by T. W. Brown
“Mostly a solid plan,” the woman said after Kevin finished. “Only it seems that those zombies don’t much care about population density any more. We had a herd of those things about a month ago that passed just about five miles north of us. If they’d come at us directly, this conversation might not be taking place. Never seen so many at once. Took four days for them to pass from the leading edge until the last of the stragglers.”
“We saw something along those lines just south of Chicago,” Kevin said with an unforced shudder. He glanced over his shoulder at his people and then returned his focus to the woman standing in front of him.
“Listen,” he said after a deep sigh that really only scratched the surface of just how tired he suddenly felt, “we have come a long way. Some of us have been on the run almost since this whole thing started. We don’t want a fight. All we want to do is find someplace that we can secure as best as possible and call home. We do have one person that might like to be admitted as a guest. She is from some small town not too far from Sioux Falls from what I understand. She is along to see if any of her family made it.”
“Well, I can only speak for myself, but your group would be a wonderful addition to our community if you would like to consider that option. Of course there are some things we will have to deal with and some of it would require a show of faith from your people. You have to understand we could not just allow a small army to tromp into our place armed to the teeth like you all seem to be. Plus, we have to insist that you all be screened to make sure that nobody brings the infection inside. But since your gang looks fairly mobile, I imagine that would be a simple formality.”
Kevin grimaced.
“Is there a problem?” the woman asked. Her stance changed just a little, and Kevin spoke fast to try and defuse the tension that had just spiked.
“Whoa! Okay…here is the deal.” Kevin explained the “immune” status of several of his companions without specifying who. He was wary of revealing that information after the whole ugly situation involving The Guardians. “So if that is a problem, like I said before, we don’t want any trouble and we will be fine with moving on to find our own place.”
“Actually…” the woman rolled up her sleeve and displayed a nasty scar on her left forearm. “We have a few of our own. We found out the hard way about the communicable nature of things, but now that we know, we have managed to handle that situation. We even have some…” she paused as if searching for the right words, “…I guess you could call them mixed marriages. Of course we do remind people of some of the same old adages used back pre-zom about abstinence being the only one hundred percent guarantee, but folks have been doing okay. It was kind of funny the first time one of our patrols returned with a few dozen cases of condoms. You would have thought they arrived with bacon.”
That earned a laugh from Kevin. “I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Kevin Dreon from Virginia Beach, Virginia.”
“Tiffany Beihn…Memphis, Tennessee,” the woman said.
“Okay…” Kevin let that word draw out to indicate that it was a bit of a question. He gave a little rolling motion with his hands to encourage her to elaborate.
“Not terribly exciting, I’m afraid,” she said. “I was visiting friends in Seattle, Washington. On the plane trip home, one of the passengers turned. The pilot made an emergency landing in Sioux Falls. By the time the plane touched down, the word was starting to get out as to what was going on. That was when all air travel got grounded. I hooked up with a few other people from the flight and we spent a week in a FEMA center until that got overwhelmed. Our little band decided to make a run for it and we got all the way to Beresford.
“Some of the locals had already started securing the town…even had to fight it out with a military convoy if you can believe that. They tried to roll in and take over, but folks around here are pretty serious when it comes to their guns. Those bumper stickers about taking their guns when you pry them from their cold, dead hands…let’s just say they were not joking.
“A few of the soldiers even deserted and took our side. We didn’t come away with as much military hardware as you guys are packing, but we did get a tank in the deal. It was never actually needed, but I bet it scared off more than one band of would be raiders along the way.”
“So I guess I go to my people and bring them forward. Of course, you can’t expect us to just surrender everything. How about if you allow a couple of us to keep our guns?” He saw a look of concern flash across Tiffany’s face. “We would not stand a chance if it got ugly, and do you really think we would come all this way to commit suicide? And my people keep their blades…again, it would be like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.” He saw a look of confusion replace concern. “You know…when that guy steps out with the big ass sword and Indy pulls his gun and shoots the guy?”
“Oh yeah!” Tiffany exclaimed. “Wow…I hadn’t thought of things like that in a long time.”
“So…are we good? I go get my people and you can set a perimeter around us and escort us in?”
“You have a deal, Mr. Dreon.”
“Just Kevin…really. That whole mister thing really makes me feel old.”
With a handshake, the two parted ways. Kevin returned to his group and shared pretty much everything that had been said in his encounter with Tiffany Beihn. The decision was made that Kevin and Catie keep their weapons. Everybody else removed all firearms and placed them in the cart behind either Kevin’s or Catie’s bicycle. After making sure that everybody knew to be on their best behavior, Kevin led his group to where Tiffany sat on her horse. She had dispersed her group in a large arc.
“Not gonna bother surrounding us in case we wanna make a run for it?” Kevin quipped with a good-natured laugh as he came to a stop a few feet from Tiffany.
“Nope…don’t need to,” Tiffany replied with a nod of her head back in the direction Kevin had come from. He looked back to see another group of at least fifty more riders bring their horses over the last ridge he and the others had topped.
“We have had you guys under watch since just north of Sioux City,” a man said as he pulled his horse up next to Tiffany.
Kevin saw a few of his people begin to look a bit nervous. He saw Bill give a furtive glance at the weapons stacked neatly in the cart behind his bicycle and it was clear that the man was trying to figure out if he could get to the weapons before being gunned down.
“Okay…” Kevin said, making sure that he did so loud enough so that not only his people but the riders nearby from Tiffany’s group could hear as well. “I understand that things are a bit different these days. I also understand that you have to keep the safety and security of your group in the forefront. We have surrendered our weapons as promised, but this new arrival of your people has my people on edge. We can end this now and my group will be on its way to find a place of our own just as I said…or you can get that second group to pull back.”
“No need,” Tiffany called out above a few voices of protest among her own people. She raised one arm up above her head and waved it back and forth.
Kevin turned to see a rider from the second group do likewise. A few moments later, the last of that group disappeared over the ridge. Looking around, he still saw some looks of concern among his crew, but they appeared to have relaxed a little.
Falling in, the procession started their ride north. As they did so, Kevin began to notice a few things that had slipped past him. In the distance and on either side of the road he could see cell towers. However, atop these towers were what might be platforms. He did not want to pull out his binoculars to confirm it, but he now had a good idea how they had been spotted.
They had travelled for about twenty minutes when one of the riders on horseback veered their direction. The individual was decked out almost exactly like Tiffany, so it was difficult to determine gender until the voice called out.
“Catie Rose?” a girl’s voice almost squealed. “Is that really you?”
Cat
ie turned to the person and squinted her eyes. “Bella Reyes?”
“Ohmigawd!” Bella squealed even louder. Kevin already did not care for her voice.
The girl jumped from her horse as Catie ditched her bike. The two met in an embrace and held each other close, both breaking into spontaneous sobs of happiness.
Everybody stopped and watched the reunion. Words flew back and forth as the pair spoke at a pace Kevin almost had trouble keeping up with. In the end, Catie was told that her mother was actually in Beresford along with a few other people that Kevin assumed had to be friends or mutual acquaintances. The sad news was that Catie’s father and grandparents had perished.
Catie seemed to take the news well, and Kevin had a feeling that she really had not expected to discover anybody still alive. The realization that her mother still lived was probably beyond her wildest dreams.
The riders seemed to relax even more with the latest revelation, and a few of them even rode up to the pair, who now remained at each other’s side for the rest of the journey, to say hello. It looked like more than a couple of them knew Catie, or at least knew of her.
About an hour later the outline of a small town appeared on the horizon. Kevin decided it could not hurt to pull out his binoculars and take a look. He was able to make out at least three very wide trenches that he imagined had to circle the town. In addition, there had been an obvious effort to level the terrain for a considerable distance around the area. He saw what, by his estimation, had to be fifty foot high towers erected about a hundred or so yards apart.
He had to correct himself a few times as he continued to ride his bicycle and slip in a few more looks at what they were approaching. He could see large walled enclosures scattered around the area, but he had no idea as to their purpose. The one thing he did notice were the medium-sized streams that flowed into town. He was impressed to see that they had a series of watch towers along their length a good distance from town.
“You people look like you have been busy,” Kevin said as he let his binoculars drop to his chest.
“Amazing how much work a person can get done when they don’t have Facebook to distract them. Now we ‘friend’ each other with a handshake. I think we may be one of the few towns in the country with a larger population now than before the zombies showed up. I think the last census…” Tiffany paused and then smiled, “…probably the last one ever…anyway, it had the town at around two thousand people. We don’t keep the number official, but I think we have almost double that many living here now. It has reached a point where we are actually about to begin construction on some new housing.”
Kevin whistled in appreciation. From what he could see, this place had everything he could hope for as he tried to begin a new life with Aleah. Looking around, he saw mixture of awe and relief on the faces of the others.
“Is this home?” Heather asked as she coasted up beside him on her bicycle. He glanced over and saw tears forming in her eyes.
“Yeah,” Kevin said after reaching over and patting the young woman on the arm. “I think we found a place to stay.”
17
Welcome Home
I sat at the table with the tattered notebook in front of me. It was not a long read, so it had taken just a few hours to finish. I considered reading it again just because I was not entirely certain what to make of it.
Everybody in the house had been thrilled to see me. But there was an undercurrent of anxiety and expectation as each greeted me. The last to shake my hand was the Marine. His name was Paul Gordon.
Paul was right around six feet tall and a solid, muscular two hundred pounds. He kept his head shaved clean (with a knife he wore on his belt that was so sharp it would make a samurai jealous) and had a dark, well-trimmed mustache that was showing flecks of gray. His eyes were a dark brown, and had the intensity of a laser when they focused on you that was only made more intense by the pebbled scarring that covered the right side of his face. There was a nasty scar on that side of his neck as well that made you wonder how a person could survive such an injury, because that scar looked so horrible. Oh…and he had a prosthetic right arm from just below the elbow.
Paul had been part of a select group of soldiers that had been wounded in battle over in the Middle East. He and several others were making stops around the country to share their stories and visit high schools around the country to say that, despite what they had suffered, they did it for a cause they believed in: the fight for freedom.
When the whole zombie thing happened, Paul had been shuttled to a FEMA center. That location was overwhelmed in the first week, and Paul found himself on the run with a handful of his fellow wounded warriors. They immediately sought out a unit and stepped in to offer assistance.
The rest of his story was pretty much like everybody else’s. Some good…some bad. He ended up in Washington State as part of a detachment that was sent to try and hold the small town of Walla Walla. When that fell apart, he ended up on his own for a while. Eventually he stumbled across a military installation. The place had been abandoned, but there was a well-stocked bunker. It had a radio, and that is where he listened for weeks.
He heard and monitored Winters’ group as well as several others, until he eventually lost the use of his generator. After a long and lonely winter, he set out with the hopes that he might join up with what he had assumed were military units trying to help others.
Of course what he found when he finally reached La Grande was something far different than he expected. Apparently he slipped out during all the chaos created when Jon and Jake had tainted the water with their infected blood.
Paul kept low and watched our group come in and take over the compound. At some point, he decided to reach out to the people who had taken over Winters’ compound—that would have been us. That had been while I was in that damned hospital bed trying to recover, so I missed out on meeting Paul and apparently a great deal more in that brief span.
The next bit is where things get dicey. The journal that Jake was keeping continued to talk about his son and how he was always looking for him every time that he went out. Somewhere along the line, he was told that his son was in La Grande. Also, he’d heard all about Winters. That must have meant that he and Jon had been playing them all along. I felt a little better in thinking that Jon had done what he did in order to prevent a greater evil.
Unfortunately, the journal entries stopped shortly after we came down and took control of Winters’ compound. From there, I had to rely on what this absolute stranger was telling me. According to him, Jake gathered information that his son might be held captive inside the Island City compound.
If that was true, it could explain how he’d flipped a switch so suddenly. He’d even used my own argument against me in that last little confrontation that we had, the one I’d originally used when I thought Carol had been taken prisoner and that they had cut off her fingers.
Apparently, Paul had been with Jake and the others on that failed attack against Island City. He’d taken part because they had been told that most of the people inside the Island City compound were being held against their will by some secret council. Hmm…where had I heard that before?
“Some of us still believed in who and what we are,” Paul said with pride. “If folks were being kept prisoner, no Marine with any self-respect could allow that to continue. Jake did what he did because he thought he was serving the greater good…and he thought that his son might be here. He would have walked through a sea of those damn zombies in his skivvies to try and save his family.”
“But why not try to talk with the people first?” I asked as I pushed the tattered journal across the table, pinching the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger and squeezing my eyes shut in hopes that the headache building behind them would vanish.
“I asked Jake to reconsider.” For the first time, I saw a hint of sadness replace the stern military expression that seemed permanently etched on the man’s face. “But he insisted that if the p
eople…” he paused and looked around as if suddenly realizing where he was and then continued, “…the people here were willing to maim and torture an elderly woman, then his son would face much worse.”
“And what made him think that his son was even being kept here?” Dr. Zahn asked from where she had taken up leaning in the entry to this dining room. That was the big question as far as I was concerned.
Once again, Paul’s expression changed. He actually looked uncomfortable. I was not sure I wanted the answer if it was bothering the man this much.
“We captured a two man patrol that had been observing our compound. Jake spotted them and a few of us went out to nab them. Only, when we subdued them, Jake changed his mind about bringing them back for questioning. We took them to an empty house that had a basement, and Jake went to work. The rest of us stayed out, not wanting any part of it. When Jake came up, he was…different. But that is also when he made up his mind about attacking this place.”
I sat back in my chair and let it all sink in. Jake had used torture, and in the end, he had either been deliberately lied to, or he misheard the information. It was entirely possible that he’d gotten ahold of one of the men from the group that Gable and his mom had been with and gotten the man to identify his son. Only, he had gone after the wrong target. Instead of the camp just up the hill a ways, he’d turned his anger on Island City.
I was not that much less confused than I had been before all of this, but at least the mud was a few shades clearer. I now had a possible reason for Jake’s sudden switch in behavior and seemingly rash and certainly ill-advised attack. This was a clear case of how real life never quite works out like it does in the stories. Somewhere along the way, miscommunication reared up and it cost people their lives.
Suddenly, I was exhausted. It felt like everything from the past several weeks…months…all of it had come slamming down on me at once. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a month.
