by Chris Lowry
“She’s quiet,” said Brian.
“It’s a good practice.”
“Yeah, but we’re helping her.”
I kept my mouth shut.
Maybe she was the last person alive in that town and used our distraction as a chance to get away.
Until she ran into me.
Or maybe there was something more.
There was usually something more now.
But she would share when she was ready.
Or we would learn about it some other way.
Our shopping spree didn’t last too long. The owners, wherever they were, had not left much, but we scored soup and spaghetti noodles, lots of both.
I made sure we emptied the cabinets, double checking for spices and even ketchup packets from fast food joints that some people collected in drawers.
Hundreds of them.
Then we checked the garage and a five gallon gas can full next to a lawnmower.
Brian plopped it in a wheelbarrow and we took turns rolling it back to the bus.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bem and Tyler were missing.
I checked the outside of the bus to be sure and hopped up on the hood to gain access to the roof and checked the tents.
They were empty.
I saw Brian and Peg come out of the woods lugging blue five gallon containers of water.
That was the rule in camp. Blue for water. Red for fuel. Never mix the two.
I slid down the side of the bus and landed with a grunt on the ground.
"Where are they?" I growled.
"Hunting," Brian took a step back.
That he didn't have to ask who I was talking about told me something.
He had seen them go.
"It's okay Dad," the Boy walked around the back of the bus, his new friend Karen trailing after. "She can take care of herself."
I knew she could.
When we found her back in Arkansas, she had been three days up a tree as a zombie pack circled the bottom.
She was smart and ingenious, and she was with the scout I trusted the most.
"That's not the point," I said. "I told you no one goes off alone."
"I didn't," the Boy answered.
He was getting to be tall, almost as tall as me.
The edge of manhood was upon him, a time when he would normally be getting nervous about the girl he wanted to ask to a homecoming dance.
Not in this new world.
"She didn't either," he pointed out.
Anna came up behind me and put a hand on my arm. It wasn't a tight grip, more of a gentle nudge, a reminder to let me know she was there. Maybe even her way of telling me to calm down before I lost it.
I took a deep breath.
"I said no one goes alone, but you two are to stay in camp. Here where I can protect you."
The others had gathered around to watch, but no one was talking.
The Boy cleared his throat.
"Dad," he shook his head looking way older than he was meant to be. "That's not fair. It's not fair to anyone else here, and it's not fair to us."
"I don't care," I shot back. "I want you safe."
Brian scooted the water cans closer to the back wheels of the bus and turned to face me.
"She's with Tyler," he reminded me. "He's the most capable guy around here."
Peg was more succinct.
"You're being ridiculous," she set her water containers beside the others.
"We all have to pitch in," the Boy said.
I've never been one for getting ganged up on.
Something about it turned all of the reason inside my skull into pure stubborn obstinance.
As much as I practiced Stoicism and strength of will, it was easy to slip over to the dark side of being an ass.
I could feel the desire to dig in my heels kicking up a notch.
Anna reached up and grabbed my face.
She pulled my lips down to hers, and though there wasn't much sensuality to the kiss, it was still enough of a shock to drag me back from the darkness and allow a little bit of common sense to rear its simple head.
"Okay," I sighed. "I'll give them five minutes before we go look."
She smiled and nodded.
Just like that. No words, just a touch and a smile.
I smiled back, feeling the ache of worry loosen its grip on my gut.
Then Bem stumbled out of the woods covered in blood.
I raced to her and scooped her up, carried her back to the side of the bus. Anna and Peg moved in with towels, water, bandages.
They tried to move me aside, but my hands were going over her arms, her neck, as I searched for the source of the gore that covered her.
She was sobbing and croaked through the tears.
"It's not me. It's not mine."
I stood back for a moment and let the two women clean her off.
"Tyler?" Brian asked.
"I'm okay," he said as he cleared the woods and came across the road.
Unlike Bem, he was clean, just small spatters of blood across his face and clothes in splotches.
"We ran into a small herd of Z," he said. "You should have seen her in action."
He stopped in front of Bem and too close to me.
I didn't see him stare at her in admiration. I didn't see her give him a smile that stood out against the ichor stained skin of her cheeks or wink up at him.
All I saw was red.
I grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and back of his pants, lifted and threw him across the clearing.
He landed in a rolling tumble that bounced three times before he came to a stop in a heap.
Then I was on him, rolling him over and dragging him up by his coat.
"You took her out there," I screamed. "You almost got her killed."
I lifted him off the ground and prepared to throw him again.
Brian grabbed one arm, the Boy the other and yanked me away.
They fought to drag me off him and settled for just a holding pattern long enough for Tyler to crawl away and set his back against the rear tires.
I shook off Brian a little harder than I meant to, lifted the Boy up and half carried, half dragged him with me toward Tyler.
The scout didn't even lift his hands to defend himself. Tears tracked down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I'm sorry."
Bem threw herself in front of him and glared up at me.
"Stop!"
Then Anna was against my chest, pushing back, and Brian dusted himself off to get back on the free arm.
I stopped fighting them and settled on a look.
Tyler shrank even further.
"I'd never hurt her," he said. "I'd never let her get hurt. You have to know that."
"Dad!" Bem shouted.
She got in my face right next to Anna.
"He saved me!" she screamed. "It wasn't his fault."
I could feel my pulse in my ears, the swish swoosh of my heart racing as adrenaline coursed through my veins.
Brian whispered on one side, Anna cooed on the other.
I let the rage go, off like waves, a slowly receding tide.
They could feel me relax, but still didn't let go.
"I'm sorry," Tyler said again.
"They don't go off without me," I told him and glared at everyone else. "Does everyone understand?"
"Dad," the Boy said, sadness in his voice.
Bem just backed up and settled beside Tyler. Peg tipped one of the containers and wet a fresh piece of cloth.
"You know the whole hulking out thing is cool when you do it for us," she started cleaning up Bem again. "Not so much when you do it too us."
I took a step back.
"They get it," Anna said. "We all get it. No one wants your kids to get hurt. No one wants any of us to get hurt."
I wanted to tell them they didn't understand.
They didn't know what I had gone through, what I had been through to reach them, to get them this far.
What I'd had to sacrifice, who I'd had to kill.
I knew I was losing my soul, bit by bit in this new world. The pieces of me that made me who I am were slipping away, being replaced by the type of person who could live in this new world.
I looked up from her and saw the others watching me.
Scared.
Worried.
I put a hand over Anna's on my chest and held it there, so she could feel my heartbeat in her palm, slowing down as I regained control.
"Are you hurt?" I locked eyes with Tyler.
"Ego's pretty bashed up," he shrugged. "And my ass is sore."
I nodded.
He might get an apology later, but he sure as Hell wasn't getting one now.
"Bem," I said.
"I'm not bit Dad," she said. "I'm not hurt either. This is all Z. And he saved me."
The glare was gone but I could tell by her voice that my attack on the scout still hurt her.
I looked at Brian.
"I'm going to look around."
He nodded.
"I'll get my gun," he said.
"Stay here. Watch everyone."
I stepped toward the front of the bus. Anna followed.
"You said no one goes out alone," she said in a quiet voice.
"I'm just checking for more herds. If there was one, there could be others."
"I'll go with you," she said.
I shook my head.
The rage was emptying out and it was being replaced by regret.
I wasn't embarrassed about what I did because of the reason behind it.
When it came to keeping the kids safe, my word was absolute law and I wasn't going to let anyone try to get around it.
But I had let my temper get the best of me, and it hurt some of the group in the process.
We couldn't afford that kind of reaction anymore.
And damn it, Peg was right. Save it for the bad guys, the Z or anyone else who tried to stop us.
These people had my back, and Tyler had been by my side in more than one fight.
He was just a kid and he didn't deserve to get tossed around like a doll.
Even if he put my daughter in danger.
"Get everyone fed. Get everyone ready to move. We have gas and water, so we can make another hundred miles East today."
She bit her tiny pouty lips between brilliant white teeth and looked up at me from under raised eyebrows.
I leaned in for a kiss, a little more than a distraction this time.
"That's a promise I'll make you keep later," she winked and squeezed my bottom.
That stirred up a different kind of beast in my tummy. Maybe a little bit lower.
I grabbed a rifle and slung it over my shoulder and stuck an extra mag in each back pocket.
Then I picked up a pike and headed into the woods. I hoped there were no more Z around and we could get moving.
It would have been smarter just to break camp and take off.
But they needed time away from me, and I needed time too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Its common knowledge that a walk in the woods can calm the soul.
Or maybe that’s music and savage beasts.
But the guy who said it never had to walk with the threat of Z hanging over his head.
Truth was, I wanted to run into one. Or six.
I could take out some aggression on the walking dead.
But I was glad I didn’t.
The birds flittering through the trees played with each other, singing songs about their world, unaffected by zombies or firefights.
It was like they were in a different world, and I suppose they were.
What did the animals care about the end of our world?
The walk did the trick, the sun flicking through the tree branches, warming my skin when I walked through the broad patches.
I felt the tension ease out, more with each step.
Muscles that I didn’t know ached started protesting.
I tried to remember the last time I relaxed, the last time I felt like I could take a full breath.
Before the Z, I decided.
Since then, it was one constant cortisol dump after another, worry for the kids, worry for the people in the group, heck, even worry for myself.
All under the constant pressure of Z.
And people trying to kill me.
Kill us.
The birds kept singing, but there was a different smell on the air.
Funny. I took a breath expecting rotting meat and decaying flesh smells to cling to the back of my throat.
This was smoke.
Faint, but there. Wet smoke, like a fire doused too fast and left to smolder in the muck and mud.
I stopped beside a tree and studied the woods.
Easy to get lost in.
Mostly pine, but evergreens scattered among them, oaks, hickory and maples filling in some of the spaces.
There was no order to the trees, which was a little strange.
I grew up in a pine forest built by a logging company. They would come in, clear cut the forest and replant saplings in neat straight rows, ready to harvest twenty years later.
It was easy to stand on one end and stare straight down a row, until the undulation of the ground underneath caused a gradual shift that hid the other end in the distance.
Here it was different.
The ground buckled and shifted, but the there was no order to the trees. Everything was random.
Except the X.
I was five hundred meters from the camp, maybe more and two trees were lashed together to form an X eight feet off the ground.
It didn’t look natural, and I took several slow, quiet steps closer to get a better look.
A vine tied the trees together, with a skin thrown around it, like a teepee.
I moved closer. Slower.
There was a tent across a small scratched out clearing, two more further on.
And a shallow pit scraped into the earth full of mud and ash.
Smoke trickled off gray charred logs.
The campsite was empty, but only by just a few minutes.
This close to our site.
If they had waited to say hello, or event to start shooting, it would have answered a question.
Like what they wanted.
But since they disappeared, probably after seeing me walk through the woods, it made me nervous.
I stopped behind a tree and kept watch for a few minutes. It stretched longer and I wondered if I was being watched back.
But the birds kept singing, the sun kept shining and after waiting for half an hour, I turned back toward the bus.
Either they weren’t coming back, spooked by my appearance, or they were waiting me out.
Neither would do me any good and I wanted to get back to the bus to double check on my people.
The sun slipped below the horizon, but twilight was bright enough to keep me from walking into trees.
I made the perimeter of our camp at full on dark, drawn by the orange glow of a campfire.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I guess they didn't hear me coming.
I wasn't trying to be stealthy, but maybe too much time sneaking around the woods made me watch my steps, or I was just lucky.
Probably lucky.
I could see the flicker of the campfire through the trees and it made me think of how to hide it better in the future.
There weren't too many folks roaming around after dark, and there happened to be some, chances were high there were up to no good.
