by D C P Fox
Alexander took out his handgun from the holster on the brown belt that surrounded his green sweats, with the white racing stripe. “All right, you’re the sheriff. Lead the way.”
Marty pumped a shell into the chamber and walked toward the person. When he got halfway up the parking lot, Alexander, behind him, said in a low voice, “Stop, it’s a zombie.”
“The sheriff did what?” Vin asked.
Alexander was on shaky ground, and he needed Vin to understand so he wouldn’t go after Marty.
“The sheriff followed a zombie,” Alexander repeated. “Vin, if the zombies are back, we need to understand more of what is going on. This zombie did not attack! All he was doing was traveling south. He didn’t notice us, but he wasn’t looking for us, or any victim. We need to understand what is going on with these zombies. He’s our only hope to beat these guys.”
Vin scowled. “And I suppose you have a theory.”
“Yes, but you won’t like it.”
“Out with it, Poindexter! Don’t dare stall, or I’m liable to just up and leave to catch up to him.”
“The sheriff recognized the zombie as the bartender in a Clinton saloon. The zombie was heading toward Clinton.”
“So?”
“So the zombie was going home.”
“Again, so?”
Alexander rolled his eyes. Vin needed to be spoon-fed. “The zombies all marched up north. North to I-70 is the way to get to Denver. What if they were all heading for Denver, for population centers? What will they do when they run out of brains to eat?”
“I don’t know.” Vin scowled again. “Eat each other?”
“No, I think they’ll go back to where they left some food behind. They’ll come back home, Vin!”
Vin sneered. “You seem to know an awful lot about these zombies. I think you’re full of shit, or you know more than you let on. Damn if I can figure out which. You think you’re useful because you’re so smart, but I do have an engineering degree. I also have a shotgun, and I’m trained to use it, but all you have is a handgun. I’m the only one keeping us together and defended. I found this place; I rescued the sheriff; I rescued you. I’m in charge here—not the sheriff, and certainly not you.”
“You didn’t rescue me, and I was here first!”
Vin scowled. “Without a shotgun you didn’t have a chance.”
Alexander sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. You’re in charge. Yes, I’m speculating, which is why we need the sheriff to investigate, but who better to investigate than him? Besides, the zombie was getting away. We had to decide fast, there wasn’t any time to consult you . . . it’s my call, I take full responsibility for it.”
“That doesn’t mean shit here asshole. We’re all responsible for each other, and now there’s only one shotgun to protect ourselves.”
“Two won’t be enough if they’ve come back home. Besides, the saloon is a three-to-four-hour walk from here. The sheriff will probably return before nightfall.”
“For your sake, he’d better, or I’ll take that responsibility of yours and shove it up your ass!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Day Eight
The draugar had a huge hole in the side of its neck, one from which little blood was oozing. Jocelyn turned her head in the direction the gunfire came from. There was a man: white, balding, with brown hair and mustache, but young-looking with a smooth face. He must have been in his early forties. He was wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants in a terrible shade of orange.
Jocelyn looked back at the draugar. He was still walking toward her.
Jocelyn drew her sword. She leapt after the draugar and swept her sword in a long arc into its neck, severing its head clean off. The head tumbled onto the sidewalk while the body leaned forward and flopped to the ground, Jocelyn taking a step back to avoid being hit by the corpse.
She turned to face the man who had shot the draugar. He was pivoting back and forth, his shotgun pointed in front of him, apparently looking for more adversaries.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked in a mildly gravelly voice, almost like a loud, cat purr.
Feeling dizzy, Jocelyn struggled to catch her breath. “I’ll be okay,” she rasped, placing her sword onto the asphalt. She knelt down, her heart pounding.
“I don’t mean to be rude, ma’am, but it might not be safe here.” She looked at him and noticed the ludicrous white stripe going down the length of his sweatpants.
“You can go. I need to say a prayer for his soul.” I have to contact him—have him tell me as much of his story as he can.
“Don’t be foolish, ma’am, there may be more lurking about. There’ll be plenty of time for prayer, but first we need to go into the store. I’ve been hidin’ there, and right now it’s safe.”
She couldn’t explain to him that there wasn’t much time, that she only had a few hours to communicate with it. Instead, she nodded and told him to lead the way.
Confirming that the zombie had returned home disturbed Marty, and he wanted to go back now and warn the others, but he faced a dilemma. This woman with the shotgun and sword—a sword that cut through the zombie’s head like butter—could make a useful ally and companion. And he couldn’t leave her to fend for herself—alone, she would eventually succumb to a horde of the zombies if they did come back. As the sheriff of this county, he felt responsible for all in it, but, more important, as a human being he just couldn’t leave her. It was one thing not to canvass for survivors, but quite another to stare one in the face and tell them they’re on their own. However, her ability to dispatch of the zombie with that sword made her dangerous—where did she get a sword, anyway? What kind of person comes equipped with a sword when a zombie apocalypse hits?
Could he trust this woman with the shotgun and sword?
First, he must get the woman to safety. They retreated to the general store’s storage area, though he didn’t know for sure if the zombies could detect them there. He supposed it was as good a place as any.
Darkness hit them as the dim sunlight only came through the windows on the doors that swung shut behind them. The woman fumbled around the walls near the doors looking for something, and it took Marty a few seconds to realize she was looking for a light switch.
“The electricity has been out for days,” he said. “Isn’t it out where you came from?”
The woman shook her head. “I didn’t realize the power grid was down. I came from a house with solar and a home battery.”
He grunted. “That could be useful.” He extended his hand. “Hello, I’m Sheriff Hill.”
She shook his hand. Her hands were strong, almost like a man’s, though her skin was soft, so she hadn’t known much manual labor. “Jocelyn Radomski. Thanks for coming by when you did, though I had no idea he was hostile.”
Marty raised an eyebrow. “They’re all hostile. How could you have survived without knowing that?”
“I was in a cabin by myself for the past month. I came out and got attacked by the cabin’s owner. If it weren’t for this—” She put down her sword on the floor, which she had kept out after chopping that zombie’s head off. “—I wouldn’t have survived.”
Damn. That meant the zombie he followed wasn’t the only one who had returned home.
“The shotgun could have done the trick,” Marty said.
“Ah, well, that’s good to know . . . I didn’t have access to it when he attacked.”
“So, when did this attack occur? Just recently?”
“No, uh, a few days ago.”
A few days? That was much earlier than he had expected. This would be the first instance of a zombie going home, to his knowledge. Unless he had always been home.
“I see. What have you been doing all this time since?”
“Well, I . . .” She paused for a while.
“Forgive me, ma’am. I don’t want this to sound like twenty questions, but I believe we can benefit from knowing each other’s stories.”
She nod
ded and paused for a while. People generally only do that when they’re trying to figure out what to say—and that meant they have something to hide. Marty felt it was time to look out the windows on the doors for zombies or other normals, but he didn’t want to give her more time to craft a good lie.
“Ma’am, I think we have to be honest with each other. Some incredible things have happened, things I wouldn’t believe possible, things I would think others couldn’t believe. Normally, I would be hesitant to repeat any of it for fear they think I’m nuts. But I know enough people who have had similar experiences—”
At that, her expression brightened. “You know more survivors?”
Marty looked at her curiously. “You’ve been in a cabin. Have you encountered more of these diseased creatures other than the cabin owner and that guy lying in the street?”
She looked like a deer caught in headlights. Definitely hiding something.
“I just, well, no I haven’t, but I came into town, and it was deserted, so I figured something really awful had happened to them. I suppose they could have fled, but . . . look, the cabin owner was dead. I mean, really dead. But then he came back to life to attack me. I hope you can believe that.”
Marty nodded. “As I said, I’ve seen things, heard stories, that I wouldn’t have believed a week ago if I hadn’t experienced it myself. How ‘bout this. I tell you my story, and then you tell me yours. You’ll see that I’m open to believing all sorts of crazy shit once you’ve heard my story.”
“We call them ‘zombies’ on account of they eat brains . . .”
Jocelyn noticed hunger setting in, but even with food stacked in crates and on shelves all around her, she waited until they finished telling their stories.
The sheriff told Jocelyn his long and sad story, of how his entire family became infected, and how he had to kill his wife and daughter. His son was still at large, though infected. He crashed his car and a group of five survivors from a supermarket in Beaver Park rescued him. That was a week ago, and they haven’t left the supermarket since. The sheriff ended his story with how he’d followed the draugar they just killed and why, that they thought the draugar first headed for population centers like Denver and/or Colorado Springs before returning home, like this draugar and George did.
Jocelyn couldn’t tell him the entire truth, and while the sheriff talked, she contemplated how much she wanted to say. But his tale was so horrifying that she had little time to do that. Now he was finished, and she still was unsure what parts of the truth to reveal.
Her hesitation must have prompted him to say, “I promise I’ll believe what you have to say, no matter how outrageous it may sound.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. I can’t tell him of my illness or of killing those four people. I just can’t. I don’t know how to be open and honest about my illness. I have never been.
“From July twenty-sixth until August twenty-sixth, I stayed alone in a cabin in the mountains with no electricity or indoor plumbing.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You said you’d believe me, right?”
The sheriff nodded. “No matter how outrageous.”
In the diffuse light, Jocelyn eyed some cans of fruit on a shelf behind the sheriff. “I’m in training to be a shaman. This was my last task before being initiated as one.”
The sheriff grunted, though it didn’t seem a rejection of what she said, more of a “hmm” kind of grunt. “You mean you heal using plants and herbs. I’ve heard of this.”
“It’s much more than that, though that is part of it. Are you aware of the Wiccan religion?”
He grunted and raised an eyebrow. “You’re a witch, then?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m Catholic, but I practice magic like Wiccans do. And the Catholic priests do, too. That’s what the rituals and incense are all about. They don’t inform the laity of this aspect, but I know because the use of magic has been passed down to me through the generations.”
“So, this isn’t new to you. You were raised with it.”
She nodded. “By my grandfather, my mother’s father, yes. My mother knows nothing about the magic side of Catholicism though, and my father left before my grandfather approached me with it.”
“Does it work? Well, I’m sure you believe it does, but how well does it work for you? This is not something I would have believed a week ago, but now . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you mind if I got something to eat?” Jocelyn asked.
“Not at all, ma’am. There’s plenty of canned food in here and out there.” He gestured toward the doors to the main part of the store. “I’ll go with you, though I ate about an hour ago.”
“No, I’ll just eat something in here.” Jocelyn worried about looting in the sheriff’s presence. “I, uh, have a little money . . .”
The sheriff grunted. “Rules have changed, ma’am. If it makes you feel better, you can leave some cash in the register, but I wouldn’t bother. I haven’t. As far as I’m concerned, that money isn’t worth anything.”
Jocelyn nodded. She came to the same conclusion, but didn’t want to be rude in front of the sheriff.
Now Jocelyn craved the canned fruit behind him. She had eaten a lot of canned fruit over the past month, but nothing lately.
“You said you thought it was a disease, though,” she said. “Isn’t that believable without something magical going on?”
“Hell, I’m not versed in the ways of science, other than forensics. To me, all this shit is magic. I mean, what kind of pathogen could bring back the dead, or make people eat brains? Oh, Alexander explained it, how they’ve revived brains in animals, how viruses always came up with ways to spread themselves—in this case, by eating brains—and how nanotechnology can coordinate all of it, even to heal, so that normal weapons are not useful against them. No, he explained it all, but it kinda went in one ear and out the other.”
“Nanotechnology. That could explain a lot.”
The sheriff grunted yet again. “You’ve studied such things?”
She shrugged. “I have a PhD, though in History, but I’ve learned in school, and from others, and from reading magazines like Scientific American.”
“I wish I spent more time reading that stuff.”
“And I wish I traveled more. Now it would seem the only traveling I’ll be doing is to Colorado Springs.”
“Oh? Why Colorado Springs?”
“I heard a garbled radio broadcast. I’m not sure, but from what I could make out this Peterson Base—”
“—Peterson Air Force Base,” the sheriff corrected.
“Is that in Colorado Springs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, it seems it may be under the control of the military.”
“May be?”
“As I said, it was garbled. It was hard to make out. It seems there may be a new president.”
“So the government’s up and running,” the sheriff said. “That really is good news.”
“Do you mind if I grab that can of peaches behind you?”
“Not at all.”
As Jocelyn got up to grab the can of peaches, she noticed the tingling on her neck had stopped. She wasn’t sure when, though it had been a while. She opened the can with the pull tab and fished out a wedge with her dirty fingers—she was now used to eating things dirty, with the limited water supply of the cabin—and savored the sweet flavor. Then she extracted more, stuffing her mouth before chewing and exploding her mouth with peachy goodness.
“Do you mind getting back to your story, ma’am?”
“Please. Call me Jocelyn. This ma’am stuff is making me feel as old as my mother.”
“Okay, Jocelyn it is. Are you stalling?”
Yes, she was. She continued to chew slowly, waiting until she swallowed her entire mouthful before continuing.
“It’s a hard story to tell.” She decided she would take the secret of killing those four people to her grave. And that meant she shou
ld avoid talking about her mental illness, at least for now.
She told her story to him—with the lies that George possessed his own shotgun, and that no one came to the house—as they sat down back in the warm, “refrigerated” section.
She recounted her encounter with George, including being bitten, and her subsequent four-day delirium.
At this, the sheriff raised an eyebrow. “So you fought off the disease?”
She nodded. “I think I did.”
The sheriff grunted. “I wonder if anyone who gets bitten, without their brains eaten, can fight off the disease.”
“I don’t know, but this is the time in the story where I need to show you something.”
She took off her backpack, placed her shoulder holster with her shotgun on the floor, and retrieved her knife. She pulled up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and then sliced into her arm, blood appearing in a line that stung.
Marty just stood there with a bewildered look on his face.
After a few seconds, she wiped the blood clean with her fingers, revealing unblemished skin.
The sheriff gasped. “Holy cow!” Then he smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Day Eight
Marty was ecstatic.
“You’re taking this pretty well,” Jocelyn observed.
“Well? It’s fantastic! I’ve got a zombie on my side!” Well, at least I hope she’s on my side.
She shook her head. “I’m not a zombie, at least as far as I can tell. Or, I might be a . . . partial zombie, if that makes any sense.”
“Well, I’m not sure what to make of it. The zombies are animalistic—they’re not rational, they just hunt. And they all have those sores, which you don’t, but you sure have their healing. They can take a bullet without slowing down. Hell, I’ll bet you can take a bullet, too.”
“I don’t know about that. But I wouldn’t think from that shotgun.”
“Shotgun’s different. But only if you get ‘em here.” He pointed to his head. “Even so, it looks like you have to literally pulverize their brain from close range. It usually takes at least three blasts to do the job.”
