by Dalton Wolf
“Well,” he said flatly. “At least I don’t have to kill him now,” then much more lightly, for effect. “That’s a load off my mind, let me tell you. You guys want tea? I think I’m gonna go make some tea,” he headed for the big steel hatchway to follow the two artisans, rubbing his sore chest through his armor. “And maybe a sandwich.”
“What?” She reached out and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him around to face her. He held her eyes with an intense, level gaze.
“He was becoming a danger to everyone, Athena. I shouldn’t have left him with you and Sarah that first time. I should have been thinking. He’s been doing a lot of very powerful drugs for a long time, longer than anyone should, but he was apparently out of control long before this Infection thing hit us.”
“You mean you…you knew?”
“No. Some of the others warned me he was acting unhinged and I started paying attention far too late.”
She nodded understanding.
“He only had one strength in life, Rosebud.”
“I thought it was football?” Sarah asked.
“No, way. His old man was always on him about his shitty play—no matter how good he actually played, his dad never gave him a break. After the accident, he didn’t have that anymore, anyway. No, in his mind the only thing he ever did right was women. I should have known he’d try to use that as his crutch through this thing. He was never as brave as he put on. I should have guessed he might try something. Knowing I put you and Sarah in danger…I should have seen to this earlier, but he was one of my first friends. I didn’t want to believe he would…”
“How did you know some thing needed to be done?” Athena asked quietly, fearing the answer.
“I saw the footage of the two of you when we left you at the Fortress—”
“—Calvin, it wasn’t the two of us. It was just him. It’s not…I—”
“—Athena,” he gripped her shoulders firmly. “I love you. But more than that, I trust you. And even more than that, I know you. I know what you look like in all of your moods. And I certainly hope I’m aware enough to know what a rape looks like when I see one. I saw the fear and anger in your eyes and the look in his when he grabbed you. I saw you fight back before you were taken off-camera...I just didn’t see the rest.”
“It was over quickly. I fought him off, Calvin. Nothing happened,” she insisted.
“I know. But not for his lack of trying.”
He turned to Sarah with a thank you written all over his face. “If Sarah hadn’t been hiding in the hall and come in at such an opportune time with a weapon, I’m not so sure you would have come away so unscathed.”
Sarah turned away, hiding her face from the pair.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he laughed. “You might have saved her life. Brick might have magically changed his personality from that moment on just because someone knew what he had done. It could have happened. It could have taken only one incident to change him. You at least gave him that chance, gave him a few more hours on this planet to try and fix things, to make better decisions.”
“That’s three months longer than he should have had,” Athena breathed heatedly.
Scooter doubled-back, stunned. “No! You mean he…it wasn’t…it wasn’t the first time?” he pointed stupidly at Athena’s loins with a pained query in his pleading eyes and a regret in his heart that it hadn’t been he who had finished the man off.
“No, I’ve never been alone with him before. Sarah was always there with us.”
“Not her,” Sarah said emphatically, turning him quickly by a hand on his shoulder.
“Me. Three months ago, when you and Trip were off to California. I never told Trip. And you don’t know, Calvin…” she stifled a cry. “You don’t know what he’s done. He said…he couldn’t wait to tell me…while he was doing that to me, that bastard bragged that he’s done it to your former girlfriends before, yours and Trip’s, and neither of you knew. He said he’s had sex with a whole bunch of his friends’ girlfriends and that none of them ever told. He told me it was because they loved it so much…just how he said I was loving it…he said that while I was biting him and screaming and fighting to get away, Calvin. He doesn’t see things the way they are really happening. I was begging him to stop and he thought I was encouraging him. How could he think I was enjoying it? He wasn’t on drugs that day. At least I didn’t think he was. How many times did he get away with that?” her eyes pleaded. “But I was never going to let Athena spend any alone time with him.” She looked at her closest friend, tears of shame flowing down her face.
“Or any other woman if I could help it. How many more times?” she repeated. “How many others before me…after me because I said nothing?” she wailed and fell full into Calvin’s solid embrace, ignoring the remnants of dead flesh mashed into the rings and the putrid stench they’d all somehow become immune to.
That son of a bitch! Calvin’s mind screamed. I should have taken him out myself in front of everyone. It should have been painful and…well, I guess nothing could be better than what just happened…and it was a jury of his victims that decided his fate. He nodded away any guilt.
“Yes!” Sarah exhaled her hate, nodding up at him. “He was a monster. But he won’t be raping any more women. Never again.” Oddly, stating it aloud seemed to bring some closure for which she hadn’t known she was in need. “Maybe that helps. Maybe it doesn’t,” she muttered “I don’t know how I’ll ever tell Trip any of this,” she wailed and began crying anew as her knees gave out.
Scooter scooped her up, taking her full weight into his arms and Athena was there in the span of a half-sob with her arms around them both. “Maybe tell him how Brick died first,” he whispered quietly into Sarah’s tiny ear. “Mention how you could hear him screaming in the distance just how sorry he was as he was dragged down the alley being slowly eaten alive…and how he prayed to God for mercy…and then mention what happened to you.” He raised his voice. “Or do it the other way around. In either order, I promise it’ll soften the blow of losing Brick. I know it does for me.”
Both girls nodded agreement.
“And that man in there loves you so much that, if he handles it the way I think he will, you might have a boyfriend waiting on you hand and foot for a very long time, if you so wish it,” he hugged her in his best fatherly manner, with repeated, gentle ‘there there’ pats on her back.
“Fiancé,” she corrected, smiling at the thought. Trip treating her like a queen for a few months would surely take some more of the hurt away…hopefully. Nothing could change what had happened, but she had already made it three months alone through the emotional realization of wanting and needing Trip Grissom in her life. Now her closest friends knew her worst secret and Brick the Dick Stephens, the most evil man she’d ever met, was gone for good…and she’d had something to do with that. The end of the world was looking brighter already.
“C’mon,” Calvin whispered. “Let’s get the streets clear and get the Wagon inside so Hef can fix it. We need to get your parents out of here as soon as we can before they make everyone choose between them and zombies.”
“Oh my god, Athena,” Sarah snuffled, wiping away her tears and stepping out of the group-embrace. “Your dad is going to drive Trip crazy. You know how much he likes to argue. And your father only makes sense about half the time.” She calmly segued from the horrors of her past to a happier time in the near future and took Athena’s arm in hers and headed for the roof access.
Calvin smiled to himself as he shuffled slowly behind the pair of chatting ladies, trying to rub the pain from his chest through two layers of armor. But he couldn’t stop a deep frown from creeping across his features as he paused to look back into the foggy, fading light. Brick’s screams could be heard in the distance for a very long time…why hadn’t he changed-over as fast as the other victims?
S.O.S
“Saul!” Miriam shouted, dropping her knitting needles and limping to the radio.
“Hello, hello,” a scared sounding older man’s voice repeated from the speaker on the modern black business desk across the room. “Calvin Hobbes? Tripper Grissom? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
“What should we do?” Athena’s mom asked quietly, voice fraught with concern.
“What Calvin said we should do, Miriam,” Saul replied in agitation, his aging body creaking as he slowly rose from the office chair. “Go get Calvin or Tripper…or Athena. Whomever is awake.”
“What if he’s gone by the time I get back?”
“Ah, yes. Good point, Miriam. We should let him know we can hear him. You go and I will talk to the man.” Saul shuffled over, picked up the mic and answered.
“Hello, um, sir. I can hear you. Do not change your radio station.”
“Radio Station…you mean frequency? Never mind. Who is this?”
“My name is Saul Rosenthal.”
“I’m sorry. I have clearly mixed something up. I’m trying to reach a Calvin Hobbes or Tripper Grissom. I must have gotten the wrong frequency.”
“No. I am monitoring this radio station for Calvin. You have the proper…station…frequency…thing”
“Oh, excellent. I’m sorry, I don’t recognize your voice,” the other voice said.
“I do not recognize yours, either, but here we are,” Saul joked.
“Um…yes. My name is doctor Devon MacGreggor. Did they tell you about me?”
“Yes, yes. They told me about the mishugena Doctor of Death.”
“I’m not…look, I don’t want to go through this again. Is Calvin there?”
“My wife has gone to go fetch him or one of the others, so for now you’re stuck with me, Doctor Mengela.”
“Great. And you are?”
“I am still Saul Rosenthal.”
“Ah, you must be Athena’s grandfather,” Doc said, taking a shot at payback.
“I am her father, you schlemiel.”
“Ah, of course,” the doctor replied with an inward smile, despite his circumstances, which were dire. “They were still awaiting your call when I left. I take it the mission to rescue you went well, rabbi?”
“I’m not a rabbi; I’m just a Jew. And yes, it went very well.”
“I’m glad. I like that bunch. You must have done a good job of raising your daughter for her to have found a group of friends like those.”
“Yes, we are very fond of our Calvin. Nice boy.”
Calvin rushed into the office looking almost refreshed, but harried, his generally bright green eyes red and puffy around the edges, skin unusually pale. “I’m here,” he announced.
“He says his name is doctor Devon MacGreggor,” Saul informed him quietly as he handed off the handheld mic to Calvin.
“You don’t have to whisper, Mr. Rosenthal. He can’t hear you if you don’t have the button pressed.”
“Hmm? Oh, right. Of course. However, we Jews are well practiced at whispering and it is always good to stay in practice.”
“I…I’m…not even sure how to respond to that, but thank you for watching the radio, sir,” Calvin gushed gratefully.
“I have told you before, Calvin, my father was Sir. You are almost my son-in-law. You will call me Saul or some version of dad,” the elder man insisted forcefully.
“I gotta be honest, Mr. Rosenthal. I’m probably never going to be comfortable calling you any of that.”
“We will see. We will see. But if you do not, I’ll put a Yiddish curse on you.”
Calvin sighed. “Whatever you say…Saul,” he replied with a tired smile and turned his attention to the radio. Still unaware of the proper greetings and such even though Hephaestus had tried to teach him numerous times before, he asked, “Are you there, Doctor?”
“Calvin?”
“Yes, Doctor. You have some new information for us, or are you just calling to gloat from safety when we’re still surrounded by death and destruction? Or are you testing your radio equipment?”
“None of the above, I’m afraid.”
“Oh? What’s up?”
“I find myself in dire need of your help again.”
“I see. Well the top secret escape vehicle won’t be ready for a few days yet. How can we possibly help NBAD and or the CDC now?”
“I never made it to NBAD.”
Calvin looked up sharply as Trip entered, watching the smile leave his friend’s face as he heard those words. Both men shared a very concerned expression.
“Well, we’ll be leaving here in three or four days. Maybe we can try and swing by wherever you are and pick you up…”
“No. You don’t understand. We never left Kansas City.”
“What?” Calvin and Trip exclaimed together.
The sound of the conversation had been traveling down the hall and echoing throughout the upper floors of the Fortress and others started trickling into the converted conference room with worried expressions. The doctor was the foundation of their hope that this thing could be beaten, a cure found. Word about his failure to reach safety covered the floor faster than a fart could fill a crowded elevator.
“How is that possible?” Calvin asked.
“I’ve been trapped in the Follow Vehicle. It took me a day and a half to figure out how to use this radio and get it tuned to your frequencies.”
“Wait. Explain again how you’re still here?”
“We believed we had found the car with my case. But it was surrounded by Infected. The Captain ordered her soldiers to drive in firing, hoping to scare the…zombies off.”
“They’re not animals,” Tripper snorted to the group, knowing neither the doctor nor captain could hear him.
“But they’re dead,” Athena added into the open mic as Calvin held it up. “And the Dead don’t feel fear. They only want to feed.”
“Well, in her defense most dead don’t get back up and walk around at all,” the doctor quipped. “But you people in Kansas City do it a bit differently, as always,” he noted with a snort.
“Is that an insult or a compliment?” Athena asked.
“I’m afraid we will only know that answer when this is all over,” the doctor mused. He was keeping a fairly high level of humor considering his current circumstances. Mainly he was happy to hear their voices. His worst fear had been that Hephaestus had finished his vehicle early and they had already left.
“So, they just marched right in?” Calvin asked, eyes wide in wonder, somehow not having heard the dialogue between Athena and the doctor.
“The sergeant tried to talk her out of it,” the doctor continued, but quieter now as if trying not to be heard by nearby Infected. “But the captain charged right in, guns blazing and the rest had to follow her.”
“Let me guess, they ran out of ammo?” Calvin asked.
“Yes. They were firing indiscriminately at first. Even though you had explained to them that only head shots work. Many rounds of ammunition were wasted on body shots, Calvin. That is not the captain’s fault. I heard her and the sergeant yelling for them to conserve ammunition and make only head shots. They were only half way through the mass of Infected and were wasting ammunition as if taking target practice. Eventually the others realized their error, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of bullets had already been wasted. Closing ranks and finally taking their time and using proper aim, they pushed the Infected away from their Humvee and made a path towards the fountain—”
“—wait, fountain? What fountain?” Calvin asked.
“That’s where the car is. It’s why they had to jump out. They couldn’t get the vehicles to the crash site, so they had to go on foot the last bit. But the Infected flowed back in and forced them away from their vehicle and the red car. Once the ammunition ran out, it was a slaughter. The last I saw, there were only a few soldiers left, running east and fighting Infected the entire way. They might have made it to a building for shelter, I don’t know. I lost sight of them because I was hiding from Infected myself. Some of these were more energetic than many we have seen. They we
re trying to break into the vehicle to get me, but it has very tough windows.”
“We’ve run into some active ones now as well, Doc.” Calvin felt a twinge of regret that he hadn’t offered the soldiers some armor, but at the time they only had a few sets and he had a responsibility to protect his own people. Besides, the captain hadn’t asked, either, and most likely wouldn’t have accepted because she didn’t understand just how much of a difference the armor made. He was certain that if she still lived, she understood now. “So, this fountain, can you describe it?”
“I think it is round,” the doctor said, but didn’t elucidate.
“That…doesn’t help, Doc,” Calvin muttered into the mic. “You do know that this is the City of Fountains, don’t you?”
“I thought that was Rome?”
“No, it’s…it’s not important. Please try to describe the fountain, Doctor.”
“Ah, yes. Sorry. It is a round fountain with children playing. It stands at the end of a road that splits into three or four other roads, each curving off in different directions.”
“Ah…can you see a car dealership to the West?”
“Yes, if what I think is west is actually west.”
“I think you’re on Burlington still.”
“Yes, I think that’s it. It’s at the end of the road on which Tripper and I lost sight of the Package.”
“Right. That’ll be Burlington,” Calvin said at a nod from Tripper.
“You’re just a few blocks away, Doc. I hate to do this, but we had a tough day out there. We’re all really beat and I’d rather not make another trip in the dark. If we can be there early in the morning, do you think you can stay safe for that long?”
“Yes. I think so. In fact, I know so. Since I seem to have no choice.”
“You always have choices, Doc. If your life is in immediate danger, we can get there. But we haven’t done a night run yet and we’d lose the camera for recon and we’re really very tired.”
