“Okay,” I say, “thank you,” and we head out to the door.
Eighteen
“Where you going?” Norm shouts as we barrel past him. The gates are closed now. I see the destruction, just a passing glance. Bodies scattered on the hill, rooted to the land like the trees. Zombies, people, stray guns and blunt weapons. But that’s not what draws my eye. What does it is the bright red smeared across the grass and dirt, flowing down the slope like a lazy river. I only see this briefly before I’m weaving in and out of people with shocked looks on their faces. Soft people. People who’ve forgotten what it’s like beyond fences and spikes. These are not like the people of Eden, though. Those people were crazy. Those people craved the blood. Had they seen what I’d just seen, they’d be jumping for joy, celebrating. The Wranglers, however, have tears in their eyes, looks of anguish on their faces.
Maybe they haven’t completely forgotten. Maybe the wounds are still fresh, not fully healed. I know exactly how they feel. It’s times like these I think of all the ones I’ve lost. My mother, Kevin, Isaiah, the Richards family, and so many more I can’t comprehend.
Jacob is navigating through the sea of people, leading me to the med center. “Up ahead,” he says, pointing to a shabby looking building with a gray and orange patched roof.
Darlene is running with us. Not far behind, I hear Norm say, “Wait up!”
Jacob moves quick for an older man. He is at the door, holding it open and waving us in. As I walk in, the smell of herbs and spices hit me. This place is not an emergency room. It’s as cozy as a library. There’s a waiting room and a woman behind a desk. She is cowering, though, holding a knife.
“Brittney, where’s the doc?” Jacob says.
“I’m here,” a voice says from behind a door. The door opens and the sterile white lights from a room beyond bleed out into the waiting area.
“Phyl, I got a bite,” Jacob says. “I amputated the arm, but she’s losing blood. You gotta help us.”
A young woman steps out. She is wearing a blue dress. Phil? I think to myself. Phyllis? But she’s not an eighty year old woman.
“Jake,” she says, “is it safe out there?” Her eyes are big, looking past us at the open door. “What was it? The cannibals?”
Jacob shoulders past her and waves me into the room.
“Oh, not Eden!” she says. “Please tell me it wasn’t them.”
“It wasn’t them,” Jacob says.
I step into the room after him. It is not a hospital by any stretch, but it’s trying to be. If anything, this is a glorified garage. There’s cots lined up on the half of the room closest to the wall. There’s a few tables for the patients. Trays full of tools. A rack full of medicines and supplies.
“What then?” Phyllis says, more like shrieks.
I hear Norm and Herb come into the room behind us. Norm is out of breath, gasping for air and Herb’s heavy footsteps almost shake the very foundation of the building. Darlene helps me lay Abby onto the table. Abby is still zonked out. I hope from shock instead of blood loss.
“It was the dead,” Jacob says.
“The zombies? They were in?” Phyllis says. “Did you hear that Brit? The dead were in!”
“Oh, my God,” the lady at the desk says in the other room.
“No, they didn’t get in, just attacked,” Jacob says.
The doctor is staring at Jacob with wide eyes. Jacob grabs her gently by the shoulders and says, “Doc, I need your help. This young woman was bit, but I cut the bite wound off with the rest of her arm. Now, she’s lost a lot of blood. I need your help.”
“Lotta people gonna need her help,” Norm mutters. “Ones that survived, anyhow.”
Jacob snaps his fingers in front of the doctor’s face. Once. Twice. Three times. “Doc?”
“Bitten, you say?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “But the hand’s gone.”
“You should’ve shot her in the head,” the doctor answers. Her face twists. “Put her out of her misery.”
“Hey!” Darlene shouts.
“What? I mean no offense…it’s just that the possibility of survival is slim. Especially since…” she trails off, looking at Jacob.
“Now, Phyl,” Jacob says in a soft voice. “I’ve seen what you could do. Frank taught you well.”
“Don’t talk about him,” Phyllis snaps.
“Phyl, it wasn’t my fault,” Jacob says. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
Phyllis bows her head, takes her glasses off, and wipes her eyes. “I know. It’s not even that. I don’t have the supplies. The proper anesthetics…we’ve been running low.”
I think of the bag full of medicine we brought and know it won’t be enough, and I shake my head.
“Just do what you can, Phyl,” Jacob says. “Do what you can and we’ll go from there.”
Phyllis nods. “I will, but I’m not making any promises.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says. “Now everybody get out. I can’t work with you watching me like scientists watching some new species of bug!”
We file out.
Norm claps his hand on my shoulder.
Jacob says, “Phyllis is a little…high strung — hell, we all are — but she’ll do a good job.” He looks out the door. A group of bloody and beaten people are walking toward the med center, lead by one of the men I recognize from the bridge. He is younger but grizzled looking, as we all are nowadays.
“Any survivors?” Jacob shouts as he walks toward the door.
The man grimaces. “A few, but some were bitten. Jones on the stomach. Croghan on the neck. Walter took it on the leg, but the time we got to him he was…he was already turning.”
I shake my head. It just keeps getting worse.
“I’m so sorry,” Jacob says.
“We are going to bury them at sunrise,” the man says. He looks up as if just noticing me. “I saw what you did. That was good. We could use a man like you here.” He looks at Norm. “Saw what you did, too. We could use both of you.”
“Thanks,” I say, the word feeling like a lie. What I did out there is not what I want to be known for.
Norm smiles, looking cocky. That’s the look I missed. Welcome back, Norm.
“Each day our numbers get smaller.” He pauses and sticks his hand out to me. “Name’s Grady by the way.” I take it. He moves on to the rest of the group, nodding and smiling.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Darlene says.
Grady shakes his head. “It’s not as bad anymore. You get used to this kind of thing, but you never get over it, you know?”
Darlene nods.
“Is the doc in?” Grady asks.
“In the back, working on a girl,” Brittney says from the front desk.
“Okay, we’re gonna need some medical attention. Steve got grazed by a bullet and Emma took a nasty spill, messed her leg all up. They’re on their way.”
“I can look at them until Phyllis is done,” Brittney says. “Bring them around back.”
She gets up to leave and Grady does the same. Before he goes, he turns to me and says, “It was great to meet you guys. I hope your girl pulls through. Phyllis is a firecracker, but she knows what she’s doing. Saved me from a gunshot wound couple months back.” He pulls down his collar and shows us a puckered scar right below his collar bone. “‘Course I had luck on my side. A couple inches lower and my heart explodes. Sometimes, you need luck.”
We shake hands again and he’s gone.
I find the nearest chair. My legs are wobbly. Darlene sits next to me on my right, grabs my hand and squeezes. I feel a migraine coming on. Norm takes the chair to my left and Jacob and Herb next to him.
“Jack, I don’t want to get your hopes up. Phyllis might be good, but zombie bites…” Norm says.
“I know,” I say.
Darlene is crying silently. She puts her head on my shoulder.
“I had a daughter. She was a little younger than yo
ur Abby, but she…she was bitten, too. On the leg. We had to amputate,” Jacob says. He leans forward and puts his head in both hands.
Sad, I think. Everyone’s got a sad story and everyday we add to the list of sad things weighing on our minds. It never ends.
“Our Abby is tough as nails,” Norm says.
“I hope so,” Jacob says. “My own girl…well, the infection got to her. I wasn’t quick enough.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault. It was mine. I should’ve never let her go out there with me. But ever since she was a kid, she wanted to be just like her daddy. Fishing, hunting, hauling garbage six days a week. She was too smart for that, of course. Had a scholarship to Vanderbilt. Then the Lord swept the rug out beneath our feet,” he clears his throat, trying to mask the sadness in his voice, “and well, here we are.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Herb says.
“Oh, thank you,” Jacob says.
The door to the patient care opens. I hear the hum of machinery, the beep of a slow heartbeat. Thank God. Thank you, God. Phyllis steps out and closes the door. I stand up, and everyone follows with me. Jacob takes off his hat.
Phyllis is covered in blood. She pulls her glasses off her face and hooks them around the collar of her dress. “She is okay for now,” Phyllis says. “I cauterized the wound, disinfected it, and dressed it. But she lost a lot of blood. We’ll be able to give her a transfusion, but — ”
Herb springs across the room, a goofy smile on his face, and wraps Phyllis up in a big bearhug, lifting her off the floor and spinning her twice around the room.
“Easy, big fella,” Norm says. “We need her alive.”
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Herb says, then puts her down. She is smiling, her hair sticking up out of her tight ponytail in little coils.
“You’re welcome. I did all I could for her, for now. As for the…virus, I’m not a hundred percent sure. Vital signs are stable and she hasn’t turned yet. Time will tell. We’ll have to keep her here for a few days, maybe more, until she is okay,” Phyllis says.
“Anything,” I say. I resist the urge to start biting my nails, for my restless legs to start pacing me around the waiting room. “Just make her better.”
“Please,” Darlene adds. “She’s my best friend.”
“She’s family,” Norm says.
“Family,” Herb echoes.
Phyllis smiles. “I would let her rest for now. You can visit her in a couple of hours.” She looks at Jacob, a frown pulling the corners of her mouth down. “If there was ever a time for a run, it would be now,” she says. “Talk to Mother for me, Jake. Tell her we’re getting desperate.”
“I will,” Jacob says.
Then Phyllis looks back at us, smiling. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe I have more people to attend to.” She walks to the door Brittney disappeared to, removing her bloody rubber gloves and depositing them in a biohazard bin. Then, under her breath, she says, “Fucking zombies.”
I snort with laughter when I really shouldn’t. Who would’ve guessed a practicing physician would talk like that? But hey, I guess in the zombie apocalypse anything is possible.
We are gathered in a tight circle, the four of us, Jacob on the outside. Darlene wraps her arms around me.
“Group hug,” Herb says, and joins Darlene and I. Norm is reluctant, but once Herb gets a hand on him, he realizes he’s going nowhere and we share a group hug for the second time today. Except this one is without Abby and I think we all can feel her absence.
As we part, I turn to Jacob and stick my hand out to him. “Thank you again,” I say. “None of us would’ve been able to do what you did today.”
He smiles. “I wish I could say it was nothing, but you know, amputation and all.”
I chuckle. “Yeah.”
“Well, I better get back to my wife. She’s going to be wondering what happened and she’ll be glad to know it’s looking up for you guys. When we lost our little girl she didn’t talk for weeks. There ain’t enough joy in this world now. We gotta spread it while we can.”
I nod. “I agree. One-hundred percent.”
He turns to the door, but stops as a bell outside chimes. I am reminded of churches. “Hm,” he says, “guess that trip home will have to wait.”
“What is it?” Norm asks, then quietly, “Dumb to be making noise that loud with the zombies this close.” He’s right. It’s not super loud, but it’s loud enough. And hearing these bells actually angers me a bit, especially after what just went down outside of the fences.
“It’s very rare,” Jacob says. “Town meeting.” He shakes his head. “It only happens after…well, tragedies. Guess I’ll be having that conversation with Mother sooner rather than later.”
The way he says it is not pleasant. He almost sounds scared.
Nineteen
There are not many people walking through the streets. Again, we follow Jacob’s lead. His wife has joined us. She was glad to hear about Abby, but sad to hear about the men and women lost at the top of the hill. Jacob grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her close.
Now, we file to the meeting place with the rest of the people. These are mostly families. Some of them have newborns, and I think to myself what a fucked-up world we’re living in when a newborn has to grow up learning Zombie Defense 101 before they learn their ABCs.
The town is made up of buildings and shacks. They are well-made and even cozy. The setup is not well-made, however. The buildings have been put up without pattern. They have risen as randomly as wild trees. The roads are not paved in all parts. Mostly it’s pact down dirt and rocks. There are torch lights on the side of the paths. Not all of them are lit. It may not be society — not the society we are used to — but it beats the hell out of empty neighborhoods full of rotting corpses, both alive and dead. And it certainly beats Eden.
Darlene is not like the rest of the people walking. She isn’t staring straight ahead, looking at nothing besides the road ahead of her. She’s looking around, taking it all in. It reminds me of the way I used to be whenever I visited a bookstore, before I got my first publishing deal. Back then, I would wander in a place like Borders or Books-A-Million the same way I’d wander into the library as a kid, or even the toy store, all wide-eyed, completely baffled by the sights and colors and the endless possibilities. So I don’t say anything to Darlene. I let her drink it all up. Six months on the road can make you forget the beauty of just settling down, of making friends and memories, and living your life. Plus, it helps put Abby to the back of her mind, though she is not in the back of my mind at all. Neither is Doc Klein, where he is, what he is doing, what was wrong with him when he passed through this little village. I intend to find out all of that.
“Oh, it’s nice, Jack,” Darlene says.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s very nice.”
“It’s a community. Nothing like Chicago. It kind of reminds me…reminds me of home.”
I smile at her and keep walking, knowing what she means. Our voices aren’t particularly loud, but no one else is talking.
She looks at me again, her eyes big and shining, and says, “When Abby is better, Jack, we should stay. There’s walls and people and houses. They even have electricity — at least in the med center. Jack? What do you think?”
I think about lying to her, but I’ve never been good at that. So I speak true. “I think that this place isn’t any safer than the car we left on the bridge. I think that before long this place will be overrun because places are always overrun. I think — ”
No, I can’t say it, especially after our little conflict earlier today. I know she wants to settle down, but can one really settle down the way the world is now? I don’t think so. With the ever-present threat of the zombies, one’s never safe. The only certain way to settle down is to get rid of them all. Doc Klein might not be our answer, but catching up to him would be going in the right direction. Not settling down. Not folding and giving
up.
“What, Jack? What?” Her voice is lower now, but it’s still sharp.
So I say what’s on my mind. I have to. “I think if we stay here, we’ll end up dying…or worse, we’ll hurt the people that live here. You saw what happened in the forest. If we would’ve just left it alone, none of that — ”
She grabs my hand, her eyes dropping but her her mouth trying to smile. “Quiet, Jack,” she says. “It’s okay. Abby is going to be okay. Everyone here is going to be okay.”
We walk on.
The meeting place is a bandstand in the heart of the village. There are about a hundred chairs set up around the stage, but the town only fills half of them. Jacob leads us down an aisle. He tips his hat to a young family. They nod back. Nobody is smiling. There are plenty of tissues and handkerchiefs in hand. The village has electricity running through the various buildings, but here at the bandstand the only light comes from low-burning torches. The flames dance in the black eyes of the crowd.
The man named Grady we met back at the med center takes the stage. He is not smiling, either. “As many of you have heard, we lost some of our own tonight. The threat has been neutralized. There is nothing to worry about, but I would like to take a moment of silence to commemorate the ones we lost. William Croghan, Walter Caspri, George Jones, Stephanie Newt, Harold Strom.”
We all bow our heads. I hear faint sniffling from the row to my right.
“All right,” Grady says. “Thank you. I do have two pieces of good news to share. There were survivors. Steve was shot, but just a flesh wound. He’s back at the med center with Brittany and Phyl. Brittney stitched him up — God forbid!” This brings a chuckle from the crowd. “Emma broke her foot, but nothing serious. She won’t need surgery, but she’ll be on crutches for the next few weeks. So if you see her hobbling around, open the door for her, if it do ya.” He grins. “She’ll appreciate that. I’m all right, too, in case you were wondering — you’re probably not. Bobby was a little displeased to see me after the incident since I took away his Gameboy and all. Little brat.” He sighs, “But what kid doesn’t hate his stepdad, right?”
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