The Missing

by Gary Chesla

  When we got up on the wall, Ed sat at the far corner and seemed quiet and subdued. I walked over to see if he felt more like talking today. After I had lost Sandy and Nicole, I wish I would have had someone to talk to instead of having to let all my emotions well up inside of me. Those emotions almost drove me insane as I struggled to understand what had happened, to cope with what I had seen happen to the girls and to live with what I had done. At least Ed had the benefit of having lived in a world haunted by the dead. Ed knew that what had happened to his wife and daughter was always a possibility, I was completely blindsided by everything. Ed at least had some understanding of what happened where I had no idea about any of it. But I knew, even though Ed had some advanced insight, that did little to ease his loss.

  I walked across the wall to where Ed stood, hoping to maybe give him an opportunity to talk and unload a little of the pent-up frustrations that he had bottled up inside him. I also wanted to try and understand what was going through his mind and why he seemed to have given up his search for Cheryl so quickly. If it were me, I would have spent the last two days combing the area around the fort until I found something, anything that would tell me where my wife had gone. I wouldn’t have been able to rest until I had exhausted all my energy to find my wife, even then I don’t think I wouldn’t have been able to stop searching until I had found her. But I knew these people were different, I just didn’t understand why.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked Ed.

  “Oh, Hi Tom,” Ed said. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come over here, I guess I was thinking.”

  “What were you thinking about?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, a lot of things I guess,” Ed replied.

  “It might help if you talk about it,” I said.

  “I don’t think anything will help,” Ed replied.

  “I think I know what you mean,” I said. “But talking might help you deal with it a little better. The pain, that lost feeling will never go away, believe me, but you learn to live with it. That’s the best you can hope for.”

  “How did you learn to live with it?” Ed asked.

  “When I lost my wife and daughter, everything was happening so fast, I had to learn how to survive, I was trying to figure out why all those dead things were after everyone, what were those things, why the world was falling apart all around me and what could I do about it. So much was happening, my mind was constantly occupied trying to figure things out. I guess in a way, that helped keep my mind distracted.”

  “So what did you figure out?” Ed asked.

  “Not a damn thing,” I replied. “What are you trying to figure out?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Ed said. “I just have so many questions, that I don’t know where to start.”

  “Yeah, there seems to be a lot of questions, but there aren’t many answers,” I replied. “You just need to accept that and make peace with that fact, then focus on what you can control. So what can I help you not understand?”

  “I thought you had everything figured out,” Ed smiled sadly.

  “You think so, try me,” I said.

  “I keep wondering if the dead we see out there are ever going to die?” Ed asked.

  “I have no idea, but I would hope so because nothing lasts forever,” I replied. “Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think that we will never see that day in our lifetime.”

  “Can the dead be saved? Can they be turned back into living people again somehow?” Ed asked.

  “Not that I know of, but I really don’t know,” I replied. “If there is a way to make something like that happen, it would take someone a lot smarter than me to figure that out.”

  “If the dead don’t eat, will they starve?” Ed asked. “If they eat, will they last longer? Do you know if they eat anything besides people?”

  “I don’t have a clue, in fact I’ not sure that the dead have the ability to eat and digest anything, most of them don’t have any stomachs left,” I replied. “See, I told you that I haven’t been able to figure out anything.”

  “You don’t know, so it might be possible, right?” Ed asked. “It might be possible that we might wake up some day and the dead will all be alive again, like they were before this all happened?”

  “Anything is possible, but I wouldn’t count on any of that happening,” I replied. “Somehow I don’t think there are going to be any happy endings to any of this.”

  Ed looked disappointed at my answers.

  “Why are you asking all these questions about the dead?” I asked.

  “I guess I’m just hoping that this will all be over some day and everything will return back to normal,” Ed replied. “Things just can’t end this way.”

  “I’m hoping that things aren’t going to end this way too,” I replied. “But in order for things to get better, it is going to be up to us to make it better. As far as the dead are concerned, the dead are here, and we just have to deal with them. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure them out. I don’t think we will ever know why they are here and why they do what they do, all you need to know about the dead is how to stay one step ahead of them, trying to understand anything else about them is a waste of time. You need to think about what you can do to survive and make your life better. Just accept the fact that life as we knew it is over and it’s never going to come back. Think about the future and forget about the past. Ed, believe me I know how hard it is to do that, but in order to survive, it’s all we can do.”

  “But I miss my family, Tom,” Ed said. “I can’t just forget about them.”

  “I didn’t say to forget about your family, you will never be able to forget about them and I wouldn’t want to forget,” I replied. “Memories of my family are the only good things that I have left, it’s what keeps me going on some days. I like to think that they are in a better place now and that I will see them again someday. I also believe that they would want me to live the best life I can until that time, so I am trying not to disappoint them. I’m sure your wife and daughter would want you to remember them, but I’m sure they would also want for you to live and have a good life.”

  “That’s hard,” Ed said.

  “It’s the hardest thing you will ever do,” I replied.

  “Thanks for talking with me,” Ed said. “I guess all I can do is try to do the best I can do and don’t give up hope.”

  I patted Ed on the shoulder.

  “Remember the good times you and Cheryl had, that is something that no one can ever take from you,” I said. “Those kind of memories have helped me get through a lot of tough times. If you let them, they’ll help guide you on what you need to do. I hope that helps, because that’s all I can tell you.”

  “It has helped more than you know,” Ed smiled. “Thanks again, I think I understand what I need to do.”

  I smiled back at Ed and put my hand on his shoulder, but since Ed had never seemed to know what he should be doing, I had no idea what he meant when he said he knew what he had to do. However, I took a little satisfaction in knowing that Ed’s eyes seemed brighter after our talk and he had a smile on his face.

  “Hey Tom,” Bill called up, “I have your sticks.”

  I turned to see Bill setting an armful of sticks on the ground in front of the wall below me.

  “I need to go help Bill for a bit, you just keep an eye on the woods line,” I said as I squeezed Ed’s shoulder. “Just hang in their buddy, it never gets easier, but after a while, you learn to live with it and it doesn’t hurt as much. For now, it’s the best we can hope for.”

  Chapter 5

  The sun was going down behind the trees when I got up. I had laid down and taken a nap after standing guard up on the wall, hoping it would be easier to stay awake while on watch tonight. I knew it would be up to me to keep Ed and Bill awake, so I wanted to be well rested.

  As I had laid back, I began to think about what had happened to the women. Three nights and three women missing couldn’t be a coincidence, but with
this group, I wasn’t ready to fully buy into the fact that someone had taken the women. I didn’t know enough about these people to form a theory yet about what might have happened, but I didn’t believe someone was sneaking into the fort in the middle of the night and taking them. First of all, Bear hadn’t awakened me during any of the nights when the women had disappeared. If someone had gotten into the fort, Bear would have known about it, even when asleep, Bear didn’t miss much. So my thoughts to this point was that the women were sneaking out on their own. Why? I have no idea. But that made more sense than someone sneaking into the fort, going into the women’s quarters where they were asleep next to their husbands, dragging them out of bed then carrying them off and through all this, not waking any one up.

  The fact that there weren’t any footprints leading away from the fort was confusing, but there could be a reason to explain that fact, even though I couldn’t think of one yet.

  Bear had become familiar with the people in the fort and after the first night he had stopped worrying about them and waking me up. If the women had come out of their quarters during the night, Bear would have noticed, but he wouldn’t have felt it necessary to get me up to investigate. He would have figured out by now that they didn’t pose any danger.

  My next thought was that if the women were leaving on their own, how were they able to get out of the fort with out leaving any clues as to how they got out. They would have had to have crawled over the wall, or they would have gone out the gate. If they went out the gate, how did they close and secure the gate behind them? Maybe someone closed and locked the gate for them, but who? Were the women working together to get out of the fort? Was there a way to get out of the fort that I didn’t know about? A way to get out that one of the women discovered, told the other women, then they made plans to sneak out of the fort, one each night until they were all out.

  Why would they do that? Where would they go?

  Still I was more inclined to believe that was happening than the idea of someone sneaking into the fort and taking them.

  As I sat up and looked around the courtyard, I knew that I really didn’t know for sure about anything. All I had was possibilities, and they were wild possibilities at that, about what could have taken place. There was no evidence to support any of the possibilities, the only fact I had to work with was the fact that the women were gone. But again, it was a fact only because I was taking the men’s word for it. They claimed to have completely searched the fort, but again, none of them appeared to me to very efficient at doing anything. But they should be able to tell if their wife was gone, unless of course that they were responsible for the disappearance. The men here didn’t seem to be some kind of monsters, but I didn’t want to rule out anything.

  I doubted that I would discover anything useful tonight, but I knew I should set my sights on learning something. I had to fight off the idea that doing this, when there were so many other things that needed done in order to survive all the dangers we were facing, that this entire idea was stupid. But after seeing the pain in Ed’s eyes earlier today, I wanted to at least help Ed find some answers, whatever those answers might be. I decided that tonight I would try to at least find something concrete, anything that would support or eliminate one of my theories. I couldn’t help but think that there was more going on here than what I was aware of. If that turned out to be the case, then that was these people’s problem. I had been thinking about leaving anyways and they could deal with their problems in their own way. From what I had seen so far, most of the problems these people had were self-inflicted. So as I entered into this project, I did so without a lot of expectations of what I might find.

  As I sat up, I saw Ed and Bill walking towards my site. They had probably been watching me take a nap and had been wanting to come over, but with Bear lying next to me, they were afraid to come over until I was awake. It was always amusing to watch the people in the fort give Bear a wide berth anytime we walked through the fort.

  “Hey, Tom,” Ed grinned and called out. “We thought you were going to sleep all night.”

  “You wish,” I replied returning his grin.

  “So what do we do now?” Bill asked.

  “The first thing I want you to do is grab one of the branches from the pile of wood near the campfire area,” I replied. “I want you two to go out the front gate and sweep the area in front of fort. Bear and I will sweep the area around the back gate.”

  “Are we cleaning up to welcome guests?” Bill laughed. “My mother always made me help her clean the house when we were expecting company.”

  “No, what you will be doing is wiping away any footprints around the gate so if we see any new footprints there tomorrow morning, we will know that someone was out there,” I replied. “So be sure to sweep away your footprints when you come back into the fort. I’m also sending the two of you together so you can watch each other’s back while you’re outside the gate, so keep your eyes open.”

  “You need us to watch your back for you when we’re done out front?” Bill asked.

  “No, Bear will watch my back,” I replied, “I’ll meet you back here in a few minutes.”

  I walked over to the wood pile and selected a branch that still had a lot of leaves remaining on it, then headed towards the back gate. I chuckled to myself as I imagined Ed and Bill literally watching each other’s backs while they swept the ground in front of the fort. As I stepped out behind the fort, I watched as Bear studied the area around the fort. When Bear didn’t appear to be concerned with anything, I began to sweep the ground in front of the gate. I finished sweeping and returned to the fort and secured the gate. The only significant thing that happened was all the dust I had stirred up by sweeping dry dirt, was it had made Bear sneeze.

  When I got back to my site, Ed and Bill were waiting for me.

  “Did you close and lock the gate?” I asked.

  “We locked it,” Bill replied. “Do you want us to build a fire in the firepit now?”

  “No fire,” I replied. “I want everything to be as it would normally be at night in the fort. If we build a fire, it could scare away whoever might have been thinking about sneaking into the fort. The fire light could also attract the dead, so we want things to look like it does every other night around here.”

  “How are we supposed to see if something happens?” Bill asked.

  “After a while your eyes will adjust to the darkness, but I don’t expect you will see much,” I replied. “What I want you to do is listen for any sounds. I want you to fill one of your pockets with small pebbles. If you hear anything, toss a pebble down into the center of the courtyard to get my attention and I’ll come to you to find out what you heard.”

  “What kind of sounds?” Ed asked.

  “Any kind of sounds, but no crickets, I think you can ignore cricket sounds,” I replied. Knowing how many false movements that Ed sees during the day, I figured I would be bombarded with imaginary sounds all night long. Hopefully he knew what a cricket sounded like and would ignore the constant sound those little critters made or it would be a really long night.

  “Should we tell you if we hear anyone moving around near our sleeping quarters, because sometimes people get up and just come out to get a breath of fresh air when they can’t sleep?” Bill asked.

  “I especially want to know if you hear any noise like that,” I replied. I hadn’t told Ed and Bill, but I had asked Charlie to tell everyone to stay inside tonight. If they did what they were told, any sounds around the fort tonight should lead us closer to finding out what was going on around here. If we did find out anything tonight, I expected it would be inside the fort and not on the outside.

  I continued.

  “Ed, I want you to go up on the front wall, Bill I want you to go up on the back wall and I’ll keep my attention on the inside of the fort for the first shift,” I said.

  “First shift?” Ed asked.

  I pulled a small white duck toy out of my pocket and held it up.

/>   I turned the ducks head, until it was facing backwards.

  “When Sandy and I were trying to get Nicole ready to go to school, we bought a timer, we called him Donald,” I replied. “When I turn his head like this, it takes thirty minutes to rotate back in place. We told Nicole that when she went to school, she had to stay in her seat and not run around the room until the teacher said it was OK. She wanted to know how long she had to stay in her seat. Sandy and I knew she didn’t have a concept of time yet, so we bought her this little duck timer. We had her practice sitting on her bed until the duck quacked so she would learn how to sit still for at least half an hour. When I had to leave my house when Lexington was overrun, I spotted Donald and slipped him into my pocket to remind me of my family.”

  I paused a moment to suppress the memories before continuing.

  “Every time the timer goes off, I am going to trade places with one of you,” I continued. “This way it will help us keep from getting bored, careless and end up falling asleep if we change places every hour.”

  “If it only takes thirty minutes for the duck’s head to turn around, how will we end up changing places only once an hour?” Bill asked.

  “I can only trade places with one of you at a time, and I will be here at my post between shift changes, so that means you will be at your post for an hour before I get to you,” I replied. “Understand?”

  “OK, I think I got it,” Bill replied.

  “Any other questions before we go to our posts?” I asked.

  “Will the duck quack every thirty minutes?” Ed asked.

  “Not anymore, now it just clicks,” I replied. “That will be better for what we are doing, that way no one but me will hear it when it goes off.”