by TW Brown
Jake Beebe and Jesus Sanchez were the two soldiers from the United States Army who showed up with Jon a couple months back. My relationship with them had been tenuous at best ever since they took Thalia and Emily—ages five and ten respectively—out into the woods and had them kill a walker. Yes, they had disabled it by taking its legs out, but I still had a problem with the whole thing. The worst part about that situation was that I was beginning to see where I was wrong. I was the one preaching vigilance and preparedness, but I was balking when it came to the girls.
“Just do your best to hurry back,” I sighed.
We stood in silence for a moment. I noticed the uncomfortable looks on their faces any time they so much as glanced Dr. Zahn’s way. She had been a rock for all of us. Nobody was comfortable with the shell of a woman she’d become almost overnight. With a nod, I led her inside and let the two “secret” lovebirds have a few moments of privacy.
Inside the giant visitor’s center cabin we called home, the mood was as expected. Even the two new arrivals, Doug and Cheryl Coates were in a corner leaning into each other for emotional support and they’d only been with us for a day.
As I peeled off my coat and gloves, my eyes sought Melissa and I found her with Thalia and Emily each snuggled under an arm with faces buried in her side. She saw me and her eyes immediately flashed to Dr. Zahn and then back to mine.
Dr. Zahn pulled away from me and went to her little emergency room/trauma center/office and shut the door. I felt something warm on my hand and looked down to see Buster, the red and white Border Collie licking tentatively. That was odd in the sense that the dog seemed to ignore me almost entirely. He was Thalia and Emily’s dog. Period.
I scratched the small dog behind the ear and was rewarded with a belly that was apparently a much more desirable location for the aforementioned scratching. Kneeling down, I gave the dog a good belly rub and remembered my beloved Basset Hound. Pluck had basically saved me that first night. For some reason, the emotions hit me like a firestorm and the next thing I knew, tears filled my eyes.
I don’t know if I stopped scratching Buster’s belly or if the dog was turned off by my pitiful crying, but at some point I found myself alone on my knees weeping like a baby. I looked up to find Thalia standing in front of me. She took my face in her tiny hands and stared into my eyes with a very serious expression of concern.
“It’s okay, daddy.” She placed her forehead against mine. “Jamie is in Heaven with Teresa and Emily’s daddy and my mommy.”
I was dumbstruck. This was just more proof that I was absolutely clueless when it came to the ability of children to process through absolutely debilitating emotional trauma and find happiness in a world that has fallen apart.
***
“Don’t take stupid chances,” I said as Jon climbed into the Snowcat with Jake and Jesus.
“And you need to take it easy on that leg,” Jon whispered. He glanced over my shoulder at Melissa. I appreciated his discretion. “You are starting to show a very noticeable limp. It is all over your face when you get tired or start to push yourself beyond what you should.”
“And if it looks bad, just come back and we will figure something out.” I ignored his ministrations.
“You know as well as I do that there isn’t anything to figure out. We need to do this. And next year we will have that full blown garden and we will hunt with a new purpose. We have to treat this like the pioneer days.”
I watched as the Snowcat roared down the hill and eventually vanished in the trees. Once it was gone I turned to get a look up in the crow’s nest. Fiona O’Hara was on watch.
“Fee,” I called.
“Yep…I know…keep an eye peeled for anything that might have been attracted by the noise.”
Everybody else had gone inside within the first few minutes; everybody except Melissa that is. Not even Thalia and Emily wanted to stay outside in this cold to play. It was bitter cold—and that was a phrase I really hadn’t appreciated until recently.
“You want to talk?” Melissa came and put her arms around me and snuggled in close.
“About?”
“Everything.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“Dr. Zahn? The food situation? Jamie? There are a number of choices.” Melissa ticked them off one by one like charges in a courtroom.
“I don’t know what to say anymore,” I conceded.
“Steve, you need to give yourself a little slack. Every single thing that happens is not your fault any more than they are your accomplishments when something works. We are a unit.”
“But you all voted me your leader.”
“And when the tough choices need to be made, we will rely on your ability to think clearly and rationally.”
“But so much has gone wrong.” I felt that strangled feeling in the back of my throat again. Man, I was sick of crying or feeling like I was on the verge of it. I didn’t think men were supposed to get this way. They sure didn’t in any book or movie I could recall. Maybe this was what a nervous breakdown feels like. Did men have those? I wasn’t sure.
“And so much has gone right. You have two little girls that you have kept alive, we have this place—”
“And we may all starve and die here,” I cut her off.
“We will figure it out,” Melissa insisted.
I looked around at the smooth, white landscape. The curl of smoke rising from the chimney added to the idyllic look that this place gave off. That was the problem with an illusion; when it shattered, you were left holding nothing.
“Okay,” Melissa’s tone grew stern and serious and she spun me around to face her. “Have you confronted Dr. Zahn for her carelessness that resulted in Teresa’s and Jamie’s death?”
I stood there shocked. This woman and every single one of us probably owed our life to that poor lady. How could she even consider being so cruel? I tried to respond, but I was seriously pissed.
“You haven’t, have you?” Melissa pressed, and I shook my head because I could not find the words to express not only my anger, but also my disappointment in this woman who I thought I’d come to know. “And you won’t…because it is not. Her. Fault.”
I stared. At first it was in confusion. But that soon gave way to something else.
“You set me up,” I gasped.
“No, I helped you see something a bit more clearly. You are so buried in the problem that you often lose sight of the big picture. Also, you put unreasonable demands on yourself that you wouldn’t dream of putting on others.” Melissa slipped her gloved hands behind my neck and pulled me down.
When I withdrew from the kiss, she looked up at me with a look that I really had no idea could exist. I only hoped that what I felt in my heart for her was as clear on my face as her feelings for me were at this very moment. We walked back to the cabin holding hands. Suddenly it didn’t feel so cold.
***
“At least five.” DeAngelo Cribbs came in from the front porch after stomping his feet to knock away the snow. DeAngelo and his wife had arrived a couple months ago. I don’t think I will ever get used to standing around shooting the breeze with one of the most sought after linebackers to enter pro football. The fact that he played for my beloved Seattle franchise made him a bigger star than Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt in my eyes. And did I mention that the man was freakin’ huge?
“And they are coming up to us for sure?” I asked.
“Seem to be.”
“Then let’s get out there and meet them in the parking lot. That is the flattest ground. It will be the safest location,” I announced.
“Three more!” Fiona called down through the trap door.
“Here’s your big knife.” Emily handed me my large sheathed blade.
“Thanks, sweetie.” I took it and kissed her on the cheek. As I fastened it around my waist Thalia arrived with my gloves.
“Here, daddy.” She held them up by the tips of the pinky fingers. “They’re stinky,” she huffed,
and once I took them from her she made over-exaggerated waves of her hand in front of her nose accompanied by a scrunched face.
I gave them a sniff and she was right. I never knew that gloves could smell like dirty socks. I guess it makes sense. I know that my hands get sweaty.
Nickie Bailey was already waiting beside the door. She had a wicked looking curved blade in one hand and an unlit torch in the other. Her friend Christina Gavi was whispering something in her ear. The two hugged, and then Christina made her way back to the rocking chair next to the fireplace.
Christina and Nickie hadn’t been with us long either. When they’d arrived, it was actually Nickie who had sought us out in hopes that we could help her wounded friend. It had been more miracle work by Dr. Zahn that had saved the woman. Maybe I needed to remind the good doctor of all of her successes. I could try to trick her like Melissa had done to me earlier, but she probably wouldn’t fall for it.
DeAngelo, Nickie, and I headed out into the gloomy winter night to take care of the stragglers who were finally arriving to investigate the sound of the Snowcat firing up several hours ago. That really showed how single-minded they were; a noise they heard several hours ago drew them from wherever they had been, from whatever direction they had been heading. There was absolutely a way to use that in our favor…I just had to figure out what that might be.
Standing on the porch, I looked down across the expanse between our cabin and the tree line. I had to remind myself of my own lecture about the dangers of the zombie. The problem I faced was trying to be concerned by these pathetic creatures spread out and struggling to make it through the snow.
“I want to see if we can take these things down before we need that torch,” I said.
“That means meeting them down below,” Nickie pointed out. “I thought the idea was to meet them up here on the flat ground.”
“We can’t be sure they will all come up here.” I pointed to a couple of the zombies that had stopped walking for whatever reason.
“So what’s the plan?” DeAngelo asked.
“Let’s move down to the Killing Tunnel with me and Nickie on the left, you take the right,” I said.
“Are you sure that you want to split up?” Something was bothering Nickie. I didn’t know her well enough to know what, but whatever it was, it had her shook. She kept looking away from me. That made my alarm bells start to jingle a little bit.
“We have zombies coming in from both sides,” I pointed out. “If we don’t use both berms, then we will lose sight of the ones on the opposite side. It is better for us to keep them in view.”
Nickie nodded, but she still seemed off just a bit. I was suddenly glad that I chose her to pair up with me. I needed to keep my eyes on her.
We headed down, and it didn’t take long for things to get tough. Once we cleared the huge flat rectangle that was the gravel parking lot in front of the cabin, we were in thigh-deep snow that slowed us down. Maybe I should have thought this through better. Would this be another huge error on my behalf? It’s not like we don’t have snowshoes inside.
Moving along the top of the berm was no easy feat. Even though it had a flattened top, it was covered with snow, and therefore, impossible to tell exactly where to walk.
Dusk seemed to be racing us to our places as the shadows grew, swallowing the surrounding landscape. It was already almost impossible to tell if anything else was coming out of the trees.
“Hey!” I barked as loud as I dared, causing the zombies to turn my way. Behind me, I heard Nickie hiss between her teeth.
“What?” I turned. Had I missed something? What on earth could go wrong?
“That’s Mark,” Nickie said with a sob threatening to overwhelm her ability to speak.
I turned back the way she was pointing. Scanning the zombies, I saw one that might have been fresher than the rest. He was wearing a tattered winter coat. One hand was still gloved…the other was missing.
“Who is Mark?”
“He was just the sweetest person you could ever meet,” Nickie sobbed. She obviously decided that fighting those tears was a futile exercise. Her voice trembled and verged on not being understandable. “I thought it was him when we went outside. He wore that coat all the time…even in his sleep.”
“That’s what was bothering you,” I mumbled.
I felt like a perfect heel for thinking that something might be up. That was an indication of just how suspicious I’d become of everybody and everything. This was just not me. I was not that guy. In fact, one of my problems early on was not being suspicious enough…not being assertive. It had almost cost me Thalia. Had I swung too far in the opposite direction?
“I wasn’t sure it was him…or I didn’t want it to be…” Her voice faded and she was looking past me now. “Oh, Mark,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
“You want to go back inside?” I asked.
“No, he deserves better…he doesn’t deserve to be one of them for eternity.”
Before I could say anything else, she plunged down the side of the berm and began driving herself through the deep snow. It fell away from her like blue-white waves crashing from the prow of a ship. Weapon raised high, she was sobbing and saying something unintelligible. Despite not being able to decipher the words, the meaning was clear. Grief. Sorrow. Heart-wrenching sadness.
Halfway there, she stumbled, the snow building in front of her becoming too great of an obstacle. She vanished from view for just a moment, but came up in a geyser of white and barreled forward.
“What’s going on?” DeAngelo called from the other berm. “Where’s Nickie?”
“She knows one of them.” That was all that needed to be said. It was getting dark fast, but I still saw him nod, I still saw the look of sympathy on his face.
I turned just as she shoved the first zombie she came to aside. It vanished under the snow, but I knew full well it would get back up. By the time I reached the bottom of the berm and took off in pursuit of Nickie as fast as I could—which wasn’t very quick considering how my leg was starting to throb—she had bulldozed past two more walkers.
I was just reaching the first one as she closed in on her friend or travelling companion; I wasn’t entirely sure of their relationship status. I jammed my Ka-Bar in the eye of the apparently confused zombie that was struggling with the idea that it could not grab the snow and use it to help regain its feet.
Pulling free, I looked and did some mental calculations. I would be able to get to one of the zombies that she had knocked aside. However, she hadn’t given the other one enough of a push, and it had remained on its feet. It would reach Nickie before I could. To make matters worse, several others had now homed in on us and we no longer had the advantage of being above them in a position of superiority. Hadn’t I just dismissed them as a threat a few minutes ago?
Nickie seemed to be hesitating. I had no idea what she was doing, but I was pretty certain that I would be adding her to the target list if she didn’t do it soon.
I reached the second one that she had knocked over and swung my blade with a solid overhand that brought it down on the crown of its head. The blade stuck and my split-second decision was to leave it and keep moving.
To my relief, Nickie reared back with her sword and ended Mark for good. Unfortunately, that relief was short lived as she let loose with a cry of anguish and went charging into the midst of a half-dozen more that were just now coming out of the tree line to her left.
I was able to hear her now and quite frankly, I was more than a little surprised at the string of obscenities she was putting together. This from a woman I’d seen crack her shin with the head of the splitting maul and say, “Jiminy crickets!”
“…send you all straight to Hell where you belong you flesh-eating mother fuckers!”
That was the least profane thing that she said over the next minute or so as she waded through the snow from one zombie to the next and administered the lethal stroke. I decided that my best course of action was
to take down the ones that had been making their way across the open field but were now coming back. Every single zombie in sight was headed towards Nickie as she did a fairly good impersonation of the Tasmanian Devil and whirled around to take the tops of skulls off and send the scalp and cranial matter flying away to land in the snow.
I was about ten or so yards away when something moved under me and sent me falling sidewise in an awkward heap. It almost seemed like the world was moving in slow motion as I watched my just drawn machete fly end over end through the air in a near-perfect arc and then vanish in the snow about five feet away.
The weapon hitting the snow and vanishing was the last thing that I saw before I face-planted in the cold wetness myself. Something was clutching my left leg and trying its damnedest to bite through my shin guard. Thank God I hadn’t gotten so complacent so as not to fully suit up for this like I’ve seen others do, I thought.
My relief was short lived as I felt something gouge into the flesh just below my knee. I cried out and kicked, but already I had the feeling that I was done for. Just like when Ian had been bitten not too long ago, my belief was that Jamie’s immunity was a gift that we should not expect to see duplicated in any other members of our group.
With a groan I rolled over…or tried to at least. My situation had just gone from bad to worse. The snow had me entombed and mobility was a serious problem. Couple that with my leg not being a hundred percent, and the fact that me trying to turn over sent an explosion of agony up that leg and straight to my mouth where, despite the snow, I managed to let loose with quite a scream.
I flailed as best I could, but I was now certain that I was a goner. Not only that, but without me watching her back, Nickie stood little chance. There were too many for one person, and she had basically run to the middle of them and rang the dinner bell.
The hand or hands grasping my ankle continued to squeeze and tug and claw at my pants. I moved as best I could, but it all seemed like a lost cause. The pain in my left leg was agonizing, but the blood I felt running down my right was the reason for concern.
