by T. W. Brown
Every one of the watch towers had a set of brass tubes and a piece of metal to bang them with. The towers were close enough that once one sounded the alarm, the others would take it up. Juan turned and looked skyward. Wherever the alarm originated, a signal flare would be fired so that the community knew where the threat was located.
Sure enough, a sputtering flare was drifting down, just to the left and a little ways behind it, a small column of black smoke was rolling skyward. It was the direction of where the bridge had once existed.
***
Glenn slipped along the side of the house. The grass and weeds crunched underfoot. He was pretty sure that this was not a place where people were ever supposed to settle and call home. The water was next to non-existent and the only thing that really flourished, as far as he could tell, were the cacti.
A single zombie stood in the middle of the street just ahead. It actually looked confused; as if it wanted to go somewhere but simply could not decide which direction to walk. It would turn one direction and then the other. He was seeing this a lot from the singles out and about. It only seemed to happen after midday when the temperature skyrocketed.
Shaking his head of the distracting thought, he crouched down and eased around, using the car still in the driveway and the closed garage door as his alley to slip past and into the yard of this house. It was bordered by a four-foot brick fence that had a wall of thick, brown, dead brush which would allow him to creep unseen to the next yard.
That yard was his goal, and now that he was so close, he began to worry. Once he got there, things were going to escalate fast and get exponentially dangerous when the time was right. Cynthia would start things into motion as soon as she was prepared once he gave her the signal that he was ready.
As fast as he could, Glenn scurried along the front bumper of the car and actually dove into the yard, coming up to his knees after a nice tuck-and-roll. Duck walking to the fence, he peered over and scanned the area through the dead foliage.
To the left, the road was almost entirely clear; empty of undead activity. However, to the right, about two blocks up, sat the high school. For whatever reason, the street was packed with undead. From his vantage point, it looked as if the zombies had the entire school surrounded. Why would anybody want their location to be entirely ringed with those things?
His eyes drifted along until he spied what he was looking for. A long piece of red cloth was fluttering in the breeze of the late afternoon. It was tied to a small sapling tree that had died like so much of the area vegetation. In this desert, once the owners of the home where this tree sat on one side of the entrance to the driveway had stopped being able to water it, it had withered and died like the rest of the world.
Of course that breeze felt like it was coming off of a blast furnace. Glenn cursed, and not for the first time, the amount of protective gear that they had to wear as he felt sweat rolling down from his neck and pooling in the small of his back.
Reaching into his pocket, he produced a similar strand of cloth and reached through the dead, dried up bush. Tying it to a branch and flicking it with his fingers so it was hanging out where it could be seen from the street, Glenn took a deep breath and waited for the next part of the plan.
He looked up at the sky and tried to guess what time it might be. It was well after the hour of noon judging by the sun. The flaming orb was about a third of the way down to the western horizon. That meant that he had a while. Cynthia had made it clear that, while she was prepared to die if it came to that, she was not in any hurry to do so.
“We do this close to dusk. That will give us shadows to hide in. Unless these people are using infrared or something high tech, then we should be fine,” she had explained.
Sitting down against the brick wall, Glenn waited. Occasionally he could hear the moan or cry of a zombie. The sounds still gave him chills. He wished that they could just find someplace that the zombies weren’t and make a home of some sort.
He had worked hard all his life to reach a point where he could provide an exceptional life for his wife. They had discussed children, but Cynthia had loved her job as a vet. Her love for animals was something that he had always known about…or so he had thought; what he had not realized was to what depths it existed. Some people were born to be caretakers, and that described his Cynthia and how she felt about her job.
She did not want to give it up. Any time that they discussed children, she shut him down the moment that he mentioned hiring a nanny.
“What is the point of bringing a child into this world if you are not going to see to taking care of that child? That is even more irresponsible than some of these idiots that get a dog, leave it locked up in the house for ten or twelve hours a day, and then are upset that the animal can’t hold in their bodily urges. I’d love to lock those people in a room for ten hours and then slap their faces when they wet themselves. See how they like it.” That was almost her exact statement, word for word.
When it came to stories on the news of people hurting animals, it was not uncommon for Cynthia to actually shed a tear. If there was a fire, flood, or disaster, she would always voice out loud her concern for the pets in the area. If asked if she had the same concern for the people, she would shrug and say, “What did they expect would happen? They willingly moved into a place called “Tornado Alley” (or some other similar qualifier such as a flood plain, over-developed hillside, just to name a few). The animals never asked to live there.”
What Glenn came to suspect was that Cynthia had a much softer spot in her heart for animals than she did for people. It was not that she did not love children, she just chose not to have any of her own.
He had thought that perhaps she would soften her stance once Mel’s baby came. If anything, it made her more determined to hold that position against having a child herself. So, Baby Xander was the object of his aunt’s love and affection, and seemed to provide all that she needed to fulfill that part of her life. On more than one occasion, as they would be driving home from visiting her brother, his wife, and their new son, Cynthia would comment, “Children are nice in short doses.” She would laugh it off like she might be making a joke, but Glenn had begun to suspect otherwise.
However, when all of this terrible business with the dead returning erupted, he had been grateful that they had not had a child of their own. He had even thought, only on occasion, and usually only when the child was fussy, that it would not be a terrible idea if the two couples parted. He had even concocted a plausible excuse.
If something were to go wrong…having the brother and sister apart would improve the chance that at least one of them survived. Of course he knew that was a flimsy reason at best and not once had he ever suggested such a thing.
Of course, now here he sat in some small Utah town, his brother-in-law and sister-in-law both dead; and he was about to try and assault a complex with an unknown number of people inside to rescue his toddler-aged nephew that may or may not be inside. To add to his unlikely scenario, he was going to rely on zombies to help him.
Glancing up, he saw that the sun had slipped farther down the western horizon. He searched and quickly spied Cynthia’s signal. There were now two red pieces of cloth fluttering in the breeze. That was the signal. Glenn tied off his own piece as a silent acknowledgement.
He crouched and gathered his courage. They had discussed this, and he had insisted very strongly that he be the one to distract the undead. As he saw it, he was choosing between putting his head in the mouth of either a lion or a tiger. One choice was just as lethal as the other. However, the task that he had chosen involved a lot of potential for running. While her condition was greatly improved, he had noticed the slight limp when Cynthia walked. The bullet wound in her leg was not entirely healed There was one other factor that helped him make up his mind. He was convinced that Cynthia was not only capable, but somehow eager, to take the lives of these people. Whether it was for her brother or the baby, he did not know.
M
oving to the end of the brick wall, he peeked over one more time to see that there was nothing in his immediate proximity. The area was clear and he rose to stand, his body feeling the tightness from having been immobile for so long. Stepping out to the middle of the road, Glenn pulled the police baton free from his belt. He produced an empty coffee can aloft that they had found back in the house where they had left that man tied up to most likely die.
“Come and get it!” Glenn hollered as he began to rattle the baton around the inside of the large can.
***
Ronni sat beside the bed as she had almost every day since he had been brought home. Her father looked terrible. He was almost gray and sweat kept beading up on his face. She had a towel handy and kept wiping him down with it after dipping it in cool water.
Sometimes, when nobody else was looking, she would peel his eyelids open. She kept expecting to see those ugly black squiggles. She knew he had been bitten, the time for him to turn had long passed; still, she was taking nothing for granted.
“How is he?” Scott poked his head in the door. He had come around six or seven times just today.
“Nothing has changed,” Ronni said with a hitch in her voice as she kept down the urge to cry.
“Look, your dad is gonna be okay.” The man stepped into the room. He crossed and uncrossed his arms in front of his chest a few times and finally settled on leaning against the wall. “He is a tough mother. Just hang in there.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he finally just gave a little nod and exited.
Tough has nothing to do with it, Ronni thought. She pulled the blanket covering him aside so that she could get a look at his leg. It took all she had not to gag and vomit at the smell. The lower leg was still swollen beyond what had to be twice its normal size to the point that she could not tell where his thigh met the knee and became the calf. The skin looked like it would split if somebody so much as touched it.
One of the medical people had put some sort of thing in his leg so that they could just screw on a syringe and use it to withdraw fluid. Also, they had the actual wound coated with this thick gel.
She let the blanket drop and her dad moaned in his sleep. The sound made her wince and she was quickly on her feet, towel in hand to dab at his forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Dad.” She had probably repeated that apology a hundred times, and she did not care if she said it a hundred more. She felt like this was all her fault.
She glanced down at her own bandaged arms and then back at her dad who just looked so frail. This was not the guy who had killed the people who had tried to attack her back in Yosemite. This man looked like he could not fight his way out of a wet paper bag.
“Any change?” a voice said from the door.
Ronni turned to discover the other person who seemed to come by every twenty minutes to check on her dad. Dustin Miller was a big man and took up most of the doorframe.
“Not yet, Mr. Miller,” Ronni answered. She was about to turn back to her dad when the man pulled off his ball cap and stepped into the room. Obviously he had more to say. He looked upset, and Ronni’s first worry was that they were going to make her and her dad leave.
“Look…” the big man was twisting his baseball cap in his hands like he was trying to strangle it. “I just want you to know that I am sorry.”
Here it comes, Ronni thought angrily. She felt her temper surge and was getting ready to rip into Mr. Miller when he continued.
“Your dad is a hero…you too for that matter. You were one of the first to volunteer to go looking for those missing children. They told us how you kept drawing the zombies away by cutting yourself and getting their attention. You mind telling me what made you think of such a thing?”
“We were running…” Ronni’s mind drifted back to that awful scene. “One of the kids, I think it was Devon, he had tripped and cut his arm really bad. From that moment, it was like the zombies forgot that the rest of us were even there. They wanted Devon. The only thing I could think of that was any different was that he was bleeding pretty bad.”
“Yeah, well you saved some lives, little missy.”
Ronni felt her heart flutter. She might have saved some of those kids, but certainly not all. She remembered well the screams—
“And your dad…he not only charged that mob that had you guys trapped in that house, but he sent the rest of us away and stayed behind to save you. I thought you were as good as dead, I think he did too,” Dustin explained. “But I’ll be damned if he didn’t send us on our way and stay with you. He said that he wanted to stop the bleeding, but with all the blood that you had lost…I am pretty sure that he did not expect you to make it. He wasn’t going to leave you behind to become one of those things.”
Ronni listened to everything that Dustin said. Here was yet another reason that her dad had to pull through. Even as crappy as she had been treating him, he had not given up on her. She was pretty sure that she had been trying to see if she could drive him off. If she did, then she would be correct; he hadn’t really cared. Yet at every turn, he was there for her. And when it meant that he was probably going to die, he had apparently not even given it a thought.
“Thanks, Mr. Miller,” Ronni finally said when a lengthy silence had started to feel just a bit uncomfortable.
“I think you can call me Dustin. You ain’t one of the little ones. Hell…you’re practically a grown woman.”
She sure didn’t feel like it at the moment. All she wanted right now was for her dad to wake up, hug her, and tell her that everything was going to be alright.
“You send for me if there is any change,” Dustin Miller said, and then exited.
Ronni scooted her seat closer to the bed and laid her head on his chest. She liked this because she could hear and feel his steady heartbeat. As long as that steady rhythm pulsed, she knew he was still with her.
Every so often a nurse or some member of the community would come in to check up on her dad. It made her feel good, like these folks actually cared one way or the other what happened.
She had dozed off when a hand touched her lightly on the shoulder. Ronni opened her eyes and was surprised to see a woman standing there. The woman looked like she had probably been pretty before. Now she just looked tired. Dark circles made large smudges under each eye and her brow was crinkled from her frowning expression. Her hair was almost blond, but it was just close enough to brown to seem kind of dirty.
“You named Ronni?” the woman asked with a bit of a slur to her voice that almost sounded like she was drunk.
For some reason, Ronni was almost scared of this woman. There just seemed something…off. Still, she did not see the problem with answering a simple question.
“Yeah.”
“You were one of the ones that went out looking for those missing children.”
“Yeah.” Again, Ronni saw no harm in answering a question that she was sure most people—this woman included—knew the answer.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” the woman whispered. “My little girl…Kaja? She didn’t make it back. Dustin said he knew for certain that she was dead. I just wanted you to know that I am grateful. And let your daddy know that I said so, too. I know that he went out after you, but he made sure that the rest of them children come back okay.” The woman turned and headed for the door.
“I will…and…” Ronni paused when the woman turned to face her. She could see so much pain in this woman’s eyes. It actually hurt her heart. “I’m sorry about your daughter.” What bothered Ronni was that she didn’t actually know which one of the children that didn’t make it was Kaja.
The woman offered a very weak smile and then left. Ronni turned back to her dad and could not help but start to cry again. She would have been dead…should have been dead. Only, even though she had been bitten, she was fine. She had a bit of a headache that came and went, but she felt no need to go and eat somebody.
There was a sound out in the hallway; it was like somebody trying
not to yelp. At that exact same moment, Ronni’s dad’s eyelids fluttered and then opened!
***
“Can somebody please tell me what in the blazes is going on?” George grumbled.
“You been selected as a stud,” Danny hooted from the tower. He was wiping tears from his eyes as he looked down on the scene below.
“He’s a happy sort,” one of the females stepped forward and pointed up. “I’ll have that one. I like a good laugh.”
The woman was just a shade over five feet tall with skin the color of hot chocolate. Her hair was in coiled braids and she was so top heavy that Jody was amazed that the woman did not fall flat on her face. She smiled and it made her face all the more beautiful.
Now it was George’s turn to chortle. He glanced up at Danny and gave a salacious wink. Danny had gone suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet. Jody was worried for a moment.
He had known Danny for quite a while. Still, some guys had “issues” when it came to mixing races. Was Danny one of those?
“You just won the lottery, sweetcakes!” Danny hooted as he slung his leg over the rail, gripped both sides of the ladder and basically did a fireman’s pole slide to the ground. He took a step forward and puckered his lips only to have the woman’s hand mash firmly, if not a bit roughly, into his face.
“I don’t know what you were thinkin’ there, Carrot Top,” the woman said firmly. “And maybe you wasn’t listening when Margarita was talkin’, but this ain’t no marriage or anything like that. You got a job…put a baby in me. Once the baby is born, I go home…you stay here. Understand me, Romeo?”
Danny scrunched up his face for a minute and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked around and then his gaze returned to the woman.
