World of Ashes

by J. K. Robinson

  “To a ship.”

  “That then went…”

  “To hell, probably.” Mary was looking at Lee as if the question were absurd.

  . “What’s the word from Alaska?” Keith changed the subject from Islamic terrorism to something that actually mattered now. “Aren’t they still around?” He was having trouble getting his boots tied when one of the laces frayed.

  “Yeah.” Mary got up and poured herself another glass of coffee. “We get messages from them via satellite once in a while. They’re not as organized or powerful as Texas. There was talk of the Alaskans taking what ships weren’t locked in ice flows and evacuating to the Aleutian Islands and Hawaii.

  “Hawaii was a Red Zone, but they think the tropical climate and the military installations on the islands might have reduced the infected population to a manageable level before it went dark. The Zims aren’t lasting long after death anyhow, not like those Voodoo things in the movies. Alaska is gonna try to clear all the islands. Evacuate their population there because the mainland is crawling. The nuclear winters are harsh there, even for the mountain men. It’s like a mini ice age. The Bearing Straight is closing, freezing over the colder it gets. I guess the mountains can’t hold Canada’s infected population forever, either. Most of the people who lived in cities aren’t taking the Alaskan winter very well and there are millions of refugees there. It’s much colder than they expected it to be and herds of livestock are dying off faster than people can eat them or build shelters.” Mary leaned her elbows on the table. “Texas was gonna send ships, but the oceans are too rough or iced over to get close to a major port. Too many rogue submarines too. Chinese, Russian, British, you name it, they’re basically pirates now. The world’s a dangerous place these days.”

  Mary could have listed more dangers, but a lot of it was scuttlebutt, rumors not to be trusted about ships full of infected washing ashore in areas once cleared. Sometimes at great cost these areas would have to be cleared again, assuming anyone survived. Islands of the Dead dotted the East Coast, the undead that floated away from them washing ashore on Florida’s pristine beaches. These guys were barely holding on, they didn’t need to know that too. Hope was sometimes the thin red line between life and death. Hopelessness could destroy a people’s morale faster than a bullet.

  Ethan showed Mary around the house when Lee went with Keith and Paula back to town. They were going to go to a bar while Mary and Ethan babysat Serenity. “This is my… well… our room up here.” He pulled down the ladder and they climbed into the attic. “Lee lives downstairs too, but only on the weekends. He stays at the barracks with the men who aren’t married. It probably does good for morale. When Paula and Keith move into the master bedroom I just kinda took over the upper level. It’s safer, so I made it more livable.” He went over to the Franklin stove and lit a fire. It was still going to get chilly at night, the paleness of the evening’s sunset through the overcast sky cast the upper living area in stark contrasts and shadows. Mary’s hair glittered in the blue shadows and orange light, Ethan wishing it would be an appropriate time to touch her already. Mary was completely out of his league, no chance she’d have so much as spoken to him before the apocalypse.

  “So where’s your dog?” Mary looked around expectantly.

  “I guess he’s still with Wigg. Which means probably at the Holiday Inn. The kids’ got a room there. I’ll get him in the morning if he wants to give him back.”

  “Your home reminds me of someplace I’ve been before. Like a friend’s house maybe.” Mary smiled. “Look, you don’t have to keep the girlfriend charade up. I don’t like the title Baby Mama because I’m not a hood-rat or white trash, but-”

  “No, Mary, I like you.” Ethan interrupted when Mary started trailing off. “I hope you and I have a future together, but you’re right, we met under the worst circumstances imaginable. What, exactly, are we supposed to mean to one another? I was holding out a false hope that Nicole was still alive, but I can let go now. I mean,” Ethan reached out and put his hand gently on Mary’s belly, “I have something and someone to come home to now. Someone to actually live for, rather than just waiting to die to meet them on the other side. I don’t want to throw that second chance away.”

  Mary took a chance and kissed Ethan. He didn’t resist, he let it happen. It felt natural and right and neither wanted to stop. They made love again, this time knowing what they were doing, and not having to feel the guilt.

  7

  Cadet Wigg didn’t want Bogey when Ethan went to get the dog in the morning. “He pissed all over the bathroom floor!” The boy complained, handing the beagle to Ethan in front of the police station and storming off to give a class to other cadets on range safety, a subject he’d made himself an expert in. To date no one had so much as had an accidental misfire on one of Lee or Ethan’s ranges, or the men they entrusted to run them after.

  As an incentive to get extra rations or time off, Mayor Kenly opened the Sheriff Department’s range to civilians so long as they signed up for the two day Conceal & Open Carry class. Having an ID that said you had a Sanctioned Minuteman Training (SMT) License meant an extra helping of side dishes at meals. The benefit was now most of the town had firearm safety training and incidents of children playing with guns all but completely ceased the better educated parents were. The daycares were going day and night, caring for children while their parents worked overnights or extra hours to build the walls that would save them all. There were already two centers dedicated to the care and placing orphans with families, and rehabilitating those who were found in the wild. Wild children were dangerous, the Cavalry and Deputies were discovering, but manage to capture them, put them in a quiet and comfortable looking home and turn on SpongeBob with a bowl of cereal and the tough exterior would melt away. This way the healing could finally begin, and fewer people would have to live with the heartache of shooting a starving child that had forgotten who they were.

  “You pissed on his floor?” Ethan looked down at the dog as he licked his palm. “Well, you ain’t gonna do that shit at my place. I’ll beat your waggly little ass.” Putting the dog on the ground Ethan saluted Old Glory on his way into the police station. Flying the American flag meant more to everyone now than before. For all they knew they might very well be the last place on Earth to fly a flag that had meant more to the world than any other in history.

  “Guten morgen, meine Sheriff.” Allen pretended to snap to attention when Ethan approached. He could perform a better salute than most Regular Soldiers, but today he was imitating Sergeant Schultz. “Oberst-Bürgermeister Charlie Daniels is in one of his moods. People are starting to ask about Lieutenant Newton, meine Sheriff. Naturally, I know nothzzzing!”

  “Stay out of my DVD collection, shithead.” Ethan made the sign with his fingers to his eyes that he was watching Allen and headed for the main office, Bogey at his heels. He knocked three times and heard Kenly shout something obscene before he entered. “I heard you’re ‘in a mood’, Sir.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Cally.” Kenly slapped a mug full of pens off the desk with his sausage fingers. “Do you know what it takes to run a town?”

  “Nope. Was I supposed to? Because I didn’t get that memo. If I was supposed to be interning for you I’m afraid I’ll need to download the cliff-notes.” Ethan sat in a chair at the edge of the room under a trophy set of antlers. Reynolds, Rowe and Lee didn’t even look back at him. Apparently this had been a long meeting already, and Ethan was just walking into the latest shit-storm with no time to take a breather from the last.

  “Boy…” A massive vain popped out on Kenly’s forehead as he wrapped his beefy hands around a snow globe, ready to launch it at Ethan. “All of you. Find Newton. I don’t give a shit if he’s hiding in his basement or if he got eaten by a fucking zoo lion. You find him, you bring him back here so I can fucking kill him myself!”

  “Did anyone consider maybe he just left?” Everyone turned to glair at Ethan. “No, seriously. I can’t be
the only one who’s thought about just wandering off into the great beyond. Maybe he just beat the rest of us to it.”

  “I served with Newton for six years.” Rowe was incredulous. “He doesn’t have an adventurous bone in his body. He doesn’t even like to camp or even stay in hotels. I can’t imagine him just ‘wandering off.’”

  “It was just a suggestion.” Ethan could tell no one was going to share his happy mood. The blatant I just got laid look. “On a serious note, I’ve been asking the citizens about Newton, it hasn’t totally escaped my attention. So you served with him for six years, did you ever hang out with him after work?”

  Rowe was about to say something, but cut herself off. Reynolds harrumphed. “I did. Once. John Newton is a weird feller. He likes to sit around and watch cooking shows and write the recipes down, but then he never cooks anything. His house is filled with newspapers and magazines still in their plastic wrappers. The idea that he just went on a walkabout and didn’t come back wouldn’t surprise me at all, whether he found some place better to be, got lost, or got eaten is hardly an afterthought.”

  “A lot of the men working on the fence saw Newton, prior to his disappearance, walking alone outside the wire. When they asked him what he was doing he never answered. They just said he would give them all extra pay tokens for beer and stuff, and then walk off like they never spoke. He never asked them to keep quiet or anything, but more like he saw no value in the money or in the conversation. They said he did this for weeks.” Ethan pulled out a notepad, “According to Mrs. Marshal, a refugee from Hannibal, Missouri, Lieutenant Newton would drive his patrol car past the edge of town near her communal house at least twice a week, sometimes driving towards Stanton and not coming back for several hours.” Bogey curled up at Ethan’s feet. Everyone looked down at the dog and made faces, but no one seemed interested in telling the sheriff to take his animal outside. “Nothing is definitive, but every sighting is North of town, not South. Best start there.”

  “So he’s in Stanton?” Kenly raised an eyebrow, “There’s nothing in Stanton. Two abandoned hotels and a rundown old gas station refugees probably bled dry even before the Army pulled out. That and the Meramec Caverns, but…”

  “We used to have a forward observer there, what happened to that?” Lee asked.

  “I ordered them back. They’d have been cut off if attacked. We haven’t had anyone out there regularly since before you came back.” Ethan admitted.

  “Well, it’s time I set up a regular patrol at least.” Lee didn’t like finding holes in his security plans. “I’ll mount up First and Second platoons. We’ll go look for any sign of Newton.”

  “I’m coming too.” Reynolds stood, his uniform sagging horribly, his utility belt on its tightest setting. He was looking good for once, alive and vital. A sense of responsibility and mortality had changed him for the better. “If he is there, and something’s happened to him, you’ll need an actual cop to look the scene over.”

  “Suit yourself.” Lee shrugged.

  “Speaking of evidence.” Ethan’s mood suddenly soured. “I know the Airmen I went to rescue didn’t make it… But while we were passing through Hillsboro we discovered something...”

  “We can’t get involved in anything gang related.” Kenly cut Ethan off. “Texas is gonna handle them. They’ve made it pretty fucking clear they’re going to ramp up military operations in a fifty mile radius around Labadie. We’re going to be considered a Green Zone. They’re well aware our Army is for us only. I made that clear when I pointed out the flag.” Kenly was rather proud of two things: Sullivan’s new Don’t Tread On Me flag, and having told the Texan Major where to shove it when he suggested 1st Cav be absorbed by the Texas National Guard.

  “I don’t think this is gang related.” Ethan looked Kenly right in the eyes, unwilling the break the stare. “I think there’s a band of highwaymen hiding in the hills down Twenty One, preying on refugees and such. I think either they didn’t see us, or they chose not to attack us because we were armed, uniformed and had a means of escape.”

  “Either way, Texas will root them out, right?” Rowe asked.

  “Don’t count on it. The Airmen and I took pictures of the bodies, found a bunch of disposable cameras in a gas station to do it with. Something about the scene didn’t look like a Traffic Control Point taken over by untrained gangbangers. It was spooky, ya know? Like an extermination squad had been there, rather than chaos.”

  Reynolds raised an eyebrow, “You live in a world where the Dead walk, and you think a bunch of bodies alongside the road are ‘spooky’?”

  “Yeah. They were stacked neatly, ya know? I wonder if it wasn’t a dumping ground for these bastards.”

  Kenly relented, “Fine. When we have the time and resources we’ll take a look.”

  Ethan stood, sure he had caught the interesting part of this briefing. “If there’s nothing else, Broadwick and I are on walking patrol today.”

  Waving him away, Kenly went back to ranting about Newton to the others. Allen was outside still and scooped the dog up as he ran ahead of Ethan. “I heard we’re on walking patrol. What did I do to deserve this?”

  “You know me. Isn’t that reason enough to be punished?”

  “You’re in a good mood. You get laid last night or something?”

  “Actually...” Ethan smiled.

  “You mean Mary stayed the night?” Ethan nodded in response. Allen smiled. “Nice. I can’t wait for my brother to figure out what girls are for, that way I can stop hiding what I’m doing.” Allen rolled his eyes.

  “We’re having a kid.” Ethan added, ignoring the comment about Jimmy. He was too young to worry about what his man-whoring older brother was doing behind closed doors. Or in the kitchen, or garage, or in his patrol car, wherever. “I guess we’re just gonna try to make things work. I know people usually fail when it’s just for the kids… but she’s got nowhere else to go.”

  “I sympathize, I really do. Just keep in mind you just met her. Aren’t you jumping the gun with a relationship?” They walked past a group of apartment buildings, people were just starting their early morning activities, the sounds of children playing were welcome over the screaming that was taking place this time one year ago. Could things really be getting better? Could Ethan ever walk down the street without a gun again? Probably not, he carried one even before the zombies.

  “Didn’t really plan it, man.”

  “I had condoms in my rucksack. You could have just asked.” Allen laughed.

  “What is wrong with you?” Ethan took his booney cap out of a cargo pocket and put it on. He noticed Allen wore his floppy sun hat like a cowboy hat, using the drawstring for the chin to give it its shape. That was a distinctly civilian thing to do. Those who’d served weren’t likely to wear the booney’s like that, perhaps because they would rather wear their covers the way they were intended, and some because they still had the instinctual fear of their 1st Sergeant finding them wearing something out of regs.

  “So what are you gonna name the kid?”

  “Shit, I didn’t even name the dog.” Ethan gestured to Bogey, who was chasing a plastic bag that blew in the wind. “I guess that’s up to Mary. We won’t even know the kid’s sex until it’s born.”

  “I guess not, huh.” Allen put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. “When do you think the sun will ever come out again?”

  “Still dreaming of your pot farm are you?”

  “Sure. Every day. Hemp Farm was my favorite Facebook game. Like I said, lots of folks are gonna grow corn and shit, I’ll be the only one growing the good shiznit.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes, “A year ago I wouldn’t have believed this conversation possible. An eighteen year old Deputy talking about growing weed like it hasn’t been illegal since the twenties.”

  “Man, I read the history of weed. It’s fucking depressing.” Allen shook his head. “Like I said before, man, I really don’t think I’ll miss The World That Was.”

&
nbsp; “I hate to say it, but me neither.” This started a conversation about all the things no one really missed. “Top on my list of crap the Zims can take to the grave with them… Cell Phones.” Ethan smiled, remembering how awesome it was to run over his cell phone a few months back. The kids in the park were lining phones up along the road and running them over with their bicycles. Ethan added a few from a junk drawer in his house and let the kids ride along while he played like only an adult can play.

  “Really? Man, cells made it soooo easy to make booty calls. But I gotta say, I really don’t miss Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus. Those two were a blight on my entire generation. Can’t say as I’m even curious what’s become of them.”

  “Motion is seconded, but when I was a kid it was the Hansen Brothers versus Marylin Mansen on Celebrity Deathmatch. You ever catch that show? I have the entire box set on DVD.”

  “You mean you had the entire box set.” Allen boasted, tossing a stick for the dog to chase.

  Ethan continued listing things, ignoring that Allen had lifted the box set. “I also won’t miss traffic, or driving even. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to get my car back one day, but I’ve given up on that. If it wasn’t a semi-truck trying to run you over, it was the gas prices trying to run you down. My car was special. And not because Pontiac put more effort into, if anything I think the electrician was drunk that day, but because she was the last thing my grandpa ever gave me before he passed. I took care of her as best I could for more than a decade, and with just the snap of someone’s fingers she was gone. Worth no more in their grandiose schemes than you or I. I do miss smoking the shit out of Mustangs on the roads though.”

  “With a stock Grand Prix? You’re dreaming.”

  “It’s not my fault Mustang drivers can’t drive.”

  “Where is it? Your car, I mean. I think we’ve discussed this, but you know me.”

  “Rotting in a lemon lot on Fort Leonard Wood, probably.” Ethan tossed the stick after wrestling it from Bogey’s mouth. He wiped the slobber on Allen’s sleeve.