Dead Man's Land

by R. J. Spears

  No one wanted to start the conversation, and it seemed as if Sally knew this, so being the no no-nonsense type she was, she eased us into it. “Just so all of you know, I’m Catholic. I was raised in it, and I lived it. So, suicide is out.” She paused as a shudder went through her body. “Also, know that I’m not going the transfusion route. That’s only putting off the inevitable.”

  That didn’t make it any easier, though.

  Being the leader, I felt it was my responsibility to take charge. “What do you want to do, Sally?” I asked, moving a step closer to her.

  “What are my choices?” she asked, turning to me. Her eyes were rimmed with tears, but they still had life in them.

  “Bad ones,” I said.

  She laughed, and that let a little tension out of the air.

  “I know this isn’t protocol, and I don’t want to act on my own, but I’m going to ask for something unprecedented. We have five of the leadership team here,” I said, looking at the others there. “I know we generally only go with two options in cases like this. We either take care of the infected individual, or they take care of themselves. I’m wondering if we could consider a third option in this case?”

  Brandon raised an eyebrow that seemed to say, “Like what?”

  While Brandon stared at me with a challenge, Kara looked to me with hope.

  “Could we consider just letting nature take it course and let Sally walk away? Would that even work for you, Sally?”

  She dropped her head, and I could see she was considering it.

  “Okay,” Brother Ed said, clearing his throat. “That would mean that she’d be one of those things out there walking around.”

  “Then let me make this easy for you,” she said. “I don’t want to be one of those things.”

  There it was, decision made. Case closed. No appeals to the Supreme Court. Do not pass go, and do not collect $200.

  Onto the next question. Who was going to do it? Once again, that phrase popped into my head again, What would Greg do?

  For all intents and purposes, the duty fell to me. Greg did it. I should do it, but it was absolutely the last thing I wanted to do. Then again, who did?

  My body and spirit seemed disconnected. My arms and legs felt like foreign objects, a million miles away. I willed them to move, but they stubbornly resisted. My throat felt parched as if I hadn’t had a drink in a week. Still, I reached down and did what I had to do.

  “Where do you want it done?” That was as brave as I could be.

  “I don’t want to be any trouble,” Sally said. “We can do it over by the pit.”

  The pit was a large trench that had been cut out of the ground by the bulldozers. It sat just beyond the third hole of the golf course behind the Manor. It was dug for one specific purpose: to provide us a place to dispose of zombie bodies. There was nothing nice or particularly pleasant about it. It was just a field of decomposed and desiccated bodies. With winter over, it even smelled bad again.

  “You sure about that?” I asked.

  “If you do it anywhere else, somebody will just have to move me there. Right?”

  I didn’t answer. Her logic was inescapable, but it seemed so cold.

  “Listen,” she said. “I won’t be here after you’ve done it. I’ll be flying skyward to heaven. So, while we can get all sentimental about it, it doesn’t matter in the end.”

  “Okay,” was the best I could muster, and I started toward the pit, taking each step with some effort. She moved in beside me, and we walked toward the pit together.

  To their credit, the rest of the group came along, although Brother Ed was the last to move. None of them spoke. The birds, still oblivious to the drama going on with us, continued their joyous spring singing.

  It was a short walk of less than a couple hundred yards. As advertised, the bodies of the zombie corpses were still there, in all of their splendor on display. The winter and the subsequent thaw had done a job on them. They seemed less like individual bodies, but more of a singular mass of parts. Arms, legs, heads, and torsos. They still stank to high heavens, though.

  We stopped at the edge and paused for a moment. There was one last choice to make, and I hoped, in this case, she’d make it easy on me. The choice was whether she’d face me or turn away.

  She anticipated this and said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll face the hills.” She started to turn away from us, but stopped. “If any of you’d like to pray with me, I’d appreciate it.”

  Kara moved to Sally’s side and took one of Sally’s hands, holding back her tears. Travis moved up as silent tears streamed down his face. Brother Ed, as soberly quiet as I had ever seen him, stepped up, too. Brandon held his position, a few feet back.

  I put a hand on Sally’s shoulder and said, “Does someone want to get us started? I’m not the best at this.”

  “I will,” Kara said, her voice thick and moist.

  I don’t remember the specifics of what was said, but it was beautiful without being showy or overly pious. To his credit, Brother Ed didn’t fly into any chest beating or clothes rending, but he spoke directly, avoiding any normally florid or overblown proselytizing. Brandon decided not to say anything at all. Travis tried to say something, but his emotions got the best of him. Even I found the courage and clear-headedness to say something. Not one of us made it through what we had to say without tears, but we held ourselves together. Kara led us in the Lord’s Prayer to end it.

  Brandon kept his back turned and his head down the entire time.

  “Thanks to all of you,” Sally said, taking each one of our hands and giving it a squeeze. After she released a hand, each person stepped back, leaving only Sally and me there.

  Strangely, I felt a calming peace come over me. My arms no longer felt heavy and numb. I wasn’t ready for dancing, but I was ready for what I had to do.

  Sally closed her eyes and turned away from me for the final time. I brought my rifle up, but the strength I felt just moments ago started to retreat from me as my hands shook. Aiming became somewhat difficult.

  I felt someone move up behind me and heard a voice whisper in my ear, “You don’t have to do this. I can do it.” It was Brandon.

  “No,” I said, “I have to.”

  “You sure?” His tone wasn’t challenging. I could tell he just wanted to take the burden from me.

  I nodded my head, and a moment later, I felt his hand on my shoulder. He gave me a gentle squeeze and stepped away.

  I prayed again, a single word SOS, and the peace that had left me, charged back in full. I knew it wouldn’t last, so I brought my rifle up in one fluid motion and pulled the trigger. The report of the gun was like an atomic blast, feeling as if it would shatter my eardrums, as it echoed across the hills for what seemed like hours. The birds stopped their songs and let us have a moment of complete silence. There was nothing peaceful about it as Sally’s body slumped forward and fell onto the pile of the dead below.

  We walked backed to the Manor in silence. I felt as if I left a part of my soul on that hill.

  Chapter 15

  Wheels within Wheels

  They had won. They had repelled the invaders and held the town. But the victory had cost them. They lost a bus and nearly two dozen soldiers. The soldiers were easily replaced. Buses were harder to come by, but they’d improvise if they had to. Why Anthony was partial to school buses, they never knew, but he liked them for some unknown and unspoken reason.

  “One more time,” he said.

  “Boss, we’ve been through this a dozen times,” Rex said, trying to hide his exasperation. They were in one of the meeting rooms that Anthony used as his office. It wasn’t much of an office. Electronic gadgets and wiring lay around the room in piles, parts of future or aborted projects. Rex couldn’t discern which was genius and which was junk.

  Anthony debriefed Roy and Maggie for over two hours, going over every little detail. Rex had told and re-told the story of the battle with the intruders. He had gone through it himse
lf for nearly an hour and broken it down from every perspective. They had seen, they had fought, they had kicked ass, and had taken names, sending their enemy away with their tails between their legs. What the hell else did he need to know?

  “Please,” Anthony said.

  This caused Rex to pause. Never in his experience with Anthony had he ever heard him use the word, ‘please.’ This was worth taking note.

  “Okay,” Rex said and went through the incident, step-by-step.

  When he finished, Anthony had a far off look in his eyes. Rex knew that this could mean one of two things: hard work or trouble. Or both. He also knew to wait for whatever revelation Anthony was about to come up with. Anthony may be a crazy bastard, but it was a-kind-of-crazy that Rex had learned to trust.

  Anthony cleared his throat and started, “While our soldiers are in constant supply, my control devices are not. And we need to take into account the training period. Lastly, there is the remote chance that we could lose all of our soldiers in either a surprise attack or if an overwhelming force were to come on the scene.”

  Anthony stopped, and Rex waited patiently. Anthony’s thoughts coalesced again, and he started up again. “We need to find a way to better protect the soldiers, and I have an idea, but it’s going to take some time to implement. Can you get me some scrap metal and welding equipment?”

  Rex thought he was going to like this idea.

  Chapter 16

  We Go On

  One time, as a little kid, I watched over a large ant colony in my front yard for a few days. The little buggers were some of the busiest things I had ever seen. They dug, they carried, and they went this way and that. Sometimes they pulled back things twice their size, be it a twig or the carcass of another insect. It seemed as if they were constantly doing something, persistent and incessantly busy.

  Being a kid, I had a somewhat limited sense of empathy. These were bugs, and they were either a living toy for me, or something to be stepped on or ignored. There was no middle ground.

  After about a week, I grew bored, so I took our garden hose and doused the colony in what seemed like a hundred gallons of water. The water must have flowed over their little world like that time it rained forty days and forty nights. I would have gone to two hundred gallons, but my dad started yelling about me wasting all that water.

  When I went out the next day, I fully expected to see my little colony gone for good, but I was amazed to see they had moved just a few feet away. They were just as busy as they were before, almost doubly so, since they had to set-up their colony all over again. Sure, there were a few corpses still lying about, but they just went about their business as if nothing had happened.

  Again, my lack of empathy got the best of me, and I drowned the colony again, but like the day before, they just moved the house and started at it again. Between my dad’s yelling at me about the water bill and general boredom, I moved onto other pursuits.

  When I reflect over the years and consider our plight among the living dead, I sometimes wonder how different we were from the ants. We busied ourselves with making our place safe and secure. We went out and looked for food and supplies. We carried on in spite of a tidal wave of zombies flowing across the country. We carried on even when there seemed to be no point in carrying on.

  I knew God was up there. I knew that quite personally, since He sent me some disturbing messages from time to time, but I sometimes wondered how different He was from the seven-year-old me, watching from high above as His ants scurried about.

  Those thoughts haunted my darkest moments, but something on that day broke me out of my black mood. It was glorious and spectacular. And that was corn on the cob. I can safely say that nothing in my life ever tasted as delicious as that first bite I took on that day in July.

  “What do you think?” Travis asked.

  “Can’t you tell?” I asked back. “I’m in heaven.”

  All the work and toil had paid off. Travis and the field workers had worked their butts off and gotten that first planting of corn in early, and we were now enjoying the dividends. Usually the dining room was full of quiet chatter, but the only thing that could be heard across the entire place was chomping, as teeth worked away at the corn. Many people had their eyes closed as they ate in a state of near ecstasy. I think I even saw a smile on Brother Ed’s face.

  Travis had warned us that it probably wouldn’t be very good, but none of us listened or even cared. We had corn on the cob, and life was good. Travis said green beans would be on the menu soon, followed by a whole bounty of other fresh produce. After subsisting on canned food during the past year, having fresh food was indescribable. That we had grown it ourselves was the icing on the cake.

  To make it an even sweeter experience, Jason was at my side. Kara had graciously given up her spot there for this night and sat across from me with Naveen and Madison beside her.

  This was Jason’s grand debut to the full community, and to my surprise, most people greeted him warmly. Brother Ed and Mrs. Hatcher still eyed him suspiciously. Some looked at him out of curiosity and must have been wondering what all the fuss was about. He couldn’t have weighed over a hundred and ten pounds, and his pallor was still bleached out from being out of the sun for so long.

  Travis walked among the tables, his face beaming with pride, checking in with the diners as if the place was his own private five-star restaurant. He slid up to our table, put a hand on Jason’s shoulder, and asked, “How do you like it?”

  Jason gave him a-thumbs-up sign and smiled broadly.

  “It’s so good to see you out of the basement,” Travis said.

  Jason nodded his head emphatically in agreement.

  Travis turned his attention to me, “I think Dad would have loved this. What do you think?”

  “I know he would have loved it,” I said, reaching up, putting a hand on his arm and giving it a squeeze.

  “It’s just fantastic,” Kara said as she reached over to wipe a kernel of corn off of Naveen’s cheek. This set off a ripple of giggling from Naveen and Madison as they poked each other under the table.

  “I see you girls are enjoying it, too,” Travis said.

  Sobering up, Naveen said, “Oh yes, it is quite delicious.”

  “I really don’t like corn all that much,” Madison said.

  We looked at her, but then burst into laughter.

  “Well,” Travis said, “you can’t please all the people all of the time.” He went off to mill around the other people, a sense of self-satisfaction emanating from him. It was nice to see him coming out from under the cloud of grief that had surrounded him after Hub’s death.

  After months of just surviving, it seemed as if we were thriving. Now, that may have been an overstatement at the time, but we could see a place down the road where we might have a real life. That life would be quite different from the ones we led before, but maybe, just maybe, we might be able to start building toward something that resembled that former life, one that might mean safety and security.

  But it seems that life in the zombie apocalypse hung in a precarious balance on the scales of fate and one that was heavily weighted towards the bad. I’m sure someone would call me a fatalist, but I’m sure our moments of joy and hope had knocked the scales too far in the positive column, so the balance sheets would need a reset.

  I learned more about that balance later that night, when God decided to send me another cryptic message. This message was similar to one that I had received in town, when we were facing off with the man on the bus and his undead army.

  I was back in the endless white limbo. Whatever I was, spirit, soul, or ghost, floated in this limbo, feeling its all-encompassing peace and serenity. It reminded me of being in a comfy, warm bed on a cold winter’s morning, only this feeling was exponentially more satisfying. It was a place I could get used to, but I didn’t fool myself this time. Something was going to happen. Some revelation or epiphany.

  Only it wasn’t either. It was a single wor
d floating in the fathomless white. “BEWARE.”

  Now, just how helpful was that, really? Beware was the watchword of the zombie apocalypse. Caution was a way of life. But there seemed to be an unspoken subtext to the word, and it eased its way into my consciousness. This subtext was, “Things are not what they appear to be.”

  Not that this was all that more illuminating, but it did clarify the message.

  You’d think that all of this would break the serenity of this nirvana-like world, but being enveloped in endless tranquility sort of dulls any negative emotions. In this world, I accepted the message, knowing that it was the truth, and I didn’t need to look any farther for answers.

  It was only in the real world that I had my doubts and questions, but this wasn’t any different than what happened all the time. God speaks to me when I am in that perfect place of communion, and it makes sense. I accept whatever happens while in that place, but moments later, when I am out in the real world, I am clueless and full of doubt.

  The real world began to tug at me again. This time it was a nagging, buzzing sound in my ear. It was a distant-buzzing at first. Buzz, buzz, it went. A bee or mosquito. The buzz became more insistent and transitioned into popping noises. It was something far off, as if someone were making popcorn.

  The door to my room burst open, I was out of my nirvana again and feeling the jarring sense of loss from being ripped out of it once more. “Joel, get up! We’re under attack.” It was Kara.

  Just three hours ago, I had lain down to go to sleep, my belly full of corn, and my rounds completed. Everything was safe and sound in the Manor. I could get used to this, I thought.

  Going from zero to sixty in less than a second wasn’t my natural state, but the engine of fear roared to life in me. The walkie-talkie next to my bed blared, “We got several attackers coming at us from the south side of the building,” a voice shouted; it was Brandon’s