camp Victory.

  “Yes, sir. It’s been a very long time since I had a plate of fried eggs,” I said cheerfully.

  Michael sat down with his own plate. After he prayed, he grinned over at me.

  “I was hoping you might want to take a look around the camp with me today.” He shoved a fork full of eggs in his mouth.

  “I ain’t gonna lie, we could use another able-bodied man such as yourself around here.”

  I finished off my bread, taking the time to sop up every little bit of eggy goodness before shoveling it in my pie hole. I regarded the man.

  Maybe I’d been a bit harsh in my judgment of Michael Hatten and his little sanctuary out here in the boonies. The world had changed and not for the good. People were learning to adapt and survive. Michael was clinging to what he thought he knew.

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around,” I said amiably.

  “Good!”

  He seemed genuinely pleased I was going to take a tour of the camp.

  I sat there waiting for him to finish his meal, beginning to wonder if perhaps Uncle Gus finding me was a good thing, that perhaps it had even been meant to be.

  Maybe heading back to the Army base, back to Melody Carter and everyone else could wait a little longer.

  Maybe Camp Victory was where I belonged for the time being.

  Maybe I was being extremely optimistic.

  When we headed out to begin the tour of the camp, I was feeling uncharacteristically hopeful. I guess a big plate of eggs and butter can do that to a man.

  “How many people do you have here?” I asked.

  “One hundred and twelve,” Michael answered.

  I sucked in a breath. So many?

  “I’m responsible for one hundred and twelve souls here at Camp Victory.” He smiled at me. “You’d be one hundred and thirteen,” he added.

  We turned down a path and headed for the back of the camp, back past all the cabins.

  “This is the garden and chicken coop,” Michael said when we stopped walking.

  Several women were pulling weeds and tending to the garden. Another woman was bunching up what looked like fresh herbs to hang to dry. The garden was pretty large and well taken care of. I was amazed already.

  On the other side of the garden was a large chicken coop and yard. Two young girls were there. One was tossing feed to the chickens and one I could see was inside the chicken house gathering eggs.

  There had to have been over two dozen chickens.

  “These are our laying hens,” Michael explained.

  “Around the other side are the birds we raise for meat.”

  “Where did you get them?” I asked.

  “Uncle Gus. He had a pen of chickens. Only a few, but he only had himself to feed, so he used to sell off the eggs he couldn’t use on his own. He didn’t do it for the money, only to cover the cost of chicken feed. He also had his own small garden, so a lot of what we have now is a direct result of the plants and seeds that Uncle Gus owned.”

  Good ‘ole Uncle Gus. These people owed him a lot.

  “Uncle Gus is something else,” I muttered.

  Michael laughed.

  “Sure is. When everyone else was fighting and killing each other over the canned and boxed goods at Walmart, Uncle Gus had a group of us loading up supplies from the lawn and garden center and the local farm supply store. Nobody was fighting over Miracle Gro and chicken feed.”

  We walked along the fence line of the camp until we came to a building.

  Michael stopped and motioned for me to enter through the door.

  The room fell silent when we walked in and I immediately felt bad for interrupting. The room was set up with a round table and several desks. It was a classroom, currently filled with about eight children of varying ages from about four to ten.

  The woman teaching them was one of the “mean girls” from dinner the previous night. A woman of about thirty-some years, hair pulled back tightly into a bun. She would have been somewhat attractive if she didn’t look like she wanted to murder me.

  That, and if she loosened her hair and ditched the dirt-colored clothing.

  She scowled at me then she noticed Michael coming through the doorway right behind me and her face then morphed into the perfect picture of grace and charm.

  Just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I thought.

  “Ms. Yancy, so sorry to interrupt your class. I do hope you’ll forgive us,” Michael said with a grin and a wink.

  Ms. Yancy all but melted at his feet.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” she said too enthusiastically.

  “Class, say hello to Mr. Hatten.”

  “Hello, Mr. Hatten,” the children chorused.

  “Hello, children. I’m showing Mr. Tex here around our camp and we thought we’d stop in to say hello.”

  The children turned their attention to me, all curious and whatnot. I tried not to fidget in front of the kids, it was just that they were beginning to freak me out a little.

  Hello? Children of the Corn?

  “And what are we learning today?” Michael asked Ms. Yancy.

  She turned to the children and tapped her yardstick on the chalkboard behind her.

  I hadn’t noticed the writing on the board until then.

  “Children, let’s recite.” Ms. Yancy pointed out the words on the board and the children began singing the exercise in unison with her to the tune of Ring-Around-the-Rosie.

  The dead, they surround us. But God, he protects us.

  Ashes. Ashes. They all fall down.

  The righteous will inherit the Earth. The unbelievers perish.

  Ashes. Ashes. They all fall down.

  I was standing there in horror, wondering if they were playing a joke on me, when Michal started clapping. Out of shock, I joined him.

  “Very good, children,” Michael said proudly.

  “Your teacher is doing wonderfully with you all here.”

  Ms. Yancy beamed. I felt ill.

  What the hell was wrong with them?

  I wondered if the parents of these kids knew what the teacher was filling their heads with. For some reason I was betting they actually did. And here I had been actually enjoying myself up until that little show. I couldn’t get out the door of the classroom fast enough.

  As we walked away from the building, I heard Ms. Yancy tell the children to take out their math worksheets, so I guess they were teaching the children some academics along with their brainwashing techniques.

  Once the bad taste of the classroom had been left in my mouth, I couldn’t quite bring myself to appreciate the rest of our tour. A room dedicated to canning fruits and vegetables, drying and smoking meats, making candles and soap.

  Knowing what they were teaching the kids, how Michael felt about God’s “will” being done through the zombies, it all just put a different spin on everything I was seeing.

  Surviving, thriving even through gardening, canning, and all other old-school methods of living was all wonderful… just not when you expected people to live and think like they were in the nineteenth century.

  Now I noticed what I hadn’t before.

  Young girls who should have been in the classroom doi
ng manual labor; women kept segregated in sleeping quarters, during meals, and about everywhere else I could see; women doing all the work that you would think women in the eighteen hundreds would have been doing— teaching, sewing, canning, cleaning, and cooking; men doing manly things around the camp.

  None of the men preferred cooking over hunting?

  None of the women preferred going on supply runs for clothing and necessities rather than making them by hand? I knew firsthand that some stuff was still plentiful out there— soap, shampoo, tee shirts, etc., and yet the women at Camp Victory were slaving over a boiling pot to make old fashioned soap.

  If they enjoyed it, that was great.

  Doing it just to keep women doing womanly things?

  Not so much. And that wasn’t the only thing that had begun to bug me.

  All the women wore drab dresses or long skirts, no bright colors, no fitted tops even, no jeans. And no matter what anyone would ever say, I knew that every single woman and young girl in the camp couldn’t prefer to wear the clothes they had on if they had a choice.

  The truth was, I knew they didn’t have a choice. And that’s when my rose-colored glasses fell completely away. Take away the little farm in the back, the hot meals, and the showers and beds, and you would be standing in the center of a cult.

  Even with that realization crashing down around me, still, who was I to say anything? No one was really doing anything wrong. No one was murdering people. No one was held here against their will so far as I could tell. And no one was complaining.

  People were healthy. Safe. Happy.

  I had no business judging.

  I had no business being in Camp Victory at all.

  When I got back to my borrowed cabin, I was convinced that after one more day of resting here at the camp, I’d be on my way again and headed toward the Army base.

  I could stomach these people for less than twenty-four hours.

  At least I hoped so.

  Chapter Six

  Cult Mingle.com

  I decided to skip lunch and clean my jeans and tee shirt on an old washboard that a woman who was older than Methuselah grudgingly let me borrow. The tee I could have done without since I had two others in my pack, but the jeans were the only ones I owned and I was not going to leave camp the next day wearing these overalls.

  When that was finished and I set them outside the cabin to dry, I worked out for a good hour in the cabin. I then cleaned and sharpened my knife, and reorganized my pack.

  I kept myself busy and out of the way like that for as long as I could. When I thought dinner might be coming close to an end, I decided to head to the mess hall hoping to snag some food without having to run into Michael or really anyone except for Uncle Gus.

  The mess hall was pretty empty when I got there, and I realized that not only had I misjudged the time since the kitchen looked like it was closing down, but also that I’d managed to show up right when something else was about to begin. I stood in the middle of the doorway, unable to decide what to do.

  With a sigh, I turned to leave and head back to my cabin. At least I knew there would be a hearty meal in the morning to fill me up before I headed out of the camp. Michael Hatten was approaching the mess hall right as I was stepping out.

  “Tex, haven’t seen you around in a few hours,” he said loudly. “You get some dinner?”

  I shook my head.

  “My own fault. I didn’t realize what time it was. I’m going to head back to the cabin and catch breakfast in the morning,” I said, taking a step in that direction.

  “You can’t go to bed without eating.”

  “I don’t want to trouble anyone,” I said, still moving.

  “Nonsense! I forgot to mention to you earlier today that on Tuesday nights we eat earlier. Come on in. I’m sure we have something you can make a sandwich out of or something in the kitchen.”

  Michael walked over and slapped me on the back like we were buddies. Clyde and a few other guys were walking with him into the mess hall and I couldn’t make any excuses or leave at that point without offending someone or looking like an unappreciative ass, so I followed him back into the building.

  “So you guys eat early on Tuesdays?” I asked as we walked over to the kitchen area.

  “Yes, every Tuesday we close up the kitchen an hour early for our Tuesday evening mingle.”

  What the hell was a “mingle”?

  “A mingle?” I asked after Michael finished asking the women who were cleaning up the kitchen area if there was a meal he could grab for me.

  “Just a little time we set aside each week for those of us who are single and would like to spend some quality time with the opposite sex.”

  “A dating service type of thing?” I asked, suddenly uncomfortable.

  Michael grimaced.

  “We like to think of it as courting in a controlled, Christian environment. Dating is such a loose and worldly term.”

  I was saved from having to comment by the lady I normally saw working in the kitchen during meal times. She gave me a brown paper bag and I thanked her. She waved away my thanks graciously. I sat at one of the empty tables and hoped Michael Hatten would disappear.

  I pulled a bowl of bean soup out of my bag and set it on the table in front of me. The bowl was still warm when I took the lid off. There were a few chunks of homemade fried bread in the bag as well.

  My mouth watered.

  “What is it you’re looking for, Tex?” Michael asked me.

  I tried not to scowl and shrugged nonchalantly.

  “Hope. Something other than just surviving,” I answered truthfully, taking a spoonful of soup.

  “We have that here,” Michael said.

  I didn’t disagree with him.

  They did indeed have something here at Camp Victory, though I was pretty sure I didn’t want anything to do with it.

  Glasses of what looked like lemonade were set out on a table along, with some bowls of pecans. Michael left the table to “mingle” with the people of the camp. Everyone stayed away from me and for that I was glad.

  When I was finished with my food I sat back and watched everyone interact. To say the whole thing was awkward would be putting it lightly. Men stood feet away from the women they were talking to.

  When couples were sitting, they still had at least a foot between them. There was no privacy, no intimacy. It was uncomfortable even for me and I wasn’t even participating. I tuned out the weirdness of the scene in front of me and wondered how soon I could make an exit without offending anyone or getting cornered by Michael again.

  “Come on now, you’re not mingling? You’re the talk of the camp… the big news,” a voice from nearby said.

  “Am I?”

  Maria rolled her eyes.

  “Of course you are. New guy. New, young guy, walking around with Michael like some esteemed guest,” Maria said with a sidelong glance toward Michael, who stood near two people who were talking more to him than to each other.

  “Esteemed guest, my fanny,” I snorted.

  “He just wanted to show how big his was.”

  Maria sputtered out a surprised laugh. She glanced around quickly and came to sit down next to me, careful to keep some space between us. I gave her a questioning look.

  She knew exactly what I was asking.

  “We have rules here about all this kind of stuff,” she said waving a hand around to include the room.

  “We don’t touch the opposite sex. No mixed swimming, hand-holding, mixed cabins, etc. We keep at least six to twelve inches between us at all times, to safeguard our sexual desires,” she said with a smirk.

  “Wow,” I said after letting that sink in.

  “Is it optional?” I asked.

  Maria’s eyes were twinkling.

  “I’m afraid not, cowboy,” she said with a grin.

  “You here for someone in particular?” I asked, unable to resist.

  Maria stiffened and I was sorry I brought it up.

&n
bsp; “I’m required to attend,” she said after a moment ticked by.

  A muscle jumped in my cheek.

  Required. Got it.

  Cult.

  “What do you usually do when you come on Tuesday night then?” I asked.

  “Guys probably line up to, um, court you,” I said with a grimace.

  Maria snorted.

  “No they don’t, actually. Not when they know Michael is interested.”

  I turned to her, careful not to lean too close. I didn’t want her to get in trouble on my account, even though she was a damned grown woman with a mind of her own.

  “Why don’t you tell him you’re not interested?” I asked.

  She sighed deeply and smiled sadly.

  “If that were going to deter him it would have worked months ago,” she said softly.

  So Michael didn’t know how to take a hint. Good to know, and another ugly mark on his character.

  “What do you do besides wish you were anywhere except for here on a Tuesday night?” I asked. “Recite poetry in your mind?”

  Maria chuckled under her breath.

  “You really wanna know?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

  “Yes I do.”

  “I do bad lip readings of the couples here in my head to pass the time.”

  I sat back with a grin spreading across my face. I thought for a moment Maria might have blushed under my scrutiny. A woman who was funny and pretty. My weakness.

  “Show me,” I said, indicating a couple across the room from us.

  “I can’t, Tex.” Maria looked scandalized.

  “I usually only do it in my head.”

  “Aw, c’mon now, sweetheart,” I begged.

  “This is the kind of entertainment you can’t withhold from a poor, mortal man. It’s inhumane! Withhold sex, yes. But comedy?”

  Maria shushed me with a giggle, glancing around to make sure no one heard my scandalous words.

  “Alright,” she said.

  The short guy with a shaggy haircut talked and then dipped his head to look at his lap every few seconds. The woman, probably in her late twenties and bored out of her mind, wouldn’t even look up at him except when he was looking down.

  It looked like she answered his questions in single syllable words. Maria cleared her throat. She deepened her voice in an exaggerated southern drawl for the guy and raised her voice in a sheepish, girl whisper for the woman.