“Make yourselves at home. Light whatever candles you need,” Frannie told Evans’ party, gesturing around as they entered the space. “You’re on your own for food at the moment, since everyone’s closed up shop.”
“We’ll be alright,” Evans said.
“You’re going to come with me to my office, so that we can catch up,” she spoke as she turned to him.
“Of course. Ang, Burt, Gerald? I’m just going to be across the hall for a minute. Moe and the camels can be kept at the back, and choose whatever beds you like.”
Gerald frowned, but didn’t argue. Evans guessed that he was assessing the place, trying to take in as much of the community as he could. If they accepted him, this was to be his new home.
Evans followed Frannie across the hall and into a former, tiny hair salon. Everything but the chairs and the mirrors had been removed. Frannie picked up a lantern on the reception desk, and used it to guide their way to the back. She kept an office there, in an emptied storage room, and used the chairs out front as waiting seats.
“Sit down,” Frannie gestured to an empty desk chair as she sat in one on the other side of her scarred work surface. She flicked the switch on a lamp, and a pale yellow light shone across the desk, highlighting the agitated scratchings of people who had been sitting where Evans was now. He hadn’t made any himself, but he had seen even Frannie pick at the wood on occasion. He didn’t know much about what she dealt with on a day-to-day basis, and therefore held no judgements about any bad habits.
“What’s powering the light?” Evans asked, the closest thing to small talk that he could manage: asking for tidbits of information that he would write down later.
“Did you notice the plywood plastered all over the place next door?”
“I did,” Evans nodded.
“We have some infected in there. If we can get a bunch of them walking on these special treadmills that Winnie designed, we can power a few light bulbs here and there.”
Evans felt his muscles tense, and had to force them to relax. Zombies in the building was never a pleasant thought, even though he knew that Frannie and her people had exceptional control over them. They had been handling and managing the dead for years, with no recent accidents. At least, no accidents that Evans knew about.
“Do people still call you the Zombie Farm, or have you managed to decide on a new name?” That had been a thing when Evans had last been there. He left while they were still deliberating on the new name. Thinking back, that had been over a year ago.
“Yeah, we’re called Paddock now,” Frannie told him. “We have a nice sign over the entrance on the other side of town; you should check it out once the storm’s passed. Haven’t gotten around to a second sign yet, where you came in. All the wood’s been needed elsewhere.”
Evans nodded.
“So, let’s get to business, shall we?” Frannie decided. “What are you doing here? I know you’re not very keen on Paddock, and you’d avoid us if you could. Just here to ride out the storm?”
“No, this was my destination.”
“Go on.” Frannie leaned back in her chair, clasping her hands behind her head.
“There’s a kid with me—a teenager actually. He’s like you guys: zombie friendly. The place where he lived was very unhappy when he brought a… an infected person within their walls.” He had almost said ‘a dead person’ but caught himself. People at Paddock didn’t consider the zombies to be dead, despite the lack of a pulse or a need for respiration. “He also attacked the person who had given away his secret, but try not to hold that against him too much. There were some crazy circumstances at the time, and everyone was wired weirdly. After a trial, Gerald was banished and I agreed to bring him here.”
“That was kind of you.”
Evans shrugged. “I was leaving anyway.”
“So that’s it? You just came to visit to drop off the kid?”
“Pretty much. That’s if you’ll take him.”
“I’ll interview him later. What about the others? Are any of them staying here?”
“We came across them along the way. There’s a town of silent ones not terribly far from here. I’ll point it out on a map for you.”
“We know about them,” Frannie told him. “We avoid them, and they keep to themselves. You’re saying those people are from there?”
Evans nodded. “Didn’t know they were there until it was too late. Spent a night in one of their prisons. The people with me, they helped Gerald and I escape. They didn’t want to be there anymore. They asked that I take them to Bridges.”
Frannie sighed heavily, placing her hands back down at her sides and leaning forward once more.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Bridges is gone.”
“What do you mean? How?”
“Raiders. Infiltrated and took over the place. They cast everyone out and killed anyone who opposed them. The survivors made their way here. We eventually went to check things out, but by the time we reached the place, the raiders were gone. They burned Bridges to the ground, presumably after stripping it of everything valuable.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe five or six months ago. The Bridges folks are still here, trying to decide whether they want to rebuild or not. We’ve offered to let them stay.”
“Can I talk to them? I want to ask about the raiders.” Evans was curious if they were the same band who had taken over the Black Box. It would be good to know if they had been taken out, or if there was another group still running around out there. Evans had liked Bridges. It was a nice little community on a fair sized island formed by a split in a river. He found himself hoping he had blown up the people who had destroyed it.
“Sure, but you’ll have to wait until after the storm. As you can see, they no longer stay in our visitors’ quarters. They’ve been moved into what would normally be permanent housing. So I heard you mention a Gerald twice? I’m guessing that’s the kid. Where’s he from, exactly?”
“A new place,” Evans told her. “They haven’t reached out to any other communities yet, at least as far as I know. I told them where various, friendly places are, however, so that they can make contact when they’re ready. They might even try reaching out to Bridges, which will be a shame when they find what’s left. They lived at sea until something like five years ago.”
“I’m guessing they don’t have a name yet?”
“Not yet.” Evans knew that Paddock—formally the Zombie Farm, formally something worse—was a stickler for names. Here, they liked names that properly defined a place, like Bridges, which had three of them.
“What kind of place is it?”
“A shipping container yard. They’ve built a wall out of the containers, and use them for housing. Good people. Very smart, and care a lot for one another.”
“What’s their aggression like?”
“Hard to say. I met them under very strange circumstances. They can be forgiving, but they can also be brutal in their retaliation against attackers.”
“For you to learn both of those things, it really must have been some strange circumstances.” Frannie clearly wanted to know. “I’m guessing it’s also related to Gerald attacking someone?”
Evans explained as best he could how his people had first attacked the container yard due to a misunderstanding. He tried to keep out details that would place where they were, not because he didn’t trust Frannie, but because he didn’t think the container yard was ready to receive unexpected visitors just yet. When he talked about the Black Box, he didn’t use the name and spoke of it as though it were a nearby cave system, in part because he didn’t know all that much about the place.
“So they were one community living as two?” Frannie asked for clarification.
“Yeah, I guess that would be a good way to describe it.”
“Sounds like it worked out for them, having somewhere to fall back to. Perhaps we should consider supplying just such a place.” Paddock didn’t have nearl
y as many people, not if you didn’t count the zombies. They couldn’t split into a fully functioning second community, but they could find a place to use as a fall back point.
“Now that Bridges is gone, you should,” Evans advised. Bridges and Paddock were a little less than three days walk apart, and so had a fairly strong relationship. It had worked out for the survivors of Bridges, but meant that Paddock could no longer do the same.
“What will you do, now that Bridges is gone? Where will you go when you leave here?”
“I don’t know,” Evans told her honestly. “I’ll have to talk it over with the others, see where they would like to go.”
Frannie nodded this time. “Do you plan to stop for long? Are you here to trade at all?”
“Depends. We’ll have to wait out the storm for sure. I’m guessing by the end of it, you’ll have decided whether Gerald is allowed to stay or not. I wouldn’t mind trading some labour for supplies. I don’t have much in the way of resources at the moment.”
“I’m sure we can find something for you to do. This storm is definitely going to cause some damage.”
Evans glanced up at the ceiling where they could hear the rain now pounding upon it. It had arrived and then steadily increased throughout their conversation.
“Not too much damage, I hope,” Evans eventually said, turning away from the pressboard ceiling.
“We’re never hit by the worst of it, so we should be alright. It’s one of the reasons we chose this place.”
Evans wondered who was getting hit by the worst of it, and what that must be like for them. He worried it might be people he knew.
“You can head back to your party now,” Frannie decided. “You have to start making new plans. Can you send Gerald over?”
“Sure.”
When Evans stood up, Frannie did as well. They shook hands across the desk.
“I’ll let you know if I hear of any jobs you can do before the storm lets up,” Frannie told him.
“Thanks.”
“And Evans?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s nice to see you again. I know our way of life makes you uncomfortable, but you should stop by here more often than you do.”
“I’ll think about it.”
When Evans left the office, he took the lantern to light his way. As he crossed through the hair salon, he could see that Gerald and the silent ones had lit a number of candles in the visitors’ centre. It appeared they had chosen to stay in one of the back corners, near the stables.
“Evans!” a voice cried out as he crossed the main hall.
Evans turned to see a stout little woman rushing at him. He had just enough time to register that it was Winnie, before she was jumping up, her hands on his shoulders to pull herself higher, so that she could give him a kiss on the cheek.
“How are you, Winnie?” Evans asked once she had both feet back on the floor.
“I didn’t know you were here!”
“I only just arrived.”
“How long are you staying? Same length as last time?” She held his hands while she spoke. Winnie was too affectionate for most people, and too energetic as well, but Evans had learned to accept that it was just who she was. They had travelled together many years ago, only a few months after the outbreak. They had come across the start of this place together, before it had been given any name at all, and Winnie had chosen to stay and help them build it.
“Not long, I’m afraid,” Evans told her. “I’m just here to drop off a kid, wait out the storm, and hopefully pick up some supplies.”
“Oh, poo.” Winnie let go of his hands so that she could gently punch his arm.
“I hear you made treadmills that can produce power?”
“Yeah, not much, but that’s better than nothing, right? I’m hoping I can improve their output. I was just about to go check on them, if you’d like to come.”
Evans looked at the boarded up shop next to the hair salon. “I’d love to,” he really wouldn’t, “but Frannie needs to talk to that kid I mentioned I’m dropping off. Also I have to discuss some things with the party members that are leaving with me. We were supposed to be going to Bridges.”
“Yeah, it’s such a shame what happened there. Make sure you talk to the Bridges people before you go. Some of them might want to join you.”
“I will.”
“See you around!” Winnie bounced off toward the chunk of plywood that served as a door to the zombie generator house.
Evans was glad to be heading the other way. He’d like to talk to Winnie some more, learn what new things she had learned, but he’d wait until she was in her workshop in the store beside Frannie’s hair salon office, where her hands could be kept busy with other things.
Before entering the visitors’ centre, Evans looked down the hallway toward the glass doors. The sunlight had become a sheet of dull grey, as water splashed down from the sky. He watched for only a second, before heading off to find Gerald.
“Frannie wants to talk to you,” he reported once the teenager was located. He was sitting on a camping cot across from Blue, having a conversation in sign.
Gerald sighed. “Now?”
“Yes, now. Here,” he handed him the lantern. “She’s in the back room of the hair salon.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“No.”
Gerald continued to hesitate, clearly preferring to keep his conversation with Blue going, as opposed to starting a new one with Frannie. Evans let his pack slide off his shoulders and thump onto the floor. When he removed his sword to drop alongside it, the sound of the sheath hitting the hard floor was loud enough to make Gerald jump. The kid glowered at Evans, but when Evans refused to break eye contact, he got up and started his journey toward the hair salon.
Evans claimed a bunk that appeared unoccupied, and picked up his stuff to place upon it. He noticed that Blue was watching him.
“Do you need something?” Evans asked.
Blue shook her head. It seemed that she was just studying him. It made Evans wonder what, if anything, Gerald had said to her about him. He didn’t really care, so long as the teenager wasn’t encouraging the girl to try to murder him in his sleep. He had had to worry about such things before, although given the nature of the silent ones, that threat seemed greater than usual. In the past, he had always woken up before the attack could take place, but would a silent one cause him to wake? He didn’t know, and really hoped he wouldn’t have to find out. There was no reason Evans could think of why Gerald or any of the others would want him dead, so he should be safe. But then why was Blue staring at him so much?
“You know that makes people uncomfortable,” Evans finally told her. “When you stare like that?”
Despite flushing red, she didn’t look all that embarrassed as she turned away from him. Maybe she was just odd. Unable to talk to her without a translator, Evans couldn’t really get to know her as well as he had the others.
“Evans?” Ang called to him in a loud whisper.
“Yes?” Evans left his things on the bed in order to walk over to the stables where Ang and Dev were watering the camels. With the storm outside, there was no shortage of hydration.
“We don’t know much about horses,” Ang admitted to him.
Evans understood. “I’ll take care of Moe.”
“Can I assist?” Dev asked. “I would like to learn.”
“Of course. Come on.” Moe was being kept at the end of the line of camels, still wearing all his gear. Evans was annoyed that Gerald hadn’t taken care of the horse. Still, it wasn’t like he’d have to deal with the kid for very much longer. Evans wasn’t yet sure if he was going to be pleased when Gerald was gone, or if he was actually going to end up missing him.
***
Their first night at Paddock passed without incident. Evans hadn’t found time to talk with Gerald, as the teenager seemed to be avoiding him, but he didn’t look upset. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look sad either. Evan
s guessed that his talk with Frannie had gone well, but that he was still judging the place for himself. Frannie had gone dashing across the street to where she lived without saying goodnight, so asking her how it went was out of the question.
The rain on the roof high overhead was really rather soothing. Evans didn’t sleep well because part of his mind wouldn’t let go of its worry about Blue, but just lying still and listening to the rain was enough for him. Only once did he get up from his bunk, and that was to go double check that the door to the zombie generator was secure. It was. He couldn’t even open it when he tried; there was a large padlock that hadn’t been there earlier. Winnie had probably locked the place up tight when she left, worried that someone in Evans’ party might wander in there and slaughter what they found.
In the morning, Evans first went to check on Moe. He also took the opportunity to wash his face in the horse’s trough. A system involving rain barrels and pipes bored through the walls kept the troughs full, and, with the storm, Evans wasn’t worried about wasting any. He could hear that it was still raining, and decided he would check on the severity of the storm after breakfast. If it didn’t look too bad, he could take a much needed shower in it.
Breakfast was a quiet affair, as Evans had no desire to start discussing the future yet, and Gerald was still asleep.
“If you need anything, I’m going to be just outside, cleaning off,” Evans told Burt.
He gathered up the few spare clothes he had and brought them with him, heading toward the end of the stables. There, a metal tub sat empty behind a curtain, some soap perched on a ledge above it. Evans took the soap. From previous visits, he knew he could pull a small lever to divert some of the water from the horse troughs into the tub, but he preferred the rain. The tub was far too small for him.
Just as he reached the doors that led out to Paddock’s main street, Frannie came bustling in.
Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct Page 38
