Dead 09: Spring

by T. W. Brown

  Graham had wanted to keep that little tidbit of information away from the people. I had made it clear that if he insisted on keeping secrets, my group, including Dr. Zahn, would be leaving. He swore that it would do no good to stir up paranoia, but I made it clear that if he wanted to convince me that there was not some dark circle or secret council pulling the strings here, he would tell the people the truth.

  Yep, I was a big ass hypocrite. BP had whisked Gable out a back way and taken him someplace safe that even I was not yet aware of and hidden him from Graham. I had divulged a good part of what I’d learned, saying that the information had been gleaned from one of the dead bodies inside the Walmart. I’d only had seconds to let my people know what I was doing. I’d sent BP and Gable away and rushed out to my group who were standing around in the parking lot. Graham and the group he was with were all the way on the far side of the lot which gave me enough time to give a very brief explanation of my plan. They would have to wait until we got home before I could give more detail.

  “We have evidence to suggest that Jessie Long and Joshua Mazer have been dealing with an outside faction. It is possible that they helped to coordinate this attack. We do not know why, and the pair has not been seen since that failed run where they made an attempt to kill one of the members of their own team.” I glanced around and saw a lot of shocked faces indicating to me that the attempt on my life was not public knowledge. “We will be making some adjustments to the normal operations within the compound as well as any trips outside the fence.”

  I spotted a trio of individuals drifting through the crowd. Since they were the only ones actually standing, they sort of stuck out like a sore thumb. I wasn’t the only person to notice. Without warning, a man leapt to his feet and drew a gun.

  “Just stay back!” the man warned, waving the pistol wildly. He looked to be in his early fifties and had seriously thinning hair which was only more exaggerated by the fact that he was blond enough to be on the Norwegian Ski Team. People all around him scurried back, trying to get out of the line of fire.

  “Just settle down, Mr. Svenson,” one of the individuals who had been approaching him warned.

  Mr. Svenson? I thought. Hmm, maybe he was on the ski team.

  Her skin was darker than Barry’s had been. She was short, but looked like she would not back down if challenged. She had no weapon drawn, but the other two who were out wide and to the sides of Mr. Svenson each had pistols in hand and aimed at the guy.

  “Stop where you are, Tish!” Mr. Svenson warned. He leveled the gun at her.

  Tish stopped, putting her hands up. “You gonna shoot me, Mr. Svenson?” she asked.

  “That’s the watch captain that took me off the schedule,” Sunshine whispered.

  Last night, I recalled Graham having been visibly bothered when he learned that Sunshine had been taken off the watch. Of course, so much had happened that I had not really given it too much thought.

  “You are all being led like lambs to the slaughter!” Mr. Svenson yelled. He was not facing the right direction to see the two people moving slowly but steadily up behind him. “The wolves will come, and you will have nobody to protect you when they arrive.”

  “We are not the ones who helped stage an invasion where many of our citizens were killed!” Graham shot back. I could tell he was now trying to help keep the man distracted.

  “How many people have you sent out and to their deaths, Graham?” Mr. Svenson challenged. “Yet, you stay safe behind the walls. As it has always been, the politicians send others out to die and do their bidding while they stay protected. My son went on one of your missions…and where is he now? Out there somewhere as one of those…those…things!” His voice had cracked and it was obvious that he was beginning to cry.

  “Your son died a hero!” Graham said calmly. “As have many others who have sacrificed so that we could secure this place and build a home.”

  “While YOU remain safe, taking none of the risk but ensuring a share of the reward!” Mr. Svenson switched his aim from the lady he had identified as Tish and now had Graham in his sights.

  He never saw the two men tackle him. There was a scuffle and the muffled sound of a weapon being fired. The reactions of those around the skirmish were hands over mouths and some turning their heads away.

  One of the men that jumped Mr. Svenson was signaling for help and it wasn’t until the second man rose from the ground that I knew they were untouched, but Mr. Svenson had been injured. I had not even noticed when Dr. Zahn separated from our group and rushed to the people starting to cluster around the downed body of Mr. Svenson. I was on my feet as were the rest of my people. I saw fear in Melissa’s eyes as she clutched her baby to herself and tried to hunch over it like a protective shield. To my surprise, or maybe not, Thalia was interested in what was going on around us, but she did not seem the least bit frightened.

  People were starting to get agitated and a few were even yelling and pointing angry fingers at Graham. One man suddenly jumped up and rushed at the men who were now standing over the downed body and allowing Dr. Zahn to do whatever it was she was doing with them acting as a buffer.

  “Everybody please settle down!” Graham was urging. If he didn’t gain control in a hurry, he would have a riot on his hands.

  Shouts were coming from every direction. People were pushing, shoving, and screaming each other down. I began to herd my group towards Dr. Zahn. Initially I had wanted to exit the scene, but there was no chance I would leave the doc behind to fend for herself. Not that she couldn’t, but I did not want us separated if this place went ballistic.

  “Everybody please remain calm!” Graham repeated. I saw a few people starting to wade into the mob and pull people apart. They did not seem to be taking sides; it looked as if they were merely trying to stop harsh words from turning into hard blows.

  By the time we reached the knot of people around the downed body of Mr. Svenson and the doc, it was actually beginning to mellow out. Somebody reached out to stop me, and I smacked the hand away. It was the woman, Tish.

  “Stay back, we have a doctor doing all she can,” Tish warned. She did not seem the least bit fazed by my having slapped her hand down.

  “Yeah,” I said, meeting her harsh stare. “That is Dr. Zahn, and she is with me.”

  “Then you can stay, but you will remain back and out of the way so she can do all that she can for Mr. Svenson.” I was just a little surprised to hear the degree of concern in her voice.

  “Fine.” I made it seem like it was no big deal.

  We all stood by as Dr. Zahn did all that she could for the man. It turned out to be a wasted effort. Eventually, Dr. Zahn moved back and pronounced Mr. Svenson dead. It was Tish who stepped forward; I had not seen her draw the large metal spike, but she plunged it into the head of the corpse to ensure that he would be staying dead.

  “Okay, people, there is nothing to see here,” Tish announced as she and the other two men that had been part of the attempt to detain Mr. Svenson began to try and usher the gathered ring of gawkers back and away.

  I turned to see Graham and a handful of others, including that gal Laura who I’d met the first time I woke up in this place, along with Carol Wills, in some sort of conference. It did not look like everybody was seeing eye-to-eye if the scowls and red faces were any indication.

  As the crowd simmered down and returned all of their attention on Graham, he shooed the others away and made a nervous gesture of wiping his hands on his pants like he wanted to clean them off. Taking a deep breath, he looked out at all of us.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” He paused until somebody yelled for him to just get on with it. “Yes, well it seems that there is growing support among many of you to send a large group of our own people out to try and secure this town once and for all.

  “We have had this come up before, but each time, calmer heads have prevailed. So, to do this the only way possible and ensure the desires of the majority are being served, I will ask for a
show of hands.” He glanced over his shoulder and I saw Carol give him a rolling gesture with one hand, indicating for him to get on with it. “All in favor of assembling a force and moving out into the city and eventually the surrounding area, please show your support by raising your hand.”

  Since we were the new kids in town, neither I nor any member of my group raised a hand. However, it was not necessary for him to count or call for those opposed. All around me, hands shot into the air, many adding a shout to their vote.

  It looks like we are going to war, I thought.

  ***

  “I, for one, am glad that it was a voluntary choice,” Dr. Zahn said from the couch.

  Our group had filtered out of the huge parking lot with everybody else once the meeting had ended, but I had asked one question in all of the chaos that followed the landslide vote for the residents of this compound to mobilize an offensive.

  “Why are we wasting resources on raising an army to go out and kill people instead of securing the stuff from that wind farm place like seemed to be the plan when I first arrived?”

  “I would think you of all people should understand that, Billy,” Carol had said as she stepped forward and all but elbowed Graham out of the way. “It does us no good to put infrastructure in place for somebody else to come along and take from us. If we do not secure our borders, then we will be swatting at flies for the foreseeable future.”

  “Yeah, because it will be a cold day in hell before I go out to wage war on another group of survivors,” I said before we departed.

  We’d returned home to discover a large pallet in the living room. It had several bags of rice and beans as well as an odd assortment of canned good. Some had no labels, and we’d opened one to discover green beans, but another had fruit cocktail. Apparently the cans with no labels were just a luck-of-the-draw type thing.

  “Of course you will not be going,” the doc said, like I was an idiot for even speaking. “You have a much more important job.”

  “Oh?” I asked, suddenly having trouble generating enough saliva to finish swallowing my food.

  “You will go with BP and a few others to wherever Gable’s people were camped.”

  On the walk back to the house, I had relayed to Dr. Zahn as much as I could remember of what Gable had said to me. We had walked in the center of our little group and there had been nobody besides my own people even remotely close enough to overhear, so I’d felt like filling her and the others in on the whole story.

  Dr. Zahn never interrupted. She listened intently, and I was hoping that she might shed some light on the situation. Maybe she could clear things up enough to have them make sense to my seemingly simple mind. When I finished, I was more than a little surprised that not only did the doctor not ask me anything, but neither did anybody else.

  “And why would I do that?” I asked after I had enough saliva to swallow and then speak.

  “If for no other reason, then to see if it is possible to retrieve the young man’s mother,” Dr. Zahn said.

  I mentally slapped my forehead. That thought had never even peeked its head up in my mind. The next hour was spent deciding who would join BP, Gable, and me, on this little quest. With all of the new arrivals now that we had Grady’s people with us, we had no shortage of people available. The problem that I was having was that I wanted people that I knew and trusted.

  Grady’s people all seemed eager to help, but I did not know them. For me, that was a problem. We were discussing the issue when there was a knock at the door. Everybody went silent like we’d just been caught with our hands in the cookie jar.

  Getting up from my chair, I opened the door. I was more than a little surprised to discover Tish from the whole riot situation standing on my porch with Graham.

  “Can we come in?” Graham asked.

  I couldn’t very well just say no. I stepped aside and ushered the two in. They emerged from the hall into the living room and Graham almost fell over his feet from stopping so fast.

  “Who are all these…” the sentence trailed off and he turned to me with a curious and confused expression.

  “Let me introduce you to Grady Jones. He is an engineer and will be a great asset if you still plan on bringing the wind turbines here and getting your power grid up and online,” Dr. Zahn said by way of greeting our new arrivals. “These people are a mix of military and civilians. Some are co-workers of Grady’s, two are fully trained RNs, and at least a dozen members of his security team are from a Ranger detachment from Washington State.”

  Wow, that was way more than I’d been told. I knew we had some soldiers, but the whole Ranger thing had been a secret up until this point. I glanced at Dr. Zahn who simply maintained her tight-lipped, non-expressive face.

  People started shaking hands, and a lot of names were being given, but I took that opportunity to step back and try to get a read on a few individuals. One man in particular stood out. He was doing almost the same thing that I was doing. He had slipped out of the throng and was observing everything going on around him just like me.

  “Are you leaving again, Billy?” a tiny voice said from beside me.

  I gave my head a little shake to clear it and redirect my attention on the person who had spoken. That was when I realized that the man was looking right at me! I had probably been staring. I glanced down to see Thalia looking up with her large, dark eyes.

  “Just for a little while,” I said as I knelt down to be at eye level with her.

  “How come you always have to leave?” she asked. “When you leave…everybody is always arguing.”

  That was news to me. “About what?” I asked, finding it more than a little odd that I was getting my intel from a seven- or eight-year-old child.

  “Everything,” the little girl huffed with a shrug of her shoulders. “It is like they are all mad at each other.”

  I could only assume that it was the stress everybody felt. I know that I was never as grouchy, and certainly not as prone to violence, as I had been in the past several weeks and months.

  “Well I will try not to be gone for long,” I assured Thalia.

  She nodded and gave me a hug. I watched her trudge up the stairs and was sad for her. She would never know a normal life. Childhood had been taken from her and, no matter what happened, she would never get it back. There would not be any new Disney characters for her to love and want on her bedspread. There would be no trips to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.

  I realized, not for the first time, how many things that I had taken for granted in my relatively short life. It was just now starting to feel like spring. That had meant football camp and the start of baseball season. I would never walk the aisle and graduate high school.

  “Billy!” a voice hissed in my ear, snapping me back to the present.

  “What?” I glanced to see Katrina standing beside me.

  “I just wanted to say that I am sorry.”

  I actually scratched my head. “For what?”

  “For getting so pissed at you and in your face when you were dealing with that prisoner. I actually thought that you were going to do something terrible.”

  I briefly considered admitting that I absolutely would have if it came down to it, but I decided there was no need. Maybe she needed to feel that I was really a good guy. Who was I to take that away from her? I now knew that she had boundaries that she was not ready to cross. And while I did not look forward to it, I knew with certainty that I would do what I needed to ensure the survival of those closest to me. The old rules and morality simply did not apply any longer. If you were going to survive in this new world, you had to be willing to commit acts that were unthinkable before.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, throwing an arm around her and giving a gentle squeeze. I felt her sort of melt into my side and give a deep sigh.

  I looked around the room, my eyes only pausing briefly on the man who was still detached from the group. I gave him a nod and he returned it. I was not entirely sure who I wo
uld be asking to join me on this little mission, but I knew that I wanted this guy. He sort of reminded me of Jon. I missed Jon.

  “Okay, everybody listen up,” I called out, easing myself away from Katrina. “Graham, did you come here for a reason?”

  “Actually…” the man began to speak, but Tish took over after he seemed to struggle.

  “Carol Wills sent us,” Tish said.

  “And?” They were running out of time if they counted on my patience. I was sick of games, sick of petty crap that had no point.

  “She wants you to lead one of the units that will be going out into town to start bringing these other factions in line. She said that she has seen you in the field, and you have more of a head on your shoulders than men twice your age.”

  I was flattered. Seriously, that was a pretty big compliment from the lady I called Granny Rambo. However, I had other things in mind.

  “No!” a tiny voice shrieked. Every head turned to find Thalia standing on the landing of the stairs that led to the second floor. “You can’t have Billy. He is the only one we have left. If he is gone, then there won’t be any more men in our house except for strangers.” The little girl bounded down the stairs and wrapped her arms around my right leg, holding on with a ferocity that you would not think possible from somebody so tiny.

  “Tell her I’m busy,” I said, reaching down and picking up the little girl. Her outburst seemed a bit odd, but I would not ever be one to admit that I could understand the mind of a little girl. Of course I didn’t understand the older versions either, but that was another issue entirely.

  “She can make it worth your while.” Tish stepped forward. “If you agree to do this, she will give you and your people whatever you want. You can have your choices of where to live.” She let her eyes roam over the group, and I was pretty sure she was not expecting so many people. However, she was just the messenger. After only a very brief pause, she continued. “You will have a person from your group and of your choosing on the council.”