by T. W. Brown
Kevin felt a wave of relief. His mind had already created the scenario where the undead fetus had clawed its way out…he cursed Zak Snyder and his Dawn of the Dead remake as he allowed himself to breathe. Still, there was something else now trying to rise up in his mind, but he smashed it down. He would not indulge such selfishness.
“Take me to her,” Kevin said with a wavering sigh.
“They won’t let you in to see her yet,” Rose said with a shake of her head. Kevin was about to explode with some angry response, but Rose cut him off. “They want to see you first…the people in charge.”
“Well they can just—” he started, but a voice cut him off.
“Mister Dreon?”
Kevin spun to discover an Asian man standing in the hallway. About ten feet behind him were three others, and everybody was heavily armed like they were heading out to the field. Surely they could not be packing all this firepower because of him.
“Yeah,” Kevin said with a step back.
“If you would come with us,” the man said in a voice that showed no malice or anger. It was simply a request.
Kevin glanced at Rose, who gave him a shrug. A thought came to him and he turned to face the strangers.
“Where is Heather?”
The man looked back at the others who all shrugged or shook their heads. He turned back to Kevin. “I have no idea. If you are referring to the other young lady who arrived with you, the one who is one of the immune, then she is likely in the clinic. We will bring you there after you have been to see Analisa.”
“And you have no idea where she is either?” Kevin turned to Rose. The girl shook her head.
“When we got here, she told me to stay with you until you came to. I followed her until Aleah was taken in to see the doctor, then I came here and have been waiting for you to wake up ever since.”
“About that,” Kevin whispered, “how long was I out?”
“About an hour.”
“Why didn’t anybody try to wake me?”
“When Aleah…” the girl’s voice faded. Kevin understood and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring pat on the arm.
“Okay, let’s go.” Kevin started toward the Asian man and his crew.
He was not surprised when they sort of surrounded him. They moved down the hallway and to a set of doors that opened to the outside. Kevin’s eyes quickly began to scan everything. What he saw was impressive. There were small garden plots everywhere that were already showing signs of growth. In addition, he noticed five trucks parked side by side. They all had various logos that announced their contents: spring water.
He spotted several rain collection devices. These people obviously understood the importance of that commodity. The human body could endure a lot, but deprive it of water and the average life expectancy was reduced to about three days.
On the tops of a few of the buildings he spotted what he had to assume to be solar panels. His question as to whether or not they were actually being used came when his group escorted him inside another large building. Of course the first thing that he noticed was the smell. His eyes tracked to a large, open space that had probably been a student study area. There were rows of open pens as well as several cages.
“Chickens,” Kevin breathed. He saw one area in particular with a series of heat lamps where they were obviously assisting with the incubation process.
They turned down another hallway and Kevin saw that several of the doors had the windows blacked out or covered. They passed just as one opened and a trio of women emerged dressed in scrubs; all with varying degrees of blood smeared on them.
Kevin slowed up. He felt something prod him between the shoulder blades.
“Ease up, Damian,” the Asian man said. He turned to Kevin. “This is our medical wing. We have injured people from the last encounter with The Guardians being tended to right now.”
“You been mixing it up long with these Guardian folks?” Kevin asked, catching just a brief glimpse inside the room that the three women had exited before the door shut with a click. He had seen a lot of beds with bodies in them. The one thing he had not been able to determine was if they were living or…undead.
“For a bit…but it’s a long story and we don’t have time right now. If you’re that interested and hang out a while, I’m sure somebody will gladly spill it to you.”
“How about a name.” Kevin stated as he glanced over his shoulder at the dark skinned man with the police baton in his hand. “I already know Damian here…but what about yours?”
“Ken, Ken Tucker.”
“And what did you do before the world ended?” Kevin asked with what he hoped was a pleasant sounding chuckle in his voice.
Something had his hackles up. He could not place it, and honestly, the thing that kept resonating in his head was that he’d seen something like this in the movies. Everybody seemed pleasant on the outside, but you just knew that there was something dark and cancerous under the surface. But this ain’t the movies, he told himself.
“Piano teacher by day, concert pianist when I could get the booking,” Ken answered wistfully.
“Seriously?”
Kevin gave the man an appraising glance and tried to picture him clean shaven and in a tuxedo, walking out onto a stage with a huge white piano. The vision just refused to come. This man looked like he’d been through a fight with a meat grinder. He had scars on his scars. Plus, he was missing a few fingers.
“We’re here,” Ken announced as they came to a stop in front of a set of double doors. They were opened to reveal an auditorium. “After you.” The man gestured for Kevin to enter. Despite several lanterns, the large room was shrouded in shadows.
Taking a deep breath, Kevin entered and made his way down the center aisle. On the stage was a long table with a dozen or so people seated around it. He could not make out what was being said due to the echoes in the empty cavern of an auditorium, but he knew arguing when he heard it.
At last, they got close enough and he was able to make out a woman speaking.
“And I say that we cease all outside-the-wall activity for at least the next few weeks. The Guardians will have their hands full with that swarm. And we lost contact with that small community just to the northeast of us, so we should consider them to be knocked out.”
“But we are so close to ending this,” a man insisted. “If we can hit them now, I don’t believe that we will have to worry about them any longer!”
Kevin glanced over at Ken. The man gave a grim smile in return. He gestured with an arm for Kevin to lead the way up a small set of steps that would take them to the stage.
“Why is your answer always about attacking?” the woman retorted.
“If you would have done as I suggested six months ago…we would not be dealing with this now.” The man pounded the table for emphasis. “My daughter would still be alive.”
“You won’t blame that on me,” the woman countered.
Somebody at the table cleared their throat to indicate that they had company. There was a sudden and, at least for Kevin, very uncomfortable, silence. Every head turned to regard the new arrival. Kevin saw a mixture of expressions that varied from curiosity to annoyance with a touch of apathy.
“You must be Kevin Dreon,” the woman said as she stood and moved around the table.
“Yeah, and whatever you have to say, make it quick. I want to see Aleah.” A small voice in his head told him to be polite, but he was not in the mood to listen. “And maybe somebody can tell me why I was locked in a closet, as well as where Heather is. Oh…and I want my stuff.”
“Maybe we ought to just toss you over the fence and be rid of you,” the man who’d been arguing with the woman snarled.
“Do what you gotta do,” Kevin shot back. “I didn’t ask to come here.”
“No, your friends called for help when you fainted,” the man retorted with a sarcastic snort. “Otherwise—”
“Otherwise nothing,” Kevin interrupted. “We’ve bee
n doing just fine on our own for quite a while. I’m sure they would have figured something out. Besides, the herd wasn’t heading our way.”
“We will take you to your friend Aleah in just a few minutes,” the woman spoke up, shooting the man a hard look that had him easing back into his chair with a scowl. “But we had a few questions if—”
“I’m not answering a damn thing until you answer some of mine!” Kevin cut the woman off.
“Okay…” She took a deep breath, and Kevin had the feeling that she was not accustomed to being talked to so harshly. He had absolutely noticed the way she was obviously running the conversation between herself and the belligerent man who was now trying to hide an amused smile. “Your one friend, Aleah was it? The pregnant one? She had a miscarriage. That was compounded by some toxic chemicals she inhaled. It caused a violent hemorrhaging, but the last report was that she would recover fully. The other young lady, the one who demonstrates the immunity? Heather? She is simply providing some cultures and blood samples…all of her own free will!” the woman added hurriedly when she saw Kevin’s expression grow darker.
“And as for you, you were placed in that holding room because we did not simply want you wandering our compound. Your weapons were taken because you are a stranger, if you have been out there this past year, then surely you must be aware that there are some…unsavory types wandering the countryside these days. You will be given your equipment if you decide to depart. Otherwise, you might find that it is a bit…” she paused and seemed to be searching for the correct word. “Pedestrian.”
“Although a lot of it looks relatively new and you obviously practice good maintenance and cleaning,” another man piped up.
“Can we save the mutual ass kissing session for later?” the belligerent man huffed.
“My colleague, Mister Cranston, is right. We do have pressing issues that must be dealt with. So, if we have answered your questions sufficiently…” The woman left that statement in the air and raised her eyebrows at Kevin to prompt his response.
“Ask your questions, but I told that member of your scout team everything that seemed important.” Kevin realized that Ken had left. He was basically on his own.
He answered each question about what they had seen back at Eggers Grove. He tried to give as much detail as possible. The one area that he felt bad about was that he had not bothered to recall the names of the people he had spoken to that had been captives of this gang calling themselves The Guardians.
At one point, a man entered the room and whispered something to the woman—who had given her name as Analisa Cimber—and then left. Analisa smiled and relayed that Aleah was stable and sleeping comfortably, that she had been given a very mild sedative and that he would be able to sit at her bedside in order to be there when she awoke a few hours from now.
The questions continued, many beyond his ability to answer. As it drew on, Kevin was able to slip in some more questions of his own. He discovered that there had been a large group of survivors who had actually been doing very well for themselves. Close to four thousand of them had made it to the US Bank building a mile or so away.
It only took them a short time to realize that they needed to find a place they could fortify. A nearby golf course had been the first choice, but an out of control fire at a bordering automotive junk yard influenced their decision to try and secure the Olive-Harvey college campus a little further north.
At some point, the first case of immunity was discovered in a young African-American woman. Three weeks later, her boyfriend turned after suddenly taking ill. The woman had tried to keep the young man away from the general population when he showed the first signs of the black tracers in his eyes which led to five deaths when he rose late one night.
After that, the story got a little jumbled. It was eventually deduced that the zombie virus could be transmitted like any bodily fluid-borne pathogen. What happened next was, in Kevin’s opinion, a prime example of why humanity might not actually deserve to survive this epoch of its history.
It started one morning with the discovery of the young woman hanging from a light post. Around her neck was a placard with the word “Carrier” scrawled in black letters. This caused a heated exchange and a lot of fights, but eventually, things settled down.
A few weeks later, a group of survivors were at the gates begging to be let in. One of the members of the group proved to be immune to the bite as demonstrated by the well healed scar on his right arm. A group of men came down as the newcomers were being ushered inside and demanded that the “carrier” be excluded from those allowed to enter.
The fact that they were all white was probably an unfortunate circumstance considering the African-American ethnicity of the newest person to show immunity. Words were said and the community divided racially within the hour. The assumption was now that ALL African-Americans were probably immune. This also led to the assumption (later confirmed during a confession that was extracted under torture) that this group had been responsible for hanging the first case.
During the fighting, a section of the barricade was breached, and undead came streaming in; having been drawn to all of the commotion taking place within the compound. Once the breach was sealed, over fifty people died and almost a hundred had been bitten. The “African-American immunity theory” was debunked on four fronts as a Hispanic man, White woman and Ken Tucker who was of Korean heritage all proved immune to the bite. Meanwhile, several African-Americans eventually succumbed and turned.
Things seemed to settle down, but feelings had already been damaged. A group of young African-American men struck two days later, kidnapping all of the men who had been at the gate that day to try and deny entrance to the one immune member of the recently arrived group. They obtained written confessions from three of the seven and went so far as to have one of the group, a young man who was no older than fifteen, stand on the roof of one of the campus buildings and shout his confession before he was shoved over the side; the fall was enough for his head to come clean from the body when the rope jerked suddenly after the twenty-plus foot fall.
And once again, conflict erupted within the compound. When it was over, several hundred members of the community escaped amidst threats of returning one day to “wipe out the abominations” as one man put it.
Over the next several weeks, patrols returned, bringing with them anybody they discovered who showed immunity to the bite. No questions were asked about how there often seemed to be only immunes being brought back to the compound from these patrols.
Six weeks later, another attack came.
This would be the first of many by The Guardians as the exiled former members of the group would brand themselves. All winter long, the two groups clashed as the nearby neighborhoods were looted by both factions. Kevin was curious as to why neither side considered abandoning the densely populated areas for someplace more remote.
“Why? Ain’t they got zombies out in the sticks?” Jordan Cranston, the belligerent man who had been arguing with Analisa when Kevin had first arrived, asked with a rude snort of a laugh.
The thing is, Kevin was struck with more force by that question than perhaps the man realized. His entire plan had been to escape to “the sticks” as the man so eloquently put it. He had made the assumption that a densely populated area would be a safer choice. Only, he had to wonder; was anyplace truly safe? They had already witnessed large urban areas with little to no zombie activity. Not only that, but they had seen herds out in the more remote regions. The undead were always on the move in the direction of whatever stimulus had drawn them on errands probably long forgotten. Not for the first time, Kevin wondered if his decision to trek all the way to South Dakota was a fool’s errand.
By the time the stories were finished, Kevin was only certain of one thing. He would not be staying here. It did not matter which side of this feud you felt was more in the right, both sides had gotten it wrong as far as he was concerned. Both sides were using the same petty mindset that
had been so prevalent in the society of the living: destroy anything that is different from yourself.
He had heard one thing that disturbed him more than anything else. These people, these immunes had sent one of their own into the midst of The Guardians. From the descriptions, she was a beautiful woman. Her sole job was to test a theory of transmission. She seduced a few of the men in a two day period.
Since her wound was a rather small scratch on her thigh, it was simple to conceal. She managed to infect five men in two days before slipping out. Sure enough, spies for the immunes reported that all five men turned within seventy-two hours. It only took The Guardians a few hours after the situation had been resolved for them to figure out what had happened.
This news upset him in more ways than one. Of course his most selfish reason was simply that he was now certain he could no longer continue his relationship with Aleah. But the other part that bothered him was that this was basically the post-apocalyptic version of a bio-weapon.
“So…will you be staying? From what we have heard in just the short conversations we have had with Heather, you would be an amazing asset to our society,” Analisa said, glancing up and down the table at the others who, with the exception of Jordan Cranston, were all nodding their agreement.
Kevin wanted to come right out and say that they would absolutely not be staying. However, he was concerned that such a response might lead to something unpleasant. At the moment, he had not seen Aleah and was not exactly sure where Heather might be.
“I need to see my friends…talk things over with them. This is not a dictatorship.” That was the best answer he had at the moment.
“Of course, you must be worried sick,” Analisa said with a nod. There was only a brief pause, though. “A quick question about her if you don’t mind.”
