by Ray Wallace
At last count, the town's residents numbered just over two hundred people. Dozens of survivors had been found and brought into the fold by those out on supply runs to other nearby towns. Anyone showing any signs of sickness were held at the local elementary school. Those who underwent the change, who were transformed into one of the Hellspawn were dealt with accordingly. Fortunately, over the past week there had been no more than half-a-dozen such incidents. It was obvious to the pastor—and Brother Randall concurred—that the majority of those who'd survived in the areas hardest hit by the outbreak were somehow immune to its effects.
They have been blessed by God.
And he was convinced that all of them had been spared for a reason—himself included.
To fight the Hellspawn, to do battle with the evil wherever we encounter it.
And, he knew, the battle had only just begun.
Once our numbers are large enough, once Brother Randall assures me the soldiers have been properly trained, the fight will begin in earnest.
He looked around at all of those who had gathered outside the church, saw the smiles on many of the faces, heard the heartwarming sound of shared laughter.
Enjoy it while it lasts, he thought, wearing a smile of his own. For soon enough, we go to war.
Monday, August 17th
"Stay in the car. I won't be long."
Dominick sat in the passenger seat of the car, watched as Irene opened the driver side door and got out, closing it behind her. She'd parked along the side of the convenience store, next to the dumpster. Within moments, she rounded the corner of the building and disappeared from sight.
Dominick didn't like the idea of her going in there by herself. It seemed like a bad plan, one that hadn't been properly thought through. In the short time he'd known Irene, he'd gotten the impression this was how she approached most situations—like she was winging it, like maybe she hadn't considered all the options. Not that he held it against her. It was a highly unusual situation—to put it mildly—in which they'd all suddenly found themselves. Before the plague, he doubted most people had sat around trying to figure out what exactly they'd do if the dead started coming back to life, possessed with a hunger for human flesh.
Not unless they had a really weird imagination.
So, yeah, he had no problem cutting her some slack, knew she was doing the best she could, given the circumstances. That didn't mean he had to blindly follow her orders.
Throughout his young life, especially during the weeks he'd spent on his own inside the apartment building, he'd developed some pretty good survival skills. Now that he'd escaped that particular environment, now that he had Irene as his "protector"—as she'd proclaimed herself on various occasions—he saw no reason to stop putting those skills to use. He'd been Lisa and Eddie's protector before Irene ever came along, figured it was only a matter of time before he ended up saving her when one of these less than stellar plans of hers went awry.
One more minute, he told himself as he stared at the corner where he'd last seen Irene, waiting for her to reappear. And then I'm going in after her.
"I'm hungry," Eddie whined.
“We'll eat in a little while,” said Dominick, turning toward the back of the car where the two young siblings sat next to one another.
"Promise?" Eddie rubbed his stomach to demonstrate just how hungry he was.
Dominick couldn't help but smile, despite the nervous tension twisting in his guts.
"Promise."
He let his gaze return to the store. Still no Irene.
Another minute passed. By then, he knew he couldn't sit around any longer.
“Listen,” he said, addressing both of the younger children. "I'm going into the store. Once I'm out of the car, I want you to duck down out of sight and stay hidden until I get back. Understand?"
They both nodded solemnly.
With that, he exited the car and moved toward the building in the early evening humidity, glancing back to make sure the siblings had done as instructed. After peeking around the corner and making sure there were no unwanted surprises waiting for him, he continued toward the store's main entrance, ducking below the windows so that no one inside could see him. When he reached the door leading into the place, he found that it had been smashed in at some point, looked down to see shards of glass littering the ground.
From inside the store, he heard a voice:
"No. Please..."
Irene.
Then a man's voice: "I said shut up, bitch."
Heart thumping in his chest, Dominick lifted his shirt and pulled out his father's pistol. Stepping as carefully and quietly as he could on the scattered pieces of glass, he entered the building. Staying low, he hid behind ransacked shelves, making his way deeper into the store, letting the voices—one of them pleading, the other demanding—lead him onward. And then he was there, standing less than ten feet behind the bulk of the man pressing Irene against the wall.
"This is gonna happen whether you want it to or not,” Dominick heard him say.
Before he even realized what he was doing, Dominick raised the gun and pulled the hammer back with an audible click.
“Let her go," he said, trying to control the quaver in his voice. "Now."
The man raised his hands, slowly, letting Irene push herself away from him. Dominick could see that her shirt had been ripped, caught the gleam of tears in her eyes. She approached him, stood beside him.
"Dominick..."
"Go outside," he told her.
She didn’t move.
“Irene. Please… Go outside.”
For another moment she hesitated before doing as he told her.
The man turned around to face him, hands held up to either side of his head. There was just enough daylight this far inside the store to let Dominick see what the guy looked like: thick, black beard, crooked nose, eyes a little too close together.
"Look, kid. Whatever you think was going on here..."
The guy took a step forward.
“Stop right there,” Dominick told him.
Another step.
“I don't think you're gonna shoot me, kid.”
Another step.
“Killing someone... It's a terrible thing.”
With that, the man lunged at him.
And Dominick pulled the trigger.
A little while later, as they drove away from that place, Dominick thought about what the man had said and realized he'd been right. He wondered if it was something he could live with, this terrible thing.
It didn't come as any major surprise when he realized that he could.
Tuesday, August 18th
Trevor's new friends had a "base camp" located less than two miles from the tree fort where they'd found him. It consisted of a modest house, two singlewide trailers, and a “doomsday bunker” buried in the earth.
"Sooner or later, we knew the shit would hit the fan," said Blake, the big guy with the southern accent and the beer gut who owned the place along with his wife, Loretta. He was ex-military and the group's de facto leader, the one who made most of the major decisions, like letting Trevor become a member of their little community. Eleven people had been living on the property before Trevor came along: seven adults, two teenagers, and two young children—the latter Blake and Loretta's sons. The group as a whole had gone out of its way to make Trevor feel welcome even though, he had to admit to himself, he hadn't been quite as cordial in return.
One evening, Blake had taken him down to the bunker, an eight-by-fifteen foot room accessed by a ten-foot ladder and a trapdoor set into the ground. The place had four bunks, shelves for supplies, a generator, a short wave radio, and an air filtration system among other amenities. Blake explained how he and his family could survive down there for weeks if they had to.
“Figured it was only a matter of time before something happened. Nuclear war, maybe.”
If the area had been turned into a radioactive wasteland, Trevor couldn't help but wonder what the p
lan would have been once their supplies ran out. He didn't ask, though. Much like most of the things in his life at this point, the answer just didn't seem all that important to him. His grief and his guilt had drained him, leaving him without purpose or a lot of concern for anything going on around him.
"It's obvious you've had a rough time of it," said Blake, placing a booted foot up on one of the bunks, a serious expression on his face. The change of subject caught Trevor off guard, had him wanting to climb the ladder and get out of there. But he forced himself to stay and listen to what the man had to say. He figured he owed him that much, at least, considering all the guy had done for him.
"You're quiet. And you have that haunted look in your eyes.” He stared at Trevor for a long moment, nodded his head like he understood. "I just wanted to let you know that if you ever want to talk about it—whatever it is—I'd be glad to listen. We're family here. You became a part of that family once we brought you in. And you'll remain a part of it for as long as you decide to stay."
Trevor had thanked him but hadn't taken him up on his offer. He knew he needed help with what he was going through but he couldn't ask for it. Not yet. He needed to suffer for what he'd done—or, to put it more accurately, for what he'd failed to do. Someday, maybe, he'd be ready to talk about it to someone, to unburden himself. But he felt pretty confident that day was a long ways off.
He threw himself into any task that was asked of him, looking forward to the times spent patrolling the fence along the property's perimeter, finding some small joy in dispatching any zombies he encountered along the way. Every couple of days, he'd go out on a supply run with other members of his newfound family. Here, too, was an activity that brought him a tiny measure of happiness as it inevitably involved some level of confrontation with the undead.
On this particular Wednesday morning, he found himself in the company of Loretta and Brad, two of those—along with Blake—who'd rescued him from the tree house a week-and-a-half earlier. Loretta drove the four-by-four while Brad sat in the passenger seat. Trevor relaxed in back. He paid little attention to the route they took, not really caring where they were headed, only hoping he'd be able to make use of the semi-automatic rifle Blake had given him for this little mission of theirs. If there was one thing Blake seemed to have in nearly unlimited supply, it was weapons and ammunition. Undoubtedly, this had something to do with his and his family's survival to this point. Trevor could only wonder how the guy hadn't ended up on some government watch list.
Who knows, maybe he did?
After a good twenty minutes of driving, Loretta brought the vehicle to a stop. When Trevor got out, he saw that they'd arrived at a large, stand-alone hardware store that had an air of abandonment to it. As luck would have it, a fairly large number of zombies wandered back and forth across the parking lot in front of the place.
“Okay, let's do this,” said Loretta.
They approached the store with guns raised and ready for action. Fingers tingling with anticipation, Trevor waited for Loretta to take the first shot. Then he opened fire, managed to forget his guilt and his grief during the slaughter that ensued.
Wednesday, August 19th
"Goodnight, honey," said Tim as he left his daughter's room. "Sleep tight."
He went down the hallway and into the living room, flashlight in hand. The power had finally gone out in the sleepy little Texas town where he and his wife, Aubrey, and their ten-year-old daughter, Melissa, had lived for the past five years now. He'd taken a job with a Dallas construction company—regional management—and rather than live in the city itself, they'd decided to purchase a place in one of the suburbs half an hour away. Although, for all the differences between the two places, they may have been located on two entirely different planets. The sprawling yards with the long driveways, the slower pace and the friendly neighbors had been more than enough to lure Tim away from the city and into the other, much more family friendly environment.
Not that it was very "family friendly" anymore.
He approached the front door of the house, the flashlight's beam leading the way and put his eye to the peephole. He detected movement out there in the darkness. The undead, he knew. The plague had found his sleepy little town and turned it into a scene from a nightmare.
Something banged against the door, startling him, making him back away. In the living room, he looked through the tiny opening between two sheets of plywood covering the bay window, took in the sight of the figures shambling across the yard in the moonlight. He thought about his parents, his brother, the many friends he'd known over the years, tried to imagine what they might be going through, wondered how they were doing, if any of them were still alive. Tim had heard from none of them in weeks, knew it was a very real possibility the people he'd known and loved had fallen prey to the sickness, had been turned into the same sort of creatures out there on the lawn in front of his house, driven by a terrible need they were powerless to resist.
He thought about his wife, how she would have been recruited into the ranks of the undead if he hadn't taken action, if he hadn't done what needed to be done. Then he thought about his daughter who'd somehow managed, like him, to avoid getting sick.
But it's a sick world. No place to raise a little girl.
This was what he told himself when, not ten minutes earlier, he'd gone into her bedroom to tuck her in. He'd grabbed one of the pillows—the big, fluffy kind that she liked—and held it over her face until she stopped slapping and scratching at his arms, until she stopped moving altogether.
“Sleep tight,” he'd told her when it was all over, just as he'd done so many times before.
Standing at the window, his thoughts turned to the handgun he used to keep on the shelf in the bedroom closet, safely out of his daughter's reach, the fact that he'd run out of ammunition for it. For what he had in mind, it would have proven quite useful. Quicker. Easier. Did he deserve quick and easy, though, after what he'd done? Or did he deserve to suffer, just a little, even if his intentions had been good? Pointless conjecture, he knew, because he was going to suffer, either way.
Stepping back from the window, he approached the front door of the house once again. It had been cross-braced with a two-by-four which he had to lift from the L brackets holding it in place.
“I'm so sorry Aubrey... Melissa...” he said. “Please, forgive me.”
Then he opened the door and walked outside into the waiting arms of the undead.
Thursday, August 20th
The border was secure. At least, that was the word going up and down the line each day. No reports of plague inside the zone. No major zombie presence in the area.
"I’d say things are going as well as anyone could hope," said Private Jenkins as he tossed a couple of cigarettes into the pot.
There were four of them, including Deandra and Jenkins, gathered around the table next to the mess tent, playing poker. Deandra had done all right for herself, had stockpiled nearly twice as many cigarettes as she'd had when she started. Which was nice for a change. Usually, she played pretty poorly. Not all that surprising, really, as she'd never been much of a poker player until recently. Since arriving in Michigan, she'd started playing several times a week. Apparently, all the practice was finally paying off. That, and the fact that Jenkins had let her in on her "tell."
"You smile, just a little, every time you've got something good."
Corporal Wellington, a bull of a man with biceps that looked like they could crack walnuts—he liked to keep his sleeves rolled up so that everyone could get a good look at them—pushed two cigarettes toward the middle of the table.
"We've been lucky so far,” he said. “Let's hope it continues. No reason to think it won't as long as we stay on top of this thing, avoid contact with anyone who might be infected. If someone even sneezes, lock ‘em down." He shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe it all works out. The plague's got to burn itself out sometime."
“Or maybe they find a cure,” said Deandra as she won another
hand.
It was her turn to deal. As she shuffled the cards, she tried to imagine it, getting through all of this unharmed, she and the millions of others living in the section of the state that had been cordoned off. “The zone,” as everyone referred to it. Was it really possible that no one within its boundaries would get or that none of them would end up as dinner—or lunch or breakfast, she supposed—for the deadheads? She wanted to think so, she really did, but after all the horror stories she'd heard... The images she'd seen on TV... The reports still coming in on a daily basis of various towns and cities outside the zone succumbing to the plague or being overrun by the undead... It was hard to convince herself that an area the size of the one they were trying to protect could avoid similar hardships.
One can hope.
"I hear east end's been seeing some action lately," said Jenkins, referring to the section of the Michigan/Ohio border near Lake Erie.
Deandra continued to deal until everyone had five cards.
"Yeah," said Wellington, "they say one guy's racked up over a hundred re-kills."
That was how everyone had started referring to it: re-killing. As opposed to actual killing which could only be performed when the victim was still classified as among the living.
Private Houarner, the fourth person sitting at their table, gave a low whistle of appreciation. Deandra couldn't even imagine such a thing. A hundred re-kills? She'd recorded a grand total of five in all of her time at the border. And she could recall each of them quite clearly, had relived a few of them in her dreams during recent weeks.
Five re-kills but no real kills.
She had yet to shoot anyone showing signs of infection or trying to cross the border illegally, two ways someone might end up catching a bullet near the zone.
