by Kuhn, Steve
He told JC, “No one wants any trouble, man. We’d rather use what little ammo we have on the shamblers. Hell, we fired eight rounds too many just because it was nice to hear someone else was out there besides us. But if you don’t drop that fucking weapon, we will open up on you and everyone with you.”
Murphy cleared his throat, drawing their attention to where he stood perched on top of D-Prime’s trailer. The old coot was chillin’ up there with an arrow on the line, pulled back, and ready to go. “When you two are done arguing over who’s got a bigger dick, I’d like to get some sleep. I suggest one of you squeeze off so we can get on with it.”
Kylee emerged from behind Murphy, evening the odds at three on three, taking aim with her sidearm as I slipped from the shadows of the trailer. I posted up beside JC and stood firm, catching a glimpse of JC’s cocky smirk from out of the corner of my eye.
The stranger gave a whistle, and no less than three more of his men and a single female came jogging out from a mess of tarps and tents near their camper—all armed.
Shit was getting ridiculous. The barrels of the various weapons on display nervously twitched from one target to the next as both groups seemed to size up the competition. Beads of sweat dripped from everyone involved as the tension became more and more palpable. We all stood in silence waiting for someone to make a move.
Our stranger never took his eyes off JC as he called to his people, “Paul, watch the one with the bow. Candice, you got Dead-Eye up there with him.”
He then addressed JC, saying, “You are outnumbered and outgunned. I say again, lay down your weapons, or we will fire on you.”
Kylee called down to them, “We have the cover of the vehicle if necessary, and you’re being fired upon from an elevated position. You may have the numbers, but your terrain is against you. You will die here, I promise.”
The stranger spat out of the side of his mouth without moving another muscle and challenged Kylee, shouting up, “Well, that certainly sounds professional and all, Miss Lady, but are you really willing to risk his life on that? Because he’s the first one I’m gonna shoot.”
He stared at JC like a stone statue. Somethin’ about this dude was unsettling. I mean, taking the whole situation at face value was nerve-racking enough; however, we’d been in similar situations before. It’s just the way things were now. Everyone was always on high alert. Everyone was always a suspect. But this guy was almost too cool about what was going on. He was over-the-top in control of his position. To me, that was even scarier than someone who was a fidgeting, nervous wreck.
They had made their camp off the road and near a small copse of trees, which was likely due to the shade it offered. Luckily for us, it also offered cover of a different sort. While we made our approach to the camp after following the sound of the gunfire, Kylee was smart enough to drop Cutty and Rebecca off. They could approach on foot in case we came across some nut-jobs. It may have saved our lives.
The lone female in the group closed her eyes as her head dipped slightly forward under the pressure of Rebecca’s handgun. She hissed, “Shit!” as she lowered her weapon and raised her hands.
Rebecca relieved the woman of her rifle, slinging it over a shoulder, as well as the pistol in her belt. Then she took aim at Paul, holding them both at bay. She told Candice, “Take two steps back. If you act a fool, I’m gonna blow your brains through your face.”
I saw Cutty rise up from his crouch and point a single blade at one of the other men, simultaneously taking a somewhat clumsy aim at the stranger with our last pistol. He told the stranger, “Yeah, son! We fittin’ ta fuck y’all up. You heard what ma girl said now. Drop yo’ shit, lest I perforate yo’ fo’head.”
We all know Cutty can’t shoot. He shoots worse than me. Shit, he shoots worse than he dances. But hey, he’s from Baltimore, and we’re in bumfuck Nebraska. So, when an enormous black dude points a gun at your face and speaks like he’s from Baltimore, you tend to just do what the fuck he says.
Once again, though, this guy didn’t budge. He simply said, “Nice flank. I gotta be honest here and tell you I didn’t see that comin’.”
Calling up to Kylee, he continued, “Well, Miss Lady, I believe we are at an impasse. You have one of my people held prisoner, but that is neither here nor there. So… I am going to count down from five and begin shooting your people. We will discuss the rest of the details when we are through with all that… if there are any of us left. Are you ready? Five… four…”
Her little, tiny voice broke everyone’s concentration as Lilly rushed from the front of the trailer, Dana tailing behind her in a feeble effort to wrangle her in, and exclaimed, “That’s easy, mister! I can count down from fifteen! Wanna hear? Fifteen, fourteen, eleventeen, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, aaaaaand one!”
The stranger snapped, “Jesus! You got kids with you?”
Dana, by this point, had managed to pull Lilly back out of sight as Kylee shouted, “We’ve killed men! We’ll do it again if we have to! But that’s not the way we want it! We followed your gunfire in hopes of meeting a group of marines that have been evacuating people. We’ve been tailing them for a long time now.”
The stranger chuckled and told us all, “Well… I believe I can help you with that. You think we can all agree to put down our weapons in the interest of that little girl in the truck?”
Rebecca kicked Candice away and to the ground and told him, “Here’s my peace offering. Now your turn.”
The stranger nodded his approval and gestured to Paul, who grumpily lowered his own weapon and helped Candice to her feet. Candice mean-mugged Rebecca and told her, “We ain’t through, you and me.”
I lowered my own piece, trusting Cutty and the others, and tucked it in my belt as the stranger’s other men began to loosen up a bit.
He stepped forward and told us all, “We did the right thing here today. Perhaps there’s still hope after all. The name’s Cotton. That’s what they call me anyway. You have food? We need ammo. We can trade you some food if you got ammo. Paul got us a couple deer this week.”
And that was how we met Cotton’s crew.
The others are working on a trade to get us some decent grub since Lilly requires more than just canned slop. I don’t know if we can really spare any ammo, but Murphy seems pretty good at haggling.
Cutty tossed me the pistol he was holding and said, “We lucky, man. I don’t like gamblin’ to begin wit’, much less when we playin’ fo’ our lives. Jus’ rememba that I prayed we come outta dat alive and we did, Dext. You might not believe in it, and Lawd knows He done tested ma faith a lot since dis shit started, homie, but we still here. I think you need dis now more den I do…”
He dumped the small Bible in my lap and left me to write this.
I don’t know…
I feel like if I touch it, my hand will burst into flames.
Entry 97
Cotton and his people cannot know about Kylee. No matter what we do or what we say, they just won’t understand. If her secret gets out around these people… I just don’t know. But, for now, we’re just business as usual.
Cotton and I rode with Cutty in the jeep, and he directed us as we went. He’s a good dude. As it turns out, his people are just a hunter-gatherer group for a much larger community—an entire town, in fact. They do supply runs, scout, hunt for deer, and a whole bunch of other shit. They also know about the herd.
Cotton asked us about it first. “You seen the wave yet?”
Cutty replied, equally as confused by the question as I was, asking, “Da wave? Whassat?”
Cotton told us, “There’s a few hundred all packed together about ten clicks to the northeast. We’ve been tracking them on an off for about three weeks. Biggest group of shamblers I’ve seen yet.”
I had to ask him, “When was the last time you actually saw them?”
He looked up in thought before answering, “I guess it’s been about four, five days now.”
He paled
visibly when I informed him that not only had we seen them, but their numbers had now swollen to upwards of a thousand. He muttered to himself, “Jesus…”
Cutty asked him, “What y’all know about da marines? They still evacuatin’ people an’ shit. Might could let da town know about all dat.”
Cotton chuckled and told Cutty, “They’ve already come and gone. Few days back, they come rollin’ up to our perimeter and hopped out like some Hollywood shit. Started barkin’ orders, tellin’ us we were being evacuated and it was time to clear out of our space. Harris took one look at that truck full of shamblers and told ’em to fuck right off. You should’ve seen their faces, man. Harris said that we were good where we were and that we weren’t going. They had some spat about martial law, revolution, blah-blah-blah. Finally, the man in charge just threw his hands up and told Harris if we were overrun, it would be his fault. Only the Robertsons and the Page families ended up going with them. The rest chose to stay put.”
I told them we knew about the bernies that Kilo had with them. I let him know how they had lost men and about Fool, but I left out the part about the soldiers turning in their sleep that night. It just seemed unimportant since whatever men were left must be like Fool and Kylee.
Cutty asked, “Who Harris?”
Pointing slightly left and gesturing for me to make a turn, Cotton answered, “Deputy Harris. He kinda runs the show ever since Sheriff Parks was bitten. Parks was euthanized in as humane a way as possible. He never felt a thing, and I think everyone saw how brave he was to give himself up. An honorable man and a good leader, Parks was. Men of honor are few and far between these days. But anyway, Harris keeps the peace just like he always did. We grow our own crops. We hunt our own food. We purify our own water supply. Hell, man, save for the fact that electricity is all but gone, I’d say we’re doin’ damn well for ourselves. We defend ourselves when the shamblers come, and that’s that. Most importantly, though, is that we are good people… So don’t act like assholes when we get there, or they’ll toss you right out.”
My first thought was JC, naturally. If anyone was going to fuck things up for us here, I’d expect it to be JC. He’s more abrasive than wiping your ass with sandpaper.
My second thought was Rebecca. She was still on thin ice with Candice after the whole standoff incident, and those two have been at each other’s throats ever since.
Apparently, Candice spent months proving herself capable of going out on the road. She had been begging to go out so she could provide for the community—learned to shoot on her own and eventually showed herself to be ready, but Rebecca clowned her on her first trip out. I can imagine that hurt Candice’s pride pretty badly, and she won’t be ready to let that go anytime soon. As long as we can prevent an outright catfight, those two will be all right I think.
This town could be exactly what we’ve been after from the beginning—safe. We can all pull our weight and, if we can keep JC in check, it would be a great place to raise Lilly—good, like-minded people making the best of the new world.
We just really need to keep this new bite a secret until Kylee can heal up.
It wasn’t even her fault, really. Cotton had us stop at the dump on the way in because that’s a natural part of the group’s route. After the scouting and the hunting, they always swing by the community’s dumping area, which is about fifteen miles out from the town proper.
They usually drop all the trash on the way out and then, on the way back in, they roll through a second time and clear it out.
Cotton explained it like this, “When you dump all your trash, it attracts animals: ’coons, possums, what have you. They’re no different than they ever were when it comes to an easy meal. Shamblers are the same way, and they ain’t as dumb as everyone first thought they were, neither. Those shamblers like to hang around the trash so they can get at the animals. Some of ’em even lay down in the garbage and wait for the coyotes to come and pick at ’em then turn the tables. Anyway, we try and keep the population down.”
Who’da thought, right?
We bailed out and got ready to do some housecleaning. It was actually nice to be around people who knew their shit when it came to the dead. Everyone reflexively put their guns on their shoulders or in their belts and drew melee weapons.
Right off the bat, we could see about twelve of them wandering around the retched field of debris. The stench of rotting animal carcasses and decomposing food was thick and heavy in the air, and it made my eyes water immediately. Luckily, I wasn’t alone as Candice and one of the other guys, Jason I think was his name, gagged and coughed.
Cutty smacked his blades together and whooped at the bernies in the trash, and they began their approach.
Paul waded into the garbage and took out two immediately, swinging a ten-pound maul straight down on the crown of their heads. There was something strangely satisfying about the wet, cracking sound it made as it smashed into their skulls.
The others in the group broke off in pairs and began sweeping the grounds for sleepers.
It was hard for me to focus on the task because of the sheer size of the area, so I just worked it over in small blocks, jabbing my latest weapon of choice here and there. I’m diggin’ the crowbar lately. It’s a nice, all-purpose piece.
I had heard Rebecca yelp shortly after watching Cotton applaud Cutty for slicing up four on his own, in typical fashion. She had tripped on something about twenty-five feet ahead of me and was just getting to her feet, wiping off bits of rotten vegetables and dumpster juice from her pants as she raised a hand to signal she was all right. I couldn’t even call to her in time to let her know that one of the dead had gotten to its feet right behind her. They got up at almost the exact same moment, so I can only assume that her own rustling around covered the sound of it, and the smell of the trash and animal carcasses made the odor of the deadhead nearly undetectable.
Kylee called out “’Becca, move!” and dashed to her side just in time to tackle the bernie onto the foul refuse. After a short scuffle, Rebecca had bashed its head in with her own club.
By that point, I had waded my way to them and Kylee was getting to her feet. Rebecca said to her, “Thanks. You all right?”
Kylee looked at us, wide eyed, in our little huddle and just shook her head, whispering, “No.”
She did a good job of holding herself together, and as she wiped herself down, she whispered, “I’m bit. Fucker got me right here…” She gestured to the webbing between her thumb and forefinger.
It wasn’t missing a hunk or anything, but there was no denying it was a bite. The incisors and canine teeth marks were clearly visible, still dimpled in her flesh, and there was blood seeping from one of them where it had just broken the skin. My stomach dropped.
Rebecca’s face was one of guilt as she whispered, “You just saved my life. That’d been a death sentence for me. Luckily, it doesn’t even look that bad, and you’ve been bitten before. Let’s call Murph over and get you cleaned up.”
I immediately took issue with that and harshly whispered, “No! We don’t know these people. They seem fine now, yeah, but if they find out she’s bitten, we have no idea how they’ll react. They might try and put her down on the spot. Let’s play it cool and just get you back to the trailer where we can handle this privately. Now… I want you to hold your knife in that hand to cover up the mark, and limp.”
Kylee whispered, “Limp? Huh?”
Cotton called over and asked suspiciously, “Everything all right over there? Close call, eh?”
Rebecca shouted over to him, “We’re good!”
I backed her play and called out, “She just twisted her ankle! You guys all right to finish up? I wanna get it wrapped up and make sure it’s not broken! Murphy’s good at that kinda shit!”
Cotton waved us off and went about his business.
We limped her back to the trailer and told Murphy what was up. Dana was inside with Lilly and overheard us, so she started her panicking shit while Murphy pou
red alcohol on the wound. Kylee rolled up her sleeve and showed Dana her scar. She told her, “I’ll be fine. Been there, done that. We’re pretty sure I’m one of very few people who can survive a bite, but these other people don’t need to know about this. You have no idea what we’ve seen on the road, Dana… what people are capable of. We don’t know these people, and we’re not taking any chances… any! Now keep your cool, and keep your mouth shut. Okay?”
Dana started to protest, but the words caught in her throat. She resigned with a simple nod.
Murphy told Kylee, “Speaking of not taking any chances, you’re back on the suspect list. Sorry, but that’s just how it is. We need you to stay out of the trailer, away from Lilly especially, for a few days. If you start to feel ill, tell me immediately and we’ll put you on dead watch. Keep close to Fart, too. She’ll probably know before you do. Got that?”
Kylee, clearly disgruntled at being put back on the ‘you might turn at any moment’ list, showed some emotion with a quivering lip. She blinked away some frustrated tears and nodded at him, saying, “Fine. Okay,” before inhaling deeply and putting on her business face.
We put her with Murphy and Fart in the cab of D-Prime, and I figure we’ll be at the town in about a half hour. JC is likely to have already been informed by Rebecca, as they’re in the trailer while I write this, but Cutty doesn’t know yet.
I don’t know anyone as tough as Kylee. She’ll get through this. She’ll be fine.
Entry 98
I swear, there is so much fuckin’ camouflage in this podunk town, it looks like everyone bought their wardrobe from Bass Pro Shop. And I can’t lie, I was hopin’ to get some ass at some point, but these broads are more busted than the day shift at a downtown titty bar.
But enough about that shit…
Imagine it’s like the old Andy-Griffith-Mayberry hookup. That’s the sort of town this is—quiet, quaint, everyone knows each other, and all that good shit. The whole thing is self-sufficient with this guy owning the tackle shop, and this other dude owning the pharmacy, and so-and-so owning the barbershop. For the most part, all of it is still intact and in many cases relatively well stocked, somehow. Hell, they even keep the grass cut with those old-school mowers and all that.
