“Why?”
“Because our parents are there! My fiancé is there!”
“Nicole was there?”
“Yes. I forgot to ask-” Ethan did interject, “Heard anything from Sarah?”
“She’s dead.” Lee said matter of fact. “She was an EMT in Norfolk when the city was overrun… She might have been a heinous bitch from hell, but she didn’t deserve...” Lee trailed off. He was known for dating superficial women, most of whom Ethan didn’t bother to get to know because they were so easily replaced. He felt almost proud that he remembered the latest girlfriend of Lee’s.
There was no point arguing that she might be alive. The highest mortality rates for people in the fight against the plague, while statistics were still coming out, were EMT’s & Paramedics. This was followed closely by Police and Doctors and other medical personnel, then Soldiers and the morbidly obese or people with health problems. The least likely to die, Ethan noticed, were Veterans and Hillbillies, often one in the same. Anyone with even the slightest bit of outdoors experience had an infinitely better chance of surviving than your average city or subdivision dweller. The most important skill, it seemed, was an ability to hide and stay quiet for hours or days. Try it. You can’t. Because you’re not motivated to be that quiet. Put a ravenous cannibal in the room with you, perhaps you’ll acquire said skills.
“Look, it doesn’t matter, Ethan. We can’t go to Oklahoma. That government facility was overrun weeks ago. It was one of the last reports that made it into an officer’s briefing before Chattanooga fell.” Lee was being completely honest, but he worried it was such a convenient excuse Ethan wouldn’t believe it.
“I just got an email form Nicole. They’re alive! I’m going.” Ethan shouted.
“Yo, Keith, we’ll catch up.” Lee said over his brother’s shoulder. Keith didn’t even turn around. He knew what Lee was about to do, and then new Cally brother didn’t disappoint when he punched Ethan straight in the face. “No. You’re not. None of us are, and that’s final.”
Ethan got up and head butted Lee, not a very tactical thing to do, but it hurt Lee every bit as much as it hurt Ethan. The brothers were rolling in the gravel swinging at each other until Keith turned around. He only did so because they were attracting zombies. Pulling out a can of mace he aimed it at them. “Knock it off!”
Seeing the can of OC spray come out of its holster, Ethan broke off and jumped away, “Whoa whoa whoa! I’m done. We’re cool.”
“Pussy.” Lee sneered.
“Have you ever been OC sprayed?” Ethan used a train car to pull himself back up to his feet. “Fuck you. I’d rather get shot.”
Keith, again, wordlessly made for Paula’s house. In the residential part of town just past Main Street most people had cleared their own property of zombies. Casualties had been expected, but to everyone’s relief there were fewer than expected. A family in a recently restored town house was performing last rights for a little girl, their daughter, that couldn’t have been more than six. Her mouth was gagged and her body bound while she squirmed and snapped angrily at the people gathered around her. The parents whaled in grief as a relative prepared to put their daughter down for good. They turned the corner and heard the gunshot, the mother screamed louder.
Even in the darkest days of the Black Plague there were more people left alive than now, more chances to keep from contracting the disease. Had people in the Dark Ages any concept of sanitation the Bubonic Plague may never have taken hold in Europe in the first place. This virus, Envier Strain 1 “Resurrection,” was just sadistic. How could a benevolent God allow such a thing to be created some might wonder. Ethan would have suggested that just because God had a plan didn’t mean it was a good one, or that you’d like it. Then again Ethan firmly believed God was much less like a personal guardian angel of all mankind, and infinitely more like a kid with an ant farm.
At the door of Paula’s house a handful of zombies were banging slowly on the door, moaning and smearing their blackened paste-blood all over what had been relatively new whitewash. Pulling out an illegally modified Tech9 Keith had taken during the Blood’s Massacre he mowed the zombies down on full auto, not worrying about hitting them in the head as he emptied the magazine into them. He dropped the smoking weapon after he’d finished, jumped on a railing on the porch and climbed up to the balcony that connected to the upstairs windows. Ethan and Lee stood in the yard, Lee dabbing blood off his nose and Ethan’s eye beginning to swell. They watched Keith’s display of climbing prowess, both standing just like Ethan who was becoming famous for his unintentional “Superman” pose with hands on his hips. The women in the house looked worse for ware, the battle overnight kept them from their beauty sleep. They too looked on with jealous expressions when Keith pulled Paula out of the window and onto the roof with him for a movie-moment recreation of the V-Day kiss.
A stocky looking woman in hockey armor was riding a bicycle nearby when Keith tore the zombies down and rescued his girl. She was a photographer/journalist for the first daily newspaper since the Army retreated, albeit printed on 8 ½ x 11 computer paper, and her camera clicked a dozen times during the eons long kiss. The image would be on the front page of the Sullivan Outpost Daily the next day.
“I’m gonna be a little busy today, but I’ll catch ya for dinner, okay?” Keith said to Paula, who was too stunned to speak. Keith helped the love of his life back inside her house and hopped down off the balcony to greet the Cally brothers. “Dafuq you two staring at? Carry on.” He smiled, pretending to be someone.
The first snowfall of the year brought with it the painful reminder that civilization had leaned too heavily on electric power all around the world. Hardly one out of every ten homes built after the mid 1960’s had been designed to accommodate a fireplace of any kind. Several homes burned down when residents, unfamiliar with the ancient art of fire, installed furnaces on carpets or in trailers. Lots of neighbors became very close that winter, just for survival, and anyone with extra fire wood or coal powered stoves to sell found themselves well-to-do in a hurry. The shift in social classes was mildly amusing to some, especially the lower income families who saw their practical skills come back into high demand, the rich and lazy were quickly becoming the riff-raff of this frontier culture. One family with a two story house had opened a “Warm Café” for those who needed a few hours in a well heated house. Their home had a fireplace in every room but the bathrooms, which allowed them to be so successful they’d opened up five more locations all around the town in less than two months. Stuck at work on the recycling trucks? Have to pull a double shift and don’t have time to walk home? No problem. Warm Café was there for you with hot, cheap food, clean water and a warm recliner. Squatters not welcome.
Though they argued about it every day, Lee managed to keep Ethan in town for the winter with horror stories of a modern day Donner Party. Keith was distracted more than ever when only a month after the V-Day picture Paula was pregnant with their first child. They were still living at Lee & Ethan’s until it seemed safer to move. The brothers didn’t seem opposed to having company, they’d both had friends or girlfriends come to stay with them before. Supply problems, the cold, and always he undead as omnipresent issues, the new town government was also having trouble legalizing the doling-out of abandoned properties to people who weren’t from town, but who now lived there much like Keith and Paula. Abandoned properties were technically now municipal property, and with large free lands up for grabs for what basically amounted to peanuts, the greedy reared their ugly heads to take advantage of the plan and make under the table property grabs.
Many people were glad someone like Aaron Kenly had been elected mayor, because had he not a woman who’d been in real-estate before the apocalypse, Jenny Kopland, would have grabbed almost every vacant property in town under one shady loophole in the law or another. As irritating and bossy as she already was, there was a very real fear she would probably try to live out some sort of Wild West whorehouse fantasy in
her perfectly clean Cowgirl boots and tasseled shirts if she were ever given power. She was short, shrewd, wealthy and reminded people ad nauseam that she had experience in leadership. This “leadership” might only have extended to being the President of the PTA, but it fueled her narcissism to new heights. Ethan unintentionally coined the name “Madam Miley” for Miss Kopland when he equated her behavior to a much fatter, older Miley Cyrus; post-Disney.
Kenly finally put the bottle and bong down long enough to stage a very clear news conference about his interpretation of the law, which was about as directly in conflict with Jenny Kopland’s agenda as anything could be. Like Presidents of Old he gave his speech on the front lawn of the town’s police station on a podium he got from who-knows-where. The air was frosty, but warming slightly as the clouds broke on that late November day. “On March 15, this coming year, all properties not currently owned or occupied by pre-war citizens, and those properties owned by people out of town, constructed within the predefined boarders of Sullivan and Oak Grove Village, will be up for auction. The price will not be in U.S. dollars, but in services or goods to the community. Prices will be low. The catch is, if a pre-war resident returns within the next five years, their property must be surrendered back to them unless a compromise or compensation is accepted by the returning party. All items not for daily life-sustaining usage must be properly stored for no less than five years, to include electronics. Municipal Storage will be available at no cost, but storage numbers are tied to house numbers. You are ultimately responsible for the items until the first day of the sixth year of storage. No one, and this means you Miss Kopland, will be allotted by the Municipal Government more than their own home or business for the foreseeable future. This is to prevent the rise of barons, or tenement states. This is a Libertarian State, folks. Everyone is free to come and go, do whatever they want for a living, or be with anyone who chooses them in return. We, your governing body, are here to protect and serve you, not the other way around. But we’re not going to allow criminal enterprises to flourish in our own back yards. Commerce will be regulated, and there will be taxes. Again, not in monetary form yet, but we will figure that part out in due time. Despite how the abridged history books in our schools was portrayed, the United States wasn’t built overnight. The Colonials didn’t just send a letter to the King with lots of pretty signatures on it and magically we became a nation. There were four long, bloody years of war and nearly another decade before the Founding Fathers were able to ratify a constitution and bill of rights. We’re not advertising a perfect system. We’re probably not even advertising a good system. But compared to all the others available, I’d stick to what we got here. Defend it to the death if necessary.” That got a round of cheers from the unexpectedly large audience, even Jenny Kopland for the sake of appearances.
This caused quite a stir, especially amongst people who were not direct owners of property. Renters or family tenants suddenly felt very threatened by citizenship laws, especially if the landlord or property owner couldn’t be proven dead. Kenly and the dozen or so office workers he’d been forced to hire tried desperately to assure those people they would not be evicted with nowhere to go. Laws, unfortunately, were arbitrary for now and Aaron Kenly was the arbiter until or if a legitimate judge were found.
The political battle with Jenny Kopland didn’t end with a speech. The woman was a manipulative bitch and a benevolent tyrant. Her style of thinking, her ideology, was what had allowed the plague to reach global proportions in the first place. Ethan, and probably many others, wondered how this woman would have fared had she not had a survivalist/hunter/yogamaster husband to protect her.
“We can get our own place in the spring.” Keith smiled, kissing Paula on the head as the crowd dispersed from Kenly’s speech. Every Friday afternoon Kenly would get on the stage, and regardless of crowd turnout give a briefing on the activities of the town. He appointed individual chiefs to run details such as trash removal, maintenance of public buildings, zombie corpse disposal, scavenging parties, etcetera. This style of direct democracy only worked on a Macro Scale, and the feedback wasn’t always official, or even acted upon. There would be no “Free Beer Fountains” in the Wal*Mart Trading Post as one man had shouted out during a weekly address. Sullivan was small enough that it didn’t need to be a Republic, no representatives or politicians need apply. Everyone could literally have their own say, sometimes even the children. A little boy, perhaps eight, asked the Mayor when the park would be reopened because he missed playing with his friends on the swings. Kenly personally helped clean the town’s two parks and reopened them that day.
“What? Our place not working for you? Because you can have Ethan’s room. He passes out on the couch most nights.” Lee smiled too, putting his gloves back on. He was having a lot of secret meetings with Mayor Kenly and the Lieutenants. He was apparently off to another one right now. “I wouldn’t look under his bed if I were you. Crusty socks and whatnot. It’s an Army thing.” He smiled.
“I don’t think Ethan would appreciate a crying child at all hours of the night.” Paula said.
“Where is Ethan, by the way?” Keith had to ask. It had been at least a day since he’d seen his friend.
“I sent him and that kid Allen on a scouting mission. They took a couple four-wheelers yesterday.”
Keith narrowed his eyes at Lee, “And what are they scouting?”
“The other towns.”
“For what?”
“For everything. Anything.”
“And who gave you the authority to give orders around here?”
Lee smiled. “Come with me. I have a job offer for you…”
4
The center of Union was a ghost town. Aside from the occasional holdout unwilling to expose themselves, hermits and rednecks and the like, there were no living people. The winter chill had frozen most of the zombies cold. They were still animated enough to moan or turn to look at you, but chasing you was out of the questions. The only real concern was vagrants and gangs in this frozen, dirty winter wonderland.
While Ethan was inside a gas station checking for anything there might be to find, Allen had driven off a man who looked like a lumberjack in women’s clothing, a strange sight as he ran amok with a ceremonial sword whacking at zombies and air while repeating the last thing he read over and over again as if he were actually saying something. “Mega Gulp Just Seventy Nine Cents!” Insanity among survivors was epidemic, people without medication or those who’d simply snapped. Rumors of feral children sneaking into camps at night and stealing things had become fact when someone set up a game camera and caught them. The kids were all under the age of ten, barefoot, and extremely dirty looking. They moved like ninjas and reportedly were always accompanied by a terrible smell. However, they weren’t afraid of zombies, they carried kitchen knives or anything sharp, and they especially weren’t afraid of you.
“Gas stations are completely dry.” Ethan tossed the nozzle down at the Quick Trip. “We can’t even count on private businesses having gasoline in their stores anymore.”
“We knew gasoline would dry up eventually.” Allen replied, watching the cross-dressing lumberjack reappear on a hilltop less than a mile away. He ducked down and was gone as soon as his pink nightgown over cammo pants was spotted. “I say we go ahead and check Washington. This place is pretty well looted. I don’t even want to check the Twin Bridges trailer park. I’m willing to bet it crawls.”
“And you don’t think Washington will be looted too? It’ll look as bad as this place and St. Clair combined.”
“The zombies from the river drove people out sooner than most towns. Maybe they didn’t have time to burn everything on their way out.” Allen shrugged and put his helmet back own. “Besides, Union and St. Clair are closer to the highway than Washington. It’s geographically isolated.”
“Whatever.” Ethan started his four-wheeler and they began driving. Normally this mission wouldn’t have involved either of them, but Ethan had
gotten into another fight with Lee. This time it wasn’t about going to Oklahoma to find their family. It was worse. Lee was going to start a boot camp in the spring. He was going to train Deputies to be Soldiers. The very idea urked Ethan. He wasn’t the biggest government supporter ever, not after the things he’d seen. As Ethan saw it, Deputies were People working for The People. Soldiers… Soldiers were expendable assets of a governing body. Property by Contract. Ethan had protested, saying that though there would be virtually no difference in the duties performed by a Deputy vs a Soldier and Soldiers weren’t going to be needed for one town. Using the word Soldiers, Army, Military, all had implications Ethan couldn’t ignore. In his mind there was no reason for a separate unit, and it had come to fisticuffs with Lee once again. Neither was a graceful loser, and had the bruises to prove it. At least this fight wasn’t in the full view of the public.
The ride to Washington took longer than they’d expected, navigating through one impossible traffic snarl after another. Ethan had a long time to think about things, the humming of the ATV’s engine inside his helmet drown out anything else. He couldn’t talk to Allen, because for some reason they’d been too stupid to bring the Humvee. That left little else but to do but self-deprecate and consider the finer points of how bad it might hurt if he survived wrecking the four-wheeler. They pressed on until a massive roadblock halfway between the two towns forced them to turn around with only minutes of light remaining. The last two nights Ethan suggested they stay in the multi-purpose building of a local community college Ethan had attended. East Central College was a massive campus for a two year school. Built in 1976 the school had added new buildings, bought more property, and while going for asthetic appeal that would outlast the 70’s accidentally created a modern castle.
World of Ashes Page 13
