by Joshua Guess
The mention of Robert sent a wave of uncomfortable reactions through the room. I knew the others had issues with how the whole thing had gone down, to varying degrees. Carla was as kind and caring as ever, but more wary around me. Jem was understanding, but the cop part of him disapproved. He didn’t say it, of course. Didn’t have to. But I knew.
“I don’t think it’s likely they’ll hit us here,” I said. “They could do that now if they wanted. Easier and more useful in the long term if they grab small groups of us as we search for supplies and bring in new people. Let the community grow just enough to work as a resource for them.”
“Fucking parasites,” Carla said, her eyes bright with anger. “We have to do something.”
“Too bad we don’t have a bunch of hunters here,” Ellis said. “At least people used to shooting from a distance would be a help.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, working through the problem. “So, we’re all agreed this is something we need to solve. We also agree it would be dumb to try a frontal assault. No glorious blaze for us. It’s gonna take some thought. We should sit with everyone and try to get some ideas.”
There is a popular idea that things by committee are never done well. War by committee, by logical extension, seems on its face like a terrible idea.
The flaw in this logic is simple. Nothing is created in a vacuum. The reason every leader in history had a cadre of people feeding them information is due to this fact. No military commander unilaterally decided what the best course of action would be.
We talked to people, and some of them had surprisingly brilliant ideas. Others not so much, but the strength of any good committee is taking in all suggestions and weeding the bad from the good.
The facts presented were concise and fairly simple. We showed them the map, explained the implications. A few people glanced at my neck, which by that point had begun to lose its black veins, but everyone understood the general concept. No one looked happy about being seen as a herd animal. But then I suppose cows and sheep would have had something to say about it, too.
The key issue for us was picking the battleground. Before any major decisions could be made, we needed to know beyond doubt that Len and his merry cannibals were still living at the farm where they held me. Which necessitated some scouting, itself a tremendously dangerous job that no one wanted.
So I volunteered.
A few of the newer people expressed open disbelief about my seriousness, assuming it had to be a trick intended to guilt some other person into doing it.
The meeting was interesting. Jem and his team of looters had produced a large number of folding tables and chairs from a nearby church. We sat in a massive square formed by the tables in the center of the bunker, battery-powered camp lights casting weird overlapping shadows everywhere.
“If you’re serious, you’re crazy,” said one disbelieving kid who had advocated picking an open fight. “If you aren’t, then saying you’ll do it isn’t gonna convince me to go in your place.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t actually going to do it,” I replied. “I won’t be fully healed for a while, but I’m far enough along to be functional. Especially if I can avoid having to kill anything.”
I was hoping for some understanding looks, but got nothing from the crowd in general. My core group sat around me, so I couldn’t see their reactions. “Look, every one of you survived out there. I had to do it for two weeks. I know how hard it is. I have a lot of respect for that. I’m offering to do this because I’ve had experience with these people. And if I go alone, it doesn’t risk anyone else. Now, can we agree I’ll go and move on to working out exactly how we’re going to stop these assholes from using us as an all-you-can-eat buffet, please?”
I sounded reasonable, calm, and collected. Working up to this meeting, I had actually practiced keeping my cool with Carla and Ellis. It took more effort than I wanted to admit.
Maria, who had suggested setting traps, raised her hand to speak. We agreed on it as a means of keeping the discussion organized, though some people grumbled that it made us look like school children. “How are you going to get there? Should we risk another vehicle?”
What she was really asking was whether we should risk the gasoline inside. In another year, gas would be useless. Eighteen months at the outside. Once the loss of potency began to become widespread, we would essentially be an island. The days of easy travel would be over.
Yet even now we had problems. Finding sources of fuel was getting harder. Plenty of vehicles sat around, but harvesting from them required a siphon and someone to act as lookout. It meant staying still out in the open, pretty much the most dangerous thing you could do short of walking right into a crowd of zombies.
I shook my head. “I’m going to ride a bike. They’d hear a car. It’ll limit what I can take with me, but I should be able to slip in and out quietly.” I kind of like the idea of a heavily armed and armored person pushing away at the pedals, though remembering how hot and tired I’d been just walking in all that almost made me cry. It was going to suck.
“What happens if they catch you?” Maria asked.
“If I think that’s likely, I’ll shoot myself in the head,” I said.
Maybe it was the words themselves, possibly the casual way I said them, but that got a reaction. Almost everyone in the room visibly flinched, many of them openly shocked.
I put up a hand. “I don’t say it to sound tough. I really don’t. These people are barely human any longer. We know they kill and eat people, but honestly I really hope they do it in that order. The virus makes them crazy, pushes them to do awful things. Have any of you stopped to wonder what they do to women?”
I let that sink in for a few seconds.
“Believe me, I’m not looking forward to this,” I said. “I’ve spent a lot of time learning to fight, to shoot, to survive. I’m sure by now Jem has explained why that is.” I had no doubt this was true. During the time I’d been missing and presumed dead, he would have told stories to explain whose hidden underground lair everyone was using. “I’ve been scared—justifiably—for a long time. I’ve gone to extremes. Fucked up as it is, that makes me ideal for this. I’ll be careful in ways most of you haven’t even considered.”
I took a calming breath. I knew I looked fine, but the idea of putting myself out there again sent icy spikes through my chest. I didn’t want it. I had no urge to throw myself into the fray again. But while I’m generally against blanket pronouncements and ultimatums, the panic and anxiety threatening to overwhelm me at the thought made me certain I had to go. If I didn’t, it would just be that much harder the next time.
When I was young, before my parents joined a questionable religious movement that became a cult, I rode horses. They paid for lessons and for six glorious months, a tiny me, a version of Ran Lawson with long, loose curls and none of the scars, grinned with joy every Saturday for a few hours as she rode. Right until I was thrown.
Yeah, I know it’s a cliché but there has to be truth in them or they wouldn’t exist in the first place. I was thrown and landed on a fence post, ribs first. It remains one of the most painful experiences of my life. Mom and dad took me to the ER, and I never went back. Never rode a horse again. I let the fear of it have a place inside me, and gave it room to grow.
In the end, they agreed. A few people expressed guilt that they hadn’t volunteered.
“What, are you dumb?” I asked one of them. “This is stupid dangerous. You have someone offering to go. Be happy about it. We may not always have the option.”
29
I was right. All that pedaling was a fucking nightmare.
The armor stayed home but for one of the standard police issue vests, and even that was jammed into my backpack. It took something like fifteen years for me to make my way across the county, largely owing to the hilly terrain and a need to avoid zombies now and then.
Three days had passed since the meeting. In that time, Jem and his team start
ed putting our plans into motion.
I stashed the bike near a road sign a few hundred yards from the farm. The tall grass did plenty to hide it, and it was far enough back from the road to not draw attention. My biggest worry was whether I’d run into any zombies while navigating toward the place from the woods.
At first I thought I was lucky not to, but a slow realization dawned on me. It wasn’t luck at all; zombies were just aware enough of how dangerous this place was to avoid it. I tried very hard not to imagine what sort of horrors were powerful enough to ward away the living dead.
I never got anywhere near the edge of the woods. Making out the shape of the farmhouse was easy enough, even from hundreds of feet away. The fields between here and there were surprisingly normal. Apparently the crop had been planted before everything went to hell. Corn grew in the flat spaces between the wooded hills, less healthy than it would have been with the regular care available to those with functional infrastructure, but it was still more food than my people could eat in a month.
I wasn’t planning this whole thing as a means to steal the food growing on the land of the people we would probably end up killing, but hey. It was a nice potential benefit.
With great care, I climbed a tree. Not high, in case I was spotted and needed to get down fast, but off the ground enough that I could get a nice view. My arm held up nicely, partially thanks to all the strengthening exercises I’d been doing. The nerves were still messed up, but way better than they’d been.
“Okay, let’s see what you’re up to,” I muttered as I pulled the small binoculars from their belt pouch and settled in to watch.
I came expecting the Reavers to be there, and was not disappointed. Movement through the windows was nearly constant—these weren’t people who had an easy time staying still when awake. I’d had a moment of doubt when I saw all the corn growing, knowing how hungry Nero could make you, but the immature plants probably weren’t even close to edible yet.
The front door opened, drawing my attention.
It was a man, though every instinct in me rebelled at the label. It had the shape of a man, but the specifics were all wrong. Even across the distance, I could see the deep shadows crawling across his veins. His skin was taut against bunched muscles, the body of a starving crack addict. Shirtless, he moved with the same furious jerks and jitters I’d seen in Len, but more pronounced.
And almost every inch of skin had some kind of injury. Long, deep scratches covered him in a patchwork straight out of a torture chamber. Some looked self-inflicted. Others were obvious assault wounds.
His face, so tiny through the binoculars, was a contorted Oni mask of rage. As I watched, he violently rubbed his palms down the sides of his legs as if to avoid further harm to himself. When that wasn’t enough, the man clenched his fists and struck the posts holding up the porch roof.
The next thing that happened was too fast to catch. A flash of color and light blurred across my field of vision, and the man was gone. I swept the area, trying to make sense of what happened.
He was in the yard, having been tackled by someone bursting through the door and launched out to the ground. The two of them fought viciously, brutally. They tore at each other, slipping in punches, elbows, knees, even a few kicks any time they could find a space. It was what I thought of as prison fighting, the desperate, struggle-for-your-life combat leaving no room for interpretation.
The newcomer was bigger and more thickly built, clearly the recipient of more food than his opponent. It made a wretched kind of sense; these people were driven by the basic urge to eat. The strong would take what they wanted and the weak would get weaker.
The big guy took control in short order. After a furious bout of exchanged blows, he managed a square hit to the temple, stunning the smaller man. Without missing a beat, the big man lunged forward and wrapped his hands and forearms around the chin and skull of his enemy.
It didn’t happen fast, but I couldn’t look away.
No matter what movies and television show you, breaking a man’s neck with your bare hands is insanely difficult. It requires more torque than most people can generate. Once in a great while a chiropractor would paralyze someone with a toned-down version of the maneuver, but actually separating the tough material holding the human neck together? No.
This guy did it. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched and writhed with the effort, the strain causing him to grimace, but he succeeded. In a horrifying twist—pun not intended but in retrospect appropriate—the smaller man didn’t appear to die from this attack. His mouth still worked. Whether the movement was simply the last throes before everything shut down, I couldn’t say.
I watched the big guy slowly raise himself to his feet, looking down at his defeated enemy as if seeing him for the first time.
Then he slowly lifted the dying man up and tossed him over a shoulder. I had a strong suspicion what would become of him once he was inside.
I truly hoped he would be dead first.
I watched for the rest of the day. After watching a guy kill one of his companions and presumably go inside and eat him, my appetite for risk-taking was thoroughly dampened. I nestled in the branches and tried to stay as still as possible, and I observed.
Once in a while I jotted down a note, if it was something specific or vital, but mostly I relied on my memory. Years of practice honed my recall to a surgical edge. Not that I needed it in this case; this group of Reavers didn’t have much complexity.
I never saw Len, but didn’t read into his absence. Not many people went outside the house, though I assumed there was another exit I couldn’t see. There would have to be, if for no other reason than to lead to some kind of outdoor bathroom. At least a dozen Reavers in the house, and it was not large. Considering their diet, the smell of that many people dropping anchor indoors would have been intolerable.
At dusk I put down one last line, a three word note summarizing what I believed to be the most important observation in front of me, then started flexing and stretching my limbs to get the circulation going again.
Climbing out of the tree was the hardest part. Cycling home took forever, but it was just work. The lack of zombies nearby made the first mile total cake, and the falling night took care of the rest. Romero was wrong in his classic movies, because the undead usually vanished once the sun fell. I’d originally thought this was odd, but on further thought it made perfect sense. Prey animals—people—usually sleep at night. Visibility is low. It’s just more efficient not to burn the energy and rest for a while, though I have no idea what constitutes rest for zombies.
I rode the bike to the pickup truck I’d stashed a few miles away and tossed it in the back. Yeah, it had been a risk, but we put the bare minimum amount of gas in the tank. Balance of risk said that minimizing the chance of being seen had to equal out with the best chance of getting me home in one piece to pass along my report.
I didn’t get to do that until the next morning. Everyone but the people on watch were asleep when I got there. My room was dark, the open walkway down to the bunker entrance a black maw in the floor. I shed my shoes and socks, pulled off my shirt, and skinned out of my pants in the space of a few seconds. I was so very ready for sleep.
I crawled into the bed and discovered someone was already there.
The beefy arm I flopped onto stiffened and tried to withdraw. Must have woken him from a dead sleep.
“Sorry,” came the muffled reply.
“Jem? What are you doing?”
It took him a few seconds to form a response. Jem was slow to wake. “Someone dropped a box of cleaning supplies when we were moving stock down to the bunker. Got it all over a bunch of beds. So I let people sleep in the guest room and I crashed here. I didn’t mean to be here when you got back.”
He sat up to move, but I pushed him back down. “It’s fine. Bed’s big enough for both of us.”
I didn’t give him time to argue, and I didn’t really have the energy. I was beat. He budged
over and made room, which I made good use of by curling up in a good impression of a cat. I heard the gentle clinking of Nikola’s tags and we were joined seconds later by a large mass or warm fur trying desperately to wiggle into the space between us.
“Nik,” I said warningly. The dog huffed a disappointed breath and took his spot at the foot, where my toes could settle against him for warmth.
I didn’t have any worries about Jem reading too deeply into sharing a bed. He was a decent guy. But if I had, they would have been negated by the fact he passed right back out almost as soon as he was done moving over. It was kind of impressive, like he’d just finished a particularly satisfying Thanksgiving dinner and fell into the vaunted food coma to recover.
It wasn’t so easy for me. I was bone-tired, the way you get after a day of hard manual labor or severe emotional upheaval. My day was a little of both. Biking a few miles, pushing down the stress and worry I’d be seen, and watching the sheer power of the violence in front of me all wore me down.
My mind wouldn’t slow down, though. Insomnia and I were old friends. For as long as I could remember, sleep was always an ideal I rarely met on even ground. Either I was too alert to find it, or I was exhausted but trapped in the quiet with my rapid thoughts. The latter was torturous for me. Going over the same mental images and ideas dozens of times always put me asleep eventually, but they were rarely pleasant things.
Today had been less fun than usual.
There was no shying away from it. My thoughts didn’t turn from the horror of the violence, no more than I tried to forget the way the Reavers themselves made my skin crawl and my throat tighten. An attack of the Shivers might give me some of their symptoms for a time, but today had shown me once and for all that I was not one of them.
