by TW Brown
“Okay, you have me there,” Randi agreed with a nod of the head. “But still, have you ever seen that many zombie children gathered in one place? Not a single adult up there. And then there are the cats.”
Vix shuddered. Yes, this was an odd pairing, but then, when she returned her gaze back to the children, she noticed the swishing tails of perhaps hundreds of felines weaving in and around the legs of all the zombie children. There was a ripple in the crowd and a single child stepped forward.
“What…” Vix started.
“…the bloody hell,” Randi finished.
“Is this what you wanted to show me?” Vix whispered.
“Well, not exactly. I was simply going to show you those little bone structures. I swear I had no idea about this madness.” Randi took a step back towards the exit, her hand reaching out and taking hold of Vix’s elbow to guide her around what looked like most of a rib cage, pelvic bone, and upper thigh.
“You think they did this?” Vix gave a nod to the children still filing out of more of the dark archways of long empty shops and stores.
“That seems as likely as anything.”
“So, what do we do about it?”
Randi eyed the one child that had come forward from the group. It had been a boy. He looked to have been seven or eight. Any shred of clothing he or any of them had owned had long since deteriorated or been scuffed away over the years. This one still wore what looked like one hiking boot on the left foot. Maybe that was what had set this one apart and made it some sort of King of the Zombie Children. Randi had no idea, but she did recognize a leader when she saw it on any level. The other zombie children actually made way for this one to come out front. Now, as she and Vix backed up for the exit, it watched with its rheumy eyes like it was waiting for them to do something.
Vix reached behind them for the shell of what was left of the door that they had pushed aside just enough for them to enter. There were actual doorways that had been ripped open with nothing remaining, but that meant deviating from their course which, at the moment, was the straight line that was the shortest distance between two points.
At last, they squeezed out. Vix went first; that allowed Randi the chance to get one more look. The children had not moved. Their leader still stood at a break in the upper guardrail where a section had fallen or been torn away. His arms hanging loose at his sides, his head tilted as he seemed to be regarding them and waiting for something.
The two women turned and ran across what had been York Road and followed the train tracks until they reached the street that took them back to the Shell Centre and their friends. It dawned on them both almost instantly that they had been able to hear the sounds of the fortification being built all the way over at the Waterloo complex. That meant that the zombie children could more than likely hear them as well.
“Why haven’t they come for us?” Vix asked.
“I have no idea, but I don’t want to count on our luck holding. We need to tell the others.”
“Then what?”
“I have no idea,” Randi muttered as they continued running home to share this news.
***
“The dome is basically a wash,” Siggy wiped his face with the towel Ronni handed him. It was difficult to tell if the streaks that were carved through the soot on his face were from sweat, tears, or both.
“At least some of you made it,” Ronni said after taking a drink from the canteen.
“You are gonna have to forgive me if I am not quite up to speed on just accepting the death of so many people that I was close to.” Siggy turned and walked over to a group of survivors rescued from the dome complex.
“Don’t let him bother you,” Henry said coming to stand beside Ronni and Chad. “I am sure he appreciates all that you people did to help us.”
“I just can’t get over the fact that this place was within just a couple of miles of our little resort,” Mark said with a shake of his head.
There was a pause in the conversation. Chad let it go on for a few minutes before he finally spoke up. He turned to Mark and cleared his throat to get the man’s attention. “So, how much trouble are we in?”
“Oh crap,” the big man groaned, rubbing his face with his hands in a scrubbing motion that only smeared the dark smudges of soot and made him look even more haggard. “Can we just forget that one? I think you made up for it.”
“But we violated some major rules,” Chad insisted.
“Jeez, Dad!” Ronni snapped. “He is cutting us some slack.”
“Tell ya what,” Mark pushed away from the tree that he had been leaning against and walked over to Chad, “let me see your hands.”
Chad extended his hands and Mark struck fast, slapping them with a loud smack that caused a few heads to turn. He yanked his hands back, sucking in a gasp between his teeth.
“What the—” Chad exclaimed.
“Feel properly chastised now?” The security chief turned to Ronni. “Do you need chastising as well?”
“No!” Ronni shoved both her hands behind her back and even took a few steps away from the man.
“How about you two get back to your vacation?” Mark suggested.
“I still can’t get over the fact that you have carved out quasi-resorts for people to go to in the fu—” Henry started, but his teeth clicked shut and he flushed a bit as his eyes darted to Ronni. “Umm…I mean the freaking zombie apocalypse.”
“The weather looks like it is turning,” Mark said after giving Chad a pat on the shoulder. “I would guess there is going to be some nice powder by morning. Why not go up to the lodge and tell them I sent you and said that you two should be given one of the rooms. Have them set you up with your gear tonight and hit the slopes first thing in the morning. We just got in some really decent snowboards from a trader that came through. He found them up in Oregon. There were the ruins of some sort of community that apparently tried to make their home in the mountains of all places. Even better, I guess it was the old lodge where they filmed that movie, The Shining. From the looks, they went under less than a year ago. Anyways, I guess there was a shitload of old skiing and snowboarding gear. The trader remembered us and brought a bunch back.”
“Can we, Dad?” Ronni spun to Chad, her face beaming with excitement.
“I guess so,” Chad shrugged.
“Try not to sound too excited,” Henry laughed. “Look, you guys know what you did, and under any other circumstance, yeah, it would be your asses, but I think we can let it slide this time. Now, go have fun.”
With that, Mark headed for the closest group of dome refugees with Henry. Once he was gone, Chad turned to Ronni who was almost hopping up and down she was so excited.
“What?” Chad asked, an eyebrow raised quizzically.
“I have always wanted to snowboard since I was little,” she gushed.
The pair returned to their cabin and gathered their gear. While he was sort of looking forward to the peace and quiet that the cabin would have provided, he could not deny his daughter this little luxury of a room in the lodge.
When they arrived at the lodge, the place was abuzz with news of the dome. Most people were incredulous that something of that nature could be so close without anybody realizing it. To Chad, that was not such a big deal. After all, it wasn’t like people were out scouring the area these days. And if the government had wanted to keep it hidden from the techno-crazed society that had existed before the zombie event, how less likely was it that it be discovered with things being as they were these days.
Once they were checked into their room, the father and daughter decided to come down to the dining room and join in the community meal. They had barely sat down when the first of the dome refugees arrived looking shell-shocked and confused. That meal turned into a bit of a welcome-and-indoctrination party for the new arrivals. Chad soon found himself working the floor with his daughter as they served hot soup and fresh bread.
When a few of the refugees recognized Chad and Ronni, they became a magnet as t
he former dome residents flocked to the pair in order to express their thanks. By the time everything settled down, Chad was exhausted. Ronni seemed fine and had even arranged the checkout of all the gear they would need for the next day.
It was no surprise to Chad that he woke to his daughter nudging him in the ribs. “Time to get moving, old man!” She laughed and danced back nimbly from his half-hearted swipe.
“That looks…” Chad rubbed his eyes and squinted.
“Yellow?” Ronni gave her Tweety Bird hat a tug, pulling the flaps down over her ears.
“At least I won’t have any problem finding you when you wipe out. That thing can probably be seen from space.”
Chad grabbed his bag and ducked into the bathroom to get suited up. The way his body felt, he probably could have slept another several hours. Leaning forward to be closer to the mirror, he hefted the candle and inspected his face. According to the doctor, the cancer would probably come on fast. He had likened it to a wildfire. Right now, it was smoldering coals, but when it caught, it would be swift and brutal.
He could not help but chuckle at the irony of his situation. He had survived a zombie apocalypse and a myriad of horrible things over the past several years only to fall prey to prostate cancer.
“Hurry up!” Ronni urged, giving the door a solid thump.
“Maybe I will fall and break my neck,” Chad mumbled. “At least then I would never have to tell her.”
Twenty minutes later, the two of them were in the lobby of the mountain resort. Looking out the window, a light snow was falling. The light from the lanterns mounted along the walkway that led to the slopes and cross-country trails were flickering as the large flakes swirled around them.
After some oatmeal, toast with wild mountain blackberry jam, and a hot, sweet rice drink, the father and daughter headed outside. Dawn was just breaking, and they actually had the slopes to themselves for the first couple of hours. Chad showed his daughter some of the snowboarding basics on a gentle slope. She was not thrilled with his insistence that she stay at the bottom of the slope as he made her practice stopping on her heels over and over.
“Stopping is the most important thing you will learn,” he kept insisting.
Her frustration only got worse when a handful of other people arrived and began making runs from the top of the hill. She watched one girl about her age as she hit a mogul and went airborne, turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees before landing with a happy squeal.
At last, Chad seemed satisfied and allowed her to start making runs from farther up the hill. She was certain that her first attempt would have him insisting that she return to the bottom of the hill when she lost control and ended up falling on her butt and then flipping several times before coming to an unceremonious stop in the thick skirt of a large pine tree.
At first she didn’t move, certain that the scolding was about to begin in regards to her obvious lack of control. When she heard nothing, she turned her head and was surprised to see her dad stopped just a few feet away. He was looking down at her with a big smile on his face.
“What’s so funny?” she huffed as she sat up. That action shook all the lower boughs of the pine tree, sending a massive amount of snow cascading down onto her. She shrieked when a bunch of it went down the back of her jacket and made contact with her skin.
“That!” Chad burst into a full on belly laugh. With a hop, he turned his board back down the fall line and let gravity begin to take him away. “See you at the bottom!” he called over his shoulder.
By the time Ronni managed to crawl out from under the bottom limbs of the tree, she was covered in snow and her teeth had started to chatter as a chill wind whipped up and seemed to find every single bit of snow dampened skin on her body all at once.
When she reached the bottom, her dad was sitting on a rock, his board leaning beside him. “How about we go grab something to eat, let you change, and then come back for another try?”
“Just let me make one more run?” Ronni pleaded.
“You sure?” Chad asked, dropping his board and sitting down to strap in, already certain as to his daughter’s answer.
They made their way over to the tow rope that would drag them up the hill. They let go at the spot on the hill that he insisted she not go beyond and made their way to the start of the run.
“You go first,” Chad ushered her past. “I want to actually watch your run this time. We can go over anything that I see when we have lunch.”
Ronni moved to the lip, waving away her dad as he insisted she keep an eye on the fall line. Honestly, she was tired of hearing that phrase. She got it….the fall line was the way the hill sloped.
“Be careful, that hill does not exactly point you in the direction we want to go,” Chad warned. “Make that switch just past the boulders and veer left!” he called after her.
She saw the spot he was talking about and was ready to cut left when she felt like she was about to fall. Throwing herself back, she overcompensated and the board cut hard right and shot over the lip of the little ridge. She was now headed for the thick copse of trees at a speed that was sure to cause injury if she crashed into them. She flopped back and continued to slide several feet until coming to a stop.
She sat up, making sure that there were no snow-laden branches this time, and saw her dad crest the ridge, his speed allowing him to go airborne just a bit and land with enviable ease as he veered towards her.
He was laughing, and then suddenly stopped. His expression changed from playful mocking to horrified in the blink of an eye. She was about to ask him what was wrong when she felt something grab her leg.
***
“We got a live one,” Jess said, motioning Jody over.
The ambush had gone off even better than he could have hoped. His people had managed to slip into position without being noticed. When they popped up from their various locations and fired at the riders, they had taken down all five and even managed to snag all the horses.
Jody walked over to the woman that had survived. She had three bolts sticking out from various locations, fortunately (or not) for her, none of them had struck anything vital. She had one in her left shoulder and two in her left leg, both jutting from her upper thigh.
“How many people in that house?” Jody knelt by the woman.
“Screw you!” the woman managed through clenched teeth.
Reaching down, Jody grabbed the bolt sticking out of her shoulder and yanked it free. The woman screamed and her head lolled back as her eyes rolled up into her head, showing nothing but the whites.
“Wake up!” Jody slapped the girl on the cheeks a few times, not hard, just enough to sting and hopefully bring the woman back around.
When her eyes finally fluttered and she once again looked up at him, there was now a bitter hatred swirling in with the contempt. Personally, Jody could care less. These people had been in on a plot that had involved kidnapping his little girl. Additionally, he was pretty certain that they had plans to attack the community that he had helped carve out into the middle of nowhere.
He remembered thinking that being in such a remote area would reduce the chances of ever having to deal with humans with the exception of the occasional raider. Certainly he had never anticipated having another community spring up. However, he guessed that it was simply a matter of human nature. Weren’t armies one of the first things that societies established throughout history? Certainly it was not to deal with wild animals (or zombies as was the case now), but rather, to protect itself from other humans who wanted more and were not happy with their own lot.
“We can do this the easy way, or you can hold out and see how much pain it takes for you to offer information that you will give up eventually.” Jody reached down and grabbed one of the bolts jutting from her thigh. “And if you think I will let you bleed out, you are mistaken.”
“You people are exactly the kind of animals that George said you were, and you can just go ahead and kill me because I ain’t tel
ling you a damn thing,” the woman managed through the pain.
Jody shrugged and yanked out the next bolt. He heard a few of his crew suck in some air between their teeth in a kind of sympathy to the pain. He was pretty sure that his reputation, whatever it might have been before, was basically ruined at this point. He gave it only a passing thought as he recalled that feeling in his gut when he had discovered his daughter missing.
He woke the woman after he had tied strips of cloth to each of the wounds and pulled them tight. They were already soaked with blood and the woman’s color was such that he did not think she would live much longer at this rate.
Standing up, he turned to the three members of the team that he had simply referred to as Red Shirts up to this point. “Take her back to Hope. Find Danny and tell him to get this woman patched up if she survives the trip. I want her alive when I get home if that is at all possible.”
There were some uncertain looks and Jody screwed on his best impression of a hard core sergeant. “You were chosen to come on this mission by me. This is my mission and I give the orders. Are we clear?”
That received some fast nods and the trio scrambled to get the woman secured, throw her over the back of a horse and a few minutes later were on their way back to Hope. Once they were gone, Jody let out a long sigh that allowed him to release some of the tension that had been building during this period where he had slipped into something uncomfortable and foreign. He suddenly had a new appreciation of Charles “Slider” Montero.
“You okay?” Jess asked after the riders were well out of earshot.
“Not really. I almost feel like I am channeling some sort of evil spirit.” Jody cast a sideways glance at the woman. “Does that make sense?”
“Perfectly,” Jess said with a nod as she patted the man on the shoulder. “You are one of the good guys, Jody. But right now, you have to wear a different hat. You need to be a warrior. That can mean that you have to hold human life in a sense of disregard. If you weren’t bothered by all this, I think I would be having second thoughts about you as our community leader.”
