by Diane Butler
“We need to block off all the various paths leading out into the park and centralize here. We have all these amusement rides and can use the metal instead of wood. In fact we can take the cars off the rides and stack them to build a barrier,” Lucky expanded.
They exchanged ideas for another twenty minutes when suddenly Roxanne grabbed his arm. “Wait! Did Ed intend to start the equipment now? At night?” They immediately received the answer when the sky suddenly lit up when Ed turned on the Ferris wheel. The lights flashed several times followed by a grinding sound and then the wheel slowly started to turn. Both of them made a mad dash into the night, yelling “Turn it off Ed. Turn it off!”
Cami, Gene and Morgan had taken the first night shift and were in a circle surrounding the camp when Cami noticed the glow in the far distance. She walked over to where Gene and Morgan had already gathered and asked “What the Hell? Those lights are moving. Do you see that?” she turned to look at Gene.
“Looks like Dollywood is already occupied” he said, crossing his arms.
“And occupied by damn fools” growled Morgan.
While Lucky and Ed were busy dismantling the park rides Roxanne decided to move her get-away car to the outside of the fence-line. She had not told either of the men about her backup plan and especially did not trust Ed. She had seen how he freaks out when in a state of panic. If he knew the location of her car it would be the first thing he’d go for and he would leave her, Lucky and everything else behind. Eventually Ed would have another car ready for backup so there was no reason to disclose to either of the men her little secret.
She slowed her step as she approached the car and came to a stop as she spotted three zombies outside the fence. They had seen her, pressing their body against the fence with their arms extended through the links. It had been so long since she had seen a zombie that she was momentarily stunned. They must have been close last night when Ed started the Ferris wheel or they wouldn’t be at the fence already. She took the steel bar that Ed had pounded down into a point, went to the fence and was able to kill two of the zombies by puncturing their skulls through the chain links. But the third zombie she could not get to because of bushes on her side of the fence. She decided that he was not an immediate danger and went about her business of taking the tarp off the car, starting it and getting back out again to unlock the gates which would open outward. Getting back into the car she used the vehicle to do the work for her, bumping the front fender against the gate and letting it open a little, then bumping the gates again until finally the car could get through. The third zombie lunged at the car but Roxanne planned on it following her away from the park gate.
She maneuvered the car around the saplings until she reached a bend in the road where she could park it without it being seen from inside the fence. She was met by two more zombies on the road. Hell, Ed must have brought in every zombie that was on the hillside last night. She pulled the car off the road into a bed of pine needles and got out with her steel pole. The two Ze’s were too close together to fight both so she separated them by side-kicking one causing it to fall. She had learned that her legs were her strongest asset so she always started with a kick to the legs or stomach of a zombie to slow them or knock them down first. Then finish them off with a blow to the head with her pickaxe.
The second zombie lunged at her but as she lashed out to kick him he stumbled and fell at her feet. She lost her balance since her kick did not meet contact with the target and almost fell on top of him. The zombie had grabbed her other leg when he fell and was attempting to pull her leg toward him. The first zombie was already up and coming toward her when Mutt suddenly appeared and began barking to draw the zombie away from Roxanne. She kicked at the downed zombie until he lost his grip on her pants leg then quickly smashed his head with the pickaxe. Mutt had drawn the other zombie away and it now had its back to Roxanne. She got on her feet and in a moment of anger which she hadn’t felt since she wanted to kill Ed Roxanne used the axe to bury it in the zombie’s ear. When it fell she went down on her knees and used her knife to stab it over and over again.
Roxanne was still on her knees, breathless with the kill of the zombie. She used her forearm to wipe the sweat off her face and pushed her hair back. Mutt came up to her and nudged her elbow, whining, trying to lick her face. “Good boy, good boy. Where did you come from?” She looked up to see Lucky standing at a distance in the middle of the road. Her heart dropped. Oh shit, how could she explain this? She got up and walked over to the car and waited for him to close the distance. He was silent. She quickly checked her back pocket and realized that the axe was still embedded in the zombie’s ear. The steel bar was where she had dropped it but she still had her knife. His silence was scaring her but when he was close enough she saw that he was fighting several emotions. His eyes showed anger, confusion, distrust and concern. But worse of all there was the look of hurt in his eyes. He saw the knife in her hand and stopped six feet from her, still silently waiting for Roxanne to speak first.
Why was her heart beating so fast? Was it because she had recently killed her first human while on the road with Mutt and it had left a deeper mark on her than the entire ZA of killing Ze’s. Lucky was still a stranger to her and she knew that he would be too strong for her if it was his intent to kill first. His high number of human kills had never been explained and in Roxanne’s eyes she was still an amateur.
Mutt stood to the side, looking from one to the other then approached Roxanne and tapped her leg as if to awaken her from a dream and bring her back to reality. “I……I couldn’t let Ed know” she whispered. “If anything happened he’d take it and abandon us. Both of us.” She sensed that Lucky was trying to get inside her mind and read the truth there. Then he took a step forward and reached out for her but quickly dropped his arms and stepped back again when Mutt started to growl. “Call off your dog,” he calmly asked, or ordered, she couldn’t tell which but decided to take her chances. “Sit Mutt.”
Lucky stepped forward to put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her into his arms. Roxanne froze from the human contact, and a loving gesture of human contact at that. She did not put her arms around him in return but she did briefly put her cheek against his shoulder. “Remind me to never piss you off,” Lucky said. She touched his arm and stepped out of his embrace.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Mutt. He wouldn’t leave me alone, kept pulling at my clothes and growling. When I didn’t see you around I became suspicious. He led me to the back gate. Never been back here before,” he said looking around. Roxanne went over and retrieved her axe from the zombie’s ear and heard Lucky open the car door. “Looks like you have it fully stocked.” He got out the tarp and began covering the car while she picked up her steel bar. But then Mutt started whining and they could see him backing up. They turned to see another zombie approaching from up the road and Lucky asked, “You up for this?”
She shook her head, “No, I’ve had my fill of Ze’s today. Ed must have called them out from miles around” she sighed. They both turned and began to trot back toward the compound together.
CHAPTER 2
Once Roxanne, Lucky and Mutt were back at the compound Roxanne locked the gate, put the rawhide string with the key around her neck and dropped the key under her shirt. Lucky noticed this and asked, “Is that the only key?”
“If I die you can always take it off my dead body,” Roxanne answered and walked away. As Lucky watched her disappear around a bend in one of the paths he leaned down to pet Mutt and said, “If only you could talk Mutt, perhaps you could explain her to me.” Mutt seemed to understand with a short “woof” and trotted off after Roxanne.
“This is not going to happen” Roxanne was thinking to herself and knew she should slow her walk. If she walked any faster it would appear as if she were running away. “I’m not going to fall for the first guy who walks into this place. I don’t know Lucky, don’t want to know Lucky, and don’t want to become close to a
nyone ever again. They are all gone sooner or later. I’ll be gone sooner or later. None of us are going to survive this new world. It’ll go back to the animals, the forests, the oceans.”
Her thoughts were interrupted by a scream for “Help! Someone help me!” Roxanne recognized Ed’s voice and started running for the center of the park only to be passed by Lucky.
“Help! Where is everybody? Lucky help me!”
Roxanne rounded a corner in time to see Lucky pick up a steel bar and swing a blow to a zombie’s head. Ed had climbed part of the Ferris wheel and was trapped there by a zombie below. Lucky made quick work of the zombie and as Ed started to climb down he began yelling at them. “Where the hell have you two been? Leaving me all alone out here, unprotected and abandoning me!”
Roxanne quickly recovered and said, “The Ze’s are gathering at the fence. Those lights and the noise last night have them moving this way.”
“We killed four of them,” Lucky said looking at Roxanne, “but I guess there was a fifth that we missed.” Roxanne had assumed that the zombie she left at the fence would follow her in the car but now she knew that it had come through the gate and there was no explaining that away.
Ed jumped to the ground and asked, “Yeah, but how are they getting in? Is there a breach in the fence?” His face was white with fear. He had thought he was safe here and that they were building a good beginning to a stable life. The thought of going on the road again, or fighting Ze’s terrified him. “Maybe I should concentrate on getting one of the service cars running instead of this other stuff. After all, we don’t have a running vehicle yet” and he walked off.
Lucky waited until Ed was out of range then turned to Roxanne and said, “He’s lying. He’s been working on a vehicle every night after he thinks we have gone to bed.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Roxanne asked.
“What else haven’t you told me, Roxanne?”
When Roxanne had first arrived at Dollywood it was the cafeteria that had been the deciding factor on whether she would stay or not. Food was the first thing she looked for and the pantry in the cafeteria was stocked beyond her imagination. There were boxes of food ranging from dried cereal to noodles. There were cans and jars of peaches, spam, vegetables, coffee and tea. There were bottles of water, soda and juices. Once she found the cabin and decided to make it her place of residence she moved a supply that would last seven days to that location. But the rest she left in the cafeteria since it was more protected from animals and weather. She knew she would still need to ration it but the bounty overcame the eerie feeling she had at night that the place was haunted.
The collapsed rides and buildings gave off distorted shadows at night and she still hadn’t found the building where a door would bang when the breeze picked up. There was also the flapping of flags strung between buildings or from poles that gave off the sound of giant bats flapping at night. One morning she elected not to do more important things and went around to every place where flags were strung and cut them down, although she wasn’t able to get them all. Any movement attracted Ze’s which enforced her decision that she was doing the right thing in neglecting other chores and cutting down the flags. Those flags would be like a beacon to them, continuously moving and at night it seemed as if the sound could be heard for miles. It was the one thing that she felt would send her over the edge and she had been tenacious in cutting them down and stomping on them.
But on this day Roxanne remembered a sign posted in the Cafeteria that Dollywood took pride in using vegetables from their own gardens so she decided to check out the Landscaping Office and Greenhouse. There were plenty of jars of canned fruits and vegetables in storage but she wanted to save those for the winter months and use fresh during the warmer seasons. She thought she would check those two places to look for packages of seeds that they could plant. Perhaps Dollywood even sold seeds from their gardens and would have a supply of them.
She found some tools that they could use in the Landscaping Office but other than a schedule of planting seasons she found nothing useful. She went over to the Greenhouse but it was disastrous. Part of the roof had fallen in but the plants that were still receiving rain water were starting to sprout in their bins. The foliage looked like it would be tulips but nothing that they could eat. She smiled when she spotted a rack in the corner which held packages of seeds. She was shifting through them when Ed came in and said “I wanted to talk to you without Lucky around. I got a car started.”
“That’s great Ed.”
He came up to her and said, “But here’s the problem. I saw what looks like a logging road about twenty feet outside of the fence and those twenty feet is heavily wooded. If we want to use that logging road for escape that twenty feet will need to be cleared of brush.”
“That’s no problem Ed” Roxanne said as she continued to flip through the packages. “We can help you with that.”
“I don’t want Lucky to know.” That got Roxanne’s attention. She stopped flipping through the packages and looked up. “If the shit hits the fan Roxie it’s just you and me. We did it before, we can do it again and you’ve learned a lot more. It’ll be one less mouth to feed. I’ll clear off the land I just need you to cover for me so he doesn’t suspect anything. I’ve already cut a hole in the fence…”
“You did what!?”
“It’s alright Roxie; I wired it back up again. It’s safe but I needed access to get in and out, it just takes a little time to unravel the wire again, but quick enough if the situation gets bad. Are you with me Roxie?”
Roxanne stared him down. She couldn’t believe it, that Ed would leave Lucky behind. She hadn’t asked how long they had traveled together. She had been here a couple of weeks before the two of them showed up at Dollywood. She had spent three days with the old lady; had been on the road alone three days before that and she and Mutt had been together for a week before arriving here. She was sure that Lucky had saved Ed’s life several times over.
“Yeah Ed, I’m with you, but like you said, things will be different this time. I’ve learned a lot more”. Ed took a step backward from the cold steely stare that Roxanne gave him and felt a chill go up his spine. After a few more steps backward he turned and left the Greenhouse. Roxanne continued to stare at the door then muttered, “You prick.”
Lucky watched from the window as Ed filled the car trunk with food, blankets, camping gear and some homemade weapons. It was dark and Ed was using a small lantern but Lucky could tell what the supplies were. Once Ed turned down the lantern and settled into his cot for the night Lucky walked back to join Roxanne on her porch.
“Well?” she asked
“Yeah, he’s loading it up now.”
“He’s not going to skip out on us Lucky”, Roxanne said. “He’s not that brave and wouldn’t know where to go. Hell, if we had to leave out of here real fast I wouldn’t know where to go. Never thought about it. Always had Dollywood in mind and never thought past that. Here,” she handed him a bottle of whiskey that was half consumed. “Don’t know if it’s still any good or not. I found it in the Groundkeepers desk.”
Lucky took the bottle and looked at it for a moment. He took the top off and smelled it then sampled a swallow. Roxanne waited until he stopped coughing and asked, “What went down between the two of you on the road? Ed needs a protector. Why would he want to dump you?”
Lucky tried to clear his throat without success so he threw caution to the wind and took another swallow. “You traveled with him Roxanne. You know his antics. The first time he returned after driving off because a zombie was near the car, I pulled him out of that car and put him in a store where I knew there was a zombie. Oh, I stayed in the store with him so the zombie wouldn’t bite him, but while he was running around screaming I told him if he ever did that again that I would lock him in a room with a zombie. That I would take the car and not look back and never give him the pleasure of shooting him in the head. I didn’t have trouble with him pulling off after that, but
a few times I did get back in the car to find he had puked because a zombie was near the car. Between the puke, his sweat from fear and pissing his pants the smell never did leave that car. Glad to be rid of it.”
Roxanne was sitting in a rocking chair and she had been slowly rocking during Lucky’s story. Because it was so dark Lucky barely caught the movement that she was nodding in agreement. “Do you know that Ed never mentioned you, although I did notice that he wore a wedding band? Said he was with a group and that they became separated. Wasn’t until that first night here when you locked us up in the shed and he knew who you were that I made him tell me about it. He said you were weak and a hindrance to him and that you had almost gotten him killed several times because of your stupidity. Sounded more like he was describing himself. That third night when I told him that you weren’t with a group he wanted us to rush you. But, like I said, I knew he’d be mad until the next morning.”
“So to answer your question,” he continued, “I guess he wants revenge for making him live with that fear each time I went on a run. I don’t think he’s a danger to us though, except for doing stupid things like turning on the Ferris wheel. I don’t think he’ll come after either one of us because even in his warped mind he knows he needs us. But if others join us and there happens to be some disgruntled characters among them Ed will quickly change sides.”
