by TW Brown
“Then what is the deal?” Jess stepped up beside Catie.
“Before I answer anything, you have to meet with the commander. He will answer all your questions, I’m pretty sure of that.”
“And so what…we sit in here and wait for a few days until this mysterious commander gets around to seeing us?” Catie scoffed.
“I am sure it will not be a few days,” the man replied. Catie felt her anger ramp up another notch as he actually laughed and gave her a dismissive wave.
“Yes, well, I wouldn’t wait too long if you know what is good for you,” Catie growled.
“Yep, I think I will be able to report that we have the right woman.” The man clapped his hands together and turned to leave. He paused in the entry to the tent and turned quickly, a smile still on his face. “I know you will probably tell me to go to hell, but I figure it is at least worth asking. You can choose to not answer naturally.”
Catie stared at the man. After a few seconds the man finally decided to ask the question. “Are you Catie Dreon?”
Catie simply continued to stare at the man. She did not blink, and for several heartbeats, she did not even breathe.
“Yeah, I didn’t figure you would answer.” The man turned to leave.
“Wait!” Catie called. The man stopped and ducked his head back inside the tent. “If I answer your question, will you grant me one request?”
“I can only promise to try.”
“Let Jess go. She has nothing to do with anything that happened here. I just met her a short time ago.”
“Catie, no,” Jess spoke up, her voice urgent and strained.
“Yeah, that is out of my control,” the man said. His smile had faded and he gave a slight nod to Catie and Jess before turning to depart.
“What are you doing?” Jess turned on Catie once the tent was empty except for just the two of them.
“I should have made this trip alone,” Catie sighed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking that we both have a stake in this. It is not just one of us who are at risk of having the people following her completely wiped out by this army.”
“Did you see the way they have things going on here?” Catie asked. Before Jess could answer, she continued. “This is not just some rag-tag bunch of raiders. They have this place set up like an old school military encampment with the tent I have to assume to be the command center in the middle. People are not just lounging around, they are cleaning weapons and mending gear. Raiders usually run things into the ground until they need to replace it. Sure, there are exceptions if somebody in the group has some sort of ingrained ethic about order and maintenance, but most raiders are lazy by nature which is why they raid…besides the whole being a sociopath thing. I underestimated them because of who they had running things. That was my mistake.”
“But you don’t know—” Jess began. Catie held up a hand to silence her.
“Shh, somebody’s coming.”
The two women turned to face the entrance. They gave each other’s hand a squeeze and then moved just far enough apart so that they could not simply be taken down easily and in one swift move by whoever was going to walk through that flap.
When the flap opened, the dazzling sunlight outside made it impossible to see anything other than a large shadowy outline. The man appeared to be fairly large and took up most of the entrance. Suddenly he seemed to lurch forward.
At the same moment the large man sort of tumbled into the tent, a voice from outside snapped, “For the love of all that’s holy, Rob, can you not just stop in the doorway. I’m right behind you, you big oaf.”
The voice sparked something in Catie’s memory. A moment later, a second figure entered the tent. This man was much more slender and a few inches taller than the other person who was straightening up and casting a nasty look over his shoulder.
“If it was Catie, there is no way I was just going to barge in. That woman can be a bit impulsive. And besides, I didn’t see you offering to go in first.”
“That is because you insisted that you knew what to do and how to handle her,” the second voice griped.
The slender man moved into the light cast by the single lantern hanging in the tent. Catie’s eyes went wide with recognition. At first she did not believe it.
“Sam? Sam Redding?”
Sam had been with the group that Catie had met back when she was in Erin’s camp. There was a small movement growing consisting of people who had decided that they were tired of following a lunatic. Only, if Catie remembered correctly, there had been a lot of talk back then and not much in the way of action. She had left them the night of Kevin’s death and set out on her own.
“I knew you would eventually turn up,” Sam said with a laugh that sounded rich and full. “You were too much of a bad ass to go down.”
“He calls you Mad Madge,” the big man offered.
“Rob McKay,” Catie said as she stepped up to the pair and planted her hand on her hips. “My Carrot Top and Erkel, I am not going to say that I ever thought I would see either of you again. And Darlene?”
The two men did not even bother to try and hide it. Each was shaking his head in the negative. Catie almost asked how, but then decided that she really didn’t want to know the horrible details. The fact that the woman was dead was all she really needed. It was too bad, but that was also a very real and regular part of the world they lived in.
“So I take it that you know these people?” Jess said with a hint of caution in her voice.
Catie turned to the woman and saw an expression of mistrust leaking in around the edges. It took her a moment to figure out what might be wrong.
“No, Jess, this is not a set-up. I had no idea these two were running the show with this army.” Catie spun on the men as a thought struck. “Cherish Brandini!” she blurted.
Both men made a face like each had just tasted something rotten. Sam was the one to speak. “You’ve seen her? Please, if you could tell us where…”
“She’s dead,” Catie said after placing a reassuring hand on Jess’s shoulder. “But she was captured with a group, we thought they were part of this army.”
“She was banished, but a few of Erin’s lackeys left with her. Mostly men, and probably guys that she was leading around by the dick for the last few months,” Sam explained. “We have had an issue with some thefts and some minor harassment, but nothing worth being too upset about. We figured she would screw up sooner or later and get caught.”
“Well, that is one less thing to worry about,” Sam said, obviously sounding more relieved than he might if things were as minor as they had alluded.
“So I guess that just leaves us,” Jess stated, finally ready to become part of the conversation.
“Yes, we have been doing a lot of back and forth about this area,” Rob said. “The land is fertile and it was our belief that perhaps the peninsula shaped piece of land that is made by the bend in the Tennessee River just to the west of what used to be Chattanooga would be an ideal spot to call home.”
That statement hung in the air for a few seconds before Jess spoke again, she glanced at Catie as if seeking support and then turned her attention to the two men. “We have another community in the area that has been here for quite some time as have we. They took the Southside Garden area and used a lot of what they salvaged from the rundown industrial section to shore up their defense. A community once tried to settle over in the Moccasin Bend area that you are talking about, but there is a herd over there that has been unbeatable by any of us. Honestly, we simply have not possessed the numbers to take them down. The old mental hospital has claimed too many lives, and eventually it became a sort of legend. Sort of the local haunted house if you know what I mean.”
This was all news to Catie, but she listened as did Sam and Rob. There was a lot of head nodding and eventually an agreement was made. Sam and Rob would send emissaries to the Southside Garden community with an offer of peace. Together, both side
s would send representatives to meet and discuss the best plan of attack for securing Moccasin Bend.
As the talking continued, Catie tuned it out and took a mental step back from everything. She watched as Sam, Rob, and Jess hunched over a table with a map that Sam had produced. They were planning and even smiling as they threw out ideas as well as the best way to ensure that the folks at Southside would join in this endeavor.
How could it happen so fast? Catie wondered. It all seemed too easy. She braced herself for what would come. Surely it would not be this simple. Also, while the immunes were more nomadic and tribal, the other two communities were established with walls and homes and all sorts of things that were in place and had taken years to establish. Who would want to just give that up and start over?
Well, that part was not her concern. Her only real concern was that the immune be given a place at the table. She wanted them to have a real community and start living. It was time to quit simply surviving.
“Catie!” Sam was standing in front of her, snapping his fingers. “Do you have a herd of zombies being directed at our camp?”
15
Field Observations
I moved through the thick brush and found the spot that would be perfect. Stretching out on my stomach, I brought the binoculars up and started scanning the area. Just down the gentle slope from where I had taken up my position, a group of six zombie children moved along the cluttered, narrow street.
One of the children paused and seemed to search the area for a moment. It tilted its head one way and then the other as it turned in roughly ninety degree increments. It paused as another zombie rounded the corner in the direction it had turned and hesitated as if taking an even more thorough look. This zombie was a normal one and easily eight to twelve years since it had turned.
The child zombie seemed to immediately dismiss the adult zombie and resumed up the little street. As always there were cats scurrying about the feet of the little zombies. The most interesting to watch were the kittens. They pounced and played, chasing the little child zombies and lunging at their feet as their undead hosts went about whatever business it is that zombies have during the course of a day.
“Look over there,” a voice a few feet away whispered, giving my arm a tug.
I looked in the direction Jim was pointing. At the far side of an old car crash that had eventually melded into a single large lump of twisted metal and various plastics that had almost made it impossible to tell where one automobile ended and the others began were a pair of zombie children sitting on the ground.
One of the children had its legs splayed and a group of kittens were using it as a border of sorts for an arena where they all wrestled and played. Every once in a while, one of the kittens would scamper up the abdomen of the child and then perch on a shoulder before pouncing on its brothers and sisters and rejoining the game.
“It doesn’t even seem to notice,” I whispered.
“Nope, that’s where you’re wrong, cupcake. Take a closer look at the eyes.”
I adjusted my binoculars and let a slight gasp escape. I had to watch for several seconds to be sure, but eventually I dropped my glasses and pulled out my journal, writing furiously every detail I could think to describe.
“Not only is it aware, but I swear I saw the corners of the mouth twitch. If it had more control I would bet that thing would be smiling,” I mumbled the words that I was committing to my journal as I wrote them.
“The day that I see a smiling zombie, I think I’ll just step off a cliff and say farewell. A world with smiling zombies is no place that I want to be.”
I had to hide my smile. Already we had seen enough in our time observing zombie children that, if Jim had ever been serious, he would have done himself in long ago. The most recent event being the scene yesterday when we had watched a pair of zombie children seeming to kick an old can back and forth for several minutes.
“It’s just a coincidence,” Jim had breathed after the first exchange. But after several more he had simply excused himself and slipped back a ways where he was no longer able to watch.
I don’t understand why these things bother him so much. Maybe it has something to do with how many zombies he had killed. The thing about Jim was that nobody really knew that much about him from his life in the Old World. It is a common thing for people to talk and share stories of their lives from before. Some of them fascinate me when I get to hear about the types of activities that were considered jobs back then. There were people who did nothing but make coffee for other people. I’ve never actually had coffee before, which I guess made imagining this sort of thing that people described seem even more incredible.
One man said that his job was to hold a sign in the heat, cold, rain or shine that told people to drive their cars slow so they would not hit the workers fixing roads. One man had a job riding around and giving people citations for parking in places illegally and there was a lady who sat behind a window all day and took money from people and gave them a receipt telling them that their money was now safe.
It all seemed so meaningless when you looked at the world today. As it was, I’d had to fight for this job to even be considered. If not for Dr. Zahn, I doubt that I would have pulled it off. Yet, here I was; me and Jim were out in the field doing an observational study of child zombies.
“You will be the new Marlin Perkins,” Dr. Zahn had quipped the day that I had finally been given the go ahead to commence my field work. Granted, I had no idea who Marlin Perkins was, but I thought it sounded like a good thing, so I didn’t let it bother me.
I had been given permission to take a maximum of three people to act in support and watch my back while I was out. I explained to the committee that I only wanted and needed one person. I still remember the look on Billy’s face when I’d announced that to the committee. Only, I also remembered how it had changed when the name I gave was Jim Sagar instead of Billy Haynes.
It wasn’t that I do not love Billy. In fact, that might be the very reason why I have chosen Jim instead. Billy had spent several days in a deep depression after I had announced that I’d not only encountered Emily, but had put her to rest as well.
“We need to move,” Jim whispered.
I snapped back to the current situation. A group of the child zombies were shuffling in our general direction. We crept backwards on our bellies so as to minimize the chance that the zombie children noticed us. When we finally reached what had once been a gas station right on the edge of this little town, we got to our feet. I went first, climbing the rope ladder that we had set up so that we could get up on the roof.
I ducked into the little tarp shelter that we had tied off to give us shade from the sun or shelter from the rain. So far the weather had been almost perfect. The days were sunny, but not too hot. The nights were chilly, but nothing a sleeping bag and my warm clothes could not keep at bay.
I grabbed a few wrapped bits of field bread and some dried meat. Jim shook his head to my offer of food and instead moved to the edge of the building and laid on his stomach, his binoculars almost glued to his face for the entire time that I ate. After a bathroom break, I went in and laid down to catch a nap. I pulled out my journal and began to review my pages of notes. A few of the entries were marked with big stars scratched in the margins of the page.
Those were things that I felt Dr. Zahn would be the most interested in when she started going through my observations. I felt my eyes grow heavy and I drifted off reading my notes.
***
Entry Seven—
At least two dozen of the children are walking across a grassy field. At first I was not paying any notice, then the cats caught my attention and what I witnessed has me absolutely fascinated. Jim says we should all just give up now because the zombies are gonna win.
The children were in a bit of a line across this one field. They were scaring out mice! The cats were running around pouncing on them and making a feline fiesta out of the entire thing. When it was over, the c
hildren all just drifted over to one area and stood around while the cats sprawled at their feet and enjoyed the spoils of their zombie child-assisted hunt. Eventually, the cats moved into a patch of sunlight and they all just sprawled on a cracked grocery store parking lot, dozing while their benefactors apparently stood in watch over them. An adult zombie wandered up and started for the sleeping cats only to be bumped and jostled until it was moving off in another direction away from where the cats napped.
Entry Seventeen—
A pack of zombie wolves arrived. That meant Jim and I had to retreat to the roof for safety, but I was able to witness a few things. Of course zombies don’t attack zombies. At least that was my understanding until today.
The wolves obviously spotted the cats and figured they had just stumbled into a buffet. (Okay, I know zombies don’t ‘figure’ anything, but I am trying to illustrate a point.) They started for the largest concentration of the cats that were currently located in an open park that still had an old corkscrew slide standing in the midst of all the tall grass like an ancient sentinel that refuses to be displaced.
I heard the first moan as we were pulling up the ladder and taking a seat where we could try and get a look at the wolves. I hadn’t planned on being able to observe them, but I would not pass up on an opportunity that was dropped in my lap. One thing I noticed right away was that the wolves still moved sort of like a hunting pack. They were spread out and in a staggered wedge formation as they closed in on the seemingly unsuspecting felines.
Out of nowhere, a very large group of zombie children crossed in front of the wolves and actually ran into them, forcing them to alter their course. The wolves began to make their odd growling groans as they apparently did not care for such treatment. Unlike human zombies that can simply be pinballed in another direction and appear to forget what it was they had previously been closing in on, the wolves tried to return to their intended targets.
