by Lowry, Chris
He gave a grin as we pulled in, gold tooth glinting in the sunlight.
I stepped out of the car and kept my rifle pointed in his general direction.
“How did you find us?”
That's the question I pondered the entire short trip back here. Brian may have sent him, but there were a couple thousand possible routes we could have taken, especially the way we zigged and zagged.
The odds of finding us were pretty slim, and running into us in town slimmer still. After the truck full of kids his age last night, I was feeling wary.
Wary enough to shoot first and skip the questions.
It was just the mention of Brian that kept me from pulling the trigger.
“One of the guys, his dad taught him how to lay a tripwire,” said Jamal. He casually dropped his hands to his belt, just above the butt of his pistol.
The kid had balls if he planned to try and quick draw us. I saw Anna shift away in my peripheral vision, spreading out so his targets were further apart.
“We string fishing line across the road connected to a can on a branch. When something goes through, it pulls down the can so we know who's in our territory.”
Our territory. That didn't sound good.
“I just followed the cans you guys knocked down,” he finished.
“We went on a lot of roads,” I shook my head.
“We have a lot of cans,” Jamal answered.
Tripwires. It made a little bit of sense to me, and if it was true, it would be a really low tech way to track something.
“Why did Brian send you?”
Jamal glanced up the road into downtown. The pastor had disappeared, either gone back inside or back to the cemetery for his thankless task, but the Z were moving our way.
“I can tell you everything on the way back, but we should get moving.”
“I haven't decided if I'm going back,” I told him.
I could see Anna's head swivel toward me, but she kept quiet.
“But Brian-”
“Tell me how you know Brian,” I told Jamal. “Tell me why he sent you after us.”
“Alright,” he said and lifted both hands. The further they got from his gun, the easier I felt.
“The group I'm in is made up of kids. We got together the first week and have pretty much stayed together. But once you're eighteen, you're out. No adults allowed. I turned eighteen a couple of days ago, and they cut me loose.”
“Kids?” Anna said. “How old?”
“A bunch of different ages. Six is the youngest so far, all the way to a couple just like me, eighteen. I know some of 'em lied and said they were seventeen, but they're my age. I just didn't rat them out,” he puffed out his chest in pride. “I should have lied too, but I wasn't thinking, you know.”
“They cut you loose,” I said as the Z moans got louder. “Then what?”
“I was alone, and scared and I met this girl and her mom. Hannah. They brought me back to their house.”
That sounded like Brian, wanting to take in strays and start building up his community. There was room enough in the house too.
“Where did you meet them?”
“A town. They were doing a supply run.”
“Just the two of them?”
“That's all I saw. I mean that's all that was there. The other two, Brian and his wife were at the house.”
Why would Brian let Hannah and Harriet go off on their own, I wondered. What were they doing in town?
“What next?”
“Look man, those Z are getting too close for comfort. Can't you just come with me, or follow me or something? I swear Brian sent me to get you. He needs your help. The little girl needs your help.”
And there it was.
I might say no to Brian. He was an adult, a man who could take care of himself and of Peg. I could say no to an eighteen year old stranger who drove up on me in the middle of a podunk town in Georgia, and ignore him.
But Hannah was my daughter's age, and I had rescued her before. Twice. The kid had a knack for trouble, and by saving her it made her my responsibility. Sort of.
I almost told Anna to get in the car and keep driving.
I could forget about Hannah, and Harriet and Brian and Peg, or at least push the memory of them to the back of my mind where I kept the rest of the ghosts. I could let them try to fix it, whatever it was by themselves, and just keep going. I had a plan and a goal of my own, and every day I delayed meant more time my kids could be in trouble. Hurting.
Just like maybe Hannah was hurting.
I spent a lot of time wondering about all the things I missed while my kids were growing up. Little things their step dads got to experience that I never would, night after night. I was haunted not by memories, but by the ghosts of missed possibilities, and those were the worst poltergeists because they weren't real, and never had been.
I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed.
It was possible the kids were alive and waiting. It was possible they were Z or dead. I had to go and find out either way. But I knew that a little girl was in trouble and I could help. The man in charge of her car had sent someone to find me to help. That meant there was something he couldn't handle so he needed my help too.
“Anna,” I said in a small voice.
She scooted around a Z as it got too close and pitched headfirst into the car to crank it up.
“How much gas do you have?” I asked Jamal.
He peeked in at the gauge.
“Three quarters of a tank.”
“Park behind the house across the street,” I told Anna. “Follow her.”
She pulled behind the little white cottage and hid the car and Jamal drove behind her. I walked across, dodging Z and jogged a little ways back toward town so they followed to buy us time, then sprinted back to Anna.
I could have killed the eight of them, but I knew that would piss the pastor off, and I didn't want to repay his kindness with pain.
We transferred the pikes to Jamal's car, a knapsack of soup, and locked the rest of the supplies in the trunk.
“Drive,” I told him and slid into the backseat, rifle across my lap and pointed at his back. The kid didn't fail to notice. Anna rode shotgun, hers aimed at him as well.
CHAPTER NINE
There should be rules to surviving the Zombie Armageddon, but no one wrote them down. Or maybe they did because I remember seeing a guide on how to survive one once, but it was a tongue in cheek joke, full of things like stock up on beer, as opposed to learning how to brew your own.
Beer could be good currency now, or a talent to bring to the table if one wanted to be a part of a community. Moonshine even better because not only could you cut the hootch with water to drink it, you could use it as fuel and fire starter. Knowing how to build a still was a valuable commodity.
Jamal drove like he was eighteen and couldn't be killed. Anna buckled up three miles in when he took a curve doing ninety and slid across the middle line. I wasn't worried about oncoming traffic so much as wrapping around a tree.
“Slow down,” I told him.
He glared at me and maybe thought about saying something back, but didn't and the speedometer crept down to sixty. We might live with that.
“Tell me about your group,” I said.
“There were thirty of us until a couple of days ago, then four of us had to leave,” Jamal gripped the wheel with easy confidence and kept his eyes on the road while he talked.
“All kids, like I said.”
“Where are the adults?”
“Who cares?” he shot back. “They're out there, but they're the ones that caused this mess.. Who needs them?”
“You now?” Anna said.
Jamal shrugged.
“Maybe. But we didn't need them in the group. Byron's in charge. He's like a genius or something, and he figured it all out. What caused this, how to survive it, what we need to do. He found us, got us set up in a shelter at the school, plenty of food and we're safe.”
“Until you turn eighteen.”
“Yeah, well not all of us agree with that but Byron says a society has got to have rules, and his rule is once you turn eighteen, you're an adult and part of the problem, not the solution.”
“So he kicks you out?”
“Or kills you. He did that to a couple of guys who wouldn't leave when he laid out the rules.”
“Why not twenty one?”
“Eighteen,” said Jamal. As if that were answer enough.
I watched him as he drove the next few miles in silence, the easy confidence of youth present in everything he did, from the way he sat to how he handled the steering wheel. I remembered how he rested his hand on his pistol belt, ready to draw, and wished for just a moment I still had that.
Growing older you can get more confident, because you know no matter how much shit life shovels in your direction, you can handle it. The confidence of youth is that no shit will come your way, a granite block of optimism that slowly gets chipped away over time. I hoped Jamal would get the time to lose it, and then thought that was cynical. Maybe the kids were right.
Adults are the ones who cause almost all the problems in the world. Maybe Byron had it right. He sounded like a little dictator, but that didn't mean he was wrong.
“Why did Brian send you after me?” I asked after five miles more.
Jamal sighed and his shoulders shifted.
“He sent three of us after you.”
“I thought you said you met Hannah and Harriet in town.”
“I wasn't alone.”
Why did he leave that part out?
“The other two dudes that turned eighteen were with me.”
Brian let three strange men into his fort. I knew the guy was trusting but that bordered on the stupid. Even unarmed they could overpower him, and-
I caught myself before I went too far down that rabbit hole. I needed to know more. But I put my finger through the trigger guard.
“Why did Brian send three of you to find us?”
“Byron was going to send them out of our territory,” he said. “They were trespassing.”
Anna spoke up.
“You mean he's cleared out all the adults? How big is your territory?”
“I don't know about all of them,” Jamal shrugged. “But all the ones we've found so far. He gives them a choice. Leave or die.”
Simple. Effective.
“Most choose to leave.”
“Brian didn't.”
Jamal shook his head.
“Brian didn't. Byron's group showed up and Brian wouldn't leave.”
“He's alive though?” Anna looked worried. “All of them?”
“They burned us out. We all got away in the boats. Except for Hannah.”
“Byron kidnapped Hannah.”
“I don't know,” he said. “She might have chosen to go with them. Byron can be pretty persuasive.”
“How did he talk to her?”
“She was out there when he laid it all out for us to leave. Said I should have told them the law.”
I leaned back into the seat. We were making good time so it would be less than an hour before we got back to the small town where Brian had hoped to build his home. I marveled for a moment at the power of speed.
Here I was afraid to drive faster than twenty five to Arkansas, and riding in a car that had crept back up to seventy five. I could make the trip to rescue the kids in a day doing that speed, but I was the one who cautioned going slow.
Why?
Was I afraid of finding answers? Finding out what really happened to them? Or worse not finding anything at all.
I closed my eyes and listened to the throaty grumble of the engine as it vibrated through the body of the car. I could smell Anna in front of me, the light scent of a perfume she must have found in the discount store wafting back on the air from the vent. I replayed the conversation with Jamal in my mind, turning it over for inconsistencies, looking for loopholes and lies.
Maybe pretending I would be able to tell if he was leading us into a trap. Pretending that I could see a tick, or a tell, but I had never been very good at playing poker.
I was more a head down push through the line kind of guy, and constantly praying I would learn from the mistakes of others as opposed to making them all on my own.
I hoped going back wasn't about to teach me another harsh lesson.
CHAPTER TEN
I made him pull off and stop three miles from the fort.
“We'll walk from here.”
“Walk?” he stuttered as if humans hadn't been doing that very thing from the beginning of time, and perhaps longer.
Anna opened her door and we both climbed out. I had picked the spot at random, instead of going to where Jamal had said we would meet. I even planned to scoot further out in the woods and come from a different direction as we got closer. It might be Brian waiting, but there was no sense in walking into an ambush if it wasn't.
“Lead on,” I told him.
Jamal strutted in front of us, walking on the edge of the asphalt roadway, eyes flicking around to the woods, the road ahead and back again. His head almost on a swivel.
Some folks have the instinct, or they go into the military and get the training. Head on a swivel means you're studying the surroundings, watching, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Maybe that’s why some people lived and some didn't. They were just more aware of their surroundings.
The kid wasn't too obvious about it, but I could see his shoulders tense up as we got closer to the place where he said we would meet.
“Hold up,” I said softly.
“It's just up here,” he pointed.
“I know.”
Anna turned toward me, shotgun still pointed in Jamal's direction, a subtle reminder.
“What are you thinking?”
“Cut around,” I told her and she nodded.
“Which side?”
I checked both sides of the road, but in the Georgia backwoods they looked like carpet covered twin landscapes.
“There's an old bank building been abandoned for years on this side. He's waiting there.”
Old buildings littered the landscape. It would be easy enough to hole up in one for a couple of hours or even a couple of days to wait.
I struck off through the woods taking the lead. Anna pointed Jamal behind me and shifted the shotgun in her hands. I didn't think she had her head on a swivel though. It was probably locked in on Jamal's right hand. One twitch or grab for his pistol and I'd feel the warm wet stickiness of his head splatter across the back of mind.
At least that's what I hoped.
He might be fast enough to get off a shot. Or Anna might blow a hole through him and hit me too.
The building was where he said it was and we arrived with both of us whole. I stood next to a tree on the shadowed side and noticed Jamal and Anna do the same. The bank was a one room building, old brick from the fifties, built like a squat solid looking square that punched up out of a black paved parking lot. The pavement was cracked in places, the weeds and grass working hard to take it back, and probably going to win.
All the windows were busted out, but the interior was still bathed in darkness.
“Inside?”
Jamal shrugged.
“He said here. Didn't say which.”
The confidence was back, the shoulders relaxed. Maybe he had been worried about Z on the road. There's a certain protection that comes from a metal shell around you. Being out in the open makes you more vulnerable.
I studied the structure, but nothing moved inside. Nothing moved outside either, except for the play of shadows on the trees. It was impossible to see in the woods for more than a few yards.
“Go up and knock,” I said.
Jamal glanced at me with his eyebrows raised.
“You serious?”
“You don't have to knock, but walk up to the building.”
He smirked.
“You know if it was a trap, t
hey wouldn't shoot me cause they would know who I was. They'd just wait for me to tell you it was alright and then get you when you came out.”
I nodded.
Damn, I hadn't thought that way. I was thinking that if it was an ambush, they would just start shooting and I could pick them off. But Jamal was right.
I took a step out from the trees. Nothing happened. I took another, this time into full sunshine.
If anyone was waiting they would be able to see me. No one took a shot, so I took a step and kept walking to the front of the bank.
There were four long concrete steps that led up to the gaping maw where two doors had once been. The sun slanted just enough to spread five or six feet of light through the doorway. I paused to look inside, but my eyesight like the sun couldn't penetrate too deep into the darkness.
I went inside and stepped to one side of the door. There were two reasons for this. First, I didn't want to give anyone inside a silhouette to shoot at, and second I could let my eyes adjust to the dimness inside.
Once they did I could see it was empty. There was a counter that ran along the back wall and an open vault with the door removed behind it. The rest of the room was void of everything but leaves, droppings and litter from kids who turned the place into a party hang out before the Z apocalypse. Old beer cans, condoms, and what looked like a single sock on the floor.
Nobody inside. No trap. No ambush.
I stepped back out and waved at the woods. Jamal stepped out first, head moving around to watch again, though I suspected it wasn't Z he was looking for this time. Anna waited until he reached me and followed.
I wanted to ask her why because tactically it was a smart move. If anyone opened fire with the two of them in the parking lot, they would both go down, but waiting only exposed one of them at a time. That meant training, and what I knew about her so far didn't indicate training.
Then I remembered I didn't know that much about her and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
The front of the bank was still in full light and I didn't want to sit exposed, but I didn't want to hide in the building either.
