DEAD_Suffer The Children

by TW Brown

  “I was loading up when I heard the crash. At first, I wasn’t sure where it came from. I only knew it was close. When I heard another, I realized it was coming from the house my mom and I were staying in.

  “I dropped everything and ran. When I got there, I realized that the window beside the front door had been busted. It didn’t seem possible for a zombie to get through such a relatively small slot, but I could see blackish streaks that looked like rotten blood on the edges around the busted-in window.

  “I got inside and could smell them. I knew the zombies where in the house, and I ran up the stairs to my mom. I needed to know that she was okay before I searched and destroyed whatever had slipped inside.

  “When I reached the top stair, I could see the door to the bedroom my mom and I stayed in was open. I hurried to it and the smell that hit me was almost enough to make me vomit. I shoved at the door and it only opened partway. Something was on the other side…but worse than that, one of those little children…the ones you seem so intent on saving or not just killing on sight? Yeah, one of those had my mom’s leg in its hand like it was holding a damned drumstick.”

  Again, she paused. This time it was because I could hear how her voice choked up as she tried to get through the story. I hadn’t seen Stephanie actually get bitten. She’d been attacked before I got there. And even then, I hadn’t been able to kill that zombie. I’d been in such shock. I’d left it for Carl to finish as I took off to the hospital when I still believed there could be something done for her.

  “I rushed in, and that thing was still just staring at me when I pulled my knife. That was when it dropped my mom’s leg and came at me. Its mouth was open, and bits of partially chewed meat fell from it as rivulets of blood ran down its chin.” Alex sniffed and spun to stare me in the face. “And then the one that had been hiding behind the door attacked me. Its cold hands grabbed my arm before I could finish off the one that bit my mom.”

  We stood there in silence for a moment. I was at a loss. Even more, I didn’t want to point out that this was further proof the child versions were different. Granted, perhaps even more dangerous, but her story was giving me even more evidence that the child version of the zombie is different from the adult counterpart.

  “The one that attacked from behind grabbed my knife hand. I turned, it was a little girl. She might’ve been ten…maybe. As she tried to bite my arm, the one that had been attacking my mom moved in from where it now stood at my back. I just managed to jerk my arm free and plunge the blade into the eye of the one that had been holding my arm when I felt the pain on the back of my leg.” Alex took a deep breath before she continued. “I heard the rip in my pants and the searing agony. It was terrible. Never in my life had I felt anything like it. That child tore a chunk out of the back of my leg. I felt the wetness as the blood ran down my calf. I still remember all those feelings. Sometimes…I swear I feel that pain come back. I wake up and am certain that I will open my eyes to see one of those monsters trying to finish what that one child started.”

  When Alex’s eyes returned to me, she stopped whatever it was that she was about to say. Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes squinted in apparent anger.

  “What? You think you’re the only one who didn’t turn after being attacked?” she spat.

  That’s when I realized that my mouth was wide open. She was taking my amazement as something personal?

  “No, I just…it’s that…” Hell, I didn’t know what to say. I guess she’d just caught me off guard. That was it. Just like that girl Katy I’d met who had a nasty bite taken out of her face. She’d been the one to prove to me that immunity was a possibility. Katy had given me hope.

  “I’m not some kinda freak,” she insisted.

  For the first time, I heard a degree of fragility from Alex. She’d been coming across as such a badass up until this point. I realized now that she might not be exactly as advertised.

  “I wasn’t trying to make you feel that way,” I explained. “I was just so blown away. You have to admit…immunity is pretty rare. You are one of about a handful of people I’ve met who are immune.” Then I realized what she’d probably had to go through to get to this point. “How long did it take you to figure out you were okay?”

  If she’d been blushing before, it was nothing compared to what I saw now. She looked away for a moment and then turned back to me. “Just a little while. One of the members of our group that disappeared on us had been bitten on the arm like two weeks before they took off. She didn’t turn. So, when my eyes didn’t show the tracers within a few hours, I had to at least assume there was a good chance I wasn’t infected. Unfortunately…my mom wasn’t as lucky.”

  I’d all but forgotten about that part. Her mom had been attacked and bitten. She was definitely having the entire zombie apocalypse experience. Other than not having to deal with hunger, her mom had not had one moment that hadn’t been awful. Losing one daughter right before her eyes; one daughter having to kill the other; getting sick from an infection that would’ve been easily handled by a doctor just weeks before. Add in being allergic to penicillin, and I felt awful for Alex’s mom.

  “By the time I had killed those two zombies and hurried to my mom’s side…her eyes were already showing the tracers. Thankfully, I think she was so sick and just out of it that she didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t want her to turn…and I thought that she’d suffered enough. I put a pillow over her head, pushed the pistol into it until I felt it reach the resistance of her forehead…and pulled the trigger.

  “I sat there beside her for a minute until I heard a moan from downstairs. Part of me was ready to die. I hadn’t yet considered I might be immune. The reminder of that pain from the bite on my leg told me to get up and handle the situation. I went down and discovered a pair of regular zombies had wandered in through the door that I’d left open.

  “It was easy to end them. After that, I went upstairs and sat down beside my mom’s corpse. The stench in the room eventually drove me to leave. I knew burying her was out of the question, so I wrapped her in the linens on the bed and then headed downstairs.”

  Alex found a relatively dry spot on a log and sat down. I waited a moment and then decided to join her. It was a large log, so I didn’t need to sit on top of her and crowd her space. I felt like maybe she still had more to say, so I just stared out at the dark swirling water of the river.

  I could smell the clean scent that always followed a bit of rain. It was strangely soothing, and I have no idea how long we sat there before Alex resumed her story.

  “I think I fell asleep,” she started.

  At first I was unsure if she was back to sharing, or if she might be telling me about the here-and-now.

  “My head jerked up and I felt terrible. I was certain this would be the start of it. Only, I wasn’t about to allow myself to turn into one of those things. I got up and wandered into the bathroom. I don’t know why, but I guess part of me needed to see it for myself.

  “When I looked into the mirror, I saw…nothing.” She paused and then gave a soft chuckle. “I mean, I saw something, obviously. Just, there was nothing wrong in my eyes. Just the normal set I’ve always had looking back at me.”

  “Did you keep checking every few hours?” I asked after another pause.

  “Yeah. And even when I’d finally convinced myself that I was not going to turn, I still found myself checking.” She looked sideways at me through the tear that had fallen down her face. “I still check every once in a while. Like I am waiting for it to show up…because I still can’t believe it.”

  I couldn’t recall the last time that I’d checked. After I came to accept my condition, I guess I just figured that was it. Also, I was certain that anybody I was travelling with would say something if my eyes were suddenly laced with black tracers.

  “Listen, I don’t know if I should say this,” Alex said, snapping me back to the moment. “If you keep Maggie here, you are going to need to keep a very close eye on her.
She is seriously blaming you for her brother’s death. We have enough going on without having to deal with that.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But I can’t just toss her out on her own. Until she does something, I have to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Well, I’ll be watching your back.”

  I found that sentiment very encouraging. While I had no doubts that Alex and I would butt heads again, I did feel as maybe we’d turned a corner.

  We walked back to discover that Drew and his people were unloading their supplies from the van. I heard a lot of comments that went along the lines of never wanting to see (or smell) the inside of that vehicle again.

  When it was all said and done, they had a couple of tents, and everybody would at least be able to be out of the worst of the elements. It was by no means perfect, but it was a start. Our community had basically tripled in size.

  Eventually, Maggie returned. She wouldn’t look at me, but she rolled up her sleeves right away and stepped in to help as we continued to get our area set up. I wanted to have not only a deep ditch that surrounded us, but also some barricades. Once we had some rudimentary defenses in place, we could start building some form of community housing that would offer us better protection than simple tents. One of the things I insisted upon when we had our first group meeting to discuss the plans for our cabins involved ensuring that each one had an underground bunker of sorts.

  “Besides being a great place to keep and store food, it will be a fallback location if we are ever overrun. We can run some form of ventilation that will offer adequate air flow if you end up trapped inside for any significant period,” I explained.

  “Give this a lot of thought back in the day?” Drew snickered.

  “Not this exact scenario,” I admitted. “But I was always thinking about what I would need to do in the event of some terrible global disaster or even an invasion.”

  “By what? Aliens?” Drew scoffed.

  “Nah…the Chinese.”

  The man looked me over and I could tell he was unsure if I was being truthful or pulling his leg. I didn’t know him well; and while I like him well enough, I saw no harm in making him and his people think I might be just a shade on the crazy side.

  He looked to be considering my statement when another voice spoke out. “Are we going to adopt a plan for people who are bitten? What about mandatory quarantine when folks return from supply runs?”

  This was one of Drew’s people. He was a chunky guy that looked like he’d probably lost a considerable amount of weight since the whole zombie thing. And if he’d lost weight up to this point, he must’ve tipped the scales well over the three hundred-plus mark before. His clothes could probably fit a second smaller person in them. I had no idea why he hadn’t bothered to swap out yet. But then, he was still hefty. Perhaps he hadn’t found anything in his new (and still at least triple-XL) size.

  “I think we’re still small enough to be able to rely on maybe just a simple exam,” I answered. Honestly, that thought hadn’t even occurred to me.

  “And how long before we ain’t?” the man challenged. “I don’t feel like going through what happened at one of those damned FEMA shelters.”

  “Okay, then maybe we pair them up with somebody for twenty-four hours that wasn’t outside the perimeter,” I suggested. “We can’t really afford to have people idle for extended periods while they sit in quarantine to ensure they aren’t infected.”

  That received a collection of nods and grunts of approval. As we went through the meeting, I could feel a sense of cohesion starting to build. For whatever reason, I was starting to feel a glimmer of hope.

  13

  Children and Strangers

  Three entire days passed with nothing worth talking about. It was all about working on our new home. A couple of Drew’s people said they remembered the location of one of those big box hardware stores. They wanted to take the van and see about locating an actual big rig to load up. It was discussed and then vetoed.

  As much as many of us saw the use of such a trip, not one of us could justify the risk at this point. We agreed that it would be a great idea once our numbers reached something close to fifty or so. That would allow for an actual team to make the run instead of two people.

  Instead, we started raiding the houses in the area. Many of them had sheds and lots of farm equipment for us to scoop up. The second trip out to a house just two down from the one that my last ill-fated run had been to yielded the post-apocalyptic equivalent of hitting the lottery. A small one maybe, but still a jackpot.

  The team of three returned to say that the house had obviously been in the process of building a massive barn. Not only was there a plethora of supplies, but there was also a huge truck with yet another earth-mover on a trailer and a good amount of fuel.

  We managed to get it all back with very little zombie interference. To help our cause, once we had everything offloaded, we took the big rig and drove back up to South Springwater Road and kept it in first gear with the engine revving high and loud as we rolled about a mile up from our location to a feed store.

  That was our second jackpot. Apparently the feed store also had several pallets of dog food stacked in their store.

  “Makes sense, lots of the farmers here with livestock keep herding dogs,” Tracy said as we loaded several large bags into the van to bring back for Chewie.

  Up until that point, after we’d run out, she was surviving off scraps. That had done her insides no favors at all much to the dismay of anybody she decided to flop down beside at night when we sat around the campfire.

  Even Michael got up a few times and walked upwind from her. It was actually sad to watch. It didn’t help that Chewie was far from silent in her emissions. That sound became the signal for anybody near her to get up and hurry away. She would look around with the saddest eyes and then just drop her head to the ground and make all sorts of whining sounds until the air cleared to the point where Michael would return and rub her ears or scratch her belly.

  I should’ve known better than to get comfortable.

  ***

  I was standing on the first platform of our very first watch tower. It was a simple bit of construction and stood about thirty feet high. We had one platform at the halfway point that was more for just adding to the stability, and then a small one at the top that could hold two people in close quarters.

  The plan was to build eight of these towers. Telephone poles worked great for the frame and we’d had no problems coming up with what we needed since they were evenly spaced down the length of Springwater Road. We’d had to utilize our flatbed big rig again, and then repeat the evolution of driving back up to the main road and away from the entrance to McIver.

  The first indication that there was a problem came when several coyotes burst from the woods and sped past our camp. One of them paused, looking back over its shoulder. It tongue was lolling, and even from where I was standing, I could see its sides heaving like a bellows. It didn’t stay long and quickly vanished into the wall of green after crossing the narrow road that ran parallel to the trench and subsequent dirt berm we’d created in this location

  I turned back to see what might’ve spooked the coyote. I expected to see a few zombies. When the first one appeared, I felt the hair on my arms and back of my neck stand up. My skin pebbled and my stomach received an unwelcome dose of acidic juices, sending a bubble of bile up to the back of my throat.

  The little boy stepped out of the dense scrub and brambles. He might’ve been ten years old in life. I saw dark splotches on his arms that were probably very old bite marks. Coming out of the same dense section of undergrowth and sprawling blackberry bushes were cats.

  It was like watching a scene from that old horror movie, Ben, only with cats. There were dozens of them. They came out to the road and then stopped. Several of the felines looked like they were searching. Their heads swung back and forth very slowly. After a moment, several of them dropped to a crouch and began to
slink across the road.

  Directly towards our camp!

  “No way in hell,” I gasped.

  As soon as the cats began to move, the little boy adjusted and began to follow. Less than two heartbeats later, more of the diminutive walking dead emerged and fell in with the procession.

  From where I stood, I could look out through the trees. I saw a considerable amount of movement. And then more bad news: a herd of regular zombies were forcing their way through the woods on the heels of the cats and zombie children.

  It was as if this was a coordinated attack. But that was impossible, right? To think otherwise was too terrifying. Yet, the proof of it was right before my eyes.

  My mind drifted to that ambush near that church. A zombie child banging on a car had launched the adults. That noise had been enough to draw them in a specific direction, then, once they spotted me, they oriented on their target…yours truly. Now, it appeared as if this pack of zombie children were leading a herd directly for our camp. Only, I was almost certain that they were following the cats.

  “Crap,” I hissed as I realized there was no way to alert the others that did not involve screaming at the top of my lungs.

  “We got a herd incoming!” I shouted.

  There really was no other option. My shouting had an instant effect on the zombies…and the cats. However, it differed depending on the variety. The mob of adults that I could now see scattered throughout the woods began to stop their advance. I shouted my warning again and saw them orient on me and begin to resume their trudging now pointed in my direction. For the most part, the cats scattered and vanished into the woods.

  It was the children, specifically, the one I’d seen leading the group, that dropped the temperature of my blood a few more degrees. He turned, standing in the middle of the little road and appeared to be searching the area. At last, he located me.