The Missing

by Gary Chesla

  “I still can’t think of a single reason why the girls would have left the fort on their own,” Charlie said then asked. “But if they did, do you think the dead would have got them?”

  “It’s hard to say, but since so many of the dead made it out this far, it could mean that they weren’t able to catch the girls, the girls might have found a good hiding spot and the dead just kept coming this way to look for them.”

  “So you think the girls could still be alive?” Charlie asked.

  “It’s possible, but I need to go out there and look over the situation for two reasons,” I replied. “First, to see if my theory and the reason so many of the dead came out this way today is correct. Second, I need to find out, whatever caused the dead to come out this far, to determine if we can expect more of them to show up around here so we can be prepared if they do.”

  “Do you think more of the dead could be coming this way?” Bill asked.

  “If something, like the girls, caused the dead to change course, yes,” I replied. “Worst case, we could see thousands of the dead coming this way.”

  “God, this could be a disaster,” Charlie said. “My mind is a blank, I just can’t think straight right now. What are we going to do?”

  “We have to get as prepared as we can and as fast as we can,” I replied. “It isn’t going to be easy, but we really don’t have a choice. I have a few suggestions on what we need to do to get started.”

  “By all means,” Charlie said. “For the last year we have been doing everything we can think of and if we would have had an attack like we had this morning, I’m not sure what we have been doing would have been enough. What do you want to do?”

  “Well, Charlie since you’re still nursing a bad leg, I would like to have you up on the wall keeping watch while the rest of us do all the leg work.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Charlie replied. “From up there I can keep an eye on everyone to make sure they do what needs to be done.”

  “Fred and George, if I could get you carry as much water as you can up to the fort,” I said. “We will need enough water to last the fort for four or five days just in case we have to deal with a large attack. Just be careful and keep alert, with all that needs to be done here at the fort we don’t have enough people to send a lookout to help you.”

  Fred and George nodded.

  “Bill, I would like for you to carry all the cut sticks and bark inside the fort and start making more arrows. Make as many as you can,” I said. “I used up just about all of the ones we had made yesterday on this morning’s attack.”

  “You want me to go out and salvage as many of the ones you shot this morning as I can?” Bill asked.

  “No,” I replied. “As far as I’m concerned, those arrows are infected with the blood of the dead and I never want to touch those things again. It’s safer to just make new arrows.”

  “OK, will do,” Bill replied.

  “Ken and Dave, after the meeting, meet me over at the blacksmith shed, I have a special project for you,” I said. “The rest of you men, I would like for you to start carrying rocks and logs into the fort, so we have something to throw down on the dead. Half of you carry rocks and the other half of you cut and carry wood. We need as much as you can get.”

  “What about me?” Ed asked.

  “Ed, you are going to come with me and Bear to go take a look at what has changed out on the interstate. Hopefully we can get a deer or two along the way, so we’ll have enough food to hold us for a few days.”

  “I’m going out to the interstate with you?” Ed asked warily.

  “Before we go, I want you to go with Charlie and get something of Susan’s for Bear to smell, get something of Cheryl’s, Connie’s and Betty’s too.”

  Ed nodded nervously.

  “OK men, get to work and I would also suggest that you get the girls to help you, we need all the hands we have,” I said. “Just keep in mind that we may only have a few hours before we get attacked again. I hope we have a few days to get ready, but if the dead are coming this way, the next wave could be here in only a few hours whether we like it or not.”

  “What do we do if we get attacked while you’re gone?” Charlie asked.

  “Without any ammo, there isn’t much you can do,” I replied. “If there are only a few of them, do what you can or lay low and hope they keep moving. If a shit load of them show up, get inside, lock the gates and try to ride it out. That’s all you can do until I get back.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Bill asked.

  “Maybe three hours, depending on what I find,” I replied. “Just work as fast as you can and keep your fingers crossed. Maybe if we’re lucky, today might just turn out to be a fluke and everything will go back to normal, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m a firm believer in Murphy’s Law.”

  “Who is Murphy?” Bill asked. “Was he traveling with you before you came here.”

  “It sounds like he must have been a lawyer if he was making up laws,” Ed added.

  “Let’s get busy,” I smiled. I wasn’t about to try and explain Murphy’s Law, if they had never heard of it, it would take too long to explain it to them in terms that they could understand. Besides, I had already given them more to do than they could handle for one day, maybe more than they could handle in a lifetime. I could only hope that I was wrong.

  Another thought came to mind as the meeting began to break up and I grabbed Barry and Albert before they could wander off.

  “Hey guys, I just thought of something else that might help us,” I said.

  Barry and Albert looked at me, the blank stares on their faces told me to make sure that whatever I told them to do, that I needed to explain it in very simple terms.

  “While I’m gone, would you two go out in front of the fort, about two hundred yards, take your rakes,” I said. “I would like for you to make a pile, or a lot of little piles of brush in a line across the field.”

  “What’s that for?” Barry asked.

  “Think of it as making obstacles to trip up the dead,” I replied. “Something to slow them down if more of them dead come out of the woods and try to make it to the fort. The piles don’t need to be very high. If you make the pile about knee high that should do it.”

  “Oh, I see,” Barry grinned. “The dead are always tripping over things and falling on their faces. We are just going to make it easier for them to do that.”

  “Now you’ve got it,” I smiled. “Any way we can slow them down and make it harder for them to get at us, will help us out. Just make sure you use a lot of dry grass and brush.”

  “That will hide the stones and branches so they can’t see them so they will trip over them,” Albert added. “Good idea, we can do that, it doesn’t sound too hard.”

  “It will also be a lot easier than carrying logs and stones, thanks Tom,” Barry grinned.

  “Back home I used to make piles of leaves around the house,” Albert grinned. “I would hide in the leaves and ambush the neighbor kids when they came around. We could hide in the brush to ambush the dead if they come around again.”

  “I wasn’t planning on hiding in the brush,” I smiled. “But that is a good idea. So you know what I want you to do. I’m counting on you to do a good job. It would be great if you can make one long pile of grass and brush across that field.”

  Albert interrupted before I finished.

  “We could move the entire way across the field without being seen,” Albert grinned.

  “That would be amazing,” I replied.

  The guys grabbed their rakes and quickly ran out the front gate, before I changed my mind and made them go help the others do all the hard work. Hopefully, they would do a good job in the hope that I might give them another easy job tomorrow. Easy and fun seemed to be the key to getting things done around here.

  My idea for the piles of brush wasn’t really to trip up the dead, even though it should also serve that purpose too. I also didn’t intend to go out in the field
and hide in the grass so I could ambush the dead, that would be dangerous, but if that was what motivated those guys to do the job, I had no intention of discouraging them from that thought. I had another reason in mind as I tried to anticipate what could happen over the next few days. I was trying to keep things simple, because so many things could go wrong, and there was no way to be prepared for everything with what I had to work with. There were so many other things that needed done, but this was a hunch, a gut feeling that I had, and I had learned months ago that when I had one of those feeling, that I should listen to my gut.

  As the meeting broke up and all the guys began to drift off, I walked over to the blacksmith shed to get work started on another one of my gut feeling projects.

  Ken and Dave were checking out the blacksmith’s tools when I entered the shed.

  “Tom, are we going to be putting shoes on horses?” Ken asked. “Where are we going to get the horses? I can’t remember when the last time was when I saw a horse. Horses would make it easier to get away from the dead.”

  “I don’t think anyone here knows how to ride a horse,” Ken said then laughed. “In fact, I think most of the people here are afraid of horses. You would have to teach us all how to ride a horse.”

  “This is a big fort, but where are we going to keep horses and does that mean we are going to have to find enough food to feed horses too?” Ken asked.

  “If we could find enough horses for everyone, wouldn’t it be better to just eat the horses? Dave asked. “Horses sound like too much work.”

  “No, the job I have in mind for you doesn’t have anything to do with horses,” I laughed. “But it has crossed my mind to maybe have you guys try to make me some heavy-duty arrowheads.”

  “That sounds a lot easier than putting shoes on horses,” Ken said as he picked up and squeezed the bellows shooting dark soot all over Dave.

  “Watch what the hell you’re doing!” Dave protested as he spit out a dark glob of saliva on to the floor.

  I decided to get to the point before my two helpers got into a fight or injured themselves with the blacksmith tools and had to join Charlie up on the wall in the handicap ward.

  “You will not be doing any type of blacksmith work,” I finally interrupted. “I have a special job for you, a job that you will just be doing here in the blacksmith shed. The only tool you will need is a shovel.”

  “I didn’t know blacksmiths used a shovel,” Ken said.

  Dave started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Ken asked.

  “I’m just imagining a blacksmith in the old west putting shoes on a horse using a shovel,” Dave laughed. “It would probably really piss off the horse, smacking his feet with a shovel.”

  “OK boys, time to get serious,” I said shaking my head and wondering if I should have chosen two of the other men for this job.

  I walked over to the back wall and took two paces out from the wall and scratched and X in the dirt.

  “Out behind the fort the field goes downhill for about fifty feet. I want you to dig a hole where I just marked the ground. Dig down about six feet. When you get down to six feet, start angling down toward the bottom of the hill out back.”

  “How big around do you want the hole?” Dave asked.

  “Just big enough for a person to crawl through,” I replied.

  “What is this hole for?” Ken asked.

  “It’s going to start out as just a hole, but it will end up being a tunnel,” I replied. “In case we need to get out of the fort someday without the dead seeing us, we can use this tunnel. So don’t make it too big or get too close to the surface or it will collapse and we’ll have to start all over again someplace else.”

  “A tunnel?” Ken asked.

  “If the dead have the fort surrounded and they find a way to break inside, we need to have a secret way to escape,” I replied. “Do you think you can handle this?”

  “Hell yeah,” Dave smiled. “When I was a kid, I tunneled under the neighbor’s fence so I could use their pool when they weren’t home. Of course, I got a good whooping when their daughter fell in the hole where I came up behind their pool and she broke her leg. My dad made me fill the whole thing back in. We’re not going to have to fill this tunnel back in later are we?”

  “No, you won’t have to fill it back in, but it’s good to know that you’re an expert on digging tunnels,” I said. “I’m counting on you to do a good job. Just don’t tell anyone what you’re doing until we find out how these women are getting out of the fort.”

  “What do we tell anyone who wants to know what we’re doing in here?” Ken asked.

  “Just tell them you’re learning to be a blacksmith,” I replied.

  Dave and Ken both smiled, I think they liked that answer. It has probably been their lifelong dream to someday be a blacksmith and all it took for their dream to come true was the end of the world.

  I just hope that if they somehow manage to dig the tunnel, that their imagination doesn’t get the better of their senses and they both don’t decide to escape.

  But then on the other hand.

  Chapter 8

  I found Ed waiting nervously by the back gate.

  “You look nervous?” I asked.

  “If there are as many of the dead out on the interstate as you say, it could get scary as hell out there,” Ed replied. “Three or four I can manage, but not thousands.”

  “I don’t intend to let them know we are there,” I replied. “Just watch me and Bear and do what we do.”

  “I can’t do what you do,” Ed replied, “and I certainly don’t intend to bite them.”

  “Just relax, we’re not going to try and be superheroes, we’re just going to go take a look,” I replied.

  “Why do you need me for?” Ed asked seriously.

  “If I get two deer, I need you to drag one back,” I smiled.

  Oh, OK,” Ed replied.

  “Did you get the items of the girls I wanted?” I asked.

  “I have them in this bag,” Ed replied.

  “Let Bear smell the bag and see if he can pick up their scent out here by the fort,” I said.

  Ed held out the bag for me to take it.

  “You can hold it down in front of Bear,” I said. “It’s about time you and Bear became friends, go ahead, hold the bag down so he can smell it.”

  “He might bite me,” Ed replied looking horrified at the thought of voluntarily putting his hands next to Bear’s mouth.

  “You’ll be OK,” I said. “He isn’t going to bite you, he may be big, but he is just a big old teddy bear.”

  “Big old teddy bear my ass,” Ed muttered under his breath, “I’ve saw him rip that zombie apart out there today.”

  I could see Ed’s hands shaking as he held out the bag for Bear to sniff.

  “Bear, smell,” I said.

  Bear looked at me then began to smell the bag, then he began to smell Ed’s hands, arms and pantlegs.

  “He says you stink,” I laughed as Bear sniffed Ed’s pant legs intently, Ed stood perfectly still, afraid to move.

  “I had an accident today,” Ed finally mumbled. “I thought Fred was going to spear me with his damn rake trying to pull me out of the fire.”

  “Bear, smell the bag,” I instructed, smiling to myself.

  Bear turned his attention back to the bag.

  “Bear, go find,” I said.

  Bear sniffed at the ground for a few seconds, then trotted back over to my side and sat down.

  “I guess whatever scent that had been out here was wiped out by the dead this morning, hopefully we’ll find something further on out” I said.

  “Your dog is sure big,” Ed said. “He’s as big as a bear.”

  “That’s how he got his name,” I replied. “He reminded me of a bear cub when we got him, so I decided to name him bear.”

  “Were your neighbors afraid of him?” Ed asked. “I bet they kept their kids in the house when Bear was out in the yard.”


  “No, the neighbors loved him, all the kids wanted to come over and pet Bear,” I replied. “When he grew up, he ended up being bigger than all the kids, but they still looked at him as being the little puppy he was when we got him. And of course, Bear didn’t realize how big he was, he just enjoyed playing with the kids like he had always done. He was always so gentle with the kids. I just had to be careful that he didn’t sit on any of them for too long, so he didn’t accidentally hurt them. When he was little he always sat on my lap and watched TV. He still did that up until a few days before everything went to hell, he is just one big lap dog.”

  “You probably didn’t get to watch much TV,” Ed grinned.

  “I could see the TV between his two big ears,” I laughed. “It wasn’t too bad.”

  We made our way out through the field. Ed really began to get nervous when we passed through the tree line and the fort disappeared from our view.

  “I’ve never been out this far,” Ed said. “What are we going to do if we run into the dead out here?”

  “The goal is to see them before they see us, then stay out of sight,” I replied.

  “What if they see us first?” Ed asked.

  “Hopefully that won’t happen,” I replied. “Just keep your voice low and watch Bear. Trust me, he will know they are there long before we will. If Bear doesn’t look concerned, then we don’t need to be too concerned.”

  “And if he all of a sudden gets concerned?” Ed asked.

  “Then we watch Bear and do what he tells us,” I replied.

  “What he tells us?” Ed asked. “He doesn’t talk, does he?”

  “Not in the human sense, but his actions will tell us what to do,” I replied. “We just need to do what he does at that point.”

  “I’m not running out there and attacking the dead,” Ed said. “I’ll get myself killed.”