by Joe McKinney
Jeff didn’t tell Robin about that, though.
She said, “So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I was going to get some lunch. You hungry?”
“A little.” She glanced around, like she was making sure they were alone. Then she said, “Of course, we don’t have to go get lunch. I mean, if you don’t want to.”
“What else would we do?” he said.
He looked at her. She smiled back.
The dormitories weren’t that far away.
Later that afternoon, Jeff was walking around, exploring the area around the new adult-education building to the south of the common area, when he bumped into a heavyset black woman in her early sixties named LaShawnda Johnson. He recognized her as one of the original Family members, the people who had come with Jasper from his church in Jackson. Jeff had met her that first day, after dinner, when he was trying to get settled in the dormitory. At the time, she’d acted like a den mother, smiling and laughing and telling jokes like she was determined to fill the day with sunshine. But she wasn’t acting friendly now. She seemed stiff, almost cold, like she’d caught him doing something dirty with a girl way too young for him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, thoroughly mystified. “Did I do something wrong? I was just looking around.”
“You just go on back to the pavilion till suppertime. Don’t come round here without permission, you hear?”
“Sure,” he said. “I hear you.”
“Go on,” she said.
He excused himself and walked away. But when he looked back, just before he turned the corner between the kitchen and the pharmacy, he saw she was still watching him, her expression hard and forbidding.
Confused and a little rattled, he made his way back across the main road, past the tool room and the vehicle garage, and past the education buildings. Most everybody seemed to be indoors, and the public areas were quiet.
LaShawnda Johnson was out of sight, but the feeling of unease he’d gotten after speaking with her remained. What had done? Why did she get so defensive? Unable to hold back his curiosity, he doubled back to the adult-education building, where classes in subjects as varied as soap making and canning and carpentry were held each night, and he started looking around. A moment later, he heard the sounds of a struggle coming from within the building. A body hit the floor. He heard men and women grunting, muffled snarls.
Swallowing hard, Jeff headed toward the front of the building and stopped at the doorway. Inside, he saw Jasper standing on the riser of a small stage on the far side of the rectangular building. Aaron stood beside him. A dozen or so members of the original family were on the floor, formed in a loose circle around a tall, lanky, brown-haired man in a blue T-shirt and brown corduroy pants. They were hitting him, kicking him, forcing him back into the center of their circle each time he tried to make a break through their line.
One man landed a hard right punch to the man’s face and knocked him backward, onto his knees. Then he stepped forward and kicked the tall man in the belly. The tall man collapsed to the ground and several others closed in on him, throwing punches and kicking him.
The tall man on the floor lurched with the blows, but offered no resistance. Jeff stood wide-eyed, not quite able to make himself believe what he was seeing. The tall man on the floor made a feeble, defeated sound, and Jasper raised a hand in the air.
Instantly, the family backed away.
“A moment, friends. Let him speak.”
Jasper kneeled down next to the man’s bruised face. “Tell me, friend. Why have you forsaken me?”
“I haven’t,” the man said. “Please.”
“But you have, friend. Don’t you see that? You were trusted with the safety of our people, and you betrayed them when you tried to flee.”
“No,” the man said.
“Yes,” Jasper answered. “When I send you on a gathering detail, that’s a sign of my trust. Why, then, friend, would someone so much in my confidence see fit to run the first chance he gets?”
The man made a feeble, inaudible reply.
Jasper rose, shaking his oddly square head. His sunglasses glinted in the sunlight that streamed in through the windows.
Jeff heard the crunch of gravel around the left side of the building. From the right side, he heard the sound of someone breathing hard. He looked around for someplace to hide, but there was no place to go, no cover.
He heard LaShawnda’s voice. “I’m telling you, I saw him going this way.”
Oh shit, Jeff thought. He looked around him again.
Then he looked down.
When LaShawnda and the other four members of the Family rounded the corner, they found the porch empty.
Aaron stepped out of the front door. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“I saw that Jeff Stavers boy come this way.”
From beneath the porch, Jeff looked up through the slats. In the thin sliver of daylight that filtered down to him, he could see them gesturing toward the outhouses on the far side of the building. Jeff held his breath and waited, listening as Aaron told LaShawnda to keep looking around.
She stood, looking at the buildings around her, then left the porch and followed after the others. Aaron went back inside the education building.
Jeff waited, listening.
A few minutes later, he heard Jasper order the Family to resume their beating of the tall man.
And while the Family punched and kicked, and the tall man whimpered beneath the blows, Jasper laughed.
CHAPTER 41
Lemmon, South Dakota.
From the driver’s seat of the RV, Michael Barnes stared out over an enormous ocean of grass. They were almost there.
“Why don’t you go back and sleep, Mr. Barnes,” said Sandra. “Send Jerald up here. He’s slept long enough.”
“I’m all right,” Barnes said.
“You’re exhausted,” Sandra said. “Look at you. You can barely keep your eyes open.”
She was right, of course. Last night, they had seemed so close, and he made the decision to keep going. They had seen a lot of the infected on the road—a lot more than he had expected to see this far from major cities—and he didn’t think it was safe to stop. But it was almost dawn now. The sky was turning a luminous gray to the east, and they still had so many more miles to go.
A nap would do you good, he thought. He’d given up his turn at the bed and let Jerald Stevens have it all night so he could be the one to drive them into the Grasslands, but that was before he’d had to deal with the monotonous prairies of South Dakota. He got the feeling a man who spent too much time looking out across those limitless waves of grass would go quietly insane. There was an immensity there that was so spectacular it left a man no choice but to turn his eye inward and look upon himself. And, Barnes knew, that way led to demons.
“You’ll wake me before we get there?” he said.
“Of course,” Richardson answered.
Barnes nodded slowly, his mind already drifting toward sleep. He got up and let Richardson climb into the driver’s seat.
He walked back to the bedroom at the rear of the RV. Clint Siefer, the kid who never seemed to say anything, was sleeping on the couch. He’d fallen asleep with the TV on, the original Star Wars playing in an endless loop on the big-screen TV across from him. Irritated, Barnes scooped up the remote and turned off the set. Then he dropped the remote on the couch at Clint’s feet and dragged himself back to the bedroom.
The light was off and he didn’t bother to turn it on. Instead, he pulled off his boots and said, “Jerald, get up.”
No answer.
“Come on, man. Get up. They want you up front.”
Again there was no answer. Barnes felt anger flare up inside him. He could see Jerald’s outline on the bed, his face turned away, one arm tossed absently over his forehead. Barnes put a hand on the bed and the other on Jerald’s shoulder, intending to push him out of bed, but he stood up suddenly when he felt something
thick and squishy under his right hand.
He stared at the thing he’d just touched, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw it was a thick slice of deli turkey. The rest of the turkey breast, the size of a football and covered with bite marks, was cradled up against Jerald’s hip.
“Oh, man,” Barnes said. “Jerald, get the fuck up, man. That’s fucking disgusting.”
He shoved Jerald a little harder, and the man’s body felt as stiff as the legs of a table.
Barnes straightened.
He turned around, hit the lights, and went back to the bed. Jerald was pale in the face, his lips blue, his eyes open and staring blankly off at a corner of the room. A small puddle of vomit was on the bed below his mouth.
Barnes couldn’t believe it. The stupid fuck had actually eaten himself to death.
“Idiot,” Barnes said. The anger took over. “Goddamn fucking idiot,” he yelled. “Goddamn son of a bitch.”
He grabbed Jerald’s body and yanked it out of the bed.
The RV slowed and stopped, and Barnes nearly fell. He put his hand on the wall to steady himself. Then he grabbed the corpse by the shirt at the back of the neck and dragged it one-handed out to the living room.
The others were running back to him as he was coming out. He tossed the body at their feet.
Richardson stared at the body. Sandra clamped a hand over her mouth. Clint Siefer sat up on the couch and stared at them sleepily, not sure what was going on. Then he saw the dead body, and his eyes went wide with fright.
“What…” Richardson tried to say.
“The dumb fucker finally did it,” Barnes snapped. “He ate himself to death. Rigor mortis has set in. Probably been dead three or four hours.”
“Oh, my God,” Sandra said.
“Fucking idiot,” Barnes said. Then he gave the body a savage kick.
CHAPTER 42
“Where do you suppose they’re coming from?” Billy asked.
Ed and Billy were on top of the perimeter fence near the main entrance, making repairs. So far, Jasper and his cronies hadn’t made a big deal of it, but every morning, when the work crews went into the fields or worked on the buildings near the perimeter, they saw more and more zombies gathering at the fence, trying to claw their way inside.
“I don’t know,” Ed said. “Maybe they were on their way for the same reason we were. They saw the signs Jasper’s people put up, same as we did. They just didn’t make it.”
From where they sat atop the fence, they could see dead bodies out in the grass. And there were two more zombies staggering toward the main entrance out on the road. Ed could see them dragging themselves along on ruined legs.
Billy scanned the prairie and shook his head.
“But there’s so many.”
“There’s gonna be more still, is my guess,” Ed said. “All those people on the road, headed here. It’s like leaving a trail of bread crumbs.”
“You think they’re following the garbage on the road, the abandoned cars, stuff like that?”
“Could be.”
Billy looked down at the damage they’d been tasked with repairing and sighed. Ed knew what he was thinking. They were in for an all-day job. Last night, about twenty zombies had beat on the fence, and they’d done a fairly respectable job of breaking it down. There was a large section that had been pulled away from the posts, and it would have to be reinforced with new wire mesh and bolstered by razor wire. What neither of them said was that it would only get harder from here. A few weeks ago, there had been only a few zombies. Now, it was every night. They woke up to the crack of rifle shots echoing across the prairie. And sometimes, when the wind shifted, they caught the foul odor of burning bodies from the disposal pits to the north of the compound. If things continued the way they were, eventually they’d reach a point where the fences wouldn’t hold the infected at bay. It was only a matter of time, he knew.
“You okay, Ed?”
He’d been daydreaming, Ed realized. Not a smart thing to do while they were fifteen feet above the ground. He smiled and slapped Billy in the shoulder.
“Great,” he said. He heaved a skein of razor wire up onto the top rail and picked out the loose end. “Here, grab the skein,” he said.
Billy took it from him and pulled it back and out of the way, so that he could feed it out to Ed as needed. They’d spent a lot of time together up here, and they’d gotten good at this. Ed enjoyed his time up on the fences with Billy. He’d actually grown really fond of the boy, despite their rough start. Julie Carnes had joked with him that he’d finally found the son he never had, and while he didn’t think it was as much as all that, he still liked talking to the boy.
And now they were up here again, working easily together, and their conversation turned, as it usually did, back to Kyra Talbot.
Lately, she was all Billy thought of.
“She’s working in the radio room,” Billy said. “The way she explained it to me, she sits in this little room outside of where Jasper monitors the radio. When he needs her, he calls her in, tells her a message to take over to the office, and she delivers it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. She probably gets him coffee and stuff like that, but I think that’s about it.”
“I guess it beats freezing up here, doesn’t it?”
“Or being one of those poor bastards out there.”
Ed nodded. They were silent for a time, and Ed noticed Billy’s attention drifting back to the center of the compound. “Hey,” he said.
“Hmm.” Billy looked at him. “What’d you say?”
“I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t have to. You got it bad for her, don’t you?” Billy didn’t answer. “You ought to be careful there.”
“Careful?”
“I’m old, Billy, but I was your age once. You don’t seriously think you’re the first guy to go nuts over a girl, do you?”
Billy smiled. “Doesn’t do any good to try to lie to you, does it?”
“Not really. But I’m wondering if you’ve thought this thing through. She’s tight with that guy from California, from what I can see. What’s his name? Colin?”
“Yeah, Colin. He’s an asshole.”
Ed cleared his throat.
“Sorry,” Billy said. “But he is.”
“It’s okay. I happen to agree with you, actually.”
“Really?” Billy looked up at Ed, and the expression on his face was hopeful, like he’d found an unexpected ally.
Ed recognized the look. It wasn’t the message he’d meant to deliver. “I think he’s desperate, Billy. That’s never a good thing. All of us are dealing with a world that has completely fallen apart, but some of us aren’t handling it as well as others.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t think he’s stable,” Ed said. “I’m saying he’s holding on to Kyra because he sees her as an element of this new world that he can control. You take that away from him, there’s no telling how he’ll react. Just be careful, okay?”
Billy didn’t answer.
“What does she think about life here in the Grasslands?”
“She likes Jasper a lot.”
The way he said it, the enthusiasm, the sudden brightening of the eyes, bothered Ed. Billy was smart about so many things, and yet there were times when he just didn’t think a thing through. First the girl, then this place. Damn, it was frustrating.
Ed put a nail in his mouth and clenched it while he hammered another into the section of wire on which he was working.
“Easy there, partner,” Billy said. “Pounding on that thing a little hard, aren’t you?”
Ed just grunted.
Billy put his hammer down and pushed himself up to a sitting position, his legs dangling over the side of the fence.
“What’s up, Ed. You all right?”
“Happy as a pig in slop.” He took the nail from his mouth and set his own hammer down. No, it wouldn’t do any good to
lie. “I thought this place would be safe, Billy. That’s why I brought us here.”
Billy looked at him strangely. “What are you talking about, the zombies?”
Ed started to speak, then stopped himself. There was a lot he felt he needed to say, but couldn’t. He hated feeling so helpless. He tried to smile but couldn’t make himself do it. He turned away and scanned the surroundings instead, the green prairie that stretched off to the horizon everywhere he looked.
Finally, he said, “I don’t know, Billy. This place…”
“What about it? You don’t like it here?”
“Do you?”
“Well, yeah,” said Billy. “I mean, sure. What’s not to like?”
They had Billy working in the kitchen most mornings, and in the laundry in the afternoons, both jobs he’d held as a trustee in the Sarasota County Jail. He seemed to enjoy the work, at least as far as Ed could tell, but Ed wondered how much longer that would go on.
“Jasper’s good at making people feel useful,” Billy said. “You got to give him that.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Ed said. And it was. He had built schools for the kids and organized activities for those too old or feeble to work. There was plenty to eat. Medical care was more than adequate. But still, Ed felt uneasy.
“So what’s the problem?” Billy said.
“What do we know about the world outside these walls, Billy? Answer me that.”
Billy thought for a moment. “Well,” he said. “Jasper says that—”
“Stop there,” Ed said. “We’ve been here, what, about three weeks? In all that time, have you seen a radio? A TV? A cell phone? Nobody gets word from the outside but Jasper. Doesn’t that concern you?”
