by TW Brown
“Cut him down,” Kevin ordered.
The children standing around simply stared at him. A few looked to Sean who was still being held and comforted by Heather.
“NOW!” Kevin ordered.
The spell broke and several of the children began fumbling over each other to cut the man down. None of them thought to try and catch him; or maybe they did but decided against it. The man landed with a thud and a loud exhale as all the air was forced from his lungs.
Kevin moved in amongst them, gently setting them aside and kneeling beside the man. Kevin winced at the ruin that was his face. He looked up when a rag was shoved almost in his own face. Deanna held out the wet cloth with a look that Kevin read as embarrassed.
“Thank you,” he said with a nod and tried to wipe the man’s face as gently as possible.
“You say that some of your men attacked these kids while out on a supply run?” Kevin asked. “How did you find out, and is that what we heard this morning from inside your compound?”
“A couple of Derek’s boys were drunk and one of them started running their mouth. Said something about snagging some girl and how her boyfriend tried to play the hero.”
“Fish,” a voice sobbed from behind Kevin.
“He said something about a camp that was ripe for the plucking…one of my guys heard it and told me. Derek had only been with us about a month. That was why he was sent out on a supply run with his little gang of fellow survivors. First thing we establish is if a person is ready to help the group. He came back with a helluva haul. We didn’t even think to ask—”
“That was our stuff!” Sean growled. “We had to leave almost everything behind when those bad men came.”
“And when we found out about it…we were going to find you…bring it back. We dealt with Derek and his gang.” The man was able to open one eye. Kevin was amazed at how blue it looked amidst all the purple bruising and the blood.
“Liar!” Sean screamed. He lunged at the man, but Heather held him and would not let go.
“Why would I lie about something like that…why would I walk into your camp—” the man began, but this time it was Kevin who cut him off.
“About that…what was your name? I don’t think I caught it. And how did you just mange to stroll into these kids’ camp?/ It’s not like you can MapQuest their address these days?” Kevin knelt in front of the man. He wanted to be able to look him in the eye.
“We questioned Larry, one of Derek’s men last night. We were trying to pick them off one at a time. These were some big boys. The kind you would just as soon not have to tangle with if you know what I’m saying.” The man gave a weak chuckle that turned into a cough. “And my name is Doug…Doug Smith.”
“Well I hope to be able to say that I am pleased to meet you some day, Mr. Smith.” Kevin stood and turned to face the children, Aleah, and Heather. “Now…where is Catie?”
“She said that she saw something,” Aleah answered. “And the next time you just up and leave to go do something stupid, would you mind letting us know?”
Kevin wanted to defend his actions. A number of excuses came to mind; he didn’t want anybody else being in the area, somebody needed to stay and look after the children, and a few others drifted through his consciousness.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” is what came out of his mouth. Truthfully, he was just tired. Also, he needed to wind down from the operation and just wanted to be alone for a few minutes. He had a lot to consider.
“And what did you blow up?” Heather asked.
“A case of dynamite…oh, and an old grain silo.”
“What?” Sean pushed away from Heather. “You blew up the whole other case?”
“You know what happens to dynamite when it goes bad, kid?”
“Dynamite can go bad?” Sean got a suspicious look on his face like he believed Kevin was trying to mess with him.
“Yeah, and when it does, it sweats nitroglycerine.”
“My grandpa took that for his heart,” one of the little girls said.
“Yeah…not exactly the same thing,” Kevin explained. “This kind of nitroglycerine is really unstable. One bump or even if two pieces rub together wrong and ka-blooey! When dynamite gets old, it sweats out the nitroglycerine inside of it. All it might take is for you to sneeze.”
Kevin felt that he was exaggerating, but not by much. Sean was looking just a little bit pale. He had a feeling that the young man had made some plans with that other case of explosives.
“Now, can we get back to Catie? When did she leave? Which direction did she go?”
“I’m right here!” a voice said as the young woman came winding her way through the blackened stones to where everybody was gathered.
“Where did you run off to?” Kevin asked.
“When this guy showed up, I went to see if he brought company,” Catie explained.
“Only three of us made it out,” Doug rasped. He was sitting up now, but definitely favoring one side and his legs were splayed.
“I wasn’t talking about you and your friends.”
“How bad is it?” Kevin knew immediately what she had gone to see.
“He brought a lot of them…over a thousand is my guess. They are making their way through the fields. That big ass explosion didn’t help. It actually turned them right for us. I see five main groups. Lucky for us, the smallest one is the only one that should hit the cemetery.”
“Everybody grab anything that is of any importance!” Kevin called as he turned to face the kids. “We need to make a run for it.”
“But it’s only zombies,” one of the kids argued. “They’re slow and stupid. We see them every once in a while at the fence. We just go up and poke them. What’s the big deal?”
“Because a few of them is no big deal, but this many, they will fold that fence over like it is made out of aluminum foil. We won’t stand a chance,” Doug spoke up, pulling himself to his feet.
“We?” several voices asked in chorus.
“Look, kids, I get it. Those guys were creeps…bad guys. But you can’t just assume that every single man left alive is going to be a monster like those guys,” Doug explained. “I am here, and I’ll be damned if I would be able to just walk away and leave you kids to…that.” He gestured with his arm the way that Catie said the zombies were coming from. That caused him to wince and double over just a bit.
“There is an airport to the northwest. If we can get to the highway, we can probably hide out there for a day or two until things settle down around here,” Kevin said as he offered a shoulder for the other man to lean on.
“That is not going to work.” Catie shook her head. “There is a mob on a direct path for that area. I climbed a water tower and got a good look around. Our best bet is to move due south to a set of railroad tracks. If we follow them, they will eventually get us back up to the southern end of Valparaiso.”
“Then I guess that is where we head.” Kevin raised his hands in the air as several of the children started asking what seemed like a million questions at once. “You can’t stay here. Trust me when I tell you that these things are bad news when they are in large groups like this. They don’t feel pain and if they want to get at something, they don’t care what is done to them in the process. Like Doug here says, they will fold that fence over like nothing.”
“Why can’t we just go down below until they pass?” a voice called out from the midst of the group.
“You can, but there is no telling how long that mob could end up hanging around, and if they find a way in…then you would be trapped,” Kevin answered. “Now, we don’t have a lot of time—”
“Maybe thirty minutes,” Catie interrupted and then nodded for Kevin to continue.
“So if you are coming with us, then grab what you can carry. Remember, things get heavier after a while. You should only bring what you absolutely need. We can replace just about anything else once we get on the road.”
The children stood around for a few secon
ds. Sean seemed unsure and was not offering any help as the majority looked to him for answers.
“You heard them,” Deanna stepped forward. “We don’t have forever. Get your butts moving!”
For the first time, Kevin actually took a look at the young girl. Her hair was a light brown and looked like she had sawed it off with a knife just above the shoulders; her eyes were a shade of hazel that almost looked green. She had freckles across the bridge of her nose and a dimple on each cheek that remained even when she wasn’t smiling. She had long legs that looked a bit awkward and reminded him of a foal; how they almost seemed too spindly to support her frame even though the girl was extremely skinny. Yet, under that was somebody with that natural ability to take charge of a situation.
Kevin was a real believer that people were born with their abilities. All it took was the right nurturing and set of experiences to bring them out. Something told him that this girl could actually thrive in this new world. He would do his best to keep an eye on her.
The children all scrambled at her command and took off for the crypt where their belongings were stored for the most part. That left Kevin, Catie, Aleah, Heather, and Doug alone.
“I can’t begin to thank you,” Doug began as he patted Kevin on the arm and eased down to sit with his back up against one of the headstones.
“You don’t need to, but I want to make something very clear,” Kevin turned to face the man after watching Deanna heard a group of the youngest children—ages looked to be between nine and ten years old—down below to gather their things. “I don’t know you, and until I have reason, I don’t trust you. I will be watching you…and the moment I even think you might be trying to pull something…I’ll kill you. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Doug said with a nod.
“So, how did you end up letting pieces of trash like this Derek and his crew into your group?” Kevin asked as he began checking his weapons one last time before they headed out. He pulled out a canteen and took a long drink, then offered it to Doug who accepted it with a grateful nod.
“Safety in numbers. We have been taking in any who came. We figured the bad guys wouldn’t try to join us as much as they would probably try to just openly attack,” Doug explained.
It seemed a fairly reasonable assumption to Kevin. But you know what they say about when you assume anything, a voice mocked in his head. He had made a few of his own over the past several months.
“But as soon as we heard what they did, a group of us decided that we had to take them out. We grabbed the one we figured would squeal the fastest and got him to spill everything…what they did to that poor girl…that young man…and where they last saw the group of kids. Our plan was that we would find the kids and try to get them to join us…some even suggested that we publically display the bodies of the men who had hurt them, so that the kids could see for themselves that we meant no harm.”
“Sounds kind of extreme.” Kevin accepted his canteen back and saw the first of the children emerging from the crypt. Some carried a small knapsack like the kind they would have used on the first day of school.
“These are extreme times,” Doug said with a laugh.
In less than ten minutes, everybody was standing in a loose semi-circle around where Kevin had remained with Doug. Kevin did a quick head count and was surprised that there were fifty-three children. He’d known that there were quite a few, but had no idea that there were so many. By the same token, as he looked at all of these faces—frightened, tired, and in some cases shocked into total apathy—he saw people that waited for him to direct them on this new path. He struggled to see the criminal element, but merely saw children.
Well, whatever crimes they committed, I think they have been absolved, he thought. Time to move forward with a clean slate.
“We have a long day ahead of us,” Kevin began. “We will be putting as much distance between ourselves and this hornet’s nest of undead that are buzzing about. You are going to get tired, but I need you to just keep going. I will find us a place to camp around dark, but we will not stop until then. We eat on the move. Does everybody understand?”
“What if you have to go to the bathroom?” a boy asked.
“Go quick and don’t get left behind. Bring a bathroom buddy,” Kevin replied.
“What if you have to go number two?” a girl asked. “I don’t want somebody standing over me while I do that.”
“Would you rather be dead?” Deanna spun to face the crowd. Kevin hid a smirk, he was starting to like this kid.
Like the Hebrews fleeing the pharaoh, the group left the cemetery in one mass exodus. Kevin positioned himself in the front with Catie beside him. She knew the way to the railroad track. Also, her recon was what they were relying on to begin with. It only made sense that he turn over the reins of leadership.
Heather travelled in the middle of the group, and Aleah had agreed to bring up the rear. Doug was just mixed in, but Kevin noted that all of the children still gave him a wide berth, none seeming that anxious to extend even the slightest hint of welcome.
As the morning passed into midday, some of the children began to forget that they were travelling through a world overrun by the undead and reverted to that behavior so typical to bored kids on a long trip. At one point, a group actually began to sing-song “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Kevin finally put it to rest…sort of. He spun suddenly. “I will pull over, turn this parade around, and take you all right back to that graveyard if you ask one more time!”
The group all looked at him, some with open mouths. Slowly, the faces changed to grins that matched the one he was unable to keep off his face. As one, the entire group—Heather, Aleah, and even Catie—yelled back, “Are we there yet?” a final time. After that, the mood gradually lightened and people milled forward and back within the confines of their loose formation to engage in all manner of conversations.
Kevin had expected there to be more problems, but was amazed at how well the group stayed together; even those who had to slip back or to the side for a bathroom break looked to be taking the journey-starting admonition to heart. Everybody brought along a bathroom buddy. Of course the boys made a much bigger show of it, many going so far as to share the degree of the stink being emitted by the individual they had paired with for such occasions.
On a few instances, Catie or Kevin separated from the group to deal with the odd straggler who picked up on their trail. Twice, Kevin had enlisted Sean, Deanna, and a few of the older kids to assist in taking down small packs that were drawn to them along the way.
Kevin continued to keep one eye on their new adult member. Doug seemed content in the fact that none of the youngsters wanted anything to do with him and just walked along quietly. Once or twice Kevin caught him trying to offer a polite hello; each time, the child would scurry away like he was the boogeyman come to life before their eyes. It was as if they had come to simply ignore his presence, but the moment that he tried to make an attempt to cross into their space, he was a venomous snake, hairy-legged spider…or scary clown. He almost felt sorry for the guy.
Not too long into their journey, they actually came close to the still-burning fairgrounds. That had been the roughest part of the journey. He’d told the children to stay low and keep absolutely quiet. He’d made sure to add that it was okay to say something if zombies were closing in; after that whole deal with the bathroom issue, Kevin was worried that some of the children might stay silent all the way up to the point when somebody got attacked. The zombie traffic had been fairly thick, but most of them were still moving around the inferno that had been the fairgrounds. Kevin looked back to check on the children at one point and saw something that he quickly dismissed as paranoia, but he still kept it in his mental file.
Doug was smiling.
To be fair, Kevin thought that it could just as easily been a grimace. Still it would be something to keep an eye on…like he didn’t have enough already on his mind.
As nigh
t began to fall, Kevin remained vigilant for a place that they could make camp for the night. They came upon what looked to be some sort of industrial plumbing facility. There were stacks of all sorts of pipes, some large enough to walk inside; upright for the youngest, hunched over for the adults and older kids.
There were a handful of buildings. A couple actually looked to still be intact. That was a rarity anymore despite what the building had once housed. Kevin believed that some people broke into buildings just for the simple fact that they could. Others, he guessed, got some sort of perverse thrill in busting out windows. To each his own, he thought as he pointed the place out to Catie and then the remainder of the group.
They trudged through the partially standing fence that surrounded the place and made their way to the largest building in the lot. It was two stories tall and a light shade of tan. Huge windows in the front gave view to what looked to be an empty office building.
Kevin took care of the locked front door and ushered everybody inside. Since they were pretty much out of food and everybody had eaten on the road as he’d said they would, he did not do anything to dissuade the children from just finding a spot on the floor and crashing. He wanted to join them, but all of the “grown-ups” would have a quick meeting first. They would still do a full walkthrough of the building and make sure that the place was in fact empty.
It was decided that Kevin and Catie would start upstairs and work their way down. Aleah, Heather, and Doug would stay with the children and just keep an eye open.
Kevin was looking out the window, and fate seemed to finally be sending him some good luck. He saw two men move behind one of the stacks of huge concrete sewage pipes just inside the main gate. One of the men looked hurt pretty bad. The other was having to help him. The injured man had one arm slung over the shoulders of the other. A dark stain was visible on his side even in the failing light of dusk.
