by Ray Wallace
"Today's your lucky day. We've been instructed to let a small number of healthy individuals past the border. Either you're telling the truth or you and your people are doing a hell of a job hiding any symptoms you might be experiencing. Now here's what you'll have to do... Continue on to the fence and stop at the gate. You'll be put in isolation until—"
"No way," said Aaron, interrupting him once again. "Not a freakin' chance!"
Then he opened the door, got out, and took off running in the direction of the zone.
I lost sight of him almost immediately, my view blocked by the truck parked in the lane next to us. The soldiers shouted at him to stop, then the one standing outside Brenda's window ran after him.
"God damn idiot!" said Roger just before we heard gunfire, three shots in a row.
I thought for sure they'd make us turn around or maybe even arrest us. But, eventually, after some more questions, they told Roger to go on ahead. We hadn't gone far when Luke pulled me toward him and said, “Don't look.” But it was too late. I'd already seen the yellow tarp near the side of the road, the one covering Aaron's body.
We had to stop at the first of the two fences blocking the way forward and wait until they'd opened the gate and waved us through. Roger was told to park the SUV in a wide dirt lot with a bunch of other vehicles. The second of the two fences built along the border could be seen standing a quarter mile or so further north. I didn't know if that meant we were actually in the zone or not. What I did know was that we now had a ten foot tall fence with razor wire across the top of it standing between us and all of the zombies that were terrorizing most of the country.
We were escorted to a small building where we were told to fill out some forms. After that, they took our pictures along with a little blood. Then we were led to a group of larger buildings where each of us was given our own apartment.
"You'll stay here until we're sure you're not carriers," we were told. How long that might take no one would say for sure.
So here I am, Diary, in isolation once again. I haven't wanted to think about what happened to Aaron, couldn't bring myself to write about it until today. You'd think I'd be used to it by now. The death. The tragedy. That, at the very least, it wouldn't hit me as hard as it would have before all this craziness began. But I'm starting to realize it's the sort of thing you never get used to. Not even a little bit.
Sunday, August 30th
Susanna sat atop the wall, using a pair of binoculars to scan the surrounding landscape. The once well-manicured grounds were looking rather unkempt these days. The grass had grown taller than it had in many years, she felt certain, and fallen leaves lay scattered everywhere. Trees blocked much of the morning light, covering most of what she saw in shadow. A warm breeze caressed the exposed skin of her face and arms, a sensation she knew she would find much less pleasurable once the afternoon heat—which seemed to have steadily intensified as the summer grew long—had settled in.
No sign of any zombies this fine morning.
Too bad.
Upon awakening nearly two hours earlier, she'd been looking forward to using some of the miserable creatures for a little target practice. She'd taken her share of it over the last several days, had made a point of regularly going out with Ramos and Davide in search of zombies to kill. And with each of these outings, she'd become increasingly proficient at making sure the undead became well and truly dead.
She knew that her fellow hunters wouldn't crawl out of bed—or wherever they may have ended up passing out—for at least another hour or two. They liked to stay up late and sleep in, a habit Lawrence did his part to encourage.
"It's not like there's any reason to be up at the crack of dawn anymore," he'd recently told her. "We're retired now. And I, for one, plan to enjoy it."
He didn't seem to spend much time in his control room these days, told her that he'd finally seen enough.
"I've never really been a big fan of horror movies..."
It turned out that Lawrence had stockpiled—along with an immense cache of food and firearms—a rather impressive supply and variety of mind-altering substances. At first, he and his “boy toys” had stuck to the weed and the alcohol. But it hadn't taken long for them to move on to some of the harder substances he kept in his “pharmacy.”
“Voila,” he'd said when he showed her the room, the shelves lining the walls laden with bottles of pills and powders, vacuum-sealed plastic bags of high-grade marijuana, peyote, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The booze he stored in another, larger room, seemingly enough to keep a small army inebriated throughout the duration of whatever war they were fighting.
Maybe not with the way they've been going through it.
Susanna had refused to participate when the nightly partying got under way. Since a few days after Zander's death, she'd been completely sober, much to Lawrence's disapproval.
"Oh, you're no fun," he'd told her the previous evening when he offered her a half-smoked joint and gotten a “No, thanks” in return. Half an hour later, after cleaning her gun, she'd retired to her bedroom and read a couple of chapters of the book she'd borrowed from the house's rather extensive library. Then she fell into a deep and uninterrupted sleep.
In the morning, she took a shower, got dressed, ate breakfast then grabbed her gun and a pair of binoculars and went outside. She used a portable ladder to climb the wall—not the first time she'd performed this particular maneuver—and there she sat, gun lying next to her, waiting for a zombie to come along, anxious to blow its brains out, to watch it drop to the ground where it would lie, never to rise again, officially dead once and for all.
So far, though, no luck.
Sighing in frustration, she lowered the binoculars, toyed with the idea of heading out into the world beyond the wall by herself before immediately disregarding the notion. She might be bored and still nurturing the anger she felt over Zander's death, but she wasn't crazy nor was she stupid. No, she'd wait for the others to wake up and conquer their hangovers enough to join her.
Until then, I'll just have to find a way to—
A splashing sound caught her attention.
Setting the binoculars down, she lowered her gaze to the moat below and before her, watched as ripples moved across the surface of the water. Grabbing the gun, she aimed it toward the ever-widening circles, wondering what could have caused them. As far as she knew, there were no fish living in the moat, no animals of any kind.
Then what—
More ripples, followed by a much louder splash as something emerged from the water.
A hand.
Susanna watched in fascination and no small amount of revulsion as the zombie—bloated, puckered, and pale from its time spent underwater—slowly emerged from the moat, its head rising into view followed by the rest of its body as it pulled itself onto dry land.
How long it had been down there, presumably stuck in the mud, she could only guess. How many days or weeks before it finally found a way to free itself?
Susanna shook her head in wonder as the awful thing climbed to its feet. It moaned as water poured out of it, a foul stench wafting up to where Susanna sat, safely out of harm's reach. The thing took a few clumsy steps toward her, baring its teeth—the few that remained—while staring at her with eyes that had faded from the standard crimson of its kind to more of a pinkish color.
"Jesus," she said under breath, taking aim with the gun, covering her mouth and nose with her free hand. And with a pull of the trigger, she gladly put the zombie down.
Monday, August 31st
They had spent the morning and part of the afternoon making their way toward the column of smoke rising in the distance. Howard walked with an umbrella over his head to protect him from the sun. Rachel had chosen to wear a hat and sunscreen on the exposed skin of her arms, legs, and neck. After all the recent walking, she'd begun to envy Howard and his portable source of shade. But she refused to implement a similar technique, wanting to keep her hands free in case they ran into trou
ble. If they did, she knew it would be of the human variety, since they had nothing to fear from the zombies.
The undead continued to give them nothing more than passing glances. It still bothered Rachel to move among them, to be so close to them. She wondered if she'd ever get used to the sight of those red eyes, the sounds of moaning and dragging feet.
And the smell. Don't forget about the smell.
She figured there was about zero chance of that happening.
"Damn, it's a hot one," Howard said from where he casually strolled next to her.
"It's late summer in Florida," said Rachel. "What did you expect?"
Not long after this exchange, she called for a break, then wandered over and stopped beneath the branches of a tree standing next to the road they followed. Crouching down, she pulled the straps of the backpack she carried off of her shoulders, set the pack on the ground next to her, unzipped it and removed a bottled water. Leaning back against the trunk of the tree, she wiped her brow and took a long pull from the bottle.
Howard set the umbrella at his feet, removed his own pack then sat down on the grass, skinny legs splayed out in front of him.
They'd taken the backpacks from a ransacked sporting goods store. The supplies they carried inside of them had been pilfered from various places—abandoned convenience stores for the most part—during their recent travels.
"So remind me why we're doing this," said Howard between bites of a protein bar.
Rachel took another swig of water and said, "You know why. We might find people there."
"Yes. And?"
Rachel knew that Howard was content with the way things were, that he had no real desire to meet other people, to involve himself in any sort of community.
“I've just never been a big people person,” he'd told her on several occasions.
She had a feeling he had a bit of a crush on her, that he liked the fact that it was just the two of them. Not that there was any chance they'd ever become romantically involved. She liked Howard well enough, figured she could have done a lot worse as far as traveling companions went. But she didn't like him in that way.
"Anyone we run into around here should be resistant to the plague," she said for what felt like the hundredth time. "Resistant to us."
He shrugged. “Probably. But we can't know for sure.”
“And that's why we'll be careful. Approach with caution. We've been over all of this. Besides, wasn’t it your idea to come to Florida in the first place?”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, watched as a dead woman missing half an arm walked by. Then they took to the road again.
An hour later, they heard the first pop! of gunfire from up ahead where they could see the smoke rising into the air.
An hour after that...
Rachel leaned against the side of a car, elbows on the roof—white paint job so it wasn't too hot—peering through a pair of binoculars. From behind her, Howard complained that his feet were killing him. As Rachel watched, a few dozen people milled around on the front lawn of a church, some of them going in and out of the building.
Be careful... Approach with caution...
"Uh, Rachel."
She didn't respond, continued to stare through the binoculars all the while wondering if these people were potential friends or foes, if finding out was worth the risk.
"Rachel."
"What is it?" she said, keeping her voice low.
"Turn around,” said a gruff, unfamiliar voice. “Keep your hands where we can see them."
She lowered the binoculars and did as she was told, took in the sight of the three armed men standing about ten feet away, pointing their weapons at Howard and her.
"How about you tell us who you are and just what, exactly, you're doing here," said the man in the middle, the one who'd already spoken.
Before she could think of anything to say, Howard took the initiative:
“Well, you see, it's like this..."
Tuesday, September 1st
Pastor Lewis continued to receive word concerning the zombie migration from Brother Randall, who in turn received the information from the various scouts under his command.
"North, always north," they would say in regards to the direction the demonic creatures were heading. "As if something's calling them..."
Pastor Lewis had no difficulty imagining what that something might be. The zombies were Hellspawn, after all, which meant they would heed the call of their one true master, the Prince of Darkness himself. To where the Evil One was calling them and for what purpose, the pastor couldn't say. If he had to guess, though...
He was aware of what had been accomplished in Michigan—or “the zone” as it was more commonly called now—and had heard about the firewall the military had established along the state's southern border, the boundary past which neither the ill nor the undead could pass. The flesh hungry minions of the Devil's army would find such a place an irresistible lure, the pastor reasoned.
The Lord may work in mysterious ways, he'd made a habit of telling his parishioners, but the Devil's motives are always clear.
He itched to go north, to bring his people with him, to take part in the battle he felt sure would be waged there. But he resisted the temptation. It seemed that not all of the Hellspawn had been given their marching orders. Significant numbers of them had remained behind like members of a conquering army, unwilling to relinquish the lands they had fought to attain. Tampa lay nearly fifty miles to the south of where the pastor and his followers had taken up residence. Scouts returning from the area had reported that significant numbers of the undead still wandered the city's streets. For the past week now, the pastor had dreamed of that city, had awakened each morning with images of the place etched in his mind. He knew this could only mean one thing.
Prior to the apocalypse that had descended out of the sky, God had spoken to the pastor through his dreams on any number of occasions. Startlingly vivid dreams, like the one many years ago in which he'd been standing behind a pulpit, preaching the word of the Good Book, telling all who would listen of God's undying love. This was the dream that had led to him becoming a pastor in the first place.
And now he dreamed of a particular city, Tampa, of taking it back from the evil that had claimed it.
At last count, his followers numbered more than four hundred strong with new arrivals trickling in every day. These included the woman named Rachel, and the older man with whom she'd been traveling. It had been reported to Pastor Lewis that when they were captured, the man—whose name escaped the pastor—had spoken of an ability he and Rachel shared to walk unmolested among the undead.
The demons refuse to harm them.
This could only mean they had the mark of the Devil upon them. What other explanation could there be? Initially, he'd considered having them killed. Or, if not killed, then cast out. But he'd changed his mind, deciding they must have been sent to him for a reason, one the Lord would undoubtedly reveal to him in due time. Just as it had been made clear to him that he must not go north, that he should stay and reclaim the city of Tampa for the living.
"By whatever means necessary, I will take it back."
He muttered the words as he got up from the bed, the same words his dream self had spoken each time it had wandered the fallen city, the streets littered with corpses.
Naked, he crossed the room to where he'd left the holy sword the night before, leaning against the wall next to the door. Wrapping his fingers around the pommel, he raised it and turned to face the young woman staring at him from where she lay on the bed, her eyes bleary with sleep.
“Did you say something?” she asked.
He smiled as he freed the blade from its sheath, holding the weapon out before him, admiring its latent power in the room's dim lighting.
"By whatever means necessary,” he said once again, “I will take it back..."
Wednesday, September 2nd
Deandra lay on her bunk, staring into the darkness, telling hers
elf she needed to sleep, knowing full well it wasn't going to happen, not anytime soon.
You weren't going to be able to avoid it forever, you know. You're a soldier. And this is a war. Like it or not, it comes with the territory. What happened today was... inevitable.
But was it?
As much as she tried not to think about it, there she was again, seeing it in her mind's eye, watching the whole terrible scene unfold all over again. Because, really, how could she not?
At daybreak, she'd been informed she wouldn't have to go out on patrol which had made her happy. She needed a day off from all the walking, the constant tension she felt while performing that particular job. Yes, she knew the odds of encountering any real danger were relatively low. It was still there, though, the possibility that at any moment something completely unexpected could happen, something with very serious consequences if handled improperly, or if plain old bad luck happened to play a role. Possible scenarios included a jammed weapon or friendly fire from a soldier with an itchy trigger finger. By the time she returned to camp, the tension usually resulted in a mild stomachache.
So, yeah, she'd been happy to hear that she'd be performing a little guard duty instead. This would involve standing at one of the gates with several of her fellow soldiers, preventing any unauthorized personnel from entering the zone.
Simple enough.
And for most of the day, it had been simple. The gate to which she'd been assigned blocked a two-lane road that cut through a wide expanse of grass and a scattering of trees as it progressed toward more civilized areas a few miles away in either direction.
Maybe not so civilized to the south anymore.
By two o'clock in the afternoon, a grand total of three vehicles had approached the gate: two of them out of the south and one out of the zone itself. The former included a military transport truck filled with soldiers returning from patrol, and a two-door sedan driven by a young woman seeking sanctuary beyond the fences at the Michigan border. The woman had been kept at a distance until the medical staff had arrived and escorted her away. The vehicle heading south had been a jeep carrying a pair of high-ranking officials. Deandra could only wonder at where they were going.
