by Dell, George
Within the first month, two dozen had joined them.
They had thirty shotguns, better than fifty rifles and dozens of handguns between them. They had banded together and journeyed into the surrounding suburbs, broken into gun shops and pawn shops to get them.
Jamie, Winston and the others had found them just a few weeks earlier. Scotty had not been with them. None of them wanted to talk about where he was or what had happened to split them up.
That had solved the mystery of feeling as though they were being followed. Billy and Beth had both wondered how long they might have been following them across the country. But nobody seemed to want to ask or answer those questions. Had they been the ones that had destroyed their truck? He found himself skating up to the edge of asking several times and then failing. It had seemed to be personal though. It bothered him that they may have been the ones who had done it.
He and Jamie had fallen back together even though he had done his best to discourage it. In truth, he thought now, looking out at the gathering gloom of early evening, he should have tried harder. He didn't love her. Couldn't imagine a life with her, and every day he spent with her made the trip from L.A. with Beth more and more unreal. A fairy tale that never happened.
He was weak. He had been weak back in L.A. And he was weak now. Jamie had sensed that Beth had said no, or something like no. That a trip halfway across the continent had not been able to change her resolve. Scotty was not with her, so she had picked things up where they had left off. Like it was the natural thing to do, Billy had thought. And who knew, maybe it was the natural thing to do now. Just pretend it didn't matter. Nothing had happened. He had met enough people who were doing that same thing and making it work, he supposed he could to. So he had fallen right back into it too: Said nothing as the relationship picked back up where it had left off.
Billy stood and watched night come down on the trees. The fires in the city seemed to suddenly burn hotter. Nothing moved anywhere. Jamie came and stood beside him for a moment before she slipped her arm around his waist and managed to capture his attention. He bent slightly and kissed her forehead.
“Wow. I can't believe you just did that. I'm already getting the forehead kiss,” She told him. She smiled up at him, teasing as she said the words.
“You know it's not like that.” He kissed her once more, this time fully on the lips, a longer kiss.
“That was better,” Jamie told him. She looked out over the emptiness. “What are you thinking?” She asked.
“I'm thinking we can't stay here forever... A few more days.” He looked down at her. “But we'll have to leave soon. We need to get south. Summer is coming down. It doesn't seem possible, but it is. It's warmer every day.” He turned to her. “We should be somewhere right now... Planting crops, getting food set for winter.” he turned back to the distant fires. “We can't stay too much longer.” He looked back at the clearing in the middle of the vehicles where the others sat and talked before the fires. There were dozens of kids. Three babies and their mothers.
He had hoped Beth would lead. She had seemed the logical choice, but she had not taken it directly. It was not a responsibility he was comfortable with. He guessed she must feel the same. Beth was there, in the background, listening, approving or disapproving silently, letting him know with her eyes what she thought, what she would or wouldn't approve of.
“That it?” Jamie asked from beside him.
He smiled and shook his head. “No. But who isn't thinking deep thoughts?” His smile faded a little. She answered it with a serious look of her own.
“Come, eat,” she said at last. She took his hand and pulled him away toward the others.
“I have to talk to Beth,” Billy told her. She let go of his hand immediately.
“Beth... It's always Beth, isn't it?” she asked.
“Jamie,” Billy started.
“But it is!” Her eyes squirted tears, hot and fast. “Why?”
“Jamie... We crossed two thousand miles together.”
“I would have... I would have, Billy.”
“But you didn't... Why is that, Jamie? Why didn't you? And when did you find us and start to follow us, when? And what happened to Scotty?”
“I'm not talking about that, Billy. I'm just not,” Jamie told him. Her eyes were bloodshot and red rimed. She turned her back on him.
“Oh, for fucks sake!” Billy threw his hands up in frustration and then forced them to his sides.
She turned back to him, her jaw set in a rigid line. “I didn't mean that,” she said, obviously meaning she did mean it, but wished she hadn't said it. She turned her eyes away. “Go on. It's okay.” She turned back to him, “Come back later on?”
Like it never even happened, Billy told himself. The new world order. He gathered his temper and thoughts. “Just a few minutes, really. I only need to ask her about staying or leaving,” Billy told her.
“I'll wait eating... until you come.” She turned and walked away without another word. Billy sighed and then turned and walked off through the campground.
Quiet conversations passed back and forth between people as he walked, a few murmured greetings he acknowledged with a smile to hide his worries, but it seemed as though there were still too many other things on everyone’s minds, and the conversations began to die down after a short time.
The dark blue was rapidly bleeding from the bowl of the sky, and the conversations beginning to break up as the people who didn't have the first shift of the watch began to drift away, crawling into their vehicles to sleep. Billy found Beth and dropped to the ground beside her.
“Bad?” Beth asked. She smiled.
Billy shook his head.
“I told you before. That woman is fucking crazy.... That whole little group around her is crazy... That's why they're with her... You need to stop fucking her, Billy. I hate to put it like that, that starkly, but, I mean that's what it is. That what keeps putting the hope in her heart. A lot of this is your own fault.” She cleared her throat, pulled a few grass blades from the ground and fed them into the fire.
“I know,” Billy said. His voice was muffled, head hanging between his hands. He felt her hand nudge his elbow. He looked up and it was outstretched. He looked puzzled. He took her hand and she pulled him from the ground. They began walking away, out past the circles of firelight.
“You're my friend, Billy. You're not the one for me. But you're fucking that woman because you think it's the best you can do, like it's what there is for you, what you're supposed to do, and that is bullshit, Billy. Bullshit.”
“Jesus, Beth.”
She laughed. “I got a mouth on me, I know, but Billy, tell me I'm wrong... Tell me I got it all wrong.”
“I can't... I can't.”
They walked as she talked, the softness of her hand pulling him farther. Within seconds they were beyond the circle of firelight and she stopped, her arms coming around him as she kissed him softly, fully on his lips.
“Beth,” he breathed.
“Just come with me... Stop thinking, Billy,” she told him. Her mouth found his again and he stopped thinking.
Her hands worked at his pants zipper and he found his own hands had already solved that problem as he pushed her jeans down past her knees. His mouth found the hard plane of her stomach a second later, and her hand began to stroke the hair of his head, pulling him closer as he planted little kisses up across her breasts, teasing her nipples, and then back down.
“Don't you take this the wrong way, Billy Jingo,” she breathed. “Don't you do it,” she whispered as she pulled him down to the ground. “Come down here with me...”
~
Jamie watched them walk from the firelight into the darkness. Her heart sank with one huge jolt. She had been tempted to chase after them, but she knew that Beth did not want Billy in the way that she wanted him, needed him, so she was sure that it was not for that reason they had walked away. She did not know the reason though and it bothered her as she thought
about it. What other reason could there be? Did you walk off into the darkness to discuss leaving this camp? Is that how it worked? Really? She stood, arms folded and watched the stars do their slow dance as her tears began to spill across her cheeks.
As the minutes passed she became more convinced that Beth did want him, always had. That it was all some sort of evil joke they had decided to play on her. On the wind she heard a woman cry out, nearby a couple laughed softly. A sob caught in her throat as she realized the truth. She tried to get her emotions under control, but she failed. She stood, head bowed, one hand across her eyes.
“Jamie?” A barely spoken question.
She raised her eyes to see Winston standing close to her.
“Are you okay, Jamie?” he asked in his halting old man's voice: A slight quiver mixed with a raspy edge; a voice that seemed nearly used up.
She caught herself as fast as she could. “Okay.... I'm okay.... Overtired,” she brushed at her eyes and tried not to look directly at him. “I'll be fine..., A little sleep,” she told him as she turned and walked away. She patted his arm affectionately as she passed by him. A few moments later she pulled the canvas flaps shut on the tent, tied them from the inside, blew out the lantern and lay down on her sleeping bag. She let the tears come full force, losing herself in them.
For a moment she told herself that she had no one to blame, save herself. That Billy had told her time and time again that he didn't feel the same for her as she did for him, but she convinced herself just as quickly that it couldn't be true. Could not, because a man didn't sleep with a woman he didn't love, did he? At least care for? Of course not. It was stupid to think that he didn't care about her. Beth had done this... Beth had taken him away.
Winston stood outside the tent looking down at the small pile of belongings Jamie had placed outside before she had pulled the canvas opening shut. He stood for just a few moments wondering what it might mean for him, for all of them, and then he walked away into the night.
~
The stars were hard diamond chips in the sky as they lay close together in the grass. Billy sat up and lit a cigarette. His heart was a slowing hammer in his chest. He rolled his own cigarettes, everybody did it seemed. There was still plenty of tobacco just lying around behind glass doors and in locked cabinets. Funny how stress made you pick up the poisons again. Gamblers did it, alcoholics did it. Smokers too, he guessed. He wondered briefly how many people had quit smoking, to live, only to be killed by what had happened, or the dead, or circumstances from all the fall out. He laughed lightly.
“What,” Beth asked.
“I was thinking millions of people quit this shit to live... They're all dead and here we are.”
“Yeah, well, irony was never lost on the arts... Better give me one of those too,” she said.
“This is bad shit, you know. It'll kill you deader than a cockroach.” Billy told her. Cockroaches had not fared well in the rising of the dead and so it was joke among them if something wasn't doing well. The dead ate cockroaches like they were popcorn. Bad time to be a cockroach.
“Damn, well I hadn't intended to live forever, cowboy. Now give me one of them damn things,” Beth told him.
Billy passed her his own and then lit himself another.
“My, God. There is nothing that feels like that,” Beth said as she drew the smoke into her lungs.
“Reason it gets you,” Billy agreed. “Hey... I guess we should at least decide to stay or go,” he laughed a little.
She looked up at him. “I hate to make decisions.”
“Me too... We have to get moving, I think,” Billy said.
“Yeah... But not now. Let's let things settle out a little more. Did you notice how things weren't quite as bad the later half of our traveling?”
“Yeah... How long... People ask me every day.”
“I don't know... It's like the feelings along the way... It says stay, when it says go, we'll go. I know how that might sound. I wouldn't say it like that to anyone else but you, but I really feel, inside I feel, that we should stay put right now,” Beth said.
Billy nodded, “Then we will.”
“Hey,” she waited until Billy looked at her. “Whore or good girl?”
Billy felt his eyes tear up fast. “Dammit, Beth, never a whore, never.”
She curled into him. “That was my fear... What was yours?”
“What do you mean?” Billy asked.
“What was yours all those nights when I looked at you and I could see you wanted me and if you just asked one more time I would have said yes. Why didn't you?”
He stared at her for a moment. “I didn't know that. You said no, I took that as no. I didn't want to mess up this thing we have. This friendship we have. I have never had that with any woman, ever... I didn't want to lose that.” He looked at her for a second longer. “Still don't want to.”
A single tear slipped across her cheek.
“I didn't mean to make you cry, Beth,” Billy told her in a near whisper.
“Stupid,” She told him. “It's for a good reason.” She buried her face in his chest. “You are not the one, Billy Jingo, but I love you and I don't know if I can ever feel that for another man or not, not that deep. Whatever it is I don't want to lose it either.”
“You won't,” Billy told her.
She looped one arm across his chest and pulled herself closer. “Better not.”
He pulled her close with one arm and took a deep drag of his cigarette with his free hand. The stars continued their slow journey across the blackness. He felt her breathing change a few moments later and he held her as she slept.
The Camp: Billy and Beth
Early June
Billy sat sipping coffee by the fire, talking over traveling plans with Beth, when a truck dropped down off the road and into the far end of the field. Conversation died away as the two of them watched the truck coast to a stop. A few more trucks left the field, passing the truck where it sat. Billy rose to his feet, poured the dregs of his coffee into the fire and looked down toward the truck.
Their trucks were the only trucks left in the field when the driver's door of the truck opened.
“Wonder what this is,” Billy said aloud as Jamie and David walked up.
“Here comes someone,” Beth said as she straightened and turned toward a large man that had stepped down from the truck and was walking slowly down through the field. The man held his shotgun in one hand, pointing at the ground, there if he needed it. He stopped in front of the people gathered around the trucks.
“I have never seen a man as big as you that walked that easy,” a young, dark haired girl leaning against the hood of one of the trucks told him. The young guy at the front of the hood turned and looked at her.
“Easy, Iris,” he told her. He turned back to the big man. “Mac,” he said. He nodded at the young woman that had spoken. “Iris.” He turned and pointed at each of the people standing there in turn.
“Beth, Billy, Winston, David. There are a couple of kids sleeping in the back of the Suburban. You're pulling in?”
The man shrugged. “Bear,” he said. “We're heading out of the city... Saw you and stopped. The lady in the truck is Cammy.” He raised one hand, turned and waved it at the truck. A few seconds later, the truck dropped into drive and drove down the field. The woman stopped the truck, opened the door and stepped out.
Beth made the introductions once more. Mac walked to the back of the truck and Billy moved up to talk to Bear and Cammy.
“We were about to light out.” He turned and nodded at the woods across the field. “We have dead around here... Getting braver and braver. The posts and the fires don't seem to keep them at bay any longer. Little boy come up missing the other morning. Not one of ours, a group passing through. There at bedtime, gone in the morning,” Billy shrugged. “A little kid... Could have wandered off, and he did... Something got him though. We found drag marks... No kid. We went after them. Spent half the day scouring those woods
. Found plenty of nests where they had been bedded down in the daylight.” he shrugged. “Gone when we got there, but they were there okay.”
“The others left because of that?” Cammy asked him.
“They're not with us,” Billy answered. “We all met here. Started a few months back with just a few of us came from L.A. and built up from there…” He looked off in the direction the vehicles had left. “They're going west, we're heading back down south. Beth, me, Jamie, Winston and David... Most of us came out of L.A. together. Met Mac and Iris; they got two kids... parents gone, crossed over from Jersey a few days back - Don Westfall and Ginny,” He pointed back at the third truck and a couple who stood talking to another couple. “Don is the tall guy with the bright red hair. Ginny's the woman next to him with the black hair. The two traveling with them are Danny Best and Rose Evans.” He turned back to Bear. He had been looking back at the others as he spoke. “You and your lady heading south?”
Bear looked over at Cammy.
“We were thinking of going across through Pennsylvania, over that way. We keep hearing... Bear keeps hearing, about the middle of the states being dead free,” Cammy said. She didn't correct the misconception Billy had that she and Bear were together. In truth, it really wasn't clear in her mind whether they were or not. They had both lost people they loved. It was probably too soon for both of them. Maybe it always would be, she thought now, as her eyes met Bear's and she saw the pain still riding there.
“I heard some talk, but I don't believe it. L.A. … A lot of the places we saw in between were so bad,” Billy said.
Bear nodded. “The radio, a few weeks back... They were talking about a city that was still safe... still held by people,” he shrugged again. “It's south anyway, maybe Alabama, just over and then down. I figured what the hell,” Bear finished.
Billy nodded. “Alabama is gone,” he said.
“Gone?” Bear's voice raised.
