Zombie-dem

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 5

  Stay or Go

  She might have preferred it if she knew Jack was dead. The elation of what was most likely false hope was draining. It played on her thoughts for every second of every day. Logan seemed to have a better way of dealing with such things.

  She sat, legs dangling over a grassy embankment, watching him fish inside the fast flowing stream. Logan had insisted they leave the crash site at first light after they had buried only one body on top of that mountain. He had led Lizzie on another characteristically grueling march back to their drop site, where he had stored their parachute under some heavy rocks. That was three days ago.

  In the time that had passed, they had cleared the zombies from the river to make it as safe as possible to use as a source of clean water and for fishing. They had just been ordinary people. It looked as though they had been simply flying from airport to airport looking for some kind of safety. Jack, if he were still alive, would have been riddled with guilt.

  Logan never did see the passenger plane come down, so really had no way to generate any kind of body count. But there were only five zombies in the river.

  He looked happy. Or at least content. He stood atop a rocky outcropping that didn't just make it fully out of the high water mark. He brandished a makeshift fishing line made out of excess rope from the parachute with a strong looking twig, which he had bated with worms. He had caught something every single day since making it back to the field that used to be, by any measure of judgment, some kind of rough going campsite.

  Logan had even made a tent and hammock out of the spare material from the parachute and reserve chute. She liked sleeping next to him in a cozy hammock. A bit of her own space would have been nice, but it was easy to feel safe with him. From the second he had saved her from a rape attack she felt like nothing much could harm her with him in the way.

  The area really was beautiful. Logan had wandered off on the second day to try to find out more about it. He had come across an abandoned farm house come bed and breakfast cottage down a relatively short farm track. There were leaflets of local attractions and maps of the area in there and he had taken as many as he could carry. Not without noting the tragic irony of being made to look like an everyday run of the mill holiday maker in the process.

  But he had at least figured out the area. They were in the west of England, towards the north, near a town called Keswick nestled on the shores of an enormous lake called Derwent Water. They had talked of going there to look for supplies many times. But Logan seemed happy to wait it out, and happier still in half cast caveman existence of subsistence living. Besides, if Jack came back, this valley was the best chance of him finding them. It seemed like a natural conduit for the rest of the valley's and offshoots to either side.

  The rolling hills shielded each side. It was impossible to see anything beyond its virtually cavernous walls. The best part of it was how sheltered it was. There was only really one entrance into the valley by road. If that's what it could be called. The short stretch Logan had walked that morning was single tracked, unpaved, and not too well looked after.

  The other way led back to crash site. That was a hard enough walk for two able bodied and determined ex serviceman of one description of another. She had been a cop and he a General in the Air Force after all. Zombies weren't going to make it.

  Lizzie was on cooking and fire duty again. She had tried in vein a few times to catch a fish or two and had been met with no luck. Logan was good at it and she was determined to have some kind of role in the day to day survival game they were playing, so she didn't mind cooking. It didn't take him long to drag a sizeable fish out of the water, sling it over his shoulder and wade back to the shore. She already had the fire and spit assembly waiting to start cooking. They both enjoyed the smell and neither complained about the monotony of their diet. Fish was all there seemed to be to eat in this place, but fish every night was better than no food any night. She smiled a hearty smile at him when he got close enough to see her face clearly.

  'There's a part of you that's at home here isn't there?' She teased him. Logan chuckled. He seemed to have been able to let go of Jack. Thinking that way about him was cruel though. He more than likely had dealt with, or was still dealing with it, in his own way. Maybe that story he told about the Russian mercenary he used to know had been part of it. Perhaps some people were just more comfortable in uncertainty than others were.

  'I think all of me is at home here.' He smiled a grand smile and lay back on the grassy bank. He had set up camp some distance away, behind the tree line to their rear. He used the branches and tree trunks to rig up a waterproof canopy under which he built his hammock. To call it a tent was a stretch. It could get really cold at night. Good thing it was summer.

  'Maybe we should stay?' She just got on with the cooking tasks as if it were second nature at this point.

  'Yeah, assuming that pub down the way there has beer on tap still, or maybe some old vine wines on the shelf. I guess I'd think about it.' Logan just laughed and closed his eyes for a moment. The sun was high in the sky between the valley's sides and it had blinded him a little bit while he was out fishing on the water.

  'Would you?' She was obviously surprised. He had given her a speech and a half back in New York about fighting to the last just because they should. Just because it wasn't morally right to stop fighting, even if the odds were intensely stacked against you. He had it all figured out in his head. Those who had an ability to do something also had the responsibility to get it done. Maybe he had given up.

  'No.' His answer was clear cut and left nothing to interpretation. 'You know I can't.' He sat up with a light strain and a deep sigh. He kneeled back down to the water's edge and took a long drink right out of the flowing water. It was cold and fresh and gave him back a little spark. They had been drinking it for days, more so since they managed to clear the river of all bodies just to make sure.

  'Okay, so there's still one more thing I can't get my head around with you.' She had been working on what she thought had been a hole in his logic for weeks. 'You retired... so, in a way of saying things, you quit. You're not fooling me any more "old man", you aren't that old. You still had some life left in you and you could have been a General for a whole lot longer.' She paused lightly to gauge his reaction. He was curious if anything, not offended. For some reason she was worried about upsetting him but quickly remembered that he had never shown even the slightest hint of anger with her.

  'Okay this could be interesting.' He entertained her to continue.

  'Maybe...' she kept on the side of caution still just because of her character. 'Maybe you had a responsibility that you walked out on? You never did tell me why you stopped...' He didn't answer for just a few moments. Maybe he was framing some kind of response. The fire was neatly crackling at this point and the fish slowly sizzling atop of it.

  'Even though I was a General... and even though I was trying to contain the most horrible diseases known to man, or help people who had already caught one... I never did really have a say on how I did it.' He sighed again and dusted off his hands. He took a stick and played with the charcoal in the fire for moment or two. The flames danced around in the sun and reflected on the water in a dizzy array of light colors. 'In the military way of thinking, yes, the objective is to stop the disease. But to stop it at any cost. Think about Cygan and the way he blew up the City without so much as an apology?'

  Lizzie nodded and took the fish from the fire. The first few times she tried cooking, it had turned out close enough to raw. She was, thankfully, starting to get a whole lot better at it. She remembered how angry Logan was when it all happened.

  'You really thought you could save New York didn't you?' She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and rubbed lightly.

  'No...' I didn't think we stood any chance. But that isn't the point. We could try. We had to try. That was our responsibility.' His face dropped a little. He still held a smile, but a deeply unhappy o
ne.

  'You still haven't said why you quit.' She wrapped the cooked fish in some edible leaves to cool. Logan was far too hungry and just started eating. There was something deeply satisfying about eating something he had caught himself.

  'Cygan was trying to cure the zombie pandemic by destroying it in fire. So we can say his intention was justified. But I think we both agree that his actions weren't. I quit because I finally realized that nothing good can come out of something bad. It's black and white, good side vs. dark side mentality on the surface of it... but if everyone bought into it. Maybe it could work.' Lizzie must have understood more than he thought she would.

  'I remember reading about World War One. Even when I was a kid in high school I thought, when I read about how many people fought, killed, and died in that war... what if they just didn't?' He smiled at her. Actually deeply proud of her for once. 'Then there was that story that one Christmas day, the two sides just got up and shook hands, played some soccer games, shared some chocolate. Maybe if they weren't so damn afraid of being shot for not following orders, then that would have been it. Rifle's down... we're not dying anymore.' A small tear formed in the corner of her eye. Suddenly she wasn't too hungry.

  'It's amazing what evils men will do when they're ordered. But just because someone tells you to do something, and you blindly follow, it doesn't make it right or you blameless. When I was a General, if Cygan told me to kill, I killed. But that doesn't mean he killed them. I did. And that coffin's on my shoulders and not his.' He paused for another drink. He wasn't upset, even though his words came right from his heart.

  'They can tell you what evil you do is for the greater good. They don't tell you that greater good is just their own twisted brand of it. No man gets to decide what is right... but we all get to feel what's right and its down to us to act on it. So if I'd been there, in those trenches? At least if the old me had been there, I would have kept firing into that inhuman line of enemies just because Cygan, or some other half witted blank slate of a military suit told me to do it.' He was brutal with his honesty. He didn't waver in the conviction in his voice, which made him sound self assured. But it was thinly veiled at best. He might have come to terms with it, but never could he forgive himself of it.

  Lizzie sat face to face with him by kneeling down on the pebbles by the water. Like a mother or a wife comforting her son or husband.

  'What about the new you?' She rested her folded arms on top of his legs and then her head atop her arms.

  'I don't know who the new me is. I've been running for too long to ask. But I do know... I know that I like soccer.' His joke shrouded the seriousness of it all, but she got it. He means the new James Logan would have thrown his rifle down with the rest of those men and never held it again.